News Round Up [July 6, 2017]

Nightfishing in Hawaii 1948

First troll opening done for Southeast summer king salmon

KFSK by Joe Viechnicki

Commercial salmon trollers in Southeast Alaska are already done with their first king salmon opening of the summer season. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced Monday the first king salmon opening would end just before midnight on Tuesday, July 4th. The fleet was expected to catch a target of 64,000 Chinook salmon by then. The catch is managed under a treaty agreement between the U.S. and Canada. Fishing opened on July 1st.

After off-loading their catch, trollers can go back out for other salmon, like coho and chum. They’re also expecting to have a second king opening later this summer. Starting July 5th, trollers also can keep hatchery kings until further notice. [Source]

Troopers: Man dies after boat runs aground in Southeast waters

Alaska Dispatch News by Jerzy Shedlock

Alaska State Troopers say the body of a 59-year-old man from Kake was found in Southeast waters after the boat he was riding in ran aground.

Troopers were notified of the grounding, in Herring Bay at the southeast end of Admiralty Island, around 1:10 p.m. on Sunday, according to a trooper dispatch posted online. "And one of the occupants, Willis Cavanaugh, 59, of Kake, was missing," the dispatch says.

The Coast Guard was coordinating a search when troopers were told at 4:22 p.m. that a good Samaritan found Cavanaugh's body about a mile offshore from Point Macartney, near the northwestern end of Kupreanof Island, south of Admiralty.

Cavanaugh's family has been told about his death.

The State Medical Examiner requested transport of the body to Anchorage for an autopsy, troopers said. [Source]

Empathy Is Killed By Popular Painkiller Found In 600 Different Drugs

Acetaminophen — commonly known as Tylenol in the US and paracetamol elsewhere — reduces people’s empathy for the pain of others, new research finds.

Acetaminophen is an ingredient in over 600 different medications, including being the main constituent of Tylenol.

Dr Dominik Mischkowski, the study’s first author, said:

“These findings suggest other people’s pain doesn’t seem as big of a deal to you when you’ve taken acetaminophen.

Acetaminophen can reduce empathy as well as serve as a painkiller.”

Previous research has also found that the drug can reduce the positive emotions of those taking it.

The research was carried out on 80 college students.

The results showed that those who had taken the acetaminophen consistently gave lower pain ratings for the people in the story.

The researchers carried out a couple of other variations to test people’s’ empathy for physical and social pain.

Dr Way explained the results of the experiment on social pain:

“In this case, the participants had the chance to empathize with the suffering of someone who they thought was going through a socially painful experience.

Still, those who took acetaminophen showed a reduction in empathy.

They weren’t as concerned about the rejected person’s hurt feelings.” [Full Story]

Iceland is One of the Few Countries Without Mosquitos

Visit Denmark, Greenland, Scotland, or Norway, and you're bound to encounter at least one Draculaic pest.

In nearby Iceland, not so.

The tiny country is among a handful of others that claim no mosquito population whatsoever.

That is, unless you count the one that has lived in a jar of alcohol at the Icelandic Institute of Natural History ever since the 1980s, when a scientist captured it in an airplane.

There are a couple theories why the nation is mosquito-free.

In much of the Arctic, Greenland especially, there are numerous shallow ponds where mosquitoes lay eggs that hatch into larvae, which eventually become blood-hungry mosquitoes. In Greenland, the insects can get so big that they can take down baby caribou.

Those shallow ponds are important because they are the first to heat up and thaw once the temperature begins to rise.

"The mosquitoes go through their development faster which means there are fewer days to be eaten by a predator," Dartmouth ecologist Lauren Culler told Motherboard last year. "Lab studies, field studies, and population models show that a warming climate means more mosquitoes survive until adulthood."

Iceland has no such lakes in which the mosquitoes can breed. And as the Times reports, the country's ecology is such that its sees three main freezes and thaws throughout the year. Mosquitoes may simply not have enough time to mature in the warmer temperatures before it gets cold again. [Source]

12 greyhounds test positive for cocaine at Bestbet race track

A local greyhound trainer's license has been suspended after 12 dogs in his care tested positive for cocaine.

According to records obtained by First Coast News, the dogs, all racers at Bestbet Orange Park, tested positive for Benzoylecgonine (BZE) -- a metabolite of cocaine.

"This is the largest greyhound drug case in American history," says Carey Theil, Executive Director of GREY2K USA in Arlington, Mass., a non-profit that opposes greyhound racing and monitors dog tracks around the country. "This is staggering."

Wait! So is Cocaine a 'performance enhancement' drug?!? If so why would it be illegal for the regular consumer?

According to the state’s investigation, one dog won with cocaine in her system, Flicka, won first place in her race on March 1, and tested positive for cocaine the same day. They also discovered evidence of cocaine in another dog, Castle Rock, the following day, March 2. Then more cocaine positives on March 5, 15, 23, 27, 29 and 31 -- for Flicka as well as other dogs.

Baughman says the repeated presence of cocaine suggests intentionality. "It shows there's been some cocaine administered into that animal, in this case, the dog," he says. [Read the rest]

Talking About Enhancement Drugs...'Performance-enhancing' drug that cost Lance Armstrong his seven Tour de France titles doesn't work, finds study

EPO, a supposedly performance-enhancing drug infamously used by cyclist Lance Armstrong before he was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles, does not actually work, according to a new scientific study.

Even though it was once one of the drugs of choice of athletes prepared to cheat and risk blood clots, strokes and other potentially fatal health problems, little scientific testing has been done to support the claims made about it.

The researchers found EPO, a hormone involved in the production of red blood cells, made no difference to the cyclists’ performance in the race, although it did have an effect in laboratory fitness tests to the point of exhaustion.

Most of the cyclists themselves did not seem to notice any boost to their training. Nine out of 23 in the EPO group thought they had been given the drug, compared to six out of the 24 in the placebo group.

Writing in the journal The Lancet, the researchers said: “We showed that it is possible to test potential doping substances in well-controlled clinical trials and that results are much less pronounced than claimed in popular literature and accounts.

“Overall, the results of our study showed that [EPO] treatment enhanced performance in well-trained cyclists in a laboratory-based maximal exercise test leading to exhaustion, but did not improve submaximal exercise test or road race performance. [Source]