Yesterday we told you about ENCODE, the recently concluded mega-project that created a kind of Encyclopedia Britannica of human gene function. Among the initiative's many findings was that so-called "junk DNA" — outlier DNA sequences that do not encode for protein sequences — are not junk at all, and are in fact responsible for such things as gene regulation, disease onset, and even human height.

And this finding also shows that scientists need to be very careful about designating something as being useless just because they don't truly understand what it does.

Junk DNA, also known as noncoding DNA, has been the dark matter of biology — a convenient placeholder for something we haven't really figured out yet. And it really shouldn't come as a complete surprise that junk DNA does in fact serve specific functions; nature tends to be rather parsimonious when it comes to these things, and isn't inclined to waste precious resources. The suggestion that 98% of our genome was essentially useless was clearly a theory that was just waiting to be overthrown.

Right, with that out of the way, here's what you need to know about the finding.

Back in 2000 at the completion of the Human Genome Project, biologists unveiled over 21,000 genes, of which only 2% were identified as being protein generators (the building blocks that make up our cells).

But what the ENCODE scientists have now discovered is that over 10,000 non-coding genes are controlling what happens to our protein-building genes. In fact, they're making a kind of single-stranded RNA that appears to help regulate gene activity. And this means that vast majority of our DNA is not making proteins to build cells — instead, it's controlling how genes work.

As a consequence, scientists now likely need to come up with a better term than "non-coding genes"; this discovery throws into question our sense of how we even define a gene — which now appears to be a collection of RNA molecules rather than a particular location on DNA.

Looking more deeply into the project's findings, the biologists (over 500 of them!) discovered that nearly 18% of our DNA is involved in regulating the DNA that codes for proteins, and that there are over four million "switches" (sites where proteins bind to DNA) that help to regulate DNA expression — of which 80% have now been identified as having a specific biochemical function. In other words, not junk.

These regulator genes serve as control mechanisms, or switches, for the DNA. They can determine which genes turn on and off, or they can act as a kind of volume knob, turning a gene up or down depending on its specific function or epigenetic response (such as DNA methylation). These differences determine whether a gene sequence produces a strand of hair, or parts of a lung — or whether someone is susceptible to high blood pressure or cardiovascular disease.

Looking ahead, the finding will help scientists better understand how genes operate in our bodies, and how they're capable of constructing macroscale organs such as livers and kidneys. Additionally, it will help biologists understand what exactly goes wrong when certain diseases strike.

You can read more about the ENCODE project at their official website.

Other sources: Guardian, SciAm, Globe & Mail. Image via Sergej Khakimullin/Shutterstock, National Cancer Institute/AP.

Astronomers using the Kepler space telescope have confirmed the discovery of a short-period super-Mercury planet that has entered the final stage of its life. The object has gotten so close to its parent star that it's only taking 15.7 hours to orbit around it, while it's surface temperature has risen to 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit. The result: a dramatic comet-like tail that's bursting outward from the planet — and with it, much of the planet's surface.

Space.com is reporting that this is the second team to take an interest in the planet — a team whose findings are soon to appear the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. The phenomenon was originally discovered by astronomers this past May, and it now appears that their results have been corroborated.

The planet, a Mercury-sized terrestrial object about 1,500 light years away, is literally getting ripped apart by its sun. The astronomers, a team led by K. Tran and Saul Rappaport, speculate that the trail of debris is made up of macroscopic particles that have reached escape velocity and are making a hasty exit from the planet's surface and atmosphere. These particles could be anything from micron-sized pyroxene or aluminum oxide dust grains.

And according to the astronomers, the planet's surface is an apocalyptic mess. It has what's called a high-Z atmosphere, one that's loaded with dust — and it's leaving the surface in a hurry, the result of cloud condensation and explosive volcanism. These gasses and particulate are escaping the planet via a Parker-typer thermal wind that's dragging dust grains along with it. The amount of force that's being exerted against this end-stage planet must be nothing short of astounding.

Given the rate of evaporation, the astronomers predict that the entire planet will be gone in about 200 million years.

It's also worth noting that this effect can only really happen to planets that are about the size of Mercury. Any larger and the gravitational forces will be too strong to sustain outflows like this one. That said, it has also been documented that hot-Jupiters can also have their atmospheres blown in to space.

Check out the original study here.

Image via NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Well, if Naomi Wolf wanted to draw attention to herself through the publication of her new book, Vagina: A New Biography, she has certainly succeeded — though it may not be the kind of attention she was hoping for. A number of commentators have taken exception to her unfortunate foray into neuroscience, particularly her claim that "a woman's brain and vagina are best understood as one system." And indeed, the howls of outrage, scorn, and ridicule have begun.

First off is The Neurocritic, a popular brain blogger who describes Wolf's new book as "an uneasy balance of sex confessional, self-help, pop neuroscience, and new age goddess yoni worship." He writes:

This unlikely combination of pseudoscientific and mystical elements provides a little something for everyone to hate. Among neuroscientists, howlers such as "dopamine is the ultimate feminist chemical in the female brain", oxytocin "is women's emotional superpower" and the vagina is "not only coextensive with the female brain but also is part of the female soul" have been making the rounds of social media.

I almost feel sorry for Ms. Wolf because it's like shooting fish in a barrel. Dopamine is not a feminist neurotransmitter, unless snails and insects have been secretly reading Betty Friedan and listening to Bikini Kill.

And to Wolf's claim that, "Those of us who are not scientists often forget that brain chemicals are vehicles for very profound human truths," the Neurocritic had this to say:

I thought brain chemicals were vehicles that bind to receptors and trigger signal transduction molecules. Even the most reductionistic neuroscientists among us realize we are worlds away from understanding how oxytocin might explain morality (Paul Zak notwithstanding).

Then there's The Neuroskeptic (sensing a trend, here), a British neuroscientist who says that Wolf's "Vagina" is full of bad science about the brain. In her book, Wolf writes that, "Sexually threatening stress releases cortisol into the bloodstream, which has been connected to abdominal fat in women, with its attendant risks of diabetes and cardiac problems; it also raises the likelihood of heart disease and stroke." She continues:

This [stress-induced cortisol release] in turn will inhibit the dopamine boost she might otherwise receive, which would in turn prevent the release of the chemicals in her brain that otherwise would make her confident, creative, hopeful, focused – and effective, especially relevant if she is competing academically or professionally with you.

Writing in New Statesman, the Neuroskeptic replies:

Stress and cortisol have repeatedly been shown to increase dopamine release. In some studies. Other studies show they decrease it. It's complicated, in other words.

Dopamine is complicated, and really rather fascinating if you're into that kind of thing. It acts on at least five different types of receptor, and what it does depends on the receptor type; there are four major dopamine "pathways" in the brain, one of which (the mesocortical pathway) is thought to inhibit another (the mesolimbic pathway) – and plenty of subdivisions beyond that.

Cortisol is, as we've seen, complicated too. Don't get me started on surface vs nuclear receptors, mineralocorticoids vs. glucocorticoids, and the hypothalamopituitary axis. Unless you're a neuroscientist, you don't want to know. It's not relevant. Neither is Wolf's simplified version of it.

Lastly we have The Guardian's Suzanne Moore who complains that Wolf's book is basically a memoir in which she struggles to rehash a "heroic truth" that many others have already told us about. After calling her an "infinitely privileged and sheltered" feminist, Moore writes:

Hence feminism becomes simply a highly mediated form of narcissism devoid of any actual brain/politics connection. What we have here is Californication, with a little trot through some basic women's studies linking female creativity with sexual awakening. Think Georgia O'Keeffe with bit of Anaïs Nin thrown in. Which is nice.

It gets dodgy when she drags in some neuroscience as evidence and appears more clueless than someone who has failed her chemistry GCSE but has two TED talks on her iPhone. She boldly goes into the clitoral v vaginal orgasm argument saying we can have it all. Call me repressed, but in between work and kids and watching this recession hit the poorest women hardest, for some time now this argument has not been uppermost in my mind. Or should I say vagina?

Still, she bangs on about dopamine and oxytocin, "the cuddle chemical", choosing studies which back up her theory that women need a lot of stroking and eye-gazing for great sex. It's all very wholesome. She follows the porn-as-desensitisation/addiction model, which is also questionable. She even goes a bit anti-dildo at one point, but who am I to say? Each to their own is my view …

Yet again we see neuroscience in the hands of the layperson being fused to very determinist ends. Thus neural pathways are formed, chemicals just do one thing, hormones rule. Actual scientists don't think so simplistically, however many rats they have tickled to orgasm.

Be sure to do yourself the favor of reading all these articles in full, as they are all very much worth it — especially Moore's piece and her rather unforgettable outro.

Image via.

In vitro fertilization was developed well over thirty years ago, but its far reaching potential for helping couples with fertility issues has yet to be fully explored. The most recent reminder of this arrived on September 5, 2012 when a baby girl named Elle Cynthia was brought into this world via cesarean. But unlike most deliveries, it wasn't mom giving birth, but rather grandma.

As Martha Irvine reports in the Huffington Post, a 53 year-old woman from Chicago recently gave birth to her daughter's baby. The new biological mom, 29 year-old Emily, had a hysterectomy two years ago after being diagnosed with cervical cancer, and assumed she would never be able to have children.

But then her mother, Cindy Reutzel, became inspired after hearing about a number of 40 and 50 year-old women who were successfully able to carry a child to full-term after in vitro transplantation — including a 51 year-old grandmother from Brazil who gave birth to her own twin grandchildren in 2007. Irvine writes:

"What if I carried your baby for you?" she asked.

Emily and Mike didn't take it too seriously at first. "We didn't really think that was a realistic option," says Emily, who works in hospital administration.

It turned out, though, that it wasn't really that far-fetched after all, particularly for a young grandmother who's in good health, like Reutzel.

After a process that included psychological evaluation and hormonal manipulation to prepare their bodies, Kim eventually implanted Reutzel's uterus with an embryo created with an egg from Emily and Mike's sperm.

It was no easy process, with a regimen of hormonal shots. Work schedules were interrupted and vacations postponed. But Reutzel was committed.

"The thought of Emily and Mike not being able to have children and share that piece of their lives with someone just broke my heart," says Reutzel, who lives in Chicago and is executive director at medical foundation. "I want Emily to have that connection with another human being like I had with her."

As her belly grew, people started asking about "her baby." But she was quick to tell them the story. This was not her baby; she was Grandma.

The baby was born without complications; grandmother and grandchild are doing well. And in fact, Reutzel has already suggested that she'd be willing to do it all over again.

[Via Huffington Post]

All images via AP.

A recent study from the Carnegie Institution for Science is suggesting that planetary winds pack enough power to energize our entire civilization — and by a significant margin. But in order for us to capture all this energy, say the researchers, we'll have to supplement traditional ground-based stations with atmospheric wind turbines.

The study, which was conducted by Kate Marvel, Ben Kravitz, and Ken Caldeira, compared the total amount of energy that could be extracted from both surface and high-altitude winds. The focus of their research was to determine the geophysical limits of energy extraction from the Earth's wind, disregarding such things as economic, social or environmental factors. In essence, they simply wanted to know how much potential energy exists in the winds for us to exploit.

And what they discovered was that there's a lot of energy out there; there's plenty of power in Earth's winds to be a primary source of near-zero-emission electric power.

But this energy cannot be extracted from the surface alone. Wind turbines are great — but they're not massively scalable. They create drag (or resistance), which results in momentum being removed from the winds. So, while adding more and more turbines would increase the amount of energy that could be extracted, there will eventually come a tipping point such that adding more turbines will not generate more electricity. Consequently, the research team had to consider all possible optimal areas from which power could be harvested from wind.

Atmospheric wind turbines, also called kite turbines, are not a new concept. Though still speculative, it's thought that they will work by being supported in the air without a tower, working in low or high altitudes. When airborne, the device will transmit extracted energy to the ground via a conductive tether.

According to the researcher's models, more than 400 terrawatts of power could be extracted from surface winds, and that 1,800 terrawatts could be generated from atmospheric winds. The researchers admit that such a massive allocation of both ground and atmospheric turbines will have "pronounced climatic consequences," but that uniformly distributed wind turbines will not substantially affect the Earth's climate. Specifically, they predict that a full-out distributed system would result in a 0.1 degree Celsius increase in zonal mean temperature, and about a 1% increase in global precipitation.

That said, given the presence of massively distributed wind turbines, it's very possible that the climate impacts predicted by the Carnegie team will be substantially offset by the subsequent reduction of carbon emitting energy sources.

And remarkably, given that current global energy demand is about 18 terrawatts, this would suggest that there is still plenty of room for growth. Near-surface winds could provide more than 20 times today's global power demand, while atmospheric wind turbines could potentially capture 100 times the current global power demand.

Read the entire study at Nature Climate Change.

Image via Joby Energy.

The human body can go without oxygen for about five to ten minutes, and about three to eight days without water. But remarkably, people have been known to live upwards of 70 days without food. How is this possible?

The answer lies in a series of evolved physiological and metabolic defenses that work to keep you alive for as long as possible in the unfortunate event that you don't have access to food. Just because you're starving doesn't mean you've become helpless. Here's how your body fights to keep you alive and active.

By definition, starvation is a process. Our bodies are not like cars which immediately shut down when they're out of gas. When we experience prolonged low energy intake, and as long as water is available, our bodies enter into a successive series of metabolic modes. It's the body's way of recognizing that food is scarce, and that it needs to re-allocate resources in preparation for what could be an extended period. In essence, your body is buying you some valuable time to give you a fair chance of finding some food.

0-6 hours after eating

Soon after eating, our bodies start to break down glycogen (molecules that store energy) to produce glucose (an important carbohydrate that fuels cells). When we're eating normally, we use glucose as our primary fuel source; all is well, we're happy, and in storage mode. Glucose gets packed into our liver and muscle, with the fatty acids getting stored around our body for (potential) future use.

In terms of energy allocation, our brains require 25% of the body's total stored energy (which is a lot if you think about it), with the rest going to fuel our muscle tissues and red blood cells.

We can go for about six hours in this glucose-burning mode, which is why we tend to get a bit cranky if we have to go without food for longer than that.

Now that said, not everyone metabolizes energy in this way. Some individuals are in a state of ketosis in which they have elevated levels of ketone bodies — compounds that are produced when fatty acids are broken down for energy instead of glucose. People in ketosis include those on a ketogenic diet (a high-fat, protein rich, low-carbohydrate diet), or those who have just completed a long physical training session. Technically speaking they're not starving — they're just in a different metabolic mode.

6-72 hours after eating

Now, whether you like it or not, you will enter into a state of ketosis should you go without food for six hours or more; this represents the first significant metabolic phase shift as you enter into starvation. At this point, all your glycogen stores will have been exhausted, and your body has no choice but to start hitting the fatty acids for energy. During lipolysis, fatty acids are directly broken down to produce ketone bodies.

Now all this is fine and well except for one very important thing: your brain cannot use fatty acids directly as its fuel source. These fats are large and cannot cross the blood-brain barrier. So, for the first 24 to 48 hours without food, your brain will continue to use the remaining glucose stores as fuel, while the rest of the body goes into the ketosis cycle.

Trouble is, the glucose isn't enough; the brain requires about 120 g of glucose per day (the same amount of sugar found in three cans of soda!). At this rate, the brain would starve and die in about three days — but clearly it does not. This is because your body has evolved a backup plan.

It's at this critical stage when the ketone bodies become all the more critical. Because they're short-chain derivatives of fatty acids, they function as tiny powerpacks that can cross the blood-brain barrier and in turn be used by the brain as an alternative metabolic fuel. Your brain will get about 30% of its energy from ketone bodies on day three, but by day four it will jump to 70%. Moreover, your brain's glucose requirement will drop from 120 g per day to 30 g once the body enters into this phase.

Fascinatingly, humans may be the only species who have brains that don't require the ongoing ingestion of glucose to function. Most animals are forced to break down skeletal muscles at a higher rate. The going theory is that, because we humans are so greatly dependent on our intelligence to survive, we have evolved the capacity to stay cognitively sharp while in the midst of prolonged starvation, thus allowing us to search for food.

72 hours and onward

That said, your brain is not out of the woods yet. It's still short of about 10 g of glucose per day. The brain has got to get its energy from somewhere, and that somewhere is your body's own proteins. At this stage in your starvation (or fast), all the cells in your body will start to break down protein that releases amino acids into the bloodstream. These amino acids are then converted into glucose by the liver, and your brain is happy again.

But your body isn't. You have now entered into the regrettable phase called autophagy where your muscle mass starts to waste away. You are literally cannibalizing yourself. Thankfully, our bodies are able to selectively decide which cells will break down and which will not — a process that balances the metabolic needs of the body, along with the critical need to prolong our ability to remain active (and look for food).

Death

Needless to say, the body is not doing so well despite these evasive maneuvers. Starvation wreaks havoc on the immune system, mostly on account of an extreme deficiency of vitamins and minerals. And in fact, some people will become weak and die of immune-related diseases during starvation.

Eventually, however, the body will run out of options. Glucose, fats, tissue, and muscle mass are finite resources that will eventually be exhausted, and with it, death. The end-stage of starvation typically brings with it one of two different diseases: marasmus and kwashiorkor.

Marasmus occurs on account of extreme energy deficiency, typically from inadequate amounts of protein and calories. At this point, body weight reaches dangerously low levels, and infections are common.

Kwashiorkor is a related disease that afflicts children who are protein-energy deficient, and can result in edema (fluidic inflammation) and an enlarged fatty liver — resulting in the counterintuitive distending of bellies, giving the illusory impression that starving children are well fed.

When death does finally arrive, its most immediate cause is by cardiac arrhythmia or a heart attack brought on by either extreme tissue degradation brought about by autophagy (notably diaphragm failure), or severe electrolyte imbalances.

People can die of starvation in as short as a three-week span, or as long as 70 days. During the Irish Hunger Strikes of 1981, for example, ten men survived without food (drinking only water) for periods ranging from 46 to 73 days.

To think that human life can be sustained for that length of time without food is nothing short of remarkable — a feat of biological engineering that's the result of millions of years of painstaking and painful evolution.

Sources: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9

Images: Suzanne Tucker/Shutterstock.com, sandwalk, sportsnutritioninsider.

Who needs rockets and multi-million dollar satellites when you can get the same results by spending only $600? This was the thinking of Adam Cudworth, a 19 year-old student from the U.K., who recently sent his Canon A570 camera to the edge of space, in hopes of capturing some cool images of Earth from space. And that he did.

Be sure to check out Cudworth's Flickr photostream to see more pics.

The Telegraph is reporting:

The student spent 40 hours working on a home-made device consisting of a box containing a GPS, radio and microprocessor - which soared to an incredible height of 110,210 ft (33,592m) when he released it last Thursday.

After taking two-and-a-half hours to float over 20 miles up into the earth's stratosphere, his contraption captured out-of-this-world images giving breathtaking views of our planet from space.

Adam used a GPS tracker similar to a car's sat-nav to follow its progress and an attached radio transmitter to find it when it fell back to earth having reached speeds of over 150mph.

The teenager, from Ombersley, Worcs., said: "It's just a bit of hobby really, I just wanted to set myself a challenge - but I'm amazed at the results.

Cudworth placed his contraption in an insulated box, along with a small video camera, two temperature sensors, two high-performance solar panels, a tracking device, microprocessor and radio. He then attached it to a high-altitude two metre latex balloon with a parachute. When all was said and done, he manged to retrieve the package about 30 miles from his home.

You can read the entire article at the Telegraph.

Via Mashable.

Space photos via Adam Cudworth's Flickr. Inset photo via Nigel Iskander/newsteam/Telegraph.

As NASA's Curiosity rover scours the Martian surface in search of signs that Mars was once capable of fostering complex life, a team of researchers from the University of Poitiers, France, and Caltech have issued a paper that casts serious doubt on the notion that the planet was once habitable.

The new theory, which was published in Nature Geoscience, indicates that clay found on the Martian surface was formed in water-rich magma — water that would be way too hot to support life.

To make their case, a research team led by Alain Meunier studied clay minerals and rocks collected from an old A-bomb test site in French Polynesia. The geologists discovered that the clay minerals bore a remarkable resemblance to the ones observed on Mars. But unlike the South Pacific clays, which were products of weathering by liquid water, the ones on Mars were formed directly from water-rich molten rock as they cooled.

Reporting for the BBC, Jonathan Amos explains further:

It is interesting because it strikes at the heart of the notion that the Red Planet was awash with water, perhaps at its surface, more than 3.75 billion years ago - an idea that has been put forward to explain the great abundance of some clay deposits observed from orbit by satellites.

However, the process of clay production at Mururoa, if replicated and widespread on early Mars, would remove the need for such large volumes of water, and with it possibly a more benign environment for life to establish itself on the planet.

"Mars was not as warm and wet in its earliest time as some have suggested. I do not believe in an early ocean on Mars," Prof Meunier told BBC News.

But [The Mururoa process] explains only the earliest generation of clays on Mars, in the early Noachian period. In later periods, liquid water has existed on Mars' surface; that is undoubtedly the case."

And as the LA Times' Amina Khan notes, this has serious implications for Martian habitability:

On Earth, clays are remarkably good at trapping organic material. So if organic compounds existed on Mars, clays would be a good place to find them.

If either of the prevailing theories about water is true, the Martian environment could have been hospitable for life, Ehlmann said. Superheated water and magma? Not so much.

"The clays would form as the lava cools from 1,500 degrees Celsius," she said. "That would not be a good habitat."

But as Khan notes, the study leaves a number of questions unanswered:

"It's certainly a different take on trying to explain the origin of some clay minerals on Mars," [said planetary scientist Ralph Milliken] "It does have some merit, and alternative hypotheses need to be considered fully."

But he said the story laid out in the new paper doesn't explain why the Martian surface appears to have tracks cut by flowing liquid. Nor does it account for blueberry-shaped mineral deposits of hematite that scientists believe may have formed when water ran past them.

Again, Meunier is not claiming that surface water has never existed on Mars — merely that it wasn't present during its early Noachian period (a time that might have been critical to the spawning of life). The jury, therefore, is still very much out on this one.

Read the entire paper here.

Other sources: BBC.

Top image: A three-dimensional image of the Nili Fossae region of Mars showing clays presence of abundant clays minerals (in magenta and blue hues) via NASA/JPL/JHUAPL.

It's often said during wartime that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." Nowhere in the annals of history is this more true than the uneasy alliance that was hoisted upon the United States and the Soviet Union during World War II. Now, 72 years later, the U.S. National Archives has released 1,000 declassified documents showing the extremes that the U.S. went to to ensure that the alliance would not be compromised: As early as 1943, Washington knew that the 1940 Katyn Massacre, in which 22,000 Poles were killed, was the work of Josef Stalin and not the Nazis — and deliberately suppressed the evidence.

Since the massacre, Poles have alleged that the U.S. government was involved in a coverup. The newly released documents suggest that their suspicions were correct, a surprising and upsetting revelation that some historians are calling "potentially explosive." Here's how the wartime episode unravelled, and how the history books will have to be rewritten.

Uneasy alliance

The alliance between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. was a union of sheer necessity, one propped-up on weak foundations. Back in 1939, Hitler and Stalin had connived to sign a nonaggression treaty that essentially gave the Nazis free license to romp all over Europe. But shortly after Hitler invaded Poland in late 1939, the Soviet Union conducted their own invasion of the country and occupied its eastern regions.

In an effort to consolidate their occupation, Stalin ordered the massacre of over 22,000 Poles, including military officers, police, and the intellectual elite. Rumours that the Soviets were involved trickled out of Poland and into Washington — but there was no evidence to support such a claim, and many simply refused to believe it. Moreover, if true, it would be much more convenient to blame the Nazis.

Then, in June 1941, in complete violation of the Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact, Hitler launched a devastating surprise attack on Russia. The Soviet Union was forced to clamor back to Britain and its allies. In just a matter of a few months, the Russians were defending a front line that extended from Leningrad down to the Black Sea — a distance comparable to a line running across the continental United States.

President Roosevelt was desperate to see this Eastern Front hold, especially in consideration of Allied activities in North Africa — and their planned invasion of Western Europe. Maintaining friendly terms with the communist and despotic U.S.S.R. was seen as a necessary evil; America quickly forgot about the Red Scare and Stalin's pact with Hitler. Hollywood propaganda lauded the courageousness of the Russian people, while American factories spewed out tanks and other supplies destined for the Eastern Front.

Coded memos

By 1943, events had progressed in Europe, as had American involvement in the war. And it's at this stage that the recently declassified documents hold relevance. Vanessa Gera and Randy Herschaft of Associated Press were able to take an early look at the secret memos, and here's what they discovered:

It was May 1943 in the Katyn forest, a part of Russia the Germans had seized from the Soviets in 1941. A group of American and British POWs were taken against their will by their German captors to witness a horrifying scene at a clearing surrounded by pine trees: mass graves tightly packed with thousands of partly mummified corpses in well-tailored Polish officers uniforms.

The Americans - Capt. Donald B. Stewart and Lt. Col. John H. Van Vliet Jr. - hated the Nazis and didn't want to believe the Germans. They had seen German cruelty up close, and the Soviets, after all, were their ally. The Germans were hoping to use the POWs for propaganda, and to drive a wedge between the Soviet Union and its Western Allies.

But returning to their POW camps, the Americans carried a conviction that they had just witnessed overwhelming proof of Soviet guilt. The corpses' advanced state of decay told them the killings took place much earlier in the war, when the Soviets still controlled the area. They also saw Polish letters, diaries, identification tags, news clippings and other objects - none dated later than spring of 1940 - pulled from the graves. The evidence that did the most to convince them was the good state of the men's boots and clothing: That told them the men had not lived long after being captured.

Soon after this experience, the POWs, with the help of MIS-X (a group that helped prisoners escape and transmit intelligence reports), were able to send coded messages back home — including a note by Clayton Bissell which clearly stated, "German claims regarding Katyn substantially correct in opinion of Van Vliet and myself."

Other newly released documents show that Roosevelt received a detailed report from Winston Churchill indicating what had happened in the Katyn Forest.

Implications

This newly released evidence strongly indicates that Roosevelt and other members of the top brass knew about the Katyn Massacre, but deliberately ignored it and kept the information hidden for the sake of maintaining an alliance with the Soviet Union. And by 1950, aware of the implications of hiding this information during the war, the U.S. government continued to issue a gag order on the entire affair. The directive was to "never to speak about a secret message on Katyn." During the 1951-52 Congressional hearings, for example, no material was presented to demonstrate that Washington knew about Katyn as early as it did.

From a geopolitical perspective, and as historian Allen Paul told the AP, the U.S. cover-up delayed a full understanding of the true nature of Stalinism — an understanding that came only later, after the Soviets acquired the atomic bomb and set up the Iron Curtain.

And historiographically speaking, the sudden presentation of previously classified information is a potential indication that there may still be more to come. Because many of the key players have now passed on, and because they no longer face any potential recrimination for misdeeds or wrongdoings, this information is finally being released to historians and the public. The history of World War II, it would seem, has yet to be completely written.

All of the newly-released documents and maps at the National Archives can be found here.

Images via National Archives.

Everybody's been rethinking psychopaths lately. Instead of thinking of psychopathy as a highly problematic and socially dangerous personality disorder, psychologists are increasingly coming to see it as an extremely complex set of characteristics that play an important role in human diversity and experience. And in fact, as a recent study from Emory University suggests, psychopathic traits like fearless dominance can be a significant predictor of success — even among U.S. presidents.

There's no question that psychopathy can be an extremely problematic condition. Maladaptive traits like poor impulse control, lack of guilt, and an inability to empathize can result in dangerous and reckless behaviors. At the same time, however, traits like fearlessness, lack of anxiety, and interpersonal dominance can play a beneficial role in certain occupations, especially leadership positions.

And not all psychopaths are criminals or socially dangerous — and not by a longshot. And as the new Emory study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology indicates, some of the most successful U.S. presidents did in fact exhibit these exact traits. Indeed, as the study suggests, psychopath-like characteristics, especially fearless dominance, are linked to low social and physical apprehensiveness — personality traits that have been correlated with better-rated presidents in terms of their leadership skills, persuasiveness, crisis management and Congressional relations.

Writing in PsychCentral, Janice Wood explains further:

The analysis drew upon personality assessments of 42 presidents, up to George W. Bush, compiled by Steven Rubenzer and Thomas Faschingbauer for their book "Personality, Character and Leadership in the White House." More than 100 experts, including biographers, journalists and scholars who are established authorities on one or more U.S. presidents, evaluated their target presidents using standardized psychological measures of personality, intelligence and behavior.

The analysis found that Theodore Roosevelt ranked highest in fearless dominance, followed by John F. Kennedy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Rutherford Hayes, Zachary Taylor, Bill Clinton, Martin Van Buren, Andrew Jackson and George W. Bush.

For rankings on various aspects of job performance, the analysis relied primarily on data from two large surveys of presidential historians: One conducted by C-SPAN in 2009 and a second conducted by Siena College in 2010.

It's important to note that psychopathy, like autism, manifests along a spectrum. Just because these presidents are listed in the study doesn't imply that they were psychopaths in the traditional (or now archaic) sense of the term. All it suggests is that, at the very least, they had personality traits consistent with someone on the psychopathy spectrum.

Moreover, the study furthers the notion that there can be "successful psychopaths" in society, and that the condition may confer particular advantages at the workplace.

You can read more over at PsychCentral. And be sure to read the entire study.

Images via JFK Museum and US Library of Congress.

Could a placebo work even if you're not consciously aware of it? Scientists have always believed that placebo effects rely on your conscious expectations of what a pill or therapy is supposed to accomplish. But a new study suggests that your unconscious mind can play a key role in triggering a placebo effect.

Could your unconscious mind be making you feel better or worse, based on cues you're not even aware of?

At first blush, this notion sounds hard to believe. How can a placebo response happen without conscious awareness being involved? But a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is suggesting a person can indeed have a placebo (or nocebo) response even when they're unaware of any suggestion of improvement or anticipation of getting worse. (A nocebo response is an expectation that you'll feel worse, not better.)

A team led by Karin Jensen of the Department of Psychiatry and the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) performed a two-phase experiment:

Thermal pain stimuli

In the first experiment, Jensen took 40 volunteers and administered heat stimulation to their forearms while simultaneously showing them images of human faces on the computer screen. For the first face, they were told to expect low pain stimulation, and for the second image, high pain stimulation. The volunteers were asked to to rate their experience of the pain on a scale from 0 to 100, with 100 being the most painful. But what the patients didn't know was that all heat simulations were the same medium temperature. Not surprisingly, the participants applied a low average rating of 19 when they saw the first face, and a high average of 53 when they saw the second face (classic nocebo effect).

So far so good, but so far nothing new.

But for the second experiment, everything was kept the same except for one thing: the images were shown in such rapid succession that the volunteers couldn't possibly register them at the conscious level — what the researchers referred to as "masked exposures." Yet, the participants recorded pain responses of 25 for the first face, and 44 for the second face.

An automatic response

What does this mean? It means that placebo and nocebo responses are not always elicited by what a person consciously thinks will happen, but what the unconscious mind anticipates will happen. Essentially, the researchers verified that subliminal stimuli has an influence on the placebo/nocebo response. Consequently, placebos should be understood as a mechanism that is automatic, fast, and powerful — and one that does not require conscious contemplation or judgement.

The researchers anticipate that these findings will offer a new framework for studying placebos, and why people respond to medicines in the way they do.

Be sure to check out the entire study at PNAS.

Image: Junker/Shutterstock.com.

Okay, math lovers, this is the one you've been waiting for: Shinichi Mochizuki of Kyoto University in Japan is claiming to have found proof (divided into four separate studies with 500+ pages) of the so-called abc conjecture, a longstanding problem in number theory which predicts that a relationship exists between prime numbers. The tricky part? Now other mathematicians need to dig into his extensive work, and confirm that he's right.

Now, because I failed grade 9 math, I'm going to let Philip Ball of Nature News explain this one to you:

Like Fermat's theorem, the abc conjecture refers to equations of the form a+b=c. It involves the concept of a square-free number: one that cannot be divided by the square of any number. Fifteen and 17 are square free-numbers, but 16 and 18 - being divisible by 42 and 32, respectively - are not.

The 'square-free' part of a number n, sqp(n), is the largest square-free number that can be formed by multiplying the factors of n that are prime numbers. For instance, sqp(18)=2×3=6.

If you've got that, then you should get the abc conjecture. It concerns a property of the product of the three integers axbxc, or abc - or more specifically, of the square-free part of this product, which involves their distinct prime factors. It states that for integers a+b=c, the ratio of sqp(abc)r/c always has some minimum value greater than zero for any value of r greater than 1. For example, if a=3 and b=125, so that c=128, then sqp(abc)=30 and sqp(abc)2/c = 900/128. In this case, in which r=2, sqp(abc)r/c is nearly always greater than 1, and always greater than zero.

If you don't get any of that or what Mochizuki has done, don't worry — many mathematicians don't either. And in fact, Mochizuki is considered somewhat of a genius and a guy who's in a league of his own. He thinks in terms of mathematical 'objects' — abstract entities like geometric objects, sets, permutations, topologies, and matricies. Ball quotes mathematician Dorian Goldfeld as saying, "At this point, he is probably the only one that knows it all."

Read more at Nature News, and check out the three studies — if you dare: I, II, III, IV.

Image via Shutterstock.com/ronstik.

Novelist Neal Stephenson wants to create a 20-kilometer space tower, which could inspire people to believe in innovation again — but also transform the way we travel in the air and into space.

To this end, Stephenson has teamed up with structural engineer Keith Hjelmstad of Arizona State University in an effort to design and build the incredible space tower. The project is an extension of Stephenson's Hieroglyph story, and the Center for Science and the Imagination — an initiative that's working to bring artists and technologists together and "turn science fiction into reality."

Stephenson, like so many others these days, is frustrated with modern society's lack of ambition when it comes to embarking upon really big projects. He calls it "innovation starvation." And in addition to attributing much of it to the pessimistic trend that has largely taken over science fiction, he also blames it on modern information technologies. As he told Stephen Cass of Technology Review, "Everything got put on hold for a generation," while civilization busied itself with figuring out the Internet.

And not inclined to wait for radically futuristic technologies to arrive, Stephenson has argued that we should make do with what we have, and start working on megascale projects anyway. To that end, along with Hjelmstad, he has outlined a proposal for their epic space tower.

Once complete, the structure would reach up into the stratosphere and be capable of refueling docked planes. It could also serve as a jumping-off point to launch missions into space. Writing in New Scientist, Jim Giles explains some of the challenges:

Hjelmstad is now analysing the feasibility of Stephenson's tower. Preliminary modelling suggests that it could support its own weight, but many questions remain. Hjelmstad must determine, for instance, whether the tower can support the payload associated with each of the uses that Stephenson imagines.

"The tower pushes well beyond anything anyone has ever done in structural engineering," says Hjelmstad. "Building [it] would be the biggest project ever undertaken by humans."

And as Giles notes, Stephenson is not the only person thinking along these lines. A similar sentiment has been expressed by writer Cory Doctorow who is hoping to see his story of 3D printers on the moon come into reality.

The idea of having sci-fi writers team up with scientists is definitely an interesting one. Perhaps we'd already be working on a space elevator if Arthur C. Clarke was given the same opportunity.

Image GDC Online/KurzweilAI, James Reeve/Photolibrary/Getty).

Biologists who study extremophiles know just how tough and resilient life can be. Microbes have been discovered in virtually all four corners of the Earth, including deserts, extreme altitudes, and undersea volcanoes. Insights like these have forced astrobiologists to reconsider the types of environments where life is capable of emerging and flourishing.

And indeed, as a new paper published in Astrobiology suggests, life may even emerge on those planets whose orbits take them out of a solar system's habitable zone — what would likely result in some rather unique and bizarre adaptations.

Odd life on odd planets

Compared to other planets, Earth's orbit is practically a circle. We are firmly planted in the midst of our solar system's so-called Goldilocks zone, which is likely why life flourishes here to the degree that does.

But not all planets are like Earth. As astronomers who study exoplanets are quickly realizing, many terrestrial planets travel along exaggerated elliptical orbits that take them too close or too far away from their parent star. The question that emerges, therefore, is whether or not life can handle these periodic journeys outside the habitable zone.

NASA's Dawn Gelino and Stephen Kane say yes — and that the presence of extremophiles on Earth likely proves it. The only requirement, they say, is that water needs to be present at some point during the planet's orbit.

The researchers suggest that life can adapt and develop countermeasures to survive the harsh conditions found outside of habitable zones. The strategies would essentially involve hiding, hibernating, taking advantage of the good times, and avoiding sterilization.

For example, the researchers suggest that some organisms could drop their metabolism to zero and hibernate in order to survive extended stays in frigid conditions. Similarly, if the planet gets too close to its sun, it could hide inside a protective layer of rock or water.

They also point to studies on Earth which have shown that spores, bacteria, and lichens can survive a variety of conditions — including the ravages of space. And if complex plant or animal life should emerge, it would have to evolve strategies to cope with an extended annual biological clock; these exo-creatures would have to find a way to optimize the time they spend in favorable conditions.

Habitable Zone Gallery

As a result of their research, Gelino and Kane are suggesting that astrobiologists need to revise the traditional parameters of the habitable zone to include those planets who, every once in awhile, leave their cozy confines.

To that end, the team has compiled a handy resource called the "Habitable Zone Gallery." The site calculates the size and distance of the habitable zone for each exoplanetary system that has been discovered, along with a graphical demonstration of each planet's orbit — and they've included those exoplanets that occasionally leave the habitable zone.

The researchers also suggest that life can emerge completely outside Goldilocks zones, such as on moons that orbit around outer gas giants. Though further research is required, they suggest that gas giants may someday have to be included as a potentially habitable zone unto themselves.

Check out the entire study at Astrobiology.

Images via NASA/NASA/JPL-Caltech.

We live in an era of accelerating change. Technology is changing and innovating faster than most of us can keep up. And at the same time, it's easy to get so caught up in shiny visions of the future, and not notice the astounding things that are happening in science and technology today. So the next time people ask you where the future went, tell them it's already here.

Here are nine underrated or overlooked technologies that could transform the world before you know it.

Top image composed by Dylan Cole.

1. Cheap and fast DNA sequencing

Most of us know about DNA sequencing — but you probably don't realize just how fast and cheap it's getting. In fact, some experts suggest that it's following along a Moore's Law of its own. As Adrienne Burke has pointed out, the speed of genome sequencing has better than doubled every two years since 2003 — back at a time when it cost $3.8 billion (i.e. the Human Genome Project). Today, thanks to advances in such things as nucleic acid chemistry and detection, a company like Life Technologies can process DNA on a semiconductor chip at a cost of $1,000 per genome. Other companies can sequence an entire genome in one single day. And the implications are significant, including the advent of highly personalized medicine in which drugs can be developed to treat your specific genome. Say goodbye to one-size-fits-all medicine.

2. Digital currency

The idea of digital currency is slowing starting to make the rounds, including the potential for Bitcoin, but what many of us don't realize is that's it's here to stay. Sure, it's had a rough start, but once established and disseminated, electronic cash will allow for efficient and convenient online exchanges — and all without the need for those pesky banks. Despite the obvious need for a distributed digital currency protocol, the adoption rate has been relatively slow. Barriers to entry include availability (it's in limited supply), the cryptography problem (the public still needs to be assured that it's secure), the establishment of a recognized and trustworthy dispute system (sensing some opportunities here), and user confidence (a problem similar to the one that emerged when paper money first emerged).

3. Memristors

Back in 1971, University of California at Berkeley professor Leon Chua predicted a revolution in electrical circuits — and his vision has finally come true. Traditionally, circuits are constructed with capacitors, resistors, and inductors. But Chua speculated that there could be a fourth component, what he called the memristor (short for memory resistor). What sets this technological innovation apart is that, unlike a resistor, it can "remember" charges even after power is lost. As a result, this would allow the memristor to store information. This has given rise to the suggestion that it could eventually become a part of computer memory — including non-volatile solid-state memory with significantly greater densities than traditional hard drives (as much as one petabit per cm³). The first memristor was developed in May 2008 by HP, who plan on having a commercial version available by the end of 2014. And aside from memory storage, memristors could prove useful in signal processing, neural networks, and brain-computer interfaces.

4. Robots that can do crazy futuristic stuff

Today we have robots that can self-replicate, re-assemble after being kicked apart, shape-shift, swarm, create emergent effects, build other robots, slither like a snake, jump to the tops of buildings, walk like a pack mule, and run faster than a human. They even have their own internet. Put it all together and you realize that we're in the midst of a robotic revolution that's poised to change virtually everything.

5. Waste to biofuels

Imagine being able to turn all our garbage into something useful like fuel. Oh wait, we can do that. It's called "energy recovery from waste" — a process that typically involves the production of electricity or biofuels (like methane, methanol, ethanol or synthetic fuels) by burning it. Cities like Edmonton, Alberta are already doing it — and they're scaling up. By next year, Edmonton's Waste-to-Biofuels Facility will convert more than 100,000 tons of municipal solid waste into 38 million litres of biofuels annually. Moreover, their waste-based biofuels can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 60% compared to gasoline. This largely overlooked revolution is turning garbage (including plastic) into a precious resource. Already today, Sweden is importing waste from its European neighbors to fuel its garbage-to-energy program.

6. Gene therapy

Though we're in the midst of the biotechnology revolution, our attention tends to get focused on such things as stem cells, tissue engineering, genome mapping, and new pharmaceuticals. What's often lost in the discussion is the fact that we already have the ability to go directly into our DNA and swap genes at will. We can essentially trade bad genes for good, allowing us to treat or prevent diseases (such as muscular dystrophy and cystic fibrosis) — interventions that don't require drugs or surgery. And just as significantly, gene therapy could eventually give rise genetic enhancements (like increased memory or intelligence) and life extension therapies. Gattaca is already here, it just hasn't been distributed yet.

7. RNA interference

The discovery of RNA interference (RNAi) was considered so monumental that it won Andrew Fire and Craig C. Mello the Nobel Prize back in 2006. Similar to gene therapy, RNA interference allows biologists to manipulate the functions of genes. It works by using cells to shut-off or turn down the activity of specific genes, and it does this by destroying or disrupting messenger molecules (for example by preventing mRNA from producing a protein). Today, RNAi is being used in thousands of labs. It's becoming an indispensable research tool (to create novel cell cultures), it has inspired the creation of algorithms in computational biology studies, and it holds tremendous potential for the treatment of diseases like cancer and Lou Gehrig's disease.

8. Organic electronics

Traditionally, our visions of cybernetics and the cyborg is one in which natural, organic parts have been replaced with mechanical devices or prostheses. The notion of a half-human, half-machine has very much become ingrained in our thinking — but it's likely wrong. Thanks to the rise of the nascent field of organic electronics, it's more likely that we'll rework the body's biological systems and introduce new organic components altogether. Already today, scientists have engineered cyborg tissue that can sense its environment. Other researchers have invented chemical circuits that can channel neurotransmitters instead of electric voltages. And as Mark Changizi has suggested, future humans will continue to harness the powers of their biological constitutions and engage in what Stanislas Dehaene calls neuronal recycling.

9. Concentrated solar power

A recent innovation in solar power technology is starting to take the world by storm, though few talk about it. It's called concentrated solar power (CSP), and it's a massively distributed system for extracting solar energy with mirrors and lenses. It works by focusing the incoming sunlight into a highly concentrated area. The result is a highly scalable and efficient energy source that is allowing for gigawatt sized solar power plants. Another similar technology, what's called concentrated photovoltaics, results in concentrated sunlight being converted to heat, which in turn gets converted to electricity. CPV plants will not only solve much of the world's energy needs, it will also double as a desalination station.

Images: Alila Sao Mai/shutterstock [1], BitCoin [2], IEEE Spectrum/R. Stanley Williams [3], City of Edmonton [5], somersault18:24/Shutterstock [6], Medgadget [7], AlphaGalileo Foundation [8], Desertec [9].

This past Monday, people who have the Dalai Lama as a Facebook friend found this little gem in their newsfeed.

All the world's major religions, with their emphasis on love, compassion, patience, tolerance, and forgiveness can and do promote inner values. But the reality of the world today is that grounding ethics in religion is no longer adequate. This is why I am increasingly convinced that the time has come to find a way of thinking about spirituality and ethics beyond religion altogether.

The Dalai Lama's advice sounds startling familiar — one that echos the sentiment put forth by outspoken atheist Sam Harris who argues that science can answer moral questions. The Dalai Lama is no stranger to scientific discourse, and has developed a great fascination with neuroscience in particular. It's very possible, therefore, that his thinking has aligned with Harris.

In a recent interview with the Globe and Mail, Harris had this to say about science and how it should be used to inform our moral and ethical sensibilities:

The moment we admit that questions of right and wrong, and good and evil, are actually questions about human and animal well-being, we see that science can, in principle, answer such questions. Human experience depends on everything that can influence states of the human brain, ranging from changes in our genome to changes in the global economy. The relevant details of genetics, neurobiology, psychology, sociology, economics etc. are fantastically complicated, but these are domains of facts, and they fall squarely within the purview of science.

We should reserve the notion of "morality" for the ways in which we can affect one another's experience for better or worse. Some people use the term "morality" differently, of course, but I think we have a scientific responsibility to focus the conversation so as to make it most useful. We define terms like "medicine," "causation," "law" and "theory" very much to the detriment of homeopathy, astrology, voodoo, Christian Science and other branches of human ignorance, and there is no question that we enjoy the same freedom when speaking about concepts like "right" and "wrong," and "good" and "evil." Once we acknowledge that "morality" relates to questions of human and animal well-being, then there is no reason to doubt that a prescriptive (rather than merely descriptive) science of morality is possible. After all, there are principles of biology, psychology, sociology and economics that will allow us to flourish in this world, and it is clearly possible for us not to flourish due to ignorance of these principles.

It's important to remember that Tibetan Buddhists, while rejecting belief in God and the soul, still cling to various metaphysical beliefs, including karma, infinite rebirths, and reincarnation. But interestingly, the Dalai Lama once had this to say on the subject:

My confidence in venturing into science lies in my basic belief that as in science so in Buddhism, understanding the nature of reality is pursued by means of critical investigation: if scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.

Other Buddhists, however, such as Stephen Batchelor, argue that Buddhism should be stripped of all its metaphysical baggage and simplified down to its basic philosophical and existential tenets — a suggestion that has given rise to secular Buddhism.

H/t PocketHobbit. Top image via. Inset image via AP.

The National Media Museum in the U.K. announced today that it has discovered the world's first color moving pictures. The reels were found inside a museum vault, hidden inside an old tin dating back to 1899. The remarkable discovery is set to re-write the history of early film.

The color film was created by an Edwardian inventor named Edward Raymond Turner. During the 1890s, Turner worked with color photographs — something that in all likelihood inspired him to do the same with moving pictures. It was during this time that he learned about color separation, the process of breaking down images into red, green, and blue.

Initially, museum curator Michael Harvey thought the film was a failed attempt to produce color moving images. But on closer inspection he realized that Turner had stumbled upon a rather unique technique.

While the film appears black and white to the naked eye, each frame looks slightly different. This is because Turner captured each frame through a particular color filter, either red, green, or blue. And lucky for the restoration team, Turner was kind enough to mark the appropriate color on every single frame.

After converting the film to standard size, and applying the appropriate "color gate", the restorers were able to reproduce the color film in the same way intended by Turner.

It's worth noting that all colors which appear on the film have not been tinted, toned, or hand colored in any way.

The researchers suspect that Turner's technique was largely unsuccessful on account of his inability to develop a reliable play-back projector.

As for the content of the film, Turner's reels feature scenes with his family in the backyard waving sunflowers around, a girl on a swing, a rainbow-colored parrot, soliders marching, and a goldfish in a bowl.

Source: National Media Museum.

Let's face it: Sex can be kinda gross. With all those body odors and fluids being traded back and forth, it's no small miracle that humans voluntarily choose to copulate at all. But as scientists from the Netherlands have recently pointed out, our willingness to engage in sexual acts despite the yuck factor may be on account of a built-in psychological mechanism that temporarily reduces our feelings of disgust during sex — at least in women.

The study, which was conducted by Charmaine Borg and Peter de Jong, involved, among other things, 90 women, soft porn, vibrators, lubricants, voodoo dolls, and a glass of juice with an insect in it. Now, while this might sound like a typical Saturday night for most io9 readers, this was serious, scientific stuff. Disgust is an evolved defense mechanism that compels people to avoid things like contamination; why people don't mind exchanging saliva, sweat, semen, and body odor, therefore, is a question that has baffled psychologists.

To figure out what's going on, the researchers divided the women up into three groups: those who would be sexually aroused (by the "female friendly erotica"), those who were not sexually aroused, and the third being a control group. Once primed (or not), the women were given a series of behavioral tasks, like wiping their hands with a used tissue (which the participants didn't know was fake), lubricating a vibrator, touching used condoms (faked), and taking a sip of juice with a large (also fake) insect in it. The women were also given a set of moral tasks, like stabbing a voodoo doll representing a person they hated, or hugging a shirt belonging to a known pedophile (faked).

The intention was to create a series of situations in which the researchers could measure the impact of sexual arousal on feelings of disgust and whether or not certain behaviors would be avoided altogether.

What Borg and de Jong discovered was that sexually aroused women rated the sex related tasks as being less disgusting compared to how the other women felt. And interestingly, they also exhibited a diminished disgust response to the non-sex related tasks and stimuli. In addition, the aroused group was less inclined to avoid certain behaviors outright; they successfully completed the highest percentage of tasks compared to the other groups.

The findings clearly show that there may in fact be a connection between sexual arousal and a diminished disgust response in women. It's not clear from the study, however, if men are subject to the same effect.

In addition, the study hold implications for treating sexual dysfunction in women. It's quite possible that women who find sex unpleasurable or gross may either not be sufficiently sexually aroused, or that their induced disgust reduction response is somehow impaired.

The study can be read in its entirety at PLOS.

Image via Shutterstock/mast3r.

Genetic testing has taken off in recent years. Companies like 23andMe and Medcan are finally allowing people to get their DNA tested so that they can better understand their genetic lineage and determine if they're prone to certain diseases. Now all this sounds good in theory — but what if your genetic tests yielded some rather horrible results? This is exactly what happened to Julie Green, a Canadian who was completey unprepared for what the tests indicated about her future health.

Writing a daily personal piece for the Globe and Mail, Green asked, "If someone offered you a glimpse into your future, would you look? What if that glimpse could reveal Alzheimer's disease or breast cancer? Would you still look?"

Undaunted by the implications, Green decided to go through with the tests anyway — and the tests results were far worse than she could have ever predicted. She writes:

With calm professionalism, Jill flags conditions in which my lifetime risk [of ovarian cancer] is greater than 20 per cent above that of the general population. I'm not much of a gambler, but the odds speak for themselves.

When she tells me I'm twice as likely as the average North American to contract Alzheimer's disease, I hardly bat an eyelid.

But she saves the biggest bombshell for last. My maternal grandmother has macular degeneration, a condition that causes loss of vision due to retina damage. A condition I had always attributed to my grandmother's 50-year career as a smoker.

While the average person carries a 3.1 per cent risk of macular degeneration, my risk is a whopping 61 per cent, Jill reveals. Immediately, the bottom of my stomach drops out.

So much for stoicism. I had no inkling that my grandmother's condition was so heavily rooted in heredity. I've been thinking the testing would reveal some great mystery about my father, when in fact it revealed more about my mother's side of the family.

Now it's important to remember that genetic tests are not destiny. As Green correctly notes in her piece, 2% of women who undergo whole genome sequencing could receive a positive test result for ovarian cancer — but that doesn't mean the other 98% are off scot-free. And vice-versa. Not only are genetic tests still very much in their nascent stage of development, they fail to take into account environmental, lifestyle, and epigenetic factors.

That said, results like these should not be ignored; that's the whole point of genetic testing in the first place. Now that she knows about her apparent susceptibility for conditions like Alzheimer's and macular degeneration, Green can work to proactively stave off the onset of these diseases to the best of her abilities. It's been shown, for example, that resistance training and brain games may work to slow down the onset of Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative disorders.

Like so many things in life, knowledge is power — even if that knowledge is bad news.

Read Julie Green's entire account of her experience.

Image via Shutterstock.com/Nikita G. Sidorov.

News broke yesterday that a beautifully preserved wooly mammoth had been discovered by Russian scientists in Siberia. The research team quickly got ahead of itself, by claiming that the mammoth remains contained actual living cells, which in turn got the media all excited about the possibility of cloning the extinct beast.

Not surprisingly, the scientists have gone back and clarified their position — forcing the media to do the same.

Various publications started to declare, "Siberian Mammoth remains found to contain 'live cells'", including the BBC. Cloning rumors started to spread, mostly on account of overly speculative AP and Reuters stories.

Once the news started making the rounds, the Russian research team quickly clarified its position, stating that it was all based on "a misunderstanding" and that it would likely take months to determine if they had found living cells or not.

The situation regressed even further when Aleksandr Agadzhanyan from the Russian Academy of Science declared that it was highly unlikely that living cells will be found in the remains, telling a Russian news agency that "The structure and the nucleus – in some special conditions of deep freezing – can be preserved, but a living thing means constant and stable exchange with outside the environment."

Worse, it was later revealed that there's a possible connection between the research team and controversial Korean scientist and cloning enthusiast Hwang Woo-Suk who has expressed potential interest in the findings.

Subsequently, news sites were careful to inject the word "may" into their headlines to ensure that no bold claims were being conveyed. The BBC had to adjust their piece, noting "This story has been amended to make clear scientists are doubtful they will find live cells."

Anyway, regardless of the initial misunderstanding, the finding is really quite extraordinary. The remains contained mammoth hair, soft tissues, and bone marrow. The mammoth was discovered by Semyon Grigoreyv and his team at a depth of 328 feet. Further research and tests will be conducted on the remains to prove one way or another if the remains do in fact contain live cells.

Images via RU.