Into the Void

‘J.B.S. Haldane was once asked what the study of [tag]biology[/tag] could tell one about the Almighty. “I’m really not sure,” said Haldane, “except that He must be inordinately fond of beetles.” There are thought to be at least 300,000 species of beetles. By contrast there are only about 10,000 species of birds.’

Nobel Laureate Prof. [tag]Francis Crick[/tag]
in “How I Got Inclined Towards [tag]Atheism[/tag],” an excerpt from What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery

Whether flying fighter jets or frolicking on the Oprah set, TC has always entertained us to the max.

While looking at disturbing pictures^W^W^W^W doing some follow-up research one of of my previous entries, I revisited a fun article about [tag]Tom Cruise[/tag] on Foreign Dispatches. It’s called What’s Wrong With This Image? and puts forth an interesting theory as to why TC is what he is, whatever that may be.

To remind anyone who doesn’t like to click links from strangers, and rightly so! - holoprosencephaly (NIH link) results from failure of the forebrain to split and rotate in the early embryonic stage. There are genetic forms, however, it is often due psych meds such as lithium or to ethanol abuse. In the most severe cases, the baby has brain and facial deformities that are incompatible with life.

Some of the least severe cases are marked by a single front incisor and mild retardation.

Cruise’s dental oddity (along with his dyslexia, small stature and family history) is an indicator of holoprosencephaly, a genetic disorder which might explain why Nicole Kidman’s pregnancies during their marriage ended in stillbirths.

I suggest that the sensitive reader not google holoprosencephaly or click any links in this paragraph. Especially not this sweet kitten picture on Fox News (where else). I think it’s rather cute in a “there but for the grace of g*d go I” sort of way.

Hey, it’s science.

Update 2/5: In defense of TC, let me state that his odd dental configuration appears to be from having lost an incisor. When you aren’t googling holoprosencephaly, you won’t find pictures of what a single wide incisor looks like.

Amazon.com: Cat’s Cradle: Books: Kurt Vonnegut

I wound up writing this review because recently, in a flight of fancy, someone conjectured that perhaps in other parts of the universe silicon forms four bonds, making ring structures - similar to the carbon-based benzene ring that is the basis of all organic materials - possible. My question was whether silicon-based amino-acid analogues would “teach” the silicon in this part of the universe to form the same kind of rings. Carbon-based DNA teaches raw [tag]amino acids[/tag] how to make more DNA, so that begs the question of whether such structures would propagate.

Ice-9 does just that.

[tag]Kurt Vonnegut[/tag]’s Cat’s Cradle isn’t quite as absurd as it seems.

Ice-9 is a form of ice with a different structure than regular ice. It is frozen solid at room temperature. Further, when it comes into contact with liquid water, it causes the water to freeze into more Ice-9. Given that 4/5ths of the earth’s surface is covered by ocean, and that our bodies are mostly made of water, you can probably deduce that keeping the Ice-9 in a thermos where it can’t come in contact with other water is an important plot element.

A [tag]seed crystal[/tag] is often necessary to initiate a phase change or precipitation, so it is conceivable that Ice-9 could initiate a catastrophe. The science fiction part is that we haven’t discovered a form of water that is solid at room temperature.

Incidentally, there’s not much danger from oxygen-breathing [tag]silicon-based life forms[/tag] because instead of exhaling carbon dioxide they’d exhale glass. They won’t be bothering us here on earth when they show up.

However, electricity-breathing silicon creatures like the semiconductor nodes that make up the Internet could be a threat. [tag]Google[/tag]’s server network has almost - not quite, but almost - reached a level of complexity where [tag]consciousness[/tag] and intention are possible.

Some reviewers on amazon.com thought that Ice-9 was a metaphor for the atom bomb. Since the possibility of [tag]thermonuclear armageddon[/tag] was so over-arching in real life at the time I first read the book, I didn’t place any emotional emphasis on that subtext. After all, it wasn’t necessary to know that [tag]Godzilla[/tag] was a metaphor for the atom bomb and the damaging effects of residual radiation in order to enjoy his antics.

Cat’s Cradle was a fun social commentary that didn’t benefit at all from atomic metaphor. Ice-9 was merely a plot device, a Deus-Ex-Machina that brought about the natural consequences of great social granfalloons.

[tag]Bokonon[/tag] isn’t the first religion founded by a science-fiction author, either, but that’s another topic for another day.

Like all of Vonnegut’s books, Cat’s Cradle looks at society and personalities and relationships with a new, slightly mad perspective. It is hard to walk away from Cat’s Cradle without re-evaluating the [tag]Granfalloon[/tag] that is [tag]organized religion[/tag], or any other carefully-crafted social institutions.

Mr. Lucky: What’s the name of the two lines between your nose and upper lip?

The Internet is great. You go online trying to find out the name of the two lines under your nose and a half hour later you’re looking at a picture that will likely require years of therapy to help you come to terms with.

LiveScience.com: Cyclops kitten.

The two lines under your nose are part of the philtrum. Inexplicably, the name comes from the Greek word “phil,” or love.

In embryonic development, if all goes well two folds of flesh grow around and meet in the front of the embyro’s head, forming the face. The philtrum is the last little bit of the “seam” where the halves of the face fused together.

According to The March of Dimes, cleft lip and cleft palate are relatively common - about 1 in 1000 babies are affected. Nowadays a cleft lip or cleft palate is usually surgically corrected with excellent results.

Holoprosencephaly is another birth defect - the philtrum is often missing altogether, and that’s just the beginning of the problem. Though they look like an extreme case of cleft palate, the facial anomalies in holoprosencephaly are the result of an underlying brain malformation. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), holoprosencephaly results when the budding brain fails to grow properly, to differentiate into right and left frontal lobes. Facial anomalies usually go along with it, since the face forms as part of the same process that causes the frontal lobes of the brain to form. Serious cases of holoprosencephaly cause significant defects including missing facial features, or facial features that fail to move around to their usual position on the head, and mental retardation. In the worst cases, the baby usually doesn’t make it to a year old. Mercifully, the kitten in the picture only lasted a day despite his owner’s best efforts to feed him and keep him warm. His littermates were all normal.

Interesting tidbit: pregnant women who experience morning sickness are less likely to miscarry and less likely to have babies with birth defects. It seems that the mother’s body can detect toxins in amounts that wouldn’t have any effect on a adult, but that interfere with embryonic organ development. Her body can also detect proteins released into the amniotic fluid in some birth defects such as anencephaly or spinal bifida and have a miscarriage.

There are so many things that can go wrong. The absolute worst of them are rejected by the mother’s body before she is even aware that she is pregnant. I believe the number is only 1 in 10 pregnancies “take.”

Many medications, including psych meds, are teratogens, that is, they cause defects. Lithium causes a very specific heart defect. Valproate causes neural tube defects. The damage to the embryo can occur before the mother even knows she’s pregnant. This makes a very strong case for being on the minimum amount of meds necessary to control the illness, or perhaps to take a med holiday before becoming pregnant.

I leave it to the reader to google “holoprosencephaly.”

Photo credit - Source: Flickr, Author: cloud_nine

globeandmail.com: Virgin birth awaited in England

Merry Christmas to all my Christian friends.

CHESTER, England — As Christmas approaches, a virgin mother is anxiously awaiting the arrival of her offspring. She’s Flora, the Komodo dragon.

In an evolutionary twist, Flora has managed to become pregnant all on her own without any male help. It would seem the timing is auspicious: The seven hatchlings are due this festive season.

—– Original Message —–
From: Kathy
To: Leslie
Sent: Monday, November 20, 2006 7:56 AM
Subject: engineers in the kitchen

The authors of the recipe seem to think that the reason [tag]engineers[/tag] don’t write recipe books that their recipes look funny. I think that if this is how engineers write recipes they definitely should stop, since (1) they think that brown sugar is unrefined, when it is not; (2) they leave open the addition of green peas instead of chopped peanuts; and (3) because they seem to think you can get chocolate chips through a cookie press.

And why anyone would substitute pure gluten for flour is strange. Using a cookie press for a soft dough is strange too, though technically no harm done there.

The eggshells are a problem, come to think of it… crunchy!

What do you think? Is it that the recipes are impossible for end users to work with, or is it because the engineer cookie makers have zero knowledge of the properties of the materials that they are recommending?

Kathy

Why Engineers Don’t Write Recipe Books
Chocolate Chip Cookies:
Ingredients:

1. 532.35 cm³ gluten
2. 4.9 cm³ NaHCO₃
3. 4.9 cm³ refined halite
4. 236.6 cm³ partially hydrogenated tallow triglyceride
5. 177.45 cm³ crystalline C₁₂H₂₂O₁₁
6. 177.45 cm³ unrefined C₁₂H₂₂O₁₁
7. 4.9 cm³ methyl ether of protocatechuic aldehyde
8. Two calcium carbonate-encapsulated avian albumen-coated protein
9. 473.2 cm³ theobroma cacao
10. 236.6 cm³ de-encapsulated legume meats (sieve size #10)

To a 2-L jacketed round reactor vessel (reactor #1) with an overall heat transfer coefficient of about 100 Btu/F-ft²-hr, add ingredients one, two and three with constant agitation. In a second 2-L reactor vessel with a radial flow impeller operating at 100 rpm, add ingredients four, five, six, and seven until the mixture is homogenous. To reactor #2, add ingredient eight, followed by three equal volumes of the homogenous mixture in reactor #1. Additionally, add ingredient nine and ten slowly, with constant agitation. Care must be taken at this point in the raction to control any temperature rise that may be the result of an exothermic reaction. Using a screw extrude attached to a #4 nodulizer, place the mixture piece-meal on a 316SS sheet (300 x 600 mm). Heat in a 460K oven for a period of time that is in agreement with Frank & Johnston’s first order rate expression (see JACOS, 21, 55), or until golden brown. Once the reaction is complete, place the sheet on a 25C heat-transfer table, allowing the product to come to equilibrium.

# # #

From: Leslie
To: Kathy
Sent: Monday, November 20, 2006 10:17:35 AM
Subject: Re: engineers in the kitchen

The science is sound, but the implementation needs a little work. I think we must hire a chemical engineer to verify the [tag]stoichiometric equation[/tag]s of the chemicals involved. He/she must be cognizant of the the unrefined hydrocarbon issue and also be able to specify the amount and types of contaminants permissible in the guten. We must also hire a process control engineer to design a cookie press that will accommodate green peas. An industrial engineer can devise a time-line and a budget, and identify the critical paths in the manufacturing process.

Will this be mil-spec or COTS?

Leslie

If someone figures out how to “cure” genetics, let me know. You can’t exactly pick up a bottle of Grecian Formula for Brain at the local pharmacy.

Remission is another thing altogether. That simply means that you are having an extended symptom-free period. Given that the DSM-IV bipolar criteria only require that the patient have ONE episode of mania or hypomania, some folks may remain in remission for the rest of their lives even without meds.

Science *is* empiricism. I would like to suggest that a large percentage doctors are not particularly careful in their application of the science of medicine. If they were scientific, they’d test and retest the bipolar patient’s continued need for meds instead of following the bizarre rule of thumb that once you’re on meds you need them forever. The killer is that as long as the illness is masked by drugs, it is impossible to practice “evidence-based medicine” as they disparagingly call it.

None of us on meds is being treated in an scientific manner. It isn’t scientifically valid to say that bipolar disorder causes cognitive deficits if a large percentage of the patients in the study were on meds. Antipsychotics have been *proven* to reduce the IQ by affecting the short-term memory. They aren’t the only drug to cause cognitive deficits. Lithium makes you feel as if your brain is wrapped in cotton wool.

I don’t believe that it is scientifically valid to say that bipolars must be on meds for life. If the patient stops the meds and experiences a return of symptoms… well, you’ve rewired the brain. The drugs themselves create a continued need for themselves by reconfiguring the brain’s neurons to need higher levels of serotonin in the synapses. The symptoms are bound to return, and much worse than before the drug did its damage.

Another thing about remission is that so many things besides bipolar disorder cause mood swings. Bipolar disorder has periods of remission. Things like the personality disorders, schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, PTSD and any of a hundred organic illness all cause mood swings. But they don’t necessarily have periods of remission, and in many cases remission just doesn’t occur.

Here - this is my particular manifestation of bipolar disorder. Three-year cycles. They come no matter what, but fortunately the meds attentuate he episodes. On the other hand, until I was on meds the cycles didn’t seriously impact my salary.

I think that it’s important, if a bipolar isn’t having remissions, to figure out why. Ultra-rapid cycling could be caused by an antidepressant, particularly in women. Newly-diagnosed bipolars often experience a great deal of fear or anxiety that might be better treated with therapy than with additional meds. Antipsychotics may ruin the patient’s ability to effectively manage the illness by dumbing them down. Sometimes it isn’t the illness, it is the meds that make bipolars disabled.

Are your drugs masking periods of remission?

Sometimes I get tired of the reverse stigma that I get for taking fewer meds so that I can continue to have a life. Isn’t that the purpose of treatment? If not, what is?

Most bipolars have the so-called milder varieties of the illness, and many of them are unfairly overmedicated and isolated from society for no good reason. It is unbearably sad to see that happening. So if I can tolerate psychosis instead of trying to medicate away every little nuance of mood or emotion, does that make me somehow inferior? I don’t f*cking think so. It isn’t pathological until it has a negative effect on my life.

The Autumnal equinox is in a couple of weeks, and during this time the days are getting shorter at the fastest rate they will all year, with the biggest change right on the day of the equinox. This graph is intended to compare the rate of change of the number of hours of daylight at two times during the year. At the Summer Solstice, light blue, there are a few days when the length of the daylight changes very little. But at the Autumnal Equinox, shown in dark green, the slope is very steep, showing that the amount of sunlight we get in a day is falling quickly. This has great implications for anyone with SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder).

I used Juergen Giesen’s Daylight Applet to generate the numbers and graphed them in Excel.

Update 10/28/2006:
Juergen has since added a graphing function to his Daylight Applet. Do go take a look at it.
Thanks to Saheli Datta for adding a blue dimension to the topic.

This is an expansion on a comment I left on The Zucchini Patch.

I think they use PET scans for what you want to do. An MRI isn’t capable of telling the difference between a live brain and a dead brain. It can, however, spot a shrunken hippocampus or amygdala or anomalies in the blood vessels.

An fMRI can see more. They can use tagged glucose or neurotransmitters, whatever they want to study. The fMRI shows where the substance concentrates in the brain, where it is used the most. The NIMH has information about this.

It’s all still under investigation, though. The fMRI is not ready to be used to diagnose.

Did you know that in ADHD, the harder the person tries to concentrate, the more the prefrontal cortex shuts down? Oddly enough, motor areas of the brain work harder at the same time. Can’t we just find a way to teach these kids that will fit with that kind of brain response? Running around in circles shouting out calculus problems, perhaps?

Apologies to my friends of the hyperactive persuasion.

Somewhere in this computer I have a letter I wrote to one of the scientists in the movie “What the Bleep Do We Know!?” who works down at Penn. I met him at the preview and asked him a few questions to correct some of my assumptions in writing the “Putting the Genie Back Into the Bottle” article. The study I was interested in was over, unfortunately. (Yes, dogs and cats *do* have Broca’s and Wernickes areas - it’s not just defined by function, it’s a physical location.)

I have an MRI of my head hanging on the wall next the the desk to remind me that I have a brain - you can see it, the small pea-sized thing in the center of the glob of mush. Several years ago I made an animation out of the scan through the layers. Where the hell did I put that?

Oh, here. I see that this one is from after I had my sinuses repaired in uhhhhh 1996 or thereabouts. Refresh the page to see the animation. My favorite part is the eye stalks. We must have had crustacean ancestors.

When did they decide that the Rorschacht test and the MMPI diagnose bipolar disorder? Bipolar isn’t a personality disorder, it’s a mood disorder. My last psychologist told me that when they modified the inkblot test, it was not longer useful in diagnosing borderline personality disorder, either. I question the whole thing at this point.

I took one years ago. The psychologist took my money out of pocket twice a week for over a year and wasn’t able to catch the bipolar disorder. When we did the inkblot test, I thought about what I’d been reading in the psychology books and created a mindset before we started. He had seascapes all over the walls so I picked an undersea theme - so that undersea pictures would be the first thing to pop off the paper at me. Dancing crabs, an octopus in a Jester’s cap. That sort of thing. The MMPI and the Thematic Apperception test were similarly transparent. And drawing pictures of my house and my family and myself. It might have been easier if I didn’t read so damn much. I read a lot more then than I do now.

Anyway, that’s what you want, a functional MRI rather than a plain old MRI.

Natural Terror | The Zucchini Patch

Update 9/22/2007: Jessica retooled her blog over the summer. Do be sure to check it out. Here’s the new link to the post above.
Natural Terror | The Zucchini Patch

A quick search for the toothmark photo below turned up a couple of interesting blog entries using the same photo. I include them here to bore the disinterested:
Who, or What, Killed the Australopithicine? - which added the phrase “Osteodontokeratic industry” to my already useless vocabulary.
IIDB > IIDB Philosophical Forums > Evolution/Creation > The wiring of the eye: Is it poor design? to which I answer, no, not a poor design but the prototype for the real thing - if we can evolve it before the Creationists destroy the world - to prevent it from happening, I suppose?
IIDB > IIDB Philosophical Forums > Evolution/Creation > Early Humans on the Menu

One of Jessica’s recent posts reminded me of Paul Shepard’s eye-opening book, “The Others: How Animals Made Us Human.”
Dr. Shepard was a Professor of Natural Philosophy and Human Ecology and wrote a number of books on our complex relationships with the earth and her other inhabitants.
In “The Others,” Dr. Shepard’s focus is on the topic of domesticating animals. Originally our relationship with other species was simple. Either we ate that species, or we were eaten by it. Simplistic as it sounds, that has a profound impact on our central nervous systems, specifically the limbic system.
As an aside, domestication changed some species into status symbols, and it is possible to determine the social status of extended family members by whether they slept nearer or farther than the livestock.
In “Thinking Animals: Animals and the Development of Human Intelligence,” Dr. Shepard briefly discusses the neurotransmitters. Prey animals are hypervigilant, always watching and waiting for some unknown something to startle them into flight. Predators’ neurochemistry, however, mandates focus: moving slowly, with patience and determination, toward the object of their attention. What kind of animal can display both kinds of attention? It must require a wild mood swing to instantly change a creeping hunter into someone who is running at top speed from a predator. It is a huge shift from one neurochemical pathway to a completely different pathway, releasing a neurotransmitter and simultaneously inhibiting another. I believe that the ability to switch contexts was an important factor in our evolution.
No matter how much we have evolved both psychologically and culturally, the old systems are still wired in and still affect us. We are not a separate act of creation.
I’m sure that our protohominid ancestors were eaten by all manner of frightening creatures. Miss Bugs tells me that her ancestors, the sabre-toothed tigers, used to sneak up on our tiny Australopithecine ancestors, grab them by the head, and drag them home for the kittens to play with. Lower teeth puncture the back of the head, unwieldy canine teeth pierce the eyes. Physical anthropologists have found quite a few Australopithecus skulls with these puncture marks, as evidenced by the wonderful photo at right. Update 9/22: This early hominid skull was found in a cave at Swarkrans in the late 1930s. It wasn’t for another 30-some years that someone paused to reflect on the odd indentations in the skulls. We’ll leave the question about the skulls having indentations resembling early hominids’ stone tools for another time. This pausing to reflect takes a lot of effort!

“The Others” is worth reading if only for the chapter on teddy bears as psychological bridges between the wild and the civilized. (I think housecats serve that purpose adequately.)

“Except possibly his soul, man prizes his mind above all else. His mind is a product of its ecology — the same ecology. Nothing that evolves persists unless sustained by those same creative forces. Like a ball at the top of a fountain, the human head pivots on its animal backbone, the mind a turning knot of thought and dream on the end of a liquid spear of living animals.”
– Paul Shepard, “Thinking Animals”

Paul Shepard mood swing sabre-toothed tiger Australopithecus evolution limbic system anthropology neurotransmitters protohominid social status

Update 9/22: osteodontokeratic industry cat food