culture of science
ddobbs | October 20, 2006
Image from the "For Family and Friends" page of Eli Lilly's Xigris website.
_________________________________________________________
Even among the other scandals the drug industry has produced lately, the behavior described in the latest New England Journal of Medicine stands out as particularly stunning. According to a Perspective written by Peter Q. Eichacker, a National Institute of Health senior investigator in critical care, the drug giant Eli Lilly, seeking to incrrease sales of an anti-sepsis drug, Xigris, that had fallen short of its blockbuster expectations (in 2002, e.g., Lilly…
ddobbs | August 23, 2006I've been interested in music and science since taking a physics of music class back in college (20 years later, amazingly, I discovered my violin teacher of 2000, Kevin Bushee, was married to the daughter of the professor who taught that class), so I was intrigued to find this Wired piece in which neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, formerly a rock producer, talks about the neuroscience of music.
Brain excited by music. Image by Daniel Levitin, from Wired story on his work.
As it happens, the piece carries a bonus for anyone following the debate over whether talent or genius is innate — an…
ddobbs | August 17, 2006It's good to see NASA hasn't completely abandoned its mandate to look after the home planet. As its Earth Observatory notes:
Among the casualties of the conflict between Lebanon and Israel in the summer of 2006 was the Mediterranean. Israeli raids in mid-July on the Jiyyeh Power Station released thousands of tons of oil along the Lebanese coast, perhaps rivaling the Exxon Valdex accident in 1989. By August 8, the spill covered approximately 120 kilometers (75 miles). The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) flying onboard NASA’s Terra satellite took this picture on August 15…