j7uy5 | January 11, 2010Those of us who watch the drug development pipeline have been pining
for a nonaddictive anti-anxiety drug. Occasionally there are
glimmers of hope. One candidate is
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emapunil">emapunil, aka XBD-173
or AC-5216. In 2004, there was an article in the British
Journal of Pharmacology about this. That article described
promising findings, in rats and mice. Now, there is an article inScience that finally show some findings in humans.
href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1575165/">Antianxiety
and antidepressant-like effects of AC-5216, a…
j7uy5 | January 1, 2010...for canceling the showing of a creationist film, Darwin's
Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record. The
background is on Greg Laden's Blog,
href="http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/10/los_angeles_venue_cancels_inte.php">Los
Angeles Venue Cancels Intelligent Design Film:
You'll recall that it was recently reported that the
California Science Center, which is loosely affiliated with the
Smithsonian Institution, had planned a screening of "Darwin's Dilemma:
The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record" which is apparently a
creationist documentary.
Well, now, the venue has…
j7uy5 | December 28, 2009Thanks to a tip from a reader, for this one.
A photographer named
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Prokudin-Gorsky">Sergei
Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) made glass negatives in
the early 1900's that could be used to create color images. He
did this by inventing a camera that would take three different
frames of the same scene, with different color filters (red, green
blue) for each. He displayed the pictures via projection, using
the same filters. Even though the negatives were only grayscale
images, the result was comparable to that obtained using a color slide…
j7uy5 | December 23, 2009Visiting with Kevin, went hiking in Soledad Canyon. The light was
crazy, alterating between awful for photography, and interesting, but
always challenging. When it stopped snowing and the wind wasn't
blowing me around, I was able to get some decent pictures.
style="display: inline;">
j7uy5 | December 23, 2009Nicely illustrated in this photo:
Thanks to Jim R., who doesn't have a blog to link.
j7uy5 | December 23, 2009From Shorpy (Always Something Wonderful), this is a photo of the
href="http://www.shorpy.com/node/2119">Christmas tree at the home of
Wilbur and Orville Wright, in the year 1900.
style="display: inline;">
j7uy5 | December 22, 2009One of the more enlightening and worrisome articles I read recently was
href="http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2008/11/24/081124ta_talk_surowiecki">The
Perils of Efficiency, by James Surowiecki. The article
was a discussion of the practical effects of the mathematical concept,
that you can only optimize one variable in an complex system. So
if you optimize for lowest cost per unit of production, you have to
sacrifice something else. One of the things you sacrifice, is
resilience.
Most managers of systems with a supply chain have adopted what is
called just-in-time supply. That…
j7uy5 | December 14, 2009Today is the 90th anniversary of the first Felix the Cat cartoon.
href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xz26t_1919felix-the-cat-feline-follies_fun">1919-Felix
The Cat - Feline FolliesUploaded by iToons.
- Watch more
comedy videos and sitcoms.
Needless to say, it changed a lot over the years. In the 1960's,
it was my favorite.
j7uy5 | December 14, 2009I couldn't resist that title, but I must admit it isn't mine; the
author's post is
href="http://pasadenasubrosa.typepad.com/pasadena_sub_rosa/2009/12/let-them-eat-antipsychotics.html">here.
This is about the NYT article about the finding that children on
Medicaid are more likely to be prescribed antipsychotic medication,
compared to those with private insurance. The obvious correlation
is that children with Medicaid are from poor families, whereas those
with private insurance are from families that have more
resources.
It is one of those studies that documents an evocative finding,…
j7uy5 | December 11, 2009This is a tip for selecting the fastest DNS server.
href="http://www.opendns.com/">OpenDNS already has
fans at ScienceBlogs (
href="http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/08/turkish_ass_shuts_down_a_slice.php">1
href="http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2007/08/connectile_dysfunction.php">2).
I've been using it for years. But now that
href="http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/">Google has
their own free/open DNS service, the question arises: which
is better? Or is there a different one that is better?
OpenDNS is free for anyone to use, but they also offer paid…
j7uy5 | December 7, 2009This is a
href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=41500">high-resolution
photo of Pearl Harbor (click to enlarge). When I saw that it had
been posted to the NASA Earth Observatory, I wondered -- momentarily --
why they would post a photo of Pearl Harbor. Then I remembered:
December 7th.
style="display: inline;">
My father was 14 on 7 December 1941. He studied in high school, got
good grades, and enlisted when he turned 18. Didn't think about it.
There was nothing to think. Every able-bodied young man did it,
unless there was a compelling reason to do otherwise.
He…
j7uy5 | December 7, 2009I wrote about this before, a couple of times, most thoroughly
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2008/06/national_infrastructure_protec.php">here.
I was reminded of this topic when I saw that the American Society of
Civil Engineers (ASCE) have updated their
href="http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/">Report Card on
America's Infrastructure.
In 2008, I compared the positions of the two Presidential candidates,
regarding advocacy for infrastructure improvements. Obama was
better. So I was somewhat hopeful that we would see some pretty
big changes, after he won the…
j7uy5 | December 2, 2009Sharon Astyk will be joining Scienceblogs soon. Everyone is
encourage to
href="http://sharonastyk.com/2009/11/30/new-shiny-stuff-classes-contests-and-the-new-blog-announcement/">read
the post about her upcoming transition. I would especially
encourage my sciblings/colleagues here to read what her commenters have
to say about us. Really. This is what the world thinks of
us.
j7uy5 | December 2, 2009This post is about a journal article that describes mortality rates in
populations of persons with eating disorders. It is sort of
about that. The article is in the APA green journal, which is not
openly accessible. Only the abstract is free. Usually I
don't write about closed-access articles. But this is different,
because I am not going to do a traditional post about a peer-reviewed
article. You don't need to have access to the whole article to
get the point.
href="http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/166/12/1342">Increased
Mortality in Bulimia Nervosa and Other…
j7uy5 | November 29, 2009While we have a cold, dreary rain here: a photo of brighter, hotter
times:
style="display: inline;">
This is from September 2007. It is a desert spiny lizard (
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sceloporus_magister">Sceloporus
magister) on a desert willow (
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilopsis_linearis">Chilopsis
linearis) with some desert marigolds (
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baileya_multiradiata">Baileya
multiradiata) in the background. The local weather
station report indicates that it was 84.2 degrees Fahrenheit (29
degrees C) when the photo was taken.
j7uy5 | November 26, 2009Environmental regulations have greatly reduced the amount of sulfur in
gasoline. This has created many benefits. But did you ever
wonder what happens to all that sulfur? Perhaps not, if it was
never clear to you why you should care.
The reason you should care is this: Sulfur is present in coal and
in most liquid fuels. When it is burned, it oxidized, much as the
carbon is oxidized. Carbon becomes carbon dioxide; sulfur becomes
sulfur dioxide. When sulfur dioxide enters the atmosphere, it
becomes a strong acid: sulfuric acid, which is battery acid. This
is one factor that contributes…
j7uy5 | November 23, 2009The USA still leads the world int he number of scientific papers
published per year. Germany and Japan were essentially tied
for second, for years. According to a recent report by
Thomspon-Reuters ISI, there is a new player at the table:
class="mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image" style="display: inline;">
The report is
href="http://science.thomsonreuters.com/info/grr-china/">available
at Thomson Reuters, free registration required.
Note that this says nothing about quality; it is all about
quantity. (HT:
href="http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2009/11/china_leaps_to.html">Paul…
j7uy5 | November 23, 2009Is there some kind of especially violent undercurrent right now, in the
right-wing river of hate?
Ed Brayton just
href="http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2009/11/missouri_republicans_call_for.php">posted
about a billboard put up by the GOP, specifically the
href="http://lafayettecountyrepublicans.blogspot.com/2009/11/new-i-70-billboard-replaces-famed.html">Lafayette
County
(Missouri) Republicans:
style="display: inline;">
src="http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/I-70%20Billboard%2011_19_09.jpg"
class="mt-image-none" style="" height="300" width="400">
The
sign
href="http://4.…
j7uy5 | November 20, 2009Reasonable persons still wonder why some others insist that permitting
gay marriage will threaten heterosexual marriage. Now we find
out: it happens as an unintended consequence. Take Texas (please):
href="http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics/AP/story/1340136.html">Texas'
gay marriage ban may have banned all marriages
By Dave Montgomery
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Posted on Wednesday, 11.18.09
AUSTIN -- Texans: Are you really married?
Maybe not.
Barbara Ann Radnofsky, a Houston lawyer and Democratic candidate for
attorney general, says that a 22-word clause in a 2005 constitutional…