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If you thought that chewing gum helped you concentrate, it might be time to reassess. While some old research has suggested that it can help you with abstract reasoning and logic puzzles, new research reveals that it can completely screw up your short-term memory. More »
from Gizmodo
Mutated shrimp from Al Jazeera’s video report
Al Jazeera‘s report on seafood in the Gulf Coast reads like a horror story: eyeless shrimp, fish with oozing sores, clawless crabs. Unfortunately these deformities are very real and disturbingly common two years after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. Chemical dispersants used by BP to “clean up†the oil spill are the likely cause.
Deformities happen even in ordinary circumstances, but scientists and fishers are seeing them in unprecedented scales in Gulf marine life. For example, half the shrimp caught in a Louisiana bay lacked eye sockets, according to fishers interviewed by journalist Dahr Jamail.
“Some shrimpers are catching these out in the open Gulf [of Mexico],†[commercial fisher Tracy Kuhn] added, “They are also catching them in Alabama and Mississippi. We are also finding eyeless crabs, crabs with their shells soft instead of hard, full grown crabs that are one-fifth their normal size, clawless crabs, and crabs with shells that don’t have their usual spikes … they look like they’ve been burned off by chemicals.
Perhaps the most troubling line in the whole article is this: “Questions raised by Al Jazeera’s investigation remain largely unanswered.†When Jamail …
from Discover Magazine
Fast-food items in the U.S. are much saltier than the same items in Europe, according to new research. France and the United Kingdom had the least salty food overall.
from News
While it’s easy to find mainstream media attacking video games for no reason, it’s also undeniable that video games can be an addictive hobby, especially for young children. More »
from Kotaku
Originating in ancient China, acupuncture has been used for 2500 years. Traditional Chinese medicine holds that disease is caused by blockages and imbalances of energy (known as chi) flowing through meridians in the body, and can be eased by inserting needles at specific points. More »
from Gizmodo
Coughing in the brain
For something so mundane, we know surprisingly little about coughing. Most of us just cough when we’re sick, but patients with habit and psychogenic coughs don’t seem to have any sort of physical trigger. Recent cough research, highlighted in a feature at ScienceNews, suggests that the neural circuitry of coughing also involves temperature perception and higher brain areas.
The same cellular receptors that sense temperature and pain also control coughing. The cool relief of a cough drop is no coincidence, as the menthol receptor both suppresses coughs and produces the cool feeling in your throat. There’s a molecular on-switch for coughing, too: a receptor called TRPV1. Unfortunately for researchers looking for a cough cure, inactivating TRPV1 also makes it dangerously difficult to feel heat. Mundane tasks like eating a hot meal or running a bath become hazardous if you don’t reflexively shrink away from scalding heat.
Other scientists are looking inside the brain, studying whether habitual and psychogenic coughs are the result of some suppression mechanism gone haywire. Stuart Mazzone has been putting people in fMRI machines along with a capsule of capsaicin to eat. Since capsaicin is the molecule that makes chilis fiery, it’s …
from Discover Magazine
Cancer researchers have found that certain types of dental X-rays significantly increased the incidence of the most common type of brain tumor in the United States: meningioma. More »
from Gizmodo