moonbuggy

`The government has decided that food from cloned animals is safe to eat and does not require special labeling. [..]

Consumer groups say labels are a must, because surveys have shown people to be uncomfortable with the idea of cloned livestock.

However, FDA concluded that cloned animals are “virtually indistinguishable” from conventional livestock and that no identification is needed to judge their safety for the food supply.’

`Suppose an anthropoid were taken into a typical human family at the day of birth and reared as a child. Suppose he were fed upon a bottle, clothed, washed, bathed, fondled, and given a characteristically human environment; that he were spoken to like the human infant from the moment of parturition; that he had an adopted human mother and an adopted human father . . . . The experimental situation par excellence should indeed be attained if this technique were refined one step farther by adopting such a baby ape into a human family with one child of approximately the ape’s age.’

`China’s government, which suppresses a range of information deemed threatening to national security, now wants to keep weather forecasts from falling into the wrong hands, state press has reported.

New regulations to take effect next year will clamp down on the illegal acquisition of Chinese meteorological information by foreigners, the China Daily newspaper reported.

The China Meteorological Administration (CMA) has identified about 20 breaches of weather security since 2000, the paper said.’

`Taking a drink with sugar-free versions of mixers, such as tonic water, cola, bitter lemon and lemonade, produces higher blood-alcohol levels.

The findings were revealed by Dr Chris Rayner, of the Royal Adelaide Hospital in Australia, at a conference in the United States. Dr Rayner, the lead author of the study, found that combining alcohol with a mixer containing artificial sweeteners resulted in significantly higher levels of blood-alcohol than the same drink taken with an ordinary mixer.’

`Siberian scientists believe that addiction to alcohol and narcotics, as well as depression, suicidal thoughts and psychosomatic diseases occur when an individual loses his or her interest in life. The absence of the will to live is caused with decreasing production of endorphins – the substance, which is known as the hormone of happiness. If a depressed individual receives a physical punishment, whipping that is, it will stir up endorphin receptors, activate the ‘production of happiness’ and eventually remove depressive feelings.

Russian scientists recommend the following course of the whipping therapy: 30 sessions of 60 whips on the buttocks in every procedure. A group of drug addicts volunteered to test the new method of treatment: the results can be described as good and excellent.’

`Imagine watching your cannabis-smoking son stab himself three times in the stomach right in front of you – and later having to deal with his suicide.

Imagine watching your beautiful daughter become a schizophrenic after using drugs and having to take over the job of caring for her baby.

Imagine realising you had a mental health problem and were seeking help, only to be turned away because the mental health service classified your problem as drug-related.

For years the parents of cannabis users have seen a link between their child’s use of cannabis and mental illness.

Now evidence is emerging that they are right.’

`A Japanese civil servant has described for the first time how he survived for more than three weeks in a mountain forest without food or water in what doctors believe is the first known case of a human in hibernation. [..]

When a climber found him 24 days later, Mr Uchikoshi’s body temperature had fallen to just 22 degrees, his pulse was barely discernible and he was suffering from multiple organ failure and blood loss. Doctors who treated him believe he lost consciousness after his fall and his body’s survival instincts kicked in, sending him into a state akin to hibernation as the temperature on the mountain dropped as low as 10 degrees.’

`More than nine out of 10 Americans, men and women alike, have had premarital sex, according to a new study. The high rates extend even to women born in the 1940s, challenging perceptions that people were more chaste in the past.

“This is reality-check research,” said the study’s author, Lawrence Finer. “Premarital sex is normal behavior for the vast majority of Americans, and has been for decades.” [..]

The study found women virtually as likely as men to engage in premarital sex, even those born decades ago. Among women born between 1950 and 1978, at least 91 percent had had premarital sex by age 30, he said, while among those born in the 1940s, 88 percent had done so by age 44.’

`Scientists say they have made the world’s strongest nanowire, reaching the theoretical limits of what they had designed. [..]

“The ultimate strength we report is the highest recorded for any semiconductor material system and is at the theoretically predicted limit,” says Sader, who was involved in measuring the strength of the wires using an atomic force microscope.

“This indicates that these nanowires are near perfect materials.” [..]

They then tested the strength by placing it across a small trench and manipulating it sideways. They found it could bend and stretch farther than any nanowire made previously, sustaining 15 gigapascals before snapping. If the wire were one centimetre in diameter it could hold up to 100 tonnes without breaking, Sader says.’

`In a discovery that has stunned even those behind it, scientists at a Toronto hospital say they have proof the body’s nervous system helps trigger diabetes, opening the door to a potential near-cure of the disease that affects millions of Canadians.

Diabetic mice became healthy virtually overnight after researchers injected a substance to counteract the effect of malfunctioning pain neurons in the pancreas.

“I couldn’t believe it,” said Dr. Michael Salter, a pain expert at the Hospital for Sick Children and one of the scientists. “Mice with diabetes suddenly didn’t have diabetes any more.”‘

`After 20 years of trial and error, scientists at Wolong boast they can now breed pandas at will. To counter the suggestion that the captive animals may be too naive about the birds and the bears, the keepers have provided sex education in the form of wildlife videos – dubbed “panda porn” – showing the animals mating in the forests.

To boost sex drive, they once tried the remedy used by countless millions of humans: Viagra. “We’ll never do that again,” Mr Zhang says. “The panda was excited for 24 hours.”

Another challenge was the risk of in-breeding. To widen the genetic stock, researchers had to come up with a way to find a mate for even the least popular females. How did they do that? “We tricked them,” Mr Zhang says with a smile. [..]

“When the males find out, they get very angry and start fighting the female,” Mr Zhang says. “We have had to use firecrackers and a water hose to separate them.”‘

`Okay, wait a minute.

You guys are killing my server.

I used to have a million digits of Pi listed here, and it was really great.

But now you have brought my server to its knees with your interest in its greatness.’

I just like the domain name, mostly. :)

`A leading professor in the U.K. said that obese people should be warned about the health risks of their weight when buying clothes, according to The Daily Mail.

Naveed Sattar, professor of metabolic medicine at the University of Glasgow, said that oversized clothing should have obesity help line numbers sewn on them to try to reduce Britain’s obesity crisis. [..]

The suggestion would be to put the label on all clothes with waist sizes over 37 inches for boys or 31 inches for girls. Women’s clothes over size 16 would also get a label.’

`Some 10,000 US researchers have signed a statement protesting about political interference in the scientific process.

The statement, which includes the backing of 52 Nobel Laureates, demands a restoration of scientific integrity in government policy.

According to the American Union of Concerned Scientists, data is being misrepresented for political reasons.

It claims scientists working for federal agencies have been asked to change data to fit policy initiatives.’

‘Australia hasn’t witnessed a single mass shooting since a massacre 10 years ago prompted nationwide gun law reforms, according to a study Thursday that linked the tough laws with a dramatic reduction in firearm deaths. [..]

The study found the buyback coincided with an end to mass shootings and dramatic decreases in shooting deaths in Australia.

“The Australian example provides evidence that removing large numbers of firearms from a community can be associated with a sudden and ongoing decline in mass shootings and accelerated declines in total firearms-related deaths, firearm homicides and firearm suicides,” the report concluded.’

Seems obvious, really. :)

`”In Hitler’s Germany it was almost a capital offence to send gold out of the country. Since the names of the laureates were engraved on the medals, their discovery by the invading forces would have had very serious consequences,” explains the Nobel Foundation. Yet, when `the Nazis occupied Bohr’s Institute and searched it very carefully’ they found nothing. [..]

“While the invading forces marched in the streets of Copenhagen, I was busy dissolving von Laue’s and also Franck’s medals,” [Niels Bohr] wrote in `Adventures in Radioisotope Research’, published in 1962.

Dissolving the medals was not easy, he would recount. For, gold is “exceedingly unreactive and difficult to dissolve.” Thus, the solution was, literally, a solution. “The medals quietly waited out the war in a solution of aqua regia.” After the war, the gold was recovered from the solution and the Foundation presented von Laue and Frank with the `recoined’ Nobel medals.’

`Fearless, ferocious and mightier than the world has ever seen, this is the new breed of super-lion.

Only one species of prey holds its attention: the buffalo — and in order to bring its powerful foe to the ground, it will take to deep water, use sophisticated hunting techniques and then silence the gigantic beast with a single swipe of a savage paw.

In a remote corner of Africa, an extraordinary evolutionary tale is unfolding, uncovered by the actor Jeremy Irons and an award-winning documentary team. A new film, Relentless Enemies, will tell the story of the emergence of a distinct subspecies of big cat on a tiny and isolated island in the Duba Plains of Botswana’s Okavango Delta.’

`The humble but lethal sea snail may hold the key to a better life for thousands of chronic pain sufferers.

Researchers from the University of Queensland believe conotoxins contained in potentially deadly sea snail venom could be used to create a treatment to replace conventional pain relief drugs such as morphine.

Dr Jenny Ekberg said her research had shown the conotoxin could produce pain relief without side effects in animals. [..]

“Unlike other anaesthetics, it’s very specific against the pain and doesn’t cause any side effects – it’s the first time anyone has discovered anything like this,” she said.’

Chemistry is funny sometimes. :)

Some more amusing ones: war of the atoms, chemists and bangs, chemists as book reviewers and radiocarbon dating.

More at Nearing Zero.

`What’s it for? Good luck answering that question. There is scientific research to be done on the moon, but this could be accomplished by automatic probes or occasional astronaut visits at a minute fraction of the cost of a permanent, crewed facility. Astronauts at a moon base will spend almost all their time keeping themselves alive and monitoring automated equipment, the latter task doable from an office building in Houston. In deadpan style, the New York Times story on the NASA announcement declared, “The lunar base is part of a larger effort to develop an international exploration strategy, one that explains why and how humans are returning to the moon and what they plan to do when they get there.” Oh–so we’ll build the moon base first, and then try to figure out why we built it.’

`Mankind has had less effect on global warming than previously supposed, a United Nations report on climate change will claim next year.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says there can be little doubt that humans are responsible for warming the planet, but the organisation has reduced its overall estimate of this effect by 25 per cent.

In a final draft of its fourth assessment report, to be published in February, the panel reports that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has accelerated in the past five years. It also predicts that temperatures will rise by up to 4.5 C during the next 100 years, bringing more frequent heat waves and storms.’

`Bihari: most officially dead person

Lal Bihari (born 1961) is a farmer from Uttar Pradesh, India who was officially dead from 1976 to 1994. He founded Mritak Sangh or the Association of the Dead in Uttar Pradesh, India. He fought Indian government bureaucracy for 18 years to prove that he is alive. [..]

Bawden: the self-elected Pope Michael I, from Kansas

[..] Sedevacantists argue that if the College of Cardinals will not or cannot elect a valid pope, ordinary Catholics can do so, under the principle of “Epikeia” (Equity). Acting on the basis of this, David Bawden was elected Pope by six people on 1990 (including himself and his parents). He is still on the job to this day.’

`The CSIRO ICT Centre today announced that it has achieved over six gigabits per second over a point to point wireless connection with the highest efficiency (2.4bits/s/Hz) ever achieved for such a system. [..]

Dr Jay Guo, Director of the Wireless Technologies Laboratory at CSIRO said that this breakthrough is just a first stage towards direct connections of up to 12 gigabits per second. [..]

The system operates at 85GHz in the millimetre-wave part of the electromagnetic spectrum (above 55 GHz) which offers the potential for these enormous speeds and is not yet congested by other uses.’

`The tide of unwanted email is rising as spammers find new ways to dodge filtering systems, experts say.

A study released in November 2006 by email filtering firm Postini, based in California, US, found that spam now accounts for 91% of all email and that over the past 12 months the daily volume of spam has risen by 120%.

A separate report, from IronPort Systems, also in California, concludes that worldwide spam volumes increased from 31 billion messages daily in October 2005 to 61 billion messages daily in October 2006.’

`Brain scans could help predict schizophrenia, research suggests.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans have revealed key changes in the brain’s grey matter in a small group before they developed symptoms.

The finding suggests tracking these changes over time, combined with traditional assessments, could help doctors to predict illness.’

`Marijuana is not a “gateway” drug that predicts or eventually leads to substance abuse, suggests a 12-year University of Pittsburgh study. Moreover, the study’s findings call into question the long-held belief that has shaped prevention efforts and governmental policy for six decades and caused many a parent to panic upon discovering a bag of pot in their child’s bedroom.

The Pitt researchers tracked 214 boys beginning at ages 10-12, all of whom eventually used either legal or illegal drugs. When the boys reached age 22, they were categorized into three groups: those who used only alcohol or tobacco, those who started with alcohol and tobacco and then used marijuana (gateway sequence) and those who used marijuana prior to alcohol or tobacco (reverse sequence).

Nearly a quarter of the study population who used both legal and illegal drugs at some point – 28 boys – exhibited the reverse pattern of using marijuana prior to alcohol or tobacco, and those individuals were no more likely to develop a substance use disorder than those who followed the traditional succession of alcohol and tobacco before illegal drugs, according to the study, which appears in this month’s issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry.’

‘German sex educators plan to launch a spray-on condom tailor-made for all sizes.

Jan Vinzenz Krause from the Institute for Condom Consultancy, a Singen-based practice that offers advice on condom use, said the product aimed to help people enjoy better and safer sex lives.

“We’re trying to develop the perfect condom for men that’s suited to every size of penis,” he said. “We’re very serious.”

Krause’s team (spraykondom.de) is developing a type of spray can into which the man inserts his penis first. At the push of a button it is then coated in a rubber condom.’

There’s also a news video, showing people playing with condoms and dildos in a science lab, basically. :)

see it here »

`NASA photographs have revealed bright new deposits seen in two gullies on Mars that suggest water carried sediment through them sometime during the past seven years.

“These observations give the strongest evidence to date that water still flows occasionally on the surface of Mars,” said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, Washington. [..]

Today’s announcement is the first to reveal newly deposited material apparently carried by fluids after earlier imaging of the same gullies. The two sites are inside craters in the Terra Sirenum and the Centauri Montes regions of southern Mars. ‘

`The richest one per cent of the world’s population owns 40 per cent of the total household wealth, while the bottom half of the world makes do with barely one per cent, according to a research report released Tuesday.

The study, which further underlined the continuing disparity between rich and poor, is by the Helsinki-based World Institute for Development Economics Research, part of the United Nations University. [..]

In contrast, 50 per cent of adults owned barely one per cent of the household wealth.’

Here’s a couple of clips from a banned Mythbusters episode, busting the myth that pretty girls don’t fart and then setting farts on fire.

see it here »