science

Weeping in utter frustration – anti-evolution bills on the NH legislative agenda!!!

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The National Centre for Science Educaion reports … Antievolution bills are on the horizon in New Hampshire. Included on a list (PDF) of legislative service requests dated June 14, 2011, are two requests to have antievolution bills drafted for the 2012 legislative session. LSR 2012-H-2176-R, submitted by Jerry Bergevin (R-District 17), asks for a bill … Read more

Naming New Elements

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We have two new elements in the periodic table, 114 and 116. The details are in the Journal of Pure and Applied Chemistry here. Both are highly radioactive and exist for less than a second before decaying into lighter atoms, so blink and you will indeed miss them. This has been on the cards for some time now, and have been submitted for inclusion along with claims for 113, 115 , and 118. Well, 114 and 116 just made it.

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Unicorn no longer extinct

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Now here is a small piece of encouraging news from Today’s Guardian … Unicorn’s are no longer extinct. Basically … the last wild Arabian oryx was shot in 1972, thus making it more or less extinct. However, a successful captive breeding programme and reintroduction efforts mean its population now stands at 1,000. You can read … Read more

Vaccines and Foreign aid

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There is a great article in today’s UK Telegraph by Hugh Pennington , the emeritus professor of bacteriology at the University of Aberdeen. It has been written in response to the news that Bill Gates and also the UK government have comitted huge sums to money, when  yesterday they pledged £814 million on top of the UK’s existing commitment to GAVI (the Global Alliance on Vaccines and Immunisation) of £680 million between 2011 and 2015.

Here are a couple of choice quotes that I’ve plucked out because I really like them …

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I’m a Climate skeptic

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I’m a climate skeptic … however, what I do not mean is that I refute the concept of man-made climate change, because the evidence for that is clear. No instead I’m skeptical that we will do anything about it , but will instead carry on tinkering around the edges, doing a few small things, but will continue to not make the really big decisions. Its almost like the folks who pop a few vitamin pills, and by doing so create a false sense of security, and so carry on gorging themselves on mountains of junk food until they hit a tipping point and an overworked heart stops.

“Oh but wait”, you say, “we have lots happening, lots of meetings to agree targets, electric cars, we all re-cycle”. All true, but sadly it is simply not enough, the latest evidence I bring to the table is a leaked report that …. well here it is, read it for yourselves :

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Conscientiousness and longevity

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There is an interesting study that went up on PubMed a few days ago. the abstract reads …

Objective: Conscientious individuals tend to experience a number of health benefits, not the least of which being greater longevity. However, it remains an open question as to why this link with longevity occurs. The current study tested two possible mediators (physical health and cognitive functioning) of the link between conscientiousness and longevity.

Method: We tested these mediators using a 10-year longitudinal sample (N = 512), a subset of the long-running Health and Retirement Study of aging adults. Measures included an adjective-rating measure of conscientiousness, self-reported health conditions, and three measures of cognitive functioning (word recall, delayed recall, and vocabulary) included in the 1996 wave of the HRS study.

Results: Our results found that conscientiousness significantly predicted greater longevity, even in a model including the two proposed mediator variables, gender, age, and years of education. Moreover, cognitive functioning appears to partially mediate this relationship.

Conclusions: This study replicates previous research showing that conscientious individuals tend to lead longer lives, and provides further insight into why this effect occurs. In addition, it underscores the importance of measurement considerations.

The abstract on PubMed can be found here.

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