圈圈坐从芝加哥大学的龙漫远老师，经过密歇根大学的端木老师，如今回到中国本土，隆重推出马原野老师。马原野：中国科学院昆明动物所研究员，研究方向是认知脑科学。1987-1988年，曾在美国耶鲁大学神经科学习做博士后，导师为美国著名神经科学家、大脑前额叶功能研究方面的牛人Goldman-Rakic。1995-1999年，曾赴英国牛津大学和美国亚利桑那大学，参与“大脑认知地图”的研究。

马老师的研究领域刚好是13同学从前滴研究领域，所以，13同学滴崇拜之情……

手记:

马老师是个很和蔼的人，也 非常“科学家”,所以他会说：“由于伦理学上的原因，你不可能把一个电极安到人的脑里面去。”我们还八卦了他在耶鲁时的导师老太太：30年代出生，白俄贵族，又是犹太人，一直Worried，生怕中国的学生会运设备回中国支援社会主义国家。汗，我真是好八卦……

从猴脑到人脑

小蓟：看您的研究经历，开始时研究灵长类动物，然后就研究了人的大脑，怎么会从猴子到人？

马原野：我开始对脑的研究就是用猴子作为实验动物的。最初是用电生理的方法，把一个电极埋到脑里去，然后观察与行为对应的脑电的变化。你可以想象，这个只能用猴子来做，由于伦理学上的原因，你不可能把一个电极安到人的脑里面去。

小蓟：那时候，就直接是把电极安到猴子脑子里吗？

马原野：对，安到脑里面去——用很细很细的一个电极，比如说，只有千分之一个毫米。到现在为止这还是一个很主要的方法。这个方法的好处在于，它可以比较精确地记录一个神经细胞的电活动，进而可以分析神经细胞的变化和猴子的行为之间的关系。但不管这个电极怎么小怎么细，在人类中是不允许的。

小蓟：需要把猴子的颅骨打开，电极插进去？

马原野：在手术室里，无菌条件下，钻很小很小的一个洞，把电极埋进去。

小蓟：从什么时候开始这样利用猴子来研究大脑呢？

马原野：上世纪30年代吧。到了上世纪后期，由于有了fMRI（功能性核磁共振成像技术），利用成像技术，在无创的条件下，就可以清楚看到大脑中的血流分布情况。它最关键的是对大脑没什么伤害，这样，就可以用来直接研究人类大脑的一些活动，比如，决择呀，注意，学习记忆等等。比如，在神经经济学中，可以用脑成像技术来研究经济抉择过程，探讨在股票市场，股民怎样决定什么时候该买进什么时候该抛出。还有，比如说，一个广告，究竟有没有效果，可以观察它有没有引起某些相应脑区的变化来判别等等。

小蓟：广告？

马原野：当然，这就产生了新的一门科学——神经营销学。可口可乐和百事可乐，不贴牌子的话，有的人甚至觉得百事可乐的味道要好一些，但因为品牌效应，消费者在购买时，可能还是会更倾向选择可口可乐，因为它的牌子比百事可乐要更有名。有人就把fMRI引入过这类试验，观察品牌究竟对哪块大脑区域产生影响。甚至想象，在大脑的哪个区域发现脑内有一个购物按钮，设法去控制这个按钮，就可以控制人们的购物行为。

小蓟：您进入这个领域时，刚好是fMRI兴起的时候，对吧？

马原野：对。MRI 有两种。通过MRI，也就是普通的核磁共振，我们可以看到脑的结构；但fMRI，前面加了个小f，也就是functional——脑的功能成像。利用fMRI，当脑血流量比较多的时候，那里就有比较强的信号。当我们观察到大脑某个区域血流量增加的时候，我们就认为，那里的脑区比较活跃。

出现fMRI之后，人类就可以直接研究人的大脑了，这是很大的进步。我们可以研究更多的东西了。因为，猴子和人是不一样的，比如，我们有语言，我们有审美，我们可以做某些决策，我们甚至会说谎……

小蓟：人的大脑和猴子大脑的区别，有没有人在研究呢？

马原野：喔，那可多了。比如咱们刚才说到的——审美，猴子有审美吗？

小蓟：它们真的没有审美吗？

马原野：严格意义上的审美，猴子应该是没有的。当然，它在择偶时，选中哪个猴子，你也可以说，这也是一种审美。但更深一层的，比如，我们欣赏一幅名画，一段音乐，甚至为之陶醉——这些，动物是没有的。

小蓟：可是，经常有人说动物听音乐会怎么怎么样呀？

马原野：那个是一种“莫扎特效应”。猴子听音乐，也经常出现莫扎特效应——这些音乐会干扰，吸引猴子的一些注意力，使猴子暂时性地改变一些行为，但究竟是什么原因，目前还不知道。但并不等于说，猴子就会欣赏音乐了。

小蓟：莫扎特效应，是专指听莫扎特音乐吗？

马原野：是的，具体说是他的钢琴协奏曲 K448。

强悍的老太太：Goldman-Rakic

小蓟：谈谈您在耶鲁做博士后时的导师Goldman-Rakic吧。

马原野：哦，Goldman-Rakic，那个老太太是个白俄。你知道白俄吗？

小蓟：白俄贵族？（我瞎猜。）

马原野：对，她的家庭是俄国的贵族，父辈十月革命后逃到了美国去，她也是个犹太人。你刚才叫的那一长串，只是她的姓。不过，这两个姓，都不是他自己的。

老太太的姓很有意思，第一个姓Goldman是她前夫的姓，后来离婚了，又嫁了个南斯拉夫人Rakic。但圈子里大家都知道她是Goldman，改起来太麻烦，她就索性保留Goldman,和新丈夫的姓放在一块儿，出了这么一个姓。

小蓟：哈，她还真厉害。您是怎么到了她的实验室呢？

马原野：因为我当时对脑高级功能感兴趣，当时上海脑所的所长张香桐先生建议我去的。

小蓟：陈冲的外公？

马原野：不是，陈冲的外公也姓张，叫张昌绍， 是位著名的药理学家。张香桐先生是国内当时最有名的神经科学家，前年去世。张先生自己就是耶鲁大学毕业的。（我很汗……）

再说Goldman-Rakic 老太太,她的家庭是十月革命后逃到美国来的，非常不喜欢社会主义、共产主义。从前实验室有只猴子，特别不听话，老是捣乱，她就给猴子起名叫托洛斯基——那是斯大林的政敌，但也是个不折不扣的社会主义者，或者叫共产主义者。

后来，我要回国的时候，要带一台当时美国能买到的差不多是最好的计算机，Mac II回国，她坚决反对。之所以反对是因为她很担心，觉得我把那台计算机带回来会用于军事上的目的。后来，我特意请来了另一位耶鲁大学的教授给我做担保，保证这台计算机，只会用作科学研究之用，绝对不会从事军事上的用途，她才勉强放行。当然，在别的事情上，老太太人都很好。

总的来说，我跟老太太在科学问题上是非常愉快，但一旦碰到政治之类的事情，就会有冲突了。Goldman当时特别看不惯我把自己的钱省下来，买些设备带回来——我们那一代的很多中国科学家都是这么做的。Goldman对此特别特别不理解，甚至反对。她曾经特别愤怒地跟我说，“我给你钱，是为了让你在美国生活得好，但我没有责任去支援一个共产国家。”当时，我就非常不高兴，跟她说，“你给我工资，是因为我为你工作，至于我怎么用这笔钱，那是我的自由。”

2002年，老太太第一次来到中国访问。在上海，她第一次被震撼了，因为，这不是她心目中的社会主义的中国。要知道，那时候，美国的录像店里，中国影片中的中国人，都是留着小辫，皮包骨头，躺在床上吸鸦片的形象。

当时接待她的是李葆明教授，这么说吧，就是姬十三的导师，哈哈哈。

2003年，老太太装修房间，为了去附近的花店买一束花装饰厨房，穿过马路时被一辆大车撞倒了，就这样去世了。

她去世之后，所有美国神经科学界对她的评价是：她是自己那一代中最杰出的神经科学家之一。

小蓟：Goldman是研究大脑前额叶的牛人？

马原野：没错，我当时之所以去她实验室，就是因为我们也在研究前额叶。她当时基本上是前额叶研究领域的NO.1。她还是美国神经科学会的主席，能坐上那个位置的女性，相当罕见。

小蓟：她是个很强硬（tough）的人吗？

马原野：那是，相当的。

脑科学与神经

小蓟：您的介绍中提到，曾经研究过“大脑前额叶”，那是个什么东西，要搞清楚大脑的每一个地方要做什么的吗？

马原野：嗯，我们的研究主要集中在大脑的前额叶。

小蓟：前额叶？

马原野：没错，前额叶有个非常俗气的名字叫做“脑中之脑”。就是说，这是大脑中发育最高级的一块皮层。只有在人身上，这块脑区的发育才达到了最高的程度。举个例子，猴子脑中前额叶的表面积不到整个大脑皮层的10%；猩猩脑中，20%；只有在人脑中，超过了30%。

在各个大脑皮层中，前额叶皮层的发育和成熟是最晚的，比如说，人的大脑前额叶大约要到25岁才能发育成熟，所以，小蓟呀，我猜你的大脑前额叶发育应该还没有成熟。（汗，我…… 哦，马老师夸我年轻来着。）

前额叶皮层也是最快开始衰老的，过了40岁，这块皮层就开始衰老了。

长期以来，我们都不知道这块皮层有什么功能，一直到19世纪。那时美国正在修铁路，当时的一种炸石开山方式是用钢钎把炸药捅到一个石头中的炮眼里，用雷管起爆，达到炸石的目的。有个小包工头，不知怎的，炸药捅的时候就炸了，钢钎跳起来穿透了他的脑袋，破坏了他的部分大脑皮层。当时，那个人甚至还可以自己走到医院，医生做手术把钢钎拔出来。痊愈后，那个人表面上看没有任何障碍，运动、感觉系统都良好。但后来，他的熟人就发现，这个人性格上发生了很大的变化。他变得很粗俗，一出口脏话，而且行为举止也非常没有教养。那人叫Roger,他的同伴们就说：“再也不是从前的Roger了。”

Roger就是伤到了大脑前额叶。人类有很多本能行为，大脑前额叶就是负责抑制这些本能行为，让人在适当的时候做适当的事情。给你举个好玩的例子，这么说吧，如果在大脑前额叶受损的人面前放一杯水，他就一定会喝，哪怕你告诉他：“这杯水不是你的，不要喝。”他们的反应都是对环境的简单反应。他的逻辑是这样的：因为有人放了水，水是用来喝的，所以，他就喝了。

我们的研究就是集中在前额叶这块皮层上，这块皮层确实很复杂，很难用一句两句话讲清楚。

关于天才和精神性疾病

小蓟：您还属于一个认知障碍研究小组，主要在研究什么呢?

马原野：认知是个非常复杂的过程，关系着我们的学习、记忆、注意力、抉择等等；而认知会出现障碍，比如注意障碍，学习记忆障碍，还有成瘾等等都是认知方面出了问题。

小蓟：成瘾也算认知障碍？

马原野：是认知障碍呀。比如吸毒这种行为，其实是个抉择的问题，当事人面临的是个决择的过程——要家庭、正常的生活，还是毒品？

马：我们还会研究老年性痴呆，精神分裂症、抑郁症等疾病的脑机制。

小蓟：精神分裂症，好像是很奇怪的一种病？

马原野：是很奇怪，目前看来，精神分裂症患者的智力一点都不低，甚至，比正常人说不定还高，比如纳什等等。

其实不单是納什，很多精神疾病患者都很有天分。比如像雨人电影中的主人翁——自闭症患者对数字会特别敏感。我见过我国心理学家测试国内患自闭症的小孩，给他们两个装瓜子的盘子，一盘只比另一盘少几颗，几千颗里少四五颗，他们就每次都能指出哪个盘子里的瓜子多。

究竟天才和精神病患者之间有什么区别和联系，目前还不清楚,这些都是我们的研究范畴。

另外，在正常人中，我们很多的行为和我们大脑发育的情况有密切联系，比如左撇子，可能他们的右脑是优势半球，但对左撇子，我们要特别注意，不要去强迫他们使用右手，若在孩儿时代，被家长强迫用右手之后，会出现比如口吃，口头语言困难之类的情况，甚至更厉害的，会导致免疫系统出问题，患上比如红斑狼疮之类的。另外一个有趣的现象就是，很多左撇子的小孩，对数字都比较敏感，当然，这个具体原因，目前也还不清楚。

小蓟：最后一个小问题，说了这么多左撇子好，您是不是左撇子呢？

马原野：不是，我绝对的右撇子，左手连缚鸡之力都没有。不过，我对数学物理这类的功课倒是也很在行，哈哈！

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Check out this picture.

These camera flashes are just awesome (well, they look awesome). They are not a very useful thing for pictures in this case. Here is the problem. Well, first here is what the flash on a camera is supposed to do. Suppose there is a camera and a ball in a dark room. In order to get light to reflect off the ball and be detected by the camera, you need light. The flash is that light. You can think of it like a flashlight that is only on for a moment. It doesn't need to be on for long since it doesn't take very much time to get an image.

Notice that I drew red arrows for the light reflecting off the red ball to represent red light. Ok, back to the problem with a flash in a football stadium. The thing I want to focus on is how much light from the flash hits the object of interest. How do you measure the intensity of light? One way is to look at the intensity in Watts/meter2. As an example, suppose I have a 100 Watt light bulb that produces 20 Watts of light (I am just making up stuff here). If this light radiates equally in all directions, then at 1 meter away I can make this diagram:

So, 20 watts over the area of a sphere with a radius of 1 meter would give an intensity of:

The problem is that camera flash does not radiate the same in all directions. However, if it is a spherical distribution the intensity will still decrease as 1/r2. For the above case, let me assume that the flash is designed to have an intensity I3 to work at 3 meters (I just made this up - I don't know the optimal flash distance). How bright would this flash appear at the distance of the skydiver in the stadium? Assuming that light is spherically distributed:

What if I want to use the flash for something that is 50 meters away? The intensity at the subject of interest would be just 0.0036 times the intensity at 3 meters. This is probably not bright enough to make the image turn out brighter. Don't forget that this light reflecting off the subject is also mostly spherically distributed. This makes the problem even worse.

So, why are these flashes on then? Well, the camera sees something dark and just assumes that you need the flash. Plus, it looks pretty. Here is a short video clip so you can see how the flashes change.

Other stuff

Check out all the red lights. I am pretty sure that those are light from video cameras (or phones that do video). Isn't it standard that in video record-mode there is a red light? If you watch the video, you might notice that you can only see the red lights when my camera is on the opposite side of the subject (the skydiver).

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Further news about the mysterious journals publisher that presents old studies as if they are new. Katharine Sanderson of Nature magazine has looked more deeply into the matter. (For background, see our previous posts — 1, 2, and 3). Sanderson’s report appears online today. It begins:

Two new journals copy the old

At least two journals recently launched by the same publisher have duplicated papers online that had been published elsewhere. Late last year, an organization called Scientific Research Publishing reproduced the papers in what its website (www.scirp.org) billed as the first issues of the new journals Journal of Modern Physics and Psychology. Huai-Bei Zhou, a physicist from Wuhan University in China who says he helps to run Scientific Research’s journals in a volunteer capacity, says that the reproductions were a mistake…

Somehow I haven't posted a bunch of interesting items collected over the last few weeks, so I need to catch up. A pre-emptive hat tip to everyone who has sent me links or notes that might seem familiar in this post.

Tungurahua in Ecuador erupting in 2000.

• First off, those of you looking for information on the Haitian earthquake that devastated the capitol Port Au Prince, Highly Allochthonous has post on the tectonics of the quake. Right now, it is hard for me to come up with a worse location in terms of devastation for a quake to have hit in the Caribbean Basin.
• Back in volcano news, a lot of the eruptions that were in the news last week have settled down - or at least stayed the same. PHIVOLCS lowered the alert at Mayon to Level 2 (from 3) based on the reduced seismicity and volcanic gas emissions - but they offered the usual caveat that the volcano may go back up to 3 at any moment. Meanwhile, Turrialba in Costa Rica continues to give off copious gas emissions but no repeat of the explosions from last week. There is a report by OVSICORI on the changes in the crater (albeit as a PDF in Spanish). Nyamuragira also continues to erupt, but the eruption is diminishing, with lava flows reaching down the slopes but still within the Virunga National Park.
• We had been hearing rumblings that Tungurahua in Ecuador was coming back to life and overnight the volcano erupted. The volcano had already been experiencing explosions and earthquakes, but this eruption produced a 3 km / ~10,000 foot ash column along with reports of lava at the summit. No one was injured in the eruption.
• The NASA Earth Observatory has posted a number of great images over the last couple of weeks, including the plume (and tephra deposits) of the Gaua eruption in Vanuatu and a stunner of a shot taken above Soufriere Hills, showing all the new pyroclastic deposits formed since the volcano made a comeback this fall.
• If you're looking for extraterrestrial volcanism, NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter team posted an image of lava flows in the Athabasca Valles. The shot shows evidence of phreatic cones (eruptions with a large water component) along with 100 meter deep lava flows.
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As the current wave of H1N1 flu starts to fade in Europe, questions are being asked about the expensive vaccines bought to fight it

This post is background for another post I'm doing tomorrow or possibly later this week. It involves that old standby of freshman physics, the pendulum. We want to find out the period of a pendulum, the length of time the pendulum spends making one complete back-and-forth cycle. It's literally one of the oldest calculations in the book, but personally I'd rather have a background that's more complete than needed instead of possibly leaving important things out. And just for the fun of it we'll use a very slightly atypical method.

This, straight from Wikipedia, is a classic pendulum diagram boiling the entire thing down to its basic geometrical essence:

Let me rename one of the variables in the diagram just for the sake of convenience. Let's rename y1 to L, for the length of the pendulum.

Now the only mass involved is the pendulum bob at the end of the rod or string. We consider the string to have no mass, which is actually a very close assumption for even "heavy" strings as long as the bob is much heavier by comparison. As such, we can find the potential energy of the system. We know the gravitational potential energy is the mass m of the pendulum bob times its height times the local gravitational acceleration g. Therefore the potential energy U = mgh. And, for the record, h = L(1 - cos(theta)). Take a moment to confirm this for yourself, and we'll use that in a bit.

Its kinetic energy is of course K = 1/2 mv^2, but we'd like to think of the pendulum in terms of the angle theta on the diagram. How can we express v in terms of theta? Well, look at the distance along the curve from the lowest point to whatever point the bob happens to be at. Call that distance c. From the basic geometry of a circle - because the pendulum bob is constrained by the string to move in a circular path - we know that c = L*theta. The rate of change of position (c being the position) is the velocity v, and with constant L we know that:

The fraction-looking thing being the calculus way of saying "the rate at which theta changes with time". Since we have both the kinetic and potential energy in terms of theta, we can write the Lagrangian now:

Plugging that into the Euler-Lagrange equations gives, after some slight simplification: [EDIT: The following two equations should have a minus sign on one side. Sorry for the typo!]

However! sin(theta) is approximately equal to theta, if the angle is small. Here, it is. Therefore we can make the replacement without sacrificing much accuracy at all, and it makes the calculation much simpler:

We've solved this differential equation before, it's just the simple harmonic oscillator. Reusing our knowledge from that problem tells us the period of the pendulum will be:

This is remarkable for the fact that the period is independent of the amplitude of a swing. Swing a pendulum a little or a lot, and so long as our sin(theta) approximation isn't broken too badly it will still take the pendulum the same time to make each swing. Larger swings mean the bob has more distance to cover, but it's doing so faster. The effects cancel out. Even for swings as large as 30 degrees, the period will deviate from this equation by less than 2%.

Given this fact, we can measure the length of a pendulum cord by timing the period. That's what we'll do shortly.

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Stuart Staniford is blogging. This is wonderful. As some of you may remember, Staniford disappeared from The Oil Drum a couple of years ago, after doing some astonishingly brilliant work on peak oil, biofuels and all sorts of stuff. Now Staniford and I disagree on a number of things, but he's a genius with data, and genius is important. Whenever Staniford annoys me, I think of what Emerson said of Carlyle: "If genius were cheap, we might do without Carlyle, but in the existing population he cannot be spared." I'm glad we've got Staniford back - we can't spare him.

His latest takes Chinese national statistics on transportation and demonstrates that if they are accurate, the size of the Chinese highway system will soon exceed the American one, that Chinese air travel is rising rapidly and that the transition to a car-centered and oil dependent economy is proceeding apace. This, of course, is problematic. Now it is easy to blame China for wanting what we have - and a dream we spent bazillions exporting to them, but that's not the point. The point is that the brakes are off, and we are heading towards a bang against hard limits on multiple fronts now.

Staniford's conclusion is this:

In summary, if present trends continue, the Chinese expressway system will likely grow larger than the US interstate highway system within the next couple of years, and Chinese car ownership will exceed US car ownership by somewhere in the neighborhood of 2017. So while the al-Shahristani plan for Iraqi oil production seems like it aims for an extraordinary increase in oil production in a hurry, it's not at all hard to see where all that oil can go. Oversimplifying greatly, it's as though the US borrowed a pile of money from China in order to fight a war to free up oil supply in Iraq in order that China could become the greatest industrial power the world has ever seen.

Oh, and you can see why China wasn't too keen to strike a deal in Copenhagen.

Read the whole article.

Sharon

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We usually see control as a marker of status; those who give orders have higher status than those who take orders.  So, for example, bosses are reluctant to oversee better-paid subordinates, and teens chafe under the control of parents and teachers, even when their lives are otherwise comfortable.  People also hate or love their governments in part because how it makes them feel controlled by others, or in control of others.

More generally, people care about the governments they live under not only because different types of government have different chances of leading to peace, prosperity, etc. People also care about how governments more directly influence their status. For example, in addition to wanting governments that induce other outcomes like peace or prosperity, I suspect most of us prefer:

1. governments with forms like those of recent high status regimes,
2. to be part of large rich powerful empires, since those are high status,
3. democracy over autarchy, as it gives us more illusion of control,
4. proportional representation, as we then more control who represents us,
5. equal votes per person, as otherwise others have more votes than us,
6. states controlled by groups we identify with, so we seem in control,
7. stigma attached to assistance given groups we don’t identify with,
8. more regulation of competing high status folks, to bring them down to us,
9. more support of affiliated high status folks, to lift us as they rise, and
10. laws that treat them but not us like children, as that degrades folks.

Such status issues may drive our choice of government forms more often than we like to admit.  So when trying to design good government, we need to take such status affects into account, so that our designs can be attractive and stable.  Thinking along these lines, I was wondering about the status effects of something like futarchy — what if every time the government considered a policy, you had the option to bet for or against that policy, and such bets influenced policy?

Yes, you might still have to suffer the status-reducing indignity of being ruled by foolish policies chosen by dimwits who in a just world would be considered your inferiors. But you would always know that, via bets, you had the option of a large influence on those policies, far out of proportion to your fraction of the population.  You would also know that you could, via bets, arrange to be paid lots when those policies went badly, just as you had predicted.  Would this raise your status, relative to only influencing policy via your tiny fractional vote, and then just having to live with the consequences?

Setting aside whether this betting system would actually choose good policies producing peace, prosperity, etc., the question I’m asking in this post is if this betting system might substantially shrink the status sting of the state.  Yes this would not fully assuage a libertarian’s outrage at being subject to policies he did not (recently) choose, but would it be a substantial step in that direction?

Google may end its controversial practice of censoring search results in China, after experiencing a massive cyberattack

A couple of smacks plus a few smart taps could let you communicate with your phone while it's still in your handbag or pocket

Astronomers measure spectrum of exoplanet directly for the first time

High-tech tracking reveals that the bird's annual migration is the longest in the animal kingdom – and almost twice as long as previously thought

Joanne Manaster has joined the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS). She says:

I am a bioengineering instructor at the University of Illinois-Urbana. I am also involved in practically nauseating amounts of science outreach at every level. My personal website Lovely Scientist Loves Science includes videos from my YouTube channel, and also some items from my modeling days way back when… when I had luxuriant flowing hair, but was NOT a scientist — yet! I was called to audition recently for a Dove ‘Real Women’ commercial for their shampoo, but was disqualified b/c I have to pull it back into a ponytail for lab work. Sigh. What’s one to do?

Joanne Manaster, LFHCfS
Laboratory Teaching
Specialist and Lecturer, Bioengineering and Developmental Biology
University of Illinois-Urbana
Urbana, Illinois, USA

Miscellaneous book-related items for you to read while I spend most of the day in transit to Austin:

• While I have yet to see a copy in a Barnes and Noble store locally, it's selling well enough in the national chain for them to have ordered more copies. Yay!
• Relatedly, the publisher has just ordered a second printing, woo-hoo! I'm not sure what the total number of copies on paper is, but if they've asked for more, that's definitely a good sign.
• I have a couple of radio interviews scheduled for next week, which ought to be an adventure. I'm taping an interview with Jim Scott of WLW in Cincinnati on Monday (not sure when it will air), and scheduled to do a live interview on Wednesday with somebody from the Thom Hartmann Program. I'll talk more about this closer to.
• The book is apprently enough to make me notable. At least, I've had a Wikipedia page for a few days now, and nobody has demanded it be taken down. It could use more information, such as a few of the biolgraphical details here, but I'm not about the edit it myself, which just invites horrible squabbling.
• 6878 at the time of this typing, since you asked.

I may or may not schedule more posts from the airport, but it would probably be a terrible idea given that I spent much of yesterday with muscle spasms in my neck. So be good, and don't trash the place while I'm gone.

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Siamese fighting fish are as aggressive as they're beautiful, but their violence is not as mindless as it might seem. First in a new series

Organic flash memory developed
http://www.physorg.com/news180259614.html

By Lin Edwards, December 17, 2009

(PhysOrg.com) -- 東京大學的研究者開發出一種非揮發性記憶體，其基本結構如同快閃記憶體，不過以更便宜、更具彈性（flexible）的有機材料製成。

快閃記憶裝置以電氣方式將資料儲存在矽電晶體中。它能迅速寫入與讀取資訊，且即便電力被移除，資訊仍可保留在記憶體中。這使得快閃記憶體對相機、USB 裝置以及 MP3 播放器而言相當有用。如果能開發出彈性快閃記憶體（flexible flash memory），它將能在大面積的裝置中找到應用，例如大面積感應器、顯示器或著內建快閃記憶體的致動器（actuators）。

這款有機快閃記憶體由東京大學工程與資訊系統系的染谷隆夫（Takeo Someya）所帶領的團隊開發。該裝置在一塊可塑的聚萘二甲酸乙二酯（polyethylene naphthalate，PEN）樹脂薄片基質上使用一個 26 x 26 記憶元件（memory cells）陣列。該基質的彈性足以讓它被彎曲成半徑只有 6 mm 的圓柱體而不會導致電氣或機械上的問題。

該裝置之所以被稱為有機快閃記憶裝置，是因為它的性質與矽快閃記憶所使用的浮動閘電晶體（floating-gate transistors）一樣。

浮動閘極為電晶體的元件之一，那完全被薄薄的、稱為閘介電層（gate dielectric）的一層絕緣材料所封裝，那使它在電氣上絕緣而且能夠讓它維持它的長達電荷數年（在矽裝置中）。若施加大電壓，電荷會被帶到浮動閘而且它會保持在那裡直到電荷被抹除（那時施以極性相反的電壓）。

染谷教授表示，有機記憶裝置的挑戰是：尋找合適的絕緣材料，那在電氣上能使儲存電荷的浮動閘絕緣。這一層必須薄到足以讓電荷遷移到浮動閘但必定不能在組裝期間融化。這種絕緣層防止電子外洩以及隨後的資料退化（degradation）。

這種絕緣薄片是以 2 奈米厚的自組單層膜（self-assembled monolayer，SAM）以及 4 奈米的氧化鋁層（鋁質浮動閘的表面氧化所形成）製成。

這種記憶體的抹除電壓約 6 V，而讀取電壓僅 1 V，此外這些電壓比先前所開發的那些有機記憶體低了許多。

該記憶體能寫入、抹除資料超過 1 千次，那比矽快閃記憶體少了 10 萬倍。有機快閃記憶體的缺點是，它維持記憶的時間僅有短暫的 24 小時，不過研究者認為，利用分子長度更長的 SAM 並減少電晶體的尺寸，使其獲得改善。

這項研究結果發表在 12/11 當期的 Science 期刊上。

※ 相關報導：

＊ Organic Nonvolatile Memory Transistors for Flexible Sensor Arrays
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/326/5959/1516

Tsuyoshi Sekitani, Tomoyuki Yokota, Ute Zschieschang,
Hagen Klauk, Siegfried Bauer, Ken Takeuchi, Makoto Takamiya,
Takayasu Sakurai, Takao Someya
Science 11 December 2009: Vol. 326. no. 5959, pp. 1516 - 1519
DOI: 10.1126/science.1179963

＊ 彈性「憶阻器」
＊ 彈性、透明的超級電容器
＊ 奈米管＋墨水＋紙＝即用電池
＊ ROLLED「印出」OLED 彈性顯示器
＊ 「液態」 OLED 提供更多發光的可能性
＊ SixthSense - Pranav Mistry

Tough new rules could further restrict inbreeding and unregistered breeding of pedigree dogs in the UK, says Andy Coghlan

The screenwriter of The Road imagines that "when the end comes it's going to be an excruciating conflation of high horror and banality"

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A magnitude-7.0 earthquake struck Haiti on Tuesday afternoon local time, about 16 kilometres south-west of the capital, Port-au-Prince