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Scientists conclude that some video games created as mental health interventions can be helpful -- if modest -- tools in improving the mental well-being of children and teens with anxiety, depression and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Spintronics -- devices that use microscopic magnetism in conjunction with electric current -- could lead to computing technology as fast as conventional electronics but much more energy efficient. As such devices are developed and studied, an important unresolved question is how device operation is affected by heating.

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss471_Theodore_Schwartz_2024_09_24.mp3 Download MP3

We’ve all heard the phrase “it’s not brain surgery.” But what exactly is brain surgery? It’s a profession that is barely a hundred years old and profoundly connects two human beings, but few know how it works, or its history. How did early neurosurgeons come to understand the human brain—an extraordinarily complex organ that controls everything we do, and yet at only three pounds is so fragile? And how did this incredibly challenging and lifesaving specialty emerge?

In this warm, rigorous, and deeply insightful book, Dr. Theodore H. Schwartz explores what it’s like to hold the scalpel, wield the drill, extract a tumor, fix a bullet hole, and remove a blood clot—when every second can mean life or death. Drawing from the author’s own cases, plus media, sports, and government archives, this seminal work delves into all the brain-related topics that have long-consumed public curiosity, like what really happened to JFK, President Biden’s brain surgery, and the NFL’s management of CTE. Dr. Schwartz also surveys the field’s latest incredible advances and discusses the philosophical questions of the unity of the self and the existence of free will.

A neurosurgeon as well as a professor of neurosurgery at Weill Cornell Medicine, one of the busiest and most highly ranked neurosurgery centers in the world, Dr. Schwartz tells this story like no one else could. Told through anecdote and clear explanation, this is the ultimate cultural and scientific history of a literally mind-blowing human endeavor, one that cuts to the core of who we are.

Theodore Schwartz, MD, is the David and Ursel Barnes Endowed Professor of Minimally Invasive Neurosurgery at Weill Cornell Medicine, one of the busiest and highest-ranked neurosurgery centers in the world. He has published over five hundred scientific articles and chapters on neurosurgery, and has lectured around the world—from Bogotá to Vienna to Mumbai—on new, minimally invasive surgical techniques that he helped develop. He also runs a basic science laboratory devoted to epilepsy research. He studied philosophy and literature at Harvard. His new book is: Gray Matters: A Biography of Brain Surgery.

Shermer and Schwartz discuss:

• Brief biographical history of how he became a brain surgeon and how you can too
• A brief anatomical lesson on the brain and nervous system
• How does anesthesia work and where does consciousness go?
• Wilder Penfield and brain mapping
• Head-on collisions and brain injuries
• Sports neurosurgery
• CTE, Football, Boxing, concussions, etc.
• Brain tumors and how to treat them: Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), Meningioma
• Cancer vs. tumors
• Strokes and aneurysms
• Cell phones and brain tumors
• Famous cases: Fyodor Dostoevsky, Johnny Cochrane, John McCain, Muhammad Ali, Ted Kennedy, H.M. (Henry Molaison), Phineas Gage, Andre the Giant, Joe Biden, Jim Brady, Eva Paron, Michael J. Fox, Lance Armstrong, Natasha Richardson
• Memory loss, dementia, senility, Alzheimer’s, etc.
• Frontal lobotomies: 1935–1955 over 60,000 were performed
• The neuroscience of violence and aggression: Donta Page, Mr. Oft, Charles Whitman
• Free will and determinism
• Sentience, consciousness, and the hard problem
• The Self: Theseus’s Ship (how much of the brain would need to change for loss of self?)
• Hindsight bias and how we justify our beliefs and behaviors
• His father’s stroke and death
• Neurolink and the future of computer-brain interface technology.

If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support by making a $5 or $10 monthly donation.

Dopamine was long thought to play a part in the placebo effect for pain relief, but a new study is questioning its true role

On June 6th, 2024, the fourth orbital test flight of the Starship successfully lifted off at 07:50 a.m. CT (08:50 a.m. EDT; 06:50 PDT) from SpaceX’s Starbase in Texas. This test was the first time the Starship (SN29) and Super Heavy (BN11) prototypes reentered Earth’s atmosphere and landed successfully. While the SN29 conducted a powered vertical landing before splashing down in the Indian Ocean, the BN11 executed a similar powered landing before splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico. In a recent tweet, Elon Musk shared a photo of the BN11 booster being pulled out of the sea.

Starship Super Heavy Booster Flight 4 pic.twitter.com/EMGpNVn58Q

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 23, 2024

News of the retrieval was posted via Elon Musk’s X account, where he hinted at the possibility of refurbishment and reuse, writing, “Fixer upper.” In addition to being the first flight test in which both vehicles made it back in one piece, this flight was also the first time that a Super Heavy booster simulated a landing at a “virtual tower.” In the future, SpaceX intends to retrieve its boosters by “catching” them with the Orbital Launch Mount tower at their Starbase facility. This is expected to occur for the first time during the fifth integrated flight test, scheduled for no earlier than late November 2024.

The flight test was originally scheduled for September but was delayed by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) until November due to environmental complaints and the licensing process. According to statements by the FAA and SpaceX, the company was already authorized to conduct multiple flights using the same mission profile they followed for the fourth flight test. However, adding an attempted “catch” has led the FAA to conduct a more thorough review of the flight and the launch facility.

The post SpaceX Recovers the Super Heavy Booster from Flight 4 appeared first on Universe Today.

Despite its importance for mathematics, the neuronal basis of the number zero in the human brain was previously unknown. Researchers discovered that individual nerve cells in the medial temporal lobe recognize zero as a numerical value and not as a separate category 'nothing'.

Scientists are pioneering a new approach to designing electrolytes for more energy-efficient and less carbon-intensive electrochemical processes. They hope to improve electrolyte performance in applications such as iron production for steel.

Researchers have developed a set of hexagon-shaped robotic components that can be snapped together into larger and larger structures. Each one of the component hexagons is made of rigid plates that serve as its exoskeleton. Driven by electricity, the plates can change their shape, shifting from long and narrow to wide and flat at high speed. The combined structures are capable of jumping four times their own body height, then can shape-shift to roll extremely fast, or use multimodal actuation to crawl through confined spaces.

The robotic components were developed at the Max-Planck-Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS). The modules are made of six lightweight rigid plates made from glass fiber that form a hexagon. Magnets embedded into the plates allows for quick connection to other components as well as providing a shared electrical ground between the modules.

Individual HEXEL modules combine soft artificial muscles with rigid components for fast and large motions. Credit: Zachary Yoder / MPI-IS Ellen Rumley / MPI-IS

The design team integrated artificial “muscles” into the inner joints of the hexagons, called hydraulically amplified self-healing electrostatic (HASEL) muscles. Applying a high voltage to the module causes the muscle to activate, rotating the joints of the hexagon and changing its shape from long and narrow to wide and flat.

“Combining soft and rigid components in this way enables high strokes and high speeds. By connecting several modules, we can create new robot geometries and repurpose them for changing needs,” said  Ellen Rumley, a visiting researcher from the University of Colorado Boulder, in a press release from MPI-IS. Rumley and Zachary Yoder, who are both Ph.D. students working in the Robotic Materials Department, are co-first authors of a new paper, “Hexagonal electrohydraulic modules for rapidly reconfigurable high-speed robots,” published in Science Robotics.

The modules are reconfigurable, with an easy process of attaching or detaching the modules. Chains of modules can be rapidly connected and can operate from one voltage source. The modules can each have their own behaviors, which allows for various operations.

The team created a video to show the various configurations and behaviors that can be created with HEXEL modules. The modules can be seen rolling, dancing, jumping, crawling, and many other motions.  

“In general, it makes a lot of sense to develop robots with reconfigurable capabilities,” said Yoder. “It’s a sustainable design option – instead of buying five different robots for five different purposes, we can build many different robots by using the same components. Robots made from reconfigurable modules could be rearranged on demand to provide more versatility than specialized systems, which could be beneficial in resource-limited environments.”

The post Shape-Shifting Robots Mimic Muscle Movements appeared first on Universe Today.

I hate writing about cancellations like this day after day, but I see it as part of my brief to let people know what’s going on.  This time we have writer Elisa Albert canceled—or rather, a panel she was scheduled to be on was canceled—because she was a “Zionist”, even though she wasn’t going to talk about Judaism. (To a very large extent, “Zionist” has become a euphemism for “Jews,” as nearly all Jews in America are Zionists—i.e., support the existence of Israel—and the only anti-Zionists I know who aren’t really anti-Semites are some Orthodox Jews, mostly in Israel.)

But I digress. The Free Press article below (click headline to read, or see it archived here), writer Elisa Albert was canceled because she was a Zionist Jew, even though the panel she was supposed to be on—a discussion of four women’s books at the University of Albany’s New York State Writer’s Festival—wasn’t going to be about Zionism.  This is the kind of cancelation that seems to me to presage a growing wave of anti-Semitism in America.  The story is below:

Excerpts (the author is Joe Nocera, and the subject, Elisa Albert, is in the photo above). Bolding is mine:

For the last seven years, the New York State Writers Institute has held an annual book festival at the University at Albany. It’s where notable authors come together and discuss big ideas like climate change, feminism, and immigration. But this year, the festival, which was held on Saturday, was disrupted because two authors refused to discuss their books with the panel’s moderator. Why? Because she is a “Zionist.”

The Zionist in question was Elisa Albert, a 46-year-old progressive feminist author whose novels—she’s written three of them—are dark comedies about subjects like modern motherhood and fame. She had agreed to moderate the panel months earlier, and she was looking forward to it. “I was going to be like a game-show host,” she told me in a phone interview. “Congenial and respectful. Have some fun in the process.”

But on Thursday afternoon, just as she was preparing to read the books by her fellow panelists, she received an email out of the blue from Mark Koplik, the assistant director of the Writers Institute. “Basically, not to sugar coat this, Aisha Gawad and Lisa Ko don’t want to be on a panel with a ‘Zionist,’ ” he wrote in an email shared with The Free Press. “We’re taken by surprise, and somewhat nonplussed, and want to talk this out.”

Albert was stunned. Though she described herself to me as “a proud Jew” who has been fiercely outspoken since October 7, there had been no hint of trouble in the months leading up to the festival. And the panel’s topic—“Girls Coming of Age”—seemed utterly benign.

But Aisha Abdel Gawad, a Muslim writer in her mid-30s whose novel Between Two Moons was published last year to considerable acclaim, and Lisa Ko, whose first book, The Leavers, was nominated for a National Book Award, were no longer willing to share the stage with a Jew who supports Israel. Unsure how to proceed, Koplik and the institute’s director Paul Grondahl contacted the third writer on the panel, the crime novelist Emily Layden who, according to Albert, told them she was dropping out as well because she wanted to avoid the controversy. (Gawad and Ko did not respond to emails, sent both to them and their literary agents, requesting comment.A request for comment was also emailed to Layden’s publicist, who did not respond.)

At that point the Writers Institute and the University at Albany, which administers the program, had to make a choice: They could publicly condemn the antisemitism displayed by Gawad and Ko and make sure the festival-goers were aware of what had happened. In a series of phone calls Thursday afternoon, Albert says she tried to convince them to do just that. Or they could capitulate to the bigotry by trying to sweep the whole thing under the rug, and listing the cancellation on the festival’s website as the result of “unforeseen circumstances.”

The institute chose the latter course.. . .

Albert suggested that they keep the panel, showing three empty chairs, but director Grondahl said that wouldn’t be fair if attendees were expecting a full panel. I can see the point there, but surely the Institute should have given Albert a chance to speak on her own: she even could have spoken about her cancellation. But it didn’t fly.  The article goes on to discuss the problems currently facing Jewish writers (I simply can’t imagine any adult fiction being written that is sympathetic to Jews or Israel).  The issue was highlighted this year in a NYT op-ed column by James Kirchick, who gives examples of “anti-Zionism” in the literary world. Click below to read, or find it archived here: Kirchick’s thesis is that Jews have a hard time making it in the literary world unless they’re willing to denounce Israel.

There has been some pushback. For one thing, banning someone from a state-sponsored panel because of their religious views is probably illegal:

In addition to failing to uphold its moral responsibility in the face of antisemitism, legal experts told me that the New York State Writers Institute may well have violated the law.

David Schizer, the dean emeritus of Columbia Law School—and the co-head of Columbia’s Task Force on Antisemitism—told me that because the Writers Institute is part of the University at Albany, which is state-funded, it must adhere to laws that outlaw discrimination. And the Department of Education has been clear that boycotting someone because of their religion is in violation of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. “If a university that takes government money says it will not have panels with Jews, that is clearly a problem,” he told me. “That is clearly illegal.”

He added, “If an institution formally condemns the antisemitism and the exclusion of Jews from a panel, that could have gone a long way to mitigate the issue.” The institute could also have let Albert go on by herself, he said. Both options are precisely what Albert said she had asked the directors of the Writers Institute to do, but they refused.

This sentiment was echoed by the head of the whole SUNY system:

On Saturday, as the festival was taking place, King sent an angry email to Albany’s president, Havidán Rodríguez, which Albert obtained and showed to The Free Press. Expressing shock at learning “from media coverage” about the canceled panel, he said the festival should have issued “an unequivocal statement that bigotry and antisemitism are absolutely unacceptable and the panel would proceed with or without these people participating.” He added: “SUNY’s content-neutral commitment to free expression and our fidelity to the protections guaranteed by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would have led to a response along the lines the author suggested. As I wrote in a recent public letter and have emphasized to all SUNY campus presidents: Antisemitism is antisemitism whatever ‘code words’ are used, including if ‘Zionist’ is intended to mean the same thing as ‘Jewish.’ ”

King concluded: “I believe the only appropriate response at this point is to ensure that Ms. Albert is afforded the opportunity to have her views expressed to the greatest extent possible, whether that is during the remaining hours of the festival or at a subsequent event held by the Institute.”

As for Albert, she took it like a mensch, though she’s not sure she’ll participate in the Writers festival any more:

. . . But she imagined a different way this could have played out—one in which Gawad and Ko had stayed on the panel instead of walking away.

“Had they been even slightly more evolved thinkers, I can easily imagine a scenario in which they might have chosen to come to Albany with open minds and hearts,” she said. “Perhaps they might have hopped that train to Albany with some awareness that, while the moderator of their panel is a fellow novelist whose lived experience and history and inheritance and education and understanding and fear and trauma and grief and shame are profoundly different from their own, there might still be something—no matter how minor, or how seemingly banal—to learn from me. Perhaps, in my wishful scenario, they might even have found it within themselves to hold space for difference, and to maybe, just maybe, grow ever so slightly in the process. Perhaps, were they just that smallest bit more open-minded, they would have managed to teach me something in turn.

“Anyway,” she concluded, “I’m sorry we won’t have the chance to meet and talk, because it would have been super cool to understand them better. And, dare to dream, I could have offered them some understanding of myself in turn.”

Bravo for Albert, and boos to the hateful Aisha Gawad and Lisa Ko, as well as the cowardly Emily Laden!  I sympathize with Albert even more because my own children’s book, initially met with enthusiasm by a respected editor and a famous illustrator, wasn’t published because the editor wouldn’t dare show it to publishers. The problem: it was a fantasy book about cats in India, and I am not Indian. I had no credibility to write about Indian cats because. . . I was a white man!   (Are there any publishers out there with guts? If so, I have a book to sell!)

Remember, this was a literary festival, and in publishing all points of view are considered by good editors. To cancel a book discussion because one of the authors supports Israel is simply beyond the pale. But these days it seems almost normal. This normalization of anti-Zionism is, frankly, scary.

Here’s a short clip of Albert at that Festival in 2015.  She seems “cool” and funny:

The tiered umbrella is one of Thailand's oldest and most sacred ornamental symbols. Constructing one of these ornate pieces, also called chatras, can take master artisans up to six months. However, researchers demonstrate a technique for constructing seven-tiered umbrellas using high-powered lasers, which dramatically reduces the production time. Employing carbon dioxide lasers, they were able to fashion umbrellas from stainless steel in a matter of days while preserving their intricate beauty.

A mysterious type of iron-rich magma entombed within extinct volcanoes is likely abundant with rare earth elements and could offer a new way to source these in-demand metals, according to new research. Rare earth elements are found in smartphones, flat screen TVs, magnets, and even trains and missiles. They are also vital to the development of electric vehicles and renewable energy technologies such as wind turbines.

Researchers have found a way to use a component of glycerol to produce bio-based propylene.

A new study reveals that artificial intelligence chatbots, such as ChatGPT, may be almost as effective as consulting a doctor for advice on low back pain.

Astronomers have observed the atmosphere of a hot and uniquely inflated exoplanet using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.

With strong bactericidal properties, graphene has the potential to become a game changer in the fight against antibiotic-resistant bacteria. So far there have been no efficient ways to control these properties -- and thus no way to make use of graphene's potential in healthcare. Now researchers have solved the problem by using the same technology found in an ordinary fridge magnet. The result of which, is an ultra-thin acupuncture-like surface that can act as a coating on catheters and implants -- killing 99.9 percent of all bacteria on a surface.

Ammonia (NH3) can be decomposed to produce hydrogen gas without releasing CO2. The ease of transport and high hydrogen density make it valuable for the green energy industry. A drawback of using NH3 is that it requires very high temperatures for decomposition reactions. Researchers have now presented a surface protonics-assisted method for the on-demand production of green hydrogen from ammonia using an electric field and Ru/CeO2 catalyst.

In most vertebrates, a pattern of chemical marks on the genome is a reliable indicator of age, but in axolotls this clock seems to stop after the first four years of life

New research is revealing that common sense is a lot more idiosyncratic than we thought, with important implications for tackling political polarisation and the future of AI

Artificial coastlines, including human-made dikes and other engineered constructions, can help prevent erosion and protect from storms and flooding. However, ecological functions remain unprotected from many of these structures. So researchers in China have investigated the use of specialized types of cement. The team started with a limestone and clay cement that hardens underwater and then added polyacrylamide and chitosan. The two treatments were mixed into the cement to form the hardened substrate, and they were sprayed onto previously hardened cement as a surface treatment. After two days, biofilm was found active and growing well on the surface-treated samples.

UPDATE: As Malgorzata points out in a comment below citing an Algemeiner article, Whitmer did defend her attorney general, which constitutes taking sides against the odious Rashida Tlaib. A quote from the Algemeiner:

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) issued a statement in defense of the state’s Jewish Attorney General Dana Nessel over what she called “antisemitic” suggestions by US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) that Nessel’s office harbored “biases” against pro-Palestinian activists.

“The suggestion that Attorney General Nessel would make charging decisions based on her religion as opposed to the rule of law is antisemitic,” Whitmer wrote on Monday. “Attorney General Nessel has always conducted her work with integrity and followed the rule of law. We must all use our platform and voices to call out hateful rhetoric and racist tropes.”

The statement came one day after Whitmer, during an interview with CNN anchor Jake Tapper, initially refused to weigh in on the quarrel between Nessel and Tlaib, who suggested that the attorney general has not treated anti-Israel protesters impartially because of her Jewish faith.

Whitmer, having corrected herself, is back on the side of the angels again. If only she were the Democratic candidate for President!

Although Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, identifies herself as a “progressive” Democratic, to me she seems progressive in the right way: she’s trying to fix the problems in her state with tangible legislation. You can see the list of her accomplishments here, and A. B. Stoddard, writing in The Bulwark last year, called Whitmer 52, “one of the most experienced, exciting, and winning Democrats in the country.” I agree with nearly all of her policies—although she’s a bit too soft on illegal immigration—and that’s why I wanted Whitmer to be the Democratic candidate for President. (Importantly, she also governs a swing state.) She has accomplished stuff in a bipartisan climate, and I’d feel a lot better with her at the helm than with Kamala Harris.

But when Kamala Harris was anointed by the Democratic Party to be its candidate, Whitmer refused to be a candidate. That’s very sad, because, given her record, Harris doesn’t hold a candle to her.  And, of course, if Harris wins this time she’ll surely be the Democratic candidate in 2028 unless she screws up big time, so that Whitmer would have to wait eight more years if she wanted to run America.

So I was sad to see this article in Politico; the title tells the tale (click to read):

An excerpt:

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer declined to take sides in a debate between Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) over almost a dozen University of Michigan students charged for pro-Palestinian protests.

“I’m not going to get in the middle of this argument that they’re having,” Whitmer said on Sunday in an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“I can just say this. We do want to make sure that students are safe on our campuses and we recognize that every person has the right to make their statement about how they feel about an issue, a right to speak out,” Whitmer added. “And I’m going to use every every lever of mine to ensure that both are true.”

Nessel, Michigan’s first Jewish Attorney General, recently charged 11 University of Michigan students for pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Most were charged for refusing to vacate the encampments on campus in May, according to the Detroit Metro Times.

Nessel defended the state’s decision to charge these students saying, “Conviction in your ideals is not an excuse for violations of the law” and “what is a crime anywhere else in the city remains a crime on university property.”

Tlaib — the only Palestinian American in Congress and a strong critic of Israel — criticized Nessel for this decision in an interview with the Detroit Metro Times. She said: “It seems that the attorney general decided if the issue was Palestine, she was going to treat it differently, and that alone speaks volumes about possible biases within the agency she runs.”

. . . When CNN’s Jake Tapper initially asked about the back and forth between Nessel and Tlaib, Whitmer declined to directly defend or criticize the state’s attorney general, responding that all she could say was “our Jewish community is in pain, as is our Palestinian and Muslim and Arab communities in Michigan.”

“I know that seeing the incredible toll that this war has taken on both communities has been really, really challenging and difficult. And my heart breaks for so many,” Whitmer said. “But as governor, my job is to make sure that both these communities are protected and respected under the law in Michigan. And that’s exactly what I’m going to stay focused on.”

Well, it seems to me that Whitmer should be supporting her own attorney general, or at least saying, that “Nessel brought charges against the protesters and we need to let those charges play out in the legal system”. But she went a bit further with her “whataboutism”, not recognizing, apparently, that free speech is not the same thing as disrupting a campus and violating the law.

That said, Whitmer is clearly between a rock and a hard place. While her attorney general brought charges against pro-Palestinian students, one of her state’s representatives, the odious Tlaib, is supported by many Michigan Palestinians or their supporters. So I can’t hold this against her very hard. While I dislike politicans that are pure pragmatists, Whitmer is not really a pragmatist.  She takes stands, and is known for her potty mouth, which I like.  A bit of that is evident in the video below.

Here’s her speech at the Democratic National Convention, without any nattering about coconuts or inappropriate laughter.  Whitmer of course had to support Harris in her speech, but believe me, I’d rather check a box for Whitmer than for Harris in November.  Had there been debates to choose a candidate, Whitmer would, I think, have come out on top.  This is a tough, accomplished women who has no problem articulating her positions.