mikethemadbiologist

Links for you. Science: E. coli data released under Creative Commons 0 license In Pictures: Spotting weedy seadragons of Australia Beavers get tough defending their turf Aggregative plasmid - new E. coli genome from HPA After David Koch Leaves NIH Board, NIH Hands Down Long-Delayed Classification…

...but these are green shoots merely "bumps in the road." Or something. Brad DeLong posted a graph showing just how dismal the employment numbers are: as a percentage of population, employment has cratered. That's a much more revealing number as unemployment, especially the strict version ('U3…

Regarding the German outbreak strain of E. coli, the data are fairly clear: it is an enteroaggregative E. coli ('EAEC') which has acquired antibiotic resistance genes and a Shiga-like toxin from an Shiga-toxinogenic E. coli ('STEC'). EAEC are interesting--according to the European Food Safety…

What is the sun doing in the sky? Let's celebrate with some links. Science: Charity: Save Four Million Lives With Vaccines Grape-Sized Amoeba Raises Questions About Origins of Animal Life Risk, probability, and how our brains are easily misled An early cure for parents' vaccine panic Other: The…

Which for those of you who don't know what the Mad Biologist's Pentultimate Political Philosophy is, it's very simple: people have to like this crap. Recently, I upgraded to Firefox 4 and I've been having 'stability issues', although they seem to have decreased in frequency somewhat. Which…

Note that I said cranky, not mad. Mad is reserved for moral degenerates who cut funding to assist people with cerebral palsy. But cranky? Yes. Recently, I've come across a couple of papers that describe interesting collections of E. coli. For example, one paper isolated a bunch of E. coli from…

Dear rest of the East Coast, please stop hogging all of the heat wave. As a gesture of good faith, I'll share some links with you. Science: Advice for Grad Students Gould's "Unconscious Manipulation of Data" NDM-1 in a US military hospital in Afghanistan Ruling Favors a 10-Inch Citizen of France…

Nope. There must be something in the water in the mens' bathroom in the House of Representatives: Congressman Bill Young (R-FL), the second ranking Republican on the powerful House Appropriations Committee, is in Italy this week on a congressional delegation. A funny thing happened to the female…

Peer review, the process in which scientific publication has to pass muster with critical reviewers, has a lot of problems. But a widely-cited report by McKinsey & Company consulting which claimed that Obamacare will result in one-third of companies dropping healthcare coverage for their…

Links for you. Science: The Mismeasure of Science: Stephen Jay Gould versus Samuel George Morton on Skulls and Bias Once more unto the "government waste" breach Announcing The Batavia Open Genomic Data Licence No joke: This is the biggest battery breakthrough ever Other: Making work Beyond the…

A constant refrain one hears when the deficit hawks let loose their piteous cries is that we are living beyond our means. Surely, our budget deficit and national debt are signs of that. Lord, for the sins which we have committed before thee... Or not so much. As I've discussed before, public…

Links for you. Science: Waffling over E. coli cause points to 'incompetence,' US expert says (Poor title that triggers anti-U.S. rage; EU public health people think its amateur hour too) How to Teach Physics Real Good Some NIH grants should fail PCR: A Revolutionary Invention So Much More Than…

Here are some O104:H4 links. The E.coli O104:H4 Genome Analysis Crowdsourcing wiki is also a good source of the latest scientific information. Anyway, links: TGAC helps in crowd-sourcing analysis of E. coli strain Possible T6SS in EAEC 55989 is absent from TY2482 genome? STEC/EHEC outbreak -…

Erstwhile progressive and fan of educational reform, Matthew Yglesias, sets up this strawman: It's useful to have these two points juxtaposed together, because it helps isolate what the controversy is actually about. When people look at the idea that for-profit colleges shouldn't get taxpayer…

Stormy and hot today. Stay inside with some links. Science: Why are sore throats cultured, and why are antibiotics administered No fixed address NSF requests for "conflicts of interest" lists drive me batty and seem to penalize collaborative, interdisciplinary researchers NIH funding rates drop…

The economic malpractice by the Obama administration is shameful. A while ago, I argued that one of the few moves that Obama could make politically to jump start the economy would be a temporary elimination of the payroll tax for workers. This could increase consumer demand (although not nearly…

Or maybe wild-ass speculation. As the data continue to come in about the E. coli outbreak in Germany caused by E. coli O104:H4 HUSEC041 (well, everything but the public health and epidemiological data which are a contradictory, incoherent mess), it appears that one of the things that has made this…

It's a skorcha! Cool down with some nice refreshing links. Science: Cancer's New Era Of Promise And Chaos EAEC / STEC genomes The PhD Question EAEC plasmids Other: This just in! The Very Serious People in Washington aren't the least bit serious... An Open Letter from Eugene Mirman to Time Warner…

Conservative commentator Dennis Prager has a nice little bigot eruption, brought to us by Thers at Whiskey Fire: It is hard to imagine a more demeaning statement about black America than labeling demands that all voters show a photo ID anti-black. This is easily demonstrated. Imagine if some…

Mike Petrilli makes an excellent point about reasonable expectations when educating poor children: This fall, about 1 million poor children will enroll in Kindergarten in the U.S. The vast majority of them live in single-parent families headed by women in the late teens or early twenties. Most of…

Links for you. Science: BGI releases a complete de novo E. coli O104 genome assembly and is making their detection kit protocols and synthesized primers freely available to worldwide disease control and research agencies How many blue lobsters does it take to start a business? Australian climate…

By now, you might have heard that politicovangelist possible presidential candidate Sarah Palin has been burbling inanities about Paul Revere, including this doozy: He [Revere] who warned the British that they weren't going to be taking away our arms, by ringing those bells, and making sure as he's…

I'll get to creationism in a bit, but first... Last week, Yves Smith started a wee lil' ruckus among progressives with a post titled "Bribes Work: How Peterson, the Enemy of Social Security, Bought the Roosevelt Name." In that post, she argued: Bribes work. AT&T gave money to GLAAD, and now…

Links for you. Science: Breaking the hourglass for headings that holler It Takes a Movement The Second Lives of Academic Posters More MRSA, in milk: A new strain in cows and humans Other: The Return of Back-Alley Abortions Idaho Woman Charged For "Unlawful Abortion," Turned In By Anti-Choice…

It would be nice if educational 'reformers' took a break from busting teachers unions to deal with the infiltration of pseudo-scientific falsehoods into the science curriculum: ...the most brazen example is buried in the middle of the story: a coal-industry produced propaganda film for kids selling…

After Friday's post, I've held off on writing much about the German E. coli outbreak, often referred to by its serotype, O104:H4, or as HUSEC041 (HUS stands for hemolytic uremic syndrome). Having had the weekend to digest some of the ongoing analysis and news reports, here are some additional…

...and I can't blame them. The recent and ongoing E. coli outbreak which began in Germany was originally claimed to have been traced to Spanish cucumbers. Erm, not so much: German agricultural authorities on Sunday identified locally grown bean sprouts as the likely cause of an E. coli outbreak…

Links for you. Science: Bacterial ROS to the malaria rescue! The bride of the son of the revenge of cell phones and cancer rises from the grave...again That's the trouble with fast food: Four lions left sheepish and hungry after failing to catch antelope who legs it to safety Why ecologists should…

Last week, James Q. Wilson, writing in The Wall Street Journal, described several of the factors that have led to a sustained decrease in crime. One reason is increased incarceration: One obvious answer is that many more people are in prison than in the past. Experts differ on the size of the…

I heard there's some kinda E. coli outbreak. Anyway, links for you. Science: My contribution to the 'HUSEC41-strains-are-not-that-new' debate In praise of model organisms The importance of being median When is MRSA not MRSA? Ancient cave women 'left childhood homes' Other: The Dismal Political…