My, What Small Molecules You Have

Making Mayonnaise Hayford Peirce (GNU Free Documentation License)

As nanotechnology continues on its journey toward world domination (or at least linguistic overuse), it's time to stop for dinner. Techniques for creating low fat "nanofoods" sound only mildly less gross than currently used products like guar gum. And how's this for reassuring? "Some nanofood products, like nanosalt, are probably safe."

Also in today's links, nurses called "Doctor," researchers called frauds, and more.

• Who, besides Jill Biden, should be allowed to call themselves Dr.? Ph.Ds? Medical doctors? What about nurses? Medical caregivers are debating whether a new degree program should confer the right on nurses to use that honorific. (I vote yes -- mainly because, for general care, I'll see a P.A. or N.P. over an M.D. any day. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that, on average, they listen a heck of a lot longer and more carefully.)
• Vicious accusations, conflicts of interest, charges of professional misconduct, parents' terror and fierce desire to help and protect their children ... oh, and inflammatory language in the press. This is how vaccines took the fall for the rising incidence of autism.
• Imagine the Alps buried under ice, midway down the Antarctic continent. A mountain range similar in size and shape is there, and scientists have just completed mapping them, which they help will explain why they exist and how they avoided erosion under ice sheets.
• Despite pledges from Obama to reinstate federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research, scientists are getting itchy to know when Bush's ban will be overturned, and wondering what's caused the delay.