The Handfish

Via Richard Dawkins:

Using its fins to walk, rather than swim, along the ocean floor in an undated picture, the pink handfish is one of nine newly named species described in a recent scientific review of the handfish family. The new-species determinations were made based on a number of factors, including number of vertebrae and fin rays, coloration, the presence of scales and spines, and proportional body measurements, according to review author Daniel Gledhill of Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, or CSIRO.

Drug-Resistant Gonorrhea Found

Scientists in Japan have discovered a new strain of gonorrhea that appears to be resistant to all antibiotics.

"This is both an alarming and a predictable discovery," lead researcher Magnus Unemo, professor at the Swedish Reference Laboratory for Pathogenic Neisseria in Örebro, Sweden, said in a statement. "Since antibiotics became the standard treatment for gonorrhea in the 1940s, this bacterium has shown a remarkable capacity to develop resistance mechanisms to all drugs introduced to control it."

Flashed Face Distortion Effect

Women Are Better At Everything

So says a study cited by TIME Magazine. Men do things worse, apparently, because they have a penis.

What's the problem with men? "There's been a lot of academic research suggesting that men think they know what they're doing, even when they really don't know what they're doing," John Ameriks, the author of the Vanguard study, told the New York Times. The reason for that overconfidence may come down to biology, research suggests. There's a growing field of study called "neuroeconomics," in which scientists are examining the link between hormonal and neurological impulses and financial decision-making. One such recent study by John Coates, a research fellow in neuroscience and finance at Cambridge University, tested male traders' hormone responses to workplace decisions. He found that testosterone — the stuff that makes men, well, men — surges during winning streaks. And that may drive both risk-taking and an attitude of infallibility. The so-called "winner effect," which has been seen in athletes during competition, also seems to apply to male traders.

The Narrowing Food Tree

(Source)

AMA Comes Out For Marriage

In response to the vote in the New York legislature, the American Medical Association has issued a call for the marriage equality across the United States. Via press release from Freedom To Marry:

With the New York State now the sixth – and largest – state to end the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage, the American Medical Association (AMA) adopted a policy position declaring that excluding same-sex couples from marriage is “discriminatory” and reaffirming existing AMA policy to support relationship recognition of gay and lesbian couples as a means of addressing health disparities faced by those couples and their families. “With this deliberate policy statement by the American Medical Association, the nation’s doctors diagnose the pain and injury that exclusion from marriage inflicts on lesbian and gay couples, their children, and loved ones – and make clear that ending marriage discrimination is the cure,” said Evan Wolfson, founder and President of Freedom to Marry. “The AMA now joins every other mainstream public health organization in America in making the case for providing the freedom to marry – and the critical safety-net that comes with marriage – to loving, committed same-sex couples.”

FOTF Denies Climate Change

HIV Vaccine on Monkeys, 'effective' - researchers

HIV vaccine administered on 13 out of 24 rhesus macaques has successfully protected the primates from the monkey equivalent of the virus. The breakthrough may pave way to a new approach to an HIV vaccine for humans, according to a study.

In an experiment, 24 healthy rhesus macaques monkeys were given a vaccine containing a genetically modified form of the virus, rhesus cytomegalovirus (CMV).

Thirteen monkeys appeared to have been protected against simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), the monkey equivalent of HIV. The vaccine also offered protection to 12 of the 13 macaques for another year.

The study says the vaccine works by stimulating the production of "effector memory T-cells", the type of blood cell which can remain vigilant in the body long after an infection has abated.

According to BBC News, other researchers welcomed the study, but said "safety issues would need to be addressed before similar approaches could be tried in humans."