Health: The weighty costs of non-caloric sweeteners A new study shows that metabolic changes induced by non-caloric artificial sweeteners (NAS) (e.g. elevated fasting glucose) are induced by (and can be directly induced by) changes to gut bacteria. Include human demonstration. Further hypotheses: (1) Increase in bacteria that break down dietary components, esp. energy extraction including fats...
Three headlines selected from this week's Science/Nature journals: (1) Memory in the innate immune system, (2) water in extrasolar atmospheres, and (3) enhancing photosynthesis in crops. Herein I summarize these, highlighting what makes them interesting to this person.
This is Nature October 10 2013, Vol. 502, Iss. 7470, Pp. 141-264. Big weapons have little downside. Secrets of trial data revealed. Earth science: The timing of climate change. Quantum physics: Watching the wavefunction collapse – – I’m not reviewing this article (but bookmarked) because I simply do not have a strong enough foundation in QM. Cell biology: Molecular clearance at...
I have listened to a Nature podcast: Stephen Hawkings and Edward Snowden are heroes of mine. They just found the largest volcano in the entire solar system. And it’s on Earth! Go Science! Team Earth. Children respond intellectually (as by the ability to differentiate dinosaurs from another species) to not only human noise (chatter), but also animal noise (cf. language). One of the greatest...
Not completely comfortable with the precise choice of that neologism. I’d have preferred post-scheduling or something. Although that is due to a difference in focus. In the original concept – from The Now Habit – the emphasis is on scheduling not-work, and filling in the blank spaces with work after each period. By contrast, I’m interested not merely in the category of “reduce...
This is a continuation of an effort to review Science 9 August 2013 Vol. 341 no. 6416. V. PubPeer is a nice, interesting, and new website, designed to allow readers to critique papers they’ve read. VI. P647, I read the full research paper, entitled Social Influence Bias: A Randomized Experiment – basically about how knowing about aggregated opinions affects our own, albeit in...
The Origin of Speech is the title of an article published in Scientific American in 1960 by Charles F. Hockett. It is often cited, even today, for its suggestion that there are 13 “design-features” shared by all languages. The 13 design-features of language: Vocal-auditory channel – While it is true that we have cultural adaptations that don’t require vocalizing communication – sign...
This is a summary of a review-piece published in the prestigious science journal Trends in Pharmacological Sciences in 2010 ([link]) entitled “Nicotine receptors and depression: revisiting and revising the cholinergic hypothesis“. The publication was authored by Yann Mineur and Marina Picciotto and discussed the connection between smoking, nicotinic receptors, and depression. Below I...
