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Comment Re:This is sheer speculation so far! (Score 5, Insightful) 155

by Group XVII (#31378996) Attached to: California Lake's Arsenic Hints At a Shadow Biosphere
It's well informed speculation. It seems like a methodical approach to developing a research agenda, and indeed we are told actual experiments are being conducted. I don't have any reason to doubt that. Probably more that a few people will find the topic fascinating. I'm sympathetic to your objection but it might be overstated.
Earth

Submission + - Common Herbicide Causes a Sex Change in Frogs (inhabitat.com)

Submitted by MikeChino
MikeChino writes: The University of California Berkeley recently released a study that found the herbicide atrazine causes perfectly healthy genetically male frogs to grow up to be reproductive adult females. Atrazine is one of the most commonly used herbicides in the world, and it is also the most commonly found water pollutant in North America. Outlawed in Europe in 2003 for after some disturbing links to prostate and breast cancer, over 80 million pounds are dumped on the US every year. The EPA regulates atrazine and has set the legal limit at 3 parts per billion, however the University of California Berkeley study used only 2.5 parts per billion, proving that even the legal limit can be dangerous.
Idle

Submission + - Weaponizing Mozart (sott.net)

Submitted by cyberfringe
cyberfringe writes: Bringing the fictional authoritarian police behavior of "A Clockwork Orange" ( http://zi.pe/iVi ) to reality, classical music is being used increasingly in Great Britain as a tool for social control and a deterrent to "bad behaviour". A school district "subjects" badly behaving children to hours of Mozart in "special detention" isolations. Unsurprisingly, some of these youth now find classical music unbearable. Recorded classical music is blared through speakers at bus stops, outside stores, train stations and elsewhere to drive away loitering youth. Apparently it works. Detentions are down, graffiti is reduced, and naughty youth flee because classical music now is "repugnant" instead of providing an intellectual and emotional opportunity to experience one of humanity's greatest arts.
Biotech

Submission + - Human Culture plays a role in natural selection (nytimes.com) 1

Submitted by gollum123
gollum123 writes: As with any other species, human populations are shaped by the usual forces of natural selection, like famine, disease or climate. A new force is now coming into focus. It is one with a surprising implication — that for the last 20,000 years or so, people have inadvertently been shaping their own evolution. The force is human culture, broadly defined as any learned behavior, including technology. The evidence of its activity is the more surprising because culture has long seemed to play just the opposite role. Biologists have seen it as a shield that protects people from the full force of other selective pressures, since clothes and shelter dull the bite of cold and farming helps build surpluses to ride out famine. Although it does shield people from other forces, culture itself seems to be a powerful force of natural selection. People adapt genetically to sustained cultural changes, like new diets. And this interaction works more quickly than other selective forces, “leading some practitioners to argue that gene-culture co-evolution could be the dominant mode of human evolution,”
Education

Submission + - Medical Journals Rejecting Tobacco Funded Research (latimes.com)

Submitted by eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: The journal PLoS Medicine joins PLoS One and PLoS Biology by announcing they will not accept any more papers funded by the Tobacco Industry. The journal's official statement cites the serious health risks associated with smoking in addition to the Tobacco Industry's misinformation campaigns. One expert tried to explain that not everyone is happy with this decision saying "By deciding to no longer allow for research funded in any part by the tobacco industry, they're acknowledging that they're no longer able to evaluate science." Will this attitude proliferate to other fields in rejecting papers funded by parties with a monetary conflict of interest with science?
Biotech

Submission + - DNA is a four letter word (bytesizebio.net)

Submitted by Copperfoot
Copperfoot writes: Can we set up an alternative assembly line for a new protein prototype and then actually set up a working assembly line for the whole new protein? A proof-of-concept has been published this week in Nature by Jason Chin's group at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge UK. DNA encodes information for protein synthesis in groups of three bases ("letters") called codons. With an alphabet of four letters that means 4^3=64 different combinations are possible, more than enough to encode proteins from the 22 naturally occurring amino acids. Chin's group engineered the E. coli bacterium to read DNA as a sequence of four letter words, instead of the usual three. The use of four letter words to code for proteins greatly expands our ability to synthesize proteins, as we now have 4^4=256 different combinations. Chin's group used their system to insert synthetic amino acids into one of the bacterium's proteins. Muahahaha!
Science

Submission + - Masters of Deceit: Camouflaged Caterpillars (discovermagazine.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: These frankly beautiful photos showcase the clever, life-sustaining disguises of 9 New England caterpillars. One green-spotted caterpillar blends in with the bunch of grapes it munches on, another looks exactly like the edge of a dying leaf. Oh, and there are other defensive tricks too, like false eyespots, inflatable horns that smell like the musk of a dangerous snake, and choreographed dance routines that confuse predators.
Medicine

Submission + - Asperger's syndrome really just autism (npr.org)

Submitted by boone
boone writes: "Asperger's syndrome is really just a form of autism and does not merit a separate diagnosis, according to a panel of researchers assembled by the American Psychiatric Association."

Submission + - 'Vegetative State' patients can communicate (bbc.co.uk) 1

Submitted by Kittenman
Kittenman writes: The BBC is carrying a story about researchers in the UK and Belgium who can detect the thinking processes within a patient previously thought to be in a 'vegetative state'. The researchers ask the patient verbally to think in certain ways to indicate a "yes", in other ways to indicate a "no" — and have successfully communicated with 4 out of 23 patients previously thought to be in a coma.

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