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Congress Knows That Science Is Important
On Wednesday, March 19th, a group of researchers organized by the Society for Neuroscience descended on Capitol Hill to let Congress know how important it was to reverse the budget cuts inflicted by the sequester and increase funding to the NIH and NSF. Biomedical research is important to the long term health and prosperity of Americans, they said. It creates jobs. It can spark innovative new business sectors. It contributes to the welfare of our soldiers. It distinguishes us internationally. It alleviates the economic burden of sad, costly and chronic health issues. In fact, it is the only hope against increasingly recognized but painfully untreatable disorders like autism, Alzheimer’s, MS and PTSD.
-->Extra Virgin Olive Oil Protects Against Alzheimer's Disease - Study
Consumption of extra virgin olive oil has been linked to reduced risk of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and its benefit may lie in one component of olive oil that helps shuttle the abnormal AD proteins out of the brain.
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Why Sea Snakes With Shrunken Heads Evolved
A team of scientists has uncovered how some sea snakes have developed 'shrunken heads' - literally smaller physical features than their related species.
A large head would seem to be a welcome trait for sea snakes, which typically have to swallow large spiny fish. However, there are some circumstances where it wouldn't be very useful: sea snakes that feed by probing their front ends into narrow, sand eel burrows have evolved comically small heads.
Hunters Criticized In Africa
Hunting in Africa has halved the number of primates, according to estimates, but that is not the extend of the problem. Primates help with dispersal of seed and the reduction in primates has led to a reduction in the numbers of fruit trees, say biologists from Lund University in Sweden.
Felling and clear-cutting is not the only problem in Africa; the researchers studied rainforests in Nigeria, where the local population hunts for food, and found that the animals that are hunted include almost all mammals, including gorillas and chimpanzees and some small species of monkey.
Planck Helps Scientists Read The Cosmic Writing On The Wall
Thanks to a supersensitive space telescope and some sophisticated supercomputing, scientists from the international Planck collaboration have made the closest reading yet of the most ancient story in our universe: the cosmic microwave background (CMB).
Today, the team released preliminary results based on the Planck observatory's first 15 months of data. They show that the universe is 100 million years older than we thought with more matter and less dark energy.
Decoding the Cosmos
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Planck Shows What The Universe Looked Like As A 'Child'
The mission of the ESA Planck satellite is to observe the Universe of the past, seeing back in time, right after the Big Bang.
The image that the Planck scientists revealed today is that of the Universe as a child, dating back to about 380,000 years after the Big Bang, when its temperature was similar to that of the most external layer of a star today.
The Ethanol Daisy Chain: Nitrogen And The Continuous Corn Yield Penalty
Mandates and subsidies have created an artificial green energy industry. In the case of ethanol, that has led to escalating corn prices. Higher prices have encouraged some farmers to switch to growing corn continuously and they are seeing unusually high yield reductions.
A six-year study has identified three key factors affecting yield in continuous corn (CC) systems.
Incidental Genetic Findings - Guidelines For Clinicians
The handling of "incidental findings" in clinical genome and exome sequencing has been addressed by the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG).
Incidental findings are health-related interpretations of a patient's genetic code that are unrelated to the primary reason for ordering the genetic testing. For example, if a clinician orders exome or genome sequencing to analyze genes related to a patient's cardiac condition, the laboratory will already have information about all the other genes in hand and could examine genes for something like cancer predisposition with relative ease.
Is The Universe Perfect?
The information extracted from Planck’s new map provides an excellent confirmation of the standard model of cosmology at an unprecedented accuracy, setting a new benchmark in our manifest of the contents of the Universe - but because precision of Planck’s map is so high, it also made it possible to reveal some peculiar unexplained features that may well require new physics to be understood.
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Planck Results Are Out!
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SMIM1: Vel-Negative Blood Problem Explained
In the early 1950's, a 66-year-old woman with colon cancer received a blood transfusion - but she suffered a severe rejection of the transfused blood. When writing the case study, the medical journal Revue D'Hématologie identified her only as "Patient Vel."
It was determined that Mrs. Vel had developed a potent antibody against some unknown molecule found on the red blood cells of most people in the world—but not found on her own red blood cells. But the molecule was unknown, nobody could find it. A blood mystery began, and, from her case, a new blood type, "Vel-negative," was described in 1952.
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What Is It Like To Be A Batshit Crazy On Teleology And Darwin
Thomas Nagel wrote one lucky paper back almost half a century ago, titled “What Is it Like to Be a Bat?”. That title went down so well, he has basically made a living from this alone ever since. Recently, he went fully down the path trodden by many a noble prize winner: Pseudoscience! I did also not believe this initially, but do read outtakes (e.g.
-->Earth's Tectonic Plates Are 'Lubricated'
Scientists have found a layer of liquefied molten rock in Earth's mantle that may be acting as a lubricant for the sliding motions of the planet's massive tectonic plates. The discovery was made at the magma layer at the Middle America trench offshore Nicaragua. Using advanced seafloor electromagnetic imaging technology pioneered atScripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Dieg , the scientists imaged a 16 mile-thick layer of partially melted mantle rock below the edge of the Cocos plate where it moves underneath Central America.
March Madness: Scientifically Predicting The NCAA Basketball Tournament National Championship
Can a computer predict the winner of the NCAA basketball tournament, called March Madness by fans and the NCAA corporate juggernaut alike?
If so, Science 2.0 will save you some time: third seed Florida will be your national champion.
The prediction is from Georgia Tech's Logistic Regression/Markov Chain (LRMC) college basketball ranking system, a computerized model that has correctly chosen the men's basketball national champ in three of the last five years.
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UK Doctors Who Have Given Placebos: 97 Percent
If you're a taxpayer in the UK, you get medical care for free - even if it's nothing at all.
A survey conducted by the Universities of Oxford and Southampton found that 97% of UK doctors registered with the General Medical Council (GMC) have prescribed placebo treatments to patients at least once in their career.
'Impure' placebos are treatments that are unproven, such as antibiotics for suspected viral infections, or more commonly non-essential physical examinations and blood tests performed to reassure patients. 'Pure' placebos are treatments such as sugar pills or saline injections which contain no active ingredients. 97% of doctors have used 'impure' placebo treatments while 12% have used 'pure' placebos.
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Beauty And Attractiveness
However, I would argue that these are precisely the wrong questions to be asking.
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Has Voyager 1 Left The Solar System? Cosmic Rays Say Yes
Beginning a few years ago, speculation began about when Voyager I would leave the solar system. There was no sure way to know, the solar system has no official boundary, so scientists were looking for signs.
35 years after its launch, it seems Voyager 1 appears to have traveled beyond the influence of the Sun and exited the heliosphere, the region of space dominated by the Sun and its wind of energetic particles, and which is thought to be enclosed, bubble-like, in the surrounding interstellar medium of gas and dust that pervades the Milky Way galaxy.
Architeuthis Dux: Release The Kraken - Onto Video
The giant squid is extremely rarely seen but remains are found in the formalin or ethanol collections of various museums.
An international team has learned that no matter where in the world they are found, giant squid are so closely related at the genetic level that they represent a single, global population - despite previous statements, they are a single species worldwide. In 1857 the Danish naturalist Japetus Steenstrup determined that this beast was the same animal that gave rise to centuries of sailors' tales about monsters in the deep, later immortalized by writers such as Jules Verne and Herman Melville. He gave it the name Architeuthis dux.
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Can People Laugh At Themselves - Study
“…there is no authoritative definition of the sense of humor, and it is also not yet clear what ‘laughing at oneself’ is, or if it even actually occurs in people’s everyday behavior.”
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