Your Dog Remembers More Than You Think - The New York Times - 0 views
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In people it is called episodic memory, and it involves a sense of self. In animals, it’s called episodic-like memory, because it’s difficult to try to plumb something as elusive as self without the aid of language.
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Dr. Fugazza and colleagues reported online in Current Biology that this showed that the dogs remembered an event they hadn’t been concentrating on, the trainer’s action. She said one aspect strengthened that conclusion: The dogs tended to lie down immediately when they got back to the mat, suggesting that their heads were in “lie down” mode, not “do it” mode.
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He said human episodic memory is lost in Alzheimer’s disease and he and others study animal memory in hopes of learning how to combat that loss. The work on dogs offers a new technique that could be very useful, he said.
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I found this experiment very interesting because it shows some aspect of how animals memory works. The result can be used to see how memory work without language. I think language and memory have an intertwined relationship because sometimes I can feel that the information stored in my brain is in language rather than abstract form such as knowledge. For example, my memory of chemistry knowledge is stored in English, so when I am reading a chemistry related book in Chinese, I would usually get lost because there aren't any vocals on Chemistry in Chinese in my memory. It would be a very interesting question to consider that how our memory will construct if we don't have a language. There is a kind of mental disease called "aphasia", meaning the loss of ability to understand language. How do they remember things when they lose the ability to assign meanings and communicate? --Sissi (11/24/2016)
Language family - Wikipedia - 0 views
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A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term 'family' reflects the tree model of language origination in historical linguistics, which makes use of a metaphor comparing languages to people in a biological family tree, or in a subsequent modification, to species in a phylogenetic tree of evolutionary taxonomy.
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the Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, Romance, and Indo-Iranian language families are branches of a larger Indo-European language family. There is a remarkably similar pattern shown by the linguistic tree and the genetic tree of human ancestry[3] that was verified statistically.
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A speech variety may also be considered either a language or a dialect depending on social or political considerations. Thus, different sources give sometimes wildly different accounts of the number of languages within a family. Classifications of the Japonic family, for example, range from one language (a language isolate) to nearly twenty.
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I found this metaphor very accurate because I think languages certainly have some intimate relationship like family members. Languages are not all very different from one another and isolated. Although people speaking different language may not understand one another, their languages are still connected. I think this article can show that language in some ways are connected like bridges instead of walls. --Sissi (11/26/2016)
Depression is as bad for your heart as high cholesterol | Fox News - 0 views
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When you think of heart attacks, you might assume the most common causes are smoking, high cholesterol, or obesity. Mental health issues probably don't spring to mind.
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Depression—which for this study, was determined by a checklist of mood symptoms, including anxiety and fatigue
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“depressed mood and exhaustion holds a solid middle position within the concert of major cardiovascular risk factors.”
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I think it is really interesting that even mental health issues has a positive relationship with cardiovascular disease. Our mind can affect how our body works. As we learn in the sense and perception unit, we know that brain will give us a shot of certain chemical that makes us feel good when we make certain decision. I think how we feel can reflect how our body feels. We all know that we feel pain because it is a warning that the injured part of our body send to our brain. So I think probably the feeling of depressed can be a warning sent by some part of our body. The scientific method mentioned in this article is a population research which is a typical biology scientific method. --Sissi (1/29/2017)
Psychiatry's New Guide Falls Short, Experts Say - NYTimes.com - 1 views
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his goal was to reshape the direction of psychiatric research to focus on biology, genetics and neuroscience so that scientists can define disorders by their causes, rather than their symptoms.
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While the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or D.S.M., is the best tool now available for clinicians treating patients and should not be tossed out, he said, it does not reflect the complexity of many disorders, and its way of categorizing mental illnesses should not guide research.
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senior figures in psychiatry who have challenged not only decisions about specific diagnoses but the scientific basis of the entire enterprise. Basic research into the biology of mental disorders and treatment has stalled, they say, confounded by the labyrinth of the brain.
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The Stem-Cell Revolution Is Coming - Slowly - The New York Times - 3 views
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In 2001, President George W. Bush issued an executive order banning federal funding for new sources of stem cells developed from preimplantation human embryos. The action stalled research and discouraged scientists.
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re-energized the field by devising a technique to “reprogram” any adult cell, such as a skin cell, and coax it back to its earliest “pluripotent” stage. From there it can become any type of cell, from a heart muscle cell to a neuron.
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But it’s a double-edged sword. After multiple cell cycles, the chances of mutations increases.
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In Biology, we learned that the study for stem cells has been halted because of the ethic issues on whether embryos should be count as human life. Now, there is this new technique that can induce skin cello its earliest "pluripotent" stage. With this technique,the study of stem cells and continue and flourish to benefit patients who need to have new cells that aren't mutated. It's surprised to see that how fast science is progressing. The science wielder at school might not be the science up to date.--Sissi (1/17/2017)
How humans bond: The brain chemistry revealed: New research finds that dopamine is invo... - 0 views
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Northeastern University psychology professor Lisa Feldman Barrett found, for the first time, that the neurotransmitter dopamine is involved in human bonding, bringing the brain's reward system into our understanding of how we form human attachments.
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To conduct the study, the researchers turned to a novel technology: a machine capable of performing two types of brain scans simultaneously -- functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, and positron emission tomography, or PET.
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Barrett's team focused on the neurotransmitter dopamine, a chemical that acts in various brain systems to spark the motivation necessary to work for a reward.
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I think this article is very interesting because it is trying to explain human social behaviors through chemistry and biology. Although there are a lot of factors in human science, by converting it to a natural science problem, we can make the question easier to answer. It also shows the interaction between different subfields of science. --Sissi (2/20/2017)
First-born children have better thinking skills, study says | Society | The Guardian - 0 views
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They may be jokingly referred to as PFBs – precious first borns – on popular parenting websites, but a study says first-born children really do reap the benefits of being number one.
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the first-born generally received more help with tasks that develop thinking skills.
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The study found parents changed their behaviour as they had more children, giving less mental stimulation and taking part in fewer activities like reading with the child, crafts and playing musical instruments.
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I find this research interesting. In this research, the researchers did a population observation, which is similar to the population method mentioned in evolutionary biology. The author also discussed a lot of hypothesis why the first born child tends to have better thinking skills. The author don't have direct evidence pointing to his hypothesis, the tendency is a fact. Although there are a lot of uncertainties in this research, this result might appeal to many first born children and make them feel a little more superior. --Sissi (2/9/2017)
How Life Began: New Clues | TIME.com - 0 views
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Astronomers recently announced that there could be an astonishing 20 billion Earthlike planets in the Milky Way
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How abundant life actually is, however, hinges on one crucial factor: given the right conditions and the right raw materials,
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what is the mathematical likelihood that life will actually would arise?
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'God made science': Louisiana teachers are literally using the Bible as science textboo... - 0 views
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students in Louisiana literally use the Bible as their science textbook, according to recently obtained records
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State law permits teachers to promote classroom discussion on evolution, but critics say the Louisiana Science Education Act allows creationism to be taught in public schools.
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students read the Book of Genesis to learn creationism in biology class.
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Louisiana science education: School boards, principals, and teachers endorse creationis... - 0 views
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For some Louisiana public school students, their science textbook is the Bible, and in biology class they read the Book of Genesis to learn the “creation point of view.”
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In another email exchange with Rowland, a parent had complained that a different teacher, Cindy Tolliver, actually taught that evolution was a “fact.” This parent complained that Tolliver was “pushing her twisted religious beliefs onto the class.” Principal Rowland responded, “I can assure you this will not happen again.” Advertisement
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permits science teachers to use supplemental materials to “critique” evolution, opening a backdoor that these teachers are using, as intended, to teach creationism. Such lessons are allowed under this Louisiana law, but they are illegal under federal law
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If Evolution Has Implications for Religion, Can We Justify Teaching It in Public School... - 0 views
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Evolutionary biology is a science, so it can be legally taught in public schools when it's treated as a science and isn't promoted as a support for atheism or materialism.
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few would deny that Darwinian evolution has larger implications that aren't friendly to theism
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the Court held in Lynch v. Donnelly that "not every law that confers an indirect, remote, or incidental benefit upon [religion] is, for that reason alone, constitutionally invalid"
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What Is Education For? - 2 views
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The truth is that many things on which your future health and prosperity depend are in dire jeopardy: climate stability, the resilience and productivity of natural systems, the beauty of the natural world, and biological diversity.
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this is not the work of ignorant people. It is, rather, largely the result of work by people with BAs, BSs, LLBs, MBAs, and PhDs.
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Ignorance is not a solvable problem, but rather an inescapable part of the human condition. The advance of knowledge always carries with it the advance of some form of ignorance.
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We're Underestimating the Risk of Human Extinction - The Atlantic - 0 views
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we humans will destroy ourselves.
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I think the biggest existential risks relate to certain future technological capabilities that we might develop, perhaps later this century. For example, machine intelligence or advanced molecular nanotechnology could lead to the development of certain kinds of weapons systems. You could also have risks associated with certain advancements in synthetic biology.
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all observations require the existence of an observer. This becomes important, for instance, in evolutionary biology
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Toddlers Have Sense of Justice, Puppet Study Shows - The New York Times - 0 views
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Children as young as age 3 will intervene on behalf of a victim, reacting as if victimized themselves, scientists have found.
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In one experiment, when one puppet took toys or cookies from another puppet, children responded by pulling a string that locked the objects in an inaccessible cave. When puppets took objects directly from the children themselves, they responded in the same way.“The children treated these two violations equally,”
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“Their sense of justice is victim-focused rather than perpetrator focused,” Dr. Jensen said. “The take-home message is that preschool children are sensitive to harm to others, and given a choice would rather restore things to help the victim than punish the perpetrator.”
Book Review - The Information - By James Gleick - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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Information, he argues, is more than just the contents of our overflowing libraries and Web servers. It is “the blood and the fuel, the vital principle” of the world. Human consciousness, society, life on earth, the cosmos — it’s bits all the way down.
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Shannon’s paper, published the same year as the invention of the transistor, instantaneously created the field of information theory, with broad applications in engineering and computer science.
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information theory wound up reshaping fields from economics to philosophy, and heralded a dramatic rethinking of biology and physics.
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E. O. Wilson's Theory of Everything - Magazine - The Atlantic - 0 views
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Wilson told me the new proposed evolutionary model pulls the field “out of the fever swamp of kin selection,” and he confidently predicted a coming paradigm shift that would promote genetic research to identify the “trigger” genes that have enabled a tiny number of cases, such as the ant family, to achieve complex forms of cooperation.
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In the book, he proposes a theory to answer what he calls “the great unsolved problem of biology,” namely how roughly two dozen known examples in the history of life—humans, wasps, termites, platypodid ambrosia beetles, bathyergid mole rats, gall-making aphids, one type of snapping shrimp, and others—made the breakthrough to life in highly social, complex societies. Eusocial species, Wilson noted, are by far “the most successful species in the history of life.”
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Summarizing parts of it for me, Wilson was particularly unsparing of organized religion, likening the Book of Revelation, for example, to the ranting of “a paranoid schizophrenic who was allowed to write down everything that came to him.” Toward philosophy, he was only slightly kinder. Generation after generation of students have suffered trying to “puzzle out” what great thinkers like Socrates, Plato, and Descartes had to say on the great questions of man’s nature, Wilson said, but this was of little use, because philosophy has been based on “failed models of the brain.”
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Book Review: 'A New History of Life' by Peter Ward and Joe Kirschvink - WSJ - 0 views
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I imagine that physicists are similarly deluged with revelations about how to build a perpetual-motion machine or about the hitherto secret truth behind relativity. And so I didn’t view the arrival of “A New History of Life” with great enthusiasm.
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subtitle breathlessly promises “radical new discoveries about the origins and evolution of life on earth,” while the jacket copy avers that “our current paradigm for understanding the history of life on Earth dates back to Charles Darwin’s time, yet scientific advances of the last few decades have radically reshaped that aging picture.”
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authors Peter Ward and Joe Kirschvink are genuine scientists—paleontologists, to be exact. And they can write.
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The Trouble With Brain Science - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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What would a good theory of the brain actually look like?
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Different kinds of sciences call for different kinds of theories. Physicists, for example, are searching for a “grand unified theory” that integrates gravity, electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces into a neat package of equations.
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The living world is bursting with variety and unpredictable complexity, because biology is the product of historical accidents, with species solving problems based on happenstance that leads them down one evolutionary road rather than another.
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3-D-printed organs are on the way - Nov. 4, 2014 - 0 views
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Add one more to the growing list of 3-D-printed products: human organs.
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Within the next few years, Renard says 3-D-printed tissues could also be used in patient treatment, to replace small parts or organs or encourage cell regeneration.
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Once the cells have been printed in the right arrangement, they begin to signal to one another, fuse and organize themselves into a collective system.
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