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SAN JOSE DEL GUAVIARE, COLOMBIA — Cerafín Méndez was out drinking one night when a fight broke out with his neighbor. The next day, three FARC soldiers came for him, bound his hands, and led him away.

That was the last time his family would see him alive.

“I was worried he had been left in the bush and eaten by animals, as if he were a dog,” said his wife, Miriam Méndez. “20 days passed, a month and nothing, nothing was found.”

Thirty years later, Méndez was finally given some closure when the Colombian government successfully identified her husband’s remains, and scheduled an event to bring them home for a proper burial.

“I finally feel like my mind was put to rest. Knowing his final location makes us feel less like he was abandoned alone,” Méndez’s daughter Mary told VICE News. “Before this, it was like he was forgotten in time.”

Méndez’s story isn’t uncommon in Colombia. More than 80,000 Colombians were violently disappeared at the hands of Guerrilla groups, armed gangs, and government forces during a half century of civil war. And for decades, their cases went cold, ignored or out of reach of authorities.

Continue reading “Searching for the 80,000 Disappeared in Colombia’s Brutal Civil War” | >

Optical microresonators convert laser light into ultrashort pulses travelling around the resonator’s circumference. These pulses, called “dissipative Kerr solitons,” can propagate in the microresonator maintaining their shape.

When solitons exit the , the output takes the form of a train—a series of repeating pulses with fixed intervals. In this case, the repetition rate of the pulses is determined by the microresonator size. Smaller sizes enable pulse trains with high repetition rates, reaching hundreds of gigahertz in frequency. These can be used to boost the performance of optical communication links or become a core technology for ultrafast LiDAR with sub-micron precision.

Exciting though it is, this technology suffers from what scientists call “light-bending losses”—loss of light caused by structural bends in its path. A well-known problem in , light-bending loss also means that the size of microresonators cannot drop below a few tens of microns. This therefore limits the maximum repetition rates we can achieve for pulses.

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Check out the CRAZIEST Cases Of MIND CONTROL In Nature! From brain controlled robot beetles to ants getting mind controlled by parasitic wasps, this top 10 list of amazing mind control techniques will shock you!

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Watch our “REAL Mermaid Sightings Around The World!” video here: https://youtu.be/ChM0CBRmVsM
Watch our “10 Sea Monsters ATTACKING A Boat!” video here: https://youtu.be/0XROvoPCDNc
Watch our “STRANGEST Animals People Keep As Pets!” video here: https://youtu.be/OMa96nPqz-Y

10.) Euhaplorchis Californiensis
The Euhaplorchis Californiensis is a parasite that is primarily found in southern California. These parasites live on the gut of shorebirds. Once the very tiny eggs of these parasites develop, they are released into the waters through the shorebirds’ feces. These eggs will live and develop into larva if they are swallowed up by snails.

9.) Acacia Trees
Ants and acacia trees have had a relationship for generations. For the longest time, people just assumed this is how it was and no one really looked into the reasoning for this relationship. That was until some scientists discovered that the relationship is actually more one sided than what people have previously thought.

8.) Phorid Flies

Continue reading “CRAZIEST Cases Of MIND CONTROL In Nature!” | >

SEATTLE, Wash. — There were 2,275 bolts of lightning in Saturday’s lightning storm that shocked Puget Sound, according to the National Weather Service on Sunday.

“To have this much lightning in the lowlands is exceptionally rare,” said Reid Wolcott, Warning Coordination Meteorologist for the National Weather Service.

MORE | Photos: Lightning fills the skies over the Puget Sound Region.

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While X-rays can produce harmful radiation, a new technique using laser-induced sound waves provides highly detailed images of the structures in our bodies.
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Photoacoustic imaging is an emerging imaging technique that shoots micro-pulses of laser light at a specimen or body part, which selectively heats up parts of the tissue causing them to expand, and generate waves of pressure – a.k.a. sound waves.

Ultrasonic sensors are situated to capture these microscopic changes, and a processing software then reconstructs the image based on what the sensors “hear.” The speed of the laser can be adjusted depending on what type of tissue one would like to visualize.

The photoacoustic imaging technique is beginning to take off in both the medical and scientific worlds, as it provides us with super clear, incredibly detailed images of the human body and the structures inside it.

Not to mention, the imaging technique causes no discomfort and there is no dangerous ionizing radiation involved, making it a desirable alternative to more traditional imaging, like a CT scan, ultrasound, or a PET scan.

Not only can this new imaging technology be used to image tissues at extremely high resolution, you can also introduce a foreign material, like a contrast dye or a specially designed nanoparticle, to see things you might not be able to otherwise.

Continue reading “A New Laser Technology Can See Inside Our Bodies Like Never Before” | >

Researchers are blurring the distinction between brain and machine, designing nanoelectronics that look, interact, and feel like real neurons. Camouflaged in the brain, this neurotechnology could offer a better way to treat neurodenerative diseases or control prosthetics, interface with computers or even enhance cognitive abilities.

Electrodes implanted in the brain help alleviate symptoms like the intrusive tremors associated with Parkinson’s disease but current probes face limitations due to their size and inflexibility. In a recent paper titled “Precision Electronic Medicine,” published in Nature Biotechnology, Shaun Patel, a faculty member at the Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, and Charles M. Lieber, the Joshua and Beth Friedman University Professor, argue that neurotechnology is on the cusp of a major renaissance. Throughout history, scientists have blurred discipline lines to tackle problems larger than their individual fields.

“The next frontier is really the merging of human cognition with machines,” says Patel. “Everything manifests in the brain fundamentally. All your thoughts, your perceptions, any type of disease.” He and Lieber see mesh electronics as the foundation for these machines, a way to design personalized electronic treatment for just about anything related to the brain. “Today, research focused at the interface between the nervous system and electronics is not only leading to advances in fundamental neuroscience, but also unlocking the potential of implants capable of cellular-level therapeutic targeting,” write the authors in their paper.

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Women innovators across the United States have been selected as AAAS IF/THEN® Ambassadors by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Lyda Hill Philanthropies to share their stories and serve as high-profile role models for middle-school girls.

Information about the 125 women selected as AAAS IF/THEN® Ambassadors can be found at www.ifthenshecan.org/ambassadors.

IF/THEN®, a national initiative of Lyda Hill Philanthropies, seeks to further women in science, technology, engineering and math by empowering current innovators and inspiring the next generation of pioneers.

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