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Discovered: Molecule That Triggers Itchiness

Lindsey Kratochwill — Thu, 23 May 2013 18:00:59 GMT

Scratching Wing-Chi Poon

At long last, researchers have identified what happens in the nervous system as an itch begins.

What really causes itching, and how it works, is surprisingly little understood. But researchers at the National Institutes of Health will publish a paper tomorrow in Science that details the discovery of a small molecule released in the spinal cord that triggers the sensation of itching in mice. The culprit molecule is called natriuretic polypeptide b, or Nppb.

Itching was long regarded as simply a less intense form of pain. In 1987, H.O. Handwerker, a German scientist, used histamine to induce itchiness in participants. Those participants itched until they couldn't take it, but did not feel an increase in pain, suggesting itching and pain were transmitted along different pathways. Then in 1997 a group of researchers from the University of Eerlangen-Nürnberg and the University of Uppsala discovered a nerve fiber that mediates itch sensations in particular.

In 2011, Washington University's Center for the Study of Itch was opened, touted as the first of its kind in the world to study itch specifically. The Center for the Study of Itch names 2007 as the year where neuroscientists began making more rapid progress in studying itching specifically, finding advances in the field that pain researchers had previously overlooked or ignored. The GRPR peptide receptor, the first itch-specific receptor to be identified, was announced in the June 2007 issue of Nature by researchers at Washington University.

In January 2008, Dr. Gil Yosipovitch, a dermatologist and researcher at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center talked to Newsweek about how much progress has been made in understanding itching and scratching.

"What we do know is that the itch doesn't stand alone. Rather the itch involves not only the skin, but also the spinal cord and the brain. We used to think that the itch shared the same neurological pathway as pain," Yosipovitch told Newsweek. "But now we know that the itch has its own neural road, if you will. There are actually some nerves in the spinal cord that are itch-specific."

The NIH study published in this week's Science further shows the distinctiveness of itch, showing that it's a "sensation that is uniquely hardwired into the nervous system with the biochemical equivalent of its own dedicated land line to the brain," according to Mark Hoon, scientist at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research and senior author of the paper, in a statement. The molecule Nppb was found to be necessary to respond to itchy substances--an itch start switch of sorts-- something that previous research suggested was unlikely.

"The larger scientific point remains," Hoon said in a statement. "We have defined in the mouse the primary itch-initiating neurons and figured out the first three steps in the pruritic pathway. Now the challenge is to find similar biocircuitry in people, evaluate what's there, and identify unique molecules that can be targeted to turn off chronic itch without causing unwanted side effects. So, this is a start, not a finish."

8 Ridiculous Nutrition Myths Debunked

Kris Gunnars/ Authority Nutrition — Thu, 23 May 2013 17:30:00 GMT

Eggsellent Pier/Getty Images

From calorie counting to high-protein diets

There is a lot of incompetence in the area of nutrition and health. Even health professionals seem to constantly contradict each other. Here are 8 ridiculous nutrition myths, thoroughly debunked.

1. A Calorie is a Calorie

It is a common myth that all that matters for weight loss is calories in, calories out.

Of course, calories matter. But the types of foods we eat are also important.

Here are 3 examples of how "a calorie is NOT a calorie."

-Fructose vs. Glucose: Fructose is more likely to stimulate hunger, increase abdominal obesity and insulin resistance, compared to the same amount of calories from glucose (1, 2, 3).
-Protein: Eating protein can raise the metabolic rate and reduce hunger compared to fat and carbs (4).
-Medium vs. long-chain fatty acids: Fatty acids that are of medium length (such as from coconut oil) raise metabolism and reduce hunger compared to longer chain fatty acids (5, 6, 7).

Bottom Line: A calorie is not a calorie. Different foods affect our bodies, hunger and hormones in different ways.

2. Eating a Lot of Protein is Bad For You

Some people think that a high-protein diet will harm your kidneys and cause osteoporosis.

It is true that eating protein can make you excrete more calcium in the short term (8).

However, long-term studies show that protein intake is associated with improved bone health and a lower risk of fractures, not the other way around (9, 10, 11).

Studies don't find any association with kidney disease either (12, 13).

The two most important risk factors for kidney failure are diabetes and high blood pressure. Eating adequate protein helps with both, which should reduce your risk of kidney disease later in life (14, 15, 16, 17).

Unless you have a medical condition, there's no reason to be afraid of having more protein in your diet. It's a good thing.

Bottom Line: Eating a high protein diet may be protective against bone fractures and reduce the two most important risk factors for kidney failure.

3. The Healthiest Diet is a Balanced Low-Fat Diet

The low-fat guidelines first came out in the year 1977, at almost the exact same time the obesity epidemic started.

This diet was never actually proven to work. It was merely based on observations.

The National Institute of Health decided to test this diet and funded the Women's Health Initiative, which is the largest randomized controlled trial ever conducted on diet.

In this study, tens of thousands of women were placed on either a low-fat diet, or continued to eat the standard western diet like before.

The study went on for 7.5 years and the conclusions were very clear:

-The diet did NOT prevent weight gain. The low-fat group weighed only 0.4kg less than the control group after 7.5 years (18).
-The diet did NOT prevent heart disease either. There was no difference between groups after 7.5 years (19).
-The low-fat diet got tested. It didn't work, period.

Bottom Line: There is no evidence that low-fat diets lead to better outcomes. The largest randomized controlled trial ever conucted on diet proves that the low-fat diet is completely ineffective.

4. Everyone Should be Cutting Back on Sodium

Sodium is a crucial electrolyte in the body and our cells need to keep it within a very tight range, or we'll die.

For a long time, sodium has been thought to elevate blood pressure and therefore raise your risk of disease.

It is true that it can mildly elevate blood pressure in the short term (20, 21).

However, studies do not support the idea that lowering sodium helps improve actual hard outcomes like heart attacks.

Randomized controlled trials on sodium restriction show that there is no effect on cardiovascular disease or death. They also show that sodium restriction may increase triglycerides and cholesterol levels (22, 23).

Unless you have elevated blood pressure, there is no reason to avoid adding salt to your foods to make them more palatable.

Bottom Line: Sodium restriction has been thoroughly tested. None of these studies have found any evidence that it actually leads to better outcomes.

5. Saturated Fat Raises The Bad Cholesterol and Gives You Heart Disease

The myth that saturated fat raises cholesterol and causes heart disease is still alive today.

This ideas was based on some flawed observational studies conducted in the 60s and 70s.

Since then, many studies have re-examined this relationship and discovered that:

-There is literally no association between saturated fat consumption and cardiovascular disease (24, 25, 26).
-Saturated fat raises HDL (the good) cholesterol and changes the LDL from small, dense (bad) to Large LDL, which is benign (27, 28, 29).
-There is no reason to avoid natural foods that are rich in saturated fats. Meat, coconut oil and butter are perfectly healthy foods.

Bottom Line: Despite decades of anti-fat propaganda, saturated fat has never been proven to cause heart disease. New studies prove that there is literally no association.

6. Coffee is Bad For You

Coffee has gotten a bad reputation in the past.

It is true that caffeine, the active stimulant compound in coffee, can slightly raise blood pressure in the short term (30).

Despite these mild adverse effects, long term observational studies actually show that coffee lowers the risk of many diseases. Coffee can:

-Improve brain function (31).
-Help you burn more fat (32, 33, 34).
-Lower your risk of diabetes… in some studies as much as 67% (35, 36).
-Lower your risk of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's (37, 38).
-Protect your liver against cirrhosis and cancer (39, 40).

Coffee is also loaded with antioxidants. It is actually the biggest source of antioxidants in the western diet and outranks both fruits and vegetables, combined (41, 42, 43).

Bottom Line: Despite coffee being able to mildly elevate blood pressure, observational studies show a strong and consistent reduction in many serious diseases like Alzheimer's and type II diabetes.

7. Eggs Are Rich in Cholesterol And Can Give You Heart Disease

Eggs have been unfairly demonized because they contain large amounts of cholesterol.

However, dietary cholesterol doesn't necessarily raise blood cholesterol and eggs have never been proven to cause harm.

If anything, eggs are among the most nutritious and healthiest foods you can eat.

They're loaded with vitamins, minerals and antioxidants.

Studies show that egg consumption actually improves the blood lipid profile. They raise the HDL (good) cholesterol and change the LDL from small, dense to Large, which is benign (44, 45).

Observational studies show no association between egg consumption and risk of heart disease (46, 47, 48).

Additionally, some studies show that eggs for breakfast can help you lose weight… at least compared to a breakfast of bagels (49, 50).

Bottom Line: Eggs are one of the healthiest and most nutritious foods you can eat and there is no association between egg consumption and risk of cardiovascular disease.

8. Low-Carb Diets Are Ineffective or Dangerous

Low-carb diets have been considered dangerous because of their high amount of saturated fat.

For this reason, they have been thought to raise your risk of heart disease and other chronic illness.

However, since the year 2002, more than 20 randomized controlled trials have been conducted and compared low-carb against the standard of care, the low-fat diet.

In almost every one of these studies, low-carb diets:

-Cause significantly more weight loss than low-fat diets (51, 52).
-Drastically lower triglycerides, an important risk factors for heart disease (53, 54).
-Raise HDL (the good) cholesterol (55, 56).
-Improve blood sugar and insulin levels, especially in diabetics (57, 58).
-Change the LDL cholesterol from small, dense (bad) to Large (benign) - which should lower the risk of heart disease (59).
-Lower blood pressure significantly (60, 61).

Low-carb diets are also easier to follow and have an outstanding safety profile. There is no evidence of any adverse effects, despite the scare tactics (62, 63, 64).

They are certainly a much better choice than a low-fat, calorie restricted diet… which many mainstream organizations still push despite zero evidence of effectiveness.

9. Anything else…?

If there are any other myths you want to add to the list, make sure to leave a comment below.

This article was republished with permission from Authority Nutrition.

Big Pic: Eruption Of Alaska's Pavlof Volcano, As Seen From The International Space Station

Clay Dillow — Thu, 23 May 2013 17:00:00 GMT

Pavlof Volcano Eruption, May 18, 2013 NASA

The crew aboard the International Space Station managed to snap these three striking images of Alaska's Pavlof Volcano a few days ago, which capture (via their oblique angles) just how far these plumes can stretch and how huge they can be (we usually see these images from directly above, so it's hard to tell just how big they really are).

Pavlof is in the Aleutian Island arc, some 625 miles southwest of Anchorage. It began erupting last week, spewing an ash plume 20,000 feet into the air. For orientation purposes: The plume is extending southeastward, back toward the mainland United States.

[NASA Earth Observatory]

Obama Set To Reboot Drone Strike Policy And Retool The War On Terror

Clay Dillow — Thu, 23 May 2013 16:30:02 GMT

An MQ-9 Reaper, precision bombs and air-to-ground missiles at the ready USAF

In a major counterterrorism address today, President Obama is expected to announce a significant shift in the drone policy that has been the cornerstone of his war on terror.

At 2 p.m. ET today, President Obama will address a crowd at National Defense University in D.C. to spell out some of the biggest vagaries of his administration--policies that are central to America's security and foreign policy that, nonetheless, have been shrouded in official secrecy, opaque statements of accountability, and open-ended legal jargon that leaves a lot of room for interpretation.

In today's speech, Obama is expected to discuss the closing of the prison at Guantanamo Bay (which, despite 2008 campaign promises, remains open) and the future of America's war on terror now that Osama bin Laden has been, how shall we say, rendered irrelevant. But policy wonks and national security nerds are mostly interested in Obama's spelling out of the legal rationale that will govern lethal drone strikes going forward.

These three topics are deeply intertwined, of course. With the drawdown of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and a reduced American presence in the regions regarded as power bases for the likes of al-Qaeda, al-Shabab, and the Taliban, American security and intelligence forces have only two real options. Strike at suspected terrorists with drones, or somehow capture those suspects and detain them (at some place like Guantanamo).

It would seem that if the war on terror is going to continue (and it is--for another 10 or 20 years according to one recently-quoted Pentagon official) then it seems that either detention or the use of lethal strikes must increase. But that's not really the case, and in today's speech Obama is expected to outline why the administration thinks so.

In his first major counterterrorism address of his second term, the President is expected to announce new restrictions on the unmanned aerial strikes that have been the cornerstone of his national security agenda for the last five years. For all the talk about drone strikes--and they did peak under Obama--such actions have been declining since 2010. And it seems the administration finally wants to come clean (somewhat) about what it has been doing with its drone program, acknowledging for the first time that it has killed four American citizens in its shadow drone wars outside the conflict zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, something the public has known for a while now but the government has refused to publicly admit.

The Obama administration will also voluntarily rein in its drone strike program in several ways. A new classified policy signed by Obama will more sharply define how drones can be used, the New York Times reports, essentially extending to foreign nationals the same standards currently applied to American citizens abroad. That is, lethal force will only be used against targets posing a "continuing, imminent threat to Americans" and who cannot be feasibly captured or thwarted in any other way. This indicates that the administration's controversial use of "signature strikes"--the killing of unknown individuals or groups based on patterns of behavior rather than hard intelligence--will no longer be part of the game plan. That's a positive signal, considering that signature strikes are thought to have resulted in more than a few civilian casualties.

Reportedly there's another important change in drone policy in the offing that President Obama may or may not mention in today's speech: the shifting of the drone wars in Pakistan and elsewhere (likely Yemen and Somalia as well) from the CIA to the military over the course of six months. This is good for all parties involved. The CIA's new director, John Brennan, has publicly said he would like to transition the country's premier intelligence gathering agency back to actual intelligence gathering and away from paramilitary operations--a role that it has played since 2001 but that isn't exactly in its charter.

Putting the drone strike program in the Pentagon also places it in a different category of public scrutiny. The DoD can still do things under the veil of secrecy of course, but not quite like the CIA can (the military is subject to more oversight and transparency than the clandestine services in several respects, and putting drones in the hands of the military also changes the governing rules of engagement).

So what does this all mean for the war on terror? If Obama plans to create a roadmap for closing Guantanamo Bay and draw down its drone strike program, it suggests that the administration thinks we are winning--as much as one can win this kind of asymmetric war. It appears the war on terror is shifting toward one in which better intelligence will lead to more arrests and espionage operations to thwart terrorists rather hellfire missile strikes from unseen robots in the sky.

The drones aren't going anywhere--they'll be a key technology piece deployed in those intelligence gathering operations. But much to the relief of drone-strike opponents, it appears America's policy of using lethal drone strikes to regularly eliminate her enemies--and whoever happens to be standing in proximity--will be put on a much tighter leash. Counterterrorism will go back to being more of a law enforcement exercise than a military "seek and destroy" mission. Lethal drone strikes will still occur, but their more judicious application is a welcome shift in policy for many Americans--and certainly for people in the parts of the world where they have been most prevalent.

Scientists Find One Gene Responsible For All White Tigers

Francie Diep — Thu, 23 May 2013 16:00:00 GMT

White tigers in Chimelong Safari Park in China Chimelong Safari Park

And it's our fault that they're super inbred.

Science may not be totally sure how the tiger got its stripes, but at least they've got this figured out. One team of biologists says it has uncovered the genetic mutation responsible for white tigers.

White tigers have black or brown stripes, white fur, blue eyes, pink noses and pink paw pads. They're not albino, as they have black-brown pigment in their eyes and in their fur. Scientists knew before that their coloring was recessive-"little a" instead of "big A," for anyone who remembers high school genetics-but little else about how it was inherited.

The new research pinpoints a change in just one place in one gene as the cause of tigers' white stripes.

To find the gene, the biologists examined a family of tigers living in the Chimelong Safari Park in southern China. The family included an orange female tiger, two white males with whom she mated, and the 13 cubs she bore (Presumably not all at once). Eight of the cubs were orange and five of them were white. The researchers sequenced the genome of the each tiger and looked for genetic variations that appeared in all of, and only in, the white tigers.

After continually narrowing their search, they eventually found one gene that seemed to make the difference. Called SLC45A2, the gene appears in several species, including humans. In people, variations in the gene are associated with light skin color in modern Europeans and with one type of albinism people get. In mice, horses, chickens and medaka fish, variations in SLC45A2 are associated with lighter skin or fur. In certain horses and chickens, mutations in SLC45A2 make the animals unable to make yellow-orange pigment, but still able to make black-brown pigment, just like white tigers.

Although they know that SLC45A2 is associated with all of these variously colored animals, scientists don't know enough yet to say exactly what the gene does that affects pigmentation.

The Chinese biologists were able to come up with some other interesting conclusions. Not much is known about white tigers in the wild because the last known free-ranging white tiger was shot in 1958. The geneticists think white tigers would have done fine in the wild, however, because their coloring is associated with just one gene, mutations in which don't usually cause other symptoms or problems in humans and chickens. Currently, many white tigers bred in captivity are born with deformities, including crossed eyes, or die prematurely. However, that's probably because they're inbred by people eager to make more white tigers, not because of their pigmentation, the researchers wrote.

They published a paper about their work today in the journal Current Biology.

Cloned Human Embryo Study Comes Under Fire

Shaunacy Ferro — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:33:48 GMT

Single human SCNT blastocyst OHSU Photos

An anonymous commenter has pointed out four different problems in last week's breakthrough paper.

A week ago, scientists from Oregon Health and Science University and the Oregon National Primate Research Center announced that they had successfully used human skin cells to clone embryonic stem cells. In the few days since the researchers' work came online, though, the research has been found to contain a few key errors.

An anonymous online commenter on PubPeer, a post-publication peer review discussion site, highlighted four potential issues regarding image reuse in the paper, published online in the journal Cell on May 15. (Unlike in most corners of the Internet, commenting anonymously isn't a mark of trolling on PubPeer, which aims to maintain "the rigor and anonymity of the closed review process currently used by the major journals.")

Lead author Shoukhrat Mitalipov, an senior scientist at the Oregon National Primate Research Center, told Nature that after reviewing the data with one of the other authors, he realized three honest mistakes had made it through the uber-quick publication process.

The paper was accepted by Cell three days after submission and published only 12 days after that. By contrast, Mitalipov's previous work on monkey embryonic stem cells went through a six month publication process with independent data verification. Mitalipov maintains that the current research is still valid. "The results are real, the cell lines are real, everything is real," he told Nature.

Two sets of image reuse pops up in the paper, with the same images labelled as cloned stem cells referred to as cells created by in vitro fertilization elsewhere. Mitalipov says the images were in fact intentionally duplicated, but their labels were accidentally reversed. He also said that the wrong data was used in one of the scatterplots. In regards to the last critique of the paper--that scatterplots in the supplementary data show an exceedingly high degree of overlap in gene activity patterns of cloned stem cells cultured in different plates--Mitalipov is standing by his data.

Thrilling announcements of human cloning have a history of going awry in the aftermath of publication. In 2004 and 2005, Seoul National University's Woo Suk Hwang's lauded successes in human cloning were retracted after it was discovered his two papers were based on fabricated data.

Cell tweeted yesterday that they are reviewing the allegations, and Mitalipov says he plans to issue an erratum to the paper.

[Nature]

The World's Largest Lego Model Is A Life-Size X-Wing [Video]

Corinne Iozzio — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:00:00 GMT

Lego's life-size X-wing fighter Dan Bracaglia

How'd they do it?

Click here to enter the gallery

This morning, Lego opened up a gigantic box in Times Square. Inside: a full-scale replica of an X-wing fighter made entirely of Lego bricks. It's the single-largest Lego sculpture in history, claiming more than 5.3 million bricks and weighing nearly 46,000 pounds. Last week, far away from the mayhem of midtown Manhattan, we had the chance to preview the sculpture, learn about the engineering that goes into a project of its scale, and (most importantly) sit in the cockpit and high-five Lego Luke Skywalker.

We met with Erik Varszegi, a Lego Master Builder based at the company's U.S. headquarters in Connecticut, in a hanger at Ronkonkoma airport on Long Island. Varszegi is one of 32 builders who spent a combined 17,336 hours constructing the model (that's about four months, if you do the math). Here's how they do it:

Every Lego model starts as a computer model. Designers use a proprietary software called Lego Brick Builder. The software first draws a grid over any 3-D object (a tank, a plane, the Death Star), and then it reinterprets that grid as Lego bricks. Corners are corners, while contours and curves become slowly sloping staircases of bricks.

The X-wing fighter, which stands 11 feet tall with a wingspan of 43 feet, is a precise 42-times scale model of the same kit you can buy at Toys ‘R' Us. That means for every one-by-one Lego peg on the kit, there's a 42-by-42 square on the sculpture. (And yes, there is a raised "LEGO" logo on each of those gigantic pegs.)

This model has an added complication: after its time in NYC, the X-wing will travel cross-country to Legoland in California, a state with a set of stringent seismic standards. The computer models help designers plan an intricate steel infrastructure that will ensure the X-wing won't shatter in a quake. It's also strong enough for you to sit in the cockpit or perch atop one of the engines.

After the steel substructure is complete, builders go about constructing the model one layer at a time. A temp-to-perm solvent binds the bricks together-after they've been clicked together. Builders put a dollop of glue inside each of the holes on the underside of a brick; the glue cures overnight, reacting with the plastic to fuse the two together permanently. Mistakes do happen, Varszegi admits, so if they catch a mistake the next morning, they can pry apart bricks with a little elbow grease and perhaps a flathead screwdriver.

The team also added some (literal) bells and whistles to the final sculpture. The engines have lights and speakers, and so they light up and cycle through a pre-programmed series of launch and battle sounds. Not to be outdone, R2D2 also chimes in.

For projects of this scale, Lego maintains a facility in Kladno, Czech Republic. Once it's completed, the fighter breaks down into 14 separate pieces that are packed in custom shipping containers and delivered by boat. For the move to Times Square, it was separated into four segments and was loaded onto trucks.

The X-wing unseats the Herobot 9000 robot at the Mall of America as the largest Lego sculpture in the world. Though ‘bot stands about 34 feet tall, it has slightly less than 3 million bricks and is grossly outweighed by the X-wing's tonnage. "It's almost too big," said Varszegi "from far enough away, you can't really tell it's Lego." Sorry Erik, to us that's the best part.

Why Do Cicadas Invade In Such Crazy Numbers?

Dan Nosowitz — Thu, 23 May 2013 14:30:00 GMT

The explanation for the infestation.

Magicicada is a plague unlike any other, here in the northeast. And it is a plague with a reason: emerging in absurd, over-the-top, biblical numbers is the cicada's bizarre--but effective--means of survival.

The Magicicada, the genus of cicada that's about to blanket the northeast United States, is a very odd creature. It is, in the animal kingdom, a very tasty treat, which is unfortunate for the cicada, but not so odd. What's odd is that it has literally no protection against getting eaten: it has a mouth but it does not bite, nor does it sting nor pierce nor scratch. It is colored a shiny black, with luminous yellow/orange wings and absurdly bright crimson eyes, which do not give it any camouflage whatsoever.

Once molted into its adult form, it does not eat or move very much. It does, however, draw attention to itself by making a godawful racket, all the time. "They're not great fliers," says Cole Gilbert, a professor of entomology at Cornell University. "They don't fly much more than a couple hundred meters." The cicada sits there on a tree and makes noise to attract a mate, while looking shiny and obvious and defenseless and delicious.

It is an idiot bug.

Literally every insectivorous animal in the northeast--songbirds, carnivorous birds (hawks, owls), opossums, foxes, cats, shrews, snakes, spiders, and even dogs--will gorge on cicadas. Billions of them will be eaten during the one summer when this brood--Brood II--emerges from the ground. Billions.

This is a strategy called predator satiation. It's contrary to the survival strategies of almost every other animal: it intends for a huge percentage of its population to be eaten. It doesn't care. The idea is to overwhelm predators with numbers, since the predators can only eat so many. The only other species that practices predator satiation in the US is the salmon.

Gilbert estimates that anywhere from 15 to 40 percent of this brood will be eaten, but the density of Brood II is massive. There could be up to 1.5 million cicadas per acre, so even a loss of 40 percent leaves, well, probably still a couple billion cicadas from this brood alone. That said, 1.5 million per acre is very high; many areas won't have one percent that many. Gilbert estimates that the brood will need between 3,000 and 4,000 cicadas per acre "to swamp the predators." So each acre will need significantly more cicadas than that to survive to breed in that area again.

The Magicicada attack is an unusual event in the northeastern ecosystem; there are very few events in the lives of flora or fauna that occur so rarely and yet so regularly. So the ecosystem doesn't depend on the cicadas, the same way some animals may rely on certain seasonal fruits or the migrations of pollinating animals. Instead, the cicadas serve as a kind of bonus or treat. Red-wing blackbirds and eastern bluebirds have been found to have much stronger and healthier broods in years that coincide with Magicicada's emergence, as do mammals like foxes and raccoons. But one of the more surprising beneficiaries are the trees.

When cicadas lay eggs, they use their proboscis to cut little slits in thin branches and lay eggs in there. When the larvae hatch, they simply plop down onto the ground, bury themselves, and attach to the root system of the tree, where they'll remain for another 17 years, unseen. We're not really sure how they count to 17; there is a gene that differentiates the 17-year cicadas from the 13-year cicadas, but, says Gilbert, "we don't really have any way to see what the hell they're doing down there for 17 years." Occasionally, if too many cicadas make these slits in branches, the branch can break and droop. Entomologists call this "flagging," because, cut off from the rest of the tree, the leaves on the broken branch will turn brown, making them rather obvious amidst the otherwise green leaves. And the last year of the cicadas' lives underground is a bit harder on the tree, since the cicada larvae are eating more and more tree juices from the roots to get ready for their brief adulthood. But this is very minimal damage, and the cicadas repay the trees.

Cicadas molt when they emerge from the ground, leaving behind a chitin exoskeleton clinging to trees. That exoskeleton is very rich in nitrogen, and when it eventually falls to the ground, it decomposes and provides much-appreciated food for the (very slightly) weakened tree. The bodies of the adult cicadas, too, if they're not eaten, decompose in huge numbers, making the soil from the year after a Magicicada emergence incredibly rich and fertile.

FYI: How Does Chewing Gum Freshen Breath?

Brianna Keefe — Thu, 23 May 2013 14:00:00 GMT

Minty fresh Dreamstime

And which gum gives you the sweetest-smelling breath?

You're driving home from a first date, and it went great: You didn't sweat too much, your jokes worked 50 percent of the time, and she didn't get an "emergency phone call" in the middle of dinner. Only one thing stands in the way of your impending make-out session: the garlic bread you just ate. What's your move? Gum. But can you be sure it will work? Science says yes, as long as the garlic is the worst of your problems.

Bad breath originates from three different sources: the nose, the stomach and the mouth. While more serious problems like acid reflux and sinus infections may underlie the smell, the most common source of halitosis is the mouth. "Everyone has bacteria in their mouth," says Dr. Christine Wu, Professor and Director of Caries Research at the University of Illinois at Chicago's College of Dentistry. "There are billions of bacteria in one little chunk of plaque."

There are billions of bacteria in one little chunk of plaque.
Normally, the good bacteria balance the bad to form a healthy, odor-free ecosystem in your mouth. Your baby breath turns rancid when anaerobes overrun the system. These bacteria, which flourish in the absence of oxygen, usually live at the back of the tongue, where they are partially protected from oxygen and spit by a film of food, dead cells and mucus. Another source of stench is plaque, which your dentist has probably been lecturing you about since grade school. Eating too many sweets and failing to brush can cause plaque buildup on your teeth, which may spread into the pockets of your gums. Here the bacteria in plaque can cause not only gum disease, but terrible breath.

If you don't brush your teeth and the bumpy area on the back of your tongue every day, these bacteria will thrive and give you bad breath. Alternatively, if you are sick and your immune system can't maintain the balance of good and bad, anaerobes will reproduce very quickly, spreading through your whole mouth. This is the white coating you sometimes see on your tongue when you're sick: smelly bacteria.

What makes bacteria particularly offensive (and not so different from humans in this way) is their excrement. Dentists call this waste "volatile sulfur compounds," or VSC, and it has a foul odor, explains Dr. Cassiano Kuchenbecker Rösing, associate Professor of the Department of Conservative Dentistry at the University of Rio Grande do Sol in Brazil. The smell is comparable to rotten eggs, and is the difference between bad breath and get-away-from-me breath.

Extra spit works like a power washer, rinsing bacteria away.The good news is that there is a second line of defense against these harbingers of evil: enjoying a stick of gum. Gums with strong scents can cover unwanted odor, but they can also actively fight the odor-causing bacteria with a twofold attack. "The stimulation of saliva, which happens with chewing gum, is responsible for diminishing the bad breath," says Rösing, whose research finds that gum can temporarily reduce VSC production by more than 70 percent. The extra spit works like a power washer, rinsing bacteria and VSC away.

Ingredients can also make a difference. Wu's lab studies essential oils, which have the surprising ability to freshen breath. "Chewing gum can be a delivery system for [these] agents to kill germs," she says. To date they have found a number of effective ingredients, including cinnamon, peppermint and spearmint oils, as well as green and black teas. Wu says some plant oils act on the bacterial membrane, making it leaky and killing the bacteria. Teas, on the other hand, kill bacteria by attacking their metabolisms and affecting their growth.

The trick is to find gums with real essential oils, a task harder than you may think. Labels commonly list the umbrella term ‘natural and artificial flavors,' wherein the natural flavors may or may not be essential oils. Wu's tested recommendation: the "kiss a little longer" gum itself, Big Red.

This story was produced in partnership with Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. For more FYIs, go here.

Why Don't We Have More Drones Monitoring Wildfires?

Kelsey D. Atherton — Thu, 23 May 2013 13:00:00 GMT

Scan Eagle

A remotely piloted aircraft, seen here launched by catapult.

U.S. Navy via wikimedia commons

Infrared eyes and remote pilots have a lot to offer forest firefighters.

Remote-controlled drones are much better at flying through smoke than human pilots: their infrared eyes can track the edge of a fire even through the thickest air. When the Forest Service asked the Federal Aviation Administration for permission to use unmanned aerial systems to monitor wildfires, the FAA said no, but offered an exemption: the Forest Service could fly the drone, so long as an operator on board another aircraft could see it at all times.

That undermines the whole reason for using a drone, of course, but such is the curious state of drone regulation today. In 2015 the FAA will pass new rules opening airspace to far more unmanned vehicles, and should have guidelines in place for how firefighters and law enforcement officials use drones.

Until then, organizations have to get authorization from the FAA to fly drones domestically. There's a growing list (and accompanying map) of groups that have FAA permission to fly drones. Groups not on that list have to request permission from the FAA to operate drones on a case by case basis, a process that can take days and has limited applicability in emergency situations. And even if an organization like the Forest Service gets timely permission, that permission often comes with the stipulation that drones be followed with a manned chase plane. Flying through smoke is a great task for a drone, but requiring another plane to follow along behind it defeats the whole point of using an unmanned plane in the first place.

Flying tracking the edges of forest fires should be one of the least controversial uses of drones ever. Congress has to approve of the FAA rules before they can take effect in 2015. It remains to be seen whether Congress will respect the difference between drones that save lives and drones that violate privacy.

[New York Times]

Portland, Oregon, Says No To Fluoridation

Francie Diep — Wed, 22 May 2013 21:47:22 GMT

Pro and Con Images from Clean Water Portland (left) and Healthy Kids Healthy Portland (right)

So when is Portlandia going to do a skit about this?

Residents of Portland, Oregon, voted down, yet again, an effort to add fluoride to their tap water.

With 80 percent of the expected ballots counted, Mayor Charlie Hales "conceded defeat," the Associated Press reported.

Portland is the largest U.S. city not to have added fluoride in the water, nor any plans to add it, the Associated Press reported. Portlanders in the past have defeated three other attempts to fluoridate their water since the 1950s, Livescience reported.

In the U.S., 196 million people have tap water that's fluoridated to the optimal level to prevent cavities, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Everyone else has either unfluoridated water or water that naturally or artificially contains fluoride at higher levels than recommended. Portland's water has naturally occurring fluoride, but not enough to make a difference to dental health.

Supporters say putting fluoride in the tap water gets the protective chemical to low-income children who might not have access to regular dentist visits. Opponents say fluoride will harm the environment, may have ill human health effects and constitutes medicating people without their consent.

The ongoing debate reshuffles the usual political alliances in Portland, the Oregonian reported. Slate reported on the groups on either side. Major medical and scientific organizations support tap water fluoridation as a safe way of preventing cavities. Opposing groups are more varied, including the Sierra Club, libertarian groups and even the local chapter of the NAACP. Anti-fluoridation lobbying is generally homegrown, Slate reported, and has received far less funding than proponents they defeated.

Curious about the studies both sides have brought up to support their positions? Livescience's reporting slants toward generally anti-fluoride studies, while Slate underlines those studies' weaknesses.

Navy Completes First Flight Of Game-Changing MQ-4C Triton Spy Drone [Video]

Clay Dillow — Wed, 22 May 2013 21:15:00 GMT

Triton on the Tarmac, May 21, 2013 U.S. Navy photo courtesy of Northrop Grumman by Chad Slattery

The long-range maritime drone will give the U.S. unprecedented surveillance of the world's oceans.

For the U.S. Navy and Northrop Grumman, it's shaping up to be a banner year in unmanned flight. While the carrier-based autonomous X-47B continues to hit milestones aboard the USS George H.W. Bush somewhere off the East Coast, out west in Palmdale, Calif., today the Navy flew its MQ-4C Triton maritime drone for the first time, marking the beginning of a sea change (pardon the pun) in the way the U.S. military patrols the oceans. The drone flew for 80 minutes and reached an altitude of 20,000 feet.

The Triton isn't a completely new platform. If it looks familiar, that's because everyone from the U.S. Air Force to NASA has been using its cousin--Northrop Grumman's reliable Global Hawk--for years now, for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, environmental monitoring, and meteorological data gathering, among other things. Triton is essentially an upgrade of the Global Hawk, optimized for maritime environments, with a strengthened airframe and de-icing features that allow it to rapidly ascend to and descend from high altitudes.

Those upgrades allow Triton to fly at altitudes nearly ten miles above sea level (its ceiling is listed as 60,000 feet, though it will likely stick to the 53,000-55,000 for most missions) for 24 hours at a time. That high vantage point allows its advanced sensors to take in a 2,000-nautical-mile view of the ocean in every direction. Carrying the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) sensor package (Popular Science awarded BAMS a Best of What's New award last year) along with a classified advanced radar system, Triton will be able to both detect and identify ships on the water.

That is, rather than registering as a simple blip on the radar screen, BAMS will be able to generate a picture of the shape of the ship and use that to identify it by profile. In that way, it will be able to tell a container ship from a Chinese frigate from a surfacing Russian submarine--from up to 2,000 nautical miles away (we felt that point was worth stressing here). Triton's strengthened airframe, augmented with de-icing technology, will then allow it to rapidly descend and ascend, so it can swoop in for a closer look at vessels of particular interest.

That's if everything works as advertised, and both Triton and BAMS are still in the early stages of development. The first flight by Triton is a big step forward. Though it's built on the back of the tested Global Hawk platform, the tweaks that have been made to the design are significant. In fact, a Global Hawk lent to the Navy by the Air Force for testing crashed at Naval Air Station Pax River last year--an event that was seen at the time as a potential setback for Triton and BAMS. So today's first flight is significant, as it marks the first airborne tests of a Triton and the beginning of the shift toward a brand new maritime capability.

That new capability is also quite significant. The Navy wants 68 Tritons based at five locations around the globe. Flying in rotations, they will be able to keep unprecedented tabs on the world's critical sea lanes and important littorals, working alongside and supporting the manned P-8A Poseidon mission (the Poseidon is replacing the P-3 Orion anti-sub warfare aircraft; basically the Triton, which is unarmed, will conduct the ISR and the Poseidon will handle any kinetic strikes or electronic warfare, should it be necessary). And because the Triton is unmanned and autonomous, it will require less intensive human labor to fly as well as less risk to human pilots.

"When operational, the MQ-4C will complement our manned P-8 because it can fly for long periods, transmit its information in real-time to units in the air and on ground, as well as use less resources than previous surveillance aircraft," said Rear Adm. Sean Buck, Patrol and Reconnaissance Group commander, in a statement. "Triton will bring an unprecedented ISR capability to the warfighter."

That's still a few years away, but today marks a critical step for the maritime capability, and a second huge leap forward for autonomous flight in just more than a week.

Got A Wound? Science Says Rub Some Dirt In It

Clay Dillow — Wed, 22 May 2013 20:15:12 GMT

MRSA CDC

Antibacterial clays can kill antibiotic-resistant E. coli and MRSA, researchers found.

The colloquial medical advice "rub some dirt in it" appears to have some merit. Researchers at Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute have been experimenting with different clays, and it appears in research presented in the journal PLoS ONE that they've come across a family of antibacterial clays capable of killing pathogens ranging from E. coli to methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, otherwise known as hard-to-kill MRSA.

Clays have been used as medical tools for ages, appearing in ancient medical texts going back as far as 3,000 B.C. Topically, they were used to treat wounds, a practice that became common in the 19th century. Early practitioners of clay therapy noted that clays tended to aid in healing, in reducing inflammation of wounds, and in pain management--though they couldn't have known why exactly.

It turns out that's probably because some clays--particularly clays rich in a certain group of metallic ions--work as antibacterial agents. In their study, the ASU researchers tested a variety of different clays with similar mineral composition but ranging compositions of metallic ions against E. coli and MRSA. They found that five metal ions--iron, copper, cobalt, nickel, and zinc--could fight the two bacterial strains, both of which are increasingly difficult to kill using standard antibiotics and antibacterials.

That doesn't mean these clays are silver bullet or any kind of antibacterial panacea. Not all clays are created equal and some lack the necessary concentrations of the necessary metal ions. Moreover, clays can contain other metals as well, like cadmium, lead, mercury, and arsenic (if you weren't paying attention in chem class, these are not metals you particularly want to introduce to your bloodstream).

But the researchers are optimistic that medicinal clays could find widespread use in certain therapeutic roles, particularly as bandaging agents as their absorptive and adhering characteristics make them somewhat ideal for sealing out external pathogens as well as absorbing and removing unwanted particulates or devitalized tissues from wounds--all while delivering a dose of antibacterial ions to the affected area.

Was The Oklahoma City Tornado The Worst In History?

Colin Lecher — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:45:00 GMT

Oklahoma City Tornado bschjoth

A disaster by the numbers.

Monday's tornado in the Oklahoma City area killed at least 24 people and leveled a massive number of homes and businesses. The L.A. Times quoted weather officials as saying the twister "was at least in the same league" as the harrowing tornado that struck the same area in 1999, while one local meteorologist called it "the worst tornado in the history of the world."

There's no single measurement that totally describes the destructive force of a tornado, but there are several ways to get a sense of the impact.

THE ENHANCED FUJITA SCALE

This scale, employed since 2007 in the U.S. as a measure of damage that a tornado causes, rates destruction from zero to five: crews survey the damage, then assign the tornado an estimated wind speed based on that damage. There's a long list of how to quantify the damage: uprooted trees indicate a certain wind speed, and same goes for window damage at strip malls. (Here are some photos that show the rough idea.) The scale runs from EF-0 (65-85 mph) to EF-5 (more than 200 mph). The first tornado to receive an EF-5 ranking hit Greensburg, Kansas on May 4, 2007. Here's a description, via The Weather Underground, of what an EF-5 is like: "Incredible damage. Strong frame houses leveled off foundations and swept away; automobile-sized missiles fly through the air in excess of 100 m (109 yd); high-rise buildings have significant structural deformation; incredible phenomena will occur."

It's tough to compare tornadoes using the EF scale alone, since several make it to the EF-5 level. The Oklahoma City tornado was initially rated as at least an EF-4 by the National Weather Service (meaning 166 to 200 mph winds), but after further surveys of the damage, the National Weather Service revised it to an EF-5.

DAMAGE DONE

Dr. Jeff Masters at Weather Underground has a breakdown of the five costliest tornadoes of all time:

1) Joplin, Missouri, May 22, 2011, $2.8 billion
2) Topeka, Kansas, June 8, 1966, $1.7 billion
3) Lubbock, Texas, May 11, 19780, $1.5 billion
4) Bridge Creek-Moore, Oklahoma, May 3, 1999, $1.4 billion
5) Xenia, Ohio, April 3, 1974, $1.1 billion
6) Omaha, Nebraska, May 6, 1975, $1 billion

This event is being compared to No. 4, the Bridge Creek-Moore tornado, which struck almost the same area and was rated an EF-5 after it hit. That tornado, according to Masters, "damaged or destroyed 8132 homes, 1041 apartments, 260 businesses, 11 public buildings and seven churches." Early reports--maybe stressing very early, in this case--suggest the damage could be considerably worse than that event. (The front page of yesterday's Oklahoman proclaimed: "Worse Than May 3rd.") That could certainly prove true: Masters expects "that after the damage tally from the May 20 tornado is added up, Moore will hold two of the top five spots on the list of most damaging tornadoes in history, and the May 20 tornado may approach the Joplin tornado as the costliest twister of all-time."

PHYSICAL MEASUREMENTS

Smithsonian magazine examined a few other ways, besides the EF scale, that tornadoes might be measured. For example: estimates put the length of the tornado at between one mile and two, likely below the record 2.5 miles of a 2004 hurricane that hit Nebraska, which was ranked at F-4 (on an older version of the scale still comparable to EF-4) and only killed one person. Although the Oklahoma twister has been upgraded to EF-5, it still likely did not come close to the record-holder for wind speed--the 302-mph tornado that hit the same area on May 3, 1999.

LIVES LOST

But natural disasters like this will be remembered for the death toll. Although early estimates suggested it could be as high as 91, that number has since fallen to 24 confirmed deaths, which could rise as more bodies are uncovered. In the 40 minutes the tornado was on the ground, at least 237 people were injured.

The Tri-State Tornado is the deadliest twister in U.S. history, lasting for 3.5 hours in 1925 and killing 695 people in Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. That makes it an outlier: the second most deadly tornado in history, the Great Natchez Tornado, killed 317 people in 1840. Worldwide, the deadliest tornado ever was the 1989 Bangladesh twister that killed at least 1,300 people.

THE OKLAHOMA CITY TORNADO

As Smithsonian points out, there are certainly some measurements, like time on the ground and sheer size, that made this tornado especially deadly, although it may not be the at the very top of any of those measurements. When all the damage has been accounted for, though, it might rank as one of the most damaging tornadoes in U.S. history, just thankfully not the deadliest.

These Self-Assembling Nanoflowers Are As Beautiful As They Are Tiny

Rose Pastore — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:32:37 GMT

Nanoflower 4 Wim L. Noorduin

Harvard researchers grew these lovely microscopic gardens using delicate chemical reactions.

Click here to enter the gallery

A nanorose may not smell as sweet as an organic one, but the red petals on this micron-scale flower are unquestionably just as beautiful. At Harvard University, materials scientists have perfected an underwater chemical reaction that results in these gorgeous, self-assembling nanoflowers.

The microscopic structures are crystals that build themselves, one molecule at a time, on a glass surface submerged in a beaker of water, barium chloride, and sodium silicate. When carbon dioxide from the air naturally dissolves in the water, it sets off the chemical reaction that causes the crystals to form.

Though the colors in these images are artificial, the intricate shapes of the nanoflowers are very real. The twists, curves, and ruffles are created when the scientists shift the components of the chemical reaction; the crystals naturally "grow" toward or away from various chemical gradients. For example, the broad-leaf shapes you'll see in the gallery formed in solutions with extra carbon dioxide.

"When you look through the electron microscope, it really feels a bit like you're diving in the ocean, seeing huge fields of coral and sponges," says Wim L. Noorduin, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard and lead author of the paper in Science. "Sometimes I forget to take images because it's so nice to explore."

Click here to see more of these amazing creations.

Should Photojournalists Be Permitted To Manipulate Photos?

Dan Nosowitz — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:00:49 GMT

The Award-Winning, Manipulated Photo Fred Hansen

In the wake of the scandal around the winner of the World Press Photo award, which was found to have been manipulated significantly with Photoshop, it seems like the right time to discuss this sort of editing. Our sister publication, American Photo, has an excellent interview with Fred Ritchin, a professor at NYU, author, photojournalist, and activist against unannounced digital manipulation of images. Check out the full interview here.

The Moore, Oklahoma Tornado, From Space

Dan Nosowitz — Wed, 22 May 2013 18:37:30 GMT

The Full Disk

Here's a full-on "disk" shot of the planet, taken by NOAA's GOES-13 satellite. (Fun fact: NOAA is pronounced like the name "noah.") You can see the storm over the central part of the US.

NASA/NOAA GOES Project, Dennis Chesters

What the destructive tornado looked like from satellites high above.

Click to launch the gallery.

Satellites from NASA, NOAA, and others captured the devastating tornado that this week destroyed many towns and houses and claimed the lives of several (the exact death toll is still unclear) in Oklahoma. Click above for a tour through those shots.

[via Flickr]

Synthetic Biologists Engineer A Custom Flu Vaccine In A Week

Francie Diep — Wed, 22 May 2013 18:08:16 GMT

Illustration of a Generic Flu Virus Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

A synthetic biology method proves its chops.

A copy of the genetic code of an H7N9 avian flu-similar to, but not exactly the same as the flu that has killed 36 people in China-arrived in a lab in Boston Easter Sunday, 2011. By Saturday, scientists had made a vaccine against it, the Boston Globe reported.

That turnaround time is weeks faster than the current best vaccine-making methods. The new shot-making strategy still needs to undergo approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It also needs tweaking before it would able to make the large amounts of vaccine needed during a flu outbreak, the editors of the journal Science wrote in a summary of the work. If the method does make it to market, however, it could speed the response to flu pandemics.

"I think it does have great potential for more rapidly preparing vaccines for new strains as they evolve," Robert Finberg, chair of the University of Massachusetts Medical School and a flu researcher, told the Boston Globe.

The new method uses synthetic biology, or the creation of biological materials, such as viruses, without using nature's usual reproductive methods. In this case, scientists from the U.S. pharmaceutical company Novartis and from the J. Craig Venter Institute built H7N9 viruses from looking at the genetic code they received on Easter. Normally, vaccine manufacturers don't make copies of a flu virus simply from a "paper" (In this case it was electronic, like an email) copy of its code. They actually have to have some virus to make more virus.

It's as if in the past, scientists always needed to have a burger on hand to make more burgers. The Novartis and J. Craig Venter Institute scientists, on the other hand, looked at a recipe for a burger and made more burgers from individual ingredients. Scientists around the world have previously used synthetic biology to engineer bacteria. J. Craig Venter, namesake of the institute involved in making the new vaccine, made a bacterium almost entirely from scratch in 2010.

Once they had their synthetic H7N9, scientists made a vaccine from a benign form of the virus that stimulates the human immune system, but can't give people the actual flu. They also came up with some other innovations helped them speed the vaccine-making process. The Boston Globe has more details.

Making the original virus synthetically helps with speed because it's much faster to send electronic copies of a virus' code around the world than it is to carefully ship samples of the actual virus, MIT Technology Review reported.

The biggest bottleneck now is performing the tests that will convince regulatory agencies that this method makes safe, effective vaccines, the Science editors wrote. Science published a paper about the synthetic vaccine last week.

This Newer, Stronger 3-D Printed Gun Costs Just $25

Clay Dillow — Wed, 22 May 2013 17:15:00 GMT

'Joe's' multi-round-ready 3-D printed Lulz Liberator

A Wisconsin engineer has produced a cheaper, more durable version of Defense Distributed's 3-D printed pistol on an inexpensive, consumer-grade printer.

Defense Distributed's plastic, 3-D printed "Liberator" single-shot handgun was here for a moment and then it was gone in more than one sense. For one, the news cycle turned over. Moreover, the State Department came down on Defense Distributed asking it to pull the CAD file for the Liberator off its servers until the lawyers could figure out if putting a free, downloadable CAD file up on the Web violated any arms export regulations. But the Liberator is back and--presumably to Defense Distributed co-founder Cody Wilson's glee--it is evolving.

By the time the State Department asked Defense Distributed to pull down the CAD file for the Liberator, it was already replicating across the Web. And one of the people who appears to have gotten his hands on it is a Wisconsin engineer who identified himself to Forbes only as "Joe." Joe has printed what he adorably calls the "Lulz Liberator" on a $1,725 Lulzbot A0-101 consumer-grade 3-D printer--a printer that is far less expensive than the industrial-grade one used by Wilson and company to create the original Liberator, which essentially was a disposable pistol--one shot and the barrel breaks, requiring the user to print another.

Joe's Lulz Liberator--cost: $25--successfully fires eight rounds through a single barrel (and a ninth round through a replacement barrel) in the video below, proving that plastic guns have already leapt beyond the one-shot-per-print limitation. The Lulz Liberator is still a single-shot weapon--that is, it only holds a single round at a time--but it can be reloaded and fired multiple times using a single barrel.

Joe made his Lulz Liberator from PA-747 ABS plastic, a standard kind of ABS that is the working material for most consumer-grade 3-D printers. Yet he claims that it's stronger than the more expensive stuff Wilson prints with in his larger, more costly Stratasys printer. Joe also augmented his version with a few components not found on the original Liberator, which is all plastic except for the firing pin made from a standard nail. The Lulz Liberator uses a metal nail for a firing pin, but also employs metal screws--available for pennies at your local hardware store--to hold the body of the firearm together rather than relying on plastic pins as Wilson's does. And like Wilson's, it contains a non-functioning piece of steel designed to bring it into alignment with the Undetectable Firearms Act.

The Lulz Liberator reportedly misfired several times during tests, and some of the screws and firing pins had to be replaced throughout the testing. Reloading is also no simple matter; each spent .380 cartridge expanded enough that they had to be pounded free of the chamber with a hammer. So it's not like the Lulz Liberator is a rapid-fire, or even a semi-rapid fire plastic firearm.

What it is: A confirmation that Wilson's Liberator design indeed functions the way he says it does, as well as proof that now that this thing is out there in the maker ecosystem it's going to evolve independent of Wilson and Defense Distributed.

One key difference between Wilson's Liberator and Joe's Lulz Liberator: the Lulz Liberator design file is not available for download online and it's unclear if or when Joe might release it into the wild. But it doesn't really matter. Defense Distributed's file is still circulating out there, and it's unlikely Joe is the only maker out there tinkering with new ways to make better firearms from cheap plastic.

[Forbes]

Headset Zaps Video Gamers' Brains For Better Reflexes

Colin Lecher — Wed, 22 May 2013 16:45:31 GMT

foc.us Headset foc.us

For when you just HAVE to beat everyone at Call of Duty.

Foc.us is a company that makes headsets for gamers. Those headsets, starting to ship in July, send electricity through your brain. This is their pitch:

Overclock your brain using transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) to increase the plasticity of your brain. Make your synapses fire faster.

Faster Processor, Faster Graphics, Faster Brain!

If that sounds a little sketchy to you, that's because it probably should.

The excellent NeuroBollocks blog explains how transcranial direct current stimulation (TDCS) is an interesting idea: sending targeted, low-level electric currents through the brain with TDCS excites certain regions, which could have implications in treating depression and stroke victims. Plug in a patient for 20 minutes, and you could get the effects for up to days at a time. So foc.us is marketing $249 headsets ("Maximum 2 headsets per order.") that claim to "[e]xcite your prefrontal cortex," thus improving your gaming ability. To the company's credit, at least one study suggests hooking up a 9-volt to your skull could improve gaming ability, although that was all done in the lab, under professional supervision.

That's definitely not the only field TDCS is exploring. Brain-zapping for medical (or extra-medical) purposes has been around for years: Giovanni Aldini was using electricity to treat treat patients with personality disorders in the early 19th century. But with the rise of brain scans able to show the results of electricity pumped into the brain, TDCS and related processes like transcranial random noise stimulation are undergoing a boom. TDCS, although still controversial, could be used to improve math skills (or get you high).

Still, NeuroBollocks outlines some of the issues with foc.us's claims:

So - does it work? Possibly… But it almost certainly doesn't do what the company says it does. For a start, if you want to "get the edge in online gaming" wouldn't you want to stimulate your motor cortex (at the top of the head) and/or the visual cortex (at the back)? It's unclear how stimulating the prefrontal cortex (behind the forehead) would give you an advantage in games. In fact, (as this article explains) placement of the electrodes over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is most often used for treatment of depression and chronic pain, so potentially these devices might have more of an effect on mood or emotions than any useful gaming-related functions.

Sure, the process could result in skin lesions, and there's still some debate over what's a safe amount of electricity to juice yourself with, but do you want to beat your friends at video games or not? (Engadget tried out a prototype and noted "a strange, almost burning, sensation.")

And no: according to the foc.us website, the headset isn't FDA-approved: "The focus gamer headset offers no medical benefits, is not a medical device, and is not regulated by the FDA."

Can't we go back to the good old days, like three weeks ago, when people were just shocking themselves to improve video games for fun?

[NeuroBollocks]

FEMA's 'Waffle House Index' Rates Moore, Oklahoma, At Disaster Level Yellow

Clay Dillow — Wed, 22 May 2013 16:15:46 GMT

A Waffle House in Fort Worth, under sunnier skies Billy Hathorn via Wikimedia

No we're not kidding, and yes that's a good thing.

Moore, Okla., is currently running at Waffle House Index Level Yellow, and that's not a joke. Craig Fugate, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has created his own informal system of rating disasters in a humanizing way, using the status of the local Waffle House as a measure of the impact of a natural disaster on a region or neighborhood. And if that sounds patronizing or nonsensical, read on, because it makes a lot of sense.

After a disaster--especially one of the magnitude of a Hurricane Katrina or the tornado that struck the southern Oklahoma City metro area on Monday--it takes a while to really gauge the state of things on the ground and to assess the overall level of damage. There are aerial photos of the devastation, sure, as well as anecdotal accounts of what's happening on one block or the next, but a snapshot of the real impact on a community is hard to come by until an official accounting of the damage--both human and economic--can be made. And that takes a while.

Then there's Waffle House. Waffle House is known--along with Home Depot, Wal Mart, and Lowe's--for its resiliency during and in the days following a disaster. The company maintains pretty serious disaster planning year-round, as it sees itself and the service it provides--hot meals and hot coffee for first responders and affected members of the community--as important for helping communities get back on their feet. As such, Waffle House takes pride in its ability to remain open, or to quickly reopen, after disaster strikes a region. Fugate allegedly first used the phrase back in 2011 following the Joplin, Mo., tornado, stating to the Wall Street Journal that if you arrive at a place and the Waffle House is closed, you know the disaster is bad.

Moreover, Waffle House's 1,600 locations are spread across 25 states in hurricane- and tornado-prone states, from Florida to Arizona and throughout the Midwest, as far north and east as Pennsylvania. And the restaurants are remarkably consistent throughout the country, in their construction, their menus, and their disaster-readiness. They all require basic utilities like electricity, water, and gas, though they can run at limited capability without them (by trucking in generators, propane, and clean water). All that makes for a good measure of comparison across the nation.

Fugate's system is three-level color system. Waffle House Index Green means the Waffle House is still operational and serving a full menu. Yellow denotes a Waffle House running at limited capacity, usually on a generator and serving only a partial menu. A closed, badly damaged, or completely destroyed Waffle House draws a red rating.

During Katrina Waffle House had to close 100 restaurants, earning it red status. But within 24 hours 60 were up and running again, upgrading many neighborhoods to yellow almost immediately (seven locations were fully destroyed). But it's important to keep in mind that the index is more a measure of the status on the ground after a disaster--the availability of generators or grid electricity, or of clean water, for instance--than a measure of the disaster itself. The 2011 tornado that devastated Joplin, Mo., closed none of the areas Waffle Houses. So the region remained yellow and green even though 162 people were killed.

The yellow rating for Moore is something of a courtesy rating at this point, as the power at the single Waffle House location there remains cut and the generator was still in transit last we heard. So Moore's Waffle Hosue is technically still closed (level red), though it should be up and running shortly (by the time you read this we may already be at a hard Waffle House Yellow). And while hot meals and hot coffee can't make up for everything that was lost in Moore on Monday afternoon, if you're going to rebuild a community it can't hurt to start on a full stomach.

[Guardian]

FYI: Could Climate Change Cause More (And Bigger) Tornadoes?

Shaunacy Ferro — Wed, 22 May 2013 15:45:00 GMT

Twister OAR/ERL/National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL)

A warming world pulls the two factors of tornado formation in opposite directions.

Scientists generally agree that climate change will increase the likelihood of extreme weather events, but the jury is still out on how tornadoes will fare in a warming world. Tornadoes are fickle beasts, and it remains tough to predict a tornado a week from now, much less what they might be like over the next few years.

"The most common finding is a warming environment leads to more storms and more intense storms, but intensity doesn't necessarily mean organizing and producing tornadoes," says Grady Dixon, an associate professor of geosciences at Mississippi State University who studies tornado climatology. "It takes a certain interaction."

Jeff Trapp, a professor of atmospheric science at Purdue University, says that while it's unclear how the intensity or frequency of tornadoes will increase, there may be more days featuring conditions ripe for twisters. "We would see an increase in the number of days that could be favorable for severe thunderstorm and tornado formation," he says. The tornado season, which varies by region, could be expanded.

In yet another theory, Harold Brooks of the National Weather Center recently told the AP that there could be a sort of condensing effect--more tornadoes occurring on fewer days of the year.

Tornado patterns have been especially wonky as of late: 2011 marked the second-deadliest tornado season for the U.S., with 1,700 tornadoes (including the particularly destructive Joplin one) and 553 deaths, according to the AP. And then, after an early start to the tornado season in 2012, the numbers reversed. The period between May 2012 and April 2013 featured the fewest tornadoes on record and the second-lowest death toll, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's U.S. Severe Weather Blog.

Where we're going as a community is to try to have climate models that are finer resolution.It's also difficult to discern whether we're seeing more tornadoes in recent years, or if awareness of them has just gone up. Since the 1990s, Dixon says, there's been an increase in tornadoes in the Midwest and northern Great Plains region and a decrease in the southern Great Plains, but that could be merely a result of better reporting.

Oklahoma is a magnet for tornadoes because it's right at the convergence point where humid air from the Gulf of Mexico collides with cooler air from the high terrain of Mexico and the Rocky Mountains. Tornadoes require strong upper level winds, up to three miles above the ground, to contrast with slower currents near ground level in what's called wind shear. It often occurs when warm temperatures from the south run into colder temperatures from the north.

A warming climate creates warmer temperatures in the north, so in that respect, decreasing wind shear, so it could actually lead to fewer tornadoes, according to Dixon.

However, another factor suggests that climate change will do the exact opposite. Convective available potential energy, or CAPE--essentially the amount of energy that's available to for storms--is determined by moisture and temperature differences between the ground and higher regions of the atmosphere. "The CAPE increases with time in a globally warmed world, mainly because the temperature near the ground and lower parts of the atmosphere increases and becomes more humid," Trapp says. "In a globally warmed future world, that thunderstorm should be more intense."

Because of these conflicting factors, "what we don't know is how this necessarily affects tornado intensity and frequency," Trapp says.

His research deals with climate change models, which are still very coarse when it comes to tornado prediction--a single pixel can be up to 100 km on a side, while individually storms are typically only half that size. "Where we're going as a community is to try to have climate models that are finer and finer resolution, like how digital cameras have higher and higher resolution," he says. With higher resolution models, researchers hope to be able to analyze storm simulations that would allow them to determine which types of storms form tornadoes with more certainty.

FYI: Are Unvaccinated Kids Really Causing The Whooping Cough Resurgence?

Francie Diep — Wed, 22 May 2013 15:15:00 GMT

Well Protected

An unsuspecting infant about to get a vaccination in her thigh, Dekalb County, Georgia, 1977

CDC/Meredith Hickson

Deadly pertussis is on the rise in the U.S., but is it really the fault of the anti-vaccine crowd?

There were more cases of whooping cough in the U.S. in 2012 than in any year since 1955, provisional data suggest. The disease, which still sounds a little old-fashioned to these young ears, has been on the rise in America since 1980. What's going on?

It's easy to blame parents who choose not to vaccinate their kids, based on anti-science beliefs. Indeed, researchers have found that unvaccinated kids have sparked whooping cough (scientifically known as pertussis) and measles outbreaks in certain schools.

Yet because their numbers are small, they're not enough to explain the overall U.S. rise. "We don't believe the small numbers of parents who are refusing pertussis vaccines for their children are driving the large numbers of cases we're seeing across the country," Alison Patti, a health education specialist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, wrote in an email response to my questions.

Instead, the CDC attributes the trend to doctors' increased awareness of the disease, improved diagnostic tests, and a newer version of the vaccine that kids began receiving in the 1990s. That last reason has gotten extra scientific oomph recently, with the publication of several studies over the past year.

The newer vaccine is effective, says Nicola Klein, a physician and researcher at the Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center in California. "It just doesn't last as long as we would like."

Klein performed the latest study to find that infants who received the newer vaccine, which has fewer side effects than its predecessor, begin to lose their immunity around age 8 or 10, Science reported. At that age, whooping cough is uncomfortable, but not usually dangerous. In infants, however, pertussis can be fatal.

The difference is that the older vaccine used killed versions of the Bordetella pertussis bacteria. It offered long-lasting immunity, but it caused fever and severe pain in most infants. In some babies, it caused seizures or fainting fits-pretty scary for a parent. What followed was a lawsuit that led to the adoption of new vaccines that contain purified pertussis proteins, but not the entire bacterium. You can check out the whole history in Science. One milestone was that in 1991, an Institute of Medicine report found that the so-called whole-cell vaccine doesn't cause brain damage, as the parents in the lawsuit contended, but by then the changeover was already underway.

For those who like to extol the tougher characteristics of earlier generations… yes, some of the scarier side effects for the whole-cell vaccine probably had to do with its longer-lasting protection. "Probably some of that more severe reaction was because of its more brisk immune response," says David Witt, another Kaiser Permanente physician who has studied pertussis outbreaks in California.

But the whole-cell pertussis vaccine isn't coming back to the U.S., Witt says. U.S. companies no longer make it and if they were to start again, they would have to get approval from the Food and Drug Administration just as if they were introducing a whole new drug. That's probably not worth the risk. Instead, companies are more likely to work on a better, longer-lasting vaccine that doesn't have those whole-cell side effects. "It's probably the better solution," Witt says.

Meanwhile, everyone I talked with said it's important for kids to get all of their doses of the whooping cough vaccine on schedule. The CDC also recommends pregnant women, plus anybody who's in close contact with infants, get the vaccine.

How Toys Are Preparing Kids For A Future With Robotic Friends

Corinne Iozzio — Wed, 22 May 2013 14:37:36 GMT

Generation Robot Paul Lachine

Introducing Generation Robot

For Christmas in 1993, my father gave me a My Magic Diary, a children's version of Casio's digital organizer. From that point on, I always had some iteration of that device-whether a PalmPilot or the iPhone 5 I carry today. Like most others my age, I was raised around mobile devices, so now as an adult, I'm generally unfazed by a new phone or tablet or piece of software. The next generation, Generation Z, will be raised with something entirely different. That thing will be robots.

Just as I had my little digital organizer, children today are growing up in a world where people touch and talk to their gadgets. Whether it's on their mother's iPad or a kid-friendly LeapPad tablet (a touchscreen device that plays interactive educational games), children are learning to interact with devices in new ways. "With touchscreens, there's an intuitive interaction with what they're craving," says Jody Sherman LeVos, a child-development expert at LeapFrog. And that interaction is not limited to touch. Speech- and facial-recognition software lets kids talk to gadgets-and lets the gadgets talk back.

Kids' perception of technology is different. Devices can be friends or teachers, not just tools.Because children are accustomed to this social relationship, their perception of technology and its purpose differs from those of their parents. Devices can be friends or teachers, not just tools or entertainment. Last year, a team at Boston-based research firm Latitude asked children to imagine how robots could fit into their lives. Sixty-four percent imagined a social humanoid, and the bots were more likely to act as tutors, playmates, or companions than exclusively as maids or assistants.

Members of Generation Z will also be the first to have advanced robot companions at home. Last fall, Hasbro released a new generation of Furby that gathers data from sensors-including an accelerometer that measures how gentle or rough a child is with the toy-and changes its personality based on how it's treated.Several more robots launching this year, including Romo and WowWee RoboMe, use a smartphone as a computing brain, so they're able to utilize the camera and facial recognition to react to people. (The toy market has been a proving ground for innovative technologies before; the Speak & Spell, for one, was the first device with a single-chip voice synthesizer when Texas Instruments launched it in 1978.)

A generation of children raised with robots could power a new wave of innovation. Just like software development, which moved from labs to start-ups to anyone with even a passing interest in code, robotics development will become democratized. Current robotic platforms, such as the Robot Operating System developed at Willow Garage in Menlo Park, California, are open. Like a smartphone SDK, the OS turns robots into a canvas for a developer to create applications. In the same way kids as young as 12 are creating mobile apps today, they will create robot apps tomorrow. Need a trainer? A Spanish tutor? A friendly ear? Just download an app, and it's literally there.

The World's Smallest Arcade

Susan E. Matthews & Rose Conry — Wed, 22 May 2013 14:00:00 GMT

Mini Arcade Machine (L) James Ellerker/Guinness World Records/ (R) Popular Science

Three games shrunk, digitized, and boozed up to a whole new level

Mini Arcade Machine

In 2006, Mark Slevinsky fixed a Tron arcade game that a friend had left for trash. The work inspired similar gaming projects, ultimately leading him to a nerdy world record this year.

While surfing the Web, Slevinsky saw printed-paper models of arcade machines, each about the size of a Game Boy. Since he had already created an operating system for small microcontroller computers, he wondered: Why not build a functional mini arcade? He started by adapting the software to play classics such as Tetris, Space Invaders, and Breakout. Next, he needed power. Two 1.5-volt AAA batteries could support 13 hours of game play yet lacked the juice to run a tiny, five-volt LED screen. Retail power supply circuits couldn't handle the voltage conversion-they all blew up-so he eventually made his own.

Slevinsky tucked the components into a wooden case and outfitted it with a joystick and button. He named it the Markade, and Guinness World Records deemed it the smallest device of its kind this year. Slevinsky's friends typically play five minutes, which he says lasts "a round of each game, or until they develop hand cramps"-on par with old-school arcade consoles.

Time: 6 months
Cost: $90

BattleShots

Bored by beer pong, Kevin Kittle turned Battleship into a booze-infused board game. He built Battleshots' playing surface out of wood, steel, and acrylic and applied a grid using fluorescent paint that glows under a blacklight. Then Kittle drilled holes in wooden ships to hold neon shot glasses. As in the real game, a player tries to guess the locations of his opponent's ships. If someone's vessel takes a hit, he must do a shot. Kittle suggests using tonic-infused concoctions, because quinine glows in ultraviolet light. Sink responsibly.

Time: 2 months
Cost: $175

Tweeting Foosball Table

To build office camaraderie at SinnerSchrader, a Hamburg-based technology company, a team of developers designed a Foosball table that sends scores and standings to the Web in real time. Players log in to a mobile application with their Twitter handles. Photo sensors in the table's chutes register goals and relay the data to a Wi-Fi-enabled Arduino microcontroller. The device updates players' Twitter accounts while pushing game stats to their phones. At first, the company worried that publicizing games would discourage play, but two of the project's developers-Thomas Jacob and Uli Schumacher-say it has created more foosball fanatics than ever before.

Time: 3 months
Cost: $150