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POPSDo we get wiser with age? "Is age a prerequisite for wisdom, though? We all know a few elderly people who lack wisdom, while we may know few young people that have wisdom in spades. People certainly aren't always at peak brainpower in old age; after all, when wrinkles begin appearing on the face, it usually means that wrinkles have started disappearing on the brain. The brain shrinks slightly with age, and aging leads to a normal decline in cognitive function that may eventually bloom into dementias such as Alzheimer's disease".
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POPSFascist America in 10 Easy Steps As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such a twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air-however slight-lest we become unwilling victims of the darkness. ~Justice William O. Douglas~
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POPSThe Possibility of Impossible cultures Heuser suggests that only humans have evolved four computational capacities, constituting a phylogenetic mind gap between humans and other animals. An important perspective, go read all of it
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POPSSpeed Up Firefox with this Cool Freeware Hey, here's some freeware I found surfing the web for Windows. Unfortunately I own a mac, but oh well. To get to this page from www.totalidea.com, go to the Products section and look near the bottom for FireTune.
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POPSThinking ahead: Bacteria anticipate coming changes in their environment To test this idea, the researchers exposed a population of E. coli to different temperatures and oxygen changes, and measured the gene responses in each case. The results were striking: An increase in temperature had nearly the same effect on the bacterium's genes as a decrease in oxygen level. Indeed, upon transition to a higher temperature, many of the genes essential for aerobic respiration were practically turned off. To prove that this is not just genetic coincidence, the researchers then grew the bacteria in a biologically flipped environment where oxygen levels rose following an increase in temperature. Remarkably, within a few hundred generations the bugs partially adapted to this new regime, and no longer turned off the genes for aerobic respiration when the temperature rose.
24
POPSBorderline Personality Disorder "...What defines borderline personality disorder--and makes it so explosive--is the sufferers' inability to calibrate their feelings and behavior. When faced with an event that makes them depressed or angry, they often become inconsolable or enraged. Such problems may be exacerbated by impulsive behaviors: overeating or substance abuse; suicide attempts; intentional self-injury. (The methods of self-harm that borderlines choose can be gruesomely creative. One psychologist told me of a woman who used fingernail clippers to pull off slivers of her skin.""
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POPSAfter Image, try it at home :) Cool tricks... Or perhaps it reveals a deeper sight to the way the nervous system functions; (A system with internal procedure, that correlates to the world outside, but certainly does not create an absolute representation of it...) an interesting experiment a la Maturana and Varela.
22
POPSComputer Gender Here are some reason to believe computer a male or a female...... heyyy.... take it easy
22
POPSHuman Cell Electric Fields Are As Powerful as Lightning Bolts This discovery is a surprising twist for cell researchers. Scientists don't know what causes these incredibly strong fields or why they' are there. But now using new nanotools, such as voltage-sensitive dyes, they can start to measure them at least. Researchers believe they may be able to learn more about disease states, such as cancer, by studying these minute, but powerful electric fields.
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POPSThe Role of Light on Human Health Rea envisions "real-time light prescriptions" to help people receive or avoid light at the appropriate times. Simple measures to control when and how much circadian light we receive could help nightshift workers stay alert on the job and sleep more effectively during the day, help cure jet lag, decrease depression, and generally help everyone get a proper night's sleep. The ability to modify circadian rhythm could potentially mitigate the negative health effects that some researchers believe are brought on by disruptions to the light-dark cycle. Recent studies have found a link between health and changes in the natural circadian rhythm. The Journal of the National Cancer Institute published a series of articles, for example, that showed night shift workers had a higher incidence of breast cancer; and, last year, the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer cited night work as a potential breast cancer risk factor.
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POPSThe Wonders of Blood Blood is the one tissue that comes into contact with every other tissue of the body, and it is through blood that our disparate parts communicate, through blood that our organs cooperate. Without a circulatory system, there would be no internal civilization, no means of ensuring orderly devotion to the common cause that is us. “It’s an enormous communications network,” Dr. Schafer said — the original cellphone system, if you will, 100 trillion users strong. Blood can also be thought of as a private ocean, a recapitulation of what life was like for all the years we spent drifting as microscopic, single-celled organisms, “taking up nutrients from sea water and then eliminating waste products back into sea water,” Dr. Schafer said. Not only is blood mostly water, but the watery portion of blood, the plasma, has a concentration of salt and other ions that is remarkably similar to sea water. Keep reading.
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POPSStephen Hawking: "Humans Have Entered a New Stage of Evolution" We have entered a new phase of evolution. "At first, evolution proceeded by natural selection, from random mutations. This Darwinian phase, lasted about three and a half billion years, and produced us, beings who developed language, to exchange information." But what distinguishes us from our cave man ancestors is the knowledge that we have accumulated over the last ten thousand years, and particularly, Hawking points out, over the last three hundred.
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POPSBan The Plastic Bag Bangladesh slapped an outright ban on all polythene bags in 2002 after they were found to have been the main culprit during the 1988 and 1998 floods that submerged two-thirds of the country. Discarded bags had choked the country's drainage systems. Nylon fishing nets, fishing line, bags, 6-pack rings etc, kill hundreds of thousands of animals every year and will continue to do so for hundreds, if not thousands of years to come. Horrible, panicked and painful deaths by drowning, suffocation or internal damage. If Bangladesh can ban the plastic bag and get by, surely so could we!
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POPSSocial Interactions Can Alter Gene Expression In Brain, And Vice Versa A critical insight came in 1992, in a study of songbirds led by David Clayton. He and his colleagues found that expression of a specific gene increases in the forebrain of a zebra finch or canary just after it hears a new song from a male of the same species. This gene, egr1, codes for a protein that itself regulates the expression of other genes.
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