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How not to win friends and influence people

Drat! Real life has once again interfered with my blogging. Fortunately, there's still a lot of what I consider to be good stuff in the archives of the old blog that has yet to be transferred to the new blog. Today looks like a perfect time to transfer at least a couple more articles from the old blog. This particular article first appeared on April 25, 2005. One reason I reposted it is that I recently forgot the very precepts that I discussed in it when over the holidays a relative brought up the topic of Sylvia Browne, provoking a clearly too vigorous response about her being a fraud. (…

The complaint against Dr. Roy Kerry, negligent killer of Abubakar Tariq Nadama

After not having written anything about the case of Abubakar Tariq Nadama, the five year old autistic boy who died as a result of chelation therapy administered to him to "cure" him of his autism, I revisited the case last week in light of the State of Pennsylvania filing charges against Dr. Kerry, the "alternative medicine" practitioner who delivered the lethal dose. I've now gotten a copy of the full list of charges, and it makes for some interesting reading if you can stand all the legalese. (The charges can also be found here.) Here's the note in Tariq's medical chart from his initial…

Framing vaccines, revisited: The "empathy" gambit

On Friday, while discussing what is perhaps the aspect of Autism's False Prophets that is at the same time the most important set of observations (namely, how the media and government miscommunicate science and how the public seems hardwired to misunderstand science) and its most glaring omission (namely, suggestions how to overcome this problem), I talked about "framing" or how we could potentially represent the current science on vaccines in a compelling way that will be persuasive to the bulk of concerned parents. We know that hard core antivaccinationist parents will not be persuaded by…

Zombies Ate My Brain! (and other tales)

Imagine with me, for a moment, that the zombie invasion has begun. You try to escape, but the zombies are just too much to handle. You can't run fast enough. They're everywhere. Your favorite science bloggers have been turned into zombies and they're coming for you. Figure 1: Thanks to Joseph Hewitt of Ataraxia Theatre for providing us with these awesome illustrations of zombified sciblings! Left to right: Christie, Sci, Bora, me, & Peter and Travis. Click on each to embiggen. I'm sure you've always wondered what would happen as a zombie ate through your brain. How would it feel? What…

Does it matter what's in a placebo?

Yes, it does matter what is in a placebo (as well as how it is administered, and so on) because the placebo is an important part of the experimental protocol used in pharmaceutical research. Before we get to why this question has even been raised, and an interesting point or two about it, lets quickly cover what a placebo really is. A placebo is a tool used for making a control in an experiment. So what is a control? A control is a subset of individual variates (which may be people, or samples of some kind, or whatever) that is given a "treatment" that is just like the treatment you are…

How many people does it take to make a baby really sick?

We have an interesting conundrum. Our offspring (______) is due on November 20th. This places the likely date of birth just prior to Thanksgiving. This causes many people to get very excited because they get to see and play with the new baby. I wonder how mad at me all those people are going to get when they find out I might not let that happen? I'm not entirely sure what we are going to do postpartum. I'm quite interested in advice, so please do make your suggestions below. I'd especially like the advice of the MD's and Public Health Scientists in the vicinity. Or anyone with relevant…

Congress polishes the turd that was NCCAM

With the way our dysfunctional federal government works, it's not uncommon for the end of a fiscal year to come and go without there being a budget for the next fiscal year in place. This phenomenon is particularly common during election years, and this year was no different. September 30 came and went, followed by the beginning of FY2015 on October 1 with no budget in place, just a continuing resolution. Finally, this week, Congress acted and passed a budget, but, as is often the case given that the President does not have line item veto power, the omnibus spending bill funding the…

Ad hominem and harassment: How antivaccine activists work

For some reason, I was really beat last night, and, given that this weekend is a holiday for a large proportion of the country (if, perhaps, not for a large proportion of my readership), I don't feel too bad about slacking off a bit by mentioning a couple of short bits that I wanted to blog about but didn't get around to. And what better topic to blog about on Good Friday than the exact opposite of what this Easter season is supposed to be about, namely the behavior of antivaccinationists? I realize it's an easy target, but, hey, I'm tired. Besides, it amuses me, and, as I've said so many…

One more example of the price of refusing science-based cancer therapy

Another year, another Breast Cancer Awareness Month. While most people who have either been touched by breast cancer or who have a professional interest in it, the significance of Breast Cancer Awareness Month is that it is a time, well, to increase awareness and to promote breast cancer research. There is another side to Breast Cancer Awareness Month, however, and it's not just the question of its excessive commercialization, which concerns some people. Rather, inevitably, just as the vaccine-autism quacks have come out of the woodwork for Autism Awareness Month each April, each October…

Dammit, You Made Me Think About Boobquake!

Samia has a very thoughtful analysis of that whole Boobquake biz...I'd recommend you read it first before going on with this post. I love Samia because she is witty, she always makes me think, and often helps me see when I am missing big, important issues. But I am not sure I am in agreement with all her points this time. I started out with a reaction to the idea of Boobquake that was very similar to her post...why get all het up about some Iranian cleric when we did not see as much a fuss here in the U.S. over the Christian fundies who said similar shit about 9/11 and other natural…

Sunday Sacrilege: Metaphorical Acid

The idea that the Bible should be interpreted as a metaphor is a good one — because it melts the superstition away. The metaphor is a powerful tool: it allows a new idea to be expressed in old and familiar terms as an aid to comprehension, and it also allows the lumbering in of a freight of emotion that can add resonance to the ideas. I use them, everyone uses them, I believe the authors of the Bible used them heavily, and they're great; without them, you're left with simple literal descriptions, turning a literary effort into a textbook. To some people, though, metaphors are anathema. The…

Coming to terms with the female orgasm

Why is it so hard to understand a commonplace thing like orgasms? I think I know why science does not understand the female orgasm. It is because science excels when it breaks free of context, history, human complexities and anthropology, but when a topic requires one to grasp context, history, human complexities and anthropology, then science, especially the hard sciences, can fall short. Also, the nature of the female orgasm is a comparative question, but human sexuality is highly (but not entirely) derived; It is difficult to make a sensible graph or table comparing aspects of sexuality…

The End Of The World is Coming in Just 501 Days!

A lot of people have been sending me links to a numerology article, in which yet another numerological idiot claims to have identified the date of the end of the world. This time, the idiot claims that it's going to happen on May 21, 2011. I've written a lot about numerology-related stuff before. What makes this example particularly egregious and worth writing about is that it's not just an article on some bozo's internet website: this is an article from the San Francisco Chronicle, which treats a pile of numerological bullshit as if it's completely respectable and credible. As I've said…

Disco Goes Digital

It sometimes seems like every day, some "intelligent design" bozo comes out with another book rehashing the same-old crap. I usually ignore it. But this time, I felt like the promotional materials for one of the new books really stepped right into my part of the world, rhetorically speaking, and so I figured I should give it a quick smackdown. The book in question is Stephen C. Meyer's "Signature in the Cell". Meyer's argument basically comes down to one that is seems like we've heard and dealt with a thousand times already. There's stuff in the cell which looks kinda-sorta like a machine…

Monoids and Computation: Syntactic Monoids

While doing some reading on rings, I came across some interesting stuff about Monoids and syntax. That's right up my alley, so I decided to write a post about that. We start by defining a new property for monoids - a kind of equivalence relation called a monoid congruence. A Monoid congruence defines equivalence classes within the set of values in a monoid. The monoid congruence relation is generally written as "~", and it's a relation between two values in a monoid: ~⊆M×M. A monoid congruence has all of the usual properties of an equivalence relation: it's symmetric, reflexive, and…

Atheism is dooooomed!

I keep hearing people telling me this, but at the same time I keep seeing more and more out atheists, and atheism becoming more and more popular. The refrain is sounding more desperate than accurate — but then, among people for whom wishful thinking is tantamount to a mathematical proof, I suppose just wanting atheism to go away is sufficient to mean it must be going away. I was sent an awesomely pathetic article making just this same kind of weak argument. There seems to be a growing consensus around the globe that godlessness is in trouble. "Atheism as a theoretical position is in decline…

Update on Anti-Union Brutality in Houston

Maybe they won't beat us in prison if they think we're white, not Latino I was going to update this post about the Houston police who used horses to break up a peaceful union demonstration. But the way the police treated the union members once in custody is so awful, it deserves its own post. According to Texas organizer, Anna Denise Solis (italics mine): We sat down in the intersection and the horses came immediately. It was really violent. They arrested us, and when we got to jail, we were pretty beat up. Not all of us got the medical attention we needed. The worst was a protester named…

Will Political Appointees at FDA Overrule a Panel of Experts and Increase Cefepime Resistance?

A few weeks ago, an FDA expert panel by a vote of 6-4 decided against the approval of the use of the antibiotic cefquinome in cattle. Unfortunately, I've heard through the grapevine that the political appointees at the FDA plan to overrule the expert panel and approve the use of cefquinome. The chairman of the panel is under pressure to alter the panel's findings, and the FDA has not posted the minutes of the meeting, which is apparently required by law. About the post title: cefepime, like cefquinome, is what is known as a fourth-generation cephalosporin antibiotic. While cefquinome is…

The Straight Bullshit Express: the Condom Edition

Yum. Theological conservative tastes GOOOODDD! Full disclosure: I have never bought into the belief of the Compulsive Centrists that John McCain is a moderate. A detailed look at his voting record shows that he is often very conservative, with the occasional moment of lucidity (e.g., recognizing that global warming is actually happening). But it is truly pathetic to watch a man who clearly doesn't agree with the theological conservatives twist himself into a pretzel in an effort to placate them. He's done it with evolution. Now, he is 'confused' about condoms: The unthinkable has…

Racial differences & heart attacks

If you don't like the word "racial," just substitute "population." In any case, Many African-Americans Have A Gene That Prolongs Life After Heart Failure: About 40 percent of African-Americans have a genetic variant that can protect them after heart failure and prolong their lives, according to research conducted at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and collaborating institutions. ... "By mimicking the effect of beta blockers, the genetic variant makes it appear as if beta blockers aren't effective in these patients," he explains. "But although beta blockers have no…

Smart people believe in evolution

Half Sigma is mining the GSS to try and understand the correlates of acceptance of the fact of evolution. He notes: Of course it's not surprising that smarter people are more likely to believe in evolution, but the difference is pretty extraordinary. Only 15% of people with Wordsum 10 disbelieve in evolution (although it's a pretty small sample size), while a whopping 57% of people with Wordum 6 (which is the average score) disbelieve in evolution. You can see the full data over at his place. So does this mean that acceptance of evolution is due to close examination of the issues on the…

On Words: II

My comment about the basics of evolutionary biology and how they enter into non-scientific discourse elicited this response from RPM: You may not like the concept of speciation, but the parts that make it up (reinforcement, geographic isolation, pre- and post-zygotic barriers, etc) are real. They are also worth studying, imo. In studying those factors, scientists are, for all intents and purposes, studying "speciation". And to study speciation, we must come up with a definition for what we consider species. Coyne and Orr argue that the best definition (in terms of practicality when studying…

How the human races got their stripes

In my post The new races of man I tried to offer a verbal exposition of my current thinking as to how and why human physical variation shows the patterns we see around us. In short, I believe that powerful selective forces have reshaped a subset of the human genome in similar and different ways across a range of populations over the past 10,000 years. Empirically, I would predict that the physical appearance we denote as stereotypically "Chinese" or "Swedish" or "West African" might be rather recent ecotypes, adapted to new circumstances, both environmental and cultural. The types we see…

When Babylon was Jewish

TNR has an interesting piece (here is a cache version of the first page) about Jewish-Christian polemics (in both directions). It is mostly a review of Peter Shaeffer's Jesus in the Talmud; a scholarly work which predictably appeals to anti-Semites. My comment on Noah Feldman and his perceptions of Orthodox Judaism elicited a lot of response. Most of it was interesting, though of course some individuals across the web became convinced that I was an anti-Semite who was a Muslim working against Jews. This missed the whole greater thrust of my point: it isn't always about you, context and…

Roger Ebert Whacks Expelled

When I read that film critic Roger Ebert was going back to work despite a bout with cancer, I wrote about my hope that he would turn his sights on the creationist screed Expelled. Many people may not know that he has been a long time, vocal opponent of the idiocy that is creationism. So I was thrilled to see his recent evisceration review of Expelled: Intelligent Design "scientists" in "Expelled" are offended by being called ignorant. When Stein points out that "Catholics and mainstream Protestant groups" have no problem with the theory of Evolution, he is informed by an ID advocate, "…

One Way to Limit the Number of NIH Grant Revisions: More Scientific Leadership from NIH

More specifically, I think more of the NIH budget needs to be much more focused and targeted, and less researcher driven. In a post about NIH proposal revisions (i.e., resubmissions after a proposal has been rejected and critiqued), ScienceBlogling DrugMonkey writes (italics original): The reason is that this policy does nothing about the tendency of reviewers to focus on grantsmanship issues as an easy triage mechanism, instead of taking the "fish or cut bait" hard look at the genuinely new application the first time. The primary stage of review is the main driver here. The ameliorative…

Planned Parenthood Is Fleecing Taxpayers? Kirsten Powers Mangles the Guttmacher Institute's Data

Kirsten Powers attempts to debunk the claim that increased access to contraception prevents unwanted abortions: In the U.S., the story isn't much different. A January 2011 fact sheet by the pro-abortion rights Guttmacher Institute listed all the reasons that women who have had an abortion give for their unexpected pregnancy, and not one of them is lack of access to contraception. In fact, 54 percent of women who had abortions had used a contraceptive method, if incorrectly, in the month they got pregnant. For the 46 percent who had not used contraception, 33 percent had perceived themselves…

The Absence of Civility Is Not the Problem: Lying and Inaccuracy Are the Problems

We're now seeing all of the civility trolls coming out of the woodwork. If by civility, one means "not engaging in violent eliminationist rhetoric", well, then I'm all for it. But what I'm concerned about is that honest criticism will be silenced. While I'm not as sanguine about political rhetoric as, let's say, Jack Shafer, the fact is a lot of people in political life are habitually...counterfactual. That is, they're liars. Others are ideologically blinkered, while yet others, sadly, are either just kinda dim or else stone-cold ignorant. We do ourselves a disservice when we treat these…

Is Thorium an Answer to Global Warming?

It's always seemed to me that nuclear power would have to be part of the solution of the global warming problem: even if the planet's population were to remain constant, and even if planet-wide energy use were to remain steady, we would still have to dramatically cut CO2 per capita emissions. The problem with nuclear power--or more accurately, uranium-based nuclear power--is the waste product. Not only is radioactive waste produced, but the byproducts of the reaction can be used to build nuclear weapons. So I was very intrigued by this Wired article about thorium-based nuclear power: When…

Misinterpreting the Solution to the Manure Crisis and the Global Warming Problem...

...and how Levitt and Dubner fail to see that the Manure problem was not 'solved', only turned into a new problem that will also require wrenching change. First, the Great Manure Crisis of the late nineteenth century: The standard horsecar, which seated twenty, was drawn by a pair of roans and ran sixteen hours a day. Each horse could work only a four-hour shift, so operating a single car required at least eight animals. Additional horses were needed if the route ran up a grade, or if the weather was hot. Horses were also employed to transport goods; as the amount of freight arriving at the…

Analysis and Thinking About Unpleasant Things

Ian Welsh, in "The bloody obviousness of most good predictions", describes how many people simply can't bring themselves to state the obvious: The Prof, a wonderful teacher who went by Dr. Anderson, and to whose door I once tacked a list of 15 intellectual disagreements, asked the class a simple question. "How many of you treat men and women exactly the same? Put up your hands if you do." Everyone's hands went up. Everyone except mine, that is. She then asked how many people didn't treat men and women the same. I put up my hand. I spent the next 15 minutes being villified by my classmates,…

A Question for Gergen and Hart: Is Opposing Creationism 'Elitist'?

Because that's what it seems they're claiming. I'll get to that in a bit. Rolling Stone invited Matt Taibbi, David Gergen, and Gary Hart to discuss political events of the day. The subject of the Tea Party came up, at which point Taibbi said: To me, the main thing about the Tea Party is that they're just crazy. If somebody is able to bridge the gap with those voters, it seems to me they will have to be a little bit crazy too. That's part of the Tea Party's litmus test: "How far will you go?" Gergen and Hart both, despite their supposedly being smart people, misinterpreted what Taibbi said…

The New England Aquarium Speaks Out Against HR 669

tags: HR669, pets, exotic animals, invasive species, ornamental fish trade, aquaculture, New England Aquarium, politics This morning, I was contacted by Scott Dowd, a biologist who specializes in studying fishes in the Amazon with the New England Aquarium. Scott sent this letter, written yesterday by Bud Ris, the President and CEO of the New England Aquarium, regarding their official position on HR 669. Scott gave permission for me to share the text of the letter here, which appears below the fold, and I also have permission to share the PDF of the letter with interested others.…

What have you done for science education in your state lately?

One of the big issues in science education is the topic of science standards: each state is supposed to have guidelines for the public school curriculum, which are intended to enforce some uniformity and also make sure that key subjects are covered. These standards are often accompanied by big political fights as the religious right tries, for instance, to get evolution (and sex education, and historical accuracy, and …) expunged from the curriculum. Sometimes they succeed, and sometimes the good guys win. An article in Evolution: Education and Outreach assesses the current state of state…

No crazier than Genesis

An eccentric Norwegian musician named Varg Vikernes has been updating (a polite word for "making up") a Norse origins story. It's nuts, but no crazier than the stuff Ken Ham and Ray Comfort want you to believe (and they, too, have been "updating" a very short metaphor from the Bible to make for a very elaborate story). Here's Vikernes' version of the creation: Our world was created in co-operation between these three proto-forces. Between Múspellheimr (the stars) and Niflheimr (the frozen matter in space) there was Gínungagap (the void). The universe was resting. It was inactive. It was in a…

Superfilly Rachel Alexandra Will Not Run In Belmont Stakes

tags: Belmont Stakes, horse racing, Rachel Alexandra, streaming video Rachel Alexandra (Medaglia d'Oro), running away with the 2009 Kentucky Oaks under the guidance of Jockey Calvin Borel. Image: David J. Phillip [larger view]. To the disappointment of her many fans, the amazing filly, Rachel Alexandra, will not be running in the upcoming mile-and-one-half Belmont Stakes, the third jewel in the Triple Crown of American horse racing. Jess Jackson, the co-owner of the three-year-old daughter of Medaglia d'Oro, cited the filly's "need for a vacation" as the reason she was not entered in the…

Welcome to Common Knowledge [Common Knowledge]

On the Googles, Common Knowledge gets more than 25,000,000 hits. It's a market research company, a scholarship foundation, a non profit fundraising firm, and in its inverse as Uncommon Knowledge part of a conservative group site, and an interview series at the Hoover Institution. We can take the Wikipedia entry: Common knowledge is what "everybody knows", usually with reference to the community in which the term is used. or we can take an anti-plagiarism guide to heart: The two criteria that are most commonly used in deciding whether or not something is common knowledge relate to quantity…

Reading Diary: Feynman by Jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick

I like to think I'm developing a little niche here on Confessions of a Science Librarian, at least as far as some of my book reviews. And I like to think that niche is reviewing science-oriented graphic novels. And I've reviewed a few over the past couple of years. Logicomix (review), Evolution: The Story of Life on Earth (review) and The Stuff of Life: A Graphic Guide to Genetics and DNA (review). And now the amazing new graphic novel Feynman, written by Jim Ottaviani and art by Leland Myrick. (Colours by Hilary Sycamore). Now when I first heard about this new biography of Richard Feynman…

Ask A ScienceBlogger, Round Four: Justify My Funds?

This week, ScienceBloggers tackled the question of how much control the public ought to have over the scientific research that its tax dollars pay for. The question was phrased like so: "Since they're funded by taxpayer dollars (through the NIH, NSF, and so on), should scientists have to justify their research agendas to the public, rather than just grant-making bodies?" And the answers? Well, the answers depend on what you mean by "justify." (continued below the fold...) Most of the ScienceBloggers claim that letting the public vote directly on which specific projects will or won't receive…

Friday Fun: Using my librarian superpowers for good rather than evil

As you can all imagine, I'm quite pleased to see the backside of the Harper government on their way out the door. Of course, the Liberals have promised a lot but only time will tell how serious they are about fixing the science-related stuff that they've promised to fix. I'll definitely be watching that and keeping track here on the blog somehow somewhere. That being said, I was quite gratified that my various pro-science advocacy efforts in general and my war on science chronology post in particular were quite popular and widely used during the election campaign. Obviously all the things…

U.S. SENATE BACKS CREATION OF NATIONAL SCIENCE WEEK AND SUPPORTS USA SCIENCE & ENGINEERING FESTIVAL

Efforts Will Bring Together Children, Families, Teachers, Businesses and World Leaders in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics The USA Science & Engineering Festival (www.USAScienceFestival.org), supported by presenting host sponsor Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT], is pleased to announce the passage by the U.S. Senate of Senate Resolution 329, which “Express(es) support for the goals and ideals of the biennial USA Science & Engineering Festival in Washington, D.C. and designati(es) the last week of April 2014 as ‘‘National Science Week.” The resolution was introduced by Sen.…

What's New on ScienceBlogs.de, April 17-23

Spring has sprung, and so have these stories on our European partner site, ScienceBlogs.de: Nobelist Eric Kandel: "Psychoanalysis needs to move on." Scienceblogs.de Managing Editor Beatrice Lugger and Klaus Korak from JoVe.com spoke to Nobel Prize winner Eric Kandel in Frankfurt. Psychology today still relies on Freud, Kandel says, but should learn to take advantage of modern technologies, such as neural imaging: "The trouble with Freud is, he is worshipped like some kind of idol. He surely had some important insights into our brain functions, but...he also, not surprisingly, made a lot of…

An Interview with Craig of Deep Sea News

Meet Craig McClain: the snorkeling, Southern-boy sea scientist of Deep Sea News. If you'd like to hire him, especially, he's available for interviews at 831-... What's your name? Craig R. McClain. The R stands for rascal. What do you do when you're not blogging? I spend a majority of my time conducting research on the biodiversity and body size of deep-sea organisms. This requires spending time at sea on research vessels, sorting samples, measuring specimens, and of course, writing papers. Lately, I also put forth a lot of effort trying to find funding and a tenure track faculty position…

Radio reminder

Don't miss this one! Today, Atheists Talk radiowill feature the physicist Lawrence Krauss for the whole hour, talking about the Origins initiative. Follow the link to get streaming audio from Air America, as long as you know a Minnesota zip code (like, say, 56267) and catch it in time — 9am Central. Honolulu Sun 4:00 AM     Sao Paulo Sun 11:00 AM     Addis Ababa Sun 5:00 PM Anchorage Sun 6:00 AM Rio de Janeiro Sun 11:00 AM Baghdad Sun 5:00 PM Vancouver Sun 7:00 AM St. John's Sun 11:30 AM Aden Sun 5:00 PM San Francisco Sun 7:00 AM Reykjavik Sun 2:00 PM Riyadh Sun 5:00 PM Seattle Sun…

Along came a spider . . .

Some stories just force themselves on you. I know I'm not special in this regard, since this story was sent by reader and frequent commenter MRK with the note, "Couldn't resist this one. . . ." Maybe the fact we are both males has something to do with it. Mrs. R. would certainly think so. Anyway, this is The Right Moment (insincere apologies to Cialis's ad agency): A Brazilian spider delivers more than a painful bite that sends most victims to the hospital. Its venom stimulates an hours-long erection. Now scientists have figured out the chemical that seems to be responsible for the penis…

Bird flu and tourism

Headlines in the last day: South Korea records seventh outbreak; Bird Flu Strikes Hanoi, Over 1,000 Chickens Culled; Bird flu erupts in Vietnam south; total 5 provinces infected; Bird flu found in 6 more areas of Afghanistan; Laos teenager dies from bird flu; Indonesian Villagers Hide Birds And Spread Flu; Myanmar takes preventive measures against bird flu; Southern China is epicenter of bird flu, U.S. researchers find; Suspicious bird flu deaths in Tehran's Pardisan Park; World experts in Kuwait as more bird flu cases detected; Dubai plans bird flu blood tests at airport -- Report: plan to…

The new CDC pandemic response guidelines

Friday CDC released its guidelines for communities to respond to pandemic flu. It adopts a hurricane warning analogy (Category 1 to Category 5 pandemic). The Categories are keyed to case fatality ratio, with the lowest category being roughly the experience of seasonal influenza (less then 0.1% CFR and illness rates of 5 - 20%), Cat 2 being the experience of the 1957 and 1968 pandemics (CFR of less than .5%) ratcheting up to Cat 5, the experience of the 1918 spanish Flu, whose CFR has been roughly estimated to be around 2 - 3%. By these measures, if H5N1 went pandemic at its current CFR of 60…

Another H5N1 paper that tells us what we thought we knew was wrong

There once was a nice tidy story about why avian influenza viruses infected birds and human influenza viruses infected humans and pigs were the "mixing vessel" that brought them together so they could reassort their genetic innards. It went something like this. The avian virus can only attach to and thus infect cells that have a specific kind of receptor on their surface. The receptor was a terminal sialic acid with a particular linkage to the underlying cellular glycoprotein (for more on this see our four part primer on glycoproteins beginning here). For birds the linkage was designated α2,…

Hot boiled wine in the middle of the winter is tasty....

The latest AskTheScienceBlogger question is: "I heard that within 15 years, global warming will have made Napa County too hot to grow good wine grapes. Is that true? What other changes are we going to see during our lifetimes because of global warming?..." Answer under the fold.... I am not a big wine connoisseur, though I like an occasional glass of French burgundy, German riesling, Adriatic cabernet or Argentinian malbec. Also, I heard that wine is generally thought to be good for you (although you should take every claim in that article with a grain of salt, e.g., aboutmelatonin in wine…

Swine flu: breaking the acute care system

Maryn McKenna has a great piece at CIDRAP News today about something that should worry all of us as we wait to see if the other shoe drops with swine flu. Our acute care health services system is so brittle it won't take much to break it:. With the global outbreak of novel H1N1 influenza (swine flu) entering its fourth week, physicians at emergency rooms, clinics, and hospitals around the United States say they are overwhelmed with "worried well" who have as much as doubled their patient loads. All the clinicians work at medical centers that have planned and practiced for pandemics and…