biology
oldie but a goodie
Remember this?
If you see the dancer spinning clockwise it means you’re using the right half of your brain. If she spins counter-clockwise it means you’re using the left.
The theory: by watching the direction of her spin, we can determine which half of our brains we’re using.
Or maybe it’s just a random optical illusion? Who knows?
The interesting thing = some of us see her spinning one direction, some the other, while some see her change directions and others, for the life of them, just aren’t able to make her change directions.
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Tag : Complete
Tag isn’t just a documentary, it’s a chad-calease-made odyssey on the subject of a game that touches everything we do.
Enjoy the trailer.
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In the Beginning was the Command Line
My pal Steve turned me on to this essay, written in 1999 by Neil Stephenson.
Highly recommended.
Here’s an excerpt :
If I can risk a broad generalization, most of the people who go to Disney World have zero interest in absorbing new ideas from books. Which sounds snide, but listen: they have no qualms about being presented with ideas in other forms. Disney World is stuffed with environmental messages now, and the guides at Animal Kingdom can talk your ear off about biology.
If you followed those tourists home, you might find art, but it would be the sort of unsigned folk art that’s for sale in Disney World’s African- and Asian-themed stores. In general they only seem comfortable with media that have been ratified by great age, massive popular acceptance, or both.
In this world, artists are like the anonymous, illiterate stone carvers who built the great cathedrals of Europe and then faded away into unmarked graves in the churchyard. The cathedral as a whole is awesome and stirring in spite, and possibly because, of the fact that we have no idea who built it. When we walk through it we are communing not with individual stone carvers but with an entire culture.
Disney World works the same way. If you are an intellectual type, a reader or writer of books, the nicest thing you can say about this is that the execution is superb. But it’s easy to find the whole environment a little creepy, because something is missing: the translation of all its content into clear explicit written words, the attribution of the ideas to specific people. You can’t argue with it. It seems as if a hell of a lot might be being glossed over, as if Disney World might be putting one over on us, and possibly getting away with all kinds of buried assumptions and muddled thinking.
But this is precisely the same as what is lost in the transition from the command-line interface to the GUI.
Disney and Apple/Microsoft are in the same business: short-circuiting laborious, explicit verbal communication with expensively designed interfaces. Disney is a sort of user interface unto itself–and more than just graphical. Let’s call it a Sensorial Interface. It can be applied to anything in the world, real or imagined, albeit at staggering expense.
If you wish, you can download and read his essay in its entirety here.
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Langer wins Millennium Award
MIT Institute Professor Robert Langer has won the Millennium Technology Prize, the world’s largest award for technology innovation.
Langer was chosen “for his inventions and development of innovative biomaterials for controlled drug release and tissue regeneration that have saved and improved the lives of millions of people,” according to Technology Academy Finland, which gives the award every other year.
The award goes to developers of a technology that “significantly improves the quality of human life, today and in the future.” Winners receive 800,000 euros, or about $1.2 million.
Tarja Halonen, president of Finland, handed Langer the prize and the trophy Wednesday afternoon at an award ceremony in Helsinki.
“It’s such a great honor — particularly given the quality of the people who have won it before as well as the quality of the innovations and people considered this year,” Langer told the MIT News Office.
At MIT, Langer runs the largest biomedical engineering lab in the world. He holds more than 550 issued and pending patents and has written some 900 research papers.
“Bob Langer’s pioneering work places him at the very forefront of science, engineering and medical innovation,” said MIT President Susan Hockfield. “In his remarkably collaborative spirit, extraordinary productivity, depth of curiosity and record of fearless innovation, he embodies the core values of MIT. We are extraordinarily proud of his many contributions and the great good that his work has brought to so many people.”
Langer’s achievements have had a profound impact on the field of cancer research. He entered the field with a PhD in chemical engineering when he teamed with cancer researcher Judah Folkman at Children’s Hospital in Boston in 1974. At that time, the scientific community believed that only small molecules could pass through a plastic delivery system in a controlled manner.
In the 1970s, Langer developed polymer materials that allowed the large molecules of a protein to pass through membranes in a controlled manner to inhibit angiogenesis, the process by which tumors recruit blood vessels. Blocking angiogenesis is critical in fighting cancer because the new blood vessels allow tumor cells to escape into the circulation and lodge in other organs.
“Bob has been a pioneer in applying materials science and engineering to drug delivery and tissue engineering,” said Subra Suresh, dean of MIT’s School of Engineering and Ford Professor of Engineering. “I’m delighted to see his seminal contributions recognized through his selection for this most prestigious award.”
Andrew Viterbi ’56, SM ’57, founder of Qualcomm, was one of four other finalists for this year’s award. He was picked as a finalist for creating an algorithm that became “the key building element in modern wireless and digital communications systems, touching lives of people everywhere,” according to the Technology Academy Finland.
The other finalists, or laureates, were Alec Jeffreys, who developed DNA fingerprinting techniques, and a trio of scientists who developed an optical amplifier that transformed telecommunications: David Payne, Emmanuel Desurvire and Randy Giles.
“It is sufficient to say that each and every one of today’s laureates has excelled in fulfilling the most important of our requirements: benefit to mankind,” said Stig Gustavson, chairman of Technology Academy Finland.
This year marks the third time the prize has been awarded — and the second time an MIT researcher has won it. Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web and senior research scientist at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, won the honor in 2004.
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Farewell, Doctor
Albert Hofmann, the father of the mind-altering drug LSD whose medical discovery inspired millions and caused controversy in others in the 1960s, has died. The good doctor died Tuesday at his home in Burg im Leimental in the village near Basel where he moved following his retirement in 1971.
For decades after LSD was banned in the late 1960s, Hofmann defended his invention.
“I produced the substance as a medicine. … It’s not my fault if people abused it,” he once said.
The Swiss chemist discovered lysergic acid diethylamide-25 in 1938 while studying the medicinal uses of a fungus found on wheat and other grains at the Sandoz pharmaceuticals firm in Basel.
He became the first human guinea pig of the drug when a tiny amount of the substance seeped onto his finger during a laboratory experiment on April 16, 1943.
“I had to leave work for home because I was suddenly hit by a sudden feeling of unease and mild dizziness,” he subsequently wrote in a memo to company bosses.
He said his initial experience resulted in “wonderful visions.”
“What I was thinking appeared in colors and in pictures,” he told a Swiss television network for a program marking his 100th birthday two years ago. “It lasted for a couple of hours and then it disappeared.”
He was 102.
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survival
And here i thought eagles were just big rats with wings who only scavenged. Perhaps Alaskan eagles are more lazy? These golden eagles are rather ambitious – warning to some – this footage is rather graphic so watch at your own risk :
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EMR and You
Have you ever wondered what, if any, effects all our WiFi and Broadband and cellular energies flying around might have on our physical bodies?
Certainly, most of us heard the rumblings during the emergence of cellphones that they may cause problems in some people and other related stories that are always presented as nothing to worry about. Such notions would hurt the cash flow to companies who manufacture such devices as well as the carriers who provide subscription-based services to them. We can’t have that now, can we?
Like so many decisions people have made over the millennia, however, we usually make great decisions for the short-term and exceedingly poor ones for the long-term.
Thus, now with so many frequencies being pulsed through the air for this and that we seemingly don’t think or care much about the long-term implications these conveniences may have in store for us. We can speculate about it but the facts are that WE CAN’T BE SURE.
Enter the EMR Policy Institute, who’s goal is :
We believe that the unfettered use of electromagnetic radiation (EMR) – radiofrequency/microwave radiation (RF/MW) present in all wireless and communications technologies, as well as the extremely low frequencies (ELF) present in powerline supplies – is ill advised given research that has accumulated over the last two decades. The Mission of The EMR Policy Institute is to foster a better understanding of the environmental and human biological effects from such exposures. Our goal is to work at the federal, state and international levels to foster appropriate, unbiased research and to create better cooperation between federal regulatory agencies with a stake in public health in order to mitigate unnecessary exposures that may be deemed to be hazardous.
If you’d like to help ensure that these technologies are monitored for these effects with greater accuracy using unbiased research, click here to sign the online petition now being assembled.
Good decisions are based on good information that is not biased and not bent to the will of vested parties. The leaders of those companies should care, too, because what if all of these frequencies are affecting DNA structure in humans? Doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor – the same types of radiation waves are flowing through all of us. All day. All night.
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Teaching Fish to Swim Isn’t Easy
Thanks to Gerald for turning me onto this.
Adapted from Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin © 2008.
Professor Shubin, the University of Chicago’s Robert R. Bensley professor, chair and associate dean for Organismal Biology & Anatomy, is also provost of the Field Museum of Natural History.
Hernias, hiccups, and snoresâ€â€oh, my! It’s been 3.5 billion years, and the human body’s past still plays a role in our lives and health.
My knee was swollen to the size of a grapefruit, and one of my colleagues from the surgery department was twisting and bending it to determine whether I had strained or ripped one of the ligaments or cartilage pads inside. This, and the MRI scan that followed, revealed a torn meniscus, the probable result of 25 years spent carrying a backpack over rocks, boulders, and scree in the field. Hurt your knee and you will almost certainly injure one or more of three structures: the medial meniscus, the medial collateral ligament, or the anterior cruciate ligament. So regular are injuries to these three parts of your knee that these three structures are known among doctors as the “Unhappy Triad.†They are clear evidence of the pitfalls of having an inner fish. Fish do not walk on two legs.
Our humanity comes at a cost. For the exceptional combination of things we doâ€â€talk, think, grasp, and walk on two legsâ€â€we pay a price.
This is an inevitable result of the tree of life inside us. Imagine trying to jerry-rig a Volkswagen Beetle to travel at speeds of 150 miles per hour. In 1933 Adolf Hitler commissioned Dr. Ferdinand Porsche to develop a cheap car that could get 40 miles per gallon of gas and provide a reliable form of transportation for the average German family. The result was the VW Beetle. This history, Hitler’s plan, places constraints on the ways we can modify the Beetle today; the engineering can be tweaked only so far before major problems arise and the car reaches its limit.
In many ways, we humans are the fish equivalent of a hot-rod Beetle. Take the body plan of a fish, dress it up to be a mammal, then tweak and twist that mammal until it walks on two legs, talks, thinks, and has superfine control of its fingersâ€â€and you have a recipe for problems. We can dress up a fish only so much without paying a price. In a perfectly designed worldâ€â€one with no historyâ€â€we would not have to suffer everything from hemorrhoids to cancer.
Nowhere is this history more visible than in the detours, twists, and turns of our arteries, nerves, and veins. Follow some nerves and you’ll find that they make strange loops around other organs, apparently going in one direction only to twist and end up in an unexpected place. The detours are fascinating products of our past that, as we’ll see, often create problemsâ€â€hiccups and hernias, for example. And this is only one way our past comes back to plague us.
Our deep history was spent, at different times, in ancient oceans, small streams, and savannahs, not office buildings, ski slopes, and tennis courts. We were not designed to live past the age of 80, sit on our keisters for ten hours a day, and eat Hostess Twinkies, nor were we designed to play football. This disconnect between our past and our human present means that our bodies fall apart in certain predictable ways.
Virtually every illness we suffer has some historical component. The examples that follow reflect how different branches of the tree of life inside usâ€â€from ancient humans, to amphibians and fish, and finally to microbesâ€â€come back to pester us today. Each of these examples show that we were not designed rationally but are products of a convoluted history.
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The De-Evolution of Culture
Larry Lessig says what no one else has the cojones to in this clip.
Larry gets TEDsters to their feet, whooping and whistling, following this elegant presentation of three stories and an argument. The Net’s most adored lawyer brings together John Philip Sousa, celestial copyrights, and the “ASCAP cartel” to build a case for creative freedom. He pins down the key shortcomings of our dusty, pre-digital intellectual property laws, and reveals how bad laws beget bad code. Then, in an homage to cutting-edge artistry, he throws in some of the most hilarious remixes you’ve ever seen.
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another kind of tag
It would be an interesting first day on the job : sign the paperwork, W-2 and whatever else, and then roll up your sleeve for a microchip injection.
Sounds like sci-fi, but it’s happened, and now a handful of states are making sure their citizens will never be forced to have a microchip implanted under their skin.
No one’s quite sure how real a threat these forced implants might be or why states are feeling compelled to protect their residents from being physically tagged. Lawmakers are calling the legislation pre-emptive [isn't that a term used for bombing other countries?] while the industry that produces the technology sees the states’ action as fear mongering.
Radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags – tiny, data-storing microchips about the size of a grain of rice – are in passports, in Wal-Mart factory shipments and in subway passes in cities from New York to Taiwan. They are also in humans. On one less-than-likely episode of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” a paranoid actor Bob Saget even uses one to monitor his adulterous wife.
Unlike Global Positioning System (GPS) technology, which is used for constant, real-time tracking, RFID tags are scanned at close range [for now] – usually from a few feet to a few inches. The tags are tracked by scanners installed at checkpoints, such as office doors or warehouse loading docks. The systems are also commonly used in highway toll collection and as theft protection in car keys.
In humans they’ve been used to store medical information, to track movement and to gain access to locked rooms. To date, roughly 2,000 RFID chips have been sold for implantation in humans, says VeriChip Corp., the only manufacturer with a Food and Drug Administration-approved implantable chip.
The company is focusing its technology on medical patient identification, and about 400 patients, including those with Alzheimer’s disease, have RFIDs implanted. Other VeriChip human implants have been used by a Spanish nightclub to allow VIPs with implanted chips to bypass entrance lines and by the Mexico attorney general’s staff to safeguard identity information at a time when the kidnapping of government officials there is not uncommon.
Some customers are using them as high-tech keys. Ohio security firm CityWatcher.com raised eyebrows in 2006 when it requested that some of its employees be “chipped,†or implanted with tags for access to certain rooms. According to published reports, only two employees got the implants before the company dropped the program. CityWatcher.com has since shut down.
But forced chipping has been a rare practice, leading some industry spokespeople to decry regulation as “scare tactics.â€Â
Wisconsin enacted the first RFID ban in May 2006, and North Dakota in April. Colorado and Ohio have bills in committee, and Oklahoma and Florida saw theirs die. Except for one U.S. House proposal to use RFID tags to track prescription drugs, Congress has not widely addressed the technology.
Yet.
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don’t forget : spore is coming soon
From the mind of Will Wright, the creator of The Sims, comes SPOREâ„¢, an epic journey that takes you from the origin and evolution of life through the development of civilization and technology and eventually all the way into the deepest reaches of outer space.
Tide Pool Phase
Fight with other creatures and consume them to adjust the form and abilities of your creature. It’s survival of the fittest at the most microscopic level.
Creature Phase
Venture onto land and help your creature learn and evolve with forays away from your nest. The only way to grow is by taking chances!
Tribal Phase
Instead of controlling an individual creature, you are now caring for, giving tools to and guilding the interactions of an entire tribe.
Civilization Phase
Once your city is established, your creatures begin seeking out and interacting with other cultures. Make contact with an olive branch or a war cry. The goal for your creatures is to conquer the planet.
Space Phase
The time has come to move on to other worlds in your solar system. Make contact, colonize, or terraform, then venture further to find other solar systems. A ‘mission’ structure provides new goals in your quest for galactic dominance.
So, enough already : check it out :
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Good and Bad
Orexin A is a promising candidate to become a “sleep replacement” drug. For decades, stimulants have been used to combat sleepiness, but they can be addictive and often have side effects, including raising blood pressure or causing mood swings. The military, for example, administers amphetamines to pilots flying long distances, and has funded research into new drugs like the stimulant modafinil and orexin A in an effort to help troops stay awake with the fewest side effects.
Certainly, there are pros and cons to this. Tricking the brain into believing it is well-rested is not the same as the whole body getting solid, good rest. There is simply no substitute. Therefore, we can presume that the potential abuses of this drug will be great as it becomes more and more readily available.
What could some of the implications of this new drug be?
Well, here’s just one of a slew of them.
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Rules : Love and Hate
Taken from wikipedia’s definition of the game:
The rules of tag are very flexible. Rules such as the following can be either decided upon before the game, or added as the game progresses to make play more fair.
At the beginning of the game, one player is designated “it”. After “it” is chosen, the other players scatter. “It” must chase them down and tag them, usually by tapping them somewhere on the body. A tagged player becomes “it”, and the former “it” joins the others in trying to avoid being tagged. This process repeats until the game ends.
In a typical game of tag, no score is kept, nor is a winner selected. Those who can avoid being tagged or who can stay “it” for the least amount of time are generally regarded as the best players. There is usually no time limit; the end of the game is chosen arbitrarily, perhaps when the players tire of the game, when recess ends, or when players get called home for dinner.
An anomalous property of tag is that although being “it” gives a player the most influence upon the game and thus could be considered the best role to play, the position is stigmatized and avoided. While most agree that the temporary stigma associated with being “it” is harmless, some have criticized tag because, they allege, a player who is often pursued to be made “it” or who is physically slow can be singled out and embarrassed. Because of this, tag has been banned in some US schools. In some variations, if the number of people exceeds five, then you may not quit until you are tagged first.
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Inside and Outside
During this process of shooting a documentary on the game of Tag, one idea has emerged again and again from both experts [such as anthropologists] and laymen alike. This is the idea of how we have a tendency to internalize experiences. This means that we tend to think about these experiences mostly in terms that they are only affecting us or are only influenced by us, ourselves. Generally speaking, we have very little self-awareness about how our actions, and not just in games, affect others.
Truth is, the kinds of experiences that involve physical touch cannot be experienced by us alone. The act of physical touch bonds us and makes us both the subject and object of the experience.
This is a complicated way of saying we need contact with others in the physical sense in order to develop and grow properly. It is the very essence of what makes us who we are, how we learn, create and navigate within and without this world as its rules continue to change and evolve.
Heavy? Sure. But it’s just these kinds of obvious thoughts we overlook day-to-day that led me to become so fascinated by such a seemingly simple childhood game.
More soon – believe me, i’m full of this kinda stuff, thanks to the kind folks who’ve humored me on this adventure of Tag.
; )
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tradition
traditions are sticky wickets. they always seem to have the best intentions, yet, too many bad ones lead to trouble and dissent in the ranks. well, potentially. except maybe here in the States.
take, for instance, now.
many folks have had it with politics and the decisions world leaders make. this is, itself, a tradition. they’ve always done it.
so, could it be a stretch to say that almost any tradition is bad? do they all start out with good intentions only to reap new hells upon those who toil to preserve them?
just a thought amidst this year’s hustle and bustle.
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Tag : trailer
[thinfilms] is in post-production for a feature documentary about the game of Tag.
a trailer for the film is now on youtube. if you’ve contributed to the film in any way, please know what it means to us – this is a labor of love that represents over 120 hours of footage featuring interviews with people of all ages and cultures describing the game, its countless variations and the ways in which they shape who we are and everything we do. the making of this film has indeed been a remarkable journey and it couldn’t have come this far without all of you. Thank you.
meanwhile, keep an eye peeled for an update about the full release coming in 2008.
we trust this finds you well and enjoying some play time every day, nurturing the whimsical spirit that Tag brings out in each of us.
sincerely,
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Cloning for dollars
Scientists at Seoul National University Korea are seeking to commercially clone dogs this year, which would be the world’s first attempt to create canine clones for money. Senior researcher Kim Min-kyu at the Seoul-based University is spearheading the efforts based on his team’s expertise in cloning dogs. As per Mr. Kim early last month, they signed a memorandum of understanding with the Korea Customs Service to clone its drug-sniffing dogs. They have already obtained somatic cells of the expensive dogs and will attempt to clone them in July or August to get puppies late this year at the earliest.
Demand for drug and explosive sniffing dogs has outstripped supply after the Sept. 11 terrorism attacks in 2001, as countries focus on beefing up security, according to Kim. But he refused to elaborate the terms of the MOU. Kim played a pivotal role in creating the world’s first cloned dog, a male named Snuppy, in 2005 as well as three other female clones last year. Still, no other scientists on the planet have succeeded in cloning a dog except Kim’s team.
here we go, folks…
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Adaptive Technology :: Evolved
Doctors laugh at me when they ask me ideally what do i want to do about my knee problem and i tell them how i’d like them to just lop it off and gimme a rad prosthetic.
if there are any doctors out there who’d like to help a fella get his quality of life back by hooking him up with something akin to this would you email queue [ - at - ] thinfilmsproductions dot com, please?
i don’t wanna be the fastest runner on my block or break any records other than the furthest walk i’ve had in months.
there’s no doubt this new technology is fascinating but, as we all know, every new solution brings with it a new set of dilemmas.
Whatever. You are my total fucking hero! THANKS, OSCAR!
click here to learn more about Oscar.
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we Like Sheep
Scientists have created the world’s first human-sheep chimera – which has the body of a sheep and half-human organs.
The sheep have 15 per cent human cells and 85 per cent animal cells – and their evolution brings the prospect of animal organs being transplanted into humans one step closer.
Professor Esmail Zanjani, of the University of Nevada, has spent seven years and £5million perfecting the technique, which involves injecting adult human cells into a sheep’s foetus.
[more]
Are you Tone Deaf?
take this nifty test developed by Jake Mandell and find out in 6 minutes or less.
if you are, don’t feel bad. Linda McCartney, first wife of Paul, often was the brunt of jokes about being perhaps the most tone deaf person to ever be in a band – Wings!
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Honeybees split town
David Bradshaw has endured countless stings during his life as a beekeeper, but he got the shock of his career when he opened his boxes last month and found half of his 100 million bees missing.
In 24 states throughout the country, beekeepers have gone through similar shocks as their bees have been disappearing inexplicably at an alarming rate, threatening not only their livelihoods but also the production of numerous crops, including California almonds, one of the nation’s most profitable.
“I have never seen anything like it,†Mr. Bradshaw, 50, said from an almond orchard here beginning to bloom. “Box after box after box are just empty. There’s nobody home.â€Â
[more]
how to move up the food chain
Since the 1960s scientists have known that chimpanzees are able to make and use toolsâ€â€behavior once thought to be an exclusively human trait.
Now National Geographic-funded researcher Jill Pruetz has observed toolmaking behavior that further blurs the line between the apes and humans: chimps in Senegal sharpening sticks into crude spears and thrusting them into tree hollows, presumably to hunt small mammals.
Jill Pruetz’s work with chimpanzees will be featured in an upcoming NOVA/National Geographic special on PBS (airdate to be determined). National Geographic News is part of the National Geographic Society.
