Reliable Science News
Where are you getting your science news? The analysis summarized by Nature.com paints a sad picture for what I’ll call general science news. Of course many of us get news specific to our fields via specialized journals, conferences, and colleagues. For the general audience, scientists and science enthusiasts, there are some poor choices out there.
I think it’s great they didn’t mention IFLS, which is on par with Food Babe. I am curious why Mosaic wasn’t mentioned.
Perhaps of interest to Gnotic Pasta and Susan Jahn
Ancient Economies: Persepolis and the Economy of Achemenid Persia – a lecture by Matt Stolper
I’m loving the #ActualLivingScientist hashtag on Twitter, especially the ones combined with #DressLikeAWoman.
Cleveland Clinic is fully committed to evidence-based medicine
I wonder what appropriately disciplined means. Anyway, I’m glad that the Cleveland Clinic recognized the danger of having their name associated with anything anti-vax.
The Science Mag article mentioned the increasing popularity of Alternative Medicine and how the Cleveland Clinic isn’t the only big hospital that is offering Alternative Medicine.
Here’s a bit from NPR from a few years ago.
But Is It Medicine? – Northwestern Memorial was one of the first U.S. hospitals to combine conventional medicine with alternative treatments like acupuncture, Reiki, and Chinese herbal remedies. In response to patient demand, a growing number of hospitals in Chicago and across the country are offering such services, but questions remain about their legitimacy. Most have not been scientifically proven to work, which also means they aren’t covered by insurance. Should patients be shelling out of pocket for alternative treatments? And what solution can conventional medicine provide?
Chicago Mag and NPR
https://soundcloud.com/morningshiftwbez/chicagos-northwestern-memorial
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/August-2013/Integrative-Medicine/
eta
I’ve written before about why it’s so important to correct false information about vaccines. Here’s just one example.
Pointy nosed blue chimaera, Hydrolagus cf. trolli
I really enjoyed the narration in the video from the Monterrey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI)). It discusses the difficulty of identifying deep sea species.
h/t Cindy Brown
http://www.mbari.org/the-pointy-nosed-blue-chimaera-really-gets-around/
The future might not be so bright
Professor Sam Wineburg, with the Stanford History Education Group started a study to examine how students (middle school, up to undergraduates) understand real vs. fake news. Although the study began well before fake news became such a big issue during the election, the report is very timely. One positive outcome of this work is that, the researchers hope to produce videos showing the depth of the problem and demonstrating the link between digital literacy and informed citizenship.
You can read another version, summarizing the research here:
Remember, it’s #FidoFriday.
Fugazza et al, recently published work demonstrating that dogs have episodic-like memory. What’s episodic memory? It’s your personal recollection of an event, but not to be confused with autobiographical memory. Semantic memory is recollection of facts, e.g., knowing the capital of Iowa. To distinguish between episodic memory and autobiographical memory, remember autobiographical memory includes semantic memory, e.g., the names of the places in your memories.
In this study, dogs were trained to mimic the trainer when the trainer gave the command “do it”. It’s called Do as I Do training. To get at episodic memory, the dogs were then trained to lie down after watching the owner do a task, like touch an umbrella or jump over a chair. Then the dogs were surprised by being asked, “do it”. They had to remember what was done 1 minute earlier and 1 hour earlier. As with many of us, the dogs did much better at the shorter delay of 1 minute.
You can read more about memory types here:
Episodic Memory: Definition and Examples
http://www.livescience.com/43682-episodic-memory.html
The full article is here:
Recall of Others’ Actions after Incidental Encoding Reveals Episodic-like Memory in Dogs
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(16)31142-3
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/11/your-dog-remembers-more-you-think
Many bits of Sobek
It’s always fun to see what will be discovered when museums use CT scanners on their artifacts. GE has CT scanners in semi trucks to make them mobile. A few years ago a colleague imaged quite a few artifacts for the Field Museum of Natural History with one of the mobile GE CT scanners.
Engineer your own remedy
I’m at work but plan to watch Buddhini Samarasinghe interview Geoff Watts who wrote the article about Tal Golesworthy, an engineer that decided to engineer his own solution.
https://www.facebook.com/mosaicscience/videos/vb.592368587469654/1311131618926677/?type=3&theater
#ISeeTheWorldWithScience.
Trouble brewing at work.
If you want to guess what the two items are, tell me something interesting about them but don’t say what your guess is. Please don’t blurt out the answer.
If you don’t want to guess, you can tell me what science the image makes you think of.
Previous examples of #ISeeTheWorldWithScience
http://goo.gl/98ZhNL via +Mark Crowley
http://goo.gl/kPz2Kr via +Rajini Rao
http://goo.gl/3nhaI4 via +Johnathan Chung
http://goo.gl/XpKIco via me
ETA
This edition of #ISeeTheWorldWithScience is long over. The two items below are liquid helium dewars that I used to refill my MRI at work.