08.20.06
Posted in Evolution, health at 6:41 pm by site admin
Check out this article about the culture shaping parasite, Toxoplasma gondii. Last time I read about this parasite was in Stuff Magazine, issue #1.
“Toxoplasma appears to explain 30% of the variation in neuroticism among countries, 15% of the uncertainty avoidance among Western nations and 30% of the sex role differences among Western nations,” Lafferty said via e-mail.
Now whats crazy is how the parasite spreads:
In 2000, Webster reported that rats infected with Toxoplasma are less fearful of and, in some cases, can even be attracted to their feline predators. She surmised that the parasite subtly manipulates a rat’s behavior to increase the rodent’s chances of being eaten by a cat—the only animal in which it can reproduce—thereby upping the odds of the parasite reproducing.
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08.16.06
Posted in business, health at 8:45 pm by site admin
Check out this article about the top 6 quesionts you should ask when joining a startup. I think the last one What will the startup do for you is the most important. Its imporant to be aware that joining a company that is still in development translates into a lot of hard work, that potentially will not go anywhere, with people that may or maynot work together well. Of course this may pay off. Point being: Is the juice worth the squeeze?.
For those of you continuing onward, here is another article title “the top five engineering hints you’ll hear. Bit wordy of a read. Basically says world is complex: different problem domains, different situations. Things may not always work, especially when something is changed. Eh, read it if you are curious.
But whatever you do, take a look atthis article talking about how stress can shrink and age your brain. Nothing terribly exciting here. Just exercise, be happy, and relax.
Earlier research showed that the neurons shrink in the hippocampus, and that seems to impair memory in response to stress, he said. More recent research suggests that the same thing happens in the brain region called the prefrontal cortex, which is crucial for decision-making and attention, he said.
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Posted in Humor at 8:32 pm by site admin
Check out this crazy japanese show. Here is the direct link to movies. The also have this video on youtube of a girl shadowing another. And here is another on google video of two guys playing ping pong, matrix-style.
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08.10.06
Posted in Education at 1:00 pm by site admin
Check out this article titled How we make memories. The gist of the research is the following:
“Chunking” occurs when otherwise unrelated items are perceived as a unit. For example, the three-letter combination FBI—but not, say, SVQ or TMY—is chunked because it’s associated with an entity, and we hear the grouping so often. Items that are chunked take up less of our mental resources to encode since each item doesn’t have to be encoded separately.
But when something is not a chunk, it can’t be bound to a context, which is important for memory.
In other words, we can remember things better if we can associate them together, and/or previous experiences. So while in some cases we may remember our first experience at something because it was unique or exciting, it will probably seem like a blur if it went by too fast.
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Posted in Education at 12:42 pm by site admin
Check out this article about our ability to see change over time. More info can be found in the research paper: Sustained Change Blindness to Incremental Scene Rotation: A Dissociation Between Explicit Change Detection and Visual Memory” (Perception and Psychophysics, 2004).
This obvious but puzzling behavior is proof that our brains perceive a basically stable world.
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08.07.06
Posted in Environment at 2:56 pm by site admin
Check out this story at the latimes.com about the destruction of the ocean ecosystem. Its a decently long and extensive article. Basically it talks about how man has been harvesting the sea, starting with fishing and then working his way down the food chain, coupled with pollution, waste, and run-off is altering the delicate balance of the ocean’s ecosystems.
In many places — the atolls of the Pacific, the shrimp beds of the Eastern Seaboard, the fiords of Norway — some of the most advanced forms of ocean life are struggling to survive while the most primitive are thriving and spreading. Fish, corals and marine mammals are dying while algae, bacteria and jellyfish are growing unchecked. Where this pattern is most pronounced, scientists evoke a scenario of evolution running in reverse, returning to the primeval seas of hundreds of millions of years ago.
To some this may be nothing new; to others this may be the much needed wake up call. Now I wonder if people are actually aware of the extent of what is happening. When you take this as part of the larger whole, you’ll see that between global warming, the growing energy crisis, and the destruction of the environment (deforestation, pollution of lakes, rivers, and oceans), that we are moving down a path it may take hundreds of years, if not thousands, to recover from. The sad thing is that it is hard to quantify a problem like environmental extrenalities. How much would you pay to see crystal blue oceans? How about clean air to breath?
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08.06.06
Posted in health at 5:38 pm by site admin
This article talks about how a drug made to enhance memory has a regenerative effect even when not being taken.
Ampakines were developed in the early 1990s by UC researchers, including Lynch, to treat age-related memory impairment and may be useful for treating a number of central nervous system disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia. In this study, the researchers showed that ampakine drugs continue to reverse the effects of aging on a brain mechanism thought to underlie learning and memory even after they are no longer in the body. They do so by boosting the production of a naturally occurring protein in the brain necessary for long-term memory formation.
Read the article for more info.
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Posted in health, society at 5:33 pm by site admin
Check out this biton why it is good to drinking and smoking togther. On the one hand, nicotine decreases the rate of gastric emptying (alcohol is absorbed slower) , allowing it to be broken down. On the other hand, alcohol decreses inhibitions, and possibly intensifies the pleasurable effects of nicotine.
When they monitored the rats’ blood alcohol content (BAC), they discovered that a higher nicotine level correlated to lower BAC. Blood alcohol level seemed to decrease in a dose-dependent fashion: At the highest amounts of nicotine, the level of alcohol in the rats’ bloodstream was 50 percent lower than when the rats didn’t receive nicotine.
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Posted in Restaurants at 5:28 pm by site admin
Check out this review on my favorite Indian restaurant in Houston, Bombay Brasserie. You can read the article for the review. I thought this one part was funny:
The screen shows a continuous loop of dark brown, gloppy-looking Indian curries to passersby. I wonder how many would-be customers have changed their minds after looking at the disgusting tape and decided to go to Kubo’s and eat some sushi instead.
I’ve never noticed whats on the tv, but I know its there.
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08.04.06
Posted in Evolution, health at 8:05 am by site admin
Article about how semen contribute to baby making.
Burch thinks human males have evolved the concoction as a counter-strategy to concealed ovulation in women. Although there are subtle chemical cues that a woman is ovulating, there are no overt signs. So at any given copulation, a male wanting to reproduce could be wasting his time. Semen that could help induce ovulation while his sperm are in her reproductive tract would be a great advantage, she says, as would compounds that could bolster a new conception and help the fertilised egg implant.
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