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Half-brain micro-napping

Every autumn, millions of songbirds embark upon long distance southerly migrations to warmer climes. Some species migrate during the day, but the majority - including sparrows, thrushes and warblers - do so at night, leaving their daytime habitats just after dusk and spending the next 8-10 hours on the wing. Nocturnal migration has several benefits. Cooler temperatures reduce the risk of overheating; reduced turbulence allows for a smooth flight with minimal energy expenditure; and the cover of night provides good protection from predators. These fly-by-night migratory species lose…

The Missing News of the Missing Methane

Here's a story that should be getting lots of press but apparently isn't: a new study indicates that plants don't release lots of methane gas. You may perhaps recall a lot of attention paid to methane from plants back in January 2006. A team of scientists (mostly from the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics)reported in Nature that they had found evidence that plants release huge amounts of the gas--perhaps accounting for ten to thirty percent of all the methane found in the atmosphere. The result was big news for several reasons. It was a surprise just in terms of basic biology--…

Parasites as Neuropharmacologists

Reports are coming out this morning on a new study on one of the Loom's favorite organisms: Toxoplasma gondii, the single-celled parasite that lives in roughly half of all people on Earth and has the ability to alter the behavior of its host. I reported on the research last June in the New York Times, when the Stanford researchers reported their results at a scientific conference. It's nice to finally get the results on paper, though. The study is a fine example of an underappreciated part of science: replication. In 2000 British researchers carried out a study in which they put healthy and…

Book Review: The Black Cloud

I once said that 2007 on Universe would include many new features, one being an occasional review of a work of science fiction. Hello! The Black Cloud is a 1957 science-fiction novel written by British astronomer Fred Hoyle. Like the novels of Carl Sagan, and, often, Arthur C. Clarke, it's something of an extrapolation of the author's deeply-held scientific conceptions. Because it was written by a scientist, further, it's almost overwhelmingly dry at times; the narrative often gives way entirely to pages full of mathematical formulae, diagrams, and lengthy expository footnotes. The…

Placebo effect stronger if you pay more

With so much written here lately about placebos and drug effectiveness, I would not want to leave out this remarkable study: Placebo effect is stronger, apparently, if you pay more for the placebo. This is a fascinating study described in a letter to the Journal of the American Medical Association. A crudely shortened version: Some researchers at MIT (none of them Bill Murray, as far as I can tell) gave light shocks to volunteers, then gave them some placebos that were costly and some that were cheap. The costly ones worked better. It sounds like a bit of a stunt, but as Respectful…

Radio Stories and a Web Resource

These may be of interest to readers of this blog: A new web resource, that's really a catalog of many resources: [Ruta Sevo has] posted about 100 recommended resources on women in science and engineering, organized into small chunks, calling it "10 x 10 List." When you use Google to find things, or a large database, you have to decide, "Is it any good?" These are short lists of selected resources for people who are entering the field. There is much more out there, of course. And the WAMC Radio Series on the Role of Women in Science and Engineering is now available online. The program is…

Twenty Years Of Sexual Harassment (and other news)

Science policy, 20 years of sexual harassment, French women students as prostitutes: a round-up of stuff from the Chronicle: Dan Greenburg of Brainstorm complains that the U.S. has no national science policy. Some commenters say "that's a good thing". Over at Chronicle Careers, Julie Vick and Jennifer Furlong talk about how to write good letters of recommendation. They include this advice: The dean also talked about an issue that merits more discussion in academe: the difference in recommendation letters written for men and women. He suggested that people writing reference letters read…

How optimistic should you feel about having your first baby?

Like most parents, Greta and I were very excited about having our first baby (Greta, I imagine, might be somewhat less enthusiastic about me putting this vintage photo of her online...). We weren't naive, though -- we had heard from friends and family about the sleepless nights, the juggling of jobs and child care, the constant requirements for feeding, and the endless stacks of diapers. We knew it wouldn't be an easy task, but we felt we were up to it, and we were overjoyed to be having a child. But at what point does this optimism become a burden? If you're unrealistically hopeful about the…

Anti-vaccine contortions: They never end

Let's review. Once upon a time, according to anti-vaccine zealots, the MMR vaccine caused autism. Soon after that, the explanation morphed. No, it wasn't so much the MMR that caused autism; rather, it was the mercury in the thimerosal preservative that used to be in several childhood vaccines in the U.S. until the end of 2001. Then, as evidence accumulated exonerating mercury in vaccines as a cause of autism, it became the "toxins." (Antifreeze, formaldehyde, and human fetal parts, oh my!) Finally, it became "too many too soon." And the anti-vaccine movement rested, because its latest excuse…

The Conversation on climate change continues

The series of articles on climate change in The Conversation continues: Mike Sandiford: Our effect on the earth is real: how we're geo-engineering the planet: In Australia natural erosion removes about 100 million tonnes of sediment each year. With our annual exports of coal and iron ore now at about 600 million tonnes, we have increased the geological erosion rate of the continent by many factors. ... Our best estimates place human industrial emissions of sulfur dioxide and CO₂ at five and 100 times natural volcanic emissions, respectively. ... The rate heat is released from the earth - a…

Chemical Trespass Redux

So I if walked over to your house and dumped something over your fence, that's probably trespassing, unless that something happened to be a box of Krispy Kreme, then it's just tasty. If it's grass clippings, you'd be pissed off; if it's an industrial chemical, you might sue. If I came over with said chemical and spoon-fed it to your newborn, I'm pretty sure I'd be looking at a 12/12 bid in the joint. Which leads me to a paper in Environmental Health Perspectives that is a follow up to a paper published on-line in the American Chemical Society journal, Environmental Science & Technology by…

Minnesota Creation Science Fair

Scale Model of a section of the Ark by Russ McGlenn I blew it off again this year: I just don't have a strong enough stomach for it. Every year, the Twin Cities Creation Science Association sponsors a science fair, and I tell myself I ought to go see it, but I know what to expect, and I just can't bring myself to see a bunch of kids getting intellectually abused. It's pretty much like any other science fair, which means that 90% of it is utter dreck that kids have done because it was required of them, and 10% is real enthusiasm and an honest appreciation of good but simple science. The TCCSA…

Profile: Dryad

We have a guestblogger today! At my request, Peggy Schaeffer kindly sent me the following introduction to Dryad, which I reproduce as I received it (save for minor formatting details). I will happily pass any questions in the comments on to Peggy for response. ---- Dryad is a repository for data underlying scientific publications, with an initial focus on evolution, ecology, and related fields. It's not an institutional repository, or one focused on only a single type of data -- it's designed for the multitudes of data underlying published articles that would otherwise be scattered…

Antivaccinationists promote a bogus internet "survey." Hilarity ensues as it's retracted.

I don’t have many “rules” per se about blogging, but one informal rule that I do live by is that I never blog about a study if all I can access is the abstract. In general, I insist on having the complete study before I will blog it, because to me the abstract isn’t enough. Basically, if I’m going to blog a study, I generally want to do it right and be able to read the whole paper, because that’s the only way to properly analyze a paper. I find this rule particularly important when analyzing the latest bit of antivaccine pseudoscience, especially because most antivaccine activists don’t go…

Swine flu: what you don't know, hurts us all

The White House held a briefing this afternoon with the Secretary of Homeland Security, Acting Director of CDC and Nat'l Security adviser to the President in attendance. If you have been following this you wouldn't have learned much, but the overall tone was one of serious concern but steady confidence. It was good security theater, and I say that in a good way. Information was divulged (judging from some of the press questions there was no danger over estimating the knowledge of the audience) and a sensible plan described. There are now officially 20 confirmed cases in the US in five states…

Growing gap between wages, rents means healthy housing is increasingly out of reach

by Kim Krisberg In California, a minimum wage worker has to work at least 98 hours in a week to afford a two-bedroom unit at fair market rental prices. In Texas, that worker would have to work between 81 and 97 hours in a week, and in North Carolina it's upward of 80 hours per week. In fact, in no state can minimum wage workers afford a two-bedroom apartment working a standard 40-hour week without spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent — the percentage historically used to determine fair rental prices. "What we've been witnessing is basically exactly what we've been expecting…

Spring Cleaning Time!

Posting will be intermittent and light this week. It is time for spring cleaning around here - pretty much a full time job. Not only is there Pesach coming to motivate me, and my next home visit in the foster/adoptive parent prep cycle, but also there's the fact that our weirdly cold spring is supposed to warm up, at least a bit. Once the weather hits the 50s with any regularity, and the garden season starts, it is all "House? What house? Who even goes into the house anymore?" Add to that the fact that we've hit the critical "8 weeks before last frost" date in the life of a grower, and…

Immune to reality

I'm off to the west coast (of Michigan) for a few days, and if I don't blog, I shall die...or something. So I have a few posts from my old blog to share with you. Sure, we all have our biases about food and health. I think chicken soup is great when you're sick---but not because of any proven biologic benefit. It just tastes and feels good, which is about the best you can expect in treating a cold. But food claims are becoming more and more fanciful. There is a lot we do and don't know about nutrition. Many of these fanciful claims seem to be centered on "immunity". This is a word…

Whassup?

You must have noticed that there wasn't too much effort on this blog over the past couple of weeks (except for the elaborate and too successful April Fools hoax). I've just been so busy lately. So, here is a quick recap, and some pictures. Back on March 21, I went to Duke University to participate in a panel called Shaping the world, one job at a time: An altruistic/alternative career panel. From education, to public health in the developing world, to science journalism, writing, blogging and publishing. The room was full (80 people? Perhaps 100?!). I am not sure one hour was enough for…

Obama administration's erosion of scientific integrity

My colleague Susan F. Wood had an excellent op-ed in the Washington Post over the weekend about the Obama administration's overruling of the scientifically grounded FDA decision to approve emergency contraceptive Plan B for over-the-counter sale without age restrictions. She begins by going back in time to a much more promising moment: President Obama's signing of a Presidential Memorandum on scientific integrity: It was a proud moment, in the East Room of the White House, on a beautiful spring day in March 2009. In the room were leading scientists, Nobel laureates, the president's science…

Compact Fluorescent Lights are gonna kill you … NOT.

Steve Milloy, junk science peddler and loser, has a new crusade: he is opposed to compact fluorescent light bulbs. How much money does it take to screw in a compact fluorescent light bulb? About US$4.28 for the bulb and labour -- unless you break the bulb. Then you, like Brandy Bridges of Ellsworth, Maine, could be looking at a cost of about US$2,004.28, which doesn't include the costs of frayed nerves and risks to health. Sound crazy? Yes, Steve, it does sound crazy. It doesn't help that it's coming from you, either. Can we get more details on Brandy Bridges' story? Uh-oh. It's World Net…

Eldest Children are Smarter: A Study in Effect Sizes

The story about two weeks ago that eldest children have a significantly higher IQ was really big news, but I didn't have time to talk about it then. Now, that I have had time to look at the articles about it, I think that some statement about what the word "significant" means is in order. The NYTimes reported: The eldest children in families tend to develop higher I.Q.'s than their siblings, researchers are reporting today, in a large study that could settle more than a half-century of scientific debate about the relationship between I.Q. and birth order. The average difference in I.Q. was…

The Science Behind Why Chimpanzees Are Not Pets

Guest post by Brian Hare, Evolutionary Anthropologist at Duke University Last month, a 200 pound male chimpanzee named Travis mauled a woman outside the home where he has been living with his owner Sandra Herold. Charla Nash was nearly killed by Travis and now has life changing wounds to her face while Travis was stabbed by his owner with a butcher knife and shot dead by the police. Was this incidence preventable or just a freak accident? Should chimpanzees and other primates be kept as pets? What is the effect of the primate pet trade not only on the welfare of these "pets" but on their…

Court-ordered surgery?

A 17-year-old man under suspicion for attempted murder is refusing to have a 9-mm bullet removed from his forehead. Prosecutors claim that the bullet, which is lodged just under the skin, could prove that the man was involved in a shootout with a used car-lot owner after taking part in a gang-related robbery of the lot. Prosecutors say it will prove that Bush, 17, tried to kill the owner of a used-car lot after a robbery in July. And they have obtained a search warrant to extract the slug. But Bush and his lawyer are fighting the removal, in a legal and medical oddity that raises questions…

"We Live In Little Houses Made of Beans"

I have written before of insects in the Ituri Forest. (Oh, and here too.) When it comes up that I've spent time there, certain questions often come up, and one of them is: "Did you eat bugs." Every one has seen those National Geographic specials where some natives somewhere are eating insects, and of course, Westerners who think they generally don't eat insects are fascinated with the idea. Of course, Westerners eat a lot more insects than they think. You should really consider any processed food you eat that started out as a plant crop to be part insect. If what you are eating is made…

Science and Climategate

Jon Stewart on the stolen Climategate emails: I have two responses to the release of these admittedly unflattering emails. Firstly, they shed virtually no light on the actual climate science. Tyler Cowen says it best: I see science, including climate science, as very much a decentralized process, based on the collective efforts of thousands of researchers. The evidence for our current understanding of climate change also comes from a wide variety of disciplines, including chemistry, meteorology, oceanography, geography, tree ring studies, ice sheet studies, and a good body of theory, which…

Why Has the Response to the California Drought Been so Weak?

In the past few weeks, I have had been asked the same question by reporters, friends, strangers, and even a colleague who posts regularly on this very ScienceBlogs site (the prolific and thoughtful Greg Laden): why, if the California drought is so bad, has the response been so tepid? There is no single answer to this question (and of course, it presumes (1) that the drought is bad; and (2) the response has been tepid). In many ways, the response is as complicated as California’s water system itself, with widely and wildly diverse sources of water, uses of water, prices and water rights,…

Survivorman! Interview with Aaron Rowe

Aaron Rowe writes for WIRED Science blog and we have first met at the Science Blogging Conference three weeks ago. Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Who are you? I am an Eagle Scout, doctoral student in biochemistry, colossal foodie, storyteller, and amateur comedian. My recreational tastes are far from the mainstream. I don't enjoy watching sports, drinking alcohol, eating meat, amusement parks, or loud music. Most of my hobbies could be described as constructive -- cooking, writing, making videos. What I want to do more than anything is assist, educate, entertain, and protect people. The…

Medical research with 'legacy samples' raises ethical questions.

In the July 18, 2008 issue of Science, I noticed a news item, "Old Samples Trip Up Tokyo Team": A University of Tokyo team has retracted a published research paper because it apparently failed to obtain informed consent from tissue donors or approval from an institutional review board (IRB). Other papers by the same group are under investigation by the university. Observers believe problems stem in part from guidelines that don't sufficiently explain how to handle samples collected before Japan established informed consent procedures. The samples in question were "legacy samples", samples…

Best lake monster image ever: the Mansi photo

Here at Tet Zoo we've looked at lake monsters on a couple of occasions now: at alleged Nessie photos here, and at the sad death of the Lake Khaiyr monster here. For a while I've been planning to add to this list, and to write about one of the most famous, most iconic lake monster photos: the Mansi photo [detail shown in adjacent image: © Sandra Mansi]. This reasonably good colour photo is well known to everyone interested in cryptozoology, but I suppose is not so familiar to those who haven't read the cryptozoological literature. So if you're familiar with lake monster literature, nothing I'…

It's time to move on, time to get goin'

So, readers know that I went out West this past weekend to visit colleagues at the University of Colorado, spend some thinking time at the southern Colorado ranchland endowed to us by the late PharmDad, and - most prominently - visit PharmMom and PharmStiefvater on the occasion of her 70th birthday. I'm extremely grateful to my wife, PharmGirl, MD, and the illustrious PharmKid for holding down the fort and handling the emotional and practical issues of the little genius starting 3rd grade on Monday. When Mom told me she'd been following the aftermath of Pepsigate/sbfail, she asked, "So, what…

Death to the apostates! (sans repentence)

Islam Online is one of the top 1,000 sites on the net according to Alexa. Every Friday I will offer a "taste" of learned commentary from that website for your edification. Today, apostates, or irtidad. Dr. Yusuf Al-Qaradawi "is a world-renowned scholar and head of the European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR) and president of the International Union for Muslim Scholars (IUMS)." He has been involved in the InterFaith Cultural Organization. Dr. Qaradawi says: The greatest kind of danger that faces Muslims is that which threatens their moral aspect of existence, i.e., their belief.…

Are Biotechnology and sustainability complementary? The Economist wants your vote

The Economist is running an online debate and we need your vote. Vote here. My opening statement: The number of people on Earth is expected to increase from the current 6.7 billion to 9 billion by 2050 with food demands expected to rise by 70%. How will we feed them? If we continue with current farming practices, vast amounts of wilderness will be lost, millions of birds and billions of insects will die, scarce water will be wasted, greenhouse gas emissions will increase and farm workers will be exposed to harmful chemicals. Clearly, the future of our planet requires that we improve the…

A rant about science educators

A piece online in The Scientist is an example of silly handwringing by science educators. James Williams, who describes himself as a science educator who trains science graduates to become science teachers, despairs because most trainee teachers he teaches don't have a clue about what makes science "science." He has been surveying them and reports: Over the past two years I've surveyed their understanding of key terminology and my findings reveal a serious problem. Graduates, from a range of science disciplines and from a variety of universities in Britain and around the world, have a poor…

H5N1 detection in 28 minutes?

Lots of stories on the wires (e.g., here) about a Nature Medicine paper describing a handheld microfluidic lab-on-a-chip to detect H5N1 inexpensively in less than 30 minutes. It was hard to understand what was involved from the news articles so I retrieved the paper (published online in advance of regular appearance in the journal hardcopy). It wasn't a particularly easy read, but here is what I was able to decipher. This device makes use of microfluidics technologies, essentially an emerging set of techniques for manipulating very tiny volumes of material -- tiny as in millionths to…

The Mersey monster is photographed!!!

On May 24th 2011, photographer Mark Harrison took a few photos of the large marine creature he saw off the Wirral Peninsula, near Liverpool (UK). Harrison initially thought that the animal might be a seal, but then decided to put the photos online as a sort of joke. Several newspapers then ran the photos as depicting a "sea monster" - dubbed the "Mersey monster" - that "baffles marine experts". Most of the coverage has appeared in the Liverpool Echo. So - OMG! - a new sea monster photographed!! Can we ever solve this most mysterious monster mystery??!? Well, duh. The Liverpool Echo…

My Picks From ScienceDaily

U.S. Reporters Often Do A Poor Job Of Reporting About New Medical Treatments, Analysis Finds: Most medical news stories about health interventions fail to adequately address costs, harms, benefits, the quality of evidence, and the existence of other treatment options, finds a new analysis in this week's PLoS Medicine. The analysis was conducted by Gary Schwitzer from the University of Minnesota School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Sedentary High School Girls Are At Significant Risk For Future Osteoporosis: Significant numbers of female high school athletes and non-athletes suffer from…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Synthetic Adhesive Mimics Sticking Powers Of Gecko And Mussel: Geckos are remarkable in their ability to scurry up vertical surfaces and even move along upside down. Their feet stick but only temporarily, coming off of surfaces again and again like a sticky note. But put those feet underwater, and their ability to stick is dramatically reduced. Monkeys Don't Go For Easy Pickings: Study Shows Primates Consider More Than Distance When Searching For Food: Animals' natural foraging decisions give an insight into their cognitive abilities, and primates do not automatically choose the easy option.…

Am I A Science Journalist?

OK, a busy day, mostly offline, so here's another provocation for you to trash in the comments ;-) There are several different aspects of science communication. If we classify them, somewhat artificially, by who is the sender and who is the receiver of information, we can have something like this: A) Scientists to scientists - mainly via scientific journals, also conferences, and recently via blogs and social networks. B) Scientists to traditional media - mainly via institutional press releases, now also blogs and social networks. C) Traditional media to interested ("pull" method) lay…

Cananea Miners Demand Improvements in Occupational & Environmental Health

Back in August, our New Solutions: The Drawing Board partnership with the journal New Solutions featured a post by Anne Fischel and Lin Nelson about the situation in Cananea, Mexico, where miners have been striking against the Asarco/Grupo Mexico copper operation for more than three years. The miners are demanding improvements not only to unsafe working conditions, but to the local environment. Fischel and Nelson were part of a group that visited Cananea last year through a tour arranged by the United Association of Labor Education and hosted by an organization of the Mexican Miners Union…

Public health ROI: Foodborne illness network is saving thousands of lives and millions of dollars

In another example of the value of investing in public health, a recent study finds that PulseNet, a national foodborne illness outbreak network, prevents about 276,000 illnesses every year, which translates into savings of $507 million in medical costs and lost productivity. That’s a pretty big return on investment for a system that costs just $7.3 million annually to operate. Created 20 years ago and coordinated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, PulseNet includes 83 state and federal laboratories and identifies about 1,750 disease clusters every year. It works by linking…

Eppur si muove!

The Harvard multimedia team that put together that pretty video of the Inner Life of the Cell has a whole collection of videos online (including Inner Life with a good narration.) Go watch the one titled F1-F0 ATPase; it's a beautiful example of a highly efficient molecular motor, and it's the kind of thing the creationists go ga-ga over. It's complex, and it does the same rotary motion that the bacterial flagellum does; it has a little turbine in the membrane, a stream of protons drives rotation of an axle, and the movement of that axle drives conformation changes in the surrounding protein…

What Giraffe Taught Me About Skepticism

In my recent blog entry "Skepticism and Informed Consensus", I pointed out that a real member of the skeptical movement is not universally skeptical (as may seem evident when you first think of it), but follows scientific consensus. The entry has spun off a lot of side effects: a long supportive reply by Orac, loads of comments at both our blogs, a blog entry of mine about the discredited idea that gays are nuts, and the first troll banned from commenting on Aard (not because he was one of several people who disagreed with me, but because he was being obstinately rude to myself and one of his…

Zombie organisms in the deep dark sea

Tiny microbes beneath the sea floor, distinct from life on the Earth's surface, may account for one-tenth of the Earth's living biomass, according to an interdisciplinary team of researchers, but many of these minute creatures are living on a geologic timescale. This is from a press release covering research coming out momentarily on the PNAS. Even as a subcriber, I cannot SEE today's issue of PNAS, so I cannot cover it directly, but I thought you would enjoy at least this little bit. The press release continues ... "Our first study, back in 2006, made some estimates that the cells could…

Dr Saul Schanberg: neuroscientist, physician, mentor, teacher, father, husband

Although I saw this obituary over the weekend, I didn't get to posting it until today. I was reminded by a local friend, an outstanding young scientist in her own right, of the impact that Dr Schanberg had made on so, so many lives in science, medicine, and our larger community. I only had the honor of meeting Dr Schanberg once, shortly after his cancer diagnosis, while we were at a Duke Cancer Patient Support Center fundraising dinner. His wife of over 50 years, Rachel, is founder and former director of the organization which they started following the loss of their own daughter. Among…

Dietary Practices, Depression and Anxiety

The January 2010 American Journal of Psychiatry has two articles pertaining to the relationship between dietary practices and mental health.  One article presents the results of a study; the other is an editorial. href="http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/ajp;167/3/305">Association of Western and Traditional Diets With Depression and Anxiety in Women Jacka et al. Am J Psychiatry 2010; 167:305-311 (published online January 4, 2010; doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.2009.09060881) © 2010 American Psychiatric Association Objective: Key biological factors that influence the…

Reading the contents of working memory

Working memory refers to the process by which small amounts of information relevant to the task at hand are retained for short periods of time. For example, before cellular phones became so ubiquitous, calling someone usually involved first finding the number and then remembering it for a just few seconds by repeating it to oneself several times. Once the digits had been dialled, they are immediately forgotten. Very little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying working memory, but very recently some advances have been made. Last month, a group from the University of Texas Medical…

What does the introduction of new communications or letters publications mean?

It just hit me this morning that new communications journals are sort of less expected right now. In this post I'll briefly discuss the traditional place of letters or communications publications in scholarly communications (in science) and then weave in some thoughts about pressures on the system to change and where we're going.* First, this piece out of the standard Garvey and Griffith model of scholarly communication (also very similar to part of the UNISIST model)(drawn on Gliffy, which rocks):   Technical reports and pre-prints also might happen between regional conferences and journal…

A token review.

The Fish and Wildlife service announced on Friday that it would review ten endangered species listing decisions that were identified by regional directors as having been inappropriately influenced by former Deputy Assistant Secretary Julie MacDonald. MacDonald, as some of you may recall, was the Deputy Assistant Secretary at Interior who decided that she needed to spend more time with her family shortly after the Interior Inspector General concluded that she acted inappropriately on numerous occasions, and (very) shortly before she was scheduled to testify before a newly hostile…

How do we recognize scenes?

Take a look at this movie (you'll need a video player like QuickTime or Windows Media Player installed in your browser to see it). You'll see four different outdoor scenes flash by, one at a time. The scene itself will only be displayed for a fraction of a second, followed immediately by a distraction pattern designed to mask any image left over in your visual system. Your job is to spot any desert or mountain scene. Watch carefully! Did you spot them? What cued you in to the idea of a "desert" or a "mountain" scene? Was it a specific object in the picture (a mesa or a snowfield)? Was it a…