More From Scientific American, July 2006
1)Michael Shermer in his "Skeptic" column discusses political views as compared to scientific views. His conclusion is that political opinions are very much subject to the "confirmation bias" whereby we pick the evidence that we want to hear and ignore the rest. Interesting sideline is that he mentions MRI studies of an equal mixture of "strong Republicans" and "strong Democrats" presented with OBVIOUSLY self contradictory statements by both Bush and Kerry. Not surprisingly the subjects picked out the problems with the candidate that they opposed and ignored those presented by their favourite. The interesting part, however, is that the scans showed that the part of the brain most associated with 'reasoning', the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex', was inactive during this evaluation while the orbital frontal cortex (associated with emotional processing), the anterior cingulate (associated with conflict resolution) and the posterior cingulate (associated with judgements about moral accountability) were most active. Once the subjects had arrived at a conclusion the ventral striatum, associated with reward and pleasure, lit up.
2)'Hubble's Top Ten' is a collection of what are the probable greatest accomplishments of the Hubble Space Telescope. Wonderful photos of such things as the Cat's Eye Nebula, the impact of Shoemaker-Levy 9 on Jupiter and much more.
3)'Stem Cells:The Real Culprit in Cancer'. Article on how not all cancer cells are "loci of regrowth" and how only a small proportion of cancer cells are involved in expanding and spreading the tumour ie "cancer stem cells". Gave me a different perspective on tumour growth and metastasis.