I have been thinking that air hockey or table tennis would be fun. I would love to have a Wii around, but we don’t have a convenient projector system in the common room… I believe Liyun’s office would be a great location to put in the new installment.
Filed in lab discussion||Comments Off on What kind of toy should we get?
NEW YORK – The American Civil Liberties Union and the Public Patent Foundation, a not-for-profit organization affiliated with Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law (PUBPAT), filed a lawsuit today charging that patents on two human genes associated with breast and ovarian cancer stifle research that could lead to cures and limit women’s options regarding their medical care. Mutations along the genes, known as BRCA1 and BRCA2, are responsible for most cases of hereditary breast and ovarian cancers. The lawsuit argues that the patents on these genes are unconstitutional and invalid.
Obviously genes should not be patented and should be deposited into the public domain.
A scientific research paper can start with a viral video on youtube. A while ago a cockatoo called Snowball was shown to dance to music.
Interesting questions were raised by this observation. Did the bird really dance to the music or did it mimic the human action? Dancing is a complex behaviour that requires coordination of auditory and motor responses. It has been predicted that the neural circuity evolved in vocal learning species. Motivated by this video, a group of scientists decide to test this out by observing how Snowball dances, and here is the quick result.
The short answer is Snowball can really dance to the music! The whole study was published in Current Biology.
Now the question is, why do animals and humans can both enjoy music? In other words, what is unique about music that can stimulate the nervous systems of different species the same way? What is the common neuro-architecture that underlies this behavior?
Reference
Patel AD, Iversen JR, Bregman MR, Schulz I. Experimental Evidence for Synchronization to a Musical Beat in a Nonhuman Animal. Curr Biol. 2009 Apr 29. [PubMed][Current Biology]