Episode #991
News Items
Who's That Noisy
- Answer to last week: Flat tire
Science or Fiction
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Item #1
Science
In a sample of almost 10 thousand people, smoking was found to correlate with lower personality scores in Conscientiousness and Agreeableness and higher Extraversion scores.https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0305634
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Item #2
Science
Researchers find that the standard pasteurization process eliminates 100% of H5N1 bird flu virus from infected milk. https://www.news-medical.net/news/20240702/FDA-commercial-pasteurization-process-kills-H5N1-bird-flu-virus-in-milk.aspx
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Item #3
Fiction
A new study finds that introns (non-coding segments of genes) can affect protein folding, independent of their effects on splicing. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2400151121
Skeptical Quote of the Week.
‘Rarely do the advocates of cleanses explain what is meant by toxins. It is one of those nebulous pseudoscientific terms rolled out by people deliberately avoiding the specificity required for a science-based analysis. It’s the modern-day equivalent of “evil spirits,” vague enough to mean just about anything while retaining the ring of scientific legitimacy.” ― Timothy Caulfield, Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything?: How the Famous Sell Us Elixirs of Health, Beauty & Happiness