I’ve been hearing, for as long as I could remember, that fresh water sources are shrinking, and soon, we may be left with no fresh water sources at all. It’s a scary thought, to think that in a few hundred years we may have run out.

But after a new breakthrough discovery, paranoids like me may be able to rest a little easier at night.

“Australian researchers said Thursday they had established the existence of vast freshwater reserves trapped beneath the ocean floor, which could sustain future generations as current sources dwindle,” reported Phys.org.

There are estimations that today about 30% of people live without adequate water supplies and that by 2030 that percentage may rise to about 45%. It’s because water use has grown almost double the population growth, no doubt thanks to factory farms.

And look at how we treat our rivers globally! I’m not an environmental scientist, nor am I even a staunch environmentalist. But sometimes a picture says a thousand words.

There are many options as to handle these great water reserves. Some say to use them as an emergency, others, particularly U.S. corporations may look at the reserves with $ in their eyes.

Either way, we need to treat these reserves as a non-renewable resource. “When the polar icecaps started melting about 20,000 years ago these coastlines disappeared under water, but their aquifers remain intact–protected by layers of clay and sediment,” Vincent Post, an Australian professor, told Phys.org.

The big problem here, though, is once these aquifers are spent, they don’t replenish. At least not while the oceans are as high as they are now.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-12-scientists-vast-undersea-freshwater-reserves.html#jCp

A new study about studies on studies say that about half of all scientific clinical trials go unpublished and those that are put to print sometimes omit key details.

“US law requires the results of medical research for drugs approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to be submitted to a database called ClinicalTrials.gov. Results, including adverse effects, have been made public there since 2008. Researchers who do not post results within a year of trial completion risk losing grants and can be fined as much as US$10,000 per day. But the database was never meant to replace journal publications, which often contain longer descriptions of methods and results and are the basis for big reviews of research on a given drug,” as said by Nature.com, a self proclaimed international weekly journal of science.

What are the implications of this? Well if the research isn’t published is it even valid? I know it’s on a database, but it never reaches print, does it matter?

The story here, claims that sometimes big-pharma may keep these stories from being published if they have a negative result in the findings. Yet as long as they get registered to the website up top they are ready to roll out.

Sadly, in my opinion, there are many loopholes here; loopholes that could be sealed by congressional passed laws. It’s just a shame that the people who could save this bill face the fallback of making the pharmaceutical industry angry. An industry that spends more lobbying than any other.

It’s down right chilling if you ask me. For more info on how career politicians exist, check this out.

I think a lot of unintended pregnancies fall on male shoulders. Of course females play a role too, but when an accident occurs, more times than not, the couple takes mutual responsibility.

We’ve all heard the birds and the bees in some form or another so I’ll spare you the details, but us males have a warning in our bodies before we ejaculate. In an awkward and failed attempt to find out what the exact name of this is, I humbly apologize, I will move on to more important things.

Contraceptives have been all the rage in the media since the Affordable Care Act, A.K.A Obama-care, A.K.A probably should have done single payer instead, Et Cetera, took effect and affected many Christian groups (probably hard right wing, let’s be honest) claiming that they should not be mandated to provide female contraceptives to employees based on their staunch values and traditions.

But as I said, it is mostly the male’s fault anyway. Sure, sexually active females should be on the pill if they want to be on the pill, but what if I told you that males can be on the pill too?

Sciencealert.com.au reported that, “A new male contraceptive could be on the horizon after scientists identified a novel way to block the transport of sperm during ejaculation,” here.

The initial report was published in, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, where they found that by blocking two proteins, they could achieve complete and total male infertility.

“The researchers demonstrated that the absence of two proteins in mouse models, α1A-adrenoceptor and P2X1-purinoceptor, which mediate sperm transport, caused infertility, without effects on long-term sexual behavior or function,” the website reported.

Researchers believe that this breakthrough could mean, in the future, that there will be oral contraceptives for men.

The positive part of this over other male contraceptives is that so far there is no long-term health effects or anything. Once off “the pill” the body would begin to send messages to the sperm again. The pill doesn’t kill sperm but rather blocks the messages your body is sending.

After more serious testing is done, researchers say there may well be a male pill in ten years time.

The honest ladies and gentlemen at the New York Times reported on the Tesla model S electric car a few months back, and didn’t have too much good to say. It seemed as if they were trying to start a flash mob to take down the horrid electric car before the wheels began spinning, pun intended.

The Tesla Model S is a revolutionary electric car making way east from its birthplace of California. The company claimed that the Model S could carry itself 300 miles on a single charge. Yet in an Op-Ed on the car from NYT, John Broder claimed that the car was terrible. It couldn’t make the trip. The Model S was bad. More or less.

“Tesla Motors’ chief executive officer says a Times story that found the electric-vehicle maker’s Model S sedan fell short of its estimated range erased $100 million of the company’s stock-market value in a matter of days,” Forbes reported on Feb. 26, 2013, 18 days after the NYT criticism.

This started a huge social media feud between the author and Tesla CEO, Elon Musk. Musk cited documents and logs and Broder argued back. It went on and on, and in the end an NYT editor stated that there could have been “problems with precision and judgment, but not integrity.”

And that got me thinking of the almost creepy bias in the media. Since then Ford has recalled the 2013 Escape SUV’s 5 times due to engine fires. There were a few hundred thousand cars recalled worldwide. The Detroit News has reported on the recall in this story, but otherwise it’s gone under-reported, if you ask me.

It just seems like the media picks the winners and losers, and if you’re the latter, be prepared for a fire storm.

Some archeologists seemed to have uncovered a sharpened stone predating our species by about 85,000 years.

The stone was made from obsidian, and found around Ethiopia. In not the greatest article ever, Discovery filled in some info on the subject, specifically by interviewing Yonatan Sahle, a researcher at University of California at Berkley.

At first the article seemed to point at our very own species being responsible for this, rewriting all that’s know about human history, and greatly extending what we really know about ourselves. But after Sahle was questioned, he put to rest that notion.

“Technological advances were not necessarily associated with anatomical changes (among Homo species),” he said. “The advances might have started earlier.”

Basically saying that humans are not the only species that could craft up useful tools and that, yes, other species within our genealogical tree knew how to get stuff done.

The amazing thing is that these spearheads were crafted specifically for distance hunting, rather than stab or thrust hunting. Which is very significant. Any discovery from our deep past, no matter how small should be praised. It’s who we are and what we were, and maybe after learning of our past it can guide us into what we will become.

To read the paper Sahle and friends published click here.

Acetaminophen is a word that I have heard a lot of in the last few years. How bad is it? Does it help? Who cares?

It’s the active ingredient found in most over the counter pain suppressants, such as Tylenol and Aleive. And now we are hearing that this very common drug may not be as safe as once believed.

Johnson & Johnson, the company that makes Tylenol, have been scrutinized many times in the past for the small gap between “recommended dosage,” and “dangerous dosage,” within their famous brand name drug. One might say Tylenol is as American as apple pie, or McDonalds.

The most recent study, conducted by the University of Oslo, in Norway, tested 48,000 children whose mothers filled out questionnaires on their medication usage during pregnancy (week 17 and week 30), along with a follow up 6 months after birth. Then the mothers reported on their children’s development three years later.

About 4% of women took at least a month worth of Tylenol during pregnancy, and the study reported that these children had slower development, i.e. walking later, poorer communication skills, harder time grasping language, etc. . .

 ” . . .this study, published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, involved a large number of women, and researchers also looked for any link to ibuprofen, a pain-relief alternative without acetaminophen.

“They found no development problems tied to ibuprofen,” Reuters health reported Nov 22 of this year.

“Long-term use of (acetaminophen) increased the risk of behavior problems by 70 percent at age three,” Ragnhild Eek Brandlistuen, leader of the study at Oloso, said.

Company PR has always been there to mop up the damage of these claims though. A spokesperson for Johnson & Johnson said that, “As the authors note in the study, there are no prospective, randomized controlled studies demonstrating a causal link between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and adverse effects on child development.”

Brandlistuen said that there needs to be more research done on this topic. And people shouldn’t be prepared to jump to any conclusions.

All I can believe is what I see, and while I never will be a pregnant mother, I do try and avoid medication as much as possible. At a doctor’s visit, not to long ago, I made note of his advice to, “Stay away from acetaminophen, as much as you can.” And I personally intend to do just that.

Resources:

The actual study : prenatal paracetamol exposure and child neurodevelopment: a sibling-controlled cohort study, Published October 24, 2013. http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/10/24/ije.dyt183.short?rss=1

Reuters article: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/22/us-tylenol-pregnancy-idUSBRE9AL15L20131122

Picture: http://www.healthnowmedical.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/tylenol.jpg

By chance, I guess, I just read a short story for another class call Beautiful Monsters. It reminded me of something. An article I read a couple months ago.

I’m sitting here right now trying to process this.

On a whim, I traveled five hours to and from New York on Saturday. This happened on a day where the most interesting thing I was expecting to happen was to replace my wireless router and maybe catch the late night games.

I think the first thing anybody should know about me is that I love metal music and most sub-genres that tag along. It’s been part of my life since I began high school. And more important than that, it’s a huge way my best friends and I could be far apart and together at the same time.

I was relaxing when I got a phone call from a friend. “Guess where I am going today,” he said. “August. Burns. Red.“

I had to go. Here’s the catch: it was in Elmira, NY, which my GPS told me was 105 miles away.

Logic told me to stay home, do some homework, study…etc. I was going to the show.

So as I wheeled onto the highway something odd happened. The 105 miles to Elmira, NY turned into 160 miles.

I’ve gone too far, I thought as I jumped onto I-80.

After a while my mind began to drift. It’s funny how you get your deepest thoughts when your mind should really be elsewhere. About a thousand places elsewhere.

I drifted through I-80, my mind on autopilot. Same goes while passing Lock Haven. But at a point, and I don’t remember where, I snapped out of it and found myself in a beautiful valley, trees just beginning to change. Mountains suddenly erupted out of the ground.

Everywhere I looked, I felt so small. I was on a vista viewing the world before me.

Depending on how cynical I feel I may or may not say I believe in god. I could care less about it most of the time, but as I smashed down the highway going 80, I have to say that I believed in something.

And it made me reflect. Not only on myself, but on everything.

Why is it that true reality doesn’t creep up on us until we’re past the point of its inception? 

Why not every time you look at a mountain or canyon or ocean you feel the size of a flea? Or rather why do we feel so small at random, obscure moments in life.

Will we ever really know?