For a number of years now psychologists have known there is a connection between sleep and memory. In one experiment on sleep and learning I can recall, one variable was controlled, sleep, to determine if it caused a change in the other, learning. The researchers had students spend a specific amount of time learning new material. The subjects were then broken into groups that were allowed to sleep for differing durations–from no hours (pulling an “all-nighter”) to a full night’s sleep. The results revealed that duration of sleep strongly influenced how much was remembered. It was hypothesized that when individuals sleep their experiences are converted into long term memory.
So yes, we can be somewhat confident that sleep does improve the ability to remember. But how does it happen? If we knew that, our confidence in the the relationships would increase even more. Enter Marcos Frank and Sara Aton of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
In an article titled, Why Sleep Is Needed To Form Memories, (a more accurate title, IMO, would have emphasized the “how,” for that is what the study was about) we learn that the team successfully revealed the actual molecular changes involved that occur during sleep alone.
Skeptics are clearly not “birds of a feather.” Why? We aren’t flighty. Ba-dum-dum! And we don’t stick together very much. We seem to be quite independent minded. So if you are looking to start a marching band, you might want to look elsewhere.
That said, there are a number of us. To locate us . . . well, you’ve got to search a bit. Allow me to help. The 105th edition of the Skeptics’ Circle has recently been posted.
I’m skeptical of those skeptics (favoritism is for those with rot in a region in their brain). But I think it’s going to be worth my time to check it out. But then again, maybe not. I won’t know until I investigate the matter, so investigate I will.
P.S. The above photo is of my backyard goldfish-niche. Pond, really.
One of the best criticisms of the anthropic principle — that it appears the universe were created just for us — comes from the late science-fiction writer, Douglas Adams. If you haven’t encountered this before, it is definitely worth a read. Here it is in total.
. . . imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!’ This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it’s still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.
Do all fields ultimately reduce down to physics? Will my field, psychology, ever couch its understanding of behavior in terms of neurochemical inertia?
Certainly, when teasing out the most fundamental mechanisms of plant growth and life we meet many chemical processes that border on the purely physical. Recent research into photosynthesis has better revealed the basic, nuts-and-bolts of the processes involved. And they clearly belong in the domain of physics.
[I]n very small-scale systems such as photosynthetic molecules, quantum effects come into play making it difficult for scientists to explain how photosynthetic molecules are able to transport energy with remarkably high efficiency.
Lasers to the rescue! How else to better understand . . . a fundamental element of biological life. Lasers. Specifically, by putting together a combination of high-power laser frequencies, the scientists discovered this, in the words of Dr Ian Mercer -
These new pictures are instantaneous snap-shots of energy being transported between electrons across a protein. Remarkably, the pictures go further in unravelling the complex way the electrons interact. This gives us something akin to a fingerprint for electronic couplings.
Stand back! That broccoli is electric. Cool.
I just wonder when I’ll be able to interpret some of my dreams using a large hadron collider. Or something.
[This material is from a page that is being recycled as a post to make room for another page.]
Ten Commandments of Rational Thinking (Who commanded them? Good question.):
1. Thou shalt not consider thine own powers of thought to be infallible.
2. Thou shalt clearly define thy terms.
3. Thou shalt not put thy finger on the scale while weighing evidence.
4 .Thou shalt keep in mind the history of science and the evolving, progressive nature of knowledge.
5. As a check and balance, thou shalt actively seek evidence to disconfirm thine favored beliefs.
6. Thou shalt refrain from projecting meaning onto random events (a limited number of data-points in probabilistic phenomena).
7. When in debate, thou shall treat others as thou would like to be treated.
8. Thou shalt not transform a fill-in-the blank inquiry into an either-or proposition (either there is a sterling scientific explanation, or the phenomenon is evidence of aliens, psychic powers, the intervention of a god, etc.).
9. For thine own likes and dislikes, yes, the truth lies within. For everything else, thou shalt do some research.
10. Honor thine schools, libraries and electronic databases.
Today is Darwin Day. Charles D. was more than a bit of a Sherlock Holmes. Thanks to the man, many people today are better equipped to approach and solve puzzles in the natural world.
Consider these clues:
- A new set of whale fossils has been found. In Pakistan!
- There are no living specimens of this type of whale anywhere in the world. It went extinct.
- From the layout and analysis of the bones, it seems there was a male, a female, and a fetus within the female.
- The fetus whale had well-developed teeth; newborns were likely able to feed themselves.
And then there is this mind-blowing clue -
The fetus is positioned for head-first delivery, like land mammals but unlike modern whales, indicating that these whales still gave birth on land.
How do we explain it? Was the perpetrator an Intelligent Designer in the Library with a candlestick? Or might Darwin and today’s evolutionary Sherlock Holmes’ come to a different verdict?
I just ran across this quote by Penn Jillette (of Penn & Teller) and it made me smile:
Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-o, and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever have.
For contrast, here are some gems from the “Good Book.”
Family -
“Beware of your friends; do not trust your brothers. For every brother is a deceiver, and every friend a slanderer. (Jeremiah 9:4)
Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. (Matthew 10: 34-35)
“I tell you the truth,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age and in the age to come, eternal life. (Mark 10:29-30)
