One News

The University of East Anglia is about to begin a study on the effect of chocolate in reducing heart disease in women with type 2 diabetes. 150 women will be needed to eat chocolate daily for a whole year.

Now don’t go out a start buying up chocolate bars just yet because the chocolate off the shelf has all the goodness processed out of it. A Belgian chocolatier has developed a flavanoid rich chocolate for the study and 27 grams will be eaten daily.

Women that have been through menopause will be selected to eat the chocolate daily and still carry on with their cholesterol lowering medication. The chocolate will have added soy compounds as well. .
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eSolar recently received a $130 million investment from Google, Oak Investment Partners, and IdeaLab. This company was almost dissolved in the 1980s but it has managed to pick up steam because it may be a promising alternative to coal burning plants.

The company uses mirrors to trap solar energy which it concentrates to turn it into steam which in turn drives the same turbines that coal burning plants use to generate electricity.

Coal burning plants are expensive to construct so investors are excited at this alternative. 4 states in the SW US have laws which require they receive 15-20% of their electricity from solar energy. Someday solar firms may compete on the open market.
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Physicists at the University of Texas have created the strongest laser on the planet. The newly created laser has reached an output of a petawatt, which is equivalent to one quadrillion watts.

The laser

Researchers at the Institute for Neurological Research at the University of California have announced that they have discovered a revolutionary new way of reducing the symptoms of Alzheimer’s by injecting patients with anti-arthritic drugs.

The scientists say the treatment reduces the symptoms of the disease in a matter of minutes and gave a 90 per cent respond rate to their trials using 50 patients in a private clinic.

The Alzheimer’s Society’s helpline phone lines were jammed within minutes of the BBC reporting the news by people demanding details of the treatment. Experts have urged caution saying more tests are needed before drawing conclusions.
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At the University of Iowa, a group of scientists are looking for people to smoke pot as part of a study to help gain some ideas concerning marijuana’s effect on brain function using brain imaging studies and achievement tests as a guide.

Robert Block, associate professor of the universities Department of Anethesia, said the scientists are looking for both pot smokers, and people who don’t smoke pot, but may consume alcohol and tobacco for the study.

Subjects will get $20 for an initial screening, with $600 for their full participation. The findings might be used to support whether marijuana should be decriminalized, used for medicinal purposes, or if harsher criminal penalties should apply.
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Drs. Goldfarb and Negoianu have cited the scientific literature available on the effects of drinking too much water and have concluded that for the average healthy person, drinking a lot of water is not necessary.

People who play sports or live in drier climate or have certain illnesses need extra water but for the average person ‘guzzling water’ does not necessarily mean good health.

The Drs. went as far to say that the drinking lots of water for improved health was ‘folklore’ and had little scientific basis.
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US scientists have reportedly been able to construct materials capable of extracting electricity from nuclear radiation, instead of the traditional method. This may have considerable impact on transportation technology, namely cars.

While the complex process involves carbon nanotubes and other materials, the simple explanation is that the materials have the capacity to absorb nuclear radiation, and convert it directly to electricity.

Traditional nuclear power is produced via heat, which produces steam pressure, which in turn drives electricity generating turbines. This new method allows for the technology to be packed into small batteries, capable of powering an array of devices.
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One of the worlds leading scientists Professor Michio Kaku, of City University in New York claims in a new book that concepts taken from science fiction like teleportation and forcefields may become be a reality.

Kaku says that teleportation has already been carried out by sending a photon 89 miles through a phenomenon called quantum entanglement although admits that the Star Trek transporter room will have to wait a couple of hundred years.

The professor claims

Daedalus used feathers and wax - and we all know what happened to his son when he flew too close to the sun. Instead, you could try surgery, says Samuel Poore, a reconstructive surgeon at the University of Wisconsin in Madison who has now described the steps that would be needed to transform human arms into wings.

It sounds like an idea that might come from the underground world of body-modders, who go in for filing teeth to points, implanting horns - and even more extreme modifications. But Poore studied the mechanisms of bird flight under Ted Goslow of Brown University, Rhode Island, before he began medical school and became interested in hand surgery.

A colleague remarked that Poore would never be able to apply his knowledge of bird anatomy to plastic surgery - and that set him thinking.

A functional wing is, sadly, out of the question. Humans lack the shoulder joint and massive muscles that millions of years of evolution gave modern birds. Wing loading is another killer requirement. Modern birds need at least a square centimetre of wing area for every 4 grams of body mass, so an 80-kilogram human would need two square metres of wing.

But an arm might be converted to a decorative wing. Poore suggests modelling it on the wing of Archaeopteryx, the earliest bird, which had a shoulder much closer to humans than the shoulders of better-flying modern birds.
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China has confirmed a sighting of an endangered species of tiger that hasn’t been spotted in 20 years. The International Natural Conservation Alliance listed the South China Tiger, or Penthern tiger, in 1996 among 10 highly endangered species.

Farmers who live in Northwest China’s Qinling Mountains, located in Shaanxi Province, spawned an investigation after some tigers by their village were spotted. China is the only habitat for the animal, where only 68 remain in zoos there.

A plethora of evidence was gathered on October 3rd, according to deputy director of Shaanxi Wild Animal Management Station Lu Xirong. It included photos, paw and teeth marks, paw prints left on the trunks of trees, and hair and feces. Read more »