Third hand smoking – Can we ban this poison already?

I’m not going to write a post on why smoking is bad, it’s too obvious and if you don’t understand why then your probably never going to find this post anyway. I’m not even going to talk about second hand smoking, ie. blowing your death cloud at me on the street. Again it’s obvious why it’s bad and may even be worse than smoking the cigarette itself as second hand smokers don’t get the benefit of a filter. No, this post is about third hand smoking, a fun new way smokers can harm those around them long after they have butted out. Read more here…

Yeah. That looks healthy.

DOTW at the Scientific American

Sometimes one site is not enough. The Scientific American invited me to submit a blog post to be published on their Guest Blog. I have written on the topic before but I treat a little more seriously here and in a bit more depth. If you want to check it out you can follow the link here. Be sure to hit the share buttons at the bottom, for every click I will rescue one adorable puppy.

First two clicks saved Micky (L) and Frankie (R). Do your part.

James.

The Wednesday Post (11/08/2010)

Looking at protein folders

A recent Nature letter looks at the properties of human protein folders and how they can design better programs to do it automatically (Photo taken by Thomas Tu)

My mother was always vaguely disdainful of me playing computer games as a child (… and as an adult). But it turns out I was just training myself to cure cancer. Some scientists have made a free online game called Foldit, where the objective is to make the most stable protein structure.

Why have they made this game?

De verborum notatio morbi – On the etymology of diseases

I find that the more we understand about the world, the less imaginative our names for diseases. Your stomach hurts? We can look at your blood work, X-ray your gut after a barium meal and, hey presto, you have appendicitis. LAME! Maybe you’ve got The Irritable Ghosts and what’s happening is that the ghosts that are inhabting your scrotum are banging on the roof because your lungs are too loud. Treatment is shutting up and dying prematurely. Let’s explore the names of other diseases.

 

My Latin dictionary is not only useful for DotW article photos, but also if I suddenly get transported into Ancient Rome (Picture taken by Thomas Tu)

Bacteria: Cancer Warriors

Recently this article was published in The Adelaide Advertiser (30-3-2010). I wanted to re-post it here with some extra bits and pieces because it generated some very nice feedback from people looking for more information. I think it’s a really interesting idea that deserves more research but at the same time I do not want to come off as peddling a new ‘miracle cure’. If you are interested I have included some references at the end where you can find and read the info yourself. Finally, while Thomas and I do sometimes carry around stethoscopes and I have a manual Sphygmomanometer, we are not doctors or medical experts. We are just biology nerds with an internet connection.

The Wednesday Post (21/4/10)

YUM!!! I want to inhale me some of that!!! (http://www.flickr.com/photos/saudi/7110085/)

Cigarettes just keep getting more dangerous for you.

A paper published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives has shown that as well as being full of the dangers we knew about (carcinogens etc.) they are also full of potentially pathogenic bacteria.

It’s been known for a long time that smoking gives you a greater chance of cancer and a huge range of issues including respiratory infections and pneumonia but this study found the actual pathogens were in the cigarettes.