What Could Go Wrong? New 'Robotic Smart Crib' Will Stop Your Baby Crying

Authored by Jake Anderson via TheAntiMedia.org,

Would you trust a robot to rock your baby to sleep?

The question likely elicits the chilling vision of a Terminator cradling your child. However, a new product - the Snoo - is, in fact, an automated crib, a high-tech bassinet perfectly calibrated to ‘swaddle’ infants and lull them into slumber. It’s an early entry of automated child care in an age that promises to integrate robotics into the daily fabric of human life.

So, back to the question at hand:

Would you trust a robot to swaddle your child while she sleeps?

The Snoo was developed by renowned pediatrician Dr. Harvey Karp, MIT-trained engineers, and Yves Behar, who runs a tech-savvy industrial design firm. The team’s goal was to recreate the sensations of being in the womb by swaddling the infant — restricting their limb movement, a practice some have criticized — and inundating them with white noise. This is accomplished with a sleeper outfit that one mother, Samantha Murphy Kelly, referred to as a “straight jacket” that safely secures the child as the bassinet rocks her to sleep.

Samantha, who wrote about the experience of entrusting the Snoo to care for her baby, describes her trepidation disappearing as she watched her child fall asleep within minutes. However, she admits that a creeping anxiety never fully went away.

“As I became comfortable with the product — even relied on it — I found new things to worry about,” she writes. 

“When the city experienced a storm in the middle of the night, I sprinted out of bed to unplug it.”

The Snoo senses when a child is stirring and modulates its speed accordingly. In this way, it is part of a new tech trend of automated devices designed to coddle children. In 2009, a Japanese company released Suima, the first fully automatic baby crib. Earlier this year, Ford, in advertising its new Max line of cars, developed a crib that simulates the ‘soothing’ vibrations of a car ride. One can imagine there will be many more products and services like these as automation in the household becomes more ubiquitous — and profitable.

But will this cottage industry be challenged by the uncanny valley? This is an aesthetics theory supposing that humans feel a kind of revulsion when faced with a human replica. It is most commonly applied to androids, robots, and dolls, humanoid manifestations that come close to approximating our form, expression, or sound — but that remain eerily incongruent.

In entrusting robotic consumer products with caring for our infants, we must overcome a feeling that something is slightly off. Even if a product has a perfect safety record, a queasy doubt will still linger. While robotics, artificial intelligence, and automation make many aspects of our lives vastly more efficient, there remains a sense that the simulacrum is untrustworthy.

Will we overcome this sense in the coming decades? Will we merge seamlessly with our new robotics creations, as Elon Musk believes? Will the 2020s bring us smart cribs and infant monitoring microchips? Or will the feeling of unease cause a Luddite rift? Only time — and money — will tell.

Are the Aging Elite “Feasting On Young Blood”? Rockefeller Research Advanced Eternal Quest

Image: Sage Ross, Wikipedia

Though it seems like science fiction, it is, in fact, based in reality.

Some of the wealthiest foundations on the planet have sponsored on-going research that dates back to the 1950s where-in scientists attempted to transfuse the vital, healthy blood of young individuals into older, and more fatigued recipients.

And apparently, it has demonstrated considerable positive effects – at least in lab studies with mice.

Nonetheless, the treatments are already taking place in selects labs in some of the most expensive area codes on the map, and where the elite seek methods and procedures for delaying death for as long as possible.

It’s creepy, but happening.

As Vox reports:

“There are widespread rumors in Silicon Valley, where life-extension science is a popular obsession, that various wealthy individuals from the tech world have already begun practicing parabiosis, spending tens of thousands of dollars for the procedures and young-person-blood, and repeating the exercise several times a year,” Bercovici reported.

[…]

The early research is groundbreaking and exciting, he says. But the interest in parabiosis is already getting ahead of the research. He fears that the science will be maligned by a rush to market a “youth serum.” Or worse: A black market for young people’s blood will arise out of the hype.

It seems that the old rumors and loose talk about rich and powerful barons in the ranking power structure drinking blood of babies (and so forth and so on…) may not be so wildly off base after all.

After all, many have speculated whether the bizarre blood shot eyes of David Rockefeller (in photo below) are not evident of many attempts at treatment to keep the aging oligarch alive – he is now 101 years old.

The question is all the more relevant, because his family, who have sponsored more medical and scientific research than perhaps any other American family, have funded investigations into genetics, longevity, social behavior, eugenics, chemotherapy and modern medicine that have defined breakthroughs.

For instance, a 1943 report from the Rockefeller Foundation discusses their involvement with “mining blood” for its qualities, both known and unknown:

“Thus, what started as an inquiry into the practicability of using animal plasma as a blood substitute for transfusion purposes, has developed into a program of “mining” blood for its individual substances and for testing these concentrates for therapeutic and prophylactic use.

Knowledge gained in a laboratory devoted wholly to problems of pure science has been turned quickly and effectively to meet immediate human needs…”

The Rockefeller Foundation and just a few other key foundations have dominated the restructuring of scientific research, and the funding and direction of research and development.

More quietly, they have also been responsible for suppressing many cures and breakthroughs that did not meet their agenda. Those fruits have been enjoyed behind the veil, if at all.

A contributor on Natural News, raptorman, dug up some very damning research that was being conducted in 1957 and sponsored by the foundation:

Parabiosis refers to the transfusing of blood from one subject to another literally combining the circulatory systems of two animals. Some scientific studies have shown reported health and longevity benefits to older mice if paired with younger mice. This came into the mainstream view with headlines about tech billionaires injecting young people’s blood for life extension…  Many articles detail the very wealthy’s interest in the process of transfusing the blood of the young for its rejuvenating properties.

Any of the recent articles on the subject are carbon copies of each other, all referencing the same report in the journal Nature. Mentioning only the same part of the report entitled Ageing Research: Blood to blood and not considering the deeper implications.

• In the past few years, however, a small number of labs have revived parabiosis, especially in the field of ageing research. By joining the circulatory system of an old mouse to that of a young mouse, scientists have produced some remarkable results. In the heart, brain, muscles and almost every other tissue examined, the blood of young mice seems to bring new life to ageing organs, making old mice stronger, smarter and healthier. It even makes their fur shinier. Now these labs have begun to identify the components of young blood that are responsible for these changes.

Raptorman draws the connection back to experiment work, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation and the secretive Office of Naval Research:

How young is the blood needed for the effects? How is this blood obtained?

About the first question, again quoting from the same article in the journal Nature just a few paragraphs down.   This part was conveniently left out of the mainstream pieces.

• Clive McCay, a biochemist and gerontologist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, was the first to apply parabiosis to the study of ageing. In 1956, his team joined 69 pairs of rats, almost all of differing ages³. The linked rats included a 1.5-month-old paired with a 16-month-old — the equivalent of pairing a 5-year-old human with a 47-year-old. It was not a pretty experiment.

The very young were paired with the old. Not sort of young like an 18-year-old, really young like a 5-year-old!! With humans pairing the equivalent of an 18-year-old with a 47-year-old might be acceptable. Whereas pairing a 47-year-old with a 5-year-old is definitely not. All of this is certainly not good for the young host as it is sucked dry of its vitality. The younger the host the more vitality there is to be had.

In McCay’s first parabiotic ageing experiment, after old and young rats were joined for 9–18 months, the older animals’ bones became similar in weight and density to the bones of their younger counterparts…

McCay’s experiments were originally funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. Scroll down the sample page and note the study was done with grants from the Office of Naval Research in conjunction with none other than the Rockefeller Foundation. It seems this organization has it’s fingers in every little pie.

Indeed, the Rockefeller Foundation has been funding his research in aging since 1936, and continuously over the course of his career:

RF Annual report, 1941

If anyone would embody the spirit and behavior of vampires, by sucking off the vitality of the young and naive, it would certainly be the very same elite who’ve lied to us as a means of keeping us all controlled.

Wars, conflicts, terrorism, news of death and destruction, and a focus on sports, entertainment and consumer culture have kept us all inside the bounds.

Maybe it goes one step further, and we’re being fed off like cattle?

Is that question really too big to raise?

Read more:

Elite Prepare to Hole Up in Luxury Underground Bunkers: “They Know Something The Rest of Us Do Not”

‘We Live In a Cesspool of Entitled, Elite Scumbags’

Why The Elite Are Buying Secret Hideaways: “A Lot of Wealthy and Powerful People Are Quite Afraid Right Now”

Why We Always Get Screwed: Calculations Show “Society Too Complex to Have A President”

The Establishment Is Preparing For Martial Law And Civil War: “Trump’s Pursuit Of Presidency Will Be The Spark”

Volunteers Transformed NICU Babies with Handmade Halloween Costumes

The neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) can be a place of great stress and worry for parents, but the NICU at St. Luke Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, has a bit more happy Halloween cheer, thanks to a kindhearted group of volunteers who created some itty-bitty costumes for the hospital’s tiniest patients. [1]

The gifted March of Dimes volunteers crafted the costumes from felt and glue in a controlled room in the hospital to ensure it was safe and sanitary for the premature newborns.

If you can’t imagine anything cuter than a tiny baby, well, imagine a pint-size Superman, Batman, ladybug, or butterfly. The delicate garb takes some of the attention away from the tubes and wires flowing in and out of the cradles and incubators.

Source: CNN

Hospital spokeswoman Michelle Manuel said:

“Families in our NICU may spend weeks or months here, and it can be an emotional time.

Providing an opportunity for them to celebrate Halloween with their little ones allows them a sense of normalcy, and to celebrate their baby’s first milestones, which is what every family wants to do.” [2]

Source: CNN

Three volunteer photographers were on-hand at St. Luke to capture the costumed babies in their full, adorable splendor, including Emmalee Schaumburg, who last year began photographing babies every other month. [1]

Schaumburg’s own daughter – who will soon celebrate her 3rd birthday – was born prematurely at 3 pounds and 6 ounces, so she understands what NICU parents go through. She said:

“Now that she’s 2 and a half, I am so glad I can go back and look at those pictures and see how far she’s come. It’s so important to remember how far these babies have come.” [2]

Thirty-five families currently have babies in the NICU at St. Luke, and not only do their tiny blessings get Halloween costumes, the families themselves also receive a “Trick or Treat, smell my feet” card with their baby’s footprints, and a hand-crocheted pumpkin filled with treats and a Halloween book. [1]

Source: CNN

The NICU staff is already dreaming up sweet ideas to make the rest of the holiday season a bit more fun for the families. [2]

Sources:

[1] USA Today

[2] CNN

Images Source:

CNN

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About Julie Fidler:
	Julie Fidler is a freelance writer, legal blogger, and the author of Adventures in Holy Matrimony: For Better or the Absolute Worst. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two ridiculously spoiled cats. She occasionally pontificates on her blog.