Mind-reading program translates brain activity into words

Ian Sample
Tuesday 31 January 2012
Full Article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jan/31/mind-reading-program-brain-words

Scientists have picked up fragments of people's thoughts by decoding the brain activity caused by words that they hear.

The remarkable feat has given researchers fresh insight into how the brain processes language, and raises the tantalising prospect of devices that can return speech to the speechless.

Though in its infancy, the work paves the way for brain implants that could monitor a person's thoughts and speak words and sentences as they imagine them.

Such devices could transform the lives of thousands of people who lose the ability to speak as a result of a stroke or other medical conditions.

Experiments on 15 patients in the US showed that a computer could decipher their brain activity and play back words they heard, though at times the words were difficult to recognise.

"This is exciting in terms of the basic science of how the brain decodes what we hear," said Robert Knight, a senior member of the team and director of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at the University of California, Berkeley.

"Potentially, the technique could be used to develop an implantable prosthetic device to aid speaking, and for some patients that would be wonderful. The next step is to test whether we can decode a word when a person imagines it. That might sound spooky, but this could really help patients. Perhaps in 10 years it will be as common as grandmother getting a new hip," Knight said...

10 outlandish things the 'scientific' controllers have in mind for you

10 outlandish things the 'scientific' controllers have in mind for you in the near future
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com
http://www.naturalnews.com/034229_science_cyborgs.html

What corporate-driven "science" has in mind for the future of humanity is far different from the dreamy utopian landscape that's been portrayed by the mainstream media. To hear the corporate-run media tell it, science is always "good" for humanity. Scientific achievements are always called "advances" and not "setbacks," even though many of them have proven to be disastrous for humanity (atomic bombs, for example, or GMOs).

While pure science is, indeed, a necessary component of any civilization which seeks to expand its understanding of the universe, what we see dominating the landscape today isn't pure science but corporate-driven "science" that only seeks to accelerate corporate profits, not human understanding. And with that corporate-slanted science comes a whole new era of truly terrifying technologies that we may soon see become reality in our world.

Here, I've compiled a list of ten future technologies that might be used to strip away your freedoms and enslave you to the corporate globalist masters, all under the label of "science."


#1) Organ harvesting from genetically modified, patented pigs
Need a replacement heart or lung? No worries, mate! Monsanto will grow you a new one using a genetically modified, trans-species pig (patent pending) that was raised on GMO animal feed and subjected to organ harvesting while it was still alive in order to keep the organs "fresh."

Your government-approved, Medicare-funded transplant will be handled by one of the top U.S. hospitals, which are, even today, deeply engaged in black market organ trafficking and illegal transplantations.


#2) "Behavioral vaccines" that rewire your brain to eliminate dissent
Disobedience is a disease! And the "cure" for disobedience (or Oppositional Defiance Disorder, as they call it) will be a new "vaccine" that biologically rewires your brain to make you more socially acceptable to the controllers.

It will be called a "behavioral vaccine" even though, in reality, it's just a chemical lobotomy. This technology will be a cornerstone of the global police state, which will have no tolerance for independent thinking or critical thought of any kind, especially against the state.


#3) Centralized, remote monitoring of all your health statistics and vital signs by the police state
Think your medical records are really private? Think again: Even now, the U.S. government maintains a secret centralized bank of blood taken from children at birth. In the near future, citizens will be implanted with biometric monitoring chips that relay information back to the government about your pulse, respiration, and the presence of either illegal drugs or legalized pharmaceuticals (which are often the very same chemicals as illegal drugs, just re-branded as a medication).

These chips will be used by the government to enforce people taking their medications. They will also be used to locate and arrest those who smoke a little pot or take addictive substances without a prescription.

But most importantly, these chips will be used to monitor nutritional levels and make sure no one attains a high level of vitamin D, for example, which promotes clear thinking and strong cognitive function (http://www.naturalnews.com/029190_v...). Under scientific dictatorship, the sheeple must be kept in a state of chronic nutritional deficiency in order to be easily controlled. This will all be sold to the public as a way for the government to monitor their "safety" because, the government will claim, "Too much vitamin D can be dangerous!" So they will set the upper safety limits to the lower threshold of cognitive awakening, making sure that everyone remains in a mental stupor as they live out their state-run lives.


#4) The total secrecy of all food ingredients, sources and places of origin
As the food industry is increasingly invaded by junk science (GMOs, anyone?), efforts will increase to hide all the chemical ingredients in food products and rename dangerous-sounding chemicals into nice-sounding chemicals.

The Corn Refiners Association is already trying to rename "High Fructose Corn Syrup" to "corn sugar." (http://www.naturalnews.com/029748_h...) Aspartame is now going to be called "AminoSweet," and MSG has been renamed things like "yeast extract" or "Torula yeast powder."

But it's going to get far worse as fraudulent science accelerates food industry deceptions. Expect to see preservatives like "sodium benzoate" renamed as things like, "Freshiness crystals." Or "artificial colors" might be described as "Fortified with pretty colors."

Above all, the food industry wants to hide where its foods come from, how they are made, and what's in them, because all three of those categories are bad news for your health.


#5) The complete criminalization of home-produced foods and medicines, forcing total reliance on factory food production
Speaking of food, corrupt "scientists" will soon insist that growing your own food is extremely dangerous because you might grow e.coli in your garden! With such absurd justifications, home gardening will be completely outlawed in many towns, and those who try to secretly grow tomatoes will be arrested and imprisoned as if they were heroin smugglers.

The idea of all this is to make the population completely dependent on centralized factory food production, in the same way the population is currently dependent on centralized electricity and centralized fossil fuels. This will all be justified with the help of "scientists" who claim that factory-produced food is safer for you because it's all pasteurized, irradiated and fumigated.


#6) The unleashing of a global bioweapon pandemic through seasonal flu shots
Whereas vaccines were once intended to prevent disease, they are now being increasingly weaponized and engineered to spread disease, which is why most of the people who get the flu each winter are the very same people who routinely take flu shots.

In the near future, as the globalists decide the world population has reached its upper tolerable limit, a live "population control" virus will be engineered right into the vaccines, followed by an aggressive vaccine push that even offers to pay people to receive flu shots. (Get a flu shot, earn $25!)

The whole scheme, of course, is nothing more than a population control measure designed to eliminate all the lower-IQ people on the planet who are stupid enough to allow themselves to be injected with biological weapons packaged and sold as vaccines. Effectively, it's really a eugenics program that the globalists believe will save the human race from the rise of stupidity (no matter what the cost in human suffering).


#7) Total government control over your reproduction and the genetic code of your "offspring"
Copulating with the person of your choice and producing your own "random" offspring will no longer be allowed under the scientific police state. Reproduction must be carefully controlled through licensing and regulation to make sure that no unexpected results occur.

Before having children, parents will need to apply to the government for permission to reproduce, at which point they will be genetically and cognitively profiled, then granted a reproduction classification status that must be strictly followed to avoid imprisonment.

People who show rebellious tendencies and speak out against the state will be denied reproduction "privileges." Only the most obedient, white-skinned, do-gooder mind slaves will be granted reproduction privileges, and they will gladly copulate and raise yet more babies to be sacrificed to the state as the next generation of mind slaves.


#8) Wireless brain implants that can be remotely activated by law enforcement to make entire crowds of people passive
The future of "science" involves all sorts of electronics implanted into the human body. One of the most convenient ones will be the "pacification chip" that will be forced upon citizens along with "money chips" that they use to pay for everything (cash will be outlawed, and using cash will be seen as a terrorist activity).

The pacification chip can be remotely activated by the government through cell tower bursts -- or through hand-held units issued to police and law enforcement commanders -- to instantly pacify large crowds of protesters or rioters. Are the students protesting about free speech again? Activate the pacification chip, and they'll all lay down on the lawn and daydream for a while.

Are revolutionaries marching on the capitol and trying to overthrow the government? Activate the pacification chip, and your tyrannical dictatorship is safe!

Such chips may also be used to "excite" the brain at times when it is also politically useful. For example, when another terrorist attack is staged on U.S. soil, the "excitation chips" can be activated across the population to get people riled up and calling for war! (And that's the whole point of false flag attacks, of course.)


#9) The genetic engineering and breeding of obedient super soldiers
In the far future, battlefield soldiers will actually be humanoid-shaped robots equipped with firearms and body armor. Think "Terminator" model T-1000. That's still a ways off, of course, given the incredible complexity of mobile power, robotic actuation technologies, vision recognition systems and artificial intelligence.

In the mean time, the most powerful nations of the world will pour R&D money into growing genetically modified super soldiers who are secretly birthed, raised and trained to be as robotic as possible. These super soldiers will be genetically engineered with peak performance attributes (high blood oxygenation, large body frames, etc.) combined with small brains that can only process enough information to follow orders but never question them.

They will also be outfitted with numerous electronic implants, making them more cyborg than human. They will have vision implants attached to their retinas, for example, GPS chips wired to their brains, comm equipment wired into their ears, and built-in pain medication dispensers that flood their bodies with stimulant chemicals so they can keep fighting even after an arm gets blown off, for example.


#10) The electromagnetic activation of metals and nano-crystals injected into you through vaccines
Here's a new one most people haven't thought about: In addition to vaccines being used to spread infectious disease, they can also be used to inject humans with nano-crystals that are sized and tuned to resonate at certain frequencies, much like a radio crystal tunes in to a specific radio band.

Such nano-crystals may lie dormant in the bodies of the general public for years or even decades, but at some point the government can take over the radio towers with an "emergency" national transmission that broadcasts an activation signal at precisely the right wavelength to excite the nano-crystals already in peoples' bodies. The results could be anything from mass insanity to massive outbreaks of violence (rioting, etc.) or just tens of millions of people instantly dropping dead. Any of those outcomes could then be exploited by the government to sell a cover story of a "terrorist attack" that requires even more government control over the population.


It could all be done in the name of "science"
Remember, this collection of 10 points is about possible future technologies that exemplify the abuse of science to empower tyrannical governments and corrupt industries. Thankfully, these ten examples have not come true yet, but several are well on their way to become reality in just the next few years.

Real science has an important role to play in any society, but I believe that science should serve the interests of the People, not the self-serving controllers who run globalist corporations and national governments. When science is used to dominate and enslave people rather than setting them free, it is a violation of one of the most fundamental truths throughout the universe: only through freedom (the freedom of ideas, freedom of questioning, freedom of discussion) can true understanding of our universe be achieved.

NaturalNews salutes the real scientists out there who pursue the betterment of human civilization without punching a clock for all the evil corporations which abuse science for their own nefarious purposes.

The Case for Parallel Universes

Why the multiverse, crazy as it sounds, is a solid scientific idea

In the August issue of Scientific American, cosmologist George Ellis describes why he's skeptical about the concept of parallel universes. Here, multiverse proponents Alexander Vilenkin? and Max Tegmark? offer counterpoints, explaining why the multiverse would account for so many features of our universe—and how it might be tested:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=multiverse-the-case-for-parallel-universe

Rainforest Fungus Makes Diesel Fuel

From Mongabay.com:
A fungus recently discovered in the Patagonian rainforest has shocked biologists and environmentalists: the fungus produces gas almost identical to diesel. In a paper announcing the discovery in Microbiology, scientists state that they believe the fungus, called Gliocladium roseum, could become an incredibly efficient green energy source.

"This is the only organism that has ever been shown to produce such an important combination of fuel substances," said Professor Gary Strobel from Montana State University.

Gliocladium roseum makes a variety of molecules of hydrogen and carbon like those found in diesel. The scientists have named Gliocladium roseu's fuel myco-diesel. The researchers found that when grown in a lab the fungus produced myco-diesel even closer to diesel used in cars...

Rainforest fungus generates biodiesel, may drive energy of the future
Jeremy Hance
November 4, 2008
http://news.mongabay.com/2008/1104-hance_biodiesel.html

Cryptid Sea Dogs

Loren Coleman, Cryptomundo.com
November 3rd, 2011

Full Article:
http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/seadogs-12

Fortean cryptozoo researcher Richard Muirhead once discovered the following “Sea Dogs” encounter, which he called “one of the strangest animal stories from Hong Kong” he had ever found:

From the Hong Kong Telegraph Extra, April 17, 1914 p.1,

Another animal story is going the rounds in yachting circles just now. Some animal-certainly it was not of the order of fishes, says our informant-which is thought to be a seal was seen between the Soko Group [these islands south of Lantau island. Cheung Chau is to the west-south-west of Hong Kong] and Cheung Chau Island on Monday [April 13, 1914] afternoon. Seen by the Telegraph, the gentleman who saw the animals, which he is of the opinion were seals, put the number that he actually saw at about eighteen, all making in one direction.

His attention was first called to them by his sailing boy on his yacht who remarked on the number of “sea-dogs” or “sea-pigs” that being the translation of the Chinese term,that there were in the water. Our informant looked but could see little at first because the animals were only just breaking water with their noses to obtain air, this being accompanied by a hissing noise. Then a small one jumped into the air and it was at once seen that, whatever they were, the passers by were not fish. Further confirmation was to be found when one of them broke water and raised his head so that he could be easily seen. His face was not unlike that of a cat with drooping whiskers over the mouth. He then dived and showed a large portion of his back as he went down;in fact,roughly speaking, five feet of his body was exposed. In all there were four persons who saw these animals – two Chinese and two Europeans and they are all convinced that they were of the nature of seals. That night the yacht was anchored in the locality and the hissing could be heard all night. However after passing Adamastor Rock [location unfound] no further traces of them were seen.

In answer to a query as to whether they were not porpoises, our informant said they were not. They had not the colour of the porpoise, but were black, as black as the Chinese pig.

Continuing, he informed us that if indeed they were what he suspected them to be, it would be a serious look out for the fisheries near Cheung Chau, for seals were voracious devourers of fish and could make sore havoc in the fishing grounds there. A question as to whether seals would be found in this latitude drew the response that the yachtsman had known of them as far south as California. [This is a rather obtuse statement. California is around 40 degrees North, Hong Kong is about the same latitude as the Tropic of Cancer i.e. c.22 N-R.]

There certainly appears to be a seal native to the latitude of California. It is spoken of in the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, as is (sic) a sea lion. There is the California or Eared Seals and the Macrohinus a species of which, the M. Lenoina, also found on the Californian coast, tending to show that the appearance of some member or other of the seal family in these regions should not be impossible for geographical reasons.

Jon Downes noted when this was posted in 2010: “There are four species of seal known from China, but all are confined to northern waters.”

Yes, “Sea Dogs” are part of the cryptozoological literature and they all cannot easily be explained away as “just seals.”

Translation algorithms used to crack centuries-old secret code

Mark Brown, wired.co.uk 10-25-11
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/10/translation-algorithms-used-to-crack-centuries-old-secret-code.ars

Computer scientists from Sweden and the United States have applied modern-day, statistical translation techniques—the sort that are used in Google Translate—to decode a 250-year old secret message.

The original document, nicknamed the Copiale Cipher, was written in the late 18th century and found in the East Berlin Academy after the Cold War. It's since been kept in a private collection, and the 105-page, slightly yellowed tome has withheld its secrets ever since.

But this year, University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering computer scientist Kevin Knight—an expert in translation, not so much in cryptography—and colleagues Beáta Megyesi and Christiane Schaefer of Uppsala University in Sweden, tracked down the document, transcribed a machine-readable version and set to work cracking the centuries-old code.

The book's pages—bound in gold and green brocade paper—contained about 75,000 characters in very neat handwriting. Outside of two words—an owner's mark ("Philipp 1866") and a note in the end of the last page ("Copiales 3")—the rest was encoded.

Some of the letters were obviously Roman and others were plainly Greek, while the rest were abstract symbols and doodles.

At first, Knight and his team isolated the Roman and Greek characters, figuring that they might be the real message, and attacked it with a home-made translation project. Eighty different languages and many hours later, and nothing happened. "It took quite a long time and resulted in complete failure," says Knight.

The team realized that the known characters were just there to mislead. So they booted them out and looked at the symbols. They theorized that abstract symbols with similar shapes might represent the same letter, or groups of letters. They tested this with different languages, and when German was used, some meaningful words emerged—"Ceremonies of Initiation," followed by "Secret Section."

A little computation later and a good chunk of the book had been decoded and transcribed. The document revealed the rituals and political leanings of a German secret society, and one that had a strange obsession with eyeballs, plucking eyebrows, eye surgery and ophthalmology. You can read the entire, weird, manifesto in English here:

http://stp.lingfil.uu.se/~bea/copiale/copiale-translation.txt

Buoyant from his success, Knight is now planning on using his techniques and programs to tackle other codes including ones from the Zodiac Killer, a Northern Californian serial murderer from the '60s; "Kryptos," an encrypted message carved into a granite sculpture on the grounds of CIA headquarters; and the Voynich Manuscript, a medieval document that has baffled professional cryptographers for decades.

The woman who never forgets anything

Hollywood star Marilu Henner's awesome memory is changing our understanding of the brain
David Derbyshire
4th October 2011

To read the full story:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2044538/Hollywood-star-Marilu-Henners-memory-changing-understanding-brain.html

A good memory is essential for any aspiring actress struggling with her lines. But in the case of Marilu Henner - a Broadway star who rose to fame in the 1970s sitcom Taxi - her memory isn’t just good, it’s incredible. For her, the past is simply unforgettable.

Give her any date from the past 40 years and she can instantly tell you the day of the week, what she was wearing, what the weather was like and what was on TV.

If that isn’t impressive enough, the 59-year-old Hollywood star, who most recently appeared on British TV screens in Celebrity Apprentice, can even recall with complete clarity events that happened when she was just 18 months old.

Marilu Henner is one of a handful of people with a rare condition called hyperthymesia, or ‘superior autobiographical memory’ - the ability to remember everything that happened on every day of their lives.

Their cases don’t just highlight the incredible power of the mind. They are also shaking some of the basic understanding about the nature of memory and what the limits of the brain really are.

Henner regards her supercharged memory as a gift.

‘It was never a trauma for me - it was just who I was,’ she says. ‘I was very good at remembering things: I was the family historian. People would come to me and ask me stuff, and it was never a problem.’

Her earliest memory is playing with her older brother in her family’s Chicago home aged one and a half. This has stunned scientists, who had assumed that it was virtually impossible to recall events before the age of two.

And that’s just the start. Most people can remember about 250 faces during a lifetime: Henner remembers thousands.

It is impossible for most of us to imagine what it is like to have a memory of every single day. She describes sifting through memories as ‘looking for a scene on a DVD before me.

‘In a second I’m back there, looking through my own eyes at the scene as I saw it in 1980 or whenever.’

Hyperthymesia (hyper means excessive while thymesia means memory in Greek) is a new concept in psychology. It was first identified in 2006 by a team of researchers at the University of California...

Lair of Ancient 'Kraken' Sea Monster Possibly Discovered

Jeanna Bryner
October 10, 2011
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/10/10/lair-ancient-kraken-sea-monster-possibly-discovered/

A giant sea monster, the likes of the mythological kraken, may have swum Earth's ancient oceans, snagging what was thought to be the sea's top predators — school bus-size ichthyosaurs with fearsome teeth.

The kraken, which would've been nearly 100 feet (30 meters) long, or twice the size of the colossal squid, Mesonychoteuthis, likely drowned or broke the necks of the ichthyosaurs before dragging the corpses to its lair, akin to an octopus's midden, according to study researcher Mark McMenamin, a paleontologist at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts.

There is no direct evidence for the beast, though McMenamin suggests that's because it was soft-bodied and didn't stand the test of time; even so, to make a firm case for its existence one would want to find more direct evidence.

McMenamin is scheduled to present his work Monday (Oct. 10) at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Minneapolis.

Cause of death

Evidence for the kraken and its gruesome attacks comes from markings on the bones of the remains of nine 45-foot (14 meter) ichthyosaurs of the species Shonisaurus popularis, which lived during the Triassic, a period that lasted from 248 million to 206 million years ago. The beasts were the Triassic version of today's predatory giant squid-eating sperm whales.

Mark McMenamin, a paleontologist at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts was interested in solving a long-standing puzzle over the cause of death of the S. popularis individuals at the Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in Nevada. An expert on the site, Charles Lewis Camp of U.C. Berkeley, suggested in the 1950s that the ichthyosaurs succumbed to an accidental stranding or a toxic plankton bloom. However, nobody has been able to prove the beasts died in shallow water, and recent work on the rocks around the fossils suggests they died in a deepwater environment, McMenamin said.

"I was aware that anytime there is controversy about depth, there is probably something interesting going on," McMenamin said. And when he and his daughter arrived at the park, they were struck by the remains' strangeness, particularly "a very odd configuration of bones."

A giant sea monster, the likes of the mythological kraken, may have taken out ichthyosaurs the size of school buses, arranging their vertebrae in curious linear patterns with nearly geometric patterns.

The etching on the bones suggested the shonisaurs were not all killed and buried at the same time, he said. It also looked like the bones had been purposefully rearranged, likely carried to the "kraken's lair" after they had been killed. A similar behavior has been seen in modern octopus.

The markings and rearrangement of the S. popularis bones suggests an octopus-like creature (like a kraken) either drowned the ichthyosaurs or broke their necks, according to McMenamin.

The arranged vertebrae also seemed to resemble the pattern of sucker disks on a cephalopod's tentacle, with each vertebra strongly resembling a sucker made by a member of the Coleoidea, which includes octopuses, squid, cuttlefish and their relatives. The researchers suggest this pattern reveals a self-portrait of the mysterious beast.

The perfect crime?

Next, McMenamin wondered if an octopus-like creature could realistically have taken out the huge swimming predatory reptiles. Evidence is in their favor, it seems. Video taken by staff at the Seattle Aquarium showed that a large octopus in one of their large tanks had been killing the sharks. [On the Brink: A Gallery of Wild Sharks]

"We think that this cephalopod in the Triassic was doing the same thing," McMenamin said. More supporting evidence: There were many more broken ribs seen in the shonisaur fossils than would seem accidental, as well as evidence of twisted necks.

"It was either drowning them or breaking their necks," McMenamin said.

So where did this kraken go? Since octopuses are mostly soft-bodied they don't fossilize well and scientists wouldn't expect to find their remains from so long ago. Only their beaks, or mouthparts, are hard and the chances of those being preserved nearby are very low, according to the researchers.

Though his case is circumstantial, and likely to draw skepticism from other scientists, McMenamin said: "We're ready for this. We have a very good case."

Real-life Jedi: Pushing the limits of mind control

The inner workings of the brain can now be read using low cost hardware
Katia Moskvitch
Technology reporter, BBC News
9 October 2011
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15200386

You don't have to be a Jedi to make things move with your mind.

Granted, we may not be able to lift a spaceship out of a swamp like Yoda does in The Empire Strikes Back, but it is possible to steer a model car, drive a wheelchair and control a robotic exoskeleton with just your thoughts.

"The first thing is to clear your mind…to think of nothing," says Ed Jellard; a young man with the quirky title of senior inventor.

We are standing in a testing room at IBM's Emerging Technologies lab in Winchester, England.

On my head is a strange headset that looks like a black plastic squid. Its 14 tendrils, each capped with a moistened electrode, are supposed to detect specific brain signals.

In front of us is a computer screen, displaying an image of a floating cube.

As I think about pushing it, the cube responds by drifting into the distance.

Admittedly, the system needed a fair bit of pre-training to achieve this single task. But it has, nonetheless, learned to associate a specific thought pattern with a particular movement.

The headset, which was developed by Australian company Emotiv for the games industry, has been around for some time. But it is only now that companies such as IBM are beginning to harness the wealth of data that it can provide.

Using software developed in-house, researchers have linked the Emotiv to devices such as a model car, a light switch and a television.

Control signals come from two main sources; electroencephalography (EEG) measurements of brain activity, and readings of nerve impulses as they travel outwards to the muscles.

Restoring Movement

New techniques for processing such information are enabling sophisticated real world applications.

Already the team has used the system to help a patient with locked-in syndrome, whose healthy, active mind became trapped in a motionless body following a stroke.

"We linked the headset to the IBM middleware, and when he pushed the cube on the screen, that behaved like a click of the mouse - so he was able to use the computer," explained IBM's Kevin Brown.

Many commercial mind control technologies are designed to restore physical ability to those who have lost it.

At Switzerland's Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), researchers have applied brain-computer interface technology to create thought-controlled wheelchairs and telepresence robots.

"A disabled patient who can't move can instead navigate such a robot around his house to participate in the social life of the family," explains the team leader, Professor Jose del Millan.

"To do that, a helmet detects the intention of some physical movement and translates it into action."

Japanese company Cyberdyne is helping people who cannot walk to regain mobility by dressing them in a full-body robotic suit called Hal.

Just as some of IBM's readings come from nerve impulses, rather than brain waves, Cyberdyne uses tiny sensors on the limbs to measure the subject's intention to move, even if the physical act is impossible.

The robot body responds by moving its arms or legs. Webcams and computer screens enabling the user to pilot their machine and communicate with friends and family through their proxy body.

Outside the healthcare field, another implementation, being developed by EPFL in partnership with car maker Nissan, is an intelligent vehicle that can use brainwave data.

Supported by numerous external sensors and cameras, brain wave sensors read what the driver is planning to do next.

Having anticipated their intentions, the car takes over, eliminating the need for tedious and time consuming physical movement.

For those who prefer pedal power, Toyota is working with Saatchi & Saatchi, Parlee Cycles and DeepLocal to develop a bicycle which can shift gear based on its rider's thoughts.

Suits and microchips

Headsets and helmets offer cheap, easy-to-use ways of tapping into the mind. But there are other, more invasive techniques being developed.

At Brown Institute for Brain Science in the US, scientists are busy inserting chips right into the human brain.

The technology, dubbed BrainGate, sends mental commands directly to a PC.

Subjects still have to be physically "plugged" into a computer via cables coming out of their heads, in a setup reminiscent of the film The Matrix. However, the team is now working on miniaturising the chips and making them wireless.

BrainGate is developing ways of using the output to control a computer cursor, on-screen keyboard, and even manipulate robotic arms.

After testing it on monkeys, the scientists have now started human trials. Lead researcher Prof John Donoghue hopes that one day, his groundbreaking research will help people with spinal cord injuries or locked-in syndrome to walk again just by thinking of moving their limbs.

Robot warriors?

But extracting information from the brain, be it by internal or external sensors, is only part of the story.

Much of the current research effort is looking at how to efficiently process and utilise the vast streams of data that the brain produces.

Turning analogue thoughts into digital information links human beings directly to electronic information networks, such as the internet. The brain becomes becomes yet another sensor to be analysed and interrogated.

And as techniques for crunching that output get more sophisticated, the technology it drives will move beyond simple device control.

"People like data," said IBM's Ed Jellard. "So if you can see patterns of data, the geekier people will be very interested to see what is going on in their brain and how it is changing over time.

"I would be interest to know if my brain is getting stronger and if I have more intense thoughts. Things like that could be useful."

While it is possible to translate brain waves into machine processable data, there remains something unique and special about those signals that rocket around inside our skulls.

They are not the same as lasers in a fibre optic cable or electrons in a microprocessor, and tapping the mind will raise philosophical and ethical questions, according to Prof Noel Sharkey.

"Once the military get a hold of it, they will push it very hard," he explains.

"At the moment they are filling the airspace in Afghanistan with drones that only one person can control - but if they get the helmets well enough developed, they'll be able to control a number of planes or robot warriors directly with their thoughts."

There are also questions about what form cyber crime would take in the age of the wired mind?

"Imagine some kind of a wireless computer device in your head that you'll use for mind control - what if people hacked into that, what could they do to you and your property?," continues Prof Sharkey.

"And what if you are forced to wear a device and someone controls you with his thoughts, making you do things?..."

The possibilities, both positive and negative, are literally mind boggling.

U.S. Scientist Patents Time Machine

BeforeItsNews.com Tuesday, October 11, 2011

To read the full story:
http://beforeitsnews.com/story/1216/437/U.S._Scientist_Patents_Time_Machine.html

To view the Time Machine Patent:
http://www.konformist.com/2011/timemachine.pdf
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20060073976.pdf

The patent for a time machine has been filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office by one Dr. Marvin B. Pohlman of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Who is Marvin B. Pohlman?

An American scientist, Marvin B. Pohlman is a man of many talents—and a very busy man.

According to his bio he's the Director of Governance, Risk and Compliance product strategy for a major Bay area enterprise software company. Despite the demands of his career, he's also managed to author three text books on IT governance and security.

In whatever spare time such a man has left, he found enough of it to invent a time machine.

At first glance, such a thing might be too fantastic a notion to believe, yet Pohlman does hold a Bachelor of Science in Engineering Physics, an MBA from Lexington Business School, and a PhD in computer science from Trinity University.

He's also a member of Portland Mensa, and is a Licensed Professional Engineer, Certified Information Systems Auditor, Certified Information Security Manager and Certified Information Systems security professional.

Perhaps he invented the time machine because he discovered he hasn't enough time to squeeze in everything he wants to accomplish?

A time traveler literally has all the time in the world

Regardless of why he invented it, he has.

From an abstract associated with the patent, Pohlman explains:

"The method employs sinusoidal oscillations of electrical bombardment on the surface of one Kerr type singularity in close proximity to a second Kerr type singularity in such a method to take advantage of the Lense-Thirring effect, to simulate the effect of two point masses on nearly radial orbits in a 2+1 dimensional anti-de Sitter space resulting in creation of circular timelike geodesics conforming to the van Stockum under the Van Den Broeck modification of the Alcubierre geometry (Van Den Broeck 1999) permitting topology change from one spacelike boundary to the other in accordance with Geroch's theorem (Geroch 1967) resulting in a method for the formation of Godel-type geodesically complete spacetime envelopes complete with closed timelike curves."
If you think this is all a big joke, take a look at the patent filing here:

http://www.konformist.com/2011/timemachine.pdf
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20060073976.pdf

What you're looking at may not last much longer in full public view. If the finished product works the U.S. military will grab it, wipe all references to it, and plunge it into another one of their deep, dark black projects.

As you can imagine, some familiar with the patent filing are skeptical...

Is Our Universe a Hologram?

In 1982 a Litttle Known but Epic Event Occured at the University of Paris
September 29, 2011
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2011/09/is-our-universe-a-hologram-in-1982-a-litttle-known-but-epic-event-occured-at-the-university-of-paris.html

What if our existence is a holographic projection of another, flat version of you living on a two-dimensional "surface" at the edge of this universe? In other words, are we real, or are we quantum interactions on the edges of the universe - and is that just as real anyway?

Whether we actually live in a hologram is being hotly debated, but it is now becoming clear that looking at phenomena through a holographic lens could be key to solving some of the most perplexing problems in physics, including the physics that reigned before the big bang, what gives particles mass, a theory of quantum gravity.

In 1982 a litttle known but epic event occured at the University of Paris, where a research team led by physicist Alain Aspect performed what may turn out to be one of the most important experiments of the 20th century. You did not hear about it on the Daily Show. In fact, unless you are a physicist you probably have never even heard Aspect's name, though increasing numbers of experts believe his discovery may change the face of science.

Aspect and his team discovered that under certain circumstances subatomic particles such as electrons are able to instantaneously communicate with each other regardless of the distance separating them. It doesn't matter whether they are 10 feet or 10 billion miles apart.

Somehow each particle always seems to know what the other is doing. The problem with this feat is that it violates Einstein's long-held tenet that no communication can travel faster than the speed of light. Since traveling faster than the speed of light is tantamount to breaking the time barrier, this daunting prospect has caused some physicists to try to come up with increasingly elaborate ways to explain away Aspect's findings.

University of London physicist David Bohm, for example, believes Aspect's findings imply that objective reality does not exist, that despite its apparent solidity the universe is at heart a phantasm, a gigantic and splendidly detailed hologram. Bohm was involved in the early development of the holonomic model of the functioning of the brain, a model for human cognition that is drastically different from conventionally accepted ideas. Bohm developed the theory that the brain operates in a manner similar to a hologram, in accordance with quantum mathematical principles and the characteristics of wave patterns.

To understand why Bohm makes this startling assertion, one must first understand that a hologram is a three- dimensional photograph made with the aid of a laser. To make a hologram, the object to be photographed is first bathed in the light of a laser beam. Then a second laser beam is bounced off the reflected light of the first and the resulting interference pattern (the area where the two laser beams conflate) is captured on film. When the film is developed, it looks like a meaningless swirl of light and dark lines. But as soon as the developed film is illuminated by another laser beam, a three-dimensional image of the original object appears.

In a recent collaboration between Fermilab scientists and hundreds of meters of laser may have found the very pixels of reality, grains of spacetime one tenth of a femtometer across.

The GEO600 system is armed with six hundred meters of laser tube, which sounds like enough to equip an entire Star War, but these lasers are for detection, not destruction. GEO600's length means it can measure changes of one part in six hundred million, accurate enough to detect even the tiniest ripples in space time - assuming it isn't thrown off by somebody sneezing within a hundred meters or the wrong types of cloud overhead (seriously). The problem with such an incredibly sensitive device is just that - it's incredibly sensitive.

The interferometer staff constantly battle against unwanted aberration, and were struggling against a particularly persistent signal when Fermilab Professor Craig Hogan suggested the problem wasn't with their equipment but with reality itself. The quantum limit of reality, the Planck length, occurs at a far smaller length scale than their signal - but according to Hogan, this literal ultimate limit of tininess might be scaled up because we're all holograms. Obviously.

The idea is that all of our spatial dimensions can be represented by a 'surface' with one less dimension, just like a 3D hologram can be built out of information in 2D foils. The foils in our case are the edges of the observable universe, where quantum fluctuations at the Planck scale are 'scaled up' into the ripples observed by the GEO600 team. We'd like to remind you that although we're talking about "The GEO600 Laser Team probing the edge of reality", this is not a movie.

What does this mean for you? In everyday action, nothing much - we're afraid that a fundamentally holographic nature doesn't allow you to travel around playing guitar and fighting crime (no matter what 80s cartoons may have taught you.) Whether reality is as you see it, or you're the representation of interactions on a surface at the edge of the universe, getting run over by a truck (or a representation thereof) will still kill you.

In intellectual terms, though, this should raise so many fascinating questions you'll never need TV again. While in the extreme earliest stages, with far more work to go before anyone can draw any conclusions, this is some of the most mind-bending metaphysical science you'll ever see.

Galaxy Clusters Back Up Einstein’s Theory of Relativity

Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, ScienceNOW
September 28, 2011
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/09/galaxies-einstein-relativity

Testing gravity is simple: walk out of a second-floor window and see what happens. It’s a lot tougher to test Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity — the general theory of relativity — which says that the gravity of an object warps space and time around it. Although researchers have proved general relativity on the scale of the solar system, validating it on cosmic scales has been more challenging. That’s exactly what a group of astrophysicists in Denmark have now done.

The researchers, led by Radek Wojtak of the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen, set out to test a classic prediction of general relativity: that light will lose energy as it is escaping a gravitational field. The stronger the field, the greater the energy loss suffered by the light. As a result, photons emitted from the center of a galaxy cluster — a massive object containing thousands of galaxies — should lose more energy than photons coming from the edge of the cluster because gravity is strongest in the center. And so, light emerging from the center should become longer in wavelength than light coming from the edges, shifting toward the red end of the light spectrum. The effect is known as gravitational redshifting.

Wojtak and his colleagues knew that measuring gravitational redshifting within a single galaxy cluster would be difficult because the effect is very small and needs to be teased apart from the redshifting caused by the orbital velocity of individual galaxies within the cluster and the redshifting caused by the expansion of the universe. The researchers approached the problem by averaging data collected from 8000 galaxy clusters by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The hope was to detect gravitational redshift “by studying the properties of the redshift distribution of galaxies in clusters rather than by looking at redshifts of individual galaxies separately,” Wojtak explains.

Sure enough, the researchers found that the light from the clusters was redshifted in proportion to the distance from the center of the cluster, as predicted by general relativity. “We could measure small differences in the redshift of the galaxies and see that the light from galaxies in the middle of a cluster had to ‘crawl’ out through the gravitational field, while it was easier for the light from the outlying galaxies to emerge,” Wojtak says. The findings appear online today in Nature.

Besides confirming general relativity, the results strongly support the Lambda-Cold Dark Matter model of the universe, an already popular cosmological model according to which most of the cosmos is made up of invisible stuff that does not interact with matter constituting stars and planets. The test also lends support for dark energy, the mysterious force that appears to be pushing the universe apart.

David Spergel, an astrophysicist at Princeton University, compliments Wojtak and his colleagues on “cleverly combining” a large cluster data set to detect a “subtle effect.” Spergel says, “This is another victory for Einstein. … This cluster test suggests that we do live in a strange universe with dark matter and dark energy, but one in which Einstein’s theory of gravity is valid on large scales.”

Jumping Off a Building With Bubble Wrap

Rhett Allain of Wired.com was asked this question: "How much bubble wrap would you need to wrap yourself in if you wanted to jump out of a first story window and survive?"

Spoiler Alert: Here's his answer:

I am going to go with 39 layers of bubble wrap. Should you actually do this? No. Don’t do this. Well, I guess you could do this with a dummy or something.

One more quick question. I wonder how much bubble wrap you would need to survive jumping out of a plane. You might not need too much more since all that bubble wrap would also slow your terminal speed down.

To see the science and math behind this answer:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/09/jumping-off-a-building-with-bubble-wrap

Mind-Reading Machine

From FoxNews.com:

It sounds like science fiction: While volunteers watched movie clips, a scanner watched their brains. And from their brain activity, a computer made rough reconstructions of what they viewed.

Scientists reported that result Thursday and speculated such an approach might be able to reveal dreams and hallucinations someday.

In the future, it might help stroke victims or others who have no other way to communicate, said Jack Gallant, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley, and co-author of the paper...

Mind-Reading Experiment Reconstructs Movies in Our Mind
September 22, 2011
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/09/22/mind-reading-experiment-reconstructs-movies-in-our-mind

New Raptor Dinosaur Used Giant Claw to Pin, Slash Prey?

"Incredibly rare" fossils give insight into raptor behavior, study says
Christine Dell'Amore
September 21, 2011
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/09/110921-new-raptor-dinosaur-fossils-talon-toe-killing-utah-science

Talk about a lucky break — paleontologists have found "incredibly rare" fossils of a new species of raptor dinosaur that severely fractured its giant-clawed foot about 76 million years ago, paleontologists say.

The six-foot-long (two-meter-long) Talos sampsonsi lived in the rainy, "hothouse world" of late-Cretaceous North America, which was then two continents—Laramidia in the west and Appalachia in the east—divided by a shallow seaway.

It's one of the few troodontid theropods—small, birdlike predators—ever discovered in North America, said study leader Lindsay Zanno, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.

Doctoral student Mike Knell, who found Talos while searching for fossil turtles in Utah in 2008, "stumbled across one of the nicest raptors that we've found in North America," she said.

"It was a thrilling discovery for those of us who got to work on it."

The dinosaur is named for the mythological Greek figure Talos—a winged figure that supposedly could run at lightning speed—as well as Utah paleontologist Scott Sampson.

Raptor Dinosaur Used Talon to Puncture Prey?

Perhaps most exciting about Talos is its injured second toe, which has added to an existing debate on what troodontids did with the giant, sickle-like claw on that toe, study leader Zanno said.

Paleontologists have offered opposing explanations for the claw, for example that it helped troodontids climb, acted as a weapon in killing prey or fighting foes, or even enabled the dinosaur to clean itself.

When the scientists analyzed Talos's injured toe bone via a CT scanner, they found a mark that indicated that the injury—possibly caused by a bite from another animal—had been traumatic.

Assuming the dinosaur used the talon when walking, such a serious injury would've caused Talos to limp on that leg, which in turn would've caused obvious changes to the skeleton's structure, Zanno noted.

Instead, "we found the complete opposite," she said—the skeleton was otherwise unscathed.

This strengthens the theory that the raptor dinosaur carried its giant toe off the ground—an idea already supported by raptor tracks that lack claw marks, according to the study, published September 19 in the journal PLoS ONE.

Instead, Talos may have wielded its claw like a puncturing device when hunting, for example by getting a foothold as the raptor scrambled up a larger animal's back, Zanno said. Or, like some modern-day birds, the dinosaur may have used the claw as a weapon while fighting with other dinosaur rivals.

It's "giving us a window into the biology of the animal that we don't get from your average, everyday specimen," Zanno said.

New Dinosaur an Omnivore?

The fact that the toe was traumatically injured at all suggests the dinosaur used it as a weapon, said Thomas R. Holtz, Jr., a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Talos was "probably not going to get a wound like that from preening its feathers," said Holtz, who wasn't part of the study.

Based on the new findings and previous dinosaur tracks, Holtz suspects the dinosaur used its claw to pin down small animals and slash bigger prey.

What's more, the specimen's post-wound survival hints that the raptor was omnivorous, Holtz speculated. With its claw unusable for hunting, the dinosaur presumably had to eat plants or other foods to stay alive while it healed.

Holtz and colleagues have previously found that troodontids had teeth more like those of plant-eating reptiles than carnivorous ones, he added.

Study leader Zanno added, "In the end we can never observe the behavior of this animal—it's always going to be controversial."

But "the more individual lines of evidence that we can add that can support the [weapon] hypothesis, the stronger it becomes."

Science Documentary of the Week

The Day I Died
BBC Documentary on Near-Death Experiences

http://www.personalgrowthcourses.net/video/inspiring/nde_day_i_died_bbc

Evolution of Narcissism

Why We're Overconfident, and Why It Works
Overestimating our abilities can be a strategy for success, model shows
National Geographic News
September 14, 2011
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/09/110914-optimism-narcissism-overconfidence-hubris-evolution-science-nature

Believing you're better than you are may help you succeed, a new study says.

For years, psychologists have observed that people routinely overestimate their abilities, said study leader Dominic Johnson, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

Some experts have suggested that overconfidence can be a good thing, perhaps by boosting ambition, resolve, and other traits, creating self-fulfilling prophecies.

But positive self-delusion can also lead to faulty assessments, unrealistic expectations, and hazardous decisions, according to the study—making it a mystery why overconfidence remains a key human trait despite thousands of years of natural selection, which typically weeds out harmful traits over generations.

Now, new computer simulations show that a false sense of optimism, whether when deciding to go to war or investing in a new stock, can often improve your chances of winning.

"There hasn't been a good explanation for why we are overconfident, and this new model offers a kind of evolutionary logic for that," Johnson said.

"It's unlikely to be an accident—we're perhaps overconfident for a good reason."

Overconfidence Pays Off When Costs Are Low

Johnson and colleague James Fowler, of the University of California, San Diego, developed a model using evolutionary game theory to explore how individuals with different strategies perform in competition with each other.

In the model two imaginary individuals, X and Y, stake claims for resources. If both claim the resource and fight over it, the stronger individual wins and gains the resource. Both individuals pay a cost for fighting over it. If only one claims the resource, he gets it for free. If neither claims it, neither gets anything.

Johnson also noted two important twists: The virtual competitors may either overestimate or underestimate their real strength. Secondly, there may be uncertainty, or a degree of error in how a competitor perceives his opponents' strength.

Based on these factors, a person then "decides" whether or not to claim the resource, while risking a fight if the other individual also claims it. They base their decision on their own perceived strength compared with how strong they believe their opponent to be.

"The beauty of the model is it captures a lot of types of human competition," said Johnson, whether it's arguing a court case or fighting over resources such as territory.

The team ran simulations over thousands of generations with individuals who had varying levels of overconfidence and varying levels of error in their assessments of others, and observed which strategies were effective. As with physical evolution, advantageous strategies "survived"—or were naturally selected—and were passed down to the next generation.

The results, published today in the journal Nature, showed that overconfidence pays off only when there is uncertainty about opponents' real strengths, and when the benefits of the prize at stake is sufficiently larger than the costs.

"So let's say you and I are fighting over some resource," Johnson said. "As long as there is some uncertainty about the outcome and the resource is valuable compared with the costs incurred in fighting for it, then overconfidence is the best strategy."

For instance, if people are fighting over an island with oil reserves, the benefit of accessing the oil might be a hundred billion dollars, while the costs of the war might be ten billion.

But if "if the cost of conflict or competition is high, and all for a fairly worthless prize—you're much better off being cautious."

False Optimism Detrimental in Advanced Societies?

Daniel Blumstein, a behavioral biologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the study puts the notion of false optimism into context nicely.

The research "provides some justification for a common phenomenon—[that] in many [modern] situations, humans behave overconfidently, and this gets us into problems."

For instance, hubris might have contributed to the 2008 global market collapse and recent wars, including the 2003 Iraq invasion, study leader Johnson speculated.

In fact, the strategy, which developed in small-scale societies, may be less successful in highly developed and complex societies—"that's when overconfidence starts to go wrong," he said.

For example, being overconfident when making decisions such as whether to invade a distant land may amount to an "evolutionary mismatch."

Johnson compares the survival of overconfidence as a primary human trait to our outmoded cravings for high-calorie food—"a consequence of a preference that was useful to us in the past" when calories were scarce "but [that] goes wrong when there's a McDonald's on every corner."

According to Robert Trivers, an expert in social evolution at Rutgers University, overconfidence may have another benefit, at least for men.

Men tend to exhibit more false optimism than women, a trait that can help in their two traditional evolutionary roles: fighting rivals and courting women.

In both situations, men are partly evaluated by their degree of self-confidence, Trivers said. During a fight, for example, false bravado may make a foe back down.

And, after all, "there are few things that are more of a physical or romantic turnoff than if the other person has low self-esteem."

Special Purr Allows Cats to Manipulate Humans

By Jennifer Viegas http://www.thedailycat.com/ca/behavior/behaviorproblems/cats_purr2

At 5 a.m., my cats want two things: breakfast and attention. Their Plan A is to meow louder than an alarm clock, which usually works. If I take longer than usual to respond, they resort to their no-fail Plan B: climbing on top of my head, butting my chin and purring with hypnotic desperation directly into my ear.

Perhaps you’ve also heard this special purr? Scientists have just named it “solicitation purring,” otherwise known as the purr we humans cannot ignore.

What Is Solicitation Purring?

Karen McComb, a cat owner herself, led the recent study on purring, published in the journal Current Biology. After she and her colleagues analyzed the acoustic structure of recorded cat purrs, they determined one particular type contains an embedded, high-pitched cry. “The high-frequency voiced cry occurs at a low level in cats’ normal purring, but we think that cats dramatically exaggerate it when it proves effective in generating a response from humans,” explains the University of Sussex behavioral ecologist.

The cry, much to a cat’s benefit, is very similar to that of a wailing human infant. “Cats have about the right size of vocal folds to produce a cry that is similar to a baby’s, so there is a coincidental element,” says Dr. McComb. In fact, she believes this cry component of a solicitation purr can sound remarkably like a crying child, and that is particularly effective with humans.

How It Works

If your cat sees you stirring from sleep at all in the early morning, it will immediately switch into giving this solicitation purring and position itself next to your head so you get the full impact. Sound familiar? Here’s what’s really taking place:

First Your cat gets a craving for food, water, attention, playtime or something else. Being relatively small, furry and unable to get to such things alone in your home, your pet sets a strategy in motion.

Second Your cat approaches you while vibrating its vocal folds, or cords, in its larynx. “This is not a normal vocal production mechanism [in the animal kingdom],” says Dr. McComb. “Usually in mammals, the vocal folds are just moved into the airstream and then are blown open and snap shut at their own natural frequency of vibration.” The resulting vibrating low fundamental frequency results in a purr.

Third Your cat doesn’t just continue to purr as usual. It voices a cry, “probably with the inner edges of the vocal folds,” believes Dr. McComb. The cry is superimposed on the regular purr.

Fourth You hear the solicitation purr and instinct kicks in. Studies show that most primates are driven to respond to the sound of an infant in distress, so your brain on some level perceives your cat as though it were an actual human baby, even though you consciously know it’s your needy feline.

Last If you are like most owners, you give in to what your cat desires. Considering cats cannot use actual words, the system is surprisingly effective. Nicolas Nicastro, who studied cat vocalizations at Cornell University, says that although they lack language, cats have become very skilled at managing humans to get what they want -- food, shelter and a little human affection.

Have Cats Domesticated Humans?

Cats are domesticated animals that have learned to pull the right levers and make the right sounds to manage our emotions. And when we respond, we too are domesticated animals.

However, don’t confuse cats for little people. “Felines cannot say, ‘Take a can of food out of the cupboard, run the can opener and fill my bowl immediately,’” says Nicastro. They’ve evolved a different, yet no less effective, method of communicating with us.

Four Types of Purrs

Dr. McComb and Georgia Mason, a professor at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, suggest cats might purr in at least four ways:

•Contentment purr This is “the relaxing one,” says Dr. Mason. It’s the common low frequency rumbling we both hear and feel.

•Silent purr Purrs can occur as silent forms that we humans feel but not hear. Kitten purrs are particularly easy to feel, probably because of a kitten’s ability to communicate “all is well” to its natural mother.

•Solicitation purr This is the newly identified purr with the embedded baby-like cry. “It’s amazing the way certain cries are recognized by humans as needy, even by non-cat owners,” says Dr. Mason.

•Pain purr Cats also sometimes purr when they’re extremely ill. No one is certain why, but some experts have speculated the felines are attempting to comfort themselves.

If you have heard the solicitation purr, consider yourself lucky. “Not all cats use this solicitation purring,” explains Dr. McComb. “It seems to most often develop in cats that have a one-on-one with their owners.”

Jennifer Viegas is the managing editor of The Daily Cat. She is a journalist for Discovery News, the news service for the Discovery Channel, and has written more than 20 books on animals, health and other science-related topics.