Boris Babenko believes there are huge opportunities for integrating computer science, and in particular computer vision, into health care and medical research, making life easier for researchers, physicians and ultimately patients.
Babenko’s strong conviction is leading to the development of powerful tools to aid in bioengineering research. In particular, Babenko, a UC San Diego computer science grad student, is working with a team of researchers to develop technology that will automate the arduous process of analyzing the vast amount of data necessary for tissue engineering. In their research, Babenko and his partner, bioengineering grad student Jessica DeQuach, seek to automate blood vessel counting in images, and to make the distinction between data collection and analysis more clear. They will present their work April 14, 2011 during Research Expo, whose theme is “Innovation for Life."
Tissue engineering is an interdisciplinary field that offers the promise of improving, repairing and/or replacing damaged tissue in the human body. Research in this area involves the development of various biomaterials and processes that facilitate the fabrication of such tissue. In their project, the engineering students are focusing on quantifying arteriole formation. An arteriole is one of the small terminal branches of an artery, especially one that connects with a capillary.
“Arteriole formation is critically important for biomaterial remodeling to help bring blood flow to the damaged area, which is why it is an analysis tool often using in tissue engineering,” DeQuach said.
Collecting this vast amount of data is currently done manually and requires an intensive amount of time and meticulous effort.
“In this project we aim to ease the burden of doing such analysis via modern computer vision techniques,” Babenko said. “While the state of the art in computer vision still requires expert oversight, the long-term goal of our work is to automate this process as much as possible.”
The students are working under computer science professor Serge Belongie and bioengineering professor Karen Christman. Their poster, titled “Towards automated quantification of arteriole formation via computer vision,” will be one of 250 research posters that engineering graduate students will present at Research Expo.
Babenko explained that analyzing images is a central issue in biology – either to study things that are too small for the naked eye, or to study something from the inside in a non-invasive
manner. With current imaging and computer technologies researchers can gather huge amounts of data. Much of this analysis, however, is still done manually.
“I think that computer vision technology could make a big impact in this area by offering powerful tools to aid in bioengineering research,” Babenko said. “Counting blood vessels is a perfect example of the tedious task bioengineers have to perform. For example, in Prof. Christman’s lab a typical experiment requires a scientist to spend up to 80 hours to annotate images, and yet we believe it is within the reach of current computer vision technology.
“The short term goal is to significantly reduce the amount of time this analysis takes, while the long term goal is to open up new possibilities for experiments that simply could not have been done due to this annotation bottleneck,” he added. “Computer vision is a fast growing field, and this progress is ready to be applied in the real world.”
Source: PhysOrg
Provided by Jacobs School of Engineering for ZeitNews.org
Telematics, a mash-up of telecommunications and informatics, is the science of scanning the world with wireless devices to extract data, sending this data to a computer network, and using the information to do anything from tracking packages to monitoring the highway speed of grocery trucks. UPS relies heavily on telematics, as does GM with its OnStar navigation system. The federal government could do a better job of capitalizing on the science, according to Michael J. Ravnitzky. So he started thinking about one of the largest mobile networks on Earth: the post office.
Ravnitzky is a chief counsel at the Postal Regulatory Commission, the government agency that oversees the U.S. Postal Service. The post office is in bad shape. From 2006 to 2009, mail volume dropped by 17 percent and officials have threatened to cut Saturday service. But where others see an inefficient and increasingly outdated system, Ravnitzky sees opportunity.
With its 218,684 vehicles stopping at more than 150 million delivery points along some 232,000 routes every day, the postal-delivery fleet could be reconceived as a vast data-gathering network. “If you were designing a data collection system from scratch, it would look a lot like the postal service,” Ravnitzky says. As he reasoned in a New York Times op-ed last December, the postal network could be used to measure air pollution and ozone levels while aiding Homeland Security operations by scanning for biological or chemical agents. Or it might detect and report WiFi and cellular dead zones. Using telematics, the postal service could evolve into an entirely new kind of public utility. It could also provide a new source of revenue. Private companies or other government agencies could buy space for their sensors on mail trucks.
Although Ravnitzky’s idea is just that—an idea—there’s precedent: Two years ago, 32 Greyhound buses rigged with sensors set off across the country to gather atmospheric and environmental data for the National Weather Service; 2,000 more such buses will roll out soon.
There’s already real interest in Ravnitzky’s plan. Marc Chapman, a compliance director for Atmos Energy, the largest natural-gas distributor in the country, says he is looking into whether sensors could be attached to postal-service trucks to detect gas leaks. Telematics might just save Saturday delivery.
As many students of history are familiar, Galileo Galilei, famed mathematician & astronomer, known today by many as the “father of modern science”, was forced by the Catholic Church under threat of torture to recant his “heretical” view that the earth revolved around the sun and not vice-versa in the 17th century. This scientifically valid idea voided long held religious dogma and hence challenged the Church's integrity itself.
In a letter from 1634, René Descartes, one of the world's most noted thinkers and philosophers, stated: “Doubtless you know that Galileo was recently censored by the Inquisitors of the Faith, and that his views about the movement of the earth were condemned as heretical. I must tell you that all the things I explained in my treatise, which included the doctrine of the movement of the earth, were so interdependent that it is enough to discover that one of them is false to know that all the arguments I was using are unsound. Though I thought they were based on very certain and evident proofs, I would not wish, for anything in the world, to maintain them against the authority of the church.... I desire to live in peace and to continue the life I have begun under the motto to 'live well you must live unseen'.”
If we step back and think about the challenges that faced this small progressive and scientific community during 17th Century Europe and compare the fear and patterns of suppression coming from the established orthodoxy of that time to that of the modern-day, we find only mere variation. Descartes' revelation and retreat from exposure, as expressed by the motto: 'to live well you must live unseen' is a disheartening disposition that speaks volumes and sadly carries on to this day across the world. The use of fear, intimidation and other time tested variations of oppression continue to persist as the dominant institutions of our society work to protect it's established orders regardless of social validity. Even more, the overall cultural itself, which invariably tends to support the accepted beliefs put forward by those that define “power” of a period, also tends to condemn those who choose to pose a challenge as it becomes a threat to the mass accepted identity itself.
The result is that many simply are not willing to risk their lives, occupations and reputations to challenge the orthodoxy of the time.
In late May 2011 news reports were generated that detailed how the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States was actively targeting “Political Activists” under the pretense of “Terrorism”.
Just as people like John Lennon and Martin Luther King Jr. were watched and harassed by the FBI for their activism decades ago, it appears modern, so-called “Anti-Terrorism” resources are being used to target environmentalists, peace, animal and political activists.
Just like the accusations of “Communism” against people like MLK Jr. in the mid 20th century, this newer, more generalized device called “Terrorism” of the 21st century is no less an “heretical”, accusatory tool than what was employed by the Inquisition century's ago to maintain the politico-religious social system.
So, we can sympathize with Descartes' notion, as to move against the Zeitgeist is to position yourself against the odds, regardless of how empirical, necessary or obvious the truth you wish to convey and act upon is.
Unfortunately, Descartes' position is unacceptable in the modern world. The risks that now exist within our current order are beginning to far outweigh the temporal personal risks generated by the act of activist objection itself.
It is no longer issues of accurate data, “rights” and “freedoms”. Today our very stability as a civilization is now in question and, if left unhindered, it threatens us all, regardless of one's position in the modern feudal hierarchy.
So, we can sit in confusion and watch as global unemployment rises due to technological unemployment and the resulting regional instability that is sure to grow. We can stare blankly at the systematic debt collapse of the world economy, country by country, like dominos, as self-appointed global banking institutions that derive money out of nothing impose austerity measures against the poor and middle class of each country to help support the wealthy, furthering the income divide.
We can twiddle our thumbs as what we have called “democracy” turns inexplicably into global plutocracy and the world economy becomes measured by how much money the rich move around amongst themselves. We can distract ourselves with our little gadgets as the rain-forests – considered by many to be the “lungs” of this planet – are destroyed at faster and faster rates, reducing our ability to absorb the growing CO2 in the atmosphere. We can keep the TV on as the clean water and food shortages that currently affect over 1 billion people continue to grow to 2 billion... 3 billion. We can scan the tabloids at the grocery store news stands as the very basis of industrial civilization, the Hydrocarbon Economy, inches towards crisis scarcity with virtually no active initiative taken to change course.
We can continue to pretend that our “leaders” are anything but “mis-leaders”, set in motion by monetary commercial interests that follow the rules of the free-market with all legislation and offices going to the highest bidder, one way or another... and we can stand amused as a new global arms race gains speed as each country comes to terms with the very real reality that wars for resources are upon us in a way unlike any period in history.
This is what separates our world from the one Descartes hid from.
The fact is, the fear tactics of the Orthodoxy - in this context the FBI or any such “Intelligence Agency” - are no longer worthy of viable concern or even acknowledgment. At no time in history has any true social change come in a manner that was not opposed with hostility by the dominant orders of the time. If you choose fear, then fear exists and those little lists/tactics held by the Intelligence/Police Agencies have merit. If you choose choose love, pride and self-respect then no accusations, lists, or threats can ever stop you. The trick now is in numbers and if we can gain critical mass and override the “divide and conquer” techniques used to keep the orthodoxy in place, the game is over.
The Zeitgeist Movement is a global sustainability activist group working to bring the world together for the common goal of species sustainability before it is too late. It is a social movement, not a political one, with over 1100 chapters across nearly all countries. Divisionary notions such as nations, governments, races, political parties, religions, creeds or class are non-operational distinctions in the view of The Movement. Rather, we recognize the world as one system and the human species as a singular unit, sharing a common habitat. Our overarching intent could be summarized as “the application of the scientific method for social concern.”
Automotive engineering has brought in advanced concepts in today’s auto industries. Cars are now installed with 8- to 16- to 32-bit processors, with thoughts of introducing the state-of-art processor technology in the very near future.
The proven technology of dual core processors, bring in speed and faster computing power, with a lower clock speed, hence consuming less power. This would mean less heat generation. In modern information technology systems, dual core processors have already created a mark, with thoughts going on for multi-core processors to be soon introduced in the market.
In the past, auto manufacturers have used dual-core processors in automotive engineering, but the thoughts are fast changing with applications taking a new turn. It is understood that some auto manufacturers is contemplating using triple-core processors in vehicles, and is also working with groups to implement quad-core processor systems.
There are many areas in automotive engineering that have notable application that require the performance of dual-core processors. The most important areas of application are fuel saving, and emission reductions, with diagnosis of safety management and transformation of hardware based functions to systems based on software.
With regards to the transformation from single-core units to dual-core would be simpler than, if this change was required to be made from a 16-bit system to a 32-bit processor. There would have been requirement for wide changes in the software making it suitable to run on a 32-bit system. As for the transformation from single-core to dual-core, the changes would be simpler, without having any major re-writes.
Cars are now fitted with distributed systems, one of them being the distributed control of the car suspensions, which provide a much smoother ride along with superior road holding. Today, the modern car is equipped with dozens of computers, to provide balanced performance if its engine, control of fuel consumption, and emission reduction. There are cars fitted with shark fin shaped antennas on the top, which provide entertainment in the form of satellite radio, GPS, and cellular networks.
Today, automotive engineering has provided the knowledge of the application of general purpose computers in vehicles, but the disadvantage is that, these are not re-programmable. It is often wondered as to why the cars really need general purpose computer systems.
To explain matters simply, many of the existing functions in the vehicles are being extended today through use of on-board general purpose computers, which has provided large benefits regarding many of the functions that we usually find in a car. More-over, computers today makes you avail the features in a car that could not be thought of in the past. During 1980?s there were strong feeling about having a PC at home, though people did not know why they need them. Today, every home has a computer and rightly so.
General purpose computers in cars bring you the modern advantage of having applications where you have Wi-Fi enabled audio system, download mp3 music and e-books, or get your email and have it read to you as you drive. One day, you will be able to share your radio system with other drivers, keep a full GPS log of your travels, and perhaps record public shows of your interest. There are future applications to come, with the concept taking shape everyday in implementation of general purpose computers in your car.
Even as the veggie blame game is now under way across the EU, where a super resistant strain of E. Coli is sickening patients and filling hospitals in Germany, virtually no one is talking about how E. Coli could have magically become resistant to eight different classes of antibiotic drugs and then suddenly appeared in the food supply.
This particular e.coli variation is a member of the O104 strain, and O104 strains are almost never (normally) resistant to antibiotics. In order for them to acquire this resistance, they must be repeatedly exposed to antibiotics in order to provide the "mutation pressure" that nudges them toward complete drug immunity.
So if you're curious about the origins of such a strain, you can essentially reverse engineer the genetic code of the e.coli and determine fairly accurately which antibiotics it was exposed to during its development. This step has now been done (see below), and when you look at the genetic decoding of this O104 strain now threatening food consumers across the EU, a fascinating picture emerges of how it must have come into existence.
The genetic code reveals the history
When scientists at Germany's Robert Koch Institute decoded the genetic makeup of the O104 strain, they found it to be resistant to all the following classes and combinations of antibiotics:
In addition, this O104 strain posses an ability to produce special enzymes that give it what might be called "bacteria superpowers" known technically as ESBLs:
"Extended-Spectrum Beta-Lactamases (ESBLs) are enzymes that can be produced by bacteria making them resistant to cephalosporins e.g. cefuroxime, cefotaxime and ceftazidime - which are the most widely used antibiotics in many hospitals," explains the Health Protection Agency in the UK (http://www.hpa.org.uk/Topics/InfectiousDiseases/InfectionsAZ/ESBLs/).
On top of that, this O104 strain possesses two genes -- TEM-1 and CTX-M-15 -- that "have been making doctors shudder since the 1990s," reports The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/05/deadly-ecoli-resistance-antibiotic-misuse). And why do they make doctors shudder? Because they're so deadly that many people infected with such bacteria experience critical organ failure and simply die.
Bioengineering a deadly superbug
So how, exactly, does a bacterial strain come into existence that's resistant to over a dozen antibiotics in eight different drug classes and features two deadly gene mutations plus ESBL enzyme capabilities?
There's really only one way this happens (and only one way) -- you have to expose this strain of e.coli to all eight classes of antibiotics drugs. Usually this isn't done at the same time, of course: You first expose it to penicillin and find the surviving colonies which are resistant to penicillin. You then take those surviving colonies and expose them to tetracycline. The surviving colonies are now resistant to both penicillin and tetracycline. You then expose them to a sulfa drug and collect the surviving colonies from that, and so on. It is a process of genetic selection done in a laboratory with a desired outcome. This is essentially how some bioweapons are engineered by the U.S. Army in its laboratory facility in Ft. Detrick, Maryland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Biodefense_Analysis_and_Countermeasures_Center).
Although the actual process is more complicated than this, the upshot is that creating a strain of e.coli that's resistant to eight classes of antibiotics requires repeated, sustained expose to those antibiotics. It is virtually impossible to imagine how this could happen all by itself in the natural world. For example, if this bacteria originated in the food (as we've been told), then where did it acquire all this antibiotic resistance given the fact that antibiotics are not used in vegetables?
When considering the genetic evidence that now confronts us, it is difficult to imagine how this could happen "in the wild." While resistance to a single antibiotic is common, the creation of a strain of e.coli that's resistant to eight different classes of antibiotics -- in combination -- simply defies the laws of genetic permutation and combination in the wild. Simply put, this superbug e.coli strain could not have been created in the wild. And that leaves only one explanation for where it really came from: the lab.
Engineered and then released into the wild
The evidence now points to this deadly strain of e.coli being engineered and then either being released into the food supply or somehow escaping from a lab and entering the food supply inadvertently. If you disagree with that conclusion -- and you're certainly welcome to -- then you are forced to conclude that this octobiotic superbug (immune to eight classes of antibiotics) developed randomly on its own... and that conclusion is far scarier than the "bioengineered" explanation because it means octobiotic superbugs can simply appear anywhere at any time without cause. That would be quite an exotic theory indeed.
My conclusion actually makes more sense: This strain of e.coli was almost certainly engineered and then released into the food supply for a specific purpose. What would that purpose be? It's obvious, I hope.
It's all problem, reaction, solution at work here. First cause a PROBLEM (a deadly strain of e.coli in the food supply). Then wait for the public REACTION (huge outcry as the population is terrorized by e.coli). In response to that, enact your desired SOLUTION (total control over the global food supply and the outlawing of raw sprouts, raw milk and raw vegetables).
That's what this is all about, of course. The FDA relied on the same phenomenon in the USA when pushing for its recent "Food Safety Modernization Act" which essentially outlaws small family organic farms unless they lick the boots of FDA regulators. The FDA was able to crush farm freedom in America by piggybacking on the widespread fear that followed e.coli outbreaks in the U.S. food supply. When people are afraid, remember, it's not difficult to get them to agree to almost any level of regulatory tyranny. And making people afraid of their food is a simple matter... a few government press releases emailed to the mainstream media news affiliates is all it takes.
First ban the natural medicine, then attack the food supply
Now, remember: All this is happening on the heels of the EU ban on medicinal herbs and nutritional supplements -- a ban that blatantly outlaws nutritional therapies that help keep people healthy and free from disease. Now that all these herbs and supplements are outlawed, the next step is to make people afraid of fresh food, too. That's because fresh vegetables are medicinal, and as long as the public has the right to buy fresh vegetables, they can always prevent disease.
But if you can make people AFRAID of fresh vegetables -- or even outlaw them altogether -- then you can force the entire population onto a diet of dead foods and processed foods that promote degenerative disease and bolster the profits of the powerful drug companies.
It's all part of the same agenda, you see: Keep people sick, deny them access to healing herbs and supplements, then profit from their suffering at the hands of the global drug cartels.
GMOs play a similar role in all this, of course: They're designed to contaminate the food supply with genetic code that causes widespread infertility among human beings. And those who are somehow able to reproduce after exposure to GMOs still suffer from degenerative disease that enriches the drug companies from "treatment."
Do you recall which country was targeted in this recent e.coli scare? Spain. Why Spain? You may recall that leaked cables from Wikileaks revealed that Spain resisted the introduction of GMOs into its agricultural system, even as the U.S. government covertly threatened political retaliation for its resistance. This false blaming of Spain for the e.coli deaths is probably retaliation for Spain's unwillingness to jump on the GMO bandwagon. (http://www.naturalnews.com/030828_GMOs_Wikileaks.html)
That's the real story behind the economic devastation of Spain's vegetable farmers. It's one of the subplots being pursued alongside this e.coli superbug scheme.
Food as weapons of war - created by Big Pharma?
By the way, the most likely explanation of where this strain of e.coli was bioengineered is that the drug giants came up with it in their own labs. Who else has access to all the antibiotics and equipment needed to manage the targeted mutations of potentially thousands of e.coli colonies? The drug companies are uniquely positioned to both carry out this plot and profit from it. In other words, they have the means and the motive to engage in precisely such actions.
Aside from the drug companies, perhaps only the infectious disease regulators themselves have this kind of laboratory capacity. The CDC, for example, could probably pull this off if they really wanted to.
The proof that somebody bioengineered this e.coli strain is written right in the DNA of the bacteria. That's forensic evidence, and what it reveals cannot be denied. This strain underwent repeated and prolonged exposure to eight different classes of antibiotics, and then it somehow managed to appear in the food supply. How do you get to that if not through a well-planned scheme carried out by rogue scientists? There is no such thing as "spontaneous mutation" into a strain that is resistant to the top eight classes of brand-name antibiotic drugs being sold by Big Pharma today. Such mutations have to be deliberate.
Once again, if you disagree with this assessment, then what you're saying is that NO, it wasn't done deliberately... it happened accidentally! And again, I'm saying that's even scarier! Because that means the antibiotic contamination of our world is now at such an extreme level of overkill that a strain of e.coli in the wild can be saturated with eight different classes of antibiotics to the point where it naturally develops into its own deadly superbug. If that's what people believe, then that's almost a scarier theory than the bioengineering explanation!
A new era has begun: Bioweapons in your food
But in either case -- no matter what you believe -- the simple truth is that the world is now facing a new era of global superbug strains of bacteria that can't be treated with any known pharmaceutical. They can all, of course, be readily killed with colloidal silver, which is exactly why the FDA and world health regulators have viciously attacked colloidal silver companies all these years: They can't have the public getting its hands on natural antibiotics that really work, you see. That would defeat the whole purpose of making everybody sick in the first place.
In fact, these strains of e.coli superbugs can be quite readily treated with a combination of natural full-spectrum antibiotics from plants such as garlic, ginger, onions and medicinal herbs. On top of that, probiotics can help balance the flora of the digestive tract and "crowd out" the deadly e.coli that might happen by. A healthy immune system and well-functioning digestive tract can fight off an e.coli superbug infection, but that's yet another fact the medical community doesn't want you to know. They much prefer you to remain a helpless victim lying in the hospital, waiting to die, with no options available to you. That's "modern medicine" for ya. They cause the problems that they claim to treat, and then they won't even treat you with anything that works in the first place.
Nearly all the deaths now attributable to this e.coli outbreak are easily and readily avoidable. These are deaths of ignorance. But even more, they may also be deaths from a new era of food-based bioweapons unleashed by either a group of mad scientists or an agenda-driven institution that has declared war on the human population.
Additional developments on this e.coli outbreak
• 22 fatalities have so far been reported, with 2,153 people now sickened and possibly facing kidney failure.
• An agricultural ministry in Germany said that even though they now know the source of the outbreak is a German sprout farm, they are still not lifting their warnings for people to avoid eating tomatoes and lettuce. In other words, keep the people afraid!
Battery technology hasn't kept pace with advancements in portable electronics, but the race is on to fix this. One revolutionary concept being pursued by a team of researchers in New Zealand involves creating "wearable energy harvesters" capable of converting movement from humans or found in nature into battery power.
This image shows a hand-pumped soft generator the researchers are using to demonstrate it. Credit: N/A
A class of variable capacitor generators known as "dielectric elastomer generators" (DEGs) shows great potential for wearable energy harvesting. In fact, researchers at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute's Biomimetics Lab believe DEGs may enable light, soft, form-fitting, silent energy harvesters with excellent mechanical properties that match human muscle. They describe their findings in the American Institute of Physics' journal Applied Physics Letters.
"Imagine soft generators that produce energy by flexing and stretching as they ride ocean waves or sway in the breeze like a tree," says Thomas McKay, a Ph.D. candidate working on soft generator research at the Biomimetics Lab. "We've developed a low-cost power generator with an unprecedented combination of softness, flexibility, and low mass. These characteristics provide an opportunity to harvest energy from environmental sources with much greater simplicity than previously possible."
Dielectric elastomers, often referred to as artificial muscles, are stretchy materials that are capable of producing energy when deformed. In the past, artificial muscle generators required bulky, rigid, and expensive external electronics.
"Our team eliminated the need for this external circuitry by integrating flexible electronics—dielectric elastomer switches—directly onto the artificial muscles themselves. One of the most exciting features of the generator is that it's so simple; it simply consists of rubber membranes and carbon grease mounted in a frame," McKay explains.
McKay and his colleagues at the Biomimetics Lab are working to create soft dexterous machines that comfortably interface with living creatures and nature in general. The soft generator is another step toward fully soft devices; it could potentially be unnoticeably incorporated into clothing and harvest electricity from human movement. When this happens, worrying about the battery powering your cell phone or other portable electronics dying on you will become a thing of the past. And as an added bonus, this should help keep batteries out of landfills.
(interviewwitha Swissbankerdone in Moscow 30.05.2011)
Q: Can you tell us something about your involvement in the Swiss banking business?
A: I have worked for Swiss banks for many years. I was designated as one of the top directors of one of the biggest Swiss banks. During my work I was involved in the payment, in the direct payment in cash to a person who killed the president of a foreign country. I was in the meeting where it was decided to give this cash money to the killer. This gave me dramatic headaches and troubled my conscience. It was not the only case that was really bad but it was the worst.
It was a payment instruction on order of a foreign secret service written by hand giving the order to pay a certain amount to a person who killed the top leader of a foreign country. And it was not the only case. We received several such hand written letters coming from foreign secret services giving the order to payout cash from secret accounts to fund revolutions or for the killing of people. I can confirm what John Perkins has written in his book “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”. There really exists just a system and Swiss banks are involved in such cases.
Q: Perkins book is also translated and available in Russian. Can you tell us which bank it is and who was responsible?
A: It was one of the top three Swiss banks at that time and it was the president of a country in the third world. But I don’t want to give out to many details because they will find me very easily if I say the name of the president and the name of the bank. I will risk my life.
Q: You can’t name any person in the bank either?
A: No I can’t, but I can assure you this happened. We were several persons in the meeting room. The person in charge of the physical payment of the cash came to us and asked us if he is allowed to payout such a big amount in cash to that person and one of the directors explained the case and all others said ok you can do it.
Q: Did this happened often? Was this kind of a slush fund?
A: Yes. This was a special fund managed in a special place in the bank were all the coded letters came in from abroad. The most important letters were hand written. We had to decipher them and in them was the order to pay a certain amount of cash from accounts for the assassination of people, funding revolutions, funding strikes, funding all sorts of parties. I know that certain people who are Bilderbergers were involved in such orders. I mean they gave the orders to kill.
Q: Can you tell us in what year or decade this happened?
A: I prefer not to give you the precise year but it was in the 80’s.
Q: Did you have a problem with this work?
A: Yes, a very big problem. I could not sleep for many days and after a while I left the bank. If I give you too many details they will trace me. Several secret services from abroad, mostly English speaking, gave orders to fund illegal acts, even the killing of people thru Swiss banks. We had to pay on the instructions of foreign powers for the killing of persons who did not follow the orders of Bilderberg or the IMF or the World Bank for example.
Q: This is a very startling revelation that you are making. Why do you feel the urge to say this now?
A: Because Bilderberg is meeting in Switzerland. Because the world situation is getting worse and worse. And because the biggest banks in Switzerland are involvedin unethical activities. Most of these operations are outside the balance sheet. It is a multiple of what is officially declared. Its not audited and happening without any taxes. The figures involved have a lot of zeros. Its huge amounts.
Q: So its billions?
A: Its much more, its trillions, completely unaudited, illegal and besides the tax system. Basically it’s a robbery of everybody. I mean most normal people are paying taxes and abiding by the laws. What is happening here is complete against our Swiss values, like neutrality, honesty and good faith. In the meetings I was involved in, the discussions where completely against our democratic principles. You see, most of the directors of Swiss banks are not locals anymore, they are foreigners, mostly Anglo-Saxon, either American or British, they don’t respect our neutrality, they don’t respect our values, they are against our direct democracy, they just use the Swiss banks for their illegal means.
They use huge amounts of money created out of nothing and they destroy our society and destroy the people world wide just for greed. They seek power and destroy whole countries, like Greece, Spain, Portugal or Ireland and Switzerland will be one of the last in line. And they use China as working slaves. And a person like Josef Ackermann, who is a Swiss citizen, is the top man at a German bank and he uses his power for greed and does not respect the common people. He has quite a few legal cases in Germany and also now in the States. He is a Bilderberger and does not care about Switzerland or any other country.
Q: Are you saying, some of these people that you mention will be at the up-coming Bilderberg meeting in June in St. Moritz?
A: Yes.
Q: So they are currently in a position of power?
A: Yes. They have huge amounts of money available and use it to destroy whole countries. They destroy our industry and build it up in China. On the other hand they opened up the gates in Europe for all Chinese products. The working population of Europe is earning less and less. The real aim is to destroy Europe.
Q: Do you think that the Bilderberg meeting in St. Moritz has symbolic value? Because in 2009 they where in Greece, 2010 in Spain and look what happened to them. Does this mean Switzerland can expect something bad?
A: Yes. Switzerland is one of the most important countries for them, because there is so much capital here. They are meeting there because apart from other things they want to destroy all values that Switzerland stands for. You see it’s an obstacle for them, not being in the EU or Euro, not totally controlled by Brussels and so on. Regarding values I am not talking about the big Swiss banks, because they are not Swiss anymore, most of them are lead by Americans. I am talking about the real Swiss spirit that the common people cherish and hold up.
Sure it has symbolic value, as you said, regarding Greece and Spain. Their aim is to be a kind of exclusive elite club that has all the power and everybody else is impoverished and down.
Q: Do you think that the aim of Bilderberg is to create a kind of global dictatorship, controlled by the big global corporations, were there are no sovereign states anymore?
A: Yes and Switzerland is the only place left with direct democracy and its in their way.They use the blackmail of “too big to fail” as in the case of UBS to put our country in big debt, just like they did with many other countries. In the end maybe they want to do with Switzerland what they did with Iceland, with all the banks and the country bankrupt.
Q: And also bring it in to the EU?
A: Of course. The EU is under the iron grip of Bilderberg.
Q: What do you think could stop this plan?
A: Well that’s the reason I speak to you. Its truth. Truth is the only way. Put a light on this situation, expose them. They don’t like to be in the spotlight. We have to create transparency in the banking industry and in all levels of society.
Q: What you are saying is, there is a correct side to the Swiss banking business and there are a few big banks that are misusing the financial system for their illegal activities.
A: Yes. The big banks are training their staff with Anglo-Saxon values. They are training them to be greedy and ruthless. And greed is destroying Switzerland and everybody else. As a country we have a majority of the most correct operating banks in the world, if you look at the small and midsize banks. Its just the big ones who operate globally that are a problem. They arenot Swiss anymore and don’t consider themselves as such.
Q: Do you think it is a good thing that people are exposing Bilderberg and showing who they really are?
A: I think the Strauss-Kahn case is a good chance for us, because it shows these people are corrupt, sick in their minds, so sick they are full of vices and those vices are kept under wraps on their orders. Some of them like Strauss-Kahn rape women, others are sado maso, or paedophile and many are into Satanism. When you go in some banks you see these satanistic symbols, like in the Rothschild Bank in Zurich. These people are controlled by black-mail because of the weaknesses they have. They have to follow orders or they will be exposed, they will be destroyed or even killed. The reputation of Strauss-Kahn is not only killed in the mass media, he could be killed also literally.
Q: Since Ackermann is in the steering committee of Bilderberg, do you think he is a big decision maker there?
A: Yes. But there are many others, like Lagarde, wo will probably be the next IMF head, also a member of Bilderberg, then Sarkozy and Obama.They have a new plan to censor the internet, because the internet is still free. They want to control it and use terrorism or what ever as a reason. They could even plan something horrible so that they have an excuse.
Q: So that is your fear?
A: Its not only a fear, I am certain of it. As I said, they gave orders to kill, so they are capable of terrible things. If they have the feeling they are losing control, like the uprising now in Greece and Spain and maybe Italy will be next, then they can do another Gladio. I was close to the Gladio network. As you know they instigated terrorism paid by American money to control the political system in Italy and other European countries. Regarding the murder of Aldo Moro, the payment was done thru the same system as I told you about.
Q: Was Ackermann part of this payment system at a Swiss bank?
A: (S m i l e)… you are the journalist. Look at his career and how fast he made it to the top.
Q: What do you think can be done to hinder them?
A: Well there are many good books out there that explain the background and connect the dots, like the one I mentioned by Perkins. These people really have hit men that get paid to kill. Some of them get their money thru Swiss banks. But not only, they have a system set up all over the world. And to expose to the public these people that are prepared to do anything to keep control. And I mean anything.
Q: Thru exposure we could stop them?
A: Yes, telling the truth. We are confronted with really ruthless criminals, also big war criminals. Its worse then genocide. They are ready and able to kill millions of people just to stay in power and in control.
Q: Can you explain from your view, why the mass media in the west is more or less completely silent regarding Bilderberg?
A: Because there is an agreement between them and the owners of the media. You don’t talk about it. They buy them. Also some of the top media figures are invited to the meetings but are told not to report anything they see and hear.
Q: In the structure of Bilderberg, is there an inner circle that knows the plans and then there is the majority who just follow orders?
A: Yes. You have the inner circle who are into Satanism and then there are the naive or less informed people. Some people even think they are doing something good, the outer circle.
Q: According to exposed documents and own statements, Bilderberg decided back in 1955 to create the EU and the Euro, so they made important and far reaching decisions.
A: Yes and you know that Bilderberg was founded by Prince Bernard, a former member of the SS and Nazi party and he also worked for IG Farben, who’s subsidiary produced Cyclone B. The other guy was the head of Occidental Petroleum who had close relations to the communists in the Sowjetunion. They worked both sides but really these people are fascists who want to control everything and everybody and who gets in their way is removed.
Q: Is the payment system you explained outside of normal operations, compartmentalized and in secret?
A: In those Swiss banks the normal employees don’t know this is happening. Its like an own secret department in the bank. As I said these operations are outside of the balance sheet, with no supervision. Some are situated in the same building, others are outside. They have their own security and special area where only authorized people can enter.
Q: How do they keep these transactions out of the international Swift system?
A: Well some of the Clearstream listings where true in the beginning. They just included fake names to make people believe the whole list is fake. You see they also make mistakes. The first list was true and you can trace a lot of things. You see, there are people around that discover irregularities and the truth and they tell it. Afterwards of course there are law suits and these people are forced to shut up.
The best way to stop them is to tell the truth, put the spot light on them. If we don’t stop them we will end up as their slaves.
A novel approach to design and construction could save materials and energy, and create unusually beautiful structures.
In conventional construction, workers piece together buildings from mass-produced, prefabricated bricks, I-beams, concrete columns, plates of glass and so on. Neri Oxman, an architect and a professor at MIT's Media Lab, intends to print them instead—essentially using concrete, polymers, and other materials in the place of ink. Oxman is developing a new way of designing buildings to take advantage of the flexibility that printing can provide. If she's successful, her approach could lead to designs that are impossible with today's construction methods.
Existing 3-D printers, also called rapid prototyping machines, build structures layer by layer. So far these machines have been used mainly to make detailed plastic models based on computer designs. But as such printers improve and become capable of using more durable materials, including metals, they've become a potentially interesting way to make working products.
Oxman is working to extend the capabilities of these machines—making it possible to change the elasticity of a polymer or the porosity of concrete as it's printed, for example—and mounting print heads on flexible robot arms that have greater freedom of movement than current printers.
She's also drawing inspiration from nature to develop new design strategies that take advantage of these capabilities. For example, the density of wood in a palm tree trunk varies, depending on the load it must support. The densest wood is on the outside, where bending stress is the greatest, while the center is porous and weighs less. Oxman estimates that making concrete columns this way—with low-density porous concrete in the center—could reduce the amount of concrete needed by more than 10 percent, a significant savings on the scale of a construction project.
Oxman is developing software to realize her design strategy. She inputs data about physical stresses on a structure, as well as design constraints such as size, overall shape, and the need to let in light into certain areas of a building. Based on this information, the software applies algorithms to specify how the material properties need to change throughout a structure. Then she prints out small models based on these specifications.
The early results of her work are so beautiful and intriguing that they've been featured at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Museum of Science in Boston. One example, which she calls Beast, is a chair whose design is based on the shape of a human body (her own) and the predicted distribution of pressure on the chair. The resulting 3-D model features a complex network of cells and branching structures that are soft where needed to relieve pressure and stiff where needed for support.
The work is at an early stage, but the new approach to construction and design suggests many new possibilities. A load-bearing wall could be printed in elaborate patterns that correspond to the stresses it will experience from the load it supports from wind or earthquakes, for instance.
The pattern could also account for the need to allow light into a building. Some areas would have strong, dense concrete, but in areas of low stress, the concrete could be extremely porous and light, serving only as a barrier to the elements while saving material and reducing the weight of the structure. In these non-load bearing areas, it could also be possible to print concrete that's so porous that light can penetrate, or to mix the concrete gradually with transparent materials. Such designs could save energy by increasing the amount of daylight inside a building and reducing the need for artificial lighting. Eventually, it may be possible to print efficient insulation and ventilation at the same time. The structure can be complex, since it costs no more to print elaborate patterns than simple ones.
Other researchers are developing technology to print walls and other large structures. Behrokh Khoshnevis, a professor of industrial and systems engineering and civil and environmental engineering at the University of Southern California, has built a system that can deposit concrete walls without the need for forms to contain the concrete. Oxman's work would take this another step, adding the ability to vary the properties of the concrete, and eventually work with multiple materials.
The first applications of Oxman's approach will likely to be on a relatively small scale, in consumer products and medical devices. She's used her principles to design and print wrist braces for carpal tunnel syndrome. They're customized based on the pain that a particular patient experiences. The approach could also improve the performance of prosthetics.
Oxman, 35, is developing her techniques in partnership with a range of specialists, such as Craig Carter, a professor of materials science at MIT. While he says her approach faces challenges in controlling the properties of materials, he's impressed with her ideas: "There's no doubt that the results are strikingly beautiful."
It's often said the eye is the window to the soul. But in this case, the eye is the window to Windows. At least, that was the goal when EyeTech Digital Systems enlisted the help of some BYU engineering students in creating an all-in-one eye-tracking system.
The idea behind the project was to create an inexpensive computer system that could be controlled completely with a person’s eyes. The hope was that this system could be used by people with disabilities in parts of the world where they can’t afford expensive eye-tracking systems.
The students created the tablet for their yearlong engineering capstone project that has students solving real engineering problems with real clients. Their client was EyeTech Digital Systems, an Arizona-based company that designs and develops eye-tracking hardware and software.
A separate BYU engineering team also worked with EyeTech last year to develop and improve the initial eye-tracking technology, but the focus of this year’s project was to integrate the eye tracking into a housing that resembles a thick tablet PC.
“They had a lot to learn about how to put together a PC, but the final result speaks for itself,” said Robert Chappell, the CEO of EyeTech. “We’ve worked with the engineering capstones two years in a row now, and I noticed the same thing both years: the teams always come up with a lot of creative, sometimes crazy ideas at the beginning, but after three or four months they know what they need to do, and they implement it very well.”
The finished product has a touch screen, runs Windows 7 and has the eye-tracking system built in — not bad for a device that’s only 2 inches thick, 10 inches long and 14 inches wide.
After performing a quick calibration, the system can move the mouse to wherever the user is currently looking. The system can run everything from Solitaire to Skype, and all it takes is a blink to click.
BYU student Nathan Christensen was on the team that developed the eye-tracking system.
Jedediah Nieveen, the captain for this year’s team, said the project was a challenge, but one that was rewarding on many levels.
“A lot of times in school you just work problems out of books,” he said. “But this allowed us to take what we learned and apply it to something in real life, something that can help a lot of people, and that’s really helped me.”
Although the primary purpose of the product is to help people with disabilities, the technology could also have broader applications in the fields of research, advertising and possibly even gaming.
Greg Bishop, an adjunct professor of mechanical engineering, is the team's faculty coach. Nieveen, Nathan Christensen, Clint Collins, Bryan Johnson, Vicky Lee and Scott Rice were the students involved in the project.
Source: physorg - Provided by Brigham Young University
Solar cells made from organic materials are inexpensive, lightweight and flexible, but their performance lags behind cells that contain silicon or other inorganic materials. Cornell chemist William Dichtel and colleagues have found a way to synthesize ordered organic films that could be a major step toward solving this problem.
Molecular building blocks assemble on graphene to provide oriented and ordered covalent organic frameworks. (Fernando Uribe-Romo)
It's the first time researchers have been able to coax materials known as covalent organic frameworks (COFs) out of their common powdered form into flat sheets of precisely ordered molecules on a conductive surface. That clears a major hurdle toward using COFs to replace the more expensive, less versatile materials used in solar cells and other electronics today.
The research appears in the April 8 issue of Science.
COFs have a variety of properties that are not found in traditional organic polymers, including excellent thermal stability, high surface area and permanent porosity. But while researchers have identified them as intriguing candidates for such devices, they have been hamstrung by the fact that the materials normally exist only as insoluble powders.
Dichtel, assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology, and colleagues developed a simple process for growing thin (25-400 nanometers thick) films of COFs on a surface of graphene, a single-atom-thick sheet of carbon. They used X-ray diffraction at the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS) to determine the materials' structure and orientation. The COFs grow as continuous films of well ordered, stacked layers on the graphene surfaces.
Unlike the powder form, the films grown on transparent surfaces can be probed using modern optical measurements. Researchers can also vary the properties of the frameworks by altering the structure of their components.
"These materials are so versatile -- we can tune the properties rationally, rather than relying on molecules to pack into films unpredictably," Dichtel said.
To demonstrate, the researchers created three variations of the frameworks. Of the three, one shows particular promise for solar cells -- it uses molecules called phthalocyanines, which are commonly found in industrial dyes used in products from blue jeans to ink pens.
Phthalocyanines, which are related to chlorophyll, absorb light over most of the solar spectrum -- a rare property for a single organic material.
"Obtaining these materials as films on electrode materials is a major step toward studying and using them in devices," Dichtel said. "This method represents a general way to assemble molecules on surfaces predictably. This work opens the door to take these materials in many other directions."
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