Funding opportunity of the week!

"Harvesting the Neuroimaging Cornucopia for Pancreatic Islet Imaging Reagents for Diabetes Research," a request for applications from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, has been released in time for the Sixth Annual World Molecular Imaging Congress.

Proposed: Understanding the brain doesn't suck.

"... recall the famous quip from Jeff Hammerbacher, a former Facebook engineer, who said, 'The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks.' We contend that working in biostatistics using complex neuroimaging data to solve the biggest puzzle of them all – understanding the human brain – is a worthy alternative."

-from "WANTED: Neuro-quants" by Brian Caffo, Martin Lindquist, and Ciprian Crainiceanu, which appears in the the Huffington Post.

Understatement of the Week?

"In setting the nation on a course to map the active human brain, President Obama may have picked a challenge even more daunting than ending the war in Afghanistan or finding common ground with his Republican opponents."

–The opening sentence of the article "Connecting the Neural Dots" by John Markoff in today's New York Times.

Compelling and Devastating.

"The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food" by Michael Moss will appear in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine.

"Today, our scientists are mapping the human brain to unlock the answers to Alzheimer’s."

"Now, if we want to make the best products, we also have to invest in the best ideas. Every dollar we invested to map the human genome returned $140 to our economy – every dollar. Today, our scientists are mapping the human brain to unlock the answers to Alzheimer’s. They’re developing drugs to regenerate damaged organs; devising new material to make batteries 10 times more powerful. Now is not the time to gut these job-creating investments in science and innovation. Now is the time to reach a level of research and development not seen since the height of the Space Race. We need to make those investments."

-Remarks by the President in yesterday's State of the Union Address.

Are you a methodologist or an ASS?

In the article "Primary study authors of significant studies are more likely to believe that a strong association exists in a heterogeneous meta-analysis compared with methodologists" in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, Orestis A. Panagiotou and John P.A. Ioannidis report that "authors of significant studies" (a group indicated by the acronym "ASS" in the paper's Tables; for example Table 2 has a column labeled "ASS vs. methodologists") are "influenced by their own investment in the field" and so are "more likely to believe that a strong association exists."

"A dog is a great walking coach."

  Dr. Mike Evans

h/t: Dr. Brian Caffo