when drugs do not work – the new brain stimulation, the immoral inquisitors are back

Glacier streams at Mt. Cook New Zealand.

 

Deep brain stimulation: a fix when the drugs don’t work

Artificial cardiac pacemakers are typically associated with controlling and resynchronising heartbeats by electrical stimulation of the heart muscle.

In a similar manner, DBS sends electrical impulses to specific parts of the brain that control discrete functions. This stimulation evokes control over the neural activity within these regions.

Prior to switching on the electrical stimulation, electrodes are surgically implanted within precise brain regions to control a specific function.

The neurosurgery is conducted under local anaesthetic to maintain consciousness in the patient. This ensures that the electrode does not damage critical brain regions.

The brain itself has no pain receptors so does not require anaesthetic.

…Drug therapy for Parkinson’s disease involves the use of levodopa (L-DOPA), a form of dopamine that can cross the blood brain barrier and then be synthesised into dopamine.

The administration of L-DOPA temporarily reduces the motor symptoms by increasing dopamine concentrations in the brain. However, side effects of this treatment include nausea and disordered movement.

DBS has been shown to provide relief from the motoric symptoms of Parkinson’s disease and essential tremors.

For the treatment of Parkinson’s disease electrodes are implanted into regions of the basal ganglia – the subthalamic nucleus or globus pallidus, to restore control of movement.

I practically grew up on One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Suddenly, Last Summer. So I have a built in anxiety about anyone messing around with the brain. While some level of wariness is reasonable when considering brain altering treatment, modern medicine seems to be leaving the nightmarish Nurse Ratcheds behind.

I’m posting this in it’s entirety so you’ll have the background, What’s Next For Kaitlyn Hunt, The Teen Charged With A Felony For Same-Sex Relationship With Classmate.

On Friday night, 18-year-old Kaitlyn Hunt and her family went public with their story: Kaitlyn was charged with a felony stemming from a relationship she had with a 15-year-old girl at her high school. The response in the 48-hours that followed, Kaitlyn’s father Steven Hunt told ThinkProgress in an interview, was “extraordinary.”

Already, nearly 40,000 people have signed a petition calling on the Assistant State Attorney, Brian Workman, to drop the case. On Facebook, more than 13,000 people have joined a group — Free Kate — in support of the family.

Last week, her father said, Workman offered Kaitlyn a plea bargain. She could plead guilty to child abuse, a felony, and spend two years under house arrest. The judge would determine if she would have to register as a sex offender. They were given a deadline of May 24th to accept the offer or face trial.

Kaitlyn’s father suggests his daughters arrest — and the substantial sentence sought by the prosecutor — are motivated by anti-gay bias. He told ThinkProgress that the younger girl’s parents have told teachers at the high school that “their daughter will NOT be gay.”

So what’s next for Kaitlyn?

The family is hoping that public pressure will improve the offer from the State Attorney. Her father said Kaitlyn would be willing to plead to a misdemeanor, but not a felony. If the position of the State Attorney does not change, Kaitlyn and her family are prepared to go to trial.

The family’s attorney, Julia Graves, has assembled a table of experienced defense lawyers that will convene next week to discuss Kaitlyn’s legal options. Meanwhile, Kaitlyn is scheduled to appear in court again on June 20. At that time, if a plea agreement is not reached, the judge could set a date for trial.

We dangerously close to returning to the worse of American historical traditions, with attitudes that resemble those of those Salem witch-hunters. Two teens having a relationships. Oh the horror. That has never happened before, someone must be punished. Criminal laws are supposed to be about protecting victims from abusive and violent behavior, negligence by individuals and corporations, not enforcing the twisted 17th century moral sensibilities of local inquisitors.

ww i sopwith camel, the tension between democracy and greed, the mini-rocket helicopter

Sopwith F-1 Camel in Flight. World War I allied fighter plane. The Sopwith was introduced on the Western front during 1917. While it was difficult to learn to fly because of maneuverability issues, once a pilot got the hang of it, the Sopwith proved to be a very effective fighter plane. They were used by both the U.S. and Great Britain.

This is interesting reading. It runs counter to the way most economists teach economy and the way much of the media portrays the connection between capitalism and democracy. Whether one agrees with every word is not as important as understanding the tension that exists between those who see freedom almost solely in terms of pursuing money and those who see freedom as a more complex combination of pursuits, Democracy versus capitalism: take two

At this point two directions appeared open: continuation of a restricted freedom and limited representative governance of society; or a Marx inspired march towards socialism. The middle way of democracy was a hard fought for compromise. It was resisted by conservatives as a precursor to socialism. The tyranny of the masses, don’t forget, is what stopped democracy from being America’s early form of government, and the series of social upheavals rocking Europe from the 1780′s through to 1848 simply strengthened conservative opposition to any broadening of the right to vote and thus to anything remotely like modern democracy.

But the excesses of capitalism came to be too much. The hardship and exploitation embodied in early industrialization led to both the Trade Union movement and to other social changes. The right to vote became pivotal in the fight against those excesses.

In other words: the creation of modern democracy was a reaction to, and very much in opposition to, capitalism. It was, from the outset, designed to mitigate the excesses. It was not at all to foster freedom, but to limit it. This limitation coming in the paradoxical form of extending participation in government even to those without property. The very definition of freedom was thus amended. Freedom was now the right to vote regardless of property ownership, which was still protected, but which was now abridged.

I picked up the piece about half way through. The introduction, with a brief history and the conclusion put this part in perspective.

A one-man 100 lb helicopter. The following is from a press release,

“A one-man 100 lb helicopter, powered by rockets in the tips of two small rotor blades, would be tested soon by the navy, it was announced to-day.
It is the nearest approach that has been made to [strapping] a pair of rockets upon the back of a man and shooting him into space “comic strip fashion,” said the designer (Mr. Gilbert Magill).

The liquid fuel rockets, he said, were controlled by a throttle. The rotors were fixed to a [steel] tube which supported fuel tanks and an open air pilot’s seat.”

Cairn’s Post, Wednesday 24 October 1951. There was also a feature article in Popular Science of January 1952. Other than that Magill and his rocket helicopter have been largely forgotten.

morning sun wallpaper, issues with internet faster than the speed of light, balloon Zénith’s long distance flight

morning sun wallpaper

Even those who are not particularly into science or technology still might find this interesting to think about,  Design Considerations for Faster-Than-Light (FTL) Communication

Abstract

We are approaching the time when we will be able to communicate
faster than the speed of light.  It is well known that as we approach
the speed of light, time slows down.  Logically, it is reasonable to
assume that as we go faster than the speed of light, time will
reverse.  The major consequence of this for Internet protocols is
   that packets will arrive before they are sent.  This will have a
major impact on the way we design Internet protocols.  This paper
outlines some of the issues and suggests some directions for
additional analysis of these issues.

I read the entire piece a couple of times wondering if it was not some kind of satire. If it is there is not phrase that gives it away, except for what I have in emphasis.

Lunar halo and luminescent cross observed during the balloon Zénith’s long distance flight from Paris to Arcachon in March, 1875. Drawing on blue paper : ink wash, lead white, and graphite. Possibly drawn by Albert Tissandier. This drawing is based on a real hot air balloon piloted by Joseph Croce-Spinelli and Théodore Sivel, that made a series of flights. The last one fatal to Joseph Croce-Spinelli and Théodore Sivel.

benton’s flood disaster, the bestest business startup tips ever

 Flood Disaster, 1951. By American Regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton. I’ve been having a some good luck lately stumbling over things that are related to what I was researching, but I had not thought of. I finally got a good print of this painting and while looking Benton’s birth date (April 15, 1889 – January 19, 1975) I came across this recent article on Flood Disaster, Thomas Hart Benton An American Artist

I recently read an article about a 1951 Thomas Hart Benton painting that sold for nearly $1.9 million at a Southeby’s auction. The painting, Flood Disaster, was created to highlight the devastating flooding of the Kansas and Missouri rivers in July 1951 that killed 17 people and displaced more than half a million residents. The painting seems timely in light of the current flooding of the Mississippi River.

I was looking at a Benton painting in a museum once and some older women that seemed to be part of a tour group looked at the same painting and one said that it reminded her of a cartoon. They looked over at me – I was fascinated by that painting and was trying to sear it into my memory -I smiled and nodded. They seemed embarrassed that they might have made a silly evaluation. Especially in the context of what we grow up with in terms of graphics – his style does have an illustrated graphic novel quality about it. That might be because his style has influenced directly, or indirectly, so many graphic artists.

tree at sunrise

I got this link on Twitter. I generally don’t like links or articles that began with “Ten Tips…” I’m not sure why I clicked over, boredom, restless, anyway this turned out to be a major exception to my rule about such links, via Anil Dash, Ten Tips Guaranteed to Improve Your Startup Success

Having had the good fortune to work with a broad range of entrepreneurs and get a front-row seat to the foundations of their success, I thought it’d be good to share 10 key tips that I’ve found work 100% of the time to increase your odds of startup success. Try to execute on as many of these as you can!

1. Be raised with access to clean drinking water and sanitation. (Every tech billionaire I’ve ever spoken to has a toilet!)
2. Try to be born in a region that is politically and militarily stable.
3. Have access to at least a basic free education in core subjects.
4. Avoid being abused by family members, loved ones, friends or acquaintances during the formative years of your life.
5. Be fluent in English, or have time to dedicate to continuously improving your language skills.
6. Make sure there’s enough disposable income available to support your learning technology at a younger age.
7. If you must be a member of an underrepresented community or a woman, get comfortable with suppressing your identity. If not, follow a numbingly conventional definition of dominant masculinity.
8. Be within a narrow range of physical norms for appearance and ability, as defined by the comfort level of strangers.
9. Practice articulating your cultural, technological or social aspirations exclusively in economic terms.

By following these ten simple tips, you’ll massively increase the odds of success of your startup! I guarantee it, or your money back.

 

lomo martian reds and greens, darpa’s planes of the future, conservatives have a middle-school plan to deal with terrorists

Back from her trip from Mars, all she got was these pine cones. She plans to plant them, so that one day earth will have Martian pine trees. They’re said to produce hydrogen as a by-product of their respiration cycle. So in the future we’ll be able to fill up our flying cars from trees.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has some plans for the future as well, Experimental Aircraft Program to Develop the Next Generation of Vertical Flight

One of the greatest challenges of the past half century for aerodynamics engineers has been how to increase the top speeds of aircraft that take off and land vertically without compromising the aircraft’s lift to power in hover or its efficiency during long-range flight.

The versatility of helicopters and other vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft make them ideal for a host of military operations. Currently, only helicopters can maneuver in tight areas, land in unprepared areas, move in all directions, and hover in midair while holding a position. This versatility often makes rotary-wing and other VTOL aircraft the right aerial platform for transporting troops, surveillance operations, special operations and search-and-rescue missions.

There is a picture of some of the concepts they envision for this vertical take-off craft, at the link. One of them looks like the craft the corporate army used in Avatar.

lomo dandelion

I have relatives like this. many of you probably do probably do as well. No matter what you do , you just can’t please them, Republicans Are Furious at Obama for Prosecuting an Alleged Terrorist

When the Obama administration is killing alleged terrorists with deadly flying robots, Republicans complain that too many of them are being killed rather than captured. When the Obama administration captures alleged terrorists, Republicans complain that they’re being given inappropriate trials instead of being locked away for life.

On Thursday, Suleiman Abu Gaith, identified by US officials as Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law and a spokesperson for Al Qaeda, was indicted in federal court in New York City on charges of conspiracy after reportedly being handed over to the US by Jordanian authorities.  Senators Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) promptly went ballistic, saying military detention was imperative. “By processing terrorists like Sulaiman Abu Ghayth through civilian courts, the Administration risks missing important opportunities to gather intelligence to prevent future attacks and save lives.” They added that Obama’s “lack of a war-time detention policy for foreign members of Al Qaeda, as well as its refusal to detain and interrogate these individuals at Guantanamo, makes our nation less safe.”

But Graham and Ayotte have their history wrong. During the Bush administration, hundreds of people were convicted in civilian courts on terrorism charges, many affiliated with Al Qaeda, without complaint from Republicans. There’s nothing about military detention that magically compels terror suspects to open up—for example, Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, one of two people apprehended in the US who spent several years in military detention during the Bush administration, did not begin talking until he was put back into the criminal justice system.

This is not about politics, it is about middle-school. Barack is one of the cool kids. Conservatives recent the hell out of that, so they are against whatever it is Barack is for. If Barack likes cupcakes, they’re against them. If he doesn’t like cauliflower, conservatives suddenly crave cauliflower. These brats make $179k per year, plus gov’mint health care benefits and a retirement plan.

culture watch: stoning and time travel, the evolution of human language, the ultimate tree house

Graphic: Anatomy of a Stoning in Iran

We look at the brutal practice of stoning in Iran. This method of execution is still practiced in certain countries, where it is used to punish adulterers and other criminals. The graphic below looks at how a stoning occurs in accordance with the exact language of the Iranian Penal Code.

Even in the form of an illustration this is horrifiying to look at.

Time reversal findings may open doors to the future

The time-reversal process is less like living the last five minutes over and more like playing a record backwards, explains Matthew Frazier, a postdoctoral research fellow in the university’s physics department. When a signal travels through the air, its waveforms scatter before an antenna picks it up. Recording the received signal and transmitting it backwards reverses the scatter and sends it back as a focused beam in space and time.

The knowledge of the science behind this concept has been around for a couple of decades. With the technology now catching up to the theory, scientists hope to be able to do things like target tumors in the body or something simpler like recharge your laptop.

Something to ponder. How human language could have evolved from birdsong

Based on an analysis of animal communication, and using Miyagawa’s framework, the authors say that birdsong closely resembles the expression layer of human sentences — whereas the communicative waggles of bees, or the short, audible messages of primates, are more like the lexical layer. At some point, between 50,000 and 80,000 years ago, humans may have merged these two types of expression into a uniquely sophisticated form of language.

AT&T Employees Display Futuristic Phone. “At the annual meeting of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company, two employees examine a possible “telephone of the future.” 1960-04-20. Note that the phone she is holding has a dial. I’ve used a dial phone. Compared to today’s push button or voice activated calling, dialing is like milking a cow for your morning cereal.

The maple of Ratibor. From The picture magazine. George Newnes Ltd., 1893-1896. Pub. 1893. Credit: Mid-Manhattan Picture Collection / Gardens. I had a tree house when I was a kid, if two planks laid across two tree branches count. This one is far beyond anything I even dreamed of.

moon homes of the future by way of 3D printer, the 150 year old question of lung evolution

Foster+ Partners works with European Space Agency to put 3D print structures on the moon

The practice has designed a lunar base to house four people, which can offer protection from meteorites, gamma radiation and high temperature fluctuations. The base is first unfolded from a tubular module that can be transported by space rocket. An inflatable dome then extends from one end of this cylinder to provide a support structure for construction. Layers of regolith are then built up over the dome by a robot-operated 3D printer to create a protective shell.

To ensure strength while keeping the amount of binding “ink” to a minimum, the shell is made up of a hollow closed cellular structure similar to foam. The geometry of the structure was designed by Foster + Partners in collaboration with consortium partners – it is groundbreaking in demonstrating the potential of 3D printing to create structures that are close to natural biological systems.’

larger image

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The ESA is not just floating this is some abstract idea, they, along with Foster, have already built  a 1.5 tonne mockup. They have also done some testing in a chamber that mimics conditions on the moon.

CT scanner helps answer 150-year-old question of lung evolution

One of the great problems of evolution is to understand how the major features of organisms have changed over great swaths of time. How did limbs evolve from fins? How did bird feathers arise from scales?

The lung is a major organ of great functional importance for vertebrates (animals with backbones). Since the mid-19th century, most biologists have thought that in living fishes, gas bladders — internal bags of air to which fishes can add or eliminate oxygen to control buoyancy — are simply a modified version of an ancestral pair of lungs. Others think lungs and gas bladders are completely different organs.

New research at Cornell using computed tomography (CT) technology has gone a long way toward showing that lungs and gas bladders really are variations of the same organ.

By proving that several ray-finned fishes, namely sturgeons and paddlefishes, as well as bowfin, have pulmonary arteries like those that supply the lungs of vertebrates, the researchers show that the common ancestor of all these fishes must have originally had lungs supplied by a pulmonary artery.

This is yet another example answering the question of irreducible complexity. Lungs are very complex organs that act in conjunctions with the heart, brain and vascular system, yet evolved from simpler structures that carried oxygen to cells. In Richard Dawkins The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins notes how the eye evolved from cells, like pond microbes, that could tell the difference between light and dark. The foundation of sight.