Science 2.0

You can always find bad news if you look for it.With the internet and social media we learn about every bad thing that happens throughout the entire world almost instantly. However the good news doesn't get shared so much. For instance how many of you are aware of the vast amount of work being done worldwide to restore eroded damaged landscapes (see below). How many people share them? Hardly anyone.

While working on my posts for the Debunking Doomsday blog, I come across a lot of good news that never gets into the mainstream media. Sharing some of them may help those of you who get depressed and scared by the journalist exaggerations and pessimism.

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Restless Legs Syndrome is a condition that causes an overwhelming urge to move the legs. Patients complain of unpleasant symptoms such as tingling, burning and painful cramping sensations in the leg and more than 80 people of people who report restless legs syndrome say they experience their legs jerking or twitching uncontrollably, usually at night.

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After California realized that their coastal counties not only led the country in vaccine denial for personal preference, they actually had more than the rest of the U.S. combined, the legislature passed a law eliminating exemptions for all but medical reasons. Sure enough, those same counties where rich white people believed vaccines cause autism suddenly had a surge in medical exemptions. Wealthy people found doctors willing to agree that their child needed a medical exemption even if they were not immune compromised.

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Palaeontologists have discovered the world's largest parrot, standing up to 1m tall with a massive beak able to crack most food sources, and given it the name Heracles inexpectatus to reflect its Herculean myth-like size and strength and the unexpected nature of the discovery.

Being a giant in a country like New Zealand, well known for giant birds, is common. Moa dominated avifaunas but giant geese and adzebills shared the forest floor, while a giant eagle ruled the skies. But a giant extinct parrot? That is special. 

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Mammals living in diverse types of environments, from ocean swimmers to mountain dwellers, have a diverse variety of protective skins adapted to the elements and now one of the largest comparative genomic studies to help determine the key molecular and evolutionary origins of mammalian adaptations seen in skin proteins found which genes, among the dozens of mammalian keratin genes, are required for living on land or in the sea.

The products of these keratin genes assemble to form the girders of the cytoskeleton in skin cells, called keratinocytes, that maintain a tight barrier between the body and the outside world.

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With two recent mass homicides, one by someone who endorsed "white supremacist" views and one that supported "Antifa" violence, the search is on for commonality between two people in opposition to each other in many ways. One commonality is skin color but there is no biological hypothesis for how melanin might increase violence. There certainly are not a lot of women doing these shootings so the chromosome correlation is one of the questions that needs to be asked.

However, a history of mental illness is common in almost all cases of mass violence. 

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In a small pilot study consume who consumed a natural dietary supplement called nicotinomide riboside (NR) daily showed signs of mimicking caloric restriction, which in mice has been linked to health benefits.

Caloric restriction is a starvation diet. When lower level organisms such as fruit flies, roundworms, rodents are raised on such a diet from birth, slashing of caloric intake by about a third has health benefits and, in some cases, extended lifespan. No humans have done that, it would be a human rights violation to wean a baby on a starvation diet, and claims about benefits in adults who took it up have too many confounders to be anything more than anecdotes. 

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Though the pancreas is an organ with little exposure to sex hormones, one form of pancreatic cancer affects specifically women, often young.

How is this possible, even though the pancreas ? This pancreatic cancer, known as "mucinous cyst", has strange similarities with another mucinous cancer, affecting the ovaries.

A new paper has a plausible answer. Both tumors originate from embryonic germ cells. While still undifferentiated, these cells migrate to the reproductive organs. On their way, some can mistakenly stop in other organs, bringing a risk of tumor that may occur 30 years later. 

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In developed countries, air quality is now great. So great that true smog (PM10 - particulate matter 10 microns in diameter) is basically going extinct in countries like America so epidemiologists and demographers have taken to promoting concern about particles so small they can only be detected with an electron microscope (such as PM2.5). 

While claims of increased mortality due to PM2.5 have fallen flat, asthma still exists and it is well-known that asthmatics have shorter lifespans.(1) A new paper speculates that as many as 170 cases of asthma per 100,000 kids each year could be caused by traffic pollution, and specifically Nitrogen dioxide (NO2), which is really common at trace levels everywhere.

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Oxidative stress plays a major role in the pathogenesis of both types of diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular diseases including hypertension. The low levels of antioxidants accompanied by raised levels of markers of free radical damage play a major role in delaying wound healing.

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Why do people cheat?

When we hear that a poor person scammed others out of money, we may attribute this behavior to their poverty, rationalizing that the person violated ethics and the law because they needed the money.

But the rich and powerful also cheat: falsifying loan applications, evading taxes, and running Ponzi schemes that defraud investors of millions.

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With the greenland ice melt in the news, what can we do to adapt to a rising sea level, and how much will it actually be? First, the melting this summer was nothing unexpected. Last year Greenland had so much snow in 2017–8 that it actually gained ice rather than lost ice. So, now we have a warmer summer and it loses more than usual - not a big deal. This of course is the northern hemisphere summer which is why this news is about Greenland rather than Western Antarctica. Mark Serreze, Director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, interviewed by Discovery blog put it like this: If you look at temperature records for the Arctic, what you see is natural climate variability superposed upon the general warming trend.

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Short summary. The 0.5 mm sea level rise due to ice melting in July is dramatic but you need to compare it with the rest of the year. July is usually the top month for ice loss. In the winter the Greenland ice sheet gains ice through snowfall, so you need to look at the balance between losses and gains.

Also you need to compare it with previous years. It’s actually not quite enough of a melt so far to beat the 2012 record. The Arctic sea ice minimum this year is also not expected to be as low as the 2012 minimum. .

This is nothing to be scared of. Just an unsurprising increased melt, after a previous year when there was so much snow that Greenland actually gained ice due to heavy winter snowfall in 2017–8

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Around the world thousands of people are on organ donor waiting lists. While some of those people will receive the organ transplants they need in time, the sad reality is that many will die waiting. But controversial new research may provide a way to address this crisis.

Japan has recently overturned its ban on the creation of human-animal hybrids, or “chimeras”, and approved a request by researchers from the University of Tokyo to create a human-mouse hybrid.

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Ever wonder why the slow moving sloth has a slightly greenish hue? Ever consider the sloth at all? Well, perhaps not. Location, location, location, is the mantra for many of us in our macro world, but it is also true for the small world of algae.

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Most membranes that are used to distill fresh water from salty are made of polymers, which are derived from fossil fuels. 

There is a reason that fossil fuels have stuck around for so long. No longer do they have terrific energy density in the form of gasoline but they make up many useful products. But many of those products can be difficult to recycle.

A new wood membrane takes a page out of the book of trees instead. In a limited sense, the intricate system of water circulating in a tree can filter it and a team of researchers have figured out how to use a thin slice of wood as a membrane through which water vapor can evaporate, leaving behind salt or other contaminants.

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Whether you realize it or not, there’s a good chance that you are being exposed to bisphenol F (BPF). There’s even a fair chance that you are highly exposed. If so, should you be concerned and what should you do about it?

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Gorilla teeth are large and high crested when compared to other great apes, believed to an adaptation to them spending a large amount of time chewing tough fibrous plant material - they have a vegetarian diet consisting almost exclusively of leafy vegetation and fruit.

The high crests on their molar teeth are at risk of damage if they eat hard objects, such as nuts encased in a woody shell, but they do it anyway. And an anthropology paper seems surprised a primate might engage in behavior that is not a force of evolution. 

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For most aging people, their 90s are the most perilous time. But if you live to be 105, your chances of living to 110 basically level out after declining when people reach their 90s.

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