Guccifer 2 Game Over Logo

Guccifer 2.0: Game Over

We've seen deliberately placed "Russian Fingerprints", efforts to forge perceived association to WikiLeaks, DNC breach claims discredited, How Guccifer 2.0 Used "Trump Opposition Research" like an identity card the day after it was cited by CrowdStrike executives in a Washington Post article, noted how he could only ever seem to hack the DNC, lacked syntactical traits of a Russian speaking English and has been shown as most likely operating within US timezones based on email timestamps, archive timestamps, Twitter activity and WordPress activity.

The list of "Additional Articles" are articles unique to this site. These provide further information showing how, why, where and when questionable APT28/29 attributions to Guccifer 2.0 occurred (all were ultimately tenuous) as well as various other relevant topics.

Update - October 3rd, 2017

by ADAM CARTER (email)

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1. Introduction
2. Timeline - What Happened & When Did It Happen
3. Guccifer2.0's Claims Debunked & Discredited
4. 3rd Party Assessments - Assumptions & Conjecture vs Evidence & Facts
5. Actions, Consequences & Convenience For Anti-Leak Narratives
6. Rushing To Be Russian - The Donkey In A Bear Costume Made A Mistake
7. Language & Text Analysis
8. Recognizing Intent From Deceptions
9. With Motive & Means - Those More Likely Linked to G2 than Russians

Additional Articles
3rd Party Articles
Frequently Asked Questions

(1) Introduction

There are individuals, who, in reality, now have a much higher likelihood of being linked to Guccifer2.0 than anyone in Russia. - The intention of this article is to inform readers extensively about everything there is to know about Guccifer2.0 and from that, be armed with enough information to give motive and means the regard they deserve.

To understand who Guccifer2.0 could possibly be - it is imperative to understand WHAT Guccifer2.0 was.

What did he do? What did he say? Are his claims now confirmed, debunked or yet to be verified? What were the results of his actions? What do any lies told and the likelihood of them being debunked or remaining secret really imply about his intent? Was there anything misreported or omitted that may have been relevant?

The best way to get a clear picture of how incidents relate to each other and recognize suspect timing is to use a timeline - The timeline below was built using references to every unique piece of information directly relevant to Guccifer 2.0 that I could find on public record (no matter whose narrative it supported - as should be fairly clear).

(2) Guccifer2.0 Timeline - What Happened & When Did It Happen?

(3) Guccifer2.0's Claims Debunked & Discredited

Before looking at intent, motive, conflicting evidence and more, it's important to become aware of a few key facts about Guccifer2.0 and some of the claims he made.

CLAIM: Hacked the DNC's servers - STATUS: Discredited

Guccifer2.0 stated in an interview with Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai (for Motherboard / Vice News) on the 21st of June, that he breached the server using a "0-day exploit of NGP-Van".

ThreatConnect, although still apparently unswayed from their assessment that Guccifer2.0 is a collective of Russians (we'll get on to that topic later in the article) - did report some very useful facts that serve to debunk Guccifer2.0's claims.

a) NGP-Van is a cloud-hosted web-service separate from the DNC network, the claimed method of breach was discredted by ThreatConnect. - It was noted that phishing for credentials would be far more practical for exploiting such a service.

b) He makes claims of lateral movement within the DNC network - but doesn't realize that his effort to match the reporting of Crowdstrike falls down due to his own misinterpretation of that. - CrowdStrike's report mentions lateral movement in terms of the "BEAR" infrastructure across the whole of the Internet rather than movement within the DNC network - it looks like Guccifer2.0 s trying to make claims that correlate with what he has inferred from CrowdStrike's reportage.

c) To quote ThreatConnect at the time (and nothing has been reported to contradict it since): "As it stands now, none of the Guccifer 2.0 breach details can be independently verified".

CLAIM: Wikileaks Source for DNC Mails - STATUS: Not Verified

Guccifer2.0 put considerable effort into trying to convince people he was the source for the DNC email leaks that ended up in the public domain on July 22nd.

He outright claimed it, multiple times.

He made a point of mentioning Wikileaks in his purposeful destruction of his own reputation on October the 4th (a reference to his Clinton Foundation claims and the files he posted supposedly demonstrating the hack) and on October 18th showed he was trying to push a perception of being associated with Wikileaks and responded to a Wikileaks tweet as though it was intended for him personally (when it wasn't).

Going back to the 4th, the supposed "Clinton Foundation Hack" - is also where his claim starts to show cracks.

He stated "I can’t post all databases here for they’re too large. I’m looking for a better way to release them now.".

Why, if he was really the source for the DNC emails, would he be at all struggling to find a solution to get the data published? - Why express this 73 days after the last large batch of data he claims to have acquired was successfully published through Wikileaks?

Even putting seemingly contradictory statements aside - Assange has stated numerous times that the emails were leaked, rather than hacked, in persistent contradiction with Guccifer2.0's claims and there is still nothing independently verifying Guccifer2.0's claims.

CLAIM: Hacked Clinton Foundation - STATUS: Discredited

On October 4th, 2016 - Guccifer2.0 claimed to have hacked the Clinton Foundation. He followed this up by posting an archive containing files that were all from previous leaks and from documents in the public domain.

Ultimately, he has never produced anything that actually shows such a hack had taken place.

These are not all of his lies or unverified claims, far from it, but they are the ones that are critical to know so that the rest of this article makes sense to you. Above all, the first is most important - his claims to breach the DNC turned out to be fantasy.

(4) 3rd Party Assessments - Assumptions & Conjecture vs Evidence & Facts

There is a difference between independently verifiable evidence and the activity somebody claims to have engaged in or that can be fabricated in an effort to misdirect and masquerade as someone they're not. - None of Guccifer2.0's claims of hacking were independently verifiable and several were debunked by ThreatConnect. - There is nothing demonstrating Guccifer2.0 was really a hacker.

The "evidence" that he's Russian, should be understood in the following context:

He CHOSE to name his computer account after the founder of the Soviet Secret Police.
He CHOSE to create/open and then save documents so the Russian name was written to metadata.
He CHOSE to use a Russian VPN service to cloak his IP address.
He CHOSE to use public web-based email services that would forward his cloaked IP.
He CHOSE to use the above to contact various media outlets on the same day.

Note: Thanks to a 3rd party's further investigation, it now appears he may have used a single document as a Russian template (with Russian stylesheet data in), saved it as a set of blank 'pre-tainted' files and then opened them later under a different username - copying/pasting in content from original documents into each blank 'pre-tainted' document before saving again - as the specific process for creating documents (Stylesheet change RSIDs correlating across files certainly suggest it and the metadata fully corroborates it too).

Guccifer2.0 covered himself and the files in the digital equivalent of "Made In Russia" labels while claiming to be a Romanian. (Giving cyber-security firms, journalists and others a flimsy veil they could easily pull off and find Russian "fingerprints" behind - not realizing that what they were revealing was a layer of misdirection that would actually prevent them from considering a 3rd possibility!)

So what independent, verifiable evidence is there?

Basically - Nothing showing he was Wikileaks source. Nothing showing he actually hacked into the DNC beyond the fact he had acquired some DNC/DCCC documents. (In fact, there was a fair bit to contradict his claims there thanks to ThreatConnect discrediting his breach claims, showing he was unduly trying to be attributed to the malware discoveries!)

Guccifer2.0 was someone who chose to use a Russian VPN (after choosing to taint documents with Russian language) and was noted to have been in possession of a password for a password-protected area of the DCLeaks site (which, plausibly, he could have been given after promising to upload some of his leaks - DCLeaks were willing to give the same password out to the press in exchange for the promise of writing a story about them!)

Pretty much everything stated about him has been based on assumptions, acceptance of questionable admissions and the public have been given little more than conjecture based on factors he seems to have been controlling and choosing.

Sam Biddle of The Intercept (one of the first people to write about Guccifer2.0 when he emerged) details the problem, in a broader sense, of blaming Russia generally for the hacks in an article released on December 14th 2016, titled: "Here’s the Public Evidence Russia Hacked the DNC — It’s Not Enough". - It covers the fact that the evidence on Guccifer2.0 looks dodgy but doesn't try to determine the intent behind his efforts to deceive and claim credit for hacking the DNC (such as this article is attempting to make clear) and instead focuses on the broader scope of allegations about the DNC being hacked.

UPDATE (12 March)

I decided to contact Elite-VPN in relation to the claims made by ThreatConnect and received a response on March 7th. The responses and the annotated image they sent are as follows:

So... it turns out that if ThreatConnect had tried using the default options - they would have been allocated the "exclusive" IP address that was NEVER really exclusive.

They've caused concern and distress unduly for a VPN Service provider by misrepresenting the service and produced false-positive indicators by suggesting the IP address was used by a shady group of Russians/Guccifer2.0 with exclusivity.

Why didn't someone ask them sooner?

NOTE: While I have uncovered an apparent mistake made by ThreatConnect, I still do respect the research they did and their reporting of facts even when they didn't necessarily support their conclusions was helpful for my investigation - without their transparency and willingness to share their research openly with the public, my research would have been much tougher, so, despite my criticisms I have to say: Thank you to all at TC for the valuable information you shared with us all. :)

(5) Actions, Consequences & Convenience For Anti-Leak Narratives

In total, the amount of new controversies specifically exposed by Guccifer2.0's actions - was very little.

The documents he posted online were a mixture of some from the public domain (eg. already been published by in 2009), were manipulated copies of research documents originally created by Lauren Dillon (see attachments) and others or were legitimate, unique documents that were of little significant damage to the DNC. (Such as the DCCC documents)

The DCCC documents didn't reveal anything particularly damaging. It did include a list of fundraisers/bundlers but that wasn't likely to cause controversy (the fundraising totals, etc. are likely to end up on sites like OpenSecrets, etc within a year anyway). - It did however trigger 4chan to investigate and a correlation was found between the DNC's best performing bundlers and ambassadorships. - This revelation though, is to be credited to 4chan. - The leaked financial data wasn't, in itself, damaging - and some of the key data will be disclosed publicly in future anyway.

All of his 'leaks' have been over-hyped non-controversies or were already in the public domain - the only exception being the apparent leaking of personal contact numbers and email addresses of 200 Democrats - and really that was more damaging to the reputation of Wikileaks than causing any real problems for Democrats. - Ultimately, it only really served to give the mainstream press the opportunity to announce that "leaked emails include personal details of 200 Democrats", again, seemingly an effort to undermine other leaks being released at the same time by legitimate leak publishers.

(6) Rushing To Be Russian - The Donkey In A Bear Costume Made A Mistake

"Russia-Tainted Metadata" Reportage Mostly Ignored A Key Piece of Metadata

There is a key fact about some non-Russian metadata that nobody seems to have reported and it certainly seems to be of critical importance - and that is the document creation timestamps...

There were multiple documents shared with TheSmokingGun, Gawker, ArsTechnica and others.

The first document, "1.doc" (mirror), was given considerable coverage, while the name "Warren Flood" was reported, the date in the report (rather than in the metadata) was reported and so it was attributed to Warren Flood on 12/19/15.

Gawker incorrectly claimed the metadata showed the document was created in 2015 when it actually indicated the document was created by Warren Flood at a much later date.

The truth is that the metadata shows the document being created 30 minutes before Guccifer2.0 appears to have gotten his hands on it:

Created by Warren Flood on 15th of June at 13:38
Modified by Феликс Эдмундович on 15th of June at 14:08

The other document, "2.doc" (mirror) was not mentioned so much, but it too had interesting metadata:

Created by Warren Flood on 15th of June at 13:38
Modified by Феликс Эдмундович on 15th of June at 14:11

How did this get missed? - My guess is that people who investigated were using MS-Word. Recent versions of MS-Word tend to show limited metadata from RTF1 format files, for example, MS-Word 2010 shows:

If you open "2.doc" in OpenOffice though, you will spot what first alerted me to the timestamp correlations in the first place:

If you look at the raw data of "1.doc" you can see an ever closer correlation:

UPDATE (18 Feb)

It was pointed out to me that I'd only focused on 2 documents and that there were more released by Guccifer2.0. - He had actually released a set of 5 RTF1-format documents, all had creation/modification dates as 15th of June and another one of them had Flood listed as it's creator:

File Created By Time Modified By Time
1.doc Warren Flood 1:38pm Феликс Эдмундович 2:08pm
2.doc Warren Flood 1:38pm Феликс Эдмундович 2:11pm
3.doc Warren Flood 1:38pm Феликс Эдмундович 2:12pm
4.doc Blake 1:48pm user 1:48pm
5.doc jbs836 2:13pm Феликс Эдмундович 2:13pm

MD5 sums and mirror links are provided below in case the originals are altered or removed in future:

File Size MD5 Mirror
1.doc 6.8mb a0977ccf006a9e9b5d2c396986cc8da7 link
2.doc 194.6kb 4409de44ef522b583e38a5ed79bf09f0 link
3.doc 211.0kb e44f494ed23907c5298b645063a5dbc3 link
4.doc 1.3mb f79972d72f5304bf1dc4cd2ae6c3a2d4 link
5.doc 67.9kb e2c432bb1e0ef06226594699876292dc link

A more detailed look at the actual contents of documents (eg. RSIDs of different changes and correlations across files) gives further clues about the procedures used to intentionally stick "Russian fingerprints" on some of the files.

Who is Warren Flood?

So... who is Warren Flood? - How did the documents get from Flood apparently creating them to the "hacker" within 30 minutes AND how did that happen when Guccifer2.0 claimed that he had been kicked out of the DNC's systems as of June 12th according to the conversation he had on the 21st of June with Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai for Motherboard/Vice? (An article in which Guccifer2.0 shows he can easily change the identity of the person who last modified the file)

We can answer the first question by looking at Warren's linkedin and facebook profiles (these profiles have almost no private or personal character information - we're only revealing things about his work, experience, professional skill set and his history with DNC, etc.).

How did Guccifer2.0 apparently acquire and edit the documents in 30 minutes of them apparently being created by Flood AND at a time that Guccifer 2.0 would later claim was AFTER he had been kicked out of the DNC's network?

From left-to-right: Joe Biden, Alice McAlexander, Warren Flood, Jill Biden.

While Warren's name may have been relatively unknown to many reading this article, he has worked for Obama for America, the DNC, served as Joe Biden's technical director and is no stranger to the White House, as his photograph with Joe and Jill Biden (embedded) suggests.

As for the main file (Trump Opposition Research) - it's basically copied from this file (which is also attached to this leaked email).

It was actually a document originally authored by Lauren Dillon (DNC research director) and modified (and sent to John Podesta) by Tony Carrk (Research Director at Hillary for America).

As it's clear the original source document was not authored by Flood it seems odd that Flood's name would be there. There was however, another clue in the meta data, the company name was recorded as "GSA" (General Services Administration), this suggests that the license was installed when Flood was working for the government and the only place I recalled seeing that in his work history was at the White House.

This leaves us with a few logical explanations:

Considering Flood's absence from the White House since 2011, no indication he had the skill set needed to fool so many cyber-security experts and a poor match up on syntax analysis, it seems the latter of these possibilities is far more probable.

(7) Corpus & Language Analysis

Several experts and their assessments have been cited, Motherboard (Vice) reference 3 such experts but only one appeared willing to be identified. - Carrying out our own analysis (and highlighting the process), we can see why the others may have chosen anonymity - their assessments seem to be limited and pick up on things that in aggregate, Guccifer rarely actually does.

Guccifer2.0 used a "Russian smiley" (")))") ONCE! - This was in one of his first posts. The other thing that made him appear Russian was that he referred to hacks as "deals" a couple of times. - HOWEVER, he ONLY does this in the interview with Motherboard/Vice on the 21st of June - he never repeats this behavior in any other communications - so, it seems it was just put on for the purpose of the interview. - These are the main 2 things pointed out by the anonymous experts and are bizarrely both things he does only in 2 isolated incidents.

Professor M.J. Connolly of the Slavic & Eastern European languages department at Boston University had the most valuable assessment - and could explain the syntactical traits that were missing from Guccifer2.0's writing.

For our own non-expert analysis, details about differences between Russian/Slavonic Languages & English language can be found here, here and here.

As a brief example, TSG article's quoted statements from Guccifer are below. Definite and indefinite article use and prepositions are highlighted:

“I stand against Guccifer's conviction and extradition. I will continue Guccifer's business and will fight all those illuminati the way I can. They should set him free!!!!”

“First I breached into mail boxes of a number of Democrats. And then using the info collected I got into Committee servers.”

Compare this to the use of English language expected from someone who is really a Russian, as demonstrated in this screenshot of a video featured in an article by ThreatConnect on 2nd of September 2016. - The difference is stark to say the least!

It's clear from the above (as well as an analysis of a much larger corpus of Guccifer's words that I have compiled - see below) that he habitually uses definite articles, even when communicating in a live chat with Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai of Vice's Motherboard, he rarely fails to include them. - The amount of instances where his definite and indefinite articles are correctly used (when they are used) is around 96%. - In other words, while he mangles English language selectively, he doesn't do it in a way that is consistent or in the way that is expected from those whose native language is one lacking definite and indefinite articles (such as is true with Russian language).

We never see Guccifer struggle with prepositions either:

He never claimed to hack through a server, or get under security or wait around being detected. His command of prepositions is very strong and he seldom drops the use of them.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: As author of this article, I am not pretending to be an expert. I'm just applying some knowledge from the public domain to a large collection of sample data in a manner that demonstrates various factors that relate to the aspects of English language that Russian's would typically struggle with.

Guccifer 2 DMs:
Robbin Young | Cassandra Fairbanks | Roger Stone
Anon1 | Lee Stranahan | HelloFLA (Aaron Nevins)
Flipper4Trump | Charlie Grapski

(8) Recognizing Intent From Deceptions

So, at present, in my personal opinion, it looks a LOT like Shawn Henry & Dmitri Alperovitch (CrowdStrike executives), working for either the HRC campaign or DNC leadership were most likely to have been behind the Guccifer 2.0 operation.

IMPORTANT: This is an interim attribution. It is subject to my inference and to change if/when new verifiable information arises.

As such, I strongly recommend that my assessment and the information in this particular section just be regarded as opinion (I may have made incorrect assumptions or made a mistake with details somewhere) and advise you to look at ALL of the information from the original sources to form a complete understanding of Guccifer 2.0 and to make your own conclusions based on what you can see demonstrated from that.

If you have any tips, know of anything significant that's missing from the timeline at all or want to chat about anything related to Guccifer2.0 feel free to contact me by email (link at top of article) - Challenges to conclusions are welcomed and won't be greeted with hostility.

Additional Articles

The following articles provide you with the links and reference materials needed to independently check and verify the first critical piece of evidence showing that Guccifer 2.0 was an operation that (as its very first objective) created files with fake 'Russian Fingerprints' through what was apparently an intentional and methodical procedure:

Isolated RTF/RSID Evidence
Correlating With Metadata

The above guides are simply my efforts to explain to others how to check and verify evidence that was actually found by u/tvor_22. The original article he wrote covering it (among other related topics) is linked to here for reference (see image and link to the right of this text).

Russia and Wikileaks: The Case of the Gilded Guccifer

Guccifer 2.0 - The Hack/Leak Contradiction (8 April 2017)

Guccifer 2.0 - DCLeaks - APT 28 (17 April 2017)

CrowdStrike & The DNC's Phantom Intruder (OPINION) (25 April 2017)

WH Meetings on Ukraine Coincide With Fingerprint Fabrications (29 April 2017)

The Guccifer 2.0 Advisory Sent To Every US Senator (17 May 2017)

Further RTF Analysis Supports Russian Fingerprint Fabrication (26 May 2017)

The Constant Storm of Controversy & Chaos (31 May 2017)

Guccifer 2.0's First Five Documents: The Process (31 May 2017)

The Webb of Deceit (7 June 2017)

The Washington Post Article on the DNC Hack - Fact or Fiction? (14 June 2017)

RussiaGate Complexities (8 July 2017)

CrowdStrike, Comey & Conflicting Claims? (17 July 2017)

Guccifer 2.0: Game Over - Six Months In (4 August 2017)

The DNC Responds To The Nation Article (12 August 2017)

The First Attack Dog Steps Forward - New York Magazine (12 August 2017)

Distortions & Missing The Point (16 August 2017)

Dirty Techniques (20 August 2017)

Focus On The Decision-Makers - They Have Been Informed (11 September 2017)

Is Salon's Sheffield Skipping & Spinning? (18th September 2017)

Phase #5 Completed (19th September 2017)

United Nations Notified (22nd September 2017)

3rd Party Research & Further Reading

This Fancy Bear's House Is Made of Cards: Russian Fools or Russian Frame-Up
by nyetneynyet aka u/tvor_22

Russia and Wikileaks - The Case of The Gilded Guccifer
by nyetneynyet aka u/tvor_22

Did Russia Really Hack The DNC?
by Gregory Elich

Is Guccifer 2 One Person or Multitude of People
by Steve Cunningham

Cyber-analyst: No evidence to connect Guccifer 2.0 to Russian DNC hack
by Steve Cunningham

The Guccifer 2.0 Chat Hoax | Part 2 | Part 3
by Hannibal Moot

Guccifer 2 and the Podesta Emails
by JimmysLlama

US Govt Data Shows Russia Used Outdated Ukrainian PHP Malware
by Mark Maunder / WordFence

Guccifer 2.0 NGP/VAN Metadata Analysis
by The Forensicator

The Russiagate Hoax — Cutting to the Chase
by Mark McCarty

Non-Existent Foundation for Russia Hacking Charge
by Skip Folden

New Report Suggests DNC Hacker Was Collecting Opposition Research on Donald Trump
by Steve Cunningham

Time Zone of Guccifer 2 cf.7z
by Stephen McIntyre

Guccifer 2.0 CF Files Metadata Analysis
by Forensicator

Guccifer 2 Email Time Zone
by Stephen McIntyre

Guccifer 2 and “Russian” Metadata
by Stephen McIntyre

Frequently Asked Questions

There are questions often asked and various alternate hypotheses offered regarding Guccifer2.0. - I'll try to cover most of those here.

Couldn't Warren Flood's Name Have Been Planted On Purpose?

It's possible, that can't be denied. There were other file types released by G2 at later dates that were tampered with, you can tell because names and paths have been blanked out (replaced with spaces).

However, with those first 5 files...

1. No Indiciators of Tampering in Initial Documents

The RTF documents don't have any indications of direct tampering. The matching creation timestamps on the first 3 documents do at first seem to suggest an anomaly, however, the RSID data actually shows that it is what we should really expect to see on the first 3 documents.

2. It Was Likely To Be The Weakest Point of Operational Security Considering All Factors

G2's efforts to attribute itself to Wikileaks on significant dates (eg. First appearance, the day Wikileaks released first DNCLeaks batch, the day it dropped the obviously-bogus-CFR-hack archive full of already-released documents, etc) it's breach methods being repetedly discredited and the consistency of the leaks never hurting Hillary yet managing to generate numerous anti-leaks headlines ahead of the DNCLeaks publications - collectively suggest that the G2 operation's primary objective was to discredit Wikileaks and the leaks that Assange had mentioned were coming in his 12th June interview.

As such, it seems probable that the operation would have been rushed initially to ensure they got ahead of Wikileaks releasing the emails and, in turn, it would mean the most likely place to find operational security weaknesses would be at the very beginning of the operation. - This is why I looked at the first batch of files before I even started writing any of the words on this page, it's where I logically expected to see where the operation was likely to be the most vulnerable due to overlooking things in the rush to race against Wikileaks.

3. Would A Foreign Hacker Have Chosen To Use Warren Flood's Name?

Considering Flood wasn't known to be active in any campaigns in the last election cycle, wasn't actually a member of DNC staff and hadn't been employed directly by Democratic politicians for approximately 6 years (at least according to his social media profiles as of 2017) - Choosing Flood's name wasn't likely to provide a plausible, coherent diversion, it seems like a really odd choice for a hacker seeking to cause confusion/misdirection.

It is for these reasons that I suspect Warren Flood's name being on the initial documents was considerably more likely to have been accidental than deliberate.

Have you considered that Russia may have fabricated Russian fingerprints because...?

There are new theories emerging as to why Russia might fabricate fingerprints. The two main ones I've seen are as follows:

1. Provocation

This is ridiculous. If Russia wanted to provoke they would just release the leaks themselves and the first anyone would hear of it would be via RT. - The whole sticking fingerprints pointing to themselves to provoke on purpose theory - is idiotic

2. Cause Confusion over Attribution with Shoddy Fabrication Effort

This theory starts with a premise that Russians knew they couldn't escape attribution to APT 28 and so they had to fabricate fingerprints to cause confusion.

This overlooks the fact that we've separated Guccifer 2.0 from APT28 (by separating him from DCLeaks) and the fact that CrowdStrike never identified those who targeted the Trump Opposition Research document - and only identified the document when they were 'clearing out the last of the hackers' from the DNC's network.

If Guccifer 2.0's attribution to APT28 was inevitable then it would be an attribution that still stands strong, we've shown that, in reality, that isn't the case.

Also, if those responsible for rendering the files wanted to leave implausible fingerprints they would have been better off NOT having RSID data that corroborates and even explains why the meta data isn't as anomalous as it first seems.

Finally, if someone wanted the fabrication to be discovered, it would have been found sooner by one of the many cyber-security researchers, investigators and reporters that already covered Guccifer 2.0 in the 7 months prior to the discovery. It was not a correlation that was at all obvious, it required one to check for matching RSIDs across multiple files (something clearly nobody had thought to do previously) - it was not something that could be detected by looking at an individual file alone.

Can't metadata be manipulated just by downloading and couldn't it have been manipulated by saving the file at times you haven't considered?

While downloading the files to your PC will cause the file headers to have the current time/date recorded - these are completely separate from the RTF metadata (which remains untouched and will still have the creation/modification dates in June of 2016). - So the downloading, etc. process and copying/moving the file around in your OS won't cause the RTF metadata to be altered.

That said, there still ARE circumstances in which the data can be reset, etc. (when opening and saving the file in apps, etc).

We have given a lot of consideration to this too...

To figure out the sort of application behaviors we are likely dealing with - it helps to know what application was likely used to generate and save them. - fortunately, this can be evaluated to some degree because we can see that all 5 RTF files have the following string in them:

You can test using OpenOffice, LibreOffice, WordPad and other apps that can save to the RTF format and check which ones produce the above string and which ones don't . We can't entirely rule out the possibility of other apps producing this but of those tested, only MS-Word seemed to leave this in files. (There are other things we can test if it ever turns out other applications have this behavior).

So testing was carried out with a few recent copies of MS-Word to see the various circumstances when the actual RTF metadata changes.

The following was observed:

(This is because the RTF-RSID correlations on the Russian language stylesheets in the first 3 documents allow us to evaluate the chronological order in which they and the actual content became present in each of the files - regardless of the metadata.).

UPDATE (May 13th, 2017): Following some tests on RTF files generated on Mac (h/t Steve Cunningham) and Windows versions of MS Office it seems highly likely the RTF docs produced by Guccifer 2.0 were generated using the Windows version of Microsoft Office.

Could Justin Cooper (Clinton aide / CGI spyware installer) be Guccifer 2?

Justin Cooper was known to have installed spyware on machines at the Clinton Global Initiative, an email from Chelsea Clinton in 2011 explains as much.

Justin was also involved in setting up the private mail server that Hillary Clinton had used while she was Sec. of State.

To assume Justin is Guccifer 2 - you'll have to assume that installing spyware at CGI would have given Justin remote access to everything on the DNC's mailserver and assume nobody managed to resolve the issue in the 5 years that followed the threat being identified.

Either assumption is a leap of faith with Justin being a Clinton aide that worked on the CGI side of things rather than the DNC/DCCC/etc.

To further diminish the likelihood of this - you can also add the fact Bryan Pagliano took over managing the server shortly after Hillary became Sec. of State (2008) and then another company called "Perfect Privacy" took ownership of the domain in 2014.

It's very unlikely to be Justin!

Isn't Guccifer 2 really a group of 7 or 8 Ukrainians/Serbians/Romanians?

Maybe Commander X can give more details or a demonstration or explanation of this?! (I'm expecting this questions from those who have listened to a recent interview Commander X did with Susan Lindauer)

The corpus suggests G2 is someone who speaks English as their first language and merely feigns sloppiness, while this doesn't really fit the theory here - it is at least more conceivable that G2 would be Romanian/Serbian due to closer similarities between English language and their languages than it is likely to be a Russian (solely from linguistics analysis).

The intent demonstrated in the framing effort shows it was an operation motivated to discredit Wikileaks and damage the reputation of leaks (which as far as I can tell, only the Clinton campaign had any desperate need to do at the time!).

I'm unaware of anything that would have suddenly given Ukrainians, Serbians or Romanians motive to discredit leaks at that time - I'm not ruling out the possibility but I struggle to find any correlations to support the premise..

I think maybe I'm lacking some of the information that Commander X is using so have had difficulty ascertaining exactly what Russian arrests, etc. the hypothesis is based on..

If Commander X has something to demonstrate or reference to explain intent/motivations/etc or evidence of some kind to support this theory (or any other information), please let me know and I'll update this article to cover it.

Have you considered Guccifer 2 may be a female?

Yes, I've considered most possibilities but there's nothing I've seen to actually suggest that G2 was female. Roger Stone referring to G2 as "her" once accidentally, in a sentence in a recent interview - is really nothing.

Even putting aside what we already know, start off with the simple statistical likelihood. - Black-hat male to female ratio is somewhere between 20:1 and 100:1. -What substantive indicators are there that Guccifer 2 was a female?

If we don't cherry-pick and instead treat everything Roger Stone says in interview as being significant, we can see he has said "he", "him" or "his" in reference to Guccifer 2 at least 20 times in the last month.

Using either, if we don't cherry pick it still looks like there's at least a 20:1 ratio. - To automatically assume Guccifer 2 must be of the gender that has a 5% (or less) likelihood due to Roger Stone ushering a single word once in one interview - is bizarre - yet it seems there's been a push on social media to claim that it's proof of Guccifer 2 being female.

Then there's the other factor - Guccifer 2 stated, in conversation with Robbin Young - that an erotic poem was making him 'hard'. - This in itself is a strong indicator that the Guccifer 2.0 persona is a male - at least in the minds of those who invented Guccifer 2.0.

Couldn't Guccifer 2 just have been a disgruntled Sanders supporter?

Guccifer 2's first action, contrary to his stated intent - was a clear effort to undermine the reputation of leaks by having them blatantly 'tainted' with a Russian name and stylesheet (overlooking the fact that the RTF data stream records clues about each document's construction besides timestamps, etc).

Considering WHAT Guccifer 2 actually was and was clearly trying to achieve, it means neither Sanders nor Trump supporters would have had a motive to actually act in the way Guccifer 2 did.

At the time (15 June), many Sanders supporters were happy to wait for Assange to deliver on the promise of Clinton related leaks that he'd given on the 12th.

Nobody opposing Hillary, immediately following news of upcoming leaks - would try to release dodgy leaks AND try attributing them to Wikileaks... those were tactics only one campaign had any need for.

(For those that don't know why this was even suggested - it's because Guccifer 2.0, as part of his misdirection - was willing to hint at allegiance with Hillary's current opponent at the time! - Initially, after his emergence and during the primary, he was seeking to attribute his activities to Sanders and would inquire with reporters about the DNC lawsuit, express sympathy for Bernie and berate the rigged process, etc.) - Then once Bernie was out of the way, Guccifer 2.0 switched - and - as many already know, he was willing to openly express admiration for Trump supporters and in one interview with the BBC he oddly blurted out something about making "America Great again".

This chicanery had many reporters convinced that Guccifer 2.0 sided with Hillary's opponents (and his actions show he actually did little to harm Hillary, if he was really a source for Wikileaks, as he claimed, he would have had more damaging material to publish at that time and would have been able to at least give some foresight as to what revelations would be coming from Wikileaks - but he didn't) - many listened to his words but didn't scrutinize his actions closely and the classic addage: "Actions Speak Louder Than Words" could never be more applicable to a hacker investigation than they have been in the case of Guccifer 2.

If G2 Was Working For Clinton Campaign Why Did He Hurt the DNC/Clinton?

He did very little to hurt the DNC and practically nothing to hurt Hillary's campaign (despite his vociferous opposition to her in word, he did little to oppose her in deed).

He did release some exclusive content but it was mostly inconsequential and largely to establish media and public trust. - There were fundraising totals that will likely end up on OpenSecrets and other sites due to records requests, outdated low-security shared-access passwords, outdated contact information of donors and lots of dull content that sapped public interest in the leaks. - The TARP-related documents were old and the only controversy they covered was one already exposed by OpenSecrets 8 years ago. - Even the ambassadorships wasn't intentional. - It's only because sleuths on 4chan cross referenced a list of ambassadorships with the list of big fund-raisers that it even became a controversy.

And so... before Wikileaks had even released the first email, G2 had gained notoriety, the Clinton objection handling talking points were being framed as a 'dossier' and in some cases 'opposition research' (when it was in fact the exact opposite - talking points to counter Clinton criticisms), the narrative of Russian hackers had been created (as we now know - very intentionally and very falsely!) and justification for claiming the leaks were "probably doctored" had been seeded. Headline's already included:

"DNC Hacker Dumps Trove of Clinton Documents"
"'Guccifer 2.0' Claims Responsibility for DNC Hack"
"Hillary Clinton 'dossier' released by hacker Guccifer 2.0"
"Will Hillary Survive Barrage of Email Leaks From Russia and WikiLeaks?"

and when Wikileaks finally did release the emails, we had outright false attribution from authors like Bluestone @ Gawker, with gems such as:

"Russia (via Wikileaks) Releases 20,000 Hacked DNC Emails Just in Time For the Convention"

This was accompanied by a choir of MSM entities admonishing Wikileaks in unison over the apparent release of donor SSNs/credit card numbers. - For every headline covering the media-collusion and primary rigging, there were 10 angrily berating Wikileaks.

Before Wikileaks even had chance to respond to the criticism... the next act of G2 was to throw fuel on the fire of criticism already scorching Wikileaks by releasing personal information for the sake of generating even more negative headlines and admonishment of leaks...

"Personal Information of Nearly 200 Democrats Leaked in Latest Hack"
"New leak releases personal data of 200 Democrats"
"DNC Hacker Leaks Personal Info Of Nearly 200 Congressional Democrats"
"Democrats hacked again! New leak releases personal data of 200 party leaders"

Guccifer 2.0 successfully maligned the reputation of leaks in various ways before Wikileaks even started releasing emails and persisted even at the time of release. - The consistent negative outcomes from his actions was one of the earliest clues suggesting his stated intent and actual intent were likely to differ, the near-zero impact on Clinton from his leaks was another hint.

Who is Guccifer 2 then? - Warren Flood or someone else?

This depends on who you ask. - If you ask those who listen to Louise Mensch, it's someone working for Putin. - If you look at the evidence, it's someone trying to frame Russia or have leaks attributed to Russia and the person who initiatially handled the pre-tainted template file that Guccifer 2's first documents were based on - appears to have used a user account in the name of "Warren Flood".

So... It's Warren Flood?

Not necessarily but there's a possibility of him being involved and knowledgeable of the scheme. - The overall misdirection effort, to me, seems very professional (let's face it, it fooled most of America for at least 9 months) and I don't think Warren will have had the full skill set for all of it. (If anything, I suspect his job was to acquire and taint files initially but suspect that others were involved, especially with regards to communications).

Looking at the statements of CrowdStrike from the 14th of June and how it correlates in one regard to Guccifer 2's activities the next day but also (a) contradicts it due to Guccifer 2 having more files than they stated had been taken and (b) it seems odd they'd detect an intrusion because of an access attempt to a Trump opposition research file and not at a litany of other, far more typical detection points (identifying hostiles as soon as they hit the TCP/IP stack, identifying malicious packets, identifying brute/wordlist password cracking attempts, identifying CPU spikes and activity of specific processes, etc.).. that I have recently been wondering exactly what CS were doing back at the DNC suddenly after Assange's announcement, wondering whether they submitted evidence to any intelligence agencies to support their detection claims - and wondering if they may be outright complicit in the Guccifer 2 operation. - Certainly, Alperovitch and Henry would have had the skills and experience needed to spearhead such an operation and the opacity with which they've operated in comparison to firms like ThreatConnect (who have been very transparent and accountable in their work) doesn't make them seem as credible to me as when I first started investigating this back in January.

Either way, regardless of attrbution of the actors/operators - what is fairly clearly is that the intent demonstrated by the consistent outcomes of Guccifer 2's actions falls perfectly in line with the motives of the Clinton campaign at that precise moment in time. - So, ultimately, it was an entity, probably consisting of a few individuals, that, judging on the merit of it's actions (contrary to it's stated intent/desires/goals/etc) - was really working to serve the Clinton campaign's agenda.

Why should I believe you over MSM/DNC/ODNI/DHS/CIA/FBI/etc?

Ideally, I don't want you to have to believe anyone - you don't really need to believe anything to know that the FSB/GRU/Russian-State/etc attribution is highly likely to be phony.

This is why the "Evidence of Intent" series of documents exists in isolation to the main article. - It's so that you can check and verify the evidence that u/tvor_22 discovered for yourself by using the primary source (Guccifer 2's blog) and Microsoft's RTF document specification as a reference... so you can check and verify the evidence using primary source and reputable sources for reference materials... rather than have to rely on my words.

I've tried to provide the tools for people to be able to do more than believe in something.

You're working for Putin! - You're a #TrumpZombie!

No. - I'm just an independent, investigative 'citizen journalist' from the UK that has no loyalty to any political parties in the US.

If you have loyalty to the Democratic party leadership and my research offends you, I'm sorry about that - I just hope you will at least try to check and verify what I've reported on and can recognize that I'm not trying to engage in partisan smears or spin.

The evidence is what it is, it's not fabricated, there's no tin foil hats here, no agenda to insult and undermine your party (or any other party)... I'm just reporting honestly on what has been found and is now being reported by multiple researchers.

Over the last 3 months, the research has:


Saturday, October 3, 2015

An intro with Diabetes

Diabetes is mainly of two types - Diabetes insipidus - a rare form of diabetes caused by a deficiency of the pituitary hormone vasopressin, which regulates kidney function that may cause frequent urination & Diabetes mellitus - caused by impaired formation of insulin by pancreas mainly due to destruction/decreased responsiveness of islet b-cells.
Diabetes mellitus is characterized by the imbalance in the secretion and/or utilization of insulin which leads to the disorder of carbohydrates (glucose) metabolism in the body. This results the increase or decrease in the blood glucose. Carbohydrates from various dietary sources are the primary exogenous source of glucose which is the main fuel for energy requirement of the body. Therefore, a continuous supply of glucose is necessary to ensure the proper function and survival of all organs.

Hence, mammals have evolved sophisticated systems to maintain the glucose level in the blood within tight limits, despite large fluctuations in food intake. Homeostatic mechanisms are in place to maintain blood glucose levels with very narrow range protecting the body against hypoglycemia during period of fasting and against the hyperglycemia following the ingestion of a high carbohydrate diet. These goals are met chiefly through the hormonal modulation of the production of glucose by the liver and the peripheral uptake of glucose by skeletal muscle, heart muscle and fat.

When mammals fast, glucose homeostasis is achieved by triggering expression of gluconeogenic genes in response to glucagon, and when they take a carbohydrate-rich diet, the function is taken over by the insulin for its uptake and utilization peripherally. Defects in carbohydrate metabolizing machinery and consistent efforts of the physiological system to correct the imbalance in carbohydrate metabolism place an over-exertion on the endocrine system, which leads to the deterioration of endocrine control. Continuing deterioration of endocrine control exacerbates the metabolic disturbances leading primarily to hyperglycemia and subsequently, the complication thus developed is called diabetes mellitus.

Type I diabetes is believed to be an autoimmune disease that results in specific immunologic destruction of b-cells of islets of Langerhans's, presence of islet cell antibodies in type I diabetes, lymphocytic infiltration in and around islets (insulitis) and association of type I diabetes with other autoimmune diseases supports the evidence of autoimmunity. About 10% of cases of type I diabetes has other organ specific autoimmune diseases such as Graves’ disease, Addison’s disease or autoimmune thyroiditis. The another presentation of insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus has been recently demonstrated that with immunological testing approximately 10% of patients initially diagnosed of having non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM) may have a slow onset for IDDM that has been termed latent autoimmune diabetes in adults.

It usually manifest at early age, generally below the age of 40. The plasma insulin levels are low and patients respond to exogenous insulin therapy. The onset is marked by polyurea, polyphagia, and with extreme derangement, ketoacidosis, all resulting from metabolic dearrangements. A catabolic state is reached because of insulin deficiency which results in glucose, fat and protein metabolism. Glucose assimilation in the muscle and liver is greatly reduced and also the stores of glycogen are depleted by increased glycogenolysis.

This causes glycosuria. The glycosuria induces osmosis and thus results in polyurea, causing profound loss of electrolytes and water. Such a renal water loss and hyperosmolarity causes depletion of intracellular water provokes the osmoreceptors of the thirst centers of brain and causes intense thirst i.e. polydipsia. Due to lack of insulin catabolism of protein and fats occurs resulting in removal of gluconeogenic amino acid from the liver, this result in negative energy balance which in turn leads to increasing appetite i.e. polyphagia. Despite of increased appetite catabolic effect prevails resulting in weight loss and fatigue but the patients are not obese. Thus type I DM is a classic triad of polyurea, polydipsia and polyphagia, weight loss and fatigue.

Type II diabetes, or maturity onset diabetes, or non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM), is more common and constitutes 80-90% cases of diabetes. The basic metabolic defect in this type of diabetes is either a delayed insulin secretion relative to glucose load (deranged insulin secretion), or the peripheral tissues are unable to respond to insulin (insulin resistance). In this type, the patient is usually 40 years of age at presentation and 80% are obese. Ketoacidosis is not a feature but hyperosmolar non-ketotic coma may be a complication. The pancreas in NIDDM is usually of normal size but with a tendency to fatty infiltration, most probably due to the obesity present in many of these patients.

The type II diabetes is further of two subtypes i.e., obese and non-obese. Obesity is a common finding in type II diabetes. There is impaired insulin sensitivity of peripheral tissues, such as muscle and fat cells to the action of insulin, in obese individuals (insulin resistance). Lack of exercise and obesity are considered major contributors to type II diabetes; roughly 90% of individuals with type II diabetes are obese. These conditions predispose to hyperinsulinemia. Increased insulin resistance results in increased fasting and postprandial b-cells synthesis, which leads to “b-cell burnout” and eventually diabetes.

The condition of insulin resistance may exist for many years before pancreatic b-cell function actually becomes impaired. Weight reduction in such obese patients produces improvement in the diabetic state. It has been observed that insulin resistance is a factor not only in obese type II diabetes but also in non-obese type II diabetes. In such individuals, the increased insulin resistance of peripheral tissues is due to either decrease in the number of insulin receptors or there is post defect.

Gestational diabetes which refers to the hyperglycemia temporarily during pregnancy in individuals, having inherited liability to develop this disorder. Although this form usually disappears following delivery, 40% of women with gestational diabetes will go on to develop type II diabetes later in life. Other types of diabetes may be secondary to pancreatic disease or removal of pancreatic tissue; secondary to endocrine disease such as acromegaly, Cushing’s syndrome, pheochromocytoma, glucagonoma, somatostatinoma or primary aldosteronism; secondary to administration of hormones causing hyperglycemia.

Iatrogenic diabetes may develop during various forms of therapies by drugs such as antihyperglycemic drugs, thiazide diuretics, preparations containing estrogen, psychoactive drugs, sympathomimetic agents etc. It is also occurring mainly in those patients who are genetically susceptible.

The prevalence of insulin dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM) is 10% whereas that of non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM) is 90% of the diabetic population. Diabetes mellitus, the most pervasive and costly chronic disease is afflicted by an estimated 175 million people worldwide. It is a leading cause of adult blindness and end-stage kidneys disease. Additionally diabetics are two to four times more likely to have heart disease or to suffer a stroke .

Therefore, Diabetes mellitus has been recognized as a growing world-wide epidemic by many health advocacy groups including the World Health Organization (WHO). Approximately 5% of the world’s population suffers from diabetes. Independent forecasters have suggested that the global prevalence of the disease will increase from 150 million in 2000 to 220 million in 2010 and to 300 million by 2025. The global burden of diabetes mellitus would rise from 135.3 in 1995 to 300 million in 2025. The WHO has also estimated that diabetes will be one of the leading causes of death and disability within the next quarter century.

India being at top of the world in diabetes cases, known as diabetes capital of the world. The Indians are more prone to diabetes due to the reason being that Indian healthcare policies have by and large emphasized on the prevention of infectious diseases only. Also, with the improved living conditions in India, we are increasingly following western dietary habits unsuited for our environs, adopting sedentary life style, and exposed to psycho-social stress. This has resulted in an unprecedented rise in diabetes population to epidemic proportions during last few decades in India.

Complications related to Diabetes mellitus is that the patients with long-standing diabetes may develop complications affecting the eyes, kidneys or nerves (micro vascular complications) or major arteries. The major arteries are affected in people with diabetes, causing a substantial increase in both in coronary artery disease and strokes as well as peripheral vascular disease. The greatest risk of large vessel disease occurs in those diabetic patients who develop proteinuria or micro albuminuria, which are associated with widespread vascular damage.


Samu Communications | Samu: I see dead people

Samu: I see dead people

negatives and positives of photography in campaigns

When is it right to display a dead child on the front page of a national newspaper? And what effects does this have? These are long debated questions, going back to at least the Boer War, and they raise fundamental ethical issues for campaigning organisations.

The current case, was sparked by the Independents bold decision to lead with Nilufer Demir’s photograph of the three year old Aylan Kurdi body, lying in the surf on the shores of Bodrum, Turkey. The unfolding reactions are already making their own headlines and this is just the start.

The power of a photograph to change a debate

How has a photograph been able to transform a “migrant crisis” into a “refugee crisis”? First of all there are the qualities of the photographer to consider. The power for transformational change of Nelufer Demir’s photograph is already being compared to Nick Ut’s famous photograph of Phan Kim Phuc during the war on Vietnam, and reopening the question can images change history?

As with all photography, being in the right place at the right time is an important element. As is the motivation to take the image, however disturbing. For Demir her decision was:

The best thing to do was to make this tragedy heard.

In both Demir and Ut’s cases the photograph received front page exposure in the mainstream media, it takes a strong editorial team to take such decisions (as explained by Ut in this interview), and they have to be able to justify this in the face of expected opposition.

There is the context of the subject in the photograph, and its ability to illustrate a story. The visual context of Demir’s photograph, a beach on the Southern edge of Europe, near where the historical Europe / Asia divide resides, is poignant. In Ut’s case, the background of billowing smoke, fired by napalm made the context of the conflict clear.

Then there is the political context of what makes the photograph ‘new, news’, how the image frames a debate.

News Timeline

The largest refugee crisis in Europe since the 1930’s has been increasing in intensity, as wars have taken their toll on populations. But it was the 2007—2008 financial crisis, and the consequential rise of the European right that have led the way in framing the debate that Demir’s photograph has so effectively challenged.

We can see for instance, that in 2005 the UKIP share of the vote amounted to 2.3% of the vote, but since the crash, has risen to 12.6%. This has been echoed across Europe.

With the growth in these disparate political movement so the use of negative campaign tactics around the movement of people has increased, which some media organisations have taken a particular interest in covering. One of these tactics has been the purposeful conflation of the terms ‘migrants’ with ‘refugees’, which have two distinct meanings.

It is in this context that Demir’s photograph entered. At a time of daily media coverage (in the UK) from Calais, from Hungary, one image stands to challenge years of a political narrative.

Promoting change

Its effects have been powerful enough to cause widespread revulsion of the refugee, migrant conflation, as seen in contrast to the claim as expressed by UKIP candidate Peter Bucklitsch that the ‘greed’ of Aylan Kurdi parents was the cause of his death.

Capture tweet

The reaction to Demir’s photograph may have taken some by surprise, with the positive campaign #RefugesWelcome that started with German football fans and has since spread.

And it’s causing further change to, even in the leadership and ranks of the Conservative party and beyond.

farron tweetcooper tweet

In just two days over 270,000 people have signed the petition, ‘Britain must accept its fair share of refugees seeking safety in Europe’, prompted by the Independent. A remarkable enough figure considering the Independent’s readership is under 58,000.

Celebrities, some business and faith leaders are lending support to challenge the negative discourse.

These are all welcome additions, on the path it is hoped, to establishing a consistent counter to the negative campaign tactics that have been employed for years.

Never just negative

It is rare that powerful images get to cause such a stir. One reason is various authorities negativity to what, they judge to be ‘negative’ imagery.

Colin Jacobson, in the introduction to his 2002 book ‘Underexposed’ wrote:

‘In recent times, a convenient myth has entered the debate. The public, it is alleged, do not want to be shown too much about the distressing consequences of their leaders’ decisions. Readers wish to be entertained, not overwhelmed with harsh reality. Censorship “by omission” has infiltrated the media as publications have progressively shied away from serious stories about the word.”

This is particularly true for campaigning organisations such as charities prompting the Advertising Standard Authority to issue guidelines on the use of ‘shock‘ tactics, with many others too issuing warnings about their overuse.

This has led to a preference for most to concentrate on positive campaigning, with some communications professionals advising that such an approach is ‘the safest and most common basic tone for campaigning‘ Positive campaigning does work and can be very effective, as I witnessed during my time at global tolerance. It is indeed the safest and most common tone.

But what Nilufer Demir’s photograph demonstrates, in an image that could, if it had been used by a charity, have been considered as being the epitome of a negative campaign, is that photographs are both positive and negative. A seemingly negative image can have positive effects. A ‘negative’’ image, can be used to counter a negative campaign. This is an important lesson for campaigning organisations.

Positive responses, but lasting damage?

Wholly negative approaches have been debated over many years, resulting in swathes of commentary and academic research. It’s been repeatedly noted that revulsion can cause political apathy, such a psychological reaction is even relied upon by the political parties that utilise such tactics. It can also trigger other emotions, prompting a positive counter response, as seen with #refugeeswelcome.

The difference is that whilst it is difficult to maintain momentum in positive campaigning, the inverse is not true. So it is not too surprising to see that it is being argued by researchers that this has profound consequences at the subtlest of levels, our genetics. The uncomfortable truth may well be that the negative leaves a longer lasting impression. It’s why we remember Ut’s photograph, not the subsequent life led by Phan Kim Phuc.


Should Democrats Take Republican Reconciliation Threats Seriously?

For almost a year now, every time budget reconciliation has been in the headline, Republicans have been there to warn that they’ll clog up the process by offering dozens–perhaps hundreds–of amendments on the floor, eating up valuable floor time, and forcing Democrats to take tough votes on controversial issues.

Most recently, Politico quoted a Republican aide laying out the threat: “While debate time is limited, the number and content of amendments are not. This approach to moving health care has a lot of problems, but one Democrats haven’t yet focused on is the number of bad votes they’d have to take to get there. Amendments don’t have to be germane (well, they do, and if they’re not, Dems can move to set them aside, but we can move to waive that; either way, there’s a vote).”Conversations with reconciliation experts suggest that the minority can in fact flood the zone with amendments–but it also shows that Democrats can circumvent them if they want to.

But it’s important to remember: Reconciliation is intended to be an expedited process. It allows for 20 hours of debate, after which all amendments must be disposed of in a so-called “vote-arama.” So all of those amendments (or motions to waive the amendments) must be voted on in rapid succession.

The grey area lies in exactly how Democrats can force an end to the charade once its clear that the Republican tactics are dilatory. That’s uncharted territory–but, as one expert points out, the chair in the Senate–a.k.a. Vice President Joe Biden–has almost unlimited power to make rulings so long as 50 members are willing to go along with them. And if Republican tactics were to go over the line, Democrats would theoretically be able to put a stop to them.

As former Senate Parliamentarian Robert Dove has pointed out, both the Republican strategy, and the Democrats’ way around it, are far outside the traditional uses of the reconciliation process. But, hey, if both sides are exploring the limits of the rules anyway, who knows what will happen.


A Detailed Look at Lacey & Larkin Frontera Fund and Other Civil, Human and Immigrant Groups

There is a global increase in the number of organizations fighting for human, civil and migrants’ rights. The United States has not been exceptional as it has seen a rampant increase in these groups in the last couple of years. Learn more about Jim Larkin and Michael Lacey: http://www.laceyandlarkinfronterafund.org/about-lacey-larkin-frontera-fund/michael-lacey/

The human rights groups fight to strengthen the rule of law by implementing international human rights requirements and upholding civil society. These groups work in line with the UNHCHR (United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights), which is a UN agency mandated to protect human rights around the globe.

Alliance for Justice (AFJ)

AFJ is an American group that is devoted to delivering justice to all the people. It represents many groups that promote progressive values. Its core mandate is to create a free, just and equitable society. It fulfills its mandate through ensuring that the judiciary advances its primary constitutional values and implements equal distribution of human and civil rights.

Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA)

CHIRLA is a California- based nonprofit group that has been tirelessly fighting for immigrant families. The organization also champion for implementation of free mobility human rights without discrimination based on race.

Its core mandate is to create a society whereby all people, immigrants or residents are included and their rights protected.

Lacey and Larkin Frontera Fund

With its headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona, the Lacey and Larkin Frontera Fund is a nonprofit foundation that benefits the Hispanic community that has borne the brunt of the racial hostility and civil right abuses in the state.

Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin founded the group in 2013 after they were compensated for the unlawful arrest by the Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

The two journalists, who also co-founded the Phoenix New Times, were arrested for exposing the misdeeds of the county sheriff. During their case hearing, the county sheriff was found guilty, and the court ordered the county to pay the duo a settlement worth $3.75 million.

The two journalists then decided to use the funds to launch the Lacey and Larkin Frontera Fund to help Mexican Immigrants get equal rights while in the United States. Read more: Phoenix New Times | Wikipedia

The Advocates for Human Rights

Founded in 1983, the organization has strengthened its position in the global human rights movement. The Advocates for Human Rights is an impartial, independent, nonprofit organization that aims at creation and implementation of all-inclusive system locally, regionally and globally.

The organization investigates and exposes the social and moral rot in the society. It also represents refugees and immigrants seeking asylum as well as training groups that advocate for human rights and policymakers.

Clay Siegall And His Dedication Towards Fighting Cancer

Cancer has undoubtedly baffled many in the medical profession due to its resilience. Cancer treatment has also attracted a lot of stakeholders as they struggle to come up with solutions towards dealing with the cancer menace. One of the companies that has made significant contributions towards the elevation of suffering brought about by cancer is Seattle Genetics.

Dr. Clay Siegall is currently the president, chief executive officer and also acts as the chairman to the board of Seattle Genetics. Dr. Clay has served as the company’s CEO since 2002. Having lost his own father to brain cancer when he was in grad school, Dr. Clay developed a drive towards caring and improving the lives of cancer patients. He consequently undertook biomedical studies and has remained dedicated and passionate towards improving the lives of cancer patients.

Dr Clay Siegall is committed to concentrating on his research, for which he uses the latest technology developments with the overall aim of finding solutions towards alleviating the human suffering brought about by cancer. Dr. Clay’s key drive and passion for his job stems from his deep concern towards assisting cancer patients. Dr. Clay has sort the best research methodologies and technology there is in the world and has fully put his heart and soul towards using his research to come up with solutions aimed at combating cancer.

Dr Siegall seeks both private and public fund raising towards raising the necessary funds required to advance his research in cancer. His passion and commitment to his work has earned him several awards including but not limited to being named the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year for the Pacific Northwest. This goes a long way to acknowledge his great impact on Cancer research.

He has also made various publications towards educating the public about his research findings as regards to cancer. Through these publications, the public and especially those affected by the cancer pandemic have a chance to understand on how best to deal with the disease. This has been without a doubt life changing for these people. Dr. Siegall personal zeal and dedication towards eliminating cancer brings a lot of hope to its cancer patients across the globe and his accomplishments are definitely instrumental and life changing across the world.

Why The Traveling Vineyard Has Seen So Much Success

Visit Traveling Vineyard’s Social Media: www.facebook.com/travelingvineyard/

Why Dr. Jennifer Walden Is the Most Sought After Plastic Surgeon

Jennifer Walden is currently working as a plastic surgeon. The American Board of Plastic Surgery certified the devoted woman after completing her fellowship training in cosmetic surgery. Dr. Walden major in facial surgery and aesthetic breast and performs breast augmentation and facial procedures like rhinoplasty. The native Texan was born and raised in Austin. She holds a bachelor’s degree in BA Biology and Medical Doctorate in Salutatorian from The University of Texas. Walden became the president of the Texas Alpha Chapter of Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society.

Career Life

Jennifer Walden completed an internship at Plastic Surgery Associates in Miami and started working in New York for seven years. During her tenure in New York, the talented surgeon took part in clinical trials that contributed to the reestablishment of silicone breast implants. Walden opened a private clinic in Westlake Hills following the birth of her sons to stay close to her family. In 2014, she launched a satellite center in Marble Falls, Texas.

Jennifer Walden was the spokesperson for the ASAPS in an article about labiaplasty. American Way recognized her as one of the best plastic surgeons in the US. Walden merges technology and her practices. She was one of the 24 best beauty surgeons of Harper’s Bazaar in 2014. The American surgeon was the best scientific exhibit candidate and won the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery Award.

Jennifer Walden is a consultant for aesthetic firms including Venus Concept, ThermiAesthetics, Sciton Inc., and Ideal Implant. FOX News, ABC News, VH1, and other media channels featured the plastic surgeon commentator. She is a member of Modern Aesthetics and Plastic Surgery Practice’s Editorial Board of Directors. Dr. Walden is among the few women serving the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery Board of Directors. The surgeon is also a co-author of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.

Todd Lubar – President at TDL Global Ventures

Todd Lubar is the Founder and CEO of the TDL Ventures Real Estate Company that operates in the United States. For over one decades of experience in the real estate industry, Todd Lubar has worked to become part of the solutions to the real estate problems facing his clients in many ways. This also means that he has always developed a fascinating approach to solving the problems facing his clients in the real estate industry. Todd Lubar is a businessman and entrepreneur who has worked in the real estate industry for over two decades to assist most people who are dreaming of owning homes. Todd Lubar is also ranked as the top 25mortgage originators in the industry for over 20 years.

Todd Lubar has also had a taste of Business in several other industries other than the real estate industry. Todd Lubar also owns several businesses in the entertainment industry as well as the mortgage construction industry. Todd Lubar has the needed passion to serve the people and his community to leverage his business in a way that promotes acumen for others for better success.

According to Inspirery.com, Todd Lubar says that the idea about TDL emanated from working in the credit and finance solution institution that issued mortgage loans to clients who were in need of business solutions. For this reason, they worked to develop a new entity that solves these problems using the modern, attractive ways using TDL Ventures Company. Todd Lubar also found a way to eliminate the barriers most clients found when they were seeking solutions in this company. This means using many loans in the industry to develop fascinating business solutions. Todd Lubar came up with the products and programs that give consumers the necessary relief.

Todd Lubar commences his day in the morning by taking a cup of coffee as well as breakfast with his children. He then proceeds to read about the latest news in the country, state, and real estate industry as it affects his business in many ways. Before Todd Lubar heads to the office. He secures some few minutes at the gym for a powerful workout. He does so because he knows he will put into perspective for priorities.

Nick Vertucci Helps Others Enjoy Success in Real Esate

Reaching The World’s Financial Needs-Equity First Holdings

Michael Gove is a journalist by profession a well-known public speaker. Recently he has been trying his luck in politics. Gove led his country to exit from the European Union, Brexit. The man of al jacks has signed a contract with Chartwell speakers who have been acting as agents for famous public speakers including Mitt Romney as well as Stephen Hawking. The public speaking company is seeking the services of Gove and is planning to invite him to speak at corporate conferences and offer his knowledge of how the country will be economically after Brexit as well as touching issues on the referendum. Chartwell did not mention how the much Mike Gove will be earning.

Andrew Bailey is the head of the Financial Conduct Authority a position he has taken from Sam Woods. Woods mentioned that Andrew would be the regulator of the world’s Che Guevara but in his part, Bailey said that his new career was more secure than being the Manager of the England Football. Keiron Sparrowhawk is an author who is trying to emphasize on a good leadership he also holds science brain-based training sessions known as Mycognition where he is known for training influential leaders including Steve Jobs who is apples former Chief Executive Officer.

Equity First Holding is one of the financial institutions that is going where other banks are not heading. The financial institutions lend money to business as well as investors including Rob Terry and Eddy Truell where they use their shares as collateral.Equity First Holdings is an international lender which its primary purpose is to offer alternative lending resolutions. The lending institutions mostly deal with stock loans and margin loans for their clients who need to raise capital instantly and those who may not qualify to get loans from a bank.

Equity first Holdings was established in 2002 and has its Headquarters in Indianapolis Indiana. Through the companies’ transparency, the borrowers can access liquidity that is below the market rate using public traded shares as their security. Since it was founded the organization has experienced tremendous growth and it has been recording a growth of about 30% each year. Equity First Holdings operates and has other offices in other nations including Singapore, Perth, Canada, Hong Kong, Bangkok, London as well as Sydney. It is has a dedicated team that ensures quality loan services and products for its clients.

Nathaniel Ru Makes People Pay Attention to Healthy Food

Nathaniel Ru is someone that has been able to make people change their minds when it comes to fast food establishments. He has created what he refers to as a fast-food alternative called Sweetgreen.

People definitely are excited about this restaurant franchise that he has put in place. It gives you healthy menu choices, but people are still paying fast food prices for a higher caliber of food. It is definitely difficult to overlook something that gives you more than the value that you would assume you could get for your money.

That is what Nathaniel Ru is trying to do with Sweetgreen. He’s trying to give people the opportunity to eat healthy even when they have said that healthy food may not be something that is on their radar.

It is great for people that are interested in this type of food to become much more acquainted with eating healthy if they are introduced to something that is delectable and cost-efficient. These are the main two things that people are going to look for regardless of what they are eating. Learn more about Nathaniel Ru: http://www.forbes.com/pictures/ekeg45fe/nicolas-jammet-nathaniel-ru-jonathan-neman-co-founders-sweetgreen-262627/

Nathaniel Ru had insight on this, and he allowed people to become acquainted with Sweetgreen by doing just this. He made menu items that were affordable and delectable. This would prove to be the best thing that he can possibly do when it came to creating a menu for the people that were fascinated by the concept of healthy food options.

There is a large amount of interest in Sweetgreen, and venture capitalists have managed to put a lot of time into establishing this type of environment.

Nathaniel Ru is experimenting with different things like the concept of the cashless restaurant. He is also making seasonal menus and creating different menus based on the different cities that the Sweetgreen locations are created in.

All of this creates a lot of talk about Sweetgreen because different restaurants have different concepts. It takes a lot of money to differentiate and do different things like this, but Nathaniel Ru has a ton of investors that are willing to help him see this through.

That is how he has been able to become as successful as he is so far. He has managed to put a lot of time into creating a platform that caters to a wide range of consumers from different areas. He has made people pay attention to healthy food.

How Gregory Aziz has grown his Career

National Steel Car is a Hamilton, Ontario-based company that is recognized for its excellence in the manufacture of the state-of-the-art railroad freight cars. The business is owned by Gregory James Aziz who is a 68 years old entrepreneur. Aziz is an alumnus of the University of Western Ontario where he was awarded a degree in economics. His career started in 1971 by serving Affiliated Foods, which is an enterprise that wholesales fresh foods. The firm is owned by his family, and he served as its manager for 16 years. During his tenure as the head of Affiliated Foods, the company grew from being a local business to a global importer that served the United States and Eastern Canada. The firm bought products from South Africa, Europe, and South America.

In the early 1990s, Gregory J. Aziz moved to New York where he ventured into the investment banking business. He made significant earnings from the sector and was able to acquire National Steel Car in 1994. The enterprise was owned by Dofasco at that time, and its productivity was low. Aziz has committed himself to growing National Steel Car into a company that offers top-notch railroad freight cars in North America. He has built the business by using unique approaches such as utilizing innovative engineering designs and developing a competent workforce. Greg invested a lot of capital that facilitated the growth of the firm’s productivity from 3,500 cars in 1994 to more than 12,000 in 1999. The number of employees who worked at National Steel Car also rose from 600 to over 3000.

The railroad steel car manufacturer has managed to be a leader in the industry due to its outstanding innovation. It is currently striving to increase its productivity so that it can penetrate the international market. National Steel Car is acknowledged for being the only North American firm of its kind that has been awarded the ISO 900I:2008 certification. The standards of the business enabled it to be acknowledged by TTZ SECO in 1996. Despite being successful, the company is still committed to retaining its reputation as a top manufacturer in the industry.

The Hamilton community appreciates the generosity of Greg Aziz. His firm is a benefactor to foundations such as the Salvation Army, the Hamilton Opera, and Theater Aquarius. National Steel Car has also developed excellent relationships with its employees, and it invites them to Christmas parties every year. The company works with its staff in organizing food drives for local food banks.


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Give 3D Parallax Effect to the 2D Images Using Depth Map

Fatik Owais Aug 03, 2017

3D Parallax effect if used correctly can add cool interactivity to your website that can grab your visitor’s attention. There are certain websites that have done excellent implementation of mouse following parallax effect, and in this tutorial we are going to replicate such effects.

Traditionally, to create such effects; a photograph is used on which layers of elements are added and on mouse movement, these different layers move with different speeds giving the illusion of depth. As seen in the example below, the scene is divided into multiple layers. The layer that will move in slower speed and cover shorter distance will give the effect of being nearer to the observer.

Our client at Arpatech demanded to have such effects, but here’s the catch; it has to be applied on a real life photograph of a room like below.

Such complex scenery would require precise cutting of objects through Photoshop and then to make multiple layers out of them. And still, it would not look natural as the scene have not much distinct elements to play with, most objects in this image are blending with one another. Even, if we use the layers method, we will end up making the landing page heavy as the layers would be in PNG format due to the need of transparency. With the new method JPGs can be used, significantly reducing the load time of the page.

By the end of the tutorial you will be able to achieve this result:

Pretty cool, considering that it can be achieved in a matter of minutes starting from just a normal 2d image.

The secret sauce behind it, is depth map. Apple uses this technique to create stunning portrait mode photos that replicates the blur background effect of big lens cameras like DSLRs. What depth map do is to provide distant information of each pixel in the photograph. iPhone 7 calculate the distance through the dual camera setup.

Luckily, we can create our own depth map using our own perception and a single Photoshop brush. Let’s get started:

How Depth Map Works:

To create a depth map, first you need to understand how depth maps work. It adds distance information to a 2d image, and it do it using only the shades of black. The darker the black is the further away, it belongs in the scene and the lighter the black is the nearer it belongs. Complete white color means that the object is the nearest.

In the above image the left one is actual RGB image, and the right one is its depth map. As, we can see the petals that are in lighter tone, and as the objects are distancing the tone of them are getting darker. In 3d terms, the tone of the color is representing the z-axis information of pixels.

Creating Depth Map Using Photoshop:

  1. Open your photograph in Photoshop

2) Create a new layer, fill it black and turn down the layer opacity to around 50% so you can see the original image below.

3) Turn down the Hardness of brush to 0% and start painting over on the black fill layer. Paint the objects with light tone that are nearer, and paint the objects with dark tone that are further.

4) Turn up the opacity of the painted layer to 100% so you can see the final result.

It don’t look great, but it gets the job done. And we deliberately don’t have to be precise with the edges, it have to be shifted outwards to give the best result. Save the file as jpg and make sure it is of the same dimensions as the original image.

Setting Up The HTML Page:

To interpret the depth map, we are using pixi.js library’s Displacement Filtre.

Here is the complete code. Feel free to play with the values to adjust the effect according to your liking.

Change the original.jpg with the filename of your original 2d image file. And change depthmap.jpg with your newly created depth map.

See the Pen Mouse Follow Parallax Effect Using Depth Map by @fatik on CodePen.

Using this method you can give subtle 3d parallax effect to 2d images in no time without running into much complexities. Thanks to Pixi library, the animations are very smooth.

Fatik Owais

Fatik Owais

Fatik loves to play creative roles in the development of great products at Arpatech.
Fatik Owais

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Category: Molluscs: Cephalopods

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The Cephalopoda are a group of molluscs characterised by large heads, muscular tentacles (modifications of the molluscan 'foot') and in most cases internalisation or loss of the typical molluscan shell. They move about in the oceans with the aid of fins, tentacles and jet-propulsion (water is taken into the gills and forced out through a fold in the soft mantle, termed the hyponome). Cephalopods include the octopuses, squid and cuttlefish, well known for their incredible colour-changing chromatophores and ability to squirt ink (which is convergent with gastropods such as the sea hare Aplysia ). Other important cephalopod groups include the pearly Nautilus, and the extinct Ammonoidea (including ammonites and goniatites), both of which have external, coiled shells.

Cephalopods are a rich source of insights into evolutionary convergence, perhaps the most celebrated example being the camera-eye, which includes also the pupil, correction for spherical aberration, retinal sensitivity, polarized vision, lateral asymmetry of eye use, and crystallin proteins. Other convergences in the sensory systems include the lateral line system and the oculomotor balancing reflex. The cephalopod brain shows interesting convergences, both in terms of anatomy (e.g. blood-brain barrier and cerebellum-like structures) as well as intelligence manifested in aspects of learning, memory, psychology, personality, social play and even a sort of tool use.

Complex behaviour among cephalopods includes lekking and use of a nuptial dance during courtship. Some cephalopods, notably cuttlefish and octopus, show highly accomplished mimicry and camouflage, based largely on changes in the colour and pattern of their chromatophores. Aspects of convergence in terms of anatomy range from the vertebrate-like structure of the cephalopod aorta to the possession of 'statolith' balancing organs and in one octopus (Ocythoe) even a fish-like swim-bladder. Regarding limbs and locomotion, the movement of octopus tentacles rather remarkably converges on the operation of a jointed limb even though there is effectively no anatomical similarity, and a number of small octopuses and the cuttlefish Metasepia pfefferi are known to engage in a form of bipedal locomotion.

Examples of convergence at the molecular level include the blood pigment haemocyanin, which is found in most molluscs and also arthropods, and elastic proteins in the aorta, which are reminiscent of those in the vertebrate heart. Powerful bioluminescence is employed by certain deep sea squid, and other squid have been found to possess bioluminescent 'reverse eyes', uniting them with many other marine and terrestrial animals that employ bioluminescence for signalling or vision.

The extinct ammonoids (ammonites and their predecessors such as goniatites) are well known for their coiled shell, and within the ammonoids we see interesting examples of convergence of shell shape. In addition to echoing patterns of change in shell shape in gastropods, a particularly important example of convergence among ammonoids concerns the pattern of morphospace re-occupation after a mass extinction.

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Topic Title Teaser text Availablity
Light producing chemicals: how to make bioluminescence

Bioluminescence in marine animals n/a Not Available
Tauropine and octopine dehydrogenase n/a Not Available
Lateral line system in fish and other animals

Some cavefish are completely blind, so how do they manage to navigate through their environment with astonishing ease?

Dicyemids and chromidinids: enigmatic endoparasites

Dicyemids and chromidinids are tiny, worm-like or 'vermiform' creatures that typically live inside the kidneys ('renal organs') of cephalopod molluscs such as octopus, squid and cuttlefish.

Mimicry in fish and other marine animals n/a Not Available
Ink production in cephalopods and gastropods

A series of striking convergences can be found in the sea-hares (Aplysia), a group of gastropods and only remotely related to the cephalopods.  Not only do they emit ink clouds (the colour is derived from ingested red algae), but they also employ chemical cues that assist in defense.

Gliding reptiles

Hearts in cephalopods and vertebrates

There is a striking convergence between the aorta of the cephalopod and vertebrate heart, notably in its structure and the employment of elastic proteins.

Pinhole eyes in Nautilus and giant clam

The pinhole eye has evolved not only in the Pearly Nautilus, but also in another group of molluscs, the bivalves and specifically the giant clams (Tridacna).

Sleep in animals

Suffering from insomnia? Fruit flies do as well...

Haemocyanin in arthropods and molluscs

Transparent tissues: eyes, bodies and reflective surfaces

Play in birds, mammals and octopus

Not Available
“Colour vision” in Firefly squid

The Japanese firefly squid (Watasenia scintillans), which inhabits the deep ocean, has three visual pigments located in different parts of the retina that are likely to allow colour discrimination as they each have distinct spectral sensitivities.

Bipedal locomotion in vertebrates and cephalopods

In effect, two of octopus' arms are applied sucker-side down to the sea-floor and unfurl along their length to provide a rolling locomotion that kinematically can be classified as walking.

Not Available
Statoliths and balance in animals

An almost universal, but convergent, method to detect changes in orientation is for small grains (statoliths) to be attached to fine hairs, whose movement triggers nervous impulses.

Not Available
Retinal sensitivity changes in vertebrates and cuttlefish

In vertebrates the sensitivity of the retina changes during the growth of the animal. In invertebrates this only occurs in the cephalopods, or at least cuttlefish, where this sensitivity has been acquired convergently.

Not Available
Polarized light detection in arthropods, fish and cephalopods

In bees detection of polarized light from different quadrants of the sky is an important component in their navigation.

Not Available
Simple tool use in owls and cephalopods

Personality in vertebrates and cephalopods

Not Available
Lekking in birds, fish, mammals and cephalopods

Not Available
Swim bladders of fish and the octopus Ocythoe

Swim bladders have evolved independently in fish and in Ocythoe octopus females.

Not Available
Octopus arm function

If you want to see a truly remarkable example of convergence, then present an octopus with a piece of food and have a high-speed camera ready…

Mimicry in insects and other arthropods

Defensive mimicry is usually Batesian, where an innocuous species adopts the colouration of a toxic species, but Mullerian mimicry is also known whereby one species, already toxic, converges on the colouration of a more common toxic species.

Not Available
Blood-brain barrier of vertebrates, cephalopods and other invertebrates

A very important component of complex brains is an effective barrier between the blood vascular system and the brain, both to regulate electrolyte balance (e.g. potassium) and exclude potentially harmful substances.

Not Available
Asymmetric eye use in octopus, dolphins and birds

Not Available
Camouflage and mimicry in cephalopods

The most familiar examples of colour change in cephalopods are related to camouflage, but there are also striking examples of sexual and defensive (Batesian) mimicry.

Not Available
Sexual mimicry in mammals and cephalopods

Sexual mimicry is widespread, and the most famous example is probably the male-like genitalia in the females of the hyaena.

Not Available
Bioluminescent reverse eyes in squid

Normally one thinks of an eye as a structure that allows light to pour into the body, but in at least some squid (cephalopods) the opposite has been achieved.

Not Available
Learning and memory in vertebrates and cephalopods

Not Available
Cephalopod brains: convergence with vertebrates

Cephalopod brains show some striking convergences with those of vertebrates, including optic lobes and a cerebellum-like region.

Not Available
Ammonoids: fossil insights into convergence

Ammonoids, perhaps most familiar from the Mesozoic ammonites, are abundant as fossils and typically occur as planispiral forms. They show extensive homeomorphy, that is the same shapes repeatedly evolve.

Not Available
Camera eyes of cephalopods

The remarkable similarity between the camera eyes of cephalopods and vertebrates is one of the best-known examples of evolutionary convergence.

Reflective tissues

Other cephalopods achieve reflectivity by employing collagen fibrils, of which the deep-sea Vampyroteuthis is perhaps the most striking example.

Not Available
Ultraviolet (UV) absorption in vertebrates and cephalopods

In some vertebrates (fish, mammals) and cephalopods we find an interesting convergence whereby some of the incoming ultraviolet is screened out.

Not Available
Octopus and other cephalopods: convergence with vertebrates

Camera eyes in vertebrates, cephalopods and other animals

Camera eyes are superb optical devices, so it is not surprising that they have evolved several times. But why, of all animals, in the brainless jellyfish? Or for that matter in a slow-moving snail?