126 results found.
... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 105: May-Jun 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects English Muddles The Brain "A boy who struggles to read English primary-school storybooks yet has no trouble with university physics textbooks in Japanese is challenging current thinking on dyslexia. The 17year-old boy, known as AS, is the first person shown to be dyslexic in one language but not another." AS has English-speaking parents but lives in Japan, where he attends Japanese primary school. He scores poorly in reading English, even lagging behind his Japanese schoolmates, but he understands English like a native. AS is also taught to read the Japanese form of writing called "kanji", in which the symbols carry meaning but have no phonetic value - unlike written English. Curiously, AS reads kanji easily, exhibiting no problems in his visual processing skills. He also does well with the other type of Japanese writing called "kana", where symbols do correspond to certain sounds. Written English is the problem! AS presents psychologists with two enigmas: If, as currently believed, a specific part of the brain is reserved for reading, and a person has trouble with one language, it seems logical that he should have difficulties with all languages. The conventional theory of dyslexia asserts that it is associated with visual processing. If so, AS should find kanji even more troublesome than English. (Motluk, Alison; "Why English Is So Hard on the Brain," New Scientist, p. 14 ...
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... but the apparently immutable protons in the nucleus of every atom are slowly dissolving. Eventually -- in more than a quadrillion years -- nothing will be left of the universe but a dead mist of electrons, photons, and neutrinos." (Flam, Faye; "Could Protons Be Mortal after All?" Science, 257:1862, 1992.) The death of memory. With increasing entropy and decaying protons on their minds, it comes as no surprise that physicists likewise believe that when one dies, that's it . An afterlife is impossible. How do physicists conclude this? In a letter to the American Journal of Physics, J. Orear proffered an interesting sort of "proof": "One such proof: human memory is stored in the circuitry of the brain and after death this circuitry completely decomposes." But not all physicists were satisfied with this simplistic view. In a follow-on letter, J.B .T . McCaughan asked how Orear knew that memory is limited to the brain's neuron circuitry. Perhaps there is something that the reductionists are missing. McCaughan then states that Orear's assertion would be negated if people really did return from the dead. He refers to the numerous accounts in the Scriptures in which wit nesses attested that some individuals did indeed come back to life. (Yes, this is all printed in the American Journal of Physics!!) After all, concludes McCaughan, with respect to witnesses, ". .. so much in life depends on such evidence, even the credibility of phys ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 84: Nov-Dec 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Hunt For The Magnetoreceptor When magnetite particles were found in organisms from bacteria to bats, it was assumed that here was the long sought magnetoreceptor which animals used for magnetic navigation. But so far, biologists do not have the slightest notion how such magnetite particles can be turned into a "magnetic sense," which sends the brain information on the direction of the geomagnetic field or, perhaps, draws a magnetic map of sorts. A completely different sort of magnetreceptor is now under investigation, one that humans may also unknowingly possess. It utilizes special photoreceptors that employ an electron-spin resonance process which is modulated by the geomagnetic field. Some of our very sensitive magnetometers use similar phenomena. The biological version of such a receptor would be connected to the brain, as the eye is, and send signals as to the direction of the earth's magnetic field. Sounds interesting, but is there any basis for thinking such a sophisticated gadget could have evolved? It seems that some experiments with newts by J.B . Phillips and S.C . Borland support the idea. The newts were first trained to orient themselves in a certain direction with respect to the geomagnetic field. "When tested under one of four artificial field alignments (magnetic north at geographic north, east, south or west), the newts kept their training directions constant relative to the magnetic rather than the geographic system of reference, but they selected ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 87: May-Jun 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Uniqueness Of Human Adolescence What major biological characteristics separate humans from other animals? The usual list begins with our large brain and bipedality, but these features are shared with dolphins and birds, respectively. Even our peculiar reproductive biology (permanent breasts, continuous sexual receptivity of both sexes, etc.) no longer seem so unique, particularly after reading about the antics of the bonobos (pygmy chimps)! But wait! No other animal, even the other primates, go through adolescence. That time period between puberty and the attainment of adult stature turns out to be something uniquely human. The great puzzle of adolescence, according to B. Bogin, is its evolutionary origin. What possible advantage does adolescence confer on humans in the battle for survival? To the contrary, skipping the teens would appear to be an advantage in the survivability of parents! One guess is that adolescence -- all 8 or so years of it -- is required for the development of the complex social skills needed by adults. (Bogin, Barry; "Why Must I Be a Teenager at All?" New Scientist, p. 34, March 6, 1993.) From Science Frontiers #87, MAY-JUN 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 89: Sep-Oct 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Electric Fish Not Backward In Data Processing The incredible sophistication of the brain and nervous system of fish using active electric sensing is evident in the South American fish Eigenmannia . This fish (different from the knife fish above) emits electric pulses at frequencies betwen 250 and 600 per second for electrolocation and communication. M. Kawasaki, at the University of Virginia, has investigated what happens when two of these fish operating on similar frequencies meet. Ordinarily, the fish would jam each other's sensory apparatus and "blind" each other. To circumvent this Eigenmannia has evolved a "jamming avoidance response," in which they both shift their pulse frequencies away from each other. To accomplish this, the fish must be able to detect time disparities between the two sets of signals less than 1 microsecond long. Their individual electroreceptors are not capable of handling such small time differences. Kawasaki has concluded that the jamming avoidance response can come only from highly sophisticated signal processing in the fish's central nervous system. (Kawasaki, Masashi; "Temporal Hyperacuity in the Gymnotiform Electric Fish Eigenmannia ," American Zoologist , 33:86, 1993.) Comment. Echo-locating bats and dolphins also possess sophisticated data processing apparatus for analyzing the echos they receive back from their prey and surroundings. It will be interesting to discover if evolution has come up with similar organic "components" for handling acoustic and electric signals. Further, we know ...
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... inhabited that part of France in 47,600 BP. So, we must conclude that the Neandertals knew well the sophisticated use of fire. They also had enough curiosity to venture deep into the earth, where for some unknown purpose they piled together an enigmatic structure. All this also seems to require more information transfer than possible with a few "ughs"! (Balter, Michael; "Cave Structure Boosts Neandertal Image," Science, 271:449, 1996) There is always the possibility that those mysterious Cro-Magnons, who seem to have appeared out of nowhere, got to western Europe ahead of schedule. They are probably the artists who made those 31,000-year-old cave paintings at Grotte Chauvet in southern France. Even though of slighter build and smaller brains, the Cro-Magnons are thought to have quickly replaced the Neandertals. Complicating the picture is abundant fossil evidence of so-called "archaic" Homo sapiens in Europe commencing some 500,000 years ago. Did these archaic versions of modern humans evolve into Neandertals before the Cro-Magnons (modern humans) arrived on the scene? Some paleoanthropologists now believe so. Just the other day it was generally thought that Homo erectus rather than "archaic" Homo sapiens gave rise to the Neandertals. (Hublin, Jean-Jacques; "The First Europeans," Archaeology, 49:36, January/ February 1996) Comment. We, too, are confused. Don't take these human evolutionary family trees too seriously. They change with each new "find," and ...
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... remarkable hydrothermal vents or "black smokers." Its CCD (Charge-Coupled Device) camera detected a ghostly glow emanating from the vents. Since this mineral-laden water gushing from these cracks in the deep-sea floor exits at 350 -400 C, the simplest explanation of the vent glow is that is is simply thermal radiation from the hot fluid. Indeed, color filters on the camera recorded a spectrum close to that of a 350 C plume. But the deep-sea shrimp camped around the vents have raised second thoughts. The shrimp, only a few inches long, live in the perpetual darkness of the miles-deep vents. They do not need and do not have ordinary eyes. Rather, they sport a mysterious organ on their backs that is connected to their brains by a nerve-fiber bundle much like an optic nerve. This organ is packed with the same light-sensitive pigments found in the eyes of surface creatures. Despite its unusual location on the shrimp, it is an "eye" of sorts. But of what use is it in the Stygian abysses? To find, perhaps, vent glows that betray the presence of chemosynthetic food sources. If this is so, the shrimps' optical organ, which is most sensitive in the blue-green portion of the spectrum, is badly mismatched to the infrared of the vent glow. It is a truism that nature is a perfectionist and would not tolerate such bad design. The eyes of animals are always well-tuned to their ways of life. Some possible conclusions: (1 ...
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... , gnats, and smart weapons In a thought-provoking letter to New Scientist, J. Margolis commences with the observation that calculating prodigies (idiot savants), who are often also mentally retarded, can easily and almost instantaneously recognize 20-digit prime numbers! Gifted mathematicians with so-called photographic memories cannot perform such mental feats using known methods for identifying primes. What do the calculating prodigies know that the rest of us do not? Better algorithms; that is, calculating methods? Margolis expands on this: "All this suggests some relatively simple, subconscious algorithms which have not, as yet, been explicitly formulated. Research in this direction might well result in new mathematical insights. "It need not be surprising that mathematical insight is more fundamental than language. Even a primitive animal brain is 'wired" to perform exceedingly complex computations essential for survival in an unpredictable environment. The latest 'smart' weapons are rudimentary compared with a humble gnat. Mathematics could be a by-product of these functions. Language is a comparatively recent evolutionary innovation and it is quite possible that conscious manipulation of abstract symbols has not caught up with an innate ability to perceive quantitative relationships." (Margolis, Joel; "What Gnats Know," New Scientist, p. 58, January 30, 1993.) From Science Frontiers #87, MAY-JUN 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... more friendly and relaxed than normal. He could not divine the reason until some months later when he decided to cover the flasks of skin-derived substances. Curiously, the lab workers soon reverted to their usual grumpy selves! What could account for this strange behavior change? Knowing that animals often communicated with one another employing chemicals called pheromones, Berliner suspected that the flasks had been releasing odorless human pheromones. Sure enough, analysis of the skin-derived materials proved him correct. Next: A Look Up the Nose. Biologists have long realized that animal noses actually contain two sensory channels. The first is the familiar olfactory system, which humans also possess. The second channel is the vomeronasal system. In animals, each system has its own separate organs, nerves, and bumps in the brain. The function of the vomeronasal system is pheromone detection. It was widely believed that humans had long ago discarded this sensory system along evolution's trail. But a closer look at the human nose by B. Jafek and D. Moran, affiliated with the Rocky Mountain Taste and Smell Center at the University of Colorado, revealed that all humans examined displayed two tiny pits on both sides of the septum, just inside the the opening of the nose. Behind the holes were tubes lined with unique cells that could well be pheromone detectors, since they responded positively to puffs of air laden with pheromones. In conclusion, we humans actually do have a sixth sense, and we are all enveloped in an aura -- not the luminous aura of the mystics but a cloud of pheromones ...
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... On Coll Island in Centennial Lake, 120 kilometers west of Ottawa. Watching an auroral display, L.R . Morris heard the sound of the aurora: "It was a faint but distant windlike sound; which, by process of elimination, could not be accounted for by any phenomenon other than the aurora." (Anonymous; "Auroral Sounds," Sky & Telescope , 83:105, January 1992. Cr. D. Snowhook.) Comment. Auroras have been heard for centuries, but they "shouldn't be." Current theory restricts auroral activity to altitudes above 50 miles, where a fair vacuum prevails, and sound generation and propagation are impossible. One explanation for auroral sounds is that intense electromagnetic waves created by the auroras sweep through the observer's brain and are rendered as sound (electrophonic sound). But perhaps some auroras reach down lower into the atmosphere than theory allows. See GSH3 in our catalog: Earthquakes, Tides, Unidentified Sounds. To order, visit: here . From Science Frontiers #81, MAY-JUN 1992 . 1992-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... ancient North America, but a century ago, when tiny graves replete with tiny skeletons were discovered in Tennessee, controversy erupted. Were they the bones of pygmies or children of normal-sized tribes? The latter choice was made, and we hear no more on the subject -- at least on the standard academic circuits. But a few reverberations are still detectable elsewhere. V.R . Pilapil, for example, asserts that the disputed Tennessee graves really did contain pygmy remains. Not only that, but he hypothesizes that the pygmies arrived in ancient times from southeast Asia, probably the Philippines, where today's diminutive Aetas live. To support his case, Pilapil recalls B. Fell's examination of the Tennessee skeletal material. Fell noted that: (1 ) The skull brain capacity was equivalent to only about 950 cubic centimeters, about the volume of a non-pygmy 7-yearold; (2 ) The teeth were completely developed and showed severe wear characteristic of mature individuals; and (3 ) The skulls were brachycephalic with projecting jaws. Fell had, in fact, described skulls very much like those of today's adult Philippine Aetas. Another line of evidence adduced by Pilapil involved the traditions of British Columbia tribes, which recognized a tribe of very small people called the Et-nane. More significant is the oral history of the Cherokees, which mentions the existence of "little people" in eastern North America. (Pilapil, Virgilio R.; "Was There a Prehistoric Migration of the Philippine Aetas to America?" Epigraphic Society, Occasional ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 106: Jul-Aug 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Does the human brain compute, or does it do more?Of course, the human brain can add and subtract, but does it perform all of its functions by manipulating 1s and 0s, as a PC does? The recent confrontation between G.K . Kasparov, boasting two hemispheres of gray matter, and IBM's Deep Blue chess-playing computer, with its boards of silicon chips, suggests that the human brain may do things somewhat differently. Consider that in the 3 minutes allotted for each move, Deep Blue could evaluate 20 billion moves. This means that it could examine every possible move and countermove for twelve sequences ahead and, in addition, selected lines of attack for 30 sequences. Kasparov was obviously doing no such computation. Yet, he won two, drew two, and lost only one game. IBM's A.J . Hoane, Jr., remarked that chess geniuses like Kasparov "are doing some mysterious computation we can't figure out." Hoane's use of the words "mysterious computation" tells us that he is a reductionist. The implication is that everything mental can be reduced to manipulating those 1s and 0s. In reality, Kasparov's brain may have been innovating, working out new strategies, discerning Big Blue's weaknesses. These "higherlevel" functions are needed when the problem (chess) is too complex for a computer to evaluate all ...
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... ONLINE No. 134: MAR-APR 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Sleep-work And Dream-work To dream an animal must sleep, and sleep is a dangerous state in the natural world. The animal is motionless, its senses are diminished; it is very vulnerable. Neither is there any provable biochemical value to sleep. (See BHF31 in Humans II) Yet, a large fraction of an animal's life is spent in this apparently useless and hazardous condition. Why, then, did sleep ever evolve? But with sleep, come dreams, and maybe an answer is to be seen in them. Cats establish long-term memories during sleep. First, it is relevant that an animal's brain (a cat's brain here) seems to be active even when an animal is sleeping deeply but not dreaming. It seems that during an extremely quiet phase of sleep, when researchers thought that nothing much was happening in the [cat's ] brain, groups of cells involved in the formation of new memories signal one another. The signals, discovered only a few years ago, allow cells in many parts of the brain to form lasting links. Then, when a few cells are stimulated during waking hours, the links are activated and an entire memory is recalled. Deep, dreamless sleep has long been thought to be of little value to an animal. Apparently this is not the case. Deep sleep seems to be valuable in memory activation. Score one for sleep ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 136: JUL-AUG 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Eclipsing Of Innate Talents The age effect. An idea going the rounds holds that everyone is really a genius but that his or her innate talents have been eclipsed or suppressed. Age is one factor that is blamed. As a child develops, so goes the theory, its brain is bit by bit swamped by the high-level conceptual thinking required for survival in the modern adult world. The child's innate mathematical genius, musical capabilities, and other "low-level" talents are placed on the brain's back burner by the demands of adulthood. It is a common observation that the young assimilate foreign languages more readily than adults. A less-well-known talent, eidetic imagery (the ability to recall images with photographic precision), is found in some children, but it also usually fades with age. Now, we learn that 8-month-old babies are apparently blessed with perfect pitch, a capability they, too, generally lose as they age. (Hall, Carl T.; "Learning by Infants Isn't Just Baby Talk," The Brain, February 28, 2001. Cr. J. Cieciel.) Removal of mental blocks. Sometimes the barriers that eclipse our innate talents are removed by mental disease. The surprising enhancing effect of dementia on some "low-level" talents was mentioned in SF#133. The same mental barriers also seem to ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 138: NOV-DEC 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Born To Enumerate Einstein once said in connection with his celebrated mathematical insights: Words and language...do not seem to play any part in my thought processes. A French scientist, S. Dehaene, sees in this declaration support for his claim that human brains possess a "number sense" that is independent of language and symbols, including even the numerals we use in arithmetic! The numerals, says Dehaene, are needed only in "exact arithmetic," which is a cultural invention and unrelated to the "number sense." Exact arithmetic, in fact, is an activity of our left brain where language is processed. Our general number sense, though, is sited elsewhere; the parietal lobe, to be specific. Dehaene's experiments with babies demonstrate that, even before they can speak or do exact arithmetic, they can do "approximate arithmetic"; that is, they can distinguish between these two sequences of tones: beep-beep, beep-beep, beep-beep beep-beep, beep-beep, beep-beep-beep. This number sense is apparently hardwired in a specific part of the human brain and the brains of a few other animals that have been tested (monkeys and rats). (Baiter, Michael; "What Makes the Mind Dance and Count?" Science, 292:1635, 2001.) Comment. Superficially, distinguishing between strings of beeps would ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 133: JAN-FEB 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects New Proteins Rewrite Memories A presumptuous article in the New York Times relates how scientists are trying to explain why two people who have viewed the same event recall it very differently years later. One theory goes like this. It seems that every time an old memory is pulled into consciousness, the brain takes it apart, updates it and then makes new proteins in the process of putting the memory back into long-term storage. The fact that new proteins are made means that the memory has been transformed permanently to reflect each person's life experiences---not the memory itself. (Blakesley, Sandra; "Brain-Updating Machinery May Explain False Memories," New York Times, September 19, 2000. Cr. D. Phelps) Ruminations. This all sounds reasonable, but it assumes that memory is stored in a protein medium of some sort. It is hard to imagine how, say, the multiplication table, can be recorded on a protein "hard drive." Are the bits representing the multiplication table encoded in a line of proteins of different types or in their sequence or, perhaps, their three-dimensional configurations? Does anyone really know what our brain's hard drive looks like? Maybe memory is hologrammic. And when a memory is pulled off the mind's hard drive, how is the information conveyed to the central processing unit, assuming there is one? Is it all ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 137: SEP-OCT 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Phantom Bodies The phantom-limb phenomenon is well-known but poorly understood. A person who has lost a limb, or born without one, experiences pain, touch, heat, and many of the other normal sensations in the absent appendage. How can this be? Neuroscientist P. Brugger, at the University of Zurich, asserts the following: The brain contains a representation of the body, and disturbances in relevant neural networks by brain tumors or epilepsy can create the apparitions. Brugger means that the brain seems to have a neurological map of the entire body, even if a person is born without a leg or loses same in an accident. The phantom-limb phenomenon is thereby expanded to a "phantom-body" phenomenon. Continuing in this vein, tumors or those "neurological disturbances" could also produce the sensation of an entire phantom body. Could such whole-body apparitions be the source of the doppelgangers (images of one's self) that have been reported in the parapsychological literature and in folklore? (Holden, Constance, ed.; "Doppelgangers," Science, 291:429, 2001.) From Science Frontiers #137, SEP-OCT 2001 . 2001 William R. Corliss Other Sites of Interest SIS . Catastrophism, archaeoastronomy, ancient history, mythology and astronomy. Lobster . The journal of intelligence and political conspiracy (CIA, FBI, JFK, MI5, NSA, etc ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 133: JAN-FEB 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Unlocking Hidden Talents Dementia is a devastating illness. The brain deteriorates slowly. Sometimes, though, it seems like the illness strips away barriers and reveals hidden or suppressed talents, as seen in the two dementia patients described below. One 53-year-old man, a car stereo installer with a 10th-grade education and no prior interest in art, suddenly began painting. At first, he drew simple still lifes of vases and bridges. But his work became increasingly sophisticated. Eventually, he was painting Indians, churches and haciendas recalled from distant memories of his youth. Similarly, a 51-year-old housewife who had never had artistic training took up painting. She initially created unsophisticated images of rivers, ponds and rural settings; later, elaborate and sometimes eccentric versions of the works of great masters. Unfortunately, such new-found talents are short-lived. They, too, deteriorate. (Stein, Rob; "Patients' New Gift Paints Clearer Image of Disease," The Brain in the News, p. 7, October 30, 1998. Cr. J. Cieciel) Comment. This peeling away of mental barriers suggests that we all have hidden or suppressed capabilities. Perhaps, some day, we will know how to unlock these in normal people. It is pertinent here that in idiot savants these mental barriers are also somehow removed to expose remarkable mathematical talents, such as calendar calculating ...
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... Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Songs In Your Head Aneurysms occur when the wall of a blood vessel weakens and bulges outward. They can be very dangerous but in some cases they produce bizarre side effects. Take, for example, this case of a 61-year-old woman. The woman's symptoms began with nausea, fatigue and then disorientation. Then, after a year, she began hearing music in the forms of songs she knew. The music was peristent but kept changing. In December, it involved Christmas songs, for example. The songs were ones the woman learned when she was young. She had no obvious physical problems that might explain the hallucinations. The woman naturally went to a psychiatrist, but to no avail. Finally, repeated MRI examinations revealed two small brain aneurysms. When these were corrected surgically, the music stopped. (Nagourney, Eric; "A Song in Your Head Can Turn Deadly," New York Times, April 24, 2001. Cr. M. Piechota.) Comment. Just how can the pressure from slightly bulging blood vessels cause someone to hear songs stored in one's memory? From Science Frontiers #136, JUL-AUG 2001 . 2001 William R. Corliss Other Sites of Interest SIS . Catastrophism, archaeoastronomy, ancient history, mythology and astronomy. Lobster . The journal of intelligence and political conspiracy (CIA, FBI, JFK, MI5, NSA, etc) Homeworking.com . Free resource for people thinking about working at home. ABC dating and personals . For people looking for relationships. Place ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 129: MAY-JUN 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Sound of Shapes The ability of some humans to determine the pitch of a musical note in the absence of a reference note (" perfect pitch") has been a favorite topic in Science Frontiers (SF #99 , #102 , and #111 ). It now seems that the human ear-brain combination can also discern the shapes and dimensions of thin, vibrating plates by the sound they make. In one type of experiment, conducted by A.J . Kunkler-Peck (Brandeis University) and M.T . Turvey (University of Connecticut), subjects gave surprisingly accurate estimates of the heights and widths of three different vibrating plates. The plates were concealed behind a screen, but the subjects could remotely control a striker. In further experiments, other subjects could distinguish between the sounds of circular, rectangular, and triangular plates. (Anonymous; "Listen to the Shapes," Science News, 157:171, 2000.) Comment. We all know from experience that small, thin plates produce higher pitched sounds that larger plates. How-ever, the ability to assign accurate dimensions without some training is surprising. The same can be said for the identification of shapes. Who, for ex-ample, has been exposed to vibrating, triangular-shaped plates in ordinary life? Could we be dealing here with another innate talent that, like perfect pitch, seems to have no adaptive ...
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... evolutionary gambit. But, C. Koch and F. Crick may have an answer. They speculate that: It may be because consciousness allows the system to plan future actions, opening up a potentially infinite behavioural repertoire and making explicit memory possible. (Koch, Christof, and Crick, Francis; "The Zombie Within," Nature, 411:893, 2001.) Questions. Could our zombie agents, primitive though they may be, be the source of those flashes of genius that appear out of nowhere, or perhaps that "dreamwork" from which solutions to problems appear fully formed upon wakening? The quotation from the Nature article presumes that consciousness does have survival value, else it would not have evolved. What sort of highly innovative genetic changes would lead to such a remarkable brain function? Did consciousness evolve in small Darwinian steps or in some grand, lucky mutation? Did any nonhuman animals progress beyond their inheritance of zombie agents? From Science Frontiers #138, NOV-DEC 2001 . 2001 William R. Corliss Other Sites of Interest SIS . Catastrophism, archaeoastronomy, ancient history, mythology and astronomy. Lobster . The journal of intelligence and political conspiracy (CIA, FBI, JFK, MI5, NSA, etc) Homeworking.com . Free resource for people thinking about working at home. ABC dating and personals . For people looking for relationships. Place your ad free. ...
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... Costerton at Montana State University imagines what a biofilm would look like if one were bacterium-size. If you found yourself in a biofilm, you'd be going along a channel full of water, like the canals in Venice, and up from the bottom of the channel, on either side, would be these slime towers. The channels would be bringing in oxygen and nutrients. and removing waste. And within each building, so to speak, some of the bacteria would be cooperating with each other, making one compound and passing it along to the next. It's at least as complicated as a tissue. and possibly as a city. (Chicurel, Marina; "Slimebusters." Nature, 408:284, 2000.) Comment. Since bacteria have no brains, where do the building plans of this "city" reside? Nanocrystal aggregates. Even lifeless nanocrystals spontaneously form long, oriented chains. Self-organization is common in inorganic nature. Nanocrystals are clumps of atoms numbering in the hundreds, often thousands. Typically, nanocrystals are only 1-10 nano-meters long. Even so, they have a colonial spirit, and, like the tunicates and amoebas, they aggregate and self-organize. (( Alivisatos, A.P .; "Naturally Aligned Nanocrystals," Science, 289:736, 2000.) Comment. Sometimes that vaunted chasm separating life from non-life seems pretty narrow! From Science Frontiers #133, JAN-FEB 2001 . 2001 William R. Corliss Other Sites of Interest SIS . Catastrophism, ...
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... all fakery. At the University of Heidelberg, 52 people with rotator cuff tendinitis were split into two groups; 25 were punctured with real needles, the rest just thought they were. In this experiment, the first group showed much greater improvement than those treated with the fake needles. Real acupuncture was more powerful than the placebo effect. Now if we can only figure out how real acupuncture works! (Lawton, Graham; "Needle Match," New Scientist, p. 10, December 4, 1999.) Placebo surgery. Because of the ethical questions, placebo surgery went out of style 40 years ago. A revival is now underway. One promising treatment for Parkinson's disease requires the drilling of holes in the patient's forehead and injecting fetal cells deeply in the brain. This is certainly a far cry from the fake acupuncture needles! One patient, who knew she was involved in a placebo experiment, was lightly sedated during the real drilling. After the holes were completed, she heard the surgeon ask for the fetal-cell implants. Because of this, she was certain she had received the complete procedure. Afterwards, she felt that her condition had definitely improved. But it was all a charade. The doctor did not insert the implants. Her symptoms soon returned. The placebo effect was only temporary. However, some of the younger patients who did get the total procedure did receive permanent benefits. The doctors knew, therefore, that the procedure holds out some promise. (Cohen, Philip; "All in the Mind," New ...
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... by them. Lucid, healing, and out-of-body dreams were also deemed anomalous but were not defined in the abstract. In fact, lucid dreams were the most common type of anomalous dream. Out-of-body dreams came next. Precognitive dreams were third in frequency. (Krippner, Stanley, and Faith, Laura; "Anomalous Dreams: A Cross-Cultural Study," Society for Scientific Exploration paper, 2000.) Comments. Lucid dreams are especially vivid and, in addition, under the direct control of the dreamer. Actually, all dreams are anomalous in the sense that it is difficult to understand how dreaming evolved. How can a series of small, random mutations introduce these often bizarre images that drift through the not-so-quiescent, sleeping brain? How could dreaming have had enough survival value to our distant ancestors to lock it permanently into the human genome? From Science Frontiers #131, SEP-OCT 2000 . 2000 William R. Corliss Other Sites of Interest SIS . Catastrophism, archaeoastronomy, ancient history, mythology and astronomy. Lobster . The journal of intelligence and political conspiracy (CIA, FBI, JFK, MI5, NSA, etc) Homeworking.com . Free resource for people thinking about working at home. ABC dating and personals . For people looking for relationships. Place your ad free. ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 13 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf131/sf131p12.htm
... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 128: MAR-APR 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Consciousness Gene We humans assume that our consciousness is something more than just the sum total of all our senses, as integrated by our brains. In other words, consciousness is something "special" that makes us more than automatons. Other animals may be automatons, but not us! D. Jones speculates in Nature that if consciousness is a definite, inheritable characteristic, it must have had survival value for it to have evolved. It then follows that consciousness must be en-coded somewhere in our genes. Only a single gene may be enough, for consciousness seems to be an uncomplicated phenomenon. Why? Because just a few simple molecules, such as those found in anesthetics, can disable it completely without affecting other bodily functions. Eventually, Jones continues, the gene (or small number of genes) responsible for consciousness will be identified. Then, we can determine for certain if any of the lower animals are also conscious. We think chimps and dolphins might be, but we're not really sure until we see if they have the necessary genes. In fact, the old-time behaviorists could be right, and all the other animals really are merely automatons. That would definitely make us "special"! Once we have the consciousness genes in our labs, we can introduce them into those other species, such as Rover and Kitty, upon whom we would like to confer the boon of consciousness ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 13 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf128/sf128p14.htm
... Amex 304 pages, hardcover, $19.95, 52 illus., 3 indexes, 1992. 548 references, LC 91-68541. ISBN 0-915554-26-7 , 7x10. Biological Anomalies: Humans II: A Catalog of Biological Anomalies Sorry, Out of print The second Catalog volume on human biological anomalies focuses upon the "internal" machinery of the body (1 ) Its major organs; (2 ) Its support structure (the skeleton); and (3 ) Its vital subsystems (the central nervous system and the immune system) Typical subjects covered: Enigma of the fetal graft * Phantom limbs * Blood chimeras * Anomalous human combustion * Bone shedders * Skin shedders * "Perfection" of the eye * Dearth of memory traces * Sudden increase of hominid brain size * Health and the weather * Periodicity of epidemics * Extreme longevity * AIDS anomalies * Cancer anomalies * Human limb regeneration * Nostril cycling * Voluntary suspended animation * Male menstruation [Picture caption: Is the complexity of the human eye anomalous?] 297 pages, hardcover, $19.95, 40 illus., 3 indexes, 1993. 494 references, LC 91-68541, ISBN 0-915554-27-5 , 7x10. Biological Anomalies: Humans III: A Catalog of Biological Anomalies Sorry, Out of print Completing our trilogy on human anomalies, this volume focuses on four areas (1 ) the human fossil record; (2 ) biochemistry and genetics; (3 ) possible unrecognized living hominids; and (4 ) human interactions with other species and "entities ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 12 - 10 Oct 2021 - URL: /sourcebk.htm
