The Daily Sabbatical
Music, Books, and Assorted Maunderings

Today is Charles Darwin's 200th birthday.  The theory of evolution by natural selection might be the single most fertile and elegant scientific hypothesis of all time.  To celebrate the bicentennial, I've been reading the two volume biography by Janet Browne, Voyaging and The… Read More

Somehow this story from the NYT tickled me.  For about a century, because of stop motion photography, it has been known that animals walk starting with the forward motion of their left hind leg, followed by left fore, then right hind, then right foreleg.  (I did not know this, and I have questions about starting on the left--do they always do that?  But nevermind.)  Turns out that in a large selection (around 50%) of cartoons, toys, artistic depictions, and even museum exhibits, the positioning of the legs is wrong.  While I don't blame the creator of Marmaduke, the Finnish… Read More

According to The USA Today:

A new study finds that certain brain functions of some low-income 9- and 10-year-olds pale in comparison with those of wealthy children and that the difference is almost equivalent to the damage from a stroke.

This from a study to be published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience this year.  This raises some important questions in political philosophy, and should cause us to seriously question certain free market conceptions of justice that presume… Read More

In a remarkable use of fMRI technology, researchers in Japan have been able to use brain imaging to map blood flow changes in the brain as subjects viewed images.  After "learning" how blood flow changed when subjects viewed one set of images (simple characters, for example) a computer was able to reconstruct what the subjects were looking at when they were shown new images. 
Bad ass.
See more at Pinktentacle.com.
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An interesting study recently showed that while alcohol reduced the competence of individuals performing tasks requiring vigilance (counting the the's in an article), those negative effects were mitigated when the drunks were surrounded by other drunks.  One suspects that the presence of the others raised their awareness that they were incapacitated, triggering compensatory attention.  Interesting result.Read More

With the reconstruction of wooly mamoth DNA, scientists are talking about how they could modify the DNA in an elephant egg so that a mammoth hatched.  (That will be a surprised momma!)  A similar trick might be possible when the DNA of Neanderthals is reconstructed, which is just around the corner.  Should we do that?  Is it ethically permissable?
I say no, for the simple reason that it is entirely too likely that it would be elected president. Or that it would at least be too convenient a GOP vice… Read More

In this fun little paper, Jason Brown, a professor of Mathematics and Statistics at Dalhousie University, uses Fourier Transforms to figure out what notes are being played in that first chord of A Hard Day's Night.  Turns out, common transcriptions must be wrong--and a piano is involved.
Even math is more fun in Canada!
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Hypnosis is a strange phenomenon, bound to invite skepticism.  Now, with technologies such as fMRIs, some of that skepticism can be assuaged.  A recent study by a group at the Weizmann Institute in Israel confirms the fact that at least in the case of post-hypnotic amnesia ("PHA," in which subjects are hypnotised to forget something until a cancelling command is uttered) pre-conscious brain behavior is significantly modified.
In the study, a group of subjects susceptible to this hypnotism were asked to watch a movie after… Read More

From Scientific American

When we feel like we don't have command of our own fate, our brains often invent patterns that offer a sense of self-control. Some folks knock on wood or step over cracks in the sidewalk. Scientists call this illusory pattern perception. Work published in the October 3rd issue of the journal Science offers a look inside our heads as they try to make us feel less helpless.

Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin devised six experiments to test students' reactions to different situations… Read More

An interesting article in the new Scientific American discusses the possible implications of quantum gravity theory for Cosmology.   In my limited understanding, quantum gravity theory was developed as an alternative to string theory in an attempt to reconcile Einsteins theory of general relativity with quantum theory--both of which are well confirmed but seem to conflict.  One of the surprising predictions of quantum gravity theory is that space-time is atomistic--not continuous, as one… Read More