A systematic review says there is a link between information provided to physicians by pharmaceutical companies and higher prescription frequency but what does that mean?   Are companies with new drugs marketing them more or are they better than previous drugs and thus get prescribed more?  

The authors analyze and describe the findings of 58 studies examining the relationship between exposure of physicians to information from pharmaceutical companies and subsequent prescribing behavior.   All but one of the studies suggested that

(a) no association was detected or

(b) exposure to pharmaceutical company information was associated with lower prescribing quality. 

Medical evidence is based on what is considered the strongest possible foundation, the placebo-controlled trial but a new paper in the Annals of Internal Medicine calls into question this foundation upon which much of medicine rests, by showing that there is no standard behind the standard – that is, there is no standard for the placebo.

The thinking behind relying on placebo-controlled trials is that to be sure a treatment is effective, it needs to compare people whose only difference is whether or not they are taking the drug. Both groups must think they are on the drug to protect against effects of factors like expectation. Study participants are allocated "randomly" to the drug or a "placebo" – a pill that might be mistaken for the active drug but is inert.

It's a known aspect of the human condition that people tend to diminish the negative impact of something they do while recognizing the negative impact of things they don't do as common sense.   In Hollywood, director Rob Reiner thinks cigarettes should be censored from movies but has no problem with teenage sex in films.    Some blame junk food advertising for obesity but may think violence on TV has no impact.

A new study in the the Oxford Journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience says that violent films, TV programs and video games desensitize teenagers to violence and blunts their emotional responses to aggression.    Do you believe it?  Probably not if you like violent video games.

Stem cell therapies hold promise as a cure for diseases but not without some risk, since faulty regulation of stem cells leads to a huge range of human diseases.   Even before birth, mistakes made by the stem cells are a major cause of congenital defects and cancer can also be caused by the body losing control of stem cell function.

Guiding stem cells along the correct pathways and reversing their mistakes is one target of cancer research and scientists from Tufts University say they have identified a novel and readily modifiable signal by which an organism can control the behavior of stem cell offspring. 

Cells and tissues grow, develop and interact in a 3-D world, why not study them that way?  The methods of culturing and studying human cells have traditionally been carried out on flat impermeable surfaces and those techniques have obviously produced a steady stream of critical insight into cell behavior and the mechanisms of infection and disease,  but those cell cultures have limitations inreproducing the tissue environment in vivo.

Researcher Cheryl Nickerson and her team at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University highlight an innovative approach for studying cells in 3-D in order to better understand disease onset and progression, particularly the responses of host cells to infectious pathogens. 

Sure, high energy physics costs billions these days (and watch out for birds - and lightning) but table-top experiments with tuned lasers and sensitive detectors can also continue to achieve the precision necessary for exploring the basic laws of physics at the heart of relativity and quantum mechanics.

Skimming by Earth as close as 11 million miles on October 20, the apparently young Hartley 2 comet will be nearly visible to the unaided eye. With binoculars, it will appear even better as a fuzzy, green blob, and a backyard telescope will offer excellent viewing.