Whats UP?

RU losing your mind?

2011-11-16T22:38:00.000+02:00

People often used to say a mind is a terrible thing to waste, and it would seem as if nature agrees in a sense. You get what you use and you lose what you don't. Just like the rest of our body, our mind works on the design principles of probability and potential in servitude to our instinct to survive and our will to thrive.

In some of the more encouraging scientific discoveries from recent years it's suggested that our mental ability could be saved from the rising incidence of senility by using it!

At first it seemed as if certain mental activities worked better than others, but as research continued we found that our brain adapt to just about anything we put our mind to, even if it means rewiring a part of the brain, as is commonly found in people learning to use cellphones for the first time.

I suppose it is easy to see how our morbid fear of getting old turned fact into the general belief that the brain is a like a muscle that can be exercised to save ourself from the permanent loss of faculty and reason, or even worse to drifting off slowly to the land forgot and in to the obscurity of Alzheimer's disease...

Easy too to understand the all too eager helping hand of those who saw a market gap, and before you could say snap had just the remedy to guarantee a mental clarity and agility you last had as a teen. It's an assumption that has spawned the multi-million-dollar computer-game industry of electronic brainteasers and memory game. But according to the research findings of a recently published paper it seems that the assumption could be wrong. According to the article in TIME:

in the largest study of these games to date, a team of British researchers has found that healthy adults who undertake computer-based "brain training" do not improve their mental fitness in any significant way.

As you may expect, the research was immediately met with a barrage of doubt and disbelief, particularly from companies that make a lot of money with all kinds of mind enhancing schemes.

It remains to be seen who will win the battle for our sanity, but to me it seems a review of the facts on hand suffice what we have always known as true, not only of our mind, but nature all around.

Use it, or lose it

But that's just me I guess. If you have a different point of view I'd love to hear from you.

Babies need tummy time!

2011-11-01T21:23:00.000+02:00

It seems that every time we interfere with the way nature intend, we discover something new that we didn't know before we tried to improve on the way things are, and most of the time we end up doing much more harm than good.

Take the recent findings on the relation between tummy time and developmental milestones as a good example (According to research, the time that babies spend playing around on their tummies is pivotal to a whole range of skills), or the discovery of below average executive functions when babies are turned on their back when they sleep.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. With crib deaths were on the rise, and statistical evidence backing up the apparent common sense that babies sleeping on their tummy are at risk, it wasn't long before Pediatric Specialists all over the world were urging mothers to turn their toddlers in the interest of preventing crib death.

And so began a growing trend of babies that are slower than tummy toddlers who have higher IQ's at 8, higher reading comprehension by the age of 26, and according to the recent finding of a long term follow-up and comparison study, by the time they hit their 30's tummy toddlers have a higher level of education and generally score better in executive functions such as categorization than babies raised on their back.

You can find the original article with links to the scientific research by following the link below:

Why babies need more tummy time than they're getting. - By Brian Mossop - Slate Magazine

Human brain - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2011-11-01T20:30:00.000+02:00

“Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”

Teilhard de Chardin

(French Geologist, Priest, Philosopher and Mystic, 1881-1955)

The dominant feature of the human brain is corticalization. The cerebral cortex in humans is so large that it overshadows every other part of the brain. A few subcortical structures show alterations reflecting this trend. The cerebellum, for example, has a medial zone connected mainly to subcortical motor areas, and a lateral zone connected primarily to the cortex. In humans the lateral zone takes up a much larger fraction of the cerebellum than in most other mammalian species.

Wikipedia

HIV

2010-07-16T12:01:00.001+02:00

HIV and AIDS is a major health problem with a wide ranging impact on employment, the economy, security and human rights. In the military environment HIV can cause loss of continuity at command level and within the ranks, increased costs with regard to recruitment and training for replacements, a reduction in military preparedness, increased costs with regard to health care, loss in productivity and a reduction of internal stability.

The HIV epidemic has continued to cause large scale morbidity and mortality, and with the exception of a few successful program continues to infect and affect communities all over the globe. One of the most identifying characters of the epidemic has been that it can occur under any socioeconomic condition, and combined with the mode of transmission led to one of the more successful preventative responses, that of behavior change programs. Due to the wide variety environmental influences and the myriad of ways in which sexuality is expressed it meant that every program had to be developed with a specific community or group to ensure a common understanding.

The Masibambisane program of the Department of Defense is an excellent example of such a prevention program, and is based on the existence of a common identity and closed community found in the military environment. According to Masibambisane:

... soldiers operate within a strict military code of conduct which leads to a controlled environment where your life and well-being depends on following orders and the support of your fellow comrades.

Since the effectiveness of such programs have been scientifically proven to be effective, not much further has been done in the field of HIV Preventative Research. What has received a lot of attention is research on our perception, awareness, reasoning and consciousness, research that has changed the way we look at emotions, feeling, love, and how these change the way we look at the world around us, and how that influence the choices that we make.

In Hiv Prevention, the success of any particular program or intervention is measured by the subject making well informed and healthy choices, and it is therefore important that scientific research in this area be incorporated into any HIV Prevention, and all health promotion programs to be developed.

The harmony of the universe

2010-04-03T03:02:00.002+02:00

Artists and architects have have used the golden ratio for centuries—for example, rectangles 1.618 times higher than they are wide—because it supposedly provides esthetically pleasing forms. The golden ratio is irrational, like pi, meaning its decimals go on forever.

In the “quantum uncertain” state of matter, the ratio “reflects a beautiful property of the quantum system – a hidden symmetry,” Coldea said. It is “actually quite a special one called E8 by mathematicians, and this is its first observation in a material.” The findings dramatically illustrate how mathematical theories developed for particle physics may find application in science at the nanoscale—the scale of a few atoms—and ultimately in future technology, he added.

Read all about it in the article "Golden ratio" hints at hidden atomic symmetry.

To experience the emotional effect of pi you can listen to <p>&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt; &amp;lt;br /&amp;gt; &amp;lt;div class='zemanta-pixie'&amp;gt;&amp;lt;img src='http://img.zemanta.com/pixy.gif?x-id=f54f58a3-8229-8b81-b387-1eabe4b0807c' alt='' class='zemanta-pixie-img'/&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;</p>

It's a small world after all!

2010-03-21T10:45:00.001+02:00

Very small, and if you know anything about quantum mechanics, you know how small I mean. The field of quantum mechanics studies the behaviour of subatomic particles, and up to now the world science has looked at it with awe and wonder. Even though the quantum world can be considered to be the basic building blocks of the universe, what we have observed up to now defies the laws of physics. But a recent discovery in new Mexico has recently observed that the quantum weirness we observe when studying subatomic particles may not be so wierd after all, and that the physical universe display much of the same characteristics of these quantum particles. Like the fact that they exist in more than one 'space' at the same time!

"This is a milestone," says Wojciech Zurek, a theorist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. "It confirms what many of us believe, but some continue to resist—that our universe is 'quantum to the core'."

Macro-Weirdness: "Quantum Microphone" Puts Naked-Eye Object in 2 Places at Once: Scientific American

Study identifies confusion about sex

2010-03-06T16:25:00.001+02:00

Is oral sex considered sex? It wasn't to around 30 percent of the study participants. How about anal sex? For around 20 percent of the participants, no. A surprising number of older men did not consider penile-vaginal intercourse to be sex. More than idle gossip, the answers to questions about sex can inform -- or misinform -- research, medical advice and health education efforts.

A recent study shows how decades of sex in the dark has resulted in such a global confusion in the act of procreation that we have lost consensus for what constitutes sex.

To be, or not to be happy

2010-02-27T20:43:00.004+02:00

That is the choice...

With research finding more and more clues about the power of our mood, and the recent development of fRMI turning our understanding of the mind on its head, I guess it should come as no surprise that the value of happiness be questioned.

I can understand why, but that does not detract from my amusement at the fact that a significant number of scientists seem to be involved in a campaign that question the value of happiness. With the discovery that happiness is a choice more often than not, that happy people are less interested in things like financial markets, news or advertisements I guess it's no surprise.

According to the article in New Scientist called Happiness ain't all it's cracked up to be:

"a wealth of data suggesting that being happy isn't all it's cracked up to be. In previous studies, Forgas has found that happy people are less able to develop a persuasive argument, more gullible and worse at remembering objects in a shop window than their unhappy fellows."

By the look of it these prophets of doom and gloom are fighting dirty as well, since the article goes on to mention that "in another study, happy non-Muslim Australians were more likely to make snap negative judgments about – and even to shoot – computer images of people in traditional Muslim dress."

Being a South African I cannot claim to have any understanding of relationships between Muslim and non-Muslim Australians, but citing happy Australians taking pot-shots at people dressed like Muslims doesn't sound like happy to me in the least.

With speculation rife about what's it all about, what is want and what is meant, what is value and what worth, I'd suggest you give the chance a choice. The worst that could happen is you're back where you are right now. Think about what you gain.

Word is out, and its happiness. Nothing more than a choice, nothing less than a life-changing event. You can try it any time you want. If you don't like it you can always change your mind. Set a reminder if you want.

From personal experience it is something I highly recommend.

Dolphins, brain size and intelligence

2010-02-21T16:22:00.001+02:00

Dolphin cognitive abilities raise ethical questions, says Emory neuroscientist

Some dolphin brains exhibit features correlated with complex intelligence, she says, including a large expanse of neocortical volume that is more convoluted than our own, extensive insular and cingulated regions, and highly differentiated cellular regions.

"Dolphins are sophisticated, self-aware, highly intelligent beings with individual personalities, autonomy and an inner life. They are vulnerable to tremendous suffering and psychological trauma," Marino says.

Group flow experience

2010-02-21T14:35:00.001+02:00

BPS RESEARCH DIGEST: Social flow - how doing it together beats doing it alone

Ever had that wonderful, timeless feeling that arises when you're absorbed in a challenging task, one that stretches your abilities but doesn't exceed them? Pioneering psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called this state 'flow'. Countless studies have shown that flow is highly rewarding and usually provokes feelings of joy afterwards. Little researched until now, however, is the idea of 'social flow', which can arise when a group of people are absorbed together in a challenging task. In a new study, Charles Walker finds that social flow is associated with more joy than solitary flow - 'that doing it together is better than doing it alone'.

Resisting temptation

2010-02-21T13:29:00.002+02:00

According to a new study by Michelle vanDellen, a psychologist at the University of Georgia, self-control contains a large social component; the ability to resist temptation is contagious. The paper consists of five clever studies, each of which demonstrates the influence of our peer group on our self-control decisions.

In one study 71 undergraduates watched a stranger exert self-control by choosing a carrot instead of a cookie, while others watched people eat the cookie instead of the carrot. That's all that happened: the volunteers had no other interaction with the eaters.

Nevertheless, the performance of the subjects was significantly altered on a subsequent test of self-control. People who watched the carrot-eaters had more discipline than those who watched the cookie-eaters.

sexuality and mental disease

2010-02-21T12:58:00.001+02:00

France has become the first country in the world to remove gender identity disorder, also known as transsexualism, from its list of officially recognized mental illnesses. This is huge news but seems yet to have been picked up by English language news sources.

Scientific ignorance?

2010-02-21T10:57:00.001+02:00

Poll shows most Texans are ignorant about science, originally uploaded by bobster855.

A recent poll in Texas perfectly illustrate the modern confusion about the reason and role of our existence.

The origin of religion

2010-02-19T19:52:00.001+02:00

Religion is often suggested as a by product of mans' morality or as a tool towards power. In the article How did religion evolve?, World Science argue that religion is most likely something that developed from existing human ability.

"... past studies, the authors said, show that people of differing religion or no religion show similar moral judgments when asked to comment on unfamiliar moral dilemmas. That suggests intuitive judgments of right and wrong work independently of explicit religious commitments, the researchers argued."

This supports the theory that religion... evolved as a separate by-product of preexisting cognitive functions that evolved from non-religious functions!

New results, age old mysteries

2010-02-19T16:49:00.002+02:00

DNA analysis has been used for many things, from identifying paternity to nailing criminals. But recent reports regarding the DNA analysis of Egyptian mummies probably take the prize for worth. In a fascinating peak-a-boo into the genealogy of some of the more conspicuous mummies being held in Egyptian archives we are bound to a find a treasure trove of who is who, and who or what killed them for the throne...

You can read more about it in TIME.

The harmony of the universe

2010-02-14T13:56:00.001+02:00

Artists and architects have have used the golden ratio for centuries—for example, rectangles 1.618 times higher than they are wide—because it supposedly provides esthetically pleasing forms. The golden ratio is irrational, like pi, meaning its decimals go on forever.

In the “quantum uncertain” state of matter, the ratio “reflects a beautiful property of the quantum system – a hidden symmetry,” Coldea said. It is “actually quite a special one called E8 by mathematicians, and this is its first observation in a material.” The findings dramatically illustrate how mathematical theories developed for particle physics may find application in science at the nanoscale—the scale of a few atoms—and ultimately in future technology, he added.

Read all about it in the article "Golden ratio" hints at hidden atomic symmetry

Redefining the meaning of life

2010-02-14T13:52:00.001+02:00

Our understanding of life has changed throughout the centuries, but it started as a quality only found in the human race, and the recent discovery about the nature of biological molecules called prions, is set to change it once again. A recent article in World Science explain why.

"Lifeless" molecules found to evolve, adapt

The study from Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Fla. found that prions can develop many mutations. Mutations that help the prions to withstand threats then tend to persist in a “population” of prions, while other prions are destroyed. This eventually leads the prions to develop adaptations such as drug resistance.

The process in other words would seem to be analogous to the way that living things evolve, according to Darwinist principles. Viruses, too—which are often considered non-living—can evolve. But unlike prions, viruses have in common with life forms that they contain DNA or closely related molecule, RNA.

Understanding happiness (Murphy's Nemesis)

2010-01-31T02:18:00.001+02:00

The subject of happiness is one that has received a lot of research attention over the past few years, and many of these ground breaking discoveries have been covered right here on Tripping to Reality. Whereas science and research usually try to keep away for subjects that cannot be scientifically defined, surveys have shown that the level of happiness as measured across a wide range of variables has stayed pretty miserable ever since we started measuring it.

The fact that global happiness is is showing such very unsportsmanlike behaviour in an age where technology is finally able to deliver the much advertised benefits of more free time, less hard labor and a general improvement in living conditions, all of them considered to increase our levels of happiness considerably, is probably one of the big factors driving the high level of interest, but it is by no means the only one.

While many people believe that happiness is as easy to find as winning the lottery, experience has shown that happiness is notoriously elusive. So much so that until recently, the only tried and tested way of ensuring happiness was in secular or monastic pursuits, but the usual entry condition that you must give away most of the stuff that you find of value to a charitable cause is not something that has inspired crowds to sign up. The whole idea of attaining happiness though discipline, frugality, meditation, chastity and eternal poverty is not a very tantalizing journey.

Most people argue that such living conditions only work for the zealots who become so pathetic or complacent in this lifestyle of sacrifice that they adopt the role of the one eyed monster in the land of the blind. A good ploy, and guaranteed to lead to some happiness perks, but not nearly the happiness you would expect considering how much you have to sacrifice.

So far, so good, but after all of that we still do not have a formula to take or a pill to drink that is beneficial and work without side effects. Fortunately the scientists observed our pathetic attempts to make a happy life, and with the aid of the latest in technology they started a meticulous investigation, that up to now may not have provided us with the happiness elixir, but quite a good collection of strategies that are almost guaranteed to get you happier at least.

A recent article by the little dumb man actually provide an excellent overview of all these discoveries, and ends by breaking down the various components that make up the happiness of the avarage man in the street. According to Dumb Little Man our total happiness coefficient is made up of roughly 50 percent as a set point determined by our genes, 10 percent by life circumstances—our marital status, our jobs, where we live, and so on--, and the remaining 40 percent by what we do and how we think. That is, 40% of our happiness is determined by our intentional activities and strategies.

A quick calculation of your own spurious success stories will reveal pretty much the same percentages, but even though every single one of us believe that happiness is primarily the result of our environment, the actual influence is a meager 10%! Once again the human ability to make informed decisions prove to be less than helpful.

Lets face it, as a collective we are terrible at calculating odds, and even though history abounds with the failures that result from such calculations, the majority of the decisions that we make is still based on trying to weigh the odds.

I think some of the hesitance to put to practice these easy happiness boosters is that we have given up on ever finding it, and besides, we know that things like meditation work, but its not as easy to do as you were made to believe. And take for instance the old adage count your blessings. That one is so old it has become part of legend and lore and fairy tales, and it doesn't really fit in to a reality that must balance the pressing matters of survival of the fittest, keeping up with the Johns-es, peer pressure and breadline income.

Truth is, most people come up with a dozen or so excuses why they wouldn't give any of the solutions the time of day, and then turn around mumbling about how hard, and how pointless, and how frustrating their lives are.

It behooves me to witness such a large scale of self inflicted misery, but my previous efforts to get friends and family involved in increasing their happiness has resulted in rebound apathy and woe of yet another failure.

Anybody want to help me establish a "Happy Farm", please e-mail me asap.

The conscience of criminals?

2010-01-25T07:23:00.001+02:00

It seems that some of the most recent research findings promise much more than improvement of brain function alone, although some people would argue that lying is a skill just like any other.

A recent article in the RD Blog that report on psychology research states:

The researchers can't be sure, but stated crudely, one possibility is that the stimulation puts the conscience to sleep, freeing the mind to lie without the usual inconvenience of moral conflict.

All of which may be cause of alarm for those who think that having a conscience in the first place is a good thing, but didn't I read somewhere that criminals didn't have any?

Right handedness and survival

2010-01-22T00:01:00.001+02:00

The whole issue of handedness has always interested me, perhaps because I am lefthanded. The findings of a recent article combine a large number of studies and propose that handedness is a common occurance in various species.

A recent article in Science Daily explore the issue of handedness and conclude that right handedness provide animals the ability to multitask specific feeding activities with predator monitoring. Chicks who have developed in the dark lose this brain lateralising behaviour and are quite good at picking seeds from pebbles until they have to monitor for predators. Then they do a poor job of both.

Non-racial global distribution patterns

2010-01-19T14:48:00.001+02:00

I have recently been reminded that the global distribution of domesticated animals during the time of the Spanish Conquistadors was responsible for the presence of smallpox among their invasion of the America's. It made me look up the global distribution of blood groups, and the following information:

Modern Human Variation: Distribution of Blood Types

The majority of the people in the world have the Rh+ blood type. However, it is more common in some regions. Native Americans and Australian Aborigines were very likely 100% Rh+ before they began interbreeding with people from other parts of the world. This does not imply that Native Americans and Australian Aborigines are historically closely related to each other. Most African populations are around 75% Rh+. Europeans have the lowest frequency of this blood type for any continent. They are 60% Rh+. The lowest known frequency is found among the Basques of the Pyrenees Mountains between France and Spain. They are only 47% Rh+.

Strange gene switching patterns in cocaine users

2010-01-09T18:00:00.000+02:00

In an article by TIME, scientists studying the effect of cocaine on epigenisis:

"Though we think about our genes mostly in terms of the traits we pass on to our children, they are actually very active in our lives every day, regulating how various cells in our bodies behave. In the brain this can be especially powerful. Any significant experience triggers changes in brain genes that produce proteins — those necessary to help memories form, for example. But, says the study's lead author, Ian Maze, a doctoral student at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, 'when you give an animal a single dose of cocaine, you start to have genes aberrantly turn on and off in a strange pattern that we are still trying to figure out.'"

Which confirms previous fears that even a single line could change your life forever, or at the very least expose your brain to a virtually foreign protein diet!

Putting pi in a different perspective

2010-01-09T15:56:00.000+02:00

Perspective is a wonderful thing.

It makes us aware of new possibilities.

Whats up with that?

2010-01-09T10:40:00.000+02:00

Whats up with that?: "If there is a single observation that seem to remain a popular feature of the change associated with growth and development it would probably have to do something with popular belief. It never cease to amaze me how often popular belief contain some of the most recent scientific discoveries as part and parcel of allegory, myth and mysticism, or how wrong popular belief can sometimes be.

Take for instance the saying, "Happy people are short sighted." Not only is it true that happy people are like that, but it is true in reality. Grumpy people are better at observing the distant features, and their logical thinking ability is better than their happy counterparts. But then I suppose we have to remember that happiness is what happiness does, and the whole business of business does not really feature in the happy world, which for some or another lack of reason seem to bother those that are grumpy. And lack of reason would be a perfect description of happiness, which provide the perfect reason not to be. Because it is.

And now science can prove it!

Contrary to popular belief...

2010-01-08T18:08:00.000+02:00

If there is a single observation that seem to remain a popular feature of the change associated with growth and development it would probably have to do something with popular belief. It never cease to amaze me how often popular belief contain some of the most recent scientific discoveries as part and parcel of allegory, myth and mysticism, or how wrong popular belief can sometimes be. Take for instance our recently discovered knowledge with regard to awareness.

Over the past few years we have discovered some amazing new facts about how our minds synthesize reality from the sensory information that it receives from the brain. I have previously written various articles that focus on how sensory information is utilised to establish patterns, and how the brain then switches to auto-pilot. This allows the brain to free a substantial amount of processing power, with sensory input being limited to the detection of unexpected events.

In a report on Auditory illusion: How our brains can fill in the gaps to create continuous sound, Science Daily discusses research that propose our auditory sensory system have a similar ability that allow us to reconstruct fragmented sounds in to a coherent stream of information, all in aid of achieving a representation of reality that make sense. According to Science daily: "It is relatively common for listeners to 'hear' sounds that are not really there. In fact, it is the brain's ability to reconstruct fragmented sounds that allows us to successfully carry on a conversation in a noisy room."

Not only does it confirm something that we have observed with visual sensory information, but the research go further to help explain what happens in the brain that allows us to perceive a physically interrupted sound as being continuous. The research, published by Cell Press in the November 25 issue of Neuron provides fascinating insight into the constructive nature of human hearing, and could provide us with clues as to how our visual sense is translated to awareness.

It would seem that we are slowly but surely starting to make sense of our senses, and with that we are starting to understand how we make sense of the world around us.

Do the feathers make the bird?

2010-01-03T12:24:00.001+02:00

Not if you listen to the song….

Devil inside

2009-12-31T15:56:00.000+02:00

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

2009-12-22T23:22:00.001+02:00

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

2009-12-22T23:14:00.000+02:00

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

2009-12-22T23:03:00.001+02:00

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?

2009-12-22T22:41:00.001+02:00

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

2009-12-22T22:12:00.001+02:00

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...

2009-12-22T07:33:00.001+02:00

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

2009-12-18T00:28:00.001+02:00

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

2009-12-17T22:12:00.001+02:00

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

2009-12-17T19:08:00.002+02:00

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

2009-12-12T15:48:00.001+02:00

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

2009-12-04T18:05:00.001+02:00

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

2009-12-04T16:17:00.001+02:00

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.

Nuns having fun

2009-11-30T20:15:00.002+02:00

That is my favorite calendar of all the Oddee.com's 10 Craziest Calendars today. Fun has become such a big part of my life these days and who would have thought, c'mon who would have thought that it was even possible to have fun as a nun?

It must be one of those small print rules that they have to keep certain riff-raff away?

I guess it's not the end of the world

2009-11-30T19:55:00.001+02:00

LHC becomes most powerful accelerator of all time - physics-math - 30 November 2009 - New Scientist

Within hours of becoming the most powerful accelerator on the planet, the LHC accelerated both its beams, one rotating clockwise and the other counter-clockwise, to still higher energies of 1.18 TeV each. Particles in those beams will have collided, although the detectors weren't turned on to detect them.

Maybe just as we know it!

Hormonal highs!

2009-11-29T15:29:00.001+02:00

Can Dopamine Make Your Future Look Brighter? - TIME

Humans have expended a great deal of intellectual energy over the past few thousand years trying to understand the morality (or amorality) of seeking pleasure. Most of philosophy begins with the question of what defines the (or a) good life. But what if the answer to what makes us happy comes down to how much of a particular chemical is circulating in our brain at any particular moment?

The neurotransmitter dopamine isn't quite that powerful, but evidence has been mounting for the past 40 years that its activity is key to helping the brain recognize experiences that cause pleasure. The more dopamine a certain event (having sex or eating ice cream, say) triggers, the more strongly that event gets hard-wired in the brain, and the more intensely your brain drives you to revisit it.

At last, me and the Pope agree!

2009-11-26T05:43:00.001+02:00

Pope tells artists

The artist's pursuit of beauty "can become a path toward the transcendent-- toward the ultimate mystery, toward God," Pope Benedict XVI told a group of artists gathered in the Sistine Chapel for a special meeting on November 21.

More doubts about Darwin

2009-11-26T05:22:00.001+02:00

While celebrations have emphasized the British naturalist's giant role in the advancement of human progress, British political journalist Dennis Sewell is not convinced. In a Q&A with the author of The Political Gene: How Darwin's Ideas Changed Politics, TIME wanted to know if we should reassess Darwin's legacy? His answers do not only support the notion, but he cites various examples of how the views of Darwin resulted in warped human thinking. According to Sewell:

What has the theory of evolution done for the practical benefit of humanity? It's helped our understanding of ourselves, yet compared to, say, the discovery of penicillin or the invention of the World Wide Web, I wonder why Darwin occupies this position at the pinnacle of esteem. I can only imagine he has been put there by a vast public relations exercise.

If it rains, we fight, if it's hot we still fight? Eish!

2009-11-25T14:29:00.000+02:00

African conflicts spurred by warming - environment - 23 November 2009 - New Scientist

Previous attempts to model the effects of climate on patterns of conflict in Africa have mostly concentrated on rainfall. But now researchers led by Marshall Burke at the University of California, Berkeley, and David Lobell of Stanford University have studied both rainfall and temperature. They found that warming was much more strongly associated with civil strife than precipitation.

Getting it right!

2009-11-25T13:33:00.001+02:00

According to the Telegraph you have a better opportunity to get approval if you speak into the right ear, which in this case is in fact, the right ear.

Known as the "right ear advantage", scientists believe it is because information received through the right ear is processed by the left hand side of the brain which is more logical and better at deciphering verbal information than the right side of the brain.

Time travel goggles, no really!

2009-11-25T13:17:00.001+02:00

New Scientist

Next time you're stuck in a never-ending meeting, speed up time - or at least your perception of it - by wearing a pair of glasses that shift your vision to the right.

Prismatic glasses that adjust vision 10 degrees to the left experience just the opposite effect, slowing perception of time, claims a new study recently published online in Psychological Science.

In the study, volunteers first wore prismatic lenses while they pointed to a pen in their periphery over and over again. This prompted their brains to adjust accordingly, shifting their world view to the right or left - the opposite direction of the lens shift.

Growing spare body parts, from tadpoles!?

2009-11-20T12:01:00.001+02:00

Growing Human Eyeballs

Dale and University of Warwick developmental biologist Elizabeth Jones, along with colleagues, discovered the eye-switch while investigating how "ectoenzyme" molecules located on the external surface of cells contributed to the development of locomotion in the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis). The biologists injected the molecules into frog embryos that comprised just eight cells.

One of the ectoenzymes triggered wonky eye development. When added to cells that would eventually form the head, the resulting tadpole sported three eyes instead of two. An even stranger sight resulted when they injected the ectoenzyme into other developing body cells. The molecule caused an additional "ectopic" eye, leading to tadpoles with a spare peeper growing out of the side, abdomen or even along the tail.

Wikipedia says - We know nothing

2009-11-20T08:18:00.001+02:00

I recently did an online search on life starting with my old favorite Wikipedia, and instead of finding the usual collection of worldly wisdom I found only three words: “We know nothing”.

It certainly got me thinking about the issue far more than any collective wisdom that is currently being displayed if you follow the link!

Life after Oprah

2009-11-20T07:25:00.001+02:00

According to the Chicago Tribune, Oprah will shut down in 2011 after being in the business for 25 years. I would just like to thank her for making a difference in my life by making a difference in others’ lives.

And thank you for giving millions of fans enough warning to prepare for a life after Oprah.

Big bad boogieman back

2009-11-16T17:21:00.001+02:00

Although now the monster is out from under the bed where it was hiding, and in plain sight right at the end of our universe!

New Scientist

SOMETHING big is out there beyond the visible edge of our universe. That's the conclusion of the largest analysis to date of over 1000 galaxy clusters streaming in one direction at blistering speeds. Some researchers say this so-called "dark flow" is a sign that other universes nestle next door.

The dark flow appears to have been caused shortly after the big bang by something no longer in the observable universe. It has no effect today because reaching across this horizon would involve travelling faster than light.

Make a wish

2009-11-16T14:05:00.001+02:00

New Scientist

The Leonid shower occurs each year when the Earth passes through streams of debris ejected by the comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle, which often leaves behind dusty trails as it passes through the inner solar system every 33 years.

Earth will cut across the first such stream around 0900 GMT on 17 November, an event that is expected to produce dozens of meteors an hour. But the spectacle will reach its peak between 2100 and 2200 GMT, as Earth passes through two debris trails left by Tempel-Tuttle in 1466 and 1533.

More about our amazing brain

2009-11-15T21:35:00.001+02:00

Monitoring Live Brains Reveals Plasticity: Scientific American

Thanks to an unconventional research technique, neuroscientists have found the first physical proof that new experiences and information have wide-ranging effects throughout both hemispheres of the brain, rather than just creating connections in one discrete area.

The meaning of life

2009-11-15T09:03:00.001+02:00

In my search for truth and meaning, and any acceptable explanation that would define life I have found that Wikipedia says we know nothing. As part of nature I thought it would help to look at the laws of nature, only to be told the following:

The majority of contemporary philosophers are realists about laws; they believe that some reports of what are laws succeed in describing reality. There are, however, some antirealists who disagree.

My first reaction would usually be to argue if you disagree about reality, then what do we have to discuss at all, but in matters such as these we need to keep an open mind and accept that everybody's opinion count.

The problem with antirealism’s objection is that it is based on the fact that there is no law, which in itself imply there is at least one. The law that there are no laws…

Finding the laws of nature

2009-11-15T07:51:00.001+02:00

I suppose it is inevitable that all journeymen must reach a place to pause and reflect, and ask them self what is the meaning of this journey. I have always considered myself as somewhat of a scientist in my behavior and approach to life, and therefore see myself as an expert on life, or at the very least the life I've lived.

In my experience there is a common bond that not only connect me with my past, but with every living thing on earth. If I accept that nothing happen without a reason like I do, then it stands to reason that everything occur according to certain laws that are immutable. At the same time they must be flexible enough to allow for the expression of the infinite variety we observe, not only in life, but in the universe we find our self.

And thus it was this day I found myself to ponder on the origin of life, and immediately ran into all sorts of difficulties, not the least of which the lack of a proper definition. In cases such as these I used to go to the collective database of knowledge as it is represented by Wikipedia, but to my surprise the entry simply reads: "We know nothing".

The same is true for the laws of nature, which is apparently still a hotly debated topic among those who normally claim to know!

Delayed gratification or future regret?

2009-11-15T06:39:00.003+02:00

Hyperopia - : an excess of farsightedness.

The future you, it seems, will wish you'd been a bigger hedonist. While we think we're being pragmatic in planning for the future, we forget we want our lives also to include dazzling moments of fun.

The case for empathy in healthcare

2009-11-15T06:39:00.001+02:00

Headlines: Nice Doctors Heal You Faster, And More: Scientific American

It feels good when someone pays attention to our concerns and our feelings—and it turns out such empathy is good for our health, too. Researchers at the University Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health report in Family Medicine that patients of doctors who expressed such concern had a cold for one day fewer than patients whose physicians focused on just the facts.

Looking for the devil inside

2009-11-14T23:07:00.001+02:00

A new brain imaging study by Josh Greene and Joe Paxton at Harvard University published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that what separates the well-behaved from the poorly-behaved might not be the ability to control your temptations but rather what kind of temptations you have.

The study looked at two hypothesis, one in which will is used to suppress the temptation to lie or cheat, and the other where grace was the reason they didn’t.

It’s all very interesting stuff, not the least their finding that demonstrate the human capacity to, at least temporarily, achieve a state of “moral grace” – a state devoid of selfish temptation. I take it there’s no devil then, yes?

Copy suicides – from the world of Opera

2009-11-14T22:43:00.001+02:00

Suicide in the case of life without honor, the "Madame Butterfly Effect," is a theme in opera. Persons who are drawn into and/or influenced by the opera subculture of honor are hypothesized to be more accepting of suicide in the case of dishonor to one's family.

Turns out the hypothesis is true, and they are! Imagine that!

Love has its perks

2009-11-14T18:26:00.001+02:00

People say love hurts, but according to new research nothing could be further from the truth. According to a recent article in Scientific American, thinking about a loved one raises our pain threshold.

In a study published this month in Psychological Science, psychology graduate student Sarah Master of the University of California, Los Angeles, and fellow researchers report on the findings of their research that suggest that bringing loved ones’ photographs to painful procedures may be beneficial, particularly if those individuals cannot be there.

In fact, because loved ones vary in their ability to provide support, photographs may, in some cases, be more effective than in-person support.

So next time you have to spend time in hospital or the dentist chair, spare a thought for your lover.

Discovering signs of the self

2009-11-13T18:11:00.001+02:00

Signature of consciousness captured in brain scans - life - 12 November 2009 - New Scientist

It turns out that there is a similar pattern of neural activity each time we become conscious of the same picture, but not if we process information from the image unconsciously. These contrasting patterns of activity can now be detected via brain scans, and could one day help determine if patients with brain damage are conscious. They might even be used to probe consciousness in animals.

The case for empathy in healthcare

2009-11-08T16:28:00.001+02:00

Headlines: Nice Doctors Heal You Faster, And More: Scientific American

It feels good when someone pays attention to our concerns and our feelings—and it turns out such empathy is good for our health, too. Researchers at the University Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health report in Family Medicine that patients of doctors who expressed such concern had a cold for one day fewer than patients whose physicians focused on just the facts.

Delayed gratification or future regret?

2009-11-08T16:26:00.001+02:00

Hyperopia - : an excess of farsightedness.

The future you, it seems, will wish you'd been a bigger hedonist. While we think we're being pragmatic in planning for the future, we forget we want our lives also to include dazzling moments of fun.

How the absurd leads to discovery

2009-11-05T13:32:00.001+02:00

Mind - How Nonsense Sharpens the Intellect - NYTimes.com

In a series of new papers, Dr. Proulx and Steven J. Heine, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, argue that the function of the brain is to find patterns in a process designed to maintain meaning, or coherence. The brain evolved to predict, and it does so by identifying patterns.

"Researchers have long known that people cling to their personal biases more tightly when feeling threatened. After thinking about their own inevitable death, they become more patriotic, more religious and less tolerant of outsiders, studies find. When insulted, they profess more loyalty to friends — and when told they’ve done poorly on a trivia test, they even identify more strongly with their school’s winning teams."

The new research supports what many experimental artists, habitual travelers and other novel seekers have always insisted: at least some of the time, disorientation begets creative thinking.

More evidence of our amazing brain plasticity

2009-11-05T13:14:00.000+02:00

Internet alters older brains in just one week - Aging- msnbc.com

Research has shown that mental stimulation similar to the stimulation that occurs in individuals who frequently use the Internet may affect the efficiency of cognitive processing and alter the way the brain encodes new information.

"Adults with little Internet experience show changes in their brain activity after just one week online, a new study finds.

The results suggest Internet training can stimulate neural activation patterns and could potentially enhance brain function and cognition in older adults.

As the brain ages, a number of structural and functional changes occur, including atrophy, or decay, reductions in cell activity and increases in complex things like deposits of amyloid plaques and tau tangles, which can impact cognitive function...

'We found that for older people with minimal experience, performing Internet searches for even a relatively short period of time can change brain activity patterns and enhance function,' Dr. Gary Small, study author and professor of psychiatry at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, said in a statement," quoting LiveScience.

Quantum physics explain bird navigation

2009-11-04T18:36:00.001+02:00

Magnetic 'eyesight' helps birds find their way - life - 01 November 2009 - New Scientist

BIRDS that navigate using the Earth's magnetic field rely more on their eyes than on the magnetic particles in their nostrils, an experiment on robins suggests.

Rival theories of bird navigation have suggested both mechanisms. Now Henrik Mouritsen at the University of Oldenburg, Germany, and his team have show that eyes could be key. In one group of robins, the team removed cluster N, a brain region involved in processing signals from the "pair-forming photopigments" in the eyes thought to relay magnetic compass information. In another group, the team cut the trigeminal nerve, which sends signals to the brain from the magnetic particles in the nostrils.

Proof of the bird fly south theory

2009-11-02T07:05:00.001+02:00

Magnetic 'eyesight' helps birds find their way - life - 01 November 2009 - New Scientist

Rival theories of bird navigation have suggested both mechanisms. Now Henrik Mouritsen at the University of Oldenburg, Germany, and his team have show that eyes could be key. In one group of robins, the team removed cluster N, a brain region involved in processing signals from the "pair-forming photopigments" in the eyes thought to relay magnetic compass information. In another group, the team cut the trigeminal nerve, which sends signals to the brain from the magnetic particles in the nostrils.

How do birds know to fly south?

2009-11-02T07:04:00.001+02:00

Do birds see with quantum eyes? - life - 03 May 2008 - New Scientist

A quantum trick might be behind birds' ability to navigate using Earth's magnetic field lines.

Some researchers think birds might be able to "see" the magnetic field via photosensitive proteins in their retinas. The theory is that when a photon strikes one of these proteins, it creates a pair of oppositely charged ions, which separate for a fleeting moment before recombining. Each of these ions contains electrons with a quantum property called spin. Initially, these spins point in opposite directions - but in a magnetic field, they tend to become aligned. When the ions recombine, this alignment triggers a specific biochemical reaction, which gives the bird information about the magnetic field.

Bigwizzle, stupid or not?

2009-10-24T07:42:00.001+02:00

It all started when a user named bigwizzle45 called someone else an idiot.

To which someone replied: Says the guy under the name of "bigwizzle"

To which bigwizzle replied: Are you implying I'm an idiot becaus of my user name?

From the utube discussion thread of the video Celebrate!, by Kool and the Gang.

Conversation thread found

2009-10-24T07:03:00.001+02:00

K says: sounds like disturbed

T says: not even close to disturbed...this is like a soft 1 inch cock compared to the hardcore 12 inch black dick that is disturbed.

Z says: i asume u mean the old disturbed, the new disturbed sucks major hardcore! but sickness disturbed is more like a 20 inch somali dick that is going through your ears ass hole!

M says: they were better before but theyre still good now. dont noe why u think they suck. regardless, distubed in general is a rock hard black cock with throbbing veins leaking pre ejaculatory fluids ready to blast a load of jizz onto bands like these.

To which Z replies: the new shit SOUNDs like the old stuff music wise but the lyrics r rly panseyish. dont get me wrong i saw em live and it was a great show! but the new songs arnt very distrbing and they lack the sickness!!!!

Said by music lovers of a Fingers Eleven video - “Good Times”, from their Album: Finger Eleven, released 2003.

Said 1 hour ago

2009-10-24T06:43:00.001+02:00

the new shit SOUNDs like the old stuff music wise but the lyrics r rly panseyish. dont get me wrong i saw em live and it was a great show! but the new songs arnt very distrbing and they lack the sickness!!!!

of a Finger Eleven Video, from 2003.

Are Humans Still Evolving?

2009-10-23T16:43:00.001+02:00

According to TIME,

Modern Homo sapiens is still evolving. Despite the long-held view that natural selection has ceased to affect humans because almost everybody now lives long enough to have children, a new study of a contemporary Massachusetts population offers evidence of evolution still in action.

A team of scientists led by Yale University evolutionary biologist Stephen Stearns suggests that if the natural selection of fitter traits is no longer driven by survival, perhaps it owes to differences in women's fertility.

But without survival to call the odds, what do you think nature selects?

The number one reason of reality meltdown

2009-10-17T19:41:00.001+02:00

According to Wikipedia, "a cognitive bias is a pattern of deviation in judgment that occurs in particular situations... " or in other words nothing else but assumption. The entry goes on to explain a list of a hundred or so cognitive biases that may occur daily in our lives.

Take for instance the Bandwagon effect as it relates to twitter. This effect describes the tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. According to Wikipedia it is related to groupthink and herd behaviour. Just like with many of the other bias found, this one has ingrained itself in our society such that it has given raise to the popular expression of "jumping the bandwagon".

They color every aspect of our reality and link each and every one of us almost inexplicably to a past that in many cases is not even our own. They are a big part of the reason why we are unbelievably bad in calculating odds and making planned choices, even against our own better judgment. And they are notoriously difficult to avoid, even by trained psychologists that know exactly how they influence or daily lives.

The best way to rid ourselves of these mind bending memes from our collective memory is to live fully in each moment. For many the proposition of facing the glare of reality without our bias colored shades may be scary at first, but most people find the experience exhilarating and fun. Exactly the way it should be.

How we deal with breavement and PTSD

2009-10-17T13:08:00.001+02:00

According to New Scientist, research is focusing on what happens in our brain when someone close to us dies.

The bottom line of Bonanno, a clinical psychologist at Columbia University in New York is "that people are often much more resilient than we're led to believe". This is confirmed by studies of Londoners after the Blitz and New Yorkers after 9/11 which showed that few people suffer serious reactions to traumatic events.

This stands in contrast to the average of 8% of people that develop PTSD, which according to Wikipedia follow after events such as violent assault, kidnapping, sexual assault, torture, being a hostage, prisoner of war or concentration camp victim, experiencing a disaster, violent automobile accidents or getting a diagnosis of a life-threatening illness. Children may develop PTSD symptoms by experiencing bullyingor sexually traumatic events like age-inappropriate sexual experiences.

All of which make me wonder if the experiences of people who find it difficult to cope with death may not be identical to those suffering of PTSD? In my own mind I ponder that the ability to "go on" is a common observation in people that cope well with bereavement and trauma.

In some people it is nothing but tenacity, in others you find it cast by tough determination, but in the scientific community it is called resilience. Resilience describes all the different reasons why some people can just stand up and dust themselves off and include the way in which the qualities combine to make a person more resilient. All, except one reason.

Just like guilt and forgiveness, resilience is a quality left moot by acceptance. Just like forgiveness, acceptance is a choice that can only be made by yourself, although it helps if you've got faith. According to earlier research, experience with the earthquake victims in NWFP & AJK clearly demonstrated the positive effects of faith & resilience. The findings echo that of others who show how faith in God Almighty, or some sort of divine existence is a major factor in strengthening resilience and promoting recovery from traumatic stress disorders.

By acknowledging the "Hand of God" we allow ourselves to see the "Hand of God" in our lives. From this perspective we have only one choice, even in the face of trauma and bereavement. To "go on" in faith isn't difficult at all, it is the only choice there is.

The importance of now become trendy

2009-10-17T11:16:00.002+02:00

Reporting on the trending issue of NOWISM -

According to Trendwatching - “Consumers’ ingrained" lust for instant gratification is being satisfied by a host of novel, important (offline and online) real-time products, services and experiences. Consumers are also feverishly contributing to the real-time content avalanche that’s building as we speak. As a result, expect your brand and company to have no choice but to finally mirror and join the ‘now’, in all its splendid chaos, realness and excitement.”

Godscience

2009-10-16T16:11:00.002+02:00

According to an article in FaithWorld:

Until not too long ago, most people believed human morality was based on scripture, culture or reason. Some stressed only one of those sources, others mixed all three. None would have thought to include biology. With the progress of neuroscientific research in recent years, though, a growing number of psychologists, biologists and philosophers have begun to see the brain as the base of our moral views. Noble ideas such as compassion, altruism, empathy and trust, they say, are really evolutionary adaptations that are now fixed in our brains. Our moral rules are actually instinctive responses that we express in rational terms when we have to justify them.
(Photo: Religious activist at a California protest, 10 June 2005/Gene Blevins)

Thanks to a flurry of popular articles, scientists have joined the ranks of those seen to be qualified to speak about morality, according to anthropologist Mark Robinson, a Princeton Ph.D student who discussed this trend at the University of Pennsylvania’s Neuroscience Boot Camp. “In our current scientific society, where do people go to for the truth about human reality?” he asked. “It used to be you might read a philosophy paper or consult a theologian. But now there seems to be a common public sense that the authority over what morality is can be found by neuroscientists or scientists.”

This change has come over the past decade as brain scan images began to reveal which areas of the brain react when a person grapples with a moral problem. They showed activity not only in the prefrontal cortex, where much of our rational thought is processed, but also in areas known to handle emotion and conflicts between brain areas. Such insights cast doubt on long-standing assumptions about reason or religion driving our moral views. “A few theorists have even begun to claim that that the emotions are in fact in charge of the temple of morality and that moral reasoning is really just a servant masquerading as the high priest,” University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt, one of the leading theorists in this field, has written.

But according to Mark Robinson, "The question of authority is a big one. Who is the ultimate authority on these issues about the fundamental nature of human morality?”

The whole "human capacity to manipulate our environment" dilemma.

2009-10-16T15:42:00.001+02:00

In a New Scientist book review of "Time" by Eva Hoffman they say"

Our societies have become obsessed with time and timekeeping, both in the workplace and at home. Jet travel manipulates our experience of day-night cycles and seasons, while biomedical science races to increase our lifespan yet further. At the other end of the spectrum, new technologies adapt our minds to the ever-briefer scales of micro and nano.

A recurring theme in the book is how the human capacity to manipulate our environment ushers in new complexities to the basic biology of time. For example, while other animals age and die on a strict schedule, humans do everything in their power to control that timing. And the book is full of interesting thoughts: consider the different temporal experience of wild blueberry bushes, which live 13,000 years, and mayflies, which fulfil their earthly purpose in a lifespan of hours.

Did someone say, "What!? I didn't know that?"?

Some googledygoop, coochie, coochie

2009-10-16T15:29:00.001+02:00

If you keep on telling your friends, like neuroscientist Manuel Carrieras would have said, "Now isn't that the ideal opportunity for research into our brain?", then you will enjoy this!

After decades spent fighting, members of the guerrilla forces have begun re-integrating into mainstream Colombian society, introducing a sizeable population of illiterate adults who have no formal education. Upon putting down their weapons and returning to society, some had the opportunity to learn to read for the first time in their early twenties, providing the perfect natural situation for experiments investigating structural brain differences associated with the acquisition of literacy in the absence of other types of schooling or maturational development.

A neuroscientist by the name of Manuel Carrieras and his colleagues jumped at the opportunity and, according to Mind Hacks, they are glad they did!

"it is almost impossible to separate out which are the brain changes due specifically to acquiring literacy and which are just part of the massive changes that constantly take place as children develop..." But after the study we now know that even if literacy develops only during the adult years, the brain scans of the previous illiterates grow. Just as it does when we're babies.

'Bombing' of moon bad idea from start

2009-10-16T10:51:00.001+02:00

More news from New Scientist about scientist's attempt to find water on the moon by smashing it with a rocket.

Weeks before NASA's LCROSS mission crashed into the moon, some scientists involved with the mission were predicting very little, if anything, would be seen from the impact – despite a well publicised observing campaign.

Others now say the $79 million mission was ill conceived and will not deliver a meaningful result even if it manages to find evidence for water on the moon.

LCROSS ended on Friday morning when a two-tonne Centaur rocket hit the floor of a perpetually shadowed crater near the lunar south pole.

The spirit of plants

2009-10-15T18:24:00.001+02:00

It was in the early 1900’s, just after the discovery of the lie detector that we first became aware that plants are more than just compost, and that they seem to display some kind of prescience. As much as I guess by accident, but profound in its implication we found that somehow a plant knew who was going to harm it, and who was going to care for it. The finding that plants “knew” things that people intend never gained a big following, but that doesn’t change the fact that they do…

The curious case of altruism.

2009-10-14T18:08:00.001+02:00

World Science suggests that

Giving among strangers more nurture than nature, study suggests

Altruism has long been a subject of interest to scientists. Superficially at least, evolutionary theory suggests altruism shouldn’t exist. Evolution occurs because some genes in a population are usually more advantageous than others. The favorable genes spread through the population because their bearers are able to out-reproduce other individuals, gradually changing the whole group’s characteristics. This doesn’t seem to allow for altruism, as presumably only those who help themselves ultimately get ahead in the evolutionary race.

Now I wonder how that would work with apes? Oh wait, threy groom each other all the time, don't they ;-?

Out of body experiences

2009-10-14T06:48:00.001+02:00

Astral travel is the focus of this article in NewScientist, and researchers says it's easy to do. Some people even like it!

Out of your head: Leaving the body behind - life - 13 October 2009 - New Scientist

So what exactly is an out-of-body experience? A definition has recently emerged that involves a set of increasingly bizarre perceptions. The least severe of these is a doppelgänger experience: you sense the presence of or see a person you know to be yourself, though you remain rooted in your own body. This often progresses to stage 2, where your sense of self moves back and forth between your real body and your doppelgänger. This was what Brugger's young patient experienced. Finally, your self leaves your body altogether and observes it from outside, often an elevated position such as the ceiling. "This split is the most striking feature of an out-of-body experience," says Olaf Blanke, a neurologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne.
Surprisingly pleasant

Some out-of-body experiences involve just one of these stages; some all three, in progression. Bizarrely, many people who have one report it as a pleasant experience. So what could be going on in the brain to create such a seemingly impossible sensation?

Stunning practice in religion

2009-10-14T06:43:00.001+02:00

Animals feel the pain of religious slaughter - science-in-society - 13 October 2009 - New Scientist

Brain signals have shown that calves do appear to feel pain when slaughtered according to Jewish and Muslim religious law, strengthening the case for adapting the practices to make them more humane.

The findings increase pressure on religious groups that practice slaughter without stunning to reconsider. "It provides further evidence, if it was needed, that slaughtering an animal without stunning it first is painful," says Christopher Wathes of the UK Farm Animal Welfare Council, which has long argued for the practice to end.Representatives for both faiths responded by claiming that stunning itself hurts animals.

A spokesman for Shechita UK says that the throat cut is so rapid that it serves as its own "stun", adding that there is abundant evidence shechita is humane.

Chimps lend a helping hand

2009-10-14T06:22:00.001+02:00

According to the latest Newscientist -

Chimps happy to help – you just have to ask - life - 13 October 2009 - New Scientist

If you're looking for help from a chimp, don't forget to say please. Captive chimpanzees readily help others obtain an out-of-reach snack, but only if they beg for it, a new study shows.

Researchers have long debated whether chimpanzees act altruistically. In the wild, the great apes exchange grooming duties, and occasionally food such as meat, but whether these transactions fit the definition of altruism is controversial.

In dozens of trials involving six pairs of chimpanzees, one of the chimps consistently offered the tool to the other. But help often came only after the chimp in need reached out its hands or made a ruckus.Such requests may be necessary because chimpanzees don't fully understand the desires of others, Yamamoto says.

Currents that flow forever?

2009-10-13T14:49:00.000+02:00

It just goes to show, you are never too old to learn!

(PhysOrg.com) -- Physicists at Yale University have made the first definitive measurements of "persistent current," a small but perpetual electric current that flows naturally through tiny rings of metal wire even without an external power source.The counterintuitive current is the result of a quantum mechanical effect that influences how electrons travel through metals, and arises from the same kind of motion that allows the electrons inside an atom to orbit the nucleus forever. “These are ordinary, non-superconducting metal rings, which we typically think of as resistors,” Harris said. “Yet these currents will flow forever, even in the absence of an applied voltage.”

You can read the article here.

Library workouts, no kidding!

2009-10-13T10:14:00.000+02:00

If you thought the library is only good for one thing, I can tell you are definitely wrong. As witness to my claim I call on lovers everywhere to say "Aye" if they snogged in the isles. But who would have thought its good for exercise!?

50 Exercises You can do at the Library (Without Looking Foolish)

With library shifts easily running eight hours and over, does that time have to be wasted sitting or stacking books? The short answer is “no.” The long answer is: “check out these top 50 exercises you can do at the library, office, or just about anywhere.”

Crashing into the moon without success

2009-10-09T17:56:00.001+02:00

On 09 October 2009, shortly after 4:31 am Pacific time (12:31 BST), a 2366 kilogram booster rocket named LCROSS crashed into a shadowed crater near the moon's south pole. The high speed collision was part of an experiment to determine if there is water on the moon - but contrary to expectations there was curiously little to see!

As hundreds of telescopes and observers watched, a NASA mission to search for water on the moon has achieved its grand finale with a pair of high-speed crashes into the lunar surface according to the article in New Scientist.

At the Ames Research Center near Palo Alto, California, scientists and engineers with the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) peered in silent concentration as successive images of the crater Cabeus grew larger on their screens. there was no telltale flash to be seen from the expected collision of a 2366-kilogram booster rocket into the permanently shadowed crater, located near the moon's south pole.

"I think we're all a little bit disappointed that we didn't see anything," David Morrison, director of NASA's Lunar Science Institute, told New Scientist. "But 90 per cent of the data has not yet been seen."

The problem with facial recognition...

2009-10-09T17:32:00.001+02:00

One of the first cognitive abilities that we develop after birth is the ability to recognize faces, but according to a recent article in Scientific American we can still get confused by such basic qualities like sexuality under the right circumstances.

Read all about it in What's in a face?

Our nervous systems are hardwired to detect and process faces rapidly and efficiently, oftentimes with very scarce details available. The pictures in the accompanying slide are often referred to as Mooney faces, after cognitive psychologist Craig Mooney, who used similar images in his research on perception. Mooney faces illustrate how little visual information it takes to “see” a face.

Productivity and Chinese Philosophy

2009-10-08T15:01:00.001+02:00

In response to growing unrest by individuals in the open market system the company created benefits. Benefits that are targeted, not only on the individual, but on the family unit as a whole.

Socially, the Chinese Married Couple is thought to be the basic unit of society. It is therefore expected that a basic unit of society is the smallest productive unit of the economy, this according to Chinese philosophy. According to Western practice, the smallest productive unit in the economy is the individual.

While this may be a convenient way to ensure that the principle of payment and remuneration may be assured, and even though it provides for a carefully legislated environment it is of very little value to companies that also depend on the principle of fair work for fair pay. While it provides an excellent way for the legislated administration of basic economic rights, it places a lot of strain on any married couple that depend on that income to provide for the demands of an ever changing family unit.

It is also affirmation that perhaps Chinese philosophy may be better than Western practice.

Taste develops before birth

2009-10-08T14:55:00.001+02:00

According to Alan Greene, a clinical professor of pediatrics at Stanford University and the author of the new Feeding Baby Green, children can acquire what he calls nutritional intelligence, which will help them choose healthy food later in life.

A fetus in the second and third trimester has highly sensitive taste buds that, through "practice meals" of amniotic fluid, get to experience whatever Mom is eating. Fetuses remember flavors from this time in the womb and seek them out after birth. This process explains why adopted infants, when swept off to a new culture, years later innately prefer their native cuisine — even though they may never have actually eaten it in the conventional sense, he says.

It makes me wonder what other sensory preferences we develop before birth?

Pro coke and pro racism

2009-10-08T14:33:00.001+02:00

The late nineteenth century was a time when many of the turmoil that we struggle with today was born, and the Roman Catholic Church was as the center of most of it. According to one of the liberal thinkers of the age, Paolo Mantegazza:

On the use of coca:

Paolo Mantegazza also believed that drugs and certain foods would change humankind in the future, and defended the experimental investigation and use of cocaine as one of these miracle drugs (its addiction potential was not known at the time). When Mantegazza returned from South America, where he had witnessed the use of coca by the natives, he was able to chew a regular amount of coca leaves and then tested on himself in 1859. Afterwards, he wrote a paper titled Sulle Virtù Igieniche e Medicinali della Coca e sugli Alimenti Nervosi in Generale ("On the hygienic and medicinal properties of coca and on nervous nourishment in general"). He noted enthusiastically the powerful stimulating effect of cocaine in coca leaves on cognition:

"... I sneered at the poor mortals condemned to live in this valley of tears while I, carried on the wings of two leaves of coca, went flying through the spaces of 77,438 words, each more splendid than the one before...An hour later, I was sufficiently calm to write these words in a steady hand: God is unjust because he made man incapable of sustaining the effect of coca all life long. I would rather have a life span of ten years with coca than one of 10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 centuries without coca."

On racial supremacy:

In a time when the popular and official science and culture in Italy were still under heavy influence of the Roman Catholic Church, Mantegazza was a staunch liberal and defended the ideas of Darwinism in anthropology, his research having helped to establish it as the "natural history of man". From 1868 to 1875 he maintained a correspondence with Charles Darwin, too. Mantegazza's natural history, however, must be considered to be from a racist/social Darwinist perspective, evident in his "Morphological Tree of Human Races." This tree maps three principles: a single European metanarrative marshals all of the world's many cultures; human history is imagined as progressive, with the European human as the pinnacle of progress and development; lastly, a ranking of different races onto a hierarchical structure. If one envisions a tree, the Aryan race is the topmost branch, followed by Polynesians, Semites, Japanese, and moving downward to the bottommost branch, the "Negritos." Mantegazza also designed an "Aesthetic Tree of the Human Race" with similar results.

Getting shot!

2009-10-06T19:31:00.001+02:00

Carrying a gun increases risk of getting shot and killed - science-in-society - 06 October 2009 - New Scientist

Packing heat may backfire. People who carry guns are far likelier to get shot – and killed – than those who are unarmed, a study of shooting victims in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has found.

It would be impractical – not to say unethical – to randomly assign volunteers to carry a gun or not and see what happens. So Charles Branas's team at the University of Pennsylvania analysed 677 shootings over two-and-a-half years to discover whether victims were carrying at the time, and compared them to other Philly residents of similar age, sex and ethnicity. The team also accounted for other potentially confounding differences, such as the socioeconomic status of their neighbourhood.

Now this is good research!

Looking for facts

2009-10-05T15:48:00.003+02:00

Looking up the AskOxford definition of the word fact it tells us the word is a noun meaning a thing that is indisputably the case. The word indisputable either means fact (huh?), or when it is used as an adjective it means unable to be challenged or denied.

And thus begin my search for the truth about reality, which according to the AskOxford tome is the state of things as they actually exist. The question that immediately pops up in my mind is how can we determine if something does indeed exist, but just as in the case of fact I wouldn't advise anyone to start with a definition.

According to AskOxford the word exist is a verb that means have objective reality or being. No wonder that the American essayist, philosopher and poet R.W. Emerson said that dictionaries are full of suggestion, the raw material of possible poems and histories?

And just as it is impossible to find any indisputable meaning to reality or existence, the same is true of truth, which is a noun that means a fact or belief that is accepted as true.

Thirst to cause ecologic change

2009-10-03T21:10:00.001+02:00

India's thirst is making us all wet - environment - 03 October 2009 - New Scientist

ONE nation's thirst for groundwater is having an impact on global sea levels. Satellite measurements show that northern India is sucking some 54 trillion litres of water out of the ground every year. This is threatening a major water crisis and adding to global sea level rise.

According to the research could be pushing up global sea levels by as much as 0.16 millimetres each year. That's 5 per cent of total sea level rise, which may just be enough to change the whole ecology of the sea.

Have you ever!

Playing nice...

2009-10-01T22:19:00.001+02:00

Better world: Be nice to people - science-in-society - 19 September 2009 - New Scientist

It sounds kind of obvious, and a little trite: the world would be a better place to live in if we were all a bit kinder to each other. But how can we make that happen?

This is fast becoming a valid scientific question. Psychologists and neuroscientists are exploring how to increase people's capacity for empathy and compassion, with two ongoing studies claiming that meditation not only increases compassionate feelings but also improves physical and emotional health.

But you don't have to be a Buddhist monk or an expert on brain plasticity to help increase global compassion. There is evidence that altruistic acts spread through social networks. In other words, if you are kind to a friend, they are more likely to be kind to someone else they know.

Feeling what we feel

2009-10-01T22:16:00.003+02:00

Icy stares and dirty minds: Hitch-hiking emotions - life - 15 September 2009 - New Scientist

WILL these hands ne'er be clean?" asks Lady Macbeth, as she obsessively tries to wash away the guilt she feels for her role in the murder of King Duncan. Her feelings of self-disgust, we are led to believe, have manifested themselves as a sensation of physical dirtiness.

It is not only in the language of playwrights such as Shakespeare that complex emotions like guilt, grief or loneliness are compared to physical sensations. These metaphors crop up in everyday phrases, too, in many languages. In English, for example, we talk of being "left out in the cold" when we feel socially excluded, a sentiment echoed in the Japanese saying "one kind word can warm three winter months".

At face value, these connections seem purely symbolic. In real life, loneliness doesn't really send us shivering, and guilt doesn't really make us feel dirty. Or do they? Recent research has found that these physical sensations can often accompany our emotions. It works the other way too - by provoking a feeling of disgust, a scene from the film Trainspotting shaped the way subjects in an experiment made moral judgements.

Legalise it?

2009-10-01T22:16:00.001+02:00

Better world: Legalise drugs - 11 September 2009 - New Scientist

Far from protecting us and our children, the war on drugs is making the world a much more dangerous place.

SO FAR this year, about 4000 people have died in Mexico's drugs war - a horrifying toll. If only a good fairy could wave a magic wand and make all illegal drugs disappear, the world would be a better place.

Dream on. Recreational drug use is as old as humanity, and has not been stopped by the most draconian laws. Given that drugs are here to stay, how do we limit the harm they do?

The evidence suggests most of the problems stem not from drugs themselves, but from the fact that they are illegal. The obvious answer, then, is to make them legal.

Feeling what we feel

2009-10-01T22:14:00.001+02:00

Icy stares and dirty minds: Hitch-hiking emotions - life - 15 September 2009 - New Scientist

WILL these hands ne'er be clean?" asks Lady Macbeth, as she obsessively tries to wash away the guilt she feels for her role in the murder of King Duncan. Her feelings of self-disgust, we are led to believe, have manifested themselves as a sensation of physical dirtiness.

It is not only in the language of playwrights such as Shakespeare that complex emotions like guilt, grief or loneliness are compared to physical sensations. These metaphors crop up in everyday phrases, too, in many languages. In English, for example, we talk of being "left out in the cold" when we feel socially excluded, a sentiment echoed in the Japanese saying "one kind word can warm three winter months".

At face value, these connections seem purely symbolic. In real life, loneliness doesn't really send us shivering, and guilt doesn't really make us feel dirty. Or do they? Recent research has found that these physical sensations can often accompany our emotions. It works the other way too - by provoking a feeling of disgust, a scene from the film Trainspotting shaped the way subjects in an experiment made moral judgements.

Quantum reality

2009-10-01T21:56:00.001+02:00

Instant Expert: Quantum World - physics-math - 04 September 2006 - New Scientist

Entanglement is the idea that in the quantum world, objects are not independent if they have interacted with each other or come into being through the same process. They become linked, or entangled, such that changing one invariably affects the other, no matter how far apart they are - something Einstein called "spooky action at a distance".
Entanglement may also provide a nearly uncrackable method of communication. Quantum cryptographers can send "keys" to decode encrypted information using quantum particles. Any attempt to intercept the particles will disturb their quantum state - an interference that could then be detected.

In April 2004, Austrian financial institutions performed the first money transfer encrypted by quantum keys, and in June, the first encrypted computer network with more than two nodes was set up across 10 kilometres in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US.
Quantum computers are another long-term goal. Because quantum particles can exist in multiple states at the same time, they could be used to carry out many calculations at once, factoring a 300-digit number in just seconds compared to the years required by conventional computers.
But particles of matter interact so easily with others that their quantum states are preserved for very short times - just billionths of a second. Photons, on the other hand, maintain their states about a million times longer because they are less prone to interact with each other. But they are also hard to store, as they travel, literally, at the speed of light.

In 2001, scientists managed to stop light in its tracks, overcoming one practical hurdle. And the first quantum logic gate - the brains behind quantum computers - was created with light in 2003.

The wonder of water

2009-10-01T21:42:00.001+02:00

And the amazing story of water continues...

Spinning water droplets behave like black holes - physics-math - 15 December 2008 - New Scientist

WHAT does a drop of water have in common with a black hole and an atom? Well, levitating water droplets can now simulate the dynamics of both cosmological and subatomic objects.

"The breakthrough in this work is the ability to reproduce, in a simple table-top experiment, 100 years of theoretical work in fluid dynamics," says Vitor Cardoso of the University of Mississippi.