Tag: science

Can Consciousness Exist Without A Brain?

“As a neurosurgeon, I was taught that the brain creates consciousness,” said Dr. Eben Alexander, who wrote in detail about his experiences with consciousness while in a deep coma.

Many doctors and biomedical students may have been taught the same about consciousness. However, scientists are still debating whether that theory holds true.

Imagine a child observing an elephant for the first time. Light reflects off the animal and enters the child’s eyes. Retinal photoreceptors in the back of the eyes convert this light into electrical signals, which travel through the optic nerve to the brain’s cortex. This forms vision or visual consciousness.

How do these electrical signals miraculously transform into a vivid mental image? How do they turn into the child’s thoughts, followed by an emotional reaction—“Wow, the elephant is so big!”

The question of how the brain generates subjective perceptions, including images, feelings, and experiences, was coined by Australian cognitive scientist David Chalmers in 1995 as the “hard problem.”

As it turns out, having a brain may not be a prerequisite for consciousness.

‘Brainless’ but Not Mindless

The Lancet recorded a case of a French man diagnosed with postnatal hydrocephalus—excess cerebrospinal fluid on or around the brain—at the age of 6 months.

Despite his condition, he grew up healthy, became a married father of two children, and worked as a civil servant.

When he was 44 years old, he went to the doctor due to a mild weakness in his left leg. The doctors scanned his head thoroughly and discovered that his brain tissue was almost entirely gone. Most of the space in his skull was filled with fluid, with only a thin sheet of brain tissue.

“The brain was virtually absent,” wrote the lead author of the case study, Dr. Lionel Feuillet, of the Department of Neurology, Hôpital de la Timone in Marseille, France.

The man had been living a normal life and had no problem seeing, feeling, or perceiving things.

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Geology is racist as it is ‘linked to white supremacy’ claims Queen Mary University of London professor

A geography professor at a leading British university has described the study of rocks and the natural world as racist and linked the academic field to ‘white supremacy’.

Kathryn Yusoff, who lectures at the prestigious Queen Mary University of London, said that the geology as a subject was ‘riven by systematic racism’ and influenced heavily by colonialism.

The study of prehistoric life through fossils was also branded as an enabler for racism, with the professor referring to the field of palaeontology as ‘pale-ontology’.

Arguing that geology began as a ‘colonial practice’, Professor Yusoff stated in her book ‘Geologic Life’ that the extraction of metals such as gold and iron had created hierarchies, pushed materialism, ravaged environments and was the route cause of climate change.

Claiming that ‘geology continues to function within a white supremacist praxis’, the academic referenced the theft of land, mining and other geological practices as having led to the creation of white supremacy and a resulting ‘geotrauma’.

Professor Yusoff’s new book focuses on geology between the 17th and 19th centuries and puts forward the notion that non-white people have a closer relationship to land than white people.

‘Broadly, black, brown, and indigenous subjects… have an intimacy with the earth that is unknown to the structural position of whiteness,’ she wrote. 

Ms Yusoff is described as a professor of ‘inhuman geography’ on the official Queen Mary University website.

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U.S. Advocates Urge White House Support for ‘RISE’ Initiative to Keep U.S. Ahead in ‘Edge Science’

A coalition of scientists and former intelligence officials is urging White House support for an initiative to advance U.S. research in ‘edge science’ and controversial fields like quantum computing and consciousness studies, The Debrief has learned.

As American advancements in technology and science rapidly evolve amid global competition, officials from the Executive Office of the President at the White House in Washington, D.C. recently met with a group of scientists and former intelligence officials advocating for a groundbreaking new initiative, Research and Innovation at the Scientific Edge (RISE), which aims to push the boundaries of scientific exploration.

RISE seeks support for projects dedicated to unconventional or cutting-edge research areas, such as quantum computing, consciousness studies, remote viewing, micro-psychokinesis (PK), time-agnostic cryptography, evidence-based tools informed by Indigenous knowledge, and potential applications for the study of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP). RISE advocates argue that pursuing these fields is essential to maintain America’s competitive edge against rapidly advancing nations like China.

The initiative’s proponents further argue that the U.S. can overcome obstacles and stigma surrounding unconventional research with Chief Executive support, allowing the U.S. to develop game-changing advantages related to everything from national security to human resilience.

The organization consists of heavy hitters from not only the science community, but former internal government officials with a diversity of agency insights, including Neuroscientist Julia Mossbridge, Ph.D.; Chitra Sivanandam from the National Security Institute; Daniel “Rags” Rasgdale, Ph.D., Former Assistant Director for Cyber in the Office of the Director of Defense Research and Engineering (Research & Technology); and Carmen Medina, a retired Senior Federal Executive with more than three decades in the Intelligence Community, including work with the CIA.

“During my more than 30 years in national security, too many times we were surprised by things that others claimed could never happen,” Medina said in a recent statement announcing the initiative. “The best way to prevent that in the future in the science and technology domains is to have a dedicated program to scan the horizon for new discoveries.”

Discussions about foreign adversaries gaining a technological edge have recently intensified, with reports suggesting that China is investing significantly in fields like quantum computing, photonics, and brain-machine interfaces.

In July, the Chinese government announced an ambitious goal to set a new world standard for brain-machine interfaces. Parallel to these efforts, China has already invested $15.3 billion in quantum technology compared to the U.S.’s $3.7 billion, an investment gap that highlights the urgent need for the U.S. to prioritize advanced research.

Along similar lines, a February 2022 RAND Corporation report comparing the U.S. and Chinese industrial bases with relation to advancements in quantum technology emphasized that Chinese efforts are primarily concentrated in government-funded laboratories, some of which have made rapid progress.

Given such concerning advancements by adversary nations, a related area of focus for RISE also involves problems associated with over-classification within the U.S. intelligence community, which even U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines has said potentially “undermines critical democratic objectives” by limiting access to information that could help advance U.S. capabilities.

“Over-classification is a considerable burden,” said neuroscientist Julia Mossbridge, Ph.D., in an email to The Debrief. “Even just bureaucratically, it weighs down government functioning. But beyond that, it has a dampening effect on science and technology ecosystems, any form of exploration, and democracy itself.”

Mossbridge told The Debrief that problems like over-classification are paralleled by separate issues that include stigmas that have long hampered serious studies into unconventional research topics.

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Trans Drugs Bad? Block the Study!

Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, one of the nation’s leading advocates for “gender-affirming care” for kids, refuses to release a ten-million-dollar taxpayer-funded study because the results don’t support continued trans-medical intervention. However, full disclosure is necessary for the trans community to make important life decisions.

The nine-year study, bought and paid for by hardworking Americans, essentially revealed that after receiving puberty-blockers, these young children did not improve in the area of mental health.  This is important information because these children most certainly were diagnosed with some mental illness prior to being seen for gender dysphoria (the belief that one’s body is the wrong sex), another psychiatric diagnosis.

Dr. Olson-Kennedy has refused to release the study because she believes that it could be “weaponized” and used as proof that “we shouldn’t use blockers.”  The puberty-blocker “treatments” supposedly delay physical development, so the body feels more like the gender identified with.

What the Olson-Kennedy study revealed was that despite being on puberty-blockers, the kids were no better off with their mental health.  In a nutshell, kids thought they’d be happy if they could be the sex they identified with, but in fact, this was not reflected in the study.  After two years, despite the treatment, there was no significant improvement in the kids’ mental health.

For those of us who follow psychiatric drugging, it is of interest that the research data are being withheld because too often these studies fail to consider the psychiatric drugging that occurred prior to the request for “transition” “treatment.”  In other words, how many of these kids were on psychiatric mind-altering drugs prior to feeling the need to transition?  What psychiatric diagnoses were involved, and what drugs were prescribed prior to the child’s belief that becoming another sex would be more in line with what they identify with?  We may never know if the Olson-Kennedy study even considered psychiatric drug use prior to trans-treatments.  It matters.

It’s no secret that psychiatric drugs can elicit strong adverse reactions, especially in children.  For example, let’s consider Nashville school shooter Audrey Hale.  Hale had been receiving psychiatric “treatment” for twenty of her twenty-eight years, and Hale had been prescribed cocktails of psychiatric drugs.  So what role did the psychiatric drugs play in Hale’s desire to “transition”?  Further, did Hale receive puberty-blockers and psychiatric drugs as a cocktail of “treatment?”  It’s anyone’s guess at this point, as Hale’s extensive mental health records have not been made publicly available.  Do we see a pattern of data-withholding among the trans-medical community?

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Scientists Were Wrong: Plants Absorb 31% More CO2 Than Previously Thought

New research shows plants absorb 31% more CO2 than previously estimated, raising the global GPP to 157 petagrams per year. Using carbonyl sulfide as a proxy for photosynthesis, this study highlights tropical rainforests’ critical role as carbon sinks and stresses the importance of accurate photosynthesis modeling for climate predictions.

A new assessment by scientists reveals that plants worldwide are absorbing about 31% more carbon dioxide than previously believed. Published in the journal Nature, this research is expected to enhance Earth system models used to forecast climate trends and underscores the critical role of natural carbon sequestration in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.

The amount of CO2 removed from the atmosphere via photosynthesis from land plants is known as Terrestrial Gross Primary Production, or GPP. It represents the largest carbon exchange between land and atmosphere on the planet. GPP is typically cited in petagrams of carbon per year. One petagram equals 1 billion metric tons, which is roughly the amount of CO2 emitted each year from 238 million gas-powered passenger vehicles.

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Woke doc refused to publish $10 million trans kids study that showed puberty blockers didn’t help mental health

A prominent doctor and trans rights advocate admitted she deliberately withheld publication of a $10 million taxpayer-funded study on the effect of puberty blockers on American children — after finding no evidence that they improve patients’ mental health.

Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy told the New York Times that she believes the study would be “weaponized” by critics of transgender care for kids, and that the research could one day be used in court to argue “we shouldn’t use blockers.”

Critics — including one of Olson-Kennedy’s fellow researchers on the study — said the decision flies in the face of research standards and deprives the public of “really important” science in a field where Americans remain firmly divided.

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Your consciousness could travel multiverse when you dream, claim scientists

Scientists have suggested that dreams sometimes act as portals to alternate realities, connecting a person to another version of themselves in a parallel world. 

“Dreams have been historically perceived as mirrors reflecting our conscious waking life, laden with symbolic representations of our desires, fears, and experiences,” they claimed in their research article. 

“Conversely, a riveting conjecture exists that dreams might also function as conduits to alternative dimensions or elevated states of consciousness, suggesting a more profound and expansive role than traditionally conceived,” they added.

This hypothesis takes inspiration from the “many worlds interpretation of quantum theory,” which is sometimes also referred to as the multiverse theory. 

It suggests that for a quantum event, there are multiple possibilities or outcomes. Each of these outcomes plays out in separate universes. So, for example, if you played a football match, your team may have won in this universe, but in some other universe, your team may have lost the game. 

The authors suggest that in dreams, one can travel to these other universes. However, this isn’t the the primary scientific basis they used to support their hypothesis.

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Scientists Uncover a Hidden “Sixth Sense” in Geckos, Prompting Questions About Human Extrasensory Potential

Researchers at the University of Maryland have uncovered a hidden and unexpected auditory “sixth sense” in geckos. 

In a study published in Current Biology, scientists revealed that geckos use a specialized part of their inner ear, known as the saccule, to detect low-frequency vibrations—a trait previously unrecognized in reptiles. 

Researchers believe other species could have a similar sixth sense. This would offer new insights into how animals perceive their environment and could have significant implications for evolutionary biology.

“The ear, as we know it, hears airborne sound. But this ancient inner pathway, which is typically linked to balance, helps geckos detect vibrations that travel through mediums like the ground or water,” study co-author and Professor of Biology at UMD, Dr. Catherine Carr, said in a press release. “This pathway exists in amphibians and fish, and now it’s proven to be preserved in lizards as well. Our findings shed light on how the auditory system evolved from what you see in fish to what you see in land animals, including humans.”

Typically associated with balance, the saccule is a part of the inner ear that allows geckos to sense vibrations through mediums like the ground or water rather than through airborne sounds like traditional hearing. 

The saccule’s sensitivity to vibrations between 50 and 200 Hz complements the gecko’s regular auditory system. This finding is significant when considering other reptiles, such as snakes or different species of lizards. 

Traditionally, many reptiles are believed to be “deaf” or “mute” because they do not vocalize sounds or respond well to airborne noise. However, the ability to detect vibrations offers a new explanation. Reptiles may communicate through vibrational signals, challenging long-held assumptions about their sensory perception.

“A lot of snakes and lizards were thought to be ‘mute’ or ‘deaf’ in the sense that they do not vocalize sounds or hear sounds well,” lead study author and PhD candidate Dawei Han explained. “But it turns out they could potentially be communicating via vibrational signals using this sensory pathway instead, which really changes the way scientists have thought about animal perception overall.”

This “sixth sense” in geckos also offers fresh insights into the evolution of hearing mechanisms across species. The saccule, present in both amphibians and fish, now shows its role in reptiles, suggesting that auditory systems may have developed more gradually and with greater complexity than previously believed. These findings highlight how hearing mechanisms likely adapted during the shift from aquatic to terrestrial environments, revealing a more nuanced evolutionary pathway than was once assumed.

The surprising discovery of an auditory “sixth sense” in geckos also raises intriguing questions about the potential for unexplored sensory abilities in humans. It opens the door to new research into the human auditory system, prompting scientists to consider whether we have similar undiscovered pathways that contribute to our perception of the world.

“Think about when you’re at a live rock concert,” Dr. Carr said. “It’s so loud that you can feel your whole head and body vibrate in the sound field. You can feel the music rather than just hearing it.”

“That feeling suggests that the human vestibular system may be stimulated during those loud concerts, meaning our sense of hearing and balance may also be linked closely.” 

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AI scans RNA ‘dark matter’ and uncovers 70,000 new viruses

Researchers have used artificial intelligence (AI) to uncover 70,500 viruses previously unknown to science1, many of them weird and nothing like known species. The RNA viruses were identified using metagenomics, in which scientists sample all the genomes present in the environment without having to culture individual viruses. The method shows the potential of AI to explore the ‘dark matter’ of the RNA virus universe.

Viruses are ubiquitous microorganisms that infect animals, plants and even bacteria, yet only a small fraction have been identified and described. There is “essentially a bottomless pit” of viruses to discover, says Artem Babaian, a computational virologist at the University of Toronto in Canada. Some of these viruses could cause diseases in people, which means that characterizing them could help to explain mystery illnesses, he says.

Previous studies have used machine learning to find new viruses in sequencing data. The latest study, published in Cell this week, takes that work a step further and uses it to look at predicted protein structures1.

The AI model incorporates a protein-prediction tool, called ESMFold, that was developed by researchers at Meta (formerly Facebook, headquartered in Menlo Park, California). A similar AI system, AlphaFold, was developed by researchers at Google DeepMind in London, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry this week.

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Chemists rips ‘feminism’ STEM class proposal

An academic journal article about “feminism” and “dysconscious racism in STEM” never should have been published, according to two chemistry professors.

Professors John Landrum and Joseph Lichter questioned why the Journal of Chemical Education allowed a paper that vaguely touched on “white supremacy” to be published.

“Overlooking the obligation to provide clear definitions and valid evidence for such terms, especially ‘White Supremacy’ which was deemed sufficiently important to include in the abstract, is hard to rationalize for a journal that ascribes to upholding reasonable standards of scientific rigor,” the two Florida International University professors wrote.

They also called the paper a “deeply flawed work of scholarship.” Only two academic publications cited the paper – the Landrum (pictured, left) and Lichter (pictured, right) reply, and a subsequent response from the original author to these criticism.

The 2022 paper argued for “teaching science with a feminist framework.” “This article presents a pedagogical model for implementing a special topic class on science and feminism for chemistry students at East Carolina University,” Professor Michelle Reyes originally wrote. She teaches at ECU.

Landrum and Lichter criticized the proposed topics, saying they “have little to do with chemistry and more to do with medical or STEM-related historical events dealing with racial and gender inequality.”

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