Review of John Rushing's new book

Mother Jones has a review of John Rushing's new book, Mission Al Jazeera. Who is John Rushing? He was the Marine that acted as a liaison to the Al Jazeera reporters in the 2004 documentary Control Room. As the Iraq war continued he became more disillusioned with the way the war was being handled. After resigning his commission, he then took a job as a correspondent for the English language version of Al Jazeera. But Rushing is not some liberal who hates America:

Ultimately, Rushing seems to be writing for an audience of disillusioned conservatives—which may be what he is: Someone who sees the United States' blunders in the Middle East as oversights rather than machinations and for whom engaging with other cultures is a novel but welcome idea. Rushing's main message is that Americans and Arabs need to learn more about each other's cultures and histories—an idea which hardly seems radical, but has nonetheless managed to stir up a fair amount of controversy.

Our (America's) inability to understand other cultures will continue to get us in trouble. Iraq after the war is not like Germany after WWII; we should not have expected a rapid rise of democracy just because we arrived. It doesn't help that fifty years ago, we helped to undermine democracy in Iraq's neighbor, Iran, just because we didn't like the things the Prime Minister was doing. Believe it or not, our leaders may talk about "spreading democracy" but they don't always have the purest of intentions towards foreign nations.

Open Blogroll Enrollment

I have been wanting to expand my blogroll recently, and going through recent comments I have seen some interesting blogs. However, my free time the past few days has been limited and I will be without a computer for a few days, so I don't have the time right now to look through them all. So I am going to try something different.

Open blogroll enrollment.

If you have a blog, and would like me to add it to my roll (on the right) then please enter the url in the comments section of this post. Specifically, I am looking for blogs that comment on the following topics:

1. Neuroscience
2. General Science (especially the misapplication of science)
3. Religion (as it relates to politics and, of course, science)
4. Food (especially issues related to organic food, local produce, food/science and food/politics)
5. Anything else that is interesting.

So, I'm not sure if this will work, but go ahead and post your blogs!

Corticopia: Iron + herbicide = Parkinson's

In this weeks Journal of Neuroscience is a report on the ability of iron and paraquat to act synergistically to create Parkinsonian-like degeneration in the nigrostriatal, dopaminergic pathway. There is a press release available from Scientist Live (from which I will quote).

Ten-day-old mice were fed iron for a week. At ages from two months to two years, they were then exposed to paraquat for three weeks. By examining their brains, Andersen and her team found that by the time the mice were a year old, early iron consumption exacerbated damage to brain cells caused by paraquat exposure. The effect was even more pronounced at two years of age, the human equivalent of
60–70 years.

Now to see if they can find some sort of correlation in humans. We already know in humans that pesticides may increase the likelihood of Parkinson's. I wonder if there is an easy way to estimate infantile iron exposure?

Bad beer, good commercial

This song has been running through my head for the past few months now, so I went searching for the video. Why is there such a strong negative correlation between beer quality and advertising quality?



By the way, this commercial is from ten years ago. Yeah, I'm old.

Tunguska crater found?

As a child, my skeptic meter was a little off. While I enjoyed science, my interest lied in its more questionable realms: cryptozoology, UFO's, ghosts, etc. I still remember watching In Search of ... , with Leonard Nimoy's authoritative narration always leaving me convinced that there are mysteries which the human race is not yet ready to solve. The intro music is running through my head right now.

In my travels, one event always stuck out in my mind, the Tunguska event. This was an explosion in 1908 over Siberia that was estimated to be 1000 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. As a child, I was easily lead to believe that it was due to an explosion aboard an extraterrestrial spacecraft. As an adult who is much more skeptical, I now realize it was a comet or asteroid that disintegrated in the atmosphere, and hence had no impact crater.

Now some scientists believe they have found the impact site:

[A] University of Bologna team says a lake near the epicentre of the blast may be occupying a crater hollowed out by a chunk of rock that hit the ground. Lake Cheko - though shallow - fits the proportions of a small, bowl-shaped impact crater, say the Italy-based scientists. Their investigation of the lake bottom's geology reveals a funnel-like shape not seen in neighbouring lakes. In addition, a geophysics survey of the lake bed has turned up an unusual feature about 10m down which could either be compacted lake sediments or a buried fragment of space rock. Other features suggest a recent origin for the lake.

Of course this is not proven, and some scientists are, rightfully, withholding full support of this conclusion:

"In my opinion, they certainly haven't provided any conclusive evidence it's an impact structure," commented Dr Gareth Collins, a Natural Environment Research Council (Nerc) research fellow at Imperial College London, UK. He added: "The impact cratering community does not accept structures as craters unless there is evidence of high temperatures and high pressures. That requires evidence of rocks that have been melted or rocks that have been ground up by the impact."

So there is still more work to be done, and they plan to do it:

The University of Bologna team plans to mount another expedition to the Tunguska region in summer 2008. The researchers aim to drill up to 10m below the lake bed to the anomaly picked up in the geophysics survey and determine whether it really is a piece of extraterrestrial rock.

Please forgive me, but my inner child still hopes that they find piece of extraterrestrial spacecraft. I can still dream, can't I?

Getting rid of glutamate to prevent brain injury

Vivian Teichberg has hit upon a novel way to prevent neuronal death following an insult to the brain. Glutamate is an excitatory amino acid, which is necessary for normal brain function. However, it becomes excito-toxic when released in large amounts, which is exactly what happens during an injury. How to stop this? Well, you could interfere with the actions of glutamate; or you can remove excess glutamate from the brain via the bloodstream.

"Normally the brain recognizes the fact that the glutamate is extremely toxic and has an inherent defense mechanism which pumps it back into the brain cells," says Teichberg. However, with trauma or disease, the brain's normal mechanisms don't function properly. They need a helping hand. Teichberg's idea was to move the excess glutamate from the brain into the blood, which would then carry it safely away and prevent its destructive effects. [snip] There is an enzyme present in blood, known as GOT, which is able to break down glutamate in the presence of a chemical called oxaloacetate (O). Teichberg figured that by injecting large amounts of O into the bloodstream, this would "drive" more glutamate from the brain into the bloodstream. "After a head injury, you give one injection of O for a short, intense time of thirty minutes, and this drains excess glutamate from the brain into the blood and protects the brain."

Sounds good. Of course, one of the problems with trying to affect glutamate levels in the brain is that brain function is so dependent on glutamate (I think the number of glutamatergic neurons in the brain approaches 50%, but don't quote me on that) that decreasing levels all around runs the danger of placing the patient into a coma. However, perhaps this method, though systemic, would only be functional near the injury site (due to the high concentration) and not really affect non-injury sites.

Shmuley Boteach, evolution, and reality impairments

I don't want to go off on Shmuley Boteach. I don't mind the fact that he pimps his books everywhere he goes and asks for paypal donations to support his blog. You have to make a living somehow. But Mr. Boteach has a penchant for letting people know just how uninformed he is on many topics. He divorces himself from reality, purposefully or not, and ends up looking like, for lack of a better word, an idiot.

In the past he has made the claim that a man's right to get turned on by goggling at women's boobs trumps a child's right to breast feed:

One [side effect of breast-feeding] is the de-eroticization of a woman's body, as her husband witnesses one of the most attractive parts of her body serving a utilitarian rather than romantic purpose. [snip] ... public breast-feeding is profoundly de-eroticizing, and I believe that wives should cover up, even when they nurse their babies in their husband's presence.

Somehow, having a basic understanding of our physiology is fine but you should not be comfortable with it. In the same article he states:

I believe this same problem comes up when men witness childbirth up close. There are certain poses in which a husband should not see his wife. By all means, be there for the entire labor, as I have been for the births of each of my eight children. But I strongly agree with the advice of the ancient rabbis that husbands should not be staring at the actual delivery. That is just too erotic a part of a wife's anatomy for it to become a mere birth canal.

The fact that it always was a birth canal seems to be unimportant. All right, so he is not comfortable acknowledging the superpowers that women have. Physiology is something he would rather not think about. But you would think that, as a marriage/sex counselor, he would have a better understanding of psychology and human sexuality. But no. Here is his advice for a woman who found out her husband is gay:

Clearly 7 years of marriage demonstrate that he is capable of being attracted to you, even if his preference is for men. [snip] I can only assume that he was doing things with you as a husband that a heterosexual husband generally does. Therefore, I would make his attraction to men an issue of no consequence. [snip] I say, the marriage should continue and he should remain completely faithful. He will just have to battle his urges toward men just as he would have to battle his urges toward other women if he were a heterosexual male.

All right, so he denies the reality that some people still hide their sexual orientation because of fears that they will not be accepted. Do you think his advice reinforces that fear? Welcome to the 1950's. Anything else?

Evolution, as a matter of fact.

Actually, he would just say he is asking questions (in the same way that conspiracy theorists are just "asking questions" about the Apollo Moon landings). That would be valid if his questions were not so completely ignorant of the evidence:

Foremost among these unresolved issues is, first, how evolution contradicts the second law of thermodynamics, the law of entropy increase.

Second, genetic mutation, the very engine of modern neo-Darwinism, is almost always catastrophically destructive to an organism, which severely challenges the notion that mutation with natural selection ultimately leads to higher complexity.

Third, after 140 years of digging up the earth, there still remain enormous holes in the fossil record, the missing links that account for tens of millions of years of evolution ...

Mr. Boteach, please don't make assertions that are not only wrong, but also easily refuted and long ago dismissed. If you have a problem cracking a book to check a few facts, then for everyone's sake leave science to the grownups and stick to your television show.


Blogs on this:
Oleh Musings
Moral Clarity
For Zion's Sake

More circumcision in the news

I was just thinking this past week that a lot of news has come out that would make people think twice about routine infant circumcision.* American parents are not having the procedure performed as often as they used to. A celebrity (if you think Alan Cumming is a celebrity) has come out in support of NORM-UK and against infant circumcision (that almost makes up for Son of the Mask). Also, a recent report showed that the number of prostitutes in a country is a stronger predictor of HIV infection rates than the number of cicumcisions, which calls into question the purportedly strong link between circumcision and HIV transmission (though I do reserve some skepticism about the accuracy of these findings). All in all, it seems that the worm is turning on the hook, and he's packing an uzi.

Then I saw this report: the AAP is re-considering their neutral stance on routine infant circumcision.

Although the AAP has never strongly endorsed or repudiated circumcision, the organization has gone back and forth on the issue for decades. Most recently, in 1999, the AAP issued a statement that neither endorsed nor discouraged circumcision, noting that the surgery – particularly when performed without painkillers – resulted in “pain and physiologic stress.”

...

A report published in February in the medical journal The Lancet is causing the organization to rethink that stance. In three trials conducted by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, heterosexual men in Uganda, Kenya and South Africa who were circumcised had HIV infection rates up to 60 percent lower than uncircumcised men. “We believe when there's this kind of information coming into play – more and more evidence in various journals – we need to go back carefully and review our policies,” Berkelhamer said. “We recommend things for all children when medical evidence is overwhelming compelling.”

But the medical evidence is not compelling. While the AAP vacillates on this issue every other pediatric society in the developed world has come out against this procedure. Excuse me while I go all ad hominem, but I can't help but think that there are doctors in the US absolutely giddy about the idea of cutting the tips off of little boys wieners. What other conclusion can I reach?

*Of course, it was a good week for me too, what with that link to my post by PZ. I would have posted this sooner, but I wanted to avoid being labeled as the circumcision blog. Though I will say I can't complain that my technorati rating spiked up a bit.

Tripping over my roots

There is a mystique about the Mayflower. Sure Plymouth, MA, founded in 1621, wasn't the first European settlement in North America. Nor was it the first permanent European settlement. It wasn't even the first permanent English settlement. But still there is something. Perhaps it has to do with the stories of our childhood; a group of religious outcasts who sought a new land where they could practice their religion freely(1); taming and colonizing a vast wilderness (2); celebrating the first Thanksgiving (3). There is just something about the Pilgrims that makes most people want to make the claim, "My descendants go all the way back to the Mayflower".

Well, I have a famous ancestor too (4). Noel Langlois and Francoise Garnier were one of the original families to permanently locate to Quebec in 1618, a year after Louis Hebert. That's their names on that monument and I am their great (10x) grandson. I beat all you Mayflower descendants by three years (5).

Neener, neener, neener.

(1) Of course, they started out expressing this freedom by taking over the ship, forcing a landing in modern day Massachusetts rather than further south as planned, and establishing a theocracy in which only their brand of religion could be practiced. But still, idealistic fairy tales are nice.

(2) Wild, except for those 54 million or so people who already lived in the Americas.

(3) Though the first official Thanksgiving celebration was to commemorate the massacre of 700 Pequot men, women, and children. But I digress.

(4) Okay, my great-grandmother had a fling with Megatron. I'm talking about someone else. Yes, there is some Decepticon in me. I'm not proud of it, so let's move on.

(5) Technically, I can do even better. There are a small, but significant, number of Aboriginal Americans in my ancestry, though their tribal affiliations have been lost to the mists of time. So when those Pilgrims came wading to shore, my other ancestors were the ones waving hi.

Use of British English causes confusion for this American

I came across this BBC article and I thought, "Have these people been smoking something?" Dummies reduce the risk of cot death.

Parents are being advised to give a dummy to newborn babies every time they sleep to reduce the risk of cot death. The government recommendations come after a review of current evidence found dummies halved the risk sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) [sic]. Breastfeeding babies should not be given a dummy until one-month old and parents should never force a baby to take a dummy if they do not want it.

Oh, pacifiers! At first I thought that they were suggesting that new parents ask either Vince or Larry to shack up with their kids.

This confusion reminds of an exchange I had in college with a British foreign student.

Student: Do you have a rubber? I made a mistake and need to correct it.
Me: I don't see how a rubber is going to help you very much now.

Or this one from when I lived in New York City.

Ex-pat: I could really use a fag right now.
Me: You might have better luck in the Village.

Huntington's and Autism advances in the news

Huntington's is a debilitating disease. Coordination of movement is compromised and cognitive function does not escape unscathed. It is autosomal dominant, meaning if one parent has the disorder they have a fifty percent chance of passing it on to their offspring (it is conceivable that a person could have two copies, but that would be an exceedingly rare occurrence). So why would such a disorder still be active in the human genome? Mainly because the disease does not begin to manifest until the individual is in the thirties, and even then it is not often noticed. By this time, most individuals are done with procreation and the gene has been handed down. Thankfully, there are genetic screens for this disorder, which allows for genetic counseling, and medications, which help control some of the symptoms. But that doesn't mean that there isn't any further work to be done.

Researchers in New Zealand have developed a model of Huntington's chorea in sheep:

A young New Zealand scientist has managed to create the world's first large transgenic animal model for Huntington's disease, a devastating neurodegenerative disorder. For her PhD, 25-year-old Jessie Jacobsen from the University of Auckland worked out how to inject into sheep the DNA containing the gene that causes Huntington's.

With this model, scientists hope to isolate changes that occur in the brain prior to the manifestation of Huntington's. Because the sheep brain is more similar to a human's than a mouse or a rat, the hope is that this will be a better model of neurological change. One drawback, and it is big, is that the normal life cycle of a sheep is 10-15 years. That means studies are likely to take several years from conception to publication. But the payoff is better clinical applications in the more distant future.

Autism has been in the news quite a bit since diagnosis of this disorder has been rising over the past decade or two. Now researchers have isolated two mutations that may be relevant to the development of autistic disorders:

They have shown one protein increases the excitability of nerve cells, while the other inhibits cell activity. The University of Texas team found that in normal circumstances the proteins balance each other out. But the study, published in Neuron, suggests that in people with autism the balance between the proteins is knocked out of kilter.

The premise comes down to pruning. Pruning is a normal function which begins to occur around two years of age. We are born with far more synaptic connections than are necessary, and pruning removes the ones that have not been in use. This helps brain organization. However, if children have weaker synaptic connections because of a mutation, then more pruning than usual occurs. Now the real question is, how do we go about correcting this altered protein?

Blogs on this:
Wired
Paxalles

Encephalon #25 is up at PsyBlog

Link-a-doo to the carnival.

Corticopia: Methylphenidate and future drug abuse

An upcoming study in Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior looks at how the reward system in the brain is altered by chronic methylphenidate administration.* This drug is regularly prescribed to those suffering from ADD or ADHD.

Parents, doctors, and others have wondered whether common treatments for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) inadvertently predispose adolescents to future drug abuse. The answer may depend on the age at which treatment is started and how long it lasts, say the authors of a new brain-imaging and behavioral study conducted in animals at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory.

The researchers gave rats chronic methylphenidate, starting at one month of age, and tested subjects with PET to look at D2 dopamine receptor availability in the striatum at two different times during treatment, at two and eight months. Additionally, at eight months, rats were tested for cocaine self-administration.

Rats given the 2mg/kg dose of methylphenidate were significantly less likely to press a lever to self-administer cocaine, and received fewer self-initiated infusions of the drug following eight months of treatment than the lower-dose group or the control rats. The changes observed in brain chemistry were specific to the age and duration of methylphenidate treatment: Specifically, after two months of treatment, brain scans revealed that both groups of treated rats had lower levels of dopamine D2 receptors in their brains than did control animals. In contrast, after eight months of treatment, the brain scans revealed elevated levels of dopamine D2 receptors in treated rats compared with controls, with the higher-dose treatment group showing the highest level of D2 receptors. In the control group, D2 receptor levels declined with age. Research at Brookhaven and elsewhere has suggested that low levels of dopamine D2 receptors may increase the likelihood of drug abuse, while elevated levels of dopamine D2 receptors may attenuate the propensity to abuse drugs.

This shows that, yes, the brain is affected by chronic methylphenidate administration. The way it is affected, however depends on the time point during which the testing occurs. Previous research has shown an increased propensity for cocaine self-administration, but only with a much shorter time period of chronic administration.

This issue hits a nerve with me a little bit. During my recent grad school interviews I had one interviewer ask me specifically what I thought about children being prescribed stimulants and how that might affect their future potential for drug abuse. I will admit that I was unprepared for that particular question and it caused me to stumble through the rest of that interview. Maybe that is why they didn’t take me into that program. Oh well, I didn’t want to live in the Bible Belt anyway.

* The paper itself is not yet on PubMed, but those of you with access to the journal can see a copy of the manuscript here. (Not a proof, the actual manuscript).

Throw out the pureed baby food

A UK official with UNICEF has said that pureed baby food is unnatural and unnecessary:

Gill Rapley, deputy director of Unicef's UK Baby Friendly Initiative said feeding babies in this way could cause health problems later in life. She said children should be fed only with breast or formula milk for six months, then weaned onto solids to improve control over how much they ate.

So far it sounds like standard AAP guidelines, so I am not sure how this differs from what people already (should) do.

After six months, Mrs Rapley said babies were capable of taking food into their mouths and chewing it. Therefore, feeding them pureed food at this time could delay the development of chewing skills. Instead, she said, they should be given milk and solid pieces of food which they could chew.

Ah, that is the difference. We made our own baby food (which is insanely easy by the way) and always left it a little chunky. When we did buy baby food it was the organic stuff, which also came a bit chunky. So I must confess, I don't have much experience with mainstream, ground-to-death baby food. Except that I know it tastes awful, which I learned when feeding my nephew.

Blogs on this:
Strollerderby
Todd and in Charge

Evolution and food together?

Could it be any better?



from Kitchen Gardeners International

Child dies of infection following circumcision

This story has been floating around for a few weeks, though I have been a bit reticent to post about it. A Canadian boy, after a routine infant circumcision, developed an infection and died from septic shock. The time line was incredibly fast:

Five hours later, the parents returned to their family doctor with the infant, who had become “irritable and had blue discolouration” below the belly button. Doctors noticed the discolouration and slight swelling of the penis, but sent the child home.

Fourteen hours after the circumcision, according to Cairns, the child was brought to another hospital where doctors noted he was extremely irritable with marked swelling of the penis and bruising to the scrotum.

The child was then transferred to a paediatric centre, where his bladder was diagnosed, Cairns said, to “seven or eight times its normal size.”

The PlastiBell ring, which is used to hold back the foreskin after circumcision, was removed and drained and the child went into shock. “If the PlastiBell had been taken off five hours after he got there, he would be alive,” said Cairns.

Of course any procedure can result in infection. However the difference between routine infant circumcision and other surgical procedures is the elective, cosmetic nature of prepucectomy. Furthermore, the difference between routine infant circumcision and other elective, cosmetic procedures is the nature of consent: an adult understands the risks of their voluntary surgery, the infant cannot. Yet, doctors still perform it without medical indication.

And likely with lasting physiological harm. Take into account that a recent study in the British Journal of Urology shows that circumcised males have less genital sensation than do intact males. This contrasts with previous research, which for the most part was done with adult males who underwent circumcision and were interviewed. In the case of the BJU paper (from the press release):

Adult male volunteers were evaluated with a 19 point Semmes-Weinstein monofilament touch-test to map fine-touch pressure thresholds of the penis. Circumcised and uncircumcised men were compared using mixed models for repeated data, controlling for age, type of underwear worn, time since test ejaculation, ethnicity, country of birth, and level of education.

This was a physiological test of sensitivity, which should not be as affected by demand characteristics as a questionnaire. Those who undergo voluntary circumcision have an psychological incentive to report that they have the same amount of feeling. It is much more difficult to fool the test which was used.

If you were to tell a medical ethics board, who are blind to the nature of the procedure, that you wanted to encourage a new surgical intervention on neonates that had questionable benefits, all the risks of other surgical procedures, and likely caused decreased tactile sensitivity, you would be swiftly, and rightfully, shown the exit. Pro-circumcision forces have the burden of proof, and have consistently failed to show a significant benefit of routine infant circumcision. Now why exactly is this procedure still the most common surgical procedure in the United States?

Blogs on this topic:
The Island of Doubt
Gene Expression
Too Many Tribbles
Healthblog CTV

A bite of Bourdains wit

If you don't know who Anthony Bourdain is, you probably are not that interested in food. The, now celebrity, chef has long been a voicebox for those who treat the culinary arts as a serious profession rather than a means to fame. He supports the working chefs, who make up almost all of the workforce, the ones who toil long days in hot kitchens with little monetary reward and even less recognition, all because they love food. Bourdain loves food, but he loathes the Food Network.

Guest writing in Rhulman's blog, he has a few choice (and even select and prime) words for the Food Networks Reality show, Next Food Network Star.

I think it's a useful window into the real heart and soul of the Food Network, a cautionary tale, morality play and case study of the kind of pathological narcissism and exhibitionism that drives people to grope strangers in hot tubs, vomit in public, share their cellulite with the world, bunk with a drunken Mini-Me and generally humiliate themselves utterly in the cause of Being On Television. That the "food" mostly looks like bonobo-puke is entirely beside the point.

Mr. Bourdain then goes on to list the faults that Food Network will find with all of the contestants: too foreign, too nice, too capable. But his mention of one contestant, already removed from the show, stuck with me.

Patrick's heartfelt identification with "local, local, fresh fresh, fresh," for instance, put him right in the headlights of the network's raison d-etre: "Fast, Cheap, Easy and Available At Any SuperMarket." No surprise he [sic] gone.

Now, I try to buy local food if available. Yesterday I drove out to the farm to buy about 10 kilos of beef from grass fed cows (plus some local pork, turkey, and ice cream). I also buy a fair share of organic fruits and vegetables. Now this of course costs more money. But unlike the bulk of the American populace, I do not find this a bad thing.

Paying more for my food makes me think about it more. When ground beef is a dollar per pound, who cares if you make a bad dish. It's cheap and easy enough to try to make again, usually without much thought as to whether you will get maximal enjoyment from your endeavors. But when that beef costs five times as much, you think more about cooking. Did I season this properly? How should I cook it? Am I sure I did not overcook it? You end up valuing food more. You respect the food. And that is why I respect Bourdain. I have no illusions that I could be friends with him, his personality and mine wouldn't click. But if I could sit down to dine with him, I would be sitting with a man who knows the value of what we eat, and hence treats food with the reverence it deserves.

Blog posts on this topic:
Chris Walker Versus
Giadaday

Fathering in the news

There are two bits of news that are interesting to fathers. First, a recent study shows that couvade syndrome (sympathetic pregnancy) may in fact be a real condition:

Expectant fathers reported a range of symptoms, including cramps, back pain, mood swings, food cravings, morning sickness, fatigue, depression, fainting, insomnia and toothache.

In more extreme cases, men developed swollen stomachs that looked like a "baby bump".

So why didn't I have this happen to me two years ago?

"These men were so attuned to their partners, they started to develop the same symptoms," said Dr Arthur Brennan, senior lecturer at St Georges, who led the study.

Ah, because I don't love my wife enough. But this condition appears to be so rare that most men are not properly attuned to their partners. Though I believe this devotion exists, forgive me for being a bit incredulous about the following statement.

One of the men in the study insisted that the stomach pain he experienced during labour outranked his wife's discomfort.

The next item, from Slate, also talks about couvade syndrome but also how the male brain changes during fatherhood.

In addition, dads-to-be have elevated levels of cortisol and prolactin, hormones that are also present in high levels among mothers who are attached and responsive to their children. A father's testosterone level also drops by about a third, on average, in the first three weeks after his child is born. These hormonal shifts, which are likely sparked by exposure to the pregnant woman's hormones (there is correlational evidence that dads who spend time with moms experience the changes), mirror those experienced by mothers and may similarly prepare men for parenthood. Men who have relatively little testosterone have been shown, for instance, to hold baby dolls longer than men who are flooded with the sex hormone.

The article then goes on to lament the dearth of research on father-infant interactions and the physical changes in men during fatherhood. And they also bring up one of my pet peeves.

You'd think that if we're ready for diaper-changing tables in men's restrooms, we'd also be ready to hear about men's hormonal barometers.

Obviously the writers at Slate aren't living in the same town that I am. I regularly find men's restrooms without changing tables. One store I went to had the amusingly ironic sign outside the woman's restroom "For your convenience, a baby changing table is located inside this restroom." Really? Yes, it really was convenient for me to leave my merchandise sitting outside the restroom while I trek out to the car, change my kid, and return only to find that some clerk has put all of the items I collected over the past hour back on the shelf. I'm going to write a letter!

Obstinance to the idea of an evolved brain

Nature has a nice editorial discussing evolution of the human brain and those who deny it. Enter Sen. Brownback:

... in The New York Times, ... he wrote: "Man was not an accident and reflects an image and likeness unique in the created order. Those aspects of evolutionary theory compatible with this truth are a welcome addition to human knowledge. Aspects of these theories that undermine this truth, however, should be firmly rejected as atheistic theology posing as science."

I don't think there is any better way to demonstrate the difference between dogma and truth, faith and attained knowledge. Sen. Brownback simply cannot accept a scientific theory that does not place homo sapiens in a special place. The reason for this is likely not evidence, but fear:

... these are deep waters. It is fairly easy to accept the truth of evolution when it applies to the external world — the adaptation of the orchid to wasps, for example, or the speed of the cheetah. It is much harder to accept it internally — to accept that our feelings, intuitions, the ways in which we love and loathe, are the product of experience, evolution and culture alone.

Which is the crux of why many of the theologically inclined reject Darwinian evolution. If evolutionary theory were applied in the way Wallace envisioned it, then humans would retain their special place in the universe and most religious folks would be happy. But tell them we are animals, and they go off in a huff. Now, for my favorite line from the editorial:

This does not utterly invalidate the idea that the human mind is ... a reflection of the mind of God. But the suggestion that any entity capable of creating the Universe has a mind encumbered with the same emotional structures and perceptual framework as that of an upright ape adapted to living in small, intensely social peer-groups on the African savannah seems a priori unlikely.

Oh, Beppo, is there no trick you won't play on mankind?

Blogs on this topic:
Access Research Network
Fourth Floor Studio
Holler Back

Advances in brain imaging

Researchers have announced a means by which PET and MRI can be combined, an advance which should help to move forward the field of brain imaging. I imagined that this technique involved oscillating between the two techniques, but no:

"This PET/MR machine - developed by Siemens and which debuted last year -acquires MR and PET scans at the same time, for the same imaging volume and, therefore, produces a higher degree of registration," he [Bernd J. Pichler]said. "The PET/MR system allows simultaneous measurement of anatomy, functionality and biochemistry of the body's tissues and cells, enabling researchers to correlate MR and PET data in a way not previously possible before," Pichler noted. "Neither the MR nor the PET imaging performance was degraded by synchronous data acquisition. The PET/MR data of the human brain revealed image qualities comparable to stand-alone systems without any significant distortions," he said.

And what are the possible applications?

Pichler explained some of the future possibilities with this PET/MR system. PET currently can differentiate mild cognitive impairment from early-stage Alzheimer's, but it cannot determine reduced brain volume caused by atrophy. "By combining MR and PET, clinicians may be able to make a more sound determination of both cognitive impairment and atrophy. Furthermore, combining PET/MR and new emerging neurological biomarkers has great potential to strengthen the assessment of the condition," said Pichler.

First fruits of the growing season

One thing to be missed when I leave my current campus is the small pond outside my building. Easily I can walk there, manuscript in hand, and begin making notes and corrections while enjoying the outdoors and even seeing a little wildlife. Across the pond, where no sidewalk goes, three cherry trees are just now starting to bear fruit. Today, I gladly walked over and ate a few handfuls, juice running down my chin, before delving into my current manuscript. Our pre-historic ancestors must have had quite the life (as long as you don't factor in the lack of modern medicine, and nutritional safeguards), resting by day and simply foraging for food when they felt like it. I say this because I am, quite unabashedly, lazy. If there weren't any exterior motivations, I would probably sit around all day doing nothing. But picking my own food, straight from the source, that I will always relish.

Yesterday, was our annual strawberry picking trip. In now have, straight from the printer, recipes for preserving whole strawberries and jam that will have to be put into action soon. We still have frozen strawberries from last year, and, in an attempt to finish them up, I also whipped up a batch of buttermilk biscuits yesterday and bought some ice cream at the store. I feel good about this farm we go to. They are local and we can pick it ourselves. They are not organic, but they do engage in integrated pest management. Pesticides are a last resort. "She can eat them," said the worker, pointing to our little one as we were assigned a row to pick. "We don't use any pesticides this late in the season." Turns out she didn't need the invitation. She turned to look at me with strawberry juice on her chin, and on her face, a big grin.

New gay think tank to counter bad science

According to this article, the Rockway Institute will "counter the influence of religious conservatives by beating them at their own game." I hope so. There are several anti-gay, pseudo-scientific think tanks out there churning out unreliable data, such as the Family Research Council (associated with Dobson's Focus on the Family) and the Family Research Institute (listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group in 2006). Executive Director Robert Jay Green has this to say:

"Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council are basically media machines churning out press releases, policy reports, appearing on talks shows constantly conveying their messages and distorting the actual research findings," Green told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.

"There is not a single iota of scientific evidence showing that children raised by lesbian and gay parents do less well than children raised by a heterosexual mother and father," he said.

Of course the Focus on the Family disagrees:

"We've looked at what homosexual activists have put forward and found it lacking. It doesn't meet basic social science standards," Carrie Gordon Earll said. "It speaks to the desperation among homosexual activists to give credibility to their political goals."

"Children do best in homes with married mothers and fathers. That's where the research is," she said.

It helps their case though if the opposing research is suppressed by conservatives. A recent report commissioned by the Canadian government has shown that there is no harm done to children raised by gay parents. Of course, it was hard to find this evidence as Harper's government only released the report after the author filed under the Access to Information Act. If only we could hold conservative groups to the same level of honesty. They are a private groups, so they can howl with as much mendacity as they like. But they shouldn't be surprised when those armed with the evidence bark back.

Blogs on this topic:
Terminator Online
Same Sex Marriage News
Pandagon

Cecil Adams on the autism-thimerosal missing link

In light of the upcoming 11 June trial, the one in which parents are seeking compensation for their children who developed autism after being an infant (sorry, after being vaccinated), Cecil has answered some questions about thimerosal in vaccines. So what does the evidence say about a link between autism and thimerosal in vaccinations?

A 2000 vaccine safety study initially showed an association, but after errors in the analysis were corrected the link vanished. In 2002 a Danish study of more than 500,000 children over age seven found no link between measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccinations and autism. A 2003 follow-up study focusing on thimerosal-containing vaccines again showed no link, and also showed autism rates increasing despite removal of thimerosal from vaccines. A British study of 5,763 children in 2004 showed only a statistically insignificant link between MMR vaccine and autism; a study of 27,749 children in Montreal found no MMR link to autism or related problems. The World Health Organization reviewed four major studies and found no link between thimerosal from immunizations and neurological disorders in children.

(Small quibble, if the link is statistically insignificant, then their is no link from the researchers point of view). I wouldn't be surprised if the families walk away with some form of compensation from this trial. A talented lawyer and a scientifically uninformed judge could synergize in the plaintiff's favor. I just (foolishly) hope that people understand the difference between objective science and the linguistic gymnastics that will almost certainly be used in this case.

Blogs on this topic:
Denialism Blog
Autism Diva

Corticopia: Habenula, the other reward system in the brain

A recent news item in Nature Neuroscience discusses lateral habenula activation as an inhibitor of dopaminergic neurons. It is based on a recent paper in Nature. In short, habenula neurons became activated in response to non-reward cues while dopaminergic neurons in the midbrain were inhibited. This relationship reversed if the reward value of the target was reversed. Also, habenula activation during non-reward preceded dopaminergic inhibition, and direct electrical stimulation of the habenula led to dopaminergic inhibition. All of this suggest that non-reward cues are signaled to the midbrain via the habenula, either directly or indirectly. This pathway was already known by those who research goal-directed behavior to be involved in reinforcement, but this helps answer how the habenula interacts with the meso-limbic dopamine pathway. The take home message, from Nature Neuroscience:

The study by Matsumoto and Hikosaka provides new information about the role of the midbrain in motivational control of movements and cognitive functions while raising a number of important questions. It is exciting in that it sheds light on the lateral habenula, an old, poorly explored brain structure belonging to the limbic system–midbrain circuit, incorporating it as a new member of the 'basal ganglia family'.

Comparison of fundamentalism in the Arab World and in the West

Ghassan Rubeiz compares fundamentalism in the Arab world and America, and gives his solution for controlling it. Christian fundamentalism is pervasive across large swaths of this continent, and I don't think their intentions for the rest of us are entirely benevolent. Here is his view on the growth of American Christian fundamentalism.

In this hyper-achieving society, too many conservative churches in the US are exploiting the congregations' growing needs for programs that will provide quick-and-easy comfort to the troubled mind and the anxious soul. ... In America, fundamental churches tend to stimulate fear and guilt in society and then claim to supply stress-relieving products.

There is a thirst for something in this nation. But unlike bygone days when providing a free meal, clothing, or shelter for the night would have been enough to lure some through church doors, most Americans have met their physiological needs. So, as Maslow purported, we have turned to fulfilling our psychological needs for companionship and purpose in life. Modern American fundamentalism has taken advantage of this niche, and where it doesn't exist it is created. Compare that to Islam in the Arab world.

Arabs want change in response to the worsening of many socio-economic indicators, such as the decline of living standards, demographic density, urbanization, rising unemployment, and dislocation from rural living. In addition, Arabs mostly face oppressive rule, political humiliation (in successive wars), and Western colonial intervention. The growing agony of the people cannot be ignored forever. ... Muslim fanatic groups are popular because they are expressing the people's frustrations.

By this description, I'm not too sure that the seeds of fundamentalism are that differentbetween our regions. The rise of American fundamentalism came about in the late 1970's and early 1980's, when the nation was suffering from unemployment, inflation, plus our own political humiliations (Watergate, the withdrawal from Vietnam, Iranian hostage crisis). These groups sought to make America strong again, found a common external enemy in the Soviet Union, and voiced the citizens concerns about growing permissiveness in society. Different band, same tune.

The thrust of the author's piece is that to avoid religious fundamentalism, mainstream religion needs to remain relevant. We can help this along by making sure that mainstream religious groups are active (West) and free from government influence (Arab world). If not, then extreme forms of religion thrive. Is this really the case? Will a more palliative form of religion keep some people from going off the deep end? Unfortunately, I believe the answer is yes. While I would rather people eschew organized religion altogether, I hold no illusions that this is going to happen.

Encephalon #24 ...

... is up at the Phineas Gage Fan Club. My favorite? Neurocritic has a post about patients with deep probe simulators in their nucleus accumbens. The interesting part? They turned around the function of the probes, using them to record electrical activity.

Corticopia: Nicotinic receptors as a pathway to interrupt cannabis abuse; and haloperidol treatment for methamphetamine overdose questioned

Both articles are from the Journal of Neuroscience, 23 May and 30 May 2007, respectively.

Goldberg's lab has investigated whether nicotinic receptors in the brain may mediate some of the rewarding effects of cannabis use. Turns out an antagonist for the alpha-7 nicotinic acetycholinergic receptor seems to block the effects of THC as measured by drug discrimination, self-administration rate, and dopamine levels in the nucleus accumbens of rats. An antagonist for the other type of nicotinic receptor in the brain, non-alpha-7, did not do the same. This specifies the alpha-7 receptor subtype as a possible target for anti-abuse pharmaceuticals.

Yamamoto is investigating something I had not heard about. Methamphetamine psychosis is often treated with the D2 dopamine receptor antagonist haloperidol. Well, his lab has shown that doing so may lead to neurotoxicity within the substantia nigra. Methamphetamine can, by itself, lead to neurotoxicity (through several biochemical pathways, as well as potentially by hyperthermia, and swelling) and treatment with haloperidol synergisticly increase glutamate levels in the substantia nigra reticulata.

POTC3: Can someone please explain this movie to me?

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.

Ummm...

Ummm...

Oh man. They were being serious.

I kept quiet until Johnny Depp's over-sized, peanut-dowsing proboscis showed up, at which point I turned to my wife and asked, "Is there any part of this movie that makes sense to you?" The next two and a half hours were dreadful. I did not understand any of it. And I am including the credits in that statement. From the Malkovichian moments of Captain Jack Sparrow to Tia Dalma's impersonation of Apache Chief there is only one word to describe this movie.

Catastrophucke.

A significant portion of the audience left before the film was finished (I would say 10-20%). I have only had one movie that I ever stopped watching at home because it was so bad, and only one movie I ever considered leaving the theater over because it was so bad. I like to give films the benefit of the doubt, just in case there is anything redeeming toward the end. But this one, I was so close to leaving. This was, quite seriously, one of the worst films I have ever seen. And they left it open for another sequel.

Blech.

Another Guillermo Gonzalez opinion

From David Kuo at BeliefNet.com.

Creationists are up in arms over the denial of tenure for Dr. Gonzalez at Iowa State University. Most of the hrump-hrump seems to be coming from those who have not spent the majority of their professional careers in an academic setting. Mr. Kuo asks a very important question, which I will answer post-haste.

Should a professor - who doesn't even teach a class on intelligent design - be denied tenure simply because he happens to believe in it?

No. He is free to teach or believe in creationism all he wants. But should a science professor be denied tenure simply because he happens to believe his research is right even though it violates some of the basic premises of his chosen field and has completely failed to convince his colleagues that they should go along with him? Yes.

Mr. Kuo lauds Dr. Gonzalez for his number of citations, but tenure is determined by several factors. One is basic knowledge of your field. There is basic evidence within each scientific field that everyone must understand, and they should adhere to this evidence unless they have extraordinary evidence to the contrary. I work in the biological sciences, and have a particular interest in neural circuitry. We know quite a bit about which neurons connect where and how they get to be that way, enough to say we have a basic understanding of how the brain works. So if a professor during tenure review were to tell me that a little magic man ran around in our brains making sure all the neurons are connected "just so" he should be prepared to do one of two things: show me some damn good evidence that he is right or start looking for another position elsewhere. This was Dr. Gonazalez's choice. He was unsuccessful at option A, so the committee invited him to explore option B.

Of course, you can always appeal to conspiracy:

... They [a major New York publishing house] are considering a manuscript from a very well respected scientist about intelligent design. They have passed it around to scientists that they have worked with in the past and it has been given positive reviews - the science is strong. Now it is very important here to stress that this book is not a book about creation science.

It is very important for me to stress here that if you are talking about intelligent design you are talking about creationism. Designer = creator. This isn't an issue of semantics, it's an issue of honesty. But please continue.

It does argue, however, that there was a designer to this world and to all life - even if that life does have a common ancestor.The biggest problem my friend has run into, however, is getting any of the scientists to publicly say anything good about the book. The reason? They would probably be fired from their jobs simply for saying anything positive about the book - no matter how good.

If the science is that strong, then no they would not be fired. Even if it weren't strong, they would probably just get giggled at by their colleagues. Just look at Francis Collins. But of course, how would one ever prove that such a conspiracy doesn't exist? Besides, you don't need to publish creationism books with some fancy publishing house. You can always publish with Regnery Publishing.

Blogs post on this:
Evolving in Kansas
Red State Rabble
Uncommon Descent
Bad Astronomy
The Questionable Authority