For more interactive features, visit Envisioning Technology
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Open Source Society | Jeremy Blum [TEDx]
Jeremy is an undergraduate senior majoring in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell. In addition to taking classes, Jeremy leads Cornell University Sustainable Design (a 150 person interdisciplinary design-build team) and does research in the Creative Machines Lab. He's constantly developing new open sources projects, and has released nearly a hundred video tutorials that aim to teach people about electronics and engineering. He maintains a video series and blog sponsored by element14 electronics, and is presently employed by MakerBot Industries, designing open source electronics for personal 3D printers.
TEDxCornellUniversity - Jeremy Blum - Open Source Society
TEDxCornellUniversity - Jeremy Blum - Open Source Society
BREAKTHROUGH! IBM: We're on the cusp of the Quantum Computing revolution
IBM Research Advances Device Performance for Quantum Computing
Latest results bring device performance near the minimum requirements for implementation of a practical quantum computer.
Scaling up to hundreds or thousands of quantum bits becomes a possibility.
YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, NY – 28 Feb 2012: Scientists at IBM Research (NYSE: IBM)/ (#ibmresearch) have achieved major advances in quantum computing device performance that will accelerate the realization of a practical, full-scale quantum computer. For specific applications, quantum computing which leverages the underlying quantum mechanical behavior of matter has the potential to deliver computational power that is unrivaled by any supercomputer today.
Using a variety of techniques in the IBM labs, scientists have established three new records for reducing the error in elementary computations and retaining the integrity of quantum mechanical properties in quantum bits (qubits) – the basic units that carry information within quantum computing. Furthermore, IBM has chosen to employ superconducting qubits which use established microfabrication techniques developed for silicon technology, providing the potential to one day scale up to and manufacture thousands or millions of qubits.
IBM researchers will be presenting their latest results today at the annual American Physical Society meeting taking place February 27-March 1, 2012 in Boston, MA.
The Possibilities of Quantum Computing
The special properties of qubits allow a quantum computer to work on millions of computations at once, while a desktop PC can typically handle minimal computations at a time. For example, a single 250-qubit state contains more bits of information than there are particles in the universe.
These properties will have wide-spread implications foremost for the field of data encryption where quantum computers could factor very large numbers like those used to decode and encode sensitive information.
"The quantum computing work we are doing shows it is no longer just a brute force physics experiment. It's time to start creating systems based on this science that will take computing to a whole new level," says IBM scientist Matthias Steffen, manager of the IBM Research team that's focused on developing quantum computing systems to a point where it can be applied to real-world problems.
Numerous other applications could include searching databases of unstructured information, performing a range of optimization tasks and solving new interesting mathematical problems.
How Quantum Computing Works
The most basic piece of information that a classical computer understands is a bit. Much like a light that can be switched on or off, a bit can have only one of two values: "1" or "0". For qubits, they can hold a value of "1" or "0" as well as both values at the same time. Described as superposition, this is what allows quantum computers to perform millions of calculations at once.
One of the great challenges for scientists seeking to harness the power of quantum computing is controlling or removing quantum decoherence – the creation of errors in calculations caused by interference from factors such as heat, electromagnetic radiation, and materials defects. To deal with this problem, scientists have been experimenting for years to discover ways of reducing the number of errors and of lengthening the time periods over which the qubits retain their quantum mechanical properties. When this time is sufficiently long, error correction schemes become effective making it possible to perform long and complex calculations.
There are many viable systems that can potentially lead to a functional quantum computer. IBM is focusing on using superconducting qubits that will allow a more facile transition to scale up and manufacturing.
IBM has recently been experimenting with a unique "three dimensional" superconducting qubit (3D qubit), an approach that was initiated at Yale University. Among the results, the IBM team has used a 3D qubit [technical paper available] to extend the amount of time that the qubits retain their quantum states up to 100 microseconds. This value reaches just past the minimum threshold to enable effective error correction schemes and suggests that scientists can begin to focus on broader engineering aspects for scalability.
In separate experiments, the group at IBM also demonstrated a more traditional "two-dimensional" qubit (2D qubit) device and implemented a two-qubit logic operation – a controlled-NOT (CNOT) operation [technical paper available], which is a fundamental building block of a larger quantum computing system. Their operation showed a 95 percent success rate, enabled in part due to the long coherence time of nearly 10 microseconds. These numbers are on the cusp of effective error correction schemes and greatly facilitate future multi-qubit experiments.
IBM and Quantum Computing Leadership
The implementation of a practical quantum computer poses tremendous scientific and technological challenges, but all results taken together paint a very favorable picture for realizing the first practical quantum computer in the not too distant future.
Core device technology and performance metrics at IBM have undergone a series of amazing advancements by a factor of 100 to 1,000 times since the middle of 2009, culminating in the recent results that are very close to the minimum requirements for a full-scale quantum computing system as determined by the world-wide research community. In these advances, IBM stresses the importance and value of the ongoing exchange of information and learning with the quantum computing research community as well as direct university and industrial collaborations.
"The superconducting qubit research led by the IBM team has been progressing in a much focused way on the road to a reliable, scalable quantum computer. The device performance that they have now reported brings them nearly to the tipping point; we can now see the building blocks that will be used to prove that error correction can be effective, and that reliable logical qubits can be realized," observes David DiVincenzo, professor at the Institute of Quantum Information, Forschungszentrum Juelich.
Based on this progress, optimism about superconducting qubits and the possibilities for a future quantum computer are rapidly growing. While most of the work in the field to date has focused on improvements in device performance, efforts in the community now must now include systems integration aspects, such as assessing the classical information processing demands for error correction, I/O issues, feasibility, and costs with scaling.
IBM envisions a practical quantum computing system as including a classical system intimately connected to the quantum computing hardware. Expertise in communications and packaging technology will be essential at and beyond the level presently practiced in the development of today's most sophisticated digital computers.
Source: IBM: We're on the cusp of the Quantum Computing revolution
Read more: IBM research advances device performance for quantum computing
IBM Research Announces New Advances in Quantum Computing
SERIOUS CROWD - Ron Paul Rocks Michigan State University
The headline at Drudge right now reads “Ron Paul draws 4000 at Michigan State.” Kudos to Drudge for reporting what most don’t: That Ron Paul continues to draw the largest and most enthusiastic crowds of any candidate in this election. “Freedom is popular” says Paul. Indeed. Perhaps photos tell the story better than words ever could:
Ron Paul Michigan State University Auditorium Intro and Crowd - 2-27-12
Ron Paul Speaks at Michigan State University (2/27/12)
Ron Paul Speech at Central Michigan University
Ron Paul Michigan State University Auditorium Intro and Crowd - 2-27-12
Ron Paul Speaks at Michigan State University (2/27/12)
Ron Paul Speech at Central Michigan University
INDIA REVOLT - India braces for general strike
Indian workers have begun a strike against high inflation and to demand better working conditions and an end to selling off state firms.
The strike has the support of most of India's major trade unions and thousands of smaller unions from across the political spectrum.
Banks, transport, post offices and ports are thought most likely to be affected by the industrial action.
But services on India's rail network are not expected to be disrupted.
States such as West Bengal, Tripura and Kerala, where the communist parties have greater influence, had been expected to be most affected by the strike.
But early reports from Calcutta, the capital of West Bengal, said the normal life was largely unaffected by the strike.
Public transport, including the city's metro railway network, was running normally and flight operations from the domestic and international airports were on schedule, the Press Trust Of India news agency said.
"Everything has been normal so far. Things are going on well. Tight security arrangements are in place with 400 police pickets set up in various parts of the city," police commissioner RK Pachnanda said.
TV channels reported that the strike was having little impact in Delhi and Mumbai.
Although India's inflation rate dropped from 9.1% in December, it remains stubbornly high at 7.5%.
Growth for the financial year ending in March is also expected to be around 7%, lower than the previous forecasts of about 9%.
The government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is trying to cut its budget deficit by selling stakes in state-run companies - something the unions object to.
Other demands include measures to curb inflation, universal social security cover for non-unionised workers and enforcement of labour laws.
Source: BBC - India braces for general strike
Strike across India likely to hit major services
Monday, February 27, 2012
Team WikiSpeed - Wikispeed Fuel Efficient Cars | Joe Justice
Joe Justice applies current software development principles to manufacture, achieving extraordinary results in designing a high efficiency and high performance automobile.
Visit: Wikispeed Fuel Efficient Car
TEDxRainier - Joe Justice - WikiSpeed
Visit: Wikispeed Fuel Efficient Car
TEDxRainier - Joe Justice - WikiSpeed
Global Risks 2012 Seventh Edition | World Economic Forum
Global Risks 2012 Seventh Edition - An Initiative of the Risk Response Network
Global Risks 2012 report is based on a survey of 469 experts from industry, government, academia and civil society that examines 50 global risks across five categories.
World Economic Forum in collaboration with:
Marsh & McLennan Companies
Swiss Reinsurance Company
Wharton Center for Risk Management,
University of Pennsylvania
Zurich Financial Services
View Report: Global Risks 2012 Seventh Edition Report
Download PDF: Global Risks 2012 Seventh Edition
Global Risks 2012 report is based on a survey of 469 experts from industry, government, academia and civil society that examines 50 global risks across five categories.
World Economic Forum in collaboration with:
Marsh & McLennan Companies
Swiss Reinsurance Company
Wharton Center for Risk Management,
University of Pennsylvania
Zurich Financial Services
View Report: Global Risks 2012 Seventh Edition Report
Download PDF: Global Risks 2012 Seventh Edition
Sunday, February 26, 2012
A Post-Quantum World | Vlatko Vedral
A couple of years ago I published a book called Decoding Reality, in which I argued that the most fundamental units of reality are not energy or matter, but bits of information. I also claimed that this resolves the age old issue of creation ex nihilo, namely how something can be created out of nothing. The answer, I maintained, was in the fact that the bits of information making up the universe are quantum. Quantum physics is based on the idea that information can be created completely spontaneously, namely without any preexisting information.
Most of you science buffs out there will, of course, know that science progresses in abrupt jumps, and every once in a while a new theory gets discovered that forces a radical departure from previously held views. I indeed viewed the evolution of science, through what the philosopher Karl Popper called the process of “conjectures and refutations,” as another instance of information processing. But if it’s not unlikely that quantum physics will one day be surpassed, then what confidence should you have in my main thesis? Could it be that the new theory will claim that some other entity – and not a bit of information – is yet more fundamental? In other words, will the post-quantum reality be made up of some other stuff?
I believe that the answer to this question is ‘no’.
For a start, quantum physics is really well established. It’s had about 100 years of complete success as far as experiments. In fact, quantum physics is so accurate that we physicists are getting desperate (let’s be honest here: we’d love it to fail, since this opens the door to discovering a new theory, and for a physicist this is the easiest way of entering the Physics Hall of Fame). Even the weirdest of quantum predictions (what Einstein termed “spooky action at a distance”) are now established beyond reasonable doubt. Quantum objects seem to know about each other in a way not allowed in the classical world, and even when these objects are far apart they act as an inseparable whole.
The fact that quantum spookiness is so well established means that if the new theory comes along, it cannot imply that the world is less spooky than quantumly. The post-quantum world can only be even spookier!
Now, people are studying all sorts of post-quantum scenarios theoretically (it’s good to do this kind of stuff since one never knows where a breakthrough will come from – these are the “unknown unknowns”). And it so happens that they all have to maintain the same degree of genuine randomness as quantum physics. It is not easy to see this — not because the arguments are intrinsically difficult, but because they are lengthy (it all goes back to spookiness, so please trust me on this one).
The random creation of information, according to the above logic, will remain in post-quantum physics and therefore, bits of information will still be in the best position of explain the creation of everything out of nothing.
Interestingly enough, some other ideas also survive the onslaught of post-quantum physics. I have studied this recently with my colleagues Markus Mueller of Perimeter Institute and Oscar Dahlsten of Singapore. We have found that the link between information and disorder (as quantified by the infamous entropy) remains in the new theories. This implies, for instance, that the link between the black hole entropy and its area (quantified by the famous Bekenstein-Hawking formula) is also likely to continue to be true.
So, are any predictions in my book going to be wrong if quantum physics fails? Yes, and possibly many. One of them is that I argued for developing quantum technology – quantum computers – and described its advantages over the present technology. If quantum physics fails, then we have to construct technology based on the new physics (but this is good news, since this can only be even more powerful). Likewise, I argued that living systems might be using quantum physics to process information more efficiently. This too fails in the post-quantum world, which again is likely to be good news, but it might also bring a new twist on the relationship between physics and biology. Could it be, as one of the pioneers of quantum physics Erwin Schroedinger alluded a long time ago, that biology will force us to come up with new laws of physics?
We are all busy thinking that a new theory will come by studying quantum physics and gravity and that we need to probe smaller and smaller regions of space and time to get there. But, maybe in order to explain the existence of life we need to come up with another theory of physics – something going well beyond quantum physics.
Vlatko Vedral is Professor of Quantum Information Science at Oxford University. Vedral studied undergraduate theoretical physics at Imperial College London, where he also received a PhD for his work on ‘Quantum Information Theory of Entanglement’. Throughout his career he has held a number of visiting professorships at different international institutions. He has published more than 170 research papers and has written two textbooks, as well as a popular science book Decoding Reality: The Universe as Quantum Information (2010).
Source: A Post-Quantum World
Most of you science buffs out there will, of course, know that science progresses in abrupt jumps, and every once in a while a new theory gets discovered that forces a radical departure from previously held views. I indeed viewed the evolution of science, through what the philosopher Karl Popper called the process of “conjectures and refutations,” as another instance of information processing. But if it’s not unlikely that quantum physics will one day be surpassed, then what confidence should you have in my main thesis? Could it be that the new theory will claim that some other entity – and not a bit of information – is yet more fundamental? In other words, will the post-quantum reality be made up of some other stuff?
I believe that the answer to this question is ‘no’.
For a start, quantum physics is really well established. It’s had about 100 years of complete success as far as experiments. In fact, quantum physics is so accurate that we physicists are getting desperate (let’s be honest here: we’d love it to fail, since this opens the door to discovering a new theory, and for a physicist this is the easiest way of entering the Physics Hall of Fame). Even the weirdest of quantum predictions (what Einstein termed “spooky action at a distance”) are now established beyond reasonable doubt. Quantum objects seem to know about each other in a way not allowed in the classical world, and even when these objects are far apart they act as an inseparable whole.
The fact that quantum spookiness is so well established means that if the new theory comes along, it cannot imply that the world is less spooky than quantumly. The post-quantum world can only be even spookier!
Now, people are studying all sorts of post-quantum scenarios theoretically (it’s good to do this kind of stuff since one never knows where a breakthrough will come from – these are the “unknown unknowns”). And it so happens that they all have to maintain the same degree of genuine randomness as quantum physics. It is not easy to see this — not because the arguments are intrinsically difficult, but because they are lengthy (it all goes back to spookiness, so please trust me on this one).
The random creation of information, according to the above logic, will remain in post-quantum physics and therefore, bits of information will still be in the best position of explain the creation of everything out of nothing.
Interestingly enough, some other ideas also survive the onslaught of post-quantum physics. I have studied this recently with my colleagues Markus Mueller of Perimeter Institute and Oscar Dahlsten of Singapore. We have found that the link between information and disorder (as quantified by the infamous entropy) remains in the new theories. This implies, for instance, that the link between the black hole entropy and its area (quantified by the famous Bekenstein-Hawking formula) is also likely to continue to be true.
So, are any predictions in my book going to be wrong if quantum physics fails? Yes, and possibly many. One of them is that I argued for developing quantum technology – quantum computers – and described its advantages over the present technology. If quantum physics fails, then we have to construct technology based on the new physics (but this is good news, since this can only be even more powerful). Likewise, I argued that living systems might be using quantum physics to process information more efficiently. This too fails in the post-quantum world, which again is likely to be good news, but it might also bring a new twist on the relationship between physics and biology. Could it be, as one of the pioneers of quantum physics Erwin Schroedinger alluded a long time ago, that biology will force us to come up with new laws of physics?
We are all busy thinking that a new theory will come by studying quantum physics and gravity and that we need to probe smaller and smaller regions of space and time to get there. But, maybe in order to explain the existence of life we need to come up with another theory of physics – something going well beyond quantum physics.
Vlatko Vedral is Professor of Quantum Information Science at Oxford University. Vedral studied undergraduate theoretical physics at Imperial College London, where he also received a PhD for his work on ‘Quantum Information Theory of Entanglement’. Throughout his career he has held a number of visiting professorships at different international institutions. He has published more than 170 research papers and has written two textbooks, as well as a popular science book Decoding Reality: The Universe as Quantum Information (2010).
Source: A Post-Quantum World
Class Size = 1 Billion, MIT OpenCourseWare's Goal for the Next Decade | Education@Google
Ten years ago, MIT helped launch a revolution in access to education when it announced it would place the core teaching materials from its entire curriculum online for anyone to use at no charge. Today, MIT OpenCourseWare shares materials from more than 2,000 MIT courses and more than 250 universities around the world have joined MIT in publishing their own course materials openly. Sites like YouTube.edu, Khan Academy, OpenStudy.com have emerged to explore this new territory of informal online learning. In December, MIT announced a new online learning initiative, MITx, which will offer a portfolio of free courses through an online learning platform that features interactivity and assessment.
In this presentation by Cecilia d'Oliveira, MIT OpenCourseWare's Executive Director and Shigeru Miyagawa, Chair of MIT OpenCourseWare's Faculty Advisory Committee and Head of MIT's Foreign Languages and Literatures Department, we'll examine the how open educational resources are changing the educational landscape and meeting the global demands for open knowledge.
Education@Google: Class Size = 1 Billion, MIT OpenCourseWare's Goal for the Next Decade
In this presentation by Cecilia d'Oliveira, MIT OpenCourseWare's Executive Director and Shigeru Miyagawa, Chair of MIT OpenCourseWare's Faculty Advisory Committee and Head of MIT's Foreign Languages and Literatures Department, we'll examine the how open educational resources are changing the educational landscape and meeting the global demands for open knowledge.
Education@Google: Class Size = 1 Billion, MIT OpenCourseWare's Goal for the Next Decade
Saturday, February 25, 2012
D-Shape 3D printer can print full-sized houses
The growing popularity of 3D printers, such as the Printbot or MakerBot's Thing-o-Matic, testify to the fact that additive manufacturing is slowly entering the mainstream. The devices are now small enough to fit on a desk and they can make all sorts of stuff, such as toys, chess figures, or spare door knobs. But what if you want to make something slightly bigger - say, a house? Then you need to turn to Enrico Dini, the founder of Monolite UK and the inventor of the D-Shape "robotic building system."
The D-Shape is potentially capable of printing a two story building - complete with stairs, partition walls, columns, domes, and piping cavities - using only ordinary sand and an inorganic binder. The resulting material is said to be indistinguishable from marble, and exhibits the same physical properties, with durability highly superior to that of masonry and reinforced concrete.
The building process is very close to what we'd expect of a huge 3D printer. A nozzle moves along a pre-programmed path, extruding a liquid adhesive compound on a bed of sand with a solid catalyst mixed in. The binding agent reacts with the catalyst, and the solidifying process begins. Meanwhile, the remaining sand serves to support the structure. Then, another layer of sand is added and the whole process is repeated. Since it's computer assisted, no specialist knowledge is required to use the printer. All that's needed is a CAD design file.
The desired structure is erected in a single work session, starting from the bottom up. The solidification process takes 24 hours to complete, but subsequent layers, 5-10 mm in thickness, may be added without delay. The annual output of the current model of D-Shape is estimated at 2,500 square meters (26,910 sq ft), which is equal to 12 two-story buildings. Reportedly, the building process takes a quarter of the time required to build an equivalent structure with traditional means.
The time gap widens in the case of structures with custom shapes. Traditionally, Portland cement is used to achieve concave or convex forms. The process is extremely time-consuming, as it often involves manual casting, intricate scaffolding, and other steps. D-Shape, by contrast, can handle such designs just as quickly as it handles regular walls.
This all sounds very promising. However, since the inventors themselves haven't yet managed to print a proper house using their machine, we expect it may take some time for this technology to prove itself. Still, it seems like it already has a lot to offer, especially to those who value creativity over practicality.
Once it's ready, be sure to watch the documentary by Marc Webb and Jack Wake Walker titled The Man Who Prints Houses. As you can see on the teaser below, It puts Dini's efforts to revolutionize the construction industry into a broader perspective.
The Man Who Prints Houses Trailer
Source: D-Shape 3D printer can print full-sized houses
Visit: D-Shape
DEBATE: Nature of Human Beings & The Question of Their Ultimate Origin | Richard Dawkins, Rowan Williams, Anthony Kenny | University of Oxford
Debate at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, February 23rd 2012 with Prof Richard Dawkins, Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams and Philosopher Sir Anthony Kenny.
For further analysis of Dawkins' arguments in The God Delusion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP9CwDTRoOE
For Dawkins' discussion with Sam Harris:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mm2Jrr0tRXk
Richard Dawkins, Rowan Williams, Anthony Kenny: "Human Beings & Ultimate Origin" Debate
For further analysis of Dawkins' arguments in The God Delusion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP9CwDTRoOE
For Dawkins' discussion with Sam Harris:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mm2Jrr0tRXk
Richard Dawkins, Rowan Williams, Anthony Kenny: "Human Beings & Ultimate Origin" Debate
Shit happens: The economics version
Stand-up economist Yoram Bauman doesn't usually swear... but it's unavoidable in this routine ("S*** happens: the economics version"). Filmed at the 2012 American Economic Association humor session in Chicago, Jan 7, 2012.
S*** happens: The economics version
S*** happens: The economics version
Friday, February 24, 2012
BREAKING! $15 Trillion Fraud Exposed in UK House of Lords | Lord James of Blackheath
Below is one of the strangest stories in financial history, one involving the US government lying about hundreds of thousands of tons of imaginary gold, illegal wire transfers and loans totalling $15 trillion.
The video, from the House of Lords, is amazing in itself.
What it doesn’t express is where the money came from though Lord James of Blackheath proves conclusively that an effort was made to say it came from a gold reserve in Brunei that, in fact, never existed.
At surface, it appears we have stumbled upon the largest terrorist organization in the world and have found original documents tracing its funding to the Secretary of the Treasury and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, two of the top financial officers in the US.
A cursory review of terrorism statues in the US indicate that all transactions we will learn about are, in fact, to be assumed “terrorist money laundering” and that the only thing preventing the immediate arrest of hundreds of top financial officials is their political connections alone.
We will be able to offer an alternative, more insights, some hard intelligence and some very valuable background that we hope will offer insightful and realistic perspectives on this amazing story.
On February 16, 2012, Lord James of Blackheath, member of Britain’s House of Lords presented evidence of an illegal scheme begun, he has thus discovered, in 2009.
His documents including originals signed by Alan Greenspan and Timothy Geithner, show the illegal “off the books” transfer by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York of $15 trillion to, initially, HSBC (Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation) London and then to the Bank of Scotland.
The Bank of Scotland, under royal charter but restricted from involvement in any such transactions, simply “gave” the money to 20 European banks to use in a highly profitable scheme of co-trading “fresh cut” MTN’s (mid-term notes), generating trillions of dollars in profits over 3 years, none of which is shown on books, none has been taxed or has benefitted shareholders in those banks.
As Blackheath outlines, the “deception and cover” for this transfer is the imaginary seizure of 750,000 tons of gold by agents of an unspoken entity (confirmed by the highest official sources as the Bush family and CIA), the listed “source” of the money.
The government of Indonesia confirms this to be an utter fabrication and that the individual named had 700 tons of gold (about half of what Gaddafi was holding), not 750,000. It is noted that only 1,500 tons of gold have ever been traded in world history, as stated in the House of Lords.
The issues that are initially brought out, issues inconsistent with international convention and starting the reader on what is only the surface discovery of two decades of crimes involving dozens of governments are as follows:
- At no time has the Federal Reserve Bank of New York been authorized to hold the funds indicated
- However, documents held by Lord Blackheath prove, conclusively that they did hold such funds and transfer them in a manner as to obscure their origin by using HSBC and the Bank of Scotland. This process, seemingly involving Alan Greenspan, Timothy Geithner and others would appear to be “money laundering” until some other explanation were found. None has been offered.
- The “collateralization” of these funds, being 750,000 tons of gold, is proven to be fantasy. These funds then, in no way or manner, are related to Brunei. The presentation of this false transaction has been conclusively proven to be a “cover and deception” project such as an intelligence organization would use.
- The transfer of these funds, all done without any authorizations, governmental or otherwise, particularly without agreements, payment of interest to the United States and without knowledge and approval of congress makes every aspect of this criminal in nature, a violation of innumerable statues.
- The receipt and use of these funds by the 20 banks, two of which are Wall Street’s largest, and the use of these funds to generate profits while the funds themselves are held “off the books” and the profits hidden and laundered, themselves the earnings of funds received through criminal acts makes any and all involved part of a criminal enterprise.
WHERE DID THE MONEY COME FROM
There is no record of the Federal Reserve being authorized to “create” $15 trillion, equal to the entire national debt of the United States.
There is, however, proof that funds that totalled, at one time, $27 trillion had been earned surreptitiously, disposed of as part of an intelligence operation against the Soviet Union and then later stolen with accusations made against George H. W. Bush as being the perpetrator.
I have spoken with two individuals, one President Reagan’s intelligence coordinator and the other Chief Legal Cousel for the Central Intelligence Agency regarding these funds.
Both have indicated that former President Bush had asked that these funds, totalling $27 trillion, be transferred to his control, that threats were made by Bush and that many involved in this operation suffered, issues including murder, illegal arrest, torture and detention among them.
The individuals I am speaking of repreatedly met with President Bush over these funds, disputed his claim to them, and indicate that the majority of the funds are the property of the people of the United States.
These funds are the mysterious “Wanta” funds, monies earned through years of currency trading aimed at collapsing the Soviet Union, a plan originated by President Ronald Reagan, then White House Intelligence Coordinator Lee Wanta and CIA Director William Casey. I have been told that, while this operation went forward under President Reagan, he had ordered that his successor, George H. W. Bush not be “briefed” out of “mistrust” for Bush.
The funds themselves were earned through a scheme of trading Soviet roubles at enormous profit, a practice that eventually collapsed their government.
A portion of the profits are subject to current litigation in the Federal Court of the Eastern District of Virginia, Judge Lee presiding. I have over 2,000 pages of documents on this case which shows a remainder of the original funds had been transferred to the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond by the Bank of China, a party to the rouble trading practice, in 2006 and is claimed as totally owned by Ameritrust Corporation.
That amount was $4.5 trillion of which we hold the SWIFT transfer documents.
The other monies, which “likely” make up from the unspent portion of the missing $27 trillion, may well constitute all that is recoverable.
Wanta, sole shareholder in Ameritrust, has offered his companies share, valued by the court now at $7.2 trillion, entirely to the American people as intended by President Reagan.
The origin of the additional funds, issued by the Federal Reserve during the 80s and 90s, totalling nearly $8 trillion is unknown. High ranking sources within the US government indicate that this can only be either the remainder of funds Wanta raised or profits made from them after the majority of funds were stolen.
Stories, some quite good actually, and personal interviews plus my own review of documents would place the theft or conversion of these funds initially with:
- The Bush family
- The “P2,” a Masonic lodge operating out of Switzerland involved in dozens of terror bombings tied to “Operation Gladio”
- People around Wanta himself including the CIA
What is lacking is a source for half of these funds. Technically, they don’t exist as there is no record of them being originated by nor transferred to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York though there are clear and discernible records of them being transferred out of that institution which never possessed them, according to their 2010 audit, in the first place.
WANTA MONEY
The transfer of Wanta funds, they can be assumed to have no other origin as they track into the Federal Reserve banking system while in escrow and are currently awaiting payment based on the orders of President Obama in accordance with findings of the federal court, is complicated by the Scottish transfer.
Either Wanta has claim to the entire amount or it is the property of the US government. That no effort has been made to secure the funds or enforce criminal and civil remedies to recover enough money to pay the entire US national debt and more, as with earnings, we are nearing well over $30 trillion by this time, is an indication that a criminal conspiracy with enough influence to overrule our own government is involved. Whether that “conspiracy is, as noted, the Bush family, rouge sections of the CIA or a secret society such as P2, one we can prove or others we only suspect exist, is another story.
The lack of action, here or as requested by Lord James in Britain, is, in itself, proof of both the seriousness and actuality of these events and the powers that can prevent any inquiry when irrefutable documents such as SWIFT transfers are available.
In fact, Lord James has offered a wealth of documents which, when combined with the 2000 pages of Wanta “discovery” from the Federal Court, constitutes more than prima facia evidence of money laundering, conversion, terrorism or worse.
Thus, the inaction in the face of overwheming and unquestioned proof is inexplicable.
FLOOD OF WANTA LITIGATION AND INDICTMENTS COMING
Currently, Wanta’s legal status is as technical conservator and owner of $7.2 trillion. However, as nearly half that is owed in taxes and the court settlement required Wanta to purchase $1 trillion in treasury bonds, the federal government should show positive interest other than President Obama and a few others.
More are being obstructionist with the payout and exercise of $3 trillion in US debt reduction.
This is, not only illegal but an indication of conspiracy.
In addition, Russian Prime Minister Putin has communicated that he awaits the agreed upon 3% payment of Russian taxes, initially on the $7.2 trillion. Will Putin want to be paid on the entire $15 trillion plus interest and will Russia and/or the US have interest in why the Bank of Scotland transferred these funds to 20 European banks to trade in MTN’s (mid term notes) without any authorization or agreement, any participation or sharing of profits.
As the funds, at least the half which the US government can claim ownership of, combined with the interest and earnings of, would quickly put the US “in the black,” again we look at, not just the press blackout on the Wanta litigation of the last 6 years but the press blackout on Lord James of Blackheath and the wealth of damning documentation he submitted to Parliament.
Nothing has been done since, it is as though the proof submitted was so dangerous that those moments in time have been erased by a mysterious g-dlike power.
What makes Wanta dangerous is that he has begun to distribute funds, some to government entities, counties and states, law enforcement agencies, giving them standing, not just in recovering funds intended for their use but in helping prosecute anyone involved in interfering with or attempting to divert funds.
One grand jury is being formed to investigate diversion of Wanta funds even at this early date. It is likely that Wanta/Ameritrust funds earmarked for border protection could lead to the indictment of high ranking US officials. This is only the beginning.
If the Royal Bank of Scotland doesn’t think it should be expecting the biggest chargeback in the history of the world, they are in for a shock.
Source: Trillion Dollar Terror Exposed: Bush, Fed, and European Banks in $15 Trillion Fraud, All Documented
FRB-Yohannes Riyadi Contract
Transcript of Lord James 2-16-2012
Lord James of Blackheath $15,OOO,OOO,OOO,OOO FRAUD EXPOSED February 16 2012
The video, from the House of Lords, is amazing in itself.
What it doesn’t express is where the money came from though Lord James of Blackheath proves conclusively that an effort was made to say it came from a gold reserve in Brunei that, in fact, never existed.
At surface, it appears we have stumbled upon the largest terrorist organization in the world and have found original documents tracing its funding to the Secretary of the Treasury and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, two of the top financial officers in the US.
A cursory review of terrorism statues in the US indicate that all transactions we will learn about are, in fact, to be assumed “terrorist money laundering” and that the only thing preventing the immediate arrest of hundreds of top financial officials is their political connections alone.
We will be able to offer an alternative, more insights, some hard intelligence and some very valuable background that we hope will offer insightful and realistic perspectives on this amazing story.
On February 16, 2012, Lord James of Blackheath, member of Britain’s House of Lords presented evidence of an illegal scheme begun, he has thus discovered, in 2009.
His documents including originals signed by Alan Greenspan and Timothy Geithner, show the illegal “off the books” transfer by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York of $15 trillion to, initially, HSBC (Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation) London and then to the Bank of Scotland.
The Bank of Scotland, under royal charter but restricted from involvement in any such transactions, simply “gave” the money to 20 European banks to use in a highly profitable scheme of co-trading “fresh cut” MTN’s (mid-term notes), generating trillions of dollars in profits over 3 years, none of which is shown on books, none has been taxed or has benefitted shareholders in those banks.
As Blackheath outlines, the “deception and cover” for this transfer is the imaginary seizure of 750,000 tons of gold by agents of an unspoken entity (confirmed by the highest official sources as the Bush family and CIA), the listed “source” of the money.
The government of Indonesia confirms this to be an utter fabrication and that the individual named had 700 tons of gold (about half of what Gaddafi was holding), not 750,000. It is noted that only 1,500 tons of gold have ever been traded in world history, as stated in the House of Lords.
The issues that are initially brought out, issues inconsistent with international convention and starting the reader on what is only the surface discovery of two decades of crimes involving dozens of governments are as follows:
- At no time has the Federal Reserve Bank of New York been authorized to hold the funds indicated
- However, documents held by Lord Blackheath prove, conclusively that they did hold such funds and transfer them in a manner as to obscure their origin by using HSBC and the Bank of Scotland. This process, seemingly involving Alan Greenspan, Timothy Geithner and others would appear to be “money laundering” until some other explanation were found. None has been offered.
- The “collateralization” of these funds, being 750,000 tons of gold, is proven to be fantasy. These funds then, in no way or manner, are related to Brunei. The presentation of this false transaction has been conclusively proven to be a “cover and deception” project such as an intelligence organization would use.
- The transfer of these funds, all done without any authorizations, governmental or otherwise, particularly without agreements, payment of interest to the United States and without knowledge and approval of congress makes every aspect of this criminal in nature, a violation of innumerable statues.
- The receipt and use of these funds by the 20 banks, two of which are Wall Street’s largest, and the use of these funds to generate profits while the funds themselves are held “off the books” and the profits hidden and laundered, themselves the earnings of funds received through criminal acts makes any and all involved part of a criminal enterprise.
WHERE DID THE MONEY COME FROM
There is no record of the Federal Reserve being authorized to “create” $15 trillion, equal to the entire national debt of the United States.
There is, however, proof that funds that totalled, at one time, $27 trillion had been earned surreptitiously, disposed of as part of an intelligence operation against the Soviet Union and then later stolen with accusations made against George H. W. Bush as being the perpetrator.
I have spoken with two individuals, one President Reagan’s intelligence coordinator and the other Chief Legal Cousel for the Central Intelligence Agency regarding these funds.
Both have indicated that former President Bush had asked that these funds, totalling $27 trillion, be transferred to his control, that threats were made by Bush and that many involved in this operation suffered, issues including murder, illegal arrest, torture and detention among them.
The individuals I am speaking of repreatedly met with President Bush over these funds, disputed his claim to them, and indicate that the majority of the funds are the property of the people of the United States.
These funds are the mysterious “Wanta” funds, monies earned through years of currency trading aimed at collapsing the Soviet Union, a plan originated by President Ronald Reagan, then White House Intelligence Coordinator Lee Wanta and CIA Director William Casey. I have been told that, while this operation went forward under President Reagan, he had ordered that his successor, George H. W. Bush not be “briefed” out of “mistrust” for Bush.
The funds themselves were earned through a scheme of trading Soviet roubles at enormous profit, a practice that eventually collapsed their government.
A portion of the profits are subject to current litigation in the Federal Court of the Eastern District of Virginia, Judge Lee presiding. I have over 2,000 pages of documents on this case which shows a remainder of the original funds had been transferred to the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond by the Bank of China, a party to the rouble trading practice, in 2006 and is claimed as totally owned by Ameritrust Corporation.
That amount was $4.5 trillion of which we hold the SWIFT transfer documents.
The other monies, which “likely” make up from the unspent portion of the missing $27 trillion, may well constitute all that is recoverable.
Wanta, sole shareholder in Ameritrust, has offered his companies share, valued by the court now at $7.2 trillion, entirely to the American people as intended by President Reagan.
The origin of the additional funds, issued by the Federal Reserve during the 80s and 90s, totalling nearly $8 trillion is unknown. High ranking sources within the US government indicate that this can only be either the remainder of funds Wanta raised or profits made from them after the majority of funds were stolen.
Stories, some quite good actually, and personal interviews plus my own review of documents would place the theft or conversion of these funds initially with:
- The Bush family
- The “P2,” a Masonic lodge operating out of Switzerland involved in dozens of terror bombings tied to “Operation Gladio”
- People around Wanta himself including the CIA
What is lacking is a source for half of these funds. Technically, they don’t exist as there is no record of them being originated by nor transferred to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York though there are clear and discernible records of them being transferred out of that institution which never possessed them, according to their 2010 audit, in the first place.
WANTA MONEY
The transfer of Wanta funds, they can be assumed to have no other origin as they track into the Federal Reserve banking system while in escrow and are currently awaiting payment based on the orders of President Obama in accordance with findings of the federal court, is complicated by the Scottish transfer.
Either Wanta has claim to the entire amount or it is the property of the US government. That no effort has been made to secure the funds or enforce criminal and civil remedies to recover enough money to pay the entire US national debt and more, as with earnings, we are nearing well over $30 trillion by this time, is an indication that a criminal conspiracy with enough influence to overrule our own government is involved. Whether that “conspiracy is, as noted, the Bush family, rouge sections of the CIA or a secret society such as P2, one we can prove or others we only suspect exist, is another story.
The lack of action, here or as requested by Lord James in Britain, is, in itself, proof of both the seriousness and actuality of these events and the powers that can prevent any inquiry when irrefutable documents such as SWIFT transfers are available.
In fact, Lord James has offered a wealth of documents which, when combined with the 2000 pages of Wanta “discovery” from the Federal Court, constitutes more than prima facia evidence of money laundering, conversion, terrorism or worse.
Thus, the inaction in the face of overwheming and unquestioned proof is inexplicable.
FLOOD OF WANTA LITIGATION AND INDICTMENTS COMING
Currently, Wanta’s legal status is as technical conservator and owner of $7.2 trillion. However, as nearly half that is owed in taxes and the court settlement required Wanta to purchase $1 trillion in treasury bonds, the federal government should show positive interest other than President Obama and a few others.
More are being obstructionist with the payout and exercise of $3 trillion in US debt reduction.
This is, not only illegal but an indication of conspiracy.
In addition, Russian Prime Minister Putin has communicated that he awaits the agreed upon 3% payment of Russian taxes, initially on the $7.2 trillion. Will Putin want to be paid on the entire $15 trillion plus interest and will Russia and/or the US have interest in why the Bank of Scotland transferred these funds to 20 European banks to trade in MTN’s (mid term notes) without any authorization or agreement, any participation or sharing of profits.
As the funds, at least the half which the US government can claim ownership of, combined with the interest and earnings of, would quickly put the US “in the black,” again we look at, not just the press blackout on the Wanta litigation of the last 6 years but the press blackout on Lord James of Blackheath and the wealth of damning documentation he submitted to Parliament.
Nothing has been done since, it is as though the proof submitted was so dangerous that those moments in time have been erased by a mysterious g-dlike power.
What makes Wanta dangerous is that he has begun to distribute funds, some to government entities, counties and states, law enforcement agencies, giving them standing, not just in recovering funds intended for their use but in helping prosecute anyone involved in interfering with or attempting to divert funds.
One grand jury is being formed to investigate diversion of Wanta funds even at this early date. It is likely that Wanta/Ameritrust funds earmarked for border protection could lead to the indictment of high ranking US officials. This is only the beginning.
If the Royal Bank of Scotland doesn’t think it should be expecting the biggest chargeback in the history of the world, they are in for a shock.
Source: Trillion Dollar Terror Exposed: Bush, Fed, and European Banks in $15 Trillion Fraud, All Documented
FRB-Yohannes Riyadi Contract
Transcript of Lord James 2-16-2012
Lord James of Blackheath $15,OOO,OOO,OOO,OOO FRAUD EXPOSED February 16 2012
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Why Quantum Theory Is So Misunderstood | Brian Cox
I recently gave a lecture, screened on the BBC, about quantum theory, in which I pointed out that “everything is connected to everything else”. This is literally true if quantum theory as currently understood is not augmented by new physics. This means that the subatomic constituents of your body are constantly shifting, albeit absolutely imperceptibly, in response to events happening an arbitrarily large distance away; for the sake of argument, let’s say on the other side of the Universe.
This statement received some criticism in scientific circles. Not because it’s wrong, because it isn’t; without this behavior, we wouldn’t be able to explain the bonds that hold molecules together. The problem is that it sounds like woo woo, and quantum theory attracts woo-woo merde-merchants like the pronouncements of New Age mystics attract flies – metaphorically speaking.
For the record, the reason that everything being connected to everything else does not allow us to be, (selects randomly from a pit of drivel), at one with the Universal consciousness, is that the subtle interconnectedness in quantum theory cannot be used to transmit information. Quantum theory, in other words, describes a counterintuitive world, but not a mystical one.
Despite this, the informed critics gave me pause for thought, because there is certainly a widespread misunderstanding of quantum theory in popular culture. Just type “quantum healing” into Google and the energies of your body mind will soon be vibrating in harmony with the standing waves in a giant Olympic-sized vat of cosmic bull. Given that none of the purveyors of this cataclysmic tosh can possibly have the faintest idea how to use quantum theory to calculate the energy levels in a hydrogen atom, the origin of the misunderstanding – if not purely financial – may be in pronouncements like the one I made in my lecture.
For some scientists, the unfortunate distortion and misappropriation of scientific ideas that often accompanies their integration into popular culture is an unacceptable price to pay. I share their irritation, but my strongly held view is that science is too important not to be part of popular culture. Our civilization was built on the foundations of reason and rational thinking embodied in the scientific method, and our future depends on the widespread acceptance of science as THE ONLY WAY WE HAVE to meet many, if not all, of the great challenges we face. Is the climate warming and, if so, what is the cause? Is it safe to vaccinate children against disease? These are scientific questions, in that they can be answered by the analysis of data, and therefore the answers are independent of the opinion, faith or political persuasion of the individual. If you would like to see the scale of the problem faced by those who wish to champion science and reason above rhetoric and knee-jerk prejudice, have a glance at the comments that are no doubt proliferating below this article because I mentioned climate change and vaccination.
The key words in the above paragraph are “widespread acceptance”. In democratic societies, progress is made through persuasion, and science has a most persuasive story to tell. Quantum theory tells us that the universe we experience emerges from a bewildering, counterintuitive maelstrom of interactions between an infinity of recalcitrant sub-atomic particles. To understand something as simple as a rainbow, we have to allow each single particle of light to explore the entire universe on its journey through the rain. This is magical, and there is plenty more in the library of science. We have landed on a world where the faint sun glints off methane lakes, seen stars the size of cities spin hundreds of times a second, and taken photographs of light from the beginning of time that has journeyed for over thirteen billion years to reach us. This is true wonder, with the power to deliver a dizzying feeling, the craving for which might be seen as the very definition of what it means to be human.
Recognizing the innate human desire to be dazzled is the key to understanding why some people are drawn to pseudo-scientific drivel; it delivers wonder, albeit chimeric. But herein lies a clue as to where the cure for irrationality lies, because reality is strange and beautiful enough to satisfy the most veracious imagination. In order to build a more scientific society, therefore, I argue that scientists must not be afraid to speak of their discoveries in language that fires the imagination and satiates the innate human need for wonder, because wonder is a doorway to a deeper appreciation and understanding of science. This is the language of popular culture, which is by definition the dominant source of information for the majority in society. If we can persuade enough people that science is as wonderful as it is useful, then we will be far better equipped as a civilization to face the great challenges of the 21st century.
Source: Why Quantum Theory Is So Misunderstood | Brian Cox
Brian Cox's guide to quantum mechanics
Heart Stop Beating | Jeremiah Zagar
By criteria doctors conventionally use to analyze patients, Craig Lewis was dead. He had no heartbeat, no pulse, his EKG was flatlined. Yet he left the hospital and returned home to his wife.
Drs. Billy Cohn and Bud Frazier from the Texas Heart Institute had deemed the condition of Lewis’ heart to be so dire from amyloidosis, a rare blood condition in which amyloid protein builds up in organs causing them to fail, that he would die within hours if they didn’t do something. That ‘something’ was to cut out the heart entirely and replace it with a centrifugal pump. Centrifugal pumps are used to pump water through pipe systems, Lewis’ would pump blood through his veins and arteries. The daring procedure was performed in March of last year. Cohn and Frazier first replaced the hearts of 50 calves before trying the procedure with a human. Following surgery, Lewis’ wife put her head to his chest. Instead of a heartbeat she heard the continuous whirring of rotor blades. Unfortunately, a new heart was just one of Lewis’ impending needs. While the pump performed as hoped, the amyloidosis continued its attack on Lewis’ liver and kidneys and he died in April.
The medical journey was captured by filmmakers Jeremy Yaches and Jeremiah Zagar in their short film documentary “Heart Stop Beating.” It’s a chilling depiction of two doctors seeing through an audacious idea.
The pump isn’t a technological breakthrough, but it is a break with current technology. Ventricular assist devices (VADs) like the Jarvik 2000 are being used by hundreds of people all over the world. Like Lewis’ pump, the Jarvik doesn’t beat. A rotor pumps the blood through. But the Jarvik is only meant to aid the heart’s lower chamber, the ventricle, do its normal job of pumping blood. Patients with the pump still have a pulse because the rotor blade action is timed to the normal beating of the ventricle, thus blood flow is still pulsatile. Lewis’ pump, on the other hand, isn’t an assist device – it’s a replacement. By adding two VADs instead of one – one circulates blood to and from the lungs, the other to and from the rest of the body – any amount of original heart tissue is simply not needed.
Nor is a heartbeat.
Source: Singularity Hub - Heart Stop Beating | Jeremiah Zagar
Visit: Jarvik Heart
Heart Stop Beating | Jeremiah Zagar
Heart Stop Beating | Jeremiah Zagar from Focus Forward Films on Vimeo.
Drs. Billy Cohn and Bud Frazier from the Texas Heart Institute had deemed the condition of Lewis’ heart to be so dire from amyloidosis, a rare blood condition in which amyloid protein builds up in organs causing them to fail, that he would die within hours if they didn’t do something. That ‘something’ was to cut out the heart entirely and replace it with a centrifugal pump. Centrifugal pumps are used to pump water through pipe systems, Lewis’ would pump blood through his veins and arteries. The daring procedure was performed in March of last year. Cohn and Frazier first replaced the hearts of 50 calves before trying the procedure with a human. Following surgery, Lewis’ wife put her head to his chest. Instead of a heartbeat she heard the continuous whirring of rotor blades. Unfortunately, a new heart was just one of Lewis’ impending needs. While the pump performed as hoped, the amyloidosis continued its attack on Lewis’ liver and kidneys and he died in April.
The medical journey was captured by filmmakers Jeremy Yaches and Jeremiah Zagar in their short film documentary “Heart Stop Beating.” It’s a chilling depiction of two doctors seeing through an audacious idea.
The pump isn’t a technological breakthrough, but it is a break with current technology. Ventricular assist devices (VADs) like the Jarvik 2000 are being used by hundreds of people all over the world. Like Lewis’ pump, the Jarvik doesn’t beat. A rotor pumps the blood through. But the Jarvik is only meant to aid the heart’s lower chamber, the ventricle, do its normal job of pumping blood. Patients with the pump still have a pulse because the rotor blade action is timed to the normal beating of the ventricle, thus blood flow is still pulsatile. Lewis’ pump, on the other hand, isn’t an assist device – it’s a replacement. By adding two VADs instead of one – one circulates blood to and from the lungs, the other to and from the rest of the body – any amount of original heart tissue is simply not needed.
Nor is a heartbeat.
Source: Singularity Hub - Heart Stop Beating | Jeremiah Zagar
Visit: Jarvik Heart
Heart Stop Beating | Jeremiah Zagar
Heart Stop Beating | Jeremiah Zagar from Focus Forward Films on Vimeo.
Printing Muscle | Organovo
In a small clean room tucked into the back of San Diego–based startup Organovo, Chirag Khatiwala is building a thin layer of human skeletal muscle. He inserts a cartridge of specially prepared muscle cells into a 3-D printer, which then deposits them in uniform, closely spaced lines in a petri dish. This arrangement allows the cells to grow and interact until they form working muscle tissue that is nearly indistinguishable from something removed from a human subject.
The technology could fill a critical need. Many potential drugs that seem promising when tested in cell cultures or animals fail in clinical trials because cultures and animals are very different from human tissue. Because Organovo's product is so similar to human tissue, it could help researchers identify drugs that will fail long before they reach clinical trials, potentially saving drug companies billions of dollars. So far, Organovo has built tissue of several types, including cardiac muscle, lung, and blood vessels.
Unlike some experimental approaches that have used ink-jet printers to deposit cells, Organovo's technology enables cells to interact with each other much the way they do in the body. They are packed tightly together and incubated, prompting them to adhere to each other and trade chemical signals. When they're printed, the cells are kept bunched together in a paste that helps them grow, migrate, and align themselves properly. Muscle cells, for example, orient themselves in the same direction to create tissue that can contract.
So far, Organovo has made only small pieces of tissue, but its ultimate goal is to use its 3-D printer to make complete organs for transplants. Because the organs would be printed from a patient's own cells, there would be less danger of rejection.
Organovo plans to fund its organ-printing research with revenue from printing tissues to aid in drug development. The company is undertaking experiments to prove that its technology can help researchers detect drug toxicity earlier than is possible with other tests, and it is setting up partnerships with major companies, starting with the drug giant Pfizer.
Source: Technology Review: Printing Muscle
Gabor Forgacs at TEDMED 2011
Joi Ito: Open-source hardware is a no brainer | MIT Media Lab
Open-source hardware is on its way, and it will foster a new era of innovation, according to MIT Media Lab director Joichi “Joi” Ito.
The emergence of freely available hardware designs and near-free components will unleash the same sort of technology innovation that open-source software kicked off a decade or so ago, Ito said Tuesday.
“If you want to build a video camera, some day you’ll be able to find all the standard parts, the designs online for free, and then you’ll only design the pieces of the product that interest you,” Ito said at an MITX fireside chat in Cambridge, Mass.
Developers would focus their attention on the more valuable hardware they build atop that standard base, just as software developers write specialized software that runs on Linux and open-source middleware instead of proprietary Unix or Windows operating systems and Oracle’s WebLogic or IBM’s WebSphere middleware.
The industry is starting to talk open-source hardware in the context of the Open Compute Foundation, which focuses on data center servers. Ito is talking of far broader application.
Ito used the birth of Google as an example of the creativity open-source software enabled. If Google Co-Founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page started out without open source, they would have had to spend big money on operating systems and other commercial software to do what they did, he said. But, because of open source, “all they had to do is write a little software and connect it to university network [all] for a couple thousand dollars,” he said.
The advent of open-source software decimated start-up costs of software companies and that, in turn, sparked an “explosion of innovation in the valley because you could try anything,” he said.
In the same manner, the adoption of the open-source model will siphon costs out of hardware design, because companies won’t have to devote as much capital to equipment. They could download designs to build them themselves or sign a contract manufacturer to build them.
The cost savings will push hardware innovation “into smaller companies, into academic labs and dorm rooms,” Ito said.
Advances in 3-D printing will also make it easier and less expensive for smaller companies to quickly create physical prototypes of their designs, leveling another hurdle.
“The idea of printing gadgets is not far away … not as far away as you think,” Ito said.
That all means smaller companies that innovate can sustain themselves while staying small. ”VCs used to snark that that’s not a company, that’s a feature. Products and companies used to have to be huge things, things like AOL. [But] today you can have very small, focused companies.”
And small companies, he said, are where innovation thrives.
Source: Joi Ito: Open-source hardware is a no brainer
There's No Tomorrow
The first production by http://www.incubatepictures.com
Animated documentary about resource depletion & the impossibility of infinite growth on a finite planet.
There's No Tomorrow
Animated documentary about resource depletion & the impossibility of infinite growth on a finite planet.
There's No Tomorrow
Ron Paul's Libertarian Roots
On December 16, 2007, on the two-hundred-and-thirty-fourth anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, Ron Paul, congressman and Presidential candidate, presided over a nationwide fund-raiser. This was a new tea party, with a new slogan: “Liberty is brewing.” In Boston, hundreds of Paul’s supporters marched to Faneuil Hall. Paul himself appeared in Freeport, Texas, where organizers had prepared barrels for him to dump into the Brazos River. One barrel read “United Nations”; another read “I.R.S.” The campaign raised more than six million dollars in one day, which was a record, and the event prefigured the protests that became common as the Tea Party movement coalesced, in 2009. The movement, with its focus on economic liberty and small government, sometimes seemed like a continuation of Paul’s campaign for the Republican nomination, during which he won a great deal of attention and a modest number of votes. It’s not much of a stretch to call him the “Godfather of the Tea Party,” as his campaign literature does, quoting Fox News. Ron Paul was ahead of his time.
Paul is running for President again this year, in a field that many Republicans find disappointing. And yet, while Paul is doing better, state by state, than he did in 2008, he has conspicuously failed to establish himself as this year’s Tea Party candidate. Polls have shown that voters who support the Tea Party are actually less likely to support Paul—some have gone for Newt Gingrich, whose denunciations of Obama are pithier, or for Rick Santorum, who is more forthright in his defense of “traditional American values.” In South Carolina, where Paul received thirteen per cent of the vote, behind Gingrich, Mitt Romney, and Santorum, he did his best among voters opposed to the Tea Party. The Ron Paul movement has grown, but the events of recent years—the rise of the Tea Party, the fights over corporate bailouts, the messy passage of Obama’s health-care reform bill—have done surprisingly little to raise Paul’s standing among Republicans. Last summer, Jon Stewart mocked cable news channels for “pretending Ron Paul doesn’t exist,” and asked, “How did libertarian Ron Paul become the thirteenth floor in a hotel?” The answer is embedded in the question. People don’t think of Paul as a top-tier Republican candidate partly because they think of him as a libertarian: anti-tax and anti-bailout, but also antiwar, anti-empire, and, sometimes, anti-Republican.
“I think parties are pretty irrelevant,” Paul says, and he doesn’t go out of his way to convince Republicans that he is one of them. He firmly opposed Obama’s health-care plan, and he might win a few more votes if he made this opposition the centerpiece of his stump speech. Instead, he tends toward arguments that are almost perversely nonpartisan—elaborating, say, the similarities between Bush’s war on terror and Obama’s. He asks, “Have you ever noticed that we change parties sometimes, but the policies never change?” Even during that first Tea Party appearance, in Texas in 2007, Paul passed up a chance to reassure Republican voters. Skipping over the “United Nations” and “I.R.S.” barrels, he picked up one marked “Iraq War” and heaved it into the river. He was seventy-two at the time, and surely relished the physical act as much as the symbolic one. “Start with that, and then we can solve the rest of the problems,” he said.
The same vigor and attitude were on display on a recent Friday morning, when he arrived, amid heavy snow, at the Union Street Brick Church in Bangor, Maine. “We came where the action is,” he said, and hundreds of supporters—packed into the pews, squatting in the aisles, wedged along the walls—hollered their approval. That day, most of the action was, in fact, in balmy Florida, where Gingrich and Romney were leading reporters on a mad dash, campaigning for the Florida primary, which was less than a week away. But Florida is a big, expensive state, and Paul is running a tactical, grassroots campaign, and so he had come to Maine instead, in the hope of picking up some of the state’s twenty-four delegates.
He is an invigorating speaker, unflappable and good-humored despite the severity of his message, which is that a wide range of institutions and policies must be abolished if liberty is to survive. His toughest verdicts emerge as astonished squeaks, and he keeps cynicism at bay by affecting mild political amnesia: every day, in every speech, he is surprised anew at what is happening around him. In Bangor, Paul called for a moratorium on “illegal” airport searches and for the dissolution of the Department of Education (along with the Department of Energy, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Department of the Interior); he called for the repeal of the Patriot Act and the repatriation of American troops stationed overseas; he called for an immediate end to bailouts and an eventual end to the federal income tax; he called for a trillion-dollar cut to the federal budget. Most pressing of all, he called for the eradication of the Federal Reserve, the rejection of paper money, and a return to the gold standard—in his view, most economic threats can be traced, often directly, to the government’s insistence on devaluing the currency by creating more of it. He asked, “What’s wrong with the idea of taking away the power, from a secret group of individuals, to print money at will”—and before he could say more he was overtaken by the sound of his supporters, who were not just cheering but also chuckling at the insanity of our monetary system. When he finished speaking, Paul posed for a hundred and ninety-seven photographs with supporters; a volunteer uploaded the images onto the Internet. As he left the stage, a local chapter of Youth for Ron Paul serenaded him with “God Bless America.” He listened appreciatively, posed for one last photograph, and then shuffled out, to the sound of a familiar chant: “President! Paul! President! Paul!”
The next day, on the Gorham campus of the University of Southern Maine, outside Portland, Paul wistfully recalled the American Revolution and the days before the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. “We’ve had this great experiment,” he said. “The best results, ever, in the history of the world, and we’re losing it, these last hundred years. It’s drifting away.” During a debate in January, when Wolf Blitzer mentioned that Paul is seventy-six (in the context of a question about his medical records), Paul challenged his rivals to a bicycle race “in the heat of Texas,” adding, “There are laws against age discrimination.” But sometimes he likes to describe himself as part of “the remnant”—a keeper of the old faith, holding on for a new age. Albert Jay Nock, a libertarian essayist, used the term in “Isaiah’s Job,” an influential essay from 1936, in which he imagined “the remnant” as a network of enlightened souls capable of saving and transforming civilization. This is what Paul offers his followers: a chance to get past the insipid illusion of everyday life and join the struggle against an enemy most people can’t even see.
Last summer, Paul announced that he wouldn’t run for reëlection to Congress this fall. In all likelihood, this campaign (his eighteenth) will be his last, although it won’t mark the end of the Paul legacy. His son Rand Paul, a newly elected senator from Kentucky—a libertarian, too, but a smoother political operator—is his political heir. Between now and the Republican Convention, in August, Ron Paul is hoping to capture as many delegates as he can—even though there’s no telling whether he’ll even vote Republican in November.
Paul likes to tell the tale of his political awakening as a conversion narrative, or perhaps a love story. “I thought I was all alone, until I discovered Austrian economics,” he says. He grew up in Pittsburgh, in a German-American family, the son of practical-minded parents who ran a dairy, and who sometimes told stories about hyperinflation in the old country. Paul went to Gettysburg College, and to Duke Medical School, and then, after being drafted in 1962, into the Air Force. When he was discharged, he set up a practice in obstetrics and gynecology (his campaign likes to remind voters that Paul “has delivered more than four thousand babies”), and eventually settled in Brazoria County, on Texas’s Gulf Coast, with his wife, Carol. His interest in economics led him to Friedrich Hayek, the Austrian economist and philosopher and the author of “The Road to Serfdom,” a polemic on the dangers of government-directed economies. Through Hayek, Paul found his way to Hayek’s teacher, Ludwig von Mises, and to Mises’s American protégé, Murray Rothbard, who grew up in the Bronx and converted to Austrianism at New York University, where Mises led seminars. Rothbard, an original thinker and a tireless polemicist, would also become one of Paul’s political mentors: he was an antiwar libertarian who sometimes styled himself an anarchist, and who eventually found common cause with what he called the “populist right.”
The Austrians, especially Mises and Rothbard, were—and remain—dissidents among orthodox economists. They viewed markets as highly sensitive data transmitters, and they argued that the government, by manipulating interest rates and the money supply, was corrupting the data, making it harder for financial actors to behave sensibly. Policymakers who tried to muffle booms and busts always ended up amplifying them instead. The Austrians insisted that they were in the business of description, not judgment, but their theory was appealing partly because it resembled a moral fable. Even now, when Paul talks economics, he often sounds as if he were drawing a spiritual distinction between the dubious bureaucratic trickery that might damn us and the hard, productive work—no bailouts, no subsidies, no easy credit—that will redeem us.
In 1971, when President Richard Nixon announced that American dollars would no longer be redeemable for gold, Paul saw disaster, and when he ran out of friends and family members and patients to warn, he became a political candidate, which gave him an excuse to warn strangers. For Austrian economists, the appeal of gold is obvious: it is a precious metal that has been precious for a long time, which makes it relatively immune to government manipulation. And for Paul, talking about gold is a way to talk about inflation, which tends to inspire a visceral reaction in voters. Our hard-earned money decays a little bit every day, just as we do. Most orthodox economists have concluded that eternal inflation isn’t necessarily harmful, as long as it can be kept mild. (They disagree, of course, on how, or even if, this can be done.) And while some of them might prefer the gold standard to our current system, few would want to risk the potentially ruinous transition away from fiat currency. Even so, there is something seductive about Paul’s vision of a gold-pegged dollar, holding its value across the centuries—glittering instead of moldering.
Continue reading: - Ron Paul's Libertarian Roots
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
TRULY DISHEARTENING! Poor America | BBC Panorama
POOR AMERICA
With one and a half million (1.5 million) American children now homeless, reporter Hilary Andersson meets the school pupils who go hungry in the richest country on Earth. From those living in the storm drains under Las Vegas to the tent cities now springing up around the United States, P a n o r a m a finds out how the poor are surviving in America and asks whatever happened to the supposed 'government' and the Real People in charge - those who you 'don't see' pulling on the strings; and their vision and welfare for the country.
Could this be a form of 'Social cleansing' without the need of war or disease inflicted by the orchestrators - simply a controlled bout of poverty? Or is this the forced education that only condition children to know only a certain amount of knowledge that can only ever see them progress in working environments such as confined offices within the 'Human Zoo' qualities within the desperately overcrowded cities.
Why are our children not educated properly - to be able to survive communally with real craft and building skills? Is the social mobility (as in other 'rich countries' such as the UK) only fairing the rich; the wealthy and the 'clever elite'; the white collar criminal, as per usual?
Broadcast Date: 13th February 2012
Poor America - P a n o r a m a [B B C] - Broadcast Date: 13th February 2012
With one and a half million (1.5 million) American children now homeless, reporter Hilary Andersson meets the school pupils who go hungry in the richest country on Earth. From those living in the storm drains under Las Vegas to the tent cities now springing up around the United States, P a n o r a m a finds out how the poor are surviving in America and asks whatever happened to the supposed 'government' and the Real People in charge - those who you 'don't see' pulling on the strings; and their vision and welfare for the country.
Could this be a form of 'Social cleansing' without the need of war or disease inflicted by the orchestrators - simply a controlled bout of poverty? Or is this the forced education that only condition children to know only a certain amount of knowledge that can only ever see them progress in working environments such as confined offices within the 'Human Zoo' qualities within the desperately overcrowded cities.
Why are our children not educated properly - to be able to survive communally with real craft and building skills? Is the social mobility (as in other 'rich countries' such as the UK) only fairing the rich; the wealthy and the 'clever elite'; the white collar criminal, as per usual?
Broadcast Date: 13th February 2012
Poor America - P a n o r a m a [B B C] - Broadcast Date: 13th February 2012
SPAIN REVOLT - Protest Against Budget Cuts in Education in Spain
A peaceful protest against budget cuts in education in Valencia, Spain on Tuesday ended in bloody police repression. Conjuring up memories of Franco’s brutal dictatorship, squads of riot police violently assaulted a group of some 300 students, arresting at least 26 and leaving scores injured. YouTube footage displayed a policeman forcefully pushing two girls onto a car, while photos emerged of young kids with bloodied faces surrounded by riot police.
While the regional police chief branded the students “as the enemy” and insisted that riot police had merely deployed “proportioned physical force”, reporters on the scene confirmed that the baton-wielding police forces had even fired rubber bullets at the students. Despite the Spanish newspaper El Publico reporting “brutal police aggression”, hundreds of students took back to the streets in the evening and encircled the University of Valencia in protest.
Tuesday’s demonstrations, which come a day after over a million Spaniards took to the streets to contest the governments’s labor reforms, marked the fourth straight day of student protests in Spain’s third largest city. Valencia is one of the most heavily hit region’s in Spain’s crippling debt crisis, and with the newly-appointed Rajoy government pushing through even more harsh austerity measures, budget cuts have left most schools without heating.
The images coming out of Valencia have already caused widespread indignation on social media and in the Spanish press, and are likely to feed into further protests in the days ahead. Solidarity demonstrations have been called in Madrid and Barcelona. But, as we previously pointed out after the crackdowns in Barcelona, New York and Oakland, this type of police violence will, in the end, only further reinvigorate our resistance.
Source: Spanish police brutalize student protesters in Valencia
Austerity Anger: Cops lash out at cuts protests in Spain
BRUTAL CARGA POLICIAL EN VALENCIA (20 2 2012)
Cargas Policiales Lluis Vives Valencia 20F
La policía lanza a dos chicas contra un coche en Valencia
UPDATE
Anger Debtline: Thousands protest after police violence in Spain
Monday, February 20, 2012
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Global Future 2045 International Congress - Modeling and Predicting Worldwide Dynamics
Raymond Kurzweil - “The Acceleration of Technology in the 21st Century: the Impact on Business, the Economy, and Society”
RAY KURZWEIL has been described as “the restless genius” by the Wall Street Journal, and “the ultimate thinking machine” by Forbes. Inc. Magazine ranked him #8 among entrepreneurs in the United States, calling him the “rightful heir to Thomas Edison,” and PBS included Ray as one of 16 “revolutionaries who made America,” along with other inventors of the past two centuries. As one of the leading inventors of our time, Ray was the principal developer of the first CCD flat-bed scanner, the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition. Among Ray’s many honors, he is the recipient of the $500,000 MIT-Lemelson Prize, the world's largest for innovation. In 1999, he received the National Medal of Technology, the nation's highest honor in technology, from President Clinton in a White House ceremony. And in 2002, he was inducted into the National Inventor's Hall of Fame, established by the US Patent Office. He has received nineteen honorary Doctorates and honors from three U.S. presidents. Ray has written four national bestselling books. The Age of Spiritual Machines has been translated into 9 languages and was the #1 bestselling book on Amazon in science. Ray’s latest book, The Singularity is Near, was a New York Times best seller, and has been the #1 book on Amazon in both science and philosophy.
Sergei Zhukov – “The Russian Space Program: Changing the Vector of our Condition
He holds a PhD in Engineering, is a spaceflight test pilot and a member of the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics. In 1979, he graduated with honors from the Bauman Moscow State Technical University with a major in Nuclear Reactors. He then worked in the Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation “Energia,” a manufacturer of spacecraft and space station components, managed experiments in astrophysics and radiobiology onboard the MIR orbital space station, and instructed cosmonauts. In 1991-1993, under the Russian Supreme Soviet, he served as deputy head of a working group on cosmonautics that enabled the creation of the Russian Space Agency (RKA) and the passage of the bill “On the Space Program” and the “Treaty Between the States of the CIS on Collaboration in the Field of Research in and Exploitation of Space.” In 1996, under the aegis of RKA, he founded and headed the company Technology Transfer Center, which became the basis for founding, in 2000, the Trade Center for Patent, Licensing and Commercial Use of Scientific Achievements. Zhukov participated in the creation of the state enterprise Russian Technology in 1997 and the “Vostochny” launch site in 2007, and he managed development of the OPK Inter-industry Innovation Center from 2007 to 2010. He is the President of the Moscow Space Club, consultant to the Federation Council, and author of numerous academic articles and collections of poetry. Since 2003, he has been a member of the Russian Cosmonauts Unit.
Sergei Krichevsky – “Populating Beyond the Earth: Problems and Prospects for Expanding into Space”
He holds a doctorate in Philosophy and a PhD in Engineering and is a Professor at the Russian Academy of National Economy and State Service under the President of the Russian Federation. Krichevsky graduated from the Red Banner Defense Aviation School for Pilots at Armavir in 1976; completed post-graduate studies at the Zhukovsky Military Aviation Engineering Academy in 1986; and graduated from the International Center for Training Systems (a department of UNESCO) in 1994. For 25 years, he served in the Air Force and Anti-aircraft Warfare Division of the USSR and the Russian Federation. He holds the rank of Military Pilot 1st Class and flew fighter jets such as the MiG-21, Mig-23, and SU-27. From 1989 to 1998, he was a cosmonaut test pilot. He numbered among the detachment of cosmonauts at the Yury Gagarin Center for Cosmonaut Training slated to fly on the Soyuz-TM rocket and serve on the MIR Orbital Space Station. Krichevsky has worked on solving problems related to the research, testing, exploitation, military application, and safety of aerospace equipment as well as environmental monitoring. He participated in preparing the federal bill “On the Space Program.” He is an active member of the Tsiolkovsky Russian Academy of Cosmonautics, a member and expert advisor to the Moscow Space Club, and the author of over 200 publications. His primary scientific interests are aviation and spaceflight, flight safety, the history and philosophy of science and technology, interdisciplinary approaches to problem solving, prognostics, integration of social, technological and natural systems, and ecology and environmental politics.
Akop Nazaretyan – “Big History as an Instrument for Strategic Forecasting: Problems at the Middle of the 21st Century”
Akop P. Nazaretyan is Senior Research Fellow of the Oriental Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences and Full Professor in Moscow State University, Editor of the academic journal ‘Historical Psychology & Sociology’. He is the author of over 300 scholarly publications, including books: ‘Intelligence in the Universe: sources, formation and perspectives’ (1991, in Russian); ‘Aggression, Morals and the Crises in World Cultural Development (1995, 1996, in Russian); ‘Aggressive Crowds, Mass Panic, and Rumors. Lectures in Social and Political Psychology ‘(2001, 2003, 2005, in Russian); Civilization Crises within the Context of Big History. Self-Organization, Psychology, and Forecasts (2001, 2004, in Russian); ‘Anthropology of Violence and Culture of Self-Organization. Essays on evolutionary historical psychology’ (2007, 2008, in Russian); ‘Evolution of Non-Violence: Studies in Big History, self-organization and historical psychology’.
Alexandr Panov – “The Singularity of Evolution and the Future of Fundamental Science”
He graduated from Moscow State University (MGU) in 1982 with a degree in physics, after which he worked at the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy until 2000. Since 2000, he has been at the Physics Department of MGU, where he is a Senior Research Fellow, having defended his PhD in Physics and Mathematics in 1997. Panov is the author of over 150 articles in scientific periodicals and one book, “Universal Evolution and Challenges in SETI,” published in 2007. His primary academic interests include the astrophysics of cosmic rays, dimensions in Quantum Mechanics, cosmology and gravity, scientific methodologies, and universal evolutionism and problems of macroevolution.
Michael Veller - “A Man in the System of Energoevolutionism”
He graduated from high school in Belarus with highest honors in 1966, and from the Philology Department of Leningrad University magna cum laude in 1972. Veller has worked in around 30 different professions: from felling lumber in Komi to cattle herding in Altai to professional hunting in Taimyr in the far north of Russia to journalism, teaching and as a tour guide. His first book came out in 1983 in Tallinn, Estonia; and since 1987, he has been a member of the Writers’ Union. As of today, his collected works number 20 volumes, and many of his writings, including his collection “Legends of Nevsky Prospekt,” the novel “Zvyagin” and the political tract “The Last Great Chance,” are bestsellers often reissued, with an overall circulation of 10 million copies. He has received a multitude of literary prizes, is a member of the Russian PEN Center, and has delivered lectures at a number of European universities. Since 1981, he has been working on his own philosophical system, which has come to be called “Energoevolutionism.” The theses of this system first appeared in print 1986-1988 in literary journals. Then in 1998, his book “Everything About Life” provided a comprehensive exposition of his philosophical views, followed by “Cassandra” in 2002 and “The Individual in the System” in 2010, which have been republished in parts under different titles, including “An Overarching Theory of Everything,” “The Meaning of Life,” “Love of Evil,” and others. At the London International Book Fair in 2011, he presented his four-volume work: “Energoevolutionism,” “Sociology and Energoevolutionism,” “Psychology and Energoevolutionism” and “Aesthetics and Energoevolutionism.” He participates in numerous international philosophy symposiums and conferences and is a member of the Russian Philosophical Association.
Dmitry Strebkov – “Prospects for Energy Resources Today”
D.S. Strebkov was born on March 11, 1937 in Vinnitsa (Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic). In 1959, he graduated from the Moscow Institute of Agriculture Mechanization and Electrification (now Moscow State Agricultural Engineering University), Faculty of Electrification. From 1959 to 1960, he worked as an engineer at the electromechanical workshop “Mosselenergo”. In 1960, he moved to the All-Union Scientific-Research Institute for Current Sources, where he worked up to 1987 as a senior engineer, senior researcher, division head, laboratory head, department head, deputy Chief Designer. Since 1987, he is director of the All-Russia Scientific-Research Institute for Electrification of Agriculture (VIESH). In the context of a secondary job, he worked from 1967 to 1987 as a senior teacher, associate professor and professor at the All-Union Correspondence Polytechnic Institute (chair “Fundamentals of Radio Engineering and Television”). In 1967, he graduated from the Moscow State University n. a. M.V. Lomonosov (Evening Department, Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics, specialty “Mathematics”). He received the Cand. Sci. (Tech.) degree from the All-Union Scientific-Research Institute for Current Sources in 1971, and the Dr. Sci. (Tech.) degree in 1983. In 1985 he received the academic status of professor at the All-Union Correspondence Polytechnic Institute (department “Fundamentals of Radio Engineering and Television”). He became a corresponding member of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences n. a. V.I. Lenin in 1991, a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences in 1993, an academician of the Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences in 1997. D.S. Strebkov heads research works on electrification of agriculture, as well as in the field of renewable energy. Twenty candidates of science and two doctors of science have received their degrees under his supervision. He has published 1000 scientific works (this number includes 305 inventor’s certificates and patents of the Russian Federation and 16 USA patents). Since 1992, he is the Chairman of the Russian Section of the International Solar Energy Society, since 2002 he is the vice-president of the Russian Committee on the Use of Renewable Energy Sources. D.S. Strebkov is the Chairman of the VIESH Dissertation Council and the Chairman of Council on Agricultural Engineering Specialties of the State Commission for Academic Degrees and Titles under the RF Ministry of Education and Science. He is also the Chairman of the UNESCO Chair and the Chairman of the Chair “Renewable Energy and Rural Electrification” of the Moscow State Agricultural Engineering University and the Head of the Working Group of the European UNESCO Bureau on education in the field of solar energy.
Alexandr Galushkin – “The State and Potential Development of Robotics and Control Systems”
Graduated from the Bauman higher technical academy in Moscow at the department of “Automatic guidance systems” in 1963, and in the same year was sent to do full-time post-graduate study at this department. In 1966, he defended a dissertation for a PhD degree in engineering, and in 1969 received the academic title of lecturer. In 1974, at the academic council of the Computer Center of the USSR Academy of Sciences, he defended a dissertation for the degree of doctor of engineering. Professor A.I. Galushkin is the author of over 300 scholarly works, including 25 monographs.
Alexandr Frolov – “Cybernetic Medicine in the Present and Future”
Graduated from high school in 1960 with highest honors, and the same year was accepted at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIFT), Department of Aviation Mechanics. He graduated from MIFT with honors and immediately entered the Institute’s graduate program, defending his PhD thesis in 1971 in Physics and Mathematics. That year, he changed specialties and began working at the Institute of Higher Neurological Activity and Neurophysiology, under the Russian Academy of Sciences, first as director of the Neurophysiological Cybernetics team, and as of 1978, as chair of the Laboratory for the Study of the Mathematical Neurobiology of Learning. In 1988, he defended his doctoral thesis in biology on two topics: Human and Animal Physiology and Biophysics. As of 1991, he has taught as a professor. He is the author of two monographs: “Neuronal Models of Associative Memory” and “Informational Characteristics of Neuronal Networks,” and over 200 articles, the majority of which have been published in international journals. For many years, he has collaborated with scientists in France and the Czech Republic. His primary areas of scientific interest: modeling associative memory, motor control and learning; brain-computer interfaces; and developing mathematical methods for analyzing electrical activity in the brain.
Sergey Enikolopov – “Ideology of Immortality: Psychological Aspect”
Head of the laboratory of the sociology of deviant behavior and a healthy lifestyle for children and teenagers at the Center for the Sociology of Education at the Russian Academy for Education. Board member of the Moscow section of the Russian Psychologists’ Society. Board member of the Russian Psychiatrists’ Society, member of the American Psychology Association (APA), member of the International Society for Research on Aggression (ISRA), member of the editorial staff of the magazines Psychiatry, Historical Psychology and the Sociology of History, member of the editorial board of the magazine Survey of Psychiatry and Medical Psychology named for V.M. Bekhterev, and the Armenian Journal of Mental Health. Full member (academic) of the Russian Academy of Medical and Technical Sciences. The author of over 250 scientific works.
Vladimir Pirozhkov – “Innovative Breakthroughs and the Creativity of the Future”
In 1985 became a student at Sverdlovsk Institute of Architecture (now – Urals State Academy of Architecture and Arts, Ekaterinburg, Russia). Holds a BSc in Design. In 1991 invited for internship by Professor Luigi Colani of Colani Design Bern AG, Switzerland. In 1993 won a scholarship at Art Center of Design, Switzerland. Holds a BSc in Transportation Design. 1994- 2000 – Interior Designer, CITROEN, Paris, France. Created interiors for the most commercially successful models: C3, Pluriel, C4 Coupe, C5 and C6. 2000 - 2007 – Senior Interior Designer, TOYOTA Europe Design Development, Nice, France. Participated in development of the most popular models: Yaris, Avensis, Auris, Corolla, RAV4, Celica, Lexus IS250, Lexus RX, and IQ, Managed development of the perspective models for years 2020-2025. From 2007 – President of the Design and Innovation Centre ASTRAROSSA, Moscow, Russia. Projects included: Restyling of GAZ SIBER-VOLGA, livery design and roll-out of Sukhoi SUPERJET-100, restyling and creating new cabin design for the whole product line-up of KAMAZ, interior design of KAMOV-62 helicopter, full size design concept spacecraft RUS. At the moment - creating innovative system of ‘3D off-road’ transport. Teaches design & innovation in leading colleges and art schools in Europe and Russia. Honorary Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Arts (from 2004).
Aleksandr Kudryavtsev – “Global Trends in the Development of Technological Civilization: Freedom through Slavery”
Alexander have more than 30 year experience in product innovation process from idea generation to verification. During last 11 years he was a CEO of “Center of Practical Innovation”, Moscow. Rector of the Moscow Public University of creativity.
Fred Spier – “Big History and the Future of Humanity”
Fred Spier is Senior Lecturer in Big History at the University of Amsterdam. He has organized and taught the annual 'Big History Course' at the University of Amsterdam since 1994, the annual 'Big History University Lecture Series' at the Eindhoven University of Technology since 2003, and the 'Big Questions in History Course' at Amsterdam University College since 2009. Spier first obtained a M.Sc. in biochemistry at the University of Leiden with research experience in plant genetic engineering and the synthesis of oligonucleotides. He subsequently obtained an M.A. in cultural anthropology at the Free University Amsterdam (cum laude) and a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology and social history (cum laude) at the University of Amsterdam. As part of these studies, Spier executed a ten-year research project on religion, politics and ecology in Andean Peru, which led to the publication of two books: Religious Regimes in Peru and San Nicolás de Zurite. Current activities include developing a paradigm that helps to explain all of history. In his article How Big History Works: Energy flows and the rise and demise of complexity (2005), downloadable on his personal website, the first outline of this theory was proposed. An improved and more elaborate version of this argument is presented in his book Big History and the Future of Humanity, Wiley-Blackwell (2010). The paperback version was released in January 2011. A translation in Spanish was published in 2011; a translation into Chinese by Truth & Wisdom Press is planned for August 2012; and also the contract for a translation into Arabic has been signed. Spier is now working on a manuscript explaining how social and technical developments have conditioned the writing of history, tentatively titled: The Size of History: Reaching Out and Looking Back. In addition to promoting big history in many different arenas, Spier currently serves as the first Vice President of the International Big History Association (IBHA) and as Program Chair of the first IBHA conference 2012, to be held in Allendale / Grand Rapids, MI.
Dmitry Bulatov – “Techno-Biological Art: The New Condition of the Living”
Dmitry Bulatov is an artist, researcher and new media theoretician. His research focuses on different aspects of interdisciplinary art media (sci-art, robotics, genetic engineering, etc.). Author of many articles on contemporary art published in Russia and abroad, also of books and anthologies, including BioMediale. Contemporary Society and Genomic Culture (Kaliningrad, 2004). Evolution Haute Couture: Art and Science in the Post-Biological Age (volume 1, Kaliningrad, 2009). His artworks have been presented in various national and international exhibitions, including at the 49th and 50th Biennale in Venice and the Ars Electronica Festival (Linz, 2002). Bulatov has taken part in numerous international contemporary art conferences and given lectures in Russia (including The State Hermitage Museum, The State Tretyakov Gallery, The National Centre for Contemporary Arts), USA, Canada, Germany, Mexico, Singapore and Hong Kong. In 2007 one of his art works was named in the The Top 10 New Organisms of the Year, selected by Wiredmagazine. He has received numerous grants and awards including the National Innovation Award for Contemporary Visual Arts (Russia, 2009). Organizer and curator of more than 20 international sci-art projects. Currently, he is a member of the editorial board of “DOC(K)S,” a French contemporary art magazine, and curator of the international science art program in a frame of the European Capital of Culture Maribor 2012, Slovenia.
Sergei Varfolomeev – “The Individualization of Human Energy and Direct Electrical Supply to Each Metabolism”
Graduated from Faculty of Chemistry The M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, Chemical Kinetics Department., 1968 Ph.D. (Chemical Kinetics, Chemical Enzymology), MSU, 1971. Junior researcher, Biokinetics Department, A.N.Belozersky Interfaculty Laboratory of Molecular Biology and Bioorganic Chemistry, M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, 1971 - 1973. Assistant Professor, Chemical Kinetics Department, Chemistry Faculty, M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, 1973 - 1974. Senior researcher, Chemical Enzymology Department, Chemistry Faculty, M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, 1974 - 1978. Professor, Head of Biokinetics Department, A.N. Belozersky Interfaculty Laboratory for Molecular Biology and Bioorganic Chemistry, M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, 1978 - 1987. Professor, Head of Chemical Enzymology Department, Chemistry Faculty, M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, 1987 – present Director, Institute of Biochemical Physics Russian Academy of Science, 2004 - present. Doctor of Science (Chemistry), MSU, 1979 (i)main fields: physico-chemical biology; biocatalysis, chemical and biological kinetic, enzymology biotechnology. (ii)current research interests: biofuels enviromental biotechnology, biosensor, genetic engineering of enzymes.
Randal Koene – “The Engineering Challenge to Make Minds Substrate-Independent via Whole Brain Emulation Within Our Lifetimes”
Dr. Koene is a neuroscientist and neuroengineer, and he directs the Halcyon SIM (substrate-independent minds) and BCI (brain-computer interfaces) divisions, as well as the Analysis team at the nanotechnology company Halcyon Molecular in Silicon Valley (http://halcyonmolecular.com/). Between 2008 and 2010, Koene was director of the Department of Neuroengineering at Tecnalia, the third largest private research organization in Europe. Dr. Koene has been involved with organized research in artificial general intelligence (AGI) since the first AGI conference in 2008. He has a strong interest in developments both in machine intelligence and human intelligence enhancement, as well as the potential convergence of the two. Dr. Koene earned his Ph.D. in Computational Neuroscience at the Department of Psychology at McGill University, and his M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering with a specialization in Information Theory at Delft University of Technology. He is a former Professor at the Center for Memory and Brain of Boston University, and is co-founder of the Neural Engineering Corporation of Massachusetts. Randal Koene established the MindUploading.org website (http://minduploading.org/) and first proposed the term and specific approach called whole brain emulation, the purpose of which is the technological accomplishment of mind transfer to a different substrate. Dr. Koene’s professional research objective is the implementation of whole brain emulation: creating the large-scale high-resolution representations and emulations of activity in neuronal circuitry that are needed in patient-specific neuroprostheses. He is a member of the Oxford working group that convened in 2007 to create a first roadmap toward whole brain emulation. Dr. Koene investigates the fundamental and multi-disciplinary requirements for substrate-independent minds, the nano- and synthetic bio-technological tools for data acquisition and interfacing with the biological brain at large scale and high resolution, as well as novel computational substrates that can support emulated functions of the mind.
Vitaly Dunin-Barkovsky – “The Russian Brain Reverse Engineering Project”
Head of the Neuroinformatics Department at the Center for Optical-Neural Technology, which is part of the Scientific Research Institute for Systems Analysis under the Russian Academy of Sciences. He has been a director, board member, or collaborator at a diverse range of Russian and international scientific institutes. Dr. Dunin-Barkovsky’s fields of interest include neuroinformatics and the theoretical and experimental biophysics of the nervous system. As of August 2011, Dr. Dunin-Barkovsky has been the Director of the David Marr Internet Laboratory for Reverse Engineering of the Human Brain, organized by the “Russia 2045” Initiative
David Dubrovsky - “Consciousness and Brain: Human Nature Transformation Perspectives”
Fought in the Great Patriotic War (from December 1943, 3rd Belarussian front). From August 1945, lathe operator at the vehicle and tractor repair factory in Melitopol, and studied at night school. He passed exams for a high-school diploma, and enrolled at the philosophy faculty of Kiev State University, graduating in 1952. He worked at a secondary school in Donetsk (1952-1957) as a teacher of logic and psychology, and after these subjects were abolished, astronomy and metalwork, and from 1957 to 1970 at the Donetsk medical institute in the philosophy department. In 1962, he defended the PhD dissertation on the topic “On the analytical and synthetic nature of the reflective activity of the brain”, and in 1969 the doctoral dissertation “A philosophical analysis of the psycho-physiological problem”. From 1971 to 1987, he was the section head of the magazine “Philosophical Sciences”, and a professor at the philosophy faculty of Moscow State University. In 1987-1988, he was the head scientific advisor of the Institute of the History of Natural Science and Technology of the USSR Academy of Sciences. From 1988 to the present, he has been the head scientific advisor at the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Philosophy (cognition theory department). He is the co-chairman of the Russian Academy of Science Scientific Council for the methodology of artificial intellect (from 2005), and a member of the editorial staff of a number of magazines. He is the author of 7 books and 280 articles. His main scientific works concern the problem of the “consciousness and brain”, an analysis of the structure of subjective reality, issues of cognition theory and science methodology. In many of his articles, the topic of research is issues of the correlation between the conscious and the unconscious, the biological and the social, philosophical aspects of psycho-regulation, self-awareness, self-improvement, artificial intellect, and problems of deception and self-deception. He is the responsible editor and author of introductory articles for the following books: J. Margolis. Personality and Consciousness. Prospects for non-reductive materialism (Moscow, 1986); Blind Deaf Mutes: historical and methodological aspects. Myths and Reality (Moscow, 1989); The Phenomenon of Karate-Do: Philosophical and Ethical-Psychological Aspects (Moscow, 1989); The Brain and Consciousness (Moscow, 1990), The Brain and Reason (Moscow, 1994),V.P. Efroimson. Genius and Genetics (Moscow, 1998); Philosophical Artificial Intellect (Moscow, 2005); Artificial Intellect: An inter-disciplinary approach (Moscow, 2006); L.M. Livtak, Life After Death: Near-Death Experiences and the Nature of Psychosis. (Moscow, 2007); The Problem of Consciousness in Philosophy and Science (Moscow, 2009); Gichin Funakoshi, Karate-Do: My Way of Life (Moscow, 2011); Natural and Artificial Intellect: Methodological and Social Problems (Moscow, 2011).
Aleksandr Kaplan – “The Integration of the Human Brain into Control Systems for Anthropomorphic Devices Using Brain-Computer Interface Technology”
In 1973 graduated from the Department of Human Physiology at Faculty of Biology of Lomonosov Moscow State University. In 1976 he finished his postgraduated study at the same department and in the same year he was left at Moscow State University for research work. Since then, he emerged from research assistant to professor, head of the laboratory, the supervisor of 12 dissertations (Ph.D. projects) , many national and international grants such as DAAD, RFBR, RHF, Skolkovo etc. Ya. Kaplan is one of the leading experts in Russia and abroad in the area of the development of the brain-computer interface technologies: his first article in this area (published in 2005) was about the possibility of creating interfaces based on the unconscious part of the brain to communicate with the external environment. Progress in this area were due to including his developments in the field of human EEG analysis and it’s interpretation, as published in numerous articles in Russia and abroad. Original segmental approach to analysis of the EEG, developed by А. Ya. Kaplan, allowed him to generate a highly sensitive test system for psychopharmacology which led to the creation of new nootropic drug, appreciated as achievement in the area of science and technology in 2002 given as a prize by State Russian Federation Government. At present, Prof. A.Ya. Kaplan works on the project of creation of the manipulators and robotic systems, controlled by EEG in his laboratories of neurocomputer interfaces at MSU and cognitive processes and interfaces in the National Science Center "Kurchatov Institute".
Oleg Bakhtiyarov – “Activating Resources of Consciousness as the Basis for Forming Qualitatively New Technologies”
Swami Vishnudevananda Giri Ji Maharaj – “Transcendental Transhumanism as the Probable Future of Humankind”
He is the certified Russian-speaking Yoga master with 20 years of spiritual experience. He studied with more than 10 masters. He is the founder of the only advanced yoga education center in Russia: the Yoga Monastery-Academy (or Advaita-Yoga Ashrama) “Collection of Secrets,” which propagates a unique system of study and practice. He is also the founder of the worldwide society of Laya Yoga, with followers in the CIS and around the world. He is the author of over 90 books and a multitude of articles and sketches on the philosophy, theory and practice of Yoga and Tantra. Swami Vishnudevananda Giri also conducts research in theoretically difficult areas of philosophy and Yoga, such as prophecy, game theory, manipulation of reality, and common roots of Vedic civilization among the Aryans and ancient Slavs. He is the founder of “The Immortals,” or Worldwide Transhumanist Movement of Immortalists, and of a new direction in Russian transhumanism and immortalism called Transcendental Transhumanism, based on the theories of Yoga and other sacred texts.
Stepin Vyacheslav - "Turning Point in Civilisation Developement. Points of Growth for New Values"
Is a Russian-Belorussian philosopher and scientific organizer. He graduated from the History Department of Belarus State University (BGU) with a concentration in the philosophy of history in 1956 and received his postgraduate degree in philosophy at BGU in 1959. In the late 1960s, he became an active participant in seminars of the Moscow “methodological circle,” and in the ‘60s and ‘70s, he was a co-organizer and leader of methodological seminars in Minsk. He received his doctorate in philosophy in 1976 and professorship in 1979; served as Chair of the Philosophy Department at BGU from 1981 to 1987 and Director of the Institute of the History of Science and Technology in Moscow from 1987 to 1988; became a Fellow of the Academy of Sciences in 1987, Director of the Academy’s Institute of Philosophy from 1988 to 2006, and a Russian Academy of Sciences Academic in 1994. He has been a foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus since 1995 and an Honorary Academic in the International Academy of Sciences, Education and Technology Transfer in Germany since 1992. Since 2006, he has been the Chair of Philosophical Anthropology in the Philosophy Department of Moscow State University. He holds the presidency of the Russian Philosophical Society.
Viktor Petrenko – “Psycho-Practices as the Key to Cosmic Consciousness”
Graduated from the Psychology Department of Moscow State University in 1973 and has remained there as a researcher and professor. In 1993, he became a tenured professor, and three years later was elected as a Fellow of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAN). In 1999, he was awarded the Rubenstein Honorary Prize in Psychology by RAN. Petrenko is the Editor and Chief of the journal “The Methodology and History of Psychology,” a member of the European Association “Theories of Personality Constructs,” and a member of the European Association “Empirical Aesthetics.” His scientific interests revolve around the psychology of consciousness, psycho-semantics, political and ethnic psychology, the psychology of art and mass communications. Petrenko is the first Russian psychologist to make wide use of the structure of semantic space in order to study the worlds of personality and ethnic and social groups. Using the framework of the methodological school of Vygotsky-Leontiev-Luria, he proposed the term “psychosemantic” to indicate a wide field of research connected with studying the contents of human consciousness; concepts on politics, economics, law, ethics, and art; and self awareness and awareness of others. In doing so, he developed a native Russian version of psychosemantics. In the field of political psychology, he has developed methods for understanding the semantic space of political parties and conducted research on the Russian political mentality. Currently, he is researching and developing a psychosemantic approach to changing states of consciousness. Petrenko is the author of over 300 publications and 8 books.
Elena Molchanova - "Creation of Meaning Inside and Outside of Psychotic Reality"
Elena Molchanova is a scientific advisor of Kyrgyz Psychiatric Association and chief consultant of the Republican Center of Mental Health, The sphere of scientific interests includes transcultural psychology, cognitive psychopathology of time perception, psychopathology of violence and stress-related disorders. Author of more than 50 peer-reviewed academic articles, co-author of 2 books and 3 manuals.
Craig Benjamin – “Building a Synthesis of Scientific Theories & Spiritual Traditions in the University Undergraduate Classroom”
At GVSU he teaches big history, world history, ancient Central Asian history, and world history historiography to students at all levels. Benjamin is a frequent presenter of scholarly and pedagogical papers at conferences world wide, and the author of numerous published books, chapters and essays on big history, world history, ancient Central Asian history, and historiography. Benjamin has recorded lectures for the History Channel, The Teaching Company, and the Big History Project. Benjamin is Vice President (President Elect) of the World History Association; Treasurer of the International Big History Association; and a member of both the Advanced Placement and SAT World History Curriculum Development and Assessment Committees.
David Christian – “Comparative Humanoid Histories”
David Christian (D.Phil. Oxford, 1974) is by training a historian of Russia and the Soviet Union, but since the 1980s he has become interested in World History on very large scales. He taught at Macquarie University in Sydney from 1975 to 2000 before taking up a position at San Diego State University in 2001. In January 2009 he returned to Macquarie University. He has written on the social and material history of the 19th century Russian peasantry, in particular on aspects of diet and the role of alcohol. He has also written a text book history of modern Russia, and a synoptic history of Inner Eurasia (Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia). In 1989, he began teaching courses on 'Big History', surveying the past on the largest possible scales, including those of biology and astronomy; and in 2004, he published the first text on 'Big History'. At San Diego State University, he taught courses on World History, 'Big History', World Environmental History, Russian History, and the History of Inner Eurasia. He is a member of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and the Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen [Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities], Affiliates Chair for the World History Association, and a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Global History and the Cambridge History of the World. In 2008, he was appointed as a James Marsh Professor-at-Large at the University of Vermont, and also accepted appointments as a Research Fellow at Ewha Women's University in Seoul and as a Professor of History at Macquarie University in Sydney. In 2009 David Christian received an ARC grant to support research on the second volume of his history of Inner Eurasia, which will cover the history of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia from the Mongol Empire to the present day. Over the next few years he will also be working with the support of Bill Gates to create an online course in Big History for High School students.
Eric Chaisson – “Cultural Evolution in a Universal Context: Will Si-based Machines Dominate C-based Humans in 2045?”
Dr. Eric J. Chaisson is an American astrophysicist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he has multiple appointments, most notably at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. His major interests are currently twofold: His scientific research addresses an interdisciplinary, thermodynamic study of physical, biological, and cultural phenomena, seeking to understand the origin and evolution of galaxies, stars, planets, life, and society. His major goal is to help devise a unifying cosmic-evolutionary worldview of the Universe and our sense of place within it. His educational work engages master teachers and computer animators to create better methods, technological aids, and novel curricula to enthuse teachers and instruct students in all aspects of natural science. He teaches an annual undergraduate course at Harvard on the subject of cosmic evolution, which combines both of these research and educational programs.
Aleksandr Lvovsky – “Quantum Technologies and Singularity”
He did his undergraduate in Physics at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. In 1993, he went on to do an M. A. and M. Phil. in Physics at Columbia University in New York City, finishing his program in 1996. In 1998 Alexander completed his Ph. D. at Columbia University under the supervision of Dr. Sven R. Hartmann, having conducted experimental studies of coherent optical transients in atomic gases. After his Ph. D. he spent a year at the University of California, Berkeley as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Physics, and then five years at Universität Konstanz in Germany, first as an Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral fellow, then as a research group Leader in quantum-optical information technology. In 2004 he became Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Calgary, where he remains today. Dr. Lvovsky is a Canada Research Chair, a lifetime member of the American Physical Society and the winner of many awards – most notably the International Quantum Communications award, the Alberta Ingenuity New Faculty award and the Emmy Noether research award of the German Science Foundation. At the University of Calgary Alexander conducts wide-profile experimental and theoretical research on synthesis, manipulation, measurement and storage of quantum optical information for applications in quantum technology.
Dmitry Leontyev – “The Future as a Space for the Possible”
Heads the Laboratory for the Study of Mathematical Neuro-Biology at the Institute for Higher Neurological Activity and Neurophysiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He holds a doctorate in psychology and is a professor in the Psychology Department of Moscow State University and Chair the Laboratory for the Study of Personality Development Problems in the Handicapped at the Moscow City Psychological and Pedagogical University. Dmitry Leontiev also hales from a renowned line of Russian psychologists, being the son of Alexei Alexeevich Leontiev and grandson of Alexei Nikolaevich Leontiev. He is currently the director of the Institute for Existential Psychology and Creativity for Life in Moscow. His areas of specialization encompass the fields of psychology of personality, motivation and concepts, theory and history of psychology, psycho-diagnostics, psychology of art and advertising, and the application of psychology in conjunction with the humanities, among other areas. He has authored over 400 publications and received the Victor Frankl Fund Prize in Vienna in 2004 for his achievements in the field of concept oriented humanistic psychotherapy. He has edited numerous translations of the works of the world’s leading psychologists. In recent years, he has been engaged in studying the possibilities for non-therapeutic psychological assistance, prevention, and facilitation of personality development based on existential philosophy
Archbishop Lazar Puhalo – “Models of Reality as Sources of Conflict”
He is a Fellow of the Chester Ronning Centre of the University of Alberta, Canada, his formal studies include physics and neurobiology. Puhalo has travelled widely in the Middle East as a member of the Conversations with Islam project, lecturing in Syria and Turkey. He has presented at the Risali I Nur symposia in Istanbul. His lecture series in Romania spanned six years, focussing primarily on social issues, and included participation in Templeton conferences on science and religion. He began work with the ecology movement in 1963 and continues to write and lecture on the dangers to our biosphere. The author of more than 38 books, including On The Neurobiology of “Sin.” His“signature work” is Culture, Commonweal and Personhood. Lecturing regularly in Universities in Canada and America, Lazar Puhalo is an internationally known lecturer in subjects related to social justice, human rights, ecology and the clash between commonweal and corporatism, as well as science and culture. Founder and abbot of All Saints Monastery near Vancouver, B.C., Canada, Puhalo is a retired hierarch of the Orthodox Church in America and serves as the Civil Liaison for the Canadian Archdiocese of the OCA. He is a consistent advocate for broader and deeper education in the sciences, ecological responsibility, the welfare of the mentally handicapped and affordable housing.
Lowell Gustafson – “Religion in the Age of Human Politics”
Lowell Gustafson received his PhD from the University of Virginia in 1984 in Government and Foreign Affairs. From 1984 to 1986, he taught Latin American Politics at the University of Virginia. Since then he has been on the Political Science faculty at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, USA, having served as chair of the department for ten years over three terms. Since 2008, he has been an Associate Dean in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Villanova. He is the author of The Sovereignty Dispute over the Falkland (Malvinas) Islands, Oxford University Press, a co-editor of 6 books, and author of many articles, chapters, and papers. Among his other professional service, he is the Secretary for the International Big History Association.
Lama Gonbo Dorje
After graduating from school, he studied at the Kalmyk State University and Shchepkin Theater Academy (Moscow). In 1990-1992, he was a khuvarak acolyte at the Elista Khurul and the St. Petersburg Buddhist temple. In 1991, on the recommendation of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, he organized and headed the Buddhist Youth Center (from 1993 the Dharma Center of Kalmykia), which at present educates the believers of Kalmykia about the foundations of the Buddha’s teachings. In 1992 – 1996 he was the executive secretary and deputy Chairman of the Kalmykia Buddhists’ Association, and in 1997-2004 underwent training at meditation centers and monasteries in Tibet, Mongolia and France. Since 2000, he has been the Superior at the Orgakin Khurul “Bodo Dalai-Lamin Rashi Lunpo”. In 2005, he was raised to the rank of Bajracharya – a teacher of Buddhist tantra according to the tradition of Drikung Kagyu of Tibetan Buddhism by His Eminence Yudra Rinpoche (Nepal).
Alan Fransis – “The Proto-Science of Consciousness”
For over forty years Alan has been researching and teaching the ancient Taoist protosciences of consciousness and the teachings of GI Gurdjieff. He was a founder of the Gurdjieff Foundation in Oregon and 2005 the Russian Center for Gurdjieff Studies. He studied directly under Masters Tung Kai Ying, Ju Kim Shek, Marshall Ho'o and in Gurdjieff Work Lord John Pentland, Michel de Salzmann and others. He was involved in the initial pilot program leading to development of UCLA Pain Control Clinic and nearby the first college of Taoist Medicine. He was founder and director of Turnaround, a skid row Center for addiction and social services. Alan is a business consultant who has given presentations to PICMET an international conference for managing engineers and technologist, is currently consulting to the creation of Manutan Corporate University in Paris and in a joint venture to develop new consciousness technology in Russia.
Maxim Kalashnikov – “Singularity-2045 or a New Dark Age”
He is an opponent of liberal policies and proponent of proactive government and the creation of a “neuro” social model that will supersede capitalism (a “neuro-society” is a structure in which society is organized along the pattern of neurons in an organic central nervous system and makes use of the most advanced technologies, known as “sixth and seventh wave” technologies). He graduated from Moscow State University with a degree in history, worked as an economic and political commentator for “Russian Gazette” from 1994 to 2001, and has served as an editor at the newspaper “Stringer” and the journal “Russian Entrepreneur.” His best known books are “Broken Sword of the Empire,” “The Third Project,” “Superman Speaks Russian,” “Harness the Lightning!” “The Global Diversion Crisis,” and “The Captivating Star of Risk.”
Vital Sounouvou - "Bionics Revolution: The Flying Humanoids"
Vital envisions a future for Africa as a place of innovation and technology with an instrumental position in the global economy. He is committed to promoting his own inventions as well as the technological and entrepreneurial innovations of his peers. At age 16, Vital founded World Teen, an association for the cultivation of talent among young West Africans, eventually numbering over 300 members. He went on to study Computer Sciences and Network Engineering, earning a degree from the Technical Institute of Calais-Boulogne. Today Vital focuses his energy on his innovative bionics project: “From Benin to the Flying Humanoids,” in conjunction with the University of Abomey-Calavi. This comprehensive vision is rooted in his belief that life can be recreated artificially (www.vitalsounouvou.com). His innovations also extend into business; Vital is a co-founder of Eworbiz.com, Afriwall, and Exportias.com. Vital is a Global Youth Innovation Network (GYIN) Ambassador and a member of the GYIN Youth Advisory Group. He has been invited to speak at numerous international exhibitions for the promotion African innovation and youth entrepreneurship. In 2010, Vital helped to create the Young Beninese Leaders Association with the sponsorship of the U.S. Embassy, and he continues to work closely with the diplomatic mission in Cotonou.
Sergei Pereslegin – “Contemporary Version of the Phase Model: Mainstream Technology Behind the Phase Barrier”
He is a literary critic and political essayist, sociologist, socionics specialist and military historian. He graduated from the Physics Department of Leningrad State University (LGU) with a specialization in “the physical properties of nuclear and elementary particles.” He has taught special courses in physics and physical mathematics at LGU, collaborated with the Moscow Institute of Systems Research, and lectured at the University of Kazan and the Riga Sociology Center. He became a “Wanderer” prize laureate in 1996 for his book of literary criticism “Eye of the Typhoon: the Last Decade of Soviet Fantasy Writing.” He is a participant in the “Leningrad Seminar,” Russia’s most important science fiction gathering, held annually by the legendary Russian science fiction writer Boris Strugatsky; compiler, editor and author of the notes in the book series “Military Historical Encyclopedia”; author of the forward and afterward of the book series “Worlds of the Strugatsky Brothers”; and head of the research groups Constructing the Future – as of 2000, the Saint Petersburg School of Scenario Forecasting – as of 2003, and Knowledge Reactor – as of 2007.
Pavel Luksha – “Education in the Future”
He is responsible for the development and delivery of integrated executive programmes. Among the recently accomplished programs are: ‘Innovation management for major state-owned corporations’ (in partnership with the Ministry of Economic Development), ‘Major Project Management for Oil&Gas Industry’ (in partnership with MIT and BP), TNK BP Academy of Major Projects, RENOVA Strategic Forum, and others. Mr. Luksha is an independent member of the board of the National Club of Director for R&D and Innovation (an all-Russia professional institution that unites executives coordinating R&D and technological innovation practices in largest Russian companies), a member of the Expert Council of the Agency of Strategic Initiatives of the Government of Russian Federation, and a leader of the Agency-supported project that forecasts most demanded competencies up to 2030. Apart from that, Pavel Luksha is one of the leaders of the Metaver (a community of groups of educational innovators), the co-author of Education 2030 foresight and a new foresight methodology ‘Rapid Foresight’. Pavel’s career track record includes experience both in business and academic fields. As a finance and strategic professional, he provided consulting services with such international companies as Accenture, Alvarez & Marsal, and Arcadis Euroconsult, advising Russian and international businesses across a range of industries, as well as governments and non-profit organizations. He also held executive positions with leading automotive manufacturer SOLLERS, and was on the Board of Directors for Zavolzhsky Motor Plant. He also ran his own businesses in advisory and HR services. Pavel’s research experience includes research activity with the Institute of Economics of Russian Academy of Science (Evolutionary Economics Working Group), and with the University of Hertfordshire, UK (Group for Research in Organizational Evolution). Pavel has published works on evolutionary economics and economics of the firm, strategic entrepreneurship, and system thinking in a number of international peer reviewed journals, including Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Journal of Sociocybernetics, Artificial Life, and others. He is also the author of the book on the foundations of evolutionary economics, published in 2009 (in Russian). He taught Strategic Management courses in MBA and undergraduate programs of leading Russian schools, including the Higher School of Economics, and Moscow State University Business School. Pavel has graduated from the Higher School of Economics with MSs degree in Economics. He holds PhD degree in Economics of Central Economic Mathematical Institute of Russian Academy of Science.
Vadim Kazutinsky – “Possible Scenarios for the Development of Civilization in the Context of Universal History”
Graduate of Kiev State University, physical department (1956), speciality – «astronomy». Since 1962 till present day he works in the Philosophy institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, where since 2005 he fills a position of a main research fellow. His doctor's degree thesis was «Traditions and revolution in modern astronomy» (1999). He is a full member of the K.E. Tsiolkovsky Russian Academy of Astronautics (since 1991).
Joseph Voros – “Macro-Prospection: Thinking about the Future Using Macro- and Big History”
Dr Joseph Voros started out as a physicist. Нe has a PhD in theoretical physics, during which he worked on mathematical extensions to the General Theory of Relativity*followed by several years in Internet-related companies (including a stint at Netscape Communications)*before becoming a futurist. His professional interests are broadly multi-disciplinary, and his main research interests are similarly varied. Among these are: the emerging field of "integral inquiry"; theories and models of social change; the long-term future of humankind; and the broad sweep of cosmic evolutionary history as a framework for conceptualising the human knowledge quest and futures research. Three of his research articles have won excellence awards including, most recently, an Outstanding Paper Award in 2010. He is a member of the World Future Society, the World Futures Studies Federation, The Foresight Network/Shaping Tomorrow, and the International Big History Association. He lives in the historic regional city of Ballarat, outside Melbourne, Australia, and spends much of his commuting time thinking about "everything from the Big Bang to the BlackBerry, and beyond.
Timur Schukin – “The ‘Avatar’ Project”
Graduated from Moscow’s Lyublin Gymnasium in 1995 and Moscow State University in 2000. In 2004, he defended his PhD thesis on Psychophysiology and “Prognosis Errors Associated with Changes in EEG Alertness Levels” at the Psychological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He has headed the Laboratory for Bio-Management at the Institute for Cognitive Neurophysiology, and worked on problems associated with biofeedback, including studying with Dr. Elmer Green in the United States. He has successfully employed invention theory in his work as an organizational consultant and led a variety of production and software projects, as well as several commercial organizations. Currently, he is the director of the company “Vetvi-Labs,” which specializes in software development and biofeedback equipment. He participated in a number of projects at the exhibit “science art” related to interactive sculpture and as a co-author and scientific consultant. In 2010, he participated in founding the global social initiative “Russia 2045,” where he continues to serve as a coordinator
Danila Medvedev – “The Possibility of Building a Utopia”
Received his PhD in economics from the Saint-Petersburg State University of Engineering and Economics in 2005. In 2007, Medvedev spoke in the Russian Parliament at a roundtable on “The Influence of Science on the Political Situation in Russia: A Look into the Future.” This was later published as a prognosis, co-authored with experts from the Russian Transhuman Movement. In February of 2010, he published “An Open Letter to President D.A. Medvedev from Citizen D.A. Medvedev,” in which he sets forth his vision of technological development in Russia.
Leonid Grinin, Andrei Korotaev – “Global Technological Transformations and Global Future”
Leonid Grinin has PhD and is Senior Research Professor at the Institute for Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, Deputy Director of the Eurasian Center for Big History & System Forecasting as well as Research Professor and Director of the Volgograd Center for Social Research. He is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Age of Globalization (in Russian), also a co-editor of the international journals Social Evolution & History and the Journal of Globalization Studies, as well as co-editor of the international almanacs Evolution, History and Mathematics, and Kondratieff Waves. In 1980 graduated cum laude from Volgograd Pedagogical University, then worked as a teacher in several educational establishments. In 1989 he founded Uchitel Publishing House, and has been its Director General ever since. In 1996 he maintained a thesis called “The Periodization of Historical Process” for Master degree in Moscow State University. And he received his PhD from Moscow State Technical University in 2001 (the PhD thesis was “The Role of Productive Forces in Historical Process”). In 2008 together with Alexander N. Chumakov he founded the journal “Age of Globalization” (in Russian). In 2009, together with Andrey Korotayev, James Sheffield and Victor de Munck he founded the Journal of Globalization Studies (in English). Grinin`s academic interests lie in the sphere of social laws, social evolution, driving forces of historical development, the theory of historical process and its periodization and certain aspects (the productive and political ones), evolution of statehood. Grinin`s academic research in the field of Global Studies, futurology and Big History is connected with the analysis of modern problem of globalization and modernization, forecasts of the world political and social-economic development, current global crisis, economic cycles of different duration and their modeling, information-scientific revolution and its influence on global processes, history of globalization and periodization of global process analysis of global trends in historical processes, comparison of global processes in nature and society. Dr. Grinin is the author of about 320 scholarly publications in Russian and English.
Andrey Korotaev made major contributions to world-systems theory, cross-cultural studies, Near Eastern history, and mathematical modeling of social and economic macrodynamics. Born in Moscow, Andrey Korotayev attended Moscow State University, where he received a B.A. degree in 1984 and an M.A. in 1989. He earned a Ph.D. in 1993 from Manchester University, and in 1998 a Doctor of Sciences degree from the Russian Academy of Sciences. Since 2000, he has been Professor and Director of the Anthropology of the East Center at the Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow, and Senior Research Professor in the Oriental Institute and Institute for African Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 2001-2003 he also directed the "Anthropology of the East" Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow. Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ In 2003-2004, he was a visiting member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. He is co-editor of the journals Social Evolution & History and Journal of Globalization Studies, as well as History & Mathematics almanac (together with Leonid Grinin and Arno Tausch). Together with Askar Akayev and George Malinetsky he is a coordinator of the Russian Academy of Sciences Program "System Analysis and Mathematical Modeling of World Dynamics". Korotayev is a laureate of the Russian Science Support Foundation in "The Best Economists of the Russian Academy of Sciences" nomination (2006).
David Hookes – “The Realisation of Our Species-Being in the Quantum-Digital Age”
Born in 1942 close to the Liverpool dock road into a working class family. Educated at Quarry Bank High School and then Trinity College, Cambridge University from which received a BA in Natural Sciences with major in Physics. As an undergraduate he was dissatisfied with the fact that there were so many conceptual problems in Physics such as the interpretation of quantum mechanics and the unexplained constancy of the velocity of light in Special Relativity. So I decided to switch to Molecular Biology. I then obtained a PhD in this subject at Kings College, London University with a thesis on the molecular structure of bio-membranes. Spent a year in Germany as a post-doctoral fellow of the Von Humboldt Foundation and carried out, inter alia, theoretical work on the transport properties of bio-membranes. Back in England I was appointed Head of Physics at Kilburn Polytechnic. Some years later took a Masters Degree in Digital Electronic Engineering at the University of Westminster. Then appointed a Senior Lecturer in Electronic Engineering at Coventry University and did research in a number of areas such as biosensors, robot tactile sensing, and computer-interactive educational technology, developing a ‘Physics -is-Fun’ workstation. After retirement he became an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Liverpool University Computer Science Department. А member of the Labour Party and a life-long trade unionist and socialist. My present research interests are: How to save the planet from the threat of global warming; renewable energy technologies; application of ideas from physics to political economy and computer networks; Computer-interactive educational technology; a hobbyist interest in foundational problems of physics.
John Smart – “The Race to Inner Space: Seeing, Guiding and Benefiting from Humanity’s Faster, Smaller, Smarter, and Wealthier Future”
John M. Smart is a technology foresight educator and a scholar in global processes of evolution, development, and accelerating change. He is president of the Acceleration Studies Foundation (Mountain View, CA), and co-founder of Evodevouniverse.com, an international research community that explores evolutionary and developmental processes of change at the universal and subsystem scales. He is also an affiliate of the ECCO research group at VUB (Brussels, Belgium). He is a professor and program champion for the Emerging Technologies masters program at the University of Advancing Technology (Tempe, AZ), which teaches foresight in exponentially advancing technologies, and seeks innovative technology solutions to humanity’s grand challenges. He is also an advisor in futures studies and forecasting at Singularity University (Mountain View, CA). John has a B.S. in business administration from UC Berkeley, an M.S.-equivalency in physiology and medicine from U.C. San Diego School of Medicine, and an M.S. in futures studies from the University of Houston. He studied systems theory at UCSD under the mentorship of James Grier Miller (Living Systems, 1978), who mentored under process philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. His personal website on accelerating technological change is AccelerationWatch.com, and his blog is EverSmarterWorld.com.
Barry Rodrigue – “Manifesto for a New Millennium”
Barry H. Rodrigue was born and raised in the eastern borderlands of Canada and the United States. After his baccalaureate, he worked in Alaska as an ethnographer, field biologist and journalist. While there, he founded the international almanac, Archipelago, and collected cultural materials for the legendary Folkways Records (available through the Smithsonian Institution’s Global Sound series). A Fulbright Scholar and Ph.D. graduate from Laval University (Québec), Dr. Rodrigue is associate professor at the University of Southern Maine. His work as an archeologist and geographer focuses on topics ranging from adaptation in the Appalachian Highlands to peace initiatives in the Caucasus. He has produced numerous articles and books, individually and with others, such as L’Histoire régionale de Beauce-Etchemin-Amiante (2003), which was short-listed for the Canadian Historical Association’s annual prize for most significant contribution to Canadian history. His work on local, regional and global issues in the past, present and future made him an early advocate for macro-studies to resolve conflict, a process he terms “mutualization.” He serves as International Coordinator of the International Big History Association (IBHA) and is a member of the Eurasian Center for Big History & System Forecasting (Russian Academy of Sciences). He is presently co-editing the text, From Big Bang to Global Civilization: A Big History Anthology (University of California Press), with Dr. Leonid Grinin and Dr. Andrey Korotayev.
Video Salutations:
Anders Sandberg
He was born in Solna, Sweden. He holds a Ph.D. in computational neuroscience from Stockholm University, and is currently a James Martin Research Fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. Sandberg's research centres on societal and ethical issues surrounding human enhancement and new technology, as well as on assessing the capabilities and underlying science of future technologies. His recent contributions include work on cognitive enhancement[1] (methods, impacts, and policy analysis); a technical roadmap on whole brain emulation;[2] on neuroethics; and on global catastrophic risks, particularly on the question of how to take into account the subjective uncertainty in risk estimates of low-likelihood, high-consequence risk.[3] He is well known as a commentator and participant in the public debate about human enhancement internationally, as well as for his academic publications in neuroscience, ethics, and future studies. He is co-founder of and writer for the think tank Eudoxa, and is a co-founder of the Orion's Arm collaborative worldbuilding project.[4] Between 1996 and 2000 he was Chairman of the Swedish Transhumanist Association. He was also the scientific producer for the neuroscience exhibition "Se Hjärnan!" ("Behold the Brain!"), organized by Swedish Travelling Exhibitions, the Swedish Research Council and the Knowledge Foundation, that was touring Sweden 2005–2006. In 2007 he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at Oxford University, working on the EU-funded ENHANCE project on the ethics of human enhancement.
Nick Bostrom
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