Clive Cookson’s enjoyable feature in today’s Financial Times deals with synthetic biology–and Craig Venter remains at the center, just as he was during the height of the human genome project.
Here’s a start on reading for the Fall–Benedict Carey’s piece in today’s NY Times about memory.
What researchers are finding is that there is no single “identity spot” in the brain. Instead, the brain uses several different neural regions, working closely together, to sustain and update the identities of self and others. Learning what makes identity, researchers say, will help doctors understand how some people preserve their identities in the face of creeping dementia, and how others, battling injuries like Adam’s, are sometimes able to reconstitute one.
I spent my last week at the MBL taking a break from blogging–and taking in as much science as I could. We took the scenic route back to Washington, heading across Connecticut on old US-6 and then on to Scranton and Harrisburg and finally into Washington. I think we avoided the worst of the traffic and certainly all of the famed tolls on the coastal route along I-95.
Sometimes you just have to hand it to the Old Gray Lady (i.e The New York Times): they still do some of the very best science journalism around. Here’s a great article written by Benedict Carey on the ability of the human brain to produce (in some cases life-saving) hunches.
Read it and enjoy.
Jim
It was an eleven hour haul up interstate 95 yesterday–just lots of traffic. We did one interesting less well-known detour heading north at New Haven to Hartford before heading east again on ancient US Route 6 to Providence. That should give you an idea of what the main US east-coast north-south artery was like.
I saw this news in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education on-line and clicked through the link. Postdocs are in a difficult gray zone, neither student nor professor–yet often the true engine of research success.
Here’s a “glass is half-full” take on the augmented cognition meme in the context of our global challenges.
Yet in one sense, the age of the cyborg and the super-genius has already arrived. It just involves external information and communication devices instead of implants and genetic modification. The bioethicist James Hughes of Trinity College refers to all of this as “exo cortical technology,” but you can just think of it as “stuff you already own.” Increasingly, we buttress our cognitive functions with our computing systems, no matter that the connections are mediated by simple typing and pointing. These tools enable our brains to do things that would once have been almost unimaginable
A bit over a month from now, the University will begin gearing up for the Fall semester. It just seems like yesterday that the Spring semester drew to a close. Summer is short and sweet at the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study.
My colleague Tyler Cowen sent along his new book and I’m quite enjoying the read so far. It’s made more interesting by the fact that, having known Tyler for more than a decade, many of the ideas in the book are clearly manifested in Tyler the person–his encyclopedic knowledge of DC area ethnic restaurants comes to mind.
My colleague and friend Chris Hill (not the diplomat) has a new piece here. In it he posits the demise of an innovation society based primarily on science and technology. I think Chris is dead wrong, but it’s an interesting challenge for those of us who come from the Vannevar Bush tradition.
Just as the post-industrial society continues to require the products of agriculture and manufacturing for its effective functioning, so too will the post-scientific society continue to require the results of advanced scientific and engineering research. Nevertheless, the leading edge of innovation in the post-scientific society, whether for business, industrial, consumer, or public purposes, will move from the workshop, the laboratory, and the office to the studio, the think tank, the atelier, and cyberspace.
