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Redefining Depression as Mere Sadness

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 06:21:34 GMT

clipped by: einbar

Let’s say a patient walks into my office and says he’s been feeling down for the past three weeks.

Should I give him a diagnosis of clinical depression? Or is my patient merely experiencing what the 14th-century monk Thomas à Kempis called “the proper sorrows of the soul”? The answer is more complicated than some critics of psychiatric diagnosis think.

To these critics, psychiatry has medicalized normal sadness by failing to consider the social and emotional context in which people develop low mood

most psychiatrists would concede that in the space of a brief “managed care” appointment, it’s very hard to understand much about the context of the patient’s depressive complaints. And yes, under such conditions, some doctors are tempted to write that prescription for Prozac or Zoloft and move on to the next patient.

But the vexing issue of when bereavement or sadness becomes a disorder, and how it should be treated, requires much more study.

Top Ten Online Psychology Tests

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 08:04:47 GMT

clipped by: abailart

Clip Source: psychcentral.com

Hundreds of online psychology experiments are going on at any given time, many cool and amusing to take part in. They’re great for researchers due to the ease and low cost of finding subjects, and because of that, more data

By design these studies are ephemeral, disappearing from the web once a deadline is reached or enough data collected. In this Top Ten list we’ve chosen to focus on experiments that are long-term, or if data is no longer collected you can still do the experiment for fun. And they are fun!

1. You Just Get Me

2. Bad Vibes

3. The Stroop Tes

4. FaceResearch.org

5. The Concept of Intentional Action.

6. Project Implicit. The Implicit Association Test

7. Basic Music Intervals.

8. Face Transformer from the Perception Lab at the School of Psychology, University of St Andrews, Scotland.

9. Visual Phenomena & Other Psychological Diversions

10. Casual Fridays at Cognitive Daily.

Each Friday

interactive test for their readers based on research, news, theories or plain curiosity

Tags: psychology tests

Beauty and the Brain

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 15:21:38 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: Future work may elucidate the long-term effects of one's surroundings on brain function and the relationship between aesthetically pleasing spaces and their functionality. What one considers beautiful is, of course, influenced by culture, learning, and experience, and not everything we find beautiful will ultimately be traceable to the structure and function of our brain. The larger question "What is beauty?" still poses a major challenge, but answering it no longer seems so impossible.

Clip Source: www.seedmagazine.com

Neuroaesthetics promises to reinvigorate science's search for a theory of beauty.

Why is something beautiful? David Hume argued that beauty exists not in things but "in the mind that contemplates them." And everyone has at some point heard the old saw that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But Plato had a fanciful answer made to argue for a universal truth: In his world of forms, he claimed there existed a perfect Form of Beauty, which was imperfectly manifested in what we call beautiful.

Such knowledge of spatial cognition provides an understanding of the brain's response to the built environment and can inform architects as they consider the aesthetic elements and function of a space. "From an architectural point of view," says Vismann, "I find the correspondence between what occurs in the brain and the physical nature of space and spatial navigation fascinating."

understanding the neural bases of spatial perception will inspire projects, inform the design process

Tags: brain, beauty, perception, neuroaesthetics

Minority Report is being materialized

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 09:08:39 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: "The inventors of the technology claim the system can distinguish between people’s memories of events they witnessed and between deeds they committed"

“As we enter more fully into the era of mapping and understanding the brain, society will face an increasing number of important ethical, legal and social issues raised by these new technologies,” Mr. Greely, the Stanford bioethicist, and his colleague Judy Illes wrote last year in the American Journal of Law & Medicine."

Interesting article. Raises many questions;
a) the easiest one is is it valid? why easiest because it can be one day answered, at least i assume so.
b) if it is valid, should we use it? where is the line of privacy? should there be a line as such?
i find it fundamentally challenging the human conceptual descriptions of what is self, identity, society and its relation.

Fascinating. what do you think?

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

India’s Novel Use of Brain Scans in Courts Is Debated

The new technology is, to its critics, Orwellian

Others view it as a silver bullet against terrorism that could render waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods obsolete

Some scientists predict the end of lying as we know it

India has become the first country to convict someone of a crime relying on evidence from this controversial machine

a brain scanner that produces images of the human mind in action and is said to reveal signs that a suspect remembers details of the crime in question

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

a judge explicitly cited a scan as proof that the suspect’s brain held “experiential knowledge” about the crime that only the killer could possess

sentencing her to life in prison.

The suspect sits in silence, eyes shut. An investigator reads aloud details of the crime — as prosecutors see it — and the resulting brain images are processed using software built in Bangalore

when the crime’s details are recited, the brain lights up in specific regions

Tags: news, neuroscience, crime, technology, ethics

The Great RIP in the Sky, Shine On, Wish You Were Here

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 11:11:29 GMT

clipped by: Djiezes
clipper's remarks: 5 of my favorite songs from Pink Floyd in honor of the death of Richard Wright (keyboard).
One of the most amazing bands of the last century.

The Great Gig in the Sky
Shine On You Crazy Diamond
Wish You Were Here
Dogs of War
One of These Days

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

Pink Floyd - The Great Gig in the Sky

[Video]

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

Shine on your crazy diamond

[Video]

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

Wish you were here

[Video]

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

Dogs Of War

[Video]

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

[Video]

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

Remember when you were young,
You shone like the sun.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Now there's a look in your eyes,
Like black holes in the sky.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
You were caught on the crossfire
Of childhood and stardom,
Blown on the steel breeze.
Come on you target for faraway laughter,

Come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr, and shine!

You reached for the secret too soon,
You cried for the moon.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Threatened by shadows at night,
And exposed in the light.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Well you wore out your welcome
With random precision,
Rode on the steel breeze.
Come on you raver, you seer of visions,
Come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine!

Tags: pink floyd, richard wright, youtube, music, video, amazing

This is no fantasy or trick of the light - Upside down rainbow

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 04:24:14 GMT

clipped by: einbar
clipper's remarks: Upside down rainbow - The circumzenithal arc or cicumzenith arc (CZA), also called the Bravais' arc, is an optical phenomenon similar in appearance to a rainbow and arising from refraction of sunlight through non-terminated, horizontally-oriented ice crystals in certain clouds. It takes the shape of one-quarter of a circle centered at the zenith and parallel to the horizon, on the same side as the sun. Its colors run from blue near the zenith to red towards the horizon; it is one of the brightest and most colorful halos"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumzenithal_arc

Clip Source: www.flickr.com

Clip Source: www.dailymail.co.uk

this is no fantasy or trick of the light, it is known as a circumzenithal arc. Seen here shimmering in the sky over Cambridge in the afternoon sunshine, it is often mistaken for a rainbow hanging upside down.

But unlike a rainbow, the sky has to be clear of rain and low level clouds for it to be seen.

Relatively rare in Britain, the arc only appears when sunlight shines at a specific angle through a thin veil of wispy clouds at a height of around 20,000 to 25,000 feet.

Clip Source: www.beloblog.com

Clip Source: www.dailymail.co.uk

Meteorologists say the clouds must be convex to the sun with the ice particles lined up together in the right direction to refract the light.

Clip Source: www.chicotreecare.com

Clip Source: www.dailymail.co.uk

This results in the sunlight bouncing off the ice crystals high in the atmosphere, sending the light rays back up and bending the sunlight like a glass prism into a spectrum of colour.

Clip Source: flickr.com

Wait till the end of the sentence... not a chance

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 09:35:16 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: The thing is, that sometimes what one hears is so much faster, that even the rare option of communication becomes rarer...
A different way to say that one is caged in her own perception.

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

Scientists Watch As Listener's Brain Predicts Speaker's Words

Scientists at the University of Rochester have shown for the first time that our brains automatically consider many possible words and their meanings before we've even heard the final sound of the word.

Previous theories have proposed that listeners can only keep pace with the rapid rate of spoken language—up to 5 syllables per second—by anticipating a small subset of all words known by the listener, much like Google search anticipates words and phrases as you type

We had to figure out a way to catch the brain doing something so fast that it happens literally between spoken syllables

The team had to create a set of words that had similar beginning syllables, but with different ending syllables and distinct meanings

Why wait until the end of the word to try to figure out what its meaning is? Choosing from a little subset is much faster than trying to match a finished word against every word in your vocabulary

it just makes sense

Tags: neuroscience, prediction

Ingrid Bergman

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 20:12:58 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman

Clip Source: www.geocities.com

Clip Source: en.wikipedia.org

Clip Source: www.geocities.com

Clip Source: en.wikipedia.org

Clip Source: www.geocities.com

Clip Source: drx.typepad.com

Clip Source: content.answers.com

Clip Source: commons.wikimedia.org

Clip Source: www.altfg.com

Will the Internet Evolve into a Lifeform?

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 20:40:48 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: One route is the evolution of electronic intelligences in situations like the internet-arms race between spammers and shielders. It might sound silly, the idea that new life could be created in an attempt to offer you a great deal on C1@Lis!!, but have you tried registering for a forum recently? Even gaining access to the lowest level of interaction online now requires elementary Turing tests to tell the humans from the robots.

Another option is the idea of the net itself becoming sentient, a vast self-modifying array of connections and information storage with limited connections to the outside world (kind of like that glob of grey goo you carry around in your skull). If that happens then Gibson help us all - remember that the net is made of about 90% spam, 9% porn, and quite a lot of whining blogs. If that mixture ever becomes self-aware we're not quite sure what it'll do, but the odds are against it being anything good.

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

Some think that sentience could emerge from any sufficiently complicated system. By the way, you're reading this on a massively-crosslinked network built from millions of routers, allowing any of a billion individual units to access, modify and reply to the others. Interested?

Computer programs are already exhibiting many of the characteristics of organic lifeforms, up to and including evolution - hilarious, since they're the only things that really are "Intelligently Designed" - and there's no reason to believe that life or awareness are exclusively organic attributes. You could say we've only ever seen chemical-based constructs which are alive, but in the past the same argument could have been applied to things moving under their own power, flight or the ability to count - and it turns out we've built machines that are sort of far better at all those things than the fleshy equivalents. If there is a magic "life-chemical" mixed in with all the blood and guts, we haven't found it.

Tags: evolution, internet, life

How many memories fit in your brain? More than we thought

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 01:12:30 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: These results are going to necessitate some re-thinking the literature. It suggests that our brains are storing a lot more information than many of us thought just a little while ago. It also suggests a very strange interaction between time and memory strength that will need to be better understood.

Clip Source: coglanglab.blogspot.com

One of the most obvious facts about memory is that it is not nearly so good as we would like. This definitely seems true in day-to-day life, and one focus of my research during the last couple years has been why our ability to remember what we see over even very short time periods is so very limited.

It may be hard to remember a visual scene over a very short time period, but new evidence suggests that it is remarkably easy to remember a visual image over a longer period of time

Researchers at MIT showed participants nearly 3,000 visual images (see some of them here) over the course of 5 1/2 hours. Afterwards, their memory was tested. They were able to discriminate the pictures they actually saw from slightly altered versions of the same picture nearly 90% of the time.

This is frankly incredible. When I show participants much, much simpler images and then ask them to recognize the same images just 1 second later, accuracy is closer to 80%!

Tags: memory, brain

Sahara Forest Project Will Generate Fresh Water, Solar Power & Crops in African Desert

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 00:17:21 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: This sounds like a really good idea. I am sure it will cost a fraction of the defense budget of certain countries.

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

Last week, a trio of visionaries launched the Sahara Forest Project to combine two innovative technologies, concentrated solar power (CSP) and seawater greenhouses, to produce renewable energy, water and food in the Sahara -the hottest place on earth.

The Sahara Forest Project aims to provide a new source of fresh water, food and renewable energy in hot, arid regions, as well as providing conditions that enable re-vegetating areas of desert. The Sahara is used here as a metaphor for any desert that formerly supported vegetation and could do so again, given sufficient water.

Seawater Greenhouses have been built in some of the hottest regions on earth, Abu Dhabi and Oman for example, where they create freshwater from seawater, while providing cooler and more humid growing conditions

Concentrated solar power is increasingly seen as one of the most promising forms of renewable energy, producing electricity from sunlight at a fraction of the cost of photovoltaics.

Tags: renewable energy, fresh water, sahara

Evolution in a Bottle

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 22:35:01 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: Over time the bacteria evolved to better suit their environment, adapting to replicate faster on the all-glucose diet. But one colony suddenly took off, consuming the previously indigestible citrate - a molecule that literally would not fit through the original bacteria's membrane. A new breed of E. Coli had evolved to consume the available resources and, over a multi-generational evolutionary battle, came to outperform the original glucose eaters.

Because of the daily samples, there is now a complete genetic paper trail of the changes (although full identification and understanding of the changes will take a little longer). This is an incredible breakthrough in evolutionary research, and a pretty nice argument to break out in the creationism 'debates' ("Prove evolution!" "Okay, I've got it right here IN THIS BOTTLE!")

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

Forget Chanel No 5 or absinthe, the most exciting thing you can get in a bottle is evolution itself. While it has incredibly obvious results in nature, you can't actually see it happen - something about having to wait millions of years. Scientists in Michigan State University have observed it in the lab, and it only took twenty.

By breeding bacteria in jars Professor Richard Lenski has been able to make a stop-motion animation of evolution in action.

He split a single colony of Escherichia Coli into twelve containers, where each group was then allowed to breed in a glucose-citrate solution (the species of E. Coli chosen can eat glucose but not citrates). Every day samples from each jar were frozen, providing a perfect record of their genetic progress.

Tags: evolution, bacteria

Websites: How They Looked Like 10 Years Ago

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 06:13:43 GMT

clipped by: hitchhiker08

Clip Source: www.hongkiat.com

Websites We Visit: How They Look Like 10 Years Ago

Amazon

Clear-cut navigation is very important for any e-commerce site and we believe Amazon handles this pretty well.

Amazon 1998

Amazon 2008

Apple

They’ve always been the trend setter and their designed inspired a lot of the Web 2.0 design out there.

Apple 1998

Apple 2008

Google

Google was still in beta ten years ago. These guys believed in simplicity and there’s no exception whether it’s 1998 or 2008.

Hotmail

Here’s how the web interface looks like before Microsoft decided to turn call it the Windows Live Hotmail.

Hotmail 1998

Microsoft

Microsoft had done tremendous changes to their web frontend over the pass ten years. The old one lacks of graphics and the current definetely has a very strong corporate look.

PCWorld

PCWorld 1998

PCWorld 2008

Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems in 1998 totally recalled us how a typical Geocities and Tripod free template were like.

Time

Wired Magazine

Wired 1998

Wired 2008

Yahoo!

Yahoo 1998

Yahoo 2008

Tags: websites, internet, ecommerce, interface, information technology