In Short: Driverless cars now legal in California, a glimpse at why people cheat

Enjoy these fascinating reads from across the Internet:

California Governor Jerry Brown signed a law yesterday making it legal for driverless cars to travel on public roadways. [Forbes] Watch Sebastian Thrun’s TEDTalk “Google’s driverless car” for a description of how such a thing works and Chris Gerdes’ talk “The future race car — 150mph, and no driver” for how it works on a race track.
.Healthcare innovators rejoice. Medstartr, the “Kickstarter for healthcare,” is currently crowdfunding for an organization that provides gynecological care for women in rural Dominican Republic, for a special bra created to be worn by breast cancer survivors and for an app that tracks medical history for first responders. [OpenSource.com]
.Google Maps has launched its first underwater panoramas, sea turtles included. [Google Blog]  Here, a slideshow of images. [Salon.com]
.On a related note, phone booths don’t need to be retired entirely — they can be refurbished as aquariums. [The Atlantic Cities]
.In June, 71 juniors at New York’s Stuyvesant High School traded answers to a state Regents exam via text message. Today, students from the premiere public school explain why, describing a systematic culture of cheating. [New York Times] Watch behavioral economist Dan Ariely’s TEDTalk “Our buggy moral code” for further insights on why people cheat.
.This Friday marks the 25th anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Here, how the show changed popular culture worldwide. [Time.com]

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‘Legal marijuana’ and a ban on brain function

The United States Congress has just passed a bill to ban ‘legal marijuana’ incense products and ‘bath salts’ stimulants – a legal move which, possibly for the first time, prohibits substances based on their action in the brain and not solely their chemical structure.

The bill is an amendment to the Controlled Substances Act which currently contains a list of prohibited drugs, defined entirely by their name.

Due to the varied nature of cannabinoids, and the fact that semi-legit labs seem to be producing new variations at a remarkable rate, the bill uses quite a wide definition.

The bill (pdf here) specifically prohibits “cannabimimetic agents”, defined as:

…any substance that is a cannabinoid receptor type 1 (CB1 receptor) agonist as demonstrated by binding studies and functional assays within any of the following structural classes…

and any preparation

…which contains any quantity of cannabimimetic agents, or which contains their salts, isomers, and salts of isomers…

In other words, the definition includes a general class of compounds and possible chemical variations that have a specific action in the brain – namely binding to the CB1 receptor.

This is, as far as I know, the first attempt to ban a specific brain function.

The safety is these drugs is still largely unknown, however. Although most were developed many years ago they’ve never been scientifically tested in humans and current research is limited to a few case reports or small studies.

There have certainly been deaths and bad reactions but as we have almost no information on how widespread the use of these drug is we really have no idea about the relative risks.

Link to news from the DrugMonkey blog.
pdf of passed bill.

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