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 -