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Submission + - Secrets of 'Magic' Antidepressant by Yale Team

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Yale researchers have discovered how a novel anti-depressant can take effect in hours, rather than the weeks or months usually required for most drugs currently on the market. The findings, described in the August 20 issue of the journal Science, should speed development of a safe and easy-to-administer form of the anti-depressant ketamine, which has already proven remarkably effective in treating severely depressed patients. The Yale scientists found that, in rats, ketamine not only quickly improves depression-like behaviors but actually restores connections between brain cells damaged by chronic stress.
Education

Monkeys Exhibit the Same Economic Irrationality As Us 254

Posted by samzenpus from the I-wanna-spend-like-you-oo-oo dept.
grrlscientist writes "Laurie Santos is trying to find the roots of human irrationality by watching the way our primates make decisions. This video documents a clever series of experiments in 'monkeynomics' and shows that some of the stupid decisions we make are made by our primate relatives too."
Biotech

First 'Malaria-Proof' Mosquito Created 261

Posted by timothy from the what-about-a-really-good-egg-cream dept.
Gisg writes "The University of Arizona team reported that their genetically modified mosquitoes are immune to the malaria-causing parasite, a single-cell organism called Plasmodium. Riehle and his colleagues tested their genetically-altered mosquitoes by feeding them malaria-infested blood. Not even one mosquito became infected with the malaria parasite."
Earth

Increasing Algal Blooms Threaten China's Coasts

Posted by samzenpus from the whole-lotta-green dept.
eldavojohn writes "While the United States deals with oil on its southern shores, China faces hundreds of square kilometers of algal blooms headed toward its shores. One large 200 sq km blob is about 13 kilometers (eight miles) away from Jiaonan in Shandong province. In 2008, China employed 10,000 people to clean a similar algal bloom in order to keep its nearby shore pristine for the Olympics. China has had several case studies (PDF) done of its algal blooms, which many attribute to nutrient pollution in lakes and shores. An Alaskan blob also amounted to an algal bloom, while West Coast red tide algal blooms are making wild shellfish deadly to consume."
Google

Google PAC-MAN Cost 4.8M Person-Hours 332

Posted by kdawson from the stolen-moments dept.
The folks at Rescue-Time, who make software that helps you (and companies) figure out how you spend your online time, did a modest calculation based on their user base and concluded that Google's playable PAC-MAN doodle cost the world over 4.8 million person-hours of productivity last Friday. "Google PAC-MAN consumed 4,819,352 hours of time (beyond the 33.6M daily man hours of attention that Google Search gets in a given day). $120,483,800 is the dollar tally, if the average Google user has a cost of $25/hr. (note that cost is 1.3 – 2.0 X pay rate). For that same cost, you could hire all 19,835 Google employees, from Larry and Sergey down to their janitors, and get six weeks of their time." Also, Google made the doodle permanent.
Science

Submission + - Scientists Create Synthetic Life (Bacteria) (jcvi.org)

Submitted by
Mark Leaman
Mark Leaman writes: "I just spotted this breaking story over on BoingBoing.net. "On May 20th, J. Craig Venter and his team at J.C Venter Institute announced the creation of a cell controlled by a synthetic genome in a paper published in SCIENCE. As science historian George Dyson points out, "from the point of view of technology, a code generated within a digital computer is now self-replicating as the genome of a line of living cells. From the point of view of biology, a code generated by a living organism has been translated into a digital representation for replication, editing, and transmission to other cells.""

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