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Search Results for: label/Alan Alda

  • Life and science challenges: flames, Hawkeye, the needle and the damage done

    Alda’s World Science Festival discussion about the Flame Challenge , which was to occur at 4pm that afternoon.  Not really knowing what was in store, I quickly accepted (um, hello, Alan Alda ).  A second phone call about 20 minutes later informed me that I would be joining Alan on stage.  Was this really happening?  In about 30 minutes time, I went from despair to elation.  I also went to the store to buy a skirt since I was already in trans…

    Authored by on June 6, 2012

  • The 2013 Flame Challenge Question: What is time?

    oes the brain store all that information?” to “Why are Shetland ponies so small?” But, once the votes were counted, there was one question that reigned supreme: What is time? Scientists will have until March 1, 2013, to submit their answer, and this year, there will be winners selected from two categories: written and video/graphics. Once submitted, the explanations of time will be scrutinized by over 5,000 11-year-olds worldwide….

    Authored by on December 11, 2012

  • Friday Roundup: Arsenic in juice, self-medicating chimps, science tattoos, Guinness Record-setting science cheerleaders, and more!

    …;toxic metal!” and calling for its removal.  Can heading the ball in soccer/football cause brain damage? Is a “Mediterranean-ish” diet good for your heart? Researchers draw that conclusion from this study of 2500 Manhattanites.  Can dreams predict the future? No. Would you want to see yourself old? Our Living World Chimps self medicate with food. They really are our closest living relatives. Speaking of being like us, some…

    Authored by on December 2, 2011

  • Biology Explainer: The big 4 building blocks of life–carbohydrates, fats, proteins, and nucleic acids

    …molecules themselves break down into a surprisingly small number of building blocks. The proteins that make up all of the living things on this planet and ensure their appropriate structure and smooth function consist of only 20 different kinds of building blocks. Nucleic acids, specifically DNA, are even more basic: only four different kinds of molecules provide the materials to build the countless different genetic codes that translate into all…

    Authored by on June 8, 2012

  • Explosions, Just a Bit More Than Fireworks

    …an element (within a compound.) The original definition can easily be shown in terms of explosives. The simple mixing of hydrogen and oxygen with the addition of just a bit of heat, will form water in an explosive display: 2H2 + O2 –> 2H2O The little flame used to catalyze the reaction in the video is actually much more energy than is necessary to cause this reaction to occur, but it’s difficult to get an even littler source of heat…

    Authored by on July 4, 2012

  • Wordless Wednesday: Marie Curie, scientist, sister, and mother

    Today’s Wordless(ish) Wednesday Marie Curie, November 7, 1867-July 4, 1934 “We must believe that we are gifted for something.” The future scientist and mother as a girl of 16. Marie (far left) with her sisters and father. How did they breathe in those corsets? We don’t know. Marie in 1903, the year she won the Nobel prize in physics. She turned 36 that year. The scientist in her lab. Marie in 1911, the year s…

    Authored by on November 9, 2011

  • After Newtown missteps, journalists get guidelines

    …almost twice as likely to say that they don’t want to live or work near a person with mental illness if they read an article about a person with mental illness involved in a mass shooting, according to a study published March 20 in the American Journal of Psychiatry. Interestingly, this tendency is the same even if the article avoids any mention of mental illness. This may be because this link between violence and mental illness is deeply engrain…

    Authored by on March 27, 2013

  • A history lesson written in … plaque?

    …and health. As they describe in the journal Nature Genetics, the researchers collected calculus samples (ewww) from 34 human skeletons dating from between 400 (late medieval) and 7,500 years ago (mesolithic), as well as from 10 members of the research team for a modern comparison. (Worst. Cleaning. Ev-ah.) They extracted and amplified specific diagnostic segments of microbial DNA from the 16S ribosomal RNA gene, and then sequenced what they foun…

    Authored by on March 18, 2013

  • Depressing genes

    Can depression be a matter of genetic fate? by Siobhan Mitchell          [This post is the latest installment in our I Am Mental Illness series.] What if you could know if you were fated to be depressed? With the rise of personal genotyping services such as 23andme, almost can find out what their psychiatric ‘fate’ will be, but what do you do with this information once you have it? When I first considered testing myself for depressio…

    Authored by on May 17, 2013

  • Is the bar high enough for screening breast ultrasounds for breast cancer?

    …n controversial. What’s new is the “Are You Dense?” patient movement and legislation to inform women that they have dense breasts. Merits and pitfalls of device approval The approval of breast ultrasound hinges on a study of 200 women with dense breast evaluated retrospectively at 13 sites across the United States with mammography and ultrasound. The study showed a statistically significant increase in breast cancer detection when ultrasound was…

    Authored by on September 21, 2012

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