“The treaty banning biological weapons is in disarray, after the US disrupted a meeting of treaty members in Geneva with a last-minute demand it knew other governments would reject.

European Union countries, stung by US failure even to warn them of the move, will now be questioning whether they can continue working in alliance with the US on international arms control treaties.” New Scientist

Mechanism of short term memory loss revealed

When the brain forms new short-term memories, it creates new neurons in a region of the hippocampus called the dendate gyrus. This process also clears outdated memories, making room for more new ones, say Joe Tsien of Princeton University, and his colleagues.

Patients with Alzheimer’s disease lose cells in the hippocampus, and one suggested treatment is to transplant stem cells into the region to replace the dead cells. But the new work suggests that the addition of new cells might in fact disrupt memory retention by dramatically altering connections between neurons in the hippocampus and boosting memory clearance, the researchers say.

New Scientist

This is probably something with which we should not be meddling, at least with our current state of ignorance about the ‘black box’ between our ears.

First world map of lightning activity New Scientist

The American Prospect covers the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association, “a normally obscure academic enclave that, for obvious reasons, found itself under a bit more of a spotlight than usual this year”, now laboring under a cloud from conservative criticism for not predicting the terrorist attacks led by flagbearer Martin Kramer’s new book Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America.

Kramer’s basic thesis — which he repeated in a scathing Wall Street Journal opinion piece that appeared, with exquisite timing, just days before the conference — was simple. According to his bill of indictment, Middle Eastern scholars have adopted a knee-jerk, leftist “third worldism.” They have failed America by consistently downplaying the threat of radical Islamic movements, and by criticizing U.S. foreign policy in Israel and throughout the entire region.

“This very sick discipline,” wrote Kramer in his Wall Street Journal article, “did nothing to prepare America for the encounter with Muslim extremism, and . . . can’t contribute anything to America’s defense.” Martin’s salvo unleashed a wave of similar expressions of disgust from the usual suspects on the right, such as The Weekly Standard and National Review, who lambasted the scholars for not predicting the World Trade Center attacks.

Ultrasound may disrupt fetal brain development, suggests a recent study comparing Swedes exposed to prenatal ultrasound with those who had not been. ’32 per cent more than expected were left-handed. In an average population, around nine per cent of men are left-handed.

[…]

The results suggest that some men who genetically would have been expected to be born right-handed had actually grown up to be left-handed. (The researcher) says this could be due to a disruption of their brain development in the womb: “It’s commonly known among neuropsychiatrists that right-handed people can become left-handed by slight damage to the brain.” New Scientist

How civil rights went wrong:

It is clear that there has been a shift in the meaning of the term racism. It is no longer the legalised persecution and ill-treatment of a supposedly inferior race. It is more a disease of the soul, or a kind of witchcraft that can be divined only by witch-finders armed with anti-racist equivalents of the Malleus Maleficarum (professional anti-racists need their racists at least as badly as the National Front needs them). And it is clear also where this shift in meaning first occurred: in America, whose trends the British follow as faithfully as any dog follows its master, despite the clear historical differences between our two countries: no slavery or legalised segregation in Britain, for example – that is to say a complete lack, pace McPherson, of institutionalised racism.

Anthony Daniels reviews Elizabeth Lasch-Quinn’s Race Experts. Telegraph UK

Does this painting by Walter Sickert reveal the identity of Jack the Ripper? “The American crime novelist Patricia Cornwell was last night accused of “monstrous stupidity” for ripping up a canvas to prove that the Victorian painter Walter Sickert was Jack the Ripper.

Even in the context of the crackpot conspiracy theories, elaborate frauds and career-destroying obsessions that London’s most grisly whodunnit has spawned, Cornwell’s investigation is extreme. Not only did she have one canvas cut up in the vain hope of finding a clue to link Sickert to the murder and mutilation of five prostitutes, she spent £2m buying up 31 more of his paintings, some of his letters and even his writing desk.” Guardian UK

Officials Go on Trial for Contempt — ‘Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton and an assistant secretary for Indian Affairs went on trial for contempt of court today, the second time in two years that senior government officials have faced charges that they lied to a U.S. District Court judge about a poorly managed trust fund for Native Americans.’ Washington Post

Gulf War Link to Lou Gehrig’s Disease: Soldiers who served in the Gulf are almost twice as likely to develop the progressive neuromuscular degenerative disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, eponymously known for its most famous sufferer, as the general public, according to new findings. This disease is a major enigma of neurology whose cause remains a mystery, as the references in this Google search on [ALS + (etiology or pathogenesis)] will show, if you care to explore further. This New York Times article, which observes that the current findings represent the first official acknowledgement of a link between service in the Gulf and a specific disease, focuses largely on the Veterans Administration response in providing disability and survivor benefits commensurate with the finding. To now, the medical literature on ALS has remarked on the uniform incidence of the disease around the world, which has argued against an identifiable environmental agent. What is extraordinary, and receives no mention in the article, is that this study hints at the first robust epidemiological association between ALS and an environmental cause. Even if it is not clear what aspect of battlefield exposure may be to blame, this may prove to be a breakthrough in investigating the etiology of this mysterious and devastating illness. Indeed, if veterans suffered some neurotoxic exposure in the sands of Kuwait, it might affect more in the CNS than the upper motor neurons whose degeneration causes ALS, and might explain other aspects of “Gulf War Syndrome.”

Parity for Mental Health: “The stigma surrounding mental illness is lifting as it becomes increasingly

apparent that millions of Americans who suffer from afflictions ranging

from schizophrenia to depression can obtain treatment that allows them to

lead full lives. The Senate’s bipartisan measure, co-sponsored by 66

members, would force insurance companies to cover mental disorders on

the same terms as they would physical ailments. It would prevent large

employers’ health plans from setting higher deductibles and co-payments

for patients treated for mental disorders than for those treated for

illnesses like cancer or respiratory problems.” NY Times editorial

Slate Editor Kinsley Has Parkinson’s: ‘Journalist Michael Kinsley says he has had Parkinson’s disease for eight years but didn’t go public with the revelation because he was in denial.
[…]

Kinsley, 50, says that only a few people knew his secret “but in the past couple of years, it seems to me, the symptoms have become more evident.”

Kinsley says he was offered the editorship of The New Yorker three years ago but the offer was withdrawn after he told “the owner” that he had Parkinson’s.’

The last paragraph of this AP story errs in saying: ‘Parkinson’s, which results from nerve-cell damage in the brain, causes muscle tremors and stiffness and affects more than 1 million Americans. It is incurable but not usually fatal.’ As Parkinson’s advances, especially when it has had an ‘early’ onset, in causes progressive mental deterioration (dementia). People often do succumb to the effects of this inanition.

Ebola Confirmed in West Africa: ‘An outbreak of fever in the west African nation of Gabon has been confirmed as the deadly disease Ebola, the World Health Organization said Sunday.

It is the world’s first documented outbreak of Ebola since last year in Uganda, where 224 people – including health workers – died from the virus. Ebola is one of the most virulent viral diseases known to humankind, causing death in 50 to 90 percent of all clinically ill cases.’ AP

This is ill-timed indeed. What would stop terrorists of financial means from quickly rounding up some infected, or exposed, individuals and promising to pay their survivors beyond their wildest dreams if they’ll get on a plane to an American or European city to spread the outbreak there before they die? Or if recruits deliberately infect themselves for the same purpose to die as martyrs to the cause? Could al Qaeda have sleeper cells in West Africa waiting for this next outbreak?

Bin Laden’s sons will kill him on TV: ‘Osama bin Laden plans a TV suicide that will trigger attacks on landmarks in London, Paris and the US.

His estranged wife Sabiha said last night he would order his elder sons to shoot him rather than be captured.

Sabiha, 45, added: “That will be the signal for a new wave of terror. The targets this time would be the Capitol building in Washington, Big Ben in London and the Eiffel Tower in Paris.”

Her claims were broadcast on Russian television as al-Qaeda boss bin Laden reportedly led 1,000 loyalists into forests in Afghanistan after being flushed out of his Tora Bora caves.’ Mirror UK [via Drudge]

Worst-Case Scenario: The U.S. Has None. ‘Constitutional Crisis, Chaos Foreseen if Top Leaders Killed. Imagine the unimaginable: The president, in the White House, the vice president, at the National Observatory, and all Cabinet members, in their respective agency headquarters, are killed in a terrorist attack on downtown Washington. So are all members of Congress, except the few who happen to be out of town.

What happens to the Republic? At the moment, the answer is alarming: chaos.’ Washington Post

The Evildoers And The Misled: Ariana Huffington on John Walker, the captured 20-year-old American who had been fighting with the Taliban.

Psychology Falls Down on WTC Tragedy:

In the wake of the tragedy, I am disturbed more than ever by the professional culture of what passes for modern Psychology. Psychology maginalizes such authentic psychological phenomena as dreams, emotions, and spirituality because these do not lend themselves as readily to empirical methodologies, and Psychology is not willing to tolerate or reward the creative and original adaptations of standard designs that is required. If our military can adjust itself to a “new war,” then academia could show a little flexibility and open-mindedness. So, in the wake of the tragedy, having heard so many claims of precognition prior to the bombings, I decided to recruit participants for an exploration of a broader and possibly more routine form of precognition in dreams.

Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, of the Federation of American Scientists: A compilation of evidence and comments on the source of the mailed anthrax. She concludes: “The recent anthrax attack was a minor one but nonetheless we now see that it was perpetrated with the unwitting assistance of a sophisticated government program. It is reassuring to know that it was not perpetrated by a lone terrorist without state support. However it is not reassuring to discover that a secret US program may have been the source of that support, and that security is so dangerously lax in military or defense contractor laboratories.”

Two from First Monday:
Communicating information about the World Trade Center Disaster:

‘This paper traces a timeline of different aspects of news coverage during the week immediately following the disaster, and then over subsequent, more reflective, weeks. The material is used to show how a single dramatic event happening locally reverberates globally, and the impact of the developing global information infrastructure (GII) on these phenomena, geographically, temporally, and sectorally.’

The Fading Altruism of Open Source Development:

‘The nexus of open source development appears to have shifted to Europe over the last ten years. This paper explains why this trend undermines cultural arguments about “hacker ethics” and “post-scarcity” gift economies. It suggests that classical economic theory offers a more succinct explanation for the peculiar international distribution of open source development: hacking rises and falls inversely to its opportunity cost. This finding throws doubt on the Schumpeterian assumption that the efficiency of industrial systems can be measured without reference to the social institutions that bind them.’

The Right Still Has Religion: ‘After Pat Robertson’s resignation last week as president of the Christian Coalition, much of the commentary focused on the declining importance of the man and his movement. Critics note that the Christian Coalition has been losing members and financial support for years, and that Mr. Robertson lost credibility when, on his television show, “The 700 Club,” he agreed with his fellow conservative religious leader Jerry Falwell that the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 were God’s punishment on America for tolerating feminists, gays and lesbians, libertarians and certain federal judges. But the fact remains that Pat Robertson has been the most influential figure in American politics in the past decade.’ NY Times

Two from the American Psychological Association Monitor:
A new take on psychoneuroimmunology: ‘Research pointing to a circuit linking the immune system and brain connects illness, stress, mood and thought in a whole new way.’

Why a bad marriage is worse for women than men: “Why is it that married men are physically and mentally healthier than unmarried men, but for women in unhappy marriages, the reverse is true?

The answer may lie in differences in the way men and women process their spouses’ and their own emotions

…”

The Disregard Syndrome: A Menace to Honest Science? Scientific advances published prior to the advent of electronically searchable archives are routinely disregarded in modern science … at our peril. The Scientist