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Rajan et al (2002) compared local honey, commercial honey, and honey flavored corn syrup in a randomized trial. It found no difference among the three.
This review says that honey is no more effective than placebo for treatment of ocular allergies.
Saarinen, Jantunen, and Haahtela (2011), which silveraw posted, found that birch pollen honey was effective for birch pollen allergy relative to a control group of "usual allergy treatment", but no different than regular honey.
I am not expert in this field, but my interpretation is that there is little evidence that local honey is more than a placebo. The effect that Saarinen, Jantunen, and Haahtela (2011) find could just be a placebo effect since they did nothing to their control group. Giving the control group a dummy treatment of honey flavored corn syrup, like Rajan et al (2002), is a much better experimental design.
As a development economist, I am sad to say: You are probably right with not giving.
Unless you know exactly how the money travels or that the organization is trustworthy in bringing the money where it belongs, there is a good chance, that the money hurts more than it helps. War lords seize the food, money vanishes in dubious channels, much of it is taken up by corruption, etc.. In the end it might strengthen the posititon of the powerful.
If you want to help, support sustainable change (like ai does) opr check your charity organization (some microfinancers are ok). But, please, don't give blindly just to feel good.
Edit: Since so many people read this, I wanted to provide some evidence. The following papers show that (state funded) aid is at best unimportant to long-term development and at worst detrimental:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304387800001504 http://www.nber.org/papers/w7108 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/713601082
Couldn't find anything on NGO-aid on the fly, though. State funded aid should serve as a good proxy for these analyses, though.
Are you asking about cannabis use leading to mental illness? The primary well-studied established link is between cannabis use and schizophrenia, and the research clearly suggests the link is only in persons otherwise predisposed to schizophrenia (meaning, they were already at risk of developing the illness, the cannabis use just "pushed them over the edge").
There is also research showing increased rates of depression and anxiety in some cannabis users, though like with schizophrenia, not everyone experiences those symptoms, and more research is needed to better understand the relationship and who is at risk of those symptoms.
EDIT: Sorry everyone, I have the lucky privilege of being on call today, and I have to go do a couple consults. So I'll be in and out the rest of the day. I'll try to check back and answer some questions when I have time.
I believe your question is based on a false premise. There are examples of beneficial viral infections, such as wasps which harbor a virus that helps defend their eggs, interference between hepatits A and hepatitis C in humans, or interference between herpes 7 and HIV.
However, we don't know much about beneficial viruses because we don't really look for them. Most of the time, we spend our effort trying to isolate pathogenic viruses. Additionally, if you consider your premise from an evolutionary perspective, one would imagine that a beneficial viral infection would quickly be spread to all members of the population, making it hard to distinguish its presence.
Here, the amount of a 1% (w/v) caffeine/PBS solution absorbed transdermally was 2.6 ug/cm^2 per hour. This is a high concentration solution and was done with with a patch applied continuously and directly to a hairless mouse.
So, the amount you would absorb over an entire day would still be sub-milligram amounts, when a cup of coffee typically has about 100 milligrams.
TL;DR: Less than what's in a sip of coffee.
While I don't have access to the full paper, this abstract I found by searching on google scholar indicates that:
The longer BHT (Breath Holding Time) significantly** increased** both percent retention of tar in the lung and the pre- to postsmoking rise in blood COHb, serum THC and heart rate, independent of puff volume and number. In contrast, the larger PV (Puff Volume) had no significant influence on these variables for the same amount of cigarette consumed. The longer BHT (and not the larger PV) characteristics of M smoking contributes to the greater COHb boost and lung retention of inhaled tar during M compared to T smoking. In addition, the longer BHT appears to enhance THC absorption.
How about we try to use real articles, rather than questionable sources that don't cite, and simply say "studies done in Australia..." before we all jump on a bandwagon.
Interesting, however, is that the size of the puff doesn't matter so much. This all makes intuitive sense: absorption is going to be regulated by the surface area to volume ratio in your lungs. I would theorize that the available surface area in your lungs is largely independent of the puff volume, because of the pulmonary alveolus, which, according to this Wikipedia link, provide a surface area of 75m^2
I had to really resist making my own post about this.
Breast sagging, or ptosis, has not been significantly linked with sleeping on your stomach. A 2010 study concluded that "age, history of significant (>50 lbs) weight loss, higher body mass index, larger bra cup size, number of pregnancies, and smoking history were found to be significant risk factors for breast ptosis".
Additionally, bra-wearing has been deemed useful for exercise, but it has been reported that no medical evidence exists to confirm that regular bra-wearing prevents sagging.
I agree, none.
Edit: Sorry, was in a hurry and gave a quick answer, here's a little more elaboration/info. There are several different ways to address this question, however I think the best place to start is by looking at studies of "resting state". Resting state studies are done by essentially telling a study participant to just relax, and not think about anything in particular while data (fMRI, PET, EEG, etc) is collected. There are several recent studies (1, 2, 3) that show that persons with higher IQ may have a more efficient network of brain connections that allow for ease of cognitive processing. However, I am unaware of any studies that have shown that these differences in "efficiency" are associated with any measurable differences in "energy use". So when just resting, I would argue that there is no evidence for significant differences in "energy use" based on IQ.
As a vision scientist, I love this question! You are asking about the difference between sensation (the photons that stimulate your retina) and perception (what you experience, also called phenomenology). This fantastic PDF chapter from MIT clarifies the problem. In a nutshell, the things we can ask about color are these: (1) are colors "real"? (2) Do we all see the same things?
The debate about whether language influences perception is an excellent one. Recent evidence actually suggests that language categories for color do not influence color perception, but can influence, say, color memory. Roberson, Hanley, & Pack (2009) tested whether speakers of English or Korean perceived color boundaries differently. They don't. Perception itself is the same regardless of language. What changes between the two languages are the descriptions or categorizations of these colors.
Here is a study where they used some common diagnostic tools to come up with a measure to determine if someone was faking or not. In a study where they had prisoners attempt to fake mental illness they were able to correctly classify 92-95% of the individuals. I just read the abstract, but I can try and track down the full paper if people are interested. Apparently prisoners try to fake mental illness a lot as the top searches that came back to me were all about prisoners.
EDIT: Here is a review from 1988 about detecting malingering. The full text can be accessed from that site. I dont have time to read it right now and summarize it, but the abstract suggests using several tests it is very easy to detect people faking mental deficiency, but others like psychosis and neurological impairment are harder to detect.
EDIT 2: mutonchops has found a second study using screening measures to find people faking mental illness with similar success rates over 90%.
i wanted to downvote you, because gluten intolerance is severely overhyped (only 3 percent of the population are actually gluten intolerant - discounting another 3 percent with celiac's disease). However, i did some research and found a credible scientific study supporting the hypothesis that gluten intolerance may influence schizophrenia.
It has to do with how the brain develops. If human babies were born at the equivalently developed time of other animals (particularly apes), it would be approximately 2-3 months later and they would have significantly larger heads. Obviously, this poses a problem for birthing. So human babies are born so helpless because a more developed human brain would be unable to pass through the female pelvic opening. During the first few months/years of a human's development, we develop cognitive skills significantly faster than any other species, but do not necessarily develop motor skills as fast.
Here is an article on it that compares humans to other primates in terms of increased encephalization.
This isn't entirely the case. What d3v1nJ is trying to say is that increased activity during auditory hallucinations is seen in Broca's area, an area of the brain associated with language production. Were we to see increased activity in Wernicke's area, this activity would indicate speech interpretation (or "hearing"). Therefore, scientists speculate that the individuals themselves are producing the speech patterns that are interpreted as "hallucinations". The idea that they are "conversing with themselves" is speculative.
Source: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/014067369391707S
Whoops...that's embarassing
EDIT: Also thought I'd share a link to the actual study instead of the article, which is here:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S089662730500156X
EDIT AGAIN: Actually that was a different, but related study. Here's the more recent one:
Although I can't speak directly to what causes suicidal thoughts in humans as this takes a great deal of psychological and medical perspective that I lack, I can speak to the presence of suicidal behavior in animals on a very basic level.
The pea aphid (Acyrthosiphon pisum), when parasitized by Braconid wasps, (Aphidius ervi) exhibit a cost sensitive suicidal behavior depending on both their reproductive contribution to their population and the probability of their spreading the disease to kin. Essentially what this means is that parasitized adults will become "suicidal" the cost of their life is exceeded by the risk to their immediate gene pool.
It is noteworthy, however, that the "suicidal behavior" is not the same as it would be for humans who are intent on killing themselves or larger animals that exhibit suicidal-like characteristics (there are numerous anecdotal accounts of Philippine Tarsiers committing suicide by bashing their heads against hard surfaces when in captivity or exposed to extreme stress). For the pea aphids, this suicidal behavior amounts to choosing more dangerous routes when escaping from their predators.
It becomes immediately apparent when reading more about accounts (confirmed and unconfirmed) of suicide in the wild that there is a large gradient with no clear division between what does and what does not constitute "suicide". I would expect that in each species, the reasons behind suicidal behavior are unique products of the evolution of their life history.
Two abstracts on the pea aphid and its parasite:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347205806761
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v328/n6133/abs/328797b0.html
Well it's actually REALLY cool: a male black widow can tell how recently a female spider has fed using only cues on her web. A well-fed female is less likely to eat her mate than a starved female, and somehow, he can detect clues of her recent foraging success even when the female is not in the web! Here's some heavy reading if you're interested
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347211002247
Not sure you'll be able to access the PDF file, but you can read the abstract
maybe my post is best suited for this question! You need (on average, for any species) 4169 individuals but the conservative estimates for mammals are around 7000 and there's only direct evidence for 12000 or so.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320707002534
since these are individuals, divide by 2 for # couples
Preterm babies is an effect of both poor healthcare and lifestyle.
Not the best source, but I cant be fucked finding more. >Starting in 2008, the March of Dimes began tracking three of the major contributors to the high preterm birth rate — lack of insurance among women of childbearing age
edit: grammer
edit2: being called out on my sources whether or not they are reputable (I dont really blame you), so here it is.
I love how anecdotal evidence has so many more upvotes than actual scientific literature. Here are a couple decent papers on early childhood attachment disorders:
Early maternal and paternal bonding, childhood physical abuse and adult psychopathic personality
Disturbances of Attachment and Parental Psychopathology in Early Childhood
EDIT: I just realized that people not on University internet connections or without journal subscriptions probably cannot access these articles. I'm providing another source which I think has a free full text:
Attachment and Borderline Personality Disorder
From the abstract,
"The author proposes (I) that individuals who experience early trauma may defensively inhibit their capacity to mentalize to avoid having to think about their caregiver's wish to harm them; and (2) that some characteristics of severe borderline personality disorder may be rooted in developmental pathology associated with this inhibition. He offers evidence for and some qualifications of this model, and argues that the therapeutic effect of psychoanalysis depends on its capacity to activate patients' ability to evolve an awareness of mental states and thus find meaning in their own and other people's behavior."
The takeaway message is that the OP's adoptive children absolutely cannot be treated as normal children, as many redditors such as DiamondShreddy seem to think.
If I was running a business I would not hire candidates that were overweight unless I had very strong evidence that showed they were hard workers. Why? Conscientiousness is the best predictor of work performance - better than IQ, Intellect, anything. Being overweight tends to be a symptom of low conscientiousness and high neuroticism - especially in women 2 citations there.
edit Downvotes better come with explanations. Sorry if you're offended that I would discriminate based on factors that would directly influence job performance.
edit2 More downvotes? Obviously I need to include citations. Cited. Now include explanations.
"The overwhelming medical and scientific opinion is that the findings outlined above do not convincingly demonstrate a causal relationship between aluminium and Alzheimer's disease, and that no useful medical or public health recommendations can be made − at least at present" - Alzheimer's Society
Plus the first source for that section says it's results are "provocative but inconclusive due to methodologic problems" link and the second source says "The use of aluminium-containing antiacids, antiperspirants and beverages from aluminium cans, are probably of small importance concerning Alzheimer's disease" respectively" link.
The existence of hypnosis has been documented using this subject (TS-H), but it seems the behavioural and ocular qualities of hypnosis is not been properly established. In my opinion another publication with this particpant is far more interesting as it investigated the changes in cortical activity across conditions. Interestingly, and I suppose not surprisingly, gamma oscillations -defined unfortunately too conservatively as 30-48Hz-, was markedly reduced. Gamma is a correlate of consciousness.
It's important to remember that this is a case study, and should not be generalized. In fact the authors suggest that: ...the hypnotic state does not occur in all who are classified as highly-hypnotizable by using current hypnotisability scales, but only in a small subgroup of them.
It's interesting to note that hypnotic suspectibility is related to certain mental disorders such as conversion disorder and other psychopathologies. I'm curious if she's been screened.
>Fairy wasps shrink to the size of amoeba by sacrificing their neurons
>Fairy wasps are some of the tiniest creatures on Earth, an entire insect roughly the size of a single-celled organism like an amoeba. That means their individual cells must be incredibly tiny...and that requires losing much of their nervous system.
>The fairy wasp, otherwise known as the fairyfly, is a parasitic insect that can measure as little as 200 micrometers long, making it roughly the size of unicellular organisms like amoebas or paramecia. Of course, this insect isn't a one-celled organism, which means its thousands of individual cells have to be shrunk down to unbelievably small sizes.
>The fairy wasp's tininess has its uses - it's able to avoid most predators and invade other insects' eggs undetected. But there's a pretty hefty trade-off for the creatures' biology, according to new research from Alexey A. Polilov of Russia's Lomonosov Moscow State University. He discovered that as much as 95% of neurons in adult fairy wasps don't have a nucleus.
>That's surprising, considering a nucleus is generally considered a pretty crucial part of a cell, particularly since it contains the cell's genetic material. And while baby fairy wasps do feature a full set of nuclei in their neurons, they lose them as they grow older.
>This sacrifice is apparently what allows fairy wasps to remain so ridiculously tiny, and losing so many seemingly crucial nuclei doesn't actually matter all that much, considering fairy wasps are still able to do all their complicated behaviors, like flying around and invading other eggs. It almost makes you wonder why us bigger species still bother with all these cellular extravagances... you know, like fully functioning neurons.
Although this is not my area of expertise, I feel that I need to weigh in because the top voted comments are incorrect.
Your body does not go into a ketogenic state. And even if it did, this would not cause the hunger pains that you are feeling.
Assuming the average human eats their last meal of the day around 1-4 hours before sleep, and then sleeps for about 7 hours, they are, essentially, fasting for half of the day. In order to keep your blood-glucose levels at a pretty constant state, your body does all of the following (this is called energy homeostasis):
decreases the use of glucose by impairing the glucose tolerance (insulin not produced in response to glucose presence) and by removing any present insulin
releases leptin, which triggers satiety
suppresses appetite
I would hazard a guess that, on days when you wake up hungry, the day before you ate a late meal, and your body has not yet had a chance to deal with the "consequences" of that meal. Once you wake up, and your body goes back to normal, this may cause a dip in your blood-glucose levels, causing your hunger pains.
Edit: best source I could find quickly (sorry, requires licensing, but abstract is available)
Relinking poster further down, to invalidate your incorrect statement: Paper is here-
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0142961212003237
"The log-rank test leads to χ2 values (one degree of freedom) of 7.009, 11.302, and 10.454, when we compare water-treated and olive oil-treated rats, water-treated and C60-treated rats, and olive oil-treated and C60-treated rats, respectively. This means that olive oil extends the lifespan of rats with respect to water with a probability of 0.99 while C60-olive oil extends the lifespan of C60-treated rats with a probability of 0.999 and 0.995 with respect to water and olive oil treatments, respectively."
So a lot of people are touching on the idea of where language is localized. Most of the time we have language localized in our left-hemispheres. The left side of our brain controls the right side of our body, and vice versa. It is commonly believed that this is why most people are right-handed.
This article says that:
>Functional hemispheric language lateralization has shown to be correlated with handedness: 95% of right-handers show left-sided functional hemispheric language lateralization, while 15% of left-handers show right-sided functional lateralization (Lurito and Dzemidzic, 2001 and Pujol et al., 1999).
Also a weird fact that left-handers tend to have shorter life expectancies for some reasons that are currently not well understood. Here is one study on that topic.
> really feel some emotional attachment to their owners or do they just stick around for food and shelter
Interesting question, but I think it is a false dichotomy. Arguably the reason that individual-specific attachment evolved (e.g. a duckling following the first animal or robot that it meets upon hatching) is because it is, on average, beneficial for finding food and shelter. Attachments can form without learned associations with food and shelter, they are automatic. Dogs' specific attachment to their human owners is a selected trait that is absent in wolves (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347205003155).
As to your second question, how can you prove an animal "really feels" an emotion? How can you prove your best friend really feels an emotion and isn't just a sociopath/brilliant actor putting on a show to manipulate you for the material benefits of your friendship? This conundrum is the foundation of the behaviorist turn in psychology, which still has not been well resolved by the upswing in neuroscience methods (e.g. monitoring activity of brain regions to infer feelings).
Look at the URL at their site. Now look at this. teehee
During the wake / sleep transition, the bidirectional communication between the hippocampus and cortex is thought to be disrupted, thereby inhibiting the consolidation of recent (right before sleep transition) memories.
This is still a topic of active research, but hopefully this helps.
Here are a couple studies I found. The first:
> A series of experiments has investigated the relationship between the playing of background music during the performance of repetitive work and efficiency in performing such a task. The results give strong support to the contention that economic benefits can accure from the use of music in industry. The studies show that music is effective in raising efficiency in this type of work even when in competition with the unfavourable conditions produced by machine noise.
And the second:
> An experiment was designed to look at the effects of 4 types of music, vs. No music, on the quantity and quality of production and the attitude of workers engaged in the routine task of assembling and packing skateboards. Ss were 26 assembly-line personnel ages 18-23. 4 types of music were played: dance, show, folk, and popular. These were contrasted with periods during which no music was played. Music conditions were balanced with respect to days of the week over a period of 5 wk. Results showed that, while employees had a highly favorable attitude toward music and thought they did more work with it, there was no change in measured productivity.
I also like hand picking references.
edit: Cherry picking is of course what I meant to write.
~~"Unhealthy food" could refer to foods with abnormally high glycemic index. These foods cause blood sugar to increase suddenly and this is hypothesized through some anecdotal evidence to stimulate the area of the brain associated with drug addiction.~~ "Rats that have been bingeing on sucrose and then fasted demonstrate signs of opiate-like withdrawal." [1] I think there might be a fraction of truth to OP's friends statement based on the idea that when you stop eating unhealthy foods with a high GI you may experience a type of withdraw that would be perhaps a different mechanism of cravings rather than plain old fashion hunger. However, the statement that true hunger is felt in the throat sounds like bullshit, but, I don't know. ~~Here is a Journal that looks to be about what I'm talking about, however, it cost money so I was only able to read the abstract. http://www.medical-hypotheses.com/article/S0306-9877(08)00305-8/abstract~~
EDIT1: Some better possibly more trusted Journals with real evidence about this topic. These seem to not refer directly to GI but with high sugar intake. [1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031938408000103 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763407000589
EDIT2: Getting rid of anecdotes.
Actually, penecillin allergies are one of the most commonly misdiagnosed conditions in children. But in any case, the allergy when it really does exist is to the antibiotic molecule itself and not to co-purification products as many believe. So even if you really are allergic, you should be able to eat any Penecillium species as long as they are not producers of penecillin.
No. You need (on average, for any species) 4169 individuals but the conservative estimates are around 7000 and there's only direct evidence for 12000 or so. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320707002534
you are actually asking several questions: in evolutionary bio we ask "what is the lowest number of individuals in a population that could allow the population to survive?" (this is studied through/asked about highly endangered animals) and this number is called the Minimum Viable Population and it varies by species, genetics, predation, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_population
- how diverse could we become? is irrelevant, since the species would die out BUT if you're interested: diversity depends on many things 2 big ones are: A- the initial genetic diversity, meaning the different alleles (different flavors of genes - like brown vs blue eyes) and B- mutation rates- roughly .003/generation (Drake et al 1998)
keywords: population bottleneck, mutation rates, inbreeding coefficient, minimum viable population, Toba catastrophe
Actually, it's only part of the reason. While methamphetamine is highly neurotoxic, evidence shows that cells that aren't poisoned by excess dopamine and oxidative stress from breaking it down actually <em>grow more</em> receptors and increase the number of synapses, which "leads to their increased excitability and contributes to compulsive drug-seeking and relapse." Not trying to one-up. I was a research assistant involved with a paper on neuroadaptive changes induced by psychostimulant use, yet to be published.
You are right in that some damages tissues can undergo significant regrowth over time. But finding that joy again has to happen from a behavioral change as well. It's difficult to find a replacement for something that makes you feel so elated, that is both your hobby and a full time job, the problem and the solution to all your problems. I hope the OP and those out there overcoming addiction can find something that can serve all those functions at once; mine is music. Find something or someone that you think you could love and give your life over to it.
> Scientists say they're close to unlocking the secrets of immortality
Not a single one of the quotes from scientists says that "they're close to unlocking the secrets of immortality". There is a huge amount we still don't understand. If you want a real, thought-provoking read rather than a cheap soundbite, have a read of this: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867405001017 then read his references. It's a wonderful introduction.
One could argue that creating nano-material such as the carbon insulation presented in the video is fairly difficult.
The problem lies in that it's difficult to make a very large sheet of it, as required by a window.
As of 2002, it was complicated to even create tubes, and not suited for mass production. Yao Wang
As of 2008, Goki Eda is positive to the future of making large sheets of nano material. This is 10 cm2, equal to the area the speaker showed in the hyperlinked video.
As of 2011, we can make big clumps of it, like for batteries, and very cheaply. Y.S Yoon
I do not know if we can produce larger sheets than 10cm2 as of 2011.
Briefly, one of the reasons is that the glycolytic capacity of the brain is low. Consequentially, ATP depletion and lactate production is dramatic in the brain.
This paper should answer your question quite comprehensively. If you can't access it, send me a PM and we'll get you the pdf.
"it's fun to imagine that women are oppressed."
This video was made for South Africa. Here's a South African study that concluded "the lifetime prevalence of experiencing physical violence from a current or ex-husband or boyfriend was 24.6%, and 9.5% had been assaulted in the previous year" http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953601002945
Then again, you're right, I better not "let reason get in the way of" my ability to read studies about the prevalence of domestic abuse of women. I'll just pretend I never read it.
When you have a high fever, enzymatic action all over your body begins to slow or fail all-together (this is a reason why people die from hyperthermia; enzymes fail to function at high temperatures).
In the brain, this causes an unbalanced level of certain neurotransmitters and other psychoactive compounds due to the lack of enzyme function needed to break down or create them. When this occurs, hallucinations, 'stroke' (due to heat), and other odd feelings begin to surface. Eventually, if the fever continues to rise, delirium, loss of consciousness, coma, or death can occur.
Edit: Best I can do for a source is an abstract and to hope your prior knowledge is the same as mine. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0306362382900568
Whether the whales are endangered or not, or whether they are used for food or not, is really not the argument. That Watson and his ilk are borderline nutjobs is also not a worthy argument. That the international community has virtually made the practice illegal is not the argument that should be made nor is the fact that the Japanese may or may not be using the whales for research (research that mostly promotes a case for allowing whaling on larger scales).
No,
These whales are social mammals with enormous brains. They are capable of pleasure, enjoyment of life, and the feeling of pain, including the emotional pain of losing other pod members.
These whales are too large to be humanely killed. They take hours to actually die, even with the supposed explosive tipped harpoons. This is documented fact. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090023304000504)
The most valid argument becomes:
Is there an essential need for the oil, food, or research of whales that outweighs the ethical concerns of killing such a highly developed (innocent) mammalian creature?
I am not weighing in... but I think that this is where the debate should start.
Unfortunately it is likely that long-term cannabis <em>smoking</em> is correlated with increased lung cancer. The study I linked found a mild 8% increase. Smoking anything will increase lung cancer risks due to the carcinogens created by heating up certain compounds to very high temperatures.
However this should not even be a noteworthy knock against marijuana usage. As this 2012 review article on marijuana usage from a medical standpoint shows there are medically significant applications for using marijuana in both managing cancer symptoms and the anticancer action of cannabinoids, naturally occurring chemicals in marijuana. One of the realistic problems in using cannabinoids for these medical applications is finding an objective way to administer them in proportions equivalent to smoking them. You cannot isolate one of these chemicals and package it into a drug (like the failure Marinol).
Melatonin plays an important role in our bodies as it helps to regulate the circadian rhythm.
According to this study the wavelengths most relative to melatonin production are 446-477 nm. These are blue wavelengths, and may or may not be produced by the lamps you have.
Melatonin does cause drowsiness and lower the body temperature so it helps to put us to sleep, but it doesn't seem to play a key role in keeping us asleep. It regulates the phase of the rhythm, meaning it helps to set when we fall asleep and wake.
Other chemicals like cortisol are suspected to play a stronger role in keeping us asleep, but they have more complex roles. They more play a role in sleep-staging, which is in itself poorly understood.
Would Nicotine fit the bill here?
I know Cyanide does. I saw an forensic files type show on discovery where a guy had been slowly killing his with the stuff.
Source so I don't get removed (get your finger of that delete button, mods)
Research suggests that "during sleep, swallowing is episodic, with long swallow-free periods" and is generally "associated with movement arousal" (which is most frequent during certain stages of sleep).
The most accepted theory for this unfortunate effect is that broad spectrum antibiotics reduce levels of intestinal bacteria, which metabolize estrogen components of the contraceptive pill to allow the liposoluble part back into circulation in the body. When bacterial levels are reduced, there is a significant increase in estrogen excretion [1]. To put it bluntly, a microbial imbalance leads to a metabolic imbalance, which leads to a hormonal imbalance and babby formed [2].
Sources: [1] http://www.medicinaoral.com/pubmed/medoralv14_i3_p123.pdf [2] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0029784401015320
Re your point on human cognition:
Young infants, non-human animals and cultures that don't have formalized mathematics count on a logarithmic scale. For example, the number halfway between 1 and 9 would be 3 (geometric mean), not 5 (algebraic mean). Here is the finding from pigeons. There are probably references to other species in the bibliography. Here's a general overview of some findings from the number representation/counting literature.
Interestingly, this is also true for timing (often called "scalar timing"). For example, if you train a rat to press one lever to a short (2s) tone and a different lever to a long (8s) tone, and then test tones of intermediate length, the duration at which rats push the levers with equal frequency is 4s (geometric mean), not 5s (arithmetic mean; press the long lever more often for this). Perhaps there is some connection between primitive counting mechanisms and timing mechanisms (as suggested here).
EDIT: typo
Sure, but this work is easier to do in primates, and it's been done. (Sorry for the paywall - [/r/scholar](/r/scholar) might help you out if you really want it.)
They apparently have a default mode network, meaning they might have some sort of introspective process, so it's somewhat reasonable to assume they have a similar inner monologue to ours.
It's just not really possible to definitively verify experiential events without real communication, something we are currently not capable of with primates - or dolphins.
I do not believe this is correct - The instability created by a quantum fluctuation may or may not be strong enough to propogate to the bulk of the fluid. Specifically see this article for a brief discussion on the threshold for vortex formation.
Also the formation of these types of instabilities are generated by shear gradients, which are on some kind of order of length scale associated with the viscosity and local velocity of the fluid. I am not certain you could convince a physicist quantum fluctuations are the cause of the instabilities due to the threshold (flow rate) dependence of the instability.
Gestalt theory has been posited to include audio as well as visual patterns. See, for example, Kubovy, M. & van Valkenburg, D. (2001). Auditory and visual objects. Cognition, 80, 97-126.. It's possible that it might explain the phenomenon.
Can I just quickly remind everyone that the word "biotruths" pretty much only refers to evolutionary psychology (which is near as dammit pseudoscience) - it doesn't invalidate established psychology/neuropsych (for instance, the finding that children have inherently worse decision-making skills is actually a good argument for age of consent laws etc.)
It's only tangentially related to the thread but I feel like I should point it out anyway.
Paper is here-
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0142961212003237
"The log-rank test leads to χ2 values (one degree of freedom) of 7.009, 11.302, and 10.454, when we compare water-treated and olive oil-treated rats, water-treated and C60-treated rats, and olive oil-treated and C60-treated rats, respectively. This means that olive oil extends the lifespan of rats with respect to water with a probability of 0.99 while C60-olive oil extends the lifespan of C60-treated rats with a probability of 0.999 and 0.995 with respect to water and olive oil treatments, respectively."
I appreciate your opinion but how could the survival curves not be significant? I've seen survival curves way crappier than that one that were significantly different.
Even though it was only 6 rats, all 6 rats on the bucky balls lived longer and were still alive when EVERY rat in the other groups was dead. The likelihood that that is due to chance is rather low, don't you think?
http://origin-ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0142961212003237-gr3.jpg
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0142961212003237
"The log-rank test leads to χ2 values (one degree of freedom) of 7.009, 11.302, and 10.454, when we compare water-treated and olive oil-treated rats, water-treated and C60-treated rats, and olive oil-treated and C60-treated rats, respectively. This means that olive oil extends the lifespan of rats with respect to water with a probability of 0.99 while C60-olive oil extends the lifespan of C60-treated rats with a probability of 0.999 and 0.995 with respect to water and olive oil treatments, respectively."
For constant, daily use, I'd say the following:
[1600-2400 mg] Piracetam; Improves communication between brain hemispheres; aids concentration, focus; improves ability to verbalize and communicate; prevents brain degeneration
[800-1200 mg] Choline; one of the best nutrients from eggs, works synergistically with Piracetam.
[100 mg] L-Theanine; reduces mental and physical stress, works synergistically with Caffeine, increases GABA levels, possibly neuroprotective
[65 mg] Caffeine; amount of a cup of coffee; works synergistically with Theanine, mild stimulant, can aid focus.
[250 mg] Calcium + Magnesium; both minerals should be chelated to aid absorption, the body cannot take more than 250 mg at once. Relaxes energetic and muscle pathways in the body, eases stress, serves as mild anti-depressant.
[5000 iu] D3; Solar energy; Boosts immune system, potent anti-depressant, aids concentration and focus
If you could make this, I'd give you all my money.
Edit: A caffeine free version would be cool. Maybe substitute less frantic energy sources, like B-12, Taurine, Guarana, etc to provide natural + mild boost.
Here's a study from Michigan indicating that children at charter schools do worse on tests than children at public schools. Here's a study of North Carolina schools which shows similar results.
Other source: http://www.themarysue.com/clara-lazen-new-molecule/
[edit]: Actual Paper: (Thanks, yuki2nagato) http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2210271X11005433
[edit]: If more teachers were like this kid's teacher, I think we would have a much better school system in the US.
How can you be so sure? I quick search on Google easily relayed that it is not a black and white issue; even among experts in the field. While it seems to be generally accepted that invertebrates do not feel pain as we do, it was not at all clear that they do not feel pain. Below are just a couple of examples discussing the possibilities.
I don't know the answer, but I feel your statement is a bit misleading. Anyway, just food for thought.
I appreciate your polite disagreement, and I think you are absolutely correct that the trouble is in the poor operalization of consciousness vs. awareness. Btw, I was using consciousness in reference to "sleep-like".
The trouble with the lack of a good definition of those two terms is that one can take research findings and interpret them to mean whatever they want. To that end, in the first article you cited, I (politely) disagree with the authors' interpretation of the findings to mean that consiousness is altered simply due to the activation contrast patterns. To be more specific, they did find differing activation patterns in areas known to be associated with "consciousness" and therefore they conclude that hypnosis must be an altered level of consciousness. However, those brain regions are also involved in numerous other functions (including attention/awareness) and I think it is premature to make a clear conclusion about "consciousness" based on those findings.
As for the second article, I'm failing to see any mention of hypnosis as associated with an altered level of "consciousness". Perhaps I'm missing it?
Also, as for my assertion that hypnosis is not a "sleep-like" state, there is EEG research to support that.
This is actually a very good question. Other posters have attributed this to the stroboscopic effect (seen clearly in film), but this is incorrect. Your eyes work completely different from a camera, there are no "frames" or snapshots of any kind. You'll hear people claim that the eyes have a "maximum frame rate", but this is again incorrect, it is simply not how human vision works.
From a theoretical perspective, in constant lighting conditions, your eyes should not see this "backwards" rotation, but for many people (apparently not all) this effect is clearly visible. A study was done in 2004 where a rotating drum and its mirror image were shown to subjects who reported only seeing the backwards motion in one drum at a time, ruling out the stroboscopic explanation. These researchers hypothesized that this was a form of perceptual rivalry, where the brain cannot determine the exact nature of an image and essentially "picks" one, often incorrectly. An example is the rotating sphere shown here. Is the sphere spinning clockwise or counterclockwise ? (there is no right answer).
tl,dr; It is an optical illusion, it has nothing to do with "frame rates" / aliasing.
Oh boy, am I going to be downvoted to oblivion with that. But I've some comment karma to spare:
Study from the university of Bath, UK
>(..) Dr Walker used a bike fitted with a computer and an ultrasonic distance sensor to find drivers were twice as likely to get close to the bicycle, at an average of 8.5cm, when he wore a helmet. >(..)The experiment, which recorded 2,500 overtaking motorists in Salisbury and Bristol, was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.
Of course, that is only the tip of the iceberg, because the study measured only one metric (passing distance). Since wearing helmets influences car drivers, which other driving parameters are also affected ?
This is my own opinion and I don't want to convince anyone, but I'm not very comfortable with the concept of increasing the risk of accident for the sake of diminishing the risk of injury when it happens.
That is an interesting thing to question. Apparently, there is some evidence that precocious exposure to anesthetics could have long term impacts on a child's intellectual development: (http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1934197,00.html)
However, there is also fairly clear evidence that pain has, and could have, a few serious effects. Some are physical, and relate to the physiological sequels of pain and the intense stress that accompanies it (http://www.cirp.org/library/pain/anand4/, see also the concept of "allostatic load"). I can't seem to find a source, but I remember hearing that one discovery associated with the 1985 research was that babies operated on without pain-killers were more likely to experience slow recoveries because of the stress from all the pain that they had experienced. There are also studies suggesting that early exposure to pain increases a person's eventual sensitivity to it (e.g. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304395905000205).
More importantly, there is no reason to think that people who don't have conscious memories of specific events aren't going to be affected by them in the long term. Humans are ridiculously plastic, and as babies (heck, even as fetuses) we start attuning ourselves to the kind of world that we will be living in. Early experiences that we don't remember shape us in many ways (if they didn't, nothing of what happened before the ages of two or three would have any impact on our personalities or physical and intellectual capacities), and intense and prolonged pain could be one such experience.
Anyways, while I'm not going to try to answer the question (it's far beyond the scope of my knowledge or competence), I would argue that pain and its consequences are not beyond the reach of our studies, and that we can work towards building a better understanding of when the different trade-offs of pain and pain-management are and are not worthwhile.
Usually much more similar compared to non-twins, but still quite distinguishable. This study measures "Minutiae matching between twin–nontwin scores a 3, whereas matching between twins scores matching score of 38 -- both on a scale of 0–999."
No, it's true. This is an example of attributive bias in which parents remember that they were told that sugar causes hyperactivity, so they attribute any perceived hyperactivity, real or imaginary, to sugar, and any lack of hyperactivity after sugar consumption is discarded from memory. An outside observer who does not have this prejudice does not experience the same things as the parents.
No, but there's this study from UCLA (no increase in cancer among heavy users of cannabis in a very large study) and this study from Harvard (THC cuts the growth of lung cancer in lab mice by up to half), for starters. Plus other studies showing cannabis compunds retarding the growth of cancer cells in petri dishes (that I can't find right now). There's also this interesting study about the protective effect of pot use on certain areas of the brain in binge drinkers, for all you crazy college kids out there.
Apples are some of the dirtiest fruits in terms of pesticide contaminats. Washing them or at the very least giving them a good rub to remove residue is important.
Pesticides applied t apple orchards are sprayed and usually topical. The natural waxy coat of apples usually prevents them for getting into the interior of an apple. Washing an apple can remove around 50% of topical pesticide residue, and peeling can remove around 98%.
In other words, eating an apple right of the tree without any treatment would give you the highest dose of residue (albeit a tiny one). Washing the apple is preferable. Processed apple products like juice and sauce likely have very low levels of pesticide residue because the apples are peeled. This source lists a residue reduction of 96% from the processing of raw apples to apple sauce as a result of peeling, and a reduction from 30-50% due to washing.
Here is a list of common apple pesticides.http://www.whatsonmyfood.org/food.jsp?food=AP
If you eat one apple without washing it, it is not going to kill you. However, if you make a habit out of it, you might be raising your risk of disease slightly. Better to know you are safe and give it a 5 second wash.
I am not an athlete but I as a sleep scientist I have never heard of this and am highly dubious. While I agree that getting sufficient sleep is important and will benefit an athlete in numerous ways, it has nothing to do with "muscle re-synthesis". A cursory search results in negligible scientific literature on the issue and even then it is mostly speculative.
On the other hand, there does seem to be evidence to support the idea that sleep restriction/deprivation can cause proteolysis but even these findings are mixed when including the non-human animal literature. Not to mention that this doesn't imply subsequent performance is actually affected.
Finally, the only published review I can find on the idea linking sleep and muscle recovery is in the infamous Medical Hypotheses journal which has in the past published articles denying the existence of AIDS, and all sorts of other pseudoscience garbage.
Abstracts:
Actually, the newest research suggests otherwise.
>Uhlenhaut et al. (2009) now report that deletion of a single gene, Foxl2, is sufficient to induce transdifferentiation of ovary into testis in adult mice, suggesting that testicular development is actively repressed throughout the life of females.
BAM.
This meta-analysis has a lot of interesting information in the introduction, but its conclusion is that soy does not significantly affect levels of circulating sex hormones.
EDIT: but I can see why some would be concerned, since vom Saal's research a decade ago found that bisphenol A, another xenoestrogen that's even more common (where it hasn't been banned), has detectable effects on development at almost immeasurably small doses. Is BPA just a more potent estrogen than phytoestrogens are?
Here is the same info, older, more credible source: http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewArticle.do?id=4721
EDIT - Also, the original paper: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967063704001682
I recall a study (in Britain IIRC) that showed this to be the case. Bad drivers forced to wear seatbelt by law drive even more dangerously. This is why pedestrian and cyclist injuries and deaths noticeably rise when seatbelt laws are instituted.
EDIT: I haven't been able to find that study but here are a couple that support the idea.
Seat-belt wearing and driving behavior: An instrumented-vehicle study
> The main result was that beginning wearers (group iii) showed signs of continuing behavioral adaptation, in the form of increased speed and increased propensity for close following, as well as several minor effects.
> Subjects who switched from not using the safety belt to using it increased driving speed during the second phase significantly more than subjects who used the safety belt during both driving phases.
It may cause a hormone release as well, and makes people feel better. An experiment done with rats using oxytocin and vasopressin injections:
>Oxytocin may, however, also be released by nonnoxious stimuli such as touch, warm temperature etc. in plasma and in cerebrospinal fluid. Consequently, oxytocin may be involved in physiological and behavioral effects induced by social interaction in a more general context. In both male and female rats oxytocin exerts potent physiological antistress effects. If daily oxytocin injections are repeated over a 5-day period, blood pressure is decreased by 10–20 mmHg, the withdrawal latency to heat stimuli is prolonged, cortisol levels are decreased and insulin and cholecystokinin levels are increased.
So in other words we may find comfort in hugging because hugging gives us the sensation of touch with other people, as well as warmth, both of which are associated with positive physiological effects. See also.
TL;DR Stress relief.
What weeee_plonk here says isn't quite true. Ordinary soap and water does kill some bacteria as well as removing them. And anti-bacterial soap doesn't actually do much to stop infections. It can even promote them, by upsetting your normal bacteria flora. I know some microbiologists, but I've not met one who thinks antibacterial soap is a good idea. (It's a marketing thing, mostly)
But water under 70 C or so won't kill bacteria. The point of washing with hot water isn't that the hot water kills bacteria, it's that things dissolve faster and easier in hot water.
The answer is yes (the paper), cooler water does remove bacteria just as well. Washing technique is more important.
Homophobic men exhibit increased arousal (as measure by penile circumference) to homosexual stimuli whereas non-homophobic men do not.
In English - Homophobia is associated with getting a boner when watching gay porn
Edit: I remembered another one I like
Stripper make more money in tips when they have the ability to get pregnant suggesting either 1) They are acting more sexual and men find that more attractive or 2) Men can somehow detect the reproductive state of the stripper and find them more attractive when they can have babies - Might seem counter intuitive (who the fuck would want to get a stripper pregnant?) but evolutionarily it makes sense
I think most of this detox stuff is clinically untested. You're going to find pretty much only anecdotal evidence either way. I couldn't find much in terms of scientific studies, except this one of the effectiveness of detox diets on masking methamphetamines (doesn't work).
It's one of many indications, but if more swollen body parts indicate mating readiness, then having larger breasts to begin with is a leg up on the competition.
This study gives an alternative explanation for genital swelling, besides indicating "sexual receptivity": http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347299911594
Yes, there is: checkout this -- which points to this.
See this article as well.
I'm sure there are other studies, probably some more substantial than what I just yanked out of google scholar - but suffice to say that there is research about that sort of mental to physical bridge for pain.
edit: fixed a link
ninja-edit: fixed a typo
Yeah, there's something called the winner effect. Basically winning in a (usually) mating display/competition provides an increased probability of winning in future, and losing results in an increased probability of losing, due to hormonal changes associated with each.
Here's one paper looking at both the effect, and the influence of location (whether in one animal's territory) in voles
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0018-506x(09)00107-x
Here's one in cichlids that specifically links testosterone to the winner effect. http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/276/1665/2249.short
Don't know for sure if there is one in horses, but it seems to be a fairly generalizable result between species.
This study seems to suggest that the pupillary light reflex is governed more by rod cells (grayscale) than cone cells (color). Rod cells have a very low response to red light as seen here, so this would seem to explain why your pupils can become more dilated under red light only.
OMG Me too =D
It's a fabulous bio-feedback system! Whenever I'm stressed my cum has notes of bitterness, and when I've been eating poorly it has a distinct umami mouth feel.
But when I've been fabulous it's juicy sweet and delicious with that musky man milk taste we all know and love <3
EDIT: I also wanted to say that it has been shown to have anti-depressant, and anti-cancer effects! It has high selenium and glycoprotein contents, so eat your jizz if you want to grow up healthy and strong boys!
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0895435689901212
As best I can tell, the research he is referring to in the video is this paper: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0167278990900762 (unfortunately I do not have access to sciencedirect articles at the moment)
From the articles that cite that paper, it seems that he was not working on a general sorting algorithm, but rather generating minimal sorting networks. These can be used to sort arbitrary numeric inputs up to a given size, but are not the same as a sorting algorithm.
Wikipedia touches on what is going on in its article on sorting networks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorting_network which "more_exercise" also points out in his/her post. The sorting networks that are known with theoretical best size and number of inputs have large constant factors. The genetic algorithm was able to find networks with better empirical runtime than the best known networks.
The aquatic ape hypothesis has basically zero support in the scientific community. It's inconsistent, and it lacks evidence in its favor.
Alternatively, this link, in case the first is paywalled.
A recent study in JESP suggests that warnings about mortal danger associated with cigarette smoking actually encourage smokers to the habit - only warnings that damage the smokers self-esteem will be effective.
You'd find what remains of the hills/creeks/rivers/etc that existed before the Sahara became a desert. You can actually get a good idea of what it would look like by using ground penetrating radar, as the dry conditions are beneficial to this technique. I found a paper talking about one region in the Sahara here, for people without access I've put an interesting image from that paper up here.
We don't really know.
Cecil Adams, as usual, has a great write up
Basically, when you get hit your brain gets compressed and some mechanical damage (perhaps not damage, disruption might be more accurate) is caused to your neurons. This causes them to fire which causes more neurons to fire and disrupts your conscious processes. If enough disruption happens, you fall unconscious. The authors of this paper believe that loss of consciousness is like a minor seizure. But it appears the field believes it is damage to the reticular activating formation. This structure is rather important for the maintenance of consciousness and a lesion of it will put you in a coma. Reticular theory fails to account for post-concussive amnesia where you don't remember what happened before being knocked out. (The epilepsy theory however, does.)
Moser, MB / Trommald, M / Andersen, P, PNAS, Vol. 91, No. 26, Dec 20 1994, page 12673-12675
Moser EI, Krobert KA, Moser M-B & Morris RGM (1998), Impaired spatial learning after saturation of long term potentiation. Science, 281: 2038-2042.
Whitlock et al., 2006, Science, 313:1093-97.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0092867494904006
Don't worry about the username, this Redditor speaks the truth. The salmonella lives all over inside the bird, which is how it gets into the eggs.
The most prominent shapes by far are the rods (bacilli) and spheres (cocci), which I think can be explained by evolutionary pressures. If you take the material that makes up a cell membrane (polar lipids; half soluble the other half insoluble) and put them in aqueous solution (water), they will spontaneously form a sphere. The soluble "heads" will face out toward the liquid while the insoluble "tails" will face inward, to the sphere's core.
As bacteria all have a primary cell wall, cocci seems like a natural shape to take without any other factor present. As actin-like filaments for the cytoskeleton and peptidoglycan cell walls developed, it could have allowed elongation to bacilli.
To my knowledge, nobody knows what actually came first for shape or gram +/-, but theories are out there.
Helices are actually quite common in nature. In bacteria, the helical shape could be partially attributed to helical actin-like filaments in the internal cytoskeleton.
As for the other shapes out there, they probably require too much energy input or precise cell wall/cytoskeleton formation to make them very prevalent or viable options. Aside from slight twists or blebs, these would be relegated to very niche envoronments, where that shape or something genetically related to it is necessary for survival.
Although you are completely correct with being careful around the whole "Silver Homeopathy" trend going on, Colloidal silver can also mean silver nanoparticles in solution. Within the Nanotechnology/Nanoscience communities these two terms are very interchangeable, and suspended gold nanoparticles are often referred to as colloidal gold. In my Nanoscience Minor I had to write a report on the Anti-microbial effects of Nanosilver, and a quick Science Direct Search, brings up hundreds of peer-reviewed papers on the subject.
Here is one example of a paper that has both Colloidal and Nano in the title: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927776511005388
So I'm not an OB/GYN, but I can tell you this a controversial topic in medicine. Your doctor is somewhat correct in that there is a lot of double blind research studies showing that women who take contraceptives (oral or intrauterine) don't have any more side effects than women taking a placebo drug. However, the problem with those studies is that epidemiological studies confirm that most women don't experience side effects, and it's a minority of patients who do experience them. Science hasn't yet shown WHY some women experience side effects and others don't, however there is a LOT of research looking at a lot of different things. One recent study showed that markers of prenatal testosterone exposure and androgen sensitivity may predict which women will experience side effects. So to sum up, we know some women experience side effects, however most women don't. We don't know why some women experience them, but there are some promising theories.
Also, this is really close to medical advice, but I feel I need to say it, and this goes to everyone. If you feel your doctor doesn't listen to your concerns or ignores you when you say that something is wrong with a particular medication, I'd seriously consider a second opinion.
Short answer: We don't know.
Longer answer: Human capacity for music and rhythm may have evolved for several different reasons. Music may function as a language, a form of social interaction solidifying social bonds, or even fall under sexual selection.
This isn't my direct area of expertise so I will send you to some review papers that might be of interest. Fitch, 2006 on the biology and evolution of music, Masataka, 2009 on the origin of language and evolution of music, and Miller, 2000 on the evolution of music through sexual selection.
Hardness isn't much of a factor no, since there's no ion exchange or such involved in the leaching process.
As for the second point, according to this data set, the mean elevations of Norway, Sweden and Denmark are 566, 320, 34 meters respectively. That'd correspond to average boiling points of 98.1, 98.9, 99.98 C in each country.
Assuming that water leaching into this particular jasmine rice follows the usual Arrhenius kinetics, and that the process has an activation energy close to the measured values for other <u>Indica</u> rice cultivars of 19-23 kJ/mol, and assuming I did my arithmetic correctly, that would mean a person in an average Norwegian location would have to boil his rice about 20 seconds longer than a person in an average Danish one, rather than 5 minutes.
This study is also interesting. Chronic alcohol exposure leads to the induction of the CYP450 metabolic pathway. Normally alcohol is metabolized via the alcohol dehydrogenase pathway which is not inducible, and there is little help from CYP450 enzymes. However, chronic alcohol exposure leads to increased induction of the CYP450 pathway, which basically brings more guns to the detox fight, leading to increasing tolerance. When you stop drinking chronically (as in right after college for me when my hangovers started), you no longer induce CYP450 to the same levels. While this is not the whole explanation for the phenomenon, it is an interesting factor nonetheless.
Procrastination is related to temporal discounting, where a larger reward in the future is seen as less significant than a smaller reward in the present. Most of your questions, I think, can be answered by reference to this idea.
>Why do people do worse at creative tasks the more we pay them and why do smokers/obese people/addicts are less likely to quit the more we scare them?
These two can't. I'm not entirely sure that they're the case, anyway; people do worse at creative tasks (as far as I'm aware) not when they are paid more, but when they are explicitly instructed to do the task in a certain way. So you might have a good artist who completely fails to finish the task when commissioned to paint a particular thing, as a speculative example.
As for people being less likely to take up healthy habits "the more we scare them", I actually thought the reverse was true. A review by McCaul et al. in 2006, for instance, recommends that "health professionals should continue emphasizing the negative health consequences of smoking to motivate cessation attempts."
Right after that fruit in the garden incident...
We don't really know for sure. There was a study examining the speciation of head and body louse as an indicator of clothing use that timed the speciation event to ~72,000 years ago (with a large margin of error). The earliest needles, possibly used for sewing, date to ~40,000 years ago and the earliest preserved flax fibers come from the same time period but these kinds of materials don't preserve well.
There is a lot of evidence, mostly based on rat studies, that false sugars [EDIT: only some of them, not aspartame] are treated like real sugars by the mouth. It tastes sweet [EDIT: assuming it also fools your body into thinking it has a high energy density], so you start to salivate and your body starts to prepare for the sugars it thinks it is getting. This means you're getting an insulin dump, whether you're consuming digestible sugars or false ones.
The danger, I assume, is that your insulin production will stop correlating with a sweet taste, which can lead to insulin problems, aka diabetes.
As a creature that evolved to eat and enjoy game, fruits, vegetables, grains, and pseudo-cereals, I'm going to stick to my ancestor's diet and avoid syrups made with strange molecules with a carbon loop in them. If you're a calorie counter, why not just drink teas or other mildly sweetened beverages?
EDIT: New shit has come to light, man. I found a 2002 comprehensive study. I guess Nutrasweet is ok.