Peer reveals ‘cello scrotum’ hoax

A top doctor has admitted her part in hoodwinking a leading medical journal after inventing a medical condition called “cello scrotum”.

Elaine Murphy – now Baroness Murphy – dreamt up the painful complaint in the 1970s, sending a report to the British Medical Journal.

She came clean when the hoax resurfaced in the 2008 Christmas edition.

A BMJ spokesman said the inclusion and subsequent debunking of “cello scrotum” had “added to the gaiety of life”.

The spoof was inspired by a similar report of a phenomenon called “guitar nipple”, which happened when the edge of the guitar was pressed against the breast, causing irritation.

“We thought it highly likely to be a spoof, and decided to go one further by submitting a similar phenomenon in cellists, ” wrote Murphy – and her husband, in the latest edition of the journal.

“Anyone who has ever watched a cello being played would realise the physical impossibility of our claim.

“Somewhat to our astonishment, the letter was published.”

Baroness Murphy, formerly a professor at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital in London, did not sign the 1974 letter herself, fearing that she might get into trouble.

Her husband John, now chairman of a Suffolk brewery, signed it instead.

Scrotal flak

The couple said that they had been “dining out” on the hoax for years, but decided to confess after seeing “cello scrotum” referenced in an article last month in the journal.

A spokesman for the BMJ said that, 34 years on, no-one faced the sack for failing to spot the implausible condition.

He said: “We did, actually, get a letter from another doctor at the time pointing out how unlikely it was.

“We may have to organise a formal retraction or correction now. Once these things get into the scientific literature, they stay there for good. But it all adds to the gaiety of life.”…

via BBC NEWS | Health | Peer reveals ‘cello scrotum’ hoax.

Ah, to be immortalized for your contribution to science…

Surrounded by friends? It’s all in your genes

Are you a social butterfly, or do you prefer being at the edge of a group of friends? Either way, your genes and evolution may play a major role, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.

While it may come as no surprise that genes may help explain why some people have many friends and others have few, the researchers said, their findings go just a little farther than that.

“Some of the things we find are frankly bizarre,” said Nicholas Christakis of Harvard University in Massachusetts, who helped conduct the study.

“We find that how interconnected your friends are depends on your genes. Some people have four friends who know each other and some people have four friends who don’t know each other. Whether Dick and Harry know each other depends on Tom’s genes,” Christakis said in a telephone interview.

Christakis and colleague James Fowler of the University of California San Diego are best known for their studies that show obesity, smoking and happiness spread in networks.

For this study, they and Christopher Dawes of UCSD used national data that compared more than 1,000 identical and fraternal twins. Because twins share an environment, these studies are good for showing the impact that genes have on various things, because identical twins share all their genes while fraternal twine share just half.

“We found there appears to be a genetic tendency to introduce your friends to each other,” Christakis said.

via NewsDaily: Surrounded by friends? It’s all in your genes.

I’ve never been the type to introduce my friends to each other on purpose, but I always appreciated my friends who are that type of person.

Helium Rains Inside Saturn, Jupiter And Other Jovian Planets, Research Suggests

Models of how Saturn and Jupiter formed may soon take on a different look. By determining the properties of hydrogen-helium mixtures at the millions of atmospheres of pressure present in the interior of Saturn and Jupiter, physicists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have determined the temperature at a given pressure when helium becomes insoluble in dense metallic hydrogen.

The results are directly relevant to models of the interior structure and evolution of Jovian planets.

Hydrogen and helium are the two lightest and most common elements in the universe. Because of their ubiquitous nature, they are critical in cosmological nucleosynthesis and are essential elements of stars and giant planets. Hydrogen by itself in the observable universe provides clues to the origin and large-scale structures of galaxies.

However, scientists have struggled to determine what conditions are needed for the two elements to mix.

Using first-principle molecular dynamics simulations, Miguel Morales, a DOE Stewardship Science graduate fellow from David Ceperley’s group at the University of Illinois worked with LLNL’s Eric Schwegler, Sebastien Hamel, Kyle Caspersen and Carlo Pierleoni from the University of L’Aquila in Italy to determine the equation of state of the hydrogen-helium system at extremely high temperatures (4,000-10,000 degrees Kelvin), similar to what would be found in the interior of Saturn and Jupiter.

via Helium Rains Inside Saturn, Jupiter And Other Jovian Planets, Research Suggests.

Natural Selection Not The Only Process That Drives Evolution?

Evolution may be a random process than Darwin believed.

Why have some of our genes evolved rapidly? It is widely believed that Darwinian natural selection is responsible, but research led by a group at Uppsala University, suggests that a separate neutral (nonadaptive) process has made a significant contribution to human evolution.

Their results have been published January 27 in the journal PLoS Biology.

The researchers identified fast evolving human genes by comparing our genome with those of other primates. However, surprisingly, the patterns of molecular evolution in many of the genes they found did not contain signals of natural selection. Instead, their evidence suggests that a separate process known as BGC (biased gene conversion) has speeded up the rate of evolution in certain genes. This process increases the rate at which certain mutations spread through a population, regardless of whether they are beneficial or harmful.

“The research not only increases our understanding of human evolution, but also suggests that many techniques used by evolutionary biologists to detect selection may be flawed,” says Matthew Webster of the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Microbiology at Uppsala University.

BGC is thought to be strongest in regions of high recombination, and can cause harmful mutations can spread through populations. The results lead to the provocative hypothesis that, rather than being the result of Darwinian selection for new adaptations, many of the genetic changes leading to human-specific characters may be the result of the fixation of harmful mutations. This contrasts the traditional Darwinistic view that they are the result of natural selection in favour of adaptive mutations.

via Natural Selection Not The Only Process That Drives Evolution?.

Screen Actors Guild Awards: And the SAG Award winners are…

Meryl Streep reacting after winning the award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role for “Doubt” at the 15th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards in Los Angeles January 25, 2009.Accepting the award, Meryl – who wore black trousers to the ceremony – said: “I didn’t even buy a dress. I’m really, really shocked.Meryl said: “There is no such thing as the best actress. There is no such thing as the greatest living actress. I am in a position where I have secret information that I know this to be true. I am so in awe of the work of the women this year – nominated, not nominated – so proud of us girls. Everybody wins when we get parts like this”Sean Penn was named Best Actor for his role in ‘Milk’ – which tells the story of Harvey Milk, California’s first openly gay elected official – and took the opportunity to talk about how important the movie is to him.

He said: “As actors, we don’t play gay/straight, we play human beings. This is a story about equal rights for all human beings.”

The cast of ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ – made by British director Danny Boyle – won the Outstanding Cast prize, which is seen as a foreshadow of the prestigious Best Picture awards at the Oscars.

via Screen Actors Guild Awards: And the SAG Award winners are… – Nachrichten English-News – WELT ONLINE.

I didn’t see Milk, but I saw Doubt with my friend Ricky Berger, at Ricky’s suggestion. Ambiguity is a form of energy and in this movie Streep plays a character which after a full length movie it is impossible to tell if she is a crazy villain or an intuitive hero.

Postmaster General: Mail Days May Need to Be Cut

One “futurist” writing 100 years ago said mail would be delivered by pneumatic tubes physically connecting all houses. Still an interesting idea.

‘Rain’ of dead birds on central NJ lawns explained; Federal culling program killed up to 5,000

The black carcasses of dead starlings still pepper the snowy roads and lawns of central New Jersey’s rural Griggstown community three days after federal officials used a pesticide to kill as many as 5,000 of the birds.

Many residents Monday were still getting over their shock from the sudden spate of deaths. Some were unaware that the deaths resulted from an intentional culling and that the pesticide used was harmless to people and pets.

“It was raining birds,” said Franklin Township Mayor Brian Levine. “It got people a little anxious.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture called local police last week and the Somerset County Health Department to warn them that a culling program was under way, but there was no notice that dead birds could fall from the sky, Levine said.Carol Bannerman, a USDA spokeswoman, said a bird-specific pesticide called DRC-1339 was used to kill the starlings. It is harmless to people and other animals, she said.

Bannerman said the starlings had to be killed because they were plaguing an area farm, where they were eating feed meant for cattle and chickens and defecating in feeding bowls.

“We’re very sorry that it played out the way that it did,” Bannerman said. She said the USDA will try to do a better job of notifying the public in the future.

Federal employees dispensed the pesticide on Friday. Birds that ingest it usually die within three days, Bannerman said, so the die-off should have run its course by Monday.

The DRC-1339 pesticide is commonly used to protect farms and feedlot operations from European starlings, which are considered an invasive species by the USDA. One hundred starlings brought to the U.S. in 1890 have grown into the nation’s most numerous bird species, Bannerman said.

via ‘Rain’ of dead birds on central NJ lawns explained; Federal culling program killed up to 5,000 — Newsday.com.

Humans have grown to be the nation’s most numerous primate species.

Dalai Lama to fund ‘neuroscience of compassion’

The Dalai Lama is teaming up with Stanford University and a multi-millionaire professor to launch a new research centre dedicated to compassion and altruism.

“His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, provided $150,000 in seed money for the center — the largest sum he has ever given for a scientific venture — and has agreed to return to Stanford for a future visit,” reads a Stanford press release.

The Dalai Lama’s contribution is small change compared to the $2 million raised so far to fund the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, but other Buddhist and Catholic groups have opened their pocketbooks. Centre director Jim Doty, a Stanford neurosurgeon who amassed a $75 million fortune working in business, knows a thing or two about altruism. He’s already pledged $25 million of that to charities, including a $5.4 million gift to Stanford.

It seems the centre’s goals involve not only investigating how the brain deals with compassion and altruism, but also leveraging those findings to improve people’s lives.

Doty hopes the centre’s research will help understand and combat childhood bullying and recidivism among prisoners. He also wonders whether the benefits of intense mediation can be more easily achieved by healthcare and corporate workers to prevent burnout, depression and anxiety.

These are all great aims, but I wonder if the centre will run into opposition from other scientists for its connection to a religious figure like the Dalai Lama.

Several years ago, the Dalai Lama gave a keynote address at the Society for Neuorscience’s annual meeting, amid criticism from some members of the society. More than 1000 people signed an on-line petition questioning his credentials, though some of the opposition was probably tied to his political views on Tibetan independence. …

via Dalai Lama to fund ‘neuroscience of compassion’ – Short Sharp Science – New Scientist.

Study Finds High-Fructose Corn Syrup Contains Mercury

Almost half of tested samples of commercial high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) contained mercury, which was also found in nearly a third of 55 popular brand-name food and beverage products where HFCS is the first- or second-highest labeled ingredient, according to two new U.S. studies.

HFCS has replaced sugar as the sweetener in many beverages and foods such as breads, cereals, breakfast bars, lunch meats, yogurts, soups and condiments. On average, Americans consume about 12 teaspoons per day of HFCS, but teens and other high consumers can take in 80 percent more HFCS than average.

“Mercury is toxic in all its forms. Given how much high-fructose corn syrup is consumed by children, it could be a significant additional source of mercury never before considered. We are calling for immediate changes by industry and the [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] to help stop this avoidable mercury contamination of the food supply,” said the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy’s Dr. David Wallinga, a co-author of both studies.

In the first study, researchers found detectable levels of mercury in nine of 20 samples of commercial HFCS. The study was published in current issue of Environmental Health.

In the second study, the agriculture group found that nearly one in three of 55 brand-name foods contained mercury. The chemical was most common in HFCS-containing dairy products, dressings and condiments.

The use of mercury-contaminated caustic soda in the production of HFCS is common. The contamination occurs when mercury cells are used to produce caustic soda.

“The bad news is that nobody knows whether or not their soda or snack food contains HFCS made from ingredients like caustic soda contaminated with mercury. The good news is that mercury-free HFCS ingredients exist. Food companies just need a good push to only use those ingredients,” Wallinga said.

via Study Finds High-Fructose Corn Syrup Contains Mercury – washingtonpost.com.

Japan to tourists: Please don’t lick the tuna

Tourists are known for acting silly, but licking the tuna?

Overwhelmed by a growing number of misbehaving tourists, Tokyo fishmongers banned all visitors from one of the city’s most popular tourist destinations – the pre-dawn tuna auctions at the world’s largest seafood market.

The ban, imposed during the peak New Year buying season, was front-page news before it was lifted last week. Now, the tourists are back, but the debate goes on: Can tourists be trusted around the tuna?

“We understand that the sight of hundreds of frozen tuna looks unique and interesting for foreign tourists,” said Yoshiaki Takagi, deputy director of the market. “But they have to understand the Tsukiji market is a professional place, not an amusement park.”

One of the more notorious recent cases was that of a tipsy British tourist – caught on tape by a Japanese TV crew – who licked the head of a frozen tuna and patted its gill. Two others, also caught on video, rode around on a cart used by wholesalers. “Get out! Get out!” an irate market official shouted in English.

“Tuna is a very expensive fish,” Takagi said. “One tuna can easily cost more than 1 million yen ($11,000). But some tourists touch them and even try to hug them.”

Fed up, the market decided to impose the ban.

So, when on Jan. 5, a premium bluefin tuna fetched 9.63 million yen – more than $107,000, the highest price in nearly a decade – no tourists were anywhere in sight. The restriction was lifted on Jan. 19, despite some grumbling from the fishmongers.

After the ban was lifted, the market began distributing leaflets at the entrance of the tuna auction site in English, Chinese, Korean and Russian, as well as Japanese. Along with the no-flash warning, it tells visitors to stay within the observation area and leave promptly after the auctions, which open at 5 a.m.

The post-ban crowds have been better behaved.

fter the ban was lifted, the market beg

via Japan to tourists: Please don’t lick the tuna.