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POPSEinstein, Newton displayed autistic traits "Psychiatry tends to focus almost exclusively on the negative side of different forms of mental illness," Fitzgerald said in statement. "I want to show that psychiatric disorders can also have positive dimensions."
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POPSThink Animals Don't Think Like Us? Think Again "By implication, a vast world of animal cognition exists out there, not just in African Grey parrots but in other creatures, too. It is a world largely untapped by science. Clearly, animals know more than we think, and think a great deal more than we know. That, essentially, was what Alex (and a growing number of research projects) taught us. He taught us that our vanity had blinded us to the true nature of minds, animal and human; that so much more is to be learned about animal minds than received doctrine allowed. No wonder Alex and I faced so much flak!" From Alex & Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Discovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence—and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process, by Irene Pepperberg.
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POPSInside the baby mind One of the most surprising implications of this new research concerns baby consciousness, or what babies actually experience as they interact with the outside world. While scientists and doctors have traditionally assumed that babies are much less conscious than adults - this is why, until the 1970s, many infants underwent surgery without anesthesia - that view is being overturned.
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POPSA world springs to life on an urban wall While the onslaught of figures, episodes and colors is at first overwhelming, a casual left-to-right reading suggests some narrative possibilities. Basically what we have here is a tale of escape and growth that begins in darkness and — after taking a few tips from the Bible, Hieronymus Bosch and M. C. Escher — ends in a stunning vortex of brilliant color.
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POPSMirror-touch people who feel a touch on their own body when seeing another person being touched
Because of the study's small size -- the researchers tested just ten synesthetes, though in a sense the number is incredible, as only one such case was previously documented -- the findings are primarily important in terms of physiology. Mirror system activity was observed in the lone earlier synesthete, and the current findings back up the association between the feelings and the system: if the same system was responsible for the sensation, it would ostensibly be difficult to distinguish between real and mirror touches. The researchers also noted that mirror synesthetes had higher levels of empathy than a control group in the study, though connecting such findings to a general empathic mechanism requires, at this stage in the research, a leap of faith. But it's probably not too soon to say, as one of the study's authors did, that "This may be an exaggeration of a brain mechanism that we all possess to some degree."
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POPSThe Brain Unmasked Diffusion spectrum imaging (DSI) is one of these twists. It uses magnetic resonance signals to track the movement of water molecules in the brain: water diffuses along the length of neural wires, called axons. Scientists can use these diffusion measurements to map the wires, creating a detailed blueprint of the brain's connectivity.
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POPSA Test of the Copernican Principle Disproving the Copernican Principle would amount to a a Copernican revolution on its own account :-) Also, certain aspects of general relativity would need a profound review. Fortunately it seems Copernicus was right after all. Or was he?
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POPSNew You By 2018 Therapeutic: Cloning for tissue replacement is already happening, as stem cells have successfully grown new heart tissues in patients. Researchers believe replacing muscle, bone, skin; even neurons, teeth, eyes, and other organs could be in beginning stages by 2018. Augmentation: Procedures expected to be in place by as early as 2015 include improved memory recall, simultaneous language translation, long range and microscopic vision on demand, wide spectrum hearing, distinctive voice projection, and stronger muscles. And by mid-to-late-2020s, “nanobots” monitoring each of our cells could keep us ageless and forever healthy. Designed Evolution: These could include memory, intelligence, speed, agility, and other behavioral and physical attributes. Eliminating undesired genes that might pre-dispose a child to cancer, heart disease or alcoholism could be possible by about 2015.
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POPSRobot Playmates for children with autism An interesting application. The consistency of the robot, without its need for rewards, attention (and everything else that humans demand :)), may make it the best therapist in such cases; trustful attentive and always available; an ideal companion is it not ;-).
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POPSRare words 'mutate' faster than common ones. I suppose if people don't use a word it is forgotten, or badly remembered. There was a great shift in language in Britain after the Black Plague. Labor became expensive and people who once were 'common folk' acquired money, land, and assumed positions of power. French that was spoken in the royal court, and was considered the 'official' language. This gave us many words describing end products, like beef, veal, and bacon, while words like calf,cow,and pig, which were in common use and concerned things that involved everyday farmers, and workers, The two dialects combining were a significant element in the evolution of the English language, because of the way it changed the frequency of word use.
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POPSRare "Rainbow" Spotted Over Idaho Known in the weather world as a circumhorizontal arc, this rare sight was caught on film on June 3 as it hung over northern Idaho near the Washington State border.
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POPSArtists Using the Full Spectrum "I’m excited by artists who are finding ways to adapt the rainbow spectrum in their work.The color field (or chromatic abstractionist) artists of the 50’s often painted with bold swaths of color but rarely used as many together as the featured artists of this article. In the 60’s, psychedelic art used colors and patterns together too. The modern artists I’ll cover in this post use color in an undiluted, anything but soft array of graphic lines and shapes resulting in work that is both vivid and alluring. Their work circumvents the boundaries their predecessors put in place to arrive at a new and bold take on prior styles."
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POPSSleep no escape from wired world. I first thought the title referred to the electrical interference from electronic devices interfering with sleep but the story is about a bed that monitors sleeping patterns and makes adjustments according to the results. It does include connection to the internet any is the chance of getting little sleep through watching movies or just being online all night.
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POPSThis is no fantasy or trick of the light - Upside down rainbow Upside down rainbow - The circumzenithal arc or cicumzenith arc (CZA), also called the Bravais' arc, is an optical phenomenon similar in appearance to a rainbow and arising from refraction of sunlight through non-terminated, horizontally-oriented ice crystals in certain clouds. It takes the shape of one-quarter of a circle centered at the zenith and parallel to the horizon, on the same side as the sun. Its colors run from blue near the zenith to red towards the horizon; it is one of the brightest and most colorful halos" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumzenithal_arc
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POPSHow do we replace a friend? Some days ago, a friend of mine died. Tina was very sick, since many years, but so calm and quite that to stay near her was like to stay under a tree in a summer day. There is no way to replace a friend like her. I'm sad, but today I want to say that I'm grateful I met her.
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POPSThe color of plants on other worlds What color will alien plants be? The question matters scientifically because the surface color of a planet can reveal whether anything lives there—specifically, whether organisms collect energy from the parent star by the process of photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is adapted to the spectrum of light that reaches organisms. This spectrum is the result of the parent star’s radiation spectrum, combined with the filtering effects of the planet’s atmosphere and, for aquatic creatures, of liquid water. Light of any color from deep violet through the near-infrared could power photosynthesis. Around stars hotter and bluer than our sun, plants would tend to absorb blue light and could look green to yellow to red. Around cooler stars such as red dwarfs, planets receive less visible light, so plants might try to absorb as much of it as possible, making them look black.<<
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POPSWireless at Fiber Speeds Richard Ridgway, a senior researcher at Battelle, says that the technique could be used to send huge files across college campuses, to quickly set up emergency networks in a disaster, and even to stream uncompressed high-definition video from a computer or set-top box to a display.
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POPSExtraordinary face recognition ability this new research shows that others excel in face recognition, indicating that the trait could be on a spectrum, with prosopagnosics on the low end and super-recognizers at the high end
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