Science & Society

Quick, which states have the most philosophical exemptions from vaccines, religious states or the more atheist states? Answer: the states with more atheists per capita - because in America they share a political and cultural demographic that is inherently anti-science. But I have good news for those anti-science people; an actual religious person has filed for a philosophical exemption, which means they can now claim anti-vaccination beliefs are 'bipartisan', just like anti-science beliefs about GMOs are bipartisan if 2 members of Congress out of 55 calling for warning labels are Republican…

Recognition of early-career women scientists helps encourage participation in medical research, builds strong research cultures, and inspires a new generation of scientists.  In that light, five medical and life science researchers from Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean Basin today received the 2013 Elsevier Foundation Awards for Early Career Women Scientists in the Developing World for work that could contribute to life-saving knowledge and therapies worldwide. The prizes were awarded by The Elsevier Foundation, the Organization for Women in Science for the…

You can bet that if I don't have my Double Black Diamond Extra Bold tomorrow morning, I am writing me a letter to Congress. Guatemalans take their coffee just as seriously and have already gone to Def-Con 1 over coffee rust, which is affecting 70% of the country's crop. Roya is a fungus that grows on the leaves of the coffee plant and that starves the beans. It's caused by too much rain, which is a recurring problem and always has been but coffee is big business now.  In 1982, the world used 2.6 billion pounds of coffee beans but in 2011, that number was 17.6 billion pounds, according to…

Heightened regulation, increased lawsuits and a resulting lack of venture capital has meant the western pharmaceutical industry faces a looming crisis but companies outside America and Europe may pick up the slack - new targets/drugs remain an evergreen medical idea elsewhere, especially to address the unmet need of drug resistance in the treatment of cancer.   Targeting kinases have been the target of most drug developers because they hold the key path to signaling, development and growth of the cell. Tumors/cancer biology indicates that this balance is disturbed and inhibiting the…

In a recent JAMA article, 2008 National Survey of Mental Health Treatment Facilities data of psychiatric hospitals, residential treatment centers and freestanding outpatient clinics or partial-care and multiservice mental health groups found that only 63 percent of U.S. counties have at least one mental health facility that provides outpatient treatment for youth.  Less than half of U.S. counties have a mental health facility with special programs for youth with severe emotional disturbance. The gaps in infrastructure are even larger in rural communities, where less than half even have…

President Barack Obama has been criticized for a lack of diversity in his cabinet compared to his predecessor - charges he also faced when he was president of the Harvard Law Review and only 25% of editors chosen by him were women. His Supreme Court Justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, were women but their selection meant that all 9 Supreme Court Justices have been chosen from a 230 mile section of the United States - two Ivy League Schools, Harvard and Yale, making decisions for all Americans. Critics again claimed a lack of diversity. While not blazing any trails, the Obama…

Media is increasingly filled with miracle vegetable and scare journalism stories, all that say they are based on scientific studies. When faced with a headline that suggests an Alzheimer's drug increases the risk of heart attack or that watching TV is bad for children's mental health, or that pesticides are causing a decline in bee populations, how do people know which can be taken seriously and which are just 'scares'? Checking for peer review is a good first step.  The 'alar scare' over apples in the US, for example, was produced by a shoddy activist group and then promoted by health…

It's no shock to know there is no anthropology without beer. No history either. Really, it took alcohol to get someone to write down mundane events in longhand.  And beer-making equipment was prized above all else, that is why many of our earliest finds from ancient civilizations have been related to it. Beer happened for the best of reasons; back when early man was running out of berries to forage and game to hunt, a schism happened in ancient tribes.  In once camp were the Luddites who wanted to stay rooted in the past; hold the population down, mitigate, ration, raise money for…

There is a reason for the disparity between charitable giving among people who advocate smaller government and larger government; people who advocate larger government already feel like they are doing their part by paying more in taxes, so they give less to charity. That same mindset limits green consumerism, says economist Dr. Grischa Perino from the University of East Anglia (UEA).  Schemes that aim to regulate greenhouse gas emissions make people feel like they have already done their part by paying more money in government programs and are less motivated to care on a…

The 1950s are irrationally idealized by some economists and also irrationally derided by some in culture, but a new paper in the Archives of Sexual Behavior seeks to rehabilitate the cultural aspects and make the case that the 1950s use of penicillin, and not birth control or more common abortions a decade later, created the 'sexual revolution' and its rise in in risky, consequence-free behavior during the "swinging 60s".   As penicillin drove down the cost of having risky sex, the population started having more of it, says  Emory University economist Andrew Francis,…