Web Surfing in France

Well, not really. Despite all the hullabaloo about free Wi-Fi in Paris, we spent six days there and were unable to find a single free public Wi-Fi spot in the vicinity of two different hotels. Even the railroad stations expected you to log on to your own subscriber network through their "free" Wi-Fi. Luckily, the hotels had Wi-Fi and one of them was actually free to guests.

There were no free hot spots along the Saone River, either.  We cruised from Port sur Saone almost to Dole without finding any unlocked "Wee-Fee."

But everything else was great. Take a look at the photos we took.

2009-10 France

Health Care Rationing

A very thoughtful article, written by an oncologist who makes those decisions for an insurance company.

New finding in spinal cord injuries

Scientists have discovered that a commonly used food additive FD&C blue dye No.1 is remarkably similar to a lab compound that blocks a key step in nerve inflammation. It makes mice recover more quickly from spinal cord injuries. Just one problem:

New Uses For Pluripotent Skin Cells

[Reuters] "Chinese researchers have managed to create powerful stem cells from mouse skin and used these to generate fertile live mouse pups.

They used induced pluripotent skin cells, or iPS cells -- cells that have been reprogrammed to look and act like embryonic stem cells. Embryonic stem cells, taken from days-old embryos, have the power to morph into any cell type and, in mice, can be implanted into a mother's womb to create living mouse pups."

One more step and there will never be any need to use embryonic stem cells. That last step is to segregate the iPS cells by type, enabling the laboratory to grow specific organs in vitro. In other words, skip the embryo-creation step in cloning and go directly to cloning a specific organ to match a specific donor. Now that we have all these life-prolonging procedures, there would be a good chance that the donor would live long enough to become their own organ recipient with no potential of rejection.

One approach would be to discover, if possible, the difference between iPS cells made from skin and those made from another organ. So far, there is no known difference between iPS cells and embryonic stem cells produced by the current procedures, so research looking for such differences will become very important.

Silencing the Climate Warming Critics

Stunning article in the Wall Street Journal today about the two-faced "scientists" in our government. The WSJ rightly points out that Jim Hansen, the biggest loudmouth in government has given over 1,400 speeches touting his version of anthropogenic global warming, many of them during the Bush administration, and had the audacity to claim that "the Bush administration" was "censoring" his work and fiddling with the science. The Obama administration has grabbed onto that claim and issued very public memos demanding transparency in government and science. Lisa Jackson, the nominee to head the EPA, joined in with "I will ensure EPA's efforts to address the environmental crises of today are rooted in three fundamental values: science-based policies and program, adherence to the rule of law, and overwhelming transparency."

So what about Alan Carlin, a senior analyst (B.S. in Physics from CalTech, PhD in Economics from MIT) who has 35 years in the EPA's National Center for Environmental Science? Last March, the Obama administration decided to declare carbon a "pollutant," and gave the EPA the authority to regulate it. And this was completely without any action by Congress. "Mr. Carlin and a colleague presented a 98-page analysis arguing the agency should take another look, as the science behind man-made global warming is inconclusive at best. The analysis noted that global temperatures were on a downward trend. It pointed out problems with climate models. It highlighted new research that contradicts apocalyptic scenarios. 'We believe our concerns and reservations are sufficiently important to warrant a serious review of the science by EPA,' the report read."

Can you guess what happened? Well, his boss forbade him to do any more work on climate change because his effort was getting in the way of EPA policy! Subsequently, anonymous people in the EPA have been bad-mouthing Mr. Carlin's work.

The WSJ concludes "Mr. Carlin is instead an explanation for why the science debate is little reported in this country. The professional penalty for offering a contrary view to elites like Al Gore is a smear campaign. The global-warming crowd likes to deride skeptics as the equivalent of the Catholic Church refusing to accept the Copernican theory. The irony is that, today, it is those who dare critique the new religion of human-induced climate change who face the Inquisition."

Obama's claims of "transparency" are basically lies. And what happened to the promise that no new legislation would be voted on without being available for debate for five days? Apparently that doesn't apply to anything in Washington these days.

Please read the whole article in the WSJ.

Good Writers.

Good writers, especially clever writers, fascinate me. I wonder how they do it. Literally, I wonder if it's spontaneous, sweat and tears, or just how it comes about.

I know a few good writers personally and have no clue how they do it, either. But what brings it to mind is today's Woot. How do they do it? How do they create something different every day? Always irreverent, of course. And usually funny.

My hat is off to good writers, be they comics or poets.

Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPS)

Slowly, the science media is realizing the potential of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS). Their use for reprogramming genes to correct defects will likely soon become a reality. iPS has the potential of providing all the touted benefits of embryonic stem cells with none of the medical or ethical issues.

The Salk Institute in La Jolla, CA has reported research that corrects a gene defect in human stem cells. The study focused on patients with a rare condition, Fanconi anemia, which causes skeletal problems and bone-marrow failure, and raises sufferers' risk of cancer. When coupled with iPS, it has the potential for correcting the defect in patients and a similar technique could do the same for many other genetic defects.

"For the first time, researchers have fixed the gene defect in cells from patients with an inherited disease, and then transformed the tissue into stem cells with the potential to reverse their condition. While scientists haven't yet tested the treatment in humans, the research could mark the beginning of a new age of curative treatments for many genetic disorders."

It's time for all the hullabaloo about embryonic stem cell research to quietly disappear. It's no longer an issue.