May 25, 2011
Rare White Kiwi Chick Born
Manukura - the little white kiwi. from Mike Heydon on Vimeo.
A rare white kiwi chick, named Manukura, hatched on May 1 at New Zealand's national wildlife center. It's believed to be the first all-white kiwi chick born in captivity.
The unusual chick is not an albino, but the rare offspring of kiwi that were transferred the center, called Pukaha Mount Bruce, from Hauturu/Little Barrier Island last year.
"The kiwi population on Little Barrier Island has birds with white markings and some white kiwi, but this was still a big surprise," Pukaha Mount Bruce Board chairman, Bob Francis said in a press release.
Manukura was the thirteenth of fourteen kiwis successfully hatched at Pukaha Mount Bruce this breeding season. When it is old enough to protect itself, Mankura may be released into a wildlife sanctuary.
But wildlife officials say they will make that decision carefully since, as Department of Conservation area manager Chris Lester pointed out, "A white kiwi might really stand out making it more vulnerable."
Read more at Discovery News
Scientists Afflict Computers with Schizophrenia
AUSTIN, Texas — Computer networks that can’t forget fast enough can show symptoms of a kind of virtual schizophrenia, giving researchers further clues to the inner workings of schizophrenic brains, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and Yale University have found.
The researchers used a virtual computer model, or “neural network,” to simulate the excessive release of dopamine in the brain. They found that the network recalled memories in a distinctly schizophrenic-like fashion.
Their results were published in April in Biological Psychiatry.
“The hypothesis is that dopamine encodes the importance — the salience — of experience,” says Uli Grasemann, a graduate student in the Department of Computer Science at The University of Texas at Austin. “When there’s too much dopamine, it leads to exaggerated salience, and the brain ends up learning from things that it shouldn’t be learning from.”
The results bolster a hypothesis known in schizophrenia circles as the hyperlearning hypothesis, which posits that people suffering from schizophrenia have brains that lose the ability to forget or ignore as much as they normally would. Without forgetting, they lose the ability to extract what’s meaningful out of the immensity of stimuli the brain encounters. They start making connections that aren’t real, or drowning in a sea of so many connections they lose the ability to stitch together any kind of coherent story.
Full Story at University of Texas
The researchers used a virtual computer model, or “neural network,” to simulate the excessive release of dopamine in the brain. They found that the network recalled memories in a distinctly schizophrenic-like fashion.
Their results were published in April in Biological Psychiatry.
“The hypothesis is that dopamine encodes the importance — the salience — of experience,” says Uli Grasemann, a graduate student in the Department of Computer Science at The University of Texas at Austin. “When there’s too much dopamine, it leads to exaggerated salience, and the brain ends up learning from things that it shouldn’t be learning from.”
The results bolster a hypothesis known in schizophrenia circles as the hyperlearning hypothesis, which posits that people suffering from schizophrenia have brains that lose the ability to forget or ignore as much as they normally would. Without forgetting, they lose the ability to extract what’s meaningful out of the immensity of stimuli the brain encounters. They start making connections that aren’t real, or drowning in a sea of so many connections they lose the ability to stitch together any kind of coherent story.
Full Story at University of Texas
May 24, 2011
Rapture: Harold Camping issues new apocalypse date
Camping predicted that on May 21st 2011, 200 Million Christians (all American of course) would be lifted up in to heaven, the rest of us would be left on earth so that God, in all his infinite love, could spend 5 months slowly killing everyone with fireballs, earthquakes and general nastiness.
Thousands of Family Radio listeners donated money, some gave away everything they owned and the estimated $100 Million raised helped plaster billboards across the US and Europe. It also funded a fleet of elaborately emblazoned rapture vans.
However skeptics may be in for a surprise, according to Camping they haven’t yet escaped judgement. It turns out the rapture was “invisible” and we can’t see it happening.
Camping, now 89 years old, first predicted the rapture in 1994, but changed his mind when it didn’t happen. His third attempt is now 5 months after the 21st of May (October 21) and he is still asking for funds to help spread the word.
According to the New York Times, when asked if his organisation would return any of the money raised, Camping stated “We’re not at the end. Why would we return it?”.
As we get older our brains run out of storage space
It’s something we just accept: the fact that the older we get, the more difficulty we seem to have remembering things. We can leave our cars in the same parking lot each morning, but unless we park in the same space each and every day, it’s a challenge eight hours later to recall whether we left the SUV in the second or fifth row. Or, we can be introduced to new colleagues at a meeting and will have forgotten their names before the handshake is over. We shrug and nervously reassure ourselves that our brains’ “hard drives” are just too full to handle the barrage of new information that comes in daily.
According to a Johns Hopkins neuroscientist, however, the real trouble is that our aging brains are unable to process this information as “new” because the brain pathways leading to the hippocampus — the area of the brain that stores memories — become degraded over time. As a result, our brains cannot accurately “file” new information (like where we left the car that particular morning), and confusion results.
Full Article at Medical Express
Anyone seen my slippers?
Should the deadly small pox virus be destroyed forever? Ministers disagree
Reuters: Health ministers are deeply divided over setting a date to destroy the world’s remaining known stocks of live smallpox virus, stored in Russia and the United States, diplomatic sources said Friday.
The two powers say that more research is needed into safer vaccines against the deadly disease eradicated more than 30 years ago. They also seek guarantees that all stocks have been destroyed or transferred to their two official repositories due to fears that the virus could be used as a biological weapon.
But their joint proposal to put off for 5 years any decision on the timing of destruction has run into opposition at the annual meeting of the World Health Organization (WHO) — where the issue has already been on the agenda for the last 25 years.
“A lot of developing countries would like to see the virus destroyed, first and foremost among them Iran,” a diplomatic source told Reuters.
Iran is already at odds with the U.S. and other powers over its nuclear program. Tehran denies Western accusations that it is seeking a nuclear weapons capability, saying its atomic activities are aimed at generating electricity only.
Many countries say the world’s remaining smallpox virus stocks should be eradicated as the disease no longer exists and the virus is lethal. They also say technology exists to develop new vaccines and antivirals without needing to use live virus.
The U.S.-Russian smallpox resolution is formally backed by 19 other countries, including U.S. allies Britain, Canada and Japan as well as several former republics of the Soviet Union.
The 193-member WHO, a United Nations agency, takes most decisions by consensus, but rules allow for a vote. Debate has been postponed to Monday, a day before the annual assembly ends.
“We expect the resolution to be adopted,” a spokesman at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Geneva told Reuters late Friday.
The WHO certified that smallpox, an acutely contagious disease, was eradicated worldwide in 1979, two years after the last case was detected in Somalia. The disease no longer occurs naturally although a woman died in Britain in 1978 after being accidentally exposed in a laboratory.
But fears have mounted that rogue states or militants could get their hands on stocks and deliberately release the pathogen.
Dr. Nils Daulaire, Director of the U.S. Office of Global Health Affairs, told reporters in Geneva this week: “Vials of smallpox have been discovered deep in freezers. This has been announced. I don’t know how many more of these there might be.”
Full article at NewsDaily
Smallpox at Wikipedia (Warning: some rather unpleasant imagery)
The two powers say that more research is needed into safer vaccines against the deadly disease eradicated more than 30 years ago. They also seek guarantees that all stocks have been destroyed or transferred to their two official repositories due to fears that the virus could be used as a biological weapon.
But their joint proposal to put off for 5 years any decision on the timing of destruction has run into opposition at the annual meeting of the World Health Organization (WHO) — where the issue has already been on the agenda for the last 25 years.
“A lot of developing countries would like to see the virus destroyed, first and foremost among them Iran,” a diplomatic source told Reuters.
Iran is already at odds with the U.S. and other powers over its nuclear program. Tehran denies Western accusations that it is seeking a nuclear weapons capability, saying its atomic activities are aimed at generating electricity only.
Many countries say the world’s remaining smallpox virus stocks should be eradicated as the disease no longer exists and the virus is lethal. They also say technology exists to develop new vaccines and antivirals without needing to use live virus.
The U.S.-Russian smallpox resolution is formally backed by 19 other countries, including U.S. allies Britain, Canada and Japan as well as several former republics of the Soviet Union.
The 193-member WHO, a United Nations agency, takes most decisions by consensus, but rules allow for a vote. Debate has been postponed to Monday, a day before the annual assembly ends.
“We expect the resolution to be adopted,” a spokesman at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Geneva told Reuters late Friday.
The WHO certified that smallpox, an acutely contagious disease, was eradicated worldwide in 1979, two years after the last case was detected in Somalia. The disease no longer occurs naturally although a woman died in Britain in 1978 after being accidentally exposed in a laboratory.
But fears have mounted that rogue states or militants could get their hands on stocks and deliberately release the pathogen.
Dr. Nils Daulaire, Director of the U.S. Office of Global Health Affairs, told reporters in Geneva this week: “Vials of smallpox have been discovered deep in freezers. This has been announced. I don’t know how many more of these there might be.”
Full article at NewsDaily
Smallpox at Wikipedia (Warning: some rather unpleasant imagery)
May 23, 2011
How to Control Brains With Light
To get a crash course in a neurological research technique that uses light to manipulate brain cells, watch this video.
Optogenetics allows researchers to investigate real-time neural interactions involved in animal movement, memories, behavior and even consciousness. It’s also proving useful in unraveling the pathology of conditions like depression, seizures and anxiety.
“The problem is that a lot is going on and it’s tough to describe. You’re borrowing genes, putting them into cells, those cells are expressing those genes and doing complex things in reaction to light,” said neuroengineer Ed Boyden of MIT, who helped pioneer the technique 11 years ago. “So we made this video to lend a little clarity to what we do.”
Read more at Wired Science
Llama Poop Helped Inca Thrive
Human populations took off and developed into complex societies in the Andes by switching from hunter-gathering to agriculture centered on maize, according to the research published in the June issue of the journal Antiquity. llama poop helped fertilize that crucial crop.
"This leap occurred 2,700 years ago and was made possible by a huge availability of animal excrement. Organic fertilizers enabled corn to be cultivated at very high altitudes, allowing the Inca to settle and flourish," Alex Chepstow-Lusty, a palaeoecologist from the French Institute for Andean Studies in Lima, Peru, told Discovery News.
The Inca ruled the largest empire on Earth -- stretching from the present-day southern border of Colombia to central Chile -- by the time their last emperor, Atahualpa, was executed by Spanish conquistadors in 1533.
Because the Inca language has no written form -- it has long been considered the only major Bronze Age civilization without a written language -- and due to the destruction of their heritage by the Spanish, the details of their meteoric rise have remained a mystery.
Chepstow-Lusty found reliable witnesses to reconstruct the "extraordinary plant-breeding event" which might be at the basis of the Inca Empire. These were pollen and mites buried in layers of mud on the floor of Lake Marcacocha in the Cuzco region of the Peruvian Andes, where Machu Picchu sits.
Similar to the rings in the trunk of a tree, each layer of sediment represents a fixed period of time. Taking a 6.3-meter (20.6 foot)-long sediment core from the lake bottom, Chepstow-Lusty investigated and radiocarbon-dated organic material from six layers, basically analyzing a 4,200-year-old sediment record.
The researcher found that maize pollen appears for the first time in the lake muds around 700 B.C., showing that the cereal could be cultivated at high altitudes of at least 3,350 meters (10,990 feet) above sea level.
Until then, Andean people were eating potatoes and quinoa, a grain-like plant similar to spinach which is very protein-rich.
According to Graham Thiele, an Andean agriculture specialist at the International Potato Center in Lima, maize indeed made a difference. More energy-dense than potato, it could be stored for much longer and was easier to transport.
"This really matters where there are no flat roads and wheeled vehicles and everything has to be carried on the back of a man or llama," Thiele told Discovery News.
"In addition, maize is more suitable for accumulation in elite controlled stores, and would have supported rent extraction by the emergent Wari and Inca elites. So maize trumps potato on transportability, storage and suitability for paying tribute," he said.
The lake sediment core also revealed that the highest abundance of oribatid mites, which eat animal dung, corresponded with the first appearance of maize.
This would show that, although corn was introduced to South America about 5,000 years ago, it reached the inhospitable Andes only with the help of llama herds. Located next to an ancient trade route between the jungle and the mountains, Marcaccocha was an ideal stop for llamas transporting goods.
Read more at Discovery News
Not So Preposterous This High Ancestral Rhinoceros
A jawbone with three molars was found 10,000 feet up Thousand Lake Mountain in Wayne County, Utah. Geologists from the Utah Geological Survey found the fossil while mapping rock layers in the mountain in 2005.
On another expedition in 2006, the geologists found a portion of the skull of another extinct mammal, a brontothere known as Duchesneodus uintensis. The fossils were embedded in sand and gravel that were likely laid down by a river.
Finding the two fossils in the same sediment layer suggested to the scientists that they are around 42 to 37 million years old, from a period known as the Duchesnean Land Mammal Age, during the Eocene Age.
Read more at Discovery News
May 22, 2011
The danger of science denial
"Everyone's entitled to their opinion, they're even entitled to their opinion about progress," says journalist Michael Specter. "But ... you're not entitled to your own facts."
Why is there such a tremendous epidemic of denialism? The main reason is due to our lack of understanding of correlation versus causation. Another is our loss of faith in authority and our mistrust of big government, big corporations and "Big Pharma" (so we then leap into the open arms of big placebo).
"Be skeptical. Ask questions. Demand proof. Demand evidence. Don't take anything for granted," remarks Mr Specter. "But here's the thing: when you get proof, you need to accept the proof. And we're not that good at doing that. ...We're now in an epidemic of fear like one that I've never seen and hope never to see again."
Unfortunately, this fear is motivating people to replace science with a belief in magic, from seemingly harmless magic such as Ginkgo biloba, echinacia, and açaí, to tragic magic such as using coffee enemas to cure cancer, or even insisting that beet root can cure HIV. People fight genetically engineered food, and think it's wrong to patent life and crop seeds -- and they blame science for these problems. But these issues are about law, morality and corporate greed, not science.
"Science is not a company, it's not a country, it's not even an idea. It's a process," Mr Specter points out. "[T]he idea that we should not allow science to do its job because we're afraid is really very deadening, and it's preventing millions of people from prospering."
The solution? Mr Specter mentions that we should fix the system instead of stopping scientific progress.
This interesting presentation explores how denialism impacts humanity with avoidable tragedies:
Even though denialism is a topic that desperately needs to be addressed, and Michael Specter clearly has the passion to advocate on behalf of science, he does not present workable solutions for most of the problems that he describes. I think people are more likely to listen to him if he mentions even one such solution. What are your thoughts?
Read more at The Guardian
Why is there such a tremendous epidemic of denialism? The main reason is due to our lack of understanding of correlation versus causation. Another is our loss of faith in authority and our mistrust of big government, big corporations and "Big Pharma" (so we then leap into the open arms of big placebo).
"Be skeptical. Ask questions. Demand proof. Demand evidence. Don't take anything for granted," remarks Mr Specter. "But here's the thing: when you get proof, you need to accept the proof. And we're not that good at doing that. ...We're now in an epidemic of fear like one that I've never seen and hope never to see again."
Unfortunately, this fear is motivating people to replace science with a belief in magic, from seemingly harmless magic such as Ginkgo biloba, echinacia, and açaí, to tragic magic such as using coffee enemas to cure cancer, or even insisting that beet root can cure HIV. People fight genetically engineered food, and think it's wrong to patent life and crop seeds -- and they blame science for these problems. But these issues are about law, morality and corporate greed, not science.
"Science is not a company, it's not a country, it's not even an idea. It's a process," Mr Specter points out. "[T]he idea that we should not allow science to do its job because we're afraid is really very deadening, and it's preventing millions of people from prospering."
The solution? Mr Specter mentions that we should fix the system instead of stopping scientific progress.
This interesting presentation explores how denialism impacts humanity with avoidable tragedies:
Even though denialism is a topic that desperately needs to be addressed, and Michael Specter clearly has the passion to advocate on behalf of science, he does not present workable solutions for most of the problems that he describes. I think people are more likely to listen to him if he mentions even one such solution. What are your thoughts?
Read more at The Guardian
Family finds £28,000 in new home – then returns it
Josh Ferrin was exploring the house he had just bought when he made the discovery.
"I freaked out, locked it my car, and called my wife to tell her she wouldn't believe what I had found," said Mr Ferrin, who works as an artist for the Deseret News in Salt Lake City.
Along with his wife and children, they spread out thousands of notes on a table, separating the bundles one by one. They stopped counting at $40,000.
Despite being tempted to keep the money to help him pay for mounting bills and broken down car, Mr Ferrin sought out the children of the home's previous owner, who had died, and gave them the money.
"I'm not perfect, and I wish I could say there was never any doubt in my mind. We knew we had to give it back, but it doesn't mean I didn't think about our car in need of repairs, how we would love to adopt a child and aren't able to do that right now, or fix up our outdated house that we just bought," he said. "But the money wasn't ours to keep and I don't believe you get a chance very often to do something radically honest, to do something ridiculously awesome for someone else and that is a lesson I hope to teach to my children."
From The Telegraph
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