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Eureka! When a Blow to the Head Creates a Sudden Genius - Brian Fung - Health. Brain injuries can sometimes reveal extraordinary talents in people. Now, savant syndrome is helping to create whole new fields of scientific discovery. Wikimedia Commons For a long time, it was a mystery as to how horses galloped. Did all four hooves at some point leave the ground? Or was one hoof always planted? It wasn't until the 1880s when a British photographer named Eadweard Muybridge settled the debate with a series of photographs of a horse in midstride. Muybridge could be obsessive -- and eccentric, too. Muybridge may have been what psychiatrists call an acquired savant, somebody with extraordinary talent but who wasn't born with it and who didn't learn the skills from someplace else later. It sounds crazy.

Wisconsin psychiatrist Darold Treffert keeps a registry of known savants as part of his research on the subject. It wasn't until recently that scientists began figuring out what actually causes savant syndrome. "What happens is that there is injury," said Treffert. Or do we? S.Korean, Russian scientists bid to clone mammoth.

Russian and South Korean scientists have signed a deal on joint research intended to recreate a woolly mammoth, an animal which last walked the earth some 10,000 years ago. The deal was signed by Vasily Vasiliev, vice rector of North-Eastern Federal University of the Sakha Republic, and controversial cloning pioneer Hwang Woo-Suk of South Korea's Sooam Biotech Research Foundation, on Tuesday. Hwang was a national hero until some of his research into creating human stem cells was found in 2006 to have been faked. But his work in creating Snuppy, the world's first cloned dog, in 2005, has been verified by experts. Stem cell scientists are now setting their sights on the extinct woolly mammoth, after global warming thawed Siberia's permafrost and uncovered remains of the animal.

Sooam said it would launch research this year if the Russian university can ship the remains. "The first and hardest mission is to restore mammoth cells," another Sooam researcher, Hwang In-Sung, told AFP. Millions Against Monsanto: The Food Fight of Our Lives | Food. Photo Credit: Shutterstock/Zvonimir Atletic April 11, 2012 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. "If you put a label on genetically engineered food you might as well put a skull and crossbones on it. " -- Norman Braksick, president of Asgrow Seed Co., a subsidiary of Monsanto, quoted in the Kansas City Star, March 7, 1994 "Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food.

For nearly two decades, Monsanto and corporate agribusiness have exercised near-dictatorial control over American agriculture, aided and abetted by indentured politicians and regulatory agencies, supermarket chains, giant food processors, and the so-called “natural” products industry. Finally, public opinion around the biotech industry’s contamination of our food supply and destruction of our environment has reached the tipping point.

Moving the Battleground. Simulation argument. Enjoying "Oedipus the King" by Sophocles. Enjoying "Oedipus the King", by Sophocles Ed Friedlander MDerf@kcumb.edu This website collects no information. If you e-mail me, neither your e-mail address nor any other information will ever be passed on to any third party, unless required by law. I have no sponsors and do not host paid advertisements. All external links are provided freely to sites that I believe my visitors will find helpful. This page was last modified December 7, 2011. If you are a student assigned to read "Oedipus the King", and perhaps also to comment on Aristotle's ideas about tragedy and "tragic flaws", this site will help you get started.

Warning: This is NOT a "family" site, and Sophocles is NOT "family entertainment". "Oedipus the King" is a monument to Sophocles's dramatic genius, and to the freedom of Athenian thought. Sophocles himself served as an army general. "Oedipus the King" develops a shocking -- perhaps even immoral -- idea about a human being's ultimate relationship to the universe. What's here? 1. Documents/Psychoactive_substances.pdf. Royal Institute of Philosophy @ Keele « Philosophy@Keele Weblog. Another busy start of the academic year, but with two excellent Royal Institute of Philosophy Invited Lectures and two more to come. In addition, we will have a Special Lecture organised by the Forum for Philosophical Research on 22 November (concluding with an improvised duet by the speaker, Steve Tormans, and Keele Philosophy Lecturer, James Tartaglia).

The Special Lecture will follow shortly after the UNESCO World Philosophy Day (on 17 November 2011). So, we will take this opportunity to celebrate also this special day. The next RIP Lecture will be on 29 November 2011. I paste below details of the first two RIP lectures, more information about the next one and the Forum Special Lecture, as well as a letter from the General Director of UNESCO on the occasion of the World Philosophy Day. (All events take place on Tuesdays, 6-7.30pm in Room CBA0.060, Chancellors Building) 11 October 2011 Can Consequences Be Right-makers? 8 November 2011 On Tortoises and Vegetables 22 November 2011 Irina Bokova.