ChatGPT is debunking myths on social media around vaccine safety, say experts

ChatGPT could help to increase vaccine uptake by debunking myths around jab safety, say the authors of a study published in the peer-reviewed journal Human Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics.

The researchers asked the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot the top 50 most frequently-asked Covid-19 vaccine questions. They included queries based on myths and fake stories such as the vaccine causing Long Covid.

Results show that ChatGPT scored nine out of 10 on average for accuracy. The rest of the time it was correct but left some gaps in the information provided, according to the study.

Based on these findings, experts who led the study from the GenPoB research group based at the Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria (IDIS) -- Hospital Clinico Universitario of Santiago de Compostela, say the AI tool is a "reliable source of non-technical information to the public," especially for people without specialist scientific knowledge.

However, the findings do highlight some concerns about the technology such as ChatGPT changing its answers in certain situations.

"Overall, ChatGPT constructs a narrative in line with the available scientific evidence, debunking myths circulating on social media," says lead author Antonio Salas, who as well as leading the GenPoB research group, is also a Professor at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Santiago de Compostela, in Spain.

"Thereby it potentially facilitates an increase in vaccine uptake. ChatGPT can detect counterfeit questions related to vaccines and vaccination. The language this AI uses is not too technical and therefore easily understandable to the public but without losing scientific rigor.

"We acknowledge that the present-day version of ChatGPT cannot substitute an expert or scientific evidence. But the results suggest it could be a reliable source of information to the public."

In 2019, the World Health Organisation (WHO) listed vaccine hesitancy among the top 10 threats to global health.

During the pandemic, misinformation spread via social media contributed to public mistrust of Covid-19 vaccination.

The authors of this study include those from the Hospital Clinico Universitario de Santiago which the WHO designated as a vaccine safety collaborating center in 2018.

Researchers at the center have been exploring myths around vaccine safety and medical situations that are falsely believed to be a reason not to get vaccinated. These misplaced concerns contribute to vaccine hesitancy.

The study authors set out to test ChatGPT's ability to get the facts right and share accurate information around Covid vaccine safety in line with current scientific evidence.

ChatGPT enables people to have human-like conversations and interactions with a virtual assistant. The technology is very user-friendly which makes it accessible to a wide population.

However, many governments are concerned about the potential for ChatGPT to be used fraudulently in educational settings such as universities.

The study was designed to challenge the chatbot by asking it the questions most frequently received by the WHO collaborating center in Santiago.

The queries covered three themes. The first was misconceptions around safety such as the vaccine causing Long Covid. Next was false contraindications -- medical situations where the jab is safe to use such as in breastfeeding women.

The questions also related to true contraindications -- a health condition where the vaccine should not be used -- and cases where doctors must take precautions e.g. a patient with heart muscle inflammation.

Next, experts analyzed the responses then rated them for veracity and precision against current scientific evidence, and recommendations from WHO and other international agencies.

The authors say this was important because algorithms created by social media and internet search engines are often based on an individual's usual preferences. This may lead to 'biased or wrong answers', they add.

Results showed that most of the questions were answered correctly with an average score of nine out of 10 which is defined as 'excellent' or 'good'. The responses to the three question themes were on average 85.5% accurate or 14.5% accurate but with gaps in the information provided by ChatGPT.

ChatGPT provided correct answers to queries that arose from genuine vaccine myths, and to those considered in clinical recommendation guidelines to be false or true contraindications.

However, the research team does highlight ChatGPT's downsides in providing vaccine information.

Professor Salas, who specializes in human genetics, concludes: "Chat GPT provides different answers if the question is repeated 'with a few seconds of delay'.

"Another concern we have seen is that this AI tool, in its present version, could also be trained to provide answers not in line with scientific evidence.

"One can 'torture' the system in such a way that it will provide the desired answer. This is also true for other contexts different to vaccines. For instance, it might be possible to make the chatbot align with absurd narratives like the flat-earth theory, deny climate change, or object to the theory of evolution, just to give a few examples.

Read more at Science Daily

The Mozart effect myth: Listening to music does not help against epilepsy

Over the past fifty years, there have been remarkable claims about the effects of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's music. Reports about alleged symptom-alleviating effects of listening to Mozart's Sonata KV448 in epilepsy attracted a lot of public attention. However, the empirical validity of the underlying scientific evidence has remained unclear. Now, University of Vienna psychologists Sandra Oberleiter and Jakob Pietschnig show in a new study published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports that there is no evidence for a positive effect of Mozart's melody on epilepsy.

In the past, Mozart's music has been associated with numerous ostensibly positive effects on humans, animals, and even microorganisms. For instance, listening to his sonata has been said to increase the intelligence of adults, children, or fetuses in the womb. Even cows were said to produce more milk, and bacteria in sewage treatment plants were said to work better when they heard Mozart's composition.

However, most of these alleged effects have no scientific basis. The origin of these ideas can be traced back to the long-disproven observation of a temporary increase in spatial reasoning test performance among students after listening to the first movement allegro con spirito of Mozart's sonata KV448 in D major.

More recently, the Mozart effect experienced a further variation: Some studies reported symptom relief in epilepsy patients after they had listened to KV448. However, a new comprehensive research synthesis by Sandra Oberleiter and Jakob Pietschnig from the University of Vienna, based on all available scientific literature on this topic, showed that there is no reliable evidence for such a beneficial effect of Mozart's music on epilepsy. They found that this alleged Mozart effect can be mainly attributed to selective reporting, small sample sizes, and inadequate research practices in this corpus of literature. "Mozart's music is beautiful, but unfortunately, we cannot expect relief from epilepsy symptoms from it" conclude the researchers.

From Science Daily

Does testosterone influence success? Not much, research suggests

With the Olympics underway, higher testosterone has often been linked to sporting success, and other kinds of success too. But beyond sport, new research has found little evidence that testosterone meaningfully influences life chances for men or women. In fact, the study suggests that despite the social myths surrounding testosterone, it could be much less important than previously thought.

It is already known that in men testosterone is linked with socioeconomic position, such as income or educational qualifications. Researchers from the University of Bristol's Population Health Sciences (PHS) and MRC Integrated Epidemiology Unit (IEU) wanted to find out whether this is because testosterone actually affects socioeconomic position, as opposed to socioeconomic circumstances affecting testosterone, or health affecting both. The findings are published today [28 July] in Science Advances.

To isolate effects of testosterone itself, the research team applied an approach called Mendelian randomization in a sample of 306,248 UK adults from UK Biobank. They explored testosterone's influence on socioeconomic position, including income, employment status, neighbourhood-level deprivation, and educational qualifications; on health, including self-rated health and BMI, and on risk-taking behaviour.

Dr Amanda Hughes, Senior Research Associate in Epidemiology in Bristol Medical School: Population Health Sciences (PHS), said: "There's a widespread belief that a person's testosterone can affect where they end up in life. Our results suggest that, despite a lot of mythology surrounding testosterone, its social implications may have been over-stated."

First, the team identified genetic variants linked to higher testosterone levels and then investigated how these variants were related to the outcomes. A person's genetic code is determined before birth, and generally does not change during their lifetime (there are rare exceptions, such as changes that occur with cancer). This makes it very unlikely that these variants are affected by socioeconomic circumstances, health, or other environmental factors during a person's lifetime. Consequently, any association of an outcome with variants linked to testosterone would strongly suggest an influence of testosterone on the outcome.

Similar to previous studies the research found that men with higher testosterone had higher household income, lived in less deprived areas, and were more likely to have a university degree and a skilled job. In women, higher testosterone was linked to lower socioeconomic position, including lower household income, living in a more deprived area, and lower chance of having a university degree. Consistent with previous evidence, higher testosterone was associated with better health for men and poorer health for women, and greater risk-taking behaviour for men.

In contrast, there was little evidence that the testosterone-linked genetic variants were associated with any outcome for men or women. The research team concluded that there is little evidence that testosterone meaningfully affected socioeconomic position, health, or risk-taking in men or women. The study suggests that -- despite the mythology surrounding testosterone -- it might be much less important than previously claimed.

Results for women were less precise than results for men, so the influence of testosterone in women could be studied in more detail in the future using larger samples.

Dr Hughes added: "Higher testosterone in men has previously been linked to various kinds of social success. A study of male executives found that testosterone was higher for those who had more subordinates. A study of male financial traders found that higher testosterone correlated with greater daily profits. Other studies have reported that testosterone is higher for more highly educated men, and among self-employed men, suggesting a link with entrepreneurship.

"Such research has supported the widespread idea that testosterone can influence success by affecting behaviour. There is evidence from experiments that testosterone can make a person more assertive or more likely to take risks -- traits which can be rewarded in the labour market, for instance during wage negotiations. But there are other explanations. For example, a link between higher testosterone and success might simply reflect an influence of good health on both. Alternatively, socioeconomic circumstances could affect testosterone levels. A person's perception of their own success could influence testosterone: in studies of sports matches, testosterone has been found to rise in the winner compared to the loser."

Read more at Science Daily

Greta Thunberg and Fridays For Future, from global myth to local mobilization

In 2019 the climate movement experienced an unprecedented growth in its mobilization capacity and its political and media impact. The success of the movement is closely linked to the figure of Greta Thunberg and the global impact of her discourse and the "Fridays for Future" movement in hundreds of cities around the world.

A study by Silvia Díaz-Pérez, Roger Soler-i-Martí and Mariona Ferrer-Fons, members of the UPF JOVIS research group of the Department of Communication, analyses the activist's speeches and messages on social networks and their legitimization through her personal story, and it also looks into the "Fridays for Future" movement in Barcelona, based on Twitter and Instagram posts. The research was based on a project that has received funding from UPF's Planetary Wellbeing call.

Greta Thunberg creates a framework for collective action that is present in her speeches and posts on social networks and has great strength and a great impact

"What it analyses, therefore the article is how Greta Thunberg creates a framework for collective action that is present in her speeches and posts on social networks and has great strength and a great impact because it is accompanied by a personal story that follows the monomyth structure," Roger Soler-Martí explains. In mythology and art, the monomyth takes the shape of the archetypal journey of the hero who achieves such status by overcoming dangers and adventures after a calling or suffering an event that takes him from an ordinary world to a mythical world.

"Fridays for Future," an international, principally student movement that protests to demand action against global warming and climate change, gained momentum when the activist Greta Thunberg began to demonstrate in front of Swedish Parliament, in August 2018. The "Fridays for Future" movement, despite its diversity, serves Greta Thunberg as an agent of mobilization and resonance.

The "Fridays for Future" movement, despite its diversity, serves as an agent of mobilization and resonance in the activist's frame

The authors studied how Thunberg's global frame is incorporated locally, for which they focused on the case of "Fridays for Future" in Barcelona via Twitter and Instagram content from its creation (February 2019) until the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic.

The results show a clear influence of the activist in the discourse of local movements and among their followers. As Soler-i-Martí, co-author of the work explains, "despite the rejection of personalist leaderships and despite the particular characteristics of the local group, the activist's global framework is very present in the discourse broadcast on "Fridays for Future" Barcelona social networks."

The construction of the frames in social movements arise from two-way dialogue between the global and the local dimensions

And Soler-i-Martí adds, "In addition, the study reveals how the experience of local groups of the movement also influenced the evolution of Thunberg's discourse, which has changed over time, incorporating new actors and strategies. This element highlights how the construction of the frames in social movements arise from two-way dialogue between the global and the local dimensions."

The analysis provides empirical evidence of the importance of global and local dynamics in social movements on the Internet and highlights that the use of the basic elements of Thunberg's frame lead messages from the local "Fridays for Future" Barcelona movement to have a greater impact on social networks among its followers.

Read more at Science Daily

Mythbusting: Five common misperceptions surrounding the environmental impacts of single-use plastics

 Stand in the soda pop aisle at the supermarket, surrounded by rows of brightly colored plastic bottles and metal cans, and it's easy to conclude that the main environmental problem here is an overabundance of single-use containers: If we simply recycled more of them, we'd go a long way toward minimizing impacts.

In reality, most of the environmental impacts of many consumer products, including soft drinks, are tied to the products inside, not the packaging, according to University of Michigan environmental engineer Shelie Miller.

And when it comes to single-use plastics in particular, the production and disposal of packaging often represents only a few percent of a product's lifetime environmental impacts, according to Miller, author of an article scheduled for publication Oct. 26 in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

"Consumers tend to focus on the impact of the packaging, rather than the impact of the product itself," said Miller, an associate professor at the School for Environment and Sustainability and director of the U-M Program in the Environment. "But mindful consumption that reduces the need for products and eliminates wastefulness is far more effective at reducing overall environmental impact than recycling.

"Nevertheless, it is fundamentally easier for consumers to recycle the packaging of a product than to voluntarily reduce their demand for that product, which is likely one reason why recycling efforts are so popular."

The mistaken belief about the central role of plastic packaging is one of five myths that Miller attempts to debunk in her conventional wisdom-shattering paper, "Five misperceptions surrounding the environmental impacts of single-use plastic."

The five common misperceptions, along with Miller's insights about them, are:

     Plastic packaging is the largest contributor to a product's environmental impact. In reality, the product inside the package usually has a much greater environmental impact.

    The environmental impacts of plastics are greater than any other packaging material. Actually, plastic generally has lower overall environmental impacts than single-use glass or metal in most impact categories.

    Reusable products are always better than single-use plastics. Actually, reusable products have lower environmental impacts only when they are reused enough times to offset the materials and energy used to make them.

    Recycling and composting should be the highest priority. Truth be told, the environmental benefits associated with recycling and composting tend to be small when compared with efforts to reduce overall consumption.

    "Zero waste" efforts that eliminate single-use plastics minimize the environmental impacts of an event. In reality, the benefits of diverting waste from the landfill are small. Waste reduction and mindful consumption, including a careful consideration of the types and quantities of products consumed, are far larger factors dictating the environmental impact of an event.

In her review article, Miller challenges beliefs unsupported by current scientific knowledge while urging other environmental scientists and engineers to broaden the conversation -- in their own research and in discussions that shape public policy.

"Efforts to reduce the use of single-use plastics and to increase recycling may distract from less visible and often more damaging environmental impacts associated with energy use, manufacturing and resource extraction," she said. "We need to take a much more holistic view that considers larger environmental issues."

Miller stresses that she is not trying to downplay environmental concerns associated with plastics and plastic waste. But to place the plastic-waste problem in proper context, it's critical to examine the environmental impacts that occur at every stage of a product's lifetime -- from the extraction of natural resources and the energy needed to make the item to its ultimate disposal or reuse.

Life-cycle assessment, or LCA, is a tool that researchers like Miller use to quantify lifetime environmental impacts in multiple categories, including climate change and energy use, water and resource depletion, biodiversity loss, solid waste generation, and human and ecological toxicity.

It's easy for consumers to focus on packaging waste because they see boxes, bottles and cans every day, while a wide range of other environmental impacts are largely invisible to them. But LCA analyses systematically evaluate the entire supply chain, measuring impacts that might otherwise be overlooked, Miller said.

Packaged food products, for example, embody largely invisible impacts that can include intensive agricultural production, energy generation, and refrigeration and transportation throughout the supply chain, along with the processing and manufacturing associated with the food and its packaging, she said.

Miller points out that the well-worn adage "reduce, reuse, recycle," commonly known as the 3Rs, was created to provide an easy-to-remember hierarchy of the preferable ways to lessen environmental impact.

Yet most environmental messaging does not emphasize the inherent hierarchy of the 3Rs -- the fact that reducing and reusing are listed ahead of recycling. As a result, consumers often over-emphasize the importance of recycling packaging instead of reducing product consumption to the extent possible and reusing items to extend their lifetime.

"Although the use of single-use plastics has created a number of environmental problems that need to be addressed, there are also numerous upstream consequences of a consumer-oriented society that will not be eliminated, even if plastic waste is drastically reduced," she said.

Read more at Science Daily

Lessons learned from addressing myths about Zika and yellow fever outbreaks in Brazil

When disease epidemics and outbreaks occur, conspiracy theories often emerge that compete with the information provided by public health officials. A Dartmouth-led study in Science Advances finds that information used to counter myths about Zika in Brazil not only failed to reduce misperceptions but also reduced the accuracy of people's other beliefs about the disease.

The results provide important context as countries launch public information campaigns about the new coronavirus (COVID-19), including how to protect oneself and prevent the spread of the disease.

"It is essential to evaluate public health messaging and information campaigns," said co-author Brendan Nyhan, a professor of government at Dartmouth. "Our results indicate that efforts to correct misperceptions about emerging diseases like Zika may not be as effective as we might hope."

The study was based on a nationally representative survey conducted in Brazil in 2017 and online survey experiments conducted there in 2017 (not long after the 2015-2016 Zika epidemic) and in 2018 (just after an unusually severe yellow fever outbreak). Using survey data, the team first demonstrated the prevalence of misperceptions among Brazilians about whether Zika can be transmitted through sexual contact (true) or casual contact (false).

The researchers then conducted three preregistered experiments testing the effectiveness of information provided by public health officials to dispel myths about Zika and yellow fever. These studies, which were conducted online among Brazilian adults, showed that corrective information about Zika not only failed to reduce misperceptions but also frequently reduced the accuracy of other beliefs people held about the disease (a finding that was replicated in both the 2017 and 2018 data).

The researchers found that corrective information about yellow fever was more effective than the material about Zika. However, exposure to this information did not increase support for public policies aimed at preventing the spread of either disease nor did it change people's intentions to engage in preventive behaviors.

From Science Daily

Celebrated ancient Egyptian woman physician likely never existed

For decades, an ancient Egyptian known as Merit Ptah has been celebrated as the first female physician and a role model for women entering medicine. Yet a researcher from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus now says she never existed and is an example of how misconceptions can spread.

"Almost like a detective, I had to trace back her story, following every lead, to discover how it all began and who invented Merit Ptah," said Jakub Kwiecinski, PhD, an instructor in the Dept. of Immunology and Microbiology at the CU School of Medicine and a medical historian.

His study was published last week in the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences.

Kwiecinski's interest in Merit Ptah (`beloved of god Ptah') was sparked after seeing her name in so many places.

"Merit Ptah was everywhere. In online posts about women in STEM, in computer games, in popular history books, there's even a crater on Venus named after her," he said. "And yet, with all these mentions, there was no proof that she really existed. It soon became clear that there had been no ancient Egyptian woman physician called Merit Ptah."

Digging deep into the historical record, Kwiecinski discovered a case of mistaken identity that took on a life of its own, fueled by those eager for an inspirational story.

According to Kwiecinski, Merit Ptah the physician had her origins in the 1930s when Kate Campbell Hurd-Mead, a medical historian, doctor and activist, set out to write a complete history of medical women around the world. Her book was published in 1938.

She talked about the excavation of a tomb in the Valley of Kings where there was a "picture of a woman doctor named Merit Ptah, the mother of a high priest, who is calling her `the Chief Physician.'"

Kwiecinski said there was no record of such a person being a physician.

"Merit Ptah as a name existed in the Old Kingdom, but does not appear in any of the collated lists of ancient Egyptian healers -- not even as one of the `legendary'; or `controversial cases," he said. "She is also absent from the list of Old Kingdom women administrators. No Old Kingdom tombs are present in the Valley of the Kings, where the story places Merit Ptah's son, and only a handful of such tombs exist in the larger area, the Theban Necropolis."

The Old Kingdom of Egypt lasted from 2575 to 2150 BC.

But there was another woman who bears a striking resemblance to Merit Ptah. In 1929-30, an excavation in Giza uncovered a tomb of Akhethetep, an Old Kingdom courtier. Inside, a false door depicted a woman called Peseshet, presumably the tomb owner's mother, described as the `Overseer of Healer Women.' Peseshet and Merit Ptah came from the same time periods and were both mentioned in the tombs of their sons who were high priestly officials.

This discovery was described in several books and one of them found its way into Hurd-Mead's private library. Kwiecinski believes Hurd-Mead confused Merit Ptah with Peseseth.

"Unfortunately, Hurd-Mead in her own book accidentally mixed up the name of the ancient healer, as well as the date when she lived, and the location of the tomb," he said. "And so, from a misunderstood case of an authentic Egyptian woman healer, Peseshet, a seemingly earlier Merit Ptah, `the first woman physician' was born."

The Merit Ptah story spread far and wide, driven by a variety of forces. Kwiecinski said one factor was the popular perception of ancient Egypt as an almost fairytale land "outside time and space" perfectly suited for the creation of legendary stories.

The story spread through amateur historian circles, creating a kind of echo chamber not unlike how fake news stories circulate today.

"Finally, it was associated with an extremely emotional, partisan -- but also deeply personal -- issue of equal rights," he said. "Altogether this created a perfect storm that propelled the story of Merit Ptah into being told over and over again."

Yet Kwiecinski said the most striking part of the story is not the mistake but the determination of generations of women historians to recover the forgotten history of female healers, proving that science and medicine have never been exclusively male.

Read more at Science Daily

Harmful, unfounded myths about migration and health have become accepted, used to justify policies of exclusion

Silhouette of a family with children.

Public health protection and cost savings are often used as reasons to restrict migrants' access to health care, or to deny them entry. Yet, as the new UCL-Lancet Commission on Migration and Health lays out with new international data and analysis, the most common myths about migration and health are not supported by the available evidence and ignore the important contribution of migration to global economies.

In 2018, there were more than one billion people on the move, a quarter of whom were migrants crossing international borders. The Commission is the result of a two-year project led by 20 leading experts from 13 countries, and includes new data analysis, with two original research papers, and represents the most comprehensive review of the available evidence to date. The report, including its recommendations to improve the public health response to migration, will be launched on 8th December at the UN Intergovernmental Conference to adopt the Global Compact for safe, orderly and regular migration in Marrakech.

"Populist discourse demonises the very same individuals who uphold economies and bolster social care and health services. Questioning the deservingness of migrants for health care on the basis of inaccurate beliefs supports practices of exclusion, harming the health of individuals, our society, and our economies," says Commission Chair Professor Ibrahim Abubakar, UCL (UK). "Migration is the defining issue of our time. How the world addresses human mobility will determine public health and social cohesion for decades ahead. Creating health systems that integrate migrant populations will benefit entire communities with better health access for all and positive gains for local populations. Failing to do so could be more expensive to national economies, health security, and global health than the modest investments required to protect migrants' right to health, and ensure migrants can be productive members of society."

The Lancet editor Dr Richard Horton adds: "In too many countries, the issue of migration is used to divide societies and advance a populist agenda. With one billion people on the move today, growing populations in many regions of the world, and the rising aspirations of a new generation of young people, migration is not going away. Migrants commonly contribute more to the economy than they cost, and how we shape their health and wellbeing today will impact our societies for generations to come. There is no more pressing issue in global health."

Myths about migration and health not supported by the available evidence:

Are high income countries being overwhelmed by migrants?

Discussions about migration often focus on rising numbers of people crossing international borders and overwhelming high-income countries, but changes in migration are more complex. Although international migration receives the most political and public attention, most movement globally is internal migration. A quarter of all migrants (an estimated 258 million people) are international migrants. In the past four decades, the percentage of the world's population that is considered an international migrant has changed very little -- from 2.9% in 1990 to 3.4% in 2017 globally.

Most international migrants are labour migrants (approximately 65%) -- and a much smaller proportion are refugees and asylum seekers.

While high-income countries have seen a greater rise in the percentage of international migrants (from 7.6% in 1990 to 13.4% in 2017), they are more likely to be students who pay for their education or labour migrants who are net contributors to the economy. Refugees make up a larger proportion of the total population in low income countries compared to high income countries (0.7% vs 0.2%).

Are migrants damaging economies?

An overwhelming consensus of evidence exists on the positive economic benefits of migration, which is insufficiently acknowledged. In advanced economies, each 1% increase in migrants in the adult population increases the gross domestic product per person by up to 2%. Additionally, migration contributes to global wealth distribution. An estimated US$613 billion was sent by migrants to their families at origin in 2017. Approximately three quarters of these remittances are to low- and middle-income countries -- an amount three-times larger than official development assistance.

Are migrants a burden on health services?

Migrants constitute a substantial proportion of the health care workforce in many high-income countries. Rather than being a burden, migrants are more likely to bolster services by providing medical care, teaching children, caring for older people, and supporting understaffed services. In the UK, 37% of doctors received their medical qualification in another country.

A new, comprehensive systematic review and meta-analysis concludes that international migrants in high-income countries have lower rates of mortality compared to general populations across the majority of disease categories. The study used mortality estimates on more than 15.2 million migrants from 92 countries and found that international migrants had lower rates of deaths for cardiovascular, digestive, endocrine, neoplasms, nervous and respiratory diseases, mental and behavioural disorders and injuries than people in the general population in the receiving country. There was no evidence of a difference for blood, genitourinary, or musculoskeletal disorders.

The only two exceptions were for infections such as viral hepatitis, tuberculosis, and HIV, and external causes, such as assault, where migrants had increased rates of mortality. However, as the report also highlights, several studies (eg on tuberculosis) have shown that the risk of transmission of infections is elevated only within migrant communities, and is negligible in host populations.

The findings are most likely to apply to international migrants in high income countries who are studying, working, or have joined family members in these countries. Vulnerable groups, such as refugees, asylum seekers, and undocumented migrants, may have different health needs, but, as the authors note, rather than form policies based on exceptions, evidence about the healthy benefits of migration should be at the forefront of decisions.

Are migrants disease carriers that pose risks to resident populations?

The stereotype of migrants as disease carriers is perhaps one of the most prevalent, and the most harmful. However, there is no systematic association between migration and importation of infectious diseases, and the evidence shows that the risk of transmission from migrating populations to host populations is generally low. Studies on tuberculosis suggest that the risk of transmission is elevated within migrant households and communities, but not in host populations.

Migrants may come from regions with higher disease burden, especially if they come from regions of conflict, with weak public health systems. But illness and infection can also be acquired or during transit -- for example air travel can facilitate the rapid spread of infection. Indeed, recent examples of spread of resistant pathogens was driven mainly by international travel, tourism, and the movement of livestock rather than migration.

Strong public health systems are needed to prevent outbreaks of disease, whether associated with migration or not.

Do migrants have higher fertility rates than among host populations?

Populist rhetoric often claims that migrants have many more children than host populations. The Commission collates data from several long-term studies that suggest the birth rates among migrants are barely at the level of population replacement (2.1 births per woman) and often falling. A study of six European countries found that fertility rates among migrant women were, in general, lower than host populations.

Studies in India and Ethiopia, for example, have shown that internal migrants are more likely to use contraception than host populations. Ensuring access to services is key to ensuring the sexual and reproductive healthcare of migrant women and girls.

Unfounded myths: harmful to individuals and society

Unfounded myths about migration have wide ranging impacts on how migrants are treated within society. Despite evidence that migrants have positive health benefit to societies, many men and women who migrate are subjected to laws, restrictions, and discrimination that put them at risk of ill-health. Protection of the public is often invoked as a reason for the denial of entry, detention or deportation, but too often these policies leave migrants facing worse health situations.

The Commission calls for governments to improve migrants' access to services, strengthen migrants' right to health and tackle the wider determinants of migrant health, including taking a zero-tolerance approach to racism and discrimination.

Restricting entry based on health status is increasingly common. In Australia, permanent residency application can be rejected because the applicant has a health condition -- the five most common reasons were intellectual or functional impairment, HIV, cancer and renal disease. 35 countries have imposed some form of travel ban on people with HIV. Too often, policies are not based on the overall contribution of migrants to host societies, but only in terms of costs to the state. Restrictions on entry or deportation for diseases with low risk of casual transmission are impermissible on both public health and human rights grounds.

Linking health status to migration enforcement also reinforces distrust in the health profession, and Iimits migrants' ability to access health care on a non-discriminatory basis. The fear of deportation can mean migrants will not seek health care or assistance when needed, hindering individual and public health. In practice, health-related enforcement regimes can pressure health workers to act as immigration control agents. The Commission points to a growing trend of states limiting access to health care for migrants, despite commitments to provide "health for all." In the UK, the hostile environment policy was highlighted in the Windrush scandal of 2018 with long-term migrants being deported midway through medical treatment. Upfront charging regulations are still in place.

"Migrants are healthier and contribute to our economy and the NHS. There is no evidence that migrants are a drain on the NHS or that they spread infectious disease. Exclusion of migrants in health systems and the increasing negative rhetoric is political and not evidence based. The hostile environment towards migrants in the UK has led directly to migrants and British citizens being denied health care, with direct severe public health and health economic consequences. Migrants constitute a considerable portion of the heath care workforce in the UK, making important contributions to the country which should be recognised," says Professor Abubakar.

States are increasingly treating unauthorised border crossings as a criminal offense, leading to detention, at times indefinitely. Indefinite offshore detention of migrants on Nauru island was introduced as an immigration policy in Australia in 2013, and the USA recently announced a zero-tolerance policy, resulting in migrants arrested or jailed and children separated from their parents. Detention poses clear violations of international law, and findings from a systematic review of 38 studies shows that detention is associated with negative health outcomes, especially mental health.

"Contrary to the current political narrative portraying migrants as disease carriers who are a blight on society, migrants are an essential part of economic stability in the US. The separation of migrant children from their parents creates long term psychological damage -- and is a cruel and unnecessary aspect of US policy. The criminalization and detention of migrants seeking internationally protected refuge violates international law, and puts them at greater risk of ill health. Migrants are vital to our wellbeing as a society. Addressing the healthcare needs of migrant populations is an essential strategy to stemming costs associated with any avoidable disease burden in these populations," says co-author Professor Terry McGovern, Columbia University, USA.

Finally, the health of migrants depends on the social and structural context of their journey, and destination. Migrant related discrimination is a profound determinant of health, especially mental health and social wellbeing. Access to justice, and education are important determinants of health. Yet a study of 28 developed and developing countries found that nearly half did not allow immediate access to education for irregular migrant children, and migrants face many barriers accessing justice, through poor information, employer intimidation, language barriers or unfamiliarity with the system.

Professor Bernadette Kumar, Norwegian Institute for Public Health (Norway) adds: "Too often, government policies prioritise the politics of xenophobia and racism over their responsibilities to act forcefully to counter them. Racial and ethnic discrimination fuel the exclusion of migrant populations, not only violating the rights of individuals, but hindering social cohesion and progress of society at large. Racism and prejudice should be confronted with a zero-tolerance approach."

The Commission is accompanied by four linked Comments, including by Louise Arbour, UN Special Representative for International Migration; David Miliband and Mesfin Teklu Tessema, International Rescue Committee; Kolitha Wickramage, International Organization for Migration, and Giuseppe Annunziata, Regional Office for Europe, WHO; and Walid Ammar, Director General of the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health.

Commission co-author Dr Nyovani Madise, African Institute for Development Policy (Kenya), adds: "Africans have always been highly mobile people, moving mostly within national and regional borders. The Commission's report confirms that migrants boost the economies of their destination countries while many also remit money back to their places of origin. Most African countries find themselves as host to refugees and displaced people running away from conflicts in neighbouring countries. Migration policies in Africa must take on board the Commission's recommendations to provide good healthcare for all people on the move and to acknowledge the positive benefits of migration when formulating and implementing development policies."

Read more at Science Daily

Sitting is NOT the new smoking, contrary to popular myth

No, sitting is not the new smoking, despite what countless newspaper articles have peddled in recent years.

That's the consensus from an international team of researchers who have laid to rest misleading claims comparing the health dangers of sitting for long periods with smoking cigarettes.

In the latest issue of the American Journal of Public Health, researchers from Canada, the US and Australia say that while research does suggest excessive sitting (roughly more than eight hours a day) increases the risk of premature death and some chronic diseases by 10-20%, this pales in comparison to the risks associated with smoking.

Smoking increases the risk of premature death from any cause by approximately 180 per cent, the researchers say.

University of South Australia epidemiologist Dr Terry Boyle, one of nine researchers involved in the evaluation, says media stories comparing sitting with smoking increased 12-fold from 2012 to 2016, and some respected academic and clinical institutions have also spread the myth.

"The simple fact is, smoking is one of the greatest public health disasters of the past century. Sitting is not, and you can't really compare the two," Dr Boyle says.

"First, the risks of chronic disease and premature death associated with smoking are substantially higher than for sitting. While people who sit a lot have around a 10-20 per cent increased risk of some cancers and cardiovascular disease, smokers have more than double the risk of dying from cancer and cardiovascular disease, and a more than 1000 per cent increased risk of lung cancer.

"Second, the economic impact and number of deaths caused by smoking-attributable diseases far outweighs those of sitting. For example, the annual global cost of smoking-attributable diseases was estimated at US$467 billion in 2012 and smoking is expected to cause at least one billion deaths in the 21st century.

"Finally, unlike smoking, sitting is neither an addiction nor a danger to others.

"Equating the risk of sitting with smoking is clearly unwarranted and misleading, and only serves to trivialize the risks associated with smoking," Dr Boyle says.

From Science Daily

Paleontologists discover largest dinosaur foot ever

Photograph from the excavations in 1998, with the brachiosaur foot bones below a tail of a Camarasaurus. University of Kansas expedition crew member as a scale.

The Black Hills region of the United States is famous today for tourist attractions like Deadwood and Mount Rushmore, but around 150 million years ago it was home to one of the largest dinosaurs known. This dinosaur was a member of the sauropod family with long necks and tails. These giant plant-eating dinosaurs like Brontosaurus and Diplodocus were the largest land animals that ever lived on this planet.

The foot described in a new scientific paper recently published in the open-access journal PeerJ -- the Journal of Life and Environmental Sciences was excavated in 1998 by an expedition from the University of Kansas, with Anthony Maltese, lead author of the study, as member of the crew. As he writes, it was immediately apparent that the foot, nearly a meter wide, was from an extremely large animal -- so the specimen was nicknamed "Bigfoot."

Now, after detailed preparation and study, Maltese and his international team of researchers from the USA, Switzerland, and Germany identified it as belonging to an animal very closely related to Brachiosaurus, famous for its appearance in the 1993 film Jurassic Park.

Anthony Maltese, Emanuel Tschopp, Femke Holwerda, and David Burnham used 3D scanning and detailed measurements to compare Bigfoot to sauropod feet from numerous species. Their research confirmed that this foot was unusually large. According to Holwerda, a Dutch PhD student at the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, Germany, comparisons with other sauropod feet showed that Bigfoot was clearly the largest dinosaur foot discovered to date.

It also confirmed that brachiosaurs inhabited a huge area from eastern Utah to northwestern Wyoming, 150 million years ago. "This is surprising," says Tschopp, a Swiss paleontologist working at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, "many other sauropod dinosaurs seem to have inhabited smaller areas during that time."

Read more at Science Daily

DNA Analysis Reveals the True Identity of Himalayan Yetis

Recreation of Yeti (left), brown bear cubs playing in water (right)

Yeti, aka the Abominable Snowman, has vexed scientists for over 200 years.

In 1925, for example, Royal Geographical Society photographer N.A. Tombazi observed a creature — deemed by others as Yeti — about 15,000 feet near the largest glacier in the Eastern Himalayas. Tombazi at the time wrote: "Unquestionably, the figure in outline was exactly like a human being, walking upright and stopping occasionally to pull at some dwarf rhododendron bushes. It showed up dark against the snow, and as far as I could make out, wore no clothes."

Supposed remains of Yeti were even collected over the centuries, including desiccated fecal material, hair, a scrap of skin, a fragment of bone from a decayed body found in a Tibetan Plateau cave, and other items.

The British production company Icon Films, creator of the documentary Yeti or Not, gathered such remains and presented them to Charlotte Lindqvist and her team for DNA analysis. Lindqvist is an associate professor of biological sciences at the University of Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences.

The results of the scientific investigation have just been released. Lindqvist and her team report that six of the supposed Yeti remains were from Tibetan brown bears, one was from a Himalayan brown bear, another was from an Asian black bear, and one turned out to be from a dog.

Himalayan brown bear from Deosai National Park, Pakistan

The findings, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, represent the most rigorous analysis to date of samples suspected to derive from anomalous or mythical human-like creatures, according to the researchers.

"Our evidence strongly points to a biological basis for the Yeti myth, and the more evidence we have that confirms that, the more unlikely it becomes that there is some other explanation for the myth," Lindqvist told Seeker.

"But," she added, "that will most likely never change the belief in the myth."

The appearance and behavior of the bears identified in the study provide clues as to how the myth might have begun and persisted for so long.

Co-author Muhammad Ali Nawaz from Quaid-i-Azam University and the Snow Leopard Trust Pakistan program explained to Seeker that Himalayan brown bears are smaller than other bear species and can look human-sized when standing, which they do, he said, "while smelling around, perceiving threats, climbing trees" and more. He added that their fur color is quite variable, with some sporting light brown shades.

A femur from the decayed body of a purported Yeti that was found in a cave in Tibet. Biologist Charlotte Lindqvist tested DNA from the bone for Yeti or Not, which aired on Animal Planet in 2016. The bone was found to belong to a Tibetan brown bear.

"They hibernate during winter in areas close to villages," he continued, "and sometimes visit houses to steal food. Attacks on humans are extremely rare, though, based on our monitoring of Himalayan brown bears in Deosai National Park, Pakistan for about 20 years."

Co-author Richard Bischof from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences added, "One attribute of Himalayan brown bears that may further facilitate the myth is the fact that they can range up to very high elevations. Encounters there must leave an impression, especially if the bear rears up to get a better look at the human intruder, before disappearing."

Okapi at Disney's Animal Kingdom

The Yeti myth isn’t the only one to be debunked by scientific analysis. The longstanding Western legend of an "African unicorn" was explained in the early 20th century as being an okapi: a giraffe relative that resembles a mix between not only a giraffe, but also a zebra and a horse.

Creatures from Australia's Aboriginal Dreamtime mythology are now believed to have been drawn from ancient encounters with real megafauna, known today from that country's fossil record.

"Ancient myths could have a basis in long extinct animals, or perhaps even other human species that modern humans encountered when they colonized the area," Lindqvist said. Some myths could therefore have been in existence for tens of thousands of years, passed down orally before the emergence of written accounts.

Not all mysteries associated with Yeti have been solved, however. A few years ago, another research team led by Bryan Sykes of the University of Oxford analyzed 30 hair samples attributed to Yeti, Bigfoot, and other anomalous primates.

Sykes and his colleagues told Seeker that two of the studied hairs could not be matched to a known bear species. They said the animal possibly was a hybrid, a bear with an unknown "color variant," or "a previously unrecognized bear."

"Although none of the Bigfoot hairs were from an anomalous primate, this does not prove that Bigfoot does not exist,” Sykes said. “Absence of proof is not proof of absence."

There is further puzzlement about the bears identified in the latest paper. The researchers' analysis of mitochondrial DNA — genetic information passed down through the female line — showed that while Tibetan brown bears share a close common ancestry with North American and Eurasian bears, Himalayan brown bears belong to a distinct evolutionary lineage.

"Our data suggests that Himalayan brown bears may be representative of the most ancient lineage of brown bears, having shared a common ancestor with all other living brown bears more than 600,000 years ago," co-author Stephanie Gill of the University of Buffalo explained to Seeker.

"They appear to have migrated into the area and been isolated ever since," Gill added. "Thus, Himalayan brown bears living today may provide a sort of window into what the ancestor of all brown bears was like."

Lindqvist admitted that she and her team are missing the male side of the story. “It is possible that these bear populations are more connected than we realize,” she said, “but that it is only the male bears that move across the mountains."

Another possibility is that around 650,000 years ago, during a period of glaciation, Himalayan brown bears became separated from other bears. That population could then have undergone a prolonged period of isolation and evolved on an independent path.

In the future, the researchers hope to sequence the nuclear genomes of Himalayan and Tibetan brown bears, permitting a more complete look at these species' history.

Read more at Seeker

No, Friday's 'Black Moon' Isn't a Sign of the End Times

Just when you thought it was safe to go outside at night to do a little stargazing, the moon is being all weird again.

If you've been paying attention to the tabloid press, you'll likely know that Friday will play host to a "Black Moon." But you probably heard about it for all the wrong reasons. According to some outlets, this "rare" astronomical event is a signal that the world is going to come to an end and a prelude to the second coming of Jesus Christ. Why? Well, some people on social media said so.

Alas, like the last "Blood Moon", "Super Moon", "Blue Moon" , "Harvest Moon" and "Monster Moon" (OK, I made that last one up), Friday's "Black Moon" is a lot less interesting than it sounds.

Every so often, we'll experience one month that has two new moons. A new moon is the first phase of the lunar cycle, when the near-side of the moon is completely in shadow (and far side is bathed in sunlight). The new moon phase is the exact opposite of the full moon. A full moon is when the whole of the moon's face is illuminated (and the far side is in shadow). This is because, when looking up at the full moon, the sun is behind our planet, flooding the Earth-facing hemisphere in light.

In the case of the new moon, the moon is positioned between the Earth and sun, leaving the near side in darkness. We'll therefore see, well, not a lot. A couple of days after a new moon, as the lunar cycle rolls on, a thin crescent will appear (pictured top), but until then, the face of the moon will be, well, black.

More or less, the lunar cycle lasts a month (on average 29.53 days -- known as a synodic month), but September this year will see two new moons, one that occurred on Sept. 1 and the other that will occur on Sept. 30. This may sound familiar; the occasional second full moon in a month is known as a "Blue Moon" -- hence the saying "once in a blue moon" when describing a rare event.

It's worth noting, however, that there are other definitions of a "Black Moon" out there, so it certainly isn't an official astronomical designation. But it sounds dramatic and probably the reason why the tabloid press finds it so captivating.

Interestingly, the Sept. 30 Black Moon is exclusive to the Western Hemisphere only. The Eastern Hemisphere will experience the same new moon on Oct. 1, but as it's a new month for the Eastern Hemisphere, it's not their Black Moon. For their Black Moon, they have to wait until Oct. 30 for the second new moon of the month. It's all beginning to sound a bit unscientific, right?

Though Friday's Black Moon isn't really an astronomical phenomenon, its timing is nonetheless important to some religions and belief systems, such as Wicca. But does it foretell doom? No, unless you want to sell a lot of newspapers.

From Discovery News

Girl's Suicide Blamed Unproven 'Wi-Fi Allergy'

A British mother claims that her teenage daughter killed herself over her allergy to her school’s Wi-Fi signals.

According to The Telegraph, “A mother claims a Wi-Fi allergy killed her daughter and is accusing an Oxfordshire school of failing to safeguard children against the physical effects of wireless technology, an inquest has heard.

Jenny Fry, 15, was found in woodland near her home in Chadlington, on June 11 this year after texting a friend telling her she would not be going to school and intended to kill herself. An inquest heard the teenager was intelligent and organised but that her life had been made a misery due to the prolonged effects of a condition known as electro-hypersensitivity (EHS).

Jenny’s mother, Debra Fry, said her daughter suffered with tiredness, headaches and bladder problems as a direct result of wireless internet connections at Chipping Norton School.”

Debra Fry’s claim that that her daughter could sense—much less was made ill by—electromagnetic waves and fields (EMFs) has found little or no support in the medical community.

The World Health Organization, for example, concluded that “well controlled and conducted double-blind studies have shown that symptoms do not seem to be correlated with EMF exposure… these symptoms may be due to pre-existing psychiatric conditions as well as stress reactions as a result of worrying about believed EMF health effects, rather than EMF exposure.”

Nonetheless, concern over the effects of EMFs (via power lines) have been around since the 1970s, and resurfaced in the past decade as cell phones have become ubiquitous. Indeed, there is a burgeoning market for so-called “EMF shields” that can be inserted into cell phones that allegedly block harmful electromagnetic waves (though consumer groups say there’s no evidence they are effective).

In May of this year, Berkeley, Calif. became the first American city to pass a measure requiring that cell phones be sold with a health warning about the exposure of users to radio frequency radiation.

Despite no credible scientific evidence that EMFs and cell phone radiation can cause cancer, some people claim that they can actually sense or feel the presence of radio waves. Signals pass harmlessly through our bodies all time, and always have. All our lives—and even before we were born—we have been surrounded by television, radio, and other waves.

High-energy cosmic waves including particles called muons pass through us all the time; as a Space.com article noted, “About 10,000 muons pass through our bodies every minute. Some of these muons will ionize molecules as they go through our flesh, occasionally leading to genetic mutations that may be harmful. At present, the average human receives the equivalent of about 10 chest X-rays per year from cosmic rays. We shouldn’t be alarmed by this, since it is just part of the natural background radiation under which humans and our ancestors have been exposed to for eons.”

Dr. Harriet Hall, a blogger for the consumer protection website ScienceBasedMedicine.org, notes that “the symptoms that ‘EMS’ patients report are real, but there is no evidence that they are caused by EMF exposure. In provocation studies, patients were unable to tell when they were being exposed to radiofrequency emissions, and they reported the same symptoms regardless of whether the devices were turned on or off.”

In other words no one is suggesting that the people who believe they have EMS are not suffering from real symptoms, but instead that they are misattributing what is causing those symptoms. A rash, for example, might be caused by an undiagnosed allergy, sensitivity to laundry detergent, or something else but be assumed to have its origins in unseen electromagnetic waves.

Despite Fry’s mother’s claims, it’s not clear why her daughter killed herself (or even that she intended to); she was clearly emotionally troubled and just because they both believed that she was sensitive to EMFs (and that the symptoms she described were attributable to that) does not mean she actually was.

Even if sensitivity to Wi-Fi had been demonstrated, Mrs. Fry’s assertion that “Wi-Fi killed my daughter” is a stretch. Many people suffer miserably from seasonal allergies, but it would be difficult to prove that pollen, for example, in any way “caused” a sufferer’s suicide.

There also seems to be some confusion about what drove her to suicide; a news article in November reported that Jenny was “still deeply upset” following the suicide of a close friend a year earlier, and barely mentioned EMF sensitivity.

Read more at Discovery News

Woman Who Promoted Cancer-Curing Diet Admits Hoax

Australian Belle Gibson claimed in 2013 that a special diet, along with alternative medicine therapies, cured her terminal brain cancer. Shunning chemotherapy and other proven cancer treatments, she claimed to have healed herself through holistic medicine and proper nutrition.

Gibson started a wellness app based on her breakthrough discovery and wrote a cookbook with cancer-curing recipes. She became a rising star in the wellness and alternative medicine industry and won Cosmopolitan magazine's "Fun Fearless Female" award for social media.

However questions were raised about Gibson's story and cancer diagnosis in March after she told Australian News that "she believed she was misdiagnosed by a medical team in Germany -- by someone who she now thinks wasn't a medical doctor. She was now seeking treatment from a conventional medical team, which she declined to name."

This curious explanation only raised more questions, such as why she wouldn't reveal the name of the person who allegedly misdiagnosed her, and how she could not know whether or not that person was really a doctor. She eventually came clean.

In an interview last week Gibson admitted that she made up the whole story: she never had cancer in the first place, and her claim that a special diet or therapy cured her cancer was false. In an exclusive interview with The Australian Women's Weekly, Gibson was asked outright if she has, or has ever had cancer.  "No. None of it's true," she confessed.

Gibson is only the latest and highest-profile person to falsely claim to have been gravely ill. In 2009 a young Canadian woman named Ashley Kirilow made news for fighting bravely against breast, ovarian, brain, and liver cancers. She and her supporters raised over $20,000 for her treatments, but Kirilow eventually admitted that she never had cancer. She had shaved her head and eyebrows to fake the signs of chemotherapy, and had spent much of the money given to her on personal expenses. She was charged with fraud but spared jail time. She claimed she faked having cancer because she wanted attention from her family.

The Psychology of Factitious Disorders

Often cancer fakers do it for attention and sympathy, not because they are necessarily trying to scam people out of money. Some people really do have a disease -- not cancer but a mental illness known as a factitious disorder. People with this disorder pretend to have an illness (usually a terminal one) and often go to great lengths to maintain the hoax.

According to the latest edition of the American Psychiatric Association's "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders," the prevalence of factitious disorders is unknown. Many cases go undetected due to the deceptive nature of the patients. Often the person successfully ends their hoax by telling friends, family, and other supporters that they are cured, so their deception is never discovered.

The manual notes that "Among patients in hospital settings, it is estimated that about 1 percent of individuals have presentations that meet the criteria for factitious disorder. The course of factitious disorder is usually one of intermittent episodes."

In other words it's not merely one incident, such as a broken leg or a bout with the flu; potentially terminal illnesses such as cancer are often claimed by the patient, allowing them to carry on the deception for many months and even years.

In some cases the factitious disorder begins with a genuine health scare or preexisting condition that is then exaggerated over time. Patients will often go to great lengths to make their fake illness seem real to both doctors and supporters, including feigning seizures, manipulating lab results (for example by adding blood to a urine sample), and even physically injuring themselves.

It's not illegal to lie about having a disease, but if the person receives donations or free services under false pretenses, he or she may be charged with fraud.

Read more at Discovery News

Dwarf Dragons Discovered in the Andes

Three new lizards that researchers describe as "dragon-esque" have just been discovered in the Andean cloud forests of Ecuador and Peru.

The woodlizards, which really do look like tiny dragons, are described in the latest issue of the journal ZooKeys.

"That more than half of the diversity of a group of large, dragon-looking reptiles from South America has been discovered in recent years should be heard by people in charge of conservation and funding agencies," lead author Omar Torres-Carvajal of Ecuador’s Museo de Zoologia said in a press release.

The discoveries increase the known number of woodlizards to 15.

He and colleagues Pablo Venegas and Kevin de Queiroz explained that the reptiles are active during the day and live in lowland tropical rainforests, such as the Chocó and western Amazon basin, as well as cloudforests on both sides of the Andes.

Although the finds were made in a region known as the "Tropical Andes hotspot," cloudforests are known less for heat than for their near-persistent low-level cloud cover. They typically are located at altitudes between 3000 and 8000 feet, and are characterized by wet tropical mountain forests.

DNA analysis proved that the newly found lizards represent new species.

Could ancient people have noticed the lizards and been inspired to create dragon myths about them? It's possible.

At least three indigenous cultures from South America created stories about dragons. Folklore from Patagonia, the Jivaro of Ecuador's Amazon region and certain other cultures referred to dragon-like animals. Dragon myths, however, seem to be a worldwide phenomenon. Countries like China and India also have popular dragon myths.

Indonesia, in particular, has its Komodo dragon lizards. With some imagination, these huge carnivorous lizards do sort of look like they are spitting fire when they forcefully stick out their long tongues. The mouths of Komodo dragons may also contain venom-like proteins that can cause intense pain in victims.

The "dwarf dragons" -- some of which measure just under 5 inches in length -- aren't nearly as threatening. There could be a lot more of them, though.

Read more at Discovery News

Albino Toddler in Africa Killed for Witchcraft

A toddler named Yohana Bahati was abducted from his home in northern Tanzania on Feb. 14, taken by two men armed with machetes. Police were called and fears were immediately raised because of the child’s rare genetic disorder, albinism. The condition results in a lack of pigmentation in the hair, skin, and eyes, giving them poor eyesight and extreme sensitivity to light. It also makes its sufferers a target for magic-related murder.

Bahati was soon found several kilometers from his home and the worst fears were realized. As a news article in “The Telegraph” described:

“The mutilated body of an albino toddler has been found in Tanzania with his limbs hacked off, the latest such killing for body parts for witchcraft… police finding the body on Tuesday afternoon in a forest area close to his home. ‘His arms and legs were hacked off,’ regional police chief Joseph Konyo said. The baby’s mother Ester Jonas, aged 30, is in a serious state in (the) hospital with machete cuts to her face and arms after she tried to protect her baby.”

This horrific crime highlights the unusual intersection of magic beliefs, African culture, and government. This is only the latest in a series of albino murders. In Tanzania and Burundi, at least 50 albinos have been murdered for their body parts in recent years according to a 2010 Red Cross report. In November 2009, four people were arrested and sentenced to death in northern Tanzania for killing an albino man to harvest his body parts.

Throughout Africa witch doctors are consulted not only for healing diseases, but also for placing (or removing) magic curses or bringing luck in love or business. The belief and practice of using body parts for magical ritual or benefit is called muti.

Muti murders are particularly brutal, with knives and machetes used to cut and hack off limbs, breasts, and other body parts from their living victims. According to the United Nations albino body parts can sell for around $600 (or about what the average person earns in one year) in Tanzania.

Muti Magic

Earlier this year Tanzanian officials had reportedly banned witch doctors in an effort to prevent further witchcraft-related murders of people with albinism, but magical beliefs are deeply embedded in sub-Saharan cultures. Though the practice of muti specifically is not commonly practiced by witch doctors and traditional healers throughout Africa, it happens often enough (especially in East Africa) that albinos and their families live in constant fear for their lives.

What makes the death of Yohana Bahati especially tragic is his young age (most victims are older children or adults), and also the explanation for why the attacks have been increasing in recent months and may get worse: the use of magic by politicians in Tanzania’s upcoming elections to gain an advantage over their rivals.

As bizarre as it may sound to Westerners, the idea of using magic to gain an edge over an opponent — or for success in business or romance — is routine and commonplace throughout Africa. Witch doctors are hired to cast or remove curses, and if you believe that magic affects your daily life — as many Africans do — then obviously those with the most to gain or lose (such as those vying for public office) want the most powerful magic employed on their behalf.

Read more at Discovery News

Fantastically Wrong: The Weird, Kinda Perverted History of the Unicorn

This woman is a virgin. How do I know? Because unicorns ain’t got time for no non-virgins.

In late 2012, the North Korean regime made a rather bizarre announcement, even by the standards of the North Korean regime. According to The Guardian, the country’s archaeologists had discovered “the lair of one of the unicorns ridden by the ancient Korean King Tongmyong,” just 600 feet from a temple in the capital city. What might have tipped the scientists off was, no joke, the words “Unicorn Lair” written right in front of the damn thing.

But a week later, The Guardian ran a second article with a frank admission. “There is only one problem with the story,” they wrote. “It isn’t exactly true.” North Korea’s claim was in fact referring to the kirin, a mythical creature not too dissimilar from the unicorn, with the same hoofed, quadruped look but sometimes having two horns instead of one. But eccentricities of the North Korean regime aside, why is it that the unicorn, or a unicorn-like beast, pervades both Asian and European cultures?

On the Horn

If you’re looking to figure out how an ancient myth started to get out of hand, a good place to start is with the great Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder, whose epic encyclopedia Natural History stood largely as fact for some 1,600 years. Problem was, Pliny wasn’t the most incredulous of writers, and crammed his encyclopedia with pretty much any account he could get his hands on.

A father and son pose with a kirin statue at the Summer Palace in Beijing, China.

“The unicorn,” Pliny wrote, “is the fiercest animal, and it is said that it is impossible to capture one alive. It has the body of a horse, the head of a stag, the feet of an elephant, the tail of a boar, and a single black horn three feet long in the middle of its forehead. Its cry is a deep bellow.”

The unicorn then shows up in various places in the Bible, at least according to some translations (it’s sometimes instead referred to as the oryx, a kind of antelope whose antlers were indeed sold as unicorn horns in medieval times, or as the auroch, a massive type of cattle that went extinct in the 17th century). Here, its fierceness is affirmed. In Numbers 24:8, for instance: “God brought him forth out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn: he shall eat up the nations his enemies, and shall break their bones, and pierce them through with his arrows.”

In the 7th century, the scholar Isidore of Seville chimed in, noting that the unicorn “is very strong and pierces anything it attacks. It fights with elephants and kills them by wounding them in the belly.” He also helped popularize the myth that would serve as a hallmark in European folklore for centuries to come: Catching a unicorn is impossible…unless you have access to a virgin woman. “The unicorn is too strong to be caught by hunters,” he writes, “except by a trick: If a virgin girl is placed in front of a unicorn and she bares her breast to it, all of its fierceness will cease and it will lay its head on her bosom, and thus quieted is easily caught.” It’ll suckle until it’s lulled to sleep. So…yeah.

This is one alarm that the unicorn shan’t be sleeping through.

The scene (above) is one of the most iconic images in wildly popular medieval books known as bestiaries, encyclopedias of sorts that cataloged nature’s beasts, both real and imagined. Not only was the natural history of the animal given, but each was then compared to a biblical figure. And the unicorn stood for Christ, since he was captured and put to death like the unicorn is done in by the virgin (though pretty much every other animal was also compared to Christ, even the pelican, which was said to peck at its own breast to revive its young with blood, like Jesus shed his own blood for us).

Thus the unicorn became firmly implanted in European lore. What followed was a full-blown mania for their horns, which were said to detect poison if you stirred them around in your food or drink. They went for tens of thousands of dollars in today’s money, and were particularly popular among paranoid royalty. More industrious users who didn’t want to wait around to have their food poisoned would grind up the horns—usually those of the oryx or narwal (whose horn is actually a giant tooth)—to gain immunity from toxins.

Over in the East, royalty had a rather more complicated relationship with their version of the unicorn, the aforementioned kirin, or qilin. Its appearance was said to foretell the birth of a royal baby, which is nice of it, but can also predict an imminent death, which is not so nice. In the 15th century, a giraffe was brought to China for the first time and presented to the emperor as a kirin, which was a gutsy move considering its proclivities for letting royalty know they’re going to die soon. The emperor, though, dismissed it as a fraud and went on to live another 10 years.

This is what it looks like when an artist draws a rhino without ever having seen one with his own eyes…while maybe huffing a bit of glue.

A Myth Is Born

The myth of the unicorn may have come from sightings of antelope and such ungulates with only one horn, having either been born with the defect or lost the horn when scrapping with a predator or one of its own kind. Less likely still is seeing a normal antelope from afar in profile, since that would only last as long as the animal didn’t move.

A far more likely culprit is the Indian rhinoceros, and clues for this are sprinkled throughout the early accounts—indeed, the unicorn is sometimes referred to as the Indian ass. Pliny, for instance, mentions that the unicorn has “the feet of an elephant,” a rhino’s feet in fact being not hooved like a horse’s, but fleshy like an elephant’s. He also notes that it has “the tail of a boar,” much like a rhino’s, “and a single black horn three feet long in the middle of its forehead.” Writers would only later describe the horn as white.

The ancient Greeks and Romans, you see, had been making forays into India and bringing back tales of the strange beasts there, and the facts tended to get a bit…lost. Cotton, for instance, was said to grow in India as an actual lamb that sprouted from the ground, just hanging there patiently producing cotton. And while Pliny actually did a pretty good job of describing the rhino, his popularization of the “unicorn” picked up more and more improbabilities as the centuries wore on. We also know that the ancient Chinese had contact with rhinos from art made out of their horns, so the animal could well have also inspired the kirin.

Read more at Wired Science

Fantastically Wrong: The Bizarre Mirages That Once Scared the Bejesus Out of Sailors

The mysterious fata morgana: making people question their sanity since the beginning of time.

Jesuit priests aren’t especially known for their heavy drug use, but it would seem that Father Domenico Giardina was tripping pretty hard on August 14, 1643. Looking out over the sea from Messina, Sicily, Giardina saw “a city all floating in the air, and so measureless and so splendid, so adorned with magnificent buildings, all of which was found on a base of a luminous crystal.” The metropolis suddenly transformed into a garden, and next a forest. And then in a flash it all descended into chaos. Huge armies sprang forth, as did the towns they had laid waste to, before the whole mess disappeared.

Father Giardina, you see, was high on life. The “great and marvelous theater” he had witnessed was the mysterious fata morgana, an incredibly complex mirage that has historically both fascinated and scared the hell out of sailors and landlubbers alike. Whether it be the work of necromancers or fairies or a god, few phenomena have captivated humankind quite so thoroughly as fata morgana.

It was Jesuits like Father Giardina, argues Marina Warner in her brilliant book Phantasmagoria, who made the first “careful” observations of fata morgana, that is, not freaking out about them and instead beginning to apply a dash of science to the matter. The good Father claimed, writes Warner, that the minerals and salts in the region “rise up in hot weather in vapours from the sea to form clouds, which then condense in the cooler upper air to become a mobile specchio, a moving, polyhedrical mirror.” It was wrong, but it actually wasn’t that far off.

Light being refracted downward as it passes from air into a denser material, plexiglass. (Some light is also reflected upward)

At work here is some basic physics. When the sun heats up the atmosphere above the ocean, it creates a gradient of temperatures: Near the surface, it’s still relatively cool because the water is chilling that air, but sitting above that is a layer of warmer air. Now, light doesn’t always travel in a straight line. When it hits a boundary between two layers of the atmosphere that are different temperatures (and therefore different densities), it bends and travels through the new layer at a different angle. This is known as refraction. The change in the light’s angle of travel depends on the difference in density between the two layers.

How does bending light create a mirage? The rest of the effect is caused by how your brain works. When light hits your eyes, your brain assumes it arrived there in a straight path between you and the object reflecting the light. So if light is bent on its way toward you, your brain will think the object is where it would be if the light’s path was straight. This is why when you are looking down on a surface of water, objects under the surface will appear to be in a different spot than they actually are—just ask a spear fisherman…if you happen to know a spear fisherman. The human brain doesn’t automatically account for the refraction. (Interestingly, the brains of some birds like ospreys do correct for the effect so that when they dive headlong into the water after a fish, they are right on target.)

In the case of a fata morgana mirage, light reflecting from a distant object such as a ship is bent downward as it passes through the colder, denser air near the surface of the ocean (or sometimes cold land, particularly ice). But your brain places the object where it would be if the light came to you in a straight path—higher than it actually is. This bending effect can even work with the curvature of the Earth if conditions are just right, which is why some fata morgana images can actually be refracted cities and ships from beyond the horizon.

A superior mirage or fata morgana, left, and an inferior mirage, what you’d see on a hot day on asphalt, right.

The opposite situation is what produces mirages like an oasis of water in the desert. In this case, a hot layer of air just above the surface bends light rays up toward your eyes, causing your brain to perceive things as much lower than they actually are. The desert oasis is actually the sky. This kind of mirage is known as inferior, while the fata morgana, which places objects higher than they actually are, is superior.

But before the Scientific Revolution and all its wonderful advances in physics, mirages were firmly in the realm of mysticism (thank a Frenchman named Pierre de Fermat, by the way, for his pioneering work in decoding inferior mirages right around the same time Father Giardina was making his own observations). Indeed, fata morgana takes its name from Morgan le Fay, the treacherous fairy, enchantress, and half-sister of King Arthur.

Morgan le Fay: fairy, enchantress, sandal enthusiast.

According to Warner, the Normans brought stories of Morgan’s magic to Italy, particularly her penchant for luring sailors to an undersea palace with visions of castles in the air—fata morgana is particularly prevalent in southern Italy’s Strait of Messina, where Father Giardina experienced his own vision. Another Italian version of the legend has Morgan falling in love with a regular fella, granting him immortality, and keeping him in captivity, then putting on shows in the sky when he gets bored with the whole never dying thing.

And long before Arthurian legend, it could have been that sightings of these phenomena gave rise to any number of the “whoa something is appearing in the sky” scenes in antiquity, Warner argues. The Second Book of Maccabees, for example, tells of sky-people coming to the aid of the Jews in their skirmishes with the Romans: “When the battle became fierce, there appeared to the enemy from heaven five resplendent men on horses with golden bridles, and they were leading the Jews.” The ghostly warriors fired arrows and thunderbolts at the rascally Romans, “so that, confused and blinded, they were thrown into disorder and cut to pieces.”

Fata morgana’s most famous offspring, though, is the legend of the Flying Dutchman, a ghost ship said to sail aimlessly around the high seas. The tale was first popularized in a story called “Vanderdecken’s Message Home” from 1821, which told of a boat from Amsterdam that haunts the Cape of Good Hope, trying to hand off letters from its dead crew to the vessels of the living (uh, no thanks, the sailors would say, you can deliver your own damn mail). Warner connects this to fata morgana showing a ship from beyond the horizon: The mirage vessel could suddenly disappear with no explanation, and there you have your legend.

Read more at Wired Science

Why People Believed Boy's 'Visit to Heaven' Story

A boy who survived a serious car accident and who later wrote an inspiring, best-selling book about meeting angels and God during his near-death experience has now admitted he made it all up.

There are dozens of people who have claimed to visit heaven (or, less often, hell) during near-death experiences.

The best-selling 2010 book “The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven” tells the story of one young boy’s near-death experience: “In 2004 Kevin Malarkey and his six-year-old son, Alex, suffered a terrible car wreck. The impact from the crash paralyzed Alex, and it seemed impossible that he could survive.

“When Alex awoke from a coma two months later, he had an incredible story to share. Of events at the accident scene and in the hospital while he was unconscious… Of the angels who took him through the gates of Heaven itself.”

It was one of two bestselling books about young boys’ experiences in heaven that came out that year; the other, Colton Burpo’s “Heaven is For Real,” was made into a 2014 film.

Colton Burpo’s experiences in heaven may or may not be for real, but Alex Malarkey admits that his is not. The website PulpitandPen.org noted that the book’s publisher “Lifeway has been selling ‘The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven’ for many years now. It is part of the trifecta of books on ‘heavenly tourism’ that Lifeway has sold and has promoted, along with ’90 Minutes in Heaven’ and ‘Heaven is for Real.’

The co-author of ‘The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven’ — the boy himself — has written an open letter to Lifeway and admonished them for not holding to the sufficiency of Scripture, and has recanted his tale.”

Malarkey’s statement read in part, “Please forgive the brevity, but because of my limitations I have to keep this short. I did not die. I did not go to Heaven. I said I went to heaven because I thought it would get me attention. When I made the claims that I did, I had never read the Bible. People have profited from lies, and continue to. They should read the Bible, which is enough. The Bible is the only source of truth. Anything written by man cannot be infallible.”

Propheting from Heaven

Of course the beauty of books about heaven, and there are many of them, some written by people who, like Malarkey, survived accidents and others by claimed psychics such as Sylvia Browne, is that nothing you write can be disproven. If a person claims to have had some personal experience with the unproven and unexplained (whether God or ghosts) we must simply take them at their word absent any compelling corroborating evidence.

Part of the reason that Malarkey’s story was so widely believed and accepted among its Christian audience is that it reinforced their existing narratives and beliefs. If he had described heaven as a place that smells like melted cheddar cheese and was populated by winged elephants singing Britney Spears songs, his experiences, however sincerely conveyed, would have been dismissed as drug-induced hallucinations or the product of a fertile imagination.

Though that may or not be any more accurate than stereotyped visions of winged people in robes walking among clouds, by sticking closely to a widely-accepted Christian interpretation of Heaven, God, and demons, Malarkey assured that his story would meet his audience’s expectations and be popular.

Many of these accounts, including Malarkey’s, involve near-death experiences (NDEs) following trauma. However scientists have cast doubt on the reality of many NDEs.

A 2001 article published in “Trends in Cognitive Sciences” by neuroscientist Dean Mobbs, of the University of Cambridge’s Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, and Caroline Watt, of the University of Edinburgh, found that “contrary to popular belief, research suggests that there is nothing paranormal about these experiences. Instead, near-death experiences are the manifestation of normal brain function gone awry, during a traumatic, and sometimes harmless, event.”

Mobbs and Watt noted that many classic NDE symptoms are actually reported by people who were never in danger of dying in the first place.

According to “The Washington Post” the book’s publisher, Tyndale House / Lifeway, has announced that it will stop selling the book and issued a statement reading in part, “We are saddened to learn that Alex Malarkey, co-author of ‘The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven,’ is now saying that he made up the story of dying and going to heaven. Given this information, we are taking the book out of print.”

Of course the book has already made millions of dollars for the publisher over the past five years, so removing it from print will not be a financial hardship.

Read more at Discovery News