April 20th, 2009

photic sneezing

This morning my classmate and I were walking to college and both sneezed at the sight of the sun. There’s an article on NewScientist that explores the possible reasons for this apparently common reaction to the sun’s light.

Mahmood Bhutta offers the hypothesis that it is to do with crossed ‘wires’ in our nervous system. From the article:

All these nerve responses flow to and from regions of the medulla close to where the sneeze centre is located. This suggests that far from being a neat system of discrete responses to individual stimuli, our reflex systems at their base in the medulla are often a tangled web of cross-talking nerve wires. Sometimes when bright sunlight hits our eyes, the parasympathetic system responds appropriately and our pupils constrict. But for certain people whose medullas are wired differently, sunlight triggers a different reflex response, such as a sneeze.

Nervous overkill is no deal breaker in the survival stakes as long as the right reflexes are also stimulated at the right time, so aberrant genes that cause confused reflexes in some individuals would have been conserved by evolution. “It’s a mess,” says Bhutta, “because it’s never had to be anything else.”

Read more at NewScientist

April 18th, 2009

Planet X and the “Wow!” signal

I wish that were the title of a film, but it’s merely a summation of my favourite stories from this NewScientist article: 13 things that do not make sense .

Also interesting was the question raised by homeopathy research (a field the concept of which I didn’t really understand before reading their summary here):

MADELEINE Ennis, a pharmacologist at Queen’s University, Belfast, was the scourge of homeopathy. She railed against its claims that a chemical remedy could be diluted to the point where a sample was unlikely to contain a single molecule of anything but water, and yet still have a healing effect. Until, that is, she set out to prove once and for all that homeopathy was bunkum.

In her most recent paper, Ennis describes how her team looked at the effects of ultra-dilute solutions of histamine on human white blood cells involved in inflammation. These “basophils” release histamine when the cells are under attack. Once released, the histamine stops them releasing any more. The study, replicated in four different labs, found that homeopathic solutions – so dilute that they probably didn’t contain a single histamine molecule – worked just like histamine. Ennis might not be happy with the homeopaths’ claims, but she admits that an effect cannot be ruled out.

So how could it happen? Homeopaths prepare their remedies by dissolving things like charcoal, deadly nightshade or spider venom in ethanol, and then diluting this “mother tincture” in water again and again. No matter what the level of dilution, homeopaths claim, the original remedy leaves some kind of imprint on the water molecules. Thus, however dilute the solution becomes, it is still imbued with the properties of the remedy.

You can understand why Ennis remains sceptical. And it remains true that no homeopathic remedy has ever been shown to work in a large randomised placebo-controlled clinical trial. But the Belfast study (Inflammation Research, vol 53, p 181) suggests that something is going on. “We are,” Ennis says in her paper, “unable to explain our findings and are reporting them to encourage others to investigate this phenomenon.” If the results turn out to be real, she says, the implications are profound: we may have to rewrite physics and chemistry.

April 3rd, 2009

wes anderson’s style retraced

Movingimagesource has an very well considered video essay detailing Anderson’s influences and making visual comparisons. Very neat! (The video link is on the right hand side).

via kottke

March 16th, 2009

the fat controller

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A new discovery is leading geneticists to think that the reason some people never get fat despite a high fat diet is because they have a gene which facilitates the conversion of dietary fat into energy instead of the body habitually storing it under the skin.

The enzyme, MGAT2, determines whether dietary fat is used to generate energy or stored under the skin around the waist. The discovery of its role could be the key to preventing obesity, diabetes and heart disease

Scientists found that mice missing the gene for MGAT2 were able to feast on a high fat diet without becoming flabby or overweight.

Mice lacking MGAT2 were also protected against glucose intolerance – a precursor to diabetes – high cholesterol and a build up of fat in liver cells.

from the telegraph, via neatorama

I ate 2 chocolate bars today (in my defense there was an offer of “5 for €2″ — I HAD to buy 5, and so eating only two of them shows great restraint) and I feel fatter already. I’ve never been so envious of other people’s genes.

March 12th, 2009

dna testing for fun

For between $399 and $2,500, four prominent companies allow a person to purchase genetic data about their disease proclivities and personal traits. Big names including Google co-founder Sergey Brin (whose wife is a co-founder of 23andMe) have participated, as have numerous reporters and regular folks. With the cost of tests decreasing, even Main Street can join the fun.

What the mainstream genetic testing companies do not do—for cost and ethical reasons—is test for the scarier, highly predictive genetic predispositions. This is the DNA data you actually need to know.

To learn whether you have a significantly elevated risk of developing breast cancer, for example, you would likely go to your hospital, which would send your blood to a laboratory, neither of which offers you social networking, folders full of random fun facts, or other perks. The most important genetic tests make a lousy game.

Read more @ GOOD

March 10th, 2009

Shakespeare’s true face?

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Eminent Shakespeare scholar Stanley Wells has identified the above picture as being the true face of Shakespeare. The painting has been scientifically dated as being from 1610, using various different techniques. It had been in an Irish family home outside Dublin for centuries before only now being recognised for what it could be. Up until now the only surviving portrait — the famous image of Shakespeare you see everywhere — was the engraving by Martin Droushout, which was done after the bard’s death.

The painting has languished for centuries outside Dublin at Newbridge House, home base of the Cobbe family, where until recently no one suspected it might be a portrait of the Bard. Three years ago, Alec Cobbe, who had inherited much of the collection in the 1980s and placed it in trust, found himself at an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London called “Searching for Shakespeare.” There he saw a painting from the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., that had been accepted until the late 1930s as a portrait of Shakespeare from life. Looking at it, Cobbe felt certain the Folger painting was a copy of the one in his family’s collection. He asked Wells, an old friend, for his help in authenticating it.

What are the odds of this guy being an old friend of Wells, a Shakespeare obsessive, though? It’s a little suspicious.

Read more: Time.

March 7th, 2009

are we alone? stay tuned

The Kepler telescope has been launched into space.

“This is a historical mission; it’s not just a science mission,” said Dr Edward Weiler, Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at Nasa.

“I maintain that it really attacks some very basic human questions that have been part of our genetic code since that first man or woman looked up into the sky and asked the question: ‘are we alone?’.”

Equipped with the largest camera ever launched into space, it is the first mission designed to find rocky worlds orbiting Sun-like stars.

I love this:

“If Kepler were to look down at a small town on Earth at night from space, it would be able to detect the dimming of a porch light as somebody passed in front,” said James Fanson, Kepler project manager at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

February 27th, 2009

Daddy eats cows.

Slate has a great article about raising vegetarian children. Mark Oppenheimer is a married to a vegetarian wife who believes their children should be raised vegetarian until they are old enough to make the ethical choice themselves of whether they want to eat meat.

…In asking my vegetarian friends, however, I have found that children raised as vegetarians tend to accept vegetarianism as a fact of life. I shouldn’t have been surprised, really: We all think that what we ate as young children was the best food in the world; it’s only with some effort that we introduce radical changes to our diet. Vegetarianism comes easily to those who have never known otherwise. “I look at it like this,” my rabbi, Jon-Jay Tilsen, a vegetarian father of four vegetarian children, told me. “Various societies and cultures have their own cuisines. And if we had been French, we’d be feeding our children frog’s legs—and in other places, monkey brains. In this country they eat cows, pigs, and chickens a lot—but in India they would sooner eat their brother-in-law than eat a cow. The point is that something that seems disgusting to eat is just a matter of what you were brought up with.” His children, unaccustomed to eating meat, have never expressed a desire to.

Read more

February 21st, 2009

taste your coffee

An article about coffee tasting that I found whilst searching for the explanation of that tingly feeling on the tongue that sometimes accompanies a nice coffee.

Snip:

Most experts concentrate on three elements Body, Acidity, & Balance.

Body: A coffee’s lipid or “oily” quality creates the tactile sensation of Body or “mouthfeel.”

Acidity: Naturally occurring acids in the beans combine with natural sugars that produce a sweetness that gives certain coffees a sharp pleasing tang or piquancy.

Balance: Think of Balance as a harmony of the many sensations yielded by a fine coffee. A “balanced” coffee is one whose flavor characteristics are all at the proper level for that variety.

A quick note on Acidity: Don’t let the term scare you. Acidity does NOT refer to pH levels discussed in high school chemistry class. It is not like hydrochloric acid or stomach acid. Instead, it is a basic taste sensation in coffee, especially those coffees grown in higher altitudes. You’ll notice a coffee’s acidity at every facet of tasting, but especially in a tingling sensation on your tongue. Acidity produces some of the pleasurable and distinctive sensations we enjoy when tasting coffee.

More

February 20th, 2009

Charles Darwin Tagged You in a Note on Facebook

Facebook as a way to examine how culture evolves to fit a niche, via Slate:

Last week, I enlisted Slate readers to help divine how Facebook’s “25 Random Things About Me” trend got started. More than 3,000 of you responded, answering queries on when you first saw a “25 Things” note, when you were first tagged, and when (if ever) you wrote your own note. On one level, the survey was a failure: I had hoped to find the trend’s Patient Zero, but there’s likely no single person who conceived of this scheme. But the absence of a singular “25 Things” creator reveals something much more interesting: Facebook organisms are not created by intelligent design. They evolve.

Read article: Slate.

February 19th, 2009

2m plastic bottles

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Above: Chris Jordan’s piece “Plastic Bottles” depicting 2m plastic bottles — the amount used by Americans every 5 minutes. Below, a close-up.

chris-jordan2

This is taken from the treehugger article: top 5 environmental artists shaking up the art world.

February 18th, 2009

genetic information

And isn’t it an arresting thought? We are digital archives of the African Pliocene, even of Devonian seas; walking repositories of wisdom out of the old days. You could spend a lifetime reading in this ancient library and die unsated by the wonder of it.

-Richard Dawkins, from his book Unweaving the Rainbow

Richard Dawkins wrote an interesting article on genetic information in relation to evolution after a question on this subject was apparently seen to stump him — this turned out to be a Creationist ploy attempting to make a dent in evolution theory’s armour. In his article, Dawkins rebukes this attempt and responds to the original question at length.

Here’s the article, and here’s the video it refers to briefly at the start.

February 17th, 2009

Obama Railroad

obama-high-speed-railroad

Obama signed and made official today his new 782.2 million dollar economic stimulus bill. Some of this is going to green causes such as making the US military more environmentally friendly.

Next to that Obama plans to make the biggest ever investment in the US railroad, creating an entirely new and very extensive railroad system.

“The time is right now for us to start thinking about high-speed rail as an alternative to air transportation connecting all these cities,” Obama said. “And think about what a great project that would be in terms of rebuilding America.”

Read more at treehugger.

I think the recession could have many such positive benefits like this — necessity is the mother of invention, they say.

February 13th, 2009

schismatic

I like the word schismatic, especially when used as a noun.

In this article the word is put to excellent use in describing Henry VIII:

When he died, he was the great schismatic, who had created a national church and an insular, xenophobic politics that shaped the development of England for the next 500 years

The article itself is interesting too! A love letter written by Henry VIII is being displayed in the British Library after being effectively hidden away in the Vatican for almost five centuries. The letter expresses Henry’s apparent deep love and loyalty for Anne Boleyn, who he would later have beheaded, and after whom he married four other women.

Ah! A romantic story that warms the heart just in time for Saint Valentine’s day!

Previously posted: Word Love (every dictionary.com “word of the day” for Valentines Day since 2000) and 400 Love Letters

February 9th, 2009

Buddhist, Economic, Physics lessons in Groundhog Day

Good blog has a fun article analysing the various lessons to be learned and philosophies upon which can be reflected in a viewing of the cult film Groundhog Day. When the film was first released it was popular but received not nearly as much praise and attention as in the intervening years. Now economists, physicists and even buddhists see the principles they teach in various aspects of the film.

Here is the Buddhist analysis:

The screenwriter Danny Rubin has admitted that he never intended all of Groundhog Day’s symbolic interpretations, but priests and rabbis have assumed that the film was intended to carry a religious moral because Phil Conners escapes the time loop (and his purgatorial boredom) when he gives in to selflessness and dedicates himself to helping others. But Buddhism offers the most exacting interpretation.

The most obvious aspect is that Phil, reliving each day, is enacting something like the cycle of constant rebirth posited by Mahayana Buddhism. But it goes deeper than that. A hard-core Buddhist interpretation holds that Phil’s great revelation isn’t eventually helping others, but realizing that he’s doomed to repeat the day he’s living. “Phil’s trapped in his own mind,” says Angela Zito, a professor of religion and anthropology at NYU. “That’s a metaphor for what every one of us goes through.”

Interpretations of Buddhism vary, but a popular rendition is that life is suffering—the endless cycle of being lashed by desires and then disappointed by what they yield. It repeats endlessly because we don’t know a way out. The only solution is to let go of desire—like Phil does, once he’s had his fill of the carnal pleasures of Punxsutawney’s women and commits himself to doing good without any expectation of benefit. “What Phil slowly sees is that he isn’t just embedded in the day he’s living. He’s actually making it,” says Zito, who’s shown the movie to students for several years to illustrate various Buddhist precepts. “But after he realizes his actions are making a difference, he soon realizes that they don’t get him what he wants. Eventually he lets go, and that’s when the day finally changes.” Of course, it’s not exactly Buddhist that Phil’s change of heart is rewarded with sex, but hey, that’s Hollywood.

Read the others here. (via kottke)

January 28th, 2009

David Attenborough accused of ingratitude for nature…

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God’s nature, anyway. He has revealed that he receives hatemail from seething creationists who deplore his lack of acknowledgement of God’s hand in nature.

It saddens me to hear that someone so admirable as Attenborough — someone who probably appreciates and loves nature more than a cathedral full of creationists could — is on the receiving end of this childishness.

Telling the magazine that he was asked why he did not give “credit” to God, Attenborough added: “They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator.”

Attenborough went further in his opposition to creationism, saying it was “terrible” when it was taught alongside evolution as an alternative perspective. “It’s like saying that two and two equals four, but if you wish to believe it, it could also be five … Evolution is not a theory; it is a fact, every bit as much as the historical fact that William the Conqueror landed in 1066.”

Attenborough, who attended the Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester in the 1930s, said he was astonished at manifestations of Christian faith.

“It never really occurred to me to believe in God – and I had nothing to rebel against, my parents told me nothing whatsoever. But I do remember looking at my headmaster delivering a sermon, a classicist, extremely clever … and thinking, he can’t really believe all that, can he? How incredible!”

Full article: Guardian

January 27th, 2009

Agnosia

Agnosia, a fascinating phenomenon, was mentioned in the article of my previous entry (which referred to visual agnosia). Wikipedia gives a summary of the condition in its various forms. A basic definition:

Agnosia (a-gnosis, “non-knowledge”, or loss of knowledge) is a loss of ability to recognize objects, persons, sounds, shapes, or smells while the specific sense is not defective nor is there any significant memory loss.

One specific form of agnosia is Amusia:

agnosia for music. It involves loss of the ability to recognize musical notes, rhythms, and intervals and the inability to experience music as musical.

Sounds incredibly unamusing to me! In fact that sounds horrible, but I suppose you’d be none the wiser. You’d feel terribly left out, and alienated from society, I would imagine…

I often feel I have the symptoms of what’s described here as “time agnosia” (the loss of comprehension of the succession and duration of events)… But what’s more likely is that I just have a highly selective memory.

Read about the different kinds of Agnosia at wikipedia.

January 27th, 2009

the “grand illusion” of consciousness

This was actually touched upon in my previous entry, but I thought it deserved its own post. An excellent article from NewScientist (22 June 2002) on an approach to explaining consciousness with science:

For the proposal “It’s all an illusion” even to be worth considering, the problem has to be serious. And it is. We can’t even begin to explain consciousness. Take this magazine in front of your eyes. Right now, you are presumably having a conscious experience of seeing the paper, the words, and the pictures. The way you see the page is unique to you, and no one else can know exactly what it is like for you. This is how consciousness is defined: it is your own subjective experience.

But how do you get from a magazine composed of atoms and molecules, to your experience of seeing it? Real, physical objects and private experiences are such completely different kinds of thing. How can one be related to the other? David Chalmers, of the University of Tucson, Arizona, calls it the “Hard Problem”. How can the firing of brain cells produce subjective experience? It seems like magic; water into wine.

Read further

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