Scientific American

Self-Worth Shattering: A Single Bomb Blast Can Saddle Soldiers with Debilitating Brain Trauma

Wed, 16 May 2012 14:40:00 EST

The stress and suffering of combat are known to leave a lasting impact on military veterans, in some cases triggering post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) . Researchers have now found an even more serious and debilitating mental condition, known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) , in veterans, particularly those injured by the concussive force of bomb blasts. [More]

Soot May Help Shift Tropics North

Wed, 16 May 2012 13:01:00 EST

Soot may be responsible for the tropics expanding north , according to an analysis involving multiple computer models of the climate. By absorbing sunlight and trapping extra heat in the atmosphere, the tiny, black particles may be helping the poleward march of tropical conditions.

The research will be published in Nature on May 17. ( Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.)

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Writing about patients: lessons from first year

Wed, 16 May 2012 12:55:00 EST

Three years ago, before fully committing myself to the idea of going into medicine, I decided to shadow in a genetics outpatient clinic to help give me a clue of what it was about. When I met twelve -yea r-old Laura (not her real name), she was wearing denim overalls, white sandals, and a floppy green hat. During her evaluation, the resident I was shadowing asked her to remove them so that he could do a routine physical exam. Everything was shed except for the green hat, which she flatly refused to touch. Laura s mother, who was in the room with us, defended her daughter s obstinacy. She never takes that hat off. Can t you just do the exam with it on?

Laura and her green hat inspired a fiction story I later wrote about a young girl s building obsession with texture and color. Many other tidbits I had learned about her, however, never made it into the narrative. In a story, with words that I arranged, characters could behave any way I chose or undergo any experience I designed. I was able to add and subtract details to Laura s narrative as I wanted not necessarily to give it a happy ending, but to package it neatly, smooth out contradictions, and tie up loose ends. A twelve-year-old became a fifteen-year-old, a green hat became a red scarf, and most importantly, the doctors were able to give my character s illness a name. By writing a fictional story about a patient, I was able to fit pieces of her medical narrative together in satisfying ways I could not do in real life.

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Know Your Neurons: How to Classify Different Types of Neurons in the Brain's Forest

Wed, 16 May 2012 10:40:00 EST

Previously, on Know Your Neurons: Chapter 1: The Discovery and Naming of the Neuron

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Microbes Annihilate the "Nature vs. Nurture" Debate

Wed, 16 May 2012 10:02:00 EST

Most E. coli bacteria found in the body are harmless

The latest research into the genetics of the human microbiome is taking to a whole new level the old (and not always fruitful) argument about whether nature or nurture is a more important influence in our lives.

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10 Things Exome Sequencing Can t Do-but Why It s Still Powerful

Wed, 16 May 2012 08:53:00 EST

Sequencing of the exome the protein-encoding parts of all the genes is beginning to dominate the genetics journals as well as headlines, thanks to its ability to diagnose the formerly undiagnosable.

The 2011 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting honored the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel s coverage of a 4-year-old whose intestinal disorder was finally diagnosed after sequencing his exome. Once investigators assigned a gene to his symptoms, a bone marrow transplant saved his life. And a just-published study compared the exomes of 12 children with combinations of developmental delay, intellectual disability, and birth defects at the Duke University genetics clinic to reference exomes, revealing 7 mutations, 2 in genes not known to be associated with disease.

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#SciAmBlogs Tuesday - on that TIME cover..., stem cells, invasive beetles, drowned Cretaceous birds, onset of autism, and more.

Wed, 16 May 2012 01:28:00 EST

- Eric Michael Johnson – Out of the Mouth of Babes

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The Football Concussion Crisis, Part 1

Tue, 15 May 2012 19:15:08 EST

NFL Hall of Famer Harry Carson joins former NBC anchor Stone Phillips and pathologist Bennet Omalu for a discussion of chronic traumatic encephalopathy among football players. [More]

Out of the Mouth of Babes

Tue, 15 May 2012 19:15:00 EST

Extended breastfeeding is the norm in most human and primate societies. So why are we the weird ones?

"Attachment (with respect to Martin Schoeller)" by Nathaniel Gold

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The Mathematician's Obesity Fallacy

Tue, 15 May 2012 18:30:00 EST

As I write, this interview with mathematician Carson C. Chow is the number-one most-emailed story on the New York Times Web site. Chow, a researcher at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, had no experience in the health sciences before he came to study the problem of why so many Americans are overweight. “I didn’t even know what a calorie was,” he says.

This kind of outsider’s perspective can be invaluable when attacking a problem as difficult and entrenched as the epidemic of obesity in the U.S. Chow relates the story of starting work at the institute a division of the National Institutes of Health and finding a mathematical model created by a colleague that could predict “how body composition changed in response to what you ate.” The problem, as Chow describes it, was that the model was complicated: “hundreds of equations,” he told the Times . “[We] began working together to boil it down to one simple equation. That’s what applied mathematicians do.”

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Car Commutes Can Counter Conditioning

Tue, 15 May 2012 15:19:08 EST

The average American car commuter spends a total of about 50 minutes each day getting to and from work. Some spend hours stuck in heavy traffic. Others may enjoy clear roads, but long drives from suburbs to the city.

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TEDMED: Tougher topics to chew on

Tue, 15 May 2012 11:47:00 EST

With earlier posts about TEDMED, I hope I whet your appetite and energized you to take on the tougher topics. There were several talks that either particularly resonated with me or that left a sour aftertaste.

Ivan Oransky , executive editor of Reuters Health, offered excellent perspective on the current trend of treating preconditions more aggressively, noting facetiously that subclinical acne is the easiest type to treat. He focused on the medicalization of even trivial problems leading to unnecessary interventions. I was immediately reminded of the fine NPR story, How A Bone Disease Grew To Fit The Prescription , which vividly described osteopenia having been created as a new disease.

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The Most Exciting Moment of My Scientific Career

Tue, 15 May 2012 11:00:00 EST

Thumbi Ndung’u left Kenya 1995 to study medicine at Harvard. He later returned to Africa on a mission to exploit HIV’s vulnerabilities. Now the head of the HIV Pathogenesis Program at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, Ndung’u spoke with Scientific American contributor Brendan Borrell about a research breakthrough early in his career that helped set the pace for the Kenyan’s ongoing study of genes in the immune system that may help to fight AIDS and lead to a vaccine. When asked which moment has been the most exciting of his young career, Ndung’u responded:

“The most exciting moment for me was when I succeeded in developing the first molecular clone of HIV subtype C as a graduate student at Harvard in the late 1990s. HIV subtype C is the most common subtype in the world. About 50 percent of all infections are caused by subtype C, but developing an infectious clone was difficult for reasons that we don’t fully understand.

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Your Microbiome Community Brings New Meaning to "We the People"

Tue, 15 May 2012 10:05:00 EST

“No man is an island, entire of itself,” wrote English poet John Donne. Nearly four centuries later science is gaining a fuller appreciation of just how literally true that is.

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Empowering the Body to Fix Its Parts

Tue, 15 May 2012 09:33:00 EST

Over the past few months, we have been flooded with emails from distressed parents asking whether their deaf child will be able to hear one day.

With each new email comes a poignant story about a child whose world is silent. It is estimated that hearing loss affects 11% of school age children and even mild loss may adversely influence school performance, cognitive development and language acquisition. The most common type of hearing loss, sensorineural, is the result of injury to the hair cells of the inner ear s Organ of Corti, most commonly due to infections, medication, noise and aging.

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Not-So-Quick Fix: ADHD Behavioral Therapy May Be More Effective Than Drugs in Long Run

Tue, 15 May 2012 06:30:00 EST

Before stimulant drugs such as Ritalin, Concerta and Adderall began their rise to popularity in the 1970s, treatment for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) focused on behavioral therapy. But as concerns build over the mounting dosages and extended treatment periods that come with stimulant drugs, clinical researchers are revisiting behavioral therapy techniques. Whereas stimulant medications may help young patients focus and behave in the classroom, research now suggests that behaviorally based changes make more of a difference in the long-term.

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#SciAmBlogs Monday - decaying aluminum, living photography, science movie consultant, octopus on ice, ugliest experiments, and more.

Tue, 15 May 2012 00:03:00 EST

Today we are happy to announce the newest blog at #SciAmBlogs – check out Molecules to Medicine!

And as usual on Mondays, we have the new Image of the Week .

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Living Photography

Mon, 14 May 2012 19:53:00 EST

Image of the Week #42, May 14th, 2012:

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What Are Science's Ugliest Experiments?

Mon, 14 May 2012 15:41:00 EST

When I teach history of science at Stevens Institute of Technology, I devote plenty of time to science’s glories, the kinds of achievements that my buddy George Johnson wrote about in The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008). George helps us appreciate what Galileo did with inclined planes, Newton with prisms, Pavlov with dogs, Galvani with frogs, Millikan with oil drops, Faraday with a magnet and coil of wire. (When George demonstrated Faraday’s experiment on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report , Stephen Colbert found the experiment so shocking that he blurted out, “Mother——!”) But I tell my students about science’s missteps, too, to remind them that scientists can be as flawed as the rest of us mortals. In that negative spirit, here are five experiments that I consider to be especially hideous, horrible, immoral in short, ugly.

Walter Freeman and Transorbital Lobotomies

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Welcome Molecules to Medicine the newest blog at #SciAmBlogs

Mon, 14 May 2012 10:26:00 EST

I am very excited to announce the latest addition to the #SciAmBlogs network – Molecules to Medicine , by Dr. Judy Stone.

Judy Stone, MD is an infectious disease specialist, experienced in conducting clinical research. She is the author of Conducting Clinical Research , the essential guide to the topic. As she says, ‘she survived 25 years in solo practice in rural Cumberland, Maryland, and is now broadening her horizons. She particularly loves writing about ethical issues, and tilting at windmills in her advocacy for social justice. As part of her overall desire to save the world when she grows up, she has become especially interested in neglected tropical diseases. When not slaving over hot patients, she can be found playing with photography, friends dogs, or in her garden.’

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