Science Friday: Facebook Makes Activism Backfire, Pastels Make Stats Fun, and Genes Make the Call in IVF

New Test could predict success of IVF treatment

Where
better to read this big-headline IVF story from home-grown Rotunda Researchers than at the Irish Examiner's overhauled website?  (They've revamped their old search, archive, and overall layout so it's much better).

Quick summary: Certain genes (more than 200 actually) appeared to differentiate potentially successful and unsuccessful IVF patients.

• "More than 200 genes were differentially expressed in patients who went on to achieve an IVF pregnancy and those who did not."

However, the number of patients involved seems quite low, and the study's leaders were quick to point out that the work is in it's "infancy."

• "Five samples came from women who went on to achieve IVF pregnancies,
  three were from women who failed to get pregnant after treatment, and
  three were from sub-fertile women who conceived spontaneously." 

The findings were announced at the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology.

If you want to see what's going on inside your brain and Mindball doesn't cut it:

Prof John Lowry at NUI Maynooth has developed in-brain sensors.  It doesn't measure alpha and theta waves like Mindball's headband does, but actually measures the chemical levels, in your brain, live.  For now, the device is rats-only, so don't go shaving your head.  Full article form Claire O'Connell at the Irish Times.

Did workplace equality halve Ireland's birthrate? Are statistics better in Technicolor?

The Beeb has a great video walkthrough of the OECD Factbook eXplorer.  If it looks complicated, just watch the video to see some ways you can use it. 

Or imagine a statistics lesson explained using the national lotto machine.

Gapminder is another interesting globalisation-issues-expressed-in-coloured-bouncyballs site.  

The false economy of Facebook activism

Perhaps from the "dog wags tail when happy" school of thought, but still significant, Matthew Nisbett over at Framing Science has a very thorough examination of how 'facebook activism' may create a "false sense of participation," and actually result in people being less politically involved.  The amount of self-referencing and bickering on blogs about scientific topics such as climate change, he says, shows how much activity is essentially going to waste. 

Nisbett's a colleague of Dietram Scheufele (hard to spell, but a Badger like me!) who showed us earlier in the year that Ireland and the US are more nanoskeptic because they're highly religious societies. Should these guys just get a monthly column in Nature Nano/Biotech?