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People have mentioned that they miss Noemon's science thread. I read a ton of science news, so I thought I'd start a thread and try to post at least one interesting link every day so we can talk about it. Maybe I'll even make a few posts where I talk about science topics without the benefit of a link.
I'll try to update this post so all the links will be collected in one place.
Oh, and feel free to post links that you find interesting. I'll try to add them to this post, too.
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Okay, the link that caught my eye today is actually a blog post: Martian Colors. The author talks about a talk he attended regarding synesthesia, where the brain mixes different senses. One common form is grapheme-color synesthesia, where certain numbers or letters evoke sensations of color. What's interesting is that these sensations are real enough that they apparently can help people perform certain tasks more easily -- check out the article for more details.
What's even wilder is that a colorblind man with synesthesia still experienced certain colors, even though his retina couldn't detect them. So that raises the question: this guy can experience colors that he's never actually detected with his eyes. When I see blue light, is there some particular set of neurons or neuron firing pattern that corresponds to what goes on in this guy's brain when he sees a letter he associates with blue? Is there some inherent blueness experience that can occur without ever seeing the appropriate wavelength of light?
Posts: 3546 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Play me a band, and I have a color association. This includes music whose CD case, or any color at all, I have not seen.
Example: Panic! At the Disco's song I Write Sins, Not Tragedies, is maybe... a slightly violet-red.
Daughtry's song It's Not Over is more of a black-blue.
Gavin DeGraw's song Chariot is yellow-orange.
The Fray's song Over My Head is red.
From the Wallflowers, songs definitely have colors. Like, their song Letters From the Wasteland has a burnt-orange/brown color, their song The Beautiful Side of Somewhere has a... whitish-blue feeling.
The Decemberists' songs all have interesting colors too. The Engine Driver is definitely purple, for example.
Death Cab for Cutie tends to have bluish hues of different sorts for the songs of theirs I have. In fact, I note that many times a band's music tends to fit in similar colors, like red, orange and yellow for Panic! At the Disco, or bluish above for Death Cab, etc.
I mean, this isn't so much a strong thing, more of a subtle association, and it really isn't always clear, but it keeps... happening. It's weird. Perhaps it's sometimes the association with some words in the songs themselves, or things I see while listening sometime that makes a connection, or what. It might be that such things have a significant impact, and not all songs automatically create a color association, it seems to occur more while I'm in my car, for example, and thus paying more attention to the music.
Maybe it's nothing. I don't know! But I know the color feels associated. It was weird, the way that this article described the letter number thing just sounded oddly familiar.
Edit:
While listening to Boa's song Duvet at this moment, after finishing typing this up and just listening a moment, I noticed a definite puplre/black vibe from the song.
Posts: 1577 | Registered: Sep 2005
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Anyway, the article says that virtually everyone living in the temperate zones, particularly people with dark skin, don't get enough vitamin D, and that vitamin D is really good to protect against cancer, and lots of diseases, and auto-immune disorders. It's really interesting. I started taking 2000 IU of vitamin D a day because of this article. There are some studies that show no benefit too, so it's not completely clear. But it sounded like something important that people might want to look into.
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I read that one too! I thought it was interesting that there were different pathways for producing the finished molecule that the body needs.
For those who can't read the article, it goes like this: D3 is made in skin cells when they absorb ultraviolet light. D2 comes from food sources. Either D3 or D2 can be made into 25D in the liver, and then 1,25D in the kidneys. However, the skin cells that make D3 in the first place can do all those steps too.
By the way, for those who have journal access through a university library or other institution, Scientific American may be available online for you.
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My favorite article (of sorts) on synesthesia is from Cassidy Curtis, a former student of my advisor in college (another of whose former students is rather well known). There's a new (since I'd last visited) flash applet at the bottom of the page that interactively shows how he sees text. Pretty cool!
Interestingly enough, my friend Veronica (who does research on synesthesia) posted a comment on the blog earlier today. Small world, I guess?
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Comet Holmes has brightened dramatically. Previously, it was so faint that a good telescope was required to see it. Over a few days, it brightened enough to be clearly visible to the naked eye, even in places with light pollution. Apparently, it has yet to dim again (it's been over a week since the initial flare-up), so go check it out! Viewing tips and a telescope image.
Apparently, the sudden increase in brightness is due to the comet abruptly throwing off a lot of gas and dust, as comets tend to do when they get close to the sun. What's odd is the comet is nowhere near the sun, and there's no good explanation for the eruption.
Posts: 3546 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Elephant seals are being used as diving probes to make ocean water depth, temperature, and salinity measurements. Mostly to track living and migration habits of the seals themselves but with the bonus of being an inexpensive though uncontrollable UAV. (The glued-on SEaOS radio-tags are shed during the annual moulting process).
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
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This video of a solar flare forming on the surface of the sun is the most amazing thing I've seen in a long time. I can't stop watching it! I keep running through it over and over again and seeing new stuff each time.
I really want a weapon that will do this... at least in some video game somewhere. How cool would that be? Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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Wow, that is pretty mesmerizing Tatiana. I'm not gonna lie, the first thing I thought of was the Lifestream from Final Fantasy VII >_<
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High definition video of the moon's surface. It's lovely. I think it's odd that we haven't really been studying the moon much since the end of the Apollo era. So thanks for the stunning images, Japan!
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What's your brain doing at night while you're asleep? It turns out that it's doing all sorts of things. Sleep appears to be vital in consolidating memories and working out patterns. Even taking a nap after learning a new task can improve performance. What's really interesting is that different stages of sleep have been tentatively linked to different kinds of learning. Deep, slow wave sleep improves declarative (factual) memory. REM tends to improve performance in pattern recognition. Stage 2 sleep, which is a transition period between light and deep sleep, appears to have some relation to motor tasks.
Has anyone actually read this guy's book? I've got some serious issues with his video. Especially if its going to be presented as a science link.
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How come in "The Tenth Dimension" he goes from talking about spatial dimensions to talking about time?
Posts: 1327 | Registered: Aug 2007
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I kind of wondered about it as well when I first saw it. It's an interesting idea, but I'm skeptical that this is the sort of thing scientists are really talking about when they speak of ten dimensions. Here's a link that discusses what I think may be closer to what the string theorists mean by "higher dimensions": Extra Dimensions in Cosmology. The other dimensions are still spatial dimensions, rather than alternate realities as presented in The Tenth Dimension. They're just too small to be perceived. Unfortunately, since we're so attuned to the three-dimensional world, it's almost completely impossible to get our heads around the concept of these other dimensions.
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Not talking about alternate realities as such (ie in the sense used in scifi&fantasy) but rather about having room with sufficient freedom for sum-over-histories to occur.
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I was actually skeptical from the beginning, but it seemed interesting, and I saw this thread, so I thought, why not. And he does, to a small degree, explain his reasoning for moving from the third to the fourth dimension in that way.
Posts: 1594 | Registered: Apr 2006
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Besides his bizarre description of 3 spacial dimension + time, my first big issue with is description is the quick gloss over quantum measurement and then its application to people (5:14 in the movie).
Claiming that quantum mechanics applies to things like people and the decisions we make is, IMO, a sign of something trying to be presented as science when it really isn't.
quote:As I often do, I started with that basic hard science fact and then ran with it far past the edges of where most mainstream scientists would be comfortable, taking it through the ideas of Richard Dawkins and on out into the metaphysical fringe. Why do I keep doing that? Why do I suggest that there should ever be any links between reality as depicted by mainstream science and, for instance, ancient philosophy? Well, as I often say, I'm not a physicist and I'm not pretending to be one: as long as fans of the tenth dimension project understand that we're exploring ideas that are beyond the periphery of the mainstream, just for the joy of playing with ideas, then speaking personally I see nothing wrong with getting creative.
But the issue here is that he presents his movie and his book as though this is really what is being claimed by the scientists doing the work--and its not, at all. If he'd like to spin theories about ancient philosphy and the reptilians that rule the planet or anything else fine. But don't misrepresent your work as something that it isn't.
Posts: 1621 | Registered: Oct 2001
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The current issue of PLoS has an article about the study of hypocretin in zebrafish. In mammals, trouble with the hypocretin system causes narcolepsy. However, in zebrafish, knocking out the receptor results in fragmented sleep but does not increased sleep during the daytime.
One really interesting thing about the study is that when the fish were sleep deprived during the night (in the dark) by electric shock, they experienced a rebound later on when allowed to sleep, much as humans do after being sleep-deprived. If, however, the fish were exposed to light, they didn't sleep and they didn't experience a rebound, even after three days with no sleep. After a week in constant light, the fish started sleeping again, but didn't show any ill effects. Perhaps in this species (or maybe fish in general) the circadian rhythm serves as more of a backup to light/dark signals.
Another interesting difference between zebrafish and mammals is the effects of injecting hypocretin directly into the skull. Doing this to mammals is highly stimulating, while the zebrafish experienced mild sedation. So in zebrafish, it seems that the hypocretin system helps to consolidate sleep, but does not consolidate wakefulness, perhaps because the light does that instead. In mammals, hypocretin helps to consolidate both sleep and wakefulness. This may imply that mammals and fish share neural circuitry for regulating sleep, but have different means of regulating wakefulness.
I'd also be interested to know if zebrafish start exhibiting circadian behavior if kept in constant dark. If so, will the mutant fish have more trouble staying awake than their wild-type counterparts? I'm sort of tempted to e-mail the authors and ask them about it.
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Nice! The postdoc I'm working with is actually just cloning out hypocretin in cavefish- we're hoping to look at how sleep behavior (among numerous other traits) evolved in animals with no predators and no light exposure versus their closest surface-dwelling relatives.
Cavefish are a particularly fun organism for the study of evolution, particulary evolutionary developmental biology, as there are several distinct populations which independently diverged from the "surface" strain, and all of which lost their eyes, pigment, predator avoidance behaviors, etc. via convergent evolution over the last few thousand years. All of these populations show very distinct phenotypes, but are still closely related enough to interbreed. As a result, they're ideal for genetic analysis. We're using QTL to map traits to particular loci within chromosomes and identifying the pertinent polymorphisms responsible for the cave phenotype versus the surface phenotype. Neat stuff, plus the cavefish look freakin' cool- think big, albino zebrafish with no eyes, which sometimes like to swim sideways.
Posts: 1321 | Registered: Sep 1999
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I'd never read that narcoleptics had dead hypocretin producers before. I used to be a night owl but then started sleeping regularly in my early twenties. My sister went on to be narcoleptic. I always thought it was basically lifestyle induced. Hmm.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Nope. The going theory is that it's autoimmune, much like type I diabetes. There's no known lifestyle link, although it's possible that early symptoms might be mistaken for a lifestyle.
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Well, except that immune response correlates with sleep quality. I'd have to see more to be persuaded of an organic autoimmune mechanism leading to narcolepsy.
Now I weep for the lobsters.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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About the lobsters, I thought it was pretty obvious already. Nobody wants to be boiled alive, right? Sometimes the human species makes me ashamed to be (mistaken for) a member.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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I read the nociception and pain article. I didn't know that there were specific criteria for telling the two apart, but it makes sense. I'm not surprised that the prawns were able to feel pain. I wonder what the subjective experience is like for an invertebrate, but I suppose it's not possible to determine that.
The comet photo is beautiful! I'm really bummed that the weather is so cloudy here. I want to go see it for myself. I wonder if it really looks like a big ball in the sky like it does in the photo. That must be an odd thing to see.
Pooka, certain HLA subtypes are associated with narcolepsy. Somewhere around 90% of people who have narcolepsy with cataplexy have the HLA-DQB1*0602 marker (although some of the general population does as well). The autoimmune link isn't definite, though -- it's just the best guess at present.
Posts: 3546 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Yes, I saw comet 17P/Holmes. I could see the spot with my eye, and I could tell it was a little blurry. Through the telescope, it looked like a giant smudge. Pretty cool, but not nearly as vivid as comet Hale-Bopp from a few years ago.
We were using a Dobsonian (sp?) telescope, and we were experiencing a little light pollution. I think you need some pretty decent eyes to spot it, but if you know where to look, it helps.
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I was bummed-- the Leonids were supposed to happen last Saturday, but there was too much cloud cover in my part of the world to see them.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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I saw a report that the coma/halo/gas cloud of comet Holmes is now larger than the Sun. Sorry, no link.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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An article on chimps and humans with a buncha bananas...err...interesting links to other missing links at the bottom of the page.
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
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BTW, I just wrote a little computer program to test the claims of the paradox listed above. I was able to reproduce the results for the alternating games. It needed to have game 1 and game 2 barely weighted against the player in order for the combined game to produce a player win. Even then, the player only came out a little bit ahead.
I couldn't get the random game to turn out in the player's favor consistently. If game A and game B were both against the player, randomly switching between them didn't seem to help any.
I'd be interested in seeing the actual study for the weights the physicist used (the article couldn't be more vague), but I don't care enough to look for it. It's probably in Spanish anyway.
That doesn't make any sense to me. Even after reading the article that explains it I don't get it. Driving a car that gets 15 mpg 100 miles uses (rounded up) 7 gallons of gas, it uses 6 for 18 mph. A 50mpg car uses 2 gallons, a 100mpg uses 1.
Using the 15,000 mile standard from the article, it takes 1,000 gallons to go that far on a 15mpg car. 833 for a 18 mpg car. 300 for a 50mpg car. 150 for a 100mpg car. Hm, that actually looks strange, you'd think the ratio would be even per mile per gallon. But still, going from 15mpg to 100mpg reduces it by 850 gallons, so, let's look at THAT number. I guess I just don't like the message of the article.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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You just proved the article's point. You saved 167 gallons by switching from the 15 mpg car to the 18 mpg car but only 150 gallons by switching from the 50 mpg car to the 100 mpg car. The point is that the best way to reduce oil consumption is to eliminate the bottom of the barrel in terms of fuel consumption (as opposed to pumping out a better Prius).
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