Online Textbook: Behavioral Neuroscience

The Rice University web site offers the Multimedia Textbook in Behavioral Neuroscience

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Language by Lesley Inglis, Mary Newsome, Zhihua Tang, and Randi Martin
Introduction
Speech Perception
Word Comprehension
Sentence Comprehension (I)
Sentence Comprehension (II)
Word Production (I)
Word Production (II): PDP Model
Sentence Production
References

Attention and Perception by Deborah Pearson, Geofrey Potts, and James Pomerantz
Visual System
Shape Constancy
Attention
Attentional Deficit Disorder
References

Thinking by Daniel Osherson
Thinking
References

Autism by Elizabeth N. Bartmess-LeVasseur and Kathryn Loveland. Internet links: David Lane
Introduction
Theory of Autism
References

The North Pacific Gyre

This story has been around a few years, but still I meet a lot of people who haven't heard about the Texas-sized plastic dump in the Pacific Ocean.

Below is the result of someone's discarded plastic soda can rings:



Plastic is an unbelievable problem. Plastic only seems cheap, because the associated disposal and clean up costs aren't included in the product price.

Go watch this: Garbage Island *

Then for something a little happier: Canvas Bags (thanks Steve Zara!).

A few minutes into episode 3 of Garbage Island, a crew member says, "You go to Subway for a sandwich. They always put it in a plastic bag. How long do you use that bag for? One minute?"

That's a significant point. We're blind to the plastic waste we create because it all goes someplace else. How will this ever change?

Garbage Island suffers from a lack of aggressive editing. There's some great material in there that won't be seen because it's surrounded by stuff that's reduntant or paced too slowly.

*Updated link here: Garbage Island I haven't watched the updated version all the way through. I notice the piece has been renamed "Toxic Garbage Island," which I find unfortunate as the word "toxic" adds the "scary" but comes with pseudoscience baggage that might be off-putting to smart people.

Science Fair

Over on Sciencewomen you can read about the winners of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair:

Three talented, hard working, and lucky students are the recipients of the Intel Foundation Young Scientist Award, which includes a $50,000 college scholarship. This year's winners are:

Efficient Hydrogen Production Using Cu-Zn-Al Catalysts Prepared by Homogeneous Precipitation Method by Yi-Han Su, 17 from Taipei Municipal First Girls' Senior High School in Taipei.

Development of Biosensors for Detecting Hazardous Chemicals by Natalie Saranga Omattage, 17, from The Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science in Columbus.

Computation of the Alexander-Conway Polynomial on the Chord Diagrams of Singular Knots by Sana Raoof, 17 of Jericho High School in Jericho, New York.

Three girls!

And now for something, ah, a bit more ordinary yet far more hilarious...(click me for teh lulz)

Crap

I fell and broke the scaphoid bone in my right wrist yesterday while doing yard work. Typing and mousing is a bitch. So I won't be as active on teh web tubes for a while.

I might pick up one of those voice recognition programs. Any suggestions?

In US, Religion Picks You!

Click the pic to go to an article about the US religion map.

When I was a kid, the Catholics were Democrats and the Baptists got abortions. Once the right-to-life movement pulled in the born-agains, a natural alliance between the Catholics and southern Protestants emerged (see map for why this alliance kicks ass).

In addition to the bloody red Baptists, the Religious Right has the Mormons, the Latino Catholics, and a lot of the working class Catholics in New England who resonate to the family values stuff even though they're not interested in the Rapture business.

The Catholic Church has watched the growth of happy-clappy fundamentalism in the US while more liberal flavors of Christianity have been dying away. I think they want some of that market share. So they've moved right. They've toughened up the rules. They got a pre-Vatican II Pope and brought back the Latin Mass for the elites. Woo to follow, I reckon. You need Holy Spirit woo to keep the peoples turned on and tuning in.

But this crazy, dominionist, when-can-we-bomb-Iran voting block has to be stopped. It's not good for anyone in the long run, including the Church.

It's possible the Church might take the high road, skipping the mysticism and authoritarianism in favor of a more rational, anti-poverty and pro-social justice message. This likely will disrupt the current alliance between Catholics and the Republicans... and so save us all.

Peer Review

What would the male-female ratio look like in a photo of today's top physicists?

Here's another story that might be about girl power. I dunno.

For some strange reason when I was in my teens, my brain liked math. I taught myself eighth grade algebra at the start of seventh grade and soon reached a point where I needed a ride to the high school across town for geometry.

The school counselor called me into his office. He said that interacting with my peers was just as important as book learning. He recommended that I take a year off from math. "You like to draw. why don't you take another art class?"

So I spent a year as a li'l helper to a math teacher, grading papers and decorating bulletin boards.

Memories evolve with time. As an easily intimidated thirteen-year-old, I heard the counselor saying, in essence, "Miss Titmouse you quirky geek, don't be such a freak!"

Now I believe he was saying, "Miss Titmouse, the school district doesn't want to pay for transportation."

The Game

Congratulations. You are now playing the game (if you weren't already).

The Game is very simple:

1. You are always playing the game.
2. You cannot win. You can only lose.
3. You lose whenever you remember the game.
4. Whenever you remember the game, you have to announce out loud, "I lose."
5. After you lose you have 30 minutes during which you can remember the game without losing.
6. As soon as you mention the game to anyone, they begin playing as well.
7. The goal of the game is to have everyone on Earth playing.

What do men want?

Thinking about girl power reminded me of something recently posted on RichardDawkins.net by Christopher Davis:

Tomorrow I will roll out in a convoy of up-armored HUMVEES heading to a small town in Afghanistan to witness the opening of a school constructed by the Afghan government along with the help of coalition forces. En route, we will see dozens of small children and they will run to the edge of the road and smile and wave. We will wave back and our gunners will toss out small bags containing candy, shoes, pencils, pens, toothbrushes etc. Many of these children will be girls...these little girls break my heart and remind me why I am an atheist.

You see, the school we are opening is for boys only. The Pashtun culture places very little value on women, much less the education of women. So when I see these little girls laughing and smiling, it saddens me because I know I am seeing them at possibly the happiest time in their life. I know that in ten or twelve years they will be someone's property.

They will be wed to some man who will treat them only slightly better than he does his livestock and feel no remorse in doing so. A man who has been taught since he was a little boy that such is the way of the world and such is a woman's place in it...and he has been taught this as part of his religion.

Now I know some wise-ass is going to read this and say "That's not what Islam teaches! Those behaviours are derived from tribal customs, not from the Koran!" I concede that may be true. But for those little girls who will wave at my convoy tomorrow, that bleak future is most likely the only Islam they will ever know.

Power to the X2

On my fourth grade report card I remember reading the comment, "Miss Titmouse should try to be more lady-like!"

Ah the good ol' days, when men were astronauts, doctors, warriors, and scientists while women were nurses, teachers, and secretaries.

Where were things like this when I was seven? Why was I denied some schooling in the ways of power? What kind of horrid, unjust society cripples half its citizens?

It's very warming to see young women now unselfconciously slicing and dicing through that which must be defeated. I refer to such mighty beings as the beloved ERV.

ERV aka Abbie Smith is a grad student studying HIV and epigenetic control of endogenous retroviruses. She's also a founding member of the Justice League. Together with her trusty companion, Arnold Schwarzenegger, she sniffs out evil pseudoscientists, liars, and witless 'tards. Then she noms upon them heartily for the sake of science and all humankind.

Kittehs Groovin'