A Telescope on the Moon Could Illuminate the Dark Ages of the Universe
A radio telescope planned for the farside of the moon could plug a 500-million-year hole in cosmic history.
By Eric BetzMay 15, 2021 9:00 PM
A massive galaxy cluster is intertwined with threads of dark matter (blue) and gas (orange). The formation of large-scale structures seen today are thought to have originated during the universe’s mysterious “dark ages.” (Credit: Illustris Collaboration)
This article appeared in the June 2021 issue of Discover magazine as "In Search of the Dark Ages." Subscribe for more stories like these.
Some 13.8 billion years ago, our universe burst into being. In a fraction of a second, it ballooned from subatomic to the size of a grapefruit. And as the cosmos grew and grew, it also cooled, until the building blocks of matter — subatomic particles called quarks and gluons — could form. Eventually, this quark soup aggregated into atoms. Atoms merged into larger molecules. Gas filled the universe. Yet the cosmos would sit like this — dark — for hundreds of millions of years before light shone from the first stars and galaxies.
We understand parts of what happened in the early universe. But a huge blank still haunts astronomers. They call it the “dark ages” because, with no starlight to study, they’re left guessing where all the familiar stuff came from. How did we go from a gas-filled universe to the one we now see in the night sky?
“The early universe had no galaxies, just hot stuff. As things cooled off, something had to happen before the galaxies formed,” says Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist John Mather of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “Honestly, we’ve got lots of stories and lots of predictions, but no measurements.”
Unravelling this mystery is “one of the great objectives of modern-day astronomy,” he adds.
To solve it, scientists and engineers have identified an unlikely location for their work, one that could help shape the next generation of astronomical research: the farside of the moon.
Before the first stars, the universe didn’t emit visible light, but the primordial matter that pervaded the universe likely did emit radio signals. Astronomers have never seen these wavelengths because they’re so stretched out that they can’t be detected over the radio chatter bouncing around Earth. The farside of the moon is the one place in the inner solar system where radio astronomers can find some peace and quiet. Its surface always faces away from Earth, so if astronomers could build a radio telescope there, they’d have a natural noise barrier.
Telescopes on the Moon
In 1986, nearly 100 of the world’s leading astronomers gathered at a hotel in Houston to present dozens of bold ideas for building telescopes on our natural satellite. Even before the Apollo program, scientists had argued that lunar telescopes were one of the best scientific justifications for going to the moon. That push helped land a small telescope on Apollo 16. And by the mid-1980s, the idea finally seemed ripe. NASA’s space shuttle program was thriving and plans for a space station were taking shape. A return to the moon seemed not far off.
Astronomers understand parts of the early universe, but huge blanks still remain. (Credit: Roen Kelly/Discover)
Then, less than three weeks after the Houston meeting, Space Shuttle Challenger crashed. America’s revived moon program would crash in the years ahead too.
Still, not everyone gave up the idea. Ever since that meeting 35 years ago, Jack O. Burns has been the lead evangelist for building telescopes on the moon. He’s pushed for lunar telescopes through three separate return-to-the-moon initiatives.
“My job since the 1980s has been leading the charge on what science we could do in terms of astronomy once we get to the moon,” says Burns, who directs the NASA-funded Network for Exploration and Space Science. For the first time, Burns thinks this crazy idea might actually become a reality. After Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, Burns served as the only scientist on the new administration’s NASA transition team. The ideas that the team came up with later became the Artemis program, which aims to land lunar astronauts by 2024.
Burns also presented his ideas for using lunar telescopes to unravel the cosmic dark ages. He sees this as the “killer app” — the scientific case that finally makes lunar telescopes indispensable. Over dinner, he sold then-NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine on the idea, too.
Burns has now completed a NASA-funded engineering study on a project he calls FARSIDE, or Farside Array for Radio Science Investigations of the Dark ages and Exoplanets. The entire radio telescope would pack into a robotic lunar lander that would touch down on the farside of the moon. Then, four small rovers would slowly uncoil nearly 30 miles of wire and 128 antennas into a spiral pattern covering some 6 miles.
In 1972, Apollo 16 placed the first Moon-based observatory.
Technology Catches Up
In the past, astronomers’ moon telescope proposals relied on lunar colonies and multibillion space programs. “The only way we could conceive of putting scientific instruments on the moon was with astronauts,” Burns says. But thanks to modern robotics and the emergence of private spaceflight companies, FARSIDE’s price tag is less than the cost of a Mars rover.
For more than a year, the FARSIDE team has been working with Jeff Bezos’ space company, Blue Origin. While Elon Musk dreams of Mars, Bezos’ ultimate goal is to have humans working and living on the moon — including doing science. To serve that goal, he’s pumped billions of dollars into reusable rockets and a cargo lander called Blue Moon that can carry several metric tons of weight to the lunar surface. With this spacecraft, Blue Origin aims to open the door to lunar colonies. For NASA, it’s also a way to get American astronauts back on the moon. But that kind of cargo capacity is more than enough to deploy a telescope, plus the rovers to build it, in a single trip.
Burns isn’t the only one pursuing it. The science potential of the lunar farside has attracted interest from other researchers — and other countries.
Astronomers have never observed in this part of the radio spectrum before, and researchers are eager to be the first to see what’s hiding there. It could offer a new test for standard cosmology. And the measurements are so sensitive, they potentially could even detect electromagnetic fields around exoplanets, helping identify habitable planets.
“You’ve got this radio-quiet environment on the other side of the moon that enables very sensitive measurements that you just can’t get any other way,” says Steve Squyres, Blue Origin’s chief scientist. “That environment is very, very conducive to doing breakthrough science.”
The Moon Rush
Even NASA recently funded another lunar telescope study. The proposal suggests using small robots to climb cliffs and suspend a radio observatory inside of a farside lunar crater.
China is chasing similar goals. The country has already deployed a small telescope on the lunar farside with its Chang’e 4 lander. Now, it’s moving forward with plans for missions surprisingly similar to the ones Burns has been pushing for decades.
The FARSIDE telescope and its attendant rovers would reach the moon using Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander. (Credit: Courtesy Caltech/JPL)
In the meantime, Burns received NASA funding to complete a concept study and develop instruments for a project called the Dark Ages Polarimetry Pathfinder, or DAPPER. This small satellite will be deployed from a spacecraft “bus,” which the agency plans to launch as soon as 2022. And instead of sitting on the moon’s surface, it will make initial observations of the dark ages and cosmic dawn during the brief part of its orbit where it’s behind the moon.
But with NASA and private companies racing to put boots on the moon as quickly as possible, astronomers have grown nervous that the radio noise pollution problems will follow them off Earth.
“There’s an imperative to do it soon,” Squyres says. “While the radio environment on the farside of the moon is quiet now, it’s not likely to stay that way.”
If scientists can start building research stations on the lunar farside, they may be able to create a long-standing precedent that this region is protected from development, like Antarctica. But wait too long, and they’ll miss the window.
“We’re ready to go now,” Burns says. “There’s no question we can do this. And someone will do it, whether it’s NASA or the Chinese or Jeff Bezos. I’m convinced it will be done.”
Eric Betz is a science and tech writer for Discover, Astronomy and others
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DJ Pap
DJ Pap aka Black Mamba has been on the Chicago dance scene since the early Eighties (80’s), with the influence of his older brother who introduced him to a variety of the 70’s dance music.
After trading his electric guitar for a pair of turntables, he taught himself how to create and deliver sounding combination of incomparable Disco and 80’s underground dance music. With influences such as Legendary Djs: Ron Hardy (Music Box), Frankie knuckles (C.O.D.’s and Power Plant) and Producer Larry Heard. While spreading this tribal and deep groove rhythm he established resident spots around the Chicago area such as a weekly underground spot called “Bonnie’s Basement on Chicago’s Southside.
By the end of the eighties his name was all over the city of Chicago. Continuing his career as a DJ he played at the Future Shock with Mike Winston, Warehouse with Diz, Studio 57 with Brucio, Tequila Factory and established number of other guest and resident spots in the Chicago area, also being able to broadcast this
signature sound coast to coast.
Deciding to take his art to higher level this veteran Dj decided to write and produce his own music. These skills were first introduced on Nitelife Collective “So Happy” with co-producer Will Paris. Also creating various sounds for Lamour Records “Voices of Ituri”, Distant Music “Talk to Me”, Seasons Recordings “Come Back Baby” and numerous other labels such as Trax Records, City Deep and with his newest venture Raisini Records.
Besides being a Dj/producer, Dj Pap started Muzic Vision Records in 2003 with Dj Fritz (SoulChild). With releases such as “Brighter Day” and “It’s the Rhythm”. With the birth of his new label “Mtima Muziki Recordings” with his long-time friend and partner, Chicago House Radio’s very own Denise aka Ms. Nycy.
DJ Pap is maintaining the vital part of personal growth with a balance of knowledge and wisdom, while still contributing to the world of house music and staying true to the roots of pure Chicago dance music.
Tribal Muzik
Deep House Beats V2
DJ Pap feat. Cei Bei - Its the Music (Rocco Remix)
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Drew Harden
5 Imaginative Ways Google Can Redesign Its Homepage
If you could change anything about the most visited web page in the world, what would it be? That's the question we recently asked ourselves about the world's most frequented homepage, www.google.com.* It's not only home to the world's most popular search engine, but Google has crafted it into a central hub for all of its online properties: Google+, Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps, and more.
We presented our designers and online marketers with a challenge: improve the web page that has defined clean design, beautiful simplicity, and unobtrusive functionality. It sounds impossible, but our team was up for the task. Here's a look at our re-imagined results:
Google Redesign #1
by Drew Harden
Our first redesign retains the simplistic feel of the original Google.com, but with emphasis on the bold aspects of Google's color palette. The goal of this design is to allow the visitor to quickly and easily transition across Google's various brands, such as Google+, YouTube, and Google Drive. Each color represents a different Google property which can be quickly accessed. When clicked or touched, the color slides over and opens access to that brand. Gone are the unnecessary "search" and "I'm Feeling Lucky" buttons, giving the visitor the ability to simply hit "Enter" or speak to execute their search.
by Cary Coppola
Want quick access to your files or friends? This design includes interactive elements directly from Google+, Google Drive, Google Maps, or other Google properties in a easy-access dashboard. Visitors can to select which elements they would like to have on their personalized google.com page. This flexibility gives the visitor full control over how simple or complex to make his/her google.com experience.
by Kayla Davison
This design takes each of the iconic colors of the Google logo and transforms them into a circle, with the first blue "G" as the largest. Each letter is represented by the next smallest circle in its respective color. As the circles decrease in size, the visitor's eye is drawn toward the center of the screen, which leads to a magnifying glass icon to initiate the search.
When the visitor begins the search, the circles scatter into a horizontal pattern similar to the original logo layout. This design takes advantage of the simplicity of Google's layout by allowing visitors to utilize the page's functionality, even when letters, buttons, and other characteristics are eliminated.
by Melissa Harden
If you feel Google should stick with search, this design is for you. Moving away from Gmail, Google+, and other properties, this home page focuses on pure search simplicity. Large font and a clean design focus all attention on the visitor's query, with a simplified search engine result page once the search is performed. Google Now technology could also be integrated, allowing a pre-populated search based on your location, search history, time of day, etc. to be present whenever the page is accessed.
by Stephanie Campbell
This design features at-a-glance Google property icons, and an information feed area that allows the visitor to see favorite social feeds, news, weather, etc. These totally customizable feeds let the visitor keep up on the latest Google News for a particular subject, his/her Gmail inbox, or more, and can be minimized or expanded.
Which design do you like the most? What would you have done differently? Is it even possible to improve Google's design? Let us know in the comments below!
*Alexa traffic rank stat, Feb 2014
CEO and Co-Founder of Blue Compass, Drew Harden has grown and guided the company from a two-person startup in 2007 to one of the Midwest's leading digital marketing companies today. He's a published author, has been cited by PR News and USA Today, and has led web projects that have been honored by organizations like Adobe and American Design Awards.


Robert Shiller on central banks and their role in a good society
Through co-ordinated action central banks have played a vital role in avoiding financial armageddon. But Robert Shiller tells Christopher Jeffery that more joined-up thinking is required
Robert Shiller talks to Central Banking editor Christopher Jeffery
Robert J Shiller is the Arthur M Okun professor of economics, Department of Economics and Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University, and professor of Finance and Fellow at the International Center for Finance, Yale School of Management. He received his BA from the University of Michigan in 1967 and his PhD in economics from MIT in 1972. He has written on financial markets, financial innovation, behavioural economics, macroeconomics, real estate, statistical methods, and on public attitudes, opinions, and moral judgments regarding markets. His 1989 book Market Volatility (MIT Press) is a mathematical and behavioural analysis of price fluctuations in speculative markets. His 1993 book Macro Markets: Creating Institutions for Managing Society’s Largest Economic Risks (Oxford University Press) proposes a variety of new risk-management contracts, such as futures contracts in national incomes or securities based on real estate that would permit the management of risks to standards of living. His book Irrational Exuberance (Princeton University Press (PUP) 2000), 2nd edition (PUP 2005) is an analysis and explication of speculative bubbles, with special reference to the stock market and real estate. His book The New Financial Order: Risk in the 21st Century (PUP 2003) is an analysis of an expanding role of finance, insurance, and public finance in our future. His book Subprime Solution: How the Global Financial Crisis Happened and What to Do about It, published in September 2008 (PUP), offers an analysis of the housing and economic crisis and a plan of action against it. He co-authored, with George A. Akerlof, Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism, published in March 2009 (PUP). His book Finance and the Good Society is forthcoming in April 2012 (PUP).
You state in your published work that there is a ‘democratisation of finance’ taking place around the world and more people now have direct access to finance than at any time in the past – something you say might surprise Karl Marx. How far along that whole process are we?
I would say less than halfway. It’s a question of whether you are talking about the world or about one country. Karl Marx said that power derives from capital and he seemed not to understand that elderly people owning capital don’t really exercise power – they delegate to someone else in the form of investing in some enterprise. As society grows more inclusive, which is a definite trend, people have access to that. If you are the kind of person who might manage an enterprise, you can raise capital – Marx didn’t seem to appreciate that. He banked his theory on a certain kind of cultural change that would be managed by the communist party. The idea was that the process of liberating capital would take the form of changing everyone’s thinking – but it hasn’t happened that way. It seems that a sense of justice has grown around the world, that it is a grave injustice for one tribe to dominate and leave the others enslaved or half-enslaved – that seems to have taken hold everywhere. Liberation of capital has taken a different form than Marx expected.
For people to participate in the financial system as equals they will need full access to information and the resources to make active and intelligent choices. What practical steps need to be taken to get closer to that?
I can only give guidance because the thing that has to be done is experimentation. It’s not a matter of being ideologically pure – it’s about making financial devices that work, and incentivising people appropriately. It involves financial engineering but it should have a behavioural side because it’s inherently difficult to know how people or society will react to innovations. The process has been that experimentation is done locally, or in one country, and if it works after the experiment has been run for 30 years or so people in other countries will copy it.
You say financial innovation has the ability to transform people’s lives via instruments that protect people against being laid off or from a fall in the price of their home. How long will it take to get to such a state?
This is a process that unfolds over centuries. I’m thinking about important innovations such as indexed bonds – as far as I can tell, it was first tried in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1780, and then 100 years goes by before anyone tries it again. [Economist] William Stanley Jevens was advocating it in Britain in the 1870s. Britain didn’t adopt it until the 1980s – 100 years after him. It seems to me that everything happens more slowly than you might imagine – we’re talking about major changes in society.
Is there anything you see at the moment that has perhaps been in the pipeline for the past 100 years that’s coming to the fore?
One of them is the arrival of the benefit corporation, which is in eight US states. The benefit corporation has in its charter both a profit-making goal and some ‘other’ stated goal for improving society or the environment – so it’s halfway between for-profit and non-profit. I keep coming back to a new formulation of economics, which is not so reliant on completely selfish behaviour. The experience of working for a benefit corporation is different from than that of a for-profit because you have a sense of the benevolence of the organisation and have a personal incentive to contribute to the activities of the corporation. It may end up making higher profits than conventional corporations because of the different social ambience. It’s too early to tell now – there’s only 18 months of history and the first ones aren’t necessarily the successful ones.
The second is the ‘social impact bond’ announced by the ministry of justice in the UK to help deal with recidivism at Peterborough prison. The problem they found is that 60% of people who are incarcerated for less than 12 months tend to end up back in jail after release – it is a deep social problem that’s hard to fix. They tried a different tack when they created a social impact bond, where the bond will pay out only if the recidivism rate falls by 7.5%, and it has a six-year term. Investors then bid for these bonds, and £5 million was transferred to charitable groups that work with the freed prisoners. The investors only get paid if they succeed, which means the investors had an incentive to look at the groups that are actually doing the work, review how they are doing it, and continue to review them. It’s a different incentivisation.
The third thing – just in the last month the US Congress passed a bill called the Jobs Act, with Jobs standing for ‘jumpstart our business start-ups’. It has a number of elements but the essential innovation is ‘crowd funding’. They want to facilitate websites to raise capital for new start-up businesses through thousands of small investments by individuals – again, this is really democratising. The ability to crowd fund depends on new information technology but also on protecting investors – a new law says that no investor can put more than 5% of his or her income into a crowd-funding investment in any given year.
When one thinks of financial markets there seems to be a tremendous information asymmetry between big banks and sophisticated funds compared with retail and other investors. How does one address those sorts of issues?
That’s a difficult issue. We’re seeing an increase in income inequality, and it has many origins, but it seems like people who are better informed and make a point of staying informed about business opportunities, have a higher potential of getting really rich, and it seems unjust to many people. In my latest book I look at the list of the 400 richest Americans and it didn’t seem like there was a top scientist on it. The Nobel Prize is only something like $1 million – that’s lunch money for these people.
In some sense, that is testimony to the power of financial technology. For every one of those guys on the Forbes 400, there are probably hundreds more who didn’t make it. Having some fabulously rich people may not be a bad thing for society because it creates a sense of economic freedom and a sense of opportunity that I think motivates constructive activity. In my book, I talk about the fact that human nature by itself is not so benevolent – it has some benevolence in it, but people are ‘grabby’ and that’s another human element we have to work around. It’s not onerous to society that we have some billionaires, as long as everyone is taken care of and the scientist, for example, has his lab, lives comfortably and has children who are educated – that’s a good society, even if there are billionaires in it.
There are many academically well-qualified people earning large sums of money applying scientific models to finance in Wall Street. Should more of them be incentivised to work in science or industry?
One example is the new millisecond trading – what advantage to society could that possibly have? Then there is the idea of rent-seeking – that’s a term that Anne Krueger, the development economist, coined about 30 years ago. The classic example of rent-seeking is feudal – when a lord who owned the land on both sides of the river would put a chain across the river and lower it only after boats paid him – he’s trying to collect the rent on his river. There is no contribution to society from that kind of activity. Some of that happens in human activities and not just in finance. I said people are ‘grabby’ and that is a problem. The other side of it is that maybe the loss to these things is not as great as people imagine, and that more Wall Street activities are actually productive for society than they imagine.
In terms of models that economists and others are using – are they going the right way? It seems that whenever there are major shocks the models do not work and one has to recalibrate or reengineer them.
We have been going through a behavioural finance revolution in the last 20 years. Before was another revolution called efficient markets – that revolution had unfortunate consequences and left people thinking that financial markets are more perfect than anything else. There is really a change in thinking from 30 years ago to now. But it’s unfortunate that the modern university is divided up into different departments as rigidly as they are. The problem is that economists mostly don’t know any psychology, sociology or political science. At my university, Yale, there used to be one department until 1927 called the Department of Economics, Sociology and Government – that sounds like a good way to put all of these together. Once they split and they moved them into separate buildings, they stopped talking to each other. What is prominent is that economists almost never quote sociologists – it’s extremely rare. I think sociology is a very important discipline – it offers important perspectives on what happens in modern society.
Financial innovation is also aimed at getting around rules and regulations, which may or may not be a good thing. I’m thinking of hybrid regulatory capital securities, the use of SIVs and the use of collateral debt obligations (CDOs). How do you view some of these innovations?
The SIVs were a way of getting things off balance sheet and away from regulators, so they were evading regulators – I can’t think of an advantage to that. The CDOs were financial innovations that actually did benefit society if they were done right – there were flaws in the design so we have to come with a CDO version two. CDOs themselves divide income streams up into tranches and sell them off separately to different investor classes. The so called ‘AAA tranche’ – which turned out not to be AAA unfortunately – became a way that a broad class of investors could invest in mortgages or whatever else was underlying the CDO without having to go through due diligence and investigating. The idea was ‘let’s put the least-likely-to-default into a tranche and present it to an independent rating agency who would confirm that we have done that, and then someone can invest in that.’ You can’t always be investigating everything – you need investments that are just certifiably safe. That creates an increase in potential demand for investment products so it liberates capital.
Do you see a big difference between over-the-counter and exchange-traded instruments?
We need both. Over-the-counter instruments tend to be designed expressly for a client and that is what some clients need, but the exchange-traded instruments are more democratic in that the process is open and visible and they provide better price discovery and, of course, they also provide liquidity. The US government is trying to encourage more exchange-trading. That is a good thing because the financial community may not provide sufficient incentives to make that happen. I worked with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange on developing futures markets for single-family homes, which we thought would be a democratising move because it makes a risk that had formerly been borne by individual households into something that has an organised market with liquidity and price discovery. We had the sense that Wall Street was not enthusiastic about this because it might take away some of their business in creating CDOs. They may make more money if there isn’t an organised market.
What do you think of some of the new tools that are being invented at the moment to help the banks, such as contingent capital bonds, bail-in bonds and so on?
I participated in the Squam Lake Report where we had a chapter on contingent capital and the idea is that you can issue a form of debt that is convertible into equity providing capital in times of stress. We thought it might be a good thing to have a dual trigger for the convertibility – one would be announced by the regulator in a defined economic crisis. If the regulator announces that we are in a systemic crisis they would automatically set off one of the two triggers. The other trigger would be something defined in terms of the balance sheet or income statement of the company that would automatically provide capital.
A number of parties cite the ‘failure of markets’ – in terms of understating risk prior to the crisis and exaggerating it in the aftermath – for their approval of European Central Bank intervention perhaps above and beyond its mandate. What do you think?
I’ve been a long-standing critic of market efficiency and wrote a book called Irrational Exuberance on it in 2000. Behavioural finance doesn’t accept the efficient markets hypothesis. Then, the question is: ‘what is the role of the central bank in dealing with crises like this?’ The general principle that I’ve talked about in my books is that when you have a crisis like this it seems to call for changing the rules of the game in the middle of the game, and that’s not desirable because it leaves people wondering ‘what am I doing, what are the rules?’. It leaves people on the wrong side of the bail-outs feeling wronged – such as the tax-payers who are paying for bail-outs of wealthy people.
It is important at times like this to think about changing the rules for future games so we don’t have to do it mid-game. In some sense, we do have an understanding that the central bank has an authority to respond to economic conditions as they evolve – so does the government. We set aside a separate central bank, which has now increasingly become independent, thinking that political pressures might inhibit correct action. The central bank and the government have the authority to change the rules when unanticipated events occur that couldn’t have been foreseen; that couldn’t have been written into the rules. They are doing that and they have some support for what they are doing. Still, we have to try to avoid interventions that make it difficult for people to know what the rules are.
Do you think it is right that many central banks around the world have strayed from their monetary policy mandates into what increasingly looks like fiscal policy positions given the shocks we’ve had?
I’m impressed with the coordinated activities of central banks around the world – it seems to be working. Often, our democratic institutions work better than you’d ever imagine. At the US central bank, we appoint the board of governors with 14-year terms and they can’t be removed except for extreme behaviour. The person comes in for relatively low pay with a mission. The measures the US central bank and other central banks have taken are well-meaning and somewhat effective. It comes around to human nature having a benevolent side to it – in the right environment that comes through. A high-minded culture has developed at central banks. I don’t know every central bank, but my general impression is that it’s not cynical and grabbing.
Do any of the policies or activities now look like mistakes?
We brought Henry Paulson, the former head of Goldman Sachs, to the Treasury and in the bail-out of AIG he managed to direct something like $12 billion indirectly to Goldman. That creates a sense of corruption but it doesn’t involve the central bank. But central bank lending of tax-payer money to specific companies outraged many people and there is a sense the banks own the central bank in the US.
Going further back, the real mistake they made was not understanding the real estate bubble and not understanding the potential for collapse as a result. A flaw in central banks – that maybe we’re improving – is that they have a narrow mandate. I was talking about how university is divided up into departments – the same thing happens with the government, more so in the US than the UK. The central bankers didn’t see it as their mission to think about mortgages that are being written or to worry about the shadow-banking sector, because they weren’t banks so they weren’t under supervision, so they let things go. Those are mistakes, but understandable given the bureaucratic structure.
Many central banks seem to say they have made the right decisions pre- and post-crisis given their mandates. Have they got a point, or is there a sense of denial?
The idea of supporting the markets with low interest rates is a very basic thing and that has probably worked to reduce the severity of this recession – and we had looked like we were going to fall into a worldwide recession. This time was different. The central banks of the world seemed to coordinate. They kept announcing new facilities and new programmes, and it gave the public a reason to hope.
Looking specifically at the US with quantitative easing, Operation Twist, the new inflation target and the Fed stating it will keep rates low until 2014 – has the Fed taken the right steps?
I find it inspiring that they are looking at new forms of policy. We are in the so-called ‘liquidity trap’ where interest rates – short rates at least – are zero, and long rates are very low, but the Fed succeeded in getting them even lower. That’s an innovative policy response that is probably helping a little bit. We have the lowest government bond rates in US history and I think it’s similarly low elsewhere. Japan did the same thing but it didn’t rescue them completely. But it meant that something that would have been a life-threatening disease is only a bad cold.
Do you think Western central banks have learned their lesson from Japan?
Japan had twin bubbles in the 1980s, in the stock market and the housing market. Both bubbles collapsed and it seemed to be a turning point for their economy. The government undertook fiscal policy and the central bank brought interest rates to zero, and the Japanese economy has generally grown between 1% and 2% a year over the last 20 years.
Will the West fare any better?
There is this deep-seated fear that this is a Great Depression-like phenomenon and the Depression-era policies never managed to end the Depression until we had World War II, and that creates an anxiety. It is the most severe contraction since the Great Depression and there is a sense that we don’t understand it fully.
Could the current range of measures just create another asset bubble?
In the US, the latest bubble was the third. There wasn’t any real national bubble until there was one in the 1970s, another in the 1980s, and another in the 2000s, each one bigger than the one before. It is conceivable that we could have yet a bigger one but that’s unlikely – maybe we have got it out of our system for a generation. After a really big event, people do change their thinking. Richard Florida has a book called The Great Reset and argues that this crisis is like pressing the reset button on a computer. On the other hand, I’ve been doing surveys of home-buyers and asking them about expectations – and for our latest survey last year people still think home prices will go up something like 5% a year over the next 10 years. Expectations have been coming down but they are still there, so I don’t know that we’ve had the great reset.
Policy-makers are saying they’ve got new macro-prudential tools and they are going to build in mechanisms for deflating asset bubbles as they are occurring. What do you think their chances are?
They’ll do better – but it’s all a matter of degree. They won’t let a bubble like the one we’ve seen go unchallenged. In countries such as China, which has had a bubble since our crisis, the government has taken steps against it. In Israel, there has been a real estate bubble and Stanley Fisher at the Bank of Israel introduced policies to cool mortgage lending.
How can central banks guard against the next financial crisis?
There is this idea about systemic risk and the interconnectedness of financial institutions. The first thing central banks can do is collect more data. For example, in the US there was no clear data on repo issuance and the kind of interconnectedness that financial institutions had. Central banks have to make their research departments understand bubbles. I went through the working paper series from the Federal Reserve a couple of years ago searching for the word ‘bubble’ in any publication before the crisis and I found one paper that talked about a possibility of a real estate bubble. Then it said in the same paper right afterwards “but one must view these claims of a bubble with some caveats”, and it listed a bunch of caveats and it seemed to take it all back. I called up the author of the paper and I said ‘you were the only guy who talked about bubbles at the Fed – why didn’t you go for it?’ He seemed very conflicted on the phone. I have a sense that underlying the thinking of central banks is that words like bubble are too loaded – it shouldn’t be in their language or vocabulary. This gets back to a basic issue about central bank policy that they have a sense that they are criticised whenever they rock the boat; whenever they say something that alarms markets. Maybe they should be saying things that alarm markets. There might be a bias in central bank thinking towards short-run stability when they should be making provocative statements from time to time. Even if they do cause market disruptions, they might actually help ensure a longer-term stability.
What do you think about using data to feed more forward-thinking and dynamic models to test the system for potential risks?
One problem that led to this crisis is an over-reliance on econometric analysis of the recent past and a sense that it is unprofessional to be raising comparisons with the Great Depression. Modelling is not taking full account of the fact that economies go through major crises at long intervals and that complacency gradually grows between the crises. There’s a tendency to over-rely on data that was collected during an upswing.
There must have been some academic studies done on that – do you think they don’t get heard?
Well, Ben Bernanke was a brilliant choice for the Federal Reserve because he wrote a book on the Great Depression. When the current crisis began, he was very aggressive in dealing with it – he didn’t want to make the same mistakes again.
Do you think he’s been successful?
I think so. But he’s not uniformly loved.
Some nations want to implement higher capital standards than those agreed under Basel III. Are they correct to do so?
Countries should do what they feel is right, and there might be some long-term advantage to having higher capital requirements. This is one of the ironies of life in the financial community – if you uphold standards, as a company or as a nation, you might go through decades of weak business because of upholding the standards and only be vindicated at a great distance. But I think it might be a good thing to do that.
A lot of central banks have moved to the inflation-targeting approach – the Fed too, it seems. Do you think that is the right approach, or are there better policies?
I know Ben Bernanke wrote another one of his books on this, with co-authors. Again, it reflects some enlightenment that expectations matter a lot so having an explicit target can be a useful tool. It had already struck me as a kind of subtlety, at least in normal times – you could announce an inflation target that implies that the real value of assets will be depreciating through time, and that might cause fundamental change. I haven’t been involved in this dispute – it seems kind of peripheral to me. It seems to me that when he wrote the book, having an unstated but implied target was good enough. It seemed to me that people were focusing on trivia, rather than the big thing that was happening, which was the housing bubble, so I didn’t feel that sympathetic to their book when it came out. Maybe it’s different now – maybe there is a sense that expectations are hampering us right now and that it could be more important to do something like this.
Looking through the Federal Open Market Committee minutes, asset bubbles and the huge systemic risks they pose was not a subject that seems to come up at all prior to 2007. Why was that?
It is due to ‘groupthink’, which psychologist, Irving Janis led research on in the 1970s. It refers to how expert groups come together and interact and Janis argued that experts in a group like that are vulnerable to self-censorship – they are all harbouring doubts about a decision that is about to be reached, but view the doubts as something that they cannot articulate in a suitably professional way, so they quiet themselves and it creates an illusion of consensus. I once served on the Federal Reserve Bank of New York advisory committee and I know exactly the feeling. The discourse is at a high and professional level. I tried to bring up my concerns about bubbles. There were no minutes of our meetings but I found it difficult internally – it’s like bringing up astrology at an astronomer’s convention.
So what’s the solution?
People should read Janis’s book and think about the vulnerability and their moral commitment to stand up and say things that are, ultimately, intuitive. We have this professional sense that everything is compartmentalised, that you have an expert in every department, and if you’re going to forecast unemployment or something you have to bring in the econometrician who has been sitting in a little room with his or her computer. I use the word ‘intuitive’, but ultimately people form valid views about economic issues by reading history and being broadly eclectic, and by reading social sciences more generally. It’s just not possible to quantify everything and it’s not possible to compartmentalise expertise. If people are aware of the problem, that goes a long way towards reducing it.


Jun 29, 2021 Supreme Court Holds That Private Companies Have A Right Under Federal Law To Seize State-Held Land To Build Natural Gas Pipelines
PennEast Pipeline Co., LLC v. New Jersey, No. 19-1039
Introduction: Today, the Supreme Court held in a 5-4 decision that the Natural Gas Act delegates the federal eminent domain power to private parties, removing a barrier for the $1 billion PennEast gas pipeline project and reversing a Third Circuit ruling that project developers could not seize New Jersey-owned land.
Background: In January 2018, PennEast obtained under the Natural Gas Act (NGA) a certificate of public convenience and necessity from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to construct a 116-mile pipeline from northeast Pennsylvania to western New Jersey. To facilitate pipeline projects, the NGA delegates federal eminent domain power to private parties that have been issued certificates of public convenience and necessity by FERC.
Shortly after receiving the certificate, PennEast instituted condemnation proceedings in federal district court against the properties in which New Jersey held interests. New Jersey moved to dismiss PennEast’s complaints on sovereign immunity grounds. The District Court denied the motion and granted PennEast’s requests for a condemnation order and preliminary injunctive relief. The Third Circuit vacated the District Court’s order insofar as it awarded PennEast relief with respect to New Jersey’s property interests. The Third Circuit concluded that because the NGA did not clearly delegate the federal government’s ability to sue nonconsenting States, PennEast was not authorized to condemn New Jersey’s property.
Issue: (1) Whether the Natural Gas Act delegates to FERC certificate holders the authority to exercise the federal government’s eminent domain power to condemn land in which a State claims an interest; and (2) whether the court of appeals properly exercised jurisdiction over the case.
Court’s Holding: In an opinion authored by Chief Justice Roberts, and joined by Justices Breyer, Alito, Sotomayor, and Kavanaugh, the Court concluded that a certificate of public convenience and necessity issued by FERC pursuant to the NGA authorizes a private company to condemn all necessary rights-of-way, whether owned by private parties or states.
The Court began by addressing the jurisdictional issue, finding that the Third Circuit properly exercised jurisdiction because New Jersey was defending against the condemnation proceeding rather than challenging the FERC certificate, which must be done in the D.C. Circuit.
Turning to New Jersey’s sovereign immunity defense, the majority found that the NGA’s delegation of the federal eminent domain authority is categorical: By its terms, the NGA delegates to certificate holders the power to condemn any necessary rights-of-way, including land in which a state holds an interest. In response to the argument that the NGA cannot authorize condemnation actions because Congress may not use its Article I powers to abrogate state sovereign immunity, the Court concluded that States implicitly consented to private condemnation suits when they ratified the Constitution.
Justice Barrett filed a dissenting opinion, in which Justices Thomas, Kagan, and Gorsuch joined, rejecting the majority’s argument that New Jersey did not have sovereign immunity to assert against federal eminent domain.
Justice Gorsuch also filed a dissenting opinion, in which Justice Thomas joined, noting that even if the States consented, the Eleventh Amendment nonetheless divests federal courts of subject matter jurisdiction over a suit filed against a State by a diverse plaintiff.
Read the opinion here.


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Version 7 – 18/01/2023


It’s About Time: Bad Robot Gets a Series Order from Hulu for Stephen King’s ‘11/22/63’
Posted September 28th, 2014 by Nicholas Graff
Hot on the tails of Stephen King’s other books adapted into TV series’ (CBS’s ‘Under the Dome’ and ‘The Thing’s They Left Behind’ ), Bad Robot has recently gotten a series order from Hulu for King’s time-travel epic ‘11/22/63.’ The order is for a 9 episode, one hour each episode season, a welcome foray back into the land of “television” (despite it being on HULU) for Bad Robot, who started with such excellent shows as ‘Alias’ and ‘Lost.’
The title of ’11/22/63′ is quite a mouthful, and is indicative of the length and complexity of the novel itself. The story is about a divorced English teacher named Jake Epping, who stumbles on a time portal and resolves to go back in time and prevent the assassination of JFK. Arriving early in 1958, he studies Lee Harvey Oswald to devise a plan, encountering obstacles along the way in Oswald himself, a love interest he discovers in a school librarian, and the past itself, which does not want to be changed. In King’s words:
“If I ever wrote a book that cries out for long-form, event TV programming, 11/22/63 is it. I’m excited that it’s going to happen, and am looking forward to working with J.J. Abrams and the whole Bad Robot team.”
The road to the production of ’11/22/63′ has been a rocky one, with the idea originally being that it would be a movie directed by Jonathan Demme (‘Silence of the Lambs’). Unfortunately, the length of the novel (over 900 pages!) and disagreements with King over which plot points were essential to the movie led to Demme abandoning the project. Luckily, that paved the way for Bad Robot to pick up the novel and prepare it for a TV adaption, with Hulu picking up the project for distribution in the US. Here’s hoping it is another homerun for King, Hulu and Bad Robot.
Source: Screenrant, Deadline
Nicholas Graff
A Southern California native (which seems to be a rarity as everyone seems to migrate here from outside the state, and everyone else born here ends up leaving for less crowded spaces), but for Nick, he loves it here. Nick has been writing since he was a teenager, self-published his first book trilogy, 'The Legacy of the Roras' back in 2011, and in 2014 published the inaugural issue of his first comic book, 'The Shadow of Aquaterra.' While not working on my own projects, he is working as a technical film editor at a major television network in their digital media division and recently began writing news and recap articles for ScienceFiction.com, a position which he has found extremely rewarding.
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Transition from pre-diabetes to diabetes and predictors of risk in Mexican-Americans
Shenghui Wu
Joseph B. Mccormick, University of Texas Health at HoustonFollow
Joanne E. Curran, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
Susan P. Fisher-Hoch, University of Texas Health at Houston
Background: No studies have examined risk factors for the transition from pre-diabetes to diabetes in populations with widespread obesity and diabetes. We determined proximal changes and factors affecting the transition among Mexican-Americans with pre-diabetes.
Methods: Participants with pre-diabetes (n=285) were recruited from our randomly sampled population-based Cameron County Hispanic Cohort. These participants were followed for an average of 27 months with repeat examination every 3 to 4 months. Metabolic health was defined as having less than 2 metabolic abnormalities (e.g., hypertension, elevated low-density lipoprotein, etc). Diabetes was identified as fasting blood glucose ≥126 mg/dL, glycated hemoglobin ≥6.5% and/or on hypoglycemic medication.
Results: Ninety-six of 285 (33.7%) participants transitioned to overt diabetes. The increased risk of diabetes in the metabolically unhealthy varying with follow-up time was 81% (adjusted odds ratio [OR]: 1.81; 95% CI: 1.09–3.02). The risk of diabetes increased 8% for each kg/m2 of increase in body mass index (BMI, OR: 1.08; 95% CI: 1.05–1.11) independent of covariates. Transition to diabetes was accompanied by a mean increase in BMI of 0.28 kg/m2, and deterioration in metabolic health of 9% (OR: 1.09; 95% CI: 1.003–1.18) compared with those who did not transition.
Conclusions: Deteriorating metabolic health and/or increasing BMI significantly raises the risk of transitioning from pre-diabetes to diabetes. Transition itself was accompanied by further increase in BMI and deterioration in metabolic health. These data underline the importance of improving metabolic health and avoiding weight gain in pre-diabetes as simple but clear diabetes prevention targets, and emphasize the importance of lifestyle management.
© 2017 Wu et al.
Wu, S., McCormick, J. B., Curran, J. E., & Fisher-Hoch, S. P. (2017). Transition from pre-diabetes to diabetes and predictors of risk in Mexican-Americans. Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome and Obesity: Targets and Therapy, 10, 491–503. https://doi.org/10.2147/DMSO.S136368
Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome and Obesity: Targets and Therapy
10.2147/DMSO.S136368
Office of Human Genetics
Diseases Commons


Dr. Bob Quotes Aristotle, Bill & Ted During Excellent ING Workshop
By Richard Lord
When sports psychologist Dr. Robert K. Winters — or Dr. Bob for short — talks about “The Psychology of Excellence,” as he did at ING’s Spring Conference, you can’t help but listen.
After all, who else can make his points by using quotes from the 1989 cult comedy classic “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” Greek philosopher Aristotle and the religious figure Buddha in one seminar?
In both his enthusiastic speaking style and with his message, Winters oozes confidence and preaches the need to believe in one’s self in order to be excellent, whether that is in the business world or on the golf course.
Dr. Bob’s countless success stories with golfers and other athletes make it obvious that those who listen to him benefit from his insight.
Winters, currently the resident psychologist at David Leadbetter’s World Headquarters in Orlando, Fla., said that from an early age he set a high goal for himself.
“I wanted to be great,” he said. “Everyone has to start out thinking they can win. It has to be a mind-set.”
And achieving the mind-set that leads to achieving excellence is not something that happens overnight. Which brings us to Winter’s quote from Aristotle, who lived between 384 and 322 BC.
“Excellence isn’t an act, but a habit,” Aristotle said.
Or as Winters puts it all these centuries later, “excellence is doing something over and over and over and getting it right.”
In an effort to gauge his golf students’ desires to achieve excellence, Dr. Bob asks several questions.
The first one is “are you good?
“All my best say they are definitely good while about half add a ‘but.’ There’s always this contingency that creates conditional confidence,’ Winters said. “On one side of the scale there is trust and on the other side there is fear, doubts and worry.”
So, Dr. Bob’s goal is to eliminate the doubt and trepidation, but as those of us to play the game know, that is easier said than done.
“I have talked to great athletes from other sports like Michael Jordan and there is no doubt that golf can be the most brutally emotionally devastating sport there is.”
The other questions Dr. Bob asks to figure out whether or not a student is willing to do the work it takes are: How do you know you are good? How good do you really want to be? How good would you be if you didn’t know how good you had to be? What are you willing to do to be as good as you can possibly be?
After those questions are answered, it’s time for Dr. Bob to instill his “five golden keys’ to attaining excellence.
No. 1: Believe in yourself.
“You are what you think you are,” Dr. Bob explains. “Your perception is your reality.”
No. 2: You need to build a life philosophy.
“Know if it is to be, it starts and ends with me,’ is the way Winters put it.
No. 3: You need to know and understand that optimism and perseverance are not natural or inherent qualities to the human condition.
Thus, it takes hard work to acquire those traits.
No. 4: You must disregard the good intentions of others and trust your instincts.
“You must become an expert on yourself,’ Dr. Bob said. “Don’t listen to the naysayers.”
No. 5: Don’t be afraid of making mistakes.
“Take a missed putt for what it is,” he said. “Failure is the fertilizer for future success.”
By doing the work that it takes to achieve personal excellence, you will able to live up to a line Winters quoted from “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.”
“Be excellent to yourself. Be excellent to others.”
Party on, golfers.


The very first Personal computer networks were committed Unique-reason devices such as SABRE (an airline reservation procedure) and AUTODIN I (a defense command-and-Management procedure), both equally made and implemented inside the late nineteen fifties and early 1960s. Because of the early 1960s Personal computer companies had started to employ semiconductor engineering in commercial solutions, and both equally typical batch-processing and time-sharing devices were in place in lots of significant, technologically Highly developed corporations. Time-sharing devices authorized a computer’s means being shared in quick succession with various users, biking in the queue of users so immediately that the computer appeared devoted to Just about every user’s jobs despite the existence of many Many others accessing the procedure “simultaneously.” This led on the Idea of sharing Personal computer means (referred to as host computer systems or just hosts) about an entire community. Host-to-host interactions were envisioned, in addition to access to specialized means (such as supercomputers and mass storage devices) and interactive accessibility by distant users on the computational powers of your time-sharing devices Found somewhere else. These Thoughts were first realized in ARPANET, which founded the very first host-to-host community connection on Oct 29, 1969. It absolutely was made through the Innovative Research Assignments Company (ARPA) on the U.S. Office of Protection. ARPANET was among the first general-reason Personal computer networks. It connected time-sharing computer systems at govt-supported analysis websites, principally universities in The usa, and it before long became a essential piece of infrastructure for the computer science analysis Neighborhood in The usa. Tools and purposes—such as the very simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP, commonly known as e-mail), for sending short messages, as well as file transfer protocol (FTP), for lengthier transmissions—immediately emerged. So as to obtain Price tag-powerful interactive communications amongst computer systems, which usually converse in short bursts of data, ARPANET utilized the new engineering of packet switching. Packet switching can take significant messages (or chunks of Personal computer info) and breaks them into scaled-down, workable parts (known as packets) that can travel independently about any offered circuit on the focus on desired destination, the place the parts are reassembled. So, compared with conventional voice communications, packet switching isn’t going to require a single committed circuit amongst Just about every pair of users. Professional packet networks were introduced inside the seventies, but these were made principally to supply efficient access to distant computer systems by committed terminals. Briefly, they changed long-distance modem connections by fewer-pricey “Digital” circuits about packet networks. In The usa, Telenet and Tymnet were two these kinds of packet networks. Neither supported host-to-host communications; inside the seventies this was even now the province on the analysis networks, and it might stay so for many years. DARPA (Protection Innovative Research Assignments Company; formerly ARPA) supported initiatives for floor-based mostly and satellite-based mostly packet networks. The ground-based mostly packet radio procedure furnished mobile access to computing means, whilst the packet satellite community connected The usa with several European nations and enabled connections with greatly dispersed and distant locations. While using the introduction of packet radio, connecting a mobile terminal to a computer community became feasible. Having said that, time-sharing devices were then even now as well significant, unwieldy, and costly being mobile or maybe to exist outside the house a local climate-managed computing ecosystem. A solid commitment Hence existed to attach the packet radio community to ARPANET in order to make it possible for mobile users with very simple terminals to accessibility enough time-sharing devices for which they had authorization. Equally, the packet satellite community was utilized by DARPA to backlink The usa with satellite terminals serving the United Kingdom, Norway, Germany, and Italy. These terminals, nevertheless, needed to be linked to other networks in European nations in order to reach the conclusion users. So arose the need to connect the packet satellite net, in addition to the packet radio net, with other networks. Foundation of the world wide web The net resulted from the effort to attach different analysis networks in The usa and Europe. 1st, DARPA founded a system to analyze the interconnection of “heterogeneous networks.” This system, referred to as Internetting, was depending on the newly introduced principle of open architecture networking, where networks with outlined standard interfaces could well be interconnected by “gateways.” A Functioning demonstration on the principle was planned. To ensure that the principle to operate, a brand new protocol needed to be made and created; indeed, a procedure architecture was also essential. In 1974 Vinton Cerf, then at Stanford University in California, which author, then at DARPA, collaborated on a paper that first explained this kind of protocol and procedure architecture—specifically, the transmission Management protocol (TCP), which enabled differing kinds of equipment on networks everywhere in the world to route and assemble info packets. TCP, which at first provided the world wide web protocol (IP), a worldwide addressing system that authorized routers for getting info packets to their ultimate desired destination, formed the TCP/IP standard, which was adopted through the U.S. Office of Protection in 1980. Because of the early 1980s the “open architecture” on the TCP/IP approach was adopted and endorsed by all kinds of other scientists and ultimately by technologists and businessmen around the globe. Because of the 1980s other U.S. governmental bodies were seriously associated with networking, such as the Countrywide Science Foundation (NSF), the Office of Strength, as well as Countrywide Aeronautics and Place Administration (NASA). Whilst DARPA had performed a seminal part in creating a little-scale version of the world wide web between its scientists, NSF worked with DARPA to grow access to your complete scientific and academic Neighborhood and to create TCP/IP the standard in all federally supported analysis networks. In 1985–86 NSF funded the very first 5 supercomputing centres—at Princeton University, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of California, San Diego, the University of Illinois, and Cornell University. Within the 1980s NSF also funded the event and operation on the NSFNET, a countrywide “spine” community to attach these centres. Because of the late 1980s the community was operating at countless bits for every next. NSF also funded different nonprofit community and regional networks to attach other users on the NSFNET. A handful of commercial networks also commenced inside the late 1980s; these were before long joined by Many others, as well as Professional World wide web Trade (CIX) was formed to allow transit targeted traffic amongst commercial networks that if not wouldn’t have already been authorized over the NSFNET spine. In 1995, right after comprehensive overview of your situation, NSF decided that aid on the NSFNET infrastructure was not essential, considering that lots of commercial providers were now keen and in a position to fulfill the needs on the analysis Neighborhood, and its aid was withdrawn. Meanwhile, NSF had fostered a aggressive collection of business World wide web backbones linked to one another by means of so-referred to as community accessibility points (NAPs).
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MediTrip Privacy Policy
for users of the Medic Travel Website on the following domains: meditrip.me.
I. Use of the Medic Travel Website.
1. The Medic Travel Website (“Website”/”Site”) published at www.meditrip.me is administered by MEDIC TRAVEL Sp. z o.o. – a corporation organized and existing under the laws of Poland, with its registered office in Poland, Lublin 20-325, at Droga Męczenników Majdanka 74, entered into the register of the National Court Register kept by the District Court for the Capital City of Warsaw, XIII Commercial Division of the National Court Register, KRS number 0000818765, with VAT PL 7393935227, and REGON (National Business Registry Number) 385066265, with its initial capital of 5000 PLN, hereinafter referred to as Site Operator.
2. This document regulates use of the Website and provides information about the collection of personal data and the privacy policy. Reading, browsing or using content stored on the Website is equivalent to accepting these Privacy Policy.
3. Any information provided on the Website is presented solely for informational purposes and does not constitute medical advice or medical opinion or recommendations regarding proceedings in specific cases. If you are interested in obtaining individual pricing of medical services please fill out the contact form. The Site Operator does not recommend nor endorse any specific medical examinations, tests, physicians, medical procedures, opinions or other information contained on the Website.
4. The Website’s contents and domain name are protected by law. The documents, articles, graphics, scripts, and other files forming the layout and contents of the Site are owned by the Site Operator or are used with permission from authorized persons. Copying and distribution using any printing or electronic method is prohibited, unless otherwise agreed upon with the Site Operator.
5. The Site Operator makes every effort to ensure that the information contained on the Website comes from reliable sources, was tested and is reliable, but the Site Operator does not take any responsibility for any results that come about from using the presented information.
II. Privacy Policy of the Medic Travel Website.
1. The provisions of the Personal Data Protection Act of 29 August 1997 (Journal of Laws from 2002 No. 101, item 926) apply in connection with providing electronic services, unless the provisions of the Law on electronic services provide otherwise.
2. The Privacy Policy summarizes the rules for processing and the protection of personal data of the Users of the Medic Travel Website published at www.meditrip.me. The Site Operator fully respects the privacy of Users. All personal information is confidential and protected from unauthorized access. Providing personal data by Users is voluntary. The Site Operator does not share any personal data about Users of the Website with third parties, except when this occurs with the User’s consent. User data can be made available to entities authorized to receive them under applicable laws, including competent justice authorities. Each User of the Site has the right to access and change the data they provided, as well as request data removal.
3. The Administrator of personal data is Medic Travel Spółka z o.o. – a corporation organized and existing under the laws of Poland, with its registered office in Poland, Lublin 20-325, at Droga Męczenników Majdanka 74, entered into the register of the National Court Register kept by the District Court for the Capital City of Warsaw, XIII Commercial Division of the National Court Register, KRS number 0000818765, with VAT PL 7393935227, and REGON (National Business Registry Number) 385066265, with its initial capital of 5000 PLN
III. Basis for Personal Data Processing.
1. The basis for personal data processing is the consent of Medic Travel Website Users given during the transfer of personal data. During the process of transfer of personal data, the User specifies the scope of use of these data and the purpose of processing in accordance with the Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.
2. When Users visit Medic Travel Website, Users can transfer personal data in order to take advantage of the services presented on the Site, including data on health status. The transfer of certain data, such as contact information, is essential to take advantage of the presented services. All data are processed with the consent of the User, and providing them enables use of all the functionalities of the Site. Personal data are subject to the highest protection provided by law. Providing data enables sending information via e-mail about services, appointment dates, and other information requested by the User on the principles laid down in the Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.
IV. Personal data collected during registration.
In order to take advantage of the features presented on the Website, the User provides their personal information by filling out the registration form or by calling the telephone numbers indicated on the Site. Providing personal data is entirely voluntary, but refusal to provide consent for their processing may cause the inability to use some of the services presented on the Site. Conditions of use of the Website are contained in the Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy. By filling out the Contact form or making an oral declaration to an Infoline consultant, the User indicates the scope of personal data processing to which the User agrees.
V. Use of User Personal Data
1. The Website Users’ personal data will be processed to provide Users with a full range of services presented on the Medic Travel Website published at www.meditrip.me. Detailed information on the use and processing of data related to the use of the Website and related e-services is contained in the Terms and Conditions.
2. You acknowledge and agree that in certain circumstances we may be obliged to disclose personal information that you have provided to us to third parties, including, but not limited to, any relevant regulator and law enforcement agencies for example, in order to conform to any requirements of law or to comply with any legal process, as well as to protect and defend our rights.
3. We reserves the right to transfer information (including any personal information you provide) to a third party in the event of a sale, merger, liquidation, receivership or transfer of all or substantially all of the assets of Medic Travel Group.
4. We may from time to time transfer your data to one of our authorized service providers for customer service, business management or for any of the purposes described herein. We will ensure that service providers process your information under strict contractual instruction, in a secure manner and in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
5. We may share your contact details with other patients interested in hearing your opinion about our service as long as you provide a separate consent.
VI. How Can a User Inform of a Change in Personal Data?
If a User who would like to change their personal information, they are required to use the contact form on the Medic Travel Website published at www.meditrip.me. Data collected automatically cannot be changed or removed.
VII. Personal Data Collected Automatically.
When a User visits the Medic Travel Website published at www.meditrip.me , data about the visit are automatically collected. These include: IP address, domain name, browser type, operating system type, etc. These data are collected for security reasons for the Website and other Users.
VIII. Cookies
The web browser you use may store text files called “cookies” on your computer’s hard drive. They allow a website, such as www.meditrip.me, to recognize repeat Users and facilitate access to our sites. Cookies do not damage your computers or files. We use cookies to offer information and services tailored to your individual needs and interests. Cookies do not contain any personal data.
IX. IP address
Data on IP address are recorded on the system log of the Website and can be made available at the request of law enforcement authorities, in the case of reasonable suspicion of committing a crime, for example: defamation, slander, stalking. The Site Operator makes every effort to prevent such situations by moderating the opinions and comments on the principles laid down in the Terms and Conditions. If there is reasonable suspicion of a crime being committed, data on the User’s IP will be forwarded to the relevant authorities on the principles set out in the Criminal Procedure Code.
X. How Do We Secure Sent Information?
Communication between your computer and our server, when we collect your personal information, is encrypted using the SSL (Secure Socket Layer) protocol. In addition, our databases are protected from access by third parties. The data Administrator keeps a register of persons authorized to process them.
XI. Changes to Our Privacy Policy.
Medic Travel Spółka z o.o. – a corporation organized and existing under the laws of Poland, with its registered office in Poland, Lublin 20-325, at Droga Męczenników Majdanka 74, entered into the register of the National Court Register kept by the District Court for the Capital City of Warsaw, XIII Commercial Division of the National Court Register, KRS number 0000818765, with VAT PL 7393935227, and REGON (National Business Registry Number) 385066265, with its initial capital of 5000 PLN, reserves the right to change this Privacy Policy by posting a new privacy policy at the Website: www.meditrip.me. The date of the last update is included on the first page of this document. Changes shall enter into force on the date specified by the Site Operator, not be less than 14 days of making them available on the Site and notifying Users.
XII. Contact.
If you have questions about the protection of privacy, please contact us via the contact form available on the Medic Travel Website published at www.meditrip.me.
These Medic Travel Privacy Policy shall enter into force on August 01, 2021.
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