It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's a Bug! No...It's a DRONE!

The way the world is fighting wars and collecting intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance has entered into a new era of sophistication. The drone, the unmanned aircraft, is making it happen.

But what is impacting the new drone technology is size. Because size matters. And when it comes to the drone world, the smaller the size…the better.

And drones are getting smaller and smaller, changing the way governments can spy and kill. Drones the size of birds and insects are on the move. Well…up in the air …is a better way to say it.

Drone prototypes are being designed to replicate the flight of the mechanics of a moth, hawk and other natural beasts of the air are in government labs. These killing and spying machines are designed to camouflage into the background. They are able to “hide in plain sight.”

Some drones just spy. Others are programmed to spy and kill. More airforce personnel are being trained as joysticks and computer pilots now compared to traditional pilots. The Pentagon is estimated to have 7000 aerial drones currently. Congress has been asked for $5 billion for drone research and development for next year.

Currently spy balloons that hover 15,000 feet above can transmit video 20 miles away.

The smallest drone currently in use is a 3 foot long Raven “which troops in Afghanistan toss by hand like a model airplane to peer over the next hill.” There are 4,800 Ravens in operation, but some are getting lost and marked as AWOL.  This has implemented some serious search and rescue missions to find lost drones, some without success.

Lately, the Raven drone is getting some serious competition in the lab. Recreating flight that mimics insect's “flapping wing” technology is now the hot item in drone research and development. Smaller drones, the size of moths and hummingbirds are in development. These small inventions will be big advancements in the world of stealth and spying.

But the data interpretation from drones still lags behind. Currently the Air Force must process almost 1, 500 hours of video per day which requires round-the-clock techno analysis command. It takes about 19 analysts per drone to interpret the current data stream.

More sophisticated video photography capturing wider footage is estimated to take 2000 analysts to process the data feeds from a drone.

The next time you see a hummingbird, dragonfly, moth or raven, take a closer look. It just might be a drone on a mission or one that has gone AWOL.

Reference:
War Evolves With Drones, Some Tiny as Bugs
NYT June 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/20/world/20drones.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2

Face Transplant Attempted on Mauled Woman

http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2011/06/10/woman-mauled-by-chimp-receives-new-face/?mod=WSJBlog

Genetically Engineered Cows Produce Human Milk_No Safety Studies for Children

Genetically modified cows have been engineered to produce a human lysozyme in their milk.  This milk is headed for commercial futures, intended for children.  The American public will have no choice of consumption or understandings of the milk's bad health effects since genetically engineered foods are not mandated to be labeled .  Adequate safety studies are not provided to the public.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/agriculture/geneticmodification/8423536/Genetically-modified-cows-produce-human-milk.html

Workers are Injured and Then TAXED

Injured workers face many challenges. The pain of being injured and the need to recover from the injury are already a lot to deal with. Financial uncertainty is also a factor, as many workers experience the anxiety of not knowing how they'll be able to cover all of their bills without a regular paycheck.

Workers' compensation and Social Security disability benefits are supposed to ease that financial strain. But those benefits don't always stretch as far as an injured worker really needs them to. For that reason, a recent decision by the U.S. Tax Court on whether workers' compensation benefits can be excluded from taxable income is of significant concern.

The court held that certain workers' compensation benefits were taxable as Social Security benefits under section 86(d)(3) of the tax code.

For rest of story see:   Read more: http://www.disabled-world.com/disability/legal/tax/taxability.php#ixzz1P1h6NzJ7

Historical Footage of rDNA Research City Council Hearings in Cambridge, MA

http://techtv.mit.edu/collections/fromthevault/videos/11570-hypothetical-risk-cambridge-city-councils-hearings-on-recombinant-dna-research-1976

Sprouts, organic farming and many unanswered questions

Government officials point to an organic farm as the source of German deadly E.coli despite the fact that all laboratory tests from the farm's food was negative for the E.coli. 

Epidemilogical evidence was used instead to pinpoint the specific farm as the source of the deadly bacteria from contaminated sprouts.

But the question remains, how did the farm become contaiminated in the first place.  Why isn't there any evidence of the E.coli present now?  Was it a natural contamination or was the E.coli purposely used to contaminate organic food crops?

759 people suffered serious complications from kidney failure from the outbreak.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110610/ap_on_he_me/eu_contaminated_vegetables?om_rid=NR04UT&om_mid=_BN8nRmB8bpM5uO

Sell out of Academia_Pfizer Buys Academia (part 3)

Pfizer (the biggest drug dealer in the world) again announces a pay off to infiltrate into publically funded academic labs in an effort to develop their pipeline for profit-making drug. Tax payer- funded academic research laboratories all over the country are being mixed in the pot for profit making deals for industry.

Who comes out the winner? Not taxpayers who pay out billions of dollars for little return.

Conflicts of interests and loss of patent rights within academic research make these academic-industrial complex deals stink for the public. While the public pays out billions of dollars, they get little in return and little focus into public health issues and public safety issues.

Pfizer has spent millions of dollars setting up collaborations in California and New York in labs that are taxpayer funded. Now Pfizer announces another $100 million dollar collaborations over the next five years with eight leading universities and research institutes in Massachusetts. It’s a lucrative investment for Pfizer who is making billions of dollars off the taxpayers back.

Public funding to academic laboratories that collaborate with money making companies should be withdrawn and given to laboratories that do research focused for the public good. In these hard hit economic times, it only makes sense. It will create more jobs which is something we need now.

The list of academic labs that have conflicts of interest with money-making schemes with rich pharma, persist to grow. These labs continue to take public funding while doing for profit research. They are in essence are double dipping into funds for research when other good scientist go without funding.

Here is only a partial list of academic institutes which do “for profit scientific research” for Pfizer and where public funding should be reconsidered for reallocation to other academic centers that focus research for the public’s welfare:

Boston University, Harvard University, Tufts University and University of Massachusetts Medical School., MIT, University of California San Francisco, Rockefeller University, New York University Langone Medical Center, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, The Mount Sinai Medical Center, Columbia University Medical Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and Weill Cornell Medical College.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/pfizer-announces-100-million-research-collaboration-with-academic-scientists/33678

Protecting Your Genetic Code

Are you concerned about your rights for genetic privacy?  Can your genetic information be misused?  Can your genetic code be used to discriminate against you?  Is your genetic code being distributed without your permission?

http://www.councilforresponsiblegenetics.org/genewatch/GeneWatchPage.aspx?pageId=342

http://www.geneticequity.org/index.php?l=widgets/pdf_viewer&id=1170

http://www.councilforresponsiblegenetics.org/pageDocuments/5I6QWJYJTE.pdf

Healthcare Services and the Disabled

Occupational Health Nurses Undermine Worker Health

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH NURSING AND THE

QUEST FOR PROFESSIONAL AUTHORITY

authors: ELAINE DRAPER, JOSEPH LADOU & DAN J. TENNENHOUSE

NEW SOLUTIONS, Vol. 21(1) 57-88, 2011

ABSTRACT

Occupational health nurses provide most of the in-plant health care services in U.S. industry but have dubious credentials to provide care for many of the injuries and illnesses they encounter. The nurses work directly for the employer in an atmosphere designed to control employer costs and employee benefits. Their loyalty to the company and limited autonomy make it unlikely that they will represent the workers’ interests. They generally embrace any expansion of their roles within the company. However, employers and government have made no serious effort to determine whether nurses can adequately take on these new functions and advance occupational health. A nurse-directed model carries the risk that nurses who are not knowledgeable
enough about the law, or are overly committed to reducing costs, may overdelegate responsibilities, thereby aiding and abetting the unlicensed practice of nursing. This overreaching is part of an ill-conceived effort to establish nursing as a profession with the greater independence, expertise, and control over training that longstanding professions such as medicine and law have achieved. An extensive literature devoted to the approval and acceptance of occupational health nursing exists, yet constructive criticism of occupational health nursing is almost nonexistent. Occupational health and safety is much too important to be largely relegated to an inadequately defined semi-profession, striving to attain higher professional status and control while lacking the expertise, power, professional standards, and autonomy required of a profession.

Baywood Publishing Co., Inc.
doi: 10.2190/NS.21.1.i
http://baywood.com/

Deadly E. Coli Strain Kills throughout German_Source Unknown

A highly lethal strain of E. Coli that kills victims by inflicting acute kidney falure has hit Germany.  At least 1500 people have succumbed to serous illness from the biological agent with at least 16 people already dead. 

It is serious.  It is a mystery.

The E. Coli strain has been found to secrete a more potent form of a shiga toxin.  The E. Coli will cling to a person's intestinal wall and release massive amounts of shiga poisons to make people sick, causing amongst other things, sezures and stroke. 

But this new strain of E. Coli also appears to have other behavior that makes it highly unusual, one of which is making it difficult to detect by conventional means. 

E.Coli is a standard microbe used in biological research, both in biomedical and agricultural genetic research. This German strain of E. Coli could have undergone natural or made-made genetic changes to make it more potent.



One of the other main mysteries to this killer strain, is that public health officials cannot trace its source.  They assume it comes from raw vegetables and warn the public from eating raw tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuces.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/02/world/europe/02ecoli.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2