All posts by keith

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Bookmarks for April 7

  • Is some homophobia self-phobia? – Homophobia is more pronounced in individuals with an unacknowledged attraction to the same sex and who grew up with authoritarian parents who forbade such desires, a series of psychology studies demonstrates.The study is the first to document the role that both parenting and sexual orientation play in the formation of intense and visceral fear of homosexuals, including self-reported homophobic attitudes, discriminatory bias, implicit hostility towards gays, and endorsement of anti-gay policies. Conducted by a team from the University of Rochester, the University of Essex, England, and the University of California in Santa Barbara, the research will be published the April issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
    Tags: science research
Politics

These Are The Prices AT&T, Verizon and Sprint Charge For Cellphone Wiretaps – Forbes

If Americans aren’t disturbed by phone carriers’ practices of handing over cell phone users’ personal data to law enforcement en masse–in many cases without a warrant–we might at least be interested to learn just how much that service is costing us in tax dollars: often hundreds or thousands per individual snooped.

Earlier this week the American Civil Liberties Union revealed a trove of documents it had obtained through Freedom of Information Requests to more than 200 police departments around the country. They show a pattern of police tracking cell phone locations and gathering other data like call logs without warrants, using devices that impersonate cell towers to intercept cellular signals, and encouraging officers to refrain from speaking about cell-tracking technology to the public, all detailed in a New York Times story.

via These Are The Prices AT&T, Verizon and Sprint Charge For Cellphone Wiretaps – Forbes.

thinking linking

Bookmarks for April 1st

  • Getting to the moon on drops of fuel – Imagine reaching the Moon using just a fraction of a liter of fuel. With their ionic motor, MicroThrust, EPFL scientists and their European partners are making this a reality and ushering in a new era of low-cost space exploration. The complete thruster weighs just a few hundred grams and is specifically designed to propel small (1-100 kg) satellites, which it enables to change orbit around Earth and even voyage to more distant destinations — functions typically possible only for large, expensive spacecraft. Instead of a combustible fuel, the new mini motor runs on an "ionic" liquid, in this case the chemical compound EMI-BF4, which is used as a solvent and an electrolyte. It is composed of electrically charged molecules (like ordinary table salt) called ions, except that this compound is liquid at room temperature. The ions are extracted from the liquid and then ejected by means of an electric field to generate thrust. This is the principle behind the ionic motor: fuel is not burned, it is expelled.
    Tags: science tech travel
thinking linking

Bookmarks for March 28th

  • Blocking ‘oh-glick-nack’ may improve long-term memory – O-GlcNAc's effects on one particular protein, CREB, got the scientists' attention. CREB is a key substance that turns on and regulates the activity of genes. Many of the genes in cells are inactive at any given moment. Substances like CREB, termed transcription factors, turn genes on. Hsieh-Wilson found that when O-GlcNAc attached to CREB, CREB's ability to turn on genes was impaired. When the researchers blocked O-GlcNAc from binding CREB, the mice developed long-term memories faster than normal mice.

    Could blocking O-GlcNAc boost long-term memory in humans?

    "We're far from understanding what happens in humans," Hsieh-Wilson emphasized. "Completely blocking O-GlcNAc might not be desirable. Do you really want to sustain all memories long-term, even of events that are best forgotten? How would blocking the sugar from binding to other proteins affect other body processes? There are a lot of unanswered questions. Nevertheless, this research could eventually lead to ways to improve memory."
    Tags: research science

  • Stand up: Your life could depend on it – Standing up more often may reduce your chances of dying within three years, even if you are already physically active, a study of more than 200,000 people published in Archives of Internal Medicine shows. The study found that adults who sat 11 or more hours per day had a 40% increased risk of dying in the next three years compared with those who sat for fewer than four hours a day. This was after taking into account their physical activity, weight and health status.
    Tags: health research science
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Bookmarks for March 27th

  • Single antibody shrinks variety of human tumors transplanted into mice, study shows – Human tumors transplanted into laboratory mice disappeared or shrank when scientists treated the animals with a single antibody, according to a new study from the Stanford University School of Medicine. The antibody works by masking a protein flag on cancer cells that protects them from macrophages and other cells in the immune system. The scientists achieved the findings with human breast, ovarian, colon, bladder, brain, liver and prostate cancer samples.
    Tags: health research science
  • Aspirin: High or low dose following heart attack? – "We observed no difference between patients taking a high dose versus a low of aspirin as it relates to cardiovascular death, heart attack, stroke or stent thrombosis," said Payal Kohli, MD,

    cardiology fellow at BWH and researcher in the TIMI Study Group, who is the lead author on this study. "Interestingly, we did find a dramatic difference in practice patterns of physicians in North America compared to those in the rest of the world," Kohli said. "North American physicians prescribed a high dose of aspirin for two-thirds of all their patients, while the exact reverse was true of the rest of the world. International physicians prescribed a low dose of aspirin to more than two-thirds of their patients." Dr. Stephen D. Wiviott, a cardiologist at BWH and researcher in the TIMI Study Group, is the senior author on the study.
    Tags: health research