purepedantry | August 20, 2006Babies smarter than average high school student:
In a discovery that could shed light on the development of the human brain, University of Oregon researchers determined that infants as young as six months old can recognize simple arithmetic errors.
The researchers used puppets to portray simple addition problems. For example, in order to illustrate the incorrect equation 1 + 1 = 1, researchers showed infants one puppet, then added a second. A board was then raised to block the infant's view of both puppets, and one was removed. When the board was lowered, only a single puppet remained.
To…
purepedantry | August 20, 2006I run down the Hudson a lot, and I am utterly amazed by people who fish there. It just seems like a unpleasant place to fish. But I had no idea that people were actually eating what they caught:
For years, state health officials have warned that because of mercury and PCB contamination, women of childbearing age and children under 15 should not eat any fish from the Hudson River, and other people should do so only sparingly. Studies and surveys have nonetheless found that many people are either unaware of those warnings or, like Mr. Tejada, simply ignore them.
But scientists are finding…
purepedantry | August 20, 2006The Clocky Alarm Clock is an alarm clock designed to flee the scene when it wakes you up so that you have to go search for it to turn it off:
Clocky (patent pending) is an alarm clock that runs away and hides if you don't get out of bed on time. The alarm sounds, you press the snooze, and Clocky will roll off of the bedside table, jump to the floor, and wheel away, bumping mindlessly into objects until he finds a spot to rest. When the alarm sounds again, you must awaken to search for him. Clocky will find new spots everyday, kind of like a hide-and-seek game.
Clocky alarm clocks were…
purepedantry | August 20, 2006Synapse #5 is up at Retrospectacle. The next Synapse is going to be hosted at The Mouse Trap on September 3rd. Submission info here.
purepedantry | August 20, 2006I found this article interesting, if for no other reason than people seem to be misunderstanding what it says and what it does not say.
The article by Leigh and Jencks for the Kennedy School of Government is entitled "Inequality and Mortality: Long-Run Evidence from a Panel of Countries." It compares the inequalities of income distribution in countries around the world with measures of health. The measure they use for income inequality is the percentage of income recieved by the top 10% of the income distribution. The measures of health that they use are infant mortality and life…
purepedantry | August 18, 2006Quotes of the Day from Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams:
"I know that astrology isn't a science,' said Gail. "Of course it isn't. It's just an arbitrary set of rules like chess or tennis or, what's that strange thing you British play?'
"Er, cricket? Self-loathing?"
"Parliamentary democracy. The rules just kind of got there. They don't make any kind of sense except in terms of themselves. But when you start to exercise those rules, all sorts of processes start to happen and you start to find out all sorts of stuff about people. In astrology the rules happen to be about stars and planets, but…
purepedantry | August 18, 2006Is Arabic language instruction biased? Frank Salameh, writing in RCP, says yes (but not in the way that you would think):
At Middlebury College's Arabic Summer School, where I taught Arabic in 2004, students were exposed to more than intensive language instruction. Inside the classroom and across campus, administrators and language teachers adhered to a restrictive Arab-nationalist view of what is generically referred to as the "Arab world." In practice, this meant that the Middle East was presented as a mono-cultural, exclusively Arab region. The time-honored presence and deep-rooted…
purepedantry | August 17, 2006Interesting reading for today:
The Neurocritic has a very good article on cognitive effects of socio-economic status. There are three important points: 1) the effects are not genetic, 2) there are a variety of different cognitive consequences, and 3) the reality is more complicated than previously suggested. Amen to that.
Mind Hacks links to synaptic fashion -- scarves and bowties illustrating synaptic contacts. I want one.
The Neurophilosopher discusses why starving song birds don't sing as well. He also has a good piece on multipotent neural progenitors.
purepedantry | August 17, 2006Lawrence Krauss has this essay in the NYT where he argues against irrational exuberance about the recent school board elections in Kansas and the ouster of some Creationist school board members. Money quote:
I have recently been criticized by some for strenuously objecting in print to what I believe are scientifically inappropriate attempts by some scientists to discredit the religious faith of others. However, the age of the earth, and the universe, is no more a matter of religious faith than is the question of whether or not the earth is flat.
It is a matter of overwhelming scientific…
purepedantry | August 17, 2006LTP activated genes are clustered on chromosomes -- or so says some work by Park et al in JBC.
LTP -- or long-term potentiation -- is a process by which synaptic strength -- the ability of one neuron to talk to the next neuron -- is increased by activity. It involves the combination of several processes with different time courses, but some of the best characterized aspects of LTP are genes who transcription is activated by a protein called CREB. CREB is activated during LTP, and CREB activated genes are go on to consolidate LTP at the activated synapse.
There are temporally distinguished…
purepedantry | August 17, 2006This is rather clever. Houle et al at Case Western show in the Journal of Neuroscience that you can use a bacterial enzyme called chondroitinase to degrade scars in spinal cord lesions and enable regeneration of axons.
Just for background, there is some interesting neurobiology when it comes to spinal cord regeneration. If you sever peripheral nerve axons and then reconnect it, the axons will regrow to find their old targets leading to a functional restoration. However, something different happens in the central nervous system (CNS). Instead of regrowing, the axons just stop.
For many…
purepedantry | August 17, 2006I haven't been posting much because I am defending my Quals today.
81 slides...I am so the Power Point God.
UPDATE: Triumph! I have passed. One more hurdle between me and occupational recognition overcome. And, yes, 81 slides was a bit long. It was supposed to go 2 hous with questions, but I went about 20 minutes over. They were joking that I was trying to "pass by attrition."
purepedantry | August 16, 2006How fantastic is this:
A 25-million-year-old whale fossil from southeastern Australia has revealed a bizarre early type of 'baleen' whale. The creature was an ancient cousin of our modern blue whales and humpbacks, but it was hardly a gentle giant of the sea. Instead it was small and predatory, with enormous eyes and teeth.
Enormous blue whales and humpbacks fall into the category of baleen whales (Mysticeti), which have no teeth, feeding instead by filtering out krill and plankton from huge gulps of sea water. For filters, the whales use large whalebone or 'baleen' plates arranged in comb-…
purepedantry | August 14, 2006Every time I think the human species has fully exploited all the ways one species can suck donkey balls -- found just every reason for all the other species be like "Yeah, we're not with them." -- we find newer, better ways. Such as, for instance, bark poaching:
Slippery elm trees here are falling victim to thieves who tear off their bark to sell in the burgeoning herbal-remedy market.
The gummy lining of the slippery elm's bark has long been used in North America, and especially in Appalachia, as a soothing agent for coughs, gastrointestinal ailments and skin irritations. But now, slippery…
purepedantry | August 14, 2006Scientists meet in Prague to discuss whether Pluto is a planet:
Nearly 2,500 astronomers from 75 countries gathered in Prague Monday to come up with a universal definition of what qualifies as a planet and possibly decide whether Pluto should keep its planet status.
For decades, the solar system has consisted of nine planets, even as scientists debated whether Pluto really belonged. Then the recent discovery of an object larger and farther away than Pluto threatened to throw this slice of the cosmos into chaos.
Among the possibilities at the 12-day meeting of the International Astronomical…
purepedantry | August 10, 2006Keeping to my week long theme of gender differences in cognition (here and here), here is an article by Diane Halpern in eSkeptic. It not only summarizes a lot of what is known about gender differences (even though it is reprinted from 1993) but also goes into confounding factors like prenatal hormones, sexual preference and most importantly handedness -- all of which affect verbal and mathematical ability. I found this passage about the confounds of handedness and homosexuality particularly interesting:
The idea that the brain is a sex-typed organ has generated a great deal of interest.…
purepedantry | August 10, 2006Watching the news coverage today, I found myself wondering what type of explosive the terrorists were trying to use on the UK planes. I did a web search, and many news services are speculating that the chemical in question could be one called Triacetone Triperoxide.
Shown above triacetone triperoxide (also called acetone peroxide, peroxyacetone, TATP, or TCAP) is an unstable white powder that is formed from the reaction of hydrogen peroxide and acetone with a strong acid catalyst. From Wikipedia:
Also known as "peroxyacetone", acetone peroxide most commonly refers to the cyclic trimer…
purepedantry | August 10, 2006...it is one of my favorites.
Snow
The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.
World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.
And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes -
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands -
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge…
purepedantry | August 10, 2006Hi all,
Blogging is going to be sporadic til Monday. I am in transit to see the Fam until then.
(Don't even get me started on the pooch screw that was security at JFK this morning. Have you ever seen a woman throw a tantrum because she had to throw out her lotion? I have.)
Have a good weekend. Stay safe. Don't kill anyone because of your lotion.
Jake