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Does Drug Advertising Help Or Hurt Consumers?

Does Drug Advertising Help Or Hurt Consumers?

Nov 12 2009 | comment(s)

The controversy surrounding prescription drug advertising is immense. Advocates for prescription drug direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) claim that it educates consumers, improves the quality of care and contributes to better patient adherence. While opponents argue that it leads to inappropriate prescribing and portrays non-medical problems as treatable medical illnesses.

Thanks to a new paper calling for stricter federal regulation of DTCA, the policy debate over the practice is certain to intensify even more. Soon to appear in the American Journal of Public Health, the study suggests that while there are some benefits stemming from (DTCA), there are significant risks that are magnified by its prominence.
Link Between Dopamine And Expectation Of Pleasure Confirmed

Link Between Dopamine And Expectation Of Pleasure Confirmed

Nov 12 2009 | comment(s)

Enhancing the effects of dopamine influences how people make life choices by affecting expectations of pleasure, according to new research from the UCL Institute of Neurology.

 Published today in Current Biology, the study confirms an important role for dopamine in how human expectations are formed and how people make complex decisions. It also contributes to an understanding of how pleasure expectation can go awry, for example in drug addiction.

The study builds on earlier research which used brain imaging as participants imagined holiday destinations. An area of the brain called the straitum tracked expectations and the
Need A Helping Hand? Just Infect A Stranger With A Cooperative Gene

Need A Helping Hand? Just Infect A Stranger With A Cooperative Gene

Nov 12 2009 | comment(s)

Cooperation is seen in every corner of life from microbes to humans, many times with no obvious advantages to those that provide it at high costs. Given the existence of “freeloading cheaters” ready to exploit the resources of those cooperating, why is it that cooperation persist? In an article now published in the journal Current Biology Nogueira and colleagues suggest that in bacteria this can result from highly mobile genes that “jump” from one cell to the next carrying the cooperative traits, effectively turning everyone into a cooperator. They also show that, at least in Escherichia coli (E. coli), this new population remains stable through “punisher” genes that impose a mafia-like strategy of “cooperation or death”, ensuring that the new cooperators do not revert to freeloading.
I Humbly Propose A Biologically Accurate Episode Of Spongebob Squarepants

I Humbly Propose A Biologically Accurate Episode Of Spongebob Squarepants

Nov 12 2009 | comment(s)

Today's scapegoat for my rant about the place of cephalopods in society is, as I predicted, Squidward Quincy Tentacles, of Spongebob Squarepants fame:




What IS that? Six appendages, a misplaced mouth, and a floppy nose? Where'd the nose come from? Where are his fins and tentacles? But oh, it turns out Squidward isn't even meant to be a squid. The Spongebob wiki quotes Squidward's voice actor: He's an octopus, but they call him Squidward. I never understood. I guess Octoward just never worked for a name, though.
Gods Unvanquished

Gods Unvanquished

Nov 12 2009 | comment(s)

(Essay 2 in Evolution&Morality Series)

The atheistic blowback to the overbearing religiosity of the Bush era has been something of a boon for the publishing industry. In an uncertain and weakening economy, they discovered a new profitable genre almost overnight. Clearly, all that oppressive God talk from the Bush administration had antagonized a sizeable group of readers. A few savvy editors were quick to recognize the appetite for books like God Delusion, End of Faith and God is not Great. Books, that took a more or less unapologetically contemptuous view of all things religious and God.

Birth of a Movement

Birth of a Movement

Nov 12 2009 | comment(s)



(Essay 1 in Series Evolution&Morality )

Can you believe it? It has been a year since a majority of Americans voted for and elected Barak Obama as president, shattering once and for all the proverbial marble ceiling.



Welcome to Moral Bytes

Welcome to Moral Bytes

Nov 12 2009 | comment(s)


This blog is my way of looking at moral values from an evolutionary perspective. If we agree that evolution explains human behavior, then it must be true of moral behavior as well.

Today I will post the first two essays in a series that argues for taking an evolutionary approach to moral theory.

Biomass utilization for food, fuels and chemicals.

Biomass utilization for food, fuels and chemicals.

Nov 12 2009 | comment(s)

Biomass utilization for food, fuels and chemicals. Biomass : Biomass refers to all the matter that can be obtained from photosynthesis. Most vegetable species use solar energy to create sugars from carbon dioxide and water.They store this energy in the form of glucose or starch molecules, oleaginous, cellulose, and lignocellulose.
Jesus Ticked Off At NASA

Jesus Ticked Off At NASA

Nov 11 2009 | comment(s)

The word on the street is that Jesus is pretty t'd off at NASA.1 What mortal sin2 did the space agency allegedly commit? The non-biological reproduction of an RNA component in a laboratory, of course.

NASA scientists reproduced uracil in a lab under conditions found in space, according to Astrobiology. Uracil is one of the components of the genetic code that makes up ribonucleic acid (RNA); RNA is mainly known for its role in protein synthesis. In other words, NASA was able to create a building block of life in the lab.
Count to five: a child has died from hunger

Count to five: a child has died from hunger

Nov 11 2009 | comment(s)

Please visit this site, and watch a ten seconds video which is very aggressive in its crude substance: during the time you watch it, two children die of hunger.

There are in the world today a billion human beings who have insufficient means to sustain themselves, their families, their children. This is so intolerable that we use to remove it from our brain. Can you imagine your child dying of hunger as you watch powerless ?
Energy Equality & The Carbon Tax

Energy Equality & The Carbon Tax

Nov 11 2009 | comment(s)

Energy is fungible and nothing is certain but death and taxes.

All energy is like all other energy and interchangeable through one means or another.  But, all energy is not created equal.  Some energy is better than other energy.  Hot energy is higher quality than cold energy.  The more heat that your energy can make with a smaller package of stuff the higher the

Nov 11 2009 | comment(s)

Nov 11 2009 | comment(s)

This is a spider. This is a spider on drugs. Any questions?

This is a spider. This is a spider on drugs. Any questions?

Nov 11 2009 | comment(s)

It doesn't get much better than strung-out spiders and a white dude using ghetto slang. And Canada.

Two caveats: one, you may want to watch this out of hearing from impressionable young children. It's not terrible but the occasional joke may be branded in their brain as scientifically valid and therefore not a bad decision. Two, I am mortally terrified of spiders, but I sucked it up for this video because it was funny. I will just be scratching at imaginary spiders crawling all over me for the rest of the day.
The Fingerprints Of God

The Fingerprints Of God

Nov 11 2009 | comment(s)

I found the premise of Barbara Bradley Hagerty's new book "Fingerprints of God" quite intriguing.  The author, raised as a Christian Scientist, attempts to look into alternative religions and science to see if her faith is justified.  There is nothing really new here - in terms of topics that have been covered in many other popular books.  

But what I found interesting was her interpretation of her experiences and investigations.  She chronicles her struggles and revelations in an autobiographical format - and I'm usually a sucker for autobiographies.
Cartoonifying Cephalopods

Cartoonifying Cephalopods

Nov 11 2009 | comment(s)

It's hard to make a good cartoon cephalopod, I guess. Yesterday I was disappointed about the Squidbillies. Tomorrow I may despair of Spongebob's pal Squidward. Today, I sigh over Nemo's little octopus friend Pearl.

I was profoundly impressed with the combination of scientific accuracy and aesthetic appeal achieved by the writer and animators of Finding Nemo. I mean, that song Mr. Ray sings about naming the zones of the ocean? Total brilliance!
Altruism In Plants?

Altruism In Plants?

Nov 11 2009 | comment(s)

The concept of altruism, a selfless concern for the welfare of others, a traditional virtue in many cultures and a core aspect of various religious traditions,  has long been debated in philosophical circles.  More recently, evolutionary biologists have joined the debate, saying that altruism may have evolved because any action that improves the likelihood of a relative's survival and reproduction increases the chance of an individual's DNA being passed on.
Where is your state of happiness? What is your state of happiness?

Where is your state of happiness? What is your state of happiness?

Nov 11 2009 | comment(s)

Since January 2008, the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index surveys 1,000 Americans every day. LIVESCIENCE published today a list in The Well-Being of 50 U.S. States from a study of interviews with over 350,000 individuals. The results are valid for the period between January 2 and December 30, 2008.
 
Generalizations were also made in the study that well-being (or happiness) was highest in the Mountain and West Coast states, then the Eastern Seaboard followed by the Midwest and Southern states.
 
The Problem Of Machine Intelligence

The Problem Of Machine Intelligence

Nov 11 2009 | comment(s)

There have been many discussions relating to transhumanism and augmenting intelligence as well as just intelligence itself.  However, at the heart of many of these discussions the subject of Artificial Intalligence (AI) emerges.  This raises the question of whether AI is possible and what it actually means.

There is no question that machines can be built to perform many intelligent-like acts and simulate human intelligence, but I would argue that there is a fundamental difference that isn't often mentioned.
Bioprocess engineering

Bioprocess engineering

Nov 11 2009 | comment(s)

Bioprocess engineering The large scale plant cell and tissue cultures have been considered as an alternative source of biochemicals over the last 40 years. Routien and Nickel received the first patent for the cultivation of plant tissue in 1956 [1] and suggested its potential for the production of secondary metabolites [2]. Shortly after that time, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) started to support research of plant cell cultures for regenerative life support systems. Since early 1960s, experiments with plants and plant tissue cultures were performed under various conditions of microgravity in space (one-way spaceships, biosatellites, space shuttles and parabolic flights, the orbital stations Salyut and