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Circadian Rhythm of Caffeine Effects

Since every chemical induces a different response in the body dependent on the time of day when it is administered, I am not surprised that this also applies to caffeine: A new study at the Université de Montréal has concluded that people drinking coffee to get through a night shift or a night of studying will strongly hurt their recovery sleep the next day. The study published in the current issue of Neuropsychopharmacology was conducted by Dr. Julie Carrier from the Department of Psychology at the Université de Montréal. Dr. Carrier runs the Chronobiology Laboratory at the Hôpital du…

Wednesday evenings at the genome

If you're in Seattle this week, and you're not going to the zoo concert on Wednesday night, you might enjoy this lecture series from the UW Genome Sciences department. We missed the first two talks because of travel, but our college-age daughter and her friend persuaded us to go last Weds. and hear Debbie Nickerson talk about genetics and drugs. Usually these sorts of talks are held during the school year and they're packed with high school students who're getting extra credit for attending and taking notes. This time it was different. We looked around the room when we arrived, of course…

2007 Bio-Link Summer Fellows Workshop

It must be spring. Summer course announcements are popping up everywhere and this site is no exception. Last Friday, I posted an announcement about our summer bioinformatics course in Alaska, June 27-29th. This week, I have a couple more conferences to announce. Naturally, I'll be at both of them, leading hands-on workshops for college and high school teachers in using the technology. Today, I want to tell you about the Bio-Link Summer Fellows Workshop, June 4th-8th Berkeley, CA I became involved with Bio-Link ten years ago when I was running the biotechnology program at Seattle…

Chinese gymnasts

If the Chinese team in the 2008 Olympics works half as hard as its government to perform spectacular and intuition-defying acrobatics, it should have the gold Medal sewed up. Consider the latest in the "China is taking food safety very, very seriously but it's no big deal" event. China has announced it is banning 18 food products, including preserved fruits, candied garlic, grilled crab, peanuts and a fruit drink. "After many years of joint efforts, China has enhanced its food safety levels by a large margin. Food safety qualification rates are continuously increasing," said China's health…

Keeping meat fresh (looking)

The folks who sell carbon monoxide monitors use the phrase "a-colorless-odorless-gas-that-can-kill-you-in-your-sleep" as if it were one word. I guess they use it often enough that it is one word to them. In fact people do die from carbon monoxide, around 500 every year. A sign of monoxide poisoning in the emergency department is an unconscious patient with cherry red lips. Carbon monoxide poisons by latching tightly to hemoglobin, preventing this protein from carrying out its function of binding oxygen. The bound carbon monixide produces carboxyhemoglobin instead of oxyhemoglobin. Carboxy…

Dr.Siegel goes to the movies

I don't usually do movie reviews here, much less reviews of movie reviews. But since I was pretty hard on Marc Siegel a year or two ago (I won't link to the posts since that would be just criticizing him all over again; they are on the old site), I'll take the time to say his movie review of Pandemic on the Hallmark channel didn't offend me. I wouldn't have written it that way, but there were some good things in it. What I liked about it was the balanced way he evaluated the veracity and plausibility of the facts portrayed in the movie. Dramatic presentations like this are a mode of public…

Getting high on hand sanitizers

No vaccine, antivirals in short supply, what to do if bird flu strikes? Wash your hands, seems to be a favorite. While its efficacy is unproven, it's not a bad thing to do anyway. Dry skin is the only plausible side effect. Dry skin and hand sanitizer abuse. It's 70% ethyl alcohol: The 49-year-old Maryland inmate seemed seriously sick after he drank from a gallon-container of hand sanitizer. Described as "loony," "red-eyed" and "combative," he was whisked by officials to a nearby Baltimore hospital for treatment. But they quickly discovered he wasn't ill -- just very, very drunk on Purell.…

NIH funds a private company. Why?

Everybody should think of starting a new career once in a while, and New Year's Day seems as good a time as any for US taxpayers to embark on their new jobs as Venture Capitalists. Medgadget, a site that brings us news of advances in medical technology, now tells us about a private Salt Lake City company, TechniScan Medical Systems, who just received $2.8 million in taxpayer money, from NIH no less, to develop a noninvasive ultrasound device for detecting breast cancer. Medgadget is offended by the use of public dollars for this purpose, and frankly, so am I. NIH supports basic research and…

Blogiversity? Blogcity? Blogstate?

Inspired by RPM of Evolgen, I ask, how many people in your school/University, or town, or state, are blogging, especially about science? First, I don't know of anyone from my University who blog privately, though you can probably search the MSNBlogs etc. for schools and locales. But, folks at North Carolina State University started, just a few months ago, their own blogging service, called WolfBlogs, using Webroller as the platform. There are still not that many blogs there, most are still trying to figure out how to do this thing, but a few have taken off nicely, and a couple are science-…

All Politics Is Local

This week, it took me quite a while to figure out how to answer the Ask a ScienceBlogger question: "What are some unsung successes that have occurred as a result of using science to guide policy?" As a relative newcomer to the United States, and even more a newcomer to American politics, I was not around long enough to pay attention to various science-driven policies of the past. Most of what I know are far from "unsung" successes - from Manhattan Project, through Clean Air and Clean Water acts, to the EWndangered Species Act, to the international Kyoto Protocol. Dealing with DDT, DES,…

MySpace, family picnics, or church?

This is a longish article, but I excerpted a few sentences for you. What do you think? Social Isolation Growing in U.S., Study Says Americans are far more socially isolated today than they were two decades ago, and a sharply growing number of people say they have no one in whom they can confide, according to a comprehensive new evaluation of the decline of social ties in the United States. A quarter of Americans say they have no one with whom they can discuss personal troubles, more than double the number who were similarly isolated in 1985. Overall, the number of people Americans have in…

One Week Update

There are some excellent news from Seed overlords. They will add to our DonorsChoose educational action for science and math programs for underfunded schools. You can see the donation thermometer on the sidebar of about 20 blogs here, including mine. We are doing excellent - my readers have already donated $342.26 and other bloggers are also doing fine - we have two weeks to go. Now Seed bosses have announced that they will match our donations, up to $10,000. So, if all the bloggers combined raise $10, 000 or more, SEED will donate an additional ten grand! You will be able to see regular…

The opportunistic flu virus

Flu virus is opportunistic. It takes advantage of any weakness. Seasonal flu picks on the very old and the very young, but pandemic flu has found us old folks tough and the younger amongst us quite tasty. No natural resistance seems to be a flavor enhancer. And pre-existing medical conditions? Quite delectable. So how full is the menu in the prime age range? CDC has just released one of their Quickstat summaries based on household interviews with a sample of the civilian, noninstitutionalized, adult U.S. population. The question the sample was asked was whether a doctor or other health…

Treating AIDS is not a crime

Most of us would agree that treating AIDS is not a crime. "Most of us" apparently doesn't include the Iranian judiciary and the Iranian government. We have posted on it several times (here, here, here) but for new readers, here's some background: Doctor Arash Alaei and Doctor Kamiar Alaei are two Iranian physicians who were detained in June 2008 by Iranian authorities. The physicians, who are brothers, were kept in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison for over six months without charges or trial. On December 31, 2008, a one-day, closed-door trial was held, in which the brothers were tried as…

Cow water: an unforgettable bouquet

Mix a little hard line nationalism with religious fundamentalism and what do you get? The formula for cow piss soft drink: A hardline Hindu organisation, known for its opposition to "corrupting" Western food imports, is planning to launch a new soft drink made from cow's urine, often seen as sacred in parts of India. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), or National Volunteer Corps, said the bovine beverage is undergoing laboratory tests for the next 2 to 3 months but did not give a specific date for its commercial release. (Reuters) The Hindu Taliban want to desecularize Indian society and…

A (National) Park with a view

The trouble with National Parks for a city boy like me is too much wilderness. I am only able to stand up on asphalt. So it is comforting to find out the Bush administration is looking out for folks like me, should by some quirk of fate we find ourselves outdoors in a National Park with no Starbucks within blocks. Soon we'll be able to see the soul satisfying outline of a huge coal fired power plant, an oil refinery or some other familiar polluter to make us feel at home. It's just too bad that the EPA's own administrators can't get onboard: The Environmental Protection Agency is finalizing…

The cruelty in Gaza continues

Reader JJ reminds me that while we celebrate Obama's victory and a new mood of hope and optimism in the US, the people of the Gaza strip have little to celebrate and even less reason for hope and optimism: The UN has no more food to distribute in the Gaza Strip, the head of relief efforts in the area has warned. John Ging said handouts for 750,000 Gazans would have to be suspended until Saturday at the earliest, and called Gaza's economic situation "a disaster". Israel earlier denied entry to a convoy carrying humanitarian supplies. It has prevented the transfer of all goods into Gaza for…

Annals of McCain - Palin, XXXII: Lying about his support of veterans

Dishonest John McCain may be a distinguished veteran, but he isn't the favorite of veteran's groups. Not that you'd know it to listen to him. He has consistently lied about this, blatantly and brazenly. Like when he responded to a veteran's question about why his voting record on funding the VA is so abysmal: Q: I know you voted for lesser increases, and sometimes they were so much less, and our VA desperately needs the money. Can you tell me why you would vote for less money for the VA when there's a war going on? M: Well of course I have not and I'm afraid I've been endorsed by the VFW in…

Annals of McCain - Palin, XXVII: palling around with a domestic terrorist

It's become a campaign issue that one of the Presidential candidates has been close with a domestic terrorist. So let's look at the facts. G. Gordon Liddy is a convicted burglar and domestic terrorist. He was also the host, in his home, for a 1998 fundraiser for John McCain's Senate re-election campaign. McCain was on Liddy's radio show in May 2007, where he praised Liddy's values and proclaimed himself proud of Liddy and his "adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great": During the same period that Bill Ayers was a member of the Weather Underground, Gordon Liddy…

Shoes for Christmas

Lots of people complained that throwing shoes at the president was an act of violence, and therefore beyond the pale of what should be allowed. I think they're wrong, that it's a harmless expression of naked contempt, and that there ought to be more contempt expressed towards this president, but let's compromise. No throwing shoes. How about politely handing them to him? The Rude Pundit had a brilliant and obvious idea. This morning, the Rude Pundit decided to honor the efforts of Muntader al-Zaidi, the Iraqi shoe-tosser, by taking out a raggedy old pair of sneakers, putting them in a…

Our pastures of plenty are hot and dirty

The hardest and most dangerous agricultural work in the United States is not done by people who are citizens. It is done by immigrants. Some don't have proper documents but many do. Documents don't protect workers from dying. And agricultural workers die of heat stroke at 20 times the rate of other workers: In mid-July 2005, a male Hispanic worker with an H-2A work visa (i.e., a temporary, nonimmigrant foreign worker hired under contract to perform farm work) aged 56 years was hand-harvesting ripe tobacco leaves on a North Carolina farm. He had arrived from Mexico 4 days earlier and was on…

Beware: Indonesian Health Minister at the wheel

The Indonesian Health Minister, Siti Fadilah Supari, has figured out how to deal with her country's reputation as being the bird flu capital of the world. She isn't going to announce deaths from the disease as they happen: A 15-year-old girl died of bird flu last month, becoming Indonesia's 109th victim, but the government decided to keep the news quiet. It is part of a new policy aimed at improving the image of the nation hardest hit by the disease. Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari said Thursday she will no longer announce deaths immediately after they are confirmed. But she promised to…

Why we don't trust the FBI

In July 2005 when there was a terrorist bombing in the London subway system the FBI, using a perfectly valid and legal subpoena, asked for and obtained documents from North Carolina State University about a possible conspirator. That apparently wasn't good enough for the FBI. They wanted the agent to get the documents using a National Security Letter under the USA Patriot Act. They made him return the documents and then issue a NSL: Under the USA Patriot Act, FBI counterterrorism investigators can self-issue such letters to get phone records, portions of credit reports and bank records,…

Help the Obama Administration devise a healthy Open Access policy

As many of you, my readers, are interested in Open Access publishing and have given it quite some thought over time, I think you are the right kind of people to contribute to this in a thoughtful and persuasive manner. Please do it. From everyONE blog: The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has invited comment on broadening public access to publicly funded research and they want to hear from you. Please post your contributions to this blog. Their Request for Information (RFI) lasts for just 30 days and expires on 7 January 2010, so we'd like to encourage you to get involved…

Tweetlinks, 10-17-09

Follow me on Twitter to get these, and more, in something closer to Real Time (all my tweets are also imported into FriendFeed where they are much more easy to search and comment on, as well as into my Facebook wall where they are seen by quite a different set of people): I tweeted a lot today. I was mesmerized by the rich tweetstream emanating from the National Science Writers conference in Austin - see today's program and tune in tomorrow for more. Unfortunately, there was not that much tweeting from the ASBH (bioethics) conference in D.C., but I will get the first-hand detailed report…

A query from New Mexico

Not all my mail is from cranks and ravers; I actually get some nice and friendly and interesting mail, too. Like this one, from Hank Alme, who asks a good question: To what extent does intellectual honesty require me to also read guys like Behe and Dembski, and to understand their arguments? That's an easy one: intellectual honesty doesn't require that you read any of their crap. One of their great successes is that they've managed to convince many people that it's only fair to read their books, often reading them instead of good science. It's not true! You are far better off reading a solid…

YouTube and public health

YouTube is a phenomenon. We've gotten so used to it (and its user generated content cousins) sometimes we don't realize how potent it is. Potent and in the hands of all sorts of people. Creative, crazy, evil, well meaning, ordinary, boring . . . you get the idea. And getting ideas is another thing people get from YouTube. Sometimes the ideas are good. Sometimes not: It may be better known as the place to go to watch a drunken David Hasselhoff eating a hamburger, but the video website YouTube has also become a popular and effective soapbox for people who believe vaccinations are harmful, a new…

Don't go in! Oh, you live here? Fine.

It's OK for storm victims to live in them, but don't let your employees enter them: FEMA. Who else? The Federal Emergency Management Agency is barring employees from entering thousands of stored travel trailers over concerns about hazardous fumes, while more than 48,000 other trailers continue to be used by hurricane victims in Louisiana and Mississippi. FEMA is advising employees not to enter any of the roughly 70,000 trailers in storage areas across the country, but the directive does not apply to other trailers still in use, agency spokeswoman Mary Margaret Walker said Thursday. (AP; hat…

Oh, stop it, Bill — you're too kind

Bill O'Reilly makes one of his trademark screeds against the War on Christmas, but it doesn't quite have the effect he intended, I think. He's very cranky about the atheist sign in the capitol of Washington state, which is Olympia, so he rants against Seattle. I'm sure it makes sense in Billo World. Seattle now rivals San Francisco for secular-progressive nuttiness. The city fathers are allowing public nakedness in city parks, nude bike riding, and in Fremont, a Seattle suburb, they actually put up a statue honoring Lenin, the father of communism. What's wrong with nudity? That sounds like a…

White House "eviscerates" CDC testimony

CDC Director Julie Gerberding's draft testimony to be presented before a Senate committee was "eviscerated" by the Office of Management and Budget according to an AP story by Josef Hebert (hat tip MF). The missing pieces related to the potential health impacts of climate change: Her testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee had much less information on health risks than a much longer draft version Gerberding submitted to the White House Office of Management and Budget for review in advance of her appearance. "It was eviscerated," said a CDC official, familiar with…

Terror in the kitchen

Someday people will look back on the period of terrorism hysteria with wonder, maybe even wry amusement. There are terrorists, to be sure. Some of them work for sovereign states and are part of their military or police. Some of them work for "non state" entities. Those are the ones governments like to call terrorists. Terminology is important, I guess. Governments and terrorists have several things in common. Both have the objective of terrorizing and frightening people as a matter of policy. That's why we call them terrorists. Governments add the extra fillip of frightening their own…

So, elephants actually run (leave the ground with all four feet at the same time)

Have You Ever Seen An Elephant ... Run?: Dr John Hutchinson, a research leader at the UK's Royal Veterinary College (RVC), has already shown that, contrary to previous studies and most popular opinion, elephants moving at speed appear to be running. Now with funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) his team is using Hollywood-style motion capture cameras combined with MRI and CT scans of elephants to build 3D computer models of elephant locomotion to show the forces and stresses at work on muscles, tendons and bones. The research team has been working…

Science Blogging Conference Update

Anton, Brian, Paul and I are now in daily (actually more than once a day) contact, putting together the last touches of the organization of the Science Blogging Conference. Only 9 days to go! The teach-in session on the 18th is full. The Friday (19th) dinner is in my neighborhood at 7pm - there is a projector and a screen so we will browse and read blogs while eating and drinking. I need to know who is coming to that - e-mail Anton or edit the Dinner page on the wiki (for both Friday and Saturday dinners). Check out the Program and if you can, make a small donation. There are currently 143…

Atheism on NPR

Yesterday I listened to a segment on All Things Considered called Atheist Brigade Takes Arguments to the Tolerant (podcast) with some trepidation. But, when it all ended, I thought it was not bad at all. Apart from a couple of intolerant sentences in the beginning by someone named Wolf (if I remember correctly) and a stupid quote of Pat Robertson, most of the time was given to Sam Harris who also had the last word. The phrase "no atheists in foxholes" was debunked and an NPR correspondent (John Burnett) who used it in the past came on the show to apologize. It is telling that he had no…

Flu: the gift that keeps on giving

There is a good Canadian Press by Michael Macdonald about the often long time it takes to make a full recovery from flu. A full blown case of classical influenza can really lay you low for days or weeks. People often report never having felt so sick. But once you are "recovered" and back to work or your daily activities you aren't necessarily fully recovered: Marga Cugnet thought she knew what she was in for when she came down with swine flu last October. But the health administrator from Weyburn, Sask., said she was annoyed and somewhat dejected when the potent H1N1 virus left her with…

A Champion of Change

Earlier this month I got an invitation to the White House. It was rather cryptic, asking me to attend an Event, today, followed by a reception in the Indian Treaty Room Regrettably, I had to decline, I was in Europe, and would only just be getting back. The logistics of getting to DC in time were near impossible; there is no source of funding for such jaunts; and, most important, there was no way I could get the paperwork to be cleared to attend submitted in time. So, they went ahead without me. Paul Ginsparg The Event was the Champions of Change - Open Science edition: a Call for…

Seeking nominations for list of unscrupulous employers

Congressman Tom Price MD (R-GA) is apparently offended by the suggestion that some companies are not model employers. During last week's hearing in the House Education and Labor Committee on a bill to modernize a few provisions of the OSHA and MSHA statutes, he seemed annoyed that asst. secretary of labor for OSHA, David Michaels, has characterized some employers as "unscrupulous." The Congressman said: "Secretary Michaels, you have talked a number of times about [quote] unscrupulouos employers [unquote]. Do you want to name any?" Dr. Michaels responded with one example: "a certain oil…

Friday Blog Roundup

The International AIDS Conference took place this week in Mexico City, and bloggers have plenty to say about it: RH Reality Check provides extensive, in-depth coverage from multiple bloggers. Marilyn Chase at WSJâs Health blog summarizes some expert attendeesâ thoughts on the future of AIDS research, the role of AIDS in healthcare system planning, reshaping the international AIDS vaccine strategy, and using AIDS drugs to curb HIV transmission. At Global Health Policy, Ruth Levine explains why PEPFAR needs more evaluation, and Mead Over considers how the global approach to AIDS has changed…

Friday Blog Roundup

Bloggers help us stay on top of environmental news: Andrew Revkin at Dot Earth brings us the grim news from a new federal report on climate change impacts: thereâs a 90-percent likelihood that the frequency and intensity of heat waves and heavy downpours will rise. Andrew Schneider at Secret Ingredients reports that the Supreme Court has rejected appeals by asbestos giant W.R. Grace, clearing the way for company officials to stand trial for knowingly endangering the lives of its workers and residents of Libby, Montana. Kate Sheppard at Gristmill keeps tabs on a flurry of fuel-related…

Friday Blog Roundup

Bloggers had a lot to say about food this week: Tom Philpott at Gristmill contrasts the U.S. and Canadian approaches to regulating the use of ethanol distillers grains in cattle feed. Guess which countryâs regulators think the important thing is leaving cattle owners free to feed their animals whatever they please, even if the substance in question has been linked to beef being tainted with a deadly strain of E. coli? Elanor at The Ethicurian (via Enviroblog) warns that EPA wants to deny communities information about the toxic gases coming out of confined animal feeding operations. Lisa…

Occupational Health News Roundup

The Charlotte Observerâs excellent series on poultry workers began by detailing the injuries workers suffer and the way company officials dismiss their complaints (highlighted in a previous roundup), and continued with a look at the inadequate regulations, inspections, and fines for poultry-processing plants. For the company House of Raeford Farms, which it cited for dozens of hazards, OSHA proposed fines totaling $205,000, but dropped that to $47,000 following negotiations with the company. That included penalties of just $3,500 after a chlorine gas leak killed one worker, and $13,560 after…

Occupational Health News Roundup

Last year, coal miner Scott Howard of Letcher County, Kentucky sued the Mine Safety and Health Administration for failing to "promulgate a respirable dust regulation that will eliminate respiratory illness caused by work in coal mines." Howard alleged that this failure left him in unsafe working conditions; he filed his suit after new studies found bluck lung disease increasing among Appalachian miners. As Ken Ward Jr. reports in the Charleston Gazette, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has now ruled that "Howard could not successfully bring the lawsuit because he had not yet petitioned…

Occupational Health News Roundup

In 2007 and 2008, 12 construction workers were killed on the Las Vegas Strip. The Las Vegas Sunâs Alexandra Berzon wrote an excellent series on the breakneck pace of construction in Las Vegas, which creates deadly conditions, and the disappointing response from the stateâs OSHA. Now, a bill has been introduced in the Nevada Assembly that would require the stateâs construction workers to complete 10 hours of safety training, and supervisors to complete 30 hours. Nevada OSHA would be responsible for certifying that workers have completed the training and for citing and fining employers who…

Friday Blog Roundup

Thereâs been a lot of news about Obama appointees this week: Mike Dunford at The Questionable Authority is furious about the secret holds placed on the nominations of John Holdren (for Science Advisor) and Jane Lubchenco (to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), and urges readers to âraise more hell over this issue.â Maggie Mahar at Health Beat reports on Sanjay Guptaâs withdrawal of his name for the Surgeon General position. Kathleen Reeves at RH Reality Check explains how Kathleen Sebelius, Obamaâs new pick for Health and Human Services Secretary, is a âpro-pregnancy…

Friday Blog Roundup

First, some welcome breaking news from Amie Newman at RH Reality Check: President Obama has rescinded the Global Gag Rule, which banned giving federal funds to internal groups that provide abortions or informations about the procedure. Jacob Goldstein at WSJ's Health Blog is also on top of the latest health news, reporting that Obama has named Richard Besser, who's headed emergency response efforts at CDC, as acting head of that agency. And bloggers have a few more thoughts on Obama's appointments and plans: Maggie Mahar at Health Beat suggests that Obama's inaugural address might have been…

Occupational Health News Roundup

In most of the worker deaths we cover, itâs clear what could have been done to prevent the tragedy â fall protection, cleanup of combustible dust, better crane inspections â and what kinds of regulations are needed to keep such disasters from occurring again. In the death of Jdimytai Damour, though, I canât summon much anger at his employer. What went wrong at the Valley Stream, NY Wal-Mart at 5 a.m. on Black Friday was instead a failure of basic human decency. Suddenly, witnesses and the police said, the doors shattered, and the shrieking mob surged through in a blind rush for holiday…

Worker fatally injured at my workplace

Mr. Rosaulino Montano, 46, an employee of  Engineered Construction Products of Smithsburg, MD fell seven stories to his death on Tuesday, Nov 18 on the campus of my workplace, the George Washington University (GWU).  Mr. Montano was installing windows at a $75 million residence hall under construction at F St and 22nd St. on the Foggy Bottom campus.  The 10-story building will house 400 students and is schedule to open in Fall 2009.  Mr. Montano's death is terrible, and when the official investigations are completed I'm sure we'll learn that his death should have been prevented…

Protecting the Public from Dangerous Products â Whatâs Next?

Members of the media are gravely enumerating all the challenging circumstances that President-Elect Obama faces (financial collapse, two wars, global climate disruption, etc), so itâs worth noting that this is also a tough time for product safety. Recent problems with lead in childrenâs toys, contaminated food, and tainted drugs have demonstrated how many holes exist in our systems for ensuring product safety, and Chinaâs melamine problem highlights how problematic it can be to rely on countries whose safety mechanisms are even weaker. Hereâs a quick review of where things stand: The…

Occupational Health News Roundup

NIOSH (the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) has launched a new blog, called the NIOSH Science Blog, as a way to fulfill its mission of translating NIOSH scientific research into practice. It invites visitors âto present ideas to NIOSH scientists and each other while engaging in robust scientific discussion with the goal of protecting workers.â Their first three posts cover a range of occupational health and safety topics: Workplace Stress, by NIOSH Senior Scientist Steve Sauter Truck Driver Safety and Health, by NIOSH Research Health Scientist W. Karl Sieber Preventing…

Occupational Health News Roundup

The Mine Safety and Health Administration has been in the news again lately. The Labor Departmentâs Inspector General released a report stating that the agency failed to conduct required inspections at more than one in seven of U.S. underground coal mines last year (budget constraints and a lack of management emphasis on worker safety by the Bush administration get the blame). In a separate audit, the IG also found that the U.S. Department of Laborâs procedures for counting mining deaths are inconsistent and donât follow the agencyâs own written rules. Charles Thomas, a 16-year veteran of…