People sometimes think the space between stars is 'empty' but that's not the case.   That area is filled with patches of low-density gas and when a relatively dense clump of gas gets near a star, the resulting flow produces a drag force on any orbiting dust particles. The force only affects the smallest particles -- those about one micrometer across, or about the size of particles in smoke. 

This explains the otherwise difficult to understand shapes of those dust-filled disks, according to a team led by John Debes at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Who are you?  Who are you online?  Are you the same to everyone?  Should you be?

There's been a lot of talk about Google Wave as a new communications paradigm.  I like Wave.  I also think it's retro, harkening back to Nelson and Engelbart's work in the 60s.  Evolutionary rather than revolutionary, as the quote goes.  But even Wave assumes you are a single 'you'.  They need to look at handling multiple personas.

Finally an article that blasts the preposterous mythology suggesting that human longevity is a relatively recent phenomenon and primarily due to advances in medical technology.

http://www.livescience.com/health/090821-human-lifespans.html

In reviewing some of the comments made to the article it is clear that there is still a great deal of confusion surrounding the difference between "expectancy" and "lifespan".  The basic point in the article is that human life span is fundamentally unchanged over 2,000 years and quite possibly for a much longer period before that.

Scientific Blogging's University Writing Competition kicks off next Tuesday, September 1st.  There's been a lot of buzz and excitement about our first-ever writing competition that will give one lucky grad student a $2,500 cash prize, and a paid 3-month writing internship at Scientific Blogging.

Data on the distribution of wealth is apparently hard to come by directly, but inheritance tax data from the UK for some years is available.  This data, it turns out, can be well-fit by an exponential function, over most of the UK population [1].  That is, the probability of having w amount of wealth appeared to be proportional to exp(-w/T), for some constant T.  Income tax data from the US from 1983 through 2005 [1-5], the UK from 1994 through 1999 [1], and Australia from 1989 through 2000 [4] also followed an exponential curve. 

Fish and some amphibians possess a unique sensory capability that allows them to 'feel' objects around them without physical contact and see in the dark.

Colloquially this is called a 'sixth sense' but scientifically it is called a lateral-line system.

A team in the physics department of the Technische Universitaet Muenchen say they are able to explore the fundamental basis for this sensory system.   The goal of that would not be to solve M. Night Shyamalan movies faster but rather, through biomimetic engineering, better equip robots to orient themselves in their environments.

A new study in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry says nearly 15 percent of preschoolers have high levels of depression and anxiety.    

Their investigation also said depressed pre-schoolers were more likely to have mothers with a history of depression.   So is that actual depression or learned social behavior that seems like depression?

Being a kid is not easy, of course, despite what parents think.   But is finding pre-school depression in high numbers due to better diagnosis or, in the cases of rampant ADD prescriptions in the 1990s, a new field looking for patients?   If it's better diagnosis, finding it earlier may be a help.   

Researchers writing in, ironically, the journal Addiction have associated abstaining from alcohol with an increased risk of depression.


Doesn't make sense, right?   Excessive alcohol consumption has been linked to poor physical and mental health but they cite evidence saying that levels of alcohol consumption that are too low may also be associated with poor mental health possibly - obviously, abstainers may have other issues or even be reformed heavy drinkers. 

You may recall the “China Brain” thought experiment about consciousness, which goes something like this: if each person in China were to mimic the activity of a neuron using cell phones to communicate with one another, would this China-sized brain like Chinese food? I may be missing some of the philosophical nuances in the question, but as a one-time philosopher, I know enough about consciousness to know I have nothing remotely worthwhile to say about it.

One of the cool things about neuroscience is that its validating some theories of psychology and even psychoanalysis.

When I wrote The Chemistry of Connection in 2007 and 2008, I made some leaps, tying together psychology and sociology, which are based on observation, with animal studies showing that mothering helps determine the distribution and sensitivity of oxytocin receptors in the brain. For one thing, I tied the oxytocin response -- the release of oxytocin in the brain in response to positive social interactions -- to attachment styles.

A new study from Baylor College of Medicine validates this link.