How Corporations Corrupt Science At The Public’s Expense
The Union of Concerned Scientists explains how they do it. To sum up:
Corporations suppress research. (”After pork producers contacted his supervisors, a USDA microbiologist was prevented from publishing research showing that emissions from industrial hog farms contained antibiotic-resistant bacteria.”)
They ghostwrite articles. (”A 2011 analysis found evidence of corporate authorship in research articles on a variety of drugs, including Avandia, Paxil, Tylenol, and Vioxx.”)
They create front organizations. (”The Center for Consumer Freedom is a nonprofit that targets dietary guidelines recommended by the FDA, other government agencies, medical associations, and consumer groups. It was founded with a $600,000 grant from Philip Morris, but has also received funding from Cargill, National Steak and Poultry, Monsanto, and Coca-Cola.”)
They corrupt advisory panels. (”A few weeks before a CDC advisory panel met to discuss federal lead standards, two scientists with ties to the lead industry were added to the panel. The committee voted against tightening standards.”)
…
Carbon Dioxide Makes You Fat
So sayeth some Danish scientists, as reported in Science Nordic:
No, this is not 1 April — and this is not an April Fool’s hoax. Mad as it may sound, Danish researchers have announced a theory that may not only explain why people all over the world are getting fatter and fatter, but also warn of the serious consequences for life on Earth of continued pollution of the atmosphere by CO2 emissions. In itself, the theory is quite simple: CO2 contributes to making us fat.
Peter Russell: The Primacy Of Consciousness
A rather fascinating and important lecture from Peter Russell. Could the fundamental nature of reality actually be consciousness?
In his documentary Peter Russell explores the reasons why consciousness may be the fundamental essence of the Universe. Many have made such claims from metaphysical perspectives, but the possibility has always been ignored by the scientific community. In this talk, he discusses the problems the materialist scientific world view has with consciousness and proposes an alternative world view which, rather than contradicting science, makes new sense of much of modern physics. He presents a reasoned argument that shows how they are pointing towards the one thing science has always avoided considering — the primary nature of consciousness.
Welcome to the Acid Sea
Is the coming tide an uninhabitable ocean? Reports the AFP via Alternet:
High levels of pollution may be turning the planet’s oceans acidic at a faster rate than at any time in the past 300 million years, with unknown consequences for future sea life, researchers said Thursday.
The acidification may be worse than during four major mass extinctions in history when natural pulses of carbon from asteroid impacts and volcanic eruptions caused global temperatures to soar, said the study in the journal Science.
An international team of researchers from the United States, Britain, Spain, Germany and the Netherlands examined hundreds of paleoceanographic studies, including fossils wedged in seafloor sediment from millions of years ago. They found only one time in history that came close to what scientists are seeing today in terms of ocean life die-off — a mysterious period known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum about 56 million years ago. Though the…
Flatworms Could Hold Key To Immortality
Is this the most advanced creature on Earth? Via the Telegraph:
British researchers believe that the worms, which live in ponds and lakes, could live forever after examining their ability to repeatedly regenerate.
“Our data satisfy one of the predictions about what it would take for an animal to be potentially immortal,” Aziz Aboobaker, who led the research. “The next goals for us are to understand the mechanisms in more detail and to understand more about how you evolve an immortal animal.”
Flatworms, known as planarian worms, have long fascinated scientists because they have an extraordinary ability to regenerate. A planarian worm split lengthways or crossways will regenerate into two separate living worms. The researchers found that flatworms can continuously maintain the length of a crucial part of their DNA, known as telomeres, during regeneration.
Around The World, Clouds Sinking Closer To Earth
The sky really is falling, Universe Today reports:
According to recent research by climate scientists in New Zealand, global cloud heights have dropped. Researchers reported a decreasing trend in average global cloud heights from 2000 to 2010, based on data gathered by the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) on NASA’s Terra satellite. The change over the ten-year span was about 100 to 130 feet.
“This is the first time we have been able to accurately measure changes in global cloud height and, it provides just a hint that something quite important might be going on,” said lead researcher Professor Roger Davies.
Burgers Made From Lab-Grown Meat
Photo: dweekly (CC)
I know — yuk! — but chances are airlines and other purveyors of gross burgers like the one at right won’t have any qualms about using synthetic meat if the price is lower than real meat. Pallab Ghosh reports for BBC News:
Dutch scientists have used stem cells to create strips of muscle tissue with the aim of producing the first lab-grown hamburger later this year.
The aim of the research is to develop a more efficient way of producing meat than rearing animals.
At a major science meeting in Canada, Prof Mark Post said synthetic meat could reduce the environmental footprint of meat by up to 60%.
“We would gain a tremendous amount in terms of resources,” he said.
Professor Post’s group at Maastricht University in the Netherlands has grown small pieces of muscle about 2cm long, 1cm wide and about a mm thick.
They are off-white and resemble strips of calamari in…
The Pharmacy On A Chip Implant
Source: MicroChips
Coming soon, whether we like it or not! The Financial Times reports:
A wirelessly controlled implant, which delivers precise drug doses into the patient’s body, has had a successful first clinical trial, bringing the possibility of the “pharmacy on a chip” that could transform drug delivery closer.
Researchers used the microchip device to give seven women with osteoporosis daily doses of a bone-strengthening hormone that was normally injected. The results were announced at the start of the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting on Thursday.
The device could transform drug delivery and help usher in a new era of telemedicine – delivering healthcare over a distance – said Robert Langer, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where the project started 15 years ago.
“You could literally have a pharmacy on a chip,” he said. “You can do remote control delivery, you can do pulsatile drug delivery, and you can…
Medical Study Of Three Real-Life Haitian Zombies
What causes zombification? Some mixture of schizophrenia, mistaken identity, a poison powder called tetrodotoxin, and amnesia. Mind Hacks writes:
We hear a lot about zombies these days, but many are unaware that in 1997 The Lancet published a medical study of three genuine Haitian zombies. The cases were reported by British anthropologist Roland Littlewood and Haitian doctor Chavannes Douyon and concerned three individuals identified as zombies after they had apparently passed away.
The Haitian explanation for how zombies are created involves the distinction between different elements of the human being – including the body, the gwobon anj (the animating principle) and the ti-bon anj, which represents something akin to agency, awareness, and memory.
In line with these beliefs is the fact that awareness and agency can be split off from the human being – and can be captured and stored in a bottle by a bòkò, a type of magician and spirit worker who can…
Cellphone Use Linked To Selfish Behavior
Photo: Ed Poor (CC)
From ScienceDaily:
Though cellphones are usually considered devices that connect people, they may make users less socially minded, finds a recent study from the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.
Marketing professors Anastasiya Pocheptsova and Rosellina Ferraro, with graduate student, Ajay T. Abraham, conducted a series of experiments on test groups of cellphone users. The findings appear in their working paper, “The Effect of Mobile Phone Use on Prosocial Behavior.”
Prosocial behavior, as defined in the study, is action intended to benefit another person or society as a whole.
The researchers found that after a short period of cellphone use the subjects were less inclined to volunteer for a community service activity when asked, compared to the control-group counterparts. The cell phone users were also less persistent in solving word problems — even though they knew their answers would translate to a monetary donation to charity.
The decreased focus…
Smoking Marijuana Nearly Doubles Risk Of Driving Accidents
While it might seem obvious, researchers Mark Asbridge, Jill A. Hayden and Jennifer L. Cartwright took the trouble to scientifically conclude that “acute cannabis consumption is associated with an increased risk of a motor vehicle crash, especially for fatal collisions.” They report their findings in the British Medical Journal – here’s the abstract:
Objective To determine whether the acute consumption of cannabis (cannabinoids) by drivers increases the risk of a motor vehicle collision.
Design Systematic review of observational studies, with meta-analysis.
Data sources We did electronic searches in 19 databases, unrestricted by year or language of publication. We also did manual searches of reference lists, conducted a search for unpublished studies, and reviewed the personal libraries of the research team.
Review methods We included observational epidemiology studies of motor vehicle collisions with an appropriate control group, and selected studies that measured recent cannabis use in drivers by toxicological analysis of whole blood or self report. We excluded experimental or…
Are Plants Intelligent?
As a follow-up on the story about a Japanese woman trying to have a conversation with her cactus, check out the HowStuffWorks team’s attempt to answer this age-old question:
Teaching A Cactus The Japanese Alphabet
Could plants communicate with us, if we had the right way of listening? The wife of a Japanese researcher gives her cacti a language lesson:
The chief of research for Fuji Electronic Industries has constructed special instruments which translate the electrical output of plants into modulated sounds, giving voice to a cactus. Relying on her affinity for plants, Mrs. Hashimoto looks forward to actual conversation with her cactus…Convinced it possesses an intelligence, she is determined to teach it the Japanese alphabet.
Scientists Reconstruct Images From Peoples’ Minds
Ben Coxworth writing for Gizmag (thanks to Geoff H for the tip):
Last September, scientists from the University of California, Berkeley announced that they had developed a method of visually reconstructing images from peoples’ minds, by analyzing their brain activity.
Much to the dismay of tinfoil hat-wearers everywhere, researchers from that same institution have now developed a somewhat similar system, that is able to reconstruct words that people have heard spoken to them. Instead of being used to violate our civil rights, however, the technology could instead allow the vocally-disabled to “speak.”
Epilepsy patients were enlisted for the study, who were already getting arrays of electrodes placed on the surface of their brains to identify the source of their seizures. The scientists used these electrodes to monitor the electrical activity in a region of their brains’ auditory system, known as the superior temporal gyrus (STG). From there, it was a matter of observing the…
Sugar Should Be Regulated As A Toxin
Personally I’d prefer to see the likes of aspartame, saccharin, sucralose and the other artificial sweeteners outlawed (not to mention the ubiquitous High-Fructose Corn Syrup) … From Live Science via Yahoo News:
A spoonful of sugar might make the medicine go down. But it also makes blood pressure and cholesterol go up, along with your risk for liver failure, obesity, heart disease and diabetes.
Sugar and other sweeteners are, in fact, so toxic to the human body that they should be regulated as strictly as alcohol by governments worldwide, according to a commentary in the current issue of the journal Nature by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
The researchers propose regulations such as taxing all foods and drinks that include added sugar, banning sales in or near schools and placing age limits on purchases.
Although the commentary might seem straight out of the Journal of Ideas That Will Never Fly, the researchers…
The Earth Is Alive
From AstroBiology Magazine:
The Earth is alive, asserts a new scientific theory of life emerging from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. The trans-disciplinary theory demonstrates that purportedly inanimate, non-living objects — for example, planets, water, proteins, and DNA — are animate, that is, alive.
Erik Andrulis, PhD, assistant professor of molecular biology and microbiology, advanced his controversial framework in his manuscript “Theory of the Origin, Evolution, and Nature of Life,” published in the peer-reviewed journal, Life. His theory explains not only the evolutionary emergence of life on Earth and in the Universe but also the structure and function of existing cells and biospheres.
In addition to resolving long-standing paradoxes and puzzles in chemistry and biology, Andrulis’ theory unifies quantum and celestial mechanics. His unorthodox solution to this quintessential problem in physics differs from mainstream approaches, like string theory, as it is simple, non-mathematical, and experimentally and experientially verifiable.
The basic idea of…
Heartless: Man Alive Without Heart Or Pulse
Perhaps in the future, we’ll spend our youth — i.e. the first hundred or so years of our lives — with a heart and a pulse, and our next couple hundred without them. DesignTaxi writes:
Two doctors from the Texas Heart Institute successfully replaced a dying man’s heart with a device—proving that it is possible for your body to be kept alive without a heart, or a pulse.
The turbine-like device, that are simple whirling rotors, developed by the doctors does not beat like a heart, rather provides a ‘continuous flow’ like a garden hose.
If you listened with a stethoscope, you wouldn’t hear a heartbeat. If you examined [the] arteries, there’s no pulse. Hooked up to an EKG, [he'd] be flat-lined.”
The Mushroom That Eats Plastic
Is this the answer to the ever-growing plastic scourge on our planet? From co.exist:
The Amazon is home to more species than almost anywhere else on earth. One of them, carried home recently by a group from Yale University, appears to be quite happy eating plastic in airless landfills.
The group of students, part of Yale’s annual Rainforest Expedition and Laboratory with molecular biochemistry professor Scott Strobel, ventured to the jungles of Ecuador. The mission was to allow “students to experience the scientific inquiry process in a comprehensive and creative way.” The group searched for plants, and then cultured the microorganisms within the plant tissue. As it turns out, they brought back a fungus new to science with a voracious appetite for a global waste problem: polyurethane.
The common plastic is used for everything from garden hoses to shoes and truck seats. Once it gets into the trash stream, it persists for generations.…
Family History of Psychiatric Disorders Shapes Intellectual Interests
Cleveland tower at the Graduate College, Princeton University. Artist: Magneticcarpet (CC)
Via ScienceDaily:
A hallmark of the individual is the cultivation of personal interests, but for some people, their intellectual pursuits might actually be genetically predetermined.
Survey results published by Princeton University researchers in the journal PLoS ONE suggest that a family history of psychiatric conditions such as autism and depression could influence the subjects a person finds engaging.
Although preliminary, the findings provide a new look at the oft-studied link between psychiatric conditions and aptitude in the arts or sciences. While previous studies have explored this link by focusing on highly creative individuals or a person’s occupation, the Princeton research indicates that the influence of familial neuropsychiatric traits on personal interests is apparently independent of a person’s talent or career path, and could help form a person’s basic preferences and personality.
Princeton researchers surveyed nearly 1,100 students from the University’s Class of 2014 early…
Playing Music Can Offset Aging Process
Photo: Stilfehler (CC)
Via ScienceDaily:
Age-related delays in neural timing are not inevitable and can be avoided or offset with musical training, according to a new study from Northwestern University.
The study is the first to provide biological evidence that lifelong musical experience has an impact on the aging process.
Measuring the automatic brain responses of younger and older musicians and non-musicians to speech sounds, researchers in the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory discovered that older musicians had a distinct neural timing advantage.
“The older musicians not only outperformed their older non-musician counterparts, they encoded the sound stimuli as quickly and accurately as the younger non-musicians,” said Northwestern neuroscientist Nina Kraus. “This reinforces the idea that how we actively experience sound over the course of our lives has a profound effect on how our nervous system functions.” …
Read more here.
