Mr Epidemiology

I like to tweet interesting stories and articles during the week (follow me @MrEpid); if you follow me you might have seen these links already:

• The 2012 Canadian Obesity Student Meeting, to be held in Edmonton, AB is now accepting abstracts! You should come!
• On the topic of Valentine’s Day, did you ever wonder if births go up on Valentine’s Day and down on Halloween? Well, they do! From the article:

On Valentine’s Day, which conveys positive symbolism, there was a 3.6% increase in spontaneous births and a 12.1% increase in cesarean births. Whereas, on Halloween, which conveys negative symbolism, there was a 5.3% decrease in spontaneous births and a 16.9% decrease in cesarean births. These effects reached significance at p < .0001 (Levy, Chung and Slade, 2011)

• Friend of the blog Dr Stephanie Prince-Ware just got her PhD! Way to go Stephanie!
• An excellent piece encouraging youth to become scientists: I am science, and so can you!
• Chocolate is made in controversial ways; Megan Carter discusses it in more detail

-Atif