Axiomatic Breakfast

National Science Foundation: Science Hard

Excerpt:

INDIANAPOLIS—The National Science Foundations annual symposium concluded Monday, with the 1,500 scientists in attendance reaching the consensus that science is hard.

“For centuries, we have embraced the pursuit of scientific knowledge as one of the noblest and worthiest of human endeavors, one leading to the enrichment of mankind both today and for future generations,” said keynote speaker and NSF chairman Louis Farian. “However, a breakthrough discovery is challenging our long-held perceptions about our discipline—the discovery that science is really, really hard.”

The Economist has a very interesting article about the science of religion and some scientists search for where the need or desire for religion comes from. The article, The science of religion, Where angels no longer fear to tread is a good read about a subject that is very intriguing. Religion seems to be ubiquitous to Humans and it seems logical that there is some biological need for it.
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Here’s an interesting article about work going on to understand the human brain. The article is from Technology Review, titled “A Working Brain Model”. Found at digg.

Excerpt:

An ambitious project to create an accurate computer model of the brain has reached an impressive milestone. Scientists in Switzerland working with IBM researchers have shown that their computer simulation of the neocortical column, arguably the most complex part of a mammals brain, appears to behave like its biological counterpart. By demonstrating that their simulation is realistic, the researchers say, these results suggest that an entire mammal brain could be completely modeled within three years, and a human brain within the next decade.

Boing Boing: Neuroscience of déjà vu

Original Article from MIT news

Excerpt:

MIT researchers report the identification of a mechanism in the brain that’s tied to the experience of déjà vu, French for “seen already.” The neuroscientists studied how subregions of the hippocampus–a part of the brain responsible for creating memories–contribute to our ability to differentiate between distinct places that are very similar. To conduct their study, the scientists observed the behavior of genetically-engineered mice in similar chambers, one with a floor that could shock them. (Yeeowch!) From the MIT News Office:

The New York Post has an interesting article about the problems with ‘Intelligent Design’. Intelligent design is the latest idea from the creationist crowd. It’s basically an attempt to push creationism without mentioning God. Lately there has been more and more push to get schools to teach Creationism/Intelligent Design. Anyway, the NY Post article a good job talking about the problems with ID. (Link from BoingBoing)

Excerpt:

From a scientific perspective, one of the most frustrating things about intelligent design is that (unlike Darwinism) it is virtually impossible to test. Old-fashioned biblical creationism at least risked making some hard factual claims — that the earth was created before the sun, for example. Intelligent design, by contrast, leaves the purposes of the designer wholly mysterious. Presumably any pattern of data in the natural world is consistent with his/her/its existence.

But if we can’t infer anything about the design from the designer, maybe we can go the other way. What can we tell about the designer from the design? While there is much that is marvelous in nature, there is also much that is flawed, sloppy and downright bizarre. Some nonfunctional oddities, like the peacock’s tail or the human male’s nipples, might be attributed to a sense of whimsy on the part of the designer. Others just seem grossly inefficient. In mammals, for instance, the recurrent laryngeal nerve does not go directly from the cranium to the larynx, the way any competent engineer would have arranged it. Instead, it extends down the neck to the chest, loops around a lung ligament and then runs back up the neck to the larynx. In a giraffe, that means a 20-foot length of nerve where 1 foot would have done. If this is evidence of design, it would seem to be of the unintelligent variety.

I like to joke about the future of computing being the Microsoft Mind Link or some other usb-in-the-brain style interface. Well, Slashdot has a link to an article about a non-invasive brain powered computer controller.

Wired has a very good article entitled “The Crusade Against Evolution”. It’s a very good read about the current battle against the theory of Evolution.

Personally this bugs me. If you want to teach creationism (or ‘Intelligent Design’ or whatever you want to call it this week), don’t teach it in a science classroom. Teach it in a class on religion or something else. Science belongs in the science classroom, not non-scientific conjecture that has no scientific basis or value.

Excerpt:

…140 years after Darwin published On the Origin of Species, 75 years after John Scopes taught natural selection to a biology class in Tennessee, and 15 years after the US Supreme Court ruled against a Louisiana law mandating equal time for creationism, the question of how to teach the theory of evolution was being reopened here in Ohio.

I just stumbled across 20q.net while browsing over at ThinkGeek. Remember the game of 20 questions growing up? Well, here’s an online version that is eerily accurate. I tried it with a letter opener, a stapler and water and it guessed correctly on all three. Very Cool!

I just ran across what looks like a very interesting magazine. Seed Magazine. So far I’ve just read the articles on their website but it looked interesting enough to sign up for their free subscription. (Link from BoingBoing)
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From Yahoo News comes a cool story of
translucent concrete at the National Building Museum in Washington. (Click below for a photo.)

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“/.”:http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/12/1436225 is pointing to an interesting article on “how the reality behind the fuel-efficency of hybrid cars isn’t exacly what people expected”:http://www.wired.com/news/autotech/0,2554,63413,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1. It turns out the mileage people are getting in these cars is actually much poorer than the 45+ mpg advertised.

“SpaceWeather.com”:http://www.SpaceWeather.com has the latest on the “strong geomagnetic activity happening”:http://www.spaceweather.com/. Sounds like we might get a chance at some real nice auroras tonight. Too bad it looks like it’ll be cloudy here.

No! Here’s a great site that “debunks a ton of the conspiracy theories that have been thrown around regarding the Apollo Moon Landing”:http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html. It was written to counter a Fox TV show about the topic. The author makes a very detailed analysis of the FOX TV program. Even without seeing the TV show, it makes good reading. (Link from “slashdot”:http://slashdot.org.)