Technology
nisbetmc | January 8, 2007In an article fronting today's Washington Post, Rick Weiss gives us a preview of the rhetorical struggle that is sure to be part of this week's House stem cell debate, namely the efforts by research opponents to spin the amniotic stem cell study as a "middle way" compromise solution to overturning Bush's flawed stem cell policy.
Atala and other scientists emphasized that they don't believe the cells will make embryonic stem cells irrelevant. "There's not going to be one shoe that fits all," said Robert Lanza, scientific director at Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Mass. "We're going to…
drorzel | January 8, 2007Paul Davies's forthcoming book Cosmic Jackpot is subtitled "Why Our Universe Is Just Right for Life," so you know that he's not going after small questions, here. The book is a lengthy and detailed discussion of what he terms the "Goldilocks Enigma," and what others refer to as "fine-tuning"-- basically, how do you account for the fact that the universe allows us to exist? A small change in the values of any of the constants of nature would very likely make it impossible for life as we know it to exist. And yet, here we are-- so how did that happen?
Though this book won't be released for a…
retrospectacle | January 8, 2007As research into stem cells broadens, it seems like we're finding them in more and more places. Most recently, stem cells have been isolated from amniotic fluid. Interestingly, they possess qualities which pose as a kind of intermediary between adult and embryonic stem cells. As much as I hate evaluating science on abstracts alone, that's all i've got at the moment until UM updates its databases.
The paper, "Isolation of amniotic stem cell lines with potential for therapy" was published in Nature Biotechnology by groups at Wake Forest and Harvard (Anthony Atala seems to be the senior…
apalazzo | January 4, 2007There is one particular comment written by BC with regards to a patent owned by Archemix that covers all RNA aptamers that I'd like to share with you:
My data point is talks with key a key scientific advisory board member of the company - they bought it from Gold's company, Gilead, IIRC (see wikipedia's aptamer page).
There are small companies such as Q-RNA that are based specifically on a single aptamer or class of aptamers (not clear to me from QRNA's site) and if they didn't get grandfather'ed then I'd say they're at the mercy of the patent holder.
I don't have the answer to the patent…
revere | January 1, 2007Everybody should think of starting a new career once in a while, and New Year's Day seems as good a time as any for US taxpayers to embark on their new jobs as Venture Capitalists. Medgadget, a site that brings us news of advances in medical technology, now tells us about a private Salt Lake City company, TechniScan Medical Systems, who just received $2.8 million in taxpayer money, from NIH no less, to develop a noninvasive ultrasound device for detecting breast cancer.
Medgadget is offended by the use of public dollars for this purpose, and frankly, so am I. NIH supports basic research and…
clock | January 1, 2007The conference is only 19 [13] days from today! It's getting really exciting!
The program is shaping really well:
On Thursday (January 18th) we will have a teach-in session. About 20 people have signed up so far (update: 30, thus the session is now full). We'll use Wordpress to help them start their own blogs, so I'll have to make one of my own in advance and play around to figure out the platform before I teach others.
On Friday (January 19th), we'll have dinner and all the bloggers present will read their posts. We have not decided on the place yet, but perhaps a site that has wifi, or…
catdynamics | December 25, 2006Gleðileg Jól!
Another blast from the past of Ye Olde Blogge
You're in grad school. Yay.
Now wtf do you do...
Well, you need to jump through the hurdles first.
Most places have some course and seminar requirements, you may in some cases test out of them or waive them, but think about whether you really want to. Odds are that your undergraduate curriculum was not complete or advanced enough in at least some areas. Yes, you want to get on with research, but you also want to be solid on the fundamentals.
Take the stoopid exams, whatever they call them, usually some variation on candidacy or comps…
clock | December 19, 2006Shoulder Ligament A Linchpin In The Evolution Of Flight:
Brown and Harvard scientists have learned that a single ligament at the shoulder joint stabilizes the wings of birds during flight. In an advanced online publication of Nature, they explain how this tough bit of tissue evolved to become a linchpin for today's fliers.
Internal Compass Of Immune Cell Discovered:
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine have discovered how neutrophils -- specialized white blood cells that play key roles in inflammation and in the body's immune defense against…
cortex | December 18, 2006DARPA, the often secretive research unit of the Pentagon devoted to sponsoring "revolutionary, high-payoff research," has recently turned its attention to neuroscience. DARPA is best known for creating the precursor of the internet, and for decades lavished its considerable resources on high-end physics. It should not be surprising that the Defense Department is now interested in the brain.
As Sharon Begley recently wrote in the WSJ:
Darpa has good reason to fund neuroscience. Discoveries and new technologies such as noninvasive imaging to detect what the mind is doing might help analysts,…
omnibrain | December 16, 2006Another classic...
So I was watching Mythbusters the other night and they were testing a number of "mind contol" devices - they used EEG, etc. They even decided that a couple methods were "plausible."
I decided what I could find out there on the internet...
The first place I looked was EBay - they really do sell everything (I once almost got an antique proctologists uhh.."probe" - it was going to be a gift .. i promise), but anyway - this picture popped up. Only $799.99!
Control people's minds with this amazingly simple technology. The Mind Control Machine converts your voice into something…
drorzel | December 13, 2006This is the second in a series of old posts about space exploration in general, and the Bush Moon-and-Mars plan specifically. This is a repost of an old blog post from 2004, so any numbers or links in the post may be out of date. There were also a few comments to the original article, that you may or may not want to read.
In this installment, we have my half-assed explanation of the conceptual problems behind the Space Shuttle program:
There are essentially two arguments for why we ought to support manned space flight, and if you dip into the comments at any of the other fine blogs linked in…
clock | December 4, 2006Brookings Hamilton Project Issues New Papers on Science and Technological Innovation:
Experts Address how Education, Patent Reform, and Inducement Prizes in Science and Technology can aid Competitiveness and Growth.
Focusing attention on the importance of science and technology innovation to U.S. growth and competitiveness, The Hamilton Project, an initiative at the Brookings Institution, today released policy proposals to spur investments in innovation, research and the education of a highly skilled American workforce. The proposals were released on The Hamilton Project website ( www.…
purepedantry | November 22, 2006Dinesh D'Souza, writing in the Christian Science Monitor, defends organized religion from criticism that links it with violence and wars:
- In recent months, a spate of atheist books have argued that religion represents, as "End of Faith" author Sam Harris puts it, "the most potent source of human conflict, past and present."
Columnist Robert Kuttner gives the familiar litany. "The Crusades slaughtered millions in the name of Jesus. The Inquisition brought the torture and murder of millions more. After Martin Luther, Christians did bloody battle with other Christians for another three…
cortex | November 21, 2006Did you know that 1 percent of hospital patients account for nearly a quarter of all medical expenses? This graph is a sobering glance at the real problems facing our health care industry. It's the 80-20 rule come to life:
The worst part is that these problems don't have an easy answer. They won't be remedied by a single-payer system, or an extension of Medicare, or by health-savings accounts. This problem was created by expensive technology. If you want to stay biologically alive, to eek out an existence full of tubes and comas and dialysis, modern medicine can probably keep your vital…
purepedantry | November 2, 2006In my previous post arguing for the relatively large psychological similarity between men and women -- in great contrast to the public conception -- I drew heavily on the work of Janet Hyde, a professor of Psychology at Berkeley.
Now Janet Hyde and Marcia Linn have published an editorial and review in Science summarizing their work. Money quote:
A review of meta-analyses of research on psychological gender differences identified 46 reports, addressing a variety of psychological characteristics, including mathematical, verbal, and spatial abilities; aggression; leadership effectiveness; self-…
evolgen | November 1, 2006Nature Reviews Genetics has published a review (go figure) of speciation genetics penned by Mohamed Noor and Jeff Feder. Here is the purpose of the review, from the horses' mouths:
Here, we review how recent advances in molecular and genomic techniques are helping to achieve a greater understanding of the genetics of speciation. For the purpose of this review, we focus on technical advances rather than theoretical concepts, which are discussed extensively elsewhere. We define speciation for sexually reproducing organisms as the transformation of within-population variation into taxonomic…
purepedantry | October 31, 2006In August, there was a big press tizzy about so-called ethical stem cells. In the paper, a group headed by Robert Lanza working at a company called Advanced Cell Technology claimed that they could take a single cell from a human morula and create a embryonic stem cell line from that cell. Admittedly, this was an exceptional scientific advance, but there were some serious caveats. First, the story was kind of hyped in the sense that the paper didn't actually show that you could do this without killing the embryo, they merely implied that it was possible. Second, I had some serious…
worldsfair | October 25, 2006Yesterday I had an opportunity to listen to and to say hello to Ronald Wright. This is a fellow who has crossed a number of disciplinary boundaries in terms of his writing prowess, and winning lots of literary awards along the way.
He's trained in Archeology and Anthropology, and as far as last night was concerned, focused on two of his books: "The Scientific Romance", and "A Short History of Progress."
Both are examplary and worth picking up. His language is just the sort that is lovely to read. In fact, I made previous comments to his bok "A Short History" in a previous post, but I'll…
retrospectacle | October 24, 2006As has been reported by myself and others, Iceland has resumed commercial whaling, killing an endangered fin whale earlier this week. However, Norway and Japan have been engaging in commercial whaling, either blatantly or under the auspices of "scientific research," for quite some time. This is quite a sensitive issue in global politics, involving high emotions on either side. Pro-whalers argue that some commercial whale populations have rebounded and are viable for sustainable hunting, while anti-whalers argue that populations are over-inflated and outdated by the IWC and that the method…
evolvingthoughts | October 21, 2006King's College, Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Public Affairs is running a series of lectures on trust in science that looks very interesting. Bit far for me to drop in, but if you're in the neighbourhood...
The ChronicleHerald article is below the fold.
King's, ethics centre present five-part lecture series on how we trust in science
The University of King's College, together with the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Public Affairs, is presenting the five-part Trust in Science lecture series, beginning Oct. 26.
The first lecture, Setting the Scene: From Magician to…