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Science (General/Chat)

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  • Could this be the end of Alzheimer's ?

    08/31/2016 1:25:29 PM PDT · by Tilted Irish Kilt · 106 replies
    dailymail ^ | 8/31/16
    A revolutionary drug that could stop people from ever developing Alzheimer’s disease has been unveiled by scientists. Trials have produced ‘unprecedented’ results and the medicine has been hailed as a potential game-changer in the fight against the cruel disease. In future, healthy pensioners could be prescribed the drug to ward off dementia, in much the same way as statins are given today to those at risk of heart attacks. One British expert described the drug, which is about to be tested in hospitals around the UK, as the best yet, others called it ‘ingenious’ work with ‘tantalising’ results.And a US...
  • Ancient Egyptian mummy's face reconstructed with 3D printing

    08/31/2016 10:54:36 AM PDT · by Red Badger · 26 replies
    www.ibtimes.co.uk ^ | August 31, 2016 13:38 BST | By Léa Surugue
    The face of an ancient female Egyptian mummy has been reconstructed with the help of 3D printing and forensic science techniques, an important step to better understand who she was. Other crucial details about her health have also been gathered, completing the picture. This reconstruction was only made possible due to the work of a multi-disciplinary team led by scientists at Melbourne University, combining medical research, forensic science, computerised tomographic (CT) scanning, 3D printing, Egyptology and art. It all started when Dr Ryan Jefferies, curator at the University's Harry Brookes Allen Museum of Anatomy and Pathology, stumbled across the skull...
  • Climate Craziness of the Week: “Climate Anxiety Counseling” enters the lexicon with a ‘practitioner’

    08/31/2016 7:34:16 AM PDT · by onona · 18 replies
    WUWT ^ | August 30, 2016 | Anthony Watts
    CLIMATE ANXIETY COUNSELING I’m scared for the effects of climate change on the world I love. Rather than try to think about, save, or mourn for the whole world, I decided to think about my city and state, and the living creatures — including other humans — who share it with me.
  • 9 Signs you're a highly sensitive person

    08/30/2016 10:15:25 PM PDT · by jcon40 · 43 replies
    Forbes.com ^ | Aug. 30, 2016 | Travis Bradbury
    Sensitive people get a bad rap. Research suggests that genes are responsible for the 15-20% of people who qualify as “highly sensitive.” Psychologist Elain Aron has studied this phenomenon extensively, and using MRI scans of highly sensitive people’s brains, she’s found that they experience sounds, feelings, and even the presence of other people much more intensely than the average person. Sensitivity And Emotional Intelligence Emotional intelligence (EQ) is your ability to recognize and understand emotions in yourself and others and your ability to use this awareness to manage your behavior and relationships. The good news is that highly sensitive people...
  • Pediatricians putting new focus on how violence, other problems affect children's lives

    08/30/2016 6:39:21 PM PDT · by Coleus · 4 replies
    bergen record ^ | August 29, 2016 | KARA YORIO
    Violence, racism, intolerance and religious bigotry made headlines this summer and the American Academy of Pediatrics took notice. These issues are impacting children and the organization wants to address the societal problems proactively with kids and their families.“We need to talk more about this, definitely,” said Dr. Sylvia Blaustein of St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center in Paterson. “I think everybody should be discussing these issues because of what’s going on nationally and internationally.”  The AAP was pushed to action in early July after shootings in Baton Rouge and Dallas. It announced an initiative aimed at addressing gun violence as...
  • Their Masters' Voices: Dogs Understand Tone And Meaning Of Words

    08/30/2016 5:57:12 PM PDT · by Innovative · 54 replies
    NPR ^ | Aug. 30. 2016 | Nell Greenfieldboyce
    When you praise a dog, it's listening not just to the words you say but also how you say them. That might not be huge news to dog owners. But now scientists have explored this phenomenon by using an imaging machine to peek inside the brains of 13 dogs as they listened to their trainer's voice. The reward pathway in the dogs' brains lit up when they heard both praising words and an approving intonation — but not when they heard random words spoken in a praising tone or praise words spoken in a flat tone, according to a report...
  • Dogs understand both vocabulary and intonation of human speech

    08/30/2016 5:17:09 PM PDT · by JimSEA · 69 replies
    Science Daily ^ | 8/29/2016 | American Association for the Advancement of Science
    Dogs have the ability to distinguish vocabulary words and the intonation of human speech through brain regions similar to those that humans use, a new study reports. Attila Andics et al. note that vocabulary learning "does not appear to be a uniquely human capacity that follows from the emergence of language, but rather a more ancient function that can be exploited to link arbitrary sound sequences to meanings." Words are the basic building blocks of human languages, but they are hardly ever found in nonhuman vocal communications. Intonation is another way that information is conveyed through speech, where, for example,...
  • Earth Just Narrowly Missed Getting Hit by an Asteroid

    08/30/2016 4:20:38 PM PDT · by Beave Meister · 38 replies
    Popular Mechanics ^ | 8/30/2016 | Avery Thompson
    On Saturday, astronomers discovered a new asteroid, just a few hours before it almost hit us. The asteroid is called 2016 QA2, and it missed the Earth by less than a quarter of the distance to the moon. That puts it about three times as far away from Earth as our farthest satellites. And we never saw it coming. So how did 2016 QA2 sneak up on us like that? For this particular asteroid, the answer seems to be that it has a very peculiar orbit. It's highly elliptical, which means it can usually be found hanging out by either...
  • Marijuana makes rats lazy, less willing to try cognitively demanding tasks

    08/30/2016 4:01:11 PM PDT · by Tilted Irish Kilt · 48 replies
    University of British Columbia @ medicalxpress ^ | August 24, 2016 | University of British Columbia
    New research from the University of British Columbia suggests there may be some truth to the belief that marijuana use causes laziness— at least in rats. The study, published today in the Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, found that tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, makes rats less willing to try a cognitively demanding task. "Perhaps unsurprisingly, we found that when we gave THC to these rats, they basically became cognitively lazy," said Mason Silveira, the study's lead author and a PhD candidate in UBC's department of psychology. "What's interesting, however, is that their ability to do the...
  • VIDEO: Top 5 "Climate Change" Myths More Thoroughly DEBUNKED Than Ever

    08/30/2016 3:54:16 PM PDT · by StevenCrowder · 25 replies
    www.LouderWithCrowder.com ^ | 08/30/2016 | Steven Crowder
    I couldn't possibly have sourced, or researched this video more. SOURCES HERE: http://louderwithcrowder.com/top-5-climate-change-myths-debunked/ The goal is this: if you need to arm yourself to debate the dogmatic Climate Change cultists... this is the video you can use.
  • Japan’s ‘Hail Mary’ at Fukushima Daiichi: An Underground Ice Wall

    08/30/2016 7:42:35 AM PDT · by DUMBGRUNT · 33 replies
    N Y Times ^ | 29 Aug 2016 | MARTIN FACKLER
    More impressive is what is taking shape unseen beneath: an underground wall of frozen dirt 100 feet deep and nearly a mile in length, intended to solve a runaway water crisis threatening the devastated Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in Japan... Built by the central government at a cost of 35 billion yen, or some $320 million, the ice wall is intended to seal off the reactor buildings within a vast, rectangular-shaped barrier of man-made permafrost... The company says that it has built more than 1,000 tanks that now hold more than 800,000 tons of radioactive water, enough to fill...
  • Milky Way had a blowout bash 6 million years ago

    08/29/2016 9:05:38 PM PDT · by sparklite2 · 22 replies
    Science Daily ^ | August 29, 2016 | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
    The center of the Milky Way galaxy is currently a quiet place where a supermassive black hole slumbers, only occasionally slurping small sips of hydrogen gas. But it wasn't always this way. A new study shows that 6 million years ago, when the first human ancestors known as hominins walked the Earth, our galaxy's core blazed forth furiously. The evidence for this active phase came from a search for the galaxy's missing mass.
  • Zika-infected mosquitoes lay Zika-infected eggs (in lab)

    08/29/2016 3:00:23 PM PDT · by Tilted Irish Kilt · 18 replies
    theverge ^ | August 29, 2016 | Rachel Becker
    Mosquito moms can transmit zika virus to their offspring — at least in the lab, a new study shows. If this also happens in nature, the virus might be able to survive in tough mosquito eggs even when cold weather, dry spells, and pesticides kill off the infectious adults. Mosquitoes can transmit viruses in the same family as Zika, such as yellow fever and dengue, to their offspring — but it wasn’t clear whether this was also true for Zika. So scientists led by Robert Tesh, an epidemiologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch, injected Zika virus into approximately...
  • Early human ancestor Lucy 'died falling out of a tree'

    08/29/2016 1:04:19 PM PDT · by C19fan · 77 replies
    BBC ^ | August 29, 2016 | Jonathan Webb
    New evidence suggests that the famous fossilised human ancestor dubbed "Lucy" by scientists died falling from a great height - probably out of a tree. CT scans have shown injuries to her bones similar to those suffered by modern humans in similar falls. The 3.2 million-year-old hominin was found on a treed flood plain, making a branch her most likely final perch. It bolsters the view that her species - Australopithecus afarensis - spent at least some of its life in the trees.
  • Is Earth being contacted by ALIENS? Mystery radio signals coming from a sun-like star

    08/29/2016 11:20:28 AM PDT · by Red Badger · 85 replies
    www.dailymail.co.uk ^ | Updated: 06:48 EST, 29 August 2016 | By Ellie Zolfagharifard
    The signals seem to be coming from a sun-like star known as HD 164595 The star is 95 light years away and may have undiscovered planets in orbit Scientists say signals may simply be the result of a natural phenomenon One possibility is 'microlensing' in which the star's gravity focuses signals coming from farther away A spike in radio signals coming from the direction of a sun-like star has excited astronomers. The signals seem to be originating from a sun-like star known as HD 164595 in the constellation Hercules, around 95 light years away. Scientists suggest they are likely to...
  • An Interesting SETI Candidate in Hercules

    08/29/2016 7:20:51 AM PDT · by LibWhacker · 26 replies
    Centauri Dreams ^ | 8/27/16 | Paul Gilster
    An Interesting SETI Candidate in Hercules by Paul Gilster on August 27, 2016 A candidate signal for SETI is a welcome sign that our efforts in that direction may one day pay off. An international team of researchers has announced the detection of “a strong signal in the direction of HD164595” in a document now being circulated through contact person Alexander Panov. The detection was made with the RATAN-600 radio telescope in Zelenchukskaya, in the Karachay–Cherkess Republic of Russia, not far from the border with Georgia in the Caucasus. The signal was received on May 15, 2015, 18:01:15.65 (sidereal time),...
  • teen dies 'after girlfriend's hickey formed blood clot that travelled to brain ..'(trunct

    08/28/2016 1:57:37 PM PDT · by SMGFan · 21 replies
    UK Mirror ^ | August 28, 2016
    A teen has reportedly died after getting a love bite from his girlfriend that caused him to have a stroke . Julio Macias Gonzalez started having convulsions at the dinner table with his family in Mexico City after spending an evening with his girlfriend. Paramedics were dispatched to the scene but the 17-year-old could not be saved. It is thought that the suction of the love bite – also known as a ‘hickey’ – caused a blood clot that travelled to Julio’s brain and caused him to have a stroke. His 24-year-old girlfriend has now disappeared and the boy’s parents...
  • Scientists stunned by huge MIT discovery

    08/27/2016 8:35:43 PM PDT · by BenLurkin · 17 replies
    morningticker.com ^ | August 27, 2016 | Dan Taylor
    In cooperation with the Sinapore University of Technology and Design, the MIT researchers found a way to print tiny features on a micron scale, and then bent them — causing them to spring back into their original shape afterwards after being heated to a certain temperatures, according to an MIT statement. There are so many potential important applications for the discovery, including actuators that would turn solar panels toward the sun automatically and drug capsules that act on their own. It’s something that goes beyond 3D printing into what researchers would call 4D printing, as the structures cross into the...
  • Earthquake Experts Tell Latino Community How To Get Ready For The Big One

    08/27/2016 7:57:06 PM PDT · by BenLurkin · 28 replies
    cbslocal.com ^ | August 27, 2016 4:14 PM | Adrianna Weingold
    “These misconceptions or behaviors that work in Latin America but don’t work here because buildings are different here, earthquakes are different here,” says Pablo Ampuero, professor of seismology at Caltech. It’s the first time Caltech has hosted an event like this, where the community engaged directly with scientists and experts, asking questions and getting important answers. The event stressed the importance of being prepared for disaster. And how earthquakes here in the US are different from those in other parts of the world. “When you look at what the earthquake will do to us, it probably won’t kill us, but...
  • The Boeing KC-46A Tanker: Refuels Military Aircraft Using 3D

    08/27/2016 6:04:21 PM PDT · by Enlightened1 · 16 replies
    Youtube ^ | 08/27/16
    The new Boeing KC-46A Refueler.  This is a great Ad Boeing did.  Think Freepers may enjoy this 2 minute video.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThbmESQTZrU