research money well spent

March 11, 2007

news flash: emotions sometime trump rational thought! Shocking, I know. Though I was intrigued at how the fMRI paradigm in this case provides a neat empirical example for why prisoner’s dilemma models don’t translate well into real-world practice:
A classic economic example is the “ultimatum game,” in which one participant gets 10 $1 bills (or loonies, [...]

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The Lamp Post Rule

March 9, 2007

Matt McIntosh, writing at Gene Expression, proposes The Lamp Post rule for discussions of science and science policy. Simply stated, “All arguments conducted in a state of relative ignorance must be algebraic.” Head over to GNXP for details.

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Best places to postdoc in the US: 2007

March 8, 2007

The Scientist has released the results of its annual poll and the verdict: MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston ranks highest, followed by the J. David Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco and the Environmental Protection Agency in the Research Triangle Park. Via Ars,
The most important criteria identified in the survey were access to training [...]

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PET and MRI

March 7, 2007

An editorial in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine (J Nucl Med. 2007 Mar;48(3):331. PMID: 17332606) argues that combination PET/MRI systems are the future and will supplant PET/CT:
In a number of ways, the path to PET/MRI has been reverse of that to PET/CT. The first PET/CT design emerged from industry–academia collaboration and was a prototype for [...]

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Scientists trying to read your mind?

March 5, 2007

Did anyone else see this article? I came across it on msnbc.com – “Scientists Try to Predict Intentions: using brain scans to read minds before thoughts turn into actions” (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17464320/)
I haven’t read anything Dr. Haynes has published in peer-reviewed journals on the topic (I’ll see what I can find) but this seems [...]

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GE issues warnings about Omniscan

February 20, 2007

The following just came out over the SMRT mailing list:
Vendor issues new warning on Omniscan MR contrast for patients with kidney disease
GE Healthcare warned European providers Feb. 7 to discontinue the use of gadodiamide (Omniscan) for patients who may be at risk for a rare and life-threatening skin disease.
read the rest of the press [...]

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Scientific Literacy

February 19, 2007

I missed “Just Science” week by a couple of weeks, so here is my post to try to make up for it:
I have recently been reading a book called “Junk Science” by Dan Agin, who describes himself as a neuroscientist and biophysicist. The book discusses the many ways that legitimate science is twisted/altered/slanted so [...]

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MRI explosion in Atlanta

February 15, 2007

In December, an MRI machine exploded due to a liquid nitrogen leak:
Two workers moving an MRI machine were injured Thursday after an explosion blew part of the machine into a wall. The workers were moving the machine at Atlanta Diagnostic Center in Kennesaw, said Firefighter Denell Boyd, a spokeswoman for the Cobb County Fire and [...]

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MRI-compatible pacemaker

February 15, 2007

via MedGadget,
Medtronic began the evaluation of its EnRhythm® MRI SureScan™ pacer, a technology designed for safe use in MRI machines, “under specified scanning conditions.” The company did not disclose what these specified scanning conditions are.
There’s a copy of the press release, too. I assume that certain kinds of scans are off-limits, like diffusion imaging. [...]

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Superconductor breakthroughs imminent?

February 13, 2007

2007 may be a big year, at least according to industry spokespeople:
Low-cost MRI machines, super-fast Internet routers, and high-capacity power lines top the list of likely breakthroughs in the field of superconductivity in 2007, according to a ‘Top-10′ forecast list released today by Elie K. Track, Ph.D., senior partner, HYPRES Inc., a leading developer of [...]

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