revere | December 5, 2008Given the size of the kinds of Federal bail-outs being discussed these days, Harvard University's endowment, almost $37 billion, by far the largest of any university in the world, sounds like chump change. But it is a staggeringly large endowment for a university and the interest alone accounted for 35% of the Harvard's annual operating budget. The previous statement is not quite accurate, we find out now. The endowment stood at $36.9 billion four months ago, the biggest decline in modern history of the institution. In the time since it has lost at least 22% of its value ($8 billion). The…
revere | December 5, 2008Environmental health researchers got some good news yesterday. The NIH's only institute that focusses almost entirely on public health and environmental science, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), got a new Director after years of chaotic and controversial regime of former Director David Schwartz, who left under a cloud of alleged conflicts of interest and mismanagement. For the last year NIEHS has been under very capable and stabilizing direction of an Acting Director, Sam Wilson, but there were limits on what could be done by a Director and his Deputy who didn…
revere | December 4, 2008Another one gone. First Miriam Makeba. Now Odetta. It's almost as if they waited for the election and then said, "It's OK, now." Odetta was 77 and her voice still powerful. It remains even more powerful in memory. This one has hit me hard.
Two contrasting clips. The first, a studio recording from 1957 of Midnight Special, the Leadbelly song she helped make famous. Vintage, classic Odetta. The second a lovely, bittersweet trio with Janis Ian and Phoebe Snow. Thanks to the posters on YouTube:
revere | December 4, 2008The 53 year old South African businessman arrived in Rio de Janeiro on November 23. Two days later he began to feel unwell. Today he was returning to South Africa -- in a zinc lined coffin:
Brazilian media reported officials as saying he may have been infected when he was a patient at a hospital in South Africa where four people died from a new strain of arenavirus, which also includes the germ that causes Lassa fever.
The health ministry said it had not confirmed that information, but said one of the suspected causes of death was the arenavirus, which is spread through the excrement or blood…
revere | December 3, 2008Many of us supported Barack Obama during the Presidential campaign, not because we agreed with all of his positions but we agreed with many of them that were crucial. We also saw no morally viable alternative. We hope to be able to continue our support, but it will always be offered in a constructive and not unconditional spirit. We appreciate the commitmentto transparency that has characterized the transition period and we have high hopes it will continue once the Obama administration takes office.
It is in this spirit we endorse and pass on these Principles for an Open Transition…
revere | December 3, 2008Don't ask me why I am so fixated on this topic but whenever I see an article about driving and cell phone use I post on it (example here). The idea that talking on the phone, dialing or texting while driving might be a wee bit of a cognitive problem doesn't seem too controversial, but many people think that the "hands free" version gets around the dangers. The little work that has been done on that subject suggests otherwise. Does that mean that just talking to another passenger is just as bad? Apparently not:
Hands-free mobile phone calls are significantly more distracting than even the most…
revere | December 2, 2008Mighty oaks from little acorns grow, but not this year. At least in a lot of places. Because for reasons no one seems to understand many places in North America are reporting no acorns at all. I'm not talking reduced numbers of acorns or few acorns. I'm talking about zero acorns:
The idea seemed too crazy to Rod Simmons, a measured, careful field botanist. Naturalists in Arlington County couldn't find any acorns. None. No hickory nuts, either. Then he went out to look for himself. He came up with nothing. Nothing crunched underfoot. Nothing hit him on the head.
Then calls started coming in…
revere | December 2, 2008Cholera is a vicious disease. It can take a healthy person and kill him or her in a day by rapidly dehydrating them from a massive, watery diarrhea. The resulting electrolyte imbalance can lead to vascular collapse or cardiac arrest. Cholera is usually spread by fecally contaminated drinking water, and hence is completely preventable. It is also easily treatable by keeping the patient hydrated with the oral rehydration therapy, basically minimally fortified water. Yet this preventable and treatable disease is now epidemic in the country of Zimbabwe. Government sources admit to over 400 deaths…
revere | December 1, 2008Barack Obama will become President of the United States in just 50 days, but the still-President, George W. Bush, is still trashing the place prior to going out the door. The latest outrage is the rush to complete a rule the new President is strongly opposed to. Somehow I don't think that's the way it's supposed to work, but that's the way it's working. If you are committed to safer workplaces in this country, the new rule is a monstrosity that will make jobs more dangerous for whoever will still have a job after this administration's policies have played out:
The rule, which has strong…
revere | December 1, 2008The common cold is probably common because a lot of different viruses cause similar symptoms. We usually treat it symptomatically or just endure it. We rarely expend much time, effort or money identifying which virus caused it. As as a result we undoubtedly haven't identified all the viruses that can make us miserable in the inimitable way we identify as a "head cold." When we entered the 21st century, some 8 years ago, there were a lot of stories about what the future might bring and I was interviewed by a well known medical TV reporter (Dr. Timothy Johnson) about what I thought would happen…
revere | November 30, 2008A story on the wires about a paper in the journal Epidemiology this month (November) confirms what other work has shown: those beautiful flowers we buy in American florist shops have an added price attached to them, paid by the children of Central America. Epidemiology is one of the top tier journals in the field of epidemiology, but I don't have access to my copy, which is at work (and I'm not), so I'm working off wire service copy (Reuters Health). From what I know of the subject, however, the account is likely accurate. Here's the gist:
In a study from Ecuador, babies and toddlers born to…
revere | November 29, 2008The economy is bad and everyone expects retail sales to be substantially off. But parents will scrimp on presents for each other to make sure their kids get presents they want. Whether we approve or not, we do it for our kids. I assume it's hardwired into our brains somehow. But in the waning hours of the Bush administration, we are still getting the same old crap and they don't give a second thought to putting our kids and grand kids at risk:
Congressional supporters of a new law meant to protect children from dangerous chemicals are trying to make sure that the government enforces the…
revere | November 29, 2008Genetically modified crops is not a special interest of mine, which is a good thing because once you get into that controversy you are like the worker who gets his sleeve caught in the machine: before long you are dragged into the gears and badly mauled. I'm not reflexively against it. I recognize that what GM advocates have been saying has more than a grain of truth: we've been engaged in genetic engineering of crops since agriculture was domesticated. Modern genetic techniques have amplified that ability by orders of magnitude, but the result is the same. We are purposely altering the…
revere | November 28, 2008Travel is off this year because of the dreadful state of the world economy, but this is still probably the biggest travel weekend of the year. So to commemorate it and because our publisher, Seed, is a German publisher as well, we present this tribute to the pleasures of Thanksgiving travel, first in English, then in German:
1040+
revere | November 28, 2008In 1988 a 32 year old woman, 36 weeks pregnant, checked into a community hospital in Wisconsin. She'd had flu-like symptoms with a moderately high (spiking to 102 degrees F.) fever for the previous week. Three days before admission she started a cough that brought up sputum and a day before started to get short of breath. On x-ray both lungs showed a consolidated pneumonia in the lower lobes and she was started on broad spectrum antibiotics, transferred to a tertiary care hospital and started on assisted ventilation. Labor was induced and she delived a healthy baby, just over 6 lbs. Four days…
revere | November 27, 2008It's Thanksgiving Holiday in the US. For many Americans a time to dine on traditional foods with family and friends; for a significant number of Americans a difficult time of loneliness or family tension; for the original Americans, a time to reflect on how European occupiers and invaders took your land and your way of life. We are fortunate enough to be in the first group but we never forget how fortunate we are. If you aren't American (and most of the world isn't) it's just another work day or another day of trying to make it to the next day.
Whatever, it's not a heavy day for blog traffic…
revere | November 27, 2008The other day we wrote a post about the reduction in genetic diversity among commercial chicken breeds that attracted a surprising amount of informed comment (surprising to us, anyway; I think it shows more about the general knowledge of a city boy like me than anything else). So while we were on the subject of chickens (as we are so often because we write a lot about avian influenza) I thought I'd post up this remarkable YouTube video illustrating chicken head control. First a little background from the point of view of a human.
Humans also have remarkable abilities when it comes to head and…
revere | November 26, 2008In a recent interview with a Japanese broadcasting company, still-President George Bush summed up his judgment on the Iraq debacle: it's a great success. He's "very pleased," mainly that he toppled Saddam Hussein. What about the rest. Like the streets being rivers of sewage?
Spare tires come in handy in Sadr City when lakes of sewage overflow trenches or bubble up from broken underground pipes. Pedestrians pull them from at-ready stacks to create a foot bridge across the excrement.
It's a routine honed by years of neglect, indifference and, recently, good intentions sucked into a cycle of…
revere | November 26, 2008My Scibling Mark H. over at the Denialism blog has reproduced an internal NIH memo that is something to behold:
If you aren't used to the conventions of scientific collegiality you might not realize at first the unbelievable stupidity of this. A visiting international scientist (a Canadian or someone from Latin America, a European, often an Asian or African visitor) can't get a snack or go outside for a smoke unless someone goes with them. Or to the bathroom. If your visitor is a member of the opposite sex you'll have to find someone to go into the restrooms with them.
And the computer part…