Jake Young is a MD/PhD student at Mount Sinai School of Medicine focusing in Neuroscience. He is due to graduate in 2032. He received a BS and a MS in Biological Sciences from Stanford University -- where he spent most of his time drinking heavily and building vegetable catapults instead of learning information that would now be eminently useful. When he is not failing terrifically to perform his sworn duties, he enjoys watching bad movies, ethnic food, and running.
Pure Pedantry is a blog about science -- social sciences and otherwise -- as well as academic and scientific culture. No one can live on science alone, so I also like to dwell on pop culture, periodically explore the humanities, and indulge in other types of geeky goodness.
Jake is joined periodically by two wonderful guest bloggers: Kara Contreary and Kate Seip. See the About Page.
DISCLAIMERS: 1) Jake Young is not a licensed physician (yet). He is merely a medical student. The information published on this site is not intended for use in medical decision making. Please seek advice from a licensed, medical professional before making any health decisions. 2) The opinions expressed are my own or those of my co-bloggers. They do not represent the views of SEED magazine or the educational establishments we currently attend.
July 31, 2006
Category: Drugs
Are we dividing drugs into illegal and legal based on a rational classification system based on risk? A British government committee says no: The committee's report recommends that drugs be ordered on "a more scientific scale, to give the public...
Posted by Jake Young at 11:49 PM • 6 Comments •
Category: Law
Gov. Schwarzenegger and Tony Blair are endeavoring to create a California and Great Britain global warming pact, to pool their efforts in lowering CO2 emissions: Britain and California are preparing to sidestep the Bush administration and fight global warming together...
Posted by Jake Young at 4:40 PM • 3 Comments •
Category: Nature vs. Nuture
This review in Nature Neuroscience is excellent. I have never seen the issue of gene-environment interactions laid out so eloquently. Unfortunately, it is behind a subscription wall, so those of you not affiliated with a University may have to just...
Posted by Jake Young at 2:36 AM • 2 Comments •
Category: Science politics
Them's, as they say, fighting words. The National Journal has a cover story on the Politicization of Science by Paul Starobin, and there is simply no way in the concievable Universe that this is not going to cause a ruckus....
Posted by Jake Young at 2:26 AM • 2 Comments •
July 27, 2006
Category: Sports Doping
Floyd Landis, most recent winner of the Tour de France, has tested positive for testosterone use:...
Posted by Jake Young at 11:39 PM • 40 Comments •
Category: Obesity and Heart Disease
A study reveals that an increasingly large number of Americans are too fat to fit in MRIs and have X-rays that lack resolution: More and more obese people are unable to get full medical care because they are either too...
Posted by Jake Young at 12:24 PM • 6 Comments •
Category: Gender
Apparently I will be spending today documenting differing opinions on the Ben Barres Nature editorial. Here is the man himself doing Q&A for the NYTimes: Q. What about the idea that men and women differ in ways that give men...
Posted by Jake Young at 11:25 AM • 0 Comments •
The WHO reports that the Sun kills as many as 60,000: As many as 60,000 people a year die from too much sun, mostly from malignant skin cancer, the World Health Organization has reported. It found that 48,000 deaths every...
Posted by Jake Young at 9:52 AM • 5 Comments •
July 26, 2006
Category: Gender
Eugene Volokh from The Volokh Conspiracy has weighed in on the recent Nature editorial by Ben Barres that I commented about before. The editorial is about whether it was right for Larry Summers, former President of Harvard, to discuss the...
Posted by Jake Young at 10:05 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Medicine
...depression. This is related to something they make medical students memorize. When someone comes in with hypertension, it is always good to check whether the person has renal artery stenosis because this is one of the few causes of hypertension...
Posted by Jake Young at 5:34 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Technology
When I first read this it summoned immediate images of the robot from Lost in Space. Fortunately, these X-ray wielding robots seem decidedly less sinister. Instead, it is a better way to deliver X-rays to lung tumors, accounting for motion...
Posted by Jake Young at 5:14 PM • 1 Comments •
Category: Technology
That's quite clever: Instead of using expensive photovoltaic cells to convert solar radiation to electricity directly, Matteran's solution uses far-cheaper thermal-collection technology to heat a synthetic fluid with a very low boiling point (around 58°F), creating enough steam to drive...
Posted by Jake Young at 4:55 PM • 10 Comments •
July 25, 2006
Category: Carnivals
Grand Rounds is up at Medical Humanities....
Posted by Jake Young at 2:02 PM • •
Category: Ethics
The entry that I posted on research challenging the idea that Hummers are worse for the environment than hybrids has sparked a great deal of contreversy and criticism. I cannot say that I find this entirely surprising. There have been...
Posted by Jake Young at 11:32 AM • 7 Comments •
July 24, 2006
The Chronicle of Higher Education is running a symposium on the benefits of academic blogging. This symposium addresses ostensibly the failure of Juan Cole, a prominent Middle East scholar and proprietor of the blog Informed Comment, to recieve tenure at...
Posted by Jake Young at 8:23 PM • 1 Comments •
Category: Science Life
Fellow Scienceblogger Jonah Lehrer has this nice little vignette in Seed arguing that practice is more important than ability. Two examples that could be forwarded for the idea of innate genius are Mozart and Tiger Woods, two child prodigies that...
Posted by Jake Young at 12:34 PM • 3 Comments •
Category: Economics
The Economist has an article about an economist using evolutionary ideas. To wit: ...Eric Beinhocker, of the McKinsey Global Institute, has undertaken his own 500-page haj, entitled "The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics". In...
Posted by Jake Young at 10:07 AM • 3 Comments •
Category: Evolution
Fanged killer kangaroo fossils discovered: Forget cute, cuddly marsupials. A team of Australian palaeontologists say they have found the fossilized remains of a fanged killer kangaroo and what they describe as a "demon duck of doom". A University of New...
Posted by Jake Young at 12:21 AM • 1 Comments •
July 23, 2006
Category: Global Warming
Roger Pielke Jr. from Prometheus has posted his recent Congressional Testimony before the House Government Reform Committee. I am big fan of him simply because I think he is genuinely looking for solutions in a debate that is stuck in...
Posted by Jake Young at 11:33 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: The Synapse (a neuroscience carnival)
Synapse #3 is up at The Neurophilosopher's Blog. Thanks to everyone that submitted. The next Synapse is at Neurotopia, hosted by fellow Scienceblogger Evil Monkey. It is on August 6th. Submission guidelines here....
Posted by Jake Young at 10:32 AM • 0 Comments •
July 21, 2006
If you could have practiced science in any time and any place throughout history, which would it be, and why?... OK, so this is going to sound incredibly trite, but my answer is right now... ...but I have a reason,...
Posted by Jake Young at 1:10 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Pop culture
Whereas Merriam-Webster has been adding words to the dictionary like unibrow and drama queen, Time Out New York has some more interesting words. Check out definitions for underboob, aireoke, etc. Hat-tip: Gawker....
Posted by Jake Young at 11:15 AM • 0 Comments •
Category: Energy Policy
Hybrid vehicles clearly have better gas mileage than many SUVs on the market, but does the gas mileage as a figure accurately represent the total energy usage required to build, market, use and destroy the vehicle? Art Spinella, in a...
Posted by Jake Young at 9:30 AM • 28 Comments •
This article is not my fault. It is in the NYTimes Business Section; therefore, this constitutes real news that I have to report, dammit. It just happens that the real news is about bull semen....
Posted by Jake Young at 12:46 AM • 2 Comments •
July 20, 2006
Category: The Synapse (a neuroscience carnival)
Reminder: The Synapse #3 is being hosted on Sunday at The Neurophilosopher's Blog. Submission information is available here....
Posted by Jake Young at 11:56 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Science policy
In an earlier post about Bush's stem cell veto, I mentioned that I am a libertarian. One of the comments got me thinking, and I want to answer it in detail. Posted by Quitter: Libertarian? And you're a scientist? Where...
Posted by Jake Young at 4:09 PM • 20 Comments •
Category: Pop culture
Kate Hudson sues magazine for pictures that made her look too skinny: Actress Kate Hudson accepted libel damages on Thursday from a magazine that printed a photo making her look too skinny, alongside an article that said her movie star...
Posted by Jake Young at 12:49 PM • 1 Comments •
Who says that being smart hurts your reproductive success? Albert Einstein had half a dozen girlfriends and told his wife they showered him with "unwanted" affection, according to letters released on Monday that shed light on his extramarital affairs. The...
Posted by Jake Young at 12:00 PM • 2 Comments •
Does anyone actually believe this is going to work? Japan is planning ultra long-range 30-year weather forecasts that will predict typhoons, storms, blizzards, droughts and other inclement weather, an official said Tuesday....
Posted by Jake Young at 11:00 AM • 8 Comments •
Scientists ask twins to comment on clones, twins smack scientists upside head: A cloned human would probably consider themselves to be an individual, a study suggests. Scientists drew their conclusions after interviewing identical twins about their experiences of sharing exactly...
Posted by Jake Young at 8:00 AM • 1 Comments •
July 19, 2006
Keith Richards pardoned for crimes he cannot entirely recollect:...
Posted by Jake Young at 8:33 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Science policy
AP is reporting that Bush has indeed vetoed the stem cell bill: President Bush cast the first veto of his 5 1/2-year presidency Wednesday, saying legislation easing limits on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research "crosses a moral boundary"...
Posted by Jake Young at 2:49 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Carnivals
Tangled Bank #58 is up at Salto Sobrius....
Posted by Jake Young at 1:59 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Oligodendrocytes
Now I study oligodendrocyte development, and if you ask me they are a truly unappreciated cell type. Here is yet one more piece of evidence: synapses have been detected between neurons and oligodendrocytes in CA1 of the hippocampus AND these...
Posted by Jake Young at 1:00 PM • 5 Comments •
Category: Space
Nifty: Astronauts travelling beyond the Earth's orbit would be at risk of cancer and other illnesses due to their long term exposure to cosmic rays. Some of these energetic particles are spewed forth during outbursts from the Sun. Others come...
Posted by Jake Young at 11:00 AM • 1 Comments •
Huh: Representative Jim Kolbe wants to do away with the penny - and for a second time has introduced legislation that would effectively kill it. The Currency Overhaul for an Industrious Nation (COIN) Act would force the rounding off of...
Posted by Jake Young at 9:00 AM • 0 Comments •
You have to read this post at The World's Fair. It is too funny. It is summaries of exhibits at a 2001 Creationist Science Fair....
Posted by Jake Young at 12:22 AM • 0 Comments •
July 18, 2006
Category: Science policy
We have all been talking about this to death, but I figured I would add my two cents. Ben Barres wrote an editorial in the most recent issue of Nature about the issue of gender disparity in science. He mentions...
Posted by Jake Young at 11:00 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Carnivals
Grand Rounds is up at ChronicBabe. It is also all about the ladies, and it is pink. I do not believe the two are necessarily related....
Posted by Jake Young at 5:17 PM • 0 Comments •
I am doing Western blots today, and none of them are working. For those of you who do not know what a Western blot is, a Western blot is a technique to detect proteins in a sample of cell lysates....
Posted by Jake Young at 3:57 PM • 5 Comments •
I actually care little about Paris Hilton's antics. I find it difficult to become interested in someone's career when the origins of that career are based on a sex tape that shows that she performs oral sex poorly. There I...
Posted by Jake Young at 12:30 PM • 8 Comments •
Sleep is an underappreciated thing. Not only does it improve your memory, but now we find it would appear lowers your risk for obesity: Research by Warwick Medical School at the University of Warwick has found that sleep deprivation is...
Posted by Jake Young at 12:40 AM • 2 Comments •
I love that there is somebody even researching this, but what I love more is that it is imminently more interesting than anything I do. The next time I am at a cocktail party, I am not talking about oligodendrocytes;...
Posted by Jake Young at 12:18 AM • 2 Comments •
Category: Evolution
God is so tricky. New research reveals that the structure of a DNA replication molecule is similar across all three domains of life: In two papers that will be concurrently published in the August edition of the journal Nature Structural...
Posted by Jake Young at 12:01 AM • 1 Comments •
July 17, 2006
Category: Carnivals
Evil Monkey from Neurotopia posts on face blindness or prosopagnosia, and how they have found a gene that results in a heritable form. They have not, to my knowledge, found a gene for why I can't remember the girl who...
Posted by Jake Young at 12:02 AM • 0 Comments •
July 15, 2006
Category: Medicine
If you go in for a mammogram and they see something that looks suspicious, odds are you are going to have to undergo a procedure called ductal lavage. Ductal lavage uses a fine needle to rinse the ducts of the...
Posted by Jake Young at 4:30 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Biology
Surgeons are experimenting with ways to use cryogenics to aid in surgery. If you can put someone in suspended animation, it would make the process of surgery much easier. Here is a description from Wired Magazine about such an experiment...
Posted by Jake Young at 4:14 PM • 1 Comments •
July 14, 2006
Category: Movies
So back in college, Kevin Smith came to talk to us. It has to be one of the funniest things I have ever seen. He came with no prepared material and spoke expositorily for about 4 hours, just telling stories....
Posted by Jake Young at 5:36 PM • 3 Comments •
Category: Science policy
I had wanted to avoid being an activist with this blog, but I think it is important enough when it relates to a directly scientific issue to break that rule. The Society for Neuroscience has issued a petition request via...
Posted by Jake Young at 3:31 PM • 1 Comments •
Category: Evolution
Apparently today will be poetry day. I found this poem in a book I was reading. It is by a man named Mortimer Collins (1860): Life and the Universe show spontaneity: Down with ridiculous notions of Deity! Churches and creeds...
Posted by Jake Young at 1:34 PM • 4 Comments •
Category: Carnivals
Just a reminder that I am accepting submission for the other neuroscience carnival on the web called Encephalon. It is due to be published on July 17th (Monday). If possible, please get me the submissions by Sunday night. You can...
Posted by Jake Young at 12:56 PM • 0 Comments •
July 13, 2006
Category: Movies
As I have promised to do some sort of regular Friday movie review here goes. Incidentally, I don't know if this will be entirely regular -- sometimes I don't see movies. So we will see how it goes....
Posted by Jake Young at 10:40 PM • 0 Comments •
This week's Ask a Scienceblogger is as follows: Is every species of living thing on the planet equally deserving of protection?... In response, I hath composed the following: An Ode to the Cuter Mammals If I were Noah, roused from...
Posted by Jake Young at 9:30 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Neural interfaces
The most recent issue of Nature has a paper by the Donoghue lab at Brown about their project implanting an ensemble of electrodes into the motor cortex of a paraplegic. Signals from the electrodes were decoded and used to run...
Posted by Jake Young at 2:03 AM • 1 Comments •
Category: Science policy
Ronald Bailey from Reason Magazine has an article covering one of the more pernicious arguments against genetically modified foods: Long time anti-biotech activist Jeremy Rifkin has come out in favor of a biotechnology technique. Should beleaguered biotechnologists break out the...
Posted by Jake Young at 1:09 AM • 0 Comments •
Is this really necessary? Castrati played heroic male leads in Italian opera from the mid-17th to late 18th century when the bel canto was the rage in Europe. Farinelli, born Carlo Broschi in 1705, was the most famous of them...
Posted by Jake Young at 12:35 AM • 0 Comments •
July 12, 2006
Category: Geek News
Nerdcore is a new genre of music created by nerds for nerds. Feel that music underrepresents your strong feelings about your +2 Chain Mail...well now you have no need to fret. Nerdcore is what happened when people who know what...
Posted by Jake Young at 11:25 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Drugs
What is the deal with the stories showing brain lesions that end addiction? First, there was this one. Then, today in Nature there was another one: Strokes often change a person's character, depending on where the damage hits. Some may...
Posted by Jake Young at 8:59 PM • 1 Comments •
Category: Neuroscience
Parents can rest easy. If your child is a late-talker, it is because your kid is a late-talker, not because you didn't show them enough baby Einstein videos: New research findings from the world's largest study predicting children's late language...
Posted by Jake Young at 3:04 PM • 2 Comments •
I was listening to the Leonard Lopate Show yesterday on WNYC (my local NPR affiliate), and I heard this great interview with Sharon Weinberger, a defense reporter, about her new book Imaginary Weapons. In the book, she details all the...
Posted by Jake Young at 2:06 AM • 1 Comments •
July 10, 2006
Category: Neuroscience
There has been a big debate over the last couple years about whether the adult human brain is capable of generating new neurons. A new study in Neuroscience by Larsen et al. provides some relevant new evidence to that debate....
Posted by Jake Young at 11:55 PM • 1 Comments •
Misha at Mind Hacks has a great update on brain-computer interface advances....
Posted by Jake Young at 11:42 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Technology
The next steak you eat could be grown in the lab: Edible, lab-grown ground chuck that smells and tastes just like the real thing might take a place next to Quorn at supermarkets in just a few years, thanks to...
Posted by Jake Young at 11:31 PM • 7 Comments •
Category: Autism
I haven't had time to read it all yet (it is sort of long and technical), but a new model by Grossberg and Seidman purports to explain how normal cognitive processes go wrong in autism -- a pretty tall order...
Posted by Jake Young at 11:18 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Biology
That will teach 'em: Social contact helped the Ebola virus virtually wipe out a population of gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo, French researchers reported on Monday. A 2004 outbreak of the virus, which also kills people, killed 97...
Posted by Jake Young at 10:57 PM • 1 Comments •
Category: Energy Policy
A study in the newest PNAS seeks to quantify the efficiency and resource utilization for various types of biofuels:...
Posted by Jake Young at 10:49 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Medicine
"Why would I ever care about heart attack screening, Jake?" This is a reasonable question so let me put it this way: The ACS [American Cancer Society] recommends the following screening ages: 20 for breast cancer with mammography from age...
Posted by Jake Young at 2:03 AM • 3 Comments • 1 TrackBacks