Nasty Worms and a Dog’s first Vet Visit –

Having a cute pet dog is not all fun and games, reveals Paige Brown. You need to be cautious that your pet isn’t harbouring something sinister….

Think again. Dogs can become infected with heartworms, hookworms, roundworms and whipworms, among others. Some hookworms and roundworms can be contracted by not only your dog, but also you and your family members, according to my ‘Congratulations on your new puppy!’ brochure. Scary thought.

Now onto the health of humans. This week, our Boston blogger Tinker Ready attended a lecture by Harvard’s Walter Willett (who, according to his introduction is the most cited nutrition scientist in the world) discussing his upcoming paper on alcohol and breast cancer:

When it comes to weight gain, Willet recently came under fire from Mainers for his anti-potato stance. While cast in with the healthy vegetables, he notes that they are actually insulin spiking starches. Potatoes, like refined carbohydrates, drive weight gain in much the same way a Classic coke does. The carbs quickly trigger a blood sugar surge and sudden drop, he said. This metabolic whiplash triggers the appetite and leads to overeating.

What do you think? You can read more of his controversial thoughts in her summary.

Occupy…

“Unless you live under a rock” as Graham Morehead puts it, by now you’ve heard of the Occupy Together movement which is being discussed fervently in the blogosphere and everywhere else for that matter. Graham reveals that even Nobel Laureates are talking about it:

“_What the protests are doing is they’ve changed the conversation… we’re actually talking about the right things… A monstrous injustice… a financial industry that ran wild, crippled the economy, which remains crippled to this day… The players who bear some responsibility faced virtually no consequences.” -Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman_ Video

Continue to his post for links to Paul’s speech and also for more information on the Occupy Together movement.

Grrrr

Would you be able to recognise a grizzly bear? ask The Frontier Scientists. If you want to learn more, then why not watch a new series of vodcasts featuring the mighty grizzly bears of Denali National Park. These short videos show field biologists and interpreters who have the difficult task of keeping Alaskan bears unacclimated to humans—and, at the same time, keeping the humans safe:

To encourage people to view their videos of the mighty grizzly bears, The Frontier Scientists are inviting the public to send in their own photos of grizzly bears, which will be posted on their website. So if you have any photos, you can submit them in 300 dpi jpegs here.

London Science Festival

This week saw the opening of the very first London Science Festival and setting the tone for a busy festival, events involving David Willetts, Richard Dawkins and Festival of the Spoken Nerd all on took place on the same night. If you wish to find our more about the Roberts Science Policy Lecture with David Willetts MP, do check out the report from our London blogger, Joanna Scott:

A well-known figure in science policy since the last election, David Willetts is Conservative MP for Havant and the Minister for Universities and Science. Mr Willetts began his lecture with a slew of facts and figures about the positive state of scientific research, claiming the UK is punching well above its weight in terms of researchers, articles, citations and other measures. He suggested that openness had been a particularly important factor in the success of the UK, citing that almost 1/2 of UK articles published listed an overseas author, while 2/3 of UK researchers had an affiliation with an overseas institution.

Included in her post is a storify, collating the live tweets from the event and also a podcast thanks to @Poddelusion. Do stay tuned for more coverage of this year’s London Science Festival and to whet your appetite, make sure you check out our previous science festival blogging extravaganza and our map of the World’s Science festivals.

Piece of mind

Scitable blogger Dave Deriso has been discussing in his post, piece of mind, the unusual condition of craniopagus; twins conjoined at the brain:

A particularly unique case of craniopagus has recently been presented of two Canadian four-year-old sisters. Unlike most craniopagus twins who are joined at higher cortical areas, these sisters are joined at a much deeper level, the thalamus. The thalamus is a deeper subcortical structure that regulates the flow of sensory information, like sight and sound, to the rest of the brain through circuits called cortico-thalamic loops. These recurrent loops are a feedback mechanism that allow us to focus on one sense while turning the volume down on others. Because this sensory relay station is cross-wired in these twins, it is quite possible, and even likely, that they share the experience of some senses, and perhaps even a piece of mind.

Find our more about this unusual condition in his post.

Scientific events calendars from around the world

To assist with your diary planning, we’ve created Google Calendars for some of the major science cities: London and Cambridge in the UK and NYC, DC, Boston and San Francisco in the US. We try to feature all the scientific events we know of in these areas, including lectures, meet-ups (including #scitweetups), exhibition openings, quizzes and the events that we’re involved with organising, such as the monthly Science Online NYC (#sonyc) discussion series. Please do let us know if you can see any important omissions. We are also happy to add anyone as a calendar admin so that you can update it with your own science events. Just get in touch. You can find links to all of the Google Calendars we have put together, in our summary post.

Fight

The Spoonful of Medicine revealed that last year, the World Health Organization released updated procedures on how best to tackle the global scourge of tuberculosis. However, they failed to address certain issues:

The fourth edition of the “Treatment of tuberculosis: Guidelines” recommended, among other changes, increasing the dosage of tuberculosis medication required to treat children. But, in a sense, the new guidance provided a destination without a map: it failed to address the larger problem of how to improve the accuracy of pediatric dosing.

Find out more in their post.

Finally, Van Gogh, Picasso, Pollock, and … Serratia marcescens?

The News blog reveal that even thought they can’t pick up a brush, bacteria have created their own painting for the first time: