Science&Health
03/14/08 -
GristMill - Immelt's outburst came toward the end of a Q&A session that saw him repeatedly assailed by ideological conservatives angry over his involvement in the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of large businesses lobbying for a carbon cap-and-trade system, and his leadership role in pushing the business world to embrace clean energy and sustainability....
03/14/08 -
ebbolles - One of the biggest controversies to emerge so far at the Evolang conference in Barcelona concerns the eternal split that arises in any inquiry into the humanities, biology or culture. Does language reflect biology or culture? Plainly, the answer is both, and nobody pretends otherwise, but which is the...
03/14/08 -
the oysters garter - You know you’ve seen this one: A normal animal is given a robot brain by well-meaning scientists. The scientists promise everyone they have complete control of the situation. Then the lead scientist gets eaten when the creature escapes and TRIES TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD. All right, maybe that was just a Pinky and the Brain episode, but still, shouldn’t the Defense Department heed the warnings of...
03/13/08 -
Britannica Blog - A preliminary study published in the December issue of the journal The Lancet Oncology provides a summary of scientific evidence of increased cancer risk in night-shift workers, as well as increased cancer risk in painters and firefighters. The study, conducted by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), emphasizes the impact of night-shift work on...
03/13/08 -
VentureBeat - Most Health 2.0 startups operate on some variation of the Field of Dreams model, hoping that if they build an innovative new service, patients and doctors will come and use it. A few, however, are making more like Willie Sutton — the fellow who, when asked why he robbed banks, replied, “That’s where the money is” — by convincing insurers to roll out their technology to an established...
03/13/08 -
Science Blogs - One last note on the whole Spitzer affair. The reason I think it's dangerous to use the sexual habits of other species (or even other human cultures) as a baseline when discussing prostitution is that the evolutionary argument has very clear policy implications. If, as David Barash argued, sexual infidelity is not only natural but normal and inescapable, then you'd have a strong argument for the...
03/12/08 -
A Very Remote Period Indeed - A. Rossi and E. Webb have a brief report in the March 2008 issue of Antiquity detailing sediment loss apparently caused by dramatic increases in the number of tourist visits at Mulka's Cave, a major rock art site in southwestern Australia. To sum up, they reconstructed changes in floor level based on dated photographs which result in the following chilling (archaeologically, at least) composite...
03/12/08 -
Pioneering Ideas - A recent article in Business Week spotlights the “Designers Accord,” the centerpiece of a growing grassroots movement to integrate environmental principles and sustainability into the design process. Designers are talking with their clients about using alternative environmentally-friendly materials and thinking of ways to use design to foster more environmentally-friendly behaviors. ZipCar is...
03/12/08 -
Science Blogs - "The most important thing is what the animal eats and that it has a good life . . . just like us," Cecchini says. "My philosophy is that the cow has to have had a really good life with the least suffering possible," he says. "And every cut has to be cooked using the best cooking method. It's a matter of respect. If I come back as a cow, I want to have the best butcher....
03/11/08 -
jetapplicant - Sometime in the last 20 years, locals in the CNMI came to understand conservation as a bunch of haoles telling indigenous people not to fish, not to feed their families, and not to practice their culture. They are mistaken. Conservation has always been an integral part of Micronesian culture. I learned it from my father and I know these guys learned it from theirs. Even so, times have changed....
03/11/08 -
Running a Hospital - I heard a great talk last week by Andrew McAfee, a professor at Harvard Business School, about Web 2.0 and, as he terms it, Enterprise 2.0. This expanded into a discussion of the inherent democratization that occurs in the 2.0 environment, from which Andy rhetorically raised the question of how reliable and accurate this kind of approach is. Of course, my immediate response was, "Compared to what?"...
03/11/08 -
anatomyonthebeach - I read an interesting post on Wachter's World about management and measurement. One of the commentators spoke about the "art of medicine." I started thinking about art and medicine. I have heard medicine described as an "art that makes use of science." In my limited experience, I agree with that. I think, that as valuable as it is, evidence-based-medicine sometimes throws the baby out. When...
03/10/08 -
universe today - The traditional view of the Earth's interior has the crust (where we live), the upper and inner mantle, the outer core, and the inner core; wrapped around each other like layers of an onion. But now textbooks will need to be revised. It turns out there's an inner, inner core. The Earth's core is known to have an inner core of solid iron about 2,400 km (1,500 miles). Wrapped around that is a fluid...
03/10/08 -
NeuroPhilosophy - Sea cucumbers are marine invertebrates which live on the sea floor and feed on debris that drift down. When threatened, they can harden their skin within seconds, so that they are less likely to be devoured by the approaching predator. This behaviour is made possible by the structure of the sea cucumber's skin, whose deeper layers contain a network of collagen nanofibres enveloped within a viscous...
03/10/08 -
GRISTMILL - The formula is pretty simple: Green is hot right now in U.S. culture, particularly among influencers. Anything that's hot attracts advertising dollars. Media wants to attract those dollars, so it runs green content. (See here for a look at how this is playing out in TV.) However, content that involves complicated or controversial issues of public policy, or that points a finger of blame at...
03/09/08 -
The Hospitalist - In it, I make the point that our hunger for measurable targets – generally a good thing – automatically diverts us from that which we don't or can't measure. In the quality and safety world, this means that we're spending a lot of time documenting smoking cessation counseling and very little on avoiding transition errors; a huge amount of energy on preventing ventilator-associated pneumonia and...
03/09/08 -
Catalogue of Organisms - It's interesting how different people perceive levels of risk. Someone once asked how I could be completely unafraid of spiders, but be extremely nervous around cars (I am - a friend of mine once banned me from riding in the passenger seat when she was driving, because the sight of my knuckles turning white as I gripped onto the handlebar would make her nervous). I asked him in return how I could...
03/09/08 -
biodiver - At issue is the nutritional value of organic versus conventional tomatoes and, by extension, other veggies. The thing is, that comes after a discussion in which I say that more than flavonoids is likely to differ between organic and conventional. Karl points out that some compounds that plants produce in response to attack might be harmful, rather than beneficial, to humans. I moan on about the...
03/07/08 -
archaeo zoo - # The first recorded account of potatoes by Europeans dates to 1537 when a group of Spaniards led an expedition to the Opón Valley in Colombia. Sir Francis Drake saw potatoes in Chile in 1578. The potato arrived in Europe towards the end of the 16th century. It reached Spain c. 1570. It then spread to Italy and Portugal. Charles d’Ecluse, or Clusius, a herbalist, was a central figure in...
03/07/08 -
brainblogger - About 4% of the world’s population possess the recessive gene for red hair, and actually 2% are redheads, as a result of a mutation that arose in Northern Europe several thousand years ago. Scientists have been divided in their opinion about whether the red headed population is headed for extinction in an age of global mingling....
03/07/08 -
physorg - The basis of the 2x4-inch "Digital Tattoo Interface" is a Bluetooth device made of thin, flexible silicon and silicone. It´s inserted through a small incision as a tightly rolled tube, and then it unfurls beneath the skin to align between skin and muscle. Through the same incision, two small tubes on the device are attached to an artery and a vein to allow the blood to flow to a coin-sized blood...
03/06/08 -
GristMill - The product, called the handler, is basically a small, plastic pirate's claw impregnated with nanoscale silver particles. The particles prevent bacteria from getting a foothold on the hook. Have to go to the ATM and come into contact with filthy keys that other flu-ridden people have pawed? No problem, just pull out your hook....
03/06/08 -
Neuroscientifically Challenged - On occasion, I will be in a public place like an airport, sports stadium, or bar/club, and I’ll pause to look at the sea of people that I’m part of. I then usually start to feel being human is a little less significant than we are inclined to think it is, as I get caught up making zoologically comparative observations. In the case of the airport or large event, I often consider how we resemble...
03/06/08 -
cognitive daily - Any serious wine drinker will tell you she can distinguish between inexpensive, low-quality wine and the fancy premium-priced stuff. She may also claim the ability to discern the difference between wine made from different grapes, or produced in different regions of the world. Yet some studies have found that even so-called experts are unable to figure that "red wine" was actually a white wine dyed...
03/05/08 -
e2oh - I am waiting for the day that instead of pushing anti-virus software to my laptop, the IT Department pushes actual viruses. Perhaps they would even write their own virus, specially designed to overwrite all Enterprise 2.0 references on my laptop with animated SharePoint logos. Perchance my virtual shrine to Andrew McAfee would be replaced by a Shakespearean sonnet about the majesty of document...
03/05/08 -
googleblog - Work in this area began in the early days of computing, with simple document retrieval based on matching queries with words and phrases in text files. Driven by the availability of new data sources, algorithms evolved and became more sophisticated. The arrival of the web presented new challenges for search, and now it is common to use information from web links and many other indicators as signals...
03/05/08 -
arxivblog - Massive plankton blooms are the plague of the oceans. They starve local species by exhausting an ocean of its food and oxygen, they turn vast areas of sea to the colour of milk and have a profound effect on the ocean food web. But where do they come from? Nobody knows. At least they didn’t until Mathias Sandulescu and buddies from Carl-von-Ossietzky Universitat in Oldenburg Germany, started...
03/04/08 -
venturebeat - Vast amounts of power are locked away in the movements of the ocean, but because of technical challenges, the number of startups that have attempted to harness wave power thus far is relatively small when compared to wind or solar. OreCon is the latest, with plans for a sort of giant, self-contained buoy that floats atop the water, each unit generating a megawatt and a half of energy. The company...
03/04/08 -
highlight health - The foundation for future progress in health and medicine is biomedical research. Open access is advantageous for the way scholarly research is executed and how results and conclusions are used. Open access publishing provides exposure to the widest audience. Anyone interested in the research can read it, which translates into increased usage and greater impact. Open Access also means greater...
03/04/08 -
network nature - Attenborough is very much as you would expect from his on-screen appearances—knowledgeable, eloquent, a consummate storyteller and extremely excited about wildlife. He is as happy enthusing about a turtle mating frenzy as he is about the grisly habits of the caecilian, a burrowing worm-like amphibian whose young feed by tearing strips of fatty skin from their mothers. And what about the most...
03/03/08 -
readwriteweb - Health 2.0, web-based apps and services for the healthcare sector, is a nascent but potentially huge market for web 2.0. As of now, many of these apps have an emphasis on communication, information sharing and community. These are relatively easy things to address using Web tools. However we're starting to see health 2.0 apps try to tackle the enormous inefficiencies in the healthcare system - check...
03/03/08 -
anthropology.net - Oceanic cultures were colonized by one cultural group that radiated and became relatively isolated from one another. In other words, little outside influence, or noise, from other cultures has theoretically impacted Oceanic canoe design. ...
03/03/08 -
tissue pathology - At least one in 12 patients who die has been diagnosed incorrectly, according to a 2003 analysis in The Journal of the American Medical Association. When trying to figure out the occasional difficult case, doctors sometimes get it wrong. Yet they rarely use the highly accurate computer systems designed to help with the identification of ailments. Take the example of DXplain, one of the more...
03/03/08 -
orbitingfrog - Hot on the heels of putting all the SCUBA data onto Google Sky, I am now sharing some Google Earth goodies. The KML files below will allow you to view the location of any satellite on Google Earth with latitude, longitude and altitude positions updated every 30 seconds.These Google Earth overlays use the NORAD two-line element (TLE) datasets that are published via the Celestrak website and are used...
03/03/08 -
Bad Astronomy - Panspermia is the idea that life on Earth originated in space and was seeded here by some event. This covers a lot of ground sky: comets, Mars, Venus, aliens, and so on. The idea isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds. It’s more medium-fetched. Mars is smaller and farther from the Sun, so therefore it cooled faster than Earth did after the period of heavy asteroid and comet bombardment a billion...
03/03/08 -
Frontal Cortex - Lots of attention has been paid to the latest review/meta-analysis demonstrating that popular antidepressant medications don't seem to be that much more effective than placebos. While this certainly isn't the first time someone has demonstrated that Prozac is only mildly more useful than a sugar pill (unless, that is, you fall into the "severely depressed" category), this review was noteworthy...
02/28/08 -
venturebeat - My first thought was that the announcement was timed to get Google on the record in advance of the Health2.0 “Spring Fling” conference in San Diego next week, which will feature lots of talk about the role of the Internet in improving healthcare. Another possibility is that Google is pulling a bait-and-switch similar to that of Navigenics, which last November “announced” its personal-genomics...
02/28/08 -
flying singer - Stone has done some serious deep cave exploring, and his company, Stone Aerospace has built some amazing underwater equipment to aid in exploring deep underground bodies of water. He has extended this to autonomous vehicles (robots) that have explored, imaged, and measured otherwise inaccessible underground lakes. NASA is now testing Stone's latest vehicle, ENDURANCE, in a Wisconsin lake, in...
02/28/08 -
Pharmalot - The films, only a few hundred nanometers thick, are made up of layers of drugs and layers of a compound called Prussian blue, which is commonly used as a dye, but has also been used to develop displays because it changes its color and charge when an electric field is applied. The films, developed by Paula Hammond, a professor of chemical engineering at MIT, take advantage of this change in charge,...
02/27/08 -
doc in the machine - What is Souveillance?: is a term from Steve Mann that refers to “bottom up” surveillance using smart dust as opposed to “top down” big brother networks looking at us little people. Here instead activities are recorded from the “perspective of a participant in the activity, typically by way of small portable or wearable recording devices that often stream continuous live video to the...
02/27/08 -
bitesize bio - Zebrafish (Danio rerio), a native to freshwater streams in Southern Asia and a common aquarium pet, is studied because its embryos are transparent and later developmental stages are therefore easily resolved. As a vertebrate, it is at least partly representative of other vertebrates, its life cycle is rather simple, and genetic manipulation is relatively straightforward. The most useful aspect of...
02/27/08 -
Brain Blogger - Most of us rely on the pharmaceutical industry to some extent for our health and well-being, whether it’s for an occasional round of antibiotics, a flu vaccination, or medication regularly taken for a chronic condition. The industry is regularly under fire for inflating drug prices, misleading or inappropriate advertisements, and concentrating research efforts on drugs that will elicit the highest...
02/26/08 -
genetic future - Yesterday's press release from Knome has generated surprisingly little interest, but it's actually a pretty big deal: the company, in collaboration with the Beijing Genomics Institute, will be beginning whole-genome sequencing for its first two paying clients within the next few months. As the release says, these will be "the first individuals in the world to have their genome sequenced by a personal...
02/26/08 -
Pipeline - I have not encountered this fine substance myself, but reading up on its properties immediately gives it a spot on my “no way, no how” list. Let's put it this way: during World War II, the Germans were very interested in using it in self-igniting flamethrowers, but found it too nasty to work with. It is apparently about the most vigorous fluorinating agent known, and is much more difficult to...
02/26/08 -
cybersoc - An Apple user since around 1984 and and now on my third iPod, I instinctively understand how to use the iPhone. I love the way it feels in the hand, although the onscreen keyboard is a bit small for my fingers, and just love the sexy, cut-down version of the mac interface. I would have bought one if the iPhone didn't have two serious shortfalls - the lack of a better than average camera, no GPS...
02/26/08 -
newscientist - Should Blackberries and other potentially addictive devices come with a health warning? It's an idea floated by UK researchers studying technology addiction. Nada Kakabadse and Susan Bailey of Northampton University are interested in technology addiction and have just launched an online survey to gather more data on people's use of technology in the workplace and how it affects the rest of their...
02/26/08 -
science-spirit - If Jesus can turn two fish into enough to feed five thousand people, now would be a good time to intervene. According to researchers, each American ate nearly a half-pound more seafood last year than the year before. As we reach the end of the Christian season of Lent�the period in which seafood consumption is at its highest�scientists predict that if the trend continues, wild marine...
02/26/08 -
universetoday - It is well documented that dark matter makes up the majority of the mass in our universe. The big problem comes when trying to prove dark matter really is out there. It is dark, and therefore cannot be seen. Dark matter may come in many shapes and sizes (from the massive black hole, to the tiny neutrino), but regardless of size, no light is emitted and therefore it cannot be observed directly....
02/22/08 -
in the pipline - A recent item from InVivoBlog about Merck which brought up some interesting points. They aren’t cheerful ones. The article is largely about Merck’s reputation, which has taken some dents in recent years, to put it lightly. The Vioxx debacle is the main reason for this, but the hits have kept on coming, such as the latest controversy over the release of the disappointing Vytorin study data....
02/22/08 -
starts with a bang - In other words, how can I see things like galaxies that are 15 billion light years away, if the Universe isn’t even 15 billion years old?! This is a damned good question, and something that took me about two years in graduate school to figure out the answer to....
02/22/08 -
ecojoes - It turns out that when Cup A Joe used paper cups, “almost 100% of [their] customers demand[ed] the added cardboard sleeve”, which the styrofoam cups do not require. Also as well additionally, it turns out styrofoam is an excellent material for recycling. Here’s what Cup A Joe had to say: “We recycle a large percentage of the cups. Many customers return their used cups for that purpose....
02/21/08 -
future pundit - Pinpointing the exact location of a cancer is needed for some types of cancer. Got ovarian cancer? Remove both ovaries. A woman can live without her ovaries (though major bummer if the woman is young and wanted kids). But suppose an early stage pancreatic cancer becomes detectable via blood test. Well, you need your pancreas. A blood test doesn't tell exactly where the cancer is located. How hard...
02/21/08 -
ctamh - I am pleased to see that NICE has produced, as promised, a draft guideline for consultation on ADHD. This will lead logically to a clinical practice guideline on pharmacological and psychological interventions in children, young people and adults for NHS services in England and Wales. But it’s the psychological interventions I’m interested in. If we backtrack, for a moment, ADHD has been...
02/21/08 -
diabetes mine - I don't usually write much here about obesity, or diets, or junk food addictions -- critical diabetes issues to be sure, but not my personal bailiwick. Nevertheless, this stuff is getting harder and harder to ignore. As the D-epidemic spreads, the news resounds with stories on too much bad food and too little exercise. It's the Westernized Lifestyle, stupid! Right? Check out the latest...
02/21/08 -
grahamazon - Running was, apparently, Sam’s thing. I don’t know exactly why he runs–he’s a a friend from the neighborhood where I grew up, and we haven’t kept in touch–but he runs, and he loves it. So it was a huge, huge loss when he developed pretty severe pelvic pains every time he tried to run. Specialists one through four recommended rest, but Sam knew there had to be something better. So he...
02/21/08 -
grist mill - The candidates have come and gone through Wisconsin for the primary season, but I still have some questions for the Democratic candidates, Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama. I would like to be enthusiastic about this election, I really would. After the past eight years, who wouldn't be ready for the "change" that they talk about? Even the Republicans are talking about change. It seems,...
02/21/08 -
healthy policy blog - The idea that juries sit around awarding hundreds of millions of dollars in frivolous medical liability lawsuits is one of the most pernicious aspects of the malpractice myth. That's because Americans are obsessed with lawsuits across the crime spectrum -- from OJ to Michael to that old lady who spilled coffee on herself and sued McDonalds -- and the idea that we're a culture ready to sue at the...
02/20/08 -
Food for Thought - A federal government study now reports that bisphenol A (BPA)—the building block of one of the most widely used plastics—laces the bodies of the vast majority of U.S. residents young and old. Manufacturers link BPA molecules into long chains, called polymers, to make polycarbonate plastics. All of those clear, brittle plastics used in baby bottles, food ware, and small kitchen appliances...
02/20/08 -
Neuroscientifically Challenged - Studying neuroscience involves dissecting individual behaviors and separating them into their biological components. For example, imagine yourself sitting in front of the television as dinner time is nearing. You grow hungrier as you wait for the show you are watching to come to end, then when it does you get up and go to the kitchen to make something to eat. If an interviewer were to later ask you...
02/20/08 -
sharp brains - Prolonged exposure to the adrenal steroid hormones like cortisol, released during the stress response, can damage the brain and block the formation of new neurons in the hippocampus, which is the key player in encoding new memories in your brain. Recent studies have shown these neurons can be regenerated with learning and environmental stimulation, but while short-term stress may improve attention...
02/19/08 -
on the wards - It was not long ago when mobile phones were considered luxury items or tools reserved for corporate executives. A decade and a half later, every Joe, Jane, and their child now sport a cell phone or some multimedia-capable variant thereof. Fortunately for the general populace and myself, a recent case-control study done in Japan has shown no significant relationship between mobile phone use and brain...
02/19/08 -
will gater - A monster so huge it is capable of slowly devouring whole galaxies at a time. Sounds incredible doesn’t it? But that is what astronomers working on the Hubble Space Telescope think that the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 1132 is - a cosmic cannibal if you will. In this stunning new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble mission astronomers are seeing the vast hulk of a galaxy, 320 million light years distant,...
02/19/08 -
Frontal Cortex - Obviously, the question of whether or not fetuses feel pain is a loaded political question: the existence of fetal pain is one of the more popular arguments used by abortion opponents. The article goes on to cite numerous scientists who disagree with Anand's conclusions and argue that fetuses are simply exhibiting a "reflex," and not actually experiencing pain....
02/18/08 -
bmj blog - This time last Christmas, medical blogs and RSS feeds were the hot technology topics, and we were debating the merits of newer models of scholarly publishing in web 2.0, such as open access and medical wikis.1 Can web 3.0 be here already? Recently, a neurologist devised an apt medical metaphor for web 3.0. He suggested that, "The development of the graphical web from its early days in 1995 to...
02/18/08 -
start with a bang - What? Gravity? In space? That’s right. Everything that’s natural on Earth, everything living, relies on gravity. Ever see an astronaut return to Earth after an extended trip into space? In addition to suffering bone-loss and a loss of skeletal strength, astronauts need to be carried, because their leg muscles can’t support their own weight! Unless you were willing to never return to Earth...
02/18/08 -
Hot Cup - North American history and archaeology isn’t as glamorous and monumental as Egyptian, Greek, Roman, or even European with its henges, barrows, and castles. We’re a young country and the predominant cultures (like the Algonquin, the Hopewell, etc.) of the North American Continent left little in the way of durable material remains. No marble friezes or granite pyramids, no massive stone henges...
02/15/08 -
Mixing Memory - One of the criticisms of most false memory research is that it lacks ecological validity. For example, in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm, a common method for inducing false memories in the lab, involves giving participants a bunch of words (e.g., bed, rest, nap, snore, etc.) that are all associated with another word that's not presented (e.g., sleep). During recall, if you ask participants...
02/15/08 -
NWN BLOG - The libertarian era of Second Life is quickly coming to an end. The latest in a long series of regulatory moves was announced by Jack Linden yesterday. Starting today, you'll probably begin seeing giant ad towers like this one in Gryzdale disappear. The new rule prohibits advertising on the Second Life mainland which impairs a neighbor's view, especially if it's done "to deliberately and negatively...
02/15/08 -
omnivoracious - I'm delighted to have this opportunity to engage with you about my new book, In Defense of Food. Anyone who's had a chance to read it--or even just glance at the cover--knows that the book is my attempt to help readers navigate what has become a treacherous food landscape, made especially confusing by the rise of something I call "nutritionism." "Nutritionism" is a highly reductive way of looking...
02/15/08 -
drug monkey - Probably the hardest thing to get across to trainees is that science careers are not a meritocracy of how good your "hands" are, how smart you are, how good actual results are, etc. It is a meritocracy at how good you are at a science career! Meaning that all of these aspects are necessary but you also need to treat your career like.....a career. And science careers require all the politics,...
02/15/08 -
Geek Doctor - Today, authentication at BIDMC and Harvard Medical School is done with a strong username and password - the usual alphanumeric/mixed case password which must be changed frequently, cannot be repeated, is not an English word etc. Using complex passwords is great on desktops, but works less well on mobile devices without keyboards or in crisis situations. Trying to type an 8 character password on a...
02/15/08 -
surgeons blog - An electrician or physicist I'm not, so I can only say that electrosurgery refers to any of several devices that provide the surgeon with a pencil-like hand unit, connected to some sort of magic box which sends little electrons or something to that hand unit, which then arc to the patient in at least two different modes: one that's best suited for cutting, and one that serves to cauterize; ie, cook...
02/13/08 -
brains on fire - It suggests that loving a person, hobby, brand, etc. involves internalizing what that brand stands for as part of your self-identity. It explains why we define ourselves by those things we love: “I am a wine enthusiast, a dog whisperer, a Demon Deacons fanatic.” And why we will defend the brands we love by tearing apart the competition, even though we have no rational basis for doing so (just...
02/13/08 -
Pharmalot - Two-thirds of all prescriptions filled in the US are generics, the highest-ever rate, according to figures released by the Generic Pharmaceutical Association. That’s up from 63 percent. Meanwhile, Bloomberg News reminds us that more expensive brand-name meds account for about 80 percent of all dollars spent on prescriptions each year. The figures, compiled by IMS Health, show generic drugmakers...
02/13/08 -
White Coat Underground - One of these pictures, and the science it represents, is based on actual dissection, functional observation, electromyography, and, well, science. The other has centuries of people talking to each other about meridians, and sticking needles into people with the hope of having something good happen. One allows someone to make a prediction based on functional anatomy, perform surgery, and achieve...
02/12/08 -
afarensis - Bioarchaeologists and paleoanthropologists draw on a wide variety of methods in order to analyze bone. The exact technique depends upon the problem being addressed. One technique, associated mainly with Christopher Ruff, that has been around since the late 1970's involves the use of beam model analysis. In beam model analysis cross sections of bone, perpendicular to the long axis, are taken and the...
02/12/08 -
archaeoporn - Scholarly journals are damn expensive, which has the overall end result of limiting the general access to their articles to those with connections to university libraries or a large amount of money. Even those who do have use of such libraries are restricted as well, since no university can afford to purchase access to all the journals their students and faculty need to read and the fact that many...
02/12/08 -
the gene sherpa - Well, mitochondria have their own DNA. It is different from the DNA in our cell's nucleus. There can be several mitochondira in our cells which have different DNA from other mitochondria. We can actually have mutations in this "other" DNA cause disease in our body as well. Meaning we may have healthy and unhealthy Mitochondria in our cells. Because the mitochondria are ubiquitous in our body their...
02/12/08 -
europhilosophy - The New York Times and Washington Post have stories on the appearance of a mysterious neurological illness in workers at a pig slaughterhouse in the southeastern Minnesota town of Austin. The condition has been named progressive inflammatory neuropathy (PIN), and has so far been reported in 6 men and 6 women, all of whom complained of burning sensations, weakness and numbness in the limbs. The...
02/12/08 -
orbitingfrog - To anyone working in astronomy, this is already true for professional telescopes. In fact Stuart over at Astronomy Blog created his telescope RSS feeds using just this data not too long ago. Now finally let us do something that isn’t normally the case: let’s connect every telescope to just one server. This central server can use the data to construct an image of any object in all four dimensions...
02/12/08 -
Running a Hospital - Well over a year ago, John Bell published a blog entry that gave people a chance to measure their company's social media score. As I re-read the checklist this week, I realized how much progress BIDMC and our staff and I had made in this regard. I also noted how little progress many of my colleagues in the health care industry had made. Meanwhile, other industries (and politicians) are zooming along...
02/10/08 -
drug monkey - So why don't you get an immune reaction to cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and other "foreign" drugs? Because they are too small for your immune system to recognize under "normal" circumstances. So scientists have taken to linking drug molecules, such as cocaine, nicotine or methamphetamine, to molecules that will engender an immune response. Then, after immunization with these tandem molecules,...
02/10/08 -
rwjf blogs - I know at least several Project HealthDesign teams that have considered how biosensing fabrics and materials might help people track valuable health info. in the course of their daily lives and transmit that data to their PHRs, providers, etc. Or how introducing biosensors in to people's homes -- say, in mattresses to measure sleep patterns or whether a patient actually gets up on a given morning...
02/10/08 -
WDES - The relational database is becoming increasingly less useful in a web 2.0 world. The reason for this is that, while the relational database model is great for storing information, it is horrible for storing knowledge. By knowledge I mean information that has value beyond the narrow current conception of the given application. I mean information that can have enduring value. In this context, one...
02/08/08 -
adaptive complexity - Sanger DNA sequencing is one of the most important scientific technologies created in the 20th century. It's the dominant method of sequencing DNA today, and very little of the best biological research of the last 20 years could have been done without it, including the whole genome sequencing projects that have thoroughly transformed modern biology. Now, new next-generation sequencing methods promise...
02/08/08 -
gmo africa - We’re all aware how teary an onion can be if mishandled when chopping. To men and women who spend considerable amounts of time cooking, this, definitely is news worth celebrating. In addition to ridding onion of the gene that causes teary effects on our eyes, these researchers promise that this new variety will be sweeter and healthier. What an exciting research? Indeed, it has generated...
02/08/08 -
highlight health - Researchers at the Netherlands’ National Institute for Public Health and the Environment used a simulation model to estimate lifetime healthcare costs for a hypothetical group of 1000 healthy-living people from age 20 until the time when the model predicted all had died. They made similar estimations for a group of people who were either obese (i.e. BMI > 30) or lifetime smokers with healthy...
02/07/08 -
Brandon Keim - After news broke that British scientists had created an embryo with genetic material from three people, I talked with University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Jonathan Moreno about what it meant and how America would react. Issues of right or wrong aside, said Moreno, it would be hard for the public to regulate the technique: because the U.S. government doesn't fund IVF research, it can't provide...
02/07/08 -
Climate 411 - New York City suffers from some of the worst traffic congestion in the country, costing workers and businesses billions of dollars a year in lost time, and heavily contributing to New York’s nearly worst-in-the-nation air quality. One in eight New Yorkers suffer from asthma. And New York is expected to add one million residents by 2030. New York State charged a commission of elected officials,...
02/07/08 -
eye on dna - You are not prepared to share your DNA test results with family members yet will feel guilty if your results have implications for their health or family relationships, e.g., BRCA breast cancer and ovarian cancer gene or non-paternity event. You are not ready to accept any results from a genetic test that do not confirm your pre-existing beliefs. For example, a person with a family history of...
02/06/08 -
Frontal Cortex - This description neatly parallels some recent findings in neuroeconomics. In a 2005 paper published in Neuron, neuroscientists at Stanford University illuminated the delicate equilibrium between our lust for gains and our aversion to risks. When the system gets out of whack, we start making bad decisions. The experiment was straightforward: a subject was given a small amount of money to invest and...
02/06/08 -
the technium - At its most foundational level, it copies every action, every character, every thought we make while we ride upon it. In order to send a message from one corner of the internet to another, the protocols of communication demand that the whole message be copied along the way several times. IT companies make a lot of money selling equipment that facilitates this ceaseless copying. Every bit of data...
02/06/08 -
Mind Hacks - Austrian AI researchers wanted to find out whether giving an 'autonomous agent' emotion-like reactions would make it more successful at playing a fight-to-the-death strategy game. It turns out, neurotic bots have the edge when it comes to video game war. The study was designed by the Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence and was presented at an AI conference in Paris. Luckily...
02/05/08 -
white coat underground - Many of my patients ask me about it; the TV is full of adds for it; you can’t avoid it. “Detoxification” is apparently the pinnacle of modern health care, if you believe folks like Joseph Mercola and Gary Null, and the dozens of adds on late-night TV. For me to explain to you why even the very idea is laughable, I have to teach you a bit of human biochemistry—just a little, I promise. My...
02/05/08 -
highlight health - The Internet is rapidly transforming healthcare. Not only is it creating new connections for the access, sharing and exchange of information, it is cultivating a new level of knowledge among patients, enabling them to have input into decisions about their healthcare. Indeed, 80% of adult Americans say they have researched at least one specific health topic, either information on exercise and fitness,...
02/05/08 -
just chromatography - The biological cell is basically a miniature factory, which contains a large collection of dedicated protein machines. In a Review, Martin van den Heuvel and Cees Dekker look at recent progress in using some of these proteins to move, manipulate or power artificial, nanoscale devices. A single living cell is capable of performing a number of tasks: it can create a full copy of itself in less...
02/04/08 -
blogfish - Wal-mart is giving a huge boost to the sustainable seafood movement. They haven't switched over to selling only sustainable seafood, they're going one better. Wal-mart is improving the sustainability of their current seafood supplies. It's now two years after Wal-mart committed to selling wild-caught seafood only if it's certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council. They made a...
02/04/08 -
spaceflight - This week I thought I'd write about a subject near and dear to my heart -- food. You are what you eat after all. First off, let me say I actually like the food here. It isn't quite like Mom's cooking, but it isn't bad! In fact it isn't really cooking at all, more like re-heating or re-hydrating. We don't have a real kitchen up here, but we do have a kitchen table. You might wonder of what use a...
02/03/08 -
venture beat - The first production version of Tesla’s Roadster, an electric sports car, was unveiled at the company’s San Carlos, Calif. facility earlier today. In fact, board chairman and proud new owner Elon Musk may be taking it for a spin as you read this. “This represents the first production electric car on the road since God knows when,” Musk said. This is good news for the company, which...
02/03/08 -
coglang lab - For a long time, spoken language was seen as inferior to written language. Hesitations and pauses were seen as flaws in the production of speech. This way of looking at language and communication (as proposed by e.g. Chomsky) proposes that there is an ultimate way to deliver an utterance. Today, we know that pauses, hesitations etc are a vital part of communication and not some sort of unnecessary...
02/03/08 -
neurophilosophy - Canadian surgeons have made a serendipitous discovery. While using deep brain stimulation to try suppressing the appetite of a morbidly obese patient, they inadvertently evoked in the patient vivid autobiographical memories of an event that had taken place more than 30 years previously. They also found that the electrical stimulation improved the patient's performance on associative memory...
02/02/08 -
Design - This week sees the Domain Name System (DNS) celebrating its 25th birthday. When it was established 25 years ago, and eight years before the World Wide Web, there were only a few hundred machines connected compared to around 130 million today. Paul Mockapetris, chairman and chief scientist at Nominum, is credited with inventing the DNS in 1983. Marking this anniversary, Mockapetris shared his...
02/02/08 -
Zooillogix - Our recent coverage of the Cracked story "The 5 Most Horrifying Bugs in the World" made reference to the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, something we felt the need to explore further. Apparently Dr. Justin O Schmidt, an entomologist recently retired from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Tucson Carl Hayden Bee Research Center, felt the need to create a ranking system for insect stings. More specifically...
02/02/08 -
Astroprof - Saturn’s rings are always fascinating to look at. Whenever I do a public star party when Saturn is visible, people are always so amazed by looking at Saturn through a telescope. The planet is great, but it’s the rings that they are looking at. They are simply fascinating. But, the rings have also been a mystery. Where do they come from? What are they made of? For over three centuries, we’ve...
01/31/08 -
star stryder - Admittedly, dark energy is something that we can’t see, can’t taste, can’t touch, can’t measure directly, and can’t even precisely mathematically describe. This makes it somewhat hard to sell as real (although it doesn’t appear to have been to hard a sell for the boogie monster, tooth fairy, and snow yeti). So, this raises the question, how can we know Dark Energy exists? Well, just...
01/31/08 -
savage minds - The first is when professors consider themselves ‘scientific’ while their foes are ‘just doing cultural studies’. This position is at least made in good faith—it is so easy to ‘do science’ when you have an unexamined faith in both the phrase and the activity. But when you are a neurochemist or low temperature physicist or engineer you are actually trying to build bigger and better...
01/31/08 -
katienbici - The introductor (is there a better word for “one who gives introductions”? I think I made this word up.) suggested that it conveyed the fallacies of ‘official languages,’ because of their manipulability. First of all, what’s an ‘official language’? A spoken or written code with the backing of an army? In that case, Xu Bing’s work could be taken as a statement against the verbal...
01/30/08 -
Tree Hugger - We have been saying for a while that polycarbonates bottles can leach Bisphenol A, a gender bender chemical, and that it was time to ditch them; now a new University of Cincinnati study shows that the temperature of the liquid inside has the most impact on how much BPA is released. According to Martin Mittelstaedt of the Globe and Mail, "Adding boiling water to polycarbonate plastic bottles causes...
01/30/08 -
saiminu - So much culture, knowledge, and tradition dies, when a language dies. Such wisdom is often locked away in its pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary amongst others. As has been stated in the New York Times in an article about the endangered language Kawesqar: In peril is not just knowledge but also the importance of diversity and the beauty of grammar. They will tell you that every language has its own...
01/30/08 -
ouroboros - There are organisms on this planet that are, for all practical purposes, biologically immortal. Last week we learned about a new body of evolutionary theory that purports to explain how negligible senescence could have evolved in at least some of these organisms: When a high density of adults prevents juveniles from finding optimal conditions for growing to maturity, it makes sense for the juveniles...
01/30/08 -
universe today - Space station astronauts will conduct a spacewalk on January 30 to replace a faulty positioning motor at base of the station’s two starboard solar arrays. ISS Expedition 16 commander Peggy Whitson and flight engineer Dan Tani will change out the motor in hopes of regaining more power-generating ability of the orbiting laboratory's expansive solar wings. But the astronauts will have to work fast,...
01/30/08 -
Cocktail Party Physics - An elderly woman is found burned almost to ashes in her living room, dressed in what is left of her nightgown, save for her ankles and feet, which remained unburnt -- along with the rest of the room. The investigating CSIs assume there was an ignition source of some kind, most likely a cigarette, but Sarah Sidle finds herself suspecting it might be SHC, in part because she can't quite believe that...
01/30/08 -
health bolt - Time magazine recently highlighted one doctor’s distaste for such a practice. The article, written by Scott Haig, Clinical Professor in Orthopedic Surgery at Columbia University of Physicians and Surgeons, focused on his experience with one such ‘medical googler’. It was obvious from the start that he wasn’t keen on her information seeking methods. “We had never met, but as we talked...
01/28/08 -
oblate spheroid - The real kicker is that this process not only protects our current food paradigm built upon corn for feed and food, the process uses far less petroleum fuel (about 13% as opposed to 77% - or 17 times more efficient) and water while greatly increasing the productive output per bale of feedstock in order to create a gallon of this cleaner burning substance here on the Oblate Spheroid....
01/28/08 -
Tree Hugger - As part of Specialized and Google's Innovate-or-Die contest, we've seen the bicycle put to some interesting uses, including lawn mowing and powering an MIT supercomputer. Clever as those designs were, however, the Grand Prize went to a team from Menlo Park, California, that invented the Aquaduct, "a pedal powered vehicle that stores, filters and transports water." Much like other innovative water...
01/28/08 -
Deep Sea News - George Bush this week declared war on sea mammals, officially adding whales to the dreaded Axis of Evil. The Bush administration stated whales are a threat to the American way of life, democracy, and of course freedom. Joking aside, Bush this week gave the official go ahead for the Navy to conduct sonar training off San Diego this week. The navy admits themselves that whales will be harmed by the...
01/27/08 -
surgeons blog - The more I think about it, the more amazing I find those words to be. I've been there. Much as I always tried to establish a relationship of trust and caring, much as I believe in the value of attitude in recovery from surgery (the writer had not, in fact, had an operation, as she told me in a later email; in addition, the doctor was not even the one treating her at that moment), I'd never have...
01/27/08 -
abcpsr - This past weekend the American Academy of Facial Plastic Surgery & Reconstructive Surgery sponsored the Latest Advances in Facial Plastic Surgery. Attending the conference were some of the country’s leading surgeons and experts in facial plastic surgery and reports claim that one of the hot topics was the increasing trend towards lip augmentations in the U.S. Although breast augmentation...
01/27/08 -
GristMill - Freedman said it's a "non-argument" and referenced the work of a number of scientific organizations (the American Dietetic Association, the American Medical Association, the National Academy of Sciences, etc.) saying that a well-planned vegan diet can be very healthy. Sure, if you're a young writer living a normal life ... But what if you're a 247-lb. professional football player whose daily...
01/25/08 -
Pharmalot - Fifteen months ago, the Department of Justice signed a deferred prosecution agreement with InterMune, where some former employees of the biotech had engaged in illegal off-label marketing of its osteoporosis drug Actimune. But as it turns out, the deal didn’t protect former execs from prosecution, and the investigation remains alive. In fact, lawyers familiar with the case say charges are likely...
01/25/08 -
Pre-Med With Purpose - Surprisingly, compared with teenagers in the early 1990s, the rates for sexual activity and pregnancy of teens today are marginally declining. While old fashion sex education maybe assisting in these gradual decreases, recent studies are finding that additional strategies need to be implemented with sex education in order to provide a substantial decline in teen pregnancies.Currently in the United...
01/25/08 -
New Medical School - Having submitted our documents for accreditation our attention turns to implementation. We have chronicled all that we intend to do and now we must begin the task of doing what we have said. We have decided to divide the enormous task of actually building The College and developing our programs into 60 days periods. We have our strategic plan to guide us and we know and understand our goals and...
01/24/08 -
Geek Doctor - Ideally, each patient would be able to declare their preferences for sharing data and have these preferences universally accessible to all healthcare information exchanges or institutions which need consents. To solve this problem, I recently proposed a technology called the Consent Assertion Markup Language (CAML) which is described in detail here. The basic idea is that a Consent Wizard could...
01/24/08 -
arXiv blog - What strategy should individuals use to achieve the same temperature for everyone without large temperature changes? That’s the question posed by Christina Matzke, an economist at the University of Bonn in Germany and a pal from Fribourg, in a curious paper on the arXiv today. They first show that there is a solution to this problem in which everyone can achieve the same shower temperature...
01/24/08 -
balancing life - The 19th century was perhaps the last century of the true adventurer-scientist. It was a time when the earth had largely been charted, but there were still large swathes of unexplored land. It was also a time when we were beginning to understand a lot of things about the earth, moving beyond simplistic religious versions of the creation of the earth, to a complex geological and biological understanding...
01/23/08 -
Spittoon - It’s hard to believe that unwillingness to share is one of the biggest obstacles to the advancement of science today. But researchers and the institutions they work for expend so much time, money and effort collecting data that they are often reluctant to give it to anybody, even their most respected peers. In today’s New York Times, biostatistician Andrew Vickers explains why sharing research...
01/23/08 -
Biosingularity - New research at the University of Chicago finds evidence for a clever way that people manage to alleviate the pain of loneliness: They create people in their surroundings to keep them company. “Biological reproduction is not a very efficient way to alleviate one’s loneliness, but you can make up people when you’re motivated to do so,” said Nicholas Epley, Assistant Professor of Behavioral...
01/23/08 -
science fiction biology - The plot is a familiar one. Our heroine always felt a little uncomfortable, like something was a bit "off" in her life. Then, out of the blue, a familiar face or a smell or a song triggers a rush of memory. Something terrible happened to our heroine, so terrible that that specific memory was completely suppressed. What happens next depends on the genre: she'll crumble, or investigate, or seek revenge....
01/22/08 -
Brain Blogger - The Human Genome Project completed nearly 7 years ago may have been a slight disappointment for the “genetic technology” industry, as far fewer genes that we once thought exist on the human chromosome. Worse, this implies that there are possibly far fewer single gene disorders than we once thought, and hence the market for single gene therapy appears to be quite “limited.” Enter Human...
01/22/08 -
Doctor David - One of my roles in our department is to be a member of the bone marrow transplant team. In that capacity, I am called upon to harvest bone marrow from healthy people who have agreed to donate, usually to a relative. Since I am a pediatrician, both donors and recipients are often children, and they are usually siblings. This puts parents in an awkward position because they have to subject one child...
01/22/08 -
grist mill - Increasing consumer demand for healthy, sustainably-produced food and agricultural products from local and regional markets has great potential to improve farm income. However, tremendous challenges stand in the way of producers satisfying these consumer preferences, in part because federal policies and programs have been slow to respond. A number of grassroots farmer and consumer organizations...
01/22/08 -
Frontal Cortex - Last week, David Brooks had a smart column on the essential "irrationality" of voters. (I'm defining irrationality here as any mental process that's not rational/deliberate/System 2. I have no idea if our democracy would be better off if voters imitated the rational agents in economics textbooks. I only know that the mind doesn't work that way.) In reality, we voters -- all of us -- make...
01/21/08 -
Science Base - Diamond is not unique! Nature’s missing crystal discovered! A crystal as beautiful as diamond! Those were the themes running through dozens of articles in the media about a discovery made by Japanese mathematician Toshi Sunada of Meiji University. The original press release proclaimed that he had discovered a theoretical crystal structure with the same symmetry properties as diamond but with...
01/21/08 -
GMO Africa - France on Friday slapped a ban on the cultivation of a maize variety genetically modified to resist European corn borer. President Nicholas Sarkozy, when challenged to justify the decision, said his government had invoked the “safeguard precaution” clause contained in the European law on genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The maize in contention is MON 810 developed by U.S. biotech giant...
01/20/08 -
Mike Leavitt's Blog - I remember worrying about polio as a child. Victims were put in an iron lung machine to preserve their lives. Many of those who lived had crippling disabilities. My mother took me to a school where we stood in a long line to be immunized. It was part of a national immunization campaign. The vaccine was delivered by putting drops in a sugar cube. Now, 50 years later, the polio virus is gone...
01/20/08 -
Hospital Impact - Giving people permission to care in the health care environment may be one solution to positively changing the manner in which we run our hospitals, nursing homes, clinics and ambulatory centers. If we carefully examine what the current behaviors are and how the stakeholders are punished and rewarded, it’s an eye opener. Having worked in this field for over 20 year, I know that profound caring is...
01/20/08 -
Mark's Daily Apple - One of our most cherished pleasures in life happens to be challenging conventional wisdom (CW). You never would’ve guessed, right? After all the talk of meat and fat this week, we’ve been feeling, well, rather off. We figured it was the perfect time to take on everyone’s favorite gristly subject: fiber. CW says Americans need serious fiber in their diets. And by “fiber” CW often means...
01/18/08 -
The health care blog - I recently had a hand in a project, called the Healthcare08 PoliGraph , which seeks to find meaningful distinctions among the presidential candidates’ healthcare policies. This was tougher than it sounds. This being the primary season, each party’s contenders are pretty much sticking with the approved script. The Democrats are trying to outbid each other for cradle-to-grave healthcare for...
01/18/08 -
health business blog - I don’t see why this is surprising and I don’t think it’s bad. Drug samples are given away by drug reps as a way to gain access to physicians. Reps hope to influence doctors to write prescriptions for insured patients whom they hope will become long-term users of the product. Pharma companies aren’t targeting the uninsured or the poor and why should they do so with samples? Patient...
01/18/08 -
inventor spot - The researchers explained that one of the most difficult parts of designing the lenses is making them biologically safe. So far, they have only tested the lenses on rabbits, with no negative effects. Electrical circuits consist of toxic chemicals, but the scientists built them from layers of metal only a few nanometers thick. The LEDs are almost as tiny, with a diameter of one-third of a millimeter....
01/18/08 -
eye on dna - Early last week, Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI) announced the complete sequencing of the fourth human genome in the world. Later the same week, whole genome sequencing company, Knome, announced a partnership with BGI where BGI will provide genome sequencing, assembly, and annotation capabilities. Knome will be responsible for analytic tools, security protocols, and genetic interpretation services....
01/18/08 -
Gene Expression - In my previous post I contended that biology is an important causal factor to keep in mind when we model the behavioral ecology (a.k.a., history) of H. sapiens. A separate, but complementary, tack is to use genetic data to supplement what we know from other historical sciences (history, archeology, economic history, etc.) to obtain a better picture of the dynamics which were operative in the past...
01/18/08 -
BlackVoices - What if your significant other told you that they were infected with HIV or AIDS? What would you do? Would you stay in the relationship or would you leave? That is the question I've asked myself many times since learning that my best friend was infected by her fiancé. She chose to stay for many reasons but the main reason she chose to stay was out of fear of loneliness. While I realize that many...
01/16/08 -
Terrasig - Compounds in grapefruit juice inhibits an enzyme required for metabolism of nearly half of prescription drugs on the market. If you inhibit drug metabolism, would that allow you to take a lower (and cheaper) dose of one of those drugs, especially an expensive drug? That is the proposition of a company called Bioavailability Systems, featured in today's Wall Street Journal and alluded to on the...
01/16/08 -
Wired Blog - After four years of deliberation, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced today that meat from cloned animals and their offspring is safe to eat. But despite public unease and lingering scientific uncertainty, the FDA won't require such meat to be labeled or tracked. Food producers say they're not about to put cloned meat on American dinner plates, as the procedure is too expensive...
01/16/08 -
sharp brains - Who do you support as US Science Advisor? Not to depress you but...are you aware that healthcare reform is really hard? how will you change all this? How will you increase price transparency of medical procedures and engage consumer forces? Sorry to insist, but this is an important point. Why is there so much confusion and misinformation about procedure prices? Have you seen the...
01/15/08 -
health business blog - Conventional wisdom is that attention deficit disorder results from a problem in the brain. This seems reasonable since the stimulants used to treat ADHD work on particular pathways in the brain. But conventional wisdom is not getting much traction: researchers have studied the genes in these dopamine pathways and found only weak effects on ADHD. Now, a group of Harvard-associated doctors...
01/15/08 -
US Food Policy - Of course, TV watching also has a strong association with nutrition issues such as childhood overweight and obesity. Some researchers suspect that TV watching is simply correlated with other types of dysfunction, which in turn contribute to overweight and obesity. Other researchers think TV watching contributes directly to weight gain because it displaces active time with sedentary time, provides...
01/15/08 -
Retrospectacle - Several historians have noted that if what caused the Black Death was truly transmitted by fleas, as Y. pestis is, then areas which had no rats or fleas would not have had great losses due to the plague. However, about two-thirds of Iceland's population was wiped out during the 14th century, despite it having no rats at the time. And many areas with hot summers above 82 degrees F, which is too hot...
01/14/08 -
BLDG Blog - To use an inappropriately over-simplified example, imagine two identical 60-story high-rises. The architect of Tower A convenes his engineering team one day and they proceed to rearrange some of the building's internal structural steel; they're thus able to cut out some cantilevers, for instance, and to eliminate excess building material, more generally. This reduces the structure's embodied...
01/14/08 -
the oil Drum - Wind power is currently the fastest growing renewable energy source (in terms of capacity - solar has a faster percentage growth rate), and looks like remaining so into the next decade. While most attention is focussed on the mainstream approach of generating power using large wind turbines - both onshore and, as Jerome recently looked at, offshore - there are a wide range of alternatives being...
01/14/08 -
James M. - You tangle blindly through the mosquito net, find your stethoscope and the pharmacy keys, walk to the car and wake the driver. you tell him that you need to go the hospital. there is a gunshot. a soldier. you are not sure why you are telling him, but you think he should know, just in case. in case of what? you don't know. in case this wasn't just an isolated, personal incident, the singular result...
01/14/08 -
Tree Hugger - Drawn like bees to a flower, we soak in the tantalizingly beautiful shapes and colors of creatures both familiar and bizarre that mix and mingle to create a coral reef. A living structure of calcium carbonate that supports one of the most diverse habitats on earth, and also one of the most economically important engines for the United States worth untold billions. In light of their recognized...
01/14/08 -
Sharp Brain - You may feel overwhelmed by the stream of seemingly contradictory suggestions regarding the best way to maintain mental clarity as you age. Based on an analysis of seminal factors in the development of modern brain anatomy, I believe it is possible to make some very compelling recommendations for growing big brains, enhancing their function, and making them resistant to the aging process. These may...
01/14/08 -
Cosmic Variance - If the universe is a computer, what is it computing? Its own evolution, apparently, according to the laws of physics. Tony Leggett got right to the heart of the matter, however, by asking “What kind of process would not count as a computer?” To which Lloyd merely answered, “Yeah, good question.” (But he did have a good line — “If the universe is a computer, why isn’t it running...
01/11/08 -
microecos - The kind of thing to drive any formerly self-respecting paleontologist nuts: underwater olfaction in mammals. Smell is an important sense for mammals, no surprise to anyone who has stepped into a Sephora outlet recently. Though we are generally far more conscious of sight and sound, we’re still led around by the nose far more than we would guess…especially when it comes to eating and mating. And...
01/11/08 -
med journal watch - The idea of a split mind has been introduced 1908 by the Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler, replacing Kraepelin's idea of premature dementia, but modern science has found that Kraepelin got closer to the point. The zeitgeist of the Freudian era in the early 20th century was in favour of the view that psychic diseases can be cured by cognitive interventions. Bleuler's new term schizophrenia (Greek...
01/11/08 -
amanzi - He looked back at me. he was stable, but the intercostal drain had a constant stream of blood running out. my friend stood back as a sister was placing a cvp. he was telling her what to do. she was learning. i looked into his eyes again. i could see the fear of death there. i wondered how many times he had seen that in other people's eyes and shown no mercy. but i was not him. i felt sorry for...
01/10/08 -
clio audio - If it were true that the camera never lies, then photography wouldn’t be a problem. It does though. Or at least a photograph isn’t a wholly objective record of reality. A couple of years back I was happy with this and was discussing illustrating an event using a photo mosaic. The universal reaction to this idea was horror, which surprised me. What I was planning to do was take a photograph of...
01/10/08 -
voltagegate - To put it mildly, the cards are stacked against the blue crab population in the Chesapeake Bay area. In the past 60 years, the human population of the area has jumped from 3.7 million to almost 18 million and, subsequently, farming and industry has exploded (it is often joked that everyone on the eastern shore of Maryland is a chicken farmer), leading to waterways filled with ferrous compounds,...
01/10/08 -
Apollo MD - No critic can confidently state that the life of a physician is an easy one. While some might quietly grumble at the seeming excesses in salary and presumptions of self-importance characterizing many physicians, it is well known that the training of physicians is a long, arduous, and expensive process to he or she who suffers the journey and transformation. The considerable starting capital required,...
01/09/08 -
Deep Sea News - Start by eating the right fish or not eating fish at all. This is probably the easiest. You yield the greatest power when you make simple decisions at the table. The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch makes this easy with downloadable charts to carry with you for every region in the U.S. With respect to fishing, Conservation Magazine also lists 10 ways to save the ocean. The list is comprised of...
01/09/08 -
GristMill - They do not account for any technological advances or economies of scale beyond 2020 (when the public funding stops and the industry becomes self-sufficient). They also do not account for growth in other renewable sources like wind, geothermal, and biomass. With more optimistic assumptions along these lines taken into account, it's likely that renewables could cover 100% of electricity by 2050. The...
01/09/08 -
Read Write Web - Word association: P2P = Napster = disrupted the music industry. P2P technology certainly did that. Skype shook up telecoms and Joost may do the same for TV. P2P (Peer to Peer) networks could be a lot more. They could be the last big disruptive technology online. The online world is increasingly getting divided into a few mega firms that can afford to invest billions in server farms (Google,...
01/08/08 -
global bioethics - It looks like 2008 will be a strange year in HIV/AIDS circles. The prospects of controlling the rise of new infections have been dimmed: 2007 was marked by a series of painful setbacks in HIV prevention research, particularly in regard to microbicides, diaphragm and vaccines. Estimates of the scale of the epidemic have been redrawn: the numbers of persons living with HIV/AIDs (most notably, in India)...
01/08/08 -
Mouse Trap - To me it seems that what is happening in these dream-deprived rats is an unlearning of learned helplessness paradigm. In learned helplessness, one stops exploring the environment and becomes extremely cautious. Learned helplessness is an extremely influential theory of depression and I have blogged about it previously. In the dream-deprived rats something exactly the opposite is happening - they...
01/08/08 -
greg laden - The prototype ...[uses] 14 cobalt ferrite rings, each about one foot in diameter and turning at one revolution per minute. An 88-square meter solar furnace will blast sunlight into the unit, heating the rings to about 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit. At that temperature, cobalt ferrite releases oxygen. When the rings cool to about 2,000 degrees, they're exposed to CO2. The cooling cobalt ferrite rings...
01/07/08 -
natural patriot - The simple, central, misunderstood theme is this: Despite the rosy optimism one hears from various quarters, We can’t grow our way out of our environmental problems. Yes, of course technology can help, and we need creative entrepreneurship. But blind reliance on the “free” market is not going to do the trick. The latest evidence on this front comes from an analysis, across 102 countries,...
01/07/08 -
genome resources - Mind reading, telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition ? Not possible you say ? Or perhaps misunderstood ? You may once have had a premonition or a feeling and later been surprised to find that it coincided with an actual event. Once, for example, when I was 15, my pal and I absconded with his mother’s car for a late night joyride - mortifyingly resulting in a dented front fender and busted radiator....
01/07/08 -
phil for humanity - What most people do not know is that there is a logical answer for this question. Actually, there are three possible answers to this question. At first this may seem out of the ordinary, since the question only offers two possible answers so please let me elaborate. First, if you believe in evolution, then the chicken egg came first. To over simplify this answer, the theory of evolution believes...
01/06/08 -
eye on dna - Mixing genealogy/ancestry genetic testing with medical genetic testing has always seemed tricky to me. My feeling is that most people who are interested in learning more about their family tree tend to be wary of using their DNA to understand their medical history. The target market for the two sides of consumer genetic testing may overlap, but not completely. So, difficulty arises when unexpected...
01/06/08 -
help my hurt - Pain isn’t completely understood yet, but researchers do know more about it now than they did in the past. Many questions remain though – such as why some people feel pain more than others, where does psychosomatic pain come in, and how come people who have limbs amputated can experience phantom pain – pain in the limb that is no longer there? This is what the scientist do know: There...
01/06/08 -
overcoming bias - Well, you could install an eye-tracker on a hunter; look for a characteristic pattern of eye movements when they're frozen waiting for prey; and use simulations or game theory to show that the gaze pattern is efficient. Then you could put an eye-tracker on a man looking into a refrigerator, and see if they show the same gaze pattern. Then you would have demonstrated a detailed correspondence which...
01/04/08 -
healthbeat blog - One of the most infamous records the U.S. holds is that of the world’s incarcerator. As of 2006, 2.2 million Americans were incarcerated, more than even China—which has over four times the population of the U.S. California is the most cell-happy state in the union, with its prison population in midyear 2006 at over 175,000, or 11.3 percent of the total prisoners in the country. The Golden...
01/04/08 -
Monterey Bay Aquarium - With the help of venture capitalists and the National Science Foundation, New Belgium Brewing Co. in Fort Collins, Colorado is the site of a pilot project to use wastewater from the brewery to create a high-protein ingredient to feed farm-raised fish including salmon and rainbow trout. That would potentially reduce the volume of wild-caught fish that have to be converted to fishmeal for a burgeoning...
01/04/08 -
The Hospitalist - I recently participated in a meeting whose aim was to develop safety measures for hospital units (ie, med-surg, ED, L&D). As various measures were being ticked off, I muttered that we should also try to capture errors that occur as patients move between units. One of my colleagues, quite sensibly, asked, “but who will be accountable for that?” “Exactly!” I said. “You’ve put your...
01/03/08 -
the genetic genealogist - As many as 3 million men worldwide might be directly descended from a single Irish warlord named Niall of the Nine Hostages who was the High King at Tara from 379 to 405. In February 2006, researchers at Trinity College in Dublin released a paper that studied that Y chromosome signature of men throughout Ireland. They found that 8% of men sampled had the same Y chromosome, with a cluster in the...
01/03/08 -
bite size bio - Technical support involves interacting with scientists over the phone to trouble-shoot problems with products or even to provide a scientific consultation on general experimental strategy and design. Since you are not face to face with other people, it makes for an easy transition for an introverted scientist in moving to a more outgoing profession. Many opportunities exist to grow in your career...
01/03/08 -
help my hurt - Chronic pain often makes people slow down and reduce their exercise. After all, if you’re hurting, why do anything that may aggravate the pain, right? However, that’s not the way to go. Your body still needs exercise. If it doesn’t get exercise, chronic pain can actually become worse as the body becomes sedentary. According to this article Exercise takes the edge off chronic pain, an exercise...
01/02/08 -
Crooked Timber - It’s a familiar story. A striking, though minor, scientific finding, is used to illustrate a well-established scientific theory, and becomes the target of those opposed to the theory, and to science in general, for political or religious reasons. Minor errors in and procedural criticisms of the work supporting the finding are conflated into accusations of fraudulent conspiracy that are then used...
01/02/08 -
grahamazon - More than four out of five people in families spending more than 10 percent of their pre-tax income on health care costs are insured. 50.7 million non-elderly Americans with insurance are in families that will spend more than 10 percent of their pre-tax income on health care costs in 2008. More than three out of four people (75.8 percent) in families spending more than 25 percent...
01/02/08 -
a mars odyssey - The fuel cell that Electrical Engineer David Bents and his team developed are offering valuable information from the intended airplane it never was used on, in order to design a next-generation regenerative fuel cell for the moon habitation. Combining hydrogen from a tank and oxygen from the air, both were used in the fuel cell design to produce electricity, with water and heat as the main...
01/01/08 -
Mixing Memory - Stereotype threat is, according to Claude Steele(1, "the threat of being viewed through the lens of a negative stereotype or the fear of doing something that would inadvertently confirm that stereotype," and there's now a pretty substantial literature showing that, in the lab at least, people's performance can be seriously affected by simply making them aware of a relevant stereotype. But the goal...
01/01/08 -
mind hacks - We live in a dangerous world and we've learnt to judge risk as a way of avoiding loss or injury. How we make this appraisal is crucial to our survival and an innovative study published in December's Risk and Analysis investigated what influences risk perception in everyday life and has shown that our retrospective estimations of risk are quite different from how we judge them at the time. Many...
01/01/08 -
David Rotman - The numbers speak for themselves. The legislation, which was signed by President Bush on Wednesday, creates an enormously ambitious Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) that mandates the production of 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels by 2022; included in that is 21 billion gallons of advanced biofuels (most of which will be cellulosic biofuels). At such levels, biofuels will account for more than 20...
12/31/07 -
Psychological Science - I have a friend who really wants a life partner. She is divorced, and after some dreary years on the dating scene she has come to realize just how much she wants a mate again, someone intelligent, kind, decent looking. With each passing month, her longing has intensified, and as her longing gets stronger her prospects appear dimmer and dimmer. She now believes that there really are no quality men...
12/31/07 -
Effect Measure - I learned emergency cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) in medical school more than forty years ago and it hasn't changed much until now. It was always hard to do, but now it's half as hard and not as unaesthetic, at least if the results of several studies are taken into account. The problem was that you had to do two things simultaneously: maintain circulation by chest compression (usually...
12/31/07 -
the infinite sphere - Santa Claus brought me several excellent books for Christmas, and I'm currently devouring one I'm finding very illuminating: Exposed, The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What's at Stake for American Power. It's one of those books that grabs and pulls me in while at the same time infuriating me. I'm only about halfway through the book, but the parts I've read so far focus on the huge...
12/30/07 -
mediashift - As the year 2007 sets in the distance, we can take some time to consider the year that was. I’m not a huge fan of year-end lists, but sometimes they help us get a grip on what transpired — and ponder what’s to come. What’s perhaps most amazing about 2007 is that two distinct phenomena — the iPhone and popularity of Facebook — were so difficult to predict ahead of time, yet they...
12/30/07 -
Jeff Jarvis - Start here: Most passengers on airlines today are connected to the internet on the ground and soon we will be in the air as airlines return to the idea of adding wireless internet to jets (see an AP roundup from yesterday here — I can’t wait). Getting us connected will be good for the airlines, not only because they have something new to sell — if they don’t try to gouge us — but also...
12/30/07 -
NERS - Charlat believes that the Upolu butterflies had gained a resistance gene (or several) that allowed them to shrug off the male-killing bacteria. It either evolves the trait itself, or gained it from South-east Asian populations that had already become resistant. Whatever the origin, the mutation spread like genetic wildfire across the Upolu and onto neighbouring Savaii. Most mutations carry small...
12/28/07 -
overcoming bias - Solomon Asch, with experiments originally carried out in the 1950s and well-replicated since, highlighted a phenomenon now known as "conformity". In the classic experiment, a subject sees a puzzle like the one in the nearby diagram: Which of the lines A, B, and C is the same size as the line X? Take a moment to determine your own answer... The gotcha is that the subject is seated alongside a...
12/28/07 -
Own Your Health - If you’ve ever heard a doctor deliver bad news, everything about that moment is probably seared into your brain with a permanence that rivals the moment you heard that Kennedy had been shot (if you’re that old) or the Towers had been hit (if you’re not.) Is it because our doctors are the white-robed, high priests of medicine that their every word, frown, or raised eyebrow has the power to...
12/28/07 -
Healthcare Economist - On Monday, the California Assembly passed a bill that mandates health insurance for all California’s citizens. The government will provide subsidies households with incomes below 250 percent of the federal poverty level. Those earning between 250 percent and 400 percent of the federal poverty level [FPL] would be able to deduct premium costs that exceed 5.5 percent of their incomes. Health insurance...
12/27/07 -
SurgeonsBlog - I've been asked it a lot: what does cancer look like? The questions don't usually refer to the microscopic view, of which the above is a good example: big and dark and variable size and shape of vacuolated nuclei, discohesive, not much cytoplasm. People want to know what I see when operating. Our apprehension of beauty has much to do, I'd guess, with the expected physical attraction to our own...
12/27/07 -
BlockAroundTheClock - The standard format of the scientific paper will become just one of many (and probably not the dominant or most frequent) form of scientific communication. Different people have different talents and inclinations. One is analytic, another synthetic. One is creative, another a hard worker. One has great hands with the equipment or animals, while another is good with computers and statistics. One has...
12/27/07 -
math trek - When you first feel the sniffles and wonder what to grab from your medicine cabinet, perhaps you should first check some numbers. Especially if one of your choices is echinacea. The evidence on whether echinacea helps fight colds has been confusing. A 2005 study concluded that the herb doesn't help, but a few months ago, a team of pharmacists claimed that it decreases the odds of getting a cold...
12/26/07 -
Not Exactly Rocket Science - Travel back in time to about 50 million years ago and you might catch a glimpse of a small, unassuming animal walking on slender legs tipped with hooves, by the rivers of southern Asia. It feeds on land but when it picks up signs of danger, it readily takes to the water and wades to safety. Indohyus The animal is called Indohyus (literally “India’s pig”) and though it may not look like...
12/26/07 -
Sandwalk - Human Genetic Variation" is the scientific "breakthrough" of 2007, according to Science magazine. I have a problem with science journalism when science writers misuse the word "breakthrough" but that's topic for another posting [Breakthrough of the Year in Science]. In this thread I want to discuss the actual choice made by Science editors. Elizabeth Pennisi describes the choice in the lead...
12/26/07 -
Sox First - Here's a warning for the boomers. The 2007 Financial Report of the US Government has found that the ageing baby boomer generation and rising health costs are going to drag down the US economy. And debt is simply unsustainable! "Simply said, holding revenues constant, required Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security spending and the related deficit financing costs will far exceed the Government's...
12/26/07 -
pharyngula - e back, I summarized a review of the evolution of eyes across the whole of the metazoa — it doesn't matter whether we're looking at flies or jellyfish or salmon or shrimp, when you get right down to the biochemistry and cell biology of photoreception, the common ancestry of the visual system is apparent. Vision evolved in the pre-Cambrian, and we have all inherited the same basic machinery...
12/26/07 -
Scott Aronson - If you want some long, acrimonious flamewars about whether the guy’s PhD should be revoked, whether oral exams should now include declarations of (non)faith, whether Ross is a walking illustration of Searle’s Chinese Room experiment, etc., try here and here. Alas, most of the commentary strikes me as missing a key point: that to give a degree to a bozo like this, provided he indeed did the work,...
12/26/07 -
Psych Central - Just in case you had any doubts that there are a great deal of politics and money involved in healthcare, look no further than some the entries posted by psychologist Bruce Levin over at the Huffington Post. Furious Seasons has the full coverage. I feel profession bashing is too easy to do, and you have to take as good as you give. For instance, psychologists shouldn’t be proud of their own...
12/25/07 -
Brain Blogger - Consider the spiritual elements that I pointed out from research on spirituality and health in the previous parts of this series. They were: meaning, gratitude, peace, confidence, sense of identity, and acceptance. The somatic (body mind) approaches to psychotherapy, including EMDR, tend to “unlock” these experiences in ways that are very personal to the individual. Generally, people refer...
12/25/07 -
Autos Canada - Arguably the most interesting new idea to come from General Motors Corp. in recent history, the Volt was unveiled in January at the Detroit auto show and has been making the rounds at other venues since. The most exciting news about the Volt isn't just that it's designed to achieve triple-digit fuel economy, but that GM has committed itself to bringing the car to market as soon as possible. No...
12/25/07 -
About My Planet - When over 200 people fell ill with a mysterious fever in Italy's northern region of Ravenna, local doctors were baffled and community members were in a panic. Was it toxins in the water? Something brought over with a recent influx of immigrants from West Africa? After the mysterious illness - the symptoms of which include high fever and bone pain - had run its course, health officials learned that...
12/24/07 -
Grrl Scientist - Since the holidays are upon us once more, I thought you would be interested to read about the psychology of gift-giving. In short, even though giving someone a gift is simple enough, the psychology behind this act is much more complex than most people realize. A large number of scientists, ranging from psychologists to economists, have studied the purpose and ramifications of gift giving in humans...
12/24/07 -
Mind Hacks - Wired has an article in its latest edition that discusses why understanding human networks are becoming key to the US Military's mission in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfortunately, the article seems to do little more than uncritically echo military enthusiasm for this new approach while telling us little about the actual science behind the techniques. But the most interesting story is not the...
12/24/07 -
Tetrapod Zoology - One last thing before Tet Zoo closes down for Christmas but, don't worry, this isn't anything I've knocked up specially... due to an unfortunate series of misunderstandings it's something I produced 'by mistake' and have since decided to recycle. Hey, why not. Ironically, I post it just when I'm in the middle of two other pterosaury bits of work (more on those soon). So I never did get to...
12/21/07 -
Mind Hacks - Sam Harris is better known as a leading atheist, but he's also completing a PhD in cognitive neuroscience and a forthcoming study by Harris is a flawed but important contribution to how we understand the neuropsychology of belief. Harris and his colleagues asked participants to respond to a number of statements with buttons presses indicating that they either believed, disbelieved or were...
12/21/07 -
Nonoscience - The advent of the lunar month of Karthigai denotes the end of the North East Monsoon that feeds the water reservoirs in our part of the world. And this is when our seemingly never-ending fight with the slimy green moss begins. Slippery bathrooms and backyards fund the local orthopedics’s vacation. Stagnant water bodies such as our local pond start reeking of the typical odour of “paasi” that...
12/21/07 -
Pharmalot - european-commission.jpgThe European Commission is poised to agree a $2.9 billion partnership this week designed to win back Europe’s place as a center for global medical innovation, The Financial Times reports. The Innovative Medicines Initiative, financed equally by pharma and the EC, will support research by academic and industry groups over seven years designed to speed up the predictable...
12/21/07 -
Clock - back in 1909 (hmmm, less than two years until the Centennial), the word was quite unambiguous - it meant "a unit of heredity". Its material basis, while widely speculated on, was immaterial for its usefulness as a concept. It could have been tiny little Martians inside the cells, it would have been OK, as they could have been plugged into the growing body of mathematics describing the changes and...
12/21/07 -
Earth Blog - Fictional flying carpets are ubiquitous and have appeared in literature since ancient times. Now they have caught the attention of a leading mathematician. Although he has only succeeded in showing that flying is practical for a bank note sized carpet, Prof Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and his co-workers believe that one capable of ferrying...
12/21/07 -
Rationally Speaking - Rationally Speaking is a web site devoted to rational discourse on science, philosophy, social and political issues. This blog is a companion to the web site and is maintained by Massimo Pigliucci with the editorial help of Phil Pollack. Announcements concerning Rationally Speaking can be obtained by subscribing to the RS Google Group. While you are at it, you may want to check out Massimo's...
12/19/07 -
Predicter - Blaine Bettinger of The Genetic Genealogist reviews a new genetic test and genealogy information provider. The venture (launched by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.--an esteemed literary critic and the director of Harvard's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, but not a geneticist) was also the subject of an article by Ron Nixon in The New York Times ("DNA Tests Find Branches...
12/19/07 -
Neuro Philosophy - God's Eye View, which depicts four biblical events as if captured by Google Earth, is the work of The Glue Society, a collective of writers, designers and art/ film directors based in Sydney, Australia. Says Glue Society member James Dive: We like to disorientate audiences a little with all our work. And with this piece we felt technology now allows events which may or may not have happened...
12/19/07 -
Health Affairs Blog - Galaxies ago, in a decade far, far away, genius entrepreneur Jim Clark launched Healtheon on the premise that one giant Internet portal could unscramble all of health care’s tangled lines of communication, rectify its inefficiencies, and soothe its troubled soul in one brilliant masterstroke. It sounded good. The Internet was young, and people believe what they want to believe. A decade...
12/18/07 -
Med Journal Watch - Whether we tend to romantic passion or rather to obsessive love mania can partly be seen in certain variants of genes, shaping the substances that make our brains work. Is this the beginning of a new era, ending with "show me your gene card" at the first date? It is definitely too early for such a prognosis. But for someone asking this question in a distant future, odds would be high that he...
12/18/07 -
The Oil Drum - The primary impact of peak oil will be felt on our transportation systems. As road transportation is the primary consumer of oil, this is where we will need to make the most changes in order to adapt to less available oil. There are a number of ways of adapting - most, if not all, of which have been discussed at length in the peak oil blogosphere. These include expanding mass transit systems,...
12/18/07 -
Food for Thought - Peanuts are a protein-rich snack food packing plenty of vitamins and trace nutrients. However, these legumes can elicit potentially life-threatening immune reactions within the one in 100 American adults who are allergic to them. Rates of peanut allergy are even higher among children. And the really disturbing news: A new study finds that the age at which this common food allergy first shows...
12/18/07 -
Jrepka - For show-and-tell today I brought this fulgurite specimen, which I unfortunately did not collect myself. In 1998 I took a group of intro geology students on a trip to Capitol Reef National Park in southern Utah, and while we watched a storm play out over the Henry Mountains I gave an impromptu lecture on convective thunderstorms and lightning. Lightning is the sudden release of huge...
12/18/07 -
Fitt Buff - What is healthy? At first, this may seem like an easy question to answer. However, when you actually stop and think about it, it's not easy at all. Is it the number of push-ups you can do? Is it the distance you can run? Is it how well-rounded your diet is? Or could it somehow be a combination of these things and more? The more I think about it, the more I realize that the easiest way to...
12/18/07 -
The Loom - Back in 2005 my daughter Charlotte, then a four-year-old, took part in a study to see how kids stack up mentally against chimpanzees. I wrote about the ambivalent experience of watching her as both a father and a curious science writer in the New York Times. The emerging lesson of the study, led by Yale grad student Derek Lyons, was that children overimitate even though they should know...
12/17/07 -
Monterey Bay Aquarium - Scientists are bringing coral reefs back to life in an experiment in Bali, by giving them doses of low-level electric current. The reefs have been damaged over the years by use of cyanide and dynamite - all too commonly used methods to catch, kill and stun fish. Fortunately, fishermen in this region have come to understand that their actions have impacted the ancient living structures that...
12/17/07 -
Dendroica - One of the interesting questions in bird evolution is whether early bird ancestors were primarily ground-based or tree-based. That is, did birds start on the ground and move up, or start in trees and move down? A new paper in Current Biology proposes to answer the question by looking at the shape of birds' feet. The researchers first classed 249 bird species from seven orders according to...
12/17/07 -
DNA Direct - DNA Archive™ New Home DNA Storage Option Can't afford $1000 to buy your loved one of the latest, "coolest" genetics offerings? Or perhaps you find genome scans intriguing but not ready for prime-time? Check out a more modest but reasonable, forward-thinking stocking stuffer: DNA Archive. This latest offering from DNA Direct is the first home DNA storage that uses laboratory quality technology...
12/15/07 -
democracy journal - The justification for this professional decision-making, articulated by theorists ranging from Max Weber to Walter Lippmann, is that while citizens can express personal opinions based on values, they are incapable of making fact-based decisions on matters of policy. For Weber, the complexities of modern governance call for "the personally detached and strictly objective expert." Only institutionalized...
12/15/07 -
Shrink rap - It's always something I thought would be a great gig to have: invent a psychological test, get a copyright, make sure it's good for something, then set up nationwide seminars to train and certify people to use it and sell the test to them. Talk about a self-made entrepreneur! But there's a reason why everybody isn't doing this. It's because inventing a test---I mean one that is actually meaningful...
12/15/07 -
NeuroPhilosophy - Hypersonic sound technology is discussed by Jonathan Moreno in his book Mind Wars (which I reviewed back in January). It uses sound waves that have been compressed into narrow beams which can then be projected to a specified location. The sound thus carried is audible only to the person or people within the targeted area, but not to anyone else. The projected sound is "contained within your...
12/14/07 -
Digital Bio - Last year, I wrote about photographs of jellyfish that were altered by newspapers, scientific publishers, science education companies, and me (for the purpose of the article) to make it look like the jellyfish glowed. Those jellyfish do NOT glow. Those images lie or at least misrepresent the truth. But that doesn't mean that glowing animals don't exist. These pictures were taken under...
12/14/07 -
mises - The natural science of climatology and the social science of economics find themselves bound up with each other in the debate on global warming. There are many economic issues to discuss concerning the government's ability to control the future of weather patterns through regulation and the like. But so far, the debate has focused on the natural-science question of whether global...
12/14/07 -
Drwes - Well, I politely and respectfully disagree. Medical errors, most of them, are NOT prevented and they can't be prevented. There, I said it. While none of us wants to be the recipient of a medical error, medical errors might just be good for you. Now before you call the Illinois Department of Regulation and ask that my medical license be revoked, hear me out. Most of us have heard ad nauseum...
12/12/07 -
Adventures in Ethics and Science - I was reading John Timmer's post on Ars Technica about the call for a presidential debate on science and technology and found myself surprised at how many of the commenters on the post think such a debate would be a terrible idea. It's not just that the commenters think that the presidential candidates would use all their powers to weasel out of taking clear stands that might get them in trouble...
12/12/07 -
On the Brain - Memory (cognitive ability, executive control, motor control, whatever) resides in a place(s). If we fix that (those) place(s), we fix memory (our failing faculties). For MEMORY, as an example, most scientists focus on one of three places: 1) the hippocampus, for ‘episodic’ or ‘long-term memory’; 2) the inferior/medial temporal or lateral frontal cortex, for ‘immediate’ or ‘working...
12/12/07 -
Geek Doctor - The exact definition of a personal health record (PHR) is still evolving, but personal health records hold the promise to make patients the stewards of their own medical data. PHRs may contain data from payer claims databases, clinician electronic health records, pharmacy dispensing records, commercial laboratory results and patient self-entered data. They may include decision support features,...
12/11/07 -
Marginal Revolution - Here is your typical breathless futurism, pulled off Digg. Let's assume the guy is right, and there will be purely virtual marriages, replete with virtual you-know-what, and many people will live full (virtual) lives without ever leaving their living rooms, etc. In this world virtual nookie and related activities reap high-productivity gains and the price of such activities falls rapidly. ...
12/11/07 -
Frankie Speaking Frankly - 1. To clarify what Health 2.0 / Medicine 2.0 is for myself. I figured that if I was going to make a contribution to discussions in this arena, I had better first make sure I had my facts straight - this is a chance for me to say what I think I know, and then for all the Health 2.0 Seasoned Veterans out there to correct me/argue with me where any inaccuracies are identified. 2. To...
12/11/07 -
Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog - Those chickens give me the willies. Like the mythical boiled frog, I hadn’t been really aware of what has been done to the broiler chicken in the past 50 years. I knew, of course. But I didn’t know. Now, thanks to an almost incidental image on the web site of CBC news in Canada, I do.1 The reason for the CBC story, amplified in a press release from the University of Alberta, is that it is...
12/10/07 -
Kate Wing - Make jellyfish ice cream. That's the message from Japan's Tango Jersey Dairy, which is trying to capitalize on the now regular invasion of giant Nomura Jellyfish. Maybe they can give the Scots the recipe, since a second swarm of purple stinger jellyfish is massing off the UK coast. Swarm II comes on the heels of a mass of purple jellies that killed 10,000 salmon in an aquaculture farm off...
12/10/07 -
When Pigs Fly Returns - When I think of prehistoric animals, I'm always fascinated by how much more "exotic" they look in comparison to modern fauna. Dinosaurs look infinately cooler than mammals, for instance, what with their horns, spikes, frills, plates, and armor. Birds, I'll admit, look much more baddass today than they did in the Mesozoic, although some Cenozoic birds were pretty awesome--Teratornis, Diatryma,...
12/10/07 -
Biomarker - Damage to the human brain, ie. loss of cells due to programmed or non-programmed cell death is presently considered to be an irreversible fate. Many a skilled neurosurgeon can place new neurons or stem cells into damaged areas, but that does little good unless those cells are able to sprout new axons and dendrites that migrate outward - sometimes very long distances - and make the proper synaptic...
12/09/07 -
Indranet - Metabolizing information The speed of e-contacts and communication prevents the full assimilation of the messages we receive. Split and fragmentary attention has become the rule for online activities, but this procedure is gradually being exported offline. But the time needed for soul maturity goes much slower than electronics. When we are not present with our aware attention, we are only...
12/09/07 -
Shifting Baselines - From 1998-2000, the Give Swordfish a Break campaign requested that chefs boycott swordfish until the international fishery commission cut quotas--700 chefs joined in. Here in Vancouver, a sustainable seafood event doesn't happen without the involvement of chefs. Since it opened, there have been a bizillion articles about Hook, D.C.'s sustainable seafood restaurant (including this one in Fortune...
12/09/07 -
Universe Today - Mention the North Pole this time of year and perhaps what comes to mind are visions of snowy, candy cane-lined streets leading to a candle-lit workshop. But how about sun-drenched regolith dotted with craters cast in permanent shadows? Those are the types of images revealed in a new detailed map of the north pole — on the moon. A mosaic created from data obtained by the SMART-1 spacecraft...
12/08/07 -
Eternalidol - Silbury Winter Silbury is the sleeping giant of prehistoric archaeology. Its megalithic cousin, Stonehenge, which stands about sixteen miles to the south, is an open book by comparison with this stupendous, enigmatic mound. Indeed, Silbury is so enormous that it was described by one awestruck writer in 1776 as an artificial mountain, while treasure hunters have been desperately tunnelling into...
12/08/07 -
Bad Archaeology - This week, the Austrian National Library in Vienna displayed the Tabula Peutingeriana, or the Peutinger Table, to the public for one day. Unless you live in Vienna that news may not be of much significance, but it does provide an opportunity to discuss a rare and priceless object. The Peutinger Table is actually a linen strip, some 20 feet long and about a foot and a half wide, that bears...
12/08/07 -
Ars Technica - Media violence and the brain: when movies attack By Jonathan M. Gitlin | Published: December 06, 2007 - 01:57PM CT The subject of violence in the media, and the effect it has on viewers, can be a touchy one. Despite study after study indicating that repeated exposure to violent images and depictions can cause an increase in aggression, movie (and by extension gaming) fans dislike being told...
12/07/07 -
Tommy Ndut - So you've just come back from your favourite little electronics store and nestled in your outstretched arms is a pile of new toys, most of which is intended to replace the aging hardware sitting by your desk. Maybe you've gone wireless and picked up a new 802.11n wireless router, or a new Serial ATA hard drive to replace the IDE drive that crashed last week... better yet, maybe you've splurged...
12/07/07 -
Mark's Daily Apple - Anxiety Culture has a great piece on worry that really stirred my pot. Anxiety is a persistent problem in our culture, and it seems to strike the affluent and poor, healthy and unhealthy, male and female, young and old alike. Anxiety is a particular breed of that umbrella term we toss around, stress, and it’s really insidious for a number of reasons. For one thing, as the piece notes, we’re sort...
12/07/07 -
Anthropology - The web is abuzz over a new publication in PLoS Genetics about a single main migration across Bering Strait. From what I can tell, this new paper, “Genetic Variation and Population Structure,” coincides with a recent publication in PLoS One that sampled mtDNA and figured out people moved in waves, but first they spent some time in Beringia. The Populations Sampled in the Genetic Comparison...
12/05/07 -
Eide Neurolearning Blog - At the most recent APS convention, Malcolm Gladwell spoke about potential problems of identifying precocious talent: "I think we take it as an article of faith in our society that great ability in a given field is invariably manifested early on, that to be precocious at something is important because it's a predictor of future success...but is that really true? And what is the evidence for...
12/05/07 -
Psychological Science - My kids are all grown now, but way back when the first was born, there was a furious controversy brewing over the risks of putting young children into daycare outside the home. It was a highly personal clash, over fundamental values like self-sacrifice and good parenting. Some mothers (and even a few fathers) actually quit their day jobs and very publicly seized the moral high ground, while...
12/05/07 -
Thinking Meat - What makes a work of art beautiful? When people judge the beauty of a piece of sculpture, for example, are they simply expressing a personal opinion conditioned by their own experiences and personality, or are they responding to something intrinsic to the artwork that evokes the same response in all viewers? A recent brain imaging study indicates that the answer is: A little of both. Italian...
12/05/07 -
star stryder - Thought questions like this have pretty much always been around, and trace back at a certain level to the old standby, if a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it still make a sound? If it weren’t for some annoying observables in quantum mechanics, these questions could be ignored by observational astronomers like myself, and pushed over to the philosophers and theologians...
12/05/07 -
hospital limpact - Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Hospitals CEO George Halvorson wrote a tremendous article in HFM on the coming "tipping point in healthcare." He cited how taking care of 1% of the sickest among us makes up 30% of the cost. Not all of those are lifestyle-driven, but some surely are. As quoted in Fast Company, Dr. Raphael Levey, of the Global Medical Forum, noted that "even as far back as when I...
12/05/07 -
Medical 2.0 - First, its another indication for the growing up of this sector. Gigaom is one of the popular and respectable blogs concerning the web world including web 2.0 . Second, the post concentrated about ventures arising in Germany. Its another indication for the rising popularity concerning Health 2.0.Its not only in the states but it live and kicking all over the world. Third, its about the ventures...
12/04/07 -
Not Exactly Rocket Science - As a species, we hate cheaters. Just last month, I blogged about our innate desire to punish unfair play but it’s a sad fact that cheaters are universal. Any attempt to cooperate for a common good creates windows of opportunity for slackers. Even bacteria colonies have their own layabouts. Recently, two new studies have found that some bacteria reap the benefits of communal living while contributing...
12/04/07 -
Archaeozoology - A theory explaining the evolution of giant rodents, miniature elephants, and even miniature humans on islands has been called into questions by new research. The new study refutes the ‘island rule’ which says that in island environments small mammals such as rodents tend to evolve to be larger, and large mammals such as elephants tend to evolve to be smaller, with the original size of the...
12/04/07 -
microecos - Waiting in the lobby of the Austin Hilton, I glanced at my feet. I noticed that I was standing square atop a beautifully sectioned and polished Turritella embedded in the floor tile. Suddenly, the “pop-out”effect clicked in, an experience familiar to anyone who has searched for fossils, foraged for mushrooms or read Martin Hanford. Snail fossils began leaping out of the floor tiles left and...
12/03/07 -
Bird Ecology Study Group - Dendrophthoe pentandra is a common mistletoe plant that is semi-parasitic on wayside trees (above left). The mistletoe is spread by flowerpeckers and sunbirds that eat the fruits and excrete the sticky seeds when perching on the branches of shrubs and trees. These seeds are excreted stuck together, as the gummy covering that originally covered the seeds remain intact when passing through the digestive...
12/03/07 -
The Infinite Sphere - Lots going on lately... one of the most interesting items that's hit the national news is the southern "water wars." I've spent a lot of time reading about water resource issues, but usually when people are fighting over water, it's usually out west. Here where I live, water seems abundant. I live within an hour of two major river systems. I drive over dozens of creeks on my way to work. We...
12/03/07 -
Island of Doubt - "It" is the great geoengineering debate. And the stakes have never been higher. The basics are ably described by Chris Mooney and his blog partner Sheril Kirshenbaum has already supplied a less-than-appreciative response. Even though there are still a good number of misinformed folks out there who can't accept the reality of climate change, some sectors of the scientific community have already...
11/30/07 -
Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog - War can be disastrous for the environment. Think about forest destruction in Kurdistan or burning oil wells in Iraq. But we know very little about agrobiodiversity losses caused by armed conflict. Some time ago, a team of geographers wrote an alarming article about maize biodiversity in Guatemala, where a war raged in the 1980s. They claimed that war and modernization had caused a massive disappearance...
11/30/07 -
Scientific Blogging - It's hard to say when scientists realized that policy makers were not always going to make the best decisions regarding science funding but a safe bet would be somewhere before 3,000 BC. In the intervening 5,000 years, not a lot has changed in how well scientists, politicians and the public really understand each other. A week doesn't go by when there isn't an article lamenting that one...
11/30/07 -
Google Public Policy - Barack Obama added another "first" to his already notable list yesterday: he became the first U.S. presidential candidate -- and, I'm guessing, the first high-level elected official in any country -- to have a ready answer to a standard Google engineering interview question. Asked by Eric Schmidt about "the most efficient way to sort a million 32-bit integers," Sen. Obama replied that "the bubble...
11/30/07 -
Media Shift - How much do online marketers and websites know about us? Do they save records on what we’ve bought, sites we’ve visited, people we’ve contacted? It’s a subject that few of us bother with until we find out our private information has been stolen or inadvertently been made public. And privacy concerns have been front and center lately as MySpace and Facebook have announced new ad targeting...
11/30/07 -
Nanoscience and Nanosociety - The Financial Times has run a piece by a senior analyst at the UK's National Endowment for Science, Technology, and the Arts. He says that while the US has appeared "to be attracting the world's next generation of scientists and engineers . . . there was one country whose citizens did not find the US attractive enough to pursue a career in science and engineering: the US itself." The author, Sami...
11/29/07 -
Grist Grill - I used to love to start my writing day by taking a poke or two at the corn-based ethanol industry -- you know, the biggest greenwash ever. An acre of corn can yeild 300 gallons or ethanol Photo: mrobenalt These days, the debunking of corn fuel almost seems like it's piling on. Today, two major newspapers -- the LA Times and The Wall Street Journal -- ran front-page stories that essentially...
11/28/07 -
Trumed - Quick story. My M1 class just finished a lecture on contemporary and alternative medicine. A classmate and friend said, "I don't understand why people buy into that Chinese medicine and stuff. I mean, I'm a scientist. I can't justify a treatment if I can't see what's going on in the body." So I quickly launched to an explanation of how TCM doctors understand their illnessness in the forms of...
11/28/07 -
Not Exactly Rocket Science - Spadefoot toads seek mates from other species under times of drought.When it comes to sex, it makes sense to stick to your own species. Even putting aside our own innate revulsion, inter-species liaisons are a bad idea because they mostly fail to produce any young. In the few instances they do, the hybrid progeny aren’t exactly racing ahead in the survival stakes and are often sterile (think...
11/28/07 -
Grrl Scientist - Going Home Again: How Migrating Birds Detect The Earth's Magnetic Field Category: Behavior • Birds • Ornithology • Zoology Posted on: November 7, 2007 4:16 PM, by "GrrlScientist" tags: bpr3.org/?p=52, birds, migration, cryptochrome, blue light, garden warbler, Sylvia borin, magnetic compass, avian cryptochrome 1a, ornithology Garden Warbler, Sylvia borin (Boddaert, 1783) Blakeney...
11/28/07 -
A Mars Odyssey - “The use of this technology is not only essential for the future of curbing the spread of infectious diseases,” explains John Haynes, public health program manager for the NASA Earth Science Applied Sciences Program. “NASA satellites are also a cost-effective method for operational agencies since they are already in orbit and in use by scientists to collect data about the Earth’s...
11/28/07 -
Hospital Impact - This is easily the most frequently asked question I get at healthcare conferences. I usually answer this by asking another question: what's the best way for the hospital to utilize the web to engage your stakeholders? The web is quickly becoming the place where conversations happen and perceptions are being formed. And new technologies make it easier than ever to be a part of that conversation....
11/28/07 -
A Cosmopolitan - I was away up north by Barrie yesterday (about a two hour drive - while speeding, from where I am in Waterloo) helping out a friend of one of my professors as part of his experiment. His whole plan is to bring archaeological techniques into forensic searches of houses since sometimes house fires can be used to disguise murders. Since current fire marshal sweeps are not as effective he was using...
11/26/07 -
Running a Hospital - Reply from one of our doctors People often ask me how our doctors feel about the things I post on this blog. The answer, of course, is as varied as our faculty, and -- trust me -- our faculty is not the least bit shy about letting me know how they feel. After I wrote a post on safety and quality a couple of weeks ago, one of our doctors wrote me the following note. I'd like to share it with you...
11/26/07 -
Surgeon's Blog - Inside a vein, it's always perfect. No matter the state of the rest of the body, when you open a vein and look inside it's smooth and shiny and slippery. The inner wall glistens and lavishes the eye with a creamy-khaki surface. Not that it's common to get into one on purpose: but for things as minor as a cut-down (directly opening a vein to insert a large IV), or as major as a portal-vein...
11/26/07 -
Crooked Timber - For a little project I’m working on I have to write something on cloning, and in particular debates about whether reproductive cloning should be legalised. It isn’t really my area of expertise, so I don’t want to form sweeping judgments too quickly. But at first glance at the literature all of the arguments for banning reproductive cloning look absolutely awful. (With perhaps one exception,...
11/26/07 -
Agricultural Biodiversity - Monopoly happens when there is only one seller for a certain product. Monopsony, this week’s new word, happens when there is only one buyer. And when this happens, it is also likely that this single buyer will impose some rigid standards. And then the industrial buyer makes fake diversity by making slightly different mixes of standard components:...
11/26/07 -
Math Trek - Abstraction lies at the heart of mathematics. It makes math powerful, but at the same time, it can make math hard to understand. Abstraction makes math simultaneously beautiful and austere, useful and esoteric. But a picture can tame the mad monster of abstraction, and sometimes, a video can do so even better. Now, a pair of mathematicians has created a video (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JX3VmDgiFnY)...
11/26/07 -
Vertebrate Paleontology - To the paleontologist, gaps represent mysteries yet to be solved. And there is no greater gap in the fossil record than the origin of bats. Recently, at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology's annual meetings in Austin, Drs. Greg Gunnell, Nancy Simmons and Thomas Eiting hosted a symposium on the evolutionary history of bats. The panel of experts presented a series of presentations detailing the...
11/22/07 -
Healthcare Economist - Yes because for medical procedures which are 1) fairly routine, 2) of relatively low risk and 3) where the patient has a high quality of information regarding the cost and benefits of the procedure, the internet can provide an important means of disseminating information and driving down price. Dentist visits are predictable and quality is relatively easy to measure. Thus using these websites will...
11/22/07 -
advanced nano - They will have roll to roll printing of computers. This is clearly a process that will get even better as the design rules shrink and as they use faster printing technology like Memjet This technology also has implications for better fabbers, rapid prototyping and rapid manufacturing over the next few years. This could foreshadow some prior to nanofactories style breakthroughs. New near-nanotech...
11/22/07 -
grunt doc - The patient had been struck on his dominant index finger with a big pipe, twice. The force of at least one of the impacts blew out a big chunk of the bone of the finger, and the arteries (and apparently nerves along with them), but left the skin behind. By ‘blew-out’ I mean there was a big laceration on both sides of the finger, but it looked like a (pale, dusky, insensate) finger. A conversation...
11/21/07 -
Effect Measure - Air pollution exists in two physical forms: as a gas (molecules) and as particles (usually heterogeneous agglomerations of huge numbers of molecules stuck together). Particles in the air are also called aerosols. Depending upon their size (really their aerodynamic behavior), their abundance and their composition, they can affect our lungs, vegetation or visibility. They can come from anywhere....
11/21/07 -
Agonist - So, when the first study came out, everyone jumped on it and acted as if it were true. A large number of children were medicated, and the end result, it appears, is a lot of stunted kids whose ADHD wasn't helped either. Of course, we don't have any other study like this to compare to either. The researchers in question do deserve credit for invalidating their own results, mind you. A lot of...
11/21/07 -
philosophy of brains - As far as I know, the modern debate ab out folk psychology begins with Wilfrid Sellars's view that folk psychology is a proto-scientific theory. For a while, the whole debate was over whether such a theory was mostly correct or incorrect, reducible or irreducible to lower-level theories. Then in the 1970s, psychologists (and primatologists) picked up on the idea and developed a whole empirical...
11/20/07 -
Science Progress Blog - In order to arrive at a sound conclusion about the brain regions activated for given mental states, researchers must design experiments with carefully controlled variables, large sample sizes, and lots of repetition. That’s why the most solid brain imaging data cover attention and memory, whereas sexier topics like politics, religion, and consumer choice do not lend themselves to the pithy and...
11/20/07 -
mozam blog - Everyone understands how medical practitioners (doctors, MAs, NPs, etc.) can help people. Also, you may be familiar with the role of community outreach. For instance, we have people here whose job it is to take medicine and food to people who aren’t able to leave their homes. They also go find people who haven’t shown up for their appointments for whatever reason (it’s too far to travel,...
11/20/07 -
mitpress - Environmental sustainability on college campuses throughout the country has been gaining greater visibility in the last few years. Oberlin College started the trend of eco-building and sustainable design with its construction in 1999 of the Adam Joseph Lewis Center. In the current issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, an article by Scott Carlson highlights Ithaca College’s construction...
11/19/07 -
Bio Ethics blog - The Democrats running for the presidential nomination got together in Las Vegas Wednesday for another debate. We've pulled highlights from the transcript that might be of interest here at our little intersection of the web. Topics included universal health care, Medicare funding, torture and birth control. The breakdown is after the jump....
11/19/07 -
From Cairo - I'll try to make the argument here as short as possible because I need to go to bed, but the topic is sure worth a much longer post than this. Why are we not encouraging enough women to pursue engineering careers in Egypt? The question is not, why is there not enough women in engineering? Or why is Egypt different? The first question is applicable everywhere, not just in Egypt, so Egypt is not...
11/19/07 -
Engineering Ethics blog - Bridges are not supposed to fall down. But last August 1, the 1,900-foot-long bridge that carried I-35W over the Mississippi in Minneapolis came apart and landed in the river, carrying thirteen people to their highly unexpected deaths. We fear dying from a lot of things, but it is safe to say that nobody on that bridge that day spent a lot of time worrying about whether they would die as an...
11/16/07 -
Daily Galaxy - A laid-back surfer has just drawn up a new theory of the universe that is blowing the establishment’s socks off. His theory is seen by some as the “Holy Grail of physics”, and is earning rave reviews from distinguished scientists. In fact, his model appears to be the elusive overarching explanation to unite all the particles and forces of the cosmos, which has been the most baffling riddle of...
11/16/07 -
Greenie - With all the attention on climate change (and about time), it is easy to forget that there are other global environmental threats which will harm human health and the well-being of all human societies this century. In my view, the one that stands out is the biodiversity contraction that is presently underway. It is incredible to think that the term “biodiversity” only came into existence...
11/16/07 -
Clastic Detritus - Published November 14, 2007 Patagonia , The Accretionary Wedge , fossil , paleontology , patterns , photographs I've taken , sedimentary structures I know it sounds lame to bring out this excuse (yet again) … but it’s the truth! I have to hand in my dissertation to my committee in less than a week and simply don’t have the time for a real post. But…I couldn’t bear not contributing to...
11/16/07 -
Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice, and Sunsets - Words can’t begin to describe what I’m feeling right now. I have a 4-month-old daughter, a boat payment and a dock payment that don’t know there’s an oil spill. The planned income that’s supposed to be there might be gone. These are the words of James Smith, owner and operator of the crab boat California Dawn reflecting on the potential loss of the sport crabbing season as a...
11/16/07 -
Skep Chick - Researchers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have discovered that the universe may weigh 10 to 20% less than previously estimated. It all stems from X-rays astronomers thought were emanating from heavy dust and gases between galaxies, but are actually more likely coming from relatively fit and trim photons and electrons. Less matter also means that there’s less dark matter, all of...
11/16/07 -
Food for Thought - As any pet owner knows, the more food that goes into an animal's mouth, the more wastes that eventually spew out the other end. The bigger the animal, the bigger its appetite. So imagine the volumes of manure—often tainted with germs—that farmers must manage for even a small feedlot with perhaps 3,500 head of cattle. Ordinarily, beef producers house their animals in pens—some the size of...
11/14/07 -
Effect Measure - MRSA and agribusiness Category: Antibiotics • Food safety • Infectious disease Posted on: November 8, 2007 4:03 PM, by revere Suppose US agribusiness food animals were being fed a poison that killed a few tens of thousands of Americans a year. Would we want them to stop? Maybe we weren't sure but had more than ample grounds for suspicion. Would we want scientists and the government to be...
11/14/07 -
Nonoscience - in Grad School, I once volunteered to entertain elementary school kids with some fun chemistry* and in the process distributed stickers that said “This is a product of chemistry”, telling the kids that they can stick them on pretty much anything they want, and it would be true. Traditionally we have always divided our understanding or perception of the world into “science” and...
11/14/07 -
Nobel Intent - Last month saw the release of a UN report that paints a very bleak picture of how humans are shepherding natural resources on the planet. One of the greatest causes for concern is our use of fresh water, without which life is impossible. Demands for fresh water come from both agriculture and drinking, with agriculture currently using almost 70 percent of global fresh water. The world's...
11/13/07 -
Geek Doctor - One of the challenges of being a doctor in the 21st century is information overload. More medical literature is published every year than a doctor can read in a lifetime. As electronic health records become more common, doctors can be overwhelmed with data gathered about each patient. Doctors do not want to review hundreds of normal findings, they want to know what is actionable for each of...
11/13/07 -
Genomicron - There has been a lot of discussion on the science blogs about "animal rights" recently. Most of the argument has centered around whether animals are necessary for research, but of course the animal rights movement includes issues such as factory farming, using animals for entertainment, the pet industry, and others. I am a scientist, in particular a zoologist, meaning that I study animals, and of...
11/13/07 -
Science Roll - HopeLab is a non-profit organization that combines rigorous research with innovative solutions to improve the health and quality of life of young people with chronic illness. What does it mean? They’ve created a PC-based video game, Re-Mission which is a 3D shooter with 20 levels that takes the player on a journey through the bodies of young patients with different kinds of cancer. Players control...
11/12/07 -
Tree Hugger - Robert Congel, owner of the Pyramid Cos., says he will build a $450 million, 40-story green hotel as part of the Carousel Center mall. The unnamed hotel will be powered (in part) by electricity generated by its solar panel facade and by hydro-electric turbines utilizing rainwater collected on its roof. It is intended to be the cornerstone of Destiny USA: a 75-million-square-foot retail,...
11/12/07 -
The Tree of Life - There is an article in this Sundays' New York Times by Amy Harmon about prejudice's possibly being revived and stoked by the oncoming personal genomics revolution. I think there is no doubt this is coming. The problem is really two fold in my opinion. First, as reflected in the story, it is pretty clear that despite the claims of some researchers who seem like they simply want to avoid the...
11/12/07 -
Adventures in Computation - Today there was a joint CMU-Microsoft Research workshop on privacy, and it opened up with discussion about various definitions of privacy. 'Privacy' is a word we might use every day, but what do we mean by it? Suppose you had some sensitive piece of information in a large database. What sorts of information about the database would you feel comfortable being released to the public, without a...
11/12/07 -
Boot Strap Analysis - The overpopulation of certain species, whether native or not, can cause problems. When these species are appealing to the public, their control becomes an even bigger challenge. Previously, I discussed these issues in regards to White-tailed Deer and Mute Swans. We can finish of the hat trick with the problems surrounding resident, or Giant, Canada Geese (Branta canadensis maxima), the largest...
11/12/07 -
Corante - I just came across this article, provacatively titled "Dumber in English". What the author, Stefan Klein, really means is "Dumber In Your Second Language", and he's almost certainly right about that. I know that when I was doing my post-doc in Germany, I was significantly less nimble in German. I didn't have much practice in the language, and that meant a lot of mental overhead while using...
11/11/07 -
Around the Clock - But seriously now, the question of authorship on scientific papers is an important question. For centuries, every paper was a single-author paper. Moreover, each was thousands of pages long and leather-bound. But now, when science has become such a collaborative enterprise and single-author papers are becoming a rarity, when a 12-author paper turns no heads and 100-author papers are showing...
11/10/07 -
Adrian Wajsbrem - SeaGen, a subsidiary of Marine Current Turbines, is installing the largest tidal-stream generator off the coast of Northern Ireland for completion by the end of the year. Generating 1.2 Megawatts, enough to power 1000 homes, it will be the largest such generator to date with its twin-turbines and is considered a commercial prototype of larger planned projects....
11/10/07 -
Numb3rs - Mathematicians and scientists in general tend to have a kind of realist/idealist conception of the world. That is, they believe that there is an external world independent of our mind(s), and that this world is knowable via observation and logical deduction. In support of this belief they point to the fact that observation and logical deduction have produced theories which have predictive...
11/09/07 -
The Gene Sherpa - Thanks again to Bertalan Mesko for putting the Sherpa on the Map at the Gene Genie. Number 19 is up at his blog Scienceroll. A nice Texan tells us about our 95% "Junk" and the 0% in the Puffer Fish. More importantly today I read a verification of what I already know. The United States population is fed up with our healthcare system. Is that a surprise to anyone? I know that the patient is...
11/08/07 -
vita beat - China's Health Ministry, through the Red Cross Blood Center (RCBC) in Beijing urged the public to contribute their share to fill up 400 units of 200-ml rhesus (Rh) negative blood type stocks needed for the Olympic Games set in the country next year. The Rh-negative blood type, which is dominant among Caucasians and Westerners, is said to be very rare in China and only account for 0.3 percent of...
11/08/07 -
strudel - OK, I thought I would start with something relatively simple; observe Saturn through a good amateur telescope. Most amateur astronomers have probably already done this and for many this is what first got them hooked on astronomy in the first place. There is something magical about the very first time you see Saturn and its rings through an 8 or 10 inch diameter telescope. Perhaps the excitement is...
11/08/07 -
West of House - I have always thought that archeology very often borders directly to grave robbery and desecration. Does it really make a difference whether the deceased was buried last week or laid to rest 2000 years ago? Does somebody´ s wish to learn more about the past justify taking people out of their graces who clearly wished to remain there until the end of days? Are we allowed to just rob graves only...
11/07/07 -
Pharmalot - Yes, America’s tweenies more than doubled their use of type-2 diabetes medications between 2002 and 2005, with girls between 10 and 14 years of age showing a 166 percent increase, according to the Saint Louis University School of Medicine and Express Scripts, which presented the data this morning at the American Public Health Association meeting in Washington DC. The academics and their PBM...
11/07/07 -
Health Bolt - Snakes have been getting a bad rap since that whole Eve debacle. While woman hath borne the brunt of oppression and scrunchies, the snake has become synonymous with all that is deceitful, fake, and worthless. As it turns out, snake oil offers real medicinal value, and you don’t even have to eat an apple. I like underdogs and I like underbellies even better. Let’s explore the ins and outs...
11/07/07 -
Silicon Valley Mom's Blog - I have been reading with interest about the continent-sized patch of garbage floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. This conglomeration of flotsam that's twice the size of Texas (just let that marinate for a moment) largely consists of plastic waste: bottles and bags that make their way through our sewers and storm drains and into...
11/06/07 -
eye on dna - Not everyone is thrilled with the idea of transgenic animals. In the US, animal rights activists vandalized UCLA scientist Edyth London’s home and caused extensive damage. She and her colleagues conducting research on animals have been harrassed and threatened with violence for years. In the UK, animal welfare groups want researchers to find other ways to conduct research even as the number of...
11/06/07 -
MathTrek - Firefighters are constantly trying to predict what a fire will do next, and a wrong guess can lead to death. Now, a group of mathematicians and scientists is working to provide a new tool for making more accurate predictions. The new model is based on a fundamental and longstanding observation that the Santa Ana winds powering the recent conflagration in Southern California emphasize: weather is...
11/06/07 -
blogfish - A 405 year old clam is the new oldest animal, but someone has probably eaten an older clam since most end up in chowder. Anyone for some ancient clam chowder? The ocean quahog is a clam that lives upwards of several hundred years. Fishermen use dredges to scoop them out of the sand, and turn them into clam chowder. Without knowing, you may have eaten a 500 year old clam. The real fate of the...
11/06/07 -
Grist - In his 1996 book Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom, the great food anthropologist Sidney Mintz concluded that the United States had no cuisine. Interestingly, Mintz's definition of cuisine came down to conversation. For Mintz, Americans just didn't engage in passionate talk about food. Unlike the southwest French and their cassoulet, most Americans don't obsess and quarrel about what comprises, say,...
11/06/07 -
A Mad Tea Party - This is the introduction to a series of posts about viruses. I’ve been browsing through science blogs and carnivals, and have noticed that there are very few dedicated to the fascinating and immensely diverse group of microorganisms known as viruses. As a virologist, I now feel compelled to contribute to the representation of my field in the scientific blogosphere. So, I am starting...
11/06/07 -
Wench Wisdom - Now that we know the root cause of chronic illness, and we know that a government-sponsored health care bailout plan isn’t going to help in any way, shape, or form (let alone a private plan), let’s set out to make a plan for our own long-term recovery and health insurance (or rather, ensurance). Let’s call it a health problem retirement plan, only it doesn’t have an IRA component....
11/04/07 -
Doc Searls - Jewgenics: Jewish intelligence, Jewish genes, and Jewish values is the latest by William Saletan in Slate. If you can, ignore the ethnic side of the story and concentrate on this excerpt: Entine laid out the data. The average IQ of Ashkenazi Jews is 107 to 115, well above the human average of 100. Note the word “data”. Saletan accepts it without question. So do most of us. Since the...
11/04/07 -
NeuroPhilosophy - Researchers from the Biomedical Engineering Laboratory at Keio University in Japan have developed a brain-computer interface that enables users to control the movements of Second Life avatars without moving a muscle. The device consists of a headset containing electrodes which monitor electrical activity in the motor cortex, the region of the brain involved in planning, executing and controlling...
11/04/07 -
Stuartatk - While footage of shuttle launches still - usually - makes the news, probably because they are full of drama and fire and cool roaring sounds, and only take a few seconds to show inbetween clips of pampered footballers of lying politicians - the activities of shuttle crews on-orbit aren't quite so headline-grabbing. Many people use the word "routine" to describe missions to the International Space...
11/02/07 -
Health Populi - Instead of ratings on decor, food, service and pricing, Zagat will review WellPoint physicians on availability, communication, trust and office environment. Like the Zagat guides on hospitality, the WellPoint physician reports will include anecdotal quotes from patients. And just like the city-based series of reports for foodies and travelers, all data in the Zagat's WellPoint reviews will be...
11/02/07 -
Centauri Dreams - Because dark matter has never been directly observed, we’re left trying to figure it out using deductions based on its presumed effects on visible matter. Seven dwarf satellite galaxies of the Milky Way — Carina, Draco, Fornax, Leo I, Leo II, Sculptor and Sextans — offer a case in point. Stars in these galaxies do not move more slowly the farther they are from their galaxy’s core. Is dark...
11/02/07 -
white coat rants - If we equate ordering too many tests with “defensive medicine,” here’s another reason that physicians practice defensive medicine: patient perceptions Some patients have significant misperceptions about the way medicine is, or should be, practiced. Even if these patients have no basis for their misperceptions, all they need to do is complain about an emergency physician and the doctor will...
11/01/07 -
Scifun - Every autumn across the Northern Hemisphere, diminishing daylight hours and falling temperatures induce trees to prepare for winter. In these preparations, they shed billions of tons of leaves. In certain regions, such as our own, the shedding of leaves is preceded by a spectacular color show. Formerly green leaves turn to brilliant shades of yellow, orange, and red. These color changes are the...
11/01/07 -
Sharp Brains - Over the last year we have interviewed a number of leading brain health and fitness scientists and practitioners worldwide to learn about their research and thoughts, and have news to report. What can we say today that we couldn't have said only 10 years ago? That what neuroscience pioneer Santiago Ramon ySantiago Ramon y Cajal Cajal claimed in the XX century, "Every man can, if he so desires,...
11/01/07 -
Mental Hope News - Michael drinks to quiet the voices in his head. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, plus bipolar and borderline personality disorders in his early 20s, he has been in and out of jail dozens of times during his adult life, all for alcohol-related offenses, his family said. “The thing about the voices is that they get really bad when I get bored,” he said in a phone interview from the...
10/31/07 -
technizzel - Princeton undergraduates who have engineered a self-driving car designed to navigate city streets without human help have been selected as semifinalists in a hotly contested Pentagon competition with top prizes worth $3.5 million. The Princeton team was among 36 semifinalists named last week by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in its “Urban Challenge” — a competition whose...
10/31/07 -
Henry Simon - Here, Mark et al begin to explore a rather important issue in historical linguistics: how fast do words evolve? To put it simply, one common way of inferring historical relationships between languages is by looking for systematic sound correspondences in words. For example, the English word for “water” is related to the German word “wasser” by a simple sound change from “t” to “s”....
10/31/07 -
psychcentral - Just in case you had any doubts that there are a great deal of politics and money involved in healthcare, look no further than some the entries posted by psychologist Bruce Levin over at the Huffington Post. Furious Seasons has the full coverage. I feel profession bashing is too easy to do, and you have to take as good as you give. For instance, psychologists shouldn’t be proud of their own...
10/31/07 -
grist mill - For years, studies showed no nutritional difference between organic and conventionally grown food. That's because scientists were looking at macronutrients -- vitamins A, B, C, and so on. But they've since learned that macronutrients are only part of the nutrition story. It turns out that there are all sorts of compounds like antioxidants and phytonutrients -- known collectively as micronutrients...
10/31/07 -
angry toxicologist - From a pragmatic standpoint (where the neddle hits the arm so to speak), vaccines save lives and prevent illness. Even if you read some book and believe everything in there, the risk benefit works out in the vaccines' favor. As to the schedule, doctors have to have a schedule so 1) they don't forget so you don't forget, and 2) so everything is done in a safe manner (i.e. every doctor can't sit down...
10/29/07 -
Check Biotech - Almost everyone has heard of, or experienced, the side effects of cancer chemotherapy. Now a laboratory at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia has described a plant- derived protein, which could soon be used as an anti- cancer vaccine, thus reducing the number of people who would need chemotherapy. Colon cancer, also called colorectal cancer, includes malignant cell growth in the colon,...
10/29/07 -
Astro Airynothing - Regular readers will know that I've questioned why I want a PhD, so the (relatively) recent discussion at In the Pipeline and A scientist's life about whether it's worth getting a PhD struck a chord with me. In the discussion at A Scientist's Life, Lou says: If you have to think whether or not to do a Ph.D. or not, maybe you shouldn't do it. Because you'll know if you really want...
10/29/07 -
Math Treck - Predicting the future is not very hard, according to Bruce Bueno de Mesquita: a little mathematics is all you need. Figuring out how to manipulate a situation to achieve specific aims is a bit less straightforward, but Bueno de Mesquita says his mathematical tools can usually do that, too. The New York University political science professor has developed a computerized game theory model...
10/28/07 -
eye on dna - In the UK, the Association of Chief Police Officers suggested collecting DNA from police officers earlier this year. And in 2004, Victoria Police in Australia were also considering a similar measure. They claimed DNA would be one way to crackdown on corruption. And in fact, an interview with Assistant Commissioner at the Ethical Standards Department, Kieran Walsh, claimed that lie detector tests...
10/28/07 -
Die Eigenheit - Naturally, I was curious about the implications. What has this meant to me, if anything, in terms of, e.g., my personality, my perceptions of the world, and my intellectual development? Sadly, there's not a lot of info out there to help me answer such questions. Wikipedia's relevant entry concerns only the corpus callosum's complete agenesis, which is associated with some pretty severe developmental...
10/28/07 -
green gabbro - This image, originally created by Nobuyuki Kayahara, is a great scientific personality test. If you see the dancer spinning clockwise, you’ve got excess spleen qi in your left frontal crockus. This means that you’re a vibrant personality whose passions are apparent to everyone around you, but sometimes you are indecisive. If you see her spinning counter-clockwise, the right ascension of your...
10/26/07 -
Cato@Liberty - A couple of weeks ago, the Secretary of Agriculture proudly gave the Chief of the Forest Service an award for “exemplary leadership and accomplishment in reducing the risk of catastrophic fire to both the wildland and Wildland Urban Interface areas through the U.S. Forest Service Hazardous Fuels Program supporting the President’s Healthy Forests Initiative.” This award would be ironic even...
10/26/07 -
Tech Medicine - Sermo's CEO, Dr. Daniel Palestrant, invited users in New York City out to dinner near Times Square last week. (Sermo is the largest online community for physicians, allowing doctors to ask each other questions, vote on answers, and post comments. Some questions are also asked by clients, primarily Wall Street firms, which pay physicians for their answers through Sermo.) Palestrant, the CEO and...
10/26/07 -
Cotch.Net - Over the next few years or decades, traditional antibiotics will largely be replaced by bacteriophages. Like everything in biology and medicine, this is ultimately down to evolution. Pathogenic bacteria are alive: they reproduce, with slight imperfections, and are therefore subject to selection. Because antibiotics are a potentially fatal environmental variable, they make an incredibly strong...
10/26/07 -
Zooillogix - Scientists at the University of Puerto Rico have discovered that sea cucumbers heal better than most animals in the world by directing their healing abilities toward their organs first. Scientists have long known that sea cucumbers belong to an exclusive group of creatures that is capable of both healing their wounds and regenerating parts of their body. The finding is particularly interesting...
10/26/07 -
Distractible - I write quite a bit about what is involved in the task of being a doctor. It is a demanding, yet rewarding job. It takes a ton of emotion and a ton of yourself put into what you do to be a good and conscientious physician - especially in my field of primary care. I must also note that the same is required of any profession requiring significant contact with patients, specifically nursing. Perhaps...
10/26/07 -
Twisted Physics - SoundjenlucLast Christmas I bought my youngest niece, Cami, her very own iPod Nano, much to the relief of her older siblings, who were tired of Cami constantly "borrowing" theirs. Her reaction was priceless: she gasped, she squealed, tears came to her eyes, she hugged the little device to her chest with eyes cast heavenward in gratitude. (I predict a stellar career as an actress when she grows...
10/24/07 -
Neatorama - What would happen if you stay awake, say, oh for 11 days straight? Would you suffer brain damage or even die? Here’s the story of a high school stunt that turned into a real scientific research into sleep deprivation from Alex Boese’s Elephants on Acid and Other Bizarre Experiments. Bruce McAllister (left) and Joe Marciano Jr. (right) help Randy Gardner stay awake as he gets a checkup...
10/24/07 -
Autism Vox - A 6′ wide by 4′ deep space with a duvet cover stuffed with foam blocks on the floor, surrounded by concrete walls, dimly lit, and with a 2-to-3-foot gap amid a barrier of storage bins: Would you consider this a “safe” place? Would you consider this a place for a child—-a special needs child; an autistic child; an autistic child who is very upset; an autistic child who is very upset and is...
10/24/07 -
A Mad Tea-Party - A recent Nature article entitled "Dengue Fever Climbs the Social Ladder" has brought attention to a viral disease that is endemic in many tropical countries, but is little known here. The article discusses how the increasing wealth of dengue fever patients in Asia is driving new efforts by drug companies to develop a vaccine, and highlights some troubling, if not surprising, issues regarding...
10/24/07 -
Bio Singularity - A study by scientists at UCL (University College London) shows that mice lacking the insulin receptor substrate (IRS)-1 are more resistant to ageing than normal mice. The research adds to a growing body of work showing the importance of insulin signalling pathways as an ageing mechanism in mammals – and potentially humans. The team studied ‘knock-out’ mice engineered to lack either insulin...
10/23/07 -
Tobacco Analysis - In this post, I address two questions that have been asked by a number of readers and by several reporters since the publication of my article in Epidemiologic Perspectives & Innovations, which concludes that many anti-smoking groups are misrepresenting the acute cardiovascular health effects of secondhand smoke: 1. Did this misrepresentation of the science just start, or has it been going on...
10/23/07 -
Grrrl Scientist - Weirdly, I just learned that recovering alcoholics, especially those who are early in the recovery process, are recommended to eat chocolate to curb their craving for alcohol. According to my sources, this recommendation is included in the book, Alcoholics Anonymous, which is also known as "The Big Book" to those who are in recovery. Why is this? Some people hypothesize that chocolate is...
10/22/07 -
notes from the field - National polls indicate that US children and teenagers play outdoors less than young people did in the past. Between 1997 and 2003, the proportion of children ages 9 to 12 who spent time hiking, walking, fishing, playing on the beach or gardening declined 50 percent, according to a University of Maryland study. Here in spectacular California, home of Yosemite, Lake Tahoe, mountains, deserts, amazing...
10/22/07 -
universe of success - Alternate realities or parallel universes for anyone who has never heard of these concepts before are another reality that seems to run parallel to the reality you currently live in. The idea of an alternative reality to the reality you are currently living in would exist if you made a different choice somewhere during the course of your life. Of course we are making choices constantly, all day and...
10/22/07 -
switchboard - I've been meaning to write about a ludicrous opinion piece that appeared in the Washington Post this past weekend. The authors claim that what will really help us address our energy and climate problems is land-development that is even more sprawling, as long as we plant some trees along the way. The main thing that gets under my skin about articles like this is the false dichotomy they create:...
10/19/07 -
tetrapod zoology - Like the hemiphractids we saw yesterday, smooth horned frogs are wide-skulled ambush predators that hide on forest floors in tropical South American forests, specifically those of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. With fleshy growths that extend from bony frontoparietal crests and with tubercles and nodules on their body and limbs, they mimic the leaf litter that they hide amongst and are highly...
10/19/07 -
mary meets dolly - Mary Meets Dolly is a website that helps shine a Catholic light on contemporary happenings in genetics, genetic engineering, and biotechnology. Why “Mary Meets Dolly”? Dolly the sheep was the first mammal cloned from adult tissue (specifically, from a mammary cell of a grown ewe). Before Dolly, cloning an adult organism was thought to be impossible. With her birth came all the possibilities...
10/19/07 -
better humans - It works because mind mapping is more sympathetic to the way in which the human brain operates. Our minds do not organize data in the same way we typically structure notes or arrange to do lists. Rather, we like to conceptualize things in a more graphical or symbolic manner, which results in better and more intuitive conceptualization. Further mind maps double as a mnemonic device as elements are...
10/18/07 -
Greg Laden - canceled James Watson (see this) of DNA fame was slated to speak on Friday at London’s Science Museum. Earlier this week he made remarks asserting that humanity can be divided into different groups, with one or more groups being intellectually superior to other groups (a so-called “White” group is in superior group, a “Black” group is the inferior group) and specifically, that...
10/18/07 -
Shrink Wrapped - Our culture is steeped in sexuality, with the result that too many children grow up with a pervasive over-stimulation which is damaging to the young, developing psyche. The results of such traumatic over-stimulation can include psychic numbing, devaluation of relationships in favor of hedonic sexuality, poorly differentiated sexuality which, again, devalues relationships, and various other...
10/18/07 -
Science Blogs - Whatever criticisms I may have had for prominent atheists like Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris otherwise, one area that I'm totally down with both of them on is their criticism of the undue respect and consideration we as a society give to religious ideas. This consideration is rarely, if ever, based on the merit of the ideas, but rather solely because they are religious ideas. Many of these...
10/17/07 -
Microecos - The name means something like “giant chief lizard…brought to you by Duke Energy.” The genus name comes from Mapudungun, the indigenous South American language that also gave us Mapusaurus, yet another example of the trend to defer to local linguistic traditions when christening (linnaeusing?) a new fossil taxon. Here’s the BBC on Futalognkosaurus dukei a recently described, absurdly...
10/17/07 -
Focs - This blog was founded to collect answers to one question. Richard Hamming asked it in his speech “You and your research”. His talk was more general, but it is a really good question and i applied it to my field. What are most important problems in computer science? I sent out lots of email to famous and not so famous people. You can read all replies on their own, but this is my...
10/17/07 -
Clastic Detritus - Ah yes…gravity…it’s responsible for the coalescence of material to form our planet, it is a fundamental force in our universe (it also makes alpine skiing so much more fun than cross-country), yet it is also constantly trying to destroy us and the stuff we build. It is relentless. Sometimes slowly and imperceptibly, sometimes abruptly and spectacularly. Gravity, with the aid of weathering and...
10/16/07 -
Science Blog - A new review of inpatient data from US hospitals shows that the number of infections caused by a common bacterium increased by over 7 percent each year from 1998 to 2003. The attendant economic burden to hospitals increased by nearly 12 percent annually. The research is published in the November 1 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases, now available online. Staphylococcus aureus (also known as...
10/16/07 -
Scapel or Sword - One of the world's foremost meteorologists has called the theory that helped Al Gore share the Nobel Peace Prize "ridiculous" and the product of "people who don't understand how the atmosphere works". Dr. William Gray, a pioneer in the science of seasonal hurricane forecasts, told a packed lecture hall at the University of North Carolina that humans were not responsible for the warming of the...
10/16/07 -
The Loom - We do a pretty good job at appreciating the visible intricacies of nature: the antennae and legs and claws of a lobster, the geometrical order of the spots on a butterfly's wings. But a lot of nature's intricacies are hidden away inside single-celled creatures, such as the baker's yeast that makes bread rise and beer ferment. At an audition for a David Attenborough documentary, a yeast cell guzzling...
10/15/07 -
robo singularity - A classic science-fiction scene shows a person wearing a metal skullcap with electrodes sticking out to detect the person’s thoughts. Another sci-fi movie standard depicts robots doing humans’ bidding. Now the two are combined, and in real life: University of Washington researchers can control the movement of a humanoid robot with signals from a human brain. Rajesh Rao, associate professor...
10/15/07 -
Frontal Cortex - he second variable is what we'll call "the fairness instinct". People have a strong aversion to inequitable outcomes. The authors of this study argue that chimps might have a lessened aversion to acts of unfairness. But there are several other studies which have concluded that the fairness instinct is a basic element of primate morality. Consider this experiment from Franz Waals and Sarah Brosnan,...
10/15/07 -
Not Exactly Rocket Science - Science fiction loves to play off the potential threat of threat of alien viruses. But a new study suggests that space travellers are much more likely to be threatened by germs from our own planet that become more virulent in space. The Space Shuttle Atlantis carried some Salmonella as part of an experimentWarding off infections is a real priority for astronauts, especially if longer space missions...
10/14/07 -
Hope for Pandora - Fishing subsidies come in the form of tariffs on imported fish, grants to build boats and pay for fuel, and reduced taxes for fishermen. According to Oceana, this accounts for $30 billion a year given to fishermen that enables the fishing industry to expand capacity beyond its normal capacity. More of the ocean is fished and when fishing occurs in largely unregulated open waters, there is critical...
10/14/07 -
Sharpbrains - According to latest scientific understanding, what we experience as "mind", our Frontal Lobesawareness, emerges from the physical brain. So, if we want to refine our minds, we better start by understanding and training our brains. A very important reality to appreciate: each brain is unique, since it reflects our unique lifetime experiences. Scientists have already shown how even adult brains retain...
10/14/07 -
psy blog - On February 2, 2001 distinguished sleep and dream researcher Professor J. Allan Hobson had a stroke in his brain stem. For 10 days Hobson could neither sleep nor dream. Then he realized the stroke was localized to the exact part of the brain he had been studying experimentally in his sleep research with cats. Call it poetic justice, or just sheer bad luck, either way Hobson approached the experience...
10/12/07 -
Dr. Health - As a woman, reading about an article related to a woman’s body as well as psychological aspect, interest me a lot. As I’ve read about this new article that I’me going to share, it makes me feel responsible to share this to all my readers. It’s something about what we can eat to cut cancer risk Sometimes, some woman or mother rarely has time to cook because they are working. Figuring out...
10/12/07 -
made a difference - The toughest operation we did last night was work on an Iraqi policeman. He had been injured by shrapnel from a suicide bomber. One large fragment had entered his belly, tore holes in his intestine, and came to rest in the plump veins in front of his tailbone. When he rolled into the ER, he waved his arms about aimlessly and scanned the room with wide panic-stricken eyes. He appeared tired and...
10/12/07 -
MathTrek - In Africa's Kalahari Desert as well as some areas around the Mediterranean, trees and bushes grow in clumps scattered in seemingly random locations across an otherwise barren landscape. Two new studies have discovered a fractal pattern in this seeming randomness, and they offer a novel explanation of how it comes about. One study suggests that areas without such a pattern are on the edge of collapse,...
10/11/07 -
Not Exactly Rocket Science - A new study shows that experienced doctors learn to control the part of their brain that allows them to empathise with a patient’s pain, and switch on another area that allows them to control their emotions. Many patients would like their doctors to be more sensitive to their needs. That may be a reasonable request but at a neurological level, we should be glad of a certain amount of...
10/11/07 -
Youth Curry - "Had I known my wife had forgotten her birth control pills, I would've been careful last night." "My husband and I are worried our family planning method might have failed last night." Now what to do? The ad copy explains: Take the I-pill - an emergency 'day after contraceptive pill. You can't miss the hi voltage campaign Cipla has unleashed for its product. What's interesting is how safe...
10/11/07 -
Divine Caroline - Five ingredients come from rocks. This got my attention. However, it only got worse when I discovered that the ingredients come from phosphate mines in Idaho, gypsum mines in Oklahoma, and oil fields in China. Okay, so now I was wondering if I was watching a real news story—come to find out, I was. The Twinkie, which was created during the Depression, contains thirty-nine ingredients. One...
10/11/07 -
The Frontal Cortex - I think the best way to understand these vegetative patients is through the prism of blindsight. (I discuss blindsight in the Virginia Woolf chapter of my forthcoming book.) Before Lawrence Weiskrantz began his investigations in the early 1970's, scientists had assumed that lesions in the primary visual areas (the V1) caused irreparable blindness. They were wrong. Lesions in the V1 only cause...
10/11/07 -
olussier - In the past few years, we have been hearing a lot about global warming and about how it affects the weather. The future does not seem too bright. However, have you ever taken the time to think about how wonderful our dear Earth is? Have you noticed how unique and perfect it is? Our planet is really fine tuned to host life. It orbits around the Sun at an average of 150 millions kilometers. This...
10/11/07 -
universe today - When you look at the amazing pictures captured by Hubble, or the Mars Exploration Rovers, do you ever wonder: is that what you'd really see with your own eyes? The answer, sadly, is probably not. In some cases, such as with the Mars rovers, scientists try and calibrate the rovers to see in "true color", but mostly, colors are chosen to yield the most science. Here's how scientists calibrate their...
10/10/07 -
space files - This meteorite fell on September 15 in a very remote area of Peru, near the community of Carancas, 800 miles from Lima. Claims rose of 200 locals falling ill after visiting the site (they saw the thing on the sky and heard it as well, that's why they were searching for it). Discussion started on many forums about 1 can this be a meteorite crater at all? 2 if yes, what type of meteorite was it? 3...
10/10/07 -
overcoming bias - Traditional Rationality is phrased in terms of social rules, with violations interpretable as cheating - as defections from cooperative norms. If you want me to accept a belief from you, you are obligated to provide me with a certain amount of evidence. If you try to get out of it, we all know you're cheating on your obligation. A theory is obligated to make bold predictions for itself, not...
10/10/07 -
microecos - The ice cream truck trolls down the street promising sweet frozen treats with doppler distorted midified Scott Joplin, as my neighbor hums along. The message is the medium, compressed and rarefied. When our fishapod ancestors first flopped out onto land, they were up against some serious obstacles. One might think that breathing would have presented the greatest difficulty. But, in fact, our...
10/08/07 -
Hot Cup of Joe - During the summer of 2005, a trial began in Italy with the goal of deciding the guilt or innocence of Marion True along with Robert Hecht, Jr in conspiracy to traffic in illegal antiquities. The trial is still underway in Rome and has certainly fulfilled the 2 year prediction some gave. The result is that several museums have already returned antiquities of illicit origin to their countries of...
10/08/07 -
Science Daily - New research suggests that pronouns may play a far greater role than simply replacing a proper name in a sentence. A University of South Carolina study suggests that pronouns help keep the brain’s complex circuitry and limited memory system from being overloaded.Using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging), psychology researcher Dr. Amit Almor and colleagues studied the brain activity of 21...
10/08/07 -
Conspiracy Factory - Horizontal transfer is cool. This is the process whereby cells pick up DNA from other cells that are totally unrelated to them. Bacteria do this all the time. They pick up DNA from viruses and other bacteria and integrate this DNA into their genomes. If it turns out to be useful, it remains in the genome. If not, it's slowly lost over time. People have always assumed that horizontal transfer...
10/08/07 -
That's Fit - Long thought to be an obsolete body part, the appendix is usually quiet and seemingly useless -- unless it gets infected. But researchers from Duke University Medical School believe that they've discovered the appendix was once useful after all. Their theory is that the small organ serves as a factory for healthy bacteria that normally flourish in the gut. If those bacteria were destroyed -- through...
10/08/07 -
Mark Frisse - It is hard to balance the current controversy over SCHIP with the broader and looming catastrophe of rising health care costs for the general population. Intel's CEO, Craig Barrett summarized this broader question in his September, 26 speech to the eHealth Initiative. In it he said: If you look at the annual health care cost increase compared to a couple of other metrics, the War in Iraq,...
10/08/07 -
Advanced NanoTechnology - Many people who are in favor of developing wind energy and solar energy use the argument that nuclear energy is slower to develop. I am in favor of wind energy and solar energy development, but I recognize that there has been less of both than new nuclear power even without new nuclear reactors. The total wind energy in the USA is now at 31 billion kwh. Nuclear is at 780 billion kwh and this increased...
10/06/07 -
JammieWearingFool - Wait until the global warming kooks get a hold of this one. Perish the thought these forlorn people may actually control their own destiny. Not that they can really do anything about it, except maybe to make these poor folks feel guilty. Which, come to think of it, is what liberalism is all about. Melting ice cap brings diamond hunters and hopes of independence to Greenland Helicopters...
10/06/07 -
New Scientist - Helmet on. The steel doors shut, a bell sounds somewhere far below and the cage drops. Within 15 seconds we are travelling at 60 kilometres an hour vertically down into the Earth. Two kilometres down, the air is warmer, muggier, and thicker – air pressure at the bottom of the shaft is twice that at the surface. It's also more radioactive and there are microbes down here whose only source of...
10/06/07 -
NeuroPhilosophy - A team of researchers from Yamaguchi University in Japan has submitted a patent application for an implantable brain cooling device that would be used to develop a new treatment for severe cases of epilepsy. Epilepsy is a condition that is characterised by abnormal electrical activity in the brain. Many epileptics experience seizures, during which they convulse - sometimes violently - before...
10/04/07 -
healthbolt - A swift spanking won’t cut it for you undisciplined souls out there. I’m sorry, but you have senility to look forward to. Or so the headlines would have us believe. Bohemians, free spirits and the generally messy get their comeuppance at last. Some 218 articles (and counting) are proclaiming that Being Less Conscientious May Be a Risk Factor for Alzheimer’s, that the Organised ‘Get...
10/04/07 -
Lawyers, Guns, & Money - The fools who live in my town banded together to reject a ballot measure yesterday that would have returned fluoride to the city's water supply. I wrote about this a few months back, when I was more puzzled than pissed that water fluoridation had generated so much controversy. In the intervening few months, I've been utterly stunned by the raft of bogus arguments lofted against what proved to be...
10/04/07 -
autismvox - Studies that indicate that autism is genetic are often roundly decried by those who believe that autism is caused by vaccines, or thimerasol, or other environmental, “extra-genetic” factors. Remarks such as “there can’t be a genetic epidemic” and “what is causing genes to mutate” are frequently offered. On the other hand, such statements suggest that more education in genetics and its...
10/03/07 -
Biosingularity - A vaccine for treating a recurrent cancer of the central nervous system that occurs primarily in the brain, known as glioma, has shown promising results in preliminary data from a clinical trial at UCSF Medical Center. Findings from the first group of six patients in the study, being conducted at the UCSF Brain Tumor Research Center, showed that vitespen (trademarked as Oncophage), a vaccine made...
10/03/07 -
10000 Birds - Autumn’s equinox heralds far more than just rueful thoughts of what summer might have been. This splendid moment of equipoise between the diurnal and nocturnal sees a myriad of creatures great and small caught up in the relentless throes of zugunruhe. It’s a natural fact, this seasonally recurring restlessness, this implacable urge to migrate. Millions upon millions of birds and insects are...
10/03/07 -
Aufbau Ost - Sunset can hide a lot from the eye. Here it is the complicated and laden subject of hydroelectricity. Just beyond the foot of the mountain on the right is a dam that controls the waterflow of the lake and that creates hydroelectricity that gives the town of Canmore, lying a few kilometers beyond that dam, a lot of its necessary power. It could be argued that dams provide green energy, because no...
10/03/07 -
healthypolicy.typepad.com/ - A new survey has found almost a third of sexually active girls aged 15-19 have gotten pregnant. That number really shocked me, although my shock is surely exacerbated by my upper-middle class upbringing. Sure, I have friends who've gotten pregnant, but not many. I recently heard the story of a girl and her boyfriend who had been having unprotected sex for over two years and she just now got...
10/03/07 -
Science blogs - A team of researchers from Yamaguchi University in Japan has submitted a patent application for an implantable brain cooling device that would be used to develop a new treatment for severe cases of epilepsy. Epilepsy is a condition that is characterised by abnormal electrical activity in the brain. Many epileptics experience seizures, during which they convulse - sometimes violently - before...
10/03/07 -
Bio Singularity - A Princeton-led research group has discovered an isolated community of bacteria nearly two miles underground that derives all of its energy from the decay of radioactive rocks rather than from sunlight. According to members of the team, the finding suggests life might exist in similarly extreme conditions even on other worlds. The self-sustaining bacterial community, which thrives in nutrient-rich...
10/01/07 -
NHS Blog Doctor - George Bernard Shaw was at a party and told a woman that everyone would agree to do anything for money, if the price was high enough. “Surely not,” she said. “Oh yes,” he said, “For instance, would you sleep with me for... for a million pounds?” “Well, maybe for a million I would” “Would you do it for ten shillings?” asked Shaw. “Certainly...
10/01/07 -
iblog - Finally some of the mystery behind left-handedness is being dispelled after scientists from Oxford have found a gene which appears to increase the chances of someone being left-handed. Approximately 10% of all people are left-handed, and now this trait is being attributed to a gene, named LRRTM1, which is said to play a large role in determining which side of the brain performs a certain function. What...
10/01/07 -
Health business blog - Overall, the rich and powerful are highly constrained in their ability to get exceptional service and quality in health care compared to other spheres in their lives. That's one reason that corporate executives are interested in improving the quality and service levels of the US health care system. They are not insulated from commoners in health care the way they are everywhere else. Unlike Huggins,...
09/30/07 -
On Social Marketing and Social Change - I was finally able to sit down with the NEJM article on obesity and social networks on the way to southern Africa last week. I haven’t been paying attention to what the popular media and b’sphere have been saying about the piece, but it turned out to very timely for other things I have been thinking about. Here are my take home messages and some additional thoughts on social networks and social...
09/30/07 -
Burton Mackenzie - I know you already have the technology to do Real-time audio analysis of nation wide distributed networks of computers for the purpose of serving targeted ads. There's lots of people who think this is cool, but scary. It might be a hard sell. Take a different direction and put this technology to use with a new service we would welcome: transcription. Using your enormous computational bandwidth,...
09/30/07 -
BioPeer - The U.S. National Institute for Health Research is investigating a new blood test that might help diagnose, or rule out, heart attacks. Acute chest pain is a common symptom of heart attack, but it is also a symptom of many problems that are less serious. Since current tests aren't able to detect heart attacks quickly, doctors must treat any sign of acute chest pain as an emergency. "Acute chest pain...
09/28/07 -
math trek - To predict where hatred among different groups of people will erupt into violence, you don't need to know the reasons for their grudges. Nor do you need to analyze the local economics, the character of the peoples, or the behavior of neighboring countries, a new mathematical analysis concludes. The study predicts ethnic violence with remarkable accuracy using only one factor: the geographical...
09/28/07 -
scott aaronson - If you want some long, acrimonious flamewars about whether the guy’s PhD should be revoked, whether oral exams should now include declarations of (non)faith, whether Ross is a walking illustration of Searle’s Chinese Room experiment, etc., try here and here. Alas, most of the commentary strikes me as missing a key point: that to give a degree to a bozo like this, provided he indeed did the work,...
09/28/07 -
emprical skeptic - However, the problem was that in his quest for Nobel-laureate-quality sperm, Graham found few men of qualifying substance willing to donate. In the end, this lack of product led to lax requirements of specimen donors and weak, and in some cases no concern with fact-checking, so that a donor’s self reported history was taken as fact on his word of honor alone. Men whose IQs were unknown were passed...
09/28/07 -
primate diaries - Later this year the European Commission is scheduled to redraft the regulations on animal experimentation. This written declaration provides a strong indication of the direction these regulations will take and may well overturn the 21-year policy allowing experiments on non-human primates. The written declaration exceeds those currently in place in Britain that bans great ape experimentation and...
09/28/07 -
food democracy - In 1987, I read Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappé and — primarily for human rights and environmental reasons — went vegan. Two decades later, I still believe that — even leaving aside all the animal welfare issues — a vegan diet is the only reasonable diet for people in the developed world who care about the environment or global poverty. Over the past 20 years, the...
09/28/07 -
cognitive daily - As you can see, the number 17 was picked much more often -- almost 18 percent of the time, compared to the 5 percent you might expect from this sample. But even random numbers aren't perfectly distributed -- if you roll a die 6 times, you most likely won't get one of each number. Perhaps in a truly random sample, we'd see a similar distribution. So I had my computer generate 347 random numbers...
09/26/07 -
grist mill - The BBC World Service just released the results of a poll they did of 22,000 people in 21 countries on attitudes toward global warming. Short story: large majorities believe that human beings are causing global warming, that urgent action needs to be taken to avert it, and that part of that action should be rich countries helping fund the efforts of poor countries. Says GlobeScan President Doug...
09/26/07 -
our bodies our blog - If you're still confused about HRT and its risks and benefits (and aren't we all?), this piece provides a good primer on why the advice on hormone replacement seems to be constantly changing. More than that, though, the article serves as a good starting point for understanding why that news release on breakthrough medicine may not stand the test of time. How can you make sense of medical research...
09/26/07 -
Mixing Memory - In a classic study on analogical reasoning, Gick and Holyoak gave people an analogous story to help them solve the problem. The story involved a general who wanted to attack a the fortress of a ruthless dictator. The fortress had many roads radiating out of it in several directions, but the dictator had the roads mined. The mines would explode if a large force walked over them, but if a small force...
09/25/07 -
discovery enterprise - As expected the GoogleLunarXprize has generated plenty of controversy. Some are dismissing the whole thing as a PR stunt by Google. Others are complaining because their pet projects are not the goal. Lets have a deeper look. David Nolan at Popular Mechanics gives five reasons why the prize won't be won. Clark Lindsey responds to the criticisms but I like to make a few points. The contest does...
09/25/07 -
wallace nichols - Lots of conversations I’ve had recently hinge around the apparent need to pit emotion against reason. My academic and capitalist friends promote the later and my activist friends, through their words, actions and body language, the former. I hear professors guiding their students to beware the pitfalls of advocacy and to employ unbiased science. And business-minded, invisible-hand worshipers...
09/25/07 -
John Carroll - Can the greatest predator in world history still be alive? It is highly unlikely that this shark, which biologists guess grew anywhere between 60 and 80 feet, and had a mouth that could swallow a modern great white whole, could still exist. However, evidence suggests that it became extinct much more recently than previously thought. While some would have you believe that it went extinct 1-2 million...
09/24/07 -
Pioneering Ideas - I've heard the state of health care described in many compelling yet disheartening ways: broken, expensive, inconsistent, complicated. But today I like this one best: health care is a hairball. Although Google suggests others coined the phrase before last Thursday, I credit Wayne Gattinella, CEO of WebMD, for introducing it to me and many of the 500 others attending Health 2.0: User-Generated...
09/24/07 -
Clioaudio - This sets the scene for a controversy around the dredging of a channel through the Ram Sethu. In 2001 the BJP, then the ruling party in India decided a channel through the Ram Sethu might be a good thing. At moment shipping has to travel round Sri Lanka. A channel could cut out a day’s travel so they started a feasibility study. In the past month the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has...
09/24/07 -
bird chick - I'm always amazed at how closely people pay attention to the blog. When I wrote earlier that I was on a tight budget and didn't know if I could go up hawk banding this fall, invitations came from all over for free housing. I am sometimes overwhelmed by friends and their generosity. Another example is what I say I'm going to blog about. While I was having a great time at the banding station, one of...
09/23/07 -
when pigs fly - Just yesterday, a new primitive dromaeosauroid was announced in that finest of scientific journals, Science. This tiny little terror, Mahakala omnogovae, is a Mongolian addition to the Dromaeosauridae, as well as its basalmost member. It seems to have just as many anatomical features in common with primitive birds and primitive troodontids as dromaeosaurs. It's position among the fearsome raptor...
09/23/07 -
faster cures - One of my favorite inspirational quotes is Basil King’s “Be bold and might forces will come to your aid,” though I have to admit I first heard it uttered by the strong and sympathetic mother Frances McDormand in Cameron Crowe’s movie Almost Famous. It is a great sentiment, inspiring, and hopeful. It is the belief that a dramatic act will not be in vain, that some how, somewhere the universe...
09/23/07 -
sun home design - Seeing the words “sustainable” and “green” used without much precision and diluted more and more as advertising adjectives, I’ve been a little obsessed recently with what these words really mean or should mean. For me “sustainable building” speaks to the balance of inputs and outputs within a closed, and resource limited, eco-system, whether it be an island, a continent, or planet...
09/21/07 -
Fixing the pipeline - For a good long time now, a massive piece of patent legislation has been working its way through Congress. It's cleared the House and is on its way to the Senate, so the number of twists and turns it can take is still substantial. And there's no telling if the President will sign it, since the administration has expressed its worries about the bill as it stands. In its current form, this law would...
09/21/07 -
the health blogger - I sit there sometimes, watching how people guzzle down sugar-laden drinks with their food, and can’t help but remember how I used to be one of them. Many of these people are my friends (you know who you are!), they don’t seem to listen to me, maybe this article shall be an eye-opener.Just about everyone has a tap for drinking water at home, right? Well we had a coke tap. We had an inventory of...
09/21/07 -
Deep Sea News - What do they all have in common? Deep-sea coral microbial ecology. Coral microbial ecology is the study of the relationship of coral-associated microorganisms to each other, the coral host, and to their environment. Just as we humans have beneficial bacteria living on our skin and in our intestines, corals also have co-habitating, non-pathogenic microbes (and yes, I AM shooting for the most hyphens...
09/20/07 -
med journal watch - Rachel Carson, one of the greatest environmentalists of all times, would have loved what I report here: In search of a better way to fight malaria, scientists in a region of Kenya have turned away from DDT and used a fish called tilapia instead. Tilapia feeds on mosquito larvae. As a test, tilapias have been introduced in one pond, and a second pond has been left without fish as a control. During...
09/20/07 -
Old Dirt - New Thoughts - Aniakchak is very near to the historic boundary between Unangan (Aleut) and Supiaq or Alutiiq (Pacific Eskimo) peoples. One of our research goals is to determine in what ways this boundary may have changed in the past. What we want to know is who lived in Aniakchak Bay? Were they more closely related to the people of the Aleutian Islands or the Kodiak Archipelago, or was their culture an amalgamation...
09/20/07 -
The Other 95% - During the course of my blogging here, I have become somewhat of a fan of spiders. My previous posts on spiders have focused on their unusual characteristics, such as doing the booty drop, showing off a little bling bling to catch the ladies eye, cutting off a leg to escape predators, and checking their web stats. I have developed an appreciation of spider diversity and behavior through reading...
09/20/07 -
Effect Measure - The bird flu influenza subtype, H5N1, that has been infecting humans with high mortality is the highly pathogenic (HPAI) version of a virus that also exists in a low pathogenic form (LPAI). The high and low path designations refer to effects on poultry, not humans, but only the HPAI versions have been of public health importance. On the other hand, the HPAI strains have all come from LPAI ones via...
09/20/07 -
Shtetl-Optimized - One day a group of physicists ran excitedly into the computer science building. "Guess what?" they cried. "You know how you're always trying to prove lower bounds, but you almost never succeed? Well, today we proved a lower bound!" "What did you prove?" asked the computer scientists. "We proved that to pull a wagon through a forest, you need at least five oxen. It's physically impossible to...
09/20/07 -
Virginia Hughes - A lot of ba-hoo-ey gets thrown around philosophy/psychology circles about what makes us different (read: smarter) than the rest of the animal kingdom. My first college course on animal behavior—where I read about the internal odometers in Saharan desert ants that allow them to pinpoint their nests after foraging for food many miles away; or the termites that cooperate over several generations to...
09/19/07 -
NeuroPhilosophy - At some point in the distant past, there was a dramatic increase in brain size in our hominid ancestors. From approximately 2 million years ago, to the present day, there has been an increase of more than 300% in brain volume in the hominid lineage: the brain of Homo erectus had a volume of about 400 milliliters, while that of modern humans is roughly 1,400 ml. The size of the human brain cannot...
09/19/07 -
GMO Africa - Ever heard of a phrase “food imperialism?” Opponents of modern crop genetic engineering regularly use it to discredit genetically modified (GM) foods, especially in developing countries. Since virtually all agri-biotech companies are U.S.-based, they reckon that they promote the America’s dream of colonizing the global food supply. This argument resonates well with those xenophobic enough...
09/19/07 -
Sentient Developments - A friend of mine recently turned me on to a new way of organizing and conceptualizing data. Called mind mapping, it is a method of note taking that utilizes diagrams which are used to represent words, ideas, tasks or other items linked to and arranged radially around a central key word or idea. Mind maps can be used to generate, visualize, structure and classify ideas. They're also used as an aid...
09/18/07 -
the gene sherpa - This is much more than Personalized Medicine. It is the economic equivalent of the "Organic" movement on bovine growth hormones. Organic healthcare sells to a group who go outside the "mainstream".....But genetics IS soon to become mainstream, unlike Organic/alternative healthcare, which took almost 50 years to gain acceptance. Organic Foods can now be shifted into Molecular foods. This allows them...
09/17/07 -
evolving thoughts - The problem of change goes back a long, long, way. Heraclitus, one of the earliest of the Greek philosophers, famously discussed it, concluding that the only constant is fire, a kind of dynamic empiricist view. Plato reacted by decrying the reality of the sensible world, preferring instead that the true reality are the ideai, or the Forms, and indeed until the end of the medieval period, "realism"...
09/17/07 -
yop2 - What’s the difference between science and magic? It’s our understanding of what makes something happen. If magic is hocus-pocus, science is simply well understood hocus-pocus. Fire? Solar eclipse? Volcanic eruption? Earthquake? Once we can explain it, it becomes science. But sometimes we’re stuck straddling that science/magic line. Consider magnets. Remember when you were a kid back...
09/16/07 -
Engadget - Google's sponsoring a new X Prize, and this one has its sights set a bit higher than suborbital. The new contest wants competitors to send a robotic rover to the moon and beam back a gigabyte of data -- including pictures and video -- of the trip. The rover also has to travel 1,312 feet across the surface of the moon. Contest entrants are required to pony up for the launch vehicle themselves, by...
09/16/07 -
Life on the Lattice - Looking at the physics blogosphere, there is a notable tendency for those blogs that receive the most attention in terms of readers, commenters and incoming links to be physicists' blogs rather than physics blogs. By a physics blog I understand a blog whose contents are devoted to physics, as in physicists advertising their research, teaching the wider public about physics, etc. A physicist's blog,...
09/16/07 -
john quiggin - My main problem has to do with the idea of a strategy and role in equilibrium concepts such as the famous Nash equilibrium. A game outcome is a Nash equilibrium if no player can gain by varying their own strategy, assuming that other players stick to their equilibrium strategy. The problem here is to say what a “strategy” is. In a game like chess or poker, this is easy: the rules say what...
09/14/07 -
Blog Fish - My last grouchy words about New England fishing touched a few nerves with readers. Now that I'm out of Boston (after only 19 hours), and safely ensconced at an undisclosed location in Washington DC, I daresay more. I know passions run high on cod in New England. My good friends, if we can't speak frankly with each other, how will we ever move forward? In that spirit let us go on, with the immortal...
09/14/07 -
shear sensibility - I just finished talking about the interior of the Earth to my intro class. I drew (semi-)concentric circles. I passed around pieces of peridotite from the Alps. I talked about squishiness in the asthenosphere. I made fun of The Core. And I'm willing to bet that on Friday, when I start talking about the tectonic origins of igneous rocks, a large fraction of the class will believe that the mantle...
09/14/07 -
primate diaries - Hamilton also wrote on altruism’s evil twin in his classic 1970 Nature paper “Selfish and Spiteful Behaviour in an Evolutionary Model”. Hamilton suggested that the evolution of spiteful behavior could be selected for in cases where the recipient of the spite was less likely to be related than an average member of their population. This is because, if a spiteful organism goes out of their way...
09/13/07 -
deaf dc blog - I’ve been carrying around this thought with me for the past few weeks. It’s a pretty interesting thought. A bit scary though when I peek a look. It’s a bit intense. It’s a bit confusing. This thought, it whispers boldly, “maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all if Gallaudet closed.” When I first thought it, I blanched with fear and looked quickly over my shoulder. As if maybe people...
09/13/07 -
universe today - Many planetary scientists believe that Jupiter’s moon Europa is our solar system’s best contender to share Earth’s distinction of harboring life. Evidence gathered by the Voyager and Galileo spacecrafts suggests Europa contains a deep, possibly warm ocean of salty water under an outer shell of fissured ice. In a paper published in the July 2007 Journal of Aerospace Engineering a British...
09/12/07 -
Discovering Biology - Sandra Porter Some maggots have gotten good press lately because of their helpful ability to clean out wounds by consuming dead tissue. Screwworms however; also known as Cochliomyia hominivorax, will never be welcomed in an operating room or anywhere else. These are the creatures of nightmares. During part of their lives, they live and travel as flies, and lay their eggs in the wounds of warm-blooded...
09/12/07 -
Telegraph Blog - This is a serious question. As is pointed out by Nick Bosanquet in today's Telegraph, we are now spending about 10% of our GDP on health, and we are not getting value for money. But before any sensible decision can be come to as to where cutbacks should be made, or economies implemented, I think we all need to address the question of what precisly we expect our Health Service to deliver. It...
09/12/07 -
Taptology - There’s a debate raging in the blogosphere on the merits of algorithmic search (e.g. Google) vs human-powered search (e.g. Mahalo). It started at the end of last year, when Jimmy Wales got plenty of airtime talking about Search Wikia – a different approach to human-powered search. More recently, Scoble has stoked up the debate and has taken a lot more flak for advocating human-powered search as...
09/11/07 -
NeuroPhilosophy - A recent study into the biophysical properties of a highly reflective and self-organizing squid protein called reflectin will inform researchers about the process of "bottom-up" synthesis of nanoscale structures and could lead to the development of thin-film coatings for microstructured materials, bringing scientists one step closer to the development of an invisibility cloak. The reflectin...
09/11/07 -
Bioethics - The LA Times reported this week that the Los Angeles city council will soon be considering an ordinance that bans new fast food restaurants in South LA. (via) The reason: the obesity rate in that part of the city is approaching 30 percent. The thinking behind this proposed ban is interesting. Here's what a city councilwoman told the Times: "The people don't want them, but when they don't have...
09/11/07 -
Science Blog - Looking at more than 500 reports, including toxicological, clinical and epidemiological studies dating from 1970’s preclinical work to the latest studies on the high-intensity sweetener, along with use levels and regulations data, an international expert panel from 10 universities and medical schools evaluated the safety of aspartame for people of all ages and with a variety of health conditions....
09/10/07 -
cleantech blog - As part of its larger environmental leadership strategy, PG&E owns and operates a clean fuel fleet of hybrid-electric and fuel cell vehicles, and more than 1,300 natural gas vehicles — the largest of its kind in the United States. PG&E's clean fuel fleet consists of service and crew trucks, meter reader vehicles and pool cars that run either entirely on compressed natural gas or have bi-fuel...
09/10/07 -
cosmic variance - The best talk I heard at the International Congress of Logic Methodology and Philosophy of Science in Beijing was, somewhat to my surprise, the Presidential Address by Adolf Grünbaum. I wasn’t expecting much, as the genre of Presidential Addresses by Octogenarian Philosophers is not one noted for its moments of soaring rhetoric. I recognized Grünbaum’s name as a philosopher of science, but...
09/10/07 -
Pipeline - When a drug company starts off a new project, a lot of things go into the decision. Most of them are scientific decisions, but a big one that isn't is the projected market size. It's a business, and if you keep developing things that don't earn out their costs (and plenty more), you won't be part of the business for long. These market numbers aren't the most reliable in the world - Pfizer, for...
09/10/07 -
NeuroPhilosophy - Research suggests that liberals and conservatives have different personality traits and "cognitive styles": while liberals are more intellectually curious and tolerant of ambiguity, conservatives have a greater desire to reach decisions quickly and are more consistent in the way they make those decisions. A new study, published online today in Nature Neuroscience, suggests that there may be a...
09/10/07 -
Sam Cook - I view data analysis as summarization: use the machine to work with large quantities of data that would otherwise be hard to deal with by hand. I am also curious about what would the data suggest, and open to suggestions. Automated model selection can be used to list a few hypotheses that stick out of the crowd: I was not using model selection to select anything, but merely to be able to quantify...
09/10/07 -
Uncertain Principals - While I'm sure there will be a lot of chatter around here in the next few weeks about the vacuum (or, God help me, vacua), I feel like I should lay the groundwork by talking about laboratory vacuum. I know I'm here to talk about cold atoms and the hot stuff going in in experimental physics right now, but I've spent a lot of time in the last couple days dealing with vacuum, and I want to tell you...
09/08/07 -
Cognitive Neuroscience - To examine the neural circuitry involved in food craving, in making food particularly appetitive and thus in driving wanting and eating, we used fMRI to measure the response to the flavour of chocolate, the sight of chocolate and their combination in cravers vs. non-cravers. Statistical parametric mapping (SPM) analyses showed that the sight of chocolate produced more activation in chocolate cravers...
09/08/07 -
60 Percent Campaign - Last week I uncovered biofuels’ enormous carbon footprint, an example of a ‘green’ solution gone terribly wrong. Now that ‘green’ is all the rage, we should all be wary of green washing. Something may present ‘green’ but best to kick the tires before taking it for a spin. The latest issue of the Utne Reader does just that in its reprint of articles from Terrain and In These Times,...
09/08/07 -
The Frontal Cortex - So tax breaks for philanthropy increase inequality: For every three dollars they give away, the federal government typically gives up a dollar or more in tax revenue, because of the charitable tax deduction and by not collecting estate taxes. [snip] The charitable deduction cost the government $40 billion in lost tax revenue last year, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, more...
09/06/07 -
John Ray - The food additive warriors have obviously got desperate but their last fling has won them the publicity battle by fraud. The extraordinary study below (Summary from The Times plus journal abstract) tells us NOTHING about actual food. Prior studies have not given the adverse effects hypothesized so this time they just gave kids cocktails of chemicals in fruit juice. And some kids were slightly affected...
09/06/07 -
comment is free - Ben Libet, author of the most famous experiment ever done on consciousness, has died at the age of 91. Not long before his death he wrote me a letter about my book Conversations on Consciousness. Polite and kind though his words were, his real reason for writing was, I think, to ask why he wasn't one of the interviewees. I was stung into replying immediately to tell him how much I wished he had...
09/06/07 -
Dandelion Salad - Albert Einstein once said, “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would have only four years of life left.” Why? Because without bees, plants don’t get pollinated. Without pollination, say good by to fruits, nuts, and some vegetables. We also won’t have natural oils (such a s olive oil, sunflower oil, hemp oil, etc.). We also won’t have many natural fibers, such...
09/06/07 -
A Chronic Dose - Last week, I read with great interest this post from Hospital Impact about technology, health care, and the Facebook generation. The points raised are compelling ones, namely: Is social networking is a better vehicle to foster community and spread awareness of health care innovations? Does it successfully integrate health care into daily life? Would health care providers benefit from social networking,...
09/06/07 -
Matthew Yglesias - "Women 'choosier' over partners" reports the BBC. What's more, "Men look for beauty, while women go for wealth when it comes to assessing future partners, researchers say." Shocking stuff. Kay Steiger points out that these conclusions are based on . . . a study of "the behaviour of 46 people taking part in a speed-dating session." That's pathetic. But it's also emblematic of what's wrong with so...
09/06/07 -
Alternative Energy HQ - A secretive Texas startup company may be on the verge of a major production breakthrough though it is hard to tell since they are not saying much. The car company that wants to build their technology into autos is talking and they are excited. Imagine a battery powered car that you could plug in for five minutes of charging and then go on a 500 mile trip without recharging or filling up with gas!...
09/05/07 -
Animal Science - With the worlds first global inventory of farm animals showing a number of breeds of African, Asian, and Latin American livestock at risk of extinction, researchers from the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) today called for the rapid establishment of genebanks to conserve the sperm and ovaries of key animals critical for the global populations future survival. An...
09/05/07 -
Cognitive Daily - Countless change blindness studies have showed that we're extremely bad at noticing when a scene has changed. We fail to notice objects moving, disappearing, or changing color, seemingly right before our eyes. But sometimes we do notice the change. What sorts of changes are we more likely to notice? I've created a simple demo that may (or may not) help answer that question. Take a look at this...