Science Bites! Options

[Brainiac]

Red Enhances Men's Attraction To Women, Psychological Study Reveals

ScienceDaily (Oct. 28, 2008) — A groundbreaking study by two University of Rochester psychologists to be published online Oct. 28 by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology adds color—literally and figuratively—to the age-old question of what attracts men to women.
...
Through five psychological experiments, Andrew Elliot, professor of psychology, and Daniela Niesta, post-doctoral researcher, demonstrate that the color red makes men feel more amorous toward women. And men are unaware of the role the color plays in their attraction.
...
Although this aphrodisiacal effect of red may be a product of societal conditioning alone, the authors argue that men's response to red more likely stems from deeper biological roots. Research has shown that nonhuman male primates are particularly attracted to females displaying red. Female baboons and chimpanzees, for example, redden conspicuously when nearing ovulation, sending a clear sexual signal designed to attract males.

Looking at the picture included in this article, the girl in the photos is wearing either red or blue. Both these colours are 'offensive' to wear in the temple so no matchmaking there.

[angrezi]

this is quite useful research. now if they can figure out why some men get off on womens shoes more than their bodies we can make further progress as a species

[Brainiac]

this is quite useful research. now if they can figure out why some men get off on womens shoes more than their bodies we can make further progress as a species

Actually I do know the neuropsychological reason behind foot fetishes. But you're right, we need to find better things to do with our time, like investigate the phenomenon by which individuals in the process of falling generally move in a downward direction, and to what extent this is mediated by body weight.

[rhapsodieff]

Oh... I thougth the girth of Gurus was relative like that of Filipino policemen in Manila... the bigger the girth the longer they have been in the profession....

Now I wonder if the concomitant observation also applies, that is the longer in the profession the fatter the more corrupt the policeman....

I wonder....

[Brainiac]

RADIOACTIVE scorpion venom sounds like the ultimate doomsday weapon but it is now being tested as a treatment for malignant brain cancer.

The scorpion Leiurus quinquestriatus lives in the Middle East. Among the powerful cocktail of neurotoxins packed into its venom is a peptide that is non-toxic to humans and binds to a receptor found only on some tumour cells. In culture, the peptide has invaded tumours in breast, skin, brain and lung tissue, but left healthy cells untouched. "It's as if the tumours collect it," says Michael Egan of the company TransMolecular in Cambridge, Massachusetts. To see if the peptide could deliver lethal doses of radioactivity to cancer cells, researchers at the company have attached radioactive iodine isotopes to it.

In a trial last year, they injected this agent directly into the tumours of 59 people suffering from inoperable brain cancer. Those receiving a higher dose lived for three months longer, on average.

In recent weeks, researchers at the University of Chicago in Illinois have begun injecting TM601 into the bloodstream of people with different types of malignant brain cancer. This latest trial will allow the company to test whether TM601 can seek out and kill secondary tumours throughout the body, as well as known primary ones.

[Brainiac]

CANCER GENETIC BLUEPRINT REVEALED

Scientists have decoded the complete DNA of a cancer patient and traced her disease to its genetic roots.

The Washington University team identified 10 gene mutations which appeared key to the development of the woman's acute myeloid leukaemia.

Just two of these had been linked to the disease before.

The sequencing technique, described in the journal Nature, could be applied to other cancers and aid the design of targeted drugs.

Read more at BBC News.

[Brainiac]

Human Brain Tissue Made From Stem Cells. (!!!!!!!!)

Japanese researchers said Thursday they had created functioning human brain tissues from stem cells, a world first that has raised new hopes for the treatment of disease.

Stem cells taken from human embryos have been used to form tissues of the cerebral cortex, the supreme control tower of the brain, according to researchers at the government-backed research institute Riken.

The tissues self-organized into four distinct zones very similar to the structure seen in human foetuses, and conducted neuro-activity such as transmitting electrical signals, the institute said.

Research on stem cells is seen as having the potential to save lives by helping to find cures for diseases such as cancer and diabetes or to replace damaged cells, tissues and organs.

Read more at Discovery News.

[Kalisurfer]

Human Brain Tissue Made From Stem Cells. (!!!!!!!!)

Japanese researchers said Thursday they had created functioning human brain tissues from stem cells, a world first that has raised new hopes for the treatment of disease.

Stem cells taken from human embryos have been used to form tissues of the cerebral cortex, the supreme control tower of the brain, according to researchers at the government-backed research institute Riken.

The tissues self-organized into four distinct zones very similar to the structure seen in human foetuses, and conducted neuro-activity such as transmitting electrical signals, the institute said.

Research on stem cells is seen as having the potential to save lives by helping to find cures for diseases such as cancer and diabetes or to replace damaged cells, tissues and organs.

Read more at Discovery News.

That is pretty amazing, but have the Japanese researchers worked out the kinks on the new brain tissue, that once implanted, one can only cognitively recognize the Japanese language while all belief in God falls away, though there is a strong attraction to the Tao and anyone called emperor.

[Brainiac]

Intelligent 'have better sperm'

Men of higher intelligence tend to produce better quality sperm, UK research suggests.

A team from the Institute of Psychiatry analysed data from former US soldiers who served during the Vietnam war era. They found that those who performed better on intelligence tests tended to have more - and more mobile - sperm. The study, which appears in the journal Intelligence, appears to support the idea that genes underlying intelligence may have other biological effects too.

Read more at BBC News.

[Brainiac]

Breast cancer gene-free baby due

A woman from London will give birth next week to the first British baby screened to be free of a gene for breast cancer.

Women in three generations of her husband's family have been diagnosed with the disease in their twenties. Without the embryo screening, any daughter born would have a 50-80% chance of experiencing breast cancer. But one expert warned the technique would not be suitable for all couples with this disease in their family.

Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) involves taking a cell from an embryo at the eight-cell stage of development, when it is around three-days old, and testing it. Using PGD to ensure a baby does not carry a gene which would guarantee a baby would inherit a disease such as cystic fibrosis, is well-established.

Full story at BBC News.

[Homer]

Science has now explained how advanced devotees are able to bore their captive audience to tears day after day with their verbal waffle:

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE4BI0VQ20081219

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Some things never change. Scientists said on Friday they had replicated an experiment in which people obediently delivered painful shocks to others if encouraged to do so by authority figures.

Seventy percent of volunteers continued to administer electrical shocks -- or at least they believed they were doing so -- even after an actor claimed they were painful, Jerry Burger of Santa Clara University in California found.

"What we found is validation of the same argument -- if you put people into certain situations, they will act in surprising, and maybe often even disturbing, ways," Burger said in a telephone interview. "This research is still relevant."

[zanardi]

Science has now explained how advanced devotees are able to bore their captive audience to tears day after day with their verbal waffle:

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE4BI0VQ20081219

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Some things never change. Scientists said on Friday they had replicated an experiment in which people obediently delivered painful shocks to others if encouraged to do so by authority figures.

Seventy percent of volunteers continued to administer electrical shocks -- or at least they believed they were doing so -- even after an actor claimed they were painful, Jerry Burger of Santa Clara University in California found.

"What we found is validation of the same argument -- if you put people into certain situations, they will act in surprising, and maybe often even disturbing, ways," Burger said in a telephone interview. "This research is still relevant."

That is so true it almost hurts. I also agree with you, Homer, about how the advanced devotees are able to bore their captive audiences to tears with their verbal waffles. Some days ago I happened to test listen a lecture given by an expert wafflerist. Man, was it boring! It was basically one simple point that was explained again and again from slightly different angles, and it seemingly went on ad infinitum and especially ad nauseum. Honestly, I do not know if there was ending to the torture or did the tape simply run out, or the listeners fell in coma. I had to stop and do some self preservation and watch Lucky Louie. http://www.hbo.com/luckylouie/

[Homer]

That is so true it almost hurts. I also agree with you, Homer, about how the advanced devotees are able to bore their captive audiences to tears with their verbal waffles. Some days ago I happened to test listen a lecture given by an expert wafflerist. Man, was it boring! It was basically one simple point that was explained again and again from slightly different angles, and it seemingly went on ad infinitum and especially ad nauseum. Honestly, I do not know if there was ending to the torture or did the tape simply run out, or the listeners fell in coma. I had to stop and do some self preservation and watch Lucky Louie. http://www.hbo.com/luckylouie/

I see, listening to the nectar, are we? You only found it torture due to listening with materialistic ears, prabhu.

But, yeah, no joke is it?

There was one temple president I knew who insisted on giving all the Sunday Love Feast lectures (beautiful how we used to call them that - Love Feast). They would go on for over an hour or even more, they seemed endless. Everyone would fidget and stand to relieve bums and legs that had long-ago fallen asleep, but he never seemed to get the hint. Some guests complained to me about the boring lectures so I had a confidential talk with the guy and boy, did he get angry. I swear it was as though he thought every word he spoke contained a cornucopia of spiritual wisdom.

[Brainiac]

Wow, they replicated the famous Milgram experiment? This is great news!

[Dhyana]

Wow, they replicated the famous Milgram experiment? This is great news!

What I wonder is where they found subjects not likely to have heard of Milgram.

Can you imagine the screams of outrage if anybody tried to replicate Zimbardo's experiment?

[Brainiac]

Can you imagine the screams of outrage if anybody tried to replicate Zimbardo's experiment?

Wouldn't Abu Ghraib have been something of an equivalent?

[Dhyana]

Can you imagine the screams of outrage if anybody tried to replicate Zimbardo's experiment?

Wouldn't Abu Ghraib have been something of an equivalent?

Nope, no randomness in assigning people to groups.

[Gerard]

In 1945 intensive research was carried out, especally in the USA and the Soviet Union, into guiding and controlling consciousness by means of electric impulses. This demonic type (one cannot call it otherwise) of brainwashing and rape and/or deprivation of the free will, is frequently called Mind Control.

Causing a sensation, these experiments came to public notice when, at the end of the sixties, the neurologist Dr. José M.R. Delgado of the Centro Ramón y Cajal Hospital in Madrid and the Yale University School of Medicine published his findings in the book 'Physical Control of the Mind: Towards a Psychocivilized Society'.

We know of ESB's potential for mind control largely through the work of José Delgado. One signal provoked a cat to lick its fur, then continue compulsively licking the floor and bars of its cage. A signal designed to stimulate a portion of a monkey's thalamus, a major midbrain center for integrating muscle movements, triggered a complex reaction: The monkey walked to one side of the cage, then the other, then climbed to the rear ceiling, then back down. The animal performed this same activity as many times as it was stimulated with the signal, up to sixty times an hour, but not blindly -- the creature still was able to avoid obstacles and threats from the dominant male while carrying out the electrical imperative. Another type of signal has made monkeys turn their heads, or smile, no matter what else they were doing, up to twenty thousand times in two weeks. As Delgado concluded, "The animals looked like electronic toys."

Delgado stimulated brain activity in his patients with electronic stimulation (ESB = Electronic Stimulation of the Brain) in the ELF domain, especially in the amygdala und hyppocampus. Funding for the project came predominantly from the American Office of Naval Intelligence, a CIA cover agency, the CIA being especially interested in this form of warfare, after it became known that in the years 1960-1965, the US Embassy in Moscow was exposed to radiation from electromagnetic fields and microwaves created by the Soviets — with the result that various physical and mental disorders occured among the staff.

In his conclusion Delgado summarized his findings by saying that

"movement, emotion and behaviour can be controlled by electrical forces, and human beings can be controlled like robots with the touch of a button."

The patients reported that their behaviour had changed against their will because they lacked the strength (will forces!) to resist against the electrical signal.

"Since the brain controls the entire body and all mental processes, electrical stimulation of the brain could be developed into an important method of planned manipulation of human behaviour."

Delgado eleborated his point of view in sentences like the following:

"We need a programme of psychosurgery for political control of the mind. Everyone who deviates from the given norm can be surgically mutilated. (...) The individual may think that the most important reality is his point of view. This lacks historical perspective. (...) Man does not have the right to develop his own mind. (...). We must electrically control the brain. Some day armies and generals will be controlled by electrical stimulation of the brain."

In Spanish Cordoba Delgado demonstrated his theory by way of popular entertainment; he implanted hair-like electrodes into the interbrain of a bull, that were to control the behaviour of the bull by acting as receivers of electrical stimulations:

"Afternoon sunlight poured over the high wooden barrier into the ring, as the brave bull bore down on the unarmed matador, a scientist who had never faced a bull. But the charging animal's horns never reached the man behind the heavy red cape. Moments before that could happen, Dr. Delgado pressed a button on a small radio transmitter in his hand and the bull braked to a halt. Then he pressed another button on the transmitter, and the bull obediently turned to the right and trotted away. The bull was obeying commands in his brain that were being called forth by the radio signals acting as electrical stimulation to certain regions in which fine wires had been painlessly planted the day before."

Delgado's research has long since found adherents. Experiments are carried out with implants capable of achieving a great variety of results; also with direct radiation from microwaves, ELF and other high-pulsating electromagnetic rays or fields designed to manipulate the memory, control behaviour, or simply temporarily incapacitate. The victims suffer long-lasting damage to the health of the organ affected, are driven to insanity by 'voices', develop compulsive behaviour, carry out certain tasks against their inclination etc. The latest experiments point in the direction of filtering the 'imprint' of concrete emotions in the brain with the aid of electroencephalograms (EEG) and specific computer software, to synthesize the relevant frequencies and amplitudes as emotion signature clusters, to store them on computer and, if needed, to clone them into other brains by stimulus transfer.

[Brainiac]

The Watcher blog, which you copied this from, appears to be of the paranoid conspiratorial type with links to Michael Moore, David Icke, and other controversial figures, as well as the insinuations and allusions about "Jews running everything". The original article, where the "watcher" copied it from, has clear spiritual undercurrents and it turns out that the author is something of a Grail enthusiast. Pity I can't understand advanced German. Other than that, Delgado's work isn't as doomsday as it is made out to be, although it may have sounded like that at the time. Physical Control of the Mind, or even The Forgotten Era of Brain (Scientific American article, pdf file) are a couple of articles that provide a more balanced view.

[Gerard]

The Watcher blog, which you copied this from, appears to be of the paranoid conspiratorial type with links to Michael Moore, David Icke, and other controversial figures, as well as the insinuations and allusions about "Jews running everything". The original article, where the "watcher" copied it from, has clear spiritual undercurrents and it turns out that the author is something of a Grail enthusiast. Pity I can't understand advanced German. Other than that, Delgado's work isn't as doomsday as it is made out to be, although it may have sounded like that at the time. Physical Control of the Mind, or even The Forgotten Era of Brain (Scientific American article, pdf file) are a couple of articles that provide a more balanced view.

I have never heard of The Watcher blog. You start immediately with your old fault of an ad hominem spiel and glossing over what your CIA psychiatrist and his Dr. Mengele-type friends do. Your opinions are only Establishment platitudes, your text books are only Establishment text books and that what falls outside that belongs of course to "conspiracy theories".
So discussing anything with you is for me a waste of time. I have more important things to do; I want to stare out of the window for a while longer. See you in the Elvis department