Parasite Theory Stirs A Revolution
“What if I told you,” Joel Weinstock said, “there were countries where the doctors had never seen hay fever?” It is another piece of evidence, another “aha” moment in the global medical mystery that Weinstock – the chief of gastroenterology and hepatology at Tufts-New England Medical Center – has narrowed down to one chief suspect: the worms.
Polynesian Chickens
Scholars have long assumed the Spaniards first introduced chickens to the New World along with horses, pigs, and cattle. But now radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis of a chicken bone excavated from a site in Chile suggest Polynesians in oceangoing canoes brought chickens to the west coast of South America well before Europe’s “Age of Discovery.”
Snorting A Brain Chemical Replaces Sleep
In what sounds like a dream for millions of tired coffee drinkers, Darpa-funded scientists might have found a drug that will eliminate sleepiness. A nasal spray containing a naturally occurring brain hormone called orexin A reversed the effects of sleep deprivation in monkeys, allowing them to perform like well-rested monkeys on cognitive tests. The discovery’s first application will probably be in treatment of the severe sleep disorder narcolepsy.
Strange Shapes On Mars
Russian viewers have been given an interesting series of photos of strange shapes found by recent Mars photography. Click through the whole set of five.
Picture-Sorting Dogs
Next time you sort through your holiday photos, maybe your dog could lend a hand. It seems dogs can place photographs into categories the same way humans do, an ability previously identified only in birds and primates. Friederike Range at the University of Vienna, Austria, and colleagues trained dogs to distinguish photographs that depicted dogs from those that did not. “We know they can categorise ‘food’ or ‘enemies’ from experience,” says Range, “but this is the first time we’ve taught them an abstract concept – ‘a dog’ – and shown they can transfer this knowledge to a new situation.”
Dakota the Dino “Mummy”
A newly un veiled “dinosaur mummy” is one of the best-preserved of the ancient reptiles found to date, accord ing to researchers—who say this one may have had stripes and the ability to out run fearsome T. rex. Scientists on Monday announced a preliminary analysis of the 67-million-year-old duck-billed dinosaur, with muscles and bones preserved in large, intact segments of skin.
Chimp’s Photographic Memory
Chimpanzees have an extraordinary photographic memory that is far superior to ours, research suggests. Young chimps outperformed university students in memory tests devised by Japanese scientists. The research, published in Current Biology, suggests we may have under-estimated the intelligence of our closest living relatives.
Sliding Rocks of Racetrack Playa
One of the most interesting mysteries of Death Valley National Park is the sliding rocks at Racetrack Playa (a playa is a dry lake bed). These rocks can be found on the floor of the playa with long trails behind them. Somehow these rocks slide across the playa, cutting a furrow in the sediment as they move. Some of these rocks weigh several hundred pounds. That makes the question: “How do they move?” a very challenging one. The truth: No one knows for sure exactly how these rocks move – although a few people have come up with some pretty good explanations. The reason why their movement remains a mystery: No one has ever seen them in motion!
Incredible Abilities
With so many superhero movies around, such as Spiderman or Hulk, we are used to see people with special abilities in fiction. But people with amazing abilities actually do exist in real life; here’s a list of 10 of the most amazing of these people!
Humanity “Shortening the Life of the Universe”
This startling claim, made by a pair of American cosmologists, has to do with observing dark matter. This is a “must read” article for those interested in the weirdnesses of quantum physics.
Natural Disasters Quadruple in Two Decades
More than four times the number of natural disasters are occurring now than did two decades ago, British charity Oxfam said in a study Sunday that largely blamed global warming. “Oxfam… says that rising green house gas emissions are the major cause of weather-related disasters and must be tackled,” the organisation said, adding that the world’s poorest people were being hit the hardest. The world suffered about 120 natural disasters per year in the early 1980s, which compared with the current figure of about 500 per year, according to the report. “This year we have seen floods in South Asia, across the breadth of Africa and Mexico that have affected more than 250 million people,” noted Oxfam director Barbara Stocking. “This is no freak year. It follows a pattern of more frequent, more erratic, more unpredictable and more extreme weather events that are affecting more people.”
Goldilocks Universe
Science, we are repeatedly told, is the most reliable form of knowledge about the world because it is based on testable hypotheses. Religion, by contrast, is based on faith. The term “doubting Thomas” well illustrates the difference. In science, a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity, whereas in religion, having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue. The problem with this neat separation into “non-overlapping magisteria,” as Stephen Jay Gould described science and religion, is that science has its own faith-based belief system. All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way. You couldn’t be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble of odds and ends haphazardly juxtaposed. When physicists probe to a deeper level of subatomic structure, or astronomers extend the reach of their instruments, they expect to encounter additional elegant mathematical order. And so far this faith has been justified.
“Slovenia’s Gandhi”
Slovenia’s President is a recluse. Told he had cancer, Janez Drnovsek moved alone to the woods and embraced his inner spirituality. His Government despises him but he is a hero to his people. It is not often that you ask a European head of state whether he has gone loopy, but in the case of Janez Drnovsek, Slovenia’s reclusive President, the question seems almost unavoidable.
Six Ideas That Can Change the World
They are making orange peel plastic and robots that can heal themselves. They are six researchers with six ideas that will one day change the world.
Giant Sea Scorpion
The fossilised remains of a giant claw that once belonged to a sea scorpion roughly 2.5 metres long have been found in Germany. Researchers say the monstrous creature is the largest arthropod ever known – over 30 centimetres bigger than the previous largest specimen of the same species. Simon Braddy at the University of Bristol, UK, and colleagues examined the 46-centimetre-long claw, found in a quarry in western Germany, and believe it belonged to a sea scorpion species called Jaekelopterus rhenaniae that roamed the ocean floors some 390 million years ago. Some palaeontologists believe that J. rhenaniae used its claws to reach out and grab passing animals, such as fish, to eat. “They were the top predators at the time,” says Paul Selden at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas, US.
10 Great Snake-Oil Gadgets
Some gadgets change the world. Others don’t. These ones, however, are very effective at one thing in particular: teleporting money out of customers’ pockets.
Noah’s Flood and European Farming
An ancient flood some say could be the origin of the story of Noah’s Ark may have helped the spread of agriculture in Europe 8,300 years ago by scattering the continent’s earliest farmers, researchers said on Sunday. Using radiocarbon dating and archaeological evidence, a British team showed the collapse of the North American ice sheet, which raised global sea levels by as much as 1.4 meters, displaced tens of thousands of people in southeastern Europe who carried farming skills to their new homes.
Vacuum Mouth
It was one of those eureka moments, when the scientists realized they had discovered a new dinosaur with mouth parts designed to vacuum up food. Paul Sereno who discovered the 110 million-year-old plant eater in the Sahara Desert that didn’t eat its food but vacuumed it up off the sea floor, has named the elephant-sized animal, Nigersaurus taqueti, an acknowledgment of the African country Niger and a French paleontologist, Philippe Taquet.
Surfer Stuns Physicists
39-year-old Garrett Lisi, reported to be an impoverished surfer, has stunned much of the scientific community with a new unifying theory that is reportedly a model of simplicity. What are the chances Lisi’s theory will gain broad acceptance? Lisi has drawn up a new theory of the universe, seen by some as the Holy Grail of physics, which is receiving rave reviews from fellow scientists. Lisi, has a PhD but no university affiliation and spends most of the year surfing in Hawaii, where he has also been a hiking guide and bridge builder, sleeping in a jungle yurt.
“Stop Perpetuating the Myth”
A UFO seen over Vancouver Island in British Columbia in 1981 and made public by the British Ministry of Defence in 2006
On Monday, in a National Press Club forum in Washington, a group of former pilots who recounted seeing strange phenomena in the sky demanded that the US government reopen an investigation into UFOs. Several pilots offered dramatic accounts of witnessing UFOs – including a transparent flying disc and a triangular craft with mysterious markings – as they insisted their questions needed to be taken seriously more than 30 years after the US file was closed. “We want the US government to stop perpetuating the myth that all UFOs can be explained away in down-to-earth, conventional terms,” said Fife Symington, former governor of Arizona and air force pilot who says he saw a UFO in 1997.
Decoding Whale Sounds
Australian scientists studying humpback whales sounds say they have begun to decode the whale’s mysterious communication system, identifying male pick-up lines and motherly warnings. Wops, thwops, grumbles and squeaks are part of the extensive whale repertoire recorded by scientists from the University of Queensland working on the Humpback Whale Acoustic Research Collaboration (HARC) project.
Big Chunk of the Universe Missing–Again!
Not only has a large chunk of the universe thought to have been found in 2002 apparently gone missing again but it is taking some friends with it, according to new research at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). The new calculations might leave the mass of the universe as much as ten to 20 percent lighter than previously calculated.
Strange but True: Snake Oil Salesmen Were on to Something
Snake oil really is a cure for what ails you, if that happens to be arthritis, heart disease or maybe even depression
Dreams and Nightmares
The patient was a 37-year-old man who had been physically abused as a boy by his schizophrenic mother, often while he lay in bed trying to fall asleep. Nevertheless, he had grown into a reasonably normal, gainfully employed adult, and he thought that the worst was behind him, until one night he awoke to find an intruder rummaging through his dresser drawers. After that, his nightmares began — terrifying, recurrent dreams in which the intruder was a middle-age woman and a knife dangled with Damoclesian contempt from the ceiling fan over his head.
The Price of Happiness
A bar of chocolate, a long soak in the bath, a snooze in the middle of the afternoon, a leisurely stroll in the park. These are the things that make us the most happy, according to new research from The University of Nottingham. In a study commissioned by the National Lottery, Dr Richard Tunney of the University’s School of Psychology found that it’s the simple things in life that impact most positively on our sense of well being.
