Now on ScienceBlogs: Will Quantum Fusion Save the Day?
Ritalin's Fallacy Diffusion MRI Tractography in the brain white matter. Some drugs work well because they are designed to hit a single, well understood target. Consider penicillin. In a simplified sense, penicillin destroys a single enzyme that bacteria need to divide...
Still more evidence that Morgellons disease is most likely delusional parasitosis, 2012 edition It's been nearly a year since I last discussed a most unusual malady. Part of the reason is that the opportunity to discuss it hasn't occurred recently; usually I need some spark or incident to "inspire" me to write about...
IQ Varies with Context In a very interesting way. As a regular reader of this blog, you know that IQ and similar measures are determined by a number of factors, and for most "normal" (modal?) individuals, one's heritage (genes) is rarely important. Putting it another way, variation across individuals...
Does thinking make it so? Last week, I wrote about how advocates of "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) or "integtrative medicine" (IM), having failed to demonstrate efficacy for the vast majority of the unscientific, anti-scientific, and/or pseudosciencitific treatment modalities, many based on prescientific concepts of...
Public Parts: A book review "Reading" books on my iPod is usually great. I can download them from audible, and while I'm tending to the daily monotony that comprises much of labwork (tissue culture, prepping protein samples, running back and forth between centrifuges), I can...
Dr. Phil follows Dr. Oz's descent into psychic woo Will it never end? First we had "America's Doctor," Dr. Mehmet Oz, credulously featuring psychic medium scammer John Edward on his show last year. Sadly, but typically, Dr. Oz was completely taken in by Edward's cold readings, even the most...
Going into the Unknown, Together The "lab" is a twice-weekly workshop that brings together Weizmann scientists and actors in an attempt to subject to rigorous scientific analysis topics that are not always easy to define, let alone quantify - creativity, spontaneity, togetherness.
CAM, placebos, and the new paternalism Three and a half years ago, I bought a new car. The reason why I mention this as a means of beginning this post is because that car had something I had never had in a car before, namely Sirius...
Credulous reporting on placebo effects strikes again Let's face it. The vast majority of "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) or "integrative medicine" (IM) therapies are nothing more than placebo medicine. This should be so abundantly clear to readers who have followed this blog, Science-Based Medicine, and/or Neurologica...
A Big Day For American Chess It occurs to me that I haven't done a chess post in a while. It's possible that I'm the only one unhappy about that, but there's actually a big chess story in the news. You see, for the first time...
I was compelled to post this I said I didn't want to say anything about free will, and I still don't, but Massimo Pigliucci weighed in, and Jerry Coyne responded, and so did Sean Carroll, and of course I created a free will thread for everyone...
No Cure for Cancer On The USA Science and Engineering Festival, Joe Schwarcz writes that in the media's "drive to capture public attention, science sometimes takes a back seat." He offers an accurate headline for one study: "Large daily dose of blueberry powder may...
Throwing (Fossilized) Bones On Pharyngula, PZ Myers tries to imagine an ancient squid, preying on reptilian whales and arranging their vertebrae as a testament to its glory. He writes "I love the idea of ancient giant cephalopods creating art and us finding the...
What we learn before we're born Pop quiz: When does learning begin? Answer: Before we are born. Science writer Annie Murphy Paul talks through new research that shows how much we learn in the womb -- from the lilt of our native language to our soon-to-be-favorite foods....
The Physics of: Ants and Bats Two different models for investigating human behavior? Yes, but not exactly in the ways you might imagine, and so much more than that.
A Tutorial in Human Behavioral Biology An overview of the classic literature in my field of study.
Performance Improves with Transcranial Random Noise Stimulation Stimulating the brain with high frequency electrical noise can supersede the beneficial effects observed from transcranial direct current stimulation, either anodal or cathodal (as well as those observed from sham stimulation), in perceptual learning, as newly reported by Fertonani, Pirully...
Attractors All the Way Up: Metastability, Rostrocaudal Hierarchies, and Synaptic Facilitation In their wonderful Neuroimage article, Braun & Mattia present a comprehensive introduction to the possible neuronal implementations and cognitive sequelae of a particular dynamical phenomenon: the attractor state. In another excellent paper, just recently out in Frontiers, Itskov, Hansel and...
Architecture of the VLPFC and its Monkey/Human Mapping If you ever said to yourself, "I wonder whether the human mid- and posterior ventrolateral prefrontal cortex has a homologue in the monkey, and what features of its cytoarchitecture or subcortical connectivity may differentiate it from other regions of PFC"...
Modus Tollens, Modus Shmollens! When people commit a fallacy so absurd that it's only recently been given a name. Soups that taste like garlic have garlic in them; you observe two people eating soup; one of them says to the other, "There is no garlic in this soup." Does the soup taste like garlic? If you said yes, then you've just committed a fallacy so absurd it's only recently been given a name.
Why are boys and men underperforming? In this TED video, Philip Zimbardo talks about an ongoing concern, the opting out of boys from academically and socially — boys are more likely to drop out of school, girls outperform boys at all academic levels, boys are...
Greater Performance Improvements When Quick Responses Are Rewarded More Than Accuracy Itself. Last month's Frontiers in Psychology contains a fascinating study by Dambacher, Hübner, and Schlösser in which the authors demonstrate that the promise of financial reward can actually reduce performance when rewards are given for high accuracy. Counterintuitively, performance (characterized as...
On Consciousness David Barash has a short, but interesting post about consciousness. Responding to someone who asked him about the most difficult unsolved problem in science, Barash writes: I answered without hesitation: How the brain generates awareness, thought, perceptions, emotions, and so...
Iain McGilchrist: The divided brain Please note, the whole "left side right side" brain thing is WRONG and we've known it has been WRONG for a very long time. Very. Long. Time. The reality is complex and interesting, but it is probably not what you think. The following video on...
Watermelon Brains It's time again for fruit and veggie carving season. And what could be better than a carved brain. This time it's out of a watermelon. Enjoy! -via Neatorama-...
“The average Russian male, however, seems to be vacillating between wanting to be with with the Russian female and wanting to be with the Italian male, while the Russian female is slowly moving away from him...This graph is 'dancefloor, viewed from above', right?” Phillip IV on Another Reason for the Russian Bride Phenomenon
Orac 04.13.2012
PZ Myers 06.17.2009
Orac 04.30.2012
Tim Lambert 09.12.2011
ERV 11.26.2011
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Some engineers use cranes and steel to make their designs reality, but synthetic biologists engineer using tools on a different scale: DNA and the other molecular components of living cells. Synthetic biology uses cellular systems and structures to produce artificial models based on natural order. Read these posts from the ScienceBlogs archives for more:
Pharyngula May 30, 2007
The Loom January 31, 2008
Discovering Biology in a Digital World July 2, 2006