CDC Report on Failures to Vaccinate

Posted on May 25, 2011  Comments (6)

Science brought us the miracle of vaccines and the near elimination of many diseases. Unfortunately people are choosing to bring those diseases to many more people because they failed to get vaccinated or failed to vaccinate their children. The needless pain and suffering caused by these poor decisions are a sad testament to scientific illiteracy.

The financial implications of the US measles outbreaks

One reason measles outbreaks are so scary (and so difficult to contain) is that measles is the most infectious microbe known to man–it’s transmission rate is around 90 percent. It has also killed more children than any other disease in history.
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The most significant factor in the spread of measles in the United States is declining vaccination rates — and, similar to what occurred in the UK in the early part of the last decade, that decline can be traced back to the press-fueled panic…

CDC report on Measles

Children and adults who remain unvaccinated and develop measles also put others in their community at risk…

In Europe in recent years, measles has been fatal for several children and adolescents, including some who could not be vaccinated because they were immune compromised.

Rapid control efforts by state and local public health agencies, which are both time intensive and costly, have been a key factor in limiting the size of outbreaks and preventing the spread of measles into communities with increased numbers of unvaccinated persons. Nonetheless, maintenance of high 2-dose MMR vaccination coverage is the most critical factor for sustaining elimination. For measles, even a small decrease in coverage can increase the risk for large outbreaks and endemic transmission, as occurred in the United Kingdom in the past decade…

Related: Vaccines Don’t Provide Miraculous Results if We Don’t Take Them – The Illusion of Understanding – 500 Year Floods

Nice Program on Mexican Free-tailed Bats

Posted on May 23, 2011  Comments (0)

Mexican free-tailed bats in the Central Valley, California: the voracious insect-eating species protects the local crops from pests. Bats really are wonderful animals and very beneficial to people. They eat many insects and some also help pollinate some plants. The Mexican free-tailed bats seem to even benefit from human activity (taking advantage of bridge underpasses as homes, for example), but many other bat species are in trouble.

Related: Nectar-Feeding Bats – Researchers Work to Protect Bats Against Deadly Disease – Moth Jams Bat Sonar

H-index Rank for Countries: for Science Publications

Posted on May 17, 2011  Comments (1)

The SCImago Journal and Country Rank provides journal and country scientific indicators. As stated in previous posts, these types of rankings have limitations but they are also interesting. The table shows the top 6 countries by h-index and then some others I chose to list (the top 6 repeat from my post in 2008 – Country H-index Rank for Science Publications). The h-index provides a numeric indication of scientific production and significance (by looking at the citations given papers by other papers). Read more about the h-index (Hirsh index).

Country h-index h-index (2007) % of World
Population		 total Cites
USA 1,139 793     4.5% 87,296,701
United Kingdom 689 465     .9% 21,030,171
Germany 607 408     1.2% 17,576,464
France 554 376     1.0% 12,168,898
Canada 536 370     .5% 10,375,245
Japan 527 372     1.8% 14,341,252
Additional countries of interest
18) China 279 161 19.4% 5,614,294
21) South Korea 258 161     .7% 2,710,566
22) Brazil 239 148  2.8% 1,970,704
25) India 227 146 17.5% 2,590,791
31) Singapore 196 .01% 871,512

Related: Top Countries for Science and Math Education: Finland, Hong Kong and Korea – Worldwide Science and Engineering Doctoral Degree Data - Top 15 Manufacturing Countries in 2009 – Science and Engineering Doctoral Degrees Worldwide – Ranking Universities Worldwide (2008) – Government Debt as Percentage of GDP 1990-2009: USA, Japan, Germany, China…

New Discovery Finds Fungi Different From All Known Forms is Ubiquitous

Posted on May 13, 2011  Comments (5)

A New, Somewhat Moldy Branch On The Tree Of Life

Many fungi are already familiar. There are mushrooms, yeasts, molds like the one that makes penicillin, plant diseases such as rusts and smuts. Mildew in your shower is one, along with athlete’s foot. There are even fungi that infect insects — as well as fungi that live on other fungi.

Biologists figure they’ve probably only cataloged about 10 percent of all fungal species. But they thought they at least knew all of the major groups.
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They found novel bits of DNA — related to fungi, but clearly different from all of the known varieties — just about everywhere, “including pond water, lake water, freshwater sediments and marine sediments,” Richards says. “Almost everywhere we looked we found this novel group.”

They then brought samples back to the lab and devised a technique to make the organisms containing this novel DNA glow under a microscope. As a result, they’ve managed to get a few glimpses of these mysterious life forms, which they have named cryptomycota.

“We know they have at least three stages to their life cycle,” Richards says. “One is where they attach to a host, which are photosynthetic algae. Another stage … they form swimming tails so they can presumably find food. And [there's] another stage, which we call the cyst phase, where they go to sleep.”

Science continues to explore and find new wonders around us. There is so much still to learn.

Related: Mycoremediation and its Applications In Oil Spills -Most Dinosaurs Remain Undiscovered – Iron-breathing Species Isolated in Antarctic for Millions of Years – Fungus-gardening Ant Species Has Given Up Sex Completely

Google Science Fair 2011 Projects

Posted on May 10, 2011  Comments (5)

The Google Science Fair selected 60 semi-finalists in 3 groups (age 13-14, 15-16 and 17-18). The 60 global semi finalists will then be narrowed down by our judging panel to 15 global finalists who will be announced later in May.

The 15 global finalists will be flown to Google HQ in California, USA for our celebratory Science Fair event and finalist judging round will take place on 11 July 2011. These finalists will be expected to present their projects before a panel of acclaimed scientists including Nobel Laureates, tech visionaries and household names.

Sailboats using canting keels are among the world’s fastest ocean-going vessels; however, there are inherent problems. Canting sailboats require the addition of canards or dagger boards to replace the loss of the primary underwater lifting surface, adding significant complexity. The second and more important issue is that the cantilevered weight of the ballast bulb at the end of the keel generates tremendous loads on the vessel. The objective of this research was to test a concept to make sailboats even faster and safer than the current designs. To test the concept, this researcher built a remote control functional model fitted for both canting and hydrodynamic keels. The results showed that the hydrodynamic keel out performs the canting keel both upwind and downwind.

The Grand Prize winner plus one parent or guardian per winner will win an amazing 10 day trip to the Galapagos Islands with National Geographic Expeditions. Traveling aboard the National Geographic Endeavour the winner will visit Darwin’s living laboratory and experience up-close encounters with unique species such as flightless cormorants, marine iguanas, and domed giant tortoises. They also win a $50,000 scholarship, split equally between team members should a team win this prize. This scholarship is intended to be used towards the finalists’ further education.

The 2 age group winners that are not selected as the grand prize winner will win $25,000 scholarships.

You can vote on your favorite projects and help select the people’s choice winner that will receive a $10,000 scholarship.

Related: 11 Year Old Using Design of Experiments – President Obama Speaks on Getting Students Excited About Science and Engineering – Science Fair Project on Bacterial Growth on Packaged Salads

Evolution of Altruism in Robots

Posted on May 5, 2011  Comments (1)

The webcast explores robots evolving cooperative behavior. A Quantitative Test of Hamilton’s Rule for the Evolution of Altruism (open access paper)

One of the enduring puzzles in biology and the social sciences is the origin and persistence of altruism, whereby a behavior benefiting another individual incurs a direct cost for the individual performing the altruistic action. This apparent paradox was resolved by Hamilton’s theory, known as kin selection, which states that individuals can transmit copies of their own genes not only directly through their own reproduction but also indirectly by favoring the reproduction of kin, such as siblings or cousins. While many studies have provided qualitative support for kin selection theory, quantitative tests have not yet been possible due to the difficulty of quantifying the costs and benefits of helping acts. In this study, we conduct simulations with the help of a simulated system of foraging robots to manipulate the costs and benefits of altruism and determine the conditions under which altruism evolves.

By conducting experimental evolution over hundreds of generations of selection in populations with different costs and benefits of altruistic behavior, we show that kin selection theory always accurately predicts the minimum relatedness necessary for altruism to evolve. This high accuracy is remarkable given the presence of pleiotropic and epistatic effects, as well as mutations with strong effects on behavior and fitness. In addition to providing a quantitative test of kin selection theory in a system with a complex mapping between genotype and phenotype, this study reveals that a fundamental principle of natural selection also applies to synthetic organisms when these have heritable properties.

Related: Robots That Start as Babies Master Walking Faster Than Those That Start as Adults – Friday Fun: Robocup 2010, Robot Football – Toyota Develops Thought-controlled Wheelchair
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