TED talks - Human Pheromones
Another great place for a quick fix of science is TED talks. Some of them are terrible unfortunately, and some are very good. Almost all TED talks suffer from trying to have a large 'wow' factor, when they don't necessarily need it. The bayblab has linked to many TED talks previously.A past bayblab post on the topic of human pheromones suggested that there isn't much good data on the topic. A recent TED talk on the subject is an example of a good TED talk. The speaker Tristram Wyatt talks about the background and history of pheromones and the recent discovery of a potentially genuine human pheromone that acts on babies. (Source: Bayblab)
Source: Bayblab - May 21, 2014 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Rob Source Type: blogs
Clinicaltrails.gov has more clinical trial data than Pubmed
Arecent PLOS publication examined clinical trial results available at clinicaltrials.gov and clinical trial data published in journals. Their results demonstrated that there is more trial data available atclinicaltrials.gov than what is available in the published literature. Data that was significantly more reported included efficacy, adverse events and serious adverse events. Is anyone using this as a resource for clinical trial data? (Source: Bayblab)
Source: Bayblab - January 31, 2014 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Rob Source Type: blogs
Clinicaltrails.gov has more clinical trial data than Pubmed
A recent PLOS publication examined clinical trial results available at clinicaltrials.gov and clinical trial data published in journals. Their results demonstrated that there is more trial data available at clinicaltrials.gov than what is available in the published literature. Data that was significantly more reported included efficacy, adverse events and serious adverse events. Is anyone using this as a resource for clinical trial data? (Source: Bayblab)
Source: Bayblab - January 31, 2014 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Rob Source Type: blogs
Conflict of Interest in Systematic Reviews
There isa recent systematic review of systematic reviews in PLOS Medicine examining the effect of industry funding on conclusions. The authors found that industry sponsored systematic reviews are 5 times more likely to support a conclusion of no positive association between sugar-sweetened beverages and obesity or weight gain as compared to studies that did not report industry funding. The authors do not give suggestions for the mechanism by which bias may have entered the systematic reviews other than the heterogeneity of literature selection. Examine systematic reviews carefully! (Source: Bayblab)
Source: Bayblab - January 22, 2014 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Rob Source Type: blogs
Conflict of Interest in Systematic Reviews
There is a recent systematic review of systematic reviews in PLOS Medicine examining the effect of industry funding on conclusions. The authors found that industry sponsored systematic reviews are 5 times more likely to support a conclusion of no positive association between sugar-sweetened beverages and obesity or weight gain as compared to studies that did not report industry funding. The authors do not give suggestions for the mechanism by which bias may have entered the systematic reviews other than the heterogeneity of literature selection. Examine systematic reviews carefully! (Source: Bayblab)
Source: Bayblab - January 22, 2014 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Rob Source Type: blogs
Curling Science - Sweeping
I often ponder the physics of curling, and have previously posted on thedrag effect here on the bayblab. These musings have yet to improve my game but as the winter olympics approach and as my beer league curling team suffers embarrassing defeats from inebriated senior citizens, I thought I would post some information I found on sweeping.Sweeping is done by one or more players on the team whose rock is being shot. The players sweep the ice, using specific curling brooms, directly in the path of the travelling rock. Sweeping reduces the deceleration and the degree to which the path of the rock curls.A common belief is that ...
Source: Bayblab - January 19, 2014 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Rob Source Type: blogs
Curling Science - Sweeping
I often ponder the physics of curling, and have previously posted on the drag effect here on the bayblab. These musings have yet to improve my game but as the winter olympics approach and as my beer league curling team suffers embarrassing defeats from inebriated senior citizens, I thought I would post some information I found on sweeping.Sweeping is done by one or more players on the team whose rock is being shot. The players sweep the ice, using specific curling brooms, directly in the path of the travelling rock. Sweeping reduces the deceleration and the degree to which the path of the rock curls.A common belief is that...
Source: Bayblab - January 19, 2014 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Rob Source Type: blogs
Curie Temperature
The Curie Temperature is a material specific temperature, where thermal motion of dipoles in a ferromagnetic material overcomes forces aligning the dipoles. Above this temperature dipoles do not align and the material looses its ability to be attracted to a magnet. Interestingly this temperature effect is sharp (I have no idea why) and thus leads to some interesting demonstrations. (Source: Bayblab)
Source: Bayblab - December 18, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Rob Source Type: blogs
Not Exactly Rocket Science - Ed Yong
As a continuation of shout-outs to awesome sources of online science snacks, I would like to mention Ed Yong's Not Exactly Rocket Science (NERS) blog. The blog has been active for almost as long as the Bayblab and has changed locations on a couple of occasions. It is currently being hosted at national geographic phenomena, where they also host the complete back catalogue of NERS posts, and which also hosts a few other awesome science blogs. NERS articles are entertaining, accurate and full of links, so it is a good starting place for some science surfing.In a recent example of an interesting article at NERS, Ed Yong writes...
Source: Bayblab - December 10, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Rob Source Type: blogs
Research ethics
The presence of falsified data in the scientific literature is arguably more important than the absence of negative results. The absence of negative results in the reporting of clinical trials is a serious problem as excellently outlined in a TED talk by Ben Goldacre. Data that has been fabricated is more offensive to me as it genuinely pollutes the literature and decreases public and professional confidence in science. Scientists who do the 'best' job of fabrication without getting caught could go on to achieve greater success and pollute the literature even more. An article at Nature news highlights some researchers atte...
Source: Bayblab - November 27, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Rob Source Type: blogs
An experiment on open access journals
As you may have already heard, an experiment on open access journals was organized by Science magazine. A spoof manuscript describing a novel cancer drug was submitted to 304 open access journals and had a 70% acceptance rate. The manuscript had many intentional errors that should have been picked up easily by the peer review process.
As a fan of the ideals of open access publishing I do believe this was an important finding. Clearly there are problems with the peer review process in these journals. This needs to be addressed.
What I find strange is that the conclusions of this experiment fail basic logic. This experiment ...
Source: Bayblab - October 16, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Rob Source Type: blogs
Numberphile - The Enigma Machine
Recently posted praise on the Bayblab was directed at SciShow for its easily digestible science stories. Now it appears remiss not to mention other great sources of science snacks. We'll take some time over several posts to cover some of these entertaining sources. Feel free to make some suggestions in the comments.
One source that we have to mention, despite the fact that it is not strictly science, is Numberphile. Numberphile is a Youtube channel that consists of "videos about numbers and stuff." Again, the host is excellent and there are some very interesting videos.
For example, in these days of revelations of the NSA'...
Source: Bayblab - October 2, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: rob Source Type: blogs
Auto-brewery Syndrome - Free Beer
A personal brewery could fit in there.
A recent 'news' story caught my attention as it was about a man with a bizarre affliction. The subject was apparently drunk to varying degrees for five years straight. Of course this isn't that unusual, except that he was not drinking alcohol, the flora in his gut was fermenting dietary carbohydrates into ethanol. After years of being a suspected 'closet drinker' he was treated with antifungal medication and is now free of his involuntary inebriation.
According to the linked news article the condition is very rare, however upon searching for this syndrome on pubmed I am given a dif...
Source: Bayblab - September 23, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: rob Source Type: blogs
Sarin Gas
If you haven't checked out SciShow on Youtube yet, please do yourself this favour. Consisting of quick science related videos it is accessible, entertaining and surprisingly informative. The SciShow team have a pretty good time with the material as well, probably best evidenced by the recent "Is SHARKNADO Possible?"
A recent SciShow describes some basic facts about Sarin gas, the nerve agent that recently killed hundreds of Syrian civilians. The video describes Sarin as an inhibitor of acetylcholinesterase. Sarin's inhibition of this enzyme prevents removal of actylecholine from neuromuscular junctions resulting in continu...
Source: Bayblab - September 11, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: rob Source Type: blogs
Bear Spray
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Where I'm living black bears are quite
commonly seen around town. While I have yet to hear of a really bad
bear encounter many bears are destroyed every year for getting too
familiar with town. Most people here merely avoid them when they see them. Alternatively, aggressive responses to threatening bear encounters include
firearms and pepper spray. While obtaining a firearm requires getting a
firearms license and many restrictions, getting bear spray is as simple as purchasing some from Canadian Tire.
So what is bear pepper spray and does
it work?
The active ingredient in bear pepper
...
Source: Bayblab - April 23, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: rob Source Type: blogs
