The Secret Lives of Strippers

A new study that took a close look (no pun intended, well, ok, maybe it is) at strippers sheds some interesting light on the complex world of human sexuality. Apparently, strippers earn more tips when they're at the most fertile phase of their ovulation cycle, due to a variety of factors, including changes in their behavior, according to psychologists who I'm sure did not come up with the idea for this scientific study as a cover for hanging out in strip clubs. I'm sure it was a sacrifice they endured in the name of science. What brave souls.

Google Earth

If you don't have Google Earth yet, you should definitely give it a spin. It will let you zoom in to your town, down to your own individual street and also let you journey through the universe, exploring stars, planets and galaxies.

Deadly animals

This is a pretty good overview from National Geographic about zoonosis, or diseases that jump from animals to humans, such as Ebola, SARS and monkeypox. And it's at least as scary as any Halloween story you'll hear this month.

New dinosaur fossil discovered

A new dinosaur fossil unearthed in Utah is being described as “the Arnold Schwarzenegger of duck-billed dinosaurs” for its massive skull and skeleton.

Gryposaurus monumentensis, as the animal has been dubbed, roamed the area around the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in the Late Cretaceous period, some 75 millions years ago. The fossil, which is described in the Oct. 3 issue of the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, is providing new clues about the ecology and evolution of duck-billed dinosaurs and may force scientists to reevaluate some of their previous ideas about the animals.

Paleontologists will discuss the find at a press conference Wednesday.

Much ado about bioweapons

The AP is going for public hysteria with their report on lab mishaps involving potential bioweapon agents, but they've missed the mark. Judging from the accounts they relay, the real threat isn't to the public at large, but rather to the lab employees working with these deadly pathogens. In most of the incidents, containment procedures were utilized and it doesn't appear there was ever any risk of spreading these diseases amongst the general population.

The story seems to be written from the perspective of someone who expects there to be absolutely no mistakes. That seems to be a naive view at best, given that humans do nothing if not make mistakes. That's why containment procedures and strategies, such as negative air flow and wearing protective equipment, are already in place at labs that handle these agents.

The reporting also attempts to be manipulative and alarming. Although the main thrust of the story is incidents at U.S. labs, the reporter attempts to arouse alarm by citing the situation in Britain in which a lab screwup may have spread foot and mouth disease. The reader is left on his own to work out the mystifying details of how British lab procedures have any connection to U.S. lab policies.

Then immediately after a paragraph informing the reader of the restrictions for working in Biosafety Level 4 labs ("Besides wearing full-body, air-supplied suits, workers undergo extensive background checks and carry special identification cards") , there's this unexplained quote from Edward Hammond, with the Sunshine Project, which tracks lab incidents:

"The risk that a killer agent could be set loose in the general population is real."

That's a serious allegation and it should be followed by some credible evidence to back it up. There's none. In fact, the report had previously told us, "No one died, and regulators said the public was never at risk during these incidents."

The only real risk mentioned in the article (lost shipments of deadly organisms) is only touched on briefly and even that appears to have amounted to nothing. "Some recount missing or lost shipments, including plague bacteria that was supposed to be delivered to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in 2003. The wayward shipment was discovered eventually in Belgium and incinerated safely."

I agree with the premise of the article that potential bioweapons should always be handled with the utmost caution. But I'm disappointed AP apparently didn't heed its own advice.

Anthrax attacks: 6 years later and still no suspect

It's been six years since anthrax spores were delivered via letters to several locations, including Florida, New York, Washington, DC, and Connecticut. Authorities apparently still don't have a suspect, while Steven Hatfill, the former "person of interest" in the attacks, is making more progress in his case against the government for invasion of privacy, as another journalist was recently ordered to give up his sources.

UK govt: Creationism doesn't belong in classroom

The UK government has issued new guidelines that explicitly state that both creationism and it's slicker, hipper cousin, intelligent design, are not science and do not belong in the classroom. You can read the guidelines for yourself here.

Guardian reporter James Randerson provides a nice overview here. And the Panda's Thumb offers this take on the situation.

Stellar Explosion

NASA describes this image captured by the Hubble telescope as depicting "the delicate filaments debris from a stellar explosion in a neighboring galaxy."

For a more thorough explanation, head here.

Astrophysicists watch football?

This is old news in the football world, but a lot of teams --NFL and college-- could probably benefit from this program developed by an astrophysicist, which seeks to tell coaches what play gives them the best shot at winning. And it's particularly topical since we're headed into a weekend full of college ball on Saturday and pro ball on Sunday. For those who don't feel like reading, click on the video for a brief clip that will explain everything you need to know about the Zeus program.

Another nail in the coffin for vaccine-autism link

The CDC reported today that a study found little evidence to indicate the vaccine preservative, thimerosal (which contains mercury), caused significant neurological problems in children.

The findings suggest "the higher thimerosal content that vaccines had back in the 1990s did not lead to harmful effects in children in performance on standardized testing at age seven to 10," according to Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

The study did not look specifically at autism (a separate CDC study is focused on that specific condition), but it used several tests to examine the effects of thimerosal exposure on intelligence, speech, language and motor skills in children between the ages of seven and 10.

Dr. Schuchat again:
"Some of the results suggested that exposure to higher thimerosal quantities led to better performance. And some of the tests showed that exposure to higher thimerosal content led to worse performance. So the totality of the results are quite reassuring and suggest continued to reaffirm the safety of vaccines."

In other words, if thimerosal levels obtained through childhood vaccinations had a significant impact on mental functioning and/or autism, the study should have found a general trend towards worse performance among kids who had exposure to higher levels of the preservative. The study didn't find that, so we can conclude from that thimerosal, at least at the levels kids would receive through vaccination, poses little, if any, risk. Of course, this is no longer a concern because thimerosal has been eliminated from most childhood vaccines.

But those who remained convinced vaccines play a role in causing autism (in spite of any credible scientific evidence supporting this dubious connection) were unswayed and I'm sure their reports attacking the study on various, probably misguided and misinterpreted, grounds will soon be forthcoming.

But as the vaccine-autism believers clamor about unsubstantiated government cover-ups or researchers' ties to pharmaceutical companies, they usually fail to acknowledge the overwhelming, life-saving benefit of vaccines or the many studies refuting any connection between autism and vaccines, which always makes me wonder about their real motivations.