Slate conducted a mass experiment in altering political memories. Were you fooled?

We altered or fabricated five events: Sen. Joe Lieberman voting to convict President Clinton at his impeachment trial (Lieberman actually voted for acquittal); Vice President Cheney rebuking Sen. John Edwards in their debate for mentioning Cheney’s lesbian daughter (in fact, Cheney thanked him); President Bush relaxing at his ranch with Roger Clemens during Hurricane Katrina (Bush was at the White House that day, and Clemens didn’t visit the ranch); Hillary Clinton using Jeremiah Wright in a 2008 TV ad (she never did); and President Obama shaking hands with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (it never happened). …

In the first three days the experiment was posted, 5,279 subjects participated. All of the true incidents outscored the false ones. Our subjects were more likely to remember seeing Powell’s Iraq presentation (75 percent), Katherine Harris presiding over the Florida recount (67 percent), or Tom DeLay leading the congressional effort to save Schiavo (50 percent) than any of the five fake scenes.

But the fake images were effective. Through random distribution, each fabricated scene was viewed by a subsample of more than 1,000 people. Fifteen percent of the Bush subsample (those who were shown the composite photo of Bush with Clemens) said they remembered seeing that incident at the time. Fifteen percent of the Lieberman subsample (those who were shown the altered screen shot of his impeachment vote) said they had seen it. For Obama meeting Ahmadinejad, the number who remembered seeing it was 26 percent. For the Hillary Clinton ad, the number was 36 percent. For the Edwards-Cheney confrontation, it was 42 percent, just seven points shy of the percentage who remembered seeing the DeLay/Schiavo episode.

When we pooled these subjects with those who remembered the false events but didn’t specifically remember seeing them, the numbers nearly doubled. For Bush, the percentage who remembered the false event was 31. For Lieberman, it was 41. For Obama, it was 47. For Cheney, it was 65. For Hillary Clinton, it was 68.

These figures match previous findings. In memory-implanting experiments, the average rate of false memories is about 30 percent. But when visual images are used to substantiate the bogus memory, the number can increase. Several years ago, researchers using doctored photos persuaded 10 of 20 college students that they had gone up in hot-air balloons as children. Seeing is believing, even when what you’re seeing is fabricated.

via Slate conducted a mass experiment in altering political memories. Were you fooled? – By William Saletan – Slate Magazine.

Can bacteria make you smarter?

Exposure to specific bacteria in the environment, already believed to have antidepressant qualities, could increase learning behavior according to research presented today at the 110th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in San Diego.

“Mycobacterium vaccae is a natural soil bacterium which people likely ingest or breath in when they spend time in nature,” says Dorothy Matthews of The Sage Colleges in Troy, New York, who conducted the research with her colleague Susan Jenks.

Previous research studies on M. vaccae showed that heat-killed bacteria injected into mice stimulated growth of some neurons in the brain that resulted in increased levels of serotonin and decreased anxiety.

“Since serotonin plays a role in learning we wondered if live M. vaccae could improve learning in mice,” says Matthews.

Matthews and Jenks fed live bacteria to mice and assessed their ability to navigate a maze compared to control mice that were not fed the bacteria.

“We found that mice that were fed live M. vaccae navigated the maze twice as fast and with less demonstrated anxiety behaviors as control mice,” says Matthews.

In a second experiment the bacteria were removed from the diet of the experimental mice and they were retested. While the mice ran the maze slower than they did when they were ingesting the bacteria, on average they were still faster than the controls.

A final test was given to the mice after three weeks’ rest. While the experimental mice continued to navigate the maze faster than the controls, the results were no longer statistically significant, suggesting the effect is temporary.

“This research suggests that M. vaccae may play a role in anxiety and learning in mammals,” says Matthews. “It is interesting to speculate that creating learning environments in schools that include time in the outdoors where M. vaccae is present may decrease anxiety and improve the ability to learn new tasks.”

via Can bacteria make you smarter?.

Related

The results so far suggest that simply inhaling M. vaccae—you get a dose just by taking a walk in the wild or rooting around in the garden—could help elicit a jolly state of mind. “You can also ingest mycobacteria either through water sources or through eating plants—lettuce that you pick from the garden, or carrots,” Lowry says.

Graham Rook, an immunologist at University College London and a coauthor of the paper, adds that depression itself may be in part an inflammatory disorder. By triggering the production of immune cells that curb the inflammatory reaction typical of allergies, M. vaccae may ease that inflammation and hence depression. Therapy with M. vaccae—or with drugs based on the bacterium’s molecular components—might someday be used to treat depression. “It’s not clear to me whether the way ahead will be drugs that circumvent the use of these bugs,” Rook says, “or whether it will be easier to say, ‘The hell with it, let’s use the bugs.’”

- discovermagazine

Surprising new evidence for asymmetry between matter and antimatter

Why is there matter in the universe and not antimatter, its opposite?

Physicists at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, including John Ellison, a professor of physics at UC Riverside, have announced that they have found evidence for a significant violation of matter-antimatter symmetry in decays of B-mesons, which are exotic particles produced in high energy particle collisions.

To arrive at their result, the research team, known as the DZero collaboration, analyzed billions of proton-antiproton collisions at Fermilab’s Tevatron particle collider, and found a 1 percent excess of pairs of muons over pairs of antimuons produced in the decays of B-mesons. Muons, which occur naturally in cosmic rays, are fundamental particles similar to electrons but 200 times heavier.

Ellison said this result is exciting and surprising since it is not predicted in the Standard Model, the comprehensive theory that explains the interactions between all fundamental elementary particles.

He explained that the dominance of matter we observe in the universe is possible only if there are differences, called “CP violation,” in the behavior of particles and antiparticles.

“The reason this is important is that CP violation – the fact that physics does not look the same when particles and antiparticles are interchanged and all processes are mirror-reflected – is one of the three ingredients identified by Andrei Sakharov, the famous Soviet physicist and dissident, needed to explain the matter-antimatter asymmetry observed in our universe,” Ellison said. “That the universe is completely dominated by matter is a mystery because the Big Bang theory predicts that there should have been equal amounts of matter and antimatter.”

According to Ellison and his DZero peers, the explanation for the dominance of matter in the present day universe is that the CP violation treated matter and antimatter differently and allowed the early universe to evolve into a situation with matter dominating completely over antimatter.

“CP violation as predicted in the Standard Model has been observed before but at a level many orders of magnitude too small to explain the asymmetry,” Ellison said. “This is the first evidence for anomalous CP violation. If confirmed by further measurements, this points to new physics phenomena in particle interactions that give rise to the matter-antimatter asymmetry, and may be another step forward in our understanding of why matter dominates over antimatter in the universe.

via Surprising new evidence for asymmetry between matter and antimatter.

Odds are 1-in-3 that a huge quake will hit Northwest in next 50 years

The major earthquakes that devastated Chile earlier this year and which triggered the catastrophic Indonesian tsunami of 2004 are more than just a distinct possibility to strike the Pacific Northwest coast of the United States, scientists say.

There is more than a one-in-three chance that it will happen within the next 50 years.

New analyses by Oregon State University marine geologist Chris Goldfinger and his colleagues have provided fresh insights into the Northwest’s turbulent seismic history – where magnitude 8.2 (or higher) earthquakes have occurred 41 times during the past 10,000 years. Those earthquakes were thought to generally occur every 500 years, but as scientists delve more deeply into the offshore sediments and other evidence, they have discovered a great deal more complexity to the Cascadia Subduction Zone.

“What we’ve found is that Cascadia isn’t one big subduction zone when it comes to major earthquakes,” Goldfinger said. “It actually has several segments – at least four – and the earthquake activity is different depending on where a quake originates. The largest earthquakes occur in the north and usually rupture the entire fault. These are quakes of about magnitude-9 and they are just huge – but they don’t happen as frequently.

“At the southern end of the fault, the earthquakes tend to be a bit smaller, but more frequent,” he added. “These are still magnitude-8 or greater events, which is similar to what took place in Chile, so the potential for damage is quite real.”

Based on historical averages, Goldfinger says the southern end of the fault – from about Newport, Ore., to northern California – has a 37 percent chance of producing a major earthquake in the next 50 years. The odds that a mega-quake will hit the northern segment, from Seaside, Ore., to Vancouver Island in British Columbia, are more like 10 to 15 percent.

“Perhaps more striking than the probability numbers is that we can now say that we have already gone longer without an earthquake than 75 percent of the known times between earthquakes in the last 10,000 years,” Goldfinger said. “And 50 years from now, that number will rise to 85 percent.”

via Odds are 1-in-3 that a huge quake will hit Northwest in next 50 years | News and Communication Services | Oregon State University.

Earthquake Preparedness Checklist (EPC)* – Use this earthquake preparation checklist to help prepare you and your families for an earthquake.
Eliminate potential hazards in classrooms and throughout the site:

____ Bolt bookcases in high traffic areas securely to wall studs

____ Move heavy books and items from high to low shelves

____ Secure and latch filing cabinets

____ Secure cabinets in high traffic areas with child safety latches

____ Secure aquariums, computers, typewriters, TV-VCR equipment to surfaces, such as by using Velcro tabs

____ Make provisions for securing rolling portable items such asTV-VCRs, pianos, refrigerators

____ Move children’s activities and play areas away from windows, or protect windows with blinds or adhesive plastic sheeting

____ Secure water heater to wall using plumber’s tape

____ Assess and determine possible escape routes
Establish a coordinated response plan involving all of the following:
Involving children:

____ Teach children about earthquakes and what to do (see resource list below)

____ Practice “duck, cover, and hold” earthquake drills under tables or desks no less than 4 times a year
Involving parents:

____ Post, or make available to parents copies of the school earthquake safety plan (including procedures for reuniting parents or alternate guardians with children, location of planned evacuation site, method for leaving messages and communicating)

____ Enlist parent and community resource assistance in securing emergency supplies or safeguarding the child day care site:

____ store a 3-day supply of nonperishable food (including juice, canned food items, snacks, and infant formula)

____ store a 3-day supply of water and juice

____ store food and water in an accessible location, such as portable plastic storage containers

____ store other emergency supplies such as flashlights, a radio with extra batteries, heavy gloves, trash bags, and tools

____ maintain a complete, up-to-date listing of children, emergency numbers, and contact people for each classroom stored with emergency supplies
Involving child day care personnel and local emergency agencies:

____ Identify and assign individual responsibilities for staff following an earthquake (including accounting for and evacuating children, injury control, damage assessment)

____ Involve and train all staff members about the earthquake safety plan, including location and procedure for turning off utilities and gas

____ Contact nearby agencies (including police, fire, Red Cross, and local government) for information and materials in developing the child day care center earthquake safety plan
*For more free resources contact: (1) Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) (2) Office of Emergency Services (OES) (3) Red Cross

- iprepare

Research on self-healing concrete yields cost-effective system to extend life of structures

Efforts to extend the life of structures and reduce repair costs have led engineers to develop “smart materials” that have self-healing properties, but many of these new materials are difficult to commercialize. A new self-healing concrete developed and tested by a graduate student at the University of Rhode Island, however, may prove to be cost-effective.

Michelle Pelletier, a URI master’s degree candidate from Woonsocket, embedded a microencapsulated sodium silicate healing agent directly into a concrete matrix. When tiny stress cracks begin to form in the concrete, the capsules rupture and release the healing agent into the adjacent areas.

The sodium silicate reacts with the calcium hydroxide naturally present in the concrete to form a calcium-silica-hydrate product to heal the cracks and block the pores in the concrete. The chemical reaction creates a gel-like material that hardens in about one week.

“Smart materials usually have an environmental trigger that causes the healing to occur,” explained Pelletier, who is collaborating on the project with URI Chemical Engineering Professor Arijit Bose. “What’s special about our material is that it can have a localized and targeted release of the healing agent only in the areas that really need it.”

In tests comparing a standard concrete mix to concrete containing two percent sodium silicate healing agent, Pelletier’s healing mix recovered 26 percent of its original strength (after being stressed to near breaking) versus just 10 percent recovery by the standard mix. The URI student said that an increase in the quantity of healing agent would likely further improve the recovered strength of the concrete.

“Self-healing concrete is a big research field right now,” she said. “But many of the approaches being taken by other researchers have not ended up being economically feasible for commercial production.”

Pelletier noted that some researchers have laced the concrete with bacteria spores that secrete calcium carbonate to fill the cracks and pores, while others embedded glass capillaries with a healing agent, but the process of filling the capillaries with the agent is long and tedious.

Next up for Pelletier is a study to see if her sodium silicate healing agent could also act as a corrosion inhibitor.

“Building concrete is routinely fixed with steel reinforcement bars to compensate for low tensile strength, but they are extremely susceptible to corrosion,” Pelletier said. “We are exploring if the release of the agent will result in corrosion inhibition by two mechanisms. First, the reduced water transport due to the filled pores and reduced interconnectivity within the matrix may result in less moisture reaching the metal and ultimately less corrosion. Also, silicates can deposit on the surface to form a protective film which may also help with reducing the corrosion rate of the steel rebars.”

One additional advantage to the use of self-healing concrete is that it could reduce the significant CO2 emissions that result from concrete production. Because the production of concrete is very energy intensive – when mining, transportation and concrete plants are considered – the industry is responsible for about 10 percent of all CO2 emissions in the United States.

“If self-healing concrete can lengthen the life of the concrete and reduce maintenance and repairs, it will ultimately reduce the production of excess amounts of concrete and result in a decrease in CO2 emissions,” she said.

via Research on self-healing concrete yields cost-effective system to extend life of structures.

Medicine’s secret archives

No one knows how many mothers’ and babies’ lives have been saved by the obstetrical forceps. This device has been part of the standard equipment of every maternity room for about 250 years. However, a shadow lies over the success story: after the Chamberlen brothers developed the device at the beginning of the 17th century, the brothers and their descendants used it for 3 generations, but kept it a secret from other obstetricians. While thanks to the forceps the Chamberlen family became rich and famous, at the same time women and babies were still dying elsewhere because the device was not available.

The story of the obstetrical forceps is one of the oldest documented examples showing what consequences secrecy in medicine can have. In an article published in the journal Trials, researchers at the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) compiled over 60 examples illustrating how the dissemination of medical knowledge has been impeded. For this purpose, they assessed hundreds of articles from journals and other sources, which covered areas including treatment for psychiatric disorders, pain, heart and circulatory disease, skin disease, cancer, and infectious diseases. A wide range of interventions was affected: from drugs and vaccines to medical devices such as ultrasound or devices for wound care. The collection reads like the script for a crime series.

Concealment is common

In science the phenomenon is called “publication bias”, i.e. bias through selective publication. This occurs on two levels: On the first level complete studies remain unpublished. For example, an analysis of 90 drugs that had been newly approved in the US showed that they had been tested in a total of 900 trials. However, even 5 years after approval, 60% of these studies were unpublished. On the second level only selected outcomes from studies are published. Nowadays researchers have to specify in a study protocol which outcomes they want to measure and how they are going to analyse them. Comparisons of protocols and journal articles of studies showed that in 40% to 60% of studies, results had either been completely omitted or analyses changed. “In this way study results are often presented in a more positive way than is actually the case,” says Beate Wieseler, Deputy Head of IQWiG’s Drug Assessment Department.

This does not only affect studies sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry. In their paper, the IQWiG authors also cite an analysis in which 2000 studies on cancer topics were analysed according to sponsorship. The proportion of published studies was extremely low: of the industry-sponsored studies, 94% were unpublished; however, even 86% of university-sponsored studies were also unpublished. “Due to legal regulations, regulatory authorities are also sometimes obliged to withhold data,” says Thomas Kaiser, Head of the Drug Assessment Department.

Patients are harmed

The concealment of knowledge often has consequences for patients. On the one hand, it can result in delays to the implementation and dissemination of beneficial interventions (as was the case with the obstetrical forceps). However, it is more common that bad news and reports of failure remain unpublished. “As a result, physicians and patients use treatments that are actually futile or even harmful,” says Beate Wieseler. For example, researchers estimate that drugs prescribed in the 1980s to prevent irregular heart beat cost tens of thousands of lives, because early signs of dangerous adverse effects were not published.

Appeals are insufficient

IQWiG’s search for documented examples of publication bias was triggered by the Institute’s own experience in its daily work, as was recently the case, for example, in the assessment of reboxetine, a drug used to treat depression: the pharmaceutical company Pfizer only provided previously concealed studies to IQWiG after subjection to public pressure. In the previously unpublished studies, the results for reboxetine were considerably worse than appeared to be the case in published studies. “For many years, not only patients but also physicians have been deceived,” says Beate Wieseler.

The collection of examples published in Trials shows that the tendency to conceal unfavourable results or results that do not fulfil one’s own expectations is so widespread that appeals and proposals for voluntary solutions will not be able to solve the problem effectively. “The increasing registration of studies in public registries is an important first step,” says Thomas Kaiser. “However, in order to protect patients, we need legal regulations, so that results of all clinical trials are published swiftly and completely.”

via Medicine’s secret archives.

Newly Discovered Gene Variants Lead to Autism and Mental Retardation

Researchers working with Professor Gudrun Rappold, Director of the Department of Molecular Human Genetics at Heidelberg University Hospital, have discovered previously unknown mutations in autistic and mentally impaired patients in what is known as the SHANK2 gene, a gene that is partially responsible for linking nerve cells. However, a single gene mutation is not always enough to trigger the illness. In some cases, a certain threshold of mutation must be exceeded. The researchers conclude from their results that a correct inner structure of the nerve cell synapses is necessary to enable the normal development of language, social competence, and cognitive capacity. Essential for the success of the project were the studies by the Heidelberg research team with the doctoral student Simone Berkel and collaboration with a Canadian research team headed by Steve Scherer. The study has already been published online in the leading scientific journal “Nature Genetics”.

Autism is a congenital perception and information-processing disorder of the brain that is often associated with low intelligence, but also with above-average intelligence. The disease is characterized by limited social communication and stereotypical or ritualized behavior. Men are affected much more frequently than women. Autism and mental retardation can occur together but also independently of one another and are determined to a great extent by hereditary factors. Some of the responsible genes have already been identified but the precise genetic mechanisms have not yet been explained.

via UniversitätsKlinikum Heidelberg: Newly Discovered Gene Variants Lead to Autism and Mental Retardation.

Amityville Horror house for sale

The house made famous in the 1979 film The Amityville Horror is up for sale in New York – ghosts not included.

The five-bedroom Dutch Colonial went on the market yesterday for $1.15 million (£800,000).

In 1974, six members of the DeFeo family were shot dead as they slept in the house. The eldest son, Ronald DeFeo, called police to report the slayings. He was convicted of the murders aged 23.

When he confessed, he told detectives:  ‘Once I started, I just couldn’t stop. It went so fast.’

George and Kathleen Lutz purchased the house after the murders, thinking it would be their dream home.

But the dream quickly turned to nightmare as a supernatural horror appeared to haunt the house. After just 28 terrifying days they fled for their lives.

According to Jay Anson’s book the house at 112 Ocean Avenue remained empty for thirteen months after the DeFeo murders.

In December 1975, the Mr and Mrs Lutz bought the house for what was considered to be a bargain price of $80,000.

The six-bedroom house was built in Dutch Colonial style, and had a distinctive gambrel roof.

It also had a swimming pool and a boathouse, as it was located on a canal.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1281233/Amityville-Horror-house-sale.html#ixzz0oxbItyEo

Did megafauna extinction cool the planet?

The rapid decline of mammoths and other megafauna after humans spread across the New World may explain a bone-chilling plunge in global temperatures some 12,800 years ago, researchers reported Sunday.

The 100-odd species of grass-eating giants that once crowded the North American landscape released huge quantities of methane — from both ends of their digestive tracks.

As a heat-trapping greenhouse gas, methane is 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide (CO2).

It was not enough to trigger runaway global warming. But when all that gaseous output suddenly tapered off, it caused or at least contributed to a prolonged freeze known as the Younger Dryas cold event, they argue.

If so, the “Anthropocene epoch” — the era of major human impacts on Earth’s climate system — began not with the industrial revolution in the 1800s, but the large-scale influx of two-legged predators to the Americas more than 13,000 years earlier.

Calculations by a trio of researchers led by Felisa Smith of the University of New Mexico, published in Nature, show how all the pieces of this previously unsolved puzzle might fit together.

Extrapolating from data on cows and other modern-day ruminants, the scientists estimated the total methane output of pre-historic megafauna at nearly 10 trillion grams per year.

At the same time, ice-core samples reveal that an abrupt drop in atmospheric methane levels of 180 parts per billion by volume (ppbv) coincides with both the virtual extinction of these gas-gushing herbivores and the onset of the deep chill that followed.

Greenland ice cores from other periods show that a reduction in methane levels of 20 ppbv corresponds to a reduction in temperature of roughly 1.0 degrees Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit).

That would add up to a decrease of 9.0 to 12.0 C (16 to 22 F), a near-perfect match with the Younger Dryas cold snap.

“We find that the loss of megafauna could explain 12.5 to 100 percent of the atmospheric decrease in methane observed,” the researchers said. …

via Did megafauna extinction cool the planet?.

NYC Sidewalk Gag

The old phrase “What goes around comes around” is a fairly accepted axiom, but it doesn’t always work for pranks — or for the pranksters.

Recently, an anonymous prankster in New York City decided to express distaste for slow tourists who dawdle on sidewalks by painting a line down the middle of a Fifth Avenue sidewalk between East 22nd and 23rd streets.The result was two lanes of traffic, one marked specifically for locals who need to get somewhere in a New York minute and the other for slowpoke tourists obviously overwhelmed by the bright lights and tall buildings of the Big Apple.

If the pedestrian prank’s purpose was to get publicity, it did the trick. Local and national publications ran photos of the sidewalk, and, presumably, readers got a good chuckle.

But one person isn’t laughing: a man who came up with a similar prank back in 1984 and feels credit should be given where it’s due — to him.

He’s media satirist and conceptual artist Joey Skaggs, who has a 40-year career creating media pranks that are designed to satirize the culture and the laziness of the media at covering big issues of the day.

via Joey Skaggs Unimpressed by NYC Sidewalk Gag – AOL News.