• Keep Your Fingers Crossed: How Superstition Improves Performance
• More Than Half the World’s Population Gets Insufficient Vitamin D, Says Biochemist
• Low Vitamin D Levels Associated With Cognitive Decline
• Team Develops Non-Toxic Oil Recovery Agent
• Smoking Mind Over Smoking Matter: Surprising New Study Shows Cigarette Cravings Result from Habit, Not Addiction
• Light and Moderate Physical Activity Reduces the Risk of Early Death
• New Antibacterial Material for Bandages, Food Packaging, Shoes
• A Blood Test for Depression?
• 3-D Gesture-Based Interaction System Unveiled

Keep Your Fingers Crossed: How Superstition Improves Performance: New research shows that having some kind of lucky token can actually improve your performance — by increasing your self-confidence. …Volunteers who had their lucky charm did better at a memory game on the computer, and other tests showed that this difference was because they felt more confident. They also set higher goals for themselves. Just wishing someone good luck — with “I press the thumbs for you,” the German version of crossing your fingers — improved volunteers’ success at a task that required manual dexterity.

~Of course, this is still a form of delusion. Everyone tested in the study was superstitious and had a lucky charm. I’d like to see a study or two that involved people who don’t rely on superstition as well. I think if a person understands the delusion of superstition, they will therefore not need the “lucky” feather in their cap. They will have appropriate self-confidence based on their actual abilities. Still, it’s an interesting study.

More Than Half the World’s Population Gets Insufficient Vitamin D, Says Biochemist: Half the people in North America and Western Europe get insufficient amounts of vitamin D. “Elsewhere, it is worse, given that two-thirds of the people are vitamin D-insufficient or deficient. It is clear that merely eating vitamin D-rich foods is not adequate to solve the problem for most adults.” Currently, the recommended daily intake of vitamin D is 200 international units (IU) for people up to 50 years old; 400 IU for people 51 to 70 years old; and 600 IU for people over 70 years old.
“There is a wide consensus among scientists that the relative daily intake of vitamin D should be increased to 2,000 to 4,000 IU for most adults,” Norman says. “A 2000 IU daily intake can be achieved by a combination of sunshine, food, supplements, and possibly even limited tanning exposure.” While there is now abundant data on vitamin D and its benefits, Norman believes there is room for more study.
Because vitamin D is found in very few foods naturally (e.g. fish, eggs and cod liver oil) other foods such as milk, orange juice, some yogurts and some breakfast foods are fortified with it. The fortification levels aim at about 400 IU per day.

Low Vitamin D Levels Associated With Cognitive Decline: An estimated 40 percent to 100 percent of older adults in the United States and Europe are deficient in vitamin D, according to background information in the article. This deficiency has been linked to fractures, various chronic diseases and death. Vitamin D may help prevent the degeneration of brain tissue by having a role in formation of nervous tissue, maintaining levels of calcium in the body, or clearing of beta-amyloid, the substance that forms the brain plaques and tangles associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
Editorial: “Vitamin D has been known for many years to play a critical role in skeletal health. More recently, observational studies have reported inverse associations between levels of serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D, the metabolite that best reflects overall vitamin D status, and the risk of a wide range of disease, including cancer, vascular disease, infectious conditions, autoimmune diseases, osteoporosis, type 2 diabetes mellitus and obesity. …It is now time to test the various hypotheses generated by observational studies of vitamin D in adequately designed and conducted randomized controlled trials.”

Team Develops Non-Toxic Oil Recovery Agent: A team of chemists has developed a non-toxic, recyclable agent that can solidify oil on salt water so that it can be scooped up like the fat that forms on the top of a pot of chilled chicken soup. The agent could potentially be used to recover oil lost in the British Petroleum (BP) spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The gelling agent developed by his team is environmentally benign. It uses a sugar-based molecule that can be obtained from renewable sources and is biodegradable. In addition, only a relatively small amount of the agent — five percent of the volume of the oil being recovered — is required for the process, which handles a range of oil from crude to vegetable oil, to work.

Smoking Mind Over Smoking Matter: Surprising New Study Shows Cigarette Cravings Result from Habit, Not Addiction: The new study found that the intensity of cravings for cigarettes had more to do with the psychosocial element of smoking than with the physiological effects of nicotine as an addictive chemical. …Dr. Dar’s studies conclude that nicotine is not addictive as physiological addictions are usually defined. While nicotine does have a physiological role in increasing cognitive abilities such as attention and memory, it’s not an addictive substance like heroin, which creates true systemic and biologically-based withdrawal symptoms in the body of the user, he says. Dr. Dar believes that people who smoke do so for short-term benefits like oral gratification, sensory pleasure and social camaraderie. Once the habit is established, people continue to smoke in response to cues and in situations that become associated with smoking. Dr. Dar believes that understanding smoking as a habit, not an addiction, will facilitate treatment. Smoking cessation techniques should emphasize the psychological and behavioral aspects of the habit and not the biological aspects, he suggests.

Light and Moderate Physical Activity Reduces the Risk of Early Death: A new study has found that even light or moderate intensity physical activity, such as walking or cycling, can substantially reduce the risk of early death. the largest health benefits from light or moderate activity (such as walking and cycling) were in people who do hardly any physical activity at all. Although more activity is better — the benefits of even a small amount of physical activity are very large in the least physically active.
The good news from this study is that you don’t have to be an exercise freak to benefit from physical activity. Just achieving the recommended levels of physical activity (equivalent to 30 minutes daily of moderate intensity activity on 5 days a week) reduces the risk of death by 19%, while 7 hours per week of moderate activity (compared with no activity) reduces the risk of death by 24%. “This research confirms that is not just exercising hard that is good for you but even moderate everyday activities, like walking and cycling, can have major health benefits. Just walking to the shops or walking the children to school can lengthen your life — as well as bringing other benefits for well-being and the environment.”

New Antibacterial Material for Bandages, Food Packaging, Shoes: A new form of paper with the built-in ability to fight disease-causing bacteria could have applications that range from anti-bacterial bandages to food packaging that keeps food fresher longer to shoes that ward off foot odor. …They made sheets of paper from graphene oxide, and then tried to grow bacteria and human cells on top. Bacteria were unable to grow on the paper, and it had little adverse effect on human cells.

A Blood Test for Depression? Researchers evaluated blood gene expression profiles in healthy individuals and patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder, or MDD. They identified a set of seven genes in whole blood that was able to distinguish un-medicated MDD patients from healthy controls. “This is a first, but major step in providing a molecular diagnostic tool for depression.” Although psychiatry already has specific criteria for diagnosing mental health disorders, this type of diagnosis would be unbiased and particularly valuable for those with whom it is more difficult to have a conversation. It may also eventually assist in reducing the stigma associated with mental health problems.

3-D Gesture-Based Interaction System Unveiled: Scientists have developed the next generation non-contact gesture and finger recognition system. The novel system detects hand and finger positions in real-time and translates these into appropriate interaction commands. Furthermore, the system does not require special gloves or markers and is capable of supporting multiple users. This system detects multiple fingers and hands at the same time and allows the user to interact with objects on a display. The users move their hands and fingers in the air and the system automatically recognizes and interprets the gestures accordingly.
Cinemagoers will remember the science-fiction thriller Minority Report from 2002 which starred Tom Cruise. In this film Tom Cruise is in a 3-D software arena and is able to interact with numerous programs at unimaginable speed, however the system used special gloves and only three fingers from each hand.
The FIT prototype provides the next generation of gesture-based interaction far in advance of the Minority Report system. The FIT prototype tracks the user’s hand in front of a 3-D camera. The 3-D camera uses the time of flight principle, in this approach each pixel is tracked and the length of time it takes light to be filmed travelling to and from the tracked object is determined. This allows for the calculation of the distance between the camera and the tracked object.
“A special image analysis algorithm was developed which filters out the positions of the hands and fingers. This is achieved in real-time through the use of intelligent filtering of the incoming data. The raw data can be viewed as a kind of 3-D mountain landscape, with the peak regions representing the hands or fingers.” In addition plausibility criteria are used, these are based around: the size of a hand, finger length and the potential coordinates.
A user study was conducted and found that the system both easy to use and fun. However, work remains to be done on removing elements which confuses the system, for example reflections caused by wristwatches and palms which are positioned orthogonal to the camera.
“With Microsoft announcing Project Natal, it is likely that similar techniques will very soon become standard across the gaming industry. This technology also opens up the potential for new solutions in the range of other application domains, such as the exploration of complex simulation data and for new forms of learning.”

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First, we’ll start with Norway. They took a novel approach to dealing with staph infections. They drastically reduced their use of antibiotics. Some time ago I talked a bit about refraining from using antibacterial soaps which are harmful to you and those you love. Anyway, Norway is now the most infection-free country in the world. And they did it by reducing their use of antibiotics.

Midday Naps boost your learning capacity! Good news for those of us able to catch a few ZZZ’s during the day. New research from the University of California, Berkeley, shows that an hour’s nap can dramatically boost and restore your brain power. Indeed, the findings suggest that a biphasic sleep schedule not only refreshes the mind, but can make you smarter.

Few professionals keep current with what’s going on in their field. This is disturbing but not surprising.

Nanotechnology creates a way to cheaply and efficiently make lightweight paper and fabric batteries, store energy, and still be stretchable!  (I love me some nanotech)  These are known as eTextiles. Imagine energy-storing wallpaper, charging your portables on the go by plugging them into your shirt. How about moving display clothing, high performance sportswear and wearable power for soldiers? Groovy!

Biogas may be even better than previously thought. Biogas from refuse produces 95 per cent less greenhouse gas emissions than gasoline, according to a new research report. With a few simple improvements to the biogas plants, the figure can rise to 120 per cent — i.e. biogas becomes more than climate neutral. This can be compared with the standard figures used today, which indicate that biogas produces 80 per cent lower emissions than gasoline.

An inexpensive, fast, accurate DNA test that reveals a person’s risk of developing certain diseases is expected to become a reality. Scientists have developed a method of pinpointing variations in a person’s genetic code at critical points along the DNA chain. The technique could be used to analyze DNA in a drop of saliva.

While research over the past couple of years is showing that taking vitamins may be more harmful than beneficial (get your nutrients in your food!), a large survey study finds that middle aged and elderly people with high levels of vitamin D could reduce their chances of developing heart disease or diabetes by 43%. Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin that is naturally present in some foods and is also produced when ultraviolet rays from sunlight strike the skin and trigger vitamin D synthesis. Fish such as salmon, tuna and mackerel are good sources of vitamin D.

More about Vitamin D:Vitamin D is quickly becoming the “it” nutrient with health benefits for diseases, including cancer, osteoporosis, heart disease and now diabetes.

How about this? Scorpion venom could be an alternative to morphine, with no side effects!

Routine Driving, even for experienced drivers, increases the chances of accidents. The findings of the study show that the brain is more active and reacts more along unfamiliar routes. When the test persons became familiar with the routes, the activity of their brains became less; this was the case for both the experienced and inexperienced drivers. This means that drivers drive on familiar routes without consciously orientating themselves.

A Brain-controlled cursor doubles as a neural network. Scientists have found that watching a cursor respond to one’s thoughts prompts brain signals to become stronger than those generated in day-to-day life. The finding holds promise for rehabilitating patients after stroke or other neurological damage. It also suggests that a human brain could quickly become adept at manipulating an external device such as a computer interface or a prosthetic limb.

So there you go, some recent random studies from the scientific world.

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Anyhoo, this is a roundup post in which I cover several topics that are tenuously connected at best. Here’s what I’m rambling on about:

• I’m a citizen scientist now! WOOT!
  • Encyclopedia of Life!
  • My Flickr
• Moving the body affects how we think – a study
• Prayer and meditation may reshape the brain – a study

First, I want to talk about a ScienceDaily report: Massive Online ‘Macroscopic Observatory’ Of Earth’s Biodiversity To Be Created. “Wanted (soon): observations from environment-minded citizens that will allow science to study biodiversity at a planetary level in a massive, comprehensive virtual observatory of historic importance.”

This guy, Edward O. Wilson, created a website, Encyclopedia of Life (eol). His dream: “Imagine an electronic page for each species of organism on Earth…” and they are starting to do just that. A page for every species. If you read the ScienceDaily article, it will be amazing. You’ll be able to get information from the Deep Web from images, maps, classification, common and scientific names, links to research and papers, etc.

It’s already there now, and growing all the time. In the future you’ll also be able to get genome sequences and much much more. Basically anything you want to know about a species will be there, at your fingertips, all on one page, for free. My scientific geekiness is giggling with delight!

And here’s where I get to finally call myself a scientist! Uh, well, a citizen scientist, which is still cool. eol wants people to submit their pictures. I’m a photographer, and I love taking pictures of nature, but I’ve never been able to do much with them. Now I can help with this project! Can you say WOOT!? I can. Woot WOOT! (Sorry, uber-geek moment there).

So what you do, what I did, was to open a Flickr account. I’m ZeNeeceC on Flickr now. I got some older pictures posted yesterday. Then here’s the tough part. You need to machine tag them with their scientific names. This is so that when you send them to the eol Flickr group, eol’s computer can get those images and put them on the right pages.

My friend Jeff said that eol sounded like a Wikipedia kind of thing for science. In a way, he’s right, because we get to contribute our images. But eol is serious about science, so the images will get authenticated. Until that time, they have a yellow box around them so people can see that they are contributed but might not be scientifically accurate like the rest of the info on the page.

Even further, though, if you just want high end science info, eol lets you set that up so that you don’t even see the citizen science stuff. It’s a very well done site.

Anyway, I am having trouble finding out what things are called. Flickr has a group called ID Please, which I joined. And I joined BugGuide.net  as ZeNeece to help me ID bugs. But the flowers and plants, I will need to find an online source to identify those more readily.

So that’s that. I wanted to share it with you because it’s so exciting to me, but also in case you or someone you know might be interested as well.

Onto some studies!

Our Bodies, Our Brains: a recent study shows that moving your body in certain ways can improve your ability to think. Published in Psychological Science.

Working with 38 subjects, the scientists confirmed that either a step forward (a typically positive movement) or a step backward (usually negative) significantly changed one’s ability to perform a mental task.

Taking four steps back improved a subject’s accuracy and timing on the task, whereas taking four steps forward led to longer processing times and more errors.

How cool is that? Now, if you follow the link, you’ll see that this was on 60 second science on Scientific American, so there are no links to studies. But they list the publication, Psychological Science, if you want to look into it further.

Prayer May Reshape Your Brain… And Your Reality: This is interesting. I’ve told you about some studies (see below) in the past in this field, which this article calls “neurotheology”.  The article from NPR is about Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist at University of Pennsylvania who has written several books and studies very religious people and their brains. Newberg says: “The more you focus on something — whether that’s math or auto racing or football or God — the more that becomes your reality, the more it becomes written into the neural connections of your brain.”

He also tested a doctor who meditates for an hour a day. He had him meditate in a brain scanner.

As expected, his frontal lobes lit up on the screen: Meditation is sheer concentration, after all. But what fascinated Newberg was that Baime’s parietal lobes went dark. Newberg said, “This is an area that normally takes our sensory information, tries to create for us a sense of ourselves and orient that self in the world,” he explains. “When people lose their sense of self, feel a sense of oneness, a blurring of the boundary between self and other, we have found decreases in activity in that area.”

The article goes on to suggest that you can benefit from meditation and prayer as well, even if you don’t devote 1 or 2 hours a day to it. I find this interesting and compelling, and it goes along with the other studies listed below. I would have liked some studies referenced and linked to in the article, but I guess I’m not that lucky.

Here are the other posts I’ve done about other relevant brain and mind studies recently:

• Church: No brain activity required- study showed how experiencing transcendence basically shut down the right parietal lobe.
• More differences in the brains of believers and non-believers: A recent study that found religious people were less anxious about mistakes they made than non-believers.
• Knowledge and Beliefs are stored differently in the brain: this wasn’t a specific study. Dr. Steven Novella mentioned it in passing on his podcast.
• Religion is the path of least resistance: This was about an article in New Scientist where people are born believers. I strongly suspect the way they conducted the studies mentioned.
• Superstitious? It could be your lack of control: This was a neat study about people who were basically put into a situation where they felt a lack of control found patterns more readily in random information.

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• Comments: Thanks for the great comments recently! I promise to reply to each of them but I am falling behind. I realized some of them really require a post devoted to them instead of just a reply. So please don’t think I’m ignoring you. I will comment soon.
• Computers: It’s true. Ask my poor long-suffering husband Butch, I am missing the Patience gene. My computer has been doing strange things since I reinstalled windows (which I do every 6 months to a year to keep things fresh and in working order, as every past geek friend of mine has recommended) and I found out through Lifehacker that Windows 7 beta is freely available for download. Well, of course I had to do it. I have waited as long as possible, but the ADD, Shiny-Loving Geek in me had to have it. I’m such a sucker for the shiny when it comes to geek stuff. (Luckily for Butch, I couldn’t care less about diamonds and that kind of nonsense. Unfortunately though, I need gadgets and computers and stuff like that.) It’s my kryptonite, I guess. So I just had to have windows 7, and now, of course, I’m having problems with the virtual memory. Sigh. So bear with me, it’s taking me quite some time to try to figure out the issue and see if I can find a fix. On a completely unrelated note, I’m interviewing geeks to be my new BFF. Please apply within.

Ok, now, I want to talk to you briefly about happiness. Are you an atheist? Are you happy? This lingering idea keeps wandering around that all atheists are curmudgeonly, grumpy, miserable, fatalistic and depressed.

I’ve been an atheist for 9 years, and for many years before that I was basically an agnostic. I have to say, I think discarding religion was a huge relief. I think I felt better. Once I finally learned to think critically, I think I started really seeing rationally and really appreciating the natural wonders of the universe. If anything, this process has left me more happy, more fascinated by the world of science and discovery. I think I’m happier and calmer, yet always eager to learn and grow.

But I think I probably come across under certain circumstances as a furious cynic. Why would that be? Which is the real me? The happy atheist is who I think I’d identify with best. But my bullshit meter has become increasingly sensitive. So when someone says something that screams of ignorance and a total lack of thinking for oneself, I just tend to get irritated, frustrated and grumpy.

It seems that wherever I go I’m surrounded by sheeple people who let others think for them. They spew forth the rubbish and lies that had been told to them by people in some strange version of authority (whether that be their minister, the pope, the government, or a slick marketing campaign) and that’s good enough for them. They wallow in their ignorance like it was some sort of universal remedy. Thinking is endangered and that pisses me off, and worries me.

Anyway, other than that, I’m quite a content person overall. Are you an atheist? Or a believer? Are you happy and content? Or are you angry and bitter and curmudgeonly? If you’re happy, do you still get really angry over certain things? I look forward to your comments! Oh,and have a great evening!

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Anyway, enjoy these groovy new materials. They have awesome potential to change our world. And it makes me think, if I never imagined this stuff, what will they think of next!? Woot!

1. Aerogel: also called “Frozen Smoke”

Aerogel is an amazing insulator, and it is an incredible sponge, absorbing pollutants and stuff. Truly amazing with huge potential, it holds 15 entries in the Guiness Book of World Records. It will be neat to see this stuff mass produced someday.

2. Carbon Nanotubes:

Ok, I love me some badass nanotechnology. Just read The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson to get an idea of some far out ideas of what we could do with them someday. Carbon nanotubes are amazingly strong, stronger than steel. They are perfect for electronics, they’re small and can build just about anything. Again, the potential is astonishing.

3. Bulk Diamond:

This one is new to me, creating bulk diamond machinery? It’s not here yet, but hey, you never know. Diamond is amazingly strong and light. It’s made from carbon, which is widely available. And already it’s being used to coat parts of machinery. It has an incredibly high boiling and melting point as well as nearly complete thermal conductivity. Cool and groovy!

4. Amorphous Metal: (metallic glasses)

These metals can be twice as strong as steel, but they disperse impact energy much more effectively than regular metal. So imagine this being used in armor. They also have electronic properties that improve the efficiency of power grids by as much as 40%. Good news for going greener in the future.

5. Metal Foam:

Some metal foam is so light that it can float on water. It’s 75-95% empty space, so it’s relatively light while still being very strong. This might be quite handy in building space colonies, or perhaps floating cities.

6. Transparent Alumina:

Three times stronger than steel AND it’s transparent!? Amazing! Imagine skyscrapers of mainly transparent metal! The possibilities are endless.

7. E-Textiles:

This is my favorite of the list, I think. The possibilities are endless for personal expression as well as practical applications. I love the idea of wearing my computer or my phone. Groovy stuff indeed.

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