Science // Current TV

Global warming at a standstill, new Met Office figures show

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/9787662/Global-warming-at-a-... more

mitekillem
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Brazilian Bikini Waxes Make Crab Lice Endangered Species

Pubic lice, the crab-shaped insects that have dwelled in human groins since the beginning of history, are disappearing. Doctors say bikini waxing may be the reason.

Waning infestations of the bloodsuckers have been linked by doctors to pubic depilation, especially a technique popularized in the 1990s by a Manhattan salon run by seven Brazilian sisters. More than 80 percent of college students in the U.S. remove all or some of their pubic hair -- part of a trend that’s increasing in western countries. In Australia, Sydney’s main sexual health clinic hasn’t seen a woman with pubic lice since 2008 and male cases have fallen 80 percent from about 100 a decade ago.

Growing up on the Brazilian coast, the owners of the J Sisters Salon routinely waxed to accommodate the ever shrinking bikinis worn on the beach. In 1994, they introduced the waxing technique at their New York Salon. Photographer: Dado Galdieri/Bloomberg

“It used to be extremely common; it’s now rarely seen,” said Basil Donovan, head of sexual health at the University of New South Wales’s Kirby Institute and a physician at the Sydney Sexual Health Centre. “Without doubt, it’s better grooming.”

The trend suggests an alternative way of stemming one of the globe’s most contagious sexually transmitted infections. Pubic lice are usually treated with topical insecticides, which once included toxic ones developed before and during World War 2. While they aren’t known to spread disease, itchy skin reactions and subsequent infections make pubic lice a hazardous pest.

Clipping, waxing and shaving the groin destroy the optimal habitat of pubic lice. The practice has helped spur sales of depilatory products for companies such as Procter & Gamble Co. (PG) and Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc. (RB/)

The global market for depilatories was worth $4.69 billion last year, according to London-based Euromonitor International Ltd., which estimates sales increased at a 7.6 percent average annual clip the past decade. Cincinnati-based P&G, Slough, England-based Reckitt Benckiser and Energizer Holdings Inc. (ENR), based in St. Louis, dominate the market, which Euromonitor predicts will reach $5.6 billion by 2016.

A majority of college men and women in the U.S. and Australia remove all or part of their pubic hair, researchers at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, reported in a 2011 paper, citing surveys and research by other scholars. In the U.K., 99 percent of women older than 16 years remove some hair, most commonly from the under arms, legs and pubic area, a 2005 study found.

Brazilian waxing took off internationally in the early 2000s, possibly spurred by the attention it was given on television shows such as Sex and the City, said Spring Cooper Robbins, a senior lecturer and sexual health researcher at the University of Sydney.

Continues...............

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-13/brazilian-bikini-waxes-make-crab-lice-endangered-species-health.htmlPubic lice, the crab-shaped insects that have dwelled in human groins since the... more

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ScienceCasts: Dark Lightning

Visit http://science.nasa.gov/ for breaking science news. Researchers studying... more

Vierotchka
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DNA directly photographed for the first time

Fifty-nine years after James Watson and Francis Crick deduced the double-helix... more

Dagum
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Origin of life emerged from cell membrane bioenergetics

A coherent pathway which starts from no more than rocks, water and carbon dioxide and... more

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Asteroid feared on course with Earth in 2040, no longer poses threat, NASA says

A massive asteroid feared to be on a collision course with earth in 2040, no longer... more

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Fluctuating Environment May Have Driven Human Evolution

Dec. 24, 2012 — A series of rapid environmental changes in East Africa roughly 2... more

mitekillem
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Cancer of Corruption, Seeds of Destruction: The Monsanto GMO Whitewash

This revolving door of corrupt ties between powerful private industry lobby groups and... more

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Discover Magazine's top science story for 2012 -- Higgs Boson; Climate change No. 4

Discover Magazine picked the likely discovery of the Higgs Boson particle by CERN as... more

HarukoHaruhara
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Venezuela Gives Over 2 million Canaima Free Laptops to School Children

Caracas, 22 Dic. AVN.- Science, Technology and Innovation minister Jorge Arreaza... more

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2012 Doomsday Secrets Revealed

Mysteries of the Mayan Calendar's predictions for December 21, 2012 uncovered

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Saber-toothed cat fossils discovered in Nevada near Las Vegas

Paleontologists say extensive research in a Nevada desert has revealed an exciting... more

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Dads Drugged with Oxytocin are "Parentally-Enhanced"

a new study out of Israel shows that 35 fathers enhance their social connection to... more

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The Great Putty Drop of 2012 results

Find out what happens when 50lbs of putty drops from the ceiling of the Franklin... more

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The Dark Side of Science

This hard-hitting video from Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, reveals the dark side of... more

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The Continuum of Humanist Education

The Humanist Institute is pleased to announce the addition of Level Two online courses... more

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Drought May Have Killed Sumerian Language

SAN FRANCISCO — A 200-year-long drought 4,200 years ago may have killed off the ancient Sumerian language, one geologist says.

Because no written accounts explicitly mention drought as the reason for the Sumerian demise, the conclusions rely on indirect clues. But several pieces of archaeological and geological evidence tie the gradual decline of the Sumerian civilization to a drought.

The findings, which were presented Monday (Dec. 3) here at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, show how vulnerable human society may be to climate change, including human-caused change.

"This was not a single summer or winter, this was 200 to 300 years of drought," said Matt Konfirst, a geologist at the Byrd Polar Research Center.

Beginning about 3500 B.C., the Sumerian culture flourished in ancient Mesopotamia, which was located in present-day Iraq. Ancient Sumerians invented cuneiform writing, built the world's first wheel and arch, and wrote the first epic poem, "Gilgamesh." [Image Gallery: Ancient Middle-Eastern Texts]

But after 200 to 300 years of upheaval, the Sumerian culture disappeared around 4,000 years ago, and the Sumerian language went extinct soon after that.

Konfirst wanted to see if a drought that spanned about 200 years may have caused the decline. Several geological records point to a long period of drier weather in the Middle East around 4,200 years ago, Konfirst said. The Red Sea and the Dead Sea had increased evaporation; water levels dropped at Lake Van in Turkey, and cores from marine sediments around that period indicate increased dust in the environment.

"As we go into the 4,200-year-ago climate anomaly, we actually see that estimated rainfall decreases substantially in this region and the number of sites that are populated at this time period reduce substantially," he said.

Around the same time, 74 percent of the ancient Mesopotamian settlements were abandoned, according to a 2006 study of an archaeological site called Tell Leilan in Syria. The populated area also shrank by 93 percent, he said.

"People still live in this region. It's not that the collapse of a civilization means that an area is completely abandoned," he said. "But that there's a sharp change in the population."

During the great drought, two waves of marauding nomads descended upon the region, sacking the capital city of Ur. After around 2000 B.C., ancient Sumerian gradually died off as a spoken language in the region. For the next 2,000 years, the tongue lingered on as a dead written language, similar to Latin in the Middle Ages, but has been completely extinct since then, Konfirst said.

The coincidence of the social upheaval, depopulation in the area and the geologic record of drought suggests climate change might have played a role in the loss of the Sumerian language, Konfirst said.

The findings also suggest that modern-day civilizations may be vulnerable to climate change, he said.SAN FRANCISCO — A 200-year-long drought 4,200 years ago may have killed off the... more

mitekillem
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6 months ago
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Article: Genetically engineered babies unless you act now!

"This is a crucial moment, what may be one of the last chances to prevent a... more

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6 months ago
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Human Genetic Variation Recent, Varies Among Populations

ScienceDaily (Nov. 28, 2012) — Nearly three-quarters of mutations in genes that code for proteins -- the workhorses of the cell -- occurred within the past 5,000 to 10,000 years, fairly recently in evolutionary terms, said a national consortium of genomic and genetic experts, including those at Baylor College of Medicine.

"One of the most interesting points is that Europeans have more new deleterious (potentially disease-causing) mutations than Africans," said Dr. Suzanne Leal, professor of molecular and human genetics at BCM and an author of the report. She is also director of the BCM Center for Statistical Genetics. "Having so many of these new variants can be partially explained by the population explosion in the European population. However, variation that occur in genes that are involved in Mendelian traits and in those that affect genes essential to the proper functioning of the cell tend to be much older." (A Mendelian trait is controlled by a single gene. Mutations in that gene can have devastating effects.)

How events affected genome

The amount variation or mutation identified in protein-coding genes (the exome) in this study is very different from what would have been seen 5,000 years ago, said Leal and her colleagues in the report that appears online in the journal Nature. The report shows that "recent" events have a potent effect on the human genome.

Eighty-six percent of the genetic variation or mutations that are expected to be harmful arose in European-Americans in the last five thousand years, said the researchers.

The researchers used established bioinformatics techniques to calculate the age of more than a million changes in single base pairs (the A-T, C-G of the genetic code) that are part of the exome or protein-coding portion of the genomes (human genetic blueprint) of 6,515 people of both European-American and African-American decent. The research was an offshoot of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute Exome Sequencing Project.

Human population increase

"The recent dramatic increase in human population size, resulting in a deluge of rare functionally important variation, has important implications for understanding and predicting current and future patterns of human disease and evolution," wrote the authors in their report.

Others institutions that took part in this research include the University of Washington, Seattle; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

Funding for the research came from the GO (Grand Opportunity) Exome Sequencing Project (NHLBI grants RC2 HL-103010 (Heart GO), RC2 HL-102923 (Lung GO) and RC2 HL-102924 (WHISP). The exome sequencing was supported by NHLBI grants RC2HL-102925 (Broad GO) and RC2 HL-102926 (Seattle GO).ScienceDaily (Nov. 28, 2012) — Nearly three-quarters of mutations in genes that... more

mitekillem
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6 months ago
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How the world's first webcam made a coffee pot famous

Computer technology now moves so fast it's hard to remember life before the... more

JuliannaEdward2
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6 months ago
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