Civilpooch

'Mind-reading' Experiment Highlights How Brain Records Memories

ScienceDaily (2009-03-13) -- It may be possible to "read" a person's memories just by looking at brain activity, according to new research. Scientists show that our memories are recorded in regular patterns, a finding which challenges current scientific thinking. Demis Hassabis and Professor Eleanor Maguire at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL (University College London) have previously studied the role of a small area of the brain known as the hippocampus which is crucial...

Friday, 13 March 2009 11:42 | 186 hits |  Email | Read more

Bird behavior predicted by game theory

ScienceDaily (Mar. 7, 2009) — A team of scientists, led by the University of Exeter, has used game theory to explain the bizarre behaviour of a group of ravens. Juvenile birds from a roost in North Wales have been observed adopting the unusual strategy of foraging for food in 'gangs'. New research explains how this curious behaviour can be predicted by adapting models more commonly used by economists to analyse financial trends.  

Saturday, 07 March 2009 16:05 | 248 hits |  Email | Read more

Brain wave activity anticipates stimulus

ScienceDaily (Mar. 4, 2009) — Neuroscientists at Georgetown University Medical Center have, for the first time, shown what brain activity looks like when someone anticipates an action or sensory input which soon follows.

Wednesday, 04 March 2009 12:53 | 210 hits |  Email

Earliest horses ridden and milked

ScienceDaily (Mar. 8, 2009) — An international team of archaeologists has uncovered the earliest known evidence of horses being domesticated by humans. The discovery suggests that horses were both ridden and milked. The findings could point to the very beginnings of horse domestication and the origins of the horse breeds we know today. Led by the Universities of Exeter and Bristol (UK), the research is published on Friday 6 March 2009 in journal Science.

Sunday, 08 March 2009 16:02 | 235 hits |  Email | Read more

Emily Rosa, Scientist

You don’t have to be a scientist to use the scientific method, it’s a way of thinking anyone can use. In 1996, eleven-year-old Emily Rosa became the youngest person to have a research paper published in a peer-reviewed medical journal — the April 1996 Journal of the American Medical Association. Rosa performed a study testing the claimed med ability of twenty-one Therapeutic Touch practitioners to detect and manipulate energy or aura. She was nine when she ran the experiment and eleven at...

Tuesday, 17 February 2009 11:32 | 274 hits |  Email | Read more

Excellent tutorial on basic science!

The mysteries of science are explored using the common Easter Peep. This is actually quite a good writeup of scientific method. "Basic Science: Our first studies focused on basic attributes and reactions of Peeps to simple conditions and stimuli. ..... After 30 seconds, our subject did indeed demonstrate a marked increase in size consistent with fear responses described in other species." Thanks Academy Grad Eden Halbert! (mouse over to see final result!)

Saturday, 21 March 2009 06:52 | 256 hits |  Email | Read more

Fear Memories Weakened With Beta-blocker Propranolol

There appears to be a window during which fear memory can be interrupted and not burned in.  I've always wondered if this could be used with dogs during desensitization and classical conditioning. Take the edge of and allow behavior in context ScienceDaily (Mar. 12, 2009) — A team of Dutch researchers led by Merel Kindt has successfully reduced the fear response. They weakened fear memories in human volunteers by administering the beta-blocker propranolol. Interestingly, the fear...

Thursday, 12 March 2009 14:06 | 200 hits |  Email | Read more

Great piece on causal fallacies

Remember the correlation between Pirates and Global Warming from the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Always a favorite of mine to demonstrate a meaningless correlation. And the case of Stephen Gould's age having a perfect correlation with the price of butter? A new one:  Reduced importing of lemons from Mexico are nearly perfectly coordinated with the decline in US highway fatalitie (R=.97). From Megan McCardle and Atlantic Business contributor Derek Lowe. This is the case, but...

Monday, 20 April 2009 20:50 | 433 hits |  Email | Read more

Here be dragons

See this. Spread this. Advocate this. Or we are all doomed.

Sunday, 15 February 2009 14:28 | 222 hits |  Email | Read more

Horses domesticated 1000 years earlier than thought

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD Published: March 5, 2009 It is a long way from Kazakhstan to Kentucky, but the journey to the Derby may have started among a pastoral people on the Kazakh steppes who appear to have been the first to domesticate, bridle and perhaps ride horses — around 3500 B.C., a millennium earlier than previously thought. From the NYT.

Thursday, 05 March 2009 22:09 | 200 hits |  Email | Read more

Humans can smell fear

ScienceDaily (Mar. 8, 2009) — When threatened, many animals release chemicals as a warning signal to members of their own species, who in turn react to the signals and take action. Research by Rice University psychologist Denise Chen suggests a similar phenomenon occurs in humans. Chen and graduate student Wen Zhou collected “fearful sweat” samples from male volunteers. The volunteers kept gauze pads in their armpits while they were shown films that dealt with topics known to inspire...

Monday, 09 March 2009 20:13 | 209 hits |  Email | Read more

It's unhealthy to be angry, especially for men

This is one of the reasons I changed careers: ScienceDaily (Mar. 16, 2009) — Anger and hostility are significantly associated with both a higher risk for coronary heart disease (CHD) in healthy individuals and poorer outcomes in patients with existing heart disease, according to the first quantitative review and meta-analysis of related studies, which appears in the March 17, 2009, issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Tuesday, 17 March 2009 00:00 | 222 hits |  Email | Read more

Musicians good at identifying emotion in sound

“Quickly and accurately identifying emotion in sound is a skill that translates across all arenas, whether in the predator-infested jungle or in the classroom, boardroom,”  etc, according to this research. Does playing the clarinet, sax, and flute as a kid count? ScienceDaily (Mar. 5, 2009) — Looking for a mate who in everyday conversation can pick up even your most subtle emotional cues? Find a musician, Northwestern University researchers suggest ... an interdisciplinary Northwestern...

Thursday, 05 March 2009 20:28 | 182 hits |  Email | Read more

NIH's Complimentary/Alternative Medicine project

See http://nccam.nih.gov/news/newsletter/2010_may/ This is the newsletter of the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NIH's - NCCAM) The NCAM was funded by the government to research what value, if any, is provided by complementary or alternative medicine.  The nccam.nih.gov website publishes results of many studies, or studies of studies. This issue covers a number of topics addressing nutritional supplements commonly marketed to the...

Tuesday, 01 June 2010 11:01 | 93 hits |  Email | Read more

Pocket Guide for Carcinogens in Personal Care Products

Consumer Tool of the Week:  As noted in last week's Organic Bytes, the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) released a new study that exposes levels of the petrochemical carcinogen 1,4-Dioxane in leading conventional as well as "natural" brands of personal care and household cleaning products. This cancer-causing contaminant is all too frequently found in products directly applied to the skin, but it is not listed on ingredient labels, making it difficult for consumers to avoid potentially...

Thursday, 12 March 2009 11:31 | 188 hits |  Email | Read more