purepedantry | September 14, 2006I talked before about how I think the Internet represents the possibility for Alternaworlds -- worlds facilitated by social interaction on the Internet with their own rules and standards.
Well, this World of Warcraft business may be rapidly careening out of control, but it is beginning to fulfill most of the criterion for what I would call an alternaworld. MSNBC gives this rather late-to-the-party or Dad-has-just-discovered-how-the-mouse-works description:
In the physical world we vainly scrounge for glory. Bin Laden still taunts us, the bus doors close before we reach them and leave us…
purepedantry | September 14, 2006Wired Magazine describes the Ultimate Blog Post from a variety of popular sites:
"Blog" itself is short for "weblog," which is short for "we blog because we weren't very popular in high school and we're trying to gain respect and admiration without actually having to be around people."
Creating your own blog is about as easy as creating your own urine, and you're about as likely to find someone else interested in it. One popular technique for building readership is to send e-mail to more well-trafficked blogs offering to exchange links with them. One popular response from those blogs is to…
purepedantry | September 12, 2006Roger Pielke at Prometheus has some back of the envelope calcuations suggesting that the prospects for climate stabilization are rather bleak. His conclusions:
1. Serious thought and research needs to be given to the prospect of stabilization levels much higher that currently being discussed. What are their policy implications for mitigation and adaptation?
2. The EU, for instance, needs to move discussion beyond its fantasy of stabilization at 450 ppm (see Richard Tol on this here).
3. If stabilization at higher than 550 ppm is determined to be "dangerous interference" in the climate system…
purepedantry | September 12, 2006GNIF Brain Blogger has a good article describing the DSM -- Diagnostic and Statistcal Manual of Mental Disorders -- that is used by psychiatrists to diagnose mental health issues of all types. Drawbacks and benefits are discussed.
In spite of some rather notable problems with the DSM -- for example, in earlier editions homosexuality was still listed as a mental disorder -- I have to sympathize with the people who write it. In contrast to most other areas, most psychiatric disorders are syndromic in nature and lacking in definitive lab tests. This makes diagnosing them an act of guessing…
purepedantry | September 11, 2006Differing from the typical strategy of threatening potential suitors with castration, scientists speculate that phermones from fathers delay their daughters sexual development:
Chemical cues from fathers may be delaying the onset of sexual maturity in daughters, as part of an evolutionary strategy to prevent inbreeding, according to researchers at Penn State.
...
"Recently, experts elsewhere discovered a little-known pheromone receptor gene in the human olfactory system, linking the role of pheromones on menarche, or the first occurrence of menstruation," said Matchock, whose findings are…
purepedantry | September 11, 2006I talked earlier this year about a patient who recovered from a coma after 20 years. In that post, I discussed how -- with respect to the diagnostic criteria -- the difference between a persistent vegetative state and a minimally conscious state is the difference between someone who has only autonomic nervous activity and episodic conscious activity. In this way, someone who is in a minimally conscious state -- as that patient was -- still has the possibility for recovery even if recovery is very rare.
Here is another case of a woman in a persistent vegetative state discussed in the…
purepedantry | September 8, 2006Remember to submit to Encephalon for Monday. Shelley is hosting it. Submission details here.
purepedantry | September 8, 2006This is really cool. It is a video of a guy who took a picture of himself every day for 6 years.
purepedantry | September 7, 2006The Union of Concerned Scientists is running a cartoon contest for the best global warming related cartoon. Check them out here. See, humor is cathartic.
Here is my feeble attempt at a global warming cartoon. Certainly not as witty as theirs, but I also can't draw so bear with me.
Hat-tip: Nature.
purepedantry | September 6, 2006Why we lay babies on their backs:
Research suggests that healthy newborn infants do not have what doctors call "nasoaxillary reflex" -- a protective reflex that helps keep their nasal passages open.
In adults lying on their side, the nasoaxillary reflex ensures that the uppermost nasal airway is open, Dr. Christopher O'Callaghan of the University of Leicester, UK, and colleagues explain in the journal Archives of Diseases of Childhood.
The researchers used acoustic rhinometry, a technique that measures nasal patency, to see whether the nasoaxillary reflex is present in 11 healthy term…
purepedantry | September 6, 2006I wrote earlier this week about evidence from electrode arrays that LTP occurs in vivo in behaving rats ("Rats, you behave!"). The paper showed that if you use an avoidance learning paradigm you can detect LTP in the hippocampus after one trial. The paper does not, however, necessarily prove that this LTP is actually necessary for learning (although there is a huge body of evidence in vitro that suggests that this is the case).
Another paper in Science rectifies that deficiency. Pastalkova et al. also show in Science that if we infuse an inhibitor to a particular enzyme into the rat…
purepedantry | September 5, 2006Rebecca Saxe of MIT reviews Encounters with Wild Children by Adriana Benzaquen about historical confrontations with so-called wild children -- children raised outside of society without supervision or what the author calls the forbidden experiment. The occurence of wild children has always been a bugaboo of developmental psychologists and philosophers who ask: what is the human nature in its uncorrupted (or unredeemed depending on point of view) state?
However, the review and the book both suggest that historically and most likely categorically, the wild children form an inadequate…
purepedantry | September 5, 2006My suspicion is that the people who know about neuroscience read the title of this and said: "Wow, Jake, there's a shocker. Tell us something we didn't know." Everyone else probably said: "Guh?" Therefore, I should probably explain why I think this finding is cool.
LTP or Long Term Potentiation is an experimental paradigm that is believed to simulate learning in vivo. In the paradigm, an exciting electrode and a recording electrode are placed into the brain of the animal, usually into an area called the hippocampus. The electrodes are position such that the action of the excitation…
purepedantry | September 4, 2006Check out this awesome molecular biology animation by XVIVO. My favorite is the depiction of actin and microtubule assembly and the movement of a kinesin molecule tethered to a vesicle.
Apparently, Harvard has contracted out with this company to provide this animations to students. If that is true, that would be lovely. Anything that helps students understand better is a good idea in my book.
However, I am skeptical about the validity of this:
XVIVO's animation plays an instrumental role in the BioVisions at Harvard program established by Dr. Lue. "Furthermore, preliminary evaluation…
purepedantry | September 4, 2006Hey everyone. Check out the Synapse #6 on The Mouse Trap (now organized by category).
The next Synapse is on GNIF Brain Blogger on September 17th. Submission guidelines here.
purepedantry | September 3, 2006No way:
BRISBANE, Australia (AP) - Steve Irwin, the Australian television personality and environmentalist known as the "Crocodile Hunter," was killed Monday by a stingray during a diving expedition, Australian media said. He was 44.
Irwin was filming an underwater documentary on the Great Barrier Reef in northeastern Queensland state when the accident occurred, Sydney's The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported on its Web site.
The Australian Broadcasting Corp. said Irwin was diving near Low Isles near the resort town of Port Douglas, about 1,260 miles north of Brisbane.
A helicopter carrying…
purepedantry | August 31, 2006I don't even want to know how he got it:
Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes have yet to show their baby daughter off in public, but eager fans were given an unusual preview with the chance to see a bronze cast depicting her first solid stool.
The scatological sculpture -- more doodoo than Dada -- is purportedly cast from 19-week old Suri's first bowel movement and will be shown at the Capla Kesting gallery in Brooklyn, New York, before being auctioned off for charity.
The artist behind the work, Daniel Edwards, previously courted controversy with a life-size nude sculpture of pop star Britney Spears…
purepedantry | August 31, 2006I have posted before about how I think that the role of genetics, at least in popular culture, has been overemphasized. Rather, the really interesting and important parts of genetics are the ways in which your genes interact with environmental factors.
There is an excellent article in the NY Times today about how longevity has a lot less to do with genes than people think. To wit:
The scientific view of what determines a life span or how a person ages has swung back and forth. First, a couple of decades ago, the emphasis was on environment, eating right, exercising, getting good medical…
purepedantry | August 30, 2006Kyra, Kyra, Kyra...
Note to self: turn off mic in the john.
Kyra Phillips, anchor of CNN's "Live From...," unwittingly upstaged President Bush's speech in New Orleans with on-the-air analysis of her husband and the marriage of her brother -- all live from a CNN ladies room.
Unaware that her wireless microphone was "live" during her break, Phillips could be heard overriding Bush"s prepared address Tuesday as he was seen marking the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
The Atlanta-based Phillips, in conversation with an unidentified woman in an echoey room, dismissed most men with a vulgar…