science Archives | Page 10 of 16

Tagscience

Cancer Cured? Granulocytes Treatment Worked 100 Percent In Mice Work But Will It Work In Humans?

June 29, 2008 / TiamatsVision

“Scientists at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center are about to embark on a human trial to test whether a new cancer treatment will be as effective at eradicating cancer in humans as it has proven to be in mice.

The treatment will involve transfusing specific white blood cells, called granulocytes, from select donors, into patients with advanced forms of cancer. A similar treatment using white blood cells from cancer-resistant mice has previously been highly successful, curing 100 percent of lab mice afflicted with advanced malignancies.

Zheng Cui, Ph.D., lead researcher and associate professor of pathology, will be announcing the study June 28 at the Understanding Aging conference in Los Angeles. The study, given the go-ahead by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, will involve treating human cancer patients with white blood cells from healthy young people whose immune systems produce cells with high levels of cancer-fighting activity. The basis of the study is the scientists’ discovery, published five years ago, of a cancer-resistant mouse and their subsequent finding that white blood cells from that mouse and its offspring cured advanced cancers in ordinary laboratory mice. They have since identified similar cancer-killing activity in the white blood cells of some healthy humans.”

(via Scientific Blogging. h/t: Slashdot)

Bees are Fitted with Microchips to Find Out Why Their Species is Dying

June 28, 2008 / TiamatsVision

Bee

“It is a remarkably hairy close-up. But this tiny microchip attached to a bee’s back will hopefully explain why so many honeybees are dying from disease. Professor Juergen Tautz and his team at the University of Wurzburg in Germany are studying the health of more than 150,000 bees, in the hope of halting the apparently inexorable decline in their worldwide population.

Bees have always been tricky to study individually. Each colony has around 50,000 members, all interacting simultaneously and making it near-impossible to observe them. Previously, each bee would be painted with a different-coloured dot on its back and scientists would video the colony – watching the tape endlessly, to try to work out the behaviour in each insect. But a revolutionary technology enables the study of bees at close quarters. As soon as a bee hatches, a tiny radio frequency identification (RFID) microchip is stuck to its back using a lacquer. This allows scientists to study its behaviour throughout its life.”

(via The Daily Mail)

Joshua Klein: The Amazing Intelligence of Crows

May 27, 2008 / TiamatsVision

“Hacker and writer Joshua Klein is fascinated by crows. (Notice the gleam of intelligence in their little black eyes?) After a long amateur study of corvid behavior, he’s come up with an elegant machine that may form a new bond between animal and human.”

(via TED)

(Joshua Klein’s website)

Incense is psychoactive: Scientists identify the biology behind the ceremony

May 22, 2008 / TiamatsVision

“Religious leaders have contended for millennia that burning incense is good for the soul. Now, biologists have learned that it is good for our brains too. In a new study appearing online in The FASEB Journal, an international team of scientists, including researchers from Johns Hopkins University and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, describe how burning frankincense (resin from the Boswellia plant) activates poorly understood ion channels in the brain to alleviate anxiety or depression. This suggests that an entirely new class of depression and anxiety drugs might be right under our noses.

‘In spite of information stemming from ancient texts, constituents of Bosweilla had not been investigated for psychoactivity,’ said Raphael Mechoulam, one of the research study’s co-authors. ‘We found that incensole acetate, a Boswellia resin constituent, when tested in mice lowers anxiety and causes antidepressive-like behavior. Apparently, most present day worshipers assume that incense burning has only a symbolic meaning.’

(via PhysOrg)

The Anima Project

May 20, 2008 / TiamatsVision

“The Anima Project promises to finally end the debate of whether certain paranormal phenomena exist. The site, launched April 10, 2008, is currently gathering data from the internet community in preparation for a definitive mathematical analysis of clairvoyance and precognition, bringing such realms under the lens of rigorous science for the first time in history.

Though scientific in nature, the Anima Project is still accessible to the general public. All that is necessary is to enter the website, register, and play a simple card-guessing game. Once enough data is gathered in this way, various mathematical tools will be used to compare the overall user results to what is expected by chance and thereby determine the veracity of paranormal phenomena. The Anima Project is unique in that it “plies the scientific method to a field commonly derided as pseudo-science, establishing a protocol for legitimate and reproducible analysis of the occult”, says project administrator and creator Keith Comito. Unlike previous parapsychology studies, the Anima Project eliminates human error and bias during data acquisition and employs sophisticated statistical techniques such as goodness-of-fit testing and runs analysis to interpret that data in a meaningful and significant manner.

As word of the website spreads, the Anima Project is sure to draw the notice of believers and skeptics alike; the resolution to this hotly debated topic has been sought for ages by both sides. Welcoming this resolution, Comito is currently in negotiations with noted skeptic James Randi over the project’s entry into his famous “Million Dollar Challenge”.

(The Anima Project via Unexplained Mysteries)

Humans Nearly Extinct 70,000 Years Ago

April 27, 2008 / Fell

From AOL News:— The human race may have had a brush with extinction 70,000 years ago, two new genetic studies suggest.

The human race may have been nearly wiped out 70,000 years ago, two new studies suggest. The human population at that time was reduced to small isolated groups in Africa, apparently because of drought, according to an analysis published Thursday in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

The report notes that a separate study by researchers at Stanford University estimates that the number of early humans may have shrunk as low as 2,000 before numbers began to expand again in the early Stone Age. "This study illustrates the extraordinary power of genetics to reveal insights into some of the key events in our species’ history," said Spencer Wells, National Geographic Society explorer in residence.

Previous studies using mitochondrial DNA – which is passed down through mothers – have traced modern humans to a single “mitochondrial Eve,” who lived in Africa about 200,000 years ago. The migrations of humans out of Africa to populate the rest of the world appear to have begun about 60,000 years ago, but little has been known about humans between Eve and that dispersal.

The new study looks at the mitochondrial DNA of the Khoi and San people in South Africa which appear to have diverged from other people between 90,000 and 150,000 years ago. Eastern Africa experienced a string of severe droughts between 135,000 and 90,000 years ago. The researchers said this climatological shift may have contributed to the population changes, dividing people into small, isolated groups which developed independently.

Paleontologist Meave Leakey, a Genographic adviser, commented: “Who would have thought that as recently as 70,000 years ago, extremes of climate had reduced our population to such small numbers that we were on the very edge of extinction.” Today more than 6.6 billion people inhabit the planet, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Of course, we know the Devil put that evidence in our DNA to trick the True Believers.

(Thanks, Chad.)

Scientists on their “life-changing” books

April 22, 2008 / Fell

via David Pescovitz at Boing Boing

New Scientist has a feature package where seventeen big name scientists recommend books that they considered "life-changing." Here is the list of the scientists and the books they suggest, with each title linking to Amazon. Follow the link at the bottom of the post to the New Scientist article where you can read the scientists’ thoughts on their picks. From New Scientist:

Farthest North – Steve Jones, geneticist
The Art of the Soluble – V. S. Ramachandran, neuroscientist
Animal Liberation – Jane Goodall, primatologist
The Foundation trilogy – Michio Kaku, theoretical physicist
Alice in Wonderland – Alison Gopnik, developmental psychologist
One, Two, Three… Infinity – Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist
The Idea of a Social Science – Harry Collins, sociologist of science
Handbook of Mathematical Functions – Peter Atkins, chemist
The Mind of a Mnemonist – Oliver Sacks, neurologist
A Mathematician’s Apology – Marcus du Sautoy, mathematician
The Leopard – Susan Greenfield, neurophysiologist
Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior – Frans de Waal, psychologist and ethologist
Catch-22 / The First Three Minutes – Lawrence Krauss, physicist
William James, Writings 1878-1910 – Daniel Everett, linguist
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep – Chris Frith, neuroscientist
The Naked Ape – Elaine Morgan, author of The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis
King Solomon’s Ring – Marion Stamp Dawkins, Zoologist

A few familiar titles, and I always like to recommend the writings of William James. I look forward to checking into the others!

Doomsday Fears Spark Lawsuit

March 27, 2008 / TiamatsVision

“The builders of the world’s biggest particle collider are being sued in federal court over fears that the experiment might create globe-gobbling black holes or never-before-seen strains of matter that would destroy the planet.

Representatives at Fermilab in Illinois and at Europe’s CERN laboratory, two of the defendants in the case, say there’s no chance that the Large Hadron Collider would cause such cosmic catastrophes. Nevertheless, they’re bracing to defend themselves in the courtroom as well as the court of public opinion.

The Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, is due for startup later this year at CERN’s headquarters on the French-Swiss border. It’s expected to tackle some of the deepest questions in science: Is the foundation of modern physics right or wrong? What existed during the very first moment of the universe’s existence? Why do some particles have mass while others don’t? What is the nature of dark matter? Are there extra dimensions of space out there that we haven’t yet detected?

Some folks outside the scientific mainstream have asked darker questions as well: Could the collider create mini-black holes that last long enough and get big enough to turn into a matter-sucking maelstrom? Could exotic particles known as magnetic monopoles throw atomic nuclei out of whack? Could quarks recombine into “strangelets” that would turn the whole Earth into one big lump of exotic matter?”

(via Cosmic Log- MSNBC)

(Related: Virtual tour of LHC via Popular Science Blog)

It’s spring and sex is in the air

March 25, 2008 / Fell

Literally. Check this out, from: Scientists discover secret sex nerve, via MSNBC:

Nerve “O” has endings in the nasal cavity, but the fibers go directly to the sexual regions of the brain. Indeed, these endings entirely bypass the olfactory cortex! Hence we know the role of Nerve “O” is not to consciously smell, but to identify sexual cues from our potential partners.

What sexual cues do our scents give off? For one thing, we are more likely to be attracted to people whose scent is dissimilar to our own. Family members often share similar chemicals, so our attraction to differing chemical makeup suggests that sexual cues evolved to protect close family members from procreating together. On the other hand, pregnant women have been shown to be more drawn to people with similar chemical makeup, which might be due to the fact that during this crucial time, women are more apt to seek out family members than potential mates.

Research has also shown that these unconscious cues processed in Nerve “O” can make or break a relationship. Couples who have high levels of chemicals in common are more likely to encounter fertility issues, miscarriage and infidelity. The more dissimilar your and your partner’s chemical makeup, the better chance you will have at successfully procreating and staying together.

So the question is, how does one go about shifting their bouquet of aromas to their advantage?

One of my female friends attests to the above:

haha, i always knew that
one of the first things I do when talking to a guy is take a quick inconspicuous wiff
[my boyfriend] always says "you love me for my smell, not for the secrets in my heart!"
because half the time i have my nose shoved in his armpit

And another seems to agree:

thats interesting
never even thought about that before
kinda makes sense though
i’m totally attracted to the scent of some people and others not

Most of us are probably aware of this on one level or another. Anyone else got sexy smelling stories out there? Post them in the comments here. I can safely say that I can genuinely get myself off just smelling a women I am with. Particularly breathing their breath and the scent of their sweat during sex. I often prefer it over the act itself.

Debunking “complementary and alternative medicine”

March 24, 2008 / Klint Finley

The term ‘complementary and alternative medicine’ (CAM) is relatively new, but the treatments it encompasses are not. Before we had science, all we had to rely on was testimonials and beliefs. And even today, for most people who believe CAM works, belief is enough. But at some level, the public has now recognized that science matters and people are looking for evidence to support those beliefs. Advocates claim that recent research validates CAM therapies. Does it really? Does the evidence show that any CAM therapy actually works better than placebos? R. Barker Bausell asks that question, does a compellingly thorough investigation, and comes up with a resounding ‘NO’ for an answer.

Bausell is the ideal person to ask such a question. He is a research methodologist: he designs and analyzes research studies for a living. Not only that: he was intimately involved with acupuncture research for the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). So when he talks about what can go wrong in research and why much of the research on CAM is suspect, he is well worth listening to.

Full Story: skeptic.com.

(via Daily Grail).

Theme by Anders Norén — Up ↑

Technoccult

Mutate Your Mind