terrasig | May 3, 2009Many readers of Terra Sig and the larger ScienceBlogs community likely remember former neuroscience graduate student blogger, Shelley Batts. Shelley originally launched Retrospectacle and she and I (and ~25 others) joined Sb in June, 2006, second wave. When she put the hammer down to finish her PhD at the University of Michigan (former home of Dr John Jacob Abel), she shut down Retrospectacle and joined forces with Steve/Omnibrain at Of Two Minds.
Shelley earned her PhD last December, headed off to postdoc at Stanford, and got engaged to her high school sweetheart, Luke Rumsey.
Well, while…
terrasig | May 3, 2009If you follow me on Twitter (@abelpharmboy) or looked at this post Thursday, you'd know that I was going to a meetup of area Twitter users. I honestly had no idea what to expect and have to say that it was a rather enriching experience. It gave me a chance to press the flesh with a crowd very different and higher energy than some (but not all) scientific gatherings.
The group was different because the people I met were more in the tech and communications biz and the higher energy might have come from that I was probably one standard deviation away from the mean age. Click through the photo…
terrasig | May 1, 2009FDA and the New York Times are reporting today 23 cases of adverse reactions to various Hydroxycut weight loss supplements. (FDA Consumer PDF here).
Above and beyond whether the stuff actually helps with weight loss, it is clear that the products contain some compound(s) that cause idiosyncratic cases of liver damage.
According to the law governing dietary supplements, the F.D.A. is empowered to act only in cases when it identifies a harmful or adulterated product that is already on sale.
"Part of the problem as you know is that F.D.A. looks at dietary supplements from a post-market…
terrasig | April 30, 2009I only signed up for Twitter (@abelpharmboy) on 21 January but have found it incredibly valuable for staying up to speed on blogs, MSM articles, local and national news, and science and medicine stories. I've already accumulated 284 "followers" which is about half of our daily blog visitors. I'd say that about 60% of those are not spammers.
Well tonight in the Bull City, there is an event called Triangle Tweetup, a meetup of local Twitter users at Bronto Nation Software (@bronto). I'm going as are a few bloggers our readers may know such as Bora Zivkovic and foodie, jewelry-maker, and…
terrasig | April 29, 2009Word around town and just tweeted by local hero, Ayse, is that the great Ernie Barnes passed away yesterday at the age of 70.
From the biography at Mr Barnes' website:
Born Ernest Barnes, Jr. on July 15, 1938 to Ernest Sr. and Fannie Mae Geer Barnes during the Jim Crow era in Durham, North Carolina, his mother worked as a domestic for a prominent attorney. As a child, young Ernest would accompany her to work and was allowed to peruse the extensive collection of art books. One day in junior high school, a teacher found the self-admitted fat, introverted young Barnes drawing in a notebook while…
terrasig | April 29, 2009Regular commenter and friend of Terra Sig, leigh (the path forward), let us know overnight that Florida State Veterinarian Dr Thomas J Holt officially confirmed that selenium overdose killed 21 Venezuelian polo horses in Wellington, Florida, on 19 April.
An attempt by an Ocala, Florida, compounding pharmacy to reproduce an equine dietary supplement called Biodyl resulted in a toxic dose of sodium selenite to be given to the horses. The pharmacy is cooperating fully with the FDA and other authorities but there is no official word as to whether the pharmacy made a calculation error or were…
terrasig | April 28, 2009Several of my blogging colleagues have been discussing over the last few days whether there is value in cultivating fellow scientists as readers of science blogs. While some find this a waste of time, others recognize that blogs provide a useful, real-time platform for disseminating information and discussing current issues and career development challenges that cannot be done well in print format. The informality of the blog also allows for frank discussion to be had between senior scientists, trainees, and the general public that do not often (if at all) occur at one's home institution.…
terrasig | April 28, 2009UPDATE (Wed 29 April): As friends and family of the Urbanos and Kanes have been arriving here via web searches, I wanted to provide a compendium of individual obituaries and plans for visitation and funeral.
Visitation for all will be at Thiele-Reid Family Funeral Home, 585 Belgrove Drive, Kearny, NJ 07032, (201) 991-1031 on Thursday, 30 April, and Friday, 1 May from 2:00 to 9:00 p.m.
Funeral liturgy will be offered for all, at St. Stephen's Church, in Kearny, on Saturday, 2 May, at 11:00 a.m.
The Urbanos will then be laid to rest at St. Nicholas Cemetery in Lodi; the Kanes will be laid…
terrasig | April 27, 2009
I just learned of this great post from Southern Fried Science via a tweet from Southern Fried Scientist that was retweeted from Rick MacPherson (Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice, and Sunsets). I mention this because my RSS reader is so full of unread posts that Twitter is serving me far better these days by quickly pointing me in the direction of blog posts and articles that would most likely interest me.
The blog is written by Andrew and David - both Southern, both fried, and both smelling of a combination of smoked pork and spiced Low Country shrimp. The blog is characterized as, "The new look…
terrasig | April 25, 2009I'm not one for gratuitous, traffic-enhancing YouTube posts but my contemporaries (80s college folks), and especially indie rock musicians, need to catch these two videos (below) from British guitarist, Daniel Earwicker. Daniel performs his own music as Primrose League (MySpace page here) but I first learned of him while Googling when I was learning to play Billy Bragg's, "Greetings to the New Brunette," referred to most often as "Shirley."
There is a killer 12-string guitar run under the duration of Greetings that Daniel suspects was not done by Bragg himself but rather Johnny Marr. Marr…
terrasig | April 24, 2009Last weekend, 21 Venezuelan polo horses collapsed and died at the US Open championship match at the International Polo Club Palm Beach in Wellington, Florida (AP, CNN). The deaths have now been associated with injection of a veterinary mineral supplement produced by a compounding pharmacy in Ocala, Florida. Located in central Florida about 45 min south of the University of Florida, Ocala is well-known for its density of equestrian farms and training centers.
Precisely how this supplement killed the animals is not yet known but I can guarantee that it was a calculation error involving an…
terrasig | April 21, 2009Never pass up an opportunity to get face-to-face time with grants officials from any research funding agency. This from the Department of Defense for those of you in Denver tomorrow:
To all individuals attending the 100th Annual Meeting of the AACR in Denver, Colorado:
The Department of Defense's Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP) will be presenting a series of short talks on CDMRP and its cancer research funding programs on Wednesday, April 22, from 8:30-10:30 a.m., in Room 607 of the Colorado Convention Center.
Scheduled to speak from the CDMRP are the Director, a…
terrasig | April 20, 2009While I was all caught up today with thinking about the 95th anniversary of the Ludlow Massacre and the 10th anniversary of the Columbine High School shootings, I was reminded of some lighthearted goings-on in Colorado today that take away some of the gloom on this Monday. (The Ludlow post is getting great traffic, by the way, but my historical posts on tragedies fail to generate much commenting for some odd reason.).
My good friends at Denver's Westword independent weekly paper tweeted me last week with this headline on from their blog, The Latest Word:
CU Chancellor, obviously high, sends…
terrasig | April 20, 2009I never will forget the look on the faces
Of the men and women that awful day,
When we stood around to preach their funerals,
And lay the corpses of the dead away.
We told the Colorado Governor to call the President,
Tell him to call off his National Guard,
But the National Guard belonged to the Governor,
So he didn't try so very hard.
- Woody Guthrie, Ludlow Massacre (1944)
I've written variations on this post a few times, for both Labor Day and the anniversary of a major turning point in US labor relations that was kept alive by historian Howard Zinn and others. I had planned to…
terrasig | April 17, 2009Our dear colleague, Erleichda, is back with another wine dinner experience. For those new to the blog, Erleichda is my slightly-senior colleague from whom I have learned a great deal about life and science. Recently retired from the discovery and development of life-saving anticancer drugs, he posts routinely on the escapades of his travels and wine dinners with his friends, known by the name "Jim's Disciples" to acknowledge their recently departed founder. This is an older column that I missed posting awhile back so here it is for your enjoyment.
Another Wine Experience: Dinner Paired…
terrasig | April 15, 2009Serendipity. Me and Tancredo, of all people.
Start here: The press has been buzzing today about former Colorado congressman and US presidential candidate, Tom Tancredo, having to cut a speech short yesterday at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill due to protesters on his stance toward illegal/unauthorized immigration to the US. With regard to state universities, Tancredo is opposed to granting in-state college tuition to children whose parents came to the US outside of legal immigration procedures.
I am not a fan of Tancredo or his policies. The time has come in this country…
terrasig | April 14, 2009
Well, it's that time of year for public radio stations in the United States: the biannual fund drive to support operations and programming. Many public radio stations are run by or associated with universities, thereby giving provide course and internship opportunities to students in print and broadcast journalism, graphic design, recording engineering, and music studies.
I love my radio station, WNCU-FM 90.7 in Durham, North Carolina - "Your Connection To Something Different." WNCU is a jazz-intensive station run out of North Carolina Central University (NCCU), a HBCU within the…
terrasig | April 13, 2009An interesting question arose the other day when we discussed the Key West acupuncturist who was diverting prescription drugs for personal use as well as in her practice. While we are not certain that the defendant put the cited muscle relaxants and anxiolytics in remedies doled out at her practice, we doubt that the demographic she targeted would be too impressed if she were to hand out prescription drugs.
This scenario led our scientific and blogging colleague, DrugMonkey, to ask how common it might be for alternative practitioners to dope their herbs with prescription drugs exhibiting…
terrasig | April 10, 2009This week's Seder supper with the Zivkovic family and local friends gave me the opportunity to investigate several Kosher wines from Israel. My local wine merchant, Wine Authorities, has been carrying several Israeli wines for over a year but I've only tasted one and have unfortunately lost my notes on that one. You can read descriptions on the four they are currently offering: go to this link and then click on "Israel."
Co-owner Craig Heffley tells me that he and his partner, Seth Gross, have tasted about 40 wines in the last year with 20 being quite reasonable and 10 outstanding.
Briefly…
terrasig | April 10, 2009Congratulations are going out today to Duke women's basketball guard and Coloradan, Abby Waner, on her no. 21 selection in yesterday's WNBA draft. A solid competitor, leader, and scholar, Waner was the 2nd pick by the New York Liberty. A Highlands Ranch (CO) ThunderRidge High School standout and Colorado Sports Hall of Fame inductee, Waner contributed over the last four years to Duke's NCAA Tournament appearances, including the 2006 finals when Duke lost to Maryland in a heartbreaker.
The entire Waner family holds a special place in our hearts. Extending a little Southern hospitality to…