ScienceZoo

Did you just eat watermelon or are you just happy to see me?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 14:01:00 +0000

Scientists have found that watermelon may literally be a quick picker-upper. Apparently, watermelon contains a chemical that has the same effects as the erectile dysfunction drug Viagra. So there you have it, science is now confirming things that happened on Seinfeld, or at least coming close. In an infamous Seinfeld episode, George gets his vitality restored after eating mango, but that's still a fruit so that's close enough for our purposes.

There's no word on why the scientists were looking for this particular chemical in watermelon in the first place. So we can only imagine that it can get lonely in the lab. Poor scientists.

But before you rush out to chow down on some watermelon this 4th, it's worth noting that to get any appreciable effect from the fruit, you'd have to eat six cups of it. So you may be too full and bloated to be of any use in the bedroom.

Bad boys win in the mating game

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 13:20:00 +0000

I'm not sure we needed a study to confirm this, but here it is just the same: Two new studies suggest that bad guys tend to do better with the ladies than the nice guys. What's next, a study confirming that water is wet? But I digress.

The more interesting part of the studies is the finding that bad guys tend to have negative, antisocial personality traits, namely: narcissism, a manipulative nature that would make Machiavelli proud and the thrill-seeking and callousness of psychopaths. Put these all together and you have what is known as the "dark triad." And guys who display the highest levels of these traits have more partners and more desire for short-term relationships.

So these guys have game that makes ladies weak at the knees, but they're not sticking around to raise any babies, which raises a really important question: Why are women falling for these guys?

Both Repubs and Dems Fall for Creationist Stupidity

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 14:14:00 +0000

The good news is that we're just as smart as we've ever been. The bad news is that we're not very smart. According to a recent Gallup poll, about 60% of Republicans and 38% of Democrats believe the Earth is 10,000 years old and humans did not result from evolution but were put here as is by god.

For those playing the home game of reality, the Earth is a lot older --much, much older by billions of years. The available evidence indicates Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. Scientific evidence also overwhelmingly indicates that humans are the result of an evolutionary process that occurred over millions of years. Taken in its entirety, the conclusion is inescapable that humans are just like any other creature on the planet in that we can trace our origins all the way back to the first primordial life forms that emerged on the planet 3 billion years ago. Unforunately for the creationist believers, all the evidence points away from the Earth being 10,000 years old or god depositing us here in our current form at that time.

Still though, a large swath of the public, particularly Republicans, seems completely ignorant of the facts supporting evolution, so the widespread view of creationism could have an impact on the presidential election this fall, according to Gallup:

Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain is facing the challenge of
gaining the confidence and enthusiasm of conservative Republicans. Turnout among
this group could be an important factor in determining the final vote outcome in
a number of key swing states. As seen here, Republicans are in general
sympathetic to the creationist explanation of the origin of humans, and if the
issue of what is taught in schools relating to evolution and creationism
surfaces as a campaign issue, McCain's response could turn out to be quite
important.

Maybe appealing to the public's ignorance is par for the course in politics, but it's still disturbing that McCain's best bet for winning the White House in November may be to cast himself as accepting the unfounded and ignorant views of creationism, rather than as someone who's informed and educated about the scientific facts.

EPO tests are unreliable, study shows

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 20:26:00 +0000

A while back I wrote about the questionable science behind last year's decision that 2006 Tour de France winner, Floyd Landis, was guilty of doping with testosterone. Now, two new studies shows that the tests used to catch illegal dopers are unreliable at best.

In a study released today, researchers doped men with EPO and collected urine samples from them. The samples were tested by two labs accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). One lab found samples positive for EPO when they were actually negative, and negative when they were actually positive. The other lab didn't find any of the samples to be positive. Perhaps even worse, the two labs did not agree on the test results. This means the lab tests are bogus and a person deemed to be positive for EPO doping may just as well be innocent.

In the second study, which came out last month, researchers found that many men --Asians especially-- have a genetic mutation that allows them to dope with testosterone but test negative on the test used at the Olympics and the Tour de France.

It's important to note that a WADA-accredited lab in France did the initial testing on Landis' samples. If the WADA lab is using tests that are unreliable, their credibility is in question, especially after their sloppy procedures came to light in the Landis case. At the very least, WADA should make an effort to determine if the tests they use are unreliable or inaccurate. But once again, as it did in Landis' case, WADA has shown itself to be less interested in good science and more interested in blind dogma. According to the New York Times, WADA dismissed the study's findings:

Olivier Rabin, scientific director of the World Anti-Doping Agency, said his group had tested its labs, sending samples of urine from people who were taking EPO and from people who were not. In general, he said, the labs agreed. But Rabin added that when the agency sends samples to its labs, they are not sent anonymously — the lab knows the samples are from WADA.
The agency does not share data from the tests on its labs, so it was not possible to determine how the organization's research compared with the latest study.

It's unconsciounable that WADA's scientific director isn't concerned that the tests used by his labs may be implicating innocent people and letting the guilty go undetected. The only fair conclusion is the agency is less concerned about catching dopers and more interested in playing politics.

But do they have a wide stance?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 20:08:00 +0000

At first glance, worms may not seem to have anything to do with human sexuality, but the invertebrates may shed some light on the origins of homosexuality. Researchers say that genetic experiments in nematode worms suggest homosexuality may be hard-wired into the brain. Activating a single gene in only in the brain of the worms did not affect their gender or appearance but made them attracted to worms of the same sex.

The findings appear in Current Biology.

WaPo gets fish-slapped

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 14:42:00 +0000

The Washington Post's story on the recommendations from a group with ties to the fish industry that mothers should eat more fish --contradicting the advice from the FDA and EPA-- took a beating last week.

The hoopla over the recommendations is important because of concerns mercury contamination in fish could lead to neurological problems in developing fetuses. To make the issue more complicated, the FDA barely monitors mercury levels in fish. And that's alarming, considering the recent food contamination issues that show quite clearly that even when the FDA is supposed to be safeguarding the food supply, the agency drops the ball.

In the front-page story, Washington Post reporter Sally Squires detailed the fish-eating recommendations from the National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition. But Squires didn't disclose the fact that, according to The Washington City Paper's Erik Wemple, the group receives funding from The National Fisheries Institute, a group that describes itself as "the nation’s leading advocacy organization for the seafood industry. Its member companies represent every element of the industry from the fishing vessels at sea to the national seafood restaurant chains."

Wemple writes: "The National Fisheries Institute paid $60,000 to Healthy Mothers for its work on the report, not to mention disbursements of $1,000 to each of the scientists to attend a symposium on the topic. There’s more to the corporate commingling: The fisheries institute uses Burson-Marsteller as its go-to PR agency, and a Burson-Marsteller staffer works as vice-chair of the Healthy Mothers coalition—though the staffer, Hampton Shaddock, was not “a part of any decisionmaking on the relationship,” according to coalition Executive Director Judy Meehan."

Squires attempts to add credibility to the recommendations from the Healthy Mothers group by saying its members include "the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."

That may be true, but neither the NICHHD nor the CDC want to be associated with these fish-industry supported recommendations. NICHHD director Duane Alexander and CDC chief science officer Tanja Popovic made the point quite clearly in a letter to the WaPo editor, published Saturday.

"The recommendation by the National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition that pregnant women consume more fish [front page, Oct. 4] has not been endorsed by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or the Health Resources and Services Administration," Alexander and Popovic write in their brief but adamant letter. "The three agencies, all within the Department of Health and Human Services, were not participants in the formulation of this recommendation, learned about it only after it was announced, have not had the opportunity to review the data on which it was based and therefore cannot support it."

Alexander and Popovic further add, "We are not aware at this time of any new evidence sufficient to change the current guidelines set forth by the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency, that pregnant women should consume no more than 12 ounces of fish per week. We continue to support those guidelines."

Squires might've learned of both NICHHD's and CDC's position had she bothered to contact them for her story. Actually, she might've done well to contact anybody who has reservations about the potential complications of mothers consuming more fish to provide a more balanced story to her readers. As it is the story is top-heavy with quotes from people supporting the increased fish consumption recommendations, and essentially reads like a pro-fish industry commercial, rather than what it actually is: a front page story from one of America's biggest newspapers.

I would expect better from both WaPo reporters and editors on a story as complex and important as fish consumption and mercury toxicity to developing babies. The paper may need to revise its reporting standards if an article this poor meets the criteria for page 1 billing.

Bees' buzz may keep elephants away

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 02:38:00 +0000

African elephants fear the buzz of bees, according to a new study that could have implications for efforts to prevent human-elephant conflicts in areas in Africa where the animals' habitat is being encroached upon by people. The findings suggest low-tech strategies, such as the placement of beehives or even just recordings of bees buzzing, could be used to keep elephants away from particular areas and may avoid the need for more extreme methods that can include killing the animals.

The study appears in the October 9 issue of Current Biology.

NOVA to air intelligent design documentary

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 16:27:00 +0000

NOVA's documentary about the Dover, Pennsylvania trial over creationism 2.0 (AKA, intelligent design) will air November 13. Called "Judgment Day, Intelligent Design on Trial," NOVA describes it as capturing "the emotional conflict in interviews with the townspeople, scientists, and lawyers who participated in the historic six-week trial, Kitzmiller, et. al. v. Dover School District, et. al. ... With recreations based on court transcripts, NOVA presents the arguments by lawyers and expert witnesses in riveting detail and provides an eye-opening crash course on questions such as 'What is evolution?' and 'Does intelligent design qualify as science?'"

I hope this documentary presents the intelligent design wackery accurately and doesn't pull punches, but I have my doubts. Most media outlets have handled the intelligent design creationists with kid gloves, either ignorant of their lying, conniving ways or perhaps deluded into falling for their erroneous claim that there is a controversy over evolution.

There is no controversy or serious debate about evolution. To borrow a phrase from National Center for Science Education executive director Eugenie Scott, evolution is the only scientific game in town. All the forms of creationism, including intelligent design, don't even meet any of the basic criteria to be considered a science, let alone pose any real threat of challenging the validity of evolutionary theory.

Judge Jones said it best when he ruled in the Dover, Pa., case that intelligent design “is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism and not a scientific theory."

I'll post more about this after the program airs.

The rise and fall of the NIH

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 20:22:00 +0000

Monday, the NIH issued a press release touting the fact that two of the three winners of the 2007 Nobel Prize in physiology/medicine were funded by the agency. That's certainly a notable achievement and the NIH deserves praise for having the foresight to recognize the value of the scientists' research several decades before (the NIH funding began in the late 60's/early 70's) it would officially be recognized by the Nobel Prize committee.

The previous business day, however, the NIH issued a release that should cast serious doubt about the agency's scientific credibility and raise questions about where its headed. In the Oct. 5 release, the NIH boasted that it had expanded its National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine to include three new Centers of Excellence for Research on Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM).

This is disappointing for at least three reasons and maybe more, but it's late and I'm tired and 3 seems like more than enough.

First, there is no "alternative medicine" or "alternative scientific method" for investigating whether a particular modality has a benefit in treating disease. Something has either been proven to work using established and accepted methods or it hasn't. There isn't an alternative scientific system in some far-flung corner of Dover, Pa., or a parallel universe.

So there is no need for the NIH to segregate out and separately fund so-called "complementary and alternative medicine" therapies. If there are indications any of these strategies actually offer some benefit, the NIH could --and should-- fund research into them via any of its other institutes, using the rigorous --albeit not perfect-- review strategies it already has in place.

Second, the NIH not only appears ignorant of this, they actually tout their commitment to wasting millions of dollars on CAM (the proposed 2008 budget for NCCAM is $121.7 million):
"The addition of these centers ... confirms our continuing commitment to rigorous CAM research," said Ruth L. Kirschstein, M.D., NCCAM Acting Director.

Third, these new CAM centers will be focusing on therapies that are almost certain to be ineffective. How can I say this so confidently? Because they're focusing on diseases, such as pancreatic cancer, multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer's disease, where treatment options are limited or often not effective, meaning any pharmaceutical or biotech company could make a bundle with an effective therapy (The research involves using lycopene (a chemical found in tomatoes) and green tea preparations to treat pancreatic cancer, reservatrol, a grape compound, for treating multiple sclerosis, and another grape compound called polyphenols for preventing Alzheimer's).

If these treatments were so promising, a researcher who was intent on pursuing them would have no problems getting funding through the normal channels of one of the 26 other institutes of the NIH, and it's very likely a pharmaceutical or biotech company would already be busy exploring them or funding the research.

More disturbingly, none of these research pursuits is likely to lead to the types of breakthroughs and widespread implications that get awarded with a Nobel prize decades down the road. And we may never know what kinds of discoveries we've missed out on because legitimate, basic research was not supported, while NCCAM instead squandered millions of dollars on fruitless endeavors.

P.S. Dr. Steven Novella recently wrote a post that quite nicely explains the problems with NCCAM. Check it out at his site. Steven Salzberg recently posted four examples of quackery funded by NCCAM at the expense of taxpayers (and common sense).

My piece makes a blog carnival

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 03:13:00 +0000

Anything Goes posted my piece on the Floyid Landis decision ("Tour de France doping decision is another win for bad science") as part of his blog carnival. Swing on over and check out the site.

The Secret Lives of Strippers

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 04:05:00 +0000

A new study that took a close look (no pun intended, well, ok, maybe it is) at strippers sheds some interesting light on the complex world of human sexuality. Apparently, strippers earn more tips when they're at the most fertile phase of their ovulation cycle, due to a variety of factors, including changes in their behavior, according to psychologists who I'm sure did not come up with the idea for this scientific study as a cover for hanging out in strip clubs. I'm sure it was a sacrifice they endured in the name of science. What brave souls.

Google Earth

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 14:10:00 +0000

If you don't have Google Earth yet, you should definitely give it a spin. It will let you zoom in to your town, down to your own individual street and also let you journey through the universe, exploring stars, planets and galaxies.

Deadly animals

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 21:39:00 +0000

This is a pretty good overview from National Geographic about zoonosis, or diseases that jump from animals to humans, such as Ebola, SARS and monkeypox. And it's at least as scary as any Halloween story you'll hear this month.

New dinosaur fossil discovered

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 20:16:00 +0000

A new dinosaur fossil unearthed in Utah is being described as “the Arnold Schwarzenegger of duck-billed dinosaurs” for its massive skull and skeleton.

Gryposaurus monumentensis, as the animal has been dubbed, roamed the area around the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in the Late Cretaceous period, some 75 millions years ago. The fossil, which is described in the Oct. 3 issue of the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, is providing new clues about the ecology and evolution of duck-billed dinosaurs and may force scientists to reevaluate some of their previous ideas about the animals.

Paleontologists will discuss the find at a press conference Wednesday.

Much ado about bioweapons

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 17:51:00 +0000

The AP is going for public hysteria with their report on lab mishaps involving potential bioweapon agents, but they've missed the mark. Judging from the accounts they relay, the real threat isn't to the public at large, but rather to the lab employees working with these deadly pathogens. In most of the incidents, containment procedures were utilized and it doesn't appear there was ever any risk of spreading these diseases amongst the general population.

The story seems to be written from the perspective of someone who expects there to be absolutely no mistakes. That seems to be a naive view at best, given that humans do nothing if not make mistakes. That's why containment procedures and strategies, such as negative air flow and wearing protective equipment, are already in place at labs that handle these agents.

The reporting also attempts to be manipulative and alarming. Although the main thrust of the story is incidents at U.S. labs, the reporter attempts to arouse alarm by citing the situation in Britain in which a lab screwup may have spread foot and mouth disease. The reader is left on his own to work out the mystifying details of how British lab procedures have any connection to U.S. lab policies.

Then immediately after a paragraph informing the reader of the restrictions for working in Biosafety Level 4 labs ("Besides wearing full-body, air-supplied suits, workers undergo extensive background checks and carry special identification cards") , there's this unexplained quote from Edward Hammond, with the Sunshine Project, which tracks lab incidents:

"The risk that a killer agent could be set loose in the general population is real."

That's a serious allegation and it should be followed by some credible evidence to back it up. There's none. In fact, the report had previously told us, "No one died, and regulators said the public was never at risk during these incidents."

The only real risk mentioned in the article (lost shipments of deadly organisms) is only touched on briefly and even that appears to have amounted to nothing. "Some recount missing or lost shipments, including plague bacteria that was supposed to be delivered to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in 2003. The wayward shipment was discovered eventually in Belgium and incinerated safely."

I agree with the premise of the article that potential bioweapons should always be handled with the utmost caution. But I'm disappointed AP apparently didn't heed its own advice.

Anthrax attacks: 6 years later and still no suspect

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 20:39:00 +0000

It's been six years since anthrax spores were delivered via letters to several locations, including Florida, New York, Washington, DC, and Connecticut. Authorities apparently still don't have a suspect, while Steven Hatfill, the former "person of interest" in the attacks, is making more progress in his case against the government for invasion of privacy, as another journalist was recently ordered to give up his sources.

UK govt: Creationism doesn't belong in classroom

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 03:15:00 +0000

The UK government has issued new guidelines that explicitly state that both creationism and it's slicker, hipper cousin, intelligent design, are not science and do not belong in the classroom. You can read the guidelines for yourself here.

Guardian reporter James Randerson provides a nice overview here. And the Panda's Thumb offers this take on the situation.

Stellar Explosion

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 17:23:00 +0000

NASA describes this image captured by the Hubble telescope as depicting "the delicate filaments debris from a stellar explosion in a neighboring galaxy."

For a more thorough explanation, head here.

Astrophysicists watch football?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 17:06:00 +0000

This is old news in the football world, but a lot of teams --NFL and college-- could probably benefit from this program developed by an astrophysicist, which seeks to tell coaches what play gives them the best shot at winning. And it's particularly topical since we're headed into a weekend full of college ball on Saturday and pro ball on Sunday. For those who don't feel like reading, click on the video for a brief clip that will explain everything you need to know about the Zeus program.

Another nail in the coffin for vaccine-autism link

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 23:35:00 +0000

The CDC reported today that a study found little evidence to indicate the vaccine preservative, thimerosal (which contains mercury), caused significant neurological problems in children.

The findings suggest "the higher thimerosal content that vaccines had back in the 1990s did not lead to harmful effects in children in performance on standardized testing at age seven to 10," according to Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

The study did not look specifically at autism (a separate CDC study is focused on that specific condition), but it used several tests to examine the effects of thimerosal exposure on intelligence, speech, language and motor skills in children between the ages of seven and 10.

Dr. Schuchat again:
"Some of the results suggested that exposure to higher thimerosal quantities led to better performance. And some of the tests showed that exposure to higher thimerosal content led to worse performance. So the totality of the results are quite reassuring and suggest continued to reaffirm the safety of vaccines."

In other words, if thimerosal levels obtained through childhood vaccinations had a significant impact on mental functioning and/or autism, the study should have found a general trend towards worse performance among kids who had exposure to higher levels of the preservative. The study didn't find that, so we can conclude from that thimerosal, at least at the levels kids would receive through vaccination, poses little, if any, risk. Of course, this is no longer a concern because thimerosal has been eliminated from most childhood vaccines.

But those who remained convinced vaccines play a role in causing autism (in spite of any credible scientific evidence supporting this dubious connection) were unswayed and I'm sure their reports attacking the study on various, probably misguided and misinterpreted, grounds will soon be forthcoming.

But as the vaccine-autism believers clamor about unsubstantiated government cover-ups or researchers' ties to pharmaceutical companies, they usually fail to acknowledge the overwhelming, life-saving benefit of vaccines or the many studies refuting any connection between autism and vaccines, which always makes me wonder about their real motivations.

Supplements recalled because they might actually work

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 20:44:00 +0000

In the unregulated, charlatan-filled world of dietary supplements, there's no telling what's in a bottle of pills. So perhaps it's not surprising that the FDA recently recalled two dietary supplements not because they were ineffective, but rather because they might actually deliver on their marketing promises.

The supplements in question, Axcil and Desirin, were pulled because they contained sildenafil, the active ingredient in the erectile dysfunction drug, Viagra. Supplements can't contain drugs because that would make them, well, drugs, not supplements. Of course if they contained medications, they might actually have some medical benefit too, but that might be asking too much from the crazy world of supplements, where claims of effectiveness are allowed but proof is not required.

According to the Axcil website, which has now been taken down, the supplement "is a scientifically formulated, breakthrough dietary supplement containing a proprietary standardized botanical extract that acts synergistically to promote erectile function and sexual desire in men." We know Viagra works quite well for this, so delete the "botanical extract" nonsense and technically this becomes a legitimate claim, just so long as they're illegally including sildenafil in their supplement pills.

Desirin makes a similar pitch, except it's targeted at women. But we know Viagra helps promote sexual function in females too, so again, this is essentially a legitimate claim.

To put this situation in other terms, the FDA seemed to have no problem when Axcil and Desirin were on the market with their unproven claims. It was only when the supplements actually contained a medication that might help -- Viagra -- that the FDA objected.

It should also be noted that even if the "proprietary standardized botanical extract" that was supposedly in these supplements had been shown in legitimate scientific studies to have some medical benefit without the addition of Viagra, this still wouldn't mean much for consumers. Supplements are not regulated, which means consumers have no way of knowing if the supplement they purchase in a store is the same compound used in the research.

The substance in the bottle could differ in concentration or the amount of active ingredients. The supplements could even contain no active ingredient. Or dirt. Or pocket lint. Who knows, maybe pocket lint actually does help treat cancer symptoms. I can at least make that claim on a bottle of pocket lint pills. Just so long as my supplements don't contain any actual anti-cancer medications, presumably the FDA won't stop me.

Of course, this isn't the FDA's fault. Their hands have been bound by Congress, which in an act of stupidity unbelievable even for Capitol Hill, passed a law keeping FDA out of supplements and allowing manufacturers to sell dietary supplements without proving either their safety or their effectiveness. This might be a good reason to steer clear of supplements, but unfortunately millions of Americans can't resist the Siren C of this industry, which racks up billions of dollars per year peddling substances that may be worthless or even dangerous. Anybody want to buy some pocket lint?

Flaring temper may hurt the heart

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 01:55:00 +0000

Myriad adages warn against losing one's temper and it turns out they may have been on to something. A new study found that middle-aged men who are prone to bouts of anger face an increased risk of developing high blood pressure and heart disease. Moreover, stress may play havoc with the heart in both men and women; the study found that middle-aged people of both gender who reported long-term stress had a heightened risk of developing heart disease.

The findings, which appears in the September/October issue of the Annals of Family Medicine, suggest that treatment for anger and stress could have the additional benefit of reducing the risk of high blood pressure and heart disease.

3D images help identify toxic effects of alcohol

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 01:55:00 +0000

Fetal alcohol syndrome, which results from mothers drinking excessively during pregnancy, consists of a variety of mental and physical birth defects caused by alcohol's impact on the development of the fetus. The most effective therapies for the condition depend on an early diagnosis, but finding reliable ways to determine who is affected has been challenging. Now a new study indicates 3D images of the face -- known as computerized craniofacial anthropometry -- may make it easy for physicians to diagnose fetal alcohol syndrome in babies and could even lead to treatments for reversing the damage and a better understanding of how alcohol affects the developing body.

The findings appear in the October issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

A face only a mother (bat) could love

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 16:54:00 +0000

Steve Gschmeissner's photo of a bat face, which was titled appropriately enough "Bat Face," won the Visions of Science & Technology Photographic Awards. For the rest of the very cool winning photos, go here.

Another HIV vaccine bites the dust. Bring in the cats

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 14:09:00 +0000

Merck's experimental HIV vaccine, like several others that came before it, has proven to be ineffective at preventing infection with the deadly virus. So it may be time for scientists to bite the bullet and adopt the approach used by the cat vaccine for FIV, the feline equivalent of HIV.

For the most part, scientists have resisted the approach used in the FIV vaccine for developing inoculations for use in humans because it utilizes the whole-virus. While this could stimulate a better immune response and offer greater protection from infection, there's the small chance that some of the virus may survive inactivation processes and could actually infect people.

The possibility, no matter how small, that somebody could get infected from a vaccine that's intended to protect is an ethical risk the medical community in general cannot take. But if a whole-virus vaccine could actually prevent infection and spare human life, wouldn't the greater ethical lapse be opting not to pursue this strategy, particularly in light of evidence indicating the global AIDS epidemic may be getting worse?