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<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" media="screen" href="/~d/styles/atom10full.xsl"?><?xml-stylesheet type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~d/styles/itemcontent.css"?><feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:openSearch="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/" xmlns:georss="http://www.georss.org/georss" xmlns:gd="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005" xmlns:feedburner="http://rssnamespace.org/feedburner/ext/1.0" gd:etag="W/&quot;C0YDRXgyeSp7ImA9WxNUGE0.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14815894</id><updated>2009-11-09T16:12:54.691-05:00</updated><title>Bayblab</title><subtitle type="html">Interesting news in science from a bunch of degenerate grad students</subtitle><link rel="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#feed" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bayblab.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://bayblab.blogspot.com/" /><link rel="hub" href="http://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com/" /><link rel="next" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default?start-index=26&amp;max-results=25&amp;redirect=false&amp;v=2" /><author><name>Bayman</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/03436172198266062229</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email></author><generator version="7.00" uri="http://www.blogger.com">Blogger</generator><openSearch:totalResults>1352</openSearch:totalResults><openSearch:startIndex>1</openSearch:startIndex><openSearch:itemsPerPage>25</openSearch:itemsPerPage><link rel="self" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Bayblab" type="application/atom+xml" /><atom10:link xmlns:atom10="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" rel="hub" href="http://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com" /><entry gd:etag="W/&quot;CU8AQXg7cSp7ImA9WxNUFkQ.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14815894.post-8578797115157521267</id><published>2009-11-08T10:24:00.001-05:00</published><updated>2009-11-08T10:24:00.609-05:00</updated><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-11-08T10:24:00.609-05:00</app:edited><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="homeopathy" /><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="humor" /><title>Homeopathy in the Hospital</title><content type="html">&lt;object width="425" height="344"&gt;&lt;param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/HMGIbOGu8q0&amp;color1=0xb1b1b1&amp;color2=0xcfcfcf&amp;hl=en&amp;feature=player_embedded&amp;fs=1"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/HMGIbOGu8q0&amp;color1=0xb1b1b1&amp;color2=0xcfcfcf&amp;hl=en&amp;feature=player_embedded&amp;fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="425" height="344"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14815894-8578797115157521267?l=bayblab.blogspot.com'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
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&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Bayblab/~4/LX1RVFGgdAk" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bayblab.blogspot.com/feeds/8578797115157521267/comments/default" title="Post Comments" /><link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=14815894&amp;postID=8578797115157521267&amp;isPopup=true" title="1 Comments" /><link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/8578797115157521267?v=2" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/8578797115157521267?v=2" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Bayblab/~3/LX1RVFGgdAk/homeopathy-in-hospital.html" title="Homeopathy in the Hospital" /><author><name>Kamel</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15548259062576527751</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:extendedProperty name="OpenSocialUserId" value="11365222348785079538" /></author><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">1</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://bayblab.blogspot.com/2009/11/homeopathy-in-hospital.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry gd:etag="W/&quot;D0ANRHY8eip7ImA9WxNUFUo.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14815894.post-6719187773677690121</id><published>2009-11-07T01:35:00.001-05:00</published><updated>2009-11-07T01:36:35.872-05:00</updated><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-11-07T01:36:35.872-05:00</app:edited><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="cancer carnival" /><title>Cancer Carnival #27</title><content type="html">The 27th edition of the Cancer Research Blog Carnival is now up at &lt;a href="http://amontenegro.blogspot.com/2009/11/cancer-research-blog-carnival-27.html"&gt;MolBio Research Highlights&lt;/a&gt;.  Go check it out!&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14815894-6719187773677690121?l=bayblab.blogspot.com'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=UaVOANnml48:F5IZMd13Seg:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=UaVOANnml48:F5IZMd13Seg:V_sGLiPBpWU"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?i=UaVOANnml48:F5IZMd13Seg:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Bayblab/~4/UaVOANnml48" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bayblab.blogspot.com/feeds/6719187773677690121/comments/default" title="Post Comments" /><link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=14815894&amp;postID=6719187773677690121&amp;isPopup=true" title="0 Comments" /><link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/6719187773677690121?v=2" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/6719187773677690121?v=2" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Bayblab/~3/UaVOANnml48/cancer-carnival-27.html" title="Cancer Carnival #27" /><author><name>Kamel</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15548259062576527751</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:extendedProperty name="OpenSocialUserId" value="11365222348785079538" /></author><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://bayblab.blogspot.com/2009/11/cancer-carnival-27.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry gd:etag="W/&quot;CUQCSXszfyp7ImA9WxNUFU8.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14815894.post-1552336586174902349</id><published>2009-11-06T10:33:00.003-05:00</published><updated>2009-11-06T11:02:48.587-05:00</updated><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-11-06T11:02:48.587-05:00</app:edited><title>Forest ignorance</title><content type="html">I have heard horror stories about the devastation in the forests of British Columbia, Canada caused by the &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_pine_beetle"&gt;Mountain Pine Beetle.&lt;/a&gt; I just moved to the West Kootenay region and I was astounded by the amount of dead trees I could see from my window. Picture below.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4mNT5vJl2ts/SvRD9VHNcsI/AAAAAAAAAQA/Q-FN5qjbuJw/s1600-h/IMG_1183.JPG"&gt;&lt;img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4mNT5vJl2ts/SvRD9VHNcsI/AAAAAAAAAQA/Q-FN5qjbuJw/s400/IMG_1183.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5401016574042534594" border="0" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;Not the best picture but in a sea of evergreens there are lots of bright orange coloured trees, to me these looked a lot like dead pine trees and assumed that this was mountain pine beetle damage. Much like that in the picture below.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.fs.fed.us/ccrc/primers/figures/primer1-fig14.gif"&gt;&lt;img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 554px; height: 344px;" src="http://www.fs.fed.us/ccrc/primers/figures/primer1-fig14.gif" alt="" border="0" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;Of course, I'm wrong, the trees in the previous picture are &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamarack_Larch"&gt;Tamarack&lt;/a&gt; Larch, a deciduous coniferous tree while the bottom picture is of mountain pine beetle infestation. I actually thought that the terms deciduous and coniferous were mutually exclusive taxonomic catagories. My ignorance knows no bounds.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14815894-1552336586174902349?l=bayblab.blogspot.com'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=9N0NMgRKTt8:zGn_hNQWH7c:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=9N0NMgRKTt8:zGn_hNQWH7c:V_sGLiPBpWU"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?i=9N0NMgRKTt8:zGn_hNQWH7c:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Bayblab/~4/9N0NMgRKTt8" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bayblab.blogspot.com/feeds/1552336586174902349/comments/default" title="Post Comments" /><link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=14815894&amp;postID=1552336586174902349&amp;isPopup=true" title="0 Comments" /><link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/1552336586174902349?v=2" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/1552336586174902349?v=2" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Bayblab/~3/9N0NMgRKTt8/forest-ignorance.html" title="Forest ignorance" /><author><name>rob</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/11878582460269426199</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:extendedProperty name="OpenSocialUserId" value="17217993704262250383" /></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4mNT5vJl2ts/SvRD9VHNcsI/AAAAAAAAAQA/Q-FN5qjbuJw/s72-c/IMG_1183.JPG" height="72" width="72" /><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://bayblab.blogspot.com/2009/11/forest-ignorance.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry gd:etag="W/&quot;C0MMRXs5fSp7ImA9WxNUFU8.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14815894.post-5867716268889239172</id><published>2009-11-06T10:18:00.005-05:00</published><updated>2009-11-06T10:31:24.525-05:00</updated><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-11-06T10:31:24.525-05:00</app:edited><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="feces" /><title>Feces ID</title><content type="html">&lt;a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4mNT5vJl2ts/SvRAzI-evEI/AAAAAAAAAP4/nc-1i7pJeJ4/s1600-h/IMG_1180.JPG"&gt;&lt;img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4mNT5vJl2ts/SvRAzI-evEI/AAAAAAAAAP4/nc-1i7pJeJ4/s400/IMG_1180.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5401013100451118146" border="0" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4mNT5vJl2ts/SvRAT3K_JrI/AAAAAAAAAPw/r7D7NolJvms/s1600-h/IMG_1194.JPG"&gt;&lt;img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4mNT5vJl2ts/SvRAT3K_JrI/AAAAAAAAAPw/r7D7NolJvms/s400/IMG_1194.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5401012563095791282" border="0" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Found this scat in my backyard. This is one of three piles near an apple tree. Any experts out there? I'm thinking it's a large cuddly vegetarian rabbit.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14815894-5867716268889239172?l=bayblab.blogspot.com'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=fZdfj2SnDHs:gGj7e2QhAAQ:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=fZdfj2SnDHs:gGj7e2QhAAQ:V_sGLiPBpWU"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?i=fZdfj2SnDHs:gGj7e2QhAAQ:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Bayblab/~4/fZdfj2SnDHs" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bayblab.blogspot.com/feeds/5867716268889239172/comments/default" title="Post Comments" /><link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=14815894&amp;postID=5867716268889239172&amp;isPopup=true" title="3 Comments" /><link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/5867716268889239172?v=2" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/5867716268889239172?v=2" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Bayblab/~3/fZdfj2SnDHs/feces-id.html" title="Feces ID" /><author><name>rob</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/11878582460269426199</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:extendedProperty name="OpenSocialUserId" value="17217993704262250383" /></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4mNT5vJl2ts/SvRAzI-evEI/AAAAAAAAAP4/nc-1i7pJeJ4/s72-c/IMG_1180.JPG" height="72" width="72" /><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">3</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://bayblab.blogspot.com/2009/11/feces-id.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry gd:etag="W/&quot;DUcGR3Y-eCp7ImA9WxNUE0o.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14815894.post-6537664808580376408</id><published>2009-11-04T18:02:00.007-05:00</published><updated>2009-11-04T18:23:46.850-05:00</updated><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-11-04T18:23:46.850-05:00</app:edited><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="oral sex" /><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="animal" /><title>Fruit Bat Blowjobs</title><content type="html">&lt;a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_yg9SNoq91Ss/SvIJq2ozLeI/AAAAAAAAAo0/ymsMW13zw8k/s1600-h/batblowjob.jpg"&gt;&lt;img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 210px; height: 222px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_yg9SNoq91Ss/SvIJq2ozLeI/AAAAAAAAAo0/ymsMW13zw8k/s400/batblowjob.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5400389534996442594" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;This has been making the rounds, but hasn't made an appearance yet on the Bayblab yet.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A &lt;a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0007595"&gt;recent paper&lt;/a&gt; in PLoS ONE has found that fellatio amongst fruit bats increased copulation time.  The image, from the paper, shows an artist's rendition of the act.  Supplementary info also includes a video of the act - complete with weird soundtrack - if you're into bat porn.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Genital licking roughly doubled copulation time.  The researchers aren't sure why the bats engage in fellatio, but offer a few speculations:&lt;blockquote&gt;"First, genital licking may lubricate the penis or increase penile stimulation, prolonging the duration of copulation. Prolonged copulation might assist sperm transport from the vagina to the oviduct, or stimulate secretions of the pituitary gland in the female and hence increase the likelihood of fertilization. Second, prolonged copulation might be a method of mate-guarding, because the mates would normally segregate after copulation to form unisexual groups which persist throughout the non-breeding season. Third, fellatio may confer bactericidal benefits and assist in the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) both to females, and to males that lick their own penis briefly after copulation. Saliva has a protective repertoire that goes beyond antibacterial activity to include antifungal, antichlamydial, and antiviral properties as well. Finally, genital licking may facilitate the detection and identification of MHC-dependent chemical cues associated with mate choice."&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14815894-6537664808580376408?l=bayblab.blogspot.com'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=qNhK_Br3z3s:6yOwdDc-dBM:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=qNhK_Br3z3s:6yOwdDc-dBM:V_sGLiPBpWU"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?i=qNhK_Br3z3s:6yOwdDc-dBM:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Bayblab/~4/qNhK_Br3z3s" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bayblab.blogspot.com/feeds/6537664808580376408/comments/default" title="Post Comments" /><link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=14815894&amp;postID=6537664808580376408&amp;isPopup=true" title="0 Comments" /><link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/6537664808580376408?v=2" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/6537664808580376408?v=2" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Bayblab/~3/qNhK_Br3z3s/fruit-bat-blowjobs.html" title="Fruit Bat Blowjobs" /><author><name>Kamel</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15548259062576527751</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:extendedProperty name="OpenSocialUserId" value="11365222348785079538" /></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_yg9SNoq91Ss/SvIJq2ozLeI/AAAAAAAAAo0/ymsMW13zw8k/s72-c/batblowjob.jpg" height="72" width="72" /><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://bayblab.blogspot.com/2009/11/fruit-bat-blowjobs.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry gd:etag="W/&quot;CUQDSXY9fCp7ImA9WxNUE0o.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14815894.post-1071655170206174849</id><published>2009-11-04T16:42:00.003-05:00</published><updated>2009-11-04T17:22:58.864-05:00</updated><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-11-04T17:22:58.864-05:00</app:edited><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="drugs" /><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="research funding" /><title>Addiction Treatment and Research</title><content type="html">There's an interesting conversation going on at Scienceblogs about the politics and funding of addiction treatment and research. Interesting to me, at least, because they in some ways mirror conversations I've had with friends in the past.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It starts with a &lt;a href="http://scienceblogs.com/bioephemera/2009/11/double_standards_politics_and.php"&gt;thoughtful post&lt;/a&gt; by Jessica Palmer at BioEphemera who discusses the double standards when it comes to smoking (and here I would probably add alcohol) versus treatment for other substance addiction.&lt;blockquote&gt;That's why it upsets me that while research to help smokers quit is generally portrayed as necessary and important, increasingly, I'm seeing politicians complain that research to help other drug addicts quit is a waste of money.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Maybe it's because these other addicts are meth addicts, or potheads, or heroin addicts - probably not people you relate to or approve of. That makes it pretty easy for the media to take cheap shots at crack, etc. addicts, and question whether we should waste money trying to help them. [...] We should be leveraging scientific research every way we can to help these people - not throwing them away or taking shots at them because they're "bad," or because we can't relate to them. They're real people. They have families.&lt;/blockquote&gt;Part of the problem, as raised in the comments there, is that drug addiction is often viewed as a moral or personal failing. Worse, watch the video at the end of Jessica's post and notice how the Fox reporter describes a few "crazy" studies. There's some serious othering of the subjects going on. The fight against drug treatment and research is a fight based on race, socio-economic status, sexual preference and gender. It's as though we aren't supposed to care about 'latino pot smokers', 'low income women' or 'homosexual fathers.' (Yes, not all of those studies are drug related, but it demonstrates some of the targets of anti-funding campaigns)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On the subject of the moral failing argument, Janet Stemwedel at Adventures in Ethics and Science &lt;a href="http://scienceblogs.com/ethicsandscience/2009/11/funding_scientific_research_th.php"&gt;makes the case&lt;/a&gt; for funding research that people don't approve of.&lt;blockquote&gt;The implication of the view that taking drugs is a moral failing is that if you make this wrong choice, you fully deserve everything that follows from this choice -- and you ought not receive any assistance in undoing the mess that your wrong choice got you into. [...] Science can ask all the questions it wants about drugs, then, but not on our dime. We already know everything we need to know about drugs. Using them is bad ... which must mean only bad people use them. Bad people deserve punishment, so the nasty effects of drug use are entirely appropriate.&lt;/blockquote&gt;She argues that there's already a public cost for the outcomes of drug addiction, so why not move that cost to helping people stop? Further, she makes the argument that the best way to develop good strategies and effective interventions is, duh, scientific research.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Both posts are worth reading, and both are important calls for understanding, compassion and funding dollars.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14815894-1071655170206174849?l=bayblab.blogspot.com'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=gQwH-P5-8f0:n7MFVm_kR1I:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=gQwH-P5-8f0:n7MFVm_kR1I:V_sGLiPBpWU"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?i=gQwH-P5-8f0:n7MFVm_kR1I:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Bayblab/~4/gQwH-P5-8f0" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bayblab.blogspot.com/feeds/1071655170206174849/comments/default" title="Post Comments" /><link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=14815894&amp;postID=1071655170206174849&amp;isPopup=true" title="1 Comments" /><link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/1071655170206174849?v=2" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/1071655170206174849?v=2" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Bayblab/~3/gQwH-P5-8f0/addiction-treatment-and-research.html" title="Addiction Treatment and Research" /><author><name>Kamel</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15548259062576527751</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:extendedProperty name="OpenSocialUserId" value="11365222348785079538" /></author><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">1</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://bayblab.blogspot.com/2009/11/addiction-treatment-and-research.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry gd:etag="W/&quot;CUQARX4ycSp7ImA9WxNUEUQ.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14815894.post-344193322701181599</id><published>2009-11-02T15:17:00.003-05:00</published><updated>2009-11-02T15:22:24.099-05:00</updated><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-11-02T15:22:24.099-05:00</app:edited><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="blog carnival" /><title>Call for Posts:  Cancer Research Blog Carnival</title><content type="html">Don't forget, the Cancer Research Blog Carnival will be appearing this Friday at &lt;a href="http://amontenegro.blogspot.com/"&gt;MolBio Research Highlights&lt;/a&gt;.  Submit your recent posts for inclusion &lt;a href="http://blogcarnival.com/bc/submit_2479.html"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.  If you don't have a post to submit, it's not too late to start writing!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The Cancer Research Blog Carnival is a monthly round-up of writing on cancer and cancer-related issues from around the blogosphere.  Previous editions can be found &lt;a href="http://cancer-carnival.blogspot.com"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14815894-344193322701181599?l=bayblab.blogspot.com'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=nY7q-yglZWE:NzvdoGpcbYE:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=nY7q-yglZWE:NzvdoGpcbYE:V_sGLiPBpWU"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?i=nY7q-yglZWE:NzvdoGpcbYE:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Bayblab/~4/nY7q-yglZWE" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bayblab.blogspot.com/feeds/344193322701181599/comments/default" title="Post Comments" /><link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=14815894&amp;postID=344193322701181599&amp;isPopup=true" title="0 Comments" /><link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/344193322701181599?v=2" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/344193322701181599?v=2" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Bayblab/~3/nY7q-yglZWE/call-for-posts-cancer-research-blog.html" title="Call for Posts:  Cancer Research Blog Carnival" /><author><name>Kamel</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15548259062576527751</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:extendedProperty name="OpenSocialUserId" value="11365222348785079538" /></author><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://bayblab.blogspot.com/2009/11/call-for-posts-cancer-research-blog.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry gd:etag="W/&quot;C0YMRnszfSp7ImA9WxNUEk0.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14815894.post-3744621561080585820</id><published>2009-11-02T14:36:00.003-05:00</published><updated>2009-11-02T17:33:07.585-05:00</updated><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-11-02T17:33:07.585-05:00</app:edited><title>Various Events for November</title><content type="html">November is upon us, and with it there are a few goings-on that our readers may be interested.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;First of all, the beginning of November also means the start of &lt;a href="http://ca.movember.com/about/"&gt;Movember&lt;/a&gt; and we invite our male readers to throw away their razors and shaving cream and start working on their moustaches.  This annual whiskerino aims to raise awareness and money for men's health issues, notably prostate cancer.  So start working on those majestic moustaches.  Send us your pics at the end of the month and we'll &lt;a href="http://bayblab.blogspot.com/2008/12/happy-movember.html"&gt;feature them on the blog&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Several months ago, I was in NYC and covered the opening of a new exhibit on &lt;a href="http://bayblab.blogspot.com/2009/05/extreme-mammals-at-amnh.html"&gt;Extreme Mammals&lt;/a&gt;.  That exhibit will be continuing until the beginning of January, if you're in the area, and will be eventually coming to Ottawa in Summer 2011 if you're waiting.  This month - November 14 - a new exhibit is opening: &lt;a href="http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/silkroad/pressrelease.php"&gt;Traveling the Silk Road: Ancient Pathway to the Modern World&lt;/a&gt;.  They invite visitors to travel with them on 'the internet of the ancient world'.  Unfortunately, I won't be able to make this opening, but it promises to be a cool, interactive experience with many hands-on actvitities and live perfomances.&lt;blockquote&gt;Visitors will watch live silkworms spinning cocoons in the section devoted to Xi’an; wander through a replica of the desert markets of Turfan, complete with the sights, sounds, and smells of exotic spices, luxury goods, and precious raw materials; meet a life-sized camel model in Samarkand and explore the ancient skills of papermaking and metalwork. In Baghdad, visitors will track the “stars” using a working model of an Arab astrolabe and discover the achievements of Islamic sciences and engineering.&lt;/blockquote&gt;More locally, this week, November 4-7th, marks &lt;a href="http://www.fashioncuresalamode.com/index.html"&gt;Fashion CURES a la mode&lt;/a&gt;.  This is an Ottawa fashion event rasigin money for Ovarian Cancer Canada.  Tickets for the runway shows, photo exhibits and after parties can be purchased &lt;a href="http://www.fashioncuresalamode.com/tickets.html"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14815894-3744621561080585820?l=bayblab.blogspot.com'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=1Np98-60YlY:ywl2g6dsWmY:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=1Np98-60YlY:ywl2g6dsWmY:V_sGLiPBpWU"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?i=1Np98-60YlY:ywl2g6dsWmY:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Bayblab/~4/1Np98-60YlY" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bayblab.blogspot.com/feeds/3744621561080585820/comments/default" title="Post Comments" /><link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=14815894&amp;postID=3744621561080585820&amp;isPopup=true" title="2 Comments" /><link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/3744621561080585820?v=2" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/3744621561080585820?v=2" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Bayblab/~3/1Np98-60YlY/various-events-for-november.html" title="Various Events for November" /><author><name>Kamel</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15548259062576527751</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:extendedProperty name="OpenSocialUserId" value="11365222348785079538" /></author><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">2</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://bayblab.blogspot.com/2009/11/various-events-for-november.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry gd:etag="W/&quot;AkUGSH09fyp7ImA9WxNUEUU.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14815894.post-1465363140645294486</id><published>2009-11-02T13:48:00.002-05:00</published><updated>2009-11-02T13:57:09.367-05:00</updated><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-11-02T13:57:09.367-05:00</app:edited><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="iq" /><title>Brain Teasers</title><content type="html">&lt;div&gt;Found these in an article about how &lt;a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427321.000-clever-fools-why-a-high-iq-doesnt-mean-youre-smart.html?page=1"&gt;IQ is overrated&lt;/a&gt;: First one to get all 3 right gets a pat on the back.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;"&lt;span style="font-style:italic;"&gt;When researchers put the following three problems to 3400 students in the US, only 17 per cent got all three right. Can you do any better?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;1) A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;2) If it takes five machines 5 minutes to make five widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;3) In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of it?&lt;/span&gt;"&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;and &lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-style:italic;"&gt;"Jack is looking at Anne, and Anne is looking at George; Jack is married, George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person?" &lt;/span&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;span style="font-style:italic;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;yes/no/insufficient information&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14815894-1465363140645294486?l=bayblab.blogspot.com'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=u69fETfBBIk:ZTtAhjBmfos:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=u69fETfBBIk:ZTtAhjBmfos:V_sGLiPBpWU"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?i=u69fETfBBIk:ZTtAhjBmfos:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Bayblab/~4/u69fETfBBIk" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bayblab.blogspot.com/feeds/1465363140645294486/comments/default" title="Post Comments" /><link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=14815894&amp;postID=1465363140645294486&amp;isPopup=true" title="7 Comments" /><link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/1465363140645294486?v=2" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/1465363140645294486?v=2" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Bayblab/~3/u69fETfBBIk/brain-teasers.html" title="Brain Teasers" /><author><name>Anonymous Coward</name><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:extendedProperty name="OpenSocialUserId" value="12075421031618281223" /></author><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">7</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://bayblab.blogspot.com/2009/11/brain-teasers.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry gd:etag="W/&quot;DU8ER30zfyp7ImA9WxNUEUo.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14815894.post-3314888217917584325</id><published>2009-11-02T11:02:00.002-05:00</published><updated>2009-11-02T11:03:26.387-05:00</updated><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-11-02T11:03:26.387-05:00</app:edited><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Halloween" /><title>scary pumpkin</title><content type="html">&lt;a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_d5_wi3GCkYg/Su8CtOqHMII/AAAAAAAAB6M/8pxO5DOZLP0/s1600-h/photo.jpg"&gt;&lt;img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 150px; height: 200px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_d5_wi3GCkYg/Su8CtOqHMII/AAAAAAAAB6M/8pxO5DOZLP0/s200/photo.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5399537454292611202" border="0" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14815894-3314888217917584325?l=bayblab.blogspot.com'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=DJpsIQwm98k:2mX_Us-UQtk:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=DJpsIQwm98k:2mX_Us-UQtk:V_sGLiPBpWU"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?i=DJpsIQwm98k:2mX_Us-UQtk:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Bayblab/~4/DJpsIQwm98k" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bayblab.blogspot.com/feeds/3314888217917584325/comments/default" title="Post Comments" /><link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=14815894&amp;postID=3314888217917584325&amp;isPopup=true" title="0 Comments" /><link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/3314888217917584325?v=2" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/3314888217917584325?v=2" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Bayblab/~3/DJpsIQwm98k/scary-pumpkin.html" title="scary pumpkin" /><author><name>Anonymous Coward</name><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:extendedProperty name="OpenSocialUserId" value="12075421031618281223" /></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_d5_wi3GCkYg/Su8CtOqHMII/AAAAAAAAB6M/8pxO5DOZLP0/s72-c/photo.jpg" height="72" width="72" /><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://bayblab.blogspot.com/2009/11/scary-pumpkin.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry gd:etag="W/&quot;DU8BRHs7eyp7ImA9WxNUEUo.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14815894.post-2429170785815090300</id><published>2009-10-22T15:39:00.003-04:00</published><updated>2009-11-02T11:04:15.503-05:00</updated><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-11-02T11:04:15.503-05:00</app:edited><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="taxidermy" /><title>Fashion Accessories From the Lab</title><content type="html">&lt;a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://blogs.laweekly.com/style_council/assets_c/2009/10/smallratandmousecufflinks-thumb-450x247.jpg"&gt;&lt;img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 450px; height: 247px;" src="http://blogs.laweekly.com/style_council/assets_c/2009/10/smallratandmousecufflinks-thumb-450x247.jpg" alt="" border="0" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://blogs.laweekly.com/style_council/assets_c/2009/10/smallratandmousecufflinks-thumb-450x247.jpg"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Before some nut job sends me death threats again, I'm joking, and I think this is gross, but in a very entertaining kind of way... More pictures if you &lt;a href="http://blogs.laweekly.com/style_council/art/reid-peppard-taxidermy-fashion/"&gt;follow the link&lt;/a&gt; and have a strong stomach...&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14815894-2429170785815090300?l=bayblab.blogspot.com'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=hHZQCepmZyk:0fhMa1kBT3E:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=hHZQCepmZyk:0fhMa1kBT3E:V_sGLiPBpWU"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?i=hHZQCepmZyk:0fhMa1kBT3E:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Bayblab/~4/hHZQCepmZyk" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bayblab.blogspot.com/feeds/2429170785815090300/comments/default" title="Post Comments" /><link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=14815894&amp;postID=2429170785815090300&amp;isPopup=true" title="0 Comments" /><link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/2429170785815090300?v=2" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/2429170785815090300?v=2" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Bayblab/~3/hHZQCepmZyk/fashion-accessories-from-lab.html" title="Fashion Accessories From the Lab" /><author><name>Anonymous Coward</name><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:extendedProperty name="OpenSocialUserId" value="12075421031618281223" /></author><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://bayblab.blogspot.com/2009/10/fashion-accessories-from-lab.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry gd:etag="W/&quot;CEEMQXs9fSp7ImA9WxNWGUU.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14815894.post-7555743532370433650</id><published>2009-10-19T12:11:00.006-04:00</published><updated>2009-10-19T16:04:40.565-04:00</updated><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-10-19T16:04:40.565-04:00</app:edited><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="science journalism" /><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="skeptic" /><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="physics" /><title>How Physicists Always Get it Wrong</title><content type="html">A few months ago, Nature Physics published an article about an &lt;a href="http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2009/08/lateral-gene-transfer-and-return-of.html"&gt;eventual overthrow of evolutionary theory&lt;/a&gt;. It's seen often enough - and in different fields. Sometimes there is legitimate grounds for strong skepticism, sometimes it's &lt;a href="http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/10/contrarianism_so_easily_blurs.php"&gt;contrarianism masquerading as skepticism&lt;/a&gt; and often, as in the aforementioned publication, it's a case of experts speaking outside their expertise (something we do at the Bayblab quite often). In a humourous paper entitled "&lt;a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/adap-org/9910002"&gt;A Simple Model of the Evolution of Simple Models of Evolution&lt;/a&gt;" [&lt;a href="http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/adap-org/pdf/9910/9910002v1.pdf"&gt;free pdf&lt;/a&gt;] the authors explain how it can happen, using an explosion of evolutionary models made by physicists as an example:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The question presents itself: why are we being deluged with such models? In the spirit of the field, we present a simple evolutionary model of this process.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;ol&gt;&lt;li&gt;A physicist runs across or concocts from whole cloth a mathematical model which is simple, neat, and contains a great many variables of the same sort.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;The physicists has heard of Darwin (1859), and may even have read Dawkins (1985) or some essays by Gould, but wouldn’t know Fisher (1958), Haldane (1932) and Wright (1986) from the Three Magi, and doesn’t dream that such a subject as mathematical evolutionary biology exists.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;The physicist is aware that lots of other physicists are interested in annexing biology as a province of statistical physics.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;The physicist interprets his multitude of variables as species or (if slightly more sophisticated) as genotypes, and proclaims that he has found “Darwin’s Equations” (cf. Bak et al. (1994)), or, more modestly, has made an important step towards eventually finding those equations.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;His paper is submitted for review to other physicists, who are just as ignorant of biology as he, but see that it’s about equivalent to the other papers on evolution by physicists. They publish it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;The paper is read by other physicists, because at least it’s not another derivation of specific heats on some convoluted lattice under a Hamiltonian named for some Central European worthy now otherwise totally forgotten.  Said physicists think this is cutting-edge evolutionary theory.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Some of those physicists will know or discover simple, neat models with lots of variables of the same type.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;They continue:&lt;blockquote&gt;[O]ur model predicts that simple statistical-physical models of evolution will continue to proliferate until either (a) all the available models are exhausted, or (b) they become as common and as boring as any other subject in the statistical physics literature, or (c) physicists learn some actual biology. We are not entirely confident that the third limiting factor will become operational before the others.&lt;/blockquote&gt;So there you have it:  this will continue to be a problem until everybody learns more biology.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Of course, as much as we would like to think so, this isn't limited to physicists, even if they aren't as humble as us bio-types.  And it's really just an extension of what we often lament in science writing (and other journalism) - poor understanding of the subject and headline grabbing, like the title of this post.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14815894-7555743532370433650?l=bayblab.blogspot.com'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=Pk4PfOn1ZsA:-Xzet0PEbCs:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=Pk4PfOn1ZsA:-Xzet0PEbCs:V_sGLiPBpWU"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?i=Pk4PfOn1ZsA:-Xzet0PEbCs:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Bayblab/~4/Pk4PfOn1ZsA" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bayblab.blogspot.com/feeds/7555743532370433650/comments/default" title="Post Comments" /><link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=14815894&amp;postID=7555743532370433650&amp;isPopup=true" title="4 Comments" /><link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/7555743532370433650?v=2" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/7555743532370433650?v=2" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Bayblab/~3/Pk4PfOn1ZsA/how-physicists-always-get-it-wrong.html" title="How Physicists Always Get it Wrong" /><author><name>Kamel</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15548259062576527751</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:extendedProperty name="OpenSocialUserId" value="11365222348785079538" /></author><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">4</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://bayblab.blogspot.com/2009/10/how-physicists-always-get-it-wrong.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry gd:etag="W/&quot;A0IDQnk_cCp7ImA9WxNXGUs.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14815894.post-2152051616202494025</id><published>2009-10-07T22:08:00.007-04:00</published><updated>2009-10-07T22:39:33.748-04:00</updated><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-10-07T22:39:33.748-04:00</app:edited><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="molecular biology" /><title>What's The Most Boring Molecule in the Cell?</title><content type="html">&lt;a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_RJHecLObemQ/Ss1OKpQOPqI/AAAAAAAACh4/J2WnRTo6scg/s1600-h/actin.jpg"&gt;&lt;img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 55px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_RJHecLObemQ/Ss1OKpQOPqI/AAAAAAAACh4/J2WnRTo6scg/s400/actin.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5390050273811906210" border="0" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The knee-jerk for many of us raised on the Western blot loading control is actin, but biologically speaking, it's far from it...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But surely not everything in the cell is such a barrel of monkeys?????&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What's your pick for the cell's most boring molecule?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;object height="344" width="425"&gt;&lt;param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/lOblMwjwG-s&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;fs=1&amp;amp;"&gt;&lt;param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"&gt;&lt;param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"&gt;&lt;embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/lOblMwjwG-s&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;fs=1&amp;amp;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;img src="file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/Antoine/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/moz-screenshot.png" alt="" /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;(Video is from Michael Way's lab. Even boring molecules do cool things when viruses are in the house!)&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14815894-2152051616202494025?l=bayblab.blogspot.com'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=1qXCWWVChhA:TVPZXVHa7dM:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=1qXCWWVChhA:TVPZXVHa7dM:V_sGLiPBpWU"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?i=1qXCWWVChhA:TVPZXVHa7dM:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Bayblab/~4/1qXCWWVChhA" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bayblab.blogspot.com/feeds/2152051616202494025/comments/default" title="Post Comments" /><link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=14815894&amp;postID=2152051616202494025&amp;isPopup=true" title="7 Comments" /><link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/2152051616202494025?v=2" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/2152051616202494025?v=2" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Bayblab/~3/1qXCWWVChhA/whats-most-boring-molecule-in-cell.html" title="What's The Most Boring Molecule in the Cell?" /><author><name>Bayman</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/03436172198266062229</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:extendedProperty name="OpenSocialUserId" value="02521217843933024602" /></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_RJHecLObemQ/Ss1OKpQOPqI/AAAAAAAACh4/J2WnRTo6scg/s72-c/actin.jpg" height="72" width="72" /><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">7</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://bayblab.blogspot.com/2009/10/whats-most-boring-molecule-in-cell.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry gd:etag="W/&quot;CkUCRns8eSp7ImA9WxNXGU4.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14815894.post-2430712022063193210</id><published>2009-10-07T11:07:00.004-04:00</published><updated>2009-10-07T11:44:27.571-04:00</updated><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-10-07T11:44:27.571-04:00</app:edited><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="humour" /><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="internet" /><title>How Fast is Your Internet?</title><content type="html">A couple of weeks ago, Larry at Sandwalk &lt;a href="http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2009/09/internet-connection-speed-test.html"&gt;posted the results of an internet speed test&lt;/a&gt; on his blog. If he was living in South Korea, Japan or Sweden his results would probably be quite different - these countries are the &lt;a href="http://www.physorg.com/news170447728.html"&gt;top three in terms of average internet speed&lt;/a&gt;. (The USA ranks 28th, no word on Canada) Likewise, if he lived in South Africa, we may still be waiting for that post to appear.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Earlier this month, a &lt;a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSTRE5885PM20090909"&gt;carrier pigeon was used to transfer data faster than South Africa's leading internet provider&lt;/a&gt;, Telkom. The bird successfully flew a data card 80km to it's destination in 1 hour, 8 minutes. Transferring the 'conventional' way, including download, took 2 hours, 6 minutes and 57 seconds - a time which apparently only accounted for 4% of the data.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Strangely, CPIP (carrier pigeon internet protocol) data transfer &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers"&gt;isn't a new idea&lt;/a&gt;.  It started as an April Fool's joke almost 20 years ago, and the first actual implementation happened in 2001.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;No word on how to adapt avian carriers for bittorrent distribution.  If only those &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon"&gt;massive flocks of passenger pigeons&lt;/a&gt; hadn't gone extinct.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14815894-2430712022063193210?l=bayblab.blogspot.com'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=vHyPVRF_1GI:UEbeIE0rnOo:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=vHyPVRF_1GI:UEbeIE0rnOo:V_sGLiPBpWU"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?i=vHyPVRF_1GI:UEbeIE0rnOo:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Bayblab/~4/vHyPVRF_1GI" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bayblab.blogspot.com/feeds/2430712022063193210/comments/default" title="Post Comments" /><link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=14815894&amp;postID=2430712022063193210&amp;isPopup=true" title="1 Comments" /><link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/2430712022063193210?v=2" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/2430712022063193210?v=2" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Bayblab/~3/vHyPVRF_1GI/how-fast-is-your-internet.html" title="How Fast is Your Internet?" /><author><name>Kamel</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15548259062576527751</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:extendedProperty name="OpenSocialUserId" value="11365222348785079538" /></author><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">1</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://bayblab.blogspot.com/2009/10/how-fast-is-your-internet.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry gd:etag="W/&quot;A0UBR3s-fip7ImA9WxNXGEU.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14815894.post-4835458560912401208</id><published>2009-10-07T00:06:00.004-04:00</published><updated>2009-10-07T00:20:56.556-04:00</updated><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-10-07T00:20:56.556-04:00</app:edited><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="ageing" /><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="nobel prize" /><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="telomerase" /><title>Another Nobel for Non-Coding RNA</title><content type="html">By now you have heard that Blackburn, Greider and Szostak have won the Nobel for their work leading to the discovery of telomeres and telomerase - the eukaryotic solution to the end-replication problem. Other than gawking over  "THE SECRET OF AGEING" and all the other shit journalists are copying and pasting into each other's newspapers, now would be a good time to take a moment and remember what a badass enzyme telomerase is. A cellular encoded reverse transcriptase, with structural homology to viral RTs, viral RNA polymerases and phage DNA polymerases. That is also composed of an ncRNA component which functions as a sort of a primer.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The molecular secret of ageing could have been something boring like actin. Is it just a coincidence that it's also cool?&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14815894-4835458560912401208?l=bayblab.blogspot.com'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=fJ4KaoUHR1g:-aCThckzY-Q:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=fJ4KaoUHR1g:-aCThckzY-Q:V_sGLiPBpWU"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?i=fJ4KaoUHR1g:-aCThckzY-Q:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Bayblab/~4/fJ4KaoUHR1g" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bayblab.blogspot.com/feeds/4835458560912401208/comments/default" title="Post Comments" /><link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=14815894&amp;postID=4835458560912401208&amp;isPopup=true" title="4 Comments" /><link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/4835458560912401208?v=2" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/4835458560912401208?v=2" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Bayblab/~3/fJ4KaoUHR1g/another-nobel-for-non-coding-rna.html" title="Another Nobel for Non-Coding RNA" /><author><name>Bayman</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/03436172198266062229</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:extendedProperty name="OpenSocialUserId" value="02521217843933024602" /></author><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">4</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://bayblab.blogspot.com/2009/10/another-nobel-for-non-coding-rna.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry gd:etag="W/&quot;C08ARn07eCp7ImA9WxNXGEg.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14815894.post-3131341404348797488</id><published>2009-10-06T13:31:00.002-04:00</published><updated>2009-10-06T13:57:27.300-04:00</updated><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-10-06T13:57:27.300-04:00</app:edited><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="snowboarding" /><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="avalanche" /><title>Avalanche Testing</title><content type="html">Here's a &lt;a href="http://www.howcast.com/videos/66016-672-How-To-Do-an-Avalanche-Test"&gt;quick video on how to test the snowpack for the presence of avalanche conditions&lt;/a&gt;.  And here's another&lt;a href="http://archives.cbc.ca/environment/natural_disasters/topics/1483/"&gt; quick video on some of the basic science behind avalanches&lt;/a&gt; hosted by Bob McDonald of the CBC (warning: this footage is OLD.)&lt;br /&gt;Another &lt;a href="http://science.discovery.com/videos/what-are-the-odds-avalanche.html"&gt;video with some avalanche information including your chance of survival should you get caught in an avalanche&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;Here is an &lt;a href="http://vimeo.com/groups/4754/videos/6581009"&gt;AMAZING video from a skier wearing a helmet camera getting caught in an avalanche&lt;/a&gt;. He is buried alive. If you watch this whole video without fast forwarding it will disturb you, but it is definitely worth it.&lt;br /&gt;This video makes me think that this snowboard season I should take up &lt;a href="http://www.wendmag.com/blog/2009/10/06/irony-of-cross-country-snowboarding/"&gt;skootching&lt;/a&gt; (aka cross-country snowboarding) to avoid the mountains and the associated avalanche dangers.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14815894-3131341404348797488?l=bayblab.blogspot.com'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=qAVHpYtawzY:kn5pqR-E-4w:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=qAVHpYtawzY:kn5pqR-E-4w:V_sGLiPBpWU"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?i=qAVHpYtawzY:kn5pqR-E-4w:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Bayblab/~4/qAVHpYtawzY" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bayblab.blogspot.com/feeds/3131341404348797488/comments/default" title="Post Comments" /><link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=14815894&amp;postID=3131341404348797488&amp;isPopup=true" title="0 Comments" /><link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/3131341404348797488?v=2" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/3131341404348797488?v=2" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Bayblab/~3/qAVHpYtawzY/avalanche-testing.html" title="Avalanche Testing" /><author><name>rob</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/11878582460269426199</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:extendedProperty name="OpenSocialUserId" value="17217993704262250383" /></author><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://bayblab.blogspot.com/2009/10/avalanche-testing.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry gd:etag="W/&quot;AkUBQXsyfyp7ImA9WxNXGE8.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14815894.post-4091871836588401720</id><published>2009-10-06T07:11:00.003-04:00</published><updated>2009-10-06T07:24:10.597-04:00</updated><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-10-06T07:24:10.597-04:00</app:edited><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="ignobel" /><title>2009 IgNobel Awards</title><content type="html">This is usually AC's department but since he's MIA - working on some improbable research of his own, no doubt - I'll cover for him.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On October 1, the &lt;a href="http://improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2009"&gt;2009 IgNobel awards&lt;/a&gt; were handed out at Harvard University.  The winners:&lt;blockquote&gt;VETERINARY MEDICINE PRIZE: Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson of Newcastle University, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK, for showing that cows who have names give more milk than cows that are nameless.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;PEACE PRIZE: Stephan Bolliger, Steffen Ross, Lars Oesterhelweg, Michael Thali and Beat Kneubuehl of the University of Bern, Switzerland, for determining — by experiment — whether it is better to be smashed over the head with a full bottle of beer or with an empty bottle.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;ECONOMICS PRIZE: The directors, executives, and auditors of four Icelandic banks — Kaupthing Bank, Landsbanki, Glitnir Bank, and Central Bank of Iceland — for demonstrating that tiny banks can be rapidly transformed into huge banks, and vice versa — and for demonstrating that similar things can be done to an entire national economy.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;CHEMISTRY PRIZE: Javier Morales, Miguel Apátiga, and Victor M. Castaño of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, for creating diamonds from liquid — specifically from tequila.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;MEDICINE PRIZE: Donald L. Unger, of Thousand Oaks, California, USA, for investigating a possible cause of arthritis of the fingers, by diligently cracking the knuckles of his left hand — but never cracking the knuckles of his right hand — every day for more than sixty (60) years.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;PHYSICS PRIZE: Katherine K. Whitcome of the University of Cincinnati, USA, Daniel E. Lieberman of Harvard University, USA, and Liza J. Shapiro of the University of Texas, USA, for analytically determining why pregnant women don't tip over.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;LITERATURE PRIZE: Ireland's police service (An Garda Siochana), for writing and presenting more than fifty traffic tickets to the most frequent driving offender in the country — Prawo Jazdy — whose name in Polish means "Driving License".&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE: Elena N. Bodnar, Raphael C. Lee, and Sandra Marijan of Chicago, Illinois, USA, for inventing a brassiere that, in an emergency, can be quickly converted into a pair of protective face masks, one for the brassiere wearer and one to be given to some needy bystander.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;MATHEMATICS PRIZE: Gideon Gono, governor of Zimbabwe’s Reserve Bank, for giving people a simple, everyday way to cope with a wide range of numbers — from very small to very big — by having his bank print bank notes with denominations ranging from one cent ($.01) to one hundred trillion dollars ($100,000,000,000,000).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;BIOLOGY PRIZE: Fumiaki Taguchi, Song Guofu, and Zhang Guanglei of Kitasato University Graduate School of Medical Sciences in Sagamihara, Japan, for demonstrating that kitchen refuse can be reduced more than 90% in mass by using bacteria extracted from the feces of giant pandas.&lt;/blockquote&gt;An interesting and entertaining crop as always.  Links to papers and other information can be found &lt;a href="http://improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2009"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14815894-4091871836588401720?l=bayblab.blogspot.com'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=u2fJKaC6NEI:yeSjJwDclSE:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=u2fJKaC6NEI:yeSjJwDclSE:V_sGLiPBpWU"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?i=u2fJKaC6NEI:yeSjJwDclSE:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Bayblab/~4/u2fJKaC6NEI" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bayblab.blogspot.com/feeds/4091871836588401720/comments/default" title="Post Comments" /><link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=14815894&amp;postID=4091871836588401720&amp;isPopup=true" title="0 Comments" /><link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/4091871836588401720?v=2" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/4091871836588401720?v=2" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Bayblab/~3/u2fJKaC6NEI/2009-ignobel-awards.html" title="2009 IgNobel Awards" /><author><name>Kamel</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15548259062576527751</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:extendedProperty name="OpenSocialUserId" value="11365222348785079538" /></author><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://bayblab.blogspot.com/2009/10/2009-ignobel-awards.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry gd:etag="W/&quot;AkcFRn85eSp7ImA9WxNXF0Q.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14815894.post-5147864593059349915</id><published>2009-10-05T12:39:00.006-04:00</published><updated>2009-10-05T23:00:17.121-04:00</updated><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-10-05T23:00:17.121-04:00</app:edited><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="guns" /><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="gun control" /><title>Epidemiology of Gun Violence in the City of Brotherly Love</title><content type="html">A recent paper from the &lt;i&gt;American Journal of Public Health&lt;/i&gt; takes a look at gun possession and gun assault in Philadelphia. &lt;a href="http://www.ajph.org/cgi/content/abstract/AJPH.2008.143099v1"&gt;From the abstract&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;blockquote&gt;Objectives. We investigated the possible relationship between being shot in an assault and possession of a gun at the time.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Methods. We enrolled 677 case participants that had been shot in an assault and 684 population-based control participants within Philadelphia, PA, from 2003 to 2006. We adjusted odds ratios for confounding variables.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Results. After adjustment, individuals in possession of a gun were 4.46 (P&lt;.05) times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not in possession. Among gun assaults where the victim had at least some chance to resist, this adjusted odds ratio increased to 5.45 (P&lt;.05).&lt;/blockquote&gt;The paper also had some stats on gun violence that were surprising, though I admit I don't know much about gun statistics. During the study period (2003-2006) there were 3485 shootings in Philly (&lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia"&gt;Population&lt;/a&gt; 1.4M, metro 5.8M) or an average of 4.77 shootings per day and an average of 9 shooting free days per year. I wonder how that compares to a city like Toronto (&lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto"&gt;Population&lt;/a&gt; 2.5M, metro 5.5M).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The study was done by taking a case-control approach. Case participants were enrolled via the police department and excluded accidental, unintentional, self-inflicted and police-related shootings - the study interest was assault with a firearm.  Control participants were matched according to age, race (black or white only), gender, and time of shooting.  In other words, the researchers took people who were shot, matched with people who were not then looked at whether each was in possession of a gun or not.  After their analysis they conclude:&lt;blockquote&gt;On average, guns did not protect those who possessed them from being shot in an assault. Although successful defensive gun uses occur each year, the probability of success may be low for civilian gun users in urban areas. Such users should reconsider their possession of guns or, at least, understand that regular possession necessitates careful safety countermeasures.&lt;/blockquote&gt;However, there were some flaws in the study.  For example, the authors "assumed that the resident population of Philadelphia risked being shot in an assault at any location and at any time of day or night", nor do they look at the legality of the guns in question. As such, matching wasn't based on location and thus excludes, for example, the possibility of 'bad neighbourhoods', it also excludes the possibility that people with illegal firearms may be involved in other illegal activities that increase the risk of a shooting.  This despite their finding that people being shot were more likely to be in areas with lower income and more illicit drug trafficking.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This, of course, doesn't invalidate any results, but it does make it harder to suggest causation as strongly as the authors do in their discussion.  From these results it's difficult to say that carrying a firearm increases your risk of assault vs. being in a high-risk group (eg. living in a certain area) increasing the chances of carrying a gun.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Still, the fact remains that gun possession is an indicator of assault risk (even if not necessarily the cause) and offers no guarantee of protection from being shot in an assault.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14815894-5147864593059349915?l=bayblab.blogspot.com'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=CaIzTEeh_VI:tbCSc-CqzIQ:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=CaIzTEeh_VI:tbCSc-CqzIQ:V_sGLiPBpWU"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?i=CaIzTEeh_VI:tbCSc-CqzIQ:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Bayblab/~4/CaIzTEeh_VI" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bayblab.blogspot.com/feeds/5147864593059349915/comments/default" title="Post Comments" /><link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=14815894&amp;postID=5147864593059349915&amp;isPopup=true" title="6 Comments" /><link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/5147864593059349915?v=2" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/5147864593059349915?v=2" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Bayblab/~3/CaIzTEeh_VI/epidemiology-of-gun-violence-in-city-of.html" title="Epidemiology of Gun Violence in the City of Brotherly Love" /><author><name>Kamel</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15548259062576527751</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:extendedProperty name="OpenSocialUserId" value="11365222348785079538" /></author><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">6</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://bayblab.blogspot.com/2009/10/epidemiology-of-gun-violence-in-city-of.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry gd:etag="W/&quot;DUcBQH47eyp7ImA9WxNXFk0.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14815894.post-5710104244812110784</id><published>2009-10-03T17:37:00.003-04:00</published><updated>2009-10-03T17:57:31.003-04:00</updated><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-10-03T17:57:31.003-04:00</app:edited><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="mating ritual" /><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="kakapo" /><title>Don't mess with the kakapo</title><content type="html">We have previously posted about the strange nocturnal ground-burrowing&lt;a href="http://bayblab.blogspot.com/2007/07/cockapoos-threatening-kakapos.html"&gt; kakapo parrot&lt;/a&gt; of New Zealand. Just because it sounds like an evolutionary disaster&lt;a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/8281382.stm"&gt; doesn't mean the kakapo won't rape your head&lt;/a&gt; if you try to get too close.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14815894-5710104244812110784?l=bayblab.blogspot.com'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=Rb9Gp-Uksa8:i048Pkh50ck:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=Rb9Gp-Uksa8:i048Pkh50ck:V_sGLiPBpWU"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?i=Rb9Gp-Uksa8:i048Pkh50ck:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Bayblab/~4/Rb9Gp-Uksa8" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bayblab.blogspot.com/feeds/5710104244812110784/comments/default" title="Post Comments" /><link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=14815894&amp;postID=5710104244812110784&amp;isPopup=true" title="2 Comments" /><link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/5710104244812110784?v=2" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/5710104244812110784?v=2" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Bayblab/~3/Rb9Gp-Uksa8/dont-mess-with-kakapo.html" title="Don't mess with the kakapo" /><author><name>rob</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/11878582460269426199</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:extendedProperty name="OpenSocialUserId" value="17217993704262250383" /></author><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">2</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://bayblab.blogspot.com/2009/10/dont-mess-with-kakapo.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry gd:etag="W/&quot;CE8CR345fSp7ImA9WxNXFU0.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14815894.post-5130769977166723887</id><published>2009-10-02T12:58:00.003-04:00</published><updated>2009-10-02T13:01:06.025-04:00</updated><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-10-02T13:01:06.025-04:00</app:edited><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="cancer carnival" /><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="blog carnival" /><title>Cancer Carnival #26</title><content type="html">&lt;a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_yg9SNoq91Ss/SsYxikiARwI/AAAAAAAAAos/5wzsf2SaZBM/s1600-h/CRBC%2BLogo%2B200X149.jpg"&gt;&lt;img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 149px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_yg9SNoq91Ss/SsYxikiARwI/AAAAAAAAAos/5wzsf2SaZBM/s400/CRBC%2BLogo%2B200X149.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5388048474186991362" border="0" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;Here we are again with the Cancer Research Blog Carnival #26 - your monthly roundup of posts from the cancer blogosphere.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The first post comes from the blog Asbestos Lung Cancer which, as you might guess, focuses on asbestos-related disease.  &lt;a href="http://asbestoslungcancer.myinfo2u.com/asbestos-lung-cancer/asbestosis-symptoms-take-decades-to-develop/"&gt;This post&lt;/a&gt; discusses asbestosis symptoms and detections.&lt;blockquote&gt;A history of asbestos exposure may provide the first clue to the diagnosis of asbestos diseases such as asbestosis and asbestos pleural disease. It often takes decades involving the patient’s asbestos exposure and the appearance of early symptoms such as shortness of breath and chest pain.&lt;/blockquote&gt;Francisco Barriga, who blogs at MolBio Research Highlights (who will be hosting the next edition, so start writing those posts!) follows up on a previous post on cancer stem cells (featured in &lt;a href="http://bayblab.blogspot.com/2009/07/cancer-carnival-23.html"&gt;Cancer Carnival #23&lt;/a&gt;) with some research blogging: &lt;a href="http://amontenegro.blogspot.com/2009/09/targeting-cancer-stem-cells-chemical.html"&gt;Targeting cancer stem cells: chemical style&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;blockquote&gt;In a previous post I tried to summarize the major points underlying the Cancer Stem Cell Hypothesis, which states that tumors are hierarchically structured and that a particular subpopulation of cells, cancer stem cells (CSCs), are capable of initiating and sustaining the growth of the tumor. This has obvious clinical implications since eliminating these cells would lead to the definitive disappearance of the tumor.&lt;/blockquote&gt;He takes a look at a recent &lt;i&gt;Cell&lt;/i&gt; paper that takes a high-throughput approach to targetting cancer stem cells and finding that conventional chemotherapeutics aren't effective against this population.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Here at Bayblab, and staying on the cancer stem cell theme, AC &lt;a href="http://bayblab.blogspot.com/2009/10/diabetes-drug-kills-cancer-stem-cells.html%22"&gt;takes a look&lt;/a&gt; at a new paper from &lt;i&gt;Cancer Research&lt;/i&gt; that finds that a widely prescribed diabetes drug might be effective against breast cancer stem cells.&lt;blockquote&gt;A friend of the bayblab sent me a link to a paper that just came out in Cancer Research showing promising results of Metformin against breast cancer. Not only does the drug seem to selectively kill CD44 positive breast cancer stem cells, but it seems to inhibit mammosphere formation.&lt;/blockquote&gt;Like the &lt;i&gt;Cell&lt;/i&gt; paper above, one conclusion seems to be that future effective drug treatments will require targetting both tumour 'bulk' cells and cancer stem cells.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;At HighlightHEALTH, the results are in and &lt;a href="http://www.highlighthealth.com/diseases-and-conditions/the-review-is-in-lifestyle-changes-prevent-breast-cancer/"&gt;Allison Bland reports&lt;/a&gt; on lifestyle changes that prevent breast cancer.  A recent update to the 2007 report by the American Institute for Cancer Research/World Cancer Research Fund (AICR/WCRF) that describes certain measures that can be taken to reduce breast cancer deaths&lt;blockquote&gt;The study is an update to the breast cancer chapter of Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity and the Prevention of Cancer: a Global Perspective. Earlier conclusions were based on data from 873 studies evaluating the relationship between diet, physical activity, obesity and cancer. The 2009 update includes evidence from an additional 81 studies.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The report estimates that over 70,000 breast cancer cases in the U.S. — 40% of cases every year– could be avoided every year by simple lifestyle changes.&lt;/blockquote&gt;The post provides more details on the report, and outlines some of the preventative measurest that can be taken.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Elsewhere in the blogosphere, &lt;a href="http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/09/is_bill_maher_really_that_ignorant_part_2.php"&gt;Orac lays the smack down on Bill Maher&lt;/a&gt; for some wacky views on medicine and cancer&lt;blockquote&gt;Maher responds that he "doesn't know whether Laetrile works," but that he knows that "the shit we've tried for the last 50 years doesn't. I know they've made no progress as far as cancer in this country. So, yes, there are people who actually go out of this country when they get cancer. Some of them come back alive after a death sentence. But in this country you can't talk about that. I might get arrested right now."&lt;/blockquote&gt;Follow the link to find out the many ways Maher has it wrong.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Finally, September marked the passing of Patrick Swayze who succumbed to pancreatic cancer.  More &lt;a href="http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/09/rip_patrick_swayze.php"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2009/09/weekend_diversion_goodbye_to_t.php"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.  One alt-med 'treatment' for pancreatic cancer is called the Gonzalez protocol.  The Journal of Clinical Oncology recently published a study showing that this regimen is substantially worse than standard care.  You can read more at &lt;a href="http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=1430"&gt;Science-based Medicine&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=883"&gt;Neurologica&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That's it for this month's Cancer Research Blog Carnival. For older editions, visit the &lt;a href="http://cancer-carnival.blogspot.com/"&gt;Carnival Homepage&lt;/a&gt;.  Don't forget, the CRBC has subscription options; you can follow by &lt;a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/CancerResearchBlogCarnival"&gt;email or RSS feed&lt;/a&gt;. An aggregated feed of credible, rotating health and medicine blog carnivals is also &lt;a href="http://feeds.highlighthealth.net/HealthAndMedicineBlogCarnivals"&gt;available&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;November's issue will be posted at &lt;a href="http://amontenegro.blogspot.com/"&gt;MolBio Research Highlights&lt;/a&gt;.  If you'd like to host a future edition, email &lt;a href="mailto:bayblab@gmail.com"&gt;bayblab@gmail.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14815894-5130769977166723887?l=bayblab.blogspot.com'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=kY6UnvyWZ4g:wTSpwWN3wo4:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=kY6UnvyWZ4g:wTSpwWN3wo4:V_sGLiPBpWU"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?i=kY6UnvyWZ4g:wTSpwWN3wo4:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Bayblab/~4/kY6UnvyWZ4g" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bayblab.blogspot.com/feeds/5130769977166723887/comments/default" title="Post Comments" /><link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=14815894&amp;postID=5130769977166723887&amp;isPopup=true" title="0 Comments" /><link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/5130769977166723887?v=2" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/5130769977166723887?v=2" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Bayblab/~3/kY6UnvyWZ4g/cancer-carnival-26.html" title="Cancer Carnival #26" /><author><name>Kamel</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15548259062576527751</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:extendedProperty name="OpenSocialUserId" value="11365222348785079538" /></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_yg9SNoq91Ss/SsYxikiARwI/AAAAAAAAAos/5wzsf2SaZBM/s72-c/CRBC%2BLogo%2B200X149.jpg" height="72" width="72" /><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://bayblab.blogspot.com/2009/10/cancer-carnival-26.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry gd:etag="W/&quot;D08NRH45cSp7ImA9WxNXFE8.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14815894.post-4685115892374245057</id><published>2009-10-01T15:18:00.004-04:00</published><updated>2009-10-01T15:38:15.029-04:00</updated><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-10-01T15:38:15.029-04:00</app:edited><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="breast cancer" /><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="metformin" /><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="diabetes" /><title>Diabetes drug kills cancer stem cells?</title><content type="html">A friend of the bayblab sent me &lt;a href="http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/cgi/content/full/69/19/7507"&gt;a link&lt;/a&gt; to a paper that just came out in Cancer Research showing promising results of Metformin against breast cancer. Not only does the drug seem to selectively kill CD44 positive breast cancer stem cells, but it seems to inhibit mammosphere formation. The puzzling part is that it seems to improve survival in nudes, but only when in combination with doxorubicin. Does this mean that killing the cancer stem cell is not sufficient to stop cancer growth? If this treatment works in humans, it might actually have a shot in combination with chemotherapy. In fact it's not the first time &lt;a href="http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/330/7503/1304"&gt;a link&lt;/a&gt; between metformin and cancer epidemiology in diabetic patients has been noticed. Hopefully the drug doesn't kill other "good" adult stem cells in the body since it is the most prescribed drug in the US (40M!). The paper also doesn't address the mechanism, but it may have something to do with &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metformin#Mechanism_of_action"&gt;MAPK, AMPK or PKC&lt;/a&gt; (then again what doesn't)...&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Here is the abstract:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;i&gt;The cancer stem cell hypothesis suggests that, unlike most cancer cells within a tumor, cancer stem cells resist chemotherapeutic drugs and can regenerate the various cell types in the tumor, thereby causing relapse of the disease. Thus, drugs that selectively target cancer stem cells offer great promise for cancer treatment, particularly in combination with chemotherapy. Here, we show that low doses of metformin, a standard drug for diabetes, inhibits cellular transformation and selectively kills cancer stem cells in four genetically different types of breast cancer. The combination of metformin and a well-defined chemotherapeutic agent, doxorubicin, kills both cancer stem cells and non–stem cancer cells in culture. Furthermore, this combinatorial therapy reduces tumor mass and prevents relapse much more effectively than either drug alone in a xenograft mouse model. Mice seem to remain tumor-free for at least 2 months after combinatorial therapy with metformin and doxorubicin is ended. These results provide further evidence supporting the cancer stem cell hypothesis, and they provide a rationale and experimental basis for using the combination of metformin and chemotherapeutic drugs to improve treatment of patients with breast (and possibly other) cancers. [Cancer Res 2009;69(19):7507–11]&lt;/i&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14815894-4685115892374245057?l=bayblab.blogspot.com'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=0ze0PPWbuh8:AZPxT-stv5s:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=0ze0PPWbuh8:AZPxT-stv5s:V_sGLiPBpWU"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?i=0ze0PPWbuh8:AZPxT-stv5s:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Bayblab/~4/0ze0PPWbuh8" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bayblab.blogspot.com/feeds/4685115892374245057/comments/default" title="Post Comments" /><link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=14815894&amp;postID=4685115892374245057&amp;isPopup=true" title="1 Comments" /><link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/4685115892374245057?v=2" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/4685115892374245057?v=2" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Bayblab/~3/0ze0PPWbuh8/diabetes-drug-kills-cancer-stem-cells.html" title="Diabetes drug kills cancer stem cells?" /><author><name>Anonymous Coward</name><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:extendedProperty name="OpenSocialUserId" value="12075421031618281223" /></author><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">1</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://bayblab.blogspot.com/2009/10/diabetes-drug-kills-cancer-stem-cells.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry gd:etag="W/&quot;D0YARXo4fSp7ImA9WxNXFEw.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14815894.post-22930471794251426</id><published>2009-10-01T12:32:00.005-04:00</published><updated>2009-10-01T12:39:04.435-04:00</updated><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-10-01T12:39:04.435-04:00</app:edited><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="anatomy" /><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="art" /><title>The Anatomy of...</title><content type="html">Have you ever wondered what's inside a Lego man?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_yg9SNoq91Ss/SsTZy4_7g_I/AAAAAAAAAoU/_6Pn81FlArU/s1600-h/minifig.jpg"&gt;&lt;img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 246px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_yg9SNoq91Ss/SsTZy4_7g_I/AAAAAAAAAoU/_6Pn81FlArU/s320/minifig.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5387670522559169522" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A balloon animal?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_yg9SNoq91Ss/SsTaAkXeDLI/AAAAAAAAAoc/cU1CITz__So/s1600-h/pneumatic-anatomica.jpg"&gt;&lt;img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_yg9SNoq91Ss/SsTaAkXeDLI/AAAAAAAAAoc/cU1CITz__So/s400/pneumatic-anatomica.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5387670757538925746" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What about Godzilla?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_yg9SNoq91Ss/SsTaWYsbR0I/AAAAAAAAAok/-QsIxvE1gzk/s1600-h/anatomy_godzilla.jpg"&gt;&lt;img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 296px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_yg9SNoq91Ss/SsTaWYsbR0I/AAAAAAAAAok/-QsIxvE1gzk/s400/anatomy_godzilla.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5387671132362721090" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Lego man, balloon animal (and more!) can be found at &lt;a href="http://web.mac.com/moistproduction/flash/index.html"&gt;Moist Production&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Godzilla (and other Japanese monster classics) via &lt;a href="http://www.pinktentacle.com/2008/10/kaiju-anatomical-drawings/"&gt;Pink Tentacle&lt;/a&gt;&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14815894-22930471794251426?l=bayblab.blogspot.com'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=--yv6p2BAEE:ncMFOKb338I:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=--yv6p2BAEE:ncMFOKb338I:V_sGLiPBpWU"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?i=--yv6p2BAEE:ncMFOKb338I:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Bayblab/~4/--yv6p2BAEE" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bayblab.blogspot.com/feeds/22930471794251426/comments/default" title="Post Comments" /><link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=14815894&amp;postID=22930471794251426&amp;isPopup=true" title="0 Comments" /><link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/22930471794251426?v=2" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/22930471794251426?v=2" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Bayblab/~3/--yv6p2BAEE/anatomy-of.html" title="The Anatomy of..." /><author><name>Kamel</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15548259062576527751</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:extendedProperty name="OpenSocialUserId" value="11365222348785079538" /></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_yg9SNoq91Ss/SsTZy4_7g_I/AAAAAAAAAoU/_6Pn81FlArU/s72-c/minifig.jpg" height="72" width="72" /><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://bayblab.blogspot.com/2009/10/anatomy-of.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry gd:etag="W/&quot;DUADRH4-eyp7ImA9WxNXEkk.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14815894.post-3942665401259519565</id><published>2009-09-29T14:07:00.001-04:00</published><updated>2009-09-29T14:09:35.053-04:00</updated><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-09-29T14:09:35.053-04:00</app:edited><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="prince rupert's drop" /><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="exploding glass" /><title>Prince Rupert's Drop</title><content type="html">Since we're into posting cool videos, check these out:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;object width="425" height="344"&gt;&lt;param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/6V2eCFsDkK0&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;fs=1&amp;amp;"&gt;&lt;param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"&gt;&lt;param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"&gt;&lt;embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/6V2eCFsDkK0&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;fs=1&amp;amp;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;object width="425" height="344"&gt;&lt;param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Pdy2_vi0FfM&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;fs=1&amp;amp;"&gt;&lt;param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"&gt;&lt;param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"&gt;&lt;embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Pdy2_vi0FfM&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;fs=1&amp;amp;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14815894-3942665401259519565?l=bayblab.blogspot.com'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=w9Xue2bwKYw:EazLC9cDNyk:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=w9Xue2bwKYw:EazLC9cDNyk:V_sGLiPBpWU"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?i=w9Xue2bwKYw:EazLC9cDNyk:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Bayblab/~4/w9Xue2bwKYw" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bayblab.blogspot.com/feeds/3942665401259519565/comments/default" title="Post Comments" /><link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=14815894&amp;postID=3942665401259519565&amp;isPopup=true" title="2 Comments" /><link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/3942665401259519565?v=2" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/3942665401259519565?v=2" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Bayblab/~3/w9Xue2bwKYw/prince-ruperts-drop.html" title="Prince Rupert's Drop" /><author><name>Anonymous Coward</name><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:extendedProperty name="OpenSocialUserId" value="12075421031618281223" /></author><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">2</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://bayblab.blogspot.com/2009/09/prince-ruperts-drop.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry gd:etag="W/&quot;C0IARHk6fSp7ImA9WxNXEUQ.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14815894.post-2402325891577936142</id><published>2009-09-28T22:14:00.004-04:00</published><updated>2009-09-28T22:32:25.715-04:00</updated><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-09-28T22:32:25.715-04:00</app:edited><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Canadian Wildlife Service" /><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="arachnology" /><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="spiders" /><title>Video Archives of the Canadian Society for Arachnology</title><content type="html">We all know what happens when &lt;a href="http://bayblab.blogspot.com/2008/07/experimental-physics-la-canadien-or.html"&gt;Cornwall engineers push the envelope&lt;/a&gt;. And when &lt;a href="http://bayblab.blogspot.com/2009/09/would-you-stick-you-head-down-bear-den.html"&gt;Canadian biologists go looking for bears&lt;/a&gt;. But no one can mess shit up like our fellow Ottawans, the Arachnologists over at the Canadian Wildlife Service. MUCH RESPECT.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;object width="425" height="344"&gt;&lt;param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/p2HipedgM3I&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;fs=1&amp;amp;"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/p2HipedgM3I&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;fs=1&amp;amp;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;H/T: An old friend of the Bay.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14815894-2402325891577936142?l=bayblab.blogspot.com'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=TvPbiC-QDE4:Qmrb-ehERKI:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=TvPbiC-QDE4:Qmrb-ehERKI:V_sGLiPBpWU"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?i=TvPbiC-QDE4:Qmrb-ehERKI:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Bayblab/~4/TvPbiC-QDE4" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bayblab.blogspot.com/feeds/2402325891577936142/comments/default" title="Post Comments" /><link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=14815894&amp;postID=2402325891577936142&amp;isPopup=true" title="1 Comments" /><link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/2402325891577936142?v=2" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/2402325891577936142?v=2" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Bayblab/~3/TvPbiC-QDE4/video-archives-of-canadian-society-for.html" title="Video Archives of the Canadian Society for Arachnology" /><author><name>Bayman</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/03436172198266062229</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:extendedProperty name="OpenSocialUserId" value="02521217843933024602" /></author><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">1</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://bayblab.blogspot.com/2009/09/video-archives-of-canadian-society-for.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry gd:etag="W/&quot;D0QHSXw7eSp7ImA9WxNQF04.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14815894.post-6988863685851327692</id><published>2009-09-23T15:40:00.003-04:00</published><updated>2009-09-23T15:48:58.201-04:00</updated><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-09-23T15:48:58.201-04:00</app:edited><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="universal healthcare" /><title>Won't Somebody Think of the Insurance Companies?</title><content type="html">Will Ferrell and others point out the REAL victims of health care reform.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;object width="480" height="400" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000"&gt;&lt;param name="movie" value="http://player.ordienetworks.com/flash/fodplayer.swf" /&gt;&lt;param name="flashvars" value="key=041b5acaf5" /&gt;&lt;param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /&gt;&lt;embed width="480" height="400" flashvars="key=041b5acaf5" allowfullscreen="true" quality="high" src="http://player.ordienetworks.com/flash/fodplayer.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;div style="text-align:center;width:480px;"&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/041b5acaf5/protect-insurance-companies-psa" title="from FOD Team, Will Ferrell, Jon Hamm, Olivia Wilde, Thomas Lennon, Donald Faison, Linda Cardellini, Masi Oka, Ben Garant, Jordana Spiro, lauren, Drew Antzis, and chad_carter"&gt;Protect Insurance Companies PSA&lt;/a&gt; from &lt;a href="http://www.funnyordie.com/will_ferrell"&gt;Will Ferrell&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14815894-6988863685851327692?l=bayblab.blogspot.com'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=110OTEe5nE8:BZjKQKARmg4:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?a=110OTEe5nE8:BZjKQKARmg4:V_sGLiPBpWU"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Bayblab?i=110OTEe5nE8:BZjKQKARmg4:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Bayblab/~4/110OTEe5nE8" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bayblab.blogspot.com/feeds/6988863685851327692/comments/default" title="Post Comments" /><link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=14815894&amp;postID=6988863685851327692&amp;isPopup=true" title="1 Comments" /><link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/6988863685851327692?v=2" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/14815894/posts/default/6988863685851327692?v=2" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Bayblab/~3/110OTEe5nE8/wont-somebody-think-of-insurance.html" title="Won't Somebody Think of the Insurance Companies?" /><author><name>Kamel</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15548259062576527751</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:extendedProperty name="OpenSocialUserId" value="11365222348785079538" /></author><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">1</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://bayblab.blogspot.com/2009/09/wont-somebody-think-of-insurance.html</feedburner:origLink></entry></feed>
