j7uy5
Posts by this author
January 26, 2009
On 14
January, 2008, the US FDA
href="http://www.frx.com/news/PressRelease.aspx?ID=1244788">approved
milnacipran for use in treatment of
href="http://www.med.umich.edu/painresearch/pro/fibromyalgia.htm">fibromyalgia.
It is ( or soon will be) available in tablets of 12.5, 25, 50, and
100mg…
January 24, 2009
This photo is from Wikimedia; it shows a Japanese macaque (Macaca fuscata) in the Jigokudani Monkey Park in Nagano Prefecture,Japan. The photo is in the public domain.
The Park features natural hot springs.
There are more photos here and here. There is a live webcam here.
January 23, 2009
This is precious. It is a screen shot from The Economist, from an article (The frat boy ships out) on the departure of George W. Bush.
I recall that The Economist ended up endorsing Kerry, saying something
like it was a tough call between two deeply flawed candidates.
Now, not so tough.
It…
January 22, 2009
Today I received an email from the hivemind, saying, in part:
In
his first speech as President-elect last November, Barack Obama
reminded us of the promise of "a world connected by our own science and
imagination." He recently stated, "promoting science isn't just
about providing resources--it's…
January 19, 2009
If the only thing Obama does, is to not do the bad things that Bush did,
then he will be a success. A disappointment, yes, but also a
success.
Above is a clip of Olbermann, summarizing in about 9 minutes the worst
of the past eight years. Below the fold is one of the consequences. It is…
January 15, 2009
There is a thought-provoking editorial in the openly-accessible Journal of Psychiatry of Neuroscience (JPN): Has the time come for clinical trials on the antidepressant effect of vitamin D?
(45 KB PDF). In it, the editor of the the Journal, Simon N.
Young, PhD, argues that there is enough…
January 12, 2009
Two things happened to the New York Times recently. For one, they announced that they will place advertisements on their front page. Two, they are publishing Opinion columns written by Bono.
I suspect the two are not unrelated. Which is another way of saying that I suspect the two are related,…
January 11, 2009
Xinhua has helpfully posted the top 10 astronomy photos of the year (2008), according to National Geographic.
January 6, 2009
When I was in training, the chairperson (John Greden)
of the department never spoke about schizophrenia. Instead, he
always used the phrase, "the schizophrenias." He believed that
there were different disease states that all produced similar clinical
presentations. But because of the rudimentary…
January 5, 2009
Man decides to enter Amtrak "
href="http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=Amtrak/am2Copy/Hot_Deals_Page&c=am2Copy&cid=1093554057903&ssid=224">Picture
Our Trains Contest." Man goes to boarding area and
takes
href="http://photos.duanek.name/popular/1/443114799_ewRgR#…
January 2, 2009
Some things never change. These are words from the remarkable Bertrand Russell, from 1932:
One of the commonest things to do with savings is to lend
them to some Government. In view of the fact that the bulk of the
public expenditure of most civilized Governments consists in payment
for past wars…
December 31, 2008
Ethanol is a poison. But the difference between poison and
medicine sometimes is only a matter of dosage.
For decades, there have been studies that purport to show a small
benefit from regular consumption of small amounts of ethanol, with
obvious problems caused by excessive alcohol consumption.
…
December 29, 2008
This photo is one of Yahoo's most emailed.
(AP Photo/Detroit Zoo,Mark M. Gaskill)
December 28, 2008
The impetus for this post came from a confluence of stimuli, as is usually the case. Recently I received a book, a biography
of J. Robert Oppenheimer (American Prometheus, by Kai Bird and Martin
J. Sherwin). The book describes the persecution of Oppenheimer
during the Red Scare in postwar USA. …
December 25, 2008
Let us all
savor the season and be appreciative of our good fortune. I
really mean that, although what I am about to say will lead some to
think otherwise.Earlier this year, it was
href="http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE4B28CB20081203">reported
that thirty million Americans…
December 23, 2008
GlaxoSmithKline, also known -- to old-timers -- as
GlaxoWellcomeSmithKlineBeecham, has elected to halt all political
contributions. Almost. The corporation itself will not make
any contributions, after having made a total of $585,425 to candidates
in the USA in 2008. It will facilitate PAC…
December 21, 2008
On 24 November 2008, the United Nations reported the outcome of the Human Rights Council's Working Group On Right To Development. They held a vote on the question of whether people have a right to food. The United States of America voted against this:
By a vote of 180 in favour to 1 against (…
December 18, 2008
Saudi
offers $10m for shoes thrown by journo
Iraq: Wednesday, December 17 - 2008 at 09:22
A Saudi man has offered $10m to buy the shoes that Iraqi journalist
Muntadar Al Zaidi hurled at US President George W. Bush, according to a
report carried by Al Arabiya net. Sixty-year-old Hassan Mohammad…
December 17, 2008
Ovation Pharmaceuticals obtained the rights to a drug developed by
Merck, Indocin IV. It is used as a medical treatment for
href="http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/dci/Diseases/pda/pda_what.html">patent
ductus arteriosus. PDA is a type of birth defect in
the heart. It is serious.
It is…
December 12, 2008
Land's End sells white coats. The kind that doctors wear.
I got an email hawking Land's End stuff. Promising big
savings. So I notice this:
Anyway, I looked at the image of the coat. I imagined myself
putting it on. Got chills. Yuck.
I'm glad I went to medical school. There was more good…
December 11, 2008
href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1208/16514.html">Senate
rejects auto bailout
By DAVID ROGERS | 12/11/08 11:15 PM EST
A White House-backed bailout for ailing automakers collapsed in the
Senate Thursday night, pushing General Motors Corp. closer to almost
certain bankruptcy absent a…
December 9, 2008
This is a photo of the controls in the cabin of the Mallard, a steam
locomotive built in 1938. The Mallard was capable of
traveling 202.7kph (126 mph), a
href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A14609333">record-high
speed at the time..
The picture is from a series by
href="http://spectrum.ieee…
December 8, 2008
Tapentadol
is a drug for pain. It was approved by the US FDA for the
treatment of moderate to severe pain. The
href="http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2008/NEW01916.html">FDA
news release was dated 24 November 2008, although the actual
approval was a few days earlier.
Tapentadol acts on μ-…
December 3, 2008
Orion Magazine has a neat article on the first
greenwashing campaigns in the USA. Remember the crying
Indian? It's all explained
href="http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/3642">here.
Although beautifully written, it is kind of sickening. How we
all were misled. Screwed…
December 1, 2008
This post ties together a number of themes that I have been harping upon
for the past few years. First, from Greg Mankiw's blog:
href="http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2008/11/whats-wrong-with-efficient-scale.html">What's
wrong with the efficient scale?
Reuters reports:
President-elect…
November 26, 2008
No, it is not newspapers and videos that are disrupting your endocrine
system (well, not that we know); rather, the topic
is in the media.
href="http://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/endocrine/index.cfm">Endocrine
disruptors are chemicals that mimic the effects of hormones.
Perhaps…
November 25, 2008
This is from an interesting open-access article in Annals of
General Psychiatry. It describes two studies,
relating to two different catastrophic events. The authors
examine the differences in how various risk factors may contribute to
the development of PTSD in persons of each gender.
href="…
November 24, 2008
It is not obvious what
href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/haly/223020107/in/pool-stickfiguresinperil/">this
sign is intended to depict, or why. It almost has
to be a photoshop job (?).
November 21, 2008
There was a time when I was vacationing, near the Bosque del Apache
wildlife preserve. There were literally thousands of birds.
Most were snow geese or sandhill cranes. There were
a lot of people, too.
But off a ways, there was a trail. It went, among other
places, to a spot called Solitude…
November 18, 2008
This looks like a pile of wooden cubes with odd images on them.
Assemble them correctly, and you get a 3-D image of the brain...except
you can't see it when you are done...
...because the image is entirely inside.
The real puzzle is this: Where do you get one? I found it on
three sites (
href…