purepedantry | December 19, 2006They must have interesting Christmas parties:
A tiny, six-legged critter that suspends all biological activity when the going gets tough may hold answers to a better way to cryopreserve human eggs, researchers say.
Tardigrades, also called water bears, can survive Himalayan heights or ocean depths as long as they have moisture.
When they don't, they produce a sugar, trehalose, slowly dehydrate and essentially cease functioning until the rain comes, says Dr. Ali Eroglu, reproductive biologist and cryobiologist at the Medical College of Georgia.
Tardigrades are not alone in their amazing…
purepedantry | December 19, 2006This has to be one of the funnier press releases I have ever read, but it is also about something of environmental importance. Researchers in Australia are experimenting with marine life in coral reefs to see how to prevent weeds from taking over:
A masked marauder has emerged unexpectedly from the ocean to rescue a dying coral reef from destruction in the nick of time.
With the dramatic flair of comic-book superhero Batman, a batfish has saved a coral reef that was being choked to death by seaweed - although the fish was never previously known as a weed-eater.
Scientists at the ARC Centre…
purepedantry | December 18, 2006Yet again, a drug company is playing damage control for failing to come clean about a drug's side effects. It makes me so mad when companies do stuff like this because it is such a preventable problem. In this case, the drug in question is Zyprexa (olanzapine) -- presently one of the go-to drugs for the treatment of schizophrenia -- and the company in question is Eli Lilly:
The drug maker Eli Lilly has engaged in a decade-long effort to play down the health risks of Zyprexa, its best-selling medication for schizophrenia, according to hundreds of internal Lilly documents and e-mail messages…
purepedantry | December 17, 2006In honor of the holidays, here is a poem by Robert Frost. My English teacher in high school used to have this theory that this poem is actually about Santa Claus. Look closely and you will catch the references.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
by Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know,
His house is in the village though.
He will not see me stopping here,
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer,
To stop without a farmhouse near,
Between the woods and frozen lake,
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake,
To ask if…
purepedantry | December 16, 2006Check out the caricature of all the ScienceBloggers in the new issue of Seed. I would be the one in the top right with the tie -- the only with a tie. That will teach me to send them a nice photo...
purepedantry | December 15, 2006On Wednesday evening, Senator Tim Johnson (D) -- the junior Senator from South Dakota -- suffered what appeared to be a stroke and was rushed to the hospital. At the hospital, he was diagnosed with intracerebral hemorrhaging as the result of a burst arteriovenous malformation. He underwent surgery to repair this bleed and is in the process of recovering.
People have been talking about this to death on the news -- which I find a bit morbid -- because should the Senator pass away or become incapacitated, the Governor of South Dakota would be allowed to appoint a new Senator to take his place…
purepedantry | December 14, 2006There has always been a bit of a debate as to whether the vesicles in the presynaptic nerve terminal that contain transmitter are just near the presynaptic membrane or are in fact hemifused with it.
At the presynapse, vesicles containing neurotransmitter are prepared and aligned by the presynaptic membrane -- the process of synaptic release needs to be very rapid. When an action potential travels down the axon, calcium flows into the presynaptic terminal. This calcium activates SNARE proteins that are involved both in docking the vesicles near the membrane and fusing them with the membrane…
purepedantry | December 13, 2006This is actually not a silly question. Birth control pills on the market such as Seasonale allow women to postpone having their period for three months and to only have four periods total per year. The way these oral contraceptives (OCs) work is relatively simple. Monthly birth control includes a withdrawl phase where the progesterone is removed. Without the hormonal support the endometrium dies, and the woman menstruates. OCs that extend the cycle to 3 months simply exclude the withdrawl phase for two of those months.
However, this begs the question as to whether the withdrawl phase is…
purepedantry | December 11, 2006Everyone always emphasizes the evangelical Right as running the Republican Party, but David Kirby and David Boaz -- writing in TCS -- argue that Republicans ignore the libertarian vote at their peril:
In the past, our research shows, most libertarians voted Republican -- 72 percent for George W. Bush in 2000, for instance, with only 20 percent for Al Gore, and 70 percent for Republican congressional candidates in 2002. But in 2004, presumably turned off by war, wiretapping, and welfare-state spending sprees, they shifted sharply toward the Democrats. John F. Kerry got 38 percent of the…
purepedantry | December 11, 2006You know the story of Persephone right.
Here is a clever poem about it by Louise Gluck.
A Myth of Devotion
by Louise Gluck
When Hades decided he loved this girl
he built for her a duplicate of earth,
everything the same, down to the meadow,
but with a bed added.
Everything the same, including sunlight,
because it would be hard on a young girl
to go so quickly from bright light to utter darkness
Gradually, he thought, he'd introduce the night,
first as the shadows of fluttering leaves.
Then moon, then stars. Then no moon, no stars.
Let Persephone get used to it slowly.
In the end, he thought…
purepedantry | December 11, 2006Here is what I am reading:
In honor of the 100th anniversary of the FDA, the Scientist has a look at its long-term prospects in light of recent scandals.
Best Buy has decided to go to totally flexible scheduling. I feel like business came to the party late on this one. Science had had flex-scheduling forever, and we are doing just fine. All it requires is a little trust and not caring when people get their work done, just that they get it done.
The NYTimes has a interesting article on the diminishing number of cases taken by the Supreme Court and speculation as to why that might be.
Daniel…
purepedantry | December 11, 2006The Synapse #13 is capably hosted at Neurocontrarian. Thanks Nick.
I have a Synapse-related announcement. The Neurophilosopher, host of the other neuroscience carnival Encephalon, and I have noticed a decline in the number of posts coming into the carnivals. We have agreed that it would make both carnivals better if they were consolidated into one.
Therefore, until further notice the Synapse is being suspended. The permanent page will remain up to archive the old issues. If you would like to submit to a neuroscience carnival, submit to Encephalon. Submissions can be made either…
kcontreary | December 10, 2006The Economist has a thought-provoking article out on the implications of "green" food. The newspaper takes on the recent trendiness of organic, fair trade, and locally-produced food, arguing that these practices may perpetuate or even worsen the global status quo they set out to remedy.
On organics (via shortage):
Following the "green revolution" of the 1960s greater use of chemical fertiliser has tripled grain yields with very little increase in the area of land under cultivation. Organic methods, which rely on crop rotation, manure and compost in place of fertiliser, are far less intensive…
purepedantry | December 9, 2006You know the scene from Old School where they wedding band is playing. The band from the movie is called The Dan Band, and I saw them last night.
They were awesome, and in honor of that I have a horde of YouTube videos. (Warning: A lot of these videos are rather vulgar.)
For those of you who don't remember, here is the scene from Old School:
Here is the complete video of that song:
So they actually have a Christmas album out -- called "Ho", and they performed a couple of their songs at the concert. They were really good, and I recommend picking it up.
Anyway, here is one of the songs…
purepedantry | December 9, 2006The last Synapse of the year is tomorrow, so remember to submit. It is being hosted at Neurocontrarian. Submission details here.
kcontreary | December 8, 2006Falling under the broad category of "papers I never thought I'd see written" comes this article by Hammad Siddiqi about the social norm of leaving the toilet seat down and whether or not it represents a Nash Equilibrium. He models the situation in terms of a two-player, non-cooperative game with payoffs given in terms of C "cost of changing seat position" and D "cost of husband getting yelled at by irate wife". Needless to say, D>>>C. Not exactly gender-neutral, but read on if you're curious...
Structure of the Game
There are two people, one is a representative of the male species…
purepedantry | December 7, 2006Your gut reaction is probably that the question is irrelevant; what parent would choose for their child to have a genetic disease. That was my reaction.
Apparently, however, some parents with genetic diseases that make them lead relatively normal lives but isolate them into special social groups -- such as deafness or dwarfism -- are electing for their children to also have these genetic diseases. As reported in the NYTimes:
Wanting to have children who follow in one's footsteps is an understandable desire. But a coming article in the journal Fertility and Sterility offers a fascinating…
purepedantry | December 6, 2006CNN's headline reads Flatulence on plane sparks emergency landing:
It is considered polite to light a match after passing gas. Not while on a plane.
An American Airlines flight was forced to make an emergency landing Monday morning after a passenger lit a match to disguise the scent of flatulence, authorities said.
The Dallas-bound flight was diverted to Nashville after several passengers reported smelling burning sulfur from the matches, said Lynne Lowrance, spokeswoman for the Nashville International Airport Authority. All 99 passengers and five crew members were taken off and screened…
kcontreary | December 6, 2006A favorite professor of mine once told me that it's always impressive to start with an example from the 18th century. So in deference to him and with a nod to Jonah Lehrer's forthcoming book, I'd like to mention Goethe's anticipation of one of the pillars of auction theory, as elaborated in an article by Moldovanu and Tietzel in JPE 1998.
In 1797, one of the central features of the book market in the (not yet unified) German states was the absence of copyright protection. An author sold his work to a publisher for a set fee, thereby fully relinquishing his rights to it. Publishers could…
purepedantry | December 6, 2006Yesterday, the NY Board of Health voted to ban trans fats -- after a phase-out period -- in restaurants in the city:
New York City's board of health on Tuesday voted to phase out most artificial transfats from restaurants, forcing doughnut shops and fast-food stands to remove artery-clogging oils from their cooking.
The law will require McDonald's and other fast-food chains that have not already eliminated transfats to do so by July 2007. They will be given a six-month grace period before facing fines.
Makers of doughnuts and other baked goods will be given until July 2008 to phase out…