terrasig | February 23, 2010As I wrote on Twitter yesterday, I am sending hugs, salutes, and immense respect to Dr. Chris Gunter and her colleagues at HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology in Huntsville, Alabama.
Gunter, a self-described "recovering Nature editor" who serves as Director of Research Affairs at HudsonAlpha, is working with several of her colleagues at the institute to finish teaching an undergraduate neuroscience course that was left without a professor following the UAHuntsville tragedy.
Practical things first: Chris has sent out a call to any educators out there who have syllabi or slides for…
terrasig | February 22, 2010A very nice surprise greeted me this morning on the local page of my AP News iPhone app: an interview in the News & Observer with Dr. Misha Angrist of the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy by freelance journalist, T. DeLene Beeland (also on Twitter @tdelene).
Angrist is perhaps best-known as the fourth of the first 10 people whose genome was sequenced for George Church's Personal Genome Project. Not surprisingly, his work focuses on the societal implications of the personal genomics movement and what knowing one's DNA sequence means today and will mean in the future. We last…
terrasig | February 21, 2010The Australian psychiatrist, musician, amateur astronomer, daddy, and blogger Tsuken just sent out word that his custom electric guitar has arrived from New Zealand luthier, Adrian Hamilton, at Ash Custom Works in Auckland.
At his blog, Music, Medicine, and the Mind, our giddy colleague writes:
Oh. Baby. Yeah. I'm here today to tell you: there is nothing - nothing - like a custom guitar. No way will a production instrument compare. To illustrate, I will describe the guitar I have just collected.
This is truly a fantastic instrument; I can hardly keep my hands off it. It plays like a dream,…
terrasig | February 21, 2010Younger readers and readers outside the southern United States may not completely grasp my preoccupation with the Jim Crow segregation era "sit-ins" over the last several months. These non-violent acts of civil disobedience in the 1950s and 60s challenged the "separate, but equal" provisions for public facilities that were upheld in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson US Supreme Court decision and continued more than a decade after the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Buses, trains, waiting terminals, restrooms, water fountains, and areas of private businesses were kept separate for whites and blacks (…
terrasig | February 20, 2010Among the many things that LungMutiny2010 has taken from me is the chance to take advantage of all the rich cultural offerings in the North Carolina Research Triangle area during Black History Month.
Regular readers will remember that I wrote a few months ago about the segregation era sit-ins, beginning with the 1957 Royal Ice Cream sit-in in Durham and the immortal 1960 Greensboro Woolworth's sit-ins that garnered national attention.
Those who came to the ScienceOnline2010 session with me and my colleague, Damond Nollan, will also remember that I spoke at length about Rev. Dr. Martin Luther…
terrasig | February 19, 2010Just a quick post on an article that caught my eye: Jazz Pharmaceuticals of Palo Alto, CA, has announced that the US FDA has accepted their new drug application (NDA) filing for JZP-6, or sodium oxybate, for the treatment of pain and fatigue associated with fibromyalgia.
The NDA was based on positive outcomes of two, Phase III clinical trials - those randomized, placebo-controlled double-blind trials that serve as the gold standard for drug efficacy. The company expects an approval decision from FDA by October 2010.
Jazz has already garnered approval for sodium oxybate under the brand name…
terrasig | February 19, 2010In our last post, we discussed a recent USPTO ruling that rejected a claim of the Pfizer patent on the erectile dysfunction drug, sildenafil (Viagra®), to a novel oral treatment for the disorder. The patent appeals panel ruled that the existence of horny goat weed, a traditional Chinese medicine used orally for impotence, was grounds for rejection of the claim.
Frequent commenter daedalus4u pulled out US Patent #6,469,012 (filed Mar 4 1996, issued Oct 22 2002) wherein the relevant claim 24 reads:
A method of treating erectile dysfunction in a male human, comprising orally administering to a…
terrasig | February 18, 2010Reuters and Bloomberg reported earlier this week on an ongoing patent battle (read: pissing match) between Pfizer and Eli Lilly & Co. relating to their erectile dysfunction drugs Viagra and Cialis, respectively.
A US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) appeals committee has ruled that an element of Pfizer's patent on sildenafil, the active chemical in Viagra, is invalid because the drug is insufficiently different from a traditional Chinese medicine called Yin Yang Huo or horny goat weed.
At issue is Pfizer's claim to a method for treating male erectile dysfunction. The patent appeals…
terrasig | February 17, 2010Following this weekend's loss of musician Doug Fieger, I'm going through some YouTube vids and found two of my favorites from the less-appreciated 2nd album by The Knack, "But the Little Girls Understand."
"I Want Ya" was the second cut - just a bunch of simple chords but Bruce Gary's drumming is even better than I remember.
This is the cover of The Kinks', "The Hard Way," that I mentioned on Monday.
And yes, I owned a black and a brown skinny tie - the only way to express individuality in a boys Catholic school uniform in the late 70s and early 80s.
terrasig | February 17, 2010What's wrong with this picture?:
You're looking at a screenshot of a map detailing the origins of each of the last 500 visits to Terra Sigillata. I took this shot at about 2 pm local time in Durban, South Africa, home to cognitive science blogger Michael Meadon at Ionian Enchantment. Michael is a graduate student at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and I learned about him via a Twitter referral - from whom I can't recall.
Be that as it may, last week Michael put out a call last week for "Africa's science nerds":
Africa, then, needs skeptical, reasoned, and scientific voices, not only to…
terrasig | February 16, 2010Just before Christmas, the US FDA issued a warning regarding a clay-based traditional West African remedy for morning sickness called Nzu or Calabar or Calabash clay. We discussed this topic here when the initial health warning came out from Texas.
The problem with the product is that it contains high levels of lead and arsenic that could be toxic to both fetus and mother.
And now the problem has expanded beyond Texas.
Scott Gavura at his excellent Science-Based Pharmacy blog tweeted earlier that the New York City Department of Health issued a similar warning today:
February 16, 2010 - A…
terrasig | February 15, 2010I was an angry 14- or 15-year-old in late 1978 or early 1979 - can't recall which year, but definitely angry - walking home on a Sunday night after a dishwasher shift at Grandma's Saucy Apron, a now-defunct Italian restaurant in my hometown where I was working to make money for a Spanish National Honor Society trip to Spain over the upcoming Spring Break.
I turned on 99X (New York City's WXLO-FM) at 9 pm for a new radio show I enjoyed from KXOA in Sacramento, CA, called The Great American Radio Show with Mike Harrison. It was the near-end of the disco era and this album-oriented rock (AOR)…
terrasig | February 14, 2010Valued commenter wc just left us a link to one of the most insightful articles to date on Dr. Amy Bishop, the University of Alabama in Huntsville biology professor charged in the shooting deaths of three colleagues where two other professors and an administrative assistant were injured.
In today's Decatur Daily, staff writer Eric Fleischauer has an extended interview with UAH psychology professor Eric Seemann. You really should read the whole thing because it provides an inside view of Bishop's personality and relationships. But here is a critical passage:
Despite her excellent research…
terrasig | February 13, 2010First and foremost our condolences go to all our our colleagues at the University of Alabama at Huntsville and others in the Huntsville science community such as Twitter friend, @girlscientist, Dr. Chris Gunter.
As we are learning, yesterday's shooting occurred after UAH Assistant Professor of Biology, Dr. Amy Bishop, learned that she would not be awarded tenure. My sentiment is very much that of my colleague, DrugMonkey. Originally appointed as a faculty member in 2003, she had previously been an Instructor at Harvard University after earning her PhD in Medical Sciences there in 1998.
We…
terrasig | February 12, 2010
I started strong this morning, lots of e-mail interaction with the lab and even a few hundred words on a blog post, but then had another setback.
Hence I offer you a photographic (iPhone cam) composition entitled, "Still Life."
I am too young to feel this old.
(Special note to PalMD: No vomiting from the new clarithromycin but, damn, my pee smells funny.)
terrasig | February 10, 2010From Monday's issue of The Press in York, England:
A breast cancer patient from York says she is "disgusted" by a shortage of the drug she and hundreds of other women rely on to reduce the risk of the disease returning.
Mother-of-two Marion Barclay, 45, said the situation became so serious last Friday, she faced the prospect of missing her daily dose of Arimidex tablets.
This story is one of several reports on sporadic, worldwide shortages of Arimidex®, the brand of anastrozole sold by AstraZeneca. Anastrozole is a competitive inhibitor of the cytochrome P450 monooxygenase isozyme known as…
terrasig | February 9, 2010Thank you for visiting our introductory post on K2 Spice and welcome readers from Maia Szalavitz at the TIME Healthland blog. The comments to which she refers can be seen by scrolling to the end of the post.
However, our blog has moved since this was posted in Feb 2010 and any further comments are closed. But if you wish to share any experiences and participate in further discussion, please visit us at our new home here.
If you're interested in our other posts on K2 Spice or other legal highs, click here.
Finally, if you're interested in our comments on Purdue University chemist and…
terrasig | February 9, 2010I'm always pleasantly surprised when a topic generates enthusiastic reader feedback, particularly when comments come from long-time readers who share experiences I never knew they had or, in some cases, comment for the first time.
The topic this time was a simple reflection on my current bout of pneumonia and my being taken aback by how debilitating it has been mentally. It's taken me two days just put put together these few sentences of what will essentially be a referral post.
A very thoughtful commenter posed a question to me about what does it mean to be "really sick." What is long-term…
terrasig | February 7, 2010I have just a couple of thoughts today that I offer to the reader not for sympathy but, rather, for scientific observation and reflection.
I've been dealing with a case of bronchitis that became pneumonia. I tried to teach through it, do grant reviews, finish a book chapter, etc. but was finally ordered by my pulmonologist to recuperative bedrest at home for approximately four weeks.
When told I'd be confined to bed for a month, I thought that it would be great - that I'd get two papers and a grant renewal done and still have plenty of time for blog posts I've been wanting to get to, finish…
terrasig | February 4, 2010Please forgive me for the cranky. I am still confined to bed and am only writing between fits of coughing that still occasionally drive me near unconsciousness due to hypoxia. I'm stuck at home trying to read some research literature across the VPN and proxy servers from my three faculty appointments that give me access to much biomedical research literature.
However, some journals are now no longer granting access if one's IP address does not come directly from the university, even if you are using the university VPN server. And then there's my love-hate relationship with Nature Publishing…