One CAN teach an old dog new tricks

... if you give it the right drugs!!!

Scientists and researchers from the University of Texas (Dallas) have recently demonstrate a potential new neurological drug which prevents newly born brain cells from dying. One may not appreciate this discovery (as I didn't!) until one realizes that when a number of brain cells are born the typical survival rate into maturity is less than 40%!!! By directly injecting the chemical they are calling P7C3 into the rats brains, they have dramatically increased the survival rate of neuron cells and shown several other positive results including:

• Corrects hippocampal deficits in healthy mice (i.e., long-term memory, spatial skills?)
• Allows rats to continue learning well into old-age
• May prevent age-related neurodegenerative diseases (e.g., Alzheimer's, etc.)
• May also prevent age-related physically degenerative conditions

This last point is demonstrated by the fact that, not only did the older P7C3-quaffing rats learn and remember better than their placebo-quaffing counterparts, they also showed higher body weights and less frailty as they aged!!! This may be because the drug works on the mitochondria of cells, which are not exclusive to those in the brain. The authors are quick to point out that they have not yet identified the mechanism, only the results (as commonly comes first with biological research!).

What is even more remarkable about this work is that it is the result of a combinatorial or a broad screening research method.... What a colleague of mine at a USAF research facility calls "The Dumb Guy Approach". That is, they eschewed the traditional approach of working up a theoretical mechanism ab initio (from first principles) and choosing a drug accordingly--this process is akin to carefully crafting a perfectly aerodynamic dart and throwing it at the center of your dartboard a.k.a. the hypothesis. Instead they took a library of 1000 possible chemicals (suggested by theoretical chemists who pared down a list of 200,000 to a fairly representative sample) and tried ALL of them--akin to taking a giant box full of darts and throwing them all at the board at once, then checking to see which one stuck. And it WORKED!

Now if you're excited about this drug and want to know when it'll become available, hold your horses. It is not even out of the animal testing phase, which means it will have to be picked up by a drug company and the research effort will be handed off from academia to industry before human trials can begin. Then it will probably be several years (3-5) before the FDA can pass it through the approval process (assuming the results are just as good for humans!). But it certainly bodes well for future generations!!!

Link to news article
Link to research article
(^ for those who can access the journal Cell, by institutional subscription or otherwise)

S Korea, Internet Powerhouse of the World!

Not just the World of Warcraft... the WORLD! That's right, for those who were unaware (including myself, until I heard a recent BBC World story highlighting broadband statistics) South Korea leads the world in average broadband speed at a whopping 15 Mbps!!! That is 10x the world average of 1.5 Mbps, around 2x the second place finisher Japan, and more than 3x the pitiful 3.9 Mbps average in the US which ranks 17th in terms of speed... (source)
Not surprisingly, they also lead the world in internet traffic per capita. At an average volume of 30 GB per person per month, South Korea's internet traffic dwarfs that of the lowly 7.0 GB average in the United States, let alone the 5.0 GB of Japan or Western Europe (source)! Of course this is expected... I mean if you had a faster connection wouldn't you download more information?!?

But South Korea also boasts an excellent record of making internet access available to much of their citizenry. Perhaps not first thought of by most as one of the best examples of Democracies around the world (though certainly in Asia!), many South Koreans feel that they have an inherent right to obtain internet access; and with over 94% of households having some form access to the net, it appears they are right!!! (source)

Of course I shouldn't complain... Living in the Netherlands where we are in 4th place with 74% of households online (compared with ~51% in the U.S.!), and an average speed of 4.9 Mbps (coming in 7th place!). We actually lead the world in the number of broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants: 38.1 compared with ~33 in Korea and ~27 in the U.S. This of course must mean our broadband providers are doing relatively poorly in terms of speed, since our average traffic is so dwarfed by S. Korea... (source)

But what do all these statistics have to do with the price of tea in China? Well I'm glad you asked, because it's just countries like China (and Iran, Sudan, Cuba, etc.) that represent very different attitudes towards internet connectivity than our friends to the south of the 38th parallel! In fact, reporters without borders have labelled such countries the "Internet's Black Holes", as their governments routinely restrict the content their citizenry is able to access on the internet (source). The US has made some news on Monday, in an effort to give voice to those residents of countries which would limit or filter their access to the world wide web. As the Secretary of State puts it:
"In the 21st century, expression and assembly are carried out on the Internet so we are going to continue to support those people who wish to circumvent and be able to communicate without being blocked by their own government"
Basically what they've done is lifted the restrictions on the export of internet communications software to these countries, which should make it easier for social networking sites such as Twitter, Buzz, and Facebook to make inroads into these otherwise closed societies. This is all in the wake of the Iranian demonstrations on their Independence Day a few weeks ago, when the government shut down internet communication out of the country yet a few digital videos of the tamping-down of demonstrators made it out days later in hard copy, and were posted on the internet; and after Cuba got some bad press when a political prisoner died from pneumonia related to the conditions of his imprisonment...
The bottom-line is that information and communication has rapidly become a new vital life resource because of the ways the internet is able to deliver it to everyone and anyone's front doorstep at the click of a button. Countries that wish to compete in a global marketplace require a citizenry which is highly connected, to be able to develop in a rapidly changing world and to innovate and grow ahead of their competitors (for education, news, social movements, etc.). But perhaps even more so, countries that wish to SURVIVE are going to have to be able to brook dissent and criticism from their citizenry, and respond accordingly (i.e., as do most Democracies, for example). Because 200+ years ago, Paul Revere rode 15 miles spreading the news of revolution to 40+ riders who went on to deliver his message. Whereas today, one post on Twitter has the potential to reach millions of followers, all across the globe, in less than a minute (depending on how many Mbps you can get!)...

Related news updates:
US to upgrade fiber-optic networks...
Google to spearhead their own upgrade plans...

Talking to yourself doesn't mean your crazy (... if you're doing math!)

So I have always been a fan of talking aloud to work out problems. In high school I caught a few odd stares from students and teachers alike, and in college people just thought I was crazy. That is until I joined a study group where we talked out the problems (increasingly more difficult!) together, aloud. When it was under the guise of a conversation, I supposed, it didn't seem so odd. When I did it alone in my office in grad school, my colleagues just thought I was a little crazy (or maybe just an eccentric academic).
But new research at the University of Granada indicates that talking aloud improves both speed AND accuracy when solving math problems. They took several graduating seniors who majored in mathematics and recorded them solving difficult problems. Those who spoke aloud to themselves (as well as those who drew pictures to represent the problem) were more likely to find the solution, and did so in a shorter time, than those who didn't!!!
The paper doesn't appear to be published yet in the Electronic Journal of Research in Educational Psychology (and I can't seem to find Revista de investigación psicoeductiva), after an exhaustive search of the internet I can only seem to find press releases and news articles about the finding. But I will update this post with a link when the publication is available on the web...
SciAm: http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=find-x-and-say-your-work-09-12-28
Guardian: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/6866135/Thinking-out-loud-helps-solve-problems.html
RedOrbit (more detailed): http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1801621/talking_aloud_helps_to_solve_mathematical_problems_more_quickly_according/index.html

Drive less, Eat fewer Hamburgers!!!

A recent issue of Scientific American revealed that beef consumption is a disproportionate way of contributing to the production of greenhouse gases.  And NO, it's not about the methane from flatulent grain-fed cows (though methane is a notably powerful greenhouse gas, with 23x the greenhouse effect of a CO2 molecule)...

The article describes the entire process of generating beef (clearing very large tracks of land, feed and 'care' of the animals, transportation, etc) and arrives at the following statistics.  Producing one pound (1 lb) of beef generates the same amount of greenhouse gases as producing (either):

*4 lb's of pork

*13 lb's of chicken

*36 lb's of asparagus, OR,

*57 lb's of potatoes!!!

So if you are concerned about greenhouse gas emissions (AND [formerly] high gas prices) you might already be cutting your annual mileage by a few hundred miles by using public transportation or walking/biking.  But remember this statistic: cutting out all the beef in the average American's diet is equivalent to *not* driving the average car 1,800 miles/year!!!

Now before you post some anti-vegetarian comment below, chillax a second... I'm not suggesting you go vegetarian (if I did, I'd be a hypocrite).  I'm not even suggesting you cut out beef all together, being an avid fan of the occasional In'n'Out burger and Korean BBQ!

But being engaged to a vegetarian HAS taught me a few things I never would have known as a carnivore: (1) When I have a vegetarian dinner, I DO NOT get hungry afterwards because of a 'lack of protein'; (2) When I eat meat that came from a small (local) farm I can TASTE the difference; and, (3) When I notice I haven't eaten meat in a few days it's such a pleasure to treat myself with it again!!!

So once again, DON'T go out and become a vegetarian right away (unless you really want to!); but DO think about how much beef you eat and where it comes from, and try to reduce your intake!!! Do we Americans really need to eat an average of almost 100lb's a year of beef?!?

[Note: I obtained the 92 lb/person/year statistics from 2007 statistics of the USDA, and the US Census Bureau.]

Google weakening?!?

Google just announced they are licensing Microsoft's Exchange ActiveSync for use with their own online sync tools.  I am mildly disappointed in this news, since I have avoided using Microsoft Outlook since the late nineties, only using it as a stopgap until NuevaSync was founded and I could sync my google calendar with the iPhone/iPod Touch through wi-fi.  I hate Microsoft's virtual monopoly of email software since it makes virii much more 'viral' and infective (for lack of a better adj.), not to mention it sucks...  Hopefully this is a temporary measure until more people switch over to Google's online services.

Although it may seem that Google has a monopoly (at least over search engine advertising), they continue to act as though they're a small to medium-sized fish in a giant ocean.  I know it cannot last forever (every big company eventually sells out), but it seems it will hold out as long as the founders remain CEO's.  [They inevitably move to the dark side once they hire a career businessman as a CEO...]