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| May 13, 2002. The Myth of the Big Bang?Another Theory Provides Alternative To Big Bang
A new theory of the universe suggests that space and time may not have
begun in a big bang, but may have always existed in an endless cycle of
expansion and rebirth.
Princeton physicist Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok of Cambridge University
described their proposed theory in an article published April 25 in an online
edition of Science.
The theory proposes that, in each cycle, the universe refills with hot, dense
matter and radiation, which begins a period of expansion and cooling like the
one of the standard big bang picture. After 14 billion years, the expansion of
the universe accelerates, as astronomers have recently observed. After trillions
of years, the matter and radiation are almost completely dissipated and the
expansion stalls. An energy field that pervades the universe then creates new
matter and radiation, which restarts the cycle.
The new theory provides possible answers to several longstanding problems with the big bang model, which has dominated the field of cosmology for decades. It addresses, for example, the nagging question of what might have triggered or come "before" the beginning of time. The idea also reproduces all the successful explanations provided by standard picture, but there is no direct evidence to say which is correct, said Steinhardt, a professor of physics. "I do not eliminate either of them at this stage," he said. "To me, what's interesting is that we now have a second possibility that is poles apart from the standard picture in many respects, and we may have the capability to distinguish them experimentally during the coming years." The big bang model of the universe, originally suggested over 60 years ago, has been developed to explain a wide range of observations about the cosmos. A major element of the current model, added in the 1980s, is the theory of "inflation," a period of hyperfast expansion that occurred within the first second after the big bang. This inflationary period is critical for explaining the tremendous "smoothness" and homogeneity of the universe observed by astronomers, as well as for explaining tiny ripples in space that led to the formation galaxies. However, as there are innumerable problems with the theory of the Big Bang, scientists also have been forced to tinker and adjust the standard theory and to add additional elements to explain an obvious flawed theory. For example, "dark energy" has been proposed to account for the recent discovery that the expansion of the universe is accelerating--a finding that seems to refute the Big Bang theory. The new model replaces inflation and dark energy with a single energy field that oscillates in such a way as to sometimes cause expansion and sometimes cause stagnation. At the same time, it continues to explain all the currently observed phenomena of the cosmos in the same detail as the big bang theory. Because the new theory requires fewer components, and builds them in from the start, it is more "economical," said Steinhardt, who was one of the leaders in establishing the theory of inflation. Another advantage of the new theory is that it automatically includes a prediction of the future course of the universe, because it goes through definite repeating cycles lasting perhaps trillions of years each. The big bang/inflation model has no built-in prediction about the long-term future; in the same way that inflation and dark energy arose unpredictably, another effect could emerge that would alter the current course of expansion. The cyclic model entails many new concepts that Turok and Steinhardt developed over the last few years with Justin Khoury, a graduate student at Princeton, Burt Ovrut of the University of Pennsylvania and Nathan Seiberg of the Institute for Advanced Study. "This work by Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok is extraordinarily exciting and represents the first new big idea in cosmology in over two decades," said Jeremiah Ostriker, professor of astrophysics at Princeton and the Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at Cambridge. "They have found a simple explanation for the observed fact the universe on large scales looks the same to us left and right, up and down -- a seemingly obvious and natural condition -- that in fact has defied explanation for decades." Sir Martin Rees, Royal Society Research Fellow at Cambridge, noted that the physics concerning key properties of the expanding universe remain "conjectural, and still not rooted in experiment or observation." "There have been many ideas over the last 20 years," said Rees. "Steinhardt and Turok have injected an imaginative new speculation. Their work emphasizes the extent to which we may need to jettison common sense concepts, and transcend normal ideas of space and time, in order to make real progress. "This work adds to the growing body of speculative research which intimates that physical reality could encompass far more than just the aftermath of 'our' big bang." The cyclic universe theory represents a combination of standard physical concepts and ideas from the emerging fields of string theory and M-theory, which are ambitious efforts to develop a unified theory of all physical forces and particles. Although these theories are rooted in complex mathematics, they offer a compelling graphic picture of the cyclic universe theory. Under these theories, the universe would exist as two infinitely large parallel sheets, like two sheets of paper separated by a microscopic distance. This distance is a extra, or fifth dimension, that is not apparent us. At our current phase in the history of the universe, the sheets are expanding in all directions, gradually spreading out and dispersing all the matter and energy they contain. After trillions of years, when they become essentially empty, they enter a "stagnant" period in which they stop stretching and, instead, begin to move toward each other as the fifth dimension undergoes a collapse. The sheets meet and "bounce" off each other. The impact causes the sheets to be charged with the extraordinarily hot and dense matter that is commonly associated with the big bang. After the sheets move apart, they resume their expansion, spreading out the matter, which cools and coalesces into stars and galaxies as in our present universe. The sheets, or branes, as physicists call them, are not parallel universes, but rather are facets of the same universe, with one containing all the ordinary matter we know and the other containing "we know not what," said Steinhardt. It is conceivable, he said, that a material called dark matter, which is widely believed to make up a significant part of the universe, resides on this other brane. The two sheets interact only by gravity, with massive objects in one sheet exerting a tug on matter in the other, which is what dark matter does to ordinary matter. The movements and properties of these sheets all arise naturally from the underlying mathematics of the model, noted Steinhardt. That is in contrast to the big bang model, in which dark energy has been added simply to explain current observations. Steinhardt and Turok continue to refine the theory and are looking for theoretical or experimental ideas that might favor one idea over the other. "These paradigms are as far apart as you can imagine in terms of the nature of time," said Steinhardt. "On the other hand, in terms of what they predict about the universe, they are as close as you can be up to what you can measure so far. "Yet, we also know that, with more precise observations that may be possible in the next decade or so, you can distinguish them. That is the fascinating situation we find ourselves in. It's fun to debate which ones you like better, but I really think nature will be the final arbiter here." For further information and a graphic animation of the cyclic scenario, see http://feynman.princeton.edu/~steinh/ |
| May 8, 2002. Brain Abnormalities & Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Neurons thought to play a key role in sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) are located near some of the largest arteries in the brain, according to a study by a Yale School of Medicine research team published in this weekıs issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience. The senior investigator, George Richerson, M.D., associate professor of neurology and physiology, said his teamıs findings support a new theory that infants who succumb to SIDS have developmental abnormalities in these neurons. In healthy infants and adults, the response of these neurons to low carbon dioxide levels during sleep may alert them to wake and breathe deeply. "When someone falls asleep with their face in a pillow, carbon dioxide levels rise," Richerson said. "The normal response is to wake up slightly, turn the head, and breathe harder. There is evidence that some infants that die of SIDS lack this normal protective response." SIDS is the unexpected and sudden death of an apparently healthy infant during sleep. It is the leading cause of death in infants between two weeks and one year of age, striking about one per 1,000 infants. The cause is unknown, but certain risk factors have been identified, among them: lying face downward, prematurity, low birth weight, male sex, winter months and recent mild upper respiratory infection. A leading theory is that SIDS is a problem with breathing during sleep. Breathing is dependent on normal levels of carbon dioxide, which is monitored by neurons in the brain called central chemoreceptors. Richerson and his co-investigators had established in earlier research that neurons in the brain containing the chemical serotonin are strongly stimulated by an increase in carbon dioxide, indicating that they are central chemoreceptors. Carbon dioxide is the colorless, odorless gas given off from the lungs as a waste product of respiration. If carbon dioxide levels in the blood become either too high or too low, there are severe, even fatal, deleterious effects. Carbon dioxide levels within the blood are controlled within the normal range by changes in the depth and rate of breathing. In this study, using imaging and electron microscopy, the researchers were able to show in laboratory rats that serotonergic neurons are located right next to large arteries in the brain, where they are ideally situated for sensing carbon dioxide levels in arterial blood. Thus, their location is optimized for their function as chemoreceptors. Richerson said researchers at Harvard and Dartmouth who studied the brains of infants who died of SIDS found abnormalities of serotonin-containing neurons. "These are the same neurons that we have been studying in rats," he said. "We now believe that serotonin neurons play an important role in detecting a rise in carbon dioxide during sleep and they cause arousal and increased breathing. A defect in these neurons could lead to SIDS by preventing this normal response, resulting in death from excessive carbon dioxide levels." Richerson said he and his team are collaborating with the scientists at Harvard and Dartmouth to understand how an abnormality of serotonin neurons could cause SIDS. "The ultimate goal," he said, "is to find a way to predict which children are at greatest risk, and find ways to reduce the chance that they will suffer this devastating event." |
| April 28, 2002. Placebo, Antidepressant May Lift Depression Via Common Mechanism Using functional brain imaging, Helen Mayberg, M.D., and colleagues at the University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, have found increased activity in the cortex accompanied by decreases in limbic regions in patients who responded to either the popular antidepressant fluoxetine or to a placebo. They propose that this pattern of changes may be necessary for therapeutic response. However, patients who responded to fluoxetine also experienced unique changes in lower areas -- brainstem, striatum and hippocampus -- thought to confer additional advantage in sustaining the response long term and preventing relapse. The researchers report on their Positron Emission Tomography (PET scan) study in the May 2002 American Journal of Psychiatry. "Our findings do not support the notion that antidepressants work merely via a placebo effect," cautioned Mayberg, who has since moved to the Rotman Research Institute at the University of Toronto. "Patients on active medication who failed to improve did not sustain the brainstem, striatal and hippocampus changes unique to antidepressant responders." In the randomized, double blind trial, 17 middle-aged men, hospitalized for unipolar depression, received either fluoxetine or placebo for 6 weeks. Rating scales revealed that 4 of the men responded to placebo and another 4 showed comparable improvement with the active medication. Nine patients failed to get better. "Treatment with placebo is not absence of treatment, just absence of active medication," note the researchers, citing possible therapeutic benefits of a change in environment and the supportive, therapeutic milieu of an inpatient psychiatric ward. PET scans traced the destination of a radioactive form of glucose - the brain's fuel - to detect brain activity patterns. After 6 weeks, brains of men who responded to either treatment showed "remarkable concordance:" Activity increased in prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate, premotor, parietal cortex, and posterior insula. Activity decreased in subgenual cingulate, parahippocampus, thalamus and hypothalamus. Men who responded to fluoxetine, in addition, showed changes in certain lower brain areas -- brainstem, hippocampus, striatum and anterior insula. Brain areas activated in the fluoxetine responders were also somewhat larger. The brain stem and hippocampus appear to have important input in sustaining the cortical/limbic changes, suggest the researchers, who note that absence of changes in these lower brain areas in placebo responders may render them at higher risk for relapse, which several previous clinical studies have shown. Although both placebo and antidepressant responders showed increased activity in the posterior cingulate (see graphic) at 6 weeks, this change had already occurred in placebo responders at 1 week. Together with other evidence, this suggests that the ability to increase activity in the posterior cingulate may be an early indicator of a brain's capacity to change and respond to treatment, says Mayberg. Medications that take a "bottom up" approach or non-drug, cognitive "top-down" interventions should work equally well. However, a need for progressively more aggressive treatments could signal "poor adaptive capacity" in the cortex/limbic network found to change in responders, say the researchers. |
| April 28, 2002. Heart Attack Patients May Benefit From
Drinking Tea
Drinking tea on a regular basis may help protect patients with
existing cardiovascular disease, according to a study in the May 7 issue of
Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, which finds that tea
consumption is associated with an increased rate of survival following a heart
attack. ³The health benefits of tea have been reported in numerous studies in recent years, but among healthy individuals the evidence [of tea 's benefits] is actually mixed,² notes the studyıs lead author Kenneth J. Mukamal, MD, MPH, of the Division of General Medicine and Primary Care at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. ³The greatest benefits of tea consumption have been found among patients who already have cardiovascular disease.² Mukamal and his co-authors found that among individuals who had suffered heart attacks, those who reported being heavy tea drinkers had a 44 percent lower death rate than non-tea drinkers in the three-and-a-half years following their heart attacks, while moderate tea drinkers had a 28 percent lower rate of dying when compared with non-tea drinkers. The key to this protection appears to lie with a group of antioxidants known as flavonoids, which are plentiful in both black and green tea. Flavonoids, which are also found in certain fruits and vegetables, including apples, onions and broccoli, could be working to help the heart in one of several ways, according to Mukamal. ³It's pretty clear that flavonoids can prevent LDL [low density lipoprotein] cholesterol from becoming oxidized,² he says, explaining that oxidized LDL can lead to the development of atherosclerosis. In addition, a recent study found that drinking black tea improved endothelial function the ability of the blood vessels to relax in cardiac patients. Finally, he adds, flavonoids may have an anti-clotting effect. The observational study was made up of 1,900 individuals, both men and women mainly in their 60s, who were questioned by trained interviewers an average of four days after suffering a heart attack and asked to report how much caffeinated tea they typically drank each week. The participants were then separated into three groups: non-drinkers, moderate tea drinkers (fewer than 14 cups per week) and heavy tea drinkers (14 or more cups per week). Based on these criteria, 1,019 patients were categorized as nondrinkers; 615 were moderate tea drinkers; and 266 were considered to be heavy drinkers. The patients were followed up 3.8 years later, at which time 313 individuals had died, mainly from cardiovascular disease. After accounting for differences in age, gender, and clinical and lifestyle factors, the researchers found an inverse relationship between tea consumption and mortality. ³What was surprising was the magnitude of the association,² says Mukamal. ³The heaviest tea drinkers had a significantly lower mortality rate than non tea-drinkers.² As is the case with any observational study, he notes, these findings could be accounted for by differences in lifestyle other tea drinking. ³One of the biggest potential criticisms of this study is that people who drink tea might be expected to live healthier lifestyles than people who donıt drink tea,² he explains. ³But among this particular group people mainly in their 60s who had suffered heart attacks tea consumption was not strongly related to lifestyle.² In other words, the participants were similar in terms of education, income, exercise habits, and smoking and drinking habits whether they drank a lot of tea or no tea at all. Mukamal does caution, however, that although these findings strongly suggest that tea consumption reduces the risk of death following a heart attack, controlled clinical studies will need to be conducted to firmly establish the link. |
| April 28, 2002. Stem Cells Help Brain Repair, Make New
Neurons And Blood Vessels After Stroke
In the first hours and days following a stroke, stem cells leave the bone
marrow to help the injured brain repair damaged neurons and make new
neurons and blood vessels, according to researchers at the Medical College of
Georgia.
The research, reported in the May issue of Stroke, used a mouse model in
which the animalıs marrow was replaced with that of a transgenic mouse with
cells that make a jellyfish protein that fluoresces green so they could trace the
cells and the natural repair process that apparently occurs after stroke.
The researchers also want to identify which bone marrow stem cell types are targeted for
this repair and how they are called to the site of injury, suspecting that
inflammation may be part of this homing² process.
³We tried to determine whether cells that reside in your bone marrow and
circulate throughout the blood could turn into any of the major brain cells
types,² said Dr. David Hess, neurologist, stroke specialist, chairman of the
MCG Department of Neurology and lead author on the study.
They found in the animal model, evidence that bone marrow cells naturally migrate to injured regions of the brain after stroke to help repair damaged tissue; they also become endothelial cells that form new blood vessels and what appear to be new neurons. ³Such repairs occurred naturally in response to stroke and the bone marrow is involved in those repair mechanisms,² said Dr. William D. Hill, neuroscientist in the MCG Department of Cellular Biology and Anatomy and second author on the research paper. ³We think that when you have a stroke, you have this central core area that is highly affected. Then you have this area like a shell surrounding the core, called the penumbra, like a shadow, that has a gradient of damage as you move from the core of the stroke to the unaffected tissue. This is the area that is going to be the most sensitive to being repaired. So maybe if we can enhance that repair, we could preserve a region that would normally die but is an area we can target to recover.² Enhancement could come through the use of growth factors that affect subsets of bone marrow cells; possibly some already on the market, for example to help leukemia patients rebuild bone marrow after chemotherapy, might be useful. ³If this works out, you will be able to give individuals shots following stroke to boost their bone marrow to proliferate these stem cells to do specific tasks, target specific groups of these stem cells important to blood vessel repair and the genesis of new neurons,² Dr. Hill said. The work has implications for all sorts of brain injuries early and late in life such as cerebral palsy, Parkinsonıs and Alzheimerıs disease. This repair process mimics embryological development when stem cells from the bone marrow help form blood vessels in the brain. ³There are some data that older people donıt have as many circulating stem cells as younger, healthier people do,² Dr. Hess said, so enhancing the cell number involved in repair should enhance the natural process. Enhancing the natural process could avoid more aggressive measures such as transplanting cell-laden bone marrow. ³Why would we transplant bone marrow cells into people when their bone marrow already has these cells?² Dr. Hess said. ³It makes much more sense to actually maximize what they already put out. Also, rather than taking bone marrow out and injecting it into the brain, why not make use, again, of this natural process that summons the cells to the location of the brain injury?² Finding what summons the cells to the injury site is key, and the researchers are looking at specific molecules up-regulated in inflammation that they suspect are also involved in homing. ³Certain factors released and expressed on the surface of damaged endothelial cells may act as flags to wave down passing white blood cells or stem cells to attach there,² Dr. Hill said. Also key is identifying which specific stem cells are summoned and are needed to make new blood vessels, support cells and neurons. This may permit selective recruitment and proliferation of just the cells needed for repair, Dr. Hill said. There are two known broad classes of these cells, hematopoetic and mesenchymal, but there may be many unknown cell types, including a separate group involved in making endothelial cells, Dr. Hess said. |
| April 23, 2002. Hemorrhagic Fever Viruses Examined As
Potential Bioweapons
Ebola, Marburg, Lassa, and other viruses that cause deadly hemorrhagic fever
illnesses could be used as biological weapons, according to a report from the
Working Group on Civilian Biodefense, a panel of 26 experts convened by the
Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School
of Public Health. The groupıs consensus statement, which appears in the May 8,
2002 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), is based
on an analysis of published research and offers public health and medical guidelines
for managing a potential attack. Like smallpox and anthrax, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) considers hemorrhagic fever viruses ³category A² biological weapons agents, because they have the potential to cause widespread illness and death, and would require special public health preparedness measures to contain an outbreak. The Working Groupıs report focuses on eight viruses: Ebola, Marburg, Lassa fever, New World Arenavirus, Rift Valley Fever, yellow fever, Ornsk hemorrhagic fever, and Kyasanur Forest Disease. Ebola and Marburg, which belong to the Filoviridae family of viruses, can be spread from person to person and are among the most deadly hemorrhagic fever illnesses. Ebola kills 50 to 90 percent of those infected, while Marburg is fatal 23 to 70 percent of the time. ³An outbreak of Ebola and Marburg would have a significant impact on our society, because they carry significant morbidity and mortality, and other than supportive medical care, there are no specific treatments,² explains lead author Luciana Borio, MD, fellow at the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies and the Critical Care Medicine Department of the National Institutes of Health. ³It is not possible to predict whether any of the hemorrhagic fever viruses are likely to be used as a bioweapon. However, we know that it is not impossible to weaponize these viruses and we, in medicine and public health, are obliged to prepare.² If an attack were to occur in the United States, the report notes that diagnosing hemorrhagic fever viruses may be difficult, since most clinicians are unfamiliar with these diseases. Most hemorrhagic fever illnesses begin with a fever and rash, which is similar to other more common illnesses. In addition, there are no widely available diagnostic tests. Currently, the CDC in Atlanta, Georgia and USAMRIID in Frederick, Maryland house the only facilities in the U.S. equipped to diagnose hemorrhagic fever viruses. According to the Working Group, few effective therapies or vaccines are available to deal with hemorrhagic fever viruses. |
| April 18, 2002. Israeli Commits Atrocities in Jenin? United Nations Envoy Says Jenin camp "Shocking and Horrifying." Israel Will Bar UN Inspectors.
As reported by CNN" "The United Nations envoy to the
Middle East said Thursday the Jenin
Palestinian refugee camp on the West
Bank is "shocking and horrifying
beyond belief," the air filled with the
smell of decaying bodies.
"It looks as if an earthquake has hit the
heart of the refugee camp here," said Terje
Roed-Larsen, the U.N. envoy. "I've just
been witnessing two brothers digging out
of the rubble their father and five other
family members. I witnessed a family
digging out their about 12-year-old son
from beneath the rubble. There's a stench
of decaying corpses all over the place
here, the scene is absolutely unbelievable." It is estimated that the Israelis may have murdered hundreds of innocent Palestinian women and children, burying many of them alive. Several mass graves have already been detected. The government of Israel, however, denies the charges but despite their denials, they will refuse to allow the United Nations to inspect the ruins of what once was the city of Jenin.
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| March 14 , 2002. Monkeying Around With Mind Over Matter It is the stuff of science fiction: Researchers at Brown University have used a tiny array of electrodes to record, interpret and reconstruct the brain activity that controls hand movement and they have demonstrated that thoughts alone can move a cursor across a computer screen to hit a target. The research was conducted using a primate model. Three Rhesus monkeys received brain implants similar to those used in treating certain human Parkinsonıs patients. ³We substituted thought control for hand control,² said John Donoghue, chair of the Department of Neuroscience and the projectıs senior researcher. ³A monkeyıs brain not its hand moved the cursor. Use of a reconstructed signal to allow the brain to accomplish immediate, complex goal-directed behavior has not been done before. We showed we could build a signal that works right away, in real time. And we can do it recording from as few as six neurons.² This work is a step toward enabling paralyzed humans to use thoughts to control a cursor that would allow them to read e-mail, surf the World Wide Web, or perform other functions through a computer interface. Eventually, the technology may help individuals who have a spinal cord injury, Lou Gehrigıs disease or muscular dystrophy, the researchers said. The researchers hope to apply the technology to restore some movement control in paralyzed patients. That step would entail seeking approval from the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA has not approved this ³instant-control brain cursor² technique for human use. The findings are described in the current issue of Nature. The lead author is Mijail D. Serruya, a graduate student enrolled in the M.D./Ph.D. program at Brown. Serruya performed the work as part of his Ph.D. research. As a medical student, he assists paralyzed patients. Serruya and Donoghue conducted the research with colleagues Nicholas Hatsopolous, a former Brown professor now at the University of Chicago; former Brown undergraduate Liam Paninski, now at New York University; and current Brown graduate student Matthew Fellows. ³This implant is potentially one that is very suitable for humans,² Serruya said. ³It shows enough promise that we think it could ultimately be hooked up via a computer to a paralyzed patient to restore that individualıs interaction with the environment. Our goal is to make sense of how the brain plans to move a hand through space and to use that information as a control signal for someone who is paralyzed. We want to provide some freedom to this individual.² The device ³would work for anything you can do or you can imagine doing by pointing and clicking,² Donoghue said. This includes reading e-mail. Or imagine an onscreen keyboard that someone can use to type sentences or issue commands by pointing and clicking. We would be extraordinarily pleased if this system could allow a patient to become somewhat autonomous. It would restore some independence to paralyzed patients who are cognitively normal people unable to carry out their movement intentions.² The research involves use of thin electrodes to record the activity of a few neurons in the brainıs motor cortex. This area contains the cells that fire when a hand moves. Activity of the neurons is first recorded while a cursor on a computer screen is moved to hit a target using a mouse-like handle. The scientists built a series of mathematical formulas, called linear filters, to create a model that related the firing of the neurons to a cursorıs target position. These linear filters then allowed the researchers to reconstruct hand trajectory from any new neural signals. The electrode array was connected to a computer by thin cables. While the subject played a simple pinball video game, the researchers turned off the hand control and substituted the reconstructed signal. While the primate continued to move its hand as if playing the game, cursor motion actually was controlled solely by brain signals associated with moving the hand. The subject then used its thoughts to move the cursor to different targets for periods averaging two minutes in length. While this instant-control brain cursor was active, the real-time signals allowed the animal to correct wayward cursor movements ³on the fly² in order to strike the target, the researchers said. This entire processing took place nearly as fast as the hand responds to the brainıs movement commands. The research suggests that subjects can use visual and other feedback to compensate for inaccuracies in the mathematical model in effect, to learn how to improve the brainıs control of cursor movement, researchers said. ³Our results demonstrate that a simple mathematical approach, coupled with a biological system, can provide effective decoding for brain-machine interfacing, which may eventually help restore function to neurologically impaired humans.² |
| March 17 , 2002. John Walker Lindh's Attorney Threatens "Peril" How to Draw Attention to a Book Any student of marketing is well aware of the simple fact that "controversy" sells. Paradoxically, often those who are embarrassed, angered, or upset about a product, such as a movie or book, and who wish to prevent its distribution and to prevent the public from seeing or reading this material, end up drawing attention to the book/movie in question by denouncing it. For those upset or opposed to a book or movie, the smart thing to do is to "shut up." Do Not Draw Attention to It. On March 12, the Attorneys for John Walker Lindh, denounced the forthcoming book by the same title, even though they admit they had never read it. As detailed by Associated Press and Reuters, these attorneys fired off a letter to the publisher in which they threatened: "This is to put you on notice that publication would be at your peril." -G.C.Harris, of the law firm, Brosnahan et al. The next day, sales of the book, John Walker Lindh: American Taliban, skyrocketed, and the authors and the publisher received invitations to appear on the national news, including Fox, MSNBC, and DateLine NBC. What is extremely odd about this controvery is that the publisher repeatedly offered these attorneys to supply material helpful to their client, and offered to print, unedited, up to 50 pages of defense. The publisher even offered to provide the attorneys with an advanced copy of the book and to write a rebuttal. Instead, the attorneys tried to stop the book, and ended up drawing attention to it. The lead in on numerous channels that evening was: "The Book Lindh's Attorney's Don't Want You to Read." As to any possibility of a lawsuit, the publisher has said that he welcomes a lawsuit as it would provide him and his team with the opportunity to directly cross-examine Mr. John Walker Lindh. "We have a lot of questions and Lindh has the answers." Will Lindh's attorneys draw more attention to the book by filing a lawsuit, which would force them to put their client on the stand? Stay tuned... |
| March 4 , 2002. The Psychology of "John Walker Lindh: American Taliban"
New Book Analyzes the Unknown Face of John Walker Lindh.
In the brilliant new psychological book, "John Walker Lindh: American Taliban" it is revealed that Johnny Taliban had some rather severe psychological problems and was making anti-American remarks while still living in the home of his "mamma" and "pappa." Moreover, as revealed in this book, he may have played a role in the bombing of the USS Cole, in Yemen. From the back cover of: John Walker Lindh: American Taliban: John Walker Lindh, at age 14, was a confused, unhappy, angry little boy with a fascination for the violent rhythms of hip-hop music. By age 16, his anger was directed at Jews, Gays, Zionists, Christians, and White America. In 1998 he joined a "Pakistan-based jehadi organization" linked to terrorists wishing to overthrow the USA. He wanted to be a holy warrior. The presence of U.S. ships off the coast of Yemen was "an act of war against Islam" he declared. He journeyed to Yemen on a mission which coincided with the bombing of the USS Cole. Mission accomplished, John Walker left for Pakistan and met with Taliban officials, and then journeyed to Afghanistan where he swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden who preached "Death to America." But was it the USA which John Walker wished to destroy, or his unknown face? John Walker was at war with himself for he hated and sought to destroy his true identity. He called himself "doodoo" but pretended he was a Black "gangsta" rap star wannabe, and announced he would "remain anonymous" because of homosexuality. He was not a "worthless dickrider" but an imitation Muslim in search of purity. Yet imitation is not reality, which is why John Walker Lindh, in picking up the martyr's gun, was aiming not for the "Great Satan" or the United States, but his unknown face. |
| March 1 , 2002. Asymmetric Broca's Area in Great Apes?? Evolutionary Implications: Lateralization for Speech? Monkeying Around With Science In a paper published by Cantalupo and Hopkins, evidence for what they believe to be a Broca's are in Great Apes is interpreted as supporting the notion that the left half of the brain was adapted for speech production over 5 million years ago. As summarized by the authors: "Brodmann's area 44 delineates part of Broca's area within the inferior frontal gyrus of the human brain and is a critical region for speech production, being larger in the left hemisphere than in the right an asymmetry that has been correlated with language dominance." The authors then go on to claim that they found "a similar asymmetry in this area, also with left-hemisphere dominance, in three great ape species (Pan troglodytes, Pan paniscus and Gorilla gorilla). Our findings suggest that the neuroanatomical substrates for left-hemisphere dominance in speech production were evident at least five million years ago and are not unique to hominid evolution." There is only one major problem with the reasoning of Cantalupo and Hopkins: Apes do not have speech and are not capable of human speech. Broca's area is a speech area in humans. Because apes do not have speech, they do not have a Broca's area. When this was pointed out to Cantalupo and Hopkins they were speechless with surprise. However, later they admitted that by publishing this nonsense, they have made monkeys of themselves." |
| February 28, 2002. Alcohol Consumption Increases Production of Opiate-like Substances (Enkephalins). One of the brainıs natural painkillers -- beta endorphin -- increases significantly in response to alcohol, cocaine and amphetamine drug administration in a key region of the brain that controls addiction, researchers have discovered. The work, conducted in rats, strongly suggests that the same thing occurs in humans, the scientists say. It offers what could be important new clues in the fight against alcohol and drug addiction. A report on the findings appears as a rapid communication in the newest issue of the Journal of Neuroscience. Authors of the paper include Drs. M. Foster Olive of the University of California at San Francisco and Clyde W. Hodge of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "This is the first demonstration that drugs of abuse increase beta endorphin levels in a key part of the brain that influences addiction," said senior author Hodge, associate professor of psychiatry at the UNC School of Medicine. "The name of this important forebrain region is the nucleus accumbens. We and others had suspected this response, but it had never been proven until now because methods were not available to test it. "In this latest work, Dr. Olive adapted a technique for quantifying endorphins and used it to measure how one of the brainıs natural painkillers responds to addicting drugs." For at least four decades, biomedical researchers have known based on animal studies that certain regions of the brain, when stimulated, produced pleasurable effects, said Hodge, also a member of UNCıs Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies. Those "rewards" promote substance use initially, and eventually, habitual users find it hard to function without them. About 15 or so years ago, scientists discovered that in those brain regions drugs of abuse caused an elevation in the neurotransmitter compound dopamine, he said. Such knowledge helps them pin down how abused substances affect humans and narrows the search for compounds that can block cravings without harming addicted people. The researchers administered alcohol, cocaine, amphetamine, nicotine and an inactive salt solution to laboratory rats via injections twice at three-hour intervals. Then, using a technique known as microdialysis combined with solid-phase radioimmunoassay, they measured endorphin levels in brain fluids removed from awake and active rats and found the effect in rodents given the first three drugs. "We hypothesize that this drug-induced release of endorphins may contribute to the positive reinforcing and motivating properties of alcohol and psychostimulant drugs," Hodge said. "We did not find this same boost in endorphins in this brain region with nicotine, but we donıt know why. It could be that the dose of nicotine we used was too low or that nicotine does not cause this same effect and instead acts in some other way." Additional research will show whether nicotine increases beta endorphin in the nucleus accumbens or whether it acts on different systems, he said. Such information should contribute to efforts to help people stop smoking. "This new work also offers a useful technique for evaluating some of the more pertinent questions such as is beta endorphin elevated during craving or during drug self-administration?" Hodge said. "That would suggest that this is a system that could be targeted for development of medications that might help humans deal with the problem of drug addiction." |
| February 12, 2002. Cerebellum and Neocortex Evolved in Tandem? Over the course of evolution the neocortex has greatly expanded, increasing to six or more layers and expanding, such that, for example, the frontal lobe has greatly increased in size. By contast, limbic system structures and the cerebellum have shown much less growth over the course of evolution. Thus the ratio of neocortex volume to total brain volume increases over the course of evolution. However, there is also evidence to suggest that the cerebellum may act as a neocortex in reserve and participates directly in all aspects of cognitive functioning occuring in the neocortex. Recent research also indicates that the neocortex and the cortex of the cerebellum" increased their computational capacity in parallel, suggesting a functional dependence of the one upon the other" |
| February 8, 2002. Learning Without Awareness Following Severe Head Injury It is well known that a brain injury can impair learning and memory. It is also known, however, that in both brain injured and normal individuals, that learning can occur without awareness. Even patients with amnesia show evidence of learning. In an article printed in this month's issue of Neuropsychology, Nissley and Schmitter-Edgecombe have reported that following a severe head injury patients can also learn without awareness, a kind of learning, called "implicit,"and that this type of learning may aid the effort to remediate the cognitive abilities of those with severe head injuries. For example, with the ability to learn implicitly, people can acquire new information about their environment without it demanding the attention required by explicit learning. For example, they could implicitly learn (just because things are arranged in a certain way) to associate looking in or writing in a memory notebook with environmental cues repeatedly presented over time. "Persons with these injuries generally perform better on tasks that require automatic as opposed to controlled, or explicit, processes," says Schmitter-Edgecombe, "suggesting that automatic processes could be exploited in remediation." For example, therapists could "teach" complex skills by breaking them down into sub-components that can be learned implicitly and/or made automatic. |
| January 28, 2002. al-Qaeda Threatens U.S. With Suitcase Nukes Soviet SuitCase-Sized Nuclear Bombs Already In U.S.? In the early 1990s the former Soviet Union began hemorrhaging nuclear scientists and nuclear weapons, including suitcase-sized nukes--many of which fell into the hands of third world countries, as well as bin Laden's al-Qaeda. Nuclear scientists, employed by our new "good friend" Pakistan, traveled to Afghanistan and provided al-Qaeda with additional assistance: the creation and deployment of nuclear bombs (an "Islamic bomb") that will be used on the United States. New York city and Washington D.C. are the most likely targets. Because of the threat of nuclear terrorism, 100s of high-tech sensors have been deployed, beginning in November 2001. These sensors have been placed in strategic locations around the United States including its borders, as well as around W.D.C. An elite commando unit, Delta Force, is also undergoing training to intervene and kill anyone trying to smuggle or set off such a device into the U.S. The suitcase nuke, in theory, would then be turned over to scientists who will try to deactiv.. KABOOM! (Just kidding). These devices called gamma ray and neutron flux detectors are designed to detect the radiation that a suitcase device will give off, so that the bomb can detected as it enters the U.S. or as terrorist drive down I95 on the way to WDC. These devices will also be employed at the Olympic Games in Utah. Unfortunately, al Qaeda has all sorts of nasty weapons at its disposal, which, despite Bush's phony war on terrorism, will eventually be used on American citizens. Indeed, a senior member al Qaeda who predicted the 9/11 attack, has reently said that ³there will be another attack and itıs going to be much bigger.² |
| January 20, 2002. Pretzel Logic: Bush Sees Shadow & Faints President Found Unconscious Lying On Floor: The Fear Factor! Bush recently declared that he "would not allow taxes to be raised over my dead body." That Bush often has that obtunded look should not be construed as an indication that the President is "brain dead." Dumb--yes. Brain dead--No. More recently, the Commander-in-Chief was found lying as if dead, at the foot of his couch. The poor man had fainted. The next day Bush felt compelled to joke about it four times."I fainted, huh huh huh!" According to the moron-in-chief, he had been watching a football game late Sunday afternoon, "and then everything went black." When he regained consciousness, he was lying face down on the floor. Does this make the President a "rug muncher?" No! by god--the man was eating a pretzel--or so he claims. Even so, this is quite diquieting. The commander of the world's only superpower was rendered incapable of performing the duties of his office because of a pretzel? Sad but true. Apparently, the president fainted because a pretzel got stuck in his throat. When asked if it was a hard or a soft pretzel-the soft type are usually sold only in open airstalls whereas hard pretzels are normally marketed in bags, he refused to say, because of national security. Instead, he joked that he should have chewed the pretzel and then swallowed, as he was told by his mother when he was a child. In the future, the idiot-in-chief promises that he will always take special care before swallowing. The day after his fainting, Bush presented a jumbo pack of pretzels to the press corps which had the words: "From POTUS (president of the United States) ... Chew slowly." In addition to his bruised ego, Bush suffered a bruised lip and scraped the side of his face. According to doctors, that the President fainted with a hard pretzel in his mouth should not be interpreted as an indication of serious health trouble. However, independent medical experts also warned that Bush might be vulnerable to further losses of consciousness. In fact, this is not the first time that Bushy suffered a faint. According to White House doctors, Bush has also suffered from fainting episodes which they referred to as a "vasovagal syncope." Vasovagal syncopes are due to excessive stimulation of the vagus nerve and thus excessive activation of the parasympathetic nervous system. Stimulation of the vagus nerve can depress the pulse and can reduce blood flow to the brain, thus causing loss of consciousness. However, this excessive stimulation is seldom caused by a pretzel. It is caused by extreme fear. Normally, the parasympathetic nerves fire in balance with opposing nerve signals to keep the body's various systems in exquisite balance. This balance can be easily upset during episodes of extreme fear. This is actually quite adaptive--at least for small animals in danger of being eaten by predators. When excessive fear results in loss of consciousness, the subject will fall to the ground as if dead. This is also known as playing possum. Predators avoid eating dead animals--which again reminds us of the brain-dead analogy which we will not repeat here. It could be that it was not fear which excessively stimulated the vagus nerve, but something big and hard. Any time you distend the esophagus -- whether it's from food or even from drinking a carbonated beverage -- it can set in motion a reflex that leads to a slowing heart rate and passing out. If that is what happened in the case of President Bush, his fainting spell and loss of consciousness would thus be diagosed as a reflex-mediated syncope originating in the esophagus due to having something big and hard stuck in his mouth and throat. |
| January 18, 2002. Head Injuries Increase Risk of Depression Evidence based on a study of World War II veterans, published in this month's Archives of General Psychiatry, suggests that men who suffer head injuries suffered are at risk for suffering severe depression even decades after their injury. It is well known that depression is common following severe, moderate, and even mild head injuries. However, this new evidence indicates that the risk persists even 50 years after the initial injury. The study involved 1,718 veterans hospitalized for various ailments during the war and questioned 50 years later.The lifetime prevalence of major depression was 18.5 percent in the head-injury group and 13.4 percent among the other veterans hospitalized during the war for other reasons, which reduces the possibility that post-traumatic stress associated with being injury per se, are due to the increase in depression. The findings suggest that football players or other individuals who suffer even mild concussion will have a greater risk of depression. Men with severe head injuries and who experienced loss of consciousness or amnesia for a day or more are far more likely to develop depression than men with the most mild injuries or those who had amnesia for less than 30 minutes. Depression is frequently associated with temporal lobe injuries, and the temporal lobe are at risk for impact shearing and contusion as they slide and bounce around in the anterior portion of the skull following a head injury. In addition, head trauma causes an inflammatory response that includes increased production of an immune system protein called interleukin 6, and increased levels of interleukin 6 also have been found in depression. |
| January 12, 2002. The Big Bang or the Big Deception. Astonomers Claim Hubble Telescope is Really a Time Machine And the Cow Jumped Over the Moon! By looking through a telescope, you can actually look backwards in time, as star light from those stars very far away, carry images from the distant past. Thus, if we were to take a ride in a faster-than-light space ship and catch up with those beams of light that have not yet reached the earth, we can travel not back in time, but closer and closer to the present. But the "present" is relative, for as we speed away from the earth, we also travel backwards in time as we catch up with those light beams that left our planet a long long time ago. As we fly away toward the stars, and reach a light-year distance of 5 billion years, the Earth would then cease to exist as we would have sped beyond the farthest reaches of earthly light. However, the same is true regarding those stars which are so far away their light has not yet reached the Earth. However, in regard to time travel, as to those planets 14 billion years distant, we would have traveled 5 billion years toward their present. How does time travel relate to the current fantasy referred to as the "big bang?" Although distance and time are linked,the evidence based on the most distant stars so far detected, indicates only that those stars that appear to be 14 billion years distant from the earth, were 14 billion years distant 14 billion years ago! But again, what of those stars which are so far away, or which died so long ago their light cannot be detected? Astonomers, and the scientific establishment, however, wish us to believe that if it cannot be seen, then it must not exist, and thus prefer to pluck out their eyes in order to blind themselves to the truth. For example, astronomers would have us believe that the big bang blew out only in one direction: like a bullet ejected in a straight-line from a rifle, or a shot gun blast that sweeps in an arc, but in one direction. But why would the big bang shoot out in one direction, and not in a 360 degree arc as would be expected and as is common for all forms of non-buffered explosions? Shhh!! Don't ask that question!! It is not allowed. Thus we are supposed to believe that the big bang was like a rifle shot and that the most distant stars--distant from earth that is--are at the leading edge, and not at the center: for if they were at the center--at ground zero--then we could expect that their light is also traveling the opposite direction and that there are stars in the opposite direction. Indeed, if the big bang exploded in a 360 degree arc and not like a rifle, then there would have to be stars at the other end of the universe. Or, consider, what if there was no big bang and there are simply more and more stars that are further and further away and on the other side of the most distant stars so far detected? Then they would be older still. But that is not acceptable. Why is that not acceptable? Shhhh. Don't ask that question. Because most mainstream scientists adhere to the same delusion, it is now claimed that by looking through the Hubble telescope, that is has been discovered that there was an outburst of star formation about a half billion years following the Big Bang. Astonomers speculate that based on their "analysis" of very faint galaxies in the deepest view of the universe ever captured by a telescope that there was an eruption of stars that burst to life and pierced the blackness very early in the 15 billion-year history of the universe. This theory is proposed by Kenneth M. Lanzetta of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, who claims that ``Star formation took place early and very rapidly. Star formation was 10 times higher in the distant early universe than it is today." Lanzetta took pictures of gallaxies 14 billion light-years away--but away from what? From where the earth is now and from where those gallaxies were 14 billion light years ago. Hence, although these gallaxies were already 14 billon light years distant, 14 billion light years ago, Lanzetta claims that the farther back the telescope looked, the greater the star-forming activity was. ``Star formation continued to increase to the very earliest point that we could see,'' said Lanzetta. "We are seeing close to the first burst of star formation." In his study, Lanzetta examined light captured in the Hubble deep field images, using up to 12 different light filters to separate the colors. The intensity of red was used to establish the distance to each point of light. The distances were then used to create a three-dimensional perspective of the 5,000 galaxies in the Hubble picture. Lanzetta also used images of nearby star fields as a yardstick for stellar density and intensity to conclude that about 90 percent of the light in the very early universe was not detected by the Hubble. When this missing light was factored into the three-dimensional perspective, it showed that the peak of star formation came just 500 million years after the Big Bang and has been declining since. Current star formation, he said, ``is just a trickle'' of that early burst of stellar birth. Another astronomer, Storrie-Lombardi said that current instruments and space telescopes now being planned could eventually, perhaps, see into the Dark Era, the time before there were stars. ``We are getting close to the epoch where we can not see at all,'' she said. On the other hand, perhaps these astronomers already cannot see at all as they have plucked out their eyes in order to blind themselves to the obvious. The further back they look, the more stars they see. There was no big bang. There was no beginning. There just is. |
| January 11, 2002. Japan Increased in Number of Japanese Teachers Who Have Sex With Students 141 teachers disciplined for lewd acts Among public school teachers disciplined during the 2000 school year, a record 141 teachers were fired or forced to retire for lewd behavior-a 22 percent increase in such acts from the previous year, the Ministry of Education reported. 71 of the teachers were fired, 25 were relieved of their teaching duties, and 20 resigned. Of those who were fired or forced to retire, 81 teachers had sex with students at their own schools, and 28 teachers were involved in indecent acts with students from other schools, or with other juveniles under the age of 18. Some teachers also took pornographic pictures of their females students and then stold them over the internet and on floppy discs. The ministry cited the case of a male vice principal at an elementary school in Fukuoka Prefecture who sold floppy diskettes of pornographic photos. In yet another case a male teacher at an elementary school fondled eight schoolgirls as they slept during an overnight school trip. In Kumamoto Prefecture, a male elementary school teacher clandestinely videotaped schoolgirls changing clothes in a classroom before and after swimming class, ministry officials said. The videotapes depicted the young ladies completely naked. Every year more and more Japanese teachers have been caught having sex with or sexually exploiting or molesting female students In the year 2000, 3,966 teachers were disciplined for sexually inappropriate behavior involving students, which is about 1,500 more teachers than were reported in the 1998 school year. The reasons for the increase is not clear, though some have speculated that stress associated with the prolonged recession in Japan may be a factor; that is, more and more teachers are seeking to relieve their stress by having sex with their female students. Indeed, the same stress factor may account for why a record 428 teachers had assaulted or behaving in a violent manner to students in 2001-a 10 percent increase from the previous school year. |
| January 10, 2002. Japan 100 People a Day Commit suicide For 3 years in a row, over 30,000 Japanese committ suicide each year. By contrast, 8,747 Japanese were killed in traffic fatalities; which means that three times as many people killed themselves last year. Suicide is thus a major health problem in Japan--but one that receives scan attention due to the stigma attached and lack of interest among Japanese and Japanese government officials. Sucides are seldomly investigated. A National Police Agency spokesman explained that investigating the cause of death often proves to be a time-consuming process, and furthermore, there are simply too many suicides in big cities. However, a major factor in the cause of suicide in Japan is the prolonged recession. Because of the shame associated with loss of income and the loss of a job many Japanese feel that that it is best if they end their lives. |
| January 9, 2002. Acne Causes Terrorism? Student Pilot in Skyscraper Plane Crash Prescribed Acne Drug Linked to Suicide The 15-year-old student pilot who crashed an airplane into a skyscraper was prescribed an acne medication that has been linked to suicide and depression. A prescription for Accutane, used to treat severe acne, was found at the home of Charles J. Bishop. According to the Food and Drug Administration 147 people who have taken Accutane, either committed suicide or were hospitalized for suicide attempts from 1982 to May 2000. Accutane is known to directly effect the brain. Bishop, a troubled loner, stole an airplane from a flight school at the St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport on Saturday and crashed it into the 28th floor of the Bank of America Plaza in downtown Tampa. He left a note expressing sympathy for Osama bin Laden and support of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Does Accutane cause terrorism? Depression has been listed as a possible side effect on Accutane's label since 1986, and in 1998 the FDA warned that suicide, too, was possible. Should terrorism be added to the list of possible side effects> Accutane's link to suicide has been under congressional investigation, spearheaded by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Michigan, whose 17-year-old son committed suicide while taking the drug. More hearings are scheduled this spring. Accutane has been marketed as an acne drug since 1982 and an estimated 12 million patients have used it. The first reports of its connection to suicide and depression came in 1985. However, in this case, Bishop was not just committing suicide, but was engaged in a terrorist act. Likewise, it is noteworthy that many of the 9/11/2001 terrorists also had severe acne--thought it is not known if they were also taking Accutane. Hence, acne appears to be directly linked to terrorism, and terrorism should be listed as a possible side effect of Accutane. |
| January 9, 2002. Scared to Death Superstitious Fear & Heart Attacks In the legendary Sherlock Holmes story "The Hound of the Baskervilles," by Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir Charles Baskerville dies from a heart attack brought on by extreme psychological and superstitious stress: He was afraid of being attacked by an avenging spectral hound--the ghost of a vengeful dog. It is well known that in case of extreme fear, individuals may become petrified, even catatonic, and unable to move--and in some animals this is associated with "death feigning" or playing possum. Some predators will not eat an animal that is already dead. However, in some cases, animals as well as human can be litteraly scared to death. They die of fright--often due to a heart attack. During hurricanes, earthquakes, or in cities beseiged during war and combat, death due to heart attacks skyrocket. New research, however, also indicates that like Sir Charles Baskerville, humans can also die of superstitious fear. Findings reported by University of California, San Diego Sociologist David Phillips in the British Medical Journal, indicate that deaths increase as a function of fear-related superstition. In Mandarin, Cantonese, and Japanese, the words "death" and "four" are pronounced nearly identically, and consequently the number "four" evokes discomfort and apprehension in many Chinese and Japanese people. Because of this, the number "four" is avoided and omitted in some Chinese and Japanese floor and room numberings, restaurants, and telephone numbers. In addition, the mainland Chinese air force avoids the number "four" in designating its military aircraft, apparently because of the superstitious association between "four" and "death." The study by Phillips and his co-authors finds that cardiac deaths peak on the fourth of the month for Americans of Chinese and Japanese descent, and that this pattern is not seen among whites. The study used computerized U.S. death certificates to examine more than 200,000 Chinese and Japanese deaths, and 47,000,000 white deaths, from 1973 to 1998. "Conan Doyle suggests that Sir Charles Baskerville was particularly susceptible to a stress-induced heart attack because he had a chronic heart condition," said Phillips. "If Doyle's medical intuition was correct, deaths from chronic heart disease should display a particularly large fourth-day peak. Sir Charles Baskerville's superstitious fear of an avenging spectral hound was shared and reinforced by his neighbors. Similarly, Chinese and Japanese superstitious fears are likely to be stronger where they are reinforced by large Chinese and Japanese populations." Phillips' evidence supports both of these expectations. For U.S. Chinese and Japanese, there are 13% more cardiac deaths than expected on the fourth of the month. This fourth-day increase is still larger (27% above expected) in California, where Chinese and Japanese populations are concentrated. Phillips and his co-authors tested nine, alternative, non-psychosomatic explanations for their findings, including the possibility that, on the fourth, Chinese and Japanese might change diets, increase alcohol consumption, refuse medicines, or overstrain themselves. The researchers concluded that their data suggest a link between psychological stress and heart attacks. "Our findings are consistent with the existence of psychosomatic processes, with the scientific literature, and with a famous non-scientific story. The 'Baskerville effect' seems to exist both in fact and in fiction, and suggests that Conan Doyle was not only a great writer, but a remarkably intuitive physician as well." |
| January 7, 2002. Individual Neurons Become Increasing Complex When Engaged in Learning and Memory An investigation of the activity of individual human nerve cells during the act of memory indicates that the brainıs nerve cells are even more specialized than many people think. Although nerve cells that change activity during the use of memory are widely distributed in the brain, individual neurons generally respond to specific aspects of memory. "For the first time, weıve been able to show differences within regions of the temporal lobe in the way individual neurons respond to memory. Everything weıve done to this point was to show that there are individual neurons that change activity --but we hadnıt been able to sort them out in any meaningful way. Now we can," says Dr. George Ojemann, professor of neurological surgery at the University of Washington. The findings appear in the January 2002 issue of Nature Neuroscience. This research involves patients with epilepsy who were awake during surgery and agreed to respond to requests to recall words, names of pictures and sounds. The recordings were from relatively healthy brain tissue that must be removed in order to reach problematic parts of the brain responsible for epileptic seizures. In a typical procedure, surgeons insert four microelectrodes and record the electrical activity as neurons communicate with other cells. After the microelectrodes are in place, patients are asked questions that measure stages of memory. The microelectrodes, sharpened tungsten wire about the thickness of a human hair, identify electric impulses from neurons. There are only a few programs worldwide that have investigated neuronal activity changes with human cognition. Given the size and complexity of neurons and their interconnections, it is difficult to measure the activity of any given neuron for a given time. The electrodes pick up discharges of a pool of neurons that are then separated into activity of individual neurons based on the shape of their individual discharges. The latest study was able to identify the behavior of 105 neurons at 57 sites in 26 patients; before, Ojemann says, his teamıs largest sample was about 25 neurons. The findings reinforce the message that neurons are very specialized. For example, researchers identified 16 of the 105 neurons that significantly changed activity with different stages of memory encoding, storage and retrieval and found that in 13 of those, changes were observed in only one modality (auditory, six; text, four; objects, three). "We just donıt find neurons that are generic memory neurons. What we find are neurons that show statistically significant relationships to memory for a particular thing," Ojemann says. There are three regional differences in brain activity that have not been noted before: 1. There is a cluster of neurons that changes activity from encoding, to storage, to retrieval, in the basal temporal area, below the temporal lobe. 2. Neurons that may help people recall something quickly after they have seen it earlier in the day what scientists call implicit memoryı -- seem very active in the superior temporal gyrus of the temporal lobe. 3. There are neurons in the language-dominant hemisphere that respond to more than one modality memory of both visual and auditory material. |
| January 2, 2002. A Critical Period For Learning All Languages, Including Sign Language Neuroscientists examining the brain activity of people who learned to speak American Sign Language (ASL) at different times in their lives have found the first evidence that there is a critical period for acquiring a non-verbal language, just as there is for spoken languages. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the researchers discovered patterns of brain activity in bilingual people who learned ASL before puberty differed from those who learned it after puberty. The findings are reported in this monthıs issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience. They indicate that when reading sign language there are regions in the brainıs right hemisphere that are activated when children who learned ASL before puberty. The brains of children who learned ASL after puberty show significantly less right hemisphere activity when reading. There is widespread acceptance among neuroscientists that there is a critical period for first language acquisition, and that children who are not exposed to any language until after puberty, are unable to fully acquire and use the principles of language. There also is evidence of similar critical periods for acquiring a second language. ³We know that late learners of ASL, while they are very fluent, never will be fully fluent like native, or early, learners of ASL,² said David Corina, co-author of the study. ³One aspect of ASL that is difficult for late learners is verb signs of motion. You see some subtle errors in their use of these verbs, just as you might detect subtle grammatical differences when listening to bilingual users of a spoken language when they are not using their native tongue.² The new study builds on earlier work by this research team showing that right hemisphere activity, along with activation in the left hemisphere, is necessary for processing ASL. The left hemisphere activity has long been associated with the processing of spoken languages. ³One area of the brain that is the signature, or specific, to signers if they learned ASL as a native signer, is the right angular gyrus,² Corina said. It is located at the juncture of the temporal and parietal lobes. Activation of the left angular gyrus has been associated with reading English and other spoken languages for many years. The new study shows consistent activation of the right angular gyrus among native signers and some, but not consistent, activation of that brain region among late signers. |
| January 2, 2002. Are the Afganistan Taliban Jewish? Taliban may be one of the "lost" tribes of Israel
According to a Jewish-Israeli anthropologist, Shalva Weil, the Taliban, whose members are mostly from the Pathan ("Pashtuns") ethnic group, is one of the fabled "10 lost tribes" of ancient Israel. In fact, for over a thousand years Jews have lived in Afghanistan's western frontier, and for centuries Pathan tribesmen have claimed they were descended from the tribes of Israel. The Pathans, a tribe of Sephardic Jews, were presumably forcibly converted to Shiite Islam in
1839. Nevertheless, despite their foced conversion, until recently the Pathans embraced similar religious clothing as religious Jews, including wearing basically identical cloaks and prayer shawls. They would wear the hair in a similar fashion, e.g., with side curls, and decorate their clothes with almost identical symbols, such as those resembling the lamps
lit by Jews at Hanukkah. They also followed many of the same customs, such a lighting votive
candles on the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath and
circumcising their sons on the eighth day after their birth--the 8th day also being a
Jewish custom. As the Taliban view the Jews of Israel as their enemies, this would mean that one tribe of Isaelites is now seeking to destroy the members of the other tribes of Israel, and to evict them from the land of Israel. If the Taliban-Jewish connection is true, this would be ironic indeed. However, just for the sake of a "thought experiment" let us engage in the following flight of fancy so as to unravel this paradoxical gnot: Many scholars believe that the majority of "Jews" (Ashkenazis) living in Israel are not really Jews--but rather, are Slavic people of Eastern European descent who were forcibly converted to Judaism in the year 740. They are "the Jews who are not Jews" --a phrase coined by the Jewish half-brother of the Jew, Jesus Christ. According to the "Jewish" author, Arthur Koestler: the ancestors of the so called European Jews came "not from Jordan but from the Volga; not from Canaan but from the Caucasus....genetically they are more related to the Hun, Uiger, and the Magyar tribes...than to the seed of Jacob." It is also the Ashkenazi (European) "Jews" (the Jews who are not Jews) who also make up a considerable part of the Jewish population now found in Israel and America--which would mean that they are the "Jews who are not Jews." In fact, the term "Jew" is a reference to the word "Judean," which means "belonging to" or "living in Judah" (Kings 16:6). The Hebrew definition of the word "Jew" refers only to the descendants of those tribes that comprised the House of Judah. In the Old and New Testament, the word "Jew" was never used in connection with any of the ten tribes that comprised the House (or Kingdom) of Israel. In this regard, the term "Jew" should only be applied to Sephardic Jews and those of the house of Judah which includes those who migrated throughout the Arab pennisula (e.g. the Taliban?) as well as in North Africa and southern Spain. Bearing in mind that this is just a "thought experiment," a flight of fantasy--if the above is true, this would mean that the majority of Jews currently occupying Israel, are not Jews at all, but invaders and pretenders-- "I know thy works, and tribulations, and poverty (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan." -Revelation 2:9 "Behold, I will make those of the synagogue of Satan, who say they are Jews and are not, but lie." -Revelation 3:9 |
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