Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) this week mailed a letter to ten of the nation's top medical schools asking for their policies on ghostwriting.
The senator -- the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee -- has grown alarmed by a New York Times series examining how pharmaceutical companies authored studies promoting their drugs. The companies then had medical academics sign onto the reports, making it appear as though the ghostwritten article was authored by a scholar.
Washington University in St. Louis was the recipient of one of Grassley's letters that stated (in part):
St. Louis shares many things in common with Baltimore, Maryland. We have the same brick infrastructure, the same *&%@ed up government, the same run-away crime and -- now -- the same STD.
Yesterday the Center for Disease Control published findings indicating that Baltimore has surpassed St. Louis as the most chlamydia-infested region of the country.
In 2008, 1,235 people per 100,000 residents in St. Louis had chlamydia for a total of 4,300 total cases. Baltimore had a higher infection rate of 1,321 per 100,000 people.
Yesterday came news, too, that St. Louis is also no longer No. 1 among people with gonorrhea. That title now goes to Richmond, Virginia.
Okay, so the story in today's business section of the Post-Dispatch is mostly about how a company that sells holiday decorations is opening an office in downtown St. Louis. (Yes, exciting!)
But the real news is the photo (below) that accompanied the story.
Post-Dispatch, Section B1, 11/13/2009
If you'll recall, the zoo hasn't had much luck keeping polar bears in recent years. The zoo's last polar bear, Hope, was euthanized in April when veterinarians found it had cancer.
In May 2005 another polar bear, named Churchill, ate a fatal helping of cloth and plastic inside its bin and died while undergoing stomach surgery. Five weeks later, a polar bear named Penny died at the zoo from infection. Turns out, she had two dead fetuses inside her uterus, though zoo officials didn't know she was pregnant.
So, what's the solution to those problematic real polar bears and their pesky habit of dying?
This week employees with James Trogolo Co. installed a family of electronic polar bears in the zoo's empty polar bear display. Technology wins again!
An official with the Saint Louis Science Center has all but ruled out creationists as the possible suspects in a brazen attack this week of a dinosaur sculpture at the museum.
A technician with the traveling "Dinosaurs Unearthed" exhibit repairs the split-open tail of the Apatosaurus statue on Wednesday at the Saint Louis Science Center.
Beth McClure, a spokesman for the Science Center, said the attack on the Apatosaurus statue outside the facility came from someone swinging on its tail, breaking it off and splitting it open.
Asked by Daily RFT if religious zealots may have been behind the vandalism, McClure responded: "I can't comment on that or speculate."
She was, however, more than willing to speculate on another theory.
"We think it was just some kids who got too close and were just messing around with it," McClure said.
On Wednesday afternoon a technician traveling with the exhibit used a paintbrush to glue the tail's outer layer back together. Despite the seemingly superficial damage to the statue, McClure said the press release she sent out alerting media to the vandalism at the museum was not a publicity stunt designed to drum up interest in the exhibit.
A Southwestern High School teacher in Piasa, Illinois, (outside of Alton) is back in the classroom today after a multi-day suspension for an assignment about homosexual behaviors in animals.
English teacher Dan DeLong was placed on paid leave last week after someone complained about the optional homework assignment he provided his sophomore students.
The homework had students read an article that challenged Darwin's theory of sexual selection by documenting hundreds of animals species that engaged in seemingly homosexual acts.
It's official, St. Louisans: Yesterday's deluge put us over the ten inches of rain mark. We got 2.41 inches, bringing us up to a grand total of 11.88 inches for the month. And that's not counting this morning.
But the National Weather Service predicts that we are done. Well, for October. Maybe even for a few days of November.
In other news, I will be spending part of the weekend checking the darker corners of my apartment for mushrooms.
If you, like many, have wondered why it's taken so long for pharmaceutical companies to roll out the new swine vaccine, here's your answer.
slu.edu
Vaccine Man: Dr. Robert Belshe
The vaccines must first be grown in fertilized chicken eggs, which requires getting a hen and a rooster to copulate -- no easy task when chickens aren't in the mood.
Of course, there are alternatives. Scientist can also grow the influenza virus inside the kidneys of dogs. Don't worry, no canines are harmed in process. (So they tell us.)
If that doesn't work, harvesting the vaccines from inside the bowels of caterpillars has also proven effective.
That's right, these cultures are grown up inside these animal cultures and then injected into your body all in the name of science.
We'll let Dr. Robert Belshe, director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Saint Louis University, explain how it works as he did yesterday to thousands of NPR listeners.
A happy thought to sustain you during the last few warm days of the year, before winter squeezes us all in its icy fist:
When a tiny buzzing member of the insect order Hymenoptera decides to plunge its stinger into your tender flesh, quite often you don't really care which particular species got you. Most people refer to them as "bees" or "that little [expletive of your choice]."
But now, thanks to Justin O. Schmidt, an entomologist at the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson and the creator of the appropriately-named and poetically-written Schmidt Sting Pain Index, you can identify what Hymenoptera stung you by how much pain it caused.
As Schmidt noted in his original paper, which covered 78 different species, "all research was self-inflicted." He is a brave, brave man.
A few choice excerpts from the Schmidt Sting Pain Index after the jump:
Last Friday, October 23, was an exciting day for St. Louis weatherwatchers: 1.91 inches of rain landed at Lambert Airport, giving October, 2009, the final boost to become the wettest October in recorded St. Louis weather history, soundly beating 1919 by .3 inches. (It was also the wettest October 23 since 1874 when scientists started keeping track of such things.)
Maybe it's a case of the pathetic fallacy, what with the Cardinals' rapid post-season collapse and all.
As of yesterday, October 25, 8.84 inches of rain had fallen in St. Louis this month. Observant readers will note that there is nearly a week left in October. Those same readers will also note that it is raining right now.
The highly flammable greenhouse gas, most famous in the form of cow flatulence (hence the lovely picture above), is causing a scare for a handful of North St. Louis residents.
The St. Louis Demolition Landfill, located just east of Hall Street adjacent to the Mississippi River, has "potentially explosive levels" of the gas seeping out of the ground.
The Missouri Department of Natural Resources was working with the City to close the dump when testing revealed more than 18 times the allowable levels of methane present in the air.
It may not be the Olympics or even the All-Star Game, but St. Louis will get a chance to bask in the international spotlight for three consecutive Aprils starting in 2011 when the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) finals will come to the Edward Jones Dome.
flickr.com/photos/silkegb
Well, OK, it's a very narrow international spotlight. But it's an intense one, sort of like the National Spelling Bee for math and science nerds.
FIRST, which stands for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, was founded in 1989 by Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway, as a way to encourage young people to get involved in math and science. Kamen calls the robotics competition "the varsity sport of the mind."
If we learned one thing from seeing WALL-E, it's that robots have feelings, too. Of course, it's one thing to see cute Pixar robots fall in love. It's another to see a simulation of the same thing in real life.
Meet Thomas and Janet. They come from the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, also known as Taiwan Tech. Their feelings toward each other are unclear, but since a performance of The Phantom of the Opera last December, they have been working on their smooching technique.
The swine flu is coming! Flu season is here! We're all gonna die! Everybody panic! Ahhhhhh!
(Unreal dons surgical mask, douses hands in sanitizer, takes a deep breath and...phew. Ok.)
Seriously folks, the St. Louis County Department of Health wants to raise community awareness for flu season and to that effect they have been busy bombarding local media outlets with press releases, creating a new website with the sole purpose of providing flu information, and staging photo-ops (like the one pictured above) with County executive Charlie Dooley receiving a dose of the ol' vaccine juice.
Mostly the campaign drills home the obvious: wash your hands, cover your mouth when you cough, don't go to work when you're sick. Duh.
There's also a fanatical emphasis on vaccination, especially for children and the elderly. It's a great idea, considering the flu kills about 36,000 people each year, mostly in those high-risk groups.
But what about other age groups? Teens, twenty-somethings, eighties babies, and everyone in between? If you don't want to hog that precious preventative medicine from the people who really need it, Unreal has discovered a way to make an effective* flu vaccine in the comfort of your own home...
Unreal has just been informed that the biggest question that plagues single women is "Why are all the good men taken?"
This came as a surprise to us, because we always believed the lament of the single woman (well, actually, women in general) was "Why are men such assholes?"
But we came across the good men being taken question in an article in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, which told us right away that this was a question of serious scientific import. Or maybe the asshole question is far too complex to be resolved with one experiment on a group of undergrads who need the credit for their Intro to Psych course. (Remember when you actually got money for participating in a psych experiment? Unreal does -- with longing.)
Ph.D. student Jessica Parker and her advisor Dr. Melissa Burkley, the authors of this article (called "Who's chasing whom? The impact of gender and relationship status on mate poaching"), hypothesized that "taken men are perceived as good" and set up an experiment on 184 undergraduates, 97 of them female, at Oklahoma State University to prove it.
In an article published yesterday in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, the Wash. U. researchers report that the bee toxin reduced the growth of breast cancer tumors in mice by nearly 25 percent
and the size of melanoma tumors by 88 percent
compared to untreated tumors.
Films like Year One could make you dumb -- or dumber.
What!? This summer's flop, Year One, was not an accurate portrayal of real historical events?!
Shocking, we know. But could it be that even some of Hollywood's more "authentic" historical films also tend to blur the facts? And could those inaccuracies affect learning?
That's what a new study from Washington University doctoral student, Andrew Butler, suggests.
The study, appearing in the forthcoming issue of Psychological Science, suggests that showing
popular history movies in a classroom setting can be a double-edged
sword when it comes to helping students learn and retain factual
information in associated textbooks.
Last month was one for the record books with St. Louis experiencing its sixth -- or was it seventh? -- coolest July in history.
As it turns out, we were not alone. While our friends in the Pacific Northwest were suffering some bizarre, surface-of-the-sun type heat, the Midwest and Northeast experienced an unusually mild July.
In fact, yesterday AccuWeather.com reported that more than 1,100 daily record low temperatures were broken in July
nationwide. And when
record afternoon low highs are considered, that number jumps to more
than 3,000 records. An additional 1,200 stations tied records.
These cool temps were especially noticeable in the central United States. In Madison, Wisconsin, the average temperature last month was just 65.7 degrees,
breaking the previous record of 66.7. Meanwhile, Cincinnati, Chicago and South Bend, Indiana, also broke records.
What caused these unseasonably cool temperatures? And is global warming a myth?
As of last night, we were poised to wrap up just the sixth coolest July on record. That doesn't mean it wasn't the coolest, though. The lowest average temperature in July came in 1961 and 1891, when it was typically a balmy 74.9 degrees. Just guessing, but Sonic Youth probably didn't play a free show under the Arch in 1891 (they probably were working on their third album at that point.)
But seriously though, through last night we were averaging 75.7 degrees. In St. Louis. In July. Maybe global warming isn't so bad after all.
Here's the full July weather history plus the kick-ass forecast for the first weekend in August
Now the Missouri Department of Conservation is telling local duck hunters that there's "much to rejoice about" in a recent federal report on the North American duck population: apparently, our continent's duck population is up a quarter over the 50-year average, and 13 percent higher than last year.
Yep. It was 25 years ago today -- July 16, 1984 -- that Cybertel Cellular Telecommunications Co. (now Verizon Wireless) ushered in the "Cellular Age" when it switched on its first tower in St. Louis.
Back then the few cell-phone subscribers on the network used the
Motorola DynaTAC 8000X -- an early portable phone that cost $3,995, measured 13 inches long and weighed 1 ¾ pounds. Dubbed "The Brick", the phone offered
just one hour worth of talk time and eight hours of standby for every
recharging.
Of course, its benefits were that you could actually see the numbers on the Brick keypad and the phone rarely -- if ever -- got lost in the couch cushions.
U.S. News & World Report came out yesterday with its annual ranking of the country's best hospitals.
Earning high marks (again) was Barnes-Jewish Hospital. The hospital ranked No. 9 this year in the magazine's "Honor Roll" of best hospitals. According to a Barnes-Jewish spokesperson, the ranking marks the 17th consecutive year U.S. News has named it as the only St. Louis area medical center listed among the nation's elite.
The hospital scored particularly high marks for its kidney, neurology and respiratory divisions.
The purple martins in Forest Park are SUPER active right now. In the video here, listen how the birds are so loud that you can barely hear purple martin enthusiast John Miller do his commentary.
Yes, it's that time of year again that Unreal dreads so much: Finding the perfect Father's Day gift for the old man. There are only so many golf balls you can get a guy -- and the idea of giving your father balls...okay, let's not take that road any further.
The Big Mouth Billy Bass fad has totally run its course. If Dad doesn't already have a fish that sings "Take Me to the River", face it, he never will. There's always a nice, manly book about war or the Presidents, but David McCullough hasn't had a book out in a few years now and the John Adams miniseries was last year's gift.
Which leaves...Rick's Custom Squirrels!
In his workshop in Mitchell, Illinois, just off I-270, taxidermist Rick
Nadeau specializes in dressing and mounting squirrels. Dead squirrels.
The insects average only about one hour of sleep per day -- or less than 10 percent of the 12 hours most fruit flies spend slumbering. Researcher Paul Shaw quickly noticed an obvious and surprising behavioral change in the sleep-deprived bugs -- even though flies have six legs, the insomniac flies fell over more often.
"We sent them to experts in neurodegeneration in flies to see if their
lack of sleep or the breeding had somehow damaged their brains," Shaw
says. "But the experts said there weren't any physical brain
abnormalities."
So, Shaw naturally thought the fruit flies must be sleepwalking. He was wrong...
The corpse flower at UMSL hath bloomed!!! (Well, it opened up slightly.)
But the Daily RFT can assure you: on Sunday, it did smell like a rotting corpse. And it did remind us of death. I.e., your death. My death. The death that awaits each of us, always. But hey, the corpse flower lives. LOL!
There are several cool things about the corpse flower. First, it's huge (50 inches tall!). Also, it doesn't bloom every year (some specimens take three years; this particular one at UMSL on Sunday took 14 years). Native to the wilds of Sumatra, the corpse flower has bloomed in the U.S. fewer than 100 times.
But here's what's really cool: when it finally does bloom, it emits a foul stench to attract flies and beetles. These carrion insects pollinate the flower.
According to the Daily RFT, if the ash borer were much bigger, it would go around punching puppies in the face.
Once these pests infect an ash tree - hard to detect until it's too late - that tree is toast within three to five years.
People from our state and federal governments are trying to contain the pest by setting traps for them. But the main way they spread is by people carting around a bunch of firewood. So don't.
Who cares, you ask? Quoth the MDC:
The implications of the infestation are severe. Even before the emerald
ash borer reached Missouri, ash trees here were suffering from "ash
yellows" disease and a complex of insect and disease problems called
"ash decline." Forestry officials say these problems combined could
produce devastation unlike any seen since chestnut blight all but
exterminated the American chestnut from forests in eastern North
America.
Until 4 p.m. today, you've got a chance to witness one of Nature's great mysteries: as the Missouri Botanical Garden liquidates this season's surplus plants, older white ladies with short hair have converged like a swarm of ravenous locusts.
On offer at 4344 Shaw Boulevard are perennials, annuals and also weird stuff you won't easily find elsewhere (like tropicals -- all the rage right now among horticultural types).
That's the argument that Drew's attorney makes in a brief filed yesterday as part of her pre-sentence report.
If you haven't been keeping score at home, Drew was convicted by a jury in L.A. in November of three misdemeanors for breaking MySpace's "Terms of Use Policy" after she helped create a fake profile and used it to tauntcyber-bully Dardenne Prairie teen Megan Meier, supposedly to the point that she killed herself.
Rather than give her the maximum three-year prison sentence the law affords, the judge is recommending that Drew pay a $3,000 fine and be subject to some probation time.
You'll be shocked (shocked!) to hear that some people think the penalties aren't quite justice served for Drew, Riverfront Times' "Best Villain" of 2008.
But Drew's attorney makes a pretty convincing argument that his client has already been through hell thanks to the tactics of a few cyber-vigilantes. You know, the same ones who were messing with Drew two years ago when her sick, sad story first broke.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that any pop cultural event involving both Jane Austen and zombies is bound to have huge appeal. (It is another truth universally acknowledged that any article or blog post concerning Jane Austen must begin with the phrase "It is a truth universally acknowledged.")
But why should this be? I mean, besides the fact that Pride and Prejudice is one of the most beloved English novels of all time and that there's just something delightfully chilling about the idea of a reanimated corpse (and that the word "zombie" just sounds cool)?
"Think of this swine flu outbreak like severe weather. If you thought a storm was coming - you would take steps to prepare yourself," said Nicole Holtgrefe, director of preparedness and client services for the St. Louis Area Chapter. "No one can prevent a pandemic from happening, but we can work together to minimize its impact."
Twitter users may or may not want to follow @swineflu, which basically has just been retweeting @CDCemergency (which has posted updates throughout the day.)
The influx of influenza information continues after the jump, with the Red Cross press release in full.
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