Emotions tag our experiences and act as waypoints in how we steer our behavior, but they seem to be subjective. Avoiding danger and pursuing rewards is essential for successful navigation through a complex environment, and thus for survival, but why are some people afraid of harmless spiders yet most are not afraid of incredibly dangerous horses?

The search for the neural correlate of emotions fascinates neuroscientists and psychologists – emotions are a central part of our mental selves.

Did Sen. Barack Obama buy the election of 2008, given that he bypassed public financing and so was able to raise and spend twice as much money as Sen. John McCain?  In 2012, the concern is the high spending by PACs but the playing field is level, both campaigns can raise and spend as much as possible this election and they will; each candidate this year will spend as much as the entire 2004 election, the last time both candidates held themselves to public financing limits.

New Cracks In Pine Island Glacier

A huge crack which was discovered last October in Pine Island Glacier has propagated into a series of cracks during the Antarctic Winter.  The recent satellite image below shows the new cracks.  Newer images will no doubt show these cracks more clearly as the sun rises higher in the Antarctic skies.  The animation below helps to demonstrate the great advance of the glacier front and the propagation of the cracks since February 2012.


Pine Island Glacier, September 11 2012.

Having recently graduated college, I can recall on more than one occasion waking up in the morning with a pounding headache, insatiable thirst, and intensely nauseous, regretting that one-cocktail-too-many (I'm sure most of you reading this can sympathize). Most people can recognize when you've had a rough night, and all of a sudden everyone becomes the expert on curing hangovers:

"Have plenty of water, it washes away the alcohol" (Somewhat true, at the very least it does prevent dehydration.)

"Take a few Tylenol, and you'll be as good as new" (Bad idea. Your liver has already been through enough.)

"Try really greasy and salty food s. Like french fries, or something. They help you get rid of all of the toxins from the alcohol" 

INTRO:  On September 14, 2012, I served as the guest speaker at the grand opening and dedication of the new Structural/ Materials Engineering Building at UC San Diego (UCSD).  Present also and offering remarks were Frieder Seible, Dean of the Jacobs School of Engineering; Pradeep Khosla, the new Chancellor of UCSD; Nathan Fletcher, State Assemblyman; Seth Lerer, dean of UCSD's Division of Arts and Humanities; and Karl Beucke, President of Weimar's famed Bauhaus Universit

The Society for Neuroscience recently hosted a webinar for all of its members on the topic of the budget sequestration event that will happen next year without some kind of positive action by Congress. The presentation was a call to action backed by a sense of urgency to protect American scientific research funding from a brutal, policy-induced beat-down.

The Gallic War showed Julius Caesar as a great military leader, proof that even 2070 years ago politicians who get stuff done got farther ahead than politicians people simply liked. It is also the first instance of a military commander documenting a campaign, so we know quite a bit. 

Is your decision-making suspect?  Do you continually date strippers or bad boys who are 'getting their band together' and wish you could instead replace your own judgment with a prosthesis?

Maybe one day.  Researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center have created a prosthetic device which is capable of restoring decision-making due to reduced capacity due from brain disease or injury - in non-human primates, anyway.

Variation in facial shape is an easy way to explain phenotypes in humans to people who don't understand biology all that well. Monozygotic twins have almost identical faces and siblings usually have more similar faces than unrelated people, implying our facial morphology is under genetic regulation - but still little has been known about the genetic basis of normal human facial morphology. 

In a recent ScienceDebate questionnaire response, speechwriters for Candidate Mitt Romney tried to distinguish themselves from speechwriters for President Obama on education(1), and then proceeded to say the exact same thing Candidate Obama said in 2008 about education - that the union system of protecting the teachers who have been around the longest rather than rewarding the ones who are the best is a big mistake.