Halo Matahari Hebohkan Warga Medan

Ribuan warga Medan, Sumatera Utara berbondong-bondong ke luar ruangan untuk menyaksikan fenomena unik. Secara tiba-tiba sekitar pukul 11.00 WIB matahari di atas langit Medan tidak seperti biasanya. Terdapat sebuah lingkaran hitam yang mengelilingi bulatan matahari. Selain itu, tiga warna lain juga turut mengitari matahari secara berlapis. Sehingga matahari tampak seperti dilingkari warna pelangi. Hal ini biasanya disebut "Halo". Uniknya, meski cuaca cerah dan mentari bersinar terang namun sengatan sinat matahari tidak begitu terasa. Kondisi ini berbeda dengan sebelum adanya lingkaran warna di matahari.

Berdasarkan pantauan di lapangan, Senin (22/9/2008) fenomena aneh ini diketahui warga setempat dari pantulan sinar matahari di kaca mobil yang lewat. Pancaran sinar aneka warna memancar dari pantulan kaca mobil yang lalu lalang di jalan. Merasa penasaran, beberapa orang warga melihat ke atas dan menemukan matahari telah dilingkari warna hitam dan beberapa warna lain. Akibat peristiwa alam ini, Jalan Pengadilan di Medan sempat mengalami kemacetan karena ratusan pengunjung sidang berbondong-bondong keluar ruangan untuk menyaksikan hal ini. Bahkan, seorang hakim dengan pakaian toga dan memegang palu sidang turut ke luar ruangan untuk memeriksa kebenaran informasi yang didengar.

Scientists Launch Study on Out-of-Body Experiences

British and U.S. scientists have launched a three-year project examining whether people who are clinically dead can have an out-of-body experience.

Out-of-body experiences, also known as near-death experiences, usually involve a person reporting to have witnessed events around them despite being considered unconscious or even technically dead by doctors around them.

Earlier in September, a collaboration of scientists with the Human Consciousness Project (HCP) announced a study that aims to determine whether heart attack patients had out-of-body experiences while they had no heartbeat or brain activity, the Western Mail reports.

The study, the group's first major undertaking, is expected to shed light on the relationship between mind and brain during clinical death.

Other scientific studies by independent researches have found that around 10 to 20 percent of people who go through cardiac arrest and clinical death report lucid, well structured thought processes, reasoning, memories, and sometimes detailed recall of events during their encounter with death, according to HCP.

So how exactly do the scientists plan to verify out-of-body experiences?

Dr. Sam Parnia, a fellow at New York's Weill Cornell Medical Center who is leading the study, proposed a simple method.

"So the only way to tell is to have pictures only visible from the ceiling and nowhere else, because they claim they can see everything from the ceiling," explained Parnia in an interview with TIME.

If they "were clinically dead, and yet they're able to come back and tell us what we were doing and were able see those pictures, that confirms consciousness really was continuing even though the brain wasn't functioning."

Clinical death is when the "heart stops beating, the lungs stop working, and as a consequence the brain itself stops working," noted Parnia, an expert in the study of the human mind and consciousness during clinical death.

After listening to hundreds of stories from people who claim an out-of-body experience, Parnia documented them in a book, What Happens When We Die. The book also provides the viewpoint of doctors who witness clinical deaths but hear their patients report the mysterious occurrence after being resuscitated.

"There was a cardiologist that I spoke with who said he hasn't told anyone else about it because he has no explanation for how this patient could have been able to describe in detail what he had said and done. He was so freaked out by it that he just decided not to think about it anymore," said Parnia to Time magazine.

The AWARE study will involve 25 major medical centers through Europe, Canada and the U.S., and will examine some 1,500 survivors of cardiac arrest.

"The study aims to settle this debate once and for all," said Parnia, according to The Independent. "It may be that out-of-body experiences are false memories but until that has been scientifically tested we can't say for sure."

Source (Image taken from different site)

Women 'more prone to nightmares'

Women experience significantly more nightmares than men and have more emotional dreams, research suggests.

In a study of 170 volunteers asked to record their most recent dream, 19% of men reported a nightmare compared with 30% of women.

Researcher Dr Jennifer Parker of the University of the West of England said there was no difference in the overall number of dreams reported. Other research has shown women tend to have more disturbed sleep than men.

One factor which has been linked to this is changes in a woman's body temperature during her monthly cycle.

Dr Parker, a lecturer in psychology, said it has been known for a long time that pre-menstrual women report more vivid and disturbing dreams.

"The consistent finding in this research was that women report more unpleasant dreams than men."

Traumatic

Women taking part in the study were much more likely to report dreaming about very emotionally traumatic events such as the loss of a loved one.

She added: "In terms of processing emotional information, women may be more prone to taking unresolved concerns into their sleep life."

Dr Chris Idzikowski, director of the Edinburgh Sleep Centre said he was not surprised the research showed a gender difference but what is difficult to pick out is whether women are having more nightmares or remembering them better.

"This fits in with what's in the literature.

"Women's sleep tends to be more disrupted and they have more insomnia.

"And more frequent wakening could cause them to pick up on the dream.

"But it could be that disturbed sleep is contributing to the fears."

He added that nightmares in everyone were probably more common than people realised as they are quickly forgotten about.

Source (Image taken from different site)

Train Victim's Cell Kept Calling Loved Ones After He Died

One local family whose loved one died in the Metrolink collision is still questioning something that happened that night.

They got several phone calls from 49-year-old Chuck Peck after the crash. But they now know he died on impact.

Peck's fiancee, Andrea Katz, told KTLA that the first call was to his son in Utah.

"...and he said my dad just called me and I said, what did he say? Is he okay? Where is he? He didn't say anything, the phone rang and it said dad," Peck's fiance Andrea Katz told KTLA.

As firefighters worked to rescue survivors, family members said Peck's cell phone kept calling his son, his brother, his stepmother, his sister and his fiancee.

But when they answered all they heard was static.

And when family members called back, the calls went straight to voice mail.

In all, family members say they received about 35 calls from Peck's cell phone through the night.

Nearly five hours after the crash at 9:08 p.m., Katz received a call.

"We were yelling in the phone, hang in there baby. We're gonna get you out. You're gonna be okay," Katz said.

When the rescue efforts turned to recovery, there was another call, which prompted search crews to trace it. They realized it was coming from the first train so they went back in one last time.

"And they were so excited they had this incredible adrenaline rush at thought that they could possibly go find another survivor... we gave her a description and they spent the next couple of hours looking for him and they did end up finding him and they said that he had died immediately on impact and there was no way he could have been calling us," Katz said.

The calls stopped at 3:28 a.m., about an hour before Peck's body was found.

Katz said the phone calls helped the family get through the night.

"The intellectual side of my brain thinks gee, it was a computer malfunction and then the emotional side of my brain, it was just Chuck letting us know that he knew that we were scared for him and letting us have hope."

Katz said she also finds comfort in knowing she and Peck were happy and that he didn't suffer in the end.

"He died instantly and he didn't suffer and when you love somebody you couldn't ask for a better way for them to leave this life, just happy and excited and didn't see it coming."

Investigators said they may never know how those calls were made because Peck's phone was never found.

They also say his body showed no sign that he lived even for a short time after the crash.

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World’s largest-ever study of Near-Death Experiences

The AWARE (AWAreness during REsuscitation) study is to be launched by the Human Consciousness Project of the University of Southampton – an international collaboration of scientists and physicians who have joined forces to study the human brain, consciousness and clinical death.

The study is led by Dr Sam Parnia, an expert in the field of consciousness during clinical death, together with Dr Peter Fenwick and Professors Stephen Holgate and Robert Peveler of the University of Southampton. Following a successful 18-month pilot phase at selected hospitals in the UK, the study is now being expanded to include other centres within the UK, mainland Europe and North America.

“Contrary to popular perception,” Dr Parnia explains, “death is not a specific moment. It is a process that begins when the heart stops beating, the lungs stop working and the brain ceases functioning – a medical condition termed cardiac arrest, which from a biological viewpoint is synonymous with clinical death.

“During a cardiac arrest, all three criteria of death are present. There then follows a period of time, which may last from a few seconds to an hour or more, in which emergency medical efforts may succeed in restarting the heart and reversing the dying process. What people experience during this period of cardiac arrest provides a unique window of understanding into what we are all likely to experience during the dying process.”

A number of recent scientific studies carried out by independent researchers have demonstrated that 10-20 per cent of people who go through cardiac arrest and clinical death report lucid, well structured thought processes, reasoning, memories and sometimes detailed recall of events during their encounter with death.

During the AWARE study, doctors will use sophisticated technology to study the brain and consciousness during cardiac arrest. At the same time, they will test the validity of out of body experiences and claims of being able to ‘see’ and ‘hear’ during cardiac arrest.

The AWARE study will be complemented by the BRAIN-1 (Brain Resuscitation Advancement International Network - 1) study, in which the research team will conduct a variety of physiological tests in cardiac arrest patients, as well as cerebral monitoring techniques that aim to identify methods to improve the medical and psychological care of patients who have undergone cardiac arrest.

Source (Image taken from different site)