04.11.11
Posted in Evolution, society at 9:04 am by site admin
Check out this article discussing some of the more recent trends in technological indoor farming.
The perfect crop field could be inside a windowless building with meticulously controlled light, temperature, humidity, air quality and nutrition. It could be in a New York high-rise, a Siberian bunker, or a sprawling complex in the Saudi desert.
Advocates say this, or something like it, may be an answer to the world’s food problems.
“In order to keep a planet that’s worth living on, we have to change our methods,” says Gertjan Meeuws, of PlantLab, a private research company.
The world already is having trouble feeding itself. Half the people on Earth live in cities, and nearly half of those — about 3 billion — are hungry or malnourished. Food prices, currently soaring, are buffeted by droughts, floods and the cost of energy required to plant, fertilize, harvest and transport it.
And prices will only get more unstable. Climate change makes long-term crop planning uncertain. Farmers in many parts of the world already are draining available water resources to the last drop. And the world is getting more crowded: by mid-century, the global population will grow from 6.8 billion to 9 billion, the U.N. predicts.
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12.15.10
Posted in Evolution at 9:57 pm by site admin
Check out this article about how prehistoric people practiced nutritional cannibalism.
“Think that a member of your group dies,” Fernandez-Jalvo told Discovery News. “The body can give one day off from hunting, which was always dangerous at that time, and what to do with the dead body that may attract other dangerous carnivores that may attack the group.”
“This could be a good solution,” she added, reminding that cannibalism does not always mean the cannibal killed the consumed individual.
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05.21.10
Posted in Evolution, technology at 7:47 am by site admin
Check out this article talking about the evolution of technology:
Brian Arthur of the Santa Fe Institute believes that Technology evolves over time: “machines started as disparate pieces of seemingly unconnected technologies, but like humans, they also have an origin and a process of evolution.” He is arguably the first person to tackle the question of the origin and evolution of machines, eloquently laid out in his book, The Nature of Technology. Evolution is an increase in maturation and complexity, and does not have to necessarily follow the path of Darwinian evolution, which is modification by descent – nature introduces small variations in an existing form over a long period of time. Granted the results are staggering, but the journey, such as that of the ape’s evolution into mankind, can take millions of years.
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04.01.10
Posted in Evolution, society at 3:18 pm by site admin
Yesterday, I posted an article about sexist pink toys for girls. On the opposite end of the spectrum, check out this article about how the male brain is not as simple as we think. Yes the area of the brain for sexual persuits is 2.5 times larger in the male brain than the female brain.
You say the “area for sexual pursuit” is 2.5 times larger in the male brain than in the female brain. Do you worry that people will read that and decide your book confirms the stereotype?
I think there is a kernel of truth in stereotypes. But [understanding human biology] doesn’t give males a pass on being civilized or any parent a pass on having to train their sons.
but, there is more to the story. I found this point particularly humorous:
You write that men and women process emotions differently. How?
The mirror-neuron system [MNS] allows us to [see a facial expression] and know what that person is feeling. When we are looking at an infant or another person we care about, women will resonate with that feeling a lot longer than men. This is not to say that men don’t do this. They do. They start out very quickly in the MNS and get a quick flash of what’s going on. Then they switch into another system called the temporal parietal junction system, which allows them to start Google-searching their entire brain circuit for ways to fix the problem.
This type of interaction goes on lots and lots between the couples that come to my office: she just wants him to talk to her about how she’s feeling about something before he launches into giving her the solution. And he feels like, well, what good will it do just to wallow in the feelings? I think one of the things that women don’t focus on or appreciate is that our men really want to make us happy. He’s the fix-it man. He really does want to be our hero, and that’s how he expresses his love.
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02.21.10
Posted in Evolution, society at 9:29 pm by site admin
Check out this article discussing how men are more attracted to ovulating women. Men can unconsciously detect the scent of ovulating women.
Women looking for that special someone might want to think twice before spritzing Chanel No. 5. A new study suggests that a woman’s natural scent may be all she needs.
Recent research shows that a man’s testosterone levels, which are linked with sexual interest, are significantly higher when they smell the shirt of a woman who is ovulating.
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01.13.10
Posted in Evolution, health at 8:52 pm by site admin
Check out this article discussing prions and the fact that they do mutate and evolve like viruses. Prions are degenerate proteins responsible for diseases such as “mad cow disease”, technically termed bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), and Creutzfeldt Jakob disease (CJD).
In the classic sense, prions, which are misfolded versions of the brain protein PrP, cannot mutate because they do not contain DNA or RNA. They can, however, give rise to variants with different properties, possibly due to differences in the folding, or shape, of the proteins. In the study, published December 31 in Science Express, researchers estimated the rate at which prion mutants can appear in cultured human nerve cells. In addition, the study suggests that once variants appear, they persist at low levels, giving rise to a heterogeneous prion population.
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01.08.10
Posted in Evolution at 10:11 pm by site admin
Found this article on wired.com titled Human Genome Is Part Bornavirus.
“Our whole notion of ourselves as a species is slightly misconceived,” says Robert Gifford, a paleovirologist at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center, affiliated with Rockefeller University in New York City. Human DNA includes genetic contributions from bacteria and other organisms, and humans have even come to rely on some of these genes for basic functions like fighting infections.
In the new study, Japanese researchers found copies of the bornavirus N (for nucleoprotein) gene inserted in at least four separate locations in the human genome. Searches of other mammalian genomes also showed that the gene has hitched rides in a wide variety of species for millions of years.
“Clearly they provide a fossil record of bornavirus that was previously only available for retroviruses,” says John Coffin, a virologist at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston who coauthored the study. “It tells us that virus evolution doesn’t proceed the way many people have viewed it.”
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04.23.08
Posted in Evolution at 1:31 pm by site admin
Check out this article discussing how a mother’s diet affects the sex of her children.
“This research may help to explain why in developed countries, where many young women choose low calorie diets, the proportion of boys is falling,” Mathews said.
The study’s findings, she added, could point to a “natural mechanism” for gender selection.
The link between a rich diet and male children may have an evolutionary explanation.
For most species, the number of offspring a male can father exceeds the number a female can give birth to. But only if conditions are favorable — poor quality male specimens may fail to breed at all, whereas females reproduce more consistently.
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03.31.08
Posted in Evolution at 9:05 am by site admin
Check out this article talking about how guys are kinda clueless reading signals from women. However, its not your typical “she wants me”, but….
Rather than seeing the world through sex-colored glasses, men seemed just to have blurry vision of sorts, overall. For instance, the college guys sometimes mistook sexual advances as pal-like gestures.
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12.19.07
Posted in Evolution, health at 3:18 pm by site admin
Found this article talking about how anti-aging drugs do/don’t really work— more specifically, they can’t stop the inevitable..
Preliminary research suggests that mitochondria-rejuvenating drugs are capable, at least in lab animals, of halting these diseases and extending longevity. The research also suggests that, once they’ve reached the end of their traditional lifespans, these animals tend to die quickly and inexplicably, without any indication of disease or systemic breakdown.
If the pattern holds in people, death would not be preceded by months or years of suffering. It would also come without warning, forever catching family and loved ones by surprise.
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07.17.07
Posted in Evolution at 10:33 am by site admin
Check out this article briefly talking about the reason bipedalism evolved in humans— it saves energy.
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05.07.07
Posted in Evolution, health, Religion/Philosophy at 10:50 am by site admin
Check out this article talking about using a selfish gene model to selectively breed insects. Their eventual goal is to create malaria-resistant mosquitos.
This article talks about how to wire your brain for religious transcendance. The article talks about modern methods of cranial stimulation, and then moves on to chemicals and traditional hallucinogens.
This article talks about the current trend of mind games (games that help exercise your mind). I’m sure most people have heard about Brainage. The article also talks about a brain training program by PositScience that is scientifically proven to help the mind.
In a recent PNAS paper, Merzenich’s lab announced that PositScience was able to reverse “age-related cognitive decline” in a randomized and controlled study of 182 subjects. Of those trained with PositScience, 93 percent showed significant cognitive improvement. “We’ve demonstrated that you can take the brain of a 75-year-old,” Merzenich says, “and make it function like the brain of a 35- or 40-year-old. It takes training, and some hard work, but it’s possible.” Preliminary results of a second trial study suggest that PositScience can even help stave off memory loss in the early stages of Alzheimer’s patients. After just four weeks, senile patients showed significant cognitive improvement. The control group, on the other hand, continued to decline.
Also this article enumerates 17 criteria for consciousness. Its a bit technical to read. Here are my two favorites:
Property 1: “Irregular” patterns of brain activity
Electrical oscillations occuring between 20 and 70 times per second are common in awake humans, but epilepsy, sleep, anesthesia and some forms of brain damage are accompanied by the dominance of highly regular oscillations slower than 4 Hz. Others have argued that the conscious EEG is characterized by a particular noise signature known as “pink” or “1/f” noise. Although the purpose of these peculiar electrical oscillations is poorly understood, they appear to be a consistent feature of primate consciousness.
Property 6: Present-centeredness
Seth et al. argue that consciousness is centered on the present, probably for evolutionary reasons, and that this present-centeredness may arise from the fact that the dynamic core of neural activity is in constant flux.
The second one seems very zen-like to me.
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05.06.07
Posted in Evolution, health at 11:24 am by site admin
Check out this article title “Hacking your Body’s Bacteria for Better Health” talking about how modern human sanitary customs, e.g. anti-bacterial soap, mouth wash, bathroom cleaners, is causing a wide-range of health concerns. Doesn’t make sense? Well anti-bacterial cleaners kill all kinds of bacterial— both the good and the bad. So in an effort to kill the bad ones, we destroy the good ones in our body that live symbiotically, providing us protection and assisting our body.
But some scientists say we’re overdoing it. All this killing may actually cause diseases like eczema, irritable bowel syndrome and even diabetes. The answer, they say, is counterintuitive: Feed patients bacteria.
“Probiotics (pills containing bacteria) have resulted in complete elimination of eczema in 80 percent of the people we’ve treated,” says Dr. Joseph E. Pizzorno Jr., a practicing physician and former member of the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy. Pizzorno says he’s used probiotics to treat irritable bowel disease, acne and even premenstrual syndrome. “It’s unusual for me to see a patient with a chronic disease that doesn’t respond to probiotics.”
I especially like this quote:
To more precisely hack the gut bacteria, Blaser calls for a Gut Genome Project, modeled after the Human Genome Project. It’s a daunting task: The human genome, mapped to great fanfare but still dimly understood, contains a tenth of the genes believed to be in our gut bacteria. But though difficult, such research could prove vital.
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01.03.07
Posted in Evolution, health at 9:14 pm by site admin
Check out this article that discusses how the high cost of child bearing could have drivin the evolution of menopause. And thanks to modern technology and medicine, we have birth control.
“One of the other problems we’ve been trying to explain in human reproduction is why women all over the world have been having fewer children whenever they get access to contraception or more education,” says Dr. Penn. “If women bear a higher cost for reproduction than men, then this might help explain why, when they get control over their reproduction, they would have fewer children.”
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12.20.06
Posted in Evolution at 10:29 am by site admin
Check out this article titled ‘Make Room for Bomb-Sniffing Humans’. Heres the first paragraph:
When it is necessary to sniff out a trail–be it to a bomb, a drug stash or even to a pie sitting on a windowsill–the task is normally better left to our canine companions. And while our four-legged friends still hold the crown for tracking scents, a new study published in this week’s issue of Nature Neuroscience proves that humans may not be bloodhounds, but they can follow a scent–and they get better with training. In addition, the paper provides evidence that mammals make comparisons between what is sensed by each of their nostrils to synthesize information on scent much the same way that they use both ears to hear.
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11.17.06
Posted in Evolution, society at 9:53 pm by site admin
Check out this article titled “Sexual Success And The Schizoid Factor”. The article states that out of the four schizotypy dimensions: (1) Unusual experiences, (2) Cognitive disorganization, (3) Impulsive non-conformity, and (4) Introvertive anhedonia, (1) and (3) had a positive correlation with the number of partners a person had. A good read. check it out for yourself.
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10.22.06
Posted in Evolution, society at 10:01 am by site admin
Check out this article at the bbc talking about how the human species (in a couple thousand years) will homogenize and then eventually divide into two distinct lines: the haves and have nots. Now I dont think humans will have receding chins (b/c we will not have to chew as much) because people like to eat. Look at modern day america. Eat, eat, eat– and probably a couple things in between. If modern medicine can discover the secret of weight gain, eating could be a very common time killer(its does exercise a few muscles in the body).
I read a couple posts/articles referencing this guys work. One site stated this meshing doesnt make sense b/c genetics preserves diversity. In other words, the parents contains genes, and thus the children will get some possible combination of these genes. So it may be true, that the middle percentile may converge more, there should still be a great deal of diversity in the world. I read somewhere long ago (I think in the book The Mating Mind) that intra-racial differences and genetic diversity are far greater than inter-racial ones.
Anyways, the article did also have an interesting thought on the role of technology in our future.
Social skills, such as communicating and interacting with others, could be lost, along with emotions such as love, sympathy, trust and respect. People would become less able to care for others, or perform in teams.
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09.25.06
Posted in Evolution at 8:21 pm by site admin
Check out this video of a frog basically dying and coming back to life. The frog doesnt really die, but the frog (being a cold-blooded amphibian) puts its self in a kind of suspended animation. Pretty cool. Goes up there with monkeys not liking noise.. umm. I mean music.
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09.24.06
Posted in Evolution at 7:18 pm by site admin
Check out this articlethat talks about how monkey’s prefer silence over music.
For his part, McDermott says it will be important to repeat the experiment with smarter—and larger—primates, such as apes and chimpanzees. He guesses that tamarins and marmosets, both very small, may dislike music because it prevents them from hearing more biologically relevant sounds.
“One of their dominant motivations is avoiding becoming a meal for someone,” he said
This makes perfect sense. Last time I had someone noises outside my house in the middle of the night, the first thing I did was turn off the tv. I wonder what would happen if they raised these monkeys up in an environment with music…
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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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