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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 18, 2013 at 6:52am

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130415172429.htm
Bad Decisions Arise from Faulty Information, Not Faulty Brain Circuits

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 18, 2013 at 6:49am

http://www.examiner.com/article/bad-decisions-come-from-bad-informa...
Bad decisions come from bad information, new study says
Science Daily reported yesterday on a new study that showed bad decisions come from errors in sensory input, rather than the brain's decision-making process.

While it might seem obvious that bad information leads to bad decisions, the question Princeton University researchers were trying to answer was whether the errors that lead to bad decisions occurred during sensory input, or deeper in the brain where decisions are made.

To do this, they subjected 4 human volunteers and 19 lab rats to streams of randomly timed clicks, which were played in both the left and right ear. Once the subjects listened to the stream, the subject had to choose which side more clicks originated from. The rats were previously trained to turn their noses in the direction of the most clicks.

More often than not, the subjects chose the correct side. When they did make the occasional error, it was when two clicks overlapped. There was no observable "noise," meaning errors, in the brain systems responsible for tallying the clicks. Multiple replications of the experiment showed these results. That meant that the errors leading the the wrong decisions occurred based on inaccurate sensory inputs, rather than faults in how that information was processed.

The data from the study were put into a computer model of the decision making process, giving insight into how the brain interprets sensory data and goes about making a decision.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 17, 2013 at 6:06am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 17, 2013 at 6:02am

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=sea-urchin-evoluti...
Can Evolution beat Climate Change?

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 17, 2013 at 5:53am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 16, 2013 at 6:34am

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/health/for-scientists-an-explodin...;
For Scientists, an Exploding World of Pseudo-Academia
The scientists who were recruited to appear at a conference called Entomology-2013 thought they had been selected to make a presentation to the leading professional association of scientists who study insects.
But they found out the hard way that they were wrong. The prestigious, academically sanctioned conference they had in mind has a slightly different name: Entomology 2013 (without the hyphen). The one they had signed up for featured speakers who were recruited by e-mail, not vetted by leading academics. Those who agreed to appear were later charged a hefty fee for the privilege, and pretty much anyone who paid got a spot on the podium that could be used to pad a résumé.

“I think we were duped,” one of the scientists wrote in an e-mail to the Entomological Society.

Those scientists had stumbled into a parallel world of pseudo-academia, complete with prestigiously titled conferences and journals that sponsor them. Many of the journals and meetings have names that are nearly identical to those of established, well-known publications and events.

Steven Goodman, a dean and professor of medicine at Stanford and the editor of the journal Clinical Trials, which has its own imitators, called this phenomenon “the dark side of open access,” the movement to make scholarly publications freely available.

The number of these journals and conferences has exploded in recent years as scientific publishing has shifted from a traditional business model for professional societies and organizations built almost entirely on subscription revenues to open access, which relies on authors or their backers to pay for the publication of papers online, where anyone can read them.

Open access got its start about a decade ago and quickly won widespread acclaim with the advent of well-regarded, peer-reviewed journals like those published by the Public Library of Science, known as PLoS. Such articles were listed in databases like PubMed, which is maintained by the National Library of Medicine, and selected for their quality.

My take on this: I have seen several common people gaining 'some partial knowledge' from the internet and actually arguing with scientists about science! Even I don't  do that with my well qualified colleagues! Wikipedia is one such thing which doesn't give full proof  information on science. Anybody can write anything on the site. I came across people giving references of Wikipedia with regard to science. Internet is confusing people too. Everybody is an expert here! Who can people believe here? Who is a 'real scientist'?

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 16, 2013 at 5:23am

http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/saying-it-with-science/a...
Saying it with Science

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 16, 2013 at 5:04am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 14, 2013 at 7:08am

http://esciencenews.com/articles/2013/04/12/secrets.bacterial.slime...
Secrets of bacterial slime revealed
Newcastle University scientists have revealed the mechanism that causes a slime to form, making bacteria hard to shift and resistant to antibiotics. When under threat, some bacteria can shield themselves in a slimy protective layer, known as a biofilm. It is made up of communities of bacteria held together to protect themselves from attack.

Biofilms cause dental plaque and sinusitis; in healthcare, biofilms can lead to life threatening and difficult to treat infections, particularly on medical implants such as catheters, heart valves, artificial hips and even breast implants. They also they coat the outside of ships and boats polluting the water.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 10, 2013 at 5:25am

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/9977464/Scientists-...
Scientists should be celebrities, says Prof Brian Cox
It means he can no longer visit his favourite pub incognito, but Professor Brian Cox has argued scientists should be celebrities as it gets people interested in the subject.

The particle physicist and television presenter said he hoped for a return to the way of the 19th century, when British scientists such as Michael Faraday and Humphry Davy were “celebrities hanging out with the romantic poets.”

It was a time when attending science lectures was a popular pursuit and “ideas were seen as exciting,” he said.

Reflecting on the renown that means he can no longer visit the Clapham High Street pub he loves in south London for fear of being ambushed by fans, he said: "Why wouldn't you want academics to be celebrities?... Of course I want science to be part of popular culture like that again.

“It's the way you get people interested in scientific ideas."

Prof Cox, who has recently returned to lecturing at Manchester University, where he teaches quantum physics and relativity, denied that his students were star struck by him however.

He told the Sunday Times News Review: “Maybe in the first lecture that I give in September they'll behave differently when they first come in, but within minutes they're criticising the size of your writing or whatever."

While he did not tend to listen to his critics, he said, “sometimes they make you aware of the clichés you've created or any laziness that's coming into what you do, so for that reason they can be good.”

Prof Cox, who played the keyboard in a hard rock band called Dare before joining the better known pop group D:Ream, said he had learned his lesson about critics then.

“Our first album was criticised for not being heavy enough, so we followed it up with one that was heavier but basically fairly s***,” he said of Dare.

“It was exactly the wrong thing to do and I've always remembered that.

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