It’s like an evil plan of bad weather.

It’s like the weather gods saying, “sunny, warm weather for everyone ELSE.”
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Happy Pi Day!

3.1415926… !

If I’d have remembered sooner, I’d have made pie to celebrate.

Got an interesting question this morning:

“Can I print out my voice mail messages?”

How does that go? “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic?”

You’d definitely need magic to be able to accomplish that one.

(You’re lucky–I skipped a rant about why this is completely impossible with our current technology.)

Scientists used 3D X-Ray Tomography to look at a computer from the 3rd century BCE. (NY Times)

Letter in Nature.

How cool is that? A computer that’s thousands of years old, and more technically advanced than anything that would be seen for centuries.

2006 Ig Nobel prizes were awarded!

The Peace prize was awarded to:

Howard Stapleton of Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, for inventing an electromechanical teenager repellant — a device that makes annoying noise designed to be audible to teenagers but not to adults; and for later using that same technology to make telephone ringtones that are audible to teenagers but not to their teachers.
REFERENCE: http://www.compoundsecurity.co.uk

Another article on C-Sections.

Here’s the headline, and the paragraph that makes the difference between this article and the one I ranted about yesterday:

C-Sections May Be Bad for the Baby

The study, published in the September issue of the journal Birth, relied on birth certificates issued for the approximately 16 million babies born in the U.S. from 1998 through 2001, and linked them with infant death records. Birth certificates indicate whether an infant was delivered vaginally or by cesarean, and whether there was a medical need such as a previous C-section, a breech position, infant distress, or health conditions in the mother such as diabetes or hypertension. The study did not address the death rate among babies born to women who needed C-sections, but the authors emphasized that “timely cesareans in response to medical conditions have proved to be life-saving interventions for countless mothers and babies.”

The limitations of the study are mentioned right up front, and then the article goes on the discuss the possible reasons for the differences. Even the headline is more realistic: “C-sections may be bad for the baby” (emphasis mine) versus “Caesarean birth triples maternal death risk”

Anyway, I just found it interesting to see a much better written article on a similar subject as the one that annoyed me yesterday.

Here’s a headline from CNN.

Caesarean birth triples maternal death risk

Researchers, led by Catherine Deneux-Tharaux of the Maternite Hopital Tenon in Paris, looked at 65 maternal deaths recorded in the French National Perinatal Survey from 1996 to 2000.

All of the deaths followed births of a single child and were not due to conditions existing prior to delivery. The women had also not been hospitalized during pregnancy.

Now, the problem I have with this is Cesarean deliveries tend to be performed on women with high risk pregnancies, or women who have problems during their pregnancy. Although they they ruled out preexisting conditions, the article doesn’t mention whether these Cesareans were elective or as a result complications during delivery.

So essential this article tells me nothing. Bah!

Important study facts often missing in media reports about medical research

News stories about medical research, often based on initial findings presented at professional conferences, frequently omit basic facts about the study and fail to highlight important limitations.

Gee. I’m shocked.

We’ll teach those Romulans! We’ll build our OWN cloaking device, and make it before we’re capable of interstellar travel!

Almost moving as quickly as the invisibility cloak.

In case you were considering a visit to Morgantown…
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This excerpt was at the end of an article I was reading. I found it rather… interesting.

Every effort in the school now is to cultivate (girl’s) minds at the expense of their bodies. They consequently have a sickly life, if perchance not cut off in early girlhood; they make poor mothers, are unable to nurse their children in many instances with a tendency to some of the most distressing complaints, and disease is propagated in their children. Much of this arises from the popular mistake that young misses must study algebra, chemistry, scientific botany, Latin, and perhaps Greek and Hebrew, but the time they are fifteen, in order to become ladies. They have no frolicking girlhood–because it is plebeian to romp out of doors with freedom, as nature intended in order to strengthen and perfect their delicate organization. A knowledge of domestic economy is decidedly vulgar, and belongs to poor kitchen girls, whose red cheeks, round arms, splendid busts, and fine health are perfectly contemptible…More active play and fewer books, pudding-making in place of algebraical equations, with free exercise of their feet, which were actually designed for walking, would produce a race of women in our midst, such as now cannot be found, in regard to figure, capacity and beauty.
Editorial: Female education. Boston Med Surg J. 1852; 46:187-188.

Found in: Pediatrics (1989) 84(4) 716.

It’s amazing that the human race survived the 19th century.

Here’s an interesting study:

Finger length predicts physically aggressive personalities

I particularly liked the quote from the author of the paper.

Dr. Peter Hurd initially thought the idea was “a pile of hooey,” but he changed his mind when he saw the data.

However, the research only holds true for men.

I’m pretty sure there was a Star Trek episode about this.

In other news, according to an article in the Washington Post, “health care costs…now consume 16 percent of the nation’s economic output.”

One interesting point made in the article: Defenders of increased drug spending have often argued that those added costs would keep people healthier and reduce the amount spent on hospitals and doctors…however, (there was) an increase in doctor costs of 9 percent from 2003 and an increase in hospital costs of 8.6 percent.

Unsurprisingly, the report also found racial and ethnic disparities.