Stephan:   Here is the latest on the death and resuscitation trend, which includes research into Near Death Experiences (NDEs). What I see is the growing awareness that there needs to be more rigor, and that comfortable old physicalist assumptions must be discarded if real development is to occur. I see papers in half a dozen disciplines, and I am fascinated by the papers I see written by obviously materialist/physicalist scientists who have pushed the physiological envelope as far as it will go and are now forced by their own data to consider nonlocal consciousness. Here's one example that immediately comes to mind: Research into NDEs started out being retrospective anecdote gathering, a sort of cultural anthropological approach, subject to all sorts of criticism. Then much more attention was paid to gathering, again retrospectively, and the conditions and context of the experiences. Then, thanks to Pim van Lommel we got a good prospective study (the one he published in no less than The Lancet). At the same time the processes of the brain moved into the quantum level. Physicalist deniers couldn't make the events go way, particularly the ones that produced verifiable information, so the argument became more and more arcance about dying brain chemistry. Thanks to researchers like Sam Parnia that criticism is now falling to pieces, because it is physiologically unsustainable. A conclusion that is continually being reinforced with each passing month as cardiovascular resuscitation becomes more and more effective and refined, and the times between brain death and what amounts to resurrection extend and become more common -- there are now accounts measured in multiple hours -- and more and more tightly controlled NDEs occur. And it is worth noting that these studies are being reported in major journals. Fact motivated change is coming, and the world looks very different.