Technology
oracknows | September 9, 2009What can one say about a woman who wrote books with titles such as The Cure For All Cancers, The Cure For All Advanced Cancers, The Cure for HIV and AIDS, The Cure For All Diseases, and, most recently, The Cure and Prevention of All Cancers (with bonus DVD)? A woman who stated that a liver fluke is the cause of all cancer and that she could cure all cancer by zapping the liver fluke with a device that looks as though it's constructed from spare parts purchased at Radio Shack? What can one say about a woman who can make a video like the one below?
In brief, what can one say about "Dr." Hulda…
grrlscientist | September 7, 2009Everyone loves free books, right? Well, I know I do, and since I've got a huge stack of books in my apartment that are seeking a loving home, I want to share them with you. These books are duplicates of review copies, advance reading copies and uncorrected proofs as well as some books that I purchased or somehow obtained. All books are in excellent (like new) shape, unless otherwise noted. I am offering them to you several times per week for the next few months, free of charge, although I will ask you to pay the cost of the shipping envelope and postage for mailing each book to you. Below the…
grrlscientist | September 7, 2009
I receive a fair number of books to review each month, so I thought I should do what several magazines and other publications do; list those books that have arrived in my mailbox so you know that this is the pool of books from which I will be reading and reviewing on my blog.
Evolution by Jean-Baptiste de Panafieu (Author), Patrick Gries (Photographer), Linda Asher (Translator). Hardcover. Gift.
The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria," the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction (Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology) by Rachel P. Maines. Paperback. Gift.
The Pink Lady: The…
jstemwedel | September 5, 2009Like a good nerd, I love me some Star Trek. I will confess to having a strong preference for the original series (TOS), on account of that was what my parents watched with us when we were wee young nerds growing up. (My dad had a freakish ability to tell within the first few words of Kirk's "captain's log" at the opening which episode it was going to be.)
Something I didn't realize until I was a mature nerd was just how regularly, in TOS, Kirk and/or the rest of the crew of the Starship Enterprise violated the Prime Directive, which, as Wikipedia tells it:
dictates that there can be no…
esiegel | August 28, 2009Yesterday, I showed you a picture of 100,000 nearby galaxies, which made me feel small, even when we just look at our (relatively) local Universe. Today, let's go down to the other end of the spectrum.
Electron microscopes have been around for a long time, and they've let us see some very advanced structures at amazingly high resolutions. For example, here are some individual pollen grains:
But what if you want to go deeper? What if you wanted, say, to see an individual protein and how it's folded? Well, we have the technology (such as at the Advanced Photon Source) to image and infer the…
dgmacarthur | August 26, 2009Complete Genomics is finally back on the road towards fulfilling its promises of $5000 human genome sequences, after delays in obtaining funding for a massive new facility pushed back its plans by six months. The $45 million in funding it announced this week will be sufficient to build the new Silicon Valley facility, which the company claims will have the capacity to sequence a staggering 10,000 genomes over the course of 2010.
Complete Genomics is an unusual creature in the second-generation sequencing menagerie: instead of aiming to generate revenue by selling machines to researchers and…
nisbetmc | August 24, 2009For DC-area readers who have been following the discussion of climate change communication at this blog, you will want to turn out to Ed Maibach's talk tomorrow at the NSF. Details below. For background reading, see Ed's report with colleagues on Global Warming's Six Americas and the resources at the Center for Climate Change Communication, which he directs. I would also recommend his recent co-authored article from the American Journal of Preventative Medicine. Ed and I are collaborating on a funded project to test different frames on climate change across audience segments, evaluating the…
esiegel | August 22, 2009New technology has led to breakthroughs in practically every aspect of our lives since the dawn of the industrial revolution. In nearly every case, it's for the betterment, in some way, of society. (And yet, I like my music best when it's acoustic, unprocessed, and barely produced at all.) Take a listen to Song for Roy by the amazing Sam Bush (with help from Emmylou Harris) about his late bass player, Roy Huskey, Jr.
One of the more memorable technological advances in my lifetime came in the mid-1990s, when DNA testing/evidence became a very controversial part of our culture with a…
clock | August 15, 2009A run-down of good recent stuff, highly recommended for your weekend reading and bookmarking:
PLoS One: Interview with Peter Binfield:
...In my view PLoS ONE is the most dynamic, innovative and exciting journal in the world, and I am proud to work on it.
In many ways PLoS ONE operates like any other journal however it diverges in several important respects. The founding principle of PLoS ONE was that there are certain aspects of publishing which are best conducted pre-publication and certain aspects which are best conducted post-publication. The advent of online publishing has allowed us to…
dgmacarthur | August 12, 2009The announcement of the Helicos genome sequence (which I've already discussed in detail) engendered a huge amount of media interest, sometimes for the wrong reasons.
Having the media attention directed elsewhere in the third-generation sequencing space was clearly an unwelcome experience for Helicos competitors Pacific Biosciences, who have responded with a press release announcing the successful raising of $68M to finance further development of their single-molecule real-time (SMRT) sequencing platform.
To be fair, raising that sort of capital in the current economic climate is no mean…
dgmacarthur | August 11, 2009David Dooling has an entertaining take on the Helicos genome sequence I discussed yesterday entitled "Another rich white guy sequences own genome".
I noted in my post yesterday that the alleged price drop for the Helicos sequence over current technologies was an illusion, but David includes a much more thorough analysis of the relative genome sequencing costs thrown around over the last couple of days and makes it very clear that the price Helicos is quoting is really no advance over the current prices for second-generation sequencing technologies:
They report reagent costs that are on par…
oracknows | August 10, 2009If there's one theme that's run through this blog since the very beginning, it's that the best medical care should be based on the best science. In other words, I like to think of myself as being far more for science- and evidence-based medicine, than I am against against so-called "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM).
Unfortunately, even though the proportion of medical therapies not based on science is far lower than CAM advocates would like you to believe, there are still more treatments in "conventional" medicine that are insufficiently based on science or that have never been…
oracknows | August 3, 2009Due to annoying stuff at work and good stuff personally, I didn't have time to grind out my usual bit of Insolence, either Respectful or not-so-Respectful, today. Fortunately, there is a long history on this blog, full of good stuff that I can repost. So, as I did when I went to TAM7, I'm picking a couple of posts for today that originally appeared in August. This one happens to have first appeared in August 2006; so if you haven't been reading at least three years, it's new to you (and if you have, I hope you enjoy it a second time).
I'll be back tomorrow.
I debated for a while about whether…
mspringer | July 27, 2009This weekend I was at the movies with my lovely significant other watching The Proposal (verdict: about what you'd expect). Unusually for a by-the-numbers romcom, the pre-film previews showed no fewer than two promising science fiction films.
Science fiction is difficult to cleanly describe - it's almost more of a flavor than a formula. The best I can do at the moment is to say that science fiction speculates on the consequences of some fundamental but scientifically plausible difference(s) between now and some other time. That time doesn't necessarily have to be the future, by the way.…
palmd | July 23, 2009Alternative medicine practitioners love to coin magic words, but really, how can you blame them? Real medicine has a Clarkeian quality to it*; it's so successful, it seems like magic. But real doctors know that there is nothing magic about it. The "magic" is based on hard work, sound scientific principles, and years of study.
Magic words are great. Terms like mindfulness, functional medicine, or endocrine disruptors take a complicated problem and create a simple but false answer with no real data to back it up. More often than not, the magic word is the invention of a single person who…
razib | July 20, 2009Shanidar 3 Neandertal rib puncture wound and paleolithic weaponry:
Since its discovery and initial description in the 1960s, the penetrating lesion to the left ninth rib of the Shanidar 3 Neandertal has been a focus for discussion about interpersonal violence and weapon technology in the Middle Paleolithic. Recent experimental studies using lithic points on animal targets suggest that aspects of weapon system dynamics can be inferred from the form of the bony lesions they produce. Thus, to better understand the circumstances surrounding the traumatic injury suffered by Shanidar 3, we…
cpikas | July 20, 2009This was the last day of comps - it's up to waiting for the results. The essays were emailed out to the readers immediately at 4pm when I finished.
This day's questions were much more attractive.
First exam was Information Retrieval - a minor area. I had to pick one of three:
- something about a system to present science so that engineers can use it to make technology?
- design and tell how to evaluate an information retrieval system that has both peer-reviewed scientific literature and blogs and wikis of interest to scientists
- exploratory search, what is it, how to support it, etc
I picked…
oracknows | July 20, 2009Screening for disease, especially cancer, is a real bitch.
I was reminded of this by the publication of a study in BMJ the very day of the Science-Based Medicine Conference a week and a half ago. Unfortunately, between The Amaz!ng Meeting and other activities, I was too busy to give this study the attention it deserved last Monday. Given the media coverage of the study, which in essence tried to paint mammography screening for breast cancer as being either useless or doing more harm than good, I thought it was imperative for me still to write about it. Better late than never, and I was…
terrasig | July 18, 2009
My Y chromosome and I are supremely honored to have been invited by skookumchick to host the August edition of Scientiae, the blog carnival of "stories of and from women in science, engineering, technology, and math." But remember: "Posts are welcome from women and men and everyone in between if they focus on the topic of the Carnival."
For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, it is summer. In academia in particular, summer is often a time when institutional responsibilities (teaching, committees) are at somewhat of a lull - still buzzing but less demanding than usual for most. One has…
cpikas | July 17, 2009Sigh. TGIF and TG I have 2 days free before the next 2. I really felt like I was very, very familiar with these articles but I had a really hard time.
I think when I look back on my response, I'll see it really wanders and doesn't make a good case.
Here are the questions. Choose one of:
- Olson and Olson (2000) Distance matters is a seminal [sic- for feminists, I know] paper. Describe why they said distance matters. There have been a lot of technological advancements since 2000, does distance still matter?
or
- Researchers argue Social network analysis is either a theory base or a…