Research
terrasig | January 28, 2008If you read nothing else: Men with prostate cancer should avoid any dietary supplement containing testosterone (or anything that sounds like it) or that offers claims of increased virility, sexual performance, or increased muscle mass.
Consumption of a herbal/hormone dietary supplement has been linked to two cases of aggressive prostate cancer as reported in a paper in the 15 January issue of Clinical Cancer Research (abstract free; full paper paywalled) . The observations and follow-up studies were conducted by urologists at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School and Baylor…
dmunger | January 24, 2008When you know something, is that different from remembering? Both types of thoughts are clearly part of the memory system, but is there really any difference between the two concepts? We often use the two terms nearly interchangeably: I might say "I remember Suzanne had her purse when we left the restaurant because I saw her pull out her phone at the bus stop," but I might equally say "I know Suzanne had her purse on the bus because she was gabbing on the phone the whole ride home."
But the subtle linguistic difference between the two terms isn't meaningless. We might know George W. Bush is…
dmunger | January 22, 2008When we first moved to the small suburban town we still live in, we quickly realized we needed to buy a second car. Nora and Jim were just one and two and a half years old, only barely beginning to understand language. After we made our purchase, sometimes we drove in the old car (a Subaru station wagon), and sometimes in the new car (a Plymouth minivan). Since neither child could pronounce words as complicated as "minivan," they had to come up with their own way to refer to the vehicles. They called the Subaru the "red car" and the van the "blue car."
But there were many other ways they…
terrasig | January 18, 2008Erleichda is the nom de plume of a guest blogger who contributes regularly to The Friday Fermentable columns. The act of contributing a column periodically on the topic of wine is consistent with the philosophy embodied in his pseudonym, i.e., to "lighten up" (from 'Jitterbug Perfume' by Tom Robbins).
Erleichda holds a PhD in microbiology following a baccalaureate in the same discipline. Post-doctoral training was received in tumor immunology and virology. While initial employment involved transplantation immunology research for a few years, a subsequent job at a research institute focused…
terrasig | January 18, 2008We're a little bit late here in wishing the DrugMonkey blog a happy 1st blogiversary. Contributors DrugMonkey, BikeMonkey, and PhysioProf have had a very productive year of offering valuable career advice for graduate and postgraduate trainees in the biomedical sciences, general discussions on NIH grant funding, and various topics in neuroscience.
The sci/med blogosphere is populated quite heavily by graduate students, medical students, and postdoctoral fellows. This situation is perhaps easy to explain in that most of these trainees are of an age that is comfortable with social networking…
dmunger | January 17, 2008Take a look at this slideshow (QuickTime required). You'll first see a photo in perfect focus. Then 12 more pictures will flash by, each of them blurred using Photoshop. Finally, the original photo will appear again. Is it the same as before, or slightly blurrier or sharper?
I'll give the answer after a few readers have had a chance to make a guess in the comments. Most people with normal vision will gradually adapt to blurry photos (though it might take a little longer than I've allowed in this movie). Then when they see a photo that's in focus, it seems too sharp -- as if it's been…
sb admin | January 16, 2008A quick look at âChernobyl: Relationship between Number of Missing Newborn Boys and the Level of Radiation in the Czech Regionsâ by Miroslav Peterka, Renata Peterková, and ZbyneËk Likovsky´ in Environmental Health Perspectives.
As a rule, more boys than girls are born. But in November 1986 in the eastern regions of the Czech Republic, the reverse was true â more girls than boys. It appears that radiation exposure released by the Chernobyl nuclear accident in April 1986, brought to earth by rain over the area, increased radiation exposure. Fetuses that were approximately three months old at…
dmunger | January 15, 2008At least once or twice a week at dinnertime, our family has what we call a "harmony meal." Jim and Nora are good eaters with broad tastes, but they both (along with me and Greta) also have some foods they don't like. A harmony meal is a meal where everyone in the family likes every dish we serve. These aren't necessarily the healthiest meals (spaghetti with meat sauce and garlic bread is a favorite), but it's nice to have a meal where everyone's happy about what's being served.
When we're not having a harmony meal, we all still manage to find something we'll eat -- and our kids understand…
terrasig | January 15, 2008This missive came in yesterday from NIH, apparently sent to all investigators funded by the agencies:
A recent open letter to Secretary Leavitt (PDF here) from Dr. Roland Nardone and several experts in cell biology highlighted an important methodological issue associated with research involving cultured cells. The letter identifies a number of instances in which research has been based on misidentified or contaminated cultures. In some cases, proper characterization would have altered the experimental outcome significantly. Improper characterization can impede efforts to replicate…
dmunger | January 14, 2008I was a little surprised by an offhand observation Thomas Schubert made in a recent research report. He claimed that while men will commonly make a fist to celebrate a goal in a soccer match or a home run in baseball, it's unusual for women to do so.
I'm sure I've seen both female athletes and fans celebrating with fist pumps. But maybe I only noticed these cases because they were exceptions. Let's see if we can verify Schubert's observation with a little poll.
Take the pollFree Poll by Blog Flux
But there are additional gender dynamics to making fists besides who celebrates that way at a…
terrasig | January 13, 2008Leave it to PharmGirl, MD, to point me in the direction of a story that addresses the core theme of this blog: not only can medicines come from the Earth, but the Earth can itself be medicine. This time we're not talking about South Carolina "sandlappers" as detailed in my inaugural post here as authored originally at the old blog. (For newcomers, you'll get this gist if you also read, "Why Terra Sigillata?").
Instead, we wish to point your attention to a LiveScience article by Clara Moskowitz entitled, Why Chimps Eat Dirt. The practice of eating soil, known as geophagy, is common among…
terrasig | January 12, 2008The word on the e-streets is that DrugMonkey co-blogger, PhysioProf, has hung out a new shingle at. . .PhysioProf, the blog. (So as not to confuse the issues, DrugMonkey is the lead blogger at DrugMonkey the blog. . .does that make sense?).
But we get the best of both worlds: PhysioProf will still be continuing his more academic gig at DrugMonkey.
PhysioProf has been a thoughtful commenter 'round these parts and has been a strength over at DM, especially with regard to academic research, funding, career development, and general issues such as how not to screw up one's own faculty interview…
dmunger | January 10, 2008There was a lot of buzz online a couple months back when an article entitled "Moniker Maladies" made what seemed to many to be a startling claim: Baseball players strike out more often when their names start with "K"; Students with the initials "C" and "D" get worse grades than others.
Actually, this effect, known as the "name-letter effect," has been known for several years. If your name -- even your last name -- starts with T, you're more likely to live in Tacoma or Tulsa than San Francisco or Springfield. Chris at Mixing Memory wrote an excellent summary of the research, so I won't repeat…
dmunger | January 8, 2008Listen to the following three short audio samples. Your job is to say whether the tempo (the rate at which the notes are played) is speeding up or slowing down. Even if it sounds like it's maintaining the same tempo, make your best guess as to whether it's speeding up or slowing down.
[Update: There's a new demo here. And see this correction]
Clip 1:
Take the pollFree Poll by Blog Flux
Clip 2:
Take the pollFree Poll by Blog Flux
Clip 3:
Take the pollFree Poll by Blog Flux
If the results here follow the pattern found in a number of studies, there should be a bias in the responses (and yes,…
dmunger | January 7, 2008The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis -- stated in its strongest form -- claims that language determines thoughts: if a language doesn't have a means of expressing a particular idea, then people speaking that language can't even conceive of that idea. This strong form has long since been rejected: There are plenty of thoughts we can have without having the words to express them.
But there is also little question that the available words do have an important impact on our thoughts. If a language doesn't have a way to express numbers above 10, for example, then that would probably result in a somewhat…
dmunger | January 3, 2008During my brief tenure as a high school teacher, one common suggestion I got from supportive colleagues was to "make your tests teaching tools." "That's often the only time you've really got your students' attention," they suggested, "so don't neglect the opportunity to teach them something."
What they meant is that you shouldn't use misleading or false information in tests as a "trick" to make sure they grasp the material: your test might be the only thing students remember from a unit.
But there's another reason testing is important for learning. For decades researchers have known that more…
dmunger | January 2, 2008You might think humans are equally good at estimating distances no matter which direction they're looking. After all, we use the same visual tools to make those estimates -- binocular disparity (the different views we see from each eye), occlusion (whether one object is in front of or behind another), and so on. But consider the situation depicted to the right. Nora is inching her way down a steep rock column, with near-vertical drops on either side of her. If she underestimates the distance to flat ground below, she might decide she doesn't need to worry about falling. Overestimating the…
dmunger | December 31, 2007[Originally posted on November 7, 2005]
What does it mean to have a gut feeling that you remember something? You see someone you recognize in a coffee shop. Do you remember her from high school? Or maybe you saw her on television. Could she be the manager of your local bank? Perhaps you don't know her at all ... but you've still got a feeling you do. What's that all about?
One theory of memory proposes that what we remember depends on our expectations. We're less likely to remember our old classmate at the coffee shop than at the high school reunion. At the bank, we might greet the manager by…
dmunger | December 27, 2007Earlier this week we discussed the relationship between life satisfaction and other measures of well-being, finding that for measures such as relative income, the happiest people weren't always the best-off. For relationships, however, the happiest individuals also seem to do better.
But these measures were only taken at an instant in time. What about over longer periods? The College and Beyond study questioned incoming college freshmen in 1976, and included a self-rating of "cheerfulness," among many other measures. Then those same individuals were surveyed in 1995. How did cheerfulness…
dmunger | December 26, 2007[Originally posted on February 20, 2006]
Here's a picture of our daughter Nora at about 3 months of age. She looks like she's fairly aware of the events going on around her (arguably more aware than she sometimes appears now, at age 12). However, as our knowledge of how infants begin to perceive the world around them has increased, we've learned that the world of a three-month-old literally looks different to them than the world we perceive as adults. That's because vision, which seems so obvious and instinctive, is actually an active process. When we perceive the world visually, we're not…