j7uy5 | June 29, 2006I'm getting ready for work, so I won't take the time to write about
this at length. It is just one of those things that is a bit
startling and I often like to post such things. This is from
Medscape (free registration required):
href="http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/537495">Could Dogs
Pose a Risk Factor For Breast Cancer?
Zosia Chustecka
June 27, 2006 — Breast cancer patients were twice as likely
to have kept a dog as a pet in the past 10 years than age-matched
controls in a small study conducted by researchers at the University of
Munich, Germany. They suggest that dogs may…
j7uy5 | June 27, 2006
Sarah Berga, et. al. presented a paper at
the
European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in
Prague, about the use of cognitive-behavioral therapy for treatment of
infertility. It this post, I elaborate on some of the details
that the mainstream media left out. I end by speculating
about what it might mean about our society, that such a simple solution
could have been overlooked for so long.
From a report on the Times Online:
href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2235656,00.html">Learning
how to beat stress could be the best fertility treatment
by…
j7uy5 | June 26, 2006Fresh from a bout with the Press regarding disclosures of spying on
financial institutions, Vice-president Cheney has taken up a new cause.
The Reuters news agency has revealed operational details of
yet another spy plot:
href="http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyID=2006-06-26T182447Z_01_L26701912_RTRUKOC_0_US-ENVIRONMENT-OCEANS.xml&archived=False">Scientists
seek to spy on world's fish
Mon Jun 26, 2006 2:15pm ET
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
OSLO (Reuters) - Thousands of marine animals could be tracked under a
$150 million…
j7uy5 | June 26, 2006I used to blog about this kind of thing fairly often. I do it
less, now, partly because so many other people are ding a fine job
themselves. This time, I am not writing in order to make a
significant contribution to public debate. Rather, I am
writing it in order to feel better.
Several newspapers reported on the Administration's use of information
from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication
(SWIFT) to track financial transactions. The reported intent
is to track terrorist financing.
President Bush and Vice-President Cheney issued condemnations (
href="http…
j7uy5 | June 26, 2006Project Mohole got underway in 1961, with undersea drilling off the
Pacific coast of Mexico. The idea was to get geological core
samples from a bore hole, to learn about the nature of
the Mohorovicic
Discontinuity (the boundary between the earth's crust and mantle).
The Project ended in 1966.
In 1971, our eight-grade science class was shown a film about Project
Mohole. I
distinctly recall that the film talked about how promising the project
was, and how much we would learn from it.
Now, I seek, and
href="http://www.ejge.com/iGEM/Articles/MoHole/MoHole.htm">find,
the truth, or at…
j7uy5 | June 25, 2006I got an email that I almost deleted without reading, thinking for a moment that it would be spam. It turned out not to be. Since the author appears to be well-intentioned, I'll go ahead and post it here. He mentions some on-line resources regarding the diagnosis and treatment of adult ADHD.
Based upon the title of the email, I thought it was going to be one of those pitches for Internet drug sales. It is not. Instead, it promotes a site put up by an independent ADHD coach. Presumably, the main purpose is to promote his business. I have no particujlar objection to that. I have no…
j7uy5 | June 23, 2006The Washington Post has a mildly interesting
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/22/AR2006062201952.html">article
about Douglas M. Duncan, who just dropped out of the gubernatorial race
in Maryland. Reportedly, he was diagnosed as having depression earlier
in the week, then decided to withdraw.
"It's time for me to focus on my health"
The decision was taken as an opportunity to discuss the problem posed
by the illness, the stigma, and the difficulties posed by the decision
to go public with the disclosure.
"There is an enormous amount of stress to…
j7uy5 | June 23, 2006On tonight's edition of the PBS show, On Faith & Reason, Bill Moyers said:
Religion is the continuation of politics by other means."
This was in the course of a discussion with Salman Rushdie Of course, he was not referring to religion as it is supposed to be practiced; rather, he was talking about religion as it so often is practiced these days, in places such as Iran and the United States.
Both of them expressed the thought that there should be strict separation of church and state.
j7uy5 | June 23, 2006What makes a good science teacher? That is the new ask-a-scienceblogger
question. I am sure that there has been a lot of research into this,
none of which I have read. That is why this post is categorized as an
"armchair musing."
I'm going to answer this in a roundabout fashion.
Studies on the effectiveness of psychotherapy have been done, to try to
isolate the variables that predict a successful outcome.
Factors such as age, level of training, gender, gender
matching (whether the patient and the therapist are the same gender),
patient perceptions, therapeutic perspective, years of…
j7uy5 | June 22, 2006I've written about this
href="http://trots.blogspot.com/2005/02/pipeline-update-insomniaimplications.html">before,
but now there is some new information.
href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=16368265&query_hl=6&itool=pubmed_docsum"
rel="tag">Gaboxadol (THIP;
4,5,6,7-tetrahydroisoxazolo- [5,4-c] pyridin-3-ol)
is an investigational drug being developed by
title="company website" rel="tag"
href="http://www.lundbeck.com">Lundbeck in
conjunction with
href="http://www.merck.com/" rel="tag">Merck…
j7uy5 | June 22, 2006Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) currently is being
investigated as a treatment for major depression. (See
href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/mar06/3050">Psychiatry's
Shocking New Tools in IEEE Spectrum.)
Now, there is a report that it also may be useful for
migraine headache.
href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060621.whmigraine22/BNStory/specialScienceandHealth/home">Magnetic
device can head off migraines, neurologists say
UNNATI GANDHI
Globe and Mail
It's like something out of a video game.
Flashing lights, vertigo, a visual…
j7uy5 | June 21, 2006The title of this post is taken from the title of a USC
href="http://www.usc.edu/uscnews/stories/7800.html">press
release, about a topic in neuroscience. A guy at
USC named
href="http://geon.usc.edu/%7Ebiederman/" rel="tag">Irving
Biederman is studying the role of opioid (
title="Wikipedia link"
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enkephalin" rel="tag">enkephalin)
activity in visual perception.
Actually, the title of this post is misleading. His research
is not about beauty. Rather, it is about recognition,
salience and learning.
In order to understand his theory, it…
j7uy5 | June 20, 2006I'm sitting here, wondering why in the world I wrote so much about a
topic that is of no more than passing interest to me. Perhaps
if I keep writing, I will figure it out.
Note: this will not make much sense unless you've already read Janet's
more recent post on the topic of breastfeeding, here:
href="http://scienceblogs.com/ethicsandscience/2006/06/what_are_the_real_benefits_of.php">What
are the real benefits of breastfeeding? Statisticians weigh in.
You also have to have read the main article she cites, here:
href="http://www.stats.org/stories/breast_feed_nyt_jun_20_06.htm">…
j7uy5 | June 20, 2006Sometimes, when I write about new psychotropic medication coming to
market, I include a comment on the abuse potential. For
example, I've commented before on the relative lack of abuse potential
for
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rozerem" rel="tag">ramelteon
(
href="http://www.rozerem.com/home_c.aspx" rel="tag">Rozerem)
and
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modafinil" rel="tag">modafinil
(
href="http://www.provigil.com/" rel="tag">Provigil).
Usually, I end with a disclaimer: "but some people will abuse
anything."
Despite that universal disclaimer, I really never…
j7uy5 | June 18, 2006Back in 2004 I
href="http://trots.blogspot.com/2004/05/functional-neuroimagingintroduction.html">blogged
about a study of functional neuroimaging. That was one view:
the technical/scientific side of things.
Today, I got another view. On the blog Brian Kerr,
Brian wrote
about a project he and some others have started:
href="http://assistivemedia.org/">Assistive Media.
Their idea is to have volunteers read magazine articles, then
make the recordings available to blind persons (podcasts, MP3,
Realplayer). One of the articles came from the Ann
Arbor Observer.
href="http://…
j7uy5 | June 18, 2006
Moose, Isle Royale National Park
National Park Service Photo,
presumed to be in public domain
Sometimes I am talking to people about how they feel about taking
psychiatric medication. Commonly, they say something like
this: "I would rather be able to do it myself," or, "I don't like being
dependent on something."
Indeed, in American culture (and many others, presumably) independence
is highly valued. It is romanticized. It is
considered to be one of the nobler of virtues. It is
something to boast about.
"I don't need anyone" is a common refrain among the boastful.
Isle Royale…
j7uy5 | June 17, 2006The Sunday Times in the UK is reporting on efforts to being criminal
charges against a doctor who claimed that the MMR vaccine caused
autism. Millions of children went unvaccinated, and now the
UK has an outbreak of measles.
Continue below the fold...
href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2230936,00.html">Focus:
How a spurious health scare brought an old killer back
The Sunday Times
June 18, 2006
Brian Deer
As health chiefs last week reported the worst outbreaks of measles
across Britain in 20 years, slow progress was being made in bringing to
justice the…
j7uy5 | June 17, 2006Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day.
Teach a fish to write, and humans will eat forever.
This tuna is said to have a verse from the Koran on its side: "Wallahu
khayru razikiyna" (God is the greatest of all providers).
HT:
href="http://www.whatwouldjesussee.com/2006/05/how-do-you-tuna-koran.html">What
Would Jesus See?
Of course, to be fair and balanced, I should include the Jesus in the
asparagus root:
href="http://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/newsbexley/display.var.754541.0.divine_vegetation_in_tutors_garden.php">credit
j7uy5 | June 16, 2006This is pretty sickening:
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,,1799772,00.html">Drugs
firm blocks cheap blindness cure
Company will only seek licence for medicine that costs
100
times more
Sarah Boseley, health editor
Saturday June 17, 2006
A major drug company is blocking access to a medicine that is cheaply
and effectively saving thousands of people from going blind because it
wants to launch a more expensive product on the market.
Ophthalmologists around the world, on their own initiative, are
injecting tiny quantities of a colon cancer drug called
title…