Washed It!

More than a quarter-century after scientists discovered the virus that causes AIDS, researchers have finally shown that an experimental vaccine can block at least some infections, marking the first small but significant step toward eventual control of this lethal pandemic.

The benefits of the vaccine were modest, only a 31% reduction in the number of new infections. But coming on the heels of previous vaccine studies that either showed no benefit at all or actually increased the risk of contracting the disease, the study buoys the hopes of researchers who had nearly given on ever finding an effective way to block the spread of the virus.

The results were released overnight in Bangkok, Thailand, where the research was conducted by a team including Thai researchers, the U.S. Army and the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

“This is a historic day in the 26-year quest to develop an AIDS vaccine,” Dr. Alan Bernstein, executive director of the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise, who was not involved in the research, said in a statement.

“We now have evidence that it is possible to reduce the risk of HIV infection with a vaccine,” said Mitchell Warren, executive director of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, in his own statement. “There is little doubt that this finding will energize and redirect the AIDS vaccine field as all of us begin the hard work to translate this landmark result into true public health benefit.”

The trial, which began in 2003, had been disparaged by many critics as a waste of time and money because each of the two vaccines used in it had been shown in individual trials to produce no benefit. But researchers speculated that using them together, with one vaccine priming the immune system and the second boosting that response, would be more effective, and their optimism about this “prime-boost” combination has been validated.

Experts said that it will be many more years before a vaccine is available for wider use, but the results indicate at last that such a vaccine may, indeed, be possible. “It gives me cautious optimism,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which helped fund the study.

The primer in this combo is Alvac, made by Sanofi Pasteur, which uses a defanged canarypox virus to carry three synthetic HIV genes into the body. The boost comes from Aidsvax, originally made by VaxGen and now owned by the nonprofit group Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases. It contains a genetically engineered version of a protein from the HIV surface.

The study involved more than 16,000 volunteers in Thailand who had no unusual exposure to the virus, just the normal everyday risk. Half received four priming doses of Alvac and two boost doses of Aidsvax over a six-month period, and half received placebo shots.

After three years of follow-up, new HIV infections were observed in 74 of the 8,198 people who received the placebo, but in only 51 of the 8,197 given the vaccine, a statistically significant 31% reduction.

To the researchers’ disappointment, however, the vaccine did not reduce levels of HIV activity in those who became infected after being vaccinated.

Full details of the study will be released next month at a conference in Paris.

The vaccine was made using strains of virus that circulate commonly in Thailand, so it is not clear whether it would have any benefit elsewhere in the world. The manufacturers have not said whether they will attempt to license their products in Thailand.

At least 33 million people worldwide are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS, and 25 million have died, according to the World Health Organization. An estimated 7,500 are infected each day.

Aidsvax had failed in two large trials halted in 2003, showing no benefit to recipients. Another trial by Merck & Co. of a different vaccine was halted in 2007 when researchers found that the vaccine might increase the risk of contracting the virus.

The research shows men who spend even a few minutes in the company of an attractive woman perform less well in tests designed to measure brain function than those who chat to someone they do not find attractive.

Researchers who carried out the study, published in the Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology, think the reason may be that men use up so much of their brain function or ‘cognitive resources’ trying to impress beautiful women, they have little left for other tasks.

The findings have implications for the performance of men who flirt with women in the workplace, or even exam results in mixed-sex schools.

Women, however, were not affected by chatting to a handsome man.

This may be simply because men are programmed by evolution to think more about mating opportunities.

Psychologists at Radboud University in The Netherlands carried out the study after one of them was so struck on impressing an attractive woman he had never met before, that he could not remember his address when she asked him where he lived.

Researchers said it was as if he was so keen to make an impression he ‘temporarily absorbed most of his cognitive resources.’

To see if other men were affected in the same way, they recruited 40 male heterosexual students.

Each one performed a standard memory test where they had to observe a stream of letters and say, as fast as possible, if each one was the same as the one before last.

The volunteers then spent seven minutes chatting to male or female members of the research team before repeating the test.

The results showed men were slower and less accurate after trying to impress the women. The more they fancied them, the worse their score.

But when the task was repeated with a group of female volunteers, they did not get the same results. Memory scores stayed the same, whether they had chatted to a man or a woman.

In a report on their findings the researchers said: ‘We conclude men’s cognitive functioning may temporarily decline after an interaction with an attractive woman.’

Psychologist Dr George Fieldman, a member of the British Psychological Society, said the findings reflect the fact that men are programmed to think about ways to pass on their genes.

‘When a man meets a pretty woman, he is what we call ‘reproductively focused’.

‘But a woman also looks for signs of other attributes, such as wealth, youth and kindness. Just the look of the man would be unlikely to have the same effect.’

Daniel Saltman

We may think we know the telltale signs of lying, be it shifty eyes or nervous fidgeting. Professional interrogators look for such tells, too, assuming a suspect’s nervousness betrays his guilt. But interrogation can rattle even the innocent, so nervousness alone cannot distinguish liars from truth-tellers.

Scientists looking for better ways to detect lies have found a promising one: increasing suspects’ “cognitive load.” For a host of reasons, their theory goes, lying is more mentally taxing than telling the truth. Per­forming an extra task while lying or telling the truth should therefore affect the liars more.

To test this idea, deception researchers led by psychologist Aldert Vrij of the University of Portsmouth in England asked one group to lie con­vincingly and another group to tell the truth about a staged theft scenario that only the truth-tellers had experi­enced. A second pair of groups had to do the same but with a crucial twist: both the liars and the truth-tellers had to maintain eye contact while telling their stories.

Later, as researchers watched videotapes of the suspects’ accounts, they tallied verbal signs of cognitive load (such as fewer spatial details in the suspects’ stories) and nonverbal ones (such as fewer eyeblinks). The eyeblinks are particularly interesting because whereas rapid blinking suggests nervousness, fewer blinks are a sign of cognitive load, Vrij explains—and contrary to what police are taught, liars tend to blink less. Although the effect was subtle, the instruction to maintain eye contact did magnify the differences between the truth-tellers and the liars.

So do these differences actually make it easier for others to distinguish liars from truth-tellers? They do—but although students watching the videos had an easier time spotting a liar in
the eye-contact condition, their accuracy rates were still poor. Any group differences between liars and truth-tellers were dwarfed by differences be­tween individual participants. (For example, some people blink far less than others whether or not they are lying—and some are simply better able to carry a higher cognitive load.)

All this makes it hard to put the study’s findings into practice—especially out in the field, where the people most likely to lie are those who are good at lying. “In the real world, there’s no Pinocchio-like cue that distinguishes liars from truth-tellers,” says study co-author Ronald Fisher of Florida International University. Magnifying subtle differences may be the next best thing. [For more on lie detection, see “Portrait of a Lie,” by Matthias Gamer; Scientific American Mind, February/March 2009.]

Note: This article was originally printed with the title, “The Load of Lying.”

Posted on: August 12, 2009 3:52 PM, by Ethan Siegel

It wasn’t all that long ago that I wrote a five-part series on Hubble’s old camera, WFPC2. I call it “The Camera that Changed the Universe.” Part 1 focused on Hubble showing us just how deep, rich, and full of wonder our Universe is. Let’s remember how this happened.

The first thing we did was take a patch of sky that was relatively empty. No bright stars, no large galaxies or clusters, no planetary nebulae, just a little tiny patch of black, empty sky.

And then we point Hubble at it. And what do we do? We sit there. And wait. Collecting tiny, miniscule amounts of light. First, for minutes on end. And then the minutes turn into hours, and the hours turn into days. All the while, Hubble just patiently sits there, pointing at the same patch of empty sky. Over 10 days, Hubble took a photograph of the same exact patch on the sky 342 times. They then added up the light from all 342 of these images. The result?

The Hubble Deep Field, taken by WFPC2. Every point of light in this image (except for about 6 which are dim stars) is a galaxy. Thousands upon thousands of new galaxies were discovered. Some were only a few million light years away, others were over ten billion light years away. All told, we learned that there are at least one hundred billion galaxies in our Universe. And we learned it from this single photograph.

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Well, nearly a decade after this, they installed a new, better camera, called the Advanced Camera for Surveys. And to one-up the Hubble Deep Field, they picked a different blank patch of sky, went even deeper, and created the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Take a look:

There are approximately 10,000 separate galaxies in this tiny little piece of sky. Well, the good folks at NASA and the ESA have created a 3-D flythough simulation of the image, showing you what it would look like if you actually flew through this image! Now that you know how distances work in cosmology, all they had to do was measure the redshift of each galaxy and program it in. Tony Darnell narrates it, and I’ve embedded it for you right here! (You can start at the 2:53 mark if you want to skip the intro.) And remember, as you watch it, that each dot of light in this image is a galaxy, comparable to our own Milky Way, with nearly a trillion stars, only one of which is our own Sun.

If you only watch one astronomy video this year, make it this one. (If you’re going to watch two, watch this one, too.) This is unbelievable eye-candy, and I encourage you to enjoy it! Thanks to Nancy at Universe Today for pointing this out.

By Daniel Saltman

About 11,000 years ago a star in the constellation of Vela exploded. This bright supernova may have been visible to the first human farmers. Today the Vela supernova remnant marks the position of a relatively close and recent explosion in our Milky Way Galaxy. A roughly spherical, expanding shock wave is visible in X-rays. In the optical photograph shown here, the 100+ light-years span spherical blast wave is shown in detail. As gas flies away from the detonated star, it reacts with the interstellar medium, knocking away closely held electrons from even heavy elements. When the electrons recombine with these atoms, light in many different colors and energy bands is produced.
(Text adapted from the Astronomy Picture of the Day website)

This image has been chosen as NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day for February 13, 2007.

The Vela SNR image presented here is one of the largest deep-sky image ever released; the full-resolution version is a whopping 1.018 gigapixel, or 1,018 megapixel. For comparison, a modern digital camera produces images of just 8-10 megapixel and a good modern LCD screen is able to show just 1/1000^th of the full-res in a time. The uncompressed version of the file is nearly 3 Gigabytes.

The image’s field of view is about 9.3 × 8.5 arc degrees, so it shows a plague of sky nearly wide as 19 times the apparent diameter of the full Moon.

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Remarkable features Moving the cursor over the image will bring up an annotated version. Clicking on the image will bring up the zoomable high resolution version (half-res). NGC 2736 is the Pencil Nebula, a shockwave expanding through interstellar space at 500,000 kilometers per hour. The Pencil Nebula is part of the Vela Supernova Remnant. Initially the shockwave was moving at millions of kilometers per hour, but the weight of all the gas it has swept up has slowed it considerably. Vela SNR VideoWhy don’t you take three minutes of additional relax? Click the “play” button, adjust the volume and start a brief voyage throughout the delicate filaments of the Vela Supernova Remnant, the nice Gum nebulas and the many clusters rich of stars that populate this plague of sky. Enjoy! Do you want a better quality? To download the video in nearly DVD-quality right click here, then click “Save target as…” on the menu (format WMV- about 32 Megabyte). Find Chart The position of the Vela Supernova Remnant (in the red circle) in Vela. Image from Cartes du Ciel.

In order to produce the color image seen here, I worked with data coming from 19 different photographic plates taken at the UK Schmidt Observatory starting from 1975. The original file is 33,421 × 30,477 pixels with a resolution of about one arc second per pixel. The image show an area of sky large 9.3° × 8.5° (for comparison, the full-Moon is about 0.5° in diameter).

Not sure if this is a common thing or if these people just have a deer around that enjoys licking cats but here you go…

German geologists Thursday said they have discovered in India one of the world’s rarest rocks, dating back to the birth of the planet when the Earth was covered with a hot ocean of melted stone.

The fragment from the primeval crust is only the second ever discovered, said scientists at the University of Muenster.

The ancient magma formed more than 4 billion years ago as the planet slowly cooled in the Hadean period. The fragment, found in Orissa state, yields answers about what the Earth was like in those times.

The find was detailed in this week’s issue of the journal Nature.

The only other piece of early magma, which was located in Canada, has been dated at 4.3 billion years old.

Normally, old rock is sucked back into the ground by the churning of tectonic movement and melted again, but the finds show some pieces of the old crust still exist.

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Experts agree that at least fifty five percent of communication is through body language alone. Be aware though that women give off more messages through body language than men, but can read men much better. Be conscious of your own body language when talking to her as she may be seeing more than you think. This is something that is worth training yourself out of if you intend on playing the game for a while. It would give you the advantage if she is kept guessing.

Women, especially those who don’t really know what they want from one minute to the next can give off mixed signals. An older, more self aware woman will be far more informative in her body language. She may even use it to her own advantage!

The most common way women use to flirt using their body is to preen. Playing with her hair, tossing it or sliding it away from her eyes or face or checking her nails. A favourite trick is to do something with lipstick. The image of lips does something to a man, and women know it.

A slow crossing or uncrossing of legs is a classic flirt gesture. Any adjustment of clothing in a opening or loosening movement is a sign of definite interest. Just try not to stare too obviously!

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If chatting to a woman over drinks, stroking a glass, teasing condensation or ice is a sign she is also teasing you. This is a message that she may have plans for you if you are a good boy! If you don’t do it naturally (which you probably will) open your legs slightly as if unconsciously, this is the return signal for ‘bring it on’.

Mirroring is a classic body language tool to gain intimacy between you. The theory is that people like people like themselves. Therefore mirroring advertises that you may be just like her. Be careful with your timing though. If she leans forward, pause before you do the same. Keep the timings random and it won’t look like you’re doing it on purpose.

Check where she is pointing. for some reason we point to people we like. Don’t just look at her hands though because chances are she will have them under control. Look at the feet and legs. If they are pointing in your direction, then you may be in with a chance.

Blinking is for the ‘body language adept’ among you. We unconsciously blink more when we like someone and the size of our pupils increase. You can increase the effect you are having by speeding up your blink rate slightly. If she matches the increased pace then she likes you.

Body language is one of the most effective ways of communicating your intentions and feelings in a non verbal, therefore, non-confrontational way. This gives you the edge and saves embarrassment if you can gauge your chances before you even speak to her

Is this real? If you have the stomach, click on the image to head to an image gallery and our very ordinary investigation.

So, are these photos real? And the answer, amazingly is… probably yes.

Here in Brazil we have our very own Minhocuçu (Rhinodrilus e Glossoscolex spp) which can easily grow beyond half a meter in length an almost an inch in diameter.

And it’s not by far the longest earthworm recorded.

The Microchaetidae family in South Africa is a group where all species can reach over a meter in length. This is no folk tale or cryptozoological rumor: specimens of this size have been duly recorded for over a century already.

And even those are not the champions. The title goes to the Megascolecidae family from Australia. The record: 2,1 meters by 24 millimeters thick.

The worms in the images all look they are up to a meter in length, compatible with the recorded dimensions for the many species of the families we discussed. They are probably real, though exactly from where and what species my ordinary investigation didn’t come up with. Specialists, do enlighten us with further confirmation and identification! The first image of a girl holding up one, for instance, may not be of an earthworm but of is a caecilian.

Giant earthworms are harmless, but perhaps because of their plain appearance and our instinctive disgust of them all kinds of legends are associated with them, even in places where we can’t find those “little” couple-meter-earthworms.

The most curious legend is not exactly about an earthworm, but of a worm. A death worm. The Mongolian Death Worm. It can allegedly kill its victims by either spraying a lethal and blinding venom, or sending electrical discharges.

In Brazil, where we do have our Minhocuçus, there’s also the legend of Minhocão, 25 meters in size. Like the Mongolian Death Worm, its not very plausible such a creature exists.

Earthworms over a couple of meters in length are real and they can more than make up for a mix of disgust and fascination. Not only they can harm nobody and are actually important part of the ecosystem, in Brazil they are in danger as they make really excellent fishing bait. This is no joke (link in Portuguese).

UPDATE: Identified! Well, at least the where and who for the second photo. It’s from Lisa B, available on her flickr account. As Lisa wrote in the comments below, “that image was taken in the Bellavista Cloud Forest Reserve in Ecuador, and it is indeed a real worm.” Thank you! Apologies for not including credit beforehand, I reproduced the original gallery from erueru, linked below, and I’m happy to include the sources.

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