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Swine flu: why are older people (apparently) less at risk?

There is as yet no vaccine for the novel H1N1 (swine flu) pandemic strain of influenza now causing widespread illness in North America and what appears to be the start of growing outbreaks in Japan and parts of Europe (but check out this excellent piece over at ScienceInsider). WHO says most developing nations are not able to track influenza, so what is happening in Africa and parts of Asia is not known with any confidence. While the clinical illness from this virus doesn't seem very different than seasonal flu, the fact that most of the world's population has no immunity to it means there is…

Defeating Hubble, from the ground!

"The Earth's atmosphere is an imperfect window on the universe... atmospheric turbulence blurs the images of celestial objects, even when they are viewed through the most powerful ground-based telescopes." -John Bahcall There's no doubt that the Hubble Space Telescope has given us some of the most spectacular, high resolution views of the Universe. From the most distant galaxies ever seen to stars here in our own galactic backyard, the Hubble Space Telescope has simply dwarfed anything we've been able to do from Earth's surface. Image credit: Bill Drelling. This is the globular cluster NGC…

Mirror images: You don't perceive the reflection, just the object

Take another look at this picture of the Rokeby Venus from last week's post on mirrors in art: Now, imagine you're actually in the room with Venus, as depicted in this painting. You suspend your astonishment long enough to conduct a quick test of the principle of how a flat mirror works. Consider what would happen to Venus' face in the mirror as you approach it. As you walk towards the mirror, would the proportion of the reflection taken up by Venus's face increase or decrease? In the painting, the face takes about 2/3 the width of the mirror. Would that proportion get bigger or smaller as…

Ethical Stem Cells Redux

In August, there was a big press tizzy about so-called ethical stem cells. In the paper, a group headed by Robert Lanza working at a company called Advanced Cell Technology claimed that they could take a single cell from a human morula and create a embryonic stem cell line from that cell. Admittedly, this was an exceptional scientific advance, but there were some serious caveats. First, the story was kind of hyped in the sense that the paper didn't actually show that you could do this without killing the embryo, they merely implied that it was possible. Second, I had some serious…

Africans Americans mostly West African, but some mostly European

I referenced a paper in PNAS yesterday, and I thought it might be good to actually point to it today. There's nothing that new in the paper. It confirms the finding that ~20% of the ancestry of African Americans is European, and, that African ancestry seems to be much more dominant when it comes to components of the genome presumably disproportionately contributed by females (2/3 of X chromosomes). In any case, the paper, Genome-wide patterns of population structure and admixture in West Africans and African Americans: Quantifying patterns of population structure in Africans and African…

Indonesia ties Vietnam for most bird flu deaths

Indonesia has now done in one year what it took Vietnam three years to "accomplish": rack up 42 deaths from bird flu . Indonesia and Vietnam are now tied for the most number of deaths from the disease, although Indonesia did it with fewer cases, a reflection of the fact the case fatality ratio in Indonesia is 78% (42/54), while in Vietnam it is 45% (42/93). The latest case is a 44 year old male who died on July 12 after being hospitalized with fever and respiratory difficulties of two days duration. He lived in a Jakarta suburb and was "reported to have had contact with birds." Whether this…

Best Science Books 2013: io9

Every year for the last bunch of years I’ve been linking to and posting all the “year’s best sciencey books” lists that I can find around the web in various media outlets. From the beginning it’s been a pretty popular service so I’m happy to continue it. The previous posts for all the 2013 lists are here. This time it's io9 Holiday Gift Books for Lovers of Science and Science Fiction. Southern Light: Images from Antarctica by David Neilson Out of the Wild: Zoo Portraits by Boza Ivanovic, Barbara Stauss Earth from Space by Yann Arthus-Bertrand Beautiful Whale by Bryant Austin, Sylvia A.…

Medicine & Health Weekly Channel Highlights

Each week we post a new picture and a choice comment from each of our nine channels here at ScienceBlogs on our channel homepages. Now, we're bringing you the best of the week in daily postings that will highlight individual channels. We've already seen great things from the Life Science, Physical Science, Environment, Humanities, Education and Politics channels; below, please check out what we selected from the Medicine & Health channel: Spreading awareness. From Flickr, by MastaBaba Reader comment of the week: In Socializing promotes survival of new nerve cells & may preserve…

Friday Blog Roundup

Bloggers react to the news of Obama's picks for top enviornmental posts: Kate Sheppard at Gristmill gathers reactions from both environmental advocates and business-oriented think tanks. (Myron Ebel of the Competitive Enterprise Institute warns that Carol Browner shares many of Al Gore's "wildest opinions.") Frances Beinecke at NRDC's Switchboard considers Obama's choices to be proof that he's serious about protect the planet and tackling global warming. Dave Loos at EnviroWonk is "cautiously thrilled" about Steven Chu heading the Department of Energy. Elsewhere: Matt Madia at Reg Watch…

Fighting smallpox, old-school style

If you ever have a few minutes to kill and need someplace interesting to go on the web, the NIH's National Library of Medicine has a ton of interesting stuff. That's where I found the this reference from the early 1900s on raising children. I ran across another gem--a manuscript from 1721 written by minister Benjamin Colman regarding "Some Observations on the New Method of Receiving the Smallpox by Ingrafting or Inoculating (containing also The Reasons which first induced him to, and have since confirmed him in, his favourable Opinion of it). (Continued below...) What a different time…

I get email

This is some email I suspect a lot of you have already received; look at it through new eyes, though. It's from Premise Media (I'm on their mailing list, and have been for a long time…how else could I have gotten an invitation to their premiere?), and I present it here as I received it, except that I stripped out most of the links. Notice anything familiar? Ben Stein's movie is now in danger of being “Expelled” from theaters Despite:A “Top 10” box office opening… Standing ovations in theaters… Scathing critics and raving fans… Expelled is being sued by YOKO ONO – and she's demanding that…

Gribbit's Violent Tendencies

Boy, just when you think this guy couldn't get any more pathetic, you see something like this. Yes, it was Gribbit who left the comment at Capt. Rational's blog wanting to beat him up tonight at 6 in Cleveland: I'm off to Cleveland this afternoon to see if a couple of my favorite trolls have the intestinal fortitude to show up and take the ass beating they deserve. So if I don't post for a day or so, that's because I'm in jail. When I was growing up, you refrained from using the liar moniker because to allow that to fly indiscriminately was grounds for a fat lip. Well there are a couple of…

Stubai, again

I don't think I mentioned that last summer we dragged the kids off to the Stubai (Franz Senn and Sulzenau), and they liked it enough that we did it again this year (FSH and Neue Regensburger). Stuff from that when I have time, but in the meantime I know I *have* mentionned my shiny new GPS watch which I took with me. And here is one result (Westliche Seespitze from the Neue Regensburger Hutte): Cutesy, eh? Note that the embed is a bit stupid, so you'll have to click on "satellite" to see stuff, and then zoom in on the peak for the most interesting stuff. But I wish I'd known the shape of the…

The Worldnetdaily's Dishonest Headlines

University to Ban Bibles, the headline screams. Brave New Schools, says the tag above the headline. The first sentence reiterates the message: Edinburgh University in Scotland will begin banning Holy Bibles from its student halls of residence due to concern they are the source of discrimination against students of other faiths. The mind boggles. The university is really going to ban students from having Bibles in their dorm rooms? Could this possibly be? If this is true, I'll be the first one to protest it. As it turns out, it's not. But you have to go down a couple paragraphs to find out…

The nearest supernova of our lifetimes turns 30, and still shines (Synopsis)

"When a star goes supernova, the explosion emits enough light to overshadow an entire solar system, even a galaxy. Such explosions can set off the creation of new stars." -Todd Nelsen In February of 1987, the first light from a supernova some 168,000 light years away was observed on Earth. It became the closest supernova to be observed since the invention of the telescope. As a result, it’s taught us more about massive star death, ejecta and supernova remnant evolution than any other object in the Universe. The two loop-like structures, identified in this Hubble image from five years ago,…

Better Teachers Cost Money

Kevin Drum points to a report comparing international education systems from McKinsey and Company management consultants. The report (9.5 MB PDF) does double duty: it serves as a useful and important contribution to the study of education reform, and also as a case study in how to use PowerPoint to generate documents that are well nigh unreadable-- it's tarted up with so many pointless graphics that it makes even FoxIt run annoyingly slow. Kevin's got the key conclusions, though: if you want better schools, you need better teachers, and if you want better teachers, you need to make education…

The loss of a great thinker

I just learned from Orac and Bora that the father of blogger Lindsay Beyerstein (Majikthise) has passed away. Dr Barry L Beyerstein was a member of the executive council of the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) and a biopsychologist at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. He was only 60 years old. Unaware of the connection to Lindsay, I have been using an essay by Dr Beyerstein in my alternative medicine lectures for almost 10 years. Why Bogus Therapies Often Seem To Work was posted at Quackwatch.com a couple of years ago…

Things that are pretty: Cities and John Hartman.

John Hartman Since Ben put up that great post about urban planning and individualism, I thought I would just show off some of John Hartman's great artwork that explore the concept of the city. They're really very striking, and a wonderful way to look upon the ideas of urban living and design. Hartman, a native of lake country Ontario, has been painting natural scenes for decades, but in the early 1980s, he started to experiment. By combining a variety of perspectives, he created complex works that brimmed with nuance, detail, information and historical narrative--all of them presented in…

How bird eggs got their shape

Image of a variety of bird eggs from Internet Archive Book Images, via Wikimedia Commons Ever wonder why bird eggs are shaped the way they are and what drives the variations in egg shapes across species? I never really wondered that either until I saw an article in Science that explained a possible reason...then I just HAD to know. Some theories had been proposed suggesting that their shape prevented eggs from rolling out of nests or otherwise sustaining damage, and so on. According to the new study, the shape of a bird's eggs may be related to their ability to fly. Researchers compared…

...or did climate change have an effect on dogs?

Another new study published in Nature Communications shows follows along with the prior post and shows that ancestral dogs were ambush hunters that evolved from forest dwelling animals similar to a mongoose (or a cat).  These early ancestors to dogs were ambush predators. The image shows Hesperocyon (left) and later Sunkahetanka (right). Image from Discovery News, by Mauricio Anton An international team of researchers studied archived samples of elbows and teeth of multiple species of dogs that lived between 40 - 2 million years ago. According to a quote from …

Sex differences in sleep apnea

I came across an interesting study published last month in American Journal of Physiology - Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology on obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), which is a disorder in which the upper airway is repeatedly obstructed during sleep resulting in bouts of intermittent hypoxia (low oxygen concentrations). I had no idea that OSA is more common in postmenopausal as opposed to premenopausal women suggesting that estrogen may help protect from OSA. The sex hormones estrogen and testosterone can increase memory and spatial learning. Therefore a team of researchers from…

Dolphins call each other by "name"

  Image of bottlenose dolphin pod from www.deography.com, Dylan O'Donnell 2010 A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides evidence that bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) use "signature whistles" to identify and call each other by "name".   Dr. Vincent Janik at the Scottish Oceans Institute, University of St. Andrews and colleagues recorded the individual whistles of wild bottlenose dolphins traveling in groups (pods). Using the recordings, they developed computerized versions of the whistles that were missing the vocal characteristics of…

Rape

June is almost over, and with nary a comment from this blog on rape. But June is the month we normally discuss this important problem. So to comply with that idea, I'm going to point you to a couple of posts from last year. If you've not read them, please have a look. Especially read the comments. Things got ugly, but they also got interesting. A rape in progress "I am a scientist observing the culture of the Namoyoma people. I am sitting in a shady spot just outside the village, writing up some notes, and I observe a disturbing event. Four men are trying to drag a young woman from the…

The Browser Acid Test

The Acid Test is a webs standards test to which browsers can be subjected to see which is best. Here are some of the current results for browsers that are released (the one you are likely to use if your software is reasonably well updated): Konqueror on Ubuntu 7.10: 62% Epiphany on Ubuntu 8.04: 59% Camino on a Mac and Firefox on Mac, Windows XP, or Windows Vista: 52% The list that I'm looking at then has fourteen combinations of different browsers, versions, and operating systems ranging from 39% to 52% Then, way down the list, we get: INternet Exporer 5.50 on Windows XP at 14% Then a bunch…

Mao Yan Can Be Dangerous to Your Neighbor's Health!

"Second-hand smoke to kill 2 million Chinese" The more I hear about what is going on in China, the more I wonder if the goons running that country have any clue about the health catastrophe lurking at the palace doors. Dr. Peymane Adab and K.K. Cheng of Britain's University of Birmingham, with colleagues in Hong Kong and Guangzhou, used data from a study of 20,430 men and women over the age of 50. Most had never smoked. "More than half of never smokers reported exposure to passive smoking in their workplace and at home, with 28 percent reporting high levels of total adult exposure," Adab and…

Plant Diversity Driven by Limiting Factors

From the University of Minnesota: The reduction in species diversity occurs because increasing the amounts of limiting resources, such as nitrogen and water, makes an ecosystem more homogeneous and consequently reduces the number of opportunities for competing species to coexist. Put another way, it reduces the number of niches, allowing a few species to dominate. [...] "In essence, the data in the article strongly supports a new explanation for why the world contains so many species," said Tilman. "It shows that plant diversity is directly related to the number of limiting factors (such as…

Another Neat Article in PLoS ONE

Molecular markers are becoming more and more popular for species identification -- a practice known as DNA barcoding. Researchers sequence a region of the genome from an organism of interest and search that sequence against a DNA database using BLAST. Such an analysis is contingent on a comprehensive database containing sequences from representatives of many diverse taxa. We do not possess such a database for fungal species. Researchers have estimated that less than 5% of all fungal species have been identified, which means the chances are good that you may be the first person to sequence…

Diversity and Science

I just got back from spending a few days with a neuroscientist friend who recently became a PI, in charge of his own lab. On one of the walls in his lab, there was a map of the world with little pins marking the birthplace of each lab member. (My friend is originally from Calcutta.) Needless to say, the world was well represented. One post-doc was from interior China, another was from Jamaica. India, Japan, Korea and, yes, America, were also represented. This astonishing diversity is one of the reasons I love science. Although a few of the globalized post-docs had trouble expressing…

Mystery Volcano Photo #25

OK, first off an apology for this week: I will be kind of crazy busy while in Davis - two papers to churn through so we can get them submitted sometime this summer, so blogging may be minimal. So, remember, whenever you hear people talk about how professors have it easy because they get the summer "off" ... Second off, another apology: Dr. Ed Kohut went to Boston College, not Boston University. You would have thought I could keep that straight, but alas, I confuse my Eagles with my Terriers. Mea culpa to all! Anyway, I have to send out a hearty congratulations to Boris Behncke destroying my…

Large eruption at Karkar in Papua New Guinea?

Karkar volcano as seen from space. Eruptions reader The Bobs left a note mentioning that there may have been a 'significant' eruption at Karkar in Papua New Guinea. The only place I can find information is John Seach's Volcano Live: An eruption occurred at Karkar volcano at 6:39 pm on 25th November 2009. The eruption plume reached a height of 45,000 ft. A magnitude 5.1 earthquake hit 90 km SSE of Karkar volcano 7.5 hours before the eruption. I don't know too much about Karkar, but the GVP says that it is a volcanic island made of a pair of calderas, with the inner caldera formed in the last…

Making an Alp out of an abbreviation

Discovery Institute honcho Bruce Chapman is upset. In answering a question from a reporter identifying herself as "from a little country, Austria, from Austrian Television," Obama quipped: It was also interesting to see that political interaction in Europe is not that different from the United States Senate. There’s a lot of — I don’t know what the term is in Austrian — wheeling and dealing — and, you know, people are pursuing their interests, and everybody has their own particular issues and their own particular politics. Chapman compares this to such Bushisms as "But oftentimes I'm asked:…

Sometimes a Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words

From the back cover of The Wimp Factor is this illustration that explains so much about the rise of the modern conservative movement: From hatred of gays to blowing the crap out of the wrong country to prove that we're not weak, it is remarkable how much of this stems from male insecurity. Couldn't these wimps have bought a red sports car or had an affair instead?

The Gangs of Ãstorp

Sunday "... five men were indicted, some of them members of the Black Cobra criminal gang. They are suspected of involvement in cake theft from the Godbiten bakery in Ãstorp [pop. 8500] earlier this week. The cake was stolen from a truck on an industrial estate. 120 boxes containing among other things mazarines, brownies and apple pie were taken from the site." Via Swedish Radio.

Minnesota March For Science

Just a little video and some pictures from today's March for Science, Minnesota. This one from the march route on the way to the capitol. Skip ahead to about 1:12 go get the best chant: Another video, this one from The Hedge: You don't see this sign at many protests: Mammals were welcome at the march: And, now, Here is my extraordinarily well timed Facebook Live post

Cosmic stuff

Lots of people have sent me photos and accounts of the recent lunar eclipse (are you confusing me with that inferior spacey blog, or something?) — so I've put some of the good ones below the fold. From Marcia: From Phillip: From Eric: And here's an interesting story about an eclipse. Don't worry, I still know that biology is much more interesting than weird rocks in the sky.

Turtles All the Way Down

A Christmas gift from my sister: Yes, that's an origami Discworld. A big turtle, four elephants, and a flat world inhabited by silly people. All folded out of paper (well, the map was printed and cut out, but the elephants and turtle are origmai). From a different angle: The map got badly overexposed from the flash, but you can see the elephants a little more clearly in this one.

History of atmospheric CO2

I have always like this graphic from Global Warming Art: It puts the current CO2 rise into sharp perspective in terms of historical flucuations, both in its magnitude and rapidity. Well, even better for impact is the video below from Youtube user CarbonTracker: Especially intriguing is watching the seasonal rise and fall, the collective breathing of earth's plant life. (passed down from Lou Grinzo to MT to here)

Sunday Morning in the Rincon Mountains

Rather than blather on about my Easter Sunday, I'll just share a few images from a morning hike in Tucson's Rincon mountains. Winter rains have given way to wildflowers, and in particular the Encelia brittlebush was spectacular. Prickly pear: A hoverfly guards his territory: Pheidole worker ant gathering nectar from a barrel cactus: Honeypot ants emerging from their nest: Close-up of Aphaenogaster cockerelli, a common harvester ant:

Welcome Students from UNC's English 12 Course

A warm welcome to students from UNC's English 12 course. Please have fun navigating and evaluating my blog. Feel free to leave comments, suggestions, and feedback in the comments section of this post. Also of interest, from the fall semester, see this class blog debate" involving the students from my Communication & Society course here at American University, and the reading list for the same course scheduled this spring.

links for 2007-10-03

Challenging the conclusions drawn from Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment A great idea, from BPS Research Digest's ongoing series of the best experiments that will never be conducted Imaginative, Yet Literal? Fewer False Memories Among Children Than Adults Misleading Reporting of Alzheimer's and Conscientiousness Research Does being "conscientious" really prevent Alzheimer's? Are Women Being Scared Away From Math, Science, And Engineering Fields? Interesting attempt at a controlled study

More link love

Head on over to Twisted Bacteria who is helping us celebrate microbial week. There is great post about the elusive habitat of some marine bacteria...or are they terrestrial? But these "marine" bacteria, generally found in shallow waters, were quite similar to their counterparts from land. For this reason, it was assumed that any actinomycetes obtained from the sea were just wash-offs from the shore.

Oslo Update: At Least 80 Killed at Utøya

A horrific update of the impact from this terrible event, from Reuters, far more than the earlier estimate of 17 victims. @Reuters Reuters Top News FLASH: Norwegian police say at least 80 killed in shootings at Utoeya From Former United States Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, PJ Crowley What happened and why? The more we understand, the better chance there is to save innocent lives.

Friday Deep-Sea Picture (August 10, 2007)

"Holy jumping jellyfish, Batman. Watch out! That thing's heading straight for us." "Not to fear, young ward. That's Enypniastes sp., a swimming sea cucumber." "A pelagic deposit feeder, I should have known..." "...from the cape alone. You can access the video from Deep Slope Expedition 2007 at the Batlink here." Photo from the weblog Kingdom of the Echinoderm by Bob Carney, LSU at Deep Slope Expedition 2007 Website. Technorati Profile

Pinker on Lakoff

Steven Pinker has a piece where he slams George Lakoff in The New Republic. Unfortunately like much of the best stuff in TNR this is behind a pay wall, though The American Scene has posted a snip. Chris has a lot of Lakoff criticism over at his old blog, and as a political liberal himself I hope that insulates him from the charge that he is biased in some way. I actually read Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think back in the late 1990s, and remember thinking a lot "where does this dude get off telling me what I think!" I was a more strident libertarian back then and I wasn…

The Buzz: House Passes Health Care Bill

After hours of deliberation late into Saturday night, the US House of Representatives passed the long-awaited health care reform bill. While many Americans are elated at the new bill's passing, others are questioning the controversial amendment added that prohibits insurance coverage for abortions. Ed Brayton from Dispatches from the Culture Wars examines the compromise many Democratic Representatives made with Catholic bishops local to their constituencies in adding this amendment. Later on, Ed also criticizes what he calls "unruly behavior" exhibited by some House Republicans to delay the…

Swine Flu Public Health Emergency

Correction appended: This post incorrectly stated the Center for Disease Control as the organization responsible for raising the pandemic threat level. This is the duty of the World Health Organization. Swine flu outbreaks are raising alarm across the globe and prompting the World Health Organizationto consider raising the pandemic threat level. For the most current interpretations of what's happening from experts on the ScienceBlogs network, see the following category threads: "Pandemic-Preparedness" and "Swine Flu" from Revere at Effect Measure, and "Influenza" and "Outbreak" from Tara…

The Buzz: Blogospherics and the State of Science Writing

With print publications in crisis, the issue of how scientific information will be disseminated in the future has become a recurrent topic of discussion here on ScienceBlogs and all over the web. Recently, Ed Brayton of Dispatches from the Culture Wars criticized National Geographic and the "sorry state of popular science writing" because of an error in a story, to which Chris Mooney from The Intersection responded, pointing out that the economic situation print publications are forced to operate under should be considered in criticisms of the field. For Mooney, it's not errors he finds…

Who's your daddy?

The Reveres are crazy busy. So what do we do to keep this space from going dark? We put up posts like this one: Identigene is selling at-home DNA testing kits for paternity testing at drugstores across the country. The $30 kit includes swabs for the child, mother, and "alleged father," consent forms, and a mailer to be sent back to the company. You'll also want to include a check--the lab fees are an additional $120. Results are available in 3-5 business days once the samples have been received. Only $150 separates you from the truth about your child's paternity, although you'll have to pay…

Blogrolling: T

OK, is there a blog missing from this list? Tales from the Microbial Laboratory Talking Points Memo Tall, Dark, and Mysterious The Taming of the Band-Aid Tangled Bank Tart juice TBogg Terra Sigillata (old) Terra Sigillata (new) Terry Tete-tete-tete The Thinking Meat Project Thomasburg Walks Those Who Can't Teach Wish They Could Thoughts from Kansas (old) Thoughts from Kansas (new) Thoughts in a Haystack Three Bulls! Three-Toed Sloth Thus Spake Zuska (old) Thus Spake Zuska (new) Tild~ Toilet Paper with Page Numbers To Go Beyond Yesterday Too Clever By Half Tom Watson: My Dirty Life & Times…

Circadian Rhythm of Alcohol Tolerance

The original title of this post - "Diurnal rhythm of alcohol metabolism" - was more correct, but less catchy (from February 21, 2006). ---------------------------------------------- Why is breathalyzer a poor method of measuring blood alcohol levels for purposes of DUI tickets? Ed Brayton explains and links to DUI Blog with additional information. Also, do not forget that every function in the body exhibits a circadian cycle. Likewise, alcohol metabolism: This is from an old study, from the times when it was OK to recruit some college freshmen to drink alcoholic beverages in the name of…