Talk about mixed messages.The active ingredient in marijuana cuts tumor growth in common lung cancer in half and significantly reduces the ability of the cancer to spread, say researchers at Harvard University who tested the chemical in both lab and mouse studies.
Frequent or long-term marijuana use may raise a man's risk of testicular cancer, American research suggests.
We've all do it but who knew the intricate biological changes that happen from a kiss.The practice of kissing is nearly universal. It is practiced in at least 90 percent of cultures among sexual or romantic partners, experts say. And the behavior is rampant among pygmy chimpanzees and bonobos. Now scientists are investigating the biological factors underlying that ubiquitous expression of love. The science of kissing even has a name: philematology.
Kissing, it turns out, unleashes chemicals that ease stress hormones in both sexes and encourage bonding in men, though not so much in women.
In an experiment, Hill explained, pairs of heterosexual college students who kissed for 15 minutes while listening to music experienced significant changes in their levels of the chemicals oxytocin, which affects pair bonding, and cortisol, which is associated with stress. Their blood and saliva levels of the chemicals were compared before and after the kiss.
Both men and women had a decline in cortisol after smooching, an indication their stress levels declined. For men, oxytocin levels increased, indicating more interest in bonding, while oxytocin levels went down in women. "This was a surprise," Hill said.
A person receives information about the person he or she is smooching. A kiss transmits smells, tastes, sound and tactile signals that all affect how the individuals perceive each other and, ultimately, whether they will want to kiss again. Women tend to be attracted to male partners with a different immune system makeup from their own, Fisher said. They subconsciously detect information about a partner's immune system through smell during kissing, she said.
As for the origins of kissing, one theory is that kissing evolved as an extension of the way mothers used to feed their children. Early humans, who lacked jars of manufactured baby food, probably chewed up food and directly transferred it from their mouths to the babies.
HILARIOUS!
The company that brought you tracking devices for stolen cars and lost animals have found a new market: tracking human beings.In fact, two companies have already put radio monitors on 18,000 people with Alzheimer's or brain injuries. Now LoJack is joining the market in a big way. Yesterday, the company announced a "diversification strategy" to "track and rescue people at risk of wandering, including those with Alzheimer's, autism, Down syndrome and dementia."
LoJack anticipates up to 16 million Alzheimer's patients by 2050, most of whom wander away at some point. But the company also notes that "autism, which is the fastest growing developmental disability that now afflicts one in every 150 babies born, can also cause children to wander."
Contrary to popular belief Valentine's Day wasn't created by Hallmark although I'm sure they reap the most benefits.One legend contends that Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men — his crop of potential soldiers. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When Valentine's actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death.
While some believe that Valentine's Day is celebrated in the middle of February to commemorate the anniversary of Valentine's death or burial — which probably occurred around 270 A.D — others claim that the Christian church may have decided to celebrate Valentine's feast day in the middle of February in an effort to 'christianize' celebrations of the pagan Lupercalia festival.
In ancient Rome, February was the official beginning of spring and was considered a time for purification. February 15, was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus. According to legend, all the young women in the city would place their names in a big urn. The city's bachelors would then each choose a name out of the urn and become paired for the year with his chosen woman. These matches often ended in marriage.
Pope Gelasius declared February 14 St. Valentine's Day around 498 A.D.
I came across this the other day and although it happened 42 years ago it's still pretty interesting and a great example of Skandinavian planning and efficiency.September 3, 1967 marks the day when Sweden switched from driving on the left side of the road to the right side.
Traffic in Sweden – if the word can be applied for horses, oxen and carts – started to use the right side of the road in 1718 and did so until 1734, when suddenly left-hand traffic was introduced. Why? No one really knows. Maybe it was to have the swordhand – right for most people – closest to the enemy when meeting on horseback. And on the left side it stayed for more than 200 years.
In 1916, the Swedish parliament acknowledged left-hand traffic by law, but every year between 1920 and 1939, the parliament discussed whether to stay on the left side or move over to the right side of the road, which Sweden's neighbour countries in Scandinavia and the rest of the continent were already using. Nothing happened.
The parliament finally decided in 1963 that Sweden should make the transition from left-hand traffic to right-hand traffic in 1967. Preparations for the switch started.
On September 3, 1967, at 04.50 in the morning, the traffic everywhere in Sweden was directed over to the right side of the road and stopped. Everything stood absolutely still for 10 minutes, and at 05.00, when it started again, all road users in Sweden from heavy trucks to cyclists were already on the right side of the road, and they have stayed there since.The photo above depicts the magic H date - a large H for Höger (right in Swedish) and Kungsgatan in Stockholm on the 3rd of September 1967 at 04.50 in the morning. The traffic is directed from the left to the right side of the street and halted.
Roads, crossings, roundabouts, flyovers etc had already been redesigned and some 360,000 road signs were changed during the night. The date had also been preceeded by an intensive national campaign, informing people about what was going to happen that day. Some 130,000 reminder signs had been put up everywhere along streets and roads, and most cars had an H-sticker on the dashboard in front of the driver in order to remind him or her.
During the whole month of September 1967, 59 people were killed in Swedish traffic and 1,077 people during the entire year of 1967. The year before, 1966, 99 people were killed in September and 1,313 during the whole year.
This is an interesting study, although I'm not sure I buy the conclusion. Nonetheless, if it's true perhaps someday the exact gene will be identified and there will be an inoculation against right-wing conservatism.Now we know that much of our personality, too, is inherited and that many social attitudes have some degree of genetic basis, including politics.
Three political science professors have studied political attitudes among a large number of twins in America and Australia. They measured the attitudes with something called the Wilson-Patterson Scale, which asks whether a respondent agrees or disagrees with 28 words or phrases, such as “death penalty,” “school prayer,” “pacifism,” or “gay rights.” They then compared the similarity of the responses among identical twins with the similarity among fraternal twins. They found that, for all 28 taken together, the identical twins did indeed agree with each other more often than the fraternal ones did—and that genes accounted for about 40 percent of the difference between the two groups.
Genes also influence how frequently we vote. Voting has always puzzled scholars: How is it rational to wait in line on a cold November afternoon when there is almost no chance that your ballot will make any difference?
Researchers studied political participation in Los Angeles by comparing voting among identical and fraternal twins. Their conclusion: among registered voters, genetic factors explain about 60 percent of the difference between those who vote and those who do not.
Last Saturday, I did a post about Shepard Fairey getting arrested in Boston. Now comes a first hand account of what really went down and a possible explanation of why it happened.
If you think the Somali pirates are bad, the US has it's own pirates and they're worse.Law enforcement authorities in this East Texas town of 1,000 people seized property from at least 140 motorists between 2006 and 2008, and, to date, filed criminal charges against fewer than half.
Virtually anything of value was up for grabs: cash, cell phones, personal jewelry, a pair of sneakers, and often, the very car that was being driven through town.
Linda Dorman, an Akron, Ohio, great-grandmother had $4,000 in cash taken from her by local authorities when she was stopped while driving through town after visiting Houston in April 2007. Court records make no mention that anything illegal was found in her van. She’s still hoping for the return of what she calls “her life savings.”
Dorman’s attorney, David Guillory, calls the roadside stops and seizures in Tenaha “highway piracy,” undertaken by a couple of law enforcement officers whose agencies get to keep most of what was seized.
Guillory is suing officials on behalf of Dorman and nine other clients whose property was confiscated. All were African-Americans driving either rentals or vehicles with out-of-state plates.
Guillory alleges in the lawsuit that while his clients were detained, they were presented with an ultimatum: waive your rights to your property in exchange for a promise to be released and not be criminally charged. He said most did as Dorman did, signing the waiver to avoid jail.
But in Tenaha, a town of chicken farms that hugs the Louisiana border, critics say being a black out-of-towner passing through with anything of value is seen as evidence of a crime.
Tenaha Mayor George Bowers, 80, defended the seizures, saying they allowed a cash-poor city the means to add a second police car in a two-policeman town and help pay for a new police station.
“It’s always helpful to have any kind of income to expand your police force,” Bowers said.
Since I don't have any children I wasn't aware of the controversy surrounding the MMR vaccine until recently when I listened to an indepth discussion about the topic on NPR.THE doctor who sparked the scare over the safety of the MMR vaccine for children changed and misreported results in his research, creating the appearance of a possible link with autism, a Sunday Times investigation has found.
Confidential medical documents and interviews with witnesses have established that Andrew Wakefield manipulated patients’ data, which triggered fears that the MMR triple vaccine to protect against measles, mumps and rubella was linked to the condition.
Despite involving just a dozen children, the 1998 paper’s impact was extraordinary. After its publication, rates of inoculation fell from 92% to below 80%.
I was wondering during the Inauguration why Beyonce sang "At Last" for the Obama's first dance rather than Etta James who single handedly made the song famous.Etta James has lashed out at Beyonce weeks after Beyonce sang James' classic "At Last" for the Obamas' first dance at the inauguration.
At a concert in Seattle last week, James told the crowd, "I tell you that woman he had singing for him, singing my song, she gonna get her ass whupped," sarcastically calling her "The great Beyoncé."
"I can't stand Beyoncé... [she] had no business ... singing my song that I been singing forever."
I grew up on the water but when I'm in it I prefer to stay within eyesight of the shore.Jennifer Figge pressed her toes into the Caribbean sand, exhilarated and exhausted as she touched land this week for the first time in almost a month.
Reaching a beach in Trinidad, she became the first woman on record to swim across the Atlantic Ocean.
The 56-year-old left the Cape Verde Islands off Africa's western coast on Jan. 12, battling waves of up to 30 feet (9 meters) and strong winds.
A friend of Figge who kept in touch with her via satellite phone, said she had originally planned to swim the Bahamas, but inclement weather forced her to veer 1,000 miles (1,610 kms) off course to Trinidad, where she arrived on Feb. 5.
Last night I watched the 60 minutes segment on Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger. As you may have figured out from a previous post I'm a humongous fan of this guy...along with oh, about 100 million other folks.Is it true Captain Sully called his local library to let them know a book he borrowed had made an unexpected visit to the Hudson River?
We, er, checked it out, and that rumor has wings! And the library was so impressed with the Captain's honesty, they waived his lost book fee! The Fresno State library also dedicated a replacement copy to heroic Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger! It gets better -- the book was about ethics!
