Anisotropic Perspectives

Cool.

Philadelphia’s Monell Center sampled the air directly above basal cell carcinomas [using GC-MS -ed] and found it was different to similar samples from healthy skin.

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[Another group -ed] has trained dogs to detect subtle changes in the odour of urine which could indicate bladder cancer, and is hoping to detect prostate and skin cancers the same way.

I used to dream about things like this.

Photos from the Daily Mail

More from the Source (Hong Kong LEGO Users Group)

These are the three major reasons Olivia Judson gives for not trivializing evolution as an optional component of introductory biology.  It’s a great article, and I’d like to emphasize an additional point: it’s a powerful idea that just works.  Hence the excitement over comparative genomics.  By studying the process of evolution by natural selection on the genetic level (studying the DNA of closely and distantly related species), we can identify parts of the genome that are likely to be “evolutionarily constrained”.  That is, random mutations that mess up traits important for successful propagation are selected out, while random mutations in less useful regions can get passed around.  Why does this matter?  It helps us identify “useful” genes for experimental investigation (genes that could put your life or health at risk if they are spelled a certain way or are put in the wrong environment).

From the Phoenix Mars Lander…

“We have water,” said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead scientist for the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA. “We’ve seen evidence for this water ice before in observations by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and in disappearing chunks observed by Phoenix last month, but this is the first time Martian water has been touched and tasted.”

Basically, the TEGA cooks the sample, releasing vapors that are then characterized by a mass spec that allows comparisons of isotopic abundances of H, O, C, and N (in other words, looking for molecular signs of life).

Nicholas Carr comments on something I think we’ve all noticed.  Excellent read.

“Is Google Making Us Stupid?”

YouTube videos about every known element.  Fun.

http://www.periodicvideos.com

Olivia Judson asks us to move beyond the obsession with Darwin.

Darwin was an amazing man, and the principal founder of evolutionary biology. But his was the first major statement on the subject, not the last. Calling evolutionary biology “Darwinism,” and evolution by natural selection “Darwinian” evolution, is like calling aeronautical engineering “Wrightism,” and fixed-wing aircraft “Wrightian” planes, after those pioneers of fixed-wing flight, the Wright brothers. The best tribute we could give Darwin is to call him the founder — and leave it at that. Plenty of people in history have had an -ism named after them. Only a handful can claim truly to have given birth to an entire field of modern science.

Michael Leavitt, Secretary of Health and Human Services, prepared some disturbing remarks on the (not so bright) future of Medicare.

When I was born, [health care] was four percent of the economy. When my son was born it had doubled to eight percent, when my first Grandson was born two years ago, it had doubled again to 16 percent… Every piece of evidence shows the trend continuing. The problem is beyond the fact that medical cost growth is faster than that of any other part of the economy… Today, 12 percent of the population is 65 or older. By 2030, nearly 20 percent of us will be seniors.

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The real pressure on this problem starts between now and 2019 when the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund is projected to become insolvent. There is no backup plan in the law to ensure that hospitals continue to be paid when the Trust Fund is depleted.

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The typical household is going to see its healthcare spending basically double in the next twenty years – from 23 percent to 41 percent of total compensation. At the same time, we are going to nearly double the share of federal spending that goes to pay for Medicare, from 13 percent to more than 23 percent. And we are going to do this while the number of working people per Medicare beneficiary is sliced nearly in half, from 4 to 2 and a half.

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At the beginning of the 20th Century, Argentina was one of the wealthiest countries in the world — wealthier even than the United States. Over the next 50 years, successive governments constructed, and then expanded, an ever-generous system of social benefits, nationalized industries, and created a vast and bloated public administration. Yet protectionist policies and a failure to invest in innovation in agriculture and other key industries meant the world economy began to change while Argentina’s didn’t. Its productivity suffered. But the country kept on spending, content and confident it was better-off than its neighbors.

As it turns out, Argentina had been operating for many years on money borrowed from the financial markets and organizations like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. By the 1990’s, the mortgage outstripped the country’s ability to pay. Creditors told Argentina, “no more, unless you fix your entitlements.”

Frankly, Argentina had started down the path of reform late, and once the government started, the political pain was too much–the nation could not sustain it. The government developed a solid monetary policy, but could not change its fiscal or spending practices.

A few years later, Argentina was in political turmoil, with a rapid succession of governments, a currency in free-fall, and a rapid spike in unemployment. The country teetered on the verge of civil unrest. Why? Because Argentines had put off hard choices for so long they were forced to make change too quickly, and they simply didn’t have the political strength to do it.

Why do we keep electing invertebrates to public office?

From the NYT:

Increasing use of the scans, formally known as CT angiograms, is part of a much larger trend in American medicine. A faith in innovation, often driven by financial incentives, encourages American doctors and hospitals to adopt new technologies even without proof that they work better than older techniques. Patient advocacy groups and some doctors are clamoring for such evidence. But the story of the CT angiogram is a sobering reminder of the forces that overwhelm such efforts, making it very difficult to rein in a new technology long enough to determine whether its benefits are worth its costs.

Some medical experts say the American devotion to the newest, most expensive technology is an important reason that the United States spends much more on health care than other industrialized nations — more than $2.2 trillion in 2007, an estimated $7,500 a person, about twice the average in other countries — without providing better care.

From New Scientist