The blood substitute PolyHeme has been previously discussed on MetaFilter, but new evidence shows that PolyHeme actually raises the chances of death by nearly 30%. PolyHeme was notable mostly for the reaction to its clinical trials, which, controversially, did not require patient consent.
posted on Apr 29, 2008 - View this thread

Cantaloupe, garlic, ginger, habenero, kiwi, nutmeg, pineapple, spearmint, watermelon and many other vodka infusion experiments by the crack alconomics team of Waylan and Brendan.
posted on Apr 12, 2008 - View this thread

An unprecedented five consecutive years of stagnant funding for the National Institutes of Health is putting America at risk - a few prominent research institutions get together to voice their concern over flat funding of the National Institutes of Health over the past 5 years, in their report The Broken Pipeline (pdf). Bloggers comment [1, 2, 3].
posted on Mar 14, 2008 - View this thread

Physical Review Letters' 50th anniversary retrospective promises to be an interesting survey of the physics landscape for the past half-century.
posted on Feb 27, 2008 - View this thread

Josh Sommer is a student at Duke who is researching and advocating to find a cure for chordoma, a rare type of cancer that he was diagnosed with during his freshman year of college. He's not new to being an advocate-- when he was in high school, he and his mom (Dr. Simone Sommer) spoke publicly about the dangers of toxic mold, which they had both experienced firsthand.
posted on Feb 20, 2008 - View this thread

Apparently, the new black is... really, really black. "Researchers in New York reported this month that they have created a paper-thin material that absorbs 99.955 percent of the light that hits it, making it by far the darkest substance ever made -- about 30 times as dark as the government's current standard for blackest black." But what possible benefit to society could come from this blacker than black substance? Why, invisibility cloaks, of course!
posted on Feb 20, 2008 - View this thread

Harvard's Faculty of Arts & Sciences voted unanimously last week to mandate "Open Access" to published articles - a first at a U.S. university, though the dean will apparently grant a waiver to anyone who wants to opt out. More to follow? Peter Suber's Open Access News is tracking reactions.
posted on Feb 17, 2008 - View this thread

The Primary Review has published three research reports about primary school education in the UK and elsewhere. The Structure of Primary Education: England and Other Countries. Primary Curriculum and Assessment: England and Other Countries. Press release summarising some of the findings.
posted on Feb 8, 2008 - View this thread

Interested on how the gummint is using Spectral Sensing Technology do defend us from attacks? You'll feel much safer after viewing the Futuristic Sensor System Dramatic Research Presentation of the 2008 International Symposium on Spectral Sensing Research (ISSSR-2008). (The tour of the Conference Site is in the same vein, with different music.)
posted on Feb 7, 2008 - View this thread

Study: Internet Not Dumbing Down Kids, Who Were Stupid Anyway. Full report! (warning: PDF) The information literacy of young people, has not improved with the widening access to technology: in fact, their apparent facility with computers disguises some worrying problems. Young people have unsophisticated mental maps of what the internet is, often failing to appreciate that it is a collection of networked resources from different providers. (Like tubes!)
posted on Jan 20, 2008 - View this thread

"Researchers found that failing to publish negative findings inflated the reported effectiveness of all 12 of the antidepressants studied." See also: Serotonin and Depression: A Disconnect between the Advertisements and the Scientific Literature.
posted on Jan 17, 2008 - View this thread

"Australians must not use whales to justify the racist ideology" The Australian government's [proto] stance on Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean has drawn a strong response by an anonymous youtube poster, citing racism as the core reason the Australian Government is taking a stand on the Japanese Whale Research Programme [caution, gruesome video and yet more racist youtube comments]. It seems Steve and Terri Irwin are trying to stop them.
posted on Jan 7, 2008 - View this thread

The Ephemera Society was glancingly mentioned prior, but deserves a better mention. It includes:
—An exhibit, an article, and links to Michael Ragsdale's 9/11 ephemera.
—A history of Coca-cola print ephemera.
—An article by Will Shortz on the ephemeral history of the crossword.
—Articles from the Louisiana Library Association's journal issue on ephemera, including Principles for Organizing an Ephemera Collection and an Overview of Political Ephemera.
posted on Jan 5, 2008 - View this thread

The Checklist - "If a new drug were as effective at saving lives as Peter Pronovost’s checklist, there would be a nationwide marketing campaign urging doctors to use it" [single page]
posted on Jan 2, 2008 - View this thread

Coloring is fun! Engage kids and get your message across with soothing, simple style!

Print these .pdfs for the little ones in your life to color. Together, learn a little grown-up wisdom about Being a Witness in Federal Court, Disaster Preparedness, Food Safety with Thermy™, Why Elephants Cry, Biomedical Research with the Lucky Puppy, or how the United Nations is a very bad organization made up of foreign countries who do not want you to be free, with Brasco!
posted on Dec 3, 2007 - View this thread

A mouse has been genetically engineered to no longer fear cats. Surely this is now only a matter of time.
posted on Nov 8, 2007 - View this thread

Yummy Science. Researchers unravel the complex combination of physical and emotional reactions that influence our perceptions of what tastes good. Once upon a time, flavor research was a matter of asking housewives to munch a few potato chips... Now it's about providing an exceptional flavor "experience." And as scientists learn to exploit the ways we perceive flavor, food manufacturers will be able to refine their products to appeal to us as individuals. Welcome to the world of personally tailored mass-produced food.
posted on Nov 5, 2007 - View this thread

The World's Largest Database of Frequently Asked Questions.
posted on Oct 25, 2007 - View this thread

Sex like a handshake (even baby sex?) Titilation and humor from Vanessa Woods, researcher at the Lola Bonobo sanctuary. (Previously)
posted on Oct 4, 2007 - View this thread

In the U.S., motorists do not pay their way. The US government spends more on highways and other auto-related expenses than it receives from auto-related taxes, unlike almost every country in Europe. In a recent report [pdf], Mark Delucchi calculates automobile-related costs and revenues in three different ways and concludes the subsidy is around 20-70 cents per gallon or $24-105 billion in 2002. But what are automobile-related costs, you ask?
posted on Oct 2, 2007 - View this thread

Laud Humphreys was studying to be an Episcopal priest in the mid-1950s when he learned, shortly after his father's death, that his father, Oklahoma State Representative Ira D. Humphreys, took trips to New Orleans to have sex with other men. After being dismissed as an Episcopal priest in the 1960s, Laud Humphreys then enrolled as a sociology grad student where he completed a dissertation about men who had sex with other men in public bathrooms in St. Louis, which Humphreys researched by agreeing to serve as a "watch queen", looking out for the police. After writing down the license plate numbers of the men having sex, Humphreys traced the men's addresses and contacted them in disguise, claiming to be collecting data for a public health survey. The research, which was condemned as unethical for its use of covert methods, was published in 1970 as Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places.
posted on Sep 8, 2007 - View this thread

The Placebo Effect In Action. "When patients believe a drug will help them, they sometimes heal themselves" (a report on a new study from Columbia University and the University of Michigan). And, an additional take on the Placebo Effect from the Skeptic's Dictionary.
posted on Aug 2, 2007 - View this thread

Zotero is one of several free, open source research tools developed by the previously mentioned Center for History and New Media. It runs within Firefox and allows you to easily capture bibliographic information from a variety of online databases and catalogs, insert in-text citations and generate properly formatted bibliographies... if you're into that. (Also check out CHNM's fantastic projects page.)
posted on Jul 26, 2007 - View this thread

Researchers have demonstrated what veteran dumpster divers have known for years: contact with a disgusting thing, even without the possibility of contamination, makes us perceive something as disgusting.
posted on Jul 18, 2007 - View this thread

"Grigioni, now back in Switzerland, said she could normally get tortoises to ejaculate within minutes, but spent months manually stimulating George and never extracted semen from him."
posted on Jul 1, 2007 - View this thread

You are most welcome. sigh. Bill Gates must feel like several billion dollars.
posted on May 29, 2007 - View this thread

In their own words... Researchers at the National Institutes of Health recall the early years of AIDS, from diagnosis of the then-unknown disease, to discovering the viral cause, and from there to the search for treatments. The site features interviews (including several with virologist Robert Gallo), early publications, and a collection of archived image materials.
posted on Apr 10, 2007 - View this thread

New study reveals prejudices amongst disabled. A research paper by Mark Deal, a PhD student and researcher at UK disability charity Enham reveals the news that disabled people have the same prejudices about disability as non-disabled people: the research points to a hierarchy of impairment, ranking Deaf as the most ‘desirable’ impairment followed by Arthritis, Epilepsy, Cerebral Palsy, HIV/ Aids, Down’s syndrome and Schizophrenia amongst disabled people. These prejudices are almost identical to those held by the non-disabled sample, with the only difference being that Cerebral Palsy and HIV/Aids were placed in reverse order.
posted on Mar 22, 2007 - View this thread

Teenager Thiogo Olson achieved nuclear fusion with an apparatus built in his basement from parts found at his local hardware store and on eBay. Another teenager put together her very own Littrow Spectrograph for $300. Young people have been doing some fascinating science ever since the first kid combined vinegar and baking soda in their model volcano. Not only are they making some remarkable discoveries, they're finding it pretty lucrative.
posted on Mar 17, 2007 - View this thread

IBM Research and Technical Journals. Complete recent issues of IBM Research and Development Journal and Systems Journal as well as searchable archives.
posted on Mar 6, 2007 - View this thread

If you've ever thought that music can be an extremely intuitive and effective way to communicate things, then Stanford Professor Jonathan Berger (samples of his music) is doing some research that might interest you. (via)
posted on Feb 6, 2007 - View this thread

Google Research Picks for Videos of the Year
Some examples: Ron Avitzur tells The Graphing Calculator Story [mefi thread], Dr. James Watson on DNA and the Brain, Steve Wozniak talks about founding Apple and Silicon Valley's boom period, Doug Lenat (of Cyc) on Computers versus Common Sense and a talk on The Archimedes Palimpsest [a little info]
posted on Jan 4, 2007 - View this thread

The Edison of our age? Stanford Ovshinsky may not be a household name, but his inventions have the power to change the world.
posted on Jan 1, 2007 - View this thread

Blu-ray discs, video games, and a cure for cancer... Too bad PS3 owners are a bunch of "know-not" idiots... More here and here.
posted on Nov 24, 2006 - View this thread

Recombinant Activated Factor VII --the Food and Drug Administration said that giving it to patients with normal blood could cause strokes and heart attacks... the Army's faith in the $6,000-a-dose drug is based almost entirely on anecdotal evidence and persists despite public warnings and published research suggesting that Factor VII is not as effective or as safe as military officials say. ...
posted on Nov 21, 2006 - View this thread

100+ authoritative research sources that are available online. Various topics, real info. Think of it as a kind of do-it-yourself AskMe, or you know, a research library.(via Making Light)
posted on Nov 3, 2006 - View this thread

Michael J. Fox makes an impassioned plea(YouTube) to Missouri voters asking them to vote for Claire McCaskill for the us Senate.
posted on Oct 20, 2006 - View this thread

Tasty Research: A digest of interesting academic research Read about interesting topics of research (mostly sociology). Science is fun! [via mefi projects]
posted on Sep 21, 2006 - View this thread

Coverage with Evidence Development. Never heard of it? Me neither, until today. It's what they call this idea: if you want to be covered by Medicare, you're forced to participate in medical research. The AMA approves (article abstract only). So much for informed consent.
posted on Sep 4, 2006 - View this thread

The Internet and our social and psychological well-being : This older study correlates Internet use with declining social relationships and isolation. A more recent study (PDF) shows that the Internet has changed and positively affects social relationships.
posted on Aug 31, 2006 - View this thread

Ketamine has been found to "significantly" improve symptoms of depression by influencing glutamate levels in the brain. A Forbes article notes that 70% of patients say improvement, and up to 29% were "nearly symptom free within one day". However, research into the effects of ketamine on depression is not exactly new.
posted on Aug 9, 2006 - View this thread

A new study by evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa suggests there are more beautiful women than handsome men, finding that attractive people are significantly more likely to have a daughter than a son. Previous Kanazawa research found big and tall parents, scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and violent men tend to have sons; while nurses, social workers and kindergarten teachers tend to have daughters. [Via]
posted on Aug 4, 2006 - View this thread

You can drift, you can dream, even walk write on water
Researchers at Akishima Laboratories have developed a device that uses waves to draw text and pictures on the surface of water. Here is a PDF file about the project (I think it is in Japanese, but it has pretty pictures!)
posted on Jul 28, 2006 - View this thread

The Human Speechome Project - "A baby is to be monitored by a network of microphones and video cameras for 14 hours a day, 365 days a year, in an effort to unravel the seemingly miraculous process by which children acquire language.". Selected video clips. Paper (PDF, 750KB). To test hypotheses of how children learn, Prof Deb Roy's team at MIT will develop machine learning systems that “step into the shoes” of his son by processing the sights and sounds of three years of life at home. Total storage required: 1.4 petabytes.
posted on Jul 23, 2006 - View this thread

"In 2006, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) distributed a 38-question survey to 5,918 FDA scientists to examine the state of science at the FDA. The results paint a picture of a troubled agency: hundreds of scientists reported significant interference with the FDA’s scientific work, compromising the agency’s ability to fulfill its mission of protecting public health and safety."
posted on Jul 20, 2006 - View this thread

A landmark rigorous study, 36 years after Walter Pahnke's Good Friday study ocuments the ability of psilocybin - the chemical in "magic mushrooms" - to trigger mystical experiences. 16 of 24 participants, who had no history of psychedelic use, rated the drug episode (after 2 months) to be among the 5 most meaningful experiences in their lifetime. A longer 40-year follow-up by MAPS on those who took LSD under the supervision of psychiatrist Oscar Janiger in the 1950s, found qualitatively the same result.
posted on Jul 10, 2006 - View this thread

Nature has a somewhat technical but free supplement on stem cells (alongwith a podcast and related blog).
posted on Jul 2, 2006 - View this thread

While the nonpartisan Pew Research Center normally focuses on US domestic issues, such as the recently and narrowly failed flag-burning amendment, the Pew Global Attitudes Project takes a wider view with reports such as The Great Divide: How Westerners and Muslims View Each Other and 16-Nation Pew Global Attitudes Survey, with results that are parts obvious, non-obvious, foreboding, hopeful and contradictory in how the two societies seemingly feel about themselves and each other. [mi]
posted on Jun 28, 2006 - View this thread

Hungover this morning? Here's why.
posted on May 30, 2006 - View this thread

Schaffer Library of Drug Policy - read the transcripts of hearings held on the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act, or the text of court decisions regarding drug policy, or the well-researched Consumer Unions report on licit and illicit drugs, or the differences between beer and drugs, according to Anheuser-Busch. A huge archive of materials, admittedly compiled from a pro-reform perspective.
posted on May 20, 2006 - View this thread