liveonearth: (moon)
In God we trust.. but
everyone else must bring data.

-W. Edwards Deming
liveonearth: (moon)
This author recognizes that the 19th century explanation of how homeopathy works it not going to satisfy modern people forever. Eventually even the slow ones will wise up that all of science flies in the face of it. I'd like to get the full text to find out if this person actually has a science bone in his body, or it it's just another circuitous route to nonsense. http://www.homeopathyjournal.net/article/S1475-4916(04)00112-2/abstract
liveonearth: (moon)
The beginning
of knowledge
is the discovery
of something
we do not understand.

— Frank Herbert
liveonearth: (moon)
Productive stupidity means being ignorant by choice. Focusing on important questions puts us in the awkward position of being ignorant. One of the beautiful things about science is that it allows us to bumble along, getting it wrong time after time, and feel perfectly fine as long as we learn something each time.

--Martin A. Schwartz
http://jcs.biologists.org/content/121/11/1771.full
liveonearth: (bipolar_express)
The DSM, of course, is the list of diagnoses written by and for psychiatrists who are dispensing pharmaceuticals which are covered by insurance. The DSM does not consider the possible causes of the disorders listed, nor allow for the possibility that simple lifestyle changes might be adequate to "cure" a disorder. The book is used to authorize the mental health professional to dispense psychoactive medications. No conflicts of interest there (ahem).

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH instead of just NIH) has decided that the basis of the DSM is not scientific enough, and it is not using those diagnoses as a foundation for ongoing research. The new Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) project to is intended to transform diagnosis by incorporating genetics, imaging, cognitive science, and more to create a new classification system. The new system of knowledge will be based on biology as well as symptoms, and will consider specific brain circuits, genetics, and experiences without regard for DSM categories. In fact the NIH is looking to support research projects that look across or subdivide current categories.

This is superb and hopeful to every person who has even been stuck with a diagnosis that didn't fit, or medicated when a simpler solution wasn't even entertained. My congratulations to the NIH for being independent enough to seek the truth.

SOURCE
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml
liveonearth: (tortoise)
Good science, like good religion,
is a journey of discovery, a quest.
It builds on traditions from the past.
But it is most effective when
it recognizes how much we do not know,
when it is not arrogant but humble.

--Dr Rupert Sheldrake

SOURCE
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-rupert-sheldrake/why-bad-science-is-like-bad-religion_b_2200597.html
liveonearth: (Infinity Knot)
Not everything
that can be counted
counts,
and not everything that counts
can be counted.


--usually attributed to Albert Einstein,
but possibly more accurately credited to
Professor of Sociology, William Bruce Cameron
liveonearth: (hotspring geology rainbow)
We went to the Mission last night to hear about Viruses from Hell, and it turns out the speaker was a PhD professor who is into viruses that come from acidic hotsprings. He looks a lot like my friend Gordon who is also a brilliant academic--something about that jutting forehead must allow for extra brains. Ken Stedman is a professor at Portland State University who has made a career of viruses. His research has mostly involved examining the genomes of extremophile viruses and comparing them. It was faintly interesting to me--genetics is interesting, and yet I am so homocentric. I really want to know about bacteriophage therapy for healing horrible infections. I want to hear about the evolution of the flu. But his research wasn't about this and his talk was about the questions that will ensure that he gets grants and funding in the future. I couldn't help but to think of the right wing perspective that academics are parasites on society and perform no useful function other than keeping themselves in priuses. There is truth it that, though it is also true that there is nothing more important for our future than to keep investigating our world and what is in it. Scientists have specialized training that makes it possible for them to think of things that I don't have words or concepts for. There is so much more of the world to know about. I am learning this narrow fraction that is medicine, and it is more than I can ever take in. Within that sea I must pick a drop.

Circling back to VIRUSES, I did bring home a few interesting factoids. I call things factoids until they've been demonstrated beyond the shade of MY doubt. He defines viruses in several ways but my favorite was "a capsid encoding organism", also known as a phage. He told us that the major reservoir of viruses on the planet is in seawater, though they infect everything else that lives. Some 5% of the oxygen in our atmosphere is produced by bacteria that are infected with viruses. The viruses increase the oxygen-production of these microbes. I learned that 10% of the human genome is viral---and this is just the ones that have been demonstrated beyond a shade of HIS doubt. Professor Stedman said that up to 43% of the human genome could be viral, and that many of the genes we got from viruses are important ones, without which we would not be here. Apparently all placental mammals share one particular viral gene so it got in there a long time ago.

One of the main points that Professor Stedman made was how much of the world is made up of viruses, and how small they are. He said that if you put all the Earth's viruses end to end the lineup would reach to the Andromeda Galaxy. And they'd weigh more than some huge number of whales, and so on.

One nice thing about going to science pubs is being around people for whom evolution just is, instead of having to debate about it. It makes me realize how much energy I put into defending a basic scientific mindset. Too many groovy spiritual people and homeopaths in my life. They stress me out.

For today my mantra is "it is OK to do nothing" and I have been enjoying it. I need to take breaks more often. And journal. Just for me.
liveonearth: (turtle mistake)
If at first you don’t succeed,
Try twice more
so your failure will be
statistically significant.

--Peter D'Adamo
liveonearth: (moon)
Left-handed people really do have different brains and genes from right-handed people. Yet left-handed people are almost never included as study subjects in scientific research. Therefore in an article in Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Roel Willems and his colleagues from the Donders Institute and Max Planck Institute in Nijmegen call for more research into left-handed people. The article was published online on 12 February 2014.

Left-handed people are rarely included as study subjects for brain or genetic research because the differences with right-handed people cause noise in the final results. However, left-handed people form about ten percent of the entire population and their brains and genes contain interesting information about the functioning of both halves of the brain as well as about several psychiatric disorders. 'Research into left-handed people is therefore interesting because of the noise they cause', thinks neuroscientist Roel Willems from the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour at Radboud University Nijmegen. With the opinion article he calls upon his fellow researchers to stop excluding left-handed people from studies.

Missed chance for the neurosciences

'One of our studies from 2009 clearly shows why research into left-handed people is so vital', says Willems. 'According to the textbooks, facial recognition takes place in the right half of the brain. Our research revealed that the same process takes place in both halves of the brain in the case of left-handed people, but with the same final outcome. That is a fundamental difference. And left-handed people might process other important information differently as well. The minimal amount of research into this is, in my view, a missed chance for the neurosciences.'


SOURCE
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-02-scientists-urged-excluding-left-handed-people.html
liveonearth: (moon)
Not sure what to make of this:
http://altering-perspectives.com/2014/02/dna-analysis-elongated-skull-released-results-incredible.html

Sounds like the creatures who had elongated hominid skulls found in Peru were genetically quite different from homo sapiens.
liveonearth: (trek jive)
American men have a variety of handicaps, not the least of which is that ruggedly independent badass image they try so hard to live up to. But it does them a disservice when it prevents them from really being close to others. There's no guarantee that they'll have or develop the ability to really connect deep down .... so it's something to celebrate when it happens. It turns out that age 80 is not too late to develop emotional intelligence. =-]

WORTH READING:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/06/opinion/brooks-the-heart-grows-smarter.html?smid=fb-share&_r=2&
liveonearth: (mad scientist's union)
I'm not big on woo woo. When practitioners choose modalities simply because they "resonate" with them, I am skeptical. But when science backs up the use of something that has long been thought of as energy medicine, I am happy to recommend it. Of course people will tell you something is backed by science when it isn't, so you have to go look at the science for yourself, or find sources like me that you know are science-minded and skeptical to help filter the claims for you.

Here's a case of energy medicine turning out to be something real. Scientists have found that acupuncture points are detectable by CT (computed tomography, fancy medical imaging). All those points have a certain size of larger blood vessels, and also thick mats of fine blood vessels that have lots of forks (birfucations) in them. Piercing the tissues at these points is probably affecting the nervous system associated with those blood vessels. This supports my belief that energy medicine (that actually works) has a anatomical and physiological basis. Acupuncture is well proven to be effective for pain, short term at least. To treat pain longterm one must take the naturopathic approach and find the reason for the pain, and change that.
liveonearth: (gorilla thoughtful)
Pretty cool:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/19/science/toe-fossil-provides-complete-neanderthal-genome.html?_r=2&

Report on the genome from the toe in Nature:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature12886.html
Abstract
We present a high-quality genome sequence of a Neanderthal woman from Siberia. We show that her parents were related at the level of half-siblings and that mating among close relatives was common among her recent ancestors. We also sequenced the genome of a Neanderthal from the Caucasus to low coverage. An analysis of the relationships and population history of available archaic genomes and 25 present-day human genomes shows that several gene flow events occurred among Neanderthals, Denisovans and early modern humans, possibly including gene flow into Denisovans from an unknown archaic group. Thus, interbreeding, albeit of low magnitude, occurred among many hominin groups in the Late Pleistocene. In addition, the high-quality Neanderthal genome allows us to establish a definitive list of substitutions that became fixed in modern humans after their separation from the ancestors of Neanderthals and Denisovans.
liveonearth: (hotspring geology rainbow)
They're predicting that in most parts of the world the new "average" will be warmer than the previous "hot" (exceeds bounds of historical variability), beginning between 2033 and 2061 (global average 2047 if we keep going the way we are). Local variations are expected. Tropical regions should get uncomfortable before elsewhere. Even a serious effort to stabilize spiraling greenhouse gas emissions will only stave off these changes until around 2069. The study was published in Nature and included 39 different models from 21 teams in 12 countries, which surprisingly all pretty much agreed.

'Uncomfortable' climates to devastate cities within a decade, study says, John Roach NBC News

Study Abstract
Ecological and societal disruptions by modern climate change are critically determined by the time frame over which climates shift beyond historical analogues. Here we present a new index of the year when the projected mean climate of a given location moves to a state continuously outside the bounds of historical variability under alternative greenhouse gas emissions scenarios. Using 1860 to 2005 as the historical period, this index has a global mean of 2069 (±18 years s.d.) for near-surface air temperature under an emissions stabilization scenario and 2047 (±14 years s.d.) under a ‘business-as-usual’ scenario. Unprecedented climates will occur earliest in the tropics and among low-income countries, highlighting the vulnerability of global biodiversity and the limited governmental capacity to respond to the impacts of climate change. Our findings shed light on the urgency of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions if climates potentially harmful to biodiversity and society are to be prevented.
liveonearth: (bamboo and moon)
An agnostic Buddhist eschews atheism as much as theism, and is as reluctant to regard the universe as devoid of meaning as endowed with meaning. For to deny either God or meaning is simply the antithesis of affirming them. Yet such an agnostic stance is not based on disinterest. It is founded on a passionate recognition that I do not know. It confronts the enormity of having been born instead of reaching for the consolation of a belief. It strips away, layer by layer, the views that conceal the mystery of being here--either by affirming it as something or denying it as nothing.
--Stephen Bachelor in Buddhism Without Beliefs page 19.
liveonearth: (ostrich)
http://store-xkcd-com.myshopify.com/products/citation-needed-sticker-pack

I'm into stickers, into science, and highly appreciative of wikipedia. So "citation needed" stickers is an appealing idea. Just be careful that you don't put them on any federally owned signage, as I believe that is a felony.
liveonearth: (Oprah_shocked)
Fascinating new research uses masses of data from NHANES to find that current cannabis users have less insulin resistance, smaller waists, and higher HDL, than former or non-users.

ExpandNotes from study and articles )

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