March 3, 2009
Carl explains this:
After death, brains that do not simply disappear sometimes get smaller. In this particular fish, Sibyrhynchus denisoni the brain must have gotten a lot smaller. Check out this image, in which the braincase is in red, and the brain is in yellow. (The scale bar is 5 millimeters…
March 2, 2009
Below, the "jugum penis," designed to prevent "nocturnal lincontinence" (aka masturbation). One of many wonders in a new London Science Museum online exhibit of historical medical objects called "Brought to Life," as featured in this New Scientist photo essay.
Don't try these at home.
March 2, 2009
The Nieman Journalism Lab has a nice round-up of some beautifully informative and often luscious work that "visualizes" news -- that is, turns news trends (and the social concerns and changes they document) into visual representations of data, like changing maps, splats of paint, or -- a favorite…
March 2, 2009
Over at Healthcare ZDNet, a site new to me, Dana Blankenhorn says
The Obama strategy for achieving health reform is now clear.
Get the money first. This changes the terms of the debate, from what will it cost to how do we do things more efficiently?
He's got a point, but it seems to me he's only…
March 1, 2009
Matthew Nisbet says maybe, but not by much.
In the U.S., there is often the false assumption that Europeans are somehow more engaged and supportive of science than Americans. Yet, as I discuss in several studies and as I have written about in articles, instead of science literacy, the same…
March 1, 2009
Ezra Klein gives the short whodat on Kathleen Sebelius, the Kansas governor who will be Obama's health and human services secretary.
Sebelius's tenure as insurance commissioner in Kansas seems to have been both successful and fairly quiet: She is not defined by the battles and struggles of that…
February 27, 2009
A while back I tossed up some of Callie Shell's photos of Obama, and the post turned out to be one of the more popular here at Neuron Culture. Recently Soulcatcher Studios, the site that is running an expanded version of that slide show, has a portfolio of the lovely, strange, and arresting 1928…
February 27, 2009
I drove up to Montreal yesterday, and amid visits with anthropologist and Somatosphere founder Eugene Raikhel, anthropologist Allan Young, and Suparna Choudhury, talked about (among other things) the emerging new area of study they're calling "critical neuroscience."
What the heck is critical…
February 22, 2009
Came down from Vermont (home) to Boston yesterday for a 3-day vaca with the 4 and 7 year-old. Much-anticipated trip, everyone eager to escape the snow and same four walls and indulge some big-city excitement (like science museums).
The 7-year-old started a travel diary in a little 1.5x3-inch…
February 20, 2009
A roundup of wonderful stuff I won't get to. Then again, many of these need no help:
"Come tomorrow and sort this hell hole out. Dinner and drinks, 4 p.m. Bring wine and caviar only.". Woman emails party invitations while asleep. Hat tip: BoingBoing
Obviously, the drug and medical device industry…
February 19, 2009
The Amygdaloids at the 92d Y, 4/3/08. Music starts at about 3m. LeDoux's the guitarist who is NOT singing. (Maybe it scares him?)
A few months back I gave a heads-up that NYU neuroscientist Joe LeDoux and his band, t the Amygdaloids, were playing in NYC. Well, the virus has spread! At Rock-It…
February 13, 2009
In a wonderful post at Mind Hacks, Vaughn, writing on "The myth of the concentration oasis" makes an argument that rather challenges my resistance to it:
The 'modern technology is hurting our brain' argument is widespread but it seems so short-sighted. It's based on the idea that before digital…
February 13, 2009
Oh man. This is good.
Via Kottke, who has other mixes as well.
Soviet Army dance ensemble + Run DMC = the invention of breakdancing in the mid-1900s.
February 13, 2009
Dangerous concept; successful execution: From the mediea team at Small Mammal, a cute video story that deconstructs a cute YouTube video to look at the science of cuteness.
Somebody run tell Liz Spikol!
February 12, 2009
Seriously.
The Times and many more have the scoop.
From the Times:
For decades, space experts have warned of orbits around the planet growing so crowded that two satellites might one day slam into one another, producing swarms of treacherous debris.
It happened Tuesday.
My favorite hed is Knight…
February 12, 2009
Despite the rain on my window, it's a fine day indeed, with many wonderful celebrations of Darwin's 200th ringing throughout the blogoshere.
Most of these, naturally, focus on Darwin's theory of evolution and its many implications and reverberations. I much admire that theory. But what I find most…
February 11, 2009
Just lost my physical science book... How is that possible? It's so BIG.
People do not believe in science.
masturbation IS a science
why did i decide to get involved with this computer science networking stuff? i am an arts person! what was i thinking? lol
sitting here doing science homework , o…
February 11, 2009
A former: drug rep explains :
Samples are the number one influencer of the prescribing habits of doctors, and I proved this with my last pharma company, which was a very small one, where doctors could request samples simply by faxing in a form off of the company%u2019s website. I became the third…
February 10, 2009
Attended my local school board meeting tonight, a friendly, almost cozy affair in the elementary school lunchroom. People we see around this small town daily; a principal I've watched Red Sox games with. The proximate issues: a continually rising budget despite falling enrollment, and -- related…
February 10, 2009
Marcia Angell makes it plain:
The fact that drug companies pay prescribers to be "educated" underscores the true nature of the transaction. Students generally pay teachers, not the reverse. The real intent is to influence prescribing habits, through selection of the information provided and through…
February 10, 2009
Reader Jay, in a comment on my post about health-care costs tanking the economy, raises an interesting question about the sorts of standardized medical records that would be needed to evaluate efficacy (and therefore economic efficiency) of various treatments:
The idea is clearly to have…
February 9, 2009
The Times' Economix blog has a good post by Alan Krueger on the need toinclude patients' lost time in estimates of health-care costs.
After waiting more than an hour in a doctor's waiting room, a friend of mine once presented his doctor with a bill for his time..... Although it doesn't currently…
February 9, 2009
Check this very scary projection of what current trends in health-care spending will mean for our economy: a growing weight that will account for half of GDP by 2082:
Peter Orszag, Obama's budget director, shows that slide in his standard talk on what's wrong with our budget. It shows why, as Ezra…
February 8, 2009
You can't make this stuff up. Unfortunately, you don't have to:
âAs hard as it is to believe, bankers who are living on the Upper East Side making $2 or $3 million a year have set up a life for themselves in which they are also at zero at the end of the year with credit cards and mortgage bills…
February 8, 2009
The health-care system's maddening inefficiencies -- high per-capita spending with poorer overall health outcomes; tens of millions uninsured and tens of millions more underinsured; insane-making battles with insurers to get reimbursements you're entitled too -- are reason enough to spur reform.…
February 8, 2009
The note below was originally a response to a comment that Bora Z left on my "More on uneasy symbiosis (mashup? smashup?) of mainstream and citizen media, but given the interest in this subject I thought I best give it its own post.
Thanks for writing, Bora. The limitations of small papers that…
February 7, 2009
The Questionable Authority (apt name for this one!) ponders a disturbing report from the Times of London.
February 7, 2009
Effect Measure -- inspired by a thoughtful note from bird-flu ace reporter Helen Branswell -- ponders the implications of the increasing lack of specialization, and thus deep subject-specific expertise, among MSM reporters.
The conclusion we draw from this is that if you really want to know…
February 7, 2009
My Darwin talk at Dartmouth on Thursday went well, and while there I had the privilege of meeting with editors of the Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Science, or DUJS -- which is, at 11 years, the oldest extant undergrad journal in the U.S., as far as its editors can tell.
I knew from writing…
February 7, 2009
"Science found wanting in nation's crime labs," says the headline at the NY Times, which ran one of many stories on the upcoming National Academy of Sciences report on forensic science. This kind of front-page attention is long overdue, as shabby science that claims to be infallible has jailed many…
