Is Psychometric g a Myth? - "As an online discussion about IQ or general intelligence grows longer, the probability of someone linking to statistician Cosma Shalizi's essay
g, a Statistical Myth approaches 1. Usually the link is accompanied by an assertion to the effect that Shalizi offers a definitive refutation of the concept of general mental ability, or psychometric
g."
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posted by kliuless
on Apr 11, 2013 -
113 comments
In 1973, while working as a young post-doc in Zanvil A. Cohn's laboratory in Rockefeller University,
Ralph Steinman described a completely new immune cell within the lymphoid organs of mice (original paper can be read
here). Based on it's distinctive shape, with it's many branched projections, he named the cell "
dendritic cell" (derived from the Greek word for "tree").
Such began a
prolific and
illustrious career, devoted to the further understanding of these cells, which transformed the way the world understood how the immune system worked. Yesterday,
Dr Steinman was awarded the The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2011 "
for his discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity". Tragically,
he had died just three days earlier of pancreatic cancer, and never learned that he was to be awarded science’s top honour.
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posted by kisch mokusch
on Oct 4, 2011 -
25 comments
(Late) Friday Flash Fun:
CellCraft. Build and improve a cell, learn how real cells work, and save the Platypus species!
posted by cthuljew
on Jul 10, 2010 -
13 comments
"Papers that are scientifically flawed or comprise only modest technical increments often attract undue profile. At the same time publication of truly original findings may be delayed or rejected."
In an
open letter addressed to Senior Editors of peer-review journals,
Professor Austin Smith (
publications) and another 13 stem cell researchers from around the world have
expressed their concerns over the current peer review process employed by the journals publishing in the field of stem cell biology.
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posted by kisch mokusch
on Feb 3, 2010 -
25 comments
Henrietta Lacks "was diagnosed with terminal cervical cancer. She was treated at Johns Hopkins University, where a doctor named George Gey snipped cells from her cervix without telling her. Gey discovered that Lacks' cells could not only be kept alive, but would also grow indefinitely.
For the past 60 years Lacks' cells have been cultured and used in experiments ranging from determining the long-term effects of radiation to testing the live polio vaccine."
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posted by HuronBob
on Feb 2, 2010 -
69 comments
DNA Not The Same In Every Cell Of Body. "...calls into question one of the most basic assumptions of human genetics: that when it comes to DNA, every cell in the body is essentially identical to every other cell... if it turns out that blood and tissue cells do not match genetically, these ambitious and expensive genome-wide association studies may prove to have been essentially flawed from the outset"
posted by GuyZero
on Jul 16, 2009 -
49 comments
Light makes a comeback. “New technologies — more sophisticated imaging techniques, fluorescent molecules that act as beacons of light in the cell, and the computing power to gather and stitch together multiple images and create videos from high-powered microscopes — make it possible to harness one of light’s key advantages: gentleness. Unlike higher-resolution techniques, light microscopes can image biological structures without killing them or chemically fixing them. At Harvard, the resurgence of light microscopy is making it possible to see structures and events that have never before been seen in the context of living cells and organisms.” Also don't miss the
video samples of “in vivo” imagining.
posted by Frankieist
on Apr 19, 2008 -
12 comments
Steath InkJet Printer Could Rock Industry I know that once your desktop printer reached a certain quality, you probably stopped caring about printing news at all. But suddenly there are a few breakthroughs to get excited about.
Kodak's first inkjet printers have cut ink cartridge prices in half,
Zink doesn't use ink at all and will fit in your pocket and now an Australian start-up is announcing a $200 printer that will print a page a second. And the inkjet connection to nanotechnology won't just mean cheaper printers. People are using inkjet heads to
print microchips and even
human cells.
Fab@Home is trying to replicate the
Altair phenomenon with 3D printers, and you can even get a
ZPrinter 450 industrial-strength 3D printer for less than $40,000. How long before the word print means serving yourself the latest Stephen King, a pair of glasses or even a new kidney?
posted by PeteNicely
on Mar 26, 2007 -
53 comments
Need a patch of
skin for that burn or perhaps some new brain cells?
Print them. A team of British scientists have shown that cells could survive ink-jet printing. Ink-jet technology moves
beyond paper.
posted by Termite
on Jan 30, 2006 -
21 comments
Death as we know it will die. If you wish to be a prophet, first you must dress the part. No more silk ties or tasseled loafers. Instead, throw on a wrinkled T-shirt, frayed jeans, and dirty sneakers. You should appear somewhat unkempt, as if combs and showers were only for the unenlightened. When you encounter critics, as all prophets do, dismiss them as idiots. Make sure to pepper your conversation with grandiose predictions and remind others of your genius often, lest they forget. Oh, and if possible, grow a very long beard.
By these measures, Aubrey de Grey is indeed a prophet. The 42-year-old English biogerontologist has made his name by claiming that some people alive right now could live for 1,000 years or longer. Maybe much longer. Growing old is not, in his view, an inevitable consequence of the human condition; rather, it is the result of accumulated damage at the cellular and molecular levels that medical advances will soon be able to prevent — or even reverse — allowing people to go on living pretty much indefinitely.
posted by sharksandwich
on Oct 30, 2005 -
43 comments
View the Milky Way at 10 million light years from the Earth. Then move through space towards the Earth in successive orders of magnitude until you reach a tall oak tree just outside the buildings of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. After that, begin to move from the actual size of a leaf into a microscopic world that reveals leaf cell walls, the cell nucleus, chromatin, DNA and finally, into the subatomic universe of electrons and protons.
posted by semmi
on Sep 20, 2004 -
18 comments
Thou shalt not make scientific progress. "Medical research is poised to make a quantum leap that will benefit sufferers from Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, muscular dystrophy, diabetes and other diseases. But George W. Bush's religious convictions stand in its way."
posted by homunculus
on Mar 24, 2004 -
45 comments
Print life! Forget this photo-realism nonsense. Scientists have modified ink-jet printers to print living cells. Like many innovations in sci-tech, I find this scary and fascinating at the same time.
posted by pinto
on Jan 29, 2003 -
9 comments
Henrietta Lacks, a Baltimore housewife, died in 1951.
Some of her cells did not die. In fact, had they been allowed to grow unchecked, they
would have taken over the world by now. As it is, even as they proved invaluable to medical researchers, their baffling ability to regenerate resulted in contamination of three decades of cellular research, costing medical researchers millions of dollars. As far as science can tell, Henrietta's cells will never die.
Creepy!
posted by stupidsexyFlanders
on Oct 10, 2002 -
29 comments
Scientists in the USA have
discovered [NYTimes] a new cell in the eye responsible for resetting the biological clock. Its being called "heretical"..
Not every day, Dr. Provencio said, do scientists find a new body function.
posted by stbalbach
on Feb 8, 2002 -
3 comments
