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Photo Upload Jan 12 2010 16:14

Photo Upload Jan 12 2010 16:14

Jan 12 2010 | comment(s)

Elizabeth consulting her colleague, the Tortoise Cat
A Yeast Contribution For The Treatment Of Parkinson’s Disease

A Yeast Contribution For The Treatment Of Parkinson’s Disease

Jan 12 2010 | comment(s)

Scientists have just identified several molecules capable of reversing the brain abnormalities of Parkinson’s disease (PD), while also uncovering new clues for its origin in a study just published in the journal Disease Models and Mechanisms (1). PD is characterised by abnormal deposits of a brain protein called alpha-synuclein throughout the damaged brain regions, but exactly what they do there is not clear.

An appetizer: Rare B Decay Asymmetries

An appetizer: Rare B Decay Asymmetries

Jan 12 2010 | comment(s)

As if taken by a spell, my joking claim to be on strike in the last post grew to become one of the longest streaks of absence from blogging of the last few months, for a series of irrelevant reasons tightly packed together.

In the meantime I have tried to put together an article on a recent very interesting measurement performed by the CDF collaboration: a study of very rare decays of B mesons, which can now not only determine the rate of said decays, but also have a taste at subtle kinematical effects in the distribution of the final states. The distributions are a new key to discriminate the existence of new physics in these rare processes.
The Buzzword Blog #6 : Customer

The Buzzword Blog #6 : Customer

Jan 12 2010 | comment(s)

If you are unsure what a buzzword is, please first read:
The Buzzword Blog #2 : What is a Buzzword?


The Buzzword Blog #6 : Customer

The word 'customer' comes via old French from the Latin consuetudinem, meaning 'habit' or 'useage'.  A customer is a person who habitually, as a matter of personal choice, exchanges his or her money for goods or services from a preferred supplier.

Where there is no possibility of personal choice, no real exercise of preference, the term 'customer' is entirely wrong.
Are You Going To The AAAS Meeting In San Diego?

Are You Going To The AAAS Meeting In San Diego?

Jan 12 2010 | comment(s)

The annual AAAS conference is being held next month in San Diego and I went last year (here and here and here) , despite it being a Chicago February, but most of you did not, thus the reason for the title.
PhDs and Diapers

PhDs and Diapers

Jan 12 2010 | comment(s)

Connecting my earlier post on PhD job realities and Melissa's blog post on Entitlement Culture is today's Ph.D comic (by Jorge Cham):


Alex, the Daytime Astronomer
Online Poker: The More You Win, The More You Lose

Online Poker: The More You Win, The More You Lose

Jan 12 2010 | comment(s)

The more hands of online poker a player wins, the more money that person is likely to lose, concludes a study conducted by a Cornell sociology doctoral student. The likely reason being that multiple wins are common for small stakes poker, and the more someone plays, the more likely he or she will eventually be walloped by occasional – but significant – losses.
Green Tea May Reduce Lung Cancer Risk For Smokers

Green Tea May Reduce Lung Cancer Risk For Smokers

Jan 12 2010 | comment(s)

Drinking green tea could modulate the effects of smoking on lung cancer, suggests a hospital-based, randomized study presented at the AACR-IASLC Joint Conference on Molecular Origins of Lung Cancer.

Researchers enrolled 170 patients with lung cancer and 340 healthy patients as controls.  The team administered questionnaires to obtain demographic characteristics, cigarette smoking habits, green tea consumption, dietary intake of fruits and vegetables, cooking practices and family history of lung cancer. They also performed genotyping on insulin-like growth factors as polymorphisms on the following insulin-like growth factors: IGF1, IGF2 and IGFBP3, which have all been reported to be associated with cancer risk.
Vitamin E Prevents Brain Damage After Stroke

Vitamin E Prevents Brain Damage After Stroke

Jan 12 2010 | comment(s)

Blocking the function of an enzyme called cPLA2 with a specific kind of vitamin E can prevent nerve cells from dying after a stroke, new research published in the Journal of Neurochemistry suggests. Using mouse brain cells, scientists found that the tocotrienol (TCT) form of vitamin E stopped the enzyme from releasing fatty acids that eventually kill neurons.

Vitamin E occurs naturally in eight different forms. The best-known form of vitamin E belongs to a variety called tocopherols. The form of vitamin E in this study, tocotrienol or TCT, is not abundant in the American diet but is available as a nutritional supplement. It is a common component of a typical Southeast Asian diet.
The 'Weekend Effect'--Why People Feel Better On Their Days Off

The 'Weekend Effect'--Why People Feel Better On Their Days Off

Jan 12 2010 | comment(s)

No matter what you do for a living, you're likely to consistently feel better mentally and physically on the weekend, according to a study of daily mood variation in employed adults. Dubbed the 'weekend effect', this tendency to feel  better on your days off is largely associated with the freedom to choose how you spend your time, the study's authors suggest. 
Willpower Alone Won't Help You Lose Weight

Willpower Alone Won't Help You Lose Weight

Jan 12 2010 | comment(s)

While exerting willpower is an important part of losing weight, new evidence suggests that their may be more to successful dieting than simply trying to eat less. Cognitive scientists from Indiana University and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin have found that the perceived complexity of diets themselves can also have a big influence on the pounds shed. Their research was published in the journal Appetite.
 
Carbon Tax Or Carbon 'Offset'? Labels Influence Public Policy

Carbon Tax Or Carbon 'Offset'? Labels Influence Public Policy

Jan 12 2010 | comment(s)

Policy makers and lobbyists who want to enact a carbon tax would do well to choose their words carefully, say Columbia University Psychologists. In a new study in Psychological Science, the research team suggests that since voters typically don't like higher taxes, policy proposals aimed at reducing CO2 emissions should be referred to as 'carbon offsets' in order to generate the most public support. The semantic trick even works on those who are most resistant to a political response to climate change--Republicans. 
Caffeine Consumption Not Linked To Tinnitus

Caffeine Consumption Not Linked To Tinnitus

Jan 12 2010 | comment(s)

 Giving up caffeine does not relieve tinnitus and acute caffeine withdrawal may actually add to the problem, according to a new study published in the International Journal of Audiology. 
Friends Influence How Much Children Eat

Friends Influence How Much Children Eat

Jan 12 2010 | comment(s)

Parents are acutely aware of the influence that friends exert over their children's behavior -- how they dress, how they wear their hair, whether they drink or smoke. And now a new laboratory-based study has shown that friends may also influence how much adolescents eat.

The study appears online in the current issue of Annals of Behavioral Medicine and involved 54 overweight and non-overweight youth -- 24 boys and 30 girls -- between the ages of 9 and 11.  Each was assigned randomly to bring a friend or to be paired with an unfamiliar peer. Study
participants worked on a computer game to earn points exchangeable for food or time to spend with their friend or with an unfamiliar peer.
Global Cooling: A Good Story, If Only It Were True.

Global Cooling: A Good Story, If Only It Were True.

Jan 12 2010 | comment(s)

Global Cooling: A Good Story, If Only It Were True.

According to Daily Mail reports of 10th and 11th January 2010, we are now entering a phase of global cooling.  However, there is an old saying about newspaper reports: "Never let the facts get in the way of a good story."

I am not here to 'knock' the Daily Mail.  My earliest recollections of reading news stories are recollections of the Daily Mail.  I still read the Daily Mail on line and enjoy the generally high standard of reporting, so it came as something of a shock to discover that Daily Mail reporters have got their facts entirely wrong about global warming.
Engineering A Cell Switch

Engineering A Cell Switch

Jan 11 2010 | comment(s)


Why should we bother building mathematical models of biological systems? Scientists from other fields might wonder why one would as such a question - physicists, climate scientists, economists, engineers, and chemists all use mathematical models to understand the world.

Some biologists do too - individual proteins are studied with quantum mechanical models by biophysicists, enzyme reactions are modeled by biochemists, physiologists have mathematical models of the circulatory system, and population geneticists model the evolution of gene frequencies in populations.
Bible Science 101 - Again

Bible Science 101 - Again

Jan 11 2010 | comment(s)

Richard Fortey reviews The Genesis Enigma in The Times Literary Supplement:
Morning Science Quote

Morning Science Quote

Jan 11 2010 | comment(s)

Science is inextricably interwoven with cosmology, with theology, with epistemology, with ethics, politics, and psychology, all of them crucial to exploration into the human condition. A cosmology cannot be taken seriously that is not consistent with modern mechanics and astronomy, nor an epistemology that is naive in its understanding of operationalism, quantum uncertainty, or the Gödel theorems. To understand Zeno's paradoxes, we do not study the classics, but Weierstrass and Cantor.

- Herbert A. Simon, "Culture to the Nth Power", in Visions of Technology, ed. Richard Rhodes, p. 247






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