Viruses are nasty opponents, as anyone who has followed the battles against influenza, SARs and HIV/AIDS can attest. They are diverse and in many cases evolve at rates that confound efforts to contain them. Anyone who has gotten a flu shot, and then came down with the flu a few months later because the “strain” of virus that the vaccine was not the same as the “strain” that they were infected with, knows just how fast viruses can evolve. In many cases, medical professional never really know which virus has caused the symptoms in their patients, and this complicates treatment and often leads to the misuse of antibiotics, which, of course, are never effective against viruses.

Since their discovery, stem cells have been hailed as the ultimate answer for crippling and incurable diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other conditions that leave vital organs like heart or nerves damaged beyond repair. Researchers from the University of Cambridge, under the leadership of Professor Austin Smith, Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Stem Cell Research at the University of Cambridge, recently published a paper(1) detailing a new technology that can transform adult stem cells into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS). This technique is able to reliably reprogram adult cells into iPS rapidly and can forego the need to rely on mammalian embryos to generate pluripotent stem cells.

I recently attended an NSF workshop on eChemistry: New Models for Scholarly Communication in Chemistry in Washington (Oct 23-24, 2008). The group consisted of about a dozen members, including publishers, social scientists, librarians and chemists. For background, this was the mandate:

Did the Bible's King David and his son Solomon control the copper industry in present-day southern Jordan? The possibility is raised once again by research reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Off-label prescription of a drug is generally legal, but promotion of off-label uses by a drug manufacturer is illegal. In an article in this week's PLoS Medicine, two physician researchers describe the techniques that they say drug companies use to covertly promote off-label use, even when such promotion is illegal.

Adriane Fugh-Berman (Georgetown University Medical Center) and Douglas Melnick (a preventive medicine physician working in North Hollywood, California) argue that while off-label drug use is "sometimes unavoidable" and sometimes "demonstrably beneficial," it has also been linked with serious side effects. Off-label drug use, they say, "should be undertaken with care and caution due to the uncontrolled experiment to which a patient is being subjected."

Bioniche Life Sciences Inc., a research-based, technology-driven Canadian biopharmaceutical company, today announced that Econiche(TM), the world's first vaccine designed to reduce the shedding by cattle of Escherichia coli (E. coli) O157:H7, has received full licensing approval from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA). Econiche is now available for unrestricted use by Canadian cattle producers and their veterinarians.

Econiche is a Canadian discovery developed by Bioniche Life Sciences Inc. The vaccine has the potential to significantly reduce the amount of E. coli O157 shed into the environment by beef and dairy cattle and, in turn, reduce the risk to human health.

The ability to make fire millennia ago was likely a key factor in the migration of prehistoric hominids from Africa into Eurasia, a researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Institute of Archaeology believes on the basis of findings at the Gesher Benot Ya'aqov archaeological site in Israel. 

Earlier excavations there, carried out under the direction of Prof. Naama Goren-Inbar of the Institute of Archaeology, showed that the occupants of the site – who are identified as being part of the Acheulian culture that arose in Africa about 1.6 million years ago -- had mastered fire-making ability as long as 790,000 years ago. This revelation pushed back previously accepted dates for man's fire-making ability by a half-million years. 

Fraunhofer researchers from Stuttgart have developed a new technology that enables the production of energy-autonomous, low-maintenance sensors.   The original application is sensors in air compression systems.  At present, those sensors are either battery-driven or connected by complex wiring. This often makes it very difficult or even impossible to install sensors in places that are hard to reach.

The solution; make electricity from air or water in a closed environment - with no movable parts.  

Is schizophrenia a disorder of glutamate hyperactivity or hypoactivity?

 The predominant hypothesis for many years was that schizophrenia is a glutamate deficit disorder but there is evidence of glutamate hyperactivity as well.  A new study by Karlsson et al., appearing in the November 1st issue of Biological Psychiatry, reinforces this point with new data about the impact of deleting the gene for the glutamate transporter EAAT1.   EAAT1, implicated in schizophrenia, plays a critical role in inactivating glutamate by removing it from the synaptic and extracellular spaces. 

No one talks about John McCain's religion, though conservative Christians are supposed to be Republican.   Democrats are the more secular, liberal party, it is said, yet they have defended Barack Obama's link to his  controversial pastor.

During the campaign of 1960, when Catholic John F. Kennedy was running on the Democratic ticket, religion became an important voting issue, and it comes up again from time to time.   Voters in 1960 were concerned about a President who might listen to The Pope while John Kerry's Catholicism was barely worth a mention in 2004.  More often today, the discussion is on 'values.'

So, hyperbole from both sides notwithstanding, how much influence does religion have on values?