If you’ve ever listened to (or participated in) a political discussion, you know that it often isn’t rational. Brain scans have now confirmed this, at least as far as partisanship goes. Researchers have found that people with strong partisan feelings reacted to political statements with the parts of the brain that deal with emotions, and even feel relief and other positive emotions if statements that go against these partisan inclinations are refuted. The research involved only those with strong partisan feelings. It would be interesting to see if there was a difference in the way moderates reacted to such statements. In the meantime, it seems that those with strong political feelings would be wise to carefully consider whether they’re thinking rationally or emotionally.

Speaking of emotions, what about that good feeling you get when someone nasty gets what they deserve? Well, apparently, men feel this stronger than women. I’m curious, though, how the results would have been if they had conducted the experiment with a crime other than cheating or a punishment other than pain. What would happen if they told some American subjects that French women do get fat?

Yes, the French are getting fatter. As you might expect, the French health authorities are getting upset. I’m sure the fact that they’ll have to foot the bill for the impending health utilization contributes to that. Based on the end of this article, however, the French people seem to be okay with their expansion. Perhaps that’s the new French paradox.

This post refers to:

Carey, Benedict. “A Shocker: Partisan Thought Is Unconscious.” New York Times. January 24, 2006

Miller, Greg. “No Sympathy for the Devil.” ScienceNOW Daily News. January 18, 2006

Sciolino, Elaine. “France Battles a Problem That Grows and Grows: Fat.” New York Times. January 25, 2006.

As part of my mission to infiltrate the web, I’ve become a contributer to The Bitter Quill. My first post went up today. The Bitter Quill is a collective blog, where the contributers are writers with varying degrees of success, all seeking publication.

Diabetes appears to be the New York Times malady of the moment. They’ve done a 4 part series on it called “Bad Blood.” The focus of the series is on type II diabetes, which was formerly known as adult-onset diabetes. It’s now found more and more commonly among younger people. Type II diabetes accounts for 95% of cases in the U.S.

Diabetes is called it a silent scourge because people can live with diabetes and not know it. The result is that many people learn they have the disease when it becomes serious, or when complications occur. The complications are frequently gruesome, however. Most leg and partial leg amputations occur as a result of diabetes.

The saddest aspect of diabetes is how little is done to manage it. Some people refuse to believe that they are ill, until it is too late to save them from such complications as amputation, heart disease, or kidney failure. In some cases, people refuse to take their pills or insulin, or to check their blood sugar on a regular basis. They also neglect the lifestyle changes that are necessary to properly control diabetes.

It’s important to remember that individual choices are only part of the picture. The New York Times series also explores the social and economic conditions that contribute to diabetes’s toll. For many who need the most help in their fight against diabetes, there are few resources. They often are located away from places where they can get exercise or find healthful foods. Many may not have insurance coverage. Sometimes the stress of life is enough to wear down resolve.

It doesn’t help that health decisions are often driven by concerns about profit rather than health. Junk food is cheaper than health food, but it’s also easier to make money from it. Insurance companies and hospitals also look at preventive care for people with diabetes as a drain on profits. Hospitals can charge more for procedures like kidney dialysis than amputations, and both are more likely to be covered by insurance than preventive services like endocrinologist or podiatrist visits.

Recently, the link between Type II diabetes and genetics was confirmed. A variant of one gene in particular can increase the risk of developing diabetes by up to 45% in people who carry 1 copy of the variant gene, and 141% in people who carry 2 copies. Over a third of Americans may carry this gene variant, and scientists estimate that 7% of Americans carry 2 copies. The variant appears to be responsible for 21% of diabetes cases—over 4 million people.

If a screening test could be developed for this genetic variant, it’s possible that many cases could be prevented using diet and exercise. In order for that to truly happen, people must be provided with some extra incentives to do so.

This post refers to:

Kleinfield, N.R. “Diabetes and Its Awful Toll Quietly Emerge as a Crisis.” Bad Blood, Part 1. New York Times. January 9, 2006.

Kleinfield, N.R. “Living at an Epicenter of Diabetes, Defiance and Despair.” Bad Blood, Part 2.New York Times. January 10, 2006.

Urbina, Ian. “In the Treatment of Diabetes, Success Often Does Not Pay.” Series: Bad Blood, Part 3. New York Times. January 11, 2006.

Santora, Mark. “East Meets West, Adding Pounds and Peril.” Bad Blood, Part 4. New York Times. January 12, 2006.

Fountain, Henry. “On Not Wanting to Know What Hurts You.” New York Times. January 15, 2006.

Wade, Nicholas. “Gene Increases Diabetes Risk, Scientists Find.” New York Times. January 16, 2006.

No, this post is not about a new fantasy novel. It’s about physics and archeology.

If you follow physics at all, you’ve probably heard of dark matter. It’s stuff that has mass (hence the “matter”) but physicists can’t see it because it doesn’t emit electromagnetic radiation like stars do (hence the “dark”). Dark matter is detected by its gravitational effects. Most of the matter in the universe seems to be dark matter, and apparently physicists at Johns Hopkins University may now know how it’s organized. (Okay, they actually announced this in early December.) It turns out that dark matter forms a sort of “cosmic web.” At the nodes the web, the mass of the dark matter becomes great enough that it can pull light matter towards it.

As for ancient cities, it turns out that the computer game Luxor is named after a real Egyptian city. An archeology professor at Johns Hopkins has set up a website where you can see photographs of her dig at the site.

This post refers to:

Johns Hopkins University Office of News and Information JHU-STScI Team Maps Dark Matter in Startling Detail. December 9, 2005.

Bryan, Betsy and VanRensselaer, Jay. Hopkins in Egypt Today. Johns Hopkins University. January 2006.

In my last post, I mentioned RNAi in passing. As it happens, I recently wrote a piece on RNAi for an online magazine called Eclectica. It’s fairly short, so I hope that you’ll take a few minutes to read it. In addition to my piece, there are a number of other non-fiction, fiction, and poetry pieces, as well as some reviews.

This post refers to:

Kanumalla, Anju. DNA, RNA, and Alphabet Soup. Eclectica. January 2006.

The new year has begun. It’s a time to look back and to look forward. If you’ve managed to recover from your New Year’s revelry, I invite you to look at a few places that review the best science of 2005 and try to anticipate what 2006 may bring.

Science decided that “Evolution in Action” was the biggest breakthrough of 2005. They’ve made their Breakthrough of the Year section available to everyone who their website, not just subscribers. They make special note of four developments in evolution: the sequencing of the chimpanzee genome, recent discoveries in human evolution, speciation, and avian influenza.

The Breakthrough of the Year runners-up are also discussed in a separate article. In addition to reviewing the achievements of 2005, the Science staff made predictions on which scientific areas to watch in 2006, as well as evaluating the predictions they made at the end of 2004. For 2006, I’m particularly interested in RNAi and the avian flu.

When I get articles from Science, I usually prefer to look at PDFs, which look nicer when printed. However, some of the full text HTML versions on the Science website include reference lists, however, which you might find useful if you want to read further. The links provided above go to full text HTML pages rather than PDFs.

In addition to Science’s end of the year special, Scientific American has also named their top 50 leaders in science for 2005. Unfortunately, it was recently revealed their choice for research leader of the year, Dr. Hwang, fabricated many of his stem cell and cloning findings. Scientific American also compiled a list of the top 25 news stories of 2005.

This post refers to:

Breakthrough of the Year Section. Science Magazine. December 23, 2005. (See orange box in the Table of Contents for links to PDF files.)

Scientific American 50. Scientific American. November 21, 2005.

Top Science Stories of 2005. Scientific American. December 26, 2005.