“Backstory: my parents met at a wedding on July 20, 1969, a very important date in the annals of human scientific achievement – the night humans first set foot on the moon. All my life, I have had a fascination with the moon not just as a tangible, graspable place (science fiction made real) but as a symbol for what the human race can achieve when we apply the best abilities of the best minds.”
When one of the founders of cognitive neuroscience is helping you plumb the mysteries of consciousness, the self, free will, and the two minds that coexist in our skulls, it helps every now and then to touch your nose. To understand why touching your nose is such a profound experience, check out my talk today on bloggingheads with Mike Gazzaniga.
(And if you want to see what Mike was like as a young post-doc 50 years ago, check out this video from the early1960s about his split brain research. It’s also evidence of how much science documentaries have changed…)
Continue reading “Smart drugs, constructed selves, and the tip of my nose”
LTY writes:
“The first is an ECG, single lead, called a rhythm strip, which shows a common and generally benign arrhythmia called second degree heart block, Mobitz Type I, also called Wenckebach. The interval between the P wave (atrial contraction) and the QRS (ventricular contraction) progressively increases till a QRS is dropped. The second is a three-lead ECG showing an acute inferior myocardial infarction, aka a heart attack.”
Continue reading “Let Me Just Roll Up My Sleeves to Make Sure You’re Not Dying”
The Encyclopedia of Life, about which I blogged and wrote about in the New York Times, has gone live earlier than previously scheduled. So go check it out. A few people have left comments here, and others are blogging too. I’m very curious to see what hard-core bioinformatics folks think as they take this baby out for a ride. Deepak Singh at business bytes genes molecules has some complaints, and Rod Page has a lot of them.
Continue reading “Encyclopedia of Life: Up and Running and Generating Debate”
The New York Times, February 26, 2008
Imagine the Book of All Species: a single volume made up of one-page descriptions of every species known to science. On one page is the blue-footed booby. On another, the Douglas fir. Another, the oyster mushroom. If you owned the Book of All Species, you would need quite a bookshelf to hold it. Just to cover the 1.8 million known species, the book would have to be more than 300 feet long. And you’d have to be ready to expand the bookshelf strikingly, because scientists estimate there are 10 times more species waiting to be discovered.
Continue reading “The Encyclopedia of Life, No Bookshelf Required”