Science News

France offers "zen-zones" on its high-speed trains, Vienna just ordered public transit users to keep the phone on silent, and more and more U.S. states are banning cell phone use while driving. Emirates Airlines, though, is giving obsessive communicators another place to gab: coach. Beginning in March, the airline rolled out technology designed to let users operate cell phones at low enough levels to avoid completely futzing up the plane's navigation and ending the conference call with a bang. Now in the U.S., we look at the Arab world and say, "You can take your excessive freedoms and shove…

We hit double digits. Champagne all around! In this episode: A timelapse video of the U.S.'s carbon footprint, a plan to turn pollution into DVDs (and fleece Al Gore?), a warning against nanotoxic socks, and a duel between two green-tech press releases. Created, written & designed by John Pavlus / Screencasts produced by Smashcut Media / Music by Jeff Alvarez Subscribe to our original video feed via iTunes or RSS.

Okay, maybe not, but Mitch Kapor, designer of Lotus 1-2-3, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and generally near-prescient entrepreneur is sending the resources of Kapor Enterprises in that direction. Kapor currently serves as the Chairman of the Board for Linden Lab, the makers of Second Life. One of the biggest complaints about virtual worlds--and we'll skip the tired flying penis jokes--is that it's hard to navigate in a 3D environment using a mouse and keyboard. His solution is to use a 3D camera to register movement and let users ride their avatars as if they were riding…

From the people who brought us Kismet… Meet Nexi, an oddly expressive robot from MIT's Media Lab.

In 1999, Hurricane Gert formed on the eastern side of the Atlantic and began the long trip to Bermuda. Along the way, it happened to pass over a hydrophone (an underwater microphone) planted half a mile deep in the mid-Atlantic. And made a little noise. A hurricane’s intense wind whips the waves into a churning frenzy, and deep below the surface of the ocean the turbulence creates a “rushing sound whose volume is a direct indicator of the storm's destructive power,” according to an MIT press release. MIT engineering professor Nicholas Makris, in a paper from a forthcoming Geophysical…

You can't avoid office politics, so you might as well learn the rules of the game

Jonathan Sawyer spent $30 000--and voided the warranty--to add a plug to his Prius hybrid

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Engineers are attempting to reconstruct the 19 April Soyuz descent from the ISS

The Toyota Production System has been applied to chip making. The electronics industry may never be the same

All too often movies make shocking science blunders, but here are a few rare gems that make a valiant effort to get it right

Storm damage has washed away Burma's main agricultural land, as its military rulers force the UN to stop shipments of emergency food

In the movie, the world froze when the "ocean conveyor belt" turned off – now scientists say they could forecast any slowdown of the crucial current

Fertility specialist explains why she treated a 16-year-old Arab patient and why other teens are likely to follow her example

The path of the Burma cyclone was accurately predicted four days before it made landfall, but the warning did not reach the people on the ground

According to wildlife experts, there are only about twenty five Amur Leopards left on earth. The Siberian Leopard or Far East Leopard as it is also known, is on the critically endangered list. During a recent census, eight of these Leopards were captured on film. Take a look at these rare photographs of the rarest of the big cats. (Photo Credit: Neal McClimon/ iStockphoto)

Glaciers now melt faster than they grow and release several pollutants into the ocean such as Insecticide. It starts trickling out of melting Antarctic glaciers decades after most countries stopped spraying DDT. The Adélie penguins are now being exposed to the toxic chemical. The DDT drips back into the ecosystem at an estimated rate of 1 to 4 kg per year.

Two dust devils have been whirling at the exact spot where the Phoenix Mars lander is going to touch down in a few weeks. The dust whirl was nearly a kilometre high but should not pose a threat to the landing. Phoenix is due to land on 25 May.

A team led by a geologist discovered fossilized sea creatures coated in tiny diamonds. The diamonds were created in the asteroid impact that killed off the dinosaurs. The single-celled organisms used the heavy diamond grains to protect themselves by sticking the diamonds together so they could sink to the bottom of the ocean.

The duck-billed Platypus has puzzled scientists for centuries. Now, researchers have determined the Platypus’s entire genetic code. There are reptile-like, bird-like, and mammal-like genetic modules. The animal is covered in fur and produces milk, but also lays eggs like a reptile.

I haven't contributed a single thing to the platypus genome project, but since my desk sits one floor above where people and robots broke the platypus DNA into chunks, cloned those chunks into bacteria, sequenced the pieces of DNA, and used massive amounts of computing power to assemble the stretches of sequence into a complete genomic whole, I'm going consider myself somewhat of an authority on the subject and tell you what's wrong with other people's ideas about the platypus. The genome sequence of the platypus was published Thursday in Nature, and from the press headlines, you could be…

The Antennae Galaxies, located in the constellation of Corvus (the Crow), are among the closest known merging galaxies. The two galaxies, also known as NGC 4038 and NGC 4039, began interacting a few hundred million years ago, creating one of the most impressive sights in the night sky. They are considered by scientists as the archetypal merging galaxy system and are used as a standard against which to validate theories about galaxy evolution. Scientists using Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 to observe individual stars spawned by the colossal cosmic…

Photosynthesis is of great interest outside biology, specifically in the energy industry. Using photosynthesis, green plants are able to harvest energy from sunlight and convert it to chemical energy at an energy transfer efficiency rate of approximately 97 percent and if scientists can create artificial versions of photosynthesis, the dream of solar power as the ultimate green and renewable source of electrical energy could be realized. However, a potential pitfall for any sunlight-harvesting system is that if the system becomes overloaded with absorbed solar energy, it most likely will…

There has been considerable interest in the publication of the platypus genome, which is good. Unfortunately, much of the reporting has been distorted, which is bad. However, rather than picking on the press, I want to focus on an example from the scientific literature where a misconception about evolutionary relationships seems to creep in and generate confusion.read more

A protein that is indispensable for passing on an accurate copy of the genome from mother to daughter cells can be compared to a cowboy’s lasso, say scientists at the The FIRC Institute of Molecular Oncology Foundation (IFOM). It 'catches' chromosomes and ties them to a transitory structure assembled during cell division. Once they have been neatly tied up, the chromosomes await the end of replication to be equally distributed between the two daughter cells. But if the lasso doesn’t catch them, chromosomes end up being randomly scattered, with potentially disastrous genetic effects:…

<p>Background Neuroblastoma is a malignant condition of the developing sympathetic nervous system that most commonly affects young children and is often lethal. Its cause is not known. <p>Methods We performed ...

(No abstract is available for this citation)

This report describes three unrelated girls with an immunodeficiency disease associated with disseminated granulomas and compound heterozygous mutations in the RAG1 or RAG2 recombination activating genes. Unlike severe combined immunodeficiency disease with null mutations in RAG1 or RAG2, this immunodeficiency disorder did not present with severe infection in early childhood, probably because the RAG mutations allowed a low level of recombinase activity. <P>

<p>An 83-year-old woman with long-standing atrial fibrillation who had previously undergone atrioventricular nodal ablation and pacemaker placement presented with symptoms of progressive heart failure. Physical examination was notable for elevated ...

<p>To the Editor: Early repolarization, consisting of an elevation of the QRS-ST junction (J point), QRS notching or slurring (J ...

A new spider species is named in honor of Neil Young.

Tom and Jerry may never get along, but cats could help mice get lucky in love.

What do doomsday cults do when the apocalypse doesn't come?

Mapping mountains and valleys of fossil teeth can shed light on ancient humans' diets.

The current level of natural activity is normal for Earth, scientists say.

The Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences' (USU) will hold its annual Research Week May 12-14. The mission of Research Week is to promote research initiatives of faculty, staff and students providing opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration and communication among USU graduate students and faculty.

The United States is bracing for what predictions say will be a "well-above-average" hurricane season. Texas Tech University has a number of wind scientists with extensive experience researching hurricanes such as Rita and Katrina and can speak as experts about various aspects of these devastating storms.

Backyard safety isn't just bike helmets and safe play structures, but protecting kids, pets and adults from diseases like West Nile Virus and EEE. The best and most proven effective method of reducing the backyard population of dangerous biting mosquitoes is by using a combination of CO2, heat, moisture, visual cues and scent. An innovative, propane-fueled insect control technology has been developed to reduce the annoyance of biting mosquitoes and the risk of dangerous mosquito-borne illnesses, providing long-term family protection and backyard comfort.

The future of nuclear physics is in designer isotopes -- the relatively new power scientists have to make specific rare isotopes to solve scientific problems and open doors to new technologies, according to Bradley Sherrill.

The Board of Directors of Canada's Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI) is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Neil Turok to the position of Executive Director.

For the last few months controversy has been building in the physics community around this summer's opening of the Large Hadron Collider at the CERN laboratory in Europe. The LHC will become the world's largest particle accelerator. (See a good...

Yesterday I had the pleasure of eating breakfast with Ian Bryden, the chair of renewable energy at the University of Edinburgh and an expert in marine energy. Professor Bryden was in Houston for the Offshore Technology Conference. We spoke mostly...

From the Sun-Sentinel in South Florida: Many South Florida residents, especially in Palm Beach County, woke up Tuesday morning and gasped. A section of drought-ravaged Lake Okeechobee, which normally should be underwater, was ablaze. Smoke from the 4,000-acre fire, shoved...

Since the publication of his book Storm World, author Chris Mooney has written some of the most concise and cogent analyses of hurricanes and their impact on modern societies. NASA EONargis dramatically floods Myanmar. Chris has been following Cyclone Nargis...

There's a fascinating article in this month's IEEE Spectrum: Last September, Israeli jets bombed a suspected nuclear installation in northeastern Syria. Among the many mysteries still surrounding that strike was the failure of a Syrian radar -- supposedly state-of-the-art --...

The first of our new column, celebrating the weird and wonderful members of the plants world. This week: dumbcane. » Read more on this story

Some of the Atlantic's largest inhabitants have been bouyed by the news that ships are listening to them. » Read more on this story

New research from the Null reveals girls scoff cereal to stop it sogging, but is it harming their bones? » Read more on this story

For all you hypochondriacs out there, Dave Hall continues his look at a some of the more unusual medical conditions, as well as some you thought you knew all about. » Read more on this story

The pod team get scientific about cereal. Plus, tea stops anthrax and your chance to win an EatMeCrunchy cereal bowl. » Read more on this story

Coming to Life: How Genes Drive Development by Christiane Nusslein-Volhard Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, winner of The Nobel Prize in Medicine, gives a concise and illustrative overview of genetics, evolution, and cellular processes as well as a discussing of current ethical issues in human biology. An excerpt from the American Scientist review of the book: The subtitle of Nüsslein-Volhard’s book is How Genes Drive Development. That’s really the essence of her conception of developmental biology, a view that guides the organization of the book. She begins with chapters that…

Given my limited knowledge of how to run a business (my sister’s the Harvard MBA of the family), I’d always thought having a bigger market is the key to success (as I alluded to in my previous post, Using Dispoable Income for Genetic Tests). There is, of course, another way of increasing company profits as Steve Jobs demonstrated with Apple: Apple’s stock has shot up more than 70% over the past year, thanks to Jobs’ strategy of focusing on his most profitable customers and coming up with new things to sell them—the ultra-thin MacBook Air most recently—rather than…

What does DNA mean to you? Here’s what Eric of Seqanswers says: To me, DNA is the single most important biological molecule, in fact to everyone it is! That fact is motivation enough for me to study and try to understand it completely. It is also extremely important for fueling intense amounts of blogging.

The New York Times reported this past weekend that more people are having problems obtaining affordable health insurance. On top of the budget constraints people face during a recession, even those who are covered by employer health insurance have to deal with “some combination of higher premiums, less extensive coverage, and bigger out-of-pocket deductibles and co-payments.” This means that many skip routine check-ups and avoid seeing the doctor unless absolutely necessary. The majority of U.S. tax payers this year will be receiving several hundreds of dollars in tax rebates.

This DNA replication song set to Backstreet Boys is truly cringe worthy! Oh, how I love bi-olo-gy (yeah yeah yeah) It’s better than chemistry And next time I have to go pee (I know) what’s happening inside of me

The Folding@Home project allows PS3 and computer owners to use spare processor cycles to help solve 3-dimensional protein structures. A new game allows players to use spare brain power to do the same. Foldit taps into human 3-D problem solving skills getting players to fold proteins in a video game interface, giving points based on energy required for a given configuration. The game has been in testing phase using proteins with known structures, but is about to challenge players with unknown structures.Try it out or read more about the game here.

I just saw this post today linked to from Bitesize Bio’s Around the Blog. It bears the title “Postdocs always overestimate their intellectual contributions” but really is about the relationship between postdocs and PIs, as seen from the postdoc perspective (and an under-appreciation of the PIs work). Life as a postdoc The postdoc (and grad student, for that matter) perspective is — and I recognize it both from my own experience and my colleagues — that you come up with most of the ideas, do all the work, and the PI just takes the credit. It is a bit exaggerated,…

An op-ed I wrote with Bob Cook-Deegan on the imminent passage (we hope!) of GINA into law appears in the Oakland Tribune: …people fear genetic discrimination, which is what makes this new law so historic. In a recent survey, the Genetics and Public Policy Center found that 92 percent of respondents worried that genetic tests could be used in ways that are harmful to those getting tested. Only one in four said they would trust insurers with access to their genetic test results. Just one in six would trust employers. The consequences of such fear, whether well-founded or not, could be…

Workforce shortages are a growing problem in the biotech industry. Communities are concerned that a lack of trained workers will either keep companies away or cause companies to move. If companies do have to move, it's likely those jobs might be lost forever, never to return. According to Robert Reich, former U.S. secretary of labor, now a professor at UC-Berkeley, biotech companies that can't hire in the U.S. will recruit foreign workers or open research centers overseas (Luke Timmerman, Seattle PI). Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Web 2.0 101 (My MD Journey): Videos about RSS, wikis, podcast or blogs: Telemedicine could eradicate many expensive ED visits (huliq.com): A community-wide study in upstate New York found that nearly 28 percent of all visits to the pediatric emergency department could have been replaced with a more cost-effective Internet doctor’s “visit,” or telemedicine, according to investigators from the University of Rochester Medical Center. The new medical bloggers’ list is up at Medblog.nl. Check it out! Talking Up A New Role For Cell Phones In Telemedicine (ScienceDaily): Two recent…

Why do people do things that will gain them social approval? It turns out that the same parts of the brain are activated for a positive social outcome as for a monetary reward. In other words, the same reward circuitry is turned on both by social and monetary gains. Corporate marketers as [...]

In my time as a catalog marketer, I almost always priced products just below the next dollar increment - a cheap item might be $9.97 rather than $10, while a more expensive item may have been $499, or even $499.99, instead of $500. My strategy was based on a couple of assumptions. [...]

I love research findings that run counter to intuition, or are at least unexpected, and the idea that you can get more for your house if you market it with an odd price is certainly unexpected. That’s what University of Florida researchers found, though: They looked at five years of real estate sales in [...]

Consumers must like lots of choices - why else would there be hundreds of shampoo brands and variants on a typical supermarket shelf? Actually, its been known for years that too many choices can reduce consumer purchases. A 2000 study at Columbia University compared consumer behavior when confronted with a selection of either [...]

Book Review: The Art of Digital Branding The Art of Digital Branding by Ian Cocoran is intended to provide a set of best practices for marketers who want to ensure their branding message is conveyed at least as effectively on the Web as anywhere else. The intended market for this book seems to be Web [...]

Ira speaks with Amir Aczel, author of "The Jesuit and the Skull", about a jesuit priest who reconciled his religion with science.

Researchers report that the common weedkiller atrazine may be able to disrupt hormonal signaling in humans.

Ira and guests look back on 25 years of research into HIV and AIDS, and talk about work towards HIV vaccines.

We'll find out about a new basic electronic structure called the 'memristor,' and why it has electronics developers excited.

What made the Sahara Desert go dry -- and is there any water there left to be found?

An important part of the admission process to a competitive college is the admissions interview. I'm against it. And that isn't just because interviews were originally instituted to keep Jews out of Harvard. It's because they are poor predictors of future performance and, even worse, they are poor predictors that people weight very heavily.I was first clued into this by none other than Google. Google recently revamped the way it chooses new hires, and an important part of the overhaul was minimizing the importance of the interview. As Laszlo Bock, Google's vice president for people operations…

Losses loom larger than gains.This useful mnemonic describes an odd experimental finding: if you have people rate on a scale of 1 to 10 how unhappy they would be to lose $100, that rating will be higher than if you ask them how happy they would be to win $100. Similarly, people tend to be reluctant to gamble when the odds are even (50% chance of winning $100, 50% chance of losing $100). Generally, if odds are even, people aren't likely to bet unless the potential prize is greater than the potential loss.This is a well-known phenomenon in psychology and economics. It is particularly…

Some may have noticed that my posts have been infrequent for the last week or two and wondered why. There is a simple answer to this:Quals.What are quals? They seem to be different in different universities, and quite possibly even between different departments. The top Google hit for "qualifying exam" sounds absolutely nothing like what I am doing. This seems to be true of graduate school in general, which is to say that there policies differ a great deal. I certainly got into trouble as a prospective graduate student by assuming that information I learned about one graduate program would…

I have written about Havard happiness professor Dan Gilbert before. He was recently interviewed by the New York Times. The article is worth the read.Read the blog: http://coglanglab.blogspot.com Do the research: http://coglanglab.org

It is well-known that infants learn their native languages with incredible ease. I just came across a passage that puts this into particularly striking context:A first point to note here is the obvious intellectual limitations that children have while language acquisition proceeds apparently without any effort. We are all extremely impressed if a two-year-old figures out to put the square blocks in the square holes and the round blocks in the round holes. Yet somehow by this age children are managing to cope with the extraordinarily difficult task of learning language.This is particularly…

Delusions are the strangest things... Once, back in the day, when I was interning in Ted Kennedy's press office we got a call from a woman (this was a pretty usual occurrence) demanding to know why the CIA, et. al. were monitoring her brainwaves. Our quick thinking secretary (a Harvard grad making 16k a year for the privilege of working in the Senate) told her to hold he was going to go check the list. He let her sit for a few minutes, got back on the phone, and told her she wasn't on the list and there must be a mistake. He would have her mind control removed immediately and he was sorry for…

I love antique anatomical drawings of the brain. I even have a couple in my office that I should probably take a picture of to show off to you guys. These illustrations from Japan are particularly interesting. According to Pink Tentacle: The Kaibo Zonshinzu anatomy scrolls, painted in 1819 by Kyoto-area physician Yasukazu Minagaki (1784-1825), consist of beautifully realistic, if not gruesome, depictions of scientific human dissection. Unlike European anatomical drawings of the time, which tended to depict the corpse as a living thing devoid of pain (and often in some sort of Greek pose),…

Cristiana Senni from World Parrots Trust just let me know that their organization has uploaded several movies to YouTube of African Grey parrots in the wild. I live with a Grey, and was absolutely amazed at their vocalizations and behaviors--pretty much exactly like Pepper. Reminds me that while Pepper is tame, he is still just one generation from his wild brethren. Check out their beautiful videos! Another under the fold... Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

The Dalai Lama has been making appearances and giving talks in the US, with his most recent talk at the University of Michigan (where I am) yesterday. Although I was unable to attend the actual talk, since the tickets were sold out within an hour of going on sale, his appearance was videotaped and uploaded (check out the movie here.) According to the press release from UM, the Dalai Lama's talk skirted most of the tough issues that Tibet is now facing, and focused more on environmentalism--a topic certainly near and dear to the inhabitants of Ann Arbor. Check it out. Read the comments on this…

Well folks, sorry I've been so AWOL around here lately. Lets just say there's been a lot of long hours in the basement with the confocal microscope, and I've also been in charge of organizing the U of M Neuroscience Spring Symposium, which is next week. I'm super-excited about the three visiting neuroscientists: Nicholas Gaiano, Ed Boyden, and David Sulzer. So, forgive my temporary absence...although I'm sure Steve is keeping everyone entertained. Speaking of entertaining, I was emailed this awesome anatomically correct brain cake, recipe which I just had to share. Someone put a lot of love…

Dolphin Parenting

Brian Cox talks about his work on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Discussing the biggest of big science in an engaging, accessible way, Cox brings us along on a tour of the massive complex and describes his part in it -- and the vital role it's going to play in understanding our universe.

In physics, quantum mechanics is the study of the relationship between quanta and elementary particles. Among other relationships the valence shell electrons and photons are quantized. Quantum mechanics is a fundamental branch of physics with wide applications in both experimental and theoretical physics. Quantum theory generalizes all classical theories, including mechanics, electromagnetism (except general relativity), and provides accurate descriptions for many previously unexplained phenomena such as black body radiation and stable electron orbits. The effects of quantum mechanics are…

Using sound and laser technology, researchers have begun to reveal the secrets of the ocean floor from the Sonoma Coast to Monterey Bay. By creating complex 3-D maps, they're hoping to learn more about waves and achieve ambitious conservation goals.

Researchers have found a way to turn wood into gasoline. Now we may not have to turn our food into fuel thanks to a possible new source: trees.

I commented on a post on the Bad Language blog, produced by my good friend Matthew Stibbe, earlier this week. He was waxing lyrical about cutting power consumption in his SOHO and mentioned how he prefers to brew tea with freshly drawn water. I pointed out that while this may have benefits it would actually increase his kettle limescale problems through the addition of extra calcium and magnesium ions. The effect will be negligible, but if we are adding up every single kilowatt-second then it could make a difference. Of course, brewing tea is not environment friendly in the first place and we…

How does one measure the worth of the science base? From the scientists’ perspective it is their bread and butter, or low-fat spread and rye biscuit, perhaps, in some cases. From industry’s standpoint, it is occasionally a source of interesting and potentially money-spinning ideas. Sometimes, it sits in its ivory tower and, to the public, it is the root of all those media scare stories. At worst, the science base is perceived as a huge drain on taxpayers’ money, especially when the popular press gets hold of ’spiders on cannabis’ and the ’scum on your…

Social engineering attacks, what used to be known as a confidence, or con, tricks, can only be defeated by potential victims taking a sceptical attitude to unsolicited approaches and requests for privileged information and resources. That is the message that arrives from European researchers. Most of us have received probably dozens of phishing messages and emails from scammers on the African continent seeking to relieve us of our hard-earned cash. Apparently, these confidence tricksters are so persuasive that they succeed repeatedly in hustling funds even from those among us with a normally…

There have been 32 issues of my science news column on spectroscopynow.com since it was last officially called Spectral Lines, but I thought it was a nice name so occasionally resurrect it here when I highlight the latest research findings I cover on the site. It also gives me an excuse to re-use a logo I did in the early days of the site touting the line “David Bradley On Spec” (geddit?). So this, week the first May issue is brought to you by the letter “F” with articles entitled: Fishing for amines, Fancy ants for arthritis, and Fixing chemotherapy. We also have,…

A post from David Bradley Science Writer RSS Awareness Day

Winning people over is a key element of human interaction – from politics to marketing to everyday dealings with friends and family. lifts the lid on the science of persuasion

A task has been found that can seemingly add to your "fluid intelligence" – and the harder you train, the more you gain

Only humans have religion, because only humans have the brain architecture to imagine things that don't exist

Concentrating on your last meal significantly reduces the desire to snack, say researchers

The new glass chip restrains a popular research worm during surgery, allowing scientists to study nerves as they recover from damage

BioNumbers - The Database of Useful Biological Numbers Here’s a neat new website. It’s a repository of quantitative information on biological things (eg. organisms, biomolecules, etc.) Some stuff I found while glancing through: Number of mRNA/cell in E. coli: 138 Volume occupied by all RNA in E. coli: 6% Average gene length in mammals: 16.6kb Average gene length in nematode C. elegans:  4 kb Mutation rate per genome per replication in humans: 0.16 mutation/genome/replication Average time between blinks in humans: 2.8 sec Amount of photons necessary to excite a cone in humans: 100…

If the Fish Liver Can’t Kill, Is It Really a Delicacy? [NYT, login] Amazing. It looks like TTX (tetrodotoxin, a potent voltage-gated sodium channel blocker well-known to electrophysiologists) is not made by the pufferfish (which I had always assumed), rather it is from the bacteria/food consumed by the fish. Decades earlier, another Japanese scientist had identified fugu’s poison as tetrodotoxin, a neurotoxin that leaves victims mentally aware while they suffer paralysis and, in the worst cases, die of heart failure or suffocation. There is no known antidote. Researchers surmised that…

Full agenda is available here. Speakers are mostly a mix of neurotech CEOs and VCs (and Rep. Patrick Kennedy). I’ve heard that there are no more free passes for students. (sadly) If anyone attends and would be willing to write-up something about the conference, please let me know and I’d be glad to put it on neurodudes.

The great Masao Ito, originator of one of the classic theories of cerebellar function, has published a new theory in the recent issue of Nature Neuroscience regarding how the cerebellum may be involved in control of cognition. The basic idea is that while the cerebellum has evolutionarily had a role of refining motor commands for the purpose of controlling the skeleton, in the human the cerebellum is capable of refining commands from frontal cortex to “control” internal representations of the outside world. Ito uses the increasingly popular language of control theory to describe…

An extremely interesting trend in neuroscience has been to use the language of Control Theory to explain brain function. A recent paper by Shadmehr and Krakauer does a very nice job of summarizing this trend and assembling a comprehensive theory of how the brain controls the body. Using control theory, they put forward a mathematically precise description of their theory. Because their theory uses blocks that are direct analogues of specific brain regions like the basal ganglia, motor cortex, and cerebellum, they can use brain lesion studies to undergird their ideas about these components.

To coincide with stroke awareness month, a new report from the US Government's Center for Disease and Control and Prevention has highlighted that less than half of people surveyed could identify the potentially life-saving early warning signs of stroke. A stroke, known medically as a cerebrovascular accident, is where the blood supply to the brain is interrupted because of blockage or damage to an essential blood vessel. It can be fatal, and more often leads to significant brain damage, but this can be limited or a life potentially saved if it is detected and treated as soon as possible. The…

Fascinating article in the New York Times on lying, deception and why exaggeration seems the same but is psychologically quite different. UK government returns to pissing in the wind over drug classification. Prime Minister feels that having wet trousers will "send a message". New Scientist covers a new study on old news that hallucinations and delusions during intensive care can lead to trauma in children. Fake tits and heroin, brought to you by HotForWords. Scientific American Mind has an excellent article on unconscious bias and prejudice and how it affects how we behave. How LSD rocked…

The legal system works on a principal of innocent until proven guilty by the evidence presented in court, but Cognitive Daily covers several studies that shown our memory of the evidence is affected by moral judgements of the person in question. With their trademark clarity, CogDaily discuss a study [pdf] by psychologist David Pizarro that found if participants were told about man leaving a restaurant without paying, they remembered the unpaid bill being more expensive if they were told he treated the waiters rudely, than if they were told he was generally a responsible person. The study is…

The link between attractiveness and facial symmetry seems to hold across both black and white faces, but also in non-human primates, according to a study just published in the open-access science journal PLoS One. One of the most striking studies in sex and symmetry research isn't mentioned, however. A 1995 study found that the likelihood of female orgasm during sex was related to the extent of bodily symmetry in the male partner. The study was led by biologist Randy Thornhill and recruited 86 young couples who completed a number of relationship questionnaires, including one on how often the…

BBC Radio 4's legendary history of ideas programme In Our Time takes an in-depth and fascinating look at the history of the brain. The programme tracks the earliest Western ideas on the function and purpose of the brain from the times of the ancient Greeks. What's most fascinating is how some completely false ideas about the brain survived centuries, despite the fact that it would have been easy to see how they were incorrect, if it weren't for the reluctance to actually do dissection studies on humans. However, there were rare exceptions in the ancient world. For example, Herophilos and…

Our ability to suppress unwanted thoughts and behaviors is thought to be related to a process known as "inhibition," whereby ventrolateral regions of prefrontal cortex (vlPFC) actively suppress inappropriate representations. A 2001 study by Sakagami et al. recorded firing data from neurons in the vlPFC to determine the exact mechanism by which this might occur. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Does the resolution or precision of human memory change with its available capacity? In other words, can you remember fewer items with greater precision than you can remember more items? Contradicting intuition, a new paper from yesterday's issue of Nature shows that all items are stored in memory with equal resolution, regardless of the number of items stored. Authors Zhang & Luck first showed that subjects are equally accurate in reporting the color of a memorized item regardless of the number of other items being maintained in memory. Specifically, when subjects were asked to select the…

Complex cognition can be predicted by remarkably simple tasks. For example, the speed with which you choose one of two possible responses can reliably predict IQ. Some theories propose that this relationship is due to differences in something called "processing speed," but more recent work has shown the effect is really due to the slowness of your slowest reaction times on such simple tasks. Known as the "worst performance rule," this can be revealed through various RT distribution decomposition techniques (e.g., "binning" of reaction times or ex-gaussian analysis). A particular class of…

Peter Hankins has written an excellent commentary criticizing the "positive comparisons" I make after contrasting brains with computers. Peter says: "... the concept of processing speed has no useful application in the brain rather than that it isn't fixed." While this statement may intuitively appeal to some philosophers, temporal limitations in neural processing are both critical for neuronal function and well accepted in both neuroscience and psychometrics. At the biological level, the membrane capacitance of neurons is important for regulating the firing rate of neurons, which itself has…

Almost everyone tries to lose weight at some point, but we are remarkably bad at it; most people quickly return to their original weight after cessation of exercise or resumption of a normal diet. A review article by Patterson & Levin elucidates the pathways for this effect, and in the process finds a special role for juvenile exercise in guarding against obesity throughout the lifespan. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Some leading medical experts have decided to end an age-old tradition — taking money from drug companies. These doctors used to get paid for making speeches, but they say they're reclaiming their tarnished credibility.» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

When it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, what you eat may be more important than where your food comes from. A new study finds that replacing red meat and dairy products with chicken, fish or vegetables could have the same impact as shifting to an entirely locally-grown diet.» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

In May 1983, the first scientific papers were published describing the possible connection between a retrovirus and the development of AIDS. The virus went on to become known as HIV. Experts discuss whether, 25 years later, scientists any closer to a cure for AIDS or to a vaccine to prevent HIV transmission.» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Researchers report that atrazine, the second-most-applied weedkiller in the U.S., may be able to disrupt hormonal signaling in humans. The herbicide, which has been banned in Europe, is suspected of playing a role in sexual abnormalities in fish, frogs and other aquatic organisms.» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

What made the Sahara Desert go dry — and are there ancient waters still hidden below the sands? In a controversial study published in the journal Science researchers argue that the drying of the Sahara took place over thousands of years — not suddenly as was previously thought.» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

A tenth of the planet's population occasionally suffers through devastating famines because small insects fear being bitten in the bum. That's the astonishing message from a new study of one of mankind's greatest pests - the desert locust. Swarms can stretch for several hundred square kilometres and each of these harbours up to 80 million hungry sets of mandibles that eat their own body weight in food every day. These plagues are unpredictable but they only form when locust populations reach some sort of critical mass. Desert locusts are two insects for the price of one; at a crowded tipping…

Cuckoos are some of nature's most familiar conmen. Several species of this large family are murderous slackers, who shun their own parental responsibilities by deceiving other birds into caring for their chicks. In the process, they destroy the eggs of the unwitting adopted family to ensure that their own chick gets undivided attention. But this is not the only way that cuckoos fool other birds - they also mimic hawks. The resemblance between cuckoos and hawks (particularly sparrowhawks) has been noted for millennia. Both birds have long bodies, wings and tails and their paler, striped…

The countryside around Iraq and the Balkans are still suffering from the ravages of wars fought in the 1990s. The environment is littered with the potentially dangerous remnants of military weapons - depleted uranium. Depleted uranium is what's left over after 'enrichment', when uranium-235 is separated from natural uranium. This isotope is suitable for nuclear reactors and weapons, and the remainder consists of uranium-238, a less radioactive isotope with a longer half-life. This "depleted uranium" is valued by the military for its high density and is often combined with titanium to produce…

This is a quick follow-up to my other post on fat cells, which as it happens, isn't the only obesity-related story out today. Another paper found a common genetic variant that increases the risk of obesity in its carriers. A huge team of researchers scoured the genomes of almost 17,000 European people for genetic variations that are linked to obesity. Until now, only one has been found and it sits within a gene called FTO. This new study confirmed that FTO variants have the strongest association with obesity, but in the runner-up position is another variant near a gene called melanocortin-4…

As fat people have an abundance of fat tissue, the natural assumption is that fat people have more fat cells, or 'adipocytes'. That's only part of the story - it turns out that overweight and obese people not only have a surplus of fat cells, they have larger ones too. The idea of these 'fatter fat cells' has been around since the 1970s. But their importance has been dramatically highlighted by a new study, which shows that the number of fat cells in both thin and obese people is more or less set during childhood and adolescence. During adulthood, about 8% of fat cells die every year only to…

By analyzing thousands of layers sediment in a core drilled from the bottom of a lake, a team of scientists has reconstructed the climate of northern Africa.

New research indicates that growing smarter has dangerous side effects that make its evolution even more puzzling.

A growing band of researchers is trying to redefine how diseases are classified — by looking at their genetic underpinnings.

The platypus genome is an amalgam of genes reflecting significant branching in evolution, scientists reported.

Mr. Sparks made critical contributions to developing the second-generation transistor, which became a building block of modern electronic devices.

The latest Silicon Valley EDA company to set up operations in Israel is CoWare.

Has Toshiba Corp.'s luck ended?

The latest research developments in interconnect technologies will be featured at IITC in June. The two most interesting trends: 3D ICs and nanotube interconnects.

Microsoft said on Friday it was appealing against a record 899 million euro ($1.39 billion) fine imposed by the European Commission for using high prices to discourage software competition.

Troops forced out the last holdouts after glowing rocks spewed from Chaitén. An expert warns that a catastrophic flow of toxic gas and ash could follow.

A "perfect storm" of factors—from location to wind speed to poor preparation—have resulted in perhaps a hundred thousand deaths from Cyclone Nargis.

People living in the earliest known settlement in the Americas relied partly on seaweed, bolstering the theory that the New World was settled via a coastal route, a new study says.

The grassy prehistoric Sahara turned to desert more slowly than previously thought, a new report says—and some say global warming may turn the desert green once again.

The world's largest group of orangutans in Indonesia may face extinction by 2011 because of palm oil plantation expansion, which is destroying habitat, experts say.

Data-recovery specialist salvages info from disk in shuttle accident.

Meat retailers can track meat from ranch to market using DNA analysis.

Retailers could be fined for selling violent games; gamers look to Constitution.

"Grand Theft Auto IV" trounced "Iron Man" by $300 million in first-week sales.

Slumping real estate market has helped conservationists buy and preserve land.

ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Researchers in Ivory Coast are asking $1 million for a three-headed hybrid coconut tree they believe could substantially boost the tropical nut's yield.

PUERTO MONTT, Chile (Reuters) - A towering plume of ash from an erupting volcano in Chile's remote Patagonia could collapse back down to devastate the surrounding area, a leading expert warned on Friday.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A new company hopes drivers will kick the oil habit by brewing ethanol at home that won't spike food prices.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan cleared the way for a law allowing non-aggressive military use of space on Friday, overturning a decades-old policy of limiting space development to peaceful uses.

BEIJING (Reuters) - A deadly strain of hand, foot and mouth disease has killed two more children in China, bringing the death toll in recent weeks to 32, state media said on Friday, as it praised a doctor who alerted authorities to the epidemic.

Researchers spy on the brain as people decide how to distribute donations to an orphanage

African desert didn't dry out as quickly as thought

Recently, telecommunications regulator OfCom (a UK government organization) “proclaimed” at the end of a long PDF report, perhaps rather naively that a lot of invaluable free information useful to the public is not being seen by its target audience because commercial sites outrank it in the search engine results pages (SERPs). One might say this is simply the way of the world and that OfCom fails to understand how the ranking algorithms of sites such as Google, MSN/Live and Yahoo! actually work. Of course, almost all search engines are commercial entities and have an inbuilt…

My singing group, Big Mouth, recently recorded an audition video for a TV competition and I decided to make a backup, edit it, and upload it to Youtube/Google Videos to share with the other members of the band. Now, aside from the first hurdle being the inability of a Windows Vista and a Windows XP machine to “see” the Sony miniDV camcorder, there were many subsequent issues to deal with. The incompatibility between camcorder and PC meant that I had to first record the audition tape on to a DVD, using a standard set-top DVD recorder. Once I had it on the DVD, which played in the…

No one likes spam. I bet even spammers don’t like spam. If you run a blog with comments enabled it can be an almost full-time job keeping on top of it. If you’re on Wordpress, then the simplest way to keep on top of it is to use the Akismet plugin which quickly learns what is and what is not spam. Couple that with the Akismet Auntie Spam Greasemonkey script (from internnetducttape) and you’ve got a convenient way of abbreviating the Akismet listings should you wish to give them the once-over, checking for false positives. Some bloggers also like to run a script or plugin…

Popups are a pain in the posterior, especially the legitimate ones, such as the Blogspot comment form, that will not let you resize them. Quick solution if you’re using Firefox. Open the about:config page, filter on the phrase “dom.disable_window_open_feature.resizable” (no quotes) and if it reads “false”, double click it to make it toggle to true. Next time you get a popup, you will be able to drag its corner to resize it. Significant Figures from David Bradley SQT: Resizing Popups

I’m not trying to get a sneak peak into your private life, but am interested in your privacy and safety. If you are only using a conventional antivirus (AV) package whether that’s AntiVir (recommended), AVG (recommended) or any of the myriad other AV products, such as McAfee, f-Prot, or Norton, then you may not know that you are wide open to attack from malware particularly in between AV updates. How come, you ask? Well, the answer lies in understanding how conventional AV software works, and how new viruses, trojans, and other nasties can circumvent it. To detect a viral attack…

Desktops are vanishing fast from the world and this process would start in india in 2 years time. I am currently searching for a perfect laptop for me and after seeing various brands, i felt Compaq would work the best. I saw lenovo (pricy !), acer (good), Dell (why to pay unnecessarily for Vista). Finally HP and compaq, and i have selected Compaq presario 773TU. Main features of Compaq presario (model - 773TU) : Core 2Duo mobile processor. ~ 1.8 Ghz 2 GB RAM 15.4 inch Price - INR 37,500 (bargained ) ~ USD 975 I am removing my desktop and that is why i haven't blogged for few days. Also opting…

It's well known that china is the global leader in producing cheap technology items like mobile phones, electronics, etc. Chinese mobile phones have recently hit Indian markets. They cost less than $100 but they have functions as such of $200 phone. Also question of durability arises in Chinese products because they are known for inferior electronics goods. I asked its durability and surprisingly reviews say that phone is at least durable 2.5-3 years. That's not too bad considering the fact about electronic goods like mobile phones. China beats Indian markets in several products because of…

Days are not far where crude oil may touch $200 per barrel. The international oil demand is rising and upon that political instability in OPEC»s and weakening US dollar. Oil doesn't only come from middle east. It comes from even Algeria, Nigeria, Venezuela, etc. Even if these non-middle east countries stop oil drilling, crude oil will touch min. $250/barrel ! The situation is such that Europe and US is forcing these countries to drill more oil field so that oil rates go down. You can't fool the world by drilling more oil fields and reducing the per barrel oil prices. This is what US…

Google pagerank update is going on and Tech Productivity got a start with PR 1. I expected it to be PR 2, but bad luck, anyway that's fine. This time, pagerank of most sites has risen. Interesting thing is that sites whose pagerank was decreased by google last time with suspect of selling links on their sites have now regained their lost pagerank. It seems it was a strategy by google so that people would fear selling links on sites. Several sites pagerank has risen this time. A positive page rank update

IIT - Indian Institute of Technology , a topmost Indian engineering institute. Graduate from IIT are better known as IITians. IITians are one of the most brilliant students worldwide. You wont get admission in any IIT university ( There 5-6 IIT's currently) easily. Its a tough job cracking its entrance test. I just saw this article at ZDnet : IITians now prefer India as their career option. Earlier, most IITians after graduating used to fly to US or UK, to some developed nations. 1964-2001 : 65 % stayed at home (India), rest went abroad. 2002-2008 : 84% now stay at home. This percentage…

DALLAS (AP) - Jenny, recognized as the world's oldest living gorilla in captivity, celebrated her 55th birthday Thursday with a four-layer frozen fruit cake and banana leaf wrapped treats at her wooded home in the Dallas Zoo.

Since they first walked the planet, humans have either buried or burned their dead. Now a new option is generating interest - dissolving bodies in lye and flushing the brownish, syrupy residue down the drain.