Dancing with the Universe

I have reservations about this study, most particularly the time frames (one week is barely enough to get good responses with food-induced immune reactions, for one). I want to see more rigorous research on this.

By this point, however, my biggest issue is with the reporting on this study, namely that it may discourage people from trying a gluten-free diet -- and given that it's the easiest and most effective way to determine whether someone has celiac disease, that may be counter-productive. IFLS even went so far as to say "unless you're diagnosed with celiac disease, going gluten-free won't help" -- but blood tests are inaccurate, biopsies are invasive, and both require eating wheat steadily for six weeks. Once I determined that I had a wheat sensitivity (not celiac disease), you couldn't have paid me to put up with the symptoms for over six weeks, and many celiacs suffer just as much.

My advice to people with digestive health issues: try cutting gluten-containing grains (wheat, rye, barley) out of your diet first. If that helps you, then go look at a FODMAP-free diet as well. You might get even better control. But above all, if you'll pardon the pun, follow your gut -- if there's something going on, you know best what your body does and doesn't tolerate.

I react to one of the proteins in the wheat family (wheat, spelt, kamut), and gluten-free foods are guaranteed not to have wheat, so I buy a bunch of gluten-free stuff. I did notice that when I tested that sensitivity last time that the bread I ate seemed pretty hard to digest. That's probably FODMAPS in play, but it's a separate reaction. So it's less clear-cut than "if you aren't celiac, don't cut go gluten-free".

Sensitive To Gluten? A Carb In Wheat May Be The Real Culprit

Just in case anyone else is wondering where the "OMG if an LED shatters in your home you need a hazmat suit to clean it up!!1!" meme is coming from:

LED products billed as eco-friendly contain toxic metals, study finds

It's an important study; LEDs appear to have more than the legal amounts of lead, and other heavy metals such as arsenic can be a disposal and groundwater issue. Where it departs from reality is how it affects the average person.

Oladele Ogunseitan, chair of UC Irvine's Department of Population Health & Disease Prevention [...] said that breaking a single light and breathing fumes would not automatically cause cancer, but could be a tipping point on top of chronic exposure to another carcinogen. [...] When bulbs break at home, residents should sweep them up with a special broom while wearing gloves and a mask, he advised."

Since Mr. Ogunseitan seems smart enough in other parts of this article, I have to assume that the reporter screwed up and quoted his guidelines for disposing of CFLs, not LEDs. Meanwhile, the "hazmat" aspect seems to have panicked non-science reporters everywhere, and I'm now getting OMGWTFBBQ from my alt-health list and social media. Sigh.

I'm going to write to Mr. Ogunseitan and the UC Irvine communications director in the hope they can put out a correction, but corrections never travel as fast or as far as bad science. :/

A Comparison of the Effects of Three GM Corn Varieties on Mammalian Health

This is not new research, but a re-analysis of the original studies done for the approval process when these varieties were introduced. It involves one Roundup-Ready variety and two Bt-protein synthesizing varieties. These varieties are all currently part of the food supply.

The conclusions (do read the "Discussion" section, it's not totally opaque for the layman especially if you read the first paragraph and the last two) were that the experimental design by the Monsanto researchers was quite flawed, and the original analysis of the results was imperfect at best. When this team reweighed the data to compensate for the experimental flaws, and ran an appropriate statistical analysis on the result, they got totally different trends than the original researchers did. From my somewhat limited knowledge of experimental design and analysis -- I had a teacher who focused on what mistakes are commonly made, and how to spot them -- this was a very thorough and appropriate correction of the statistical techniques and design.

( A few highlights: )

I'm not an opponent of genetically-modified crops -- far from it -- but I've been concerned from the get-go that insufficient testing has been done on all aspects of the safety of the resulting plants. The possibility that Bt proteins could be toxic to humans makes sense to me, as we've never eaten large amounts of the stuff before and who knows what our bodies think of it; we already know that Roundup is toxic, and crops which can be sprayed with impunity will naturally have higher levels of residue in them. We need to look at these potential issues before these crops are released to the public, and assure ourselves that the risk is minimal or none. We, as scientists, owe it to ourselves and the public to do this, no matter how small we think the risks may be -- even with a "safe" bet, we're still gambling with huge stakes.

I hope this spurs a flood of animal-toxicity studies, particularly long-term ones. I hope it prompts studies of other crops, such as soy and canola. We can't afford to wait.

Lastly, I hope this serves as a reminder: don't take any single study at face value, whether you like or dislike the results. Unless you can critically examine the methods and analysis that were done, you have no idea whether the data was good or the conclusions were reasonable. Bad studies and analysis don't even have to be from malicious or sneaky intent (I can tell you that a distressing number of researchers figure that slapping all the numbers into a table and running ANOVA is the best way to handle any data). Wait until the study has been picked apart and corroborated by others before treating it as anything approaching fact.

Thanks to lily, I was introduced to this little gem:

The Solution to the Big Dinosaur Paradox

Putting aside for a moment the fact that I was unaware of the presence of a Big Dinosaur Paradox, this site is wonderful. It seeks to use logical deduction and scientific evidence (no, real physics formulas and numbers) to find answers to the great puzzles of life, or at least what this author thinks are the great puzzles. It discards some of the weirder theories out in creationist-land because they don't hold up scientifically. And finally, at the end, the stream of logic and scientific thought comes to an irrefutable conclusion. (No, I won't tell you what it is. Though you might want to look up which materials have a density of 670 kg/m³.)

It is, without a doubt, one of the most entertaining sites I've seen in a while.

I decided to read up on ricin, to refresh my memory, and found more details on its mechanisms than I had known before. Read on, boys and girls, to discover a toxin that is so efficient it's almost like it was engineered to be the world's most potent poison...

( A little explanation of how it works, for the layman. )

So we have a toxin which moves freely into (and somehow out of) cells, using their own transportation machinery, resists all the cell's degradation pathways, gets put exactly where it needs to be without effort, hits a universal spot on quite possibly the most important protein in the cell and disables it immediately, and can do so thousands of times a minute for many minutes. I can't think of any way I'd engineer a better poison, except to make it possible to absorb it in some way other than ingestion or injection. (DMSO, anyone?)

The more I learn about it, the scarier it gets.

Making decisions tires your brain.

When CFS gives me brainfog and it's hard to focus, it gets much, much harder to make even small decisions (like what I want to eat). This links the lack of concentration issue with the difficulty in making even brief, simple decisions.

Hell, I should contemplate how this affects me even when I'm not crashy.

My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nachos.

"-oyl" is indeed the suffix for an acyl halide. Good to know I remembered correctly.

1,10-decanedioyl chloride:

Oh, and Lexan? Made out of bisphenol A and phosgene. You know, phosgene-the-chemical-warfare-agent. Hoy.

Hey hybrid owners! Your car is putting your health at risk.

Fortunately, ATTI has the solution to your woes. If you think $65 x 4 is too steep a price, think about all the health care costs you're avoiding, not to mention the improvement in quality of life!






I have a few physics textbooks I'd like to throw at these guys.

And maybe a fraud suit.




(I don't think that EMF sensitivity is total bunk -- look at how I'm not supposed to be able to detect certain chemicals at such incredibly low concentrations as I do. But high-voltage AC lines are a totally different animal compared to DC battery current. I just wish more EMF-sensitive people knew that.)

This caught my eye, mainly because it has to do with plant pathology. It is, however, also a tale of the same sort of corruption that pervades the current White House. Which makes sense, given who Katherine Harris is.

Pressure was put on Florida officials to test "Celestial Water" as a cure for citrus canker

I haven't researched citrus canker specifically, but I remember hearing that it's been a real scourge in Florida over the last four years or so. It's a bacterial disease, and the combination of wet weather (which helps it spread from tree to tree) and hurricanes (which injured the trees, making wounds where disease could enter) has made a serious impact on the citrus orchards. The only treatment for most cankers is to cut off the affected parts, which in many cases in Florida has meant taking out trees entirely. Everyone's looking for some other way, but I don't know of any.

When Katherine Harris, who knows absolutely zip about plant disease, hooks up with a New York Rabbi and a cardiologist to suggest a cure, it makes me angry that scientists have to comply with ignorant superstitious beliefs just because of who she is. Other quacks are brushed off with a quiet "do the research and let us know". Yet this Kabbalist dreck gets tested by the state, because a U.S. Representative is breathing down people's necks.

Gah. I get irritated by politicians messing with climate change data, but I guess when they mess with my profession, it gets personal.