Monthly Archive for March, 2006

Secret to a speedy recovery: no prayers, please

Published
by
billycuts
on March 31, 2006
in Consciousness/Psych/Brain, Health/Bio-Tech, Mind/Body/Spirit and Religion
. 0 Comments

PRAYERS offered by strangers had no effect on the recovery of people undergoing heart surgery, a large study has found.

In fact, patients who knew they were being prayed for had higher rates of post-operative complications, perhaps because of the expectations the prayers created, the researchers findings have suggested.

Because it is the most scientifically rigorous investigation of whether prayer can heal illness, the study, begun almost a decade ago and involving more than 1800 patients, has for years been the subject of speculation.

At least 10 studies of the effects of prayer have been carried out in the last six years, with mixed results. The latest study was intended to overcome flaws in the earlier investigations. The report was scheduled to appear in The American Heart Journal next week, but the journal’s publisher released it online on Thursday.

Sydney Morning Herald

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The Neurobiology of Mass Delusion by Jason Bradford

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on March 29, 2006
in Activism, Consciousness/Psych/Brain, Nature of Reality and Society/Social Systems
. 1 Comment

History is replete with examples of social organizations, whether a business or a nation, that failed to perceive the realities of a changing environment and didn’t adapt in time to prevent calamity. Hubris and a self-reinforced dynamic of mass delusion characterize the waning phases of these once powerful groups. In hindsight we ask, “What were they thinking? Wasn’t the situation obvious to everyone? The evidence is so clear!” Here’s the question we should ask next: “Is history now repeating itself?”

Anyone familiar with the concepts of overshoot, resource depletion, global climate change, mass extinction, and related ills, wonders why the media, church groups and political leaders do not vigorously discuss these topics. By contrast, those unfamiliar with these issues assume that because they are not covered closely, the problems must not be too worrisome. My view is that science and history are correct, and that we are headed for a major planetary disaster as far as humans are concerned. I’ve tried to understand why the human brain, on a collective level at least, is apparently incapable of dealing with obvious problems. Here’s what I’ve learned.

Mindfully

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Dada Manifesto by Tristan Tzara, 23rd March 1918

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on March 29, 2006
in Art, Literature/Poetry, Philosophy and Resistance
. 0 Comments

The magic of a word – DADA – which for journalists has opened the door to an unforeseen world, has for us not the slightest importance.

To launch a manifesto you have to want: A.B. & C., and fulminate against 1, 2, & 3, work yourself up and sharpen you wings to conquer and circulate lower and upper case As, Bs & Cs, sign, shout, swear, organise prose into a form that is absolutely and irrefutably obvious, prove its ne plus ultra and maintain that novelty resembles life in the same way as the latest apparition of a harlot proves the essence of God. His existence had already been proved by the accordion, the landscape and soft words. * To impose one’s A.B.C. is only natural – and therefore regrettable. Everyone does it in the form of a crystalbluff-madonna, or a monetary system, or pharmaceutical preparations, a naked leg being the invitation to an ardent and sterile Spring. The love of novelty is a pleasant sort of cross, it’s evidence of a naive don’t-give-a-damn attitude, a passing, positive, sign without rhyme or reason. But this need is out of date, too. By giving art the impetus of supreme simplicity – novelty – we are being human and true in relation to innocent pleasures; impulsive and vibrant in order to crucify boredom. At the lighted crossroads, alert, attentive, lying in wait for years, in the forest. * I am writing a manifesto and there’s nothing I want, and yet I’m saying certain things, and in principle I am against manifestos, as I am against principles (quantifying measures of the moral value of every phrase – too easy; approximation was invested by the impressionists). *

I’m writing this manifesto to show that you can perform contrary actions at the same time, in one single, fresh breath; I am against action; as for continual contradiction, and affirmation too, I am neither for nor against them, and I won’t explain myself because I hate common sense.

Grey Lodge

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A New DS Game to Please the Brain

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on March 28, 2006
in Consciousness/Psych/Brain, Games and Mindhacks
. 0 Comments

Nintendo is releasing Brain Age, a DS game based on the research of the Japanese neuroscientist Ryuta Kawashima. Kawashima found that if you measured the brain activity of someone who was concentrating on a single, complex task—like studying quantum theory—several parts of that person’s brain would light up. But if you asked them to answer a rapid-fire slew of tiny, simple problems—like basic math questions—her or his brain would light up everywhere.

Hence the design of Brain Age. It offers you nine different tests, some of which seem incredibly basic—like answering flash-card math questions—and others which are fiendishly tricky. At one point, the DS shows flashes a grid of numbers for one second, then hides the digits; you have to try to remember where they were located in the grid, in ascending order. After you’ve played a few rounds, the DS calculates your “brain age”: How mentally nimble you are, compared to the statistical averages of other people Kawashima measured. Age 20 is the best you can do—the apex of your mental powers, apparently—and by playing Brain Age every day, you can become mentally younger and younger.

Now, the science here is a little dubious. The idea of a discrete brain age is about as phrenologically suspect as the increasingly-disputed concept of IQ itself. Kawashima believes you improve your cognition by getting your brain to light up all over at once. But not all neuroscientists agree that this full-brain activity means you’re thinking more intelligently.

I’m quibbling, though. The truth is, scientists have long known that you can get smarter and stay smarter by engaging in daily, brain-teasing activity—and Brain Age certainly qualifies.

Wired

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The Physical and Psychological Effects of Meditation

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on March 28, 2006
in Consciousness/Psych/Brain, Mind/Body/Spirit, Mindhacks and Occulture
. 0 Comments

A comprehensive study summarizing the scientific research on meditation is available free online from the Institute of Noetic Sciences. The publication (also for sale in book format) is titled “The Physical and Psychological Effects of Meditation” (1996) by Michael Murphy and Steven Donovan. In the helpful introduction Eugene Taylor discusses the historical roots of meditation, outlines meditation’s introduction to the modern West, and provides an overview of meditation as a subject of scientific study in the West, India, and China.

When it comes to defining meditation, Taylor writes:

As for modern developments, in trying to formulate a definition of meditation, a useful rule of thumb is to consider all meditative techniques to be culturally embedded. This means that any specific technique cannot be understood unless it is considered in the context of some particular spiritual tradition, situated in a specific historical time period, or codified in a specific text according to the philosophy of some particular individual.

Taylor is indicating that meditation doesn’t exist as we popularly conceive it — in an abstract or general form — only as distinct techniques which have emerged from specific philosophical and religious backgrounds. As an example, Taylor points out that the widespread and well-regarded Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, founded at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, “combines elements of Vipassana, a Theravada form of Buddhist meditation from Burma, and Zen practices from Japanese Buddhism with Hatha yoga, a tradition from the Indian subcontinent.” (An entry at TricycleBlog, the weblog of the Buddhist magazine Tricycle, offers some thoughts about the MBSR program’s secular presentation of Buddhist meditation.)

When meditation is put under the scientific microscope, Taylor refers to two points of confrontation. The first is whether a rationally-based scientific method can adequately evaluate the realm of ‘intuition and insight’:

Science, the product of Aristotelian thinking and the European rationalist enlightenment, now turns its attention to the intuitive transformation of personality through awakened consciousness (and other such Asian meanings of the term enlightenment). This means that the faculties of logic and sense perception, hallmarks of the scientific method, are now being trained on the personality correlates of intuition and insight, hallmarks of the traditional inward sciences of the East.

To grasp what meditation is has proven to be no easy task. The underlying and usually hidden philosophical assumptions of traditional, rationalist science do not value the intuitive. They do not acknowledge the reality of the transcendent or subscribe to the concept of higher states of consciousness, let alone, in the strictest sense, even admit to the possible existence of unconscious forces active in cognitive acts of perception.

Secondly, Taylor asks whether science itself will be transformed by the encounter:

The essential difficulty here is not just the reformulation of meditation techniques to fit the dictates of the scientific method, but rather what might be called a deeper, more subtle, and potentially more transformative clash of world epistemologies. It is not simply that meditation techniques have been difficult to measure but rather that, in the past, meditation has largely been an implicitly forbidden subject of scientific research. Now, however, major changes are currently underway within basic science that presage not only further evolution of the scientific method but also changes in the way science is viewed in modern culture. An unprecedented new era of interdisciplinary communication within the subfields of the natural sciences, a fundamental shift from physics to biology, and the cognitive neuroscience revolution have liberalized attitudes toward the study of meditation and related subjects. Meanwhile, the popular revolution in modern culture grounded in spirituality and consciousness is having a growing impact on traditional institutions such as medicine, religion, mental health, corporate management strategies, concepts of marriage, child rearing, and the family, and more. Increasingly, educated people want to know much more about meditation, while our traditional institutions of high culture remain unprepared as adequate interpreters.

The body of “The Physical and Psychological Effects of Meditation” is authored by Michael Murphy and Steven Donovan. Following their own overview of the scientific studies on meditation, they provide a detailed summation of the scientific research by organizing it into three categories: physiological effects, behavioral effects, and subjective reports. The research is then broken down by category as follows:

Physiological Effects

The Cardiovascular System
— Heart Rate
— Redistribution of Blood Flow
— Blood Pressure and Hypertension
— Other Cardiovascular Changes
The Cortical System
— EEG: Alpha Activity
— EEG: Theta Activity
— EEG: Beta Activity
— EEG: Hemispheric Synchronization
— EEG: Dehabituation
— Specific Cortical Control
— Other Cortical Changes
Blood Chemistry
— Adrenal Hormones
— Thyroid Hormones
— Total Protein
— Amino Acids and Phenylalanine
— Plasma Prolactin and Growth Hormone
— Lactate
— White Blood Cells
— Red Blood Cell Metabolism
— Cholesterol
The Metabolic and Respiratory Systems
Muscle Tension
Skin Resistance and Spontaneous GSR
Other Physiological Effects
— Brain Metabolism
— Salivary Changes
— Effectiveness in the Treatment of Disease
— Treatment of Cancer
— Changes in Body Temperature
— Alleviation of Pain
— Exceptional Body Control

Behavioral Effects

Perceptual and Cognitive Abilities

Perceptual Ability
— Reaction Time and Perceptual Motor Skill
— Deautomatization
— Field Independence
— Concentration and Attention
— Memory and Intelligence
Rorschach Shifts
Empathy
Regression in the Service of the Ego
Creativity and Self-Actualization
— Creativity
— Self-Actualization
Hypnotic Suggestibility
Anxiety
Psychotherapy and Addiction
— Psychiatry and Psychotherapy
— Addiction and Chemical Dependency
Sleep
Sex Role Identification

Subjective Reports

Equanimity
Detachment
Ineffability
Bliss
Energy and Excitement
Altered Body Image and Ego Boundaries
Hallucinations and Illusions
Dreams
Synesthesia
Extrasensory Experiences
Clearer Perception
Negative Experiences

Searchable Bibiliography

via Meditation Blog

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Brain Cells Fused with Computer Chip

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on March 28, 2006
in Computers, Consciousness/Psych/Brain, Mindhacks and Robots/A.I.
. 0 Comments

The line between living organisms and machines has just become a whole lot blurrier. European researchers have developed “neuro-chips” in which living brain cells and silicon circuits are coupled together.

The achievement could one day enable the creation of sophisticated neural prostheses to treat neurological disorders or the development of organic computers that crunch numbers using living neurons.

To create the neuro-chip, researchers squeezed more than 16,000 electronic transistors and hundreds of capacitors onto a silicon chip just 1 millimeter square in size.

They used special proteins found in the brain to glue brain cells, called neurons, onto the chip. However, the proteins acted as more than just a simple adhesive.

“They also provided the link between ionic channels of the neurons and semiconductor material in a way that neural electrical signals could be passed to the silicon chip,” said study team member Stefano Vassanelli from the University of Padua in Italy.

The proteins allowed the neuro-chip’s electronic components and its living cells to communicate with each other. Electrical signals from neurons were recorded using the chip’s transistors, while the chip’s capacitors were used to stimulate the neurons.

live science

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Incompetent People Most Likely To Be Confident Study Shows

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on March 28, 2006
in Consciousness/Psych/Brain
. 0 Comments

There are many incompetent people in the world. Dr. David A. Dunning is haunted by the fear that he might be one of them.

Dunning, a professor of psychology at Cornell, worries about this because, according to his research, most incompetent people do not know that they are incompetent.

On the contrary. People who do things badly, Dunning has found in studies conducted with a graduate student, Justin Kruger, are usually supremely confident of their abilities—more confident, in fact, than people who do things well.

``I began to think that there were probably lots of things that I was bad at, and I didn’t know it,’’ Dunning said.

One reason that the ignorant also tend to be the blissfully self-assured, the researchers believe, is that the skills required for competence often are the same skills necessary to recognize competence.

The incompetent, therefore, suffer doubly, they suggested in a paper appearing in the December issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

SanFranciscoGate

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Towards Gravity Generation?

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on March 27, 2006
in Physics
. 0 Comments

Scientists funded by the European Space Agency have measured the gravitational equivalent of a magnetic field for the first time in a laboratory. Under certain special conditions the effect is much larger than expected from general relativity and could help physicists to make a significant step towards the long-sought-after quantum theory of gravity.

The research demonstrates that a superconductive gyroscope is capable of generating a powerful gravitomagnetic field, and is therefore the gravitational counterpart of the magnetic coil. Depending on further confirmation, this effect could form the basis for a new technological domain, which would have numerous applications in space and other high-tech sectors” says Clovis de Matos, ESA-HQ, Paris.

Although just 100 millionths of the acceleration due to the Earth’s gravitational field, the measured field is a surprising one hundred million trillion times larger than Einstein’s General Relativity predicts.

European Space Agency

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Ideas of Consciousness-expansion by De Es Schwertberger

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on March 23, 2006
in Art
. 1 Comment


1960’s

Rutgers Researchers Find Fat Gene

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on March 21, 2006
in Biology, Genetics and Health/Bio-Tech
. 0 Comments
Rutgers researchers have identified a gene—and the molecular function of its protein product—that provides an important clue to further understanding obesity and may point the way to new drugs to control fat metabolism.

The scientists found that the human protein known as lipin is a key fat-regulating enzyme. “Lipin activity may be an important pharmaceutical target for the control of body fat in humans, treating conditions that range from obesity to the loss of fat beneath the skin, as seen in HIV patients, ” said George M. Carman, a professor in Rutgers’ department of food science.

science daily

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Neurons that Detect Novel Objects

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on March 21, 2006
in Consciousness/Psych/Brain
. 0 Comments

A rare opportunity to study patients with an intractable form of epilepsy has led to the identification of specific neurons in the human brain that respond to novel or familiar objects. The discovery was made using micro-thin electrodes that read electrical activity from single neurons inside the brains of patients who were undergoing treatment to determine the origin of their epileptic seizures.

Prior to these studies, researchers had only identified regions of the human brain involved in detecting novel images or objects using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Those studies yielded conflicting evidence about whether such neurons existed in the learning centers of the brain – the hippocampus and amygdala. The hippocampus is involved in learning and memory, and the amygdala helps to etch memories that are associated with emotions such as fear.

HHMI
thanks to michael

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Pentagon Plans Cyber-Insect Army

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on March 21, 2006
in Big Brother, Consciousness/Psych/Brain, Health/Bio-Tech, Military, Mindhacks and Robots/A.I.
. 0 Comments

The Pentagon’s defence scientists want to create an army of cyber-insects that can be remotely controlled to check out explosives and send transmissions.

The idea is to insert micro-systems at the pupa stage, when the insects can integrate them into their body, so they can be remotely controlled later.

Experts told the BBC some ideas were feasible but others seemed “ludicrous”.

A similar scheme aimed at manipulating wasps failed when they flew off to feed and mate.

The new scheme is a brainwave of the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), which is tasked with maintaining the technological superiority of the US military.

It has asked for “innovative” bids on the insect project from interested parties.

BBC

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Canadian Recording Industry: P2P Isn’t Bad For Business

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on March 19, 2006
in Computers, Economics, Freedom of Information, Inc. Shenanigans, Music and Web News
. 0 Comments

The Canadian Record Industry Association (the Canadian version of the RIAA) has released a study in which they conclude that P2P downloaders buy lots of music, and that P2P doesn’t particularly harm their industry.

Particularly noteworthy findings in the 144 page study report include:

* The survey asked for the sources of music on people’s computers. Among those who download music from P2P services, the top source of music was ripping copies of their own CDs (36.4%), followed by P2P downloads (32.6%), paid downloads (20.1%), shared music from friends (8.8%), downloads from artist sites (5.6%), and other sources (2.9%). In other words, even among those who download music from P2P services, the music acquired on those services account for only one-third of the music on their computers as store-bought CDs remain the single largest source of music for downloaders (page 53).
* For all the emphasis on the teenage downloaders, it is interesting that the 35 to 44 age group had the largest spread between CDs and P2P as the source of music. Among that demographic, 31 percent of their music comes from P2P services and 27 percent from ripping their own CDs (page 69).
* Consistent with many other studies, people who download music from P2P services frequently buy that same music. The study found that only 25% of respondents said they never bought music after listening to it as a P2P downloaded track. That obviously leaves nearly 75% as future purchasers, including 21% who have bought music ten times or more. Note that demographically, the lowest percentage of non-buyers actually belonged to the 13 to 17 year old demographic (page 70).

Michael Geist > BoingBoing

Also see this bashing of the MPAA for pulling chinanigans.

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The Geometrization Of Thought

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on March 18, 2006
in Consciousness/Psych/Brain, Mathematics, Memetics, Organization/Systems/Chaos and Physics
. 1 Comment

F. David Peat

As a result of the popular books and magazine articles that have appeared over the last few years the topic of chaos theory has become familiar to many people. While some psychologists may not be comfortable with the mathematical details of the theory they are probably acquainted with its broad outlines and general concepts. Thus, for example, the image of “butterfly effect” is often applied to systems so extraordinary sensitive that a perturbation as small as the flapping of a butterfly’s wings produces a large scale change of behavior. While chaos theory holds that such systems remain strictly deterministic they are, nevertheless, so enormously complex that the exact details of their behavior are, in practice, unpredictable even with the aid of the largest computers.

On the other hand, since such systems remain within the grip of their strange attractor while the details of their fluctuations appear to be random, nevertheless, their chaos is contained within a particular range of all possible behaviors. Their dynamics may, for example, exhibit a fractal structure in which similar patterns are repeated at smaller and smaller scales of space and intervals of time. As an example, while it is impossible to predict the exact value of a particular share on the stock market at an arbitrary date in the future one may be able to say something about its general pattern of fluctuation over a month, day or even an hour.

In a sense, therefore, chaos theory is something of a misnomer for it is not so much the study of systems in which all order has broken down in favour of pure chance but rather of those which exhibit extremely high degrees of order involving very subtle and sensitive behavior. The full description of such systems would require an enormous, potentially an infinite, amount of information. On the other hand, highly complex behavior can sometimes be simulated in very simple ways through the constant repetition of an iterative processes such as Prigogine’s baker’s transformation or the non-linear feedback associated with the changing size of insect populations.

While chaos theory and fractal descriptions are capable of simulating a wide variety of natural processes it remains an open question as to the extent to which such theories actually offer a full account of the inner workings of nature and society. For example, while repeated iterations can generate complex results this does not necessarily mean that such iterations are part of the actual generative processes of nature itself. Another pertinent question is to what extend dues absolute randomness and chaos occurs within the universe. While chaos theory is purely deterministic may there exist certain natural processes that are essentially chaotic, indeterministic and random? Quantum theory would be an obvious choice, for the time at which a radioactive nucleus disintegrates is, according to the theory, absolutely indeterministic – it is a matter of pure chance. David Bohm, however, has produced a deterministic version of quantum theory which perfectly accounts for all the empirical findings and predictions of the theory without invoking the assumption of absolute chance.

Another area in which intrinsic randomness occurs is in the sequence of digits of an irrational number. But what is the ontological basis of such numbers in nature? Are they a manifestation of intrinsic randomness in the universe or do they represent the abstract limits of processes that involve an infinite amount of information? At present there seems to be no way of deciding whether pure chance and randomness plays a role in the cosmos or if all systems are essentially deterministic in nature.

future positive

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10 Atom Thick Circuits Manipulate Electron Waves

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on March 15, 2006
in Computers, Nanotechnology and Physics
. 0 Comments

Using thin layers of graphite known as graphene, researchers have produced proof-of-principle transistors, loop devices and circuitry. The devices have the attractive properties of carbon nanotubes but could be produced using established microelectronics manufacturing techniques.

Ultimately, the researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the United States, in collaboration with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, hope to use graphene layers less than 10 atoms thick as the basis for revolutionary electronic systems that would manipulate electrons as waves rather than particles, much like photonic systems control light waves.

KurzweilAI

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