Posts
May 13, 2013
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3:48 PM | Forget Science, Fracking Must Go
Responsible energy production would seem to have an obvious positive roadmap; have energy companies include environmental groups in guiding pollution standards and participating in studies about natural gas extraction.But for entrenched constituencies, that is unacceptable.
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2:20 PM | Growing old with NF-kB
Sci is at SciAm blogs today talking about a new study on aging. Specifically, the discovery of a new role for the protein NF-kB. Less NF-kB? Longer lived mice. What does this mean and where does it go? Head over and check it out.
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Rather than Draconian measures to cut emissions, which will impact people in various regions and economic spheres unfairly, a better solution may be to simply keep places cooler and hot days, which will reduce fuel needed for air conditioning.And outer space can help, Stanford researchers say. They designed an entirely new form of cooling structure that cools even when the sun is shining - by reflecting sunlight back into the chilly vacuum of space.
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2:03 PM | The ‘unnamed feeling’ named ASMR
Here’s my BBC Future column from last week. It’s about the so-called Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, which didn’t have a name until 2010 and I’d never heard of until 2012. Now, I’m finding out that it is surprisingly common. The original is here. It’s a tightening at the back of the throat, or a tingling […]
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The movement of nitrate through groundwater to streams can take decades to occur and that long lag time means that changes in the use of nitrogen-based fertilizer (the typical source of nitrate) may take decades to be fully observed in streams, according to a recent study.Water quality experts have been noting in recent years that nitrate trends in streams and rivers do not match their expectations based on reduced regional use of nitrogen-based fertilizer. The long travel times of
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I have been fascinated and perplexed by reports of the seemingly invigorating and anxiety reducing effects of bingeing and purging (purging by self-induced vomiting). Personally, I cringe at the idea of self-induced vomiting and have always wanted to avoid vomiting at all costs, including during food poisoning. The insight from recent blog entries and the subsequent comments has made an impact on me. I see that the motivation to engage in bingeing/purging (b/p-ing) behavior can
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12:21 PM | An Interview with Don McLeroy, Part I
On the SGU this week we did an interview with Don McLeroy, the former chairman of the Texas School Board of Education, famous for his (successful) attempts to insert wording into the science textbook standards that would open the door for creationist arguments. The interview was very enlightening. In my opinion it was an excellent [...]
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12:00 PM | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Neurodojo/~3/QkUIk_PYWyQ/i-just-want-to-continue-my-education.html
“I just want to continue my education.”
I’ve heard this from a few prospective grad students. I understand why they would say they want to continue their education when they’re asked why they want to go to grad school. I imagine for their entire lives, they have probably been encouraged to stay in school. For their entire lives, they have probably been told degrees are a pathway to greater professional success. For their entire lives, education has been an unalloyed good.
But […]
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11:41 AM | The New Eugenics – same as the Old Eugenics?
Did I mess a memo? Has eugenics somehow become respectable again? SourceThere has been a lot of talk lately, in the blogosphere at least (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), about the idea of using molecular genetics to predict and select for higher intelligence in humans (through pre-implantation screening of embryos, for example). The prevailing view among many discussing this idea seems to be that if we can do it, we obviously should do it. The casualness with which this conclusion is reached
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Suicide rates have fallen among farmers
Among the various risk factors for suicide, psychologists have recognised for some time that a person's occupation plays an important part. Suicide rates have tended to be unusually high in professions that provide ready access to guns, drugs, or open water, such as in farming, medicine, dentistry and maritime careers.
A new analysis has examined whether this still holds true. Stephen Roberts and his colleagues accessed the UK suicide rates for dozens […]
Roberts, S., Jaremin, B. & Lloyd, K. (2012). High-risk occupations for suicide, Psychological Medicine, 43 (06) 1231-1240. DOI: 10.1017/S0033291712002024
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5:11 AM | Growing old with NF-kB
Aging happens. As you get older, your body slows down, eventually your brain slows down, too. Some things go gradually, and some go suddenly. To many people, this might seem like a pretty random process. We used to think of aging this way, as just…well cells get old, which means we get old, too. DNA [...]
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3:33 AM | Wiring Eyes
We can probably all agree that eyes would just be useless bags of vitreous humor if not for their wiring to the brain. It’s the highly precise connections between specialized cell types within the eye and their specific target cells within the brain that allow us to visually experience our world. But how do these […]
Huberman A.D., Wang G.Y., Liets L.C., Collins O.A., Chapman B. & Chalupa L.M. (2003). Eye-specific retinogeniculate segregation independent of normal neuronal activity., Science (New York, N.Y.), 300 (5621) 994-998. DOI: 10.1126/science.1080694
Huberman A.D., Wei W., Elstrott J., Stafford B.K., Feller M.B. & Barres B.A. (2009). Genetic Identification of an On-Off Direction- Selective Retinal Ganglion Cell Subtype Reveals a Layer-Specific Subcortical Map of Posterior Motion, Neuron, 62 (3) 327-334. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2009.04.014
Osterhout J., Josten N., Yamada J., Pan F., Wu S.W., Nguyen P., Panagiotakos G., Inoue Y., Egusa S. & Volgyi B. & (2011). Cadherin-6 Mediates Axon-Target Matching in a Non-Image-Forming Visual Circuit, Neuron, 71 (4) 632-639. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2011.07.006
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12:00 AM | The Inadvertent Psychological Experiment
Escape from Camp 14 is deeply disturbing, and I highly recommend it. Escape from Camp 14 by Blaine HardenEscape from Camp 14 is a chilling tale of Shin Dong-hyuk's escape from a North Korean prison camp. What is so interesting about Shin Dong-hyuk's story as written by Blaine Harden is that he was born inside this North Korean prison camp. Apparently they allow breeding between prisoners as a reward for 'good behavior.'Escape from Camp 14 reveals the obscene violations of human rights that […]
Lee YM, Shin OJ & Lim MH (2012). The psychological problems of north korean adolescent refugees living in South Korea., Psychiatry investigation, 9 (3) 217-22. PMID: 22993519
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May 12, 2013
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11:44 PM | How social experiences improve your health
Social Connections Drive the ‘Upward Spiral’ of Positive Emotions and Health People who experience warmer, more upbeat emotions may have better physical health because they make more social connections, according to a new study published in Psych [...]
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10:25 PM | Update on the Great BRAINI Debates
The NSF, DARPA and the NIH sponsored a meeting last week that brought together scientists to brainstorm ideas for the new BRAIN Initiative (a proposal I’ve explored many times, starting here, and most recently, here). Organizers seem to have begun to reassure critics that they are developing more inclusive planning procedures and that the funding mechanisms […]
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9:49 PM | Síndrome de Korsakoff
¿Qué sabes acerca de las consecuencias cognitivas del consumo crónico o continuo de alcohol? ¿Te es familiar la palabra "Korsakoff"? Sí o no, repasemos brevemente una importante revisión que, en 2009, publicaron Michael D. Kopelman, Allan D. Thomson, Irene Guerrini y E. Jane Marshall, acerca del "famoso" síndrome de Korsakoff, el cual se estudia en el módulo de "amnesias" en la universidad o
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The large majority of non-coding DNA, which is abundant in many living things, may not actually be needed for complex life in at least one carnivorous plant, Utricularia gibba, according to a paper in Nature.
U. gibba, the carnivorous bladderwort plant, genome is the smallest ever to be sequenced from a complex, multicellular plant. The researchers who sequenced it say that 97 percent of the genome consists of genes — bits of DNA that code for proteins — and small pieces of DNA
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In honor of Mother’s Day (USA) and in support of taking a mental health day, I’m skipping a blog post for this week. My mother’s in town and we’re having […]
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3:57 PM | Pollution And Parliament
Pollution and ParliamentIs carbon dioxide a pollutant ?I am old enough to remember the great smog and the 1953 flood. There is nothing like a first-hand view of nature in the raw to make a person environmentally aware. It was in the 1950s at the age of about 6 or 7 that I learned how coal was made out of vegetable matter in nature's own pressure cooker. The origin of coal was so widely known that it was often called 'bottled sunshine'.
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¡Hola a tod@s! Hoy, en nuestra serie "Psicología básica para todos", tenemos un tema de la vida profunda...no, mentiras, de la vida cotidiana: la realización de un proyecto de vida. Más que un "manual de instrucciones" o la manera como "se debe" hacer, esta sencilla presentación es la visión de alguien -a quien le interesa el tema- acerca de qué debemos pensar o tener en cuenta para realizar
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The American Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) is due out this month. In the period leading up the launch of DSM-5 there has been considerable debate. Professor David Kupfer, head of the DSM-5 taskforce responds to the NIMH statement here (with a write-up here). The Observer features a debate between psychiatrist Professor […]
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11:44 AM | Neurocriminology, Meet Human Development
These are two lines of research that will hopefully increasingly merge… Neurocriminologist Adrian Raine’s new book The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime presents a biological approach to criminal behavior, but a biology that increasingly recognizes developmental and …
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10:54 AM | Disaster response psychology needs to change
I’ve got an article in today’s Observer about how disaster response mental health services are often based on the erroneous assumption that everyone needs ‘treatment’ and often rely on single-session counselling sessions which may do more harm than good. Unfortunately, the article has been given a rather misleading headline (‘Minds traumatised by disaster heal themselves […]
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10:47 AM | Acne bacteria to blame for back pain
What do acne and chronic back pain have in common? Well, as it turns out, more than people once thought. A group at the University of Southern Denmark have found that the same bacteria that gives people spots might be … Continue reading →
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Today’s Observer has a debate headlined “Do we need to change the way we are thinking about mental illness?” I read it with interest, as I happen to think that we do need to change, and that the new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association (DSM5) has numerous problems.
The discussion was opened by Simon Wessely, a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, who responded No. He didn’t exactly defend the DSM5, but he disagreed with the criticism that […]
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4:50 AM | Your Unconscious Calls The Shots
A review of Leonard Mlodinow's 'subliminal' focusing on how our unconscious mind rules our behaviors.read more
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1:50 AM | Hornswoggled With A Boondoggle
Hornswoggled with a BoondoggleEtymology isn't a true science, but any etymologist worthy of the name needs to adopt scientific methods if he or she is to avoid falling into the trap of producing another piece of false etymology.That's etymology, but if you mouth entomology, as many of your peers do, I had as lief an insect spoke my lines. (Hamlet Act 3, Scene 2 - almost.)I had as lief an insect spoke my lines
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May 11, 2013
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8:10 PM | The Pot President
Hendrik Hertzberg on the hypocrisy of the hip.
In a blog post at the New Yorker last week, Hendrik Hertzberg spotlighted a recent joke made by the President of the United States at the White House Correspondents dinner. In reference to the rapidly changing media landscape, Obama said: “You can’t keep up with it. I mean, I remember when BuzzFeed was just something I did in college around two A.M. (Laughter.) It’s true! (Laughter.)”
The days of expressing a cringing contrition for […]
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I recently reviewed the book “Weird Life” by Dr. David Toomey. You will find my original, unchanged review here. A few minutes ago Dr. Toomey kindly informed me in an email that the copy I read was in fact an unproofed copy. I was not aware of that at the time and I apologize for …
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Legendary Confederate fighter Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson died 150 years ago but the actual cause of his death has been a subject of debate. And it was again at the 20th annual Historical Clinicopathological Conference in Maryland.Jackson got the nickname "Stonewall" from Confederate General Barnard E. Bee, when he moved an artillery battery up to support Bee's troops as they retreated at the First Battle of Bull Run (called First Manassas by Confederate troops)(1). Bee said of the mostly […]
