In May, genetically modified sugar beet plants were found in a soil mix sold to gardeners at a landscape supply business in Corvallis, Oregon. The contamination incident raises doubts about the ability of the sugar beet seed industry to keep GM sugar beets from contaminating non-GMO sugar beets and related plants.

Insert long string of profanities here.

UPDATE: Jim here. From the article -

Morton is frustrated because the two seed companies that could be responsible for the problem, West Coast Beet Seed and Betaseed, aren’t saying anything. “No one has stepped forward to accept responsibility,” he says.

Greg Loberg of West Coast Beet Seed told the Corvallis Gazette-Times, which first broke the story, that he couldn’t say anything because of the lawsuit.

Morton contacted the Willamette Valley Specialty Seed Association about the problem. “I told them this is trespass; I will make this an issue so they can’t keep ignoring it. Somewhere along the line responsibility will be assigned,” he says.

UPDATE: Boulder County, CO says No to GMO Sugarbeets

Also of note- The gushingly pro-biotech Scientific American suggests that scientists shouldn’t have to have corporate permission to study engineered crops.

Kate Bush’s gonzo “Cloudbusting” video, an homage to the Wilhelm Reich story, starring Donald Sutherland.

In so many words. Swedish company fined for 2007 incident in which a robot, thought to have no power supply, grabbed a man’s head and in the ensuing struggle, broke a few of his ribs.

This attack of course violated Law #1 of the Three Laws of Robotics.

Tons of articles about Velikovsky and the controversy that bears his name, “The Velikovsky Affair.”

Gonzo Science mourns the loss of another titan of science:

Brian was a scientist well ahead of his time. He pioneered theoretical biology, structuralism, complexity theory, holistic and Goethean science, inspiring generations of students and colleagues across the disciplines to ask the big questions and always to think beyond received wisdom.

It was my great privilege to study with Brian Goodwin at Schumacher College. He was one of my heroes.

As the popularity of salvia has risen over the past 16 years—its psychoactive properties were discovered in 1993 by Daniel Siebert, an independent ethnobotanist based in Malibu, Calif.—calls to treat the plant as an illegal drug have grown louder. Twelve states have recently placed S. divinorum in their most restrictive controlled substance category, and four others have laws restricting sales. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has listed salvia as “a drug of concern” and is looking into the drug to determine whether it should be declared a Schedule I controlled substance, on par with heroin and LSD.

The unusual properties of salvinorin A intrigue scientists. Psychiatric researcher Bruce Cohen and his colleagues at Harvard Medical School have been developing analogues of salvinorin A and studying their possible mood-modulating properties. The team’s work with salvinorin A in animals suggests “that a drug that would block kappa opioid receptors might be an antidepressant drug—probably a nonaddictive one—or a mood stabilizer for patients with bipolar disorder,” Cohen remarks. By activating the kappa opioid receptors, drugs such as salvinorin A could reduce dependence on stimulants and the mood-elevating and mood-rewarding effects of cocaine. Because salvinorin A can produce distortions of thinking and perception, researchers speculate that blocking the receptors might alleviate some symptoms of psychoses and dissociative disorders.

Some investigators, including the team at Harvard, believe that modified forms of salvinorin A could bolster its medicinal value. Tom Prisinzano, a medicinal chemist at the University of Kansas, points out that some chemical transformations of salvinorin A have different pharmacological abilities—such as a longer-lasting action or an enhanced ability to bind to receptors—and no hallucinogenic properties. Modifying its novel structure, he says, “could potentially treat a number of different central nervous system disorders.”

But if salvinorin A becomes a federally scheduled drug, research on it would become “much more difficult,” predicts Rick Doblin, director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a nonprofit based in Santa Cruz, ­Calif.

Full story from Scientific American.

One commenter on the Salvia story had this to say-

What about the experience with other drugs of abuse such as, indeed, LSD?  Studies WERE done on them, and they didn’t result in the production of any useful medications.  What REASON is there to think this would be any different?

In response, let’s ponder this story about contemporary LSD research.

Bird Art: Attenborough on Bowerbirds

In 2007 researchers theorized that a comet set off continental fires that led to the mysterious disappearance of the Clovis people and the extermination of 35 mammal genera, including mammoths, mastodons, ground sloths and camels. The team documented a “black mat” of charcoal throughout North America that contains high levels of iridium, magnetic spheres, and nano-diamonds, which are consistent with such an airburst. The controversial theory also gibes with the 1908 Tunguska atmospheric detonation (also thought to be from a comet or meteorite) that leveled trees in Siberia, and it echoes the extraterrestrial impact widely believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

Today, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the same team reports on shock-synthesized hexagonal diamonds, known only from meteorite and other impact events, in a soot layer from Arlington Canyon on Santa Rosa Island in California. The canyon is famous for containing the earliest human remains in North America, dating back to 13,000 years, and the soot layer coincides with the disappearance of the pygmy mammoth from the island. In a documentary shown earlier this year on the Public Broadcasting Service’s NOVA science show, the team also claimed that they discovered similar diamonds from the Greenland Ice Sheet dating to the same period.

The skeptics are not amused.

Arrests made as part of clusterfuck arrest bonanza in New Jersey:

There’s a lot to dig into on this story about New Jersey mayors, lawmakers, and rabbis being charged in connection with a federal corruption and international money laundering probe.

But we’ve been focusing on one of the few New Yorkers: Issac Rosenbaum, a Brooklynite who works in real estate — and has been charged with trafficking in human kidneys. It’s not clear how or whether this case is tied to the public corruption probe. But with details like these, who cares, frankly…

While I generally loathe Chris Matthews, this bit about Obama’s birth certificate is a home run.

Rates of teen pregnancy and syphilis rose during the abstinence only Bush years.

Killed by ants after napping under the wrong tree.

…when police reached the scene, the man was already dead, but swarms of ants were still crawling across his body.

Literary agent wanted to help market our Burroughsian farce of a Ballardian science fiction novel, “Novelty Theater.” Also: “High School War Stories,” “Gonzo Science II”. Email with your tips and pointers. Thank you.

Amateur astronomer is first to catch glimpse of an earth-sized hole in Jupiter’s clouds, indicating a recent hellacious impact.

Previous research had shown that birds seem to have an internal compass that allows them to “see” Earth’s magnetic field. This magnetic vision guides them on long journeys.

Scientists have also studied a protein molecule, called cryptochrome, that drives the chemical processes behind the birds’ magnetic abilities.

But what the molecule was reacting with to create birds’ special sight has been a mystery—until now.

Due to a laboratory mishap, scientists have discovered that toxic superoxides may be the previously missed ingredient.

Fuckin’ birds get all the cool stuff.

Even if any of the photos become accepted as proven fakes, that doesn’t mean the mission didn’t happen. All that would logically entail is that some of the photos were faked. That would itself entail a conspiracy, but obviously a much smaller one. Need good propaganda against the Reds from your Moon mission but the photos didn’t turn out? Fake ‘em. Years later, a sloppy documentary appears on Fox that debunks the photos, and extends those conclusions to the entire mission. I don’t want to take a side (re: the photos) with this post exactly, but I do want to make clear, as a point of order, that the photos are different than the entire mission.

Explains a lot.

This guy’s throwing the gauntlet down - he’s just found the oldest dinosaur burrow, pushing that timeline back 15 million years, and he’s not so much predicting as wildly speculating, but still:

“Right now burrowing dinosaurs might look like an exception to the rule,” he said. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if more species [dug burrows]. Ten years from now it might be considered commonplace.”

We’ll check back. My guess: he’s right.

A single door-slam to punctuate her natural call, but technically tool-use. Kinda flirts with musicality too, in keeping with our “Up With Anthropomorphicization” campaign.

RELATED: Proto-language of the housecat 

The interaction represented produced the famous explanation of the structure of DNA, but the model pictured is a stiff snapshot of idealized DNA. As researchers from Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Houston note in a report that appears online in the journal Nucleic Acids Research, DNA is not a stiff or static. It is dynamic with high energy. It exists naturally in a slightly underwound state and its status changes in waves generated by normal cell functions such as DNA replication, transcription, repair and recombination.                   

Does this have any bearing on the safety of genetic engineering…? Nah.

She never found that younger man she was looking for to raise them. Latest proof that fertility treatments are a technology that has run amok (see also: the ”octomom”).

“66, single and selfish needs two kids for short term relationship.”

Alternate Title - Squid on a Beach.

 New Scientist catches up with cold-fusion pariah Martin Fleischmann.

MARTIN FLEISCHMANN can still remember the morning he entered his lab and saw the terrific hole in the workbench. It was about the size of a dinner plate. Beneath, nestled in a shallow crater in the concrete floor, were the remains of a chemistry experiment that had been fizzing idly for several months without incident. “It had obliterated itself!” he recalls.

It happened overnight, so no one witnessed the meltdown that took place in a basement lab at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, in 1985. But for Fleischmann and his longtime colleague Stanley Pons, there could be only one cause: room-temperature or “cold” fusion. If they were right, the chemists had made a reaction that nuclear physicists had thought next to impossible, one that potentially held the key to almost limitless clean energy. Yet four years later, and just weeks after they had announced their discovery at a now infamous press conference on 23 March 1989, their work was dismissed from mainstream science. Cold fusion became a pariah field, and Fleischmann and Pons fell under the shadow of disrepute.

At his home near Salisbury, UK, 82-year-old Fleischmann looks too beaten to entertain suggestions that, after two decades, cold fusion might actually be gaining acceptance. He has Parkinson’s disease, and although he still speaks in his usual measured phrases and Czech accent, he is slow and often loses his train of thought. “All my activities are devoted to giving up,” he laughs, glancing at his coffee cup performing another involuntary rattle on its saucer.

Poor bastard.

We here at Gonzo Science have an abiding interest in linguistics, Lettrism, and taxonomy; this video satisfies all 3 needs at once.

A sealed entrance is all that remains between archeology and a rare find - tomb of an Aztec king: 

That the seals are unbroken suggests that the potential tomb has not been looted.

Indiana Jones wouldn’t wait to open it, but…

Despite rising expectations, the archaeologist said he and his team must be patient.

Only by working slowly and methodically will the team be able to reconstruct the funerary customs and other artifacts that could shed light on the Aztec economy, political system, and religion as it existed before the arrival of the Spanish in the 1500s.

That is such bullshit!!!! What if there’s alien artifacts???!!! Kidding. Still, an unlooted tomb could contain surprises… Here’s hoping for evidence of transoceanic pre-Columbian contact. 

Wanted to make sure everybody saw this real-life X-Files-looking shit, found by a remote robot camera of some kind I gather. Anyway I’m not sure as of this writing if the mystery has been cleared up as to identifying these revolting things, but I’ll update this when/if I know.

Looks like the ’defective gene’ theory of Alzheimer’s ain’t so tough.

“Until this point there has been a lot of focus on defective genes but now it is becoming clear that really represents a small proportion of the total community who are at risk of getting Alzheimer’s,'’ he said.

….Study author and professor of pathology and lab medicine at Rhode Island Hospital in the US, Suzanne de la Monte, found that a massive rise in fertiliser and processed food sales coincided with an increased prevalence of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s’ and type 2 diabetes in the US.

“We have become a ‘nitrosamine generation,'’ she said.

Probably futile to suggest scaling back the trend of looking for genetic causes of everything.

The muriqui’s peaceful reputation stems mainly from northern populations that feed on abundant leaves, and where males patiently queue to mate with females. But in the southern population…, fruit is more widely available than in the north… Because fruit is widely dispersed, females detach from the main group to locate it, making them less available for sex with the males than in the north where everyone stays together to eat leaves. Lacking ready mates, males may become frustrated, creating mutual tension and aggression.

Tense monkeys are violent monkeys.

The death of weapons inspector Dr. David Kelly openly reconsidered as a conspiracy of black market anthrax interests “suiciding” him. (This came as a surprise to me as I would have first guessed it was British Intelligence that did it. Not that British Intelligence and black market anthrax interests are necessarily mutually exclusive of course.) From the article:

“…David Kelly was of particular interest to us because he was a world expert on anthrax and he was involved in some degree with assisting the secret germ warfare programme in apartheid South Africa.”

…I am reminded by a diary on DailyKos that the ruling of Kelly’s death as a suicide was disputed in an open letter by three specialist medical professionals:

Dr Nicholas Hunt, the forensic pathologist at the Hutton inquiry, concluded that Dr Kelly bled to death from a self-inflicted wound to his left wrist. We view this as highly improbable.

The dispute over the nature of Kelly’s death is a great science vs. science story, suggesting the omnipresent question: if the scientists can’t agree, how can the layperson ever know? And the answer, we think, is to just go ahead and do the research yourself and evaluate competing explanations according to the criteria of adequacy. Sometimes the answer comes up conspiracy!