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Fructose Fogs the Brain New Study on Rats Suggests

  • Posted on May 16, 2012 at 12:10 pm

A high intake of fructose impairs the cognitive abilities of rats by interfering with insulin signaling, but omega-3 fatty acids (n-3) reduces those negative effects effects according to a study from the Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology UCLA published in Journal of Physiology.

Although headlines today, including my own, emphasize the study’s findings regarding the impairing effects of high levels of fructose, the study also highlights the importance of n-3 acids, specifically DHA, to cognitive function. The authors of the study conclude: “In terms of public health, these results support the encouraging possibility that healthy diets can attenuate the action of unhealthy diets such that the right combination of foods is crucial for a healthy brain.”

The study, conducted by Rahul Agrawal1 and Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, consisted of four groups of six rats:

  • one group ate an n-3 deficient diet with a fructose solution
  • one group ate an n-3 deficient diet without a fructose solution
  • one group ate an n-3 sufficient diet with a fructose solution
  • one group ate an n-3 sufficient diet without a fructose solution

Each group was tested on a Barnes maze, a standard measure of spatial learning and memory in rodents. Prior to beginning their special diets all of the rats had been trained in the maze for a five days were found to be of equal cognitive condition.

The study found that an n-3 deficient diet hampered the rats’ performance on the maze, and that adding high fructose intake to an n-3 deficient diet made things substantially worse. The rats with an n-3 sufficient diet but a high level of fructose did significantly better than those with a n-3 deficient diet and a high level of fructose, but still did worse than those with a deficient n-3 level but no fructose. Here’s an illustration of the latency in completing the maze (lower is better):

Comparison of latency times in Barnes maze test

The study notes: “Although there was a preference towards fructose drinking in comparison to the food intake, no differences were observed in body weight and total caloric intake, thus suggesting that obesity is not a major contributor to altered memory functions in this model.”

Full Paper: The Journal of Physiology: ‘Metabolic syndrome’ in the brain: deficiency in omega-3 fatty acid exacerbates dysfunctions in insulin receptor signalling and cognition

This is a new study and has yet to be replicated, and so far its implications for human diets is unclear. “We’re not talking about naturally occurring fructose in fruits, which also contain important antioxidants,” Gomez-Pinilla said in a pres release. “We’re concerned about high-fructose corn syrup that is added to manufactured food products as a sweetener and preservative.”

Although studies have found positive benefits in taking DHA supplements (see Wikipedia for an overview), previous study by Nutritional Sciences Division at King’s College London on the DHA levels in vegans and vegetarians concluded that although those who don’t eat meat have significantly lower levels of DHA “There is no evidence of adverse effects on health or cognitive function with lower DHA intake in vegetarians.” However, there are now a number of algae based vegan DHA supplements.

From http://technoccult.net/archives/2012/05/16/fructose-fogs-the-brain-new-study-on-rats-suggests/

A New Theory of Everything

  • Posted on May 12, 2012 at 9:00 am

Technology Review covers Stuart Kauffman‘s work to find a mathematical model for autocatalytic sets, the process by which life may emerge from molecules:

What makes the approach so powerful is that the mathematics does not depend on the nature of chemistry–it is substrate independent. So the building blocks in an autocatalytic set need not be molecules at all but any units that can manipulate other units in the required way.

These units can be complex entities in themselves. “Perhaps it is not too far-fetched to think, for example, of the collection of bacterial species in your gut (several hundreds of them) as one big autocatalytic set,” say Kauffman and co.

And they go even further. They point out that the economy is essentially the process of transforming raw materials into products such as hammers and spades that themselves facilitate further transformation of raw materials and so on. “Perhaps we can also view the economy as an (emergent) autocatalytic set, exhibiting some sort of functional closure,” they speculate.

Could it be that the same idea–the general theory of autocatalytic sets–can help explain the origin of life, the nature of emergence and provide a mathematical foundation for organisation in economics?

Full Story: MIT Technology Review: The Single Theory That Could Explain Emergence, Organisation And The Origin of Life

(via Social Physicist)

I find this very interesting, but don’t get too excited. These sorts of grand unification theories are extremely elusive. I’m also skeptical of these sorts of models which try to find universal rules for all types of systems.

See also:

Social Physics with Kyle Findlay

Guest Post: Some resources for thinking about systems

From http://technoccult.net/archives/2012/05/12/a-new-theory-of-everything/

Deadline Pressures Are Bad for Creativity

  • Posted on May 7, 2012 at 6:00 am

Ever think that deadlines pressures help you find creative solutions to problems? According to a Harvard Business School study, that’s not the case. From an interview with the researcher behind the study:

My research team and I investigated time pressure and creativity as part of a multi-year research program in which we had a large number of organizational employees—238 individuals on 26 project teams in 7 companies in 3 industries—fill out a brief electronic diary every day during the entire course of a creative project they were doing in their jobs. [...]

As the HBR article points out, the results suggest that, overall, very high levels of time pressure should be avoided if you want to foster creativity on a consistent basis. However, if a time crunch is absolutely unavoidable, managers can try to preserve creativity by protecting people from fragmentation of their work and distractions; they should also give people a sense of being “on a mission,” doing something difficult but important. I don’t think, though, that most people can function effectively in that mode for long periods of time without getting burned out.

At the other end of the spectrum, very low time pressure might lull people into inaction; under those conditions, top-management encouragement to be creative—to do something radically new—might stimulate creativity. But, frankly, I don’t think there’s much danger of too little time pressure in most organizations I’ve studied.

Harvard Business School: Time Pressure and Creativity: Why Time is Not on Your Side

(via Alex Pang)

See also: Overtime Kills Productivity)

From http://technoccult.net/archives/2012/05/07/deadline-pressures-are-bad-for-creativity/

Study: Moderate Jogging Increases Longevity

  • Posted on May 6, 2012 at 6:00 am

From a press release regarding an as of yet unpublished study conducted over the past 36 years:

Undertaking regular jogging increases the life expectancy of men by 6.2 years and women by 5.6 years, reveals the latest data from the Copenhagen City Heart study presented at the EuroPRevent2012 meeting.

Reviewing the evidence of whether jogging is healthy or hazardous, Peter Schnohr told delegates that the study’s most recent analysis (unpublished) shows that between one and two-and-a-half hours of jogging per week at a “slow or average” pace delivers optimum benefits for longevity. [...]

The debate over jogging first kicked off in the 1970s when middle aged men took an interest in the past-time. “After a few men died while out on a run, various newspapers suggested that jogging might be too strenuous for ordinary middle aged people,” recalled Schnohr.

European Society of Cardiology: Regular jogging shows dramatic increase in life expectancy

The press release doesn’t talk about how the study controlled for other health factors. Do joggers live longer than swimmers or cyclists? Did the joggers and non-joggers have otherwise similar health habits (diet, tobacco, etc.)?

See also: How and Why Exercise Boosts Your Brain. Plus: How Little Exercise Can You Get By With?

From http://technoccult.net/archives/2012/05/06/study-moderate-jogging-increases-longevity/

Meta-Study Suggests Acupuncture No Better Than Placebo

  • Posted on May 1, 2012 at 7:00 am

I’ve linked before to research on the effectiveness of acupuncture for managing pain. But a recent meta-study published in PAIN suggests that real acupuncture is no more effective than “fake” acupuncture:

The authors observe that recent results from high-quality randomized controlled trials have shown that various forms of acupuncture, including so-called “sham acupuncture,” during which no needles actually penetrate the skin, are equally effective for chronic low back pain, and more effective than standard care. In these and other studies, the effects were attributed to such factors as therapist conviction, patient enthusiasm or the acupuncturist’s communication style. [...]

In an accompanying commentary, Harriet Hall, MD, states her position forcefully: “Importantly, when a treatment is truly effective, studies tend to produce more convincing results as time passes and the weight of evidence accumulates. When a treatment is extensively studied for decades and the evidence continues to be inconsistent, it becomes more and more likely that the treatment is not truly effective. This appears to be the case for acupuncture. In fact, taken as a whole, the published (and scientifically rigorous) evidence leads to the conclusion that acupuncture is no more effective than placebo

ScienceDaily: Acupuncture for Pain No Better Than Placebo — And Not Without Harm, Study Finds

The story also mentions harmful side affects from acupuncture malpractice (though malpractice is a risk in just about any professional service).

From http://technoccult.net/archives/2012/05/01/acupuncture/

Reproducibility Project Aims to Replicate Published Psychology Studies

  • Posted on April 29, 2012 at 11:04 am

Great news:

If you’re a psychologist, the news has to make you a little nervous—particularly if you’re a psychologist who published an article in 2008 in any of these three journals: Psychological Science, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, or the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.

Because, if you did, someone is going to check your work. A group of researchers have already begun what they’ve dubbed the Reproducibility Project, which aims to replicate every study from those three journals for that one year. The project is part of Open Science Framework, a group interested in scientific values, and its stated mission is to “estimate the reproducibility of a sample of studies from the scientific literature.” This is a more polite way of saying “We want to see how much of what gets published turns out to be bunk.”

Chronicle of Higher Education: Is Psychology About to Come Undone?

From http://technoccult.net/archives/2012/04/29/reproducibility-project-aims-to-replicate-published-psychology-studies/

History of the N-Back Training Exercise

  • Posted on April 24, 2012 at 5:19 pm

Dan Hurley wrote a lengthy New York Times piece covering the origins of the n-back training exercise, which purportedly improves fluid intelligence in those who practice it daily:

The study, by a Swedish neuroscientist named Torkel Klingberg, involved just 14 children, all with A.D.H.D. Half participated in computerized tasks designed to strengthen their working memory, while the other half played less challenging computer games. After just five weeks, Klingberg found that those who played the working-memory games fidgeted less and moved about less. More remarkable, they also scored higher on one of the single best measures of fluid intelligence, the Raven’s Progressive Matrices. Improvement in working memory, in other words, transferred to improvement on a task the children weren’t training for. [...]

When Klingberg’s study came out, both Jaeggi and Buschkuehl were doctoral candidates in cognitive psychology at the University of Bern, Switzerland. Since his high-school days as a Swiss national-champion rower, Buschkuehl had been interested in the degree to which skills — physical and mental — could be trained. Intrigued by Klingberg’s suggestion that training working memory could improve fluid intelligence, he showed the paper to Jaeggi, who was studying working memory with a test known as the N-back. “At that time there was pretty much no evidence whatsoever that you can train on one particular task and get transfer to another task that was totally different,” Jaeggi says. That is, while most skills improve with practice, the improvement is generally domain-specific: you don’t get better at Sudoku by doing crosswords. And fluid intelligence was not just another skill; it was the ultimate cognitive ability underlying all mental skills, and supposedly immune from the usual benefits of practice. To find that training on a working-memory task could result in an increase in fluid intelligence would be cognitive psychology’s equivalent of discovering particles traveling faster than light.

New York Times: Can You Make Yourself Smarter?

Hurley mentions one unpublished study that has failed to replicate the n-back results, but otherwise it is still holding up in tests. However, you should always be weary of the decline effect.

But really, the biggest drawback is probably that it’s hard to get people to start or stick with the n-back. I’ve known about for years now and still haven’t done it.

From http://technoccult.net/archives/2012/04/24/history-of-the-n-back-training-exercise/

Overtime Kills Productivity

  • Posted on April 19, 2012 at 11:24 am

I wrote a long article for SiliconAngle on research into overtime and the 40 hour work week. It turns out that in most cases overtime and lack of sleep do more harm than good:

Facebook COO Sharyl Sandberg has kicked up a mini-controversy by admitting to Makers.com that she leaves the office at 5:30PM every day, and has done so for years. In the Valley, where work is a religion, leaving early is heresy.

Earlier this week “Jon” published The 501 Developer Manifesto, a call for developers to spend less time working.These calls for less time at the office are counter balanced by a recent talk by Google executive Marissa Mayer at an 92|Y event. Mayer dismissed the phenomena of “burn out” as resentment and boasted of working 130 hours a week at times.

Research suggests that Sandberg is probably the more productive executive, and those 501ers may be on to something. In a lengthy essay titled “Bring back the 40-hour work week,” Alternet editor Sara Robinson looks at the history of long working hours and reminds us why the 40 hour limit was imposed in the first place: working more than 40 hours a week has been shown to be counterproductive. It’s a relevant conversation for IT workers, who according to ComputerWorld average 71 hours of work per week.

DevOpsAngle: What Research Says About Working Long Hours

From http://technoccult.net/archives/2012/04/19/overtime-kills-productivity/

Is Punning a Disease?

  • Posted on April 18, 2012 at 9:20 am

Last year author Douglas Coupland predicted that within the next 10 years: “We will still be annoyed by people who pun, but we will be able to show them mercy because punning will be revealed to be some sort of connectopathic glitch: The punner, like someone with Tourette’s, has no medical ability not to pun.”

Turns out some researchers already think “bad humor,” including excessive punning, is a disease. MSNBC reports:

Witzelsucht (the Germans just have the best words for everything, don’t they?) is a brain dysfunction that causes all sorts of compulsive silliness: bad jokes, corny puns, wacky behavior. It’s also sometimes called the “joking disease,” and as Taiwanese researchers phrased it in a 2005 report, it’s a “tendency to tell inappropriate and poor jokes.” We’ve covered all sorts of strange disorders of the mind in earlier Body Odd posts: one disorder makes you believe your loved ones are strangers, another convinces you that your hand has taken on a life of its own. Now, we give you a brain disorder that actually causes a poor sense of humor.

MSNBC: No pun intended: ‘Joking disease’ is no joke

From http://technoccult.net/archives/2012/04/18/is-punning-a-disease/

Is Punning a Disease?

  • Posted on April 18, 2012 at 9:20 am

Last year author Douglas Coupland predicted that within the next 10 years: “We will still be annoyed by people who pun, but we will be able to show them mercy because punning will be revealed to be some sort of connectopathic glitch: The punner, like someone with Tourette’s, has no medical ability not to pun.”

Turns out some researchers already think “bad humor,” including excessive punning, is a disease. MSNBC reports:

Witzelsucht (the Germans just have the best words for everything, don’t they?) is a brain dysfunction that causes all sorts of compulsive silliness: bad jokes, corny puns, wacky behavior. It’s also sometimes called the “joking disease,” and as Taiwanese researchers phrased it in a 2005 report, it’s a “tendency to tell inappropriate and poor jokes.” We’ve covered all sorts of strange disorders of the mind in earlier Body Odd posts: one disorder makes you believe your loved ones are strangers, another convinces you that your hand has taken on a life of its own. Now, we give you a brain disorder that actually causes a poor sense of humor.

MSNBC: No pun intended: ‘Joking disease’ is no joke

From http://technoccult.net/archives/2012/04/18/is-punning-a-disease/

For DARPA, What’s After Autonomous Cars? Humanoid Robots

  • Posted on April 5, 2012 at 2:10 pm

Word on the street is that DARPA is following up its autonomous vehicles Grand Challenge with a humanoid robots challenge. According to Travis Deyle:

It seems we’re going to have a new DARPA Grand Challenge! The BAA with formal details should be out very soon, but for now we’re bringing you the unofficial, preliminary details based on notes from Dr. Gill Pratt’s talk at DTRA Industry Day: The new Grand Challenge is for a humanoid robot (with a bias toward bipedal designs) that can be used in rough terrain and for industrial disasters. The robot will be required to maneuver into and drive an open-frame vehicle (eg. tractor), proceed to a building and dismount, ingress through a locked door using a key, traverse a 100 meter rubble-strewn hallway, climb a ladder, locate a leaking pipe and seal it by closing off a nearby valve, and then replace a faulty pump to resume normal operations — all semi-autonomously with just “supervisory teleoperation.” That’s a tough challenge, but it should be fun! It looks like there will be six hardware teams to develop new robots, and twelve software teams using a common platform (PETMAN anyone?!). The most crazy part about all of this: The United States is getting back into the humanoid robot game… in a big way! [...]

The US has largely turned its back on legged humanoid robots over the last two decades (unlike Japan). I actually thought this was a good? thing, particularly for service and home robots, but perhaps the military perspective is altogether different? This is sort of ironic given that Japanese roboticists are (somewhat) refocusing on non-legged robots in the wake of the Fukushima embarrassment. [For those not in the know, Japanese roboticists have been chided by the government for their inability to apply robots in the disaster. Furthermore, there was some embarrassment when iRobot, a foreign company, stepped in to lend robotic assistance. ]

Hizook: New DARPA Grand Challenge for Humanoid Robots — Preliminary (Unofficial) Details

From http://technoccult.net/archives/2012/04/05/for-darpa-whats-after-autonomous-cars-humanoid-robots/

Holding a Gun Makes You Think Others Are Too

  • Posted on March 29, 2012 at 1:06 pm

I wonder if this remains true even if the test subject is just carrying a gun, but not holding it in their hands (ie, if it applies to cops with holstered guns):

The researchers varied the situation in each experiment – such as the having the people in the images sometimes wear ski masks, changing the race of the person in the image or changing the reaction subjects were to have when they perceived the person in the image to hold a gun. Regardless of the situation the observers found themselves in, the study showed that responding with a gun biased observers to report “gun present” more than did responding with a ball. Thus, by virtue of affording the subject the opportunity to use a gun, he or she was more likely to classify objects in a scene as a gun and, as a result, to engage in threat-induced behavior, such as raising a firearm to shoot.

Science Daily: Holding a Gun Makes You Think Others Are Too, New Research Shows

I’ve seen some skeptical comments questioning whether firearm training would reduce this effect. But Scientific American reports in its coverage of this study that 1/4 of all police shooting involve unarmed suspects. Police receive more than a little (though some argue not enough) firearm training.

The AP also covered the story and notes: “Past research suggests that people can be more likely to perceive a poorly seen object as a gun if it’s held by a black person than by a white person, experts say.”

See also: Priming.

From http://technoccult.net/archives/2012/03/29/holding-a-gun-makes-you-think-others-are-too/

Some Bees Are “Thrill Seekers” – Does That Mean Insects Have Personalities?

  • Posted on March 9, 2012 at 3:08 pm

From Wired UK:

The researchers found that thrill-seeking is not limited to humans and other vertebrates. The brains of honeybees that were more likely than others to seek adventure exhibited distinct patterns of gene activity in molecular pathways known to be associated with thrill-seeking in humans.

The findings present a new perspective on honeybee communities, which were thought to be highly-regimented and comprised of a colony of interchangeable workers taking on a few specific roles to serve their queen. [...]

Robinson and his team studies two behaviors that looked like novelty seeking: scouting for new nest sites and scouting for food. When a colony outgrows its living quarters, the swarm must hunt for a new home. Around five percent of the swarm goes hunting for new lodgings. These “nest scouts” are around 3.4 times more likely than their peers to also become food scouts, researchers discovered.

“There is a gold standard for personality research and that is if you show the same tendency in different contexts, then that can be called a personality trait,” Robinson said.

Wired Science: Honeybees May Have Personality

(via James Governor)

Photo by Gilles San Martin

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/PcNU6B_BCqw/

Huge Solar Flare’s Magnetic Storm May Disrupt Satellites, Power Grids

  • Posted on March 7, 2012 at 4:33 pm

solar flare march

A coronal mass ejection is headed for earth:

A massive solar flare that erupted from the sun late Tuesday (March 6) is unleashing one of the most powerful solar storms in more than five years, a solar tempest that may potentially interfere with satellites in orbit and power grids when it reaches Earth. [...]

“When the shock arrives, the expectation is for heightened geomagnetic storm activity and the potential for heightened solar radiation,” Kunches said.

This heightened geomagnetic activity and increase in solar radiation could impact satellites in space and power grids on the ground. Some high-precision GPS users could also be affected, he said.

“There is the potential for induced currents in power grids,” Kunches said. “Power grid operators have all been alerted. It could start to cause some unwanted induced currents.”

Airplanes that fly over the polar caps could also experience communications issues during this time, and some commercial airliners have already taken precautionary actions, Kunches said. Powerful solar storms can also be hazardous to astronauts in space, and NOAA is working close with NASA’s Johnson Space Center to determine if the six residents of the International Space Station need to take shelter in more protected areas of the orbiting laboratory, he added.

Space.com: Huge Solar Flare’s Magnetic Storm May Disrupt Satellites, Power Grids

(via Jon Mitchell)

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/Lr-SuNhJeM8/

The Risks and Rewards of Yoga

  • Posted on March 4, 2012 at 9:21 pm

William J. Broad, author of The Science of Yoga: The Risks and the Rewards, writes for the New York Times:

Hatha originated as a way to speed the Tantric agenda. It used poses, deep breathing and stimulating acts — including intercourse — to hasten rapturous bliss. In time, Tantra and Hatha developed bad reputations. The main charge was that practitioners indulged in sexual debauchery under the pretext of spirituality.

Early in the 20th century, the founders of modern yoga worked hard to remove the Tantric stain. They devised a sanitized discipline that played down the old eroticism for a new emphasis on health and fitness.

B. K. S. Iyengar, the author of “Light on Yoga,” published in 1965, exemplified the change. His book made no mention of Hatha’s Tantric roots and praised the discipline as a panacea that could cure nearly 100 ailments and diseases. And so modern practitioners have embraced a whitewashed simulacrum of Hatha.

New York Times: Yoga and Sex Scandals: No Surprise Here

(via AshleyB)

Broad goes on to discuss some of the studies linking yoga to sexual stimulation and speculates about how that could relate to some of the various guru sex scandals that have plagued yogis for decades.

Broad also recently wrote for the times How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body, an extremely interesting piece that’s made frustrating by its lack of comparisons between the number of injuries in yoga and the number of injuries in other types of strength training. But here’s a taste:

Black has come to believe that “the vast majority of people” should give up yoga altogether. It’s simply too likely to cause harm.

Not just students but celebrated teachers too, Black said, injure themselves in droves because most have underlying physical weaknesses or problems that make serious injury all but inevitable. Instead of doing yoga, “they need to be doing a specific range of motions for articulation, for organ condition,” he said, to strengthen weak parts of the body. “Yoga is for people in good physical condition. Or it can be used therapeutically. It’s controversial to say, but it really shouldn’t be used for a general class.”

(via Dangerous Meme)

See also:

Calling Bullshit on Penn and Teller’s yoga episode

Stripping the Gurus

Guruphiliac

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/WZB632mCkhg/

Welcome to the Acid Age

  • Posted on February 29, 2012 at 11:28 am

From a press release issued by the United States Geological Survey:

Human use of Earth’s natural resources is making the air, oceans, freshwaters, and soils more acidic, according to a U.S. Geological Survey – University of Virginia study available online in the journal, Applied Geochemistry.

This comprehensive review, the first on this topic to date, found the mining and burning of coal, the mining and smelting of metal ores, and the use of nitrogen fertilizer are the major causes of chemical oxidation processes that generate acid in the Earth-surface environment.

These widespread activities have increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, increasing the acidity of oceans; produced acid rain that has increased the acidity of freshwater bodies and soils; produced drainage from mines that has increased the acidity of freshwater streams and groundwater; and added nitrogen to crop lands that has increased the acidity of soils.

The United States Geological Survey: Earth’s Acidity Rising – Major Causes and Shifting Trends Examined to Guide Future Mitigation Efforts

(via Doc Searls)

You can find the study here (I’ve not read it).

A few thoughts, assuming this study, and the description of i, is accurate:

1) I’ve argued for a while that even if global warming isn’t real, or if humans aren’t causing it, most of the tasks associated with trying to slow or stop it are still worth while (see: What If We Created a Better World for Nothing?). This study seems to confirm that.

2) I was skeptical about the value of organic farming, but this essay by Manuel Delanda convinced me that there is value there, if nothing else, in reducing dependence on external sources for fertilizers, therefore creating more resilience for organic farms (but I still think it’s an overhyped, poorly defined term mostly used by large corporations to bilk customers into paying more for food). This study presents another reason to reduce the use of nitrogen fertilizers.

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/ihxLWiL59uE/

Researchers Say Humans Didn’t Wipe Out the Neanderthals

  • Posted on February 28, 2012 at 8:01 am

new xmen neanderthals

I thought the idea that humans killed off the Neanderthals was already losing currency. And now a paper published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution casts more doubt on that particular hypothesis.

i09′s Alasdair Wilkins summarizes:

A team of Spanish and Swedish researchers say that new DNA evidence paints a far grimmer view of the state of Neanderthals. Their analysis suggests the Neanderthal population had crashed 50,000 years ago, and a relatively small band of survivors then recolonized central and western Europe before their final end 20,000 years later. In a statement, Love Dalén of the Swedish Museum of Natural History explained what they discovered:

Instead the paper’s authors suggest climate change had a greater impact on neanderthals than previously thought.

Alasdair Wilkins writes: “This also raises the question of just how humans would have really fared against a Neanderthal population at full strength. I’m sensing some pretty serious alternate history fodder here…”

i09: The extinction of Neanderthals had nothing to do with us

Image from New X-Men

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/dVVmIbgFl7g/

The Myth of the Eight-hour Sleep

  • Posted on February 25, 2012 at 1:58 pm

A 1595 engraving by Jan Saenredam

Roger Ekirch, a historian at Virginia Tech, believes that he’s found evidence that until sometime between the 17th and 19th century Europeans used to sleep in two separate blocks, known as first and second sleep, rather than one eight hour block. According to historical literature he’s uncovered, people would wake up for an hour or two between blocks.

From the BBC:

During this waking period people were quite active. They often got up, went to the toilet or smoked tobacco and some even visited neighbours. Most people stayed in bed, read, wrote and often prayed. Countless prayer manuals from the late 15th Century offered special prayers for the hours in between sleeps.

And these hours weren’t entirely solitary – people often chatted to bed-fellows or had sex.

A doctor’s manual from 16th Century France even advised couples that the best time to conceive was not at the end of a long day’s labour but “after the first sleep”, when “they have more enjoyment” and “do it better”.

BBC: The myth of the eight-hour sleep

(via Hacker News)

See also:

Segmented Sleep

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/qSX4jIhtA3M/

How and Why Exercise Boosts Your Brain. Plus: How Little Exercise Can You Get By With?

  • Posted on February 22, 2012 at 5:18 pm

The New York Times on how exercise raises the level of glycogen available to the brain:

After the single session on the treadmill, the animals were allowed to rest and feed, and then their brain glycogen levels were studied. The food, it appeared, had gone directly to their heads; their brain levels of glycogen not only had been restored to what they had been before the workout, but had soared past that point, increasing by as much as a 60 percent in the frontal cortex and hippocampus and slightly less in other parts of the brain. The astrocytes had “overcompensated,” resulting in a kind of brain carbo-loading.

The levels, however, had dropped back to normal within about 24 hours.

That was not the case, though, if the animals continued to exercise. In those rats that ran for four weeks, the “supercompensation” became the new normal, with their baseline levels of glycogen showing substantial increases compared with the sedentary animals. The increases were especially notable in, again, those portions of the brain critical to learning and memory formation — the cortex and the hippocampus.

New York Times: How Exercise Fuels the Brain

Also:

While many of us wonder just how much exercise we really need in order to gain health and fitness, a group of scientists in Canada are turning that issue on its head and asking, how little exercise do we need?

The emerging and engaging answer appears to be, a lot less than most of us think — provided we’re willing to work a bit. [...]

For years, the American Heart Association and other organizations have recommended that people complete 30 minutes or more of continuous, moderate-intensity exercise, such as a brisk walk, five times a week, for overall good health.

But millions of Americans don’t engage in that much moderate exercise, if they complete any at all. Asked why, a majority of respondents, in survey after survey, say, “I don’t have time.”

Intervals, however, require little time. They are, by definition, short. But whether most people can tolerate intervals, and whether, in turn, intervals provide the same health and fitness benefits as longer, more moderate endurance exercise are issues that haven’t been much investigated.

New York Times: How 1-Minute Intervals Can Improve Your Health

(via socialphysicist)

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/ZQxObTDlJB8/

Dolphins Talk in Their Sleep – In Whale

  • Posted on February 17, 2012 at 5:38 pm

From ABC News:

News has come from France that some captive-born dolphins there have been recorded “talking in their sleep” — and talking in Whale, no less, not Dolphinese.

The scientists involved say this would be the first time that dolphins have been recorded mimicking sounds a significant period of time after hearing them.

ABC News: Dolphins Reported Talking Whale in Their Sleep

(via Cole Tucker)

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/_UHpxgEEFME/

Timeline of the Far Future

  • Posted on February 15, 2012 at 6:18 pm

Wikipedia entry of the day: Timeline of the Far Future. Excerpt:

>50 billion: Assuming both survive the Sun’s expansion, by this time the Earth and the Moon become tidelocked, with each showing only one face to the other.
100 billion: The Universe’s expansion causes all evidence of the Big Bang to disappear beyond the practical observational limit, rendering cosmology impossible.
450 billion: Median point by which the Local Group, the collection of ~47 galaxies to which the Milky Way belongs,[42] will coalesce into a single large galaxy.

(via Substack)

See also: Earth May Exist Forever and Matrioshka Brain.

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/R5xVsX9D8-Q/

Interview with a Designer Drug Designer

  • Posted on February 12, 2012 at 10:55 am

drug structures

Last year Vice interviewed an anonymous chemist/ neuropharmacologist who invented a few new designer drugs similar to ketamine or PCP, most notably methoxetamine which is becoming increasingly popular. Sort of the Alexander Shulgin of disassociatives.

On the medicinal uses of ketamine:

I discovered a long time ago that ketamine and cannabinoids helped my phantom hand. I’m quite convinced these classes work by distorting body image so severely that you phase out triggers for the pain. I have experienced profound proprioceptive distortions after intramuscular PCP injection, as if my whole body were a proportional model of the sensory homunculus. But in a sense, what I feel is not hallucination or a distortion, I actually find dissociatives corrective, that is, they make the phantom disappear. This is not just an idiosyncratic response on my part; there are at least three articles published on the effectiveness of ketamine in treating phantom-limb pain. It’s dished out by British pain-management clinics for just that purpose in the form of a nauseatingly artificial lemon-flavored linctus. Needless to say, the whole lot of it gets squirted up the arse to bypass my taste buds, but even this has its drawbacks… like sticky, sugary bum cheeks!

On being hospitalized after going into a catatonic state while testing 3-MeO-PCP:

And what happened when you were released?

That was the final straw for my partner, and she said she would not sit idly by and watch me self-destruct. When I came home she was gone, Nesbitt was still dead, and all of the arylcyclohexylamines I had been researching had been confiscated and destroyed.

That’s really terrible. Alexander Shulgin always felt that the dissociatives had no use as psychotherapeutic drugs, and John Lilly found that even when you think the effects of ketamine have worn off there is a lingering undercurrent of dissociation that prevents you from reaching baseline.

And despite the fact that I knew all of that, I still ignored what should have been indicators that I was slipping. The arylcyclohexylamines light up too many of the reward systems in the brain, with the dopamine-reuptake inhibition, the NMDA antagonism, and the µ-opioid affinity. They lend themselves to abuse and escape to fantasy. I used to find myself raving about chemicals I had only tried once or twice, saying they were Huxley’s soma or moksha, or Polidamma’s Nepenthe. I’ve come to realize that dissociatives have a really dark side to them that classic serotonergic psychedelics don’t.

Vice: Interview with a Ketamine Chemist

See also: Vice’s interview with Shulgin

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/4wQd50CEiUY/

Forthcoming Conference: Sexual Science 2.0

  • Posted on January 28, 2012 at 4:01 pm

This looks like an interesting conference, November 8-11, 2012 in Tampa, FL:

The Internet and sex go together like Florida and sunshine. Online resources enrich our lives with sexual health and sexuality information, opportunities for relationship formation and sexual connections, sexually explicit materials, and commercial sex products. We can also face unintended consequences from Internet use, including dependence/compulsion, abuse, and inaccurate information and misinformation. However, beyond the Internet, myriad of technologies greatly influence human sexual behavior and sexuality both positively and negatively. Thus, the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality (SSSS) theme is Sexual Science 2.0: Technological innovations in sexuality research. Although submissions from all areas of the scientific study of sexuality are welcomed, we are especially interested in multidisciplinary submissions focused on how technology informs and is a part of the research being conducted by sexual scientists. Potential research topics for plenaries, presentations, and trainings may include:

  • Sex and the Internet (Internet sex-seeking, navigating relationships online)
  • E-dating (finding dates and relationships online)
  • Technology-based sexual health interventions (video, web-based, chatrooms, etc.)
  • Cybersex (sexual interactions mediated by Internet or other electronic technology)
  • Compulsive online sexual behavior
  • Non-monogamy and the Internet
  • Special populations and online sexual communities
  • Sex and new media, social networks, etc. (Web 2.0, Google+, Facebook, Foursquare, etc.)
  • Reproductive and contraceptive technologies
  • Technologies pertaining to pharmaceutical/medical treatments and sexual enhancement
  • Sex toys and other commercial sex products that utilize technology
  • Online sexually explicit material, pornography, and erotica
  • Technologies aiding with sex therapy, sex research, sexuality education, etc.
  • Technologies for measurement and data collection, including new measurement styles
  • Sexual harassment online/cyber-stalking
  • “Sexting” and other innovative ways to communicate about sex
  • Sex and mobile phones/other portable communication technologies (tablet PCs, phones, laptops, etc.)
  • And others…

Sexual Science 2.0 conference

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/AHdj0yIC5LQ/

Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky: State of the World 2012 (Highlights Part 1)

  • Posted on January 5, 2012 at 11:56 am

It’s that time of year again. Some good stuff this year. Sterling starts off talking about what he sees as the key drivers of global change:

I’ve tended to emphasize climate change, urbanization and demographics. Those are big and significant changes in the world, but also pretty easy to measure and quantify. That’s like hunting for futurity under the street-lights where it’s nice and bright.

So I often tell people that the mid-century will be about “old people in big cities who are afraid of the sky.” I think that’s a pretty useful, common-sense, plausible assessment. You may not hear it said much, but it’s how things are turning out.

Sterling then runs through the futurism of various localities, including fringe groups, including:

Chemtrails. These guys are pitiable loons, but they’re interesting harbingers of a future when even scientific illiterates are deathly afraid of the sky. It’s interesting that we have cults of people who walk outside and read the sky like a teacup. I’ve got a soft spot for chemtrail people, they’re really just sort of cool, and much more interesting than UFO cultists, who are all basically Christians. Jesus is always the number one Saucer Brother in UFO contactee cults. It’s incredible how little imagination the saucer people have.

Sterling’s bit on the mud machine of Italy could apply almost equally in the U.S:

The “Mud Machine.” This is the Berlusconi media empire, which engages in the unique practice of suppressing dissent by suggesting that everybody in Italy equally useless and crooked, so why even bother. After all, everybody in Italy would have orgies involving underage illegal-alien Moslem prostitutes if they had the chance, so why get all worked up; mind your own business. The Mud Machine works because Italians enjoy being cynical about themselves. Nobody wants to be seen as the chump, so everybody ends up being victimized.

Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky: State of the World 2012

For an important angle on urbanization check out this Grist interview with professor of urbanism Witold Rybczynski.

Also, the Grinders are running their own state of the world style conversation. You can submit questions for them on Formspring.

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/v5sBbvVtZhU/

The Man Who Told the Internet He’d Come from the Future

  • Posted on December 28, 2011 at 4:03 pm

john titor insignia The Man Who Told the Internet He’d Come from the Future

Mike Lynch, a private detective hired for an Italian documentary on Titor, suggests that Haber’s brother, John Rick Haber, is Titor. John Rick Haber is a computer scientist who would have known about the IBM 5100 and Unix 2038 problem, with a post office box application later linking John Rick Haber with the John Titor Foundation. Lynch believes John Rick Haber to have the computer knowledge and wit to perpetrate the Titor hoax.

i09: The Man Who Told the Internet He’d Come from the Future

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/ndQ5KV38nn0/

Is Getting Paid to Do What You Love All It’s Cracked Up to Be?

  • Posted on December 27, 2011 at 3:48 pm

drawing on stairs Is Getting Paid to Do What You Love All Its Cracked Up to Be?

David McRaney writes:

The Misconception: There is nothing better in the world than getting paid to do what you love.

The Truth: Getting paid for doing what you already enjoy will sometimes cause your love for the task to wane because you attribute your motivation as coming from the reward, not your internal feelings.

If you pay people to complete puzzles instead of paying them for being smart, they lose interest in the game. If you pay children to draw, fun becomes work. Payment on top of compliments and other praise and feeling good about personal achievement are powerful motivators, but only if they are unexpected. Only then can you continue to tell the story that keeps you going; only then can you still explain your motivation as coming from within.

Consider the story you tell yourself about why you do what you do for a living. How vulnerable is that tale to these effects?

You Are Not So Smart: The Overjustification Effect

Interesting stuff. I wonder if this is part of why self-employed people are happier even though self-employment is far more stressful than working for hire?

(Photo by Bo Nielsen)

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/7T357xDh7Hc/

In Case You Missed It Last Week: LHC Reports Discovery of Its First New Particle

  • Posted on December 26, 2011 at 4:58 pm

largehadroncollider 300x175 In Case You Missed It Last Week: LHC Reports Discovery of Its First New Particle

The Chi_b (3P) is a more excited state of Chi particles already seen in previous collision experiments, explained Prof Roger Jones, who works on the Atlas detector at the LHC.

“The new particle is made up of a ‘beauty quark’ and a ‘beauty anti-quark’, which are then bound together,” he told BBC News.

“People have thought this more excited state should exist for years but nobody has managed to see it until now.

“It’s also interesting for what it tells us about the forces that hold the quark and the anti-quark together – the strong nuclear force. And that’s the same force that holds, for instance, the atomic nucleus together with its protons and the neutrons.”

BBC: LHC reports discovery of its first new particle

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/49cCDzQjoRQ/

Edge 2011: What Scientific Concept Would Improve Everybody’s Cognitive Toolkit?

  • Posted on December 13, 2011 at 6:28 pm

the thinker Edge 2011: What Scientific Concept Would Improve Everybodys Cognitive Toolkit?

This year’s Edge question was: “What scientific concept would improve everybody’s cognitive toolkit?” There are some good but somewhat boring answers, like Susan Blackmore’s or Kevin Kelly’s. But here are some of the more interesting ones I found:

Stewart Brand: Microbes Run the World

Nicholas Carr: Cognitive Load

Aubrey de Grey: A Sense Of Proportion About Fear Of The Unknown

Jonah Lehrer: Control Your Spotlight

Evgeny Morozov: Einstellung Effect

Jay Rosen: Wicked Problems

Douglas Rushkoff: Technologies Have Biases

Nassim Taleb: Antifragility — or— The Property Of Disorder-Loving Systems

I would especially recommend reading both Carr’s and Lehrer’s.

There are a ton of these, so I haven’t read them all, so there could be some gems out there I missed. What are your favorites?

If I’d been asked, I’d have chosen one of the following:

1. The idea of systematic ideology – that people choose what to believe based on ideology, not reason (an idea also supported by research indicating that facts can actually backfire when trying to change someone’s mind). Systematic ideology, named by George Walford, was proposed in 1947 by Harold Walsby. The idea is now being pursued by the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School, though they don’t use the term and may not be aware of Walsby’s and Walford’s work.

2. The Decline Effect.

Photo by Andrew Horne

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/y58GGrS7fQc/

Astronomers Find Earth-like Planet 600 Light Years Away

  • Posted on December 6, 2011 at 4:29 pm

kepler artist conception Astronomers Find Earth like Planet 600 Light Years Away

The BBC reports:

The planet lies about 15% closer to its star than the Earth is to the Sun
Astronomers have confirmed the existence of an Earth-like planet in the “habitable zone” around a star not unlike our own.

The planet, Kepler 22-b, lies about 600 light-years away and is about 2.4 times the size of Earth, and has a temperature of about 22C.

It is the closest confirmed planet yet to one like ours – an “Earth 2.0″.

However, the team does not yet know if Kepler 22-b is made mostly of rock, gas or liquid.

BBC: Kepler 22-b: Earth-like planet confirmed

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/i_HDH0oH3mE/

Astronomers Find Earth-like Planet 600 Light Years Away

  • Posted on December 6, 2011 at 4:29 pm

kepler artist conception Astronomers Find Earth like Planet 600 Light Years Away

The planet lies about 15% closer to its star than the Earth is to the Sun
Astronomers have confirmed the existence of an Earth-like planet in the “habitable zone” around a star not unlike our own.

The planet, Kepler 22-b, lies about 600 light-years away and is about 2.4 times the size of Earth, and has a temperature of about 22C.

It is the closest confirmed planet yet to one like ours – an “Earth 2.0″.

However, the team does not yet know if Kepler 22-b is made mostly of rock, gas or liquid.

BBC: Kepler 22-b: Earth-like planet confirmed

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/i_HDH0oH3mE/

The Neuroscience of Video Games, a Review of the Literature

  • Posted on November 23, 2011 at 8:49 pm

gamer 01 The Neuroscience of Video Games, a Review of the Literature

John Walker takes a look at the journal Nature‘s recent Brains On Video Games collection, which includes both possible negative and possible positive outcomes of video game play.

The bad news: much of the positive cognitive gains from video gaming are non-transferable, and gaming may increase both aggression and the symptoms of ADHD. The good news: it doesn’t sound like that should be a problem for people without existing aggressive tendencies or ADHD.

My take-away: if you like playing games, keep playing them. If you don’t, there’s probably not much benefit in starting.

Rock, Paper Shotgun: Nature’s Neuroscientific Review Of Games

See also:

Video Games Boost Brain Power, Multitasking Skills

Video Games and Spatial Cognition (PDF)

Video Gamers Are Better Lucid Dreamers?

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/LULnM8aom7Q/

The Neuroscience of Video Games, a Review of the Literature

  • Posted on November 23, 2011 at 8:49 pm

gamer 01 The Neuroscience of Video Games, a Review of the Literature

John Walker takes a look at the journal Nature‘s recent Brains On Video Games collection, which includes both possible negative and possible positive outcomes of video game play.

The bad news: much of the positive cognitive gains from video gaming are non-transferable, and gaming may increase both aggression and the symptoms of ADHD. The good news: it doesn’t sound like that should be a problem for people without existing aggressive tendencies or ADHD.

My take-away: if you like playing games, keep playing them. If you don’t, there’s probably not much benefit in starting.

Rock, Paper Shotgun: Nature’s Neuroscientific Review Of Games

See also:

Video Games Boost Brain Power, Multitasking Skills

Video Games and Spatial Cognition (PDF)

Video Gamers Are Better Lucid Dreamers?

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/LULnM8aom7Q/