lord_rotorooter writes "Felix Ortiz, D-Brooklyn, introduced a bill that would ruin restaurant food and baked goods as we know them. The measure (if passed) would ban the use of all forms of salt in the preparation and cooking of food for all restaurants or bakeries. While the use of too much salt can contribute to health problems, the complete banning of salt would have negative impacts on food chemistry. Not only does salt enhance flavor, it controls bacteria, slows yeast activity and strengthens dough by tightening gluten. Salt also inhibits the growth of microbes that spoil cheese."

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Lanxon writes "It's true: 'Effects of cocaine on honeybee dance behavior,' 'Fellatio by fruit bats prolongs copulation time,' and 'Are full or empty beer bottles sturdier and does their fracture-threshold suffice to break the human skull?' are all genuine scientific research papers, and all were genuinely published in journals or similar publications. Wired's presentation of a collection of the most bizarrely-named research papers contains seven other gems, including one about naval fluff and another published in The Journal of Sex Research."

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Have you ever wanted to secretively spike an entire community's food supply with psychoactive drugs and see what happens? If so, then you should have joined the CIA in 1951. H P Albarelli Jr., an investigative journalist, claims that a sudden outbreak of mass insanity and hallucinations in the French town of Pont-Saint-Esprit 50 years ago was part of a CIA experiment with LSD, and not caused by flour contaminated with ergot as had been theorized. The brown bread, that is circulating around us, is not, specifically, too good. It's suggested that you do stay away from that.

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CWmike writes "Two insurance organizations in upstate New York said on Wednesday that they will offer their members and employers virtual physician visits beginning this summer, making New York the fourth state to provide these types of services. BlueCross BlueShield of Western New York, BlueShield of Northeastern New York and technology services provider American Well said the Online Care service will allow members to talk with physicians in real time through a private online chat network or through a voice-over-IP phone call. The service also offers video chat and instant messages. Members can sign on to the insurer's Web sites and look for physicians who are available online in various specialty areas."

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MikeChino writes "What's a Gribble? It's a tiny marine shrimp found on the southern coast of Britain — and its ability to digest wood may provide a breakthrough in efficient biofuel production. Researchers are studying the gribble's digestion process at a new UK bioenergy center in order to synthetically copy the process so that grasses, husk, straw and willow can be converted more efficiently into biofuels. The scientists reckon that information learned from the gribble could increase the efficiency of biofuel conversion by a factor of 6, making biofuels even more cost effective while utilizing non-food crops."

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ral writes "The human tongue can taste more than sweet, sour, salty, bitter and protein. Researchers have added fat to that list. Dr. Russell Keast, an exercise and nutrition sciences professor at Deakin University in Melbourne, told Slashfood, 'This makes logical sense. We have sweet to identify carbohydrate/sugars, and umami to identify protein/amino acids, so we could expect a taste to identify the other macronutrient: fat.' In the Deakin study, which appears in the latest issue of the British Journal of Nutrition, Dr. Keast and his team gave a group of 33 people fatty acids found in common foods, mixed in with nonfat milk to disguise the telltale fat texture. All 33 could detect the fatty acids to at least a small degree."

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Julie188 writes "After more than three decades of service to researchers and staff stationed at the bottom of the world, the dome at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station was deconstructed this austral summer. Designed and constructed by the Seabees — the construction battalions of the US Navy — in the early 1970s, the dome's geodesic design provided a unique solution to the challenges posed to engineers trying to build structures at the South Pole. The dome is being returned to southern California where it will be held in storage. It could possibly be trotted out as an exhibit in a new US Navy Seabees museum."

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astroengine follows up to a story about the LHC shutting down that seems to have hit all the news replicators today. "It's to be expected when pushing the frontiers of physics, but the LHC's epic 'will it or won't it' saga continues. Due to an unforeseen construction mistake, the LHC will cease experiments for a year (starting around late-2011) so repairs and upgrades can be carried out. For now, accelerated particles will have a maximum energy of 7TeV (half the power of the LHC's design maximum), which is ample for at least 18 months of experiments before shutdown."

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Xemu writes "Computers don't make children fat, but watching TV for the same length of time does. This is shown by a recent Swedish study of all school children in Lund's county conducted by RN Pernilla Garmy. The results were clear: The child's obesity was directly affected by placing a TV in the child's room, but placing a computer in the room had no effect at all. One theory is that it's common to have a snack in front of the TV, while a computer requires a more active user, for example when chatting or playing games."

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An anonymous reader writes "After a little over five months of pondering, xkcd fans have cracked a puzzle hidden inside Randall Munroe's recent book xkcd: volume 0. Here is the start of the thread on the xkcd forums; and here is the post revealing the final message (a latitude and longitude plus a date and time)."

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kkleiner writes "For many years countless individuals in the US have had to watch with envy as dogs and horses with joint and bone injuries have been cured with stem cell procedures that the FDA has refused to approve for humans. Now, in an exciting development, Regenerative Sciences Inc. in Colorado has found a way to skirt the FDA and provide these same stem cell treatments to humans. The results have been stunning, allowing many patients to walk or run who have not been able to do so for years. There's no surgery required, just a needle to extract and then re-inject the cells where they are needed. There has always been a lot of hype around stem cells, but this is the real deal. Real humans are getting real treatment that works, and we should all hope that more companies will begin offering this procedure in other states soon."

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macslocum writes "Nat Torkington begins sketching out an open data process that borrows liberally from open source tools: 'Open source discourages laziness (because everyone can see the corners you've cut), it can get bugs fixed or at least identified much faster (many eyes), it promotes collaboration, and it's a great training ground for skills development. I see no reason why open data shouldn't bring the same opportunities to data projects. And a lot of data projects need these things. From talking to government folks and scientists, it's become obvious that serious problems exist in some datasets. Sometimes corners were cut in gathering the data, or there's a poor chain of provenance for the data so it's impossible to figure out what's trustworthy and what's not. Sometimes the dataset is delivered as a tarball, then immediately forks as all the users add their new records to their own copy and don't share the additions. Sometimes the dataset is delivered as a tarball but nobody has provided a way for users to collaborate even if they want to. So lately I've been asking myself: What if we applied the best thinking and practices from open source to open data? What if we ran an open data project like an open source project? What would this look like?'"

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justice4all writes "Nokia has filed a US patent for a phone charger that harvests kinetic energy. The technology has been used in laptops, PDAs, and GPS receivers, according to Nokia. Essentially, the mobile devices would be powered in part through the movements of their owners."

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suraj.sun writes "The virus that causes AIDS can hide in the bone marrow, avoiding drugs and later awakening to cause illness, according to new research that could point the way toward better treatments for the disease. Dr. Kathleen Collins of the University of Michigan and her colleagues report in this week's edition of the journal Nature Medicine that the HIV virus can infect long-lived bone marrow cells that eventually convert into blood cells. The virus is dormant in the bone marrow cells, she said, but when those progenitor cells develop into blood cells, it can be reactivated and cause renewed infection. The virus kills the new blood cells and then moves on to infect other cells, said. In recent years, drugs have reduced AIDS deaths sharply, but patients need to keep taking the medicines for life or the infection comes back, Dr. Collins said."

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captn ecks writes "A biodegradable and self-sterilizing bag for people of the toilet-disenfranchised world (40% of humankind) to dispose of their bodily waste and turn it into safe fertilizer has been created by a Swedish entrepreneur. It's a dead simple and brilliant solution to a vexing problem. From the article: 'Once used, the bag can be knotted and buried, and a layer of urea crystals breaks down the waste into fertilizer, killing off disease-producing pathogens found in feces. The bag, called the Peepoo, is the brainchild of Anders Wilhelmson, an architect and professor in Stockholm. “Not only is it sanitary,” said Mr. Wilhelmson, who has patented the bag, “they can reuse this to grow crops.”'"

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Scientists in Chile have lost years of research from last month's massive earthquake, which overturned microscopes, destroyed research labs, and took the life of a young marine biologist.

Authors: Jocelyn Kaiser, Antonio Regalado

The announcement last week that a closely watched phase III clinical trial for Alzheimer's disease had failed to show a significant effect deals yet another demoralizing blow to patients, families, and caregivers.

Author: Greg Miller

Environmental groups in Thailand and elsewhere are laying at least part of the blame for low levels of the Lancang-Mekong River on China's doorstep. They claim that China's management of a series of dams on the Lancang River has aggravated the unfolding crisis.

Author: Richard Stone

ScienceNOW reported this week on the results of our blogging contest at this year's AAAS meeting, a new hiding spot for HIV, genes for pain sensitivity, and a solution to the rangeland paradox, among other stories.

Researchers from Stanford University and a consortium of nonprofit organizations have been working side by side with colleagues from the North Korean Ministry of Public Health to help set up the isolated nation's first laboratory capable of growing the mycobacterium that causes tuberculosis and detecting drug-resistant strains.

Author: Richard Stone

ScienceInsider reported this week that the H1N1 virus may have had less impact this winter than expected, but a new report from Hong Kong suggests that the virus in pigs has picked up genes from the human version, among other stories.

A work group of the American Psychiatric Association is proposing revisions for personality disorders in the forthcoming fifth version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, often referred to as psychiatry's bible.

Author: Constance Holden

Last week, neuroscientist Dario Ringach of the University of California, Los Angeles, spoke with Science about a recent panel discussion he co-organized on animal research and the resulting renewed attention he's gotten from animal-rights extremists after having given up primate research in 2006.

Author: Greg Miller

The editor of the journal Medical Hypotheses—an oddity in the world of scientific publishing because it does not practice peer review—will apparently lose his job over the publication last summer of a paper that says HIV does not cause AIDS.

Author: Martin Enserink

Last week, 1700 politicians, scientists, industrialists, and investors attended a 3-day summit in a suburb of Washington, D.C., to mark the first anniversary of the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy.

Author: Eli Kintisch

Two researchers have taken a stab at explaining why oceans have far fewer species than terrestrial habitats.

Author: Elizabeth Pennisi

The emerging understanding of the 2-year-old materials could change physicists' views on the decades-old mystery of high-temperature superconductivity.

Author: Adrian Cho

Once forgotten or erased, 1960s-era satellite images are being salvaged from old equipment and proving valuable in climate and space science.

Author: Heather Pringle

It now appears possible to sequence a patient’s genome at reasonable cost and with sufficient accuracy to be useful.

The review aims to help the U.N. climate change panel avoid the kinds of errors that have brought its work into question in recent months, officials said Wednesday.

An Oscar-winning filmmaker describes his goals in revealing details of the ongoing dolphin slaughter in a Japanese town.

For the first time, the complete, original manuscript of the theory of relativity, profoundly human and surprisingly moving to examine, has been put on display in Jerusalem.

When the software mogul Mitch Kapor won planning approval for his 10,000-square-foot house in Berkeley, Calif., neighbors were surprised that it will qualify as “green.”

Bedbug-sniffing dogs are the new and furry front line in an escalating domestic war.

The countries are the last two major economic powers to agree with the aims of the nonbinding agreement.

Mr. Thorbjarnarson was a scientist with wide interests in saving and learning about many species.

The president planned to spell out his vision for the future of American astronauts in space at a conference next month.

In a new book about the space race, Megan Prelinger sees hopes, dreams and fears in the form of magazine ads.

Making the leap from reactor-grade nuclear fuel to bomb-grade is like the rich getting richer: really fast.

Dr. Peter J. Pronovost, medical director of the Quality and Safety Research Group at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, travels the country advising hospitals on innovative safety measures.

“Relatively pure” ice is believed to be in small craters near the lunar north pole, and researchers say it could be easily tapped by future explorers.

If altered bits of genetic material could be picked up in a patient’s bloodstream, they would serve as a direct and sensitive marker of cancer.

The medical experts told an National Institutes of Health conference that the trend of “once a Caesarean, always a Caesarean” may be safely reversed.

A study of farming colonies in Canada found that giving flu vaccine to schoolchildren protected the community.

In an appearance that harked back to his 2008 campaign, President Obama made an emotional pitch for public support.

Beta amyloid, which was once thought to be a chief villain in Alzheimer’s, may be part of the brain’s normal defenses, researchers at Harvard suggested.

Researchers have tested the Sensecam, which contains a digital camera and an accelerometer, as an aid to people with Alzheimer’s disease and other memory disorders.

Using their computers, travelers will be able to donate $2 when making reservations on some Internet travel sites.

In 1899, two Swiss researchers discovered that an irregular heartbeat could be stopped by shocking the heart.

A National Sleep Foundation report on ethnic groups’ habits found responses on tiredness and sex were similar for most groups.

Most reported vaccinating their children, but more than half said they were concerned about adverse effects.

A new study found that older people hospitalized for a critical condition had a statistically significant drop in scores on cognitive tests when compared with people who had not been hospitalized.

Dr. Childs helped shape the understanding of inherited diseases as scientists learned more about so-called inborn errors of metabolism, biochemistry and molecular biology.

The UN secretary general asks the world's leading science academies to review the UN's climate science body.

Japan voices opposition to a proposed ban on international trade in bluefin tuna, after the EU backs the plan.

Researchers in Edinburgh say they have solved the mystery of why some chickens hatch out half-male and half-female.

Deforestation has revealed what could be a giant impact crater in Central Africa, according to Italian scientists.

EU nations decide to support a ban on international trade in Atlantic bluefin tuna until stocks recover.

The eggshells of long-dead and extinct species are a particularly good source to find preserved DNA, researchers say.

The science spokesmen of the three main political parties cross swords on the issue of UK research funding.

The Large Hadron Collider must be shut down for a year starting in late 2011 to address design flaws, the BBC has learned.

The largest meat-eating plant in the world is designed not to eat small animals, but small animal poo, scientists discover.

A never-before-seen reaction in nanotubes could make for batteries that pack a mighty punch, say researchers.

Will review of UN climate change body be unbiased?

Can all species live side by side in unique ecosystem?

The dawning age of the agricultural automatons

Environmentalists and the EU lock horns over biofuels

Politicians look away as Cyprus dies of drought

UK Skynet: Not to be confused with The Terminator

Europe is set to release its first non-native "biological control" species to curb the spread of Japanese knotweed.

Commercial and political interests are abusing historical whaling rights of indigenous people.

The European brown bear's love of electricity and telegraph poles is helping scientists gain new insights into its behaviour.

Mystery surrounds the deaths of 75 starlings which fell from the sky.

Skynet 5, the UK's single biggest space project, is to get a fourth satellite to up the bandwidth available to British forces.

Former Labour and Conservative science ministers challenge the next UK government to maintain investment in science.

A Tory-backed report urges incentives for schools and tax breaks for researchers to raise the profile of science.

Scientists may have identified the first specks of interstellar dust in material collected by the Nasa Stardust spacecraft.

Saltwater pumped into the earth to release natural gas offers a "plausible," but not definitive, explanation for small quakes in 2008 and 2009.

Obesity scientists dig deep to find the connection between body fat, white blood cells and a cascade of diseases.

Aaron Cohen, the former director of NASA's Johnson Space Center who helped create the space shuttle program, has died in College Station after a long fight with cancer. He was 79.

"If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you," then, with apologies to Kipling, you might not be a climate scientist.

How do I track the national and worldwide high temperatures each day? Why is snow so bright at night? These and many more weather questions are answered in our online weather Q and A column.

The potent greenhouse gas appears to be seeping through the Arctic Ocean floor and into the Earth's atmosphere, research shows.

An international team Thursday concluded that it was an asteroid, not volcanoes, that wiped out dinosaurs 65.5 million years ago.

'The moon was full, the wind roared, the tide was high and people died by the dozens.

The human digestive tract is a virtual zoo, full of a wide variety of bacteria, a new study found. And scientists say that is a good thing.

The fossilized remains of a 67 million-year-old snake found coiled around a dinosaur egg offer rare insight into the ancient reptile's dining habits and evolution, scientists said Tuesday.

Earth's days may have gotten a little bit shorter since the massive earthquake in Chile, but don't feel bad if you haven't noticed.

The fossilized remains of a 67 million-year-old snake found coiled around a dinosaur egg offer rare insight into the ancient reptile's dining habits and evolution, scientists said Tuesday.

Skip Animal Planet and the Science Channel, say scientists, and go to Jon Stewart's 'Daily Show' or Stephen Colbert's 'Colbert Report.'

A herbicide that contaminates the water consumed by millions of Americans has been found to produce gender-bending effects in male frogs.

Operators of the world's largest atom smasher restarted their massive machine Sunday in a run up to experiments probing secrets of the universe, a spokeswoman said.

The curriculum of Johns Hopkins' new part-time degree program is focused on climate change science, energy systems, carbon management and climate change policies. Classes will be held in the evenings at the Johns Hopkins Washington, DC Center near Dupont Circle. Learn more at environment.jhu.edu (PRWeb Mar 11, 2010)

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/03/prweb3705364.htm

MochaHost.com is proud to announce it has partnered with software developer SmarterTools Inc. to help businesses communicate, measure, and support their day-to-day business operations. (PRWeb Mar 11, 2010)

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/03/prweb3705444.htm

Three critical recommendations from a national workshop have been released to address deep-vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE), a growing public health problem estimated to affect nearly 1 million Americans each year. (PRWeb Mar 11, 2010)

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/03/prweb3706734.htm

First Annual International Iridoid Research Symposium to Be Held This Summer at Tahitian Noni International (PRWeb Mar 11, 2010)

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/iridoids/research/prweb3707794.htm

Small pack bottled water generates 46 percent less CO2 eq. when compared to soft drinks also packaged in PET plastic. (PRWeb Mar 11, 2010)

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/Bottled_Water_Industry/Environmental_Footprint/prweb3711574.htm

Today’s online education trends make it easier for businesses to provide employees with web-based professional business education programs (PRWeb Mar 11, 2010)

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/online/educations/prweb3713334.htm

A recent study implies that gender-specific differences in the perioral skin (skin surrounding the mouth) account for more and deeper skin wrinkling in women than in men. In cosmetic plastic surgery, it is important to consider the reasons why a particular treatment may or may not be effective. Current treatments for perioral wrinkles include the use of ablative & non-ablative laser treatments, botox injections, injectable facial wrinkle fillers, dermabrasion and chemical peels. Despite these many options, the effective treatment of wrinkles in the perioral region still remains a challenging problem for cosmetic surgeons today. (PRWeb Mar 11, 2010)

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/03/prweb3704384.htm

LocalITCompanies.com is now serving the greater metropolitan regions of Chicago, Dallas and Houston and will soon be expanding nationwide. Local IT Companies connects businesses with up to three pre-screened IT service companies, allowing the business to choose its ideal match. (PRWeb Mar 11, 2010)

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/03/prweb3648334.htm

iCardiac Continues Technology Leadership with Largest Number of Highly Automated QT(sm) and QT Beat-to-Beat(sm) Studies (PRWeb Mar 11, 2010)

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/automated/qt/prweb3699974.htm

Delphi Healthcare Partners, Inc. has begun a second partnership for Hospitalist services with CarolinaEast Health System. Orthopedic Hospitalist services began in July, 2009 at CarolinaEast, with General Surgery Hospitalist services added earlier this year. (PRWeb Mar 11, 2010)

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/03/prweb3706994.htm