I started ‘CommonScienceSpace’ over 8 years ago, and this will probably be the last post. Of the 66 posts, a number are related to the broad theme of how new stuff is discovered, and the science behind it. In that vein, let me tell you a story.
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Sixty years ago, back in the last millennium, I was a student at the University of Alberta, finishing up a four-year degree in Chemistry.… Read the rest “Dead rats and a living president”
As of March 4, 2020 the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, has spread to more than 77 countries. More than 93,000 cases have been reported, and just under 3,200 deaths. It’s thought that the virus infected its first human victim in the city of Wuhan in China, in November, 2019. That case was apparently caused by transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from an animal. Since then, it has spread by human-to-human contact. The virus probably originated in bats, and then likely passed through another animal before it found its human host.… Read the rest “The Drift of Coronavirus”
Samuel Hahnemann, father of homeopathic medicine.
A paper published in the June 30, 1988 issue of the high-profile scientific journal Nature shocked the biomedical research world. Its anodyne title, “Human Basophil Degranulation Triggered by Very Dilute Antiserum Against IgE”, probably didn’t cause any non-scientists to choke on their breakfast cereal. But in the eyes of the mainstream scientific world, the article made a radical claim: Pure water, admittedly with a special history, could generate an immune reaction in a test tube.… Read the rest “The Fading Memory of Water”
Peter Nowell and David Hungerford in 1960
Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML) is not a cancer you hear about very often. That’s not because it isn’t serious — until recently, it carried a frightening prognoses. Until about 2000, newly diagnosed CML patients had a 5-year survival rate of 31%. But we don’t hear much about CML because it is a rare disease, and affects far fewer people than cancers of the breast or prostate, or lung cancer.… Read the rest “Chronic Myeloid Leukemia: a Molecular Diagnosis”
The present-day Gila River in the Gila Box Riparian National Conservation Area in southeast Arizona.
Both nature and nurture affect human obesity. For some people, and for some populations, the genetic tendency to become obese is not fulfilled because of their environment, the circumstances of their lives. But when those circumstances change, the genetic potential may be realised quickly, and lead to the medical issues that follow from obesity. An example that starkly illustrates this comes from the sunbaked desert south of Phoenix, Arizona.… Read the rest “The Gila River People, Victims of Modernity”
(Bald Eagle and Hawk Mountain scenery. Image courtesy of David Dehner.)
Hawk Mountain, a picturesque site in southeastern Pennsylvania, is on the eastern slopes of the Appalachians. These mountains create an updraft that helps raptors, large birds of prey such as hawks and eagles, on their migratory flights between their northern summer habitats and their wintering sites in the southeast United States. They are also somewhat of a bottleneck, causing large numbers of raptors to converge in their flight paths and pass over Hawk Mountain.… Read the rest “Malaria: No Simple Solutions”
