Devil inside

It always strikes me as funny when scientific research confirm what we have known for centuries. In a similar fashion to the other examples of its kind, the dictum that "Power corrupts" have also made it from our collective consciousness to that language that we speak.

Only now, with the scientific data to back us we don't have to rely on recalling the examples of history. Now we can quote research! Man, I love those guys and gals in white!

You can read the scientific lowdown on it at World Science.

Premature babies benefit from the magic of music

Hearing Mo­zart’s mu­sic might make prem­a­ture ba­bies grow faster by re­duc­ing their rate of en­er­gy ex­pend­i­ture, a study has found.

Re­search­ers are dub­bing the phe­nom­e­non a sec­ond “Mo­zart Ef­fec­t,” in ref­er­ence to pre­vi­ous find­ings that clas­si­cal mu­sic may lead to tem­po­rary per­for­mance im­prove­ments on cer­tain men­tal tasks.

Past re­search has al­so found that mu­sic re­duces stress, low­ers the heart rate and even im­proves the rate of weight gain in pre­term in­fants, ac­cord­ing to Ronit Lu­bet­zky and col­leagues at Tel Aviv Un­ivers­ity in Is­ra­el, who con­ducted the new study.

You can read all about it at World Science.

Will the real Santa please stand up

In an article in LiveScience you can read all about how religion and society transformed a one time Catholic Saint into a multi billion dollar industry.

Santa Claus the man is actually loosely rooted in fact, though he hasn't always looked the way he does today, having evolved from a gift-giving Catholic saint who lived during the third century.

The Protestant Reformation and the emigration of European traditions to America morphed that pious figure into the red-suited character that is now one of the most famous images in the world, complete with his iconic army of elves and a magical transportation system.

To pot and sing about it

According to new research there is a strong link between listening to music that mention pot in the lyrics and smoking it. After controlling for such demographic variables as age, race, gender, parental education and school grades in analyzing the data, researchers did admit that

it may be that heavy exposure to music about marijuana causes marijuana smoking, it may also be that those who smoke marijuana seek out music with lyrics related to marijuana

Which is what I thought would be the case in the first place, no research required. You can read all about it here.

Why do we sleep?

According to an article in HarvardScience

"Our data are consistent with the idea that sleep is primarily devoted to the critical activities of repair and reorganization in the brain, not the whole body, and that this reorganization probably includes learning and memory," "This leads to the conclusion that other organs and tissues do not require an analogous state because they can be repaired or reorganized during waking or resting periods."

But then it is also worth mentioning that there are views that question the wisdom of mental activities such as the rote of learning and memory since our brain do these by natural design, and with far greater efficiency than any educational program could ever hope to achieve.

Just a glimpse of understanding

Neuroscience-Net Article 1996-011

Neurobiological investigations are rapidly approaching, or perhaps have even reached, the size scale at which quantum phenomena may be observable. One such phenomenon is the collapse of the quantum wave function, which one school of physics has long thought to be a brain process. In this commentary, possible neural mechanisms of wave function collapse and their relation to human conscious experience are considered, as well as their potential involvement in neuropathologies that may be quantum mechanical in nature. Other interpretations of quantum mechanics and their relevance to neuroscience are also discussed.

Get to wait a minute...

The vast left-brain conspiracy - CultureLab - New Scientist

Plato, long before neuroscience, spoke of the struggle in the soul between Reason, Appetite and Temperament. This, neurologically speaking, has turned out to be the struggle between the brain's upper and lower regions. It's so last century.

But wait a minute!

Did Plato really consider the spirit to be capable of Appetite and Temperament, and did he actually argue that Reason could exist as a singularity in the vast unity of the soul? And if by reason more than ridicule, the upper and lower regions of the brain propose example of duality in all, much like the concept of Yin and Yang, then surely its much earlier than last century?

More evidence that feelings spread through social networks

The washingtonpost.com recently reported on the findings of a study by John T. Cacioppo of the University of Chicago that show how loneliness is transmissible. Although it may sound counterintuitive, loneliness can spread from one person to another, said Cacioppo about his research. He told the Washington Post that the research was based on a federally funded analysis of data collected from more than 4,000 people over 10 years.

Analysis of the data collected found that "lonely people increase the chances that someone they know will start to feel alone, and that the solitary feeling can spread one more degree of separation, causing a friend of a friend or even the sibling of a friend to feel desolate." "A friend of a lonely person was 52 percent more likely to develop feelings of loneliness by the time of the next interview, the analysis showed. A friend of that person was 25 percent more likely, and a friend of a friend of a friend was 15 percent more likely."

The research is part of a growing body of evidence that emotion can spread through social networks. Last year, researchers from the Harvard Medical School published similar evidence suggesting that happiness is contagious.

"Using the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Index (a standard metric) that study participants completed, the researchers found that when an individual becomes happy, a friend living within a mile experiences a 25 percent increased chance of becoming happy. A co-resident spouse experiences an 8 percent increased chance, siblings living within one mile have a 14 percent increased chance, and for next door neighbors, 34 percent.

But the real surprise came with indirect relationships. Again, while an individual becoming happy increases his friend’s chances, a friend of that friend experiences a nearly 10 percent chance of increased happiness, and a friend of *that* friend has a 5.6 percent increased chance—a three-degree cascade."

Alice's adventures in algebra

According to an article in New Scientist, the rewrite of Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol is a satirical commentary on 19th century mathematics. Carroll was a pseudonym, used by Charles Dodgson, a mathematician at Christ Church College, Oxford.

"The 19th century was a turbulent time for mathematics, with many new and controversial concepts, like imaginary numbers, becoming widely accepted in the mathematical community. Putting Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in this context, it becomes clear that Dodgson, a stubbornly conservative mathematician, used some of the missing scenes to satirise these radical new ideas."

Political games threaten global rescue plan

The Danish capital of Copenhagen is currently playing host to a game of global politics, and the prize that our countries politicians are playing for is nothing less than our own survival. The United Nations Climate Change Conference kicked off with a bang eight days ago as scientists from all over the world presented proof that Global Warming is no longer considered to be a future event, and that it is a reality that must be addressed immediately if we wish to reverse the climate changes that are taking place right now.

But the bang soon fizzled to business as usual, and with only hours left for the leaders of the world to agree on a proposal to save us from our own development, politicians are still posturing and bickering among each other. According to a report in New Scientist it's not just the final figures about who promises to do what that remain in dispute. Debates continue on the entire architecture of the deal.

"Should nations agree on a continuation of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, with all the legal and diplomatic niceties of the 1997 agreement? That's what developing countries want - largely because Kyoto required little of them but set cast-iron targets on industrialised countries. And clumsy Danish efforts to scrap it were what lay behind the ultimatums and walkouts from the islands states last week and African nations this week."

While time is running out to come up with a solution that will save our planet, our leaders are playing political games.

A question of peace

It depends on your definition I guess, but I have always wondered why someone should be awarded a prize for peace. Would that be thanks for keeping cool even when you’re under duress, or did you somehow stop the fight you started? Perhaps you played the game of politics so well that enemies decide to bury grudge and put their differences aside, or did you change the hearts and mind of people all across the globe to live in peace and harmony? What would be enough for the award of Nobel Peace Prize?

As far I see and know the peace itself is more reward than any prize award.

The arrogance of our race

Askipedia.com - Why are there 12 months in a year?

In order to keep the seasons from shifting dramatically and confusing the animals there were occasionally leap years, just like ours (sort of). Instead of adding one day in February, an entire month as added. This leap month was known as Mercedonius. For some strange reason during a leap year February (known then as Februarius) was shortened to 23 or 24 days, the leap month began at the end of Februarius.

The Roman Gods

Roman mythology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Romans had no sequential narratives about their gods comparable to the Titanomachy or the seduction of Zeus by Hera until their poets began to adopt Greek models in the later part of the Roman Republic. What the Romans did have, however, were:

* a highly developed system of rituals, priestly colleges, and pantheons of related gods.
* a rich set of historical myths about the foundation and rise of their city involving human actors, with occasional divine interventions.

The Roman model involved a very different way of defining and thinking about gods than that of Greek gods. For example, if one were to ask a Greek about Demeter, he might reply with the well-known story of her grief at the abduction of Persephone by Hades. An archaic Italian, by contrast, would tell you that Ceres had an official priest called a flamen, who was junior to the flamens of Jupiter, Mars, and Quirinus, but senior to the flamens of Flora and Pomona. He might tell you that she was grouped in a triad with two other agricultural gods, Liber and Libera. And he might even be able to rattle off all of the minor gods with specialized functions who attended her: Sarritor (weeding), Messor (harvesting), Convector (carting), Conditor (storing), Insitor (sowing), and dozens more. Thus the archaic Roman "mythology", at least concerning the gods, was made up not of narratives, but rather of interlocking and complex interrelations between and among gods and humans.