science tagged posts

“Science and the Arts” is one of a large series of magazine-like books, or book-like magazines, that Scientific American offers to its subscribers as a reward for renewing their subscription. Each contains a collection of articles from the magazine that relate to some general topic, in this case, as the subtitle of the work indicates, “the interrelationship of science and art.”

Published sometime in the mid- to late 1990s, this volume contains articles that span nearly four decades, from 1955 to 1994, and cover topics ranging from the creative process to visual art, sculpture, music, and perception. There’s even a long poem by John Updike.

Because of the age of the articles, it’s fair to assume that the science of each topic covered has advanced, probably significa...

If you thought the nature/nurture debate was settled, think again. Far from it, even within the scientific community. Are genes the primary determiner of who will get fat over time, is it the sum of their behaviors, or both?

An article this week in Science News reports on a study done by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute (yes, really) in Boston. They looked at over 2 million genetic variants from thousands of people and came up with a way to predict, they said, a person’s likelihood of becoming “obese” (having a Body Mass Index of 30 to 39.9) or “severely obese” (BMIs of 40 or higher). OK, that sounds useful.

But hold on, other researchers said...

The fundamental element of my Eternity Plague series—The Eternity Plague (book 1), Chrysalis (book 2), and Wild Spread (book 3, currently in draft)—is that five naturally-mutated viruses have infected all of humanity and are doing all sorts of strange and not necessarily wonderful things to everyone. My heroine, Dr. Janet Hogan, discovers the viruses and has to try to stop them before they do too many awful things. Good luck with that: so far the viruses are doing more things faster than Janet and her team can respond to them. How will the series end? Sorry, no spoilers here.

But because these books are science fiction, I wanted to ground them in science, and good science at that...

Last time I asked, “If you had to get rid of one piece of the technological stuff you use every day, what would it be?” This time the question is reversed and A LOT harder: you can only keep one thing.

This is a really sneaky and difficult question because technology, writ large, is so deeply embedded in our lives. Consider all of the things that are powered by electricity. The electrical grid that brings power to our homes is so critical that if you want to keep one electrically powered device, you have to either also keep the grid or replace it with some other technology that would generate electricity—and that violates the “rules” of this question.

So that means everything powered by electricity has to go: not just computers and smart phones, but refrigerators, washers and dry...

Last time, I wrote about how gene therapy is being used to fix certain kinds of errors in DNA, and so cure or significantly reduce certain kinds of cancers. I asked whether you would accept such a treatment for yourself.

It’s one thing to accept the risks that are associated with these still new and experimental treatments, but would you make that decision for a sick child—one of your children?

© Suthisa Kaewkajang | Dreamstime.com

Current Treatments

I didn’t make a point of it last time, but two of the diseases for which this kind of gene therapy is now available, B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and junctional epidermolysis bullosa (“butterfly skin”), are both childhood diseases...