Sunday, September 14, 2014


News Clips Of The Day


10 Arrested In Pakistan Over 2012 Attack On Malala Yousafzai – NPR
by SCOTT NEUMAN
September 12, 2014

Pakistan says it has arrested 10 militants believed to have been involved in a near-fatal attack two years ago on teenage activist Malala Yousafzai.

Army spokesman Gen. Asim Saleem Bajwa said in 2012 the men had been ordered by the head of the Pakistani Taliban, Mullah Fazlullah, to kill Yousafzai, who was 15 at the time.

Despite serious head injuries, Yousafzai — who rose to prominence for her campaign against Taliban efforts to forcibly prevent girls from attending school — survived the attack.

"The entire gang involved in the murder attempt ... has been busted," Bajwa said.

The army said the detainees were from the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. In addition to targeting Yousafzai, the group had also been instructed to kill other "significant members" of the local community, including members of an anti-Taliban "peace committee," The Guardian quotes Bajwa as saying.

After initially being treated in Pakistan, Yousafzai was transported to a hospital in the U.K., where she and her family now live.

Since her recovery, Yousafzai has continued her activism. In July of last year, less than a year after the attack, she addressed the United Nations, telling the assembly that the Taliban "thought that the bullets would silence us, but they failed.

"The terrorists thought that they would change my aims and stop my ambitions," she told delegates, "but nothing changed in my life, except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born."

In October, European lawmakers awarded her the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.




“Army spokesman Gen. Asim Saleem Bajwa said in 2012 the men had been ordered by the head of the Pakistani Taliban, Mullah Fazlullah, to kill Yousafzai, who was 15 at the time.... The army said the detainees were from the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. In addition to targeting Yousafzai, the group had also been instructed to kill other "significant members" of the local community, including members of an anti-Taliban 'peace committee,' The Guardian quotes Bajwa as saying.... Since her recovery, Yousafzai has continued her activism. In July of last year, less than a year after the attack, she addressed the United Nations, telling the assembly that the Taliban "thought that the bullets would silence us, but they failed. 'The terrorists thought that they would change my aims and stop my ambitions," she told delegates, "but nothing changed in my life, except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.' In October, European lawmakers awarded her the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought."

Hooray for a very young but obviously mature young woman whose simple goal was to get an education. She literally faced down the primitive and vicious antifeminism of a Taliban leader in Pakistan, a country where women have very few if any rights. I am pleased to see that she got the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. The group who tried to kill her had also been told to kill others of an anti-Taliban "Peace Committee." I am also relieved to see that the Pakistani government is proceeding against the ten and hopefully they will get many years in prison. Pakistan is almost ruled by the Taliban, which is of course why when President Obama sent in the Navy Seals to kill Osama bin Laden, he didn't tell thePakistani government about the raid. Good move, President Obama.





American Mathew Miller sentenced to six years of hard labor in North Korea
CBS/AP September 14, 2014, 7:23 AM

PYONGYANG, North Korea - North Korea's Supreme Court on Sunday sentenced Matthew Miller, a U.S. citizen, to six years of hard labor for entering the country illegally and trying to commit espionage.

At a trial that lasted about 90 minutes, the court said Miller, 24, of Bakersfield, California, tore up his tourist visa at Pyongyang's airport upon arrival on April 10 and admitted to having the "wild ambition" of experiencing prison life so that he could secretly investigate the North Korean human rights situation.

Miller, who waived the right to a lawyer, was handcuffed and led from the courtroom after his sentencing. The court ruled that it would not hear any appeals to its decision.

Earlier, it had been believed that Miller had sought asylum when he entered North Korea. During the trial, however, the prosecution argued that it was a ruse and that Miller also falsely claimed to have secret information about the U.S. military in South Korea on his iPad and iPod.

In August, Miller told the Associated Press he was being treated well, and was even allowed daily walks. He also claimed that he had been seeking his release.

"I have been requesting help from the American government, but have received no reply," Miller said at the time.

It was not clear whether he was speaking on his own initiative, or if his comments were coerced.

Miller is one of three Americans now being held in North Korea.

A trial is expected soon for Jeffrey Fowle, who entered the North as a tourist but was arrested in May for leaving a Bible at a provincial club. The third American, Korean-American missionary Kenneth Bae, is serving out a 15-year sentence for alleged "hostile acts."

All three have appealed to the U.S. government to send a senior statesman to Pyongyang to intervene on their behalf.

During a brief interview with The Associated Press in Pyongyang last week, Miller said he had written a letter to President Barack Obama but had not received a reply.

Fowle, a 56-year-old equipment operator for the city of Moraine, Ohio, said his wife, a hairstylist from Russia, made a written appeal on his behalf to Russian President Vladimir Putin. He said the Russian government responded that it was watching the situation.

The U.S. has repeatedly offered to send its envoy for North Korean human rights issues, Robert King, to Pyongyang to seek the freedom of the detainees, but without success.

Former President Bill Clinton came in 2009 to free a couple of jailed journalists. Jimmy Carter made the trip in 2010 to secure the release of Aijalon Gomes, who had been sentenced to eight years of hard labor for illegally crossing into the country to do missionary work.

In 2011, the State Department's envoy for North Korean human rights managed to successfully intervene in the case of Korean-American businessman Eddie Yong Su Jun.





“At a trial that lasted about 90 minutes, the court said Miller, 24, of Bakersfield, California, tore up his tourist visa at Pyongyang's airport upon arrival on April 10 and admitted to having the "wild ambition" of experiencing prison life so that he could secretly investigate the North Korean human rights situation. Miller, who waived the right to a lawyer, was handcuffed and led from the courtroom after his sentencing. The court ruled that it would not hear any appeals to its decision.... In August, Miller told the Associated Press he was being treated well, and was even allowed daily walks. He also claimed that he had been seeking his release. 'I have been requesting help from the American government, but have received no reply,' Miller said at the time. It was not clear whether he was speaking on his own initiative, or if his comments were coerced.”

All the other people mentioned in this article as being held in North Korea had some kind of logical reason for being there but this young man was perhaps mentally unbalanced, unless the US government did indeed send him in to spy on the human rights situation there. I do doubt that, though. Young adult men sometimes become involved mentally with some adventure seeking idea – like going into Syria to fight with ISIS – and get involved in something much bigger than they are prepared to deal with. This looks to me like one of those cases. I'm afraid he is going to find what he was apparently seeking – what its like to live in a North Korean prison. Maybe 6 years of hard labor will mature him. He told reporters that he is being treated well. Hopefully that situation will continue.




City raising money for homeless through parking meters
CBS/AP September 13, 2014, 9:55 PM

PASADENA, Calif. - The city of Pasadena is letting homeless people keep the change.

The Los Angeles suburb is turning 14 parking meters into repositories for donations made to nonprofits that serve the homeless, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.

Pasadena's housing director, Bill Huang, says the hope is that people who might be reluctant to hand spare change to a panhandler will be more open to putting it in a meter.

"There's still a lot to do. There are still almost 700 homeless persons here in Pasadena. It's way too many people, but resources are shrinking dramatically," Bill Huang, the city's director of Housing and Careers Services told CBS Los Angeles.

Despite shrinking resources, homelessness has been cut nearly in half across the city. Officials hope the meter program will further their progress.

The meters, painted bright orange and covered with smiley faces and inspirational sayings, are also designed to raise awareness of homelessness.

So far the pilot program's first two meters have raised about $270 over three weeks.

Some homeless advocates complain the meters aren't a serious enough effort to help the homeless. They also say that in some cities meters have been used to push panhandlers out of town.

"If we would get serious about addressing the actual economic and social issues that we find so off-putting, we wouldn't need meters," said Paul Boden, director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, who called the project "asinine."

Pasadena is the first city in Los Angeles County to try the meter approach. Officials said the primary purpose is to raise awareness about homelessness, although they acknowledge it could also reduce panhandling.

Dorothy Edwards, who panhandled near a Target store until she found a home, had mixed feelings.

Getting handouts from strangers allowed her to buy necessities she needed immediately like rain gear, tents and food for her dog, she said. But she added that panhandling also made it easier for her to remain homeless long-term.

"When you look at the big picture, the meters are going to be a long-term solution," she said.

Denver, with 55 meters, says it has raised more than $30,000 annually for homeless programs while seeing panhandling decrease. But in Orlando, Florida, the Times reports, 15 meters have raised just $2,027 in three years, $27 more than it cost to install them.

Pasadena's meter campaign was put together by students at the Art Center College of Design and funded by various grants. The meters themselves were donated.

Local charitable groups are collecting the money.




Pasadena's housing director, Bill Huang, says the hope is that people who might be reluctant to hand spare change to a panhandler will be more open to putting it in a meter.... The meters, painted bright orange and covered with smiley faces and inspirational sayings, are also designed to raise awareness of homelessness. So far the pilot program's first two meters have raised about $270 over three weeks. Some homeless advocates complain the meters aren't a serious enough effort to help the homeless. They also say that in some cities meters have been used to push panhandlers out of town. 'If we would get serious about addressing the actual economic and social issues that we find so off-putting, we wouldn't need meters,' said Paul Boden, director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, who called the project 'asinine.' … Denver, with 55 meters, says it has raised more than $30,000 annually for homeless programs while seeing panhandling decrease. But in Orlando, Florida, the Times reports, 15 meters have raised just $2,027 in three years, $27 more than it cost to install them. Pasadena's meter campaign was put together by students at the Art Center College of Design and funded by various grants. The meters themselves were donated.”

Denver has had a noticeable success rate from their meters, while Orlando has received very little money. I think the charitable organizations and the Art Center College of Design need to study the work that has been done in Denver and do likewise with their meters. As for Orlando, the deep South population tends to be against efforts to help the homeless, preferring to ignore them and let them get by the best way they can. Helping the homeless is a liberal cause. Treating them as a police matter is the conservative way.

I'll bet Pasadena can make it work if they take a look at the success in other cities. According to the article, “homelessness has been cut nearly in half across the city” despite Paul Boden's comment that the meters don't address the real problems behind homelessness. Anything that helps is worth doing. Effectively addressing the psychiatric and social reasons behind homelessness is a much bigger problem, with no easy cures, it seems to me. Even with mental health drugs like antidepressants and anti-psychotics, most people need one to one or group therapy, which involves their being sufficiently stabilized to get off the street and stay off. Going out to live on the street instead of looking for help shows a mental problem of some kind in most cases. A fairly large number of homeless people will chose the street because they can continue to use drugs or alcohol there – which is a mental health issue – or because they have a police record and an outstanding warrant against them. Most of them are either heavily depressed or mentally deficient in some way not to go to the city government for HUD housing, psychotropic drugs and food stamps, if they are destitute and cannot find work. I'm encouraged to see that this novel technique for raising money has worked in some places, and I hope it works in Pasadena.





It's All About The Girls: Is The World Listening To Them? – NPR
by LINDA POON
September 14, 2014

"My shoes wear out from walking to school, and then I can't go because we can't afford new shoes," says a girl from Indonesia.

"I want to live freely," says another girl, in Egypt. "I don't want people to dictate what I do. No one to control us, no one to hit us, no one to tell us what clothes to wear."

In Congo, a girl starts to list her chores: "Tidying the house, fetching water, preparing meals," she says. "There are so many I can't even name them all."

Their voices are part of a chorus of more than 500 girls, ages 10 to 19, from 14 developing countries. They've shared their challenges and dreams with the Girl Declaration, a campaign started last year by the Nike Foundation.

The aim: to change the way the world thinks about girls, says Lyric Thompson at the International Center for Research on Women, which worked with Nike on the project.

Writing this week in the journal Science, Melinda Gates saysthat "no society can achieve its potential with half of its population marginalized and disempowered."

They are the "engines" of global development, writes the co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And they should be at the center of development plans and goals.

She's talking about the hundreds of millions of women and girls who face gender inequality around the world, especially in low- and middle-income countries.

But activists say the world's girls have been left out of the current Millennium Development Goals, which expire in 2015. The existing goals focus on issues like poverty and education. They fail to address child marriage, genital mutilation and adolescent pregnancy, Thompson says.

The United Nations plans to replace the current goals with a new agenda for 2015, and advocates like Thompson have been pushing for world leaders and policy makers to turn their attention to girls.

Nike has worked with 25 development organizations to capture the voices of young adolescents. Since its launch last year, the Girl Declaration has been presented to leaders around the world and also shared online through the leaves of a virtual "Girl Tree."

Thompson and others want to set priorities that will help the 250 million adolescent girls living in poverty. And the best way to understand what a girl needs is to ask her.




“'My shoes wear out from walking to school, and then I can't go because we can't afford new shoes,' says a girl from Indonesia. 'I want to live freely,' says another girl, in Egypt. 'I don't want people to dictate what I do. No one to control us, no one to hit us, no one to tell us what clothes to wear.' In Congo, a girl starts to list her chores: 'Tidying the house, fetching water, preparing meals,' she says. 'There are so many I can't even name them all.'... They've shared their challenges and dreams with the Girl Declaration, a campaign started last year by the Nike Foundation. The aim: to change the way the world thinks about girls, says Lyric Thompson at the International Center for Research on Women, which worked with Nike on the project.... But activists say the world's girls have been left out of the current Millennium Development Goals, which expire in 2015. The existing goals focus on issues like poverty and education. They fail to address child marriage, genital mutilation and adolescent pregnancy, Thompson says.”

http://www.girleffect.org/2015-beyond/the-declaration/ – This statement of goals concerning the welfare of girls is too long to quote here, so you may want to go to this website and read it. When I think of things like genital mutilation I cringe, yet in tribal societies throughout the Old World and even among the American Indians, these things persist. When I took one of my anthropology courses discussion of the subject was given under the heading of “rites of passage.” Boys in such societies are also circumcised, not at a month old, but at the age of ten or so when they are just about to become an adolescent and without any pain killing drug. These things go back many thousands of years and are part of the basic beliefs of the culture, a part of their religion, so to speak. These rites admit the teenager to adult society, and usually give them new rights and responsibilities. The fact that they are brutal is what makes them so abhorrent to today's eyes.

World cultures desperately need to open up to new ideas, send all their children to school at least far enough to allow them to read, write and do math, and develop an active concern for individual freedom and psychiatric issues – it is to be assumed that boys and girls will be more mentally healthy if they haven't experienced the horror of having their most sensitive tissue lopped off with a dirty knife without anesthetics or antibiotics. When I think of the possibility of a primitive Islamist cult that practices such things making its way into a peaceful culture – anywhere, not just the US or Europe -- and trying to institute Sharia Law there, I am horrified. I definitely feel that if it requires more war to stop a group like ISIS (or the Taliban or Boko Haram or any other offshoot of al-Qaeda) we need to do it. I apologize for not being entirely a pacifist, but I am not, either in personal life or international relations. There are people who have to be fought, or they will take over and destroy civilized culture. Of course what we really need is more effort like this UN program to bring enlightenment into societies that don't allow girls to go to school, or do even worse things to their women. There is a great need for growth in human society, though we have made great strides in technology and science.





Crocodile Meets Godzilla — A Swimming Dino Bigger Than T. Rex – NPR
by CHRISTOPHER JOYCE
September 11, 2014

There once was a place on Earth so overrun with giant, meat-eating predators that even a Tyrannosaurus rex would have been nervous. One predator there was even bigger than T. rex,and scientists now say it's apparently the only aquatic dinosaur ever found.

The swimming monster is called Spinosaurus aegyptiacus. It was 50 feet long — longer than a school bus, and 9 feet longer than the biggest T. rex.

A replica of its skeleton is being assembled in a cavernous room at the National Geographic Society in Washington D.C. As workmen worked to finish erecting the exhibit, I walked around the beast with paleontologist Nizar Ibrahim from the University of Chicago. He collected the bones and, along with Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno, determined that it was indeed a swimmer.

Ibrahim describes the place in North Africa where this spinosaurus lived 97 million years ago as a "river of giants."

"Big predatory dinosaurs, giant fish, crocodile-like predators. In fact, the place was really pretty predator-heavy, so I call it the most dangerous place in the history of our planet," Sereno says.

It was swampy, with many rivers. Now it's a desert, where Ibrahim looks for dinosaur bones. But he didn't find spinosaurus's bones, exactly. They found him.

But first, more about the dinosaur: It takes up most of the room. Its jaw is long, with interlocking front teeth like a crocodile's — good for catching fish, very big fish. Then there are the pits in the bones of its jaw. "These openings house pressure receptors to detect movement of prey underwater," says Ibrahim.

Spinosaurus's nostrils are back near its eyes — better for breathing while half-submerged. It has a long, serpentine neck. Its long front legs are tipped with footlong claws. "Probably used to tear apart prey into bite-size chunks," Ibrahim says gleefully. Along its back, the dinosaur has 7-foot-tall bony spines that stick up like a picket fence. In life, they supported an enormous sail-like crest.

The hips and back legs are narrow and small, considering all the weight they carried. On land, spinosaurus probably shuffled on all fours — a lousy walker, but a great swimmer. Plus its bones are solid, not hollow like most dinosaurs'. That suggests that, as in whales and penguins, the bones of spinosaurus acted as ballast. And its feet are wide, like a wading bird's.

Ibrahim's voice in describing this creature has a new-father's pride. Actually, not so new — as he writes in this week's issue of the journal Science, he and his team spent years examining each of the skeletal characteristics that led them to conclude that this dinosaur was made for swimming.

Now, it was well-known that big swimming reptiles existed in prehistoric times. But dinosaurs are a very different order of animal than reptiles, and nobody had an inkling that dinosaurs could swim until this one turned up.

In fact, spinosaurus bones were first discovered 100 years ago, by a German scientist in Egypt. The find puzzled researchers. "A lot of the skeleton was missing," explains Thomas Holtz, a paleontologist at the University of Maryland. "It was sort of a mystery dinosaur, and the mystery was furthered when all the specimens were destroyed during World War II."

They had been in a museum in Munich that was bombed by Allied planes. Scientists were left with just drawings and, over time, a few more bones that surfaced in Africa. Until recently, paleontologists figured the creature must have lived on land and snagged fish out of rivers — like a giant heron with teeth.

"But we were wrong," Holtz says. "It just goes to show, you know, that evolution is pretty tricky and it does all sorts of weird and wonderful things. And that's what makes the living world — and even the dead parts of the living world — so amazing."

But no more amazing than the way Ibrahim found this new specimen. It started in 2008 in Morocco. A local fossil hunter showed him an odd chunk of bone, a dinosaur bone, but one that puzzled him. Ibrahim didn't make much of it at the time. Then, several years later, he was visiting colleagues at a museum in Italy.

"My Italian colleagues said, 'We have something you have to see. It just arrived here. It's a partial skeleton; it was spirited out of North Africa. We don't really know where it came from.' "

Ibrahim looked at the bones. "And my jaw just dropped," he remembers. "There were just long spines, skull bones, leg bones, and I thought, 'This is amazing.' "

He saw something familiar in the bones. "It looked exactly like that chunk of bone I had seen in Morocco several years earlier," he says. "And I thought, 'You know what? This could actually be the same skeleton.' And so I thought, 'All I need to do now is travel back to Morocco and find this one man in the middle of the Sahara.' "

Ibrahim laughs when he remembers this; his Italian colleagues thought he was crazy.

But if he could find that fossil hunter, maybe he could find the rest of the bones. So, during several trips to Morocco, Ibrahim searched for the guy with the fossils. No luck. He didn't know the man's name, only that he had a mustache. Then last year, Ibrahim was drinking a cup of mint tea in a Moroccan cafe. He says he was ready to quit searching. He looked up and there was a man dressed in white walking by — with the mustache. It was the fossil hunter.

Ibrahim stopped him, and begged the man to show him where that first chunk of bone had come from. He said the Italians wanted to repatriate the bones in their possession to the right place — he had to be sure this was, indeed, the source of those bones.

The man agreed to drive Ibrahim into the desert. They stopped and climbed partway up a mountain, to a hole that had been dug in the rock. And there was the rest of the dinosaur's skeleton.

Scientists now know what the real Spinosaurus aegyptiacuslooked like — and that it swam. The Moroccan and Italian bones have been reunited, and will go back to Morocco. And now we know that Earth, apparently, once was home to a 50-foot, swimming, carnivorous dinosaur.




“One predator there was even bigger than T. rex,and scientists now say it's apparently the only aquatic dinosaur ever found. The swimming monster is called Spinosaurus aegyptiacus. It was 50 feet long — longer than a school bus, and 9 feet longer than the biggest T. rex..... As workmen worked to finish erecting the exhibit, I walked around the beast with paleontologist Nizar Ibrahim from the University of Chicago. He collected the bones and, along with Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno, determined that it was indeed a swimmer. Ibrahim describes the place in North Africa where this spinosaurus lived 97 million years ago as a 'river of giants.' 'Big predatory dinosaurs, giant fish, crocodile-like predators. In fact, the place was really pretty predator-heavy, so I call it the most dangerous place in the history of our planet.' Sereno says.... Its long front legs are tipped with footlong claws. 'Probably used to tear apart prey into bite-size chunks,' Ibrahim says gleefully.... The hips and back legs are narrow and small, considering all the weight they carried. On land, spinosaurus probably shuffled on all fours — a lousy walker, but a great swimmer. Plus its bones are solid, not hollow like most dinosaurs'. That suggests that, as in whales and penguins, the bones of spinosaurus acted as ballast. And its feet are wide, like a wading bird's.”

I'm glad that over time the size of animals has decreased. One of the latest of the big guys to disappear was the aurochs of Europe, from which modern cattle are descended. “The species survived in Europe until the last recorded aurochs died in the Jaktorów Forest, Poland in 1627.” said Wikipedia. Imagine a big bull nine feet tall at the shoulder. It's a good thing that humans developed large and very useful brains, because we aren't much for brawn, except for certain people who are bodybuilders or the very rare giants produced by hormonal imbalance.

Life during the age of dinosaurs was more horrible than exciting to me. Animals like the very large, filthy and ugly Komodo dragons are a good modern-day example of the situation. While I don't want any animal to go extinct, I am glad that those creatures have several islands all to themselves where only a few people live. There are deer and some other prey species which the dragons eat. See http://komodoislandisnew7wondersoftheworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/28/local-human-population-of-komodo-island/.






Some Things You Can Do In Your Sleep, Literally – NPR
by ALISON BRUZEK
September 11, 2014

For those who find themselves sleeping through work — you may one day find yourself working through sleep.

People who are fast asleep can correctly respond to simple verbal instructions, according to a study by researchers in France. They think this may help explain why you might wake if someone calls your name or why your alarm clock is more likely to rouse you than any other noise.

The connections between sleep, memory and learning aren't new — but the research is notable for its examination of automatic tasks. The study, published Thursday in Current Biology, first recorded the brain waves of people while they were asked to identify spoken words as either animals or objects while they were awake. After each word, the participant pushed a button with either their right hand for animals or their left hand for objects.

The brain map produced by the EEGshowed where activity was taking place in the brain and what parts of the brain were being prepped for response. This preparation might include hearing the word elephant and then processing that an elephant is an animal. The participants did this until the task became automatic.

The researchers then lulled the participants to sleep, putting them in a dark room in a reclining chair. Researchers watched them fall into the state between light sleep and the deeper sleep known as rapid eye movement (REM). They were then told a new list of words.

This time, their hands didn't move, but their brains showed the same sorting activity as before. "In a way, what's going on is that the rule they learn and practice still is getting applied,"Tristan Bekinschtein, one of the authors of the study, told Shots. The human brain continued, when triggered, to respond even through sleep.

But the researchers weren't fully satisfied, so they took it a step further. They did it all again, but instead of animals and objects, they used real words and fake words. They also waited until the participants were more fully asleep.

Again, they found that the sleeping participants showed brain activity that indicated they were processing and preparing to move their hands to correctly indicate either real words or fake words were being spoken.

"It's pretty exciting that it's happening during sleep when we have no idea," Ken Paller, a cognitive neuroscientist at Northwestern University who is unaffiliated with the study, told Shots. "We knew that words could be processed during sleep." But, Paller adds, "we didn't know how much, and so this takes it to, say, the level of preparing an action."

While this sounds like great news for those who could use a few extra hours in the day for memorizing irregular verbs or cramming for the bar exam, the researchers caution that the neural activity they found may apply only to automated tasks. They hope that future studies may look into whether any similar cognitive task begun in an awake state might continue through early sleep — like crunching calculations.

"It's a terrible thought, in the modern world," says Bekinschtein, referring to the pride people take in forgoing sleep for work. "I think, in a way, these experiments are going to empower people ... that we can do things in sleep that are useful."





“The researchers then lulled the participants to sleep, putting them in a dark room in a reclining chair. Researchers watched them fall into the state between light sleep and the deeper sleep known as rapid eye movement (REM). They were then told a new list of words. This time, their hands didn't move, but their brains showed the same sorting activity as before. "In a way, what's going on is that the rule they learn and practice still is getting applied,"Tristan Bekinschtein, one of the authors of the study, told Shots. The human brain continued, when triggered, to respond even through sleep. But the researchers weren't fully satisfied, so they took it a step further. They did it all again, but instead of animals and objects, they used real words and fake words. They also waited until the participants were more fully asleep. Again, they found that the sleeping participants showed brain activity that indicated they were processing and preparing to move their hands to correctly indicate either real words or fake words were being spoken.”

I used to go over the forms of Greek nouns, etc., as I was going to sleep. I don't know if that helped me to learn it or not, but it did put me to sleep. One author I was reading about said she imagines her plots while in a dream state and then the next day writes them up. Also, I have a few times been able to manipulate the pattern of a dream consciously while lightly asleep. That is useful if you're having a nightmare. The most interesting thing about this article, to me, is that scientists now can interpret brainwaves by linking them to waking actions, then follow the pattern during sleep. Also there was an article within the last two or three years about monkeys being wired up electrically and doing tasks with their brainwaves rather than with their hands. See brain/computer interface on the Wikipedia article – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain%E2%80%93computer_interface.
The following is from that article. I had no idea this science went back as far as 1924.

“The history of brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) starts with Hans Berger's discovery of the electrical activity of the human brain and the development of electroencephalography (EEG). In 1924 Berger was the first to record human brain activity by means of EEG. Berger was able to identify oscillatory activity in the brain by analyzing EEG traces. One wave he identified was the alpha wave (8–13 Hz), also known as Berger's wave.

Berger's first recording device was very rudimentary. He inserted silver wires under the scalps of his patients. These were later replaced by silver foils attached to the patients' head by rubber bandages. Berger connected these sensors to a Lippmann capillary electrometer, with disappointing results. More sophisticated measuring devices, such as theSiemens double-coil recording galvanometer, which displayed electric voltages as small as one ten thousandth of a volt, led to success.

Berger analyzed the interrelation of alternations in his EEG wave diagrams with brain diseases. EEGs permitted completely new possibilities for the research of human brain activities.”