Glider

Yep.

It is, but not in the way I think you think it is. The aboriginals would not have developed larger molars and a more robust gut over a few thousand years, nor would everyone else have developed smaller teeth & guts in the same timespan. There is inherent in the species a degree of variance to begin with. Under tough dietary conditions, those with more robust teeth and guts would have done better, and were more likely to pass on the existing trait. Under less tough dietary conditions, the posession of more robust teeth and guts is less important as a factor. So, whilst statistically, the aboriginals have larger molars and guts (i.e. the population is distributed around a higher mean with respect to these measures), the western European (or American) population contains individuals with molars and guts as large as the aboriginals, but these populations have a broader distribution with respect to these measures (i.e. those traits have not been selected for in particular), so due to the lack of dietary (environmental) pressure, the original variance in molar/gut size is still broad. Whilst this does demonstrate evolution in progress (as it is), it is different from stating that a population has has developed a significant phenotypical difference (which takes millions of years), rather, the population distribution has narrowed around an existing difference which provided an advantage under certain environmental conditions.

That's pretty much it, yep.

Yes, and they'd all be male, so extinction wouldn't be far behind (haemophilia is an X-linked trait, there are virtually no female haemophiliacs).

Who? Who will you choose to pay for something over which they had no influence or control, principally due to the fact they never even existed? Where's the justice in holding somebody responsible for acts/situations over which they had no control or influence, nor were even alive to witness? Whilst people today have a responsibility to learn from the past (to ensure the crappier bits aren't repeated), attempts to hold them accountable for things that happened before they were born can only result in bad feeling all round and an increased probability that the crappier bits of the past are repeated.

That's true, but I believe Vit.C has a possible role in preventing colds (or the development of acquired immunity). Once you have succumbed to a cold, it's of little use. The principle problem with vitamins is that people get the idea that vitamins = good, but then conclude that (therefore) lots of vitamins = very good. Consequently, with the huge money spinning trade in vitamin suppliments, cases of hypervitaminosis are appearing with rapidly increasing frquency, mainly due to the ingestion of vitamins A & D (these are fat soluble and not easily excreted and so accumulate in fatty tissue, particularly the liver). Even Vit. C is harmful in excessive amounts (particularly in children) causing intestinal disturbances and kidney damage.

Due to the nature of flu and cold viruses (rhinoviruses), there is no 'cure'. The influenza vaccine is produced to protect 'at risk' groups, as flu can be lethal to these people. The best you can do is to treat the symptoms and protect against secondary infections. These are usually opportunist bacterial infections which take advantage of the fact your immunocompetence is compromised by the initial viral infection. To deal with the main symptoms and help prevent secondaries do the following: If you get a temperature, take paracetomol to reduce it. Drink plenty of fluids. Keep warm. Rest a lot.

Joints are where nerves are most vulneraple. At a joint, the nerve is less protected, as you know when you bang your 'funny bone'. That particular sensation is caused by a blow crushing the ulnar nerve, which causes those shooting parasthesias down the distal T1 dermatome (which includes your little finger, half of your ring finger and half the palmar area). If you have parasthesia (unusual sensation: tingling, burning etc.)in an area distal to your thumb joint then it sounds like a crush injury to the nerve innervating that area. In other words, the pressure you applied at the joint, has slightly damaged the nerve at that point (or the inflammation is putting pressure on it where it crosses the joint), which is interfering with afferent transmission from areas distal to the point of injury. There is nothing you can do to fix it, it will fix itself (you could avoid using scissors on thick cardboard for a while though. Also, you could avoid sticking needles into it. Just look after it). It's not an uncommon thing; people do this kind of damage to themselves all the time. The fact you have sensation (albeit a weird one) beyond the site of injury shows that the damage isn't too bad; the nerve is intact, just slightly damaged or under pressure. It will recover. It's just a matter of time. Might be another day...might be a few days, but I wouldn't worry about it.

Sounds like there's definite (but minor) damage. Sounds worse than it is, as it is no more damage than you would expect, having caused a blister. By applying the pressure of the scissors for 15 minutes to the same spot (sufficient to cause a blister) and rubbing hard (by cutting thick cardboard), it sounds like you've covered the first two or three stages of a pressure sore: Stage I "non-blanchable erythema of intact skin -- the heralding lesion of skin ulceration" The constant pressure and rubbing will have resulted in a localized inflammatory response (the release of substance-P, prostoglandins and histamine). This results in redness and swelling and hyperalgesia, due to the release of the substances mentioned above. Stage II "partial thickness skin loss involving epidermis and/or dermis" (by loss, you can assume 'skin death' as the skin covering a blister, although intact, is dead) Stage III "full thickness skin loss involving damage or necrosis of subcutaneous tissue that may extend down to, but not through, underlying fascia" There would be no necrosis, but clear damage to subcutaneous tissue. Continued rubbing and pressure after stage II (the appearance of a blister, or at least the death of skin at that area) will have resulted in the destruction of free nerve endings (C and A-delta fibres mainly). You should still have deep sensation (vibration, tap and thud) which are mediated by larger afferent fibres, but shallow cutaneous sensation in that area will be gone, or dulled, until the subcutaneous tissue repairs itself. There is nothing you can do to get the sensation back, it will just take a little time (a day or so). That's tomorrow I have to give a lecture on 2-Way ANOVA from 2 till 3pm, then take a seminar from 4 till 5pm on the same subject...then hit the bar and dull the pain.

Ahhh...gotcha...I know researchers like that. Same applies to kit. They get an expensive new toy and want to use it on everything, like firing up a new functional magnetic resonance imager to investigate a sick bee they found in the car park, kind of thing

Excellent...it looks fairly comprehensive too (can't understand why the brain and cognitive sciences course doesn't include any research methods though). I had a look at some of the modules within that course. The reading list on one of them is...interesting. Cool!

I think using the technique appropriate to the problem is best. If the problem requires a triangulation approach, then use it. If not, don't (it just wastes time and resources). I'm not sure I understand the question though; research methods have to be dictated by the topic under investigation. I don't see how what you are being paid to do the investigation can affect your choice of method(s).

Bloody hell!...It's Dick Van Dyke!

Well said!

You'd think so, wouldn't you? But then it's easier to weasel around a flawed system than a robust system. This eases the way for this quota obsessed government to meet their target of 'eveybody in university' (whilst at the same time, by the way, cutting the funding of any University with a research rating of less than 4). I agree with widening access in principle. I agree that socioeconomic status should not be a factor in University admissions. However, I think the government have missed several points: Positive discrimination is still discrimination. Whilst everybody has a right to higher education, that does not mean that everybody has the right to a degree (that must depend on individual merit). Whilst it may be acceptable to lower University entry standards to allow wider access, it is in no way acceptible to lower University 'exit' standards (there are no brownie points in 50% of the population holding graduate degrees if the degrees are worth less than A levels). The principle that Universities are not funded by the number of students enrolled, but by the number of students that pass, presents a clear conflict of interests As with the NHS, higher education is fast becoming the victim of 'targets' and a 'box ticking' philosophy. Meeting these targets benefits only the government (who can then blather on about how "under this government, such and such targets were met), but causes significant problems for everybody else, and actually makes things a lot worse in the long term, e.g. patients not being put on waiting lists in the first place, just to keep the waiting times in the 'target range'. Students awarded worthless degrees in jamboree bags to meet the target of graduate numbers (which also devalues the degrees held by those who had to work for them). All this and more is for the benefit of the government, and NOT the people being governed.

Whut? No we don't. We have control of the end product (behaviour), but our state of mind is driven by many factors, a substantial number of which are out of our control. As our behaviour is driven to a large extent by our state of mind at any given time, it is fair to assume that our behaviour is influenced to a degree by factors outside of our control (and even outside our awareness). Why? He is a computer scientist speciallizing in neural nets and artificial intelligence, with a basis in linguistics. If I want infomation on affective processing and preattentive functions, I look at the work of people involved in that research. For example: Abramson, L. Y., Garber, J., & Seligman, M. E. P. (1980). Learned helplessness in humans: An attributional analysis. In J. Garber & M. E. P. Seligman (Eds.), Human helplessness: Theory and applications (pp. 3-34). New York: Academic Press. Banaji, M., R., Blair, I. V., & Glaser, J. (1997). The automaticity of everyday life. In R. S. J. Wyer (Ed.), The automaticity of everyday life: Advances in social cognition (Vol. 10, pp. 63-74). Mahwah, New Jersy: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Bargh, J. A. (1988). Automatic information processing: Implications for communication and affect. In L. Donohew & H. E. Sypher & e. al. (Eds.), Communication, social cognition, and affect. Communication (pp. 9-32). Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Bargh, J. A. (1989). Conditional automaticity: Varieties of automatic influence in social perception and cognition. In J. S. Uleman (Ed.), Unintended thought (pp. 3-51). New York: The Guilford Press. Bargh, J. A. (1990). Auto-motives: Preconscious determinants of social interaction. In E. T. Higgins & R. M. Sorrentino (Eds.), Handbook of motivation and cognition: Foundations of social behavior (Vol. 2, pp. 93-130). New York: The Guilford Press. Bargh, J. A. (1997). The automaticity of everyday life. In R. S. J. Wyer (Ed.), The automaticity of everyday life: Advances in social cognition (Vol. 10, pp. 1-61). Mahwah, New Jersy: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Bargh, J. A., Chaiken, S., Govender, R., & Pratto, F. (1992). The generality of the automatic attitude activation effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62 (6), 893-912. Bargh, J. A., Chaiken, S., Raymond, P., & Hymes, P. (1996). The automatic evaluation effect: Unconditional automatic attitude activation with a pronunciation task. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 32, 104-128. Bargh, J. A., & Chartrand, T. L. (1999). The unbearable automaticity of being. American Psychologist, 54 (7), 462-479. Bargh, J. A., Chen, M., & Burrows, L. (1996). Automaticity of social behavior: Direct effects of trait construct and stereotype activation on action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71 (2), 230-244. Bargh, J. A., & Ferguson, M. J. (2000). Beyond behaviorism: On the automaticity of higher mental processes. Psychological Bulletin, 126 (6), 925-945. Bargh, J. A., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (1994). Environmental control of goal-directed action: Automatic and strategic contingencies between situations and behavior. In W. D. Spaulding (Ed.), Integrative views of motivation, cognition, and emotion. Nebraska symposium on motivation (Vol. 41, pp. 71-124). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Bargh, J. A., & Pietromonaco, P. (1982). Automatic information processing and social perception: The influence of trait information presented outside of conscious awareness on impression formation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 43 (3), 437-449. Baumeister, R. F., & Sommer, K. L. (1997). Consciousness, free choice, and automaticity. In R. S. J. Wyer (Ed.), The automaticity of everyday life: Advances in social cognition (Vol. 10, pp. 75-81). Mahwah, New Jersy: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Bernat, E., Bunce, S., & Shevrin, H. (2001). Event-related brain potentials differentiate positive and negative mood adjectives during both supraliminal and subliminal visual processing. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 42 (1), 11-34. Cacioppo, J. T., Berntson, G. G., Sheridan, J. F., & McClintock, M. K. (2000). Multilevel integrative analyses of human behavior: Social neuroscience and the complementing nature of social and biological approaches. Psychological Bulletin, 126 (6), 829-843. Cardinal, R. N., Parkinson, J. A., Hall, J., & Everitt, B. J. (2002). Emotion and motivation: the role of the amygdala, ventral striatum, and prefrontal cortex. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 26, 321-352. Chartrand, T. L., & Bargh, J. A. (1999). The chameleon effect: The perception-behavior link and social interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76 (6), 893-910. Chen, M., & Bargh, J. A. (1997). Nonconscious Behavioral Confirmation Processes: The Self-Fulfilling consequences of Automatic Stereotype Activation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 33 (5), 541-560. Chen, M., & Bargh, J. A. (1999). Consequences of automatic evaluation: Immediate behavioral predispositions to approach or avoid the stimulus. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25 (2), 215-224. Clore, G. (1997). Minding our emotions: On the role of automatic, unconscious affect. In R. S. J. Wyer (Ed.), The automaticity of everyday life: Advances in social cognition (Vol. 10, pp. 105-120). Mahwah, New Jersy: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Cytowic, R. E. (1993). Essays on the primacy of emotion, The Man who Tasted Shapes (pp. 186-230). USA: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Davidson, R. J., & Irwin, W. (1999). The functional neuroanatomy of emotion and affective style. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 3 (1), 11-21. Davidson, R. J., Jackson, D. C., & Kalin, N. H. (2000). Emotion, plasticity, context, and regulation: Perspectives from affective neuroscience. Psychological Bulletin, 126 (6), 890-909. Dijksterhuis, A., Aarts, H., Bargh, J. A., & van Knippenberg, A. (2000). On the relation between associative strength and automatic behavior. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 36 (5), 531-544. Dijksterhuis, A., Bargh, J. A., & Miedema, J. (2000). Of men and mackerels: Attention, subjective experience, and automatic social behavior. In H. Bless & J. P. Forgas (Eds.), The message within: The role of subjective experience in social cognition and behavior (pp. 37-51). Philadelphia: Psychology Press/Taylor & Francis. And so-on, all the way to Z, with: Zajonc, R. B. (1980). Feeling and Thinking: Preferences Need no Inferences. American Psychologist, 35, 151-111. Zajonc, R. B. (1984). On the primacy of affect. American Psychologist, 39 (2), 117-123. No, I don't think, nor did I ever state, that we are helpless. What I do state is that we are not as much in control of our own drives and emotions (and as a consequence, behaviour) as we like to think we are. This has nothing to do with responsibility or accountability. We always have the ability to check our initial impulses and modify our behaviour. The offence comes partly from your blase dismissal of an extremely serious condition, and in particular those who suffer from it, and partly from your casually flawed exposition upon a subject about which, it is apparent, you know little. And you should know know that you cannot present as 'fact' any conclusions you base upon it. I don't care how many of your aquaintences agree with you, it does not establish fact. Opinion ^10 is still just opinion. Your statement that "The ones still alive are all of the same opinion as myself..." dismisses completely the ones who are now dead due to this so-called 'wake up call'. You don't consider that serious? I have never denied there are malingerers. I don't doubt that there are. I just don't assume a person is a maligerer because they are suffering from depression. In no way does it even begin to clear things up. What do you mean "Physiological illness that results in depression". Depression is a condition in itself, though it has many aetiological factors, both biological and environmental. Are you suggesting that depression is not real unless it results from, or is associated with a physical pathology?

Is that a 'fact'? Cite your source. Not many. Do you think a damn good talking to in the "pull yourself together, you lazy (usually rich) malingering waster" vein might help? You do like the word 'fact' don't you? Can you provide any evidence in support of these 'facts'? I can provide substantial evidence to show that people have a lot less control over their daily 'mindsets' than the 'total control' you state as 'fact', and therefore that 'choice', to a large extent, doesn't enter into it.

Aww geez....how stupid is that? I can understand the use of 'creditworthy' I s'pose; where a student takes a novel approach to a problem that would have worked but for (e.g.) a minor arithmetical error (I still think it's a dumb word though), but N for 'nearly' instead of F for 'fail'?. Suppose they were miles out? You'd be lying to them.

200 billionths of a degree? I wonder what kind of instrument can measure the difference at those temperatures. Hardly the difference between 'gloves or no gloves' is it?

0.4 Kelvin is the closest we can get. They study the flow characteristics of liquid helium at this temp.

1) People with bi-polar disorders aren't called mentally handicapped. 2) Why would not having a frontal lobe classify as a mental handicap?

As I say, telling yourself those kinds of things is one thing; a personal decision to attempt to regain some control. Being told those things by other people whilst you are in the middle of complete hopelessness is less than useful. Why should anyone have to help you with depression? Why should a doctor help you when you're sick? Why should a firefighter pull you out of a car wreck? Why should the police intervene if they see you getting mugged? None of these people owe you anything. What's the alternative? Sit on your hands and watch people go to hell? Seasonal Affective Disorder is "...nothing to really worry about any more than getting tired at the the end of the day..."?. Oh. Well, that's ok then. Getting mad at depression might work for you, but people who are severely depressed don't get mad. They no longer care about anything enough to get mad.

Good for you! And well done. I'm glad you managed to overcome it. However, that is still only 1. Whilst I admire your approach to your own depression, I don't think it provides a sound basis for dismissing the hundreds of thousands of other people with severe depression as attention seeking malingerers or spoiled rich people Nor do I believe that your approach would necessarily benefit them in any way. Whilst you made a personal decision to do something about your condition, I doubt very much that you would have responded so well to somebody else telling you, in the middle of your despair, that your depression was Depression affects different people in different ways, and there are many types of depression (e.g. reactive, acute-severe, chronic (dysthymic disorder), bipolar (cyclothymic disorder), Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and so-on). These conditions can and do destroy people and wreck families. To imply that these have been turned into a science and exist for the benefit of the clinicians or therapists involved... ...is quite offensive, not least to those still suffering from depression, to whom it says "not only is everything hopeless, but the people you thought were trying to help you are really parasites feeding off your despair" (a great step forward on their path to recovery), and shows an astounding lack of insight into the condition, especially from one who has suffered from it in some form.

We don't have any that produced the abundant 'free energy' that fusion promises (though apparently, we are close; we just have to stabilize and maintain the reaction for more than a couple of seconds). We have some that spit out a few nutrons now and again.

True, but still, you have to wonder where we're going. It reminds me of swap meets; rummaging around greasy boxes for parts for me ol' bonnie. I wonder how long it'll be till we have swap meets where people gather looking for second hand custom eyes, or a classic 2050 set of reconditioned kidneys (re-bored and gas flowed, of course).