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jwilbanks | December 9, 2008I gave a project briefing yesterday at the CNI fall meeting. I talked about our experience in building the Neurocommons project and the release of our RDF distribution for data integration in molecular biology.
The meeting was PACKED. 400+ people. I was sad that my briefing was up against the OAI-ORE briefing - that's a project we want to connect to at a deep level - but I was glad to have a good crowd. It's a little intimidating to get questions from Don Lindberg about your use of bio-information from the National Library of Medicine, or from George Strawn about the NSF use of semantics.
tlambert | December 9, 2008The NEJM reports some extremely promising results on a vaccine against malaria:
In this trial, RTS,S was given along with other vaccines for children (a vaccine containing diphtheria and tetanus toxoids, whole-cell pertussis vaccine, and conjugated Haemophilus influenzae type b vaccine), according to the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) schedule. There was no interference with immune responses to the EPI vaccines. This result suggests that it will be feasible to provide RTS,S together with other routine children's vaccines, making its delivery in endemic areas much easier and less…
gregladen | December 9, 2008Black is beautiful, without a doubt. We are all versions of Africans with varying degrees and patterns of non-adaptive and often unfortunate mutations owing to chance, inbreeding, or genetic isolation, and we are all subject to clinally manifest selective forces resulting in clinally distributed phenotypes. Here and there there may be a pocket of people who really stand out from the rest of the species, but that is rare and is presumably a short term phenomenon, and the level of difference if actually measured between such groups and their neighbors remains far less than typical levels of…
cwilcox | December 9, 2008Women know this is true. Men know it, too, I think, they just don't want to admit it. Now it's supported scientifically. New research out of the University of Michigan suggests that the economic crisis could really be the fault of you horny dogs - so there!
The study sought to determine if men's financial habits, aka overspending and conspicuous consumption, were related to his desire to impress possible mates. They compared data taken from men aged 18-45 about their past, current, and desired future physical encounters with their degree of financial consumption.
"It gives an ultimate…
gregladen | December 8, 2008This evening we have two topics to cover in the area of domestic engineering. The first has to do with shopping (for groceries) and the second has to do with dishwashers.
First, and this will be brief, on the shopping for groceries:
Grocery Shopping
You know how each person goes up to the conveyor belt and puts their purchase items down, and perhaps places a plastic stick (provided by the store) behind your items (or if necessary in front as well) in order to separate the items that you are purchasing from those of other shoppers?
Well, you're doin' it wrong!!!!
Or at least, some of you…
gregladen | December 8, 2008Emily Badger writing at Miller-McCune's blog has a thoughtful piece on how George Bush ruined science for everybody:
Barack Obama received a relatively quiet endorsement on Aug. 23 from 61 of the country's Nobel laureates in physics, medicine and chemistry -- scientific heavyweights who used the occasion to both call for a scientific renewal in America and critique the state of American science at the end of the Bush era.
"During the administration of George W. Bush," their open letter charged, "vital parts of our country's scientific enterprise have been damaged by stagnant or declining…
grrlscientist | December 8, 2008tags: Millionth Comment Contest Winner, ScienceBlogs
Chandelier.
Hundred Acres restaurant and bar.
Image: GrrlScientist 6 December 2008 [larger view].
Since I am exhausted at the moment, but still have a few minutes of wireless connectivity left before the library closes, I thought I'd tell you a little about the wonderful brunch that I shared with Peggy, scienceblog's millionth comment contest winner, and with a few other sciencebloggers and several employees of Seed magazine -- whom I refer to as "seedlings". We met at the restaurant, Hundred Acres, in SoHo, near NYU.
The restaurant…
grrlscientist | December 8, 2008Here's the latest carnivalia to keep you entertained;
Movie Monday, which is fileld with all sorts of movie news, including lots of trailers.
Review Bloggers Carnival, issue 32. This blog carnival is all about consumer reviews of items (and books) that they've enjoyed .. or not. Useful for those of you who can still afford to do some Christmas shopping!
sb admin | December 8, 2008The 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…
razib | December 8, 2008Genetic Future has the temerity to put the shyest people in Europe on the spot, pointing to a paper, Genome-wide association analysis of metabolic traits in a birth cohort from a founder population. Below the fold is a map swiped from Genetic Future, I invite some bold if introverted readers to offer comment on the correspondences with their own knowledge of their nation.
Related: Finns as European outliers and The genetics of Fenno-Scandinavia.
cortex | December 8, 2008While researching this story, I came across a fascinating (and controversial) take on the "depression epidemic" called The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder. It took a few months, but I've got a new interview with the authors up at Scientific American:
LEHRER: In your book, you take a critical look at major depressive disorder (MDD), a mental illness that will afflict approximately 10 percent of individuals at some point during their life. In recent decades, the number of cases of MDD has sharply increased. Are we currently experiencing an…
ddobbs | December 8, 2008
I get a couple media-industry newsletters, which lately have made gruesome reading: The blood is running deep in most media companies, and today came the news that the New York Times, from which I get some of my better freelance assignments, is borrowing against its own brand-new building to meet cash shortages.
The same paper today runs an essay on how constantly rains such bad news these days. My favorite line:
Every modern recession includes a media séance about how horrible things are and how much worse they will be, but there have never been so many ways for the fear to leak in.…
jwilbanks | December 8, 2008One of the hardest parts of the day job is trying to explain why the commons works for science to people. I find that I have to start by explaining what science actually is, how science works, and how that doesn't take advantage of the possibility of the internet, which means I have to explain the possibility of the internet, and on and on. The smarter the non-scientist, ironically, the harder this can be - because the smart non-scientist frequently has a hard opinion about science and the internet. "Just get it online and everything will be fine!" is a common refrain.
Several months ago, I…
cwilcox | December 8, 2008
Now tell me this place doesn't look like a cool place to live. It's a concept idea for an entirely self-sufficient, green city for over 75,000 people. The design, by MVRDV, recently won the Gwanggyo City Centre Competition.
Construction for the environmentally-friendly metropolis could begin as early as 2011 in an area just south of Seoul, Korea
Now, if they don't call it "The Emerald City," I am going to be really disappointed.
gregladen | December 7, 2008This is a bunch of people getting their science news in 3D:
It must be a story about one of those parasites that come flying out of your head after breeding in your brain or something.
Anyway, 3D Science News is HERE.
gregladen | December 7, 2008Genetic Tests of Athletic Prowess -- For Babies
A new genetic test offers to predict the sports at which a baby will someday excel. But even if the science were sound -- it's not -- this might not be a good idea.
The $150 test, offered by Colorado-based Atlas Sports Genetics, looks at ACTN3, a gene that codes for fast-twitch muscle fiber.
Details here, and a related commentary here.
Horrifying parasitic illness reaches all-time low from PhysOrg.com
(AP) -- Cases of Guinea worm disease - a horrifying infection that culminates in worms coming out of a victim's skin - have reached an all-…
grrlscientist | December 7, 2008tags: BirdNote, BirdNote calendar
Image: BirdNote calendar.
In these difficult economic times, it is unusual to get something for nothing. However, there is one thing that you can get for free: BirdNote. BirdNote is a 2-minute radio program that combines the rich sounds of birds into stories that illustrate the intriguing and sometimes truly amazing ways of birds. BirdNote premiered in February 2005 and runs seven days per week on a roughly a half dozen National Public Radio stations. For years, I have advertised BirdNote in Birds in the News because I strongly believe in their mission,…
stoat | December 7, 2008There is an Anathem wikia (inevitable I suppose and quite useful for my purpose) but unfortunately it doesn't have a picture of the proof of Pythagoras's theorem that the aliens put on the outside of their spaceship. So here it is:
[Note: the colours are mine; and I have reconstructed the picture from memory of the book and working out what it is trying to prove; hopefully I've got it right.I mean, I know I've got the proof-picture right; I'm less sure that this is exactly whats in the book. The line that looks orthogonal inside the larger square, is.]
The proof isn't critical to the story (…