Tag: science

science

More Green Versus Brown News

Posted on

For all those potheads out there, WGTCTIP2 has some good news for you. To follow up on a post from a few months back about the long term effects of smoking marijuana, according to the findings of a new study at the University of California Los Angeles “that surprised even the researchers,” marijuana smoking does not increase a person’s risk of developing lung cancer. Smoking cigarettes however definitely does, so if you are currently smoking and you must smoke something, switch from the brown stuff to the green stuff immediately. Not only will your lungs be healthier, but your appetite will improve and marginally funny movies and television will become magically more amusing.
After the jump, feel free to read the Reuters report.
Via Phyl
Study finds no marijuana link to lung cancer
By Deena Beasley Tue May 23, 9:40 PM ET
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Marijuana smoking does not increase a person’s risk of developing lung cancer, according to the findings of a new study at the University of California Los Angeles that surprised even the researchers.
They had expected to find that a history of heavy marijuana use, like cigarette smoking, would increase the risk of cancer.
Instead, the study, which compared the lifestyles of 611 Los Angeles County lung cancer patients and 601 patients with head and neck cancers with those of 1,040 people without cancer, found no elevated cancer risk for even the heaviest pot smokers. It did find a 20-fold increased risk of lung cancer in people who smoked two or more packs of cigarettes a day.
The study results were presented in San Diego on Tuesday at a meeting of the American Thoracic Society.
The study was confined to people under age 60 since baby boomers were the most likely age group to have long-term exposure to marijuana, said Dr. Donald Tashkin, senior researcher and professor at the UCLA School of Medicine.
The results should not be taken as a blank check to smoke pot, which has been associated with problems like cognitive impairment and chronic bronchitis, said Dr. John Hansen-Flaschen, chief of pulmonary and critical care at the University of Pennsylvania Health System in Philadelphia. He was not involved in the study.
Previous studies showed marijuana tar contained about 50 percent more of the chemicals linked to lung cancer, compared with tobacco tar, Tashkin said. In addition, smoking a marijuana joint deposits four times more tar in the lungs than smoking an equivalent amount of tobacco.
“Marijuana is packed more loosely than tobacco, so there’s less filtration through the rod of the cigarette, so more particles will be inhaled,” Tashkin said in a statement. “And marijuana smokers typically smoke differently than tobacco smokers — they hold their breath about four times longer, allowing more time for extra fine particles to deposit in the lung.”
He theorized that tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, a chemical in marijuana smoke that produces its psychotropic effect, may encourage aging, damaged cells to die off before they become cancerous.
Hansen-Flaschen also cautioned a cancer-marijuana link could emerge as baby boomers age and there may be smaller population groups, based on genetics or other factors, still at risk for marijuana-related cancers.

movies

An Inconvient Truth

Posted on

An Inconvient Truth opens this coming Friday, 5/26 and I for one cannot wait to see it, even though it may very well be “the most terrifying film you will ever see” as its producers claim. Wired and other media outlets have written alot lately about how Al Gore, freed from politics, is focusing all of his energies on facing the looming environmental disaster the globe is facing (he is the narrator of this documentary). The movie is supposed to be awe-inspiring, damning, scary, eye opening and whole bunch of other adjectives. I have pledged to not only see this movie (the site has a counter which tracks pledges) but to bring 3 others with me. In a sense, environmentalists are treating this the same way that Christians treated “The Passion of the Christ” and I for one think that its a good move as this movie’s message needs to be spread to as many people as possible.
Check out the trailer below and please, for our planet’s sake and for the sake of our children, grand children and all future generations, go and see this film. In 5 years, Kilimanjaro will no longer have an snow and Hemingway’s masterpiece becomes a true anachronism. He might as well called it “Hanging with the Dodo.” Truly Scary shit.

science

Little Mermaid Update

Posted on

Milagros Cerron, Peru’s very own little mermaid, turned 2 and to that I say “mazel tov!”. She is basically doing fine – all things considered – and literally is a walking miracle (milagros means miracle in spanish and she has taken her first steps).

vert.milagros.ap.jpg

I know a number of readers, especially for some reason teenage girls in the UK, have been interested in tracking her progress and have left well wishes on WGTCTIP2. After the jump, feel free to read the CNN article about her.
Via Phyl
Peru’s ‘Little Mermaid’ making strides at 2: Doctor says girl should be able to walk on her own by year’s end
LIMA, Peru (AP) — Smiling, blowing kisses and taking small assisted steps, Peru’s “miracle baby” celebrated her second birthday Thursday, nearly a year after doctors successfully performed risky surgery to separate her fused legs.
Milagros Cerron, whose name means “miracles” in Spanish, was born with a rare congenital defect known as sirenomelia, or “mermaid syndrome.”
The condition is almost always fatal, but Milagros has not only survived but also grown into an alert, vivacious little girl who can pull herself from a seated to a standing position.
“We have managed to develop the muscles in the inferior extremities,” said Dr. Luis Rubio, head of a team of surgeons who operated on her in June. “The girl can now stand by herself and has started taking her first steps.”
He predicted she would be able to walk on her own by the end of the year.
To demonstrate her progress, Rubio held the child’s hands as she took small, shuffling strides during the party in the public hospital where her surgery took place.
He said that on May 25, Milagros will undergo another operation to separate a remaining 2 inches (5 centimeters) of fused tissue just below the child’s groin.
“That will permit the child to perfectly take a long step,” he said.
She will need 10 more years of reconstructive surgeries and rehabilitation, he said.
Milagros’ hips are narrow and small, and she has a deformed left kidney and a small right one located low in her body. In addition, her digestive and urinary tracts and her genitals share a single tube.
Dressed in a hot-pink shirt and blue jeans, Milagros enthusiastically blew out candles on a birthday cake shaped like the Walt Disney character “Little Mermaid,” the nickname she is known by in Peru.
Born with her legs fused to the ankles and her feet splayed, she resembled one of the mythical sea creatures before her operation.
Rubio said Tiffany Yorks, a 17-year-old American girl, was the only other person known to have undergone a successful surgery to correct the rare congenital defect, which is almost always fatal within days of birth.
Milagros is small for her age, about the size of a 1-year-old, and all of her time spent with physicians has taken a toll.
A team of speech specialists are now working with her to assure her linguistic skills develop normally, Rubio said.
“It is normal that a child says ‘mama’ at the beginning, or ‘papa,’ but the girl instead of saying ‘mama’ was saying ‘doctor.’ Her first word was ‘doctor,’ ” Rubio told The Associated Press.
But Milagros’ mother did not appear concerned with the detail.
“She does everything. She is a normal girl in her activities,” said Sara Arauco, 21, who gave birth to Milagros in a hospital in Peru’s Andes mountains. “The only thing is the small problem with her legs, and that’s nothing because everything else is normal. She knows more than 50 words.”

space

Throwing Out A Spacesuit

Posted on

The astronauts at the ISS are stuffing an old spacesuit with discarded clothes and a radio transmitter and will then toss it out the door into space. The transmitter will send recorded messages in six languages to amateur radio operators for several days before eventually re-entering Earth’s atmosphere and burning up. The project, called SuitSat-1, was the brainchild of a Russian ham radio operator.
Cool.
Via Phyl

ramblings

Go Before They Are Gone

Posted on

I do not make a habit of reading USA Today. In fact, I never read it unless I’m on vacation and have no other option. That being said, I could not resist clicking on a banner for USAToday.com that was advertising the top Travel stories of this past week. The story that really called out to me was “Vanishing Treasures: 5 places to see before they are gone”. According to this paper, here are the top 5 cultural treasures that are in danger of going bye-bye:

  1. The snows of Kilimanjaro
  2. Polar bears on Hudson Bay
  3. Ancient Egyptian archaeological sites
  4. Gullah/Geechee culture
  5. Monarch butterflies’ annual migration

I’ll have to check my calendar but odds are I’m not seeing any of these in ’06. Hopefully they will still be around in ’07…

tech

The GeigerPod

Posted on

This GeigerPod, an iPod inside of a Geiger counter, is simply fantastic. I love when people hack one device and make another one out of it, like when people turned their XBox’s into Linux machines or when Chris made a rechargable iPod battery out of an Altoids tin. Check out the entire Flikr set of the retrofitted counter. I say well done JavaMoose!

Via Slashdot

politics

Does Dubya Have Pre-senile Dementia?

Posted on

I have not listened to a George Bush speech, even the State of the Union address, for a long time now for 2 reasons. The first is that he uses Orwellian double speak (passing legislation called the “Clear Skies Initiative” that allows for more pollution) which really makes me distrust most of what he says. This is especially true after how he promised billions to NYC after 9/11 which never showed up, after he presented info about Iraq which was flat out wrong – my list is really long so I’ll just stop there. The second is that he more times than not sounds like a total idiot. The fact that someone sounding so stupid could have gotten so far upsets me to no end. I take great pride is sounding like I know what I’m talking about, even when I don’t have a clue. It turns out that there may be a scientific explanation to my second reason.

Dr. Joseph M. Price wrote in a letter to the editor printed in the October 2004 issue of The Atlantic that “slowly developing cognitive deficits as demonstrated so clearly by the President can represent only one diagnosis and that is pre-senile dementia.” One of the symptoms is “a striking decline in his sentence-by-sentence speaking skills.” His letter was in response to James Fallows “When George Meets John” article in the July/August 2004.

This Bush Pre-senile Dementia video intercuts footage from 10 years ago with recent footage. As the site that hosts the video says, you’ll see the difference is dramatic, disturbing and obvious.
Yes, pre-senile dementia looks like penis dementia if read really fast. Sort of like how Scot Run, PA always looks like Scrotum, PA when you whiz by the I-80 highway sign going 75 mph. That doesn’t change the fact that it exists and tha our President probably suffers from it. Its nice to know that once Bush sounded smart but now he’s getting closer to Mohammed Ali land. I would much rather have an intelligent chap, even someone I disagree with, representing me than Dubya, King of the Malaprops.

Via Neu

politics

ID Denied

Posted on

A Pennsylvania judge has prevented a public school district from teaching Intelligent Design in biology classes. U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III wrote, “Our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.” All I can say is “Thank the lord.”

That reminds me – I need to hit up the Darwin exhibit at the AMNH. It closes at the end of May so I have some time.

After the jump, read the full article.

December 20, 2005

Judge Bars ‘Intelligent Design’ From Pa. Classes

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

HARRISBURG, Pa. — “Intelligent design” cannot be mentioned in biology classes in a Pennsylvania public school district, a federal judge said Tuesday, ruling in one of the biggest courtroom clashes on evolution since the 1925 Scopes trial.

Dover Area School Board members violated the Constitution when they ordered that its biology curriculum must include the notion that life on Earth was produced by an unidentified intelligent cause, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III said. Several members repeatedly lied to cover their motives even while professing religious beliefs, he said.

The school board policy, adopted in October 2004, was believed to have been the first of its kind in the nation.

“The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy,” Jones wrote.

The board’s attorneys had said members were seeking to improve science education by exposing students to alternatives to Charles Darwin’s theory that evolution develops through natural selection. Intelligent-design proponents argue that the theory cannot fully explain the existence of complex life forms.

The plaintiffs challenging the policy argued that intelligent design amounts to a secular repackaging of creationism, which the courts have already ruled cannot be taught in public schools. The judge agreed.
“We find that the secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to a pretext for the Board’s real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom,” he wrote in his 139-page opinion.

The Dover policy required students to hear a statement about intelligent design before ninth-grade biology lessons on evolution. The statement said Charles Darwin’s theory is “not a fact” and has inexplicable “gaps.” It refers students to an intelligent-design textbook, “Of Pandas and People,” for more information.

Jones wrote that he wasn’t saying the intelligent design concept shouldn’t be studied and discussed, saying its advocates “have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors.”
But, he wrote, “our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.”

The controversy divided the community and galvanized voters to oust eight incumbent school board members who supported the policy in the Nov. 8 school board election.

Said the judge: “It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.”

The board members were replaced by a slate of eight opponents who pledged to remove intelligent design from the science curriculum.

Eric Rothschild, the lead attorney for the families who challenged the policy, called the ruling “a real vindication for the parents who had the courage to stand up and say there was something wrong in their school district.”

Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Mich., which represented the school board, did not immediately return a telephone message seeking comment.

The dispute is the latest chapter in a long-running debate over the teaching of evolution dating back to the famous 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, in which Tennessee biology teacher John T. Scopes was fined $100 for violating a state law that forbade teaching evolution. The Tennessee Supreme Court reversed his conviction on a technicality, and the law was repealed in 1967.

Jones heard arguments in the fall during a six-week trial in which expert witnesses for each side debated intelligent design’s scientific merits. Other witnesses, including current and former school board members, disagreed over whether creationism was discussed in board meetings months before the curriculum change was adopted.

The case is among at least a handful that have focused new attention on the teaching of evolution in the nation’s schools.

Earlier this month, a federal appeals court in Georgia heard arguments over whether evolution disclaimer stickers placed in a school system’s biology textbooks were unconstitutional. A federal judge in January ordered Cobb County school officials to immediately remove the stickers, which called evolution a theory, not a fact.

In November, state education officials in Kansas adopted new classroom science standards that call the theory of evolution into question.

science

Longer Needles Needed For Fatter Butts

Posted on

I like to put my own spin on whatever I post and create my own titles instead of simply cutting and pasting an article’s existing title. That being said, the headline to a science article about how longer needles are needed for fatter butts was so perfect that it basically forced me to reuse it. It seems that fat asses are causing many drug injections to miss their mark as regular length needles are not getting to the buttock muscle. Fascinating.
Via Neu

ramblings

Green Versus Brown

Posted on

Although both marijuana and tobacco smoke are packed with cancer-causing chemicals, other qualities of marijuana seem to keep it from promoting lung cancer, according to a new report. In the latest issue of Harm Reduction Journal, Dr. Robert Melamede of the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs says that the difference rests in the often opposing actions of the nicotine in tobacco and the active ingredient, THC, in marijuana.

After the jump, read the entire article which I grabbed in case it goes bye-bye. I know a few people who are going to be very excited to hear about this bit o’ news.

Via Phyll

Smoking pot not a major cancer risk: report

Reuters Health

October 26, 2005 09:04:12 AM PST

Although both marijuana and tobacco smoke are packed with cancer-causing chemicals, other qualities of marijuana seem to keep it from promoting lung cancer, according to a new report.

The difference rests in the often opposing actions of the nicotine in tobacco and the active ingredient, THC, in marijuana, says Dr. Robert Melamede of the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs.
He reviewed the scientific evidence supporting this contention in a recent issue of Harm Reduction Journal.

Whereas nicotine has several effects that promote lung and other types of cancer, THC acts in ways that counter the cancer-causing chemicals in marijuana smoke, Melamede explained in an interview with Reuters Health.

“THC turns down the carcinogenic potential,” he said.

For example, lab research indicates that nicotine activates a body enzyme that converts certain chemicals in both tobacco and marijuana smoke into cancer-promoting form. In contrast, studies in mice suggest that THC blocks this enzyme activity.

Another key difference, Melamede said, is in the immune system effects of tobacco and marijuana. Smoke sends irritants into the respiratory system that trigger an immune-regulated inflammatory response, which involves the generation of potentially cell-damaging substances called free radicals. These particles are believed to contribute to a range of diseases, including cancer.

But cannabinoids — both those found in marijuana and the versions found naturally in the body — have been shown to dial down this inflammatory response, Melamede explained.

Another difference between tobacco and marijuana smoking, he said, has to do with cells that line the respiratory tract. While these cells have receptors that act as docks for nicotine, similar receptors for THC and other cannabinoids have not been found.

Nicotine, Melamede said, appears to keep these cells from committing “suicide” when they are genetically damaged, by smoking, for instance. When such cells do not kill themselves off, they are free to progress into tumors.

THC, however, does not appear to act this way in the respiratory tract — though, in the brain, where there are cannabinoid receptors, it may have the beneficial effect of protecting cells from death when they are damaged from an injury or stroke, according to Melamede.

All of this, he said, fits in with population studies that have failed to link marijuana smoking with a higher risk of lung cancer — though there is evidence that pot users have more respiratory problems, such as chronic cough and frequent respiratory infections.

If marijuana does not promote lung cancer, that could factor into the ongoing debate over so-called medical marijuana. Melamede said he believes “marijuana has loads of medicinal value,” for everything from multiple sclerosis, to the chronic pain of arthritis, to nausea caused by cancer treatment.

U.S. government officials, however, maintain that the evidence for medical marijuana is not there. Ten states allow people to use marijuana with a doctor’s prescription, but the Supreme Court has ruled that federal law trumps state law.

SOURCE: Harm Reduction Journal, October 18, 2005.