There’s a great new study that shows how similar vertebrates’ and insects’ brains are. The scientists conduct molecular, developmental, genetic, and structural/morphological, neurochemical, neurological, and higher-order function tests! So maybe that’s cool1, but no real surprise2 1. It’s actually super amazing cool. 2. Well, not to someone with a reasonable education in biology. But I think this...
This is for you. I love you. Love is the quintessential romantic, irrational, human experience. It is in the first place the domain of its clients, although readily owned by the poets. As for others. The philosophers are permitted access, though they often regress into poets too; describing love as sacred, profound, and utterly existential. In the penultimate place in the line for love, in front...
Meta: Writing this note during week one: My plan is to complete week one (i.e. first) and then try to use a holistic perspective to see if I can get some sort of MM-type [Mind Map] notes going. The final goal by the end of this course will be to have an intellectual framework for astronomy. 2: The Celestial Sphere Modern astronomy recognizes 88 constellations as areas (with defined boundaries)...
This is Nature October 10 2013, Vol. 502, Iss. 7470, Pp. 141-264. Big weapons have little downside. Secrets of trial data revealed. Earth science: The timing of climate change. Quantum physics: Watching the wavefunction collapse – – I’m not reviewing this article (but bookmarked) because I simply do not have a strong enough foundation in QM. Cell biology: Molecular clearance at...
Concept: Cancer immunoscore. Also: TNM staging. Background: Cancers are traditionally scored using TNM (tumor, lymph node, metastasis) staging. Evidence that proximity of immune cells to tumor is correlative to therapy success. Technology: Cancers can be beneficially scored by using description of local immune cells. Source: Based on a News piece published in Nature (3 April 2013). Concept:...
Technology: Electroceuticals are made conceivable by recent advances, including optogenetics, microsurgery, nanotechnology-based energy production. Future research needed in Finer neural circuits, including their anatomy and signalling patterns vs response.
Source: A Comment piece in Nature (April 11, 2013).
Meta: Idea: Have a list of contents at the top of each date. Each listing to be the text of a heading, or if not then at least some form of anchoring as repeated in the body. I follow now with an exemplar instance of this idea: NOTES on my reading of KANT’s Prolegomena. Dear DIARY. SCIENCE or JOURNAL CLUB on studying NEURONAL COMPLEXITY. Meta: The (mere) fact that I have more to write about...
I have listened to a Nature podcast: Stephen Hawkings and Edward Snowden are heroes of mine. They just found the largest volcano in the entire solar system. And it’s on Earth! Go Science! Team Earth. Children respond intellectually (as by the ability to differentiate dinosaurs from another species) to not only human noise (chatter), but also animal noise (cf. language). One of the greatest...
This is a continuation of an effort to review Science 9 August 2013 Vol. 341 no. 6416. V. PubPeer is a nice, interesting, and new website, designed to allow readers to critique papers they’ve read. VI. P647, I read the full research paper, entitled Social Influence Bias: A Randomized Experiment – basically about how knowing about aggregated opinions affects our own, albeit in...
Journal: Reading science literature: I did a once-over browse of the TRENDS journals that have been published so far in this month, and have selected a few that I thought could be interesting. In TRENDS IMMUNOL I found an article that claims to review what’s known about the genetic implications for mechanisms of IBS. This is not something I’ll read now, but appears to be a reference...
