Sigmund Freud wrote in The Interpretation of Dreams that "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" - he meant not everything was about sex, which must really frustrate evolutionary psychology grad students(1), being as he is the most famous psychiatrist ever and was wrong about almost everything else but correct on that point.

But that also means a cigar isn't always just a cigar, even in the literal sense.  In an era where progressive busybodies have taken to micro-regulation of choice (grocery bags, Big Gulps, goldfish, Happy Meals, golf), it was only a matter of time before the cultural mullahs who want to ban cigarettes (but legalize pot) turned their sights on cigars.
 

A new study shows that supplementation with an encapsulated fruit and vegetable juice concentrate (Juice Plus+® Orchard Blend and Garden Blend) was associated with an increase in serum beta-carotene concentrations, reduced abdominal adipose tissue and improved insulin resistance in overweight boys compared to the placebo group. These study results add to the existing body of research about the role of nutrition in promoting children's health.

 In a head-to-head trial between VPRIV and Cerezyme(R) (imiglucerase), only patients treated with VPRIV experienced statistically significant improvement in lumbar spine bone mineral density at 9 months 

 Shire plc today presented new data that show VPRIV(R) (velaglucerase alfa for injection), the company's enzyme replacement therapy for type 1 Gaucher disease, significantly improved selected markers of Gaucher-related bone disease in patients. These data were presented at the European Working Group on Gaucher Disease (EWGGD) meeting held in Paris, France. 

The evolutionarily recent over-reliance on wheat-based products could be a reason behind the current increases in dietary problems related to gluten, according to an expert in digestive disorders. 

Who hasn't thought about Chasing UFOs?  

When I saw "Independence Day" in 1996 I first thought, "A Mac can bring down an entire alien civilization? Their users really are creative!" but then I wondered if some day, someone might actually get paid to find aliens.

Well, that day is here.  But I have to warn you, the language is bad in this UFO stuff.

Genetic modification of food has happened for thousands of year.  Tomatoes would still be the size of your thumb without genetic modification.

A 2012 study may mean tomatoes of the future could get that much better. They're big business, on the order of 15 million tons of the fruit for processing and fresh-market sales annually, so for decades food scientists in the tomato industry have selected varieties that are uniformly light green before they ripen, in order to produce tomatoes that can be harvested at the same time.  But this characteristic is accompanied by an unintended reduction in sugars that compromises the flavor of the fresh fruit and its desirability for processing.

A very interesting paper appeared one week ago in the Arxiv. It is titled "Higgs Self-Coupling Measurements at the LHC", and it is authored by M.Dolan, C.Englert, and M.Spannovsky. The idea is that once and if a Higgs boson is found at the LHC, the next natural step of the research would be its characterization as a pure standard model object or a more complex, or just different, beast.

Of course, once a signal were established, the LHC experiments would certainly want to measure all its properties as precisely as possible: mass, angular distributions, cross section in all the production mechanisms, and decay modes.

The atmosphere of exoplanet HD 189733b, about 60 light-years from Earth, changed dramtically after a violent flare on its parent star bathed it in intense X-ray radiation. Result: A powerful burst of evaporation. 

Self-plagiariasm is big news these days.  A short while ago, former ACS president Ron Breslow had an article in the Journal of the American Chemical Society pulled - not because he claimed dinosaurs might be ruling other planets, but because he re-used work from other articles he wrote without crediting himself.

On Sunday there was considerable confusion about the alleged "GMO" grass that killed cattle.  Turns out it was not GMO grass at all, but a hybrid.  I received many inquiries about the difference between a GMO and a hybrid, as the latter sounded truly freaky and much more invasive than any frankenfood.