The true colors of the modern-day anti-smoking movement showed brightly last week, as a prominent smoke-free air advocate (me) was thrown off a smoke-free advocacy list-serve for daring to criticize an inflammatory and unfounded personal attack, bordering on defamation, of an individual (private citizen) who is a smoking ban opponent which was posted on the [...]

Swine flu started in pigs (although we don’t exactly when or where), adapted to and passed to humans who returned the favor and passed it back to pig herds. Then we heard that turkeys in Chile had contracted the virus, followed by ferrets and a house cat. We can infect animals cross species with flu [...]

Right-wing pundits/Conservatives/the Usual Suspects hate how much money the government has spent/is spending on HIV/AIDS. “No one gets AIDS but homos and blacks, so why the hell is the government spending all this money on AIDS and not cancer?” (random example)
There is a pattern Im seeing in these kinds of people: They are stupid, [...]

I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and think about things. In fact I frequently have a problem with early waking. I think it’s age related. In any event, one of the things I sometimes think about (mainly I think about my research or something connected with it, which is one reason [...]

Spontaneous cerebrospinal rhinorrhea is a rare clinical condition. More commonly it develops due to cerebral tumors or hydrocephalus; it is seldom seen in association with empty sella syndrome. This is a 40 yr old female with spontaneous CSF leak. MRI images reveal a flattened thinned out pituitary gland and defect in the sellar floor on [...]

This is a case of 38 yr old female who presented to us with a history of convulsions. MR imaging brain was performed and a small focus of splenium hyperintensity is noted on diffusion weighted and slightly hyperintense on FLAIR images.DiscussionFocal splenial hyperintensity has been reported in patients with clinically mild encephalitis/encephalopathy, epilepsy, in association [...]

It was ALL OVER the internet (check out Observations of the Nerd for some particularly good coverage), of course you know I HAD to blog it, right? Sadly, it got taken over in the first week by the Oxytocin weeks of DOOM (oh, it was doom, there were a lot of late nights that [...]

I am told that Goldie Hawn is developing a mindfulness curriculum.:
Equipping children with the social and emotional skills they need to lead smarter, healthier, and happier lives.
One can hope. It beats mindless movies and TV, right?
Hat tip: Stephanie West Allen at Brains on Purpose

Sacrococcygeal teratoma is the most common tumour of the fetus and neonate, with a reported incidence of 1 in 35,000-40,000. This neoplasm is composed of tissues from all three germ layers. The extent of sacrococcygeal teratoma was classified according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.Type 1 – Primarily external and has only a mimimal presacral [...]

Source: Children’s Hospital BostonDate: November 23, 2009
Summary:
Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells — adult cells reprogrammed to look and function like versatile embryonic stem cells — are of growing interest in medicine. They may provide a way to create different kinds of patient-matched stem cells as treatments for disease, while sidestepping many of the [...]