Thursday Things: Use Your Brain Edition
22 October 2020. Vol 2 No 43 By Dan McGirt. #63
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“I am not the lemur you are looking for. Move along.” Photo by Arnaud STECKLE on Unsplash
Lemur Alert! Recently a lemur was kidnapped (lemurnapped?) from the San Diego Zoo. Doesn’t that sound like the setup for an Encyclopedia Brown case? I loved the Encyclopedia Brown mysteries when I was in elementary school. I think I probably ever solved only two of them, if that, correctly before having to look up the solution in the back.
I was also a fan of Sherlock Holmes the Hardy Boys. I still have my copy of the Hardy Boys Detective Handbook. Having read this, plus numerous cases by all these famous detectives, along with reviewing numerous Batman comics and reruns of the 1960s Batman television show, I decided in the third grade that I was qualified to open my own detective agency and I would charge the same rate as Encyclopedia Brown — 25 cents a day, plus expenses.
Unlike Encyclopedia Brown and the Hardy Boys, who had cases coming their way seemingly all the time, I found my elementary school and neighborhood completely devoid of mysteries for me to solve. I had zero clients. None. What I wouldn’t have given to solve The Case of the Missing Lemur! Not that I knew what a lemur was.
I say that by way of introducing my new hero, 5-year-old James Trinh, who did indeed solve the case of Maki the missing lemur:
Five-year old James Trinh spotted Maki in the parking lot of Hope Lutheran Day School as he made his way to his mother’s car, the school’s director Cynthia Huang said Friday afternoon.
James caught a glimpse of the furry fugitive and exclaimed, ‘There’s a lemur! There’s a lemur!’ Huang said.
Huang, who hadn’t heard about Maki’s mysterious disappearance from the zoo, was skeptical at first.
“We’ve had coyotes, skunks, raccoons,” the director said. “I thought, ‘Are you sure it’s not a raccoon?’”
It was definitely not a raccoon.
Good work, detective! Your knowledge of and ability to instantly identify a mammal native only to Madagascar saved the day. Encyclopedia Brown would be proud.
And young James did a lot better than 25 cents a day: 5-year-old boy gets lifetime zoo pass for spotting stolen lemur: “Recapture an endangered ring-tailed lemur stolen from the renowned San Francisco Zoo — and get a lifetime zoo pass.
James Trinh got the reward for spotting the lemur, Maki, and he couldn’t be happier. After all, he loves animals — and he’s only 5, The Associated Press reported.”
As for the lemur thief: Lemur thief arrested in San Rafael: “A Los Angeles man accused of stealing a lemur from the San Francisco Zoo this week was arrested in San Rafael on Thursday after he allegedly shoplifted from a supermarket and then stole a truck, authorities said.”
Case closed!
It’s electric! New research claims that consciousness itself is an energy field
An unusual new idea in neuroscience suggests that our consciousness is derived from a field of electromagnetic waves given off by neurons as they fire.
The idea is that these waves of electrical activity get sent out by neurons and, as they propagate across swaths of the brain, orchestrate our entire conscious experience.
The theory comes from Professor Johnjoe McFadden from the University of Surrey, who published his theory in the journal Neuroscience of Consciousness, which I’ll just assume you subscribe to.
A press release elaborates:
Professor McFadden posits that consciousness is in fact the brain's energy field. This theory could pave the way toward the development of conscious AI, with robots that are aware and have the ability to think becoming a reality.
Early theories on what our consciousness is and how it has been created tended toward the supernatural, suggesting that humans and probably other animals possess an immaterial soul that confers consciousness, thought and free will—capabilities that inanimate objects lack. Most scientists today have discarded this view, known as dualism, to embrace a 'monistic' view of a consciousness generated by the brain itself and its network of billions of nerves. By contrast, McFadden proposes a scientific form of dualism based on the difference between matter and energy, rather than matter and soul.
Dualism is back, baby! Take that, you monistic morons! Although this “building an AI with consciousness and self-aware robots” bit seems like a bad idea. Maybe let’s keep this theoretical and call it a day?
You can read the full trippy journal article here if you want more details, plus Shakespeare quotes and a picture of Robert Downey, Jr.: Integrating information in the brain’s EM field: the cemi field theory of consciousness
Ah, yes, it all makes sense now. Source: Neuroscience of Consciousness
In other news, babies don’t know much. Newborn brains lack maturity to process emotions as adults do
Humans aren't born with mature brain circuitry that attaches emotions to the things they see or hear in their environment, a new study shows.
Researchers studying brain scans of newborns found that the part of the brain involved in experiencing emotions isn't functionally connected in a mature way with the regions that process visual or auditory stimuli.
In adults, the connections between those parts of the brain allow us to feel fear when we see a bear in the woods or love when we see the face of a family member.
But it appears that it takes at least a few months for babies to be able to connect what they see with specific higher-level emotions, said Zeynep Saygin, co-author of the study and assistant professor of psychology at The Ohio State University.
This would seem fairly obvious, that our brains come with some assembly required. Nevertheless, now it’s official. Not sure when the EM field starts generating consciousness (per the last item) if all the neural connections aren’t made at birth. Is there some minimum threshold of neural activity necessary for consciousness to ignite? Further research (and grants!) needed!
You can read all the details in Adults vs. neonates: Differentiation of functional connectivity between the basolateral amygdala and occipitotemporal cortex published in the open access scientific journal PLOS ONE. Complete with helpful illustrations!
Ah, yes, it all makes sense now. Source: PLOS ONE
Okay, enough with the brainy stuff. Let’s talk about super wood! Stronger Than Steel, Able to Stop a Speeding Bullet—It’s Super Wood! No, get your mind out of the gutter:
Some varieties of wood, such as oak and maple, are renowned for their strength. But scientists say a simple and inexpensive new process can transform any type of wood into a material stronger than steel, and even some high-tech titanium alloys. Besides taking a star turn in buildings and vehicles, the substance could even be used to make bullet-resistant armor plates.
Now I want a wooden tank. With lasers. Also, this sentence alone makes this article worth the price of admission: “Wood is abundant and relatively low-cost—it literally grows on trees.”
Now, Hu and his colleagues say they have come up with a better way to densify wood, which they report in Nature. Their simple, two-step process starts with boiling wood in a solution of sodium hydroxide (NaOH) and sodium sulfite (Na2SO3) …
So simple! Why didn’t I think of that? Probably not enough neural connections. Do go on.
This partially removes lignin and hemicellulose (natural polymers that help stiffen a plant’s cell walls)—but it largely leaves the wood’s cellulose (another natural polymer) intact, Hu says.
The second step is almost as simple as the first: Compressing the treated wood until its cell walls collapse, then maintaining that compression as it is gently heated. The pressure and heat encourage the formation of chemical bonds between large numbers of hydrogen atoms and neighboring atoms in adjacent nanofibers of cellulose, greatly strengthening the material.
So, basically, super-compressed, super-dense wood becomes super strong. How strong?
The team’s compressed wood is three times as dense as the untreated substance, Hu says, adding that its resistance to being ripped apart is increased more than 10-fold. It also can become about 50 times more resistant to compression and almost 20 times as stiff. The densified wood is also substantially harder, more scratch-resistant and more impact-resistant. It can be molded into almost any shape.
Strong enough to stop bullets — not quite as well as Kevlar, but at 5 percent the cost of Kevlar. You get what you pay for. I’m not going to quote the entire article, but go read it for all the details on this new (yet old) material and its potential uses. And another team of researchers is making transparent wood.
Combine the two, and you’ve got bulletproof windows made of wood. And who doesn’t want that?
“Challenge accepted.”
For our last item we’ll leave science behind and veer across several lanes into the supernatural. In a seasonally appropriate post, the Stuckey’s blog shares five haunted highways you’ll probably want to avoid in Finding Haunted Highway Happiness.
Yeah, don’t let that title fool you. These are some seriously scary stretches of road. First up The Dead Zone on I-4 in Florida. A long and creepy tale of yellow fever victims, cursed graveyards, and mysterious fires, all leads to:
If you plan to travel this haunted interstate highway on your next road trip, be extra cautious as you approach the Dead Zone area; travelers have reported seeing phantom trucks and cars racing down the road and crashing not only during the Halloween season, but all year round. Additionally, check the weather forecast before you leave as hurricanes and tornadoes are said to frequently travel exactly along I-4’s path. Additionally, traveler’s have witnessed hitchhiking apparitions, floating headlights, and freezing asphalt on hot days, which only add to the bizarre stories told about this infamous interstate.
And don’t expect your smart phone to save you, as many people claim their mobiles simply stop working and that static disrupts their radios in this section of highway leaving you not knowing about what troubles might lay ahead. Nevertheless, happy motoring!
Also covered:
The Ghost Boy of Clinton Road, New Jersey!
Kelly Road and Pennsylvania’s Mystery Mile!
“Resurrection Mary” on Archer Avenue near Chicago!
Bray Road and the Werewolf of Wisconsin
Figures Wisconsin would have werewolves, from alliteration alone.
Nopity, nope, nope! Probably fake. But still nope. Source: ???
Do pecan log rolls ward off these supernatural menaces? I guess if you want to test that theory you’ll have to stop at Stuckey’s before braving one of these haunted highways. Let us know how that works out.
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