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The War on Dengue Fever
By THOMAS FULLER, The New York Times, November 4, 2008
BANGKOK — There was little that doctors could do for a 3-year-old boy brought to Bangkok’s main children’s hospital two weeks ago with dengue fever. Like thousands before him, he had reached the most dangerous phase of the disease, dengue shock syndrome, and he died of internal bleeding and organ failure three days after being admitted.
Directly across the street, in the United States Army’s largest overseas medical research laboratory, military scientists are offering hope for future generations: a vaccine. Developed after decades of trying, it is one of two experimental vaccines that experts believe may be commercially available by the middle of the next decade.
( Read More )
Findings: Obama and McCain Walk Into a Bar ...
By JOHN TIERNEY, The New York Times, November 4, 2008
While Americans choose their next president, let us consider a question more amenable to science: Which candidate’s supporters have a better sense of humor? In strict accordance with experimental protocol, we begin by asking you to rate, on a scale of 1 (not funny at all) to 9 (hilarious) the following three attempts at humor:
( Read More )
Mind: When Duty Calls: The Value of Voting, Beyond Politics
By BENEDICT CAREY, The New York Times, November 4, 2008
For those who love the civic cheer and lukewarm coffee of their local polling place, an absentee ballot has all the appeal of a tax form. The paperwork, the miniature type, the search (in some states) for a notary public: it’s a tedium bath, and Pam Fleischaker, a lifelong Democrat from Oklahoma City, had every reason to take a pass this year.
Ms. Fleischaker, 62, was in New York recovering from a heart transplant, for one. And in her home state, the Democratic candidate, Senator Barack Obama, was polling hopelessly behind his opponent, Senator John McCain. She mailed in her absentee packet anyway, and hounded her two children, also in New York, to do the same.
“That one vote isn’t going to be decisive makes no difference to me,” Ms. Fleischaker said in a telephone interview last week. “Your vote is your voice, and there’s more power in it than in most of the things we do. It’s a lost pleasure, the feeling of that power.”
In recent years psychologists and neuroscientists have tried to get a handle on how people make voting decisions. They have taken brain scans, to see how certain messages or images activate emotion centers. They have spun out theories of racial bias, based on people’s split-second reactions to white and black faces. They have dressed up partisan political stereotypes in scientific jargon, describing conservatives as “inordinately fearful and craving order,” and liberals as “open-minded and tolerant.”
None of which has helped predict people’s behavior in elections any more than a half-decent phone survey. The problem is not only sketchy science, some experts say; it’s that researchers don’t agree on the answer to a more fundamental question: Why do people vote at all?
( Read More )
Images from Mars show deposits of minerals like opals in magenta and blue.
Minerals on Mars Point to More Recent Presence of Water
By KENNETH CHANG, The New York Times, November 4, 2008
Still puzzling over how warm and wet Mars may have once been, scientists are now seeing global mineralogical signs that the planet was at least occasionally wet for the first two billion years of its existence.
( Read More )
More Here
Grave Warnings of Disease, With the Adman’s Flair
By AMANDA SCHAFFER, The New York Times, November 4, 2008
The woman could be the girl next door, posing for a portrait or selling cereal or soap. Her hair is neatly parted. Her earnest eye and smile seem to telegraph innocence.
Beware.
“She may look clean,” the poster warns. But “pick-ups, ‘good-time girls,’ prostitutes spread syphilis and gonorrhea.”
The poster, one of many created by the Public Health Service during World War II to warn the troops about the dangers of casual sex, is on display as part of a retrospective of 20th-century health posters from the permanent collection of the National Library of Medicine.
( Read More )
By THOMAS FULLER, The New York Times, November 4, 2008
BANGKOK — There was little that doctors could do for a 3-year-old boy brought to Bangkok’s main children’s hospital two weeks ago with dengue fever. Like thousands before him, he had reached the most dangerous phase of the disease, dengue shock syndrome, and he died of internal bleeding and organ failure three days after being admitted.
Directly across the street, in the United States Army’s largest overseas medical research laboratory, military scientists are offering hope for future generations: a vaccine. Developed after decades of trying, it is one of two experimental vaccines that experts believe may be commercially available by the middle of the next decade.
( Read More )
Findings: Obama and McCain Walk Into a Bar ...
By JOHN TIERNEY, The New York Times, November 4, 2008
While Americans choose their next president, let us consider a question more amenable to science: Which candidate’s supporters have a better sense of humor? In strict accordance with experimental protocol, we begin by asking you to rate, on a scale of 1 (not funny at all) to 9 (hilarious) the following three attempts at humor:
( Read More )
Mind: When Duty Calls: The Value of Voting, Beyond Politics
By BENEDICT CAREY, The New York Times, November 4, 2008
For those who love the civic cheer and lukewarm coffee of their local polling place, an absentee ballot has all the appeal of a tax form. The paperwork, the miniature type, the search (in some states) for a notary public: it’s a tedium bath, and Pam Fleischaker, a lifelong Democrat from Oklahoma City, had every reason to take a pass this year.
Ms. Fleischaker, 62, was in New York recovering from a heart transplant, for one. And in her home state, the Democratic candidate, Senator Barack Obama, was polling hopelessly behind his opponent, Senator John McCain. She mailed in her absentee packet anyway, and hounded her two children, also in New York, to do the same.
“That one vote isn’t going to be decisive makes no difference to me,” Ms. Fleischaker said in a telephone interview last week. “Your vote is your voice, and there’s more power in it than in most of the things we do. It’s a lost pleasure, the feeling of that power.”
In recent years psychologists and neuroscientists have tried to get a handle on how people make voting decisions. They have taken brain scans, to see how certain messages or images activate emotion centers. They have spun out theories of racial bias, based on people’s split-second reactions to white and black faces. They have dressed up partisan political stereotypes in scientific jargon, describing conservatives as “inordinately fearful and craving order,” and liberals as “open-minded and tolerant.”
None of which has helped predict people’s behavior in elections any more than a half-decent phone survey. The problem is not only sketchy science, some experts say; it’s that researchers don’t agree on the answer to a more fundamental question: Why do people vote at all?
( Read More )
Images from Mars show deposits of minerals like opals in magenta and blue.
Minerals on Mars Point to More Recent Presence of Water
By KENNETH CHANG, The New York Times, November 4, 2008
Still puzzling over how warm and wet Mars may have once been, scientists are now seeing global mineralogical signs that the planet was at least occasionally wet for the first two billion years of its existence.
( Read More )
More Here
Grave Warnings of Disease, With the Adman’s Flair
By AMANDA SCHAFFER, The New York Times, November 4, 2008
The woman could be the girl next door, posing for a portrait or selling cereal or soap. Her hair is neatly parted. Her earnest eye and smile seem to telegraph innocence.
Beware.
“She may look clean,” the poster warns. But “pick-ups, ‘good-time girls,’ prostitutes spread syphilis and gonorrhea.”
The poster, one of many created by the Public Health Service during World War II to warn the troops about the dangers of casual sex, is on display as part of a retrospective of 20th-century health posters from the permanent collection of the National Library of Medicine.
( Read More )
