While inflammation often causes damage to the nerves of multiple sclerosis (MS) patients, a group of HBI researchers has been studying how neuroinflammation can instead be harnessed to repair the damage caused by this disease.
Dr. V.W. Yong’s laboratory set out to test whether a drug that is used to treat MS symptoms, Copaxone or glatiramer acetate (GA), could also play a role in repairing the covering of nerves that have been damaged by MS.
Have you ever caught yourself wondering, upon observing a seemingly utterly unlikely coincidence, whether there was anything supernatural at work that made it happen ? I would guess that all of us, even the most rational thinkers, have caressed that thought for a minute, at least once. A few typical examples can be given of situations which one apparently fails to ascribe to natural causes:
1) Grandma dreams of her deceased husband spelling a sequence of numbers, and the following day she sees the same sequence coming out at Lotto. Was grandpa trying to let her win a large sum ? It will be quite hard to convince her otherwise.
I had relatives visiting from out of town and, because they had never been to Las Vegas, we took a two day, one night, short plane trip over the mountains.
Naturally, I won some money. Is that because I am a mathematical genius? No, everyone except the truly elite is going to lose money in a casino by knowing just enough probability to be dangerous while the truly stupid are going to be the foundation of any gambling town.
A Tale Of Two Cities (by Charles Dickens) was a weekly serial publication at this time 150 years ago. My tale of two feathers is about dinosaurs and modern birds with a twist on feathers.
This is not about a Mayan 2012 apocalypse. This is about the 9th century Mayan apocalypse, as documented by NASA. It's also about modern global warming. So there's plenty of doom to go around.
Let's first cover the '2012 apocalypse', a fabrication based on pseudoscience. Modern Mayans are
annoyed at the 2012 rumors. The misinterpretation of their ancient culture-- that somehow an apocalypse is predicted for 2012-- has finally reached its nadir. Hollywood is going to make a movie about it. Imagine your own history being reduced to a single 90-minute special effects extravaganza.
The human heart, a tireless organ that beats within our chests continuously for decades, continues to amaze me, in spite of my having studied it for several years now. My continued amazement stems not from the fact that this muscle functions for so long, and for the most part without us being aware of it (although this is indeed phenomenal), but from the rich variety of behavior that it exhibits across multiple scales.
When Republicans were told, as part of a recent study, that diabetes results from social factors that mitigate personal responsibility, like a lack of neighborhood grocery stores or government-funded places to exercise, they were not inclined to want to enact legislation to rectify that - but Democrats reacted better to a government approach when culture was to blame rather than individuals.
Both were equally supportive when diabetes was presented in terms of genetic factors.
Was the lesson that framing is bad and science is good? Well, no, though personally I am inclined to think that way.
I receive a lot of inquisitive emails from intelligent laymen, and today I received a nice one that asked, in so many words, “Is natural selection fast enough to explain the complex biology we find in our world?”
My knee-jerk response was to say, “Well, of course natural selection is fast enough, because here we are?” But I didn’t do that.
I also didn’t respond by taking out my Dawkins-certified religion-bludgeoning stick. I’m not partial to that pedagogical approach, and I figure it only got Dawkins uncomfortably familiar with Ms. Garrison of South Park.
Instead, I responded in what I think was a more helpful fashion, and my answer was not what the questioner expected. Here is what I wrote:
*****
While I can appreciate the usefulness of smoking bans, especially as it relates to non-smokers (or even smokers for that matter). I'm not convinced that the science is establishing a sound cause and effect linkage.
There is little doubt that smoking is not a healthy activity, but similarly we should be aware of all forms of air pollution. A recent study suggested that even a relatively brief exposure to second hand smoke could precipitate a heart attack1. Unfortunately, I haven't seen how such a study or determination was made, so it is impossible to assess their methodology.
Consider the following quote:
