Alexander Kruel › Comments

"In depressed people the areas of the brain that generate positive emotions do not maintain high activity levels for as long in the depressed." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

That sounds a bit ... circular to me. - Eph Zero

"Winter is sweeping into the Northern Hemisphere! For many, this will be a season for storytelling and ritual, for reconnecting with family, for taking time off work, for just staying indoors and keeping warm ... and for getting stranded at airports. Whatever your winter tradition, TED wants to wish you a heartfelt "Happy Holidays!" with this list of 10 great TEDTalks to warm your hearth -- and to keep at-the-ready on your laptop or iPhone for those times when the only other options are mass market paperbacks." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have proposed a new paradigm that should allow scientists to observe quantum behavior in small mechanical systems." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"Daniel Reda, co-Chair of the Biotechnology and Bioinformatics track at Singularity University, introduces the key concepts and breakthroughs in biotechnology and bioinformatics. Filmed during the November 2009 Executive Program at Singularity University." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"Much of today's genetic research and diagnostics uses tools and technologies enabled by DNA's ability to bind to its complementary strand in a sequence specific manner. By placing short stands of DNA with known sequences on a surface and watching if molecules from a biological sample (tissue, blood, etc) bind to these immobilized DNAs allows researchers to determine genetic composition of the sample. This information can help identify mutations responsible for diseases or help guide the doctor to choose the best treatment strategy. For biologists studying molecular mechanisms inside cells, this information helps to quantify the expression levels of genes. Detection of the binding – or hybridization – of DNA strands is at the heart of modern medicine." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"Someday you will be able to continuously measure your body in a hundred ways, and this constant data will transform your health." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"Back in the dark ages I had an article in a special issue of Behavioral and Brain Science (in an issue devoted to publishing the papers given at a meeting on vision - "Controversies in Neuroscience III: Signal Transduction in the Retina and Brain"). They put me on the mailing list of reviewers, which is how I can occasionally pass on interesting papers that are appearing in the journal. A recent email offered a list of articles what the editors found most interesting. I've enjoyed reading several of them." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"Yes, I swiped this from Richard Dawkins’s website (thanks, RD!), but I had to pass it along to those readers who missed it. This is a collection of ten articles about atheism by Greta Christina, who has previously been below my radar." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"In January, Israel will become the first country in the world to give people who sign their organ donor cards points pushing them up the transplant list should they one day need a transplant. Points will also be given to transplant candidates whose first-degree relatives have signed their organ donor cars or whose first-degree relatives were organ donors." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"The relationship between emotions and rationality is one that has preoccupied man for thousands of years. As the ancient Stoics said, the emotions typically involve the judgement that harm or benefit is at hand (Sorabji 2006). Already, then, there was thought to be a relationship between emotions and ‘judgement’, the latter implying a degree of rationality." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

" I would just like to point out that any of these laser pointers are not toys, so please treat them with all the necessary respect and safety precautions. They can sting skin and hurt your (or others) eyes. The 55 mW laser can burn through a black trashbag (yes, we actually tried this, and the bag started melting in about 15 seconds). Some of the more powerful ones can light matches, burn dark fabrics, etch dark plastics and leathers, light fireworks, or even melt rubber and plastics. Not sure why you'd want to do some of these things, but it points out how powerful they are. Of course, you also need to watch out for planes in the area when you are using them. If you are doing an astronomy activity with a large group where you might be easily distracted, I'd suggest appointing a "spotter" to keep on the lookout for airplanes that might come into the region." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"By implanting an electrode into the brain of a person with locked-in syndrome, scientists have demonstrated how to wirelessly transmit neural signals to a speech synthesizer. The "thought-to-speech" process takes about 50 milliseconds - the same amount of time for a non-paralyzed, neurologically intact person to speak their thoughts. The study marks the first successful demonstration of a permanently installed, wireless implant for real-time control of an external device." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"Many animals test their legs and totter forth only hours after they are born, but humans need a year before they take their first, hesitant steps. Is something fundamentally different going on in human babies? Maybe not. A new study shows that the time it takes for humans and all other mammals to start walking fits closely with the size of their brains." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

Yeah right... http://www.youtube.com/watch... ;-) - Alexander Kruel

"I took this video on 18 December 2008 but never uploaded it due to beta restrictions. Since Metaplace is official dead now I thought to do it after all." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"Everything of beauty in the world has its ultimate origins in the human mind. Even a rainbow isn't beautiful in and of itself." -- Eliezer Yudkowsky - Alexander Kruel

"Toxoplasma gondii is an obligate intracellular parasite that causes different lesions in men and other warm-blooded animals. Humoral and cellular immune response of the host against the parasite keeps the protozoan in a latent stage, and clinical disease ensues when immunological response is compromised. Brain parasitism benefits the parasite causing behavioral changes in the host, not only in animals but also in humans. Schizophrenia and epilepsy are two neurological disorders that have recently been reported to affect humans coinfected with T. gondii. Further studies based on host-parasite interaction in several wild or domestic warm-blooded species are still necessary in order to better understand parasitism and behavioral changes caused by T. gondii." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"Foursquare is the new Dodgeball. Which is to say that it is my (and many other people's) method for tracking where we go (and in most cases our social activities). On a daily basis I use the iPhone app to announce some of my whereabouts to friends. I share specifics selectively, but in aggregate my information is shared publicly. (Disclosure: Foursquare is an OATV investment)" - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"When people do evil things, such as when they commit genocides in Bosnia or Rwanda, we call them "animals." If people do altruistic things, such as when they save another's life or give generously to the poor, we attribute this to our noble human morality. We call them "humane."" - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"Based on his fieldwork and research on chimpanzees, bonobos, and capuchins Doctor Frans de Wall said - "many animals are predisposed to take care of one another and come to other beings aid. Their strong similarity to human biology suggests that every person is destined to care for others. " - Alexander Kruel

"Now consider what you could accomplish with such capabilities. Toward the naughty side, you could achieve a military takeover of most of the world, and maintain totalitarian control thereafter. Cooperative homes get good stuff; uncooperative homes get bombs; pretty soon they’d fall in line." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"Suppose you know someone believes that the World Trade Center was rigged with explosives on 9/11. What else can you infer about them? Are they more or less likely than average to believe in homeopathy?" - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"Here are 60 absolutely stunning images of the Earth as seen from outer space. Click on the images for large resolution versions which you can use as wallpapers." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"Technology is turning us all into miniature media moguls. For those that want to share moments of their lives as they happen, recording video and uploading it later is simply too slow of a process. They need streaming video and they need it know. Luckily iPhone can finally help them out. While Ustream has had a broadcast streaming video application for Nokia and Android phones for months, the iPhone version just came out earlier in December. With Ustream Live Broadcaster, users can upload and record live video to the web, alert their social networks (via Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube), and archive their work for later. Best yet, Ustream offers the application for free." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"Noh proposes an alternative protocol based on “counterfactual” quantum communication in which a secret key can be distributed as a result of the mere possibility of particle transmission rather than an actual event. To achieve this, a single photon is sent into a Michelson interferometer, one arm of which is watched by Bob, while the other arm is examined by Alice. Bit values are encoded in photon polarizations, and Alice and Bob can set up a secret key by noting which photons are detected in which arms, including events in which photons do not even travel down the signal path that Bob is watching (the silent quantum dog). The author points out that this method can be implemented with existing optical technology and may foil Eve, who cannot benefit from photons that haven’t been transmitted." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"The X-51A WaveRider is expected to fly as fast as 4,000 mph (Mach 6). But in its first flight Dec. 9, it stayed firmly tucked under the wing of a B-52H Stratofortress." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"Earworms are those songs that get lodged in your cranium, playing over and over and over. There's been surprisingly little published research on the phenomenon, although that hasn't stopped popular science writers like Oliver Sacks from speculating about it. There's an 'expert' in the form of Professor James Kellaris at the University of Cincinnati, but his investigations all appear to be unpublished. That hasn't stopped Kellaris' university from hosting a website devoted to earworms. And there's also an online earworm exhibition at San Francisco's Exploratorium." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"Well, we don’t really need any more evidence for evolution, do we? But it keeps pouring in, the latest in a paper from the Journal of Evolutionary Biology (link is to the abstract, and if you have journal access you’ll find the paper in the online “early edition”)." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"Over the last several years, we here at Metaplace Inc. have been working very hard to create an open platform allowing anyone to come to a website and create a virtual world of their own. Unfortunately, over the last few months it has become apparent that Metaplace as a consumer UGC service is not gaining enough traction to be a viable product, requiring a strategic shift for our company. We’re sorry to announce today that Metaplace.com will be closing to the public at 11:59pm on January 1st, 2010. This is a bittersweet moment for us. Metaplace Inc the company will be continuing on – in fact, we have big plans – but what you the users have known as Metaplace will be going away. We are also losing some friends and colleagues here as part of this strategic shift. We’d rather dwell on the good than the sad. You, the users, have done amazing work here, and we want to celebrate it. We may not have managed to reach our goals with Metaplace.com and Metaplace Central, but we still had a lot... more... - Alexander Kruel

"Omega 3 fatty acids from fish make mice less likely to overreact to loud noises. The idea here is maybe the same happens with humans." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"The omega-3 essential fatty acids commonly found in fatty fish and algae help animals avoid sensory overload, according to research published by the American Psychological Association. The finding connects low omega-3s to the information-processing problems found in people with schizophrenia; bipolar, obsessive-compulsive, and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorders; Huntington's... more... - Alexander Kruel

"This avalanche was only a meter or 2 high and occurred in what appeared to be a reservoir for snow-making at Eldora Mountain Resort, hence the plastic underlay. The slope is on the leeward side of the “mountain”; note the cornices to the left of the avalanche." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet