Long before drug cartels, crack wars and TV shows about addiction, cocaine was promoted as a wonder drug, sold as a cure-all and praised by some of the greatest minds in medical history, including Sigmund Freud and the pioneering surgeon William Halsted.
According to historian Dr. Howard Markel, it was even promoted by the likes of Thomas Edison, Queen Victoria and Pope Leo XIII.
Read about it here: http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/07/22/social.history.cocaine/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
Neuropsychiatric diseases like schizophrenia, depression, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and more cost billions per year and account for 13% of the global burden of disease (a measure of years of life lost due to premature mortality and living in a state less than full health), according to the World Health Organization.
However, pharmaceutical companies have decided that generating new drugs to treat these disorders are simply too costly to pursue, and are pulling the plug on research and development in this area.
Read more here: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-dearth-of-new-meds
It’s a few years old, but worth seeing.
Thanks to Kedmobee.
Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 photographed active volcanoes on the moon Io on its way past Jupiter in 1979.
In 1980, it confirmed the existence of three new moons orbiting Saturn.
In one of its final photographs, transmitted in 1990, Earth appears as a grainy speck bathed in the rainbow rays of the Sun.
Since then, NASA scientists have shut down six of its ten instruments, and it is so far away that transmissions now take more than 16 hours to reach Earth.
It is now traveling out of the heliosphere, the bubble of space filled by the Sun’s wind. In late 2004, Voyager 1 crossed the ‘termination shock’, the boundary beyond which the solar wind’s influence begins to wane. And this year researchers were expecting it to meet another boundary–one at which the solar wind sharply reverses direction, signaling the beginning of interstellar space.
Instead, Krimigis says, measurements of low-energy charged particles show that the solar wind has gradually slowed to zero and is mingling with interstellar gases. Theories failed to predict this mixed-up environment, and Krimigis says it may even be possible that this is, in fact, what interstellar space looks like. “We may have crossed and don’t know it, because nobody has a model that describes what we’re seeing,” he says.
A 65-year-old Inocenta Hernandez from Guatemala City went running outside her house thinking there had been an explosion nearby, only to find that the sound was coming from inside her home. She returned indoor to find a three feet wide, 40 feet deep sinkhole beneath her bed. She was relieved that the damage was only to her house and none of her grandchildren, who had been playing near the bed.
Guatemala City is prone to the giant pits, which are often caused by tropical rain storms. A massive chasm had opened up in Guatemala City back in May 2010; it swallowed up whole buildings and an intersection. Miraculously no deaths were reported. A Texas sized pit had developed in the town of Diasetts, Texas in 2008. The 600 feet long, 150 feet wide gaping sinkhole sucked down a tractor, several telephone poles, and an assortment of oil field equipment.
Thanks to Mr. P Cuomo for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.
Brain scans hint excessive time online is tied to stark physical changes in the brain.
Read more here: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=does-addictive-internet-use-restructure-brain
Tales of this creature in the Pacific with a long neck, a horse-like head, large eyes, and back bumps that stick out of the water have been around for over 200 years. Here is the most recent sighting in Alaska.
Read about it here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/20/alaska-loch-ness-monster_n_904658.html?view=print
and here: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/upshot/loch-ness-monster-alasaka-204906638.html
Thanks to Mr. P Cuomo for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.
It's Interesting 