Scintilla

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, November 17

by kevinzim The amateur scientist (that’s us) [Via Seth's Blog] Many people buy a car (probably their single biggest discretionary purchase) based on slamming a door, kicking a tire and judging the handshake of a salesperson. We choose a surgeon based on the carpeting in his office and a politician by his hair cut. During the first week of swine flu vaccines in New York, most parents (more than half!) chose to keep their kids out of the program. Interviewed parents said things like, “I’m not sure it’s safe,” and “I wanted to see if it affected other kids…” No mention of longitudinal studies or long-term side effects. No science at all, really, just rumors and hunches and gut instincts.

It's Friday evening, time once again for the "refresh game", where I sit on the CERN website waiting to find out what terrorism/food/drink crisis will befall the Large Hadron Collider next (TGB's Daniel Cressey is putting his money on a badger from the future quantum mechanically tunneling his way into the beamline). At the moment, though, it's all looking pretty good! Commissioning of the machine should be completed any minute now, and the physicists and engineers in charge of the LHC could begin injecting beams of protons into the machine tonight. Optimistically, we could be about a week or two away from collisions.

Research on a “brain-eating tribe” may hold the key to understanding and even treating mad cow disease, according to The Daily Telegraph. A genetic study of the Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea has shown that certain members have genetic mutations that protect them from a disease called kuru, which can be contracted by eating prion proteins in brain matter. The disease, which kills tribe members who do not have the mutation, is similar to Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD), which is sometimes wrongly referred to as "mad cow disease". The findings further our understanding of the role of inherited genes in the protection and susceptibility to diseases such as kuru and CJD, known as prion diseases. This was an informative study of the genetics of a unique population, but it does not directly improve our knowledge of the prevention or treatment of CJD in the UK.   Where did the story come from?

Keith Kloor While many are feeling pessimistic about the prospects for a deal at Copenhagen, Geoffrey Lean at Grist believes the big climate summit still has a pulse. He reports that “environment ministers from 40 key countries—assembled this week for a two-day preparatory meeting in Copenhagen—made good progress towards a political agreement.” Lean doesn’t deny that the odds for success are still long. But the game is by no means over, he writes: “It is all very difficult. But there is a chance that, with luck and skill, a climate-saving deal can be reached. And while far from ideal, the hope that a deal is still salvageable is a lot better than the doom that was so widely pronounced at the start of the week.” Meanwhile, are people suffering from “climate fatigue,” and tuning out the steady drumbeat of alarming news on climate change? Richard Kerr in Science examines the communication challenges [subscription required]. He writes: