Florilegium

I had previously speculated on how electric and magnetic fields generated by individual neurons may be able to transmit information to other neurons with which they are not in synaptic contact. From a purely physical point of view it strikes me as at least something to investigate. After all, we know that there are broad sweeps of electric fields that travel across the brain - whether alpha, beta, gamma, delta or theta waves. Such endogenous fields are both generated by the brain and feed back upon the brain. There must therefore be a mechanism by which such emergent fields are generated, sustained and propagated by the basic units of our brain: the neurons.

The first cases of Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (often referred to as electro-hypersensitivity or even EHS) were studied in the 1970s and yet decades later few people are even aware of the condition. We living human beings are more than just flesh and blood; we are also a highly complex electromagnetic system. This also means that we interact with external electromagnetic radiation (EMR). But try switching off every single electrical device in your home and work and ponder on how dependent we now are on these devices. The problem is that no importance is given to how detrimental all this EMR is to human health.

Who says science journalism is dying when it seems to be gloating about slaying one sacred cow after another: chiropractic, homoeopathy and now... dieting.The internet is bursting to the seams with weight loss programs, slimming advice, nutrition counselling, fitness regimes, low fat, low carb, low salt, low sugar, low motivation diets. It's enough to drive one to drink, except that it would also make you fatter...or would it?

I've been pondering this for some time and have just now been fired into action by a comment I made in another article “Building  Smarter Artificial Intelligence  By... Shrinking the Body?” One approach to artificial intelligence is to model the activities of neurons as electrical circuits with multiple inputs and multiple outputs. The model assumes that each individual neuron affects only those other neurons with which it has direct contact at the synapses. But, we also know that an electrical signal will also generate an electromagnetic field.

A study in the March edition of the American Journal of Psychiatry, senior-authored by Jerome C. Wakefield, empirically challenges the effectiveness of psychiatrists' official diagnostic manual in preventing mistaken, false-positive diagnoses of depression. This isn't the first time that Wakefield has challenged the DSM criteria for diagnosing depression. His first assault caused such controversy that the criteria were slightly tightened, but DSM-V is on the horizon and I suspect psychiatrists are busy pushing their particular niche obsessions.

On 31 December 2009, Fabrice Bellard announced that he had set a new world record for the most number of digits of the number pi. His algorithm has calculated the first 2.7 trillion digits of this famous mathematical constant, beating the previous record of 2.5 trillion digits set earlier in the year.

ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory has revealed the chemical fingerprints of potential life-enabling organic molecules in the Orion Nebula, a nearby stellar nursery in our Milky Way galaxy. This detailed spectrum, obtained with the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared (HIFI) - one of Herschel's three innovative instruments - demonstrates the gold mine of information that Herschel-HIFI will provide on how organic molecules form in space. Several German Institutes contributed essential parts to the HIFI instrument: the Universität zu Köln and two Max Planck Institutes: Radioastronmie (Bonn) and Sonnensystemforschung (Lindau).

March 14th is Pi Day, and that's official! This tradition was started at the Exploratorium, in San Francisco, and 2010 will be their 22nd year of irrational exuberance. It also coincides with Einstein's date of birth – which was on 14 March 1879 – so it's a double celebration for geeks around the world.

Making love in the middle of the night while both of you are half asleep is undoubtedly pleasurable. But what if you suddenly realize that your partner is still asleep; not just half asleep but fully asleep on the job? If so, then he or she may be suffering from sexsomnia, a rare sleep disorder involving sexual behaviour.

Richard Dawkins should write a paper entitled "How not to run a Web 2.0 website." Perhaps apt that he is now the former Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, as he has shown little understanding of his public, which has also damaged his efforts at science communication. How can I make such bold statements?

“Is religion a science?” This may seem an odd question with which to start, but this is the very first question Aquinas asks in his monumental Summa Theologica. “Among the philosophical sciences one is speculative the other practical [natural philosophy], nevertheless sacred doctrine [Roman Catholicism] includes both; as God, by one and the same science, knows both Himself and His works.” For Aquinas, not only is theology both a speculative and natural philosophy but it is also superior to both, in as much as it is guided by divine knowledge, which cannot be misled, and has as its end ultimate bliss, towards which all other sciences strive too.

In December 2008 CNN announced that it was closing down its whole science and technology production team and moving the environmental agenda into their general news. It was as if the news world had just lost a continent, prompting four of the world's leading science and environmental journalism groups to pen their first ever joint letter of protest. "In wielding this axe, your network has lost an experienced and highly regarded group of science journalists at a time when science coverage could not be more important in our national and international discourse." Nevertheless, the axe fell.