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"An accurate and colorful discription of a gout attack was elegantly written in 1683 by Dr. Thomas Sydenham who was himself a sufferer of gout: The victim goes to bed and sleeps in good health. About 2 o'clock in the morning, he is awakened by a severe pain in the great toe; more rarely in the heel, ankle or instep. This pain is like that of a dislocation, and yet the parts feel as if cold water were poured over them. Then follows chills and shiver and a little fever. The pain which at first moderate becomes more intense. With its intensity the chills and shivers increase. After a time this comes to a full height, accommodating itself to the bones and ligaments of the tarsus and metatarsus. Now it is a violent stretching and tearing of the ligaments- now it is a gnawing pain and now a pressure and tightening. So exquisite and lively meanwhile is the feeling of the part affected, that it cannot bear the weight of bedclothes nor the jar of a person walking in the room. "

A giant asteroid smashing into Earth is the only plausible explanation for the extinction of the dinosaurs, a global scientific team said on Thursday, hoping to settle a row that has divided experts for decades. A panel of 41 scientists from across the world reviewed 20 years' worth of research to try to confirm the cause of the so-called Cretaceous-Tertiary (KT) extinction, which created a "hellish environment" around 65 million years ago and wiped out more than half of all species on the planet. Scientific opinion was split over whether the extinction was caused by an asteroid or by volcanic activity in the Deccan Traps in what is now India, where there were a series of super volcanic eruptions that lasted around 1.5 million years. The new study, conducted by scientists from Europe, the United States, Mexico, Canada and Japan and published in the journal Science, found that a 15-kilometre (9 miles) wide asteroid slamming into Earth at Chicxulub in what is now Mexico was the culprit. "We now have great confidence that an asteroid was the cause of the KT extinction. This triggered large-scale fires, earthquakes measuring more than 10 on the Richter scale, and continental landslides, which created tsunamis," said Joanna Morgan of Imperial College London, a co-author of the review.

"Hundreds of species of bacteria call the human gut their home. This gut "microbiome" influences our physiology and health in ways that scientists are only beginning to understand. Now, a new study suggests that gut bacteria can even mess with the mind, altering brain chemistry and changing mood and behavior. In recent years, researchers have become increasingly interested in how gut bacteria might influence the brain and behavior, says John Cryan, a neuroscientist at University College Cork in Ireland. So far, most of the work has focused on how pathogenic bugs influence the brain by releasing toxins or stimulating the immune system, Cryan says. One recent study suggested that even benign bacteria can alter the brain and behavior, but until now there has been very little work in this area, Cryan says."

"Hundreds of species of bacteria call the human gut their home. This gut "microbiome" influences our physiology and health in ways that scientists are only beginning to understand. Now, a new study suggests that gut bacteria can even mess with the mind, altering brain chemistry and changing mood and behavior. In recent years, researchers have become increasingly interested in how gut bacteria might influence the brain and behavior, says John Cryan, a neuroscientist at University College Cork in Ireland. So far, most of the work has focused on how pathogenic bugs influence the brain by releasing toxins or stimulating the immune system, Cryan says. One recent study suggested that even benign bacteria can alter the brain and behavior, but until now there has been very little work in this area, Cryan says."

"Renegade husband and wife philosophers Pat and Paul Churchland met forty years ago in a college Plato class. Their instincts as philosophers - then and now - run outside the philosophy mainstream. Where most philosophers looked to reason and logic to apprehend the human mind, the Churchlands looked - and look - to science. There is no independent "mind", these two practically say, just the human brain, three pounds of tissue and water, firing away behind all our emotions, beliefs, actions. Consciousness itself, they say, is straight biology, a machine. Once, that sounded esoteric. Now, it's on the frontline of debate over law, soul and life."

ScienceDaily (Aug. 19, 2011) - Boys are maturing physically earlier than ever before. The age of sexual maturity has been decreasing by about 2.5 months each decade at least since the middle of the 18th century. Joshua Goldstein, director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock (MPIDR), has used mortality data to demonstrate this trend, which until now was difficult to decipher. What had already been established for girls now seems to also be true for boys: the time period during which young people are sexually mature but socially not yet considered adults is expanding.

Brain, bodily awareness, and the emergence of a conscious self: these entities and their relations are explored by Germanphilosopher and cognitive scientist Metzinger. Extensively working with neuroscientists he has come to the conclusion that, in fact, there is no such thing as a "self" -- that a "self" is simply the content of a model created by our brain - part of a virtual reality we create for ourselves. But if the self is not "real," he asks, why and how did it evolve? How does the brain construct the self? In a series of fascinating virtual reality experiments, Metzinger and his colleagues have attempted to create so-called "out-of-body experiences" in the lab, in order to explore these questions. As a philosopher, he offers a discussion of many of the latest results in robotics, neuroscience, dream and meditation research, and argues that the brain is much more powerful than we have ever imagined. He shows us, for example, that we now have the first machines that have developed an inner image of their own body -- and actually use this model to create intelligent behavior. In addition, studies exploring the connections between phantom limbs and the brain have shown us that even people born without arms or legs sometimes experience a sensation that they do in fact have limbs that are not there. Experiments like the "rubber-hand illusion" demonstrate how we can experience a fake hand as part of our self and even feel a sensation of touch on the phantom hand form the basis and testing ground for the idea that what we have called the "self" in the past is just the content of a transparent self-model in our brains. Now, as new ways of manipulating the conscious mind-brain appear on the scene, it will soon become possible to alter our subjective reality in an unprecedented manner. The cultural consequences of this, Metzinger claims, may be immense: we will need a new approach to ethics, and we will be forced to think about ourselves in a fundamentally new way. At

David Baum, University of Wisconsin, says: "All agree that eukaryotes arose from a symbiotic relationship between two cell types: bacteria that became mitochondria and a host cell, archaea, or a close relative of archaea, that became the cytoplasm and nucleus. This symbiosis explains the origin of mitochondria, but what about other eukaryotic structures, most notably the nucleus?" The Baums' inside-out theory provides a gradual path by which eukaryotic cells could have evolved. The first stage began with a bacterial cell whose outer membrane forms protrusions, which the Baums call 'blebs', that reached out from the cell. These protrusions trapped free-living mitochondria-like bacteria between them. Using the energy gained from being in close contact with bacteria (and using bacterial-derived lipids), cells were able to get bigger and expand the size of their blebs. The sides of the blebs formed the endoplasmic reticulum and their inner surfaces formed the outer membrane of the nucleus, with the original outer membrane of the archaeon becoming what we now call the inner nuclear membrane. Finally, the fusion of blebs with one another led to the formation of the plasma membrane. The result was the eukaryotic cell as we now know it. This inside-out theory is explained in more detail using a diagram in the research article (see notes to editors).

The shares of Netgear are now at their all-time maximum value. This is due to the efficient products that the company has been making in all these years. The routers and modems are easy to use and works on all kinds of electronic devices.

I almost said "alive," but we're not there yet. In an announcement that's eerily reminiscent of Terminator, PublicTechnology.net reported Friday that the UK's latest military satellite, dubbed Skynet 5A, is now in service.

"About the Cafe Cafe Scientifique is a forum for discussing and debating science issues which are of concern to everyone. Our aim is to promote public engagement with science and to foster interesting, fact-based discussions in a fun and relaxed atmosphere. Our speakers are scientists or science journalists, ethicists, or related experts from the local community who donate their time to present and discuss their work with the public. We include a range of topics and disciplines. Cafe Scientifique started in France and Great Britain in the late 1990′s, and has now spread all over the world -including Vancouver!"

Amazon has announced some brand new features for Fire TV and its popular Fire TV Stick streaming device. Both platforms will now integrate personalized recommendations from both Netflix and HBO for subscribers.

"Meta is a tool that helps researchers understand what is happening globally in science and shows them where science is headed. Pending shareholder and court approval, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is acquiring Meta to help bring its technologies to the entire scientific community. Sign up now to reserve your free account."

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"When the right microorganisms are at work, immune cells involved in the development of autoimmune illnesses like psoriasis, multiple sclerosis and arthritis, can develop anti-inflammatory properties. Scientists at Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the Institute for Research in Biomedicine, Bellinzona, Switzerland, have now made this discovery. Their work is published in the current issue of the scientific journal Nature*. The scientists were able to prove that particular fungi activate the immune cells involved in the development of certain illnesses, whereas other microorganisms, in particular bacteria that are found naturally on our skin, lend an anti-inflammatory function to them. "This not only demonstrates that the composition of our microflora has a decisive role in the development of chronic illnesses, but also that the key cells causing illness can develop an anti-inflammatory 'twin'," explained Dr. Christina Zielinski, first author of the study."

"There is a biological story with information. I have been repeating that in a natural environment, a stressor is information. So too much information would be too much stress, exceeding the threshold of antifragility. In medicine, we are discovering the healing powers of fasting, as the avoidance of too much hormonal rushes that come with the ingestion of food. Hormones convey information to the different parts of our system and too much of it confuses our biology. Here again, as with the story of the news received at too high a frequency, too much information becomes harmful. And in Chapter x (on ethics) I will show how too much data (particularly when sterile) causes statistics to be completely meaningless. Now let's add the psychological to this: we are not made to understand the point, so we overreact emotionally to noise. The best solution is to only look at very large changes in data or conditions, never small ones"

"or those of you who do not have the patience to read the whole review, but are interested in the way new technologies, especially the Internet, are changing the way science is done, I can say - go now and buy yourself a copy of Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science. It is excellent. Worth your investment in time and money."

"Over the last 10 years, MIT biologist Leonard Guarente and other researchers have demonstrated that very-low-calorie diets provoke a comprehensive physiological response, which promotes survival due to a set of proteins called sirtuins. A new report by Guarente published online in Cell has now demonstrated that sirtuins may also have a key part in the psychological response to dietary restriction. "

A recent article in Scientific American questioned whether research on stem cell lines derived from unfertilized eggs was too tightly regulated by the federal government. Now that technology allows the creation of stem cells without fertilization, there is no question that federal laws and guidelines are overly restrictive, causing a detrimental effect on valuable scientific inquiry.