New words are new

Crossword contribution:
[Via Escapable Logic]

palindrone |ˈpalinˌdrōn|
noun

a sequence of words that sound like communication when spoken but are equally meaningless when read backwords or forwards, e.g., in the great history of America rulings there have been rulings.
a person who speaks in palindrones, often a person who does no useful work and lives off others.

ORIGIN early 21st cent.: from Greek palin‘again‘ + Old English drān, drǣn [male bee,] from a West Germanic verb meaning ‘resound, boom‘ ; related to Dutch dreunen ‘to drone.‘

I love new words and this one makes absolute sense.

Technorati Tags: General

Guinness record

OMFG: Players Finish RecordBreaking 34 Hr Indoor Soccer Game:
[Via Digg]

22 crazy people – two women, 20 men – completed a record-breaking 34-hour indoor soccer game in Tarrytown, NY. They topped the Guinness World Record for an indoor soccer game – 30 hours – and tacked on another four hours. Also, they benefitted the Make-A-Wish Foundation and raised enough to grant a wish for a seriously ill child.

They only got 5 minutes of a break for every hour they played. So 2 hours break in 24. Wow. I’d think they would all be pretty non-functional, even if you did split it up well. And they have to fit in food and bathroom breaks. Good for them.

Technorati Tags: General, Health

For lack of a bacterium…

by dawnzy58
[Microbiology] From the Cover: Faecalibacterium prausnitzii is an anti-inflammatory commensal bacterium identified by gut microbiota analysis of Crohn disease patients:
[Via Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue]

A decrease in the abundance and biodiversity of intestinal bacteria within the dominant phylum Firmicutes has been observed repeatedly in Crohn disease (CD) patients. In this study, we determined the composition of the mucosa-associated microbiota of CD patients at the time of surgical resection and 6 months later using FISH analysis. We found that a reduction of a major member of Firmicutes, Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, is associated with a higher risk of postoperative recurrence of ileal CD. A lower proportion of F. prausnitzii on resected ileal Crohn mucosa also was associated with endoscopic recurrence at 6 months. To evaluate the immunomodulatory properties of F. prausnitzii we analyzed the anti-inflammatory effects of F. prausnitzii in both in vitro (cellular models) and in vivo [2,4,6-trinitrobenzenesulphonic acid (TNBS)-induced] colitis in mice. In Caco-2 cells transfected with a reporter gene for NF-κB activity, F. prausnitzii had no effect on IL-1β-induced NF-κB activity, whereas the supernatant abolished it. In vitro peripheral blood mononuclear cell stimulation by F. prausnitzii led to significantly lower IL-12 and IFN-γ production levels and higher secretion of IL-10. Oral administration of either live F. prausnitzii or its supernatant markedly reduced the severity of TNBS colitis and tended to correct the dysbiosis associated with TNBS colitis, as demonstrated by real-time quantitative PCR (qPCR) analysis. F. prausnitzii exhibits anti-inflammatory effects on cellular and TNBS colitis models, partly due to secreted metabolites able to block NF-κB activation and IL-8 production. These results suggest that counterbalancing dysbiosis using F. prausnitzii as a probiotic is a promising strategy in CD treatment.

Interesting. Crohn’s could be due to a reduction in our gut flora that results in an inflammatory response. Many researchers have postulated the opposite – that a specific bacteria caused the illness. Using this bacteria as a probiotic to replace the missing bacteria is an unusual idea, but, based on the data, seems like a useful thing to attempt. Especially since it is not easily ameliorated by drugs.

Technorati Tags: Science

The Cluetrain

Cluetrain – More relevant than ever:
[Via Robert Paterson's Weblog]

Cluetrain Review

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: web 2.0 cluetrain)

The Cluetrain Manifesto was one of the pivotal books in my life. I remember being brought to tears in some parts because it put into words things that I had felt for quite some time. To me, it is one of the most important works of the last 20 years.

Technorati Tags: Social media, Web 2.0

Cigarette ads

Back when taking a drag wasn’t a drag:
[Via Joho the Blog]

Stanford’s posted a great collection of cigarette ads designed to hide the fact that sooner or later you’ll be coughing up blood. (Thanks to Tim Hiltabiddle for the link.)

Do all ads look so misbegotten in hindsight?

Technorati Tags: Health

Great maps

Where Wars Kill People:
[Via Cosmic Variance]

The World’s Fair links to a great site at Telegraph.co.uk: the Atlas of the Real World. It’s a set of world maps (really cartograms), with the area of countries proportional to something more interesting than the mere land area – number of nuclear weapons, wealth in the year 1, and so on. Here is one to chew over: number of war deaths in the years since WWII.

Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Latin America shows up just a bit. The big orange country in Asia is China, not Russia.

There are 18 maps and some of them are really interesting. NIce to have software that can help visualize data for us.

Technorati Tags: General

They are the devil

60 Minutes: The bets that brought down Wall St.:

[Via Crooks and Liars]

Here is the video.

60 Minutes’ Steve Kroft examines the complicated financial instruments known as credit default swaps, and reveals how these little-known derivatives played a central role in precipitating the current market meltdown. In essence, speculators bet that homeowners wouldn’t be unable to pay back their mortgages, and when those people started defaulting and the speculators tried to cash in their wagers, there was no money to cover the literally trillions of dollars in payouts. What it really boils down to is an unregulated gambling racket that Congress voted unanimously to create and legalize.

The world’s financial system teetered on the edge again last week, and anyone with more than a passing interest in their shrinking 401(k) knows it’s because of a global credit crisis. It began with the collapse of the U.S. housing market and has been magnified worldwide by what Warren Buffet once called “financial weapons of mass destruction.”

They are called credit derivatives or credit default swaps, and 60 Minutes did a story on the multi-trillion dollar market three weeks ago. But there’s a lot more to tell.

As Steve Kroft reports, essentially they are side bets on the performance of the U.S. mortgage markets and the solvency on some of the biggest financial institutions in the world. It’s a form of legalized gambling that allows you to wager on financial outcomes without ever having to actually buy the stocks and bonds and mortgages.

It would have been illegal during most of the 20th century, but eight years ago Congress gave Wall Street an exemption and it has turned out to be a very bad idea.

I said they are the devil. 60 minutes tells us all.

Technorati Tags: Economy, Politics

Effective flu vaccines for the elderly

High dose of flu vaccine boosts immune response in elderly:
[Via EurekAlert! - Infectious and Emerging Diseases]

(University of Rochester Medical Center) Giving people age 65 and older a dose four times larger than the standard flu vaccine boosts the amount of antibodies in their blood to levels considered protective against the flu, more so than the standard flu vaccine does. The findings from a study of nearly 4,000 people were presented Oct. 26 at a national meeting on infectious diseases.

Previous work had indicated that the flu vaccine might be useless when given to elderly patients. Their immune systems just do not respond to the antigens as well as younger immune systems, which is also why they are more at risk for succumbing to infectious disease.

While it would not be easy to produce, if simply using 4 times more vaccine really worked, many of the elderly could be helped. Of course, the increased dose would have to also lack an increase in side effects. But at least there is hope and perhaps other adjuvants could be used to enhance the immune response.

Technorati Tags: Health, Science

I believe it also

This I Believe: Our Noble, Essential Decency:
[Via Group News Blog]

Check this out at Group News Blog. Fifty-eight years ago but it still describes us very well.

Technorati Tags: Politics

Religion and politics

by The Jamoker

Does religion make a difference in politics?:
[Via Eureka! Science News - Popular science news]
From Barack Obama’s controversial pastor to Sarah Palin’s “secret religion”, religious values have continued to play a dominant role in the presidential election since John F. Kennedy became the first Catholic elected to president in 1960. Hoping to answer the question of which political party has a monopoly on the “best” values and how religion affects these values, Kennon Sheldon, a University of Missouri professor, compared the “extrinsic” values (financial success, status, appearance) with “intrinsic” values (growth, intimacy, helping) of self-declared Democrats and Republicans in four different samples.

read more

An interesting report. Seems that there are really very little differences between Conservatives and Liberals. Essentially both wanted to deal with intrinsic values.

Even religious and non-religious Liberals has very similar values. The only group who were different were non-religious Republicans, who did not care much for intrinsic values and mainly cared about money and status. In general, the values varied little between different people. We are more alike than different.

Of course, you’d not know it during an election season when it is to the advantage of each party to demonstrate how different the ‘other’ is.

Technorati Tags: Politics

New drugs may not help

Costlier new diabetes drugs don’t necessarily produce better outcomes, Stanford researcher says:
[Via Eureka! Science News - Popular science news]

The annual cost of prescription diabetes drugs nearly doubled to $12.5 billion between 2001 and 2007, according to a study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the University of Chicago. The researchers say the findings raise questions about whether the higher cost actually translates into improved care and better outcomes.

read more

This has to be of some concern. The hope for Big Pharma is that they can charge more for their new drugs because of better outcomes and lower overall cost.

Technorati Tags: Health, Science

Discussing Web 2.0

by notsogoodphotography
[Crossposted at SpreadingScience]
Are scientists missing the boat?;.:
[Via Bench Marks]

….or has that boat already sailed?

I’ve read many a blog posting or magazine article declaring that scientists are behind the curve, and we biologists have been slow to pick up the new online tools that are available. I’ve repeatedly asked for examples of other professions that are ahead of the curve that we can use as models (are there social networks of bakers sharing recipes and discussing ovens?), but haven’t seen much offered in response. I tend to think that it’s not a question of scientists being slow, it’s that the tools being offered aren’t very appealing. Note how quickly scientists moved from paper journals to online versions, which only took as long as it did because of the slow progress on the part of journal publishers getting their articles up on the web. The advantages of online journals were obvious, and in comparison, the advantages of joining “Myspace for scientists” are less evident.

Are social networks )”Meet collaborators! Discuss papers!”) ever going to see heavy use from the biology community? Or are we starting to see that they’ve run their course in general, and scientists were prescient in not wasting their time?
[More]

There are too many advantages that arise from using many of these Web 2.0 tools (i.e. the ability to leverage human social networks in order to examine large datasets). However, the race will not be to have 5000 friends, as often seen out in the wild.

In a closed environment, such as a corporation, there are some very good uses for wikis, blogs, etc. They can not only help workflow tremendously but also can allow new metrics to be used in order to track just who contributed what to a project.

Moving tacit information from insides someone’s head outside into an explicit database will have important consequences for many organizations.

I don’t think the next generation will shun these tools. They will just have a better idea of how to interact with them more usefully, with a focus that can really help their workflow.

Technorati Tags: Science, Web 2.0

Easy to check out

McCain Palin going after fruit flies:
[Via The Tree of Life]

As if scientists did not have enough reasons to vote against McCain-Palin who seem to have decided that Bush was overly supportive of science. Now Palin is attacking of all things “fruit-fly research.” Lovely. Proof that they are both clueless (not knowing what a fruit fly is probably) and anti-science at the same time. For more on this see:
Sarah Palin: Ignorant and anti-science [Pharyngula]
Palin Balks at Scientific Research
Sarah Palin: Ignorant and anti-science
Genetically Ignorant
Think Progress » Memo To Palin: Fruit Fly Research Has Led To …
Palin.. fruit flies…and ignorance

This is from the “Tree of Life” blog ( http://phylogenomics.blogspot.com ) of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate at the University of California, Davis.

Everyone is going off about ‘Palin hates fruit flies.’ This is misleading on several points and simply hyperbolic on others. But then she is also misleading and wrong on some points. And, because of the Internet, any of us can be our own investigative reporter and find out just what is going on. we do not have to rely on others.

Because it is a given that Palin did not find out these facts herself. Someone in the campaign went out and found these facts that ended up in her speech. So can we.

It is very easy to find out just what she said. There are transcripts of what she was planning to say along with video of what she actually said. (An edited version is shown above). The important points are earmarks for fruit flies in France.

Because of new transparency regulations dealing with earmarks, something BOTH McCain and Obama introduced, we can examine just what earmarks are being discussed. A search for Fruit Fly finds only 1 earmark in France, for $300,000. So, there is an earmark for fruit flies in France but it is not in Paris but in Montpelier, which is almost 600 km (about 320 miles) away. So, one correct fact. One incorrect fact. There was no real reason to add where in France it was so why use the wrong city?

From the earmark page, we can see that the money is not for the same fruit fly that we have used in genetics research, Drosophila melanogaster, but the olive fruit fly, Bactrocera oleae. She was not talking about fruit fly research dealing with Drosophila but about research dealing with a major fruit pest. So most of the critics are off base when discussing the genetics work. That is not what this research is examining.

Clicking on the USDA link takes us to a page where we can search for olive fruit fly. First hits give us a lot of information of research in France. Now we can actually inform ourselves about just what is going on and make our own decisions about its worthiness. We do not have to rely on the words written or spoken by others but what we can learn ourselves.

Turns out that the ARS has has a lab in France, focussed on a variety of research projects in order to examine pests that make it to the US in their natural surroundings. This helps identify ways to control the pests without having to do it all in the US.

Without preventative measures, the damage level from these flies can approach 100%. Let’s see. $300,000 in order to try and find a way to prevent $34 million (in 1991) in crop damage. We can find out some of the things this lab has been done in the fight against this parasite.

I would make a point that this would be money well spent and certainly not something stupid to examine. To paraphrase “I would rather study them over there so we don;t have to fight them here.”

I am sure there are some stupid earmarks but I certainly could see how this is money well spent. Simply saying ‘fruit flies in France’ while technically true is misleading in its intent.

So, in my opinion, while both sides had some things factually wrong, I believe that this is research that could be very worthwhile to carry out. Luckily it is very easy to find out this information, indicating that openness and transparency have very definite benefits.

Technorati Tags: Politics, Science

Never throw anything away

by skycaptaintwo

Old scientists never clean out their refrigerators:
[Via The Panda's Thumb]

We all know the story of the Miller-Urey experiment. In 1953, a young graduate student named Stanley Miller ran an off-the-wall experiment: he ran water, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen in a sealed flask with a pair of electrodes to produce a spark, and from those simple building blocks discovered that more complex compounds, such as amino acids, were spontaneously produced. Stanley Miller died in 2007, and in going through his effects, the original apparatus was discovered, and in addition, several small sealed vials containing the sludge produced in the original experiment were also found.

This isn’t too surprising. I’ve gone through a few old scientists’ labs, and you’d be surprised at all the antiquities they preserved, all with notes documenting exactly what they are. It’s habit to keep this stuff.

Now the cool part, though: the scientists who unearthed the old samples ran them through modern analysis techniques, which are a bit more sensitive than the tools they had in the 1950s. In 1953, Miller reported the recovery of five amino acids from his experiment. The reanalysis found twenty two amino acids and five amines in the vials. He was more successful than he knew!

[More]

This is a great story but it is a shame Miller is not one of the authors.

Technorati Tags: Science

Sick

Sushi USB Drives:
[Via Discovery News: Deep Sea News]

Do they work as delicious as they look? mmmm….

More at Toxel.com.

No comment is really needed. I might accidentally eat one during a late night set of blogging.

Technorati Tags: Technology