One hypothesis goes that electric toasters became popular because something had to be done with electricity. So it may go with some vaccines. Roche has set up a co -marketing agreement with private laboratory Unilabs-IHS to support greater access to HPV testing throughout the UK.
Like global warming? You can thank nuclear power protesters. Since the 1970s, a full-scale public relations war on nuclear power has been waged, meaning a growing population became more reliant on fossil fuels instead of zero-emissions nuclear power.
Now, a formal complaint about subsidies for nuclear power has been sent to the European Commission (DG Competition). If it is upheld, it unlikely that any new nuclear power stations will be built in the UK or elsewhere in the EU. The complaint may be followed by legal action in the courts or actions by politicians to reduce or remove subsidies for nuclear power. The complaint has been prepared by lawyers for the Energy Fair group, with several other environmental groups and environmentalists.
Should researchers be obligated to publish null results? Should they have to publish all trial data? Missing data distorts the scientific record, so that clinical decisions cannot be based on the best evidence, and that can harm patients and lead to futile costs to health systems, accoding to an editorial at BMJ.
It's no secret that a large proportion of evidence from human trials is unreported, and much of what is reported is done so inadequately but there is no real accounting for the consequences of unpublished evidence.
Changes to the diagnostic definition of autism will be published in the fifth edition of the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" - DSM V - but exactly what those changes will be is a key point of discussion. There are still a lot of qualifying issues in a lot of areas for a publication that has already been a long time in the making.
At stake? Apparently a lot of money. Autism was once rare enough that a definition was not rigorous but it also was not crucial - some leeway was allowed. As a result, recent increased instances, either to more occurrences or more accurate diagnoses or even mis-diagnosis, have made the new definition for DSM-V a hot topic.
If you don't think the government should be artificially mandating winners and losers among clean energy companies with artificial subsidies, don't let that turn you off of basic research, where the real improvement in future clean energy will be made.
A discovery by military and academic researchers that embedding charged quantum dots into photovoltaic cells can improve electrical output by enabling the cells to harvest infrared light, and by increasing the lifetime of photoelectrons, may mean dramatically increasing the amount of sunlight that solar cells convert into electricity.
Forget starving yourself or kooky ideas like a lettuce diet for increased longevity - the answer to living longer may be found in a bottle of alcohol.
Minuscule amounts of ethanol, the type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages, has been shown to more than double the life span of Caenorhabditis elegans - though just why is still unclear, so don't get out the Jim Beam just yet. Plus, high concentrations have been linked to numerous detrimental neurological effects too many times for that to be overthrown any time soon.
It seems that certain great ideas have Times. Like, whoever's alive at that time, it doesn't matter--they're going to discover electricity, because the idea's in the ether. Or whatever.
So as it turns out, 2009 was the Time of finding neurotoxins in stranded Humboldt squid. I mean, obviously, right? Or, um, maybe not.
Let me explain: in 2009, a bunch of Humboldt squid stranded on beaches up and down the Pacific coast of North America. And two entirely independent groups of people had the same brilliant idea of taking samples from these stranded squid and looking for neurotoxins.
Can your school-age child break this code?
VS LBH NER NTRQ ORGJRRA RYRIRA NAQ FVKGRRA NAQ PNA ERNQ GUVF GURA JUL ABG RAGRE GUR NYNA GHEVAT PELCGBTENCUL PBZCRGVGVBA
If so, The School of Mathematics at The University of Manchester, where Turing helped develop the earliest stored-program computers following his pioneering Enigma Code-breaking work at Bletchley Park during WW2, wants to help develop those skills and is organizing a competition to celebrate Turing's centenary.
This week's edition of the CMS Times features a
short piece by A.Rao,
where some points are made on the issue of correct statistical analysis of high-energy physics data.
Corporate media likes to shock or enrage people so when it comes to science stories, the ridiculous - life on other planets, billions 'wasted' on curing cancer, Republicans hate science - often takes precedent over the quiet wins.
