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This page shows you the most recent publications within this specialty of the MedWorm directory.
Felix Baumgartner to freefall from almost 40 km up
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Real-life action hero Felix Baumgartner plans to take a balloon up to the edge of space and then to jump out. In freefall he hopes to break the speed record for a human travelling without a machine, the needle, as it were, reaching speeds in excess of the speed of sound. In the BBC newsclip there’s a nice simulation of the event.
Of more concern was Pallab Ghosh’s claim that if Baumgartner gets a hole in his protective space suit his blood could begin to boil because of the very low pressure at that altitude. Wrong. He might get cold and could suffocate, his saliva might bubble in his mouth, but the pressure of...
Source: Sciencebase Science Blog - February 7, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science 23 baumgartner felix mil Source Type: blogs
Embryonic Stem Cells Improve Vision Of Blind PatientsEmail this article to a colleague.
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Researchers at UCLA’s Jules Stein Eye Institute and colleagues have successfully used specialized retinal cells derived from human embryonic stem cells to improve the vision of two legally blind patients.
The trial was led by Dr. Steven Schwartz, opthalmologist and chief of the retina division at the Institute. Although the results are extremely promising, only two patients were treated. The trial will have to be preformed successfully many more times before the procedure can be accepted as an option for care.
Nevertheless, the preliminary findings represent a milestone in the therapeutic use of stem cells and may p...
Source: Highlight HEALTH - February 7, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Walter Jessen Source Type: blogs
Kinect could help phantom limb painEmail this article to a colleague.
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A phantom limb is the perception that an amputated or missing limb or other body part is still attached to the body. The sensations, by most accounts, are unpleasant and commonly painful. Mirror therapy has been used to help alleviate some of the problems experienced by veterans, accident victims and others who have lossed limbs because of disease. A mirror box, has many limitations. Ben Blundell and colleagues at the University of Manchester, UK, thought the Microsoft Kinect gaming system coupled with an immersive 3D virtual reality environment might be able to help.
Kinect is a motion sensing input device for the Xbox 36...
Source: Sciencebase Science Blog - February 7, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science kinect limb pain phantom Source Type: blogs
Testing times, but no pardon for TuringEmail this article to a colleague.
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UK government minister, Lord McNally, responded for the government declining to pardon Turing:
The question of granting a posthumous pardon to Mr Turing was considered by the previous Government in 2009.
As a result of the previous campaign, the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued an unequivocal posthumous apology to Mr Turing on behalf of the Government, describing his treatment as "horrifying" and "utterly unfair". Mr Brown said the country owed him a huge debt. This apology was also shown at the end of the Channel 4 documentary celebrating Mr Turing’s life and achievements which was broadca...
Source: Sciencebase Science Blog - February 7, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science pardon testing times Turing Source Type: blogs
New openaccess paper from my lab on "Zorro" software for automated masking of sequence alignmentsEmail this article to a colleague.
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A new Open Access paper from my lab was just published in PLoS One: Accounting For Alignment Uncertainty in Phylogenomics. Wu M, Chatterji S, Eisen JA (2012) Accounting For Alignment Uncertainty in Phylogenomics. PLoS ONE 7(1): e30288. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0030288
The paper describes the software "Zorro" which is used for automated "masking" of sequence alignments. Basically, if you have a multiple sequence alignment you would like to use to infer a phylogenetic tree, in some cases it is desirable to block out regions of the alignment that are not reliable. This blocking is called "maski...
Source: The Tree of Life - February 7, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs
Walnuts shrink prostate tumors in miceEmail this article to a colleague.
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UC Davis researchers, with colleagues at the USDA Western Regional Research Center in Albany, Calif., assessed tumor size in mice fed different diets for 9, 18 and 24 weeks. They found that the mice that consumed the human equivalent of 2.4 ounces of whole walnuts daily, gained weight at the same rate as mice fed a [...] (Source: Biosingularity)
Source: Biosingularity - February 6, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Derya Tags: Biotechnology Source Type: blogs
Science Online pluses and minusesEmail this article to a colleague.
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How long can a conference continue after it has ended? I don’t know the answer, but I know that Science Online 2012 is definitely not over yet, despite the fact that the last plenary session ended more than two weeks ago. On the Wikipage of the conference the list of blog coverage after the conference just seems to keep growing, and on Twitter #scio12 tweets keeps rolling in. People I didn’t meet at the conference, I am now meeting two weeks later, meaning that I can still add names to the list of “people I met at Science Online”. Quite amazing.
It is great to read other people’s reflections o...
Source: Biomedicine on Display - February 6, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Nina Bjerglund Andersen Tags: blogging conference nametags science online 2012 science online 2013 sciene communication scio12 Twitter Source Type: blogs
10 out of 10 for boron’s coordinated effortEmail this article to a colleague.
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A team in the US has created a boron compound that has the highest coordination number of any planar species, squeezing 10 spoke-like bonds from a central metal hub to 10 boron atoms equally spaced around a nanoscopic wheel.
I asked theoretical chemist Pekka Pyykkö of the University of Helsinki, Finland, for his thoughts on the work:
“This combined experimental and theoretical discovery is in my opinion worth of any coverage you can give it. The new record of 10 for an equatorial coordination number, in a perfect symmetry group D10h, will make lovers of records happy,” he told me.
“At a deeper, quantum m...
Source: Sciencebase Science Blog - February 6, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science 10 borons coordinated effort Source Type: blogs
Just Because It Isn’t Sweet … Doesn’t Mean It Isn’t SugarEmail this article to a colleague.
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From a nutritional perspective, is a spoonful of white rice more like a spoonful of sugar or a spoonful of brown rice? Because they taste and look similar, most people assume that white rice and brown rice share many of the same nutritional qualities. It turns out, however, that this is not the case. The reason has to do with the chemical nature of carbohydrates.
Image credit: Two kinds of rice in spoons via Shutterstock
Carbohydrates can be divided into two major classes: simple carbohydrates and complex carbohydrates.
The simple carbohydrates are colloquially called sugars, and they taste sweet on the tongue. Sugars con...
Source: Highlight HEALTH - February 6, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Kirstin Hendrickson Source Type: blogs
Testosterone makes us less cooperative and more egocentricEmail this article to a colleague.
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Testosterone makes us overvalue our own opinions at the expense of cooperation, research from the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL (University College London) has found. The findings may have implications for how group decisions are affected by dominant individuals. Problem solving in groups can provide benefits over individual decisions as we are able [...] (Source: Biosingularity)
Source: Biosingularity - February 6, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Derya Tags: Biotechnology Source Type: blogs
Are diet soft drinks bad for you?Email this article to a colleague.
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New study finds potential link between daily consumption of diet soft drinks and risk of vascular events Individuals who drink diet soft drinks on a daily basis may be at increased risk of suffering vascular events such as stroke, heart attack, and vascular death. This is according to a new study by Hannah Gardener and [...] (Source: Biosingularity)
Source: Biosingularity - February 6, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Derya Tags: Biotechnology Source Type: blogs
Fun visit to the #UCDavis Bohart Entomology Museum w/ my daughter's Daisy Troop (led by my wife)Email this article to a colleague.
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Kudos to the UC Davis Bohart Museum of Entomology for the tour they gave to the Daisy Troop my daughter is in (which is run by my wife and a friend of hers). I got there a little late and embarrassed myself by thinking one of the dads was one of the museum workers and introducing myself (even though I know the dad pretty well). Oh well, live and let learn. The visit went great - the kids got to play with bugs, got to open the stacks and even pull out drawers of various bugs (note - the general term, not the Homoptera). The museum staff were wonderful and the museum itself is very nice. A great kids activity in Dav...
Source: The Tree of Life - February 5, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs
Measuring What Makes A MedicineEmail this article to a colleague.
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A new method for rating the attractiveness of a compound could help chemists discern potential new drugs from duds. Researchers have come up with a way to quantify a compound’s drug potential that moves beyond simply “hot or not,” instead providing a measure that allows compounds to be ranked as well. The approach “takes things [...] (Source: Biosingularity)
Source: Biosingularity - February 4, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Derya Tags: Biotechnology Source Type: blogs
‘Panic button’ could help cancer defy drugsEmail this article to a colleague.
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Stressed yeast cells frantically reshuffle their chromosomes in a desperate last bid to find a combination that survives. This “panic” response enables them to rapidly evolve resistance to drugs. The discovery might also apply to cancer, because cancer cells often have abnormal numbers and arrangements of chromosomes. Understanding one of the mechanisms by which cancers [...] (Source: Biosingularity)
Source: Biosingularity - February 4, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Derya Tags: Biotechnology Source Type: blogs
Genentech drug to fight common skin cancer gets OKEmail this article to a colleague.
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Federal regulators Monday approved the first drug for people with advanced forms of basal cell carcinoma, the most common kind of skin cancer, as well as the most common cancer in general in the United States. The drug, made by South San Francisco’s Genentech, a subsidiary of the Swiss drug giant Roche, is designed for [...] (Source: Biosingularity)
Source: Biosingularity - February 4, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Derya Tags: Biotechnology Source Type: blogs
Scientists turn skin cells into neural precursors, bypassing stem-cell stageEmail this article to a colleague.
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Mouse skin cells can be converted directly into cells that become the three main parts of the nervous system, according to researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The finding is an extension of a previous study by the same group showing that mouse and human skin cells can be directly converted into functional neurons. [...] (Source: Biosingularity)
Source: Biosingularity - February 4, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Derya Tags: Biotechnology Source Type: blogs
Next up for Science in Congress: HR3433 - the Grant Reform and Transparency ActEmail this article to a colleague.
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Just got pointed to this by Mark Martin. There is a new bill making its way through congress - HR 3433 - the Grant Reform and New Transparency Act of 2011. It has a subtitle apparently of "To amend title 31, United States Code, to provide transparency and require certain standards in the award of Federal grants, and for other purposes."
The full text of the bill and other information is available here.
I personally don't know much about this bill but found some discussion of it here and here:
House Committee Passes Bill Requiring Disclosure of Peer Reviewers
GRANT Act Would Require Publication of All Research Grant...
Source: The Tree of Life - February 4, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs
Stop deifying "peer review" of journal publications:Email this article to a colleague.
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Peer review. It is a critical part of scientific research and scientific progress. Without it, science as a field might look like Fox News Stories or postings on Jenny McCarthy's web site, where ideas people have are given gravitas regardless of how ludicrous they are. But somehow, many in the public and press, and many many scientists alas, have deep misconceptions about peer review.
The most recent example of such misconceptions involves the arsenic life saga. If you are not familiar with this story - here is a summary (for some fine scale details on the early parts of the story see Carl Zimmer's post...
Source: The Tree of Life - February 4, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs
Museion and the Web 2012Email this article to a colleague.
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Daniel and I just finished a meeting on the topic “how to plan a workshop day for our colleagues about Web Outreach”. The task was given to us by our director Thomas Söderqvist, who formulated the reason for having such a day like this:
If we shall be able to convince scientists about the importance of communicating science, we need to practice what we teach. In other words, we need to develop an exemplary communication practice that others can learn from (and others include not only scientists, but also curators in other museums). Telling others outside the museum what we are doing is an *integral* part...
Source: Biomedicine on Display - February 3, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Bente Vinge Pedersen Tags: web resources Source Type: blogs
Dear students: In this classroom you will have to have your mobiles turned ONEmail this article to a colleague.
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Do term papers have to be written with pen and paper? No, luckily not anymore. Is it necessary to hand in a printed version of your exam paper? No, universities (at least in Denmark) now let you submit online. Would most people use programmes like Word etc for writing their assignments? Probably yes. But how about putting it all online? And making it public. By using a blog format?
The idea seems very relevant in a course on Public Health Science Communication, which will also cover how social media can play a role in communicating science. At least the idea is very inviting to me. And several universities have already tri...
Source: Biomedicine on Display - February 3, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Nina Bjerglund Andersen Tags: blogging teaching blogs classroom blogging communication skills science communication ScienceOnline2012 scio12 Source Type: blogs
Heart Conditions Don’t Just Affect Older AdultsEmail this article to a colleague.
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This article was written by Julianne Wyrick.
February is American Heart Month. Sponsored by the American Heart Association, American Heart Month is a time to battle cardiovascular disease and educate people on what they can do to live heart-healthy lives. Heart disease, including stroke, is the leading cause of death for men and women in the United States.
How much do you know about the condition of your heart? Heart health awareness typically focuses on heart disease in older adults caused by an unhealthy diet and a lack of exercise. But what if you could be at risk for cardiac arrest and sudden death even though you are ...
Source: Highlight HEALTH - February 3, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Guest Writer Source Type: blogs
Authorship without responsibility?Email this article to a colleague.
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I'm becoming increasingly disturbed by the behaviour of Wolfe-Simon's arseniclife coauthors. She shared the credit for the work with 11 other authors but, in the year since the tide of support turned, the senior author is the only one to have said even a word to support her or defend the work. And even he mostly says 'No comment' or 'We'll wait for the peer-reviewed responses'. All of the authors signed the Response to Comments published in early June, so I presume they stand by the work. Why then is Wolfe-Simon the only one speaking up to defend it?
David Dobbs made this point very well in ...
Source: RRResearch - February 3, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Rosie Redfield Source Type: blogs
Interesting new metagenomics paper w/ one big big big caveat - critical software not available "Email this article to a colleague.
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Very very strange. There is an interesting new metagenomics paper that has come out in Science this week. It is titled "Untangling Genomes from Metagenomes: Revealing an Uncultured Class of Marine Euryarchaeota" and it is from the Armbrust lab at U. Washington.
One of the main points of this paper is that the lab has developed software that apparently can help assemble the complete genomes of organisms that are present in low abundance in a metagenomic sample. At some point I will comment on the science in the paper, (which seems very interesting) though as the paper in non Open Access I feel uncomforta...
Source: The Tree of Life - February 3, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs
Vanity pressEmail this article to a colleague.
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"Look, matey, I know a dead publishing industry when I see it, and I'm looking at one right now. It's not pinin'! It's passed on! This industry is no more! It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet its maker! It's a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! Its metabolic processes are now 'istory! It's off the twig! It's kicked the bucket, it's shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-PUBLISHING INDUSTRY!!"No, it's not dead yet. It's lobbying its lit'le heart out, though.IMHO, it's time to switch the machine off and embrace the future. The future as...
Source: Across the Bilayer - February 2, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Source Type: blogs
Evening Events at Medical MuseionEmail this article to a colleague.
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Tickets are now on sale at PolitikenBillet for our new evening event series, Body | Medicine | Object. Here’s the series description from the event homepage (also in Danish here):
“Come to a late night consultation at Medical Museion, and get closer than ever before to objects from the unique historical collections, ranging from amputation saws to human specimens. Encounter mysterious objects from cutting edge medical research laboratories, and explore the devices that are changing the way we live with disease and disability. Meet scientists, artists, and philosophers all trying to make sense of the body and how we m...
Source: Biomedicine on Display - February 2, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: louise Tags: aesthetics communicating science events materiality objects public engagement speakers things Source Type: blogs
Drug Companies Collaborate to Fight Neglected Tropical DiseasesEmail this article to a colleague.
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A global initiative to fight neglected tropical diseases launched in London this week. The so-called London Declaration calls for the eradication of 10 neglected tropical diseases by 2020. Experts are calling it the largest coordinated effort ever undertaken to combat diseases that affect 1.4 billion people in the world’s poorest countries.
Organized by Bill Gates and united by a new World Health Organization (WHO) strategy, which outlines goals and objectives for the enhanced control, prevention, elimination and eradication of neglected tropical diseases, thirteen 13 pharmaceutical companies — Abbott, AstraZ...
Source: Highlight HEALTH - February 2, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Walter Jessen Source Type: blogs
2010 "Arsenic found in DNA", 2012 "We never claimed arsenic was in the DNA" WTF?Email this article to a colleague.
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Unbelievable. Check out this news story on some new results relating to the "Arsenic Life" story. The story discusses a paper from Rosie Redfield that has been deposited in arXiv. Rosie has been persistent in doing tests on the strain GFAJ-1 that Wolfe-Simon had isolated. One of their new results is that they cannot detect arsenic/arsenate in the DNA from this strain. Amazingly, in this news story Wolfe-Simon is reported to have said that they never claimed that arsenic was getting into the DNA:
Wolfe-Simon, who says she can’t comment in detail until Redfield’s results appear in a peer-reviewed jo...
Source: The Tree of Life - February 2, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs
F1000 Launches Open Access Publishing for Biology and MedicineEmail this article to a colleague.
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This week, the Faculty of 1000 (F1000), announced F1000 Research, a new fully Open Access publishing program across biology and medicine that will launch later this year [1]. F1000 Research is intended to address the major issues afflicting scientific publishing today: timely dissemination of research, peer review, and sharing of data.
Last summer, F1000 celebrated ten years highlighting the top literature in biology and medical research. Faculty of 1000 (F1000) is a unique online services that selects, rates, and evaluates important articles based on the opinions of global leaders in biology and medicine. Articles are s...
Source: Highlight HEALTH - February 1, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Walter Jessen Source Type: blogs
Open peer review of our arseniclife submission pleaseEmail this article to a colleague.
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Our manuscript reporting the lack of arsenate in the DNA of arsenate-grown GFAJ-1 cells is now available on the arXiv server at http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.6643.
I posted it there mainly out of principle (openness is good), but it's already attracting some critical commentary. This reminded me that one of the main purposes of the arXiv is to encourage pre-publication discussion of research. This is open peer review!
So please post your comments on our manuscript here. To get things started, here are the comments already made:
NotAnAstrobiologistJan 31, 2012 09:42 PMAs I understand it, Figure S1 has erro...
Source: RRResearch - February 1, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Rosie Redfield Source Type: blogs
Q & A about Elsevier, my blog retraction, and #OpenAccessEmail this article to a colleague.
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Jop de Vrieze has written an article related to the Elsevier boycott for ScienceInsider:
Thousands of Scientists Vow to Boycott Elsevier to Protest Journal Prices
In the article, one of the things he discusses is my blog post (which I then "retracted) suggesting people ignore any papers published in Elsevier Journals: Boycotting Elsevier is not enough - time to make them invisible (UPDATED/RETRACTED).
In his article he wrote:
One scientist who strongly supports the boycott is Jonathan Eisen, a microbial genomicist at the University of California, Davis, and the Academic Editor-in-Chief of PLoS Biology, an open ac...
Source: The Tree of Life - February 1, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs
The Neurobiology of Bliss–Sacred and ProfaneEmail this article to a colleague.
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In studies that observe the brain in action, the right hemisphere seems to be the sexy hemisphere. It lights up during orgasm—so much so that, in one study, much of the cortex went dark, leaving the right prefrontal cortex as a bright island. New research suggests the right hemisphere is also hyperactive amongst the “hypersexual,” [...] (Source: Biosingularity)
Source: Biosingularity - January 31, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Derya Tags: Biotechnology Source Type: blogs
T lymphocytes and cancer cellEmail this article to a colleague.
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. Coloured scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of T lymphocyte cells (red) attached to a cancer cell. T lymphocytes are a type of white blood cell that recognise a specific site (antigen) on the surface of cancer cells or pathogens and bind to it. Some T lymphocytes then signal for other immune [...] (Source: Biosingularity)
Source: Biosingularity - January 31, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Derya Tags: Biotechnology Source Type: blogs
Heart Bypass Surgery (CABG)Email this article to a colleague.
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(Source: Biosingularity)
Source: Biosingularity - January 31, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Derya Tags: Biotechnology Source Type: blogs
Testify: The Open-Science Movement Catches FireEmail this article to a colleague.
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For years, the open science movement has sought to light a fire about the “closed” journal-publication system. In the last few weeks their efforts seemed to have ignited a broader flame, driven mainly, it seems, by the revelation that one of the most resented publishers, Elsevier, was backing the Research Works Act — some tomfoolery [...] (Source: Biosingularity)
Source: Biosingularity - January 31, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Derya Tags: Biotechnology Source Type: blogs
Making memories lastEmail this article to a colleague.
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Memories in our brains are maintained by connections between neurons called “synapses”. But how do these synapses stay strong and keep memories alive for decades? Neuroscientists at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have discovered a major clue from a study in fruit flies: Hardy, self-copying clusters or oligomers of a synapse protein are an [...] (Source: Biosingularity)
Source: Biosingularity - January 31, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Derya Tags: Biotechnology Source Type: blogs
Layers of graphene, water and heliumEmail this article to a colleague.
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Graphene is perhaps the thinnest material known. Essentially it is a single, isolated layer of the carbon allotrope graphite. In SpectroscopyNOW this week I discuss new research into how a single layer of graphene is transparent to water molecules in the sense that the water can “see” whatever is underneath without the graphene influence. More details on that and potential applications over on SN, but it was the coincidence of a paper by Geim and colleagues at Manchester, which I covered last week in Chemistry World that intrigued me. On the one hand water interacts with a metal coated with a single layer of gr...
Source: Sciencebase Science Blog - January 31, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science graphene helium layers water Source Type: blogs
Post mortem breast implantsEmail this article to a colleague.
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When you leave your body to medical science you might imagine some marvellous discovery among your organs and tissues that leads researchers to the wondrous discovery of a universal anticancer drug or something equally stupendous. In reality, it can be a much more mundane, especially for any women donating their mortal coil.
Researchers at Emory University have been testing two techniques for implanting silicone prosthetic breast implants into cadavers. Obviously, the implications of their work will be of relevance to living recipients, rather than the morticians. They have investigated whether the so-called Keller Funnel,...
Source: Sciencebase Science Blog - January 31, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science breast implants mortem post Source Type: blogs
LowestMed Mobile App Helps Consumers Make Informed Decisions About Prescription DrugsEmail this article to a colleague.
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LowestMed recently launched a first-in-the-industry mobile app that enables healthcare consumers to view and compare prescription drug prices — including $4 generic drugs — at leading supermarket and pharmacy chains in their local area on an iPhone or Android device.
LowestMed’s proprietary technology effectively makes prescription drug pricing transparent. The LowestMed app includes more than 1,000 of the most popular brand name and generic drugs, which comprise more than 95% of the most commonly prescribed drugs in the nation.
According to Brad Bangerter, CEO of LowestMed:
Most consumers don’t ...
Source: Highlight HEALTH - January 31, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Walter Jessen Source Type: blogs
Real Space LegoEmail this article to a colleague.
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I was very impressed with the Lego-astronaut of Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad. These two seventeen year olds from Scarborough sent a Lego man 24km above the surface of the earth. Using a weather balloon, some long ropes, a cellphone GPS, Styrofoam, cameras and some patriotic Lego they captured some spectacular footage. The footage has captured widespread media attention. It is amazing that the technology for what is essentially an unmanned space probe is within the budget of two smart seventeen year olds. (Source: Bayblab)
Source: Bayblab - January 31, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: rob Source Type: blogs
PotashEmail this article to a colleague.
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Canada is the largest producer of potash in the world. Recent investment in the development of potash resources in Saskatchewan is raising the usual issues of economic prosperity vs environmental sustainability. As potash is becoming a larger part of the Canadian economy I thought that I would share what I learned about potash because I knew essentially nothing about it until recently.Before the late 1800s, potash was produced by leaching salts from the ashes of wood or plants and boiling the solution in a pot, hence the name potash. Historically, Canada was a large producer of potash as the frontier was opened up and defo...
Source: Bayblab - January 31, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: rob Source Type: blogs
At the margins of life and deathEmail this article to a colleague.
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As I wrote the other day, Medical Museion hosts the Graduate Programme of Medical Science and Technology Studies here at the University of Copenhagen.
Now we are proud to announce a graduate course titled ‘At the Margins of Life and Death’, to be held 21-23 August 2012.
The aim of the course — which is organised by associate professor Mette Nordahl Svendsen and professor Lene Koch from the Section of Health Services Research here in Copenhagen — is to present “notions, materialities and regulations of life and death in the laboratory, in the clinic, and among patients and users of medical...
Source: Biomedicine on Display - January 30, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Thomas Söderqvist Tags: graduate courses science and technology studies Source Type: blogs
Biomarker Bulletin: January 30, 2012Email this article to a colleague.
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Biomarker Bulletin is an occasionally recurring update of news focused on biomarkers aggregated at BiomarkerCommons.org. Biomarkers are physical, functional or biochemical indicators of normal physiological or disease processes. The individualization of disease management — personalized medicine — is dependent on developing biomarkers that promote specific clinical domains, including early detection, risk, diagnosis, prognosis and predicted response to therapy.
Selventa Receives Patent for Method to Identify Biomarker Profiles
Selventa, a biomarker discovery company that enables personalized healthcare throug...
Source: Highlight HEALTH - January 30, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Walter Jessen Source Type: blogs
Deodorants still don’t cause breast cancerEmail this article to a colleague.
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It was perhaps inevitable that a paper published in the journal Journal of Applied Toxicology that showed parabens (a preservative used in underarm deodorants and countless other products) to be present in breast cancer tissue samples would be grabbed by the tabloids and others and turned into the latest scare story about how deodorants cause breast cancer. Indeed The Daily Mail, for instance, not known for its scientific accuracy announced that: “Chemical found in deodorants, face cream and food products is discovered in tumours of ALL breast cancer patients”.
Of course, that wasn’t even close to the tru...
Source: Sciencebase Science Blog - January 30, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science breast Cancer deodorants Source Type: blogs
The #arseniclife manuscript has been submitted!Email this article to a colleague.
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We've posted the manuscript on the public arXiv.org server. You can download the full pdf, including all the supplementary data, at http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.6643. (Source: RRResearch)
Source: RRResearch - January 30, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Rosie Redfield Source Type: blogs
Lists of Elsevier journals to boycottEmail this article to a colleague.
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Readers of this blog probably already know that there's a call out to boycott journals published by Elsevier because of their anti-scientific publishing practices. Initially researchers were signing a pledge to not contribute to Elsevier's activities, by refusing to publish in, referee for, or do editorial work for any Elsevier journal. I've signed this (at The Cost of Knowledge), and you should too.
Jon Eisen has now expanded this, asking that researchers also refrain from promoting work published in Elsevier journals (Boycotting Elsevier is not enough - time to make them invisible). Don't write blog p...
Source: RRResearch - January 30, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Rosie Redfield Source Type: blogs
Scary and funny: functional researcher Peter Uhnemann on OMICS group Editorial Board #JournalSPAMEmail this article to a colleague.
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OMG. This is both hilarious and terrifying.
Many out there know there are journals out there that border on SPAM. I have written about this often before (e.g., see For $&%# sake, Bentham Open Journals, leave me alone and Yet another SPAMMY Science publisher: Scientific and Academic Publishing and The Tree of Life: Really sick of Bentham Open Spam) as have many others (e.g., Open and Shut?: The Open Access Interviews: Matthew Honan and Academic spam and open access publishing - Per Ola Kristensson).
But this one takes the cake. There is a journal called "Molec...
Source: The Tree of Life - January 30, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs
Boycotting Elsevier is not enough - time to make them invisible (UPDATED/RETRACTED)Email this article to a colleague.
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Update: The original post here was written at midnight, with a cat on my lap. I thought this post conveyed some tongue in cheek aspect of this idea to ignore work in Elsevier journals. (one could view it as a midnight middle finger to Elsevier over some of their policies). But clearly, based on the responses I am seeing that did not come across. I accept the error of my ways. Drug Monkey is right - no work should be ignored - no matter where it is published. I could explain in more detail what I was trying to convey - but in the end that is like explaining a bad joke. Instead, I am ther...
Source: The Tree of Life - January 30, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs
‘Panic button’ could help cancer defy drugsEmail this article to a colleague.
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Stressed yeast cells frantically reshuffle their chromosomes in a desperate last bid to find a combination that survives. This “panic” response enables them to rapidly evolve resistance to drugs. The discovery might also apply to cancer, because cancer cells often have abnormal numbers and arrangements of chromosomes. Understanding one of the mechanisms by which cancers [...] (Source: Biosingularity)
Source: Biosingularity - January 29, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Derya Tags: Biotechnology Source Type: blogs
ArXiv submission?Email this article to a colleague.
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I'd like to put our arseniclife submission to Science onto the arXiv server so that anyone who's interested can read it. Not many biologists use arXiv (it's mainly a physics thing) but it's a very convenient place to post manuscripts and other documents. And its use by physicists provides a great precedent for open science, because manuscripts are posted there and submitted for formal publication in peer-reviewed journals.
However, I'd like to first find out whether Science has any policy about arXiv pre-publication. Their Instructions to Authors say: Distribution on the Internet may be considered p...
Source: RRResearch - January 29, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Rosie Redfield Source Type: blogs
How are these @kejames re: #PLoSOne cc: @boraz @edyong209 @danielaphdEmail this article to a colleague.
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...... READ MORE .......
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This is from the "Tree of Life Blog"
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.
-------- (Source: The Tree of Life)
Source: The Tree of Life - January 29, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs
