Open Science
David Basanta is discussing open science in his latest post after being inspired by a TED talk given by Professor Jay Bradner at Harvard Medical. Bradner, who is working on molecules which can target cancer cells, first published a paper with the results and a candidate molecule, making it clear that he would share this molecule with any lab in the world. David elaborates:
He calls this open source science. I call it science.
You can hear more of David’s thoughts in his post.
“Following the sunstone”
Barbara Ferreira has been discussing a new study published in Proceeding of Royal Society which reveals how Vikings were able to successfully navigate and sail from Scandinavia to America in near-polar regions, using “sunstones”.
Centuries-old Viking legends tell of glowing sunstones that navigators used to find the position of the Sun and set the ship’s course even on cloudy days. In 1967, a Danish archaeologist named Thorkild Ramskou speculated that the Viking sunstone could have been Iceland spar, a clear variety of calcite common in Iceland and parts of Scandinavia.
Picture: Birefringence of Iceland Spar seen by placing it upon a paper with written text. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Find our more about these “glowing sunstones” in her post.
Bird evolution
GrrlScientist is divulging details on the evolution of Hawaiian honeycreepers; she explains:
Using a large DNA data set, researchers have identified the progenitor of Hawaiian honeycreepers and have linked their rapid evolution to the geological formation of the four main Hawaiian Islands.
Picture: ʻAkiapōlāʻau, Hemignathus munroi, is a passerine version of the woodpecker, feeding on insects hiding within the branches of trees.
You can find our more about these honeycreepers in her summary.
A snaky solution?
The Spoonful of Medicine blog have revealed in a paper published this week in Science, that cardiologist Leslie Leinwand of the University of Colorado, and her colleagues identified a mixture of three fatty acids in pythons’ blood that were activated during cardiac growth: myristic, palmitic, and palmitoleic acids. When she injected them into mice, their hearts exhibited healthy growth:
The next step is to study whether this fatty acid mixture can heal or treat diseased mouse hearts and then, eventually, human. “The question is whether this growth is truly physiological and is it going to help the heart function better,” says Rong Tian, who studies cardiovascular metabolism at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Continue reading the post for more information.
Job tips and podcast
During the recent Career Expo in London hosted by NatureJobs, interviews with the two key speakers were recorded. Listen to the two podcasts for tips including what to expect from the working culture, how to adapt to the social culture, pointers on funding, visas and online networking:
Podcast1: Lisa Kozlowski from Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia speaks about moving to the United States.
Podcast 2: Madeline Paterson from Symmetry Coaching talks about networking
Their interviews are also available as podcasts on naturejobs.com.
Who were Europe’s first humans?
Nature News blog have made known that several sets of teeth found in the UK suggest that ancient humans roamed Europe thousands of years earlier than previously thought.
Continuing the theme of evolution is this week’s guest blog post by historian Jill Jones. In her piece, The Living Dinosaur, she talks about the ginkgos, a dominant forest tree species:
The Ginkgo biloba is one of the wonders of the natural world, a “living fossil” whose arboreal ancestors date back to the Jurassic period. “How or why the ginkgo managed to survive when all of its relatives went extinct is an unsolved botanical mystery,” wrote Del Tredici in Horticulture back in 1983—a mystery he would spend two decades helping to partially unravel.
Learn more about the ginkgo tree in Jill’s post.
Mind over Matter
Scitable’s blogger Dave Deriso continues his discussion on the interesting clinical condition of craniopagus, explaining that it affords a thought-provoking debate over medical ethics. In his post he takes a step back and considers whether it is ethical for physicians to decide if the birth of such debilitated individuals should be allowed:
Ken Walker is a Canadian physician who claims that most doctors lack the “intestinal fortitude” to say that the birth of craniphagus twins “should never have happened.” He goes on to say that that allowing such a birth is a “cruel experiment and will cost taxpayers millions of dollars in medical and social costs.” He attempts to substantiate his utilitarian arguments by asserting that the Canadian “health care system cannot afford reckless expenditures of this kind.” Finally, he claims that “Like it or not, we have reached a point where some medical decisions have to be based on financial realities” (Walker, 2007).
Find out what contradictory opinions are considered in the debate in Dave’s post. What do you think? Feel free to leave your own thoughts in the comment thread.
Imaging
Finally, Viktor Poor explains in his latest cartoon, that Medical imaging uses many techniques and one of them is the positron emission tomography:
