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December 13, 2012

2:00 PM | Could Scientists Have Found A Gay Switch?

Pop Art Couple © Rceeh | Dreamstime.comEpigenetic molecules that regulate genes may influence homosexuality. Gayness may not be in our genes, but in the molecules that regulate them. New research suggests that epigenetic factors -- chemical "switches" attached to genes that turn them on or off -- are a more plausible heritable mechanism behind homosexuality than DNA itself. Non-genetic changes to gene expression are called epi-marks, for epigenetics, the field of research dealing with the […]

December 06, 2012

2:01 PM | Love Of Spicy Food Is Built Into Your Personality

Chili Peppers via FlickrLove of spicy food isn't just desensitization, or cultural upbringing--it also has ties to who you are. When I was a kid, I'd watch in awe as my dad ate dinner. It wasn't just the heaps of food piled on his plate that impressed me. (The words "portion control" had yet to enter the public lexicon.) What always made me shake my head in disbelief was his curious habit of alternating bites of his meal with bites off a jalapeno pepper. To save time, he'd simply hold the […]

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Gran Sasso, Solar Neutrinos, and Radioactive Decay Rates

We interrupt your normal coverage of magnetic monopole searches today to bring you something much more cool from well.. the same location! I was jazzed to find out yesterday that the next monopole project I was going to write about was done at a stunningly pretty location Gran Sasso, Italy. (picture 1)Then, thanks to +Oliver Thewalt I found out about a very interesting study done regarding a possible time dependence of the decay rates of radioactive isotopes. So much for the […]

Bellotti E., Broggini C., Di Carlo G., Laubenstein M. & Menegazzo R. (2012). Search for time dependence of the 137Cs decay constant, Physics Letters B, 710 (1) 114-117. DOI: 10.1016/j.physletb.2012.02.083

Jenkins J.H., Fischbach E., Buncher J.B., Gruenwald J.T., Krause D.E. & Mattes J.J. (2009). Evidence of correlations between nuclear decay rates and Earth–Sun distance, Astroparticle Physics, 32 (1) 42-46. DOI: 10.1016/j.astropartphys.2009.05.004

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Berkeley Lab Builds ‘Artificial Forest’ to Harvest Solar Energy

Devices for artificial photosynthesis are often called “artificial leaves”. This leaves, however, are of no use unless you can create an “artificial forest” from them. Now, scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have reported the first fully integrated nanosystem for artificial photosynthesis. Read more »

Liu, C., Tang, J., Chen, H., Liu, B. & Yang, P. (2013). A Fully Integrated Nanosystem of Semiconductor Nanowires for Direct Solar Water Splitting, Nano Letters, 2147483647. DOI: 10.1021/nl401615t

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Even People Without Synesthesia Find Colors in Music

It’s time to stop scoffing at the synesthetes: linking music to colors is totally normal. It’s not really about the notes, though. Researchers say the colors we find in music are actually the colors of the emotions the music makes us feel. Synesthetes are people whose sensory experiences overlap; they most often link letters or numbers to certain colors. Music-color synesthesia, in which hearing music triggers the colors, is rarer. In fact, when Stephen Palmer and Karen Schloss at […]

Palmer, S., Schloss, K., Xu, Z. & Prado-Leon, L. (2013). Music-color associations are mediated by emotion, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1212562110

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Algorithmic view of historicity and separation of scales in biology

A Science publications is one of the best ways to launch your career, especially if it is based on your undergraduate work, part of which you carried out with makeshift equipment in your dorm! That is the story of Thomas M.S. Chang, who in 1956 started experiments (partially carried out in his residence room in […]

Pais, D. & Leonard, N. (2013). Adaptive network dynamics and evolution of leadership in collective migration, Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena, DOI: 10.1016/j.physd.2013.04.014

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The Even Earlier Discovery of Antibiotic Resistance

So about a month ago, I wrote about how amazing it was that penicillin resistance was discovered as early as 1940, two years before it went on general sale. But whilst researching that article, I realised that Sulphonamide drugs entered the market long before penicillin, with their discoverer, Gerhard Domagk, being nominated for a Nobel prize in 1939. He had been tasked by Bayer pharmaceuticals to test out a gargantuan number of dye molecules to see whether they could kill off bacteria, and in […]

Gradmann C. (2011). Magic bullets and moving targets: antibiotic resistance and experimental chemotherapy, 1900-1940, Dynamis, 31 (2) 305-321. DOI: 10.4321/S0211-95362011000200003

Titford M. (2010). Paul Ehrlich: Histological Staining, Immunology, Chemotherapy, Laboratory Medicine, 41 (8) 497-498. DOI: 10.1309/LMHJS86N5ICBIBWM

Casanova J.M. (1992). Bacteria and their dyes: Hans Christian Joachim Gram, Historia de La Immunologia, 11 (4) Other: Link

Ehrlich P. Address in Pathology, ON CHEMIOTHERAPY: Delivered before the Seventeenth International Congress of Medicine., British medical journal, PMID: 20766753

Kaufmann S.H.E. (2008). Immunology's foundation: the 100-year anniversary of the Nobel Prize to Paul Ehrlich and Elie Metchnikoff, Nature Immunology, 9 (7) 705-712. DOI: 10.1038/ni0708-705

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December 13, 2012

December 06, 2012

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