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Best Science Books 2012: Jack Uldrich/Jump the Curve: A Futurist’s Top Ten Books for 2012

Another list for your reading, gift-giving and collection development pleasure. Every year for the last bunch of years I’ve been linking to and posting about all the “year’s best sciencey books” lists that appear in various media outlets and shining a bit of light on the best of the year. All the previous 2012 lists are here. This post includes the following: Jack Uldrich/Jump the Curve: A Futurist’s Top Ten Books for 2012. Note: This list includes some slightly older books and some books that are more strictly business books rather than tech or science books. I decided to include them…

Nature discusses the US election

Good ol' UK-based Nature has a special section dedicated to the US election. I'm not surprised — the whole world has a stake in this one, and I sure hope we don't disappoint them, for our sake and theirs. Both presidential candidates were asked their opinion on various issues of science policy, and the answers are publicly available, in two parts. Unsurprisingly, only Obama bothered to reply; in an attempt to be fair, Nature dug through McCain's old speeches to charitably cobble up the kind of answers he might have given if a) he weren't an incompetent old coot who can't get his act together…

I don't want to be healed by Jesus, I want real medicine

We have a new euphemism and a potential new regulation from the Bush administration: "provider conscience rights". What this is about is providing religious doctors with loopholes so that they can avoid responsibility for treating patients with the best possible care — so they can use religious excuses to justify neglect. You can read the press release, Regulation Proposed to Help Protect Health Care Providers from Discrimination, and of course the odious Mike Leavitt has mentioned it. This is a proposed new rule that if, for instance, a doctor with superstitious scruples is treating a rape…

Best Science Books 2011: The Guardian

Another list for your reading, gift-giving and collection development pleasure. Every year for the last bunch of years I've been linking to and posting about all the "year's best sciencey books" lists that appear in various media outlets and shining a bit of light on the best of the year. All the previous 2011 lists are here. This post includes the following: The Guardian Books for giving: science, Biography, History, Nature. Incoming!: or, Why We Should Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Meteorite by Ted Nield Survivors: The Animals and Plants That Time Has Left Behind by Richard Fortey…

A Real Sendup

I saw this article today in the New York Times, "Long-Awaited Medical Study Questions the Power of Prayer." It recounts the findings of a study in the American Heart Journal, which attempted to measure the effect of prayer by strangers on the outcome of coronary bypass surgery in over 1,800 patients. It was an incredibly ambitious study. The problem, of course, is that this is impossible to test. I'm not arguing for or against the efficacy of intercessory prayer here, lest people from either camp jump on my case. But seriously, doesn't rigorous scientific testing defeat the very idea of…

Best Science Books 2016: Brain Pickings The Greatest Science Books of 2016

As you all have no doubt noticed over the years, I love highlighting the best science books every year via the various end of year lists that newspapers, web sites, etc. publish. I've done it so far in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013,2014 and 2015. And here we are in 2016! As in previous years, my definition of "science books" is pretty inclusive, including books on technology, engineering, nature, the environment, science policy, public health, history & philosophy of science, geek culture and whatever else seems to be relevant in my opinion. Today's list is . Black Hole Blues and…

What's Hiding in Your Cells' Family Tree?

DNA testing can reveal how closely related you are to a group of people halfway around the world or, if you're doing evolutionary research, where organisms fit on taxonomic trees. The same DNA tests, when performed on the cells in a single human body, can be used to reconstruct lineage trees that can trace the cells' ancestry back to the embryo. The principle in all three cases is the same: DNA amasses mutations over time, and these mutations can be used to assess how far back two people, organisms or cells shared a common parent. The idea for the cell lineage trees comes from the group of…

Immunization against Autoimmunity

Often, simply identifying the structure of a potential drug target protein and designing a molecule to block it are not enough. Just ask Prof. Irit Sagi, a chemist turned biology researcher, who recently developed a clever technique for directing the body to design its own protein-blocking molecules. Sagi studies an enzyme called matrix metalloproteinase 9 (MMP-9). This protein, along with other members of the MMP family, cleaves straight through the support tissues in the body - collagen and the extracellular matrix that gives organs and tissues structure. This, of course is crucial for…

Tackling Global Sustainability: A Need for Integrated Systems Approaches

  If there is anything that the past few decades of research and study of major global challenges tells us, it is that truly effective solutions to sustainability challenges require truly integrated approaches across disciplines, fields of study, data sets, and institutions. We are not going to solve 21st century global problems with 20th century tools. The planet is faced with a wide range of regional and global threats: air and water pollution, loss of biodiversity, a rapidly changing climate and new risks from extreme weather events, energy and food security, conflicts over resources such…

Matt Ridley and the Holocene Optimum

If the title of Matt Ridley's new book, The Rational Optimist, sounds a little familiar, that's because it borrows heavily from the world view of one Bjorn "The Skeptical Environmentalist" Lomborg. Both contrarians dismiss global warming as nothing to worry about, although Ridley seems even less convinced that the planet is actually experiencing anthropogenic global warming. I don't have time to read it -- but I did manage to take a look at the kind of thinking that Ridley uses at his blog. This week, Ridley wrote about what his research in the "Holocene Optimum," uncovered. What he found, he…

Spotlight on X-STEM Speaker: Dr. Francis Collins

X-STEM - presented by Northrop Grumman Foundation and MedImmune - is an Extreme STEM symposium for elementary through high school students featuring interactive presentations by an exclusive group of visionaries who aim to empower and inspire kids about careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). These top STEM role models and industry leaders are sure to ignite your students’ curiosity through storytelling and live demonstrations. Our spotlight on our X-STEM Speakers begins with Geneticist, Physician and Director of the NIH, Dr. Francis Collins. Raised on a small…

Role Models in Science & Engineering Achievement: Satyendranath Bose -- Renowned physicist

Satyendranath Bose collaborated with Einstein, and is for whom a family of subatomic particles known as "Bosons" is named Born during British colonial rule in Calcutta (now Kolkata), India in 1894, Satyendranath Bose, even as a child, showed promise as a creative mathematical and scientific thinker. As a young student he loved experimenting with different methods to solve mathematical problems and improvising various ways to conduct science experiments.  When he joined the University of Calcutta in 1916 as a researcher studying the theory of relativity, it was an especially exciting period to…

This Week's "Featured Fan" is Bill Boss!

Each week we like to acknowledge those that truly make our Festival the largest celebration of science: our fans. Without the support of our fans, we would not be able to able to achieve our mission which is to re-invigorate the interest of our nation's youth in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) by producing and presenting the most compelling, exciting, educational and entertaining science festival in the United States. Our fans travel from near and far to attend the Festival and along with our volunteers; they help us maintain the buzz of this celebration all year long. This…

An Interview With Dr. Signout

This time we sat down with the ever-elusive Dr. Signout, of Signout. What's your name? Ooooh. Sorry, can't tell you that. What do you do when you're not blogging? Why, I provide compassionate, evidence-based patient care at a high rate of speed. If I'm not doing that, I'm probably traveling, reading, drinking coffee, or cooking flamboyantly. What is your blog called? Signout. What's up with that name? When residents hand off the care of their patients to other residents, they're supposed to summarize each patient's medical background, issues, and potential for change in clinical status in a…

Shout out to Innovate-Educate blog

Shout out to the Innovate-Educate blog for their post on the science festival! Thanks for getting the word out! Do you have a blog? Want to help us get the word out about the USA Science and Engineering Festival? Blog about the festival and we will give you a shout out and link to you. From Innovate-Educate blog: Are you ready for The Woodstock of Science? Ever wanted to talk with a Nobel Laureate? Did you know red wine goes well with steak, but also has anti-aging properties? Want to uncover the mysteries of baseball's knuckleball? These and other intriguing questions are answered at the…

'My Hands Used to Pick Weeds; Now They Perform Brain Surgery'--Dr. Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa

"The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery." ~~Mark van Doren The chemical structures danced across the page as I sat trying to figure out what reaction came next. It was the beginning of organic chemistry as an undergraduate and people had warned me that o-chem would be a bit of a monster. Over that previous summer I had heard countless horror stories about how hard organic chemistry can be. As a biology/ pre-med major I had no other choice but to endure this course. Yet by the second month of class I enthusiastically soaked up the varied drawings, rapidly mastered the new…

Genetically modified humans are already here (and doing fine)

A long-sought goal in genetics has been to develop therapies that can use correctly functioning genes to replace genes with defects. If we had the technology to predictably modify our genomes, we would have the ability to cure many diseases instead of having to place people on medications for their entire lives. For a long time, gene therapy has remained an elusive dream. But, in the past few years the dream has come closer to reality, especially in the case of ten children, who live because of researchers who kept that dream in sight (1). Figure 1. Random children Technorati Tags:…

Digital Biology Friday: Searching for synonyms

In last week's episode, your assignment was to think of an interesting plant trait and find a description about a gene, related to that trait, by searching PubMed. Since coming up with an interesting trait might be a challenge for some people, let's think about how to approach this step. Picking your trait. If you're having a hard time thinking of a trait, it might be helpful think about where plants grow, why we grow plants, and why it might be hard or easy for plants to grow. Some of the environmental factors that affect plant growth are: climate, soil composition, nutrient…

If we ignore the atmosphere, can we make it go away?

Some of us walk by the bus stop and nervously glance at the scruffy-looking man carrying the ragged sign. I try not to breathe through my nose while I read the sign, carefully pretending all the while that I'm not really interested. Ah, it says "Repent! The world will end tomorrow!" I smile since I always love a testable hypothesis. Tomorrow morning, I will wake up and I will know the scruffy street preacher got it all wrong. It is "An Inconvenient Truth" that global warming presents us with another testable hypothesis. But this one doesn't make me smile. Al Gore has described some…

Fossil daisy-chain

Here's a very strange fossil from the Chengjiang Lagerstätte, an early Cambrian fossil bed from 525 million years ago. It's a collection of Waptia-like arthropods, nothing unusual there; these are ancient creatures that look rather like headless shrimp. What's weird about it is the way the individuals are locked together in a daisy chain, with the telson (tail piece) of each individual stuck into the carapace of the animal behind. It's not just a fluke, either — they have 22 fossil chains, and just one animal all by its lonesome. (Click for larger image)Waptia-like arthropod, Lower Cambrian…

The Scientific Zombie

Before Zombie Day comes to a close, I want to do a little braaaaaaaaaaain dump on where zombies actually fit into the scientific landscape (and to thank Joseph Hewitt for the amazing art he provided for all of us. As a huge Evil Dead fan, I especially appreciate my copy of the Necronomicon. Groovy.) My colleague Lee Billings, with whom I have killed literally tens of thousands of zombies, and I started the day with a discussion of the connection between zombies and science, which took us to the roots of modern-day zombie-dom. It seems pretty clear that word and the basic concept comes from…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Children's Sleep Difficulties: Reports Differ From Children To Parents: Elementary-school-aged children commonly experience sleep problems, but little research has addressed the reasons behind this phenomenon. A new study finds that children of this age say they have sleep difficulties much more often than their parents report such problems. Sleep Apnea Patients At Higher Risk For Deadly Heart Disease; Arrhythmia Found To Increase During REM: People with sleep apnea could also be at risk for a particular kind of deadly heart arrhythmia, finds Saint Louis University researchers. They presented…

Genetic Variation I: What is a SNP?

If you've read any of the many stories lately about Craig Venter or Jim Watson's genome, you've probably seen a "SNP" appear somewhere. (If you haven't read any of the stories, CNN has one here, and my fellow bloggers have posted several here, here, here, here, here, and here.) You may be wondering, and rightly so: just what is a SNP? Never fear, hopefully this post will answer some of those questions. tags: DNA sequencing, DNA , SNPs, genetic testing SNP stands for Single Nucleotide Polymorphism. That's a mouthful. It means some people, will have one base at a certain position, in a…

Basics: How do you sequence a genome?

About a week ago, I offered to answer questions about subjects that I've either worked with, studied or taught. I haven't had many questions yet, but I can certainly answer the ones I've had so far. Today, I'll answer the first question: How do you sequence a genome? Before we get into the technical details, there are some other genomic questions that you might like answered. How much does it cost to sequence a genome? I remember in 2002, when we were at the O'Reilly bioinformatics conference and we heard Lee Hood challenge the DNA sequencing community to lower the costs of genomic…

Oh sure, blame it on the bacteria!

Bacteria can cause other epidemics, why not obesity? Is there a relationship between our body weight and our bacterial inhabitants? Two reports in Nature (1, 2) suggest that bacterial populations differ between people who are obese and people who not, and that the bacterial inhabitants of their guts, may be partly to blame. In one study, the authors studied the bacterial populations of their volunteers' intestines by compiling a data set of 18,348 DNA sequences for bacterial 16S ribosomal RNA by sampling feces. Wow! That's a lot of ... well, I won't say it, but you know what I mean. In…

A picture worth a thousand 378 barfs

I must confess to a (possibly unhealthy) fascination for the topic of food poisoning. You know the kind. First you're afraid you're going to die. Then you're afraid you're not going to die. When I taught the food sanitation course I loved showing 1960s US Army "barf films" meant to train food handlers. I could never figure out if it was real vomit coming out of the mouths of the recruits hanging over the sides of their barracks cots or staged. I still don't know. Anyway, with such obsessions you can understand why my attention was drawn to the story of salmonella poisoning that occurred last…

Is the Captain of the Men of Death saddling his horse again?

A hundred years ago Sir William Osler described acute pneumonia as "The Captain of the Men of Death," a phrase he remembered from John Bunyan's The Life and Death of Mr. Badman (the actual phrase is "Captain Consumption, with all his men of death"). In 17th century England it was indeed "consumption," an older term for tuberculosis, which deserved the rank in Death's Legion, and the day may come again when it will come out of retirement to lead a new regiment against us. Beginning in the late 1940s tuberculosis began to recede from the consciousness of the industrialized West, and now it is…

Purell cocktails and other complexities of managing a flu outbreak

Hand gel sanitizers are making an appearance all over our medical center. There's one right next to the elevator on the ground floor of the building where my office is and don't have to touch a thing. Just put your hand under it and it dispenses a cool alcohol-based gel that sanitizers my hands and dries very quickly. Alcohol does that. And other things: Alcohol hand gel meant to combat swine flu has been banned from a prison after inmates started eating it and became embroiled in a drunken brawl. Inmates have been drinking the liquid soap placed on their wing after realising it contained…

No, not at my University of Oregon!

Noooooo! I'm a proud graduate of the University of Oregon, and I think Eugene is a wonderful place…and now I learn that damned dumb creationists were drooling stupidly in the student union. Three creationists lectured on their nonsense there. There was Tom Alderman. There is "a mountain of evidence that the universe was designed," he said. "Design has been proven to an extreme probability," he said. No, there is no evidence for design, let alone "proof" of design—even the fact that he is talking about proof shows that he knows nothing about how science works. At least he nakedly revels in…

Swine flu: flu pandemics -- if you've seen one, you . . .

It would be nice to think that the 28 cases at the NY Prep School are it for the city and that the virus has been contained there. But that was always more a wish than a plausible reality: CBS 2 HD has learned of a confirmed case of swine flu at the Ernst & Young headquarters in Times Square. One of the staffers became ill over the weekend after coming into contact with a family member who had been exposed to the virus. The staffer is said to be resting at home and the company believes, due to the virus' 24-hour incubation period, that no one else at Ernst & Young was exposed. The…

Prospects for science policy

We're learning more about what Obama is actually going to do in office, and while there are some negatives, right now the positives outweigh them. Let's get the bad decisions out of the way first. Rick Warren, professional homophobe, bigot, and smirking airhead, will be prominently promoted in the invocation at the inauguration. This is a symbolic slap to the face of rationalists and GLBT citizens of our country, and is not a good sign. The man who will be the Interior Secretary, a position which should be concerned about conservation of the country's natural resources and which has been…

Madness in Gaza

Israel, a state entity, is committing war crimes in Gaza. They have blockaded and imprisoned an entire civilian population in the Gaza strip, over a million people, and have now launched air strikes against civilian targets with the expected results: the deaths of hundreds, among them women and children and innocent men. The Israeli attacks are the disproportionate response to escalating firing of rockets into Israel from the Gaza strip. The Israelis claim they will continue their brutality until it "changes [the] behavior" of those they blame for the rocket attacks. Any person with more than…

Toxic toy: the gift that keeps on giving

The economy is bad and everyone expects retail sales to be substantially off. But parents will scrimp on presents for each other to make sure their kids get presents they want. Whether we approve or not, we do it for our kids. I assume it's hardwired into our brains somehow. But in the waning hours of the Bush administration, we are still getting the same old crap and they don't give a second thought to putting our kids and grand kids at risk: Congressional supporters of a new law meant to protect children from dangerous chemicals are trying to make sure that the government enforces the…

FDA and BPA: more stench

I run a fairly large research program at my University. My NIH grant, which runs in the tens of millions, pays for a lot of things, including a portion of my salary. But as Director, my salary is (alas) only a tiny portion of this complex operation, which has many senior principal investigators and core facilities, labs, research groups, post docs, students, research staff, etc., etc. The whole operation has to fit together and work. We're big but not huge. So $5 million, while accounting noise in Wall Street bailout terms, is a pretty big deal and not because of the paltry half salary I…

Chinese baby formula scandal

Two of my grandsons were here today. They are just babies (16 months and month and half) but one of them is a little colicky. He looks like he is having cramps after downing his formula. But compared to some babies in China, it's nothing. The formula they've been drinking was adulterated with melamine, the same adulterant responsible for pet deaths from tainted dog food not long ago (see here, here, here). Dozens of poor babies have kidney stones. One has died. If you've never had kidney stones, this might not mean that much. But I've had them. Twice. The pain is excruciating. It's been…

KBR and DoD expose workers and soldiers to a carcinogen but it's not a big deal

What's a little sodium dichromate, anyway? So it's a known human carcinogen and can do a lot of other nasty things. No big deal. Not for Iraq war contractor, KBR, anyway. At the time KBR was a subsidiary of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, Halliburton. So when they were given a lucrative contract to clean up and safeguard Iraqi oilfields after the Bush Mission was Accomplished in 2003, they told the soldiers and workers that the chemical, used as an antirust agent and then strewn all over the oil facilities, was a "mild irritant." Later they admitted…

A novel creationist argument

Wow. Creationists can surprise you with a rare flash of imagination — like this argument that because you don't drool, god exists. Ok, I have an Evolution Challenge for you. Make your mouth produce a bunch of spit, let it dribble down your face and time how long it is before you simply have to wipe it off. Go ahead; try it! I promise you it won't be very long. It's extremely uncomfortable to have it sit there. Think about the babies in your life. Have you ever thought about the fact that they stop drooling after the first couple years of life? Have you ever imagined what life would be like…

New test approved for influenza like illnesses

Every year "flu season" comes during which there is a marked uptick in influenza-like illnesses (ILIs) in the community. An ILI is defined to be cough or sore throat together with a fever of over 100 degrees F. (37.8 degrees C.) or self-reported fever and chills as well as no other obvious cause (e.g., strep throat). But are all ILIs influenza? No. They are ILIs. In the absence of lab work (and since most are thought to be of viral origin, only non-specific symptomatic and supportive therapy is recommended and no diagnostic lab work is usually done), an ILI could be from influenza virus or…

Medical education and the military

Medical education in the US is four grueling years on top of four years of undergraduate college education. The spectrum of topics is hugely wide and the depth of coverage hugely uneven. Some things are covered in ridiculous detail and others with breathtaking superficiality. And some things hardly at all: Medical students are woefully uninformed about military medical ethics and a physician's responsibilities under the Geneva Conventions, a situation that could be a problem if they're ever drafted, according to an article by Harvard Medical School researchers. The researchers surveyed…

Telling a cell to make an eye

Some of the best moments in a scientist's life come when things don't go as planned. Or rather, when the world tells you something you never suspected and weren't even looking for. Ah, those lucky folks at the University of Warwick: The researchers were exploring whether release of ATP (an important signaling and energy carrying molecule) influenced the development of locomotion in frogs. Their experiment introduced molecules called ectoenzymes (normally found on the outside surface of cells) into frog embryos at one of the earliest stages when the frogs-to-be were just 8 cells in size. Three…

West Nile woes

If you were an organic farmer you might be a tad pissed if the government came along and sprayed your crop with pesticide without your consent, essentially spoiling it. But that's what happened near Sacramento north of the American River between July 30 and August 1, as the local mosquito control district did aerial spraying to "control" mosquitoes that might be carrying West Nile virus. They aprayed 86 square miles (55,000 acres), home to 375,000 people: Lab tests by Environmental Micro Analysis, an independent lab in Woodland, showed crops from at least one farm in Citrus Heights were…

New Orleans, one year later, is still a ghost town

Last year, there was so much blogging about Katrina, I thought that the best thing I could do was create a large linkfest of everyone else's posts. That is what I did - check it out here, a nice one-stop-shopping for the analysis and opinion at the time. If you need to refresh your memory that is the place to go. You can also find most of the iconic images collected in one place here. But I did not entirely abstain from commenting myself, though I was trying to look for angles nobody else covered and news nobody else had - which was hard to find at that time. So, I blogged about how…

My Picks From ScienceDaily

Wing Morphing Of The Swift Could Inspire New Aircraft Designs: A swift adapts the shape of its wings to the immediate task at hand: folding them back to chase insects, or stretching them out to sleep in flight. Ten Dutch and Swedish scientists, based in Wageningen, Groningen, Delft, Leiden, and Lund, have shown how 'wing morphing' makes swifts such versatile flyers. Their study, published as cover story in Nature on April 26, proves that swifts can improve flight performance by up to three-fold, numbers that make 'wing morphing' the next big thing in aircraft engineering. Female Ticks Have…

We Like Round Numbers

Is it something about wholeness? Or milestones? But we certainly do like round numbers. Of course, our numbers are social constructs. Our days and years are determined by the planet we are living on. Our number system is decimal presumably because we all start our early-years arithmetic by counting on our fingers - of which, on the last count, there are ten. I remember back in middle school, I was actually quite good at math (my strength was in coming up with short, elegant solutions for geometry problems, but I also did well on logic, not so well on algebra), going to math competitions…

Schinderhannes bartelsi

Fans of the great Cambrian predator, Anomalocaris, will be pleased to hear that a cousin lived at least until the Devonian, over 100 million years later. That makes this a fairly successful clade of great-appendage arthropods — a group characterized by a pair of very large and often spiky manipulatory/feeding arms located in front of the mouth. Here's the new fellow, Schinderhannes bartelsi: (click for larger image)Holotype of Schinderhannes bartelsi. (A) Ventral. (B) Interpretative drawing of ventral side. l, left; r, right; A1, great appendage; A2, flaplike appendage; sp, spine; fm, flap…

A simple explanation

Of Religion and Morality (December 02, 2005) ------------------------------------------ From I Am An Atheist, via Pratie Place, come these "commandments": As an atheist you have a number of rights and responsibilities. These include (but are not limited to): 1. Have no gods. 2. Don't worship stuff. 3. Be polite. 4. Take a day off once in a while. 5. Be nice to folks. 6. Don't kill people. 7. Don't fool around on your significant other. 8. Don't steal stuff. 9. Don't lie about stuff. 10. Don't be greedy. Remember, theists will condemn you for living by this code because you are doing…

Getting health information on the internet

Everyone knows that people commonly use the internet for health information. "Commonly" means almost half (45.6%) of adults over 18 who were interviewed by the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) during the first 9 months of 2009. The estimate is made from household interviews of a national sample of adults who don't live in institutions, like a nursing home, school or prison (euphemistically called a correctional facility). The question asked by the NHIS was: "Did you look up health information on the Internet in the past 12 months?" The percentage by age group is fairly even, except for…

Is it time for humans to throw in the towel?

There's a lot of fascinating robotics work being done these days, although it is disheartening to see how much of it is designed to help kill people or just kill them outright. But not all of it and over at Boingboing there was an example of a project designed to do household chores. We already have Roombas to clean the floor and a lot of laundry is sort of automated (at least the wash, scrub, rinse, dry cycles are). But then there's the unpleasant task of taking them out of the washing machine, dumping them into the drier, taking them out of the drier and folding them. The firs three of…

FBI's mercy killing of the anthrax case

This is our 10th post on the anthrax attacks. Will it be our last? Yes, if the FBI has anything to say about it. They are closing the case. A case they messed up pretty thoroughly from the outset but now want us to believe they've solved, even though the culprit they fingered, Dr. Bruce Ivins, a bioweapons researcher at Fort Detrick, allegedly committed suicide and wasn't available to interrogate. I say "allegedly" because there are other explanations for his demise, most plausibly in our view, an accident involving interaction of alcohol and acetaminophen which caused liver failure. But the…

Occupational Health News Roundup

Over the course of three days, three miners were killed on the job in West Virginia, Illinois, and Wyoming. Ken Ward Jr. describes their deaths in the Charleston Gazette: In the recent incidents, 62-year-old Roger R. King of Moundsville was killed Friday when he was hit in the head by part of a chain being used during a longwall machine move at CONSOL Energy's McElroy Mine in Marshall County. On Saturday, a miner at Alliance Coal's Pattiki Mine in White County, Ill., was killed when an underground cart rolled over and he was pinned underneath it. Local media identified the miner as Robert…