omnibrain | March 27, 2007I just though you all would be interested in this ;)
There's a new Chinese saying: When life hands you panda poop, make paper.
Researchers at a giant panda reserve in southern China are looking for paper mills to process their surplus of fiber-rich panda excrement into high quality paper.
...
The Chiang Mai Zoo in northern Thailand already sells multicolored paper made from the excrement produced by its two resident pandas. Making paper there involves a daylong process of cleaning the feces, boiling it in a soda solution, bleaching it with chlorine and drying it under the sun.
Here's the…
omnibrain | March 26, 2007I think I'm going to be sick...
I am glad I studied the bible in school... although it was in the context of literature (we also read the Koran, etc.) This is a bit different. Chuck Norris is the spokesman for a religious organization with shady goals. It seems that they are saying one thing and doing another. See below for more details.
Martial arts maven Chuck Norris, legend has it, can defeat packs of savage wild animals, hordes of vicious, armed goons, and even onrushing Mack trucks with nothing more than his hands and feet. Now, Norris wants to kick secularism's ass - he wants…
omnibrain | March 26, 2007Got you! haha... just kidding ;)
This story is a bit less controversial than the whole Bell Curve thing ;)
According to a EurekaAlert press release,
Although intelligence is generally thought to play a key role in children's early academic achievement, aspects of children's self-regulation abilities--including the ability to alternately shift and focus attention and to inhibit impulsive responding--are uniquely related to early academic success and account for greater variation in early academic progress than do measures of intelligence. Therefore, in order to help children from low-income…
omnibrain | March 26, 2007I just added two new blogs to the blogroll (which I hate doing for some reason).
The first is Ginny's who is a staffer here at ScienceBlogs and is a freelance science writer. Her blog is named Sequitur. You can also find links to all her science writing on the sidebar. What's that blog name about Ginny?
The second blog I discovered when Kate left some good comments on some of my posts :)The Anterior Commissure "was started as a new year's resolution with the intention of developing a better understanding of the field of science in a more global context. It has become a horrible…
omnibrain | March 25, 2007If you hadn't noticed, the posting was pretty light last week. Here's why:
You can visit my flickr page for the whole set - which should actually be growing by hundreds of photos in the next week or so as I add the other peoples pictures to the set.
omnibrain | March 23, 2007I almost forgot about Multimedia Friday!
Here's some brain surgery! [edit by Sandra - the procedure in the video is removal of a Hydatid cyst. It's a tapeworm, eww!]
Hahaha.... soooo cheezy. Wilder Penfield - the greatest Canadian alive!
omnibrain | March 23, 2007I found this entertaining snipit on some random website. I never realized that Tony Robbins (whose whole sctick revolves around firewalking) was such a fraud. It seems that you can delete a single memory (this time without that crazy drug) by visualizing it, making it black and white and then 'sending' it away from you.
Here check it out:
With this exercise you can actually 'delete' anything at all. I learned this memory-delete exercise from Tony Robbins, and it's based on the mental visualization principles from Neuro Linguistic Programming. Here's what you do.
1. Make a picture in your…
omnibrain | March 23, 2007I just made it back from backpacking (pictures forthcoming) in the Chisos mountains and figured I'd post a little short neato study I found since I'm way too tired to write anything with actual content (not that I ever really do anyway).
In the study, the researchers used genetic engineering to introduce a snippet of DNA that encodes instructions for how to make the red photopigment into the mice's genome. They then tested whether the mice could discriminate between two different colored lights.
Pretty neat eh!? Here's the msnbc write up.
-edit-
ahhh it seems The Loom actually has a very…
omnibrain | March 21, 2007I started a thread on the old Omni Brain asking what the coolest name in science was. These are a few we came up with:
James Intrilligator (Psychology - vision)
Ray Jackendoff (Psychology - language)
Dr Martin S. Angst (Neuroscience - Pain)
Dr Jules Angst (Psychiatry)
There are some great names out there yet to be discovered! Share your favorites?
omnibrain | March 20, 2007It was one year ago today that I made the first post to Omni Brain. I never imagined we would do this well.
In the last year Omni Brain has undergone many many changes, the biggest of which have been Sandra of Neurofuture fame joining the blog, and moving to ScienceBlogs.
We started with not-even 3000 page views in our first full month and now receive tens of thousands of page views and visitors - which is pretty great for a smart ass little science blog! Our Technorati ranking has also grown by leaps and bounds; near 14,000 today.
Thanks everyone, for reading and for all your lively…
omnibrain | March 19, 2007Since I'm away I scheduled this Ali G video post I found on Ginny's blog, Sequitur.
Enjoy!
omnibrain | March 18, 2007
I'll bet you'll never guess!
Give up?
It's a drunken orgy!
(from the old blog)
omnibrain | March 16, 2007It sounds good doesn't it?! Just read a bit further until you realize what they're actually saying...
The president of the leading Southern Baptist seminary has suggested that a biological basis for homosexuality may be proven, and that prenatal treatment to reverse gay orientation would be biblically justified.
The Rev. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., and one of the country's evangelical leaders, posted the article on his personal Web site earlier this month.
Mr. Mohler said in the article that scientific research "points to…
omnibrain | March 15, 2007Nothing neuroscience/psychology related today only videos of Big Bend National Park in Texas that I should be on my way to right about now. So enjoy...and be jealous! ;)
I'll be back next Wednesday. See you then!
(there are a couple more videos below the fold)
omnibrain | March 15, 2007Ahh... about 20 years after beginning the project our paper was finally accepted at the Journal of Neurophysiology. If you'd like a copy go to my reprint website which will let you request a reprint and will email you a copy. A great sneaky way of dealing with copyright/distribution laws ;)
Here's the abstract:
Humans and animals use information obtained from the local visual scene to orient themselves in the wider world. although neural systems involved in scene perception have been identified, the extent to which processing in these systems is affected by previous experience is unclear.…
omnibrain | March 15, 2007A company in Korea is applying for a patent of their new technique to help all those poor video game addicted kids in korea (think kids playing video games for 4 days straight and then dying). The only problem with the patent... the chances of it working in Korea are about the same as them working in the United States (with non-Korean speaking kids). Here's why:
Venture start-up Xtive proposes to subliminally convince these kids to kick the habit by exposing them to an inaudible repetitive message. "We incorporated messages into an acoustic sound wave telling gamers to stop playing. The…
omnibrain | March 14, 2007For those local blog readers:
CAS/MILLERCOMM2007.
Daniel C. Dennett, Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, Tufts University will give a CAS/MillerComm lecture entitled The Domestication of Wild Religions.
The lecture will be given on Friday, March 30, 2007 at 4:00 p.m. in 112 Gregory Hall, 810 S. Wright St., Urbana.
All CAS/MillerComm events are free and open to the public. For more information, contact the George A. Miller Committee at 333-6729 or the CAS events line at 333-1118 or web information at http://www.cas.uiuc.edu/casmillercomm.php.
Annual Philosophy/Public Lecture