Ingmar Bergman dies at 89

In light of Ingmar Bergman's passing yesterday at the age of 89, and considering that this year is the 50th anniversary of the release of "The Seventh Seal", I post the following.

Cannabis and psychosis

I meant to write a post about the recent study of cannabis and psychosis, which you can read about here and here, but it seems that I was a bit slow on the uptake. Omni Brain and Neurophilosphy already posted their comments.

WILT: The olfaction of spearmint and caraway

As I am now immersed in summer reading in preparation for graduate school, I have come across a tidbit that I found most interesting. So, I will be sharing this with you in an installment called, "What I Learned Today".


Even without culinary experience, anyone should easily be able to distinguish spearmint from caraway (mmm, Beef on Weck) by olfaction alone. You can even tell just by looking at the chemical structure of the two olfactants how different they smell.

Maybe not. They are two forms of the chemical carvone. Spearmint is on the left, caraway on the right. They are stereoisomers, or mirror images of the same compound. Yet that one change makes the difference between the toothpaste in your medicine cabinet and the loaf of rye in your bread box.

Henry Rollins on the Iraq War

I have not liked Henry Rollins music, at least the stuff that I have heard. Nor did I particularly enjoy his stand-up act when I saw it on TV. But, I like what he has to say about the war in Iraq in this Mother Jones interview:

Mother Jones: The first thing I wanted to ask you about was your USO tours. Can you tell me about how and why you got involved doing those tours?

Henry Rollins: I do it because that's my way of protesting the war, and it's my custodial duty to go behind this president that started this needless war that's hemoraging everything from needless lives to money and everything else. And the fact that the soldiers don't dictate policy; they just go and do what they are told, leads me to believe I don't really have a beef with the troops, I have a beef with the people who sent them into where they are deployed. So I go and I meet these people without any hesitation and I quite like them.

Some Bush supporters seem to have a problem with this logic. There are those of us who do not support the war because it began under false pretenses and continues without an effective strategy. Our troops have done everything that was asked of them. The problem is the people in charge are asking them to do the wrong things. In response to your mantra, naive neo-cons, we don't hate the troops; we hate you.

MJ: Have these experiences changed the way you think about the war at all, having met so many people one on one, face to face?

HR: No. [The war] was a bad idea. It never was a good idea. It's an illegal war. We're not there for the purposes that George W. Bush says. He has a perfect situation there because if you leave it now, you leave these people who did not ask for your incursion; you leave these people in worse shape than when you got there. And so no, I don't think anything different about it, I just feel it more acutely, and at this point it's now more of a personal thing.

Yes, unsurprisingly, Henry Rollins is pissed off and has been since the start of this fiasco. My question is, why did it take other people so long to reach the same conclusion?

Corticopia: Sex disparity in alcohol-withdrwal induced neural damage

In science, you sometimes start by looking for one thing and find something entirely different. Kris Wiren's lab was looking for differences in gene expression and neural damage in severe vs. attenuated alcohol withdrawal mice following a bolus of alcohol. What they found instead was that sex, not withdrawal severity, had a stronger effect on both outcomes. Specifically, female mice showed more neural damage and fewer expression of pathways responsible for cell repair than males. This was, to some extent, already suspected by those involved in alcohol research, but even Wiren was surprised by the findings (from the press release):

"We designed the experiment to be able to identify gene expression differences between lines of mice that are genetically selected for severe alcohol withdrawal compared with mice that are resistant to alcohol withdrawal," Wiren said. "I thought there would be a difference between the genders, but I didn't think it would be the most important thing."

She added, "The withdrawal severity phenotypes do show some differences, but they're subtle."

In short, the authors looked at gene expression in the prefrontal cortex, the area presumed to be responsible for inhibitory control (control which addicted individuals are believed to lack) and then looked at neural damage in the same area in two different mice: lines that have been bred to express severe withdrawal and attenuated withdrawal. In addition, the researchers looked at males and females in both lines.

"At this one time point, which is the peak for cell death, we clearly see females are showing enhanced brain damage compared to the males. So, if you're female, the cells are dying; if you're a male, the cells are not," Wiren said."We don't know the behavioral consequences of that, though."

What's more, Wiren and Hashimoto discovered, male brains respond to alcohol withdrawal much differently, in a potentially reparative manner.

"What we found in males is that almost 50 percent of the (alcohol-regulated) genes are involved in the pathway for cleaning things up," Wiren said. The genes respond with "removal of damaged proteins. The females have all this apoptosis (cell death) going on, and the males instead may have repair going on."

Circumcision and the International Aids Society conference

The International Aids Society is holding their annual conference in Sydney, Australia, with today being the last day. If you have read about it in the news, all you have probably seen is how researchers are all atwitter that circumcision reduces HIV transmission by (at best) 60% (never mind that condoms are at least 80% effective).

What you are not likely to hear about are presentations like this one which seem to show that circumcision does nothing to prevent HIV transmission in homosexual males. This has been one of the many "elephants in the room"of this research.

Certainly 50-60% is a significant decrease, and I wouldn't object to any adult voluntarily undergoing circumcision if they think it would benefit them. But of course we can all see where this is going if unchecked; researchers are going to push routine infant circumcision. Those same researchers see no problem with this (from previous link).

When performed under antiseptic conditions by a trained practitioner, says [Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Illinois at Chicago Robert] Bailey, it is a simple, low-risk procedure.

Unfortunately when those risks become reality, it can be physically, psychologically, and financially traumatic. This should make everyone question if the perceived, minimal benefit of neonatal circumcision is significantly great enough to recommend against leaving a child intact.

Clinical observation important to early autism diagnosis

Clinicians at Baltimore's Kennedy Krieger Institute are developing a means by which to diagnose younger children with autism. It doesn't involve blood samples, genetic testing, or brain scans. It involves behavioral observation and can be done as early as 14 months.

Landa told her fellow researchers to make their best guesses at whether the 14-month-olds they observed were autistic or not, something they were reluctant to do. Half of those who were eventually diagnosed with autism could not be diagnosed that early because they appeared to be functioning like typical children. Only later did their development slow or regress.

In a conference room at Kennedy Krieger's Greenspring Avenue campus on a recent morning, Landa narrated a series of video clips taken of the children she studied. One showed a typically developing 14-month-old giggling away as he played with a toy and a therapist across the table. The boy was interested in the toy, to be sure, but seemed more enthralled with the woman, trying to get her to laugh with him.

Another showed Joshua at 14 months. A researcher tried to get him to play peek-a-boo with a blanket, but the boy was having none of it. He actually tried to get as far away as he could from the blanket and the person behind it.

Landa and her team can now spot many cases of autism from 14 months. The key now, she said, is to devise some guidelines for what parents and pediatricians should look for at that age to get the treatment started, trying to retrain the brain while it is at its most malleable.

The psychologist in me is partial to behavioral intervention over medicinal intervention (at least as a first action). Here we see that highly trained individuals can diagnose autism early, providing time for early intervention. That is just as important to treating a disorder as any pharmacological treatment

German state Culture Minister gives creationism a putsch

The German political bureaucracy is set up in a way quite similar to that of the USA. There is a federal and state level, as well as sub-state and municipal governments. In Germany, the lower levels are given less freedom of action than in the US, but there are still some things over which they have direct control without interference from the federal government, such as education (1). And Karin Wolff (2), culture minister for the Hessian State, is now suggesting that theological questions about the origin of the world should be included in science classes.

Wolff, a Protestant who rejects charges she is promoting creationist ideas, sparked the debate in Germany by telling a newspaper she wanted "modern" biology lessons and that she saw common ground between natural sciences and religion.

"I see no contradiction between biological evolution and the biblical explanation for the world's origin," she told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily. "In fact there is an amazing overlap between the Bible's explanation of the seven days of creation and scientific theory."

I'd like to think that the nation which gave birth to such great minds as Nietzsche, Lichtenberg, and Muller would be immune to this sort of thing. Of course the United States gave birth to Bierce, Vonnegut, and that other Muller, and look where we are.

Blogs on this:
Ontogeny
Fistful of Euros

(1) I am by no means an expert on the German government, but this is my understanding based on a quick read of some material. If my summary is inaccurate, then please feel free to correct me in the comments section.

(2) A translation from the German language version of Wikipedia. Sorry, I can't do better.

They used to have a word for this sort of thing ...

My intentions when I started this blog was to write about science stuff in general, but what real intrigued me was the apparent (in my view) misapplication, misinterpretation, and misrepresentation of science for social gain. Like using the findings of neuroscience for the successful theological conversion of teenagers :

Understanding adolescent brain development and adolescent development in general is the second most important thing that any youth worker can do to improve their effectiveness in ministry, said Mark Oestreicher, president of Youth Specialties, in an interview with Kara Powell, executive director Center for Youth and Family Ministry.

Oestreicher believes that, because the adolescent brain is still developing, trying to fill it with information is the wrong approach (don't let any pesky facts get in the way) because memory storage is not what is most important to the brain at that time. What is more important is that the brain's way of thinking is becoming more established:

So rather than cramming in a lot of information, Oestreicher calls youth workers to set teens on a course that would most likely become their future practices. The course includes helping kids develop the ability to think about their faith, to process what it means to have a relationship with God, to help them understand what it means to doubt and to embrace their doubts and to move through them and beyond them.

"If we can help them to start to attune their brains to those things, those will become practices, you might say, brain function that will sustain their faith development for the rest of their life," the Youth Specialties head stated.

Plus, a teen's brain is not done developing until 20 to 25 years old. The prefrontal cortex, which is the decision-making portion of the brain, is one of the last areas of the brain to fully develop. That explains why teens act the way they do, making experimental or a lot of times dumb choices without thinking through the
consequences.

When the prefrontal cortex matures, that's when teens can reason better and make better judgments.

So, their basic approach is to say to teenagers 1) there is a lot of minutia about our faith but don't worry about that right now, 2) here is a list of rituals and basic things you need to do to be a member in good standing with our faith, 3) it's okay to have doubts, ask questions, and make decisions we don't like but you need to try to stop doing that and trust us, and 4) once you are old enough and can process everything better, we will get more specific about our faith.

This sort of disregard for teens and their ability to think (both within and without of religion) drove me nuts when I was that age. Like when I asked my priest "given the similarities between the gathering of saints, in Catholicism, and the pantheon of gods, in Greek mythology, can't one be seen as just a replacement for the other?" I expected a more theologically satisfying answer than "saints are documented, Greek gods aren't." Or when a friend of mine asked a creationist who was ministering to us "how can you believe in a six day creation when all the evidence shows a much longer time period?" He probably hoped for more than "read your bible and you will understand." This approach expects little from teenagers and demands even less.

Personally, I treat young people with more respect than that.

Saturday in the lab ...

It is so rare now that I spend a Saturday in the lab that I forgot one of the main advantages of doing so. Listening to my beloved wussy music without ridicule.

I have also been looking for a reason to post this video. One of the greatest rock musicians of all time singing what is perhaps one of the most wussified pop songs of all time. And I love it!

Corticopia: More brain pathways involved in goal-directed behavior

I lamented a while ago that the neural circuitry for goal directed behavior continues to become more complex. From a recent issue of the Journal of Neuroscience come two papers that expand on this complexity.

First, Shepard's lab has shown that the lateral habenula inhibits dopamine neurons as a population. This is an area that has long been known to be connected to the midbrain, and therefore is probably involved in reward mechanisms. What was not known was the action by which this inhibition occurred. The researchers show that it likely works through the GABA-A receptor (I know, I know, what doesn't work through the GABA-A receptor; that sucker has binding sites for everything).

Next, Japanese researchers have shown that medium spiny neurons from the striatum feed back to the lateral hypothalamus. Which is important for feeding behavior. Which is goal directed.

Things were so much simpler when it was just the VTA and striatum.

Bergman classic turns fifty

Fifty years ago, Ingmar Bergman submitted a low-budget, rapidly produced film to the Cannes Film Festival. It won the Special Jury Prize and established Bergman as one of the preeminent European directors of the 20th century. To this day, one cannot escape from the iconic opening images of The Seventh Seal, those of a man challenging death to a game of chess in order to delay the inevitable.

Stephen Applebaum has written a really nice, though long, article on the 50th anniversary of this film and includes the impressions of some present day directors. What strikes me is how this film reflects Bergman's own struggles with faith.

He was raised within a strict Lutheran family, a fact which permeates throughout his work, but in adulthood, he questioned his own religious direction. Though Bergman said he still prayed when he made The Seventh Seal, the faith that he had inherited from his father was starting to chafe. His doubts are manifested in his characters, notably the Knight, Antonius Block (von Sydow), who returns to Sweden from the crusades disillusioned, and with his faith in shreds. Having presumably partaken in much slaughter, he is closer to Death - who tells him that he has been his constant companion - than to God. Now that it is his turn to die, Block challenges Death to a game of chess to buy time to perform one meaningful act, and to discover whether God exists. Death, if anyone, must know the answer, mustn't he? Block's squire, Jons (Gunner Björnstrand), is his mirror image: a cynical, bitter atheist who thinks the universe is meaningless.

This is the struggle that many have when their beliefs begin to appear untenable: hold onto a belief that I know is probably false, or accept what is likely true and discard the superstitions of my past. I think it is significant that once Death finally comes, it is Jon who utters the final (paraphrased) words "Remember, until the end, the joy of having lived." Life is its own meaning, without the need to search elsewhere for it.

Tagged again!

This time I can't blame Pieret. What bothers me most is the randomness of this tagging. I was hoping for more judicious specificity.

But I will take a play from Angry Lab Rat's playbook and not pass on this meme. Especially to him. I don't want to see Angry Lab Rat turn into Totally Pissed Off Lab Rat. So, if anyone wants to play along consider yourself tagged. Of course, given my picture to the right, no one should be surprised at the result.

Your Score: Robot

You are 85% Rational, 0% Extroverted, 28% Brutal, and 14% Arrogant.

You are the Robot! You are characterized by your rationality. In fact, this is really ALL you are characterized by. Like a cold, heartless machine, you are so logical and unemotional that you scarcely seem human. For instance, you are very humble and don't bother thinking of your own interests, you are very gentle and lack emotion, and you are also very introverted and introspective. You may have noticed that these traits are just as applicable to your laptop as they are to a human being. You are not like the robots they show in the movies. Movie robots are make-believe, because they always get all personable and likeable after being struck by lightning, or they are cold, cruel killing machines. In all reality, though, you are much more boring than all that. Real robots just sit there, doing their stupid jobs, and doing little else. If you get struck by lightning, you won't develop a winning personality and heart of gold. (Robots don't have hearts, silly, and if they did, they would probably be made of steel, not gold.) You also won't be likely to terrorize humanity by becoming an ultra-violent killing machine sent into the past to kill the mother of a child who will lead a rebellion against machines, because that movie was dumb as hell, and because real robots don't kill--they horribly maim at best, and they don't even do that on purpose. Real robots are boringly kind and all too rarely try to kill people. In all my years, my laptop has only attacked me once, and that was only because my brother threw it at me. In short, your personality defect is that you don't really HAVE a personality. You are one of those annoying, super-logical people that never gets upset or flustered. Unless, of course, you short circuit. Or if someone throws a pie at you. Pies sure are delicious.

To put it less negatively:

1. You are more RATIONAL than intuitive.

2. You are more INTROVERTED than extroverted.

3. You are more GENTLE than brutal.

4. You are more HUMBLE than arrogant.

Compatibility:

Your exact opposite is the Class Clown.

Other personalities you would probably get along with are the Hand-Raiser, the Emo Kid, and the Haughty Intellectual.

*

*

If you scored near fifty percent for a certain trait (42%-58%), you could very well go either way. For example, someone with 42% Extroversion is slightly leaning towards being an introvert, but is close enough to being an extrovert to be classified that way as well. Below is a list of the other personality types so that you can determine which other possible categories you may fill if you scored near fifty percent for certain traits.

The other personality types:

The Emo Kid: Intuitive, Introverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Starving Artist: Intuitive, Introverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Bitch-Slap: Intuitive, Introverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Brute: Intuitive, Introverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

The Hippie: Intuitive, Extroverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Televangelist: Intuitive, Extroverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Schoolyard Bully: Intuitive, Extroverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Class Clown: Intuitive, Extroverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

The Robot: Rational, Introverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Haughty Intellectual: Rational, Introverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Spiteful Loner: Rational, Introverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Sociopath: Rational, Introverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

The Hand-Raiser: Rational, Extroverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Braggart: Rational, Extroverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Capitalist Pig: Rational, Extroverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Smartass: Rational, Extroverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

Be sure to take my Sublime Philosophical Crap Test if you are interested in taking a slightly more intellectual test that has just as many insane ramblings as this one does!

About Saint_Gasoline

I am a self-proclaimed pseudo-intellectual who loves dashes. I enjoy science, philosophy, and fart jokes and water balloons, not necessarily in that order. I spend 95% of my time online, and the other 5% of my time in the bathroom, longing to get back on the computer. If, God forbid, you somehow find me amusing instead of crass and annoying, be sure to check out my blog and my webcomic at SaintGasoline.com.

Link: The Personality Defect Test written by saint gasoline on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Future prospects for Biological Sciences PhDs

When I went through grad school round two, there was an editorial in Nature Neuroscience, then a new periodical, on the overabundance of PhDs in the life sciences. To summarize, for those who don't have access to the editorial, the National Research Council reported that academic departments were producing too many PhDs in the life sciences, especially neuroscience, and this needed to stop. It made me worry a little bit, as that was 8 years ago and things must have only gotten worse.

Except that according to this article on CNN, the opposite is occuring now. The biotech and pharmacological industries can't find enough PhDs in the USA and have to go looking for them abroad (or take them from smaller biotech/pharma firms).

In 2005, the latest year data are available from the National Science Foundation, U.S. institutions turned out 6,368 Ph.D.s in biological sciences. That was only 1,000 more than a decade earlier. About 30% of U.S. biology Ph.D.s come from abroad. Some will take their skills home.

Meanwhile, the industry's talent needs are soaring.

What could have happened over the ensuing decade to change everything? Is it more simply (as was stated in the Nature Neuroscience editorial) that most recent PhDs are looking for jobs in an academic setting, overlooking job opportunities in the private sector? Whatever the case may be, I think the market I enter 5+ years from now will be very different from the one that existed when I first thought about doing this PhD thing.

Unwanted religious gifts

My daughter received a few books from her day care provider this past Friday in advance of their vacation. One bothered me a little because the main character is a certain crimson colored monster that clearly suffers from bouts of mania. I detest him because he is representative of much of the needless consumerism and commercialization which is pushed upon the children of America. However, he is almost completely unavoidable. The second book bothered me a lot because it was a religious book (from the same family that dropped that 30 ton piece saccharine, The Purpose Driven Life, upon the public). I assume our daycare provider is not an avid reader of my blog, else she would know that my proclivities toward religion range from ambivalence to complete ambivalence.

All of which raises an interesting question for me. I don't consider myself a Neville Chamberlain atheist; I will gladly engage someone who sees their right to push religion upon me as greater than my right to ignore their superstitions. But I am not the type to actively engage without provocation. In this instance, I think the gift was simply given out of ignorance of our religious persuasions. The area where I live is certainly more religious than where I grew up, and more religious than I am comfortable with; but it is not filled with the same level of zombie-like proselytizing I have seen in other areas, and I don't think spreading "the good word" was her intention. So, how should I react to such a gift? My inclination is to just ignore it, donate (or better yet recycle) the book, and move on. Our provider, I believe, honestly does not think that some of her clients are non-theists. However, if my child were older and more impressionable, I would have to quickly disabuse her of that notion.

Post in which Tantalus dusts of his economics degree

This piece (which originally ran in the New York Times) about the dominance of free market thought in the Economics departments of most American universities and colleges gave me the chance to talk a little economics 13 years after I stopped doing so.

But in recent months, economists have engaged in an impassioned debate over the way their specialty is taught in universities around the United States, and practiced in Washington. They are questioning the profession's most cherished ideas about not interfering in the economy. [snip] And free trade is not the only sacred subject, Blinder and other like-minded economists say. Most efforts to intervene in the markets - like setting a minimum wage, instituting industrial policy or regulating prices - are viewed askance by mainstream economists, as are analyses that do not rely on mathematical modeling.

This is something that has troubled my mind since leaving school. I was taught in the environment described, one which ascribes to the neoclassical theories of Milton Friedman and the Chicago school of economic thought (with a little bit from the Vienna school, but everyone knows they are a bunch of wankers). But over the last several years, these theoretical models have not comported with the reality that I see. The problem as I see it comes done to what we were taught in Economics 101: the assumptions of the free market. I don't remember them all but I will list a few that trouble me.

1. Information is abundantly available to consumers and suppliers.
2. Entry into and exit from the market is free.
3. Participants make rational decisions.
4. Exchange is voluntary.

Now, under what circumstance would these assumptions be true? Consumers almost never have all the information they need about a product. Often the product needs to be purchased before its quality can be ascertained. Large markets, auto manufacturing for example, have large barriers to entry; even smaller markets, such as the restaurant industry, require significant startup costs. Don't get me started on rational behavior. Computers are rational; humans are emotional. We regularly make decisions that are not in our best interest. And if I need a job because I have to put food on the table, then taking a minimum wage job because it is the only one available is not really voluntary.

My point is that the assumptions of a free market are often incorrect. Which is fine in the classroom, my professors even told us on day one that these assumptions were often not met. It certainly makes mathematically modeling much easier. But then those same economists tried to apply those models to the real world, forgetting what they told us in that first lesson. Realizing these assumptions are more often wrong than right, along with the behavior of the current occupant and the knowledge that I now have a kid growing up in this mess of a world, has over the past decade moved me further left on the political spectrum. Although is is possible that I have not moved and the rest of the body politic has shifted right.

How to use RSS feeds 101

When RSS first came out oh so many years ago I thought it was completely pointless. However, after seeing this demonstration by The Common Craft Show, as posted by Retrospectacle, I decided to give it a go. After doing it for about two months, I must say it is a vast improvement over my old way of looking at the web. So for any Luddites out there who aren't doing this (but I imagine there can't be too many left), might I suggest giving it a try?

Click To Play

Corticopia: Basolateral Amygdala important for changing behavior

This article appears as an advance online publication from Nature Neuroscience. You can also read the press release on the article, from which I will quote.

Researchers tested whether rats that had been exposed to cocaine for several weeks could learn to distinguish between two different odor cues - one that gave them water laced with sucrose and the other which was water laced with bitter tasting quinine.

"We then reversed the two odor cues, so the odor predictive of the sugar reward became predictive of quinine and vice versa. In earlier experiments, normal rats have been able to learn this new association," says Geoffrey Schoenbaum, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of anatomy and neurobiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and lead researcher on the study. "We found that rats exposed to cocaine were much slower than non-drug exposed rats at changing their behavior after the reversal."

Cocaine administration essentially "fixed" the decision-making ability of these rats. When reward contingencies change, cocaine exposed rats made less than optimal choices. This gives some neurological basis to the poor life choices made by chronic drug abusers, even though the error of those choices are apparent to everyone else. Behavioral inertia is a terrible thing. To show that the basolateral amygdala was the area impeding the learning of new associations, a lesion experiment was done.

"Remarkably, lesions that destroyed these neurons fixed the reversal deficit," says Schoenbaum. "The drug-exposed rats with lesions in the amygdala performed as well on reversals as rats that were never exposed to cocaine."

When it comes to drug addiction, we started with the VTA-NAcc connection. Slowly we have added the pre-frontal cortex to the mix. Now, we are talking about amygdalar contributions, and in a few years we will probably be including the hebenula and insular cortex as well. Nothing is simple in neuroscience.

Global warming skeptics lose another stone from their shaky foundation

If you listen to those who are skeptical of man-made global warming, then I am sure you have heard something along the lines of the following.

"Earth, Mars, Pluto, and Triton are all experiencing warming trends. The obvious commonality is that we are all in the same solar system. Therefore, increased solar activity is a likely cause of this warming trend."

You can listen to Republican non-presidential candidate Fred Thompson say something similar here. Never mind that Phil ripped this to shreds several months ago, you still hear it quite often.

I bring this up because a new report shows that the sun isn't heating up, it is actually cooling down. It has been for the past two decades. However the earth, which doesn't cotton to the sun telling it what to do, has steadily increased its temperature. The interpretation of this information is quite obvious. Does this stop the (man-made) global warming skeptics from continuing to cite the rising temperatures on other solar bodies? Not at all. On the very day this report was issued, Mark Simone, a bench warmer who fills in periodically for Sean Hannity on his radio program, was trying to peddle this example of sloppy science to anyone who would listen. Many people do listen and, unfortunately, many of them probably eat it up without question.

A Modest Proposal by Larry Caldwell

Larry Caldwell has produced what I believe to be a wonderful piece of satire that would have made Jonathon Swift proud. His argument starts with a clearly inane interpretation of a Center for Inquiry policy paper written by Barbara Forrest, from which he takes as the main thesis

... that, since nearly all of the leading intelligent design proponents are Christians who have expressed a preference for a Christian influenced culture, their scientific efforts cannot be trusted as bona fide science. Forrest's claim, echoing a common theme of Darwinists, is that since the vast majority of intelligent design promoters are Christians, their scientific work must necessarily be so biased by their religious beliefs as to be compromised. On this basis, Forrest essentially argues that anything Christian proponents of intelligent design say about science must be rejected as real science.

Wonderful! He quite stealthily takes a policy paper, which of course no one will read, which spends more than one-third of its text on the infamous creationist wedge document, which spends another fourth of its text on court cases and their aftermath, and comes to the simplified conclusion that the text promotes ignoring the science of Christians. Hyperbole at its finest! But Mr. Caldwell does not stop there. He decides to invoke regression ad absurdum,

... we would then have to conclude that the scientific work of over 95% of evolutionary biologists is infected with a non-theistic religious bias. According to Forrest's prescribed response to this bias, we would have to reject all of the scientific work of over 95% of evolutionary biologists based on the non-theistic religious bias that infects their work. Apparently, Forrest would urge rejection of the work of the remaining 5% of evolutionary biologists on the basis of the theistic religious bias that supposedly infects their work.

Of course! Do you not see the equation he is making here? Non-theism is just as important to the majority of scientists as theism is to the evangelical scientist. Completely non-sensical! Why, who has ever heard of crowds of non-theists, gathering once per week (or more) for several hours to praise their belief in nothing; non-theists who have picked one book about non-belief, and then chosen a small percentage of that book to pore over, memorize, and recite back to believers in an attempt bring them out of the fold; non-theists who will gladly state that their non-belief is the defining characteristic of their humanity with all the grinning certitude of a lobotomy patient? No one! Brilliant! But he continues with his proposal of how to solve this bias:

We would begin by assuming that all scientists hold some religious belief that will have an impact on their scientific work. Standard procedure should be to disclose that religious belief at the outset of any discussion of the scientist's work, so that the bias that presumably flows from that scientist's religious beliefs can be taken into consideration in evaluating the scientist's work.

Ye gads! Will he not stop with his subtle preposterousness! Expose the bias that scientists have before discussing their work. Not just funding conflicts, as is already done, but religious bias too. And why not political bias? Sexual orientation? Ethnicity? Eye color? Height? All things that might bias how we look at the world. Why should the fact that I am a 1.8 meter, blue-eyed, white, heterosexual, left-of-center non-theist bias how I record neurons during drug administration? It doesn't! Of course it is patently ridiculous; and that is why it is great satire! Good show! But there is one more zinger:

The scientific work of scientists who are proponents of intelligent design and of scientists who are opponents of intelligent design should be judged by the same ultimate standard — how do their scientific theories or hypotheses about life's origins comport with the actual scientific data?

Gadzooks! Who would object to having their research looked at objectively? The creationists of course! The reason they are rejected is precisely because their work has been looked at objectively. Well played! Well done! Well well! The fact that Mr. Caldwell has written such a fine piece of satire, and has also created the additional irony of having it published on a creationist website as if it were serious ... oh it is too much to bear!

Ditching the brain disease model of addiction

If you've read through my blog, you probably gathered that I run a little left-of center on the gamut of American politics. Therefore, I was rather surprised that when I read this article by Sally Satel, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, I found myself nodding along in a few places. She discusses the recent HBO series 'Addiction' and castigates the scientific community for its tendency to present substance abuse as a disease of the brain.

The brain disease concept sends a perilous public health message. First, it suggests that an addict’s condition is amenable to a medical cure (much as pneumonia is cleared with antibiotics). Second, it misappropriates language more properly used to describe conditions such as multiple sclerosis or schizophrenia—afflictions that are neither brought on by the sufferer himself nor modifiable by his desire to be well. Third, it carries a fatalistic theme, implying that users can never free themselves of their drug or alcohol problems.

The emphasis, Ms. Satel believes, should be placed on personal agency, the ability of the individual to control their cravings. She cites the success of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Unfortunately, the HBO series barely mentioned Alcoholics Anonymous itself, the most widely used and successful method for staying sober. “Well-done studies repeatedly find that AA is more effective in moving people to abstinence than any other form of outpatient treatment for alcoholism,” says Keith Humphreys, professor of psychiatry at Stanford University and an expert in the field. “On additional measures, like reduced days missed at work, improvement in depression, and better family life, AA is comparable to other treatment. And, what’s more, the price is right: it’s free.”

I find it odd that to support her main thesis, that addiction is something over which the patient can exert power, she touts the success of a group whose members first admit that alcohol use is something over which they have no control. Though I have a contention with two of their founding principles (submission to a higher power and absolute avoidance of alcohol consumption), I do believe that AA's insistence on character change (i.e. changing the environment/people who enable alcohol use) to be vital. Which brings me to one thing that Ms. Satel does not mention. Based on her previous work I would not expect her to mention this, but it is my belief that social conditions may be a driving force behind continued drug use.

Take an upper-middle class executive who has a home, family, and the means to enjoy some of life's luxuries and compare him to a lower class laborer who rents, is estranged from his children and has little money and less opportunity for recreation. Now, if both are addicted to cocaine, which one has the stronger incentive to bring their addiction under control? If you ascribe to the dopamine theory of reward, then you should also contend that replacing drugs with something else that activates dopamine release (a chat with a loved one, taking the kids to an amusement park, strolling through an art gallery) would be essential. Economic opportunity, a sense of community, recreational activities and generally something more to live for than a temporary high would do more to abate drug use in this country than many of the other methods used today. Which I think goes along with Ms. Satel's opinion that addiction needs a behavioral rather than medical solution.

Medical ethics in the neonatal ward

Recently, the BBC reported that a neonatologist was facing inquiry after hastening the deaths of two terminal neonates:

Asked on Monday how the parents of baby Y appeared, Dr Munro replied: "They were utterly distraught. If you put yourself in their shoes, they have already said their last goodbyes to their baby, then suddenly there are these massive, racking agonal gasps [struggle to breath] which appeared to build up - they were utterly, utterly distraught. The parents were in tears saying things like 'I can't take any more'. I took the decision then to administer Pancuronium."

That doctor has been cleared by the General Medical Council and he had this to say about the outcome:

I hope that today's decision will promote further consideration of the treatment of neonates and end of life decision making and that this, in turn, will lead to clearer professional guidance for doctors, better patient care and greater support for parents.

Okay, I'll state my position. I believe that a person's right to control their body, including when they die, is one of our most fundamental rights by virtue of being human. For this reason I am against the death penalty, in favor of doctor-assisted suicide, and in favor of the choice to terminate pregnancy if desired. In the case of neonates, that power rests with the parents. Should a patient be terminal or without reasonable chance of recovery, then hastening death should be a viable option. I would certainly allow doctors to administer more than a muscle relaxant that may stop spasms but has no palliative effects.

Feel free to discuss.

Corticopia: Brain pathway underlying depression

This is one of those papers which I find more interesting for its technical aspects than the actual findings. Researchers at Stanford imaged a whole brain circuit, showing altered activity in brain slices of rats suffering from depression-like symptoms, alterations which could be reversed with anti-depressant drugs. The article is in Science (for those of you with access) and a layperson version is in Scientific American. There is also a write-up on Science Daily, but it is poorly written except that they describe quite well the imaging technique used:

Raag Airan, an MD/PhD student in Deisseroth's lab and co-first author of the study, led the development of a technique called voltage-sensitive dye imaging for this model. This technique allows intact brain circuits to be viewed in real time, enabling the researchers to watch living neurons in action, across entire brain networks.

The system uses a fluorescent dye, sensitive to brain circuit activity, which the researchers introduce into the animal brain tissue. As dyed circuits light up and darken again in response to electrical activity, very fast high-resolution cameras capture the action. The researchers can observe how different stimuli received by the animal, such as a dose of an antidepressant drug, affect circuit operation.

This is an inventive solution, but I think they are a bit overoptimistic about the applications of their research.

Deisseroth predicted that, as noninvasive imaging of human brains gets better in the next few years, researchers will be able to measure these same quantitative measures in people as well. "That will be a wonderful thing when that happens," he said.

Non-invasive methods have been getting better, but I find the contention that we will achieve similar resolution within the next few years dubious. Not to mention that some question whether these non-invasive techniques (fMRI, PET) fully correlate with electrical activity in the brain.

Some food items in the news

First, there is some evidence that organic food may be higher in flavonoid levels than conventional food, and thus may be better for your heart.

A ten-year study comparing organic tomatoes with standard produce found almost double the level of flavonoids - a type of antioxidant. Flavonoids have been shown to reduce high blood pressure, lowering the risk of heart disease and stroke.

Flavonoids are the same things that, in red wine, were found to be heart healthful about 20 years ago. The difference is significant, though I wouldn't stop exercising and rush to replace your daily aspirin with freshly picked beefsteak. But for people on the edge of developing heart disease (i.e. undetected heart disease) eating such food may keep cardiovascualr problems at bay.

Speaking of subtle effects diet can have on our health, here is an article discussing the physiological pros and cons of coffee, and specifically caffeine, consumption.

The [caffeine] habit has become less guilt-inducing recently, with growing evidence that both coffee and tea can fight cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Parkinson's disease and more. Because most people equate these beverages with the caffeine in them, it's tempting to conclude that the stimulant is what gives these wonder drinks their powers.

That may not be the case. Caffeine's effects on health appear to be considerably more nuanced.On the plus side, the drug does appear to help protect the brain from degenerative disease and, for many, keep the brain's gears churning, which is what drives most people to drink it in the first place. But habitual and large doses of caffeine can also stress the heart and interfere with insulin's ability to process sugar. And many of the benefits ascribed to caffeine may be due, in fact, to other chemicals that outweigh caffeine's negative effects.

Mmm, french pressed Sumatran french roast. I'm sorry, my mind wandered. By the way, if you are looking for a company that sells good coffee with a conscience, you can try this guy.

Less local farm to support

This weekend was the last weekend to pick cherries. Obligations kept us away for the previous two weekends, so away we went. First we grabbed some blueberries; our toddler picked fruit along with us, but only one ever made it into our bag. We managed to start before the sun broke along with about one-hundred other people. The picking was quite good, though one couple decided to complain, quite loudly, to the fifteen year old field attendant about the quality of the fruit. I later went up to assure her that the couple was either inept at berry selection or felt they were entitled to an impossible standard. "No matter what happens in life, you will always find idiots who will complain about something. It's best not to dwell on it, people like that are never satisfied." She was appreciative.

Then it was off to pick cherries. This fruit was not so good, but that was our own fault for going so late in the season. Patrons swarmed around the trees, but most of the stone fruits were out of reach. Once we scrounged up a ladder, I was able to pick about two and a half kilos. We paid for our fruit and began the drive home. But on the way out we saw something quite disturbing. In the field where we first gathered strawberries from this farm eight years ago were foundations for several homes. That's right; our local, family farm had sold off part of their land to feed the insatiable appetite our populace has for McMansions.

We support our local agriculture as much as possible. We didn't even need this fruit; we still have plenty in the freezer from last year. What more can we do? How can we convince others to support local farms? And who will we trust to grow our food, the very things that sustain us, when those family farms are paved over to make room for golf courses, shopping malls, and row homes?

Please do what you can to support those who feed us.

An octet of random facts

Pieret is an evil, evil man for leaving this comment in my blog. But he did it, and so did Wilkins. So, here we go with the meme experiment.

1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5. Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog.

I'm glad they are random facts and not interesting facts. I would have a hard time coming up with eight of those. I have seen this thing moving around the blogosphere and it has finally reached its way down to me on this D-list blog. On with facts.

1. I once won a telephone and $100 from Cap'n Crunch through a second-chance sweepstakes (a lottery for unclaimed prizes). A nice thing to get at 12 years old.

2. I came very close to death when I had appendicitis at 13. My appendix had ruptured and the surgeon said that had I not gone in for surgery within 24 hours they would not have been able to do anything for me. Also important because this was the first time I had what I guess you might call an agnostic experience. Maybe I will post about that someday.

3. Current number of lives saved by me: three. Twice as a lifeguard (once on-duty and once off-duty). The third time was for my neighbor who choked on a lollipop and fell unconscious. Now they all either need to repay their debt or serve me for a thousand years in the underworld, bwa-ha-ha!

4. At sixteen I was obese. Clinically speaking, I mean, I met the definition. So I decided to go on a diet and exercise regimen and went from 105 kilos down to about 80. For the most part, I have kept it off.

5. As a result of losing weight, I started to enjoy running. So, in my senior year of high school track and field I switched from a thrower (shot put, discus) to a runner (1600 m). For those of you who have gone through high school track you know that it is hard to get throwers to run for any reason, except maybe to catch an ice cream truck. I was shunned for the rest of my high school days.

6. I have a compulsion to do things with both sides of my body. If I scratch my head on one side, I need to scratch my head on the other side with the other hand. If I kick a stone with one foot, I need to kick another stone with the other foot. It just feels balanced that way.

7. I make a big deal of going to graduate school this fall, but I already was in a PhD program that I entered directly from university. But, I got my master's and left. I don't regret leaving, though I do wish I had my PhD already.

8. I have the best wife and kid in the world!

Now whom to choose for spreading this virus. Um, meme. I hope they haven't gotten it already.

Angry Lab Rat
Attention Detour
Double the Myth
Funny Man
The Holodeck is Malfunctioning Again!
Neurotic Neuron
Random Intelligence
Red State Rabble

Edit: I originally had Urban Pedestrian on this list, but there was no way to comment on his blog. Man, did he dodge a bullet.

Blogroll Enrollment Closed

I was only expecting a handful of responses from my call for blogs, but got a few more than that. As you can see on the right, I have added several blogs and reworked the blogroll into different categories. If you don't see your blog listed then it is probably for one of two reasons. Primarily, if the blog did not overlap with some of the things I like to post about it was probably passed over. Secondarily, if postings were infrequent (less than one a month) then I may not have added it for that reason. This isn't a reflection of the quality of the blogs, simply a testament to the limited amount of time I have each day to go through and look at everything I would like to.

From the added blogs, here are some posts I found to be interesting.

Neurotic Neuron does a more in-depth review of the MIT Fragile X research I posted about the other day.

Angry Lab Rat discusses the disadvantages of several alternative fuel sources, something which I have not gotten around to yet.

Circumcision and HIV post thoughts about the lawfulness of Medicaid payment for infant circumcision.

I Do What I Can talks about the split personality that is George W. Bush.

Cynic Dot Comic has created an amusing "Reverend Phelps Award"

Urban Pedestrian talks about the tacky, tourist trap that is Niagara Falls.

What's Inside My Head? speculates on what may be in store for Harry Potter at the end.

Time for me to meet my compatriots

So, as I have stated, I will be starting a neuroscience Ph.D. program in the fall. I'm already a bit self conscious about being older than all of the incoming students, most of the existing students, and probably one or two of the faculty as well. Then I go and read about this guy.

Andrew Hsu earned three degrees at the University of Washington by age 16 and became the second-youngest individual to graduate from the school. He published a book on Chinese-American scientists and started the non-profit World Children’s Organization. What’s next for this 16-year-old whiz kid? Stanford, as it turns out — Hsu is coming to The Farm to complete a Ph.D. in neuroscience.

He is literally half my age and we are, right now, at the same point in our academic careers. Sigh. I do like his justification of graduate school over medical school.

I thought specifically about whether to go into graduate school instead of medical school. Medical school is really intense knowledge gathering for four years, but it’s still learning what is already in textbooks, not creating new things. I want to go to graduate school to learn unknown things.

People have often asked me why I don't want to go to medical school and I always had a similar rationale. Med school is a lot of work, but nearly all of it is simply memorizing the information. It is challenging, but not the sort of challenging I'm looking for.

Corticopia: The ancient vertebrate brain

Science Daily reports on a finding that both vertebrates and invertebrates share some of the same neural centers in the brain (reported in Cell*), specifically those related to hormonal control.

Researchers from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory [EMBL] now reveal that the hypothalamus and its hormones are not purely vertebrate inventions, but have their evolutionary roots in marine, worm-like ancestors. In this week's issue of the journal Cell they report that hormone-secreting brain centres are much older than expected and likely evolved from multifunctional cells of the last common ancestor of vertebrates, flies and worms.

What I like about this study is that they showed similarities between the zebrafish and annelid in three ways. Anatomically, these neural centers develop in the same area of the body. Morphologically, the neural cells share similar characteristics. Genetically, there is also conservation of the mRNA between species.

Much is made over the fact that vasotocin (in zebrafish) and RF-amides (in the annelid) are related to sensation. Rather than developing as an organ for processing, the brain probably began as a simply sensory organ (which, frankly, should not be a surprise to anyone). The mention of RF-amides makes me all nostalgic for my first lab, in which I worked with another annelid, the medicinal leech. My primary project, over two summers, was to apply a variety of RF-amides to the pharyngeal muscle. Little did I know that, unwittingly, I was actively participating in neuroscience research.

*For some reason, Science Daily gave the wrong title for this paper. Glad we have PubMed.

Dispelling autism myths ain't so easy

Arthur Allen has a good essay over at Slate about dispelling the myth that autism is linked to vaccine administration. The reason people cling to such myths, he says, is because there are rational, though not scientifically accurate, reasons for doing so:

Blaming vaccines can promise benefits. Victory in a lawsuit is an obvious one, especially for middle-class parents struggling to care for and educate their unruly and unresponsive kids. Another apparent benefit is the notion, espoused by a network of alternative-medical practitioners and supplement pushers, that if vaccines are the cause, the damage can be repaired, the child made whole. ...[snip]... Another explanation for the refusal to face facts is what cognitive scientists call confirmation bias. Years ago, when writing an article for the Washington Post Magazine about the Tailwind affair, a screwy piece of journalism about a nonexistent attack on American POWs with sarin gas, I concluded that the story's CNN producers had become wedded to the thesis after interviewing a few unreliable sources. After that, they unconsciously discounted any facts that interfered with their juicy story. They weren't lying—except, perhaps, to themselves. They had brain blindness—confirmation bias.

The real danger I see is that when progress comes, it may be overlooked. MIT researchers have found a possible mechanism by which the symptoms of autism may be reversed. Not prevented, reversed. But, instead of recognizing the potential of such work many will continue to insist on receiving chelation therapy. This holds true for other disorders as well. How many people who insist that aluminium is responsible for Alzheimer's will sit down and read the new report that prions may protect against amyloid plaque formation, which is believed to be most responsible for disease progression? Probably not too many. But the problem isn't that such people are ignorant, or illogical, but that they are human. We (even scientists) simply find it too difficult to admit when we are wrong. Instead, we push back harder:

None of [the recent evidence] moves Mary Wildman, 47, whose son's case is before the court and who drove from her home near Pittsburgh to watch the hearing, which ended this week. "I know what happened to my son after he got his MMR shot," she told me. "I have no doubt. There's no way they'll convince me that all these kids were not damaged by vaccines."

My overachieving older brother

I might as well grumble about it now. My brother Optimus, you've probably heard of him, is starring in a movie. Great, as if we didn't have enough awkward moments during the annual family barbecue on July 4th. Overachieving little prick. Mother always did like him best. Of course my sister, Medicus Prime, shot up to the number two position, all because she's going to be a "real" doctor. Pfft.

At least I'm better than that ne'er do well Rodimus. Come on Rod, everyone knows that you aren't really dad's kid; you don't even look like any of us. I'm betting your real father was Big Rod, that plumber who came to "clean the pipes" while dad was away getting his diodes replaced. Quit trying to make yourself seem better than everyone else. Autobot Matrix of Leadership my ass ...

Religious Released Time and Church/State separation

The town where I grew up was so Catholic ...

How Catholic was it?

... it was so Catholic that there were three parishes to service a community of 5,000.

Not really a joke, so much as a statement fact. And a segue into today's post about church/state separation (part of the Blog Against Theocracy). Often the "state" in "church/state" is thought of as the federal or state level of government; but I would conjecture that at the local level there is an even greater breakdown of the wall of separation. A breakdown that is maintained by a populace too homogeneous in their attitude to be bothered by the potential for dissent, or by issues that are too small to be given anything other than local media attention. Issues such as Religious Released Time.

As a child, every Monday (in grades 1-3) or Thursday (in grades 4-6) I would board a public school bus with most of my fellow students and travel to our respective parishes for religious instruction. Most went to the Irish-Catholic parish, while I went to the smaller, French-Catholic parish (the third Catholic parish was actually a renegade group that chose not to go along with Vatican II, but that is another story). We received our religious instruction, then returned, on public school buses, to our respective schools. Total time spent was about an hour and a half. Now, why do I think this is a violation of church/state separation? After all, it is a completely legal, Supreme Court approved program. I think it is a violation because of the one time I didn't get on that bus.

For some reason, one week in sixth grade my parish decided not to have religious education. This only affected me, as I was the only one in my class who was a member. So when that Thursday came I stayed behind with the non-Catholic kids. All five of them. In a total class of 30 plus students. Now I won't get into things like issues of ostracism or anything like that. I want to note what didn't happen that day when everyone else was gone. We didn't learn anything. Our teacher sat at his desk while we played on the computers, talked, played cards, and, once we got bored enough, began reading some of our textbooks. I turned to my friend Walt and asked, "Is this what happens every Thursday when we are gone." "Every Thursday," he confirmed. Ninety minutes of class time that isn't class time.

Ninety minutes per week.

Three-thousand five-hundred and ten minutes per school year.

Roughly five-percent of class time.

In essence, because our community turned a blind eye to what happened when everyone else was learning about Jesus, those kids were not being provided with the education they deserved. Five percent. Not much? Ask a teacher what they could do with five-percent more time. Teach one more subject per week. Have more one-on-one time with their students. Perhaps finally get beyond the chapter on WWII in the history book before the school year comes to an end. All because the public school was all too willing to allow the religious majority to take that time away.

I don't care if parents want to individually take their kids out of school for religious instruction. Or if they want to take off free periods for instruction. Or after or before school. Heck, I don't even care if they use school buses as long as the churches compensate the school. But that time should not be to the detriment of another student's right to learn. There was one established fact in my school district, and the schools made sure that Walt and the others who stayed behind heard it once a week: "This student's religion is more important than your education."