Post List

  • May 20, 2013
  • 11:14 PM
  • 3 views

Dosage: one space mirror per year. Some side effects may occur.

by Michael Angus in Anthroblogenic Warning

Something small has gone wrong in your home. Maybe a light bulb has gone out, or the tap has started leaking at the hinge. You can't fix it right now, because you're half way through watching nineties classic "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York". Or maybe "Game of Thrones". Whatever, I don't keep up with TV. The point is you need a quick fix, so you grab a lamp from the bedroom or stick a towel under the sink. That'll do, you think. I'll sort it out properly tomorrow. Future me totally has this one ........ Read more »

Vaughan, N., & Lenton, T. (2011) A review of climate geoengineering proposals. Climatic Change, 109(3-4), 745-790. DOI: 10.1007/s10584-011-0027-7  

  • May 20, 2013
  • 04:09 PM
  • 9 views

Earth’s centre is out of sync

by Perikis Livas in Tracing Knowledge

We all know that the Earth rotates beneath our feet, but new research from ANU has revealed that the centre of the Earth is out of sync with the rest of the planet, frequently speeding up and slowing down.... Read more »

ANU News. (2013) Earth’s centre is out of sync. Australian National University. info:/

  • May 20, 2013
  • 03:35 PM
  • 16 views

Why don't men understand women?

by Isabel Torres in Science in the clouds

Men might have found themselves an excuse not to listen to women. New research suggests that men have twice more difficulty reading emotions in women than in men. This may not sound surprising, but evidence that men have trouble understanding women is, at best, scarce.Being able to guess someone else’s thoughts, feelings and intentions is an instinctive social skill that develops in early childhood. We might take it for granted, but people who struggle or are unable to read other people, like ........ Read more »

  • May 20, 2013
  • 02:37 PM
  • 37 views

Shale Gas Fracking Has No Impact on Groundwater in Arkansas, Study Concludes

by dailyfusion in The Daily Fusion

A new study by scientists at Duke University and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) finds no evidence of groundwater contamination from shale gas production in Arkansas.... Read more »

  • May 20, 2013
  • 02:33 PM
  • 8 views

When green means danger A stunning new species of palm-pitviper from Honduras

by Perikis Livas in Tracing Knowledge

A new species of green palm-pitviper of the genus Bothriechis is described from a seriously threatened cloud forest reserve in northern Honduras. Because of similarity in color pattern and scalation, the new species (Bothriechis guifarroi) was previously confused with other Honduran palm pitvipers. Genetic analysis revealed that the closest relatives of the new species are actually found over 600 km to the south, in the mountains of Costa Rica. The study was published in the open access journal ........ Read more »

Pensoft News. (2013) When green means danger A stunning new species of palm-pitviper from Honduras. Pensoft News. info:/

  • May 20, 2013
  • 02:19 PM
  • 5 views

Subaru Telescope Observations and the CoRoT Mission Unveil the Future of the Sun

by Perikis Livas in Tracing Knowledge

A team of astronomers led by Jose Dias do Nascimento (Department of Theoretical and Experimental Physics, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte [DFTE, UFRN], Brazil) has found the farthest known solar twin in the Milky Way Galaxy– CoRoT Sol 1, which has about the same mass and chemical composition as the Sun. Spectra from the High Dispersion Spectrograph (HDS) on the Subaru Telescope showed that CoRoT Sol 1 is about 6.7 billion years old while space-based data from the CoRoT (Convect........ Read more »

NAOJ Press Release. (2013) Subaru Telescope Observations and the CoRoT Mission Unveil the Future of the Sun. Subaru Telescope NAOJ. info:/

  • May 20, 2013
  • 01:23 PM
  • 4 views

Epilepsy Service Organization in Countries with Limited Resources

by Vivek Misra in Beautiful Mind

tumblr: bellapaige88On average, 9.5/1000 population has epilepsy in Low and Middle Income Countries (LAMIC). A research which has resulted in the global campaign against epilepsy has shown, the gap between treatment need and the treatment provision worldwide is approximately 70% [1]. This large ‘treatment gap’, i.e., lack of appropriate treatment for a large number of patients with epilepsy, due to a number of causes including inability to identify cases, inability to deliver adequate treatm........ Read more »

  • May 20, 2013
  • 01:10 PM
  • 6 views

Sugary Drinks May Increase Risk of Kidney Stones

by Shawn Radcliffe in Branáin

Staying hydrated is good advice for men who’ve had kidney stones before, but sugar-sweetened sodas and fruit punch may not be the best choice of fluids.... Read more »

Ferraro, P., Taylor, E., Gambaro, G., & Curhan, G. (2013) Soda and Other Beverages and the Risk of Kidney Stones. Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. DOI: 10.2215/​CJN.11661112  

  • May 20, 2013
  • 12:25 PM
  • 15 views

Cancer increases the chances of bankruptcy - a new study on Americans

by Usman Paracha in SayPeople

Main Points:

Researchers have found that the cancer patients in America are more than two times more likely to go bankrupt than the healthy people. I think this is the case not only in America but everywhere in the world.

Published in:

Health Affairs

Study Further:

Researchers collected data in Washington State from about 400,000 adults and found that the patients of cancer have more chances of bankruptcy, i.e. 2.65 times more chances, even if they have the health insurance as the........ Read more »

  • May 20, 2013
  • 11:55 AM
  • 8 views

Epidemiology of Childhood Brain Disorders: ADHD and Autism

by William Yates, M.D. in Brain Posts

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control has published a comprehensive summary of the epidemiology of childhood brain disorders in the most recent Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.This report produced some sensationalized headlines that up to 20% of children suffer from a mental disorder.  However, I was more interested in looking at the prevalence estimates for some of the individual disorders from the report.The report collates data collected from a variety of surveys and data sets inclu........ Read more »

Perou R, Bitsko RH, Blumberg SJ, Pastor P, Ghandour RM, Gfroerer JC, Hedden SL, Crosby AE, Visser SN, Schieve LA.... (2013) Mental health surveillance among children - United States, 2005-2011. Morbidity and mortality weekly report. Surveillance summaries (Washington, D.C. : 2002), 62(2), 1-35. PMID: 23677130  

  • May 20, 2013
  • 11:24 AM
  • 10 views

CrossFit Nutrition: Saturated Fat May Speed Cell Demise

by AB Kirk in Stff Competition

CrossFit Nutrition: Cell Health and Telomeres. CrossFit Nutrition: you can only be as healthy as your cells.  One marker of cell health is telomere length.  Telomeres cap the ends ofThe post CrossFit Nutrition: Saturated Fat and Cell Health appeared first on WODMasters Stiff Competition.... Read more »

  • May 20, 2013
  • 09:24 AM
  • 8 views

Do We Really Want To Eat Mexican Food?

by Katja Keuchenius in United Academics

FIFA discoverd that a lot of Mexican meat contains clenbuterol. A drug used to fatten cattle, enhance sportsperfomance, treat people with breathing disorders ánd to lose weight. So watch it with those tacos.... Read more »

  • May 20, 2013
  • 08:06 AM
  • 4 views

Die württembergische Landesaufnahme - Vaterlandsliebe als Wurzel der Landschaftsarchäologie

by Rainer Schreg in Archaeologik

Zwischen 1821 und 1851 wurde im Königreich Württemberg die topographische Landesvermessung durchgeführt. Sie war noch vor der Annahme der württembergischen Verfassung angeordnet worden und sollte einer gerechten Besteuerung in dem 1806 erheblich erweiterten und zum Königreich erhobenen Württemberg dienen. Das Produkt war neben dem steuerrelevanten Primärkataster auch der topographische Atlas des Königreichs Württemberg, der die Messtischblätter 1:50000 umfasste.  Eduard Paulus der........ Read more »

  • May 20, 2013
  • 08:00 AM
  • 10 views

Baby geniuses: young guppies show number skills

by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo

I have vague memories of the first time I counted to a hundred. It felt like one of those landmarks like tying your shoes for yourself the first time, or riding the bicycle more than a few feet without the training wheels or dad holding you up.

Of course, I don't come anywhere near Adam Spencer:

Once when I was about 7, I counted to 10,000 just to check the numbers didn't run out before then #NerdConfessions
Counting large numbers is not something that comes easily for us humans. A new paper c........ Read more »

Piffer Laura, Miletto Petrazzini Maria Elena, & Agrillo Christian. (2013) Large number discrimination in newborn fish. PLOS ONE. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0062466  

  • May 20, 2013
  • 07:01 AM
  • 10 views

“I guess what he said wasn’t that bad”

by Rita Handrich in The Jury Room

A while ago we did a focus group on a shockingly unethical healthcare provider targeting lower income zip codes for insurance fraud and the phrase “those Mexicans” came up in the deliberations. “That’s a good business model”, an older Caucasian woman said, “because those Mexicans will do whatever you tell them to do”. She seemed oblivious [...]

Related posts:
Everyday racism: A comparison of African American and Asian American Women
Life lessons from mock jurors: “Money don’t........ Read more »

  • May 20, 2013
  • 04:13 AM
  • 20 views

Stand by me: Close friendships counteract genetic vulnerability to depression in girls, but not boys

by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest



Publication of US psychiatry's updated diagnostic code has provoked renewed debate in recent weeks over the extent to which mental illness ought to be framed as a psychosocial or a biological problem. The answer of course is that it is both. A new Canadian study captures this interplay, showing how close friendships mitigate the risk for girls whose genes mean they are more vulnerable than average to depression.

Mara Brendgen and her colleagues studied 294 pairs of twins aged ten years old (1........ Read more »

Brendgen, M., Vitaro, F., Bukowski, W., Dionne, G., Tremblay, R., & Boivin, M. (2013) Can friends protect genetically vulnerable children from depression?. Development and Psychopathology, 25(02), 277-289. DOI: 10.1017/S0954579412001058  

  • May 20, 2013
  • 03:59 AM
  • 11 views

Autism, plasma cytokines and siblings

by Paul Whiteley in Questioning Answers

I'm gonna try and be fairly brief in this post on the paper by Valerio Napolioni and colleagues* (open-access) looking at plasma cytokine profiles in cases of autism and their asymptomatic siblings. Brief because (a) the paper is open-access and (b) the participant groups (autism: n=25; sibling controls n=25) were relatively small so one has to be quite careful in extrapolating the findings with any large degree of confidence.Siblings by Paul Klee @ WikiPaintings  Just in case you are ........ Read more »

Napolioni V, Ober-Reynolds B, Szelinger S, Corneveaux JJ, Pawlowski T, Ober-Reynolds S, Kirwan J, Persico AM, Melmed RD, Craig DW.... (2013) Plasma cytokine profiling in sibling pairs discordant for autism spectrum disorder. Journal of neuroinflammation, 38. PMID: 23497090  

  • May 20, 2013
  • 12:04 AM
  • 10 views

Do Hyaluronic Acid Injections Reduce Biomarkers of Collagen Degradation?

by Stephen Thomas in Sports Medicine Research (SMR): In the Lab & In the Field

Take Home Message: Hyaluronic acid injections decrease factors related to collagen degradation. Some blood tests may differentiate responders and nonresponders to these injections.

Knee osteoarthritis, one of the leading causes of disability, has no cure and current treatments commonly involve medications to decrease inflammation and pain. Hyaluronic acid (HA) injections have become a popular form of treatment for knee osteoarthritis. However, the mechanism of action has yet to be determ........ Read more »

  • May 19, 2013
  • 11:52 PM
  • 24 views

Blood magic: old blood ages the young

by Shelly Fan in Neurorexia

“Our ancient countess was refused her desires will To bathe in pure fresh blood She’d peasant virgins killed Elizabeth, in the chasm where was my soul Forever young, Elizabeth Bathorii in the castle of your death You’re still alive, Elizabeth”                                                                         -“Elizabeth”, Ghost  As folklore has it, Elizabeth Bathorii, Countess of Hungary, often bath........ Read more »

Villeda SA, Luo J, Mosher KI, Zou B, Britschgi M, Bieri G, Stan TM, Fainberg N, Ding Z, Eggel A.... (2011) The ageing systemic milieu negatively regulates neurogenesis and cognitive function. Nature, 477(7362), 90-4. PMID: 21886162  

Loffredo FS, Steinhauser ML, Jay SM, Gannon J, Pancoast JR, Yalamanchi P, Sinha M, Dall'osso C, Khong D, Shadrach JL.... (2013) Growth Differentiation Factor 11 Is a Circulating Factor that Reverses Age-Related Cardiac Hypertrophy. Cell, 153(4), 828-39. PMID: 23663781  

Zhang G, Li J, Purkayastha S, Tang Y, Zhang H, Yin Y, Li B, Liu G, & Cai D. (2013) Hypothalamic programming of systemic ageing involving IKK-β, NF-κB and GnRH. Nature, 497(7448), 211-6. PMID: 23636330  

  • May 19, 2013
  • 11:45 PM
  • 16 views

Natural algorithms and the sciences

by Artem Kaznatcheev in Evolutionary Games Group

Today, I am passing through New York City on my way to Princeton’s Center for Computational Intractability for a workshop on Natural Algorithms and the Sciences (NA&S). The two day meeting will cover everything from molecular algorithms for learning and experiments on artificial cells to bounded rationality in decision-making and the effects of network topology […]... Read more »

Chazelle, B. (2012) Natural algorithms and influence systems. Communications of the ACM, 55(12), 101. DOI: 10.1145/2380656.2380679  

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