Swans on Tea

Scott and Scurvy
How the cure for scurvy was found and lost again.
They had a theory of the disease that made sense, fit the evidence, but was utterly wrong. They had arrived at the idea of an undetectable substance in their food, present in trace quantities, with a direct causative relationship to scurvy, but they [...]

That’s where snake oil comes from, right?
Infographic of the benefits of various supplements.
Snake Oil? Scientific evidence for popular health supplements
They claim this is all based on large human blind placebo-controlled studies, and here are those studies. I wonder, though, where do you get blind placebos?

Watch out, Colorado
Altitude Causes Weight Loss Without Exercise
The scientists ferried 20 overweight, middle-aged men by train and cable car to a research station perched 1,000 feet below the peak of Germany’s highest mountain, Zugspitze. During the week-long stay, the men could eat and drink as much as they liked and were forbidden from any exercise [...]

Mundane examples of energy at the Hamiltonian Function.
The energy of walking up a hill.

Industrial robot hones virtual autopsies
The researchers are already pioneers of virtual autopsies, or “virtopsies”, which use non-invasive imaging of a body inside and out rather than the radical post-mortem surgery typically used to determine cause of death.
Now they are using a robot, dubbed Virtobot, to carry out parts of that process, making it more reliable [...]

Skulls in the Stars: Lord Rayleigh on Darwin
Darwin set out to show that insects play a crucial role in cross-pollinating plants, carrying pollen from one flower to another, and he published his results on orchids in a book in 1862, Fertilisation of Orchids. Among those results is the insightful observation that the colors [...]

An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All
This isn’t a religious dispute, like the debate over creationism and intelligent design. It’s a challenge to traditional science that crosses party, class, and religious lines. It is partly a reaction to Big Pharma’s blunders and PR missteps, from Vioxx to illegal marketing ploys, [...]

Trial raises doubts over alternative pain therapy for arthritis
“It appears that any perceived benefit obtained from wearing a magnetic or copper bracelet can be attributed to psychological placebo effects. People tend to buy them when they are in a lot of pain, then when the pain eases off over time they attribute this to the [...]

sciencegeekgirl: If a boy pees on the floor and there’s nobody there to see it
The boys’ urinals were often surrounded by a puddle of “liquid.” Were the urinals weeping water? Or were the boys purposely urinating on the floor (as the janitor believed)? And, most importantly, how can we use our good friend SCIENCE [...]

“You can say that again” — The King of Id
My molar has apparently abdicated — it rejected its crown. Ugh. Fortunately I was able to have the dentist see me and fix my little problem.

An assassination attempt, with emphasis on ass: the bomb was concealed in the orifice of choice for concealing items. I’d say convenient orifice, but it’s probably not all that convenient.
The bomb couldn’t be that big, and water (being a large fraction of the human body) isn’t very good shrapnel.
While the assassination proved unsuccessful, [...]

Schizophrenia
A very thoughtful, and thought-provoking, chapter from an upcoming book.
If I’d had cancer, people would have rallied around, but because I had schizophrenia, few wanted to know.
They were afraid.