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One last update (for now) on the youth who "cured himself" of melanoma, Chad Jessop

I hadn't intended to write about this again, at least not for a while, but curiosity got the better of me. About a month and a half ago, I discussed a highly dubious story that was going around by e-mail about a 17-year-old boy with melanoma whose mother supposedly "cured" him with "natural" treatments. As you might imagine, the story was riddled with incorrect-sounding medical information and inconsistencies. Earlier this week, through a highly credulous blogger going by the 'nym the Angry Scientist, I became aware of an update to the story, in which the names of the mother and child (Laurie…

Open Lab 2007 - soon in a bookstore near you!

The day before yesterday, my copy of The Open Laboratory 2007, the second annual science blogging anthology, arrived in the mail. So yesterday, Reed and I met at a coffee shop and looked it over. It looks great! Reed knows what he's doing and is a perfectionist, so of course the book looks perfect. So, I went back online to Lulu.com and approved the book to be sold in various online and offline bookstores. The book information will be sent to Bowker's Books In Print and once approved by Bowker, Lulu will upload the title to their distribution network. This process is generally completed…

Indirect Truths: Understanding the Social Impact of Documentary Film

How much impact has Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth had on the global warming debate? More generally, how can we understand the range of influences that a documentary film might have on the public or on policy? I address these questions and others in the introduction to a recent report published by the Center for Social Media at American University. As I review, in a fragmented media system with many competing choices, even blockbuster documentaries such as Inconvenient Truth reach relatively small audiences of already concerned or engaged citizens. Selectivity bias, however, can be…

Extra, Extra

There was A LOT of stuff this week. Was this week particularly good for blogging or am I just aware of more blogs and blog posts in recent weeks? Am I paying more attention because of the new networks? Am I just filtering less, and including more in the round-up? Anyway, lots of awesome. Science I've really been enjoying the Replicated Typo blog lately. I particularly liked a recent post on the social sensitivity hypothesis: "Given findings that certain genetic variants will make a person more sensitive to social contact and more reliant on social contact under stress, it proposes that…

The making of an embryo: information and mechanics

Is the general audience "black board" talk at KITP today, giving an overview of the quantitative approches to morphogenesis program currently unverway. Symmetry breaking and mechanics. The Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics runs parallel programs and currently there is a biophysics program New Quantitative Approaches to Morphogenesis concurrent with the astrophysics program on A Universe of Black Holes During each multi-week program there is a black board lunch talk, for all members of KITP, giving an overview of the theme of the program or some key aspect of it. The talk is intended to…

ScienceOnline2010 - evening events (and wild nights afterward)

The conference is only a week away!!!!! I have introduced the participants, and the Program over the past couple of months (there's a little bit more to come). Today, we'll go into the night....the dark side! There are three evenings during the meeting, thus three evening events for participants. Importantly, all three are also open to locals (or whoever is in town that day) who are not registered to attend the main program of the conference. On Thursday night, for those early birds whose flights from far-away places bring them in on Thursday, as well as for the locals who are already here,…

Study on blogging in the lives of academic mothers

From my email box: My name is Annie Fox and I am a graduate student in Social Psychology at the University of Connecticut. Currently, I am conducting a study examining the role of blogging in the lives of Academic mothers. We have identified you as a potential participant because your blog came up in our web search for relevant blogs. Consequently, we would like to invite you to participate in our research study. Your participation would involve the completion of an anonymous online survey. The survey contains a mixture of multiple-choice and open-response questions, and should take less…

Powers of Ten Concert to Kick off the USA Science and Engineering Festival!!

Thanks to Festival Partner University of Maryland for helping us get the word out about the Festival and the Powers of Ten Concert and Streaming it LIVE! Find out more here on their website. USA Science & Engineering Festival Opens with Live Powers of Ten Concert Festival of Science and Technology - Opening Program: The Powers of Ten - A Journey in Song from Quark to Cosmos.WHAT: Powers of Ten - A Journey in Song from Quark to Cosmos : Opening program of the USA Science & Engineering Festival. WHEN: Sunday, October 10, 2010, 5:00 - 7:00 p.m. WHERE: Elsie and Marvin…

It's time to move on, time to get goin'

So, readers know that I went out West this past weekend to visit colleagues at the University of Colorado, spend some thinking time at the southern Colorado ranchland endowed to us by the late PharmDad, and - most prominently - visit PharmMom and PharmStiefvater on the occasion of her 70th birthday. I'm extremely grateful to my wife, PharmGirl, MD, and the illustrious PharmKid for holding down the fort and handling the emotional and practical issues of the little genius starting 3rd grade on Monday. When Mom told me she'd been following the aftermath of Pepsigate/sbfail, she asked, "So, what…

Season Extension and Fall Gardening Class

Just to let you know, I'm going to be starting another class this coming week, beginning on Tuesday - this one helping people get started with fall gardening and season extension. If you are like most folks, you probably start out enthusiastic about your garden, but around the middle of the summer, you get focused on harvesting, or overwhelmed and let the cool season garden peter out. And that's a mistake, because with very simple and cheap methods of season extension and a little attention right about now (for those as northerly as me, a bit later for folks south of me in this hemisphere…

"What do you think, sirs?"

Maybe I'm just a glutton for punishment, but I having something of an affinity for cheesy B-movies. I probably acquired the taste during childhood, when Jaws II, III, IV, and most of the Godzilla series would be playing on any given weekend, and even though I would be hard pressed to give any of the movies more than 2 stars out of 5 I do like turning down the lights, grabbing some popcorn, and sitting down to watch something that I know is going to be nearly painfully bad. There are a few exceptions, a few creature features that stand out from the rest (i.e. Alligator, The Host), but by and…

More commentary on animal rights extremists.

In an op-ed by Tim Rutten in today's Los Angeles Times: No sensible person dismisses the humane treatment of animals as inconsequential, but what the fanatics propose is not an advance in social ethics. To the contrary, it is an irrational intrusion into civil society, a tantrum masquerading as a movement. It is a kind of ethical pornography in which assertion stands in for ideas, and willfulness for argument, all for the sake of self-gratification. At the end of the day, there is no moral equivalence between the lives of humans and those of animals. I think this is essentially the point…

ScienceOnline2010 - what to do while there, what to do if you are not there but are interested?

ScienceOnline2010 is starting in three days! If you are not excited yet....well, I think you should be! And perhaps I can help you....with this post. First, see the complete list of attendees, or, if you want more details about everyone, browse through these introductory posts. It is always good to know more about people you are about to spend two or three days with.... Then, check out the Program to see which session in each time-slot you want to participate in. Go to individual session pages right now and join in the discussions, or ask questions. Start shaping the discussion online before…

Making it real: People and Books and Web and Science at ScienceOnline2010

People You cannot see the feedback that many participants at ScienceOnline2010 have already provided to Anton and me (keep them coming - we take the responses very seriously), but the recurring theme for the "highlight of the conference" question was "Meeting the People"; and the main request for the future is "provide more time for informal conversations". You will see even more of that kind of sentiment if you peruse the growing list of blog coverage. Or glean it from photographs posted on Flickr and Picasa here, here, here, here and here. Or on YouTube videos here and here. While Early…

Making it real: People and Books and Web and Science at ScienceOnline2010

People You cannot see the feedback that many participants at ScienceOnline2010 have already provided to Anton and me (keep them coming - we take the responses very seriously), but the recurring theme for the "highlight of the conference" question was "Meeting the People"; and the main request for the future is "provide more time for informal conversations". You will see even more of that kind of sentiment if you peruse the growing list of blog coverage. Or glean it from photographs posted on Flickr and Picasa here, here, here, here and here. Or on YouTube videos here and here.... While…

Run, do not walk, to register for ScienceOnline2010

Over the weekend, registration opened for ScienceOnline2010, the fourth annual science communicators conference to be held January 14-17, 2010, in the Research Triangle Park area of North Carolina. Please join us for this free (but donations are accepted) three-day event to explore science on the Web. Our goal is to bring together scientists, physicians, patients, educators, students, publishers, editors, bloggers, journalists, writers, web developers, programmers and others to discuss, demonstrate and debate online strategies and tools for doing science, publishing science, teaching…

Get out of here, atheists!

The governor of Illinois has been playing some games with state money, shuffling a million dollars to benefit a Baptist church, and an atheist dared to testify to the legislature against this. The response from one legislator was unsurprising: she shrieked at the atheist to get out. Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago) interrupted atheist activist Rob Sherman during his testimony Wednesday afternoon before the House State Government Administration Committee in Springfield and told him, "What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous . . . it's dangerous for our children to even know that…

ScienceOnline'09 - introducing the participants 10

The interest in the conference was overwhelming this year. When we opened the registration back in September we did not expect that we would have to close it in less than three weeks, already over our maximal number of 200. As a result, our waitlist got bigger and bigger and, occasionally, as someone would cancel, we could invite someone from the waitlist to register. About a dozen people held off until the end, hoping they would still be able to make it, but had to cancel over the last week or two. In their place, we invited several people from the waitlist (and yes, we are still over…

Science Blogging Conference - who is coming? (Technology + Science + Business = Uber-geekery)

There are 79 days until the Science Blogging Conference. The wiki is looking good, the Program is shaping up nicely, and there is more and more blog and media coverage already. There are already 112 registered participants and if you do not register soon, it may be too late once you decide to do so (we'll cap at about 230). Between now and the conference, I am highlighting some of the people who will be there, for you to meet in person if you register in time. Emile Petrone is a young entrepreneur who designed and runs one of the first science-specific online social networks - Knowble.net…

Uncertain Dots, Academic Blogs

Last week, a comment I made on Twitter about the annoyance of doing merit evaluation paperwork led to some back-and-forth with Rhett Allain and the National Society of Black Physicists Twitter account about whether blogs can or should count toward academic evaluation. This seemed like a good topic for another video hangout with me and Rhett, which we did yesterday. Unfortunately, there were some technical issues with the hangout, which delayed the start and didn't allow live Q&A, but we did get video: (The camera appears to be on just me for most of this, so it's largely a hangout…

Update: Antarctic Vote Count

The current Antarctic Trip Vote count is as follows; 3848 - 1710 - 1424 - 1157 - 1113 out of 496 candidates registered. I am in third place and sloooowly creeping up on second place. With only 6 weeks remaining, voting is changing rapidly as previous voters reassign their votes and new voters cast theirs for the first time. The top four vote-getters are receiving most of these votes, so I need your votes more than ever to recapture first place, so please ask your friends and relatives to vote for me now! If you've already voted, then please encourage your family, friends, colleagues and…

Innovation and STEM Outreach to K-12 Students Headline AT&T's Return as Major Sponsor!

As its new corporate slogan - "Rethink Possible" - suggests, AT&T is known for its long history of continually exploring new ways to reinvent itself through technological innovation, educational outreach and community involvement. The global telecommunications leader is bringing this same spirit to the 2nd USA Science & Engineering Festival in its return as a major Sponsor! Get ready for a bevy of excitement when AT&T assumes key roles in next year's event, including serving as the official host of the Festival's high-profile Nifty Fifty speaker engagements where four of its…

Friday Deep-sea Picture: Phakellia sponge (07/24/08)

Deep Sea News' Friday edition has a new mission - to "restore" small black and white figures from obscure scientific journals to their original color, hoping to give these images a new life and audience online. The paper's citation will be included. Please contact us if you have something to share. The image of Phakellia sponge is from the Johnson Sea Link submersible surveys of a Florida bioherm at 171 m depth in the west Atlantic. The sponge is about 2 ft tall. I like it because it's a good example of convergent evolution. You have to ask yourself, is Phakellia a sea-fan imposter? Or vice…

JOURNAL WATCH: New Study Finds That As of 2003, The Most Consistent Predictor of Citizen Activism in the Stem Cell Debate Was Church Mobilization

A pre-publication release of a study I did with Kirby Goidel of LSU is now available at the website of the journal POLITICAL BEHAVIOR. Analyzing national survey data collected in 2003, the study finds that the most consistent predictor of citizen activism in the stem cell debate (measured as donating money, contacting officials, writing letters to the editor etc) is church-based mobilization, including the distribution of materials at church, and requests to participate from church leaders. Below is the abstract and article information. Readers at universities should be able to download…

Flu beats sex

Every disease has a website, it seems, and common diseases may have many. The UK has a charity devoted to asthma that has a site, AsthmaUK.com, with an interesting feature, an "asthma trigger" section that discussed things that may bring on asthma symptoms in people with asthma. Asthma is a disease involving airway dysfunction where it becomes difficult to exhale. You can get an idea of how debilitating this can be by taking an ordinary drinking straw and while breathing in normally only breathe out through the straw. Try it. Very distressing, you'll find. So you don't want to trigger the…

GSA update: spatial thinking about hot springs near normal faults

I'm heading home tomorrow, and I've finally got a little time to blog. Here's quick summary of the sessions I went to on Sunday (the first day of the meeting). Detachment Dynamics: heat, deformation, and fluids in extensional systems: Where continental crust stretches apart, steep normal faults join at depth into detachment systems: shear zones that separate hot, ductilely deforming rocks from shallower, brittly deforming rocks. These systems have been discussed since the 1980s, but the focus in this session was a little different than in past discussions I've witnessed. Detachments bring…

ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Jeremy Yoder

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 Jeremy Yoder from University of Idaho and the Denim and Tweed blog to answer a few questions. Jeremy came to ScienceOnline2010 as one of the two winners of the NESCent blogging contest. Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my…

Putting the Yellow in your Urine

Let me give you a little back story. As many of you know, I'm new to scienceblogs, and one of the first things we get to do is join a message board full of all the bloggers (sciblings) here. Well, suffice it to say, a contentious discussion took place between me and another scibling, which resulted in my being called a total n00b in front of the entire world. So, what better way to make peace than by having me -- an astrophysicist -- answer a question about physiology?! Let's take a look at what I've got, since I'm a frequent solicitor of questions: Why is my pee yellow in the morning, but…

Driftglass' Reponse to Sebelius

Seven years into the reign of Little Lord Pontchartrain, some Democrats still don't get that the Republicans and movement conservatives do not reconsider and rethink, they regroup and rearm. driftglass tries to help Democratic Kansas Governor Sebelius understand this (bold original): And then comes the Democratic response from Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius. Sebelius: I'm a Democrat, but that doesn't matter tonight. The fact that you're tuning in suggests that you're[....] Oh, Jebus. Pause, while I roll my eyes and reach for the Fwow Up Bag. Sebelius: I will now detour from the…

Implicit Understanding and Inference in Language

The following is a guest post by Joshua Hartshorne at the Cognition and Language Lab. The first scientific paper I wrote states, in the second paragraph, that "language depends on two mental capacities with distinct neurocognitive underpinnings": vocabulary and grammar. To understand cats are mammals, all you need to know are the definitions of CATS, ARE and MAMMALS, plus the grammar involved. This was how I was trained to think about language. I knew that there were probably some other aspects of language (like phonology), but they seemed peripheral. That worked well enough until I came…

Outcropedia: cool geology for Google Earth

Last month, another structural geologist came to town to check out possible sites for a future field class. While we were out looking at one of my favorite teaching sites, he commented that geologists seem unusually willing to share their secrets with one another. (We had met at one of the Cutting Edge workshops, where great teaching ideas are free for the taking, technically unpublished but shared online and in person.) A few weeks ago, I learned about another example: Outcropedia, a project of the International Union of Geosciences' TekTask group. From the organizers' e-mail: The…

Science crowdsourcing - ecology

Help scientists track plant and animal cycles: The USA-National Phenology Network (USA-NPN) -- a University of Arizona, Tucson-based group of scientists and citizens that monitors the seasonal cycles of plants and animals -- is calling for volunteers to help track the effect of climate change on the environment. The group is launching a national program encouraging citizen volunteers to observe seasonal changes among plants and animals, like flowering, migration and egg-laying. They can then log in and record their observations online at the USA-NPN website. "The program is designed for…

Science Blogging Conference - who is coming? (Local bloggers 2)

There are 77 days until the Science Blogging Conference. The wiki is looking good, the Program is shaping up nicely, and there is more and more blog and media coverage already. There are already 113 registered participants and if you do not register soon, it may be too late once you decide to do so (we'll cap at about 230). Between now and the conference, I am highlighting some of the people who will be there, for you to meet in person if you register in time. Antony Williams is the Director of ChemZoo Inc, which runs ChemSpider which is an Open Access online database of chemical…

Science Blogger Panel in Duke's "Science in the Media" Class

I had the happy pleasure of visiting on Friday with Sheril Kirshenbaum and Bora Zivkovic for a panel discussion in a course at Duke University's Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy. Directed by Dr Misha Angrist, PubPol 196S "Science in the Media" is described in the course catalog as follows: Those who write about science, health and related policy matters for a general audience face a formidable challenge: to make complex, nuanced ideas understandable to the nonscientist in a limited amount of space and in ways that are engaging and entertaining, even if the topic is far outside the…

CPB Report on Best Practices in Digital Journalism: Implications for Science Communication

This week, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting released a report on best practices in digital journalism that I co-authored with several colleagues here at American University and the Center for Social Media. Titled Scan and Analysis of Best Practices in Digital Journalism In and Outside U.S. Public Broadcasting, the report was commissioned by CPB as part of the organization's planning for future directions in online reporting and media. In keeping with CPB's mission, the report has a strong emphasis on strategies for using digital journalism to promote civic engagement, public…

BMI TMI

Note: I've been informed by one or two experts whom I trust that my plan sucks. My basic plan is based on a Weight Watchers model, but I take experts with evidence very seriously, so there may be some serious modifications to this post. --PalMD Obesity is a bad thing. This isn't a moral judgment. If one of your values is long life and good health, then obesity is a bad thing. In general, I think it's a bad idea for me to write about my personal health issues, but I'd like to try an experiment. I suffer from one of the most common and fasting-growing (!) health problems in the U.S.---…

Prevention is in the air: Getting ready for National Public Health Week

by Kim Krisberg "CQ, CQ Celebrating National Public Health Week!" "CQ, CQ Celebrating National Public Health Week!" If you're an aficionado of amateur radio -- or ham radio as it's also known -- this is the call you might hear coming out of Oklahoma City on April 6. In layman's terms, it means "Calling all stations, calling all stations! Celebrating National Public Health Week!" In honor of this year's National Public Health Week observance, which runs April 2-8, officials with the Oklahoma City-County Health Department will hold a special drill in which all of its amateur communications…

Swiss Government Enacts Strict Pet Laws

UPDATE: Looks like the fount of wisdom that is The Time's Online lost a thing or two in the translation. Lucky for us, informed Zooillogix reader and sometimes D&D player, Dragon's Sorrow End, has set the record straight. The government of Switzerland has passed the most comprehensive laws in the history of pet ownership to protect the well being of social animals. In hopes of creating an "informed population," the laws cover everything from guinea pigs to rhinoceroses. Here are some of the more interesting regulations: - Dog owners are required to become qualified in a two-part course…

Infecting pigs with human-adapted swine flu virus

An interesting piece on an infection trial of novel H1N1 in pigs appeared on ProMed over a week ago, but with dealing with swine flu up close and personal and all, I am only just getting to comment on it. This was a study done in the EU (VLA-Weybridge, Mammalian Influenza Group) to see how easy it was to infect pigs with the human-adapted swine flu, what kinds of symptoms and pathology it produced, and how transmissible it was. The answer seems to be easy, mild and very, in that order. 11 pigs were inoculated intranasally and when they began to shed virus a naive pair of pigs placed in…

Marburg hits Europe once again

Marburg is a filovirus; a cousin of Ebola. Both cause hemorrhagic fever; both have been recently discovered in fruit bats; both have hit Africa in a small number of human outbreaks. Both also remain largely mysterious; we know very little about their ecology in the wild; how frequently they really infect humans (and other animal species; Ebola especially has taken a toll on great apes); and their mode of transmission from their wild reservoir to primate hosts. These enormous gaps in our knowledge remain despite recently passing the 40-year mark since the discovery of filoviruses in a lab…

Unfollowing

So a couple of weeks ago I unfollowed every science-type person in my Twitter feed. Not because I don’t like them, in fact, many were friends and colleagues. But there’s something sickly in the online science community, and this was an experiment in ways I might build around that. I have mixed feelings about Twitter. On the whole, I think it’s a marvellous invention, which exposes me to people and ideas that I might not ever come by otherwise. I’ve gotten work through it, made pals, and learned many interesting things. But there’s also a certain predisposition to sourness. It’s a poor format…

Senator Reid's Foot in Mouth Problem

Senator Harry Reid, the incoming Senator minority leader, caught a lot of flak for saying that Clarence Thomas' legal opinions are poorly written and that he was "an embarrassment to the court." Some of that flak came from me, in a post where I pointed out that while I am on the opposite side of most issues with Justice Thomas, Reid's claim was unjustifed and beneath the dignity of a Senate leader. Alas, Reid is not quite done making himself look like an ass. James Taranto, writing in the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web, quotes Reid's response when asked on CNN to provide an example of…

Deranged creationists: here are your instructions

Oh, that little scamp, Billy Dembski. He's all upset about his shabby treatment at Baylor, and he's displacing his anger into a defense of Robert Marks. President John Lilley of Baylor appears to have made up his mind that Prof. Robert Marks's Evolutionary Informatics Lab is to have no place at Baylor. There is only one court of appeal now, the Baylor Board of Regents, who can reverse Lilley's decision and even remove Lilley as president. Here is the list of board members. I encourage readers of UD to contact them (respectfully) and share their concerns about this gross violation of academic…

From science research to science teaching: how to pay for a change

When I was a post-doc, I spent a few months seriously thinking about changing careers and teaching high school. I might have followed through on that plan, too, but I didn't know how to pay for it. Today, if you have a background in science, technology, math, or engineering, you can retrain to become a teacher and the National Science Foundation will help. The Robert Noyce scholarship program has funds to help ease that transition to the classroom. From the NSF web site: The Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program seeks to encourage talented science, technology, engineering, and…

Relationships in lab groups.

This post is standing in for a lecture and class discussion that would be happening today if I knew how to be in two places at once. (Welcome Phil. 133 students! Make yourselves at home in the comments, and feel free to use a pseudonym if you'd rather not comment under your real name.) The topic at hand is the way relationships in research groups influence the kind of science that comes out of those groups, as well as the understanding the members of the group have of what it means to do good science. Our jumping off point is an article by Vivian Weil and Robert Arzbaecher titled "…

Not Even Wrong

From time to time, my Seed magazine hosts throw out a question for bloggers to answer. Today's question is concerns a column by James S. Robbins on global warming in the National Review Online. Robbins claims that global warming will be a great thing if it happens, which he doubts. The question is, does he have a point? The question of what the full range of effects from global warming will be--both good and bad--is an important one, but Robbins shows little ability to offer an answer. His column overlooks important things, gets various facts wrong, and belies a general ignorance of and…

NYT Helps in Typical Rape-victim Smearing

We should have predicted this when we discussed the UVa Rape story in Rolling Stone last week, it was just a matter of time before people would start suggesting the central figure in the story, Jackie, might be fabricating. I would be surprised if this response did not occur, because sadly it is so typical. What I'm surprised by is that the New York Times, is credulously repeating this smear led by Richard Bradley, and Jonah Goldberg of all people. Still, some journalists have raised questions about the story. Richard Bradley, who as an editor at George magazine was duped by the former New…

Social media evangelism

It's that time of the year. Spots for ScienceOnline are a hotter commodity than Justin Bieber concert tickets amongst the pre-teen crowd; The Open Laboratory 2011 has just come out in print; and academics are discussing the utility of social media in full force. This topic has long been an interest of mine; with Shelley Batts and Nick Anthis, I even wrote a peer-reviewed paper on the topic way back in 2008. And it's fresh on my mind, as last week I braved the world of the University of Iowa's Internal Medicine Grand Rounds to discuss "Social Media and Medicine," evangelizing for social media…

Links for 2010-07-30

Getting young scientists into the science teacher pipeline: IU News Room: Indiana University "Producing science teachers who can keep up with rapidly advancing fields and can also inspire students is not an easy task. With a grant from the National Science Foundation's Robert Noyce Scholarship Program, the School of Science at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis is challenging science majors -- individuals who enjoy and appreciate science -- to transfer their enthusiasm and knowledge to students in middle school and high school classrooms. Through the Noyce Summer Internship…

Latest Indon death: round up the usual suspects

So now we can all rest easy because we know where the 6 year old girl (not a boy as the Indon Ministry of Health previously reported) who died recently of H5N1 infection acquired the virus. The source of all H5N1 infections: birds. How do we know? Because an official of the Indonesian bird flu centre says so: "She had indirect contact with dead chickens near her school," Joko Suyono, an official at the ministry's bird flu centre, said by telephone. The victim, from the city of Cilegon in Banten province, had initially been identified as a six-year-old boy, but Suyono said this was due to a…