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terrasig | July 27, 2007I once had a pharmacology professor who told us, "Today's side effects are tomorrow's therapy." What he meant was one's garbage is another's treasure. Side effects in one setting can be used for therapeutic benefit in another.
A perfect example is minoxidil, the antihypertensive vasodilator, that had the unusual side effect of causing inappropriate hair growth. But when formulated in a cream whose distribution could be restricted by where you put it, voila!...you have Rogaine (Regaine outside the US).
Well, a similar situation has been emerging over the last several years with "…
cmcclain | July 26, 2007 Image credit: (c) 2003 MBARI, A pair of Humboldt squid hunting in Monterey Bay. Over the last five years, large, predatory Humboldt squid have moved north from equatorial waters and invaded the sea off Central California, where they may be decimating populations of Pacific hake, an important commercial fish. More on the study here at DSN.
cmcclain | July 26, 2007
No that's not real and neither are the others in the post! Argonauta Argo, National Museum& Gallery, Cardiff
Spending time at the Museum Comparative Zoology at Harvard (MCZ), a Museum of a Museum, I realize the potential for items to get lost in unvisited cabinets. This happens regularly in my own brainoffice. Eureka!
Paula Holahan, a curator at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Zoological Museum, noting a series of keyholes under the exhibit cases decided to explore. After excavating the keys, she was quite surprised to find several boxes of glass sculptures of marine…
tqa | July 26, 2007
Yesterday, my wife and I were talking about current events over dinner. Part of the discussion got a little bit...interesting:
Me: "It looks like some of the families at Fort Lewis are upset with the post CG [commanding general].
Wife: "Oh? What'd he do?"
Me: "It looks like he thinks that the number of memorial services is causing problems, so he decided to just have one big one every month instead of individual services."
Me: "Sorry. Should have waited until you were done chewing."
In all seriousness, though, the incident at Ft. Lewis really did happen, although I did have some of my…
revere | July 26, 2007In my early to mid career it fell to me to teach large lecture courses that surveyed all of environmental health. Everything. Air polllution. Wastewater. Food sanitation. Radiation protection. Over the years I learned a lot beyond my particular specialty (environmental epidemiology) and it has stood me in good stead in many ways. Students seemed to enjoy learning about it, too, and one of their most frequent reactions was surprise at how suddenly newspapers had all sorts of stories about environmental topics. Of course those stories had always been there. They just never noticed them. I am…
tqa | July 25, 2007
I've been looking at the Ward Churchill case more than I expected. I don't know why, exactly. It might be because Churchill is such a fantastically outrageous character - both in the tone of his published works and in the depths of his academic malfeasance. It might be because of the delicious irony involved. Churchill's misconduct was discovered, after all, as a result of the public hue and cry that came after one of his essays came to light - an essay that Churchill had subtitled, "On the Justice of Roosting Chickens." Mostly, though, I think it's because as I read more of what Churchill…
cmcclain | July 25, 2007On the wire from Oceana (Europe)...
Just a few weeks into our summer-long expedition, the crew of Oceana's Ranger experienced an intense day at sea....At the time of the incident we had filmed, photographed and recorded the positions and catch of about 80 French illegal driftnetters...Seven ships coordinated their attack by surrounding the Ranger in the Mediterranean Sea. After immobilizing our propellers, they began to hurl objects of all kind - including poisonous fish, flares and 4-letter words - and demanding the photos and videos we had collected. They even went so far as dropping…
grrlscientist | July 25, 2007This week's reader poll results are posted below the fold. These results were not at all surprising to me, although I am interested to read your comments. As always, I'd like to thank you for taking these polls, they are very informative.
I also include a link to a new poll that you can take, or you can scroll down to find the same poll on my left sidebar. Note that you can choose more than one answer on this particular poll.
What type of books do you read; fiction or nonfiction?
cmcclain | July 25, 2007Growing up to two meters (six feet) long, Humboldt squid are formidable predators that hunt krill and a variety of fishes. Their normal habitat is within the tropical and subtropical waters of the East Pacific. Over the last few years, however, Humboldt squid have begun moving into cooler-water areas such as Central California.
Image: (c) 2003 MBARI
If you been keeping up here at DSN, you probably already know that Humboldt squid are invading further north up the Pacific Coast. Dosidicus gigas are voracious pack hunters occurring historically from Chile to Baja California. Occasionally, they…
cmcclain | July 25, 2007Image above: NEEMO 11 crew member works near the undersea habitat "Aquarius" during a session of extravehicular activity for the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) project. Image credit: NASANemo is some cute cuddly fish for children and Disney wallets. NEEMO on the other hand although also based in Florida is much better. NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations project sends groups of NASA employees and contractors to live in Aquarius, an undersea laboratory 62 feet down off Key Largo owned by NOAA, for up to three weeks at a time. Aquarius provides a platform to…
cmcclain | July 25, 2007Scholastic.com just launched Investigate the Giant Squid: Mysterious Cephalopod of the Deep. The site is geared for children and provides numerous links and activities to learn more. Also included are teacher's resources and guide.
cmcclain | July 25, 2007I apologize about the temporary lack of entries. My beloved MacBook Pro is sick as in the doctor says "I am sorry there was nothing more we could do"...as in the farmer says "We had to put her down, she was fixin to turn"...as in the priest saying "Demons be gone!" You get the picture. Not having access to a functional computer, and Peter out of the country, expect some temporary outages here at DSN. Will post when I can.
tqa | July 25, 2007
I'm now living in a state where the Governor thinks that a creationist is just who we need running the schools. Absolutely wonderful. I'd say more, but the Bad Astronomer did a much better job.
tqa | July 25, 2007
A few of you might remember Ward Churchill. He's the University of Colorado professor who caused a stink a few years ago with an essay that compared 9/11 victims in the World Trade Center to Nazis. His remarks generated a surge of demands that he be fired. Yesterday, he finally was - but not for the 9/11 essay. And there's the rub.
Ward Churchill was dismissed for cause by the Board of Regents for academic misconduct that was unearthed when people began to examine his record more closely when the offensive essay came to light. They found repeated cases of academic misconduct, and filed a…
mixingmemory | July 24, 2007I usually avoid linking to the continental philosophy blogs that I read because I'm well aware of the attitudes towards "pomo" stuff among many of the readers of this blog, but this post at Larval Subjects (a blog by a Deleuze scholar who, if I'm not mistaken, also practices some form of Lacanian psychoanalysis) got me thinking. I know that there have been movements within literary criticism to utilize and perhaps inform research and theory in cognitive science, and many if not most of these have been within the cognitive linguistics paradigm, broadly construed (not all of it is conceptual…
sb admin | July 24, 2007Crosspost from Effect Measure, by Revere
At 3:50 am EDST I received the welcome news, via Declan Butler, that the Tripoli 6 were free and on the tarmac in Sofia, Bulgaria. All are Bulgarian citizens and were released by the Libyan prison authorities as part of an extradition arrangement. Their life sentences were immediately pardoned by Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov. Our six medical colleague had been accused of deliberately infecting over 400 children in a hospital in Benghazi, Libya and sentenced to death. They have been imprisoned for 8 years, through two trials and numerous appeals…
pharyngula | July 24, 2007Fabulous news: the Palestinian and Bulgarian health care workers who were falsely accused by the Libyan government of infecting children with AIDS, who were sentenced to death, and who had their sentence then commuted to life in prison, have been given a pardon and released. They are currently in Bulgaria, out of prison, and safe. The various governments involved say no money changed hands, but that a deal was worked out for release in return for closer ties to the EU, whatever that means.
pharyngula | July 23, 2007I just got home a short while ago, and it's 90°, my shirt is soaked through with sweat, and the feeble breeze here isn't strong enough to provide any relief at all, but it is from precisely the right direction to stir the thick olfactory stew from the nearby swine farms to sluggishly settle on bucolic Morris. Then, to add to the clammy stink, I just had to read Norwegianity's flensing of the rotting carcass of Michael Totten. I needed something light and airy and sweet, Mark — is this your revenge for being trapped in a library listening to me drone on yesterday?
nisbetmc | July 23, 2007Big Tobacco.
Big Oil.
Big Pharma.
Big Biotech.
Big Nanotech?
Each of these phrases are examples of frame devices, words that act like triggers in activating underlying cultural meanings.
In fact, these frame devices instantly communicate the public accountability frame: Who benefits? Who controls the science? Is this science in the public or in the private interest?
As nanotechnology climbs up the media agenda over the next decade, watch out for the "Big Nanotech" frame device. It will be a sign that interpretations of the issue are moving from a promotional emphasis on social progress and…
tqa | July 23, 2007
The Fish and Wildlife service announced on Friday that it would review ten endangered species listing decisions that were identified by regional directors as having been inappropriately influenced by former Deputy Assistant Secretary Julie MacDonald. MacDonald, as some of you may recall, was the Deputy Assistant Secretary at Interior who decided that she needed to spend more time with her family shortly after the Interior Inspector General concluded that she acted inappropriately on numerous occasions, and (very) shortly before she was scheduled to testify before a newly hostile…