The DNA Network

Irony, heredity and serenity [A Free Man » Science] Posted: 12 Nov 2008 06:24 PM CST I’ve literally got students coming out the wazoo today, so I’ll keep things short and simple… After ranting about premature Christmas decorations and my general disdain for the holiday, I’ve been tasked with coming up with a personalized message for my company’s Christmas cards. This is, by far, the most difficult three or four sentences I’ve ever had to churn out. Any suggestions? —————————— I’m pleased to be the host for Mendel’s Garden #26. Mendel’s Garden, the genetics blog carnival, is looking for the best genetics posts in the blogosphere. I’m hosting the December edition and am actively looking for submissions. Everything from transcription to evolution to genetic counseling and social implications of genetics research are welcome. I’m particularly interested in non-specialists, so if you’ve got something that you could tag with “genetics” send it my way. If you’d be interested in having a post featured, please e-mail me your latest and greatest to chris (at) afreeman (dot) org. —————————— Finally, when things have gotten harried this week, I’ve turned to this video for a dose of serenity. The internets are awash with cute kid videos, but I have the cutest kid (and possibly the most patient dog) around. —————————— Image Credit I’d never heard of The Bouncing Souls until this track came my way, but I can’t stop listening to it. They’ve been around for ages and I’m thinking of checking out more of the New Jersey quartet’s music. Buy the self-titled record that featured “Serenity” and other records here. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Coffee Break Science Browsing [adaptivecomplexity's blog] Posted: 12 Nov 2008 03:16 PM CST Actually, today it's tea because I need to go easy on the caffeine. Here's what's interesting in science around the web this week: Where did hobbits come from? Not the hobbits in the Shire, but Homo floresiensis, a diminutive hominid that lived on an Indonesian island 20,000 years ago. PBS has an essay on evolution and why island creatures sometimes get very big or very small. read more

Stay Smart, Stay Healthy: Let’s reform healthcare! [ScienceRoll] Posted: 12 Nov 2008 01:41 PM CST Two days ago, I posted a great video focusing on the major problems of healthcare systems. Then Brendan left a comment for us and introduced the Stay Smart, Stay Healthy website, the creator of the video. Stay Smart Stay Healthy is a Humana new-media venture designed to deliver guidance, and to support awareness and understanding of the healthcare industry. Our goal is simple: to educate consumers on the healthcare system by removing the usual complexities and replacing them with an informative and engaging series of videos. Two of their many unique videos are published on Youtube. How Does Insurance Work? Why Is Healthcare So Expensive? Give them feedback, promote them on your blogs and join their project on Facebook or Youtube.

Underselling Genomics Award #1: David Whitworth for "Genomes and Knowledge: A questionable relationship" [The Tree of Life] Posted: 12 Nov 2008 12:15 PM CST I do not normally write too much here about non Open Access publications but this one is so good I had to. Everyone with access to Trends in Microbiology should check out Julian Parkhill's rebuttal to an article written by David Whitworth in the same issue. Whitworth's article is "Genomes and knowledge – a questionable relationship? " and it is in my opinion, filled with some unsuppoerted and over the top statements. In essence, he is arguing that we should stop genome sequencing because there are a bunch of genomes out there already and after all, all that matters is work on model organisms so if you have enough genomes related to your model organism you should move on. Alas I do not have time to detail them here. But fortunately, Parkhill does a great job of responding in his article Time to remove the model organism blinkers. The end of his article reflects how I feel too: In the end, when faced with the astonishing diversity of microorganisms, if all we manage to do is to describe a few random organisms in painstaking detail, then we will have failed to understand microbiology. To suggest we curtail the remit of microbial genomics is bad enough; to suggest it now, when we are on the brink of finally being able to truly study genomic diversity, is absurd. So sure, sometimes we in genomics oversell the benefits of genome sequence data (and in fact, I give out a little award here for those people). But Whitworth is at the other end of the spectrum, wearing, as Parkhill states "blinkers" to the benefits of genome sequence data. As a reflection of how much I disagree with most of Whitworth's implications, I am giving him my first "Underselling Genomics Award". This is from the "Tree of Life" blog ( http://phylogenomics.blogspot.com ) of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate at the University of California, Davis..

Analysts Say deCODE Genetics Headed for Bankruptcy Court [Eye on DNA] Posted: 12 Nov 2008 11:18 AM CST deCODE’s problems should not be any surprise to those following Iceland’s massive financial crisis. Morningstar’s Matthew Coffina has now listed deCODE stock as one of five that “look completely worthless.” deCODE Genetics (DCGN) From the Analyst Report: “DeCODE Genetics engages in some provocative research projects…. However, the company has yet to gain approval from the Food and Drug Administration for any of its products, and it is currently facing a severe liquidity crisis. It appears more likely to us that deCODE might no longer be a viable entity.” via Genealogy-DNA-L

Genes in the Post-Genomic Era [evolgen] Posted: 12 Nov 2008 10:00 AM CST You would think that geneticists would have a good definition of "gene". After all, genes are what we study. In introductory biology courses, you may have been introduced to the concept of the gene as the unit of heredity. That's all well and good, but when you begin to study genes at a molecular level (i.e., looking at DNA sequences), that definition ceases to be practical. The advent of DNA sequencing led to the concept of the gene as an open reading frame, and the post-genomic era has challenged the very idea of the gene. I've previously discussed the definition of gene (What is a gene?, What is a gene? -- yes, two different posts with the same title), but I didn't get into very many details. Alas, I don't feel like spending much time laying out my opinion, suffice it to say I think "gene" is an obsolete, overly generic term that should be replaced by a more specific term whenever possible. Luckily, the New York Times has published an article by Carl Zimmer sketching out some of the possible interpretations (Now: The Rest of the Genome ). This lets me pick and chose my favorite meaning from a variety of opinions represented in Carl's piece. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Quick book meme [My Biotech Life] Posted: 12 Nov 2008 09:59 AM CST “And if that’s not enough of a good thing, consider this: Descartes liked to stay in bed till 11 A.M. - good ammunition the next time anyone gives me flak about sleeping late.” in The Know-It-All - One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World by A. J. Jacobs Grab the nearest book. Open it to page 56. Find the fifth sentence. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions. Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST. Quick book meme

US Department of Labor tackles biotechnology skill standards [Discovering Biology in a Digital World] Posted: 12 Nov 2008 09:15 AM CST What skills does a biotechnology technician need to know? This seems like a simple question, but people have been struggling to define biotech skill standards since the early 90's. Complicating this question is that many areas of biotechnology require somewhat different skills. Antibody work requires one set, plant or animal tissue culture, another; fermentation, another; manufacturing, another; DNA sequencing, yet another set. Even skills that you might think are universal, like using a microscope, are not. During my years in graduate school, I never used a microscope; I cloned genes and ran gels. Plus, many skill requirements change. These days, if I were a grad student, I'd probably be operating robots or sending my samples to a core lab. Anyway, the Department of Labor has decided that the time has come to define the needed skills and establish a: Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

A frustrating press release (or, adaptation is not random). [Genomicron] Posted: 12 Nov 2008 09:03 AM CST My feeling about science news reports is decidedly mixed. On the one hand, I read most of the main news services in order to keep up with research outside of my own discipline. On the other hand, I would say that about once every two or three days I find a story so silly that it makes me physically uncomfortable. This is one of those. Evolution's new wrinkle: proteins with 'cruise control' act like adaptive machines It opens: A team of Princeton University scientists has discovered that chains of proteins found in most living organisms act like adaptive machines, possessing the ability to control their own evolution. The research, which appears to offer evidence of a hidden mechanism guiding the way biological organisms respond to the forces of natural selection, provides a new perspective on evolution, the scientists said. Organisms do not "respond to natural selection". Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals within a population. It is a population level process and it is not interchangeable with "challenges to organism survival". If all organisms in a population are able to respond to a challenge such that there is no differential survival and reproductive success, then there is no natural selection. It continues: The researchers -- Raj Chakrabarti, Herschel Rabitz, Stacey Springs and George McLendon -- made the discovery while carrying out experiments on proteins constituting the electron transport chain (ETC), a biochemical network essential for metabolism. A mathematical analysis of the experiments showed that the proteins themselves acted to correct any imbalance imposed on them through artificial mutations and restored the chain to working order. "The discovery answers an age-old question that has puzzled biologists since the time of Darwin: How can organisms be so exquisitely complex, if evolution is completely random, operating like a 'blind watchmaker'?" said Chakrabarti, an associate research scholar in the Department of Chemistry at Princeton. "Our new theory extends Darwin's model, demonstrating how organisms can subtly direct aspects of their own evolution to create order out of randomness." Adaptive evolution is the result of natural selection -- the differential survival and reproduction of randomly varying individuals on the basis of heritable characteristics. This differential survival and reproduction is, by definition, non-random. Again, organisms do not evolve, populations do. And then it says: The work also confirms an idea first floated in an 1858 essay by Alfred Wallace, who along with Charles Darwin co-discovered the theory of evolution. Wallace had suspected that certain systems undergoing natural selection can adjust their evolutionary course in a manner "exactly like that of the centrifugal governor of the steam engine, which checks and corrects any irregularities almost before they become evident." In Wallace's time, the steam engine operating with a centrifugal governor was one of the only examples of what is now referred to as feedback control. Examples abound, however, in modern technology, including cruise control in autos and thermostats in homes and offices. The essay is the one presented by Lyell and Hooker to the Linnean Society in 1858, along with one by Darwin. Here is the full paragraph: Wallace (1858): The hypothesis of Lamarck---that progressive changes in species have been produced by the attempts of animals to increase the development of their own organs, and thus modify their structure and habits---has been repeatedly and easily refuted by all writers on the subject of varieties and species, and it seems to have been considered that when this was done the whole question has been finally settled; but the view here developed renders such an hypothesis quite unneccessary, by showing that similar results must be produced by the action of principles constantly at work in nature. The powerful retractile talons of the falcon- and the cat-tribes have not been produced or increased by the volition of those animals; but among different varieties which occurred in the earlier and less highly organized forms of these groups, those always survived longest which had the greatest facilities for seizing their prey. Neither did the giraffe acquire its long neck by desiring to reach the foliage of the more lofty shrubs, and constantly stretching its neck for the purpose, but because any varieties which occurred among its antitypes with a longer neck than usual at once secured a fresh range of pasture over the same ground as their shorter-necked companions, and on the first scarcity of food were thereby enabled to outlive them. Even the peculiar colours of many animals, especially insects, so closely resembling the soil or the leaves or the trunks o which they habitually reside, are explained on the same principle; for though in the course of ages varieties of many tints may have occurred, yet those races having colours best adapted to concealment from their enemies would inevitably survive the longest. We have also here an acting cause to account for that balance so often observed in nature,---a deficiency in one set of organs always being compensated by an increased development of some others---powerful wings accompanying weak feet, or great velocity making up for the absence of defensive weapons; for it has been shown that all varieties in which an unbalanced deficiency occurred could not long continue their existence. The action of this principle is exactly like that of the centrifugal governor of the steam engine, which checks and corrects any irregularities almost before they become evident; and in like manner no unbalanced deficiency in the animal kingdom can ever reach any conspicuous magnitude, because it would make itself felt at the very first step, by rendering existence difficult and extinction almost sure soon to follow. An origin such as is here advocated will also agree with the peculiar character of the modifications of form and structure which obtain in organized beings---the many lines of divergence from a central type, the increasing efficiency and power of a particular organ through a succession of allied species, and the remarkable persistence of unimportant parts such as colour, texture of plumage and hair, form of horns or crests, through a series of species differing considerably in more essential characters. It also furnishes us with a reason for that "more specialized structure" which Professor Owen states to be a characteristic of recent compared with extinct forms, and which would evidently be the result of the progressive modification of any organ applied to a special purpose in the animal economy. Wallace was talking about the consequences of randomly determined variants that had a change in one feature without a compensatory change in some other feature, namely that they would not survive. There is nothing in this that implies that individual organisms are changing in response to challenges or that species are directing their evolution. It goes on, but I will jump forward: The research, published in a recent edition of Physical Review Letters, provides corroborating data, Rabitz said, for Wallace's idea. "What we have found is that certain kinds of biological structures exist that are able to steer the process of evolution toward improved fitness," said Rabitz, the Charles Phelps Smyth '16 Professor of Chemistry. "The data just jumps off the page and implies we all have this wonderful piece of machinery inside that's responding optimally to evolutionary pressure." The authors sought to identify the underlying cause for this self-correcting behavior in the observed protein chains. Standard evolutionary theory offered no clues. Applying the concepts of control theory, a body of knowledge that deals with the behavior of dynamical systems, the researchers concluded that this self-correcting behavior could only be possible if, during the early stages of evolution, the proteins had developed a self-regulating mechanism, analogous to a car's cruise control or a home's thermostat, allowing them to fine-tune and control their subsequent evolution. The scientists are working on formulating a new general theory based on this finding they are calling "evolutionary control." ... Various researchers working over the past decade, including some at Princeton like George McClendon, now at Duke University, and Stacey Springs, now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, fleshed out the workings of [ATP], finding that they were often turned on to the "maximum" position, operating at full tilt, or at the lowest possible energy level. Chakrabarti and Rabitz analyzed these observations of the proteins' behavior from a mathematical standpoint, concluding that it would be statistically impossible for this self-correcting behavior to be random, and demonstrating that the observed result is precisely that predicted by the equations of control theory. By operating only at extremes, referred to in control theory as "bang-bang extremization," the proteins were exhibiting behavior consistent with a system managing itself optimally under evolution. Based on this story, it is challenging to determine just how this is differs from evolution in the usual sense. Looking at the original paper, it appears that what the authors are arguing is that 1) the constituent proteins in the electron transport chain are tuned to an extreme, 2) that this extreme is not related to the function of the proteins as would be "visible" to natural selection on the grounds of electron transport capability, 3) that the proteins in the network are optimized for redox potential, which has no consequences for the organism and therefore cannot have evolved through normal selection, and 4) that something else, i.e. self organization, is involved in producing the extreme features of the proteins. The rest is mathemagic, so someone else can wade through it and see if the argument makes sense if they like. I am not actually concerned with whether the calculations are correct. As it so often is, the issue is about press releases and the hype and sloppy descriptions of both ideas and history that they (and, too often, the people interviewed) present. ________ Update: PZ weighs in. People have been having trouble finding the article. It's here. The authors have another paper in the bastion of bad biology, arXiv, that quotes directly from Wallace (here). Don't blame the story author, these guys lifted that out of context by their own selves. This is the feed from the original Genomicron. To visit the new version and access other science-related content, see http://www.scientificblogging.com/genomicron.

Scientists Socializing Online [Sciencebase Science Blog] Posted: 12 Nov 2008 07:00 AM CST My post on social media for scientists seems to have been received rather well, with a huge amount of traffic and positive responses from various big name commentators across the networks and blogosphere. Several scientists have already commented about the post over on Nature Networks. Nature’s own Maxine Clarke describe it as “an amazingly useful post” but was worried that there seem to be so many scientific social media clones now available. It is, she says, “It is hard to see them all enduring.” But, that’s not surprising, natural selection and survival of the fittest will kick in. Indeed, it already is happening to a degree. Some of these communities are fast approaching critical mass. For instance, Joerg Heber is also concerned that there lots of clones and that although the trend is towards increasing fragmentation of our online identities, he points out that SciLink.com now has 44000 users or thereabouts, whereas SocialMD, claims just 3100. “In the end,” he says, “there surely will be a concentration process for all those sites and only a few will survive. There likely will be a self-accumulating user base for the most successful ones, as the more users there are the more sense they make.” But, compare those figures with the likes of LinkedIn (30 million users) and Facebook (120 million) and one has to wonder what is the purpose of creating a niche community external to such sites, when one might simply create a group within those and have access to potentially millions of like-minded individuals. Indeed, it never occurred to me to create a standalone science writers community online, I simple organised a Facebook science writers group, which now has almost 400 members. Obviously, there are fewer science writers than scientists. Heber concedes that LinkedIn and Facebook may not be perfectly suited to scientists, but wonders whether the networking sites I listed in the original post really are specific to scientists? “Can you share lab books and wikis?” he asks. Martin Fenner mentioned ScienceOnline’09, which I do hope to attend (looking for a sponsor, right now). This unconference, which will be for scientists and science communicators alike will, he says, have a session on social networks for scientists, moderated by my good friends Cameron Neylon of Science in the Open and Deepak Singh of bbgm. Fenner followed up his original comment with the following, pointing out that AAAS Science Careers (Social Networking Grows Up) also had an article on this topic [which I hadn't seen when I started writing the original Sciencebase post mid-October, db]. “They talk about a few social networking sites for scientists, but somehow fail to mention Nature Network,” Fenner says, “The article also mentions social networking sites set up by universities, including ResearchConnect (University of Manchester) and Small Worlds (University of Leicester). I didn't know about this (unless you count the Facebook organisation by universities), but it looks like a good idea.” Brian Willson of the Microsoft Chemical Team Blog gave my post a mention and noted that most of the sites are apparently aimed at academia rather than industry. He was curious to know whether web 2.0 and online communities would impact scientists in industry, a topic he has discussed previously on the MCTB. 44000 members is impressive (for SciLink), but have any of the social media sites for scientists really achieved critical mass yet?have any of the social media sites for scientists really achieved critical mass yet? By which I mean do they have enough active members to become self-sustaining and useful to science and the communities they serve? Way back in the 1990s, I used to work for two of the biggest proto-social media sites for scientists - ChemWeb and BioMedNet. The former had more members than the American Chemical Society (which at the time was around 140,000 I believe) and BMN even more at, if memory serves correctly, close to half a million, far more than Facebook and LinkedIn put together!). Both CW and BMN were incredibly innovative (having been created by Vitek Tracz, chairman of the Science Navigation Group, and founder of the open access publisher BioMedCentral as well as the those two online communities). CW and BMN were running what were essentially blogs alongside their news and features output, providing preprint servers (in the case of Chemweb), member search tools, webinars and online conferences, and access to dozens of resources. Of course, they were never labelled web 2.0. This was, after all well before the .com bubble burst and the web was reborn. Unfortunately, both CW and BMN were bought up by a giant shareholder-driven publisher (mentioning no names) and driven into the ground once the company realised it wasn’t making enough money from them. Which was a great shame, because they really could have made huge inroads into the very world we are discussing. ChemWeb.com lives on thanks to Chemindustry.com and is thriving in its new form as my regular readers will know from The Alchemist newsletter, but at the moment it is not quite the community-led system it once was. In some sense, all these new social media sites for scientists are simply reinventing a well-worn wheel from a decade past and whether or not any of them will achieve the significance (at their height) of a Chemweb or a BioMedNet remains to be seen. Offline scientific networks/societies continue to grow as they have done since their earliest days in the nineteenth century and before (their online efforts don’t seem to have yet built the online communities that could exist) Given that many of the online efforts are insignificantly small in terms of membership numbers compared to the now defunct BMN and compared to the offline presence of the bigger scientific societies, I seriously doubt that more than one or two will survive and thrive. But, we’ll have to wait and see. Perhaps it will take a killer application for one to emerge as a leader and become as essential to scientists as MySpace is to a teenybopper and Facebook is to students. That killer application, however, remains to be revealed. Scientists Socializing Online

Genetic Genealogy at the ASHG Meeting in Philadelphia [The Genetic Genealogist] Posted: 12 Nov 2008 06:44 AM CST The 58th annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics is currently being held in Philadelphia.  Today at 10:00AM there will be a session specifically about genetic genealogy entitled “The Social, Ethical, and Biomedical Implications of Ancestry Testing: Exploring New Terrain.”  From the abstract: “What is genetic ancestry and how does it relate to race and ethnicity? The development of increasingly cost effective genomic sequencing technologies and public interest in genetic ancestry has led to a dramatic flourishing of direct-to-consumer products and new approaches to biomedical research. In this session, panelists define the contours of this emerging landscape and explore the commercial, biomedical, social and ethical implications of this burgeoning category of genomic application. Panelists consider the following questions: What genetic ancestry information is available to consumers? How is genetic ancestry used in biomedical research? What implications do genetic approaches to ancestry have on social identity? What ethical and policy issues must be addressed in this changing landscape? Panelists provide perspectives from industry, medicine, cultural studies, and bioethics.” The moderator of this session is Sandra Soo-Jin Lee of Stanford University.  The panelists include Joanna Mountain who will talk about ‘New dimensions for direct-to-consumer genetic ancestry testing’; Kimberly Tallbear who will talk about ‘The genetic construction of indigeneity’; and Esteban González Burchard who will talk about ‘The importance of ancestry testing and genetics in biomedical research’.  Additionally, the moderator will discuss ‘Racing forward: The ethics of ancestry testing.’ Comments: I don’t like the mixing of the controversial phrase “direct-to-consumer” with genetic genealogy.  Of course it’s direct-to-consumer, who else would the results go to?  Should your doctor or genetic counselor review your genetic genealogy results?  That would be a ridiculous restriction. The panelists will also be discussing the “ethical and policy issues” in this changing landscape.  As always, I believe that education, not more government regulation, is the answer to these ethical and policy issues.

Do you need some reasons why to blog? [ScienceRoll] Posted: 12 Nov 2008 06:35 AM CST A few days ago, I posted a message on Friendfeed: "What is your favourite blog story (that happened to you because you’re blogging)? I would like to share the best stories with students at the Medicince 2.0 credit course." Now I thought I should share the best stories with you: I got a chance to work at MIT - Ricardo Vidal I interviewed one of my heroes, Felsenstein, and one of the researchers I most admire, Rod Page. Unfortunately not in person, but I guess they will invite for some coffee or tea if I ever show up on their door. - Paulo Nuin I got the job at PLoS in the comments of one of my blog posts: http://scienceblogs.com/clock/… - Bora Zivkovic Got invited to SciFoo - Pedro Beltrao I got invited to write an article for Nature, and then got invited to SciFoo - Richard Akerman I was invited to write a column on 3QuarksDaily; as a result of the Open Science stuff I posted there, I was interviewed by Mitch Waldrop for Scientific American; as a result of that interview, I was invited to give a seminar on OA; as a result of that seminar, I was invited to join the advisory board of the Berglund Center at Pacific U. Also, I would never have met the BioGang if I’d never blogged. - Bill Hooker Too many to mention. Highlights include people I’ve been able to get to know both virtually in person, the ability to participate in events I probably would not have otherwise. Specific highlights would include Scifoo and being interviewed by Jon Udell. And if I can put a plug in for Twitter, I kinda applied for a job on Twitter - Deepak Specifics - invitation to SciFoo, invitation to Science iin 21st Century and being at the conferences were real personal highlights. Meeting smart and interesting people online and in person. More generally the communication and connections have changed and are still changing the way I think about things. - Cameron Neylon as a student, I’m impressed when the author of a paper I discuss contacts me to continue the discussion. otherwise, as a librarian, I’ve gotten to discuss interaction issues with a few vendor reps and I’ve gotten a few speaking gigs out of it. - Christina Pikas Couple of things: I got my mentors (convinced few smart people to become my small advisory board); got involved in scientific collaboration (with Cameron); I was interviewed by a polish magazine about Science 2.0. When article about S2.0 was published, I was contacted by people building science-business collaboration platform in Poland (there’s something coming next year); most importantly learned quite a lot and changed career plans - but that doesn’t sound very cool, does it? - Pawel Szczesny I was interviewed by ABC.com for a piece they wrote about customer service agents because of a blog post I’d written about my days as a CS rep. - Stupid Blogger (aka Tina) funding from Submeta, superb collaborators, trip to UK, invitations to speak at confs, consulting work and just plain fun - Jean-Claude Bradley I got my current job because of my blog and through reading other blogs. Started talking with the guy who hired me over IM because of a few blogs that he had done regarding cat litter and RIM Blackberry cell phones. - Alex Scoble CISSP If something great happened to you because of your blog, please share the story with us.

Google Flu Trends [ScienceRoll] Posted: 12 Nov 2008 06:20 AM CST Yesterday, the official Google Blog introduced Google Flu Trends, an interesting tool that might change the way infectious diseases are monitored these days. Our team found that certain aggregated search queries tend to be very common during flu season each year. We compared these aggregated queries against data provided by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and we found that there’s a very close relationship between the frequency of these search queries and the number of people who are experiencing flu-like symptoms each week. As a result, if we tally each day’s flu-related search queries, we can estimate how many people have a flu-like illness. Based on this discovery, we have launched Google Flu Trends, where you can find up-to-date influenza-related activity estimates for each of the 50 states in the U.S. You can also download raw data or use the Flu shot locator.

Keith Olbermann on Prop 8 + protests coming up [the skeptical alchemist] Posted: 12 Nov 2008 02:55 AM CST As promised, here comes more coverage on the passing of Prop 8 in California. I am re-posting a video showing Keith Olbermann's reaction to the passing of the proposition -- it is worth watching till the end. Hat tip: Greg Laden. Also, you might have heard that nation-wide protests are being organized for November 15, so Join the Impact here or here. You can follow the developments of the fight against Prop 8 on my Twitter as well. View blog reactions

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