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carlyo | November 19, 2012Virginia Apgar – Physician
The New York anesthesiologist-researcher who helped establish the field of modern neonatology, and created the newborn APGAR Scoring System in 1953 – a simple but important test administered at birth to determine the physical health of infants. This test is responsible for helping to dramatically reduce infant mortality over the last 50 years.
If you were born in the last 50 years or so, chances are –within minutes after birth -- you underwent an important health evaluation devised by Virginia Apgar. The work of this feisty, no-nonsense pediatric anesthesiologist…
illconsidered | November 19, 2012Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
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Another Week in the Planetary Crisis
Information Overload is Pattern Recognition
November 18, 2012
Chuckles, COP18+, IEA-WEO, Post Sandy, Sheffield, Cook
Fukushima Note, Fukushima News, Nuclear Policy
Melting Arctic, Walrus, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica
Food Crisis, Fisheries, GMOs, GMO Labelling, Food Production
Hurricanes, GHGs, Carbon Cycle, Temperatures, Aerosols,…
gregladen | November 19, 2012These are the tweets from the Montreal Police:
For those who don't know, Dennis Markuze is a perennial internet-only (so far) stalker who has been sending nasty emails and tweets to anyone he sees as a key Atheist figure or anyone thusly linked, and posting rambling often offensive sometimes threatening blog comments on our blog sites, for several years now. He is a Nostradamus cultist. A while back he was arrested and put by Montreal authorities into psychiatric care, and later released under certain conditions including that he not bother people on line any more. More recently he…
gregladen | November 19, 2012I have lived among Cannibals, according to a lot of people who claim to know. The number of times that the "tribal" people of the Congo have been called cannibals is too great to be counted, most notably in great literature like The Heart of Darkness but most commonly, I suspect, from the pulpit or soap box by those raising money to spread this or that word. Most Europeans and Americans don't know it, but many people who live in the Congo are quite convinced that the bazunga ... the white foreigners ... are cannibals. I've listened closely to these assertions, made by many individuals, and…
gregladen | November 18, 2012Do you now the story of the Essex? It is a ship that went down to the sea in the 19th century, and the first mate survived to chronicle the story (The Wreck of the Whaleship Essex). There are a lot of reasons that this story is interesting and important. For me, there is a special level of interest because I was involved in the excavation of the shipyard where the Essex was built.
My friend Romeo Vitelli is writing a multi-part blog post on the Essex Disaster, which begins thusly:
When the whaleship Essex left Nantucket on August 12, 1819, the twenty-one men on board had no idea that…
gregladen | November 17, 2012and later on podcast.
They are the stuff of horror and science fiction stories. They are the fodder for much political debate and public fear. Yet they may be our future and our salvation.
What are they? They are artificially created biological organisms. Authors George Church and Ed Regis, in their new book, Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Recreate Nature and Ourselves, tell us they are coming, and they tell us not to be afraid. Wary, perhaps, but not afraid.
Church is a molecular geneticist, who created many of the tools we use for genetic sequencing. He is also the founder of the…
carlyo | November 16, 2012Alia Sabor -- Materials scientist
Modern-day child prodigy who earned her Ph.D. at age 17, and became the youngest college professor in history in 2008.
No doubt, materials scientist Alia Sabur has been ahead of the "learning curve" for most of her young life. She was born in New York City in 1989 and started talking and reading when she was just 8 months old. She finished elementary school at age 5, and made the jump to college when she was just 10.
By age 14, Alia had earned her Bachelor's of Science degree in applied mathematics (summa cum laude) from New York's Stony Brook University,…
lborkowski | November 16, 2012This is the second in a series exploring the intersections between effectively caring for people living with chronic pain and the rise in unintentional poisoning deaths due to prescription painkillers. (The first post is here.) The series will explore the science and policy of balancing the need for treatment as well as the need to prevent abuse and diversion. This week's story looks at clinical efforts to reduce the risk of opioid abuse and overdose while still caring for patients; the next story will explore the role of public health officials in curbing opioid abuse.
by Kim Krisberg
Since…
gregladen | November 16, 2012A repost:
In a paper that is about to be published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, researchers Andrew Heymsfield, Patrick Kennedy, Steve Massie, Crl Schmitt, Zhien Wang, Samuel Haimov and Art Rangno make the claim that "The production of holes and channels in altocumulus clouds by two commercial turboprop aircraft is documented for the first time. ... Holes and channels in supercooled altocumulus clouds can be the result of homogeneous ice nucleation induced by turboprop and jet aircraft at temperatures warmer than previously accepted for commercial aviation…
gregladen | November 16, 2012Do you know Burn Notice? It is a TV series on USA Network involving a spy, an ex IRA soldier, and a retired Navy Seal who end up working together to solve two problem streams: the ongoing difficulty of why (and how) the main character, Michael, was "burned" as a spy, and the novel problem that arises every episode in which the team helps some hapless innocent from getting out from under the boot of a nasty bully criminal, or something along those lines. During the process of handling these parallel problems, the crew have to MacGyver their way out of a lot of problems, and much of this is…
gregladen | November 16, 2012Atheist Voices of Minnesota: an Anthology of Personal Stories was released earlier this year. It is chock full of personal stories about the journey from some place to atheism, written by Minnesota authors such as Norman Barrett Wiik, Elizabeth Becker, Kenneth Bellew, Ryan Benson, August Berkshire, Donald L. Boese, Ryan Bolin, Jill Carlson, Justin M. Chase, Greta Christina, Linda Davis, Andrew Downs, Shannon Drury, Anthony Faust, Paul Gramstad, Mike Haubrich, Kori Hennessy, Peter N. Holste, Michelle M. Huber, Eric Jayne, George Kane, Greg Laden, Bill Lehto, M. A. Melby, PZ Myers, Robin…
carlyo | November 15, 2012Samira Ibrahim Islam -- Noted Saudi pharmacology researcher and professor
First woman in Saudi Arabia to earn a Ph.D.; introduced formal university education for girls in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Recalling when she became the first woman from her country of Saudi Arabia to earn a Ph.D., noted pharmacology researcher and professor Samira Ibrahim Islam still wells up with pride and emotion: "It was big news in my country," she remembers. "There was a newspaper that asked my father to describe what he felt about me earning the Ph.D., and my father [with tears in his eyes] answered, 'Now, I can…
gregladen | November 15, 2012For a long time I ignored the White House petitions, mostly, because their sign in system was messing with me and I spend very little time on web sites that mess with me. But they seem to have fixed that problem and now I can actually read what is going on there and participate in the process. Or not.
So, here's some ideas. First, I wonder if we should all sign the petitions for various states to secede from the Union, but only for states we don't live it. That would be funny. Like this one:
ALLOW ALASKA TO SECEDE FROM A DYSFUNCTIONAL UNION.
As an American Veteran on behalf of the U.S.…
gregladen | November 15, 2012The best politically oriented book of the year that I know of is without doubt Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power, by Rachel Maddow. It is a must read and you will love it. A quick description:
"One of my favorite ideas is, never to keep an unnecessary soldier," Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1792. Neither
Jefferson nor the other Founders could ever have envisioned the modern national security state, with its tens of thousands of "privateers"; its bloated Department of Homeland Security; its rusting nuclear weapons, ill-maintained and difficult to dismantle; and its strange…
gregladen | November 15, 2012I've not been to Maine in years, but there was a time when I frequented the state and knew it pretty well. And, my recollection is that almost everybody there is white or whitish. Hardly any black people. I looked it up just now: Maine is 12th from the bottom among us states in terms of percent "black" with about 1%.
Now, here's the thing. Steve Benen at The Maddow Blog is reporting on comments mad by Maine Republican Party Chairman Charlie Webster's concern that on election day, "Dozens of black people" showed up out of nowhere and voted. Here's Charlie:
"Pat" is "Part" so that's "…
gregladen | November 15, 2012As you know, it was recently reported that a woman named Savita Halappanavar was killed in an Irish hospital when she was not given proper medical treatment for religious reasons. One of the last conversations she had was with hospital employees who told her and her husband that this was an "Irish Catholic Hospital" so of course there would not be a termination of a pregnancy, which was in the process of a long and problematic miscarriage, even if the patient, Savita Halappanavar, might die with out it. Well, she did die, at the hands of the hospital staff. First, the fetus died, but the…
carlyo | November 14, 2012Before being elected to the U.S. Congress in 1998, physicist Rush Holt taught and researched such areas as solar spectroscopy and plasma physics. This background inspired some of his supporters in the 12th District of New Jersey to make bumper stickers that proudly read: “My congressman IS a rocket scientist!” -- reflecting their growing desire "for more science, or at least more scientific thinking, in Congress," Rush recalls. Combining a keen interest in science with politics came relatively smoothly for Rush. He inherited his interest in politics from his parents. His father was the…
gregladen | November 14, 2012I have two questions:
1) Which high power storms had zero extra energy from warming in the atmosphere and seas owing to the release of fossil carbon?
2) Which high powered members of the military, other government units, or industry and business had zero extramarital affairs or the equivalent?
Answer: Number 1 has been on the increase, number 2 on the decrease, on average, the former owing mainly to the burning of fossil fuels, the latter to the disestablishment of the hareem system.
Visit the Petraeus Affair Tumblr.