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I was going to say the same thing, but my article is only from 2007... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17717151

The link to the paper just gives the executive summary, which actually conveys little information. Even wikipedia wasn't much help. If there's a physicist out there, I get the impression that somehow leptons are being converted to fermions? If so, how, and why do they? If not, could someone give a good explanation?

This is fascinating, but I can't find much explanation.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17358966
Magnetic confinement of massless Dirac fermions in graphene.
De Martino A, Dell'Anna L, Egger R.

Institut für Theoretische Physik, Heinrich-Heine-Universität, D-40225 Düsseldorf, Germany.

Abstract
Because of Klein tunneling, electrostatic potentials are unable to confine Dirac electrons. We show that it is possible to confine massless Dirac fermions in a monolayer graphene sheet by inhomogeneous magnetic fields. This allows one to design mesoscopic structures in graphene by magnetic barriers, e.g., quantum dots or quantum point contacts.

PMID: 17358966 [PubMed]

*My* statistic? It's not mine, these stats are from the US Centers for Disease Control. If you have a beef with actual research results from actual scientists looking at actual patients in the real world, go argue with them:

So sayeth the CDC: "While 3.3 million Americans are allergic to peanuts or tree nuts, 6.9 million are allergic to seafood. Combined, food allergies cause 30,000 cases of anaphylaxis*, 2,000 hospitalizations, and 150 deaths annually.**"
GO READ: http://www.cdc.gov/HealthyYouth/foodallergies/

* "cases of anaphalaxis" ranges from just-detectabe-itchy-mouth to fall-down-choking as other commenters have noted.
** Which adds up to about 10 deaths yearly from peanuts or tree nuts, in the entire USA (pop 350M).

The CDC references NIH work: "Report on the Expert Panel on Food Allergy Research, June 30 and July 1, 2003, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health." [PDF 190K]
GO READ MORE: http://www.niaid.nih.gov/about/organization/dait/documents/june30_2003.pdf

Your school *might* have a person with a potentially fatal peanut allergy. However, asserting that there have been 2+ (in all of your 5 years of teaching) is statistically disputed by the CDC, NIH, and AMA. I'm not angry, I'm just disgusted by wild kooks who "feel" that their anecdotal reports carry more weight than serious research involving many thousands of people. You get to have your own opinions, not your own facts.

The cold, hard numbers indicate that most of the "alerts for serious peanut allergies" at your school are either (a) misinterpretation by parents (who foolishly believe "detectable response" == "possible death"), or (b) misdiagnosis by Dr/allergists who would rather overprescribe than miss that 1 in 30M potential death.

What you have in your school, judging by your numbers and CDC data, are 1-3 kids per year whose parents are overprotective or hypochondriacs, or kids prone to panic attacks (which loosely mimics anaphalactic shock) when confronted with unmanaged fear.

Agreed. At first I Thought "Well the only sources appear to be blogs" so I understood the idea of putting it under idle.

BUT, it's on the NCBI Medical Publication website, here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18926410

So I don't know why they didn't just link that and put this under... I dunno... Is there a Bio or medicine section? Science if nothing else.

Well, maybe you can help me.

Certainly. Thanks for the paper, I look forward to absorbing it.

I'm having serious difficulty finding any serious refutation of in-depth studies of radiation hormesis (which you claim makes someone lose all credibility).

Well first of all, and most obviously, Rockwell draws a long bow to compare "acting like a vaccination to reduce cancer rates and extend lifespan of nuclear workers and atomic bomb survivors" presumably to the paper which you link. Radon is one of the comparably benign radionuclides and a nuclear worker is likely to encounter that and more yet the paper (presumably - as that is the title) only speaks to radon and it's daughter products whose half lifes fall *within* a human life span.

However there is plenty of work surrounding ingested low-energy emitters, in particular Tritium which a nuclear worker is as likely to encounter.

Tritium is biologically mutagenic *because* it's a low energy emitter, like radon. This characteristic makes readily absorbed by surrounding cells. The available evidence from studies conducted journal a list of effects if you are looking for similar studies as refutation. From those works;

Tritium can be inhaled, ingested, or absorbed through skin. Eating food containing radionuclides 3H can be even more damaging than drinking 3H bound in water. Consequently, an estimated radiation dose based only on ingestion of tritiated water may underestimate the health effects if the person has also consumed food contaminated with tritium. (Komatsu)

Studies indicate that lower doses of tritium can cause more cell death (Dobson, 1976), mutations (Ito) and chromosome damage (Hori) per dose than higher tritium doses. Tritium can impart damage which is two or more times greater per dose than either x-rays or gamma rays.

(Straume) (Dobson, 1976) There is no evidence of a threshold for damage from 3H exposure; even the smallest amount of tritium can have negative health impacts. (Dobson, 1974) Organically bound tritium (tritium bound in animal or plant tissue) can stay in the body for 10 years or more.

It's often said "of all the elements in nuclear waste tritium is one of the more harmless ones" and while it's more benign than most other radioactive effluents it's toxicity should not be under-estimated.

Tritium can cause mutations, tumors and cell death. (Rytomaa) Tritiated water is associated with significantly decreased weight of brain and genital tract organs in mice (Torok) and can cause irreversible loss of female germ cells in both mice and monkeys even at low concentrations. (Dobson, 1979) (Laskey) Tritium from tritiated water can become incorporated into DNA, the molecular basis of heredity for living organisms. DNA is especially sensitive to radiation. (Hori) A cell's exposure to tritium bound in DNA can be even more toxic than its exposure to tritium in water. (Straume)(Carr)

First, as an isotope of hydrogen (the cell's most ubiquitous element), tritium can be incorporated into essentially all portions of the living machinery; and it is not innocuous -- deaths have occurred in industry from occupational overexposure. R. Lowry Dobson, MD, PhD. (1979)

Maybe if you're so experienced in debating these issue, you could provide me with such a refutation to Bernard L. Cohen's paper published in Health Physics from 1995 titled "Test of the linear-no threshold theory of radiation carcinogenesis for inhaled radon decay products."

Perhaps you can find that in the paper Histopathologic findings of lung cancer in Navajo men: relationship to U mining and you can read Lung Cancer after Exposure to Radon Daughters and for materials and circumstance background you can read

Exercise burns carbs and then fat. Trouble is, the carbs we take in our daily diet still outnumbers that which I burn from riding 10 miles each day.

Then you needed to eat fewer calories, and not just from carbs. Low carb diets work only when caloric intake decreases. (If you consume 3000 calories of fat and protein and burn 2000 calories, just what do you think happens to that other 1000 calories?)

In fact, people can lose weight on either low carb (preferable a vegetarian low carb, if one doesn't want to shorten one's lifespan, since a typical low carb/high protein diet has detrimental effects of coronary blood flow) or high carb diets. The problem is caloric intake, not the proportion of macronutrients in the diet. If carbs are to blame, why does Japan have one of the lowest obesity rates in the world and a diet still centered around rice? And why is that obesity rate increasing as the diet Westernizes and becomes less carb-centered? It's nothing to do with carbs versus protein or fats, it's serving size, sugar, and exercise patterns.

People seriously do not understand nutrition or how diet and exercise work.

Yes, and the belief in the effectiveness of low carb diets is just evidence of this.

Anyway, congratulations on decreasing your caloric intake and losing weight, even if it took belief in the effectiveness of pseudoscience to help you do it.

I don't want to discount the value of the study itself. Clearly it's important to quantify how bad the problem is and try to develop solutions. But at the same time, the article and summary might give one the impression that the errors and biases involved were newly discovered by the researchers. A few examples:

The secondary marker problem (e.g. tracking cholesterol levels instead of real outcomes like deaths)
Comparing new drugs only to placebo or only to drugs that aren't best-in-class or using an intentionally weak dose of the comparison drug
Using meta-analysis of other studies instead of doing new research (and often doing it badly)
Doing retrospective analyses like chart reviews instead of prospective studies (and often doing those badly)

To expand upon that last example: common problems with the methodology of chart review studies were investigated thoroughly by Gilbert and Lowenstein in 1996. Despite their findings and recommendations for how to do a chart review properly, things haven't improved much since.

Many doctors and researchers have been critiquing studies and warning about these problems for years. In the emergency medicine context, for example, Jerome Hoffman, a UCLA medical professor and emergency department physician, is well known as a critic of poorly designed studies in the emergency medicine literature. He has critically reviewed studies since 1977 as part of a continuing medical education program called Emergency Medical Abstracts.

So the problems are well known. The bigger issue is how to fix them.

It would be significantly easier to go back to "old school" and just extract it from the pancreas of animals. Assuming you aren't allergic to that form (which isn't chemically identicial to human insulin). Otherwise splicing the genes into E-coli can't be that difficult with modern equipment - it was done in 1978 after all. But I'm not a molecular biologist to know...

One example of "old school", which is straight forward but tedious and hope to god you don't screw it up and inject the results:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1259392/

Thanks for making my point exactly. The NIH is slowly investigating acupuncture, maybe you should start there.

from one of my recent emails:

One point should be noted: that the energy phenomena involved are as complex and variegated as are all the physical flesh-and-organ-and-chemical structures of the meat body. Different programs and different disciplines with their different traditions and histories are working with different aspects of this life force energy, so you will find descriptions as different as those coming from specialists working with the epidermis and those working with joints or those working with some aspect of the digestive tract. We know, in fact, as scientific fact that at least some of this energy is "real," because no living organism can live without chemical process and all chemical processes are electrical in nature - what's controversial there is whether those electrical processes or any field effects can be tangible.

HTH, HAND.

As an academic, I can tell you that there is almost nothing serious to be found on the Internet whatsoever...

One word: PubMed

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17382831 It was at the center of the whole David Nutt issue.

There is no significant difference in latency or duration for vertical vs. horizontal saccades (eg: see ), and you're dead wrong about reading speed: In English, the optimal column width for fast reading is somewhere between 50 and 100 characters per line, depending on exact circumstances.

However, there are two other relevant facts: 1) The lower visual hemifield has a larger cortical representation than the upper visual hemifield, and shows modest improvements in visual performance (this is unsurprising, since our hands/tools/ground near us is usually in our lower hemifield) and 2) We can move our head side-to-side more rapidly, and with a larger range of motion than we can up and down, which changes some saccade distributions.

Irregardless of the mechanics of the situation, reading is a highly trained activity, and direction of reading is not universal. Chinese, for instance, can be read top-to-bottom, or with either horizontal possibility as the initial direction, with the reader cued by slightly differing strokes and punctuation . I'm not aware of any bottom-to-top sequential reading in any culture, which is probably due to the above mentioned processing differences. However, there are also mixed reading sequences that use multiple horizontal and vertical elements in a single block, like Mayan hieroglyphs (2x2 blocks LR->TB within block, blocks are read TB->LR ) or the Korean Hangul system (variety of block sizes, read TB->RL). Arguably, the latter systems are most efficient in terms of leveraging the early geometry of the visual system (log-polar, with resolution dropping exponentially with distance from the fovea.

It's not a typo, it's talking about rotations of a single microcrystal.
The previous article that is referenced records rates of 500 rotations per second - which is 30,000rpm.

and also https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Pseudogene,
It is not all that clear to me that these viral DNA fragments are in fact capable of being "involved in virus creation".

Or more specifically, I have yet to see any specific evidence that they are in fact "involved in virus creation".

To be fair you seem to be advocating for the possibility, rather than the actuality.

Also I need to point out I am not a professional molecular biologist (I'm sure there is one around here somewhere), but to me the links did not seem to argue conclusively one way or the other.

The section on functional pseudogenes seems to indicate that there is still some active debate on the subject.

Many of the source articles seem to be locked behind paywalls, but a few are accessible.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1456316/?tool=pmcentrez

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1567693/?tool=pmcentrez

http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/19/5/654.abstract

and also https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Pseudogene,
It is not all that clear to me that these viral DNA fragments are in fact capable of being "involved in virus creation".

Or more specifically, I have yet to see any specific evidence that they are in fact "involved in virus creation".

To be fair you seem to be advocating for the possibility, rather than the actuality.

Also I need to point out I am not a professional molecular biologist (I'm sure there is one around here somewhere), but to me the links did not seem to argue conclusively one way or the other.

The section on functional pseudogenes seems to indicate that there is still some active debate on the subject.

Many of the source articles seem to be locked behind paywalls, but a few are accessible.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1456316/?tool=pmcentrez

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1567693/?tool=pmcentrez

http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/19/5/654.abstract

I think it's pretty certain that there is life on Mars now, as NASA didn't take any extraordinary measures to eradicate all possible forms of life from the probes until 1995 and the Mars Orbiter. Earlier, a memo was issued, but not much was done. Up to 10^5 possibly surviving microbes were permissible on the earlier crafts, if I remember correctly.

It's a shame, as the planet can never be uncontaminated and studied as a truly lifeless planet.

Think back a few generations from yourself. Heck think back 50 years before the EPA came into existence. Does that horrible lack of concern for the environment affect your daily life today? Do you even know what they dumped back then?

Yes, and yes.

It's more complicated than that, though. Most people are probably not affected at all. But some people are affected in tragic ways. And even though I haven't gotten sick from being exposed to toxins, I AM paying for Superfund site amelioration. Does that affect my daily life? To some extent. Here's a fun map to check out superfund sites.

Yes the people should be punished, but as previous posters have pointed out, it isn't criminal without intent.

Well, others may have pointed it out, but it's still incorrect. There does not need to be willful harm for criminal negligence to occur. Disregarding safety can be a criminal act, even if any harm that occurs is unintentional.

It's because science says one thing one day, and weeks later says the opposite. Also, scientists argue among themselves about what the conclusion should be.

Despite your hyperbole, the fact remains that science is never static. No one EVER gets it right on their first try. Many don't get it right on their 20th try. That's the WHOLE POINT of the scientific method and the research process. Science isn't about proving anything; proofs are exclusive only to mathematics and can be dubious even then. Instead, science is about DISproving things. Like in a crucible, irrelevancies, false observations, improper procedures, incorrect conclusions, etc are burned away, usually a bit at a time, to get a PURER product (note not a PURE product, simply a PURER product) that enhances our knowledge and understanding of the world. Ongoing falsification is at the core of the scientific method.

As such, sure, science says one thing one day, then some time later, IMPROVES upon that, either refining it via specificity, OR refutation, even. Unlike what most people understand about science, refutation is a GOOD thing -- it demonstrates that the scientific method is WORKING. No true scientist wants to cling to the wrong answers!

Sure, scientists argue about a lot of things; it is in their nature. However, just because they argue doesn't mean they ignore each others' established and (thus far) unfalsified research. Two scientists could argue vehemently all day long over the specificity of a nearly insignificant point in a pair of competing research studies which otherwise support each other. However, when you ask them about the general consensus of their respective research, they will fully admit to being in near total agreement.

Bottom line, journalism makes science look like a bunch of bumbling clowns because it can't summarize research correctly, and the scientists sometimes do a bad enough job themselves that they don't need help bungling the conclusion. I have this argument all the time with people who don't understand how the scientific method works, and the difference between internet news and peer-reviewed journals.

That's why I pretty much ignore what journalists and pundits say; I go STRAIGHT to the science/research itself. Hell, I still consider myself a skeptic of what scientists say about a lot of things, but if I don't have the knowledge/training and haven't done the research, I will give a scientist who does/has the benefit of a doubt until such time as I do have better information from a more reliable source, or from my own research into the subject.

As such, I (and others) would appreciate direct links to papers, rather than regurgitation of "talking points"-style articles in popular rags, which often cherry-pick and distort salient bits to suit the whims of the article author/editor/publisher. Hence:

Here is Dr. Ioannidis's paper referenced by your linked article.

Just like in the Thurner and Hanel paper recently published, I think that Dr. Ioannidis makes valid and important points in his observations. However, again, they are hypothetical in nature. He doesn't actually review or provide specific evidence for statistical analysis to support his contention that "Most Published Research Findings Are False". Again, that doesn't invalidate his contentions (at least directly), but it also does not indict any specific body of research in any meaningful way. In simpler words, you can't use that as a litmus to automatically disregard any particular research paper "just because Dr. Ioannidis said that 'Most Published Research Findings Are False', thus this paper's findings are false". That's being grossly disingenuous and not a little intellectually dishonest.

Finally, regarding gp post, you seem overly sensitive. I didn't read that as a "here's the obvious, maybe that explains it?" post. But maybe I give people more credit than they

My heart goes out to all of the families with children with Autism or Aspergers. I cannot imagine how difficult it must be to come to terms with the fact that your child has one of these conditions, and then to fight to ensure that your child gets the education and care needed for them to live a rich, fulfilling life.

Blaming vaccinations is not the answer, however. There have been a wealth of impartial studies performed, and the results overwhelmingly show that autism is NOT caused by vaccinations. For example, there was an extensive review performed in 2004 by the Institute of Medicine, an organization chartered by the National Academy of Sciences in 1970 to serve as an adviser to the federal government on issues affecting the public's health, as well as to act *independently* in identifying important issues of medical care, research, and education. (see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20669467)

By falsely linking autism and vaccines, parents have been hesitant to vaccinate their children. The lack of vaccinations has resulted in unnecessary illnesses, complications, and deaths due to diseases that are 100% avoidable. (For over a hundred real-life accounts of people who have suffered or died from vaccine-preventable diseases, you can visit http://www.immunize.org/reports/. The main body of the site is pretty interesting, too.) I cannot imagine how a parent must feel, knowing that their child is disabled or dead because they weren't immunized. I'm betting it's 1,000x worse than the parent of an autistic child who was immunized, since there is absolutely no question that the (in)action of the parent is to blame.

Calling for more studies to prove what has already been established - that vaccines do not cause autism - diverts funds away from research that can try to establish what *does* cause the disease and develop more effective treatment methods. I think that we all would be better served by putting funds towards this kind of research.

I have followed Dr. Wakefield's ethical case, and understand that his methods were at question, and his results have not been duplicated in humans. Although there is a new study which calls the vaccine regimen of the 1990s into question.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20628439

That's putting it mildly. Not only did Wakefield conceal conflicts of interest, but it has been shown that the description of the work and how it was done was false. Your statement that it has not been duplicated "in humans" is technically correct--others have tried to reproduce Wakefield's claimed results and have gotten contrary results--but it could be misunderstood as indicating that it has been duplicated in nonhumans. This is not true.

And the study you cite was originally co- authored by Wakefield (although they demoted him to an acknowledgment when the extent of his scientific malfeasance and unethical behavior became widespread public knowledge), and also has major scientific problems.

A synapse is an intracellular junction that allows for the propagation of binary electrical information between neurons.Like transistors, synapses have threshold voltages that need to reached before the information can be sent. In a sense, synapses = transistors. A single neuron in the brain may have on the order of several hundred to tens of thousands of synapses. Considering there are about 100 billion neurons in the human brain, the number of synapses add up to a daunting number. Here's where I got the info: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1188961/pdf/jpn00078-0049a.pdf http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/facts.html

Abstainers may include teetotalers who used to abuse.

This hypothesis has been tested and rejected as a cause of the results.

http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/aa45.htm

Substantial evidence (1) has discounted speculation that abstainers include a large proportion of former heavy drinkers with pre-existing health problems (i.e., "sick quitters").

The thing is, most of these genetic causes for high cholesterol are due to diet.

That's not really the segment of the population I'm thinking about. I meant people with inherited hypercholesterolemia. These people are always going to produce more cholesterol than they need (as I'm reading it, anyway). Of course, such a person shouldn't make things worse by having a bad diet.

There's always disease and there will always be a reason for research medicine and doctors because of this, but until insurance companies start paying for nutritionists we're stuck in a bit of a rut.

I think we agree on this point. I just wanted to make it clearer that diet isn't always the ultimate solution to the problem.

The article is not clear as to what the age range of the people in the survey was. It says "The sample of those who were studied included individuals between ages 55 and 65 who had had any kind of outpatient care in the previous three years. The 1,824 participants were followed for 20 years." Does this mean all of those surveyed were in the 55-65 age range? It is known that moderate alcohol consumption in the elderly results in increased longevity due to lower incidences of heart disease. But, for every else alcohol makes death more likely due to accidents, suicide etc.

Except next week they will "discover" the opposite, and the following week alcohol will cause cancer

That alcohol is a contributing risk factor for cancer is already known - TFA even mentions it: "Even though heavy drinking is associated with higher risk for cirrhosis and several types of cancer (particularly cancers in the mouth and esophagus), heavy drinkers are less likely to die than people who have never drunk." (Estimates are that around 6% of cancer deaths can be attributed to alcohol consumption).

You do know that American Indians had advanced agriculture right? Primarily in the southeastern United States, Mexico and western South America.

The hunter-gatherer idea is a Plains, mountains, jungle and Taiga thing, not for all American Indians.

Drinking and Alcoholism in American Indians is different than in other ethnic groups in North America, 5.6 times higher alcohol related deaths for one. Obesity and alcohol use among American Indians isn't a problem because of "fried foods and alcohol and pizza and burgers".

http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh22-4/253.pdf

> If your against animal testing (not a particularly republican standpoint), you should decline virtually all medication.

Much traditional chinese medicine/treatment has been tested on humans for centuries or even longer ;).

Seriously, some of it actually works in dealing with the symptoms, but might cause other problems...

For example, researchers found that a popular herb for reducing infant jaundice actually worked for reducing the jaundice, but could actually cause problems:

"Bilirubin-protein titration studies with the horse radish peroxidase method have shown that the herb is highly effective in displacing bilirubin from its protein binding. Free bilirubin is liberated in this process and this could increase the risk of brain damage in jaundiced infants. "

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8373675

So I'm sure many of those traditional medicines/treatments actually have an effect and aren't just placebos. It would be good to test the "promising" ones to see what they actually do and whether the results are desirable :).

It turns out the induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to which you refer aren't really equivalent to embryonic stem cells (ESC). This paper (with which I'm not affiliated) illustrates the point quite clearly. They also show that the epigenetic memory can, to some extent, be erased by drugs, but there are still significant differences between those treated cells and true ESCs.

Found some tasty information for those who are inclined to produce their own 3D model of a human adenovirus. Gives some juicy details that the linked article doesn't. A quasi-atomic model of human adenovirus type 5 capsid

I read the article on the New York Times yesterday, but I've been thinking about this a lot lately in general, and I've come across some pretty interesting stuff. For instance, its pretty obvious that computers give off a lot of blue light. Apparently someone decided that blue LEDs meant high tech and so devices get fitted with them all over the place. Blue light in particular is linked to suppression of melatonin(source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11487664). Particularly low levels of melatonin have been observed in patients with various degrees of ASD, including slashdot's favourite asperger's (source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17505466).

So, my contention is that the "rise in autism" that seems to be so prevalent these days is probably a result of children basically being deprived of proper darkness, being surrounded by light from computers, tv, video games, etc. I've started taking melatonin supplements as since I got back into IT work about two years ago and spending much more time on computers, I've been sleeping a lot less and feeling generally less sociable. My memory has gotten shot, etc. Could just be that I'm getting older, but I'm only 26... I'm not that old. When I get a break away from computers, take some time out to sleep, and get outside in the woods then I can generally shake the effects off in a day or so, but when I was a kid the world wasn't nearly as surrounded by computer technology in all its myriad of forms as it is today, where kids are basically handed a DS right out of the womb. I didn't see a gameboy until I was about 7 or 8, and it had a monochrome screen with no backlight.

And no, I don't mean a break from work. I mean a break from computers. It's not just being at work -- when I'm at work, its light outside anyway. I mean no laptop, no fancy phone, no nothing. Go away for a few days and leave that stuff behind, because if I'm just at home on the weekend and spend a lot of time plugged up, then I don't feel any better for not having been at work.

The way kids are today, with all their gadgets and gizmos can't possibly be any better for their brains than it is for their bodies, not playing outside nearly as much as they used to.

Stories like this match up pretty well with my own anecdotal evidence, not that it means much, but when I find NIH studies that seem to point to much more extreme versions of what I've seen, even in myself. Like I said, the effects on an adult are likely to be temporary, but our brains had time to mature before being mushed up.

I read the article on the New York Times yesterday, but I've been thinking about this a lot lately in general, and I've come across some pretty interesting stuff. For instance, its pretty obvious that computers give off a lot of blue light. Apparently someone decided that blue LEDs meant high tech and so devices get fitted with them all over the place. Blue light in particular is linked to suppression of melatonin(source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11487664). Particularly low levels of melatonin have been observed in patients with various degrees of ASD, including slashdot's favourite asperger's (source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17505466).

So, my contention is that the "rise in autism" that seems to be so prevalent these days is probably a result of children basically being deprived of proper darkness, being surrounded by light from computers, tv, video games, etc. I've started taking melatonin supplements as since I got back into IT work about two years ago and spending much more time on computers, I've been sleeping a lot less and feeling generally less sociable. My memory has gotten shot, etc. Could just be that I'm getting older, but I'm only 26... I'm not that old. When I get a break away from computers, take some time out to sleep, and get outside in the woods then I can generally shake the effects off in a day or so, but when I was a kid the world wasn't nearly as surrounded by computer technology in all its myriad of forms as it is today, where kids are basically handed a DS right out of the womb. I didn't see a gameboy until I was about 7 or 8, and it had a monochrome screen with no backlight.

And no, I don't mean a break from work. I mean a break from computers. It's not just being at work -- when I'm at work, its light outside anyway. I mean no laptop, no fancy phone, no nothing. Go away for a few days and leave that stuff behind, because if I'm just at home on the weekend and spend a lot of time plugged up, then I don't feel any better for not having been at work.

The way kids are today, with all their gadgets and gizmos can't possibly be any better for their brains than it is for their bodies, not playing outside nearly as much as they used to.

Stories like this match up pretty well with my own anecdotal evidence, not that it means much, but when I find NIH studies that seem to point to much more extreme versions of what I've seen, even in myself. Like I said, the effects on an adult are likely to be temporary, but our brains had time to mature before being mushed up.

Since you commented anonymously I don't know if you will see this but I will reply anyhow.

It has to do with drawing the line as to what you call a human. Is a baby a human? Is a 6 or 3 month old fetus a human? Is a single fertilized egg a human? There's no easy answer because people can't even agree on how to define a human when it's full grown.

Which is why it is very important to squash the perpetuated lies about abortions being used for embryonic stem cell research. Rather than base a moral decision on visions of dead babies it is better to learn the facts. And the fact is that there is a hugely significant difference between a fertilized egg and a 3 month old fetus, and the difference becomes even more significant when we consider that these are not fertilized eggs inside a womb that have some calculable probability of gestating and growing into a human baby. We are talking about human cells that will absolutely never gestate into a human for the same reason that an unused egg lost through menstruation or sperm ejaculated during a wet dream or even a naturally fertilized egg that fails to embed to the uterus wall will absolutely positively never become human babies even though they are human cells and under the appropriate conditions would actually have a reasonable probability of becoming a human.

why all the fuss over embryonic stem cells? I'm not a bio-chem guy but I know enough to understand the arguements, and the one thing I don't get is that there are better stem cells out there than embryonic. Embryonic stem cells people think have a lot of promise, but they're blank slates and if you were to regrow some sort of damaged tissue, how would you control the growth so it doesn't become some cancerous tumour, especially when it's harvested from an outside source?

It is my hope that a discovery is made that will make this question moot, however, as it stands today there are significant advantages in the use of embryonic stem cells. I have no intention of going through all the article research again but a few months back I had this same discussion with another individual and based on what I have read the adult stem cells actually present a greater risk of cancer than embryonic stem cells. In fact, the wiki article you linked to provides references to research suggesting adult stem cells are the source of cancer.

But I will provide one additional link before I end my commenting, the utilization of stem cells, adult or embryonic, as a source for cures to diseases will require a plentiful supply of cells. This is exactly where adult stem cells fail as noted at the National Institutes of Health.

"Embryonic stem cells can be grown relatively easily in culture. Adult stem cells are rare in mature tissues, so isolating these cells from an adult tissue is challenging, and methods to expand their numbers in cell culture have not yet been worked out. This is an important distinction, as large numbers of cells are needed for stem cell replacement therapies."

How statistically significant were these results, given that the sample size was nineteen?

Significant enough to warrant another study with a bigger sample size. That's the nature of clinical trials: start small, and if you see any hint of an effect, repeat bigger. Then once your study has covered 1000 people, your new drug application is almost finished.

Indeed; this was noted in my original post. The recreational potential is limited in part due to seizure factor.

Disregarding the limited (mostly anecdotal) evidence for recreational interaction of Wellbutrin with other drugs there's another point to make:

Here's the summary on PubMed.>

Note that the study also encompasses total hours played and craving symptoms. How was gaining such information possible other than subjective accounts from the sampled?

Then there's the fact no placebo group was present: There were zero corresponding Starcraft players/addicts given a sugar pill and then shown the Zerg images to measure their reactions. So how do we know whether this was Wellbutrin or merely the study itself and circumstances surrounding it that triggered the difference?

How statistically significant were these results, given that the sample size was nineteen? I wouldn't be so quick to jump to conclusions considering the control and experimental groups must have included 10 or fewer people.

Not Dr., but patient spopepro with the 5150 to prove it. It took a while to find the right meds, so I know the questions and indications of interest.

But not wanting to resort to anecdotes, how about the national library of medicine. Scroll down to where it says "Bupropion is a monocyclic antidepressant structurally related to amphetamine." There are other references there as well.

I remember seeing an article very recently (on Slashdot maybe) that pointed out that boxing got more dangerous when they started using padded gloves, because that let the boxers hit with all their strength. Take away the football helmets and pads and you might get more contusions and cuts, but less brain damage; it would be more like rugby with the players hitting each other much more softly.

That's a nice theory.

It's also wrong.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15335432
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15335433

Rates of skull and head injury have dropped with each succeeding generation of football helmet. Neck injuries briefly increased after the advent of the plastic helmet, but rule changes took care of most of that.

I remember seeing an article very recently (on Slashdot maybe) that pointed out that boxing got more dangerous when they started using padded gloves, because that let the boxers hit with all their strength. Take away the football helmets and pads and you might get more contusions and cuts, but less brain damage; it would be more like rugby with the players hitting each other much more softly.

That's a nice theory.

It's also wrong.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15335432
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15335433

Rates of skull and head injury have dropped with each succeeding generation of football helmet. Neck injuries briefly increased after the advent of the plastic helmet, but rule changes took care of most of that.

I'm sorry you had side effects from a medication or felt that your physician was not being honest with you. However what you are saying about cholesterol and statins is utter BS. Sure cholesterol is necessary for us to live -- every cell has cholesterol in its cell membrane to regulate membrane fluidity. We use it in construction of bile salts for fat absorption and to make endogenous steroids. But its role in cardiovascular disease is well documented since the 1950s. Here, let me cite you the Framingham Heart Study website. Literally thousands of papers demonstrate that high cholesterol, specifically LDL, leads to atherosclerotic plaque formation, then eventual arterial occlusion, infarct, and possibly death.

Regarding statins -- sure there are side-effects, the most notable being liver dysfunction and myalgia. But let me cite you another famous study, the Scandinavian Simvastatin Survival Study (4S). The pertinents: 30% relative risk reduction in all-cause mortality and 42% relative risk reduction in coronary mortality (patients with angina or prior MI).

So please cite me some evidence for what you are saying, or stop spreading ridiculous misinformation.

The United States Drug Enforcement Administration stated in 2008 that written prescriptions for ADHD have risen 500% since 1991.

The National Institute of Mental Health also wrote a summary on this in 2007 with a global focus.

What about blowing into the device, through an activated charcoal filter, as used with cigarettes? Activated charcoal appears to absorb at least some alcohol.

If you're really serious about tracking metadata, it may be worthwhile to take a look at some of the tools offered by caBIG:

https://cabig.nci.nih.gov/

The caBIG tools are geared toward using a model-driven approach to define precise metadata which promote semantic interoperability. Underlying the caBIG tools is a metadata repository called the caDSR, which follows the ISO/IEC 11179 Standard for Metadata Registries:

https://cabig.nci.nih.gov/concepts/caDSR/

The caBIG tools are all open-source, developed by the National Cancer Institute.

If you're really serious about tracking metadata, it may be worthwhile to take a look at some of the tools offered by caBIG:

https://cabig.nci.nih.gov/

The caBIG tools are geared toward using a model-driven approach to define precise metadata which promote semantic interoperability. Underlying the caBIG tools is a metadata repository called the caDSR, which follows the ISO/IEC 11179 Standard for Metadata Registries:

https://cabig.nci.nih.gov/concepts/caDSR/

The caBIG tools are all open-source, developed by the National Cancer Institute.

I think the main difference is that I have never heard of any caffeine overdose related deaths.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15935584

http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/caffeine/caffeine_health.shtml

Now you have.

Just so you know, first link, widely discredited. Bad methodology, cherrypicked data, and never once mentioned a scientific reason as to why GMOs would be dangerous (they never do). Second, I've heard of those, but never one endorsed by the scientific community, nor one that could point to a reasonable cause for the animals' behaviors. It would be a real surprise if animals could detect subtle genetic changes but would still eat everything else. Third, can't find the link right now, but I read that it is somewhere in the range of 1 out of 50,000 monarchs that would be affected by that pollen (given the range and spread and that sort of thing) even if we accept that report, which, again, I haven't heard overwhelming confirmation of, and keep in mind, even if we accept that, it is generally believed that Bt crops tend to increase nontarget insect biodiversity and reduce pesticide applications, so even if we accept the thing about the monarchs, it is a trade off situation, not a loss with no gain.

Genetic engineering is a very controversial area, don't be surprised if you read a lot bad science about it. I mean, there are dozens of studies 'proving' that homeopathy works, that doesn't mean it does. The general scientific consensus among biologists, botanists, horticulturists, zoologists, microbiologists, biochemists, geneticists, ect., is that they're safe and effective. Sure, there might be patent stuff to work out, but that doesn't effect the crops themselves, and there might even be environmental side effects (although, not using them could be worse), but it is generally beneficial.

Your last paragraph is way off though. Just because there is a dispute (largely between scientists and laymen, what should that tell you?) does not mean we should forgo them. There is an equally valid dispute over the safety and effectiveness of vaccination, and whether or not they cause autism, and pharma patents on them, and every now and again a bad batch makes minor headlines (or is used sensationally by bad or biased journalism); should we stop vaccinating too? Just because a small vocal group of scientifically illiterate cranks muddy the waters for people who don't closely follow the subject? There is a dispute, yes, but it is, by and large, a manufactured controversy, an ultimately popular debate but not a scientific one.

This site claims the average household income in 1986 was $30,000 before taxes. For comparison, the average household income in the region where I live is about $35,000 today. I really see no reason why the average person was unable to afford a computer in the 80s, though I welcome numbers to show otherwise.

> Researchers have long known that mammals, including humans, lack a key enzyme -- one possessed by most of the animal kingdom and even plants -- that reverses severe sun damage

The story description is misleading. By careful omission it gives the impression that this enzyme is the only one that can repair sun-damaged DNA damaged by UV, emphasizing that humans lack it. OH CRUEL LORD! But we do in fact already have other enzymes that repair DNA damage and these are very old news. Ohio U. are just talking about one mechanism, but the press release makes it sound like the only one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_repair
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8053698

Seems to be a trend with journal articles: Release the journal article and a popular press article; Take huge liberties with the popular press article to guarantee widespread media coverage (and we guess future funding and sunscreen merchandising). Note Ohio U. is the source of the journal article and this press release:
http://www.medicaldaily.com/news/20100725/550/researchers-discover-how-key-enzyme-repairs-sun-damaged-dna.htm

We saw the same thing recently with the silly "chicken or egg" article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/jul/18/chicken-and-egg-conundrum-solved

I'm not knocking either journal article. What they did was pretty cool, but would these people please learn to be honest in their press releases too? You would think they would have learned from Climategate?

*sigh*
I realize that you are making fun of the morons who believe that anything with the words "radiation" or "nuclear" in it is horrible and dangerous and should be banned - i.e. the kind of people who forced "NMR" to be changed to "MRI". Unfortunately, the other extreme, the "If it's not ionizing it's completely harmless!" brigade, is just as bad. There are plenty of ways of causing harm without messing with DNA directly. Would you be ok with looking into a 250 W laser? A 250 W UV light all day? Sticking your head in a microwave and turning it to 250 W? It's all just non-ionizing EM radiation! It's safe!

Now, do cellphones cause cancer? The best answer we have right now is "probably not" (getting definitive answers from epidemiological studies is notoriously difficult).
Am I personally concerned? No.
Is people's exposure to cellphone radiation a legitimate concern though? Definitely yes. Nobody studying this believes that cellphone radiation is ionizing, or even that it causes cancer by direct action. What people are concerned about are more subtle, indirect effects, like for example altered blood-brain barrier permeability. EM fields and RF radiation can do funky stuff to your brain. Could some of those interactions be (indirectly) carcinogenic? It's a possibility, but epidemiological evidence so far suggests otherwise. Could there be other, non-carcinogenic health effects of concern? Quite possibly.
In any case, consumer choice and information is a good thing. If you think cellphone radiation is completely harmless, just ignore the SAR value. If you are concerned, you get our current best estimate on the possible danger level. Everyone wins.

CT scanning is associated with an increased risk of cancer in children. This development will significantly lower that risk.

As a physics engineer experienced in the field of radiotherapy and familiar with the techniques mentioned in the /. article as well as certified in radiation safety I am sorry to say that although the radiation dose is reduced, it is only reduced in very specific cases, where it is actually not a real benefit. This technique is not used for normal CT scanning, used to diagnose in your average hospital.
This technique is used for radiotherapy (and mainly for position verification of the organ to be irradiated). Lowering CT dose in such cases is a benefit, but compared to the amount of radiation the person undergoing the treatment receives, to treat his' or hers cancer, it is finite. Apart from that the dose for a Conebeam CT in general is already lower than the dose received by a diagnostic CT scan.
The benefit to using the GPU to do the reconstruction of the conebeam CT is also in the fact that reconstruction and therefor the assessment of the scan can be done quicker, making it less likely that the patient has moved, making it more likely to treat the correct spot. It also makes it possible to more accurately deliver dose and thus sparing surrounding healthy organs and tissue.
To put the received conebeam CT dose in perspective: The biological dose received from on such CT scan is about as high as a few hrs long haul flight (considering the effective dose received per hour as stated by BA).
Regarding the cited article of increased risk in cancer in children: Every person receiving radiation has a risk of getting cancer in the future added to the normal risks of getting cancer (for instance by aging or cosmic radiation).
For children this is far more important as induced cancer is a late effect that takes years to decades before it kicks in. Since the bulk of cancer patients is of higher age (due to the fact that cancer is a age deficiency, mainly) they will most of the times not live long enough to experience the side effects. Since children have a longer live span in front of them compared to adults, we have to be more careful, as because of the larger number of years to life, inherently means a higher risk of late effects induced by radiation.

CT scanning is associated with an increased risk of cancer in children. This development will significantly lower that risk.

For even more buzzkill try giving this abstract a read:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17478320

Personally I'm not that bothered, bellow a certain threshold I'll accept health problems.
Everything is bad for you sooner or later.

I just don't like the claims that it's actually good for your health since they're mostly bunk.