purepedantry | July 6, 2006What does a scanner see? Into the head? Into the heart? Does it see into me? Clearly? Or darkly?
Think about it this way. Everything that you have ever been or ever will be, everything you have loved, every preference, every joy, every sweet or sordid memory is contained in a squishy mass of about 1.5 kg. That squishy mass is so fragile that whiplash can mortally wound it and so demanding that you must eat constantly to feed it. The slightest change in temperature or decrease in oxygen will leave it useless.
True, it is surrounded by a skull -- which from personal experience in anatomy…
purepedantry | July 6, 2006The Department of Energy has begun a Nuclear Film Declassification Project where they are going to release the footage of old nuclear weapons tests. Sample videos and a statement below the fold.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has embarked on the Nuclear Weapons Film Declassification Project to make available to the public and many users films that contain historically significant events in the development of the U.S. nuclear weapons program. This is being done under the Department of Energy's Openness Initiative. The film project is being carried out by DOE's Albuquerque Operations…
purepedantry | July 6, 2006The New York Times has a interesting article about the long term consequences to adolescent brains of early drinking. To whit:
In experiments conducted by the Duke team, the reformed rat drinkers learned mazes normally when they were sober. But after the equivalent of only a couple of drinks, their performance declined significantly more than did that of rats that had never tippled before they became adults. The study was published in 2000 in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. Other research has found that while drunken adolescent rats become more sensitive to memory…
purepedantry | July 5, 2006...I am just concerned that she needs to stay out of the sun because being a redhead she is at high risk for skin cancer:
Fair-skinned redheads are known to have increased risk of developing melanoma. Now researchers may have pinpointed one of the reasons: variations in a gene called MC1R. This gene assists in producing melanin pigment to help protect the skin against the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays (UV). However, some variations (variants) of MC1R are less protective than others. Two recent studies, from the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne and Western General Hospital in England,…
purepedantry | July 5, 2006FuturePundit posted an article about the decline in American's social attachment that my Mom actually emailed to me. My Mom being a Mom has a continuing interest in my social health, particular where this is related to my reproductive success (just kidding Mom).
Anyway, this article is about a study that shows the Americans have declining numbers of friends and confidants:
It compared data from 1985 and 2004 and found that the mean number of people with whom Americans can discuss matters important to them dropped by nearly one-third, from 2.94 people in 1985 to 2.08 in 2004.
Researchers…
purepedantry | July 5, 2006Anabolic steroid abusers get gingival overgrowth (that would be big gums), or so says this study in the Journal of Periodontology:
Researchers found that prolonged use of anabolic androgenic steroid (AAS) is closely associated with significant levels of gingival enlargement, according to a new study published in the Journal of Periodontology.
Gingival overgrowth is a condition in which the gingival tissues become swollen and grow over the teeth. Overgrown gums make it easier for bacteria found in plaque to accumulate and attack supporting structures of the teeth, potentially leading to severe…
purepedantry | July 4, 2006Every time I think that Britney Spears cannot become more trailer trash, she goes and becomes the black hole into which all other trailer trash in the Universe is sucked:
That would be Britney Spears in the latest issue of Bazaar being her very pregnant self.
1) That was disturbing when Demi Moore did it. It didn't end up being, as intended, a big feminist thing. It just ended up being wrong.
2) As the Hat-tip link points out, that is not even in the ball park of how Britney Spears looks. She is at the hind end of two kids and an imploding mairrage. I am amazed that Photoshop science has…
purepedantry | July 4, 2006This weeks Ask a Scienceblogger is:
What are some unsung successes that have occurred as a result of using science to guide policy?
I don't know if this is unsung but it bears repeating because it is truly a triumph of science over those who would prefer the research had not been done.
In 1964, the Surgeon General released the Surgeon General Report: Reducing the Health Consequences of Smoking representing one of the first of the US governments comprehensive strategies to reduce smoking. The report occured in the teeth of public opinion and industry lobbying.
Periodic updates have been…
purepedantry | July 4, 2006When a man wakes up after a 20 year coma, you know that people are going to pay attention. Particularly after the Terry Schiavo business, I think it is important to add some facts to this debate as early as possible before it gets completely out of control.
So let's talk about this guy. In 1984, Terry Wallis has a car accident where he was thrown from his pickup. He goes into a coma. Despite his family's objections, it would appear he was misdiagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state rather than a minimally conscious state:
But improvements in the care of patients could be made…
purepedantry | July 4, 2006Neurodudes has an excellent article on software intended to reduce medical errors.
Just from my limited personal experience, I would say that such software would be useful if people understand that it is limited in scope. There are three general reasons I think that software is useful in medicine:
Standardization. There are many diseases for which there are clear standards of care. For example, chest pain has a very straightforward heuristic that we follow in diagnosing a patient, and for each possible diagnosis there is a clear set of treatments. In areas for which there is not a lot…
purepedantry | July 4, 2006In 4th of July related news, Takeru Kobayashi has yet again proven that stomach size and total body size have no clear correlation.
A 160-pound wonder from Japan set a new record by devouring a sickening 53 3/4 frankfurters in 12 minutes to win the annual Independence Day hot dog eating competition on Coney Island.
More interesting as he usually crushes the competition someone actually came close to beating him this time:
His strongest competition was Joey Chestnut, a 220-pound civil engineering student from San Jose, Calif., who set an American record by eating 50 hot dogs during a…
purepedantry | July 4, 2006You remember what you learned in biology right -- or maybe health. A woman is born with all the eggs she will ever have. Well some researchers in Australia are disputing that point.
By doing stereology on mice aged 1 to 200 days they claim to show that the overall number of eggs does not decline. Stereology is the science of accurately counting cells in a tissue.
The trouble is that I don't buy it.
Here is the abstract (the article requires a subscription):
Proliferation and partial meiotic maturation of germ cells in fetal ovaries is believed to establish a finite, non-renewable pool…
purepedantry | July 3, 2006The first issue of another neuroscience carnival called Encephalon is up.
Coturnix at A Blog Around the Clock will be hosting the next The Synapse on July 9. Submission guidelines here.
Also, I will be hosting the next Encephalon on Jul 17th, 2006. Click here for submission guidelines.
purepedantry | July 2, 2006A clip of Shatner honoring George Lucas. Hilarious. Video below the fold.
Hat-tip: Volokh Conspiracy.
purepedantry | July 2, 2006The Family Guy has a great spoof on the religious interpretation of evolution.
purepedantry | July 2, 2006When you get in a conversation about pharmaceuticals, everyone always asks me: "Why can't they just give them away? Drug companies make so much money anyway. Why do we even have patents?"
Well, the reason is that piracy stifles innovation. If people can't make any money off what they make, then they can't afford to design anything new. Don't believe me...read this:
Kingsoft Corp.'s English-Chinese dictionary program is used on most of China's 60 million PCs. That's the good news. The bad news: Kingsoft doesn't make any money from it, because 90 percent of those copies are pirated.
One…
purepedantry | July 2, 2006Hellllloooooo, love-dart. When molluscs mate, the male shoots this little spear into the female depicted here protruding from the female's head:
Hot.
But why all the she-snail hating. Chase and Blanchard show in this work that the purpose of the dart is for the male snail to convey his man mucus into the female. That is his man mucus, not his royal jelly. The man mucus apparently contains some type of hormone or enzyme that makes the male more likely to successfully sire offspring.
I can't even assimilate this information from this paper. It is so gross yet so cool. Even the abstract…