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Editors' Picks

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Floating Nuclear Plant Would Ride Out Tsunamis
Built like oil rigs, offshore reactors would be safe from earthquakes, too. Continue reading →
Tech
Engineering
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Editor's Pick
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When Evidence Backfires
Don't read this blog post. Definitely don't read it to the end. Didn't I tell you not to read this blog post? You're still doing it... We can laugh at our inherent ability to be contrary, but unfortunately something similar can happen when we give a human being scientific evidence that debunks ...Read More
Neurobonkers | Big Think
Psychiatry | Psychology
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Editor's Pick
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Scientists Find A Planet Like Earth
The planet, about 500 light-years from Earth, orbits in its star's habitable zone.
Science | KQED Public Media for Northern CA
Environment | General Science
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Editor's Pick
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What does the new Tamiflu data really tell us?
Does Tamiflu have any meaningful effects on the prevention or treatment of influenza? Considering the drug’s been on the market for almost 15 years, and is widely used, you should expect this question has been answered after 15 flu seasons. Answering this question from a science-based perspective requires three steps: Consider prior probability, be systematic […]

Jefferson T., Jones M., Doshi P., Spencer E.A., Onakpoya I. & Heneghan C.J. (2014). Oseltamivir for influenza in adults and children: systematic review of clinical study reports and summary of regulatory comments, BMJ, 348 (apr09 2) g2545-g2545. DOI:

Freemantle N., Shallcross L.J., Kyte D., Rader T. & Calvert M.J. (2014). Oseltamivir: the real world data, BMJ, 348 (apr09 2) g2371-g2371. DOI:

Science-Based Pharmacy
Health | Medicine
1
Citation
Editor's Pick
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Brain Scans: Don’t Throw Out The Baby With The Dead Salmon
Is neuro-skepticism in danger of going too far? Is it time to take a critical look at critiques of neuroscience? Martha Farah of the University of Pennsylvania says yes, in a Hastings Center Report just published: Brain Images, Babies, and Bathwater: Critiquing Critiques of Functional Neuroimaging Farah covers a broad spectrum of criticisms, ranging from […]The post Brain Scans: Don’t Throw Out The Baby With The Dead Salmon appeared first on Neuroskeptic.

Farah MJ (2014). Brain images, babies, and bathwater: critiquing critiques of functional neuroimaging., The Hastings Center report, 44 Suppl 2 30. PMID:

Neuroskeptic
Neuroscience | Academic Life
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Citation
Editor's Pick
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Posts with Citations

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New Discovery turns Neuroscience Upsidedown
Sometimes finding out that something established isn’t true is more groundbreaking than finding something new. That is exactly what happened this week when it was found out that the covering that […]

Tomassy G.S., Berger D.R., Chen H.H., Kasthuri N., Hayworth K.J., Vercelli A., Seung H.S., Lichtman J.W. & Arlotta P. (2014). Distinct Profiles of Myelin Distribution Along Single Axons of Pyramidal Neurons in the Neocortex, Science, 344 (6181) 319-324. DOI:

Lunatic Laboratories
Medicine | General Science
Citation
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Was Lamarck right after all? A look at epigenetic inheritance
Myths © EEGFrom the Wikipedia definition of epigenetics: "In biology, and specifically genetics, epigenetics is the study of heritable changes in gene activity that are not caused by changes in the DNA sequence."Wait a minute... how can we inherit anything that's not encoded in the DNA? All the information we inherit from our parents is coded in the DNA ... Right?That's correct. However, there's something very important that goes hand in hand with the information contained in the genes: […]

Heard E & Martienssen RA (2014). Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance: Myths and Mechanisms., Cell, 157 (1) 95-109. PMID:

Lim JP & Brunet A (2013). Bridging the transgenerational gap with epigenetic memory., Trends in genetics : TIG, 29 (3) 176-86. PMID:

Hunter, P. (2008). We are what we eat. The link between diet, evolution and non-genetic inheritance, EMBO reports, 9 (5) 413-415. DOI:

CHIMERAS
Biology
Citation
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The Mystery of “Quantum Resonance Spectroscopy”
Can quantum physics help to diagnose schizophrenia and depression? A paper just published in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease claims that a technique called ‘quantum resonance spectroscopy’ (QRS) can accurately diagnose various mental health problems. But is it quantum wizardry or magic quackery? According to the authors of the new paper, Zhang et […]The post The Mystery of “Quantum Resonance Spectroscopy” appeared first on Neuroskeptic.

Zhang Y, Liu F, Shi J, Yue X, Zhang H, Du X, Sun L & Yuan J (2014). Exploratory quantum resonance spectrometer as a discriminator for psychiatric affective disorders., The Journal of nervous and mental disease, 202 (4) 287-91. PMID:

Neuroskeptic
Neuroscience | Academic Life
Citation
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The nose knows: How to pick your friends
We all have that friend. Let's call her Jane. Jane is bubbly and gregarious. Jane doesn't attend a party, she manifests it. She seeks out social gatherings and is enlivened by human presence. Jane is a good listener and has many trusted friends. What can explain Jane's extroversion? The answer, astonishingly, is her attraction to human body odor. 

Lübke, K., Croy, I., Hoenen, M., Gerber, J., Pause, B. & Hummel, T. (2014). Does Human Body Odor Represent a Significant and Rewarding Social Signal to Individuals High in Social Openness?, PLoS ONE, 9 (4) DOI:

CuriousCortex
Neuroscience | Psychology
Citation
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Monotonicity of EM Algorithm Proof
Here the monotonicity of the EM algorithm is established. $$ f_{o}(Y_{o}|\theta)=f_{o,m}(Y_{o},Y_{m}|\theta)/f_{m|o}(Y_{m}|Y_{o},\theta)$$ $$ \log L_{o}(\theta)=\log L_{o,m}(\theta)-\log f_{m|o}(Y_{m}|Y_{o},\theta) \label{eq:loglikelihood} $$ where \( L_{o}(\theta)\) is the likelihood under the observed data and \(L_{o,m}(\theta)\) is the likelihood under the complete data. Taking the expectation of the second line with respect to the conditional distribution of \(Y_{m}\) given \(Y_{o}\) and […]

Ruslan R Salakhutdinov, Sam T Roweis & Zoubin Ghahramani (2012). On the Convergence of Bound Optimization Algorithms, arXiv, arXiv:

Wu C.F.J. (1983). On the Convergence Properties of the EM Algorithm, The Annals of Statistics, 11 (1) 95-103. DOI:

McLachlan G. & Peel D. DOI:

Lindons Log
Computer Science | Mathematics
Citation
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Brains Anti-Distraction System Found
So once my Grandmother… oh wait sorry, I was distracted while typing. As it turns out I’m not the only one. But there is hope, two Psychologists at Simon Fraser University […]

Gaspar J.M. & McDonald J.J. (2014). Suppression of Salient Objects Prevents Distraction in Visual Search, Journal of Neuroscience, 34 (16) 5658-5666. DOI:

Lunatic Laboratories
Medicine | General Science
Citation
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Introduction to Traditional Peer Review
Peer review was introduced to scholarly publication in 1731 by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, which published a collection of peer-reviewed medical articles. Despite this early start, in many... -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Bailar, J. (2011). Reliability, fairness, objectivity and other inappropriate goals in peer review, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 14 (01) 137-138. DOI:

Biagioli, M. (2002). From Book Censorship to Academic Peer Review, Emergences: Journal for the Study of Media & Composite Cultures, 12 (1) 11-45. DOI:

Benos DJ, Bashari E, Chaves JM, Gaggar A, Kapoor N, LaFrance M, Mans R, Mayhew D, McGowan S, Polter A & Qadri Y (2007). The ups and downs of peer review., Advances in physiology education, 31 (2) 145-52. PMID:

Bornman, L. (2008). Scientific Peer Review: An Analysis of the Peer Review Process from the Perspective of Sociology of Science Theories, Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, 6 (2)

Brown, R. (2006). Double Anonymity and the Peer Review Process, The Scientific World JOURNAL, 6 1274-1277. DOI:

Callaham ML, Baxt WG, Waeckerle JF & Wears RL (1998). Reliability of editors' subjective quality ratings of peer reviews of manuscripts., JAMA : the journal of the American Medical Association, 280 (3) 229-31. PMID:

Godlee, F., Gale, C. & Martyn, C. (1998). Effect on the Quality of Peer Review of Blinding Reviewers and Asking Them to Sign Their Reports, JAMA, 280 (3) 237. DOI:

Lee, C. J.,, Sugimoto, C. R.,, Zhang, G., & Cronin, B. (2013). Bias in Peer Review, JASIST, 64 (1) 2-17.

Spier R (2002). The history of the peer-review process., Trends in biotechnology, 20 (8) 357-8. PMID:

Information Culture
Library Science | Publishing
Citation
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First female “penis” discovered in cave-dwelling insects
Image showing the female penis of N. auroraCredit: Current Biology, Yoshizawa et al.Kingdom: AnimaliaPhylum: ArthropodaClass: InsectaOrder: PsocopteraFamily: PrionoglarididaeGenus: NeotroglaSpecies: N. aurora, N. curvet and 2 otherThis Thursday, researchers announced that they have discovered several insect species that display the "world's first" known instance of gender-reversed genitalia. In simple words, they have found 4 insect species with female... "penises." and male […]

Yoshizawa, K., Ferreira, R., Kamimura, Y. & Lienhard, C. (2014). Female Penis, Male Vagina, and Their Correlated Evolution in a Cave Insect, Current Biology, DOI:

Strange Animals
Biology
Citation
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Typing Method for Cryptosporidium Meleagridis
We recently developed a highly applicable method for typing of Cryptosporidium meleagridis isolates. C. meleagridis is the third most common species involved in human cryptosporidiosis, a dirrhoeal disease taking a major toll on global health. Molecular typing of Cryptosporidium is critical to understanding transmission and identifying outbreaks. Until now, no robust method has been available […]

Kotloff KL, Nataro JP, Blackwelder WC, Nasrin D, Farag TH, Panchalingam S, Wu Y, Sow SO, Sur D, Breiman RF & Faruque AS (2013). Burden and aetiology of diarrhoeal disease in infants and young children in developing countries (the Global Enteric Multicenter Study, GEMS): a prospective, case-control study., Lancet, 382 (9888) 209-22. PMID:

Christen Rune Stensvold
Microbiology | Public Health
Citation
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Dump fossil fuels for the health of our hearts
Cleaning up air pollution will provide immediate health gains as well as longer-term climate benefits, highlights New York University's George Thurston

Pope, C. (2003). Cardiovascular Mortality and Long-Term Exposure to Particulate Air Pollution: Epidemiological Evidence of General Pathophysiological Pathways of Disease, Circulation, 109 (1) 71-77. DOI:

Smith, K., Jerrett, M., Anderson, H., Burnett, R., Stone, V., Derwent, R., Atkinson, R., Cohen, A., Shonkoff, S., Krewski, D. & Pope, C. (2009). Public health benefits of strategies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions: health implications of short-lived greenhouse pollutants, The Lancet, 374 (9707) 2091-2103. DOI:

Horton, D., Harshvardhan, . & Diffenbaugh, N. (2012). Response of air stagnation frequency to anthropogenically enhanced radiative forcing, Environmental Research Letters, 7 (4) 44034. DOI:

Kelly, J., Makar, P. & Plummer, D. (2012). Projections of mid-century summer air-quality for North America: effects of changes in climate and precursor emissions, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions, 12 (2) 3875-3940. DOI:

Thurston, G. (2013). Mitigation policy: Health co-benefits, Nature Climate Change, 3 (10) 863-864. DOI:

Rice, M., Thurston, G., Balmes, J. & Pinkerton, K. (2014). Climate Change. A Global Threat to Cardiopulmonary Health, American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, 189 (5) 512-519. DOI:

Simple Climate
Climate Science
Citation
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