Most Liked Science Blogs (319)

In an effort to continue bombastically to bomb away at neophytes, and to have all our shamelessly wasteful research grants re- funded, we here at VI International are no strangers to sensational science, especially if it's basically a hunk of trash. Digressing.

Long overdue are the early findings announcements of early findings, being announced early, right here and now. But in the saintly fairness of the Director, since one new syndrome describes Him, we'll begin there. Some may have noticed here, his obsessive compulsive preoccupation with liberal hypocrisies, certainly only a bit less an impairment than the now world famous Trump Derangement- Hilary Deficit Syndrome. A certain hottie Northlands Norwegian Nursie has even used the word Syndrome in reference to our dear leader himself. Peace be upon her curvaceous little backside.

At first, we thought a totally descriptive name for the syndrome would be best. One of out hottie overpaid interns came up with---"Annoying Little Wanker Thinks He's Sherlock Holmes on Exposing Liberal Hypocracy Syndrome " Sure, a spot on description of his illness, but a bit of a mouthful. Not to mention a pretty crappy acronym.

So our creative, but vastly overpaid and underworked HR hangabouts suggested---"Detective Shorty Liberal Hypocrisy Syndrome," which soon emerged as, "Short Wanker Anti -liberal Detective Syndrome"---SWADS, abbreviated.

And if the glove fits, wear it well.

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First off, I have to thank Jim for bringing this to my attention. In fact, other than from Jim, I have not heard a single thing about this comet. It was discovered in late December....for whatever that means.

I have been kinda watching things on a daily basis as more and more information becomes available about it. What they say about it, as it become closer and closer to our sun, it is melting more and more. This is a comet, it is ice. So, as it heats up, it melts. Scientists say that the more it melts, the more light it will reflect, being easier to see in space.

The ancients feared comets...claiming they bring disease and destruction.

Now, this is where I start wondering a bit...because, I am no scientist and I am no astrologer.

But, the way I read about this comet, it will becoming near Earth.

Even if there is no physical collision from the hard physical form of the comet, is it possible the Earth could pass through the plume that is being melted off it? If so, is the Earth going to just pass through water vapors (because comets are reported to be frozen ice)...or....is there a possibility that some microbes may exist in this plume?

From what I understand, asteroids are somewhat able to be detected where it comes from...because we have a asteroid belt around us. But comets on the other hand come from deep space...and from what I understand, scientists don't know where they come from. Like I mentioned earlier, this comet was reported to be just discovered in December.

Anyway....just some thoughts here.

Thanks Jim.

Happy Saturday all.

We sometimes see bloggers vapidly copying often biased fake news reports on one topic or another, distinguished only in their one track attacking of our Brilliant and Dazzling, promise keeping, Ivy League graduate, President Trump. In the ensuing back and forth of postings, these syndrome victims then display only marginal education on most related topics, having to do with their initial copied blog text or videos, and always with a striking inability to appreciate other sides of the argument. Often these writings involve scientific, medical and even psychiatric themes.

Although roundly accepted as the hairdressers of medicine, psychiatrists have made a valid clinical observation now and again. One of the most robust relates to the strength of the fixed beliefs, and behaviors, in the delusional syndromes. These victims have traditionally focused on delusions having strong popular exposure in various media. Examples, often humorous, are from radiation, space visitors, and such. These folks are almost always fun to listen to, initially at least, and almost never dangerous. In one subtype, however, delusions of jealousy, usually of a spouse's imagined extramarrital adventures, violence has occured.

In the Trump Derangement-Hilary Deficit Syndromes, which often rise clinically to delusional diatheses, these trends are strong indeed. So when we see even a slight change in their presentations, it is noteworthy.

We now see statements from such sad cases as---"if Trump is reelected". It's hard to over emphasize how different this is from their usual take on the political world, and accordingly, at variance with the evolution of validly diagnosed delusional syndromes. We at the Vierk Institute are intrigued, and are on it. Typically, those who suffer from delusional syndromes will only relax their fixed beliefs with the use of powerful antipsychotic agents, and even then, only partly so. Talk therapies won't touch it at all. Is there a Nobel Prize somewhere in this astute clinical finding? Stay tuned.

Today from CNN;

So I try to introduce tidbits of other things into each lecture. Here, I relate how my grieving is lessened by the dear hearts of the young ladies in the busy beaver front row of the class. Very busy beaver. The loss, over just one month, of both of two wonderful kitties, weighs heavily on this otherwise hardened racist/sexist/multiphoboc Vierk heart. Miss Angel, huntress extraordinaire Maine coon cat, still presenting the women next door with all sorts of prey---voles, moles, mice and yes, the odd chipmunk as well---even during her frail last days. And huge calico Miss Lilly, who left us just yesterday, community greeter suprema, who on her last days, nearly blind, and barely still able to walk, sat on the front lawn in the warm mid spring sun, allowing passers by to scratch her on the favorite spot, under the chin. Purring right to the very end.
And how about these young budding pubic health students, now numbering almost 20, in their loose blouses and short skirts, all with the flashy red FM heels a going, informing me of their great sacrifice to help with the C-19 pander demic. It brought tears to these old eyes to hear that each and every one of these civic minded angels, is forgoing the use of undies, while sitting up front with your epididimis prof, just so that the fabrics can be better used for masks in the war against the great enemy, the deadly virus, as now called by our dear leader, Mr. Trump. With youth such as this, all I can say is,--- what a country! Chases away the kitty loss blues.But enough digression.
Now then, just how does evidence emerge from Epid? Again there are several levels of validity of such evidence, corresponding to the designs of the respective study approaches. At the most basic level, as with our cousin scientists, the demographers, descriptions of populations of individuals, some quite sophisticated, can yield very useful information. From predicting the clinical/hospital needs of a community, as in Health services Epid, to generating novel hypotheses, for analytical investigators, this research is vital. With these data, the more analytically minded crowd can employ various study designs, to explore the relationships between health/disease in these populations, and various factors of interest. And here's the kicker. In the more natural sciences, one can compare groups of lab animals, both control and groups exposed to the factors under study, PROSPECTIVELY, and see where the cards fall. But in Epid, methods exist to perform such investigations using historical data, as well as going forward.
The scope of these designs are beyond this course level, but your teacher would be happy to explain all of them, in his office, after class, but only to students, sequentially, one hour each, as individuals. Here, these approaches however will be named, so google away. Again, from most basic, to sophisticated, these include: ecological (correlations only) designs; cross sectional (lacking time dimensionality) investigations; case control studies-enabling the investigation of historical relationships, if only for one illness at a time; cohort designs, both forward and backward looking, by analogy with research with lab animals. And sometimes, these approaches can be combined, as in nested case control within cohort studies, say of defined worker populations.
Now the so called gold standards of these investigations are the various types of clinical trials, which strictly speaking, takes us into the field of clinical Epid. Often described as multi arm, randomised, blinded, power driven, etc., investigations,-- these are used to study the efficacy of medical interventions, such as new drugs, and diagnostic and surgical technologies. And taking all of this now to the realm of public health, we see the community clinical trials, which often are useful for policy decisions. Next time, this leads into the topics of epidemics.
By the way, my lovely beavers, the perfumes are great. class over.

Having once more deftly managed my usual pathetic detractors, and gently further bonded with the man crush fellows, it's back again to shameless showing off, under the pretext of unsolicited public education. We've covered, in only a few Blogs, most of the ideas underlying basic, and even more advanced, Epid. It's origins, purposes, development, ground level technical features, and much more, were covered, admittedly only in a cursory fashion. But careful readers will have gotten the main points.
Of course, in these days of the Chinese Wuhan wet markets virus, many will want to know what Epid reveals about this latest gift to the world from the one party Han state. In doing so, many of the basic concepts which were covered earlier in the lecture series enter in.
Now we cover various features of statistical analysis, showing how closely related are medicine, Epid, public health and biostatistics.This actually is an extension of calculating the results of laboratory experimentation. It's rare to compare just two mice, or viral tissue culture Petri plates, for the differences after different exposures to experimental variables. And ideally, many attempts are made to have these, before the experiment, to be identical. Strains of laboratory animals are bred, at great expense, to be as nearly identical as possible. Of course, except in the rare natural occuring experimental situation, this is not possible for researchers on humans, unless the scientists worked in NAZI times, But I digress.
All sorts of factors in free living human populations come up, many of which relate to the outcomes of experiments. So called intermediate variables (confounders, effect modifiers, etc.), while we can try to "match" study subjects and controls in various study designs, this is far from perfect. So techniques were developed to gather such data, say smoking, or weight, and to try to adjust for their differential effects in generating results. With few such factors, simple tabular statistics, such as 2X2 table Chi square or T tests work, and with so called AVOVA techniques, (analysis of variance), even more statistical adjusting can be done.
But for many extraneous factors, and many thousands of study subjects, nore refined statistical techniques are needed. And these can also help to estimate the sizes and relevance of differences in study populations.so called "effect measures", and to guage statistical significance. As a group, these all are forms of what is called multiple regression techniques, and have direct impact on making predictions ("Models"), as in COVID -19.

Later, alligators. And I await careful reading and notification of my gramatical and other erors from my wanker detractors. Here, boys, come and get your treat. .

I've used that phrase often and tonight hpylady_ suggested it on Jim's blog about virus being carried on tiny particles found in air pollution.

The concept of a canary in a coal mine is because miners had died as the levels of colorless odorless carbon monoxide, methane or other gases that proved to be fatal to the miners. They had no means of detecting these hazardous/toxic gasses and found that canaries would quickly sicken when subjected to that kind of environment allowing the miners to escape unharmed.

Using canaries became an 'early-warning' system for the workers deep inside the mines.
It wasn't until years later they carried compressed air breathing systems and carbon monoxide detectors to protect miners.

The birds were no longer needed but the saying is still around...

The idiom/metaphor 'Canary in a coal mine' also relates to other things, such as financial indicators. For example: Mortgage borrowers in this coronavirus pandemic could be the canary in the mine to a foreclosure crisis.

TAG. ) ..for those about to rock / ac/ DC
......
..we salute you..

...start me UP / rolling Stones
Family affair / sly & family stone
... another brick in the wall pt.2 / p Floyd
This is the One /. stone roses
...rocky Mtn. Way / walsh
Rosetta stoned / Tool
...total.} Rock of Ages / A M Toplady [ 1775.
AR ] why should the Father bother ? / petra
( 2 call us his children....?
...Y should the spirit ..hear it...when we pray...
( it's all because of what the son has done....)
3 0 9 1...[ 3068 & 3467...yahu- yasha / yahusha.
.- 2042. .a mountain
1 0 4 9. House of Rock ) beth-Tsur....Jn.3:17...Psalm 18.

..tag.) ..city Limit / the radio dept.

The bulldozer song / new sky kids
... dirt / Alice in chains
..Final Separation / bulldozer
Midtown Tunnel Vision // Rainbow
.. beginning to see the Light / vlvt. Underground
Cause of death / Obituary
..Total.} the INTERNET / Hive Mind
A R ] ..the Funeral / band of horses
....regenerated in the grave / bulldozer
Tunnel / 3rd day...... standby....4 more music to wake the dead....

Is it possible that Trump was hinting about something he might know, but it is a hidden technology/medicine?

or

Is it that he was really talking about us injecting Clorox in our bodies? ...or when he was talking about introducing the inside of our bodies to a light.


Of course, those sound like ridiculous ideas....anybody...a 4 year old would know better, which makes me wonder.



Happy Friday all.