Archive for September, 2011
Gene Found That Controls Chronic Pain
Popping pain killers may not be the answer, not if you can isolate and alter the gene which regulates chronic pain. Via Reuters:
British scientists have identified a gene responsible for regulating chronic pain, called HCN2, and say their discovery should help drug researchers in their search for more effective, targeted pain-killing medicines.
“Our research lays the groundwork for the development of new drugs to treat chronic pain by blocking HCN2.”
Scientists from Cambridge University said that if drugs could be designed to block the protein produced by the gene, they could treat a type of pain known as neuropathic pain, which is linked to nerve damage and often very difficult to control with currently available drugs.
“Individuals suffering from neuropathic pain often have little or no respite because of the lack of effective medications,” said Peter McNaughton of Cambridge’s pharmacology department, who led the study.
Perfume Pills Will Make Sweat Smell Pleasant
The future of perfume will be taking a pill that turns your sweat into golden droplets emanating the pleasant smell of your choice. Body odor will no longer be a bad thing. For instance, you’ll find yourself saying, “Did someone just take a fresh batch of chocolate chip cookies out of the oven? Oh, it must just be Michael’s armpits.” Via GreenMuze:
No more spritzing, spraying or dabbing, now you can start you day with confidence knowing that all you need to do is swallow a simple digestible perfume capsule to smell great all day. The Swallowable Perfume, created by renowned Australian artist Lucy McRae, in conjunction with Harvard University biologist Sheref Mansy.
“Once absorbed, the capsule enables the skin to become a platform, an atomizer, a biologically enhanced second skin synthesized directly from the natural processes of the body,” explains the artist’s website. “Fragrance molecules are excreted through the skin’s surface…
Chemical Agent Turns Tissue Transparent
Olivia Solon writes on Wired:
Japanese researchers have developed a chemical agent that turns biological tissue transparent, allowing for vivid imaging of neurons and blood vessels deep inside mouse brains.
The aqueous reagent — referred to as Scale — offers a way of analyzing complex organs and networks in tissue samples, without having to dissect them into smaller pieces. Developed by Atsushi Miyawaki and his team at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Scale performs better than other clearing reagents because it doesn’t affect the shape or proportions of the sample. It also manages to avoid decreasing the strength of signals emitted by genetically-encoded fluorescent proteins in the tissue, which are frequently used by researchers as markers to flag up specific cells.
This means that neuroscientists can visualise fluorescently-labelled brain samples at a depth of several millimetres (as opposed to just one millimetre) and see neural networks at sub-cellular resolution. The team has used the agent to examine…
1000-Year-Old Aztec Brew Is Hottest Beverage In Mexico
As quoted by Reuters, Mexico City Museum Director, Salvador Zarco tells us that “Among the Aztecs the drink was reserved for the nobles and priests for ceremonial use and for pregnant women.” I have visions of hipster pregnant chicks in Williamsburg flocking to their local pulqueria…
CERN Scientists Back Alternative Climate Change Theory
For those of you who think that all scientists subscribe to the “global warning is caused by humans” theory, some very prominent exceptions are making some noise, now led by the boffins at CERN, reports Anne Jolis in the Wall Street Journal:
In April 1990, Al Gore published an open letter in the New York Times “To Skeptics on Global Warming” in which he compared them to medieval flat-Earthers. He soon became vice president and his conviction that climate change was dominated by man-made emissions went mainstream. Western governments embarked on a new era of anti-emission regulation and poured billions into research that might justify it. As far as the average Western politician was concerned, the debate was over.
But a few physicists weren’t worrying about Al Gore in the 1990s. They were theorizing about another possible factor in climate change: charged subatomic particles from outer space, or “cosmic rays,” whose atmospheric…
Dolphins Address One Another By Name
Their names, however, are whistle patterns. New Scientist reports:
Stephanie King of the University of St Andrews, UK, and colleagues monitored 179 pairs of wild bottlenose dolphins off the Florida coast between 1988 and 2004. Of these, 10 were seen copying each other’s signature whistles, which the dolphins make to identify themselves to each other.
The behavior has never been documented before, and was only seen in pairs composed of a mother and her calf or adults who would normally move around and hunt together.
The copied whistles changed frequency in the same way as real signature whistles, but either started from a higher frequency or didn’t last as long, suggesting Dave was not merely imitating Alan.
Evangelical Trend: Talking In Tongues On Facebook
Is it a hoax, or the holy spirit operating though the internets? Recently the Lord has begun entering the fingers of believers, causing them to “type in tongues”. Via the Christian Post:
Televangelist and self-professed prophetess Juanita Bynum has sparked curiosity among internet users and the Christian community for several comments on the minister’s Facebook page where she appears to type “in tongues.”
Bynum’s prayer posts soon caught the attention of the media, with one reporter at a spirituality website speculating that the minister was communicating “in tongues.” On one prayer post, visitor Cindy McCraw commented, expressing her agreement. “I believe it’s tongues (holy spirit). It’s called praying in the Spirit,” McCraw wrote.
Army Colonel John Alexander On UFOs
Former Army intelligence officer Col. John Alexander discusses his efforts to penetrate the mystery surrounding UFOs will serving in the army. (While on active duty he was granted permission to create the military’s only UFO working group.)
Alexander believes UFO’s exists but are not necessarily extraterrestrial, and that there is no grand, sinister, coordinated cover-up by the military structure. His hope is for experts to be able to probe the topic further without being subjected to ridicule or damage to their careers. My conclusion: this man is, in fact, an alien.
GOP Debate Audience Cheers Texas’s 234 Executions
“I think Americans understand justice…In the state of Texas…you will face the ultimate justice.”
The biggest positive response at last night’s Republican presidential debate may have occurred when moderator Brian Williams, addressing Rick Perry, began, “Your state has executed 234 death row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times,” at which point he was interrupted as the crowd spontaneously broke into rapturous applause.
The Death Penalty Information Center lists nine people executed by Texas in recent years who were likely innocent.
Are Americans The Coolest People In The World?
Photo: gcardinal (CC)
Well according to a new poll, the answer is “yes!” Reuters reports:
They may be witnessing their global superpower influence decline in the face of challenges from other emerging players on the world stage, but Americans have been voted the world’s “coolest nationality” in an international poll.
Social networking site Badoo.com asked 30,000 people across 15 countries to name the coolest nationality and also found that the Spanish were considered the coolest Europeans, Brazilians the coolest Latin Americans and Belgians the globe’s least cool nationality.
“We hear a lot in the media about anti-Americanism,” says Lloyd Price, Badoo’s Director of Marketing. “But we sometimes forget how many people across the world consider Americans seriously cool.”
Of course, not all Americans are cool far from it. Some like Snoop Dogg, Lady Gaga, Samuel L. Jackson, Johnny Depp and Quentin Tarantino are way cooler than others.
Americans, however, are the dudes who invented cool and who still…
New 9/11 Audio Tape Revelations
New York Times
Very interesting new 9/11 information reported by the New York Times:
For one instant on the morning of Sept. 11, an airliner that had vanished from all the tracking tools of modern aviation suddenly became visible in its final seconds to the people who had been trying to find it.
It was just after 9 a.m., 16 minutes after a plane had hit the north tower of the World Trade Center, when a radio transmission came into the New York air traffic control radar center. “Hey, can you look out your window right now?” the caller said.
“Yeah,” the radar control manager said.
“Can you, can you see a guy at about 4,000 feet, about 5 east of the airport right now, looks like he’s —”
“Yeah, I see him,” the manager said.
“Do you see that guy, look, is he descending into the building also?” the caller asked.
“He’s descending really quick too, yeah,”…
‘Test City’ Being Built In New Mexico Desert
Would you jump at the chance to live in an artificially-created city in the middle of nowhere and participate in trial runs of the technologies of tomorrow? This is as close as you can come to living in a space colony on Earth. BLDGBLOG writes:
A private consulting firm in Washington D.C. is developing a “test city”—one “with no permanent population”—in the New Mexico desert, according to the Albuquerque Journal. It will be “a privately financed, small city on 20 square miles in New Mexico for testing and evaluation of new and emerging technologies,” run from afar by Pegasus Global Holdings.
This as yet unnamed location will be devoted to the “‘real world’ testing of smart grids, renewable energy integration, next-gen wireless, smart grid cyber security and terrorism vulnerability,” making it a life-size trial for private sector urban management—Cisco’s city-in-a-box and IBM urbanism wrapped in one.
I’m inclined to ask what it might look…
Creativity is ‘Vomit, Poison and Agony’ to Most
From ScienceDaily:
Most people view creativity as an asset — until they come across a creative idea. That’s because creativity not only reveals new perspectives; it promotes a sense of uncertainty.
The next time your great idea at work elicits silence or eye rolls, you might just pity those co-workers. Fresh research indicates they don’t even know what a creative idea looks like and that creativity, hailed as a positive change agent, actually makes people squirm.
“How is it that people say they want creativity but in reality often reject it?” said Jack Goncalo, ILR School assistant professor of organizational behavior and co-author of research to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science. The paper reports on two 2010 experiments at the University of Pennsylvania involving more than 200 people.
The studies’ findings include:
- Creative ideas are by definition novel, and novelty can trigger feelings of uncertainty that make most people…
On Bullying
Bullying is taught in schools, churches and families throughout America. Bullying is a common practice in our military training. An extremely prevalent form of this teaching is “group punishment.” One person or more breaks the rules or is accused of not carrying his or her weight; and everyone is punished for the perpetrators’ infractions or inadequacies simply because they’re in that class or unit.
This incites the group to pressure the perpetrators into working harder or altering their behavior. This form of bullying is also very common in the work place and is an encouraged form of harassment. This pressure is “bullying” and it takes many forms: Beatings, hostile behavior and threats, ostracism, and many other forms of harassment. At Columbine the victims of bullies bullied back and only after that did people speak out against bullying on a nation-wide scale.
They formed organizations to prevent and stop bullying. All of their…
Alien Chip Found in Napoleon’s Skull?
Via Life’s Great Clues:
Scientists examining the remains of Napoleon Bonaparte admit they are “deeply puzzled” by the discovery of a half-inch long microchip embedded in his skull. They say the mysterious object could be an alien implant — suggesting that the French emperor was once abducted by a UFO!
“The possible ramifications of this discovery are almost too enormous to comprehend,” declared Dr. Andre Dubois, who made the astonishing revelation in a French medical journal. Until now, every indication has been that victims of alien abduction are ordinary people who play no role in world events. Now we have compelling evidence that extraterrestrials acted in the past to influence human history – and may continue to do so!”
Dr. Dubois made the amazing find while studying Napoleon’s exhumed skeleton on a $140,000 grant from the French government.
“I was hoping to learn whether he suffered from a pituitary disorder that contributed to his…
Gibson Guitars Vs. the U.S. Government
Via Brooklyn Vegan and Gibson.com:
The Federal Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. has suggested that the use of wood from India that is not finished by Indian workers is illegal, not because of U.S. law, but because it is the Justice Department’s interpretation of a law in India. (If the same wood from the same tree was finished by Indian workers, the material would be legal.) This action was taken without the support and consent of the government in India.
On August 24, 2011, around 8:45 a.m. CDT, agents for the federal government executed four search warrants on Gibson’s facilities in Nashville and Memphis and seized several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. Gibson had to cease its manufacturing operations and send workers home for the day, while armed agents executed the search warrants. Gibson has fully cooperated with the execution of the search warrants.
First Nations Oppose Tar Sands Pipeline
Native Activists have been on the front lines opposing the Alberta Tar Sands for years. Native Canadians have frequently borne the brunt of industrial pollution, particularly in Northern Canada. How will the new proposed Keystone XL pipeline affect Native communities both in the US and Canada? Colorlines explains:
In hopes that action would discourage President Barack Obama from permitting an extension to the Canadian Keystone pipeline — also known as the “Keystone XL” — a group of First Nations and American Indian activists protested in front of the White House on Friday.
Before being arrested, the protesters insisted that the extension — which will run from Alberta Canada to Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas — will harm ancestral homelands.
“Our Lakota people oppose this pipeline because of the potential contamination of the surface water and of the Oglala aquifer,” said Deb White Plume, a Lakota activist. “We have thousands of ancient and historical cultural resources that…
How The U.S. Media Squashes Dissent
From oft-acclaimed and criticized political cartoonist Ted Rall, writing for Al Jazeera:
The American media deploys a deep and varied arsenal of rhetorical devices in order to marginalise opinions, people and organisations as “outside the mainstream” and therefore not worth listening to. For the most part the people and groups being declaimed belong to the political Left. To take one example, the Green Party – well-organised in all 50 states – is never quoted in newspapers or invited to send a representative to television programmes that purport to present “both sides” of a political issue. (In the United States, “both sides” means the back-and-forth between centre-right Democrats and rightist Republicans.)
Marginalisation is the intentional decision to exclude a voice in order to prevent a “dangerous” opinion from gaining currency, to block a politician or movement from becoming more powerful, or both. In 2000, the media-backed consortium that sponsored the presidential debate between…
New Shark Species Found In Food Market
Photo: Laurent Bugnion (CC)
Biologists are finding new species constantly, but it took a hungry market and working fishermen to find this new shark species. The National Geographic reports:
It’s unlikely anyone’s ever complained, “Waiter, there’s a new species in my soup.” But the situation isn’t as rare as you might think.
A monkey, a lizard, and an “extinct” bird have all been discovered en route to the dinner plate, and now a new shark species joins their ranks, scientists report.
Fish taxonomists found the previously unknown shark at a market in Taiwan—no big surprise, according to study co-author William White.
“Most fish markets in the region will regularly contain sharks,” White, of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Hobart, Australia, said via email.
[Continues at National Geographic]
