Science Daily is a great site for weird stories. Here are some snips from the past few days.
In a follow-up to research showing that psilocybin, a substance contained in “sacred mushrooms,” produces substantial spiritual effects, a Johns Hopkins team reports that those beneficial effects appear to last more than a year.
Watermelon may have a viagra-like effect:
Watermelon may not be as organ specific as Viagra,” [Dr. Bhimu Patil, director of Texas A&M’s Fruit and Vegetable Improvement Center in College Station] said, “but it’s a great way to relax blood vessels without any drug side-effects.”
As if a moral compass weren’t enough to tell us our drug war is wrong, science, or at least statistics, weighs in:
A survey of 17 countries has found that despite its punitive drug policies the United States has the highest levels of illegal cocaine and cannabis use…. The authors found that 16.2% of people in the United States had used cocaine in their lifetime, a level much higher than any other country surveyed (the second highest level of cocaine use was in New Zealand, where 4.3% of people reported having used cocaine). Cannabis use was highest in the US (42.4%), followed by New Zealand (41.9%).
Yay, New Zealand. Nice place. In a related story, scientists from Hungary, Germany and the U.K. have discovered that our own body not only makes chemical compounds similar to the active ingredient in marijuana (THC), but these play an important part in maintaining healthy skin. This finding on “endocannabinoids” just published online in, and scheduled for the October 2008 print issue of, The FASEB Journal, could lead to new drugs that treat skin conditions ranging from acne to dry skin, and even skin-related tumors.
And in the plants are people too department, we have circadian rhythms in plants:
The daily cycles of many organisms are well known, but what has not been clear is whether these cycles are just responses to external cues of light, dark, heat, and cold, or if there are internal clocks that are set and reset by environmental signals. In animals, circadian rhythms are known to be important for maintaining a multitude of physiological processes…. They may be even more critical for plants, which grow in many different light and temperature environments that not only vary with latitude but also with subtle differences within just a few feet. Plants respond to changes in light and temperature, opening flowers at dawn and closing them at night or blooming in the right season. However, they also have endogenous circadian (“around the day”) rhythms with roughly 24 hour periods that are regulated by numerous genes that interact in complex pathways and cycles like exquisite 18th century clocks.
