Cochineal Dye Bugs Starbucks Customers

Pink food seems to be raising a lot of eyebrows lately. A few weeks ago, meat product pink slime became embroiled in debate, and now a new crimson challenger has stolen the limelight: Starbucks has come under fire for using the pink dye cochineal (carmine) in their Strawberry Frappuccino drink ( blogs including NPR s The Salt and Bug Girl have also covered this story ).

Credit: wptv.com

#SciAmBlogs Wednesday - feathered tyrannosaurs, coral transplants, nanomedicine, Kawasaki Disease, and more.

Yes! We’ve made it! Forget NYTimes or BBC or NPR SciAm Blogs were featured in The Onion! That is the pinnacle nowhere higher to go. We are now part of the popular culture see the video… of course, we made it our newest Video of the Week

And now back to more serious fare…

#SciAmBlogs Officially Pop Culture Icon

Video of the Week #37 April 4th, 2012

Can Diseases Cross Oceans By Wind?

Aneurysms in the coronary arteries of a Kawasaki victim. Public domain; click for source.

That’s the question I examine in my first feature story for Nature , published today online and in the print magazine April 5. A bizarre disease of toddlers and infants called Kawasaki Disease — which only emerged in the 1960s in Japan — causes little kids to develop rash; fever; swollen hands, feet, and lymph nodes; red tongue and cracked lips; and, bizarrely, to develop coronary artery aneurysms that can kill them right away or years later by heart attacks in otherwise totally healthy young adults.

In the Heat for a Moment: The Male Giant Panda's Sex Drive Fluctuates to Match the Female's Short-Lived Libido

There is perhaps no mammal that is less often in the mood for sex than the female giant panda. Each spring, female pandas enter estrous (aka "heat") for only 24 to 72 hours. If male pandas do not make their move during that brief window of time, they miss their chance to mate. Although researchers initially struggled to breed pandas in captivity , they achieved recent success by closely studying the females' reproductive behaviors. But what about the males? It now seems that male pandas have a reproductive cycle of their own, knowledge of which could strengthen the growing captive panda population by improving both breeding strategies and artificial insemination techniques . From the summer through the fall, male pandas are not interested in sex at all. But each winter and early spring, sex hormones flood the males' bodies, plump up their testes and fire up their sperm factories in preparation for a very brief mating season. [More]


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Programmable Nanomedicine Cancer Treatment Shrinks Human Tumors

Cancer cell illustration courtesy of iStockphoto/Eraxion

Chemotherapy treatment for cancer is a nasty process. Doctors must try to give patients just enough of the toxic drugs to kill off cancer cells without doing too much harm to the rest of the body’s healthy tissues , a balancing act that, even if successful, can nevertheless cause horrible side effects.

Mucous Cancer - The mess of Pseudomyxoma peritonei

This is re-posted from my old blog because it has been getting a few hits lately.

My wife is a nurse and she sees some properly interesting medicine at times. A little while ago she told about this doosey of a cancer and I couldn t help but write about it.

#SciAmBlogs Tuesday - DNA Patents, Supernova, Power of Mindset, Bat-Killing Fungus, and more.

News tidbit of the day? The #SciAmBlogs make an appearance in an Onion video (around 1:57-2:04).

Are DNA Patents Doomed?

DNA is special. Unlike other body parts, it holds information. Even discarding a blood spot or saliva sample doesn t necessarily prevent the telltale DNA sequences from living on in a database.

We guard our DNA data in a way that we don t other test results, such as cholesterol levels. Genes are uniquely ours. They say something about us at some fundamental level, more than a mammogram or a Pap smear or an x-ray, said James Evans, MD PhD, professor of genetics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, at a symposium on DNA patenting at the International Congress of Human Genetics in Montreal in October 2011.

Why Some Pain Relievers Cause Intense Itching

Millions of patients benefit from opioids such as morphine and codeine, but the pain relief they provide often comes with intense itching. In some cases, the irritation is so bad that patients will opt to cut back on painkillers. Now a study in the October 14 issue of Cell has found a possible explanation--the first step to creating drugs that will not make patients choose between experiencing itchiness and pain.

#SciAmBlogs Monday - Craigs List Avenue, Religion and Medical Care, Words With Rocks, Bad doctors, Futuristic Foods and more.

Most important news of the day we have a new blog! Check out Rosetta Stones !

Second, as it is Monday, we have a new Image of the Week .

The Celestial Goldfish

Image of the Week #36, April 2nd, 2012:

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Dengue Virus Makes Mosquitoes Better Spreaders

The dengue virus depends on mosquitoes to get around. But the virus may have evolved a way to speed its spread--by manipulating the behavior of its mosquito hosts. It makes them more bloodthirsty, and quicker to find a blood meal, than their uninfected counterparts. So says a study in the journal Public Library of Science Pathogens . [Shuzhen Sim, Jose L. Ramirez and George Dimopoulos, Dengue Virus Infection of the Aedes aegypti Salivary Gland and Chemosensory Apparatus Induces Genes that Modulate Infection and Blood-Feeding Behavior ]

Routine Mammograms Lead to Overdiagnosis of Breast Cancer

Image courtesy of iStockphoto/PinkTag

Breast cancer kills nearly 40,000 women in the U.S. each year a figure that has been in slow decline in the past two decades , despite (and in part thanks to) improved screening technology and an increase in treatment options. The percentage of women who get breast cancer and survive, however, is a trickier statistic to assess.

How Useful Is Whole Genome Sequencing to Predict Disease?

A $1,000 genome sequence is close to being available. What will your sequence tell you about your actual risk for certain diseases?

World Repository of Human Genetics Will Move to Amazon's Cloud

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"Bad doctors" and bad habits

“So. Why did you choose medicine?&

During the first few weeks of medical school, this question came up a lot in the context of getting to know our fellow classmates. We did icebreakers, learning one another s stories, sharing our inspirations and motivations. We heard the huge range of narratives and experiences that led us here, to the same place, about to embark on the same journey.

Molecules to Medicine: When Religion Collides with Medical Care: Who Decides What Is Right for You?

San Carlos Church - Vince Alongi

The recent presidential candidate debates, fights over insurance coverage for contraceptives, and the Virginia and Texas legislatures imposition of intrusive, unnecessary ultrasounds prior to any abortions are highlighting the fundamental issue of the role of religion in health care and the separation of Church and State. While the emphasis has been on reproductive care, the imposition of religious beliefs on access to medical care is far more wide reaching in its deleterious effect on the ability of people to choose their care and have their medical needs met.

Open Laboratory 2013 - submissions so far

It is now expected by the science blogosphere that I post the full updated listing of all the submissions every Monday morning. This serves as a reminder for bloggers to submit their (and other people s) posts, and to some extent prevents duplicate entries. But most importantly, it presents a growing listing of some of the most exciting work on science blogs. This is a weekly post where bloggers can discover each other and discover blogs they were not previously aware of. Thus it is also a promotion for all the bloggers involved.

The submission form for the 2013 edition of Open Lab is now open. Any blog post written since October 1, 2011 is eligible for submission . We will close the form on October 1st, 2012.