Punk Rock Cooking … add a little anarchy to your cooking. getcrafty

Puff, the Magic Genome: ‘After nearly a decade of hard work, researchers are close to paydirt. They’ve got the genetic sequencing of the Japanese pufferfish about 90 percent complete.

Why all this fuss over such an odd little fish?

Well, it turns out that the pufferfish genome is remarkably similar to the human one, making it a valuable road map for human geneticists. Not only that, but it doesn’t contain all the “junk” found in human DNA, the stuff that makes finding actual genes so difficult.’ Wired

Anthrax Doctor’s Quick Thinking

The elderly man’s labored breathing and fever seemed nothing more exotic than a bad case of pneumonia. But then Dr. Carlos Omenaca got a troubling call.

It was the patient’s boss. A fellow employee had just been diagnosed with anthrax, he said, the deadly inhaled form of the disease.

Hardly a U.S. doctor alive had ever seen a case of inhaled anthrax. Could this be another one? …The patient was Ernesto Blanco, the 73-year-old mailroom worker, who in retrospect turned out to be the first person hospitalized in the anthrax attacks and the first to survive the inhaled form of the disease. Wired

Cribbed from wood s lot, a link to an effort that’s near and dear to my heart. Bad Neuro-Journalism: “…what we find to be among the worst examples of journalism about the brain appearing in the popular press. To be selected as an example of bad neuro-journalism, the article must demonstrate one (or more than one) of the following flaws:

• seriously misrepresents the original science
  

• covers research of dubious value
  

• wildly extrapolates the reported findings
  

• presents an overly simplistic interpretation of a complex finding”

You’ll find links to an archive of past ‘winners’, as well as pointers to neuro-journalism done well.

James S. Mcdonell Foundation