Group items tagged

"But, "one has to be cautious. This is exciting science in rodents, but you can't just extrapolate to humans," says Emeran Mayer, a gastroenterologist and neuroscientist at UCLA's Center for Neurobiology of Stress who was not involved in the new study. Drug and food companies that make probiotics - beneficial bacteria taken in a pill or eaten in food such as yogurt - hope the products can help relieve depression, improve weight loss and cure other conditions, but there is little evidence in people that probiotics can accomplish those goals, Mayer says. "It's almost like science fiction; you can imagine the most amazing things because so little is known about it," he says. But, "So far there's really no evidence that probiotics affect emotions in humans." "

"I simply cannot believe that John Cook of Skeptical Science and psychologist Stephan Lewandowsky managed, in just 8 pages, to create something as magnificent as their new Debunking Handbook. It is packed not only with wonderful graphics, but also with a clear explanation of why many attempts to defeat misinformation fail, and what steps must be taken to do a better job. The core issue, of course, is one that I've written much about-too many scientists assume that that facts win out on their own, but that isn't actually true"

"The results are indeed worthy of attention, with Prof Taylor's team finding that in an early stage clinical trial of 11 people who were put on a diet of just 600 calories As written about in Dr Ben Goldacre's latest Bad Science column, producing a pattern from experimental data to come to a conclusion can be a 'magical' experience, but medicine is an 'imperfect art'. "We all know one atom of experience isn't enough to spot a pattern." writes Goldacre, "But when you put lots of experiences together and process that data, you get new knowledge.""

Portal is a directory of Computer Science pages at Wikiversity. This directory page provides links to Computer Science learning resources that have been developed by the various Wikiversity Computer Science content development projects. The main content development project is the School of Computer Science. This portal features exciting examples of Computer Science learning resources. Wikiversity participants who are interested in Computer Science are invited to create and participate in learning projects and learning resources and help organize them by developing this portal. We're just starting, but we already have some good materials. The Computer Science Portal serves to provide quick access to everything in the Computer Science category.

UnCollege isn't just an idea or a website. It's a movement. It's a lifestyle. We believe that college isn't the only path to success. UnCollege is a social movement changing the notion that going to college is the only path to success. We empower students to hack their education through resources, writing, and workshops. We believe that everyone can live an UnCollege life by hacking their education.

HOW do people acquire high levels of skill in science, business, music, the arts and sports? This has long been a topic of intense debate in psychology. Research has shown that intellectual ability matters for success in many fields - and not just up to a point.

Tabula will be platform and content agnostic, working with as many brands and versions of tablet computers as possible. Of course, compatibility takes coding hours, so we'll start with one or two platforms and build from there. But let's just say we fully recognize the value of high-end and lower-cost hardware when it comes to solutions to help schools thrive.

"But Young's new theory will face scrutiny of its own. Commenting on the theory, Rutgers University anthropologist Fran Mascia-Lees, who has written extensively about the evolutionary role of breasts, said one concern is that not all men are attracted to them. "Always important whenever evolutionary biologists suggest a universal reason for a behavior and emotion: how about the cultural differences?" Mascia-Lees wrote in an email. In some African cultures, for example, women don't cover their breasts, and men don't seem to find them so, shall we say, titillating. Young says that just because breasts aren't covered in these cultures "doesn't mean that massaging them and stimulating them is not part of the foreplay in these cultures. As of yet, there are not very many studies that look at [breast stimulation during foreplay] in an anthropological context," he said. Young elaborates on his theory of breast love, and other neurological aspects of human sexuality, in a new book, "The Chemistry Between Us" (Current Hardcover, 2012), co-authored by Brian Alexander."

"For study author Dan Kahan, these results are a fairly strong refutation of what is called the "deficit model" in the field of science and technology studies-the idea that if people just had more knowledge, or more reasoning ability, then they would be better able to come to consensus with scientists and experts on issues like climate change, evolution, the safety of vaccines, and pretty much anything else involving science or data (for instance, whether concealed weapons bans work). Kahan's data suggest the opposite-that political biases skew our reasoning abilities, and this problem seems to be worse for people with advanced capacities like scientific literacy and numeracy"

Dr Simon Archer and his team at Surrey University were particularly interested in looking at the genes that were switched on or off in our volunteers by changes in the amount that we had made them sleep. "We found that overall there were around 500 genes that were affected," Archer explained. "Some which were going up, and some which were going down." What they discovered is that when the volunteers cut back from seven-and-a-half to six-and-a-half hours' sleep a night, genes that are associated with processes like inflammation, immune response and response to stress became more active. The team also saw increases in the activity of genes associated with diabetes and risk of cancer. The reverse happened when the volunteers added an hour of sleep. So the clear message from this experiment was that if you are getting less than seven hours' sleep a night and can alter your sleep habits, even just a little bit, it could make you healthier

"Hudnall: I really do believe that repression makes you sick. I'm big believer of what is coming out in the neuroscience and therapy community. Brene Brown, who is a shame and guilt expert, said it best: "We have an epidemic of shame in this country." If you keep things inside and have no one to talk to - and this is not crystals and patchouli - you will get sick, you will be miserable, you will ruin your relationships, and you will be unhappy. I know people whose lives were ruined by silence. Especially women. The one thing that has really opened my eyes while teaching is just what we do to our women. Only my women students have said to me, "I don't know if I have anything worth saying." It smacks me in the face every day. We are really fucking up our women"

What he and his orangutan buddies do in the forests of Sumatra tells scientists that advance trip planning and social networking aren't just human traits, A new study of 15 wild male orangutans finds that they routinely plot out their next day treks and share their plans in long calls, so females can come by or track them, and competitive males can steer clear.

Why More Equality? Our thirty years research shows that: 1) In rich countries, a smaller gap between rich and poor means a happier, healthier, and more successful population. Just look at the US, the UK, Portugal, and New Zealand in the top right of this graph, doing much worse than Japan, Sweden or Norway in the bottom left.

The Eastern United States and parts of Europe have just gone through one of the worst winters in history. Was it because of El Nino and what is El Nino.

Just days after NASA released the first cosmic dreamscapes taken by the newly refurbished Hubble Space Telescope three teams of astronomers have used the rejuvenated observatory to find what appears to be a bounty of the most distant galaxies known.

In a recent study, researchers show that a gene called DMRT1 found only on the Z chromosome partly explains bird "maleness". When a ZZ embryo gets less DMRT1, the embryos start to take on some female traits. These studies show us that bird gender can be partly explained by genetics. Not having enough of a single gene can keep a bird from becoming a bona fide male bird. But this doesn't rule out the possibility of a female gene being on the W chromosome. Scientists just haven't yet found one.

ScienceDaily (Apr. 19, 2010) - Some of us need regular amounts of coffee or other chemical enhancers to make us cognitively sharper. A newly published study suggests perhaps a brief bit of meditation would prepare us just as well.

(AP) -- Floods, fires, melting ice and feverish heat: From smoke-choked Moscow to water-soaked Pakistan and the High Arctic, the planet seems to be having a midsummer breakdown. It's not just a portent of things to come, scientists say, but a sign of troubling climate change already under way.

"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."

Infrared photos of a few extrasolar planets. Don't expect much - you just see points of light - but they've been imaged in Infrared light.