Penn Science Policy and Diplomacy Group

Last month I analyzed the media coverage of Ebola in a post where I dissected an interview between Fox News reporters and Dr. David Sanders. I was recently contacted by Dr. Sanders, who wished to clarify a few issues that I raised in my article. The purpose of my post was to demonstrate how the media sometimes covers scientific issues in ways that exaggerate and oversimplify concepts, which can potentially mislead non-scientist citizens. I stated that the way Dr. Sanders described his research sounded a little misleading. I intended to convey how I thought an average non-scientist listener might interpret the dialogue. However, Dr. Sanders points out that he was careful with his wording to avoid possible confusion. He explained, “as you have pointed out, one says one thing, and the media (and the Internet) render it as something else.  I would just like to point out that I carefully stated that Ebola can ENTER human lung from the airway side; I never said infect.  I also...

Our bodies evolved to alternate rhythmically through sleep and wake periods with the 24-hr cycle of the day. These “circadian rhythms” are controlled by specific neurons in the brain that act as molecular clocks. The experience of jet lag when we change time zones is the out-of-sync period before the brain’s internal clock re-aligns with the external environment. How does this molecular clock work in the brain? Decades of research have uncovered that environmental signals, such as light, are integrated into a circadian clock by specific neurons in the brain. However, little is understood about how these circadian clock cells drive biological effects such as sleep, locomotion, and metabolism. A study by Penn researchers published earlier this year in Cell  has discovered critical neural circuits linking the circadian clock neurons to behavioral outputs. The researchers used the fruit fly Drosophila as a model organism because like humans, they also have circadian rhythms, ...