ARECENT GROUNDBREAKING EXPERIMENT in which anesthesia was administered to rats has convinced scientists that tiny structures in the rodents’ brains are responsible for the experience of consciousness. To pull it off, these microscopic hollow tube structures, called “microtubules,” don’t rely on our everyday flavor of classical physics. Instead, experts believe, microtubules perform incredible operations in the quantum realm. Citing the work of earlier researchers, the study infers that the same kind of quantum operations are likely happening in human brains.
During their rat brain experiments, scientists at Wellesley College in Massachusetts gave the rodents isoflurane, a type of inhaled general anesthetic used to induce and maintain unconsciousness for medical procedures. One group of drugged rats also received microtubule-stabilizing drugs, while the other did not. The researchers discovered that the microtubule-stabilizing molecules kept the rats conscious for longer than the non-stabilized rats, which more quickly lost their “righting reflex,” or the ability to restore normal posture, according to their findings, published in the peer-reviewed journal eNeuro in August 2024.
The Wellesley study is significant because the physical source of consciousness has been a mystery for decades. It’s a major step toward verifying a theory that our brains perform quantum operations, and that this ability generates our consciousness—an idea that’s been gaining traction over the past three decades.
Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy has had enough of America’s highways being treated like social-justice canvases.
According to the directive issued this week to every governor in the nation, the Trump-appointed cabinet official ordered states to scrub their roads, intersections, and crosswalks of “political messages or artwork,” singling out rainbow-themed crosswalks as prime offenders.
“Roads are for safety, not political messages or artwork. Today I am calling on governors in every state to ensure that roadways, intersections, and crosswalks are kept free of distractions,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy.
“Far too many Americans die each year to traffic fatalities to take our eye off the ball. USDOT stands ready to help communities across the country make their roads safer and easier to navigate.”
Safety communication is always better when it is unambiguous, straight to the point, universally understood and is not distracting. Based on this reasoning alone, it is right to go back to standard crosswalks everyone understands. More pedestrians are hit by motor vehicles than most people realize. If even one person’s leg is saved by this directive, it’s worth it. And, you can be sure lives will be saved. ABN
For at least six decades, neuroscientists have been arguing over a big, foundational question: Do adult brains make new neurons? This process of “neurogenesis” had been shown in other adult animals, but its evidence in humans was circumstantial—until now. Using a new technique, scientists have found newly formed neurons in the brains of adults as old as age 78—and, for the first time, have identified the other brain cells that birthed them.
The results, published on Thursday in Science, are the first signs that cells with the capacity to turn into neurons, called neural precursor cells, exist in adult human brains. “Now we have very strong evidence that the whole process is there in humans, from the precursor cells to the immature neurons,” says Gerd Kempermann, a neurobiologist at the Dresden University of Technology, who was not involved in the study.
The Department of Education announced that the University of Pennsylvania has agreed to resolve Title IX violations related to allowing transgender swimmer Lia Thomas to compete on the women’s team during the 2021-22 season.
As part of the resolution deal, Penn will adopt definitions for male and female consistent with biological sex; restore stolen records and titles to female athletes; and, issue personal apologies to each impacted female swimmer.
One of those swimmers is Paula Scanlan, a teammate of Thomas who has previously expressed the emotional distress she suffered from being forced to change with a biological male in the women’s locker room for an entire season.
Paula Scanlan, former University of Pennsylvania swimmer and teammate of Lia Thomas, testifies during the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitution and Limited Government hearing on gender-affirming care for children.
“I am deeply grateful to the Trump administration for standing firm in protecting women and girls and restoring our rightful accolades,” Scanlan told OutKick. “It is because of their strong leadership that my alma mater now knows it has no choice but to begin the process of reforming its policies to uphold women’s rights. Today marks a momentous step toward repairing the past mistreatment of female athletes and forging a future where sex discrimination no longer limits girls’ potential.”
Scientists have begun work on a controversial project that aims to create human DNA from scratch. World’s largest medical charity, the Wellcome Trust, has donated Rs 117 crore (10 million pounds) to start the project, which involves scientists from universities including Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College.
“The sky is the limit. We are looking at therapies that will improve people’s lives as they age, that will lead to healthier ageing with less disease as they get older,” Dr Julian Sale, of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, who is part of the project, told the BBC.
“We are looking to use this approach to generate disease-resistant cells we can use to repopulate damaged organs, for example, in the liver and the heart, even the immune system,” he said.
As per Professor Matthew Hurles, director of the Wellcome Sanger Insititute, studying how genes and DNA regulate our bodies could help us pinpoint when they go wrong and ultimately develop better treatments.
“Building DNA from scratch allows us to test out how DNA really works and test out new theories, because currently we can only really do that by tweaking DNA in DNA that already exists in living systems,” said Mr Hurles.
This isn’t just another UFO mystery. What Greer said in Mexico about the sphere’s materials, movement, and possible alien inscriptions, will blow your mind.
1/ Dr. Steven Greer flew to Mexico for one reason: To examine the Buga Sphere up close. After seeing it, he didn’t hold back:
“This is clearly an anomalous object with multiple possible origins.”
2/ Greer didn’t jump to conclusions. He brought a team of scientists to test the sphere using isotope-level metal analysis and Carbon-14 dating. To determine if it’s from Earth, or from deep space.
3/ They found a polymer embedded in the sphere, near its equator. It contains carbon, and if it’s thousands of years old, then this isn’t a modern object. It predates industrial civilization.
4/ Now here’s where it gets exciting! Inside the Buasphere are microscopic fiber optics which according to Dr. Steven Greer are molded into the structure itself. That’s not 20th-century tech, that’s integrated photonics before we even knew what that was.
5/ Greer says this kind of fabrication doesn’t match anything known from Earth, unless a long-lost civilization once had access to tech we can’t even replicate today.
The Discovery of life on Mars, and by extension, the stars, could be proven by discovery of a single living microbe on the Red Planet. But, at the same time, a mass of independently derived data all indicating a finite probably of life, indicating Occam’s Razor as a factor, can also form the basis for the following Inductive Reasoning: 1. The Conditions on Early Earth, where life appeared, and Early Mars, have now been found to be basically identical; therefore, based on the Principle of Mediocrity, the probability of life is estimated to be PL =0.5 on Mars, an estimated 50% probability. 2. Complex organic matter has been found in recently formed aqueously altered terrains on Mars, and in both ancient and young meteorites from the Red Planet, in aqueously deposited minerals found within them, suggesting a further probability of biological origin versus abiotic of PL =0.5. 3. Reexamination of the Viking Life Experiment results, given new knowledges of both Mars surface chemistry and biologically generated super-oxides on Earth, strongly support the conclusions of Levin that life was found in 1976, 4. The seasonal variations of two biologically produced gases, O2 and CH4 recently discovered, are consistent with widespread microbial life on Mars, and along with the Life Experiment results, again can be estimated to indicate a PL =0.5 for each test. In the article we will explore these four findings holistically and draw the overall Inductive Conclusion that the simplest interpretation for this body of data is that Life began and persists on Mars as surely as it does on Earth. We assume here that, using a probabilistic model, the probability of Mars being sterile is PS =(1-PL)N+1 and yields an estimated probability of Life on Mars as 97%. Life on Mars is thus discovered. This conclusion, similar to a court case built on circumstantial evidence, can also be likened to a Second Copernican Revolution, wherein the Earth is now displaced from the center of the Biological Universe, just as it was formerly displaced from its geometric center.
At around 15 min, the video describes the effects of this observation of those who observed it. Worth watching from the beginning, but I mention that to show it goes somewhere human and very interesting. Filing this one under both ‘science’ and ‘Buddhism’. ABN
Observed anomalies that are not let go are the heart and soul of investigative science. There have been many theories about why the Towers fell — nano-thermite, energy weapons, mini nukes. If DARPA is 30-50 years ahead of what the public knows, which it surely is in many realms, it makes sense that we still do not know what caused the fall of the Towers or the other major events of 9/11. It surely was not crashing airplanes, which themselves are four separate events, each rife with unique anomalies: The plane that disappeared into a hole in the ground in PA; the plane that flew at an impossible speed into the Pentagon; the two planes that supposedly struck the Twin Towers, also flying at impossible speeds and seemingly disappearing into the Towers unlike any airplane crash in history. ABN
American Buddhist Net 