Saving Bigfoot

 
Mike Lake is the Canadian member of parliament for Edmonton-Mill Woods-Beaumont. He belongs to the Conservative Party of Stephen Harper.

Lake is 38 years old and has a bachelor of commerce degree from the University of Alberta. In other words, he is a university graduate.

Lake calls for bigfoot to be protected under Canada's Species at Risk Act [Bigfoot risks extinction, says Canadian MP]. It appears that Mike Lake has been persuaded to make a fool of himself by bigfoot "researcher" Todd Standing. This should not be a surprise since all Conservative MP's have already demonstrated a certain amount of detachment from reality.

Canadians will get a kick out of another press release [Bigfoot May Gain Protection by Canadian Parliament] where Mike Lake MP is identified as a member of the Canadian Mounted Police.

[Hat Tip: fellow Canadian James Hrynyshyn]

Gene Genie #6

 
Read the sixth edition of Gene Genie at Scienceroll [Gene Genie: a Famous Blog Carnival’s Sixth Issue]. There's lots of good science but if that doesn't tempt you then go for the videos on Mendel and genetics.

My contributions are the articles on the genes for The Human Genes for the Pyruvate Dehydrogenase Complex and Noncoding DNA and Junk DNA.

What's Your Abel Number?

 
Pharmacologists at the recent Experimental Biology meeting in Washington were excited about their Abel numbers [Six degrees of pharmacology]. The Abel number represents the number of links to John J. Abel, the founder of modern pharmacology. In this case the links have to be through authors on a publication.

I wonder who we could choose for biochemistry?

They Put Nicotine in Tim Hortons Coffee

 
Friday's Urban Legend: FALSE

Have you received an email message like this one?

Are you a Non- Smoker or Against smoking all together ?

Do you ever wonder why you have to have your coffee every morning?

** TIM HORTON'S SHOCKER **

A man from Arkansas came up to Canada for a visit only to find himself in the hospital after a couple of days. Doctor's told him that he had suffered of cardiac arrest. He was allergic to Nicotine. The man did not understand why that would of happened as he does not smoke knowing full well he was allergic to Nicotine. He told the doctor that he had not done anything different while he was on vacation other than having Tim Horton's coffee. The man then went back to Tim Horton's and asked what was in their coffee. Tim Horton's refuses to divulge that information. After threatening legal action, Tim Horton's finally admitted.....

*** THERE IS NICOTINE IN TIM HORTON'S COFFEE ***

A girl I know was on the patch to quit smoking. After a couple of days she was having chest pains & was rushed to the hospital. The doctor told her that she was on a Nicotine overload. She swore up & down that she had not been smoking. SHE WAS HAVING HER COFFEE EVERY MORNING.

Now imagine a women who quits smoking because she finds out that she is pregnant, but still likes to have her Tim Horton's once in a while.

THIS IS NOT A JOKE, PLEASE PASS THIS ALONG.... YOU MIGHT SEE THIS ON THE NEWS SOON.

Another version has "them" putting MSG in the coffee instead of nicotine. That's the version that I received this week from well-meaning, but not very skeptical, friends.

As usual, snoopes.com is on the case [Nicotine Non-Fit]. There is no nicotine in Tim Hortons coffee and there's no MSG either.

I'm a "Modernist"

 

You scored as Modernist. Modernism represents the thought that science and reason are all we need to carry on. Religion is unnecessary and any sort of spirituality halts progress. You believe everything has a rational explanation. 50% of Americans share your world-view. Modernist 100% Materialist 88% Existentialist 81% Postmodernist 44% Romanticist 38% Idealist 31% Cultural Creative 25% Fundamentalist 0% What is Your World View? created with QuizFarm.com

[Hat Tip: Shalini]

USA Is Number 2 in Health Care

 
Scientific American, that paragon of science writing, has an article on health care. It reports the results of a study done by a bunch of Canadians. They compare the health care systems in the USA and Canada and discover that We're Number Two: Canada Has as Good or Better Health Care than the U.S..

According to Woolhandler, by looking at already ill patients, the researchers eliminated any Canadian lifestyle advantage and just examined the degree to which the two systems affected patient deaths. (Mortality was the one kind of data they could extract from a disparate pool of 38 papers examining everything from kidney failure to rheumatoid arthritis.)

Overall, the results favored Canadians, who were 5 percent less likely than Americans to die in the course of treatment. Some disorders, such as kidney failure, favored Canadians more strongly than Americans, whereas others, such as hip fracture, had slightly better outcomes in the U.S. than in Canada. Of the 38 studies the authors surveyed, which were winnowed down from a pool of thousands, 14 favored Canada, five the U.S., and 19 yielded mixed results.

These studies are never conclusive. There will always be people who quibble about this or that and just as you might expect there is the obligatory complaint about wait times in Canada.

The point isn't so much whether Canada is better—although it is—the point is that Americans have just got to stop pretending that they have the best health care system in the world. At the very least it's time to admit that it's "one of the best." One thing is very clear, the American system may not be the best in the world but it's sure the most expensive.

The study's authors highlight the fact that per capita spending on health care is 89 percent higher in the U.S. than in Canada. "One thing that people generally know is that the administration costs are much higher in the U.S.," Groome notes. Indeed, one study by Woolhandler published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2003 found that 31 percent of spending on health care in the U.S. went to administrative costs, whereas Canada spent only 17 percent on the same functions.

I suspect there are many European countries with health care systems that are just as good as the one in America. I suspect that Japan, New Zealand, and Australia have good health care as well. I've never seen any data that shows that the quality of health care in America is better than everywhere else in the world. It seems to be one of those myths of American superiority that has no basis in fact. The myth prevents Americans from joining the rest of the civilized world and adopting socialized medicine.

Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science

 
One of my readers (thanks Allyson) has directed me to an article on the Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science. Most of them are familiar to skeptics but they deserve to be more widely publicized. Here are seven ways to recognize a kook.

1. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media.
2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work.
3. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection.
4. Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal.
5. The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries.
6. The discoverer has worked in isolation.
7. The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation.

I'd like to add an eight criterion to this list.

8. The discoverer does not critically evaluate contrary evidence.

Science Blogs

 
The latest issue of Cell has an opinion piece on science blogs by Laura Bonetta. Laure did her homework. She interviewd many of us and distilled the results into a pretty good summary of what science blogging is all about [Scientists Enter the Blogosphere].

I'm pleased that she quoted me on the trade-off between writing a blog and the amount of time it takes away from doing other things.

Moran, at age 60, is somewhat unique among bloggers. Most bloggers, regardless of what they write about, tend to be younger. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project more than half of all bloggers in the United States are under the age of 30. “Most of my colleagues think what I do is strange. Partly, that's because they are not into the technology. I happen to have grown up with the Internet and understand its culture,” says Moran. “I think the younger people who are blogging now are likely to be doing it when they are 60.”

The age barrier is not the only thing keeping more scientists from blogging. The biggest impediment is probably lack of time. According to most bloggers, posts can take 30 minutes to a couple of hours to research and compose. That may not seem like much, except that a critical factor for a blog's success is that posts are updated frequently, ideally at least once a day. “If I ever stop doing this, it is because of time commitment,” says Moran.

This is an important point. I don't know how some of my blogger friends can keep on posting several things every day. It takes me hours to write up a scientific posting. I just can't do it every day.

On the other hand, it takes me only a few minutes to post an opinion piece. Perhaps that's why those postings are more common, even on science blogs. Here's the conundrum. Does a science blog need to have controversial opinion pieces in order to attract enough readers to make the science postings worthwhile? I think the answer is yes.

Undegraduate Research Experience

 
The following press release appeared on EurekAlert [Students benefit from undergraduate research opportunities].

Students benefit from undergraduate research opportunities

Many pursue advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics

Undergraduate students who participate in hands-on research are more likely to pursue advanced degrees and careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields, according to a new study.

The study's authors state that National Science Foundation (NSF) and other entities' efforts to encourage representation of underrepresented groups in STEM fields appear to be effective.

For example, students who entered 2-year colleges were as likely as those who entered 4-year colleges or universities to participate in research. And undergraduate researchers were more likely than non-researchers to pursue a doctorate.

"This study indicates that carefully designed undergraduate research experiences motivate students," said Myles Boylan, program director for NSF's Course, Curriculum and Laboratory Improvement Program in the Divisions of Undergraduate Education and Graduate Education. "Students consider their research experiences to be effective previews of doing STEM graduate work as well as good learning experiences."

Many of the talks and discussions at the recent Experimental Biology meeting in Washington focused on the value of the undergraduate research experience. There were a lot of talks noting the correlation between students who went on to graduate school and students who did an undergraduate research project. Most assumed that it was the undergraduate research experience that motivated students to apply to graduate school.

I'm a little disappointed in these claims. As a scientist, I'm well aware of the fact that a correlation does not prove a cause. In my school, the undergraduates know that you have to do an undergraduate research project in order to enhance your chances of getting into graduate school. Thus, students who are motivated to go to graduate school will choose to do an undergraduate reseach project. I'm not sure that the undergraduate research experience is what motivates students to apply to graduate school or whether it is the motivation to go to graduate school that causes students to choose an undergraduate research project.

In my experience, the undergraduate research project is a fourth (senior) year phenomenon. Usually the application to graduate school has to be sent in before Christmas and the GRE's have to be written long before that. To me this suggests that the motivation precedes the research experience but then I'm just a scientist. What do I know about these things?

Don't get me wrong, I think research experience is a wonderful thing. My concern is that its value is being hyped at the expense of other ways of acquiring knowledge and motivating students to pursue a career in science.

At the meeting, I attended ten different talks on undergraduate research. There wasn't a single talk about how to improve the teaching of basic concepts and principles in biochemistry and molecular biology. Is this a problem? You bet. Several of the speakers revealed some misunderstanding of those very concepts and principles. This leads me to suspect that they are concentrating too much on the "doing" of science and not enough on the understanding.

Where Was I Yesterday? (3)

 

Where Was I Yesterday? (2)

 

Where Was I Yesterday? (1)

 

Nobel Laureate: Christiaan Eijkman

 
 

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1929.



Christiaan Eijkman (1858-1930): "for his discovery of the antineuritic vitamin"



Christiaan Eijkman won the Nobel Prize in 1929 for his observations leading to the discovery of thiamine or vitamin B₁. Deficiencies of thiamine cause beriberi, a disease that was widespread in Asia before the cause was discovered by Eijkman.

The story of Christiann Eijkman is well-known to most biochemistry students. Here's the story as recounted in the Nobel Prize presentation speech.

That the fruits of civilization are not solely beneficial is shown by, inter alia, the history of the art of medicine. Not a few illnesses and diseases follow close on the heels of, and are more or less directly caused by, civilization. This is the case with the widespread disease beriberi, first described more than 1,300 years ago from that ancient seat of civilization, China. In modern times, however, it was not until towards the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century that the disease attracted more general attention. Subsequently it has, on different occasions and with varying degrees of violence, made its appearance in all five continents, but more particularly its haunts have been in Eastern and South-Eastern Asia. At times the disease has been a serious scourge there. Thus in 1871 and 1879, Tokio was visited by widespread epidemics, and during the Russo-Japanese War it is said that not less than one-sixth of the Japanese army was struck down.

Beriberi shows itself in paralysis accompanied by disturbances in the sensibility and atrophy of the muscles, besides symptoms from the heart and blood vessels, inter alia, tiredness and oedema. Decided lesions have been shown in the peripheral nerves which seem to explain the manifestations of the disease. Mortality has varied considerably, from one or two per cent to 80 per cent in certain epidemics.

A number of circumstances indicated a connection between food and beriberi: for example, it was suggested that the cause might be traced to bad rice or insufficiency in the food of proteins or fat.

The severe ravages of beriberi in the Dutch Indies led the Dutch Government to appoint a special commission to study the disease on the spot. At the time, bacteriology was in its hey-day, and it was then but natural that bacteria should be sought as the cause of the disease, and indeed it was thought that success had been attained. The researches were continued in Java by one of the commission's coadjutors, the Dutch doctor Christiaan Eijkman. As has so often been the case during the development of science, a chance observation proved to be of decisive importance. Eijkman observed a peculiar sickness among the hens belonging to the laboratory. They were attacked by an upward-moving paralysis, they began to walk unsteadily, found difficulty in perching, and later lay down on their sides. The issue of the disease was fatal unless they were specially treated. It has been said that the secret of success is to be prepared for one's opportunity when it presents itself, and indubitably Eijkman was prepared in an eminent degree. With his attention focussed on beriberi, he immediately found a striking similarity between that disease and the sickness that had attacked the hens. He also observed changes in numerous nerves similar to those met with in the case of beriberi. In common with beriberi, this ailment of the hens was to be described as a polyneuritis. In vain, however, did Eijkman try to establish micro-organisms as the cause of the disease.

On the other hand, he succeeded in establishing the fact that the condition of the hens was connected with a change in their food, in that for some time before they were attacked they had been given boiled polished rice instead of the usual raw husked rice. Direct experiments proved incontestably that the polyneuritis of the hens was caused by the consumption of rice that by so-called «polishing» had been deprived of the outer husk. Eijkman found that the same disease presented itself when the hens were fed exclusively on a number of other starch-rich products, such as sago and tapioca. He also proved that the disease could be checked by the addition to the food of rice bran, that is to say, the parts of the rice that had been removed by polishing, and he found that the protective constituent of the bran was soluble in water and alcohol.

Eijkman's work led Vorderman to carry out investigations on prisoners in the Dutch Indies (where the prisoner's food was prepared in different ways according to the varying customs of the inhabitants), with a view to discovering whether beriberi in man was connected with the nature of the rice food they consumed. It proved that in the prisons where the inmates were fed on polished rice, beriberi was about 300 times as prevalent as in the prisons where unpolished rice was used.

When making investigations to explain the results reached, Eijkman considered that protein or salt hunger could not be the cause of the disease. But he indicated that the protective property of the rice bran might possibly be connected with the introduction of some particular protein or some special salt. At the time it might have been readily imagined that the polyneuritis in the hens and beriberi were due to some poison, and Eijkman set this up as a working hypothesis, though his attempts to establish the poison were in vain. In his view, however, such a poison was formed, but it was rendered innocuous by the protective substance in the bran. It was only Eijkman's successor in Java, Grijns, who made it clear that the substance in question was used directly in the body, and that our usual food, in addition to the previously known constituents, must contain certain other substances, if health is to be preserved. Funk introduced the designation vitamins for these substances, and since then the particular substance that serves as a protection against polyneuritis has been called the «antineuritic» vitamin.

It might have been expected that Eijkman's discovery would lead to an immediate and decided decline in beriberi - perhaps to the disappearance of the disease. But this was by no means the case, and not even in the Dutch Indies, where Eijkman and Grijns had worked, were the results particularly brilliant. The reasons for this were several: the reluctance of the inhabitants to substitute the less appetizing unpolished for polished rice, the opinion that polyneuritis in birds was not a similar condition to beriberi in man, and an inadequate appreciation of Eijkman's work. As a result of numerous experiments by different investigators on animals and human beings, who offered themselves for experimental work, it has gradually become clear that beriberi is a disease for the appearance of which lack of the vitamin found in rice bran - but also other circumstances - is of decisive importance. These experiences, in addition to successful experiments made in various places on the basis of Eijkman's observations, especially in British India, have gradually led to a general adoption of Eijkman's views. The successful attempts to combat beriberi which are now proceeding are the fruits of Eijkman's labours.

It was the analysis of the nature of the food used in cases of polyneuritis in hens that led Eijkman to his discovery. As a rule, analysis and synthesis complete each other, and indeed the employment of both these avenues of approach has been of decisive importance also for the development of the science of vitamins.

Bacteriophage Lambda

 
Bacteriophage λ is one of the most important model organisms but it's often omitted from the list, especially if the list has been written by anyone under 40.

Hop on over to The Evolutionary Biologist and read up on What has phage lambda ever done for us?. I mentioned in the comments that it's possible to create an entire course on the principles of molecular biology based on bacteriophage λ. That may be a bit of an exaggeration ... but not by much.

I believe strongly that you can't teach a course on developmental biology, for example, without describing the genetic switch in λ.

Today's students know nothing about the valuable contributions made by the phage group. That's a shame because it illustrates science in one of its purist moments. You shouldn't be allowed to graduate if you don't know the real reason why Max Delbrück and Salvador Luria got Nobel Prizes.

My Six Months Are Up!

 
I started Sandwalk six months ago. The goal was to give it six months to see how things worked out. I was told that you have to reach 1000 visits a day to be "successful" as a blogger and, as you can see, I didn't make it. But it's close—the average number of visits per day is a bit over 900.

It will take me a few days to evaluate the experiment.