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.
May 30, 2007
Category: Technology
Researchers have discovered cows with genes that allow them to make skim milk: Herds of cows producing skimmed milk could soon be roaming our pastures, reports Cath O'Driscoll in Chemistry & Industry, the magazine of the SCI. Scientists in New...
Posted by Jake Young at 10:17 AM • 5 Comments •
Category: Aminals
Research in army ants has shown that they will plug holes in the road using an interesting technique: Certain army ants in the rainforests of Central and South America conduct spectacular predatory raids containing up to 200,000 foraging ants. Remarkably,...
Posted by Jake Young at 10:06 AM • 1 Comments •
Category: Neuroscience
Memory for computers is getting pretty large, but it is still based on basically the same system that it was several years ago. They have just gotten better a fabricating them. It is an interesting question to ask whether we...
Posted by Jake Young at 9:59 AM • 3 Comments •
May 29, 2007
Category: Global Warming
The NYTimes has an excellent article about the controversy concerning hurricanes and global warming: Perhaps the best known proponent of the idea that warming and hurricanes may be connected is Kerry A. Emanuel, an atmospheric scientist at the Massachusetts Institute...
Posted by Jake Young at 12:01 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Libertarian politics
Ilya Somin from the Volokh Conspiracy has this post on a resurgent paternalism -- using as its justification new findings from behavioral economics: "Libertarian Paternalism" is all the rage in law and economics circles these days. To slightly oversimplify, libertarian...
Posted by Jake Young at 11:51 AM • 6 Comments •
May 23, 2007
Category: Religion
The latest issue of Science magazine (May 18) has several reviews devoted to the coming of age of behavioral neuroscience. However, one by Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg caught my eye. The review is entitled "Childhood Origins of Adult...
Posted by Jake Young at 11:07 AM • 9 Comments •
May 21, 2007
Category: Religion
Daniel Lazare, writing in the Nation, has an interesting article about differences of opinion even among atheists: This is the problem, more or less, confronting today's reinvigorated atheist movement. For a long time, religion had been doing quite nicely as...
Posted by Jake Young at 11:19 AM • 5 Comments •
May 18, 2007
Category: Publishing and Journals
A new journal for case reports only, The Journal of Medical Case Reports, has spawned an discussion at The Scientist about whether we should even have case reports in journals: Does the medical literature need more case studies? A new...
Posted by Jake Young at 9:50 AM • 4 Comments •
May 17, 2007
Category: Reproduction, Birth Control, and Abortion Politics
The NYTimes has an interesting article on the increasing amount people are willing to pay for donor eggs: A survey published this month in the journal Fertility and Sterility, "What Is Happening to the Price of Eggs?" found that the...
Posted by Jake Young at 10:16 AM • 7 Comments •
Category: Obesity and Heart Disease
Not good news for people who think low carbs is the answer. A recently published study has shown an increase in mortality associated with low-carb/high-protein diets. Studies looking at the comparative effectiveness of different diets have shown that basically all...
Posted by Jake Young at 10:10 AM • 4 Comments •
Category: Space
Neat. One of the moons of Saturn, Enceladus, has cracks and eruptions that couldn't be explained by heat. (It is much too small to have volcanic actiivty.) They think that the cracks might be caused by tidal forces from Saturn's...
Posted by Jake Young at 9:07 AM • 0 Comments •
May 16, 2007
Category: Politics
Whoa. Check out the Senate Judiciary Committee testimony by Former Justice Department Deputy James Comey. Andy Card and Alberto Gonzales accosted John Ashcroft in his ICU bed to get him to change his mind the legality of the Administration's dosmestic...
Posted by Jake Young at 9:14 AM • 2 Comments •
Category: Herbal remedies and other Hooey
If my job was to debunk poorly justified herbal remedies, I would eat well for life. Here is the newest one: stem cell enhancers. As covered in the Scientist: A California company is marketing the latest in dietary supplements, an...
Posted by Jake Young at 9:03 AM • 4 Comments •
Category: Development
No, this is not like voodoo prediction where they will know what will happen 12 years hence. All of us, however, are capable in degrees of predicting what is going to happen over short time scales. This predicition falls into...
Posted by Jake Young at 9:02 AM • 1 Comments •
Category: Global Warming
You remember how in The Day After Tomorrow global warming leads to a shutdown of the Gulf Stream and catastrophic cooling of Europe. (This would be before the scene where the cold chases the kid down the hallway of the...
Posted by Jake Young at 9:02 AM • 2 Comments •
May 15, 2007
Category: Evolution
Paul Rubin has an editorial in the Washington Post about how evolution may result in a proclivity towards economic and social conflict: Conflict was common in the environment in which humans evolved. As primates, which are a very social order,...
Posted by Jake Young at 9:45 AM • 3 Comments •
May 14, 2007
Category: Neurological disease
Science has an article this week (sadly behind a subscription wall) about a rare disease called Mobius syndrome. Mobius syndrome is a developmental disorder of facial muscle innervation with a variety of presentations; however, the presentation often includes facial paralysis...
Posted by Jake Young at 1:30 PM • 0 Comments •
May 10, 2007
Category: Obesity and Heart Disease
The NYTimes ran an excerpt of a book called Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss -- and the Myths and Realities of Dieting by Gina Kolata. Having read the excerpt -- I haven't read the whole book --...
Posted by Jake Young at 11:43 AM • 11 Comments •
May 8, 2007
Category: Autism
Less than a week after I had to correct myself on autism and face perception, I read another article on the subject that has me skeptical. Let's see if we can apply what we learned before. The conclusions from my...
Posted by Jake Young at 9:53 AM • 4 Comments •
Category: School Vouchers
Call me a self-centered, but I thought that the school voucher wars were an exclusively American issue. I guess not. The Economist summarizes voucher programs in other countries. Apparently several have met with a great deal of success. Money quote:...
Posted by Jake Young at 9:52 AM • 4 Comments •
May 7, 2007
Category: Blogging
I know some of the others (among them Jason) have talked about this, but I thought I would mention it. The May 4th issue of Cell has an article by Laura Bonetta about scientific blogging. Money quote: The concept of...
Posted by Jake Young at 12:57 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Academia
The Economist has an interesting article about reforming academia in Europe to make it more transparent and competitive. Resistance is to be expected. Money quote: Unleashing universities' "full potential", and "mobilising the brainpower of Europe" are at the heart of...
Posted by Jake Young at 8:47 AM • 2 Comments •
May 3, 2007
Category: Haha, a funny
Oops: Children here got more than they bargained for when they tuned in to "Handy Manny" on the Disney Channel this week -- hard-core pornography. Cable giant Comcast is investigating how the porn was broadcast during the popular cartoon, which...
Posted by Jake Young at 1:59 PM • 6 Comments •
Category: Music
Just to show that I have way too much time on my hands, I went last night and collected the best science themed music videos that I could find on YouTube. Feel free to suggest more if I missed some....
Posted by Jake Young at 10:30 AM • 6 Comments •
May 2, 2007
Category: Aminals
The Freakonomics guys have a simply hysterical article in the New York Times magazine about monkey economics. The article discusses how monkeys possess the mental apparatus for economic valuation including the use of money. They train the monkeys to use...
Posted by Jake Young at 11:13 AM • 16 Comments •
Category: Global Warming
The Great Global Warming Swindle was a documentary that aired in March on UK TV organized by Martin Durkin of Wag TV. The documentary purports to debunk several of the claims made by climate scientists on global warming. (Just to...
Posted by Jake Young at 9:51 AM • 5 Comments •
May 1, 2007
Category: Economics
I live in Manhattan, and it has always been a source of fascination how prices got so exorbidant. While I am somewhat protected from market forces -- I live in school-subsidized housing -- even with the help I have a...
Posted by Jake Young at 10:29 AM • 1 Comments •
Category: Autism
Earlier this week in the post Neurological "Personhood," I made a comment about individuals with autism. My comment was as follows: 1) Some individuals do not show normal development in the system of identifying personhood described. For example, individuals with...
Posted by Jake Young at 10:00 AM • 8 Comments •
