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Kansas, please stop screwing up

I like Kansas and Kansans—I've got a copy of Oceans of Kansas(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) on the coffee table at home, I think the paleontological history of the region is wonderful and represents a great opportunity for the residents to learn. And then there's this news: a major meteorite find, and what do people in the area do? They declare a meteorite festival! How cool and science-friendly is that? Well, unfortunately… All you have to do is look at the details (and not just that they've got some Branson cowboy performing there). In particular, look at all the astronomy events (appropriate)…

Global Warming Hoax?

I found this at John Fleck's href="http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/?p=2310">Inkstain, but others are writing about it, too.  Some think it is a hoax perpetrated to promote anthropogenic global warming denialism; others think it is an attempt to discredit the denialists.   I was all excited at the prospect that humans aren’t causing global warming after all, that it’s really href="http://www.geoclimaticstudies.info/benthic_bacteria.htm">benthic bacteria. Then Roger Pielke Jr., suspicious bastard that he is, had to go and href="http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/…

Heavy Hitter Favors Open Access

Howard Hughes Medical Institute has announced a policy to promote open-access publication of scientific papers.  They are not only supporting it philosophically, but financially as well.  In fact, they are not only supporting it, but requiring it for their researchers: href="http://www.hhmi.org/news/springer20070927.html">HHMI Expresses Support for Springer Open Choice September 27, 2007 The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) has expressed support for Springer's Open Choice program whereby articles are — if accepted for publication after a process of rigorous peer-review —…

Gals and show mares

This video has been going around — it's a group of women talking about the importance of evolution to the biological sciences. I confess to cringing in a few places — there's too much ready equation of evolution with natural selection — but I certainly wouldn't question the competence of these accomplished scientists, even if I might argue with them a bit. But now the clowns at Uncommon Descent have discovered it and given their assessment. It shows sixteen female academics or science writers, mostly young, whose enthusiasm for evolution is so overwrought that they turn themselves into…

Yet Another Annoyance

April 26, 2007 Dr. Joseph ***** **** * ******* St Ann Arbor, Michigan 48103 Dear Dr. *****: Thank you for contacting me regarding the impeachment of Vice President Cheney. I appreciate hearing from you. As you know, impeachment is a very serious matter. The Constitution sets forth the general principles which control the procedural aspects of impeachment, vesting the power to impeach in the House of Representatives, while giving the Senate the power to try impeachments. In any case, the proceedings would have to be initiated by the Republican leadership on the House Committee on…

Watching the development of my inner grinch

I'm sitting at my desk at home, feeling the cold air blowing through the window, and watching the birds eat at the bird-feeder. I submitted the last of our grades yesterday, including one for a student who hasn't attended class since October and who I am worried about. I am now dreading the release of my course evaluations. I am working on the interim report for our ADVANCE project, officially due to NSF on New Year's Day but I'm desperately trying to get out the door before Christmas. I have just started the wheels in motion to hire another student on the ADVANCE project, and am waiting…

How to recruit women and minorities in a faculty search?

I'm no longer the most junior member of the department, so I'm not quite as sheltered from service obligations as I was last year. That means that when a faculty position opened up unexpectedly, I got tapped to serve on the search committee. As the woman on the committee, I'm finding myself tasked with making sure that we have a diverse applicant pool. I'm glad that our university is genuine about their support for diversity (at least in applicant pools), and I'm happy to do what I can to make sure this pool is diverse, but ... no one has told me how to go about doing so. So far, the things…

6 random facts about how ScienceWoman got here

Picking up on a meme for which I've been tagged by ScientistMother, I'm going to add my own little twist, and do six random facts along a common theme. I chose geoscience in seventh grade because I needed a science fair project and I didn't want to do anything my parents knew something about. Between them, they had degrees or jobs in chemistry, biology, and computer science. Physics was a little daunting for a 12-year old, so geoscience it was. By the time I was 17, I knew I wanted to be a particular geoscience subspecialty. My choice of colleges was influenced by the location of one of the…

Old-fashioned plum butter

Isis and Physioprof aren't the only ones who can cook, you know. I don't get to cook on a regular basis, but every couple of weeks there's some piece of produce just begging to be cooked into deliciousness. This past week, it was a batch of organic Italian plums that came with our produce delivery (my one indulgence). I wasn't quite sure what to do with so many plums, so I consulted my shelf of cookbooks and decided upon a recipe from a 1950's book on freezing and canning for farm wives. I updated the techniques and downgraded the quantities a bit, and methods and results are below the fold…

Thinking about teaching

This week I'm attending a workshop on pedagogy and I'm hearing lots of interesting ideas from people teaching really exciting and innovative courses. They are incorporating service learning, multi-week projects, location-centric courses, and intro courses for particular audiences (say, business majors). They are doing cool case studies, fun field activities, integrating current events, and designing real world applications. It's inspiring, and honestly, a little overwhelming. (And this is only the second day!) Right now I'm contemplating revising my intro course, but I'm not sure when I'll be…

Hurrah, women STEMers! Now what?

You may have read this announcement already - it's making the rounds on the "women in STEM" listservs (I got this version off of WEPAN, but I also saw it on the NSF-PGE listserv). It reads: House Celebrates Women Scientists, Technologists, Engineers, and Mathematicians On June 4, the House approved, by voice vote, a resolution (H. Res. 1180) recognizing the efforts of outstanding women scientists, technologists, engineers, and mathematicians in the United States and around the world. Sponsored by Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA), the resolution contains a number of findings, including: women have…

ISEF 2008: The science that won the prize

Sana Raoof, left, 17, of Muttontown, N.Y., Yi-Han Su, 17, center, of Chinese Taipei and Natalie Saranga Omattage, right, 17, of Cleveland, Miss., pose after receiving top honors at the 2008 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Atlanta, Friday, May 16, 2008. Yesterday, Yi-Han Su was named one of three winners of the Intel Foundation Young Scientist Award at ISEF 2008, for her project on "Efficient Hydrogen Production Using Cu-Zn-Al Catalysts Prepared by Homogeneous Precipitation Method." Below the fold I'll show you what a winning display looks like and I'll share her…

The collective brain

An individual ant is quite insignificant, but a large group of ants can do quite remarkable things. Likewise, neurons evolved to communicate with each other, and are quite useless except when connected to a network of other neurons. I've always liked to use the ant colony as an anology for brain function. According to this article about swarm intelligence by Carl Zimmer, it may be more than just an anology: By studying army ants -- as well as birds, fish, locusts and other swarming animals -- Dr. Couzin and his colleagues are starting to discover simple rules that allow swarms to work so…

U.S. government adopts Russian "mind-reading" technology for counter-terrorism

In this article from Wired, Sharon Weinberger discusses "mind-reading" technology that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security hopes to use to identify terrorists. The DHS is interested in Semantic Stimuli Response Measurements Technology (SSRM TEK), which has been developed at the Psychotechnology Research Institute in Moscow. SSRM Tek is a software package which can, according to those who developed it, measure peoples' responses to subliminal messages presented to them in a computer game. Terrorists' responses to scrambled images (of, say Osama bin Laden or the World Trade Center) are…

Drinking from a spiny penis

(Fleur Champion de Crespigny) Researchers at the University of Exeter have found that female bruchid beetles (Callosobruchus maculatus, above) mate when they are thirsty. Evolutionary biologist Martin Edvardsson kept some female bruchids with, and others without, access to water. All the females were given the opportunity to mate with a new male every day. In the journal Animal Behaviour, Edvardsson reports that those females without access to water mated more frequently - up to 40% more - than those with access to water. This leads him to conclude that female bruchid beetles…

Quantum Computing Postdoc at LPS

A theoretical condensed matter postdoc of interest to the quantum computing folks: Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Theoretical Condensed Matter and Quantum Information Science at the Laboratory for Physical Sciences, University of Maryland. Applications are being accepted for physics postdoctoral research positions in quantum information and device theory at the Laboratory for Physical Sciences (LPS) at the University of Maryland-College Park. Demonstrated expertise in one or more of the following categories is desired: semiconductor/condensed-matter physics, solid-state quantum computing (e…

Q-Tips Ravage Another Young Life

People, I need to say this. Its never a good idea to stick things--including Q-tips--in your ears. Despite the illusion of 'cleaning' your ear canal, often Q-tips just shove the ear wax further into the canal, or worse, can cause permanent damage by rupturing an eardrum. However, I had no idea that occasionally the cotton tip could lodge into your ear canal, causing temporary (but very real) deafness. A boy from Haverfordwest, England, can hear on one side for the first time in nine years after a cotton wool bud suddenly popped out of his ear. Jerome Bartens, 11, was diagnosed deaf in his…

Be an Optimist, Do Some Science

Every now and then I do a Google News Search for topics I'm interested in to get good blog fodder ('neuroscience' and 'parrots' are of course perennial favorites). This time one of those searches popped up an interesting news piece in The Hindu newspaper which really resonated with me, tagged with a quote by David Baltimore: "You cannot do science unless you are an optimist." That is one of those truths that becomes so important in grad school when many projects fail, or good ideas get scooped, publication hopes are frustrated, and that final dissertation defense seems so far away. A healthy…

Brain Hydatid Cyst (with Surgical Video)

This video is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen on YouTube. It shows the oh-so-careful surgical removal of an egg-sized cyst (intact) from a person's brain. The cyst is a hydatid cyst, which is the result of a parasitic infection by tapeworm larvae(Echinococcus). Generally speaking, it does not occur in the USA, but rather occurs in Mediterranean countries, the Middle East, the southern part of South America, Iceland, Australia, New Zealand, and southern parts of Africa. The cysts, which are initiated by one larvae, eventually come to house thousands of tapeworm larvae. So it is…

Vintage Ear Trumpets!

People have always lost their hearing with age, but before there were hearing aids and cochlear implants, there were ear trumpets. And ear trumpet is pretty much exactly what it sounds like (a cone whose small end fits in the ear canal) and serves to better collect and amplify sound into the ear. A person hard of hearing would hold it to their ear as someone else would speak (or yell) into the large end of the trumpet. The earliest description of an ear trumpet was in the early 1600s. Most ear trumpets were custom-made, and they varied greatly in opulence and function. Some were hand carved…

Sign-Language Chimp Washoe Dead at 42

Its been a bad year for animal communication. First Alex the Grey Parrot suddenly dies, now the famous sign-language-using chimp Washoe has also died Tuesday night of the flu. Washoe, who first learned a bit of American Sign Language in a research project in Nevada, had been living on Central Washington University's Ellensburg campus since 1980. She had a vocabulary of about 250 words. Washoe also taught sign language to three younger chimps who remain at the institute, Central Washington spokeswoman Becky Watson said. They are Tatu, 31, Loulis, 29, and Dar, 31. Washoe was the only chimpanzee…

I get email

I know the flaming crazy emails are more fun, but here's one of the nice ones I also get. It's also a little bit unusual in that the writer isn't a Christian. Hello professor, I'm a long time reader first time writer. I've been following your blog for over 3 years now, and you have been one of the main influential characters that aided me in shedding my old Muslim beliefs and embrace rationality and skepticism. I want to take this opportunity to thank you for, well, being you really! I found your blog during the creationists hype back in 07/08, and was quite amused at your style of writing…

Beethoven Died of Inadvertent Lead Poisoning?

The German composer Beethoven, considered one of the most gifted composers of all time, died inexplicably at the age of 57 in 1827. He had been quite sick in the months leading up to his death, and in the past few years, research has determined that Beethoven likely died of lead poisoning. Studies detected toxic levels of lead in his hair and then, two years ago, in Beethoven's bone fragments. Now, Viennese forensic pathologist Christian Reiter has published a paper in the Beethoven Journal claiming that Beethoven's doctor likely inadvertently poisoned the composer with lead-containing balm…

When Mental Patients Get Lost in the System

There's an interesting article up at CNN today regarding families who have "lost" loved ones in mental institutions over the years. One in particular is making a movie about the little sister he thought was gone. One day in 1957, when Jeff Daly was 6 years old, his little sister, Molly, disappeared. Jeff Daly's efforts to find his sister, Molly, led to a new Oregon law about records for institutions for the disabled. Every night at dinner, he would ask his parents the same question, "Where's Molly?" Every night, he says, he received the same answer: "Stop asking about Molly." Decades…

Friday Grey Matters: Parrots Have Individualized Calls For Offspring

German researchers at the University of Hamburg claim to have documented that some parrots seem to give their offspring (but not their mates) individual "names," in the form of a distinctive call which is different for each of their chicks. The studies were inspired by observations in the spectacled parrotlet's natural habitat in Colombia. There, researchers from Hamburg noted that individual parrots seemed to respond to specific calls that other parrots in the same flock ignored. 'A mother bird had the uncanny ability to utter a cry that would result in her chick returning to the nest…

Bangladeshi boy with two heads passes away

A sad story from Bangladesh: a baby boy born with two heads has passed away at just two days old. What makes the story especially sad is that apparently the boy, named Kiron, was doing surprisingly well shortly after birth, even eating, but his parents could not afford further medical treatment at a larger hospital. They took him home, where he died of respiratory problems. The photo above shows how remarkably normal both heads look - at first, I thought it was a hoax. It's unclear at this point how Kiron developed two heads, although what little I've seen suggests that it was probably a…

A Natural Wild Urban Duck Event

Photo by Kevin Ambrose Apparently dozens of DC ducks are dying, right in front of traumatized tourists: National Mall visitors watched park police wade through the water collecting more than 20 lifeless birds Saturday afternoon. The latest incident comes just two weeks after 17 other ducks mysteriously died at the reflecting pool. The Environmental Protection Agency and FBI (web) agents have tested the water and the air around the pool, but so far there is no word on what's causing the ducks to die. The National Park Service says the deaths are a natural event that is triggered by wildlife…

Give me electronic marginalia, please

Alan Jacobs finds a quote that beautifully expresses why I don't want a Kindle, and why I wish the iPad were a stylus-friendly Mac tablet: Of course, you can't take your pen to the screen. When it comes to annotating the written word, nothing yet created for the screen compares to the immediacy and simplicity of a pen on paper. The only effective way to respond to text on screen is to write about it. The keyboard stands in for the pen; but it demands more than a mere underline or asterisk in the margin. It demands that you write. That, of course, was the reason for the pen all along: it's a…

Call for papers: moving digital medicine and science into museums

This may appeal to some of you: The 15th biannual conference of the European Association of Museums for the History of Medical Sciences (EAMHMS) will be held at the University of Copenhagen, 16-18 September, 2010. This year's conference focuses on the challenge to museums posed by contemporary developments in medical science and technology.The image of medicine that emerges from most museum galleries and exhibitions is still dominated by pre-modern and modern understandings of an anatomical and physiological body, and by the diagnostic and therapeutical methods and instruments used to…

Don't look now - it's another 'scientific consensus'!

Oh noes! Chris Mooney just used the phrase "scientific consensus on global warming" in a WaPo article on Climategate: While the controversy has receded, it may have done lasting damage to science's reputation: Last month, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 40 percent of Americans distrust what scientists say about the environment, a considerable increase from April 2007. Meanwhile, public belief in the science of global warming is in decline. The central lesson of Climategate is not that climate science is corrupt. The leaked e-mails do nothing to disprove the scientific consensus on…

"I'm just turning a rational eye to your dogma"

I went to see Randall Munroe, creator of xkcd, a few weeks ago at MIT. Unfortunately the line to get him to sign books was about fifty frenzied geeks long, so I didn't stay for that. But I did enjoy his dialogue with the audience, which mainly consisted of answering questions ranging from obsessive fanboy minutia (why is xkcd published on Monday, Wednesday and Friday?) to vast and metaphysical (what is the true difference between geeks, nerds and dorks?) The latter question led to Munroe doodling and tinkering with a ridiculously convoluted Venn diagram, the details of which I can't remember…

Poem of the Week: W. H. Auden's The Labyrinth

The Labyrinth by W.H. Auden Anthropos apteros for days Walked whistling round and round the Maze, Relying happily upon His temperament for getting on. The hundredth time he sighted, though, A bush he left an hour ago, He halted where four alleys crossed, And recognized that he was lost. "Where am I? Metaphysics says No question can be asked unless It has an answer, so I can Assume this maze has got a plan. If theologians are correct, A Plan implies an Architect: A God-built maze would be, I'm sure, The Universe in miniature. Are data from the world of Sense, In that case, valid evidence? What…

Incentives for helping kids in need

In case helping preschool special ed students by providing materials for science exploration isn't rewarding enough, the Scienceblogs overlords at Seed Media have made two really enticing offers. First, Seed is matching the first $15,000 donated by scienceblogs readers during the challenge. I think we're really close, and your donation could put us over the top. Even if you only have $5 to donate, with Seed's match, you're really giving $10. Second, it's not just about the altruism. There is something in it for you. Seed is giving prizes. details below the fold. Donors can win: ⢠1 fresh,…

Helping Vermont

Photo of Vermont highway courtesy of Kyle Cornell Last week, I had my long-awaited vacation semi-ruined when, thanks to Hurricane Irene, my flight back from the West Coast was cancelled. I had to rent a car and drive across the country in a rush - not my favorite way to spend three and a half days. But based on what I saw passing through New York, and what I've heard about the damage in Vermont, I can't complain: flooding has overturned homes, isolated entire towns, and destroyed everything some families own. Vermonters are a notoriously self-sufficient bunch, and I haven't seen that much…

Randy Hage's Manhattan Wonder Cabinet

Nick's Luncheonette Randy Hage Via the eye-candy blog How to Be a Retronaut (thanks Miles for first sending me a link there), the painstakingly accurate miniature Manhattan streetscapes of LA artist Randy Hage are half-toy, half-historical document - a wonder cabinet of urban curiosities. Hage's overarching goal is to preserve rapidly disappearing streetscapes. As he told Jeremiah Moss at Vanishing New York, I remember one instance in particular that prompted me to seriously focus on this project. I was on my way to revisit a Brooklyn donut shop that I had photographed a year earlier. I…

Stop torturing me, MIT!

Now this is just cruel: yesterday the Cambridge Science Festival kicked off - a week of science, sciart, sci-journalism and sci-education activities at MIT, Harvard, the Museum of Science, and surrounds. Am I going to be hanging out all day with my fellow-geeks in the sun (which finally came out a few days ago, right on cue)? No! Because I have to write two final papers. (At least they're about sci-law. . . ) Anyway, don't be like me. If you're in the Cambridge/Boston area, have a life and check out the Cambridge Science Festival schedule. There are talks, performances, screenings, panels,…

Radio Hoax: Forced Identification of Muslims

This sounds eerily similar to another kind of 'forced identification'.......... When radio host Jerry Klein suggested that all Muslims in the United States should be identified with a crescent-shape tattoo or a distinctive arm band, the phone lines jammed instantly. The first caller to the station in Washington said that Klein must be "off his rocker." The second congratulated him and added: "Not only do you tattoo them in the middle of their forehead but you ship them out of this country ... they are here to kill us." Another said that tattoos, armbands and other identifying markers such as…

A Complicated Dominion: Tiffany Bozic

Silent Dredge, 2008 Tiffany Bozic Currently showing at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery: "A Complicated Dominion: Nature and New Political Narratives," featuring the work of Tiffany Bozic, among others: Our dominion is complicated and comes with profound responsibility. Humankind has become adept at leveraging natural resources and scientific advances to not only ensure our survival, but also to support and spread various political agendas. Along the road we have developed life-enhancing technologies and become more widely informed about the necessity of our participation in…

In which Chris Mooney annoys me.

As I sit here waiting for Al Gore to start speaking, I'd like to note that Scibling Chris Mooney over at the Intersection has really annoyed me. Apparently the fact that I didn't like the film Sizzle is evidence that I, too, am likely a terrible communicator of science who lacks self-awareness. (Since there is no other possible reason for me to fail to LOVE the film!) Now, Chris, some scientists who dislike Sizzle may dislike it for that reason - but there are a lot of other reasons to dislike the film, some of which I and other Sciblings have mentioned! When you say, In my view, what's so…

A Little Hegel

Over at A Brood Comb, Tanasije Gjorgoski posts a quote from Hegel's Philosophy of Logic that is one of my favorites. I used to use part of it all the time in discussions with people (mostly scientists) who thought that all metaphysics was nonsense to be avoided at all cost. The Atomic philosophy forms a vital stage in the historical evolution of the Idea. The principle of that system may be described as Being-for-itself in the shape of the Many. At present, students of nature who are anxious to avoid metaphysics turn a favourable ear to Atomism. But it is not possible to escape metaphysics…

Time-Space Metaphors: A Proposed Experiment

Earlier today I posted about the spatial and temporal ventriloquism aftereffects. One of the reasons I find those effects fascinating because I think they might hint at a counterargument to recent studies by Daniel Casasanto and Lera Boroditsky that seem to provide evidence that time is metaphorically structured through spatial experience and concepts, as I discussed the other day. In those experiments, the growth of a line and the length of a line influenced people's perception of temporal durations (see the link for a full description of the studies). I think this result might occur because…

Cognitive Neuroscience of Religion

Over at The Neurocritic, there's a great post on an imaging study that contrasted singing and speaking in tongues in five religious women. That reminded me of a paper I had read a couple months ago by one of the authors of the speaking in tongues study. It's a paper on the neuroscientific study of religion, but it primarily focuses on methodological issues (operational definitions of religion, subject selection, imaging techniques, etc.), so it may not be interesting to everyone. If you want to read it, you can do so here. Anyway, the reason I bring this stuff up (other than to link to the…

Color Memory Changes Color Perception

One of the things that I love the most about cognitive science is that it's always challenging our intuitions about the world and how we perceive it. Think, for example, of all the classic Gestalt illusions, such as my all time favorite, the Kanizsa Triangle. What these illusions, and many other findings over the history of the study of visual perception show is that perception doesn't simply represent the world "as it is." Instead, perception is a fundamentally creative process, relying on inference, subtraction, and all sorts of other alterations of incoming sensory data. Spend a little…

Ask a Science Blogger - Quitting Your Day Job

This week's (and my first) "Ask a Science Blogger" question comes from a Science Blogs reader named Jake Bryan (aka chezjake). He asks: Assuming that time and money were not obstacles, what area of scientific research, outside of your own discipline, would you most like to explore? Why? The answer is all of them. I'm an information junky, so I'd love to study just about everything. Of course, my less-than-stellar math abilities would make theoretical physics pretty difficult, but a guy can dream, right? But if I'm going to give a real answer, the choice would have to boil down to either…

New Alvin Replacement in the New York Times

Graphic from The New York Times Company. The New York Times has a well-written article about the new Alvin replacement. There is also a 15 minute Science Times podcast and several photos of the 7 foot wide, 3 inch thick titanium sphere being molded (must see) as well as the above graphic proposing a hybrid option to use the new sphere inside the old Alvin body during the interim period. Here is an excerpt: " The United States used to have several submersibles -- tiny submarines that dive extraordinarily deep. Alvin is the only one left, and after more than four decades of probing the sea's…

Document Freedom Day

On 26 March 1874, the great poet href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Frost" rel="tag">Robert Frost was born.   Perhaps it is not so notable, but 26 March 2008 is the first href="http://documentfreedom.org/News/20080220" rel="tag">Document Freedom Day.   Early in the development of computer technology, the world decided to take the well-traveled road: the road of proprietary document formats.  This path led to endless headaches, unnecessary costs, and the inability of people to use their machines to their full potential.  It created obscure vectors for the spread of viruses…

The Pluto objection

I'm so sorry, Kentucky. How do you end up with such ignorant school superintendents? Ricky Line is concerned because his school district is teaching the facts of evolution. "I have a very difficult time believing that we have come to a point ... that we are teaching evolution ... as a factual occurrence, while totally omitting the creation story by a God who is bigger than all of us," he wrote. "My feeling is if the Commonwealth's site-based councils, school board members, superintendents and parents were questioned ... one would find this teaching contradictory to the majority's belief…

Early Playoff Action: Advantage Pluto

The playoffs are not even underway in the 2007 Science Spring Showdown, yet already the teams are maneuvering for any advantage they can get.  The match-ups are so even, that everyone knows it is the intangibles that will make a difference.   href="http://scienceblogs.com/worldsfair/2007/03/chair_bracket_here_we_go_scien.php"> alt="" src="http://scienceblogs.com/worldsfair/upload/2007/03/benbracket.jpg" border="0" height="399" width="480"> In the highly-competitive "Chair" Bracket, the world's scientific community has its eyes riveted on the IAU vs. Pluto game.  As href="http…

CPAP Reduces GERD: How does this work?

I had to think about this for a bit before it made sense (free registration on Medscape required): href="http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/547792">Does Continuous Positive Airway Pressure Decrease Gastroesophageal Reflux in Patients With Obstructive Sleep Apnea? Twenty-four-hour esophageal pH monitoring was used by Spence and colleagues[4] to determine whether continuous positive airway pressure (C-PAP) decreases nocturnal reflux in patients with obstructive sleep apnea. Seventeen patients were studied on 2 different nights; 12 were overweight (body mass index: 27.3-50.8). All…

Quick Note about Antibiotic Resistance and Animal Feed

The Union of Concerned Scientists is concerned again.  This time, they are concerned the possibility that a fourth-generation cephalosporin, href="http://www.intervet.co.uk/Products_Public/Cephaguard_Injection/090_Product_Datasheet.asp">cefquinome, could be approved for use in animal feed. It seems obvious that this could lead to more problems with antibiotic resistance.  If bacteria are exposed to these antibiotics in sublethal amounts, in animals, those bacteria probably would develop resistance to the antibiotics.  If those same bacteria later cause infection in humans, the…