purepedantry | October 12, 2006There are intruders invading from our Southern border! No, not illegal immigrants -- jaguars. Having not been seen in the Southwest for some time, some of them have started to filter in from Mexico. The NYTimes reports:
Using the same clandestine routes as drug smugglers, male jaguars are crossing into the United States from Mexico.
Four of the elusive cats have been photographed in the last decade -- one as recently as last February -- in the formidable, rugged mountain ranges of southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico.
And while no one knows exactly how many jaguars are here, or…
purepedantry | October 11, 2006The NYTimes is reporting that an aircraft has crashed into a residential building on the Upper East Side of Manhattan:
A small plane crashed into a high-rise on the Upper East Side, raining down debris on Manhattan and unleashing what witnesses reported was a gigantic fireball, police said.
The aircraft struck 524 E. 72nd Street, a 50-story condominium tower.
The aircraft struck the 20th floor of a building on East 72nd Street, said Fire Department spokeswoman Emily Rahimi. Witnesses said the crash caused a loud noise, and burning and falling debris was seen. Flames were seen shooting out of…
purepedantry | October 11, 2006Conservationists have discovered a new species of bird in the cloud forests of Colombia:
A colorful new bird has been discovered in a previously unexplored Andean cloud forest, spurring efforts to protect the area, conservation groups said Monday.
The bright yellow and red-crowned Yariguies brush-finch was named for the indigenous tribe that once inhabited the mountainous area where it was discovered.
For conservationists the discovery of the species came at a crucial time -- the government has decided to set aside 500 acres of the pristine cloud forest where the bird lives to create a…
purepedantry | October 11, 2006Unbelievable:
Not even a medical emergency can pull some men away from a television showing their favorite sports teams, a U.S. study has determined.
University of Maryland emergency physician David Jerrard tracked nearly 800 regular season college and professional football, baseball and basketball games in the state over three years and found there always was an increase in the number of men who checked into emergency rooms after these events.
Jerrard's study, to be presented on Sunday at the annual meeting of the American College of Emergency Physicians Research Forum in New Orleans, showed…
purepedantry | October 10, 2006News@Nature has the best summary of what is known about North Korea's missile test that I have read thus far.
How big was the blast?
Estimates for the bomb's yield (the amount of energy discharged when the weapon is detonated, in the equivalent mass of trinitrotoluene, or TNT) differ widely, from 550 tons of TNT to 5-15 kilotons (this last a Russian estimate). By comparison, the Hiroshima bomb was about 12.5 kilotons.
The lower estimate is very small: it would be difficult to build a bomb with a critical mass of plutonium that creates a blast like this. It may be that the bomb didn't…
purepedantry | October 10, 2006So there is no one schedule to do the Synapse for next week, and this is kind of deliberate.
For those of you who don't know, the annual Society for Neuroscience convention is this weekend from Saturday to Wednesday. The SfN is the Lolapalooza of neuroscience meetings. Tens of thousands of neuroscientists from all areas go every year. Neurology rock stars go on stage to explain their newest bestest research, and hordes of male and female grad students (read: neurology groupies) throw their underwear at them.
Anyway, I am going to hold off publishing the Synapse until after the annual…
purepedantry | October 10, 2006I was sorry to hear this story. A high school student in Colorado Springs, CO died suddenly on the football field. There was no apparent cause. Autopsy revealed that the boy had an enlarged heart:
A preliminary autopsy conducted by the El Paso County Coroner on Saturday said Vialpando died as a result of a cardiac condition.
"They told us he had an enlarged heart," said J.R. Vialpando. "They don't know if the heart attack caused the heart to enlarge, or if the heart was already enlarged and caused the heart attack. They're going to do more tests."
No drugs were present in Vialpando's…
purepedantry | October 6, 2006Here is your YouTube fun of the day. It is compilation of the Daily Show series Evolution Schmevolution from about a year ago I think. Hilarious.
purepedantry | October 6, 2006So I went to the book signing last night for the Best American Science Writing 2006, and it was really interesting so I want to plug this book. In attendance were Jesse Cohen, the series editor, as well as authors Paul Bloom, Dennis Overbye, and Johnathan Weiner.
I haven't had a chance to read the book yet, but Dennis Overbye wrote about a convention for time travelers at MIT. Johnathan Weiner wrote about a weird syndrome of combined neurodegenerative diseases that occurs in a cluster on Guam -- possibly because they like to eat bats.
My favorite, however, was Paul Bloom -- a psychology…
purepedantry | October 5, 2006The Seed Overlords interviewed me (via email) in their continuing quest to know (Biblically) all the bloggers. Check it out here.
purepedantry | October 5, 2006On September 30 the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act -- an act intended to criminalize the intimidation of scientists involved in animal research -- passed the Senate by unanimous consent. I wrote in support of this bill earlier this month.
This is from a press release from the AAAS related to the issue:
In the wee hours of the morning before officially recessing for the fall campaign trail, the Senate passed the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (S. 3880) under a unanimous consent agreement. The bill, introduced by Senators James Inhofe (R-OK) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), addresses the…
purepedantry | October 5, 2006Memoirs of a Skepchick dramatizes the researchers who determined men and women are aroused at the same rate -- talking to a grade school class:
"So you watch the men and women get hotter with the night vision goggles?"
"It's a camera, technically, and . . . yes, yes we do."
"What are they doing while you watch them?"
The man looks to the teacher for help, but recalls that she took advantage of today's talk to step out for a coffee and cigarrette. "Well, they're, uh, they're watching movies actually."
"What kind of movies?"
"Um, a lot of different movies . . . "
"Why would people get hotter…
purepedantry | October 4, 2006Some scientists have decided to form a 527 -- a political action committee that is not tax deductible under election law -- to combat what they feel is a rising anti-science sentiment:
Several prominent scientists said yesterday that they had formed an organization dedicated to electing politicians "who respect evidence and understand the importance of using scientific and engineering advice in making public policy."
Organizers of the group, Scientists and Engineers for America, said it would be nonpartisan, but in interviews several said Bush administration science policies had led them to…
purepedantry | October 3, 2006So there is this plant called dodder that parasitizes other plants, but until recently it was not known how it found the other plants. Recent research suggests that it does so by a form of smell.
Dodder is in fact a plant, but when it generates seedlings they will actually wave around towards other plants. If they find an appropriate one they will latch on to them and burrow roots into them to steal nutrients. It does this because while it is a plant and does have chlorophyll, it does not produce enough energy from photosynthesis to survive. Here is the skinny on dodder:
Dodder…
purepedantry | October 2, 2006No more excuses, men:
"Comparing sexual arousal between men and women, we see that there is no difference in the amount of time it takes healthy young men and women to reach peak arousal," said Dr. Irv Binik, psychology professor and founder and director of the Sex and Couple Therapy Service of Royal Victoria Hospital, which is part of the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC).
Thermal imaging, or thermography, is infrared imaging using thermographic cameras that detect radiation emitted by objects based on their temperature. Because of its usefulness in detecting warm objects in the dark,…
purepedantry | October 2, 2006I was just thinking about something. The Nobel Committee is usually mysterious in how they pick the winners, but why did Greg Hannon not win the Nobel with the others? My understanding was that he was sort of the guy for RNA interference. In fact, the review that I cited in my last post came from him because I know that he has written all kinds of reviews about it.
Also, a lab mate of mine mentioned this: why did they win Medicine and not Chemistry? Because RNAi treatments have ended up being such loads of hype. It has ended up being such a load because no one can get enough of it into a…
purepedantry | October 2, 2006Andrew Fire and Craig Mello have won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of RNA interference:
Americans Andrew Z. Fire and Craig C. Mello won the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine Monday for discovering a powerful way to turn off the effect of specific genes, opening a new avenue for disease treatment.
''RNA interference'' is already being widely used in basic science as a method to study the function of genes and it is being studied as a treatment for infections such as the AIDS and hepatitis viruses and for other conditions, including heart disease and cancer.
Fire, 47, of…
purepedantry | October 1, 2006The Synapse #8 has been capably posted at Mind Hacks. Thanks guys. Haven't figured out where the next Synapse will be. If you would like to host email me. I will let you know when I know.
purepedantry | September 29, 2006Oh my God, best article ever:
Having sex in the weightlessness of outer space is the stuff of urban legends and romantic fantasy -- but experts say that there would be definite downsides as well.
Spacesickness, for instance. And the difficulty of choreographing intimacy. And the potential for sweat and other bodily fluids to, um, get in the way.
"The fantasy might be vastly superior to the reality," NASA physician Jim Logan said here Sunday at the Space Frontier Foundation's NewSpace 2006 conference. Nevertheless, Logan and others say the study of sex and other biological basics in outer…
purepedantry | September 29, 2006As the Nobel Prize announcements are due to come out soon, it would be good if you knew your Nobel history. Lawrence Altman for the NYTimes has an excellent article on it. Money quote:
Yet in a little known story, the Nobel Prizes, the first of which will be announced on Monday, almost never came to be, largely because of the unsophisticated way Nobel drew up his will. It was flawed and legally deficient because he lived in many places and never established a legal residence. Nobel resided for many years in France, made intermittent visits to a home in Sweden and amassed assets in many…