Astoundingly, it’s called Science Blog. And who says scientistic types aren’t creative? I’d say it’s loaded with lots of science goodness, but that’s so cliched, I can’t.
Archive for category Science
Great Science Blog
Jan 30
Painful Childbirth
Jan 28
Is there any other kind? Well, this question in the NYT caught my eye: Why do humans, unlike virtually all other mammals, experience so much pain in giving birth? The answer was long and ultimately boiled down to we don’t know, but there is an untestable theory. I guess if you run a question and answer column, you can’t just say “I don’t know”.
Exercise isn’t just good for your muscles and heart – it’s good for your brain, too. One thing that’s struck me about aging (now that I’m feeling the effects) is how the maintenance requirements just keep increasing. One way to stay young is through exercise. Not only does it keep your muscles from atrophy, it keeps your brain from atrophy. Aerobic exercise is best for your cardiovascular system and your brain. Researchers can measure this both functionally through cognitive testing and also physically. People who exercise don’t lose as much grey matter (neurons and support cells) or white matter (myelin sheaths) as they age than people who don’t exercise. So people, let’s get walking out there! We don’t want our brains to shrivel up.
Researchers at Washington University have discovered that intestinal bacteria can cause people (AKA bacterial growth medium) to produce an antibiotic that is specific to invading bacteria. Angiogenins, thought to promote blood vessel growth, apparently are an effective and specific antibiotic (and not only bacteria, but yeast too). Our bodies don’t think all bacteria are bad – not only do we need them for certain vital tasks, we take care not kill those off when we try to kill off the ones that attack us.
You might recall the big hoopla around angiogenins awhile back because researchers discovered they could cure cancer in mice with anti-angiogenic compound – they could starve a tumor by taking away its blood supply. Sadly, it hasn’t seemed to work in humans. Sadly, I couldn’t find a decent link, so you’ll just have to rely on my memory.
Reuters reports that an Italian researcher has linked a gene (charmingly named DD) to abnormal weight gain in men. And it’s widespread – about 40% of the population (I’m not clear which population) has it. It’s not as big a deal as made out, however when you read that 52 percent of carriers are overweight as compared to 44% of non carriers. That’s the problem with reading the last part of an article as opposed to just the headline – the headline is always an attention grabber, staking out the most extreme position, and the real meaning is buried at the end of the article.
All Natural Tanning
Jan 15
When you mix soybean oil with an extract from oat bran, you don’t get an all natural fiber laxative, you get an all natural sunscreen with no nasty chemicals, not even to make it, according to the USDA.
A German study finds that hypertension is linked to the number of nephrons in your kydneys. Nephrons are the physical structure of capillary and tubes that filter your blood to make urine. The researches examined 20 cadaver kidneys, 10 from people with hypertension, 10 from people without, and discovered that those with hypertension averaged less than half the nephrons of those without. And they couldn’t find any evidence that the low count was due to loss of existing nephrons. It would seem that you are born with a certain number of nephrons, and if the number is low, you get hypertension. So get your blood pressure tested — even if your diet and overall health are perfect, you can still have high blood pressure.
Does God Play Dice?
Jan 13
Well, Einstein was just proven right about the speed of gravity. But so far, his famous saying “God does not play dice” seems to be wrong. Quantum mechanics continues to be probabilistic, not deterministic. In fact, not only does God appear to play dice, he seems to be far more fond of it than beetles. But Gerald ‘t Hooft is trying to reconcile the two opposite views with a new theory. Right now we have a probabilistic quantum scale giving rise to a deterministic seeming classical scale. Einstein wanted a scale below the quantum, controlled by what were known as hidden variables. Well, an experiment in the ’80s eliminated hidden variables as tenable science. But ‘t Hooft thinks he may have found a way around it; the trouble is, this new scale is so small it’s far beyond the ability of current technology to measure. Ah, the joys of theoretical physics.
Better Than Sliced Bread
Jan 10
Femtosecond Lasers. Lasers that can vaporize anything in a single pulse, but delicate enough for a woman. Or a man, since I figure I’ll get my eyes LASIK’ed by these soon, which in my time frame of reference means the next decade. These lasers have two big benefits: one is they work so fast the material is vaporized before it can transmit any heat into the surrounding material, and two you can actually control the depth in a transparent material at which the vaporization occurs. Mega cool. The coming revolution, if nano-technology and gene manipulation doesn’t get there first.
Presidential Advice
Jan 10
The Edge (yeah, never heard of them before, either) asked a bunch of respected scientists and thinkers to pretend The President had asked their advice on the pressing scientific issues of the day, and what to do about them. I read through a bunch, but I found Dennis Dutton’s advice to be the best of the bunch:
“I hope your new Science Advisor comes to the job armed with knowledge of the rich history of junk science and false predictions served up to government in the last forty years. The point is not to be cynical about fads and careerism, but wisely to choose where best to support both pure science and science that can give us beneficial technologies. ”
OK, it’s meta advice, but I think that’s better than what a lot of the responses were: variations on “Plastics my boy, plastics.” I mean, how can you do any better than:
“Today, it is much easier for scientists to receive grants if they indicate their research might uncover a serious threat or problem—economic, medical, ecological. Media fascination with bad news is partly to blame, along with the principled gloominess and nagging of organizations such as Greenpeace. But government itself has played its natural part. After all, as H.L. Mencken once remarked, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” “
