This is a repository for all cool scientific discussion and fascination. Scientific facts, theories, and overall cool scientific stuff that you'd like to share with others. Stuff that makes you smile and wonder at the amazing shit going on around us, that most people don't notice.
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Originally Posted by jjchieffan:
Wow! Proof of a megaflood. Imagine that. Their timeline is off by a few million years. But they're on the right track. Baby steps.
Stories of a giant, or even world-encompassing flood have been part of many mythologies for well over six thousand years. [Reply]
As if the name of the planet wasn't enough, scientists recently discovered Uranus is home to fart-smelling clouds.
University of Oxford researchers examining the planet's infrared light through the Gemini North telescope discovered clouds of hydrogen sulfide spreading into Uranus' upper atmosphere. That's a toxic gas that smells like rotten eggs or someone passing gas. [Reply]
Originally Posted by listopencil:
Stories of a giant, or even world-encompassing flood have been part of many mythologies for well over six thousand years.
So are stories about giants roaming the earth. [Reply]
NASA is teaming up with a company called SpaceWorks to create a sleeping pod that could get astronauts into deep space. How does it work?
One of the most exciting space sleep projects is currently being developed at a company called SpaceWorks Enterprises. They’ve been working with NASA to develop a stasis chamber they say could keep astronauts asleep for 2 weeks at a time, and possibly longer.
SpaceWorks suggests astronauts stack these short hibernation periods back to back, with a couple of days in between to walk around and stretch out. The crew can then rotate waking and sleeping shifts, and in doing so can pass the 300 some days it would take to get to the Red Planet.
Unlike what you’ve probably seen in movies, this design isn’t for an individual sleep pod, but a shared sleeping chamber. The chamber works by lowering a group of astronaut’s body temperatures to 32 degrees celsius, then it sedates them to suppress the body’s reactions to the cold. The low temperature would put their bodies into a mild hypothermia, slowing down your metabolic rate and preventing injury from lack of oxygen.
Aside from greatly reducing the necessary food and water for the mission, these stasis chambers could also have some other major benefits, like requiring a smaller area to be thoroughly protected from radiation. The researchers also want to equip the chambers with artificial gravity, which could prevent a lot of the negative health effects associated with long term space travel. [Reply]
Abstract
Objective. —To examine the effects of sugar on the behavior or cognition of children by using meta-analytic techniques on reported studies.
Data Sources. —Studies were identified through a literature search of the MEDLINE and PsychINFO databases and the authors' files using sugar, sucrose, and attention deficit disorder as the search terms.
Study Selection. —Studies were required to (1) intervene by having the subjects consume a known quantity of sugar; (2) use a placebo (artificial sweetener) condition; (3) blind the subjects, parents, and research staff to the conditions; and (4) report statistics that could be used to compute the dependent measures effect sizes.
Data Extraction. —Variables included publication year, study setting, subject type and number, gender, age, sugar and placebo type and dose, prior dietary condition, measurement construct, means and SDs for the sugar and placebo conditions, and direction of effect.
Data Synthesis. —Sixteen reports met the inclusion criteria for a total of 23 within-subject design studies. The weighted mean effect size and related statistics for each of the 14 measurement constructs revealed that although the range for these means was from -0.14 for direct observations and up to +0.30 for academic tests, the 95% confidence interval for all 14 mean effect sizes included 0.
Conclusion. —The meta-analytic synthesis of the studies to date found that sugar does not affect the behavior or cognitive performance of children. The strong belief of parents may be due to expectancy and common association. However, a small effect of sugar or effects on subsets of children cannot be ruled out.(JAMA. 1995;274:1617-1621) [Reply]
A large long-term study on the use of the big-selling weedkiller glyphosate by agricultural workers in the United States has found no firm link between exposure to the pesticide and cancer, scientists said on Thursday.
Published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI), the study found there was no association between glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto’s popular herbicide RoundUp, “and any solid tumors or lymphoid malignancies overall, including non-Hogkin Lymphoma (NHL) and its subtypes”.
It said there was “some evidence of increased risk of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) among the highest exposed group”, but added this association was “not statistically significant”.
The findings are likely to impact legal proceedings in the United States against Monsanto, in which more than 180 plaintiffs are claiming exposure to RoundUp gave them cancer - allegations that Monsanto denies.
The findings may also influence a crucial decision due by the end of the year on whether glyphosate should be re-licensed for sale across the European Union.
EU countries had been due to vote on the issue on Thursday, but again failed to agree to a proposal for a five-year extension.
The EU decision has been delayed for more than a year after the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) reviewed glyphosate in 2015 and concluded it was “probably carcinogenic” to humans. Other bodies, such as the European Food Safety Authority, have concluded glyphosate is safe to use.
The research is part of a large and important project known as the Agricultural Health Study (AHS), which has been tracking the health of tens of thousands of agricultural workers, farmers and their families in Iowa and North Carolina.
Since the early 1990s, it has gathered and analyzed detailed information on the health of participants and their families, and their use of pesticides, including glyphosate.
David Spiegelhalter, a professor of the Public Understanding of Risk at Britain’s Cambridge University who has no link to the research, said Thursday’s findings were from a “large and careful study” and showed “no significant relationship between glyphosate use and any cancer”.
He added that the possible association with AML “is no more than one would expect by chance”.
Reuters reported in June how an influential scientist was aware of new AHS data while he was chairing a panel of experts reviewing evidence on glyphosate for the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in early 2015.
But since it had not at that time been published, he did not tell the expert panel about it and IARC’s review did not take it into account.
The publication of the study on Thursday comes more than four years since drafts based on the AHS data on glyphosate and other pesticides were circulating in February and March 2013.
In a summary of the results, the researchers, led by Laura Beane Freeman, principal investigator of the AHS at the U.S. National Cancer Institute, said that among 54,251 (pesticide) applicators studied, 44,932, or 82.9 percent, used glyphosate.
“Glyphosate was not statistically significantly associated with cancer at any site,” the summary said.
Scott Partridge, Monsanto’s vice president of strategy, said the study results clearly showed the weedkiller was safe.
“This is the largest study of agricultural workers in history, over the longest period of time,” he told Reuters. “It is the gold standard,... and it definitively demonstrates in a real-world environment that glyphosate doesn’t cause cancer.” [Reply]
A large long-term study on the use of the big-selling weedkiller glyphosate by agricultural workers in the United States has found no firm link between exposure to the pesticide and cancer, scientists said on Thursday.
Published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI), the study found there was no association between glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto’s popular herbicide RoundUp, “and any solid tumors or lymphoid malignancies overall, including non-Hogkin Lymphoma (NHL) and its subtypes”.
It said there was “some evidence of increased risk of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) among the highest exposed group”, but added this association was “not statistically significant”.
The findings are likely to impact legal proceedings in the United States against Monsanto, in which more than 180 plaintiffs are claiming exposure to RoundUp gave them cancer - allegations that Monsanto denies.
The findings may also influence a crucial decision due by the end of the year on whether glyphosate should be re-licensed for sale across the European Union.
EU countries had been due to vote on the issue on Thursday, but again failed to agree to a proposal for a five-year extension.
The EU decision has been delayed for more than a year after the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) reviewed glyphosate in 2015 and concluded it was “probably carcinogenic” to humans. Other bodies, such as the European Food Safety Authority, have concluded glyphosate is safe to use.
The research is part of a large and important project known as the Agricultural Health Study (AHS), which has been tracking the health of tens of thousands of agricultural workers, farmers and their families in Iowa and North Carolina.
Since the early 1990s, it has gathered and analyzed detailed information on the health of participants and their families, and their use of pesticides, including glyphosate.
David Spiegelhalter, a professor of the Public Understanding of Risk at Britain’s Cambridge University who has no link to the research, said Thursday’s findings were from a “large and careful study” and showed “no significant relationship between glyphosate use and any cancer”.
He added that the possible association with AML “is no more than one would expect by chance”.
Reuters reported in June how an influential scientist was aware of new AHS data while he was chairing a panel of experts reviewing evidence on glyphosate for the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in early 2015.
But since it had not at that time been published, he did not tell the expert panel about it and IARC’s review did not take it into account.
The publication of the study on Thursday comes more than four years since drafts based on the AHS data on glyphosate and other pesticides were circulating in February and March 2013.
In a summary of the results, the researchers, led by Laura Beane Freeman, principal investigator of the AHS at the U.S. National Cancer Institute, said that among 54,251 (pesticide) applicators studied, 44,932, or 82.9 percent, used glyphosate.
“Glyphosate was not statistically significantly associated with cancer at any site,” the summary said.
Scott Partridge, Monsanto’s vice president of strategy, said the study results clearly showed the weedkiller was safe.
“This is the largest study of agricultural workers in history, over the longest period of time,” he told Reuters. “It is the gold standard,... and it definitively demonstrates in a real-world environment that glyphosate doesn’t cause cancer.”
I never trust headlines or articles that don't link directly to the study. [Reply]
I was curious about this, so I searched the literature.
There was a commentary in the Journal of Epidemiology and Public Health addressing this specific study indicating their belief that there are several problems with the AHS study: first, its median follow-up is only 6.7 years, which is a short period of time for a cohort study following cancer latency, and they only followed a small number of NHL cases (92) instead of a pooled analysis of 650 that was available. They also (reportedly) redacted almost all of their source information and relied nearly exclusively on internal data rather than peer-reviewed literature for supporting information and listed no authors or contributors on their report.
I'd be pretty wary of this information absent further analysis.
Portier CJ, Armstrong BK, Baguley BC, et al Differences in the carcinogenic evaluation of glyphosate between the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) J Epidemiol Community Health 2016;70:741-745. [Reply]
Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins:
I was curious about this, so I searched the literature.
There was a commentary in the Journal of Epidemiology and Public Health addressing this specific study indicating their belief that there are several problems with the AHS study: first, its median follow-up is only 6.7 years, which is a short period of time for a cohort study following cancer latency, and they only followed a small number of NHL cases (92) instead of a pooled analysis of 650 that was available. They also (reportedly) redacted almost all of their source information and relied nearly exclusively on internal data rather than peer-reviewed literature for supporting information and listed no authors or contributors on their report.
I'd be pretty wary of this information absent further analysis.
Portier CJ, Armstrong BK, Baguley BC, et al Differences in the carcinogenic evaluation of glyphosate between the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) J Epidemiol Community Health 2016;70:741-745.
Wow, They could get almost any result they wanted by doing that couldnm't they? [Reply]
