Incredible Facial Reenactment Technology Can Manipulate Trump & Putin Videos In Real Time (VIDEO)

Imagine what this could be used for.

The world of technology just got a little more interesting. Researchers have developed a pretty mind blowing new piece of video technology that allows a person the ability to transfer their facial expressions on to another person in real-time – creating a video that looks real enough to convince almost anyone.

The technology comes out of a collaborative effort between Germany’s University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, the Max-Planck Institute for Informatics, and Stanford University in California. The incredible technology has already being tested on George W Bush, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, and Vladimir Putin.

The study, Face2Face: Real-time Face Capture and Reenactment of RGB Videos, “animates the facial expressions of the target video by a source actor and re-renders the manipulated output video in a photo-realistic fashion,” according to the researchers.

via Collective - Evolution

Why We Become Friends With Genetically Similar People

It makes sense that we choose friends based on compatibility. I mean, why would we want to form relationships with people who disagree with everything we say or do?

As you grow, you may absolutely find the importance of creating a circle of friends whose perspectives differ from yours, and in fact, interacting with people with opposing viewpoints can be incredibly beneficial to your overall growth, from you how you interact and respond to others to your actual outlook on life.

The more experiences you have, the more openminded you become. However, having friends who share genuine interests makes life joyous. To share interests and activities with another person — to eat certain foods, play certain sports, listen to certain music, and so on — is a beautiful, communal, and enriching thing. But have you ever considered the science behind why we choose our friends?

According to a recent study, led by Nicholas Christakis, a professor of sociology and medicine at Yale University, and James Fowler, a professor of medical genetics and political science at the University of California, our friends seem to be genetically more similar to us than strangers.

For their findings, which were published in the Journal of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the team of researchers analyzed the genomes of 1,932 people, and compared pairs of friends with pairs of strangers.

The study discovered that, on average, every person had more similar DNA with their friends than with strangers. The researchers suggested that such an outcome points to our tendency to make friends who share similar racial backgrounds.

The study concluded that, on overage, our friends can be compared to our fourth cousins genetically, which means that we share an estimated 1% of our genes with our friends.

And as Christakis explained, “1% does not sound a big deal, but it is for geneticists. It is noteworthy that most people do not even know who their fourth cousins are, but somehow, from the countless possible cases, we choose to make friends with people who are genetically similar to us.”

Christakis and Fowler also created a “friendship score” in order to predict who will befriend whom at nearly the same level of confidence scientists have for predicting a person’s chance of obesity or schizophrenia on the basis of genes.

The team found that, in relation to individual genes, friends are more likely to have similar genes related to the sense of smell, but different genes that control immunity. This led them to conclude that friends are relatively more dissimilar in their genetic protection against various diseases. Such an evolutionary mechanism — having connections to people who are capable of withstanding different pathogens — can serve society in general, since it reduces interpersonal spread of disease. But it is still unclear how we select people to gain this immunological benefit.

The study discovered that genes that were more similar between friends seem to be evolving faster than other genes. According to Christakis, such findings may reveal why human evolution seems to have accelerated over the past 30,000 years.

Christakis also noted that “new research reinforces the notion that humans are ‘transgenic’ beings, not only because of the bacteria that live on/in/around us, but because of the people who surround us. It seems that our capacity depends not only on our genetic composition, but also on the genetic composition of our friends.”

via Collective - Evolution

12 Clear Signs You’re Avoiding Your Soul Work

For the last week I have been frustrated beyond belief. Why? I had no idea.

Until I realized that the frustration I was feeling was due to NOT using my full potential in my life and work; to side-stepping my true capacity to create what only I can create.

Let’s take a step back for a minute.

Why do humans create? Buildings, families, businesses, communities… Why do we do it?

Somewhere inside us we feel the pulse of creation, the creative force of the universe that is constantly evolving our reality.

This the purest form of creation. But what typically happens is this: we try to create for gain. Our own personal agenda gets in the way and we find ourselves thinking about something other than the creation itself — what we’ll get out of it.

What is soul work? It is your highest potential to create something tangible that shapes even the tiniest part of this world.

In business it’s a common, but insidious thought that governs our behaviour:

‘What is going to make me money?’

As soon as our thoughts switch to money, we have lost touch with the creative impulse and our egos start to take over, for personal gain. What we create becomes about the money first and the creation second.

To clarify — we are right to think about our livelihood, but how can we possibly know what will support our lives? Quite simply, we like to think we know because it feels safer, but we don’t.

So the golden question emerges:

What will make you enough money to live well and happy?

From my resistance to earning money in ways that made me unhealthy or unhappy, I have pondered this question for days and weeks over years. The answer has been lurking in my consciousness the whole time, but I didn’t want to hear it. Eventually I listened and this is what it said…

‘When you do your soul’s work, it will support your life.’ 

Such a simple statement, but I urge you to read it twice.

Most of us spend our lives avoiding our true soul’s work. There are plenty of people I know who think they are doing their soul’s work but they’re not. I know the signs well, because I’ve been trying to find the core of my soul work my whole life.

Get to the core of your soul work and you will live well.

Here’s how I define ‘soul work’: It is your highest potential to create something tangible that shapes even the tiniest part of this world. It’s that thing that you know you’re meant to do, but you find every reason NOT to do it. Or sometimes it’s more unconscious — what you’re doing somehow feels ‘off’ but you don’t know what else there is. Either way, things aren’t flowing, as you may notice, particularly in the form of your health, creativity, and money.

Soul work is where your highest virtues meet the needs of real people in everyday life. You can be soulful without work or work without soul, but you need soul + work to maximize your reward.

When we are creating something of value in this world, we receive something of value in return, be it money, a hug, or fruit on a tree. We each have inside us the energy to create and when we don’t use this energy up, our creative flow is stifled, our bodies choke with ailments, and money isn’t as available as it could be.

When we are doing our soul’s work, our creative energy is free-flowing and otherworldly rewards are free to flow to and through us. It is the pinnacle of what you can create now in service to others, fulfilling a genuine need in society. It is using ALL of what you have inside you right now to its full potential. No holding back some parts of you. No reserves for later. This is what makes you a powerful creator.

You ARE a powerful creator of your reality.

Yet, ultimately you don’t choose what supports your life. Your soul does. From the bird’s eye view, your soul knows the divine match for your gifts + the needs of others. That is the exchange that will support your life.

I will boldly say that if you are not thriving in health and finances (yes, I mean both at once), you have not reached the core of your soul’s work, yet.

Each of us has many things that we could do, but there is one direction that will ignite your passion and vitality more than anything else. And THAT is what will support your life, in the form of money, gifts, opportunities, relationships… whatever it takes for you, as an individual to thrive. Your soul has a plan.

While you are sidestepping your soul work, even in small ways that may seem inconsequential, you are limiting your capacity to have a thriving livelihood and lifestyle.

And there’s myriad ways that we clever humans do just that without realizing.

12 Ways You May Be Avoiding Your Soul Work

You’ve heard of self-sabotage? Well that’s exactly what avoiding your soul work means. It’s NOT doing what would actually be good for you. You know, like eating that extra handful of chips you don’t need, or watching YouTube instead of going for a walk, or hanging out with that friend who always drains you.

Here are the patterns that I have observed, the strategies that are a wonderful distraction from doing what we’re here to do. They’re behaviours that keep looping as the norm. We all have them. Is yours on this list?

1. The Rebel

Rebel for the sake of it. Do the opposite of what would actually be good for you, and create lots of drama to justify your position.

2. The Dreamer

Hang out in fantasy land. Get stuck in the trap of ‘unlimited possibilities’ or ‘going with the flow’ without committing to one strategy long enough to see the fruits of your efforts.

3. The Gambler

Gamble your time and money away. Take lots of risks without a strategy, and end up with nothing to show for it.

4. The Controller

Over-achieve. Get addicted to taking on more than you can chew just so you can conquer the challenge, and find that you’re essentially alone in your accomplishments.

5. The Sloth

Get bogged down in minutia. Stay at the ground level, thinking small without a solid plan for long-term growth.

6. The Copy Cat

Skim the surface. Focus on creating at the surface level so you keep creating the same stuff over and over.

7. The Passivist

Try to please everyone. Get pulled in a million directions by the people around you, and lose yourself in the process.

8. The Theorist

Live in your head. Create lots of theories, and never find a way to translate what’s in your head into something of real-life value.

9. The Glutton

Over-consume life. Try to do too much/everything and burn yourself out, for fear of living too small.

10. The Guru

Live in a bubble. Love the sense of safety and security so much that you don’t push yourself to accomplish anything of value to the wider world.

11. The Illusionist

Swallow your power. Go against your own tide of creativity and keep it a secret, so no-one ever discovers what you are capable of.

12. The Martyr

Give rigidly. Get stuck in the cycle of providing for everyone else’s needs, without seeing who you really are without their reflection.

Know Your Trap? There’s only one question to ask…

In my experience there are two things that are important to mention:

1. You can’t force the timing of getting to the core of your soul work. Whether you own a business or you work for someone else, the point is to live with the question “Am I doing my soul’s work?” It will bring you closer and closer until you have no choice but to acknowledge it.
   And then…
2. It takes great courage to follow the creative urge when it comes. Some people sit on theirs for years and wonder why life isn’t flowing. Others who commit to follow the urge become the leaders of our age.

As Marianne Williamson says so beautifully, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”

What change do you need to make to reach the core of your soul work?

via Collective - Evolution

Why Empathy Is So Important in Everyday Life (Video)

You’ve surely heard the saying, “You can’t understand someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.” The person who first offered this wisdom is lost to history, but it’s become so ingrained in our vernacular because of the importance empathy has in life.

Because each and every one of us is an individual, with our own unique outlook on life, it can be incredibly easy to disagree; to misunderstand; to offend. Think of a time you were crying, and someone couldn’t seem to wrap their head around how your emotions matched the situation. That alone is enough to make your tears flow harder.

Empathy is truly about trying to understand other people’s experiences and perspectives. If you think about your strengths and weaknesses in this area, you might find it’s very easy for you, or people you know, to subconsciously practice empathy, like when you see a stranger get hurt. You find yourself truly concerned for their well-being. Our egos can make it difficult, however, to see someone else’s feelings as valid when they differ from our own. But just because someone has, for instance, different sensitivities, doesn’t make them any less real, or any less important.

In an overwhelming way, empathy has been devalued in our society in recent years. One example, explains author and child psychologist Michele Borba, is the seismic shift that our culture has undergone. She notes that one of the biggest culprits is technology. “Self-promotion, personal branding, and self-interest at the exclusion of others’ feelings, needs, and concerns,” she argues, is “permeating our culture and slowly eroding our children’s character,” and the outcome is a drop in youth empathy. This only creates peer cruelty, bullying, cheating, the inability to harbour moral reasoning, and a mental health epidemic in young people. And it’s a double-edged sword — the youth become adults, and the downward spiral continues.

So where does one start to fix the problem? Practice, and lots of it. We must not only teach youth to practice empathy, but also lead by example.

Start by listening intently when people speak to you. Even if you don’t agree with what they’re saying, consider the motivation behind it being spoken. Rather than shutting off your brain to the rest of their words and formulating a response, digest all of it.

When you do respond, make sure you take time between the end of their thought and the beginning of yours, so as to respond in a way that truly acknowledges what they said, and not what you were thinking while they said it.

When in a social setting, embrace it. If you’re in the elevator, waiting to board a plane, sitting at a cafe by yourself, try to put your phone down, your book away, and simply absorb the world around you. Empathy is about understanding, and we cannot understand if we never look up and take it all in. Ask yourself how the people around you may be feeling, what they might be thinking. Try to wonder and care about these complete strangers.

It’s also valuable to consider a tense situation you are currently in, or have been in, with someone else. You may associate this situation with feeling hurt and angry, with them having wronged you. You are the victim here. Now, with that knowledge, consider the altercation from that person’s point of view. Think about how you might have made them feel. You may realize that the issue stems from mere differences, not ignorance or hatred.

You can even try practicing internally the opposing viewpoint. This will take you away from your own ego, and put you in the shoes of the other person. Such an exercise will force you to open your mind to the issue at hand and to another perspective on it.

The following video by Devin Clark further dives into why empathy is so important to have in everyday life, and shows how you can improve your own.

 

 

via Collective - Evolution

New Cannabis Patch Treats Fibromyalgia & Diabetic Nerve Pain

Over the past 100 years, cannabis has gone from being legal, to illegal, to entering a strange legal grey area in our society. The stigma surrounding cannabis has pushed people to believe that it’s a “drug” that’s poor for your health, when in reality, it’s a plant that has incredible healing properties.

Cannabis can significantly help people suffering from anxiety or chronic pain, and can even kill cancer cells. Some of the more recent innovations using cannabis were two pain relieving patches created by Cannabis Science, designed for patients with fibromyalgia and diabetic nerve pain.

Medical Uses for Cannabis

Cannabis can and has been used for many years to treat a wide variety of illnesses including cancer. Cannabinoids refer to any of a group of related compounds that include cannabinol and the active constituents of cannabis.

Consuming cannabis activates cannabinoid receptors in the body, and the body itself creates compounds called endocannabinoids, which help to produce a healthy environment. Cannabinoids play a significant role in immune system generation and re-generation, which is why cannabinoids reduce cancer cells.

A study published in the British Journal of Cancer, conducted by the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Complutense University in Madrid, determined that Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and other cannabinoids inhibit tumour growth. Numerous organizations and universities, including Harvard Medical School, have also been studying the effects cannabis has on cancer cells, proving its success and recommending it to be used as cancer treatment for specific types of cancer.

Numerous cancer patients will smoke marijuana or take cannabis oil orally in order to mitigate the pain and nausea associated with chemotherapy. THC has been available in pill form for treating nausea and vomiting in cancer patients since the 1980s.

Even the U.S. government has unwittingly confirmed that cannabis kills cancer cells. A group of federal researchers commissioned by the government were selected to prove that cannabis has no accepted medical value, but their findings showed otherwise (read our article here).

Studies show that THC, the compound found in cannabis that gives it its “euphoric” effect, activates pathways in the central nervous system that work to prevent pain signals from being sent to the brain. Likewise, cannabis has been shown to be especially effective against neuropathic pain, or nerve-related pain. Cannabis is essentially an all-natural form of Advil!

Cannabis can also be used to decrease anxiety and mitigate symptoms from PTSD, as the high from THC is associated with temporary memory impairment. Recent studies confirm that oral doses of THC can help relieve a variety of PTSD-related symptoms including flashbacks, agitation, and nightmares.

Cannabis Science’s Innovative “Pain Patch” 

Two of the latest cannabis medical innovations were created by Cannabis Science, a U.S. company specialized in the development of cannabis-based medicine, particularly those meant for cancer treatment. Cannabis Science already has some products on the market in California, such as its “When Nature Meets Science” product line, which includes healing bombs, drops, and tinctures, all made with cannabis.

The company recently designed two new pain relieving medications for self-medicating patients with diabetic neuropathy nerve pain and fibromyalgia.

Diabetic neuropathy is a form of peripheral neuropathy, which is damage to or disease affecting the nerves. Side effects include impaired sensations, movement, and gland and organ function. Neuropathy can result in painful cramps, fasciculation (fine muscle twitching), muscle loss, bone degeneration, and changes in the skin, hair, and nails.

Fibromyalgia is a condition whereby patients have chronic, widespread pain and experience a greater pain response to pressure. Symptoms include fatigue, problems with sleep, memory, and bowel function, restless legs syndrome, numbness and tingling, and sensitivity to noise, lights, or temperature. Fibromyalgia can also have psychological effects including depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The medications for both of these ailments will be offered in the form of an adhesive transdermal patch, allowing users to absorb a specific dose of medication through the skin, which then travels into the bloodstream. This method is favourable because it provides users with a controlled release of medication, which in this case is a large amount of cannabinoid (CBD) extract. As the CBD enters into the bloodstream, it then penetrates the central nervous system, allowing their pain to subside.

“As more states nationwide legislate for the legalization of Cannabis and Cannabis derived medications, we here at Cannabis Science are focused on developing pharmaceutical formulations and applications to supply the huge growing demand expected over the coming few years,” explains the company’s CEO, Raymond C. Dabney.

Even though the medical uses of cannabis have been proven time and time again through numerous accredited science institutions and universities, the stigma surrounding cannabis remains significant and contentious. Since it’s an illegal substance, numerous people shy away from it, including those who are suffering from illnesses cannabis could cure or seriously help treat.

It’s inevitable that once it becomes legalized in more places, it will become common practice for the medical industry to recommend its usage. I’m not a doctor, but I can envision people using cannabis-based pain patches for a variety of issues outside of fibromyalgia and diabetic nerve pain. Pharmaceutical pain patches have been designed in the past to treat localized pain in many areas of the body, so why couldn’t we do the same with cannabis?

via Collective - Evolution

Your Favourite Music Can Get You High – Sort Of

We think of music as art, as entertainment, and as a pastime. It’s personal; it’s communal. Music is one of those things that, for many of us, can ignite innumerable feelings and memories in just one song, or even one verse alone. Throughout history, music was used for medicinal purposes, and research today has demonstrated that therapeutic value.

But now, new research suggests music could even get you high.

Without even knowing the findings, think about how you can relate to this idea. When you’re feeling stressed out, motivated or unmotivated, angry, sad, happy, celebratory, etc., music may be one of your favourite tools for heightening the emotions you’re feeling, or shifting them. According to the new study, this emotional response happens because music activates a chemical reward system in the brain — the same one that makes delicious food, intense exercise, and opioid drugs feel great.

Though the brain’s reward system can cause us to feel amazing, it can also lead us down a rabbit hole of detrimental habits, like overeating, overexercising, and drug addiction. But if we can gain control over this system, we can learn to avoid such behaviors and reap the benefits of the positive aspect of the high.

The study tested how naltrexone, a drug that diminishes the effects of opioids in the brain and is therefore used primarily to treat drug and alcohol addiction, affects musical enjoyment. Conducted by researchers at McGill University, the research required 15 students to pick between two different pieces of music they loved, and that gave them chills, and bring them into the lab.

The subjects were then given either naltrexone or a placebo. After an hour, the students listened to their music of choice, along with two “neutral” songs selected by the scientists. While the music played, the students used a slider to measure their form of pleasure in relation to a specific song.

Sensors also measured electrical activity in their facial muscles. Prior to exiting the lab, the participants also took a survey regarding their reactions. After a week, the subjects were put through the same test, except the naltrexone group received placebos and vice versa.

The results revealed that participants moved their facial muscles less with naltrexone in their system, which suggests that it had reduced their emotional response to what they were hearing. This was found for both positive and negative emotions: the highs felt lower, and the lows felt higher.

The sliders implemented in the study revealed that the subjects’ pleasure lessened when listening to their favourite music as a result of the naltrexone, but this did not have an effect on their feelings about the neutral music.

The research suggests that, much like it does for exercise, food, and drugs, naltrexone seems to prompt a low response to music, which backs up the theory that the same reward system in the brain accounts for our reactions to all of them.

The study authors concluded, “The current experimental finding of reduced response from both the positive and negative valence EMGs (ZYG and COR respectively) reinforces the notion that music is complex and rarely conveys a single emotional valence. Listeners more often report finding music to be bittersweet than purely happy or purely sad, and many listeners report that even sad music brings them pleasure.”

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Hallucinations Are Much More Common Than We Think

When certain experiences fall outside of societal norms, people tend to keep their personal events to themselves. For instance, you probably don’t hear people walking down the street talking about their hallucinations as candidly as they do, say, their dreams.

But new research has found that the former is actually much more common among the general population than most people realize.

A study examining over 7,400 people in the UK discovered that 4.3% of participants had reported having experienced visual or auditory hallucinations in the past year, including people without mental disorders. This proves the phenomenon isn’t limited to people with psychosis.

“There is a general idea in psychiatry that hallucinations are a feature of psychosis,” explained lead researcher Ian Kelleher from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, “but when we looked at a whole range of mental health diseases we found that hallucinations are symptoms that occur in a wide range of mental health disorders such as depression or anxiety.”

Borderline personality disorder was used as an example of a psychotic disorder for this study, which, like many other mental issues, has a heavy stigma that sufferers see and hear things that aren’t there. The results of this recent study challenge the stigma, however, dismantling the idea of a divide.

The researchers reviewed data from the 2007 Adult Psychiatric Morbidity survey, and found that a significant amount of participants had been diagnosed with a mental health condition.

To determine if hallucinations were more common among people with a psychotic disorder as opposed to those without, the team looked at how many people with borderline personality disorder reported seeing or healing things that other people couldn’t over the last year compared to participants with non-psychotic depression or anxiety.

Their results showed that hallucinations weren’t greater or more apparent in those with borderline personality disorder than in those with a non-psychotic mental disorder. Additionally, more than 4% of every single respondent reported hearing or seeing things that others couldn’t, leading the team to suggest that hallucinations aren’t exclusively symptoms of psychosis.

“Hallucinations are more common than people realize. They can be frightening experiences, and few people openly talk about it,” Kelleher explained. “Our research is valuable because it can show them they are not alone and that having these symptoms is not necessarily associated with having a mental health disorder. It breaks the taboo.”

Such findings support the results of a bigger study published in 2015, which analyzed data for more than 31,000 people from 19 countries. Researchers found that about 5% of the general population reported experiencing hallucinations, regardless of having a mental illness or not.

“We used to think that only people with psychosis heard voices or had delusions, but now we know that otherwise healthy, high-functioning people also report these experiences,” explained lead researcher John McGrath, from the Queensland Brain Institute in Australia.

These studies reveal the potential inaccuracy of symptoms associated with mental health disorders, and highlight just one of many problems with stigmatizing people who suffer from mental illness, both from a scientific perspective and a moral one.

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Stanford Engineers Designed A Low-Cost Battery For Storing Renewable Energy

Stanford University researchers have created a new battery that could change the way we look at renewable energy storage forever.

The team used urea, an affordable, natural, and readily-available material present in mammal urine and fertilizers to create a battery that is significantly more efficient than past versions.

Stanford chemistry professor Hongjie Dai and doctoral candidate Michael Angell developed the nonflammable battery, which contains electrodes made from abundant aluminum and graphite.

“So essentially, what you have is a battery made with some of the cheapest and most abundant materials you can find on Earth. And it actually has good performance,” explained Dai. “Who would have thought you could take graphite, aluminum, urea, and actually make a battery that can cycle for a pretty long time?”

Dai’s lab created the first rechargeable aluminum battery in 2015 to astonishing effect: a system that charged in less than a minute, and which lasted thousands of charge-discharge cycles. The lab teamed up with Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) to use the battery to power a motorbike, winning a 2016 R&D 100 Award for their groundbreaking results.

This original version, though impressive, involved an expensive electrolyte. The newest version, on the other hand, implements a urea-based electrolyte and is an estimated 100 times cheaper than the 2015 model. It also has higher efficiency and a charging time of just 45 minutes. Dai noted that the cost difference between the two batteries is “like night and day.”

Dai and Angell’s work marks the first time urea has been used in a battery.

The low-cost battery is even more impressive in a day and age when the demand for renewable technologies continues to grow. Energy storage has proved a massive challenge for solar power and other renewables, with users requiring a reliable way to store power when their systems aren’t generating energy.

This demand provokes the need for cheap and efficient batteries to store the energy for release at night. The batteries currently on the market, such as the lithium-ion or lead acid batteries, are both expensive as well as limited in their lifespans.

Dai and Angell’s battery may be the answer to this storage issue.

“It’s cheap. It’s efficient. Grid storage is the main goal,” Angell noted.

Grid storage, according to Angell, is the most realistic goal thanks to the battery’s low cost, high efficiency, and long cycle life. The Coulombic efficiency, a measurement of how much charge exits the battery per unit of charge that it takes in during charging, proved high for this battery, coming in at 99.7%. Another important attribute is Dai’s urea battery’s low risk factor. Unlike lithium-ion batteries, for instance, this new battery is not flammable.

“I would feel safe if my backup battery in my house is made of urea with little chance of causing fire,” Dai noted.

The team has licensed the battery patents to AB Systems, which Dai founded. And currently, a commercial version of the batter is underway.

The researchers believe this battery could allow for solar energy to be stored in every building and every home. “Maybe it will change everyday life,” admits Dai.

via Collective - Evolution

Entirely New ‘Continent’ Discovered On Earth, It’s Huge & Hidden In The Pacific Ocean

In school, we are taught some basic things that never seem to change, like the fact that one plus one equals two, there are five (or is it six?) vowels in the English language, and there are seven continents on Planet Earth.

But the last of those examples is getting a major makeover thanks to a team of 11 researchers who found that Earth has a concealed continent called “Zealandia” that’s hidden in the Pacific Ocean and attached to New Zealand.

The newly published research concluded that New Zealand and New Caledonia are actually part of a huge 4.9 million sq km (1.89 million square-mile) single slab of continental crust that is unhinged from Australia.

Published by the Geological Society of America, the study discovered that the region is 94% submerged, mostly due to crustal thinning before the supercontinental break-up. For their findings, the team used upgraded satellite-based elevation and gravity map technology.

“The scientific value of classifying Zealandia as a continent is much more than just an extra name on a list,” the scientists explained. “That a continent can be so submerged yet unfragmented makes it a useful and thought-provoking geodynamic end member in exploring the cohesion and breakup of continental crust.”

This kind of reminds me of hearing that Pluto was a planet, and then that Pluto wasn’t a planet, and then… it’s hard to keep up. However, the team says Zealandia should be considered a geological continent, which really just makes me question everything we think we know about geology. But really, how human of us to not have all the answers, right?

The researchers said the continent used to be considered a collection of continental islands and fragments.

“Based on various lines of geological and geophysical evidence, particularly those accumulated in the last two decades, we argue that Zealandia is not a collection of partly submerged continental fragments but is a coherent 4.9 Mkm2 continent,” the study said.

So does this mean their are eight continents? Not exactly. According to geologists, Europe and Asia are one giant continent they refer to as “Eurasia,” which means the new addition of Zealandia brings the number of continents to seven — which is the number we’ve become accustomed to.

Geophysicist Bruce Luyendyk coined the name Zealandia back in 1995 to refer to the two islands and other submerged pieces of crust that once separated from Gondwana. Of the new findings, in which he did not take part, he said, “These people here are A-list earth scientists. I think they have put together a solid collection of evidence that’s really thorough. I don’t see that there’s going to be a lot of pushback, except maybe around the edges.”

The researchers are referring to Zealandia as a “realization” rather than a “discovery,” since New Zealand has been considered a continent by some experts in the field for years.

“This is not a sudden discovery but a gradual realisation; as recently as 10 years ago we would not have had the accumulated data or confidence in interpretation to write this paper,” the study’s authors said. “Zealandia illustrates that the large and the obvious in natural science can be overlooked.”

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Los Alamos Study Finds Airport Scanners Can Rip Apart & Alter DNA

Can we ever believe what our government tells us about airport security devices?

Apparently not. First they told us those X-ray scanners (that showed way too many naked body parts) were perfectly safe.

Even the manufacturer of the device, Rapidscan, openly admitted the scanners had not been adequately tested. The truth was later revealed that the safety tests turned out to be totally rigged, as reported by Natural News.

With fabricated results, the technology was quickly rushed into every airport worldwide. No one listened to what the scientists in the field of radiation were trying to tell them – it’s not safe.

It wasn’t until the backscatter radiation levels the scanners were putting off began showing an increased incidence of cancer in TSA agents (along with the lawsuits that quickly followed), that the devices were finally yanked. The TSA quickly scrambled for another solution.

Now they also want us to believe that the replacement technology, millimeter wave “digital strip search” scanners, are also “perfectly safe”.

Don’t believe it for a second. The TSA failed to adequately test these devices for health and safety factors as well. Unfortunately, in today’s world, security trumps human safety.

These millimeter wave technologies are designed to bombard innocent travelers with high frequency energy particles known as terahertz photons.

A study conducted by Boian S. Alexandrov et.al. at the Center for Nonlinear Studies at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, revealed that these terahertz waves could “…unzip double-stranded DNA, creating bubbles that could significantly interfere with processes such as gene expression and DNA replication.”

In other words, this study is the smoking gun that raises serious concerns about the impact of terahertz radiation upon fertility, fetal development, and cancer.

Now think about the thousands of people who are subjected to these levels of untested energy particles every day in the name of “National Security”.

The military’s Active Denial weapon uses millimeter wave technology to create an intense burning sensation on the skin’s surface using a 95 GHz (3.2mm wavelength) beam.

But the TSA tells us not to worry about their millimeter waves because:

“Millimeter wave technology bounces harmless electromagnetic waves off the body to create the same generic image for all passengers.” 

This is completely inaccurate because the nature of millimeter waves is that our bodies and water are excellent absorbers of these waves. Millimeter waves do penetrate and absorb into our skin.

At the microwave technology center in Malaysia, health subjects were exposed to microwave radiation between 20 — 38 GHz, the range in which the TSA scanners operate.

They found that millimeter waves penetrated the subject’s skin at depths of between 1.05 mm at 20 GHz to 0.78 mm at 38 GHz. This is enough to penetrate below the epidermal layer of the skin.

Millimeter waves have been reported to produce a variety of bioeffects, many of which are quite unexpected from radiation penetrated less than 1 mm into biological tissues.

Of particular concern is the citing of studies that show there is an irreversible water memory effect by millimeter waves operating in the 36GHz frequency, and that the millimeter wave effects on blood plasma vary greatly from one person to the next.

Does this information make you extremely uncomfortable? Well, it should. And it should also make every one of us mad as hell.

Since the day they first rolled out these human violation technologies in 2007, I have always chosen to “opt out”. I would rather endure the intrusive body pat down any day than subject myself to covert DNA alteration.

So what if it takes an additional 5-15 minutes of your time getting to your gate? It’s time to exercise your own personal body health consciousness, since the US government has clearly demonstrated they don’t possess any qualms about not protecting you.

Alternation of DNA can be subtle and deadly down the line. Who would ever make the connection that a TSA scanning machine might have contributed to any negative health effects you eventually experience.

If you are a frequent air traveler, like myself, you should be concerned about your levels of exposure. If you’re a TSA agent, you should find another job.

This past weekend as I was trying to make a flight back to Los Angeles from the Columbia, South Carolina Airport, I did my usual “opt out” thing. The TSA agents from this little backwater airport tried to feed me the propaganda line about “minimal risk.”

I told them I’d read the studies and they needed to be better informed. They looked at me blankly trying to tell me it was just like using a cell phone. Not true.

The millimeter wave scanners the TSA operates put out more than 20 billion times more oscillations per second in smaller terahertz waves, so the cellular effects will be different from cell phones.

I’m sure no one ever told TSA agents this, but they feed the same lies back to the people that they’ve been told, so I tried to be more forgiving.

I’m sure no one had requested an opt out for some time in this South Carolina airport, which is why I got the pat down of all pat downs.

The female agent made sure to give me karate chops straight up to my private parts twice in the back and then another two times in the front. Totally unnecessary. She kneaded my waist in a strange manner, grabbing hold of any loose skin she could find.

I have had hundreds of pat downs over the years, and no one, I mean no one, has ever been as intrusive as this TSA agent.

My first instinct was to tell her how inappropriate she was being, then I remembered how I would most likely be punished for my non-sheep-like behavior and not be allowed to make my flight.

During the procedure she also sniffled and sneezed, spreading her germ warfare all over me through out the entire security grope session.

I think we have all had enough of this undignified treatment in the name of security. It’s already been proven that these scanner devices and intrusive pat downs have not made our world any safer from terrorists.

Airport security testers have snuck through everything from guns to explosives, clearly proving their ineffectiveness. Metal detectors should be sufficient enough.

If everyone opted out of the scanner, the whole program would eventually fall apart. The lines of opt outs would be so long it would bring the air travel industry to a standstill.

It would also send a clear message that unsafe devices are not going to be tolerated. Take the extra time and just do it — opt out. If you love yourself, than you owe it to yourself.

Now I’m already ahead of you on what you’re thinking — that they’ll just suspend all our civil liberties and make it mandatory to go through the scanners whether we want to or not.

Well, I would like to believe that they would be flooded with lawsuits if they did, but there’s an even easier solution. Go to a medical supply store and buy a cheap inexpensive arm sling and put it on before going through TSA.

If you can’t hold both arms up over your head while in their scanner, it renders the results totally unusable. They know this and have to let you opt out for medical reasons. The sheeple are getting smarter. Afterall, life is all about how you handle Plan B.

Dr. Kathy Forti  is a clinical psychologist, inventor of the Trinfinity8 technology, and author of the book, Fractals of God.

via Collective - Evolution