Cognitive Labs

Scientists have made a causal association between hydrogen sulfide and lower blood pressure. Mice lacking a regulatory gene involved in producing the gas are therefore gene-deficient and don't produce a normal quantity of the gas, and as a result, appear to suffer from inflammation of the blood vessels that leads to high-blood pressure.

It is theorized that humans may have the same weakness, and that hydrogen sulfide, a gas with the odor of rotten eggs, is a natural regulator of blood pressure vis-a-vis its impact on vascular tissues.


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Labels: blue, flame, flatulence, hydrogen, science, sulfide

// posted by neurofuture6:18 PM permanent link

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  tags: take a quick memory test | games for your brain | moving pix for your brain | gamer IQ

The Wired science blog (via Google news) is reporting right now that a major announcement relating to Mars is imminent.

The content is speculated to range from the ability of soil on Mars to sustain life to the possible announcement of the evidence of present or past life on Mars. The Amerian Association for the Advancement of Science's Science will likely be the journal publishing the findings.

This certainly will be a major story when announced.

Labels: aaas, aviationweek, googlenews, life, mars, science, wired

2007 Developments...


-Dr. James Watson, co-discoverer of the double-helix, gets decoded
and elects not to know his APOEe4 (Alzheimer's genetic risk) status - book

-Brain Training: a Nascent Industry gets more support, led at the consumer end by Nintendo which has sold 10 million copies of BrainAge

-Personal Genetic Assessment Becomes Widely Available

-"Genebook/MyDNA" Hypothetically available from deCodeme and 23and me
-friends and contacts can see each others genetic make-up
-will people select associations in the future based on the data?
-Science fictional concept from many works including the film 'Gattaca'

-Connection Between APOEe4,Cognitive Speed and Early Detection of Impairment
shown by Cognitive Labs in peer-reviewed research

-Scientists moving toward cocktail approach in treating Alzheimer's
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071127150841.htm

-Consensus on Early detection of Alzheimers is becoming increasingly vocal

-Cognitive 'Speed' a key measure of cognitive fitness, studies show speed exercises maintain brain fitness more effectively than randomly selected activities. Also, eat chocolate and have sex

-Cognitive Labs' creates first open source brain-training gadgets that can run anywhere

(successful beta complete, this may be one for 2008)

-According to New Scientist, there may be Multiple Universes in the same place, which would help to explain the problem of the 'missing mass' in astrophysics. Put a bag with a few grams of sand on a scale, yet the weight is 1 kilogram. Our present detection methods are insensitive to these hidden grains of sand.

Univ. of Arizona paper on missing mass

These Developments, in our biased opinion, will contribute towards a better year ahead - with greater life, prosperity and health for everyone.



(ankh, wedja, seneb)

Labels: 10, 2007, brain, science, Ten, Top, topten

Scientists have detected waves following magnetic lines that radiate from the sun at a velocity of 9 million miles per hour.

From the article:

Like a wave traveling along a string, Alfven waves run along the sun's magnetic field lines and reach deep into space. While astrophysicists have identified the waves far away from the sun, they've never been detected close to our star-the ripples were too small and too fast to spot.


If you could surf this wave and harness its force, at such a speed, it would take only 10 hours to reach the sun from the earth and 1 minute and 45 seconds to reach the moon; going to Mars from the earth would be about the duration of a flight to Hawaii.

Christened the alfven waves, scientists at the National Solar Observatory's Sacramento Peak Observatory in New Mexico believe they are the mechanism that transfers energy from the sun to the Corona, or sun's atmosphere, which heats up to millions of degrees - far hotter than the sun's surface.

Read the original postulation of Hannes Alfven (1942) towards a theory of this class of electromagnetic waves at Nature.com

Labels: alfvenwaves, science

Statin drugs, commonly used to lower cholesterol, may offer potential in delaying the onset of Alzheimer's according to a study mentioned here.

Labels: alzheimers, globeandmail, science, statins

NY Times - Using virtual reality goggles, a camera and a stick, scientists have induced out-of-body experiences — the sensation of drifting outside of one’s own body — - in healthy people, according to experiments being published in the journal Science.

A representation of one of the scenarios that scientists used to study out-of-body experiences.

When people gaze at an illusory image of themselves through the goggles and are prodded in just the right way with the stick, they feel as if they have left their bodies.

The research reveals that “the sense of having a body, of being in a bodily self,” is actually constructed from multiple sensory streams, said Matthew Botvinick, an assistant professor of neuroscience at Princeton University, an expert on body and mind who was not involved in the experiments.

read all of it

Labels: blakeslee, nytimes, out-of-body-expeience, science

Using specially designed computer games, researchers probe the behavior of the orange-colored primate at the zoo in Atlanta, GA in an effort to better understand patterns of social behavior...


The AP article:

Four-year-old Bernas isn't the computer wizard his mom is, but he's learning. Just the other day he used his lips and feet to play a game on the touch-screen monitor as his mom, Madu, swung from vines and climbed trees.

The two Sumatran orangutans at Zoo Atlanta are playing computer games while researchers study the cognitive skills of the orange and brown primates.

The best part? Zoo visitors get to watch their every move.

The orangutans use a touch screen built into a tree-like structure that blend in with their zoo habitat. Visitors watch from a video monitor in front of the exhibit.

"That's so cool," Jeri McCarthy told her three daughters as Bernas drew a red, blue and yellow picture on the screen. "He can't get enough!"

Zoo officials hope the exhibit will raise awareness of the rapidly diminishing wild orangutan population, which is on track to completely disappear in the next decade, and potentially provide keys to their survival.

"The more we understand about orangutan's cognitive processes, the more we'll understand about what they need to survive in the wild," said Tara Stoinski, manager of conservation partnerships for the zoo. "It enables us to show the public how smart they are."

In one game, orangutans choose identical photographs or match orangutan sounds with photos of the animals — correct answers are rewarded with food pellets. Another game lets them draw pictures by moving their hands and other body parts around the screen. Printouts of their masterpieces are on display in the zoo.

The computer games, which volunteers from IBM spent nearly 500 hours developing, test the animals' memory, reasoning and learning, spitting out sheets of data for researchers at the zoo and Atlanta's Center for Behavioral Neuroscience, a partner in the project.

The data will help researchers learn about socializing patterns, such as whether they mimic others or learn behavior from scratch through trial and error, said Elliott Albers with the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience.

Researchers hope the data can point to new conservation strategies to help the 37,000 orangutans living in the wild on the Indonesian islands of Borneo and Sumatra.

"Hopefully we can get the animals to find better sources of food more easily," Albers said.

The National Zoo in Washington, D.C., and Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago are also conducting such orangutan research. Visitors can also watch the animals use computers at the National Zoo, Stoinski said.

Labels: ibm, orangutan, science, social