UK company designs injectable bone

A company in the UK, named RegenTec, has developed a new “injectable bone” that can quickly seal bone fractures and aid in quick healing. They inject the white “proprietary” substance into the break site, and the body’s temperature causes the substance to solidify into a “living bone”-like material.

Injectable Bone isn’t the only bone glue out there. Others exist, although they have some problems. In some cases they harden in a solid mass or raise body temperature at the injection site enough to damage nearby tissue.

Injectable Bone could actually encourage bone growth, when bone-producing cells and growth-encouraging drugs are mixed in with the powder mixture. The cells fill up the holes with natural bone as the Injectable Bone degrades into lactic acid, a compound produced naturally by the body.

Full story from Discovery News

Human babies are born to interact with numbers

Studies on infants have shown that human children seem to have an innate connection with numbers. Scientists showing children varying objects noted a larger change in interest when showing children varying numbers of objects rather than varying types of objects.

Brian Butterworth, a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London, has spent much of his career teasing out which bits of humans’ understanding of numbers are innate—and which learnt, and how. He thinks people are born with brain circuits that are dedicated to recognising and understanding the number of items in small collections. On this foundation an entire “number sense” is built, as children realise that bigger and bigger numbers can be reached by adding “one more” and learn by experience how these bigger numbers behave.

Full story from the Economist

Delicious genetically altered corn disturbs mouse immune systems

The amount of GM corn that the mice ingested was almost their entire diet for 30-90 days, but it is still an important reminder that gene modification in living things is a tricky road. More attention needs to be given to sustainibility before we jump straight to remaking corn.

The researchers said that the study’s findings underscore the importance of considering the gut and peripheral immune response to GM crop ingestion as well as the age of the consumer when evaluating GM crop safety.

A press release issued by the Institute of Science in Society stated, “It is clear that genetic modification is inherently hazardous, as it invariably results in unpredictable and uncontrollable changes in the genome and the epigenome (pattern of gene expression) that impact on safety.”

Original Story | via extinguish

Of A Disappearing Nature

It seems that on the East Coast, some trees are not bearing any acorns. Naturalists are baffled with the “zero production” occurring in oaks in varying regions. The complete lack of acorns, typicallly used by squirrels as a food source, is causing the scientists in the area to scratch their heads.

The absence of acorns could have something to do with the weather, Simmons thought. But he hoped it wasn’t a climatic event. “Let’s hope it’s not something ghastly going on with the natural world.“ [note: emphasis added]
…
“Once I started paying attention, I couldn’t find any acorns anywhere. Not from white oaks, red oaks or black oaks, and this was supposed to be their big year,” said Greg Zell, a naturalist at Long Branch Nature Center in Arlington. “We’re talking zero. Not a single acorn. It’s really bizarre.”

This on the tail of reports from earlier this year of bats around the world mysteriously dying in massive quantities. Radical changes in the environment are apparently causing nature to adapt rapidly. Mysterious deaths among species seem to increasing, and even bees are dropping off the face of the planet. It seems that only the jellyfish are multiplying, but at frightening speed; jellyfish have been overrunning the other ocean life in certain areas of the world, threatening entire populations of animals and wiping out fisheries. I wonder if the Earth has tired of us all.

Full story from the New York Times | Props to Rigorous Intuition for Jellyfish links

Marketing Magician and Author Ben Mack Speaks at Esozone

Marketing magician Ben Mack recently gave a speech titled How to Produce an Elephant at fringe-science/occult event Esozone in Portland, OR. Ben Mack is the author of the conciousness thriller Poker Without Cards. He also offers the book for free under a CC-license with the title I Am The Virus.

His speech was on marketing, memetics, and magic. MMM! Watch closely…he will kill a woman who is Twittering during the event and make an elephant appear in the tiny room.

Thanks for recording and posting the footage, Maybe Meme | Ben Mack Black Magic

Cannabis Could Prevent Memory Loss and Alzheimer's

More news  on the medical cannabis front: recent studies have shown cannabis to prevent Alzheimer’s and prevent improve memory retention in small doses.

When given a compound similar to THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, rat brains displayed reduced levels of inflammation associated with Alzheimer’s disease. The drug also stimulated the production of proteins associated with memory formation and brain cell growth.
…
Marchalant and fellow OSU psychologist Gary Wenk previously showed that marijuana can improve memory formation in rats. The latest research, presented at this week’s Society for Neuroscience annual meeting, provides a detailed look at THC’s effect on the brain.

via Technoccult | Wired story | The Daily Mail

Bizarre force acting on NASA space probes

Recent studies of data from space probes have shown that strange forces are at work in the aether. On 5 separate occasions, NASA recorded speed anomalies on space probe flybys.

The researchers looked at six deep-space probes – Galileo I and II to Jupiter, the NEAR mission to the asteroid Eros, the Rosetta probe to a comet, Cassini to Saturn, and the MESSENGER craft to Mercury. Each spacecraft flew past the our planet to either gain or lose orbital energy in their quests to reach their eventual targets.

In five of the six flybys, the scientists have confirmed anomalies.

“I am feeling both humble and perplexed by this,” said Anderson, who is now working as a retiree. “There is something very strange going on with spacecraft motions. We have no convincing explanation for either the Pioneer anomaly or the flyby anomaly.”

In the one probe the researchers did not confirm a noticeable anomaly with, MESSENGER, the spacecraft approached the Earth at about latitude 31 degrees north and receded from the Earth at about latitude 32 degrees south. “This near-perfect symmetry about the equator seemed to result in a very small velocity change, in contrast to the five other flybys,” Anderson explained – so small no anomaly could be confirmed.

via SOTT

Humans behave like sheep, ants – easily led packs of sheeple roam the lands

Recent studies by the University of Leeds has shown that people act like flocks of sheep or birds – allowing themselves to be led by a small percentage (5%) of individuals.

Results from a study at the University of Leeds show that it takes a minority of just five per cent to influence a crowd’s direction – and that the other 95 per cent follow without realising it.
…
Other experiments in the study used groups of different sizes, with different ratios of ‘informed individuals’. The research findings show that as the number of people in a crowd increases, the number of informed individuals decreases. In large crowds of 200 or more, five per cent of the group is enough to influence the direction in which it travels. The research also looked at different scenarios for the location of the ‘informed individuals’ to determine whether where they were located had a bearing on the time it took for the crowd to follow.

This is an interesting study – especially since just a few days earlier a study was released that showed that people are easily led by other individuals – even when they know a better way.

Even more striking, even when we are shown a faster route, we prefer to stick with the old one and tell others to take the long road too, a finding that could have lethal implications when it comes to evacuating a building or ship in an emergency.

“These results parallel similar findings in ants and fish, and show that very simple processes can underlie human behaviour” commented Dr Simon Reader of Utrecht University, who reports the findings today in the journal Biology Letters.

American College of Physicians push for rescheduling of Cannabis

Purple Kush from jimmyjoints

A large and respected association of physicians is calling on the federal government to ease its strict ban on marijuana as medicine and hasten research into the drug’s therapeutic uses. [...]In a 13-page position paper approved by the college’s governing board of regents and posted Thursday on the group’s website, the group calls on the government to drop marijuana from Schedule I, a classification it shares with illegal drugs such as heroin and LSD that are considered to have no medicinal value and a high likelihood of abuse. Link

The ACP is the largest medical-specialty organization with over 124,000 members. It’s very good to see an organization like this supporting the rescheduling of cannabis. The closer we get to accepting the truth of the matter – that cannabis is not harmful. The only harm imposed by smoking ‘reefer’ is the harm that the government causes by prohibiting US citizens from deciding what to ingest.

Even federal judge Francis Young ruled:

…Marijuana’s therapeutic ratio, like its LD-50, is impossible to quantify because it is so high.

In strict medical terms marijuana is far safer than many foods we commonly consume. For example, eating ten raw potatoes can result in a toxic response. By comparison, it is physically impossible to eat enough marijuana to induce death.

Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.

White House Rejects Cannabis Research and Promotes More Propaganda

The White House Drug Policy blog just released an article about recent medical research from the Medical Research Institute of New Zealand (MRINZ). The institute has just concluded a study where they found that one joint a day apparently causes more cancer than a pack of cigarettes a day.

The lung cancer study was conducted on 79 patients in New Zealand. The risk of the disease rose 8% for each year of smoking one joint a day, and 7% for each year of smoking a packet of cigarettes a day.

Researchers at the Medical Research Institute of New Zealand admitted it was a small study, but said nonetheless “it shows clearly that long-term cannabis smoking increases lung cancer risk”. (emphasis added)

The funny thing about it is that this is a direct contradiction to a larger, more through study conducted a few years ago.Dr. Donald Tashkin of UCLA and his research team concluded:

The new findings “were against our expectations,” said Donald Tashkin of the University of California at Los Angeles, a pulmonologist who has studied marijuana for 30 years.

“We hypothesized that there would be a positive association between marijuana use and lung cancer, and that the association would be more positive with heavier use,” he said. “What we found instead was no association at all, and even a suggestion of some protective effect.”

And this is coming from the largest case-control study ever done, involving over 2,000 people. Not only that, but in the original study, the difference in risk was 1%! Another thing I found very interesting was where the MRINZ gets its money from. Well, a quick check of their Project Grants page gives away some very interesting names.

AstraZeneca – major pharmacuetical company and makers of controversial drug, Seroquel
GlaxoSmithKline – major pharmacuetical company, makers of the very dangerous Paxil, and well-known industry bullies
Novartis – huge pharmacuetical company, makers of Ritalin and Trileptal, and previous owners of Gerber (?)

Yeah – so now this whole deal makes sense.

(via Drug WarRant)

Update: Found some more interesting details on this study. Turns out that it was even less important than I thought. The amount of people that they list in the MRINZ study is 79. But that was the entire group.

Cannabis smoking was not associated with a significantly increased risk of lung cancer [except for] those with the highest tertile of use.

The tertile group? 14 people and 4 controls. That’s insane – that’s not a study, that’s a flawed inference.