Yep.Originally Posted by zombie67
Yep.
Drink Up: Discern Fact from Fiction for Popular Health Beverages
Learn what the science says about some popular claims regarding the cognitive effects of certain drinks
Dec 18, 2014 |By Victoria Stern
THINKSTOCK
1. Pomegranate juice enhances memory: Probable. Many studies support the connection, including a recent brain-imaging study that showed that volunteers with age-related memory issues who consumed this antioxidant-rich drink performed better on memory tasks than those who drank a red placebo drink.
2. Red wine staves off cognitive decline: Possible. A growing body of research continues to support the health benefits of drinking wine. One study, which followed a group of men and women over seven years, found that ...
Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar..._HLTH_20150113
Beef from Former Mad Cow Epicenter Could Hit U.S. Shelves This Year
By Philip Yam | January 8, 2015 |
Credit: Ysangkok/Wikimedia Commons
After nearly 16 years, the U.S. has agreed to import beef from Ireland—the first European country to get the go-ahead since the epidemic of mad cow disease swept the continent In the 1980s and 1990s. The move—which may extend to the rest of the British Isles later this year—serves as a milestone in the history of the disease, which can destroy not only the brains of cows, but also those of the humans who eat them.
The epidemic exploded because of the way British farmers raised their bovines. Instead of eating grass or grain, the animals consumed feed made from their dead brethren. Coupled with money-saving changes that did not fully cleanse the feed during processing, the forced cannibalism ...
Read more on http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/...ves-this-year/
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever
Astronauts Evacuate U.S. Side of Space Station
An alarm suggesting a potentially toxic ammonia leak on the International Space Station early Wednesday, but it might have been a false alarm
January 14, 2015 |By Miriam Kramer and SPACE.com
The station's six-person crew, which includes two Americans, three Russians and an Italian astronaut, took refuge in the station's Russian-built segment.
Credit: NASA
An alarm suggesting a potentially toxic ammonia leak on the International Space Station early Wednesday (Jan. 14) forced astronauts to evacuate the U.S. side of the orbiting lab, but NASA says there is no proof such a scary leak actually occurred. It might have beeen a false alarm.
The station's six-person crew, which includes two Americans, three Russians and an Italian astronaut, took refuge in the station's Russian-built segment, isolating themselves from modules built by NASA, Europe and Japan due to the leak alarm at 4 a.m. EST (0900 GMT). NASA astronautsBarry "Butch" Wilmore, Terry Virts and European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti are ...
Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...A_SPC_20150115
SpaceX Dragon Capsule Delivers Fresh Supplies to Space Station
The capsule was carried January 10 atop a Falcon 9 rocket that lifted off from Cape Canaveral. After launch the rocket came down as planned on a drone ship but hit a bit too hard
January 12, 2015 |By Mike Wall and SPACE.com
The rocket stage came down on target but hit the drone ship too hard Saturday. SpaceX will try the bold maneuver again on future launches, company representatives said.
Credit: NASA TV
SpaceX's robotic Dragon resupply spacecraft has arrived at the International Space Station after a two-day orbital chase.
NASA astronaut Barry "Butch" Wilmore, commander of the station's current Expedition 42, grappled Dragon using the orbiting outpost's huge robotic arm at 5:54 a.m. EST (1054 GMT) on Monday (Jan. 12). The capsule was installed on the Earth-facing port of the station's Harmony module three hours later.
The astronauts can now begin offloading the 5,200 pounds (2,360 kilograms) of food, spare parts and scientific experiments that Dragon brought up on this mission, the fifth of 12 unmanned cargo flights SpaceX plans ...
Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...A_SPC_20150115
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever
First footage captured of rare ‘Type D’ orcas
By Bec Crew | January 9, 2015 | Comments1
As they were tracking a Nigerian poaching vessel through the South Indian Ocean on Boxing Day last year, Australian conservationists aboard the SSS Bob Barker saw something pretty incredible – a pod of 13 Type D orcas. These orcas are so rare, they’ve only been seen on 13 recorded occasions. This footage is believed to be the first time this type of orca has ever been recorded alive.
“The crew watched in awe as the 13 killer whales, including a small juvenile and a large male, used the six-meter swell to surf across the bow,” chief engineer of the Bob Barker, Erwin Vermeulen, said in a statement. “For almost an hour, the surf-show continued and was accompanied by bow riding, tail-slaps and breaches.”
In the southern hemisphere, the orca population is ...
Read more on http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/...-type-d-orcas/
Giant Squid and Whale Sharks Not as Big as People Think
A study reveals that people's "fish stories" are usually exaggerated when compared with scientific reports of body sizes for marine creatures
January 14, 2015 |By Tanya Lewis and LiveScience
A diver is dwarfed by a giant jellyfish.
Credit: Yomiuri Shimbun
When it comes to determining the size of giant squid and other large sea animals, humans have a tendency to exaggerate, a new study suggests.
A team of researchers compared scientific and popular media reports of body sizes for 25 species of marine creatures, including whales, sharks, squids, and other giant ocean dwellers, and found that most of the animals were smaller than what was reported.
"It's human nature to tell a 'fishing story,'" said Craig McClain ...
Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...SA_BS_20150116
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever
Manhattan Project Plutonium, Lost to Obscurity, Recovered by Scientists
Radioactive signatures identify one of the first pieces of plutonium seen by human eyes
January 15, 2015 |By Andy Extance
Nagasaki atomic bomb blast.
Credit: Library of Congress
“Fat Man,” the atomic bomb dropped by the U.S. on Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945, carried about 6.2 kilograms of enriched plutonium, roughly the size of a softball. The origin of that deadly hunk of metal can be traced back via a tiny sliver weighing less than three millionths of a gram, created in the labs of Manhattan Project researchers. It is a historic fragment, embodying both stunning scientific achievement and deep tragedy—that one bomb killed and wounded at least 64,000 people (estimates vary) as well as hastened Japan’s surrender. And in 2007 this historic sample, the first plutonium ever seen by researchers, vanished from the public eye.
Now it has resurfaced in a plastic box in a windowless, secure six-foot by six-foot room in the University of California, Berkeley’s Hazardous Material Facility. The tiny lump, derived from Nobel Prize–winning chemist Glenn Seaborg’s original discovery ...
Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...SA_SP_20150119
Humans Cross Another Danger Line for the Planet
By Mark Fischetti | January 15, 2015 |
Disappearing Forests: Green are sustainable for now, yellow and red are past the safe limit.
Five years go an impressive, international group of scientists unveiled nine biological and environmental “boundaries” that humankind should not cross in order to keep the earth a livable place. To its peril, the world had already crossed three of those safe limits: too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, too rapid a rate of species loss and too much pouring of nitrogen into rivers and oceans—primarily in the form of fertilizer runoff.
Now we have succeeded in transgressing a fourth limit: the amount of forestland being bulldozed or burned out of existence (see map below). Less and less forest reduces the planet’s ability to absorb some of that carbon dioxide and to produce water vapor, crucial to plant life. And the ongoing loss alters how much of the sun’s energy is absorbed or reflected across wide regions, which itself can modify climate.
Details about the fourth transgression, and updates on how well the planet is faring on all nine boundaries, are being published today online in Science. Another international team ...
Read more on http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/...or-the-planet/
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever
Coral Reefs Show Remarkable Ability to Recover from Near Death
Scientists have identified key factors that enable corals to recover from bleaching events brought on by global warming
January 15, 2015 |By David Biello
REEF RELIEF: This coral reef in the Seychelles has largely recovered from bleaching in 1998 thanks to the complexity of its shape and the depth of the water.
Courtesy of Nick Graham
As the planet heats up so do the world's waters, and that means more coral bleaching. But now a new study reveals that some corals can bounce back from such near death experiences.
The heat death of a reef reveals itself as whitening, dubbed coral bleaching, which results when corals expel the tiny plants that provide food and are responsible for the rainbow of reef colors. In 2014, coral bleaching happened in the northern Mariana Islands, the Marshall Islands, the Hawaiian Islands and even the Florida Keys. Severe bleaching has now happened two years in a row off Guam and overheated waters have now appeared off the Pacific island nations of Kiribati and Nauru and are also pooling near the Solomon Islands.
"The odds seem good for 2014 to be only the third recorded global scale mass bleaching," says Mark Eakin ...
Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...A_EVO_20150119
The Neandertal Mystique
Our heavy-browed cousin remains the most fascinating member of the human family
Jan 20, 2015 |By Kate Wong
Giordano Polini
For the cover story of the February Scientific American I return to one of my favorite subjects: our mysterious cousins the Neandertals. This time I take stock of recent findings that bear on the question of how the cognitive abilities of Neandertals compare with anatomically modern humans. It’s an intriguing area of research, not least because in addition to illuminating the Neandertal mind, such investigations can help reveal what factors allowed anatomically modern humans—our kind—to succeed where other members of the human family failed.
Just as fascinating is the long history of Neandertal studies, which date back to the 19th century. Indeed the Neandertals are the best known ...
Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...A_EVO_20150119
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever
The Dog and Cat Wing: Hospital Sets Up a Scanner Center for Pets
A hospital looks to the four-legged to pad its bottom line while improving care for our furry companions
January 20, 2015 |By Dina Fine Maron
A dog patient relaxes near a MRI machine.
Credit: Rebecca Krimins
BALTIMORE—Down the hall from the hospital waiting room where patients await their turn to get medical scans, a middle-aged patient was undergoing an MRI of her lower back. That she had arrived at the hospital in a cage is only the first clue this was no ordinary MRI procedure. There’s the pulse-reading clip normally affixed to a finger that instead was clamped to her tongue. And the disposable bubble wrap tucked under her front paws to keep her warm.
Having our furry friends like eight-year-old Glacier, a Boxer, undergo a pricey medical scan may come as no surprise to devoted pet owners. But with few exceptions most veterinary centers lack the expensive scanners, so four-legged patients must use the ones originally meant for two-legged ones. The new animal medical-imaging center at The Johns Hopkins Hospital ...
Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar..._HLTH_20150120
Paralyzed Rats Walk Again with Flexible Spinal Implant
Elastic material bridges gaps, relays nerve impulses, in damaged spinal cords
January 20, 2015 |By Josh Fischman
The e-dura soft spinal impant helps transmit nerve impulses.
Courtesy EPFL
A rubbery ribbon of silicone, laced with cracked bits of gold that transmit nerve signals, has been spliced into the broken spinal cords of paralyzed rats, restoring their ability to move. The implant may be the first step towards helping paralyzed people in the same way.
Injuries that cause paralysis are like cuts in a telephone cable. Signals that start in the brain are supposed to travel down nerves in the spinal cord to muscles, but breaks in the nerves interrupt them. Patching the breaks with new wires, jumping over the cut in the phone line, should restore communication.
But it is an unfortunate paradox that, in people who cannot move, their spines still can. The nerves stretch and bend. Rigid wires implanted next to them rub them raw, creating scars ...
Read more on ... http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar..._HLTH_20150120
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever
Discovery: Fish Live Beneath Antarctica
Scientists find translucent fish in a wedge of water hidden under 740 meters of ice, 850 kilometers from sunlight
January 21, 2015 |By Douglas Fox
Credit: Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling Project
Stunned researchers in Antarctica have discovered fish and other aquatic animals living in perpetual darkness and cold, beneath a roof of ice 740 meters thick. The animals inhabit a wedge of seawater only 10 meters deep, sealed between the ice above and a barren, rocky seafloor below—a location so remote and hostile the many scientists expected to find nothing but scant microbial life.
A team of ice drillers and scientists made the discovery after lowering a small, custom-built robot down a narrow hole ...
Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...SA_BS_20150123
Ancient Viruses Gain New Functions in the Brain
Once thought to be little more than genetic junk, retroviruses lurking within host genomes have acquired new roles that may be involved in brain development, a recent study suggests
January 19, 2015 |By Andrea Alfano
About 8 percent of our genetic material is made up of absorbed forms of retroviruses.
Credit: National Cancer Institute
If thinking about the billions of bacteria taking up residence in and on your body gives you the willies, you probably won’t find it comforting that humans are also full of viruses. These maligned microbes are actually intertwined in the very fibers of our being—about 8 percent of our genetic material is made up of absorbed forms of retroviruses, the viral family to which HIV, the pathogen that causes AIDS, belongs.
Our intimate relationship with these so-called endogenous retroviruses may be distressing to think about but a study published last week in Cell Reports suggests that they may help shape that thinking by participating in brain development. By manipulating mice genetics, researchers found evidence that ...
Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...SA_BS_20150123
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever
One for you zombie67.
Ebola Epidemic Takes a Toll on Sierra Leone’s Surgeons
Twenty percent of the nation’s surgical practitioners have been killed by Ebola
January 22, 2015 |By Seema Yasmin and Chethan Sathya
Although the rate of new Ebola infections in Sierra Leone, along with neighboring countries Guinea and Liberia, is finally falling, more than 800 health care personnel have been infected with Ebola in the hot zone and nearly 500 have died since the epidemic began.
Credit: CDC Global via Flickr
Thaim Kamara is 60 years old and would like to retire this year. But he is one of only eight remaining surgeons in Sierra Leone, a west African country of about six million people. Kamara lost two friends to Ebola in 2014—Martin Salia and Thomas Rogers, fellow surgeons at Connaught Hospital in the capital, Freetown. In light of the dire circumstances, Kamara has postponed his plan to retire.
Although the rate of new Ebola infections in Sierra Leone, along with neighboring countries Guinea and Liberia, is finally falling, more than 800 health care personnel have been infected with Ebola in the hot zone and nearly 500 have died since the epidemic began, according to a January report by the World Health Organization. And the toll, along with the continuing deaths of health care workers will have devastating implications for the long-term health of these nations.
Salia’s death in November was especially devastating for Sierra Leone. The talented surgeon was not only a precious commodity, he was an ...
Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar..._HLTH_20150127
Self-Propelled Micromotors Take Their First Swim in the Body
Microsized tubes can now zip around in a mouse’s stomach and deliver cargo, suggesting the potential for improved functions of nanoparticle drug carriers and imaging agents
January 23, 2015 |By Katherine Bourzac and Chemical & Engineering News
In 2012, Wang and his colleagues made micromotors fueled by acids, which offered the potential to run the devices on bodily fluids, such as gastric juices.
Credit: ACS Nano
The idea sounds like something out of a science-fiction novel: Tiny medical machines zooming around the body delivering drugs, taking tissue samples, or performing small surgical repairs. But, now, for the first time, researchers have demonstrated a simple micromotor that can propel itself inside the body (ACS Nano 2014, DOI: 10.1021/nn507097k). When introduced into a mouse’s stomach, the micromotor swims to the stomach lining and delivers cargo.
The study is an important landmark, says Thomas E. Mallouk, who develops nanomotors and micromotors at Pennsylvania State University. It shows the potential of motorized particles to possibly improve the functions of nanoparticle drug carriers and imaging agents.
In recent years, researchers have designed microsized motors ...
Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar..._HLTH_20150127
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever
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