Brainstorms Heard of the Brainstorm Consortium? A worldwide group of dozens of researchers is trying to understand diagnosis from the bottom up, starting with your genes. In a recent paper in Science, the group looked at 25 “brain associated” disorder, ten of them psychiatric, fifteen neurologic. They sorted them through GWASS – genome wide association […]
Can Cancer Be “Solved” in Ten Years?
Microsoft researchers in Cambridge, England are proposing to “solve” the “cancer puzzle” in ten years. How Will They Do It? Treating cells as “programs” rather like software. The result will be turning cells into “living computers” that can be reprogrammed – to treat cancer or any other illness. Work has commenced on a Bio Model Analyzer, […]
Can We Regulate Food Like Tobacco? (7/7/14)
Obesity and Health Many groups, like the Consumers International and the World Obesity Federation, argue food should be regulated as strictly as tobacco. Their claim (BBC News, May 18th) is that deaths from obesity are rising rapidly – about 30% globally from 2005-2010 – and that obesity promotes so many chronic diseases – from diabetes […]
Learning From the 400,000 Year Old Man (12/18/13)
Where We All Come From Is North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un scared of a thighbone? One that’s 400,000 years old? He should be. A bedrock of North Korean ideology since the 1940’s has been North Korean’s racial homogeneity and superiority over everyone else – particularly hybrid Americans. It’s one way you can keep a […]
Lust In the Dust (10/21/13)
Must Sex Lead to Death? Never heard of the dasykaluta? The phascogale? Don’t be surprised. Small marsupials rarely get favorable media attention. Look at how we treat mice. But these otherwise insubstantial, arthropod ingesting (that includes roaches) rodents deserve our interest and perhaps our piteous respect. For they show the lengths evolution can go to […]