purepedantry | June 5, 2007How the brain codes numbers is a challenging problem. We know that certain parts of the brain must code numbers because they are involved in numerical calculation. Some of them -- such as the prefrontal cortex (PFC) -- are also involved in the calculation of reward, so it would be good if we knew how numerical rewards were encoded.
Neider and Merten address this issue of neural encoding of numbers in a recent paper in the Journal of Neuorscience.
In the paper, they trained monkeys to respond to different numbers of cues in a delayed response task while they were recording from their…
purepedantry | June 5, 2007Michael Blim wrote a column at 3 Quarks Daily about when his doctor decided to drop him in a move to a boutique medicine practice. For those of you who don't know what that is, it is a family medicine practice where the physician has a limited number of patients who pay an annual fee in addition to whatever treatment costs they might incur for that year. The rationale from the patients point of view is that you are getting more access to your doctor. The rationale for the doctor is that you get to limit your patient load -- and the insanity that comes with an unlimited patient load -- and…
purepedantry | June 4, 2007Sarah Silverman slams Paris Hilton at the MTV Movie Awards. Too bad Paris was in the audience at the time.
Video below the fold:
Hat-tip: WWTDD.
purepedantry | June 4, 2007Thorpe and colleagues, publishing in the journal Science, have performed a study of orangutan movement that is turning the traditional view of the evolution of walking on its head.
The traditional view is that walking upright on the ground -- terrestrial bipedalism -- was preceded by a phase of knuckle walking on the ground. It was speculated that this phase would closely resemble how we see modern gorillas walking on the ground today.
However, Thorpe and colleagues, by observing orangutans moving through trees, are arguing that there was another way that terrestrial bipedalism could have…
purepedantry | June 4, 2007God, what is with me today and women's health? You would think I had girls on the brain.
I happened across this the other day, and it is simply the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. They are now selling chewable mint-flavored birth control.
Perhaps, the women out there can chime in on this, but is there any reason you would want your birth control to be chewable? Would you want your birth control to in any way resemble Flintstones vitamins?
It's kind of stupid too because they are advertising this for the woman on the go, but if you chew it you have to drink a glass of water right…
purepedantry | June 4, 2007This falls into the rather broad category of things I will post but about which I will not comment. This is in part because I think the results are relatively self-explanatory. Maybe it is because I am a big prude. But mostly it is just because I am not touching this. No way...not with a ten-foot pole... (Just visualize me trying to decide whether I should put a photo of cleavage in this post.)
Anyway, here is your brief synopsis of breast-related news:
ABC details an interview with Elisabeth Squires, author of Boobs: A Guide to Your Girls, wherein she discusses appropriate cleavage for…
purepedantry | May 30, 2007Researchers have discovered cows with genes that allow them to make skim milk:
Herds of cows producing skimmed milk could soon be roaming our pastures, reports Cath O'Driscoll in Chemistry & Industry, the magazine of the SCI. Scientists in New Zealand have discovered that some cows have genes that give them a natural ability to produce skimmed milk and plan to use this information to breed herds of milkers producing only skimmed milk.
The researchers also plan to breed commercial herds producing milk with the unique characteristics required to make a butter that is spreadable straight…
purepedantry | May 30, 2007Research in army ants has shown that they will plug holes in the road using an interesting technique:
Certain army ants in the rainforests of Central and South America conduct spectacular predatory raids containing up to 200,000 foraging ants. Remarkably, some ants use their bodies to plug potholes in the trail leading back to the nest, making a flatter surface so that prey can be delivered to the developing young at maximum speed.
The raid always remains connected to the nest by a trail of forager traffic, along which prey-laden foragers run back to run back to the nest. This trail can be…
purepedantry | May 30, 2007Memory for computers is getting pretty large, but it is still based on basically the same system that it was several years ago. They have just gotten better a fabricating them.
It is an interesting question to ask whether we could store memories in alternative substrates such as biological ones. The idea is an intriguing one, particularly when we are talking about neurons, because while the capacity of biological networks isn't infinite, it is pretty damn large. Just think of the system for long-term memories in your brain. The fact that you can remember your first grade teachers name…
purepedantry | May 29, 2007The NYTimes has an excellent article about the controversy concerning hurricanes and global warming:
Perhaps the best known proponent of the idea that warming and hurricanes may be connected is Kerry A. Emanuel, an atmospheric scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His conclusion that the total power released in Atlantic and western Pacific hurricanes had increased perhaps by half in recent decades, reported in 2005 in the journal Nature, is one of the most discussed ideas in the debate.
He is not alone. Last year, researchers led by Carlos D. Hoyos of the Georgia Institute…
purepedantry | May 29, 2007Ilya Somin from the Volokh Conspiracy has this post on a resurgent paternalism -- using as its justification new findings from behavioral economics:
"Libertarian Paternalism" is all the rage in law and economics circles these days. To slightly oversimplify, libertarian paternalists claim that people systematically make mistakes as a result of cognitive errors and biases. Afterwards, they end up with outcomes that they themselves consider inferior to at least some of the alternatives they could have gotten by making a different decision in the first place. As a result, third party intervention…
purepedantry | May 23, 2007The latest issue of Science magazine (May 18) has several reviews devoted to the coming of age of behavioral neuroscience. However, one by Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg caught my eye. The review is entitled "Childhood Origins of Adult Resistance to Science," and their core argument is that resistance to science in adulthood is the result of persistence of childhood traits. Ouch. Provocative from the very first.
Let's go into what they actually said before I say what I think about it.
The authors begin by listing the myriad litany of unsupported things that people believe: ESP,…
purepedantry | May 21, 2007Daniel Lazare, writing in the Nation, has an interesting article about differences of opinion even among atheists:
This is the problem, more or less, confronting today's reinvigorated atheist movement. For a long time, religion had been doing quite nicely as a kind of minor entertainment. Christmas and Easter were quite unthinkable without it, not to mention Hanukkah and Passover. But then certain enthusiasts took things too far by crashing airliners into office towers in the name of Allah, launching a global crusade to rid the world of evil and declaring the jury still out on Darwinian…
purepedantry | May 18, 2007A new journal for case reports only, The Journal of Medical Case Reports, has spawned an discussion at The Scientist about whether we should even have case reports in journals:
Does the medical literature need more case studies? A new journal is betting it does, even as editors at other journals say the answer is no.
Historically, case reports have proven extremely valuable to clinicians faced with diseases they knew little about. But in an age where countries spend more on research than ever before investigating both rare and common diseases, some experts argue that the obscure nature of…
purepedantry | May 17, 2007The NYTimes has an interesting article on the increasing amount people are willing to pay for donor eggs:
A survey published this month in the journal Fertility and Sterility, "What Is Happening to the Price of Eggs?" found that the national average compensation for donors was $4,217. At least one center told the authors of the paper that it paid $15,000. Many centers did not respond.
Though laws prohibit the sale of transplant organs, sperm donors have always received small payments, and prospective parents in the United States are allowed to compensate women for their far greater…
purepedantry | May 17, 2007Not good news for people who think low carbs is the answer. A recently published study has shown an increase in mortality associated with low-carb/high-protein diets.
Studies looking at the comparative effectiveness of different diets have shown that basically all diets are equivalent. (Equivalently bad, that is. All the diets tested produced moderate declines in weight, but adherence was low.) However, no real studies have examined what the mortality benefits or hazards might be associated with the low-carb/high-protein diets that are currently de rigeur.
Trichopoulou et al.,…
purepedantry | May 17, 2007Neat.
One of the moons of Saturn, Enceladus, has cracks and eruptions that couldn't be explained by heat. (It is much too small to have volcanic actiivty.) They think that the cracks might be caused by tidal forces from Saturn's gravity:
In 2005, the Cassini spacecraft flew by Enceladus and saw plumes of material erupting from the south pole of Enceladus. Scientists were surprised to see this because eruptions are powered by heat from an object's interior. Enceladus is tiny compared to most moons, only about 500 kilometers (310 miles) in diameter, so it should have lost its interior heat…
purepedantry | May 16, 2007Whoa. Check out the Senate Judiciary Committee testimony by Former Justice Department Deputy James Comey. Andy Card and Alberto Gonzales accosted John Ashcroft in his ICU bed to get him to change his mind the legality of the Administration's dosmestic surveillance program:
The room was dark. Mrs. Ashcroft was standing by the bed. Comey said that Ashcroft, in his sixth day in intensive care, was not in good shape. He was unfocused, disoriented.
"And it was only a matter of minutes that the door opened and in walked Mr. Gonzales, carrying an envelope, and Mr. Card," Comey said. "They came…
purepedantry | May 16, 2007If my job was to debunk poorly justified herbal remedies, I would eat well for life.
Here is the newest one: stem cell enhancers.
As covered in the Scientist:
A California company is marketing the latest in dietary supplements, an extract from algae they claim will boost the number of circulating stem cells, easing disease and discomfort. Consumers have already spent millions on the "stem cell enhancer," but some stem cell researchers remain unconvinced the product even works -- and warn that the "enhancer" may trigger other problems, including cancer.
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According to STEMTech HealthSciences…