Genetically modified cells attack tumors

A new method of genetically modifying cell to attack cancer cells looks promising. Even very tiny neuroblastoma tumors are no match. The NSPCs (neural stem-progenitor cells) are able to deliver a chemotherapy drug only to cancerous cells without affecting healthy cells, which means if it becomes used doctors will be able to treat cancer much more aggressively due to the side-effects being minimized.

It has been known for a long time that any medical treatment involves a placebo affect to some extent, but new research finds it's nearly all placeboic when it comes to pain relief. The expectation of pain relief releases endorphins (your body's natural pain killers) which is why different people swear by different virtually identical brands. For example, in my day to day life I've noticed some people like Aspirin, some Panadol, some Neurofen, and some people have strong opinions about which ones work and which don't at all. If you believe one is better than the other, it is.

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Fish 'n Flush

Hmm. So there's this product that is apparently "for bathrooms of tomorrow", called the Fish 'n Flush. It basically turns your toilet tank into a fish tank... I don't know about the bathrooms of tomorrow, but I sure hope the people of tomorrow don't get kicks out of some fish having front row seats to the owner's patented shit show.

What kind of sicko customer base is this? That's like 3 fetishes/disorders all into one, they must have a respectable customer base...

Order now!

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Google and NASA partnership

Just today I was talking with my good friend Maurizio of MGShareware about how Google does everything. They have a piece of nearly every big industry I can think of.
Granted, they have already dabbled a little bit in NASA's area with their program Google Earth closely resembling NASA World Wind, but now an actual partnership has been announced "on several space-related projects".
On top of taking on the task of organising NASA's various large amounts of information on the intarweb, there are plans for a virtual flyover across the surface of the Moon or Mars. Plans are also being made for joint research, facilities, education and missions.

In other news (hehe) a new paper in the journal Science proposes that it may not be water ice that is spraying from Enceladus, it may actually be coming from reservoirs of clathrates (ice phase of nitrogen and methane), which, if true, makes it unlikely life is there after all. Personally I still think Titan is worth focusing on! Get to it scientists, gawd!

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Single top quark found

Scientists from the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Lab have found the first evidence of single top quarks, which is exciting news as it confirms predictions made by particle theory. It's hoped that these techniques will be able to search for the Higgs boson. Up to now, scientists had only observed the top quark in subatomic processes involved the strong nuclear force, which produces pairs of top and antitop quarks, but Fermilab's Tevatron cranked to a million billion proton-antiproton collisions which resulted in this rare process involving the weak nuclear force.

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NZ history changes

16 million year old fossils of a mouse-sized land animal have been found in New Zealand, unlike any other mammal. This is a big find, as it suggests that NZ wasn't completely submerged all those millions of years ago, and it has been thought for a long time that the birds of New Zealand did so well because there was no competition from land mammals - this is the first evidence of a land mammal ever being found in NZ, pre-humans of course.
This finding suggests that the rule of birds in NZ was a more recent thing, and with a new grant from the Australian Research council of $500,000 hopefully they will find and date more fossils so we can get a good idea of just how recent it was.

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Low-fat foods lead to fatter people!

A new study in the latest Journal of Marketing Research shows that people eat, on average, 28% more total calories when they eat low-fat snacks than regular ones, while already obese people can eat 45% more.
Makes sense!

Also new outbreaks of the Ebola has been virus is sweeping northwest Congo, resulting in mortality rates of 95% for gorillas and 77% for chimpanzees.
Several vaccines for ebola are fully developed, but man donors and conservation organizations are reluctant to put up the money needed. Poor many-thousand-times-removed cousins!

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Effects of smoking more quickly reversible than once thought

A new study on abnormal coronary artery function in young smokers (ages 20 to 30, averaging 20 cigarettes a day each) have shown that after only a month of quitting, the artery goes back to normal.

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Marijuana not a gateway drug

A 12-year study has been published by the University of Pittsburgh has concluded that marijuana doesn't lead to other drugs. The findings support the "common liability model" which is basically that people take what they're exposed to and what is most easily available to them. In fact, in a lot of the people studied, marijuana use stopped once they were of legal age to buy alcohol.

A study by Dr Robert Heath from the University of Bath on advertising has concluded that a TV advertisement's success is determined only by it's emotional content and creativity, not by information. So for instance an ad for the Renault Clio was a big success even though it contained nearly no information about the car itself.

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Breakthrough in apples!

CSIRO researchers have located the gene that controls the colour of apples. Which could mean new apple varieties. Okay I'm not knocking this or anything, I think apples are swell, but surely if these researchers have the skill to find specific genes, they could be doing things that are a little more useful than this. What do you think?

A new done by a team of American and Japanese researchers has shown that people who natively speak different languages may perceive rhythm differently. For example, the 'universal' though that a long tone signifies the end of a group may be just a product of Western culture/language. Also, English speaking listeners grouped short and long tones as "short-long", while Japanese speaking listeners grouped them as "long-short". The article has many more interesting points, which can be found here.

Black patients are more likely than white patients to prefer life-sustaining care when they have an incurable illness with serious mental and physical disabilites (such as brain death). The same study showed there was little correlation between religion and people's opinion on this.

Up 'till recently, scholars have thought that human rituals started out around 40,000 years ago in Europe, but a recent discovery has shown that advanced rituals were performed by Homo sapiens (us) in Africa 70,000 years ago. This is an amazing finding! Read more!

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