The X-37b’s Big Brother Revealed: Boeing Bags $6.6m Contract to Do This

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2B21C16B00000578-3186484-image-a-21_1438815284013Boeing has been awarded a $6.6m contract to design a cheap, reusable mini shuttle that can launch military satellites.

The small, planelike craft is known as the XS-1 program—short for ‘eXperimental Spaceplane 1’, and could blast off in 2019 on its first test mission.

It is hoped the craft could quickly launch small satellites that could defend against the growing threat of Russian and Chinese space weapons.

XS-1 could ‘create a new paradigm for more routine, responsive and affordable space operations,’ according to DARPA, the military research arm heading the project.

The XS-1 is an airplane-like vehicle that can fly to the edge of Earth’s atmosphere and quickly boost small satellites into orbit, and then land, refuel, load up another satellite, and take off again within 24 hours. (Read more from “The X-37b’s Big Brother Revealed: Boeing Bags $6.6m Contract to Do This” HERE)

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NYC Police Commissioner: “Weaponized Weed” Triggering Nude, Psychotic Rampages With Superhuman Strength

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Synthetic MarijuanaNYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton warned Tuesday about the rise of what he called “weaponized marijuana” — synthetic pot known as “K2″ or “Spice” on the streets — which makes users psychotic while giving them superhuman strength . . .

“A better term for it might be weaponized marijuana,” Bratton told reporters at a press conference at police headquarters.

“A number of individuals, when under the influence of this drug, are relatively impervious to pain and also have significant enhancement of their physical strength,” he said.

“So our officers encountering these individuals face more significant risk of having to subdue these individuals and potentially receiving injuries.”

Spice users are impervious to traditional takedown methods used by cops, such as tasers and mace, officials said. (Read more from “NYC Police Commissioner: “Weaponized Weed” Triggering Nude, Psychotic Rampages With Superhuman Strength” HERE)

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Grannyball Lecter: Woman Ripper, 68, Murdered, Chopped up and Ate Victims

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269921Tamara Samsonova, 68, is suspected of sawing off their heads and limbs and gouging out their lungs.

The pensioner – likened to the fictional cannibal Hannibal Lecter – was arrested this week [in Russia] over the murder of her friend Valentina Ulanova, 79.

She was spotted on CCTV footage carrying Ulanova’s body parts in a black plastic bag . . .

In one diary, Samsonova confessed she butchered a lodger in her flat.

She wrote: “I killed my tenant Volodya, cut him to pieces in the bathroom with a knife, put the pieces of his body in plastic bags and threw them away.” (Read more from “Grannyball Lecter: Woman Ripper, 68, Murdered, Chopped up and Ate Victims” HERE)

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Mormons Publish Photos of ‘Seer Stone’ Used by Joseph Smith

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Photo Credit: NY Times The Mormon church for the first time is publishing photos of a small sacred stone it believes founder Joseph Smith used to help translate the story that became the basis of the religion.

The pictures of the smooth, brown, egg-sized rock are part of a new book that also contains photos of the first printer’s manuscript of the Book of Mormon. Officials with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints unveiled it Tuesday at a news conference in Salt Lake City.

It’s the religion’s latest step in a push to be more transparent about its history and tenets. The church’s effort in recent years to be more open about its past was triggered by the religion’s increasing prominence as its membership tripled over the past three decades to 15 million worldwide today. Questions emerged about the burgeoning faith, with some criticizing it for being secretive about its beliefs and practices. (Read more from “Mormons Publish Photos of ‘Seer Stone’ Used by Joseph Smith” HERE)

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Transgender Teen, 18, Undergoes Rare Surgery so She Can Be a ‘Dad’ One Day

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[Editor’s note: the below excerpt from Yahoo.com is provided to inform. As with other stories regarding the “transgendered,” the pronouns used below are the author’s choice, not ours] When 18-year-old Cole Carman made the decision to transition from female to male late last year, the San Francisco-area teen knew that she would be in for major surgery and hormone therapy.

That didn’t stop Carman, a recent high school grad set to start college in the fall, from signing on for another potentially risky medical procedure: egg retrieval. It’s a fairly routine (yet still major) surgery, typically undertaken by egg donors and some women undergoing in-vitro fertilization.

But Carman may be the first transgender teen to have her eggs successfully harvested before transitioning — preserving his ability to have children that he’ll be biologically related to, whether he chooses to carry a child himself or turn to a surrogate. “I’ve always known I wanted to have kids of my own, so when my endocrinologist talked to me about it, it was a no-brainer,” Carman told Yahoo Parenting.

The surgery, which was done at the end of May, wasn’t so simple. It required 10 days of hormone shots, and it left her dealing with side effects like bloating and cramping. During the procedure, a doctor used a needle to harvest as many egg follicles as possible, freezing them so they can be thawed and fertilized at some point in the future.

What makes Carman’s situation so groundbreaking is that up until recently, doctors didn’t routinely talk about fertility preservation to transgender teens or adults who were planning to transition. (Read more from “Transgender Teen, 18, Undergoes Rare Surgery so She Can Be a ‘Dad’ One Day” HERE)

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‘Gene Drive’: Scientists Sound Alarm Over Supercharged GM Organisms Which Could Spread in the Wild and Cause Environmental Disasters

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A powerful new technique for generating “supercharged” genetically modified organisms that can spread rapidly in the wild has caused alarm among scientists who fear that it may be misused, accidentally or deliberately, and cause a health emergency or environmental disaster.

The development of so-called “gene drive” technology promises to revolutionise medicine and agriculture because it can in theory stop the spread of mosquito-borne illnesses, such as malaria and yellow fever, as well as eliminate crop pests and invasive species such as rats and cane toads.

However, scientists at the forefront of the development believe that in the wrong hands gene-drive technology poses a serious threat to the environment and human health if accidentally or deliberately released from a laboratory without adequate safeguards. Some believe it could even be used as a terrorist bio-weapon directed against people or livestock because gene drives – which enable GM genes to spread rapidly like a viral infection within a population – will eventually be easy and cheap to generate.

“Just as gene drives can make mosquitoes unfit for hosting and spreading the malaria parasite, they could conceivably be designed with gene drives carrying cargo for delivering lethal bacterial toxins to humans,” said David Gurwitz, a geneticist at Tel Aviv University in Israel.

A group of senior geneticists have called for international safeguards to apply to researchers who want to develop gene drives, with strict security measures placed on laboratories to prevent the accidental escape of “supercharged” GM organisms that are able to spread rapidly in the wild. (Read more from “‘Gene Drive’: Scientists Sound Alarm Over Supercharged GM Organisms Which Could Spread in the Wild and Cause Environmental Disasters” HERE)

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Canadian Hitchhiking Robot’s Cross-Country Trip Ends Prematurely in the City of Love

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The Canadian researchers who created hitchBOT as a social experiment told The Associated Press that someone in Philadelphia damaged the robot beyond repair on Saturday, ending its first American tour after about two weeks.

The kid-size robot set out to travel cross-country after successfully hitchhiking across Canada in 26 days last year and parts of Europe. It is immobile on its own so gets from place to place by relying on the kindness of strangers . . .

The creators were sent an image of the vandalized robot Saturday but cannot track its location because the battery is dead. They said they don’t know who destroyed it or why. But co-creator Frauke Zeller said many children who adored the robot are now heartbroken. (Read more from “Hitchhiking Robot’s Cross-Country Trip in US Ends Prematurely in Philly” HERE)

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Doomsday Scenarios? They’re Always Top of Mind

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Nicolas Miailhe can’t stop thinking about the robot that’s going to take your job. And it’s not just robots that concern him, it’s also the contractor working for the latest Uber-like disruptor that plans to take over your industry. He’s also contemplating what will happen to our genetic sequences when we hand them over to doctors who promise personalized medicine, and how that data could fuel a new age of eugenics if it lands in the wrong hands. But he, of course, realizes that all of this worry will be for naught if climate change makes Earth unlivable.

Miailhe isn’t some crazy on the fringe of society. He is a student at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and he belongs to just one of the serious groups around Boston that are devoting their brainpower to preparing for the technological crises of the future.

Elon Musk, founder of the electric car maker Tesla, is helping to fund such studies. Stephen Hawking, the theoretical physicist, was one of thousands of people to sign a letter published this week that warns of the dangers of autonomous weapons.

In case you’ve missed it, threats to civilization as we know it are a hot topic right now, as anyone who’s been to a bookstore or a movie theater knows. But real-world scientists are thinking apocalyptically, too. Many believe that humans — sometime between inventing agriculture and reshaping the global climate — have created a new geological epoch. This age, informally called the anthropocene, will be the subject of a new section at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. The display will be set among the dinosaurs — perhaps as a reminder of just how precarious life for humans has become.

So it’s only natural that Boston and Cambridge, hubs for both technology and serious thinking, are sprouting groups that address doomsday anxieties. (Read more from “Doomsday Scenarios? They’re Always Top of Mind” HERE)

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Sign of the Times: Satan’s Statue Rises Proudly Near Detroit River

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A Satanic organization unveiled a controversial bronze Baphomet sculpture in Detroit just before midnight on Saturday, after trying in vain to have it installed near a Ten Commandments monument in Oklahoma.

Due to planned demonstrations, the group, which is opposed to Bible-themed displays on government land, kept the location of the unveiling of its 9-foot-tall monument secret until the last moment, when it emailed the information to ticket holders.

The Satanic Temple unveiled the one-ton statue at an industrial building near the Detroit River just before 11:30 p.m. local time as supporters cheered, “Hail Satan.” Some of the hundreds in attendance rushed to pose for photos.

The statue of a winged Baphomet with a human body and a goat’s head resembled a design the group previously released. Statues of a boy and a girl stood in poses of adoration on either side.

Jex Blackmore, director of the Satanic Temple Detroit chapter, said temple members planned to transport the sculpture to Arkansas, where earlier this year the governor signed a bill authorizing a Ten Commandments monument on the State Capitol’s grounds. (Read more from “Sign of the Times: Satan’s Statue Rises Proudly Near Detroit River” HERE)

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Dude’s Rattlesnake Selfie Ends With $153,000 Bill

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A San Diego man who was nearly killed while trying to take a selfie with a rattlesnake racked up a killer $153,000 hospital bill instead.

By far the largest bite listed on the itemized bill is $83,341.25 for “pharmacy.” That’s because Fassler’s lifesaving treatment depleted the anti-venom supplies at two local hospitals, KGTV reported.

It’s not clear whether Fassler has insurance — and whether these are dollar amounts that he will in fact have to pay out of pocket. But the confusion over health-care pricing is common for Americans who receive bills and can’t be sure where the numbers come from.

There’s currently only one commercially available anti-venom for treating venomous snakebites in the United States — CroFab, manufactured by U.K.-based BTG. And with a stable market of 7,000 to 8,000 snakebite victims per year and no competitors, business is pretty good. BTG’s latest annual report shows CroFab sales topped out at close $98 million dollars last fiscal year.

The antivenin costs hospitals roughly $2,300 per vial, with a typical dose requiring four to six vials. In some cases multiple doses are needed, according to CroFab’s promotional Web site. Fassler required multiple dosings over a five day period. (Read more from “Dude’s Rattlesnake Selfie Ends With $153,000 Bill” HERE)

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