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What Do Autism, Vaccines, BPA And Arsenic In Foods Have In Common? Dr. Oz

What Do Autism, Vaccines, BPA And Arsenic In Foods Have In Common? Dr. Oz

Oct 20 2012 | comment(s)

Dr. Oz, the famous television doctor/celebrity, has never found a bit of scare journalism or a miracle vegetable he didn't promote. He is infamous among public health professionals for exaggerating the origins of autism, vaccines, dangers of BPA and chemical additives, arsenic in foods. His latest misadventure in questionable pop science was an October 12 program titled “GMO Foods: Are They Dangerous to Your Health?”

in his “investigation,” Oz provided uncritical time for Jeffrey Smith, an activist with no scientific or medical background, and Dr. Robin Bernhoft, a leading proponent of unconventional medical interventions and a belief, unsupported by mainstream science, that most chronic medical problems are caused by “toxic environmental exposures.”
NPR Busts 5 Common Myths Of GMOs

NPR Busts 5 Common Myths Of GMOs

Oct 20 2012 | comment(s)

Wouldn't it be great if seeds from GMO plants were sterile?  Then, unlike with regular seeds, farmers would have to buy them over and over again.

Wait, Monsanto already does that, right?  No, but it's a nice myth.  Heck, I bet even Monsanto lets that one slide, because then gullible people will buy their seed every year, even for crops that don't need it. And it perpetuates the shrill claims by anti-science progressives that evil corporations are all corporation-y and out to kill us all with their evil seed, except when they are getting rich making us addicted to it.

And if you accidentally get seeds from a Monsanto crop, they are going to sue you, right?  Well, that isn't true either.
Galaxy Evolution - An 8 Billion Year Pattern Emerges

Galaxy Evolution - An 8 Billion Year Pattern Emerges

Oct 20 2012 | comment(s)

Star-forming galaxies take the form of orderly disk-shaped systems, like the Andromeda Galaxy or the Milky Way, where rotation dominates over other internal motions. The most distant blue galaxies in the study tend to be very different, exhibiting disorganized motions in multiple directions. There is a steady shift toward greater organization to the present time as the disorganized motions dissipate and rotation speeds increase. These galaxies are gradually settling into well-behaved disks.
First Patient In Randomized Controlled Hypertension Trial Of AV-Coupler Enrolled

First Patient In Randomized Controlled Hypertension Trial Of AV-Coupler Enrolled

Oct 20 2012 | comment(s)

Cyberbullying Does Not 'Cause' Teen Suicide

Cyberbullying Does Not 'Cause' Teen Suicide

Oct 20 2012 | comment(s)

While it makes for convenient mainstream media news pieces to draw convenient lines between cyber-bullying and suicide and thus declare that ending bullying would end suicides, it's not so simplistic, notes research from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) National Conference and Exhibition in New Orleans. Most teen suicide victims are bullied both online and in school, and many suicide victims also suffer from depression.
CHMP Positive Opinion For HUMIRA In Pediatric Crohn's Disease

CHMP Positive Opinion For HUMIRA In Pediatric Crohn's Disease

Oct 20 2012 | comment(s)

Biodiversity conservation: in situ and ex situ.

Biodiversity conservation: in situ and ex situ.

Oct 20 2012 | comment(s)

I had a chance to witness plant conservation sites in Sweden, Japan  Germany and India. Almost all the plant species are conserved in cold storage , in liquid nitrogen, and in different methods of storage so that if mankind looses all plants on earth in the event of some circumstances of floods or man made devastations the life can be started again. Although we don't envisage a threat of nuclear war now but  it was so much in the air just 4 decades ago  that plant storage facilities were made to withstand even atomic attacks.

How Much Initiative Should People Who Care About The Climate Take?

How Much Initiative Should People Who Care About The Climate Take?

Oct 19 2012 | comment(s)

An iron dumping experiment was recently conducted by an environmentally concerned group who believe controlled geo-engineering may be the solution to impending science issues. It was conducted without involvement from the scientific community and without proper governance.
Jonah Lehrer, Proust, And The Tyranny Of Salami

Jonah Lehrer, Proust, And The Tyranny Of Salami

Oct 19 2012 | comment(s)

In the scientific community, researchers call it salami slicing. Appropriately, the act consists of shaving down a collected dataset until a scientist reaches the smallest scrap of result that still constitutes an original idea.

This decontextualized whisper defines the least publishable unit: the publon. The researcher proceeds to neatly separate the salami slice from the rest of the data and use it as the meat of a submission to a peer-reviewed journal. The next step fills out the sandwich: Authors repeat the submission process several times with various combinations of the same publons and different academic journals.
Guidelines For Clostridium Difficile Infection Testing Not Being Followed In Europe

Guidelines For Clostridium Difficile Infection Testing Not Being Followed In Europe

Oct 19 2012 | comment(s)

Data presented at the international ID Week 2012 conference in San Diego showed that over three quarters (78%) of healthcare professionals surveyed in Europe believed that they may not be following guidelines for the testing of Clostridium difficile infection (CDI), despite survey respondents believing that CDI is increasing with a large number of cases going undiagnosed.[1] 

The Quote of the Week

The Quote of the Week

Oct 19 2012 | comment(s)

"The problem of averaging data containing discrepant values is nicely discussed in Ref. x [...] It is difficult to develop a procedure that handles simultaneously in a reasonable way two basic types of situations: (a) data that lie apart from the main body of the data are incorrect (contain unreported errors); and (b) the opposite -itis the main body of data that is incorrect. Unfortunately, as Ref. x shows, case (b) is not infrequent [...] the choice of procedure is less significant than the initial choice of data to include or exclude."

The Review of Particle Properties 2004, p.16.
Winners Of SciVal Award Brazil 2012 Announced

Winners Of SciVal Award Brazil 2012 Announced

Oct 19 2012 | comment(s)

Scientific products and services company Elsevier and the Federal Coordination of Improvement of Personnel in Higher Education (Capes / MEC), today announced the winners of the second edition of SciVal Award Brazil 2012, honoring higher education and research institutions for their contribution to the scientific development of the country. 

According to Scopus data, Brazil holds the 13th position globally in research output per country. The award honors Brazilian education and research institutions that stand out for their excellence in research performance. The ten winners were selected according to research performance indicators drawn from Elsevier's tool SciVal Spotlight, such as collaboration with Brazilian and foreign institutions and citations per document.

L'Oréal-UNESCO Announces Women In Science Laureates

L'Oréal-UNESCO Announces Women In Science Laureates

Oct 19 2012 | comment(s)

The L'Oréal Foundation and UNESCO has announced the five women scientists who will be honored as the 15th L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Laureates. On March 28th, 2013, the five Laureates will be honored at an Awards ceremony in Paris and will receive US$100,000 in recognition of their accomplishments. 

The research of the 2013 Laureates ranges from contributing to better understanding of climate change to advancing research on neurodegenerative diseases and potentially uncovering new energy sources. 

The Laureates of the 2013 L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards in Physical Sciences are:

Lottery Tickets - To Swap, Or Not To Swap?

Lottery Tickets - To Swap, Or Not To Swap?

Oct 19 2012 | comment(s)

If you had just bought a lottery ticket, would you be willing to swap it? If you’re like most people, the answer would be an emphatic ‘No’. But why? Given that a properly-run lottery is an entirely random affair, mathematical theory dictates that your chances of winning won’t change whether you swap or not.
Measuring Up To The Happiness Standard

Measuring Up To The Happiness Standard

Oct 19 2012 | comment(s)

By all accounts, my friend Lori has a fabulous sense of style. Plus, she really knows how to find a bargain. The outfits she assembles from Goodwill and vintage clothing shops continue to defy expectation – and imitation. Years ago, when we both lived in Boston, I snuck glances at the pages she flagged in her fashion magazines. Now, whenever I catch her during her visits home to the Bay Area, I file away shopping tips while we fill each other in on our lives.
Helicobacter Pylori

Helicobacter Pylori

Oct 19 2012 | comment(s)

Helicobacter is a good example in our changing understanding of the role of microbes and the human body environment.  Some may recall that this particular bacteria was introduced to the public in a rather striking experiment where it was suspected of causing stomach ulcers and gastritis.  Dr. Barry Marshall drank a petri dish containing cultured Helicobacter Pylori and within days developed gastritis.  This demonstrated a firm connection between bacteria and gastritis/stomach ulcers as well as the role of using antibiotics to treat this condition.

Helicobacter is presumed to be present in about 50% of the world's population upper gastrointestinal tract, while fully 80% of individuals harboring this organism are asymptomatic.
Atom Interferometry - Detecting The Undetectable

Atom Interferometry - Detecting The Undetectable

Oct 19 2012 | comment(s)

If one beam travels a fixed length and another travels an extra distance or in some other slightly different way, the two light beams overlap and interfere when they meet up, creating an interference pattern that scientists inspect to obtain highly precise measurements.
Helmets: How Vibrations From Football Hits Wobble The Brain

Helmets: How Vibrations From Football Hits Wobble The Brain

Oct 19 2012 | comment(s)

It's football season so along with cheers and yelling you will hear a more dangerous sound; the sharp crack of helmet-to-helmet collisions. Hard collisions can lead to player concussions but the physics of how the impact of a helmet hit transfers to the brain is not yet well understood. 

A research team has created a simplified experimental model of the brain and skull inside a helmet during a helmet-to-helmet collision. The model illustrates how the fast vibrational motion of the hit translates into a sloshing motion of the brain inside the skull. 
Essays On Emergence Part I

Essays On Emergence Part I

Oct 19 2012 | comment(s)

I am about to go to an informal workshop on naturalism and its implications, organized by cosmologist Sean Carroll. The list of participants is impressive, including Pat Churchland, Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins, Dan Dennett, Rebecca Goldstein, Alex Rosenberg, Don Ross and Steven Weinberg.
Why Government Appears Inefficient

Why Government Appears Inefficient

Oct 19 2012 | comment(s)


Three reasons why government can look less efficient than it really is:

1. Cherry-picking in privatization. Let’s suppose we could rank government agencies or services in descending order of productivity: 1, 2, 3, and so on, with agency 1 being the most efficient and productive. As a reality check, let’s note that such a ranking is indeed possible, in a rough way.