terrasig | September 15, 2009As I've been more than swamped as of late, I wanted to offer up some of insightful posts my colleagues around the blogosphere (I can just get in about 20 of the my most recent feeds from Google Reader while making the coffee, although putting the laptop on the range top is probably a bad idea.).
Dear Freshman - FSP's take on a nine New York Times essays on advice for the incoming college student
What To Expect When You're Clueless - Two students with comparable records are applying for grad school. Which of the two faculty reactions do you have in response to Student 2?
Regular programming…
terrasig | September 11, 2009[Here is why I will always remember. This was posted here originally on 11 September 2006.]
Let me tell you about John Michael Griffin, Jr.
Griff, as he was known in high school, was a friend of mine.
Late in the first half of our lives, he stood up for me physically and philosophically, for being a science geek. John's endorsement was the first time I was ever deemed cool for wanting to be a scientist.
Griff died an engineer and hero in the collapse of one of the World Trade Center towers five [eight] years ago today.
We lost touch almost twenty years before, but his kindness and…
terrasig | September 9, 2009Update: Visitors arriving by search engine may care to read our followup post on 20 November following M.D. Anderson's filing of legal action in this case.
The premier US cancer hospital and research center in Houston released a statement today distancing themselves from a Dallas company claiming an endorsement of their water product by The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center:
Recently, you may have heard or read about a company that sells Evolv, a "nutraceutical beverage," which is being promoted in part based upon testing done at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer…
terrasig | September 7, 2009
. . . or as Dr Barrett refers to it more accurately, Insurance Reform.
On Friday, Sarah Avery of the News & Observer reported on her interview with the now-retired Pennsylvania psychiatrist who started the Quackwatch.com website in 1996 following years of investigating fraudulent health practices.
From the Quackwatch Mission Statement:
Quackwatch is now an international network of people who are concerned about health-related frauds, myths, fads, fallacies, and misconduct. Its primary focus is on quackery-related information that is difficult or impossible to get elsewhere. Founded by…
terrasig | September 3, 2009In the United States, this is currently National HBCU Week (presidential proclamation here) and yesterday marked the end of the annual academic conference on HBCUs ("Seizing the Capacity to Thrive!") in Washington, DC. HBCUs span from Michigan and Ohio to Texas, Florida, and the US Virgin Islands - see here for the complete list and links to HBCUs.
Don't feel bad if you've never heard of HBCUs - as noted in my repost from last year, I didn't until I went to college. I've updated the post here and and added a few new morsels of knowledge stemming from my own continuing education about the…
terrasig | August 31, 2009
The Boulder County coroner announced today that the July death of a Boulder teen was indeed due to opioid intoxication from preparation of a poppy pod tea.
Jeffrey Joseph Bohan, 19, of Boulder, was found dead in his friend's Boulder home about 6 p.m. July 21 after drinking poppy-pod tea the night before with his brother, according to Boulder police.
Investigators suspected the Fairview High graduate, who was going to Colorado State University, died from the psychoactive tea, which is brewed from the plant that produces opium. But they couldn't be sure until the Coroner's Office confirmed…
terrasig | August 29, 2009In today's Letters to the Editor of the News & Observer, well-known substance abuse treatment researcher Dr Wendee Wechsberg bemoans the potential cost-cutting of religious studies and women's studies at Meredith College in Raleigh, NC.
The irony: Meredith College is a well-regarded private women's college established by Baptist missionaries.
Meredith counts among its alumnae the journalists Judy Woodruff and Marcia Vickers, Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court Sarah Parker, and attorney/former First Lady of New York Silda Wall Spitzer.
Given that her expertise extends from…
terrasig | August 27, 2009Today's post comes to your courtesy of yet another of my revered Canadian colleagues: pharmacist Scott Gavura, author of the excellent Science-Based Pharmacy blog.
Back in April, 21 Venezuelan polo horses from the Lechuza team died at the U.S. Open Polo Championship in Palm Beach County, Florida after being injected with a compounded supplement similar to Biodyl®intended to prevent equine rhabdomyolysis syndrome (EMS) - known otherwise as "tieing-up" or azoturia.
Franck's Pharmacy in Ocala, Florida - the heart of Florida's equine community - was the compounding pharmacy where the…
terrasig | August 26, 2009[Sort of a repost from the last three years, updated appropriately - APB]
Seven years ago at 11:24 am EDT (1524 GMT), your humble blogger was handed the keys to a whole new vocabulary of love.
The gift came in the form of a 7 lb 13 oz (3,544 gm), 20.5 inch (52 cm) bundle of drooling, peeing, meconium-pooping bundle of baby girl, yanked from an incision in PharmGirl's abdomen.
The lessons of compassion and unconditional love I have been taught by these two women have comprised the most formative experiences of my life.
In return, PharmGirl has suffered tremendous indignities on my behalf:…
terrasig | August 24, 2009
Propofol.
For further information and detailed background, please see our previous post on this injectable anesthetic agent known as propofol or Diprivan®.
This L.A. Times article today also has a concise timeline of the events leading to the death of Michael Jackson
terrasig | August 21, 2009The other day Orac at Respectful Insolence wrote about yet another case where failure to vaccinate has caused a resurgence, in this case of measles in New Zealand.
Otherwise preventable and potentially fatal diseases are popping up in communities around the world as the importance of immunization is ignored by a generation of parents who never knew these diseases.
Well, looks as though they're beginning to find out.
I'm keeping my eye on a similar case brought to my attention by my Twitter feeds from Colorado (if I can't be there, I'll at least read about it). This report from the…
terrasig | August 19, 2009I'm not a competitive athlete but there are just some drugs I *must* take because of my asthma. I expect that as I continue to age, I will have to take more drugs.
But what if I were an elite master's track & field athlete? John Leland takes on this topic in yesterday's New York Times:
Mr. Levine, who is 95 and has had operations on both knees, in June set the American record in the 400-meter dash for men ages 95 to 99, only to see it broken at the U.S.A. Masters Outdoor Track & Field Championships a few weeks later. "Nothing counts unless you're first," he said.
Mr. Levine belongs…
terrasig | August 18, 2009
A couple of four years ago, a few dudes I just met around town had this idea to bring together a few bloggers who write about science. One was Anton Zuiker and the other was Bora Zivkovic, also known as Coturnix or He-Whose-Mind-Teh-Intertubes-Pass-Before-Going-Out-To-The-World. Anton also has a title, bestowed upon him by News & Observer columnist Dan Barkin back in 2007:
He's a quiet visionary. He's a low-key doer. He's a let's-get-together-and-see-where-this-goes guy. It's the Zuikers of this new, interwoven world who may play a significant role in determining how far Web 2.0 goes…
terrasig | August 16, 2009
Artemisinin is a natural product isolated from the leaves of the annual wormwood, Artemisia annua. Used originally in Chinese herbal medicine, the pure compound is employed in Africa as an inexpensive antimalarial drug. In April, 2009, the multinational pharmaceutical company Novartis received FDA approval for a combination drug called Coartem®, comprised of the semi-synthetic artemisinin analog, artemether, and another novel antimalarial, lumefantrine.
An herbal preparation of artemesinin has recently been associated with a single case of hepatic injury as reported in this week's issue of…
terrasig | August 15, 2009
Yes, this is my second post on Derek Lowe of my last three.
No, I am not his publicist.
But Derek has another nice post on how drug company scientists could do a better job on educating the public on the drug discovery process:
I do a lot of talking around here about how the general public doesn't really have a good idea of what goes on inside a drug company. But a conversation with a colleague has put me to thinking that this might be largely our own fault.
One of Dr. Lowe's talents is the ability to put a lot of ideas into very concise posts. So take two minutes to read about the 90%…
terrasig | August 14, 2009
Here's the updated version of the group, Billionaires For Bush, doing their clever schtick prior to a healthcare town hall forum last evening in Durham, NC (Yes, they are standing in front of a Hummer H2).
A robust crowd of 850 people filled the B.N. Duke Auditorium on the campus of North Carolina Central University to hear from a panel led by Congressman David Price (D-NC4).
[N.B. - not well-known is that the Duke family purchased 25 acres of land to create the campus for this historically-black college four miles across town; hence, the university honored the gift by naming its central…
terrasig | August 10, 2009I know that we have been very fortunate to attract a few new readers over the last year or so. For those, and as a reminder to others, I wanted to focus on some of my major blog influences. One of these is Derek Lowe, an early science blogger who is perhaps the only pharmaceutical company chemist who writes under his own name. Dr Lowe writes the blog, In The Pipeline.
Dr Lowe gives invaluable insights into the industry about companies large, small, and tiny, and provides on of the few places where scientists entering the job market can truly get a glimpse of what it's like to work for a…
terrasig | August 8, 2009Although I'm American, much of my training and early independent career was influenced by British cancer researchers. At the time, their laboratories were supported by ICRF, the Imperial Cancer Research Fund. In 2002, ICRF merged with the Cancer Research Campaign to create Cancer Research UK (CRUK).
I have several friends who work for Cancer Research UK, not the least of whom are blogger/author Ed Yong (Not Exactly Rocket Science) and writer/musician Dr Kat Arney, author of the aptly-named blog, You Do Too Much. Together with fellow professional science communicator Henry Scowcroft, they…
terrasig | August 5, 2009
Welcome to the August 2009 edition of Scientiae, the blog carnival of "stories of and from women in science, engineering, technology, and math."
[Apologies at the outset for missing the submission from ScienceWoman, co-blogger at Sciencewomen, entitled, "Unhurried summer mornings"]
I'm honored to be the first man invited to host the carnival. The invitation means a great deal to me on a number of levels: my laboratory has run between 75% and 100% women during my years in the business, including all of my PhD students, and I have a brilliant physician-scientist wife who has given us a joyous…