Posts

November 21, 2011

One hundred years ago, an American pharmacist named Wilbur Scoville developed a scale to measure the intensity of a pepper’s burn. The scale – as you can see on the widely used chart to the left – puts sweet bell peppers at the zero mark and the blistering habanero at up to 350,000 Scoville Units. [...]

August 02, 2011

3:30 PM | A view to a kill in the morning: Carbon dioxide

In 1940, inspired by a tragic accident, a New York pathologist came up with the scenario for a perfect murder. His idea was based on the deaths of five longshoremen, their bodies found in the cargo hold of a steamer docked on the East River. The boat had been carrying cherries from Michigan. The men [...]

2 Results

Sidebar

Filters

Posts with Citations

Big data for autism and the promise of newborn bloodspots

An episode of the BBC program Horizon on 'Big Data' recently caught my attention. The content was a fascinating insight into how we are living in a data-rich age and how trawling/mining/dredging such data has the ability to advance medicine, predict crime and even make someone a few quid/dollars/euros on the stock market.Gone (data) fishing @ Wikipedia I'm a big believer in big data. In particular how, with the right sources, technology, techniques and people, big data might be able […]

Mizejewski GJ, Lindau-Shepard B & Pass KA (2013). Newborn screening for autism: in search of candidate biomarkers., Biomarkers in medicine, 7 (2) 247-60. PMID: 23547820

Citation

The mindbus technique for resisting chocolate - should we climb aboard?

Imagine you are the driver & your chocolate cravings are unruly passengers If someone gave you a bag of 14 chocolates to carry around for five days, would you be able to resist eating them and any other chocolate? That was challenge faced by 135 undergrads in a new study that compared the effectiveness of two different "mindfulness" resistance techniques. To help them, Kim Jenkins and Katy Tapper taught 45 of their participants "cognitive diffusion", the essence being that "you are not […]

Jenkins, K. & Tapper, K. (2013). Resisting chocolate temptation using a brief mindfulness strategy, British Journal of Health Psychology, DOI: 10.1111/bjhp.12050

Citation

Quasi-delusions and inequality aversion

Patient M: It’s impossible —- no one could urinate into that bottle -— at least no woman could. I’m furious with her [these are the patient's emphases] and I’m damned if I am going to do it unless she gives me another kind of bottle. It’s just impossible to use that little thing. Analyst: It […]

Fehr, E. & Schmidt, K. (1999). A Theory of Fairness, Competition, and Cooperation, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 114 (3) 817-868. DOI: 10.1162/003355399556151

Citation

What if 501(c)4 Organizations Had to Disclose Their Donors?

The IRS kerfuffle has increased interest in the tax code by about 5700%, and one outcome is that people are starting to put the various exemption groups under a microscope. Dylan Matthews has thoughtful piece on 501(c)4 organizations, the groups at the center of the scandal. Matthews thinks the real issue is disclosure, and it’s [...]

Dowling, C. & Wichowsky, A. (2013). Does It Matter Who's Behind the Curtain? Anonymity in Political Advertising and the Effects of Campaign Finance Disclosure, American Politics Research, DOI: 10.1177/1532673X13480828

Citation

Offshore Drilling Helps Microbiologists Study Life on Earth and Beyond

Offshore drilling is often discussed in terms of its positive effect on the economy and the potential risks it carries for the environment. There’s, however, another side to offshore drilling, one that is less often talked about. A recent study done at the University of Aberdeen, suggests that the oil and gas industry’s pursuit of new oil reserves has contributed to a greater understanding of where life exists on Earth and may even help us look for life on other planets. Read more »

Parnell, J., Boyce, A., Hurst, A., Davidheiser-Kroll, B. & Ponicka, J. (2013). Long term geological record of a global deep subsurface microbial habitat in sand injection complexes, Scientific Reports, 3 DOI: 10.1038/srep01828

Citation

Posts

November 21, 2011

August 02, 2011

Posts with Citations

User Activity