Our oldest rock

What is the oldest thing that you have ever held in your hands? How ancient and antique was it? Well, you cannot beat the age of what I held today: the oldest solid rock in our solar system, a meteorite that is 4.56 billion years old! Older than our Earth!

What I did not know about Nourooz!

Every year we celebrate the beginning of the Spring, Nourooz. We take pride in this holiday. We clean our houses, set up new year's table, wish friends and family the best, all because of Nourooz. Nourooz reminds us of the rebirth of the nature, and we aim to have a new start as well. For at least a couple of weeks most people forget about their past grudges and come together. For at least two weeks everyone is friendly and nice, hoping the spirit of spring and rebirth continues in the coming year.

I knew that people in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, parts of India, Iraq, and Turkey also celebrate Nourooz. What I did not know was that Kurds of Turkey, some of whom want independence from Turkey and a state of Kurdistan (similar to some Kurds in Iraq) were not allowed to celebrate Nourooz openly in Turkey until 2005; that many kurds were detained on Nourooz by the Turkish government who takes action against supporters of the Kurdish rebel movement; that many Kurds in Turkey use this holiday for making political rallies and statements; that they often use fire (holy and important in Nourooz celebration) to ruin so many public places; that many Turks have negative feelings towards Nourooz because of all the destruction and bad news they hear on that day in their country. That is a shame; That is the last thing I could expect to hear about our beloved Nourooz.

اين هم از فوايد ترك شيرازى شدن!

References:
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nowruz

Some of this year's sad news:
[1] http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/nevruz-clashes-erupt-in-five-cities-across-turkey-.aspx?pageID=238&nID=16452&NewsCatID=338

[2] http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/explosives-found-near-nevruz-site-in-eastern-turkey-.aspx?pageID=238&nID=16420&NewsCatID=341

[3]http://www.ubalert.com/a/86851

Dress to impress yourself!

Today I learned about the stroop effect, a measure of our brain's reaction time. There is a test associated with this effect, mentioned on the right hand side column of the link below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroop_effect

Apparently, there are other things that can affect our brain's reaction time, including our clothing!

"
“The clothes we wear have power not only over others, but also over ourselves,” Northwestern University scholars Hajo Adam and Adam Galinsky write in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. While much research has looked at how our wardrobe influences the way we’re perceived, their study examines its impact on our own thinking and behavior.
"

Learn more here:
http://www.miller-mccune.com/science/the-brain-focusing-power-of-the-lab-coat-40108/

TED Ed

Today TED introduced TED Ed! A great project, aligned with the purpose of this blog; Something I envisioned to make or have one day through different efforts, whether it was our podcast, my project at work or this blog! Who knows, maybe I contribute to TED Ed one day!

http://youtu.be/FfJ5XG5i2aw

Their online channel is here: http://www.youtube.com/user/TEDEducation

Keep learning and sharing!

Do you want to forget it?

Do you want to delete your traumatic, stressful memories? Is there a past event that keeps haunting you? There is an article that suggests you can forget! Their method is a very novel one!

Previously, the most common approach for preventing post dramatic stress disorder (PTSD) was to make potential patients talk about it as soon as possible before the memory is sealed and repressed within them. Or to make PTSD patients recall the memory and talk about it.

It turns out this approach was flawed and wrong. Remembering bad memories does not unburden us, they reinforce the stress and pain every time we relive those memories!

The new approach exploits the changed set of connections in the brain that occur when we recall something

"Every time we think about the past we are delicately transforming its cellular representation in the brain, changing its underlying neural circuitry. It was a stunning discovery: Memories are not formed and then pristinely maintained, as neuroscientists thought; they are formed and then rebuilt every time they’re accessed. “The brain isn’t interested in having a perfect set of memories about the past,” LeDoux says. “Instead, memory comes with a natural updating mechanism, which is how we make sure that the information taking up valuable space inside our head is still useful. That might make our memories less accurate, but it probably also makes them more relevant to the future."

The new approach uses a drug to target those specific neural connections that occur through protein synthesis. Then a drug is used to target and ruin those proteins. The timing is the key to get it done right! Later on, even if you want to remember that memory you cannot! "Because the protein required to reconsolidate the memory will be absent, the memory will cease to exist."

This to me sounds like having a memory leak in computer science! Delete the pointers or links between memory cells and let them just hang out there? I wonder if this approach would cause other problems? I guess maybe like large computers with a lot of memory, we can afford to have a few unused, unconnected cells, floating around!

"In the very near future, the act of remembering will become a choice."

I think maybe to some extent we still have this choice, not necessarily for traumatic and stressful life changing events though, maybe just for some unpleasant and negative memories. We can refuse to get into a negative cycle of remembering them, and talking about them and reliving them over and over and over ....

Reference:
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2012/02/ff_forgettingpill/all/1

Pill controls more than just the birth!

As you may know, several recent articles on psychology of love and attraction suggests that we subconsciously select mates that increase the odds of us having stronger, healthier children. One of the major factors in making this decision is how we perceive the smell of our potential mate. We naturally find the smell of those whose immune system is way different from ours more attractive [1]. Now, the thing I did not know and learned during the last Nerd Nite is that when a woman is on birth control pills, this natural selection does not work as designed. In fact, it works in the exact opposite way: the woman finds men with similar immune system to her own, attractive [2]. Then, say if things work great between them, they get married, and decide to have kids, and the woman goes off the birth control pill, what happens? She does not feel attracted to her husband. She wonders "what the hell have I done?". Who did I marry?! Interesting, huh?

[1] http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/smell-life/200902/the-scent-sex

[2] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=birth-control-pills-affect-womens-taste

Xenopus

I have not updated this blog for over a month! My apologies. I assure you that it does not mean that I have not learned at least one lesson a day though. Let's get back on the track.

A couple of weeks ago I attended Nerd Nite in DC! A nice way for a bunch of nerds to go out on a Saturday night, have some drinks, mingle, listen to some music and some funny, and yet scientific, lectures.

One of the talks was about Xenopus, a kind of frog that I had no idea was so important to us! This frog is a premier research tool in medical sciences, and also used in pregnancy tests! Did you know that if you mix Xenopus's egg with a pregnant woman's urine, they reproduce and multiply in hundreds and thousands? And that is how the tests work?

Ponder about this piece of information as lesson of the day. If you like to learn more about contributions of Xenopus to humans and science, read more here and here.