Japanese Researchers Begin to Pull Ahead

Posted on November 6, 2008 by Michael

Thanks to the tireless efforts of the soon-to-thankfully-end Bush administration, the United States is beginning to fall behind in science and technology. One example to this effect is the recent advancements made by the well-funded research of Japanese scientists.

TOKYO (AFP) – Japanese researchers said Thursday they had created functioning human brain tissues from stem cells, a world first that has raised new hopes for the treatment of disease.

Stem cells taken from human embryos have been used to form tissues of the cerebral cortex, the supreme control tower of the brain, according to researchers at the government-backed research institute Riken.

The tissues self-organised into four distinct zones very similar to the structure seen in human foetuses, and conducted neuro-activity such as transmitting electrical signals, the institute said.

Research on stem cells is seen as having the potential to save lives by helping to find cures for diseases such as cancer and diabetes or to replace damaged cells, tissues and organs.

The team’s previous studies showed stem cells differentiated into distinct cells but until now they had never organised into functioning tissues.

Let’s hope an Obama administration can finally give the scientific community the true support it has been needing for the past 8 anti-science years.

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Barack

Posted on November 5, 2008 by Michael

Barack Obama - Hope

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Delusional Indonesians

Posted on November 2, 2008 by Michael

Indonesians appease volcano gods with sacrifices

MOUNT BROMO, Indonesia – Indonesian legend has it that six centuries ago, a princess hurled her youngest child into a fiery volcano to appease mountain gods who had granted her fertility.

Today thousands of pilgrims flock to Mount Bromo on East Java each year to offer the spirits food, live animals and money and ask for prosperity and health. Bromo, a 7,641-foot volcano, is one of Java’s most popular tourist attractions.

The poor arrive days ahead of the ceremony, carrying fishing nets to catch money and anything edible. They camp under tarps in the crater atop the mountain’s chilly slopes.

The alternative to this would be to discourage delusional beliefs in an assortment of magic sky and earth fairies and instead to encourage the donation of this wasted money, food, and livestock to the poor people desperate for anything they can get to aid in their survival. I’m undecided as whether to call this bottom-up economics or just not-being-fucking-stupid.

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Scientists Endorse Obama

Posted on November 1, 2008 by Michael

An Open Letter to the American People

The year’s presidential election is among the most significant in our nation’s history. The country urgently needs a visionary leader who can ensure the future of our traditional strengths in science and technology and who can harness those strengths to address many of our greatest problems: energy, disease, climate change, security, and economic competitiveness.

We are convinced that Senator Barack Obama is such a leader, and we urge you to join us in supporting him.

During the administration of George W. Bush, vital parts of our country’s scientific enterprise have been damaged by stagnant or declining federal support. The government’s scientific advisory process has been distorted by political considerations. As a result, our once dominant position in the scientific world has been shaken and our prosperity has been placed at risk. We have lost time critical for the development of new ways to provide energy, treat disease, reverse climate change, strengthen our security, and improve our economy.

We have watched Senator Obama’s approach to these issues with admiration. We especially applaud his emphasis during the campaign on the power of science and technology to enhance our nation’s competitiveness. In particular, we support the measures he plans to take – through new initiatives in education and training, expanded research funding, an unbiased process for obtaining scientific advice, and an appropriate balance of basic and applied research – to meet the nation’s and world’s most urgent needs.

Senator Obama understands that Presidential leadership and federal investments in science and technology are crucial elements in successful governance of the world’s leading country. We hope you will join us as we work together to ensure his election in November.

Clicking on the link will show the signatures 76 Nobelists, 3 of which are winners from this year.

It doesn’t help that McCain and Palin deride scientific research into bear DNA in Montana, fruit fly research critical to olive grove crops in California, and the use of an “overhead projector” which would bring Chicago’s planetarium up to date with those in L.A. and NYC, not to mention that fact that one of these two scientifically illiterate mooks doesn’t think understanding climate change is important toward stopping it.

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Solar System Like Ours Discovered

Posted on October 27, 2008 by Michael

Evidence found of solar system around nearby star

WASHINGTON — For the first time, astronomers think that they’ve found evidence of an alien solar system around a star close enough to Earth to be visible to the naked eye.

They say that at least one and probably three or more planets are orbiting the star Epsilon Eridani, 10.5 light-years — about 63 trillion miles — from Earth. Only eight stars are closer.

The host star, slightly smaller and cooler than our sun, is in the constellation Eridanus — the name of a mythological river — near Orion in the northern sky.

Epsilon Eridani is much younger than the sun, about 850 million years old compared with 4.5 billion years for our system.

“This really is a system like our solar system was when it was five times younger than it is now,” said one of the discoverers, Massimo Marengo , an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. “It’s like a time machine for our solar system.”

“This system probably looks a lot like ours did when life first took root on Earth,” said Dana Backman , of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. , the lead author of a report to be published Jan. 10 in The Astrophysical Journal .

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The Stink in Your Fart

Posted on October 27, 2008 by Michael

Apparently, the stink in farts control blood pressure.

A smelly rotten-egg gas in farts controls blood pressure in mice, a new study finds.

The unpleasant aroma of the gas, called hydrogen sulfide (H2S), can be a little too familiar, as it is expelled by bacteria living in the human colon and eventually makes its way, well, out.

The new research found that cells lining mice’s blood vessels naturally make the gas and this action can help keep the rodents’ blood pressure low by relaxing the blood vessels to prevent hypertension (high blood pressure). This gas is “no doubt” produced in cells lining human blood vessels too, the researchers said.

The article goes on to explain that researchers subjected mice to conditions comparable to hypertension in humans. The mice which were missing a gene responsible for the production of were unable to relax their blood vessels as much as the mice which did have the gene.

This doesn’t mean that if you fart often that you’ll have low blood pressure since hydrogen sulfide only accounts for the stink of your ass gas, not the whole shebang of gases and pressure, but it does mean that science editors are getting better at writing attention-grabbing headlines.

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Palin and Science

Posted on October 25, 2008 by Michael

Sarah Palin is spouting off again on science. She still has no idea what she’s talking about.

You’ve heard about some of these pet projects they really don’t make a whole lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not.

Here are some links from the first search page on ScienceDaily.com. Search term “fruit flies”.

In Lean Times, Flies Can’t Survive Without Their Sense Of Smell
For Best Pest Detection, Suit The Attractant To The Fruit Fly
Bar Flies: Fruit Flies Searching For Shut Eye: Possible ‘Sleep Gene’ Identified
The Good And The Bad Of A Potential Alzheimer’s Target
Fruit Flies Learn and Remember Better When Lacking One Receptor
Human Aging Gene Found In Flies
Like Sweets? You’re More Like A Fruit Fly Than You Think
One Missing Gene Leads To Fruitless Mating Rituals

Fruit fly - Science Daily

There are another 45 pages of results.

Update: I just found a little more info on this earmark. Numbers range from $211,000 to $826,000 (the reason for the discrepancy is unclear). This link gives the upper range. The point of the research seems to specifically rely upon saving California’s olive groves – not that Sarah Palin had any idea, nor that it would have mattered if this was even some of the research into fruit flies that goes to understanding autism.

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Beware What You Read

Posted on October 19, 2008 by Michael

It’s quite common for the media to exaggerate claims or to use the tactic of fear to get readers or viewers. At the risk of contradicting my last post on anecdotal evidence, just watch an episode of Dateline. Your mattress may be ridden with bed bugs!

So it comes as little surprise that Yahoo! has an article up noting that triclosan (a pesticide) may do more harm than good.

There are concerns that triclosan may contribute to the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. It’s also present in human bodies and breast milk, as well as in streams. The Environmental Working Group says triclosan has been linked to developmental defects, liver toxicity, and cancer in lab studies. It also may affect thyroid and other hormones that are crucial to normal development.

These “concerns” are rather fabricated. It may very well be true that triclosan has horrible, apocalyptic effects that will stunt your growth and give you cancer. But it’s pretty unlikely. And the honest results of the study bear this out.

Further research is clearly needed to assess whether the emergence of antibiotic resistance in the community setting is associated with the growing use of soaps containing triclosan.

The reason for this is that the study had so many variables in it, it’s basically pretty tough make a definitive determination one way or the other. For starters, there is no known baseline resistance for triclosan. That is, no one knows how much triclosan resistance is naturally in bacteria populations and how much is there due to the increased use of triclosan. Then there’s the fact that the studies didn’t bear out higher rates of resistance in these ‘natural’ settings. If you control the environment and allow little to no contaminantion, yes, facing specific bacteria against a pesticide may very well result in an increased resistance. There are no guarantees in evolution, but the effects of natural selection can be a bit exaggerated in the lab. One possible reason no resistance was found in the uncontrolled environments is that any added genetic mutations are too specific and costly to do well.

So essentially, it is inconclusive whether there is any added danger to using soaps with triclosan in them. Bacteria is unlikely to become resistant outside a lab, especially when there is more than one species at a time vying for survival against this pesticide. Again, there are no guarantees in evolution, but I’m betting your livers and thyroids are safe.

But to be fair, the Yahoo! article is initially focused on pointing out that anti-bacterial soaps are no more effective at hand hygiene than traditional soap and water. This is an accurate description of the findings of this study. I just hope Yahoo! is more careful next time when they want to elicit fear from readers. I won’t hold my breath.

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