We…learn. We…feed.

“‘Slime mould’s remarkable problem-solving capabilities are well-documented and include finding the shortest path between different food sources. It also displays memory, in a similar way to a novel electrical component called a memristor, which has in turn been likened to the functionality of biological brains. ‘It’s one of the simplest organisms that can learn,’ says Gale.”

And now, IT HAS A FACE. Scientists program an old-timey robot to dramatize the electrical signals emanating from slime mold. In a 100,000 years, this is going to seem like one of those Skynet-level bad ideas. And the hat is particularly creepy touch — Very Something Wicked This Way Comes.

The Wheel of Pain…for Dogs.

“The Turnspit Dog, 1500-1900 – A dog specifically bred to run on a small wheel in order to turn meat so it would cook evenly. This took both courage, to stand near the fire, and loyalty, to not to eat the roast. Due to the strenuous nature of the work, a pair of dogs would often work in shifts. This most likely led to the proverb ‘every dog has his day.'”

Time to raise Berk’s retirement age? By way of the re-designed Quiddity, which has tons of intriguing posts up at the moment, a curious history of dog-powered engines. “The last illustration displays a very unique, but now extinct, dog called the Turnspit…bred in Britain for hundreds of years to help with cooking and is the original ‘working dog.'”

They Stand Watch.

“As the world’s leading full-spectrum genetic security and containment company, Trask Industries continues to uncover new ways to control the mounting X-gene threat…Our goal is to solve tomorrow’s problems, today.”

Following up on last week’s posters, the X-Men: Days of Future Past viral campaign kicks off with a spiffy corporate website and commercial for Trask Industries (Note Peter Dinklage, in period ‘stache), along the lines of the pre-Prometheus commercial for David — and we all know how Prometheus turned out. Still I’m a sucker for Watchmen-style alternate history, like the Sentinel presiding over Ronald Reagan’s inauguration, above.

Explorers on the Moon.

“The next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink.” A belated happy 44th anniversary to the Apollo 11 crew, the first without Neil Armstrong. Speaking of which, it’s now been over 40 years since man walked on the moon — ’bout time to go back, dontchathink? (Spiffy Tintin image via LinkMachineGo.)

Sleep: Nature’s Reset Button.

“More than 20 years ago…we began to suspect that the brain’s activity during slumber may somehow restore to a baseline state the billions of neural connections that get modified every day by the events of waking life. Sleep, in this telling, would preserve the ability of the brain’s circuitry to form new memories continually over the course of an individual’s lifetime without becoming oversaturated or obliterating older memories.”

More Science of Sleep: In Scientific American, two Italian academics put forward their “synaptic homeostasis hypothesis” (SHY) of slumber, whereby the brain weakens (not strengthens, as is usually assumed) synaptic links overnight. “In principle, SHY explains the essential, universal purpose of sleep…sleep restores the brain to a state where it can learn and adapt when we are awake…Most generally, sleep is the price we pay for the brain’s plasticity — its ability to modify its wiring in response to experience.”

Also part of SHY: the idea of “local sleep”: “Recently we have even found that prolonged or intense use of certain circuits can make local groups of neurons ‘fall asleep’ even though the rest of the brain (and the organism itself) remains awake…It seems that when we have been awake for too long or have overexerted certain circuits, small chunks of the brain may take quick naps without giving notice.” I believe in Internet parlance this is known as “haz-ing the dumb.”

Uatu Degrasse Sagan.

(Klaatu barada nitko?) All that being said, one Comic-Con remake reveal I can get excited about — although “Executive Producer Seth McFarlane” gives me a moment of pause — is Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s upcoming 13-episode reboot of Cosmos.

“‘There’s never been a more important time for COSMOS to re-emerge than right now. I want to make this so entertaining, and so flashy, and so exciting that people who have no interest in science will watch just because it’s a spectacle,'” MacFarlane said in a news release.”

Online All the Way.

Hello all. So after a month or so of significant work — hence, the relative quiet around these parts of late — I have followed up on my earlier promise/threat and transformed all 1200+ pages of my dissertation into Uphill All the Way, the online edition.

The text was actually already available online in PDF form through Columbia’s Academic Commons, which is one of the reasons I thought converting it for better HTML presentation was a good idea. Now, hopefully, one can peruse the chapters more easily (or someone can skip around to the parts they are interested in.)

I don’t know if this is reassuring or depressing, but reading through it all again over the past month and change, I was once again struck by how much of this story resonates with recent events. Long before the disappointment of the current administration, ostensible progressive Woodrow Wilson had cracked down on civil liberties and broken the heart of the world at Versailles. Before Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, there was Eugene Debs and Sacco and Vanzetti. Before Austerity, there was Coolidge “Parsimony”. Before Katrina, the Great Mississippi Flood. Before Holder, Palmer. Before today’s continuing fight over evolution, Scopes. Before the recent news of forced sterilizations in California prisons, breaking just this past weekend, there was Buck v. Bell.

Instead of the Tea Party, there were 100% Americans and an Invisible Empire. Instead of fretting about “Obamacare” and “Kenyan Socialists,” conservatives rallied against the Sheppard-Towner Act and a Catholic in the White House. Instead of a War on Drugs, there was a Noble Experiment.

Then as now, civil liberties, corporate corruption, and immigration reform were major issues of the day. Then as now, the Supreme Court was a roadblock to positive change. Then as now, a culture of prosperity masked inequality and deep injustices in American life, and an ascendant business class aimed to leverage its considerable political influence to stamp out workers’ right to organize.

In the 1920s just as much as the 2010’s, progressives struggled to organize in opposition, and began to seriously question the two-party system. Then as now, many lost heart in the possibility of change. And, then as now, the push to make a more just and progressive America was, as always, Uphill all the Way.

Enjoy!

Good News, Coffee Achievers.

“In one large-scale epidemiological study from last year, researchers primarily at the National Cancer Institute parsed health information from more than 400,000 volunteers, ages 50 to 71, who were free of major diseases at the study’s start in 1995…men who reported drinking two or three cups of coffee a day were 10 percent less likely to have died than those who didn’t drink coffee, while women drinking the same amount had 13 percent less risk of dying during the study.”

Better living through chemistry: The NYT’s Gretchen Reynolds touts the potential medical benefits of caffeine addiction. “Participants with little or no caffeine circulating in their bloodstreams were far more likely to have progressed to full-blown Alzheimer’s than those whose blood indicated they’d had about three cups’ worth of caffeine.” Factor in all the taurine I consume to boot, and I’m disco.

Seven Minutes of Fury.

“In 12 exercises deploying only body weight, a chair and a wall, it fulfills the latest mandates for high-intensity effort…into about seven minutes of steady discomfort — all of it based on science.”

To complement Calvinism: The NYT lays out a seven-minute workout that might actually work. “The exercises should be performed in rapid succession, allowing 30 seconds for each, while, throughout, the intensity hovers at about an 8 on a discomfort scale of 1 to 10…Those seven minutes should be, in a word, unpleasant.”

Good Tom Zhang.

“The stereotype, outmoded though it is, is that new mathematical discoveries emerge from the minds of dewy young geniuses. But Zhang is over 50. What’s more, he hasn’t published a paper since 2001.”

In a surprising mathematical coup, UNH lecturer Yitang “Tom” Zhang has apparently cracked open a centuries-standing “twin-prime” puzzle about the “bounded gaps” in the distribution of prime numbers. “Yitang Zhang couldn’t get a teaching job after receiving his Ph.D., and things got so dismal at one point that he even became a Subway sandwich artist in order to stay afloat.”