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Umbilical Cord Yields Brain Cells using a Stressor!

A "holy grail" in spinal injury research is to repair the spinal cord with newly minted nerve cells. This study published in the journal ACS Chemical Neuroscience takes us a major leap forward, with the first evidence that cells from an umbilical cord -- not from a fetus -- can be transformed into active nerve cells. This eliminates any ethical concerns about using a fetus for medical applications. From the Abstract: Umbilical cord stem cells would be a favorable alternative to embryonic stem cells for therapeutic applications. In this study, human multipotent progenitor cells (MLPCs)…

Two X ray images of chopsticks lodged inside the skull of living patients

A couple of surprising images from the medical literature - two patients with chopsticks buried deep in their skulls.  The first belongs to a 38-year-old woman who was dancing at a wedding while eating with chopsticks. Someone accidentally pushed into her from behind, causing the woman to fall forward onto one of the chopsticks. The wooden skewer went straight through the back of her mouth, into the skull and snapped against the back of it, coming so close to the carotid artery that a separate image shows the major vessel pushed to one side(!).  Despite some length of it still jutting out of…

Don't be fooled ... this is just more robots, and other matters

Before I sign on to this, I want to know what happens when the vehicles become self aware and take over the planet: Vehicles That Talk to Each Other Know What Lanes They're In from PhysOrg.com A standard GPS receiver has an average 2D-positioning accuracy of about 13 meters. While this precision is high enough to direct you to your hotel, it's quite a bit lower than the accuracy required to determine which lane your car is in while driving down the highway. [...] But wait, this could also be robots. Robots fighting in outer space: Intergalactic 'shot in the dark' shocks astronomers from…

Eruption started at Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland

A shot from the Hekla webcam showing the glow from the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull that started March 20, 2010. Quick note, but for those of you who have been following the seismicity at Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland, there is news from Iceland that an eruption has started. I will post more details as I can find them, but so far, evacuations have commenced near the volcano. It sounds like the eruption can be seen coming through the glacier on the volcano, but any real details of the style of volcanism are unknown. This is the first known eruption of Eyjafjallajökull since 1823. UPDATE 9:40…

Eugenics and involuntary euthanasia

While I am on vacation, I'm reprinting a number of "Classic Insolence" posts to keep the blog active while I'm gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old blog over to the new blog, and I'm guessing that quite a few of my readers have probably never seen many of these old posts.) These will appear at least twice a day while I'm gone (and that will probably leave some leftover for Christmas vacation, even). Enjoy, and please feel free to comment. I will be checking in from time to time when I have Internet access to see if the reaction…

Are Chinese subsets of Southeast Asians?

That's probably the big takeaway of a new paper on the genetics of Asians, a set which includes South Asians, but in the new research mostly focuses on the people of East Asia. In a global context this work is important. The backstory is that there are disagreements about the exact process of the "Out of Africa" migration. Most researchers would agree that the vast majority, perhaps all, of the distinctive genetic content of the human species derives from a migration from the African continent between 50 and 100 thousand years ago (closer to the former date than the latter likely). Note that…

Playing chicken with drug resistant Salmonella

Salmonella is an enteric pathogen that causes quite a lot of foodborne illness. I learned there were several species of Salmonella bacteria of which the cause of typhoid fever was called Salmonella typi. Spread via food and water it used to kill a lot of people in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Nowadays all Salmonella bacteria are considered to be different subspecies (serovars) of just one species, Salmonella enterica. There are more than 2500 of them, of which several routinely infect humans. Salmonella enteritidis is the most common form of foodborne bacterial infection (NB: many…

Welcome Earth Day with the Greatest April Shower of All: The Lyrids!

"April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain." -T. S. Eliot Of course you all know the refrain, "April showers bring May flowers," but there's one April shower that brings fireballs instead: the Lyrids! Image credit: John Chumack, retrieved from Bob King. Like all meteor showers, the Lyrids come from a comet's dust trail that forms a great ellipse with respect to our Solar System. Once per year, the Earth, in its orbit around the Sun, passes through this dusty debris. When this happens, the Earth, moving…

Jewish Wingnuts Weigh in on Katrina Too

Not content to allow the raving moonbats of Christianity to have all the attention, a group of Jewish moonbats have decided to throw their tinfoil hats into the ring and make their case. Their argument? The hurricane was sent by God as punishment for our support of the Israeli pullout from Gaza. And who's reporting it? The Worldnutdaily, of course: "Katrina is a consequence of the destruction of [Gaza's] Gush Katif [slate of Jewish communities] with America's urging and encouragement," Rabbi Avraham Shmuel Lewin, executive director of the Rabbinic Congress for Peace, told WND. "The U.S.…

Sperm war - the sperm of ants and bees do battle inside the queens

One night of passion and you're filled with a lifetime full of sperm with no need to ever mate again. As sex lives go, it doesn't sound very appealing, but it's what many ants, bees, wasps and termites experience. The queens of these social insects mate in a single "nuptial flight" that lasts for a few hours or days. They store the sperm from their suitors and use it to slowly fertilise their eggs over the rest of their lives. Males have this one and only shot at joining the Mile High Club and they compete fiercely for their chance to inseminate the queen. But even for the victors, the war…

Violent war deaths: Surveys vs passive surveillance

I've been remiss in not commenting on Obermeyer, Murray and Gakidou's paper in the BMJ, Fifty years of violent war deaths from Vietnam to Bosnia: analysis of data from the world health survey programme. OMG derive estimates of violent war deaths in thirteen countries from the World Health Survey and compare them with counts from passive surveillance (like the Iraq Body Count). Here's my graph of their results, showing 95% confidence intervals for the ratio between the survey estimate (WHS) and the passive count (Uppsala/PRIO). The green line is the weighted average of the ratios (2.6). As…

On antiserum and Ebola virus

In 1925, dogsledders raced through the frozen Alaskan bush to bring antiserum to the isolated village of Nome.  The antiserum arrived in time, saved the lives of many villagers from the horrors of diphtheria, and inspired the Iditarod, a famous race in celebration of the dog sledders' heroic feat. West Africa could use a similar effort today.  Richard Harris's blog at NPR has a good story about doctors' efforts to develop and use antiserum to treat Ebola.  According to ABC news, Dr. Kent Brantly, who is being seen at Emory University Hospital was treated with antiserum as was the other aid…

A grandpa looks at pediatric flu

My children are no longer young. In fact they are old enough to have children of their own and when my daughter asked me if I thought her then 6 month old should get a flu shot I didn't hesitate: Absolutely, I said. And he did. Two of them, the required number. That was just before the flu season, which he has so far weathered just fine. Sadly that's not true for all children. The two most vulnerable groups for dying from influenza are children under 5 and the elderly (me). I got flu shots, too, although the evidence it will help me is not as good as the evidence my little grandson will be…

Burnt Daub and the Ghost of Wattle

It's re-run week! I've gone back to my first month of blogging and found some good stuff. Here's a piece from 20 December 2005. Lately I've been washing a lot of ruined building materials, debris from a house fire 2000 years ago. Me, my friend Howard and his students excavated a Viking Period boat burial in Ãstergötland last summer. It dated from the 9th century AD and was sitting on the remains of a settlement from the 1st century BC. We weren't there to study that period, but we ended up with a shitload of burnt daub. Thousands of pieces of fired clay with imprints of twigs and straw.…

Cyprus: so it all ends happily

I'm sure my headline is over-optimistic. But its certainly looking good, compared to the doom-laden view mid week. And (insofar as I can tell, not having any specialised insight) the correct solution has been found - so much so, that you might wonder why it wasn't found immeadiately. And that solution, in brief, is to honour the guarantees for deposits of less than 100k euro, close the most broken bank, and impose losses on those with more than 100k euro. The bit I find interesting is the Russian perspective. The original bad deal - losses on accounts above 100k limited to 10% - was clearly…

Climatologists the next geologists?

Over the last decade or so, hard rock geologists have done rather poorly in science, because they have become unfashionable, and are overshadowed by the popularity of climate change. Some of them become bitter and twisted and prominent septics. Which brings me on to Copenhagen Congress: why the biased reporting? from Nurture, which reports on Mike Hulme's letter to Science complaining about the reporting of the Copenhagen conference: Hulme et al. point out that the dominant mode of media reporting after the event was of impending doom which is no great surprise, because that was what the…

The missing hotspot misses the point

A recent comment here brought up the frequent contrarian argument that there is a signature patern to enhanced greenhouse gas warming that is missing in the observational data despite showing up in the models. This is notably absent from the How to talk to a climate sceptic guide, something I hope to rectify Real Soon Now(tm). I left a comment response but thought I may as well put it here in a new thread as it is OT over there. Here is the referenced graph: Figure 9.1. Zonal mean atmospheric temperature change from 1890 to 1999 (°C per century) as simulated by the PCM model from (a) solar…

Elephants can differentiate human voices

Research published last month in PNAS provides evidence that African elephants (Loxodonta africana) can differentiate human voices. This is a very important skill to an animal that is often threatened by humans. Prior research has shown that elephants could tell the difference between African ethnic groups using sight and scent. The study was conducted by Drs. Karen McComb and Graeme Shannon (University of Sussex, Brighton, UK). They recorded men from two different Kenyan ethnic groups speaking in their native language the phrase "Look, look over there, a group of elephants is coming." The…

Can't... Blog... Them All

PLoS One has an overload of ecology centered articles I want to read and review from the past few weeks. I'm hoping I get to some of them in the next week: Climate Change, Genetics or Human Choice: Why Were the Shells of Mankind's Earliest Ornament Larger in the Pleistocene Than in the Holocene? [Abstract] The southern African tick shell, Nassariuskraussianus (Dunker, 1846), has been identified as being the earliest known ornamental object used by human beings. Shell beads dated from ,75,000 years ago (Pleistocene era) were found in a cave located on South Africa's south coast. Beads made…

Stormier Arctic Seas Affects Sea Ice (which was melting anyway, but still...)

Interesting to look back at this now that the Arctic Ice Cap is opening up and disappearing: A new NASA study shows that the rising frequency and intensity of arctic storms over the last half century, attributed to progressively warmer waters, directly provoked acceleration of the rate of arctic sea ice drift, long considered by scientists as a bellwether of climate change. NASA researcher Sirpa Hakkinen of Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and colleagues from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Mass., and the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, St. Petersburg…

Eyjafjallajökull eruption continues to wreak havoc across Europe

The ash plume from the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption. To say that the Eyjafjallajökull eruption has become the most significant volcano-related news story of the year would be an understatement. There has been wall-to-wall coverage on every major media outlet, dissecting everything from the effect of ash on jets, to the effect of ash on people, to wildly premature commentary on the climatic effect of the eruption to the potential place in history of this event. The eruption is affecting a wide swath through society: the European economy may take a hit of billions of dollars due to…

Comments of the Week #77: From searching for ET to the Oort Cloud

“Making a wrong decision is understandable. Refusing to search continually for learning is not." -Phil Crosby From searching for ET to galaxies beyond what Hubble can see, as well as two great guest posts, it's been an incredible week here at Starts With A Bang. Best of all, you've had plenty to say about it all, and so now's our chance to continue the conversation. Here's what you might have missed: Are we looking for ET all wrong? (for Ask Ethan), Draw your own circuits (for our Weekend Diversion), The glory of Saturn's rings (for Mostly Mute Monday), Maxwell's unification revolution (a…

Homo floresiensis: Two Years Out

Two years ago this month, I was taken aback by some explosive news. A team of Indonesian and Australian scientists reported that they had discovered fossils of what they claimed was a new species of hominid. It lived on the island of Flores in Indonesia, it stood three feet tall, and it had a brain about the size of a chimp's. Making the report particularly remarkable was the fact that this hominid, which the scientists dubbed Homo floresiensis, lived as recently as 18,000 years ago. I wrote up a post on the paper, and took note of some strong skepticism from some quarters. And since then, I…

Popcorn Lawsuits and a Weak Regulatory System

The Seattle Post-Intelligencerâs Andrew Schneider reports on another lawsuit from a consumer who says his lungs have been damaged by years of microwave popcorn consumption. The most famous microwave-popcorn consumer, Wayne Watson of Denver, filed suit earlier this year. Watson drew national attention after he was diagnosed with bronchiolitis obliterans, a disease previously found only in workers from plants that used the butter-flavoring chemical diacetyl. (The Pump Handle was the first to publicize the fact that a popcorn consumer had been diagnosed with the disease; check our diacetyl page…

Another Microwave Popcorn Problem

By Liz Borkowski While weâre waiting to hear what EPA and ConAgra have learned from studying emissions from microwave popcorn, itâs worth remembering that airborne artificial butter flavoring isnât the only concern associated with this particular convenience food. Rebecca Renner reported last year in Environmental Science & Technology about a study by FDA scientists on consumer products that contact food. They were investigating potential sources of the 4-5 ppb of PFOA, a suspected carcinogen, that most Americans carry in their blood, and one of the things they looked at was…

New and Exciting in PLoS ONE

There are 9 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites: Genetic Evidence of Geographical Groups among Neanderthals: The Neanderthals are a well-distinguished Middle Pleistocene population which inhabited a vast geographical area extending from Europe to western Asia and…

Silly ol' Jack Chick

A reader sent me a note about this rather well known and deeply stupid poster from Jack Chick…I'd already seen it and addressed it some time ago, but I thought I'd bring back this old article. Jack Chick, the author of the infamous Big Daddy anti-evolution tract, has an amusing poster he's peddling. (click to view in a larger size) It purportedly illustrates a series of frauds in the reported evolutionary history of human beings. The text is too tiny to read at this size, but it's listed at Chick's site, and I reproduce it below, along with my response. Chick's claims My response…

In homage to Carrie Fisher: Read a book

You have already heard the sad news that Carrie Fisher had died, at a young age, after suffering one or more heart attacks. To honor her, you are probably going to go watch some old Star Wars movies. But I have a different suggestion. The woman was a prolific and accomplished author (and more) and there is a good chance that she's written at least one book you've not read, if not several. That's what I'm going to do. I'll make a list of her books, pick one, and read it. But, since I'm a blogger, I figure, why not let you benefit from my efforts and see the list? If I've left anything off or…

Tell The AGU To Do The Right Thing About AGW #ExxonKnew

A while back it became apparent, or should I say, more apparent, that Exxon corporation had been playing a dangerous and unethical game with the science of climate change, and for decades, misled people on the relationship between their fossil fuel related activities, the effects of those activities, and possible solutions. (They've known about this problem all along.) Part of this seems to have involved making misstatements about climate change, and pumping resources into anti science activities and organizations. The American Geophysical Union is the unifying organization for geologists…

The ERV thats killing koalas: KoRV

Creationists cant deal with ERVs. They have no answer to the problems ERVs pose to Creationism. They have no alternative explanation for the weight ERVs lend to evilution. However, this doesnt stop Creationists from bluffing/lying to save face in front of the True Believers. One of the more baffling responses Ive gotten to ERVs is 'ERVs dont exist. They arent really ancient retroviral fossils.' The most common response is 'ERVs arent junk DNA! See, this one gene (out of 1,000,000 similar genes that are clearly junk) has been co-opted for use by the host! So, YAY JESUS!' Real world, real…

The Basics of Statistics II: Standardized Normal Distribution and Z-Scores

So in the last post, we talked about the normal distribution, and at the very end, discussed that if you knew the mean and standard deviation of a population for a particular variable, than you can compute the probabilities associated with a particular value of that variable within that population. The problem is, to do so, you have to use a really long equation that involves math and stuff, and if you're reading this, chances are you're not a big fan of math. I know I'm not. What we need, then, is a simpler way to get those probabilities. And it turns out there is just such a way: a…

RNA classification

Well two weeks ago in Science, two reports came out about yet another species of small RNA ... rasiRNA ... uhm ... piRNA (OK they haven't harmonized their nomenclature yet). So here is a brief review of the types of RNA: - mRNA (messenger RNA). These are the RNAs that encode polypeptide chains. - rRNA (ribosomal RNA). These form the core structure of the ribosome. The ribosome is the enzyme that translates the tri-nucleotides, to amino acids. In this way it synthesizes (or "translates") proteins from mRNAs. - tRNAs (transfer RNA). These are used by the ribosome to translate the tri-nucleotie…

ARHIVE: 25 Things You Should Know About the Deep Sea: #12 Where Deep Sea Organisms Come From

The series continues! Chris Mah and Peter's recent and wonderful posts have goaded me into next segment of the 25 Things You Should Know About The Deep Sea (the last post in this series links to all the previous). The beginnings of deep-sea science in the late 1800's was dominated by two ideas about deep-sea life, the azoic and living fossil hypotheses. The later of these was the abyss sheltered animals through previous extinction events and general catastrophes leading to a repository for fossil taxa. Louis Agassiz and T.H. Huxley, both scientific leaders of the time, were hopeful to…

Happy Election Day! GO VOTE! [A Vote For Science]

The day is finally here. You've heard it from everyone, but I'll pile on...VOTE! Our final tally on the YouTube AVoteForScience challenge is 30 something videos from scientists endorsing Obama....and not one video from a scientist endorsing McCain. That seems to reflect a general consensus on the issue of who is better on science policy issues. It's too bad, really. It would have been nice to see a good justification for voting the other way if such an argument could be made on science issues. Here are two entertaining videos from the submissions. Happy voting everyone!

Music to stop writing grants by: Okou

To mark the end of grant writing, a bit of a departure: Music that isn't political. A French band called Okou (words are in English). Tatiana Heintz (vocals) is a French woman whose mother is from the Ivory Coast and Gilbert Trefzger (steel guitar) is Swiss. His father is from Egypt. They are now based in the UK. I'm not sure how to describe their music, but I learned of it from one of my favorite blogs (and a daily read), The Brain Police. The blogger Microdot lives in rural France, hails from Detroit and was a professional musician. He and his wife are old friends. Enjoy:

Escape from Alcatraz!

50 years ago today, three men did the impossible. They escaped from Alcatraz. They may or may not have lived. Apparently, the promise was made that if they escaped, lived, then continued to live, they would return today. There are people waiting on Alcatraz today, including the sister of one of the men. So, we'll see. Mean time, here's the trailer from the movie, "Escape from Alcatraz"; In case you were interested in escaping from Alcatraz yourself, you could try this: And finally, the MythBusters tackled the story and here's what they came up with: _______________________ Photo by…

A few things you should have a look at if you are bored.

Atheists are trolls it turns out!!!! Jason has it covered. Hey look, I won an award! Some bad news from the Death from the Skies front: a half dozen meteors all seemed to come from the same spot in the sky, indicating they all had a common origin. ... they probably come from a parent comet with an orbit that's at least 53 years long. Moreover, the orbit of this comet crosses that of the Earth Read the details here. As has been said before, Pre-school kids reveal their instincts for science. Hey look, scientists are funny! Made you look!

Happy Election Day! GO VOTE!

The day is finally here. You've heard it from everyone, but I'll pile on...VOTE! Our final tally on the YouTube AVoteForScience challenge is 30 something videos from scientists endorsing Obama....and not one video from a scientist endorsing McCain. That seems to reflect a general consensus on the issue of who is better on science policy issues. It's too bad, really. It would have been nice to see a good justification for voting the other way if such an argument could be made on science issues. Here are two entertaining videos from the submissions. Happy voting everyone!

Photo of the Day #88: Red Panda

Giant pandas might get most of the media attention, but red pandas (Ailurus fulgens) are in just as much trouble from a conservation standpoint. Habitat fragmentation is the greatest threat (as it is with many species), outside pressures from humans worsening the situation for these animals as they have a naturally occurring slow birth rate and high death rate. As with other animals from Asia, products made from various parts of the red panda are important to various ceremonies and the animals are still hunted and poached, especially for their hides. The individual above was photographed at…

SI/USGS Weekly Volcano Activity Report for 11/11-11/17/2009

The latest news from the USGS/Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program Weekly Volcano Report ... Highlights (not including Mayon) include: Strombolian eruptions and small pyroclastic falls at Arenal in Costa Rica. 3 km / 10 000 foot ash plume from Bagana on Bougainville Island in Papua New Guinea. Rumbling noises, ~4.5 km / 14 000 foot ash plumes and incandescence were all reported coming from Fuego in Guatemala. Steam-and-ash from Popocatepetl near Mexico City reached 7.4 km / 24 300 feet. Satellite images of Shiveluch revealed a large thermal anomaly - the new lava dome - along with multiple…

SCOTUS decision on gene patents is bad biology, and bad for science

I'm pleased the Supreme Court has decided to reject the idea of patenting genes, as such case law would be restrictive to scientific discovery and also just feels fundamentally icky. From a legal perspective, as far as I understand patent law (not a lawyer here), it also seemed to fail on the more basic level of novelty and obviousness. The methods used to discover such genes were not what was invented. And one could conceive of "gene trolls" that would seek out gene aberrations and sit on them, just like other patent trolls, waiting for a payout and hindering scientific and medical…

Friday Fun: 6 superheroes who got their powers from being lousy scientists

I've always been a big comics and graphic novel fan. In particular in my youth I was a huge superhero fan. So this one was just a natural for me. Especially since one of the heroes that is profiled was one of my youthful favourites: The Incredible Hulk! 6 superheroes who got their powers from being lousy scientists The Incredible Hulk His Origin: Bruce Banner runs onto a gamma bomb testing facility to save a trespassing teen. He shoves the teen into a ditch, but gets hit with the full powers of radiation. Note in the pic above that it says Banner was miles from the detonation of the bomb.…

Happy Earth Day in Pictures!

As you may have noticed from yesterday's unusual post, today is Earth Day! I thought I'd share with you some of my favorite pictures from space of it, including the famous photograph from Apollo 8 known as Earthrise: This combination shot made from NASA’s Terra satellite and NOAA’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite: The known satellites at least 0.1 meters in size in orbit around Earth (there are ~11,000 of them as of April 2005, and another 100,000 between 1 cm and 10 cm in size): Looking at the Earth and the docked Space Shuttle from the International Space Station: And…

Income, IQ, and profession

Research from Bristol: Doctors and lawyers are more likely to come from wealthy backgrounds according to new research from the Department of Economics that indicates that the 'social gap' that prevents poorer people from entering the top professions is becoming more pronounced over time. Using data on family income and IQ in childhood drawn from the National Child Development Survey (NCDS), which tracks a representative sample of the population born in 1958, and the British Cohort Study (BCS), which follows people born in 1970, the research shows that professions such as law and medicine…

Nature's Evolutionary Gems

The following announcement is from Nature. About a year ago, an Editorial in these pages urged scientists and their institutions to 'spread the word' and highlight reasons why scientists can treat evolution by natural selection as, in effect, an established fact (see Nature 451, 108; 2008). This week we are following our own prescription. Readers will find at http://www.nature.com/evolutiongems a freely accessible resource for biologists and others who wish to explain to students, friends or loved ones just what is the evidence for evolution by natural selection. Entitled '15 evolutionary…

The World Trade Organization Battle in Seattle - 10 Years On

This week, ten years ago, between 50,000 and 100,000 protesters from a wide variety of labor, environmental and global justice organizations descended on the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference being held in Seattle and prevented delegates from reaching the convention hall. This effectively shut down the talks and focused public attention on an undemocratic institution that had previously been little understood. Delegates from more than forty poor African, Caribbean and Latin American nations were united in opposition to their treatment by the wealthy countries and the public…

Bone-house wasps

Bone-house wasps protect their young by building walls made of ant carcasses. Image from: Merten Ehmig A new species of spider wasp that protect their young with walls made of ant carcasses has been discovered in the forests of China. Dr. Michael Staab from the University of Freiburg discovered the new species which he named Deuteragenia ossarium meaning "bone-house wasp" since the wasps reminded him of the ossuaries in Europe with structures decorated from human bones. Sedlec Ossuary in the Czech Republic. Image from Wikipedia. Similar to the ossuaries, the bone-house wasps use alive…

Building bones from fat

Drs. Chia Soo and Bruno Péault, from the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA, have found a way to turn stem cells from fat tissue into bone of higher quality than that grown with prior techniques. The mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) isolated from the fat tissue may develop into bone, cartilage, muscle as well as other tissues. More importantly, fat tissue is easily accessible through liposuction. What is unique about their research is that they were able to purify stem cells from fat tissue relatively quickly. Until now, the isolated cells were a…

Did Lott get the 98% by cherry-picking?

Julian Sanchez suggests that if Lott really got the 98% from his survey, then by marrying the 2.5 million Kleck DGU estimate with the 98% brandishing number, Lott is indulging in cherry-picking the numbers most favourable to his position from different surveys. Well, in this case I don't think that Lott is cherry picking. In statements before May 1999, Lott would say that there were 2.5 million DGUs (Kleck's DGU number) with 98% of them involving brandishing. After May 1999 (which was when he first claimed that the 98% came from his own survey) Lott switched to…

anti-Sheen

I don't know about you, but I am ready for this... From Mashable: the Sheen "eraser".... From Brenna Ehrlic: Ah, how fickle fame can be when you're rendered an Internet meme that draws its strength from insanity. Yup, the web is starting to grow weary of Mr. Charlie Sheen's antics, as evidenced by Tinted Sheen, the Charlie Sheen Browser Blocker. Yep, this browser extension for Chrome and Firefox blacks out all mentions of Sheen and his antics (i.e., words like #winning) from your Internets. Download it today, unless you're one of the legions of folks planning to apply for his ad-sponsored…