Today's Fresh Blogs...

• UK Press: Gene for left-handedness

  Published: July 31, 2007, 12:52 pm

  Tags: Science Stories, Health Amp Medicine Stories

  it up, mostly briefly. Stories: The Register Lucy Sherriff; BBC; Telegraph Laura Clout; Times Lewis Smith; Other leftyness news: NewKerala (India, Jul 18): Converting left-hander to right-hander also changes the brain. Grist for the Mill: Wellcome Trust Ctr/Oxford U Press Release;

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• NYTimes ScienceTimes: About us humans — 237 reasons for sex, game playing, the subconscious (and other topics too)

  Published: July 31, 2007, 11:21 am

  Tags: Science Stories, Health Amp Medicine Stories, Environment Stories

  - gracing Carey’s sampling of the latest from the subconscious front. Lots more inside. These other notables include: Claudia Dreifus on Heidi Cullen, PhD researcher-turned-TV climatologist. It tells of the ideological brickbats tossed her way upon entering the media-celebrity-climate arena and, more interesting, her transformation from

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• Wash. Post: Embryo “harm” and stem cell supply

  Published: July 30, 2007, 1:40 pm

  Tags: Health Amp Medicine Stories

  The long-tussle over stem cells, human embryos, abortion policy, and the rights of fetuses has long had its hair-splitting phases. The Post’s Rick Weiss brings it up to date in a Sunday story on a Congressional ban on any stem cell supply with federal money that harms embryos. Which is to say, the development of ways to harvest a few stem

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• Wires, Dailies, lots of ink: Multiple genes for multiple sclerosis turn up in multiple studies published in one day

  Published: July 30, 2007, 12:10 pm

  Tags: Health Amp Medicine Stories

  articles (see, for another example, the wide flurries of news about E. coli contamination and disease, even though we all have E. coli and only a few variants ooze loads of toxins); -CP Other stories: NY Times Nicholas Wade keeps the hype flame low and, in a succinct piece, neatly puts the news into context of both overall MS research and general

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• Baltimore Sun, Reuters: A human-inspired gene + mouse = schizophrenia lab model

  Published: July 29, 2007, 1:33 pm

  Tags: Health Amp Medicine Stories

  it says here. -CP Stories: Reuters Julie Steenhuysen includes objections from groups that regard the work as cruelty to animals; Baltimore Sun Chris Emery reports explicitly that, while mouse genes similar to the mutated human ones are known, the team transplanted portions of the human genes into the mice. Good reporting. The paper

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• New Scientist Editorial: About science writers, and that news of a restless leg syndrome gene

  Published: August 1, 2007, 10:04 am

  Tags: Health Amp Medicine Stories, About Journalism

  week’s flurry of news stories about discovery of a gene complex associated with restless leg syndrome and related disorders got quite a rise from the editorial board at New Scientist magazine. The editorial, text here, sounds a caution to the many science writers who covered it that, maybe, they overdid the idea that RLS itself, rather

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• Baltimore Sun: Do women feel more pain than men. Or feel it differently, anyway?

  Published: August 1, 2007, 10:59 am

  Tags: Health Amp Medicine Stories

  It seems that popular culture — judging, at least, by situation comedy plots on TV — holds men as the primary whiners about pain. Women, evolved for childbirth, scoff at aches that have the guys plopping into Barcaloungers and calling for icepacks. But nope, maybe women really are more sensitive. The Inquirer’s Chris Emery,

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• New Scientists, LA Times, SF Chronicle, etc: Is the office printer a micro-particle polluter too?

  Published: August 1, 2007, 1:11 pm

  Tags: Health Amp Medicine Stories, Environment Stories

  room quite yet. -CP Stories: SF Chronicle Jane Kay has it above the fold, page 1, with a hed “Big health risk seen in some laser printers. ” She writes that perils can equal having a smoker puffing away in the next cubicle over. The journal paper only says the amount of ultrafine particles from some printers is as great as of

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• AP, Denver Post: Full moon means accidents. Not for people. For pets, maybe.

  Published: August 1, 2007, 11:37 am

  Tags: Science Stories, Health Amp Medicine Stories

  department: AP - William J. Kole: Study debunks full-moon injury beliefs. The study was performed in Austria. It says injury rates are pretty constant, moonshine or not. (And is the idea of a link mostly a European one? Don’t recall hearing it much in the states.) Denver Post (July 17) - Katy Human: Pet puzzler: Full

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• San Jose Mercury News: Brain fires up during musical interludes

  Published: August 2, 2007, 2:55 pm

  Tags: Science Stories, Health Amp Medicine Stories

  It seems natural enough that one perks up when, amid the busy passages of a complex piece of orchestration, the music falls silent for a beat or more. Kind of like if one walks off a ledge. Yikes no floor, the mind shouts. Ditto no music. But surmise and evidence are different things. In the Mercury News Lisa Krieger has a story on Stanford and

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• AP, Reuters, more: Disgraced Korean stem cell worker really did do something good. Too bad for him he said it was something else.

  Published: August 2, 2007, 1:56 pm

  Tags: Health Amp Medicine Stories

  Hospital-Boston team. -CP Stories: AP Malcolm Ritter; Reuters Julie Steenhuysen; Nature.com Ewan Callaway; Scientific American JR Minkel; Grist for the Mill: CH-Boston Press Release;

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• AP, Reuters: In S. Africa, signs HIV epidemic’s peak may have passed

  Published: August 3, 2007, 10:27 am

  Tags: Health Amp Medicine Stories

  the nation’s health minister. The latter attributes the encouraging news to less risky behavior. Fine. But she sees modern antiretroviral treatments as less important than traditional remedies that, in most cases one presumes, have not all passed the gauntlet of scientific tests and validation. -CP Stories: Reuters Muchena Zibomo,

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• Washington Post: A close look at gene therapy and one woman’s death

  Published: August 6, 2007, 10:46 am

  Tags: Health Amp Medicine Stories

  of US Nat’l Library of Medicine adenovirus-gene therapy graphic here). Weiss makes clear that the cause of death is not yet known. Tight coincidence is its primary link to the treatment. It says here that a somewhat recent rule change hides from view the rule-changing discussions that opened the door to a critical aspect of the test

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• NYTimes ScienceTimes: The bad choices in pancreatic cancer, rare applause for adipocytes, and a sort-of-Darwinian theory of who gets rich

  Published: August 7, 2007, 11:24 am

  Tags: Science Stories, Health Amp Medicine Stories, Environment Stories

  restoration (for just one example) achieved much the same, wealth-generating change of society in a generation. Going on too long here. Other notables include: Natalie Angier : Its Poor Reputation Aside, Our Fat Is Doing Us a Favor in which she explains why fat cells need some appreciation. Dennis Overbye: What's in a Name? Parsing the God

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• LA Times: Some give Baby Einstein music and videos a thumbs-down

  Published: August 7, 2007, 12:25 pm

  Tags: Health Amp Medicine Stories

  sell books, too. -CP Other stories: HealthDay News; Daily Mail (UK); Time Magazine Alice Park; Guardian Unlimited Helen Pidd; Grist for the Mill: U. Washington Press Release;

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