Slashdot Mirror

Apple sells about 200 million iPhones each year. Apple is definitely not attempting to stop tens of thousands of iPhones from being reused to encourage more sales. If anything, iPhones tend to be used longer than other smartphones - https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...

So this idea that Apple just wants you to get a new one is not supported by the facts.

A couple of years ago I read about an exciting new approach to treating cancer: DNA nanobots. These are very simple machines made from DNA.

How simple are they? They are hollow capsules with a hinge and a latch. The one function of the nanobot is to pop the latch open under the correct circumstances.

(Note: I'm a software developer, not any kind of doctor or scientist, and I'm describing this in my own words based on my own understanding. Apologies if I get anything wrong. Links at the end so you can go to better sources.)

The latch can be configured to open only when it bumps into a specific protein. For example, a protein only found on the cancer to be treated.

The idea is that a nano-dose of strong medicine is inserted into the "nanobot" capsules. Each does of medicine is tiny but there are literally trillions of capsules. (That's why they are made out of DNA... no person and no machine can make these, they are self-assembling.) Then the capsules are introduced into the body of the patient. They travel along through the body, bumping into things, and the medicine doesn't do anything because it's contained inside the capsule. Then, when the capsule happens to bump into a cancer cell, the latch opens, the medicine is released, and a nanodose of the medicine is administered directly to the cancer cell.

What I found exciting about this is that it decouples the problems of being both safe and effective. We have plenty of effective anti-cancer drugs, but many of them are useless because they aren't safe. They aren't selective enough; they will kill healthy tissue as much as they kill cancer cells. But if we can program the latch to open only when near the cancer cells, potentially these same drugs would now become safe to use. The nanobot makes the effective drugs safe.

The research from the news story identifies many targets. If the latch can be programmed using this new data, potentially the nanobots can be tailored to attack any kind of cancer and not hurt any healthy tissue.

From time to time I check the news to see if there is anything new about DNA nanobots. The original research I read about has gone silent... I read somewhere that a major drug company had bought the research so maybe it's quietly being developed (and the staggering piles of paperwork quietly started at the FDA).

Here is the research I originally read about:

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2014/12/ido-bachelet-announces-2015-human-trial.html

I didn't find any follow-up about the human trial. I'm wondering whether the treatment worked and the patient was saved.

https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5nck89/what_happened_ido_bachelet_and_leukemia_nanobot/

Here's what appears to be another research team pursuing the same idea.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180212112000.htm

It's pretty impossible that complex reasoning, creativity, social and emotional intelligence, and sensory perception will ever be done by a machine.

I mean, all that machines can do for creativity now is create art in multiple styles including abstract weirdness like Dali, create photorealistic art based on crude drawings supplied as source material, write shitty stories, and create pop songs. There's no way that they will ever do more than that in the future, right?

I'm sure that they will never be able to sense emotions in people, nor will they replace a therapist. We certainly won't try to get AI to determine if people are likely to be criminals or re-offend if they have been convicted before.

Computers definitely will never be able to see and sort things, smell, recognize songs, or have a sense of touch or feel pain.

It's one thing to lay out soft skills that a lot of people don't have and say that's where jobs lie in the future. It's a whole different ballgame to ignore the fact that computers are already making inroads there, and already are better than some percent of the population at those things. Unless the authors are expecting technology to suddenly go in reverse, they're packing bags for a ship that's already sailed.

Meteorite data show that Mars had a much denser atmosphere billions of years ago, perhaps as dense as half that of the Earth (now it is only 0.06 times as dense as the Earth's). Back then it had a magnetic field to avoid atmosphere stripping by the solar wind.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...

Because contrary to the science that has already been done (cited above), and that this hardware and a little extra labware would enable, making your own "Very VERY special micro brew" is totally impossible!

YES, IMPOSSIBLE! /s

Overrated my ass.

an attacker would need control over Swiss Post's secured IT infrastructure "as well as help from several insiders with specialist knowledge

I've got some chocolate to trade for a password or two. Or if not that, maybe some cheese?

Science Daily: Social engineering: Password in exchange for chocolate

You probably want to use the waist-to-height ratio instead.

The Delta32 mutation of the CCR5 gene causes resistance to HIV and other plagues such as the Black Death. It occurs naturally in some people as a result of selection pressure of the plagues. Even though the methods used here to cure HIV are rather costly and dangerous and won't become mainstream, what it shows is that the Delta32 mutation of CCR5 gene not only provides resistance to HIV by turning of a receptor that the virus needs to attach to the cell in order to infect the host but also cures it outright. What that means is that a much safer cure can possibly be targeted along this path.

Like grow seaweed which is a valuable crop for food, fertilizer, and biofuels.

https://www.climatecouncil.org...

We could fertilize sections of the oceans with iron which would increase fish yields.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

So instead of listening to the Lex Luthor types and blocking out the sun like crazy people, why don't we help nature which will help us by giving us more food and absorbing CO2.

If we really want to go crazy... we could still dump a bunch of lime (calcium) into the ocean.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...

~Kevin Matthews aka matthekc

"Blacks commit vastly disproportionate amount of crimes, especially violent ones"

All things male are considered bad. [The blatant sexism is everywhere. Making anything and everything a gendered issue (and therefore, a problem with men, of course). - Women of this generation make at least 8% more than similarly qualified males. [Looks like I remembered that 8% number from that Time Magazine article I linked]

White men systemically discriminated against in all spheres of life - from family court - to hiring [They literally had to end blind recruiting because, once the bias against men was removed, MORE men than before were found to be qualified. These talking head idiots didn't even realize that today's system already discriminates in womens' favor. Of course, the solution was to halt the study, lest we have a solid foundation to prove discrimination. But, I think this is VERY good early proof of systemic discrimination in hiring, at least in Australia.] - to welfare (men are not eligible in any way unless disabled or "disabled") [I was somewhat wrong here. If you look under "The Three-Month Time Limit", it appears that women without children cannot get SNAP long-term either. So, I had one, very minor point, which I don't have good evidence from a mainstream source for.]

Looks like it's you who got fucked. Moron.

Could this phenomena explain the lack of split consciousness after one undergoes Corpus callosotomy?
https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...

https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...

Wait, is this just another Volcano that has become active?

https://www.sciencedaily.com

The Sahara is greening. That's because it's getting wetter. Yes, the desert is getting wetter! California is back up over normal snowpack levels, and the Midwest has a general increasing trend of precipitation. Pretty much everything you said was just proven wrong...

Lots of rich liberals have walls around their homes and/or neighborhoods, so they seem to believe that they work.

They are wrong. Gated communities don't have less crime.

Walls don't work.

"And we are back to the dark ages..."

Not according to this:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...

"These devices can be extremely effective at preventing debilitating tremors or seizures in patients with a variety of neurological conditions. But the electrical signatures that precede a seizure or tremor can be extremely subtle, and the frequency and strength of electrical stimulation required to prevent them is equally touchy. It can take years of small adjustments by doctors before the devices provide optimal treatment.

WAND, which stands for wireless artifact-free neuromodulation device, is both wireless and autonomous, meaning that once it learns to recognize the signs of tremor or seizure, it can adjust the stimulation parameters on its own to prevent the unwanted movements. And because it is closed-loop -- meaning it can stimulate and record simultaneously -- it can adjust these parameters in real-time."

I guess it depends on how you define pattern matching.

That is a good point. To me, what a single neuron or collection of neurons does is pattern matching, in the sense that the output of a neuron or collection thereof can be regarded as identifying a certain (abstracted, meaningful) pattern within the universe.

Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) to me are definitely showing signs of that. Just look at Nvidia's latest stuff:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

A more sophisticated intelligent system is probably going to need more structure for both the problem and the solution.

Will it, though?

The difference between us and apes in intelligence is huge, but in terms of biological evolution and makeup we're not that far apart. Finding the differences between the brain of a bonobo and a human is pretty hard. If there is a 'special sauce' to intelligence, it must be a fairly small (yet very significant) variation on the theme of the chimp biological neural network.

I'm not sure where I'd put current artificial neural networks exactly on an analogous evolutionary scale, but I'd say we are past invertebrate and into insect levels of potency (although perhaps not complexity just yet). Consider advances in science like this:
- https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...
- https://www.nationalgeographic...
Moving ANNs up the evolutionary scale is going to be far from trivial, but I'd say there is a pretty clear path forward.

Why blame the healthcare system when the population is so unhealthy? A healthcare system can't fix people killing themselves and then showing up for help. Only 12% of the US adult population is metabolically healthy.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...

The healthcare system also has challenges that many other countries don't have: unhealthy people and populations that are heterogeneous both culturally and in ancestry. Is it perfect? No. But looking at results only as opposed to inputs and results is ignorant.

for a discussion. Some states charge on dollars sold (the more progressive ones) but a lot charge on _volume_ sold. e.g. one liter of Pabst taxes the same as one liter of expensive wine.

How is your Napoleon complex faring? Sounds like you skipped your meds today....

You can laugh now, but someday I will dance on your grave: short men live longer. ... and you will pay more for your extra-long coffin. Enjoy the legroom.

The odd thing about Napoleon is that he wasn't that short. He was actually tall for the day at 5'7 which was actually slightly taller than most people at the time. The idea of Napoleon Bonaparte being diminutive came from British wartime propaganda where he was depicted as being short and monkey-like. Comparatively, Lord Horatio Nelson his British naval adversary was 5'4 but the Duke of Wellington, who commanded the British army during the Napoleonic wars towered over most people at 5'11.

So Napoleon wasn't short at all, he was in fact, slightly tall for a Frenchman.

How is your Napoleon complex faring? Sounds like you skipped your meds today....

You can laugh now, but someday I will dance on your grave: short men live longer. ... and you will pay more for your extra-long coffin. Enjoy the legroom.

Childhood Obesity Linked to Early Start on Solid Food

Childhood Obesity Linked to Divorce

Childhood obesity linked to health habits

Childhood Obesity Linked to Mom's Lifestyle and Diet Choices

Childhood obesity linked to cold virus

Childhood Obesity Linked to Fast Food Toys

Childhood Obesity Linked to Vitamin D Deficiency

Childhood obesity linked to Poor School Performance and Coping Skills

Childhood obesity linked to antibiotics

Childhood obesity linked to hip disease in adolescence

Childhood obesity linked to More Junk Food Ads

Childhood obesity linked to poverty, parenting style Childhood Obesity Linked to a Mother's Weight Gain in Pregnancy

Childhood Obesity Linked to lakc of sleep

Childhood obesity linked to eating food from animals treated with antibiotics

Childhood obesity linked to Mutant Gean

Literally: first hit on Google, 2007:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...

This seems a little simplistic considering public carriers are businesses out to make a buck and stay in the government's good graces, and methods to breach security can be had easily, if deliciously while adding security pretty much just subtracts from their bottom line.

But what about the phone he was *supposed* to be using? I'd think that the NSA would be able to configure/vet that to be inversely as secure as the public carrier networks aren't.

Hopefully benign. Someone needs to study if those micro plastics encourage bad gut bacteria when the plastics are passing through or getting stuck on the gut lining. How about the news about the parasitic worm that helps improve good gut bacteria?

https://www.the-scientist.com/...

https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...

According to IPCC, CO2 contributes 3.5 times as much as methane. And only part of the methane comes from cow farts.

Ahh, but methane is a MUCH more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.

link Car's put out the CO2....cows, while they aren't the largest expellers of methane, do put out quite a bit.

The damage from cow produced methane rivals the damage out put by cars emitting CO2, since methane is a bit more damaging to the atmosphere than CO2 is.

The optimum degree of inter-relatedness, as measured by fertility, is one equivalent to being third cousins, see for example this.

Check out the following article regarding the subject and the source of the methane:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...

Yep, I read it. But you might not be aware that, according to observational data, wildfire smoke may interact with local pollutants to create ground-level ozone.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...

The Seattle smog was different, but the larger point I was making was that wildfires are huge events that undoubtedly have a very real impact on the regional environment. I'd be very surprised if the two events weren't linked. Can that be proven yet? No, but if you see correlating data, you have to at least LOOK to see if there may be causality before dismissing it out of hand.

...That's an interesting idea, so I did a quick search. That produced this link:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...

It looks like the itching is a common side effect (good to know, I didn't know that before looking it up), and the researchers are working to *reduce* it not *cause* it.

Geologically perilous? Houston hasn't had anything over a 4.0 in the last 30 years from what I can tell.

Geologically was about the best choice of wording. Earthquakes are not the issue, but subsidence. Houston is sinking - some places at a 2 inch per year rate. https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...

Right off the Gulf of Mexico and with rapid subsidence is not a good scenario. I surely wouldn't buy land there.

You being poorly educated on this subject does not change the fact that comparisons in homicide rates between first world nations are considered perfectly valid by those who aren't. They control for all of the typical major exasperating factors like major degrees of poverty, wealth inequality, and government corruption to name a few.

In sociology ? You mean a "Science" where studies can't be reliably replicated

https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...

Anyway going back to your idiocy. The violent crime rate in Montana a state with very little regulation of gun ownership 281/100k overall violence comparing that to London it's 2200/100k considering strict violence against the person

https://www.statista.com/stati...

https://www.bozemandailychroni...

So are you an idiot or just not as well educated as you think you are ?

Oh just going back to the within the same society

Maryland has a violent crime rate of 457/100k
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

But has much stricter gun laws.

Geee It seems the predictive power of your proposition is near zero.

sponsored by the alcoholic beverage industry

Just a few of those doing those 'alcohol industry backed' studies:

The School of Public Health at Harvard University
Catholic University of Campobasso
Kew-Kim Chew, epidemiologist, University of West Australia
Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University
Edward J. Neafsey, Ph.D., Loyola University Chicago
University of East Anglia

There are more. It looks like, according to you, the six universites above are in the pocket of the alcohol industry. Your claim, now go about backing it up.

The issue is how much vitamin D is healthy, and what level constitutes deficiency.

No, the issue is how much vitamin D you actually absorb from supplements, and how efficacious taking supplements is overall. The most popular supplements have not been shown to provide significant health benefits, including vitamin D. The simple fact is that most supplements are a waste of money.

Women should avoid it for all the same reasons.

One exception. As a natural fertility treatment when a woman has low estrogen. And women are not as affected by being doused with estrogen.

The scary part is the estrogen mimics. These have been implicated in birth defect in male children https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...

And the really nifty one https://www.wfaa.com/article/n...

It is incredibly interesting that there is no national program, no hue and cry to eliminate this problem, other than the BPA mimic issue. It's real, it's proven, and I'll leave it to others to discuss why no one seems to give a shit about it.

And the benefits aren't specific to sauna use. Hot tub use can give similar effects:

"The research found that soaking in a hot tub several times per week for two months results in improved measures of cardiovascular health, beneficial changes in fat tissue and other improvements suggestive of a reduced risk of diabetes or other metabolic disorders."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...

Examples

Scientists discover double meaning in genetic code

https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...

If you start a program to fertilize coral reefs, and it turns out the fertilizer has other unintended consequences (like causing algal blooms), you become financially and possibly criminally liable for those consequences.

If birds fertilize coral reefs with their droppings, and their droppings have other unintended consequences, nobody sues the birds in court.

Gives multiple meanings to the phrase, "shit happens."

Remember that academics have to establish themselves with peer reviewed papers. So they need to study something to get started. Once they get tenured at a university, they can study something serious like basket weaving from 10,000 years ago.

You are confusing difficulty of early detection based on symptoms alone with severity and the nature of the disease.

Protein which does damage to the tissue is necessary for multiplication of the influenza virus.
Rhinovirus doesn't do that as it has a completely different structure.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...

Insulin may be as important for the mind as it is for the body. Recent research has raised the possibility that Alzheimer's memory loss could be due to a novel third form of diabetes. Scientists have discovered why brain insulin signaling would stop working in Alzheimer's disease. They have shown that a toxic protein found in the brains of individuals with Alzheimer's removes insulin receptors from nerve cells, rendering those neurons insulin-resistant.

Very strange abstact. In the beginning it implies that diabetes cause Alzheimer, while the last sentence indicates to the opposite.

see here. Haven't you ever seen a dog eat grass?

Dogs have evolved to be omnivores.

see here. Haven't you ever seen a dog eat grass?

To investigate "coffee", go to sciencedaily.com, do a search on term "coffee":

Benefits of drinking coffee outweigh risks, review suggests:

Coffee is enjoyed by millions of people every day and the 'coffee experience' has become a staple of our modern life and culture. While the current body of research related to the effects of coffee consumption on human health has been contradictory, a new study found that the potential benefits of moderate coffee drinking outweigh the risks in adult consumers for the majority of major health outcomes considered.

Drinking coffee could lead to a longer life, scientist says

Whether it's caffeinated or decaffeinated, coffee is associated with lower mortality, which suggests the association is not tied to caffeine

Scientists have found that people who drink coffee appear to live longer. Drinking coffee was associated with lower risk of death due to heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and kidney disease. People who consumed a cup of coffee a day were 12 percent less likely to die compared to those who didn't drink coffee. This association was even stronger for those who drank two to three cups a day -- 18 percent reduced chance of death.

Three to four cups of coffee a day linked to longer life

Three or 4 cups a day confers greatest benefit, except in pregnancy and for women at risk of fracture

Three or more cups of coffee daily halves mortality risk in patients with both HIV, HCV

A novel five-year study highlights importance of behaviors such as coffee drinking and not smoking on health and survival of HIV-infected patients, report investigators.

Higher coffee consumption associated with lower risk of early death

Higher coffee consumption is associated with a lower risk of early death, according to new research. The observational study in nearly 20 000 participants suggests that coffee can be part of a healthy diet in healthy people.

I like things like this last study quite a bit: there are people who obsess over the importance of double-blind clinical trials, but those are invariably an investigation of a single chemical substance on a relatively small population, often just looking at the incidence of some particular problem ("cancer of the left-pinkie")-- whole population studies tell you something about the way actual human beings live, and don't make implicit assumptions like dying of cancer is worse than heart failure (or getting hit by a car...).

We've apparently got an issue at present where the law (and not just in California, thanks for playing) requires labeling "known carcinogens" without any sense of whether the product as a whole is good or bad for you.

To investigate "coffee", go to sciencedaily.com, do a search on term "coffee":

Benefits of drinking coffee outweigh risks, review suggests:

Coffee is enjoyed by millions of people every day and the 'coffee experience' has become a staple of our modern life and culture. While the current body of research related to the effects of coffee consumption on human health has been contradictory, a new study found that the potential benefits of moderate coffee drinking outweigh the risks in adult consumers for the majority of major health outcomes considered.

Drinking coffee could lead to a longer life, scientist says

Whether it's caffeinated or decaffeinated, coffee is associated with lower mortality, which suggests the association is not tied to caffeine

Scientists have found that people who drink coffee appear to live longer. Drinking coffee was associated with lower risk of death due to heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and kidney disease. People who consumed a cup of coffee a day were 12 percent less likely to die compared to those who didn't drink coffee. This association was even stronger for those who drank two to three cups a day -- 18 percent reduced chance of death.

Three to four cups of coffee a day linked to longer life

Three or 4 cups a day confers greatest benefit, except in pregnancy and for women at risk of fracture

Three or more cups of coffee daily halves mortality risk in patients with both HIV, HCV

A novel five-year study highlights importance of behaviors such as coffee drinking and not smoking on health and survival of HIV-infected patients, report investigators.

Higher coffee consumption associated with lower risk of early death

Higher coffee consumption is associated with a lower risk of early death, according to new research. The observational study in nearly 20 000 participants suggests that coffee can be part of a healthy diet in healthy people.

I like things like this last study quite a bit: there are people who obsess over the importance of double-blind clinical trials, but those are invariably an investigation of a single chemical substance on a relatively small population, often just looking at the incidence of some particular problem ("cancer of the left-pinkie")-- whole population studies tell you something about the way actual human beings live, and don't make implicit assumptions like dying of cancer is worse than heart failure (or getting hit by a car...).

We've apparently got an issue at present where the law (and not just in California, thanks for playing) requires labeling "known carcinogens" without any sense of whether the product as a whole is good or bad for you.

To investigate "coffee", go to sciencedaily.com, do a search on term "coffee":

Benefits of drinking coffee outweigh risks, review suggests:

Coffee is enjoyed by millions of people every day and the 'coffee experience' has become a staple of our modern life and culture. While the current body of research related to the effects of coffee consumption on human health has been contradictory, a new study found that the potential benefits of moderate coffee drinking outweigh the risks in adult consumers for the majority of major health outcomes considered.

Drinking coffee could lead to a longer life, scientist says

Whether it's caffeinated or decaffeinated, coffee is associated with lower mortality, which suggests the association is not tied to caffeine

Scientists have found that people who drink coffee appear to live longer. Drinking coffee was associated with lower risk of death due to heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and kidney disease. People who consumed a cup of coffee a day were 12 percent less likely to die compared to those who didn't drink coffee. This association was even stronger for those who drank two to three cups a day -- 18 percent reduced chance of death.

Three to four cups of coffee a day linked to longer life

Three or 4 cups a day confers greatest benefit, except in pregnancy and for women at risk of fracture

Three or more cups of coffee daily halves mortality risk in patients with both HIV, HCV

A novel five-year study highlights importance of behaviors such as coffee drinking and not smoking on health and survival of HIV-infected patients, report investigators.

Higher coffee consumption associated with lower risk of early death

Higher coffee consumption is associated with a lower risk of early death, according to new research. The observational study in nearly 20 000 participants suggests that coffee can be part of a healthy diet in healthy people.

I like things like this last study quite a bit: there are people who obsess over the importance of double-blind clinical trials, but those are invariably an investigation of a single chemical substance on a relatively small population, often just looking at the incidence of some particular problem ("cancer of the left-pinkie")-- whole population studies tell you something about the way actual human beings live, and don't make implicit assumptions like dying of cancer is worse than heart failure (or getting hit by a car...).

We've apparently got an issue at present where the law (and not just in California, thanks for playing) requires labeling "known carcinogens" without any sense of whether the product as a whole is good or bad for you.

To investigate "coffee", go to sciencedaily.com, do a search on term "coffee":

Benefits of drinking coffee outweigh risks, review suggests:

Coffee is enjoyed by millions of people every day and the 'coffee experience' has become a staple of our modern life and culture. While the current body of research related to the effects of coffee consumption on human health has been contradictory, a new study found that the potential benefits of moderate coffee drinking outweigh the risks in adult consumers for the majority of major health outcomes considered.

Drinking coffee could lead to a longer life, scientist says

Whether it's caffeinated or decaffeinated, coffee is associated with lower mortality, which suggests the association is not tied to caffeine

Scientists have found that people who drink coffee appear to live longer. Drinking coffee was associated with lower risk of death due to heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and kidney disease. People who consumed a cup of coffee a day were 12 percent less likely to die compared to those who didn't drink coffee. This association was even stronger for those who drank two to three cups a day -- 18 percent reduced chance of death.

Three to four cups of coffee a day linked to longer life

Three or 4 cups a day confers greatest benefit, except in pregnancy and for women at risk of fracture

Three or more cups of coffee daily halves mortality risk in patients with both HIV, HCV

A novel five-year study highlights importance of behaviors such as coffee drinking and not smoking on health and survival of HIV-infected patients, report investigators.

Higher coffee consumption associated with lower risk of early death

Higher coffee consumption is associated with a lower risk of early death, according to new research. The observational study in nearly 20 000 participants suggests that coffee can be part of a healthy diet in healthy people.

I like things like this last study quite a bit: there are people who obsess over the importance of double-blind clinical trials, but those are invariably an investigation of a single chemical substance on a relatively small population, often just looking at the incidence of some particular problem ("cancer of the left-pinkie")-- whole population studies tell you something about the way actual human beings live, and don't make implicit assumptions like dying of cancer is worse than heart failure (or getting hit by a car...).

We've apparently got an issue at present where the law (and not just in California, thanks for playing) requires labeling "known carcinogens" without any sense of whether the product as a whole is good or bad for you.

To investigate "coffee", go to sciencedaily.com, do a search on term "coffee":

Benefits of drinking coffee outweigh risks, review suggests:

Coffee is enjoyed by millions of people every day and the 'coffee experience' has become a staple of our modern life and culture. While the current body of research related to the effects of coffee consumption on human health has been contradictory, a new study found that the potential benefits of moderate coffee drinking outweigh the risks in adult consumers for the majority of major health outcomes considered.

Drinking coffee could lead to a longer life, scientist says

Whether it's caffeinated or decaffeinated, coffee is associated with lower mortality, which suggests the association is not tied to caffeine

Scientists have found that people who drink coffee appear to live longer. Drinking coffee was associated with lower risk of death due to heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and kidney disease. People who consumed a cup of coffee a day were 12 percent less likely to die compared to those who didn't drink coffee. This association was even stronger for those who drank two to three cups a day -- 18 percent reduced chance of death.

Three to four cups of coffee a day linked to longer life

Three or 4 cups a day confers greatest benefit, except in pregnancy and for women at risk of fracture

Three or more cups of coffee daily halves mortality risk in patients with both HIV, HCV

A novel five-year study highlights importance of behaviors such as coffee drinking and not smoking on health and survival of HIV-infected patients, report investigators.

Higher coffee consumption associated with lower risk of early death

Higher coffee consumption is associated with a lower risk of early death, according to new research. The observational study in nearly 20 000 participants suggests that coffee can be part of a healthy diet in healthy people.

I like things like this last study quite a bit: there are people who obsess over the importance of double-blind clinical trials, but those are invariably an investigation of a single chemical substance on a relatively small population, often just looking at the incidence of some particular problem ("cancer of the left-pinkie")-- whole population studies tell you something about the way actual human beings live, and don't make implicit assumptions like dying of cancer is worse than heart failure (or getting hit by a car...).

We've apparently got an issue at present where the law (and not just in California, thanks for playing) requires labeling "known carcinogens" without any sense of whether the product as a whole is good or bad for you.

A quick google. Maybe you should do some more reading

Subject could be just poked, without actually being stuck with a needle.
Does not really work, as poking is enough in most cases.

Acupuncture Just As Effective Without Needle Puncture

Subject could be given acupuncture without knowing which kind is it ("right", "wrong", "fake") - while being informed that the choice will be random.
That is not what a double blind study is about. The subject has to be convinced that it gets the real thing.

Sham acupuncture may be as efficacious as true acupuncture: a systematic review of clinical trials