Still Believe Nature Got It Wrong? Top 10 Health Benefits of Marijuana

There is no plant on Earth more condemned than marijuana. We’re talking about a living organism which governments have taken upon themselves to designate as an illegal substance. Despite no existing evidence of anyone ever dying of a marijuana overdose, possession of this plant is still illegal in many parts. Marijuana has been found to suppress cancer, reduce blood pressure, treat glaucoma, alleviate pain and even inhibit HIV. It is an antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective. Can you understand more now why it’s illegal?

No Independent Study Has Ever Linked Marijuana To Psychosocial Problems
Cannabis is one of the most powerful healing plants on the planet. Dozens of studies have made pseudoscientific attempts to indicate that young people who use cannabis tend to experience psychological, social problems and mental decline. However, there is no evidence that marijuana use is directly linked with such problems, according to the results of a study published in The Lancet.

“Currently, there is no strong evidence that use of cannabis of itself causes psychological or social problems,” such as mental illness or school failure, lead study author Dr. John Macleod of the University of Birmingham in the UK told Reuters Health.

“There is a great deal of evidence that cannabis use is associated with these things, but this association could have several explanations,” he said, citing factors such as adversity in early life, which may itself be associated with cannabis use and psychosocial problems.

Macleod and his team reviewed 48 long-term studies, 16 of which provided the highest quality information about the association between illicit drug use reported by people 25 years old or younger and later psychological or social problems. Most of the drug-specific results involved cannabis use.

Cannabis use was not consistently associated with violent or antisocial behavior, or with psychological problems.

In another study, Scientists from King’s College, London, found occasional pot use could actually improve concentration levels.

The study, carried in the American Journal of Epidemiology, tested the mental function and memory of nearly 9,000 Britons at age 50 and found that those who had used illegal drugs as recently as in their 40s did just as well, or slightly better, on the tests than peers who had never used drugs.

‘Overall, at the population level, the results seem to suggest that past or even current illicit drug use is not necessarily associated with impaired cognitive functioning in early middle age,’ said lead researcher Dr Alex Dregan.
Dr Dregan’s team used data on 8,992 42-year-olds participating in a UK national health study, who were asked if they had ever used any of 12 illegal drugs. Then, at the age of 50, they took standard tests of memory, attention and other cognitive abilities.

Overall, the study found, there was no evidence that current or past drug users had poorer mental performance. In fact, when current and past users were lumped together, their test scores tended to be higher.

The Age of Deception is Ending

In 2003, the U.S. Government as represented by the Department of Health and Human Services filed for, and was awarded a patent on cannabinoids. The reason? Because research into cannabinoids allowed pharmaceutical companies to acquire practical knowledge on one of the most powerful antioxidants and neuroprotectants known to the natural world.

The U.S. Patent 6630507 was specifically initiated when researchers found that cannabinoids had specific antioxidant properties making them useful in the treatment and prophylaxis of wide variety of oxidation associated diseases, such as ischemic, age-related, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. The cannabinoids are found to have particular application as neuroprotectants, for example in limiting neurological damage following ischemic insults, such as stroke and trauma, or in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and HIV dementia. Nonpsychoactive cannabinoids, such as cannabidoil, are particularly advantageous to use because they avoid toxicity that is encountered with psychoactive cannabinoids at high doses useful in the method of the present invention.

In a historic and significant moment in American history, last November, Colorado became the first US state to legalize marijuana for recreational use. The impact of the decision could ripple across the entire country with vast opportunities to educate millions on the top health benefits of marijuana.

With the passage of I-502 in the 2012 Washington State election, marijuana also became legal in Washington–not just for medical use, but also for recreational use. Weed is still illegal as far as the United States government is concerned, but Washington and Colorado both have yet to figure out how that will work. It’s certain that this issue will continue to evolve and smooth out as time goes by, but the remaining states will eventually follow suit or be left behind with outdated laws.

Top Health Benefits

It’s no surprise that the United States has decreed that marijuana has no accepted medical use use and should remain classified as a highly dangerous drug like heroin. Accepting and promoting the powerful health benefits of marijuana would instantly cut huge profits geared towards cancer treatment and the U.S. would have to admit it imprisons the population for no cause. Nearly half of all drug arrests in the United States are for marijuana.

According to MarijuanaNews.com editor Richard Cowan, the answer is because it is a threat to cannabis prohibition “…there really is massive proof that the suppression of medical cannabis represents the greatest failure of the institutions of a free society, medicine, journalism, science, and our fundamental values,” Cowan notes.

Besides the top 10 health benefits below, findings published in the journal PLoS ONE, researchers have now have now discovered that marijuana-like chemicals trigger receptors on human immune cells that can directly inhibit a type of human immuno-deficiency virus (HIV) found in late-stage AIDS.

Recent studies have even shown it to be an effective atypical anti-psychotic in treating schizophrenia, a disease many other studies have inconsistently found it causing.

1. Cancer
Cannabinoids, the active components of marijuana, inhibit tumor growth in laboratory animals and also kill cancer cells. Western governments have known this for a long time yet they continued to suppress the information so that cannabis prohibition and the profits generated by the drug industry proliferated.

THC that targets cannabinoid receptors CB1 and CB2 is similar in function to endocannabinoids, which are cannabinoids that are naturally produced in the body and activate these receptors. The researchers suggest that THC or other designer agents that activate these receptors might be used in a targeted fashion to treat lung cancer.

2. Tourette’s Syndrome
Tourette’s syndrome is a neurological condition characterized by uncontrollable facial grimaces, tics, and involuntary grunts, snorts and shouts.

Dr. Kirsten Mueller-Vahl of the Hanover Medical College in Germany led a team that investigated the effects of chemicals called cannabinols in 12 adult Tourette’s patients. A single dose of the cannabinol produced a significant reduction in symptoms for several hours compared to placebo, the researchers reported.

3. Seizures
Marijuana is a muscle relaxant and has “antispasmodic” qualities that have proven to be a very effective treatment for seizures. There are actually countless cases of people suffering from seizures that have only been able to function better through the use of marijuana.

4. Migraines 
Since medicinal marijuana was legalized in California, doctors have reported that they have been able to treat more than 300,000 cases of migraines that conventional medicine couldn’t through marijuana.

5. Glaucoma 
Marijuana’s treatment of glaucoma has been one of the best documented. There isn’t a single valid study that exists that disproves marijuana’s very powerful and popular effects on glaucoma patients.

6. Multiple Sclerosis 
Marijuana’s effects on multiple sclerosis patients became better documented when former talk-show host, Montel Williams began to use pot to treat his MS. Marijuana works to stop the neurological effects and muscle spasms that come from the fatal disease.

7. ADD and ADHD 
A well documented USC study done about a year ago showed that marijuana is not only a perfect alternative for Ritalin but treats the disorder without any of the negative side effects of the pharmaceutical.

8. IBS and Crohn’s 
Marijuana has shown that it can help with symptoms of the chronic diseases as it stops nausea, abdominal pain, and diarrhea.

9. Alzheimer’s 
Despite what you may have heard about marijuana’s effects on the brain, the Scripps Institute, in 2006, proved that the THC found in marijuana works to prevent Alzheimer’s by blocking the deposits in the brain that cause the disease.

10. Premenstrual Syndrome 
Just like marijuana is used to treat IBS, it can be used to treat the cramps and discomfort that causes PMS symptoms. Using marijuana for PMS actually goes all the way back to Queen Victoria.

Mounting Evidence Suggests Raw Cannabis is Best

Cannabinoids can prevent cancer, reduce heart attacks by 66% and insulin dependent diabetes by 58%. Cannabis clinician Dr. William Courtney recommends drinking 4 – 8 ounces of raw flower and leaf juice from any Hemp plant, 5 mg of Cannabidiol (CBD) per kg of body weight, a salad of Hemp seed sprouts and 50 mg of THC taken in 5 daily doses.

Why raw? Heat destroys certain enzymes and nutrients in plants. Incorporating raw cannabis allows for a greater availability of those elements. Those who require large amounts of cannabinoids without the psychoactive effects need to look no further than raw cannabis. In this capacity, it can be used at 60 times more tolerance than if it were heated.
Raw cannabis is considered by many experts as a dietary essential. As a powerful anti-inflammatory and antioxidant, raw cannabis may be right u there with garlic and tumeric.

Human Cloning? Stem Cell Advance Reignites Ethics Debate

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Researchers remove the genetic material from an unfertilized human egg cell in the first step toward creating a cloned human embryo CREDIT: Cell, Tachibana et al.  View full size image

A new stem cell discovery has reawakened controversy about human cloning — though technical challenges mean scientists are far from being able to create human babies as in Michael Bay's 2005 sci-fi flick "The Island."

Not that they would even want to.

"Nobody in their right mind would want to do that," said John Gearhart, the director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, who was not involved in the study. And indeed, the research wasn't conducted with the idea of creatingcloned mini-me's in mind. Instead, scientists attempting to treat diseases of the cell's powerhouse, the mitochondria, refined the technique, which is the same one used to create the cloned sheep Dolly in 1996. [5 Wild Stem Cell Discoveries]

But the parallels between the animal-cloning procedure and the new human one have triggered concern. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) swiftly issued a statement condemning the research, both on the grounds that embryos were destroyed in the research process and over the concern that the full reproductive cloning of humans is on its way.
"They or others may be close to being able to develop cloned human embryos to the fetal stage and then beyond," said Richard Doerflinger, the associate director of USCCB's Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities.
Technical difficulties
Fortunately for anyone concerned about the specter of human cloning, scientists say they're nowhere close to being able to get cloned human embryos past early stages of development. The study's leader, Shoukhrat Mitalipov of Oregon Health & Science University, told reporters that the early embryos — 100-cell bundles known as blastocysts — seem to have defects preventing them from implanting properly in the uterus and reaching maturity.
A blastocyst consists of an inner mass of cells that will become the fetus. Surrounding this inner cell mass as a hollow ball is a layer of cells called the trophoblast. These trophoblast cells are destined to become the placenta, the organ that nourishes the growing embryo and, later, the fetus. [8 Odd Changes That Happen During Pregnancy]
But in clones, the trophoblast cells frequently fail, perhaps a domino effect from just a few genes going wrong, said Jose Cibelli, a stem cell researcher at Michigan State University. The mother's body may reject the implanting embryo. If implantation occurs, the vast majority of cloned embryos fail to make it past the first trimester of pregnancy.
For example, scientists can take a normal embryo from the uterus of one cow, transplant it into another and have a 60 percent chance of a normal calf being born. Transferring a cloned cow embryo into a cow uterus results in a healthy calf less than 10 percent of the time, Cibelli told LiveScience.
"When you see that scenario, whoever wants to move this into humans quickly, I think it should be criminal," Cibelli said. "We should not do this. It's totally crazy."
So far, Mitalipov and his colleagues have not been able to grow a cloned monkey fetus to term, suggesting that primate reproduction may be even more complex than what is known from Dolly the sheep and other farm animals.
The goal of cloning
So why clone human embryos at all?
The answer is stem cells. These cells have the capability to develop into any tissue in the body — a talent that could make them the stars of regenerative medicine, the goal of which is to grow fresh cells and tissues from patients suffering from various diseases.
Scientists are now able to take regular adult cells and tinker with their genes, turning back time to make these single-use cells pluripotent, or capable of differentiating into multiple cell types. These cells are called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells), and their use is generally supported by anti-abortion groups such as the USCCB, since no embryos are destroyed in their creation.
"We think that it is wrong to attack some innocent human lives here and now to help others down the road," Doerflinger told LiveScience. "Fortunately, the great advances we are seeing in the use of adult and iPS stem cells provide promising alternative ways to heal illnesses without raising people’s temptations to engage in such attacks," he said, referring to the destruction of human embryos.
It's true that iPS cells have great promise. On the other hand, they may have drawbacks. Researchers aren't sure how the human immune system will respond to iPS cells, and there are questions about how stable the revised genomes of these cells would be over time.  
"From the mouse data, we know that [embryonic cloning] is better than iPS cells," Cibelli said.
What's more, iPS cells can't be used to treat diseases of the mitochondria, which are tinyorgans within cells that convert the molecules in the food we eat into chemical energy the cell can use. Mitochondria have their own DNA, separate from what's in the nucleus. Trying to treat a mitochondrial disease by turning back the clock on an adult cell's genome would do nothing, because the messed-up mitochondrial DNA remains in the iPS cell.
An embryonic clone is a different story. In this technique, scientists take an unfertilized egg cell and remove the DNA in the nucleus, keeping its mitochondrial DNA intact. They then take an adult skin cell, extract the DNA, and insert it in the place of the egg's original nucleus. Now that adult cell's genome can hum along in its new home, creating stem cells without the mitochondrial defects present in its original form. [How Stem Cell Cloning Works (Infographic)]
"That's neat because in one step, you can technically get rid of that [mitochondrial] mutation," Penn's Gearhart told LiveScience.
The resulting embryonic stem cells could then theoretically be grown into adult cells to replace the ailing person's mutated cells.
Time to talk about cloning?
While cloning is not the goal of the controversial new technique, scientists say it would be naïve to ignore the fact that the new research brings them one step closer to being able to create human clones.
"My feeling is that it's sort of an unintentional step in that direction," said Paul Knoepfler, a stem cell researcher at the University of California Davis School of Medicine.
Refining the technique is naturally helpful to anyone out there who might want to start cloning people, Knoepfler said. Any work of the sort would need Food and Drug Administration approval in the United States — not a given, by any means — but rogue clinics or scientists in less-regulated nations could make attempts, he said.
"There may not be a lot of these people out there, but I think there's enough to worry about it," Knoepfler told LiveScience.
Gearhart said concerns about human cloning are "overwrought," given that the scientific community is empathically not interested in crossing the ethical lines involved.
"Who among us would want to take that risk of bringing someone into this world that would be defective?" Gearhart said.
The time for a conversation about cloning may be nearing, however. The cloning of a monkey or other non-human primate would likely be a "strong signal" that it's time to set some rules around human cloning, Cibelli said. Thirteen states currently have laws on the books prohibiting reproductive cloning.
A worst-case scenario would be a clone showing up on the scene before the legalities are hammered out, Knoepfler said.
"As the technology advances, I think the legal and ethical and political dialogue should also go along with it, so we can face these potential future issues in a proactive kind of way," he said.

Does 'Failure to Replicate' Mean Failed Science? (Op-Ed)

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A pipette and test tubes. CREDIT: Anton Prado PHOTO, Shutterstock  View full size image

David Funder, a psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside, is president of the Society for Social and Personality Psychology. He contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

A lot of scientists wear worried frowns these days. Science seems under attack from numerous directions. Some of the attackers are wearily familiar. Peddlers of dogma have been sworn enemies of science since the Dark Ages. People whose political beliefs are challenged by research seek to shut it down. And nobody is much surprised when scientists whose findings threaten the basis of a person's or corporation's wealth find themselves facing well-financed opposition and even personal attacks. Scientists who study astronomy, evolution, discrimination and global warming — to name a few — are used to this situation, and while they surely don't enjoy it, it's really nothing new.

However, scientists now have something else to worry about. The very foundation of science is suddenly being brought into question. The issue concerns "replicability," the assumption that valid scientific studies can be repeated by anybody with the necessary skills and will yield the same results.

In 2005, a distinguished medical researcher wrote an article entitled "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False," and its publication seemed to mark some kind of turning point. In the years since, serious concerns regarding the trustworthiness of research findings have been voiced in major journals and at professional meetings of fields as diverse as medicine, physics, cell biology, economics, and my own field, social psychology. [Oops! 5 Retracted Science Studies]
Across all of those disciplines, the concern has been the same: Findings garnered in one lab, sometimes important and famous findings, have turned out to be difficult, if not impossible, to reproduce anywhere else. When that happens, it's called a "failure to replicate" — a phrase that strikes a chill in the heart of any scientist who hears it.
Why do findings sometimes fail to replicate?  There are many possible reasons. In a few cases — which have become infamous — researchers committed fraud and literally made up their data. One of the most famous instances involved Dutch psychologist Diederik Stapel, the subject of a recent profile in the New York Times, who fraudulently invented data for dozens of studies over a period of years. Other cases of data fraud have been reported recently in oncology, genetics and even dentistry.
But while these egregious cases justly cause widespread alarm, focusing too tightly on them can be misleading. Such fraud is actually rare, and the typical reasons for failures to replicate are different. To list just a few: The replication study might not follow exactly the same methods as the original study, or the new investigators may not have the skills necessary to successfully repeat a complex experimental procedure; the finding in question might have undiscovered "moderator variables," factors that cause the finding to get stronger, or go away; or, the original finding might been a "lucky" accident.
The mechanisms of nature are complicated, sometimes even almost chaotic. Scientists work hard to find signal amidst all that noise, and when they think they find something, are eager to report it to their colleagues and to the world. They also might, in some cases, be a little too eager. After all, research dollars, reputations and careers are all on the line, and it would be surprising indeed if these incentives did not lead scientists —who are as human as anyone else — to do what they can to convince themselves and their colleagues that they have found something important.
For this reason, it is only natural that psychology is leading the way in dealing with replicability issues and developing prescriptions for improvement that are relevant to all areas of science. Special articles or complete special issues with specific recommendations have recently been published by Perspectives on Psychological Science, Psychological Inquiry and the European Journal of Personality. Social psychologist Brian Nosek and his colleagues have initiated an online Open Science Framework to make it easier for researchers to share methods and data. And recently, a task force of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology formulated other recommendations to help improve the conduct and reporting of research, and to reconsider the incentives that affect the behavior of research scientists.
The recommendations are numerous, and some are rather technical (involving, for example, new statistical standards). But the recommendation that might be the most important is also the simplest: Do more research.
Because nature is complicated and reliable findings are difficult to find, we need to examine it using more powerful methods. For astronomy, this might mean a bigger telescope; for microbiology, it might be a stronger microscope. For all fields of science, including psychology, it means simply more data.
Studies need to get bigger. Small studies are useful for trying out new ideas, but only replications can sort genuine discoveries from false starts, and replication studies need to be large to be conclusive. A finding based on 100 rats will be more reliable than a finding based on 10; a treatment outcome that is evaluated with 1,000 patients will be more reliably assessed than one that looks at only 100; and, in general, the bigger the number of research subjects in a study, the more reliable the finding.
But big studies are expensive and time-consuming. The typical scientist works under conditions of scarce resources and intense time pressure, and replication studies are not conducted or reported as often as they should be. Changing this state of affairs will require some behavior change by some scientists — a challenge we in social psychology are eager to tackle — but also more resources. Specific replication studies may be deemed successes or failures while firm conclusions only emerge over time. What matters most is that scientists continue to work hard to determine which exciting preliminary findings stand up under repeated research.

How Evolution May Help Build Better Robots

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This virtual robot evolved to move as quickly as possible using four types of tissue: soft support tissue, bone and two types of muscle. While a living creature has cells, this robot has voxels (or 3-D pixels) colored according to the type of tissue. CREDIT: Creative Machines Lab  View full size image

NEW YORK — In the real world, animals have evolved the ability to get from point A to B by galloping, crawling and jumping. Now, robots in the virtual world have accomplished something similar.

In new work, researchers have simulated evolution using virtual robots and watched them develop locomotion strategies of their own.  

In robot-creating simulations, researchers started with random assortments of four types of tissues — including two kinds of muscle, soft support tissue and bone. The simulations favored the tissue configurations that traveled the fastest from point A to point B. Then the team allowed the mathematical simulation to run its course over 1,000 generations of robots.

"We see really cool stuff as a result of that, without any interaction from me or anyone else, just this process unfolding itself," Nick Cheney, a member of the research team and a doctoral student at Cornell University, told an audience of reporters Tuesday (May 21) here in midtown Manhattan.
The team dubbed the categories of successful robot design that emerged as the L-Walker, the Incher, the Push-Pull, the Jitter, the Jumper and the Wings. [Super-Intelligent Machines: 7 Robotic Futures]

One of the virtual robots demonstrates the strategy for locomotion it has developed through simulated evolution.
CREDIT: Creative Machines Lab

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"I would never come up with anything that looks remotely like that," Cheney said, referring to one of these virtual robots. The bots consist of cubes known as voxels (three-dimensional pixels), which display bright colors signifying different types of tissue.
In these simulations, the virtual robots accomplished something highly unusual for robots: They adapted.
Most robots currently in use in the real world are precisely engineered to work in highly constrained environments, such as manufacturing floors, with their every action hand designed and coded by engineers. As a result, these machines cannot adapt to unfamiliar surroundings.
Unlike human engineers, however, nature is a master at creating creatures that can adapt to and interact with their surroundings. This happens through natural selection, the process by which certain traits give organisms a better chance to survive and thus produce more offspring. Nature thus "selects" these traits to persist in future generations. Cheney and colleagues are striving for a similar process in robotics.
Although the creatures he and colleagues created do not currently exist in the real world, they could be created with 3D printing.
"The truth of the matter is we can print almost anything, any design," he said, noting researchers recently made an artificial ear with living cells using a 3D printer.
In creating the virtual, soft-bodied robots, the team intentionally avoided the traditional robotics' design approach, Cheney said.
"We wanted to be true to nature and introduce muscles and bones and tissues," he said.
Most of the random assortments of tissues that served as a starting point were "pretty bad," he said. "Every once in a while, you get lucky and one is slightly better. Those reproduce more … Over time, you get some pretty amazing things."
In real life, a molecule called DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) encodes the instruction set to create a living organism; analogously, these virtual robots were created using what is known as a compositional pattern-producing network, or a network of mathematical functions, Cheney said.
Many of the strategies that emerged among the soft-bodied robots mimicked those of animals, such as a galloping horse or a crawling inchworm.
The research team included Cheney, colleagues Robert MacCurdy and Hod Lipson of Cornell's Creative Machines Lab, and Jeff Clune of University of Wyoming's Evolving AI Lab. The research is scheduled for presentation at the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference in Amsterdam in July.

Famous Prime Number Conjecture One Step Closer to Proof

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New research reveals an infinite number of prime numbers exist that are separated by a distance of at most 70 million. CREDIT: Andreas Guskos | Shutterstock.com  View full size image

Infinity down, only 69,999,997 to go.

New research has proven that prime numbers don't just disappear as numbers get larger — instead, there is an infinite number of prime numbers separated by a distance of at most 70 million.

The new proof, accepted this month for publication in the journal Annals of Mathematics, takes the field one step closer to solving the twin prime conjecture, a famous mathematical idea that suggests the existence of an infinite number of prime numbers separated by a distance of 2 (for example, the prime numbers 11 and 13, which are separated by 2). Prime numbers are those that are divisible by only themselves and 1.

Prior to this discovery, mathematicians suspected there were infinitely many twin primes, or prime numbers separated by two, but proofs hadn't set bounds on how far apart primes could be separated. [The 9 Most Massive Numbers in Existence]
"It's a huge step forward in terms of showing that there are primes close together," said Daniel Goldston, a mathematician at San Jose State University in California. "It's a big huge step toward the twin prime conjecture."
Other mathematicians also applauded the achievement, and its author, Yitang Zhang, a mathematician unknown in the field. "Basically, no one knows him," said Andrew Granville, a number theorist at the Université de Montréal, as quoted by the Simons Foundation. "Now, suddenly, he has proved one of the great results in the history of number theory."
Simple observation … tough solution
In the 1800s, mathematician Alphonse de Polignac noticed a strange trend in prime numbers. Though so-called twin primes get less common as numbers get bigger, de Polignac became convinced that there were infinitely many twin primes.
But proving it was another matter.
These problems "are very attractive to people because the problems themselves are not difficult to understand, but the solution — the proof — could be very difficult," said Zhang of the University of New Hampshire.
Many attempts relied on finding primes using sieve methods, which essentially involves crossing out numbers that have larger and larger factors to find primes (for instance, crossing out all the numbers divisible by 2, then 3, then 5, then 7, and so on).
All of the small primes can be manually calculated, and if numbers get large enough,mathematicians can generalize the technique. But in between small numbers and big ones is a vast terrain where primes are too big calculate with the sieve, but too small to make generalizations about.
In 2005, Daniel Goldston, a mathematician at San Jose State University in California, and his colleagues János Pintz and Cem Yildirim developed a new method (called GPY) to make claims for that middle range of numbers in order to prove that the numerical gaps between prime numbers are bounded, and not infinite.
"Our method got right up to the point where you would approach getting this bounded gaps result, but we couldn't get it," Goldston said.
Crossing the gap
Zhang had been trying to find a way to close the gap in the GPY method for years. But last summer, he felt a breakthrough was close and devoted all his efforts to cracking the prime problem.
He finally developed set of new mathematical methods and used them to overcome the gap in prior work.
The math community hasn't thoroughly scrutinized the proof to ensure it's airtight, but several mathematicians in the field have done a first-pass check and found the logic sound.
The current known maximum gap between primes is 70 million, but that number may come down dramatically with further iterations of the proof.
Still, it's unlikely that the same methods could be used to prove the twin prime conjecture, Goldston said.
"We are pretty sure these methods aren't going to get down to two," Goldston said. "You have to have some new ideas."

Stunning Byzantine Mosaic Uncovered in Israel

Here, a huge mosaic with geometric patterns that dates back to the Byzantine Period and would have been used as the floor of a public building in what is today Kibbutz Bet Qama, in the B'nei Shimon region council in Israel. CREDIT: Yael Yolovitch, Israel Antiquities Authority  View full size image

Archaeologists have uncovered an "extraordinary" mosaic that would've been used as the floor of a public building during the Byzantine Period in what is today Israel, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced.

The colorful mosaic and public building, whose ceiling was covered in roof tiles, were uncovered in Kibbutz Bet Qama, in the B'nei Shimon regional council, prior to theconstruction of a road between Ma'ahaz and Devira Junction.

"The minute we started excavating we found the mosaic, before we found the edges of the building," Davida Eisenberg Degen, an archaeologist with the IAA, told LiveScience during an interview. [See Images of the Byzantine Mosaic]

The mosaic would've extended the area of the main building, with a total area about 40 feet long by 28 feet wide (12 meters by 8.5 meters). Divided into three squares with circles within each, the mosaic was decorated with "interwoven designs," Degen said. At each corner were amphoras, or jars used to hold wine, and other designs, such as two peacocks flanking an amphora, a dove and a partridge, and one amphora with a pomegranate and a lemonlike fruit inside.

The mosaic discovered prior to construction of an interstate in Israel, was decorated with geometric structures and amphoras, or vessels for holding wine. The amphoras were also decorated, for instance, one was flanked by a pair of peacocks.
CREDIT: Yael Yolovitch, Israel Antiquities Authority

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Though other areas of the site showed evidence of the practice of Christianity, the public building seemed to have no religious affiliation. The researchers aren't sure what it would've been used for between the fourth and sixth centuries A.D.
"The find of this mosaic is extraordinary; the size of it and the [condition] goes beyond what is usually found," Degen said. "This is an unusual find."
In front of the building, archaeologists had also discovered pools and a network of channels and pipes used to convey water between them. Steps were uncovered in one of the pools, the walls of which were covered in colored plaster, called fresco.
Archaeologists are trying to figure out the purpose of the building and pools, though they say the construction of the structures would have required considerable economic resources.
The site of the excavation is located on an ancient road that ran north from Be'er Sheva and also includes a large estate with a church and a large cistern surrounded by farmland. One of the structures likely served as an inn for visitors, the researchers speculate.
During the Byzantine Period, Jewish and Christian settlements in the area would have been situated next to each other. In fact, scientists just excavated two nearby Jewish settlements: Horbat Rimon, which held a synagogue and ritual bath called a miqwe, and the Nahal Shoval antiquities site. Nearby Christian settlements include the churches at Abu Hof in the Lahav Forest and a monastery at Givot Bar.

'Junk' DNA Mystery Solved: It's Not Needed

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The humped bladderwort plant (shown here in a scanning electron micrograph) is a voracious carnivore, with its tiny bladders leveraging vacuum pressure to suck in bitty prey at great speed. CREDIT: Enrique Ibarra-Laclette, Claudia Anahí Pérez-Torres and Paulina Lozano-Sotomayor  View full size image

One person's trash may be another person's treasure, but sometimes, trash is just trash.

So-called junk DNA, the vast majority of the genome that doesn't code for proteins, really isn't needed for a healthy organism, according to new research.

"At least for a plant, junk DNA really is just junk — it's not required," said study co-author Victor Albert, a molecular evolutionary biologist at the University of Buffalo in New York.

While the findings, published Sunday (May 12) in the journal Nature, concern a carnivorous plant, they could have implications for the human genome as well. Genes make up only 2 percent of the human genome, and researchers have argued in recent years that the remaining 98 percent may play some hidden, useful role. [Image Gallery: Amazing Carnivorous Plants]

Trash or treasure

For decades, scientists have known that the vast majority of the genome is made up of DNA that doesn't seem to contain genes or turn genes on or off. The thinking went that most of this vast terrain of dark DNA consisted of genetic parasites that copy segments of DNA and paste themselves repeatedly in the genome, or that it consists of the fossils of once useful genes that have now been switched off. Researchers coined the term junk DNA to refer to these areas.

"Nobody's really known what junk DNA does or doesn't do," Albert told LiveScience.
But in recent years, researchers have debated whether "junk" might be a misnomer and if this mysterious DNA might play some role. A massive project called ENCODE, which aimed to uncover the role of the 3.3 billion base pairs, or letters of DNA, in the human genome that don't code for proteins, found that in test tubes, about 80 percent of the genome seemed to have some biological activity, such as affecting whether genes turn on. Whether that translated to any useful or necessary function for humans, however, wasn't resolved.
Lean genome
Albert and his colleagues sequenced the genome of the carnivorous bladderwort plant,Utricularia gibba, which lives in wet soil or fresh water throughout the world and sucks swimming microorganisms into its tiny, 1-milimeter-long bladders.
The genome had just 80 million base pairs. Compared with most other plant species, that genome was positively tiny, Albert said. The lily genome, for instance, can have 40 billion base pairs.
Yet the bladderwort had about 28,500 genes, not much different from plants of similar type and complexity.
The difference was in the junk: The bladderwort plant seemed to have stripped out a vast amount of noncoding DNA. Yet the plant did just fine without that material.
In fact, through a genetic quirk the bladderwort had its entire genome duplicated — meaning the plant got two full copies of the genome — three separate times since it diverged from the tomato. Yet the carnivorous plant somehow retained its tiny genome.
Unnecessary bulk
The findings suggest junk DNA really isn't needed for healthy plants — and that may also hold for other organisms, such as humans.
But it's still a mystery why some organisms have genomes bloated with junk while other genomes are studies in minimalism.
One possibility is that there was some evolutionary pressure to strip the genome of extra material. But that's unlikely given that similar plants with huge genomes don't seem to fare badly, Albert said.
It's more plausible that, by chance, the bladderwort plant has biological processes that favor stripping out extraneous DNA over adding it in, Albert said.

Homeowners Warm to Solar Power: Op-Ed

Various kinds of electricity-generating roofing materials (including slate, tile, and shingles) being tested by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. CREDIT: National Institute of Standards and Technology

Marlene Cimons of Climate Nexus contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

When Linda and Jay Mathews moved back to their native California nearly two years ago — after 20 years in New York and Washington — they found their dream home in Pasadena. It had everything they wanted, plus a few items not on their shopping list. Among the latter: solar panels on the roof that keep their electric bill to about $100 a year, less than what they paid each monthwhen they were living in the East.

Moreover, because the power generated by their panels contributes to the region's overall electric grid, they also receive credit for energy they produce but don't use — a policy known as "net metering," which adds additional savings to their overall electric costs.

"We weren't looking for a house with solar panels, but we are very happy we have them," said Linda, a retired editor. "Our electric bills are so much lower, and I love the notion that we are not dependent on electricity from coal-fired plants, those big villains that spew out all those toxic chemicals. We also appreciate that California is very environmentallyconscious, which makes it easy to afford solar energy."
All indications are that the vast majority of Americans would love to have solar energy, if they could. The industry enjoys widespread public support that cuts across geographic, economic and political demographics. For example, a Hart Research Associates pollconducted last fall for the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) found that nine out of 10 Americans believe it's important for the nation to develop and use solar power.
But not everyone who wants solar energy can have it. "The challenge the solar industry faces is bridging the gap from overwhelming public support to mass public adoption," said Monique Hanis, a former spokeswoman for the SEIA. "Solar is already more accessible and affordable to Americans than ever before, but we still have work to do before we get mass adoption."
The reasons for that gap range from upfront costs to the many hurdles companies and consumers must clear in order to install residential panels — for example, permits and inspections required by many municipalities. There also are practical matters, such as whether a property receives enough sun during the day to make installing solar panels worth the investment.
Also, utility companies, required by many states to include a specific percentage of renewable energy in their portfolios, now are trying to eliminate net metering, arguing that it increases costs for their non-solar customers.
"They seemed to be comfortable with our business when it was a boutique thing, something just for the wealthy," said Will Craven, a spokesman for SolarCity, one of the nation's largest solar companies. "But now that it genuinely is competitive, they are threatened by it."
The cost of the Mathews' system was part of the price of their new home, but most homeowners are not always so lucky. It can be expensive to add a system, even though ultimately it will pay for itself, and then some. [2013 Best Solar Panel Reviews and Comparisons]
Solar companies have been trying to make this burden easier by offering the option of no-money-down solar leases, where the company owns and maintains the solar installation on the customers' roof, then sells the power to the customer at a price lower than the utility would charge.
For consumers who want to own systems, the good news is that the cost of materials and installation have been dropping rapidly recently — an estimated 70 percent in the last two years, according to the American Solar Energy Society (ASES).
The bad news, however, is that the hassles of meeting state and local requirements can raise the price consumers ultimately pay, and subject them to bureaucratic procedures that can be time-consuming and frustrating. Requirements differ among states, with some — California, New Jersey, Maryland and North Carolina, among them — being more solar friendly than others. Requirements also differ among local municipalities.
A single federal policy would simplify the process greatly.
"If you buy a new water heater or a new furnace for your house, a plumber comes and installs it, and that's it — but if you want to install solar panels, multiple agencies have to approve it," said Susan Greene, president of the ASES. "It's almost impossible for solar companies to work nationally, so they usually only focus on certain states because it's too much work and too expensive to do it in the others."
Moreover, many advocates believe that solar entrepreneurs must step up within their communities to build relationships with policymakers and the media "to show that solar is working for their community," Hanis said. "They have to aggressively market to the families and small businesses in their community to show that this is something that can be viable in their neighborhoods."
There are encouraging signs that this already is happening.
SolarCity, for example, has installed panels nationwide on more than 100 Walmart stores, and in numerous school districts. One school district near Fresno, for example, saved enough money in electricity costs to restore its music program, suspended in a cost-saving measure in 2009.
In some communities where consumers can't install their own panels, it may be possible for them to buy shares in a solar "farm" located elsewhere and receive a credit against their utility bill. "It's not wired directly into your house, but it's going into the grid," Greene said. [World's Largest Solar Plant Goes Online]
Also, new crowd-sourcing models are beginning to draw both investors and consumers. For example, Mosaic, which funds solar projects and pays its investors back with interest. "Pretty brilliant stuff," said Jeff Siegel, managing editor of Green Chip Stocks, an alternative energy research firm.
Siegel is confident there will be more of this. "As far as closing the gap, I definitely see it happening," he said. "Solar installations in the United States continue to soar. Leasing models are going gangbusters. I believe the industry is continuing to grow quite well, and is likely to do so well throughout the rest of this decade and beyond."