The catastrophic decline around the world of “apex” predators such as wolves, cougars, lions or sharks has led to a huge increase in smaller “mesopredators” that are causing major economic and ecological disruptions, a new study concludes.

The findings, published today in the journal Bioscience, found that in North America all of the largest terrestrial predators have been in decline during the past 200 years while the ranges of 60 percent of mesopredators have expanded. The problem is global, growing and severe, scientists say, with few solutions in sight.

An example: in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, lion and leopard populations have been decimated, allowing a surge in the “mesopredator” population next down the line, baboons. In some cases children are now being kept home from school to guard family gardens from brazen packs of crop-raiding baboons. (…)

Primary or apex predators can actually benefit prey populations by suppressing smaller predators, and failure to consider this mechanism has triggered collapses of entire ecosystems.

{ EurekAlert | Continue reading }

‘Philosophy is the cure for which there is no adequate disease.’ –Jerry Fodor

‘The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.’ –B. Russell

‘The relation between science and philosophy is like the symbiotic relationship between the countryside and town. The former provides the latter with food receiving garbage in return.’ –L. Kolokowski

{ 3 Quarks Daily | Continue reading }

We all naturally think that our perception of the external world is accurate and correct: why else would it work so consistently for us? By and large, that view is quite correct. The model we have of the world works because our brains constantly make predictions about how the world behaves and when we test it by our actions, the errors are detected and the model is improved. This correction means that we are always improving our model of the physical world, making it more useful.

Chris Frith, a Professor of Neuropsychology, explains how our brain filters out a vast amount of what we perceive. Our vision is constantly corrected by the brain to allow for everything from indistinct features on the edge of our field of view, through to filling in the blind spot on our retinas so we see complete scenes. Our brain routinely compensates for inadequate perception by filling in the details by prediction.

{ Blogcritics | Continue reading }

photo { Cassander Eeftinck Schattenkerk }

related { How your brain creates the fourth dimension. }

How many scholarly stakes in the heart will we need before Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), still regarded by some as Germany’s greatest 20th-century philosopher, reaches his final resting place as a prolific, provincial Nazi hack? (…)

For Faye, Heidegger’s 1930s Nazi activism came from the heart. Pains takingly providing sources, Faye exhibits Heidegger’s devotion to “spreading the eros of the people for their Führer,” and the “communal destiny of a people united by blood.” We learn of Heidegger’s desire to be closer to Hitler in Munich, and his eagerness to lead the Gleichschaltung, or “bringing into line,” of the German universities with Nazi ideology. According to several witnesses, Heidegger would show up at class in a brown shirt and salute students with a “Heil Hitler!”

{ The Chronicle of Higher Education | Continue reading }

I guess I think it sounds flatly preposterous to say that Heideggerian philosophy is fascist. It’s just that the Heideggerian immune system, so to speak, is particularly bad at fighting off something like fascism. That’s not what it’s built to do. Which is a very bad thing.

{ Out of the Crook Timber | Continue reading }

Stifter in fact always reminds me of Heidegger, of that ridiculous Nazi philistine in plus-fours. Just as Stifter has totally and in the most shameless manner kitschified great literature, so Heidegger, the Black Forest philosopher Heidegger, has kitschified philosophy. (…)

I cannot visualize Heidegger other than sitting on the bench outside his Black Forest house, alongside his wife, who all her life totally dominated him and who knitted all his socks and crocheted all his caps and baked all his bread and wove all his bedlinen and who even cobbled up his sandals for him. (…) Heidegger is the petit-bourgeois of German philosophy, the man who has placed on German philosophy his kitschy nightcaps, that kitschy black night-cap which Heidegger always wore, on all occasions. Heidegger is the carpet-slipper and night-cap philosopher of the Germans, nothing else.

{ Thomas Bernhard, Old Masters: A Comedy }

photo { Heidegger’s hut has become a place of pilgrimage | full story }

The ability to digest the milk sugar lactose first evolved in dairy farming communities in central Europe, not in more northern groups as was previously thought, finds a new study led by UCL (University College London) scientists published in the journal PLoS Computational Biology. The genetic change that enabled early Europeans to drink milk without getting sick has been mapped to dairying farmers who lived around 7,500 years ago in a region between the central Balkans and central Europe. Previously, it was thought that natural selection favoured milk drinkers only in more northern regions because of their greater need for vitamin D in their diet. People living in most parts of the world make vitamin D when sunlight hits the skin, but in northern latitudes there isn’t enough sunlight to do this for most of the year.

In the collaborative study, the team used a computer simulation model to explore the spread of lactase persistence, dairy farming, other food gathering practices and genes in Europe. The model integrated genetic and archaeological data using newly developed statistical approaches.

{ EurekAlert | Continue reading }

What’s powering your home appliances? For about 10 percent of electricity in the United States, it’s fuel from dismantled nuclear bombs, including Russian ones.

“It’s a great, easy source” of fuel, said Marina V. Alekseyenkova, an analyst at Renaissance Capital and an expert in the Russian nuclear industry that has profited from the arrangement since the end of the cold war. (…)

In the last two decades, nuclear disarmament has become an integral part of the electricity industry, little known to most Americans. (…) Treaties at the end of the cold war led to the decommissioning of thousands of warheads. Their energy-rich cores are converted into civilian reactor fuel.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

One of my many pet peeves is drug marketing. Even though Big Phama likes to tout how much it spends on R&D as a justification for high drug prices, it spends more on marketing as a percentage of revenues than it does on R&D. Think about it: in what other industry are the margins high enough to support in person selling to small businessmen? And I read once that over 88% of the so-called “new drug applications:” in the last 10 year have not been for new drugs, but new uses for existing drugs, and to extend the patent on existing drugs.

Drug companies are masters of this art. At Pfizer, which sets the gold standard for drug selling methods, each salesman markets only three drugs in his territory. So if a doctor is a candidate for more than three, he has more than one salesman calling on him. The scripts are highly refined, with a 15 second pitch that rolls into a one minute pitch that rolls into a longer chat if the drug detailman can get the time. All drug companies keep current records on how much each doctor is buying of each drug. Another tactic is “You aren’t prescribing as much of XXX as your peers are….”

They also give lots of little goodies (pens, notepads, desk toys). There is ample research that shows that giving even minor gifts is effective (doubters please read Robert Cialdini’s classic, Influence: The Art of Persuasion). And drug companies do all kinds of small scale research on existing drugs (as in this has no medical benefit, it’s just a sales tool, but those studies no doubt get lumped in the R&D total) to give the salesmen something fresh to talk about with existing drugs.

{ Naked Capitalism | Continue reading }

photo { Dr. Jeffrey F. Caren, a cardiologist in Los Angeles, created a display of the hundreds of pens given to him by the drug industry. | J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times }

Researchers at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet have discovered a mechanism that controls the brain’s ability to create lasting memories. In experiments on genetically manipulated mice, they were able to switch on and off the animals’ ability to form lasting memories by adding a substance to their drinking water.

The ability to convert new sensory impressions into lasting memories in the brain is the basis for all learning. Much is known about the first steps of this process, those that lead to memories lasting a few hours, whereby altered signalling between neurons causes a series of chemical changes in the connections between nerve fibers, called synapses. However, less is understood about how the chemical changes in the synapses are converted into lasting memories stored in the cerebral cortex.

A research team at Karolinska Institutet has now discovered that signalling via a receptor molecule called nogo receptor 1 (NgR1) in the nerve membrane plays a key part in this process.

{ Karolinska Institutet | Continue reading }

related { Traumatic memories can be erased. }

Pica is a medical disorder characterized by an appetite for substances largely non-nutritive (e.g., clay, coal, soil, feces, chalk, paper, soap, mucus, ash, gum etc.) or an abnormal appetite for some things that may be considered foods, such as food ingredients (e.g., flour, raw potato, raw rice, starch, ice cubes, salt).

In order for these actions to be considered pica, they must persist for more than one month at an age where eating such objects is considered developmentally inappropriate. The condition’s name comes from the Latin word for magpie, a bird which is reputed to eat almost anything.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }

If I ask you to imagine thirteen bananas, not the numeral 13 but 13 distinct, clearly separated bananas, you’re going to run into trouble; it’s easy to imagine four different bananas, all with different shapes and slightly different colors and spots in different places, but thirteen? If I ask you to add twelve to the pile, you may remember that 13+12 = 25, but can you picture it? Can you picture a pile of thirteen distinct bananas, to which you add another twelve distinct bananas, the way you can easily picture in your mind’s eye a pile of three distinct bananas to which you add one?

{ Daily Meh | Continue reading }

{ Wingsuit base jumping | via The Year in Pictures }

{ SomaliCruises.com }

{ via Gawker }

Four Australian men undress and soap up at a car wash.

Woman drives into an aquarium at Tampa International Airport. The collision demolished a 1,500-gallon tank and killed most of the 30 saltwater fish.

A Taiwanese woman, who reportedly asked for divorce from her husband because his penis was too long, has been refused after a request to measure the man’s manhood was denied.

Facebook alibi saves jailed teen. Related: LameBook. And: Reflections on leaving Facebook.

Saudi Arabia cracks down on magicians.

Australia’s koalas could be wiped out within 30 years unless urgent action is taken.

NASA Scientist: The world won’t end in 2012.

The story started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is headed toward Earth… [Doomsday 2012, the Planet Nibiru, and Cosmophobia | PDF]

A list of failed predictions of the end of the world.

Number 85 Broad Street, a dull, rust-coloured office block in lower Manhattan, doesn’t look like a place to stop and stare, and that’s just the way the people who work there like it. There’s no name plate on the building, no sign on the front desk and the armed policeman stationed outside isn’t saying who works there. There’s a good reason for the secrecy. Number 85 Broad Street, New York, NY 10004, is where the money is. All of it. Goldman Sachs, the world’s most powerful, and most secretive, investment bank.

Two are charged with helping Madoff falsify record.

Opportunities for technology startups that want to go public are returning, Nasdaq’s chief executive says.

HP to buy 3Com for $2.7 billion.

Brazilian democracy, at long last, is working well, following many years of military government, and its economy seems more robust than ever. But two connected and major challenges lie ahead for Brazil and its government: the need to build a far more equal society and to resist the temptation to use nationalism to mask whatever domestic failures may manifest themselves.

Many continue to mourn the death of Jörg Haider, an Austrian far-right politician who died in a drunken car crash last year.

In the late 1980s Iraq had a space program.

Environmentalism is given the same weight as religion in British employment laws.

You think you know why leaves fall off trees. Well, you’re wrong. It’s not the wind. It’s not the cold.

Is owning a dog worse than owning an SUV? [chart | full article]

Kissing evolved to spread germs, not feelings.

If humans are genetically related to chimps, why did our brains develop the innate ability for language and speech while theirs did not? Scientists suspect that part of the answer to the mystery lies in a gene called FOXP2. [Read more]

Foreign subtitles improve speech perception (as long as these subtitles are in the same language as the film).

When does consciousness arise in human babies?

Researchers found strong evidence that many dinosaur species were probably warm-blooded.

A new study demonstrates the power of music to alter our emotional perceptions of other people.

Performing horizontal eye movement exercises can boost your creativity.

Heart rate variability, a sign of a healthy heart, has been shown to be higher in yoga practitioners than in non-practitioners.

Less than 1 in 3 Toronto bystanders who witness a cardiac arrest try to help, study shows.

It may be no accident that, while some of the best American mathematical minds worked to solve one of the century’s hardest problems—the Poincaré Conjecture—it was a Russian mathematician working in Russia who, early in this decade, finally triumphed.

Ten statisticians every psychologist should know about.

Alice in Wonderland syndrome, also known as Todd’s syndrome.

Bibliometrics provides powerful tools for the evaluation of scientific research [PDF].

Bruce Wasserstein — CEO of Lazard. Ltd. and owner of New York magazine — died suddenly. A quickly released notice assured staff and public that Wasserstein family ownership and support would continue.

Times Square enters the WiFi age.

Bruce Davidson at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery.

A Columbia University professor has been charged with assault and harassment after an another Columbia employee accused him of punching her in the eye at an Upper West Side bar Friday night.

Liquid marijuana seized in Brooklyn.

Apple to open Upper West Side store, fourth in New York.

Histories of sex and censorship in New York City.

Brooklyn Top 40. A highly subjective ranking of the songs that define the sound of right now.

Does AC/DC matter?

Bad music in public spaces. More and more hotels, restaurants, and retailers adopt music as a branding device.
Rock music quality vs. U.S. Oil Production.

In 1996 The New Yorker hired Gladwell as a staff writer after first publishing an essay he wrote for the magazine’s “Black in America” special issue.

How to write badly well.

From writing in the bathroom (Junot Díaz) to dressing in character (Nicholson Baker), 11 top authors share their methods for getting the story on the page.

“The Original of Laura” — fragments of a novel that Nabokov left unfinished at his death and that his son, Dmitri, decided, after much agonizing, to publish against his father’s wishes. Related: Why The Original of Laura should never have become a book.

Book printing jargon.

Read Me: A Century of Classic American Book Advertisements.

“The list doesn’t destroy culture; it creates it. We like lists because we don’t want to die.” Umberto Eco Interview.

Robert Crumb interview. [more]

Few writers have managed to exercise the kind of control that Bennett has exerted over his public image. He discovered early on that one way to protect yourself from a gossip-loving culture is to hide in plain view, to become a character.

When a “fairy-tale” marriage goes bad, the ending can be extremely grim. The divorce of supermodel Stephanie Seymour and tycoon Peter Brant.

Photographer says Mike Tyson hit him at LAX.

Bill Murray explains why he’s not crazy about the idea of Ghostbusters 3.

J.Lo. sues ex-husband for $10M over sale of sex tape, Judge blocks ex’s sex tape sale.

Does the camera really add ten pounds?

Sand behaves like a fluid but also like a solid. So how can some lizards swim through it?

My friends don’t have boyfriends and I think I know why.

How green is your sushi?

Who’s to blame for these hideous Internet ads that just won’t go away?

How to generate scientific controversy.

I had hemorrhoid surgery in 1973 and have had trouble pooping ever since.

Phoot Camp, an invite-only camping trip and photography workshop.

Steve Jobs’ hits and misses. Update: Seven secrets of a Steve Jobs presentation.

How to open a bottle of wine with a shoe.

Top of the list was 女孩的女孩 (’girl on girl’) while experts warned internet users not to confuse 热的乐趣 (’hot fun’) with 公鸡乐趣 (’cock fun’) unless they secretly want to.

Free Christian Clip Art.

Sexy clothes hangers for men.

Seeking Adult Drunk Clown for 30th Birthday party.

List of animals with fraudulent diplomas.

Who knows the world?

He who knows himself.

What is the eternal mystery?

Love.

{ Novalis, Henry Von Ofterdingen, 1802 }

{ Pagan magazine, 1966 | Richard Kern and Jo Ratcliffe, V Magazine September 09 }

{ left | right }

{ Katsura Funakoshi, The Sphinx is Eating a Grasshopper above the Forest, 2007-2008 | Asger Carlsen }

{ Oscar Santillan, Failed dawn, 2008 | Stéphane Vigny, Lustre, 2007 }

{ Thom Puckey, Black Penitent, 2000 | Mask, dated 1745, Inscribed by Myochin Muneakira | The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York }

Anyone who has been trained as a physician – or is close to someone who has been – is aware that the dissection of a cadaver is an integral part of the physician’s learning and socialization. The first incision is something few physicians forget. That procedure is reproduced time after time, in country after country, and provides a seminal building block of medical education. (…) Dissecting a cadaver also gives young doctors “an appreciation for the wonders of the human body”. Students often give their first “patient” affectionate names; however, much less attention is paid to where the cadaver came from.

Supplying human cadavers is left to the responsibility of others, most notably the anatomy course instructors or school administrators. These individuals are not alone in trying to secure specimens. Alongside primary medical education providers, a large number and wide range of other users are also trying to secure cadavers for their own needs. The continuing training of medical doctors, for instance, relies on cadavers. In addition, allied health professionals, emergency medical workers, and medical researchers all demand cadavers or cadaver parts. As an illustration, orthopedic surgeons use human joints to fine-tune their skills to learn new procedures. Similarly, some researchers studying Alzheimer’s disease might require human brains. Also, government agencies and automotive manufacturers that try to improve automotive safety benefit from research using cadavers.

It does not help that many users seek the same “good” type of cadavers. A good specimen, in this context, means a young cadaver, one not overly obese or too evidently diseased. Such a description is generally the antithesis of cadavers made typically available through donations, so the supply is further strained. Not surprisingly, both in the United States and other countries, those who require cadavers often question the adequacy of the supply and regularly voice their fear of shortages of cadavers.

However, trying to address the question of a shortage of cadavers often means facing the taboo on trading human anatomical goods. Blood, organs, and cadavers are generally thought to be better left untouched by market dynamics. (…) In essence, many would argue that blood, organs, and cadavers should not be considered goods.

That said, the demand for cadavers remains strong, and numerous ideas have been voiced to augment the supply. As an illustration, there is an ongoing debate about the impact of using financial incentives for donors or their families to encourage anatomical donations. Similarly, surveys of potential whole-body donors seek to gain insight into the reluctance to donate and how better to educate potential donors. By understanding the reluctance to donate, the hope is that the root causes of such reluctance might be addressed.

Another novel solution to the cadaver shortage lies in securing specimens from a new set of actors in the commerce in cadavers. These actors are legal entrepreneurial ventures that have been operating for more than a decade in the United States; they cater to domestic users and international ones alike. (The procurement of cadavers is regulated, but the export of cadavers much less so.) For medical schools in countries with strong societal norms against donating one’s body to science, such a supply route can prove quite practical. In those and other instances, medical schools can purchase for a fee the entrepreneurial ventures’ services and help medical students learn their craft. Like corn, wheat, and civilian aircrafts, cadavers sent abroad can be seen as another U.S. export product, although one dwarfed by these other export categories. The notion of human cadavers as a thriving export industry is obviously far away; however, I want to suggest that its legality and limited occurrence underline crucial new developments in markets for anatomical goods. While the international organ trade is almost unanimously condemned, human cadavers can legally freely flow across the globe.

{ A Market for Human Cadavers in All but Name by Michel Anteby | Economic Sociology, November 2009 | PDF | Continue reading }

photo { Ruth Bernhard, In the Box - Horizontal, 1962 }

{ Babies with an accent. Newborns cry differently depending on their mother tongue. | Max Planck Society | Full article }

related { Babies’ language learning starts from the womb }

If philosophy hadn’t existed – apart from Aristotle – what would we not know? The answer is that it wouldn’t have made the slightest difference. (…)

Science has done very well without any philosophy whatsoever. Take biology over the last 100 years – philosophy has had zero impact. (…)

Nothing in Popper or in any other philosophy of science has anything relevant to say about science.

{ Lewis Wolpert/The Philosophers’ Magazine | Continue reading }

For example, what does quantum mechanics actually mean? I’ve been using quantum mechanics for about 35 years, almost three-quarters of my life, and the more I study it the less I understand it.

{ Alan Sokal/The Philosophers’ Magazine | Continue reading }

You’re sitting at home and you see an ad on TV for junk food. Fast food, some sugary cereal, a hot dog wrapped in a waffle wrapped in bacon wrapped in whale blubber. Whatever. Even if you don’t go out and buy this product, can the ad itself contribute to making you fat?

It can.

That’s the conclusion of a new paper out in Health Psychology:

Children consumed 45% more when exposed to food advertising. Adults consumed more of both healthy and unhealthy snack foods following exposure to snack food advertising…

{ True/Slant | Continue reading }

related { Weird food McDonald’s sells around the world. }

related { We spend more on products with detailed nutritional information. }