Let us take a moment, while contemplating the sleek engineering of the quiet engine sonic inlet, to consider that tie. That man is not a model. He is, in all likelihood, an engineer. An actual rocket scientist. There are no horn-rim glasses, no pocket protectors and neither white coat nor jumpsuit. Perhaps… and I can find no higher resolution [...]]]>

Let us take a moment, while contemplating the sleek engineering of the quiet engine sonic inlet, to consider that tie. That man is not a model. He is, in all likelihood, an engineer. An actual rocket scientist. There are no horn-rim glasses, no pocket protectors and neither white coat nor jumpsuit. Perhaps… and I can find no higher resolution than the NASA Image Library’s photo… that white bow-tie shape is, in fact, ear protection, removed and placed casually around the scientist’s neck. Perhaps.

But one can dream. One can dream of aeronautic laboratories filled with men in corduroy blazers, oxblood Chelsea boots and maroon pants. And, yes, ties. White ties. Ties wide enough to shake the stars from their heavens.

Professor David Nutt, from the Department of Medicine at Imperial College London, the senior author of both studies, said: “Psychedelics are thought of as ‘mind-expanding’ drugs so it has commonly been assumed that they work by increasing brain activity, but surprisingly, we [...]]]> Imperial College, London, is learning what makes psilocybin mushrooms *trippy* – and what that means for our brains:

Professor David Nutt, from the Department of Medicine at Imperial College London, the senior author of both studies, said: “Psychedelics are thought of as ‘mind-expanding’ drugs so it has commonly been assumed that they work by increasing brain activity, but surprisingly, we found that psilocybin actually caused activity to decrease in areas that have the densest connections with other areas. These hubs constrain our experience of the world and keep it orderly. We now know that deactivating these regions leads to a state in which the world is experienced as strange.”
…
The function of these areas, the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), is the subject of debate among neuroscientists, but the PCC is proposed to have a role in consciousness and self-identity. The mPFC is known to be hyperactive in depression, so psilocybin’s action on this area could be responsible for some antidepressant effects that have been reported. Similarly, psilocybin reduced blood flow in the hypothalamus, where blood flow is increased during cluster headaches, perhaps explaining why some sufferers have said symptoms improved under psilocybin.

After drilling for two decades through more than two miles of antarctic ice, Russian scientists are on the verge of entering a vast, [...]]]> Who knows what dim, multiform entities could yet lurk for silent millennia beneath that hostile, white blanket of impervious snow and unrelenting wind? Washington Post is almost ready to discover what ancient secrets lie in Lake Vostok?:

After drilling for two decades through more than two miles of antarctic ice, Russian scientists are on the verge of entering a vast, dark lake that hasn’t been touched by light for more than 20?million years.

Scientists are enormously excited about what life-forms might be found there but are equally worried about contaminating the lake with drilling fluids and bacteria, and the potentially explosive “de-gassing” of a body of water that has especially high concentrations of oxygen and nitrogen.

…

“This is a huge moment for science and exploration, breaking through to this enormous lake that we didn’t even know existed until the 1990s,” said John Priscu, a researcher at Montana State University who has long been involved in antarctic research, including a study of Vostok ice cores.

“If it goes well, a breakthrough opens up a whole new chapter in our understanding of our planet and possibly moons in our solar system and planets far beyond,” he said. “If it doesn’t go well, it casts a pall over the whole effort to explore this wet underside of Antarctica.”

…

[Robin Bell, of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University,] who has studied Vostok using satellite imaging and other above-surface instruments, said the lake is part of a complex system in which ice sheets bring in meltwater at their bottoms and later carry refrozen water elsewhere. She said that although the lake has not “felt the wind” in 20?million to 30?million years, the water in it is not as ancient — in the 100,000s to low millions of years old. The only ancient water present, she said, is probably in the sediment at the bottom.

…[T]his is “the first study to show that pythons are having impacts on prey populations—and unfortunately those impacts appear to be pretty dramatic,” said study leader Michael Dorcas, a herpetologist at Davidson College in North [...]]]> National Geographic is watching South Florida with a growing sense of unease over the alien monsters eating any creature who wanders into the Everglades:

…[T]his is “the first study to show that pythons are having impacts on prey populations—and unfortunately those impacts appear to be pretty dramatic,” said study leader Michael Dorcas, a herpetologist at Davidson College in North Carolina.

“We started the study after we realized, Man, we’re not seeing a lot of these animals around anymore,” Dorcas said.

But “when we did the calculations, we were pretty astonished.”

…

For the study, Dorcas and colleagues conducted nighttime surveys of live and dead animals on roads between 2003 and 2011. Such numbers provide estimates of how many animals of a certain species are present in a given area.

The scientists compared these data with similar surveys conducted in 1996 and 1997.

Before 2000 it was common to see mammals such as rabbits, red foxes, gray foxes, Virginia opossums, raccoons, and white-tailed deer on roadways after dark, the team says.

But the 2003 to 2011 surveys—which covered a total of nearly 35,400 miles (57,000) kilometers of road—revealed “severe declines” in mammal sightings, according to the study, published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Raccoon observations dropped by 99.3 percent, opossum by 98.9 percent, and bobcat by 87.5 percent. The scientists saw no rabbits or foxes at all during their surveys.

Though sampling roadkill seems like a really clever idea, I do think there’s a problem with their methodology. During the recession, people have been driving around a lot less, especially over the bits of highway that lie between coasts (not so many weekend trips to Naples or Miami Beach). Not so much fewer animals as fewer cars. I wonder if they compensated for that.

It has been known for some time that house mice (Mus musculus) produce ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) during courtship but it has generally been assumed that these are no more than squeaks. However, recent spectrographic analyses have revealed that USVs [...]]]> Vienna’s University of Veterinary Medicine has been listening to the mice as the tiny Casanovas sing to impress the babes:

It has been known for some time that house mice (Mus musculus) produce ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) during courtship but it has generally been assumed that these are no more than squeaks. However, recent spectrographic analyses have revealed that USVs are complex and show features of song. Although the vocalizations are inaudible to human ears, when playbacks of recorded songs are slowed down their similarity to bird song becomes striking. Frauke Hoffmann, Kerstin Musolf and Dustin Penn of the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna’s Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology aimed to learn what type of information is contained in males’ songs for the discerning ear of the female mouse to detect. Their initial studies, the first to study song in wild mice, confirmed that males emit songs when they encounter a females’ scent and that females are attracted to males’ songs. Additionally, the scientists discovered that females are able to distinguish siblings from unrelated males by their songs – even though they had previously never heard their brothers sing.

[via keepyourpebbles]

[O]ne of the challenges in treating these severely depressed patients is that there simply isn’t any drug that provides quick relief, says Anu Matorin, medical director of the Psychiatric Emergency Center [at the Texas Medical Center].

…

Mental [...]]]> Into the K-hole and out of altogether darker hole… NPR looks at the new use for an old club drug (and veterinary anesthetic):

[O]ne of the challenges in treating these severely depressed patients is that there simply isn’t any drug that provides quick relief, says Anu Matorin, medical director of the Psychiatric Emergency Center [at the Texas Medical Center].

…

Mental health researchers got interested in ketamine because of reports that it could make depression vanish almost instantly.

In contrast, drugs like Prozac take weeks or even months. And the frustrating thing is that depression medications really haven’t changed much since Prozac arrived in the 1970s, says Sanjay Mathew from Baylor College of Medicine, who is in charge of the ketamine study at Ben Taub.

“Everything since then has been essentially incremental,” he says. “There have been tweaks of existing molecules.”

But ketamine represents much more than a tweak, Mathews says.

“It’s a completely different mechanism,” he says. “And the focus is on really rapidly helping someone get out of a depressive episode.”

…

I talk to Carlos Zarate, who does ketamine research at the NIH and has never met Merrill. Zarate says patients typically say, ” ‘I feel that something’s lifted or feel that I’ve never been depressed in my life. I feel I can work. I feel I can contribute to society.’ And it was a different experience from feeling high. This was feeling that something has been removed.”

I compare this to what Merrill said about her experience: “No more fogginess. No more heaviness. I feel like I’m a clean slate right now. I want to go home and see friends or, you know, go to the grocery store and cook the family dinner.”

Apparently, one of the big problems with ketamine research is that it’s really hard to double-blind for it. It’s so effective, that patients and researchers immediately know which group has been given the treatment and which the placebo.

E.D. Leavitt, Massachusetts mechanical engineer, designed many huge machines in the 1870s.They moved things, macerated and mangled them, mined and melted them. Leavitt’s machines did things measured in the millions of gallons.

And his niece was one of the great women of astronomy, too.

[image via Old Book Illustrations]

Dr. Steven Schlozman, has written extensively about the brain function of undead zombies (as opposed to voodoo victim zombies). He’s co-director of Medical Student Education in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and, much more importantly, on the advisory board of the Zombie Research Society.

His self-appointed mission is [...]]]> Popular Mechanics recently investigated the forensics of the zombie head shot:

Dr. Steven Schlozman, has written extensively about the brain function of undead zombies (as opposed to voodoo victim zombies). He’s co-director of Medical Student Education in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and, much more importantly, on the advisory board of the Zombie Research Society.

His self-appointed mission is to use zombie fiction to help teach people about the way the human brain works. One of the useful points he makes is that, contrary to the idea that the brain stem (medulla oblongata) must be destroyed in order to destroy a zombie, their behavior indicates that several parts of their brains are still functioning in a coordinated way. They hear noise, stagger toward it and attack the target on sight. These are sure signs that the zombie frontal lobe is active enough to process sensory input through the thalamus. Of course, the frontal lobe must be damaged because the zombie acts on base impulses, like pursuing and eating other people. Other brain damage accounts for the lack of motor coordination and general poor manners.

The good news here for zombie apocalypse survivors­—and defenders of the logic of zombie shows—is that damage to other parts of the brain could put a zombie down for good.

Shoot the head. Kill the ghoul. And here’s a Harvard medical professor (and a survey of the published literature) to tell you why.

“We don’t understand this really fundamental step in our existence, which is how non-living matter went to living matter,” [Neal Devaraj, assistant professor of chemistry at the University of California, San Diego] said. “So this is a really ripe area to try to [...]]]> Scientists have come one step closer to creating artificial life by building a cell membrane from scratch:

“We don’t understand this really fundamental step in our existence, which is how non-living matter went to living matter,” [Neal Devaraj, assistant professor of chemistry at the University of California, San Diego] said. “So this is a really ripe area to try to understand what knowledge we lack about how that transition might have occurred. That could teach us a lot – even the basic chemical, biological principles that are necessary for life.”

Molecules that make up cell membranes have heads that mix easily with water and tails that repel it. In water, they form a double layer with heads out and tails in, a barrier that sequesters the contents of the cell.

Devaraj and [Itay Budin, a graduate student at Harvard University] created similar molecules with a novel reaction that joins two chains of lipids. Nature uses complex enzymes that are themselves embedded in membranes to accomplish this, making it hard to understand how the very first membranes came to be.

“In our system, we use a sort of primitive catalyst, a very simple metal ion,” Devaraj said. “The reaction itself is completely artificial. There’s no biological equivalent of this chemical reaction. This is how you could have a de novo formation of membranes.”

Sebastian Thrun, a professor of computer science at Stanford, revealed today that he has departed the institution to found Udacity, a start-up offering low-cost online classes.

…

Mr. Thrun told the crowd his move was motivated in [...]]]> The Chronicle of Higher Education is watching closely as a tenured Stanford professor leaves his secure job to teach at an online startup:

Sebastian Thrun, a professor of computer science at Stanford, revealed today that he has departed the institution to found Udacity, a start-up offering low-cost online classes.

…

Mr. Thrun told the crowd his move was motivated in part by teaching practices that evolved too slowly to be effective. During the era when universities were born, “the lecture was the most effective way to convey information. We had the industrialization, we had the invention of celluloid, of digitial media, and, miraculously, professors today teach exactly the same way they taught a thousand years ago,” he said.

…

“I feel like there’s a red pill and a blue pill,” he said. “And you can take the blue pill and go back to your classroom and lecture your 20 students. But I’ve taken the red pill, and I’ve seen Wonderland.”

[via Dr. Hale]