George Bernard Shaw on religion – The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

There is little evidence that religious belief protects people from stress-related diseases. The evidence is not strong, but it would not be surprising if it were true, for the same kind of reason as faith-healing might turn out to work in a few cases. I wish it were not necessary to add that such beneficial effects in no way boost the truth value of religion’s claims. In George Bernard Shaw’s words,

“The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.”

Taken from The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, 2006

An alternate route to psychology?

A hundred years ago, a bold researcher fascinated by the riddle of human personality might have grabbed onto new psychoanalytic concepts like repression and the unconscious. These ideas were invented by people who loved language. Even as therapeutic concepts of the self spread widely in simplified, easily accessible form, they retained something of the prolix, literary humanism of their inventors. From the languor of the analyst’s couch to the chatty inquisitiveness of a self-help questionnaire, the dominant forms of self-exploration assume that the road to knowledge lies through words. Trackers are exploring an alternate route. Instead of interrogating their inner worlds through talking and writing, they are using numbers. They are constructing a quantified self.

Taken from “The Data-Driven Life” By GARY WOLF NYTimes.com

Neurogénesis?

Atrás quedaron los días en que se pensaba que el cerebro era un órgano escrito en piedra. Hoy se sabe que la neurogénesis no es ciencia ficción. “Ocurre todos los días, y poco a poco vamos aprendiendo qué actividades generan más neuronas”, destaca Maestre, directora del laboratorio de neurociencias de La Universidad del Zulia y presidenta de Fundaconciencia.

http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/articulos/53555.html

Isaac Asimov – I Robot, precious moments at work…

“Oh, why do they give us these jobs?” asked Donovan.
“Because,” replied Powell, gently, “we’re no loss, if they lose us. O.K., relax!…”

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“Then look at our position,” added Powell, “if everything works – fine! If everything goes wrong – we’re out of our depth and there probably isn’t a thing we can do, or anybody else. But the job belongs to us and not to anyone else so we’re on the spot, Mike.”

Carl Sagan – The “Pale Blue Dot”, May 11, 1996

“Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves”…

Voyager 1: Family Portrait, Feb. 14, 1990

The cameras of Voyager 1 on Feb. 14, 1990, pointed back toward the sun and took a series of pictures of the sun and the planets, making the first ever “portrait” of our solar system as seen from the outside.

Nóbel de Medicina 2006: Hacia el dominio de las “Partículas Elementales”

Press Release

2 October 2006

The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has today decided to award

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 2006

jointly to

Andrew Z. Fire and Craig C. Mello

for their discovery of

“RNA interference – gene silencing by double-stranded RNA“

New opportunities in biomedical research, gene technology and health care

RNA interference opens up exciting possibilities for use in gene technology. Double-stranded RNA molecules have been designed to activate the silencing of specific genes in humans, animals or plants. Such silencing RNA molecules are introduced into the cell and activate the RNA interference machinery to break down mRNA with an identical code.

This method has already become an important research tool in biology and biomedicine. In the future, it is hoped that it will be used in many disciplines including clinical medicine and agriculture. Several recent publications show successful gene silencing in human cells and experimental animals. For instance, a gene causing high blood cholesterol levels was recently shown to be silenced by treating animals with silencing RNA. Plans are underway to develop silencing RNA as a treatment for virus infections, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, endocrine disorders and several other conditions.

Read more…

Jorge Volpi – En Busca de Klingsor: Apostando por la inmovilidad.

-Me temo, querido amigo – decía Von Neumann – que usted está apostando por la inmovilidad, lo más peligroso que puede hacerse en un juego como éste… ¡Claro que puede intentarlo, pero hasta las leyes físicas irían en su contra! En los juegos uno siempre intenta avanzar, ir consiguiendo nuevos objetivos, derrotar lentamente al adversario… – Von Neumann regresó a su asiento y puso su gruesa mano sobre el brazo de Bacon-. Como amigo suyo, debo decirle que su estrategia lo llevará al fracaso…

Roger D. Kornberg – En busca de las “Partículas Elementales”

Press Release

4 October 2006

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2006 to

Roger D. Kornberg
Stanford University, CA, USA

“for his studies of the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription”.

A family story about life

In order for our bodies to make use of the information stored in the genes, a copy must first be made and transferred to the outer parts of the cells. There it is used as an instruction for protein production – it is the proteins that in their turn actually construct the organism and its function. The copying process is called transcription. Roger Kornberg was the first to create an actual picture of how transcription works at a molecular level in the important group of organisms called eukaryotes (organisms whose cells have a well-defined nucleus). Mammals like ourselves are included in this group, as is ordinary yeast.

Read more…