...proudly awarded to Cute Overload.
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Yeah. I check out CO. Whaddaboudit?
World's Tiniest Snake Discovered Under Tiny Rock
Moments later, he was skinned to make the world's smallest Louis Vuitton bag for a demanding hamster.
Wocka wocka wocka.
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Seed magazine online briefly describes a recently published abstract in Nature Neuroscience:
Whether or not one subscribes to the doctrine of free will, it is difficult to imagine that we're not responsible for most of life's little choices. ... In the 1980s, however, Benjamin Libet performed an experiment that seemed to show that areas of the brain responsible for certain body movements activate before we are conscious of our decision to move. Researchers in Europe recently decided to test Libet's conclusion again. A group of 14 volunteers was asked to press either of two buttons, one with the left hand and one with the right, whenever they wanted, so long as they noted the time when they made their decision. Watching the patterns of activity in the volunteers' brains, researchers could predict which button the individuals would pick up to 10 seconds before they had consciously made their choice [emphasis mine].
Gawd, I love this stuff.
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[ED: This is a touch old.]
From good old 1951, and courtesy of the BBC... 
The music was played on the successor to Manchester's "Baby" A scratchy recording of Baa Baa Black Sheep and a truncated version of In the Mood are thought to be the oldest known recordings of computer generated music. The songs were captured by the BBC in the Autumn of 1951 during a visit to the University of Manchester.
[MORE]
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From ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) lolscience:
In related science-geek news, the BF and I are contemplating another trip to Florida for the next shuttle launch. Luckily, that would be the final mission to service Hubble. Far too much coolness to take.
And has anyone seen "When We Left Earth"? Man, I am just a sucker for the Gemini and Apollo missions.
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Scientific American picks apart another gem from the former Nixon speechwriter [excerpted]:
about intelligent design and evolution
1) Expelled quotes Charles Darwin selectively to connect his ideas to eugenics and the Holocaust. When the film is building its case that Darwin and the theory of evolution bear some responsibility for the Holocaust, Ben Stein's narration quotes from Darwin's The Descent of Man thusly: With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. This is how the original passage in The Descent of Man reads (unquoted sections emphasized in italics): With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. The producers of the film did not mention the very next sentences in the book (emphasis added in italics): The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil. Darwin explicitly rejected the idea of eliminating the "weak" as dehumanizing and evil. Those words falsify Expelled's argument. The filmmakers had to be aware of the full Darwin passage, but they chose to quote only the sections that suited their purposes. 2) Ben Stein's speech to a crowded auditorium in the film was a setup.
3) Scientists in the film thought they were being interviewed for a different movie.
As Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, Eugenie Scott, Michael Shermer and other proponents of evolution appearing in Expelled have publicly remarked, the producers first arranged to interview them for a film that was to be called Crossroads, which was allegedly a documentary on "the intersection of science and religion." They were subsequently surprised to learn that they were appearing in Expelled, which "exposes the widespread persecution of scientists and educators who are pursuing legitimate, opposing scientific views to the reigning orthodoxy," to quote from the film's press kit. When exactly did Crossroads become Expelled? The producers have said that the shift in the film's title and message occurred after the interviews with the scientists, as the accumulating evidence gradually persuaded them that ID believers were oppressed. Yet as blogger Wesley Elsberry discovered when he searched domain registrations, the producers registered the URL "expelledthemovie.com" on March 1, 2007—more than a month (and in some cases, several months) before the scientists were interviewed. The producers never registered the URL "crossroadsthemovie.com". Those facts raise doubt that Crossroads was still the working title for the movie when the scientists were interviewed. 4) The ID-sympathetic researcher whom the film paints as having lost his job at the Smithsonian Institution was never an employee there.
One section of Expelled relates the case of Richard Sternberg, who was a researcher at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History and editor of the journal Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. According to the film, after Sternberg approved the publication of a pro-ID paper by Stephen C. Meyer of the Discovery Institute, he lost his editorship, was demoted at the Smithsonian, was moved to a more remote office, and suffered other professional setbacks. This selective retelling of the Sternberg affair omits details that are awkward for the movie's case, however. Sternberg was never an employee of the Smithsonian: his term as a research associate always had a limited duration, and when it ended he was offered a new position as a research collaborator. As editor, Sternberg's decision to "peer-review" and approve Meyer's paper by himself was highly questionable on several grounds, which was why the scientific society that published the journal later repudiated it. Sternberg had always been planning to step down as the journal's editor—the issue in which he published the paper was already scheduled to be his last. ...[a related report's] appendix contains copies of e-mails and other documents in which Sternberg's superiors and others specifically argued against penalizing him for his ID views. (More detailed descriptions of the Sternberg case can be found on Ed Brayton's blog Dispatches from the Culture Wars and on Wikipedia.) 5) Science does not reject religious or "design-based" explanations because of dogmatic atheism.
Expelled frequently repeats that design-based explanations (not to mention religious ones) are "forbidden" by "big science." It never explains why, however. Evolution and the rest of "big science" are just described as having an atheistic preference. Actually, science avoids design explanations for natural phenomena out of logical necessity. The scientific method involves rigorously observing and experimenting on the material world. It accepts as evidence only what can be measured or otherwise empirically validated (a requirement called methodological naturalism). That requirement prevents scientific theories from becoming untestable and overcomplicated. 6) Many evolutionary biologists are religious and many religious people accept evolution.
... the film is wrong to imply that understanding of evolution inevitably or necessarily leads to a rejection of religious belief. Francisco Ayala of the University of California, Irvine, a leading neuroscientist who used to be a Dominican priest, continues to be a devout Catholic, as does the evolutionary biologist Ken Miller of Brown University. Thousands of other biologists across the U.S. who all know evolution to be true are also still religious. Moreover, billions of other people around the world simultaneously accept evolution and keep faith with their religion. The late Pope John Paul II said that evolution was compatible with Roman Catholicism as an explanation for mankind's physical origins. During Scientific American's post-screening conversation with Expelled associate producer Mark Mathis, we asked him why Ken Miller was not included in the film. Mathis explained that his presence would have "confused" viewers. But the reality is that showing Miller would have invalidated the film's major premise that evolutionary biologists all reject God. Grr. Just... grr. Believe what you will, but don't be so effing lazy as to not do your homework. And cheat.
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Just got back from a trip to Florida, which included a wonderful stop at Kennedy Space Center, so I'm really in the exploration groove. From BBC News:
The world's most powerful optical telescope has opened both of its eyes. Astronomers at the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona have released the first images taken using its two giant 8m diameter mirrors. [MORE]
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From the Los Angeles Times:
In the 1890s, a New York surgeon named William Coley tested a radical cancer treatment. He took a hypodermic needle teeming with bacteria and plunged it into the flesh of patients.
After suffering through weeks of chills and fevers, many showed significant regression of their tumors, but even Coley himself could not explain the phenomenon.
His experiments were sparked by the observation that certain cancer patients improved after contracting infections. One patient experienced regression in a tumor in her arm after developing Saint Anthony's fire, a streptococcus skin infection.
Doctors at the time considered Coley's bacterial mixtures to be more black magic than medicine, and with the advent of radiation therapy, the well-meaning doctor was soon consigned to the annals of quackery.
But today, some scientists think Coley had it right: Germs can teach our bodies how to fight back against tumors. Dr. John Timmerman, a cancer immunotherapy expert at UCLA's Jonsson Cancer Center, says this revolution has produced "the most exciting sets of compounds in cancer immunology."
These scientists have not yet proved their case. But new studies are revealing that certain cancers may be reduced by exposure to disease-causing bacteria and viruses, and pharmaceutical companies are testing anticancer treatments that capitalize on the concept by using bacterial elements to boost the body's natural immunity.
The studies also imply that our cleaner, infection-free lifestyles may be contributing to the rise in certain cancers over the last 50 years, scientists say, because they make the immune system weaker or less mature. Germs cause disease but may also fortify the body, a notion summed up in a 2006 report by a team of Canadian researchers as "whatever does not kill me makes me stronger."
So tell your kids to go play in the mud.
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You know, this is one of the reasons why I really love YouTube.
From the Deep Sea News blog:
Dr. Eric Vetter was in a submersible off the coast of Moloka'i when a 6-gill shark, at an estimated 17ft, swam within feet of the sub.
Off the hook, indeed.
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"...Robot Dance Video Evar!" I most certainly agree with BotJunkie. UPDATE: Video is still available here. This video was sponsored by WIRED after Keepon’s wildly successful (in Japan) music debut .... [ MORE]
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While catching up on Mind Hacks:
The Utne Reader has a shocking article on a near medical tragedy... George Farthing, an expatriate British man living in America, was diagnosed as clinically depressed, tanked up on antidepressants, and scheduled for a controversial shock therapy when doctors realized he wasn't depressed at all, he was just British! Farthing, a man whose characteristic pessimism and gloomy perspective were interpreted as serious clinical depression, was led on a nightmare journey through the American psychiatric system. Doctors described Farthing as suffering from pervasive negative anticipation... The doctors reported that the satisfaction he seemed to get from his pessimism was particularly pathological.
Of course, it would be churlish not to mention Whybrow and Gartner's theory that the personality of the American people reflects the fact that they have a greater genetic propensity for mania. Indeed, it would be.
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Courtesy of BBC News: The first pictures taken by the Messenger probe as it passed Mercury on Monday have started to arrive at Earth. They include images that show parts of the surface missed by the Mariner 10 spacecraft when it flew by the planet in the 1970s. The data began transmission to Earth on Tuesday.
Credit: NASA /Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington Of course, NASA's MESSENGER web site has the glorious close-up of Mercury's cratered surface. Just look. Next flyby will be in early October.
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From The Chronicle Review:
I for one am afraid that American culture's overemphasis on happiness at the expense of sadness might be dangerous, a wanton forgetting of an essential part of a full life. I further am concerned that to desire only happiness in a world undoubtedly tragic is to become inauthentic, to settle for unrealistic abstractions that ignore concrete situations. I am finally fearful of our society's efforts to expunge melancholia. Without the agitations of the soul, would all of our magnificently yearning towers topple? Would our heart-torn symphonies cease?
My sense is that most of us have been duped by the American craze for happiness. We might think that we're leading a truly honest existence, when we're really just behaving as predictably and artificially as robots, falling easily into well-worn "happy" behaviors, into the conventions of contentment. Deceived, we miss out on the great interplay of the living cosmos, its luminous gloom, its terrible beauty.
Melancholia, far from a mere disease or weakness of will, is an almost miraculous invitation to transcend the banal status quo and imagine the untapped possibilities for existence. Without melancholia, the earth would likely freeze over into a fixed state, as predictable as metal. Only with the help of constant sorrow can this dying world be changed, enlivened, pushed to the new.
[For example,] One would think that Keats's life would have fostered bitterness in him, but he remained generous in the face of his difficulties. He didn't flee to the usual 19th-century escapes: Christianity or opium, drink or dreaming. Though he unsurprisingly underwent pangs of serious melancholia (who wouldn't, faced with his disasters?), he nonetheless never fell into self-pity or self-indulgent sorrow. In fact, he consistently transformed his gloom, grown primarily from his experiences with death, into a vital source of beauty. Things are gorgeous, he often claimed, because they die. The porcelain rose is not as pretty as the one that decays. Melancholia over time's passing is the proper stance for beholding beauty. ...Most hide behind a smile because they are afraid of facing the world's complexity, its vagueness, its terrible beauties. ... Most of us habitually...try to lose ourselves in distraction and good cheer. We don inauthenticity as a mask, a disguise to protect us from the abyss.
This is part of how emotions become intelligence, and why I've noticed that the emotionally shallow or one-dimensional are absolute bores -- and also occasionally dim. They seem to require an inordinate amount of energy to deal with and...well, not surprisingly, the interaction is less than satisfying. Sigh. Yeah, I've got one of those in my life. Might as well admit it.
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...cos I know that's how you like it. So here come the winners of the Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest. Pity it takes so long before we students get to learn the cool stuff about math.
And for some lovely background music, consider Anthony Phillips's "Through the Black Hole/Pluto Garden" (I'll share more about that later). Yes, that Anthony Phillips. [See this on MOG]
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From David Pogue's latest column:
 This weekend, at a few minutes past 9 a.m. EST, “CBS News Sunday Morning” will broadcast my report on this year’s Solar Decathlon.
It’s a competition, now held every other year (this was the third Decathlon since 2002). It’s produced by the Department of Energy as a showcase for the latest high-tech solar homes—designed and built by college students. The universities’ engineering and architecture students begin working one or two years in advance to design a completely self-powered home. This year, there were 38 entries, mostly from the United States and Europe. ...From Germany, the University of Darmstadt’s amazing house was a glass cube wrapped on all sides by what looked like beautiful wooden shutters. But in fact, these were louvers covered with solar panels—computer-controlled to track the sun’s arc. The Germans’ house was filled with cool energy touches—like the oven whose floor descends from the bottom to present your food, lowering like an elevator. The rising heat stays in the oven, rather than pouring into the kitchen as it does when you open a traditional oven door. The sheetrock of this home’s walls was infused with paraffin (candle wax). Why? To absorb heat and liquefy during the day, and then release the heat and re-solidify at night. On the weekends, the lines to get into this house were an hour long. Maybe it’s no surprise; Germany is really into solar power. By German law, if you have solar panels, the power company must buy any excess electricity you generate. As a result, families routinely pocket a handy $100 or $150 a month—from the local utility. There’s a gold rush for roof space, and solar technology is a red-hot market. It’s brilliant.
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...we have an appendix [AP/Yahoo! News].
And whatta name: Journal of Theoretical Biology. Wonder what else is theoretical about biology.
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...orange juice tastes like crap after you brush. Thank you, WIRED.
 Sodium Lauryl Sulfate
This is the detergent part of the toothpaste, the stuff that makes most of the lather when you brush (it shows up in shampoo for the same reason). It has a strange side effect, though: It desensitizes the taste buds that register sweetness. That's why orange juice tastes so awful right after you brush your teeth — your tongue is picking up only the sour and bitter flavors. As the amount in your mouth diminishes after brushing, your taste buds return to normal.
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From PhysOrg:
...scientists at Northwestern University have discovered why brain insulin signaling -- crucial for memory formation -- would stop working in Alzheimer’s disease. They have shown that a toxic protein found in the brains of individuals with Alzheimer’s removes insulin receptors from nerve cells, rendering those neurons insulin resistant. (The protein, known to attack memory-forming synapses, is called an ADDL for “amyloid ß-derived diffusible ligand.”)
With other research showing that levels of brain insulin and its related receptors are lower in individuals with Alzheimer’s disease, the Northwestern study sheds light on the emerging idea of Alzheimer’s being a “type 3” diabetes.
The new findings, published online by the FASEB Journal, could help researchers determine which aspects of existing drugs now used to treat diabetic patients may protect neurons from ADDLs and improve insulin signaling in individuals with Alzheimer’s. (The FASEB Journal is a publication of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.)
In the brain, insulin and insulin receptors are vital to learning and memory. When insulin binds to a receptor at a synapse, it turns on a mechanism necessary for nerve cells to survive and memories to form. That Alzheimer’s disease may in part be caused by insulin resistance in the brain has scientists asking how that process gets initiated.
...They discovered the toxic protein causes a rapid and significant loss of insulin receptors from the surface of neurons specifically on dendrites to which ADDLs are bound. ADDL binding clearly damages the trafficking of the insulin receptors, preventing them from getting to the synapses. The researchers measured the neuronal response to insulin and found that it was greatly inhibited by ADDLs.
Whoa. Wonder what the epidemiologists would say.
(See also: forum discussion. Ignore the pharmaceutical conspiracy theorist. Yawn.)
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From WFMU's Beware of the Blog:
 The Meadowlands was once a 21,000-acre glacial lake, home to great woolly mammoths, much later followed by Lenape Native Americans and eventually Dutch settlers. The area seriously tanked, post World War II, when industrial debris initiated the process of filling in/destroying the salt marshes. The building of highways I-95 and I-80, along with mountains of illegal dumping gave the Meadowlands the stench inducing image made concrete in Woody Allen's Broadway Danny Rose, and countless NYPD tales of high profile bodies gone missing. Today the water is significantly cleaner than it was in the 1970's, in part due to grass roots organizations like Hackensack Riverkeeper, and their legal efforts to make polluters accountable for the destruction. Unfortunately many of the toxic chemicals have not been permanently eradicated, merely temporarily plowed over until money can be found to do more lasting and costly clean-ups. But don't tell that to the nearly 300 bird species that have been seen enjoying the floating views of NYC, framed by fiddler crabs, marsh grasses, and long forgotten industrial sites.
Too late to give the area props by taking an "eco-cruise," but walking tours and kayak/canoe rentals are still available. Tick, tick, tick.
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nickiplum's journal
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