Enjoy!

Changes In The Sun Are Not Causing Global Warming, New Study Shows (Science Daily)

So, you can cross off the sun as the possible cause of global warming. Still left on the list, HUMANS, and bigfoot.

The hypothesis they tested was that increased solar activity reduces cloudiness by changing cosmic rays. So, when clouds decrease, more sunlight is let in, causing the earth to warm. Some climate change skeptics have tried to use this hypothesis to suggest that greenhouse gases may not be the global warming culprits that most scientists agree they are.

In research published in Geophysical Research Letters, and highlighted in the May 1 edition of Science, Adams and Pierce report the first atmospheric simulations of changes in atmospheric ions and particle formation resulting from variations in the sun and cosmic rays. They find that changes in the concentration of particles that affect clouds are 100 times too small to affect the climate.

When Your Brain Doesn’t Know What Your Body Is Doing (Science Magazine)

This is why i make lists:

As anyone with a busy schedule can attest, intending to do something and actually doing it are two different things. But your brain doesn’t make such neat distinctions, according to a new study. Researchers have found that when you wave at someone, for example, the intention to move your hand creates the feeling of it having moved, not the physical motion itself. The discovery sheds new light on how the brain tracks what the body does.

The, next quote, description of the experiment is a must read. how in our brain are localized in different areas the idea to do a certain action, and the will to make the action happen. It’s a neurological basis for free will. Does disjunction of this relationship happen without brain lesions? Can it be triggered by traumatic experiences? Can this relationship be used to in order to create false memories, or even overcome addiction and augment self esteem? Can someone feel like they have actually done something, when in fact they have done nothing?

After stimulation of the parietal cortex, patients reported “wanting” to move their arms, legs, lips, or chest but didn’t actually move them. When Mottolese stimulated the same region more intensely, patients believed that they had moved the body parts they’d intended to move even though they hadn’t. Stimulating the premotor cortex, on the other hand, resulted in real movements, but the patients were never conscious of their motions.

Narcolepsy: A Case of the Body Attacking Itself? (ScienceNow)

I am becoming comfortable with the idea of our bodies being a community of different cells bound together by a central organization system, much like how the united states is a unique entity made up of millions of voices and minds. i am into ideas about disease that describe an illness like we describe social problems, how parts of the body do not communicate or organize under the rules of the biological road. Cancer is currently thought as cell factions and misfits who have decided to live their way, being a glutton for resources and a disruptor of essential processes of the body. It doesn’t take much for a couple of cellular rebels to make the whole body go to shit. Even diseases you wouldn’t automatically think it Take this understanding of narcolepsy:

Emmanuel Mignot, a sleep researcher with the Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California, has been studying narcolepsy for more than 20 years. In the late 1990s, his team discovered that narcoleptics lack hypocretin, a hormone produced by a few brain cells that helps keep people and animals awake. In narcoleptic patients, the mechanism that makes the hormone is intact, but the cells are missing, suggesting that something destroys them.

Narcoleptics are also likely to have a specific variant of the human leukocyte antigen. HLA instigates the body’s immune response by presenting fragments from pathogens to the immune cells, which in turn fight the pathogens off. Most autoimmune diseases, such as multiple sclerosis and type 1 diabetes, are associated with specific HLAs. Although later studies found no further evidence of an immune link, the coincidence made Mignot and many other sleep researchers suspect that an autoimmune attack was ravaging narcoleptics’ hypocretin-producing cells.

The article continues to say that it is not known why these particular cells are targeted by the immune system. It possible could be like FOP, where there is a mutation in the receptors on the outside of these cells. A doctor told me that she has never heard of hypocretin tests for patients with sleep disorders.

Plastics That Change Color When Stressed (ScienceNow)

It’s increasingly harder to make the argument for plastic to be widely used for packaging and consumer products that will soon be thrown out and fill the world’s landfills. However, if they could be used in this way, to indicate if a plane wing or replacement organs need to be replaced , plastics could have important, limited uses in the future.

Keep Biofuels Out of the Gas Tank (ScienceNow)

One more study that shows Obama’s stance supporting biofuel powered cars is misguided:

Biofuels work better if you don’t put them directly into your car. That’s the conclusion of a new study that shows that ethanol derived from corn and switchgrass allows cars to drive farther and emit less greenhouse gases if these crops are converted to electricity for powering electric vehicles rather than pouring the ethanol into the gas tank….

Cars would travel 81% farther on the energy in biofuels if it were first converted to electricity, the team reported today in Science. Powering an electric vehicle using crops would also prevent the release of up to 10 tons of CO₂ per acre compared with a similar sized gasoline-powered car.

Were Neanderthals Devoured By Humans? (slashdot)

There is recent news attempting to understand the relationship with Homo Sapiens distant primate relative, the Neanderthals, and if we interbred. A new theory suggests we may have eaten Neanderthals.  Researchers have found evidence of human life in Germany 37,000 years ago.

A giant leap toward space-based solar power (LA Times)

Who cares about cloudy days anymore? OR nighttime for that matter.

A Manhattan Beach start-up called Solaren Corp. seeks to launch an array of giant solar power collectors into orbit 23,000 miles above Fresno and beam the energy to Earth. PG&E has signed a contract to buy the power — if Solaren can make the technology work.

Aging: Sleep Deprivation Easier on Older People (NY Times)

The analysis, published online May 3 in The Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, found that for the first 16 hours, the two groups were evenly matched, but for the next 10, the younger people had about three times as many attentional failures as their elders and significantly slower reaction times. Those under 29 were also more inclined to nap — more than half of them dozed at one time or another, while all of the older people stayed awake.

While it may be true that the older you get, the easier it is going without sleep, chances are, as this slate article points out, not sleeping long enough will eventually kill you.