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U.S. to disclose UFO findings from Pentagon task force
A new report from The New York Times describes a Pentagon task force's long-standing project to collect data on unidentified aerial phenomena and a Pentagon consultant who says the U.S. has collected crashed "off-world vehicles."

- Since 2007, a Pentagon task force has been collecting data on unidentified aerial phenomenon.
- Earlier this year, the Pentagon published three videos showing encounters between Navy pilots and strange-moving flying objects.
- The former head of the Pentagon task force believes U.S. officials have collected artifacts from crashed aircraft.
In April, the Pentagon released three videos taken by Navy pilots showing unidentified flying objects. Government officials didn't say the videos depicted alien spacecraft, nor did they say the objects were novel aircraft sent from a foreign nation. In short, the message was simply: nobody knows.
But the government wants to find out.
According to a recent Senate committee report, the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force at the Office of Naval Intelligence will "standardize collection and reporting on unidentified aerial phenomenon" and disclose some of its findings to the public within 180 days of issuing reports.
This once-covert task force has, under multiple names, been studying "unidentified aerial phenomena" since at least 2007, according to a recent New York Times report. Defense Department officials had told the Times that the task force had run out of funding in 2012. But the Times later spoke to people involved with the program who said it had never stopped studying unexplained aerial phenomena.
The Senate report frames unidentified aerial phenomena as a potential threat to national security. Senator Marco Rubio told the Times that the U.S. needs to study these sightings in case a foreign nation, like China or Russia, has made "some technological leap" that "allows them to conduct this sort of activity."
So, what might the task force disclose? Maybe not much more than what the government has already revealed. For example, the Pentagon videos from April (which The New York Times had first published in 2017 and 2018) show what some American pilots have called "Tic Tac" UFOs — fast, ovular aircraft that don't fly like anything currently on the market.
"What we saw exceeded anything that we had in our inventory, far superior to the airplanes that we were flying in; at the time they were brand new," David Fravor, a retired Navy pilot who said he encountered a Tic Tac UFO, told Fox News.
But interestingly, the new Times report describes how the former head of the Pentagon UFO task force, Luis Elizondo, is "among a small group of former government officials and scientists with security clearances who, without presenting physical proof, say they are convinced that objects of undetermined origin have crashed on earth with materials retrieved for study."
The report also mentions Eric W. Davis, an astrophysicist at Aerospace Corporation who's worked as a consultant for the Pentagon UFO program since 2007, and who's authored multiple papers on theoretical advanced propulsion systems for the Air Force Research Laboratory. Davis said he's briefed Defense Department officials as recently as March on "off-world vehicles not made on this earth."
Leslie Kean, who co-bylines these NYT stories, has made a career of researching UFOs. She's also written a book abo… https://t.co/LXn6qBUVVe— Dan Zak (@Dan Zak)1595556822.0
It's hard to know what to make of such extraordinary claims. After all, unlike the Tic Tac videos, there's no physical evidence suggesting the U.S. government has collected crashed aircraft. What's more, it's worth noting that in the public conversation about aliens or the supernatural, there have always been people with big claims but little (or zero) evidence to back them up. (Of course, if physical evidence did exist, it'd almost surely be classified.)
But what's clear is that the U.S. government is becoming more transparent about the strange objects that have been appearing in American skies and over the Atlantic Ocean. That's good news for UFO enthusiasts. Yet the scientific community doesn't seem interested at all.
In an interview with Vox, political scientist Alexander Wendt described a "taboo" against scientists studying UFOs.
"...even though the Navy is now saying, 'Hey, we've got UFOs on film, here they are,' the scientists are still not going to study them," Wendt said. "So there seems to be something blocking the scientific community from engaging this phenomenon, even though anything else even remotely this interesting would generate limitless research dollars."
Wanted: A Science of UFOs | Alexander Wendt | TEDxColumbus
Still, after Wendt gave a TEDx talk on the need for scientific study on UFOs, he said he received many emails from individual scientists saying: "Thank you, we wish we could study this, but we can't because our lives depend on getting grants from the government and other research institutes, and if anybody gets worried that we're interested in UFOs, boom, they won't get a cent and their careers will be in the tank."
Could this taboo set back efforts to bolster national security? After all, these recent reports are coming from the same people in charge of protecting U.S. airspace, and they're reporting objects that not only exceed modern technological capabilities, but also seem to defy our modern understanding of physics. If scientists react to these reports with the same eye-rolling that they'd give to tin-foil-hat conspiracy theorists, that seems like a problem.
As Senator Rubio told the Times, there might be a "completely, sort of, boring explanation" for the sightings, "but we need to find out."- Secret government UFO reading list revealed - Big Think ›
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Dogs digest human food better and poop less
A new study finds that dogs fed fresh human-grade food don't need to eat—or do their business—as much.
- Most dogs eat a diet that's primarily kibble.
- When fed a fresh-food diet, however, they don't need to consume as much.
- Dogs on fresh-food diets have healthier gut biomes.
Four diets were tested
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTU5ODI1MS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1NjY0NjIxMn0._w0k-qFOC86AqmtPHJBK_i-9F5oVyVYsYtUrdvfUxWQ/img.jpg?width=980" id="1b1e4" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="87937436a81c700a8ab3b1d763354843" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1440" data-height="960" />Credit: AntonioDiaz/Adobe Stock
<p>The researchers tested refrigerated and fresh human-grade foods against kibble, the food most dogs live on. The <a href="https://frontierpets.com.au/blogs/news/how-kibble-or-dry-dog-food-is-made" target="_blank">ingredients</a> of kibble are mashed into a dough and then extruded, forced through a die of some kind into the desired shape — think a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_extrusion" target="_blank">pasta maker</a>. The resulting pellets are sprayed with additional flavor and color.</p><p>For four weeks, researchers fed 12 beagles one of four diets:</p><ol><li>a extruded diet — Blue Buffalo Chicken and Brown Rice Recipe</li><li>a fresh refrigerated diet — Freshpet Roasted Meals Tender Chicken Recipe</li><li>a fresh diet — JustFoodforDogs Beef & Russet Potato Recipe</li><li>another fresh diet — JustFoodforDogs Chicken & White Rice Recipe.</li></ol><p>The two fresh diets contained minimally processed beef, chicken, broccoli, rice, carrots, and various food chunks in a canine casserole of sorts. </p><p>(One can't help but think how hard it would be to get finicky cats to test new diets. As if.)</p><p>Senior author <a href="https://ansc.illinois.edu/directory/ksswanso" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Kelly S. Swanson</a> of U of I's Department of Animal Sciences and the Division of Nutritional Sciences, was a bit surprised at how much better dogs did on people food than even refrigerated dog chow. "Based on past research we've conducted I'm not surprised with the results when feeding human-grade compared to an extruded dry diet," he <a href="https://aces.illinois.edu/news/feed-fido-fresh-human-grade-dog-food-scoop-less-poop" target="_blank">says</a>, adding, "However, I did not expect to see how well the human-grade fresh food performed, even compared to a fresh commercial processed brand."</p>Tracking the effect of each diet
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTU5ODI1OC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY3NjY1NTgyOX0.AdyMb8OEcjCD6iWYnXjToDmcnjfTSn-0-dfG96SIpUA/img.jpg?width=980" id="da892" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="880d952420679aeccd1eaf32b5339810" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1440" data-height="960" />Credit: Patryk Kosmider/Adobe Stock
<p>The researchers tracked the dogs' weights and analyzed the microbiota in their fecal matter.</p><p>It turned out that the dogs on kibble had to eat more to maintain their body weight. This resulted in their producing 1.5 to 2.9 times the amount of poop produced by dogs on the fresh diets.</p><p>Says Swanson, "This is consistent with a 2019 National Institute of Health study in humans that found people eating a fresh whole food diet consumed on average 500 less calories per day, and reported being more satisfied, than people eating a more processed diet."</p><p>Maybe even more interesting was the effect of fresh food on the gut biome. Though there remains much we don't yet know about microbiota, it was nonetheless the case that the microbial communities found in fresh-food poo was different.</p><p>"Because a healthy gut means a healthy mutt," says Swanson, "fecal microbial and metabolite profiles are important readouts of diet assessment. As we have shown in <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jas/article/92/9/3781/4702209#110855647" target="_blank">previous studies</a>, the fecal microbial communities of healthy dogs fed fresh diets were different than those fed kibble. These unique microbial profiles were likely due to differences in diet processing, ingredient source, and the concentration and type of dietary fibers, proteins, and fats that are known to influence what is digested by the dog and what reaches the colon for fermentation."</p>How did kibble take over canine diets?
<p>Historically, dogs ate scraps left over by humans. It has only been <a href="https://www.thefarmersdog.com/digest/the-history-of-commercial-pet-food-a-great-american-marketing-story/" target="_blank">since 1870</a>, with the arrival of the luxe Spratt's Meat Fibrine Dog Cakes—made from "the dried unsalted gelatinous parts of Prairie Beef", mmm—that commercial dog food began to take hold. Dog bone-shaped biscuits first appeared in 1907. Ken-L Ration dates from 1922. Kibble was first extruded in 1956. Pet food had become a great way to turn <a href="https://www.dogfoodadvisor.com/choosing-dog-food/animal-by-products/" target="_blank">human-food waste</a> into profit.</p><p>Commercial dog food became the norm for most household canines only after a massive marketing campaign led by a group of dog-food industry lobbyists called the Pet Food Institute in 1964. Over time, for most households, dog food was what dogs ate — what else? Human food? These days more than half of U.S. dogs are <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/03/magazine/who-made-that-dog-biscuit.html" target="_blank">overweight or obese</a>, and certainly their diet is a factor.<span></span></p><p>We're not so special among animals after all. If something's healthy for us to eat—we're <em>not</em> looking at you, chocolate—maybe we should remember to share with our canine compatriots. Not from the table, though.</p>Your genetics influence how resilient you are to the cold
What makes some people more likely to shiver than others?
Some people just aren't bothered by the cold, no matter how low the temperature dips. And the reason for this may be in a person's genes.
Harvard study finds perfect blend of fruits and vegetables to lower risk of death
Eating veggies is good for you. Now we can stop debating how much we should eat.
- A massive new study confirms that five servings of fruit and veggies a day can lower the risk of death.
- The maximum benefit is found at two servings of fruit and three of veggies—anything more offers no extra benefit according to the researchers.
- Not all fruits and veggies are equal. Leafy greens are better for you than starchy corn and potatoes.
Cephalopod aces 'marshmallow test' designed for eager children
The famous cognition test was reworked for cuttlefish. They did better than expected.
