http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=india-court-ruling...
India Court Ruling Upholds Access to Cheaper, Generic Drugs

India’s Supreme Court today rejected efforts by the Swiss drug major Novartis to patent the anticancer drug Gleevec (imatinib mesylate), in a ruling that signaled India’s determination to support affordable medicines.

The court rejected the Basel-based company’s challenge to India’s patent law, which limits drug firms’ ability to extend patent life beyond 20 years by making minor modifications to drugs, a tactic known as ‘evergreening’. Novartis's patent claim on a modified version of Gleevec (marketed in some countries as Glivec) “fails in both the tests of invention and patentability”, the court said.

****

The Supreme Court denied efforts by Novartis to patent an anticancer drug by "evergreening" its chemistry, signaling India's commitment to price reductions for drugs, especially HIV drugs
The purpose of evergreening by the pharmaceutical companies is to extend the patent on the old drug and NOT allow generics to be made. This keeps the price & $profits high and restricts access to the drug.

"This technique, known as “evergreening,” allows pharmaceutical companies to obtain or extend monopoly protection for old drugs simply by making minor modifications to existing formulations or dosages, or by identifying a new therapeutic use for an existing medicine."

http://aids2012.msf.org/2012/the-trans-pacific-partnership-agreemen...

http://adage.com/article/global-news/courvoisier-unilever-manipulat...
How Courvoisier and Unilever Manipulate the Senses
Other Marketers Lag In Sensory Marketing; Expert Spells Out Opportunities

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=mirror-neurons-can...
Mirror Neurons Can Reflect Hatred

Mirror neurons distinguish between those we like and those we do not.
Mirror neuron activity is thought to be a very basic part of brain function—and it can be seen in many animals besides humans—the new finding supports the notion that our brain is predisposed to distinguish “us versus them.” This distinction can be beneficial, encouraging caution around those with harmful intentions, or dangerous, further entrenching prejudices. To weaken unwelcome biases, lead author Lisa Aziz-Zadeh, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Southern California, suggests that exposure and perspective taking could go a long way.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/27-science-fictions-that-became-scie...
27 Science Fictions That Became Science Facts In 2012

Official mind reading is possible

Crime drama CSI, which airs on KHQA-CBS.
One of that show's saying is, "Science doesn't lie." - Very True!

Scientists 'read dreams' using brain scans

Scientists have found a way to "read" dreams, a study suggests.

Researchers in Japan used MRI scans to reveal the images that people were seeing as they entered into an early stage of sleep.

Writing in the journal Science, they reported that they could do this with 60% accuracy.

The team now wants to see if brain activity can be used to decipher other aspects of dreaming, such as the emotions experienced during sleep.

Professor Yukiyasu Kamitani, from the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories, in Kyoto, said: "I had a strong belief that dream decoding should be possible at least for particular aspects of dreaming... I was not very surprised by the results, but excited."

Brain wave

People have been trying to understand dreams since ancient Egyptian times, but the researchers who have carried out this study have found a more direct way to tap into our nighttime visions.

The team used MRI scans to monitor three people as they slept.

Just as the volunteers started to fall asleep inside the scanners, they were woken up and asked to recount what they had seen.

Each image mentioned, from bronze statues to keys and ice picks, was noted, no matter how surreal.

This was repeated more than 200 times for each participant.

The researchers used the results to build a database, where they grouped together objects into similar visual categories. For example, hotel, house and building were grouped together as "structures".

The scientists then scanned the volunteers again, but this time, while they were awake and looking at images on a computer screen.

With this, they were able to see the specific patterns of brain activity that correlated with the visual imagery.

Dream machines?

During the next round of sleep tests, by monitoring the brain scans the researchers could tell what the volunteers were seeing in their dreams. They were able to assess which broad category the images were in with 60% accuracy.

"We were able to reveal dream content from brain activity during sleep, which was consistent with the subjects' verbal reports," explained Professor Kamitani.

The researchers now want to look at deeper sleep, where the most vivid dreams are thought to occur, as well as see whether brain scans can help them to reveal the emotions, smells, colours and actions that people experience as they sleep.

Dr Mark Stokes, a cognitive neuroscientist from the University of Oxford, said it was an "exciting" piece of research that brought us closer to the concept of dream-reading machines.

"It's obviously a long way off, but there is no reason why not in principle. The difficult thing is to work out the systematic mapping between the brain activity and the phenomena," he explained.

However, he added that a single dream-reading system would not work for everyone.

"All of this would have to be done within individual subjects. So you would never be able build a general classifier that could read anybody's dreams. They will all be idiosyncratic to the individual, so the brain activity will never be general across subjects," he said.

"You would never be able to build something that could read other peoples thoughts without them knowing about it, for example."

Sursa: bbc.co.uk

Thank you, Georgescu, for posting this information!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/9977464/Scientists-...
Scientists should be celebrities, says Prof Brian Cox
It means he can no longer visit his favourite pub incognito, but Professor Brian Cox has argued scientists should be celebrities as it gets people interested in the subject.

The particle physicist and television presenter said he hoped for a return to the way of the 19th century, when British scientists such as Michael Faraday and Humphry Davy were “celebrities hanging out with the romantic poets.”

It was a time when attending science lectures was a popular pursuit and “ideas were seen as exciting,” he said.

Reflecting on the renown that means he can no longer visit the Clapham High Street pub he loves in south London for fear of being ambushed by fans, he said: "Why wouldn't you want academics to be celebrities?... Of course I want science to be part of popular culture like that again.

“It's the way you get people interested in scientific ideas."

Prof Cox, who has recently returned to lecturing at Manchester University, where he teaches quantum physics and relativity, denied that his students were star struck by him however.

He told the Sunday Times News Review: “Maybe in the first lecture that I give in September they'll behave differently when they first come in, but within minutes they're criticising the size of your writing or whatever."

While he did not tend to listen to his critics, he said, “sometimes they make you aware of the clichés you've created or any laziness that's coming into what you do, so for that reason they can be good.”

Prof Cox, who played the keyboard in a hard rock band called Dare before joining the better known pop group D:Ream, said he had learned his lesson about critics then.

“Our first album was criticised for not being heavy enough, so we followed it up with one that was heavier but basically fairly s***,” he said of Dare.

“It was exactly the wrong thing to do and I've always remembered that.

http://esciencenews.com/articles/2013/04/12/secrets.bacterial.slime...
Secrets of bacterial slime revealed
Newcastle University scientists have revealed the mechanism that causes a slime to form, making bacteria hard to shift and resistant to antibiotics. When under threat, some bacteria can shield themselves in a slimy protective layer, known as a biofilm. It is made up of communities of bacteria held together to protect themselves from attack.

Biofilms cause dental plaque and sinusitis; in healthcare, biofilms can lead to life threatening and difficult to treat infections, particularly on medical implants such as catheters, heart valves, artificial hips and even breast implants. They also they coat the outside of ships and boats polluting the water.

http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/saying-it-with-science/a...
Saying it with Science

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/health/for-scientists-an-explodin...;
For Scientists, an Exploding World of Pseudo-Academia
The scientists who were recruited to appear at a conference called Entomology-2013 thought they had been selected to make a presentation to the leading professional association of scientists who study insects.
But they found out the hard way that they were wrong. The prestigious, academically sanctioned conference they had in mind has a slightly different name: Entomology 2013 (without the hyphen). The one they had signed up for featured speakers who were recruited by e-mail, not vetted by leading academics. Those who agreed to appear were later charged a hefty fee for the privilege, and pretty much anyone who paid got a spot on the podium that could be used to pad a résumé.

“I think we were duped,” one of the scientists wrote in an e-mail to the Entomological Society.

Those scientists had stumbled into a parallel world of pseudo-academia, complete with prestigiously titled conferences and journals that sponsor them. Many of the journals and meetings have names that are nearly identical to those of established, well-known publications and events.

Steven Goodman, a dean and professor of medicine at Stanford and the editor of the journal Clinical Trials, which has its own imitators, called this phenomenon “the dark side of open access,” the movement to make scholarly publications freely available.

The number of these journals and conferences has exploded in recent years as scientific publishing has shifted from a traditional business model for professional societies and organizations built almost entirely on subscription revenues to open access, which relies on authors or their backers to pay for the publication of papers online, where anyone can read them.

Open access got its start about a decade ago and quickly won widespread acclaim with the advent of well-regarded, peer-reviewed journals like those published by the Public Library of Science, known as PLoS. Such articles were listed in databases like PubMed, which is maintained by the National Library of Medicine, and selected for their quality.

My take on this: I have seen several common people gaining 'some partial knowledge' from the internet and actually arguing with scientists about science! Even I don't  do that with my well qualified colleagues! Wikipedia is one such thing which doesn't give full proof  information on science. Anybody can write anything on the site. I came across people giving references of Wikipedia with regard to science. Internet is confusing people too. Everybody is an expert here! Who can people believe here? Who is a 'real scientist'?

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=sea-urchin-evoluti...
Can Evolution beat Climate Change?

http://www.examiner.com/article/bad-decisions-come-from-bad-informa...
Bad decisions come from bad information, new study says
Science Daily reported yesterday on a new study that showed bad decisions come from errors in sensory input, rather than the brain's decision-making process.

While it might seem obvious that bad information leads to bad decisions, the question Princeton University researchers were trying to answer was whether the errors that lead to bad decisions occurred during sensory input, or deeper in the brain where decisions are made.

To do this, they subjected 4 human volunteers and 19 lab rats to streams of randomly timed clicks, which were played in both the left and right ear. Once the subjects listened to the stream, the subject had to choose which side more clicks originated from. The rats were previously trained to turn their noses in the direction of the most clicks.

More often than not, the subjects chose the correct side. When they did make the occasional error, it was when two clicks overlapped. There was no observable "noise," meaning errors, in the brain systems responsible for tallying the clicks. Multiple replications of the experiment showed these results. That meant that the errors leading the the wrong decisions occurred based on inaccurate sensory inputs, rather than faults in how that information was processed.

The data from the study were put into a computer model of the decision making process, giving insight into how the brain interprets sensory data and goes about making a decision.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130415172429.htm
Bad Decisions Arise from Faulty Information, Not Faulty Brain Circuits

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/warning-bad-science-can...
Warning: Bad science can damage your health

Nature's great ecologists:

http://www.google.com/green/products/engineers/#/bower-birds

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/35143/title/J...
Jailed for Faking Data

A researcher working for a US pharmaceutical company’s Scotland branch is sent to prison for falsifying safety test data on experimental drugs due for clinical trials.

http://www.techlicious.com/guide/top-sites-that-make-science-awesome/
Top Sites That Make Science Awesome

"As for integrity, those researchers who are surprised that the world of peer-reviewed publication does not always produce the highest quality research should have their degrees revoked. Academic credentials aren't sufficient if you don't understand how the human being works, particularly en masse.

Just because an article has been published, even in a highly reputable journal, doesn't mean it couldn't possibly contain an error. And if an offer sounds too good to be true, it probably is. "

This is a sweeping statement. It is the endeavour of the scientific community to get things improved. Only because people understand things, they point the flaws out and bring it to the notice of the scientific community, for it to take steps to make the changes for the improvement. Not because to understand the flaws of how human beings or their minds behave and work and keep quiet. Science degrades if scientists fail to raise their voices against "substandardness"! Science can never correct itself if this happens. Science learns by its mistakes and advances by correcting itself.

Thank you, Georgescu, for the informative images.

http://incubator.rockefeller.edu/?p=1123
5 Steps to Separate Science from Hype, No PhD Required

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/talking-back/2013/05/02/spring-...
Spring (and Scientific Fraud) Is Busting Out all over

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/borges-and-the-para...
Paradox of the perceived and Quantum mechanics

Adding Up Diagnosis Errors

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323551004578438692201...

http://esciencenews.com/articles/2013/05/03/gray.hair.and.vitiligo....!+Science+News+-+Popular%29
Gray hair and vitiligo reversed at the root
Hair dye manufacturers are on notice: The cure for gray hair is coming. That's right, the need to cover up one of the classic signs of aging with chemical pigments will be a thing of the past thanks to a team of European researchers. In a new research report published online in The FASEB Journal people who are going gray develop massive oxidative stress via accumulation of hydrogen peroxide in the hair follicle, which causes our hair to bleach itself from the inside out, and most importantly, the report shows that this massive accumulation of hydrogen peroxide can be remedied with a proprietary treatment developed by the researchers described as a topical, UVB-activated compound called PC-KUS (a modified pseudocatalase). What's more, the study also shows that the same treatment works for the skin condition, vitiligo. "To date, it is beyond any doubt that the sudden loss of the inherited skin and localized hair color can affect those individuals in many fundamental ways," said Karin U. Schallreuter, M.D., study author from the Institute for Pigmentary Disorders in association with E.M. Arndt University of Greifswald, Germany and the Centre for Skin Sciences, School of Life Sciences at the University of Bradford, United Kingdom. "The improvement of quality of life after total and even partial successful repigmentation has been documented."

To achieve this breakthrough, Schallreuter and colleagues analyzed an international group of 2,411 patients with vitiligo. Of that group, 57 or 2.4 percent were diagnosed with strictly segmental vitiligo (SSV), and 76 or 3.2 percent were diagnosed with mixed vitiligo, which is SSV plus non-segmental vitiligo (NSV). They found that for the first time, patients who have SSV within a certain nerval distribution involving skin and eyelashes show the same oxidative stress as observed in the much more frequent general NSV, which is associated with decreased antioxidant capacities including catalase, thioredoxin reductase, and the repair mechanisms methionine sulfoxide reductases. These findings are based on basic science and clinical observations, which led to successful patient outcomes regarding repigmentation of skin and eyelashes.

http://newsok.com/science-not-a-collection-of-unquestioned-facts/ar...
Science not a collection of unquestioned facts

Scientists and educators' provocative and important work can be broadly cast as creative teaching, communicating science,performing science (doing research), and being developmental scientists.

http://improvscience.org/

improvscience provides services for principal investigators, educators, managers and directors to develop scientists capable of collaborative, creative and innovative research and production.

Let's use the innovations from creativity, organizational and human development to create exceptional work conditions for scientists to creatively explore our world. Let's improv our science. 

improvscience events provide professional development in multiple settings. Hear how we help our clients meet their goal

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/scientist-solutions-collaborate4c...

Scientist Solutions - Collaborate4Cures

They help the World's Life Scientists so they can Heal Disease Faster

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/10/bacteria-infected-mosquito...
Bacteria-infected mosquitoes may halt malaria

Scientists have infected mosquitoes with a bacteria known as Wolbachia, which sabotages malaria-causing parasites in the bugs, limiting their ability to spread malaria to humans, Science News reported.

In the latest study from Michigan State University (MSU), researchers are theorizing that the Wolbachia bacteria would stop the malaria parasite from being spread from an infected bug to a person.

Zihyong Xi and his team from MSU injected Wolbachia bacteria into thousands of mosquito embryos that were of the Anopheles stephensi species. In the past, this species has been difficult to infect. However, one female mosquito caught the bacteria and produced a laboratory line of infected offspring.

Xi’s research, which is published in the May 10 edition of Science, said the mothers spread the bacteria to 34 generations of descendants. Those descendants carried less than one-third as many malaria parasites as the uninfected mosquitoes.

“It’s a very important study because they’re the first group to show that Wolbachia can establish a stable heritable infection,” said Jason L. Ragson of Pennsylvania State University, who did not work with Xi, but has been trying to lure Wolbachia bacteria into another species of mosquitoes for approximately eight years.

Xi said it’s too early to release Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes into the wild – he wants to see if they can block pathogens and compete for mates, according to Science News.

Two papers recently published in the journal Nature indicated that the Wolbachia bacteria also has the ability to eliminate dengue fever in generations of infected mosquitoes, Reuters reported.

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112843812/identical-twins-exp...
Study: Experience Builds Neural Connections, Differentiates Twins
From Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen to professional hockey players Henrik and Daniel Sedin, identical twins have always captivated the public’s imagination. Although they are genetically identical, anyone who has gotten to know a pair of twins can begin to pick up on the subtle differences that make each person unique.

Based on research involving mice twins, a group of German researchers has found an individual’s personal experiences add to the neural connections within the brain, allowing that individual to deviate in its own unique way, according to a new study in the journal Science.

To reach this conclusion, the team housed 40 genetically identical mice twins in an intricate, five-level cage – complete with glass chutes, toys, scaffolds, nesting places and other features. The mice were able to explore about five square yards of space.

“The animals were not only genetically identical, they were also living in the same environment,” Gerd Kempermann, the principal researcher and a professor of genomics regeneration at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Disease in Dresden, said in a statement. “However, this environment was so rich that each mouse gathered its own individual experiences in it. Over time, the animals therefore increasingly differed in their realm of experience and behavior.”

The mice were also fitted with a microchip that sent out electromagnetic signals, allowing the scientists to track the mice as they moved and to record their brain activity. While some mice roamed throughout the entire enclosure, some stayed close to familiar paths and areas. Over the course of three months, the team also observed the mice developing their own unique personality.

“Over time, the animals therefore increasingly differed in their realm of experience and behavior,” Kempermann told the AFP.

The team found the most explorative mice were generating more new neurons in the hippocampus, the brain region for learning and memory, than their more passive counterparts.

In their report, the researchers said they have demonstrated how personal experiences and learned behavior contribute to individualization, asserting that neither genetics nor environment is responsible for this growth.

“Adult neurogenesis also occurs in the hippocampus of humans,” Kempermann said. “Hence, we assume that we have tracked down a neurological foundation for individuality that also applies to humans.”

The findings give new clues to how the brain works, and could have implications for future research on learning and aging, the researchers said.

“When viewed from educational and psychological perspectives, the results of our experiment suggest that an enriched environment fosters the development of individuality,” co-author Ulman Lindenberger, director of the Center for Lifespan Psychology at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, told the AFP.

In the journal, the study was accompanied by a commentary written by Olaf Bergmann and Jonas Frisen of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, who were not directly involved in the research. They said the study has two main uses.

“Molecular understanding of neurogenesis will hopefully aid in the rational development of new classes of drugs for psychiatric disease,” they wrote, adding that it “may teach us… how living our lives makes us who we are.”

Source: Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_how_to_escape_education_s_dea...
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_how_to_escape_education_s_dea...

http://www.examiner.com/list/research-immune-system-stays-young-lon...
Research: Immune system stays young longer in women
One reason that women live longer than men has been shown to be that women’s immune systems stay active longer according to research published by researchers in Japan and the United States in the journal Immunity & Ageing on May 14, 2013.

A comparison of the immune systems of healthy men and women ranging in age between 20 and 90 years old presented distinct differences with age.

The number of neutrophils decreased for both sexes and lymphocytes decreased in men and increased in women. Younger men normally have higher levels of lymphocytes than similarly aged women but over time the number of lymphocytes becomes similar.

The rate in decline in T cells (T lymphocytes) and B cells was slower for women than men.

Both CD4+ T (T helper cells) cells and NK (natural killer) cells increased with age, and the rate of increase was higher in women than men.

IL-6 (interleukin 6) and IL-10 (interleukin 10) decreased in men more rapidly than in women.

Red blood cell counts decreased more in men than in women.

This study does not account for every possibility of longer life spans in women versus men but does indicate that estrogen has a facilitating effect on the longer lasting immune systems of women.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-manhattans-gre...

Why Manhattan's Green Roofs Don't Work--and How to Fix Them

City rooftops covered with vegetation are seen as a way to reduce the urban heat-island effect and cut energy usage--but so far, the results have been unimpressive