Posts tagged science
Articles and news from the latest research reports.
3D reconstruction of Phineas Gage’s skull, showing the passage of the tamping iron. Read about Gage’s connectome here
The World’s Most Famous Brain
In the summer of 1953, Henry Gustav Molaison (1926-2008) underwent brain surgery to contain epileptic seizures that had become critically debilitating. The intervention brought some relief from convulsions, but these positive results were overshadowed by an astonishing and indelible side effect. Soon after the operation, it became apparent that he could no longer recognize hospital staff, he did not remember the way home, he did not remember newspaper articles he had just read, nor the crossword puzzles he had solved; otherwise, he was completely normal. Since the time of the surgery, more than five decades of scrupulous neuropsychological research examined the nature of patient H.M.’s amnesia which proved to be both persistent and remarkably selective.
The goal of our project is to provide a window into the brain of the man who helped establish the scientific study of memory and unfailingly forgot the enormously generous contribution he made to medical research.
Earth’s Fractal Brain From Above
Photography by Hector Garrido
Pictures of alcoholic drinks under a microscope reveal the molecules that make up our favourite tipples
Click here for more pictures
The rat brain has served as an excellent model for elucidating the complex anatomy and physiological mechanisms of the human brain. As a result, a significant amount of information on brain diseases, such as dementia and Parkinson’s disease, has been determined from investigations using rat brains.
Predatory beetles can detect the unique alarm signal released by ants that are under attack by parasitic flies, and the beetles use those overheard conversations to guide their search for safe egg-laying sites on coffee bushes.
Full article: Predatory beetles eavesdrop on ants’ chemical conversations to find best egg-laying sites
Deep-sea squid removes its own arms to distract baffled predators
A species of deep sea squid can jettison its own bioluminescent arms to distract predators and attackers. Later, when the squid has safely escaped, it re-grows its lost limbs.
Moths know how to melt into the background
Many species of moth are experts in camouflage, with the ability to make themselves practically invisible to predators by matching the pattern on their wings with that of their background. But surprisingly little is known about the behaviour surrounding this conjuring trick.
The Superstitious Fund Project
The fund works like this: stock trades are carried out by an Automated Trading System (colloquially, a “robot”), which is a computer program that buys, sells or holds stocks based on a set of specifications encoded into the program’s governing algorithm. The code for Chung’s experiment was written by Jim Hunt, who runs a firm called Trading Gurus, and together with Chung they named it “Sid the Superstitious Robot”. (They also decided to make the source code completely transparent and free to download.)Like many investment models, Sid is an automated speculator. But whereas other algorithms might take action based, for instance, on a stock’s recent performance or the price of oil, the criterion for this program are lunar phases and the affection and disaffection people have for certain numbers. “I wanted it to operate based on human characteristics,” Chung says.
Sid won’t buy anything on the 13th of the month, and steers clear of buying or selling any stock if its value happens to have a 13 in it. As for lunar phases, Chung explains with a hint of pride that the algorithm finds a new moon to be “good”, whereas a full moon is very, very bad. “The closer the moon is to being full, the more it effects us,” Chung says. So as the full moon approaches, the robot – instead of starting to grow claws and thick brown hair – sells more, as if it is nervous about the moon’s impact on multinational corporations and the decision-making capabilities of senior management. If you’re wondering how this automated yet temperamental trader handles an eclipse, one word: sell.