Fake Meg Ryan Advert

Chase Scheinbaum, asks in The Spoonful of Medicine Blog whether celebrities add potency to drug ads:

Well, in March, Health Marketing Quarterly published a study focused on that very question. While the research looks only at print ads, and does not consider the seemingly ubiquitous television counterpart to them (we are looking at you, Sally Field) it provides some interesting data. The researchers created two types of ads for a fictitious antihistamine, unimaginatively dubbed ‘Allergone’. One depicted actress Meg Ryan. The other featured a non-celebrity. They asked 482 adults what they thought. In short, they found, “no significant difference in credibility and effectiveness” between the two ads. So, celebrities may not be very convincing salespeople when it comes to drugs, according to the researchers, lead by Nilesh Bhutada, a pharmacy care administrator at California Northstate University College of Pharmacy in Rancho Cordova, California.

Find out more about the history of celebrity prescription drug adverts in Chase’s post.

Suicide in India

Suicidal rates in India are increasing at an alarming pace if a new study in the Lancet is to be believed. Indigenus‘s blogger, Subhra Priyadarshini elaborates:

After road accidents in men and childbirth related deaths in women, the second most important cause of death in India seems to be suicide, according the study which relies on data from the the Registrar General of India (RGI). The RGI conducted a national mortality survey between 2001 and 2003 to determine the cause of deaths in 1·1 million homes chosen randomly from all parts of India.

What the researchers have now done is this: they have applied the age-specific and sex-specific proportion of suicide deaths in this survey to the 2010 UN estimates of absolute numbers of deaths in India. Thus they arrived at an estimation on the number of suicide deaths in India in 2010. What they found is shocking:  about 3% of the deaths among people over 15 years of age were due to suicide. This accounts for  about 1,87, 000 suicide deaths in India in 2010 at these ages — 1,15, 000 men and 72, 000 women. Even more shocking was the estimation that 40% of suicide deaths in men and 56% in women were between 15 and 29 years of age. About half of suicide deaths were due to poisoning, mainly through pesticides.

Find out more in Subhra’s post. 

Dolphin genome

Helen Thompson, reveals in the News Blog that it seems being a brainiac is just in a dolphin’s genes:

Last fall, a team led by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, took the first crack at sequencing the bottlenose dolphin’s genome, as part of a larger study of several mammalian genomes. Although the resulting sequence has gaps, the WSU team used it to flag some 10,025 genes with counterparts in the genomes of nine other mammals, including cows, horses, dogs, humans and elephants. They found 228 gene sequences that had changed significantly relative to other mammals. About 10% of those relate to the nervous system — a probable driver of the dolphin’s mental prowess.

Learn more about this research in Helen’s post.

#MentoringSci

The latest Soapbox Science mini-series has been focusing on the role of mentors in science, tying in with this year’s Lindau Nobel Laureate meeting. So far we have heard from a mix of mentors, mentees and projects set up to support scientific mentoring.  The latest post is by Stephani Page, a rising 5th year graduate student at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In her commentary, she asks whether your ability to be receptive to the guidance of others hinges on race and gender:

For any student, regardless of race and gender, there is pressure to perform and flourish. That pressure is, at the very least, heightened by race and gender.  I have to thrive in an environment that at times discourages my presence.  Many people function under the notion that because racism and sexism are no longer accepted as social norms that they also no longer exist.  In a society that has self-identified as post-racial and gender inclusive, many seem to have denounced the idea that negative stereotypes and preconceived notions of people can still remain in the subconscious and, thereby, effect treatment of others.  My experiences suggest otherwise.

You can hear more of Stephani’s thoughts in her post, and check out the other guest posts here. More to come next week. For more discussions around this year’s Lindau meeting, check out the Lindau Nobel Community site.

Trees, grass and carbon dioxide 

GrrlScientist is discussing, in her latest post, how a new study shows that increasing carbon dioxide levels favours trees over grass, suggesting that large regions of Africa’s savannas may be forests by the end of this century:

The African savannas appear peaceful but beneath the wings of birds and the hooves of mammals, a millennia-long battle is being fought. This struggle determines whether vast regions of the tropics and subtropics are covered in grasslands, savannas or forests. But a new study shows that rising concentrations of CO₂ are shifting the odds to favour trees over grasses, suggesting that large regions of Africa’s savannas may be forests by the end of this century.

Plain tomatoes taste… plain

Alice Lighton, reporting in the News Blog explains tomatoes bred to have a uniform colour are not as sweet as their more mottled counterparts:

Decades of selecting fruit that begin life with pale green skin may have inadvertently contributed to the bland flavour of the modern supermarket tomato.

Uniform tomatoes are easier to harvest and preferred by consumers. Researchers have pinpointed the genes responsible for even-coloured fruit, and found an association with photosynthesis in plants. Tomatoes with the mutation do not produce a protein responsible for chloroplast development in fruit, and pale unripe fruit produce less sugar while they develop, resulting in a less sweet tomato.

More details can be found in Alice’s post.

Jordan to set up regional nuclear science hub

The Chemical and Physical Analysis Laboratory (CPAL) in Jordan may become a regional hub for nuclear science training after it received accreditation this week from International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation. Mohammed Yahia, in the House of Wisdom Blog explains more:

In a statement released by the Jordan Atomic Energy Commission, the new facility, which is still under construction with help from the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Arab Atomic Energy Agency, will be a “training ground” for Arab students and researchers in nuclear engineering and physics.

Once the new facility is up and running, Jordan hopes it can provide consultation to other states in the region that are interested in starting their own nuclear energy programmes.

According to the local news agency Zawya, Jordan has already put together a nuclear engineering programme at the Jordan University of Science and Technology in Ramtha, where the first research nuclear reactor will be built in 2016. A centre of excellence is also planned at the University of Jordan to produce the trained workforce that will run Jordan’s many planned nuclear reactors.

Find out what the critics have to say in Mohammed’s post. 

Sexual Objectification

SciLogs blogger, Kris Hardies is talking about sexual objectification in his latest post:

A number of different scientific studies have shown that self-objectification has various negative psychological and physical consequences such as increased body shame, body dissatisfaction, disordered eating, and even decreased mathematical performances (to find out more, see the Youtube video below).

Join in the discussion by leaving your thoughts in his comment thread. 

A Science Haiku

Scitable’s blogger, Ada Ao is entertaining us this week with a Postdoc haiku: