Новости за 20.10.2010

Next time you're at the pub with friends, take it easy on the lightweights—the ones who are getting a little silly after just a couple of drinks. That might be a blessing in disguise, according to a new study, because the 10 to 20 percent of people whose genetics make them especially sensitive to booze might also be at greatly reduced risk to develop alcoholism. In the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, Kirk Wilhelmsen and colleagues identified a particular gene associated

The insurance industry's weather simulator is more awesome than your weather simulator. It can hold nine houses, create hurricane-force conditions on its interior via 750,000-gallon tanks of water, and it just opened. The Institute Business & Home Safety, an organization backed by the insurance industry, built the $40 million hangar of destruction in South Carolina. With an update next year, "we'll shoot hail down from the rafters of the building to simulate hail storms," said Tim Reinhol

Kim Douglass fills in the latest on tennis twitter behavior. Updates from Janko Tipsarevic @TipsarevicJanko is upset, Brad Gilbert @bgtennisnation gives advices, Vania King @queen_v21 loses stuff, Andy Murray @andy_murray loves his dog, Jelena Jankovic @jelena_jankovic complains, John Isner @JohnIsnerTennis comments on Federer tweener, and Ivo Karlovic @ivokarlovic reveals fears. Follow @Tennis_Now!

It's common wisdom that the big cats, like so many animals, evolved their particular look to blend into the background and skulk around undetected. But just how much are a cat's spots or stripes fine-tuned to its habitat? To find out, William Allen and colleagues dug into the markings in detail for a study in Proceedings of the Royal Society B and found that their specificity is even more connected to the species' home and lifestyle than scientists ever knew. The Allen team studied 35 different

A couple of months ago I pointed out that a Letter published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, critiquing a certain paper about antidepressants, made very similar points to the ones that I did in my blog post about the paper. The biggest difference was that my post came out 9 months sooner.Well, it's happened again. Except I was only 3 months ahead this time. Remember my post Clever New Scheme, criticizing a study which claimed to have found a brilliant way of deciding which antidepressan

Holy hideouts, Batman, they’ve found the Batcave! Thanks to Google Maps, a giant Batman symbol has been discovered on the rooftop of an office building on Kadena Air Base. But so far, nobody has seen the Caped Crusader.

The British government announced yesterday that it's scrapping a huge and controversial tidal power project that would have cost up to $48 billion to build, and could have provided clean energy for up to 5 percent of the United Kingdom. It was just too expensive, the government said. “Other low-carbon options represent a better deal for taxpayers and consumers,” Chris Huhne, secretary of state for energy, said today in a written statement to Parliament in London. The decision, along with separat

A  new drug seems to be able to reverse normal age-related memory decline in old mice--like a face-lift for neurons, bringing them back to their younger days. The results of the experimental treatment, which works by blocking certain stress hormones, were published in the Journal of Neuroscience. "What's most surprising is that even short-term inhibition was able to reverse memory loss in old mice," says Jonathan Seckl, a professor of molecular medicine who was involved in the research. "I don