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Hypothalamus Changes: Obesity Alters The Brain Area Involved In Body Weight Control

Hypothalamus Changes: Obesity Alters The Brain Area Involved In Body Weight Control

Dec 27 2011 | comment(s)

The number of people with one or more of the adverse complications of obesity, including type 2 diabetes and heart disease is rapidly increasing.

Drugs designed to treat obesity have shown limited efficacy and have been associated with serious side effects, largely because we have limited understanding of the effects of obesity on our natural mechanisms of body weight control.

For example, while great strides have been made in our understanding of how the brain controls our desire to feed, as well as the processes underlying the balancing of energy intake and expenditure, little is known about how the are altered by obesity. Two independent groups of researchers have now generated data that begin to address this issue.

Fat-Busting Bugs

Fat-Busting Bugs

Dec 27 2011 | comment(s)

From a Press Release by Yorkshire Water:


Trillions Of Fat-Busting Bugs To Be Deployed To Help Fight Sewer Fat


Trillions of fat busting bugs are being deployed from today (Thursday 22 December) by Yorkshire Water over the festive period as it bids to rid its sewers of fat blockages and prevent pollution.
A Geologist's Experience (Accretionary Wedge 41)

A Geologist's Experience (Accretionary Wedge 41)

Dec 27 2011 | comment(s)

For the 41st Accretionary Wedge Ron Schott asked for "the most memorable or significant geological event that you've directly experienced."  I had to think long and hard about this, because I haven't been lucky enough to witness anything truly exciting first hand.  True, I once felt my bed shake in a hostel in Chile during a rather small earthquake, but that's hardly a significant event.  The day Eyjafjallajökull erupted we were supposed to be flying back from a field trip
The Circle of Life--Squid Style

The Circle of Life--Squid Style

Dec 26 2011 | comment(s)

The Jaffe Laboratory at UC San Diego posted some lovely videos of market squid mating aggregations off La Jolla in Southern California. Check them out here.

The first one is just classic: murky green water, and a seemingly endless field of squid mating, spawning, and dying. The piles of "egg fingers" they've produced hint at the enormity of the next generation--most of which will be eaten before they can take part in their own orgy.
Science As Rationalization And Ultimate Religion

Science As Rationalization And Ultimate Religion

Dec 26 2011 | comment(s)

The main observation here is that rationalization on the social level is rationalization on the personal level performed by macro-systems (social systems from our point of view). Scientism is the ultimate religion. Calling this a dangerous anti-science position is natural and expected at this point in evolution.
Partisanship, Simplicity-Seeking, And Maladaptation

Partisanship, Simplicity-Seeking, And Maladaptation

Dec 25 2011 | comment(s)

“Malicious,” “diatribe,” and “preposterous” are words recently thrown at me. (How remarkable that I lived nearly 60 years before drawing this kind of vitriol. Maybe I haven’t been assertive enough!) When a scientific question has political implications, people have trouble separating the science from the politics. Anyway, it started like this…

Daniel Sarewitz of Arizona State University wrote an astonishingly obtuse article in Slate (December, 2010) titled “Most scientists in this country are Democrats. That's a problem.” Sarewitz cited a 2009 Pew Research Center finding that 6 percent of U.S. scientists are Republicans and 55 percent are Democrats. He took off from there.
When does Christmas start?

When does Christmas start?

Dec 24 2011 | comment(s)

Some thoughts from G.K.Chesterton, with tomorrow in view:
77,000 Years? Discovery Claims World Oldest Bed

77,000 Years? Discovery Claims World Oldest Bed

Dec 24 2011 | comment(s)

A cave in South Africa contains a bed made of bundles of sedge and wild quince leaves. It was found by archaeologist Lyn Wadley of Wits University while excavating a site at Sibudu in KwaZulu-Natal province. Wadley found the bed, about the size of a modern twin bed, buried over nine feet deep in sediments inside a rock shelter on a cliff face on the banks of the Thongathi river, 20 north of Durban. Wadley has been working there since 1998. The bed was covered with a layer of aromatic leaves from a plant called the river wild quince. No other tree leaves were found on the bedding, so the leaves were not there as a result of random leaf fall, the report said.
ATLAS Discovers New Chi_b Resonance

ATLAS Discovers New Chi_b Resonance

Dec 24 2011 | comment(s)

Just as you thought it was over for 2011, and you proceeded to hung the Higgs mass plots on the christmas tree as a wish for stronger signals next year, ATLAS comes out with a new particle discovery. That's what I like of particle physics - there's always so much going on that the excitement is never really over.
Ohm For Christmas

Ohm For Christmas

Dec 23 2011 | comment(s)

Ohm For Christmas

The ohm is the unit of electrical resistance.  It is named in honor of the genius of Georg Ohm, who figured out that the flow of electricity in materials from a 'hot' source might just resemble the flow of heat from a hot source.  Ever since we started measuring electrical resistance in ohms, electricians and engineers have been making up atrocious puns based on that term.  I decided not to make an exception here.
XMRV Viral Link To Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Paper Retracted

XMRV Viral Link To Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Paper Retracted

Dec 23 2011 | comment(s)

Science for the win!
High Resolution Images Of Vesta By DAWN

High Resolution Images Of Vesta By DAWN

Dec 23 2011 | comment(s)

NASA is featuring the first high-resolution images of asteroid Vesta as taken by the DAWN spacecraft during a low-altitude orbit. The images show a very interesting surface, battered with old and more recent craters, plus "textures such as small grooves and lineaments that are reminiscent of the structures seen in low-resolution data from the higher-altitude orbits. Also, this fine scale highlights small outcrops of bright and dark material." (from the NASA piece).
Franco Rimondi, 1944-2011

Franco Rimondi, 1944-2011

Dec 23 2011 | comment(s)

I was saddened today upon hearing of the death of Franco Rimondi, a colleague in the CDF experiment. Franco was a professor of physics at the university of Bologna since 1980. His research in particle physics encompasses the last forty years, during which he collaborated with many experiments, starting with bubble chamber kaon decay studies in the late sixties, and then ADONE at Frascati in the seventies, and the split field magnet (SFM) at CERN. The experiment he spent most of his research career on was however probably CDF, at the Fermilab Tevatron collider.
A Top 10 Science Stories Of 2011 List

A Top 10 Science Stories Of 2011 List

Dec 23 2011 | comment(s)

Los Alamos National Laboratory's top 10 science stories of 2011 include alternative energy research, world record magnetic fields, disease tracking, the study of Mars, climate change, fuel cells, solar wind, and magnetic reconnection. 

Mars Habitability 

Three Los Alamos technologies are aboard the Mars Science Laboratory mission's Curiosity rover, set to touch down on the surface of the Red Planet this coming August. Los Alamos radio-isotope batteries are providing power and heat to Curiosity, which is the largest rover vehicle ever deployed to Mars. These power sources will help drive the 10 scientific instruments on board the vehicle.

Wastebook 2011 - Sen. Tom Coburn Tackles Spending Silliness

Wastebook 2011 - Sen. Tom Coburn Tackles Spending Silliness

Dec 23 2011 | comment(s)

U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-OK) today released a new oversight report, “Wastebook 2011” that highlights over $6.5 billion in examples of some of the most egregious ways our taxpayer dollars were wasted - 100 of the countless unnecessary, duplicative and low-priority projects spread throughout the federal government while the money for extending jobless benefits to the millions of Americans who are still out of work can't be found.

What made his annual list?

• $75,000 for an awareness campaign about the role Michigan plays in producing Christmas trees&poinsettias.
Rare Amoeba-Like Fossils Are Single-Celled Ancestors Of Animals

Rare Amoeba-Like Fossils Are Single-Celled Ancestors Of Animals

Dec 22 2011 | comment(s)

At various times in Earth history, single-celled organisms threw their lot in with each other to become larger and multicellular, resulting, for instance, in the riotous diversity of animals. However, fossil evidence of these major evolutionary transitions is extremely rare.
Benefits Of New EPA Rules Greatly Outweigh Costs, If You Use Pretend Money

Benefits Of New EPA Rules Greatly Outweigh Costs, If You Use Pretend Money

Dec 22 2011 | comment(s)

What is a paltry $195 billion in real cost versus $1 trillion in potential savings? Fans of 'jobs created or saved' fuzzy economics will love a report by the Joint Center For Political and Economic Studies, which says that six new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) air quality regulations, which will cost about $195 billion over the next 20 years, will save well over $1 trillion. 

I italicize $1 trillion because it works best if you use a Dr. Evil voice to read it so I wanted to give you a visual hook. Like him, it may take some trial and error to figure out what number will have enough impact to mobilize people into action so, like these numbers, just make them up until you get the desired effect.
Those Deceiving Error Bars

Those Deceiving Error Bars

Dec 22 2011 | comment(s)

Have you ever looked at a histogram with the data displayed as counts per bin in the form of points with error bars, and wondered whether those fluctuations and departures from the underlying hypothesized model (usually overimposed as a continuous line or histogram) were really significant or worth ignoring ?
Driving in Circles

Driving in Circles

Dec 22 2011 | comment(s)

Driving in Circles

People often wonder whether the world would be able to do something about its dependence on oil and its effects on the environment. A child asked the following question on Hidden Science (a mobile phone app developed by Orange Telecom and the Science Council UK where schoolchildren ask questions about science)