So vacation has begun with diving into a book project I’ve been thinking about for some time, dealing with the national conversation we need to begin having about neuroethics. My co-author and I have been talking about this idea for so long that the words pretty much flowed easily today. It’s an interesting idea that writing is easy when you’ve had enough time to really think through an issue. Conversely (at least for me) when I just jump into writing about an issue, it can be difficult going. All of this is potentially an argument against blogging.

Also took some time to work on a consulting project that I’ve been at for the past two years in the area of integrating translational research into mental health delivery.

So where’s the vacation time? Well the other day on the road down to Wintergreen we listened to Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book on Lincoln’s cabinet, Team of Rivals. It was one of those “books on tapes” which are now on CD’s. Driving through the heartland of the Commonwealth of Virgina where the Civil War was decided, made the characters come very much alive…across the century and a half.

Jim

I’ll be on vacation for the next two weeks at our house in Wintergreen Virginia…somewhat near Charlottesville at the very top of the Blue Ridge. It will be at least ten degrees cooler at 3000 feet than the valley floor below and the views from the glass windows extend some 60 miles. While I’m there I hope to begin work on a new book and to finish off my slides for my trip to Austria in about four weeks. All of this of course depends on Verizon successfully bringing in broad-band and my resurrection of an old Apple Airport wireless router. If worse comes to worse, I’ll just hang out on the Appalachian Trail I guess…it’s about 1000 meters away from the house.

I hope to continue blogging from the mountains.

Jim

From this week’s SCIENCE: Harbaugh et al.

Money quote:

However, consistent with warm glow, neural activity further increases when people make transfers voluntarily.

I’ll be out of touch for the next two days at an NSF review panel for the IGERT program which stands for Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship. Unlike most of my colleague panelists, however, I wont be traveling out of town. The National Science Foundation is just a bit down Glebe Road in Arlington from my house, closer than the Krasnow Institute. I’m seriously thinking of taking the local Arlington bus, if I can figure out the schedule.

Jim

For those outside university library firewalls, I’m linking to the Faculty of 1000 link. Here’s the direct link the the Nature article. The key point is that in a mouse model of Parkinson’s disease, the calcium channel blocker, isradapine, acts to protect pars compacta dopamine neurons. In my opinion this discovery may have real significance for patients.

Jim

Here’s a wonderful article from the American Scientist On-line about all those strange spam subject lines that seem to be immune to our University spam filters. Turns out it all comes down to bio-mimetics. The spam evolves with the anti-spam software: essentially co-evolution.

Jim

Cnet news has a great story about the upcoming new DARPA Urban Grand Challenge. Here at the Krasnow Institute, we’re very interested in machine intelligence as part of the larger cognitive issue.

Money quote:

Now comes the hard part: a race on mock city streets that will raise the bar for artificial intelligence in the 21st century.

A team of officials from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) visited a parking lot here next to Google headquarters to test Stanford University’s autonomous passenger car, Junior, in what was its first big qualifying test for the upcoming Urban Challenge, DARPA’s third Grand Challenge competition for driverless vehicles.

Rita Colwell gave a wonderful talk up on Capitol Hill yesterday as part of an initiative being put forward by the Center for Neurotechnology Studies. Dr. Colwell is of course the former Director of the National Science Foundation and a terrific scientist. She is now at the University of Maryland, but her words still carry tremendous weight around this town. I had the privilege of reacting to her talk with some comments of my own on the subject–my belief is that such a neurotechnology initiative can be deeply enter twined with the Decade of the Mind project. These technologies essentially would allow us to ask the scientific questions necessary to “crack” the mind. The Center for Neurotechnology Studies is a part of our sister institute, The Potomac Institute for Policy Studies.

According to Andrew Sullivan it’ll be cognitive neuroscience.

I spent yesterday up on Capitol Hill. It was quite hot and humid and reminded me nothing so much as of my intern days working for the New England Congressional Caucus. Today I’ve got a stack of NSF grants in front of me to review.

Jim