Factoid and links – Sunday reading
Yup, it’s time I cleaned up my browser tabs and offered my readers pointers to a small selection of the interesting bits’n’bobs hiding there.
Reading the blurb for an up-coming lecture at the University of Otago, The 1918 influenza epidemic in Polynesia, I read ’The 1918 Influenza pandemic was one of the great mortality events in human history. Somewhere between 2 and 5 percent of the global population died due to this outbreak, […]’
Read about Ph.D. comics to be appearing as a movie.
Staying with the subject of movies for a moment, over at Science Progress Jonathan Moreno reviews the up-coming* movie Contagion, arguing it’s respects the intelligence of the audience and represents science and public health workers.
Science has partially retracted a paper proposing a link between the mouse XMRV virus and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). For those new to this, it is something of an on-going saga, one that I first touched on over a year ago now. (Others have been following this for longer.) More on this latest development can be read at Retraction Watch and elsewhere (e.g. at ERV).
The self-same Science magazine includes a blurb describing a product with ‘no chemicals’ and get a deserved ticking off by Deborah Blum at PLoS Blogs. Titled Et tu, Science Magazine? Indeed. (Where were the editors on that one?)
Derek Lowe has a short piece about the a recent success in the FoldIt protein-folding game, along with some failures.
Among things I would liked to have covered, is this research revealing a genetic basis for (some cases of) hereditary crossed or ‘lazy’ eyes (strabismus), covered here by Ben Good.
At ArsTechnica, Robert Fortner reports that polio may be on the way out in India (with graph). If true: good to hear!
The (many, many!) other tabs are pointing at research papers or other things that are a bit too geeky for general reading, so I’ll leave you with these few. At least I can feel less guilty about throwing the tabs away now…**
Footnotes
* Or is it already out? I’m behind the times; too much work, not enough play…
** I’m kidding, of course.
Other articles on Code for life:
Monkey business, or is my uncle also my Dad?
Life sciences want bioinformatics, but not so much e-infrastructure?
5 Responses to “Factoid and links – Sunday reading”
The XMRV saga continues to throw up interesting tit-bits. ERV has a post up showing that two gels reporting different results look surprisingly similar:
http://scienceblogs.com/erv/2011/09/xmrv_and_chronic_fatigue_syndr_29.php
I haven’t looked into this in detail as I’m far too busy to try to, hence I’ll leave the interpretation up to you readers – read her post.
I’ll let readers make what they will of this rumour (unconfirmed at the time of writing): “The entire WPI research program has been closed by the institute’s CEO, and the facility is now locked down.â€
http://treatingxmrv.blogspot.com/2011/10/square-one.html
(I’m drawing attention to the developments at the institute, not the views expressed in the main body of this article.)
There is nothing on the WPI website by way of news or press releases. (Yet.)
H/T: Comment by ERV
Follow-up at the Wall Street Journal blogs:
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2011/10/03/scientist-who-led-xmrv-research-team-let-go/
More here from Retraction Watch:
http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/why-didnt-xmrv-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-researcher-mikovits-now-fired-share-data-with-science/
An now more in Science Insider from Science magazine:
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Researcher Fired Amidst New Controversy.
(Those less familiar with the science find some of the explanations in the Science Insider article difficult to follow. FWIW: Abbie has objected to the description of her blog as being ‘snarky’, saying ‘irreverent’ is nearer the mark.)