NCBI ROFL: The ideal elf: identity exploration in World of Warcraft. | Discoblog

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2974645378_8d6eece492“In this study, we examine the identity exploration possibilities presented by online multiplayer games in which players use graphics tools and character-creation software to construct an avatar, or character. We predicted World of Warcraft players would create their main character more similar to their ideal self than the players themselves were. Our results support this idea; a sample of players rated their character as having more favorable attributes that were more favorable than their own self-rated attributes. This trend was stronger among those with lower psychological well-being, who rated themselves comparatively lower than they rated their character. Our results suggest that the game world allows players the freedom to create successful virtual selves regardless of the constraints of their actual situation.”

ideal_elf

Photo: flickr/CavinB

Related content:
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Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Blue is for losers.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Beware of Wii tennis.


Help maintain LPIN ballot access

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You need a third choice on your ballot now more than ever!

The LPIN needs 2% of the vote in the 2010 Secretary of State race in order to continue having ballot access for the next four years. By achieving over 10% in this race, the Libertarian Party of Indiana will have the ability to hold a primary and effectively register voters!

What does ballot access mean for libertarians and the voting public? In the 2008 Presidential election, our candidate for President, Bob Barr, received over 29,000 votes. Barr was automatically placed on the ballot.

Ralph Nader was also a candidate in Indiana, but voters needed to write his name in. Nader received only 909 votes in Indiana. Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin received 1,024.

So please tell all of your friend to pull the L lever on election day for our Secretary of State Candidate!

Ancient Astronomy; Not All Heroes and Legends

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Astronomy has been with us for a long time; since around 3300 BCE, when Western astronomy was developing in Summer, Assyria, and Babylon.  Probably there the first astronomers were priests, and their practice and understanding of the science was seen as magical and divine.   Even so, very early in the game astronomy became a science, while astrology became a philosophy.

Replica of Earliest Surviving Telescope; Image Michael Dunn

Initially, astronomy was tied closely with astrology as the two disciplines grew and matured.  The mathematical roots of astronomy were expressed early in the precise positioning of temples, and you can see what technical skill they obtained by the orientation of the pyramids.  A yearly calendar was fixed by studying the movements and positions of the sun, moon, and stars.

The invention of the telescope in 1608 was, of course, of major importance to the science.  Even before the telescope, however, early astronomers were experimenting with lenses in magnification and bending of light waves.  As early as 3rd century BCE, Euclid was writing about reflection and refraction of light.

Replica of Newton's Reflecting Telescope; Image Andrew Dunn

We fortunately have a wealth of artifacts to examine relating to early astronomy.  The temples and observatories themselves, the paintings, tapestry, remnants and stonework keep archaeoastronomers busy.  It wasn’t all gods, goddesses, heroes and legends.  The Antikythera mechanism alone kept scientists guessing for decades.  Some people still believe it is evidence of Earth’s visitation by extra terrestrials.

Antikythera mechanism, National Archaeological Museum, Athens

We always think of the 20th century as the period of most growth in the sciences, and so it may have been.  Still, we need to stop and consider what our ancestors were able to deduce having only their eyes and their minds with which to work.  Amazing…

Pathway Compared to 23andMe and Navigenics

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A commenter at Gene Sherpas writes:

It seems to me that the service Pathway offers is closely modeled on 23andMe’s products, so why do you consider them to be so much more responsible? On the surface, I can’t see much difference in how the two services work? And Pathway seems to have a more invasive privacy policy?

Short answer: pick your battles

Long answer: 23andMe is anti-medicine —lies. Navigenics is “integrative medicine” —noise. Both companies have had many years and many executive teams to demonstrate any motive otherwise. They have not.

But readers are absolutely correct. Pathway tries similar hey-bro-just-kidding garbage in their Terms of Service and in their product design. I know.

Pathway Genomics and the Services do not provide medical advice or diagnosis or treatment recommendations for diseases or other health conditions.

For the obtuse: My agenda is that “business problems” of 23andMe and Navigenics are correctly attributed to dishonesty and not “the market” or “needz more bizdev to doctors.” I prefer to believe that people care about their work and want to make it better for the greater good.

That said, of Silicon Valley genomics, only Counysl seems to have any inkling that its work is critical human medicine and not a mere toy with “scalable economics” in a “fundable market.”

“Oh but Navigenics is Serious!” Boring toys are still toys.

Aside: If —hypothetically— you were to solicit a genetic test in my medical office that was like 23andMe —”only better!” … keep it clean. I am watching.

How to Tell a Fine Old Wine: Look for That Hint of Radioactive C-14 | Discoblog

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401px-Red_wine_and_chocolatImagine dropping a few hundred dollars for a bottle of “premium wine” only to discover it tastes like plonk! For years, collectors of fine wines have gone to great lengths to ensure that the wine they buy is indeed of the advertised quality and age. From tamper-proof caps to prevent the dilution of a premium wine with cheap stuff to an electric tongue that can distinguish fine wines, connoisseurs have tried their best not to get ripped off. Now, they have another trick at their disposal, and this one involves an atom bomb.

According to new research, collectors can avoid purchasing a faked bottle of an old vintage by running the wine through a “bomb pulse” test, which uses the radioactive material present in air to date the wine. The system is accurate enough, say scientists, to date your wine’s vintage up to a year of its production–so that a collector can be certain, for example, that a Chateau Lafite Rothschild 1982 isn’t actually a child of the aughts.

Speaking at the American Chemical Society meeting in San Francisco, chemist Graham Jones said that prior to the 1940s, all the carbon-14 in the Earth’s biosphere was produced by cosmic rays and nitrogen in the upper atmosphere. However, from the late 1940s to 1963, atomic bomb tests released radioactive material and significantly increased the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere. Ever since the atomic tests stopped in ‘63, this “bomb-pulse” C-14 has been gradually diluted by the CO2 formed by the burning of fossil fuels.

What’s all this got to do with vino? Well, when the grapes on the vine took in this CO2, they also ingested the bomb pulse C-14 and in the process, transferred minute, harmless qualities of the radioactive carbon to their wine.

PhysOrg explains:

The scientists used a highly-sensitive analytical device called an accelerator mass spectrometer to determine the C-14 levels in the alcohol components of 20 Australian red wines with vintages from 1958 to 1997 and then compared these measurements to the radioactivity levels of known atmospheric samples. They found that the method could reliably determine the vintage of wines to within the vintage year.

So much like carbon dating helps determine the age of prehistoric fossils and artifacts, the lingering traces of bomb-pulse C-14 present in wine could help determine its vintage. The scientists are hopeful that this technique will help prevent fraud in the $3 billion global wine market.

Related Content:
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80beats: Chemistry Experiment Produces the Ultimate Wine Taster

Image:Wikimedia


This Is Your Brain on Puberty: Study Probes Why Learning Slows for Teens | 80beats

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Human_brainIt’s not that teenagers aren’t trying to learn. (Well, OK, some of them definitely aren’t trying.) But the distractions that come with being a teenager are exacerbated by the fact that teens just don’t learn as quickly as either young kids or adults, and a new study of mice that appears in Science points to specific brain changes that might help explain why.

Seeking to study spatial learning during puberty, the team devised a relatively complex task (at least for a mouse) that requires learning how to avoid a moving platform that delivers a very mild shock [TIME]. While the prepubescent mice picked up on what to avoid pretty quickly, as did adult mice, pubescent mice took considerably longer to figure it out. The key to these differences was what study leader Sheryl Smith saw in the brains of these mice.

Building on their own previous work that showed a spike in the number of chemical receptors in the brains of adolescent mice, Smith and her colleagues looked for that effect in the hippocampus, the brain region associated with learning. Sure enough, pubertal mice had seven times as many of the receptors as infant mice. In adulthood, the number of these receptors fell back to an intermediate level [New Scientist]. Smith thinks those extra receptors could be inhibiting learning by interfering with activity in the hippocampus.

While people often complain of being too stressed to learn, you need a least a little bit of pressure, and it seems the pubescent mice weren’t stressed enough. When Smith’s team gave the mice a stress steroid called THP, that reduced the learning problems. Typically THP is produced in response to stress, and has a calming influence. But in the strange brains of the pubescent mice, THP did the opposite—it slightly increased their stress levels and closed the learning gap.

It’s too early to say how well this might work on humans, since our teenagers, compared to pubescent mice, are an even more complex puzzle. It’s possible that “they’re just being difficult, it’s their hormones, or they’re doing it on purpose,” she said. “There are so many things going on in humans that we wanted to break it down in a mouse study where we could look at what’s going on in the brain” [HealthDay News].

Related Content:
80betas: How Ritalin Works In the Brain: With a One-Two Dopamine Punch
80beats: Why ADHD Kids Have Trouble Doing Homework: No Payoff
DISCOVER: Girls Hit Puberty Earlier Around the World

Image: Wikimedia Commons


Breezy Monday

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Female Eider inspecting Inner Farne

Monday 22nd March comments:
The start of the first full week back on the Farnes brought breezy weather which restricted the wardens to the islands but appeared to encourage Puffins. All across the islands, huge numbers of Puffins were present, all sitting around familiarising themselves with the islands once again (its been eight months since they last set foot on solid ground!). However stormy weather will drive the birds back to sea for several more days before eventually settling in mid-April.

Although we’ve only been out for a few days ourselves, the team are settling and getting use to island life. The Farnes look barren at this time of year (as expected) but it hasn't stopped our breeding birds - as the first eggs have been discovered – a female Mallard sitting on eleven eggs on a nest site in the lighthouse compound. I wouldn’t be surprised if we had Shags sitting on eggs within a week or two, but watch this space.

Highlights: Red-throated Diver 2N, Common Scoter 32, Shelduck 2, Goldeneye 3, Pochard female north, Woodcock flushed, Bar-tailed Godwit 12, Curlew 244, Fieldfare 3, Redwing 4, Song Thrush and Rook 2.

Health-Care Reform Passed. So What Does It Mean? | 80beats

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P032110PS-0787After months of party wrangling that culminated in a Sunday night political spectacle, President Obama has finally managed to push through far-reaching reform to the country’s health care system. The House voted 219-212 for final approval of the legislation, and on Tuesday the President will sign the bill into law.

The new law would require most Americans to have health insurance, would add 16 million people to the Medicaid rolls and would subsidize private coverage for low- and middle-income people, at a cost to the government of $938 billion over 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office said [The New York Times].

Here’s a primer on what some of the biggest changes will be in the current health care system. While some changes won’t come into effect till 2014, there are some things that will affect your insurance this year.

Immediate Changes (2010)

These are the changes that Obama and team call the “early deliverables,” because they would kick into effect as early as six months after the bill is signed into law. Here are a few.

  • The uninsured can finally get coverage: Adults who have been denied coverage because of preexisting conditions will be able to sign on to a federally subsidized insurance program that is due to be established within 90 days. This stopgap insurance program, whose coverage isn’t expected to be comprehensive, will expire once new insurance exchanges start operating in 2014.
  • Coverage for everyone: Insurance companies will not be allowed to drop people from coverage when they get sick, nor can they make health plans vastly more expensive for people with preexisting conditions. Lifetime limits on the amount of health care an insurer will pay for will be eliminated, and annual limits will be restricted.
  • Coverage for kids: For parents with a sick child, there’s some relief—companies won’t be able to drop kids under the age of 19 from coverage because of pre-existing conditions. Parents can also keep their kids on a family plan till they turn 26 or get a job that offers them benefits.
  • Closing the doughnut hole: An estimated 4 million Medicare beneficiaries who hit the so called “doughnut hole” in the program’s drug plan (the gap in coverage which currently begins after $2,700 is spent on drugs) will get a $250 rebate this year. The cost of drugs in the coverage gap will then drop 50 percent next year, and the hole will be closed entirely by 2020.
  • Tax credits for small businesses: For small businesses with fewer than 25 employees and average wages of less than $50,000, the government will provide a tax credit of up to 35 percent of the cost of healthcare premiums so that they may provide coverage to their employees.

Short-Term Changes (2011-2014)

  • Free annual wellness visit for Medicare beneficiaries: Medicare beneficiaries will get a free annual wellness visit, and the new health plans will be required to cover preventive services with little or no cost to patients. Medicare will also provide 10 percent bonus payments to primary care physicians and general surgeons.
  • New Medicaid program for poor: A new Medicaid plan for the poor will allow states to provide more home- and community-based care for disabled people who would otherwise require institutional help.

Long-Term Changes (2014 onwards)

  • Get insurance or face penalties: Beginning in 2014, all Americans would be expected to get insurance or face penalties. The fine depends on household income, but there’s also an upper limit; a family would pay a maximum of $2,085. Extremely low-income people will be exempt from the fines.
  • Large employers must provide insurance: Big employers are also expected to provide coverage to workers or face fines. Businesses with 50 or more workers who do not provide coverage will be fined $2,000 for each uninsured employee.
  • Extending Medicaid to cover low-income families: Medicaid, the state-federal program for the poor and disabled, will be expanded sharply starting 2014; it will now offer care to people with annual incomes less than 133 percent of the poverty level ($29,326 for a family of four).
  • Tax credits for low-income families: People with incomes up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level will receive tax credits on a sliding scale relative to their income to help them to buy insurance.
  • Buying insurance on state exchanges: State-based insurance marketplaces called exchanges are expected to go into effect in 2014, where people can pick and choose the plan that works best for them. Once the exchanges are up and running, insurers will be barred from rejecting applicants based on their health status. The new policies sold on the exchanges will be required to cover not just hospitalizations, doctor visits, and prescription medicines, but also maternity care and certain preventive exams.

Related Content:
Cosmic Variance: Obamacare

Image: Pete Souza/ Whitehouse.Gov


Stepping off the narrow path of reality | Bad Astronomy

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I’ve said here before that the path of reality is razor-thin: there’s only one way to be right, but an infinite number of ways to be wrong.

The thing is, that narrow path is like a single, unbroken strand, but each path of unreality leads to every other. If you can chuck reality into the dustbin, then all manners of silliness seem equally plausible. You might think that believing in Santa Claus is a lot sillier than believing in homeopathy, but really they’re the same: they’re both fantasy.

For support in this thesis of mine, I present to you an article in the New York Times about how politicians who attack evolution legislatively are now also attacking global warming. This doesn’t surprise me at all, for two reason. One is that I’ve already written about dumb legislation in South Dakota and Utah trying to resolve away climate change, resolutions filled with nonsense and ridiculous assertions that fly in the face of what we know. That’s empirical proof that politicians are willing to try to legislate narrow partisan beliefs into reality.

But the other reason I’m not surprised is that, over the past decade or so in particular, we’ve seen the far right promote fantasy over reality. Abstinence-only education, creationism, global warming denialism, defunding stem cell research, the mocking of volcano research, fruit fly research, planetarium star projectors.

It shows to me that once you buy into one flavor of candy-coated nonsense, they all start to taste pretty good. But we have to be adults here, and understand that you can’t live on candy. In fact, too much makes you sick. And that’ll make walking that narrow path that much harder.


An update on our search for new SBM bloggers

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Three and a half weeks ago, Amy Tuteur announced her departure from SBM. Three weeks ago, I announced that we were recruiting new bloggers to replace Amy, to bolster areas of weakness among our bloggers, and expand our repertoire. I thank those of you who have responded.

Given that none of you have heard anything from us other than perhaps an acknowledgment of receiving your application, I thought it reasonable to give a brief update. Due to a combination of the death crud (of which those of you who are my Facebook friends may be aware), a challenging couple of weeks at work, and various other concerns, I haven’t made as much progress in evaluating potential new bloggers as I had hoped. I had hoped that we would have at least been able to start sending out an offer or two by now. All I can ask is: Be patient. And, if you know of any quality bloggers who haven’t been proposed already, please let me know. We are evaluating candidates, and it shouldn’t be long before I start communicating with the top applicants.


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Leisure Time for Plants | Visual Science

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Everyone knows plants are special. They eat meat, respond to music, and of course perform the impressive feat called photosynthesis. And now, thanks to artist and smarty-pants Jonathon Keats they have entertainment. Keats has produced a documentary show just for plants. After making porn for plants featuring hardcore pollination, he has turned to more general themes. The above image is a sample of skies filmed in the United States and Europe, recently projected for a selected botanical audience at the AC Institute in NYC.

Image courtesy Jonathon Keats

how lao, brown cow

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Bob Dylan helped define a generation’s revolution – one that Leslie Engle thought had passed her by as she was growing up. In “real time”, it had, pure and simple. Fortunately, through educating, volunteering, cooking, and embracing everything Lao, she has found her own personal “revolution” and is enjoying every second of it all.

© Gretchen for TravelBlogs, 2010. |
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Endangered Species Meeting Brings Good News for Elephants, Bad News for Coral | 80beats

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ElephantThe Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) continues through Thursday of this week, and the fallout continues today.

On Friday we reported that the bluefin tuna trade ban failed thanks in large part to Japanese diplomatic efforts, denying new protections to the endangered fish, but also noted that the question of opening the ivory trade had yet to see a vote. Over the weekend the convention voted down those ivory proposals put forth by Tanzania and Zambia, which would have allowed one-off sales of ivory from government stockpiles. The ivory trade was banned in 1989, but two sales have since been granted to nations showing effective conservation [BBC News]. However, fears that such sales encourage poaching led the meeting’s attendees to reject the new proposals.

While most conservation groups lobbied against the ivory proposal, another of their pet causes—offering more protection for corals against harvesters who sell them as jewelry—failed at CITES. The proposed restrictions would have stopped short of a trade ban but required countries to ensure better regulations and to ensure that stocks of the slow-growing corals, in the family coralliidae, were sustainably harvested [The New York Times]. The provision garnered 64 “yes” votes to 59 for “no,” but needed a two-thirds majority to pass.

Related Content:
80beats: Bluefin Tuna is Still on the Menu: Trade Ban Fails at International Summit
80beats: Is Ivory Season Starting, Just As Tuna Season’s Ending?
80beats:Scientists Say Ban Atlantic Bluefin Tuna Trade–and Sushi Chefs Shudder
80beats: Elephant-Lovers Worry About Controversial Ivory Auctions in Africa

Image: flickr / wwarby


Obamacare | Cosmic Variance

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Good news and bad news last night, as the House passed health care reform.

The good news is: the House passed health care reform. The work isn’t completely done yet, of course. The House had already passed a heath care bill, months ago, but this isn’t it; last night they passed the Senate’s version of the Bill, which had some glaring flaws. Under ordinary circumstances the House and Senate would get together and hammer out a compromise between their two bills. But in the meantime Republicans picked up an extra Senate seat in Massachusetts after Teddy Kennedy died, and they had promised to filibuster the compromise package. (Because, after all, what courageous moral stand could be worth invoking arcane parliamentary procedures more than the fight to prevent millions of people from getting health insurance, especially if that was the life’s goal of the Senator whose death allowed you to improve from having twenty fewer votes than the opposition to only having eighteen fewer votes?)

So Obama will sign the Senate bill that the House just approved, and then the Senate will consider a reconciliation bill also passed by the House last night. Under even-more-arcane procedures, the reconciliation measure can be passed without threat of filibuster. It requires only “majority vote,” a quaint notion in this highly baroque age.

It’s not an especially huge bill, whatever you may have heard, but it will have an impact. Here is a list of the major impacts, and an interactive graphic to figure out how you will be affected. The most important features seem to be:

  • Establish health insurance exchanges, and provide subsidies for people below four times the poverty line.
  • Guarantee insurance for people with pre-existing conditions, and eliminate “rescissions” that take away insurance from people who get sick.
  • Push business to provide insurance for their employees, and self-employed individuals to buy insurance for themselves.
  • Close the “donut hole” in the existing Medicare payout structure.
  • Implement cost controls (mostly through slowing the growth of Medicare spending), thereby lowering the budget deficit by $130 billion over the first ten years, and by another $1 trillion over the next ten years.

Overall, it’s a relatively incremental bill, placing bandages over some of the more egregious wounds in the current system, while leaving in place the essential structure through which we funnel billions of dollars to middlemen while paying far more for medical care per person than any other country without getting better results. For 90% of Americans, coverage and insurance will continue as before. Basically, this brings us a little closer to where Western Europe was a century ago.

Still, a tremendous political accomplishment — maybe not from the perspective of what we were hoping for when Democrats took control of both houses of Congress and the Presidency in 2008, but certainly from the perspective of the last couple of months, when it often seemed like we weren’t going to get anything at all. More than anyone, credit for the accomplishment goes to Nancy Pelosi, who didn’t give up when things looked grim. From now on she won’t simply be known as the first female Speaker of the House, but one of the most effective leaders in its history. Here she is marching to the Capitol yesterday, arms linked with civil-rights pioneer Representative John Lewis from Georgia, carrying the gavel that was used when Medicare was passed in 1965. An historic moment.

Which brings us to the bad news. One of the reasons why Pelosi was marching with Lewis was to demonstrate support a day after this man who had marched at Selma was repeatedly called “nigger” by protesters outside the Capitol. Ugly by itself, but worse in context: it’s becoming harder and harder to have a meaningful debate in this country without participating in a race to the rhetorical bottom.

There exist reasonable arguments against health-care reform; not arguments I agree with, but ones that at least make superficial sense. It costs money to provide insurance for the uninsured, and someone will have to pay. Asking healthy people to buy insurance will be a burden to them. There will be less extra money floating around if we cut down on unnecessary costs, which might impede the pace of medical innovation. (I didn’t say they were great arguments, just that they made superficial sense.) But these aren’t the arguments that are actually made most frequently. Instead we hear that the Democrats are abandoning the principles of representative democracy by passing legislation while they control both legislative houses and the executive; or that liberals won’t stop until they have swept away the last vestiges of personal choice in American life; or that the government wants to decide when to kill granny. Right-wing bloggers nod with approval at the idea that people are stocking up on guns, preparing for fighting in the streets. The race to find the most scary and overheated characterization of a pretty benign state of affairs is a fierce one.

The most depressing aspect of the situation is not the existence of crazy fringe elements — those will always be with us, on both sides of any issue — but of the reinforcing dynamic between the fringe and the supposedly respectable parts of the Republican party. It’s been clear for a while to most people (outside the White House, anyway) that Republicans in Congress made a clear choice that their own self-interests are served by preventing Democrats from passing any meaningful legislation, whatever that might mean for the good of the country. Speeches during House “debate” last night consistently played to the worst aspects of the protesting mob. One Congressman shouted “baby killer!” at Democrat Bart Stupak, who is staunchly anti-abortion, as he spoke to support the bill. [Update: it was Randy Neugebauer (R-Tex.).] Two protesters inside the House chamber were arrested for being disruptive — and “several Republican lawmakers stood up and cheered during the interruption.”

Lest you think this is simply concern-trolling from a liberal telling conservatives to be less intrusive, note that conservative commentators like David Frum are making the same point: the rhetoric has gotten out of hand, and it’s not good for anybody, except maybe the “conservative entertainment industry.”

I’ve been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes it mobilizes supporters – but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead. The real leaders are on TV and radio, and they have very different imperatives from people in government. Talk radio thrives on confrontation and recrimination. When Rush Limbaugh said that he wanted President Obama to fail, he was intelligently explaining his own interests. What he omitted to say – but what is equally true – is that he also wants Republicans to fail. If Republicans succeed – if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out of office – Rush’s listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for Sleepnumber beds.

I’m not sure what the end game is — whether it’s possible to step back to a more reasonable dialogue. Disagreement is good, and it’s important to have an active and engaged opposition party, no matter who the majority party might be. But whipping up hysteria at the cost of working together constructively isn’t in anyone’s interests. Obama campaigned on a message of hope and change and bipartisan togetherness, and I think that was a sincere message on his part; but it certainly hasn’t come to pass, and there doesn’t seem to be any indication that it will.