An NPR report today points out an oddly ironic result of the embryonic-stem-cell policy shift announced by the Obama Administration last year. On August 9, …
Author: Bruce Goldman
Why our brains may not like surprises
"Still, a man sees what he wants to see, and disregards the rest." You just know that those words from The Boxer, penned by Paul …
Hit the brakes on health-care bill, say two top Dem pollsters
Patrick Caddell and Douglas Schoen are pollsters for the last two non-GOP U.S. Presidents - Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, respectively. So it's revealing that …
Old 8th grade algebra sucks new medical information from blood
0.24a + 0.41b + 0.35c + 0.12d + . . . = 1.00 0.21a + 0.29b + 0.20c + 0.08d + . . . = …
Guts and glory: Growing intestinal tissue in a lab dish
The intestine is, in its essence, a tube surrounded by rings of smooth muscle that periodically undergo rhythmic, sequential contractions followed by relaxations. This squeezes …
Ain't no cure for the muscle-cramp blues: The sun slowly sets on quinine
On June 8, 1962 - the ninth anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation - Commander Walter Edward Whitehead, the bearded pitchman for Schweppes quinine water, …
Fruit flies fly while scalped, exposing their brain cells for science
Hats off to Caltech researchers, who found that scalping fruit flies allowed them to record the insects' brain activity for the first time while they …
A grain of salt concerning salt-intake reduction
Headlines were made, a month or two ago, by a mathematical-modeling study published in the New England Journal of Medicine suggesting that lowering average U.S. …
Freshen up those stem cells with young blood
Vampire fetishists will be heartened by this news release from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which suggests there may be something to the idea of …
Hepatitis C virus's Achilles heel
Stanford's Jeffrey Glenn , MD, PhD, and colleagues, in a just-published study, have discovered a promising class of compounds that could help defeat the hepatitis …
Stem-cell sausage: Is Porky Pig obsolete?
In case you missed this groundbreaking news last week, MSNBC reported that Dutch researchers are on their way to producing "pork in a petri dish." …
Number of H1N1 patients declines, but calls for patience continue
Bad bugs are a bit like those giant mutant insects from sci-fi flicks of yore: Just when you think the world is safe, he-e-ere comes …
Compassion, Darwin, facial expressions, the Dalai Lama – and counterterrorism?
[1-11-10 update: Please note that due to unforeseen circumstances Paul Ekman's talk Thursday Jan. 14 has been postponed and will be rescheduled.] What happens when …
A cell phone is not a microwave oven or a nuclear reactor
There's been a lot of chatter about cell-phone use leading to brain cancer. But that conversation may be nearing its termination, unless Scandinavian skulls provide …
H1N1 flu and emotional epidemiology: What if they gave a vaccine and nobody came?
A few weeks ago I posted a link to one of several articles describing the spread of what was rumored to be a particularly virulent …
More evidence that seasonal flu vaccine protects against H1N1
A week ago, I noted that being old enough to have experienced earlier forms of the H1N1 influenza strain that were circulating prior to 1958 …