Science2.0
Should Evolution Be A Law Rather Than A Theory?
Seven words that make my blood boil.
This same point has been made in every evolution-creation debate there has ever been, and it provokes the same exasperated response from the evolution camp every time.
"Evolution is both a fact AND a theory. You're misunderstanding scientific terminology. What about the theory of gravity; if you don't believe it then you don't just float away!"
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Anti-Smoking Ads That Work Are Not The Most Shocking Ones
In a recent study, an area of the brain that initiates behavioral changes had greater activation in smokers who watched anti-smoking ads with strong arguments than ads with clever tricks like loud sounds and unexpected twists - and those smokers had significantly less nicotine metabolites in their urine when tested a month after viewing those ads.
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CP Violation In D Mesons: New Physics Or Standard Physics ?
First of all, CP violation is intriguing because of the depth of the concept: proof of that be that it is not at all easy to explain it to outsiders (I will make an attempt below, but I am likely to fail!).
Second, its elusive nature makes it even more mysterious and difficult to study: only a few subatomic physical systems exhibit it, and the effect is visible only as a modification of measurable quantities at the level of a few parts in a thousand.
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Statistical Downscaling Says Hawaii Will Get Less Rain Due To Global Warming
Rainfall over the Hawaiian Islands has been declining since 1978.
Is the drying trend due to global warming? Yes, says a team of researchers who found that climate models don't have enough resolution to capture the diverse rainfall pattern over Hawaii, where dry and wet areas often lie only a mile or even less apart, and so devised a method called 'statistical downscaling.'
They first got a take on the effects of the general drying trend on local heavy-rain days by reanalyzing observations from 1978 to 2010 at 12 rain-gauge stations spread throughout the islands. Studying hundreds of weather patterns during such days, they identified the typical atmospheric circulation patterns in the North Pacific that favor heavy rains over Hawaii.
Bacterial Vaginosis - More Common Than Yeast Infections And A Risk For Premature Births, STDs
Bacterial vaginosis is a condition that occurs when the typical mix of microbes in the vagina is knocked off-kilter, sometimes resulting in a change in the consistency of vaginal fluids and an unpleasant odor. Bacterial vaginosis is diagnosed through examination of the vagina and tests of the vaginal fluids and then typically treated with antibiotics.
The condition affects as many as one in every three women, making it more common than yeast infections. But bacterial vaginosis often does not cause significant symptoms, leaving many women unaware they have it, but it has been linked to preterm birth and increased risk of sexually transmitted diseases. New research points to a common species of bacteria as an important contributor to bacterial vaginosis.
Water, By Jove: Shoemaker-Levy 9 Impact Still Evident Today In Jupiter's Atmosphere
On March 24th, 1993, astronomers David Levy and Carolyn and Eugene M. Shoemaker discovered the first comet observed orbiting a planet rather than the Sun. Named Shoemaker-Levy 9 (SL9), it was found to be composed of 21 fragments. Soon after that, orbital studies showed that the comet had passed within Jupiter's Roche limit in July 1992. Inside this limit, the planet's tidal forces are strong enough to disintegrate a body held together by its own gravity, thus explaining SL9's fragmentation.
Phase IIb Aviator Trial Shows High Viral Response Rates In Patient Types With HCV Genotype 1
Results from "Aviator," AbbVie's phase IIb clinical trial of its investigational direct-acting antivirals (DAAs) for the treatment of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, continue to demonstrate high sustained viral response (SVR) rates against genotype 1 HCV, across patient types.
Data show greater than 90 percent SVR were achieved in patients new to treatment and in patients who had previously failed treatment with pegylated interferon and ribavirin (null responders).
Diagnostic Errors More Costly Than Treatment Mistakes
At least when it comes to an analysis of malpractice lawsuits, diagnostic errors - not surgical mistakes or medication overdoses - accounted for the largest fraction of claims, the most severe patient harm, and the highest total of penalty payouts. Diagnosis-related payments amounted to $38.8 billion between 1986 and 2010, they found.
The new analysis looked only at a subset of claims, those that rose to the level of a malpractice payout, but they estimate the number of patients suffering misdiagnosis-related, potentially preventable, significant permanent injury or death annually in the United States ranges from 80,000 to 160,000.
No Known Benefits Of Suicide Screening In Primary Care Settings
Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States. Statistics show that 38 percent of suicidal adults and 90 percent of youths had visited their primary care physicians in the 12 months prior to committing suicide.
An evidence review finds that while there are screening tools to help physicians identify adults at risk for suicide, there's no evidence that using these screening tools in primary care will actually prevent suicides. In adolescents, there are no proven primary care-relevant screening tools to identify suicide risk.
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force reviewed evidence for upcoming recommendations on suicide screening and treatment for adults and adolescents and issued a paper.
Transdifferentiation: Antibody Directly Transforms Bone Marrow Cells Into Brain Cells
Researchers have found a way to turn bone marrow stem cells directly into brain cells, bypassing current cumbersome techniques and bringing about the possibility of simpler and safer methods. Stem cell therapies derived from patients' own cells are widely hoped to one day treat spinal cord injuries, strokes and other conditions throughout the body, with no immune rejection.
"These results highlight the potential of antibodies as versatile manipulators of cellular functions," said Richard A. Lerner of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI, principal investigator for the new study. "This is a far cry from the way antibodies used to be thought of—as molecules that were selected simply for binding and not function."
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Are Athletes The Biggest Victims Of Stereotype Threat On College Campuses?
Blanket stereotypes are bad but they often come into existence for a reason; the problem becomes when everyone is labeled with the same brush. There is a common belief that some schools, high school and college, are giving athletes an easier time because they have physical skills but not academic ones, for example, and so all athletes become considered "dumb jocks".
Are college athletes victims of stereotype threat the way sociologists contend women and minorities in science classes are?
Rivers Are 'Horizontal Cooling Towers' Says Study
Thermoelectric power plants interact with climate, hydrology, and aquatic ecosystems while rivers serve as "horizontal cooling towers" — but at a cost to the environment, says a new analysis.
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Satellites Will Get Treated To 3 Coronal Mass Ejections
A coronal mass ejection (CME) is when our sun sends billions of tons of solar particles into space. A CME can affect electronic systems in satellites and NASA recently saw three.
Structual Balance: Rock Hyrax Has Frenemies Too
Humans navigate complex social situations in deciding who to befriend or to abandon - a "frenemy" is someone who is both friend and enemy while the old military saying is that 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'.
Animal social networks also use sophistication in judging social configurations and a new paper in Animal Behaviour applied a long-standing theory in social psychology called "structural balance."
How Your Brain Finds A Needle In A Haystack
How do we often find something tiny in a large area?
When our brains begin a targeted search, various visual and non-visual regions of the brain mobilize to track down that person, animal or thing. That means that if we're looking for a youngster lost in a crowd, the brain areas usually dedicated to recognizing other objects, or even the areas attuned to abstract thought, shift their focus and join the search party. The brain rapidly becomes highly focused child-finder, and redirects resources it uses for other mental tasks.
Widening The Net - The Capture Of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
Whenever there is a high profile criminal act like the Boston Marathon Attack, we usually hear from the media that "the net is closing" on a suspect. In this age of rapid communication, surely it is more often the widening of the net that leads law enforcement agencies to the suspects. Thanks to science, a communications net can be established very rapidly and globally. Thanks to science there can be no hiding place for a high profile fugitive from justice.
The Dragnet
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Are We Still Alone? - Humanity's Quest For A Friend
None of that matters.
The most important question is first; is life easy or hard?
Without an answer to that question, the rest is schoolyard nonsense.
I'm equally disturbed at how blithely we regard our own dominance. It's as if there is no question that the universe was created for humans to use and abuse. -->
The Benefits Of Being Uninformative
Professors Dina Mayzlin and Jiwoong Shin have identified ways in which advertising that is deliberately devoid of any attribute information can (sometimes) help to promote sales.
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Wildfires Dump Massive Amounts Of Charcoal Into The Worlds' Oceans
Wildfires turn millions of hectares of vegetation into charcoal each year but it wouldn't seem like it ends up in the oceans.
Yet researchers have found that this charcoal does not remain in the soil, as previously thought. Instead, it is transported to the sea by rivers and thus enters the carbon cycle. The researchers analyzed water samples from all over the world. They demonstrated that soluble charcoal accounts for ten percent of the total amount of dissolved organic carbon.
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The Politics Of Pharmaceuticals: Post-Election Government Impact On The Industry
Pharmaceuticals don't have a discovery problem, or a financing one, they have a political one that impedes everything else. Politics have a greater direct effect on the pharmaceutical industry than anything else in the US, and correspondingly drug companies makes considerable investments in election campaigns, just like unions and any other special interest reliant on government.
The November elections kept the face of Washington the same as 2010, with President Obama in the White House, Democrats still in control of the Senate and Republicans still controlling the House of Representatives - but that means the pharmaceutical industry will be impacted in a variety of ways.
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