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Iterative Reconstruction Technique Significantly Reduces Patient Radiation Dose During CT ScansComputed tomography (CT) scans are responsible for more than two thirds of the total radiation dose associated with medical imaging exams. However, a newly adapted low-dose technique called adaptive statistical iterative reconstruction may enable radiologists to reduce patient radiation resulting from CT up to 65 percent, according to a new study.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 22 Aug 2009 | 3:00 pm New Way To Reproduce A Black Hole?Despite their popularity in the science fiction genre, there is much to be learned about black holes. Researchers have proposed a new way of creating a reproduction black hole in the laboratory on a much-tinier scale than their celestial counterparts.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 22 Aug 2009 | 3:00 pm Unleashing The Power In BeerBrewing beer creates tons of leftover used grains. But that waste can be turned into fuel, as developers have shown.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 22 Aug 2009 | 3:00 pm Orchids And Fungi -- Partners For LifeThree Thai orchids have been found to rely on a wide range of fungi to help them take carbon out of the soil instead of producing their own organic carbon.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 22 Aug 2009 | 3:00 pm Math Model Accurately Mimics Cell Division In Carbon-cycling BacteriumScientists have developed a quantitative, mathematical model of DNA replication and cell division for the bacterium Caulobacter crescentus.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 22 Aug 2009 | 3:00 pm Key Feature Of Immune System Survived In Humans, Other Primates For 60 Million YearsA new study has concluded that one key part of the immune system, the ability of vitamin D to regulate anti-bactericidal proteins, is so important that is has been conserved through almost 60 million years of evolution and is shared only by primates, including humans -- but no other known animal species.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 22 Aug 2009 | 3:00 pm Artificial Life One Step Closer: Scientists Clone And Engineer Bacterial Genomes In Yeast And Transplant Genomes Back Into Bacterial CellsScientists have developed new methods in which an entire bacterial genome was cloned in a yeast cell by adding yeast centromeric plasmid sequence to the bacterial chromosome and modified it in yeast using yeast genetic systems. This modified bacterial chromosome was then isolated from yeast and transplanted into a related species of bacteria to create a new type of cell.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 22 Aug 2009 | 9:00 am Open Wide And Say 'Zap': New Way To Clinically Assess Condition Of Tooth Enamel Using LasersA group of researchers in Australia and Taiwan has developed a new way to analyze the health of human teeth using lasers. By measuring how the surface of a tooth responds to laser-generated ultrasound, they can evaluate the mineral content of tooth enamel -- the semi-translucent outer layer of a tooth that protects the underlying dentin.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 22 Aug 2009 | 9:00 am Higher Pathogen Loads In Collapsed Honeybee Colonies, Study FindsHoneybees in colonies affected by colony collapse disorder (CCD) have higher levels of pathogens and are co-infected with a greater number of pathogens than their non-CCD counterparts, but no individual pathogen can be singled out as the cause of CCD, according to a study by an international team of researchers.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 22 Aug 2009 | 9:00 am Computer System Improves Pain Therapy For Cancer PatientsPain therapy for cancer patients -- whether inpatient or outpatient -- is often inadequate. At Heidelberg University Hospital, the use of an innovative electronic system -- combined with guidance by an experienced clinical pharmacist -- has been successfully tested. The treatment of the patients showed little variance from international guidelines on pain therapy. In addition, patients reported having less pain.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 22 Aug 2009 | 9:00 am Obama to visit China mid-November (Reuters)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 22 Aug 2009 | 4:28 am Countdown begins for Tuesday space shuttle launch (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 22 Aug 2009 | 3:41 am The Nation's Weather (AP)AP - Active weather will persist Saturday over the East Coast as a cold front extends from a low pressure system in eastern Canada.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 22 Aug 2009 | 3:26 am Report: Russian hydro plant called unsafe in 1998 (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 22 Aug 2009 | 3:07 am Officials investigated in lead poisonings of China (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 22 Aug 2009 | 1:35 am Hurricane Bill douses Bermuda, moves north (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 22 Aug 2009 | 1:10 am Ariane 5 places Japan, Australia satellites in orbit (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 22 Aug 2009 | 12:35 am Gene Linked to Inherited Kidney Disease Found (HealthDay)HealthDay - FRIDAY, Aug. 21 (HealthDay News) -- A genetic mutation associated with inherited kidney disease has been pinpointed by an international team of researchers, who also identified a potential treatment that's currently being tested in a clinical trial.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 21 Aug 2009 | 9:48 pm Satellites put into orbit for Japan and AustraliaKOUROU, French Guiana (Reuters) - An Ariane-5 rocket put into orbit satellites for Japan and Australia after being launched from French Guiana on Friday, space officials said.Source: Reuters: Science News | 21 Aug 2009 | 7:34 pm New Moon Photo Reveals Tracks from Tough Apollo Moonwalk (SPACE.com)SPACE.com - A new snapshot from NASA's newest moon probe has revealed the 38-year-old tracks leftover from a grueling moonwalk by two Apollo astronauts who tried, and failed, to reach a tantalizing crater.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 21 Aug 2009 | 5:00 pm SLIDE SHOW: The Week's Top StoriesTake a look at the past week's top news in the Flashback Slide Show.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 21 Aug 2009 | 2:00 pm An Emptied Flask Makes for Empty Promises
After four vodka tonics, you might feel determined to conquer fear and finally tell your married co-worker that you’ve been in love with her for years. But the next morning, not so much. It may seem obvious to most of us that drunken promises don’t mean much, but apparently two German researchers weren’t so sure. Using 60 undergrads as guinea pigs, they designed a randomized control trial to test the effects of alcohol on a person’s commitment to unrealistic goals. “People may indicate being determined to reach their goals after having consumed alcohol,” wrote the researchers in the August edition of the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, “but once sober again, they do not walk the talk.” After asking participants about their most-important personal goals, the researchers gave half the students vodka tonics and the other half plain tonic water with lime. To separate the true effects of alcohol from the psychological effects of thinking you’re intoxicated, the researchers went to great lengths to convince the entire group that they’d be sipping spirits, including sneakily smearing all the glasses with alcohol and pouring decarbonated tonic water out of a vodka bottle.
They must have done a pretty good job, as only two people from the placebo group realized they’d been duped (and one tolerant drinker in the vodka group thought he’d been tricked, too).
“Intoxicated participants’ lack of considering their expectations particularly played out when chances to attain the goals were grim,” wrote researchers. “In light of low expectations, participants in the alcohol condition felt more committed to their goals than did participants in the placebo condition, whereas in light of high expectations, commitment did not differ between conditions.” In other words, drunk people ignore reality and think they can do just about anything, a condition scientists have aptly labeled “alcohol myopia.” Unfortunately, drunken courage didn’t translate into sober certitude. In a second, similar study, the researchers followed participants for three weeks after the experiment. Among the sober crew, the strength of a person’s commitment predicted how many steps they would take to achieve their goal in the following weeks. But among those who had been drinking, commitment didn’t correlate with future action. The researchers say their results can help explain why people who don’t have high hopes for success are more likely to abuse alcohol. The study also helps clarify why weekend revelry never leads to dogged concentration on Monday morning. Or maybe that’s the hangover. Via Mind Hacks. Image 1: Flickr/Jeremy Brooks. Image 2: Figure 1 from Sevincer and Oettingen, “Alcohol Breeds Empty Goal Commitments,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Vol. 188 (3), 623-633, August 2009. Reprinted with permission from the American Psychological Association. See Also:
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 21 Aug 2009 | 1:53 pm Bogosphere: The Strangest Things Pulled Out of Peat Bogs
A few thousand years ago, someone living in what is now Ireland made some butter, stuck it into an oak barrel, wandered out into a bog about 25 miles west of Dublin, and buried it.
Somehow, that someone lost track of it, which two lucky archaeologists discovered when they dug up the stashed loot earlier this year in the Gilltown bog, between the Irish towns of Timahoe and Staplestown. But that wasn’t the first keg of butter that’s been preserved by the strange chemistry of the bog. Or the 10th. More than 270 kegs of bog butter have been retrieved from the wetlands, along with dozens of ancient bodies, swords, and ornaments. Here, we run down some of the strangest things that scientists and citizens have pulled from the peat. All kinds of bodies have been found with their skin and organs intact. The objects are preserved by the remarkable properties of Sphagnum mosses, which come with preservatives built into their cell walls. After they die, they decay very slowly. and anything that falls into the Sphagnum peat bogs decays more slowly, too.
Murder weapons are a common find. Archaeologists believe the bogs were sites for ritual sacrifices, because many of the bodies appear to have been tortured or “overkilled.” In the picture (above) of a find named Yde girl, you can see the cord that was used to strangle her. Tollund Man suffered a similar fate: A noose was found around his neck.
Murder wasn’t all that happened out on the bogs. Multiple trepanated skulls, that is to say, skulls with holes drilled in them, have been found. Based on the use of the procedure in medieval times, one hypothesis is that the “operation may have been performed to remove a blood clot or a less-tangible thing like a spirit” from an individual. Even now, there’s still a small number of people who think drilling holes in their skulls is therapeutic. While we don’t know much about the people who wandered these bogs thousands of years ago, analytical chemistry has helped identify substances that make them seem startlingly modern. One corpse’s hair appears to have been coated with primitive hair gel, made from “vegetable oil mixed with resin from pine trees found in Spain and southwest France.” The man lived around 300 B.C.
Beyond the bodies, which were the subject of a traveling international exhibit, The Mysterious Bog People, functional artifacts are often found, too. These swords from what are now Sweden and Denmark were discovered in the late 1890s.
This wheel was discovered in the Netherlands along with another just like it. It’s about 2½ feet in diameter and carved from a single piece of oak. It’s been dated to 2700 B.C., which makes it one of the oldest wheels found in Europe. (But let’s not get bogged down in reinventing the wheel.)
A construction crew working on a highway in 1955 pulled up this dugout canoe from a Dutch bog. It’s almost 9 feet long and was radiocarbon-dated to 8500 B.C. Images: 1. flickr/ronlayters 2. Drenth Museum, Netherlands 3. Drenth Museum 4. Anthropologisk Laboratorium of Denmark 5. Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 6. Drenth Museum 7. Drenth Museum See Also:
WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal’s Twitter, Google Reader feed, and green tech history research site; Wired Science on Twitter and Facebook.
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 21 Aug 2009 | 1:49 pm Human Lifespans Nearly Constant for 2,000 YearsMaximum human lifespan, often confused with life expectancy, has remained more or less the same.Source: Livescience.com | 21 Aug 2009 | 1:26 pm What You Should Know About Arthritis (LiveScience.com)LiveScience.com - This Week's Question: I'm pretty sure I have arthritis in my knee. Is there any danger this will spread? First, anyone who thinks they may have arthritis should see a doctor. Self-diagnosis is hazardous to your health. Now for some information about arthritis all geezers should know. Arthritis, which comes in different forms, is inflammation of the joints. Osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis and gout are the three most common forms of arthritis among seniors. Osteoarthritis is the most prevalent. None is contagious. ...Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 21 Aug 2009 | 12:55 pm Robot Cats Purrrrfect for ElderlyA robotic feline may soon be a popular companion for seniors.Source: Livescience.com | 21 Aug 2009 | 12:50 pm Brighter idea for bendy displaysFlexible and bright transparent displays based on inorganic LEDs outpace their organic LED cousins, researchers say.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 21 Aug 2009 | 11:45 am Astronauts Eye Hurricane BillAstronauts are tracking Hurricane Bill as it makes it way over the Atlantic ocean.Source: Livescience.com | 21 Aug 2009 | 11:28 am Flexible, Stretchable LEDs Promise Better DisplaysNew, flexible LEDs could be used in everything from brake lights to television screens.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 21 Aug 2009 | 11:00 am WATCH: Engineering TissueRegrowing tissue may seem like the work of a mad scientist, but the reality isn't so crazy.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 21 Aug 2009 | 11:00 am BLOG: The Best Animal SleepersSleep is nature's way of making animals more efficient; so who are the top sleepers?Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 21 Aug 2009 | 10:40 am War's End Opens Up Angolan 'Jurassic Park'Dinosaur hunters say that the once war-torn Angola holds a bevy of rare fossils.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 21 Aug 2009 | 10:00 am Seawater May Someday Power JetsThe ocean may hold the largest source of power.Source: Livescience.com | 21 Aug 2009 | 9:33 am Traffic Puts a Damper on Frogs' Sex LivesTraffic noise is drowning out the seductive croaks of amorous male frogs.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 21 Aug 2009 | 9:00 am New Moon Rovers Rehearse on EarthRed Rover's laser maps in 3D, while Black Rover's radar peers 6 feet under. Offspring of these wheeled test vehicles will ply the lunar surface, Martian terrain, crusts of planetary moons and perhaps the outer rinds ofdwarf planets.Source: Livescience.com | 21 Aug 2009 | 8:56 am Big Squeeze Creates New Stars in Cosmic CloudNew photos of a cosmic cloud rich with young stars offer tantalizing clues about how those stars came to be.Source: Livescience.com | 21 Aug 2009 | 8:51 am MRI Reveals Organs During SexDr. Pek Van Andel and colleagues made the first MRI images of male and female sex organs while couples were having sex.Source: Livescience.com | 21 Aug 2009 | 8:50 am Female sticklebacks see right through the sexual display of flashy malesAn investigation into sexual display in sticklebacks illustrates the pitfalls of judging a man by the size of his medallion The criteria that females use to choose partners can be baffling to us males. In the animal world, a male's attractiveness often seems to be down to one completely arbitrary characteristic, like tail length. Female birds of paradise, for example, are suckers for a long tail, so much so that the males have evolved tails so long they can be a nuisance. The reason females select for such costly ornaments has been the subject of debate among evolutionary biologists for some time. In 1975, Israeli scholar Amotz Zahavi suggested that long tails and enormous antlers are attractive precisely because they are such a burden to the male. Their costliness means that they are reliable indicators of a male's quality, since only the fittest males can afford to produce them. Male sticklebacks that develop a bright red throat might not seem to be going to much trouble compared with deer that grow huge antlers, but Zahavi's "handicap principle" could be at work here too. The red colouration that these fish use to attract females relies on pigments called carotenoids, that are hard to come by in the diet. Carotenoids mop up free radicals and are essential for an effective immune system. Thus by showing that he has plenty of carotenoids knocking around, a male stickleback might be advertising his good foraging skills and excellent health, and also his skill at avoiding predators, since the red colour makes him more conspicuous. Males that are in poor condition are likely to be deficient in carotenoids, and so for them the cost of producing the mating signal is higher. Choosing her partner wisely is important to a female stickleback for two reasons. First, a fit and attractive partner will pass on good genes to her offspring, helping them to survive and reproduce. Second, sticklebacks are unusual in that males care for the developing eggs and fry. A female wants to know that her mate is healthy enough to perform these duties well. Weak males have even been known to eat the eggs when times get desperate. So can female sticklebacks reliably judge the quality of potential mates by the redness of their throats? Not always, according to researchers at the Universities of Glasgow and Exeter, whose study is due to be published online today in the journal American Naturalist. They guessed that males in poor condition would go all out to produce the reddest signal they could early in the mating season, because they might not have the chance to mate for long before expiring. Healthier males, on the other hand, would keep some of their strength in reserve, because there would be more opportunities for them to mate in the future. This assumption was borne out when the researchers tested their hypothesis. At the start of the breeding season, all of the males had a good red throat, and females paid little attention to the degree of redness when choosing a mate. They didn't trust it as a signal of reproductive fitness. As the summer wore on, however, only the fittest males could maintain the colouration, and only at this late stage did females develop a strong preference for redder throats. If we can learn anything from sticklebacks, then, it is that women should be wary of going for a flashy bloke: he might not be able to keep it up for long. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 21 Aug 2009 | 8:46 am Science NationScience for the People: Surprising discoveries and fascinating researchers.Source: Livescience.com | 21 Aug 2009 | 8:22 am Better Prediction Sought for Devastating FloodsWeather radar and laser mapping could help warn of impending floods.Source: Livescience.com | 21 Aug 2009 | 8:21 am The Art of ScienceDrawing on her scientific background, Susan Eriksson creates mixed-media sculptures, paintings, and installations. She blends scientific discipline with the inspiration that drives successful artists in the studio and scientists in the laboratory.Source: Livescience.com | 21 Aug 2009 | 8:20 am Grease? New Coating Comes Clean With WaterA new coating promises grease stains can be wiped away with plain old water.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 21 Aug 2009 | 5:30 am Earth WatchLife is cheap in the frog lane, so who's paying for it?Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 21 Aug 2009 | 4:54 am Lightning Helps Forge Artificial Blood VesselsBlood vessels created with lightning may help to produce artificial organs.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 21 Aug 2009 | 4:30 am Glowing 'bomber worms' discoveredNewly discovered glowing ocean worms release tiny green bombs to distract their predators, according to scientists.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 21 Aug 2009 | 4:07 am Bizarre newt uses ribs as weaponsScientists discover how one amphibian deters attackers by unsheathing its bare rib bones, using them as poisonous spears.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 21 Aug 2009 | 3:11 am Why the wrinkle-faced bat has such a powerful biteThe wrinkle-faced bat's strangely shaped skull gives it a powerful bite and an advantage over other bats, according to research.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 21 Aug 2009 | 3:03 am
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After four drinks, both groups were asked to rate their commitment level to a specific goal. Not surprisingly, inebriated students expressed strong commitment to their deepest desires, whether it was to hook up with a new friend or fly to France to visit a relative. But unlike sober participants, the drinking group didn’t lower their commitment level just because a goal was unrealistic.
