Speaking of rushing ahead...

The World Health Organization has asked Vietnam to refrain from pursuing its own vaccine for the bird flu virus.Potentially unsafe conditions for developing the viral strains was the principal concern.

I was just speculating (previous post) about U.S. scientists going ahead in secret while federal regulations prohibit stem cell experiments. It's clear that the code of ethics for scientists and researchers must have a far wider and stronger influence on its practitioners than the priniciples of integrity that corporate greed regularly oversteps. The possible consequences of bio-breaches are unimaginably vast.

S.Korea pulling way ahead in stem cell study

S.Korea's Hwang at cutting edge with innovative approaches that are making dramatic progress towards fighting terminal illnesses.

The U.S. is waiting. Or are maybe some researchers going ahead in secret? I can't imagine being a scientist with a passion in this area who would not forge ahead and just save the results to publish when the federal restrictions are lifted. Guess we'll see.

Research yields alternative for high-risk group

Good news and bad news. MRI combined with mammography has been shown to be better at detecting breast tumors in young women with high risk, but it also results in more false positives than X-ray alone. Here are the facts:

"About 1% of women carry mutations in either the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes; they have an 85% lifetime risk of breast cancer.

"Contrast-enhanced MRI scans identify more tumors in high-risk women than X-ray mammography; together, the modalities are synergistic.

Contrast-enhanced MRI scans are especially adept at finding tumors in women with mutations in the BRCA1 gene"

Okay, if your other option is to have both breasts removed before you even have any sign of the disease, would you opt to live with the chance of being periodically terrified by false positives?

Given the human being's natural attachment to his or her body parts, the answer for many women in that 1%-high-risk-group would be yes. Thanks to today's improved breast enhancement techniques, women who choose preventive surgery don't have to live with the same devastation as in previous decades.

Now at least there's a third option. This is research working as it should.

Neural mechanism relates to impulsive decision-making

Pigeon studies have shown have identified a single neuron that is involved in controlling impulsive behavior.

"These findings not only shed light on impulsive decision-making, but they may also aid the understanding of neuropathologies, such as drug addiction, gambling, frontal lobe syndrome, and attention-deficit disorders, that are characterized by a decreased ability to wait for a large reward."

Promising research for the disease-model. But it would also be interesting to study how the neuron might affect other factors that can sometimes be involved in those behaviors such as:

• lack of positive experience--"Is the big reward really possible?"


• lack of any experience--"Haven't seen any reward like that so don't believe in it."


• hidden rewards--"I'm secretly getting something I want more than that reward."

But I've strayed into psychology/mental health here. So, yes, it makes sense to start with the much-more-easily-researched neuron approach and see where it will take us. Like the guy trying to invent the world's greatest glue who accidentally invented Post-It notes, who knows what motherlode we'll strike along the way.

X-ray technology--first progress in a century

A new stationary X-ray device based on carbon nanotubes has scientists in North Carolina excited. If it works as expected--getting images from multiple angles without mechanical motion--scanners can be made cheaper, use less electricity and produce higher-resolution images. They'll also be smaller and faster. The device, which works by emitting a scanning X-ray beam made up of multiple smaller beams, is the first significant improvement in X-ray technology in a hundred years.

Discovered about a decade ago, "carbon nanotubes" are tiny bits of carbon that are very strong tubular structures formed from a single layer of carbon atoms and are only about a billionth of a meter in diameter.

Read more about these new miraculous building blocks of the universe.

Power plant emissions intensify pollution in hot weather

We all want more electrical power when the weather's hot. After all, who doesn't have air conditioning today? Not many of us city dwellers. This new report brings bad news. "Measuring emissions from a power plant in eastern Pennsylvania in July 1995, Princeton University scientists found that a given amount of nitrogen oxide produced much more ground-level ozone on warmer days than on cooler ones. On hot days, they calculated, emissions from a plant upwind of a densely populated area could lead to more than three times as many deaths as in cool weather.

"...The Clean Air Interstate Rule finalized in March aims to cut overall nitrogen oxide emissions from utilities by 61 percent in the next decade..."

Guess we'd better start thinking now of ways to get along with less AC in the future. Maybe we'll have to start sitting on our front porches again--of course, most of us will have to build one first.

The danger of following custom

Dramatic results indicate that a procedure considered routine in heart patient care is much more likely to kill the patient whose pain it's supposed to be relieving. For a hundred years morphine has been recommended as an option to relieve chest pain associated with heart failure. Duke University scientists decided to test it against nitroglycerin in recent research funded by a pharmaceutical company.

Results ere surprising: Morphine to relieve severe chest pain associated with the non-ST-segment elevation acute coronary syndrome may increase the risk of death by nearly 50%.

Well, just because the pharma company wants to find corroborating evidence that its product(s) will do the job, doesn't mean that we can't be grateful that the research revealed that, like snake oil of the 1800s and leeches of earlier decades, somebody in a white coat saying "let's do this" doesn't make it right.

How very important it is to teach our children to question authority. Uncomfortable, perhaps. Tough sometimes? Absolutely. Worth it? Unquestionably.

Obesity increase--a reflection of the baby boomer wave?

"In the early 1970s, 22.5 percent of people with incomes below $25,000 (in 2000 dollars) were obese. By 2002, 32.5 percent of the poor were. Just 9.7 percent of people with incomes above $60,000 were obese in the 1970s, but that jumped to 26.8 percent in 2002."

So says a report to the American Heart Association.

Partly, this increase is due to a larger number of older people having higher incomes (the successful baby boomers), but at the same time the incidence of diabetes has been climbing dramatically, so it's not all a case of numbers. Some nurses, chiropractors and alternative health professionals are convinced that the use of corn syrup in virtually all our processed foods is secretly contributing to the "unhealth" of America. Read your labels and see what you think.

At last--truly portable computing power

Imagine being able to carry around your computer to research sessions, meetings, seminars, etc. with little more effort than carrying a book. No cords, no heaving heavy stuff around. Well, Bill Gates has been listening (and maybe getting tired of carrying his own heavy computer around).

Microsoft is working on an ultra-thin Tablet, in the $800 price range (current code name Ultra Mobile 2007) that will weigh about a pound and would have an all-day battery life. What's not to like?

He's only hedging a little ("we do believe this is achievable), and says the device will be a camera, a phone, a music device that will complement the PC.
And listen to this--they're talking about

...a new, fixed document format, Metro, which he said will be "available free to the world." These documents can be created on any platform and shared acoss the world. Plus, Metro-compatible printers will give a new and enhanced printing experience.

What I get out of this is that they're coming up with a new and simplified document format that will rival the portability and universal readability of the PDF--and looks like it will require new hardwar (they're partnering with computer manufacturer Acer). Hey, if they get it even a tad faster and easier to use (PDFs are notoriously slow to open and navigate), Adobe's PDF could be in trouble--though Adobe's getting aggressive about positioning itself (heck, they even recently bought Macromedia for billions of dollars).

Well anyway, Microsoft, now you're talkin'. When you get there, a lot of us will be there. ...unless, of course, someone beats you to it.