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Why should using genetic information to discriminate against soldiers be okay?

We were all thrilled last spring when the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act passed the House by a vote of 420 to 3. When GINA gets through the Senate, this act will protect individuals against discrimination based on their genetic information with health insurance and employment. The promise of genomic project won't ever be achieved until individuals (besides Watson and Venter) can use their own genetic information to benefit their own health, without fear of insurance repercussions. Passing this act seems like a no-brainer. But I glanced at Nature last night and noticed that…

A brilliant new strategy!

I've been wrong. I've argued that destroying America's educational infrastructure and promoting stupid ideas like creationism will inevitably erode our country's competitive standing in the world marketplace. I've always thought the only way to correct that was to improve public education — but there's an alternative. Make other countries stupider! Romania's withdrawal of the theory of evolution from the school curriculum could be evidence of a growing conservative tendency in teaching. Evolution has been removed from the school curriculum in a move which, pressure groups argue, distorts…

Social cohesion through consensus about hierarchy

Power Emerges From Consensus In Monkey Social Networks: Research on communication typically focuses on how individuals use signals to influence the behavior of receivers, thus primarily focusing on pairs of individuals. However, the role communication plays in the emergence of social structures is rarely studied. In a new paper from The American Naturalist, Santa Fe Institute researchers Jessica Flack and David Krakauer study how power structures arise from a status communication network in a monkey society. Power structure is important because it can influence the complexity of interactions…

Occupational Health News Roundup

Itâs become increasingly evident over the past few years that many veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have sustained mild traumatic brain injuries, often from being in the vicinity of a powerful blast. (See last monthâs New York Times article for details.) Symptoms can range from dizziness and persistent headaches to hearing problems and memory loss. Now, USA Today reports, the government is substantially increasing benefits for veterans suffering from milder forms of brain injuries. A regulation announced this week modifies a 1961 rating schedule for mild brain trauma. Doctors have…

Too disgusting to ignore

Reading Ed Brayton's discussion of the contrasting behaviors of our two presidential candidates with regards to law and Supreme Court decisions, I couldn't resist comment. One of the few advantages of medschool is that it keeps me from reading the news while I'm studying for exams, most recently my internal medicine shelf exam yesterday. Thus I'm protected from a state of constant fury from the idiocy of our dear leaders. This being a post-study day I unfortunately ended up reading this statement from John McCain from George Will's article that giving Gitmo prisoners habeus rights was "…

WebCams Create Fascinating New Stars: Peregrine Falcons

tags: Falcon Fascination, peregrine falcon, streaming video Powerful and fast-flying, the peregrine falcon, Falco peregrinus, hunts medium-sized birds, dropping down on them from high above in a spectacular stoop. Virtually exterminated from eastern North America by pesticide poisoning in the middle 20th century, restoration efforts have made this species a regular, if still uncommon sight in many large cities. Thanks to Charlie from KQED Public Broadcasting in San Francisco, I have embedded a wonderful video about the resident SF peregrine falcons (below the fold). These amazing predators…

Palomar threatened? - update

San Diego Tribune is reporting the reservation fire has reached South Grade road on Palomar mountain. Am I correct in thinking this is the switchback road that goes straight up to the observatory? So the fire is 5-10 miles away and below the observatory? Anyone know observatory status? PS: apparently fire was mid-mountain about 2 miles from observatory at dawn PPS: House-to-house battle on top of Palomar Mountain PPPS: Caltech web site now says wind turned and observatory is safe for now. UPDATE: definitely a bad fire coming up Palomar Mountain, whether it engulfs(ed) the top depends on what…

Bizarre email from Trump's HHS spokesperson

Today, The Pump Handle had its own bizarre experience with the Trump Administration. It came via an email sent by HHS spokesperson Matt Lloyd to members of the Association for Health Care Journalists. Some of those professionals were reporting on the data released today by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on insurance enrollment on Healthcare.gov. The 90-day open enrollment period ended this week. CMS's plain-spoken news release indicates that 9.2 million individuals selected plans from the ACA marketplace, including three million new consumers. Many of these Americans…

Weekend Diversion: Happy Everything

"Appreciation is a wonderful thing: it makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well." -Voltaire All over the world, there are celebrations going on today. Yes, it's Christmas, but there's a much older reason to celebrate. I'm not talking about Roman festivals, Ancient Greek celebrations, or even old Hebrew traditions, although I will give you the David Grisman Quintet's classic, Shalom Aleichem.I'm talking about the sky. And not the night sky, either. If you want to see what the Sun does, day-from-day, all you need to do is construct a pinhole camera with a photographic plate on the…

Ladies of the Barrow

I'm writing this on the train home from Lidköping on Lake Vänern in Västergötland province. I've spent a pleasant day discussing an interesting fieldwork project with colleagues. Gothenburg PhD student dynamic duo Anneli Nitenberg and Anna Nyqvist Thorsson have been working for years on the island of KÃ¥llandsö, famous mainly for Läckö Castle, and now they're doing something really audacious: they're digging a major barrow on the island's southern shore, diameter ~20 meters. Badgers have threatened to destroy it, and so the ladies got an excavation permit and ample funding from the…

Our Strange Entrances

The houses in our new neighbourhood are clones of one basic design: an L-shaped single-story structure with a fenced yard inside the angle of the L. The main entrance (1) is on one of the L's outer long walls. The grubby-boots entrance (2) is on the gable adjoining the wall with entrance 1. Finally, there's an entrance from the yard (3) which in many cases is fitted to be unlocked only from the inside: it's how the architect intended us to reach the yard from inside the house. Our particular specimen of this design only has entrance 3, combining the functions of all three entrances from the…

Dorky Poll: Grand Challenges

I'm going to drop back a bit, and steal an idea from Doug Natelson, who posted about Grand Challenges in condensed matter physics almost two weeks ago. This was prompted by a report from the National Research Council listing such challenges, including things like "How do complex phenomena emerge from simple ingredients?" and "How will the energy demands of future generations be met?" They're certainly grand, and challenging. So, the question for the audience is: What are the Grand Challenges in your own field? If you're a scientist, what are the big questions that need to be answered in your…

Takayama or Kanazawa?

So, as mentioned previously, Kate and I are planning to go to Japan for the World SF Convention, and spend a couple of weeks doing touristy stuff. We're down for about a week in Kyoto, and a week in the Yokohama/Tokyo area (where the con is). Then, there are 3-4 days at the end of the trip that we haven't decided what to do with. We've pretty much got it narrowed down to one of two options, as you might guess from the post title. We're working on not much more than guidebooks and web sites, though, so input from anybody with actual experience of Japan would be more than welcome. The candidate…

Big News in Tiny Physics

A couple of significant news items from the world of particle physics: There was a conference on neutrino physics recently, and the big news from there is that two experiments measure something funny with neutrino oscillations, namely that the oscillations seem to proceed at different rates for neutrinos and antineutrinos. This is a really surprising sort of asymmetry, and would be awfully hard to explain. These are, however, preliminary results that are being released now because there was a conference on neutrino physics, not because the people doing the experiments have rock-solid proof…

Legal Harassment of Retrospectacle

In this post, my SciBling Shelley Batts, of Retrospectacle, analyzed a recent paper claiming that fruit becomes healthier when consumed with alcohol. Something about boosting the antioxidant properties of the fruit. Interesting stuff. Even more interesting was what happened next. The paper in question was published in Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, published by Wiley. In writing her post, Shelley reproduced one table and one graph from the actual paper. That provoked the following e-mail from Wiley: The above article contains copyrighted material in the form of a…

Bristol Summer School on Probabilistic Techniques in Computer Science

An interesting summer school for computer scientists interested in probabilistic techniques to be held in Bristol, UK (you know the school that had a chalkboard with the statement that quantum computers could efficiently solve NP-complete problems :) ) Deadline fast approaching. Details below. From the summer school webpage: The purpose of this school is to provide a graduate-level introduction to probabilistic methods in modern theoretical computer science, and to the mathematics underlying these methods. The school is primarily aimed at research students, postdocs and early career…

How many lives are saved by defensive gun use?

About 2/3 of the crimes where guns are used for self defence are assaults, so this is the death rate that we should use. Frank Crary said: Why? As I said, attempted murders/murders would have a much (as in, order of magnitude) higher. Even if they are only a small fraction of violent crimes, their contribution would still be as great as that from assaults. Let's see, if attempted murder/murder is 5% fatal, then there must be 500,000 of them to get the same contribution as I have assumed from assaults. That gives 25,000 homicides from attempted murder/murder and 25,000 from assaults. Oops…

Culture Dish Doesn't Live Here Anymore

As I said  yesterday on Twitter, a big conflict of interest and transparency problem has arisen on ScienceBlogs. Like several other bloggers here, I'm now on a hiatus, however like like David Dobb's and Blake Stacy's, my hiatus from ScienceBlogs will be permanent. I've been contemplating a move from ScienceBlogs for a while for several reasons, but PepsiGate has sealed the deal for me. Several of my ScienceBlogs colleagues have summed up the situation well, including PZ Myers, GrrlScientist, and Brian over at Laelaps. For a full recap of the issue and other ScienceBloggers' responses, see…

Fair Use? What's That?

UPDATE: There was a veritable blogswarm on this issue, and Shelley reports that it seems to have generated results. Although, I will note that "granting permission" is not quite the same thing as acknowledging that her original post fell under fair use. Shelley Batts at Retrospectacle wrote a post the other day analyzing a journal article that has been reported misleadingly in the popular press under headlines like "Alcohol Makes Fruit Healthier". In her post she had reproduced a part of one figure and a table from the original journal article in order to analyze what was going on in…

Tid Bits - Classics Edition

I love the classics - be it Greek plays, Roman history, all of the great myths or all of the ancient philosophers that lie at the base of our western civilization. (Weren't those Atomists so prescient?) And yes, I also managed to marry a classics major. That's why I thank the FSM that I live in an age where you can obtain all this information for free and downloadable onto your iPod. So what's out there? Well a few months back I was in despair (along with hundreds of others) about the apparent downfall of the History of Rome Podcast. Well over the weekend Mike Duncan, just like Cincinnatus,…

Health News

Methamphetamine use in pregnancy changes learning ability of the offspring from PhysOrg.com Studies have suggested that infants exposed to methamphetamines while in the womb can suffer irreversible brain damage, although the exact effects of these drugs during pregnancy have been hard to pinpoint due to many other negative behaviors that often occur in meth users. [...] How fast you'll age is written in the bones, research finds from PhysOrg.com Perhaps the aging process can't be stopped. But it can be predicted, and new research from Tel Aviv University indicates that people may live…

Paltridge's Time Warp

Last week I wrote about how the Australian government was gagging scientists from expressing mainstream science views on global warming. Garth Paltridge has responded with a claim that global warming skeptics get gagged as well. From the Feb 22 Australian Financial Review: Graeme Pearman (in his ABC Four Corners interview last Monday) maintained that CSIRO is not backward in stifling comment from scientists on matters that bear on its political aspirations. It was ever thus. In the early nineties I was involved in setting up the Antarctic Cooperative Research Centre, which was, and…

Lancet study released

The Lancet study on deaths in Iraq has been released. Get it here. Here's the summary: Background An excess mortality of nearly 100 000 deaths was reported in Iraq for the period March, 2003-September, 2004, attributed to the invasion of Iraq. Our aim was to update this estimate. Methods Between May and July, 2006, we did a national cross-sectional cluster sample survey of mortality in Iraq. 50 clusters were randomly selected from 16 Governorates, with every cluster consisting of 40 households. Information on deaths from these households was gathered. Findings Three misattributed clusters…

You could help save Oregon kids from zombie attacks

My other half sent me this link on Friday: from Wired, rating weapons used to kill zombies (in Zombieland, and elsewhere). Their number 13: 13. Rock hammers Not to be confused with tremendous mallets, these things are faster to wield and don't leave you exhausted after two or three swings. Used for busting rocks, they can easily be repurposed to bust zombies. Advantages: Combines all the best qualities of the 1911A1 and the pump-action shotgun. Disadvantages: None. Anyone who suggests otherwise eats babies. The e-mail reminded me about one of the projects from the Geobloggers…

Darwin Does Indeed Sell Out

GAME PREVIEW | PRESS CENTER We are merely (a) day(s) away from the game between Corporate and Darwin (we're not sure whether the game will happen tomorrow or the next day due to some scheduling conflicts at Ivory Tower Arena), and the Corporate team has made a stunning revelation: Darwin did it for the money, not the love of the game. This is quite a surprising turn of events. Chuck D was financial secure for his entire life, and it was long thought that his pursuit of science came from a quest to understand the world around him. Not so fast, says Corporate team spokesman B. Roe Crat. The…

Anyone Misplace a Bag? A Green Bag?

This is interesting: 30.11.2007 / 16:23 WWII army bag is found in desert LONDON. November 30. KAZINFORM. A bag belonging to a World War II soldier from Lancashire has been discovered in the Egyptian desert after lying there for more than 60 years. Alec Ross, from Burnley, lost the bag containing personal letters and photos, while serving with the 8th Army. Egyptian tour guide Kahled Makram found the bag in the Sahara desert and traced Mr Ross's family through a BBC website on World War II. The bag is being sent to Burnley to Mrs Ross's sister, Irene Porter. source This happened to me, too.…

Gratuitous sex shot

Here's a salacious image from my little corner of the Garden State. Just look at that yearning pistil and those turgid stamens. Ooooh, baby! Here's the full shot of the flowers. Part of my rather checkered undergrad majors included botany. My interest in plant physiology shoved me in the direction of biochemistry and organic chemistry, but I retain an affection for plants. These Casa Blanca lilies are just a few of the flowers gracing my deck. My undergrad research project involved 1,3-beta-glucan synthase (EC 2.4.1.34) which I more or less isolated (please don't ask me about protein…

How much of yourself can you see in a mirror

This is one of my favorite demos. I like it because anyone can do it at home and people usually find the results surprising. Here is the situation: How much of yourself could you see in a small mirror? What if you move farther away from the mirror, can you see more of yourself? If you want to do the demo yourself, now would be a good time. All you need is a small mirror (I used a platter from a 10 GB hard drive - they make awesome mirrors). It will help out a lot if you can mount the mirror on a surface that is very near to vertical. Here is my version of this demo (in case you can't…

Creationists are geniuses

Really, they are. A while back, the Institute for Creation Research moved to Texas, where they expected a friendly welcome, and instead they got spanked: their request to be allowed to hand out degrees was turned down by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. This made the ICR angry, and they made a wacky lawsuit. A genuinely deranged brief. Their minds work in very twisty weird ways. They've gone down in flames — they are not authorized to give out degrees. But those creationist brains that scuttle sideways and inside out are not daunted by this mere legal restriction! Their website…

A busy day for Etna and Galeras

Today was a doubleheader for volcanic eruptions in the news: Today's explosive eruption from Mt. Etna. Image courtesy of the INGV. As I briefly mentioned earlier, Galeras in Colombia had an "atypical" eruption - apparently meaning it was non-explosive - that has prompted evacuations and a change in the alert status to "Red" for the volcano. Various news sources don't have a lot of new information yet, but you can check on the report on the INGEOMINAS page (spanish) - and they have links to some of the Galeras news (audio, spanish) from their main page. Some of the latest reports from…

Bush Administration Destroys Another Intelligence Operation

As if outing Valerie Plame, whose primary task was to monitor and contain WMD proliferation in the Middle East--including Iran, wasn't bad enough, the Bush Administration destroyed another intelligence gathering operation for political gain (italics mine): A small private intelligence company that monitors Islamic terrorist groups obtained a new Osama bin Laden video ahead of its official release last month, and around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, it notified the Bush administration of its secret acquisition. It gave two senior officials access on the condition that the officials not reveal they had…

BP, Scientists, and Gag Agreements

Last week, I wrote about a column by biologist Marc Lipsitch, who described a conflict of interest for scientists that has not been discussed: gag agreements for scientists who accept industry funding. In other words, if the corporate funder doesn't like the results, nobody will hear about them. These agreements also present other problems, such as reviewing grant proposals or receiving federal funding, as the scientist will have access to information that is unknown and undiscussed*. Well (pun intended), BP appears to have tried this strategy too (italics mine): BP has been trying to hire…

Going native with stealthy librarian ninjas

McMaster University colleague Andrew Colgoni (Twitter) has taken my Stealth Librarian Manifesto and tamed it a little bit and come up with his own version, which is here. I like what Andrew has to say in a post titled, I prefer Ninja Librarianship, myself: [T]here's much that can be learned from discovering where your faculty are reading/going and finding them there. This can be as simple as finding on-campus conferences that draw a broad faculty audience, and visit that. Here at McMaster, the Centre for Leadership in Learning annually hosts a teaching and learning conference, which draws…

Medicine & Health and Brain & Behavior Weekly Update

Welcome to another Channel Update. In this post, you will find the large versions of the Medicine & Health and Brain & Behavior channel photos, and also the contextualized versions of the reader reactions from the aforementioned channels. Medicine & Health Medicine & Health channel photo. Image captured with an electron microscope of a six-day-old human embryo implanting in a womb. From Flickr, by LoreleiRanveig Often in the scientific world, work and play intermingle. In this case, it appears to be especially so. Putting in the time to learn a specialty science can be…

Medicine and Brain Weekly Channel Highlights

In this post: the large versions of the Medicine & Health and Brain & Behavior channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week. Brain & Behavior. From Flickr, by Kyknoord Medicine & Health. From Flickr, by riot jane Reader comments of the week: On the Medicine & Health channel, Revere of Effect Measure poses the question, Who uses alternative medicine and for what? The most recent Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report released by the CDC revealed that over 15 percent of adults in the U.S. use some form of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (…

Education and Politics Weekly Channel Update 9-10-08

In this post: the large versions of the Education & Careers and Politics channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week. Education and Careers. From Flickr, by david_terrar Politics. Protesters scuffle with police outside the Republican National Convention in St. Paul From Flickr, by Ligadier Truffaut Reader comments of the week: In Barack Obama: A pro-vaccine pharma shill who doesn't care about autistic children? Orac takes on the touchy subject of vaccines and autism by looking at Senator Obama's stance on the issue, and the reaction from around the…

Environment, Humanities and Education Weekly Channel Highlights

In this post: the large versions of the Environment, Humanities & Social Science and Education & Careers channel photos and comments from readers. Environment. From Flickr, by *clairity* Humanities & Social Science. One of Olafur Eliasson's New York City Waterfalls cascades off the Brooklyn Bridge. From Flickr, by epicharmus Education & Careers. Traffic lights at dusk in Portland, Oregon. From Flickr, by Mannequin- Reader comments of the week: In Forget the planet, save the humans!, Coby of A Few Things Ill Considered shares a video created by a 10 year old boy which…

Using HIV to prove some points about evolution, part IV

Did HIV become resistant to Atazanavir because of a genetic change? Was that genetic change inherited? Did HIV evolve? Can we explain why genetic changes at specific sites might help HIV escape the effects of the drug? Let's find out. All of the sequences in the image below (except for the first) come from HIV strains that were isolated from patients who took Atazanavir and no other protease inhibitors. All of the strains of HIV from patients were resistant to the drug. If an amino acid is different from other strains, the color at that position is changed. Since we see different…

Indonesia's Arpège strategy

"Promise them anything, but give them Arpege" was a famous perfume ad campaign of the 1960s. Indonesia is free with promises, but what it is actually handing out doesn't smell like Arpege. After promising (for at least the third time since January) to resume sharing of viral isolates, we find only three clinical specimens, not isolates, have arrived in Japan but the provision of specimens or isolates from another 12 known and confirmed cases from Indonesia is unclear. After refusing to share H5N1 avian flu viruses with the World Health Organization since the start of the year, Indonesian…

Swine flu and auto accidents

The number of people who die from seasonal flu every year varies greatly from year to year. No one really knows what it is. The most frequently (mis)quoted figure is 36,000 deaths directly or indirectly, although this figure is a long term seasonal average of excess mortality correlated with flu season. We discussed this in more detail in an earlier post and for the purposes of this one, only the rough order of magnitude is pertinent. Let's just say it's in the tens of thousands -- roughly. Let's also agree on the several hundred thousand hospitalizations from flu or flu related illness -- on…

The anthrax attacks: the FBI's incurable disease

When the FBI said that they had conclusive scientific evidence that biodefense scientists Bruce Ivins of the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) was the 2001 anthrax attacker, many people asked to see the evidence. Don't worry, we were told. It will be published for all to see in the peer reviewed scientific literature and then everyone will be convinced that the organisms used in the attacks came from a flask in the laboratory of Dr. Ivins. We're still waiting for the scientific papers, but some of the evidence is now being presented at scientific meetings.…

Bush EPA high jinks again. Sigh.

Full disclosure: I know the toxicologist who is the subject of this post. Not well. But I know her and I know her work and she is, as the story from the LA Times says, a highly respected scientist. And no shrinking violet, which accounts for the fact that the Bush EPA has dismissed her from an expert panel on brominated flame retardants widely used in consumer products like upholstery and electronic equipment. Your body is also full of them. Well, at least that's true for some 90% of Americans. Maybe you are the one in ten. Back to the one in 300,000,000, the President of this country (for…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Species' Sizes Affect Lives Of Cells In Mammals: Cells from the smallest to the largest of mammals often seem to be "one size fits all." Now a closer look reveals that whether a cell lives in an elephant, mouse or something in between can make a big difference in its life. Researchers from the University of Florida Genetics Institute, Harvard Medical School and other institutions developed mathematical models that they used to examine 18 cell types from mammals ranging from mice to elephants. They found two basic categories -- cells that stay the same size but have drastically different…

Senator Lautenberg's public health legacy

When Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) passed away Monday at the age of 89, the Senate lost one of its longest-serving members and the US lost a public-health champion. Brad Plumer at the Washington Post's Wonkblog describes several of Senator Lautenberg's achievements, including banning smoking on airplanes, preventing people convicted of domestic violence misdemeanors from owning guns, and requiring states to raise their drinking ages to 21 and lower the drunk-driving blood alcohol threshold from .10 to .08. The Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin writes about Lautenberg's environmental…

Time for Flu Shots

The CDC has declared this week to be National Influenza Vaccination Week, and is working to raise awareness about the seriousness of influenza and the importance of vaccination. The agency reminds us that each year in the U.S., 5-20 %of the population gets the flu, and approximately 36,000 people die from it. Many of these deaths occur among young children and the elderly, so if youâre in one of those groups or come into contact with those who are, itâs a good idea to get yourself vaccinated. The idea behind flu vaccination isnât just to avoid getting a virus thatâll make you miserable for a…

ConAgra Drops Diacetyl - and Prompts More Questions About Unreleased Research

Last week, Pop Weaver announced that it was eliminating diacetyl from its microwave popcorn products. Today, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Associated Press report that ConAgra will remove diacetyl from its Orville Redenbacher and Act II microwave popcorn over the next year. This news comes as David Michaelsâs post here about federal agenciesâ inadequate response to a case of bronchiolitis obliterans in a popcorn consumer has attracted widespread media attention (e.g., from the Associated Press, Denver Post, and Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel). Itâs great to see that popcorn companies are…

My picks from ScienceDaily

This Is Your Brain On Jazz: Researchers Use MRI To Study Spontaneity, Creativity: A pair of Johns Hopkins and government scientists have discovered that when jazz musicians improvise, their brains turn off areas linked to self-censoring and inhibition, and turn on those that let self-expression flow. More coverage from Smooth Pebbles, Mind Hacks, Wired Science, Neurophilosophy, Science A Go Go, PsychCentral and The Rehearsal Studio Evolution Of Aversion: Why Even Children Are Fearful Of Snakes: Some of the oldest tales and wisest mythology allude to the snake as a mischievous seducer,…

Rubik's Cube Tournament - Winners Meet Professor Erno Rubik

From the USA Science & Engineering Festival: WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--It's the 30th Anniversary of the Rubik's Cube, and the USA Science & Engineering Festival is planning a You CAN Do the Rubik's Cube tournament in Washington, D.C., October of 2010. Teams from Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia are eligible to compete. Here's a video from the first You CAN Do the Rubik's Cube tournament held this spring in San Diego. Rubik's Cube creator Professor Erno Rubik will receive a Lifetime Science and Math Education Achievement Award from the…

Spam

Over a period of just over one week, just over 500 pieces of spam got through to my last spam filter, and were autodeposited in a "is this spam?" box. My primary e-mail account is buried behind three layers of spam and virus filtering, and my mailer has a Bayesian junk mail filter. At least five different aliases forward to this account and I have at least three other accounts that receive e-mail and do not forward, some of which are public and some of which are never shown on web pages or readable Net sources. My primary e-mail has been visible for 20 years, and the current address has been…

Occupational Health News Roundup

The day after the Tony Awards honored excellence in Broadway theater, the NIOSH Science Blog posted information about some of the theatrical hazards and precautions that may not be visible to audiences. Gregory A. Burr and Deborah Hornback write: While the theater provides entertainment, the preparation and production of live performances can also pose hazards to those working in all aspects of the theater –from actors on stage to set designers behind the scenes and musicians in the orchestra pit.  Some of these hazards were well publicized in recent years as multiple actors and stunt doubles…