What we're talking about 
Friday, November 14, 2014
Life, Death, and ERVs
Why big animals do not have higher cancer risks
Life Lines September 26, 2014
I read an interesting article in Scientific American that discussed the so-called Peto’s Paradox. Dr. Richard Peto (University of Oxford) came up with the idea that if every cell has an equal probability of becoming cancerous, then larger animals would be predicted to develop cancer at higher rates than smaller animals. As it turns out,…
ERVs vs HIV– Maybe a bad idea
erv September 24, 2014
For quite a while, now, there has been a connection between Endogenous Retroviruses and HIV. For some unknown reason, some of the young ERVs in humans, the ones that can still code for a protein here and there, are reactivated in HIV+ patients. Scientists have found ERV RNA in HIV+ patient plasma, and they have…
In a phenomenon known as Peto's paradox, large mammals do not develop cancer more often than small mammals, despite having more cells that could go haywire. On Life Lines, Dr. Dolittle writes "Some researchers suggested that perhaps smaller animals developed more oxidative stress as a result of having higher metabolisms. Others proposed that perhaps larger animals have more genes that suppress tumors." But a new hypothesis argues that large mammals have evolved to minimize the activity of ERVs, which are ancient viral elements integrated into our DNA. Active ERVs can cause cancer and possibly other diseases; mice exhibit about 3300 active ERVs, while humans exhibit about 350. On the blog known as ERV, Abbie Smith writes "some of the young ERVs in humans, the ones that can still code for a protein here and there, are reactivated in HIV+ patients." Researchers are considering targeting these ERVs in order to combat HIV; as Abbie writes, "You could train the HIV+ individuals immune system to ‘see’ the ERV components in an HIV infected CD4+ T-cell, and BAM! Kill the HIV infected cell!" But she warns that other ERV components are expressed in many normal human cells, and teaching our immune system to target them might be a very bad idea.
Channel Surfing
Life Science
A reader sent me the following question: “How does a lizard grow a new tail?” This was a very timely question as new research has shed light on this very phenomenon. A team of experts at Arizona State University led by Dr. Kenro Kusumi and colleagues have been studying limb regeneration in lizards. The…
This is devious: Mexican free-tailed bats have jamming sonar to disrupt competitor bats’ food hunting. It’s like there aren’t enough insects for everyone to eat!
Physical Science
“I asked the Zebra, are you black with white stripes? Or white with black stripes? And the zebra asked me, Are you good with bad habits? Or are you bad with good habits? Are you noisy with quiet times? Or are you quiet with noisy times? Are you happy with some sad days? Or are…
“I must trust that the little bit of love that I sow now will bear many fruits, here in this world and the life to come.” -Henri Nouwen So, maybe you’ve been living under a rock, but whether you have or haven’t, the news is still amazing: we’ve just landed on our first not-a-rock in space,…
When our science fiction fills our heads with ideas that could make our lives tremendously improved, we like to believe it’s only a matter of time before technology catches up with our imaginations. Indeed, tricorders, wireless communicators and rocket ships were just some of the breakthroughs predicted by sci-fi on their way to becoming commonplace technology.…
Environment
Have you heard the comet singing? From the Rosetta Blog this press release: Rosetta’s Plasma Consortium (RPC) has uncovered a mysterious ‘song’ that Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is singing into space. RPC principal investigator Karl-Heinz Glaßmeier, head of Space Physics and Space Sensorics at the Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany, tells us more. Sound_comet2 Artist’s impression of the…
Time for some politics – it always provides cheap hits. I’ll start with this cartoon, which I found on facebook, promoted by various of the Good. But, its rubbish; its Wrong Thinking. Its a response to the US mid-term elections – or at least, I think that’s why its being reposted – and the message…
Have a look at this new video from Peter Sinclair: Peter has an interview with Jeff Goodell, contributing editor of Rolling Stone, which you will want to see. They talk about the political aspect of sea level rise in Florida. More about sea level rise here.
Humanities
A reader sent me the following question: “How does a lizard grow a new tail?” This was a very timely question as new research has shed light on this very phenomenon. A team of experts at Arizona State University led by Dr. Kenro Kusumi and colleagues have been studying limb regeneration in lizards. The…
Decreased lung function, breast cancer, miscarriage, depression and neurological disease. These are just a few of the health and disease risks that salon workers disproportionately face while on the job, according to a new report on the impact of toxic chemicals within the beauty and personal care industry.
Confessions of a Science Librarian
Music Mondays: Gaga, Bennett, Bowie & Blue: The jazz conversation continues
The fallout of the Great Sonny Rollins Jazz Satire Blowup of 2014 is still reverberating through the jazz community, prompting new uproars and bouncing off a surprising number of new jazz eruptions in the wider culture. Definitely interesting times to be a jazz fan, if not always for the right reasons. Some cool stuff going…
Education
USA Science and Engineering Festival: The Blog
Creating Smarter Life-Saving Drugs and Gene Therapy Through Nanobiotechnology with Dr. Jordan Green
The ‘Nifty Fifty (times 4)’, a program of Science Spark, presented by InfoComm International, are a group of 200 noted science and engineering professionals who will fan out across the Washington, D.C. area in the 2014-2015 school year to speak about their work and careers at various middle and high schools. Meet Nifty Fifty Speaker Dr. Jordan Green …
A reader sent me the following question: “How does a lizard grow a new tail?” This was a very timely question as new research has shed light on this very phenomenon. A team of experts at Arizona State University led by Dr. Kenro Kusumi and colleagues have been studying limb regeneration in lizards. The…
USA Science and Engineering Festival: The Blog
Who Will Be the Next Academy Award Winners? Who Was the Best Basketball Player of All Time? The Answers Can Be Found in Mathematics, Says Tim Chartier
The ‘Nifty Fifty (times 4)’, a program of Science Spark, presented by InfoComm International, are a group of 200 noted science and engineering professionals who will fan out across the Washington, D.C. area in the 2014-2015 school year to speak about their work and careers at various middle and high schools. Meet Nifty Fifty Speaker Dr. Tim Chartier…
Politics
I noted earlier that the Democratic losses in the House were less than expected given what usually happens during the midterms. It is harder to make such a statement with the Senate because of the lower numbers, with fewer than a tenth of the total number of elections at stake when compared to the house.…
Yes, I know, that headline sounds wrong. But I worded it carefully and I assure you it is far more correct than many other headlines we are seeing, about the “historic loss in Congress” with the 2014 election. The truth is, the party in the White House tends to lose house seats with every midterm…
Chris Mooney has an astonishingly weak op-ed in a recent edition of The Washington Post. Desperate to make an argument that liberals deny science just as surely as conservatives do, he seizes on a recent study that shows a large percentage of sociologists are not open to the idea that certain gender differences are the…
Medicine
A reader sent me the following question: “How does a lizard grow a new tail?” This was a very timely question as new research has shed light on this very phenomenon. A team of experts at Arizona State University led by Dr. Kenro Kusumi and colleagues have been studying limb regeneration in lizards. The…
Of the many lies and myths about vaccines that stubbornly persist despite all evidence showing them not only to be untrue but to be risibly, pseudoscientifically untrue, among whose number are myths that vaccines cause autism, sudden infant death syndrome, and a syndrome that so resembles shaken baby syndrome (more correctly called abusive head trauma)…
Decreased lung function, breast cancer, miscarriage, depression and neurological disease. These are just a few of the health and disease risks that salon workers disproportionately face while on the job, according to a new report on the impact of toxic chemicals within the beauty and personal care industry.
Brain & Behavior
A reader sent me the following question: “How does a lizard grow a new tail?” This was a very timely question as new research has shed light on this very phenomenon. A team of experts at Arizona State University led by Dr. Kenro Kusumi and colleagues have been studying limb regeneration in lizards. The…
Get rid of your addictions while you sleep? Weizmann Institute researcher Dr. Anat Arzi is not promising this yet, but she and Prof. Noam Sobel have shown that changing bad habits through sleep conditioning could someday be possible. After just one session in the Neurobiology Department’s sleep lab, volunteers reported smoking on average 30% fewer…
Drs. Thomas Eliot Haworth and Holly Shiels (University of Manchester) teamed up with Drs. Jaakko Haverinen and Matti Vornanen (University of Eastern Finland) to explore how electrical signaling in the hearts of fish have evolved by comparing Teleost fish with sturgeons. Their findings were published this month in the American Journal of Physiology – Regulatory,…
Technology
A reader sent me the following question: “How does a lizard grow a new tail?” This was a very timely question as new research has shed light on this very phenomenon. A team of experts at Arizona State University led by Dr. Kenro Kusumi and colleagues have been studying limb regeneration in lizards. The…
A Few Things Ill Considered
Caltech: Robotic Ocean Gliders Discover Why Antarctic Polar Ice is Melting
Dear Readers, Find below an interesting press release I may as well share verbatim: The rapidly melting ice sheets on the coast of West Antarctica are a potential major contributor to rising ocean levels worldwide. Although warm water near the coast is thought to be the main factor causing the ice to melt, the process…
With Ubuntu’s release a few weeks ago of Ubuntu 14.10, Mate has now become an official flavor of Ubuntu. There are two pieces of bad news that relate to this that we’ll get out of the way. First Ubuntu’s default distribution, which uses the Unity Desktop by default, broke a key Linux feature. If you…
Information Science
Confessions of a Science Librarian
Music Mondays: Gaga, Bennett, Bowie & Blue: The jazz conversation continues
The fallout of the Great Sonny Rollins Jazz Satire Blowup of 2014 is still reverberating through the jazz community, prompting new uproars and bouncing off a surprising number of new jazz eruptions in the wider culture. Definitely interesting times to be a jazz fan, if not always for the right reasons. Some cool stuff going…
Confessions of a Science Librarian
Cool linky stuff for science undergrads (13): The rise of astrostatistics
I have a son who’s currently a third year physics undergrad and another son who’s in first year philosophy. As you can imagine, I may occasionally pass along a link or two to them pointing to stuff on the web I think they might find particularly interesting or useful. Thinking on that fact, I surmised…
Sad news today: Tom Magliozzi, one of Cambridge Massachusetts greatest gifts to public radio (and Cambridge has given a LOT of gifts to public radio) died today. Car talk was, verily, one of the best things ever. I have one Car Talk story and this is as good a time as any to tell it.…
Jobs
Decreased lung function, breast cancer, miscarriage, depression and neurological disease. These are just a few of the health and disease risks that salon workers disproportionately face while on the job, according to a new report on the impact of toxic chemicals within the beauty and personal care industry.
A select group of small business representatives will meet with OSHA this week to discuss a possible new regulation to protect workers from infectious diseases. OSHA has been convening these panels since 1997, but it will be the first time that we’ll be able to listen in on the discussion.
The Pump Handle
San Francisco women firefighters take part in first study on firefighting exposures and breast cancer
In the span of just a couple years, five of Heather Buren’s colleagues at the San Francisco Fire Department were diagnosed with breast cancer. At first, Buren thought the diagnoses were part of the unfortunate toll that comes with age. Still, something felt amiss — “it just felt so disproportionate to me,” she said.
