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Reinventing Discovery with Michael Nielsen at York University!

If you're in the Greater Toronto Area next Tuesday, please drop by and see Michael talk. I'm thrilled that my library is co-sponsoring such a fantastic event! Presented by: Janusz A. Kozinski - Dean, Faculty of Science and Engineering The Division of Natural Science The Steacie Science and Engineering Library Location: Paul A. Delaney Gallery, 320 Bethune College Date: Tuesday, March 15, 2011 Time: 12:30 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. Refreshments will be served courtesy of Steacie Science and Engineering Library Prof. Nielsen will describe an evolution in how scientific discoveries are made driven by…

Real Guys Immunize

Last week I went to Philadelphia to a very interesting meeting - a Social Media Summit on Immunization. Sponsored by Immunization Action Coalition, this was a second annual meeting for health-care non-profits, organized (amazingly well, with great attention to detail) by Lisa Randall (and, I am sure, a small army of helpers). Over a day and a half of the meeting there were two simultaneous sessions at each time slot, but I did not have much opportunity to ponder my choices as I was at the front of the room at three sessions, and participated actively in several others. The style was very '…

Millipedes of Iraq

It's an axiom of military life that no plan survives first contact with the enemy. It appears that our latest plans in Iraq couldn't survive contact with our allies: Military planners have abandoned the idea that standing up Iraqi troops will enable American soldiers to start coming home soon and now believe that U.S. troops will have to defeat the insurgents and secure control of troubled provinces. Training Iraqi troops, which had been the cornerstone of the Bush administration's Iraq policy since 2005, has dropped in priority, officials in Baghdad and Washington said. No change has been…

Campbell Brown is on a roll!

A few years ago, I went to see 'Good Night, and Good Luck' with some friends. Afterwards we loled at the fact that in order to see reporters kicking ass and taking names, we had to watch a movie. I am loling no longer. Campbell Brown is on a friggin roll!!! Remember the RNC, when she asked 'Tucker' to give one example of Sarah Palins activities as 'commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard'? The McCain campaign chastised Campbell for being 'too aggressive' and canceled McCains appearance on Larry King because of it. Campbell was being a 'Mean Girl', so to speak. Luckily, Campbell…

Happenings in the Quantum World: Nov 13, 2007

Grad school opportunities, postdoc opportunities, interference experiments, more D-wave, and sabbatical at the Blackberry hole Pawel Wocjan writes that he has positions open for graduate students in quantum computing: Ph.D. Position in Quantum Computing & Quantum Information with Dr. Pawel Wocjan, School of EECS, University of Central Florida (UCF), Orlando, in sunny Florida I am accepting applications for a Ph.D. position in Quantum Computing and Quantum Information starting in Fall 2008. You can learn more about my research and the research in quantum information science at UCF by…

Upcoming presentations

This coming Friday I'll be at the NISO Discovery Tools Forum in Chapel Hill, NC, to talk about ResearchBlogging.org, along with fellow ResearchBlogger and librarian Eric Schnell. Here's the abstract for our presentation: ResearchBlogging.org began simply as a way for academic bloggers to identify serious and public posts in what can also be a frivolous and private environment. Then, once these items are identified -- many of them written by experts in a field -- effective indexing, archiving, and discovery becomes a realistic possibility. To date, hundreds of bloggers have signed up for the…

JUST SAY NO!

Thanks to Panda's Thumb and Biochemical Soul I've been informed of some sneaky senatorial crap going down in DC. Here's the info: Science Getting the Shaft US Senators Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Susan Collins (R-ME) are proposing to cut the stimulus/spending package by roughly 10%. Their staff have identified several âuselessâ programs included in the bill, and it appears that they consider science funding to be one of those useless pursuits. Over the last 50 years, much of our economic development has been driven by science, and at a time when the US is faced with losing its scientific dominance…

Farm and Garden Design Class and Memorial Day Family Weekend

I am *still* without full access to my email, although new stuff is at least being forwarded to Eric's account. I apologize profusely for the difficulties, but I know that some people who tried to register either got bounces or got through, but are buried in my gmail account without my having access, so I would ask you to please send again! I'm very, very sorry about this! I'm told (for the fourth day running) that the problem will be resolved by my ISP by tomorrow. Hopefully this time it is actually true. Meanwhile, if you haven't registered for the class, and would like to, I will at…

How much should the president know about the Internet?

Apparently the blogosphere is abuzz with McCain's recent disclosure that he has to force himself to use a computer, that the closest he comes to using email is his staffers showing him email, and that his wife makes all the online reservations when they go to the movies (source NYT). This is in stark contrast with Obama who, on top of looking super-presidential and cool, is apparently a whizz with the technotoys, and even had his own podcast since early days of his senatehood. In the NYT piece, an interesting comment was posed by both the McCain campaign and a blogger associated with the…

ScienceOnline'09 - some more individual session pages

The registration is almost full! And the Program is shaping up quite nicely. Check out these sessions today: How to become a (paid) science journalist: advice for bloggers Gene Wiki and BioGPS: Web Tools for Annotation and Understanding of Gene Function Gender in science -- online and offline Rhetoric of science: print vs. web Open Notebook Science - how to do it right (if you should do it at all) Online science for the kids (and parents) Blogging adventure: how to post from strange locations

Club George

I first learned about this book, Club George: The Diary of a Central Park Bird Watcher (NYC: Thomas Dunne Books, 2006), when the author, Bob Levy, was interviewed recently by Brian Lehrer on the local National Public Radio affiliate, WNYC [mp3, 17:54]. After that interview concluded, I poked around on the internet, found the publicist's contact information and emailed him, requesting a review copy of the book, which he was happy to provide. Club George is the story of the relationship that developed between a human and a wild bird, the transformation of a focused career man into a devoted…

Researchers use Ebola to study the news media’s role as a vector of fear

Analyzing online searches and social media activity has often been suggested as a way to track and maybe even predict the spread of diseases. And it’s a great idea — if it’s done right, it could offer public health workers real-time surveillance and a jumpstart at containing dangerous outbreaks. But there’s a hitch. How can we attempt to decipher between online activity triggered by the possibility of actual disease symptoms and online activity triggered by simple curiosity? That was the question Sherry Towers and her colleagues set out to answer. At the very least, they wanted to gain some…

Even More Pathetic Statistics from HIV/AIDS Denialists

While looking at the sitemeter referrals to GM/BM, I noticed a link from "New Aids Review", a denialist website that that I mentioned in [my critique of Duesberg.](http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2006/09/pathetic_statistics_from_hivai…) The folks at NAR are continuing to pull bad math stunts, and I couldn't resist returning to the subject to show how stubbornly boneheaded people can be, and how obviously bad math can just slip by without most people blinking an eye. To remind you, the original Duesberg quote was: >Most, if not all, of these adolescents must have acquired HIV from…

Liveblogging CDC Ebola Briefing October 14th

Live blogging. Dr. Tom Frieden talking. Don't say "hand in glove!" What the are doing in Dallas: 1) Site manager on the site in Dallas every hour of the day, checking protective gear use. 2) Enhanced training, including by experienced nurses with Ebola experience. 3) Limit number of care staff so they can be more expert. Have been hearing concern from health care workers everywhere, working to minimize concerns. Working to prepare all nurses and docs in all ER's to ID Ebola, asking "where have you been in the past month/21 days" Infections more likely to spread from someone not…

Today's Drum: Positive Black News

As of late, I've not been particularly good at responding to those of you who've been so nice to comment on the blog. So, I spent a little bit of this morning going through your comments and looking at your blogs and websites, especially those of you with whom I was not previously familiar. Among these was commenter Keith, co-founder and editor of an online zine called Today's Drum. Keith was kind enough to write a couple of notes on both our Diversity in Science carnival submission on NIGMS's Dr Geraldine Pittman Woods and the 65th anniversary of the first interracial college basketball…

How to Destroy a Bank

By way of Yves Smith, we come across Eddie Braverman's (a blogging pseudonym) advice on how to take out a major bank (Warning: the link is to an article in Playboy (really); half-naked women in the sidebar are probably not work safe): Step one: Give the plan a recognizable name. Like many ex-commodities brokers, Eddie appreciates action. A few months after he published his plan, he told me about it from the security of a Parisian café: "You could call it Tank-a-Bank or Flashrun or Bankbusters. Give it a name that tells people they're signing up for direct action, with one bank chosen to…

Teens talk school online

Key findings of a new study by the National School Boards Association and Grunwald Associates LLC exploring the online behaviors of U.S. teens and 'tweens show: * 96 percent of students with online access use social networking technologies, such as chatting, text messaging, blogging, and visiting online communities such as Facebook, MySpace, and Webkinz. Further, students report that one of the most common topics of conversation on the social networking scene is education. * Nearly 60 percent of online students report discussing education-related topics such as college or college…

Wild birds and wild guesses

The fact seven people in Azerbaijan contracted bird flu from wild birds has been assumed for some time and now has been officially confirmed by researchers in Germany: Four people have died after catching avian flu from infected swans, in the first confirmed cases of the disease being passed from wild birds, scientists have revealed. The victims, from a village in Azerbaijan, are believed to have caught the lethal H5N1 virus earlier this year when they plucked the feathers from dead birds to sell for pillows. Three other people were infected by the swans but survived. Andreas Gilsdorf, an…

Let's Un-Lobotomize Congress

In "The Republican War on Science" Chris Mooney referred to the Newt Gingrich-led Congress' decision to eliminate the Office of Technology Assessment as "a stunning act of self-lobotomy." If anything, he was lowballing the effects. For those of you who aren't familiar with this agency (and don't feel bad if you're not; it's been dead for 12 years), the OTA was a nonpartisan Congressional agency. It's job was to provide Congress with an objective analysis of the complex scientific and technical issues relevant to various issues that were relevant to measures under consideration. Ostensibly…

ScienceOnline2010 - Program highlights 2

Continuing with the introductions to the sessions on the Program, here is what will happen on Saturday, January 16th at 10:15 - 11:20am: A. Demos - FieldTripEarth - Mark MacAllister and Russ Williams Description: Field Trip Earth (FTE) is the conservation education website operated by the North Carolina Zoological Society. FTE works closely with field-based wildlife researchers and provides their "raw materials"--field journals, photos, datasets, GIS maps, and so on--to K-12 teachers and students. The website is in use by classrooms in all 50 US states and 140 countries world-wide, and was…

ScienceOnline09 - On Reputation

If you check out the Program of the ScienceOnline09 conference, you will notice that there will be three sessions that address, each from a different angle, the question of building and maintaining scientific authority and reputation online: in scientific papers, in comments on scientific papers, and on science blogs: Reputation, authority and incentives. Or: How to get rid of the Impact Factor This session is moderated by Peter Binfield and Bjoern Brembs: Historically, there has been much use and misuse of Thomson Scientific's (Thomson Reuters) Impact Factor (IF). Originally devised to rank…

One day course in reef ecology

Deep coral biologists like myself are continually looking to shallow reefs for applicable paradigms. A new online seminar on coral reef futures sponsored by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies provides about 100 examples in a set of FREE online lectures given by a parade of stars like Terry Hughes, John Pandolfi, and Bob Steneck. It's like a dream course in reef ecology from the comfort of your own home. The only thing lacking is a printable diploma! Topics covered by the online seminars include: * The latest science on coral bleaching * The rising plague of coral…

A wild weekend of godlessness in Minneapolis!

It's another weekend of travel for me. Tonight, I'm off to St Olaf, that fine Lutheran institute of higher learning, to rail against the corruption of science by religion. I'll be speaking at 6 at the Lion's Lair, Buntrock Commons, out there in Northfield, MN (wait…"lion's lair"? Do they mean that literally?) The really exciting news, though, is that the Minnesota Atheists are hosting a talk by Hector Avalos tomorrow afternoon. This is extremely convenient for me — drive in to give a talk, stay and get to listen to another — so yes, I'll be there, too! It's just fun, fun, fun for this lovely…

Can you spot the April Fools gags, or is reality too weird?

We've reached the point where reality has become so completely absurd that sheer absurdity is no longer a reliable indicator that a news item or blog post is actually an April Fools gag. I don't know whether I should laugh, cry, or crawl into a hole and hide. Think I'm kidding? Here are a few of the stories I've noticed so far today. Try and guess which ones are April Fools jokes, and which are real. I'll put the answers and links to the sources - I think I've got them all right - below the fold. 1. Minor volcanic eruption in Yellowstone Caldera. 2. Following hospitalization of student…

An Evening with Dave Jacke (Twin Cities)

Gardening Like The Forest: Home Scale Ecological Food Production Learn how you can grow an abundant food-producing ecosystem in your backyard! Join us and learn how to grow food, fuel, fiber, fodder, fertilizers, farmaceuticals, and fun. We can meet our own needs and regenerate healthy ecosystems at the same time! Friday January 16, 7pm to 9pm $10 Cover charge. All are welcome. Minneapolis College of Art and Design 2501 Stevens Avenue, Minneapolis, MN 55404 AND Gardening Like the Forest: Fundamentals of Ecological Gardening A Workshop for Gardeners, Designers and Students Explore the theory,…

Thank them - they made ScienceOnline'09 possible

ScienceOnline'09, the third annual science communication conference (successor to the 2007 and 2008 North Carolina Science Blogging Conferences), was another unqualified success wifi issues notwithstanding. Around 215 scientists, educators, students, journalists and bloggers gathered for three days of activities, meals, sessions and hallway conversations to explore ways to use online tools to promote the public understanding of, and engagement in, science. Find a comprehensive listing of links to the many blog entries and video clips posted before, during and after the conference to learn…

Will 2017 be the antivaccine year?

]As hard as it is to believe, I've been dealing with the antivaccine movement since at least the early 2000s. Back then, I didn't have a blog, either this one or my not-so-super-secret other blog, and most of my online activities were restricted to Usenet. For those of you who don't remember Usenet, which has largely become the province of trolls and spam these days, it is a massive set of online discussion boards on literally thousands of topics. Indeed, I first encountered antivaccine advocates on Usenet and started to learn the sorts of pseudoscientific arguments they make, so that when I…

OSHA at 35: Your Comments Welcome

By Michael Silverstein Thirty-five years after the passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the promise of worker protection remains substantially unfulfilled. Over the past several months, I have been traveling across the country and talking with people experienced in worker health and safety to gather ideas about what we can do to protect workers better. The more I hear, the more I am certain that we canât achieve this by simply trying harder to do more of the same. The draft paper âGetting Home Safe and Sound? OSHA at Thirty-Fiveâ summarizes what Iâve learned and suggests three…

Disclaimers and such

Last updated 09 October 2008 When writing on medical topics, a few issues are important to address directly, conveniently laid out by the Health on the Net Foundation. Medical authority and complementarity, or, "I'm not your doctor" We don't give advice here. Our posts represent our own opinions, thoughts, etc. and no one else's. Neither our hospitals, partners, universities, nor anyone else has approved of anything we write. The information in our posts is intended for discussion purposes only and not as recommendations on how to diagnose or treat illnesses. Our writings do not claim to…

Monckton's 125 errors

The saga of Monckton's Physics and Society article continues (previous posts: 1 2 3 4 5). Via Eli Rabett, here is Arthur Smith's list of 125 errors in Monckton's piece. Also, a few more snippets on how Monckton's article ended up in Physics and Society. Lawrence Krauss (outgoing chair of the American Physical Society's Forum on Physics and Society (FPS)) wrote: Earlier this year, the editors ran a piece submitted by Gerald Marsh, a frequent contributor to FPS, in which he questioned the accuracy of climate change predictions and estimations of anthropogenic contributions to it. The article…

Butterflies, Beetles Bees, Bugs... Insects Rule! ISO Entomology Contributors, Sponsors and Volunteers at the Expo!

Insects make up the largest and most diverse group of organisms on the planet, with the over 1 million described and 4-30 estimated species all playing a crucial role in biodiversity of the ecosystem. They are also critical for a wide variety of science and technology fields including agriculture, environmental and even biomedical science, and are even being explored as a vital source of food. "Insects are much too important to leave out of an event like the USA Science & Engineering Festival," says Dr. Aaron T. Dossey, a Ph.D. biochemist and postdoctoral research entomologist, currently…

Tweetlinks, 10-08-09

Follow me on Twitter to get these, and more, in something closer to Real Time: Geobloggers - who is coming to #scio10? There is a session proposed that you may want to join in How @TomLevenson rakes Megan McArdle over hot coals on disingenuous science reporting: It's not that McArdle can't read...it's that she can't (won't) think: part four (and last, thank FSM). (part 4, links to 1,2,3) Spoor of South African Dinos Analyzed BLT Kama Sutra Rules to Eat By Darwin: 3 Poems Lisa Sanders was on State Of The Nation at noon at wunc 91.5FM today. Book Review: Don't Be SUCH A Scientist Open Access…

Morning dip - Health-reform, height prediction, flying birds, eye contact

Ezra Klein reviews Obama's handling of yesterday's health summit -- a piece well worth reading for a taste of how sharply focused and serious Obama is about truly comprehensive health-care reform. Karen Tumlty, a health-care expert, describes in Time her own family's grueling wrestling match with the health-insurance industry. A timely story -- no pun intended -- as it makes painfully clear that it's not just the 46 million people uninsured (did I just say "just" 46 million people) who fare poorly in the current system. Genetic Future looks at how a Victorian-era height-prediction system…

ScienceOnline2010 - interview with John McKay

Continuing with the tradition from last two years, I will occasionally post interviews with some of the participants of the ScienceOnline2010 conference that was held in the Research Triangle Park, NC back in January. See all the interviews in this series here. You can check out previous years' interviews as well: 2008 and 2009. Today, I asked John McKay from Archy and Mammoth Tales blogs to answer a few questions. Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Where are you coming from (both geographically and philosophically)? I've…

Paperless Office? Bwahahahaha!

Today, I have everything I need on my computer, and so do most working scientists as well. Papers can be found online because journals are online (and more and more are Open Access). Protocols are online. Books are online. Writing and collaboration tools are online. Communication tools are online. Data collection and data analysis and data graphing and paper-writing tools are all on the computer. No need for having any paper in the office, right? Right. But remember how new that all is. The pictures (under the fold, the t-shirt is of Acrocanthosaurus at the NC Museum of Natural…

Regulating the magic that is homeopathy: The sabotage of poor reporting and false balance

Well, it's over. I'm referring to the two day hearing held by the FDA in Bethesda seeking public comment regarding how it should modernize its regulation of homeopathic products. Actually, as I discussed before (as did Jann Bellamy over at my favorite other blog, Science-Based Medicine), in fact it's arguable wither there is currently much, if any, actual regulation of homeopathic remedies. Oh, sure, sometimes when a foolish company or true believer tries to market something as unremittingly dangerous as a homeopathic asthma nasal spray, the FDA takes notices. However, for the most part, the…

Around the Web: Integrating integrity, Connecting with new faculty, Learning to love summer reading and more

Integrating Integrity (teaching research ethics to grad students) How to Train Graduate Students in Research Ethics: Lessons From 6 Universities Connecting With New Faculty, Or, Welcome to Our World Why Online Education Won't Replace College—Yet How America learned to love summer reading Make Us Do the Math (on the recent Hacker article) Self archiving science is not the solution “Innovation” and governance: Ontario’s proposed PSE system overhaul Following the herd, or joining the merry MOOCscapades of higher-ed bloggers What’s a Board to Do? (UVa post) Assisting Research Versus Research…

Why I left Facebook, and then went back

It's rare that I blog off topic - there's so much cool science in the world that I don't have much time for anything else. But my departure from Facebook has co-incided with something of a global trend, so I thought I may as well explore what people thought. In case you've been wrapped in roofing felt for the last few weeks, here's the scoop. After a series of embarrassing security flaws and anger over the company's attitude toward privacy, Facebook users are leaving in droves. Or at least, that's the claim - the reality is that there's no viable alternative yet, although some bright…

Fast approaching: The Skeptics' Circle

Time's flying by once again. You know, the longer I serve as the organizer of this great endeavor that I did not start, namely The Skeptics' Circle, the more it amazes me just how good it routinely is. It also amazes me just how fast time flies between editions. This time around is no exception. Already, the next edition is due in a mere four days, on May 8, 2008. This time around, the host will be The Skepbitch. Besides having an utterly awesome name for her blog, the Skepbitch is--well--a skeptic. In fact, so dedicated is she that she was willing to subject herself to a lecture by Sylvia…

First case of MERS in the US highlights need for preparedness

Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) is a viral respiratory illness characterized by fever, cough, and shortness of breath, and it has been fatal in 30% of the cases identified since the disease was first reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012. It is caused by a coronavirus (MERS-CoV) and has been shown to spread between humans by close contact; new research suggests the virus may also be transmitted to humans from camels. Cases have been identified in multiple countries in the Arabian Peninsula, and a spike in cases in April -- more than 200 in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that…

Madam Speaker, I Yield My Remaining Time to the Paleontologist from the Great State of California

Over at Aetiology, Tara Smith launched an interesting discussion by talking about why her heart doesn't automatically leap when a reporter wants to talk to her. That post was followed by a lot of scientists swearing up and down about the awful treatment they've experienced at the hands of reporters. Chris Mooney, a reporter, thinks the ranting is all misplaced, and wants us to understand that reporters who write about science are the best trained journalists of all. I thought I'd join the fray. I think, first off, that Chris is a bit off-base. He's not feeling the genuine pain being…

Unification for Your Eyes and Ears

Image courtesy of the Cajal’s Butterflies of the Soul gallery at The Beautiful Brain. Noah Hutton is founding editor of The Beautiful Brain, an online magazine that explores recent neuroscience findings through monthly podcasts, essays, reviews, and galleries, with particular attention to the dialogue between the arts and sciences. Some of our greatest triumphs as a species have come from those who saw little difference between being a scientist and being a humanist. From Leonardo’s visionary notebooks to Herschel’s lunar poetry, science has provided a necessary resource for some great art;…

iPhone Sausage Making

Mac Users Guide Flickr Photostream As a technophile, I do love my iPhone and iPod as portable portals to new media, the web and entertainment. But everything comes at a price. I was reminded of this, starkly, by a brilliant commentary by Mike Daisy, featured recently on NPR's This American Life. That sausage may be delicious, but few of us want to be reminded of how it came to be. So it goes for iPhones, even for something as mundane as to how their screens are cleaned in the factory. From This American Life broadcast, "Mr. Daisy and The Apple Factory:" Mike Daisey performs an excerpt…

ScienceOnline'09 - individual session pages

If you check out the Program, you'll see that I have started making pages for individual sessions - just click on "Go here to discuss" next to each session. Over the next few days I will do this for all the sessions and the session leaders will use those pages in whichever ways they want. For now, I have made pages for these sessions - check them out: Science Fiction on Science Blogs? Science blogging without the blog? Science online - middle/high school perspective (or: 'how the Facebook generation does it'?) Transitions - changing your online persona as your real life changes Semantic…

Interview with Mark Patterson, Executive Director of eLife

Welcome to the most recent installment in my very occasional series of interviews with people in the publishing/science blogging/computing communities. This latest installment is with Mark Patterson, Executive Director of new OA publisher eLife. I attended an ARL Directors briefing conference call on eLife with Mark a little while back, highlighting for me just how interesting this project is and just how little I knew about it before the call. Hence, this interview. A huge thanks to Mark for agreeing to participate! =============   Q0. Mark, tell us a bit about yourself and how you ended up…

See Planets!

Direct imaging of extra solar planets. The cat dynamicist has the details. (because, linking, I've heard, is good.) Fomalhaut b, a nice name. When I was on the road to becoming an astrophysicist, as a young grad student, I remember thinking how cool it would be to join the planet hunters. I mean being able to say that in your research you "discovered a planet" well how cool would that be. Alas I caught the quantum bug and so all those days spent studying the interstellar tedium are now lost, like tears in the rain.

ScienceOnline'09 - Education sessions

Today, instead of introducing people, I will introduce a session, or two or three. Feedback from participants of the last two conferences indicated a lot of interest in sessions relevant to science educators at all levels. At both the 1st and the 2nd conference, we had one session on using blogs in the classroom. But this time, we want to heed the calls and provide, if possible, three such sessions, each targeting a somewhat different audience. So, if you go to the conference wiki and check the Program page, you will see the following three sessions listed there: Online science for the…

Why We Have Breast Cancer Support Groups

A new study from a team of Stanford University School of Medicine researchers led by David Spiegel, MD, shows that participating in support groups doesn't extend the lives of women with metastatic breast cancer. The results differ from oft-cited previous findings by Spiegel that showed group psychotherapy extended survival time. This study contradicts an earlier experiment done by Dr. Spiegel in 1989 which did reveal that the survival of similar patients was extended by joining a support group. His comments regarding the disappointing lack of a time benefit from state-of-the-art group…

Twin Cities Science Events

At the Bell Museum of Natural History Cafe Scientifique: Looking at Lichens Tuesday, January 8, 2008; 6 p.m. Kitty Cat Klub, Dinkytown We've all seen lichens growing on rocks, trees, or buildings. Yet their unusual and complex structure often goes unnoticed. Though they appear to be a single entity, lichens are actually complex and versatile organisms. Bell Museum Curator of Lichens, Imke Schmitte, will discuss the evolution of lichens, which species provide food, medicines and clothing dyes, and which help out nature by cleaning the air and adding color to the landscape. Cafe…

Football and brain trauma: a workplace health issue

by Michael Lax, MD, MPH The news that almost one third of NFL football players can expect to suffer the effects of brain trauma made headlines in major media. While it is not surprising that large men, often leading with their heads, bashing each other week after week suffer some consequences, what was unexpected was how many players are likely to be injured, and that the NFL actually acknowledged this reality. Obviously, the findings lead to the question of what to do about it besides compensate the injured. In the context of workplace injuries the injury rate in this industry is…