Boobies: Baring it all for breast cancer.

Again we see a return to the theme of showing your boobies to the public in support of a cause.

I call for more causes like this. Hell, I might even create some societal injustices just to get things going.

I've decided to get a hybrid car.

I've even picked out the model. It was tough going to find one that approached my horsepower requirements, but this one does everything I want (except deliver handjobs on the freeway, which mysteriously isn't showing up on any product feature lists anywhere.)

Calorie restriction and long life (again).

Some guys identify a second gene associated with life extension effects of calorie restriction. This doesn't mean much except that they will probably be able to duplicate the effect without starving people.

I can't wait to see what happens when all this stuff is fully decoded. I predict: 1) they WILL solve aging completely within most of our lifetimes, 2) there will be an attempt to limit the distribution in order to keep the world's population down, and 3) we will see the bloodiest wars ever as a direct or indirect result (I'm guessing direct).

Not to be negative or anything.

Words can change the way things smell.

Apparently the mere suggestion of a word can change the connotation of smells from "unpleasant" to "pleasant". This suggests that smells are basically agnostic and that we're trained to recognize whether they're "good" or "bad".

No word on whether subliminal suggestions can make a pussy smell good. All you girls could try an experiment, though. Next time he's down there say stuff like "buy a Mustang GT" or "you can have the whole garage for a workshop and I'll park the car in the driveway". If it leads to more pussy eating, you might just find that you don't mind walking through the snow to get to the car.

Study: Training improves attention in kids.

A new study from the University of Oregon shows that a short training course can improve the attention skills of little kids.

It's kind of like some parents have been saying for years: "Don't drug our kids, teach them."

Don't forget to join the campaign to change school district terminology from "Little Johnny appears to have improved attention on the medication," to "Little Johnny displays behavior similar to the focus-trance of a meth addict".

More naked PETA girls.

As idiotic as PETA is, you just gotta love their campaign of getting naked in public.

Netherlands gets things way, way wrong.

Despite their shining party town Amsterdam, the Dutch have something seriously wrong with their heads.

fashion for recycling nuts

Recycle that old air tube canister as a trendy handbag.

Fwd: New avenues to exploit animals: Cows Generate Electricity!

In a crushing blow to PETA, researcher generates electricity from cows.

Ok, I admit to being misleading here, it's bacteria from cow shit that's due to be exploited. Perhaps they'll rename themselves "SHITA".

Plant Superiority

As has been suggested before, I hold plants in higher regard than most humans. I offer proof: they can repair their own sunburns.

When added to the existence of beer (made from plants of course), the evidence is compelling.

Advances in mindwipe technology: memory-related drug cravings.

Basic science on the nature of memory and brain reward mechanisms provide for important clues on how to design the perfect mindwipe procedure for our nation's criminals. Soon, we'll be able to change them all into the people we'd have them be and they'll like it!

These guys will be invited to join my administration after the revolution.

Treatment to block memory-related drug cravings

[...] a study led by John F. Marshall, a researcher in UCI's Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, shows that memory for places associated with cocaine use can be strikingly altered by inactivating a specific protein called ERK (extracellular signal-regulated kinase) in the brains of animals. [...]

telecrapper

No, not remote crapping, but an answering machine that intercepts telemarketers and holds virtual conversations with them.

Although this is a great idea, I have a feeling that it will escalate the war of technology and we'll soon face computerized telemarketers that can't be distinguished from human ones. This puts the entire telemarketer job market at risk! We need a LAW or SOMETHING!

Seriously, though, I predict that we really don't need spam on our telephone system.

From Make:

"Are you tired of answering the phone only to find a telemarketer on the other end and wish you could make them as angry as you feel? Now you can build your own answering system that carries on a virtual conversation with the telemarketer and drives them nuts. The Telecrapper 2000 (TC2K) is a computerized system designed to both intercept incoming Telemarketing calls on the first ring, and then carry on a virtual conversation with the telemarketer. The site also features phone calls the device has carried out with telemarketers. Thanks Jay! Link. "

Study: Most Scientific Papers are Wrong

This is precious: "Assuming that the new paper is itself correct". If I was a girl, I'd <giggle>.(Nah, on second thought, I wouldn't.) The source of this paper though reveals the level of trust held in the hearts of the medical community.

Most scientific papers are probably wrong

Most published scientific research papers are wrong, according to a new analysis. Assuming that the new paper is itself correct, problems with experimental and statistical methods mean that there is less than a 50% chance that the results of any randomly chosen scientific paper are true.

John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at the University of Ioannina School of Medicine in Greece, says that small sample sizes, poor study design, researcher bias, and selective reporting and other problems combine to make most research findings false. But even large, well-designed studies are not always right, meaning that scientists and the public have to be wary of reported findings.

"We should accept that most research findings will be refuted. Some will be replicated and validated. The replication process is more important than the first discovery," Ioannidis says.

In the paper, Ioannidis does not show that any particular findings are false. Instead, he shows statistically how the many obstacles to getting research findings right combine to make most published research wrong.

Massaged conclusions

Traditionally a study is said to be "statistically significant" if the odds are only 1 in 20 that the result could be pure chance. But in a complicated field where there are many potential hypotheses to sift through - such as whether a particular gene influences a particular disease - it is easy to reach false conclusions using this standard. If you test 20 false hypotheses, one of them is likely to show up as true, on average.

Odds get even worse for studies that are too small, studies that find small effects (for example, a drug that works for only 10% of patients), or studies where the protocol and endpoints are poorly defined, allowing researchers to massage their conclusions after the fact.

Surprisingly, Ioannidis says another predictor of false findings is if a field is "hot", with many teams feeling pressure to beat the others to statistically significant findings.

But Solomon Snyder, senior editor at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore, US, says most working scientists understand the limitations of published research.

"When I read the literature, I'm not reading it to find proof like a textbook. I'm reading to get ideas. So even if something is wrong with the paper, if they have the kernel of a novel idea, that's something to think about," he says.

Journal reference: Public Library of Science Medicine (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124)