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cortex | December 13, 2007The latest issue of Nature has a thought-provoking article on new research trying to understand the psychopathic brain. On most psychological tests, psychopaths appear perfectly normal. Their working memory isn't impaired, they use language normally, and they don't have reduced attention spans. In fact, several studies have found that psychopaths have slightly above average IQ's.
So what causes the psychopath pathology? The problem seems to reside in the emotional brain: psychopaths have tremendous difficulty sympathizing with the emotions of others. When normal people are shown staged…
cmcclain | December 13, 2007Then Tim Flannery's rather late review of The Deep and The Silent Deep should convince you to add these to your collection.
cmcclain | December 13, 2007Not just whale bones but all bones. Osedax worms are those bone-eating snot flowers, purveyor of all rotten and whale-like, masters of polyandry, and more diverse than we thought. Researchers here at MBARI placed cow bones, in constructed bone trees, on the seafloor and found Osedax fancies them too. Not as much though! Densities were significantly lower than those typical of whale bones.
Figure above from Jones et al. (2007). Figure 1. (a) Deployed 'bone tree' adjacent towhale-2893 during May 2006. (b) In situ close-up fromhigh definition video of Osedax rubiplumus and O. nude-palp-A on…
cortex | December 13, 2007Home sales are plummeting. In the Times, David Leonhardt focuses on Paramount, CA, site of the most precipitous drop in home sales in the country:
Just south of Los Angeles, there is a small city called Paramount where houses have all but stopped selling.
Since the summer, only about three homes a week -- including houses and condominiums -- have sold in Paramount. In the third quarter of this year, only 30 homes changed hands, down from 134 in the third quarter of last year.
That 78 percent drop is bigger than the decline in any other ZIP code in the country, according to an analysis that a…
cmcclain | December 13, 2007A whole sack full of news on climate this week. Yesterday, I enjoyed an excellent talk delivered by Joaquim Goes from Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences. He provided rather convincing data that the Arabian Sea is undergoing an oceanographic shift. Eurasian warming is triggering a decline in snow across the Himalayan-Tibetan plateau region. This in turn results in atypically strong southwest monsoon (SWM) winds and enhanced wind-driven upwelling off the coasts of Somalia, Oman, and Yemen. The effect is a drastically increased phytoplankton bloom in the western and central regions of the…
cmcclain | December 13, 2007It's a questions that has plagued the life sciences for years. In the ultimate cage match to the death who would be the winner, a humungous squid or a sperm whale? Animal Face Off on the Discovery Science will tackle that question this Friday at 7:30 pm. Moreover, for your viewing pleasure the episode will be double the normal length. Even better the episode features squid expert extraordinaire Steve O'Shea vs. American whale scientist Scott Baker. My vote is obviously for the humungous squid and it appears that the chosen squid is the Colossal Squid. 500kgs and 12 meters in length with…
denialism | December 13, 2007Yes, I know, I'm stating the obvious again. But I just couldn't resist when I saw this. In his never-ending quest to attack all science that doesn't affirm his belief that vitamin D and fruit smoothies will cure all disease, he's gone after the new new induced pluripotent stem cell findings. As far as I know, he's the only one to criticize the new technology as a whole, and his reasoning?
Really I can't believe he's this stupid. Reasoning, is the wrong word for this.
Let's ask instead, what is his demented, completely ignorant, insipid, moronic justification?
While less controversial…
gregladen | December 12, 2007
Erase Racism
Carnival of the Godless
Gene Genie
Carnival of Political Punditry
Mendel's Garden
Philosophia Naturalis
School Politics and Philosophy
Carnival of Education
Oekologie will be hosted at Behavioral Ecology Blog, coming up SOON. Send in your submissions now! (This is mainly a reminder for myself, I've going something coming out tomorrow on Gorila Genetics and Biogeography ...)
grrlscientist | December 12, 2007tags: science, public policy, politics, federal funding, research, reality-based government, 2008 American presidential elections, ScienceDebate2008
I have spoken with quite a few people from CraigsList and other places regarding the logistics and goals for ScienceDebate2008, and have found that there are plenty of misperceptions as to what scientists wish to accomplish. In short; ScienceDebate2008 is not a "science pop-quiz" that demands that the presidential candidates regurgitate a bunch of scientific theories and formulae on television.
Instead, ScienceDebate2008 is focused on…
grrlscientist | December 12, 2007tags: Deroptyus accipitrinus, hawk-headed parrot, red-fan parrot, pets, birds, avian, parrots
Adult red fan (hawk-headed) parrot, Deroptyus a. accipitrinus.
(Adults of both sexes are distinguished from juveniles
by the creamy white spot on the forehead
and the orange ring around the pupil of the eye.
The skin around the eye darkens in adults if
the birds are exposed to sunlight).
Image: Dale R. Thompson.
As you probably remember, about six weeks ago, a reader got me a young, newly-weaned hawk-headed parrot, Deroptyus a. accipitrinus, for a pet. I preferred not to name this bird until…
blue_expo | December 12, 2007Here's another interesting question from our most recent neurobiology exam. With some luck PZ won't get irritated that I keep recycling my work. This paper was a bit of a brain thumper but also very interesting after deciphering what it's talking about.
3) Summarize this paper and describe both the neural circuit and the genes underlying this particular rhythm.
Stoleru D, Peng Y, Agosta J, Rosbash M (2004). Coupled oscillators control morning
and evening locomotor behavior of Drosophila. Nature 431:862-868
The roughly one hundred bilaterally arranged circadian clock neurons in adult fly…
pharyngula | December 12, 2007The bad news: Terry Pratchett has been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's disease. The good news: there's no immediate danger, he's still optimistic, and he's got more work in progress.
cortex | December 12, 2007Paul Ekman, the eminent UCSF psychologist, has a new exhibit of his photography on display at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. The photographs are primarily of the South Fore people, an isolated group living in the New Guinea highlands. Ekman was studying their facial expressions, trying to figure out if the articulations of human facial muscles were universal, as Darwin had first theorized:
Ekman's team found that the Fore's facial expressions for happiness, sadness, fear, surprise, anger, and disgust were strikingly similar to those found in other cultures. For example, when asked to…
pharyngula | December 11, 2007We shouldn't leave the Moslems hanging with all the blame for bad behavior — so here's some more deplorable activities that have show up in my mailbox in the last few hours.
The typographer who designed the popular font Gill Sans was a devout Catholic…who had sex with his sisters, his daughters, and his dog. Who could have seen that coming?
More Christmas displays are in the news: in this case, the Christians are vandalizing a Wiccan symbol. Or who knows…maybe it's some vicious atheist who is running over the pentacle and leaving the nativity scene alone.
Running over Wiccan symbols is…
grrlscientist | December 11, 2007Everyone knows that the universal language of science is English, which is not to say that scientific papers are not published in other languages, but if the author wants his or her papers to be widely read, they must publish in English. However, the citizens of the world speak many different languages and their lives are impacted by scientific research just as much as English-speaking peoples' live are .. so, ScienceBlogs is launching a German-speaking counterpart and now they are wondering .. which language should they focus on next? They have a very short poll (2 questions) for you to…
cmcclain | December 11, 2007
How large was the black octopus
That darkened the day's peace?
Were its branches made of iron
And its eyes, of dead fire?
And why did the tricolored whale
Cut me off on the road?
Chilean poet and communist politician Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalt, published this poem in The Book of Questions (translated by William O'Daly) under the penname Pablo Neruda. In 1971, Neruda was awarded the Nobel Prize, despite many of the committee members opposition to Neruda's previous praise of Stalinist dictatorship.
The illustration (black cut-out over hand-painted paper) is from Kristen Scribner from the…
sb admin | December 11, 2007By David Michaels, Susan Wood, and Liz Borkowski
Weâve joined with our fellow scientists and citizens to call for presidential candidates to devote a debate to an issue we havenât heard enough about in campaign appearances so far: science. The âScience Debate 2008â campaign is a nonpartisan effort that states:
Given the many urgent scientific and technological challenges facing America and the rest of the world, the increasing need for accurate scientific information in political decision making, and the vital role scientific innovation plays in spurring economic growth and competitiveness,…