Weight-Loss Supplement Has Teensy Potential Side Effect: You Might *Get Mad Cow Disease*! | Discoblog
Updated: 2011-03-31 21:44:13
: Subscribe Give a Gift Archives Customer Service SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS NCBI ROFL : What do Republicans dream about Hint : it’s not sex . Weight-Loss Supplement Has Teensy Potential Side Effect : You Might Get Mad Cow Disease Human Chorionic Gonadotropin hGC a hormone produced during pregnancy , is isolated from the urine of pregnant women and used to treat infertility Since the 1950s however , it’s also been used as a weight-loss aid—and still is , even though there’s no solid evidence showing it . works But taking hCG could be worse than just ineffective : A new study shows that doses of the hormone can transmit prions , the misfolded proteins that cause mad cow disease and its human
Subscribe Give a Gift Archives Customer Service SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS The Earth’s lumpy gravity Blastroid I have a new article up on Blastr the SyFy channel’s web site for news and info and scifi-y . stuff The article is about asteroid impacts , and the lack of Hollywood accuracy thereof . I take a typical movie synopsis and destroy it plot device by plot device . It’s like taking all my movie reviews and condensing them down into one run-on snark . And yes , I know that the illustration for the article seen here is scientifically inaccurate . I know what you’re thinking it’s so obvious : no asteroid is actually flying saucer shaped At least , that’s what they want you to think So go
Let’s just round up and say “everything.” In Germany they are currently debating rules on what data companies can keep and analyze, vs. what they must throw away. To make a point, Green Party politician Malte Spitz went to court to force Deutsche Telekom to share the data they had collected about him, just from [...]
They’re streaming live from the Science Committee right now….MIT’s Kerry Emanuel is the scientist on the panel who will be defending the mainstream scientific view that it’s warming out there, thanks to homo sapiens. Several other witnesses are far more “skeptical.” My take on the hearing is here. Short quote: This sort of thing has [...]
Sociologist Barry Glassner, the president of Lewis & Clark College in Portland, agrees with my “Do Scientists Understand the Public” paper, written for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Writing in USA Today recently, Glassner argued that Were hard data and cold logic all that mattered, any number of common personal behaviors would be [...]
, Subscribe Give a Gift Archives Customer Service SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS DARPA Puts Out Call for a DNA-Embedded Genetic Surveillance Machine From White Dwarfs to Dark Matter Clouds , the Universe May Have Many Homes for Habitable Planets Carbon-Nanotube Cancer Detector Can Catch Even a Single Marauding , Malignant Cell What’s the News Scientists have developed a new carbon nanotube device pictured above that’s capable of detecting single cancer cells Once implemented in hospitals , this microfluidic device could let doctors more efficiently detect the spread of cancer , especially in developing countries that don’t have the money for more sophisticated diagnostic equipment . Any
, Subscribe Give a Gift Archives Customer Service SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS Carbon-Nanotube Cancer Detector Can Catch Even a Single Marauding , Malignant Cell From White Dwarfs to Dark Matter Clouds , the Universe May Have Many Homes for Habitable Planets What’s the News While the Kepler spacecraft is busy finding solar system-loads of new planets other astronomers are expanding our idea where planets could potentially be found . One astronomer wants to look for habitable planets around white dwarfs arguing that any water-bearing exoplanets orbiting these tiny , dim stars would be much easier to find than those around main-sequence stars like our Sun . Another team dispenses with stars
: : . Subscribe Give a Gift Archives Customer Service SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS NCBI ROFL : Shocking study finds it’s hard to learn without a . brain Weight-Loss Supplement Has Teensy Potential Side Effect : You Might Get Mad Cow Disease NCBI ROFL : What do Republicans dream about Hint : it’s not sex . Incidence of having dreamed and conservative political . attitudes The association of political attitudes of conservatives and reports of their having had a dream was investigated . 48 female graduate students in counseling psychology were given the KJP Dream Inventory and the Kerlinger Social Attitude Scale II . Scores on conservative political attitudes were positively correlated with
Subscribe Give a Gift Archives Customer Service SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS Tattooed scientists are taking over Xtranormal Inclusive Fitness Debate : Oh Frabjous Day The Tangled Bank is spectacularly successful”–Quarterly Review of Biology The Quarterly Review of Biology delivers a rave for The Tangled Bank : An Introduction to Evolution Daniel McShea of Duke University : writes This is the first textbook I have seen by a professional science writer . If this is a sort of experiment in textbook publishing , it is a spectacularly successful one The result is an introduction to the field that is not only accurate and up to date , but—of course—well written . How important is the prose in a
Subscribe Give a Gift Archives Customer Service SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS Astronomers Say Milky Way Has Around 2 Billion Earth Analog” Planets That’s the Bad News Carbon-Nanotube Cancer Detector Can Catch Even a Single Marauding , Malignant Cell DARPA Puts Out Call for a DNA-Embedded Genetic Surveillance Machine What’s the News : DARPA wants to fund research into technologies that could be built into the genome of microorganisms and keep track of any changes made to the organism’s genes , according a call for proposals the agency made earlier this month . In other words , DARPA wants to turn on Track Changes” in certain viruses and . bacteria What’s the : Context This genetic surveillance
Subscribe Give a Gift Archives Customer Service SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS An ionized rose would smell as sweet OK , because I like y’all : bonus aurora timelapse video More Mercury NASA has just released more images of Mercury as seen by the MESSENGER spacecraft , and they’re pretty : cool This first one is something of a repeat , showing the same region as the picture they released yesterday , but now it’s in color Mercury is not exactly the most beautifully hued planet , but it does have some color to it . This composite was taken in the infrared shown red in the image red shown as green in the image and blue shown as blue and has a maximum resolution of about 2.7 kilometers 1.6 miles
Subscribe Give a Gift Archives Customer Service SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS New Battery Produces Energy Using the Ions in Plain Old Seawater DARPA Puts Out Call for a DNA-Embedded Genetic Surveillance Machine Astronomers Say Milky Way Has Around 2 Billion Earth Analog” Planets That’s the Bad News What’s the News Based on early Kepler data , astronomers say that the Milky Way galaxy may house at least two billion Earth-like planets—one for every several dozen sun-like stars . As NASA researcher Joseph Catanzarite told Space.com With that large a number , there’s a good chance life and maybe even intelligent life might exist on some of those planets . And that’s just our galaxy alone there are
Subscribe Give a Gift Archives Customer Service SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS MESSENGER’s first picture from Mercury orbit More Mercury An ionized rose would smell as sweet I’m such a sucker for emission nebulae , the sites of intense star formation . Part of that is because I spent years researching other types of gaseous clouds , but also because they’re just so darn pretty , like this shot of NGC 371 Click to ennebulenate , or get the 2000 x 2000 pixel version NGC 371 is in the Small Magellanic Cloud , a companion galaxy to our Milky Way . That puts it at a distance of about 200,000 light years , or 2 quintillion 2,000,000,000,000,000,000 . kilometers In this kinda-sorta false color image
Subscribe Give a Gift Archives Customer Service SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS Amazon Gets the Jump on Apple and Google by Launching Cloud Music Service Astronomers Say Milky Way Has Around 2 Billion Earth Analog” Planets That’s the Bad News New Battery Produces Energy Using the Ions in Plain Old Seawater What’s the News Scientists have created the first rechargeable battery that uses seawater and freshwater to generate electricity . If installed into every ocean-discharging river in the world that’s not a realistic scenario—just a frame of reference the process could produce 2 terawatts , or about 13 of worldwide electricity use . As the researchers write this battery is simple to fabricate
: . Subscribe Give a Gift Archives Customer Service SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS What Every Lonely Guy Needs : A Fake Facebook Girlfriend NCBI ROFL : What do Republicans dream about Hint : it’s not sex . NCBI ROFL : Shocking study finds it’s hard to learn without a . brain Unsuccessful reinforcement of a discrete action in paramecia , P . . caudatum Previous research into the possibility of learning in paramecium in this laboratory has shown that these organisms can learn to remain in a specific location based on cathode shock reinforcement . The present experiment was designed to assess whether paramecium could learn a discrete action as opposed to remaining in a specific area , using
Subscribe Give a Gift Archives Customer Service SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS Why is aspirin toxic to cats The writing process A year at Discover I like noting anniversaries , even belated ones . I hopped across to Discover from ScienceBlogs a year ago last Saturday and as if to mark the occasion , it’s been a record-breaking month in terms of traffic . I’ve thoroughly enjoyed being here among illustrious company , and it’s given me a lot of impetus to up my game , and play around with new ways of talking about . science My sincere thanks to Amos Zeeberg for recruiting me , Gemma Shusterman for providing speedy and kick-ass tech support and Eliza Strickland , Andy Moseman , Joe Calamia , and
Subscribe Give a Gift Archives Customer Service SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS Parasite Rex Redux : Now with a new epilogue The Tangled Bank is spectacularly successful”–Quarterly Review of Biology Tattooed scientists are taking over Christof Koch is one of the world’s leading experts on consciousness . A longtime professor at Caltech , he’s just become the chief scientific officer at the Allen Brain Institute an innovative research center that was funded with 100 million from Microsoft’s Paul Allen . The institute has spent the past eight years building remarkably detailed , three-dimensional atlases of mouse brains . Now , as Koch explains to Nature he will use those atlases to launch an
Israeli firm which secured Japan nuclear plant says workers there ‘putting their lives on the line’ Magna CEO says Japanese workers at nuclear plant ‘projecting business as usual’ but says it is ‘unclear if they are healthy due to the high level of radiation at the reactor, which is life-threatening.’ The CEO of the Israeli company that installed the security ...