Researchers at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences in Toronto have just completed an analysis of hospital visits in Ontario, showing that, compared to people born under other astrological signs, Virgos have an increased risk of vomiting during pregnancy, Pisces have an increased risk of heart failure, and Libras have an increased risk of fracturing their pelvises.
The large amount of data - from 10,000,000 Ontario residents - showed that each of the 12 astrological signs had at least two medical disorders associated with them, thus placing people born under a given sign at increased risk compared to those born under different signs.
NEW YORK - Researchers are trying to find ways to regrow fingers - and someday, even limbs - with tricks that sound like magic spells from a Harry Potter novel.
There's the guy who sliced off a fingertip but grew it back after he treated the wound with an extract of pig bladder. And the scientists who grow extra arms on salamanders. And the laboratory mice with the eerie ability to heal themselves.
Contrary to conventional thought dating back to Freud, victims of traumatic events do not subconsciously repress the memories but rather recall them with a clarity reminiscent of reality.
That startling finding comes from a five-year-study conducted by researchers at Dalhousie University in Halifax. The same study, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) concludes that people have much more difficulty recalling pleasant memories than they do unpleasant.
A giant asteroid named Apophis could be on a trajectory to careen into Earth in 2036. That was the prediction NASA scientists made in 2004, suggesting a 1 in 37 chance that the space rock would hit our planet.
The danger has since receded - the revised likelihood that Apophis will hit Earth is 1 in 45,000. But the close call has galvanized efforts among scientists to predict and hopefully prevent a potentially apocalyptic impact.
A sharp freeze could have dealt the killer blow that finished off our evolutionary cousins the Neanderthals, according to a new study.
The ancient humans are thought to have died out in most parts of Europe by about 35,000 years ago.
And now new data from their last known refuge in southern Iberia indicates the final population was probably beaten by a cold spell some 24,000 years ago.
People are born with "kinship detectors" that help us stay away from romantic entanglements with our siblings that could lead to evolutionary disaster, a new study suggests.
But the system is far from fail-safe, the scientists found.
Comment: What is interesting is that the above article is accompanied by a sidebar that says the following:
On a "moral-wrongness" scale of 19 crimes, people ranked brother-sister sex as being below child molestation but above other, relatively minor offenses such as drug dealing and smoking marijuana. The ranked results, from most to least immoral, are below:
1. Molesting a child
2. Rape
3. A man killing his wife
4. A woman killing her husband
5. Consensual father-daughter sex
6. Consensual mother-son sex
7. Father-daughter marriage
8. Mother-son marriage
9. Consensual brother-sister sex
10. Brother-sister marriage
11. Assault with a weapon
12. Robbing a bank
13. Selling cocaine
14. Breaking and entering
15. Embezzlement
16. Smuggling illegal aliens into the country
17. Public drunkenness
18. Speeding on the highway
19. Smoking marijuana
It is a strange society we live in that ranks essentially victimless crimes above harm to others. And don't get the wrong idea; no one is suggesting that incest is even remotely a good thing. But let's get a perspective here!
The Earth's hum comes from the bottom of the sea and not from turbulence in the atmosphere, says a US researcher, backing a novel theory put forward in 2004.
The hum is a low rumble continually present in the ground even when there are no earthquakes happening, but is detectable only by very sensitive seismometers. Its frequency is near 10 millihertz, below the range of human hearing.
Janet Rettig Emanuel
EurekAlertFri, 16 Feb 2007 10:05 UTC
While human changes to the environment cause conservation biologists to worry about species extinction, Yale biologists are reversing the logic by trying to trap viruses in habitats that force their extinction, according to a report in Ecology Letters.
To avoid going extinct a population must not only survive, but also reproduce. Paul Turner, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale, tested the practicality of luring a virus population into the wrong cells within the human body, thus preventing virus reproduction and alleviating disease.
"Ecological traps for viruses might arise naturally, or could be engineered by adding viral binding sites to cells that disallow virus reproduction," said senior author Turner. "We proved the concept using a non-human virus, and variants of the bacteria cells it infects."
Exquisite colour images of the Martian surface give a tantalising glimpse into the Red Planet's watery past.
Shots of the deep valley Candor Chasma show light coloured areas of rock where water could have flowed.
These "haloes" surround fractures in the Martian bedrock which provide a promising target in the search for evidence of past life on the planet.
A geophysicist in the US has new evidence that the oceans are responsible for the Earth's strange low-frequency hum. Spahr Webb of Columbia University says that low frequency "infragravity" ocean waves interact with one another to make the ocean floor vibrate at a specific set of frequencies between 1-10 mHz. Webb says that his theory is supported by seismic and ocean data, which show correlations between hum and wave activity.
Over the past decade geophysicists have become increasingly aware that the Earth is vibrating at a series of well-defined "infrasonic" frequencies between about 1-10 mHz. The origins of this hum have been the subject of heated debate. Earthquakes were an obvious candidate, but they were ruled out along with interactions between turbulence in the atmosphere and the Earth's surface.
Comment: What is interesting is that the above article is accompanied by a sidebar that says the following: It is a strange society we live in that ranks essentially victimless crimes above harm to others. And don't get the wrong idea; no one is suggesting that incest is even remotely a good thing. But let's get a perspective here!