Researchers in the UK found that people who ingest a lot of caffeine, for instance by drinking lots of coffee, tea, and caffeinated energy drinks,
are more likely to report experiencing hallucinations, including hearing voices and seeing things and people that are not there.
The research, which was funded by the UK's Economic and Social Research Council and the Medical Research Council, was done by scientists at
Durham University, and is published as an academic paper in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.
Defined as consuming more than the equivalent of seven cups of coffee a day, a high caffeine user was three times more likely to have heard a person
speak when there was nobody there, compared to low caffeine users (those who had less than the equivalent of one cup of coffee a day),
200 students
One possible explanation, said the authors, was that caffeine amplifies the effects of stress, by boosting the release of the stress hormone cortisol.
good scientist cause he said to be cautious about the results.
Readers should note that this study merely showed a link between caffeine intake and propensity to hallucinate in a group of students: it did not
establish the direction of the relationship,
ethanol is kinda on the back burner to try and find more effecient mehtods for fuel.
It is based on the part of Islamic law derived from a statement by the prophet in which dealing with alcohol in any form--including purchase, sale, transport, consumption, and manufacture--is strictly prohibited.
The opinion comes from Sheikh Mohamed al-Najimi, of the Islamic Jurisprudence Academy in Saudi Arabia.
the statement was not a fatwa but simply his own opinion.
He noted that any ban would extend beyond Islamic countries to cover observant Muslims in other countries. This might include tourists, students abroad, and other groups.
EXACT replicas of a man's thumb bones have been made for the first time using a 3D printer. The breakthrough paves the way for surgeons to replace damaged or diseased bones with identical copies built from the patients' own cells.
Weinand "grew" his replacement bones on the backs of laboratory mice, in the same way that Jay Vacanti of Massachusetts General Hospital famously grew a human ear from human cartilage cells back in 1997.
Firstly, you need a 3D image of the bone you want to copy. If the bone has been lost or destroyed, you can make a mirror image of its surviving twin.
several steps
This image is then fed into a 3D inkjet printer, which deposits thin layers of a pre-selected material on top of one another until a 3D object materialises.
Weinand loaded the printer with tricalcium phosphate and a type of polylactic acid - natural structural materials found in the human body. The resulting bone "scaffolds" contained thousands of tiny pores into which bone cells could settle, grow and eventually displace the biodegradable scaffold altogether.
The team extracted CD117 cells from bone marrow left over after hip-replacement operations.
CD117 cells grow into primordial bone cells called osteoblasts, which the team syringed onto the bone scaffolds in a gel designed to support and nourish them
Finally, the scaffolds were sewn under the skin on the backs of mice where they grew for up to 15 weeks, until the scaffold had changed into human bone
Finnish team
reconstructed a man's jawbone
on a "scaffold" left for nine months in his abdomen. In that case, the stem cells came from the patient's own fat cells.
do you think that this is something that we should do when faceed with such a shitty economy?
Obama has signed an Executive Order today reversing the ban on federal funding of stem cells. You may recall he promised to do this during his campaign, and made a point of it in his answers for Science Debate 2008.
the memorandum will order the Office of Science and Technology Policy to "assure a number of effective standards and practices that will help our society feel that we have the highest-quality individuals carrying out scientific jobs and that information is shared with the public,"
There is a minority group in America that is a bigger percentage of the country than blacks or Hispanics.
A new comprehensive study by The Program on Public Values at Trinity College shows that this group is now a whopping 15% of the country. Mormons by comparison are a puny 1.4% of the population, and people can't shut up about the Mormons.
What's revolutionary is how the DNA fragments the work is based on were
dead.
The original samples had been kept in
a jar of ethanol for over a century, and considering how DNA breaks
down over time even putting Col2a1 together was a massive success.
The research is extremely well-timed, with current conservation efforts
focusing on salvaging as many species as possible with biotissue
cataloging efforts and seed vaults around the world.
While the
reconstruction of complete animals is a long way off, if possible at
all, this research demonstrates that the basic steps are possible -
it's only our time and technology that are lacking.
Microsoft founder turned philanthropist Bill Gates released a glass full of mosquitoes at an elite technology conference to make a point about the deadly disease malaria.
"Malaria is spread by mosquitoes," Gates said while opening a jar onstage at the Technology, Entertainment, Design Conference — a gathering known to attract technology kings, politicians, and Hollywood stars.
"I brought some. Here I'll let them roam around. There is no reason only poor people should be infected."
Gates then waited a minute or so before assuring the audience the freed insects were malaria-free.
Gates retired as head of Microsoft last year to focus more on his foundation. One of its key projects is ending malaria and it has spent millions on fighting the disease.
Michael Phelps admits to smoking cannabis after bong picture is published
Michael Phelps has admitted to smoking cannabis and apologised after a picture
of the record-breaking Olympian with a bong pipe was published
I engaged in behaviour which was regrettable and demonstrated bad judgment.
I’m 23 years old and despite the successes I’ve had in the pool, I acted in
a youthful and inappropriate way, not in a manner people have come to expect
from me. For this, I am sorry. I promise my fans and the public it will not
happen again,” Phelps said in a statement.
it's a means of controlling an expanding population.
4 Sex
why almost everything in biology uses sexual reproduction rather than asexual cloning - sex is a highly inefficient way to reproduce.
The suggestion that sex's gene shuffling makes us more able to deal with changing environments seems plausible, but the evidence is scarce
5 Free will
Neuroscientists are almost convinced that free will is an illusion. Their experiments show that our brains allow us to think we are controlling our bodies, but our movements begin before we make a conscious decision to move.
A girl born with the altered gene would have a 50-80% chance of breast cancer
Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) involves taking a cell from an embryo at the eight-cell stage of development, when it is around three-days old, and testing it.
In this case, the 27-year-old woman and her husband, who are being treated by fertility expert Paul Serhal at University College Hospital London, do not yet know if they are having a girl or a boy.
wish to remain anonymous,
"The whole objective of this exercise is not just to make sure the child doesn't have the gene, but to stop the transmission from generation to generation."
gene would not guarantee any daughter born to the couple would be unaffected by breast cancer because there are other genetic and environmental causes.
not carrying an altered
we must not forget the embryos which were discarded because they did carry the gene.
In the celluloid world of romantic comedies, shy but decent men get the girl, arguments set up sweet reconciliations, and couples separated by tragedy are always reunited through improbable coincidence.
But now researchers are beginning to ask whether the make-believe world projected in "rom-coms" might actually be preventing true love in real life.
Family and Personal Relationships Laboratory in Edinburgh
40 Hollywood romantic comedies released between 1995-2005
They found that problems typically reported by couples in relationship counseling at their counseling center reflect misconceptions about love and romance depicted in Hollywood films.
if your partner truly loves you they'd know what you need without you communicating it,
that your soul mate is predestined.
watched a David Lynch drama.
Serendipity,
violent movies
be cautious about watching too many romantic comedies
needed source of hope and inspiration for the unattached.
Americans today drink about 192 gallons of liquid a year—or about 2 liters a day. To put it into perspective, this is nearly twice as many calories as we did 30 years ago.
consuming sugary-tasting beverages--even if they're artificially sweetened--may lead to a high preference for sweetness overall. That means sweeter (and more caloric) cereal, bread, dessert--everything.
forces out the healthy beverages you need.
100 percent nutrition-free
Aspartame is 180 times sweeter than sugar
brain tumors and lymphoma in rodents.
The FDA maintains that the sweetener is safe, but reported side effects include dizziness, headaches, diarrhea, memory loss, and mood changes.
99 out of every 100 marihuana arrests in the United States are made under state law
Although federal law currently prohibits any use of marihuana except under very limited circumstances, states are not required to enforce federal law or prosecute people for engaging in activities prohibited by federal law.
Debilitating medical condition
Cancer, glaucoma, positive status for human immunodeficiency virus, acquired immune deficiency syndrome, hepatitis C, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Crohn's disease, agitation of Alzheimer's disease, nail patella, or the treatment of these conditions.
"Medical use" means the acquisition, possession, cultivation, manufacture, use, internal possession, delivery, transfer, or transportation of marihuana or paraphernalia relating to the administration of marihuana to treat or alleviate a registered qualifying patient's debilitating medical condition or symptoms associated with the debilitating medical condition.
Usable marihuana
primary caregiver
2.5 ounces of usable marihuana
primary caregiver will be allowed under state law to cultivate marihuana for the qualifying patient, 12 marihuana plants kept in an enclosed, locked facility; and
the “foreign” kebab that is being kicked out of Italian cities
as it becomes the target of a campaign against ethnic food, backed by the
centre-right Government of Silvio Berlusconi.
began in the town of Lucca this week
gastronomic racism
where the council banned any new ethnic food outlets from opening within the
ancient city walls.
“to protect local specialities from the growing popularity
of ethnic cuisines”
“We stand for tradition and the
safeguarding of our culture,”
Mr Zaia said that those ethnic restaurants allowed to operate “whether they
serve kebabs, sushi or Chinese food” should “stop importing container loads
of meat and fish from who knows where” and use only Italian ingredients.
I even refuse
to eat pineapple
Vittorio Castellani, a celebrity chef, said: “There is no dish on Earth that
does not come from mixing techniques, products and tastes from cultures that
have met and mingled over time.”
The
San Marzano tomato, a staple ingredient of Italian pasta sauces, was a gift
from Peru to the Kingdom of Naples in the 18th century.
Even spaghetti, it
is thought, was brought back from China by Marco Polo, and oranges and
lemons came from the Arab world.
Student withdrawn from UK school over CCTV in toiletsOfficials: Cameras were installed in bathrooms following incidents of 'major concern'
A Teenage pupil has been withdrawn from her school after CCTV cameras were installed in the pupils' toilets.
Anthony White, from Llandysul said the cameras at Ysgol Dyffryn Teifi in Ceredigion were an "outrageous invasion" of his daughter Jade's privacy. Jade, 14, said: "I am not going back while the cameras are there. It must be against the law to have them there."
Ceredigion Council said it had installed the cameras after incidents of "major concern".
Spokeswoman Anwen Francis said: "Any such viewing of CCTV footage is undertaken by senior members of staff having Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) clearance."
It may be an indicator of mating potential in fertile women.
"More precisely, I
suggest that the symmetry, shape, and position of umbilicus can be used
to estimate the reproductive potential of fertile females, including risks of certain genetically and maternally inherited fetal anomalies."
During pregnancy,
the umbilical cord supplies a baby with nutrients and oxygen from the
mother. After birth, it's clamped and snipped, leaving a short stump
that eventually falls off.
Sinkkonen found we prefer belly buttons
that are t-shaped or oval and vertical, with a little hooding, and
which don't protrude. In short, we dislike outies and don't favor the
cavernous variety either.
If further research confirms the signaling hypothesis, female
umbilici may be routinely measured to detect risk pregnancies of
several fetal abnormalities,"
Attorney General Signals Shift In Marijuana Policy
Attorney General Eric Holder signaled a change in medical marijuana policy Wednesday, saying federal agents will target marijuana distributors only when they violate both federal and state law.
That would be a departure from the Bush administration, which targeted medical marijuana dispensaries in California even if they complied with that state's law.