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POPSWho's Minding the Mind? New studies have found that people tidy up more thoroughly when there’s a faint tang of cleaning liquid in the air; they become more competitive if there’s a briefcase in sight, or more cooperative if they glimpse words like “dependable” and “support” — all without being aware of the change, or what prompted it. In describing my own research or cognitive science in general to people, the most difficult obstacle I would eventually encounter was the stubborn human belief that there was a independent entity — a free will — in charge of everything important that goes on in their brain. While science has been steadily dismantling this understandable misconception for decades, recent studies on subconscious social priming like these would have helped me demonstrate my point. To be fair, it's more than a little disconcerting to realize what a messy mix of competing, semi-independent, multi-layered neural modules are responsible for producing our daily behavior.
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POPSFacebook Never Forgets "The Internet's anonymity, long memory and free-for-all gossip culture may yet prove a poisonous cocktail. But as our generation grows older and enters public life -- thankfully, we have some time -- we'll find ourselves in a political culture that increasingly views these "gotcha" moments in context and with an eye toward forgiveness. After all, the incriminating photo, the offensive blog post, that drunken 3 a.m. e-mail -- it could have been any of us."
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POPS“Junk DNA” May Have Triggered Key Evolutionary Changes in Human Thumb and Foot A rapidly evolving sequence from the human genome drives gene activity in the developing thumb, wrist and ankle of mouse embryos, suggesting the sequence may have contributed to key evolutionary changes in the human limbs that allowed us to walk upright and use tools. An indication of their biological importance, many of these non-coding sequences have remained similar, or “conserved,” even across distantly related vertebrate species such as chickens and humans. Recent functional studies suggest some of these “conserved non-coding sequences” control the genes that direct human development.
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POPSHow Did Soviet-Style Torture Become ‘Interrogation’? A Senate investigation is underway, but many of the details are surfacing already. His question is only underscored by a 1956 article, “Communist Interrogation,” in The Annals of Neurology and Psychiatry, recently turned up by the Intelligence Science Board, which advises the spy agencies.... he article shows that methods embraced after 2001 were once considered torture that would produce false information.
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POPS'Beer goggles' are real - it's official As well as changing perceptions of attractiveness, alcohol also encourages us to engage in behaviour we would otherwise avoid. In a study by Robert Leeman of Yale University students reported they were more likely to engage in risky sexual acts after drinking - which could be due to alcohol lowering our inhibitions through a direct effect on the brain or by providing a convenient excuse for such behaviour.
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POPSThe American People are the Problem
There is no doubt that when a first term senator, without a credible achievement, who proved himself incompetent at the mere act of casting a vote as a State Senator, who is the most Leftist member of the Senate and all of Congress, who talks about sacrifice while giving 1% of his windfall salary to charity, who will not talk about his record, agenda, or be "distracted" by questions of his intended policies, who has befriended a terrorist and racist preacher, who has a wife that says there is a "veil of impossibility" in America ( She went to Yale, remember), who is an adherent of Black Lib (marxist) Theology, who never worked in Business or Industry, never managed a company, and never served his country. A man who whips his naive supporters up using tactics, imagery, and organic unity not seen since the early 1930's. The American People are in fact the problem when this is the man that one of the major parties in the US seems to believe is fit to be President of the U.S.
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POPSResearchers Discover Remnant of an Ancient 'RNA World'
Breaker's lab solved a decades-old mystery by describing how tiny circular RNA molecules called cyclic di-GMP are able to turn genes on and off. This process determines whether the bacterium swims or stays stationary, and whether it remains solitary or joins with other bacteria to form organic masses called biofilms. Bacterial use of RNA to trigger major changes without the involvement of proteins resolves one of the questions about the origin of life: If proteins are needed to carry out life's functions and DNA is needed to make proteins, how did DNA arise? The answer is what Breaker and other researchers call the RNA World. They believe that billions of years ago, single strands of nucleotides that comprise RNA were the first forms of life and carried out some of the complicated cellular functions now done by proteins. The riboswitches are highly conserved in bacteria, illustrating their importance and ancient ancestry, Breaker said.
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POPSAncient Climate Change May Portend Toasty Future With a continuation of current trends in the use of coal, oil, and gas, natural background atmospheric CO2 concentrations are expected to double around mid-century. The ancient emissions are comparable to the CO2 that can be expected from human activity over the coming few centuries. If human-induced carbon emissions continue unabated, there could be a similar shift in species evolution.
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POPSDid George W. Bush Have Sex With That Man? "Does anyone really believe that Republicans don't have their own dalliances? We don't really give a hoot who anybody sleeps with in their private lives. But when one party puts on such a show of being straight, upright Christians just to fool the masses into voting for them, their hypocrisy should be exposed - at every turn of the button." Having said all of that, did GW have sex with that man? The article is an old one and Mr. Guckert now has his own web site. We will never know whether the question is an absurd one or not, but it's a fascinating question.
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POPSWhat Are You Optimistic About? - The Edge Annual Question 2007 The Edge asks a very interesting question to a whole bunch of leading thinkers, scientists, philosophers, etc. each year. This is this years question. Last years question was: "What is your Dangerous Idea"? Question of 2005 was " What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it ? I only clipped a tiny selection of the candidates & links to their answers of this years question. It's a great resource. Really worth checking out. Just click one of the links I clipped & feed yourselves with some optimism. ( ;-) to invictus)
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POPSBill Maher: New Rules - Look Beyond The Candidates’ Skin Color Cont.... And it’s true, he’s spent his entire life shuffling from one low-paying government job to another. Well, except those years he spent in prison. Typical! And between you and me, he’s not very articulate. Oh, he may have some street smarts, but he’s not what you call an educated man. He freely admits he’s ignorant about the economy. And apparently the only thing his white running mate knows how to do is crank out one baby after another. And now of course, her teenage daughter is pregnant out of wedlock. Because she learns it at home! But that doesn’t mean we should assume all white people are like that, just because so many of them are.
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POPSMapping Infectious Diseases - Realtime on the Web Some see HealthMap's wide net as an advantage. "I think this is the future direction of infectious-disease epidemiology," says Durland Fish, an epidemiologist at Yale School of Public Health, in New Haven, CT, who has previously worked with Brownstein. "This goes beyond traditional human case reporting, which we've done in the past," he says. For example, the software may pick up reports from scientists working outside the public-health arena, perhaps identifying a new animal virus with the potential to jump to humans. That could conceivably give public-health officials the power to intervene before an outbreak. "We would be able to identify where this virus is likely to emerge in humans," says Fish. "Once we get the first human case, we would know the virus has made the jump. That's presumably what happened with SARS."
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