Posts

June 17, 2013

[A Monday afternoon editorial.] Sometime within the past couple of months, the National Institutes of Health decided to start enforcing the requirements of its public access mandate that went into effect in April of 2008. On the one hand, it was nice of NIH to give its funded researchers a year or two or […]

8:59 PM | This Week at UBC: Backward signs

Ever see these signs at UBC? Wanna know what it means? Well, Liam and I tell you all about it in this week’s video.

8:00 PM | Student guest post: Unintended Consequences

Student guest post by Naomi Kirschenbaum Although we can never know, there are estimates in the range of 15,000 displaced pets in the wake of 2005 Hurricane Katrina. Many of the dogs found their way to shelters and homes in our community around the Monterey Bay in California. As a local veterinarian the most notable…

7:07 PM | Student guest post: Tuberculosis: A Real Problem With No Real Solution

Student guest post by Jack Hamersky After successfully completing a job interview I had the opportunity to take the next step in my employment process: taking a Tuberculosis or TB test. I have received the test before but never really understood the point of testing for a disease no one ever sees in my community.…

6:55 PM | Student guest posts–summer course

Years like this are rough on blogging. As previously noted, I teach an every-other-year spring course on infection and chronic disease. Well, every summer I also teach an intensive course (basically a semester crammed into a week) on the topic of applied infectious disease epidemiology: taking what’s known about ID epi and learning how to…

5:15 PM | A nice short piece in Nature Reviews Microbiology on the growing...

A nice short piece in Nature Reviews Microbiology on the growing “Culture-free Club” in clinical microbiology.

4:07 PM | Snowball the dancing cockatoo by Sy Montgomery | Book Review

SUMMARY: A witty and engaging children's book that tells the true story of an internationally famous cockatoo who changed the way scientists think about dancing. "If life doesn't give you fruit, you can always eat nuts. And if you don't like nuts, at least you can throw them on the floor, which is highly entertaining." ~Snowball the dancing cockatoo (p. 14). A couple years ago, Snowball the dancing cockatoo burst upon the scene after one of his YouTube videos went

4:03 PM | Brain Insula Signals Response to Depression Treatment

In a previous post, I reviewed a research summary of the potential for brain imaging to be a clinical tool in the diagnosis of brain disorders in the mood disorders domain.One of the key points in that review is the value of finding brain biomarkers for response to specific treatments.To follow up on this point, a recent research study has been published that proposes the brain insular cortex region may be key to determining specific treatment response in major depressive disorder.Helen Mayberg […]

3:35 PM | G8 Meeting Begins: Ag Antibiotics on Agenda?

Quick post today as I’m getting ready for some travel. Just to note: The G8 summit is beginning in Ireland, and there is a push on to put intensive agriculture and its antibiotic use on the agenda for discussion by ...

2:38 PM | Age-related Smelling Loss Significantly Worse in African-Americans

The ability to distinguish between odors declines steadily with age, but a new study by Jayant Pinto, MD, shows that African-Americans have a much greater decrease in their sense of smell than Caucasians. This can have serious consequences. Olfactory loss often leads to impaired nutrition. It also may be an early warning sign of neurodegenerative […]

Pinto JM, Schumm LP, Wroblewski KE, Kern DW & McClintock MK (2013). Racial Disparities in Olfactory Loss Among Older Adults in the United States., The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences, PMID: 23689829

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2:19 PM | Book Review: The Recession Hurt Many People, Now Austerity is Hurting More

Jean Adams from Newcastle University, UK reviews “The Body Economic: why austerity kills” by David Stuckler & Sanjay Basu In early 2009, a few short months after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, an interesting debate broke out on the Health …

1:01 PM | Reversing the loss of brain connections in Alzheimer’s disease

The first experimental drug to boost brain synapses lost in Alzheimer’s disease has been developed by researchers at Sanford-Burnham. The drug, called NitroMemantine, combines two FDA-approved medicines to stop the destructive cascade of changes in the brain that destroys the connections between neurons, leading to memory loss and cognitive decline.

Talantova, M., Sanz-Blasco, S., Zhang, X., Xia, P., Akhtar, M., Okamoto, S., Dziewczapolski, G., Nakamura, T., Cao, G., Pratt, A. & Kang, Y. (2013). A induces astrocytic glutamate release, extrasynaptic NMDA receptor activation, and synaptic loss, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1306832110

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12:07 PM | Chemistry and diversity: Inseparable partners

Scientists come in two flavors, unifiers and diversifiers. Unifiers try to find the common threads underlying disparate phenomena. Diversifiers try to find more disparate phenomena for the unifiers to unify. Occasionally a diversifier may wear a unifier’s hat and consolidate what he knows and sometimes a unifier may take a break from his grand goal and revel in the details, but by and large the demarcation stands. As the history of science demonstrates, both diversifiers and unifiers are […]

11:49 AM | A Homeopathy Debate

On two occasions I was invited to UCONN to debate the scientific legitimacy of homeopathy - in 2007, and again in March of this year. I often directly confront or debate those who hold an unscientific belief. Sometimes this is criticized as being pointless, but that claim is premised on the assumption that the only [...]

11:34 AM | Ask a Silly Question…

Many of us will have had the experience, at some point in our lives, of sitting in a doctor's office feeling bewildered and, quite possibly, scared. We've come to the doctor in need of answers. "Am I ill? How sure are you of what I have? How would it affect me if we left it untreated? What can you do about it, and how will that treatment affect me? Will I have to change my lifestyle, will the treatment change

11:34 AM | The Lancet: Virological Analysis Of A MERS-CoV Patient

Spread of MERS-CoV Credit Dr Ian MacKay VDU MERS-CoV # 7405 With the announcement of 9 new MERS-CoV cases over the past week in Saudi Arabia, and unconfirmed media reports of 7 additional cases in Taif, our need to better understand this emerging virus grows greater with each passing day. Overnight The Lancet published a detailed report on the clinical symptoms and virological analysis of the 17th known MERS case – a 73 year old man […]

11:25 AM | A Kickstarter launched a couple of days ago is already half way to letting you control a cockroach with your phone, but is this ethical?

I’m not sure where to begin on the ethics of this. On the up side, inspiring kids to learn about technology such as this could directly lead to promising careers resulting in the next generation of treatments. On the down side, we’re seeing completely uncontrolled experimentation on the brains of … Read More [...]

8:00 AM | Survey Quality: You gets what you pay for

Surveys are tricky– how do you know they are really representative of public opinion? Patrick Sturgis, Professor of Research Methodology at the University of Southampton, considers survey methodology and why the 2012 Wellcome Trust Monitor took pains to ensure “gold-standard random sampling”. A few weeks ago the UK Education Secretary, Michael Gove, got himself into […]

7:30 AM | Willkommen, Griasgod, Welcome, Benvenuti, Hos Geldiniz und Καλώς ήρθατε

so klingt es derzeit in meiner an der TU München forschenden Arbeitsgruppe. # Aber wie wird das erst in Lindau klingen mit Besuchern aus fast 80 Ländern? # Ich bin beeindruckt und gespannt zugleich. Als Leiter einer analytisch-chemisch ausgerichteten Forschergruppe bin ich es ja gewohnt, viele Nationen um mich herum zu haben sowie den wissenschaftlichen Dialog zu suchen und führen. # Aber wie wird es sein, wenn über 600 Nachwuchsforscher (und einige Journalisten sowie wir Blogger) […]

7:18 AM | Bad science about GMOs: It reminds me of the antivaccine movement (revisited)

I never used to write much about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) before. I still don’t do it that often. For whatever reason, it just hasn’t been on my radar very much. That seems to be changing, however. It’s not because I went seeking this issue out (although I must admit that I first became interested…

7:04 AM | Videos from a personal perspective

These days four young researchers prepare for something special during the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting. They skype with film professionals, learn from tips and tricks. Because they will not only attend the meeting, they will also make videos – each one of them focusing on a special topic. ‘The Spirit of diversity at Lindau’ ‘Connect’ 'Learning form the Laureates and what they learned from us’ ‘Facing challenges and inspiring others in science’ To give you a first impression of […]

7:00 AM | More bad science in the service of anti-GMO activism

6:32 AM | SPECT/MR is now launched!

A new technology is added in imaging hybrid. a few days ago, at the Molecular Imaging’s 2013 Annual Meeting, was presented the first system that integrates a magnetic resonance imaging with SPECT. It is in practice of a gamma camera (but not in this way truly) with mri integrated.… Read the restL'articolo SPECT/MR is now launched! sembra essere il primo su Septimus.it.

2:10 AM | Esta semana en ciencia – 16 de Junio 2013

Seis noticias científicas cortas que ocurrieron esta semana...

1:13 AM | Men’s Health Week: Get It Checked

Men face unique health challenges, and one of the most dangerous is their reluctance to seek healthcare. For Men's Health Week, we remind men to get it checked.

June 16, 2013

10:01 PM | Vitamin D and CV Disease - Part III

For the final part of the series on Vitamin D and cardiovascular disease, we'll focus on the relevant clinical trials. Again, for full attribution, the primary source for this is the excellent review at Nature Reviews Nephrology. Parts 1 and 2 of this series can be found by clicking here and here.Again, we'll break up the trials into categories:1. Inflammation: As mentioned before, vitamin D has been shown to have anti-inflammatory effects in animal studies. A number of studies have examined […]

8:41 PM | Fluorescent sushi?

Dr. Miyawaki from the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Wako, Japan and colleagues have identified the first example of a muscle protein in Japanese freshwater eels (Anguilla japonica) that fluoresces under special circumstances that may lead to improved medical testing (photo above). The researchers have isolated the protein they named UnaG (after “unagi”, the term…

7:47 PM | Saudi MOH: 3 More MERS-CoV Cases & 4 Fatalities

# 7404 My thanks to @Ironorehopper at FluTrackers for tweeting this update from the KSA Ministry of Health, announcing 3 new coronavirus cases, and the deaths of 4 previously announced cases. Jeddah is a major port city located to the west of Mecca, while Taif (where two patients are announced today to have died) is just east of the holy city. Here is the machine translation of the press release. The English language corona […]

5:58 PM | How to Find the Right Health Insurance for You

Choosing the right health insurance for you could be a big decision, if you are self-employed or run your own small business. There are hundreds of insurance companies available in the market who offers exciting plans with diverse marketing strategies. As a result, it becomes an incredibly tough task to find the best fit. Personally, I believe it’s a kind of finding the dream girl in Africa!So how may you find the right health insurance that will not just help you to save money but also allow […]

5:04 PM | Am I an indicator of a decline in hygiene?

A few weeks ago I was seeing patients at a clinic in an affluent suburb. My first patient of the day was a professional woman. At the end of the encounter, she said: "Can I ask you a question?" I had no idea where this was going, sensing that this was probably not going to be a medical question, but said, "of course." She then proceeded to ask me how I liked my Toms, as she wanted to buy her husband a pair. I was in my typical summer clinic attire, which consists of a polo jersey, khakis, and […]

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June 17, 2013

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