Reader blogs
What is reality?
You may say, ‘All that is real, is reality.’ And, by the word ‘real’, I understand, all that can be seen, felt or heard. So, for example, if I see a flower in front of me, then it is obviously real. No one can seriously doubt that fact! No one can seriously say that the flower is not ‘real’.
Really?
NASA's Kepler Telescope asks a question: Can we identify Earth-like planets with atmospheres suitable for life?
The LHC (Large Hadron Collider) asks: Can we find remnants of a particle we think existed milliseconds after the creation of our universe that forced an imbalance of matter over anti-matter that is responsible for the universe existing as we know it.
Tietze's syndrome--a painful disorder of the costal cartilage--can mimic a heart attack, pulmonary blood clots, or even psychological stress. Diagnosing the disorder is often a matter of ruling out what disorders a patient doesn't have, and reaching a diagnosis by exclusion.
People who have been following this blog know that birth order affects who you are friends with and who you marry. Here's some comprehensive recent evidence on race. It probably won't come as a surprise, but it's nice to have numbers.
Where do research participants come from?
I am in the process of revamping the Internet laboratory, as I'm trying to increase the number of participants. Some very successful websites recruit ~500/day. I have been averaging about 30/day -- still respectable, but it limits what I can do.
Not long ago, a Canadian research team discovered something surprising: In the recipe for great sex, orgasm is optional. Said the head researcher, "There is plenty of evidence that most people believe that the secret to sexual fulfillment is technical, that it's about better manual and oral stimulation techniques." In fact, "You could have terrible sex with orgasms and despite orgasms, but you could have optimal sexuality without orgasm."
So where did humans get the idea that sex must always lead to orgasm?
As a fan of professional science, I was thrilled to hear that the Nobel Peace Prize was offered to President Obama, and not just because I want to hear someone yell "you lie!" during his speech in Oslo before getting tazed by agents of the King. My hope is that the bold initiative taken by the Peace Prize committee will finally extend to all the other Nobel categories.
The most recent findings from an independent researcher can be reviewed here:
http://www.carnicom.com/blood2.htm
There are documented independent findings posted at this link, as well:
http://www.carnicom.com/conright.htm
Why is it CDC won't identify these unusual components and why won't the EPA identify the filament?????
Most denizens of the interwebs (at least of this corner of the interwebs) will have heard the announcement that the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine will be given to Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and Jack Szostak for their work on telomeres - the structures found at the ends of human chromosomes. You may already have read a little about the research behind it (if not, the NobelPrize.org press release is a very good place to start) so I’ll try to keep the background as short as possible. What I would like to do here is to explain the assertions that “cancer research has also benefited from the Nobel-winning trio's work”. If you haven't already done so, I also recommend reading "Understanding Cancer Part 1"
I'm revamping the Web-based lab. Can you help?
Ever since I interviewed members of the Alvarez team (who developed the asteroid impact theory of the great Cretaceous/Tertiary extinction) and Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker (of the 1994 "Great Comet Crash" fame) for a 1997 young adult book called To the Young Scientist, I've been following news of comet and asteroid impact events closely.
I haven't lost any sleep over the possibility of a collision with the Earth orbit-crossing asteroid Apophis, but it certainly couldn't be ruled out in my lifetime (though I'd be quite old by 2036).
Here's a NASA news release with good news about that asteroid. Note that superstitious people might have been worried at one time about an impact on a certain Friday the thirteenth in 2029.
Following the release are specific links to a few of my books for children and teens.
I've been endlessly scoring digit-symbol coding protocols (fun...), a subtest of the WAIS-IV, for the past few weeks at my new neuropsych externship so the following article seems particularly relevant. In a recent study by Cantlon and colleagues published in the latest Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, they decided to measure the brain activity of 6-7 year-old children during numerical comparison tasks using fMRI
Dear Bloggers
Subject: New quake protection By Leon Raychman
I am Israeli structural engineer, before in the States with Severud Perone Assoc.N.Y, N.Y
In 1999 I have received American Patent # 5946865 “Dynamic building support structure.” and also Israeli patent.
There is an incredible and talented lady named Jan Smith who has created a phenomenal site to document everything she has uncovered about Morgellons. I am listing her site link here as well as the photograph link. The photos are worth a million words! My heartfelt gratitude and awe for what this wonderful woman has accomplished.
Termed by Fuster in 2006, the construct was created to solve the problematic yet popular view that the human brain is made up of discrete cortical domains dedicated exclusively to visual discrimination, language, spatial attention, face recognition, motor programming, memory retrieval, and working memory.
