June 2011
67 posts
May 2011
48 posts
“It almost never feels like prejudice. Instead, it seems fitting and just—the...”
– Carl Sagan (via theperplexedobserver)
“To truly assess the efficacy of acupuncture a widespread double-blind test needs...”
– Made-up medicine works on made-up illnesses (via edyong209)
While this article may be funny, it has an incredibly narrow idea of what ailments are and are not “real” and what can be an effective treatment. The joke seems to be: we don’t really know why acupuncture works, it...
Two Girls, One Brain →
Could Conjoined Twins Share a Mind?
By SUSAN DOMINUS
“Twins joined at the head — the medical term is craniopagus — are one in 2.5 million, of which only a fraction survive. The way the girls’ brains formed beneath the surface of their fused skulls, however, makes them beyond rare: their neural anatomy is unique, at least in the annals of recorded scientific literature. Their brain images...
“The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because...”
– Jules Henri Poincaré (1854-1912) French mathematician
The Mysterious
“An entire universe that has scarcely been explored lies before the scientist. There is the sky sprinkled with celestial bodies moving about in the darkness of infinite space, the sea with its mysterious depths, the earth guarding within its innermost recesses the history of life, including man’s predecessors; and finally, the human organism or masterpiece of creation. Each cell...
“To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and flow of the tides, to feel...”
– Rachel Carson
“To say that a man is made up of certain chemical elements is a satisfactory...”
– Hermann Joseph Muller (1890-1967) U. S. geneticist. Nobel prize for medicine 1946.
“There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and...”
– Dalai Lama
Scientists cure cancer, but no one takes notice →
fuckyeahdevelopmentalbiology:
Canadian researchers find a simple cure for cancer, but major pharmaceutical companies are not interested.
Researchers at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Canada have cured cancer last week, yet there is a little ripple in the news or in TV. It is a simple technique using very basic drug. The method employs dichloroacetate, which is currently used to...
“When I was chief scientist at NOAA in the early 1990s, one of the agency’s...”
– Sylvia Earle Smith College, 2011 Commencement Address
http://www.smith.edu/events/commencement_speech2011.php
Psychiatrists are the least religious of all... →
“Patients probably seek out, to some extent, physicians who share their views on life’s big questions,” Curlin said. That may be especially true in psychiatry, where communication is so essential. The mismatch in religious beliefs between psychiatrists and patients may make it difficult for patients suffering from emotional or personal problems to find physicians who share...
“If language naturally evolves to serve the needs of tiny rodents with tiny...”
– Temple Grandin
Health-care providers are prescribing... →
“What we learned suggests that providers are referring their patients for mind-body therapies as a last resort once conventional therapeutic options have failed. It makes us wonder whether referring patients for these therapies earlier in the treatment process could lead to less use of the health care system, and possibly, better outcomes for these patients.” -Aditi Nerurkar, MD,...
“There’s so much humanity in a love of trees, so much nostalgia for our first...”
– Muriel Barbery “The Elegance of the Hedgehog”
Mechanisms of Love
Just finished my Organic Chemistry final yesterday. I’ve never been overly molecularly-minded, so it was tough terrain to study. But once I get into the zone with orgo studying, I find a state of utter bliss/despair, where everything is as enigmatic as an electron. And then I write poetry.
Mechanisms of Love The Claisen condensation reaction brings together two esters, but what does this...
