Weird News of the World Thread - Part 2

Do You Suffer From 'Exploding Head Syndrome'? You're Not Alone.

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http://io9.com/do-you-suffer-from-exploding-head-syndrome-youre-not-a-1694503780

I've never even heard of this. Has anyone here on the Hype ever experienced this?


I've experienced this a few times, but always wrote it off as waking from a bad dream. It can be pretty intense, one moment you'll be having a nice dream when a sudden very loud noise awakens you, like a sudden loud clap of thunder.
 
I've experienced this a few times, but always wrote it off as waking from a bad dream. It can be pretty intense, one moment you'll be having a nice dream when a sudden very loud noise awakens you, like a sudden loud clap of thunder.

That's got to be an odd experience. I've had the thing were you kind of fall asleep and then something crazy happens and you jolt awake really quick but never any loud explosions in my head that I can remember. Does this happen fairly regularly?
 
Fish Oil Not So Perfect After All

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In the American tradition of overdosing on vitamins in pill form instead of eating actual foods packed with the nutrients themselves, fish oil is one of our favorite go-to accompaniments to our disgusting junk food habit. In fact, it's become the third-most ingested supplement in the U.S., presumably because we believe it's doing something. Turns out, it's not.

According to a report in the Well blog at the New York Times, fish oil has long been praised for improving heart health and reducing the risk of stroke, when neither of those things are exactly true.

From 2005 to 2012, at least two dozen rigorous studies of fish oil were published in leading medical journals, most of which looked at whether fish oil could prevent cardiovascular events in high-risk populations. These were people who had a history of heart disease or strong risk factors for it, like high cholesterol, hypertension or Type 2 diabetes.

All but two of these studies found that compared with a placebo, fish oil showed no benefit.​

If we can't trust Big Vitamin, who can we trust?

Sure, the omega-3s that you find in your fish oil supplement may logically appear to contribute to a reduction in heart disease and blood clots. As the Times puts it, "Omega-3s can also reduce inflammation, which plays a role in atherosclerosis." Yeah, okay, that's one thing. But in large-scale studies fish oil contributes to that cause very negligibly. Most of our info on the stuff is completely out of date, having been set into the vitamin canon during studies of the late 90s, when our understanding of cardiovascular health was very different. You gotta be kidding us:

"But since then, there has been a spate of studies showing no benefit," said Dr. James Stein, the director of preventive cardiology at University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics. Among them was a clinical trial of 12,000 people, published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2013, that found that a gram of fish oil daily did not reduce the rate of death from heart attacks and strokes in people with evidence of atherosclerosis.​

The chief of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Dr. JoAnn Manson, claims that the jury is still out, and that fish oil could helpfully contribute to prevention of other diseases such as cancer and depression. But for now, maybe just eat a fatty fish or two.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/...-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

The vitamin industry as a whole is unregulated and full of crap as far as I'm concerned
 
Playboy Mansion Allegedly Built Secret Tunnels for Celebrity Neighbors

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A new report from Playboy Magazine claims old blueprints link the Playboy Mansion to several neighboring celebrity homes via a series of secret tunnels.

Magazine staffers claim they discovered excavation photos taken in the 1970's and eventually found tunnel blueprints stored in the Mansion basement purporting to lead the (now-former) homes of actors like "Mr. J. Nicholson," "Mr. W. Beatty," "Mr. K. Douglas" and "Mr. J. Caan."

We asked if we could see the tunnels. A staff member said, off the record, "I heard they were closed up sometime in 1989." Hugh Hefner married Playmate Kimberley Conrad in 1989. We went back to the general manager, and he said he couldn't discuss it further.

We then asked The Mansion staff for more info about the celebrity tunnels, and we were told Mr. Hefner did not wish to comment. We reached out to reps for Nicholson, Caan, Douglas and Beatty, and they have not agreed to comment.​

It's unclear if the tunnels were ever actually constructed, though polaroids on the Playboy website suggest at least some excavation work was done.

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http://gawker.com/did-a-bunch-of-celebrities-have-secret-tunnels-to-the-p-1694667548

I would love to have a secret tunnel to the Playboy mansion
 
That's got to be an odd experience. I've had the thing were you kind of fall asleep and then something crazy happens and you jolt awake really quick but never any loud explosions in my head that I can remember. Does this happen fairly regularly?

It used to happen a lot more often than it does now, I find if I go to bed stressed about something or feeling a lot of anxiety it is a lot more likely to happen. Got into the habit of meditating before bed to lessen any negative feelings.
 
It used to happen a lot more often than it does now, I find if I go to bed stressed about something or feeling a lot of anxiety it is a lot more likely to happen. Got into the habit of meditating before bed to lessen any negative feelings.

Glad to hear it's not too disruptive for you, I can imagine it would screw me all up. My sleep schedule is already pretty weird
 
Why the Plastic Recycling Market Just Crashed

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Recycling is not just a nice thing that hippies do anymore. Recycling is a business—a massive one whose wheels are greased by money, money, and more money. Nowhere is this more apparent right now than in the recycled plastic market, where prices have plunged 50 percent in just six months.

“One day it’s profitable to recycle a bottle, and the next day some global economic number changes and that same bottle is trash,” says Stacey Vanek Smith in NPR’s Planet Money podcast. That global economic number is the price of oil, which you may have noticed has also plunged. That’s been great for drivers filling up the gas station, but it’s also hit the recycling industry hard. It’s all interconnected.

Our plastic bags, for example, are sent off to China, where they become anything from toothbrushes to carpet. But plastic bags are especially hard to clean, so they’re relatively expensive to recycle. Now that oil is cheap, it’s also cheap to make new plastic. China doesn’t want to buy our gunky old plastic bags anymore.

To make matters worse for recyclers, paper has also taken a hit recently for the boring old reason of the Euro getting weak. The full (non-boring!) Planet Money episode connects the dots to explain the problem with paper. It is just another example of our massive global economy, connected by trash.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2015/03/27/395815221/episode-613-trash

The Butterfly Effect in full swing
 
For Sale on eBay: Military Vehicle To Start Your Robot Army

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Ever had a burning desire to start your own robot army? Well, now might be your chance, provided you have $55,000 to spare. Someone is selling an experimental unmanned military vehicle on eBay. (Death ray not included.)

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the U.S. military had a renewed push to develop unmanned vehicles. Most Americans, of course, are familiar with the unmanned aerial vehicles (usually called drones) that are so commonplace in the military today. But we often forget about the experiments with ground vehicles which were being developed to act as surveillance, supply, and even combat support on the battlefield.

This DEMO III unit was an experimental unmanned ground vehicle (UGV), which was part of that early 2000s effort. The military's goal with the DEMO III program was to develop small vehicles able to, "drive autonomously at speeds of up to 40 mph on roads, 20 mph off road by day, and 10 mph off road by night or in foul weather conditions."

Like many UGVs of the period, it was a stepping stone to the unmanned vehicles of the future. But it's unclear precisely what this little guy might be capable of, given the fact that the seller hasn't even had a chance to play with the thing since acquiring it from the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

"I bought it because it was unique and one of a kind. I'm not sure what kind of software it has or needs, because I haven't had the time to experiment with it yet," the seller told me over email.

The eBay listing explains: "This will not be sold or shipped to anyone who cannot prove to me that: (1) it will not be sent overseas and (2) it will not be used directly or indirectly for anything that will cause the FBI to show up at my door."

I asked the seller if he had to sign anything that said he wouldn't sell it to anyone who might send it overseas. Surprisingly, he didn't.

"I didn't have to sign anything like this," he said through email. "I'm taking it upon myself to take this precaution, because it seems to me that I should have had to sign something."

As an experienced purchaser of government surplus, he's accustomed to signing these kinds of documents. Including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) statements, which even apply to exercise equipment.

"I mean really, if I have to sign ITAR compliance statements to pick up a used stair master from NASA Goddard, then this should have been a no-brainer, but the GSA is not a very competent organization if you know what I mean," he said.

But this DEMO III unit isn't going to go full Skynet anytime soon. It's not weaponized and it doesn't come with the Lidar that might allow for autonomous driving capabilities. Even if nobody buys the vehicle, the seller just wants to learn how to play with the thing.

"If nothing else, I'm hoping to make contact with someone who can help me to operate it."

http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/for-...hicle-to-start-1694615564/+kcampbelldollaghan

I swear you can find damn near anything on the internet these days
 
Cattle Yard Aroma Carries Antibiotics and Antibiotic-Resistant DNA

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You don't need to see a cattle yard to identify its existence; the smell alone is usually enough. Now, though, you're breathing in not just the aromatic compounds you likely know well—but a selection of antibiotics and antibiotic-resistant DNA, too.

A new study by researchers from Texas Tech University sought to explore the airborne transmission of antibiotics from cattle yards. During a six-month period, the team gathered air samples—both up- and down-wind—from 10 commercial cattle yards within 200 miles of Lubbock, Texas. Each of the yards was home to between 20,000 and 50,000 cattle.

Analysis of the samples revealed that the sample taken down-wind were dramatically different to those taken up-wind, containing a wide range of particulate matter. In particular, the researchers found the antibiotics tetracycline, chlortetracycline, and oxytetracycline in 60 percent the down-wind samples. Oxytetracycline was found in all of them.

"[Particulate matter] generated at beef cattle feedyards contains distinct communities of bacteria, antibiotics, and antibiotic resistance gene sequences," write the authors. "Thus there is significant potential for widespread distribution of antibiotics, bacteria, and genetic material that encodes antibiotic resistan ce via airborne [partoculate matter] as a result of the large mass of fine particles released daily from beef cattle feedyards in the Central Plains of the United States."

The researchers also point out that distribution can be further fueled by "significant wind energy potentials and frequent wind events in this region." Given that the consumption of antibiotics and antibiotic-resistant DNA by humans can lead to antibiotic resistance, this mode of transportation is of some concern—especially for the vegetarians among us.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/03/...istant-bacteria-from-cattle-are-now-airborne/

That's crazy
 
Why No Century Will Ever Start on a Sunday, Wednesday or Friday

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The Gregorian calendar is full of wonderful mathematical quirks, and here's one of them: under its regime, a century will never start on a Sunday. Or a Wednesday or Friday, for that matter.

The reason is (fairly) straightforward. The Gregorian calendar completely cycles every 400 years; add 400 years to any date, and the day of the week will be exactly the same. That means that there are only four different days with which a century can begin, and they happen to be Monday, Saturday, Thursday, or Tuesday (in that that order, for each consecutive century). If that makes your head hurt, watch the video—which explains how the cyclical nature comes about in a little more detail.

http://gizmodo.com/why-no-century-will-ever-start-on-a-sunday-wednesday-o-1694722806

I did not know that
 
A Medieval Recipe Could Kill Hospital Superbugs. No, Really.

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Staph infections are one of the most pervasive and annoying bacterial infections faced by hospitals every year. It infects half a million people in the US every year, with symptoms ranging from skin infections to heart problems — and worse, some strains (commonly known as MRSA) have evolved to resist common antibiotics.

As it turns out, medieval communities also faced staph — in particular, with staph causing eye sores called styes. Our ancestors had an old-timey cure, too, written in Old English in Bald's Leechbook:

Take cropleek and garlic, of both equal quantities, pound them well together, take wine and bullocks’ gall, of both equal quantities, mix with the leek, put this then into a brazen vessel, let it stand nine days in the brass vessel, wring out through a cloth and clear it well, put it into a horn, and about night time apply it with a feather to the eye; the best leechdom.​

Christina Lee, the Viking studies professor who came across the recipe, decided to take it to a microbiologist at her university to test. They painstakingly followed the recipe — not easy, when since modern crop varieties differ significantly to the older ones.

They tested the homebrew potion on scraps of skin taken from mice infected with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, the most difficult-to-kill version of staph. Surprisingly, the recipe killed 90 per cent of the bacteria — the same success rate as Vancomycin, the drug hospitals use to treat MRSA. An American researcher contributing to the project found a similar rate when he repeated the effect.

Now, researchers need to work out which particular compound worked the magic. The team also tested the individual ingredients on their own, and found no effect on the MRSA strain; it seems that there's something about steeping in a brazen vessel that bacteria just doesn't like. (Of course, it's worth mentioning that test-tube results don't always play out so well in the real world.)

The findings are due to be presented at a conference this week in Birmingham, UK. Until then, just make sure you stock up on garlic, bile salt, and wine. Particularly the wine.

http://www.newscientist.com/article...ills-hospital-superbug-mrsa.html#.VRoQd_nF9VU

Kind of cool to think they really had some stuff figured out even way back then
 
Ya the vitamin world is a bunch of garbage. Most of the "supplements" barely even contain what they claim. It's sad that states like Utah lobby so hard to keep them un-regulated. IMO they need to be regulated as quickly as possible to wash away all the BS
 
Getty Oil Heir Found Dead in Suspicious Scene Involving Rectal Injury

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Law enforcement officers have reportedly detained the former girlfriend of Andrew Rork Getty, an heir to the Getty Oil fortune who was discovered dead Tuesday "under suspicious circumstances" apparently involving a serious rectal injury.

Getty, the grandson of oil scion J Paul Getty, was in his late 40s.

It's still unclear what happened—Getty's ex-girlfriend, who called 911, apparently told the operator he had suffered a cardiac arrest, and TMZ's initial report contained a now-excised reference to a gunshot wound to the face. Now, in an updated post, TMZ reports Getty's death involved a "traumatic injury to the rectal area" with "significant bleeding."

It also wasn't the first time cops had responded to the address—the LA Times reports Getty sought the restraining order against her as recently as two weeks ago. And, via TMZ:

Our sources say Andrew and his ex-girlfriend have a storied history with the LAPD. Cops have been to his residence 31 times, mostly for domestic disturbances. Our sources say they have both frequently been under the influence of drugs during the police visits.

We're told the drugs cops found in the past were prescriptions.

As for their relationship, we're told he has a restraining order against her and she has been placed under a 5150 psychiatric hold in the past, after injuring cops when they responded to the house. We're also told she's allegedly broken into Andrew's house on numerous occasions.​

http://www.tmz.com/2015/03/31/andrew-getty-dead-j-paul-getty-grandson-death-girlfriend/

Crappy way to go out
 
Pennsylvania Man Killed By His Dead Mother-In-Law

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A Pennsylvania man who basically died at the hands of his dead mother-in-law Monday will reportedly be laid to rest this week "right in front" of the spot where she killed him.

Ed Kublius, a caretaker at the St. Joseph's Cemetery, tells WNEP 74-year-old Stephen Woytack and his wife, Lucy, liked to visit the cemetery every Easter to pay their respects. Kublius was working nearby Monday when Woytack—tending to his mother-in-law's gravesite—got trapped underneath her gravestone. Via the Times-Tribune:

Stephen and Lucy Woytack were attaching a religious ornament to the stone when it toppled, pinning Mr. Woytack underneath, according to Lackawanna County Coroner Tim Rowland. The warmer weather "made the terrain, monument and its base unstable," Mr. Rowland said in an emailed press release Monday. The coroner listed the manner of death as accidental.

For years, cemetery caretaker Ed Kubilus saw the Woytacks when they visited the gravesite, and he said he knew Mr. Woytack well. After the stone fell on her husband, Mrs. Woytack found Mr. Kubilus on the other side of the cemetery. He called police and rushed to the gravesite, where he tried to lift the 300- to 400-pound granite block, but couldn't. Police arrived a few minutes later, but by then it was too late, he said.​

Kublius told the Times-Tribune shifting gravestones can be an issue in the spring when the ground begins to thaw out.

"It's just a freak thing that happened," he told the paper. "It's heartbreaking."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...-mother-in-laws-gravesite/?wprss=rss_homepage

All the more reason why I want to be cremated
 
Teen Finds Parents Dead in Home With Injuries From Chainsaw

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A Philadelphia-area couple was discovered dead in their home by their teen son on Tuesday, bearing what authorities say were "severe" cuts from a chainsaw, the Associated Press reports.

From NBC Philadelphia:

The 14-year-old boy called police around 12:50 p.m. and reported he found his parents unresponsive with lacerations from a chainsaw in their home on the 1100 block of Country Lane in Lower Moreland.

Police arrived at the home and found the bodies of the 48-year-old man and his 43-year-old wife inside.​

"The death of the female seems to be an apparent homicide, however, the investigation is continuing," said First Assistant District Attorney Kevin Steele. "This is preliminary at this point."

Steele told The Intelligencer a chainsaw was found inside the house.

According to WPVI-TV, police had been called to the home in the past for unspecified domestic issues. Autopsies to determine cause of death are scheduled for Wednesday.

http://lancasteronline.com/news/pen...cle_a11c5013-88dd-5d8e-967c-6f8841fd92f2.html

Man that is horrible
 
Study Shows Internet Access Inflates Your Sense of Internal Knowledge

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If you don't know something, you Google it. Of course you do. But researchers suggest that the digital fast track to knowledge can inflate our sense of how much information is actually stored away in our brain.

Researchers from Yale have carried out experiments to investigate how Internet searching changes the way people rate their own internal knowledge. Using over 1,000 student participants, the team carried out a series of nine different tests that compared participants who used the Internet for knowledge acquisition to those using other means. The results appear to suggest that the use of the Internet boosts perception of knowledge, even when it's about something unrelated to previous online exploration.

For instance, in one example participants were asked to research how a zip works: some used the Internet, others read about the topic from a print out. Later, those participants were asked about zips and also about a completely unrelated topic—why cloudy nights were warmer than non-cloudy nights. Those who had used the Internet were more confident about their answers to the latter question whether they were right or not, even though they hadn't read anything about it. There are plenty more examples like this in their paper. Matthew Fisher, one of the researchers, explained to The Telegraph:

"The Internet is such a powerful environment, where you can enter any question, and you basically have access to the world's knowledge at your fingertips. It becomes easier to confuse your own knowledge with this external source. When people are truly on their own, they may be wildly inaccurate about how much they know and how dependent they are on the Internet."​

In fact, Internet-using participants also turned out to view themselves not just as more knowledgeable, but as more intelligent than the other participants in the study, too. None of this is necessarily a bad thing, of course—but it does mean that those of us who spend a lot of time reading the Internet might not be quite as sharp as we think we are.

http://www.engadget.com/2015/04/01/...as-your-googling-suggests/?ncid=rss_truncated

So the internet turns everyone into a know-it-all? Did we really need a stud to tell us this? They could have just visited these forums and come to this conclusion
 
This Guy Could Have Deleted Everything on YouTube, but He Resisted

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Some powers are so terrible and vast that they should be denied to humankind, for we would not know how to wield them responsibly. For example: Kamil Hismatullin, a Russian hacker and security tinkerer, briefly had the ability to delete everything on YouTube.

Smart tech firms like Google and Facebook routinely pay hackers and miscellaneous security geeks to find (and report) security flaws. This way, companies can plug the holes before someone less scrupulous can use them to mess with our data online. It’s a good system, and as Hismatullin, one such geek, details in a personal blog post, he recently landed a whopper: the ability to instantly delete any video on YouTube. All it took was sending a very, very short string of text to the site, and no matter whose video you’d targeted, it’d vanish as if the owner himself had trashed it.

He uploaded a video of the attack in action, if you’re curious:

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What’s more surprising than the fact that it only took Hismatullin several hours to find this vulnerability is that he didn’t go wild with power, insane with cyberstrength and video bloodlust. He could’ve nuked Gangnam Style and its 2.2 billion views. He could’ve erased Rickroll, Rihanna, Macklemore, Minecraft, and Charlie Bit My Finger. Surely he could’ve automated the process and just wiped YouTube into a big vacuum. No more videos, no more Kimmel Pranks, no more content. He could have been a God. We would’ve submitted to him, given him our clothes and coins and fealty. But instead he handed it all over to Google for a $5,000 bounty, which really seems very low!

In general I spent 6-7 hours to research, considering that couple of hours I’ve fought the urge to clean up Bieber’s channel haha.

Although it was an early Saturday’s morning in SF when I reported issue, Google sec team replied very fast, since this vuln could create utter havoc in a matter of minutes in the bad hands who can used this vulnerability to extort people or simply disrupt YouTube by deleting massive amounts of videos in a very short period of time. It was fixed in several hours, Google rewarded me $5k and luckily no Bieber videos were harmed :D

Already in the comments, he’s realized he got lowballed: “Yes, I agree with you, this bug is worth more than $5k. To be honest I expected $15k-$20k.”

http://kamil.hism.ru/posts/about-vrg-and-delete-any-youtube-video-issue.html

I would have gone mad with that power
 
I would have laughed at that $5,000 offer. He found a hole that would have caused a nightmare for YouTube if it had been found and exploited by less honest people. And the best Youtube can offer the person that found the hole so it could be closed is $5,000 in return? Thats an insult.
 
A Fire Has Raged Beneath London For 24 Hours Straight

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The most complex and important parts of our city are below our feet. If things go right, we never even notice the thick layer cake of cables, pipes, insulation, and refuse that are packed right under the pavement. But in London yesterday and today, the city got a smokey reminder.

As Gizmodo UK reports, a massive electrical fire—possibly fed by a gas leak—erupted in London yesterday afternoon. Because of the nature of the fire, firefighters were forced to let burn for 24 hours, according to the BBC, and thousands of London residents were evacuated while emergency crews sprayed down buildings nearby the manhole covers that were spitting flames into the street. Why? Because it was safer than trying to stop the fire itself, which may have led to an explosion.

As a spokesperson told The London Evening Standard, “it’s safer for us to allow the flames to continue while we work with the utility company to isolate and cap the main. You may see flames coming up from the ground but that’s a safer way of dealing with it.”

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Why Manhole Fires Are Increasing

Thankfully, no one was hurt in the fire, and the city now says the blaze is under control. But it’s a reminder that aging infrastructure is becoming a bigger problem than ever in our cities. About a month ago, Reuters published a report on the growing problems here in New York, where in a single week in February ConEd reported 600 fires in manholes. Reuters says there’s an average of six manhole incidents a day in NYC.

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There are plenty of reasons why fires in the electrical systems just below street level are growing more and more common. The weather doesn’t help: Street salt, rats, and construction mistakes can penetrate insulation and spark fires. A single cable can carry many thousands of volts—the corroded cables create small fires and smoke, which build up until the manholes explode with incredible and dangerous force.

It’s just another example of how urban infrastructure, some of it installed in the early years of the 20th century, is literally fraying at the ends. But it’s one of the most pressing, and one of the most difficult to imagine solving, since replacing every cable housing on every city street is impossible.

How Machine Learning Could Help

So, does this mean that NYC, London, and other aging cities need to replace thousands of miles of cabling under their busy streets? In some places, yes. But Reuters points out that researchers are working on alternatives, too.

A few years ago, a team at MIT and Columbia set out to use machine learning to figure out where and when these manhole fires would occur in NYC. They used data mining to pull information about the age and vulnerability of ConEd’s cabling and manholes (of which there are 51,000!) recorded on “tickets” by the company. The scientists were able to parse these data into an algorithm that could predict where the next explosions or fires were likely to occur.

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“We started this project with a large quantity of disparate, noisy (and at the time, unintelligible) data, with no guarantee or clear indication that this data could be useful for prediction, and a murky goal of predicting ‘serious’ events,” write the authors in a study about the project. But they were able to form a predictive model that has already been implemented in Brooklyn—to “excellent” results, they add, saying that their model is now “being extended to all other boroughs.”

Their project gives us a glimpse at the realistic middle ground between ignoring our infrastructure woes until our cities collapse and the doomsday scenario where we’ll need to replace every inch of street over the next few decades. For now, the fire in London will keep smoldering—but in the future, city engineers might know where and when to look out for the next problem.

http://gizmodo.com/a-fire-has-raged-beneath-london-for-24-hours-straight-1695294815

Had no idea that was such a problem but it makes sense when you think how old all that stuff is
 
The EU Is Planning Antitrust Charges Against Google

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The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the European Union is preparing to level antitrust charges at Google "in the next few weeks."

The culmination of a five-year investigation, a "person familiar with the matter" tells the newspaper that the EU is putting the finishing touches to charges. That includes asking companies that had previously submitted confidential complaints against Google to the Union to publish information publicly. Those companies, the newspaper writes, include shopping, local and travel firms, and the requests signals a "a strong indication that formal antitrust charges [are] being prepared" according to antitrust experts.

In the past, Google has denied anti-competitive behavior, pointing to product failures—Google+, anyone?—as a sign that competition is alive and well. Officials at the EU disagree The last antitrust chief, Joaquín Almunia, tried to push through antitrust charges against Google three times during his tenure; Margrethe Vestager, his replacement, is said to be planning "to move the case forward in a relatively short time frame," according to the Journal.

What will come of the charges if they materialize remains to be seen. Competition cases are heard by the EU commission, which acts judge and jury in competition cases, and appeals are rarely overturned. If Google were found guilty, it could be fined up to 10 percent of its annual revenue. Equally, it's plausible that the search giant could attempt to strike some kind of settlement deal with the EU, in which it resolves to change its policies.

All that remains to be seen, of course. But either way, if the stories are accurate, it seems the EU is about to get serious on Google.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/eu-lays...google-1427928793?cb=logged0.2577170485826018

Ouch, sounds like the big G is going to be forking out a lot of cash
 
The Most Popular Antidepressants Are Based On An Outdated Theory

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One in ten Americans takes an anti-depressant drug like Zoloft or Prozac. These drugs have been shown to work in some patients, but their design is based on a so-called “chemical imbalance” theory of depression that is incomplete, at best.

The number of people taking antidepressants has increased by over 400% since the early ‘90s. In a certain light, this could be perceived as a success for public health; it is clear, for example, that tens of millions of people have found antidepressants to be effective. What’s less clear is why these medications work, but decades of research on the subject suggest that an explanation parroted in ad campaigns and physicians’ offices alike – that depression can be chalked up to low levels of serotonin in the brain – is insufficient.

“Chemical imbalance is sort of last-century thinking. It’s much more complicated than that,” Dr. Joseph Coyle, a professor of neuroscience at Harvard Medical School, told NPR in 2012. “It’s really an outmoded way of thinking.”

This is the story of how pharmaceutical companies and psychiatrists convinced the public that depression was the result of a simple chemical imbalance – and how scientists, patients, and psychiatrists are working to piece together the more complicated truth.

Better Thinking (And Feeling) Through Chemistry

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Psychiatry in the 1950s was a field in transition. Mental disorders were often believed to be the direct result of social circumstance, and many psychiatrists relied on talk therapy to treat their patients. The few drug therapies that did exist were rarely well-suited for treating particular maladies. Morphine and opium were sometimes used to treat depression, while insulin shock therapy was used to render uncooperative schizophrenic patients comatose.

By the end of the 1950s, Thorazine, a new psychiatric drug, had become the treatment of choice for schizophrenia. Thorazine simplified the problem of safely keeping aggressive patients calm and docile, and was seen as far less cruel than putting those patients in a coma.

During the 1960s, researchers confirmed that neurotransmitters, like dopamine or serotonin, served as the chemical signals that allowed neurons to communicate, underpinning much of the brain’s function. Thorazine was soon found to inhibit dopamine receptors in mice, blocking the normal effects of dopamine, and potentially explaining its sedating effects in humans. [Image Credit: Dan Century | CC BY 2.0]

Drugs similar to Thorazine were then developed on the premise that excessive dopamine in the brain could be responsible for certain aspects of schizophrenia. These drugs quickly demonstrated that the chemical manipulation of neurotransmitters could be effective in treating mental disorders.

Psychiatry had lagged behind other medical fields for decades, in large part because it lacked treatments tailored to treat specific conditions. Thorazine helped accelerate the acceptance of biological psychiatry, which focused on the biological basis of mental disorders. Biological psychiatry also provided a welcome opportunity for psychiatrists to work directly with pharmaceutical companies to develop targeted, drug-based treatments for mental disorders. Change was in the air.

Pinpointing Low Serotonin As The Culprit Behind Depression

Psychiatrists in the mid-20th century were also keen to develop drug therapies for more common mental disorders, like depression. Case reports had documented mood changes in patients being treated with various drugs for non-psychiatric illnesses. Iproniazid, used to treat tuberculosis, seemed to improve patients’ moods, while reserpine, originally used to manage high blood pressure, appeared to mimic depression. Just why either of these drugs influenced mood remained anyone’s bet.

Thorazine’s documented effects on dopamine receptors raised the possibility that iproniazid and reserpine might be influencing mood via their effects on some neurotransmitter. Remarkably, this appeared to be the case. Iproniazid increased serotonin levels in the brain, while reserpine decreased serotonin levels. Other drugs which had similarly shown promise as anti-depressants in the 1950s, like imipramine, were also shown to raise serotonin levels. [Image Credit: Kevin Dooley | CC BY 2.0]

These examples (with the exception of reserpine’s serotonin-sapping effects – more on this later) suggested that low serotonin might be responsible for depression’s symptoms, and that boosting serotonin’s levels might alleviate these symptoms. In other words, they indicated that depression could be due to a chemical imbalance in the brain, and that this imbalance could be corrected through the targeted use of proper drugs.



Based on rodent studies, researchers could reasonably surmise that the drugs would increase serotonin levels. What they couldn’t assume was that a boost in serotonin levels would be of benefit to people suffering from depression. And yet, at least for some patients, the therapeutic effects of these drugs were undeniable. But these early anti-depressants caused severe side effects, and psychiatrists were skeptical that patients would agree to take them. Pharmaceutical companies saw a major (and, potentially, majorly lucrative) opportunity: A drug that could increase serotonin levels without causing severe side effects could revolutionize the treatment of depression.

These companies began hunting for new chemicals that met these criteria.

A New Class Of Antidepressants

In the early 1970s, pharmaceutical chemists struck gold with the invention of drugs like fluoxetine (Prozac) and sertraline (Zoloft). These compounds were part of a new class of anti-depressants, called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), that raised serotonin levels by preventing neurons from recycling serotonin that had already been released. Promisingly, SSRIs were about as good at treating depression as their predecessors, but they caused milder side-effects.

It took about twenty years for the first SSRIs to pass through clinical trials and receive FDA approval. Psychiatrists and drug companies alike were happy to trumpet a biological explanation for depression (low serotonin), and an appropriate, relatively safe remedy (SSRIs).

“Why am I depressed, and what can I do about it?” a patient might ask. “Well, there’s research indicating that depression is related to low levels of serotonin,” a psychiatrist might reply. “And here’s a pill that will increase your serotonin levels, and alleviate your depression.”

Television commercials, too, leaned heavily on the chemical imbalance theory:

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The ad, like many pharmaceutical commercials, was careful not to make absolute claims about Zoloft’s effectiveness. Instead, it contextualized a definitive statement (that Zoloft works to correct an imbalance) with an inconclusive one (i.e. that while its cause is unknown, depression may be related to an imbalance of natural chemicals). Couched in this careful language was an implication, that psychiatrists not only had a solid grasp of depression’s biological underpinnings, but had deduced from this understanding how to treat its symptoms in a targeted way.

It’s difficult to say what effect direct-to-consumer marketing campaigns like this one had on antidepressant sales, but it seems reasonable to assume that it was significant; by 2006, anti-depressants in the U.S. represented the most popular category of prescription drug.

But those familiar with depression know that it can often resist treatment. Not every person faced with depression can be helped by anti-depressants designed to “correct” a supposed serotonin deficit – a fact that underscores the insufficiency of the chemical imbalance theory, and the complexity of depression, in general.

The Myth Of The Chemical Imbalance Theory

There is no question that the chemical imbalance theory has spurred chemists to invent new anti-depressants, or that these anti-depressants have been shown to work; but proof that low serotonin is to blame for depression – and that boosting serotonin levels is the key to its treatment – has eluded researchers.

For starters, it is impossible to directly measure brain serotonin levels in humans. You can’t sample human brain tissue without also destroying it. A crude work-around involves measuring levels of a serotonin metabolite, 5-HIAA, in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), which can only be obtained with a spinal tap. A handful of studies from the 1980s (like this one) found slightly decreased 5-HIAA in the CSF of depressed and suicidal patients, while later studies have produced conflicting results on whether SSRIs lower or raise CSF levels of 5-HIAA. These studies are all circumstantial with regards to actual serotonin levels, though, and the fact remains there is no direct evidence of a chemical imbalance underlying depression.

The corollary to the chemical imbalance theory, which implies that raising brain serotonin levels alleviates depression, has also been hard to prove. As mentioned previously, the serotonin-depleting drug reserpine was itself shown to be an effective anti-depressant in the 1950s, the same decade in which other studies claimed that reserpine caused depression-like symptoms. At the time, few psychiatrists acknowledged these conflicting reports, as the studies muddled a beautiful, though incorrect, theory. Tianeptine is another drug that decreases serotonin levels while also serving as a bona-fide anti-depressant. Tianeptine does just the opposite of SSRIs – it enhances serotonin reuptake. Wellbutrin is a third anti-depressant that doesn’t increase serotonin levels. You get the picture.

If you prefer your data to be derived more accurately, but less relevantly, from rodents, you might consider a recent meta-analysis carried out by researchers led by McMaster University psychologist Paul Andrews. Their investigation revealed that, in rodents, depression was usually associated with elevated serotonin levels. Andrews argues that depression is therefore a disorder of too much serotonin, but the ambiguous truth is that different experiments have shown “activation or blockage of certain serotonin receptors [to improve] or worsen depression symptoms in an unpredictable manner.”

Other problems with the chemical imbalance model of depression have been well documented elsewhere. For instance, if low serotonin levels were responsible for symptoms of depression, it stands to reason that boosting levels of serotonin should alleviate symptoms more or less immediately. In fact, antidepressants can take more than a month to take effect. Clearly, something here just doesn’t add up.

Bringing The Public Up To Speed With 50 Years Of Brain Science

To spur psychiatry forward, we need an improved public understanding of depression, and new forms of treatment. To learn more about the former , I contacted Jeffrey Lacasse – an assistant professor in the College of Social Work at Florida State University who specializes in mental health and psychiatric medications – and neuroanatomist Jonathan Leo of Lincoln Memorial University in Tennessee. In 2007, Lacasse and Leo published research on the media’s propagation of the chemical imbalance theory. In their investigation, the researchers followed up on every mention of the chemical imbalance theory they could find over a one-year span. I wanted to know the extent to which the public dialogue about depression has shifted since their investigation was published.

In a joint e-mail, Lacasse and Leo told me that the public portrayal of the chemical imbalance theory has dropped off noticeably in the past few years. Though TV commercials promoted SSRIs using the chemical imbalance theory in the early 2000s, “we noticed these advertisements came to a screeching halt around 2006-07,” they said. It’s not entirely clear why these advertisements disappeared, but the researchers speculate it’s because the underlying science had failed to corroborate the theory, and finally come to the attention of advertising execs who had knowingly skipped their homework.

But Lacasse and Leo say depressed patients are still routinely told by their GPs and psychiatrists that they have a chemical imbalance, in spite of criticisms from prominent academic psychiatrists like Ronald Pies, who “states that no knowledgable, well-trained clinician would say such a thing.”

“If patients search the internet on these issues,” Lacasse and Leo say, “we would expect them to be very confused.”

The two researchers are concerned “that the story most patients have been hearing from their clinicians for the past 25 years simply has never lined up with the actual scientific data,” raising the question of whether patients have had the opportunity to give fully-informed consent.

There is no question that antidepressants can be very beneficial for some people. But the effectiveness of these medications has been shown to vary widely. As noted in a meta-analysis of antidepressant drug effects published January 2010 in The Journal of the American Medical Association:

The magnitude of benefit of antidepressant medication compared with placebo increases with severity of depression symptoms and may be minimal or nonexistent, on average, in patients with mild or moderate symptoms. For patients with very severe depression, the benefit of medications over placebo is substantial.​

Some psychiatrists vehemently disagree with the way journalists and other psychiatrists have pushed back against the chemical imbalance theory, and anti-depressants in general, noting that these therapies are effective, even if we don’t fully understand why they work.

For what it’s worth, the sudden cessation of televised versions of the chemical imbalance theory still perplexes Lacasse and Leo, who are continuing to study how the public portrayal of depression influences patients. Today, the chemical imbalance theory appears to exist predominantly in the lay audience’s mind. It seems there exists opportunity for change.

The Science Of Depression Advances – With Luck, Psychiatry Will Follow

To get a sense of where an expert in depression felt the study and treatment of depression was heading, I contacted Poul Videbech, a professor of psychiatry at Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark. He was frank with his assessment of the field: “ The truth is, the chemical imbalance theory has been immensely fruitful, as it has inspired us to develop new drugs,” he said.

“At the same time,” he adds, “it has probably been wrong, or at very least partially wrong. Depression – which is several disease entities – is much more complicated than this simplistic theory assumes. “

Videbech says depression’s wide range of symptoms can be linked to myriad overlapping factors, from genetic vulnerability, to deficiency of certain neurotransmitters (call it “chemical-imbalance-theory-lite”), to disruptions in circadian rhythms, to factors that can alter the survival and growth of neurons. The birth of new neurons, for example, is a hallmark of a healthy brain; a prominent new theory about how SSRIs work has connected elevated serotonin levels to the elevated birth of neurons. But the science still has a ways to go.

“ It is also obvious that psychological stress and so-called early lifetime stress can cause depression,” he says. That’s not to say that depression’s social underpinnings are distinct from its biological ones, Videbech adds. “The dichotomy of depressions being either ‘biological’ or ‘psychological’ disorders,” he says, “is thus false, and not justified by scientific literature.”

This dichotomy, he says, is upheld in large part by lay people, who may think that treatment with anti-depressants implies an exclusively biological origin for the disease. “It is a major pedagogical task for doctors (and journalists) to eradicate these old fashioned beliefs. They are so beautifully simple to explain,” says Videbech, “but nevertheless wrong.”

Videbech also mentioned several new therapies that could gain traction in coming years. Ketamine, for example, shows promise, but must be given at regular intervals; transcranial magnetic stimulation, in which magnets are used to non-invasively manipulate brain activity, and wake therapy, in which patients are kept awake for prolonged periods, are two other options backed by reams of scientific evidence. In the future, we may even see psychedelics return to the psychiatric clinic; a number of psychedelic compounds – including psilocybin, the hallucinogen found in magic mushrooms – have shown promise as antidepressants in recent years, a fact that has led many to call for an end to bans on psychoactive drug research.

SSRIs remain an effective form of therapy for millions of patients, but scientists and psychiatrists are eager to improve our understanding of depression and its treatment. That understanding may eventually incorporate some aspect of the chemical imbalance theory, but the whole picture is almost certainly more complex.

http://io9.com/the-most-popular-antidepressants-are-based-on-a-theory-1686163236/+seanhollister

As a schizophrenic person mental health and psychiatric stuff always intrigues me
 

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