This week in science

Techne said:
Interesting article thanks. Cancer can be argued to be a species on its own. Some cancers e.g. in Tasmanian devils are even contagious.

I don't think there are "cancer genes" as this article suggests since there is not a subset of genes that are deferentially expressed in all cancers. Sure, each kind of cancer can perhaps be characterized by a few oncogenes, the methylation and/or acetylation status of the particular cancer, metabolic alterations, mutations etc. But the only universal feature of cancer is that well... it is malignant. Non-malignant tumours are not cancers.

The way forward is not to try and find a silver bullet to treat all cancers but instead to try and find a way to make it viable for cancer treatment to become even more personalized.
Click to expand...

Techne said:
Aka the "I&%$*#lovescience" crowd.
Click to expand...
Some more info from your favourite site
http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/cancer-could-be-old-multicellular-life-itself
 
Cash register receipts account for high bisphenol A (BPA) levels in humans

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141022143628.htm

BPA from thermal paper used in cash register receipts accounts for high levels of BPA in humans. Subjects studied showed a rapid increase of BPA in their blood after using a skin care product and then touching a store receipt with BPA.
Click to expand...
 
10 million year old bacteria! How is that possible? The earth is only 10k years old!

/pokes at Christians
 
Rise in mass die-offs seen among birds, fish and marine invertebrates

An analysis of 727 mass die-offs of nearly 2,500 animal species from the past 70 years has found that such events are increasing among birds, fish and marine invertebrates. At the same time, the number of individuals killed appears to be decreasing for reptiles and amphibians, and unchanged for mammals.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150112181319.htm
 
Computers using digital footprints are better judges of personality than friends and

Computers using digital footprints are better judges of personality than friends and family

Researchers have found that, based on enough Facebook Likes, computers can judge your personality traits better than your friends, family and even your partner. Using a new algorithm, researchers have calculated the average number of Likes artificial intelligence (AI) needs to draw personality inferences about you as accurately as your partner or parents.
Click to expand...

A new study, published today in the journal PNAS, compares the ability of computers and people to make accurate judgments about our personalities. People's judgments were based on their familiarity with the judged individual, while computer models used a specific digital signal: Facebook Likes.
The results show that by mining Facebook Likes, the computer model was able to predict a person's personality more accurately than most of their friends and family. Given enough Likes to analyse, only a person's spouse rivalled the computer for accuracy of broad psychological traits.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge and Stanford University describe the finding as an "emphatic demonstration" of the capacity of computers to discover an individual's psychological traits through pure data analysis, showing machines can know us better than we'd previously thought: an "important milestone" on the path towards more social human-computer interactions.
Click to expand...
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150112154456.htm
 
Sitting for long periods increases risk of disease/early death regardless of exercise

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150119171701.htm
The amount of time a person sits during the day is associated with a higher risk of heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and death, regardless of regular exercise, according to a review study.
Click to expand...

"More than one half of an average person's day is spent being sedentary -- sitting, watching television, or working at a computer," said Dr. David Alter, Senior Scientist, Toronto Rehab, University Health Network (UHN), and Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences. "Our study finds that despite the health-enhancing benefits of physical activity, this alone may not be enough to reduce the risk for disease."
Click to expand...

The authors found the negative effects of sitting time on health, however, are more pronounced among those who do little or no exercise than among those who participate in higher amounts of exercise.
Click to expand...
 
IFLS. Hmm..

I'd be a little more careful about where I get my scientific info from. Not dissing IFSL, but a cursory glance and the name would make me put the info I get there in the 'To be fact-checked' file. Same as news reports.

A lot of what is reported in this type of media are just early 'findings/theories' (grab the headlines) that have not yet gone through the mill of peer-review properly.

All nice and interesting. But there lies a danger. The woo-woo merchants are constantly looking for cracks in science in order to defend and peddle their baseless fantasies. Pushing preliminary, non-scrutinized scientific research as scientific fact is manna from heaven to them because a lot of it will be off the mark or just totally wrong.
 
YeOldeOke said:
IFLS. Hmm..

I'd be a little more careful about where I get my scientific info from. Not dissing IFSL, but a cursory glance and the name would make me put the info I get there in the 'To be fact-checked' file. Same as news reports.

A lot of what is reported in this type of media are just early 'findings/theories' (grab the headlines) that have not yet gone through the mill of peer-review properly.

All nice and interesting. But there lies a danger. The woo-woo merchants are constantly looking for cracks in science in order to defend and peddle their baseless fantasies. Pushing preliminary, non-scrutinized scientific research as scientific fact is manna from heaven to them because a lot of it will be off the mark or just totally wrong.
Click to expand...

If you read their articles you'll notice citations all over the place.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X