Kenneth Rogoff, the former chief economist at the IMF and now a professor at Harvard University, said the greenback may drop another 12 percent on a trade-weighted basis.“This recession will be long and deep and when we get out of it, we’ll have inflation,” How did this happen? This stick-figure cartoons sorts it out for […]
Eat more drumsticks: Broiler (meat) chickens have been subjected to intense genetic selection. In the past 50 years, broiler growth rates have increased by over 300% (from 25 g per day to 100 g per day). There is growing societal concern that many broiler chickens have impaired locomotion or are even unable to walk. Here […]
Today, for the first time ever, oil ended the day above $100 a barrel. It won’t last. The last time oil hit these levels (adjusted for inflation) was in 1980, after the throes of the Iranian revolution. The sudden drop in supply shot prices upwards. Before that, during the oil embargo of 1973, oil simply […]
In my week of carefully recording my weight and diet, using the excellent CRON-o-Meter program, I gained a half pound–from 163.5 to 164.0 pounds in the seven day moving average. Just to emphasize, I wasn’t trying to lose weight, rather just to record what a typical week of eating was like for me. A few […]
Since moving to Seattle I’ve gained thirty pounds. On my slight five-foot-ten frame, that represents about a fifth more of me since 2001. How did that happen? Very slowly, and with both fat and muscle gains contributing. Arriving at 135 pounds to Seattle, I was close to being underweight, my BMI above 18.5. Now at […]
(Image from Takahashi et al., Induction of Pluripotent Cell form Adult Human Fibroblasts by Defined Factors, Cell (2007), doi:10.1016/j.cell.2007.11.019) Ok. Now I believe. Two groups working independently–Dr. Yamanaka’s lab in Japan and Dr. Thomson’s Lab in Wisconsin–have converted human cells into embryonic stem cell-like cells. This tremendous accomplishment is on par with the initial creation […]
Ever since high school, one of my guilty pleasures is to read the Nuclear Regulator Commission’s Operating Experience Summaries. Every workplace dealing with significant amounts of radioactive material must report any accidents that could result in injury. The best are compiled and archived. Something about the combination of ordinary foolishness, incredibly dangerous substances, absurdly convoluted […]
Seattle hosts one of the two major NIH-funded human embryonic stem cell research centers in the United States. This federally funded grant–ten million dollars spread over five years–is supplemented with private donations from the community. What’s being done with the money: A course to train young scientists, training grant to fund them and community outreach […]
Proposition 1, the combined Roads-and-Transit package for metropolitan Seattle, provides a real conundrum for me. The sentiment in the Stranger’s ‘no’ endorsement rings pretty true to me: After road proponents realized they didn’t have voter support for a stand-alone roads package (a major roads-expansion proposal died at the polls in 2002), legislators in Olympia linked […]
I’ve just returned from a week long trip to Germany (Düsseldorf and Dresden) for scientific meetings on stem cell research and regenerative medicine–the land of cheerful public artwork, amazing cab drivers and tear-inducing-good mass transit. How many hybrids did I see? Zero Some thoughts: I. Human embryonic stem cell research in Germany is under tight […]