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In the '70s, a cluster of adults and children in Lyme, Old Lyme, and East Haddam, Connecticut, began to develop fevers, swollen joints, and, most mysterious, an angry rash, especially after playing or hiking near rivers. The cases were most prevalent in deer-heavy areas, and scientists quickly discovered a common link: black-legged ticks that jump from deer to humans. Lyme disease was first identified by a medical entomologist in 1982. Though recovery is usually speedy if you’re promptly treated with antibiotics, Lyme disease is a notoriously slippery condition to diagnose, especially outside the Midwest or Northeast, where it’s most common....

A formal retraction of a highly publicized same-sex study with falsified results has been made by Science magazine on Thursday for misrepresentation of survey incentives and funding. One of the authors of the article, Columbia University political science professor Donald Green has requested the retraction on May 19, saying co-author Michael LaCour had been incapable of producing the raw data that was applied in the study. The magazine decided to go ahead and retract it after its own investigation even though LaCour did not agree with the decision.

The news from Africa and the Third World is seldom good, and much of the bad news is about disease born of ignorance, superstition and primitive sanitation, news dispatched by a media addicted to tales of unrelieved gloom, certain doom and inevitable disaster. We were all supposed to be dead by now from strange diseases reduced in the public prints to acronyms and bold initials — AIDS, SARS, MERS, swine flu, avian flu and most recently Ebola. These diseases are rightly feared, but in most places they’re diseases only of a tiny part of the population of a country or...

Republican lawmakers chastised the head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Friday, saying the agency’s obsession with global warming is undercutting space exploration programs. “There are 13 other agencies involved in climate change research, but only one that is responsible for space exploration,” Texas Rep. Lamar Smith told NASA administrator Charles Bolden in a hearing. “The administration continues to starve NASA’s exploration programs to fund a partisan environmental agenda,” Smith said. “NASA simply deserves better.” Republicans are concerned that NASA is spending too much money on Earth sciences while cutting funding for space exploration. President Barack Obama’s 2016 budget...

Oxytocin is that feel good hormone that bonds a child to his or her mother. But never mind that. Researchers in Hawaii are recruiting girls as young as 14 to participate in second trimester abortions, where the preborn baby is 18-24 weeks gestation, in order to test whether or not oxytocin can reduce bleeding in mothers during and after abortion. The study is being conducted by the University of Hawaii and the University of Washington in Seattle – both public universities, which leads to the obvious question: is the government funding this study? A second trimester abortion is at least...

Doing research for a novel. Can anybody tell me, what section of London would the families of merchantmen sailors have lived in during the late 17th century? All I can find on-line is "London." But I've got to believe that they lived relatively close to the docks in areas with specific names. And I suppose officers would live in a different section than that of common sailors.

The government is spending far too little money on energy research, putting at risk the long-term goals of reducing carbon emissions and alleviating energy poverty, some of the country’s top business leaders found in a new report. The American Energy Innovation Council, a group of six executives that includes the Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and the General Electric chief Jeffrey R. Immelt, urged Congress and the White House to make expanded energy research a strategic national priority.

We are from the School of Meteorology and we invite you to participate in our research project entitled Tornado Warning Communication and Response. This research is being conducted at The University of Oklahoma. You were selected as a possible participant because you received the link to the online survey. What is the purpose of this research? The purpose of this research is to study how different individuals respond to severe weather communication. What will I be asked to do? If you agree to be in this research, you will answer 10 questions regarding severe weather communication, each with multiple parts....

South Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s office is claiming her appearance at the Grammy awards Sunday wasn’t a just a junket for a star-struck politician dying to rub elbows with the glitterati. It was a research trip, paid for by the congresswoman’s campaign funds. That’s the story being spun by Wasserman Schultz’s office, anyway, after a New York Times reporter posted a photo of the Democrat in the background of a television standup – a photo that rocketed around the Twitter world. (The presence of Texas Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee in the same photo helped.)

A bill to further restrict abortion in Oklahoma and another to make embryonic stem cell research illegal both cleared a House committee on Wednesday, despite concerns from a doctor on the panel. While activists gathered at the Capitol for the annual anti-abortion Rose Day rally, the House Public Health Committee voted mostly along party lines to approve both bills. An exception was Rep. Doug Cox, a Grove Republican and an emergency room physician who opposed both measures. One bill would increase from 24 to 72 hours the amount of time a woman must wait before receiving an abortion after receiving...

This is a thread I started to house links that answer and explain a variety of topics covered in this sites. Partly I wanted to make a reference guide that was easier to use to find resources quickly. But also I wanted to research various topics. Since it will have information on a wide range of things it does not work to mention specifics. What I will start with is a list of links explaining or at least highlighting what are the economic systems, political systems, political parties and ideologies then move on to explanations of the differences between the...

Critics of marijuana legalization love to argue about its repercussions for “the children”—paging Nancy Grace—but the American Academy of Pediatrics seems to disagree. The group has now appealed to the Drug Enforcement Agency to reclassify marijuana and allow them to research its medical benefits for children, the Wall Street Journal reports. They have also asked the federal government to permit marijuana use by children with serious conditions. Marijuana is currently listed as a Schedule 1 drug by the federal government, classifying it with drugs like heroin. This scheduling prohibits research by ranking marijuana as having no acceptable medical use. “A...

This is not a thread for light browsing. This will wear out anyone, links that make me wish I were twenty people at once. Here are some research aids: Dogpile Search [searches google, bing and other other engines simultaneously.] All the following are Free Republic Forum Pages. Most are link lists for referening: Where's Obama's Birth Certificate? We are winning the debate. Here's why -- a plain spoken summary. Monster Ping [earlier deep research] Monster Ping [earlier deep research, now more concentrated on shockers] Close Encounters with the Loony Left Thug-0-crat hit list [shocking links and headlines] Weird News and...

Interesting here to see transhumanists again talking about moving offshore—literally!—to avoid government regulations. -- Mellonkronos “Researchers, Ahoy! Should Futurist Science Move… Offshore?" By Nikki Olson November 9, 2014 http://transhumanity.net/researchers-ahoy-should-futurist-science-move-offshore/ What is the likelihood of seeing research vessels devoted to scientific research outside the bounds of national jurisdiction? The idea of relocating for the sake of circumventing law, in particular the notion of establishing new nations in international waters, is an idea typically initiated with liberty in mind. The Principality of Sealand, for instance, established in 1967, was founded with the intention of creating a space free from “oppressive laws and...

LONDON (Reuters) - Bats are living up to their frightening reputation in the world's worst Ebola outbreak as prime suspects for spreading the deadly virus to humans, but scientists believe they may also shed valuable light on fighting infection. Bats can carry more than 100 different viruses, including Ebola, rabies and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), without becoming sick themselves. While that makes them a fearsome reservoir of disease, especially in the forests of Africa where they migrate vast distances, it also opens the intriguing possibility that scientists might learn their trick in keeping killers like Ebola at bay. "If...

Genetics will determine whether a person infected with Ebola dies, scientists claimed today. A new study has found DNA could be the key to tracking the deadly effects of the virus which has ravaged West Africa. The World Health Organisation revealed nearly 5,000 people have died from the disease, which has devastated Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. A team of scientists at Washington University believe their study has identified genetic factors behind the mild-to-deadly range of reactions to the virus.

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Judith White, who runs a research lab at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, submitted a proposal to the National Institutes of Health to test potential countermeasures against Ebola in March — just as Liberia was confirming its first two cases of the deadly virus. The project, a collaboration of the university, the Army and a drug company, showed promising early results: Mice injected with two compounds — one used in a drug to treat female infertility, the other found in a breast cancer drug — showed immunity to Ebola. But a few months later, not...

While federal and state agencies institute new policies and procedures in light of Ebola making an appearance in the U.S., the White House has called for a suspension on research involving other viruses with deadly potential for the time being. On Friday, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy announced its moratorium on funding new “gain-of-function” research, saying it plans to further assess its risks and benefits. It also called for a voluntary stop on current research in this field. “Because the deliberative process launching today will aim to address key questions about the risks and benefits of...

“Republican cuts kill” – new Web ad by the Agenda Project Action Fund This ad is simply a more extreme version of a new Democratic talking point — that GOP budget cuts have harmed the nation’s ability to handle the Ebola outbreak. It mixes statistics — the budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “cut” $585 million (the ad offers no date range) — with disturbing images of the outbreak and various Republican leaders saying variations of the word “cut.” A slightly more nuanced version of this theme was launched by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which...

According to Jin, a major cause of insulin resistance is the accumulation of excess fat in the cells of the liver, as well as in muscle tissue. The fat disrupts the process where, ordinarily, insulin would cause body tissues to correctly absorb glucose – blood sugar – and use it as a fuel. With nowhere else to go, much of the excess glucose remains in the bloodstream, where in high concentrations it can damage tissues throughout the body – potentially leading to blindness, kidney damage, cardiovascular diseases and other severe health problems. “Our goal in this study was to find...