terrasig | December 6, 2009I posed this question earlier today on Twitter and have already garnered a good number of responses.
STEM - science, technology, engineering, and mathematics - is the acronym used by educators, researchers, and funding agencies focused on fundamental science. The US National Science Foundation, the primarily US STEM funding agency, states:
As described in our strategic plan, NSF is the only federal agency whose mission includes support for all fields of fundamental science and engineering, except for medical sciences.
My reason for asking is that I was going to write a post that would…
terrasig | December 5, 2009Alright. I understand the prohibition on not taking photos of presenters' data.
However, prohibiting Twittering?
Use of cameras and all other recording devices (this includes digital, film, and cell phone cameras, as well as audio recordings) are strictly prohibited in all session rooms, in the Exhibit Hall, and in all poster and oral presentation sessions. Twittering (see above) and other forms of communication involving replication of data are strictly prohibited at the Annual Meeting or before publication, whether data presented are in the Exhibit Hall, poster area, poster sessions, or…
terrasig | December 4, 2009Earlier this week, I saw one of the best treatments of a misinterpreted story that has me thinking about how all news outlets should report in vitro laboratory studies.
Only thing is that it didn't come from a news outlet.
It came instead from a brainwashing site run by those medical socialist types - I am, of course, speaking of the UK National Health Service and their excellent patient education website, NHS Choices.
You may recall reading in the popular dead-tree or online press that investigators from New York Medical College in Valhalla published in British Journal of Urology…
terrasig | December 3, 2009Dear Readers:
No I haven't dropped off the face of the Earth. I've only been quiet because I am getting crushed during this last week of the semester. I have a couple of topics I want to share with you but it may not happen today.
Please accept my apologies for slacking on my commitment to each of you.
Regretfully,
Abel
terrasig | November 30, 2009Welcome, fellow ScienceOnline2010 registrant! This is just the payment page; for more details on the banquet, CLICK HERE.
ScienceOnline2010 Saturday Night Dinner
Radisson at Research Triangle Park
Saturday 16 January 2010 - 7:00 pm
$37.50 (USD) per person
(includes $1.50 PayPal fee)
Who are you paying for?
Myself $37.50
Myself and 1 guest $75.00
Myself and 2 guests $112.50
Myself and 3 guests $150.00
Guest names, if any
Once your payment clears, I will mark you as paid on the list at the conference website.
If you are unable to use this method of advance…
terrasig | November 29, 2009I had the honor today of witnessing the recognition of a civil rights landmark here in The-Town-That-Tobacco-Built.
This afternoon, North Carolina Historical Marker G-123 was dedicated at the site of the 23 June 1957 segregation protest at the Royal Ice Cream parlor, just north of downtown Durham.
The 1960 Greensboro sit-ins sparked a national movement but were not the first such action. Individual and group protest actions prior to 1960, generally isolated and often without wider impact, took place across the state and region. A protest in 1957 in Durham had wider consequence, as it led to…
terrasig | November 28, 2009As we mentioned earlier this week, a brouhaha has erupted north of the border (or just a bit east for our Detroit-area colleagues) whereby graduates of Canada's two naturopathy schools may be given drug prescribing rights by the Ontario legislature. Editor-in-chief of the Skeptic North blog, Steve Thoms, put up this detailed background in "Fake Doctors with Real Drugs," at the JREF Swift blog:
Bill 179 was introduced in the spring of this year as a way of expanding scope-of-practice for health care professionals in Ontario, including (but not limited to) nurses, midwives, pharmacists and…
terrasig | November 27, 2009The region of southern Colorado on either side of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains is quite special to the Pharmboy family. The high plains to the east and San Luis Valley to the west are sparsely populated, stunningly beautiful with a veritable mine of geological treasures, and are unlikely to be built up in the PharmKid's lifetime. In fact, most counties down there have fewer people now than they did in 1900.
It is also rugged and you can easily die out there. Which gets you in touch with what matters.
Bighorn sheep and West Spanish Peak outside of La Veta, Colorado, about 60 miles east…
terrasig | November 26, 2009
Two weeks ago, Canadian Skeptics United published on their Skeptic North site a piece by an Ontario pharmacist criticizing a proposal by the province to grant limited prescribing rights to naturopaths. The essay, which was reprinted in the National Post on Tuesday, outlines the intellectual and practical conundrum presented by allowing those with education that diverges from science-based practices to prescribe drugs.
The naturopath lobby has come out in force and appears to be relatively unopposed in the 54 comments that follow, primarily because the NP closes comments 24 hours after online…
terrasig | November 25, 2009
By most metrics, those of us at Terra Sig World Headquarters are liberals. Nevertheless, we often enjoy reading conservative writer, attorney, and American Enterprise Institute fellow, David Frum. Perhaps I have a soft spot for him because he's Canadian and he also writes for my favorite print newsmagazine, The Week.
Well, Frum chose this week to write, "Herbal remedies need real scrutiny," at his FrumForum and the post was subsequently published as a special commentary at CNN.com. The latter version has accumulated about ten times as many comments. The thesis of his essay is that the…
terrasig | November 23, 2009Last Monday, Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi dropped a bombshell in his new budget proposal. From the Jackson Free Press:
In his Nov. 16 budget proposal, Barbour announced that the state was facing a $715 million budget shortfall in fiscal year 2011 and another $500 million shortage in fiscal year 2012. In addition to merging the state's HBCUs, he suggested many draconian budget cuts in response to the impending shortage.
"This budget proposes merging Mississippi Valley State and Alcorn State with Jackson State. No campus would close, but administration would be unified and significant…
terrasig | November 22, 2009It's Sunday morning on the US East Coast and I really need to put the computer down to get out for a hike in the crisp, autumn air. Sunday morning is a great time to catch up on long-form writing but I won't be the one providing it for you.
Instead, I encourage you to take 15 minutes this morning to read an "old" (2005) article in Fortune magazine entitled, The Law of Unintended Consequences, by Clifton Leaf in Fortune magazine.
This article details the impact of a 1980 amendment to US patent and trademark law put forth by Senator Bob Dole and the senior Senator Bayh, Birch. The Bayh-Dole…
terrasig | November 21, 2009At the recent U2 Academic Conference, I had the opportunity to be at the local premiere of It Might Get Loud, a much-more-than documentary of the electric guitar as told through the careers of Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, U2's The Edge, and Jack White of The White Stripes and Raconteurs. For the record, I thought that White was going to be totally out of his league - while I wouldn't call him a "legend" as billed by the producers, I left being incredibly impressed with his background and breadth of abilities.
Related to the movie trailer below, I had an exchange with Toaster Sunshine, a…
terrasig | November 20, 2009
In September we posted "M.D. Anderson name misused in Evolv nutraceutical water advertising," detailing the not-exactly-truthful claim by a multilevel marketing company that their bottled water product was "tested" by one of North America's premier teaching and research hospitals.
A flurry of search engine hits to this post raised my attention to the fact that the The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center has now initiated legal action against the makers of Evolv. Cameron Langford at Courthouse News Service reports:
Two companies are pushing bottled tap water with false claims…
terrasig | November 20, 2009
Denise Gellene in the New York Times is reporting this morning that Scottish physician, Sir John Crofton, passed away on 3 November at age 97.
Crofton is best known for implementing a combination drug regimen to treat tuberculosis, the insidious lung infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis which decimated the US early last century and still kills 2 million a year worldwide. The concept of using drug combinations to increase individual drug potency and slow the emergence of resistance is now a mainstay of therapeutic approaches for cancer, HIV, and other infectious diseases.
Gellene…
terrasig | November 19, 2009No matter how early I wake up, it's always five hours later in the UK and I'm overwhelmed by the thought that I'm already behind (I won't even get into the feeling I have when I think of our Australian readers).
So when I start the day reading my Twitter stream, it's usually populated by midday news from England. I follow the NHS - National Health Service - "one of the largest publicly funded health services in the world," and their superb health information site, NHS Choices.
This morning I saw this tweet about the launch of their new sexual health site:
@NHSChoices Our new sexual health…
terrasig | November 17, 2009
Brandon Haught is Director of Florida Citizens for Science Communications and has been a tireless advocate for science education across this large and educationally diverse state. His blog, an activity of the larger Florida Citizens for Science organization, carries this mission:
This blog is used to keep track of the good, bad and ugly science news in our state and beyond. We tend to focus on educational issues. When a science class makes the news for doing something interesting or positive, I try to make sure a post goes up here about it. When a Florida scientist gets out into the…
terrasig | November 16, 2009Before you tell me to go do this, I did - and I still don't have a good answer.
I was reminded of this issue when I learned that a couple of friends were off this weekend to the snowy Rocky Mountain West attending the 2009 Carnivore Conference: Carnivore Conservation in a Changing World sponsored by Defenders of Wildlife at the Grand Hyatt Denver. Some of these folks are graduate students and freelance writers who are on tight budgets.
The most recent article I found on this issue was by Barbara E. Hernandez at BNET. She asked the same question as I, made some observations, and asked…
terrasig | November 15, 2009
On Friday, I wrote a post about the 20th anniversary of my PhD dissertation defense and my reverence for Henrietta Lacks, the woman whose cervical cancer gave rise to the first immortalized human cell line and the primary system for my work. I also alluded to The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the upcoming book by Rebecca Skloot that is already garnering extensive pre-release praise.
I was, as readers have come to expect, quite a bit sentimental and reflective, with a call that we all do our part to somehow acknowledge those patients whose tissues make it possible for us scientists to do…
terrasig | November 13, 2009Twenty years ago this morning, I had to defend a body of work that contained this paragraph on page 24:
HeLa cells are a human cervical carcinoma cell line having a doubling time of 24 hr and were obtained from Dr. Bert Flanegan, Dept. of Immunology and Microbiology, University of Florida. HeLa cells were maintained as subconfluent monolayer cultures in minimal essential media (alpha modification; GIBCO) with 10% fetal bovine serum (GIBCO) at 37° under a humidified atmosphere containing 5% CO2. Cells were maintained in logarithmic growth by subculturing every other day using 0.05% trypsin/0.…