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Medicine

Submission + - LSD can treat alcoholism (nature.com) 1

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: LSD has potential as a treatment for alcoholism, according to a comprehensive retrospective analysis of studies published in the late 1960s and early 1970s (http://www.nature.com/news/lsd-helps-to-treat-alcoholism-1.10200).

The researchers sifted through thousands of records to collect data from randomized, double-blind trials that compared one dose of LSD to a placebo. Of 536 participants in six trials, 59% of people receiving LSD reported lower levels of alcohol misuse, compared to 38% of people who received a placebo (full paper (PDF) http://jop.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/03/08/0269881112439253.full.pdf+html). The study adds to the weight of evidence that hallucinogenic drugs may have important medical uses, including, for example, the alleviation of cluster headaches (http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/06/28/0416208/lsd-alleviates-suicide-headaches).
Robotics

Submission + - Hong Kong dentist to explore Egyptian pyramids with his robotic tools (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by asavin
asavin writes: Ng Tze-chuen, a 59-year-old dentist, is teaming up with Egypt's former antiquities minister to explore the Pyramids of Giza.

To do this, he's invented a tiny insect-sized robot with dental forcep-inspired grips on the top. This will be used to travel between the cracks on two mysterious doors blocking a tomb.
Japan

Submission + - Japan's Nuclear Energy Industry Nears Shutdown (nytimes.com)

Submitted by
mdsolar
mdsolar writes: "All but two of Japan’s 54 commercial reactors have gone offline since the nuclear disaster a year ago, after the earthquake and tsunami, and it is not clear when they can be restarted. With the last operating reactor scheduled to be idled as soon as next month, Japan — once one of the world’s leaders in atomic energy — will have at least temporarily shut down an industry that once generated a third of its electricity."
Businesses

Submission + - Google to devs: use our payment system or be dropped (smh.com.au)

Submitted by Meshach
Meshach writes: Google has been pressuring applications and mobile game developers to use its costlier in-house payment service, Google Wallet for quite some time. Now Google warned several developers in recent months that if they continued to use other payment methods — such as PayPal, Zong and Boku — their apps would be removed from Google Play, The move is seen as a way to cut costs for Google by using their own system.
NASA

Submission + - NASA boss says Mars colonisation will be corporate only (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by 99luftballon
99luftballon writes: The head of NASA Ames has said that he expects any colonisation of Mars, the Moon or asteroids to be done by private companies rather than by NASA. There's some interesting parallels with the East India Company, although that was hardly a triumph of capitalism. The article also mentions Google's head of space projects, who has 'Intergalactic Federation King Almighty and Commander of the Universe' on her business cards.
Science

Submission + - Humans are Nicer Than We Think (vice.com)

Submitted by derekmead
derekmead writes: While everyone’s always waxing like Lord Tennyson about nature being “red in tooth and claw,” neuroscience and psychology are quietly telling us that we may be innately nicer than we think. Sure, we’re not cuddly little bunny rabbits, but many lines of evidence over the past few decades have pointed toward some distinctly physical underpinning of basic morality and aversion to violence, implying that humans (and probably many other animals to) have a strong built-in “try-not-to-punch-that-dude” mechanism.

A recent study published in the journal Emotion, by psychologists Fiery Cushman, Allison Gaffey, Kurt Gray, and Wendy Mendes, provides some further evidence for the link, as the authors put it, “between the body and moral decision-making processes.”

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