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Thursday, April 16, 2015

Daily 2 Cents: UFO or Fatima-Like Apparition? -- Last Male Northern White Rhino Under Armed Guard -- Earth's Mysterious Hum Explained



UFO or Fatima-Like Apparition?

Stamford, CT - 4/15/2015: Hovered over house then moved away - MUFON CMS

UFO Stalker Report

The Fatima UFO Hypothesis


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Last Male Northern White Rhino Under Armed Guard

The last remaining male northern white rhino has four armed guards protecting him 24 hours a day.

The solitary male, whose name is Sudan, represents the end of an era for the northern white rhinoceros. He, along with four females, are the only surviving members of their species and with old age creeping up on him and with all previous mating attempts having failed, things are now looking pretty grim.

So great is the importance of his wellbeing that Sudan is now accompanied at all times by a squad of armed guards and his magnificent horn has been removed to deter poachers.

Two of the females remain with him in the hopes that they will mate while two others are in a zoo.

"With the rising demand for rhino horn and ivory, we face many poaching attempts and while we manage to counter a large number of these, we often risk our lives in the line of duty," said Simor Irungu, one of the rangers who protects the animals at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya.

While there is still a chance that Sudan will be able to successfully mate with one the females it is looking increasingly likely that he will be the last male of his species.

Once he dies it will only be a matter of time before the northern white rhinos disappear forever. - World’s last male northern white rhino under round-the-clock armed guard in Kenya

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Earth's Mysterious Hum Explained

A new study has investigated what causes the planet to inexplicably vibrate at very low frequencies.

While it has long been known that seismic events can cause the planet to resonate for up to several months, evidence has also been found of a second, more subtle type of vibration that seems to occur all the time even when there are no earthquakes.

This microseismic activity is too faint for humans to pick up but now researchers investigating the cause of the phenomenon have discovered that ocean waves may be responsible.

Through the use of computer models simulating the movements of the wind and tides the scientists were able to determine that colliding ocean waves produce seismic waves that can take up to 13 seconds to complete one oscillation.

Slower waves however can take a lot longer - up to 300 seconds - and it is these that are thought to cause the mysterious hum due to the pressure of the water being dragged across the seafloor.

"I think our result is an important step in the transformation of mysterious noise into an understood signal," said lead study author and oceanographer Fabrice Ardhuin.

Because these waves can penetrate deep in to the Earth's mantle it is also hoped that a complete understanding of this phenomenon could help scientists learn more about the planet's interior. Read more at Earth's Mysterious Hum Explained

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Science Shows Marijuana Can Help Kill Tumors, Federal Government Admits

The information war about marijuana may have turned a new page with the federal government’s acknowledgment of a recent study that found the plant can significantly reduce aggressive types of brain tumors when combined with radiation treatment, endorsing what medicinal marijuana advocates have long affirmed as its healing properties.

A team of researchers from St. George’s University of London recorded reductions in high-grade glioma masses — a deadly form of brain cancer — in mice. The mice’s tumors shrank after they were exposed to radiation in tandem with two marijuana compounds: THC, which creates the “high feeling,” and CBD, which has no psychoactive side effects. In their report, the researchers said that both cannabinoids made tumors more receptive to the radiation treatment, creating what lead author Dr. Wai Lui described to HuffPost as a “triple threat” approach.

“We’ve shown that cannabinoids could play a role in treating one of the most aggressive cancers in adults,” Liu wrote in an op-ed earlier this year. “The results are promising…it could provide a way of breaking through glioma and saving more lives.”

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), a government drug abuse and addiction research organization, may be on the cusp of a philosophical change. NIDA issued a revised statement about medical marijuana at the beginning of April that acknowledged the research out of St. George’s University of London, as well as other findings summarized in a November research report.

“The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not recognized or approved the marijuana plant as medicine,” the statement reads. “However, scientific study of the chemicals in marijuana, called cannabinoids, has led to two FDA-approved medications that contain cannabinoid chemicals in pill form. Continued research may lead to more medications.”

Lui’s medical marijuana study, which was published in the journal Molecular Cancer Therapies, follows other research conducted by a team of scientists from the United Kingdom who found that a combination of six purified cannabinoids can kill cancerous cells found in leukemia patients. Previous research has confirmed that THC reduces the size of cancerous tumors and stops the spread of HIV. Scientists have also found that strains of CBD can potentially treat children and adults suffering from seizure disorders.

Marijuana also seems to be less dangerous than previously thought. An Emory University study earlier this year found that, contrary to the concerns of many legalization opponents, inhaling marijuana smoke for years doesn’t cause significant lung damage. Those findings have also been supported by prior studies.

The scientific findings in recent years have brought forth questions about marijuana’s legal standing in the United States. The federal government currently designates marijuana as a Schedule I drug, classifying it as a highly addictive substance with no medical value. Its legal status has led to a lack of federally regulated studies about the plant, and ultimately impedes scientists’ efforts to understand its potential as a healing agent.

The wave of medical marijuana legalization in recent decades has propelled questions of the plant’s medical potential to the forefront of public policy debates. More than 20 states and the District of Columbia have legalized the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes. Support for legalization has increased among voters in the swing states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida. While the two latter states currently have legislation on the table that will legalize marijuana, parties on both sides of the debate admit that knowledge gaps about marijuana threaten consensus around legislation. In Illinois, lawmakers are mulling expanding the disease list for the state’s medical marijuana program to include anxiety, migraines, insomnia, and post-traumatic stress disorder. A bill under consideration in the U.S. Senate would lift barriers to access of medical marijuana for military veterans.

“I am a Vietnam Vet and can only imagine how things would have been,” one war veteran wrote in his petition to have PTSD included among the conditions in Illinois’ medical marijuana program. “While visiting in Colorado I had the benefit of trying cannabis in candy form…. and I felt wonderful. No thoughts of violence, self-deprecation, or hopelessness. My life would be different today.”

Right now, the federal government via NIDA grows a limited supply of marijuana on a Mississippi-based campus, where researchers spend most of their time conducting experiments about the plant’s negative effects rather than its potential positive effects — much to the chagrin of medical marijuana advocates and those who would like to see an expansion of scholarship on the subject.

Federal barriers to research mean that scientists often have to jump through hoops to secure samples legally through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and NIDA, a process that delays research by months, and oftentimes years.

“The whole process is wrong,” Andrew Weil, the American doctor and author who conducted the first double-blind clinical trials of marijuana in 1968, told the Washington Post last year. “There is a great deal of evidence both clinical and anecdotal of its therapeutic effects, but the research has been set way back by government policies.”

That’s why there’s been some pressure to reclassify marijuana. Earlier this year, the American Academy of Pediatrics urged the government to downgrade marijuana to a Schedule II drug, which would allow for more research into its potential uses to treat sick children with seizures. “A Schedule I listing means there’s no medical use or helpful indications, but we know that’s not true,” Seth Ammerman, a clinical professor in pediatrics at Stanford University who co-authored the group’s policy statement on the subject, said at the time. - Science Shows Marijuana Can Help Kill Tumors, Federal Government Admits

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