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NYT reports a new initiative from the administration President Obama will announce a campaign Monday to enlist companies and nonprofit groups to spend money, time and volunteer effort to encourage students, [b]especially in middle and high school[/b], to pursue science, technology, engineering and math, officials say.There's actually stuff aimed at the older kids, but the RSS feed condenses the story to The plan will enlist companies and nonprofits, including "Sesame Street," to spend money and time to encourage students to pursue science, technology, engineering and math.
Some new and controversial breast cancer screening guidelines have been in the news. Orac has a number of posts (linked in the comment at the link) describing a number of the issues involved. He provides some very good discussion of the complexity of screening vs benefits. Paraphrasing some of the highlights:
Indeed, the current recommendations of the USPSTF are no less arbitrary, nor are they clearly more scientific than previous recommendations for screening, although they do include more recent studies as their basis. More than taking into account more recent studies, what they appear to reflect is a different attitude towards the risk-benefit ratio, in which the modest benefits of mammography in women between ages 40-49 are judged not to be worth the harm caused. Others may look at the same data and decide that the benefits of screening in this age range are worth the potential harms. What we should all agree on is that women should be aware of and understand as much as possible those tradeoffs. In the meantime, I'm not entirely buying these new recommendations, at least not the argument that they are more "science-based" than the older recommendations when, in actuality, they also arbitrarily decide that screening 1,300 women to save one life is an acceptable cost but screening 1,900 to save a life is not. As I've written before, I sincerely hope that better technology and the discovery of new biomarkers can decrease these high numbers by increasing the specificity of mammographic screening and, possibly, even allowing us to identify which mammographically detected tumors don't need treatment.The reaction to the new recommendations are predictable, and even if the epidemiology is sound, the timing is pretty bad given the politics of the health care debate. The news coverage has not done a good job of explaining the nonmonetary costs in the analysis, and commentators have focused on this as a way of suggesting that the recommendations are a misguided attempt to save money. The coverage comes across as balancing death vs anxiety and short term pain and inconvenience from biopsies. This is not an easy sell under the best of circumstances. Indeed, one of the recent modeling studies used by the USPSTF (I'm relying on Orac here, I haven't read the USPSTF report) says: If the goal of a screening program is to efficiently maximize the number of life-years gained, then the preferred strategy would be to screen biennially starting at age 40 years. Decisions about the best starting and stopping ages also depend on tolerance for false-positive results and rates of overdiagnosis.Life-years gained is not the only benefit. Orac again: Even if earlier detection, because of lead time bias, doesn't change the overall prognosis, at the very least detecting cancer earlier makes it possible to use less disfiguring surgery in more women and to use less aggressive chemotherapy. This is not a benefit to be sneezed at, but it is one that is frequently completely ignored in discussions of this sort.How these benefits are weighted vs. costs of earlier screening over a much larger population of false positives has no scientific answer, IMO.
I had missed this sad news until I checked Derek Lowe. Warren DeLano, the creator of the open source graphics program PyMol died earlier this month. The family has put up a website and there is a memorial fund taking donations. PyMol brought the power of high-end molecular graphics packages to a lot of scientists. We used it for figures in several papers, and DeLano was great in keeping it reasonably priced and open source. He will be missed.
Stanford and Wisconsin lost close games, while A&M became bowl eligible by blowing out Baylor at Kyle Field. The Badgers and the Ags played at about the same time. The Ags were on the radio while the Badgers were on the Big 10 network, which means I couldn't watch either of them. First the good news: Despite being somewhat sloppy, the Ags dominated the Baylor Bears, who have been without soph star QB Robert Griffin since an early season-ending injury. Baylor was able to upset Missouri earlier, but overall they've lost six out of their seven last contests. The Ags went up 14-3, but it looked like Baylor was going to make it a game when they drove down to the A&M 8. But the Bears threw and interception to end the drive early in the second quarter. Aggie db Terrence Frederick probably should have taken a touchback instead of coming out and getting only to the 1 yard line. Jerrod Johnson got 2 yards on first down. On second down, Christine Michael got the other 97. It was an A&M record for the longest play from scrimmage ever. Final score 38-3. With wins over Tech, Iowa State, and Baylor to go with early triumphs over New Mexico, Utah State, and UAB, this puts the Ags at 6-5 going into the Texas game on Thanksgiving. That should get them to a bowl. Meanwhile, the Badgers fell behind to Northwestern, came back in to lead 14-10 early in the second quarter, and then fell apart before halftime to trail 27-14. A second half rally fell short as Wisconsin couldn't get closer than 31-33. The Badgers last score was with lots of time left in the 4th quarter (10:45). But although the D was able to force punts after 6,3, and 3 play Wildcat possessions, the Badgers last 3 drives ended punt, fumble, interception. Northwestern hangs on. Big Game was on Versus, so I got to watch one of my teams. Stanford jumped out to an early lead on a Toby Gerhart 61 yard TD run, and Gerhart scored again after Stanford blocked a Cal punt to get the ball on the Cal 19. It seemed like Stanford would dominate when Cal could only convert several trips into the red zone into a FG and a diving pick by Richard Sherman. But Stanford's offense lost their timing and Cal was able to cut the lead to 14-10 by halftime, and take the lead for good on the first drive of the second half. Stanford looked like they would answer when Chris Owusu returned the kickoff to the Cal 27, but that only resulted in -1 yard and a missed FG. Cal's Shane Vereen gashed the Stanford D on a 10 play 72 yard drive after the miss to make the lead 24-14 Cal. Stanford got it's act together and answered with Gerhart's third TD after a big 31 yard pass earlier in the drive. But Cal answered early in the 4th quarter to go back up 31-21. The teams traded punts and then Andrew Luck connected twice with Chris Owusu twice and Ryan Whalen once to go from the Stanford 13 to the Cal 26. Gerhart ran the ball to the 5 and then took it in on the next play for his 4th TD of the day. It was 31-28 with about 7 minutes to go. Stanford had it's second wind on offense... could the D stop Cal? They could and they did, forcing a punt that was downed on the Stanford 21. 4:27 to go. Stanford went nowhere, though, and Harbaugh bizarrely decided to go for it on 4th and 8, despite having 3 timeouts left. Cal took over on downs when Luck's pass missed badly (it may have been tipped at the line). Stanford held the Bears to a FG, but that meant a FG would not send the game into OT. A TD was needed. Cal squibbed the kick and Stanford started on their own 42 with 2:42 remaining. Luck scrambled for a first down, and then on second and 6 flipped the ball to Gerhart on a scramble. Gerhart ran through several Cal defenders to get to the Cal 13 with about 1:50 left - plenty of time. With Cal back on their heels, I expected Stanford to try to run wide to try to get Gerhart's fifth TD. Instead, two pass plays were called. The first was incomplete, the second was a pick that sealed the win for Cal.. The heartbreaker must have been the football gods' punishment of Harbaugh for going for 2 last week when he was up big on USC.
Earlier today, we went to watch Duke play the Aggie Women in Texas A&M's season opener. Coming in, both teams were 2008-9 tourney teams dealing with the loss of 3 of their major stars. Duke lost Chante Black, Abby Waner, and Carrem Gay. Black and Waner got drafted by the NBA. The Ags lost Takia Starks, Danielle Gant, and LaToya "Miss Mean" Micheaux. The preseason polls had Duke at #6 and the Ags at #16 in the coaches poll. The AP poll had the Ags unranked. The last time these two teams met, A&M won handily in the regional semifinals of the 2008 NCAA tourney, before falling to eventual champ Tennessee. Coach Blair and several team members came to the men's opener on Friday to drum up a crowd, and there was a good turnout bolstered by the Corps of Cadets. The 6,866 fans were loud and supportive all game. Both teams came out playing hard, aggressive ball. Tanisha Smith stole the opening tip into the Duke backcourt for an opening layup. Duke The game was close until Danielle Adams came in for Adaora Elonu and Sydney Carter subbed for Tyra White. Carter and Adams added even more energy to an already intense game. The 6-1 Adams was the JUCO player of the year and is a big woman, but she is shockingly quick for her size and has a soft shooting touch. Carter is the shortest player on the team at 5-6. With the two Sydneys (Carter and Colson) both able to handle the ball, the Ags went on an 8-0 run capped by Adams pulling up for a smooth 3-pointer that shocked and delighted the crowd. The teams traded stops and scores until Carter hit a pair of 3s to stretch the lead to 31-19. A&M stretched the lead to a 10 pt halftime margin. Sydney Colson made sure Duke didn't start well in the second half by scoring 9 of her final 17 in the first few minutes and dishing a nice assist to Tanisha Smith to make the lead 54-43. Duke rallied with an 11-1 run to cut it to 55-52. The Ags had six turnovers in that span, although the home crowd was screaming for fouls on some of those plays. Adams went on a run and Kelsey Assarian put back a miss from the left corner by Tyra White to stretch the lead to 14 with 10 minutes to go, and Duke never threatened again. Final score A&M 95, Duke 77. The summary doesn't do justice to the fierce D played by both teams. Duke's press led to a lot of turnovers, and their height advantage helped them to get 21 offensive rebounds. The Devils outboarded the Ags 44-39 overall. But the Aggie D held Duke to 33.3% from the field. Damitria Buchanan set an A&M record with 7 blocks and the Ags had 11 rejections overall. A&M had 25 assists, led by Colson with 10 for a double-double. Five Ags scored in double figures, led by Adams with 24. It was a great performance to watch. It will be interesting to see what happens to A&M in the polls.
Wisconsin wasn't in their usual ESPN/ESPN2 11AM slot on the tube here in Texas, so I only got to follow their progress via the crawl on the bottom of other games. The Badgers crushed the Wolves in Camp Randall, sending MgoBlog into cute pictures mode again. Michigan is down, but fans of Big 10 teams are happy to kick them while they're there. The big upset of the day was Stanford at USC, which was on Fox Sports Southwest, allowing me to enjoy the whole lovely thing. After Stanford's collapses against Wake Forest and Arizona earlier this year, and their letting Oregon back into the game last week, I was very pleasantly surprised by the second half in LA. 55-21. At their place. On homecoming. Wow! Harbaugh was nuts, though, to go for two on the penultimate TD. I think he's going to try to parlay this season into a higher paying job elsewhere, and let his successor take the wrath of Pete Carroll in 2010. That payback game, scheduled for Palo Alto next fall, will see the Cardinal without Toby Gerhart, who added 178 yards and 3 TDs to his senior season resume. I think Gerhart deserves some Heisman attention. This win will put him on more voters' radar. Stanford, which soared to #17 in the polls today, finishes against Cal and Notre Dame, Both games are at home, and the game against the Irish is on ABC. After those two wins, a good performance by the Aggies was perhaps too much to ask for. A&M at Oklahoma was on FSN after the Stanford-USC game, so I didn't even have to change the channel. A&M started out getting two quick first downs on the first possession of the game. But on the fifth play of the drive, Christine Michael fumbled (on a play where OU got away with an uncalled face mask), and the Sooners ran the recovery in for a quick 7-0 lead. OU pushed field position toward the A&M goal as the teams traded stops and punts. After a couple of rounds of this, OU started on their own 44. Landry Jones hit a couple of long plays and the Sooners went up 14-zip. At this point, one might think the rout was on. But it wasn't. The Ags fought back to close the lead to 14-10 before the end of the first quarter. In doing this, A&M became the first team to score on OU in the first quarter this season. As the second frame began, the field position was tipping the other way. The teams traded punts. After A&M stopped OU on their own 16 to force a punt, it looked like the Ags were going to get great field position to cut the lead or go ahead. Instead, disaster. Punt returner Terence Fredrick ran up on the ball, and realizing it was out of reach, pulled back at the last second. The ball didn't touch him. But Colton Valencia, also playing on the return team, thought T-Fred had muffed the ball and dove for the rolling punt. He touched it but OU recovered deep in A&M territory. A few plays later, it was 21-10. A&M bogged down just over midfield on the next possession. A good punt put the Sooners deep in their own territory and it looked like A&M would get the ball back. But Eddie Brown was called for roughing the passer after pushing Landry Jones in the end zone on second and 15. It was late, but it wasn't much of a hit. In any case, it kept the OU drive alive. The Sooners converted the drive into a TD to stretch the lead to 28-10. Whether that lead would have been surmountable was rendered moot when Cyrus Gray fumbled the kickoff and OU recovered. After the ensuing TD and kickoff, Gray fumbled again, allowing OU to take a 42-10 lead into halftime. The second half merely allowed OU to stretch the final margin to 65-10.
A Navy sports blog dissects how the middies got a decided schematic advantage over the Irish D. With videos marked up so that even a casual fan like me can see what happened. Sample of the explanatory text: As far as the corner was concerned, everything looked the same as the last drive; his man, the inside receiver, was on the line of scrimmage. When he looked inside, he saw the slotback lined up off the LOS, just like before. What he didn't see, though, was the slotback on the other side of the formation moved up in a tight end position. He also didn't see the receiver behind him backed up off the line. That made his man eligible, but he didn't realize it. The ball is snapped, he runs inside looking for a run, and the ball is thrown over his head to a player he thought he didn't have to cover.Ever wonder how coverages get blown? It's not all random mistakes. Opportunities get created.
Uncrowded wisdom from Derek Lowe All that "wisdom of crowds" stuff, as I understand it, is about consulting large numbers of individual thinkers, not getting them all into one room and having them agree on something. Especially if some of the people in the room can decide the salaries and promotions of the rest of the crowd.
A tough loss for the Ags in Boulder. A&M took a lead into halftime, let CU come back to tie, stretched the lead back to 10, and then fell in the end by 1. Ouch. I watched most of this game on a low-res webcast. The Buffs QB was sacked 8 times, but also escaped to buy time often enough to engineer the winning drive. That included a converting 2nd and 25 into 3rd and 16, and then hitting a 45 yard pass. Wisconsin went to 7-2 with a win against an Indiana team that is probably better than it's 4-6 record. Based on the highlights and recaps, the Badgers had their running game going. This game was played in the early time slot, but wasn't on one of the ESPNs for once. Stanford was on Fox in the late afternoon, playing Oregon at home. After the #8 Ducks demolished USC, I didn't expect the Cardinal to win, much less jump out to a big lead. It was 31-14 at halftime. Oregon had massively outscored opponents in the 3rd quarter, and Stanford already had a couple of second half collapses against Wake Forest and Arizona. So the crowd may have been nervous when the Duck took the second half kickoff and went 86 yards in 6 plays for a TD to cut the lead to 10. Stanford went 3 and out, and Oregon quickly got a first down and looked like they were moving. I confess that I peeked at a different game for a bit, and when I flipped back, Stanford was celebrating a Luck to Owusu TD pass. What happened? Apparently the Ducks self-destructed on their second drive and had to punt to Stanford. The ensuing Cardinal drive was false start, 31 yd run by Gerhardt, 31 yd pass for the TD. TDs by both teams left the score 45-28 going into the final quarter. Stanford added a FG to make it 48-28. But Oregon wasn't dead yet. Two TDs cut the lead to 6 with about 2 minutes to go... and I was having uncomfortable flashbacks to the Ags 6-pt lead from earlier. Stanford recovered the on-side kick and pounding Toby Gerhart wasn't enough for an icing first down. But it was enough to bring Stanford in range for a 48-yd FG to stretch the lead to 9. Final score Oregon 42, Stanford 51. Stanford becomes bowl-eligible with games against USC, Cal, and Notre Dame left. Stanford's Toby Gerhart is now second in the nation in rushing, and has 16 TDs. Gerhart passed Heisman frontrunner Mark Ingram of Alabama today in yards. Can Gerhart get onto the Heisman radar? Elsewhere, Northwestern upset Iowa as the Hawkeye QB was injured. Bama won a slugfest with LSU. Charlie Weis and ND lost to Navy at South Bend for the second time in three years, raising the heat on the hot seat for the Irish coach. Notre Dame fans thought this was the year for them to get a BCS bowl, with a schedule full of rebuilding teams. The loss to Navy drops the Domers to 6-3. They still have Pitt, UConn, and Stanford left.
Been off the blog during the week, but the victims and heroes of Ft. Hood remain in my thoughts. The Fort Worth Telegram has an outline of what happened on Thursday Witnesses say a man later identified as Hasan jumped on a desk in the processing center and shouted "Allahu akbar!" — Arabic for "God is great!" He was armed with two pistols, one a semiautomatic capable of firing up to 20 rounds without reloading. He fired more than 100 shots.10 minutes. More than 100 shots. When I first heard the number of dead and wounded, I did not imagine that the whole thing could have happened so fast. Indeed, some of the earlier reports described the massacre as taking about half an hour. The Austin American Statesman describes Maj Hasan as mainly using one of the two pistols he had. Manufactured by the Belgium-based FN Herstal, the FN FiveSeveN pistol was heavily criticized when it was introduced in the United States about five years ago because it was designed to fire bullets through body armor. Critics sought to block its sale.From what I can tell, the 5.7mm ammunition is not particularly powerful. The FN Herstal is designed to be light with a large capacity, and the low power gives low recoil, allowing better control. These characteristics, combined with the large capacity magazine, the close quarters, and Hasan's training explain his ability to get off so many shots in such a short time. They also may partly explain why some of the injured were able to pull others out of the building before realizing that they had been shot themselves. The Statesman quotes someone as saying that this is an odd weapon for a doctor to have. But it's a short range personal defense weapon, not some mini sniper rifle. I suspect that those worried about deployment to Afghanistan might buy similar nonstandard weapons to take with them, so it is not clear to me that buying this gun is evidence of premeditation.
Seems like a rather harsh premise, but Forbes uses that headline to describe a new drug from Human Genome Sciences. Shares of Human Genome Sciences and Vertex Pharmaceuticals, tiny drug developers that first gained during the hype fest that followed the mapping of the human genetic code a decade ago, are soaring Monday morning after positive clinical trial results.Anything new for lupus is potentially very good news. The stories don't tell us how genomics was used in the drug development, but the HGS website describes it thusly: BENLYSTA is an investigational human monoclonal antibody drug. It is the first in a new class of drugs called BLyS-specific inhibitors that recognize and inhibit the biological activity of B-lymphocyte stimulator, or BLyS®, which was discovered by HGS in 1997.BLyS was described in a 1999 Science paper. Interestingly, from a genomics hype point of view: A 285-amino acid protein was identified in a human neutrophil-monocyte-derived cDNA library that shared identity within its predicted extracellular receptor-binding domain to APRIL (28.7%) (1), TNF(16.2%) (2), and lymphotoxin- (LT-) (14.1%) (Fig. 1A) (3).In other words, this didn't actually come from the human genome project, and the identification of BLyS reminds me of something Bill Haseltine told Charlie Rose when the draft sequence was announced: HGS and others had already identified plenty of new targets without a complete genome. Still, I would hardly say that genomics has been a failure in general.
Catching up on 3 weeks of CFB... Texas A&M: The Ags went from the depths of despair after the unexpected Massacre in Manhattan in week 7 to the heights of joy after winning in Lubbock for the first time in recent memory. The loss to K-State led to speculation about how the loss would affect Rick Perry's reelection bid and much weeping and gnashing of teeth in Aggieland. Matt "Dr Saturday" Hinton wrote Obviously, the Big 12 laughs in the face of the transitive property, Vegas, history and the fundamental notion of a rational universe capable of logically sustaining a fixed belief system.Mike Leach's reaction was more colorful: As coaches, we failed to make our coaching points more compelling than (the players') fat little girlfriends,'' Leach said. "Fat little girlfriends have some obvious advantages. For one thing, their fat little girlfriends are telling them what they want to hear, which is how great you are and how easy it's going to be. This week the Ags had to be on guard against a letdown against Iowa State, who had an upset of their own in week 8. The Clones used 8 Nebraska turnovers to beat the Huskers 9-7. Not to worry; the Ags dominated the Cyclones at Kyle yesterday 35-10. A&M didn't punt at all during the game and got several key turnovers. A&M now needs one more win to become bowl-eligible, with Colorado, OU, Baylor, and Texas left on the schedule. Wisconsin: The Badgers were on a 2-game losing streak coming into their game on the usual ESPN/ESPN2 morning slot. Ohio State and Iowa both shut down the Wisconsin running game and buried the Badgers after Wisconsin took an early lead. Meanwhile Purdue was on a 2-game win streak, including a huge upset win over Ohio State in week 7. The Boilermakers followed his with a win over Big 10 bottom-dweller Illinois. This led the oddsmakers to temp some into picking Purdue for the upset, or at least to cover the 6.5 pt spread. Beating Wisconsin would require shutting down the Badgers running game and exploiting their secondary. Purdue did neither. Result 37-0 Wisconsin. The Badgers are bowl eligible at 6-2 with Indiana, Michigan, Northwestern, and Hawaii left to go. Stanford: The Cardinal split with the Arizona schools in weeks 7 and 8, and are now 5-3. To get to a bowl, Stanford needs to beat one of Oregon, USC, Cal, and Notre Dame, all of whom are currently ranked. All but USC are home games. In games involving teams where I don't have a rooting interest: Texas big win over Okla State last night puts the Longhorns in a position where the Ags might be able to play spoiler here on the 26th. Oregon's beatdown of USC yesterday will make it interesting if they win the Pac-10 and upsets lead to choosing between the Ducks and a Boise State team that beat them at the start of the season. The odds are still on a Texas vs. Florida/Alabama winner in January... but recent Novembers have had plenty of surprises.
The Aggies were on Fox Sports Network early against the Cowboys of Oklahoma State. OK State has been without tailback Kendall Hunter since late in their loss to Houston, and earlier this week superstar wideout Dez Bryant was ruled ineligible for lying to NCAA investigators. Although there were several times when the Pokes undoubtedly missed Bryant, they also showed why they were ranked coming in despite the absence of Hunter (it should be noted that playing Rice and Grambling since Hunter's injury probably helped). A&M gave OK State a good fight for most of the game, leading 15-14 at halftime. It could have been more: OK State's second TD came on a play were the ball went off of Aggie DB Dustin Harris' hands, and A&M coach Mike Sherman chose to go for a TD on 4th and goal from the 1 late in the first half. Then again, OK State coach Mike Gundy went for it in a similar situation earlier in the half. The Cowboys and Ags both scored in the third quarter to make the score 22-21. But after Christine Michael took the lead back for the Ags, a poor kickoff and a good return gave OK State good field position. It looked like A&M might hold, but on 3rd and 8, OK State picked up an A&M blitz and Robinson hit Justin Blackmon for 32 yards to the A&M 14. A big run from Beau Johnson, carrying tacklers, brought the ball to the 1 and Johnson got the TD two plays later. A&M's answering drive got down to the OSU 24, but after a sack to end the third quarter, A&M had to try for a long FG. Matt Bullock hit the 50 yard kick to cut the lead to 29-25. OSU had to start on their own 7 after a penalty on the return. But the Ags couldn't stop the Cowboys from a 16 plays, 93 yard drive that ate 07:41 from the clock. That gave OSU a cushion that they needed, as A&M scored again on their next possession. The highlight had to be a great catch by Howard Morrow for a 27 yard gain on 2nd and 22. A&M missed the 2 pt conversion. The Ags chose to kick deep with 3:35 left in the game and 3 timeouts. But they couldn't prevent OK State from getting the first down they needed to ice the game. The Cowboys got some help from a questionable spot on 3rd down, and they had to go on 4th and inches to avoid punting back to A&M. It was an exciting game and a tough loss. A&M made some good plays, but showed familiar weaknesses: the D needs to get more pressure and the offensive line needs to protect Johnson much better. Wisconsin-Ohio State was underway by the time the A&M game ended. Dr. Saturday says it well: I think if you'd told the Badgers coming in that they would run twice as many plays as Ohio State; gain twice as many yards; force almost as many three-and-outs (six) as they allowed first downs (eight); and hold Terrelle Pryor below 150 yards total offense and pick him off once while limiting the Buckeyes to one offensive touchdown, I think the Badgers would have taken that game.Unfortunately tOSU scored on two INTs and a kickoff return, and the Buckeye D bent but didn't break very often. Final score Wisconsin 13, tOSU 31. Stanford's performance against Oregon State continued the trend of increasingly disheartening losses. The Beavers were up 31-7 at halftime. Stanford made an attempt to come back, but after cutting the lead to 31-14, the Cardinal allowed Oregon State to score an answering TD early in the 4th quarter. That Beaver drive was helped by what the KZSU announcers thought was a bogus roughing the kicker call. Stanford scored twice more to make the score closer than the game actually was. In the fourth quarter, the KZSU announcers were talking about whether Harbaugh should adjust the game plan to pad Toby Gerhart's individual stats.
First, St. Louis blows the win in the 9th on an error. Then Mizzou does gives up 27 in the 4th to go from a 12-0 lead to a 27-12 loss. Ouch.
The 2009 Chemistry prize goes to Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (Cambridge), Thomas Steitz (Yale) and Ada Yonath (Weizmann Inst.) for the structure of the ribosome. This one was an obvious prize for the work, but not as obvious for which three would share it. One could make strong arguments for Harry Noller and Peter Moore, and possibly others. I had thought that this might not happen this year, given the "pure" chemist whining over GFP and RNA polymerase. Congrats to all involved!
The Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine was awarded to Liz Blackburn, Carol Greider and Jack Szostak. This is an interesting set. Liz is a slam dunk, in my opinion. But while Greider and Szostak are outstanding scientists, I think their sharing the prize for telomeres is a bit surprising, especially after reading the press release. It appears that Greider's share is largely for the very important experiments she did as a grad student with Liz, and usually the lab head is the only one who gets credit from the Nobel committee. Greider is also cited for her work on the connection between telomerase, telomere shortening and senescence. Szostak is cited for the observation that linear chromosomes are unstable in yeast without telomeres, the collaboration with Blackburn to show that telomeres could stabilize yeast minichromosomes, and the work with Vickie Lundblad showing senescence in yeast. Szostak is better known for his work unrelated to telomeres, however, especially his work on recombination and on RNA aptamers. What's not clear to me is whether the Nobel committee viewed the early experiments as the key to the shares for Greider and Szostak, or whether they are viewed Carol and Jack as the key figures in the telomere-senescence connection. The announcement reads as if it's the former.
Yesterday was unusual in that all three of my main teams were on TV. Sure, I had to watch Stanford-UCLA online, but at least it was video instead of just the KZSU audio feed. I've come to expect a Wisconsin game in one of the early ESPN slots. The Badgers were playing Minnesota in the Paul Bunyon's axe game, one of four trophy games the Gophers play. Sadly, they don't hold any of them right now, and the broadcast showed a set of forlorn empty trophy cases waiting for Minnesota to rise to the ranks of the Big 10 elite. The two teams slogged it out in the rain in the Gophers partially full new stadium with Minnesota taking a 13-10 lead into halftime. After trading turnovers to open the second half, the Badgers seemed to take control, scoring two TDs and driving for a third. Wisconsin got its running game going, especially with John Clay, and combined this just enough passes to tight end Garrett Graham to keep the D honest. After Wisconsin was up 24-13 the Badgers were looking to add an icing score with a 3rd and 5 from the Minnesota 15. A false start backed them up to the 20, and then tailback Zach Brown coughed up a fumble that was returned 80 yards for a TD. Instead of 27-13 or 31-13, the score was now 24-21 after a 2-pt conversion. But Minnesota still had the problem of a D that was wearing down. Wisconsin marched down the field for another TD by Clay. Minnesota got an answered with a quick drive to cut it to 3 again. Although the Gophers forced a 3 and out to get one more chance from their own 5 with 1:43 to go, the Badger D stiffened and the comeback ended with a fumble by Minnesota QB Adam Weber under intense pressure. Wisc 31, Minn 28. UCLA came into Stanford stadium knowing they'd have to stop Toby Gerhart in order to win. They didn't. The game was not as close as the 24-16 final score. The Cardinal led 24-6 going into the 4th quarter. Gerhart had 134 yards rushing and 3 TDs. The first ever Southwest Classic had A&M facing Arkansas in the new Cowboy's stadium. This was a chance to see how far the Ags had progressed after winning big against three cupcakes. For Arkansas, this was a game they needed to win to avoid dropping to 1-3 after losing to Georgia and Alabama. For the first 9 minutes, it looked like the Ags were for real. A&M scored the first 10 points, and held the Razorbacks to 3 and outs on their first three possessions. The first two ended on sacks by Von Miller and Matt Featherston. Arkansas' fourth possession started with a 67-yard pass from Mallett to Adams to set up the Hogs first score, and 8-yard pass. A&M came close to answering right away as Jerrod Johnson threw a nice ball to a wide-open Ryan Tannehill over the deep middle. But Tannehill couldn't make the catch and the Ags couldn't overcome an offensive pass interference a play later. This was followed by a dreadful 5 yard punt, giving Arkansas the ball on the Aggie 38. Taking advantage of a defensive PI call on the Ags, Mallet used the short field to pull the Hogs ahead for good with his second TD pass. But again, it Ags looked like the Ags might answer, as A&M took the ensuing kickoff from their own 38 to the Arkansas 38. Going for it on 4th down, the Ags gave the ball back. But pressure from Miller caused a tip-interception on the next Arkansas possession. Arkansas forced a punt with help from some penalties, but muffed the catch. At 10:02 in the second quarter, it was looking like the anticipated shootout as A&M had the ball first and 10 on the Arkansas 12. But on second down, the Arkansas D blew up the play and forced a Johnson fumble that was returned for a TD and a 21-10 lead. A&M never recovered from that blow. By this point the Arkansas defense had adjusted to overwhelm the A&M offensive line, one of the Ags big question marks since last year. Johnson was running for his life and the next two Aggie possessions netted -5 and -zero yards. The first of these led to an Arkansas FG after the punt and return gave the Hogs the ball on the A&M side of midfield. The next time, the Ag D gave up 73 yards and a TD on four straight completions of 29, 8, 5, and 31 yards. Arkansas had neutralized Miller. 30-10 Arkansas at the half. A 20 point lead is bad, but not insurmountable in principle. Sherman's hurry-up offense should do better in these situations than Franchione's run-oriented system. But it would require adjustments to give Johnson time to throw. My sense of the second half was that A&M did give Johnson a little bit more time, but not enough. From the TV it was hard to see if the receivers were not getting open on quick routes or if JJ was just not going to them. Meanwhile, the D wasn't able to regenerate much pressure on Mallett. Although A&M was able to score another 9 points, Arkansas scored another 17. Final A&M 19, Arkansas 47. Fortunately for A&M, the national TV night audience had USC demolishing Cal and Miami upsetting OU to distract them from our debacle. Earlier, Michigan lost to Mich State in a bizarre OT game where the Spartans dominated, then gave up a frenzied comeback to sent the game into OT, and then picked off Tate Forcier to get the win. This dropped the Wolverines from the ranks of the unlkely unbeatens. Northwestern beat Purdue by scoring 24 unanswered points and holding off a late rally. Washington fell in OT to Notre Dame. Before the Irish sealed the win, an overexcited commenter at bluegreysky expressed frustration: Fire everyone, cancel all the scholarships, burn the stadium to the ground, and make ND a woman-only school just to be sure this never happens again.There are some A&M fans who are overreacting similarly.
Did a Google News search based on a story on Special Report earlier tonight, and found this NYT story from last week Across the country, federal health officials say, only about 42 percent of all health care workers get an annual flu shot. That is little better than the overall national average of 33 percent and far below the 65 to 70 percent rate for the elderly.The Fox story was covering a protest, also covered by USA Today ALBANY — Several hundred health-care workers, civil libertarians and members of anti-vaccine groups on Tuesday railed against a mandate that medical professionals get seasonal and swine-flu vaccines.The NYT article highlights "poorly educated workers", but the protest included RNs. Not surprisingly, the Autism anti-vaxers were there too. Here's the thing. No one should be forced to get the shot. But an employer should have the right to fire someone who doesn't. Why? ...although the original intent was to protect the recipient and cut down on absenteeism, it slowly became clear that in hospitals, fewer flus in doctors and nurses meant fewer dead patients.Facilities that don't have immunocompromised patients could be lax about this, I suppose. But if you're serving immunocompromised patients I have no problem making this a condition of employment.
In the NYT William Safire, a speechwriter for President Richard M. Nixon and a Pulitzer Prize-winning political columnist for The New York Times who also wrote novels, books on politics and a Malaprop's treasury of articles on language, died at a hospice in Rockville, Md. on Sunday. He was 79.We always enjoyed Safire's On Language columns in the Sunday NYT.
Reason points out a story about Michigan cracking down on a woman watching her neighbors' kids without a license Lisa Snyder of Middleville says her neighborhood school bus stop is right in front of her home. It arrives after her neighbors need to be at work, so she watches three of their children for 15-40 minutes until the bus comes.
Via the Weekly Standardthe Denver Post describes a novel fundraising strategy by a Colorado PBS station: On the same day the FBI arrested Najibullah Zazi on what would turn out to be damningly detailed evidence of alleged terrorist intentand just three days after the ever-prescient Gary Hart proclaimed, "I don't think he sounds like a terrorist" — KBDI-Channel 12 aired a couple of 9/11 Truther documentaries as part of a fund-raising drive.
A&M, Wisconsin, and Stanford all win this week. The Badgers were in their traditional ESPN early game slot, playing Michigan State. The Spartans had just come close to knocking off Notre Dame after being embarrassed by a directional Michigan school, and the Badgers were unimpressive against various early cupcakes. Wisconsin was favored by 3 by virtue of being at home. Wisconsin 38 Mich State 30. And it wasn't anwhere near that close. The Badgers blew the Spartans out before giving up two late TDs in garbage time. A&M crushed UAB to stay unbeaten. Listened to this on the radio. Good news: records set for most offense in the first three games, Johnson runs for 3 TDs and throws for 3 more, lots of Ags catch passes even with star wideout Jeff Fuller out with a broken leg. Bad news: all the gaudy numbers are against the cupcake part of the schedule. Up next: Arkansas in Dallas. Stanford ends Washington's brief time in the rankings. Washington 14, Stanford 34. UDub couldn't stop Toby Gerhart, who ran for 200 yards on the day. Elsewhere, this weekend saw the #4, 5, 6, and 9 all lose in upsets. The biggest egg was laid by Cal, who didn't just lose: the Bears lost badly at Oregon. Really badly. Other games were maddeningly close. Tough to be a fan of the state-supported schools in the Hoosier state this weekend. First, IU lets Michigan off the hook and then Purdue blows a chance to beat Notre Dame.
Via Instapundit, Washington Times reports on the reason a vote to put the health care bill online for 72 hours before voting failed in committee: Sen Baucus says it would be too hard to do. Baucus' excuse - that it would take his committee staff two weeks to post the bill online - sounds a little crazy too. Finance Committee members are the only ones who vote based on the "plain English" version of a bill, not the legally-binding language.How can it take two weeks to post a document in this day and age. I suspect that it means that they don't know about "Save as PDF", and would print the bill out and then scan it. The benign explanation is incompetence. The paranoid interpretation is that online documents generated this way are much harder to search.
Tierney in the NYT This longevity gap, Dr. Preston says, is primarily due to the relatively high rates of sickness and death among middle-aged Americans, chiefly from heart disease and cancer. Many of those deaths have been attributed to the health care system, an especially convenient target for those who favor a European alternative.It's interesting that the smoking culture has changed so much that I now think of other countries as having much more smoking than we do. But it wasn't that long ago that things in the US were different. In addition to smoking, Americans probably ate more meat, drank less wine, and were more likely to have stress-induced health problems.
Wofford 14, Wisconsin 44. Wofford? OK, the Terriers where 9-3 last year, and were coming in off a win against Charleston Southern. But they're still a 1-AA team with no geographic ties to Wisconsin. Utah State 30, Texas A&M 38. Utah State, like A&M's first opponent, New Mexico, came in with a new coach. The Utah State Aggies had a worse record in the previous few years, though. The game, which I listened to on the radio, was not as close as the score, to the extent that one can figure out what is going on from listening to the incomprehensible Dave South. A&M did let USU score first, and didn't take over the game until the second quarter. But TAMU did have a 38-17 lead before letting USU score twice in the fourth quarter. San Jose State 10, Stanford 42. I watched part of Cal-Minnesota early. Cal looked like they were going to blow the Gophers out, then went flat for a while before pulling away at the end. It was the first time I watched Jahvid Best play. Very impressive. Later in the afternoon, I watched some of USC-Washington on the web, but mostly flipped back and forth between games. I did manage to see that after giving a gift win to Michigan last week, Notre Dame got a gift win from the Spartans. I had the sound off on Texas Tech vs Texas. Texas let Tech hang around longer than I thought they would. And the last turnover induced by Sergio Kindle's hit on the Tech QB sure looked like helmet to helmet leading with the head to me. Condolences to the fans of Purdue, Maryland, and especially Virginia.
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