The Nighttime Earth From Space Like You’ve Never Seen It Before -

The Nighttime Earth From Space Like You’ve Never Seen It Before - 



These super-high-resolution images, made possible by a new type of infrared sensor on the satellite, were revealed here at the American Geophysical Union conference Dec. 5.

The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite has a "day-night band" that can detect natural and man-made light with unprecedented resolution and clarity. It can resolve everything from the nocturnal glow of the atmosphere to the light of a single boat at sea. It can detect auroras, wildfires, the reflection of moon and star light off clouds and ice and the lights alongside highways. The sensor has six times better spatial resolution and 250 times better resolution of lighting levels than anything that came before it.

The VIIRS instrument works by scanning in 22 different wavelength bands. For each pixel, it uses a low-, medium- or high-gain mode to accurately depict the light from each source. Low-light signals are amplified and bright lights are kept from being over-saturated.

The data from the Suomi satellite is freely available to the public within hours, providing the first look at the Earth at night for most scientists. Previously, the U.S. Air Force had a suite of night-time satellites with low-light sensors, but the data wasn't nearly as good, was mostly classified, and was available only to a few scientists.

Read more -
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/12/suomi-satellite-night-lights-gallery/

The Coming Derivatives Panic That Will Destroy Global Financial Markets -

The Coming Derivatives Panic That Will Destroy Global Financial Markets - 


When financial markets in the United States crash, so does the U.S. economy.  Just remember what happened back in 2008.  The financial markets crashed, the credit markets froze up, and suddenly the economy went into cardiac arrest.  Well, there are very few things that could cause the financial markets to crash harder or farther than a derivatives panic.  Sadly, most Americans don’t even understand what derivatives are.  Unlike stocks and bonds, a derivative is not an investment in anything real.  Rather, a derivative is a legal bet on the future value or performance of something else.  Just like you can go to Las Vegas and bet on who will win the football games this weekend, bankers on Wall Street make trillions of dollars of bets about how interest rates will perform in the future and about what credit instruments are likely to default.  Wall Street has been transformed into a gigantic casino where people are betting on just about anything that you can imagine.  This works fine as long as there are not any wild swings in the economy and risk is managed with strict discipline, but as we have seen, there have been times when derivatives have caused massive problems in recent years.  For example, do you know why the largest insurance company in the world, AIG, crashed back in 2008 and required a government bailout?  It was because of derivatives.  Bad derivatives trades also caused the failure of MF Global, and the 6 billion dollar lossthat JPMorgan Chase recently suffered because of derivatives made headlines all over the globe.  But all of those incidents were just warm up acts for the coming derivatives panic that will destroy global financial markets.  The largest casino in the history of the world is going to go “bust” and the economic fallout from the financial crash that will happen as a result will be absolutely horrific.

There is a reason why Warren Buffett once referred to derivatives as “financial weapons of mass destruction”.  Nobody really knows the total value of all the derivatives that are floating around out there, but estimates place the notional value of the global derivatives market anywhere from 600 trillion dollars all the way up to 1.5 quadrillion dollars.

Keep in mind that global GDP is somewhere around 70 trillion dollars for an entire year.  So we are talking about an amount of money that is absolutely mind blowing.

So who is buying and selling all of these derivatives?

Well, would it surprise you to learn that it is mostly the biggest banks?

According to the federal government, four very large U.S. banks “represent 93% of the total banking industry notional amounts and 81% of industry net current credit exposure.”

These four banks have an overwhelming share of the derivatives market in the United States.  You might not be very fond of “the too big to fail banks“, but keep in mind that if a derivatives crisis were to cause them to crash and burn it would almost certainly cause the entire U.S. economy to crash and burn.  Just remember what we saw back in 2008.  What is coming is going to be even worse.

It would have been really nice if we had not allowed these banks to get so large and if we had not allowed them to make trillions of dollars of reckless bets.  But we stood aside and let it happen.  Now these banks are so important to our economic system that their destruction would also destroy the U.S. economy.  It is kind of like when cancer becomes so advanced that killing the cancer would also kill the patient.  That is essentially the situation that we are facing with these banks.

It would be hard to overstate the recklessness of these banks.  The numbers that you are about to see are absolutely jaw-dropping.  According to the Comptroller of the Currency, four of the largest U.S. banks are walking a tightrope of risk, leverage and debt when it comes to derivatives.  Just check out how exposed they are…

JPMorgan Chase

Total Assets: $1,812,837,000,000 (just over 1.8 trillion dollars)

Total Exposure To Derivatives: $69,238,349,000,000 (more than 69 trillion dollars)

Citibank

Total Assets: $1,347,841,000,000 (a bit more than 1.3 trillion dollars)

Total Exposure To Derivatives: $52,150,970,000,000 (more than 52 trillion dollars)

Bank Of America

Total Assets: $1,445,093,000,000 (a bit more than 1.4 trillion dollars)

Total Exposure To Derivatives: $44,405,372,000,000 (more than 44 trillion dollars)

Goldman Sachs

Total Assets: $114,693,000,000 (a bit more than 114 billion dollars – yes, you read that correctly)

Total Exposure To Derivatives: $41,580,395,000,000 (more than 41 trillion dollars)

That means that the total exposure that Goldman Sachs has to derivatives contracts is more than 362 times greater than their total assets.

To get a better idea of the massive amounts of money that we are talking about, just check out this excellent infographic.

How in the world could we let this happen?

Read more - 
http://www.blacklistednews.com/The_Coming_Derivatives_Panic_That_Will_Destroy_Global_Financial_Markets/22928/0/38/38/Y/M.html

French Sperm Count 'Falls By One Third' In Past 20 Years -

French Sperm Count 'Falls By One Third' In Past 20 Years - 



A major sperm study has delivered a blow to the bedroom reputation of French men.

Gallic sperm count and quality have fallen sharply since the start of the 1990s, say scientists.

The research involving more than 26,600 men showed a "significant and continuous" 32.2% decrease in sperm concentration over 17 years. Numbers of sperm per millilitre of semen fell at about 2% a year between 1989 and 2005.

Researchers calculated that in French men with an average age of 35, sperm count reduced from around 73.6 million per millilitre of semen to 49.9 million.

At the same time, the proportion of normally formed sperm declined by about a third.

Read more - 
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/12/05/french-sperm-count-fall-third_n_2242524.html?utm_hp_ref=canada&ir=Canada

Kate Middleton's nurse falls for prank call, gives out health information - to woman impersonating the Queen -

Kate Middleton's nurse falls for prank call, gives out health information -  to woman impersonating the Queen - 



The British hospital treating the former Kate Middleton admitted it was victimized by a crank call in which information on the Duchess of Cambridge’s condition was given to a woman impersonating Queen Elizabeth II.

King Edward VII’s hospital acknowledged Wednesday that an Australian radio station made a hoax call to the hospital in the early hours Tuesday. A woman using the often mimicked voice of the monarch asked after the Duchess’ health — and was told that Kate, who is being treated for morning sickness — “hasn’t had any retching with me and she’s been sleeping on and off.”

The hospital says the conversation was held with one of the nursing staff. Its telephone protocols are being reviewed.

The Australian 2DayFM placed the recording of the conversation on its website.



Read more -
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1297749--hospital-treating-kate-middleton-falls-for-prank-call-gives-out-health-information