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AeroShot - Caffeine You Inhale

AeroShot - Caffeine You Inhale

Oct 27 2011 | comment(s)

Is sitting around with your friends and talking while you drink coffee too time-consuming?  Do you think that 5 Hour Energy Drink tastes creepy?

The folks at AeroShot have some good product news for you; inhalable caffeine.

Sure, the little lime-flavored puffs jolt you with 100 mg of caffeine, the same as a large cup of coffee, but they also throw in niacin, vitamin B6 and vitamin B12.  If you like your herbal mental placebo, it is sweetened with Stevia.
Internet Readers: Still Cheap

Internet Readers: Still Cheap

Oct 26 2011 | comment(s)

The millenials, people who grew up with a robust Internet that does more than sell dog food, have a sense of entitlement about not paying for anything.  Heck, we get some people on Science 2.0 who object to even having an ad, and we have one-third the ads of every other large science site and no overlays or things they have to click through elsewhere.
Next Up For Decoding: The Voynich Manuscript

Next Up For Decoding: The Voynich Manuscript

Oct 26 2011 | comment(s)

A team of researchers that made headlines for decoding a secret society's 18th century manuscript, the Copiale Cipher,  is working to reveal the secret behind an even more mysterious book, one that the world has yet to decode or even know if it is anything but gibberish - the Voynich manuscript.
Microstructure-Property relationships in Ti2448 components produced by Selective Laser Melting: A Love Story

Microstructure-Property relationships in Ti2448 components produced by Selective Laser Melting: A Love Story

Oct 25 2011 | comment(s)

How a blend of titanium's alpha and beta crystalline forms makes a perfect match for bone tissue. But this 'Dance Your Ph.D.' entrant didn't have a video camera, so they took over 2,000 stills and made a stop-motion animation from them.

Microstructure-Property relationships in Ti2448 components produced by Selective Laser Melting: A Love Story from Joel Miller.

Why Is Halloween Getting So Popular? The Faith Vacuum

Why Is Halloween Getting So Popular? The Faith Vacuum

Oct 21 2011 | comment(s)

Non-mainstream religions and statements like 'spiritual but not religious' have all correlated to a shift in confidence away from mainstream religions.  While outright atheism is slightly more popular (which could be cultural acceptance of atheism making it more known) a la carte belief systems are much more so.  Bring on the ghost hunters, psychics and astrologers too.
Mystic Tourism: Searching for the Yagé in Peru

Mystic Tourism: Searching for the Yagé in Peru

Oct 20 2011 | comment(s)

Mystic tourism, the basis for William Burroughs’ The Yagé Letters, is becoming big business in the Amazon.
Why men are attracted to bitches

Why men are attracted to bitches

Oct 20 2011 | comment(s)

Sorry, guys, but it's been scientifically proven that a woman can now blame her anger and aggression on her genes. Scientific research found that some women are genetically programmed to be angry and aggressive by a serotonin receptor gene. The good news is that not every woman carries it.

What does this mean for you? Not only is anger and aggression in a woman the fault of her genetics, but it may be passed down to your daughters, too. Yikes.

Bad enough, but why are men so darn attracted to bitchy types?

Dr. Wendy Walsh has the answers at AskMen.com


Waste-to-energy plants are worse than coal

Waste-to-energy plants are worse than coal

Oct 20 2011 | comment(s)

It sounds perfect.  Turn garbage into energy. 

Proposals for new or expanded waste-to-energy (WTE) incinerators, which combust trash (i.e. municipal solid waste) to generate electricity and produce steam to heat buildings, are all the rage these days.  There's just one problem in this alternative energy; studies show they emit higher rates of lead, mercury, nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide than the coal-fired plants we are told to hate.

We're already losing billions in taxpayer money on wasteful solar company placebos, let's not add hundreds of millions for these incinerators as well.
Illinois regulators seek to discipline autism doctor: Dr. Anjum Usman

Illinois regulators seek to discipline autism doctor: Dr. Anjum Usman

Oct 20 2011 | comment(s)

A calcium-to-zinc imbalance, yeast, dysbiosis, low zinc, heavy metal toxicity and abnormally high levels of aluminum, antimony, arsenic, cadmium, copper, lead, nickel, silver, tin, titanium and selenium.  You name it, and Dr. Anjum Usman diagnosed it regarding a child with autism

The treatments he used include dietary restrictions; nearly three dozen vitamin, enzyme, mineral and other dietary supplements; two antifungal drugs; four chelators or detoxifying drugs; a hormone suppressor, and hyperbaric oxygen treatments, in which the child is shut inside a pressurized bag filled with extra oxygen.

'Alternative treatments' that turn out to be uncontrolled experimentation on children? What a shock.
Louisiana Declares War On Goodwill And Flea Markets

Louisiana Declares War On Goodwill And Flea Markets

Oct 19 2011 | comment(s)

Conservative Republican Governor Bobby Jindal can't like why his state is in the news today; a Democrat state representative has spearheaded a successful effort to damage stores like...Goodwill?

District 44 Representative Rickey Hardy co-authored House bill 195, which says people who deal in 'second hand' goods can longer accept cash.   Why?  Apparently the government thinks the second-hand 'buying stolen goods' problem by Goodwill and pawn shops and other small businesses is so severe it needed to be legislated out.  Oh, and those flea markets are commonly regarded as real hotbeds of crime too.
Want An Ice Bowl? The 5 Best Cities To Watch Football

Want An Ice Bowl? The 5 Best Cities To Watch Football

Oct 18 2011 | comment(s)

Even fans who weren't born yet know about the Ice Bowl - the 1967 conference playoff game between Dallas and Green Bay to determine who would go to the Super Bowl. With a game-time temperature of −15°F and no heating system, the field was as smooth as ice and it snowed the whole time.

But Green Bay is not the worst city for football weather - and by worst I mean the best because football in the snow is just plain better.  If you are a football fan, you probably know what city is the worst; Buffalo, New York, which Jonathan Erdman of the Weather Channel gives a 'worst weather score' of 85.9, far ahead of Cleveland and Pittsburgh and Green Bay.
Calling E. Coli: 1 in 6 British Cellphones Contaminated With 'Fecal Matter'

Calling E. Coli: 1 in 6 British Cellphones Contaminated With 'Fecal Matter'

Oct 18 2011 | comment(s)

One in six cellphones in Britain may be contaminated with fecal matter that can spread E. coli, likely because so many people don't wash their hands properly after using the toilet, according to  researchers at the London School of Hygiene&Tropical Medicine and Queen Mary, University of London.

The findings also suggest that many people lie about their hygiene habits. The study authors went to 12 cities and collected 390 samples from the cellphones and hands of volunteers, who were also asked about their hand-washing habits.
Value of Pi computed out to 10 trillion digits

Value of Pi computed out to 10 trillion digits

Oct 17 2011 | comment(s)

Why compute Pi, that pesky mathematical constant that is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, out to 10 trillion digits?  Because climbing mountains is hard and plenty of people have already done that.

But Pi?  No one else has done this.  ja0hxv wrote yesterday that he had reached that ridiculous number after starting on October 10, 2010 - but 191 days of actual computing time due to his machine crashing.  Luckily he had a modern computer.  If he even did one calculation per second on paper it would have taken him over 310,000 years.
Why you can't individually control your toes

Why you can't individually control your toes

Oct 17 2011 | comment(s)

Neuroscientist Bradley Voytek recently got asked why a person can't individually control their toes.  Well, I never thought about it before - I don't have great need to use individual toes in some prehensile fashion but perhaps that is only because I can't.

Voytek says the primary motor cortex is the issue and shows us all about Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) to boot.


Edward O. Wilson’s New Theory of Everything

Edward O. Wilson’s New Theory of Everything

Oct 17 2011 | comment(s)

Edward O. Wilson is arguably the world's most famous myrmecologist - he studies ants, but most people have not heard of myrmecology.  They may have heard of entomology and almost certainly have heard of evolutionary biology.

Wilson has long held that his study of ants can tell us about people and that hasn't been without controversy.  His acrimony with paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, who likewise extrapolated his knowledge into the social working of mankind, never ended, even after Gould died.
Yucca Mountain: The 'Scientization' Of Politics

Yucca Mountain: The 'Scientization' Of Politics

Oct 14 2011 | comment(s)

We've all heard of politicizing science, like when tobacco companies cast doubt on the scientific evidence for a connection between tobacco and lung cancer or environmental groups try to cast doubt on the benefits of GMO foods.

But in the case of Yucca Mountain, the reverse happened: Government officials "scientized" politics. They made decisions that were largely political but cloaked them in the garb of science.
Microsoft Co-Founder Paul Allen Is Not Buying The Singularity

Microsoft Co-Founder Paul Allen Is Not Buying The Singularity

Oct 14 2011 | comment(s)

Paul Allen knows a thing or two about computers; he built the company that is the definition of the operating system for modern PCs.

He's as optimistic about the power of technology and its ability to shape culture as anyone can be but, like us, he is more skeptical that it will translate into actual human evolution.  Like us, he notes that Ray Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns is just an optimistic black box based on a 'law', like Moore's Law, that is not a law at all, it is simply matching past topology to an idea and extrapolating it into the future.
50,000 years ago, we all talked like Yoda

50,000 years ago, we all talked like Yoda

Oct 14 2011 | comment(s)

Long ago, in a galaxy very, very near (because it was this one) we all talked like Yoda from "Star Wars", one hypothesis suggests.

The original "proto-human language", linguists contend, used subject-object-verb (SOV) ordering, with some variation.  So when prehistoric men met prehistoric women, he likely said, "Make out with me you will."

The researchers came to their conclusion after creating a language family tree, which shows the historical relationships between all the languages of the world.

The Original Human Language Like Yoda Sounded by Natalie Wolchover, Life's Little Mysteries
Did Alternative Medicine Woo Help Kill Steve Jobs?

Did Alternative Medicine Woo Help Kill Steve Jobs?

Oct 13 2011 | comment(s)

Add Steve Jobs to the list of famous people who died treating terminal diseases with woo rather than with medicine.

It turns out Jobs had been treating his pancreatic cancer with a special diet prescribed by the alternative medicine promoter Dr. Dean Ornish instead of opting for early surgery. 

A Lesson in Treating Illness by Brian Dunning, Skeptoid
The Scientist Magazine Bids Farewell

The Scientist Magazine Bids Farewell

Oct 10 2011 | comment(s)

If you're in the life sciences, you have like heard of The Scientist.  After 25 years of making a go of it, they announced they are closing the doors.

It's a tough market out there, as we can attest.  If we had 2008 advertising rates and 2011 traffic, we would be making pretty darn good money.  I have no idea how companies with expensive midtown Manhattan offices do it.   Well, they have a sales force and we don't, and multiple publications.   But you get the idea.  It's always a difficult market for science; Henry Donahue, former CEO of Discover, once said to me over coffee, "I think media buyers went into that business because they hate science."