Can US Cities, States Reduce Carbon Emissions without Feds? Coping with Trump and Climate Change

0000-0002-8715-2896 Lizards, microbes, and climate change after leaving the Paris accord   Posted June 9, 2017 by Tabitha M. Powledge in Uncategorized post-info AddThis Sharing Buttons above LIZARDS AND GLOBAL WARMING Been reading about how

Is the government telling women not to drink? How many microbes in the human body?

homepage_734x546pxThe headlines called it “incredibly condescending” (Alexandra Petri, ComPost),  “unrealistic” (Jia Tolentino, Jezebel), and “bonkers” (Olga Khazan and Julie Beck, The Atlantic.) The post from the aptly named Brandy Zadrozny at The Daily Beast) was

The cancer moonshot and other future science fantasies

Last Friday, On Science Blogs was given over to the many “best of science” lists of 2015. This week’s post is about what bloggers foresee for 2016–and beyond. THE CANCER MOONSHOT: WELCOME TO 2016 Vice-President

Again, water on Mars. Also abortion, Planned Parenthood, fetal tissue research

WATERY MARS AGAIN Emily Lakdawalla thinks everybody should calm down about NASA’s much-trumpeted latest discovery of liquid water on Mars. The discovery, which is probably not flowing water but rather something more like damp sand, doesn’t, she argues at the … Continue reading »

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Small Talk: When Bacterial Chatter Gets Invasive

Sticks and stones may break our bones but microbes’ “words” may hurt us. Breast cancer is a threat to men and women worldwide. Like all cancers, the known causes are attributed to genetics and carcinogens, but recently, scientists have begun … Continue reading »

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Making Medicines from Soil: Going Behind the Scenes of a Citizen Science Project

Taking you behind the scenes and into the laboratory of the Citizen Science Soil Collection Program This is a guest post by Dr Robert H. Cichewicz a professor at the University of Oklahoma and leader of the Citizen Science Soil Collection Program. … Continue reading »

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Moratorium on virus research, epigenetics and fear, open access to journals

  A moratorium shuts down research on flu, MERS, and SARS viruses The debate began quickly over the moratorium that the White House has  declared on certain sorts of virus research, the sort where researchers are deliberately trying to make … Continue reading »

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All Nobel Prizes in 2014 Will be Microbially Themed: The Microbes Guarantee It

So - last year I secretly created a microbiome based spying system that can transmit the thoughts and emails of people who they colonize.  I introduced this community into all the people on the various Nobel Prize committees in order to get information in advance about their plans for the Nobel Prizes. After getting such information, and discovering that the Nobel's this year were NOT focused on microbes, I then created a microbiome-behavioral manipulation system and re-infected the Nobel committees with this community.  This community forces their host to think about microbes all the time.  All microbes.  All the time.  And thus I am nearly 100% certain that all the Nobel's this year will be about microbes in some way.

Given that, here are my predictions for the All-Microbial Nobel Prizes.

Medicine:
The Human Microbiome and Methods for Studying Microbial Communities.  Should go to Norm Pace and some other people.  Possibly Jeff Gordon.  Possibly Jo Handelsman.  Possibly others.  Depends on how much the microbes in the committees emphasize themselves versus all microbes.

Physics:
Vera Rubin for her work on "Dark Matter" since we all know that the key dark matter in the universe is "microbial dark matter".

Chemistry:
Discovery and characterizing of the mechanisms of CRISPRs.  No clue who will get this but it likely could include Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier and others.

Peace:
Bill and Melinda Gates and their foundation for their work on global health, especially on protecting from infectious diseases.

Literature: Ursula K. Le Guin in particular for her Wrinkle in Time series and its emphasis is on mitochondria.

Economics:
Well, since microcredit has already won an Economics prize, I am not sure how this will play out but certainly it will involve some type of microeconomics.  Definitely NOT macroecnomics. I think the most likely winner here is Esther Duflo because of her work on both microeconomic topics and microcredit.


Very old new species, hospice v. hospital, & once more: how many microbes in the human body?

New animal, perhaps from before the Cambrian Explosion They look sort of like mushrooms, but they are animals. All hail discovery of not just a new species, but possibly a new phylum. Possibly even an animal remnant, thought to be … Continue reading »

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Prostate cancer screening dispute, microbiome hype

Once more, screening for prostate cancer

It’s pretty much conventional wisdom among the experts that routine prostate cancer screening for the prostate-specific antigen can cause more harm than good. The recent results of the European study of routine PSA screening …

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