Good News and Bad News on Cancer

Scientists affiliated with the Cancer genome project have isolated hundreds of genes that, when mutated, contribute to Cancer:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6424117.stm

In the 1980's, there was a fair amount of optimism that Cancer could be linked to isolated gene mutations- perhaps acting alone- that caused the development of tumors and subsequent metastasis (spread to other tissues). This research indicates that Cancer (or at least many types of Cancer) are the result of multiple gene products acting together (or no longer interacting correctly) to create the conditions necessary for Cancer. As one might imagine, this makes early diagnosis more difficult and treatment potentially more challenging (although, a drug that hits one target may still be enough to stop the disease).

Interestingly, one set of prime culprits were the "kinases." These proteins take a phosphate group from the energy carrier ATP (Adenosine TriPhosphate) and attach it to another protein. What is the point of such an action? By attaching a phospate group on another protein, that protein might change shape- thus activating or deactivating the function of that protein. The result is that the signalling (communication) system within the cell is disrupted. A cell might be activated to start dividing or invading new tissues. Certain chemicals that are known to cause Cancer activate protein kinases. Phorbol Ester (a chemical found in linseed) is one such chemical that is highly carcinogenic and turns on a certain kinase named Protein Kinase C. These are just one set of a variety of other proteins that turn on and off the cells communication pathways. It is likely that genomics will find many other signalling proteins that play a role in Cancer formation and spread. It also means that scientists will identify more drug targets that could be used to control Cancer.

Getting rid of the term "Stone Age"

Anthropologists want to get rid of the term "stone age" when referring to certain populations:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/6422581.stm

Normally, I'm not a big fan of changing terms for things but this one is probably over-due. Those Stone Age people may not use the latest technologies but they seem to do just fine- as long as they are isolated from us "enlightened" beings.

While we are at it, I've always found the term "simple organism" to be offensive. While the Archaebacteria that live in hot springs are ancient, they are anything but simple. Can you live in water several 100 degrees in temperature suffused with sulfur? Same goes for radiodurans- it lives in nuclear reactors where its DNA undergoes constant reshuffling due to radiation. Anything that can live in those conditions is anything but simple.

Europe Enters "The War for Talent"

The European Research Council has set aside a new fund for "blue sky" research:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6399157.stm

The fund has been created to make Europe more economically competitive- the same rationale that gets used in the U.S. by people who have little knowledge of science and little more knowledge of economics. It was interestingly inaugurated in Germany- the birth place of academic scientific research with commercial application. From an economics standpoint, much needs to be done in Europe to make the transfer of academic research to commercial application more seamless. However, regardless of the rationale for creating this fund, the U.S. should take notice. The U.S. cannot expect to use Europe (or China or India) as a reservoir of ready-made scientific talent. The biggest thing to come out of this fund may have little to do with Europe creating "The next big thing" and everything to do with Europe holding on to its best and brightest.

Open Source Publishing, Tenure and Other Fantasies

The Public Library of Online Science (PLOS) Biology had the following editorial advocating public access to scientific findings funded by the Federal government:

http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.0050048

On a general note, I couldn't agree more. Publishing companies charge ridiculous subscription rates for university libraries. This has gotten to a point where even large relatively well-funded universities have to pick and choose which journals they are going to provide to their students and faculty. For public universities, access to information represents one more hurdle that limits their ability to compete for the best faculty, grad students, etc.. Moreover, state legislatures seldom find library resources to be "sexy" enough to spend tax payer money on- better to spend it on some towering edifice of half-empty lab space filled with subpar faculty doomed to be booted when tenure just doesn't work out- but that's another story.

The authors ,who represent such highly diverse groups as 1.) Nobel Prize winners and 2.) tenured faculty at MIT, spend much of this editorial NOT talking up the benefits of open access to the public but instead point to the benefits of open access across different generations of scientists. In a nutshell- "For younger scientists, being recognized is critical to our professional successes. Making our work openly available is a means of being recognized and emulated. Senior researchers also should be encouraging their graduate students and postdoctoral colleagues to use open access for career advancement." Well, this is a dilemma- who is going to go first? Who wants to put their career on the line and forgo that paper in "Science" or "Nature"? How will these older and presumably "more kindly" faculty look upon a tenure file filled with open access papers. What graduate student or post-doc wants to commit career suicide by publishing in an open access journal. Let's try not to pretend that we aren't heading toward a two-tier system of publication of high-end, high presige, high expense journals and everything else.

I really wish the scientific world could be this way- free of judgment and open to the collegial interchange of ideas. Science is not for the weak or the kindly. Academic science is a self-selecting system that grinds down those who don't have the exceedingly high levels of talent and/or complete self-sacrifice to succeed. Perhaps tenured faculty and Nobel Prize winners are willing to put aside their egos long enough to publish "down" but there will be harsh rewards for younger faculty who do the same. This is obviously very pessimistic. The editorial needed to point towards some policy recommendations that would ensure scientific results would be judged on other merits beyond the prestige of the journal. Without it, I can hear the scoffing of thousands of young faculty trying to sweat out another paper before 5 years is up.

The world of open access is truly wonderful and will do much to increase the flow of information- especially to universities in poorer nations with low library budgets. However, the academic science establishment is going to have to reform itself before publications are truly open- same is true of research DATA but that is another story.

Ocean Sediments as a Carbon Dioxide Trap?

Under the category "More Research Needed" this article popped up in the NY Times today.

"Team Looks at Seafloor as Gas Trap " See below:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/08/science/earth/08carbon.html?_r=1&ref=science&oref=slogin

The premise of this article is that the ocean sediments represent a highly stable environment where we can pump carbon dioxide with little worry of escape. The article states (and I am hoping that the scientists interviewed did not use these words) that the seafloor sediments would "guarantee it (Carbon dioxide) would stay denser than the water above, and thus be permanently locked away. " Has anyone taken into account that pumping massive quantities of carbon dioxide into sediments just MIGHT alter the chemistry of the sediments? Is there a possibility that by-products could be produced that are less dense than water (elemental oxygen and hydrogen are also green house gases)? Even if carbon does stay trapped in the sediments, what does this mean for sediment chemistry and anything that lives within it? There is evidence that pumping Carbon dioxide into the earth results in the creation of carbonic acid. I know, we are talking about 10,000 feet and not much macrobiotic lives down there. However, I'm not too excited about creating a microbial deadzone either. The more we learn about the deep oceans, the more we realize that these are not completely devoid of life. I would even say that some of the MOST exciting discoveries of recent years have been made in the abyss regions.

I'm not even going to get into the geological implications. We know that weather (for instance) impacts mountain creation (uplifting of the Himalayas). What would pumping massive amounts of gas into the Earth's crust do to fault zones? I did not read the original PNAS article that this was published in. Perhaps these and many better stated arguements have been posited. I do worry however when policy makers (and citizens) are given the impression that there are quick fixes to very complex problems. -Kyle

I Told You So...

How many times have I said, "We really need to destroy the sun!" Now, here is evidence of the Sun's baleful influence. BBC Headline: Sun kills 60,000 a year, says WHO

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/5219540.stm

Thoughts on my own Greek Odyssey

The Star-Trib http://www.startribune.com/1513/story/551053.html is running a series on somebody who is traveling around Greece. I was talking to a friend about my own Greek experiences and remembered the following weird episodes...

Muse-O'-Mart: If you are going to Greece, know one thing....you DO NOT NEED to go on a guided tour of anything! O.K., so on our last day, we decided to take a tour of the Oracle at Delphi....kind of ironic because Marcy works on Oracle applications and I like babbling incoherently about people's futures under the influence of methane fumes. Anyhow, as our bus headed north out of Athens (and the guide points out a big swamp that is supposed to be Marathon- I thought it looked like my Grandma's swamp) you start to get into the Parnassus Mountains. Entering the foothills, the guide points out "here are the foothills of the Parnassus Mountains where the muses of ancient mythology lived!" then the bus turns off to a convenience store. I maintain that this is where the muses still get their essentials- milk, smores-fixins, smokes, etc.. Others maintain that it may be where they get slurpees and stale hot dogs. I guess we will leave this one to the scholars...

Laundry...open all day! O.K., so Marcy and I are trecking about Greece and are starting to get kind of grungy...time for some launderin'. Well, somewhere (probably Hania, Crete) we see a laundromat that is "open all day." GREAT! we think, we'll wander around all day and save the laundry for the nighttime- its a 24 hour laundromat. So, about 7:00 we come back to the laundromat to find the proprietor locking up. We mention to him "Hey! I thought you are open all day!" he replied "Yes, and now it is night!" Point taken...he did our laundry anyhow.

Feel the Wrath of the Janissaries! and would you care for a new lamp?...The Janissaries were Turkish mercanaries known (early) for their ferocity and skill in battle. With Greece under Turkish rule for so long, the Turkish influence is hard to miss. In Hania, there is the mighty Mosque of the Janissaries- a wonderful example of Turkish/Islamic architecture. I was kind of miffed to go and look inside to find it had been turned into a furniture store...then again, my ancestors weren't ruled by the Turks for 500 years.

If it looks German and its a tourist, it must be a German...I look kind of Scandinavian (being half German and Norwegian does that to a person). As Marcy and I trekked about, we were constantly talked to in German- usually by someone trying to sell something. Strangely, even the Germans wanted to talk to us in German. One German guy on a bus near Knossos said "Hallo" to me. I said "Hallo" back. This opened a brimmin' bottle of German prattle that I could only shrug at. The guy kept staring at me for 10 minutes, probably wondering what the Hell was wrong with me....More later! -Kyle

Music Sampling and the Death of Creativity

A friend of mine sent me a note on how music sampling (taking pieces of prerecorded material and making new music) seemed to indicate that we are running out of creativity in music. New technologies allow an increasingly large group of people to "create" new music though much of it is not necessarily original. Is this what we are doomed to? Is music really dead?

Basically, it would seem, that everything that has been made in the past is simply scrap parts for use in something today. It won’t be long before music from the 50s-90s is simply looked at for its modules rather than the sum of its parts. There will be a few of us around who will differ I guess. Listening to what passes as progressive music today, I find much of it to be listenable. Why? Because most of it is made up of things that I liked in the past. The vocals can be completely atrocious and the lyrics pure distilled drivel but if it has the right patchwork of remnants, it can be listenable. O.K., now that I realize that, nothing will be listenable again….

On the more contentious area of sampling and why people can’t make something original- The question is not WHY can’t people make something original but why would they WANT to make anything original. I guess it all depends upon what you are trying to accomplish. If you are trying to make art, then you probably shouldn’t be sampling. If you are trying to become famous and/or make money, then you should sample. You have the knowledge of 1 million songs out there and what pleases the human brain- it’s like having 50 years of market research. Why waste time coming up with something new when you can cobble together the combined experience of 100,000 artists. And the great thing is…You don’t have to know what you are doing! No need to go to music school or spend hours strumming on the guitar or tootling away on the synthesizer. Slap together 12 modules in some order and you have something.

So, is music dead? Have we truly run out of ideas? As always, we are quick to write obituaries. Nietzche declared that God is Dead. Early 20th Century German artists declared “Die Kunst ist Tott” (Art is dead). Hegel said history could die and Fukuyama declared it dead- though now he is back-peddling a bit…why would anyone buy one of his books now? I’m not so sure music is dead. It has just come down to the masses.

What does this mean? For serious musicians, it would seem to indicate a cheapening- a lessening of value because there is an increase in supply. There is probably some truth in that. I think what it really means is that there is an increase in competition and it falls to these serious musicians to “add value” to music creation. If music is dead, then it will fall to a new generation of musicians to create and be the source of new influences- to be the source of modules. There is nothing new with this. The problem is that these musicians have to be able to yell above a larger crowd and this IS new.

As for the general world of creativity and the increasing difficulty of making money/a living off of creating new music or photography, I would tend to agree. There are fewer “Barriers to entry” as there once was. It is much cheaper than it used to be to create things since more people can afford the machinery. The ease of use of these machines also means that many more (not everyone) can create art regardless of educational preparation. I guess one’s view on this as a good or bad depends upon who you are. As consumers of general goods, it is generally agreed that people can afford to buy more than they used to (in the U.S.) because more goods are made in cheaper countries (fewer barriers to entry)- more clothes, more toys, cheap electronics. We can save the money for bigger houses, bigger cars and more fuel. Is the same thing happening in art? I’m not so sure. I have trouble seeing art as a commodity. However, I do believe that there is more competition in art and more ways to display one’s art. Like all competition, it will force innovation. The problem may very well lay in laying claim to that intellectual capital in the courts.

Teach your kids about....Parasites!

Last I checked, parasites were somewhere near the bottom of most people's most beloved groups o' critters. This is just a shame. Parasites are truly miraculous examples of natures endless ability to adapt. Parasites have the ability to live off of a host without killing them. Some, like pin worms, are hardly noticeable at all...though they can makes one's bum itch at times. In my book, they are far more fascinating than your large predatory species with their less than elegant claws and teeth or your "stupid" pathogenic bacteria and viruses that just mindlessly kill stuff. While Ebola is scary with the bleeding out of one's eyes and the internal hemhoraging and all, its really just a dumb virus that can't spread too fast because it kills its host too quickly. Remember...a pathogenic "germ" is just an organism that always wanted to be a parasite but was never quite good enough.

Parasites are all around us as any Minnesotan knows. Our friends the ticks come early in the Spring and our friends the mosquitos reluctantly leave us only with the first hard frost. Let's leave the ticks and the mosquitos to the entomologists ( OH ICK! BUGS!) and focus on the more microscopic parasites. (BTW, if you REALLY want to get yourself a mess of ticks, take a white sheet and drag it through a ditch and WALLA! TICKS!) On a side note, don't take a first date out on a tick-collecting excursion....just don't do it.

Well, how does one expose one's family to the fascinating world of parasites without doing oneself a mighty mischief? Well, your best bet is to look for a parasite that doesn't infect people. Our less parasitic friends at the MN Dept. of Natural Resources have just the ticket. In the spring, go to a pond where wood ducks are nesting. Find some snails- try looking on the undersides of leaves- sometimes floating leaves. Pop those snails in a small jar with some water. Give it a day or 2 and you will start seeing little white translucent worms wriggling about in the water.

These are Cercariae. The adult organism lives in birds such as ducks or Kingfishers or Egrets. The adults release eggs into the bird which releases them into the water. The eggs hatch to release larvae which go swimming in search of a snail. These larvae dig their way into the snail and shack up in its liver. Later, these are released as the Cercariae that you will see in your jar. Outdoors, these would then find their way to a fish which the bird would eat thus starting the beautiful cycle of life anew! ENJOY! -Kyle

The Next Workplace Revolution

Starting in the 1960s, women started entering the workplace in large numbers. Since the 60’s, the female workforce participation rate has steadily increased while the participation rate for men has remained steady or even declined. While participation rates (or wages for that matter) are not at parity with men, the gap has steadily closed.

The trend is supported in looking at gender staffing of occupational groups. From 1970 to the present, women have made huge inroads into occupational groups such as management, business/financial operations and professional and technical occupations. Indeed, around half of these positions are now held by women- though it should be noted that healthcare and education jobs often get lumped into some of these categories- areas that have been “traditionally” dominated by women. Despite this progress, areas such as engineering/sciences and precision manufacturing remain male-dominated. Likewise, office and administrative jobs are still heavily staffed by women. The gender diversification of occupations is seemingly a one-way street where women are taking over a greater role in many jobs but men are not reciprocating. Nursing may be the exception to that rule.

The following NY Times article offers a new insight: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/education/09college.html In a nutshell, this article shows (and data support) that women are more likely to go to college than men, they are more likely to finish college than men and they are more likely to excel at college than men. Now, take into account that our economy/labor market is changing. We are increasingly a knowledge economy. That knowledge economy is creating a 2-tier labor market of high-skill, high wage jobs and low-skill, low wage jobs. Basically, the employment opportunities that we (or our children) are likely to have depend on us having access to quality advanced education and the ability to complete that education. Groups that cannot (or will not) access higher education face a future that is even more uncertain than those of us who have lived through corporate white/blue-collar downsizing, the IT Bubble burst or job offshoring.

So, who is best positioning themselves for success in the knowledge economy? Well, apparently young women are getting the message and are flocking to higher education. Indeed, the latest Department of Labor statistics show that the labor force participation for women is going down for the first time in years. Is it because more young women are staying at home? Probably not- it is likely due to a double whammy of retirements of those earlier waves of women entering the labor force and young women going to school full-time.

The implications of this trend are many and I’m not going to get into all the ramifications. But, I will point out one interesting note. In a report in the Harvard Business Review (http://www.hbr.com/) (Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success, March, 2005) a survey of employed women with advanced degrees who are in professional and managerial positions showed that 37% of women take time off from work (24% for men). Of this group, about 74% went back to work though most indicated that their future wages and growth opportunities suffered significantly because of taking time off. Startlingly, 0% of them wanted to go back to their original private sector place of work- the public and nonprofit sectors had somewhat higher rates. As an economist, I am fairly skeptical of any 0% figure but it does show something about how poorly many employers are addressing the sensitivities of a huge and powerful part of its workforce (Incidentally, the rate for men was not disclosed. It could also be 0% for all I know- perish the thought…maybe none of us want to go back to our original employer after taking time off!) Regardless, by investing in education, women are increasing their bargaining power in the future job market. Employers take note.

-Kyle

Handy Tip for Memorization:
I found this tip on lifehacker.com- basically put one fact that you are trying to remember on a notecard and focus on memorizing that one fact- pretty elementary....

http://lifehacker.com/software/learning/how-to-make-effective-flash-cards-185927.php

Now, for the serious memorization geek, I suggest a box filled with tiny bits of paper. Back in my rowdy ;) undergrad days, I studied for the vocabulary section of the GRE (Graduate Record Exam). I made lists of vocabulary words and cut them into tiny bits and put them in an old check box. When riding on the bus or waiting for a class, I would pull out the "box of words"-picking them out randomly and figuring out the meaning. I then set those aside that I did not know for future lookup. Through this system, I learned the meaning of such HIGHLY useful words as caparison, evanescent, uxorial and copralite- I won't ruin the suspense for you! Go look them up! If you don't believe me about the word box, just ask Marcy- www.marcysackett.blogspot.com -I'm sure I still have it somewhere... -Kyle

At the behest of a few interested parties, I decided that maybe I ought to actually write something in my blog! Being that this is kind of public, I thought that maybe I ought to write something kind of intellectual or work related-I'm an Economist and former Biochemist....I'm really sorry...please feel free to click the "next blog" button on the upper right hand side of your screen....NAH, I don't feel like being smart today. (Silent aside to the econ geeks who might be visiting- I'll write something about the Copenhagen Concensus soon- tune back in!) Then I thought, perhaps I should write a short story of some kind and put THAT on my blog but I don't really feel like being creative either. There are numerous odd experiences that I could talk about that I have encountered in the last 2 weeks- I'm convinced that I saw Patsy from "Absolutely Fabulous" walking in the St. Paul Skyway! Its TRUE! No, that's no good. Instead, I will talk about something passionate....something deep and special to me...something intimate....my organization system:

I don't use a PDA or a Franklin Planner. I use a pile of notecards connected by a BullDog Clip. Before mocking me for my low tech means of organizing things, hear me out! For one…how much information do you REALLY need and how often? For me, I need to know…What do I have to do today? What do I need to know about the things that I need to do today? When am I going to do the things that I am going to do today? And How might an unforeseen development affect things I need to do in the near future? The pile o’ notecards is just one part of a larger organizational system- Groupwise keeps my meeting schedules and an Excel Workbook full of tabs keeps track of projects, long-term priorities and other “STUFF” Stuff includes: Gift ideas for Marcy, Packing lists for vacations, weird ideas that I think of when I can’t go to sleep, etc.. I use the groupwise and excel workbook to organize my notecards. The notecards then organize my activities for the workday.

So, notecard one is filled out every morning and consists of all of the things I would like to accomplish that day and when I would like to do them. For instance:

Read newspaper 8-9
Wander around and talk to people 9-10
Eat bon bons 10-11
Do Sudoku puzzle 11-12
LUNCH 12-1
Work on Sudoku puzzle more 1-2:30
Give up on Sudoku, watch people outside 2:30-3:30
Get ready to go home 3:30-4:30

Does this schedule always go according to plan? Of course not! The Sudoku could be EXTRA hard one day and I have to give up earlier! But, my pile of notecards allows me the flexibility I need in an environment of constant change!

Cards 2+X consist of notes on projects that I am working on or projects that I am planning on pawning off on my lackeys. Whenever, I go to a meeting, my pile of cards (with some empty ones) follow me. I use these to take notes or jot down ideas. I then keep these in an appropriate file folder that contains other meeting materials. When the day comes when I am supposed to work on this project, I bring out the appropriate notecard and add it to my daily pile. For every new meeting, I make a new card. So, I may have (in some limited cases) 5-6 cards for an individual project. I can then consult these cards at any subsequent meetings.

Card X+1 has a tiny photocopy of my next 2 months worth of appointments. Rather than dragging around a PDA with all of my meetings for the rest of my life, I can simply look at my tiny card and pencil in any necessary appointments- you must be able to write very tiny. So, now when I am at a meeting and we are trying to figure out when we can meet next, I just whip out my tiny calendar card while everyone else hauls out Franklin Planners or frantically scribbles on PDAs with those ridiculous Styluses (sp?) and non-sensical scripts. Back at my desk, I put new appointments into my Groupwise Calender.

Lest you think that I walk around with a packet of 50 notecards, I do not. In a typical day with 2 meetings, I might have 4 or 5 though sometimes more depending on the project. I do not need to recharge my notecards. I do not need to “sync” my notecards. Despite my geekishness, most people are very admiring of my notecards…though they strangely never adopt the system themselves….They easily fit in my breast pocket (with my collection of pens and photo ID!). They are flexible- If I sit on them, they do not break! If I leave them in my car on a hot/cold day, they will not “die.” When I am done with a project or a day of work, I get the resolution of throwing those cards away. Yes, most days, I must transfer unfinished tasks to tomorrow’s card- thus giving birth to another day of organizational fun and high-jinx!

So, what happens if I am out on the road and I need to know somebody’s number NOW! Well geez….you can’t plan for every contingency in life. Is it really worth it to wander around with a huge book or a fragile PDA “just in case” you need something. My calendar card comes with a tiny photocopy of my office phone list. If I need a number not on that list, I can call someone on that list to get it for me. Or better yet- be a Free Rider!- Just bug your coworkers who carry around those PDAs and get the number from them! -Kyle

Welcome to my Blog Project!