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Comment by Pope Beanie on March 28, 2016 at 4:00pm

Haha, theoretically. Hmm, should gun buyers pass a T. gondii test?

Comment by Pope Beanie on March 28, 2016 at 3:50pm

People with “rage” disorder twice as likely to have a latent toxoplasmosis parasite infection

Posted on March 23, 2016 by Kevin Jiang in Features

The protozoan Toxoplasma gondii, tissue cyst in brain (Photo: D. Ferguson, Oxford University)

Individuals with a psychiatric disorder involving recurrent bouts of extreme, impulsive anger—road rage, for example—are more than twice as likely to have been exposed to a common parasite than healthy individuals with no psychiatric diagnosis.

In a study involving 358 adult subjects, a team led by researchers from the University of Chicago found that toxoplasmosis, a relatively harmless parasitic infection carried by an estimated 30 percent of all humans, is associated with intermittent explosive disorder and increased aggression.

[source]

Comment by Pope Beanie on March 15, 2016 at 7:59pm

From PhysicsGirl:

[see it larger on youtube]

Comment by Tiffany Davis on March 15, 2016 at 7:54pm

i never got the chance to learn science because i went to a special school that taught only kindergarten never taught any kind of science but iv'e always been interested in science though. 

Comment by SteveInCO on March 11, 2016 at 11:10pm

Beware the law of unintended consequences.  A fast working bacteria that eats a specific kind of plastic...could end up eating all of it, including that stuff that's still in use.

Comment by Stephen on March 11, 2016 at 1:45pm

Scientists Have Discovered a Bacteria That's Evolved to Eat Plastic

A team of Japanese scientists has discovered a bacteria that’s evolved to break down and consume PET—one of the world’s most environmentally damaging plastics.

The team discovered the bacteria living on plastic items found in wastewater samples it was collecting. Called Ideonella sakaiensis, it appears to consume a diet made up exclusively of PET, which it breaks down using a pair of enzymes. The bacteria cling to the plastic, then break the plastic down into terephthalic acid and ethylene glycol in a two-step process. They then digest those two substances. PET was only invented about 70 years ago. That means the bacteria must have evolved the ability to consume the plastic over the intervening decades. The results are published in Science.

The team is obviously excited about the prospect of using the bacteria to clean up the planet. There are, after all, millions of tons of waste PET on the surface of our planet—on landfills and in our seas. But right now, the bacteria are inefficient: New Scientist reports that it takes “6 weeks at 30°C to fully degrade a thumb-nail-sized piece of PET.” That’s because the bacteria multiplies relatively slowly, so it may be possible to genetically engineer a bacterium that combines the speed of multiplication of something like E.coli with the plastic-chomping abilities of Ideonella sakaiensis.

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It’s not the first natural organism to consume plastic. In 2012, there were reports of an Amazonian fungus that was able to break down polyurethane. But in terms of cleaning the planet, bacteria could be far more efficient. Let’s see if the team can speed the process up.

http://gizmodo.com/scientists-have-discovered-a-bacteria-thats-evol...

Comment by Stephen on March 10, 2016 at 9:47pm

Beautiful and relaxing, just awe inspiring.  

Comment by Pope Beanie on September 7, 2015 at 6:41pm

Surprising giant ring-like structure in the universe

September 7, 2015 by Tomasz Nowakowski

[...]

"The researchers found a ring of nine gamma ray bursts (GRBs)—the most luminous events in the universe—about 5 billion light years in diameter, and having a nearly regular circular shape, noting that there is a one in 20,000 probability of the GRBs being in this distribution by chance."

[...]

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-09-giant-ring-like-universe.html#jCp

Comment by Pope Beanie on May 15, 2015 at 7:07pm

Comment by Pope Beanie on December 13, 2014 at 5:48pm

Link between vitamin D and dementia risk confirmed

Vitamin D deficiency is associated with a substantially increased risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease in older people, according to the most robust study of its kind ever conducted.

An international team, led by Dr David Llewellyn at the University of Exeter Medical School, found that study participants who were severely Vitamin D deficient were more than twice as likely to develop dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

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