faculty of 1000

Post-publication peer review

Richard of York…

Posted by rpg on 10 March, 2010

It’s all in the mind

Neuroscience is a fascinating subject, and not just because our friend Robert Sapolsky is a Faculty Member. Neuroscience (at least at F1000) covers a spectrum of subjects and disciplines, from the molecular basis of odour discrimination, through neural processing in the retina all the way up to anticipation of rewards and what chemical signals drive spontaneous learning and the pursuit of information.

In that vein, then, it’s rather fitting that

the last two decades of neuroscience and biological psychiatry research have revealed [that] there are no meaningful categorical differences in brain structure or function that map onto categorical clinical disorders

Ot to put it another way, it’s being on the ends of the spectrum, not having a discrete genotype, that makes you ’sick’. Ahmad Hariri of Duke University evaluated a paper from Robert Plomin (just down the road at King’s College) which synthesizes current thinking about mental illness into a conceptual framework summarized by the single statement

there are no categorical psychiatric disorders but rather a continuous range of behaviors which, at the extremes, may interfere with daily functioning.

The critical thing is that mental illness appears to be polygenic; that is there are multiple genes, each which have a small effect. Thus qualitative disorders, the ones that occupy pscychologists and psychiatrists, are simply the extremes of the bell curve of quantitative effects—there is a continuous range of brain structures and functions mapping onto a continuous range of behaviours. (‘Simply’, he says.) Now that’s all very well, but for the most part we don’t actually know what those quantitative traits, those individual genes, are. That shouldn’t be a major problem: Hariri recommends replacing categorical endpoints (exclusive) with quantitative biological and behavioural phenotypes (exclusive) in ongoing research. Extremes of the spectrum are important—medically and socially—and accepting this framework has enormous implications for the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of mental illness.

Which way is ‘up’?

I wrote a fluff piece for The Scientist ‘Hot Papers’ section last week (actually, I wrote three but only one is of concern now). It turns out that a long-held belief (there’s no other word) about segregation of different cell types in the developing embryo might well be wrong. The proposed mechanism is really intriguing but you’ll have to wait for me to tell you about it. In a almost-parallel development (pun not intended) another paper on F1000 looks at a similar problem in plants—in this case the generation of apical-basal patterning in Arabidopsis. This is important for establishment of root and shoot identities at opposite ends of the plant. Turns out that the previously-characterized PLETHORA genes and the CLASS III HOMEODOMAIN-LEUCIN ZIPPER transcription factor(don’t ask me why plant biologists have to shout so much) act antagonistically to define shoots versus roots.

While we’re talking about plants, Swiss researchers have found that the membrane at the Casparian strip is a diffusional barrier, and much like tight junctions in animal cells, generates polarity within cells. Two boron transporters (BOR1 and NIP5;1) are markers for polarization and allowed the researchers to trace polarity’s back to the embryo.

Changing your mind

An NMR structure

Anyone who has spent any time at all looking at protein structures knows that NMR and x-ray crystallography tell you different things. Crystal structures give you the impression of something fixed in space, and NMR structures usually look like something constructed from over-cooked spaghetti. They’re both representations of course, but someone has finally pointed out that native structures of proteins should be described in terms of ensembles rather than some ‘average’ structure. I’m not convinced this counts as a ‘paradigm shift‘ but it’s good to see these thoughts in print. Oh, and I get to use my new ‘Hidden Jewel’ icon! Tell me what you think. Hidden Jewel

Another challenging paper was published in Cell last month, identifying the tumour suppressor NF2 as a partner of (yet another) E3 ubiquitin ligase. The protein of NF2 is called ‘Merlin’, for ‘Moesin-Ezrin-Radixin-related protein’, and has signficant similarity to one domain of the cytoskeletal protein I did my thesis on. So the surprise is that Merlin appears to be active in the nucleus, rather than (or in addition to?) at the plasma membrane.

This paper is going to alter the way we think about the tumor suppressor NF2 [...] These findings are surprising and will make us reassess how Merlin works.

says Jonathan Chernoff of the Fox Chase Cancer Center. This has shades of the whole ‘nuclear actin’ controversy.

Men of Harlech

Worms Armageddon Finally, all is not what it seems in the Welsh valleys. Mutant monster worms are using calcium binding and sensing pathways to deal with environmental lead, turning into mutant killing compost eaters of DOOM! Well, not quite, but it does appear that a population of the little wrigglers in the unpronounceable Cmystwhyth Valley diverged from the rest of the species 17 thousand years ago. One lineage is pretty normal, the other eats lead for breakfast. The authors of the paper recommend mandatory genotyping of all individuals prior to field-based ecotoxicological assays, particularly those using discriminating genomic technologies. I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit, etc.

Posted in Weekly roundup | Tagged: , , , , | 3 Comments »

Hair apparent

Posted by stevepog on 8 March, 2010

beware of the bearded man bearing breadfruit

Sometimes there’s a real life-changing thrust to blog posts, that drives at the heart of a pivotal issue in modern society and make people question their motives, passions, opinions or even educational goals.

But seeing as we’re all coming down off a post-Oscars high, let me preempt your own judgement by rating this one as an Inglourious Basterds compared to the Hurt Locker of more worthy blog scribblings.

Actually, it’s really more of a Valkyrie than QT’s latest effort but then Tom Cruise never won any awards for his ability at copying accents (and it obviously wasn’t nominated for the 2010 awards so it’s less zeitgeisty).

Anyway, my point is to direct your eyes to the picture of the man on the left, much-respected Stanford neuroscientist and f1000 Faculty Member Robert Sapolsky.

With a beard that would make Hagrid feel ashamed, Sapolsky must be a delight as a lecturer. He’d also make a great magician with no need for a top hat either.

Sapolsky is a seasoned reviewer for f1000 and contributed a very positive review of a recent paper in Nature which discussed Prejudice and truth about the effect of testosterone on human bargaining behaviour. The crux of the paper was in a press release we put out today but the first emailed responses from journalists focused not on the weighty issues being discussed but of course, the accompanying photo above.

In one reporter’s words, it encouraged her to ask for more information on him as “I’ve been meaning to do somethign (sic) on weirdy beardies for a while”.

This is not the first time we’ve discussed hirsute scientists and our friend Joanne Manaster has a similar penchant (purely scientific) for bearded biologists. But it reinforces once again how much we should respect a scientist who sports this look: if he shows half as much commitment to research as to beard growth, a cancer/malaria/Xbox-related RSI cure is surely not far away.

*it’s ok, I cringed while writing the headline as much as you probably did reading it. To me it felt like the title for a bad 90s C-grade comedy starring a faded stand-up comic.

Then I did an IMDB search (I’m writing this in real-time, so the punchline could be a fizzer) and whaddya know?

It was closest in wording to a bad Canadian comedy flick , a 1912 black and white romantic drama and best of all, the ridiculously titled, Michael Flatley: Eire Apparent, about the most arrogant Irishman to ever pull on a pair of tights. Riverdance fans, I’ll meet you in the car park if you want to take issue with that assessment.


Posted in Communication, FMs, Journalism, Press Releases, Random, Science, f1000 | Tagged: , , , | 6 Comments »

Music to my ears

Posted by rpg on 5 March, 2010

A few weeks ago I went to the Faraday Prize Lecture at the Royal Society. The lecture, The secret mathematicians, was given by the Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science Marcus du Sautoy. Du Sautoy talked about five artists, how they were inspired by mathematics, and how their art tells us things about mathematics: a musician (Olivier Messiaen); an author (Luis Jorge Borges); an architect (Le Corbusier); a painter (Salvador Dali) and a choreographer (Rudolf Laban).

Music probably has the most obvious connection to mathematics: rhythm and tonality are based on mathematical relationships, and du Sautoy reminded us of the saying of Gottfried Leibniz,

Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting.

For me, the link between mathematics and music breaks down when composers take the maths and try to base music on it, without reference to several hundred years of music theory. In other words, just because you can use (for example) prime numbers to create a pattern, doesn’t mean you should. Schoenberg’s atonal compositions just sound like noise to me—yes, call me a Philistine if you like—and I reckon you should leave prime numbers to the cicadas. Mathematics can describe all music, sure; but not all maths is musical.

Similarly, the relationship between music and the rest of science has not always been harmonious. I came across the Symphony of Science this week, a musical project

designed to deliver scientific knowledge and philosophy in musical form.

Sounds great, and the website looks nice with embedded videos and links to the lyrics. Unfortunately I’m not convinced it works: some pleasant enough but rather non-descript elevator muzak plays while voices of scientists are processed to sound synthesized (and yes, the pitch and tempo are adjusted to saound vaguely musical but anyone can do that in Garageband) and lip-synced with video. It’s not ground-breaking by any stretch, and is shot through with New Age-style philosophies that I find rather hard to stomach (and check out the strange collection of Google ads on the site!). Richard Dawkins repeatedly saying ’science is the poetry of reality’ trivializes any meaning he might have been trying to get across. The only thing worth repeating was Jill Tarter’s The story of humans is the story of ideas; to shine light into dark corners but even that isn’t in the same league as Tom Lehrer, whether reciting all the chemical elements or poisoning pigeons in the park; or even Ron Laskey:


Haaaarvard

Back to du Sautoy. In a three-dimensional development of da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, the choreographer Rudolf Laban claims that Man is inclined to follow the connecting lines of the 12 corner points of an icosahedron with his movements travelling as it were along an invisible network of paths; and indeed his dancers trace out a Platonic shape with the tips of their limbs. But whether the maths drives this, or whether the mathematical description is simply an inevitable consequence of our bodily shape is not clear.

AcropioolisThe Fibonacci series is very familiar to most scientists, and perhaps because it is the result of a simple geometric algorithm it describes many natural relationships: the expanding population of rabbits, for example, or the spiral shape of a snail’s shell. Architects such as Le Corbusier have used it to plan buildings in two and three dimensions, and even the Greeks knew about it: the proportions of the Acropolis follow the Golden Ratio, which is derived from the Fibonacci sequence.

AsteroidsLiterature can also take inspiration from mathematics—not simply in the number of words or letters or syllables (although that is something that has occurred to this writer)—but in the inspiration of Borges’ Library of Babel. Borges, amazingly, uses a literary device to describe one model of the Universe: finite, yet unbounded (as opposed to spatially infinite but ‘flat’). Du Sautoy took the opportunity in his lecture to show how a simple computer game could also model the Universe, which caused not a little hilarity and some reflections on the nature of dimensionality.

Finally, Salvador Dali.

Dali once said

I am a carnivorous fish swimming in two waters, the cold water of art and the hot water of science

and in his art he is actually experimenting with mathematical relationships even as he creates. His art is informed by fractals (‘Visage of War’); by three-dimensional shapes and the Golden Ratio(‘The Sacrament of the Last Supper’); catastrophe theory (‘The Swallow’s Tail’ and ‘Topological Abduction of Europe’); and four-dimensional space:

Dali's Crucifxion on a hypercube
Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus)

Christ floats above the exploded tesseract or hypercube (a three dimensional representation of a four dimensional shape); Dali uses a very mathematical and indeed scientific construct to explore how spirituality extends beyond the dimensions and senses normally available to us.

Mathematicians, says Marcus du Sautoy, do it for the beauty, for the art. There is a pleasure in counting, in numbers; and in their relationships to each other. Perhaps then it is not surprising that art and maths do have a great deal to say to each other.

The Michael Faraday Prize Lecture is available from the Royal Society website.

Posted in Friday afternoon, The Scientist | Tagged: , , , , | 2 Comments »

Separation Anxiety

Posted by rpg on 4 March, 2010

Stem cells for dummies

The ability to maintain embryonic stem cell lines—more importantly, to preserve their pluripotence—in culture held out great promise for the treatment of a range of conditions from cancer to Parkinson’s disease. Unfortunately the technology ran into trouble when in 2001 the US Government restricted Federal funding to work done with the 21 lines that existed then, effectively kiboshing meaningful stem cell research in the US. Although the ability to induce pluripotency in adult cells (‘induced pluripotent stem’ or ‘iPS’ cells) avoided much of the controversy associated with deriving cells from human embryos, iPS cells are not as reliable as the real thing. All this changed last year when President Obama revoked the bill and enabled the development of new guidelines for Federal funding. And last month, the federal contract with the National Stem Cell Bank—the only one in the US—expired, throwing the stem cell game wide open.

All this means that we’re likely to see a lot more requests for stem cell line approval, like this:

Request for Human Embryonic Stem Cell
Line to be Approved for Use in NIH Funded Research. Type of Information
Collection Request: Revision, OMB 0925-0601, Expiration Date 02/28/
2010, Form Number: NIH 2890.

—and there’s even a Stem Cells for Dummies! (H/T)

Naturally, F1000 has its fair share of stem cell excitement. A study from Osaka University shows that embryonic stem cells do not have circadian rhythms; in fact, they do not express the transcriptional-translational feedback loops that generate rhythm in somatic cells. And although differentiation appears to induce circadian rhythm in these cells, subscequent treatment with the factors used to create iPS cells turns it off again. It’s not that straightforward though: an older paper, from Kyoto University, evaluated last week, finds a role for a cyclic gene that is expressed in stem cells, and in fact its expression level at the point of differentiation determines cell fate. So it would appear that circadian rhythm and commitment to cell differentiation are pretty much inseparable in development.

Six degrees of separation

It’s been an intriguing week for Structural Biology, too. The apparent similarity of many protein folds looks like an accident of physics rather than of evolution: there are only so many folds available to the 20 natural amino acids. Almost any two protein domains are separated by seven or fewer intermediate structurally similar domains—and this holds even for artificially-created polypeptide sequences.

The fact that evolutionary divergence need not be invoked to explain the continuous nature of protein structure space has implications for how the universe of protein structures might have originated, and how function should be transferred between proteins of similar structure.

Intrinsically unstructured proteins can lead to pathological conditions such as cancer and amylopathies. A paper from Madan Babu’s lab at the MRC-LMB (where I spent six happy years) shows that these proteins are actually very tightly and differentially regulated. Solving the three-dimensional shape of structured proteins, on the other hand, is fraught with difficulties. It’s exciting then to see a method that nearly doubles the size of proteins that potentially could be solved by NMR, by only looking at the peptide backbone assignments. Expect to see more NMR structures, and faster, then.

At the movies

I don’t think there’s any denying that studying the cytoskeleton gives the most opportunity for biology eye candy. A group at Southwestern Medical Center in Texas looked at how semaphorin receptors talk to the actin cytoskeleton, and show that fly cell ‘bristles’ reflect what’s going on inside the cell. They also show that a protein called Mical unbundles and depolymerizes actin fibres.

Finally, there’s been a lot of interest in how sticking cells down to a surface helps them stick mnore tightly to each other. A paper in the Journal of Cell Science, evaluated twice on F1000, describes an intriguing technique to test this: the researchers used two micropipettes to pull cells apart, measuring the force required as they do so. Reviewers Ekaterina Papusheva and Carl-Philipp Heisenberg say

In future studies, this could be used to visualize the spatial transmission of the signals between integrin and cadherin adhesion sites e.g. by implementing fluorescence resonance energy transfer biosensors

which should make for some very pretty data indeed. There is a movie of the technique, that I found fascinating. Can you predict when they’re finally going to separate?

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Have we overlooked the drinking cup?

Posted by Callum Anderson on 3 March, 2010

One of the things I love about scientific knowledge is that it is always in a state of flux. Theories are constantly being amended, rejected or confirmed by the community. In short, there is always room for more research regardless of how well trodden the ground may be.

In this vein, I read an interesting paper, evaluated by Faculty of 1000 member Phil Fischer (link to evaluation free for 3 months).

Simonne Rufener and a team based jointly at the University of Bern, Swiss Tropical Institute in Basel and Institute of Aquatic Sciences and Technology at Dübendorf have published a field study which expands significantly on previous research.

Every year, some 1.6 million people die due to diarrhoea associated with contaminated drinking water. In countries without running water, where drinking water must be collected at source, plenty of research has shown that the water is often contaminated at various stages before consumption, even if the source is relatively free from contamination (see here, here, and here).

The paper hypothesizes that in-house recontamination of drinking water after treatment is a significant, often overlooked problem in the developing world. The team visited 81 households in Bolivia and took 347 water samples from current sources, treated water, transport vessels and drinking vessels. Looking at levels of E. coli at various stages of the water journey, the Rufener and his team were able to show that disinfection at source, or even at home prior to consumption, did not effectively reduce bacteria levels. In fact the paper makes the point that even after home based water treatment such as boiling or SODIS

Only 36% of the treated water samples were free from E. coli

The real conclusion to acknowledge is that disinfecting water at source or at home will continue remain a relatively ineffective treatment while the majority of drinking vessels are still contaminated with E. coli. In the future, we may find solutions which combine water-source interventions, with effective hygiene education to help reduce levels of bacteria in the drinking cup itself.

Rufener S et al J Health Popul Nutr 2010 28 :34-41

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The drugs don’t work

Posted by rpg on 2 March, 2010

A copy of ‘People & Science’, the publication of the British Science Association appeared on my desk this morning. (Aside: what is it with these people? Founded in 1831, they used to be known as the British Association for the Advancement of Science, or the BA, and set out to combat the perceived elitism of the Ri. Fair enough, but they had a massive re-branding exercise last year and now have a logo that looks like a bilberry splat. Failing to learn from the experience of CRUK, they also object to the abbreviation BSA, which depending on preference is either related to blocking agents or motorcycles. At least BAAS got them on the front page of Google, even if it does sound like sheep shouting.)

Anyway, the article flagged for my attention is one by Sir John Krebs, son of the famous German biochemist Hans (of Krebs cycle fame) and a frighteningly distinguished scientist himself. Krebs, who chaired the 2007 working party of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics to produce a report on the ethics of Public Health, writes about the infamous ‘Nutt-sacking’. For those of you not up to date on the machinations of the UK Government, Professor David Nutt was chair of the independent Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), until he was sacked for, um, advising the government.

It’s not quite like that of course: the UK Government asked for advice on the classification, and thence the penalty for possession or trading, of cannabis. Based on evidence of potential and actual harm to individuals and society, the ACMD said that cannabis should remain a ‘Class C’ drug; that is possession should carry a maxium two year gaol sentence (compare with Class A drugs like LSD or heroin, carrying a seven year sentence for possession; and amphetamines, which carry a five year sentence). The UK Government ignored this expert advice and reclassified cannabis as ‘B’ (somebody should tell them about the Netherlands). The Prime Minister, even before the ACMD review, had already said that cannabis should be reclassified as ‘B’, and the then AMCD Chair, Sir Michael Rawlins asked the Prime Minister to butt out and wait for the review. When the review came around nobody should be at all surprised that the Labour Government ignored the advice (in the interests of populist policy and Nanny State-ness, no doubt). They had, after all, previously telegraphed that they had no intention of accepting the ACMD’s advice on the classification of ecstasy. As Lord Krebs says, ‘it would appear that the personal opion of the Home Secretary trumped the considered analysis of the statutory expert committee’. So, perhaps, the government should not have been surprised that Professor Nutt then publicly criticized them for ignoring advice.

They sacked him anyway. You can read some measured analysis from Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist at Imperial College, at the LabLit blog. Bill also lambasts politicians of all colours for failing to grasp that evidential science doesn’t give a hoot for policy.

Lord Krebs in ‘People & Science’ this month tells us that—however much we scientists might like to believe otherwise—independent scientific advice is, on the whole, valued in Westminster. Politicians of all parties are keen to emphasize their commitment to evidence-based policy, and in areas from infectious disease, to GMOs, to climate change, this commitment is usually fulfilled. There are over 70 expert committees providing advice and most Departments (but not, notably, the Treasury) have their own Chief Scientific Adviser. Lord Kreb’s own advice on the need to gather more evidence before deciding whether or not to cull badgers was accepted (but it would appear that didn’t make any difference in the long run—they eventually bowed to uninformed pressure from the farmers, presumably while P&S was in press); and the BSE crisis was handled on the basis of scientific evidence. He does, however, point out that it would have been better to assemble proper evidence before splashing half a billion quid on the Sure Start programme, but I guess you can’t win them all.

The latest example of politicians actually listening to scientists came just last week, when MPs from the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee said homeopathy ‘remedies’ are a waste of money, and should not be available on the NHS.

However, whether ministers will take heed of evidence that contradicts favoured policies, or apparent vote-winners, is still a matter of debate. The draft Principles on Scientific Advice published by the science minister Lord Drayson apparently emphasize the importance of independence, openness and respect for scientific evidence. But how are disputes going to be handled? And when Westminster ignores scientific advice, what recourse do we have? And surely, shouldn’t we be able to criticize elected representatives without fear of losing our jobs?

PS Prof. David Nutt is talking at the Science Media Centre on Thursday 18th March. I’d love to go but I’m going to Geek Pop The Science Sessions instead. More on that later.

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Spending too long on the couch

Posted by Callum Anderson on 28 February, 2010

Couch potatoes beware!, or so says Faculty of 1000 member Paul Pagel in his evaluation of a paper studying links between television viewing time and mortality in Australia.

Television is the sedentary activity of choice for many of us in the developed world. And plenty of studies have already demonstrated a relationship between televison viewing time and various disorders such as cardio-metabolic risk, diabetes and weight gain.

This particular study into television viewing habits of 8800 by Professor David Dunstan and his team is valuable due to the large sample size and also the length of time the observation ran.

By studying a large sample (8800) of adults aged more than 25 for a median period of 6.6 years, the researchers were able to get results on a big enough scale to make some powerful conclusions.

Let’s look at the numbers.

•A total of 284 deaths were reported in the period
•Of which 87 were related to cardiovascular disease

After appropriate adjustments for age, gender, exercise and and body habitus were made, the authors were able to determine that the likelihood of cardiovascular related mortality was increased for each one hour increment of television viewing per day. As viewing time passed four hours per day, the risk was significantly enlarged.

See the results for yourself

After adjustment for age, sex, waist circumference, and exercise, the hazard ratios for each 1-hour increment in television viewing time per day were 1.11 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.03 to 1.20) for all-cause mortality, 1.18 (95% CI, 1.03 to 1.35) for CVD mortality, and 1.09 (95% CI, 0.96 to 1.23) for cancer mortality. Compared with a television viewing time of or =2 to or =4 h/d. For CVD mortality, corresponding hazard ratios were 1.19 (95% CI, 0.72 to 1.99) and 1.80 (95% CI, 1.00 to 3.25).

Dunstan and his team at Baker IDI are also careful to note in this paper that television watching itself is not necessarily the danger. Rather it is the prolonged sitting time associated with watching television. I found this paper particularly interesting because it runs against the grain, and insists that as well as promoting healthy initiatives such as exercise and lifestyle modifications, we should also be looking at methods of reducing sedentary activities. What do you think? Is it more important to encourage a healthy lifestyle or discourage an unhealthy one, or is a balance of the two necessary?

Posted in f1000 | Tagged: , , | 2 Comments »

On the run-26Feb10

Posted by rpg on 26 February, 2010

This week, I have mostly been in Philadelphia.

View of Philly

Philadelphia, sometime this week

That was to meet The Scientist team, and sit down with Sarah Greene and figure out exactly how we’re going to run this new beast. The bottom line is that F1000 will now be feeding into The Scientist much more directly, and my job suddenly got a whole lot more interesting (not to mention busy). I’m very much looking forward to it.

We’ve already made a start: our Facebook page is now displaying links from The Scientist (there’s a few glitches that I need to sort out, but it’s there) and I’ll be pitching in with The Scientist’s Twitter feed. And readers should soon notice changes in some of the regular features, as well as additional stuff in print and online. Keep checking back here for updates. Check back here to find out what we’re doing.

Now, I’m totally jet-lagged (the extra two hours on the tarmac waiting to be de-iced didn’t help matters) so I’m going to wish you all a splendid weekend, and I’ll be back Monday.

Dirty snow on the sidewalk

Much as it was a productive week and they’re a great bunch in Philly, I’m glad to be in London again.

Posted in Friday afternoon | Tagged: , , | 2 Comments »

When animal activists go too far

Posted by stevepog on 25 February, 2010

We have previously discussed the honorable activities of the Americans for Medical Progress (AMP) and its members, including Dario Ringach whose recent paper on animal activism was highly rated by our reviewers.

AMP send regular email updates to scientists and this item looked at an extremely important issue, so I am reproducing it here in full:

SCIENCE BLOGGERS DECRY ACTIVIST TARGETING OF CHILDREN

Five members of the Science Blogs community have posted strong commentaries today denouncing the activist targeting of a scientist’s child.

As background, UCLA professor Dario Ringach, one of the organizers and participants of last week’s panel discussion about animal research with AR adherents, and two of his colleagues had protests at their homes a few days in advance of the event. In an after-action communique about the protests, it was stated that activists knew where one of Dario’s children went to school and are planning to stage a protest there.

Janet Stemwedel, a panelist in the UCLA discussion, led the outcry on her widely-respected Adventures in Science and Ethics blog with a post entitled “Time to Get Mad. Time to Speak Up.”
(http://scienceblogs.com/ethicsandscience/2010/02/time_to_get_mad_time_to_speak.php ) Here is the thrust of her call to action:

“For just daring to stand up and share his view, Dario was targeted for more home demonstrations. And now, activists threaten to bring the demonstration to his children’s schools, to “educate fellow students what their classmate’s father does for a living”.

“Express the view that scientific research is worth doing, plan on your kids being harassed? Is that what we’ve come to? Is this really the society we want to live in?

“If it’s not, we need to stand up and say so, in no uncertain terms.

“Having differing opinions is not a crime. Nobody’s kids should be targeted for harassment because you disagree with their parents. We need to call this behavior out, no matter who does it, no matter what cause they hope to further with it.

“Each time these tactics are the ones that are used, we die a little as a pluralistic society, no matter which side we support. Any member of the public paying attention to such shenanigans should be outraged, and should say so.

“And members of the scientific community especially have reason to oppose these tactics. They reflect, after all, the impression that scientists aren’t really a part of our society, that they’re not really members of our moral community. You can bang on their windows and scare the crap out of their kids, and “normal” people won’t make a peep about it.

“Scientists are normal people, despite their specialized skills and interests. They need to see this bullying for what it is and raise their voices to reject it.

“Scientists, are you mad? Then stand up and say it.”

Four other prominent members of the Science Blogs community have already responded to her call, and other articles are likely to come in following days.   The Science Bloggers are:

PZMyers at Pharyngula:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/02/terrorists_of_the_animal_right.php

Orac at Respectful Insolence:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/02/animal_rights_thugs_researchers_children.php

Dr. Isis at On Becoming a Domestic as Laboratory Goddess:
http://scienceblogs.com/isisthescientist/2010/02/go_read_this_now_1.php

Nick Anthis at The Scientific Activist:
http://scienceblogs.com/scientificactivist/2010/02/here_we_go_again.php

(Please note that some of the posts link to animal rights websites.  If you wish to see what is connected to a specific link and are unwilling to visit activist sites, send us a note.)

How to respond to Dr. Stemwedel’s call to action?   A first step would be to participate in the lively discussion that is continuing in the comment sections of her blog and those of the other writers.  Also, sign the Pro-Test Petition if you have not already  – www.raisingvoices.net – and encourage your family, friends, colleagues and elected officials to do so as well. Consider becoming more involved in outreach about the research message, whether it is to schools or with adults in your community; we have a starter’s guide at www.amprogress.org/advocacy and would be delighted to send you materials and facilitate contacts with other research advocates in your area and with your interests.

Posted in Communication, FMs, Random, f1000 | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

More food for thought

Posted by stevepog on 24 February, 2010

By Steve Pogonowski and Bea Downing

Work dramas, late bills, latent childhood trauma: adult life is full of potential for the average person to get stressed and deal with it by ‘comfort eating’.

As discussed in a previous post by Callum, labeled ‘Food for thought’ (hence my segued sequel/blatant rip-off title here), there are ongoing studies starting to appear in the earlier pages of top-ranked journals that look at the psychological, rather than purely physical, causes and effects of weight gain and obesity.

But the fact remains that there is still much to learn about the biological processes resulting from the mental stresses of daily life.

In a recent F1000 Biology Report, Faculty Member Achim Peters from the University of Luebeck and Dirk Langemann of Carolo-Wilhelmina-University looked at recent advances detailing how stress affects neurometabolism and eating behavior.

Stress increases the brain’s demand for glucose and, in some people, causes comfort eating and weight gain due to a weak sympathoadrenal response.

Under stress, the brain’s metabolic rate – and glucose demand – shoots up by 12%. Two mechanisms then come in to increase glucose availability to the brain: brain-pull and storage-push. Brain-pull mechanisms increase the percentage and amount of energy that the brain can withdraw from the blood across the blood-brain barrier, while storage-push mechanisms increase blood-glucose levels to flood the system with energy.

During periods of chronic stress, the stronger storage-push response results in the blood being loaded with energy. When the brain’s demand for glucose falls, the storage-push is still releasing glucose into the blood. The remaining glucose is mopped up by insulin and stored as fat.

Peters and Langemann said:

“Evidence accumulates that the stressed mind can choose a metabolic coping strategy by switching its supply mode from brain pull to ‘comfort eating’.”

Chronic stresses in adult life, such as job-related demands and difficulty paying bills, may weaken the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and the sympathetic nervous system. In adults with depression and anxiety, weight gain and the risk of obesity were increased in a dose-response fashion with the number of episodes of these common mental disorders.

Problems can also strike earlier in life: early-life stress and juvenile trauma result in long-lasting changes in the activity of the autonomic nervous system and body weight. Prenatal psychosocial stress exposure is associated with hyperinsulinemia in later life, a strong predictor of weight gain and a typical marker of brain-pull inefficiency.

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