Posted by spooneybarger
Thu, 23 Oct 2008 06:57:00 GMT
It sounds like science fiction, by scientists say it might one day be possible to erase undesirable memories from the brain, selectively and safely.
Using a complex genetic approach, U.S. and Chinese researchers believe they have done just that in mice, but the feat is far from being tested on humans.
Study co-author Joe Z. Tsien, co-director of the Brain & Behavior Discovery Institute at the Medical College of Georgia, Augusta, says the “work reveals a molecular mechanism of how [memory deletion] can be done quickly and without doing damage to brain cells.”
The finding is published in the Oct. 23 issue of Neuron.
Posted by spooneybarger
Sun, 24 Feb 2008 13:11:00 GMT
DRAGONS and virgin births are the stuff of myth and religion. Except, that is, in Kansas, where they have recently come together in a way that should alter the way many of us look at nature and demonstrate the risks in our habit of using it to help us make ethical decisions.
Keepers at Wichita’s zoo got a surprise last year when they found developing eggs inside the Komodo dragon compound. Komodos are large rapacious lizards naturally found in Indonesia, but increasingly populating zoos around the world. Finding fertile embryos of dragons is a joyous occasion — there are only a few thousand of the lizards in the wild and captive breeding may be the only way to keep the species around.
But these eggs — two of which hatched a few weeks ago — were unusual: they developed from a female that had had no male of the species in close proximity for more than a decade. Judging from similar occurrences over the past two years in Britain, it appears that these lizards sometimes use a form of virgin birth in which eggs hatch without conception. The embryos are genetic clones of the mother.
Posted by spooneybarger
Tue, 22 Jan 2008 08:20:00 GMT
The team at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the Federal Institute of Technology created the little experimental learning devices to work in groups and hunt for “food” targets nearby while avoiding “poison.” Imagine their surprise when one generation of robots learned to signal lies about the poison, sending opponents to their doom.
Posted by spooneybarger
Tue, 09 Oct 2007 10:47:00 GMT
lacking in peer review as it is…
It don’t get much weirder than this. The universe is about to lose its dimension of time says a group of theoretical astrobods at the University of Salamanca in Spain. And they got the evidence to prove it.
Posted by spooneybarger
Sun, 24 Jun 2007 07:34:00 GMT
Item 1:
At Seattle City Hall there are rules.
No weapons, no animals, no loitering, no alcohol, no lying down, no smoking, no music, no fighting, no trespassing.
Could the next thing be no microwave popcorn?
“It can be a significant problem in the future,” says Seattle Facilities Director Pedro Vasquez.
The City Facilities Department has just issued a memo to all City employees.
SUBJECT: Burnt microwave popcorn.
The Justice Center has been evacuated eight times in three years, forcing the evacuation of more than 400 people. If the problem continues, it will result in a ban of all microwave popcorn.
Digging that hole to China on a sandy beach is a summertime rite of passage for many kids.
But a new report reveals that those holes, even fairly shallow ones, can collapse and kill.
By sifting through news reports and other sources, researchers found 52 cases of sand-hole collapses in the United States and three other countries, Australia, Great Britain and New Zealand. Sixty percent of the victims, 31 people, died, while many of the others needed rescuing and CPR.
please note, that last one is from Forbes magazine… wtf?
Item 4:
Geese force-fed and then slaughtered for their livers may get their final revenge on people who favor the delicacy known as foie gras: It may transmit a little-known disease known as amyloidosis, researchers reported on Monday.
Tests on mice suggest the liver, popular in French cuisine which uses it to make pate de foie gras and other dishes, may cause the condition in animals that have a genetic susceptibility to such diseases, Alan Solomon of the University of Tennessee and colleagues reported.
That would suggest that amyloidosis can be transmitted via food in a way akin to brain diseases such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or CJD, which can cause a rare version of mad cow disease in some people who eat affected meat products or brains.
Posted by spooneybarger
Fri, 04 May 2007 06:55:00 GMT
warfare, warfare…
A sexual arms race waged with twisted genitals has been discovered in waterfowl.
The genitalia of the females of these species have at times apparently evolved to make it harder for males to successfully impregnate them, according to new findings that shed light on the eternal war of the sexes.
Posted by spooneybarger
Wed, 03 Jan 2007 09:01:45 GMT
A 21-year-old German tourist who wanted to visit his girlfriend in the Australian metropolis Sydney landed 13,000 kilometers (8,077 miles) away near Sidney, Montana, after mistyping his destination on a flight booking Web site.
A Chinese budget airline that sold tickets for as little as 13 U.S. cents has been fined for violating government price controls, a news report said Monday.
Posted by spooneybarger
Tue, 05 Dec 2006 08:34:21 GMT
Slow. Relentless. Known for eating people’s brains and leaving a trail of devastation and misery in their wake. Yes, zombies have always had a lot in common with the American legal system – and now, seven of the undead have filed a lawsuit against the Minneapolis police.
The plaintiffs were dancing at a party in July when the seven of them – six adults and one juvenile in heavy zombie makeup – were arrested by the police, and held for two days. They claim they were abused and treated badly during that time.
The reason given by the police for their arrest was that the living dead were ‘simulating weapons of mass destruction.’ This might have been partly due to the police’s ongoing efforts in the War on Zombies, and partly due to the fact that the police couldn’t tell the difference between a radio in a backpack and a dirty bomb.
Scientists at a U.S. weapons laboratory say they have trained bees to sniff out explosives in a project they say could have far-reaching applications for U.S. homeland security and the Iraq war.
Researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico said they trained honeybees to stick out their proboscis - the tube they use to feed on nectar - when they smell explosives in anything from cars and roadside bombs to belts similar to those used by suicide bombers.
Posted by spooneybarger
Mon, 13 Nov 2006 16:49:51 GMT
It’s called the WIS – the Wearable Instrument Shirt – and it is tipped to make the air guitar as obsolete as the horse and cart.
Scientists at the CSIRO’s Textile and Fibre Technology division in Geelong have woven electronic sensors into a T-shirt so that it can be played liked a real guitar
Posted by spooneybarger
Fri, 10 Nov 2006 14:58:34 GMT
Let the robot holocaust commence: robots think we taste like bacon.
Researchers at NEC System technologies and Mie University have designed … a metal man gastronomist, “an electromechanical sommelier”, capable of identifying wines, cheeses, meats and hors d’oeuvres. Upon being given a sample, he will speak up in a childlike voice and identify what he has just been fed. The idea is that wineries can tell if a wine is authentic without even opening the bottle, amongst other more obscure uses…like “tell me what this strange grayish lump at the back of my freezer is/was.”
But when some smart aleck reporter placed his hand in the robot’s omnivorous clanking jaw, he was identified as bacon. A cameraman then tried and was identified as prosciutto.
Posted by spooneybarger
Thu, 09 Nov 2006 19:48:13 GMT
A family planning doctor told a patient that she had “something sinister” moving in her stomach and needed an exorcism to ward off evil spirits, a medical tribunal heard yesterday.
Dr Joyce Pratt, 44, informed the young woman that she was being tormented by black magic and sent her away with crosses and stones to protect her. She also claimed to have visionary powers and told the patient that her mother was a witch who was planning to kill her, it was alleged.
Posted by spooneybarger
Thu, 26 Oct 2006 15:58:09 GMT
Researchers are struggling to understand a rare medical condition where sufferers unknowingly demand, or actually have, sex while asleep, New Scientist magazine reported on Wednesday.
New animal research suggests that teenagers’ brains may be better at adapting to certain short-term effects of drinking. But that’s not a good thing, researchers say.
In experiments with rats, scientists found that adolescent rodents developed an “acute tolerance” to alcohol, quickly recovering from the immediate effects alcohol had on their social behaviour, while their adult counterparts remained impaired for a longer stretch.
For rats, social behaviour essentially consists of sniffing and play fighting. In human terms, the animals’ alcohol-induced impairment was akin to being unable to speak with your drinking buddies.
The teenage rodents, however, quickly regained their social skills. Thirty minutes after being given alcohol, their social behaviour appeared normal; in contrast, the adult animals were still unable to interact normally, according to findings published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.
