Oxygenated alcohol reduces hangovers. North Korean doctors ran three experiments using 19.5 percent alcohol drinks, and measured the speed at which people’s blood alcohol dropped to 0.000 percent. One of the alcoholic drinks was oxygenated. Drinkers from the added oxygen content group sobered 20-30 minutes faster and had less severe and fewer hangovers than people who drank non-fizzy. The body needs to oxidise ethanol to water and carbon dioxide to process it. This occurs via hepatic oxidation, where the liver does its thing. Enzymes that process alcohol require oxygen to function. It’s thought that by storing the oxygen in the alcohol itself, the system functions more quickly and efficiently. The oxygen-enriched alcohol beverage reduces plasma alcohol concentrations faster than a normal dissolved-oxygen alcohol beverage does. Champagne has similar qualities. - io9.com
A new device that checks a man’s sperm count at home is soon to go on sale in U.K. The developer, Dr John Herr, of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, said it would suit couples who had tried for pregnancy for a few months but weren’t ready to seek professional help. The SpermCheck fertility test will retail for about $45 and is said to be 96 percent accurate. Sperm counts of 20 million per millilitre of semen and above are considered normal. The test will tell if a man’s sperm count meets this level. If both strips are negative the man is likely to be infertile. The test works by detecting the antigen (SP-10) found on the surface of the head of a sperm cell. - Daily Mail
The earthquake that killed more than 800 people in Chile on Saturday had probably shifted the Earth’s axis and shortened the day, a National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientist said. Earthquakes could shift hundreds of kilometres of rock by several metres, changing the distribution of mass on the planet, Richard Gross said. That affected the Earth’s rotation. “The length of the day should have gotten shorter by 1.26 microseconds (millionths of a second). The axis about which the Earth’s mass is balanced should have moved by 2.7 milliarcseconds (about 8cm or 3in).” The magnitude 9.1 Sumatran earthquake on Boxing day in 2004 that generated an Indian Ocean tsunami had shortened the day by 6.8 microseconds and shifted the axis by about 2.3 milliarcseconds, Dr Gross said. The changes happened on the day and then carried on forever. - BusinessWeek
An independent board of scientists will be appointed to review the workings of the world’s top climate science panel, which has faced recriminations over inaccuracies in a 2007 report. The board’s work will be part of a broader review of the body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCChas been under fire since it was pointed out that the 2007 report included a prediction that Himalayan glaciers would vanish by 2035, although there was no scientific consensus to that effect. One area to be examined is whether the panel should incorporate so-called gray literature, a term to describe non-peer-reviewed science, in its reports. Many scientists say such material, from reports by government agencies to respected research not published in scientific journals, is crucial to a complete picture of climate science. – The New York Times
A recent report in The New England Journal of Medicine says that a stem cell transplant performed in Germany has unexpectedly removed all signs of HIV from a 42 year-old American patient. The unnamed white male was treated two years ago for leukaemia with a dose of donor stem cells. His HIV RNA count has dropped to zero and remained there. While the treatment was for leukaemia, Dr Gero Hutter and colleagues at the Charite Universitatsmedizen in Berlin had selected the stem cell donor for his HIV-resistant genes. Like many instances of “miraculous medicine”, this case has its complexities. Knowing all these qualifications and complexities, Dr Hutter says, “even if stem cells aren’t the cure for HIV/aids, they continue to impress me as an insanely versatile and effective route of treatment.” – SingularityHub
When the United States restricted stem cell research in the early part of the century that research didn’t die. It emigrated. All over the world, scientists continued to explore the efficacies of embryonic and adult stem cells with astonishing results. Now, as the public becomes increasingly aware of these ‘miracle’ treatments, the demand for stem cell therapies has increased far beyond what institutionalised Western medicine seems able to immediately provide. The result is exhilarating and terrifying: more and more patients are travelling abroad to seek stem cell treatments. Companies such as Atlanta-based Global Surgery Providers are marketing direct to patients, facilitating travel for medical procedures including stem cell transplants. While governments, doctors, and patients are still struggling to understand the complexities of the dangers and advantages of medical tourism, it continues to grow. – SingularityHub
New strains of ‘Gram-negative’ bacteria have become resistant to all safe antibiotics. The bacteria, classified as Gram-negative because of their reaction to the so-called Gram stain test, can cause severe pneumonia and infections of the urinary tract, bloodstream, and other parts of the body. Their cell structure makes them more difficult to attack with antibiotics than Gram-positive organisms such as MRSA. The only antibiotics — colistin and polymyxin B — that still have efficacy against Gram-negative bacteria produce dangerous side effects: kidney damage and nerve damage. Patients who are infected with Gram-negative bacteria must make the unsavoury choice between life with kidney damage or death with intact kidneys. Recently, some new strains of Gram-negative bacteria have shown resistance against even colistin and polymyxin B. Infection with these new strains typically means death for the patient. - The New York Times
An independent board of scientists will be appointed to review the workings of the world’s top climate science panel, which has faced recriminations over inaccuracies in a 2007 report. The board’s work will be part of a broader review of the body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCChas been under fire since it was pointed out that the 2007 report included a prediction that Himalayan glaciers would vanish by 2035, although there was no scientific consensus to that effect. One area to be examined is whether the panel should incorporate so-called gray literature, a term to describe non-peer-reviewed science, in its reports. Many scientists say such material, from reports by government agencies to respected research not published in scientific journals, is crucial to a complete picture of climate science. – 
A recent report in 
When the United States restricted stem cell research in the early part of the century that research didn’t die. It emigrated. All over the world, scientists continued to explore the efficacies of embryonic and adult stem cells with astonishing results. Now, as the public becomes increasingly aware of these ‘miracle’ treatments, the demand for stem cell therapies has increased far beyond what institutionalised Western medicine seems able to immediately provide. The result is exhilarating and terrifying: more and more patients are travelling abroad to seek stem cell treatments. Companies such as Atlanta-based Global Surgery Providers are marketing direct to patients, facilitating travel for medical procedures including stem cell transplants. While governments, doctors, and patients are still struggling to understand the complexities of the dangers and advantages of medical tourism, it continues to grow. – 
