Flat Earth Theory: Does it have a scientific leg to stand on?

By:Alexandria Addesso

Although the Greek philosopher Aristotle in the 300s BCE explained in his writings that the Earth was spherical and not flat, most of the world did not come to agreement on this rational until the 1700s. Yet lately, there is in growing popularity a segment of people who currently hold the belief that the world is flat. Being that the scientific findings are constantly influx, is there any grounds for this non-spherical belief?

The most common flat-earth theory states that the Earth is a disc, with the Arctic Circle in the center of it and Antarctica around the rim in the form of a 150-foot-tall ice wall. This is a theory popularized by Orlando Ferguson, a real estate developer, in 1893. While the Earth is believed to be a disc, in this theory the sun and moon are believed to be spherical, thus explaining the Earth's day and night cycle by positing that the sun and moon are wide 32 miles (51 kilometers) and move in circles 3,000 miles (4,828 km) above the plane of the Earth. These celestial spheres illuminate different portions of the Earth in a 24-hour cycle. Yet this theory does not come with experimental evidence to back it up.



On the Flat Earth Society’s website there is a page listing simple experiments done by seven different people that support the theory. Most having to do with the lack of a “bulge” when looking, over 30 miles out into the ocean, with a telescope.

“IF the earth is a globe, and is 24,900 English statute miles in circumference, the surface of all standing water must have a certain degree of convexity--every part must be an arc of a circle,” said Tom Bishop, a flat Earth believer cited on the Flat Earth Society website. “From the summit of any such arc there will exist a curvature or declination of 8 inches in the first statute mile. In the second mile the fall will be 32 inches; in the third mile, 72 inches, or 6 feet, as shown in this chart. Ergo; looking at the opposite beach 30 miles away there should be a bulge of water over 600 feet tall blocking my view. There isn't.”



PBS NewsHour’s website also published an article several years ago about seven DIY experiments that could be down to prove the Earth is indeed spherical. One of the experiments directly challenges Bishop’s findings by simply suggesting that the experimenter watch the sunset, while laying on a beach, on the Pacific coast. If, while laying on your back you see the sun’s rays completely disappear, you will be able to see them again if you simply hop up and stand on your feet, thus justifying the Earth’s curvature.

Everything is to be questioned, even those questioning what is accepted.

Alzheimer’s Disease: Possibly Caused From Haywire Immune System Eating Brain Connections?

By: Alexandria Addesso

Memory loss and absent-mindedness has long been seen as an inevitable flaw that comes with old age. Although there is a slew of medications on the market that are prescribed for those suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease, none seem to change it by too large of a margin. This has led scientists to rethink what in particular is the root cause of Alzheimer’s.

New studies done on laboratory test rodents have found that there is a marked loss of synapses, which are a junction between two nerve cells, consisting of a minute gap across which impulses pass by diffusion of a neurotransmitter. Specifically synapses that are located in brain regions that are highly significant and key to memory.



These junctions between nerve cells are where neurotransmitters are released to spark the brain’s electrical activity. Currently, all pharmaceutical drugs on the market for the treatment of Alzheimer’s, focus on eliminating β amyloid, a protein that forms telltale sticky plaques around neurons in people with the disease. But, more β amyloid does not always mean more severe symptoms such as memory loss or poor attention.

Researchers at the University of Virginia, School of Medicine, in Charlottesville found that a protein called ‘C1q’ sets off a series of chemical reactions that ultimately mark a synapse for destruction. After this occurs immune cells called microglia-glial cells derived from mesoderm that function as macrophages (scavengers) in the central nervous system and form part of the reticuloendothelial system, destroy or “eat” the synapse.



“It is beautiful new work brings into light what’s happening in the early stage of the disease,” said one of the researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine neuroscientist Jonathan Kipnis.

These findings could mean that treatment that blocks C1q could be pivotal and highly successful in fighting Alzheimer’s Disease. When researchers gave the laboratory rodent test subjects an antibody to stop the destruction of cells by microglia, synapse loss did not appear. This could also mean a slowing in cognitive decline, but according to Edward Ruthazer, a neuroscientist at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital in Canada, using microglia as such a central role to fight the disease is “still on the controversial side.”

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Are the Well Read More Likely to Succeed?

By: Alexandria Addesso

With television, movies, and the internet to entertain us many have been reading less and less. So much information can now be attained in small sound bites or social media posts, which often leaves large knowledge filled tomes on the shelf. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, “reading has declined among every group of adult Americans,” and for the first time in American history, “less than half of the United States adult American population is reading literature.” But could this trend be detrimental? How important is reading and how does it affect a person’s chances at achieving success in their lifetime?



Studies done at The New School, a New York City private University found that reading is crucial for socialization especially in children. Researchers also found evidence that literary fiction improves a reader’s capacity to understand what others are thinking and feeling. In one study done by the university and published in Science, participants read non-fiction/nothing, popular fiction, or literary fiction then were tested on their ability to understand other people’s thoughts and emotions. Participants that read non-fiction/nothing showed unimpressive results. When they read excerpts of popular fiction their test results were dually insignificant. But, when they read literary fiction their test results improved vastly and so did their capacity for empathy.

Reading is also the key for those who want to be leaders or chief executive officers (CEO). Reading in general has shown to increases verbal intelligence, making a leader a more adept as well as a more articulate communicator. Being that reading is a form of leisurely recreation, it has been shown to be a good stress reliever which overall leads to a more peaceful work environment. Some very well read successful people include Steve Jobs the founder of Apple, Phil Knight the founder of Nike, and Winston Churchill who won the Nobel Prize for Literature.



Currently about 60 million Americans suffer from some form of a sleep disorder. A lack of sleep can negatively affect a person’s mental, physical, and emotional well-being. Sleep experts often recommend establishing a regular de-stressing routine before bed to calm your mind and ready your body for rest. Reading is one of the top strategies recommended to add to your routine right before going to sleep. Bright lights from electronic devices signal the brain to wake up, whereas reading a book under a dim light can tell your system to do the inverse.

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Smartphone Usage Linked to Male Infertility

By: Alexandria Addesso

The use of cellular phones, have become so common in our day-to-day lives that the inanimate objects almost become another appendage. Smart phones, the most commonly used type of cellular phones today rely on electromagnetic frequency (EMF) radiation to receive real time messaging. But could this form of frequencies be harmful when they are being transmitted all day?

Being that cell phones are portable, people tend to have them on their person all day. Men, more often than women, usually keep their cellular smart phones in their front pockets. Multiple recent studies have been conducted on whether keeping these cellular devices in such a close proximity to a man’s genitalia while transmitting EMF radiation could be harmful.



“Collectively, the research indicates that exposure to cell phone radiation may lead to decreases in sperm count, sperm motility and vitality, as well as increases in indicators of sperm damage such as higher levels of reactive oxygen species (chemically reactive molecules containing oxygen), oxidative stress, DNA damage and changes in sperm morphology ,” said The Environmental Working Group (EWG) after publishing a scientific literature review of 10 studies linking smartphone usage and male infertility.

Other studies even indicate specifically an 8 percent decrease in sperm motility and an approximate 9 percent decrease in sperm viability.
“Overall, these findings raise a number of related health policy and patient management issues that deserve our immediate attention. Specifically, we recommend that men of reproductive age who engage in high levels of mobile phone use do not keep their phones in receiving mode below waist level,” wrote researcher GN De Iuliis in the study Mobile phone radiation induces reactive oxygen species production and DNA damage in human spermatozoa in vitro published in 2009.



Even though keeping your cell phone on a belt clip has long been seen as more safe, much data has shown that it is only slightly better than carrying it in your front pocket. If a man is trying to conceive a child it is best that he reduces his cell phone usage. Data on smartphone usage and female infertility is still widely unknown.

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Evolutionary Psychology: A New Approach to Understand Crime

Relative new branch of Psychology addresses crime towards a comprehensive explanation of Punishment, Public Policy, and Prevention

Crime is responsible for a significant amount of human suffering in society. The lives of victims and their families can be adversely affected; often in profound ways. Crime can erode social trust in communities and lead to fear amongst the residents. Crime is expensive for police and even more expensive to prosecute and contain. Perpetrators, too, suffer from the effects of their actions as their lives are altered, often permanently, and typically for the worse. It’s important to analyze an evolutionary approach, which will be invaluable for advancing our understanding of why crime occurs and what accounts for the main patterns in offending that we observed.

We need to keep in mind that problematic behaviors can arise as a result of evolved psychological mechanisms operating as they were “designed” by natural and sexual selection. A significant amount of male to male aggression, for instance, reflects selection for intra-sexual competition amongst males because success in such context advances reproductive success. Male to male violence reflects the operation of evolved adaptation working as they were designed to. Problem behaviors can also arise through the operation of conditional adaptations operating as they were designed by natural and sexual selection in response to specific social and ecological environments.



Before we begin considering specific approaches for preventing crime, we think it is useful to recognize three general points regarding an evolutionary approach towards reducing problematic behaviors. First, where it is possible, programs and policies should work with “human nature” rather than against it. Even if we recognize that humans are enormously flexible in their behavioral repertories, there are likely to be certain practices, policies, and social arrangements that work too crudely against the grain of evolved predisposition and proclivities. Hence, this will likely lead to ineffectiveness. A second related point is that it can often be possible to affect “workarounds” that act on the same evolved motivations that lead to problematic behavior, but instead, channeling the behavior along more societally desirable paths is ideal.

Police officers can’t help but think they have a magical effect on the flow of traffic as all they have to do is enter a stream of vehicles in a marked patrol car and the cars around them immediately slow down and become more cautious. Of course there is no magic involved: human behavior is enormously flexible and will change in predictable ways to different features of the situation as they emerge.

There are two interesting strategies (increasing the effort and reducing the rewards of offending) that are fairly explicable from both a rational choice and evolutionary perspective. If a good deal of offending is related to the pursuit of social status, then changing the reward structure of the environment will alter the relative value of criminal actions as a means to increase social standing. Better locks, bars, screens, security measures and so forth. Simple means that offenders find it harder to obtain the rewards of offending.



Efforts to increase the risk of offending such as the implementation of closed-circuit television, improved street lighting, and better opportunity for natural surveillance have shown to be effective in reducing certain types of offending . Strategies to remove excuses for offending such as instructions, signs, notices, and techniques for altering the conscience of individuals have been evaluated less rigorously. However, we suggest that both of these situational crime prevention strategies can be effective for largely the same reasons. Both strategies provide ecological context that enhance prosocial behavior by reinforcing social and moral norms and alerting individuals to the risk of punishment.

There are a large number of different social crime prevention programs that have been developed and are subject to formal evaluations. Most of these programs focus on addressing the known risk factors for offending and there is a good deal of evidence that properly developed and implemented social crime prevention programs that can be effective in reducing offending. From an evolutionary perspective, the importance of developmental focused social crime prevention initiatives cannot be emphasized enough.



Approaches to interventions that largely focus on merely preventing or stopping risky behavior without any consideration of the ‘function’ of that behavior are not likely to be effective. We think that the key contribution of an evolutionary approach is to help us to go beyond our understanding of the developmental risk factors for offending to identify the key causal processes that are most likely to be implicated. For example, prevention programs like education and home visitation provide information about proper prenatal and antenatal care, parenting practices, and health care which create less harsh intrauterine and early childhood environments that, in turn, can promote the development of slower life history strategies.

An evolutionary perspective suggests that the existence of punishment is essential for the viable functioning of any society, small or large. Without the existence of the third-party punishment of individuals who violate important social and moral norms, there will almost certainly be a substantial reduction in cooperation and an increase in unsanctioned punishment. We are not simply suggesting that we should punish norm transgressions because that is how we have evolved to respond to such transgression. Rather, any attempt to abolish punishment is likely to have unintended negative consequences given our evolved predispositions and the evolutionary function of punishment.



Psychological and behavioral adaptations along with cultural practices have evolved in tandem in response to the violation of significant moral norms. One result of this dynamic and evolving interaction of biology and human nature has been a suite of normative systems and institutions specifically designed to prevent, and if necessary, manage serious wrongdoing (crime).
A problem with groups or individuals seeking revenge without the mediation of an impartial agency is that it can lead to a seemingly endless cycle of harmful actions and counteractions that destabilize social networks.

Punishment can be defined loosely as the intentional infliction of sanctions by the state on individuals who have unjustifiably harmed other people. There are numerous normative justifications of punishment including retributivism, consequentialism, and communicative justification.

The focus of the communicative justification of punishment on the well-being of a community means that relationships between moral stakeholders are of critical importance and the role of individual entitlements and duties assumes lesser importance. It is a collectivist approach to resolving disputes between people and arriving towards solutions to ethical problems such as crime. The process of reconciliation involves forgiveness and the willingness of individuals and the state to look beyond the imposition of punishment, or vengeance, to the moral task of repairing damaged relationships between offenders, victims, and the community.

Because humans are cultural species whose behavior is strongly influenced by social and moral norms and the ecological contexts in which they are embedded, changes in these norms can affect significant changes in behavior that can be sustained through cultural and ecological inheritance. Sustained efforts to support and facilitate the development of pro-social norms and change norms that support or facilitate antisocial behavior, are therefore, likely to be one essential component of efforts to reduce the harmful effects of crime. Changes in legal practices have an important role to play in this context. An evolutionary perspective does not provide all the answers. It does offer a coherent, theoretical framework for integrating the basic and applied sciences in a way that can foster the development of a science of intentional change that has implications for our efforts to reduce offending and the various harms that arise from crime and its management.
By: Jaime F. Adriazola
American Graduate University, Washington DC
References:
Evolutionary Criminology, Russil Durrant / Tony Ward
The Psychology of criminal conduct; New Providence NJ, Mathew Bender & Company Inc.
Missing the Revolution: Darwinism for social Scientists, Oxford: University Press
Handbook of evolutionary psychology, D. M. Buss
Why evolution is true; New York: Viking
The evolutionary psychology of violence; Psicothema

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The Science of Solidarity

By: Alexandria Addesso

To many Charles Darwin is the utmost authority when it comes to the study of evolution. Many people took his findings about the importance of competition and how it plays a role in evolution and ran with it. Even as far as applying it to society and thus creating social Darwinism. Anarcho-scientist Peter Kropotkin was inspired by the publication of On the Origin of Species to go and do his own observations of a multitude of species and seemed to come to the opposite conclusion of such Darwinism backers. He argued against claims that competition alone led to evolution or ‘survival of the fittest’, and insisted that mutual aid is a major factor of evolution. The following is an introductory excerpt from Kropotkin’s book Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution.

Two aspects of animal life impressed me most during the journeys which I made in my youth in Eastern Siberia and Northern Manchuria. One of them was the extreme severity of the struggle for existence which most species of animals have to carry on against an inclement Nature; the enormous destruction of life which periodically results from natural agencies; and the consequent paucity of life over the vast territory which fell under my observation. And the other was, that even in those few spots where animal life teemed in abundance, I failed to find – although I was eagerly looking for it – that bitter struggle for the means of existence, among animals belonging to the same species, which was considered by most Darwinists (though not always by Darwin himself) as the dominant characteristic of struggle for life, and the main factor of evolution.



Kropotkin chronicled his findings while observing a wide variety of insects, birds, sea-life, and different mammals including humans. When it came to who was fittest to survive and further their species, it was most often those who cooperated via forms of mutual aid and solidarity.

As soon as we study animals – not in laboratories and museums only, but in the forest and the prairie, in the steppe and the mountains – we at once perceive that though there is an immense amount of warfare and extermination going on amidst various species, and especially amidst various classes of animals, there is, at the same time, as much, or perhaps even more, of mutual support, mutual aid, and mutual defense amidst animals belonging to the same species or, at least, to the same society. Sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle. Of course it would be extremely difficult to estimate, however roughly, the relative numerical importance of both these series of facts. But if we resort to an indirect test, and ask Nature: "Who are the fittest: those who are continually at war with each other, or those who support one another?" we at once see that those animals which acquire habits of mutual aid are undoubtedly the fittest. They have more chances to survive, and they attain, in their respective classes, the highest development of intelligence and bodily organization. If the numberless facts which can be brought forward to support this view are taken into account, we may safely say that mutual aid is as much a law of animal life as mutual struggle, but that, as a factor of evolution, it most probably has a far greater importance, inasmuch as it favours the development of such habits and characters as insure the maintenance and further development of the species, together with the greatest amount of welfare and enjoyment of life for the individual, with the least waste of energy.



Solidarity scientifically leads to the continuation of life. Through the solidarity of family units, as wells even sometimes larger communities, children are able to be raised and protected. Solidarity is also pivotal for any revolution, social movement, or major change to occur. The slogan “workers of the world unite,” first mentioned in the Communist Manifesto in 1848, called for solidarity among all proletariat (the lower/working class) regardless to nation or ethnicity. These were truly powerful words of unity for those across a particular class line against their oppressors that belonged to the bourgeoisie (the middle/capitalist class).

A major group that unified lower class people across ethnic and gender lines on U.S. soil in the aftermath of the Democratic Convention protests of 1968 was the original Rainbow Coalition. It was formed by the Illinois Chapter of The Black Panthers in Chicago and also included the Young Patriots (a group of white youth who had migrated from Appalachia to Chicago), the Young Lords (a group of Puerto Rican nationalist youth), disenfranchised jewish youth and members of the women’s movement. The Rainbow Coalition epitomized solidarity and intersectionality within the class struggle. Because of its diversity, the Rainbow Coalition was able to bring about treaties among violent rivaling gangs as well as fight against police brutality that did nothing but add to the wave of violence. With unity comes power, and this was highly threatening to both local and national government.



“It seems to me that a lot of the real intense government repression didn’t happen until the Black Panthers started building coalitions,” said Bobby Lee a Black Panthers member who helped organize the Rainbow Coalition along with Deputy Chairman of the Illinois Chapter Fred Hampton, in an interview with Chicago Area. “Once the party departed from the ‘hate whitey’ trip and got serious about building real politics, we were a threat—plain and simple. The FBI were always watching us. But the Rainbow Coalition was their worst nightmare.”

For major changes to occur, for the preservation of life, and to strive towards survival and thus evolution, solidarity is a major factor.

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Archaeologists Unearthed the First Pope In History. What They Found Proved Something Incredible

The mummy of Pope St. Pius I is one of the best preserved in the history of mankind. His corpse was not embalmed it was mummified naturally for a period of about 1,700 years.

His remains are considered a true discovery for science, because even though during life he suffered from cardiovascular diseases, gallstones, gout, diabetes, caries and tuberculosis, these organs preserved very well.

This bishop is considered as the first official Pope. He was born in Aquileia, Italy. And he died in 155, to be buried in the beautiful cathedral of Aquileia.

Much later, in the year 1789 the building of the cathedral was demolished. The coffin of the Pope was opened and everyone was surprised by the fact that the body was in perfect condition. Finally the body was transferred to a chapel in the year 1875.

Studies say there are several reasons why the body has been preserved in such a good way. First, because he was naturally mummified thanks to the air between the months of November and December, which are the coldest of the year and because of the large amount of plants and humidity inside the crypt.



But until 2010 scientists had no possibility to study the remains carefully.
The coffin’s pillow and mattress were filled with plants and vegetables that gave off a strong smell, probably to hide the smell of the corpse, but also to preserve it. There were lavender, mint, hops and juniper berries. ”

However, the most surprising thing was that they found a plenty of documents narrating different versions of the alleged life of the son of God, Jesus of Nazareth.



The discovery suggests that senior leaders of the Catholic Church hid the evidence that proves that the history of the Messiah was only an invention to carry out the purposes of the order.

Among the documents could be found the stories of hundreds of prophets who had a life very similar to that of Christ, among which stand out the figures of Horus, Mithra, Krishna, Dionysius, etc.

After the find, a large number of versions about what actually happened with Jesus has emerged. Science, on the other hand, claims that there is evidence to prove the existence of Jesus the man, but not as the life of the supposed son of God, that the narrative created from the life of other prophets and different cultures of the world.

Source: www.smithsonianmag.com

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Does the Universe have a Rest Frame?

Experiment aims at resolving divergence between special relativity and standard model of cosmology

Physics is sometimes closer to philosophy when it comes to understanding the universe. Donald Chang from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, China, attempts to elucidate whether the universe has a resting frame. The results have recently been published in EPJ Plus.

To answer this tricky question, he has developed an experiment to precisely evaluate particle mass. This is designed to test the special theory of relativity that assumes the absence of a rest frame, otherwise it would be possible to determine which inertial frame is stationary and which frame is moving. This assumption, however, appears to diverge from the standard model of cosmology, which assumes that what we see as a vacuum is not an empty space. The assumption is that the energy of our universe comes from the quantum fluctuation in the vacuum.

In a famous experiment conducted by Michelson and Morley in the late 19th century, the propagation of light was proved to be independent of the movement of the laboratory system. Einstein, his Special Theory of Relativity, inferred that the physical laws governing the propagation of light are equivalent in all inertial frames -- this was later extended to all physics laws not just optics.



In this study, the author set out to precisely measure the masses of two charged particles moving in opposite directions. The conventional thinking assumes that the inertial frame applies equally to both particles. If that's the case, no detectable mass difference between these two particles is likely to arise. However, if the contrary is true, and there is a rest frame in the universe, the author expects to see mass difference that is dependent on the orientation of the laboratory frame. This proposed experiment partially inspired by the Michelson and Morley experiments can be conducted using existing experimental techniques. For simplicity, an electron can be used as the charged particle in the experiment.

Story Source: Material provided by Springer
Journal Reference: Donald C. Chang. Is there a resting frame in the universe? A proposed experimental test based on a precise measurement of particle mass.

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