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Pilot Study: Fibromyalgia Fatigue Improved By TENS Therapy

Fibromyalgia is the term for a poorly-understood condition where people experience pain and fatigue...

High Meat Consumption Linked To Lower Dementia Risk

Older people who eat large amounts of meat have a lower risk of dementia and cognitive decline...

Long Before The Inca Colonized Peru, Natives Had A Thriving Trade Network

A new DNA analysis reveals that long before the Incan Empire took over Peru, animals were...

Mesolithic People Had Meals With More Tradition Than You Thought

The common imagery of prehistoric people is either rooting through dirt for grubs and picking berries...

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Evidence from Siberian caves suggests that a global temperature rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius could see permanently frozen ground thaw over a large area of Siberia, which would threaten to release carbon from soils and damage to natural and human environments.

A thaw in Siberia's permafrost (ground frozen throughout the year) could release over 1,000 giga-tons of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, potentially enhancing global warming.

Studies by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)  Agroecosystems Management Research Unit in Lincoln, Nebraska  are shedding some light on the microbes that dwell in cattle manure—what they are, where they thrive, where they struggle, and where they can end up.  

In one project, ARS microbiologist Lisa Durso used fecal samples from six beef cattle to identify a core set of bovine gastrointestinal bacterial groups common to both beef and dairy cattle. She also observed a number of bacteria in the beef cattle that had not been reported in dairy cows, and identified a diverse assortment of bacteria from the six individual animals, even though all six consumed the same diet and were the same breed, gender and age.

In "The Descent of Man" (1871), while contemplating how humans learned to speak, Charles Darwin speculated that language might have had its origins in singing, which "might have given rise to words expressive of various complex emotions."

Since then, numerous researchers have believed that that Darwin was on the right path and a new group says the balance of evidence now suggests that human language is a grafting of two communication forms found elsewhere in the animal kingdom: first, the elaborate songs of birds, and second, the more utilitarian, information-bearing types of expression seen in a diversity of other animals.

Every year in Germany, approximately 280,000 people suffer a myocardial infarction; more than 52,000 die as a result. Due to an occluded vessel, parts of the heart muscle no longer have sufficient circulation and the tissue dies off. These regions are not replaced by new heart muscle cells but instead by scar tissue – this generally causes the pump function of the heart to decrease following an infarction.  

Scientists have tested a method in mice allowing the morphological and functional sequelae of a myocardial infarction to be reduced and
with which scar tissue can be reduced and cardiac output increased.
 

Deficit thinking is the belief by elites that the public is simply unaware of or unable to understand science and that lack of knowledge prevents the right policy decision. It rarely works as a strategy.

Scholars at Umeå University in Sweden analyzed public opposition to dam removal,  an increasingly common practice as old splash dams and small hydropower dams have become obsolete, and found that disagreements are not based on knowledge deficiency but are instead a case of different understandings and valuation of the environment and the functions it provides. 

Solar geo-engineering is one proposed approach to mitigating the effects of climate change - the idea being to deflect some of the sun's incoming radiation. 

Ignoring the technology issues, in a world where countries can't even agree they contribute to greenhouse gases, the political uncertainties and geopolitical questions about who would be in charge of solar geo-engineering activity and its goals are daunting. A UN of climate change is the worst of all possible worlds.