- July 2, 2009
- 08:14 PM
- 0 views
The BCA “Plethora of evidence”: The Fallon Paper
by colinhockings in Blue Genes
After a long, long wait, the BCA finally published its list of ‘evidence’ on the Simon Singh case. Read the Lay Scientist’s appraisal for an indication of how poor the evidence is. It consists entirely of irrelevant articles and poor studies but there was one paper that no-one could find. It is by Joan M. [...]... Read more »
JOAN M. FALLON, D.C., F.I.C.C.P. (1997) The Role of the Chiropractic Adjustment in the Care and Treatment of 332 Children with Otitis Media. Journal of Clinical Chiropractic Pediatrics. DOI: http://www.labarberachiro.com/Web Articles/Ear Infec Study.pdf
- July 2, 2009
- 05:10 PM
- 9 views
Sen et al (2007) Learning to Identify Beneficial Partners
by Samuel Joseph in linklens
Cited by 4 [ATGSATOP]So this is another paper in my attempt to finish the background reading for an invited paper in the AP2PC'07 workshop proceedings. I believe I found this one following a citation trail from Ben-Ami and Shehory (2007) and I think I grabbed it because it had "learning" in the title. Peer to Peer is mentioned in passing, but this paper is really about a multi-agent system where individual agents have learning capabilities. I know the first author from a panel ........ Read more »
Sandip Sen, Anil Gursel, & Stephane Airiau. (2007) Learning to identify beneficial partners. Working Notes of the Adaptive and Learning Agents Workshop at AAMAS.
- July 2, 2009
- 02:39 PM
- 1 view
Bigfoot or Mistaken Identity?
by Evilutionary Biologist in The Evilutionary Biologist
Ecological Niche Modeling is a great tool for conservation biology, phylogeography and evolutionary biology. However, as Jeff Lozier and colleagues point out in a paper in Journal of Biogeography,...
[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]... Read more »
Lozier, J., Aniello, P., & Hickerson, M. (2009) Predicting the distribution of Sasquatch in western North America: anything goes with ecological niche modelling. Journal of Biogeography. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2699.2009.02152.x
- July 2, 2009
- 02:06 PM
- 9 views
Ganlea megacanina: Saki of the Eocene
by zinjanthropus in A Primate of Modern Aspect
Meet the White-faced Saki, Pithecia pithecia. P. pithecia lives in South America, where it scampers about the low canopy eating the seeds of fruit with tough outer shells. To get through those tough outer shells, it has robust, stout canines that are able to pierce the skins and dig out the soft fruit and seeds [...]... Read more »
Beard, K., Marivaux, L., Chaimanee, Y., Jaeger, J., Marandat, B., Tafforeau, P., Soe, A., Tun, S., & Kyaw, A. (2009) A new primate from the Eocene Pondaung Formation of Myanmar and the monophyly of Burmese amphipithecids. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2009.0836
- July 2, 2009
- 01:04 PM
- 22 views
When are highly-anxious women most anxious? When you least expect it
by Dave Munger in Cognitive Daily
Take a group of 18- and 19-year-old women, college freshmen and sophomores. Then test them to find out who has the most social anxiety: who's most nervous about dealing with other people, particularly in public situations. What would be the most difficult thing you could ask these high-social-anxiety women to do? How about this:
I would like you to prepare and deliver a four-minute talk. This talk will be videotaped and viewed later by several professors and graduate students.... It is extremel........ Read more »
GAYLEBECK, J., DAVILA, J., FARROW, S., & GRANT, D. (2006) When the heat is on: Romantic partner responses influence distress in socially anxious women. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 44(5), 737-748. DOI: 10.1016/j.brat.2005.05.004
- July 2, 2009
- 11:54 AM
- 11 views
Plants, our saviors from a deep freeze
by Christine Buckley in EcoTone
As plants become starved for CO2, rock weathering diminishes. Credit: study coauthor David Beerling
Earth is currently in an ice age. (People, especially climate change naysayers, sometimes forget that.) The growth of the Antarctic ice sheet began about 25 million years ago, and by about 3 million years ago we had a full-blown ice age. [...]... Read more »
Pagani, M., Caldeira, K., Berner, R., & Beerling, D. (2009) The role of terrestrial plants in limiting atmospheric CO2 decline over the past 24 million years. Nature, 460(7251), 85-88. DOI: 10.1038/nature08133
- July 2, 2009
- 11:30 AM
- 12 views
Take a break from being lazy – your health depends on it!
by Peter Janiszewski in Obesity Panacea
... Read more »
Healy, G., Dunstan, D., Salmon, J., Cerin, E., Shaw, J., Zimmet, P., & Owen, N. (2008) Breaks in Sedentary Time: Beneficial associations with metabolic risk. Diabetes Care, 31(4), 661-666. DOI: 10.2337/dc07-2046
- July 2, 2009
- 08:00 AM
- 13 views
Invert science keeps food on table
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
Simon Leather has a good short article about the problems of working with invertebrates in biology. The problems are not intellectual, but structural. He argues that if you work on invertebrates, you really don’t have much of a chance of getting a job at a major research institution. Some of Leather’s claims are backed by references. But phrases like “it is obvious that” crop up, which are always warning signs for opinions trying to pass themselves off as facts.It contains this short bla........ Read more »
Leather, S. (2009) Institutional vertebratism threatens UK food security. Trends in Ecology . DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2009.05.002
- July 2, 2009
- 07:00 AM
- 20 views
Simple, obvious, and wrong answers
by iayork in Mystery Rays from Outer Space
Macrophage phagocytosing mycobacteria
Sometimes the simple, obvious answer is right, and sometimes it’s completely backwards.
Tuberculosis was a terrifying, ubiquitous killer in the 19th century, but is relatively rare today (at least, in developed countries). The reason for the drop in Tb deaths isn’t entirely clear; it started with social factors probably including accidental or deliberate isolation [...]... Read more »
Sadagopal, S., Braunstein, M., Hager, C., Wei, J., Daniel, A., Bochan, M., Crozier, I., Smith, N., Gates, H., Barnett, L.... (2009) Reducing the Activity and Secretion of Microbial Antioxidants Enhances the Immunogenicity of BCG. PLoS ONE, 4(5). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0005531
- July 2, 2009
- 04:25 AM
- 20 views
A computerised learning tool helps boost study effectiveness
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
Much of psychology's efforts over the last few decades have been spent on understanding the nature of memory. Increasingly, though, psychologists are beginning to apply what we've learned about memory, so as to help enhance people's performance. In 2007, the Digest reported on a study that investigated the optimal interval to leave between study periods if you want to remember material long term. Now Claudia Meltzer-Baddeley and Roland Baddeley have tested a related approach to study, known as a........ Read more »
Metzler-Baddeley, C., & Baddeley, R. (2009) Does adaptive training work?. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 23(2), 254-266. DOI: 10.1002/acp.1454
- July 2, 2009
- 01:34 AM
- 14 views
Evolution 2009: The Evolution meetings were, indeed, blogged
by Jeremy Yoder in Denim and Tweed
So I've been putting off a final post-mortem on the use of online resources in connection with Evolution 2009, but Nature finally shamed me into it with an article specifically about blogging and microblogging at scientific meetings as part of a special section devoted to science journalism.
The Nature piece captures the concerns that came up when I first broached the subject of trying to increase the meetings' online profile, especially the question of unwanted publicity: scientific meetings o........ Read more »
Batts, S., Anthis, N., & Smith, T. (2008) Advancing science through conversations: Bridging the gap between blogs and the academy. PLoS Biology, 6(9). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0060240
Saunders, N., Beltrão, P., Jensen, L., Jurczak, D., Krause, R., Kuhn, M., & Wu, S. (2009) Microblogging the ISMB: A new approach to conference reporting. PLoS Computational Biology, 5(1). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000263
- July 2, 2009
- 12:46 AM
- 9 views
Sydney Brenner on C. elegans
by GrumpyBob in Flies and Bikes
The latest issue of Genetics to flop onto my desk has a rather nice article by Sydney Brenner entitled "In the Beginning Was the Worm...". This brief article (in the regularly excellent Perspectives section) presents an account of the origins of Caenorhabditis elegans research, by the beast's main man, research which ultimately earned him Nobel Prize fameRead More...... Read more »
Brenner, S. (2009) In the Beginning Was the Worm ... Genetics, 182(2), 413-415. DOI: 10.1534/genetics.109.104976
- July 1, 2009
- 08:22 PM
- 32 views
Subtleties of Calorie Restriction and Evolution
by Reason in Fight Aging!
My attention was drawn today to a recent open access paper that theorizes on how evolution came to produce the calorie restriction response. Given that calorie restriction notably improves health and longevity, why isn't this beneficial metabolic state switched on all the time? Stresses like dietary restriction or various toxins increase lifespan in taxa as diverse as yeast, Caenorhabditis elegans, Drosophila and rats, by triggering physiological responses that also tend to delay reproduction. F........ Read more »
Ratcliff, W., Hawthorne, P., Travisano, M., & Denison, R. (2009) When Stress Predicts a Shrinking Gene Pool, Trading Early Reproduction for Longevity Can Increase Fitness, Even with Lower Fecundity. PLoS ONE, 4(6). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0006055
- July 1, 2009
- 07:45 PM
- 21 views
Mapping the Sasquatch
by jebyrnes in I'm a chordata, urochordata!
I love modeling! I love modeling! Modeling will solve everything!
Let’s model the spatial distribution of Bigfoot!
WAIT, WHAT?!
Figure 1 from the paper. Foots denote sighting of Sasquatch footprints. Circles for just visual/auditory sightings. I ask, how does one know what Bigfoot sounds like?
Yes, it sounds silly, but in the current issue [...]... Read more »
Lozier, J., Aniello, P., & Hickerson, M. (2009) Predicting the distribution of Sasquatch in western North America: anything goes with ecological niche modelling. Journal of Biogeography. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2699.2009.02152.x
- July 1, 2009
- 04:31 PM
- 23 views
ABI SOLiD Joins the WGS Party
by Daniel Koboldt in Massgenomics
At last published in early access at Genome Research is the whole-genome sequencing of a Yoruban male on ABI SOLiD technology. A year ago, this might have merited a Nature or Science publication. That window seems to have closed for whole-genome sequencing of a single, undiseased individual. By my count, this is the sixth published [...]... Read more »
McKernan, K., Peckham, H., Costa, G., McLaughlin, S., Tsung, E., Fu, Y., Clouser, C., Dunkan, C., Ichikawa, J., Lee, C.... (2009) Sequence and structural variation in a human genome uncovered by short-read, massively parallel ligation sequencing using two base encoding. Genome Research. DOI: 10.1101/gr.091868.109
- July 1, 2009
- 03:07 PM
- 19 views
Happy New (Medical) Year!
by PalMD in White Coat Underground
The medical education calendar begins and ends on the first of July each year, and in the hospital, that means a brand spanking new crop of young doctors. While this may sound a bit scary, the facts are a bit subtle (and not terrifying). Some of the questions regarding the so-called July Phenomenon are:
Are hospitals more dangerous in July?
Is care more expensive in July?
Are hospital stays longer in July?
The data show that there does not appear to be an increase in poor outcomes in July ........ Read more »
Barry, W., & Rosenthal, G. (2003) Is There a July Phenomenon?. The Effect of July Admission on Intensive Care Mortality and LOS in Teaching Hospitals. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 18(8), 639-645. DOI: 10.1046/j.1525-1497.2003.20605.x
Ford, A., Bateman, B., Simpson, L., & Ratan, R. (2007) Nationwide data confirms absence of ‘July phenomenon’ in obstetrics: it's safe to deliver in July. Journal of Perinatology, 27(2), 73-76. DOI: 10.1038/sj.jp.7211635
- July 1, 2009
- 02:20 PM
- 23 views
Growing old and collecting cellular junk
by Paul in Green Light Go
I just finished an entry for the SOA timeline on the 1970s discovery that nematodes collect inactive enzymes and molecules as they grow older. The main idea being that the body is unable to clear out the junk inside cells and that the energy cost of carrying this junk leads to senescence, or aging.
The theory [...]... Read more »
Harriet Gershon, & David Gershon. (1970) Detection of Inactive Enzyme Molecules in Ageing Organisms. Nature. DOI: http://sageke.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sageke;2002/37/cp16
Murphy, C., McCarroll, S., Bargmann, C., Fraser, A., Kamath, R., Ahringer, J., Li, H., & Kenyon, C. (2003) Genes that act downstream of DAF-16 to influence the lifespan of Caenorhabditis elegans. Nature, 424(6946), 277-283. DOI: 10.1038/nature01789
- July 1, 2009
- 11:52 AM
- 22 views
Cosmic Cluedo
by Niall in we are all in the gutter
It was Omega Centauri in the galactic disk with the gravitationally induced star formation. That’s the conclusion of a new paper by some Brazilian astronomers.... Read more »
Salerno, G., Bica, E., Bonatto, C., & Rodrigues, I. (2009) On the possible generation of the young massive open clusters Stephenson 2 and BDSB 122 by ω Centauri. Astronomy and Astrophysics, 498(2), 419-423. DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/200911737
- July 1, 2009
- 09:51 AM
- 25 views
The inflammatory response
by Vincent Racaniello in virology blog
During the earliest stages of a virus infection, cytokines are produced when innate immune defenses are activated. The rapid release of cytokines at the site of infection initiates new responses with far-reaching consequences that include inflammation.
One of the earliest cytokines produced is tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α), which is synthesized by activated monocytes and macrophages. [...]... Read more »
Thomas, P., Dash, P., Aldridge Jr., J., Ellebedy, A., Reynolds, C., Funk, A., Martin, W., Lamkanfi, M., Webby, R., & Boyd, K. (2009) The Intracellular Sensor NLRP3 Mediates Key Innate and Healing Responses to Influenza A Virus via the Regulation of Caspase-1. Immunity, 30(4), 566-575. DOI: 10.1016/j.immuni.2009.02.006
Allen, I., Scull, M., Moore, C., Holl, E., McElvania-TeKippe, E., Taxman, D., Guthrie, E., Pickles, R., & Ting, J. (2009) The NLRP3 Inflammasome Mediates In Vivo Innate Immunity to Influenza A Virus through Recognition of Viral RNA. Immunity, 30(4), 556-565. DOI: 10.1016/j.immuni.2009.02.005
- July 1, 2009
- 08:00 AM
- 22 views
Predictability is a weakness: Snakes catch stereotyped swimmers
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
I’ve published a few papers on neurons involved in escape responses in crustaceans. In my recent review on crustacean escape responses, I noted:Giant neurons and electrical synapses provide for short latency, but stereotyped responses. The non-giant circuit for repetitive tailflipping provides crayfish with flexibility and the potential for sustained escape.I recall giving a lecture some years ago about crayfish escape responses, I remember trying to emphasize the importance of the non-giant n........ Read more »
Catania, K. (2009) Tentacled snakes turn C-starts to their advantage and predict future prey behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0905183106
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