Human Connectome Project releases major data set on brain connectivity The Human Connectome Project, a five-year endeavor to link brain connectivity to human behavior, has released a set of high-quality imaging and behavioral data to the scientific community. The project has two major goals: to collect vast amounts of data using advanced brain imaging methods on a large population of healthy adults, and to make the data freely available so that scientists worldwide can make further discoveries about brain circuitry. The initial data release includes brain imaging scans plus behavioral information — individual differences in personality, cognitive capabilities, emotional characteristics and perceptual function — obtained from 68 healthy adult volunteers. Over the next several years, the number of subjects studied will increase steadily to a final target of 1,200. The initial release is an important milestone because the new data have much higher resolution in space and time than data obtained by conventional brain scans. Courtesy of D. Courtesy of M.F.
Top 10 Queer and Feminist Books of 2013 2013 has been truly awesome for new queer and/or feminist things to read. Here are some of the best ones. 10. How Poetry Saved My Life, by Amber Dawn Amber Dawn combines memoir and poetry into something that is both at once as she discusses her experiences as a writer, sex worker, survivor and queer-identified person. In her interview with Ali, Dawn says: “Many memoirs cover a chronological time frame—travelling from the author’s “inciting moment,” through a sort of character or personal arch, to an ending resolution. 9. The Summer We Got Free is a fearless, semi-magical-realist queer coming-of-age story that also won the 2013 Lambda Literary Award for debut fiction. In a review at Lambda Literary, Dawn Robinson writes: “I will not give you all of the salient details of this layered, complex, and absorbing novel in this brief review—no spoilers here. 8. In an interview with Dan Fishback on Emily Books, Binnie says: 7. A.J. 6. In an interview with the Rumpus, Corin says: 5. 4. 3. 2. 1.
A time traveller’s guide to medieval 14th-century shopping The poet WH Auden once suggested that, in order to understand your own country, you need to have lived in at least two others. But what about your own time? By the same reckoning, you need to have experienced at least two other centuries. We can approach the past as if it really is ‘a foreign country’ – somewhere we might visit. The marketplace “Ribs of beef and many a pie!” All around him people are moving, gesturing, talking. Crowds are noisy. What can you buy? But in most markets it is the popular varieties which you see glistening in the wet hay-filled crates. Next we come to an area set aside for corn: sacks of wheat, barley, oats and rye are piled up, ready for sale to the townsmen. These are only for the wealthy. The rest of the marketplace performs two functions. Planks, you ask? Everyone in medieval society is heavily dependent on each other for such supplies, and the marketplace is where all these interdependencies meet. Haggling Regulations Facts Prices in the 1390s*
Glass Sculptures Of Deadly Viruses and Bacteria By Like Jerram | Rederr January 10, 2014 Glass Sculptures Of Deadly Viruses Made By Luke Jerram Ebola Artwork By Luke Jerram - Website - Facebook - Twitter Ebola haemorrhagic fever (EHF) is a viral haemorrhagic fever and one of the most virulent viral diseases known to humankind. One of the most complex glass artworks Jerram’s team have created to date, the sculpture was commissioned for Artis Royal Zoo, Amsterdam, Holland. Giardia Giardia is a parasite that can infect the intestines and cause ‘giardiasis’ which can lead to sudden-onset (acute) or persistent (chronic) diarrhoea. Created 20,000 x larger than the actual parasite, the artwork has been made for Artis Royal Zoo in Amsterdam. E. coli This is one of the largest and most fragile of Jerram’s sculptures. Ev71 – Hand Foot and Mouth Disease Enterovirus 71 (EV71), one of the major causative agents for hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD). This virus is a member of the enterovirus species A. The artwork was commissioned by a scientific research centre in 2012. Amoeba
Habits of Mind THE INDIAN MEDIA IS LIKE pliable dough. It can be kneaded, punched, stretched and rolled in all directions. If overworked, it turns rubbery, dense and inert. And if the hands that knead it are dirty, it becomes impossible to separate the grime from the good. External pressures and internal pollutants jointly compromise the loaf. In the past two years, there have been a number of examples of our institutions and politicians overworking the press. Within the media industry, there was plenty of grime. Having thought through some of the specific instances of the external punches on the media and the ugly impairments inside the media, large questions bog my mind. We don’t have—like a few democracies do, and like all democracies ought to—a well-articulated philosophical framework by which to think about the media, that would define to all—politicians, judges, bureaucrats, police, academics, media owners, editors and reporters—what the rules of the game are. “I don’t know,” Hutchins replied.
What medieval Europe did with its teenagers Image copyright Getty Images Today, there's often a perception that Asian children are given a hard time by their parents. But a few hundred years ago northern Europe took a particularly harsh line, sending children away to live and work in someone else's home. Not surprisingly, the children didn't always like it. Around the year 1500, an assistant to the Venetian ambassador to England was struck by the strange attitude to parenting that he had encountered on his travels. He wrote to his masters in Venice that the English kept their children at home "till the age of seven or nine at the utmost" but then "put them out, both males and females, to hard service in the houses of other people, binding them generally for another seven or nine years". It was for the children's own good, he was told - but he suspected the English preferred having other people's children in the household because they could feed them less and work them harder. So why did this seemingly cruel system evolve?
Mystery Flu Winter 2013 Zinc disrupts magnesium uptake in pneumonia zinc starves lethal bacteria to stop infection Monday, 11 November 2013 Australian researchers have found that zinc can 'starve' one of the world's most deadly bacteria by preventing its uptake of an essential metal. The finding, by infectious disease researchers at the University of Adelaide and The University of Queensland, opens the way for further work to design antibacterial agents in the fight against Streptococcus pneumoniae. Streptococcus pneumoniae is responsible for more than one million deaths a year, killing children, the elderly and other vulnerable people by causing pneumonia, meningitis, and other serious infectious diseases. The study reveals that the bacterial transporter (PsaBCA) uses a 'spring-hammer' mechanism to bind the metals. "Without manganese, these bacteria can easily be cleared by the immune system," says Dr McDevitt. Dr. Dr.
India’s Post-Ideological Politician The catch-all populism of Arvind Kejriwal and the Aam Aadmi Party has proven politically expedient in India. Arvind Kejriwal is not a socialist. He’ll be the first one to say this. Yet the website arvindkejriwal.net.in (clearly run by a fan of Kejriwal, not the man himself) proudly proclaims that Kejriwal is a “popular socialist.” This manifesto was prepared for the Delhi Assembly elections, the first big test for the fledgling Aam Aadmi Party (commonly known as the AAP). Delhi’s ruling party — the dynastic, dithering Congress — got walloped, winning a measly 8 seats, as voters expressed their discontent with rising food prices and a series of embarrassing political scandals. But Kejriwal himself scored the most telling victory, soundly defeating Congress’s Sheila Dikshit, who has served as Delhi’s Chief Minister (the state-level equivalent of Prime Minister) for the past fifteen years. With this kind of support base, why does Kejriwal eschew the leftist label?
Siberian princess reveals her 2,500 year old tattoos She is to be kept in a special mausoleum at the Republican National Museum in capital Gorno-Altaisk, where eventually she will be displayed in a glass sarcophagus to tourists. For the past 19 years, since her discovery, she was kept mainly at a scientific institute in Novosibirsk, apart from a period in Moscow when her remains were treated by the same scientists who preserve the body of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin. To mark the move 'home', The Siberian Times has obtained intricate drawings of her remarkable tattoos, and those of two men, possibly warriors, buried near her on the remote Ukok Plateau, now a UNESCO world cultural and natural heritage site, some 2,500 metres up in the Altai Mountains in a border region close to frontiers of Russia with Mongolia, China and Kazakhstan. To many observers, it is startling how similar they are to modern-day tattoos. Reconstruction of Princess Ukok's tattoos, made by Siberian scientists 'It is a phenomenal level of tattoo art.