tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35178062008-08-25T21:27:19.081-07:00Science and Health BlogsLorenzohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16598377696238546062noreply@blogger.comBlogger287125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3517806.post-25977197898716043102008-08-25T21:22:00.000-07:002008-08-25T21:27:19.094-07:00Why Neanderthal man may not have been as stupid as he looks
(Steve Connor, The Independent, 26 August 2008)
Neanderthals were not as stupid as they have been portrayed, according to a study showing their stone tools were just as good as those made by the early ancestors of modern humans, Homo sapiens. . . . Scientists who spent years learning how to make replicas of the stone instruments used by Lorenzohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16598377696238546062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3517806.post-1838893242260778942008-08-07T18:43:00.000-07:002008-08-07T19:18:28.490-07:00'Major discovery' from MIT primed to unleash solar revolution
In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn't shine. . . . Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storingLorenzohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16598377696238546062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3517806.post-68078324957072248752008-08-07T14:23:00.000-07:002008-08-07T14:50:54.875-07:00TED talk by Kevin Kelly: Predicting the next 5,000 days of the Web
When you consider the fact that everything that is happening on the Web at this very moment was completely unpredicted just a decade ago, and the fact that today the Web is still less than 5,000 days old, it certainly gives one a reason to wonder what must be yet coming at us. At the 2007 TED Conference, Kevin Kelly makes a few Lorenzohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16598377696238546062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3517806.post-17622811324537016792008-07-14T15:23:00.000-07:002008-07-14T15:27:08.541-07:00 Sleeping soundly 'boosts memory'
(BBC News, 14 July 2008)
Researchers found sleep appears to have a dramatic impact on the way the brain functions the next day. . . . It appears to strengthen connections between nerve cells in the brain - a process key to both learning and memory. . . . The researchers studied a group of 32 volunteers who were taught a new skill or shown images they would later Lorenzohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16598377696238546062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3517806.post-2633388841069598602008-07-06T16:11:00.000-07:002008-07-06T16:17:56.713-07:00Study: 'Magic mushrooms' have long benefit
(MSNBC, July 1, 2008)
In 2002, at a Johns Hopkins University laboratory, a business consultant named Dede Osborn took a psychedelic drug as part of a research project. . . . She felt like she was taking off. She saw colors. Then it felt like her heart was ripping open. . . . But she called the experience joyful as well as painful, and says that it has Lorenzohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16598377696238546062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3517806.post-32491804835677741912008-01-19T11:01:00.000-08:002008-01-19T11:06:03.412-08:00Medical plants 'face extinction'
(BBC News, January 19, 2008)
Hundreds of medicinal plants are at risk of extinction, threatening the discovery of future cures for disease, according to experts. . . . Over 50% of prescription drugs are derived from chemicals first identified in plants. . . . But the Botanic Gardens Conservation International said many were at risk from over-collection and Lorenzohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16598377696238546062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3517806.post-91676170793157563502007-12-11T09:07:00.000-08:002007-12-11T09:14:13.400-08:00Human evolution is 'speeding up'
(Anna-Marie Lever, BBC News, 11 December 2007)
Humans have moved into the evolutionary fast lane and are becoming increasing different, a genetic study suggests. . . . In the past 5,000 years, genetic change has occurred at a rate roughly 100 times higher than any other period, say scientists in the US. . . . This is in contrast with the widely-held belief that Lorenzohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16598377696238546062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3517806.post-66704027219562686422007-09-22T14:51:00.000-07:002007-09-22T15:00:54.723-07:00List of Genetically Modified Foods on your grocery shelf
True Food Now! has an interesting list of many common foods that you see on the store shelves every day that have been genetically modified. [Click link above for complete listing] For example, under the chocolate category:
GENETICALLY ENGINEERED INGREDIENTS [IN]
Cadbury (Cadbury/Hershey's) Mounds Almond Joy York Peppermint Patty Dairy Lorenzohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16598377696238546062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3517806.post-33965520898331863602007-07-10T17:21:00.000-07:002007-07-10T17:24:31.591-07:00Michael Moore Busts Wolf Blitzer
In case YouTube drops the video I've linked to below, I'm following it with a transcript from this interesting exchange between Moore and Blitzer.
TRANSCRIPT OF THE ABOVE INTERVIEW:
BLITZER: Michael Moore is joining us now live from Detroit. Michael, thanks very much for coming in. You want to respond to anything ...
MOORE: First of all, Wolf, yeah, well -- Lorenzohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16598377696238546062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3517806.post-2070175657786834252007-03-14T19:24:00.000-07:002007-03-14T19:47:30.799-07:00Expedite the Move Towards a Solar-Electric Economy via Tesla Motors
Elon Musk is an Internet / rocket-launch / electric-car / solar-power entrepreneur. Musk has a grand plan. It all starts with a sports car.
Musk was born and grew up in South Africa. In 1995, Musk went onto a graduate program in energy physics at Stanford. He dropped out to start Zip2, which was acquired by AltaVista for US$307Halhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16435726352424686973noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3517806.post-86547227990750623632007-03-02T09:58:00.000-08:002007-03-02T10:06:56.040-08:00Species under threat: Honey, who shrunk the bee population?
(01 March 2007, The Independent)
Across America, millions of honey bees are abandoning their hives and flying off to die, leaving beekeepers facing ruin and US agriculture under threat. And to date, no one knows why. It has echoes of a murder mystery in polite society. There could hardly be a more sedate and unruffled world than An Old Curmudgeonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00468339733863179942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3517806.post-1158183561410240422006-09-13T14:29:00.000-07:002006-09-13T14:39:21.490-07:00Neanderthals' may have survived longer than previously thought
(BBC NEWS, 13 September 2006)
A study in Nature magazine suggests the species may have lived in Gorham's Cave on Gibraltar up to 24,000 years ago. . . . The Neanderthal people were believed to have died out about 35,000 years ago, at a time when modern humans were advancing across the continent. . . . The new evidence suggests they Lorenzohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16598377696238546062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3517806.post-1154137236132323232006-07-28T18:37:00.000-07:002006-07-28T18:40:36.146-07:00Agent Orange 'caused gene damage'
(BBC News, 28 July 2006)
New Zealand troops who served in the Vietnam War suffered significant genetic damage from exposure to Agent Orange, a study suggests. . . . The chemical was used by the US military in Vietnam in the 1960s. . . . It has been blamed for a variety of medical conditions suffered by soldiers and up to four million Vietnamese. . . . The US Lorenzohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16598377696238546062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3517806.post-1153497090069682242006-07-21T08:45:00.000-07:002006-07-21T08:51:31.910-07:00Bees and flowers decline in step
(BBC News, 21 July 2006)
Diversity in bees and wild flowers is declining together, at least in Britain and the Netherlands, research shows. . . . climate change and modern industrial farming are possible factors in the linked decline. . . . There is a chance, they say, that the decline in pollinating bees could have detrimental effects on food production. . . . Lorenzohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16598377696238546062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3517806.post-1151948692568606632006-07-03T10:36:00.000-07:002006-07-03T10:44:52.636-07:00Hackers stepping up attacks on Pentagon
(Siobhan Gorman, Baltimore Sun, July 2, 2006)
The number of reported attempts to penetrate Pentagon computer networks rose sharply in the past decade, from fewer than 800 in 1996 to more than 160,000 last year - thousands of them successful. At the same time, the nation's ability to safeguard sensitive data in those and other government computer systems is Lorenzohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16598377696238546062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3517806.post-1151335649628376842006-06-26T08:25:00.000-07:002006-06-26T08:27:29.666-07:00Lab tuned to gravity's 'ripples'
(BBC News, 26 June 2006)
One of the great scientific experiments of our age is now fully underway. . . . A German/UK team has put the giant GEO 600 gravitational wave detector in a continuous observational mode. . . . The Hanover lab is trying to detect the ripples created in the fabric of space-time that sweep out from merging black holes or exploding stars. . . Lorenzohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16598377696238546062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3517806.post-1151080091179476672006-06-23T09:24:00.000-07:002006-06-23T09:28:11.200-07:00'Thirst For Knowledge' May Be Opium Craving
(ScienceDaily, June 20, 2006)
Neuroscientists have proposed a simple explanation for the pleasure of grasping a new concept: The brain is getting its fix. . . . The "click" of comprehension triggers a biochemical cascade that rewards the brain with a shot of natural opium-like substances, said Irving Biederman of the University of Southern California. Lorenzohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16598377696238546062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3517806.post-1148421028496478322006-05-23T14:46:00.000-07:002006-05-23T14:50:28.520-07:00Web inventor warns of 'dark' Net
(BBC News, 23 May 2006)
The web should remain neutral and resist attempts to fragment it into different services, web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee has said. . . . Recent attempts in the US to try to charge for different levels of online access web were not "part of the internet model," he said in Edinburgh. . . . He warned that if the US decided to go ahead with aLorenzohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16598377696238546062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3517806.post-1146829933622363982006-05-05T04:49:00.000-07:002006-05-05T04:52:13.646-07:00Deep ocean trawl finds new forms of life
(BBC NEWS, 4 May 2006)
A three-week voyage of discovery in the Atlantic has returned with tiny animals which appear new to science. . . . They include waif-like plankton with delicate translucent bodies related to jellyfish, hundreds of microscopic shrimps, and several kinds of fish. . . . The voyage is part of the ongoing Census of Marine Life (CoML) Lorenzohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16598377696238546062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3517806.post-1145013740163782952006-04-14T04:18:00.000-07:002006-04-14T04:22:20.176-07:0010th Planet Appears Barely Larger Than Pluto
(Kenneth Chang, New York Times, April 11, 2006)
The 10th planet turns out to be barely larger than Pluto, a new photograph by the Hubble Space Telescope shows. . . . The object — still officially unnamed but currently tagged with the designation 2003 UB313 and nicknamed Xena — covered an area only 1.5 pixels across in the digital image taken by Hubble,Lorenzohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16598377696238546062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3517806.post-1144782829040012592006-04-11T12:10:00.000-07:002006-04-11T12:17:30.136-07:00Drug firms 'inventing diseases'
(BBC NEWS, April 11, 2006)
Pharmaceutical firms are inventing diseases to sell more drugs, researchers have warned. . . . Disease-mongering promotes non-existent diseases and exaggerates mild problems to boost profits, the Public Library of Science Medicine reported. . . . Researchers at Newcastle University in Australia said firms were putting healthy people at Lorenzohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16598377696238546062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3517806.post-1132175226489439452005-11-16T13:07:00.000-08:002005-11-16T13:07:06.556-08:00Bush Administration Approves Pesticide Testing on Orphans & Mentally Handicapped Children
[NOTE: This is a follow-up to an earlier story, Bush's Fascist Government Using Poor Children in Toxic Chemical Tests, which caused the Bush regime to modify its plans to only test toxins on orphans and mentally challenged children.]
(Organic Consumers Association, November 16, 2005)
Public comments areLorenzohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16598377696238546062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3517806.post-1132108873667859842005-11-15T18:41:00.000-08:002005-11-15T18:43:00.023-08:00Rumsfeld To Profit from Bird Flu Hoax
(Dr. Mercola, mercola.com)
Finally, the pieces of the puzzle start to add up. Not long ago, President Bush sought to instill panic in this country by telling us a minimum of 200,000 people will die from the avian flu pandemic, but it could be as bad as 2 million deaths in this country alone. . . . This hoax is then used to justify the immediate purchase of 80Lorenzohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16598377696238546062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3517806.post-1131826078713311412005-11-12T12:07:00.000-08:002005-11-12T12:07:58.746-08:00Meditation Improves Brain Development Study Shows
(LiveScience Staff, 11 November 2005)
Meditation alters brain patterns in ways that are likely permanent, scientists have known. But a new study shows key parts of the brain actually get thicker through the practice. . . . Brain imaging of regular working folks who meditate regularly revealed increased thickness in cortical regions related to Lorenzohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16598377696238546062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3517806.post-1131556078889502622005-11-09T09:07:00.000-08:002005-11-09T09:07:58.956-08:00Evolution suffers setback in Kansas, citizens vote to devolve
(BBC NEWS, 09 November 2005)
Public schools in the US state of Kansas are to be given new science standards that cast doubt on evolution. . . . Proponents of the change argue they are trying to expose students to legitimate scientific questions about evolution. . . . The Kansas decision came as voters in Pennsylvania replaced all Lorenzohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16598377696238546062noreply@blogger.com