Well, it is now official, so I thought I would let my blog know about it too: I am honored to announce that I was chosen to serve in the CMS Statistics Committee. Along with eight highly distinguished colleagues, I will work for at least the next two years in a group that will take care of ensuring the accuracy of all results that our 2500-strong collaboration will produce.

CMS is one of the two high-energy physics experiments designed to study the proton-proton collisions delivered by the LHC, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. The machine is expected to start data-taking in November this year.

CDC officials are anticipating a wave a vaccine horror stories, and reminding folks that by sheer coincidence bad things will happen after some people get their flu shots:

As soon as swine flu vaccinations start next month, some people getting them will drop dead of heart attacks or strokes, some children will have seizures and some pregnant women will miscarry.

But those events will not necessarily have anything to do with the vaccine. That poses a public relations challenge for federal officials, who remember how sensational reports of deaths and illnesses derailed the large-scale flu vaccine drive of 1976...

A recent article entitled "Educators could learn a thing or two from the automotive industry, study finds" piqued my interest. 

"...explains how "Lean production" techniques have transformed the

automotive, construction, and service industries as well as healthcare

delivery."

I was hooked.  Clearly here was a model for education from some of the most successful, admired industries in the world.  I did notice that there wasn't much mention of the materials, curriculum, or the students themselves, but then why burden yourself with extraneous details.

In India, more than about 80% of the rural people depend mainly on plants for their primary healthcare needs. Many member plants of family Euphorbiaceae are found in Rajasthan and used here in many traditional remedies. A list of plants of family Euphorbiaceae found in Rajasthan is given in Table 3.2. Different plants of Euphorbiaceae are used in traditional medicine include: E. antiquorum, (Fig.3.3), E. antisyphilitica (Fig.3.2), E. chamaesyce, (Fig.3.4), E. cyparissias, (Fig.3.5), E. helioscopia (Fig.3.6), E. hypericifolia, (Fig.3.7), E. lathyris, (Fig.3.8), E. longifolia, (Fig.3.9), E. milii, (Fig.3.10), E. neriifolia, (Fig.3.11), E. nivulia (Fig.3.12), E. peplus, (Fig.3.13), E. resinifera, (Fig.3.14), E. royleana, (Fig.3.15).

The state is rich in floral diversity as 1911 wild species belonging to 780 genera and 154 families are found here (Singh and Pandey, 1980, 1983, 1998; Katewa et al., 2004). The commonly used herbal medicines used by tribals of Rajasthan belongs to the families Euphorbiaceae, Fabaceae, Asteraceae, Apiiaceae, Cucurbitaceae, Acantheceae, Papaveraceae, Capparidaceae and Solanaceae (Sharma and Vyas, 1985; Shetty and Singh,1987; Joshi, 1991, 1994; Sharma, 2002; Parveen et al., 2007). The distribution of family Euphorbiaceae in Rajasthan is given in Fig 1.4. The family contains a large variety of phytotoxins, mainly diterpene esters, alkaloids, glycosides, and ricin-type toxins (Evans 1986a, 1986b), and their presence make it ethnobotanically and pharmacognostically important family.