Researchers now know who she was, and they know that Leonardo da Vinci painted her portrait to commemorate the birth of her second son. But what they don’t know is how he did it, because on close examination, there seem to be no brushstrokes. Could it have been an earlier photograph, as the Shroud of Turin is suspected of being?

Not even the most sophisticated modern analysis available to art historians has revealed the secret of how Leonardo could have painted with brush strokes so fine that they still cannot be detected. Researcher John Taylor was amazed by the lack of brush strokes on the painting, even he examined it with the most sophisticated imaging equipment available.
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A current crop of solar flares could disrupt GPS systems, which more and more cars are using. They are also standard equipment on jet planes, which makes the flares a potentially much more serious problem. But GPS is not the only thing these solar flares could stress?the radiation they give off could harm astronauts’ brains.

Fiery discharges from the sun may not bother the GPS in your car are on your cell phone. In LiveScience.com, Jeanna Bryner quotes Paul Kintner Jr. as saying, “If you’re driving to the beach using your car’s navigation system, you’ll be OK. If you’re on a commercial airplane in zero visibility weather, maybe not.”
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Don’t miss Anne Strieber’s fascinating subscriber interview with Colm Kelleher about Alzheimer’s Disease this week! Could the obesity epidemic in the US that is fueled by corn ALSO be the cause of the incredible rise in Alzheimer’s Disease? New studies have found that cutting down on carbohydrates and drinking red wine may stave off the memory-stealing disease that everyone dreads.

A new study directed by Mount Sinai School of Medicine extends and strengthens the research that what you eat might halt or even reverse symptoms of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). The researchers are studying calorie restriction, especially restriction of carbohydrates. Restricting calorie intake may prevent AD by triggering activity in the brain that leads to a longer life.
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One of the greatest tragedies of the Iraq War may turn out to be that we spent so much energy and money on fighting an unnecessary war abroad, while we should have been concentrating on the climate emergency here at home. Now it may be too late.

Global temperatures are dangerously close to the highest ever in the past million years. NASA satellite images of the Arctic reveal large cracks in the ice cover.

In LiveScience.com, Sara Goudarzi quotes NASA’s James Hansen as saying, “This evidence implies that we are getting close to dangerous levels of human-made pollution.”

She quotes meteorologist Alan Robock as saying, “It’s certainly the warmest it’s been in the last couple of thousand years.”
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