Sarah and Loki

Sarah and Loki on the front lawn - 9/13/09

Left Handedness

As defined at Wikipedia:

Left-handedness is the preference for the left hand over the right for everyday activities such as writing. Most left-handed people exhibit some degree of ambidexterity. Left-handedness is relatively uncommon; 90 to 93 percent of the adult population is right-handed.

...

Amongst Muslims, and in some societies including India, it is customary to use the left hand for cleaning oneself with water after defecating. The right hand is commonly known in contradistinction from the left, as the hand used for eating."

Left is unclean, right is clean. As can be imagined left-handedness in India is a bigger deal than in other countries, such as America, where left-handedness is sometimes seen as a feature.

From Rocketboom comes this report on how a new Indian organization hopes to change people's perception of left-handedness:

TED - Simulating the Brain at the Cellular Level

What happens when scientists know the equations and interactions of an individual neuron and then create a computer model that contains millions of them interacting together based on biological constructs?

Here's a bit about the researcher:

In the microscopic, yet-uncharted circuitry of the cortex, Henry Markram is perhaps the most ambitious -- and our most promising -- frontiersman. Backed by the extraordinary power of the IBM Blue Gene supercomputing architecture, which can perform hundreds of trillions of calculations per second, he's using complex models to precisely simulate the neocortical column (and its tens of millions of neural connections) in 3D.

Oliver Sacks: What hallucination reveals about our minds

From TED: Oliver Sacks: What hallucination reveals about our minds

Neurologist and author Oliver Sacks brings our attention to Charles Bonnett syndrome -- when visually impaired people experience lucid hallucinations. He describes the experiences of his patients in heartwarming detail and walks us through the biology of this under-reported phenomenon.

Master Gene Switch for Disease-fighting Cells Identified

From ScienceDaily Master Gene That Switches On Disease-fighting Cells Identified By Scientists:

The master gene that causes blood stem cells to turn into disease-fighting 'Natural Killer' (NK) immune cells has been identified by scientists, in a study published in Nature Immunology September 13.

Dr Brady explains: "Since shortly after they were discovered in the 1970s some scientists have suspected that the vital disease-fighting NK cells could themselves be behind a number of serious medical conditions, when they malfunction. Now finally, with our discovery of the NK cell master gene and subsequent creation of our mouse model, we will be able to find out if the progression of these diseases is impeded or aided by the removal of NK cells from the equation. This will solve the often-debated question of whether NK cells are always the 'good guys', or if in certain circumstances they cause more harm than good."

This research has the potential to forward our understanding of how NK cells are going awry in multiple sclerosis if indeed NK cells play a part.

How We Read Each Other's Minds

From TED: Rebecca Saxe: How we read each other's minds:

Sensing the motives and feelings of others is a natural talent for humans. But how do we do it? Here, Rebecca Saxe shares fascinating lab work that uncovers how the brain thinks about other peoples' thoughts -- and judges their actions.

fMRI enables researchers to see which areas of the brain are activated while subjects are thinking. Correlating the scans with social activities yields clues as to what subjects are thinking about and how they're doing it. Combine that with investigating how these areas change over longer periods of time yields yet more interesting clues as to how humans develop socially. Very interesting!

Cymatics - Modal Phenomena

Via TED comes a talk by Evan Grant about cymatics. From Wikipedia:

Cymatics (from Greek: κῦμα "wave"), also known as modal phenomena, is the study of visible sound and vibration, typically on the surface of a plate, diaphragm, or membrane. Directly visualizing vibrations involves using sound to excite media often in the form of particles, pastes, and liquids.

TMBG Science

TMBG has released a new album - Here Comes Science. Here is a video of one of their songs - Electric Car.

I bought the new album from iTunes for $15 and it comes with a video for each song which was well worth the money. The other videos are groovy artistic.

XKCD - Tech Support Cheat Sheet

From XKCD:

Puppy Unit - 6 weeks

Got a new picture of our future pup from the breeders. At 6 weeks of age currently, we will be able to bring him home in 2 weeks. No progress on the name selection yet.