On the blogs: MCASitis, PubMed search 'tricycle'

On Dr. Gwenn Is In, pediatrician Dr. Gwenn Schurgin O’Keeffe reminds us of a rite of spring: standardized tests for children that can bring with them a malady she calls MCASitis.

"Test taking anxiety is truly real, even for young kids. And, with anxiety can come physical symptoms such as stomach aches," she writes. "I worry about the impact of State testing on kids. ... Young kids don't need that pressure and I feel very strongly about that."

On Nature Network Boston, PhD student Anna Kushnir fumes about PubMed, the online database of scientific journal citations and abstracts created by the U.S. National Library of Medicine. She's not sure she can call it a search "engine." Maybe a tricycle, she suggests.

"I hate PubMed. I hate it with a burning passion. For a site that is as vital to scientific progress as PubMed is, their search engine is shamefully bad. It’s embarrassingly, frustratingly, painfully bad," she writes. "When is it going to get better? Is there any chance this might happen before my dissertation is due? Because frankly, it’s driving me more bats than the dissertation itself."