NPR has an interesting little segment on the evolutionary advantages of religious beliefs. It speculates on the psychological relationship between religion, individual behaviour, group cooperation and government. Listen here.
August 13th, 2010
the complimentary protein song
From the University of Cincinnati Professor Stein Carter:
Amino acids are just great
When sitting on your plate.
Your body needs all twenty kinds
To build your bones and minds.
But there are eight that we can’t make:
Essential ones to take
Within your food so you’ll be set,
But some are hard to get.
Three limit others’ usefulness
If you consume much less.
Combine these foods to get them all
So you’ll grow big and tall:
Whole grain with milk or grain with bean
Or peas with seeds between
Or maybe try all three or four
If you want something more.
You must of course hear the accompanying music to appreciate this musical mystery. Don’t quit your day job, Professor Carter!
Here’s the science bit: an explanation of dietary protein requirements at the same website..
Our bodies use amino acids in a specific ratio to each other, so if a person doesn’t get enough of one of them to match with the rest, the rest can only be used at a level to balance with that low one. Most of these amino acids are fairly easy to get in a reasonably well-balanced diet. However, there are three that are a little harder to get than the rest, thus it is important to make sure you’re getting enough of these three. These three are called limiting amino acids, because if a person’s diet is deficient in one of them, this will limit the usefulness of the others, even if those others are present in otherwise large enough quantities. The three limiting amino acids include the sulfur-containing ones (methionine and cysteine), tryptophan, and lysine.
…
Because of publicity from certain agricultural industries, many people in our culture have been taught to think that it is necessary to eat meat to get protein, but this is not true! People in many other cultures do not eat meat yet do get enough protein in their diets. It is true that there are areas of the world where people need to raise cattle and eat meat to survive. For example, in certain arid areas of Africa where almost nothing grows, cattle can graze on the meager grass that’s there that people can’t eat, and the people can eat the milk and meat from those cattle. In our country, the climate is much better, and we can raise many varieties of edible plants, thus we have available alternate (and often better) sources of protein. Some plant protein sources, like soybeans, have a better amino acid balance for humans than meat.
Well, I never.
August 7th, 2010
challenge the dogma
Maverick scientist James Lovelock on his approach to science.
His wikipedia page has a summary of his rather compelling argument for pro-nuclear environmentalism. He is probably most famous for his Gaia hypothesis.
July 26th, 2010
Would you like the fish, or the fish?
And interesting question from an old article at The Straight Dope:
Why didn’t Eskimos get scurvy before citrus was introduced to their diet? They have a traditional diet of almost entirely meat and fish. Where did they get their vitamin C?
And the answer:
This calls to mind a question I’ve dealt with before: Why do the Eskimos (or Inuit, as those in Canada and Greenland generally prefer to be called) stay there? It turns out that the people of the north have a highly evolved physiology that makes them well suited to life in the arctic: a compact build that conserves warmth, a faster metabolism, optimally distributed body fat, and special modifications to the circulatory system. One marvels at the adaptability of the human organism, of course, but still one has to ask: Wouldn’t it have been easier just to move to San Diego?
Much of what we know about the Eskimo diet comes from the legendary arctic anthropologist and adventurer Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who made several daredevil journeys through the region in the early 20th century. Stefansson noticed the same thing you did, that the traditional Eskimo diet consisted largely of meat and fish, with fruits, vegetables, and other carbohydrates–the usual source of vitamin C–accounting for as little as 2 percent of total calorie intake. Yet they didn’t get scurvy.
Stefansson argued that the native peoples of the arctic got their vitamin C from meat that was raw or minimally cooked–cooking, it seems, destroys the vitamin. (In fact, for a long time “Eskimo” was thought to be a derisive Native American term meaning “eater of raw flesh,” although this is now discounted.) Stefansson claimed the high incidence of scurvy among European explorers could be explained by their refusal to eat like the natives. He proved this to his own satisfaction by subsisting in good health for lengthy periods–one memorable odyssey lasted for five years–strictly on whatever meat and fish he and his companions could catch.
Read further at The Straight Dope.
July 24th, 2010
tree climbing or skinny dipping?
Last October I posted Elaine Morgan’s TED talk, in which she argues quite compellingly in favour of the “Aquatic Ape Theory”, a theory suggesting that there was an aquatic phase in our evolution.
Yesterday I discovered that there was a BBC documentary made in 1998 about Elaine and her championship of the theory. It’s on youtube in its entirety (Part 1, above).
It’s a good summary of the basis of the theory, and it also includes criticism of the theory by scientists.
July 22nd, 2010
intimate cucumber photography
Inside Insides blog has a collection of fruit and veg porn: MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) photos of fresh produce, animated in sequence to reveal a kaleidoscopic beauty.
Above is a cucumber from top to bottom. More at Inside Insides (via kottke).
July 21st, 2010
Rosemarie is for remembrance, between us daie and night
An unhinged Ophelia (Kate Winslet) recalls that rosemary is
traditionally for remembrance, in Hamlet (Kenneth Branagh, 1996).
A rose by any other name:
The botanical name Rosmarinus is derived from the old Latin for ‘dew of the sea’, a reference to its pale blue dew-like flowers and the fact that it is often grown near the sea. (Garden Guides)
Rosemary for memory:
Rosemary is said to stimulate the memory; both Greek and Roman students wore garlands of Rosemary to further learning in their studies. Rosemary also has a strong association with marriage and it was traditional for brides to carry sprigs of Rosemary in wedding bouquets; this was originally for its aromatic properties. Today, Rosemary is also associated with death; some European countries carry Rosemary at funerals and throw the herb into the grave. (Suite 101: Rosemary)
To wear a wreath of rosemary into an exam would be a fun tradition to uphold, I think.
I was looking for some kind of natural mosquito repellent and I read online some claims of rosemary to that effect. So I steeped a heaped teaspoon of dry rosemary in about 3/4 a mug of hot water, for an hour or so — maybe a bit longer. I strained the solution into a small atomizer in order to spray it on my skin before bed. And, lo and behold, I haven’t gotten a bite since, except for a night when I forgot to use it. I admit that’s hardly conclusive scientific evidence, but so far so good.
Rosemary in English folklore:
Rosemary was also popular as a Christmas decoration, an all-purpose disinfectant, and even as a hair rinse. As late as the 1990s people were still calling it the ‘friendship bush’: ‘You always had to plant rosemary in your garden so that you wouldn’t be short of friends’ (Vickery, 1995: 318). Nevertheless, a parallel belief states that rosemary only thrives where the woman of the house is dominant. A much older tradition, reported by Nuttall, holds that rosemary plants never grow taller than the height of Christ when he was on earth, and that when they are 33 years old their upward growth stops. (answers.com)
As for Rosmarine, I lett it runne all over my garden walls, not onlie because my bees love it, but because it is the herb sacred to remembrance, and, therefore, to friendship; whence a sprig of it hath a dumb language that maketh it the chosen emblem of our funeral wakes and in our buriall grounds.
– Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) (Suite101: Remembering Rosemary)
More info about rosemary’s alleged medicinal uses at suite101.
May 16th, 2010
the biology of love
Above is a video about the visual MD — a new way to visualize the system of our bodies.
Here’s one of their videos, giving a scientific perspective on mother-child bonding: The Biology of Love.
I could watch such videos all day. I have some sort of drive to learn about how things work.
May 1st, 2010
in space, staying healthy is half the work
Learning about how our bodies behave in space, one appreciates more how automatic and self-sustaining our bodies are on earth.
This episode of Euronews’ Space series gives insight into the challenges of staying healthy in space. It goes a little more in depth than the usual “yer bones get weak n stuff”.
One has to respect the astronauts for the conditions they endure and the risks they take, and one has to respect everyone involved in such projects for their vision and ambition and professionalism.
April 22nd, 2010
food that digests itself for you
The alien pods of the Chickpea plant, Cicer arietinum L.
Photo by wikipedia user botbin.
Raw chickpeas apparently increase significantly in nutritive value when left to sprout. But I read that uncooked chickpeas contain chemicals that inhibit protease — the enzyme in our bodies required to digest their protein. So how can one benefit from the sprouted chickpea if you can’t even digest it?
Apparently when the chickpea sprouts, it effectively begins to digest itself for you. It turns its protein into digestible amino acids which it uses to fuel the plant’s growth. Therefore one doesn’t need to cook a sprouted chickpea to make it digestible, as one does an unsprouted chickpea.
[anti-nutrients] are substances that bind enzymes or nutrients and inhibit the absorption of the nutrients. The commonly alleged anti-nutrients are protease inhibitors, amylase inhibitors, phytic acid, and polyphenolic compounds such as tannins. With proper soaking and germination, none of these are anything to worry about. Around the world, studies have been and are being conducted on the use of germinated seeds as a low-cost, highly nutritive source of human food. It is well established that when legumes are properly soaked and germinated, their nutritive value increases greatly, usually to levels equal to or exceeding those of the cooked bean. (Nutritive value is the ability of food to provide a usable form of nutrients: protein, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals). This has been shown for mung bean, lentil, chickpea (garbanzo bean), cowpea (blackeye pea), pigeon pea, fava bean, fenugreek seeds (a member of the pea family), green & black gram, kidney bean, moth bean, rice bean, soybean, and legumes in general. The increase in nutritive value in the raw sprouted seed is due to an explosion of enzyme activity, which breaks down the storage-protein and starch in the seed into amino acids, peptides, and simpler carbohydrates needed for the seed to grow. The seed is literally digesting its own protein and starch and creating amino acids in the process. Because of this process, sprouted seeds are essentially a predigested food. At the same time, the anti-nutritional factors such as enzyme inhibitors and other anti-nutrients are greatly decreased to insignificant levels or to nothing. Soaking alone causes a significant decrease in anti-nutrients, as the anti-nutrients are leached into the soak water. Soaking for 18 hours removed 65% of hemagglutinin activity in peas.Soaking for 24 hours at room temperature removed 66% of the trypsin (protease) inhibitor activity in mung bean, 93% in lentil, 59% in chickpea, and 100% in broad bean. Then as germination proceeds, anti-nutrients are degraded further to lower levels or nothing. Soaking for 12 hours and 3 – 4 days of germination completely removed all hamagglutinin activity in mung beans and lentil. Soaking for 10 hours and germination for 3 days completely removed amylase inhibitor in lentils. Normal cooking removes most or all of the anti-nutrients.
(via living-foods)
April 8th, 2010
spending warm summer days indoors writing frightening verse to a buck-toothed girl in Luxembourg
The brains of shy or introverted individuals might actually process the world differently than their more extroverted counterparts, a new study suggests.
About 20 percent of people are born with a personality trait called sensory perception sensitivity (SPS) that can manifest itself as the tendency to be inhibited, or even neuroticism. The trait can be seen in some children who are “slow to warm up” in a situation but eventually join in, need little punishment, cry easily, ask unusual questions or have especially deep thoughts, the study researchers say.
The new results show that these highly sensitive individuals also pay more attention to detail, and have more activity in certain regions of their brains when trying to process visual information than those who are not classified as highly sensitive.
Role in evolution
The sensitivity trait is found in over 100 other species, from fruit flies and fish to canines and primates, indicating this personality type could sometimes provide an evolutionary advantage.
Biologists are beginning to agree that within one species there can be two equally successful “personalities.” The sensitive type, always a minority, chooses to observe longer before acting, as if doing their exploring with their brains rather than their limbs. The other type “boldly goes where no one has gone before,” the scientists say.
The sensitive individual’s strategy is not so advantageous when resources are plentiful or quick, aggressive action is required. But it comes in handy when danger is present, opportunities are similar and hard to choose between, or a clever approach is needed.
More (livescience)
March 29th, 2010
memories only as accurate as the last time they were remembered?
Ten years ago, while experimenting with rats, [Joseph] Ledoux made a discovery that changed the way neuroscientists view memory [...].
In that experiment, Ledoux conditioned rats to fear a bell by ringing it in time with an electric shock until the rats froze in fear at the mere sound of the bell. Then, at the moment when the fear memory was being recalled, he injected the rats with anisomycin, a drug that stops the construction of new neural connections. Remarkably, the next time he rang the bell the rats no longer froze in fear. The memory, it seemed, had vanished. Poof!
Ledoux concluded that the neural connections in which memories are stored have to be rebuilt each time a memory is recalled. And during rebuilding—or reconsolidation, as he termed it—memories can be altered or even erased. Neuroscientists now believe that reconsolidation functions to update memories with new information—something of an unsettling idea, suggesting that our memories are only as accurate as the last time they were remembered.
!!!
March 24th, 2010
veggie paper
A close-up of my colourful and fibrous veggie paper.
The inner edge of the apple card is dark because I had to moisten it
in order to fold it without breaking the paper.
Paper doesn’t have to be made out of wood fibres, and it doesn’t have to be bleached and smooth. I had fun making this fruit and vegetable fibre based paper (admittedly it’s quite coarse — like card) and printing on it with fruit and vegetables afterwards. I should have gone the full mile and made the paint out of fruits and vegetables, too!
For more photographs and an explanation of the process, read the full post.
March 20th, 2010
when all else fails, tell a story…
From Margaret Atwood’s review of “Anthill” by E. O. Wilson in the New York Review of Books:
[E. O. Wilson] has written widely on human nature, on genes, on mind, on culture. Then, beginning in 1984 with Biophilia, he expanded his field of vision to position human beings within their own crucial ecosystem, the earth. It’s no accident that small children are riveted by other life forms: we humans emerged to consciousness in necessary converse with them. It’s only in the past fifty years or so that children have been brought up to think chickens come from the supermarket and Nature is a TV show. As with so many things, what we don’t know may kill us, and what we seem not to know right now is that without a functioning biosphere (clean air, clean water, clean earth, a variety of plant and animal life) we will starve, shrivel, and choke to death.
Wilson wrote one of my favourite books, The Diversity of Life and is renowned for his work studying and writing about insects, and ants in particular. His latest book is called Anthill, but this time it’s a novel, a fiction.
So, why has Wilson now turned to novel-writing? Those of us who’ve been at it for a while might have warned him off. Stick to what you know, we might have said. Rest on your considerable laurels. Don’t risk having the literati point and jeer; don’t give your opponents the opportunity to tear you down. What have you got to gain?
“A wider readership for urgent ecological messages” might be one answer. Many people have trouble grasping complex hypotheses and long strings of numbers, whereas narrative skills seem to be part of the basic human toolbox—an adaptation that gave those who could spin impressive yarns an evolutionary edge. Studies have shown that we identify with and remember stories, learning more easily from them than we do from more abstract presentations. (Hence the “stories” of such things as candles and pencils that we got in primary school. Are kids now being taught via Andy Atom and Ginny Gene? If not, maybe they should be.) Biologists—like doctors—are by their nature prone to storytelling: they study life forms, and a life form is nothing without its story, moving and changing as it does through time, through birth to growth to reproduction, then back into the ongoing food chain. Wilson may well have reasoned that he could get his warnings across more easily through a novel than through another “Nature” book.
What to make of Anthill ? Part epic-inspired adventure story, part philosophy-of-life, part many-layered mid-century Alabama viewed in finely observed detail, part ant life up close, part lyrical hymn to the wonders of earth, part contribution to the growing genre of eco-lit: yes, all these. But hidden within Anthill is also a sort of instruction manual. Here’s an effective way of saving the planet, one anthill at a time, as it were—preserving this metaphorical Ithaca as an “island in a meaningless sea,” a place of “infinite knowledge and mystery.” The largeness of the task and the relative smallness of the accomplishment make Anthill a mournful elegy as well: this may be all that can be saved, we are led to understand. But we are also led to understand that it’s worth saving.
March 16th, 2010
the killer triangle: salt+fat+sugar
A killer burger. Fantastically communicative photo by Johanna Parkin.
David A. Kessler on our creeping diet:
For years I wondered why I was fat. I lost weight, gained it back, and lost it again – over and over and over. I owned suits in every size. As a former commissioner of the FDA (the US Food and Drug Administration), surely I should have the answer to my problems. Yet food held remarkable sway over my behaviour.
The latest science seemed to suggest being overweight was my destiny. I was fat because my body’s “thermostat” was set high. If I lost weight, my body would try to get it back, slowing down my metabolism till I returned to my predetermined set point.
But this theory didn’t explain why so many people, in the US and UK in particular, were getting significantly fatter. For thousands of years, human body weight had stayed remarkably stable. Millions of calories passed through our bodies, yet with rare exceptions our weight neither rose nor fell. A perfect biological system seemed to be at work. Then, in the 80s, something changed.
More at the Guardian.
February 28th, 2010
Mihyang Kim
Mihyang Kim, Self-Portrait in October 2009.
Acrylic on canvas | 2009 | 61 x 71 cm
My work is about nature and the human body. Painting nature and the human body is the easiest way to express my ideas because I grew up in the countryside and I am a nurse. I am inspired by nature and organic shapes and vivid colors that can be found in the outside world and biological bodies. I think nature and human bodies live in co-existence with each other. My work has common themes of balance and co-existence. The balance found in nature and also the fight for balance and co-existence in human life or political struggles.
February 28th, 2010
how genetics works
February 23rd, 2010
d.h. lawrence and the second brain
Speaking of the second brain… A friend has brought it to my attention that D. H. Lawrence has written with tremendous relish on the subject of the second brain, or solar plexus:
In that little book, “Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious,” I tried rather wistfully to convince you, dear reader, that you had a solar plexus and a lumbar ganglion and a few other things. I don’t know why I took the trouble. If a fellow doesn’t believe he’s got a nose, the best way to convince him is gently to waft a little pepper into his nostrils. And there was I painting my own nose purple, and wistfully inviting you to look and believe. No more, though.
You’ve got first and foremost a solar plexus, dear reader; and the solar plexus is a great nerve center which lies behind your stomach. I can’t be accused of impropriety or untruth, because any book of science or medicine which deals with the nerve-system of the human body will show it to you quite plainly. So don’t wriggle or try to look spiritual. Because, willy-nilly, you’ve got a solar plexus, dear reader, among other things. I’m writing a good sound science book, which there’s no gainsaying.
Now, your solar plexus, most gentle of readers, is where you are you. It is your first and greatest and deepest center of consciousness. If you want to know _how_ conscious and _when_ conscious, I must refer you to that little book, “Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious.”
At your solar plexus you are primarily conscious: there, behind you stomach. There you have the profound and pristine conscious awareness that you are you. Don’t say you haven’t. I know you have. You might as well try to deny the nose on your face. There is your first and deepest seat of awareness. There you are triumphantly aware of your own individual existence in the universe. Absolutely there is the keep and central stronghold of your triumphantly-conscious self. There you _are_, and you know it. So stick out your tummy gaily, my dear, with a _Me voilà_. With a _Here I am!_ With an _Ecco mi!_ With a _Da bin ich!_ There you are, dearie.
(from read print)
And:
The primal consciousness in man is pre-mental, and has nothing to do with cognition. It is the same as in the animals. And this pre-mental consciousness remains as long as we live the powerful root and body of our consciousness. The mind is but the last flower, the _cul de sac_.
The first seat of our primal consciousnesses the solar plexus, the great
nerve-center situated behind the stomach. From this center we are first dynamically conscious. For the primal consciousness is always dynamic, and never, like mental consciousness, static. Thought, let us say what we will about its magic powers, is instrumental only, the soul’s finest instrument for the business of living. Thought is just a means to action and living. But life and action take rise actually at the great centers of dynamic consciousness.The solar plexus, the greatest and most important center of our dynamic consciousness, is a sympathetic center. At this main center of your first-mind we know as we can never mentally know. Primarily we know, each man, each living creature knows, profoundly and satisfactorily and without question, that _I am I._ This root of all knowledge and being is established in the solar plexus; it is dynamic, pre-mental knowledge, such as cannot be transferred into thought. Do
not ask me to transfer the pre-mental dynamic knowledge into thought. It cannot be done. The knowledge that _I am I_ can never be thought: only known.This being the very first term of our life-knowledge, a knowledge established physically and psychically the moment the two parent nuclei fused, at the moment of the conception, it remains integral as a piece of knowledge in every subsequent nucleus derived from this one original. But yet the original nucleus, formed from the two parent nuclei at our conception, remains always primal and central, and is always the original fount and home of the first and supreme knowledge that _I am I._ This original nucleus is embodied in the solar plexus.
(from online literature)
Terrific! Thanks very much, Alice.
See also this glorious diagram of the network of nerves in the abdomen, including the celiac plexus or solar plexus @ wikipedia).
