This post was originally published in “Download the Universe,” a multi-author blog about science ebooks edited by Carl Zimmer.
Rockets and People: Volume 1. By Boris Chertok. Published by NASA.
Reviewed by Veronique Greenwood
November 9, 2012
Author: admin
The New York Times, October 29, 2012
As this year’s flu season gathers steam, doctors and pharmacists have a fresh stock of vaccines to offer their patients. The vaccines usually provide strong protection against the virus, but only for a while. Vaccines for other diseases typically work for years or decades. With the flu, though, next fall it will be time to get another dose.
“In the history of vaccinology, it’s the only one we update year to year,” said Gary J. Nabel, the director of the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
That has been the case ever since the flu vaccine was introduced in the 1950s.
Continue reading “Scientists Move Closer to a Lasting Flu Vaccine”
This post was originally published in “Download the Universe,” a multi-author blog about science ebooks edited by Carl Zimmer.
Angel Killer. By Deborah Blum. Published by The Atavist, October 2012.
Reviewed by Annalee Newitz
October 27, 2012
Continue reading “Can Science Ever Truly Liberate Us From Evil?”
Discover, October 25, 2012
I am sitting in a darkened, closet-size lab at Tufts University, my scalp covered by a blue cloth cap studded with electrodes that detect electric signals from my brain. Data flow from the electrodes down rainbow-colored wires to an electroencephalography (eeg) machine, which records the activity so a scientist can study it later on.
Wearing this elaborate setup, I gaze at a television in front of me, focusing on a tiny cross at the center of the screen. The cross disappears, and a still image appears of Snoopy chasing a leaf. Then Charlie Brown takes Snoopy’s place, pitching a baseball. Lucy, Linus, and Woodstock visit as well.
Discover, October 24, 2012
Ian Reid, a psychiatrist at the Royal Cornhill Hospital in the Scottish city of Aberdeen, has treated people with severe depression for 25 years. “It’s a very nasty illness, depression,” he says. “I have worked with people who have cancer and depression, and more than one of them has said, ‘If I had to choose one of those two diseases, I’d go for the cancer.’ ”
When patients come to Royal Cornhill with major depression, they’re first treated with psychotherapy and antidepressants. Only about 40 percent respond to their first medication. Sometimes a different one will do the trick, but in Reid’s experience, about 10 to 20 percent of depressed people respond to no drug at all.