|
|
Welcome Guest Login or Signup
|
|
Lucifer |
PROFILE |
|
GALLERY |
|
BLOGS |
|
GUESTBOOK |
|
FRIENDS |
|
FAVORITES |
|
VIDEOS |
|
|
|
|
Viewing 1 - 10 out of 18 Blogs.
I have always had an intense interest in the paranormal. Actually, My life was saved through paranormal intervention before birth. This story of how my life was saved before birth was related to me by my mother and father when I was a teenager. It was May of 1955 and my mother was pregnant with me. She was in her 9th month and the pregnancy had been normal. One night as my parents were sleeping, my father kept having this same dream. Over and over and over again. In the dream, my fathers dad (my grandfather Vincenzo) who had died a few years earlier appeared in the dream. My grandfather Vincenzo kept telling my father to wake up because the baby is drowning. My grandfather kept repeating this in the dream . Get her to the hospital, the baby is drowning. Get her to the hospital, the baby is drowning. The dreams became so intense that it woke my father up. He saw my mother in distress and rushed her to the hospital. They did an immediate C section after finding that the cord was wrapped around my neck and I was suffocating and almost dead. What a way to begin life. Over the years I have had three more personal paranormal experiences
Tags: Dreams And The Supernatural
"Step Aside Quacks, The Search for Longer Life Is Real Science Now." NEWSWEEK magazine features TA-65 Never Say Die
Step aside, quacks. The search for longer life is a real science now.
Anne Underwood NEWSWEEK From the magazine issue dated Dec 15, 2008 By the time it reaches the age of 18 days, the average roundworm is old, flabby, sluggish and wrinkled. By 20 days, the creature will likely be dead-unless, that is, it's one of Cynthia Kenyon's worms. Kenyon, director of the Hillblom Center for the Biology of Aging at the University of California, San Francisco, has tinkered with two genes that turn simple worms into mini-Methuselahs, with life spans of up to 144 days. "You can beat them up in ways that would kill a normal worm-exposing them to high heat, radiation and infectious microbes-and still they don't die," she says. "Instead, they're moving and looking like young worms. It's like a miracle-except it's science."
Since the days of Ponce de León, if not before, people have been seeking the elusive Fountain of Youth. Until recently, such pursuits were the realm of quacks and charlatans. And there are still plenty of snake-oil salesmen out there on the Internet and in so-called anti-aging clinics, hawking everything from longevity-bestowing Ecuadoran waters (which are probably harmless) to growth hormones (which could be downright dangerous for adults). But serious scientists are now bringing respectability to the field, unraveling the secrets of aging on a cellular level and looking for ways to slow it down. And while the science is still young (so to speak), legitimate longevity-boosting treatments could be available in 10 to 15 years-although the gains would be more modest than in Kenyon's worms.
The pursuit is not as quixotic as it may seem. Some critics of the scientific quest for longevity say it's God's will that we should die when our time comes. But in the past century, a clean water supply, antibiotics, vaccines and improved medical care have boosted life expectancy at birth by roughly 50 percent in the United States-from 48 for men and 51 for women in 1900 to 75 for men and 80 for women today. No one seems to object to that. "I'm 54," says Felipe Sierra, director of the division of aging biology at the National Institute on Aging. "A hundred years ago, I would have been dead by this age." Others argue that keeping people alive longer will further strain the social safety net. Yet for most scientists, the goal is not to tack years of sickness onto the end of life. "The goal is to extend youth," says Harvard molecular biochemist David Sinclair, who is working with a potential anti-aging compound called resveratrol. "I want to keep people healthier for longer and lessen the burden on the economy."
Studies are already yielding important clues on what produces healthy aging. One obvious answer is a healthy lifestyle, with plenty of exercise and a diet that includes lots of fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Seventh-day Adventists eat a vegetarian diet, don't smoke and spend a lot of time with family and church groups, which helps reduce stress. "They routinely live to 88 or so, which suggests those are ages most of us could attain with a healthy lifestyle," says Dr. Thomas Perls, director of the New England Centenarian Study.
But to make it to 100, like the 1,500 participants in Perls's study-or 110, like his "supercententarians"-it takes more than virtuous behavior and avoiding a collision with a Mack truck. A person needs genes that slow aging and boost defenses against age-related diseases. About half a dozen such genes have been identified out of perhaps 100 or so that might exist. The exceptional people with these genes seem to spend very little time sick-even when they defy all the rules. "We had one man who smoked three packs of cigarettes a day," says Perls. "He gave up smoking at 90, but he still drank three martinis a day-and he was out repairing his roof the day before I visited him. He died at 103."
Some of these beneficial genes appear to be involved in metabolic pathways related to growth, as well as the processing of fat and cholesterol. Kenyon manipulates a gene in her worms that reduces the action of insulin and a related hormone called IGF-1. "Lowering these hormones activates a gene called Foxo," she says, "which stimulates a whole host of responses that protect cells-boosting the immune system, increasing antioxidants, keeping proteins folded correctly." A study of Ashkenazi Jewish centenarians this year also found variations in genes governing IGF-1. A second study found protective changes in the Foxo genes of healthy 95-year-old men.
If there were no way to achieve these ends without having rare genes, then there would probably be no hope for most of us. (Only one in 6,000 Americans alive today is a centenarian.) But there may be another route to the same end, even if it's a path most of us will not want to follow-a severe low-calorie diet. Mice who eat 30 percent less live about a third longer. Similar effects in primates are just becoming available through a decades-long study in rhesus monkeys.
Obviously, no one can put people in cages, control their diets and follow them for 80 years to see how it all works out. But Dr. Luigi Fontana at Washington University School of Medicine is tracking 45 members of the Calorie Restriction Society, who voluntarily put themselves on such a diet. They are people like Tadd Ottman, 53, a software engineer in California. Since adopting a calorie-restriction diet in 2002, he's eaten just 1,500 calories a day, while being careful to meet nutritional requirements (one factor that distinguishes the practice from anorexia). He's dropped from 180 pounds to 130-and learned to cope with the effects: hunger pangs, reduced libido and feeling cold. On the bright side, his cholesterol has fallen from 244 to 169, his blood pressure is just 96 over 66 and he requires 45 minutes less sleep a night. "I'm like a long-distance runner," he says, "except that I don't exercise." He doesn't take in enough calories for much of that.
Fontana has been studying Ottman and 44 others for an average of 12 years. "Their heart function is 15 years younger than their chronological age," he says. "They have the blood pressure of teenagers." Their C-reactive protein-a measure of damaging, chronic inflammation-is a fraction of normal. The only way they fall short of calorie-restricted mice (other than extended life span, which has not yet been demonstrated) is that they do not have lower levels of the hormone IGF-1, which is believed to play a major role in aging and cancer. "IGF-1 doesn't fall, because 25 percent of their calories come from protein, versus the recommended 15 percent," he says. "We don't see this in vegetarians."
Extreme calorie restriction is not a practice that most people should try. Too many people are likely to simply yo-yo out of any initial weight loss. And pregnant women and children should never attempt it, lest they hinder development.
But Harvard's Sinclair is hoping to develop pills that will mimic the benefits of calorie restriction-without depriving us of chocolate or crumpling our sex drive. In 2006, he published a much-heralded study in Nature on a compound from red wine called resveratrol. Obese mice that received concentrated doses were just as healthy as skinny mice. They also lived longer and had superior endurance. "They were Lance Armstrong mice, except they were fat," he says. In a study this year, lean mice on resveratrol also had less heart disease, fewer cataracts, stronger bones and better motor function-though they did not live longer than normal.
To the extent that resveratrol mimics calorie restriction and exercise, it may be because all three activate a protein called SIRT1, a member of the sirtuin family of enzymes. SIRT1 increases the formation of new mitochondria, the power plants of cells, and it revs up existing ones. Last month Sinclair published a study showing that SIRT1 also repairs chromosome breaks, helping to keep youthful genes switched on and aging genes turned off. And Kenyon says that SIRT1 boosts the same metabolic pathway that she enhances in her worms.
None of this proves that SIRT1 extends human life. But both Kenyon and Sinclair have helped set up businesses to pursue clinical applications of their work. Any drugs that result will not be approved for longevity, since the FDA approves drugs only to treat illnesses. Instead, both Sinclair's Sirtris Pharmaceuticals and Kenyon's Elixir Pharmaceuticals are pursuing pills for diabetes, one of the leading diseases of aging. Sirtris's formulation of resveratrol has been shown in early trials to lower blood sugar and insulin in patients with type 2 diabetes, and the company is entering trials with synthetic sirtuin activators that are up to 1,000 times more potent than resveratrol. Though 60 to 90 percent of drugs at these stages of testing ultimately fizzle out, GlaxoSmithKline purchased Sirtris over the summer for $720 million. "Half a dozen major drug companies are working on sirtuins," says Dr. Christoph Westphal, CEO of Sirtris. "Because they affect many diseases of aging, the potential market is huge."
Other future blockbusters could be drugs that repair telomeres, the DNA caps on the ends of chromosomes. Every time a cell divides, the telomeres become shorter. When they shrink too much, cells stop replicating and start to function poorly. The result is wrinkling and general deterioration-well-known problems of aging. But scientists hope to forestall the effects by boosting telomerase, an enzyme that rebuilds telomeres. "There are rare families with very low telomerase," says molecular biologist Elizabeth Blackburn of UC San Francisco. "They never make it to old age. They die first of infections, cancers or lung fibrosis."
That doesn't prove that boosting telomerase extends years of health. But it's a reasonable hypothesis. Last month the first evidence in mammals surfaced in a study from Spain. Mice that were bred to have enhanced levels of telomerase lived 40 percent longer-and had better glucose sensitivity and motor function, stronger skin and less inflammation. The relevance to humans is open to debate. But UCLA immunologist Rita Effros also published a study last month on immune cells that were drawn from people with HIV. The cells were treated in the lab with a telomerase activator from Geron Corp. "Sure enough, they killed viruses better, divided longer and acted more youthful," Effros says. It's not just people with HIV who stand to benefit. "Many diseases of aging involve a weakened immune system," she says. But because too much telomerase could theoretically boost cancer risks, "it will be a long and difficult job to make sure a telomerase drug is safe," says Blackburn.
Some folks aren't waiting. Telomere biologist Bill Andrews of Sierra Sciences is taking a telomerase-boosting supplement called TA-65. "I believe it's safer than driving my car to work," he says. Since he started taking it a year and a half ago, Andrews says he has moved from the back of the pack to the front in 100-mile runs known as ultramarathons. But don't expect to find TA-65 at your local Vitamin Shoppe. It is available only from TA Sciences-for $25,000 a year. And customers have to undergo a battery of tests every six months to gauge the results, none of which have been published yet.
It might be smarter to save the $25,000 and modify your lifestyle. Last month Blackburn published a study showing that 30 men on Dr. Dean Ornish's program (an ultralow-fat diet, exercise and stress reduction) increased their telomerase levels by 30 percent. "According to the World Health Organization, 80 percent of heart disease and 40 percent of cancers could be prevented with a healthy diet and lifestyle," says Fontana. For those of us in the wrong end of the gene pool, healthy habits may be the best life preserver around.
With Karen Springen
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/172561
China’s cyber army is preparing to march on America, says Pentagon
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article2409865.ece
(© Corbis. All Rights Reserved)
Tim Reid in Washington
Chinese military hackers have prepared a detailed plan to disable America’s aircraft battle carrier fleet with a devastating cyber attack, according to a Pentagon report obtained by The Times.
The blueprint for such an assault, drawn up by two hackers working for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), is part of an aggressive push by Beijing to achieve “electronic dominance” over each of its global rivals by 2050, particularly the US, Britain, Russia and South Korea.
China’s ambitions extend to crippling an enemy’s financial, military and communications capabilities early in a conflict, according to military documents and generals’ speeches that are being analysed by US intelligence officials. Describing what is in effect a new arms race, a Pentagon assessment states that China’s military regards offensive computer operations as “critical to seize the initiative” in the first stage of a war.
The plan to cripple the US aircraft carrier battle groups was authored by two PLA air force officials, Sun Yiming and Yang Liping. It also emerged this week that the Chinese military hacked into the US Defence Secretary’s computer system in June; have regularly penetrated computers in at least 10 Whitehall departments, including military files, and infiltrated German government systems this year.
Related Links
China ‘tops list’ of cyber-hackers
Nasty effects of China syndrome
Cyber attacks by China have become so frequent and aggressive that President Bush, without referring directly to Beijing, said this week that “a lot of our systems are vulnerable to attack”. He indicated that he would raise the subject with Hu Jintao, the Chinese President, when they met in Sydney at the Apec summit. Mr Hu denied that China was responsible for the attack on Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary.
Larry M. Wortzel, the author of the US Army War College report, said: “The thing that should give us pause is that in many Chinese military manuals they identify the US as the country they are most likely to go to war with. They are moving very rapidly to master this new form of warfare.” The two PLA hackers produced a “virtual guidebook for electronic warfare and jamming” after studying dozens of US and Nato manuals on military tactics, according to the document.
The Pentagon logged more than 79,000 attempted intrusions in 2005. About 1,300 were successful, including the penetration of computers linked to the Army’s 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions and the 4th Infantry Division. In August and September of that year Chinese hackers penetrated US State Department computers in several parts of the world. Hundreds of computers had to be replaced or taken offline for months. Chinese hackers also disrupted the US Naval War College’s network in November, forcing the college to shut down its computer systems for several weeks. The Pentagon uses more than 5 million computers on 100,000 networks in 65 countries.
Jim Melnick, a recently retired Pentagon computer network analyst, told The Times that the Chinese military holds hacking competitions to identify and recruit talented members for its cyber army.
He described a competition held two years ago in Sichuan province, southwest China. The winner now uses a cyber nom de guerre, Wicked Rose. He went on to set up a hacking business that penetrated computers at a defence contractor for US aerospace. Mr Melnick said that the PLA probably outsourced its hacking efforts to such individuals. “These guys are very good,” he said. “We don’t know for sure that Wicked Rose and people like him work for the PLA. But it seems logical. And it also allows the Chinese leadership to have plausible deniability.”
In February a massive cyber attack on Estonia by Russian hackers demonstrated how potentially catastrophic a preemptive strike could be on a developed nation. Pro-Russian hackers attacked numerous sites to protest against the controversial removal in Estonia of a Russian memorial to victims of the Second World War. The attacks brought down government websites, a major bank and telephone networks.
Linton Wells, the chief computer networks official at the Pentagon, said that the Estonia attacks “may well turn out to be a watershed in terms of widespread awareness of the vulnerability of modern society”.
After the attacks, computer security experts from Nato, the EU, US and Israel arrived in the capital, Tallinn, to study its effects.
Sami Saydjari, who has been working on cyber defence systems for the Pentagon since the 1980s, told Congress in testimony on April 25 that a mass cyber attack could leave 70 per cent of the US without electrical power for six months.
He told The Times that all major nations – including China – were scrambling to defend against, and working out ways to cause, “maximum strategic damage” by taking out banking systems, power grids and communications networks. He said that there were at least a thousand attempted attacks every hour on American computers. “China is aggressive in this,” he said.
Programmed to attack
Malware: a “Trojan horse” programme, which hides a “malicious code” behind an innocent document, can collect usernames and passwords for e-mail accounts. It can download programmes and relay attacks against other computers. An infected computer can be controlled by the attacker and directed to carry out functions normally available only to the system owner.
Hacking: increasingly a method of attack used by countries determined to use electronic means to gain access to secrets. Government computers in Britain have a network intrusion detection system, which monitors traffic and alerts officials to “misuse or anomalous behaviour”.
Botnets: compromised networks that an attacker can exploit. Deliberate programming errors in software can easily pass undetected. Attackers can exploit the errors to take control of a computer. Botnets can be used for stealing information or to collect credit card numbers by “sniffing” or logging the strokes of a victim’s keyboard.
Keystroke loggers: they record the sequence of key strokes that a user types in. Logging devices can be fitted inside the computer itself.
Denial of service attacks: overloading a computer system so that it can no longer function. This is the method allegedly used by the Russians to disrupt the Estonian government computers in May.
Phishing and spoofing: designed to trick an organisation’s customers into imparting confidential information such as passwords, personal data or banking details. Those using this method impersonate a “trusted source” such as a bank or IT helpdesk to persuade the victim to hand over confidential information. (Michael Evans)
What Country Is Your Food From? Product Bar Coding. Now you can read the bar code and find out what country your food is from.
Good to know because of the problems with food processed in China.
For your Information ...the first 3 digits of the barcode is the country code wherein the product was made.
Sample: all barcodes that start with 690,691,692 until 695 are all MADE IN CHINA.
471 is Made in Taiwan
Important Bar Code Information:
00 ~ 13 USA & CANADA
30 ~ 37 FRANCE
40 ~ 44 GERMANY
49 ~ JAPAN
50 ~ UK
57 ~ Denmark
64 ~ Finland
76 ~ Switzerland and Lienchtenstein
471 ~ Taiwan
628 ~ Saudi Arabia
629 ~ United Arab Emirates
690 - 695 ~ China
740 - 745 ~ Central America
All 480 Codes are Made in the Philippines.
Is now the time for "Disclosure"? And if we get it, what do we do then? What would you like to see or have happen?
I just received this e-mail from MUFON about flooding the new President with requests for FULL UFO DISCLOSURE. Here is what I received along with the address. ** All, update… ok, I’ve decided not to bring the address to the meeting… I’ll just post it now.. here is where you mail your letters asking for disclosure: The Honorable Barack Obama President Elect of the United States 713 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510 Fax: 202-228-4260 _______________________________________________________________ Hello all, Not sure if any of you have heard about this, but here is the website if you are interested in sending a letter for disclosure to the next president elect. Here is the website explaining it. http://www.faxonwashington.org/I will be sending a letter out on Wednesday, November 5th along with countless others. They give the address on the website. Let our voice be heard. :-) HERE ARE SOME OF THE KEY POINTS FROM THE WEBSITE.. Purpose for the Million Fax on Formal acknowledgement of an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race - Disclosure - is close at hand and already under consideration by elements within the United States Government. But it is not a fait accompli. It could be withheld due to events or loss of political will. It is critical the American people act in concert now to help close the deal. There has never been a more profound opportunity for you to make a difference and change the course of history. How You Can Do It Between November 5, 2008 and January 20, 2009 - seventy-seven days - send a letter, fax and/or email to the senatorial office and transition headquarters of the President Elect calling for the next administration to end the Truth Embargo regarding an extraterrestrial presence and release as much relevant information to the American people as possible within reasonable constraints of national security. You won't be alone. The goal is one million. Basic points to draw from for your letter, fax or email The new president should demand and receive a full briefing by his military services and intelligence agencies regarding the extraterrestrial presence and related phenomena, and/or The new president should support convening congressional hearings to take testimony from scores of former military and agency employees regarding extraterrestrial phenomena, and/or The new president should formally acknowledge to the American people the extraterrestrial presence - Disclosure, and/or The new president should release into the public domain extraterrestrial derived technologies, secretly studied and reverse engineered for six decades, and now essential to overcome the environmental, economic and social challenges of our time. Whatever else you feel moved to include. 
Bush preparing for alien invasion Today: November 2, 2008 U.N. to debate contact with extraterrestrial civilizations U.N. General Assembly Now Has Resolution To Establish United Nations Decade Of Contact & Diplomatic Relations With E.T.s For the first time in almost 27 years, the United Nations General Assembly will be debating the issue of establishing diplomatic relations with advanced Extraterrestrial Civilizations that may now be visiting Earth. On December 16, 2005, a Resolution to establish a United Nations Decade of Contact was formally transmitted to the incoming President of the General Assembly, H.E. Jan Eliasson of Sweden by the Institute for Cooperation in Space (ICIS), a Non-Governmental Organization. President Eliasson was Sweden's Ambassador to the United Nations from 2000 to 2005. Almost to the day twenty-seven years ago, on December 18, 1978, the United Nations General Assembly voted to approve decision 33/426, inviting U.N. Member States "to take appropriate steps to coordinate on a national level scientific research and investigation into extraterrestrial life, including unidentified flying objects, and to inform the Secretary-General of the observations, research and evaluation of such activities." Then U.S. President Jimmy Carter then supported the U.N. General Assembly's decision. Carter himself had a close Encounter of the First Kind with a UFO (Night Light) in October 1969, in the company of 10 members of the Leary, Georgia Lion's Club while he was running for Governor of Georgia. Four years later, while Governor of Georgia, Carter filed a public UFO sighting report, dated September 18, 1973. UNITED NATIONS DECADE OF CONTACT Former Canadian Minister of Defence, Hon. Paul Hellyer has requested that the Canadian Parliament hold hearings on the issue of relations with Extraterrestrial civilizations. On September 25, 2005, at the Toronto Exopolitics Symposium held at Convocation Hall, University of Toronto, former Minister of National Defence Hellyer stated: "UFOs, are as real as the airplanes that fly over your head." He stated, "The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning. The time has come to lift the veil of secrecy, and let the truth emerge, so there can be a real and informed debate, about one of the most important problems facing our planet today." Over 630,000 registered journalists and 283,000 registered media outlets world-wide have downloaded a November 24, 2005 Thanksgiving Day (USA) Yahoo News story of Mr. Hellyer's request to the Canadian Parliament. Mr. Hellyer, Canada's former Minister of Defence, supports a United Nations Decade of Contact. In the introduction to a recent book, EXOPOLITICS: POLITICS GOVERNMENT AND LAW IN THE UNIVERSE, by ICIS International Director Alfred Lambremont Webre, Mr. Hellyer writes, "To turn us in the direction of re-unification with the rest of creation Alfred Lambremont Webre is proposing a 'Decade of Contact' - an 'era of openness, public hearings, public funded research, and education about extraterrestrial reality.' That could just be the antidote the world needs to end its greed-driven, power-centered madness." http://www.ufodigest.com/unufo.html
A friend of mine from the TAPS website had this experience. Check this out.
Hey everyone:
Just wanted to share one of my experiences...mainly because I don't understand it...
A couple years ago, I was in Oregon at Christmas. I had taken a picture of my granddaughter who was then about 2 years old (she's 4 now). I used my digital camera (the first one I had...not the real expensive one).
When I reviewed the pictures as they were still on the camera, I swear I saw my first husband (which is her grandfather) in the picture beside her looking at the camera as if posing with her. I showed my daughter and she was surprised. My son (spitting image of his father), also said that was "freaky" and told me to download it to the computer so we could get a better look.
Well, I wanted to be sure we all didn't imagine it, so we looked at all the other pics first (on the camera), then went back to that one. Sure enough, his image was still there with my granddaughter, as if posing with her. However, when I downloaded the picture to my computer, the picture was not showing him there. We looked back on the camera, and just like on the computer, he was gone.
Is this possible??? But then I feel everything is possible, and I know I didn't imagine it. My kids saw it, too! I've gotten orbs in many pictures, but I generally just write them off as dust. I don't trust "orbs" as evidence any more than Jay & Grant do.
|
|
|
|
|
Read before you Post, Message or Chat...
To provoke or instigate personal attacks of any kind
on the opinions, experiences or beliefs against any group or individual will not
be tolerated.
Posting any form of content that is disrespectful, condescending or promotes bickering of
any kind toward any individual(s) will also not be tolerated.___________________________________
Don't forget to invite your friends to join us. Here are a couple of ideas...
- Use the INVITE link found at the bottom of all pages.
- Place a
BANNER on your Website, MySpace, FaceBook or other online profiles.
Banners can found in the
GET INVOLVED link at the bottom of all pages.
Have fun!
|
| Copyright©2008 Supernatural Connections - Paranormal Social Network. All rights reserved. |
|
|
|
|
