All Posts
2008-08-29 15:01:12
by Jake Young in Pure Pedantry
Biology
One of the problems brains must overcome to behave effectively is to discretely encode all the different responses that they can produce. Considering movement alone, you can move in a lot of different ways. Selecting which one is appropriate is troublesome in itself, but encoding all of them is a challenge. It is like trying to organize the Library of Congress so that you can instantly find exactly what you want. Your brain must come up with some way to encode each of these responses separately because if it didn't than you might engage in one response when you really meant another. Ho...more
- Duncan J. (2008) Hierarchical coding for sequential task events in the monkey prefrontal cortex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(33), 11969-11974. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0802569105
2008-08-29 13:09:33
by brainblogger in Brain Blogger
Clinical Research
Sometimes we forget that doctors are just like everyday people. They have families, they are members of parent/teacher organizations (PTOs), they help their children with school projects and homework, and they, in many cases, are still repaying school loans. You name it, and yes, the doctor has probably experienced it. So too is the case ...more
- Fromme E. (2003) Care of the Dying Doctor: On the Other End of the Stethoscope. JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, 290(15), 2048-2055. DOI: 10.1001/jama.290.15.2048
2008-08-29 12:06:46
by Translating Autism in Translating Autism
Psychology
A review of: Losh, M., Sullivan, P.F., Trembath, D., Piven, J. (2008). Current Developments in the Genetics of Autism: From Phenome to Genome. Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology, 67(9), 829-837. DOI: 10.1097/NEN.0b013e318184482d
Dr. Molly Losh and a team at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill just published a comprehensive review of the scientific literature on the genetics of autism. Here I present the cliffsnotes version of the article, although I highly recommend that everyone with access to this manuscript should read it, for it is a very well craf...more
- Piven J. (2008) Current Developments in the Genetics of Autism: From Phenome to Genome. Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology, 67(9), 829-837. DOI: 10.1097/NEN.0b013e318184482d
2008-08-29 09:16:15
by Felix Bohne in science-meets-society
Biology
Autor: fee
Die Makuladegeneration (MD) ist eine Erkrankung der Makula, dem Punkt des scharfen Sehens in der Retina des Auges, die leider immer noch in der ganz- oder teilweisen Erblindung der Betroffenen endet. Die Auslöser sind nach wie vor unbekannt, doch in den vergangenen Jahren wurden diverse Fortschritte auf diesem Gebiet erzielt.
Grundsätzlich werden zwei Varianten, die ...more
- Zhang K. (2008) Toll-like Receptor 3 and Geographic Atrophy in Age-Related Macular Degeneration. , DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa0802437
- He Y. (2007) Climate Change and War Frequency in Eastern China over the Last Millennium. Human Ecology, 35(4), 403-414. DOI: 10.1007/s10745-007-9115-8
2008-08-29 06:03:16
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
Psychology
Armchair commentators take note: when it comes to predicting whether players are going to make a shot, it really does make all the difference if you currently play the sport yourself.
Salvatore Aglioti and colleagues filmed a player attempting to throw a ball into a basketball hoop, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. They then showed portions of the film to elite basketball players, non-playing experts (coaches and journalists) and novices. Rather than being shown in full, the video was paused at various stages of the player's attempt, either before or after he had released the ...more
- Urgesi C. (2008) Action anticipation and motor resonance in elite basketball players. Nature Neuroscience, 11(9), 1109-1116. DOI: 10.1038/nn.2182
- Billon P. L. (2001) The political ecology of war: natural resources and armed conflicts. Political Geography, 20(5), 561-584. DOI: 10.1016/S0962-6298(01)00015-4
2008-08-29 02:00:16
by Dr Shock in Dr Shock MD PhD
Clinical Research
Long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy is superior in the long term to short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy. Short-term produces benefits more quickly than long-term therapies. After 3 years of follow-up, however, the situation was reversed with a stronger treatment effect in the long-term psychodynamic treatment group both for patients with depressive and anxiety symptoms.
If a patient is capable ...more
- Renlund C. (2008) Randomized trial on the effectiveness of long-and short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy and solution-focused therapy on psychiatric symptoms during a 3-year follow-up. Psychological Medicine, 38(05), DOI: 10.1017/S003329170700164X
2008-08-29 01:08:28
by scicurious in Neurotic Physiology
Biology
I had to cover this review, just because I saw the title. If I ever have a child (pity that poor child) they will be guinea pigs for experiments on “children as projectiles”. I can’t help it, every time I read the phrase, I think of someone putting a baby with a little helmet into ...more
2008-08-28 18:08:38
by Orac in Respectful Insolence
Clinical Research
Believe it or not, there was one area of so-called "alternative" medicine that I used to be a lot less skeptical about than I am now. Homeopathy, I always realized to be a load of pseudoscientific magical thinking. Ditto reiki, therapeutic touch, and other forms of "energy healing." It didn't take an extensive review of the literature to figure that out, although I did ultimately end up doing fairly extensive literature reviews anyway. Then, the more I looked into the hodge-podge of "healing" modalities whose basis is not science but rather prescientific and often mystical thought, the less...more
2008-08-28 18:01:40
by Chad Orzel in Uncertain Principles
Astronomy
This paper is the third of the articles I wrote when I was a grad student, and the first one where I was the lead author. It's also probably my favorite of the lot, not just because of the role it played in my career, but because it packs a lot of science into four pages.
The whole thing is summarized in this figure from the old NIST web page, which is a simplified version of Figure 2 from the paper itself:
This shows the collision rate as a function of time after we hit a cold sample of atoms with a 40ns pulse of laser light tuned near the atomic resonance frequenc...more
- Rolston S. (1998) Time-Resolved Studies of Ultracold Ionizing Collisions. Physical Review Letters, 80(23), 5093-5096. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.80.5093
- He Y. (2007) Climate Change and War Frequency in Eastern China over the Last Millennium. Human Ecology, 35(4), 403-414. DOI: 10.1007/s10745-007-9115-8
2008-08-28 16:08:39
by Olexandr Isayev in isayev.info
Biology
Our work on AIMD simulation of CL-20 thermal decomposition just get published in the J. Phys. Chem. B!
CL-20 (2,4,6,8,10,12-hexanitro-2,4,6,8,10,12-hexaazaisowurtzitane or HNIW) is a high-energy nitramine explosive. To improve atomistic understanding of the thermal decomposition of CL-20 gas and solid phases, we performed a series of ab initio molecular dynamics simulations. We found that during unimolecular ...more
- Leszczynski J. (2008) Ab Initio Molecular Dynamics Study on the Initial Chemical Events in Nitramines: Thermal Decomposition of CL-20. Journal of Physical Chemistry B, 112(35), 11005-11013. DOI: 10.1021/jp804765m
- Billon P. L. (2001) The political ecology of war: natural resources and armed conflicts. Political Geography, 20(5), 561-584. DOI: 10.1016/S0962-6298(01)00015-4