Science with the Kids: Gravity

Who's ready for some fun, quick, and easy science with the kids? The kids and I had some fun science time last night. I thought I'd share what we did, because this is super easy and the kids genuinely loved it.

First, we did a little experiment. I took a sheet of paper and a little bag of pennies and showed them to the kids.

Materials for experiment #1

I asked them what they thought would happen if I dropped both at the same time. Not surprisingly, the both said that the pennies would hit the ground first. I told them that was their hypothesis, and it was good to have a hypothesis, and that we'd test it. But first, I asked them what they thought the other possibilities were. They quickly got that the paper could hit the ground first. I asked if there was a third possibility, and after thinking for a minute, Pumpkin came up with the idea that the two objects could hit the ground at the same time.

I've done this experiment with other kids (probably 50 kids total, over the years) and Pumpkin is only the second child to come up with that third option, so I'm pretty proud of her.

Then we did the experiment. We counted down from three, and I dropped the pennies and the paper. As they expected, the pennies hit first, while the paper floated down.

I asked them why they thought this was, and they both agreed that it was because the paper was lighter.

Then I asked them how we could test that theory. They didn't have any ideas, so I provided one: I crumpled up the paper and said that if their theory was correct, the pennies should still hit first. They agreed.

Materials for experiment #2

Then I dropped the pennies and the paper together again. This time, the two objects hit at the same time, which just delighted my kids. They were literally jumping up and down with excitement.

I asked whether they had any other ideas about why the pennies hit the ground first in the first experiment but not the second, and to my amazement, Pumpkin got it. She said it was because the air was pushing on the paper and in the second experiment, the paper was smaller so the air couldn't push on it as much. Mr. Snarky had been watching in bemusement up until this point, standing behind the kids. I saw his eyebrows go up when she said that. I think I managed to just smile and say that was a good answer.

In fact, I am very impressed with her answer. I think they covered something similar in science last year at school- they talked about wind as part of their weather module, and she came home with a pinwheel. But still, she was able to take that idea and apply it to something completely different. I was not expecting either kid to figure out why the paper fell more slowly in the first experiment.

After talking about our results a bit, we all watched this really cool video demonstrating the same point with far fancier equipment:



The kids really liked the video, so even if you don't do the experiment, consider showing the video to your kids. I think having done the experiment makes the video more fun, though.

One thing I didn't do that I wish I had done was point out that the people in the control room in the video are a physics professor and a bunch of engineers. They all knew what was going to happen, but they still react to the outcome with the same delight my kids showed during the penny and paper dropping experiments. That's part of the beauty of science!

The entire process-two experiments, discussion, and video watching- took less than 20 minutes. I think Petunia is maybe a little bit young for the experiment, or at least for doing the experiment with an older sister who got the answers faster than she did. However, Petunia still really enjoyed the experiment and the video, and both kids tell me they want to do more family science experiments. I guess I'd better find us some more to do. Feel free to leave suggestions in the comments.

Weekend Links: The Don't Panic Edition

One of my more stereotypically geeky attributes is that I love Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. I even programmed my very first cell phone (one of those StarTAC flip phones) to say "Don't Panic" on its tiny little screen when I first opened it up.

The "Don't Panic" line, for those who don't know the series, comes from the guide itself, which has the words printed "in large, friendly letters" on its cover.

I put the phrase on my phone because I, like most people, can get myself worked up over things, and it was actually useful to have my phone remind me to calm the eff down.

Which is all to say that I am very sympathetic to the people who are freaking out over Ebola right now, but think it would be better if we all heeded the advice on the cover of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and calmed down.

I wasn't going to write a post about this, because I am not a virologist or an epidemiologist or really in any way the sort of scientist whose expertise gives her reason to write about this outbreak. But then I came across a post from another scientist who is also not a virologist, epidemiologist, or even, apparently, someone who has bothered to read some basic science about Ebola and apply some common logic to the facts we have. I will not link to that post because it is bad, and full of things that are not true. But it made me want to write this post, just to link to some resources that are more useful, and to say: a scientist speaking outside his or her own realm of expertise is no more believable than anyone else blathering on the internet. That includes me. Check the sources and make sure the information tracks back to someone who is speaking within their realm of expertise.

What little specialized knowledge I have about Ebola comes from having once worked on a biodefense project, back in the early 2000s when those projects were all the rage. I was involved in the database design (since that is my area of expertise), but I also helped explain the biology to a lot of people whose backgrounds were more on the defense part of biodefense. As part of that project, I read a lot of papers about a lot of infectious diseases and for awhile, I was on the mailing list that sent out notices about reportable diseases. I learned a lot about Listeria from those notices, which perhaps made me a little more paranoid than strictly necessary about that particular risk during my pregnancies.

It was a fascinating project for a lot of reasons, but one of the things that stuck with me the most was the glimpse it gave me into the inner workings of government. Every few months or so, we would all fly to DC to have a meeting with the people assigned to this project from all the various governmental agencies- CDC, Homeland Security, the State department, various branches of the military, the Post Office (remember the Anthrax attacks?), and on and on. There was even a guy who we were pretty sure was there representing some part of the intelligence community, although officially he was there in some other capacity. His knowledge and his official capacity were greatly mismatched- i.e., he knew far too much about far too many obscure diseases for the title he supposedly held.

Anyway, at the second or third such meeting, it dawned on me that my entire project was a bit of a cover. Oh, we would turn in a fairly decent work product and perhaps the system we were working to specify would even eventually get built, but the real benefit of the project was that it forced all of the government people from all those different branches to sit in a room and talk to each other. This was good because it made them learn how their counterparts in other branches saw similar issues and gave them an inkling of the different constraints everyone operated under. It was also good because it meant that they developed some personal relationships, which would come in handy if there ever was really a crisis and they needed to get something through a bunch of inter-departmental bureaucracy quickly.

I came away from the project impressed with the intelligence and diligence of the governmental officials I'd met (with one notable exception), and absolutely in awe of the bureaucracy under which they had to try to get things done.

That is a very long preamble to my first link, which is a post from Ezra Klein about why a bureaucrat with a reputation for being good at navigating through inter-departmental morasses is actually a really great pick for an Ebola czar.

Assuming that not much has changed in government since my brief stint interacting with it, I'd guess that we have plenty of really smart people who know what we need to do, and what we want the czar to do is help them get it done. The best response to the Ebola outbreak undoubtedly will require involvement from a wide range of agencies across several departments- not to mention various state and local health departments. I know that a lot of people are upset that the Ebola czar is not someone with a scientific or medical background, but personally, I'm glad Obama seems to have picked someone who knows how to get things done in our bureaucracy.

OK, on to some information about the disease itself.

This article from USA Today provides a good overview of why the people most at risk of getting Ebola are the ones treating late-stage patients.

This also matches what we saw happen in Dallas: no one who was in the apartment with Mr. Duncan between his first and second trips to the ER has gotten sick. None of the doctors who treated Mr. Duncan have so far gotten sick. The people who got sick are the nurses, who were the ones getting exposed to large amounts of infected fluids. Really, if you read no other article I link to here, read the USA Today one above to get an understanding for the difference between a patient in the early days of symptoms and a late stage patient.

If you want to really dig into what we know about how Ebola is transmitted, this post from some Australian virologists is full of information.

One of the egregiously false statements in the post that set off this rant/link list was that people infected with Ebola almost always die. That is just not true. Even in the current outbreak in West Africa, mortality is somewhere between 50 and 70%. That is still a very high percentage, but it is not "almost always." Also, good "supportive care" (e.g., rehydration- Ebola patients lose a lot of fluids) is known to improve survival. One of the challenges in West Africa is the lack of hospital beds and trained personnel to care for patients and provide that supportive care. That is not a problem in developed nations like the US. Here in the US, we have lost one patient, had four recover completely, and have another two who seem to be doing well under treatment (update: there is one more patient being treated at Emory: a WHO doctor flown in from Sierra Leone. I don't know anything about his condition). I came across this Megan McArdle article, which has a quote from Paul Farmer (a well-known and well-respected figure in public health in the developing world) stating that he thinks the mortality rate in a developed country is more likely to be about 10%.  I've also seen estimates of 20% mortality with proper supportive care, but I can't find a link for that right now. Sadly, we don't have any actual data on this because the world has never cared enough about an Ebola outbreak to send sufficient resources to the effected areas to provide good supportive care to all of the people who get sick.

That McArdle article is a bit alarmist about the risk of an Ebola patient using a public bathroom- Emory tested surfaces in the rooms of the Ebola patients it treated and found no contamination. The article describing this testing is quite clinical (but worth a read!) so I'll extract the key phrase:

"Environmental testing in the patient rooms had no detection of viral RNA and included many high touch surfaces such as bed rails and surfaces in the bathroom."

The evidence we have indicates that this virus- like most viruses- does not live long on surfaces. McArdle is a smart journalist with a lot of experience covering health issues. I am disappointed she didn't do better in this regard.

The McArdle article does a good job, however, of explaining why the people in the know are focusing more on West Africa than here. The best way to keep the US safe isn't to issue travel bans- we know that does not really work. It is to help the West African countries contain their outbreaks, which is why the CDC has people deployed there and why we have our armed forces there building treatment centers.

My statement about the weaknesses of the McArdle article leads to my final point in this post: a lot of what you read in the media is unnecessarily alarmist. McArdle's bit about the bathroom is mild compared to the nonsense that has been spewed by Fox and CNN.

In fact, Media Matters found that the more Ebola coverage you watch, the less you know.

The case of "clipboard man" is another example of some people in the media not taking the time to get the facts before they speculate and freak out... and freak a bunch of other people out, too.

In closing, I fully understand why people are a little freaked out about Ebola, but the reality here is a lot less scary than many of the media reports will lead you to believe. I think hospital nurses have every right to be screaming at their management for better gear and training. The rest of us should take the advice of the Hitchhiker's Guide. Don't Panic.

But maybe donate to Doctors without Borders or UNICEF, who are on the ground in West Africa trying to help the people who are really at risk.

Weekend Reading: The Things to Make You Think Edition

I am still pretty swamped (big release goes out Tuesday! Guess who's working this weekend?) but this week I have a "real" weekend links post for you, with a bunch of good articles and posts to make you think.

First up, Catherine Liu wrote a thorough takedown review of Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld's "Triple Package." I suspect it is well-deserved. I wasn't planning to read the book, and this review certainly didn't change my mind on that! I particularly like her point about how Chua and Rubenfeld's worldview completely devalues work that does not meet their limited definition of success:

"Their lists of successful people from the “Triple Package” groups reads like dross written in capitalist propaganda cubicles — or SAT prep companies trying to market their services: look at all the people we have helped gain admittance to Ivy League schools! There are no firemen, no public school teachers, no social workers, no psychologists, no steelworkers, no plumbers, no horticulturalists, no veterinarians, no nurses, no carpenters, no astronauts, no computer engineers, no farmers, no soldiers, no tinkers, no tailors, no chefs, no ceramicists, no artists, no non-classical musicians, and no poets in Chua’s and Rubenfeld’s accounting of successful Americans."

I really liked this piece from Brittney Cooper about who gets overlooked when the pundits talk about public scholarship. Tressie McMillan Cottom also has a nice post about the making of pundits and the new crop of journalism start ups. I am happy to see the latest crop of media startups, but sad that they are missing the chance to really diversify the voices we read. I suspect they are doing the all too common hiring thing of preferring to hire people they know and trust... which almost always shrinks diversity. (I see this in my own industry, too, and it is a very, very hard thing to combat- but writing about that is for another time, when I've thought more carefully about what I can and cannot say.) I know there are other sites working to build their audience that perhaps have more diverse voices, and I need to seek them out. But seeking them out takes time- which is why we turn to pundits and "big" media sites, which is why it matters so much that those "big" sites try to find the diverse voices to share....

Salon has been doing a pretty good job of that, I think, and I am increasingly fond of that site despite its tendency for click-baity headlines and unabashed left-leaning bias. I don't go there for an unbiased take on the news- I go there to read thought-provoking things written by smart people. And I have another article from them to share this week: a really good look at how people who have never experienced true poverty can fail to see it and its effects. I remember the day in grad school when I was listening to a report on the news about a new recalculation of the poverty level and realized that the stipend I considered a bit stingy was actually at the poverty level- for a family of four. And I had job security, a great deal of autonomy, a fair amount of respect from society, and great health insurance (better than what I have now, actually). I realized that as much as I and my fellow students (all of whom were single) liked to complain about how broke we were, we had no idea what real poverty was like. That was a very sobering realization, and one that I think a fair number of  people have never had.

Moving to an even more distressing topic.... You might have heard about the dying child who needed access to an experimental drug that had no active trials. The drug company, a small biotech startup, was refusing to supply the drug on the grounds that they did not have the resources to do so. Not surprisingly, there was a big internet stink about that. The company and FDA have since found a way to supply the drug with the possibility of including data from this patient in a phase III (I have no idea how that is going to work, but clinical trial design is not my area of expertise, so I'll just trust that they have figured something out). John Carroll has a good editorial on this situation, which I will actually urge you to go read if you have any interest at all in the topic. As someone who has worked at (and been laid off from) biotechs, I can say that the argument that supplying compassionate use doses of experimental drugs could in fact lead to a company going bankrupt before getting the drug on the market is entirely plausible.

I am extremely happy that the company and the FDA found a way to fix this one case, but I also hope that people will not forget the general problem. Manufacturing a drug for human use requires a lot of overhead, not to mention the people to actually do the work of creating the batch. Most venture-backed biotechs are under tight timelines and there is a real risk of running out of money before the definitive trials can be completed. I think we need a system to pay for compassionate use cases so that companies do not face this impossible decision of whether to try to save a patient now at the risk of stranding their potential future patients and so that patients can get access to the drugs without a social media campaign. I am deeply uncomfortable with the way we seem to be turning access to medical care into a social media popularity contest.

I will refer back to my Tungsten Hippo post of a few weeks ago and argue that it is not "they" who should do something about cases like this, but US. This is the sort of problem that government seems well-suited to solve, perhaps with a fund to compensate the companies asked to provide compassionate use doses. It could be "need-tested" so that profitable pharma companies would continue to pay their own way, but little biotechs without any revenues could draw on the fund. I might write to my congressfolk to suggest something like this, but that seems unlikely to have much impact. I'm not sure what else to do, though. I'll have to think about that.

For anyone who is not in the drug discovery industry and would like to know a little more about why drugs are so damn expensive, Derek Lowe had a post this week about the reasons new drug applications fail.

So, that was a lot of heavy stuff.

On a slight less life-or-death note, I really liked this post from Frank Chimero, which I'll say is about life in the internet age, but which might more accurately be described as just being about life and how to live it.

And Stochastic Planet had a couple of great pictures. That site is one of my favorite things in my RSS feed, not because the pictures are always great (sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't) but because I love the look at a random spot on the globe from a random photographer. It is somehow comforting that so many of the random photographers are clearly quite bad at photography (like I am). Also, I really want to know the backstory on that Finnish picture.

Finally, let's end with a testament to the human spirit. This is a video shot in Tacloban, where people are still cleaning up after Typhoon Haiyan, which hit last November.

Weekend Reading: The 23 and Me Edition

Today, I had a Twitter conversation with @Moreandagain about 23andMe and the FDA, because I replied to this tweet:

I'd just like someone to explain why 23andme can't tell people what their genes put them at risk for.
— Cocky McSwagsalot (@MoreAndAgain) December 6, 2013

Here was my initial answer:

@MoreAndAgain the problem is that they literally can't, not w/certainty. Errors in sequencing, errors in software, complexity of data.
— Wandering Scientist (@wandsci) December 6, 2013

And then we discussed some more from there. This discussion was mightily hampered by the fact that I have been, as I admitted in my tweets, an only mildly interested bystander to the entire story.

My basic position- which again, I admit is not as informed as it could be- is that I'd like to see the personal genomics industry succeed, but that I think they need to be subject to some sort of regulatory oversight. My reason for that second part is that I, someone with a PhD in biochemistry who has worked in genomics, do not feel qualified to evaluate 23andMe's claims, and want there to be an impartial third party who checks that their claims are legitimate. I do not want to do this myself, because doing so would be enormously time-consuming, even for people who have the necessary scientific and technical background to assess their claims.

The usual response to this is that if I want help understanding my genetic data, I can go to my doctor. I see two problems with this position:

1. I know from multiple conversations I have had with my own doctors (all of whom I like, respect, and think of as really good doctors) that I am generally more well-versed on genetics and biochemistry than they are. This is not surprising, given the details of our educational backgrounds. However, it means that I cannot generally expect my doctor to tell me anything more about a specific risk factor I might find in 23andMe's data than I already know. Perhaps the best I could hope for would be to be referred to a specialist if my data indicated something potentially concerning.

2. The aspects of 23andMe's business that I most want subjected to oversight go well beyond what a specific risk factor might mean. I want someone to check that they are accurately and straightforwardly reporting on the accuracy of their sequencing methods. I wonder how many of their customers understand that there is pretty much a statistical certainty that the genotype they received from 23 and Me has at least one incorrect SNP call.* This does not mean 23andMe is doing their sequencing wrong- far from it. It is just a consequence of the limits of our detection methods and the large number of SNP calls they are making. However, if 23andMe customers do not understand this, I blame 23andMe and I would be inclined to think that they were engaging in shady marketing practices.

I also want someone to assess the validity of the methods they are using to associate specific SNPs with specific traits. What data are they using? Are they just applying public data, or do they have some proprietary algorithms? How well do they transmit information about the inherent uncertainties in this data to their customers?

I also want 23andMe to have a documented process for preventing bugs in the software they write to assemble the data, such as the one Lukas Hartman found when he dug into his alarming 23andMe results.

I have not done my research, so I do not know how much of the above 23andMe is doing well right now. Maybe they are doing everything exactly how I would hope. However, if they are not subject to regulatory oversight, I have essentially zero trust that they will always do all the above and do it well. The necessary scientific and technical validation is expensive to do. Taking software bugs as seriously as I think they need to is also expensive.Writing clear, consumer friendly documentation of all of the limitations- and scrupulously ensuring that no marketing spin sneaks into this documentation- is very hard to do. We do not trust drug companies to do this. The packaging inserts that accompany prescription drugs are reviewed and approved by the FDA. Why should we trust a personal genomics company to do it?

None of this means I think 23andMe should close up shop. Far from it. I think there is great promise in what they are trying to do. FDA regulation is not a perfect solution, but neither, I think, is just treating this industry like any other online service and letting it run unregulated.

I promised @Moreandagain that I'd dig up some links that do a better job of describing the science and the concerns than I can do. I put a couple of the links above. Here are some more:

David Dobbs has a nuanced write up in the New Yorker.

Hank Greely, writing at the Stanford Center for Law and the Biosciences covers the legal basis of the FDA's actions, some of the history, and some of the concerns. One interesting tidbit I noticed in this article was the mention that the FDA has indicated it wants a risk-based method of regulating "laboratory developed tests." This sounds similar to what they do for software used in medical and other regulated circumstances (21 CFR Part 11, for those in the know- and yes, software needs to be regulated in some circumstances, because some bugs can be deadly). The risk-based method of implementing the regulations for software allows companies to perform (and document!) an assessment of the risks of the system, and then take appropriate mitigating actions based on the severity and likelihood of those risks, essentially customizing the regulation for the level of risk. Doing something similar for genetic tests seems like a reasonable thing to me.

Genotopia has a post arguing that the dispute between 23andMe and the FDA is not about access to your genetic data, but about the hype the company used to make you want that access.

Michael Eisen has a very good post about the regulation of genetic testing, arguing it should be regulated but not as a medical device.

I'm sure I've missed some great pieces about this. Feel free to rectify that in the comments.

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*SNP = single nucleotide polymorphism. The SNP calls are what allow 23andMe to make any prediction about traits. Basically, a SNP is a site in the genome in which more than one nucleotide is found within the population. Some SNPs are silent, and change nothing in our phenotype (observed traits). Others cause benign differences (e.g., hair color). Others are implicated in diseases. Of the ones implicated in diseases, only a subset have a proposed mechanism for action, and only a subset of those have experimental validation for that mechanism. Our level of confidence that a SNP is related to a disease state increases as we move from a statistical correlation to a plausible proposed mechanism to experimental validation of that mechanism.The classic example of a SNP associated with a disease via a known, experimentally validated mechanism is the mutation in hemoglobin that causes sickle cell anemia.

Weekend Reading: The Science Edition

In a major mommyblogging fail, I neglected to include the absolute cutest Halloween story in yesterday's post: Petunia came home from trick-or-treating and dumped her bucket of candy on the sofa. She picked through and found the candy she doesn't like. She pronounced it "yucky" and asked to trade it. I asked her what she wanted to trade for, and she said "mommy." I asked her what she meant, and she told me that she wanted one kiss for every piece of rejected candy. I made the trade.

--------------------

Now... on to this week's links, which are all about science this week.

First up, I really liked this article about techniques researchers are using to help autistic people better understand neurotypicals. I particularly like the point that neurotypicals could also use some help better understanding autistic people. I think that is very true, and if anyone out there knows of a good resource for that, please leave it in the comments.

Science writer Tara Haelle has written a comprehensive debunking of flu vaccine myths. As an asthmatic, I encourage all of you to get your flu shot. My lungs thank you for doing your part to increase our herd immunity!

Another post that I appreciated due to my own screwed up immune system: Christie Wilcox looks at a theory that allergies evolved to protect us from toxins. I often joke about cat allergies being a tiger early warning system... I think this theory is more plausible.

Mr. Snarky sent me this write up of Petunias in Space! It is nifty.

Danielle Lee has put up her first post since the post responding to Ofek that started all the harassment discussions. It is an excellent post about the need for science to become truly inclusive.

Let's end with some geeky humor.

WTF, Evolution had an awesome Halloween post.

Bookoisseur has a great cartoon: Seriously dude I think you're overreacting.

And this last chart isn't really about science but it is so true....

Happy weekend, everyone!

Thoughts on a Course on Presenting Data and Information

I spent my day today at a course on Presenting Data and Information, given by Edward Tufte. Tufte is one of those people who is selectively famous- just about everyone in my little professional world has heard of him, whereas just about no one else I know recognizes his name. I was delighted to get the chance to see his course, and as a bonus, I am now the owner of four of his books (they came with the class registration): The Visual Display of Quantitative Information,  Envisioning Information, Visual Explanations, and Beautiful Evidence. I look forward to reading them all, but I think the class added a dimension I would not have gotten from just reading his books.

I won't attempt to summarize the entire course here- if you're curious check out Tufte's website or one of his books. Besides, I am still assimilating what I learned. The older I get, the more I find that really interesting ideas take awhile to digest and incorporate into my thinking. So right now, I just have a pastiche of ideas, and not a unified narrative. But I want to share a few thoughts from the day:

1. A lot of the discussion in Tufte's books and in the class is about how to create a truly great graphical display of data. (He points to Minard's graph showing Napolean's march into and retreat out of Russia as a particularly effective graphic.) One of his fundamental points is that "the purpose of an information display is to assist thinking about the content." I found myself thinking back to the book Soundings, about Marie Tharp, the amazing maps she produced, and how the intellectual contribution of figuring out how to organize and present data so that its meaning can be understood is often under-appreciated.

2. I have just finished reading Distrust That Particular Flavor, a collection of essays by William Gibson. One theme Gibson returns to in several essays is the idea that the internet is a sort of collective external memory for humankind. That idea popped into my head a couple of times during today's class, but I haven't really sorted out what, exactly, I think the link is. Maybe just that if the internet is our collective memory, it would be good if we had better ways to organize and present the data in it. But maybe something more... I think this is an example of how it takes time for me to assimilate new ideas into my thinking.

3. Tufte did discuss the internet, and specifically Tim Berners-Lee's original proposal for an information "mesh" at CERN, which led eventually to the internet. Watching that part of the class, I was struck by how many times we have had to rediscover the fundamental unsuitability of hierarchical data models for representing most real world data. The first "discovery" of this of which I am aware was in Codd's work on relational databases. And then Berners-Lee founded the internet because he was dissatisfied with the limitations of the hierarchical information stores available to him at CERN. But then XML came around, and we all had the argument again. And now NoSQL databases have come around, and we're discussing it yet again. I don't know if this is sad, funny, or telling us something profound about how we humans like to think about data. (And for the record, I've made extensive use of XML, and think NoSQL databases are interesting and have advanced our capabilities in important ways- but there are fundamental limitations in representing data as a hierarchy, and some subset of the IT world seems to periodically forget that.)

I will certainly continue thinking about the course- after all, I have always liked to organize information. It is a unifying theme for a lot of my interests. I may or may not write more about Tufte's ideas in the future, but if you are at all interested in the topic of how to present data and you get a chance to attend his course, definitely take it.

Weekend Reading: Science and Tech Edition

We were supposed to go to a hay ride through a display of holiday lights tonight, but it was rained out. So we're having a "special night in" instead- a dinner picnic (with chocolate milk!) in the living room while we watch some Christmas shows via Amazon Prime... We're even skipping bath. That I came up with this idea is a bit of a miracle, given how beaten I've been feeling by work and parenting and just life in general this week. Of course, I did have a 45 minute drive from day care to Pumpkin's school in which to think about ideas....

So, given the aforementioned feeling of being beaten, it probably isn't surprising that I don't have many insightful comments to go with my links tonight. But I've gathered up some science and tech links for you over the last few weeks.

First up: the story of an epic hacking that is a cautionary tale about how intertwined our online accounts are, how much damage a determined hacker can do, and how scarily easy it is to put together the info a hacker needs to take over your online life. Also, the ultimate motivation for the hacking is a sad statement on the worst of human nature.

Next, Rands had an interesting post about how tech companies succeed and fail. There are some interesting perspectives in the comments, too.

Bad Mom, Good Mom wrote a really interesting summary of an important paper about ship tracks, with implications for the weather here in Southern California.

Finally, an article about the limits of automation in information organization.  I found this link via a site called PaidContent.org. With a tag line of "the economics of digital content," I suspect I might find a lot of interesting things on that site in the future- or at least interesting to me, with my odd interest in how people who create things online might make money from their efforts.

And now I need to go help Petunia say Good Night to the moon, and get her into bed. This weekend we're getting our tree, and starting our holiday shopping, and all that good stuff. I hope you have fun plans, too!

Weekend Reading: The Hodgepodge Edition

I have another hodgepodge of links for you. Maybe I should just give up and admit that most weeks, I have a hodgepodge of links... but no, I think I'll cling to the fiction that I do themed links posts a little while longer.

First, I have a couple of work related posts: First Generation American has an awesome post about networking, and my friend @smbaxtersd send me a link to a great post about how there really isn't a shortcut to  learning the skills required to be a data scientist. I think that last one is broadly applicable to many fields- as we discussed last week, you have to put in the effort to build the skills.

On a completely unrelated note, I love the recent article in the Guardian from Ariel Meadow Stallings, which completely captures why I dislike the almost reflexive calling of privilege that I run across sometimes, particularly on feminist sites. You should go read the whole thing, but here is one particularly good quote:

"My priorities with online discourse are dialogue and respect. In my little corner of the online world, I keep my focus on constructive critique and articulate, compassionate communication. Shouting down people who disagree with you (even if I agree with your argument) simply doesn't feel productive or helpful. If I had a dollar for every time we have to delete a blog comment that I personally agreed with because it was stated as an attack … I could shift my whole business model. Being an asshole: it's not just for the GOD HATES FAGS people any more."

She also ends with a great checklist to use before writing a comment. Really, go read that article. It is great.

And of course, there have been lots of posts about Mitt Romney's unfortunate binders full of women. Here are some of my favorites:

• Avivah Wittenberg-Cox on HBR discusses the remark in the context of Romney's time as CEO at Bain Capital. Hush has an awesome explanation of why Romney's remarks about women in the workplace are annoying to so many of us women in the workplace.
• Lisa Suennen at Venture Valkyrie has a data filled rant on the topic, looking at the business case for actually hiring more senior women rather than just looking at binders full of them. (This last one also came via @smbaxtersd's twitter stream.)

And finally, I end with dolphins, who can apparently sleep half of their brain at a time. (Found via this article, which I found via slashdot.) How cool is that? I want to do that! But alas, I cannot. So I should go do the dishes so that I can get to bed and let my whole brain sleep. Happy weekend, everyone!

Weekend Reading: Cool Science (and Scientists) Edition

I've got science links for you this week! And they're cool ones, I promise.

First, though, I have to tell you a funny story about my husband, which I may or may not have told you before- but if I did, it was a long time ago and a lot of you weren't here yet. So I'm telling it again. Anyway, not long after he moved over here from New Zealand, he was doing laundry one night in our apartment laundry room, which you got to by going out our front door, down some stairs, and into a little room off the carport. He came back in after getting a load going, looking a little freaked out but clearly trying to look calm and not at all worried. "I don't want to alarm you, " he said, "but there is a giant rat on the steps outside."

Now, I just had to see the giant rat, so I got up and went outside with him, and there, sitting on the steps leading up to our upstairs neighbors' apartments was an opossum.

I burst out laughing, which first annoyed him, and then puzzled him, until I managed to stop laughing long enough to tell him what we were looking at. And then he burst out laughing, because he finally understood why the idea of someone importing possums into a country like New Zealand for their fur seemed so strange to me.

For those of you who don't know, here is an American possum, aka opossum:

Image source: http://www.aaanimalcontrol.com/professional-trapper/howtogetridofopossums.htm

Note the mangy looking fur.

Here is an Australian possum, which is what was introduced into New Zealand to disastrous effect:

Image source: I don't know, could be me, could be my husband. Odds are it was him.

Note the fluffy looking fur.

OK, on to the first link, which is about... possums! The American kind. Apparently, you can't poison them.

The next link needs a little story, too, I think. I had a roommate in college who delighted in making what she called "magic putt" or something like that- which was corn starch mixed with water. Have you ever done this? If not, go do it now. I'll wait.

If you make this mix, and hit it with your finger, it will feel solid. But if you put your finger in slowly, it will feel like a liquid. It is a pretty cool effect, and I look forward to showing it to my kids some day.

And now, some physicists have worked out why it behaves like this. Pretty cool.

Finally, a reader sent me a link to this post with suggestions from some prominent female scientists in the UK about how to get more women in STEM careers there.  Also pretty cool.

Motherhood, Science, And All That

I wasn't planning to write a post tonight. I was going to catch up on some of the excellent posts waiting for me in my blog reader, instead. But, today I came across the #scimom posts (thanks, Dr. O!) and I want to participate. The basic idea is to try to get the science-blogging and the mom-blogging communities to come together and learn from each other. I like that idea. I think science has something useful to contribute to parents- see my rant about the mercury in HFCS furor, or, more interestingly, take a look at the Parenting Science blog. But I also think science bloggers could learn something from mom bloggers- there is, for instance, a distressing tendency amongst some of the science bloggers to believe that their struggles with balance a career and a home life are somehow unique. They aren't. As an example, I read an excellent blog written by an ob/gyn that gives, among other things, a glimpse into the juggle for a doctor who is a mother.

So I want to participate, but I wasn't sure what to write about. After all, I've already written about how I'm a happy working outside the home mother, and why I don't think quitting my job would actually make my life- or motherhood- any easier. I have a post about combing motherhood with a career in science, which includes a list of other scientists who are mothers (and a standing invitation for people to contact me to be added to that list). What's left to write about?

I thought I'd talk a little bit about how science and motherhood interact in my life. It is not always how I would expect. For instance, I am predictably fascinated by watching my children grow and develop, both as a mother and as a scientist. But I cannot for the life of me remember the early stages of development- that's why I ended up creating a baby development cheat sheet. I wanted to follow along, but couldn't keep up.

Still, I definitely find myself turning my knowledge and training onto myself. I spent the better part of both pregnancies trying to come up with a plausible evolutionary advantage to the nausea I felt. (I did not succeed in that, so if anyone wants to offer up a theory, I'd be glad to hear it!)

As a mother it drives me nuts that I there is not more research on, for instance, how antigens pass into the breastmilk and whether that is a concern. But as a scientist, I know that those studies are both hard to design and hard to recruit for.

For me, the struggles I had in the early days of breastfeeding were easier to handle because I understood the biology and that made me trust that my body and my baby would sort it out- but I know that for many scientist moms, that is not the case. And I also am well aware that there are biologists out there posting on science blogs about how they are icked out by breastfeeding. That just blows my mind, but I try to stay non-judgmental about that- as long as no one judges me for breastfeeding my kids until they are 2. If that happens my hackles go up and I start quoting the WHO guidelines. I am a bit surprised to find myself such a strong proponent of breastfeeding for more than a year- I went in thinking I'd make it to a year then stop. As I realize that my second- and last- baby will be two in six short months, I find that I am actually quite sad to think about the end of breastfeeding. Who knows? I may go longer. (Although she's already starting to drop feedings, so I suspect she won't let me even if I want to.)

I guess we all bring our backgrounds with us to parenting, but then find that much of what we thought we knew is turned on its head by the new little person in our lives. So hurray for the project to get the moms and the scientists (and those of us who are both) talking to each other. I hope it works!

A Rare Scientific Diversion

I don't write that many science-y posts here, mostly because I'm too lazy to do a good job of them. But I came across some interesting things recently, and rather than save them for the Weekend Reading post, I thought I'd go ahead and post them now.

We've all heard a lot about personalized medicine. OK, maybe you haven't and it is just those of us  working in drug discovery who keep hearing how whole genome sequencing is going to transform medicine and our industry along with it. After a few years in the drug discovery industry, you've heard how technology X is going to change everything so many times that you get a bit cynical. But the decreasing cost of whole genome sequencing does seem to be making an impact- it is just not clear what that impact will ultimately be.

Two of the science blogs I follow, Omics! Omics! and In the Pipeline both had recent posts about the sequencing of the genomes of tumors. I find it interesting that they come to very different conclusions. Keith Robison at Omics! Omics! sees progress and the chance to start matching (already marketed) drugs that inhibit specific enzyme. Derek Lowe at In the Pipeline sees a mess of different mutations in a population of tumors that were originally thought to be quite similar and wonders if we'll need to go back to the toxic wrecking ball approach to make any progress. These are both drug discovery veterans who know a lot about what it takes to make a drug, so it is interesting to read their different viewpoints. Which one is right? Heck if I know. I think that only time will tell.

But I also came across a story of a much more immediate impact from whole genome sequencing, albeit on a very small scale. The scale of one small boy who had a baffling and life-threatening disease. I read about it in an article focused on the science/IT aspects of the story, but that links to the newspaper series with the focus more on the little boy. It is an amazing story. I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that whole genome sequencing probably saved that little boy's life.

Reading about that family's ordeals certainly puts our worries with Petunia in perspective. But, it is still highly likely that she will wake up in an hour or so and not want to go back to sleep... so I guess I should head to bed.

Weekend Reading: The Science and Technology, Edition

I've got some science and technology-related reading for you this weekend:

First up, a post from well-known pharma industry blogger Derek Lowe (if you have an interest int he drug discovery and development business and wonder how it looks from the inside, his blog is an excellent place to start) on the difficulties of replicating some of the big academic discoveries in industrial settings. It references a post from a biotech venture capitalist, which is also an interesting read. The point about the potential bias in academic studies ties into the point I often argue when reacting to food scares and the like- it is fine (good, even) to be skeptical about the studies your hear about. But you really need to be an equal opportunity skeptic. All scientists need money to live, so we are all theoretically susceptible to bias when our research findings have the potential to conflict with the source of that money.  This is not a problem that is unique to industry.

Next, Marion Nestle has a post up about food coloring and hyperactivity. It is short, but gives a sense of the history of this issue, of which I was only vaguely aware. I generally enjoy Dr. Nestle's posts and don't find her too preachy. Some of her commenters, on the other hand, live in an idealized world that bears no resemblance to the one I inhabit- so read the comments at your own risk! Also, Derek Lowe had an interesting post today about potentially favorable effects of some dye compounds- so the story is not a simple one. Perhaps this is a case where the data are not clear so people's opinions are influenced more by their own biases than we'd like.

Finally, this post about the aptly named Creepy app, which was developed by a privacy research to show how much location information can be easily gleaned from people's tweets, etc., is worth a read. I am feeling better and better about my decision not to go "all in" on social media!

A Bad Couple of Days

Today, for the second day in a row, I held my baby down while a technician drew blood. Petunia has been having recurring fevers, and we need to rule out some sort of persistent low level bacterial infection or something worse, like cancer or an autoimmune disease. The doctor ordered the first round of tests yesterday, expecting them to come back indicating nothing, which would have led us to conclude that she has just been getting one virus after another. She's in day care and has an older sister, so this would not be unreasonable.

But the first round of tests came back indicating that something more might be going on. So she ordered more tests. I left work early again today, and drove Petunia to the doctor's office. I held her down to get a chest x-ray (that came back normal) and then to get blood drawn. Finally, I held her down while a nurse gave her a big shot of antibiotics. (The doctor recommended that we start treating on the assumption that the earlier test results were indicating infection, which is far more likely than cancer or an autoimmune diease. Also, the side effects of the antibiotic are upset tummy, which we generally can manage with a probiotic- we use Culturelle.)

We won't have the results of the second round of tests back for a few days, but Petunia seemed back to her usual happy self this evening, so I strongly suspect the eventual diagnosis will be some sort of bacterial infection, which the antibiotic shot cleared up. However, this little episode has got me thinking about cancer, and childhood cancer in particular. When I was a kid, it was practically considered a death sentence. Now, the cure rates of some childhood cancers are above 90%. As unpleasant and nerve-wracking as the last couple of days have been for me, I probably would have been far more worried 20 years ago.  There is a lot of work left to do- kids treated for cancer often have long term issues from the treatment. Far too many types of cancers still have few good treatment options. But from where I sit, working in the biotech industry, a lot of progress is being made (I'm too tired to make this a good, link-laden post, but Google Biospace.com or FierceBiotech to find some stories of recent advances and setbacks in the industry.) And from where I sat this week, as a mother of a little baby who probably doesn't have cancer, but whose first round of test results weren't 100% reassuring, I am very grateful for that progress. Now let's keep going until no one has to fear a cancer diagnosis.

Some Reassuring Opinions on Bisphenol A

I came across a link to a scientific opinion piece about bisphenol A (BPA) recently, and thought I'd post about it here. It should reassure those of us whose babies were fed from bottles made before the BPA uproar forced manufacturers to switch to different plastics. The author of this piece, and a companion piece written for a more general audience, is Richard Sharpe, a scientist at the prestigious Medical Research Council in the UK. As far as I can tell, he has no connection with the plastics industry. In fact, a quick survey of some of his publications indicates that he is concerned about the effects of some environmental influences on human reproduction- just not BPA.

Dr. Sharpe argues that there were design flaws in the study that ignited all of the concern about BPA, and that multiple later studies have failed to replicate that original finding. A recent study again failed to replicate the findings, and Dr. Sharpe thinks that this should be the end of the argument.

Of course, the original study's authors refute this argument in a letter to the journal that published Dr. Sharpe's opinion piece. There is a published rebuttal to this letter as well, which unfortunately, I can't access.

All of this back-and-forth is about whether or not BPA is likely to cause reproductive issues. There is also an argument about whether or not BPA is likely to leach from the bottles in any appreciable amount under the conditions that they are usually used. (A couple of years ago, I had references on that argument, too, but I can't find them right now- suffice to say, some groups say "Yes! Heaps of BPA leaches out!" and other groups say "No! Those first groups were doing their studies all wrong!" Back when I was making the decision about whether to change Pumpkin's bottles- this uproar really hit the mainstream when she was about 9 months old- I decided that I believed the second group more.)

Scientific arguments like this are actually not that uncommon. What is unusual here is the extent to which this has played out in the "regular" press and the fact that public opinion has already forced bottle manufacturers to change the composition of their bottles. In my opinion, public opinion was driven largely by a report from the Center for Health, Environment and Justice- which is not exactly a neutral, science-based organization. To me, this is an example of the politicization of science, just as much as the shenanigans pulled during the Bush administration were, and it is just as wrong. Science should be about testing hypotheses and reporting facts, and not about spin. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."

The problem with arguments like these is that it is next to impossible for a non-expert, even a scientist in a related discipline, to really sort out who is right.  In these situations, it is helpful to get a feeling for what the majority of experts in the field think. And luckily, someone has surveyed toxicologists on their opinions about what environmental exposures are harmful. Only 9% rated BPA as a high risk. (There is a lot of other interesting data in that link, too.)

So why does this all matter if the decision has been made? BPA is gone from baby bottles. Well, a lot of us still have older bottles. About 1/3 of the pumped milk Petunia gets, for instance, is delivered in Pumpkin's old BPA-containing bottles.  But more fundamentally,  it bothers me to see science used to force a change when the data doesn't necessarily support that change. The BPA was replaced with other chemicals, not fairy dust. Who knows whether those chemicals will be deemed safe in 15 years? I can tell you that at least one of the reformulations produced an inferior bottle. We needed additional bottles for Petunia, so we bought some new ones from the same brand we used with Pumpkin. There were two options, and we bought some of each. We've pretty much stopped using one of the types of bottles, because it didn't rinse clean in the dishwasher. I didn't like the fact that I had to rewash those bottles by hand almost every time. Besides, if the dishwasher soap is sticking to the bottle, what else is?

I came across the link to the opinion piece by Dr. Sharpe in the comments on a post from Science-Based Medicine about the recent report from the President's Cancer Panel. The entire post is worth a read, if you have the time.

A Miscellany of Updates

A while ago, I wrote up my conclusions from some lunchtime literature reading on high fructose corn syrup. At the time, I could not find any studies that demonstrated an actual difference between the effects of eating HFCS and sucrose. Earlier this week, a paper came out that found some differences in the effects of HFCS and sucrose- in rats. Unfortunately, I do not have access to the journal in which it was published. Derek Lowe has a write up of the paper, and one of the comments on that post led me to Marion Nestle's take on it.

All in all, I don't find this convincing/alarming enough to make me go out of my way to get the original paper, let alone change my eating habits. But then, I don't drink soda, I only occasionally indulge in other sweetened beverages such as Vitamin Water (which should probably just be called "sugar water"), and I don't have a huge amount of other sources of refined sugar in my diet. However, this is the first study I've seen that indicates that there might be any metabolic difference at all between a soda sweetened with HFCS and one sweetened with sucrose, so I thought I'd mention it. It will take much more convincing correlative data and/or some data pointing to an actual mechanism for how HFCS acts differently than sucrose to change my basic opinion (that it is refined sugar in general, not HFCS in particular, about which we should worry).

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The Binky Fairy's visit was reasonably successful. It took over an hour to get Pumpkin to sleep Monday night, and she spent at least 30 minutes of that time repeating how she wanted her binkies, and didn't want the Binky Fairy to come. I was beginning to think that I was going to have to drug either her or me, but then she just dropped off to sleep and I was able to escape from her room. Last night, we were back down to the more usual 30-45 minute weekday bedtime, and there were only a few minutes of whining about the binkies. Tonight, she just stated once that she wanted her binkies, and then dropped the subject and asked me to tell her one of her favorite stories.

Her lip is already much better.

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When I was listing the many reasons why this was a particularly silly time to be inviting the Binky Fairy to visit our house, I left off the fact that Petunia has hit her 6 month growth spurt. Monday night, I had barely gotten Pumpkin to sleep and Petunia's bottles ready for the next day before Petunia woke up for the first time wanting to eat. Last night, I lost track of how many times I nursed her. Maybe 4 or 5? Prior to this, Petunia was waking only once to eat, and had shown signs that she might be convinced to drop that, so this is quite a set back. It reminds me of the "bad old days" of sleep (or lack thereof) during Pumpkin's infanthood. I am much more sanguine about it this time around, though, perhaps because I know that it is just a phase, and that I will survive it. Perhaps because I have already figured out how to function on so little sleep.

Still, the combination of Petunia's growth spurt (and concomitant all night nursing), Pumpkin's continuing potty regression, and Pumpkin's recent decision that Daddy is not allowed to help her with anything (because apparently only Mommy knows how to properly help her wash hands) have left me feeling drained- literally and figuratively.

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Speaking of Pumpkin's potty regression.... it is not due to a urinary tract infection, and gee, it was a lot of fun finding that out. (Being an hour late to work because you were trying- and failing- to convince a three year old to pee into a cup is downright demoralizing.) Everything I've read indicates that this is pretty normal, and that all we can do is just grin and bear it. And do a lot of laundry. I have a load in the dryer right now.

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And on happier, but even more mundane, topics.... we still love our dishwasher. And the Scanpan has worked out great. Due to a poor shopping decision, we ended up with a large "standard" Calphalon non-stick skillet and a smaller Scanpan. The Calphalon one is already discoloring and clearly won't last all that long. When it goes, I'll replace it with a Scanpan, because the small one has been awesome.

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Did I miss anything? I often find myself wondering about dropped threads in the blogs I read. If I've dropped any myself, mention it in the comments, and I'll fill you in. I'm all about the oversharing!

Cool Graphic on Vitamins

I came across a graphic showing the amount of evidence for various vitamins and supplements by way of Derek Lowe at In the Pipeline. It is a really cool way to look at the data, but then, the Information Is Beautiful site always has cool ways to look at the data. I thought I'd share it, particularly since I've recently been talking about the evidence supporting the use of vitamin D.

A Mechanism for the Effects of Vitamin D on Immune Function

Our pediatrician is a big proponent of vitamin D supplementation, and thanks to her, everyone in the family regularly takes vitamin D. She referred us to the GrassrootsHealth.org website for more info about her recommendations. I did some PubMed searching, too, and decided that I agreed that the available evidence suggested that vitamin D supplementation might be a good idea- or at least that it wouldn't be a bad idea. We all know that vitamin D is essential for strong bones (this is because we can't absorb calcium without it), but one of the other things that vitamin D is supposed to help is your immune function.

I submit that "improves immune function" will be irresistable to just about any parent with a child in day care. And indeed, after we started giving Pumpkin vitamin D, I noticed a drop in the number of illnesses in our family (most of our illnesses come home from day care, and Pumpkin is the first one to get sick). However, she had also been at day care for awhile, and presumably built up some immunity to various things, so I considered this suggestive, but nothing more.

This week, I cam across a recent article in Nature Immunology by von Essen, et al, which adds support to the idea that vitamin D is essential for proper immune function. (You can read the abstract of the original paper without a subscription. Here is a write up of the paper, too.)

The paper looksat the function of one type of immune cells, called T cells. T cells are far more responsive to antigen after they have been "primed"- i.e., exposed to antigen once. The current model to explain this involves the fact that T cell activation can occur via two different signaling pathways. The first pathway dominates in "naive" T cells (T cells that have never been exposed to antigen), while the second dominates in T cells that have previously been exposed to antigen. The second pathway is far more efficient than the first, which explains why primed T cells are more responsive than naive ones.

But how do the primed T cells switch to the second pathway? That is where the new paper comes in. The researchers show that the expression of one key protein in the second pathway, phospholipase C gamma1, is increased by the combination of vitamin D and its receptor (cleverly called "vitamin D receptor", or VDR). The expression of VDR, in turn, is increased by the activity of the first pathway. So, the T cells turn on the second, more active pathway using the same pathway that they use to respond to antigen the first time they "see" it- but only if there is sufficient vitamin D around. The researchers even showed that T cells isolated from people with low serum levels of vitamin D were less responsive to antigen than T cells from controls with normal levels of vitamin D.

Maybe it is because my background is in biochemistry and biophysics, but this is the sort of study I like to see when I'm trying to evaluate the benefits of a supplement. Correlative population studies are all well and good, but I'm always a little suspicious of them. Human beings aren't lab animals- it is very hard to control for all of the confounding variables in how we live our lives. A population study indicating a correlation between levels of some vitamin and a certain outcome is a nice story, but it is only the outline of the story. A biochemical mechanism adds some satisfying detail to the story.

And here is the ironic twist to this story- as I write this, my nose is blocked with the second or third consecutive cold I've had this season, which just goes to show that no supplement can guarantee you perfect health.

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I am not a medical doctor. This post should not be construed as medical advice. I read the entire paper, but as an interested scientist, not as a careful reviewer. If you're wondering about whether or not you or your children should take vitamin D supplements, all I can really tell you is to talk to your doctor and/or do your own research.

This Should Make You Feel Better about Day Care

Last week's Science had two book reviews about parenting in it. Both were interesting. One was a review of a sociology book called Longing and Belonging, by Allison Pugh, about the use of consumer goods to help children fit in. The other was a review of a human evolution book called Mothers and Others, by Sara Hrdy. I've linked to the summaries rather than the full text because you'll need a subscription to read the full text.

The premise of Mothers and Others (at least according to the review- I haven't read the book yet) is that humans are actually a "cooperatively breeding species", meaning that "individuals other than the mother assist in the care and provisioning of young". This is supported by the shorter birth interval of human hunter-gatherer populations (3-4 years) as compared to great apes (6-7 years) and by the tolerance human mothers show to having other individuals hold and care for our young (apparently, this is a big no-no in great ape society). Fathers, by the way, don't count- mothers couldn't count on them sticking around. They do in some hunter-gatherer societies, but not in others. Flexible child care arrangements utilizing the larger societal group are more consistent.

Furthermore, Hrdy argues that this cooperative breeding status might explain the origin of some human interaction behaviors (such as our ability to theorize about the intentions of others) that had previously been explained primarily by the existence of warfare. The reviewer, Gillian Brown, points out that other researchers have begun to theorize that cooperative breeding might even explain the selection of some quintessentially human behaviors, such as "social learning, teaching, and language."

So, the modern trend of flexible child care arrangements that often involve members of our larger societal group isn't so new afterall. I wonder what the traditionalists who argue that the nuclear family is the only way in which humans should raise children would say to that? (No cheap shots about them not believing in evolution- not all of the traditionalists are fundamentalist Christians.)

This theory of human cooperative breeding would argue that societies that provide better "extended group" support to mothers are more inline with our evolutionary biology, and perhaps even more likely to succeed. Current demographic data certainly supports the idea that greater societal support to families leads to more successful societies, at least if we define a successful society as one that is not shrinking. Many Western countries are seeing declines in birth rates to levels below replacement. It is common to "blame" this on working women. However, as a recent article in the Economist points out, the trend of lower birth rates in countries in which many women work outside the home has been reversed, and there is now a positive correlation between birth rates and female employment rates. The article theorizes that this is due to the fact that children are no longer an economic help (in that they could work on the farm) but an economic drain (in that we need to buy them lots of things), and so many families need two incomes to support multiple children.

The article goes on to explain that countries with high female employment rates tend to have "large government cash transfers to families, generous replacement pay during parental leave, the availability of plenty of part-time work and lots of formal child care." Most mothers reading this post probably could have told the researchers this, but it is actually based on comparative data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. France and the Scandinavian countries are the examples of this sort of society.

The obvious exceptions are America and Britain, neither of which provide large cash payments to families or state-provided child care. The article posits that our birth rates are still high because of a flexible labor market that allows women to drop out and then back in and because public opinion "approves of working mothers". I'd also add that, at least in the US, quality child care is available, even if it is not state sponsored and is rather expensive. I remember a thread on going back to work at Ask Moxie in which a woman from Austria commented that it was almost impossible to find child care for a child under the age of three. Long maternity leaves are the norm, there. I can only speak for myself, but I think that if I lived in a country like that, I would not be having a second child. I don't want to spend that much time out of the workforce, not because I'd worry about my ability to get back in, but because I'd miss the work. Not all women are cut out to be stay at home mothers. Perhaps the key to our relatively high birth rate is that, despite our occasional squabbles about what type of mother is "best", we do actually allow each woman (whose family has sufficient means....) to find her own way.

Now, if we could just learn a little bit more from our evolutionary past, and actually provide societal support to ALL mothers, not just those with the means to purchase it. I think that would make us an even more successful society.

Feeling Fragile

One of my weirdest pregnancy symptoms is an increased feeling of fragility. I am much more aware of risks, and much more likely to think about risks so insignificant that they're rather silly (e.g., the risk of a car crashing through my bedroom window while we sleep). The feeling is not overwhelming or all-encompassing. One part of my brain comes up with these implausible scenarios, and another part is raising its eyebrows, saying "Really? We're going to worry about this?"

I noticed the fragile feeling the first time around, and thought that perhaps this was just a part of becoming a parent- suddenly, my life seems more important because there is a small, vulnerable other life depending on me. The feeling persisted a bit after I gave birth, even expanded to include the fragility of my new baby, but then it faded away to more normal parent worries.

I'd mostly forgotten the odd fragile feeling until it came roaring back at about month 4 or 5 of this pregnancy. This makes me think that the feeling is related to hormone levels and not just the knowledge of impending life changes. This is really annoying (it is not a fun feeling) but also very interesting. I wonder if anyone is looking at the impact of hormones on anxiety disorders? I think (but am not sure and certainly don't have the reference to back this up) that women are more likely to be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder than men. Could it be the impact of our hormones? If so, does the fact that I experience a specialized increase in anxiety give any clues about which hormones are to blame? I wonder if there is anything in this that would help find new treatments for people who suffer from these disorders?

Some times I really miss being more involved in exploratory research. There was a time in my life (even in my post-grad school working life) when I could easily have justified spending a work afternoon seeing what the literature said about all of this.

Well Baby

We're all feeling a lot better here. I am unfortunately still prone to coughing fits, and when the one brought on by my attempt to unload the dishwasher combined with my lingering evening "morning sickness" to actually make me throw up for the first time in this pregnancy... well, I took the hint and decided to retire to the sofa with my laptop.

Right now, Pumpkin is having her snack with Daddy and demonstrating the new rhyme she's learning at day care: I'm a little teapot. She can do most of the rhyme with very little prompting. It is unbelievably cute. (Yes, grandparents, et al., we'll get this on video at some point.) She's also telling her Daddy that he should "be happy!" He's trying to extend that to "don't worry, be happy", because he loves the 80s.

Earlier today, we took her to the doctor for her 2 year well baby check up. It seemed like a bit of a misnamed appointment, since the entire family is still suffering a bit from colds, but Pumpkin still did great. She took her own shoes off for her height and weight check. She stuck her tongue out as requested, and let the doctor check her ears and listen to her heart without struggle. She also impressed the doctor with her words and phrases- her language skills have really taken off lately.

The doctor gave us a picture book for Pumpkin, as part of some campaign someone is running to encourage parents to read to their children. It is a worthy goal. It is very easy to forget just what a privileged upbringing Pumpkin is getting. She has shelves full of books and parents who are always happy (OK, at least willing) to read to her. She, in fact, has pretty much anything she needs. She's lucky that way.

The fact that other kids aren't as lucky as Pumpkin has been on my mind lately, due to a recent Economist article on the impact of childhood stress on later life. The Economist article is summarizing a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Evans and Schamberg. The PNAS stuy concludes that childhood stress correlates with reduced working memory later in life (working memory is an important component of intelligence), and strongly implies that a causal link is likely. This is far from my field of expertise, but I wasn't completely convinced by the PNAS study that the working memory reduction was caused by the stress. It certainly seems like a strong, plausible hypothesis, though, given everything we know about the effects of chronic stress (the summary of these are far beyond what I have the energy for tonight- check out Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, by Robert Sapolsky for a good book on the subject).

However, I certainly don't think that the conclusion the Economist article reaches is supported by the evidence. The article concludes by referencing studies that have shown that social position is related to stress (the lower your status, the more stress you have in general), and extrapolating:

"So, it may not be necessary to look any further than their place in the pecking order to explain what Dr Evans and Dr Schamberg have discovered in their research into the children of the poor. The Bible says, “the poor you will always have with you.” Dr Evans and Dr Schamberg may have provided an important part of the explanation why."

I think this lets those of us who are higher on the "pecking order" off the hook far too easily. Leaving aside the fact that wealth is not perfectly correlated with status, there is no reason to assume that the stress-related effects seen by Evans and Schamberg are entirely due to low status. There are many other sources of stress in a poor person's life. Not having enough to eat is stressful. Being too cold because your family can't pay the heating bills is stressful. Having parents who are stressed and worried about meeting the family's basic needs is no doubt stressful. Being sick and unable to go to the doctor for treatment because your family does not have adequate health insurance is probably pretty stressful, too. All of these things could be at least partially addressed by programs to alleviate the effects of poverty. We do not know if such programs will help to break the cycle of poverty, but we certainly cannot conclude from this study that there is no point in trying.