dailymail - You may already know this, but psychic powers might really exist.
Research suggests that far from being a trick employed by fairground fortune tellers, many of us are blessed with the ability to see into the future.
Influencing events before they happen is also within our remit, the study by a respected psychologist found.
The publication of the results in a leading social science journal will make waves in the staid world of science, where terms like clairvoyance, telepathy and ESP are dirty words.
They will also spark a million conversations about the significance of everyday occurrences, such as knowing who is at the end of the phone before picking it up.
Daryl Bem, a physicist and part-time magician-turned-psychologist, set out to investigate psi, or parapsychology to you and me.
In one experiment, students were shown a list of words to memorise. They were later asked to recall as many as they could and finally they were given a random selection of the words to type out.
Not surprisingly, they were better at remembering some words than others. But spookily, these tended to be the words they would later be asked to type, suggesting a future event had affected their ability to remember.
In another experiment, the students were shown an image of two curtains on a computer screen and told one concealed an erotic picture. The students chose the curtain hiding the naughty picture slightly more often than could be explained away by chance, this week's New Scientist reports.
Importantly, the position of the picture was randomly allotted by a computer which didn't make its decision until after the volunteer chose one curtain or the other.
To believers in the paranormal, this suggests the students were actually influencing future events.
In a third study, the students were shown a picture of a tempting-looking basket of fruit or a menacing pit bull terrier and timed while they rated the image as pleasant or unpleasant.
After making their choice, they were shown a word such as luscious or menacing.
Amazingly, the words shown seemed to affect their reaction time, despite them being flashed up after they'd rated the picture.
This suggests that they had had a premonition of the word and the thought of a menacing basket of fruit had slowed them down, compared to the mental image of a menacing dog.
In other words, they were able to see into the future.
Professor Bem, of Cornell University in New York State, carried out nine different experiments involving more than 1,000 volunteers.
All but one came down on the side of the psychics.
The odds against the combined result being down to mere chance or being a statistical fluke are 74billion to one, says the professor, who has a plea for the science world to open its mind to the possibility of the paranormal.
At least one sceptic who has read the research is willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Joachim Krueger, a US psychologist, said: 'My personal view is that this is ridiculous and can't be true.
'Going over the methodology and experimental design is the first line of attack. But, frankly, everything seemed to be in good order.'
The proof of the pudding, says New Scientist, will be in whether other scientists can repeat the professor's success.
Once has already tried to prove him wrong, by carrying out a failed attempt to repeat the word recall experiment using an online survey.
But Professor Bem, who has a reputation for careful work, says that allowing the students to work online rather than taking them into the lab could have simply meant they weren't concentrating hard enough.
NOTE: quoting my friend Irene...it's the "bloody idiots" that give those with true ability a bad name...Lon
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Boy, 3, unearths £2.5m treasure trove on first metal detecting expedition
sky - A three-year-old boy using a metal detector for the first time has unearthed a gold pendant estimated to be worth over £2.5m. James Hyatt made the discovery while out with his father and grandfather in Hockley, Essex. He had only been scanning the soil for a matter of minutes when it started beeping.
The trio, from Billericay, started digging and just eight inches deep, they saw a glint and found what they now know to be a 500-year-old gold pendant. Dad Jason, 34, said: "James got a buzz after just five minutes. We saw a glint eight inches down and gently pulled the object out. Dad was blown away. He'd never found anything like it in 15 years doing his hobby.
"James was so excited to find treasure, though he's too young to realise its significance." Experts believe the rare locket, or reliquary, dates back to the 1500s and was used to hold alleged parts of Christ's crown of thorns or crucifix. James, who is now four, said: "I was holding the detector and it went beep, beep, beep.
"Then we dug into the mud. There was gold there. We didn't have a map - only pirates have treasure maps." An inquest has declared the reliquary treasure trove and it could be bought for millions by an interested institution, including the British Museum. Proceeds will be split with the family and the owner of the field where the pendant was found.
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Superbugs 'could be destroyed using beams of light that decontaminate the air'
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1329778/Superbugs-destroyed-using-beams-light-decontaminate-air.html#ixzz15fEvg86l
dailymail- Hospital superbugs such as MRSA and Clostridium difficile could be beaten using light, scientists said today.
A team from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow has developed a 'pioneering' lighting system that can kill the bacteria.
The technology decontaminates the air and exposes surfaces by bathing them in a narrow spectrum of visible-light wavelengths, known as HINS-light.
It works by exciting molecules within the bacteria, which in turn produces 'highly reactive' chemical species that are lethal to it.
Clinical trials at Glasgow Royal Infirmary suggest the HINS-light Environmental Decontamination System could provide 'significantly greater' reductions of bacterial pathogens in hospitals than cleaning and disinfection alone.
Other methods of decontamination, including gas sterilants or UV-light can also be hazardous to staff and patients.
Scientists said it was 'a huge step forward' in preventing the spread of hospital infections.
The technology was discovered and developed by a multidisciplinary team of experts from the university.
Microbiologist professor John Anderson said: 'The technology kills pathogens but is harmless to patients and staff, which means for the first time, hospitals can continuously disinfect wards and isolation rooms.
'The clinical trials have shown that the technology can help prevent the environmental transmission of pathogens and thereby increase patient safety.'
The technology uses violet coloured HINS-light, but the research team has used a combination of LED technologies to produce a warm white lighting system that can be used alongside normal hospital lighting.
Prof Scott MacGregor, the university's faculty of engineering dean, said: 'New approaches to disinfection and sterilisation are urgently needed within the clinical environment, as traditional methods have significant limitations.
'HINS-light is a safe treatment that can be easily automated to provide continuous disinfection of wards and other areas of the clinical environment.
'The pervasive nature of light permits the treatment of air and all visible surfaces, regardless of accessibility, either through direct or reflected exposure to HINS-light within the treated environment.'
The technology was developed in Strathclyde's Robertson Trust Laboratory and was supported by the University of Strathclyde, The Robertson Trust and the Scottish Enterprise Proof of Concept Programme.
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Cougar carcass marks 7th confirmed sighting in 14 months
minnesota.publicradio - A dead cougar turned up over the weekend in Pope County, according to a report on Alexandria television KSAX. The station had also reported recently on a cougar sighting nearby that state Department of Natural Resources officials dismissed as a large house cat.
Now the station is posting pretty convincing photos of a large, male, and very dead cougar laying in grass next to a coffee cup.
I'm assuming the cup is intended to demonstrate the cat's relative size, and has nothing to do with the animal's death. I mean, I've had some strong coffee before, but ...
I just reported on Minnesota Public Radio of an increasing number of mountain lion sightings in Minnesota over the last two years.
Glenwood, Minn., Area Wildlife Supervisor Kevin Kotts was not available Monday.
I spoke at some length with a former DNR biologist who now studies things like cougars and Canada lynx on a contract basis. He worries about the public perception that there's some kind of department conspiracy going to suppress reports of cougar sightings.
Some people, apparently, believe the DNR is either covering up what it knows about cougars in Minnesota, or worse yet, that the department has actually introduced mountain lions into the state, the biologist said.
He assures me that both theories are complete bunk. The cougars are almost certainly individual young males looking for lady cats, and wandering in from the western Dakotas, where they've pretty much filled up the region's capacity for cougars. There's still no evidence mountain lions are staying, or reproducing in Minnesota.
But now, a dead cougar will almost certainly re-fire the theories.
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China: that’s no UFO, that’s my Cessna
FT - News that China is opening its low-altitude airspace to private helicopters and planes is a boost for international and Chinese aircraft-manfacturers. It should also address another pressing problem facing the Chinese authorities - the big increase in UFO sightings being reported across the country.
Although aviation officials don’t publish figures on UFO sightings, they say there’s been a huge spike in such reports in the last few years. But rather than setting up a Chinese X-Files unit to investigate the paranormal, the authorities have come up with a more mundane explanation: wealthy commuters.
It seems that China’s new super-rich have developed a penchant for flying in their own newly-bought helicopters and small airplanes - thereby avoiding the chronic delays and terrible service on commercial airlines, while gaining an impressive status symbol.
The difficulty is that all private flights must first be approved by military and civil aviation authorities, a process that can take weeks or even longer. For wealthy businessmen who live or work outside major cities (where their light planes and helicopters are liable to get shot down), the temptation to flaunt the rules is just too great.
So, the nouveaux riches don’t let their helicopters rust in the hangar while they wait for approval. Instead, they take to the skies without permission, spooking the locals and air-traffic controllers who spot these unidentified flying objects on their radar screens.
Such rule-bending is not uncommon in China - indeed, throughout the economy, it has allowed businesses to outgrow the bureaucratic thicket. Yet, when in comes to air travel, non-compliance poses serious safety risks. And that has helped prompt Beijing finally to rethink its tight military control over most of the country’s airspace.
