kbonham
Posts by this author
March 7, 2011
One of my earliest memories is of waves. I was 7 or 8 years old, on some nameless stretch of sand in southern California, and I was trapped. I don't remember when I learned to swim, and I don't remember a time when I didn't love the ocean. But I remember the day I learned to respect it.
My…
February 28, 2011
I started writing a lengthy response to a reader comment on one of Heather's posts, but decided it could use a post of it's own.
The question:
As to being pathogenic, is it possible that many bacteria are pathogenic if given sufficient opportunity?
[snip]
It seems largely to me that the line…
February 23, 2011
If you were going to design the perfect immune system, what would you do? This question is often posed to beginning immunology students, and the best answer may be so obvious that it doesn't occur to most. The best immune system is one that prevent pathogens from ever gaining access to your squishy…
February 11, 2011
At the superbowl party at my house last weekend, most folks didn't really have a stake in who won. But several friends were rooting for Pittsburg to loose, largely due to their quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger. In case you don't pay attention to sports news (like me), Roethlisberger was twice…
February 10, 2011
I was going to cover this paper, but Ed beat me to it (and did a far better job than I would have):
With a pulse of light, Dayu Lin from New York University can turn docile mice into violent fighters - it's Dr Jekyll's potion, delivered via fibre optic cable. The light activates a group of neurons…
February 10, 2011
My common New Year's resolutions (get more exercise, keep my lab notebook up to date, etc) rarely make it off the starting block. In this I am hardly unique, and there are very good reasons why, so I usually also try to make one major, sort of intangible resolution. This year for instance (largely…
February 1, 2011
PalMD has a great post about vaginas. More specifically, about the wonderful commensal bacteria that help keep a vagina at the proper pH, and what happens when they get booted out:
From time to time, this normal balance of bacteria is disrupted. When this happens, the normally dominant…
January 31, 2011
Local announcement for folks in the Boston area:
Science by the Pint is back in full force for its second season at a new venue, the Tavern in the Square in Porter Square. Science by the Pint is SITN's own science cafe - a fun, informal event where scientists mingle with the general public to talk…
January 25, 2011
For your ammusement, I give you the latest Science Signaling cover:
According to the journal,
The image shows the AVP neurons, which have their cell bodies in the hypothalamus and nerve terminals in the pituitary.
Oh really? Someone must have hired the little mermaid guy.
January 25, 2011
I've said it before, and I'll say it again - pathogens are devious little bastards:
Discovery of a Viral NLR Homolog that Inhibits the Inflammasome
In order to respond to a virus, a cell first has to recognize that it's there. There are a lot of ways the cell tries to do this - some receptors (like…
January 23, 2011
Mark Henderson of The Times is embarking on (what I think is) a great project - highlighting the contribution that the science savvy can have and are having on public discourse.
The intersection of science and politics is a growing interest of mine, though I don't have nearly as much credibility…
January 20, 2011
The heavy hitters in the science publishing business are taking notice.
This critical onslaught was striking -- but not exceptional. Papers are increasingly being taken apart in blogs, on Twitter and on other social media within hours rather than years, and in public, rather than at small…
January 13, 2011
Have you ever been wrong? Well then, this book is for you.
It's a trick question, because everyone is wrong all the time. A more detailed review after the jump, but the bottom line: read it.
I'm barely exaggerating when I say that reading Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margins of Error by Kathryn…
January 11, 2011
New York Times columnist David Brooks wants to explain away the actions of Jared Loughner, the gunman that shot 20 people at a political event as the isolated actions of a deranged psycho:
All of this evidence, which is easily accessible on the Internet, points to the possibility that Loughner may…
January 11, 2011
There's more to learn about the viruses that infect bacteria over at Discover. This time, it's Ed Yong talking about the bits of DNA that can be leftover in bacterial genomes from viral infections, and how they might actually be helping their hosts:
These captives are called cryptic prophages and…
January 10, 2011
It might seem strange at first to use reflection on the recent shooting in Arizona to make a point about progressive politics, but it's absolutely compelling. Go read this, seriously:
Instead our shadow in this country is economic greed, and there is a constant pull to unfetter business, to…
January 10, 2011
Lately, I find myself disagreeing with PZ far more than I used to on a number of matters. Today though, I think he's 100% correct:
What we have here is an attempted assassination of a politician by an insane crank at a political event, in a state where the political discourse has been an…
January 4, 2011
I rely on my phone to keep track of time - I tend to lose/break or cover watches in chalk, but my phone is pretty reliable. But how does it know the time, and how to people keep track of the passing seconds? Find out in this month's SITN Flash.
Last month, the Flash was spintronics, but the latest…
January 4, 2011
I was going to leave all the promotion of ZOMGSCIENCE.net, to everyone else, but he (it has to be a he right?) did T-cells:
I like Sci's description best
Is it overwhelmingly informative? Nope. Is it clean and safe for children or work? Nope. Is it massively entertaining?!?! YES!
-----
*I'm not…
January 4, 2011
The vermin only teaze and pinch
Their foes superior by an inch.
So, naturalists observe, a flea
Has smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite 'em,
And so proceed ad infinitum*:
-Jonathan Swift
Even though I study the immune system, it always amazes me just how many…
January 2, 2011
Like so many things, the problem is best explained with an analogy. Imagine a car parked in a dark garage (if you're a mechanic by hobby or trade, make it a computer). Someone hands you keys to the car, a flashlight and a piece of metal that she says belongs to a car similar to the one in the…
December 30, 2010
I'm from California, but this is my third New England winter (though last year doesn't really count since Washington DC and New York stole al our snow). Even I know, this is a really important message:
And the tips for idiots (mentioned at 0:57) are especially important:
- Do not attempt to mow…
December 29, 2010
Bacteria are tiny. Compared to our cells, they can seem insignificant. There are about ten times more bacteria cells in your gut *right now* than there are human cells in your entire body, but they only make up about 5% of your mass. They're tiny, but they're successful - they live in places we can…
December 26, 2010
As Boston gets buried under a layer of snow (wooo! blizzard!), the the Weekend Review makes a return with one of my favorite topics: gut microbes.
The fields of immunology, microbiology, nutrition and metabolism are rapidly converging. Here we expand on a diet-microbiota model as the basis for the…
December 19, 2010
Know anything about quantum computing (other than it sounds awesome)? Well, I didn't, until I read the latest edition of the Harvard Science in the News Flash.
Thus far, utilizing charged electrons to make computers has been endlessly fruitful, allowing us to build smaller and faster computer chips…
December 16, 2010
A while back, ERV wrote about a rather silly study trying to equate viruses with obesity. I don't have anything to add to that, but I mention it because in that post, she linked to William M Briggs. He seemed to have a pretty good take on that study, and since I wasn't reading any other blogs by…
December 15, 2010
If you've had your head in the sand for the last 2 weeks, you might have missed the story about arsenic in bacteria and the resulting controversy. If you did go read Ed Yong first.
In an editorial published today in Nature, the editors make a similar point to the one I made yesterday, namely that…
December 15, 2010
Scicurious has a great post about free will, and how most people think they have more free will than others.
It doesn't matter whether we HAVE free will or not, our daily lives seem to make us FEEL that we have it. We make many decisions, consider many options every day, some big, some small, but…
December 13, 2010
In last week's editorial in Science, Bruce Alberts starts with a point that I think few here would disagree with: decisions in government need to be data-driven, and based on the best science available. This point has been made before, and it's certainly crucial, but the more crucial point is why…
December 12, 2010
Sometimes, when I take a step back and look at the ways that we can manipulate life, I'm astounded. We can breed mice that lack any gene we want. We can also insert new genes, and have them only express in certain types of cells or only at certain times. This is routine. We can make design viruses…