Oprah Winfrey's Guests Can Be Dangerous For Your Health.

Valerie Borde, blogger and science columnist for L'Actualite magazine, wrote about an report published in Newsweek on the subject of Oprah Winfrey's miracle advice guests. For instance:

- TV actress Suzanne Somers, who claims to have found the secret of eternal youth, including daily growth hormones injections and taking no less than 60 supplements per day!

- The gynecologist Christiane Northrup, who diagnosed Oprah's thyroid problems which should be read as a signal sent by her soul to her body.

- A top-model convinced that his son became autistic following a vaccination against measles, a myth that gave birth to a real public health problem in many countries.

- The author of the book "The Secret", who claims that it is sufficient to believe that the positive waves of the universe can send us the object of our desires, money ... or the cure for cancer.

- Several developers of cosmetic surgery treatments also considered risky or ineffective.

According to Newsweek, one problem is that on Oprah's show, there is one opinion more equal than others; and by the end of the program there is no doubt where Oprah herself stands on the issues. Oprah takes these things very seriously. They seem to be, after all, the answers she hopes to find for herself.

Another problem is that Oprah does not invite on her show any experts who could give a different opinion - more scientific - about the issues addressed, and she never asks difficult questions to her guests. One can be sure that as a result of her shows, these irrational and dangerous ideas spread in the population.

What a student!

In case you missed the news on Yahoo from AFP:

"A 16-year-old Iraqi immigrant living in Sweden has cracked a maths puzzle that has stumped experts for more than 300 years, Swedish media reported on Thursday.

In just four months, Mohamed Altoumaimi has found a formula to explain and simplify the so-called Bernoulli numbers, a sequence of calculations named after the 17th century Swiss mathematician Jacob Bernoulli, the Dagens Nyheter daily said. "

Like to get onr student like this once in a while.

Olé! An Asteroide almost Hit Earth.

2009DD45, a 30 to 40 meters in diameter asteroid, on Monday, passed at 60,000 kilometers over southeast Pacific, seven times closer than the moon, to the surprise of astronomers, report Australian newspapers today.

"No object of that size or larger has ever been seen so close to Earth," said Rob McNaught, an Australian scientist at the observatory in Siding Spring.

2009 DD45 is the asteroid that has come closer to Earth since 1973, according to astronomer Peter Brown of the University of Western Ontario (Canada) and has a size similar to the one that devastated 2000 square kilometers of forest in Siberia in 1908.

McNaught, contracted by NASA, found 2009 DD45 Friday night and determined that the Earth would not get in its path "by not much." About 1,000 asteroids have been classified as potentially dangerous as they pass near Earth throughout history.

According to McNaught, the probability that a meteorite of more than one kilometer in diameter hit the Earth is one every several million years, while the possibility that one smaller, capable of endangering a entire city, is "one every one hundred years."

Near Earth Asteroid 2009 DD45 on 2009 March 2 - moving at about 500"/minute:

Another video prepared at 12.15 noon on 2nd March,09. Shows simulated animation of Asteroid 2009 DD45 closest pass at 63,500 km at 19:14 p.m. IST(13.44 UTC)on 2nd March, 2009

Asteroid 2009 DD45 zipped past Earth today, March 2nd at 1340 UT, about 72,000 km (0.00048 AU) away. That's only twice the height of a geostationary communications satellite. The 35-meter-wide space rock is similar in size to the Tunguska impactor of 1908, but today there was no danger of a collision--just a close shave.

The Egg came before the Chicken.

This morning, I was meditating about I don't remember what and was about to use this Egg-Chicken Dilemma as an example when I realized that it was no dilemma.

Why?

Because there were a long time before the chickens, animals who were laying eggs: for instance, the dinosaurs. Those friendly creatures are the reptiles and birds ancestors. So, obviouly, eggs were around a long time before the chickens.

The problem is that we don't know what animals are the direct parents of the first so-called chicken. By which genetical or historical accident, the cross between those two animals resulted in something, I suppose, pretty close to a chicken for the first time. Anyway, who thinks about that when eating a delicious omelet or a chicken taco?

So, why have we been bothered for so long by that stupid false dilemma? We could have asked the same question about any bird: which came first the egg or the eagle? the egg or the duck?

Any more questions?

Mengele's Legacy

In a new book, Mengele: the Angel of Death in South America, the Argentine historian Jorge Camarasa, a specialist in the post-war Nazi flight to South America, has pieced together the Nazi doctor's mysterious later years.

He reveals how, after working with cattle farmers in Argentina to increase their stock, Mengele fled the country after fellow Nazi, Adolf Eichmann, was kidnapped by Israeli agents.

He claims that Mengele found refuge in the German enclave of Colonias Unidas, Paraguay, and from there, in 1963, began to make regular trips to another predominantly German community just over the border in Brazil – the farming community of Candido Godoi.

After speaking to the townspeople of Candido Godoi, he is convinced that Mengele continued his genetic experiments with twins – with startling results. And, Mr Camaras claims, it was here that soon after the birthrate of twins began to spiral.

(via Infobae and The Telegraph)

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Canada's Spectrum Allocation Table.

The following chart was found on Fagstein's blog in a note about the mandatory U.S. cut-off date, when all televisions must stop analog transmission and switch to digital. It looks pretty cool, isn't it?

The problem is that millions of television sets are not capable of receiving digital television signals and won't be able to receive anything after this date. In Canada, the switch happens on Aug. 31, 2011, for the entire country except the North. We have two more years to make sure that everyone keeps its sacred right to watch television.

Detox Products are Marketing Scam, claims Young Scientists Group.

The London-based The Voice of Young Science, a team of early-career scientists, set out to explore detox claims attached to a wide range of consumer products.

Researcher Tom Sheldon said he was tasked with examining claims for one shampoo product targeted to busy city dwellers.

Sheldon said the study aimed to shed light on how many companies use "detox" as a method of marketing products, though they are in fact no different from other products on the market.

"That's legalized lying really," he said. "I think that if we allow the companies to just get away with making any claims that they like, not only do they cost the paying public — the trusting public — a great deal of money on products that don't work, but they also have a further reaching effect which is to tell people scientific untruths, and I think the public deserves more than that."

(via Yahoo)