purepedantry
Posts by this author
March 20, 2008
Drew Carey has a video on reason.tv about the possibility of a market for donor kidneys. He interviews recent kidney donor Virginia Postrel. I think Postrel has it just right:
If the 1984 law criminalizing organ sales were simply repealed, here's what I think would happen. In the short term,…
March 20, 2008
CNN has a story about a Navy neurologist who tried using mirrors to help soldiers from Iraq with phantom pain. Phantom pain is pain in amputees that is perceived to originate in the amputated limb. What causes it is not exactly clear although many theories exist. However, it is often refractory…
March 20, 2008
Mind Hacks discusses an editorial in the American Journal of Psychiatry that argues that the DSM-IV -- the diagnostic manual that psychiatrists use to diagnose mental disorders -- should include internet addiction. Vaughan is quite legitimately skeptical:
Rather curiously, the editorial mentions…
March 19, 2008
I was struck by this story on NPR about so-called "stem cell tourists." Stem cell tourists are parents taking their children to China for injections of stem cells in hopes of curing a wide variety of diseases. I want to convey at least in some small way what an insanely bad idea this is:
Jena…
March 17, 2008
Encephalon has a particularly good crop of brainy goodness this issue, so let's get started.
Mind Hacks looks at a fascinating case of a man with unstoppable hiccups because he has Parkinson's disease.
Neuroscientifically Challenged looks at the possibility of using a nanopolymer from sea…
March 17, 2008
(This is sort of a round-up of comment on the economics news. I don't have much to say about it yet.)
It would appear that the economy has just gone from bad to really bad, although if you wanted to be technical it was probably bad already. Prices just hadn't fallen to reflect the true magnitude…
March 14, 2008
It's pi day. (You know...3/14...stay with me on this...)
In honor of pi day, here are the first million digits of pi. (Not reproduced here because I don't want our tech guy to put a hit out on me.)
March 14, 2008
I wish I could do this:
Scientists exposed 4-day-old sand dollar larvae to fish mucus, a sign that danger is close. They found that the larvae created clones of themselves within 24 hours.
"It's the first time we've seen anything clone itself in response to cues that predators are near," said…
March 13, 2008
Paul Krugman on an economic theory of trade for interstellar trade (Hat-tip: Slashdot):
This paper extends interplanetary trade theory to an interstellar setting. It is chiefly concerned with the following question: how should interest rates on goods in transit be computed when the goods travel at…
March 12, 2008
Things I did not visualize reading this morning. 1) David Mamet wrote a piece in the Village Voice -- of all places -- disavowing his faith in government.
Money quote:
For the Constitution, rather than suggesting that all behave in a godlike manner, recognizes that, to the contrary, people are…
March 12, 2008
A Christmas present, maybe? Maybe not.
A "neurotheology" researcher called Dr Michael Persinger has developed something called the "God Helmet" lined with magnets to help you in your quest: it sounds like typical bad science fodder, but it's much more interesting than that.
Persinger is a proper…
March 11, 2008
Well, that's good:
Medical scientists just starting at universities have been, more and more often, left empty-handed when the federal government awards grants. So on Monday the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to medical research, announced a little help: a new…
March 11, 2008
The association between sleep and memory performance has been relatively well-documented. Studies in animals and humans have shown memory deficits in both declarative and procedural memory associated with sleep deprivation. (The subject is slightly complicated because whether sleep deprivation…
March 10, 2008
I am hosting Encephalon next week on Monday (March 17th). If you would like to submit a neuroscience-related post to this carnival, email it to encephalon [dot] host {at} gmail [dot] com.
I will be writing it on Sunday night, so try and get your posts in by 7 pm if you want them to be included.
March 10, 2008
MarkH, SciBling at denialism blog and fellow MD-PhD student, takes issue with my post about a move to ban "poaching" of doctors from African countries. I can't say I am entirely surprised, since I knew that post would be controversial. I want to respond to his -- in my opinion very substantive…
March 7, 2008
Unbelievable.
Unbelievable is simply the only word that can describe this article in the Lancet. Citing problems with retention of doctors in under-treated populations in Africa, Mills et al. argue that direct recruitment of doctors by groups in the West should be criminalized and the…
March 5, 2008
Over at Crooked Timber, John Quiggin has launched a broadside at NYTimes Science Blogger John Tierney (also here) over what he (Quiggin) considers politicization of science:
One of the big problems with talking about what Chris Mooney has called The Republican War on Science is that, on the…
March 5, 2008
And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. (Exodus 3:2)
Moses was high when he saw that bush. Or so speculates Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew…
March 5, 2008
I got this flier from the American Academy of Neurology in the mail, and it cracked me up.
Check out under the title:
It actually says: "Now Featuring More Basic Science than Ever!"
Does that sound like a cereal commercial to anyone else?
American Academy of Neurology: Now with more cornflakes…
March 5, 2008
How do you track the relative contributions of a plant species in an ecosystem? When you are talking about thousands of square miles of land area this can be an incredibly daunting task, but it is very important because it provides important information related to invasive species that may be…
March 4, 2008
Don't believe in evolution? Just look to the weeds in the sidewalk:
Like other members of its family, Crepis sancta produces two types of seeds. Heavy seeds fall into the grass below the plant, whereas lighter seeds with feathery tails drift in the wind to new habitats. Ecologists have long known…
March 4, 2008
The NYTimes has a slide show of "migraine" art provided by Oliver Sacks from his book Migraine. They attempt to illustrate what a migraine aura looks like.
Neat. I would put one up on my wall if I didn't feel so horrible that it was the pictorial prelude to someone's intense pain.
March 3, 2008
I nearly aerosolized Diet Pepsi all over my computer screen when I read this:
It a town hall meeting Friday in Texas, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., declared that "there's strong evidence" that thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative that was once in many childhood vaccines, is responsible for the…
March 3, 2008
1) Two of my favorite bloggers -- Shelley Batts of Retrospectacle and Steve Higgins of OmniBrain -- have teamed up to form at group blog called Of Two Minds. Adjust your links accordingly.
2) Encephalon 40 is up at Mind Hacks. Thanks Vaughan!
March 3, 2008
Conventional wisdom + bigger microphone = excellent journalism!
High fives all-around for Charlotte Allen who repackages conventional wisdom about sex differences to a degree rarely attained by print journalists.
My favorite part:
Depressing as it is, several of the supposed misogynist myths about…
March 3, 2008
I don't know if you have seen these, but Florida Orange Juice started a new ad campaign featuring commercials with the voice of Tom Selleck. (Magnum PI does like his orange juice.)
Anyway, the commercials show a beaker into which is being poured OJ. Tom Selleck then proceeds to say:
"Food…
February 29, 2008
That is amazing:
The basis of the 2x4-inch "Digital Tattoo Interface" is a Bluetooth device made of thin, flexible silicon and silicone. It's inserted through a small incision as a tightly rolled tube, and then it unfurls beneath the skin to align between skin and muscle. Through the same incision…
February 29, 2008
Jay Cost at RCP uses a prisoner's dilemma game to show why the absense of institutional structures is likely to yield a socially inefficient result in the Democratic primaries. He looks at the super delegates' behavior in terms of what is good for them vs. what is good for the party:
The core…
February 28, 2008
...literally:
Scientists are priming two spacecraft to slam into the moon's South Pole to see if the lunar double whammy reveals hidden water ice.
The Earth-on-moon violence may raise eyebrows, but NASA's history shows that such missions can yield extremely useful scientific observations.
"I think…
February 28, 2008
Language Log details the results of this fascinating experiment. The researcher was looking at second language acquisition, and in order to have a control she tested the native-speakers on the gender of particular words in French.
The assumption would be the native-speakers would all agree on the…