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Boyce Rensberger's Tracker
To your molecular biology vocabulary, add the term XNA.
The X, as Eryn Brown wrote in the Los Angeles Times, is from the Greek xeno, the prefix meaning strange or alien. Thus, "strange nucleic...
For many years dentists' offices have...
For many years dentists' offices have displayed posters claiming that gum disease can lead to cardiovascular disease. Periodontists have even led patients to believe that treating gum inflammations and infections can help prevent heart attacks. The connection looked fishy when a supposed link first arose, a former staffer at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research told the Tracker, but that didn't stop the institute from pushing the idea until it became widely accepted.
In 2005, for example, a research paper, promoted with a dental institute news release was headlined, "...
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With their almost poetic name, cosmic rays have tantalized scientists and science watchers for a century. Originally thought to be a form of electromagnetic radiation--hence the "ray" name--they are charged subatomic particles that streak...
With their gelatinous, tentacled, pulsating bodies jellyfish hardly seem...
With their gelatinous, tentacled, pulsating bodies jellyfish hardly seem like creatures designed for success in today's world. But they are thriving, multiplying, spreading throughout most of the world's coastal ecosystems, according to a new report out of the University of British Columbia.
Gerry Bellett, writing in the Vancouver Sun, says the scientists credit global warming, pollution and human activity for the growing success of one of the world's more primitive organisms.
Anecdotal evidence in recent decades has suggested that there were more...
The Higgs boson, if it exists, remains in hiding.
After weeks of...
The Higgs boson, if it exists, remains in hiding.
After weeks of hype suggesting that physicists at the Large Hadron Collider had found solid evidence of the existence of the fabled particle, the long-awaited announcement Tuesday morning produced these characterizations:
--"tantalizing hints" Dennis Overbye in the New York Times
--"intriguing hints" John...
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Coolest thing in Science Times this morning is an image of a huge mountain range, more rugged than the Alps, that lies beneath two miles of Antarctic ice. That's it in the picture at the right. (The image is a few years old but, as far as the Tracker can tell, not...
The Washington Post's Fact Checker...
The Washington Post's Fact Checker column by Glenn Kessler regularly examines claims by Republican candidates for the presidency, awarding anywhere from zero to four Pinnocchios. Rarely does science figure in the mix. Sunday's column did visit a science topic.
Rick Perry has accused climate scientists of manipulating data to attract federal funding. He has claimed that "almost weekly, or even daily" a growing number of scientists are coming out against climate change as caused by human activity.
Kessler easily...
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Physics watchers are all atwitter about a news conference set for 8 a.m. Eastern time Tuesday. That's when two teams of researchers at the Large Hadron Collider are to announce findings that are widely rumored to point to the existence of the Higgs boson. That, in turn, is the long hypothesized particle whose existence would confirm the existence of another hypothetical thing called the Higgs field. That field is predicted by the Standard Model,...
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The concept behind gene therapy has always had great appeal. You have a disease caused by a bad gene? Install a good version of the gene and it might well compensate. Nothing succeeds in medicine like a quick fix. If it works.
Of course, it turned out that genes work in far more complex ways than once imagined. And there's the...
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If this one hadn't appeared in The Huffington Post (albeit the UK edition), we probably would have ignored it. But since a fair number of intelligent but young people read THP, they might well think David Whitehouse has disclosed a dirty little secret of science and medical journalism--the embargo....
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Fortunately, it's extinct, maybe for half a billion years. It was, as several science writers put it without quotes, "the world's first superpredator." Hm.
Anomalocaris, known for some years from fossil deposits in the Burgess Shale in British Columbia,...
Maybe science pundits have it wrong. Maybe Americans aren't...
Maybe science pundits have it wrong. Maybe Americans aren't as science illiterate as has been fashionable to claim for generations. I found a ray of hope in an online blog post on the Washington Post's site today. The column, by Alexandra Petri, is called ComPost.
Here's her lede: "Like the Higgs Boson, Rick Perry’s latest ad must be seen to be believed. But I’m somewhat relieved that the Higgs Boson might exist."
Yes, it's a bit of a non sequitur, but that's not my point. Nor is my point the reference to Rick Perry, who is the...
One of life's little mysteries, but an enduring one that has fascinated almost everyone...
One of life's little mysteries, but an enduring one that has fascinated almost everyone is why yawns are catching. Relatively few scientists have studied it. And still there is no agreed explanation.
But from the latest PLoS ONE comes a modest study suggesting that the link that transmits the yawn impulse varies with how close two people are. According to Italian researchers who observed free living humans in various settings, the power of the yawn signal (whether visual or auditory) is strongest between family members and close friends. It is weakest between strangers. And intermediate between acquaintances. The researchers say this implies that yawning is a display of empathy, much like smiling when somebody else smiles.
The study got a...
Seems we've been doing something about the weather after all. We've been making it worse.
As a result 2011 has just taken the record as having the worst weather--measured as billion-dollar calamities--on record. And, confirming what many have suspected, NOAA is attributing it--at least in part--to climate change.
In the current calendar year, the U.S. has seen twelve weather disasters costing more than $1 billion each. In total they have cost about $52 billion. And more...
Newsworthiness is not a level playing field.
Some...
Newsworthiness is not a level playing field.
Some topics merit coverage only when something really big happens. Others get into the news media on the merest of incremental developments.
Dinosaurs are a good example of the low-threshold category. So many people love to read about them that just about any claim relating to these extinct reptiles gets into the paper or on the air or--especially--onto the Web. Today's example is a previously unknown species found in a museum cabinet. (News release here.)
In the medical realm the lowest standards for newsworthiness probably are for claims and opinions about breast...
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