retrospectacle | August 8, 2007If I'm on a date (which believe me, doesn't happen often) I can usually tell how its going by how, and how much, my date is smiling. Is the smile genuine or forced? Polite or flirty? Or worse yet, not smiling at all??
Either way, a lot of emotional content can be found in a person's smile. But wait, is smiling universal? What I mean is, is the emotional content constant across different cultures?
There isn't much to smile about when you go to the Department of Motor Vehicles, but you're still asked to when you get your picture taken for your driver's license. Most people comply. However I…
retrospectacle | August 6, 2007If you aren't personally affected by the skin condition rosacea, you might not even know what it is. However, it affects over 45 million people worldwide, mostly fair-skinned people of European descent. At first, it is characterized by blotchy flushing on the face/neck regions, but eventually causes semi-permanent redness, dialation of blood vessels in the face, itchy eyes, burning sensations, and bumps (see below). Obviously, not pleasant.
The reason underlying this condition has only just recently been pinpointed by Richard Gallo's group, published this week in Nature Medicine. In a…
retrospectacle | August 4, 2007As evidenced by the Tour de France's continuing troubles with chemical and blood doping, many professional athletes (but by no means all) are willing to take drastic measures to get an "edge." Blood doping involves strengthening a person's endurance by a blood transfusion. The extra red blood cells increase the recipient's ability to transport oxygen to tissues temporarily, but also expose the athlete to serious cardiovascular risks. Doping with drugs and hormones is also widely publicized, with the some of the usual suspects being artificial testosterone, human growth hormone, modafinil, and…
retrospectacle | August 2, 2007How about some Nintendo underwear?
Continued below the fold....
Think Geek has HttPanties
Trouble getting into those panties?
Keyboard pants?
These have the structure of estrogen..
retrospectacle | August 2, 2007 Rebecca O'Connor, graduate student at the University of California- Riverside, knows why parrots screech and bite and it has a lot more to do with human behavior than the bird's. She's written a book incorporating animal-training techniques, detailing how to improve the manners of an ill-mannered bird by rewarding good behavior while keeping a handle on your own emotions.
Part of an emerging group of behaviorists who reject old ideas of punishing and dominating birds, O'Connor is gaining national attention with her book, "A Parrot for Life: Raising and Training the Perfect Parrot Companion…
retrospectacle | August 1, 2007The current issue of Nature has a fascinating study regarding how implanted electrodes helped a minimally-conscious man to regain many cognitive functions lost during a traumatic injury. Patients in a minimally-conscious state only very low and sporadic levels of awareness, and have little chance for recovery past the initial 12 months post-injury.
But a 38-year old man who had been in such a state for over 6 years received deep brain stimulation via electrodes implanted near the central thalamus (see picture below), which is an area involved in relaying sensory signals. During stimulation…
retrospectacle | August 1, 2007There's an interesting article up at CNN today regarding families who have "lost" loved ones in mental institutions over the years. One in particular is making a movie about the little sister he thought was gone.
One day in 1957, when Jeff Daly was 6 years old, his little sister, Molly, disappeared.
Jeff Daly's efforts to find his sister, Molly, led to a new Oregon law about records for institutions for the disabled.
Every night at dinner, he would ask his parents the same question, "Where's Molly?"
Every night, he says, he received the same answer: "Stop asking about Molly."
Decades…
retrospectacle | July 31, 2007Its been a while since I updated the Ye Olde Blogroll, and since I've gotten a few email requests for links (good ones, not links to essay writing services) I thought I'd declare open season on links. I'll be updating this weekend, so if you want me to check out your site, leave it in the comments. I can't promise I'll link you but I will take a look. The 10 most interesting new blogs get mentioned in a post of their own!
retrospectacle | July 31, 2007PhDs are useful for all kinds of things. Some people become faculty, others go into industry, and some decide to market ridiculously nerdtastic neurologically-based gifts via the internet. Sure, the latter kind may be rare, but a good idea is still a good idea. Welcome to Neuromart, online purveyors of parapanalia related to my favorite organ (the brain, of course!).
From brain models (you always wanted one of your very own, didn't you?) to brain candy (the sweet stuff, not the Kids in the Hall movie), Neuromart is sure to keep the dopamine flowing.
retrospectacle | July 28, 2007If you've walked into any large bookstore lately and browsed the "Science" section, you may have been appalled by what passes as science literature these days. In addition to being minuscule (and often sandwiched between the 'Occult' and 'Self-Help' sections), it is often peppered with 'mislabeled' books. These books are the subject of an interesting blog project called Biologists Helping Bookstores. In a nutshell, the aim is to re-shelve religion and philosophy books to the correct part of the store--and out of the science section. Obviously, some people have a lot of time of their hands.…
retrospectacle | July 27, 2007 Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), currently the most common childhood-onset behavioral disorder, is nothing if not controversial. Nearly every aspect of ADHD from diagnosis to prevalence to medication, and even its mere existence, is disputed by at least one 'concerned' group. And honestly, who could blame parents for being hesitant to medicate their young children, especially since medications come with risks? However, ADHD is a very real (and prevalent) disorder which has discrete neurochemical and, as more and more research is suggesting, genetic causes. It has been linked…
retrospectacle | July 25, 2007Everyone has painful or unpleasant memories in their past, and some of us would welcome the chance to forget them forever. Some debilitating disorders, like post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), prey on these memories in ways that are often difficult-to-treat. According to some recent research, a drug taken shortly after a traumatic event, or during the recall of traumatic memories, may act to 'erase' them from the brain. Does it work, and could it be a useful treatment? What about the potential for abuse ("de-briefing" comes to mind)?
One drug, propranolol, is currently used to treat…
retrospectacle | July 24, 2007Yesterday some Big News hit the internet: Diet Sodas Linked With Health Risks (this link courtesy of Reuters Health). Now according to the press release, diet sodas are linked with increased risk for heart disease and diabetes; specifically that adults who drank one or more sodas a day had a 50% increased risk of 'metabolic syndrome.' This syndrome is characterized by excess fat around the waist, high 'bad' cholesterol and low 'good' cholesterol, and high blood pressure among other things. Furthermore, this syndrome places a person at risk for heart disease and diabetes.
The study, published…
retrospectacle | July 21, 2007John of Stranger Fruit tagged me in this meme, how could I resist?
Your Score
: SurpriseAdoption Cat
20% Affectionate, 57% Excitable, 20% Hungry
Calloused. Heartless. Exuberant. You carry the heavy burden of informing children that they are adopted by jumping out of their birthday cake. A difficult task, but somebody must break the news to children on their only day of happiness.To see all possible results, checka dis.
Link: The Which Lolcat Are You? Test written by GumOtaku on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test
I tag everyone!
retrospectacle | July 20, 2007I attended a seminar on gene therapy not long ago, and while I never talked much about it at the time, something stuck in my mind as someone interested in the field: is gene therapy a soft form of eugenics? Gene therapy, as referred to by most medical researchers or ethicists would likely be construed as a good thing, a positive thing meant to heal and help a person's suffering. Eugenics, on the other hand, is widely maligned as negative--to artificially produce or design offspring which fit certain criteria. If gene therapy *could* be construed as eugenics, and perhaps it can't, should we…
retrospectacle | July 19, 2007 On my way over to a friend's house last night, an unusual thing happened: a firefly which was in the process of lighting up got squashed against my windshield at that exact moment. While there wasn't much resembling an insect left, smeared across the glass was a streak of glowing green goo which continued to fluoresce for 5 or 6 seconds before fading into black. In fact, in the last few moments the guts glowed brighter than the bug did.
Which got me thinking about 2 things. One, how do fireflies bioluminesce? And two, does science use this glowing protein in a similar way as GFP (green…
retrospectacle | July 18, 2007As you all know, I've been infected with the LOLVirus, symptoms manifesting as LOLParrots. The first three are a tribute to the LOLRus, who has fought nobly for his stolen bucket. Amazingly, across phyla, another poor creature feels his pain.
retrospectacle | July 17, 2007I'm sure I'm not the only Sopranos fan around these parts, and I'm sure I'm not the only person to be a bit baffled by the last episode. It seemed like all lead up and no payoff. True, Tony's big rival and head of the New York mob was, er, dispatched of, but what really seemed resolved in the lives of the core characters?
The Sopranos main theme to me really seemed to be one of loss and death. By the last episode, many characters we had come to love over the years were physically dead (Tony's mom, Christopher, Adriana, Bobby, Sil (mortally wounded?), and many more could be considered…
retrospectacle | July 17, 2007[This is part of a series I'm doing here on Retrospectacle called 'Science Vault.' Pretty much I'm just going to dig back into the forgotten and moldering annuls of scientific publications to find weird and interesting studies that very likely would never be published or done today (and perhaps never should have.) I'll probably try to do it once a week (and if you have suggestions, please do email me with them.)]
Some say that American science is defined by its innovation and creativity, and who better embodies that than Alexander Graham Bell? Inventor of the telephone (strike that, first…