Joss Whedon’s new show Dollhouse is about a secret organization that supplies mind-wiped sex ninjas to the rich. It’s not set in the future because neuromanipulated technoslaves could exist today. Here’s proof.

1. We can erase people’s memories.
Back in October a study was published in Neuron that proved an enzyme called CaMKII can erase bad memories while you recall them. In Dollhouse, the “actives” have their own memories erased first, and then new memories implanted. The brain-erasure technology is actually the cornerstone of the operation, as it’s what turns the actives into blank slates ready to be reprogrammed. Right now, with the cooperation of desperate people, scientists could be using CaMKII to erase their old lives. Then they’ll just need to implant new personalities and emotions.

2. We can regulate people’s moods with microchips.
Right now, there are a series of implantable microchips on the market that send out electrical impulses over your nerves that can soothe a depressed person or reduce seizures. Some call them neurological pacemakers, and we are discovering new things about them every day – such as the fact that some can cause instant orgasm. Wipe somebody’s brain, then install these brain pacemakers, and you might start shaping a whole new person by controlling what gives them pleasure and what makes them depressed.

3. We can use brain implants to steer animals left and right.
Several years ago, neuroscientists invented a little rat-sized brain implant that sent directional signals to the rodent’s brain. Using a handheld remote, scientists sent electrical signals to the parts of the rats’ brains connected to right and left whisker sensations – and could induce the rats to turn right or left at the press of a button. Dubbed the “robo-rat,” the creatures could be used for complicated search and rescue efforts that require crawling into small places. Or they could be the beta version for a more nefarious technology implanted into humans’ brains that would allow a corporation like the Dollhouse to remote-control an active’s every move, right down to which street they turn on.

4. Infrared brain scans can predict what people want.
As we reported last week, researchers have discovered that a simple infrared brain scan can reveal patterns in brain activity that show simple preferences. Ask a person whether they’d rather have a dog or a cat, and this scan will give you the answer. This is the first step towards knowing how to shape people’s preferences. If scientists could trigger a reaction in your brain that reversed the pattern, they might be able to turn a cat person into a dog person and vice versa.

5. Human-computer interfaces link human brains directly to computers.
You may have heard of BrainGate, a technology that uses electrodes sunk into your gray matter to convert electrical impulses from your brain into computer commands. It is currently used by people who are profoundly paralyzed to communicate by moving a cursor around. If we can open up communication between brain and computer like that, it stands to reason that the communication might be two-way. Who is to say there is no secret organization using a BrainGate-esque technology to reprogram people’s thoughts?

Source : National Geographic

Animal Ancestor

Jan. 27, 2009 — A sperm-looking creature called monosiga is the closest living surrogate to the ancestor of all animals, according to new research that also determined animal evolution may not always follow a trajectory from simple to complex.

Yet another find of the study, published in the latest PLoS Biology, is that Earth may have given rise to two distinct groups of animals: bilaterians — animals with bilateral symmetry, like humans — and non-bilaterians, which include corals, jelly fish, hydra, unusual, often poisonous, creatures known as cubozoans, and other organisms.

Free-living, unicellular organisms called choanoflagellates, however, could be on every person’s family tree, so long as it was a gigantic one.

Source: Discovery News

Interesting video straight from CNN’s website, showing what appears to be a UFO flying in front of the Washington Monument.

Although it is hard to miss, it appears approximate 9 seconds into the footage and streaks across the sky from the right side.

Sorry I was not able to directly embed this video, but please check it out on CNN :

UFO Footage During Live Broadcast of Obama Inauguration

Stone Age man as seen in the BBC series Walking With Cavemen

It has long been suspected that humans have an ancient history of drug use, but there has been a lack of proof to support the theory.

Now, however, researchers have found equipment used to prepare hallucinogenic drugs for sniffing, and dated them back to prehistoric South American tribes.

Quetta Kaye, of University College London, and Scott Fitzpatrick, an archeologist from North Carolina State University, made the breakthrough on the Caribbean island of Carriacou.

They found ceramic bowls, as well as tubes for inhaling drug fumes or powders, which appear to have originated in South America between 100BC and 400BC and were then carried 400 miles to the islands.

While the use of such paraphernalia for inhaling drugs is well-known, the age of the bowls has thrown new light on how long humans have been taking drugs.

Scientists believe that the drug being used was cohoba, a hallucinogen made from the beans of a mimosa species. Drugs such as cannabis were not found in the Caribbean then.

Opiates can be obtained from species such as poppies, while fungi, which was widespread, may also have been used.

Archeologists have suggested that humans were extracting mind-expanding drugs from mescal beans and peyote cacti as far back as 5,000 years ago, but have not found direct evidence that this is true.

They consider that drugs were being used to induce spiritual or trance-like states by people who had religious beliefs.

Source

Melamine may be in US food supply

Take this seriously and pass it along

In China, ANYTHING made with Chinese-manufactured milk powder before September 14th was PULLED from their store shelves.

In the US, this garbage is still being sold!

Foods at risk: ANY food manufactured in China and potentially any food containing milk powder. US food manufacturers imported millions of pounds of milk powder from China before September 14th. The FDA continues to allow to be sold.

This includes chocolate, cookies, cakes, and even things like packaged macaroni and cheese.

Background

Mike Mozart is a product designer who also runs a video blog about new developments in the toy industry.

His reviews are normally light, cheerful affairs and completely apolitical.

If he appears distraught, it’s because he is. This is serious.

Mozart has discovered that the US is the ONLY country that still permits potentially melamine-contaminated food on its shelves. Even China has removed these products from its stores.

That’s right. This poison that killed and injured thousands of people, mainly children, may be in US food. We’re the only country that hasn’t pulled it from its shelves.

Here’s what you need to know

1. Melamine was added to food products manufactured in China to simulate protein content. These food products were imported into the US by the ton.

2. Melamine itself is bad, but much worse – and not reported – is that melamine is an industrial product, not a food product and often comes contaminated with a wide range of dangerous industrial toxins.

There is no such thing as food grade melamine. None of it is suitable for food.

3. The widespread practice of adding melamine to powdered milk products has killed and seriously injured thousands of children in China.

Melamine injuries children by damaging their kidneys. There has already been a reported spike in kidney stones in American children.

Last year, when melamine was found in pet food sold in the US and traced to death in animals, it was headline news.

This news, potentially far more serious, is being censored.

4. The Chinese government knew this contaminated food was on the shelves killing children and said nothing so as not to put a damper on the “Olympic spirit.”

5. As much 20 MILLION POUNDS of food manufactured in China that contains milk powder was imported into the US this year. Also, it’s not clear how many US food manufacturers use milk powder manufactured in China in their products.

6. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) refuses to test for melamine contamination – or it is has, refuses to make the results of these tests available to the public.

Further, the FDA refuses to force food manufacturers to remove the contaminated food from its shelves, something they are completely capable of doing.

7. Why is this being done?

Mozart theorizes: a) to prevent a scandal before the election and b) to avoid further deterioration of the US stock market.

Are these motivations plausible?

Long-time Brasscheck TV viewers know that the FDA has demonstrated over and over again throughout its history that it is a political agency designed to protect well connected law breakers and has next-to-zero interest in the public welfare.

AVOID all food products manufactured in China and any product that contains milk powder that does not disclose its source. (Egg powder is also being identified as a potential source of this contamination.)

The direct YouTube link for this video is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUB79WJ9ktQ

Please share this information with friends, family members and colleagues so they can make an informed decision about what they eat.

Knowing the parties involved – China, the FDA, the Bush administration, the US news media, and corporate America – you can be sure that none of them can be trusted to look out for your welfare.

Why this is so diabolical

Here are the indisuputable facts of this case:

1. Chinese manufacturers are known to have added melamine to powdered milk products including baby food.

2. Melamine is not a permitted food additive in any country. It is an industrial product and is often contaminated with other toxins.

It damages the kidneys and is particularly dangerous, even fatal, to small children and infants.

3. Every other country on earth – including China – has removed all products made with Chinese-manufactured milk powder from their stores.

4. The FDA and the Bush Administration has made the US the only country on earth to have opted to leave these potentially tainted products on store shelves.

5. The FDA and the Bush administration knows that millions of pounds of Chinese-manufactured milk powder was imported into the US in the last twelve months.

6. It knows exactly what companies imported this material and the food manufacturers that used it know exactly what batches of their products this material is in.

7. The FDA and the Bush Administration further knows that:

a) injury and death associated with consumption of products containing melamine will not take place immediately (except perhaps in the case of infants) and

b) it will be practically impossible for sufferers of this tainted food to attribute their injuries to specific products since weeks, months or even years might pass between ingestion and symptoms.

Summary: By leaving these food products on store shelves, the FDA and the Bush Administration know exactly the risk of harm to US consumers and are hoping because of the nature of the poisoning that they will be able get away with it and thus avoid the political consequences of a recall.

1. The Woman Who has 200 Orgasms every day

UK’s Sarah Carmen, 24, is a 200-a-day orgasm girl who gets good, good, GOOD vibrations from almost anything. She suffers from Permanent Sexual Arousal Syndrome (PSAS), which increases blood flow to the sex organs. “Sometimes I have so much sex to try to calm myself down I get bored of it. And men I sleep with don’t seem to make as much effort because I climax so easily.”

She believes her condition was brought on by the pills. “Within a few weeks I just began to get more and more aroused more and more of the time and I just kept having endless orgasms. It started off in bed where sex sessions would last for hours and my boyfriend would be stunned at how many times I would orgasm. Then it would happen after sex. I’d be thinking about what we’d done in bed and I’d start feeling a bit flushed, then I’d become aroused and climax. In six months I was having 150 orgasms a day—and it has been as many as 200.”

She and her boyfriend split— and new partners struggle to keep up with her sex demands. “Often, I’ll want to wear myself out by having as many orgasms as I can so they stop and I can get some peace,” she said.

2. The Man Who Can’t Get Fat

Mr Perry, 59, can eat whatever he likes – including unlimited pies, burgers and desserts – and never get fat. He cannot put on weight because of a condition called lipodystrophy that makes his body rapidly burn fat.

He used to be a chubby child, but at age 12 the fat dropped off “almost over night”. He initially tried to eat more to gain weight, but it had no effect. Mr Perry, of Ilford in Essex, endured a decade of tests before the illness was diagnosed. It finally emerged that his body produces six times the normal level of insulin. Doctors have admitted that the condition would be a “slimmer’s dream”.

3. The Man Who Doesn’t Feel Cold

Dutchman Wim Hof, also known as the Iceman, is the man that swam under ice, and stood in bins filled with ice. He climbed the Mt. Blanc in shorts in the icy cold, harvested world records and always stands for new challenges.

Scientists can’t really explain it, but the 48-year-old Dutchman is able to withstand, and even thrive, in temperatures that could be fatal to the average person.

4. The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep: stayed awake 24 hours a day for years

Rhett Lamb is often cranky like any other 3-year-old toddler, but there’s one thing that makes him completely different: he has a rare medical condition in which he can’t sleep a wink.

Rhett is awake nearly 24 hours a day, and his condition has baffled his parents and doctors for years. They took clock shifts watching his every sleep-deprived mood to determine what ailed the young boy.

After a number of conflicting opinions, Shannon and David Lamb finally learned what was wrong with their child: Doctors diagnosed Rhett with an extremely rare condition called chiari malformation.

“The brain literally is squeezed into the spinal column. What happens is you get compression, squeezing, strangulating of the brain stem, which has all the vital functions that control sleep, speech, our cranial nerves, our circulatory system, even our breathing system,” Savard said.

5. The Girl Who is Allergic to Water

Teenager Ashleigh Morris can’t go swimming, soak in a hot bath or enjoy a shower after a stressful day’s work – she’s allergic to water. Even sweating brings the 19-year-old out in a painful rash.

Ashleigh, from Melbourne, Australia, is allergic to water of any temperature, a condition she’s lived with since she was 14. She suffers from an extremely rare skin disorder called Aquagenic Urticaria – so unusual that only a handful of cases are documented worldwide.

6. The Woman Who Can’t Forget

That’s the story of AJ, an extraordinary 40-year-old married woman who remembers everything.

McGaugh and fellow UCI researchers Larry Cahill and Elizabeth Parker have been studying the extraordinary case of a person who has “nonstop, uncontrollable and automatic” memory of her personal history and countless public events. If you randomly pick a date from the past 25 years and ask her about it, she’ll usually provide elaborate, verifiable details about what happened to her that day and if there were any significant news events on topics that interested her. She usually also recalls what day of the week it was and what the weather was like.

The 40-year-old woman, who was given the code name AJ to protect her privacy, is so unusual that UCI coined a name for her condition in a recent issue of the journal Neurocase: hyperthymestic syndrome.

7. The Girl Who Eats Only Tic Tacs

Meet Natalie Cooper, a 17-year-old teenager who has a mystery illness that makes her sick every time she eats anything. Well, almost anything. She can eat one thing that doesn’t make her sick: Tic tac mint!

For reasons that doctors are unable to explain, Tic tacs are the only thing she can stomach, meaning she has to get the rest of her sustenance from a specially formulated feed through a tube.

8. The Musician Who Can’t Stop Hiccupping

Chris Sands, 24, from Lincoln, hiccups as often as every two seconds – and sometimes even when he is asleep. He has tried a variety of cures, including hypnosis and yoga, but nothing has worked. Mr Sands thinks his problem stems from an acid reflux condition caused by a damaged valve in his stomach. “If the acid levels are severe enough they are going to do keyhole surgery and grab part of my stomach and wrap it around the valve to tighten it,” he said.

Mr Sands, who is a backing singer in the group Ebullient, said the condition has hampered his career as he has only been able to perform four times. In the next couple of weeks –as of the day of the report–, doctors at Nottingham’s Queen’s Medical Centre will put a tube into his stomach to monitor acid levels and decide if keyhole surgery is possible.

9. The Girl That Collapses Every Time She Laughs

Kay Underwood, 20, has cataplexy, which means that almost any sort of strong emotion triggers a dramatic weakening of her muscles. Exhilaration, anger, fear, surprise, awe and even embarrassment can also cause sufferers to suddenly collapse on the spot.

Kay, of Barrow-upon-Soar, Leicestershire (UK), who was diagnosed with the condition five years ago, once collapsed more than 40 times in a single day. She said: “People find it very odd when it happens, and it isn’t always easy to cope with strangers’ reactions. ”

Like most cataplexy sufferers, Ms Underwood is also battling narcolepsy – a condition that makes her drop off to sleep without warning. Narcolepsy affects around 30,000 people in the UK and about 70 per cent of them also have cataplexy.

10. The Woman Who is Allergic to Modern Technology

For most people talking on a mobile phone, cooking dinner in the microwave or driving in a car is simply part of modern living in 21st century Britain. But completing any such tasks is impossible for Debbie Bird – because she is allergic to Cell Phones and Microwaves.

The 39-year-old is so sensitive to the electromagnetic field (emf) or ’smog’ created by computers, mobile phones, microwave ovens and even some cars, that she develops a painful skin rash and her eyelids swell to three times their size if she goes near them. As a consequence, Mrs Bird, a health spa manager, has transformed her home into an EMF-free zone to try and stay healthy. ‘I can no longer do things that I used to take for granted,’ Mrs Bird said. “My day-to-day life has been seriously affected by EMF”.

1. If your throat tickles, scratch your ear!

When you were 9, playing your armpit was a cool trick. Now, as an adult, you can still appreciate a good body-based feat, but you’re more discriminating. Take that tickle in your throat; it’s not worth gagging over. Here’s a better way to scratch your itch: “When the nerves in the ear are stimulated, it creates a reflex in the throat that can cause a muscle spasm,” says Scott Schaffer, M.D., president of an ear, nose, and throat specialty center in Gibbsboro, New Jersey. “This spasm relieves the tickle.”

2. Experience supersonic hearing!

If you’re stuck chatting up a mumbler at a cocktail party, lean in with your right ear. It’s better than your left at following the rapid rhythms of speech, according to researchers at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. If, on the other hand, you’re trying to identify that song playing softly in the elevator, turn your left ear toward the sound. The left ear is better at picking up music tones.

3. Overcome your most primal urge!

Need to pee? No bathroom nearby? Fantasize about Jessica Simpson. Thinking about sex preoccupies your brain, so you won’t feel as much discomfort, says Larry Lipshultz, M.D., chief of male reproductive medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine. For best results, try Simpson’s “These Boots Are Made for Walking” video.

4. Feel no pain!

German researchers have discovered that coughing during an injection can lessen the pain of the needle stick. According to Taras Usichenko, author of a study on the phenomenon, the trick causes a sudden, temporary rise in pressure in the chest and spinal canal, inhibiting the pain-conducting structures of the spinal cord.

5. Clear your stuffed nose!

Forget Sudafed. An easier, quicker, and cheaper way to relieve sinus pressure is by alternately thrusting your tongue against the roof of your mouth, then pressing between your eyebrows with one finger. This causes the vomer bone, which runs through the nasal passages to the mouth, to rock back and forth, says Lisa DeStefano, D.O., an assistant professor at the Michigan State University college of osteopathic medicine. The motion loosens congestion; after 20 seconds, you’ll feel your sinuses start to drain.

6. Fight fire without water!

Worried those wings will repeat on you tonight? “Sleep on your left side,” says Anthony A. Starpoli, M.D., a New York City gastroenterologist and assistant professor of medicine at New York Medical College. Studies have shown that patients who sleep on their left sides are less likely to suffer from acid reflux. The esophagus and stomach connect at an angle. When you sleep on your right, the stomach is higher than the esophagus, allowing food and stomach acid to slide up your throat. When you’re on your left, the stomach is lower than the esophagus, so gravity’s in your favor.

7. Cure your toothache without opening your mouth!

Just rub ice on the back of your hand, on the V-shaped webbed area between your thumb and index finger. A Canadian study found that this technique reduces toothache pain by as much as 50 percent compared with using no ice. The nerve pathways at the base of that V stimulate an area of the brain that blocks pain signals from the face and hands.

8. Make burns disappear!

When you accidentally singe your finger on the stove, clean the skin and apply light pressure with the finger pads of your unmarred hand. Ice will relieve your pain more quickly, Dr. DeStefano says, but since the natual method brings the burned skin back to a normal temperature, the skin is less likely to blister.

9. Stop the world from spinning!

One too many drinks left you dizzy? Put your hand on something stable. The part of your ear responsible for balance — the cupula — floats in a fluid of the same density as blood. “As alcohol dilutes blood in the cupula, the cupula becomes less dense and rises,” says Dr. Schaffer. This confuses your brain. The tactile input from a stable object gives the brain a second opinion, and you feel more in balance. Because the nerves in the hand are so sensitive, this works better than the conventional foot-on-the-floor wisdom.

10. Unstitch your side!

If you’re like most people, when you run, you exhale as your right foot hits the ground. This puts downward pressure on your liver (which lives on your right side), which then tugs at the diaphragm and creates a side stitch, according to The Doctors Book of Home Remedies for Men. The fix: Exhale as your left foot strikes the ground.

11. Stanch blood with a single finger!

Pinching your nose and leaning back is a great way to stop a nosebleed — if you don’t mind choking on your own O positive. A more civil approach: Put some cotton on your upper gums — just behind that small dent below your nose — and press against it, hard. “Most bleeds come from the front of the septum, the cartilage wall that divides the nose,” says Peter Desmarais, M.D., an ear, nose, and throat specialist at Entabeni Hospital, in Durban, South Africa. “Pressing here helps stop them.”

12. Make your heart stand still!

Trying to quell first-date jitters? Blow on your thumb. The vagus nerve, which governs heart rate, can be controlled through breathing, says Ben Abo, an emergency medical- services specialist at the University of Pittsburgh. It’ll get your heart rate back to normal.

13. Thaw your brain!

Too much Chipwich too fast will freeze the brains of lesser men. As for you, press your tongue flat against the roof of your mouth, covering as much as you can. “Since the nerves in the roof of your mouth get extremely cold, your body thinks your brain is freezing, too,” says Abo. “In compensating, it overheats, causing an ice-cream headache.” The more pressure you apply to the roof of your mouth, the faster your headache will subside.

14. Prevent near-sightedness!

Poor distance vision is rarely caused by genetics, says Anne Barber, O.D., an optometrist in Tacoma, Washington. “It’s usually caused by near-point stress.” In other words, staring at your computer screen for too long. So flex your way to 20/20 vision. Every few hours during the day, close your eyes, tense your body, take a deep breath, and, after a few seconds, release your breath and muscles at the same time. Tightening and releasing muscles such as the biceps and glutes can trick involuntary muscles — like the eyes — into relaxing as well.

15. Wake the dead!

If your hand falls asleep while you’re driving or sitting in an odd position, rock your head from side to side. It’ll painlessly banish your pins and needles in less than a minute, says Dr. DeStefano. A tingly hand or arm is often the result of compression in the bundle of nerves in your neck; loosening your neck muscles releases the pressure. Compressed nerves lower in the body govern the feet, so don’t let your sleeping dogs lie. Stand up and walk around.

16. Impress your friends!

Next time you’re at a party, try this trick: Have a person hold one arm straight out to the side, palm down, and instruct him to maintain this position. Then place two fingers on his wrist and push down. He’ll resist. Now have him put one foot on a surface that’s a half inch higher (a few magazines) and repeat. This time his arm will cave like the French. By misaligning his hips, you’ve offset his spine, says Rachel Cosgrove, C.S.C.S., co-owner of Results Fitness, in Santa Clarita, California. Your brain senses that the spine is vulnerable, so it shuts down the body’s ability to resist.

17. Breathe underwater!

If you’re dying to retrieve that quarter from the bottom of the pool, take several short breaths first — essentially, hyperventilate. When you’re underwater, it’s not a lack of oxygen that makes you desperate for a breath; it’s the buildup of carbon dioxide, which makes your blood acidic, which signals your brain that something’ ain’t right. “When you hyperventilate, the influx of oxygen lowers blood acidity,” says Jonathan Armbruster, Ph.D., an associate professor of biology at Auburn University. “This tricks your brain into thinking it has more oxygen.” It’ll buy you up to 10 seconds.

18. Read minds!

Your own! “If you’re giving a speech the next day, review it before falling asleep,” says Candi Heimgartner, an instructor of biological sciences at the University of Idaho. Since most memory consolidation happens during sleep, anything you read right before bed is more likely to be encoded as long-term memory.

Source

A Quarter of Mammals At Risk for Extinction

· At least 25 percent of the world’s wild mammals are at risk of extinction, according to a survey released yesterday.

Mammals that live on land face hunting and the loss of their habitat, while those that live in the water are threatened by pollution and by accidental killing through fishing and being struck by ships.

Large species such as primates (including the Sumatran orangutan and red colobus monkeys) and ungulates (hoofed animals) are more threatened than small creatures, such as rodents and bats.

Large mammals are less common than smaller ones, they are hunted more often and they need more land to survive.

Primates face some of the most intense pressures. The report said that 79 percent of primates in South and Southeast Asia, including the Hainan gibbon, are facing extinction.

Scientists list the Dama gazelle, which lives in Africa, and the Malaysian tapir as endangered hoofed animals.

The report was conducted by 1,700 experts in 130 countries over five years by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. The findings cover 5,487 wild mammal species identified.

Source: Washington Post

Human Brain Shifts Into Higher Gear During Exercise

Alternative energy is all the rage in major media headlines, but for the human brain, this is old news. According to a study by researchers from Denmark and The Netherlands published in the October 2008 print issue of The FASEB Journal, the brain, just like muscle, works harder during strenuous exercise and is fueled by lactate, rather than glucose. Not only does this finding help explain why the brain is able to work properly when the body’s demands for fuel and oxygen are highest, but it goes a step further to show that the brain actually shifts into a higher gear in terms of activity. This opens doors to entirely new areas of brain research related to understanding lactate’s specific neurological effects.

“Now that we know the brain can run on lactate, so to speak, future studies should show us when to use lactate as part of a treatment,” said Gerald Weissmann, MD, Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. “From an evolutionary perspective, the result of this study is a no-brainer. Imagine what could have or did happen to all of the organisms that lost their wits along with their glucose when running from predators. They were obviously a light snack for the animals able to use lactate.”

To reach their conclusion, the researchers looked at research that compared the blood running to and from the heads of volunteers undergoing strenuous exercise. They found that the blood on its way to the brain contained considerably more lactate than blood flowing from the brain. Further investigation showed that the brain was not storing the lactate which had come from the muscles during exercise, but rather using it as fuel. In fact, the brain helped to clear lactate from the circulation, thereby leaving glucose to the muscles that need it for the hard work they were performing.

September 2008 | Prophet Motive

Absorbing Orbs

Orbs

This summer, I visited Glastonbury, the New Age epicenter of England, to speak at a “Great Mysteries” conference about orbs. Orbs are best known as those mysterious balls of light that have appeared on digital photographs for the last fifteen years, though some claim they can see them with the naked eye as well. Orbs have spawned an enthusiastic subculture of people who believe the blobby wisps are not dust particles or lens anomalies, but angels, spirits, other-dimensional beings and so on. Although I am now an accredited orbs expert, I remain agnostic on the subject. In this area, one encounters the same difficulties in establishing a methodology as one does with other phenomena that float on the outer edge of cultural possibility, such as UFOs, crop circles, occult conspiracies, miraculous appearances of the Virgin and so on.

The Orbs Conference offered an eccentric collection of testimonies, channeling, scientific research and slide shows. My favorite take on the orbs came from William Bloom, a local mystic, who claims he has telepathic chats with the spheres. The orbs told him they work like “a cloud or a flock,” and visit us to “support group consciousness.” According to the orbs, “As we touch your individual psyches you begin consciously to experience yourselves as intimately connected with all other life forms on this planet and throughout the cosmos.” A physicist who connected two cameras to take simultaneous photographs found that orbs would only appear on one or the other camera. While he took this as evidence of their quantum subtlety, it could suggest spoof rather than proof.

In my talk on the orbs, I downplayed the question of the orbs’ authenticity to take a sociological approach. A postmodern phenomenon, the orbs only appeared in our world due to new technology, digital media, and social networks like Flickr, or blogs where people share orb images. As our evolving social technologies keep bringing us together in unexpected ways, Bloom’s transmission about “group consciousness” is thought provoking. As media theorist Clay Shirky explores in Here Comes Everybody, new social tools are making it possible for previously unconnected groups of people to suddenly behave like a “cloud or a flock,” when their interests coincide.

The orbs express a cute, trickster element by redirecting our attention. Most people first discover orbs when they are trying to photograph something else — friends at a party, a politician, their cat. Once captivated by the odd spheres floating through their images, their perspective changes: what seemed most important becomes marginal, and vice versa. A friend of mine once suggested that the year 2012 — end-date of the Mayan “long count” — might be when the center and the periphery of our attention switches places. The areas that our culture now finds important — such as possessions and wealth — might become marginal, while other areas, such as the development of soul and the ability to perceive subtle energies, will take on greater significance.

Although I do not pretend to have certainty in this area, I find the theories of the Dr. Alexey Dmitriev, a Russian scientist, to be highly intriguing. Dr. Dmitriev believes that our entire solar system is undergoing a phase transition, entering a region of the galaxy saturated with more intense cosmic energies. He has documented changes on other planets and moons around our solar system, some of which are developing atmospheres or experiencing polar reversals. One way this phase-transition is manifesting on earth is in increasing “vacuum domains” such as tornadoes, which are occurring with greater frequency. The orbs might be linked to this transition to a higher-energy state, as plasma-based vacuum domains that appear for an instant before spinning away. Plasma is the most unstable form of matter, and could be responsive to psychic energy — the orbs seem drawn, if not produced, by conscious intent. In photographs, they appear with greater frequency and in greater numbers at celebrations, group meditations, weddings and so on.

It can seem a bit reductive to seek to explain phenomena — such as the gregarious orbs — that resides at the periphery of our awareness. What is an explanation, in any case? Generally, it is a like cheap magician’s trick that pretends to make the Mystery disappear by covering it with language. As a phenomenon, the mass interest in the orbs suggests we are going through another wave of “Spiritualism,” a movement that swept the U.S. and Europe in the 1890s, bringing with it a wave of aura photography, levitating mediums and other anomalous events. Only the future will reveal whether the orbs reflect a deeper development of psychic awareness, or whether they are a fad that will soon trail off into the ether, from whence they perhaps came.

Daniel Pinchbeck is the author of Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism (Broadway Books, 2002) and 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl (Tarcher/Penguin, 2006). His features have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Wired and many other publications.

Here Are Some Orb Photos to Investigate : (What do you think?)

Posted in 1 Biology, 2 Technology, 3 Spirituality, 5 Psyche, 7 Inspiration ]]> http://dragonfaerie.wordpress.com/2008/10/01/daniel-pinchbeck-absorbing-orbs/feed/ 0 DarkLight http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj178/eleven2004/070811download013.jpg Orb Photo More Orbs http://greatmystery.org/images/orb_tour1/tp8.jpg http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj178/eleven2004/070811download013.jpg http://dragonfaerie.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/chimeras-human-animal-hybrids/ http://dragonfaerie.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/chimeras-human-animal-hybrids/#comments Tue, 30 Sep 2008 16:21:01 +0000 DarkLight http://dragonfaerie.wordpress.com/?p=476 ]]>

Of Mice, Men and In-Between
Scientists Debate Blending Of Human, Animal Forms

Chimera (ki-MER-ah)

By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 20, 2004; Page A01

In Minnesota, pigs are being born with human blood in their veins.

In Nevada, there are sheep whose livers and hearts are largely human.

In California, mice peer from their cages with human brain cells firing inside their skulls.

These are not outcasts from “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” the 1896 novel by H.G. Wells in which a rogue doctor develops creatures that are part animal and part human. They are real creations of real scientists, stretching the boundaries of stem cell research.

Biologists call these hybrid animals chimeras, after the mythical Greek creature with a lion’s head, a goat’s body and a serpent’s tail. They are the products of experiments in which human stem cells were added to developing animal fetuses.

Chimeras are allowing scientists to watch, for the first time, how nascent human cells and organs mature and interact — not in the cold isolation of laboratory dishes but inside the bodies of living creatures. Some are already revealing deep secrets of human biology and pointing the way toward new medical treatments.

But with no federal guidelines in place, an awkward question hovers above the work: How human must a chimera be before more stringent research rules should kick in?

The National Academy of Sciences, which advises the federal government, has been studying the issue and hopes to make recommendations by February. Yet the range of opinions it has received so far suggests that reaching consensus may be difficult.

During one recent meeting, scientists disagreed on such basic issues as whether it would be unethical for a human embryo to begin its development in an animal’s womb, and whether a mouse would be better or worse off with a brain made of human neurons.

“This is an area where we really need to come to a reasonable consensus,” said James Battey, chairman of the National Institutes of Health’s Stem Cell Task Force. “We need to establish some kind of guidelines as to what the scientific community ought to do and ought not to do.”

Beyond Twins and Moms

Chimeras (ki-MER-ahs) — meaning mixtures of two or more individuals in a single body — are not inherently unnatural. Most twins carry at least a few cells from the sibling with whom they shared a womb, and most mothers carry in their blood at least a few cells from each child they have born.

Recipients of organ transplants are also chimeras, as are the many people whose defective heart valves have been replaced with those from pigs or cows. And scientists for years have added human genes to bacteria and even to farm animals — feats of genetic engineering that allow those critters to make human proteins such as insulin for use as medicines.

“Chimeras are not as strange and alien as at first blush they seem,” said Henry Greely, a law professor and ethicist at Stanford University who has reviewed proposals to create human-mouse chimeras there.

But chimerism becomes a more sensitive topic when it involves growing entire human organs inside animals. And it becomes especially sensitive when it deals in brain cells, the building blocks of the organ credited with making humans human.

In experiments like those, Greely told the academy last month, “there is a nontrivial risk of conferring some significant aspects of humanity” on the animal.

Greely and his colleagues did not conclude that such experiments should never be done. Indeed, he and many other philosophers have been wrestling with the question of why so many people believe it is wrong to breach the species barrier.

Does the repugnance reflect an understanding of an important natural law? Or is it just another cultural bias, like the once widespread rejection of interracial marriage?

Many turn to the Bible’s repeated invocation that animals should multiply “after their kind” as evidence that such experiments are wrong. Others, however, have concluded that the core problem is not necessarily the creation of chimeras but rather the way they are likely to be treated.

Imagine, said Robert Streiffer, a professor of philosophy and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin, a human-chimpanzee chimera endowed with speech and an enhanced potential to learn — what some have called a “humanzee.”

“There’s a knee-jerk reaction that enhancing the moral status of an animal is bad,” Streiffer said. “But if you did it, and you gave it the protections it deserves, how could the animal complain?”

Unfortunately, said Harvard political philosopher Michael J. Sandel, speaking last fall at a meeting of the President’s Council on Bioethics, such protections are unlikely.

“Chances are we would make them perform menial jobs or dangerous jobs,” Sandel said. “That would be an objection.”

A Research Breakthrough

The potential power of chimeras as research tools became clear about a decade ago in a series of dramatic experiments by Evan Balaban, now at McGill University in Montreal. Balaban took small sections of brain from developing quails and transplanted them into the developing brains of chickens.

The resulting chickens exhibited vocal trills and head bobs unique to quails, proving that the transplanted parts of the brain contained the neural circuitry for quail calls. It also offered astonishing proof that complex behaviors could be transferred across species.

No one has proposed similar experiments between, say, humans and apes. But the discovery of human embryonic stem cells in 1998 allowed researchers to envision related experiments that might reveal a lot about how embryos grow.

The cells, found in 5-day-old human embryos, multiply prolifically and — unlike adult cells — have the potential to turn into any of the body’s 200 or so cell types.

Scientists hope to cultivate them in laboratory dishes and grow replacement tissues for patients. But with those applications years away, the cells are gaining in popularity for basic research.

The most radical experiment, still not conducted, would be to inject human stem cells into an animal embryo and then transfer that chimeric embryo into an animal’s womb. Scientists suspect the proliferating human cells would spread throughout the animal embryo as it matured into a fetus and integrate themselves into every organ.

Such “humanized” animals could have countless uses. They would almost certainly provide better ways to test a new drug’s efficacy and toxicity, for example, than the ordinary mice typically used today.

But few scientists are eager to do that experiment. The risk, they say, is that some human cells will find their way to the developing testes or ovaries, where they might grow into human sperm and eggs. If two such chimeras — say, mice — were to mate, a human embryo might form, trapped in a mouse.

Not everyone agrees that this would be a terrible result.

“What would be so dreadful?” asked Ann McLaren, a renowned developmental biologist at the University of Cambridge in England. After all, she said, no human embryo could develop successfully in a mouse womb. It would simply die, she told the academy. No harm done.

But others disagree — if only out of fear of a public backlash.

“Certainly you’d get a negative response from people to have a human embryo trying to grow in the wrong place,” said Cynthia B. Cohen, a senior research fellow at Georgetown University’s Kennedy Institute of Ethics and a member of Canada’s Stem Cell Oversight Committee, which supported a ban on such experiments there.

How Human?

But what about experiments in which scientists add human stem cells not to an animal embryo but to an animal fetus, which has already made its eggs and sperm? Then the only question is how human a creature one dares to make.

In one ongoing set of experiments, Jeffrey L. Platt at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., has created human-pig chimeras by adding human-blood-forming stem cells to pig fetuses. The resulting pigs have both pig and human blood in their vessels. And it’s not just pig blood cells being swept along with human blood cells; some of the cells themselves have merged, creating hybrids.

It is important to have learned that human and pig cells can fuse, Platt said, because he and others have been considering transplanting modified pig organs into people and have been wondering if that might pose a risk of pig viruses getting into patient’s cells. Now scientists know the risk is real, he said, because the viruses may gain access when the two cells fuse.

In other experiments led by Esmail Zanjani, chairman of animal biotechnology at the University of Nevada at Reno, scientists have been adding human stem cells to sheep fetuses. The team now has sheep whose livers are up to 80 percent human — and make all the compounds human livers make.

Zanjani’s goal is to make the humanized livers available to people who need transplants. The sheep portions will be rejected by the immune system, he predicted, while the human part will take root.

“I don’t see why anyone would raise objections to our work,” Zanjani said in an interview.

Immunity Advantages

Perhaps the most ambitious efforts to make use of chimeras come from Irving Weissman, director of Stanford University’s Institute of Cancer/Stem Cell Biology and Medicine. Weissman helped make the first mouse with a nearly complete human immune system — an animal that has proved invaluable for tests of new drugs against the AIDS virus, which does not infect conventional mice.

More recently his team injected human neural stem cells into mouse fetuses, creating mice whose brains are about 1 percent human. By dissecting the mice at various stages, the researchers were able to see how the added brain cells moved about as they multiplied and made connections with mouse cells.

Already, he said, they have learned things they “never would have learned had there been a bioethical ban.”

Now he wants to add human brain stem cells that have the defects that cause Parkinson’s disease, Lou Gehrig’s disease and other brain ailments — and study how those cells make connections.

Scientists suspect that these diseases, though they manifest themselves in adulthood, begin when something goes wrong early in development. If those errors can be found, researchers would have a much better chance of designing useful drugs, Weissman said. And those drugs could be tested in the chimeras in ways not possible in patients.

Now Weissman says he is thinking about making chimeric mice whose brains are 100 percent human. He proposes keeping tabs on the mice as they develop. If the brains look as if they are taking on a distinctly human architecture — a development that could hint at a glimmer of humanness — they could be killed, he said. If they look as if they are organizing themselves in a mouse brain architecture, they could be used for research.

So far this is just a “thought experiment,” Weissman said, but he asked the university’s ethics group for an opinion anyway.

“Everyone said the mice would be useful,” he said. “But no one was sure if it should be done.”

The Fibonacci Spiral and the Nautilus

or, don’t believe everything you read

I’ve been working on a short talk on Fibonacci numbers for a friend’s math class.

Back when I was in high school, I did a research project on Fibonacci numbers (their use in planning the growth of a city’s power stations), and for a while I had to explain the project endlessly, so I thought I remembered pretty well what sorts of visuals I’d need — some pine cones, maybe some flower petals or branching plants, graphics of the golden ratio and the Fibonacci/ Golden Spiral, and some nice visuals of natural wonders like the chambered nautilus and how that all fits in with the Fibonacci sequence.

I collected my pine cones, took some pictures and made some slides, then it was time to get to work on the golden spirals. I wrote a little GIMP script-fu to generate a Fibonacci spiral and set of boxes, then I went looking for a Chambered Nautilus image on which I could superimpose the spiral, and found a pretty good one by Chris 73 at Wikipedia. I pasted it into GIMP, then pasted my golden spiral on top of it, activated the Scale tool (Keep Aspect Ratio) and started scaling.

And I just couldn’t get them to match!

No matter how I scaled or translated the spiral, it just didn’t expand at the same rate as the nautilus shell.

So I called up Google Images and tried a few different nautilus images — with exactly the same result. I just couldn’t get my Fibonacci spiral to come close.

Well, this Science News article entitled Sea Shell Spirals says I’m not the only one. In 1999, retired mathematician Clement Falbo measured a series of nautilus shells at San Francisco’s California Academy of Sciences, and he found that while they were indeed logarithmic spirals (like the golden spiral), their ratios ranged from about 1.24 to 1.43, with an average ratio of about 1.33 to 1, not even close to the 1.618… ratio of the Golden Spiral. In 2002,John Sharp noticed the same problem (that link doesn’t work for me, but maybe you’ll have better luck).

As the Science News article points out,

Nonetheless, many accounts still insist that a cross section of nautilus shell shows a growth pattern of chambers governed by the golden ratio.

No kidding! Google on fibonacci nautilus and you’ll get a boatload of pages using the chambered nautilus as an illustration of the Fibonacci (or Golden) spiral in nature. It’s not just the web, though — I’ve been reading about nautili as Fibonacci examples for decades in books and magazines. All these writers just pass on what they’ve read elsewhere … just like I did for all those years, never actually measuring a nautilus shell or trying to inscribe a golden spiral on one.

Now do a Google image search for the same terms, and you’ll get lots of beautiful pictures of sectioned nautilus shells. You’ll also get quite a few pictures of fibonacci spirals. But none of those beautiful pictures will actually have both the nautilus and the spiral in the same image.

And now I know why — because they don’t match!

(Happily, this actually may be a better subject for my talk than the nautilus illustration I’d originally planned. “Don’t believe everything you read” is always a good lesson for high schoolers … and it’s just as relevant for us adults as well.)

Thanks ShallowSky – great article!
(\o/)

Designer Anthony Mallier from India has created ‘Sparkle’ contact lenses to make your eyes “Sparkle like they’ve never sparkled before.” The ‘Sparkle’ Contact lenses are fused with tiny Swarovski crystals in a circle around the edges of the lenses.

The ‘Sparkle’ contact lenses are the second place winner in the ‘Crystal Vision’ competition co-organized by designboom and Swarovski. Mallier took the ‘Crystal Vision’ theme literally when he designed the crystal eye ‘bling’. The competition had 4074 entries from 92 countries.

Mallier relates, “Swarovski has been synonymous with adding that extra ‘sparkle’ to everyday life. Swarovski crystals have the power to transform the ordinary into something extraordinary through their sheer brilliance. `Sparkle’ is one such attempt to enhance the expression of one of our most expressive features: our eyes.”

Will the Internet Evolve into a Lifeform?

Computer programs are already exhibiting many of the characteristics of organic lifeforms, up to and including evolution – hilarious, since they’re the only things that really are “Intelligently Designed” – and there’s no reason to believe that life or awareness are exclusively organic attributes.  You could say we’ve only ever seen chemical-based constructs which are alive, but in the past the same argument could have been applied to things moving under their own power, flight or the ability to count – and it turns out we’ve built machines that are sort of far better at all those things than the fleshy equivalents.  If there is a magic “life-chemical” mixed in with all the blood and guts, we haven’t found it.

Others would object that only beings with souls can ever be truly alive, but such people rarely have anything useful (or even sensible) to say on the subjects of evolution or technology and so can be safely ignored.

The question is now what form this life would take.  While the movies teach us that evil cybernetic intelligences are created in military research labs, with the occasional time-traveling component mixed in, the most likely environment is wherever has the greatest connectivity, diversity and sheer quantity of data flow.  That’s right, the internet.

One route is the evolution of electronic intelligences in situations like the internet-arms race between spammers and shielders.  It might sound silly, the idea that new life could be created in an attempt to offer you a great deal on C1@Lis!!, but have you tried registering for a forum recently?  Even gaining access to the lowest level of interaction online now requires elementary Turing tests to tell the humans from the robots.

Another option is the idea of the net itself becoming sentient, a vast self-modifying array of connections and information storage with limited connections to the outside world (kind of like that glob of grey goo you carry around in your skull).  If that happens then Gibson help us all – remember that the net is made of about 90% spam, 9% porn, and quite a lot of whining blogs.  If that mixture ever becomes self-aware we’re not quite sure what it’ll do, but the odds are against it being anything good.

Posted by Luke McKinney, The Daily Galaxy

Eight organisms that make you go ‘eww’ (MSNBC)

Slimy, stinky, icky and ugly — these creatures gross us out

Introduction

By John Roach, contributor

Skunk. The mere mention of the black and white mammal is enough to make people plug their noses. That’s because these creatures are legendary for deterring predators with an oily, foul-smelling spray emitted from glands on either side of their anus. Eww. Some species can shoot the fetid substance more than ten feet and whatever it hits may forever carry the stench. As a defense mechanism, scientists say the stinky spray is quite effective: Most would-be skunk predators stay away unless they have nothing else to eat. Even humans are well trained to keep their distance.

When the skunk in this photo got its head stuck in a jar of salad dressing, a police officer cracked it off with a pellet gun fired from 40 feet away.

Slimey hagfish has sex appeal … for some

What’s the sex appeal here? This jawless, nearly blind, eel-shaped fish uses a tooth-barbed tongue to devour rotting flesh on the ocean floor from the inside out. And when a predator such as a whale or seal comes after a hagfish, the creature vomits and secrets a protein that reacts with seawater to form a thick, slimy mucus. Yet thousands of pounds of hagfish are caught every year to supply a booming market in South Korea where they are considered an aphrodisiac. The fish is commonly broiled in sesame oil, sprinkled with salt and accompanied with a shot of liquor.

Sea cucumbers jettison internal organs

Those who piss off some of the more than 1,100 species of sea cucumbers could be in for an unpleasant surprise: They can violently contract and hurl some of their internal organs out of their anus. While the experience could mentally scar the organ-caked victim for a lifetime, the sea cucumber quickly regenerates the jettisoned body parts. As their name suggests, the cucumber-shaped relatives of sea urchins and star fish live on the ocean floor worldwide where they use suction-cup-like feet to crawl around, and use anywhere from eight to 30 tentacles around their mouths to feed. Not all humans are grossed out by the organisms: They’re a delicacy in Asia.

Turkey vultures clean up carrion, look ugly

If looks could kill, turkey vultures would never starve. The birds’ ugliness stems from their bald red heads and featherless necks which allow them to stay clean as they dive in to feast on rotting carcasses. The unsightly birds use a keen sense of smell to locate carrion as they soar overhead, seldom flapping their wings. Some ornithologists think this graceful flight makes up for the bird’s otherwise unsavory appearance and habits. Perhaps, but one more gross fact: Turkey vultures defecate on their own legs, using the evaporation to cool down, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Bot fly larvae get under our skin, literally

Travelers to the tropics of the Americas, beware the bot fly. Especially the human bot fly. Its larvae want to get under your skin. Really. Adult bot flies, which look like bees, lay their eggs on other insects such as mosquitoes. When the host insect lands on a human to feed, the eggs hatch in response to body heat, the larvae drop off and work their way under the skin, often through the hole pierced by the insect. There, the maggots feed … and grow. At first, human hosts are oblivious to the things, but as the larvae get bigger their movements cause sharp pains. Removal requires suffocation first to ease the grip of the little hooks that keep the larvae anchored in the tissue. The other option: Wait until the flies hatch.

The larvae in this picture were removed from the scalp of the gentleman in the background. Ick.

Dung beetle: The name says it all

For dung beetles, of which there are thousands of species, life is a load of crap. Some of the insects roll up feces into big balls to munch on or make a home for their larvae. Others bury the dung where they find it and do with it as they please. And some just dive right into the steamy piles. Scientists credit the dung processors for everything from keeping farm soils fertile to spreading around seeds packaged in the droppings.

Corpse flower looks phallic and stinks

Even though the phallic shape may stir certain thoughts, you wouldn’t give this flower to someone with hopes of setting a romantic mood: The bloom of Amorphophallus titanum gives off a stench along the lines of rotting flesh or an outhouse in sweltering heat. The smell repels all but the bravest humans, but attracts pollinators such as flesh-eating beetles and sweat bees. The bloom lasts for less than 72 hours and then the stench dissipates. Amorphophallus titanum, which translates to “giant shapeless phallus,” can be found in tropical forests on the Indonesian island of Sumatra and botanic gardens worldwide.

World’s largest flower is a smelly parasite

The plant that produces the largest – and perhaps most rank-smelling – flower on Earth is a parasite. That means rafflesia plants lack stems, leaves, and roots for capturing sunlight to make food and pull water and other nutrients from the ground. Rather, they suck life from the vines they latch onto in the rainforest floor. The big flowers – some measure three feet across – put off a rotting-flesh stench that attracts pollinators such as carrion flies. Scientists believe the girth may have evolved to boost the scent.

Source: MSNBC Science

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 4:20 PM on 10th September 2008

They are the toughest animals on the planet – and now scientists have discovered that they can even survive in space.

The tiny creatures, known as tardigrades or water bears, are certainly strange-looking with their eight chubby legs, little claws and probing heads.

Some experts have compared their shape with jelly babies or moles but tardigrades they should not be judged by their ‘cute’ appearance. They are virtually indestructible – they will not die even if they are boiled, frozen, squeezed under pressure or desiccated.

Tardigrades or ‘water bears’ are the toughest creatures on the planet

In fact, they can be completely dried out for years – and then spring back to life as if nothing had happened.

Now researchers have revealed that tardigrades – which usually measure no more than a millimetre in length and live in moss – have withstood the airless extremes of space.

Amazingly, after ten days, some of them did. They became the first animals to survive exposure in space without protection.

The experiment, supported by the European Space Agency, was headed by Dr Ingemar Jonsson, of the University of Kristianstad, Sweden.

‘Our principal finding is that the space vacuum, which entails extreme dehydration, and cosmic radiation were not a problem for water bears,’ he said. But admitted that exactly how they survived ‘remains a mystery.’

The water bears were kept in a chamber on board the FOTON-M3 spacecraft as it orbited 270km above the Earth 270km.

A slide was opened to expose them to the vacuum and the cold. Some were also subjected to the Sun’s UV rays which are 1,000 times stronger in space than on Earth and, incredibly, survived for the return trip. They continued to breed successfully.

Dr Jonsson and his colleagues in Stockholm, Stuttgart, and Cologne published the results of the space study in the journal Current Biology.

He said, ‘The ultraviolet radiation in space is harmful to water bears, although a few individuals can survive even that.’

He believes that even if they suffered DNA damage, the little water bears could somehow repair it. The next challenge is to try to understand the creatures’ ‘exceptional tolerance’ to extreme conditions, he said. It could help scientists learn how to treat cancer.

‘All knowledge involving the repair of genetic damage is central to the field of medicine,’ Dr Jonsson said.

‘One problem with radiation therapy in treating cancer today is that healthy cells are also harmed. If we can document and show that there are special molecules involved in DNA repair in multicellular animals like tardigrades, we might be able to further the development of radiation therapy,’ he added.

German scientist Dr Ralph Schill, who also worked on the project, said, ‘I hoped they would make it but I could hardly have expected this result – you can’t simulate some of the space conditions in the lab’.

Water bears exist in nearly all ecosystems of the world. What makes them unique is that they can survive repeated dehydration and can lose nearly all the water they have in their bodies.

When dehydrated, they enter into a dormant state in which the body contracts and metabolism ceases. In this death-like dormant state, water bears manage to maintain the structures in their cells until water is available to ‘reactivate’ them.

In 1998, Japanese scientists subjected the creatures to pressures up to 6,000 greater than our atmosphere. They lived. In tests, they have also survived X-rays and being frozen to just above absolute zero – that’s minus 273.15C, the coldest temperature possible.

‘No animal has survived open space before,’ says developmental biologist Bob Goldstein of the University of North Carolina.

‘The finding that animals survived rehydration after days in open space – and then produced viable embryos as well – is really remarkable.’

Source

A team of biologists and chemists is closing in on bringing non-living matter to life.

It’s not as Frankensteinian as it sounds. Instead, a lab led by Jack Szostak, a molecular biologist at Harvard Medical School, is building simple cell models that can almost be called life.

Szostak’s protocells are built from fatty molecules that can trap bits of nucleic acids that contain the source code for replication. Combined with a process that harnesses external energy from the sun or chemical reactions, they could form a self-replicating, evolving system that satisfies the conditions of life, but isn’t anything like life on earth now, but might represent life as it began or could exist elsewhere in the universe.
While his latest work remains unpublished, Szostak described preliminary new success in getting protocells with genetic information inside them to replicate at the XV International Conference on the Origin of Life in Florence, Italy, last week. The replication isn’t wholly autonomous, so it’s not quite artificial life yet, but it is as close as anyone has ever come to turning chemicals into biological organisms.
“We’ve made more progress on how the membrane of a protocell could grow and divide,” Szostak said in a phone interview. “What we can do now is copy a limited set of simple [genetic] sequences, but we need to be able to copy arbitrary sequences so that sequences could evolve that do something useful.”
By doing “something useful” for the cell, these genes would launch the new form of life down the Darwinian evolutionary path similar to the one that our oldest living ancestors must have traveled. Though where selective pressure will lead the new form of life is impossible to know.
“Once we can get a replicating environment, we’re hoping to experimentally determine what can evolve under those conditions,” said Sheref Mansy, a former member of Szostak’s lab and now a chemist at Denver University.
Protocellular work is even more radical than the other field trying to create artifical life: synthetic biology. Even J. Craig Venter’s work to build an artificial bacterium with the smallest number of genes necessary to live takes current life forms as a template. Protocell researchers are trying to design a completely novel form of life that humans have never seen and that may never have existed.
Over the summer, Szostak’s team published major papers in the journals Nature and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that go a long way towards showing that this isn’t just an idea and that his lab will be the first to create artificial life — and that it will happen soon.
“His hope is that he’ll have a complete self-replicating system in his lab in the near future,” said Jeffrey Bada, a University of California San Diego chemist who helped organize the Origin of Life conference.
Modern life is far more complex than the simple systems that Szostak and others are working on, so the protocells don’t look anything like the cells that we have in our bodies or Venter’s genetically-modified E. coli.
“What we’re looking at is the origin of life in one aspect, and the other aspect is life as a small nanomachine on a single cell level,” said Hans Ziock, a protocellular researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Life’s function, as a simple nanomachine, is just to use energy to marshal chemicals into making more copies of itself.
“You need to organize yourself in a specific way to be useful,” Ziock said. “You take energy from one place and move it to a place where it usually doesn’t want to go, so you can actually organize things.”
Modern cells accomplish this feat with an immense amount of molecular machinery. In fact, some of the chemical syntheses that simple plants and algae can accomplish far outstrip human technologies. Even the most primitive forms of life possess protein machines that allow them to import nutrients across their complex cell membranes and build the molecules that then carry out the cell’s bidding.
Those specialized components would have taken many, many generations to evolve, said Ziock, so the first life would have been much simpler.
What form that simplicity would have taken has been a subject of intense debate among origin of life scientists stretching back to the pioneering work of David Deamer, a professor emeritus at UC-Santa Cruz.
What most researchers agree on is that the very first functioning life would have had three basic components: a container, a way to harvest energy and an information carrier like RNA or another nucleic acid.
Szostak’s earlier work has shown that the container probably took the form of a layer of fatty acids that could self-assemble based on their reaction to water (see video). One tip of the acid is hydrophilic, meaning it’s attracted to water, while the other tip is hydrophobic. When researchers put a lot of these molecules together, they circle the wagons against the water and create a closed loop.
These membranes, with the right mix of chemicals, can allow nucleic acids in under some conditions and keep them trapped inside in others.

That opens the possibility that one day, in the distant past, an RNA-like molecule wandered into a fatty acid and started replicating. That random event, through billions of evolutionary iterations, researchers believe, created life as we know it.
In a paper released this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Mansy and Szostak showed that the special membranes, fat bubbles essentially, were stable under a variety of temperatures and could have manipulated molecules like DNA through simple thermal cycling, just like scientists do in PCR machines.
The entire line of research, though, begs the question: where would DNA, or any other material carrying instructions for replication, have come from?
Many researchers have tried to tackle this problem of how RNA- or DNA-like molecules could have developed from the amino acids present on the early Earth. John Sutherland, a chemist at the University of Manchester, published a paper last year demonstrating one plausible way that RNA could have spontaneously been created in the prebiotic world.
Once such molecules existed, Szostak’s lab’s demonstrated in a Nature paper earlier this summer that nucleic acids could replicate inside a protocell (pdf).
But while many scientists agree the protocell work is impressive, not every scientist is convinced that it contributes to a reasonable explanation for the origin of life.
“Their work is wonderful inasmuch as what they are doing can be,” said Mike Russell, a geochemist with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “It’s just that I’m uneasy about the significance of it to the origin of life.”
Russell argues that the very first life-like molecules on Earth would have been based on inorganic compounds. Instead of a fatty acid membrane, Russell argues that iron sulfide could have provided the necessary container for early cells.
But UCSD’s Bada pointed out that it as unlikely we will ever know how life actually began.
“[Szostak's] point, and how we all view it, is that it’s a nice model, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it happened that way,” he said.
Szostak suggested that even if life could theoretically or did begin some other way, his lab’s hypothesis was (at least) experimentally plausible.
“We’re now pretty much convinced that growth and division could occur under perfectly reasonable prebiotic conditions in a way that is not some artificial laboratory construction,” he said.

And actually, the most intriguing possibility of all may be that the protocells in Szostak’s lab do not closely model earthly life’s origins. If that’s true, human beings, ourselves the product of evolution from the most primitive organisms, would have created an alternative path to imbuing matter with the properties of life.
“What we have in biology is just one of many, many possibilities,” Szostack said. “One of the things that always comes up when people talk about life and universal qualities is water. But is water really necessary? What if we could design a system that works in something else?”

Official University Research Website

Girls outdo guys at ogling

Women are worse oglers than men – despite the widespread belief they are less physically focused.

Scientists used eye-tracking technology to pinpoint what people looked at when shown a series of sexy photos, reports The Sun.

They expected women to be more interested in faces and men in the naughty bits – but it was the other way round.

Dr Heather Rupp of the US-based Kinsey Institute said: “Men looked at the female face much more than women and both looked at the genitals comparably.”ananova.com

High love..
http://current.com/items/89247300_skydive_wedding

Amazing Art Piece:

http://current.com/items/89243731_tantalus

Check out current.com/burningman for more live feeds/pods!

Peace

David Kirby, Author:  Evidence of Harm: Part 1

Burners take festival far beyond the playa

By Kristin S. Larsen ? klarsen@rgj.com ? August 23, 2008

Photo by ergoat.com

Everyone loves a party.

Few festivals can boast of the dramatic growth and global appeal claimed by Burning Man, a counter-culture festival that attracts thousands to a barren playa north of Reno.
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What started as a small group of friends burning an eight-foot tall wooden man in 1986 on a San Francisco beach, has exploded into hundreds of regional events and tens of thousands of participants scattered across the globe.

The Burning Man festival attracted about 48,000 in 2007, but the number of events and social networks espousing the principals of Burning Man has blossomed beyond the Black Rock Desert. Spin-off festivals include Texas-based Burning Flipside, Burning Mooseman hosted in the Ontario backwoods, and Burning Toast in the Arizona desert.

Burners are creating their own unique gatherings and regional contacts to aid burner networking, which has spread to Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa.

?Burning Man is not a select club or a clique or a closed subculture,? Burning Man Director of Communications Marian Goodell said. ?It is a kind of tapestry, an ever-widening network of actions and relationships extending far beyond the place called Black Rock City. As a result, many of us have gained a way of looking at life that is similar.?

From 2000 to last year, Fred ?Hagey? Hagemeister, 55, has hosted the Black Rock International Burner Hostel from his home in Sparks to give world travelers a place to stay free of charge before attending Burning Man. He estimated he?s aided a few thousand over the years including briefly housing about 400 people in 2004 before scaling back his efforts because of neighbors? complaints and financial limitations.

To thank him for his hospitality, some of those he had hosted raised $1,100 in 2005 so he could attend the Nowhere festival in Spain, which he described as a ?lower budget? Burning Man.

?Since it was smaller (than Burning Man) you get to know fewer people better,? Hagemeister said. ?It has the same vibe as far as the dancing and the music, and less dramatic, huge art.?

After the annual festivals, the Burning Man Web site says many of the burners who returned to their home cities felt the urge to stay connected to other burners with some expressing trouble reintegrating into ?normal? society. This led to the creation of the Regional Contacts Network and a variety of e-mail list serves and forums for participants to keep in touch.

?I cry when I finally arrive on the playa to meet my (chosen) family, most of whom I haven?t seen for an entire year,? Hagemeister said.

Josie ?Capt?n Annebonny? Harvey, 22, of Seattle, who aided in setting up the infrastructure of Burning Man and New Zealand?s equivalent Kiwiburn for the last two years, said a cross-mixture of attendance is common.

She said a variety of Kiwiburn theme camps and attractions emulate the Burning Man exhibits, but it is held in the middle of a sheep pasture, surrounded by miles of farmland. Kiwiburn?s Thunder Ditch, equipped with foam weapons for play battle is a takeoff on the Thunder Dome, where bungee-corded combatants slug it out with foam-covered pugil sticks.

The Deep End, a popular daytime music camp at Burning Man, was mimicked by one Kiwiburn camper in 2007 who dubbed his site the Cheap End and played a CD of Deep End music over speakers mounted to his van. He turned on his blinking hazard lights for effect. The next year he attached a papier-mch� sheep head to the front of his vehicle and called it the Sheep End in honor of their rustic location, Harvey said.

Harvey said while it?s hard to describe a Burning Man style event, she said the people are what define it.

?It?s such a range of themes and ages and styles,? Harvey said.

The Burning Man Web site reads: ?It is clear that Burning Man is no longer confined to the Black Rock Desert. Dozens of satellites orbit the Mother ship; each and every one possesses a unique flavor and character. Burning Man as a cultural movement is still in its youth.?

Source: news.rgj.com

About the study:

At least one pharmaceutical was detected in tests of treated drinking water supplies for 24 major metropolitan areas, according to an Associated Press survey of 62 major water providers and data obtained from independent researchers.

Only 28 tested drinking water. Three of those said results were negative; Dallas says tests were conducted but results are not yet available. Thirty-four locations said no testing was conducted.

Test protocols varied widely. Some researchers looked only for one pharmaceutical or two; others looked for many.

Some water systems said tests had been negative, but the AP found independent research showing otherwise. Both prescription and non-prescription drugs were detected.

Because coffee and tobacco are so widely used, researchers say their byproducts are good indicators of the presence of pharmaceuticals. Thus, they routinely test for, and often find, both caffeine and nicotine’s metabolite cotinine more frequently than other drugs.

Source: The Associated Press
Duane Moser, an assistant research professor with Desert Research Institute, collects water samples from the Las Vegas Wash in Henderson, Nev.
Enlarge By Jae C. Hong, AP
Duane Moser, an assistant research professor with Desert Research Institute, collects water samples from the Las Vegas Wash in Henderson, Nev.

ILL EFFECTS?

Troubled by drugs discovered in European waters, poisons expert and biologist Francesco Pomati set up an experiment: He exposed developing human kidney cells to a mixture of 13 drugs at levels mimicking those found in Italian rivers.

There were drugs to fight high cholesterol and blood pressure, seizures and depression, pain and infection, and cancer, all in tiny amounts.

The result: The pharmaceutical blend slowed cell growth by up to a third suggesting that scant amounts may exert powerful effects, said Pomati, who works at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

Taken alone, this was a modest study. But in fact Pomati’s work is part of a body of emerging scientific studies that indicate that over time, humans could be harmed by ingesting drinking water contaminated with tiny amounts of pharmaceuticals.

In another recently published study, Pomati discovered that some of those pharmaceuticals could amplify or reverse the effects of some others.

And Pomati’s work indicates some drugs cause cellular effects at scant concentrations that strangely cannot be seen at higher levels.

Such findings are preliminary; they alone cannot demonstrate the same effects within the human body. But they provide scientific hints, just like cellular experiments that routinely guide discovery of new drugs.

They also heighten worry about the possible effects on especially vulnerable groups, like the very young, old or sick. “My wife is pregnant, and I don’t let my wife drink the water …,” said Pomati.

Elsewhere in the world, other researchers are finding results similar to Pomati’s.

In research awaiting publication, human breast cancer cells grew twice as fast when exposed to estrogens taken from catfish caught near untreated sewage overflows in Pennsylvania, compared with other fish.

The University of Pittsburgh researchers didn’t calculate how much effect came from pharmaceuticals instead of natural hormones, but their earlier work points to birth-control pills and hormone treatments as important contributors, said lead researcher Conrad Volz.

“There is the potential for an increased risk for those people who are prone to estrogenic cancer,” said Volz, who studies environmental hazards at the university’s Cancer Institute.

He said people who regularly drink water containing low levels of hormones may be at higher risk, since they would presumably consume more of these drugs than those who only occasionally eat such fish.

Scientists at the Helmholtz research center in Leipzig, Germany, linked low levels of the pain reliever diclofenac to an inflammatory-like response in human blood cells, according to biologist Kristin Schirmer. Inflammation at the wrong time and place plays a role in conditions ranging from infections and arthritis to heart disease.

Sandra Steingraber, a biologist at New York’s Ithaca College, adds that many efforts to determine how trace drugs affect humans don’t fully consider the whole range of pharmaceuticals in the environment and whether someone has been exposed at more susceptible times, like during childhood or old age.

“The timing makes the poison as much as the dose,” she said. “And the dose itself is not the dose from just any one thing it’s from this whole kaleidoscope of chemicals.”

Taking notice of accumulating evidence, the drug industry has backed studies of its own in recent years that have found very slight, if any, risk to humans.

But these studies haven’t used water samples analyzed for drugs. Instead, the studies estimate danger from what’s known about how much of a drug is sold and how toxic it is to animals. Then, safety margins are added for unknowns, such as possible effects of decades of exposure.

Those margins are just educated guesses. Also, the studies usually ignore what might happen to people exposed to the complex combinations of medicines that are often found in drinking water.

Then, there are the byproducts of the drugs. When medications are digested and processed through water treatment plants, they may take a new metabolic form.

“They miss some of the big issues. Our research shows mixtures are so prevalent,” said Dana Kolpin, a U.S. Geological Survey water expert who launched a plethora of research in 2002 after finding pharmaceuticals in most samples taken from 139 streams in 30 states. “If there are any cumulative or additive issues, you can’t just dismiss things so quickly.”

Even if Kolpin is right, the industry may be focusing on the wrong pharmaceuticals, said chemist James Shine at the Harvard School of Public Health, who oversaw what’s probably the broadest risk review yet, a yet-to-be-published study covering scores of the most common drugs sold in the United States.

As suspected, some chemotherapy drugs turn up high on that list. But blood-pressure diuretics, though rarely considered, appear to pose more risk than many drugs more often evaluated.

Even when researchers downplay risk, that may not be the final word.

People “are going to be concerned about being medicated by mandate when you turn on the tap,” said Dr. Stevan Gressitt, a psychiatrist who’s led a push for a program in Maine that allows consumers to turn in unused pharmaceuticals for secure disposal or destruction. “And that’s going to be seen if the level is (only) one molecule in 100 taps.”

By Jeff Donn, Martha Mendoza and Justin Pritchard, Associated Press
A vast array of pharmaceuticals ? including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones ? have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows.

To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose. Also, utilities insist their water is safe.

WATER DEPARTMENTS: Reports rarely released to public
BOTTLED WATER: Is it any safer?
NEW YORK CITY: Sedative traces found in water
LOS ANGELES: Water tops national taste test
RELATED: Problems in fish blamed on contamination

But the presence of so many prescription drugs ? and over-the-counter medicines like acetaminophen and ibuprofen ? in so much of our drinking water is heightening worries among scientists of long-term consequences to human health.

In the course of a five-month inquiry, the AP discovered that drugs have been detected in the drinking water supplies of 24 major metropolitan areas ? from Southern California to Northern New Jersey, from Detroit to Louisville
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Washington | Philadelphia | Boston | San Francisco | Detroit | Miami | Houston | New York City | Phoenix | Baltimore | Southern California | Tucson | Fairfax | Department of Environmental Protection | National Investigative Team | Northern New Jersey | Benjamin H. Grumbles | Passaic Valley Water Commission | Va. Montgomery County

Water providers rarely disclose results of pharmaceutical screenings, unless pressed, the AP found. For example, the head of a group representing major California suppliers said the public “doesn’t know how to interpret the information” and might be unduly alarmed.

How do the drugs get into the water?

People take pills. Their bodies absorb some of the medication, but the rest of it passes through and is flushed down the toilet. The wastewater is treated before it is discharged into reservoirs, rivers or lakes. Then, some of the water is cleansed again at drinking water treatment plants and piped to consumers. But most treatments do not remove all drug residue.

And while researchers do not yet understand the exact risks from decades of persistent exposure to random combinations of low levels of pharmaceuticals, recent studies ? which have gone virtually unnoticed by the general public ? have found alarming effects on human cells and wildlife.

“We recognize it is a growing concern and we’re taking it very seriously,” said Benjamin H. Grumbles, assistant administrator for water at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Members of the AP National Investigative Team reviewed hundreds of scientific reports, analyzed federal drinking water databases, visited environmental study sites and treatment plants and interviewed more than 230 officials, academics and scientists. They also surveyed the nation’s 50 largest cities and a dozen other major water providers, as well as smaller community water providers in all 50 states.

Here are some of the key test results obtained by the AP:

? Officials in Philadelphia said testing there discovered 56 pharmaceuticals or byproducts in treated drinking water, including medicines for pain, infection, high cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy, mental illness and heart problems. Sixty-three pharmaceuticals or byproducts were found in the city’s watersheds.

? Anti-epileptic and anti-anxiety medications were detected in a portion of the treated drinking water for 18.5 million people in Southern California.

? Researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey analyzed a Passaic Valley Water Commission drinking water treatment plant, which serves 850,000 people in Northern New Jersey, and found a metabolized angina medicine and the mood-stabilizing carbamazepine in drinking water.

? A sex hormone was detected in San Francisco’s drinking water.

? The drinking water for Washington, D.C., and surrounding areas tested positive for six pharmaceuticals.

? Three medications, including an antibiotic, were found in drinking water supplied to Tucson.

The situation is undoubtedly worse than suggested by the positive test results in the major population centers documented by the AP.

The federal government doesn’t require any testing and hasn’t set safety limits for drugs in water. Of the 62 major water providers contacted, the drinking water for only 28 was tested. Among the 34 that haven’t: Houston, Chicago, Miami, Baltimore, Phoenix, Boston and New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection, which delivers water to 9 million people.

Some providers screen only for one or two pharmaceuticals, leaving open the possibility that others are present.

The AP’s investigation also indicates that watersheds, the natural sources of most of the nation’s water supply, also are contaminated. Tests were conducted in the watersheds of 35 of the 62 major providers surveyed by the AP, and pharmaceuticals were detected in 28.

Yet officials in six of those 28 metropolitan areas said they did not go on to test their drinking water ? Fairfax, Va.; Montgomery County in Maryland; Omaha; Oklahoma City; Santa Clara, Calif., and New York City.

The New York state health department and the USGS tested the source of the city’s water, upstate. They found trace concentrations of heart medicine, infection fighters, estrogen, anti-convulsants, a mood stabilizer and a tranquilizer.

City water officials declined repeated requests for an interview. In a statement, they insisted that “New York City’s drinking water continues to meet all federal and state regulations regarding drinking water quality in the watershed and the distribution system” ? regulations that do not address trace pharmaceuticals.

In several cases, officials at municipal or regional water providers told the AP that pharmaceuticals had not been detected, but the AP obtained the results of tests conducted by independent researchers that showed otherwise. For example, water department officials in New Orleans said their water had not been tested for pharmaceuticals, but a Tulane University researcher and his students have published a study that found the pain reliever naproxen, the sex hormone estrone and the anti-cholesterol drug byproduct clofibric acid in treated drinking water.

Of the 28 major metropolitan areas where tests were performed on drinking water supplies, only Albuquerque; Austin, Texas; and Virginia Beach; said tests were negative. The drinking water in Dallas has been tested, but officials are awaiting results. Arlington, Texas, acknowledged that traces of a pharmaceutical were detected in its drinking water but cited post-9/11 security concerns in refusing to identify the drug.

The AP also contacted 52 small water providers ? one in each state, and two each in Missouri and Texas ? that serve communities with populations around 25,000. All but one said their drinking water had not been screened for pharmaceuticals; officials in Emporia, Kan., refused to answer AP’s questions, also citing post-9/11 issues.

Rural consumers who draw water from their own wells aren’t in the clear either, experts say.

The Stroud Water Research Center, in Avondale, Pa., has measured water samples from New York City’s upstate watershed for caffeine, a common contaminant that scientists often look for as a possible signal for the presence of other pharmaceuticals. Though more caffeine was detected at suburban sites, researcher Anthony Aufdenkampe was struck by the relatively high levels even in less populated areas.

He suspects it escapes from failed septic tanks, maybe with other drugs. “Septic systems are essentially small treatment plants that are essentially unmanaged and therefore tend to fail,” Aufdenkampe said.

Even users of bottled water and home filtration systems don’t necessarily avoid exposure. Bottlers, some of which simply repackage tap water, do not typically treat or test for pharmaceuticals, according to the industry’s main trade group. The same goes for the makers of home filtration systems.

Contamination is not confined to the United States. More than 100 different pharmaceuticals have been detected in lakes, rivers, reservoirs and streams throughout the world. Studies have detected pharmaceuticals in waters throughout Asia, Australia, Canada and Europe ? even in Swiss lakes and the North Sea.

For example, in Canada, a study of 20 Ontario drinking water treatment plants by a national research institute found nine different drugs in water samples. Japanese health officials in December called for human health impact studies after detecting prescription drugs in drinking water at seven different sites.

In the United States, the problem isn’t confined to surface waters. Pharmaceuticals also permeate aquifers deep underground, source of 40% of the nation’s water supply. Federal scientists who drew water in 24 states from aquifers near contaminant sources such as landfills and animal feed lots found minuscule levels of hormones, antibiotics and other drugs.

Perhaps it’s because Americans have been taking drugs ? and flushing them unmetabolized or unused ? in growing amounts. Over the past five years, the number of U.S. prescriptions rose 12% to a record 3.7 billion, while non-prescription drug purchases held steady around 3.3 billion, according to IMS Health and The Nielsen Co.

“People think that if they take a medication, their body absorbs it and it disappears, but of course that’s not the case,” said EPA scientist Christian Daughton, one of the first to draw attention to the issue of pharmaceuticals in water in the United States.

Some drugs, including widely used cholesterol fighters, tranquilizers and anti-epileptic medications, resist modern drinking water and wastewater treatment processes. Plus, the EPA says there are no sewage treatment systems specifically engineered to remove pharmaceuticals.

One technology, reverse osmosis, removes virtually all pharmaceutical contaminants but is very expensive for large-scale use and leaves several gallons of polluted water for every one that is made drinkable.

Another issue: There’s evidence that adding chlorine, a common process in conventional drinking water treatment plants, makes some pharmaceuticals more toxic.

Human waste isn’t the only source of contamination. Cattle, for example, are given ear implants that provide a slow release of trenbolone, an anabolic steroid used by some bodybuilders, which causes cattle to bulk up. But not all the trenbolone circulating in a steer is metabolized. A German study showed 10% of the steroid passed right through the animals.

Water sampled downstream of a Nebraska feedlot had steroid levels four times as high as the water taken upstream. Male fathead minnows living in that downstream area had low testosterone levels and small heads.

Other veterinary drugs also play a role. Pets are now treated for arthritis, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, allergies, dementia, and even obesity ? sometimes with the same drugs as humans. The inflation-adjusted value of veterinary drugs rose by 8%, to $5.2 billion, over the past five years, according to an analysis of data from the Animal Health Institute.

Ask the pharmaceutical industry whether the contamination of water supplies is a problem, and officials will tell you no. “Based on what we now know, I would say we find there’s little or no risk from pharmaceuticals in the environment to human health,” said microbiologist Thomas White, a consultant for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

But at a conference last summer, Mary Buzby ? director of environmental technology for drug maker Merck & Co. Inc. ? said: “There’s no doubt about it, pharmaceuticals are being detected in the environment and there is genuine concern that these compounds, in the small concentrations that they’re at, could be causing impacts to human health or to aquatic organisms.”

Recent laboratory research has found that small amounts of medication have affected human embryonic kidney cells, human blood cells and human breast cancer cells. The cancer cells proliferated too quickly; the kidney cells grew too slowly; and the blood cells showed biological activity associated with inflammation.

Also, pharmaceuticals in waterways are damaging wildlife across the nation and around the globe, research shows. Notably, male fish are being feminized, creating egg yolk proteins, a process usually restricted to females. Pharmaceuticals also are affecting sentinel species at the foundation of the pyramid of life ? such as earth worms in the wild and zooplankton in the laboratory, studies show.

Some scientists stress that the research is extremely limited, and there are too many unknowns. They say, though, that the documented health problems in wildlife are disconcerting.

“It brings a question to people’s minds that if the fish were affected … might there be a potential problem for humans?” EPA research biologist Vickie Wilson told the AP. “It could be that the fish are just exquisitely sensitive because of their physiology or something. We haven’t gotten far enough along.”

With limited research funds, said Shane Snyder, research and development project manager at the Southern Nevada Water Authority, a greater emphasis should be put on studying the effects of drugs in water.

“I think it’s a shame that so much money is going into monitoring to figure out if these things are out there, and so little is being spent on human health,” said Snyder. “They need to just accept that these things are everywhere ? every chemical and pharmaceutical could be there. It’s time for the EPA to step up to the plate and make a statement about the need to study effects, both human and environmental.”

To the degree that the EPA is focused on the issue, it appears to be looking at detection. Grumbles acknowledged that just late last year the agency developed three new methods to “detect and quantify pharmaceuticals” in wastewater. “We realize that we have a limited amount of data on the concentrations,” he said. “We’re going to be able to learn a lot more.”

While Grumbles said the EPA had analyzed 287 pharmaceuticals for possible inclusion on a draft list of candidates for regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act, he said only one, nitroglycerin, was on the list. Nitroglycerin can be used as a drug for heart problems, but the key reason it’s being considered is its widespread use in making explosives.

So much is unknown. Many independent scientists are skeptical that trace concentrations will ultimately prove to be harmful to humans. Confidence about human safety is based largely on studies that poison lab animals with much higher amounts.

There’s growing concern in the scientific community, meanwhile, that certain drugs ? or combinations of drugs ? may harm humans over decades because water, unlike most specific foods, is consumed in sizable amounts every day.

Our bodies may shrug off a relatively big one-time dose, yet suffer from a smaller amount delivered continuously over a half century, perhaps subtly stirring allergies or nerve damage. Pregnant women, the elderly and the very ill might be more sensitive.

Many concerns about chronic low-level exposure focus on certain drug classes: chemotherapy that can act as a powerful poison; hormones that can hamper reproduction or development; medicines for depression and epilepsy that can damage the brain or change behavior; antibiotics that can allow human germs to mutate into more dangerous forms; pain relievers and blood-pressure diuretics.

For several decades, federal environmental officials and non-profit watchdog environmental groups have focused on regulated contaminants ? pesticides, lead, PCBs ? which are present in higher concentrations and clearly pose a health risk.

However, some experts say medications may pose a unique danger because, unlike most pollutants, they were crafted to act on the human body.

“These are chemicals that are designed to have very specific effects at very low concentrations. That’s what pharmaceuticals do. So when they get out to the environment, it should not be a shock to people that they have effects,” says zoologist John Sumpter at Brunel University in London, who has studied trace hormones, heart medicine and other drugs.

And while drugs are tested to be safe for humans, the timeframe is usually over a matter of months, not a lifetime. Pharmaceuticals also can produce side effects and interact with other drugs at normal medical doses. That’s why ? aside from therapeutic doses of fluoride injected into potable water supplies ? pharmaceuticals are prescribed to people who need them, not delivered to everyone in their drinking water.

“We know we are being exposed to other people’s drugs through our drinking water, and that can’t be good,” says Dr. David Carpenter, who directs the Institute for Health and the Environment of the State University of New York at Albany.

The federal government doesn’t require any testing and hasn’t set safety limits for drugs in water. Of the 62 major water providers contacted, the drinking water for only 28 was tested. Of the 28 major metropolitan areas where tests were performed on drinking water supplies, only Albuquerque; Austin, Texas; and Virginia Beach; said tests were negative.

TAP WATER TESTING

Here’s the list of metropolitan areas, with the number of pharmaceuticals detected and some examples of specific drugs that were found, or where tests were negative, not conducted or awaiting results:

Albuquerque, N.M.: tests negative

Arlington, Texas: 1 (unspecified pharmaceutical)

Atlanta: 3 (acetaminophen, caffeine and cotinine)

Austin, Texas: tests negative

Baltimore: no testing

Birmingham, Ala.: no testing

Boston: no testing

Charlotte, N.C.: no testing

Chicago: no testing

Cincinnati: 1 (caffeine)

Cleveland: no testing

Colorado Springs, Colo.: no testing

Columbus, Ohio: 5 (azithromycin, roxithromycin, tylosin, virginiamycin and caffeine)

Concord, Calif.: 2 (meprobamate and sulfamethoxazole)

Dallas: results pending

Denver: (unspecified antibiotics)

Detroit: (unspecified drugs)

El Paso, Texas: no testing

Fairfax, Va.: no testing

Fort Worth, Texas: no testing

Fresno, Calif.: no testing

Honolulu: no testing

Houston: no testing

Indianapolis: 1 (caffeine)

Jacksonville, Fla.: no testing

Kansas City, Mo.: no testing

Las Vegas: 3 (carbamazepine, meprobamate and phenytoin)

Long Beach, Calif.: 2 (meprobamate and phenytoin)

Los Angeles: 2 (meprobamate and phenytoin)

Louisville, Ky.: 3 (caffeine, carbamazepine and phenytoin)

Memphis, Tenn.: no testing

Mesa, Ariz.: no testing

Miami: no testing

Milwaukee: 1 (cotinine)

Minneapolis: 1 (caffeine)

Nashville, Tenn.: no testing

New Orleans: 3 (clofibric acid, estrone and naproxen)

New York City: no testing

Northern New Jersey: 7 (caffeine, carbamazepine, codeine, cotinine, dehydronifedipine, diphenhydramine and sulfathiazole)

Oakland, Calif.: no testing

Oklahoma City: no testing

Omaha, Neb.: no testing

Orlando, Fla.: no testing

Philadelphia: 56 (including amoxicillin, azithromycin, carbamazepine, diclofenac, prednisone and tetracycline)

Phoenix: no testing

Portland, Ore.: 4 (acetaminophen, caffeine, ibuprofen and sulfamethoxazole)

Prince George’s and Montgomery counties, Md.: no testing

Riverside County, Calif.: 2 (meprobamate and phenytoin)

Sacramento, Calif.: no testing

San Antonio: no testing

San Diego: 3 (ibuprofen, meprobamate and phenytoin)

San Francisco: 1 (estradiol)

San Jose, Calif.: no testing

Santa Clara, Calif.: no testing

Seattle: no testing

Southern California: 2 (meprobamate and phenytoin)

Suffolk County, N.Y.: no testing

Tucson, Ariz.: 3 (carbamazepine, dehydronifedipine and sulfamethoxazole)

Tulsa, Okla.: no testing

Virginia Beach, Va.: tests negative

Washington, D.C.: 6 (carbamazepine, caffeine, ibuprofen, monensin, naproxen and sulfamethoxazole)

Wichita, Kan.: no testing.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.usatoday.com

If our actions are determined by prior events, then do we have a choice about anything-or any responsibility for what we do?

By Shaun Nichols

Many scientists and philosophers are convinced that free will doesn?t exist at all. According to these skeptics, everything that happens is determined by what happened before?our actions are inevitable consequences of the events leading up to the action?and this fact makes it impossible for anyone to do anything that is truly free. This kind of anti-free will stance stretches back to 18th century philosophy, but the idea has recently been getting much more exposure through popular science books and magazine articles. Should we worry? If people come to believe that they don?t have free will, what will the consequences be for moral responsibility?

In a clever new study, psychologists Kathleen Vohs at the University of Minnesota and Jonathan Schooler at the University of California at Santa Barbara tested this question by giving participants passages from The Astonishing Hypothesis, a popular science book by Francis Crick, a biochemist and Nobel laureate (as co-discoverer, with James Watson, of the DNA double helix). Half of the participants got a passage saying that there is no such thing as free will. The passage begins as follows: ??You,? your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. Who you are is nothing but a pack of neurons.?
The passage then goes on to talk about the neural basis of decisions and claims that ??although we appear to have free will, in fact, our choices have already been predetermined for us and we cannot change that.? The other participants got a passage that was similarly scientific-sounding, but it was about the importance of studying consciousness, with no mention of free will.

After reading the passages, all participants completed a survey on their belief in free will. Then comes the inspired part of the experiment. Participants were told to complete 20 arithmetic problems that would appear on the computer screen. But they were also told that when the question appeared, they needed to press the space bar, otherwise a computer glitch would make the answer appear on the screen, too. The participants were told that no one would know whether they pushed the space bar, but they were asked not to cheat.

The results were clear: those who read the anti-free will text cheated more often! (That is, they pressed the space bar less often than the other participants.) Moreover, the researchers found that the amount a participant cheated correlated with the extent to which they rejected free will in their survey responses.

Varieties of Immorality

Philosophers have raised questions about some elements of the study. For one thing, the anti-free will text presents a bleak worldview, and that alone might lead one to cheat more in such a context (?OMG, if I?m just a pack of neurons, I have much bigger things to worry about than behaving on this experiment!?). It might be that one would also find increased cheating if you gave people a passage arguing that all sentient life will ultimately be destroyed in the heat death of the universe.

On the other hand, the results fit with what some philosophers had predicted. The Western conception idea of free will seems bound up with our sense of moral responsibility, guilt for misdeeds and pride in accomplishment. We hold ourselves responsible precisely when we think that our actions come from free will. In this light, it?s not surprising that people behave less morally as they become skeptical of free will. Further, the Vohs and Schooler result fits with the idea that people will behave less responsibly if they regard their actions as beyond their control. If I think that there?s no point in trying to be good, then I?m less likely to try.

Even if giving up on free will does have these deleterious effects, one might wonder how far they go. One question is whether the effects extend across the moral domain. Cheating in a psychology experiment doesn?t seem too terrible. Presumably the experiment didn?t also lead to a rash of criminal activity among those who read the anti-free will passage. Our moral revulsion at killing and hurting others is likely too strong to be dismantled by reflections about determinism. It might well turn out that other kinds of immoral behavior, like cheating in school, would be affected by the rejection of free will, however.

Is the Effect Permanent?

Another question is how long-lived the effect is. The Vohs and Schooler study suggests that immediately after people are made skeptical of free will, they cheat more. But what would happen if those people were brought back to the lab two weeks later? We might find that they would continue to be skeptical of free will but they would no longer cheat more.sciam.com

Searching for Bigfoot group to sue Georgia hoaxers
By CHRISTIAN BOONE, KATHY JEFCOATS
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
They claim their hoax was not for profit, but Atlanta residents Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer received $50,000 from a California Bigfoot tracker who now plans to sue to get the money back.

The two Georgia men’s tale of having found a Bigfoot carcass in the North Georgia woods really started to stink when California Bigfoot enthusiasts finally examined the body and found it was just a costume.

“There will be legal action” said Catherine Ortez, who works for Searching for Bigfoot, Inc. in in Menlo Park, Calif. The organization paid for rights to the men’s story and their find. “If this was a joke, it was very methodical and thought-out,” she said.

The Searching site was founded by Tom Biscardi, who authenticated and promoted the alleged Georgia Sasquatch. Biscardi, who did not return calls requesting comment, has his own credibility issues, according to a police officer in a nearby jurisdiction.

“He was involved in a similar hoax a few years back,” said Agent Dan Ryan with the Palo Alto (Calif.) Police Department.

In an interview with WSB-TV Wednesday night, Whitton and Dyer’s attorney, Steve Lister, blamed Biscardi for blowing his clients’ joke out of proportion.

“It started off as some YouTube videos and a Web site,” said Whitton, “We’re all about having fun.”

Whitton, 28, a Clayton County police officer for six years, was fired Tuesday after news of the hoax spread. Dyer, 31, is a former Clayton County corrections officer.

Though, according to their site, the pair are not averse to making money off their amusement. For $500, you can join them for a Bigfoot expedition. They also sell Sasquatch-related T-shirts and caps.

Repeated attempts to reach both men were unsuccessful, and Lister did not return calls seeking comment.

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/metro/clayton/stories/2008/08/20/bigfoot_hoax_lawsuit.html

Scientists Create Blood From Stem Cells

By Brandon Keim

Source: Wired Science

Scientists have used embryonic stem cells to generate blood — a feat that could eventually lead to endless supplies of type O-negative blood, a rare blood type prized by doctors for its versatility.

“We literally generated whole tubes in the lab, from scratch,” said Robert Lanza, chief science officer at Advanced Cell Technologies.

People usually require blood transfusions that match their own blood type: A mismatch can be fatal. Type O-negative can be safely transferred into anyone, but is only possessed by about 7 percent of the population, leaving supplies perpetually short.

The new technique, devised by Lanza and colleagues at the Mayo Clinic and University of Illinois, is still preliminary. Its safety hasn’t yet been proved in animals, much less humans.

But because blood cells are short-lived and cannot divide, there’s reason to believe that stem cell-derived blood cells could pose fewer complications than other therapeutic stem cells, which can divide unpredictably.

“The beautiful thing is that you start with one line, expand them indefinitely and generate as many as you want,” said Lanza. “It’s a literally inexhaustible source of cells for therapy.”

Lanza’s team allowed a small culture of embryonic stem cells — naturally capable of becoming any other type of tissue in the body — to divide until it numbered a few billion cells. These they treated with a chemical cocktail that coaxed the cells into whatever type they wanted: A, B or O. If they’d started with a type O-negative line, said Lanza, they could just as easily have made that, too.

Tests showed the blood cells to be identical to each other, and able to carry oxygen as efficiently as their natural counterparts.

The Red Cross described the work, published today in Blood, as “pioneering.” However, they warned against premature celebration.

“At this stage, the work is very promising, but has not progressed to the stage where the cultured cells are fully equivalent” to natural cells, said the organization in a statement. “Much more work will yet be needed before this becomes a practical reality.”

The most pressing uncertainty is safety: Embryonic stem cells are sometimes unpredictable and can develop genetic mutations during chemical reprogramming, leading to future side effects.

Blood cells, however, don’t have any DNA — they lose their nuclei as they develop from stem cells — and don’t divide, instead being broken down by the body when their four-month life cycle ends. That, said Lanza, should reduce the possibility of complications.

“You don’t have to worry about anything lifelong,” he said. “They’ll be gone no matter what.”

The ethics are potentially problematic, as embryonic stem cells ultimately originate in an embryo that is destroyed during their harvest — a process that some religious conservatives equate with murder.

But Lanza said his technique could also work with stem cells produced by de-differentiation, a new and ethically trouble-free process during which adult cells regress into an embryonic state.

De-differentiated cells have a tendency to go cancerous — but because blood cells are DNA-free, said Lanza, they could be safe in this particular application.

If Lanza’s technique works, it will be a boon wherever blood transfusions are needed, but especially in places where type O-negative blood is not immediately available, such as emergency rooms and battlefields.

“There’s always a great demand for type O blood,” said Red Cross spokeswoman Molly Dalton. “It’s always a worry that we don’t have enough.”

Biological properties and enucleation of red blood cells from human embryonic stem cells [Blood]

Image: WikiMedia Commons

Correction: I originally stated that Lanza’s team made type O-negative blood; it was type O blood that they made — still versatile, but not quite the universal grail of type O-negative. However, Lanza said that the technique could just as easily make O-negative, provided one started with an O-negative stem cell line — something they did not possess (and does not appear to exist in any of the embryonic stem cell lines currently eligible for federal research funding.) “As soon as you get one line, it’s immortal,” he said.

My apologies for this mistake.

See Also:

• Emergency Type O Blood Shortage in Georgia
• Hacking the Hack of Stem Cell Reprogramming
• Bush Praises Skin to Stem Cell Breakthrough in State of the Union
• Too Soon to Give Up on Embryonic Stem Cells
• New Method for Controversy-Free Embryonic Stem Cells

WiSci 2.0: Brandon Keim’s Twitter and Del.icio.us feeds; Wired Science on Facebook.

Scientists Say We Can See Sound

By Robin Nixon, Special to LiveScience
Source: LiveScience

posted: 18 August 2008 08:57 am ET

Your brain’s visual system can be employed to hear, according to a study of monkeys. Scientists figure this might be one reason blind people develop keen hearing. Image credit: Dreamstime

Turning conventional neuroscience on its head, new research suggests the human visual system processes sound and helps us see.

Here’s the basics of what was Neuroscience 101: The auditory system records sound, while the visual system focuses, well, on the visuals, and never do they meet. Instead, a “higher cognitive” producer, like the brain’s superior colliculus, uses these separate inputs to create our cinematic experiences.

The textbook rewrite: The brain can, if it must, directly use sound to see and light to hear.

The study was published last week in the journal BMC Neuroscience.

Monkey hear, monkey see

Researchers trained monkeys to locate a light flashed on a screen. When the light was very bright, they easily found it; when it was dim, it took a long time. But if a dim light made a brief sound, the monkeys found it in no time – too quickly, in fact, than can be explained by the old theories.

Recordings from 49 neurons responsible for the earliest stages of visual processing, researchers found activation that mirrored the behavior. That is, when the sound was played, the neurons reacted as if there had been a stronger light, at a speed that can only be explained by a direct connection between the ear and eye brain regions, said researcher Ye Wang of the University of Texas in Houston.

The study presents the first evidence that a sensory cell can process an alternative sensation, said head researcher Pascal Barone of the Université Paul Sabatier in Toulouse, France, who discovered a contender for the anatomical connection in 2002.

Emergency broadcast

The discovery likely explains the tremendously quick reactions of most animals, including humans, to stimuli that cue multiple senses, such as a rustling tiger or a honking bus.

Especially in the corners of the visual field, where eyesight is poor, the ears take up the slack and stimulate the visual system, Barone said.

An extra benefit, Wang explained, is the early visual system’s spatial precision, something higher brain regions fudge in favor of prioritizing our central gaze. By sending sound inputs directly to our image processor, the auditory system can avoid playing telephone with time-sensitive information.

Extra-sensory power

The discovery is likely unrelated to the rare experience of synesthesia, a bizarre condition experienced by a few people who can feel, hear and taste colors. In synesthesia, for example, more complicated sensations combine at later stages of brain processing, so that just the mention of a color, a letter or a shape can automatically trigger the perception of a certain note.

What most excites Barone about the new findings is the potential for “cortical plasticity” in sensory areas.

For example, the blind, by definition, do not use the visual system to see. But they can, this research suggests, use it to hear. This may explain how blind people develop such advanced hearing skills and, similarly, why the deaf often possess superior sight, said Barone.

The primary visual system is also directly activated by touch – perhaps helping us slap that mosquito before it stings.

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STORY HIGHLIGHTS
North Georgia men say they’ve found a den of Bigfoot creatures
They say they’ll reveal details of one Bigfoot on Friday in California
The body of the furry half man-half ape is 7 feet, 7 inches tall, they say
Men won’t reveal Bigfoot den’s location because they don’t want others disturbed

(CNN) — A policeman and a former corrections officer say that on Friday they will unveil evidence of what they claim is their biggest find ever: the body of Bigfoot.

The thawed body of a creature reputed to be Bigfoot reportedly weighs more than 500 pounds.
1 of 2

Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer, a pair of Bigfoot-hunting hobbyists from north Georgia, say they found the creature’s body in a wooded area and spotted several similar creatures that were still alive.

The carcass of the furry half-man, half-ape is 7 feet, 7 inches tall and weighs more than 500 pounds, they say. However, the two are not disclosing the exact location of their discovery to protect the remaining creatures.

Tom Nelson, chairman of the biology department at North Georgia College and State University in Dahlonega, said he’s “pretty skeptical” the world will feast its eyes on a new species Friday.

“That would certainly rock mammalogy,” joked Nelson, who specializes in the study of mammals. “I see a research grant in my future.”

Whitton and Dyer plan to unveil what they say is DNA and photo evidence of the discovery in Palo Alto, California, in conjunction with a group called Searching for Bigfoot Inc.

A photograph on that group’s Web site shows what appears to be the body of a large, hairy creature with an ape-like face, stuffed into a large freezer.

According to a written release, the two announced the discovery on an Internet radio show, “Squatch Detective,” several weeks ago. iReport.com: Do you believe in Bigfoot?

“The only person we would allow to come down and verify the body was ‘the Real Bigfoot Hunter,’ Tom Biscardi,” Dyer said, referring to Searching for Bigfoot’s CEO, who has been looking for the elusive, legendary creature in the United States and Canada since 1971.

Whitton is a Georgia police officer who is on administrative leave after being shot in the wrist during a pursuit. Dyer is a former prison guard.

DNA tests on the body have begun, said the statement, and “extensive scientific studies” will be done on the body by scientists, including a molecular biologist, an anthropologist and a paleontologist.

Nelson, the university professor, acknowledged that new species of animals have been discovered in recent decades and that, in science, “we always acknowledge the possibility of something new.”

But he said that even in north Georgia, home to the Blue Ridge Mountains and the foot of the Appalachian Trail, it stretches the imagination to think a family of 7-foot-tall creatures could have eluded hunters, hikers and creeping development until now.

“To the average person, these places just seem like extreme wilderness where you’ll find lions and tigers and bears,” he said. “The reality is that you’re never more than a mile from a road.”

The group says the animal is male, has reddish hair and “blackish-gray” eyes and human-like feet, hands and teeth.

According to Psychology Today and referencing the American Journal of Psychiatry, serotonin, the brain chemical in charge of moderating mood, metabolism, and sexuality, has been linked to spiritual experiences. Psychology Today reports:

A team of Swedish researchers has found that the presence of a receptor that regulates general serotonin activity in the brain correlates with people’s capacity for transcendence, the ability to apprehend phenomena that cannot be explained objectively. Scientists have long suspected that serotonin influences spirituality because drugs known to alter serotonin such as LSD also induce mystical experiences. But now they have proof from brain scans linking the capacity for spirituality with a major biological element.

So what does this mean? Well, the researchers believe that it provides evidence that religiosity and spirituality are not defined necessarily or entirely by environmental or cultural factors, such as upbringing. Basically, those with a higher concentration of serotonin receptors will therefore most likely show a stronger inclination towards spiritual acceptance.

What do you think? Does this belittle the notion of spirituality or encourage it? Tell us your thoughts below.

Source: huffingtonpost.com