Monday, February 21, 2005

Brain study points to 'sixth sense'. Following the Asian tsunami, scientists struggled to explain reports that primitive aboriginal tribesmen had somehow sensed the impending danger in time to join wild animals in a life-saving flight to higher ground. A new theory suggests that the anterior cingulate cortex, described by some scientists as part of the brain's "oops" center, may actually function as an early warning system -- one that works at a subconscious level to help us recognize and avoid high-risk situations. [Science Blog - News from Science, Medicine, Space, Physics and More] 6:13:54 PM    comment [] Sci-Fi Eye for the Geek Guy. Quick, think of your favorite sci-fi television or movie franchise or writer (i.e. Star Trek, Star Wars, Dr Who, Dune, HHG2TG, Asimov, Babylon 5, Blade Runner, Lexx, BattleStar Galactica, Flash Gordon, Arthur C. Clarke, William Gibson, Philip Jose Farmer, or Planet of the Apes, Buckaroo Banzai, The Matrix.) Don't think about it too much. I just want you to remember the first one that popped into your mind. Ok, got it? Great. Read on to see if I peg your personality type at all. (Participants receive a handy home version of the game.) [kuro5hin.org] 5:53:33 PM    comment []

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Celebrating the Body Beautiful. The human body is intriguing in all its forms. A photo exhibit features subjects both nude and clothed, giving us a complex picture of who we are as a species and as sexual beings. Commentary by Regina Lynn. [Wired News] 7:32:05 PM    comment [] Puijilittatuq, or just too many seals for one blogger to blog. The Inukitut have a word for it: "puijilittatuq." Translation: "He does not know which way to turn because of the many seals he has seen come to the ice surface." That's a good description (from this month's issue of Ansible, the scifi newsletter from David Langford) of the blog-blockage typically caused by a fresh copy of Ansible. Thank goodness, at least, that I'm not in Paris! Bloggers there will face the nightly temptation of being able to play mobile-phone-Tetris, using the lights on the Bibliotheque Nationale. (Thanks, Engadget!) And check out Anil Dash's piece on "Information Bankruptcy." My favorite bit: I learned that half of all bankruptcies in the United States are caused by medical bills, courtesy of Rebecca's link. I wish I had learned this from John Kerry about six months ago. This is the core of the health care debate in this country, not edge-case stem cell research. Modern political organizations have fantastic research resources available to them, but they squander these resources on finding weaknesses in their opponents... ... And I linked to Jay McCarthy's beautiful "Letter to Beatrice" from my del.icio.us linkblog, but never got around to pointing to it from here. Tiny sample: In these paragraphs I will take Aristotle's classification, if for no other reason then to impress those who are so impressed, on friends: those of interest, of love, and of contemplation. This division is not always perfect, and thus many components could easily be rearranged, but how many books are in the Bible is much less important than their complete message--so I press onward... ... Now, you've got plenty to read, and I'm headed back to Thog's Masterclass... [Betsy Devine: Funny Ha-Ha or Funny Peculiar?] 7:29:45 PM    comment [] Solar Cell Implant May Restore Some Sight for the Blind. Ophthalmologists at Rush University Medical Center implanted Artificial Silicon Retina (ASR) microchips in the eyes of five patients to treat vision loss caused by retinitis pigmentosa (RP). The implant is a silicon microchip 2mm in diameter and one-thousandth of an inch thick, less than the thickness of a human hair. Four patients had surgery Tuesday, January 25. The fifth patient is scheduled for a later date. [Science Blog - Science Blog -- Research News in Science, Health, Medicine, Space, Physics and More] 7:28:00 PM    comment [] What Exactly Is Under the Sea?. Even with today's advanced mapping technologies, old and sometimes secret data can lead to deadly surprises on the ocean floor. By Rowan Hooper. [Wired News] 7:25:23 PM    comment []

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Irradiated For Longevity. ScienceDaily reports on experiments suggesting that low levels of radiation exposure increase longevity - in small mammals at least. This isn't of immediate practical value, but it adds to the body of knowledge surrounding hormesis, or the "phenomenon in which low doses of an otherwise harmful agent can result in stimulatory or beneficial effects." This study does suggest an underlying biochemical mechanism: "a moderate increase in glucocorticoid levels, associated with low-level radiation, could be an important factor underlying the increase in longevity that has been observed in other shorter studies on small mammals exposed to low-level radiation." View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/01/050128222047.htm Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/ [Longevity Meme News and Commentary] 7:07:50 PM    comment []

Sunday, January 02, 2005

Short Stuff. Short fiction from Interzone, The Third Alternative, Nancy Jane Moore [Emerald City: science fiction and fantasy book reviews] 5:53:47 AM    comment [] Materials Science And Bone Glue. Regenerative medicine encompasses many minor fields often overlooked by observers - such as how we fix broken bones. Betterhumans reports on the development of a new engineered compound that glues bones together and speeds healing. "Seliktar took fibrin, the protein in blood plasma responsible for clotting, and to it attached a synthetic material called polyethylene glycol that's a plastic used in biomedical applications ... "The result is a three-dimensional material with the biological properties of fibrin and the strength of plastic." These sorts of advances - enabled by materials science - may seem comparatively minor, but they greatly improve on natural regenerative processes and benefit many people. View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?articleID=2004-12-24-4 Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/ [Longevity Meme News and Commentary] 5:52:34 AM    comment []

Tuesday, December 21, 2004

The Loneliest Mystery of the Deep. For the last 12 years, a single solitary whale whose vocalizations match no known living species has been tracked across the Northeast Pacific. Its wanderings match no known migratory patterns of any living whale species. Its vocalizations have also subtly deepened over the years, indicating that the whale is maturing and ageing. And, during the entire 12 year span that it has been tracked, it has been calling out for contact from others of its own kind. It has received no answer. Nor will it ever. [kuro5hin.org] 6:17:05 PM    comment [] Date for new Harry Potter book revealed. The sixth Harry Potter book will hit the shops on July 16 next year, the publisher Bloomsbury has announced. [Telegraph News | Breaking News] 6:11:13 PM    comment [] Searching the Web for Copycats. Here's a useful application of the Google API: Copyscape, a free service that can find Web sites plagiarizing your content. The service takes any URL as input, looking for a suspicious number of matching words on other sites. Most hits for Workbench came from sites and aggregators making legitimate use of my RSS feed. Copyscape found several plagiarists of my book Sams Teach Yourself Java 1.1 in 24 Hours, using the first chapter as input. The service might be too fast on the trigger: Another suspected copywronger was a person who quoted one of my jokes as his .SIG. [Workbench] 6:09:30 PM    comment [] How About Not 'Curing' Us, Some Autistics Are Pleading. A new program is rooted in the view of autism as an alternative form of brain wiring, rather than a devastating disorder. By By AMY HARMON. [NYT > Education] 6:07:02 PM    comment []

Saturday, December 18, 2004

Eating the 'Polymeal' cuts heart disease by 76 percent [Science Blog] 9:52:04 PM    comment [] The Racist of Earthsea. In Slate magazine, SF author Ursula LeGuin complains that the producers of the new Earthsea miniseries have butchered her work. One form of butchery that she zeroes in on is by casting characters who she intended to be red, brown, or black as white people. I have mixed feelings. LeGuin has every right ... [Armed and Dangerous] 9:50:39 PM    comment []

Monday, December 13, 2004

Are We Puppets or Free Agents?. Interpretations of the insanity plea have changed through the ages, but advances in neuroscience promise to redefine free will and personal responsibility, and change the way we think about punishment. By Rowan Hooper. [Wired News] 9:02:17 PM    comment [] Improvements in Organic Photovoltaics. Jamais Cascio: One of the drawbacks of traditional silicon-based photovoltaic cells is that they are hard. While it's possible to embed traditional solar cells in fabric, it's... [WorldChanging: Another World Is Here] 8:59:19 PM    comment []

Saturday, December 11, 2004

Rivers and Tides. Just watched Rivers and Tides, a documentary about the English landscape artist Andy Goldsworthy. He creates short-lived pieces, and few permanent works, out in the field, using the materials (leaves, driftwood, ice, pigments made from plant and minerals) at hand. Some observations about why I think he's good at it: He embraces Wabi Sabi. He's not afraid of screwups. In one scene in the film, he's building an elaborate, chaotic latticework out brambles and thorns. He talks about how he likes to build out to the edge of stability. The structure buckles and he tries to keep it together. It fails. Brambles fall, and he facepalms. Earlier, we see him building His leaf pieces delight me. He will sort through fallen leaves on the forest floor, and cover a small puddle with a blanket of leaves in a color gradient, shading from purple, back to yellow. In another construction, he organized a line of stones along the bottom of a shallow, fast moving stream. He sought out stones contrasting with the uniform grey and created a subtle line of color running below and perpendicular to the current. [More Like This WebLog] 5:53:17 PM    comment []

Tuesday, November 30, 2004

New Tool Automatically Searches Handwritten Historical Documents [Science Blog] 6:57:17 PM    comment []

Saturday, November 27, 2004

Science Geek Gifts for All. Banish underwear from your gift-giving list this year! Your smarty-pants friends and relatives aren't as hard to buy for as you might think. The web is full of brain-gratifying gift ideas. By Kristen Philipkoski. [Wired News] 7:22:58 PM    comment [] Green Chemistry. Alex Steffen: USA today has a nice, short piece about the rise of green chemistry: "The fundamental idea of green chemistry is that the designer of a... [WorldChanging: Another World Is Here] 7:17:38 PM    comment [] This has relevance to other kinds of thinking besides computer architecture... Joel Spolsky: "When you go too far up, abstraction-wise, you run out of oxygen. Sometimes smart thinkers just don't know when to stop, and they create these absurd, all-encompassing, high-level pictures of the universe that are all good and fine, but don't actually mean anything at all." [Scripting News] 7:16:25 PM    comment []

Friday, November 26, 2004

Girl Is First to Survive Rabies Without a Shot. A critically ill Wisconsin teenager who was bitten by a bat recovered after being put into a drug-induced coma and being given antiviral drugs. By By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL. [NYT > Health] 4:30:49 PM    comment []

Monday, November 15, 2004

Sci-Fi Paints a Pretty Picture. Whether you're into science fiction's predicted future or just like bizarre creatures, here's an art show for you. Rachel Metz reports from New York. [Wired News] 6:33:38 PM    comment []

Friday, November 12, 2004

Using a New Language in Africa to Save Dying Ones. Linguists see the computer as one important way of saving hundreds of languages in Africa, some spoken only be a few dozen elders. By By MARC LACEY. [NYT > Technology] 7:21:35 PM    comment [] Affluent countries should embrace 'kangaroo' care for preemies [Science Blog] 7:21:04 PM    comment []

Thursday, November 11, 2004

Weaving The Future. Jamais Cascio: When we read about "wearable" computers, we generally see accompanying pictures of awkward-looking college students wreathed in cables and black plastic or adorned with oversized... [WorldChanging: Another World Is Here] 6:29:58 AM    comment []

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