Comment Inches? (Score 1) 280
Weirdly, not even once are inches mentioned in the study but they are all over the summary. Why?
Comment Socially determined (Score 3, Interesting) 161
The role of women in most societies is such that advanced social skills and sociability are highly valued and rewarded. For men it is, on the other hand, winning, being strong, etc. While there may be actual biological factors in play, this research does not distinguish between what's "biological" and what "social". (Yes, there are those changes in brain blood flow but those arise as a result of learning too.]
Comment Re:confused about mention of "fat" (Score 1) 211
The only relevant (and evidence-based) diet rule: Eat what you want, just don't fucking stuff yourselves like every meal is your last.
Comment Re: Add enough salt (Score 1) 160
Glutamate does indeed cross the blood-brain barrier freely but only in the direction from the brain to the blood. This is due to the configuration of glutamate transporters on endothelial cells - symporters with sodium on the brain side and simple diffusion channels on the blood side. So while it is theoretically possible to get glutamate into the brain, it would need a very, very large blood concentration.
Also, the excitatory neurotransmitter is glutamate itself, glutamine has no neurotransmitter activity. This is, indeed, why this one-way transport system for glutamate developed - evolution probably frowned upon having brain activity disrupted after every protein-rich meal...
Finally, I do not think your symptoms are made up (although I am curious in what way were your self-experiments "controlled"), only that they are very unlikely to be caused by glutamate from the diet entering the brain and causing neuronal excitation.
Also, the excitatory neurotransmitter is glutamate itself, glutamine has no neurotransmitter activity. This is, indeed, why this one-way transport system for glutamate developed - evolution probably frowned upon having brain activity disrupted after every protein-rich meal...
Finally, I do not think your symptoms are made up (although I am curious in what way were your self-experiments "controlled"), only that they are very unlikely to be caused by glutamate from the diet entering the brain and causing neuronal excitation.
Comment Money, money, money (Score 5, Insightful) 347
A mother wants to make money off her son's gymnastics videos? This world is really going to hell...
Comment Misleading title (Score 3, Insightful) 84
Could you please, next time, put the really important info into the title? "New Drug Rapidly Repairs Age-Related Memory Loss, Improves Mood *in Mice*. Thank you.
Comment Shipped to China (Score 1) 153
Yes, because all of the fossil fuel-intensive manufacturing (and more) was shipped to China and other countries. This is a virtual drop due to capital transfers. Solves nothing.
Comment Re:EU has always been tough on US companies. (Score 2) 502
US 320 milion people, EU 500 million people
US GDP 20 trillion USD, EU 20 trillion
Tell me again why should EU play nice?
Comment Re:book was boring (Score 1) 60
Completely agree. Apart from the poorly edited writing the reason I put it down after about a hundred pages were the glaring errors in chemistry (and elsewhere). "Anyway the reserve [liquid] oxygen would only be enough to make 100 litres of water (50 litres of O2 makes 100 litres of molecules that only have one O each)." This is bullshit, 50 litres of liquid oxygen make only 64.7 litres of liquid water. You can't have a sci-fi *based* on science and engineering feats with the science (can't speak for engineering) being completely wrong - not fictional, just wrong.
Comment Re:Stupid summary (Score 1) 355
Actually, based on nominal GDP the Czech Republic has about 1/67 (at about 1/30 population) and Latvia about 1/500 (at 1/150 population) the money that the USA has. Not exactly poor countries...
What Does It Actually Cost To Publish a Scientific Paper? 166
ananyo writes "Nature has published an investigation into the real costs of publishing research after delving into the secretive, murky world of science publishing. Few publishers (open access or otherwise-including Nature Publishing Group) would reveal their profit margins, but they've pieced together a picture of how much it really costs to publish a paper by talking to analysts and insiders. Quoting from the piece: '"The costs of research publishing can be much lower than people think," agrees Peter Binfield, co-founder of one of the newest open-access journals, PeerJ, and formerly a publisher at PLoS. But publishers of subscription journals insist that such views are misguided — born of a failure to appreciate the value they add to the papers they publish, and to the research community as a whole. They say that their commercial operations are in fact quite efficient, so that if a switch to open-access publishing led scientists to drive down fees by choosing cheaper journals, it would undermine important values such as editorial quality.' There's also a comment piece by three open access advocates setting out what they think needs to happen next to push forward the movement as well as a piece arguing that 'Objections to the Creative Commons attribution license are straw men raised by parties who want open access to be as closed as possible.'"
Comment Re:"top bioethicist "? (Score 1) 117
It is actually a pretty terrible paper. It barely discusses any ethics at all and the little it does is about third grade level.
Submission + - How Will E-Reading Change Us? (txchnologist.com)
ambermichelle writes: If 2011 was the year of the tablet, with the triumph of Apple’s iPad 2 and the more measured success of Amazon’s Kindle Fire, it was also the year the print books had their spines ripped out. Chain bookseller Borders filed for bankruptcy while vultures circled Barnes & Noble (which nevertheless survived). As we rush headlong into the e-reading future, Norwegian researcher Anne Mangen has been asking, “How does digital technology change the way we read?”
Mangen is a favorite researcher of digital skeptics such as Nicholas Carr. Her research has found that reading on screens has taught us how to skim texts effectively but we may find it increasingly difficult to focus on difficult tasks. What does this mean for how we educate children? Will the shift to e-books make us forget how to read printed books?
Mangen is a favorite researcher of digital skeptics such as Nicholas Carr. Her research has found that reading on screens has taught us how to skim texts effectively but we may find it increasingly difficult to focus on difficult tasks. What does this mean for how we educate children? Will the shift to e-books make us forget how to read printed books?
Comment Matter = mother, at least etymologically (Score 1) 163
Did you know that "matter" is (likely) derived from "mater", Latin for "mother"? http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=matter That makes your last sentence deliciously tautological :-)
Comment Re:Red and green apples. (Score 1) 371
replying to undo moderation.
