purepedantry | November 15, 2006On The Colbert Report last night, Stephen Colbert talked about an article about uterine transplants for The Word. Scientists now claim that there is nothing technically to prevent us from performing a womb transplant, even to the point that you could put a uterus in a man:
Scientists claim that the first human baby could be born from a transplanted womb within three years.
Animal experiments have dismissed many of the concerns that womb transplants could not produce healthy babies.
The Swedish expert behind the research says that one of the best candidates to be an organ donor would be the…
purepedantry | November 15, 2006The answer is that it increases lymphocyte motility, helping to fight the infection:
Nobody likes coming down with a fever, but feeling hot may do a body good. Researchers report online 5 November in Nature Immunology that a fever in mice revs up the immune response by helping white blood cells enter lymph nodes, where they join the battle against microbial invaders.
All mammals can develop fever when they're sick enough, and even cold-blooded animals with infections, such as fish and lizards, will seek warmth to raise their body temperatures. This suggests that fever somehow helps the body…
purepedantry | November 14, 2006We're mad as hell, and we are not going to take it anymore:
In recent years, women's health has been a national priority. Pink ribbons warn of breast cancer. Pins shaped like red dresses raise awareness about heart disease. Offices of women's health have sprung up at every level of government to offer information and free screenings, and one of the largest government studies on hormones and diet in aging focused entirely on older women.
Yet statistics show that men are more likely than women to suffer an early death.
Now some advocates and medical scientists are beginning to ask a question…
purepedantry | November 14, 2006Saliva, is there anything it can't do?
A new painkilling substance has been discovered that is up to six times more potent than morphine when tested in rats -- and it's produced naturally by the human body. Natural painkillers are very rare, and researchers hope that this recent find might be harnessed as a clinical treatment.
Naturally produced painkillers might help to avoid some of the side effects experienced by patients treated with synthetic compounds such as morphine, including addiction and tolerance with prolonged use. But the new substance will first have to be tested to confirm…
purepedantry | November 13, 2006The Synapse #11 is up at Developing Intelligence. Next Synapse is on November 26th at Dr. Deborah Serani's blog. Submission details here.
purepedantry | November 13, 2006I see that Simon Baron-Cohen has a piece in Seed about his theory of autism. I am really skeptical of many of his arguments related to autism, so I thought I would discuss a couple of them. Here is his core argument:
So what has all of this got to do with autism? We know that autism runs in families, and that if a child with autism is a twin, the chances of the other twin also having autism is much higher if the twins are identical. This tells us that genes are likely to be an important part of the explanation, and that one should look at the parents of children with autism for clues.…
purepedantry | November 9, 2006Here is an audio recording of the oral arguments in the case of Gonzales vs. Carhart (as an mp3).
Gonzales vs. Carhart is a case about the federal partial birth abortion ban:
The Supreme Court on Wednesday heard oral arguments on the federal late-term abortion ban, the first major abortion issue before a more conservative court now that Samuel Alito has replaced retired justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
The procedure in question in the current cases, Gonzales v. Carhart and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood, is called by critics "partial birth" abortion and is medically known as "intact dilation…
purepedantry | November 9, 2006Shelley Batts has this to say about the poor funding situation of late:
At the Society for Neuroscience meeting last month, there was a special symposium regarding the current NIH funding situation that was supposed to be given by the current director of the NIH, Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni. Due to his plane being delayed, he was a no-show, although the talk was instead given by a few of the directors of NIH divisions. The gist of the talk was this: despite the NIH's budget being doubled a few years back, demand for grants has risen much faster and hence the paylines have decline dramatically. And…
purepedantry | November 8, 2006I meant to post this early, but the Neurophilosopher has an excellent history of Alois Alzheimer, for whom the disease is named:
On November 25th, 1901, a 51-year-old woman named Auguste Deter (below right) was admitted to the hospital, and was examined by Alzheimer. Deter at first presented with impaired memory, aphasia, disorientation and psychosocial incompetence (which was, at that time, the legal definition of 'dementia'); her condition gradually worsened, and she started losing other cognitive functions and experiencing hallucinations. Because of her age, Deter was diagnosed with…
purepedantry | November 8, 2006Suck on that title. Anyway, this is actually an important public health issue. Circumcision cuts your STD risk:
Circumcised males are less likely than their uncircumcised peers to acquire a sexually transmitted infection, the findings of a 25-year study suggest.
According to the report in the November issue of Pediatrics, circumcision may reduce the risk of acquiring and spreading such infections by up to 50 percent, which suggests "substantial benefits" for routine neonatal circumcision.
The current study is just one of many that have looked at this controversial topic. While most research…
purepedantry | November 7, 2006Not to have too much levity about electoral irregularities, but this is just funny:
In some areas of Indiana and Ohio, computer problems meant polling stations did not open on time, with voters being turned away, or given paper ballots. In Colorado, voters queued for hours because of technical glitches and in Oklahoma, a squirrel chewed through an electric cable, cutting off power to electronic voting machines in several polling stations.
"It's an unmitigated disaster," said Warren Stewart, the political director of VoteTrustUSA, a watchdog deeply sceptical of electronic voting.
Was it an…
purepedantry | November 7, 2006Did you know that Sacha Baron Cohen, star of the Borat movie, and Simon Baron Cohen, a prominent autism scientist, are related? I didn't. They are cousins.
Baron Cohen, 35, rarely gives interviews out of character. He guards his privacy so fiercely that, according to the U.K. press, his publicists denied not only that he attended a party for "Borat"'s recent London premiere, but also that a party even occurred. (It did.) When NEWSWEEK contacted his cousin Simon Baron Cohen, a psychologist and one of the world's chief experts on autism, Dr. Baron Cohen demurred via e-mail: "I must respect…
purepedantry | November 7, 2006I know this is kind of old news, but some people have taken issue with the Stern Report -- a report about the economic consequences of global warming.
Some of the people taking issue are those who are still skeptical that global warming is real. But some who are taking issue question the validity of Mr. Stern's numbers -- that they may be overestimating the economic impact.
One of the second group is economist Richard Tol who issued a critique of the report (available via Prometheus):
The Stern Review does not, in fact, present a formal cost-benefit analysis. Instead, it compares the…
purepedantry | November 7, 2006Wow. That is not something you hear everyday:
Australian scientists unveiled three test-tube koala joeys on Monday as part of an artificial insemination program to preserve the vulnerable mammal.
The scientists said the program would lead to the creation of the world's first koala sperm bank, which will enable researchers to screen out koala diseases.
Scientists from the University of Queensland said a total of 12 koala joeys were produced using test-tube insemination.
The koalas were conceived using a new breeding technology that uses sperm mixed with a special solution to prolong the sperm…
purepedantry | November 7, 2006Bad teaching is one of my pet peeves, but I go back and forth on PowerPoint. I think its egregious abuse most of its users shouldn't necessarily bring a cloud on the whole program -- sometimes it is used effectively. Still most people are not using it correctly, in a way that facilitates good teaching rather than is a crutch for bad teaching.
Chad Orzel from Uncertain Principles has an excellent guide to using PowerPoint for good rather than evil:
2) Limit Your Material. I tend to view one slide per minute as an absolute upper bound on any given talk, and I rarely reach that. The most…
purepedantry | November 6, 2006Eugene Volokh has written an article in the Harvard Law Review arguing that abortion is constitutional. This is not shocking. The Supreme Court has made clear that abortion is constitutional. However, he is arguing -- rather than from the point of view of right to privacy -- abortion to save a woman's life is constitution because of the right to self-defense:
Three women lie in adjoining hospital rooms. A fourth lives a block away. All are in deadly peril.
Alice is seven months pregnant, and the pregnancy threatens her life. Her fetus has long been viable, so she no longer has the Roe/…
purepedantry | November 5, 2006DNA Artistry will make a special piece of art from your DNA:
DNA-Artistry: The Art of Science -- creating one-of-a-kind genetic portraits.
DNA-Artistry gives new meaning to the term "original art." It's a self-portrait that's as individual - and unique - as you are. DNA-Artistry uses the science of your individual DNA sequence to create art in the form of your very own genetic blueprint. One that is beautifully - and colorfully - expressed on canvas or in print.
It all starts with a profile: yours.
DNA-Artistry uses DNA profiling, a tool to identify an individual's unique genetic makeup. A…
purepedantry | November 5, 2006In the upcoming election, immigration is likely to be a big issue.
The wisdom and expanse of legal immigration notwithstanding -- I tend to favor the widest possible on both humanitarian and economic grounds -- it is good to remember that the distinction between the natives (unless of course you are Native American) and recent immigrants was and has always been a fiction. It is wildly unhistorical to suggest that we are anything other than a bastard people. We are all visitors, so the trying to distinguish amongst the quality of more recent migrants is destined to be arbitrary hair-…