the economist | ON THE evening before All Saints' Day in 1517, Martin Luther nailed 95 theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg. In those days a thesis was simply a position one wanted to argue. Luther, an Augustinian friar, asserted that Christians could not buy their way to heaven. Today a doctoral thesis is both an idea and an account of a period of original research. Writing one is the aim of the hundreds of thousands of students who embark on a doctorate of philosophy (PhD) every year.
In most countries a PhD is a basic requirement for a career in academia. It is an introduction to the world of independent research—a kind of intellectual masterpiece, created by an apprentice in close collaboration with a supervisor. The requirements to complete one vary enormously between countries, universities and even subjects. Some students will first have to spend two years working on a master's degree or diploma. Some will receive a stipend; others will pay their own way. Some PhDs involve only research, some require classes and examinations and some require the student to teach undergraduates. A thesis can be dozens of pages in mathematics, or many hundreds in history. As a result, newly minted PhDs can be as young as their early 20s or world-weary forty-somethings.
One thing many PhD students have in common is dissatisfaction. Some describe their work as “slave labour”. Seven-day weeks, ten-hour days, low pay and uncertain prospects are widespread. You know you are a graduate student, goes one quip, when your office is better decorated than your home and you have a favourite flavour of instant noodle. “It isn't graduate school itself that is discouraging,” says one student, who confesses to rather enjoying the hunt for free pizza. “What's discouraging is realising the end point has been yanked out of reach.”
Whining PhD students are nothing new, but there seem to be genuine problems with the system that produces research doctorates (the practical “professional doctorates” in fields such as law, business and medicine have a more obvious value). There is an oversupply of PhDs. Although a doctorate is designed as training for a job in academia, the number of PhD positions is unrelated to the number of job openings. Meanwhile, business leaders complain about shortages of high-level skills, suggesting PhDs are not teaching the right things. The fiercest critics compare research doctorates to Ponzi or pyramid schemes.
takingnote |With the indictment of former Atlanta School
Superintendent Beverly A. Hall and 34 other public school employees in a
massive cheating scandal, the time is right to re-examine other
situations of possible illegal behavior by educators. Washington, DC,
belongs at the top of that list.
Michelle A. Rhee, America’s most famous school reformer,
was fully aware of the extent of the problem when she glossed over what
appeared to be widespread cheating during her first year as Schools
Chancellor in Washington, DC. A long-buried confidential memo from her
outside data consultant suggests that the problem was far more serious
than kids copying off other kids’ answer sheets. (“191 teachers
representing 70 schools”). Twice in just four pages the consultant
suggests that Rhee’s own principals, some of whom she had hired, may
have been responsible (“Could the erasures in some cases have been done
by someone other than the students and the teachers?”).
Rhee has publicly maintained that, if bureaucratic red
tape hadn’t gotten in the way, she would have investigated the
erasures. For example, in an interview[1] conducted for PBS’ “Frontline”
before I learned about the confidential memo, Rhee told me, “We kept
saying, ‘Okay, we’re going to do this; we just need to have more
information.’ And by the time the information was trickling in back and
forth, we were about to take the next year’s test. And there was a new
superintendent of education that came in at the time. And she said,
‘Okay, well, we’re about to take the next test anyway so let’s just make
sure that the proper protocols are in place for next time.’”
At best, that story is misleading.
The rash of “wrong to right” (WTR) erasures was first
noticed by the DC official in charge of testing, who, after consulting
with the test-maker, asked Rhee to investigate, in November, 2008.
Through her data chief, Rhee turned to Dr. Fay G. “Sandy” Sanford for
outside analysis.
I have a copy of the memo[2]
and have confirmed its authenticity with two highly placed and
reputable sources. The anonymous source is in DCPS; the other is DC
Inspector General Charles Willoughby. A reliable source has confirmed
that Rhee and Deputy Chancellor Kaya Henderson discussed the memo in
staff gatherings. Sanford came to Washington to present his findings in
late January, 2009, after which he wrote his memo.
In response to my request for comment, Rhee issued the
following careful statement: “As chancellor I received countless
reports, memoranda and presentations. I don’t recall receiving a report
from Sandy Sanford regarding erasure data from the DC CAS, but I’m
pleased, as has been previously reported, that both inspectors general
(DOE and DCPS) reviewed the memo and confirmed my belief that there was
no wide spread cheating.” After receiving this statement, I sent her
the memo; her spokesman responded by saying that she stood by her
earlier statement.
Chancellor Henderson did not respond to my request for a response.
Sanford wanted the memo to be kept confidential. At the
top and bottom of each page he wrote “Sensitive Information–Treat as
Confidential,” and he urged, “Don’t make hard copies and leave them
around.” (The memo.)
The gist of his message: the many ‘wrong to right’ erasures
on the students’ answer sheets suggested widespread cheating by adults.
“It is common knowledge in the high-stakes testing
community that one of the easiest ways for teachers to artificially
inflate student test scores is to erase student wrong responses to
multiple choice questions and recode them as correct,” Sanford wrote.
Sanford analyzed the evidence from one school, Aiton,
whose scores had jumped by 29 percentiles in reading and 43 percentiles
in math and whose staff–from the principal down to the custodians–Rhee
had rewarded with $276,265 in bonuses. Answer sheets revealed an
average of 5.7 WTR erasures in reading and 6.8 in math, significantly
above the district average of 1.7 and 2.3.[3]
Sanford, a Marine officer who carved out a post-retirement
career in data analysis in California, spelled out the consequences of
a cheating scandal. Schools whose rising scores showed they were
making “adequate yearly progress” as required by the federal No Child
Left Behind Act could “wind up being compromised,” he warned. And what
would happen to the hefty bonuses Rhee had already awarded to the
principals and teachers at high-achieving schools with equally high
erasure rates, Sanford asked? And, Stanford pondered, “What legal
options would we have with teachers found guilty of infractions? Could
they be fired? Would the teachers’ contract allow it?”[4]
While Sanford’s memo doesn’t raise the issue, falsely
elevated scores would deny remedial attention to children whose true
scores would trigger help. Just how many children could only be
determined by an investigation.
Michelle Rhee had to decide whether to investigate
aggressively or not. She had publicly promised to make all decisions
“in the best interests of children,” and a full-scale investigation
would seem to keep that pledge. If cheating were proved, she could fire
the offenders and see that students with false scores received the
remedial attention they needed. Failing to investigate might be
interpreted as a betrayal of children’s interests–if it ever became
public knowledge. Fist tap Big Don.
NYTimes | As school districts across the country consider placing more police officers in schools, youth advocates and judges are raising alarm about what they have seen in the schools where officers are already stationed: a surge in criminal charges against children for misbehavior that many believe is better handled in the principal’s office.
Since the early 1990s, thousands of districts, often with federal subsidies, have paid local police agencies to provide armed “school resource officers” for high schools, middle schools and sometimes even elementary schools. Hundreds of additional districts, including those in Houston, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, have created police forces of their own, employing thousands of sworn officers.
Last week, in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., shootings, a task force of the National Rifle Association recommended placing police officers or other armed guards in every school. The White House has proposed an increase in police officers based in schools.
The effectiveness of using police officers in schools to deter crime or the remote threat of armed intruders is unclear. The new N.R.A. report cites the example of a Mississippi assistant principal who in 1997 got a gun from his truck and disarmed a student who had killed two classmates, and another in California in which a school resource officer in 2001 wounded and arrested a student who had opened fire with a shotgun.
Yet the most striking impact of school police officers so far, critics say, has been a surge in arrests or misdemeanor charges for essentially nonviolent behavior — including scuffles, truancy and cursing at teachers — that sends children into the criminal courts.
NYTimes | Cheon H. Park ran a company that had begun to prosper on government contracts, but he had bigger ambitions. So he tore down his shabby headquarters on a quiet street in Flushing, Queens, and replaced it with a lavish three-story building that had marble floors, granite countertops, red carpets and a soaring chandelier.
Then he brought in the clients: 3- and 4-year-olds with developmental disabilities.
Scores of them came each weekday, their parents lured by the attractive surroundings and the promises of state-of-the-art therapy. New York City and New York State paid for it all, from the expensive renovations to the services themselves, at a rate of as much as $98 an hour.
But many of the children entrusted to Mr. Park’s company did not get the care they needed, according to numerous interviews with workers and parents and an extensive analysis of government records.
Some children whose first language was Chinese languished in classes taught in Spanish or Korean. Others who were supposed to receive individual tutoring were thrown into groups of four or more children, all with different types of disabilities.
Some children did not have disabilities at all and were simply being used to generate billings, the interviews show.
“We had kids who were little rocket scientists being put in there — who could read and write at a third-grade level,” said Angel Tirado, a former aide to Mr. Park.
Mr. Park’s contracts were canceled by the city at the beginning of this school year after The New York Times questioned officials about his company.
But his success until then underscores how private contractors have taken advantage of this generously financed but poorly regulated segment of the special-education system, often called special ed pre-K, according to an investigation by The Times.
At Mr. Park’s company, the costs to treat these 3- and 4-year-olds were enormous. The government routinely spent more than $50,000 in a single year on services for one child, according to an analysis of billing records.
In all, that occurred 281 times from 2005 to 2012, the records show.
realitysandwich |
The cause of our concern: while the original criticism against Hancock and Sheldrake was later retracted -- literally crossed out on the blog page -- after the speakers rebutted it, the initial decision to remove the videos still held. Statements from TED staff implied that the presentations were "pseudoscience," but
no specific allegations were made. Both Rupert Sheldrake and Graham
Hancock offered to debate a member of the anonymous science board, or
any other representative, about actual criticisms, but got no response.
To an outsider, TED's actions are baffling.
In your personal statements you
say that TED is not censoring the videos, since they are available on a
back page of your site, and technically that may be true. But by
relegating them to obscure blogs that are not indexed as part of the
regular pool of TEDx talks, the unequivocal message is that these talks
are not fit to be seen among the thousands of other presentations that
TED offers through YouTube. Somehow they were mistakes that slipped
through and need to be quarantined from the "good" TED talks, to keep
them from contamination. Given TED's influence, this treatment is
unfairly damaging to the reputations of the speakers singled out.
The subsequent cancellation of TEDxWestHollywood's license,
apparently due to the involvement of three of its speakers, who were
named in a letter from TED staff, seems to be a continuation of the same
baffling behavior. Again, the only reason given was a vague reference
to "pseudoscience." But why these speakers? What had they done to
justify reprimand -- especially since TEDxWestHollywood had been in
development for a year and was only two weeks from taking place?
The five people identified as problematic by TED work in different
fields. Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist. Graham Hancock is a journalist
who has written about archeological ruins. Larry Dossey is a doctor.
Russell Targ is a physicist. Marylin Schlitz is a social anthropologist
and consciousness researcher. The one subject they all have in common is
a shared interest in the non-locality of consciousness, the possibility
that consciousness extends beyond the brain. Each speaker has devoted
many years to the rigorous study of consciousness through the lens of
their respective disciplines, and they have come up with provocative
results.
Through its actions, TED appears to be drawing a line around this area
of investigation and marking it as forbidden territory. Is this true? In
the absence of any detailed reasoning in TED's public statements, it's
hard to avoid this conclusion. It would seem that, despite your
statement that "TED is 100% committed to open enquiry, including
challenges to orthodox thinking," that enquiry appears to not include
any exploration of consciousness as a non-local phenomenon, no matter
how it may be approached.
archive | OMNI was a science and science fiction magazine published in the US and
the UK. It contained articles on science fact and short works of science
fiction. The first issue was published in October 1978, the last in
Winter 1995, with an internet version lasting until 1998.
OMNI was launched by Kathy Keeton, long-time companion and later wife of
Penthouse magazine publisher Bob Guccione, who described the magazine
in its first issue as "an original if not controversial mixture of
science fact, fiction, fantasy and the paranormal". Before launch it was
referred to as Nova, but the name was changed before the first issue to
avoid a conflict with the PBS science show of the same name, NOVA.
The magazine was initially edited by Frank Kendig, who left several
months after the magazine's launch. Ben Bova, who was hired as Fiction
Editor, was promoted to Editor, leaving the magazine in 1981. After
Kendig and Bova, Editors of OMNI included Richard Teresi, Gurney
Williams III, Patrice Adcroft, Keith Ferrell, and Pamela Weintraub
(editor of OMNI as one of the first major standalone webzines from
1996-1998). Kathleen Stein managed the magazine's prestigious Q&A
interviews with the top scientists of the 20th century through 1998.
Ellen Datlow was Associate fiction editor of OMNI under Robert Sheckley
for one and a half years, and took over as Fiction Editor in 1981 until
the magazine folded in 1998. The very first edition had an exclusive
interview with renowned physicist, Freeman Dyson, the second edition
with American writer and futurist, Alvin Toffler.
OMNI entered the market at the start of a wave of new science magazines
aimed at educated but otherwise "non-professional" readers. Science
Digest and Science News already served the high-school market, and
Scientific American and New Scientist the professional, while OMNI was
arguably the first aimed at "armchair scientists" who were nevertheless
well informed about technical issues. The next year, however, Time
introduced Discover while the AAAS introduced Science '80.
Advertising dollars were spread among the different magazines, and those
without deep pockets soon folded in the early 1980s, notably Science
Digest, while Science '80 merged with Discover. OMNI appeared to weather
this storm better than most, likely due to its wider selection of
contents.
International editions of OMNI magazine were published in at least five
markets. The content in the British editions closely followed the North
American editions, but with a different numbering sequence and British
advertising. At least one British edition was entirely unique and was
shipped under the banner of "Omni UK". The Italian edition was edited by
Albert Peruzzo and ran for 20 issues from 1981 to 1983. The Japanese
edition ran from at least 1982 to 1989. German and Spanish editions were
also published.
NYTimes | The visible brain has arrived — the consistency of Jell-O, as
transparent and colorful as a child’s model, but vastly more useful.
Scientists at Stanford University
reported on Wednesday that they have made a whole mouse brain, and part
of a human brain, transparent so that networks of neurons that receive
and send information can be highlighted in stunning color and viewed in
all their three-dimensional complexity without slicing up the organ.
Even more important, experts say, is that unlike earlier methods for
making the tissue of brains and other organs transparent, the new
process, called Clarity by its inventors, preserves the biochemistry of
the brain so well that researchers can test it over and over again with
chemicals that highlight specific structures and provide clues to past
activity. The researchers say this process may help uncover the physical
underpinnings of devastating mental disorders like schizophrenia, autism, post-traumatic stress disorder and others.
The work, reported on Wednesday in the journal Nature,
is not part of the Obama administration’s recently announced initiative
to probe the secrets of the brain, although the senior author on the
paper, Dr. Karl Deisseroth at Stanford, was one of those involved in
creating the initiative and is involved in planning its future.
Dr. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health,
which provided some of the financing for the research, described the new
work as helping to build an anatomical “foundation” for the Obama
initiative, which is meant to look at activity in the brain.
Dr. Insel added that the technique works in a human brain that has been
in formalin, a preservative, for years, which means that long-saved
human brains may be studied. “Frankly,” he said, “that is spectacular.”
Kwanghun Chung, the primary author on the paper, and Dr. Deisseroth
worked with a team at Stanford for years to get the technique right. Dr.
Deisseroth, known for developing another powerful technique, called
optogenetics, that allows the use of light to switch specific brain
activity on and off, said Clarity could have a broader impact than
optogenetics. “It’s really one of the most exciting things we’ve done,”
he said, with potential applications in neuroscience and beyond.
“I think it’s great,” said Dr. Clay Reid, a senior investigator at the
Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, who was not involved in
the work. “One of the very difficult challenges has been making the
brain, which is opaque, clear enough so that you can see deep into it.”
This technique, he said, makes brains “extremely clear” and preserves
most of the brain chemistry. “It has it all,” he said. Fist tap Rembom.
frontiersin | Although significant advances have been made in our understanding of the
neural basis of action observation and intention understanding in the
last few decades by studies demonstrating the involvement of a specific
brain network (action observation network; AON), these have been largely
based on experimental studies in which people have been considered as
strictly isolated entities. However, we, as social species, spend much
more of our time performing actions interacting with others. Research
shows that a person's position along the continuum of perceived social
isolation/bonding to others is associated with a variety of physical and
mental health effects. Thus, there is a crucial need to better
understand the neural basis of intention understanding performed in
interpersonal and emotional contexts. To address this issue, we
performed a meta-analysis using of functional magnetic resonance imaging
(fMRI) studies over the past decade that examined brain and cortical
network processing associated with understanding the intention of others
actions vs. those associated with passionate love for others. Both
overlapping and distinct cortical and subcortical regions were
identified for intention and love, respectively. These findings provide
scientists and clinicians with a set of brain regions that can be
targeted for future neuroscientific studies on intention understanding,
and help develop neurocognitive models of pair-bonding.
In an 1880 article entitled "What is the Fourth Dimension?",
Hinton suggested that points moving around in three dimensions might be
imagined as successive cross-sections of a static four-dimensional
arrangement of lines passing through a three-dimensional plane, an idea
that anticipated the notion of world lines, and of time
as a fourth dimension (although Hinton did not propose this explicitly,
and the article was mainly concerned with the possibility of a fourth
spatial dimension), in Einstein's theory of relativity.
Hinton later introduced a system of coloured cubes by the study of
which, he claimed, it was possible to learn to visualise
four-dimensional space (Casting out the Self, 1904). Rumours subsequently arose that these cubes had driven more than one hopeful person insane.[citation needed]
Hinton created several new words to describe elements in the fourth dimension. According to OED, he first used the word tesseract in 1888 in his book A New Era of Thought. He also invented the words kata (from the Greek for "down from") and ana
(from the Greek for "up toward") to describe the two opposing
fourth-dimensional directions—the 4-D equivalents of left and right,
forwards and backwards, and up and down.[11]
Hinton's Scientific romances,
including "What is the Fourth Dimension?" and "A Plane World", were
published as a series of nine pamphlets by Swan Sonnenschein & Co.
during 1884–1886. In the introduction to "A Plane World", Hinton
referred to Abbott's recent Flatland
as having similar design but different intent. Abbott used the stories
as "a setting wherein to place his satire and his lessons. But we wish
in the first place to know the physical facts." Hinton's world existed
along the perimeter of a circle rather than on an infinite flat plane.[12] He extended the connection to Abbott's work with An Episode on Flatland: Or How a Plain Folk Discovered the Third Dimension (1907).
wikipedia | The James–Lange theory refers to a hypothesis on the origin and nature of emotions
and is one of the earliest theories of emotion within modern
psychology. It was developed independently by two 19th-century scholars,
William James and Carl Lange. The basic premise of the theory is that physiological arousal instigates the experience of a specific emotion.[1]
Instead of feeling an emotion and subsequent physiological (bodily)
response, the theory proposes that the physiological change is primary,
and emotion is then experienced when the brain reacts to the information
received via the body's nervous system.
The theory has been criticised and modified over the course of time,
as one of several competing theories. In 2002 a research paper on the autonomous nervous system stated that the theory has been "hard to disprove".[2]
thescientist | Women rate images of men more highly the larger their penises are, according to a study published yesterday (April 8) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Penis size had about the same influence as height in determining how
females rated the attractiveness of males. Body shape was also
influential in determining hotness—men with broad shoulders and narrow
hips faired best.
Researchers had 105 heterosexual female Australian women rate life-size
computer-generated images of men of various heights, builds, and penis
sizes. They found that, at rather short lengths, adding inches to penis
size was hugely helpful, but the benefit per added inch began to
diminish when penises reached around 3 inches long when flaccid. The
researchers, from three Australian universities, predicted that there
would be a size at which penises became too big but said that they had
not studied big enough penises to reach that point. The longest penises
they tested were around 5 inches long. Also, having a big penis boosted
tall men’s ratings more than it boosted short men’s ratings.
The scientists said that women’s apparent interest in penis size could
explain why human males have penises that are larger in proportion to
body size than the penises of other animals. Since penises would have
been readily visible for much of human evolution, ancestral women could
have selected for large penises through sizing up partners before
copulating.
The preference could have several explanations, the authors speculated.
A previous study showed that larger penises were associated with more
orgasms in female sex partners. A predilection for large penises could
also be a social or cultural phenomenon. Alan Dixson, a primatologist at
the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, told Nature
that in order to understand the cultural component, the researchers
should study how women from various areas and cultures value penis size.
dailymail | For years women have been convinced that porn star style waxing and vajazzles are the quickest way to impress their other halves in bed, with nearly two thirds saying that their look down below is calculated to please their man.
But it appears that it's time to wave goodbye to painful waxing for good, after a new survey found that men actually prefer a natural look.
According to the poll, which canvassed 1,000 men, the most popular look is is 'trimmed and tidy' – a far cry from the Hollywood, which involves having all hair removed.
Nearly half (43 per cent) of those who took part in the survey, which was commissioned by waxing brand, Nads, said they preferred their women to look as natural as possible but with a 'Bermuda triangle' - trimmed hair and waxed edges leaving no bikini hair overspill.
17 per cent plumped for the Brazilian, a landing strip of pubic hair, while 15 per cent liked the heart shaped 'Heart Breaker'.
Just 12 per cent chose the full Hollywood, with most men saying they preferred their women to have some hair 'down there'.
The style that men hated the most was the 'G Wax' – a closely trimmed small square of hair that most felt looked a bit silly and a bit of a turn off.
Among the men who took part in the poll was Sidcup father of two, Mark Tailworth, who said: 'I’d hate my wife not to have some hair, I much prefer her to be well trimmed than sporting some ridiculous, unsexy design.'
zerohedge | Engineers around the world have done a great job developing nuclear
technologies to serve mankind’s many endeavors: medical devices, power
generators, naval propulsion systems, or the most formidable weapons
ever built, so formidable that they could largely wipe out mankind and
its many endeavors.
However, engineers haven’t figured out yet what to do with the highly
radioactive and toxic materials nuclear technologies leave behind. They
leak through corroded containers, contaminate soil, water, and air, and
after decades, we try to deal with them somehow, but mainly we’re
shuffling that problem to the next generation. The enormous sums coming
due over time were never included in the original costs. We’re not even
talking about an accident, like Fukushima, whose costs will likely reach
$1 trillion, but about maintenance and cleanup.
For example, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State, the
largest, most daunting environmental cleanup project in the US. More
than 11,000 people work
on it. Nine relatively small reactors on that property produced
plutonium, starting in 1943 through the Cold War. In 1987, the last
reactor was shut down. What remains are various structures, such as the
evocatively named “Plutonium Finishing Plant” (aerial photo: red “X” marks denote sections to be demolished) or the “Plutonium Vault Complex” that stored plutonium for nuclear weapons (photo of corridor).
Buried underground are 177 tanks containing 56 million gallons of
highly radioactive and toxic waste. The 31 oldest tanks, made of a
single layer of now rust-perforated carbon steel, have been leaking
highly radioactive and toxic sludge into the ground for decades.
Hence the “Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant,” a radiochemical processing facility. In its annual report
to Congress, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, which has
jurisdiction over the “defense nuclear facilities” of the Department of
Energy (DOE), describes the task at Hanford:
After
these wastes are retrieved from the tanks, the plant will chemically
separate the waste into two streams of differing radioactive hazard and
solidify them into glass in stainless steel canisters. The
low-radioactivity glass will be disposed of onsite, while the high-level
waste glass will be shipped offsite for permanent disposal once a
repository is available.
Turns out, almost none of it, according to the report, can be done
safely or at all. And that “repository?” It doesn’t exist. Despite
decades of trying, the US has not been able to come up with one.
krem | KING 5 News has learned there’s been a series of unexpected hydrogen gas
releases from a tank holding radioactive waste at Hanford Nuclear
Reservation.
Confidential sources say it began on March 16 and lasted for several
days, much longer than usual, and they worry a single spark could have
set off an explosive release of radioactivity.
This comes two days after a report
by a government panel expressing concerns about the release of
flammable gasses at Hanford and the government's inability to respond to
them.
Our confidential sources and government representatives are giving
dramatically different versions of what has happened. Both agre a
million-gallon tank holding nuclear waste at Hanford had a build-up of
hydrogen gas.
Our confidential sources say it was of a magnitude larger than anything
teams there have seen in at least two years and "burped" days longer
than normal.
Workers who toil above the buried Hanford tank farms constantly monitor
the tanks for gas build-ups and will conduct controlled releases to
reduce pressure. We're told this was a spontaenous release, not
controlled.
Hydrogen gas is constantly being produced in some tanks by the extremely
high temperatures of nuclear waste. They are like dozens of underground
crock pots just simmering away. Sometimes, they can boil over.
guardian |Drugs derived from magic mushrooms could help treat people with severe depression.
Scientists believe the chemical psilocybin, the psychedelic ingredient
in magic mushrooms, can turn down parts of the brain that are overactive
in severely depressive patients. The drug appears to stop patients
dwelling on themselves and their own perceived inadequacies.
However,
a bid by British scientists to carry out trials of psilocybin on
patients in order to assess its full medical potential has been blocked
by red tape relating to Britain's strict drugs laws. Professor David Nutt,
professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London, will
tell a conference today that because magic mushrooms are rated as a
class-A drug, their active chemical ingredient cannot be manufactured
unless a special licence is granted.
"We haven't started the study
because finding companies that could manufacture the drug and who are
prepared to go through the regulatory hoops to get the licence is
proving very difficult," said Nutt. "The whole field is so bedevilled by
primitive old-fashioned attitudes. Even if you have a good idea, you
may never get it into the clinic, it seems."
Research by Nutt has
found that psilocybin switches off part of the brain called the anterior
cingulate cortex. It was known that this area is overactive in
individuals suffering from depression. In his tests on healthy
individuals, it was found that psilocybin had a profound effect on
making these volunteers feel happier weeks after they had taken the
drug, said Nutt – who was sacked as the chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs in 2009 after repeatedly clashing with government ministers about the dangers and classification of illicit drugs.
Nutt's
team also discovered that another section of the brain known as the
default mode network was also influenced by psilocybin. "People with
depression have overactive default mode networks and so ruminate on
themselves, on their inadequacies, on their badness, that they are
worthless, that they have failed – to an extent that is sometimes
delusional. Again psilo-cybin appears to block that activity and stops
this obsessive rumination."
To determine if psilocybin could be used as a treatment to help patients, Nutt and his team were given £550,000 by the Medical Research
Council to begin a three-year project to test the drug on people with
depression. Patients who had failed to respond to two previous
treatments would be selected. The aim was to test 30 with the drug and
30 with a placebo.
However, the group has found its path blocked
by bureaucracy. So difficult has the government and the EU made it for
companies to manufacture the active ingredients of Class A drugs that
price tags of around £100,000 were given by chemical companies.
"We
only need a relatively small amount of the drug, an order worth only a
few hundred pounds," said Nutt, who is set to describe his work with
psilocybin at the UK Festival of Neuroscience conference
in London today. "If we have to pay £100,000 we simply cannot afford to
carry out the rest of the study. We have not given up but it is proving
very difficult," he said.
"Depression is now the largest cause of
disability in Europe. There are many effective treatments but only
about a third of individuals respond fully. At least 10% fail to respond
to three different treatments. We badly need more types of treatment
but we cannot pursue these because the government is denying scientists
access to powerful tools that could help people in need. The regulations
that govern researchers access to Class A drugs are totally
inappropriate and harmful."
guardian | When the psychologist Peter Chadwick
explained that he was trying to research psychosis he was given short
shrift by one of his patients. "You're trying to climb rain, Peter, or
sweep sun off the pavement." The desire to build a science of disabling
mental states can sometimes seem like wishful thinking, especially to
those who have experienced the turmoil of an unquiet mind.
It is
therefore no accident that critics of psychiatry have always had a
particular dislike for the use of diagnosis. There are those on the
outer fringes who still argue that classifying anything as a "mental
illness" is fundamentally flawed, but most of the debate centres on the
possibility of distinguishing different forms of psychological
disability. One of the key issues is whether different diagnoses such as
schizophrenia, bipolar or depression
represent distinct disorders that have specific causes or whether these
are just convenient and perhaps improvised ways of dividing up human
distress for the purposes of treatment.
This is a hot and newly contentious topic. The fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5),
the book that lists psychiatric diagnoses, is due out in May. The
latest revision has emerged after a decade of unfriendly debates over
what should be included and where the boundaries should lie.
The most medical approach sees each diagnosis as a separate disease with specific causes. For example, the National Institute of Mental Health,
a US government research agency, describes schizophrenia as "a chronic,
severe, and disabling brain disorder", something akin to a distinct
condition linked to specific genetic risks and brain changes. But
diagnoses are not usually derived from scientific discovery but are
based on descriptions of experiences and behaviours, which are then
tested for their coherence in scientific studies. For those who see
mental illness as something best understood at the level of the brain
and genetics,
the discovery of specific biological differences associated with a
particular diagnosis is considered to be good evidence for its validity.
An
alternative approach is to see the definition of schizophrenia as a
makeshift way of classifying mental distress that clinicians happen to
agree on. From this point of view, rather than schizophrenia being a
scientific discovery, it's a tradition – varying in its usefulness
depending on your point of view. This difference of opinion turns out to
be remarkably politicised: the medical model traditionally favours
diagnosis, medication and biomedical science, while the social model is
linked to the championing of individual experience, psychotherapy and
social interventions.
But a growing body of evidence suggests that
this divide is both unhelpful and misleading because some of the best
evidence that diagnoses do not represent distinct disorders comes not
from social criticism but from medical genetics. Observers may note that
this is a deliciously uncomfortable situation for both parties. The
hardline biological psychiatrists have had diagnoses undermined by
exactly the techniques they use to support them and the social
constructionists may have to accept that the best evidence for their
"humane" conclusions are biological studies which they reject as
supposedly "alienating".
bbcnews | People with autism use their brains differently from other people, which may explain why some have extraordinary abilities to remember and draw objects in detail, according to new research.
University of Montreal scientists say in autistic people, the brain areas that deal with visual information are highly developed.
Other brain areas are less active.
The National Autistic Society says the findings significantly increase understanding of the condition.
The research, published in the journal Human Brain Mapping, pulls together 15 years of data on the way the autistic brain works.
Better at visual tasks
It suggests that the brains of autistic people are organised differently from those of other people; the area at the back of the brain, which processes visual information, is more highly developed.
That leaves less brain capacity in areas which deal with decision-making and planning.
That may be why people with autism can be better than others at carrying out some types of visual tasks.
For example, some are able to draw highly accurate and detailed images from memory.
However, they can find it difficult to interpret things like facial expressions.
The condition varies in severity, with some people functioning well, but others completely unable to take part in normal society.
The researchers believe their findings may lead towards new ways of helping people to live with the condition.
"For example, this may show a means to help people to literacy in a much more natural way than the usual methods of helping autistic people," said Dr Laurent Mottron from the University of Montreal.
"The natural tendency is to think that autism is a form of disorganisation. Here, what we see is that it is a reorganisation of the brain," he said.
plosone | Since the dawn of time, Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) have intrigued
and, nowadays, are still not fully explained. Since reports of NDEs are
proposed to be imagined events, and since memories of imagined events
have, on average, fewer phenomenological characteristics than real
events memories, we here compared phenomenological characteristics of
NDEs reports with memories of imagined and real events. We included
three groups of coma survivors (8 patients with NDE as defined by the
Greyson NDE scale, 6 patients without NDE but with memories of their
coma, 7 patients without memories of their coma) and a group of 18
age-matched healthy volunteers. Five types of memories were assessed
using Memory Characteristics Questionnaire (MCQ – Johnson et al., 1988):
target memories (NDE for NDE memory group, coma memory for coma memory
group, and first childhood memory for no memory and control groups), old
and recent real event memories and old and recent imagined event
memories. Since NDEs are known to have high emotional content,
participants were requested to choose the most emotionally salient
memories for both real and imagined recent and old event memories.
Results showed that, in NDE memories group, NDE memories have more
characteristics than memories of imagined and real events.
plosone | The metabolic phenotype varies widely due to external factors such as
diet and gut microbiome composition, among others. Despite these
temporal fluctuations, urine metabolite profiling studies have suggested
that there are highly individual phenotypes that persist over extended
periods of time. This hypothesis was tested by analyzing the exhaled
breath of a group of subjects during nine days by mass spectrometry.
Consistent with previous metabolomic studies based on urine, we conclude
that individual signatures of breath composition exist. The
confirmation of the existence of stable and specific breathprints may
contribute to strengthen the inclusion of breath as a biofluid of choice
in metabolomic studies. In addition, the fact that the method is rapid
and totally non-invasive, yet individualized profiles can be tracked,
makes it an appealing approach.
Free To A Good Home
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I know what gooning is same as I know what felching is but I don't care to
remind myself all that often about it. The Internet just keeps exposing the
ni...
Sex Dolls, Robots, and AI companions
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It's not what you think.
YouTube:
In this episode, Dr. Rena Malik, MD is joined by sociologist Dr. Ken Hanson
to explore the surprising realities of s...
If Free Will Is False, Destiny Is True
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Free will is like God: perhaps dead, its absence having something to say
about morality (what Nietzsche meant by “Gott ist tot” was that the
Christian God ...
FREE BOOK: On Nonviolence
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“Michael Barker’s interrogation of nonviolent protest tactics and regime
change is both timely and important. Drawing on cases ranging from American
democr...
Return of the Magi
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Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
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(Damn, has it been THAT long? I don't even know which prompts to use to
post this)
SeeNew
Can't get on your site because you've gone 'invite only'?
Man, ...
First Member of Chumph Cartel Goes to Jail
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With the profligate racism of the Chumph Cartel, I don’t imagine any of
them convicted and jailed is going to do too much better than your run of
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the economist | ON THE evening before All Saints' Day in 1517, Martin Luther nailed 95 theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg. In those days a thesis was simply a position one wanted to argue. Luther, an Augustinian friar, asserted that Christians could not buy their way to heaven. Today a doctoral thesis is both an idea and an account of a period of original research. Writing one is the aim of the hundreds of thousands of students who embark on a doctorate of philosophy (PhD) every year.
