August 2008 - Posts - Lab Rats

August 2008 - Posts

Chewing gum to reduce stress, multitask, and what not

Posted by Seema Singh at 
Here's some news you can chew. The gooey, chewy gum that has been linked to several things, from dental hygiene to weight loss to concentration enhancement, is now shown to reduce stress. According to a new study presented on August 30 at the 10th International Congress of Behavioral Medicine in Tokyo, chewing gum helps relieve anxiety, improve...

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Is P+C+M= B?

Posted by Seema Singh at 
"Using physics, chemistry and mathematics to understand biology", is the title of the first monthly lecture which National Chemical Laboratory, Pune, is starting under a community outreach program for students from September 28. The idea is to get a whole new generation excited about science and the emerging, rather already established, multi...

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Investment: $1.8 billion, ROI in 15 years: $86 billion...

Posted by Seema Singh at 
Yes, that's the trade-off California state government pulled off in its tobacco control program which ended in 2004. In a first ever study to quantifiably connect tobacco control to healthcare savings, published in today's issue of PLoS Medicine, researchers say California state government made a 50-to-1 return on its investment in tobacco control...

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At last the search for CSIR directors begins

Posted by Seema Singh at 
After years of stop-gap leadership at various institutes, 14 of 37 CSIR (Council of Scientific and Industrial Research) institutes are likely to get their fulltime directors. CSIR has advertised that it needs "outstanding R&D professionals" to head its national institutes. Let's hope it gets them soon, and the search isn't as elusive...

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Are we smarter than 5th graders?

Posted by Jacob Koshy at 
Couple of days ago, Professor Yash Pal , former UGC chairman and one of India's best known science communicators. (Remember Turning Point, on DD?), asked a startlingly simple question: Why does we always see the same side of the moon? To place matters in context, it was at the launch of a book on India's upcoming moon mission . There were a...

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Budget lessons from Bell Labs

Posted by Seema Singh at 
What was once iconic of fundamental research and served as a well-spring of innovation for the telecommunications industry at large is now on the brink. Bell Labs, reports Nature in today's issue, has "bottomed out" . Bell says the report of "its death" is exaggerated. Could be, but only to some extent as experts had expressed...

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Personalized medicine: genes vs ethnicity; Venter vs Watson

Posted by Seema Singh at 
Few biologists would put their genome on the sequencing block to advance the science they passionately pursue. James Watson , Nobel prize winner for medicine and discoverer of the double helix, and J Craig Venter , scientist-turned-entrepreneur who, in 2000, raced the Human Genome Project to sequence the entire human genome, did just that -- got their...

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Calculating carbon footprints, or toe-prints?

Posted by Seema Singh at 
Calculating carbon footprint has become almost fashionable and with dozens of calculators available online, one can even calculate one's individual or a household's footprint. But a surfeit of calculators is creating confusion, and controversy , as there is no universally accepted way of calculating carbon footprints. As a result, say researchers...

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The Nobel and the not-so-noble

Posted by Jacob Koshy at 
It may be premature calling it a trend, but Indian-born scientists have begun publicly voicing dissent—even alleging unfairness—in the manner Nobel prizes are awarded. Indian-origin professor, Mrinal Thakur, of the Auburn University in the United States had his second press conference in five years, accusing the Nobel Prize Committee of having an “anti...

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Dissecting Indian science, publicly

Posted by Seema Singh at 
It's good to see scientists, who often avoid debating across the table, discuss through the press. The beneficiary, almost always, is the reader. In two recent issues of Economic & Political Weekly two senior scientists literally pitch universities against national laboratories. Something a neighbourhood blog An Awkward Corner also discusses...

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Risk assessment for breast cancer

Posted by Seema Singh at 
Breast cancer, which until recently was thought to be a scourge of the West, is now rising in Asia, including India , that too at a younger age. While India has no national figures yet on the incidence of breast cancer, (the Indian Council of Medical Research has started a national registry as it is the fastest growing cancer among women in India) oncologists...

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Health α marriage? Times they are a changin'

Posted by Seema Singh at 
We've been long fed on the diet that marriage, even if going out of fashion, is good for health . Not any more, it seems. A new report, due to publish in the September issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behaviour , titled The Times They Are a Changin': Marital Status and Health Differentials from 1972 to 2003, says the health of people...

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Big step in the fight against aging

Posted by Seema Singh at 
A few years ago, responding to a query from a senior member of the Indian Academy of Science on tips for keeping the memory sharp and brain active (he said he had problems remembering phone numbers), the noted neurosurgeon from the National Brain Research Centre in Haryana, Dr P N Tandon, said: "Use it [brain] or lose it." But that might not...

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We’ve evolved to fear cobras, not traffic lights…

Posted by Seema Singh at 
That's what a behavioral ecologist from Tel Aviv University says. And driving in Bangalore for over 10 years, often exasperated at fellow drivers' and the meandering cattle's chaotic ways, half forgetting the traffic rules myself, I couldn't agree more with this research finding. In his new research published in Nature today, Arnon Lotem...

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Predicting drug disasters

Posted by Seema Singh at 
One of the most stringent drug regulatory authorities in the world, the US Food and Drug Administration, comes under flak for having fatal flaws in the way new drugs are tested and marketed. This time it’s no patients’ advocacy group but a sociologist and professor of comparative health at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey . Presenting...

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