Cognitive Labs

Artist rendering of a supernova in the night sky

After analyzing layers of deposits in both Europe and North America, Scientists are speculating that the last ice age occurred in the blink of an eye: less than one year.

According to a recent study, the catalyst may have been a comet impact in the Northeast of America which caused massive forest fires, melting of northern ice sheets, and an influx of fresh water into the Artic seas which caused the moderating effect of the North Atlantic current to breakdown. The massive heating, curiously, caused Northern hemisphere cooling to occur due to the huge quantities of smoke and dust emanated into the atmosphere.

In addition to a comet impact, other causes include potential supernovae (cosmic rays), the catastrophic collapse of a distant galaxy (cosmic radiation/microwaves), or heavy remnants of the Taurid meteor shower impacting on Earth.

Once the cooling trend started, there was no moderating factor that could reverse it, so a warming trend took several millennia to develop.

It is speculated that this event may be responsible for the elimination of large mammal species in North America and Europe (mammoth, large cats, horses, sloths, camels) in the geological record, and the end of the human "Clovis" culture.

Sudden cooling was demonstrated in the film The Day After Tomorrow.

Labels: achim, berkeley, brauer, camels, fires, lawrence, potsdam, tomorrow, youngerdryas

Here's a quick look at medicine in Ancient Egypt. We'll follow up with additional interesting links. One of the more interesting cases we are aware of is the Hearst Medical Papyrus, found by George Reisner of Berkeley, working under the sponsorship of Phoebe A. Hearst. Intensive evaluation of these works, with an eye for potential scientific value, is one of the more interesting prospective works we are considering. There is also a possible issue with the authenticity of this work, not, however with the Ebers Papyrus...

Labels: berkeley, hearst, medical, papyrus, reisner

Here is an interesting piece on gene expression from the Allen Neuroscience Gateway, commenting on research completed at UC-Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley Lab. You may access the gateway simply, from the Cognitive Labs' site brain.com. The subject (drosophila) is a fruit fly.

Labels: allen, berkeley, drosopilia, genes, lbl, neuroscience