redofrac

"And, does it reflect reality? Do new populations really preserve the prexisting culture in practice?"

I'm not totally sure what you're presuming integrating with a community should involve, but there's a large gap between preserving and - as in here - actively interfering with the preexisting culture of a community.

Were the MIT journals previously behind a paywall? Is there any info about the move?

Could you explain how the need for two mutations refutes the idea of an adaptive walk? The elife article just seems to suggest that walk may have been a more complex process.

While the worm in question, C.Elegens, is vastly simpler than the human brain, the numbers don't paint the complete picture. When you look at the product of evolution in such a system, every single neuron has a very precise role. Moreover, the balance/interaction between those 302 neurons are also very difficult to disentangle. There are also some pretty big biological differences, for instance, C.elegens neurons don't typically transmit information through spikes! Instead they show gradual polarization and depolarization. Now you look at the human brain, and the immense complexity means that there's no way that every neuron can have a precise genetically encoded role - there simply wouldn't be enough information. Instead, we assume that there have to be more generalizable patterns of how neurons are organized and communicate. For example, we know that the way the visual cortex organizes information between the two eyes is dependent on correlated input from the eyes themselves ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocular_dominance_column) and that without sensory information provided by the eyes this organization will never develop.

All this to say that there are important differences between being able to fully model a small, tightly optimized bundle of specialized neurons (and non-neuronal cells, we've only recently begun understanding how important glial cells are to brain function), and searching for general abstractions of information processing in the human brain.

> To test these predictions, we conducted a double blind, sham-controlled, within-subjects experiment using EEG and high-definition tACS (HD-tACS; a form of tACS that provides more precise targeting of cortical structures)

So they're applying stimulation with electrodes placed on the head. tMS and stuff like this are the main ways available right now for non-invasively inducing oscillatory activity.

From the article: "They looked for a link between a child’s behavioral problems at age 7 and his or her mother’s post-natal acetaminophen use, and found none. They looked for a link between a child’s behavioral problems at age 7 and acetaminophen use by the mother’s partner during pregnancy. Again, they found no association."

Also isn't clear at all if they're accounting for multiple comparisons. Given they're looking at (glancing through they paper) at least seven or eight cell phone related factors, it'd be pretty crucial here.

Just curious, what's wrong with this?

To get a structural MRI scan, you need the subject to both be willing to lie inside a a scanner and capable of holding still for a few minutes.

This can be challenging in populations such as autism, and unfortunately often biases studies towards higher-functioning individuals, who tend to have an easier time with this.

For human trials of this nature, typically at-risk populations can be used, and it's seen if there's a reduction in infection rates.

Yeah, this is what I was going at. As well, when a language like sanskrit is spoken as vernacular, then you end up with exactly what we have now: a bunch of related languages that have all developed their own changes and quirks over the last few thousand years.

Much like Latin, a good deal of the regularity is because Sanskrit is only a written language.

The sentiment has value, but it feels misleading to need to back it up by aligning the idea with the Nazi Germany. (The closest quote by Goebbels appears to be about England rather than Germany, not sure if that makes it more or less relevant here)

I wouldn't put so much emphasis on the source: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels#Misattributed

I'd guess two is a limitation of the Thunderbolt controller they're using, and adding the HDMI is a cheap way to free up one of those ports.