More often than not, science is a tedious process of checking, rechecking, cross-checking, and finally starting over from scratch. Throughout history, most important technological advances have occurred not with a “eureka!” moment, but with the slow, steady grinding away of researchers and academics. This allows us not only to hone in on the truth, but also to make predictions about what we may discover in the future.

These predictions are usually not completely accurate, and further research is required. This is how the process of science works: a theory is tested, problems with the theory are identified, and a new theory is proposed. Sometimes, however, the results are so surprising that researchers are left scratching their heads and struggling for an explanation. Here are some of the more surprising results from the past couple decades of research.

Starting with the Caveman in the Mirror
Neanderthals – our thick-browed, stooped-shouldered cousins, disappeared 30,000 years ago. They were a species doomed to extinction. Though they were very closely related to us, they failed to make any kind of art or use tools more advanced than sharp rocks and thrusting spears. No wonder then, that as our ancestors spread across the globe, Neanderthals vanished, obviously out-competed by their more intelligent and graceful relatives.

But that’s not the entire story. After careful comparison of the genome of modern humans with that of the Neanderthals, it appears that we share as much as 1-4% of our DNA with those distant relatives, indicating that they interbred with our ancestors. For a long time, scientists didn’t know whether to classify them as another species, or just a very odd subspecies of humanity. This new finding puts that debate to rest; biologically speaking, humans and Neanderthals were the same species because we are able to interbreed. Only modern Africans show no sign of Neanderthal genes in their genome, indicating that the two populations interbred after they left Africa. Interestingly, there is just as much Neanderthal DNA in areas where no Neanderthals ever lived as in places like Europe where the two populations lived side-by-side. This means that the interbreeding took place very early in our diffusion out of Africa, before we split into the various ethnic groups seen today.

The Pioneer of Anomalies
In 1972, the Pioneer 10 spacecraft was launched on its mission to study the planet Jupiter. It became the first spacecraft to cross the asteroid belt on July 15 of the same year. In 1973, Pioneer 11 was launched on a similar mission that would also take it to Saturn to study that planet as well. However, by 1980, something appeared to be going wrong. The spacecraft weren’t where they were supposed to be and were climbing out of the sun’s gravity well more slowly than expected. By 1994, NASA scientists were struggling to come up with an explanation, as the discrepancies between predicted and actual positions continued to grow until the spacecraft were out of position by many thousands of kilometers.

There is still no universally accepted explanation for this phenomenon which affects all craft we send into deep space. All known forces have been accounted for, yet there is a 8.74±1.33×10^−10 m/s^2 constant acceleration towards the sun. Explanations range from the mundane: measurement error; to the extraordinary: a new understanding of physics is required. Some say that our understanding of gravity is incomplete; that at the distances involved in these calculations gravity behaves differently than we understand here on Earth. However, this explanation ignores the fact that gravity acts exactly as we think it should regarding the planets in the outer solar system. Recently, a simpler explanation has gained traction: that thermal radiation pressure inherent in the spacecraft is somehow to blame.

This is Your Brain on Agriculture
By now, everyone knows the basic story of human evolution. Our ancestors clambered down from the trees, stretched their legs, began walking and running across the savannah, eventually started making tools, agriculture, roads, cities, etc. All along, our brains were increasing in size as they struggled to comprehend the changing landscape and increasingly complex social structures. This seems obvious, especially if we look at our close evolutionary relatives that are smarter than most animals but still nowhere near our level of intelligence.

Yet this seemingly obvious, common-sense observation is false. For the last 20,000 years, the size of our brains has actually been shrinking, in all populations everywhere on the globe. How could this possibly be, when 99% of our technological advances occurred during this time? This result is not only surprising, it seems counter-intuitive and impossible. However, the results are undeniable. If the trend continues at the same rate, in another 20,000 years our brains will have regressed to the size of Homo Erectus’.

So what could possibly be the cause of this? The past 20,000 years have born witness to many changes on our planet, namely: the climate has warmed and the population of human beings has exploded. Evolution isn’t a steady, improving process that makes organisms smarter and stronger each generation, but rather an economical process that adapts organisms to the conditions of their environment. As the climate warmed, larger brains and bodies became less efficient, and so natural selection may have favored people with smaller builds and smaller brains. However, there have been numerous periods of warming in our evolutionary past, and our brain size did not show the same decrease during those events. Alternatively, the explosion of the human population may have something to do with it. When the global population was small, tiny, isolated bands of humans needed to be self sufficient, and an individual needed to know how to perform all of the tasks necessary for survival. Additionally, as resources were scarce, only the most intelligent were able to survive until breeding age. They could not rely on a larger tribe or nation to take care of them in the event of a disaster, and there was very little social safety-net for a person that fell on hard times. As population densities grew, however, it was possible to divide up the labor and take care of the less fortunate. Now, individuals could focus on specific tasks, neglecting their knowledge of others.
This trend only intensified with the advent of agriculture and modern medicine, as there was always work for the less intelligent, and surplus food to feed them. This is known as the “idiocracy theory,” and fans of the movie Idiocracy will understand why. While this may seem rather bleak, and comes close to being an argument for eugenics, the news isn’t all bad: for the past 200 years or so, our brain size seems to be on the increase again. This indicates that perhaps its not evolution causing this trend, but nutrition, which has gotten much better in that time, but which was on the decline since the introduction of agriculture. The real cause will likely turn out to be a combination of factors, and researchers are constantly coming up with new theories.

Drug Users Want Decriminalization – And So Should Law Enforcement
If you want to keep people from doing something, make it illegal. This has been the principal behind our legal system for as long as it has existed. Ideally, laws reflect the values of that society; we value life so murder is illegal, we value property so theft is illegal, etc. The abuse of drugs seems like one of these simple issues, it obviously causes problems, and so it should be made illegal.

However, as we all know, making something illegal doesn’t stop people from doing it. People still murder and steal, despite the fact that they know it’s wrong and know it’s illegal. When the law becomes less about morals, and more about standards, you find even more people willing to break that law; for instance it would be difficult to find a single driver that doesn’t break the speed limit at some point during their commute. And people still abuse drugs, even though they know the consequences if they are caught. The United States has one of the highest rates of marijuana and cocaine abuse anywhere in the world despite having some of the most stringent anti-drug laws on the books.

That brings us to Portugal’s surprising experiment. In 2001, the small Atlantic nation decriminalized possession of all drugs, from marijuana to methamphetamine. Experts at the time predicted a disaster; Portugal would soon be drowning under hordes of junkies and “drug tourists.” Yet the experiment proved to be a success. Treating drug abusers as a health issue rather than a criminal justice issue, Portugal now has one of the lowest rates of drug abuse in the West. Proportionally, more Americans have tried cocaine than Portuguese have tried marijuana.

The idea is that treating drug addicts as criminals only drives them underground, making it impossible for them to get treatment for their problem. Treating addiction as a health issue is not only more effective, it is cheaper than incarceration. This should be of particular interest to the United States which has some of the highest rates of drug abuse in the world and stringent drug laws that fuel terrible gang violence in Mexico. Based on the Portugal model, many addiction experts now believe that if the United States took an approach similar to Portugal, not only would the drug gangs lose their funding, but our shameful prison population would decrease to a reasonable number.

A Hole in the Universe
In June of 2001, The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) was launched into space in order to study the cosmic microwave background radiation. This is radiation left over from the Big Bang itself, and this map is the most complete picture of the early universe we have to date. The probe registers tiny fluctuations in the temperature of this radiation, which allows us to determine the positions of clumps of matter and energy at this early stage of the Universe’s life. This map is a series of “hot” and “cold” spots that relate these positions in two dimensions.

When going over the results, researchers found something anomalous in a region of sky in the constellation Eridanus: a cold spot that seemed much to large to be explained by natural fluctuations. This may not seem significant, but if the finding is accurate it represents a part of the universe devoid of matter and energy at least 500 million light-years across, and would by the largest structure ever observed. Such structures should not exist according to our current understanding of physics and our simulations of the large-scale evolution of the Universe. The discovery was later confirmed by the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope. It is such a surprising find that it has lead one researcher to claim: “It is the unmistakable imprint of another universe beyond the edge of our own.” Her theory is that the hole was caused by quantum entanglement between our two universes before they were separated due to cosmic inflation. Other, less exciting theories, focus on measurement error and misinterpretation of the data.

Science continues to surprise us. The more we learn, the more we learn we need to learn. The universe is full of strange and surprising events and objects, many of which we can’t even imagine. The process of science is the exploration of these events, and the struggle to understand and make sense of them. Undoubtedly, we’re not always going to get the results that we expect, but that’s half the fun of science, and also when the most important discoveries are made. In the words of Isaac Asimov: “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’, but ‘That’s funny…’”

After over a decade long competition, India, currently the world’s ninth largest military spender with annual expenditures topping $40 billion and growing has renewed its long standing strategic relationship with France the worlds third largest military spender for decades to come in a decision to purchase 126 French multi-role Rafale combat aircraft. Dassault Aviation’s omnirole Rafale beat out the American F-16IN/F-18 Super Hornet, Russian Mig-35, Swedish Gripen and the last final contender of the Medium Multi Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) competition the Eurofighter Typhoon in the largest military arms deal so far this century. In the process they likely secured the first ever major Rafale export deal in almost two decades valued at over $20 billion with countless more billions of dollars in support and upgrades rolling in over the following decades.

India’s choice of the Rafale jet fighter will provide a truly vital boost to France and Europe’s international economic and industrial prestige and solidifies their geopolitical alliance with Europe and the West in general on defense matters. Naturally, the deal would likely not have been possible without the past relationship between the two nations in military deals and of course the vital transfer of technology agreement between France and India which will help the world’s most populous democracy develop their own aerospace industry, which up to date has mostly been producing aircraft under strict licenses with foreign partners, mostly Russian.

All is not won yet though, the final negotiations between France’s Dassault and the Indian Air Force (IAF) and respective governments are expected to carry over the coming month and you can certainly count on competitors lobbying, offering sweetened deals and trying to shift India’s decision before the final contract is signed irregardless of whether the Indian Air Force has picked its new personal favorite or not.

Under the new deal the first 18 ready to fly Rafales built in France would arrive in the Indian Air Forces hands by 2015. The rest of the Rafales would be built assembled on a production line in India.

The massive contract is expected to shape India’s aerospace and military industries for the next three decades at least and would renew a long standing and highly sought after strategic partnership between India and highly interested International powers and arms manufacturers. It would also provide an important boost to the French military industrial complex in a time when national budget deficits are forcing most European military’s to down size and cut back heavily. India’s own defense sectors would of course also benefit enormously from the transfer of technology and gain decades of research and development against its regional competitors almost overnight.

With the help of key Eurofighter Typhoon consortium partners, the UK’s prime minster David Cameron is publicly taking the forefront to heavily lobby and put all of the UK’s political, economic and geopolitical clout over India in a bid to try to force the deal to breakdown during the months of final financial negotiations between the French and Indians, hoping to bribe, coerce and convince the Indian politicians and put pressure on the Indian Air Force to drop the Rafale completely signaling the projects likely death in favor of the EF. Pretty low posturing from the UK considering they’re supposed to be a part of the EU after all.

The Eurofighter was of course the only other finalist to remain in the decade long competition against the Rafale and it is a truly a major blow to the EF consortium’s project, with the Indian Air Force having took the strategic and calculated political decision to go with the French Rafale due the the transparent almost scientific technical merits and the important beneficial military partnership India has had with France for decades now.

Unusually enough when it comes to arms deals like this, the whole deal so far has apparently been without much political interference, and Indian politicians decided this time to keep the process transparent and leave it in the hands of the Indian Air Force, the most apt to decide on these types of matters, hence the Rafale’s victory.

Jasjit Singh, the former air commodore and director of the Delhi-based Center for Air Power Studies, “This process, systematic and almost scientific, even if rather prolonged, should finally lay the ghost of Bofors – that has been the major cause of delays in defense modernization for the past century – to rest.” He is of course referring to past arms procurement deals India has been involved in which were marred by bribery and political influence, which neither got India the best weapons needed nor for the best cost and caused much outrage amongst the Indian military, experts and tax paying public alike.

Mr Singh went on to add that the Indian aerospace industry was in its infancy, and the most prominent Indian company, Bangalore-based Hindustan Aeronautics and others in the Indian military industrial complex desperately needed to accelerate building an independent and self grown defence industry base that can equip the Indian military against strategic regional competitors like China and Pakistan and at the same time prepare home grown technology to compete with Russia and China in export markets in Asia and Africa.

France’s Dassault and transfer of technology agreements would definitely provide a massive boost and technological edge in positive economic times where India clearly has the necessary revenue patterns to devote much on R&D and military production to secure their edge in the face of future economic downturns in an attempt to catch up with long standing regional and neighboring rival China which currently holds a strong and defined military advantage over India. The Rafale would definitely likely do well in the geographic conditions and mountainous border regions as an omnirole fighter with air, ground, and nuclear strike capacities all wrapped into one affordable package. India would definitely have a strong military hand, particularly if as they have been doing continue to build up their navy and air craft carrier capabilities, of course the Rafale also comes in a naval variant which the Eurofighter does not.

Now of course all this is not purely down to which is the better air craft, in air to air roles the EF is likely as capable as the Rafale in many aspects, however economic concerns also factor in heavily here, and believe it or not the Rafale as a more mature platform than the EF apparently has the the lower unit price and lifetime maintenance cost. Naturally the Rafale probably would not have won this bid had Nicholas Sarkozy and the French military not decided to take such a decisive and prominent lead operational role in the recent NATO led campaign against Libya in 2011, as besides Afghanistan the Rafale had not seen much action. Unfortunately though, war does pay off, at least for those those who showcase size-able advantage and end up on the victorious side.

The question remains, is France risking anything offering to hand over more sensitive technology then any of the competitors are apparently willing to do? Part of the deal of course is that the Indians plan on squeezing the French for every bit of French technology and aerospace know how possible in the deal. Does France have a technological trump card here or are they truly willing to sell the baby with the bath water to gain some commercial advantage? Or does this strategic partnership between France and India go much further then the mere sale of Rafales and outweigh the short term commercial and geopolitical advantages?

Many analysts believe the deal goes well beyond the aerospace industry, and that France has agreed to a deep and long standing renewed strategic partnership with India as it has been doing in a lesser or greater degree for decades now. Particularly in crucial civilian and military areas where India wants more advanced technological advances then they currently have at their disposal or capacity to catch up in, areas such as as nuclear, submarine, naval and software capacities. This is indeed a pretty good deal for India, but then again, so long as France and the Europeans continue to innovate and develop their technology above and beyond the competition which these contracts will supposedly financially permit, why should the sellers be worried? It’s not as if Europe and India are going to war anytime soon is it? India definitely seems like the most logical strategic partner when compared to most in the region today.

Still, despite being the strongest critics of the deal today, many of these same critics inadvertently back the French commercial position in terms of “maintaining their edge” and would likely do the same to bring home the sale, claiming that India is effectively buying obsolete technology that the French themselves were potentially planning on dumping where the “best before date” is just only now in its prime and expiry is only a decade or two around the corner. In a couple decades from now though, will that technology effectively be expired? Will France and Europe have something far better in production by then?

No matter the case, in reality India was only bidding on 4th generation fighters for cost reasons, the same fourth gen fighters the West have had for over two decades now, of course the 5th generations fighters are truly only in their test phases and nothing has truly been proven yet. Considering the Rafale’s would be replacing India’s aging old school (and I mean “super old school”) Russian Migs, I think they’ve definitely taken a massive step forward in modernization and are ushering a whole new geopolitical era into the region. Let’s wait and see though if this potentially massive deal will be closed or if some corrupt Indian political bribery will come into the picture last minute and blow the whole thing off course for the Indian Air Force.

Manipulating the human mind has been has been field of battle throughout our entire history. In any conflict, the mental battle is just as important, and sometimes more so than the physical one. Even animals instinctively know this: they would much rather engage in displaying and frighten competitors off than resort to actual combat. In the past, this mental warfare was limited to propaganda and displays of superior strength. Recent research into the human brain, however, has opened up new avenues of attack. Rod Flower, a professor of biochemical pharmacology at Queen Mary University of London, was recently quoted in a Royal Society report on neurological weapons as saying: “[…]understanding of the brain and human behavior, coupled with developments in drug delivery, also highlight ways of degrading human performance that could possibly be used in new weapons.”

As research into how to enhance the performance of the human brain and repair damage has lead to new and novel ways to conduct warfare. From man-machine interfaces that allow soldiers to pilot drones with their minds to new systems for delivering debilitating drugs to the enemy, world militaries are beginning to open up to the idea of the brain as a weapon.

As reported before, the military has been interested in brain-to-brain communication, allowing soldiers to hold a conversation without making a sound and giving away their position. New research indicates that soon it could be possible for a soldier in the field to remotely operate a drone aircraft or other robot with an implant in their brain. This raises interesting ethical questions, as Flower postulates: “This idea brings about a bit of a blur in the distinction between mind and machine, which obviously has to be addressed very carefully,” he said. “If we got to the point where we could control a sophisticated machine, and the machine did something … like committing a war crime of some sort, who would be responsible for that, you or the machine?” From my point of view, if you are controlling the machine that commits the war crime, obviously you are responsible. But using technology like this puts another barrier between the soldier and the target – effectively dehumanizing the act of destruction. And while accountability questions may seem straightforward, in reality any court case involving a situation like this would be a legal nightmare, nearly impossible to unravel.

Other research is looking at ways to enhance or disable the brain itself. DARPA is funding research into preventing the effects of sleep deprivation in soldiers. Their aim is to find ways to stimulate the brains of soldiers, enhancing their awareness on the battlefield. Additionally, dealing effectively with stress while in combat is high on their priority list. They plan on using brain scans of recruits to identify those that have high tolerance to stress and to improve upon it both non-medically and biochemically.

Another area of interest mentioned in this report is the science of “brain reading,” although the report admits it is still in its infancy. Mentioned in an earlier article, this technology would allow us to peer inside the mind at a person’s thoughts. Obviously, it would be of great usefulness in a law enforcement or counter terrorism situation. Currently, these devices must be calibrated for the individual, so it’s not likely to be used in the field anytime soon, but simpler devices could be developed sooner that give simple “lie/no lie” responses.

Since the end of the World War Two, militaries around the globe have been taking the threat of mental warfare seriously. Research into purported psychic abilities actually took place during the Cold War, with the Soviet Union claiming to have a woman that could stop and start a frog’s heart with just her mind. The United States had similar projects under the heading “Project Stargate” that researched phenomena like remote viewing. While none of this research bore fruit, with modern advances in neuroscience and computing, we are making these ideas possible. The next war may be fought as much in the mind as in the field.

Roughly 3.8 billion years ago on our planet, something incredible happened. From the humble beginnings of a frothy, chemical soup, something emerged that copied itself. Then, the copies made copies. Some of these structures were able to copy themselves better, while some were not able to copy themselves at all, and those structures that were able to leave more copies became more prevalent while those that didn’t went extinct. This should be a familiar story by now; it is the story of life and evolution on Earth as we currently understand it. But how do you get from a self-replicating structure made of a few molecules to the complex workings of the human brain?

Step 1: It’s Alive!

The first step is the most mysterious step in the process that eventually produced all the organisms we see around us today. Screened from our view by the shroud of time, the exact origin of life remains an enigma. There are several factors at play that make the clues to this event incredibly rare. The first is the huge, 3.8 billion year gulf between then and now. Fossils and other traces of early organisms are obliterated over time by the slow grinding of geology; the cycling of the Earth’s crust. The tiny, fragile fossils left by early life stand almost no chance of surviving into our present period. However, there are a few, tantalizing clues left in geologically calm areas around the world. Tiny mounds, called “stromatolites,” are the fossil remnants of extremely old life forms. Resembling similar structures we see today, stromatolites are formed by colonies of single-celled organisms as their grains of silt cling to their cell membranes, piling up over the generations.

The second barrier that limits our understanding of this event is life itself. Once they were established, the first organisms began to evolve rapidly, and out-competed the earlier, simpler forms. The more simple forms went extinct as their progeny adapted and spread, leaving us with very little idea of what these first organisms were like. The simplest one-celled organism today is the product of 3.8 billion years of evolution, just as we are, and as a result is no where near the simplicity enjoyed by the first organisms.

These two factors make our understanding of the origin of life murky indeed. However, we know that life did originate, so the only question is how. Miller and Urey showed in their famous experiment in the 50’s that organic compounds could form on Earth naturally under the right conditions. Interestingly, it seems that they can also form in outer space. The early Earth was a chemical soup, and bombarded by comets that potentially carried the seeds of life. Out of this bio-chemical froth, only one simple structure capable of self-replication was needed. Once it had a foothold, life would be almost impossible to dislodge.

Step 2: Going Green

The Earth is green. Nearly everywhere you look (in nature) the world is painted with chlorophyll. This is a result of a struggle that occurred roughly 2.4 billion years ago when the first cyanobacteria evolved. Prior to the emergence of cyanobacteria, there was almost no free oxygen in the earth’s atmosphere, and there were almost no organisms that exploited it, as we do today. Once the first photosynthesizing organisms came into being, they began pumping out vast amount oxygen. At first, this wasn’t a problem, as the oxygen became bound up with iron and organic matter. However, once these two oxygen-sinks became saturated, free O2 began to accumulate in the atmosphere, and effectively poisoned most of the life in existence at the time. Additionally, when the free O2 in the atmosphere combined with methane, it may have lead to the longest and most severe episode of glaciation in the planet’s history.

For our ancestors, this was an incredibly important event. Somehow, they adapted to exploit all of this free O2 as it was poisoning their neighbors. Not only did it grant them the aerobic energy pathway; it killed off nearly all of their competitors as well. If this event had not occurred, life on Earth would be very different.

Step 3: It’s Business Time

Sexuality is ingrained into us at a cellular level. As we all know, the only hope our genes have of living on into future generations is if we successfully mate with a member of the opposite sex and leave reproductively viable offspring. However, this wasn’t always the case, and is still not the case for the majority of organisms alive today. Bacteria and archaea reproduce by mitosis, essentially splitting themselves into two exact copies of the parent cell. This was the only method of reproduction until our one-celled eukaryot ancestors stumbled upon this method of reproduction. At first, it seems like a disadvantageous strategy; finding a mate and mixing genes is an energy-expensive process, and since two individuals are required to reproduce rather than just one, the number of descendants is reduced by half. On the other hand, there are many compensations that make up for these drawbacks. The most important of these is genetic variation. Asexually reproducing organisms essentially make a copy of themselves that is nearly genetically identical, like twins separated by a generation. Sexually reproducing organisms, on the other hand, produce a novel suite of genetic traits with each generation. Two sets of genes come together to produce a third that is distinct from either parent. This genetic variation allows for rapid evolution and adaptation, and provides resistance to parasites and viruses that may specialize on a particular genome. Additionally, whenever a mutation occurs that is unfavorable, this mutation can be edited out by recombining with a healthy genome.

Step 4: Getting Clumpy

Now the fun begins. Until this point in time, life had been little more than a film of slime covering the oceans and rocks of the early Earth. But it was not a boring place if you were a single-celled organism; they competed with each other for space and resources as fiercely as modern organisms do today. There were predators, parasites, and viruses that plagued these early life forms, and various strategies were devised to deal with them. If you look at modern organisms, one of the most widely used and effective strategies against predation is to stay in groups. Nearly all animals that are food for something else do this, from colonies of ants to herds of elephants. The reason is obvious: it’s safer in numbers. This same strategy was used long ago by our ancestors, clumping together for mutual protection. Those clumps that were more integrated and able to fend off predators more successfully survived and passed on their genes more than those that did not. Once these clumps of cells were established they began competing with each other, and the more cohesive, large clumps out-competed the smaller, more diffuse ones. This process is eventually what led to the specialization of different types of cells in multi-cellular organisms. There are several different theories about how this may have occurred. The Symbiotic Theory is the idea that different groups of unrelated cells came together for mutual protection. These groups of cells became interdependent, and unable to survive without each other. Eventually, their various genomes were incorporated into one single genome, however there is currently no explanation how this may have happened. The Cellularization Theory states that one single cell developed multiple nuclei with partitions between them, essentially seeming like a multi-cellular organism without actually being one. The Colonial Theory is similar to the Symbiotic Theory, but starts with a colony of single-cell organisms all of the same species that gradually diversify over time. This last theory is the most widely accepted, and has been seen to occur independently in several lineages.

Step 5: An Explosive Case of Life

This famous event in evolutionary history was one of Darwin’s main issue with the theory of evolution. Almost overnight, it seems, multi-cellular life diversified from simple cellular colonies to most of the major phyla we have today (and many that no longer exist). This event is known as the Cambrian Explosion. Although this sudden emergence of so many species in the geologic column is incredible, the time-scales are so long, and the evidence so spotty, that it is likely that the Cambrian Explosion didn’t happen much faster than any other diversification event. Recent evidence shows that multi-cellular organisms date back to before this time, but they were simple, worm-like creatures. But during the Cambrian itself, multi-cellular life diversified into so many strange and interesting forms that its no wonder people have focused on this time. There are many theories for why this “explosion” occurred. Adaptive radiation events often follow extinction events, as the survivors struggle to fill the newly opened ecological niches, and there is evidence of an extinction before the Cambrian. Around this time, free oxygen in the seas and atmosphere was increasing, which may have allowed organisms to grow larger. Likewise, calcium concentrations in the seas increased, possibly allowing for the construction of skeletal tissues. Even the evolution of the eye and specific hox genes have been listed as reasons for this event. Whatever the reason, following this event, life on Earth became much more recognizable to our modern sensibilities.

Step 6: The Walking Fish

Our first ancestors that crawled up onto land were little more than fish with stiff fins, dragging themselves through the mud. Seeking to escape predation, or take advantage of new food sources on land, these first air-breathing fish gradually colonized the land, eventually evolving into reptiles, amphibians, mammals, and birds. During the Devonian period, roughly 416 million years ago, these first tetrapods inhabited shallow streams, walking along the bottoms with their fins/feet. Interestingly, the bony fish that these tetrapods evolved from were the first fish to have a swim bladder, which would evolve into a lung in tetrapods, and nearly all fish species alive today (excluding sharks and rays) are their descendants.

Step 7: Big Brains Make a Big Impact

After the evolution of tetrapods, the story of life on Earth becomes very familiar. Mammals and dinosaurs evolve at about the same time, but dinosaurs are the dominant multi-cellular life form on land until the extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous period. During this time, mammals were little more than scurrying vermin, but they were perfecting traits that would allow them to become dominant later. Since they were mainly nocturnal, mammals evolved to be warm-blooded in order to stay active through the cool nights. They gave up laying eggs in favor of live births, and mothers began to feed their young with milk glands. These traits made social life among mammals very important relative to other organisms. Warm-bloodedness, complex social structures, and finally the extinction of the dinosaurs had mammals poised to take over the world at the end of the Cretaceous period. Since the first simple brains evolved long ago, the average brain-size and intelligence of organisms has generally increased over time, and roughly 2 ½ million years ago the first members of our brainy family evolved.

Descended from tree-dwelling apes that had adapted to the swelling grasslands, these ancestors of ours lived in complex social structures like those of chimpanzees and bonobos. However, they began hunting more often than our cousins that stayed in the forests, as the game in the grasslands was larger, more common, and the most exploitable source of food available. These early hunters didn’t have deadly claws like a leopard, or crushing jaws like a hyena, but what they did have was the big brains of apes. Over times, these brains increased in size as the more intelligent hunters brought home more food, and were thus able to reproduce better. Human minds are relationship calculators, designed to keep track of the relationships between various members of our group. As group sized increased, so did the size our brains in order to keep up. Being the extremely social creatures that we are, the most important thing in our lives is impressing our fellows with our mental and physical feats, and thusly you have the origin of art, science, and religion.

The story of life on Earth is much more complex and convoluted than the simple, 7-step process I’ve outlined here. There are twists and turns unexpected by even the most imaginative biologist, and with our emerging understanding of genetics, the story is being revised all the time. Mysteries abound, from how life began to why people started farming instead of hunting and gathering. But no matter how limited our knowledge is, it’s somehow comforting to think of yourself as a component in an unbroken chain stretching 3.8 billion into the past, and who-knows how long into the future.

Inside your body, right now, there are billions upon billions of tiny machines mindlessly toiling to keep you alive and functioning. They enable every function in your body, from wiggling your toes to causing the neurons in your brain to fire. It might sound like science fiction, but it is an everyday, common occurrence. These nanomachines are the very basis of our biology; assembled from proteins synthesized by our DNA and RNA. In essence, we are these nanomachines.

Now, modern science is finally catching up with Mother Nature in the creation of tiny molecular machines. In the past decade the field of nanotechnology has exploded, with many new applications likely coming in the next few years. One of the most exciting of these is in the fight against cancer. Current chemotherapy drugs target all cells that are dividing rapidly, a hallmark of cancer. However, many healthy cells divide rapidly as well, and can also be targeted by these drugs, making chemotherapy an extremely uncomfortable treatment. At the UCLA California NanoSystems Institute’s (CNSI) Nano Machine Center, researchers are trying to create a selective drug delivery system that releases cancer fighting drugs only where they are needed within the body. They have developed micro-valves that respond to specific wavelengths of light, so tiny capsules could be ingested by the patient, and a particular area of skin where tumors were present would be illuminated. The light would trigger the valves to release the contents of the micro-capsules directly to the targeted area without affecting other areas. The un-triggered micro-capsules would then pass harmlessly from the patient’s body.

In the future, more advanced nanobots could be prowling our blood streams, hunting pathogens and repairing damage. At the University of Monash in Victoria, Australia, researches have developed a miniscule motor small enough to work inside human arteries. This motor could spin a tiny propeller, like the flagellum on a sperm cell, driving the nonobot through the patient’s blood stream at about 6cm per second. However, powering such a small device is a problem in itself, as a nanobot can’t exactly drag a 9-volt battery through at artery. So, Bradley Nelson at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich has created a similar tiny device that is powered by a continuously changing magnetic field. The nanomachine in question has a flagella-like tail composed of semi-conducting material, and a tiny magnetic head composed of chromium, nickel, and gold. The head constantly orients itself to the changing magnetic field, causing the tail to spin and propelling the nanobot forward.

However, our best nanobots are still those based on the molecular machinery found in every single one of us. Recently, New York University Chemist Nadrian Seeman won the Kavli Prize in Nanoscience for his work with DNA molecules. Referred to by the Christian Science Monitor as “Nanotechnolgy’s Henry Ford,” his lab took two important steps forward in our investigation and use of biological nano-machinery. Firstly, he was able to create entirely synthetic, 3-D DNA structures for the first time anywhere. These structures are the initial steps in our ability to create our own DNA sequences from scratch. Secondly, working closely with colleagues at China’s Nanjing University, he was able to create a DNA assembly line that has the potential to build many nano-sized structures. “An industrial assembly line includes a factory, workers, and a conveyor system,” said Seeman. “We have emulated each of those features using DNA components.”

Perhaps the most incredible use of nanotechnology isn’t in medicine or biology, it’s in the world of rock n’ roll. Researchers at Cornell have finally succeeded in creating a guitar the size of a single cell. The strings of the guitar are just 100 atoms thick, and when plucked they actually resonate (though they are obviously inaudible). The guitar was created as a demonstration of technology they have developed for creating intricate structures on this small of a scale. However, there has been no word on whether or not they have created nano-turntables for cells that prefer hip-hop.

Then there is the dark side of nanotechology. Many people fear the “grey goo” scenario, in which self-replicating nanobots harvest the material around them to create copies of themselves, eventually consuming the entire earth. If you happened to see the recent remake of “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” you’ll remember a scene in which this exact event occurred. Thankfully, Keanu Reeves was there to save us all, as usual. These threats may seem remote and far-fetched, until you read this harrowing account of one woman vicously assaulted by a combination of chemtrails and nano-bots. Even though the nanobots in this story turned out to be nothing more than glitter, next time we may not be so lucky.

“And so the whimper of a black out begins… and ends. What now?”

First off, let me start off by saying it goes without saying that historically and still currently, Operation Reality aka Opreal categorically does not support legislation such as PIPA or SOPA as currently presented before the U.S. legislature nor as described or presented in the various official and unofficial outlets. As a humble, small organization, we are simply trying to do our little bit to help spread the word and seed some thoughts in the hopes that such laws get scrutinized, stopped, or even stomped on in their tracks with rightful reforms and complete negations where necessary. As it stands, such a law would without a shadow of a doubt negatively affect the internet including this very site. Freedom of information, free speech, and sharing are an integral part of our operations as with so many others online the world over. Despite this, we do not deny the need for law and accountability in the online context.

As an international global organization we also do not support similar E.U. or Global treaty frameworks based on or inspired by popular legislation such as ACTA or its derivatives as currently formulated and presented before the current publicly elected bodies that be, who may or may not be willing to overlook the bigger picture and stifle innovation and the competition of tomorrow in order to make a quick buck today.

As we are all well aware, too many detrimental laws have been passed by governments the world over for decades and even centuries now, under the pressure of select minute powerful and dedicated private interest groups without popular consent purely based off of financial clout and contacts. We are firm believers that if we do not learn to resist such patterns of history, history will only repeat itself, with those same intellectually restrictive laws lingering on for decades, centuries, or even millenia. Until eventually, such laws become the very integral norm of the base social and intellectual fabric makeup of the living interacting beings and societies who inadvertently voted and allowed them to be enacted in the first place, whether directly or indirectly, or on the backs of those who were simply being silent; those who blacked out so to speak.

Perhaps though some will argue it’s all a bit late in the game and people didn’t get involved or voice their opinions nearly regularly enough or early enough? The real fact is that these types of grand legal restructurings do not just happen over night nor without reason whether we agree with them or not. Every cause has an effect. As time passes though, even those individuals who were in a privileged position to enact and lobby for them for whatever reasons in turn too will become restricted and subject to them. Potentially even leaving future generations without any straightforward capacity, or clear straightforward course to object, appeal or amend. All this based purely off of abstract subjective political and economic pressure enforced by perennial private interests who do not have the masses interest at heart but rather their own personal and business interests and with the goal of maintaining their privileged positions. Whether we like it or not, such laws must be stopped and conscientiously and actively opposed before they become reality, or we all lose a little bit more free speech, liberty and freedom until we end up tangled down by so many restricting laws dating from god knows when that we are no longer able to express ourselves naturally unfettered as active human beings and participants in humanistic orientated societies and their underlying communication spheres.

As the name may imply however, this is Operation Reality, and we are perhaps at times overly realist about our beliefs and understandings of how the world works; hoping to accurately understand that our conscious make ups of politics, geopolitics and relevant laws are an inherent and integral part of those societal mixes and preconceptions whether for better or worse.

This of course is because it involves the direct implication of real people and their geo-social interactions (which all of us reading this are actors of), and without it, least as we know it, we likely wouldn’t even have any such thing as the “Internet” or “modern civilization” as we currently know or are privy to experience it based off of history. We simply would not be organized or respective of each other if we did not have these abstract legal rules and threats of penalties. Does a nearly extinct lion ask for permission before it slaughters and eats a gazelle in order to survive for only a day longer? No. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying such a societal structure wouldn’t always intrinsically naturally exist somewhere, somehow, but not as the globalized uniform entity as we know it in 2012, and certainly not with the same impact or logic of reasoning behind the stipulation or proposals of such specific amendments of laws seeking to govern even something as incredible as what PIPA/SOPA/ACTA proposes. These are structures we simply would not be debating nor discussing if it was the complete natural law of the jungle out there.

We must never forget however, our current technology and infrastructure is a direct by-product of our organization as structured uniformed societies, which whether we like it or not are intrinsically based on the intellectual concept of law in order to create a certain uniformity and hierarchy. Even if that be in relation to laws that may very well impede and add overt barriers to our natural unfettered biological conscious imagination and natural competitive instincts as the striving surviving species that we all are.

In our existence (at least to all those reading this) the Internet is very well without a shadow of a doubt (intellectually speaking) the current mass driving communication mechanism and facilitator behind this so called New World Order or Globalization for lack of better terminology. We may not agree with its outcome, yet we are all indirect participants whether that be in our success, failure, praise or silence. This structure continues to evolve unfettered despite so many of our instinctively yet usually opportunistically (from a societal/intellectual/economical perspective) inadvertent embraces or oppositions to it in the very same length of breath.

The Internet we are told, is a technology and mechanism that changes all that was past, in reality, it doesn’t really change the real societal fundamentals we know but rather simply makes them more abstract, despite any marketing and PR hype promoted by those individuals and organizations who have something to gain from making you believe otherwise. This is because all real tangible economic and societal activity resulting form the Internet communication’s medium is ultimately based off of humans and societies they themselves interacting, and these are made possible by governing laws as we know them. Why should the Internet be any different? Do we seek some sort of escapism into the virtual? Some sort of abstract lawless society without respect for the same laws we are subject to in the offline world, instead being governed by purely technological laws and limitations? Perhaps, but I think we all know escapism from the regular mundane segmentation of laws of societal nation states and their inherent barriers in favor of some sort of global free for all technological utopia is not what any of us are truly looking for either.

Without the human and inherited intellectual societal structures and interactions present, the Internet is simply a bunch of machines or unaccountable bio-mechanical individuals communicating based off of instinctive and opportunistic rules, trends and guidelines, opportunism at its worse. Despite how much we may yearn and seek as so called conscious individuals to view ourselves as being unique and somehow outside of the so called law abiding flock of sheep, in reality we naturally all live amongst it and follow it, online or offline, we are all a part of it, the same collective, the privileged and underprivileged alike. We simply choose to ignore it at times.

This my fellow Internauts, is why we should be routinely voicing and lobbying our opinions and stances without fear, in particular in the area of politics and law, being more vocal, more persistent, engaging and more direct with our representatives. Staking and scrutinizing our legal ground year round, 24/7 365 days per year and acting on it in order to get our point across loud and clear and affect positive change. We should not find ourselves in the situation we find ourselves now, waiting, for some sort of one 12 hour or 24 hour last minute gimmick protest period to make our voices heard and get the message out while in the meantime every other day of the year we are acting like uninterested and clueless cattle moving where ever hearded.

Instead of the flock spending its time polluting the online ecosystem with Internet memes and cat videos, it needs to be stating and expressing social and political positions, lobbying and even more importantly creating, acting, voting, running for office, making it clear that you will not simply sit by idly being spoon fed your favorite “free” content produced and owned by some third party and only waking up when it’s threatened to be taken away from you or charged for. Ultimately we must assert that we have the true societal and gross external influence year round on all laws and not just those which threaten our own personal little bubble.

Until such a mentality shift takes off of course, we may very well believe we have no other means but to simply engage in periodic virtual hunger strikes, proceeding to voluntarily silence and black ourselves out in order to feel like we’re doing the bare minimum at making a difference. The fact is we are not being proactive by blacking ourselves out, we are being reactive, and worse of all only temporarily, and those who do so are essentially silencing themselves voluntary. It should be the other way around. By silencing yourself you will almost always lose.

Do you see our beloved Google’s, Facebook’s, Twitter’s and those who claim to actually allow you to get your individual messages across and voices heard amongst the flock blacking themselves out? NO you don’t, as they have already understood the reality of certain things, they no longer view themselves as the sheep but as the shepherds and are acting as such year round overtly and covertly.

Don’t suckle the tit of your pay master year round and only decide to abstract and purposely silence yourself out of the equation for a few hours to rebel one day per year only then to start suckling on it again a few hours later. You cannot simply talk the talk year round, then walk the walk only one day of the year and expect to be heard or taken seriously by those in power. Yes, Wikipedia (main exception), Reddit and all those other random Internet meme websites we’ve never heard of until now but are suddenly jumping on the SOPA bandwagon for publicity, are you really going to keep latching on and suckling at the tit that feeds you solely to get your name out there or are you serious about creating and initiating change year round beyond 3 minute PR gimmicks?

Instead of blacking out in protest, try communicating more effectively and more regularly, get involved in politics and not only on issues that affect your personal business interests only when it suits you to do so. Otherwise it simply reeks of yet more unfettered marketing opportunism which plagues society enough as is, both online and offline.

A little simplistic background info on PIPA/SOPA for those who somehow may not be aware of what it is by now.

It is well known by now that popular social news sharing site Reddit are going ahead with their January 18 2012 twelve hour long scheduled PIPA/SOPA protest blackout by replacing their regular site’s link sharing and forum style services with messages on how PIPA/SOPA legislation would effectively force the shutdown of sites like theirs and generally threaten the Web as we know it. The question is, will it really make any difference unless the true mainstream U.S. based Web monopolies and juggernauts like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, eBay, PayPal, Wikipedia, LinkedIn, Bing (Microsoft), Yahoo and other such big name sites get involved and implement their own SOPA blackouts?

While it may be a straight forward decision for smaller privately operated sites like Reddit who in reality do not have consequential revenues or expenses nor do they provide vitally important underlying infrastructure or services to the online and consequently offline economies, for companies like Google, Amazon, eBay and PayPal (in particular the publicly traded ones) it is a totally different story. Millions upon millions if not billions of people rely on such services for more than merely passing the time by looking for some interesting links or comments to read or worse yet internet memes and pictures of cats. Wikipedia is another site albeit a more serious one which seems to have had an easier time deciding to likely participate in a blackout but yet again for such a site which is supposedly not for profit, what is a few hours of blackout to make a point? It’s not as if in that time span they will lose millions upon millions of dollars in revenue or seriously hinder individuals and businesses the world over, in fact if anything they may even gain a bunch of new donations for having taken a symbolic stand against SOPA. As with Reddit it would be good free PR and thus isn’t all that hard of a decision to make.

While without out a shadow of a doubt Google Inc. has the most influence and capacity to influence change on any SOPA blackout front, will they really be willing to risk their 24/7 365 day a year uptime business model and risk the annoyance or potential losses of millions upon millions of consumers and customers revenue (not to mention their own)? Of course they’re protected legally through their Terms of Service and would not owe anyone anything if they did purposely make their services unavailable even if only temporarily, but I doubt they would be willing to do that merely to protest against SOPA. Google is a multi-billion dollar public corporation and the way they deal with situations like this is precisely why they pay millions upon millions of dollars year in year out to lobbyists and politicians, so that they don’t have to resort to disrupting their business model or customer base no matter how short term. Granted free PR is always tempting though, so if Google gets involved in any online SOPA blackout protests this coming week it would likely be nothing more than another gimmick Google logo or Youtube video on their home page, or an info notification of some sort which 98% of people going about their online business unfortunately would likely simply have a glance at and then pass over. I could be entirely wrong and I hope I am, but I somehow doubt Google Inc. would ever go so far as to purposely making all or even one of their services such as Search, Gmail, advertising, Youtube, Google Plus, Analytic s, Blogger, etc. unavailable even if only for a few hours. Of course this remains to be seen. Mind you, even a small notification on Google’s home pages would have a far greater effect then a site like Reddit going offline, even if it they decided to go offline for a whole week or month.

Amazon, PayPal, eBay and pure e-commerce orientated sites are also likely not going to damage their corporations daily revenue stream voluntarily or impede people from using their services to make them money no matter for how short a duration. Perhaps also a little pop up or info notification is their likely option? Better than nothing I suppose.

Facebook and Twitter on the other hand are in a bit of special place. While completely blocking access to their services for x amount of hours would likely result in substantial revenue losses and a lot of annoyed users, in reality they do not really operate on the same infrastructure or services level as Google, in fact not even close, in particular in regards to business services. People could definitely live without Facebook and Twitter for several hours although a whole day would drive the point home better and the effect of the reach would be huge in terms of getting the word out to the mainstream, in particular with Facebook’s massive user-base and fervent daily user activity. Of course for the effect to truly hit home to people, it would have to be an actual blocking of access to the sites services and not merely another information notification on the front page, although unfortunately if they participate that seems like the more likely route they’d take.

All in all the whole idea of an online SOPA blackout protest might in actually be starting to lean at this stage more towards a positive PR exercise to the benefit of some who spotted a potential hot trend, let’s hope this turns out not to be the case. While it is respectable that a site like Reddit would get the ball rolling on something like this and I agree fully people need to keep mounting the pressure as without it SOPA could very well been pushed through unimpeded “as is” by clueless legislators getting their arms twisted, in reality though, without the backing of the big online players and proper sustained direct political pressure it’s simply not going to have the effect they hope for as it will not truly leak out of the “techies” sphere into the US mainstream which is of course ideally what needs to happen. It’s still impressive that Reddit is now being mentioned alongside such big names though, it must make their founders proud and shows how far they have come as a web site. Nerveless, PR stunts aside, I remain optimistic though, because while companies like Google Inc. may not be pulling all their services offline in a move to insight people to act and get the word out, they may have a better weapon, their economic clout and high paid lobbyists and political donations which if mobilized correctly, whether for better or worse will likely have far more influence on U.S. law makers then a few million people on Reddit wondering why they can’t post up or comment on a link for a few hours. Besides us Redditors are used to that anyways by now, remember “Reddit is under heavy load, you broke Reddit”. Sad to say it, but welcome to reality.

It is certainly true though that companies like Google and Facebook have far more to lose then a company like Reddit when it comes to SOPA/PIPA style legislation, it’s still hard to envisage them making their services completely unavailable voluntarily. One can still hope. Let’s wait and see.

If you want to throw your 2 cents in their direction and give them your support you can contact them through the following links.

-To contact Google directly, click here, select “Other” and fill out the form.
-To contact Facebook directly, click here and sign-in, and fill in the form.

You can also contact the NetCoalition which represents many of the big name Internet companies mentioned above.

Also for our American readers probably even better then spending time writing to Google or Facebook and Co you’d be far better off contacting your congressman/congresswoman or senator and telling them you categorically oppose PIPA/SOPA style legislation and expect them to do something about opposing it too.

One thing’s for sure, the next week will certainly be an interesting time to see the effects of online mobilization and protest against unpopular legislation in the United States of America. It’s still funny how much public outcry and mobilization seems to be taking place and gathering pace against a law like SOPA when bills like the Patriot Act and other draconian legislation seem to remain largely ignored, unscathed and unchallenged. Welcome to the Internets, where we care more about being able to access our favorite content and websites (ideally for free) than international wars, environmental degradation, economic injustices and disparities of wealth, our personal privacy or individual and human rights.

A little simplistic background info on PIPA/SOPA for those who somehow may not be aware of what it is by now.

Strategic intelligence and geopolitical analysis publisher Strategic Forecasting (aka Stratfor) have finally managed to get their website back online today after Anonymous hackers allegedly compromised their systems and lifted around 200GB of email and credit card information from site subscribers late last year. The website is now offering all their content for free apparently presumably due to the fact that it was all likely leaked publicly anyways. According to the statement by Stratfor founder and CEO George Friedman, the hackers had access to the systems since early December 2011 and Stratfor had actually been in communication and cooperating behind closed doors with the FBI since that time and had been reassured by the FBI that all the relevant credit card companies had been alerted.

According to Mr. Friedman it was apparently the FBI who specifically requested Stratfor not reveal publicly that its systems had been breached, but rather to wait and let the hackers go public with the information and use the compromised account data they had obtained. Which is precisely what the hackers did, when they apparently starting to publish information online and use the compromised credit card details to make donations to various charities around the Christmas period last year. It remains to be seen what information the FBI and credit card companies managed to gleam from the usage of this data. The investigation and backtracking whether futile or not is apparently still on going.

Stratfor’s CEO naturally also issued a formal apology to all his site’s subscribers for having stored their credit card information in their database in plain text without any form of encryption. He went on to add that Stratfor would no longer handle their own databases in relation to such sensitive data storage and instead from now on would be outsourcing that task to a company deemed equipped and competent enough to handle it in a secure manner. Clearly that’s not a lot of confidence in his own IT team but considering what happened it definitely would appear to be a sound decision.

Mr. Friedman also claims that hackers hit his systems again on Christmas Eve in what he described as an attempt to silence and censor his company, essentially destroying and managing to completely wipe clean four of their servers including deleting their backup data and defacing their website. According to their website now online they still do not know who orchestrated or carried out the attacks nor have any arrests been made, however their cooperation with the FBI investigation continues and renewed attacks are apparently expected.

George Friedman, defiantly ready for round 2?

Our understanding of the Universe around us continues to grow at an exponential pace, as does our ability to exploit and utilize that knowledge. While many people fear that the world will end next December, in reality we are seeing the beginnings of a series of scientific and technological breakthroughs on par with the industrial revolution. Here’s a quick preview of what to expect from the coming year in science and technology.

Physics

This past year was an exciting one for physicists, with many interesting discoveries that raised even more interesting questions. In the fall, a team from Gran Sasso Italy published incredible results from a series of experiments in which they appeared to be detecting neutrinos emitted from CERN’s physics laboratory traveling faster than the speed of light. If this result is true, it would alter Einstein’s famous theory of relativity and send us back to the drawing board, where particle physics is concerned. However, these findings are being widely disputed. In Antarctica, physicists have created an instrument called IceCube that detects neutrinos emitted naturally when cosmic rays come into contact with our atmosphere. IceCube has detected neutrinos with 10,000 times the energy of those created at CERN, but never seen any evidence that they travel faster than the speed of light. However, the OPERA project that published the initial results checked, double-checked, and triple-checked their experiment for mistakes and could not find any, so the mystery remains.

Even more exciting, researchers at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva believe they are close to discovering the Higgs boson, the elusive sub-atomic particle that gives other particles their mass. The Higgs has been predicted to exist by the Standard Model – our current understanding of the rules by which particles interact – but has never been detected. At a seminar on December 6th, the heads of two different experiments at the LHC said they found tantalizing indications that it may exist in the 124-125 gigaelectronvolt range (about 130 times as heavy as the protons in atomic nuclei). The results are exciting, but researchers are cautious as it could be due to small fluctuations in the data. However, the two different experiments have produced corresponding results, and so researchers are hopeful that they have finally found an important missing component of the Standard Model. “Within one year we will probably know whether the Higgs particle exists,” claimed Professor Stefan Soldner-Rembold from the University of Manchester.

Cosmology

The number of exoplanets continues to grow as NASA’s Kepler mission sweeps the stars. December was an exciting time for the mission; on the 5th the team announced they had found the first planet to orbit its star in the habitable zone – a disc-shaped area around each star where water can exist in its liquid form. While the planet in question is too large to have a rocky surface like Earth’s, on December 20th, they announced the discovery of the first Earth-sized exoplanets. Unfortunately, these planets orbit much too close to their parent stars to be considered habitable, but the team is confident that we are getting closer and closer to finding our extra-solar twin. “The tremendous growth in the number of Earth-size candidates tells us that we’re honing in on the planets Kepler was designed to detect: those that are not only Earth-size, but also are potentially habitable,” stated Natalie Batalha, Kepler deputy science team lead. “We are on the edge of our seats knowing that Kepler’s most anticipated discoveries are still to come.”

Medicine

Recent advances in cancer vaccines have many researchers in the field optimistic for the future. According to the National Cancer institute, there are more than 250 clinical trials of vaccines underway at the moment. “It bodes well for what you’re going to be seeing in the future,” said Dr. Larry Kwak, professor and chairman of lymphoma and myeloma at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. While radiation and chemotherapy are still the most widely used of cancer therapies, that could change in the coming year. Cancer vaccines work differently than traditional vaccines, and are generally not administered until after a patient has already come down with the disease. Depending on the type of cancer, a more general vaccine may be used, or it may need to be tailored to a specific patient’s tumors.

Another exciting advance in this field is the use of targeted viruses to attack cancer cells. In August, a team at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute in Canada claimed they have shown that these viruses can be delivered through the bloodstream to cancer cells without harming other tissues. According to lead researcher John Bell, cancer cells have defects that make them more susceptible to viral infection than normal cells. This makes the use of targeted viral therapy a much safer option than radiation and chemotherapy, which have very serious side affects. What’s more, since the virus is in the patient’s bloodstream, it can seek out and find cancer cells that have metastasized and are spreading throughout the patient’s body. Surgery removes only the tumor itself, not these metastasized cells, and they are often missed by chemotherapy as well. “We will need to do more trials to know if this virus can truly make a difference for patients,” Bell said, but they are hopeful that soon we will have a more selective and powerful tool in our fight against cancer.

Gadgets and Technology

2012 promises to be a good year for the technophile. As advances in personal computing combine with cheaper, easier-to-manufacture electronics, a plethora of new consumer technologies have come onto the scene. Here are just a few of the products expected to make a big impression in the coming twelve months.

3-D Printing for the Masses: Makerbot has created the Thing-o-Matic, a commercially available 3-D printer, and while the price may be a little hefty, it is available for individual purchase. Designed to be more user-friendly than traditional 3D printers, Thing-o-Matic carves solid objects out of a plastic automatically, and features USB connectivity so you can create plastic replacement parts, sculptures, or your very own dinosaur-with-Stephen-Colbert’s-head.

Intwine Connected Thermostat Monitors your Eco-Footprint: for the technology lover with a green, guilty conscience, this is the perfect power-monitoring tool. Working with nearly any HVAC system, the device allows the user to watch their energy usage over the web via wi-fi connection, and adjust it accordingly.

Remote Control Robots: spy on your neighbors, race your friends, or simply terrorize the cat with these awesome new remote control robots available at Brookstone. From your computer or smartphone you can now operate a real flying drone just like the US Military and law enforcement (AGM-114 Hellfire missiles not included). There is also a spy tank with night vision that is sure to be used for legitimate, wholesome purposes only.

While 2011 was an incredible year for many branches of science, 2012 looks to be even more fascinating. Whether you’re hoping to find another habitable planet, break the speed of light, cure cancer, or simply keep tabs on your neighbors with a flying robot, 2012 holds a lot of promise for you. Have a safe, happy, and illuminating New Year.

By now, if you have a computer, eyes, or ears, you’ve heard of the “Stop Online Piracy Act,” or SOPA. The debate regarding this bill is incredibly heated: with some people saying that if it passes it will destroy the internet, while others saying that if it doesn’t the internet will destroy society. Pretty serious stuff. Those of us that grew up with the internet cringe at the idea of any government agency directly regulating it, pointing out that it has been largely unregulated (at least in the West) since its inception and has been doing just fine.

But what would SOPA actually do if it were passed? Critics say it would do little-to-nothing to actually stop online piracy. What the bill would do is allow ISPs to block domains from outside the US if they host pirated material. Basically, since copyright holders can’t sue foreign websites for illegally distributing their material, SOPA allows them to attack the distribution network (the internet) instead. A good analogy would be if the US closed down sea-ports because sometimes illegal drugs are smuggled in on ships.

Go Daddy, one of the largest domain hosting companies in the US, came out in support of SOPA, and as a result, a boycott was planned for Dec. 29th. Organized and detailed instructions were created and disseminated around the web, informing people how to switch their domain from Go Daddy to one of their competitors. Less than 24 hours after the boycott was generally announced, Go Daddy dropped their support of SOPA, and CEO Warren Adelman had this to say: “It’s very important that all Internet stakeholders work together on this [stopping online piracy]. Getting it right is worth the wait. Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it.” A wise move from a shrewd businessman. The internet foments into an angry mob rather quickly, and the anonymity it provides only emboldens that mob further. But while most critics were angrily protesting, others were quietly preparing. It turns out that if SOPA were passed, getting around it to access illegal content still wouldn’t be very difficult. A simple firefox add-on has already been created called DeSopa that would allow users to access banned sites, like the Pirate Bay with ease. The fact that this extension has already been created before the bill is even debated in the House shows just how easy it will be for dedicated pirates to continue doing what they’re doing. The only real victims of SOPA will be those with less computer knowledge who would be unable to access sites they would have before.

Ever since Napster first came out in the late 90’s, content producers have been tearing their hair out trying to figure out how to stop people from copying what are essentially just 1’s and 0’s. Digital media, by its very nature, is incredibly easy to reproduce and disseminate. While this allows the individual to access mountains information and entertainment at the click of a button, it flies in the face of the older business model of content producers. Acts like SOPA and PIPA (its sister act in the Senate) are the last gasps of a moneymaking dinosaur that is hopelessly outdated. There is no way to stop individuals from sharing electronic media, even with the strictest laws and most brutal punishments. However, whichever side of the debate you come down on, the “Stop Online Piracy Act” will not stop online piracy, and that is the bottom line.

It’s the 22nd century, and mankind has broken through our own stellar eggshell and made our presence felt across the galaxy. That’s the hope of NASA’s Ames Research Center and DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, who are collaborating on a $1 million dollar study to help us take out next steps into space. Its purpose is to produce a business model that will allow for the development of technologies needed for transporting human beings to another star system. The initiation of this study is merely step one in a process that will hopefully lead to an interstellar human community. Sustainable business practices are the key, and efforts are already underway to seed the research that will develop the necessary technologies further down the road. One of the main goals of the program is to diversify the organizations involved: “looking at history,” said Dave Neyland, director of DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office, “most significant exploration, like crossing oceans or continents for the first time, was sponsored by patrons or groups outside of government.” Government agencies are subject to oversight committees and the whims of various administrations; and long-term, sustainable efforts are much more difficult for them to shepherd. In contrast; a robust strategy with many different agencies and corporations all working towards the same goal has a higher likelihood of success over longer periods of time.

However, sending a manned spacecraft to another solar system is an incredibly daunting challenge. It will require breakthroughs in propulsion systems, medicine, communications, data management, and energy production. Not only that, but a suitable destination must be found: we don’t want to send our astronauts to a solar system with no planets, or worse: to that damned planet of the apes. However, advances are being made in the field of planet-finding, and experts predict that within the next 10 years we will find a planet similar enough to Earth that it will be worth investigating closer. How we get there, however, is another problem entirely.

Due to the vast distances between star systems, and the relatively slow acceleration of our current spacecraft, it would take longer than a human life-span to reach our neighbors. Even with improved fuel technologies, any spacecraft we create will not be able to go faster than the speed of light, which is still too slow to be practical for interstellar voyages. However, there may be a loop-hole: while matter and energy cannot move through space-time faster than the speed of light, there is no known law of physics preventing space-time itself from doing so and there are tantalizing indications that it can. Immediately following the Big Bang, there was a brief period when many models predict that space-time was accelerating faster than the speed of light. It is well known that all matter and energy warp space-time, which causes gravity, so theoretically it would be possible to create a structure of mass and/or exotic energy that accelerates a “bubble” of space time, with a spacecraft embedded within. Some lab experiments have revealed tantalizing clues that this may in fact be possible: when a gyroscope is placed above rotating, super-cooled rings, it behaves as if it is rotating as well. This indicates that the rotating rings effect the local space-time matrix. In other experiments it has been shown that between two parallel, uncharged metal plates, there is a region of space that seems to have less energy than the surrounding region. Researchers conducting these studies believe this area of “negative energy” could be generated in front of a space time “bubble,” pulling it forward like a vacuum. Whether or not the “bubble” could be accelerated past the speed of light is unknown.

One of the biggest obstacles to these technologies, besides our lack of knowledge, is the huge amount energy required to utilize them. Our current energy production capacity comes nowhere near the amount needed to create a “space-time warp bubble.” Whole new power production technologies will have to be created, not merely more efficient solar panels and cold fusion. Some scientists think that if we learn how to harness dark energy – the force behind the universe’s continual expansion – we could meet the energy requirements of such a spacecraft. But due to the fact that we have no idea what dark energy is or how to research it, these ideas are pure speculation at best.

Diversity is the key to survival for any species. Not just genetic diversity, but diversity of habitat. Author and scientist Harry Kloor related this concept to humans when he said “if we don’t eventually spread out – I’m not saying tomorrow or even 100 years – but if we don’t get off planet it is inevitable that we would go extinct, just like the dinosaurs.” It’s not a matter of if – but when. Eventually, a huge asteroid will smash into the Earth and wipe us out, or climate change will alter the environment to a point that it becomes uninhabitable. Even if we’re lucky enough to survive all of that, eventually the Sun will expand as it converts hydrogen to helium enveloping the Earth, utterly annihilating it. Our only chance for true long-term survival is migration. The more star systems we inhabit, the harder it will be to make us extinct. And if we can develop the ability to travel to other stars, why on Earth shouldn’t we?

The concept of free will has been hotly debated and argued about for centuries. Acceptance of this idea is the basis of our legal system; you must be responsible for your own actions. On the surface, it seems obvious that free will is real; you’re cold so you put on a jacket, you’re hungry so you eat something. But as we know, things are never as simple as they seem, and recent experiments have shown that this conscious decision-making process may be an illusion.

For centuries, philosophers and theologians have argued back and forth about the existence of free will, and what it means. For the more religious-minded, there is no debate: free will exists and was given to us by God. This is the basis of not only our code of laws, but also our code of morality. If the ultimate agent behind all of our actions is our conscious decision making process, then everything we do, good or bad, is entirely our own fault. On the other hand, if our actions are predetermined and entirely governed by outside forces, the argument goes, then we aren’t responsible for what we do.

This way of thinking is so ingrained in us that it actually affects our moral decisions. In a study conducted at the University of Minnesota, researchers found that participants were more likely to cheat on a test if they first read a passage of text indicating that there was no such thing as free will. Participants that read a pro-free will text were much less likely to cheat. This indicates that if individuals are more inclined to believe in free will, they are more likely to act in a “moral” way.

None of this addresses the question of whether or not free will is real or an illusion, however. Indeed, the very question was impossible to investigate scientifically until recent advances in neuroscience. In 2007, a researcher at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin named John-Dylan Haynes conducted an experiment into our decision making process that yielded some startling results. “The first thought we had was ‘we have to check if this is real’,” Haynes said. “We came up with more sanity checks than I’ve ever seen in any other study before.” The results Haynes is referring to indicate that the subjects of the experiment subconsciously made decisions before their conscious brain was aware of it. Participants in the study were hooked up to an fMRI machine, and asked to look at a screen that displayed a sequence of random letters. They were told to press a button with either their left or right hand whenever they felt the urge, and to remember the letter displayed on the screen at the time. The conscious decision to push the button occurred about a second before the act, as recorded by the fMRI machine. However, up to seven seconds before the subject pushed the button, there was a pattern of brain activity that allowed the researchers to correctly predict the action more than half the time. The subjects were unaware of this brain activity until they felt that they had made the decision themselves.

This indicates that the conscious mind is little more than the tip of the iceberg. Decisions are made at lower levels, and only afterwards is the consciousness made aware of them, at which point it invents reasons for the actions performed. This flies in the face of what we think we know about free will and decision making. According to this research, decisions are made at a chemical and biological level, and our consciousness is little more than a spectator. Why, then, do we have the illusion of free will at all? As with all questions related to our nature and biology, the answer is: because it benefited our ancestors.

Humanity’s uniqueness is based on our ability to model the motivations of others in our mind. When you look at another person performing a series of actions, your mind automatically invents a story to explain what is going on. Understanding what other people are doing, and more importantly, why, allows us to learn from one another, enables our imaginations, and helps us plan for the future. At some point in the past, our modeling of others’ minds led to the modeling of our own minds, and this is where the concepts of “I” and “free will” come from. This isolating of the mind as a distinct entity, separate from its surroundings, allows individuals to not only be blamed for their misdeeds, but also recognized for their triumphs. In order to maximize reproductive fitness, human beings had to be able to take credit for the good things they’d done, and punish those that do wrong. While it may be true that a person commits a crime for perfectly understandable reasons, it is much easier for a social group to simply assign the blame to that individual and be done with the problem.

The whole debate of “free will” vs. “determinism” is itself a by-product of our way of thinking. We isolate our minds from the environment, and we divide things into two categories: self-motivated and other-motivated. In this model, human beings are self-motivated with autonomous decision-making abilities completely independent of the world around us. Other-motivated entities are objects like rocks, which only move or act if some other agent acts upon them. Things like animals, computers, and plants may fall anywhere in between those two extremes, depending on your own personal biases. But this is entirely false. Our minds are not separate from the world around us, but deeply ingrained. However, this doesn’t mean that we are soulless robots doomed to act according to our programming. Our consciousness arises out of and is motivated by the environment that we find ourselves in, and yet is still real and must be taken into account. It makes no sense to argue about whether or not free will exists, instead it should be recognized and studied for what it is: the most incredible tool evolution has ever devised to help us survive.

On March 5th of this year, the US military launched an Atlas 5 rocket, carrying an unusual payload. Nested within the nose cone was the second fully robotic space plane, the X-37B, the first being the X-37 which had its maiden voyage last year. While it is reminiscent of NASA’s now-retired Space Shuttle, the X-37B is only ¼ of the size, and fully automatic. The 29-foot space plane has cargo doors similar to those on the space shuttle, and uses the same reentry procedure. However, with its onboard batteries and solar arrays, the Air Force predicted that the X-37B should be able to stay in orbit for around 270 days. In comparison, the longest manned shuttle mission was only 17 days.

Recently, the mission passed the 270-day mark, and the Air Force has yet to bring the space plane down. The specifics of the mission are classified, and according to Under Secretary of the Air Force for Space Programs Gary Payton, the mission was to: “take a payload up, spend up to 270 days on orbit. They’ll run experiments to see if the new technology works.” That sounds innocent enough, but many other nations are watching with wary eyes. Iran called the X-37B a “secret space warplane,” and Russian generals are calling for investment and research into their own space weaponry. Many have speculated that the X-37B is a prototype orbiting bomber, like a space-based predator drone; or a weapons platform to destroy enemy satellites quickly and efficiently.

According to a report by the Secure World Foundation, the most likely use of the new spacecraft is as an observation platform for spying on the US’ enemies. It could potentially carry radar, optical, and infrared sensors, and intercept electronic communications. “Although there doesn’t appear to be any one mission that justifies the X-37B program,” stated the report’s primary author, Air Force Space and Missile officer Brian Weeden, “the ability to flight-test new sensors and hardware before they go into full development, combined with a more timely, flexible way to conduct surveillance, is why I think this program is going forward.” Since the retirement of the Space Shuttle, the Air Force has needed a way to put spy satellites into orbit. This is likely one of the main purposes of the X-37B, and its ability to stay in orbit much longer makes it a more versatile option. The smaller, robotic craft is also much more maneuverable than satellites currently in use, and could respond to situations on the ground much more quickly. However, it is unlikely that the X-37B will be used as a bomber, as its payload bay is to small to hold the large de-orbiting boosters such bombs would require to hit their targets.

The lack of information about the mission is likely what is causing the most tension in world politics. The United States is the only country with the capability to comprehensively track the activities of other nation’s space vehicles. When Russia or China launch anything into space, the US government is able to track and verify that it was not a hostile act. When the US performs a similar launch, however, most of the time no one is able to independently verify what is going on. Brian Weeden recommends the US share its space tracking technology and data with other governments. With other nations at our same technical level, we could implement a “verification regime” similar to what the United States and Russia use to keep tabs on each other’s nuclear weapons on Earth.

As we venture further and further out of our atmosphere and continue to learn more about the universe around us, technologies like the X-37B will become indispensable. In the future, more and more work will be done in orbit, and reusable, unmanned vehicles are the best method to do so safely and efficiently. But if we don’t share our knowledge and technology, we run the risk of creating tension where there need not be any. Other nations have good reason to be worried. While the X-37B is probably not an orbital weapon, the same technologies could be used to create one. A nation that has weapons in orbit, out of reach to countermeasures and impossible to defend against, would have a distinct advantage in any conflict. The only way to minimize this concern is with openness and transparency, a policy that the US government will hopefully adopt in regards to these kinds of missions in the future.

Today the European Union’s highest court, the Court of Justice based in Luxemburg has made a historic ruling against allowing censorship in the name of copyright protection as it violated fundamental rights. The ruling goes against and opposes a recent Belgium national court’s decision to force the largest ISP in Belgium Belgacom SA to forcibly block users from illegally sharing music and video files and blocking access to sites and services that facilitate such sharing in the Scarlet Extended case.

The ruling in case C-70/10 Scarlet Extended SA v Société belge des auteurs, compositeurs et éditeurs SCRL (SABAM) stated that “EU law precludes the imposition of an injunction by a national court which requires an internet service provider to install a filtering system with a view to preventing the illegal downloading of files.”

This ruling comes as a result of a Belgian court’s decision last year to seek a European wide clarification on whether forcing national ISP’s to block access to file sharing sites and services on their networks was permissible and in line within the wider European Union’s legal fundamental communication rights. This action to seek a higher courts’ guidance came as a direct result of SABAM (essentially Belgium’s equivalent of the RIAA/MPAA) mounting pressure and initiating several legal battles in Belgium’s national courts over the past few years, including having rulings in their favor which forced ISP’s to block peer-to-peer file sharing and access to sites and services that facilitate it.

Belgacom SA being the largest telephone company in Belgium had recently become the largest ISP in Belgium after its approval by antitrust boards in its take over of Scarlet ISP back in 2008. This ruling goes in favor of Scarlet’s appeal against a 2007 Belgium court order to “make it impossible” for users to violate copyright laws, which it argued would be a complete breach of its customers personal privacy with which the CVIRA agrees.

Some may also remember back in 2008 when the EU’s top court ruled in a case involving Telefonica SA’s (Spains largest telcom provider) that ISPs should not be required to reveal the identities of customers accused of illegal file sharing. At the time the Belgian court said that ruling “was not sufficient” to settle Scarlet’s appeal and so it will be interesting to hear the Belgium courts reaction over the coming days to this latest ruling from the EU Court of Justice which apparently seems to make things pretty clear.

This latest ruling from the ECJ of course comes at a time of all-out offensive in the war against data sharing online, this decision would seem to imply that the draconian censorship measures continuously being lobbied and requested by the entertainment industry are totally disproportionate in their fight against individuals for copyright protection of their licensed and owned works.

One would hope this will mean that policy-makers across the European Union will be forced to take this decision into account and review their staunch support for repressive laws such as the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), and instead engage in a productive and much needed reform of copyright law which actually respects individual fundamental rights such as freedom of communication and privacy.

VIDEO SOUNDBITE (in French) by Koen Lenaerts, Judge of the ECJ, reading the judgment in the case C-70/10 Scarlet Extended SA v Société belge des auteurs, compositeurs et éditeurs SCRL (SABAM).

Yesterday many news outlets have been touting the story of anonymous hackers having leaked new revelatory internal Facebook documents pertaining to how and what sort of user information law enforcement is able to request from the social network. Unfortunately this is not exactly totally accurate as such documents have already been made available for several years now thanks to groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and are actually not even exactly up to date, at least not to be able to be reporting them as being “new”.

The specific documents currently most prominently being reported on many news sites are actually two different versions of instructions (one dated from 2010 and the other from late 2006) on how law enforcement agencies should submit subpoenas and requests to gain access to private user data from the social networking giant.

It still serves as positive news though, bringing such important matters back into the public spotlight and presumably pressuring Facebook to become a little more transparent to their user base about how they hand over their data in these sorts of cases. In fact just today, in response to mounting discussion of these old documents resurfacing, Facebook has apparently taken the decision to preemptively publish to their own site some updated information for Law Enforcement Authority requests in an attempt to dispel the idea that they have something to hide.

However this information is very much on the light side and is not the full law enforcement guideline documentation comparable to the information found in the older guidelines circulating online for some years now. For the more or less full documents, it is being reported by some sources that we will have to wait a week or so for Facebook to release an actual updated version of those. Of course Facebook has not acknowledged this rumor nor the authenticity of the documents and the sources in question are not necessarily the most reputable nor do they even seem sure if this will actually happen or not. While we all hope it will, I wouldn’t be surprised if Facebook doesn’t release anything or perhaps if they do, only release a watered down version of the guidelines not containing anything particularly new or controversial so as to not rile up potential privacy concerns further.

According to the older documents, Facebook will initially provide agencies with “basic subscription information (BSI)” such as an account’s email address, mobile phone number, date and time of account creation, login and logout times, a list of all accounts associated with the IP’s, etc. They also will provide what they call a user’s “Neoprint” which is basically an expanded global view of a profile’s activity including “all wall postings and messages to and from the user that have not been deleted by the user” and along with this “a compilation” of all an account’s photos and uploaded data and information that’s ever been uploaded irregardless of whether it is publicly viewable in their profile or not.

Of course what draws many people’s attention is the claim of being able to only provide information that has “not been deleted by the user”, however this is likely due to the fact that this is from an older document and Facebook has changed its terminology and user interface options since in order to basically make it more clear that now that they have the hardware infrastructure in place they’re pretty much never going to allow “permanent” deletion of anything anymore, or at least as little as their infrastructure permits. Which tends to coincide with recent investigations by the Irish Data Commissioner and other EU member states and bodies investigating the inabilities of user’s to gain access or control to the true full body of their own data including of course being able to delete it permanently which generally speaking may violate many EU and national privacy laws.

So while a lot of misinformation may be circulating at the moment about anything new being discovered, at least for those who may not yet have had their attention brought to the Facebook law enforcement documents in the past, it is always good news to bring such information back into the spotlight to encourage discussion. What we really want to see though, is if approaching the end of 2011, Facebook will actually try to play the transparency card they tout so freely in their attempt to build trust and actually release their full current updated law enforcement documents so that Facebook users can perhaps get a better idea of where they stand going into the new year. Let’s wait and see.

By now, we are all familiar with the laundry list of environmental, political, and economic issues associated with fossil fuels. They pollute, cause wars, and create confusing fiscal entanglements that are difficult for even the most seasoned economist to follow. Even more than that, however, is the elephant in the room: fossil fuel reserves are finite, non-renewable, and will eventually run out. So whether we want it to or not, our dependence of this form of energy will eventually come to an end.

Also familiar by now is the suite of alternative energy sources that have cropped up within the past 50 years that attempt to address these issues. One of the most popular is biofuels. This is the approach championed by President Bush in his State of the Union Address in 2007, calling for the reduction of 20 percent of the US’ annual gasoline usage over the following ten years. This opened the floodgates for farmers and landowners to start producing biofuels from the crops in their fields, and the most common of these is corn.

Unfortunately, this created a host of new problems, most of them environmental. The production of corn itself reduces the amount of nitrogen in the soil, reducing its quality and making it difficult for anything to grow there again. The nitrogen ends up in rivers, and eventually in the Gulf of Mexico, where it causes huge algal blooms that create “dead zones” devoid of oxygen where fish and other marine creatures cannot survive. Growing corn is also an energy and labor intensive process, requiring petroleum-based pesticides, and there are concerns about whether or not it takes more energy to grow corn than it produces. The Conservation Reserve Program, which pays landowners rent to allow their lands to grow native prairies and forests, lost 2.3 million acres in one month to corn production after Bush announced the biofuel initiative. Interestingly enough, native prairies themselves might provide the answer. In a study conducted at the University of Kansas, a test plot with a diverse community of native prairie grasses produced the same amount of biomass as hay meadow treated with chemical fertilizers. Since they do not require chemical fertilizers, and return farm acreage to its natural state, fields sown with native grasses are much more environmentally sound than cornfields.

The whole issue in question here is energy production. When most of us think of fossil fuels, we think of the gasoline that powers our cars. There is a huge infrastructure in place in the United States for delivering gasoline to the most remote areas so that we can cruise the highways. This has likely contributed to our reliance on fossil fuels as an energy source, and our enthusiasm for embracing biofuels like biodiesel and ethanol. However, if we were to switch our transportation network to one that was all electrically powered (i.e. electric cars), that would open the doors for true alternative fuel sources. We are tantalizingly close to a revolution in power production; as our dependence on fossil fuels wanes, new technologies will take up the increased demand. These new technologies are already in production and poised to supply our needs.

Recently the IAA (International Academy of Astronautics) released a report concerning the feasibility of orbital solar power stations. They concluded that it could be cost effective to supply the world’s energy needs in this way in as little as 30 years. Basically, space-based solar stations would collect energy and send it to any location on the Earth it was needed, via microwave or laser. Another technology that is picking up steam is molten-salt thorium nuclear reactors. These reactors are much safer and cleaner than traditional nuclear reactors, and the only reason they were overlooked as an energy source in the United States is that they don’t produce enough weapons-grade uranium for warheads.

As previously mentioned, our supply of fossil fuels is limited, and we will eventually run out. Long before that point, these fuels will be so difficult to obtain that they will cease to be a cost-effective means of energy production. Biofuels will help to soften this shock as they will allow us to continue to drive our cars and burn hydrocarbons, but eventually politics will catch up with technology. What the future of energy-production and transportation holds in store for us is anybody’s guess, but there are a number of options for us to choose from, and probably many more than no one has thought of yet.

For almost 70 years, we have been launching Earthlings into space. In true scientific tradition, the first astronauts were fruit flies, followed a few years later by Albert II, a Rhesus Monkey. Although Albert II died on impact after his parachute tragically failed, his sacrifice was not forgotten and paved the way for human astronauts to continue his voyage of discovery.

However, fruit flies and primates aren’t the only things we’ve been launching into space. Like stowaways on an old steam ship, microbes have been sneaking aboard our rockets in every available niche. Guided by nothing more than dumb luck and the blind hand of evolution, these space colonists adapt, exploit, and take advantage of this new frontier even more enthusiastically than we do. Although every manned space mission is thoroughly sterilized before launch, and astronauts are kept in quarentine before they fly, microbes still find their way inside, even hitching a ride in our own bodies.

The sterile environment inside a launch vehicle actually creates new opportunities for microbes to reproduce and evolve. On Earth, microbe evolution and proliferation is generally held in check by the vast number of other species of microbes that already inhabit every conceivable ecological niche. In contrast, a sterile environment, like that inside the ISS (international space station), is competition-free for any microbes that establish themselves. Any species that finds its way into this sterile environment has an almost unlimited number of niches to adapt to, and evolution has free reign to expiriment with many novel forms. Researcher Michael Roberts at NASA discusses this in a paper on the subject: “As products of natural selection, degenerate [redundant] elements (whether species, genes, or enzymes) engender biological systems with a near-limitless potential for phenotypic diversity.” This means that microbes are poised to make evolutionary jumps from ecological niche to ecological niche; all they need is the opportunity. Opportunities like those found in the sterile environment aboard space vehicles.

On extended space missions in the future, astronauts will likely have to grow plants and recyce waste in a closed environment. This will provide ideal conditions for the evolution of new strains of bacteria. How these strains will evolve and what their effects will be on the life-support systems and the health of the crew is unknown. However, recent research has found that some microbes actually become more virulent when exposed to zero-gravity conditions. E.coli bacteria don’t even wait for evolution in microgravity environments to alter the expression of some of their genes. This means that microbial evolution will likely out-pace our efforts to control them.

Bacteria have a long history of space travel. In 1967, the unmanned craft Surveyor 3 landed on the moon and dropped off a camera. Two-and-a-half years later it was retrieved, and the most fascinating thing learned from it was that a colony of Streptococcus mitis had survived the entire time inside, exposed to the atmosphere (or lack thereof) of the moon. Indeed, there is tantalizing evidence that microbes made the journey to space and back long before our species evolved, perhaps blasted into orbit by meteor impacts or volcanic eruptions. They are amazingly resistant to this extreme environment, surviving wide temperature swings, radiation, and near-vacuum pressure. Back on Earth, microbes are found everywhere we look, in every environment imaginable, living in ways we thought were impossible, and have been known to survive for as long as 30 million years in their spore form. Indeed, the idea that microbes may be have been the first space explorers seems less and less ridiculous the more we learn about them. There is even a hypothesis that Earth-life is descended from microbial space colonists.

In November of last year, NASA launched a satallite with the delicious name of O/OREOS (Organism/Organic Exposure to Orbital Stresses) with the express purpose of studying how microbes behave in outer space. Results and data are still pouring in, but it appears that bacteria and organic structures are even more resiliant to the conditions of space than we imagined.

One of the biggest challenges for future astronauts exploring new worlds will be the risk of contaminating a brand new environment with our own microbes. We’ve already seen the damage that invasize species do here on Earth, on new planets they may be even more destructive. Not only that, but long space missions inside a sealed environment will lead to the evolution of novel microbes that could prove to be extremely harful for the crew. Right now abourd the ISS, brand new microbial communities are forming and evolving which have never been existed before, and are very poorly understood. As Roberts says in his paper: “The expiriment is under way, and the changes in populations and communities will occur whether studied or not.” Before we spread our way across the solar system and the galaxy, we need to learn more about the tiny colonists that will be coming with us.

Occupy Wall Street, the movement that just won't die

You can’t deny that the Occupy Wall Street movement has done a great job of pointing out injustices. Hardly anyone can refute claims of income disparity anymore; middle class families on food stamps now realize that they have been marginalized; and even old ladies in the neighborhood bodega are criticizing punitive banking practices.

But there is another injustice that deserves some attention, and most of us know it as the education gap. Now, more than ever, the gap between the least educated and most educated is wide–inundated Mississippi river wide.

Last week, the National Center for Education Statistics released its yearly report card, known as the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress). Bureaucratic acronyms aside, the report explains much of what you would expect. Our luckiest, most economically fortunate children, are excelling; our unfortunate, minority children that often live in non-English language homes and have parents that make less than $25,000 a year, are stagnant, showing minimal growth if any. Of course, these studies do not disaggregate to what we now see as the 99 percent verses the 1 percent. The NAEP considers a family that is on Free or Reduced Lunch a poor family, and a family that does not qualify for Free Lunch as average. The difference between the 1-percenter and 99-percenter children is even more striking.

Unfortunately, many of the top private schools that one-percenters attend do not publish test scores. They don’t have to. They are under no requirement to waste student time with unnecessary barometers (they are required by law to take a few). Fortunately, an organization exists that accumulates private school statistics. The Council for American Private Education, CAPE, has advocated for private school education since its founding in 1971. As they accurately claim, more than 10% of students in the US attend a private school. CAPE also points out that private school students are more capable in all subject areas and have higher rates of volunteerism and positive community interaction. It comes down to this: how is it that private schools have come to embody all of the values that we once instilled in public education?

Just look at the curricula of these top private schools (a good example). They read books that poor children never read. Their students are expected to discern mathematical equations that most only glimpse in college. And they write. They write, and read, and study philosophy, and experience the world in a way that would make even Thoreau jealous from his recondite cabin (the joke here is that Henry David Thoreau did not think much of formal education).

Students in government-funded schools are not challenged in this way. Do we expect less of them because they are not the one percent? Do we consciously, or subconsciously, acknowledge that there are smarter genes? Many people still think that certain people are born with far superior mental powers. You only need to look at studies of small children to learn that this is not true. Children at the age of three test similarly well, regardless of their race or parents!

This argument could go on and on. I encourage you to look into the public and private schools in your area. Although we may struggle to take back our money from the 1-percent, it takes no effort at all to equalize education. It starts with high standards, not meddling low standards enforced vis-à-vis high stake tests.

In true Operation Reality form, I am only interested in starting a conversation. Much, much more needs to be written on this topic. I do not have the expertise to propose solutions; I can merely point out the discrepancies and pray that greater minds will assemble. The first step, though, is involvement. We all need to involve ourselves more in education, holding our schools and politicians accountable for what happens in the classroom. So 99-percenters, your move.

The human brain is one of the most complex systems we know of, capable of performing an amazing number of calculations (2.2 billion megaflops, or operations per second), and storing 3.5 quadrillion bytes of data. It is also incredibly efficient, using less energy than a light bulb in a space small enough to fit between your ears. In comparison, the K computer; the world’s most powerful computer; is capable of 8.2 billion megaflops, but it gobbles up 9.9 million watts and is made up of more than 80,000 CPUs strung together in a vast computing armada that takes up an entire building. And yet it has never written a poem or painted a work of art.

One reason for this difference is the way in which machines and biological minds compute data. Current, transistor-transistor computers are serial processors, computing things in a sequential manner. Biological brains, on the other hand, are parallel processors, as each neuron is connected to up to a thousand others at a time. This gives the brain a great advantage over our current computing technology. Despite this limitation, researchers at IBM have been able to successfully simulate the brains of less intelligent animals, including rats, mice, and cats. The computer is called Blue Gene, and has also been able to simulate up to 4.5 percent of the connections in a human’s brain. In order to completely simulate a human brain, they will need to hook up 880,000 processors, which they hope to achieve by 2019.

Other researchers have taken a different approach. At the National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Japan researchers have started working with a molecule called DDQ (2,3-dichloro-5,6-dicyano-p-benzoquinone) that has some intriguing possibilities for the future of computing. The molecule is a ring molecule, and can connect with up to 6 other DDQs molecules at a time. It also has 4 different states, or configurations for its electrons to assume. More importantly, these states are translated from one molecule to any it is connected to, creating signaling cascades much like those that occur in the human brain. Led by a researcher named Anirban Bandyopadhyay, the team has successfully been able to calculate how heat diffuses through a medium, and how cancer spreads through the body. They are quick to point out that an individual DDQ molecule has a maximum of 6 connections, while neurons can have up to a thousand, but it does have the potential to be more efficient and faster than traditional transistor-transistor computing. For more detailed information about how the molecule works, read their paper.

Within our lifetimes, a complete simulation of a human brain will be possible. What that will mean is anybody’s guess. We are approaching a fantastic time in our history as the sciences of computing and neurology come together. This will raise a number contentious and baffling issues. Should simulated human brains be considered people? If so, what are their rights? Questions that had been safely in the realm of science fiction will spill over into reality to confront us head on.

According to a report from the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission reported publicly by Bloomberg, Chinese hackers suspected of operating on behalf of the P.L.A. managed to interfere and take over control of at least two U.S. satellites on multiple occasions throughout 2007 and 2008. The compromised satellites Landsat-7 and Terra AM-1, are operated by N.A.S.A. and the U.S. Geological Survey respectfully, and are primarily used for earth climate and terrain observation.

The USCC draft report which is due out next month explained, “Such interference poses numerous potential threats, particularly if achieved against satellites with more sensitive functions. Access to a satellite‘s controls could allow an attacker to damage or destroy the satellite. An attacker could also deny or degrade as well as forge or otherwise manipulate the satellite’s transmission.”

The hackers are suspected to have gained control by proxying through compromised ground control systems at the Svalbard Satellite Station in Spitsbergen, Norway operated by the Norwegian company Kongsberg Gruppen. Even though Kongsberg Satellite Services (Ksat) denies they were hacked, with KSAT chief Rolf Skatteboe stating that “they do not understand where the American government is getting their information from.”

The draft report detailed that the Landsat-7 earth observation satellite experienced over 12 minutes of interference in October 2007 and July 2008. The Terra AM-1 earth observation satellite also was taken control of at least twice, for a few minutes in June 2008 and over nine minutes in October the same year according to a closed-door U.S. Air Force briefing.

U.S.’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration said, “the responsible party achieved all steps required to command the satellite,” although according to the draft report the hackers never exercised that control.

While the draft report does not outright accuse a China as such would be very difficult if not impossible to prove, it does say the the breaches are consistent with publicly asserted Chinese military doctrine which advocates disabling an enemy’s space systems, with particular emphasis on being able to come and go and control “ground-based infrastructure, such as satellite control facilities” in order to “compromise, disrupt, deny, degrade, deceive or destroy” their enemies space computer systems.

Many analysts such as Christopher Bronk, a former diplomat with the U.S. Department of State, believes China’s strategy in any cyberwar will be to degrade and disrupt communications but to not completely disable their opponent’s networks. The goal would be to own as much of a network as possible in order to control it when hostilities break out. This is why maintaining an ability to come and go from the systems is paramount, and a continual probing and penetration testing routine takes place with back-doors and root-kits continuously requiring updating and obfuscating.

Of course the Chinese deny all this. Wang Baodong, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington stated that the U.S. congressional commission has “been collecting unproved stories to serve its purpose of vilifying China’s international image over the years.” Supremely confident, he even went so far as to add that China “never does anything that endangers other countries security interests.”

Personally I would argue that this security “risk” as described by the USCC is perhaps a bit exaggerated and is indeed a tad vilifying of China if there is no serious proof, although if there is it should be taken seriously. When it comes to the U.S government though, it seems China is often used as a scape goat for lapses when it comes to cyber security these days even though it is true this security lapse had nothing really to do with the US government but rather the Kongsberg Group and the fact that the commercially operated Svalbard Satellite Station “routinely relies on the Internet for data access and file transfers.” Of course its employees also use it to browse the web and stay in touch, understandably one can imagine it can get pretty boring up there stuck on a snowy island in the middle of no where. Connecting such critical networks to the larger Internet though does truly defy logic and is an accident waiting to happen.

What I gather from this particular compromise is that it seems no more than someone having been able to gain temporary access to one of the remote computers used as a link station in this case operated by Kongsberg which houses software able to communicate with the hardware used to forward basic messages to trigger downloads from the satellite. It may very well have been as innocent as simply a lack of oversight on the system administrators part (perhaps they forgot to patch their Windows XP machines or accidentally picked up some malware online and an opportunist decided to take advantage – I kid you not) as opposed to something more serious such as straight up jamming of the satellites up-link frequencies or something more malicious such as forging, redirecting, being able to trigger software uploads or straight up blocking of the satellites end to end message transmissions.

These two satellites are of course polar orbiting satellites, which fly very low and are therefore visible from a given point on Earth for only a few minutes at a time which coincides with the reports that the satellites were only “controlled” and “interfered” with for very short periods at a time from the SvalSat base station and no others along its route. Normally if such a low orbit satellite is unable to communicate with one particular link station along its route, then it will simply default and try the next one on its orbital path.

Therefore provided these satellites are well designed, it shouldn’t really cause much of a problem if one ground antenna is unreachable for a while, whether that be due to some Chinese hacker, curious botnet operator, or something slightly more natural such as heavy snowfall, which presumably must be quite a normal occurrence somewhere such as Svalbard.