ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 751
May 24, 2015
Bacteria the newest tool in detecting environmental damage
Courtesy of Oak Ridge National Laboratory
By Science Daily
The reaction most people have when they hear the word bacteria is rarely a good one.
While it’s true that food- and water-borne bacteria cause untold illnesses and even death around the world, a team of researchers from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory has found a way to use bacteria to help prevent some of the very symptoms most people associate with them.
Terry Hazen, the Governor’s Chair for Environmental Biotechnology, a joint UT-ORNL appointment, is working with a team of researchers who have developed a method of using bacteria to help test for the presence of a wide array of pollutants.
“Bacteria can be a great bio-sensor for the environment,” said Hazen, who holds appointments in environmental engineering, microbiology and earth and planetary sciences at UT. “Critically, even if you can’t see the contaminant, the bacteria will react a certain way if pollutants have been there in the past.”
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Faith Healing Kills Children
Photo by djedzura/Shutterstock
By Jerry A. Coyne
As preventable diseases like measles and whooping cough are reappearing in the United States, many anti-vaxxers are re-evaluating their opposition to immunization, and others are questioning nonmedical exemptions from vaccine requirements. The California state Senate, for instance, just overruled a long-standing law that permitted parents with religious and philosophical reservations to send their children to public and private schools without their shots.
This is a sound decision: Vaccinations are safe and essential for the health of our society. We cannot allow philosophy or faith to trump public health. But denying children potentially life-saving vaccines is just one part of the problem; I’d like to eliminate even more exemptions: those now enshrined in many laws permitting religious parents to withhold scientific medical care from their children in favor of faith healing.
Forty-eight states—all except West Virginia and Mississippi—allow religious exemptions from vaccination. (California would be the third exception if its bill becomes law.) A similar deference to religion applies to all medical care for children. As the National District Attorneys Association reports, 43 states give some kind of criminal or civil immunity to parents who injure their children by withholding medical care on religious grounds.
If your faith mandates spiritual healing and your child dies because you offer prayer instead of insulin or antibiotics, your chances of being charged with a crime are slim. There are religious exemptions for child neglect and abuse, negligent homicide, involuntary manslaughter. Several states allow parents to use a religious defense against charges of murder of their child—and in some places they can’t be charged with murder at all. And even when parents are prosecuted, acquiescence to religious belief often leads to their being acquitted or given light sentences, including unsupervised parole. None of this, of course, applies to parents who refuse medical care on nonreligious grounds; those individuals get no immunity from prosecution.
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May 23, 2015
Ancient Arctic DNA Suggests That Dogs And Wolves Split 40,000 Years Ago
Photo credit:
This is an ancient Taymyr Wolf bone from the lower jaw. The animal lived 27,000 to 40,000 years ago / Love Dalén
Researchers analyzing DNA isolated from an ancient Siberian wolf bone have discovered that dogs originated at least 27,000 years ago, and maybe even as far back as 40,000 years ago. The findings, published in Current Biology this week, suggest that dogs became domesticated thousands of years earlier than we thought.
Supernovae Have Diverse Beginnings
Photo credit:
The processes that cause Type Ia Supernovae, one of whose remnants are shown here, are increasingly debated / NASA
Textbooks may need to be rewritten as evidence emerges that most Type Ia supernovae are caused by colliding stars. One study providing such evidence also suggests that these explosions start off with surprising variation, even when their peaks look similar.
Type Ia supernovae are particularly exciting to astronomers because they are usually thought to be equally luminous, allowing us to calculate their distance using their brightness.
This Lens Could Give You Superhuman Vision
Photo credit:
Darryl Dyck / Canadian Press
Ocumetics Technology Corp claims to have developed a painless eight-minute procedure that would give you vision that is supposedly three times better than 20/20. The "bionic" lenses would give even 100-year-olds better vision than anything currently available. Does this sound too good to be true? Well, we can’t tell, as it has yet to undergo any clinical trials.
ATHEIST VS ASSHOLE
People think all atheists are assholes. It’s easier to argue against someone who is painted as a villain. I’m so tired of the stereotype!
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Doubt Cast On ‘Young Blood’ Anti-Aging Protein
Photo credit:
wk1003mike/Shutterstock
It might sound like the plot from a vampire movie, but since the 1950s it’s been observed that young blood seemingly rejuvenates old mice. To great fanfare, last year it was announced that scientists might have finally cracked the riddle following the discovery of the specific protein that could be responsible for the apparent anti-aging properties. However, a new paper has cast doubt on this discovery.
Teenage Girl Had To Stay Awake For Four Days After Parasite Started Eating Her Eyeball
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Jessica Greaney's right eye is swollen from the eye parasite / Jessica Greaney
For the squeamish, the images in this article are not extreme.
The 19-year-old contact lens wearer, Jessica Greaney, thought she only had a minor eye infection: her eye was sore and her eyelid kept drooping. "But, by the end of the week, my eye was bulging, and it looked like a huge red golf ball," Greaney said. "It was swollen, and extremely painful, and they admitted me into hospital."
New Campaign Profiles Litterers From Their DNA And Posts Reconstructions Of Their Faces
Photo credit:
Ogilvy & Mather Hong Kong
Would you think twice about littering if your face was plastered on billboards as a result? While this sounds like something straight out of science fiction, it’s not. The Hong Kong Cleanup Initiative has collaborated with advertising firm Ogilvy & Mather to launch ‘The Face of Litter.’ The rather terrifying awareness campaign will collect the DNA traces found on litter to create a picture of the person's face and place it on multiple platforms.
Chickens From Hell And Cartwheeling Spiders: The Top 10 New Species 2015
Photo credit:
This underwater "crop circle" is no longer a mystery. Credit: Yoji Okata
Happy (almost) Birthday Carl Linnaeus! The "father of taxonomy," who established the first universally accepted way of classifying animals and plants, was born in southern Sweden on May 23, 1707. He started with simply dividing the world into three kingdoms—plants, animals and minerals—and then proceeded to classify them depending on their appearance, eventually giving all living things a simple two-part Latin name, which biologists still do to this day.
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