NASA’s Charles Jorgensen is developing sebvocal speech recognition technology, which can recognize what you say even if you don’t make a sound. Normally, when we speak we shape words with our articulator muscles as we force air past the larynx. However, these muscles work even when there is no air pushed through. Just saying words to yourself sends weak electrical signals, known as electromyograms, to your mouth. Electromyograms can be recorded, processed with statistical algorithms, and turn into speech, all without wasting precious air. This technology would be especially useful to astronauts, scuba divers, fighter pilots, as well as anybody working in loud, chaotic environments. Researchers have already used subvocal commands to drive a car (virtually) and navigate the web, while Japanese NTT Docomo hopes to apply subvocal speech recognition to make a silent cel phone. This would be great, because then we would not have all these people with tiny headsets going around seemingly talking to themselves like schizophrenics.

Silent Speaker, Forbes.com

The 75th annual Bryn Mawr-Wellesley book sale is going on this week, March 22-26, at the Priceton Day School, 32 Vandeventer St., Princeton, NJ, with proceeds going towards scholarships. This is a can’t-miss event for any true bibliophile. If you’re in the area the hours are:

Wednesday, March 22
10am - 2pm - Preview Sale (Admission $20)
2pm - 9pm

Thursday, March 23
Friday, March 24
10am - 9pm

Saturday, March 25
10am - 7pm (Half-price day)

Sunday, March 26
11am - 3pm (Box day, as many books as you can fit into a box for $5)

The Bryn Mawr Club of Princeton

The Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), a nonprofit service comprised of 53,548 member libraries in 96 countries, has a list of the top 1000 book titles, decided by the libraries’ "purchase vote" in ‘05. Here are the top 10:

1. The Bible
2. US Census
3. Mother Goose
4. The Divine Comedy
5. The Odyssey
6. The Iliad
7. Huckleberry Finn
8. Lord of the Rings
9. Hamlet
10. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

The complete list of the Top 1000 from 2005, OCLC.org

Remember remember the fifth of November,
gunpowder treason and plot.
We see no reason, why gunpowder treason,
should ever be forgot…

 
V’s Introduction:

Voila! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is it vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished, as the once vital voice of the verisimilitude now venerates what they once vilified. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose vis-a-vis an introduction, and so it is my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.

V for Vandetta

A joint study between the Mayo Clinic physicians and Arizona State school of journalism examined 1,203 newspaper articles about neurological conditions from 2003 and found that 20% of them had medical errors or exaggerations. The articles were taken from the New York Times and eight other regional newspapers with circulation over 200,000. The most common mistake was exaggerating the effectiveness of treatments. Aren’t you glad you get your brain news on the internet?

Newspaper coverage of neurologic conditions incorrect 20 percent of the time, study shows, EurekAlert.org
Mayo Clinic News

Astronomers using the infrared Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered an double helix nebula 80 light years in length near the center of the Milky Way galaxy. "We see two intertwining strands wrapped around each other as in a DNA molecule," said Mark Morris, a UCLA physics/astronomy professor and lead author of the article published today in Nature. "Nobody has ever seen anything like that before in the cosmic realm… What we see indicates a high degree of order." The double helix nebula is about 300 light years from the enormous black hole at the center of our galaxy (Earth is c. 25,000 light years from it). "We know the galactic center has a strong magnetic field [1,000 times that in our galactic suburbs] that is highly ordered and that the magnetic field lines are oriented perpendicular to the plane of the galaxy," Morris said. It is interesting how the astronomical macrocosm can mirror the biological microcosm. Seems likely this discovery will be enlisted towards the argument for intelligent design, as well as the fractal/holographic universe.

Astronomers report unprecedented double helix nebula near center of the Milky Way, EurekAlert.org
The Double Helix Nebula: a magnetic torsional wave propagating out of the Galactic centre, Arxiv.org

Ambien, the most popular sleep medication in the US with over 24 million prescription in 2004, may cause sleep-walking, driving, talking, even stealing. Timothy Morgenthaler of the Mayo Clinic Sleep Disorders Center says he has seen many cases of people sleepwalking and sleep-eating after taking the drug, behavior that stopped when they went off Ambien. He reported 5 such cases in the journal Sleep Medicine in 2002 and others at the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center reported 19 more last year. Reports to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) show more instances of sleepwalking with Ambien than with all the other sleep aids combined.

Somnambulism, or partial arousal, is a disorder in which a person is neither awake or asleep. Ambien might prevent people from waking up completely when something disturbs their sleep, so they end up in partial arousal. This would explain why they are able to carry out routine tasks, albeit imperfectly at times, and why they do not remember doing so when questioned afterwards. The most absurdly hilarious case of Ambien-related somnambulism is probably Lt. Judith Renee Lasswell, 39. Last September, she was arrested for shoplifting after she sleepwalked into a Navy base exchange, picked up an "X-Files" DVD and tried to return it for store credit. As a result, her top-secret security clearance was revoked and, in addition to larceny charges, she could face a dishonorable discharge. "I’ve never had a problem before in my life until I took Ambien, and it’s literally ruined my career and everything I ever worked for," said Lasswell. "I have gaps in memory from the whole time I was on Ambien, which is very terrref=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somnambulism”>Sleepwalking, Wiki
Automatism (case law), Wiki

Today marks the date of the assassination of Gaius Julius Caesar in 44 BCE, the 15th day of the Roman month of Martius, Idus Martiae. The term Ides comes from the earliest Roman calendar, said to have been created by Romulus, the mythical founder of Rome. While the calendar was displaced in the 3rd century AD by one close to the modern, the term Ides stayed in the vernacular for centuries to come. So when Shakespeare had the soothsayer (named Spurinna according to Suetonius and Plutarch) tell Caesar to "Beware the Ides of March" in 1599, he assumed that the audience knew when the Ides was.

The unfortunate day was marked by numerous omens, some mentioned by Shakespeare. A sacrificial animal was found to have no heart. During construction in Capua sponsored by Caesar, the tomb of Capys, believed to be one of the region’s founders, was uncovered with an inscription warning that the man responsible for the disturbance would be slain by his countrymen. On March 14, a king-bird carrying a laurel (sign of peace) into the Curia of Pompeii was torn apart by other birds. Livy recorded that Caesar’s wife Calpurnia dreamt that the star set upon their house by the Senate had fallen. Another version has her dream Caesar stabbed in her arms. Despite these warnings, Caesar went about his business, which involved being stabbed 23 times by the conspirators, some his friends. Et tu Brute?

Several software companies are working on a new type of software, the hunch engine, that can be used to enhance human intuition. Abstractly, the user is presented with a starting point, the seed, and a set of mutations. When the user selects the mutation that looks good, a new set of mutations is generated from which he can select again, and again, and so on until the desired mutation is found. The idea behind it is what Supreme Court Justice Potter Steward called the "obscenity principle", the user may not know what they are looking for, but they will know when they see it. Others call the process guided natural selection.

Such software can have a wide range of applications. Eric Bonabeau, founder of Icosystem, demonstrated at the O’Reilly conference in San Diego last week how the hunch engine can be used to improve digital images by picking from mutations, without any understanding of programs like Photoshop. It has also been used in France to optimize postal routes to allow more intangible benefits while still fulfilling management’s requirements. Meanwhile, Coalesix is gearing the engine towards drug discovery. Their software, called Mobius, allows pharmaceutical chemists to examine 12 molecules (mutations) at a time, from which they pick the ones that look promising, which then recombine into 12 more that are hopefully closer to the drug they are searching for.

What gives the hunch engine an edge over traditional software, is that it can provide a result that the user could not predict. As Dave Weindberger, author of Small Pieces Loosely Joined, pointed out, we design many things, but our hunches are usually predictable and repetitive, mutation can take us in new unforeseen directions.

Software Helps Develop Hunches, Wired.com
‘Hunch engine’ sharpens up your half-baked ideas, NewScientist.com ($)

Icosystem

The Yale School of Medicine is researching the application of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to silence the voices in the heads of people with schizophrenia. TMS is the non-invasive use of rapidly changing magnetic fields to induce specific electromagnetic fields in the brain. Stimuli are applied to an area of the brain several times per second for several seconds. The quantity, strength, duration and interval between stimuli are refered to as the stimulation parameters. While electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) allow researcher to see which parts of the brain activate when a subject performs a certain task, they can’t prove that those parts are in fact used for the task. But if they can suppress the activity through TMS stimulation, then the part is probably used in the performance. So, by holding magnets over parts of the skull for a few minutes a day, it’s possible to alter the very biochemistry of the brain, stimulating or suppressing different regions, with effects that can last beyond the duration of the application. Yale psychiatrist Ralph Hoffman MD hopes to use this technology to treat tha auditory hallucinations of schizoprenics. By focusing on the Wernicke’s region in the left temporal lobe and another region on the opposite side of the brain (parts used in perceiving words spoken by others), he was able to reduce these hallucinations.

Auditory hallucinations are not the only applications for TMS. Tony Ro at the Rice University, TX, applied TMS to the visual cortex (in the back of the brain, used for seeing) to interrupt the normal visual pathway, thereby enducing the peculiar phenomenon of zombie vision. Better known as ‘blindsight’, it is the condition found in some patients with brain damage who report not seeing something but correctly identify the shape and location when forced to guess. In Ro’s experiments, subjects were shown vertical and horizontal lines on a computer screen, but because the pathways were jammed while under TMS they reported seeing nothing. Still, when asked to guess they gave the right answer 75% of the time. In a similar experiment with red and green dots, their accuracy rose to 81%. "This high degree of accuracy for both the directional orientation and color tasks was significantly above chance," says Ro. "It’s clear that detailed visual information was still being processed unconsciously."

TMS can also enhance areas of the brain, making people exhibit dazzling latent intelligence, sparks of genius one sometimes finds in autistic people. Alan Snyder of the University of Sydney conducted many experiments on university students in which he used TMS to stimulate the frontal lobe and measured subjects’ ability to draw, proofreed and do math. After repeated controlled experiments he found that 40% of the volunteers exhibited extrodinarily inhanced abilities: drawing better than they thought they ever could, catching mistakes they missed before TMS, and solving math problems faster. This has led Snyder to believe that autistic thought is not a biological fluke like some supposed, but rather a variation on thinking we may all be capable of.

Clearly, transcranial magnetic stimulation has many uses. It can strip us of our senses, rendering us unable to perform even the most basic tasks, or it can open our minds, stimulating hidden talents we never knew we had. TMS machines still run for $25,000-50,000 and are not sold to the general public, limiting their use to hospitals and universities. Nor are there any schematics for how to make one on the internet, unlike the make-your-own EEG. So, if you want to get hooked-up, your best bet is probably volunteering for neurology/cognitive science research.

Yale expands research using magnetic stimulation for schizophrenia, EurekAlert.org
Out of sight, out of mind? EurekAlert.org
Savant for a day, NYTimes.com
Transcranial magnetic stimulation, Wiki

Superior mirages and UFOs

Dr. Stephen Hughes, a physics/astrophysics lecturer at Queensland Institute of Technology, suggested that some UFO sightings can be explained using a rare atmospheric phenomenon known as a ‘reverse’ or superior mirage. Why superior? Well, a standard or inferior mirage is when something on the horizon looks like it’s reflected in water. This illusion is caused by the inversion layer between the cold air near the ground and the warm air above. When light passes from the cold layer into the warm one, it’s reflected downwards and thus projects over the horizon. But temperture inversions can also occur high up, bouncing light from astronomical bodies, as well as aircrafts. So, if a plane flies into a spot occupied by an inversion layer, a light can appear to travel very quickly from miles away on the horizon towards the aircraft. As soon as the plane flies out of the inversion layer, the light will rush back towards the horizon. This erratic back and forth motion can be repeated multiple times, given multiple inversion spots. Consequently, what may look like a UFO zig-zagging at great speeds across the sky, could just be an optical illusion.

Blinded by power of illusion, Courier-Mail.new.com.au

March 8th is International Women’s Day. IWD was first observed on February 28th, 1909 in the US, after a declaration by the Socialist Party of America. Towards the end of WWI, women across Europe held peace rallies on March 8, 1913. Then, following the Russian October Revolution (second part of the February Revolution) in 1917, Bolshevik feminist Alexandra Kollontai convinced Lenin to make March 8th an official holiday, although it remained a working day until 1965. The United Nations gave official sanction/sponsorship to IWD in 1975. While in 2005, the British Trades Union Congress overwhelmingly approved the designation of the day as a public holiday in the UK. IWD is still celebrated in much of Europe, India and Mexico. The image is this year’s official IWD logo, which kind of looks like something you might see after you’ve been thrown down a well.

Alexa Internet, a subsidiary of Amazon.com, a provider of web traffic statistics, has a list of the Top 500 English language web-sites, a curious read. As of March, Yahoo still reigns at number one, followed by MSN, Google and Ebay. What’s a little surprising is that the social networking site MySpace is at number five. Then again, with over 61 million profiles at the time of this post, it may not be that strange. After all, the Daily Show recently had a segment about MySpace, doubtless boosting it’s popularity further, meanwhile the top unsigned musician from MySpace’s artist section, Tila Tequila, adorns the cover of the current issue of Stuff magazine. Though MySpace is the most popular social networking site (probably because it’s free), it’s not the only one. Euphemistically named AdultFriendfinder, an international site for people who just want anonymous sex in its different varieties, weighed in at #22. The Dr. Phil endorsed Match.com dating site came in at #37, followed by the school-oriented Facebook.com at #44, while the invitation-only Friendster.com trailed behind at #51. It’s pretty amazing how many people already use these sites, with TV commercials only now beginning to air for them. I guess it’s true, we’re all connected. Blogging sites too shared in the glory, with Blogger.com (my host) at #10, Xanga.com at #24, and Photobucket.com at #66.

Top 500, Alexa.com

Scientists at the University of Edinburgh found that parts of the brain shrink because of stress. Alasdair MJ MacLullich and co. looked at the anterior cingulate cortex, which responsible for controlling stress hormones. After analzing hormone levels and brain volume in two groups of volunteers, ten healthy males ages 65-70 each, they found that those with the smaller anterior cingulate cortex experienced more stress. This area usually shrinks with age and may be a cause depression and Alzheimer’s disease. What’s weird is that our environments can alter the very physical composition of our brains. MacLullich said that "the discovery deepens doctors’ understand of ageing, depression and Alzheimer’s diseases, and will help in the development of treatments based on reducing high levels of stress hormones."

Scientists gain new understanding of age-related depression and dementia, EurekAlert.org

Milton Wainwright, a microbiologist at Sheffield University, is testing samples from one of the strangest events in meteorological history. Starting July 25, 2001, it rained red over the Kerala district (western India), and the rain stayed red for two months. The downfall burned the leaves on trees and turned everyone’s clothing pink. If that wasn’t strange enough, hours before the first ruby drop fell, people heard a loud sonic boom that shook houses in the region. Recent analysis of samples from the incident reveal some curious particles. At 50% carbon, 45% oxygen, with pinches of iron and sodium, they just may be extra-terrestrial biological material. The theory first proposed by Godfrey Louis, physicist at Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, is that a piece may have broken off a passing comet and fell towards the coast, which could explain the sonic boom. Many scientists believe that comets may carry organic chemicals and some even suggested that we evolved from microbes that were brought to Earth via comet (Fred Hoyle). So, it’s possible that the weird stuff that made it rain blood was in fact some sort of alien biomatter, absorbed by the clouds as the meteor broke up in the atmosphere, which gave the rain it’s hue and strange properties. There have been other meteorites with organic chemicals, like the one that fell in Murchison, Australia in 1969 with high concentrations of amino acids (c. 100 ppm). Since many comets are largely ice, they can be rich in organic compounds. They may have also created the Earth’s oceans. But now that I’ve soothed you enough, aren’t crashing thunder and rain of blood things that happen on the first day of the Apocalypse?

Red rain could prove that aliens have landed, Guardian.co.uk
Astrobiology:Missions, Nasa.gov
Exobiology: Interview w/Stanley L. Miller, AccessExcellence.org

The largest study of marijuana and depression to date, conducted at SUNY-Albany and published in the journal Addictive Behaviors, has found that daily and weekly marijuana users had about 30% fewer symptoms of depression than non-users. Further, they were more likely to report good moods and had fewer physical complaints like sleeplessness. Which is interesting, considering that the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) Director John Walters said that "marijuana… can lead to depression, thoughts of suicide and schizophrenia." Of course this knowledge is nothing new, clergyman Robert Burton claimed marijuana as a treatment for depression in The Anatomy of Melancholy as early as 1621. But how does weed alleviate depression? Recent experiments with rat brains and a synthetic cannabinoid HU210 conducted by Xia Zhang, University of Saskatchewan-Suskatoon, Canada, found that two high doses a day for 10 days increased the neurogenesis (nerve cell formation) in the hippocampus (part associated with learning, memory and moods) by as much as 40%. Moreover, when placed under stress, rats that received the cannabinoid showed fewer signs of anxiety and depression than rats that didn’t. When neurogenesis was stopped using x-rays, the behavioral effects disappeared. Other studies have shown that hippocampus nerve cell growth is suppressed by other common drugs like alcohol, cigarettes and cocaine. So, when life’s getting you down, instead of drinking yourself into a stupor, leaving your hopes and dreams buried under tobacco leaves, why not put the ‘can’ in cannabis, the ‘merry’ in marijuana, and the ‘blunt’ in your mouth. You may just grow some brain cells instead of killing them.

Marijuana users less depressed, MPPP.org
Marijuana might cause new cell growth in the brain, NewScientist.com

A survey conducted by NORC of the University of Chicago, "Altruism and Empathy in America: Trends and Correlates," authored by Tom W. Smith, found a connection between altruism and strong romantic relationships. 1,329 people were surveyed. First, they were asked to rate their agreement with statements like "I’d rather suffer than let the one I love suffer" to measure their level of altruism. Then, they were asked to rate their happiness in their lives and marriages. Those who scored high on altruism were more likely to come out "very happy." Women tended to have a greater empathy and altruism than men, and children who grew up with both parents were morempathicic than those who didn’t. Least altruistic were girls raised only by a father. Money had little to do with it. The Fetzer Institute conducted a similar study in 2002, allowing researchers to note that altruistic behavior has been growing over the years. About 5% (at 75%) more people reported having concerned feelings for the less fortunate than in ‘02, while the number of people who felt they shouldn’t worry about others dropped by 7% (to 25%). So, it seems true that the selfless are happier than the selfish, karma.

Survey links altruism and romantic love, UChicago.edu

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And ‘mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And ‘mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ‘twould win me
That with music loud and long
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

The story goes that this poem came to Coleridge in a dream. He had fallen asleep after taking "an anodyne … in consequence of a slight disposition", which is code for getting high on laudanum (a liquid form of opium) and passing out. In his dreams/hallucinations he supposedly composed some two-three hundred lines, which he tried to capture on paper as soon as he woke up. But after writing down the first three stanzas, he was interrupted by a "person on business from Porlock" who kept him for over an hour. When the man finally left, Coleridge had forgotten the rest of the poem. To this day, the person from Porlock is used as a metaphor for the annoying sublunar distractions that get in the way of artistic genius.

The National Opinion Research Center (NORC) of the University of Chicago surveyed 33 nations to determine which people are the most proud of their country. They distinguished between pride over specific accomplishments and general national pride, assigning a score to each nation. United States (4.0) topped the pride over accomplishments survey, followed by Venezuela (3.6), Australia (2.9), Austria (2.4), South Africa (2.7), Canada (2.4), Chile (2.6), the Philippines (2.3) and Israel (2.3). The general national pride was strongest in Venezuela (18.4), then United States (17.7), Australia (17.5), Austria (17.4), South Africa (17), Canada (17), Chile (17.1), New Zealand (16.6) and Israel (16.2). What this seems to suggest is that national pride is strongest in relatively new nations that were once colonies. In 1995-96, NORC conducted a similar survey with 23 countries, which allowed researchers to examine changes over the past decade. This comparison suggests that the nations that experienced recent terrorist attacks on their citizens (US and Australia) have the fastest growing national pride. Meanwhile, established nations (especially in Europe) have the lowest national pride. "It could be that those nations are experiencing a response to globalism, particularly among young people. Many identify as much as being Europeans as they do as being citizens of their own country. In some European nations, the concept of strong patriotism also has negative connotations," said Tom Smith, Director of the General Social Survey at NORC. At the bottom of the list, starting with the least patriotic, Germany, Latvia, Sweden, Slovakia, Poland, Taiwan, France, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic.

Americans and Venezuelans lead the world in national pride, EurekAlert.org
NORC, UChicago.edu

A new study documented in the February 27 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine (JAMA/Archives journal), eating or drinking cocoa can lower blood pressure and reduce the risk of dying. Brian Buijsse M.Sc. of the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, Netherlands, and company studied 470 Dutch men ages 65-84 since 1985. After the initial physical examinations and interviews about their diets (used to place them into one of three groups depending on their cocoa consumption), they had follow-up visits in 1990 and 1995. For those who didn’t show up, records of illnesses and deaths were obtained from hospitals or the government. During those 15 years, 314 men died, 152 because of cardiovascular diseases. The study showed that men with the highest cocoa consumption were half as likely to die from cardiovascular problems, regardless their smoking habits, fitness, or alcohol intake. Furthermore, they were also less likely to die of any cause. Cocoa contains a chemical called flavan-3-ols, which can lower blood pressure and improve the function of cells lining the blood vessels. But, the authors believe there’s more to the story. "The lower cardiovascular mortality risk associated with cocoa intake could not be attributed to the lower blood pressure observed with cocoa use, our findings, therefore, suggest that the lower cardiovascular mortality risk related with cocoa intake is mediated by mechanisms other than lowering blood pressure." Makes you wonder what’s the life expectancy in Hershey, PA?

Cocoa intake linked to lower blood pressure, reduced risk of death, EurekAlert.org