Scientia – Think Research Expose Neo-Journalism, Think, Research, Expose Wed, 13 Dec 2017 06:10:15 +0000 en-US hourly 1 New Test Reveals Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria in a Half Hour Mon, 09 Oct 2017 04:13:53 +0000

The discovery of antibiotics in the early part of the 20th century changed modern medicine. Simple infections that previously killed people became easy to treat. Antibiotics’ ability to stave off infections made possible routine surgeries, organ transplants, and chemotherapy for the treatment of cancer.

But because of overuse and misuse, antibiotics are losing their effectiveness. Many species of bacteria have evolved resistance to commonly used antibiotics and multidrug-resistant bacteria–so-called superbugs–have emerged, plaguing hospitals and nursing homes. Last month, the World Health Organization issued a dire warning: The world is running out of antibiotics.

A new test developed at Caltech that identifies antibiotic-resistant bacteria in as little as 30 minutes could help turn the tide by allowing medical professionals to better choose which antibiotics to treat an infection with.

A visualization of how the antibiotic resistance test works.

Credit: Caltech
A paper describing the method appears in the October 4 issue of Science Translational Medicine.

When doctors treat patients with bacterial infections, they often skip over first-line antibiotics like methicillin or amoxicillin–drugs that bacteria are more likely to be resistant to–and go straight for stronger second-line antibiotics, like ciprofloxacin. This practice increases the chance that the treatment will be effective, but it is not ideal. That’s because the increased use of second-line antibiotics makes it more likely that bacteria also will become resistant to these stronger drugs.

“Right now, we’re overprescribing, so we’re seeing resistance much sooner than we have to for a lot of the antibiotics that we would otherwise want to preserve for more serious situations,” says Nathan Schoepp, a Caltech graduate student and co-author of the study.

The problem is that there has not been a quick and easy way for a doctor to know if their patient’s infection is resistant to particular antibiotics. To find out, the doctor would have to send a sample to a testing lab, and wait two to three days for an answer.

“Therapies are driven by guidelines developed by organizations like the World Health Organization or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention without knowing what the patient actually has, because the tests are so slow,” says Rustem Ismagilov, Caltech’s Ethel Wilson Bowles and Robert Bowles Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and director of the Jacobs Institute for Molecular Engineering for Medicine. “We can change the world with a rapid test like this. We can change the way antibiotics are prescribed.”

DNA markers show up as fluorescing dots in the test, making them easy to count. Here, the test shows a bacterial sample grew more poorly in an antibiotic solution, indicating that it does not have resistance to that antibiotic.

Credit: Caltech/Matthew Curits

Ismagilov, Schoepp, Caltech graduate student Travis Schlappi, who is also a co-author, and their fellow researchers aimed to develop a test that could be completed during a single visit to the doctor’s office. They focused on one of the most common types of infections in humans, urinary tract infections (UTIs), which 50 percent of women contract during their lifetimes. UTIs result in eight million doctor visits and one million ER visits each year in the United States alone.

The researchers’ new test works like this: A sample of urine (which may contain bacteria) collected from a patient with a UTI is divided into two parts. One part is exposed to an antibiotic for 15 minutes, while the other part incubates without antibiotics. The bacteria from each sample then are broken open (lysed) to release their cellular contents, which are run through a process that combines a detection chemistry technique called digital real-time loop-mediated isothermal amplification, or dLAMP, with a device called a SlipChip (SlipChips are a previous invention of Ismagilov and his Caltech colleagues). This combination replicates specific DNA markers so they can be imaged and individually counted as discrete fluorescent spots appearing on the chip.

The test operates on the principle that typical bacteria will replicate their DNA (in preparation for cellular division) less well in an antibiotic solution, resulting in the presence of fewer DNA markers. However, if the bacteria are resistant to the antibiotic, their DNA replication will not be hampered and the test will reveal similar numbers of DNA markers in both the treated and untreated solutions.

When used on 54 samples of urine from patients with UTIs caused by the bacteria Escherischia coli, the test results had a 95 percent match with those obtained using the standard two-day test, which is considered the gold standard for accuracy.

Ismagilov and Schoepp plan to begin running the test on other types of infectious bacteria to see how well it performs. They also hope to tweak the testing procedures to work with blood samples. Blood infections are more difficult to test because the bacteria are present in much lower numbers than they are in urine, but such a test could help reduce mortality from blood-borne infections, which can turn fatal if not treated quickly.

Middle Age Fattens You Up If You Do Not Increase Your Physical Activity Thu, 28 Sep 2017 01:03:06 +0000

The Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences at the University of Jyväskylä has examined how changes in the daily step count are related to changes in the body mass index (BMI).

During the four-year follow-up period, especially women increased their daily step count significantly. Approximately 25% of the research participants increased their step count with more than 2,000 steps, whereas approximately 19% decreased their step count during the follow-up.

The participants were grouped into increasers, decreasers and maintainers according to the total of their steps. The changes in the groups’ BMI were compared to the changes in their step count, and the comparison of the step counts was proportioned to the time the step counter had been kept on.

Image result for middle aged weight gain
Credit: Wikipedia

During the research period, there was growth in both the women’s and the men’s BMI. Almost half of the participants maintained the amount of their daily aerobic steps at the same level and approximately one-fourth increased their daily step count with over 1,000 steps during the research period.

The test participants whose total step count grew by more than 2,000 steps during the follow-up period, maintained their BMI at the same level throughout the years. In contrast, BMI increased for those whose step count stayed at the same level or decreased.

– The trend in physical activity looks good. International studies have shown that physical activity generally decreases along with age, but here it increased, Professor Mirja Hirvensalo states. Even though step counts in general look good, it should be noted that the amount of passive people who take less than 5,000 steps per day did not change significantly during the research period.

The researchers remind everyone about the significance of incidental activity.

– The steps accumulate on many instances during the day, if you give it a chance. One does not necessarily need to go for a walk every day to increase the daily step count. Instead, attention should be paid to choices in everyday life. Does every trip need to be made by car or could some of them be done by foot, or could the stairs be taken instead of the elevator, Postdoctoral Researcher Kasper Salin reminds us.

The Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns Study has been monitoring over 3,000 Finns regularly from 1980 onwards. One part of the study considers physical activity, and during the last two measurings it was monitored with step counters. During the four-year follow-up period, the step count data and the required background variables were gathered from a total of 1,033 participants. During the follow-up period, the examinees were from 34 to 49 years of age. The recommended daily step count for adults is 10,000 steps.

The research was executed as a part of The Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns Study led by professor Olli Raitakari. The study is funded by the Ministry of Education and Culture and the Finnish Cultural Foundation.

The Accelerating Expansion of the Universe May Not Be Real Thu, 14 Sep 2017 06:35:04 +0000 The Daily Journalist.


The accelerating expansion of the Universe may not be real, but could just be an apparent effect, according to new research published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The new study—by a group at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand—finds the fit of Type Ia supernovae to a model universe with no dark energy to be very slightly better than the fit to the standard dark energy model.

Dark energy is usually assumed to form roughly 70% of the present material content of the Universe. However, this mysterious quantity is essentially a place-holder for unknown physics.

Current models of the Universe require this dark energy term to explain the observed acceleration in the rate at which the Universe is expanding. Scientists base this conclusion on measurements of the distances to supernova explosions in distant galaxies, which appear to be farther away than they should be if the Universe’s expansion were not accelerating.

A computer-simulated image depicting one possible scenario of how light sources are distributed in the cosmic web.

Credit: Andrew Pontzen and Fabio Governato / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

However, just how statistically significant this signature of cosmic acceleration is has been hotly debated in the past year. The previous debate pitted the standard Lambda Cold Dark Matter (ΛCDM) cosmology against an empty universe whose expansion neither accelerates nor decelerates. Both of these models though assume a simplified 100 year old cosmic expansion law—Friedmann’s equation.

Friedmann’s equation assumes an expansion identical to that of a featureless soup, with no complicating structure. However, the present Universe actually contains a complex cosmic web of galaxy clusters in sheets and filaments that surround and thread vast empty voids.

Prof David Wiltshire, who led the study from the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, said, ”The past debate missed an essential point; if dark energy does not exist then a likely alternative is that the average expansion law does not follow Friedmann’s equation.”

The difference in the magnitudes of supernovae in the ΛCDM and Timescape cosmologies and the magnitudes the supernovae would appear to have in an empty universe (horizontal dashed line). Both models show recent apparent acceleration following earlier deceleration. In the Timescape model this is not a real effect, however, and the curve is flatter than the ΛCDM case.

 Credit: Lawrence Dam, Asta Heinesen and David Wiltshire.

Rather than comparing the standard ΛCDM cosmological model with an empty universe, the new study compares the fit of supernova data in ΛCDM to a different model, called the ’timescape cosmology’. This has no dark energy. Instead, clocks carried by observers in galaxies differ from the clock that best describes average expansion once the lumpiness of structure in the Universe becomes significant. Whether or not one infers accelerating expansion then depends crucially on the clock used.

The timescape cosmology was found to give a slightly better fit to the largest supernova data catalogue than the ΛCDM cosmology. Unfortunately the statistical evidence is not yet strong enough to rule definitively in favour of one model or the other, but future missions such as the European Space Agency’s Euclid satellite will have the power to distinguish between the standard cosmology and other models, and help scientists to decide whether dark energy is real or not.

Deciding that not only requires more data, but also better understanding properties of supernovae which currently limit the precision with which they can be used to measure distances. On that score, the new study shows significant unexpected effects which are missed if only one expansion law is applied. Consequently, even as a toy model the timescape cosmology provides a powerful tool to test our current understanding, and casts new light on our most profound cosmic questions.

NULLIUS IN BURGER Thu, 17 Aug 2017 11:25:27 +0000  – By Mike Sutton –


Bullshit kills? Realy? “Nullius in Verba”  Show me the Evidence!

Last week in London, I seriously offended my hosts by insisting that the pink beef burger they served my daughter from their BBQ was quite possibly not safe for her or anyone else to eat. The juicy fat and perfectly charred burger was made from the finest ground steak from their local trusted butcher, and so they insisted it was perfectly safe to eat. Safe, because it is safe to eat a rare steak. After a heated discussion (pun intended) they finally, grudgingly, accepted that I was right.
I was right to tell them that not only are pink burgers unsafe (unless you first sear the outside of the steak before grinding it up), they are particularly unsafe for children and should never be served to them. Why is this a fact? Because the carcass of a slaughtered bull is often covered in its faeces, or that of other bulls (literally bullshit), and so it can get onto the meat. Bullshit contains E. coli, which is a lethal bacteria if ingested by humans.
Pink burgers might be safe if the internal pink bit has reached 160 degrees throughout in the cooking process, but it’s very hard for anyone to prove to you that it has. For all you know they made a mistake or they are “bullshitting” in the philosophical sense described by Harry H. Frankfurt   . Where is the verifiable evidence, you need to ask.
In my opinion, when it comes to beef burgers, it is logically, rationally, better to stick with the veraciously potential life-saving guidance of the Hospitality Association    on such things as pink beef.


The Bullshit Burger Parable

Later in the evening, my hosts turned the discussion to the difficulty I am having in getting the scientific and wider community to understand why it is important that we distinguish between truth and bullshit in the story of the discovery of evolution by natural selection.
People read my book, ‘Nullius in Verba: Darwin’s greatest secret    agree with the newly discovered bombshell evidence in it, but just can’t be bothered to spend so much as 5 minutes of their precious time to write a review on Amazon to help spread the truth. Why, because apparently “who cares about the truth of such matters?” I was further informed: “The trouble with you is that you care too much about the truth.”

The newly discovered facts in my book are as unwelcome as the guest who questions the food hygiene of the dish served them by a beloved and proud host. And yet, the veracious information I gave them might save the from killing someone they love.

Analogously, understanding the real, as opposed to mythical, process by which all ground-breaking scientific discoveries are made may in the future improve scientific knowledge about how to increase the rate of making new life-saving discoveries in science. If we don’t realise this we don’t realise the lesson of the Bullshit Burger Parable: namely, bullshit literally kills!

I hope my hosts come to realise that the importance of knowing how to distinguish bullshit from truth has lifesaving consequences. I don’t think they will be serving their own or anyone else’s children pink burgers ever again. I hope not anyway.

Do you have time to spread this important message to your fellow humans? Perhaps you don’t care enough about the truth? After all, as my extremely successful hosts told me: “Don’t you realise we are living in a post truth world?” They know that the big money in academia today, and other corporations (not their respective sources of income, by the way) is in selling palatable bullshit instead of unpalatable truth, just so long as it brings in money. And that is exactly what the Darwin deification industry does. It’s very profitable for universities that spread it. It’s very profitable for the publishers who publish it. And it’ very profitable for the authors and scientific associations that peddle it. Is money the “bottom” line (pun intended)?


(C) Dr Mike Sutton. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. To be Used only with express written permission
The author’s eight year old daughter understands the lifesaving difference between evidence and dangerous wishful thinking. Do you?
Marijuana Associated with Three-Fold Risk of Death from Hypertension Wed, 16 Aug 2017 10:43:20 +0000 The Daily Journalist.















Distinguished Professor of Psychology Backs Bombshell Discovery of Charles Darwin’s and Alfred Wallace’s Plagiarising Science Fraud Sat, 12 Aug 2017 21:39:14 +0000

– by Mike Sutton –











The Snake Conspiracy Fri, 04 Aug 2017 06:45:13 +0000 By Sebastian Sarbu.

The oldest and most dangerous secret society is known as the Brotherhood of the Good, being followed down the line by the Brotherhood of Fire, the Black Snake, the Order of the Assassins or Ishmaelites, the Secret Jesuit Order, the Order of Baphomet, and the Circle of the Poles.

We shall prove first the connection between the phenomena of life, by revealing the laws that govern the world, as well as the true science of survival, which, given appropriate social conditions, would have led to a healthy evolution, well-adapted to existing races, civilizations, and to the national characteristics of every society.

These explanations are necessary given that in order to talk about controlling conscience we have to define first what is conscience, since it is impossible to destroy the enemy’s system if we continue to adopt the same manner of thinking, the same values, as well as the same soul devastating ideology. That is to say, we cannot eliminate the historical adversary by thinking like him and thus allowing him to be reborn or transposed in the vital space of collective consciousness. Let’s proceed.

The science and the occult

Before idealizing science, and thus behaving like those who are disappointed by speculative philosophical and religious currents, we must know that there is no great difference between science and religious, political, or ideological doctrines. The specific differences have been nullified via the subordination of any free and independent research to the ideologies of various powers.

Moreover, we can see that the exact sciences, which provide mankind and society with the technical and material basis for survival, have profoundly religious foundations!!!

The foundation for the exact sciences, but also of the social sciences, including psychology, can be correctly defined as being metaphysical. We refer to classical science, for the modern one is one big mental manipulation which was created for occult purposes and whose purpose is the creation of an experimental society, the globalist one.

Physics rests upon metaphysics, to which it is still close. Chemistry rests upon alchemy.

Mathematics is based upon numerology, or sacred initiate mathematics. Both were founded by Pythagoras, whose system we have inherited. It is thus not an accident that Pythagoras was a freemason, as he was initiated at the Pyramid of Khufu in Egypt (actually, Aton’s pyramid).

The philosopher and mathematician Auguste Comte (1798 – 1857), the founder of positivism and of modern sociology, proved the fact that numbers do not represent real quantities, but mere abstract proportions, adopting the same conceptual line of thinking as Kant, who regarded knowledge as a process preceding experience, a product of the mind, which is nothing else than mathematics par excellence.

It must be said that positivism is the best-oriented form of knowledge; it is necessary to the individual more than to society given that modern society is a utilitarian-progressive one which can apply positivism only in certain fields.

Positivism is not a science as it is understood nowadays. It is a manner, a way, a direction of research by which man bases his knowledge upon experience and doubts the systemic realities being decreed as unique: matter and spirit.

We are hence positivists and we will apply positivist criteria and principles to political reality, by proving that the laws of existence are a mirror and a reciprocal manifestation of the acts carried out by an individual or collectives.

Worse (or more dubious) even, as is revealed by special research, the so-called science, even positivist science, was organized, or, more specifically, modified for the purpose of differing from metaphysical or spiritual science, in the purest dialectical reactionary way.

We mention that we are not interested in saving or denouncing the metaphysical aspects, but we merely observe the facts in a neutral way, with a maximal degree of objectivity, as in any independent research. We cannot ignore the quackery. As such, we can only take one direction: the one showing that modern manipulation, comprising occult structures, both operational and emergent, originates in the mythical past of humanity, where the so-called “snake conspiracy” began.

Therefore, before evaluating a conventional or unconventional phenomenon, one has to look for the causes, having in mind the knowledge that wherever there is a relationship between cause and effect there is nothing supernatural, no force superior to man which could suspend the natural order.

Moreover, people should not mix the plans and components of their bio-energo-plasmatic beings, which function autonomously, and thus via different laws generating other types of effects.

Closing Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Increases Crime, Says New Study Mon, 31 Jul 2017 05:54:04 +0000

A new study published in the July issue of the Journal of Urban Economics finds that contrary to popular belief, medical marijuana dispensaries (MMDs) reduce crime in their immediate areas.

In the study, titled, “Going to pot? The impact of dispensary closures on crime,” researchers Tom Y. Chang from the USC Marshall School of Business, and Mireille Jacobson from The Paul Merage School of Business at UC Irvine, examined the short-term mass closing of hundreds of medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles that took place in 2010.


Mireille Jacobson is an associate professor of Economics and Public Policy, and director of the Center for Health Care Management and Policy at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business.

Credit: UC Irvine
The two researchers found similar results when they examined restaurant closures.

“The connection between restaurants and MMDs is that they both contribute to the ‘walkability score’ of a given area. Areas with higher scores have more ‘eyes upon the street’ a factor that is proven to deter some types of crime,” said Jacobson.

The types of crime most impacted by MMD and restaurant closures were property crime and theft from vehicles. The researchers attributed this result to the fact that these types of crimes are most plausibly deterred by bystanders.

“Our results demonstrate that the dispensaries were not the crime magnets that they were often described as, but instead reduced crime in their immediate vicinity,” said Jacobson.

Credit: Wikimedia Commons / Laurie Avocado
When Chang and Jacobson examined the impact of temporary restaurant closures in Los Angeles County, they found an increase in crime similar to what they found with MMDs. They also found that once a restaurant reopened, crime immediately disappeared.

Jacobson added, “We can conclude from our research that retail businesses are effective in lowering crime, even when the retail business is a medical marijuana dispensary.”

Boomers Having More Extramarital Sex Than Gen-X Or Millennials Mon, 10 Jul 2017 05:32:41 +0000


Credit: Pixabay




Credit:  University of Utah







Professor Refutes Groupthink, Proving That Wisdom of Crowds Can Prevail Wed, 14 Jun 2017 07:37:44 +0000
Anyone following forecasting polls leading up to the 2016 election likely believed Hillary Clinton would become the 45th president of the United States. Although this opinion was the consensus among most political-opinion leaders and media, something clearly went wrong with these prediction tools.

Though it may never be known for certain the reasons for the discrepancy between public perception and the electoral reality, new findings from the University of Pennsylvania’s Damon Centola may offer a clue: the wisdom of a crowd is in the network.


Centola network
Credit: University of Pennsylvania
The classic “wisdom of crowds” theory goes like this: If we ask a group of people to guess an outcome, the group’s guess will be better than any individual expert. Thus, when a group tries to make a decision, in this case, predicting the outcome of an election, the group does a better job than experts. For market predictions, geopolitical forecasting and crowdsourcing product ideas, the wisdom of crowds has been shown to even outperform industry experts.

That is true — as long as people don’t talk to each other. When people start sharing their opinions, their conversations can lead to social influences that produce “groupthink” and destroy the wisdom of the crowd. So says the classic theory.

But Centola, an associate professor in Penn’s Annenberg School for Communicationand School of Engineering and Applied Science and director of the Network Dynamics Group, discovered the opposite. When people talk to each other, the crowd can get smarter. Centola, along with Ph.D. candidate Joshua Becker and recent Ph.D. graduate Devon Brackbill, published the findings in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“The classic theory says that if you let people talk to each other groups go astray. But,” said Centola, “we find that even if people are not particularly accurate, when they talk to each other, they help to make each other smarter. Whether things get better or worse depends on the networks.

Damon Centola

Credit: University of Pennsylvania

“In egalitarian networks,” he said, “where everyone has equal influence, we find a strong social-learning effect, which improves the quality of everyone’s judgements. When people exchange ideas, everyone gets smarter. But this can all go haywire if there are opinion leaders in the group.”

An influential opinion leader can hijack the process, leading the entire group astray. While opinion leaders may be knowledgeable on some topics, Centola found that, when the conversation moved away from their expertise, they still remained just as influential. As a result, they ruined the group’s judgment.

“On average,” he said, “opinion leaders were more likely to lead the group astray than to improve it.”

The online study included more than 1,300 participants, who were placed into one of three experimental conditions. Some were placed into one of the “egalitarian” networks, where everyone had an equal number of contacts and everyone had equal influence. Others were placed into one of the “centralized” networks, in which a single opinion leader was connected to everyone, giving that person much more influence in the group. Each of the networks contained 40 participants. Finally, Centola had several hundred subjects participate in a “control” group, without any social networks.

In the study, all of the participants were given a series of estimation challenges, such as guessing the number of calories in a plate of food. They were given three tries to get the right answer. Everyone first gave a gut response.

Then, participants who were in social networks could see the guesses made by their social contacts and could use that information to revise an answer. They could then see their contacts’ revisions and revise their answers again. But this time it was their final answer. Participants were awarded as much as $10 based on the accuracy of their final guess. In the control group, participants did the same thing, but they were not given any social information between each revision.

“Everyone’s goal was to make a good guess. They weren’t paid for showing up,” Centola said, “only for being accurate.”

Patterns began to emerge. The control groups initially showed the classic wisdom of the crowd but did not improve as people revised their answers. Indeed, if anything, they got slightly worse. By contrast, the egalitarian networks also showed the classic wisdom of the crowd but then saw a dramatic increase in accuracy. Across the board, in network after network, the final answers in these groups were consistently far more accurate than the initial “wisdom of the crowd.”

“In a situation where everyone is equally influential,” Centola said, “people can help to correct each other’s mistakes. This makes each person a little more accurate than they were initially. Overall, this creates a striking improvement in the intelligence of the group. The result is even better than the traditional wisdom of the crowd! But, as soon as you have opinion leaders, social influence becomes really dangerous.”

In the centralized networks, Centola found that, when the opinion leaders were very accurate, they could improve the performance of the group. But even the most accurate opinion leaders were consistently wrong some of the time.

“Thus,” Centola said, “while opinion leaders can sometimes improve things, they were statistically more likely to make the group worse off than to help it.

“The egalitarian network was reliable because the people who were more accurate tended to make smaller revisions, while people who were less accurate revised their answers more. The result is that the entire crowd moved toward the more accurate people, while, at the same time, the more accurate people also made small adjustments that improved their score.”

These findings on the wisdom of crowds have startling real-world implications in areas such as climate-change science, financial forecasting, medical decision-making and organizational design.

For example, while engineers have been trying to design ways to keep people from talking to each other when making important decisions in an attempt to avoid groupthink, Centola’s findings suggest that what matters most is the network. A group of equally influential scientists talking to one another will likely lead to smarter judgments than might arise from keeping them independent.

He is currently working on implementing these findings to improve physicians’ decision-making. By designing a social network technology for use in hospital settings, it may be possible to reduce implicit bias in physicians’ clinical judgments and to improve the quality of care that they can offer.

Whether new technologies are needed to improve the way the groups talk to each other, or whether we just need to be cautious about the danger of opinion leaders, Centola said it’s time to rethink the idea of the wisdom of crowds.

“It’s much better to have people talk to each other and argue for their points of view than to have opinion leaders rule the crowd,” he said. “By designing informational systems where everyone’s voices can be heard, we can improve the judgment of the entire group. It’s as important for science as it is for democracy.”