There's nothing about Wii that makes it any better than any other similar exercise. We used the Apple//GS "tour" program for the same thing, back when it was brand new. We also used a computerized version of the old psych-test "trail making test" on a Mac 128, back when it was new too.
Fact is, it's not really the exercise that does the trick, it's giving the brain a task where it can plan a trajectory of movement. You can get the same effect almost instantly by giving a Parky a cane. They don;t need it to walk, they place it out in front of themselves and walk towards it. Planning that trajectory makes execution much easier. Once the trick is learned, games and canes are not longer needed. For a while.
Using these doesn't increase dopamine levels. What they do is give the brain reason to make more use of what little there is. It grows more receptors in response. It has the same effect of increasing dopamine. It's preferable to dopaminerigic drugs which have nasty side effects much like antipsychotics (extrapyramidal symptoms, like tardive dyskenesia). Newer drugs like pramipexole (Mirapex) don't have those side effects, but are fairly expensive. A cane is much cheaper.
"The US government has little experience with commercial enterprise."
WTF? The US government controls the very basis of commercial enterprise, the economy. It exists in large part to support commercial enterprise. Very few high level legislative officials haven't been directly involved in operating a commercial enterprise.
How come it is that the cancellation of regular increases in the manned spaceflight program during a period when no manned spaceflight is planned is being called the "dismantling of the manned spaceflight program" in the summary? NASA's budget and program planning show an intent to keep the program running at the present level while they decide on what the next program is to be. Per TFA:
"In his opening statement at the markup hearing, Mollohan said the cut should not be viewed as a diminution of the subcommittee's support for NASA's human spaceflight activities. "Rather, it's a deferral taken without prejudice; it is a pause, a time-out, to allow the president to establish his vision for human space exploration and to commit to realistic future funding levels to realize this vision."
A summary so clearly contrary to TFA without the summary calling TFA wrong or a lie indicates no attention being paid to the facts. Could be an agenda with no support looking for an outlet, could be just a wild guess used instead of reading TFA. Either way, it's a good case for/. editors doing at least minimal research comparing the summary and TFA. Not doing so causes them to make the same mistake as the submitter.
It's criticism, in my opinion warranted, plainly presented, posted calmly, and you can like it or not. It is therefore not, per moderator guidelines, flame bait.
The proper greeting requires one to drop trou and present one's anatomical Antarctica. What do you think all that anal probing was about? The reason they've just dropped all abductees right back off is because every time they've said 'hello', they were ignored. If we return the gesture properly we get the secrets of nuclear powered personal jet packs, flying cars, and chrome jump suits with big fins around the shoulders, just like in the pictures. Improperly, and the greeter goes FOOM. The difference is the little light bulb embedded in the tip. Good luck
I suggest that we line up every piece of digital information that we have and send it all. They can get a half decent view of us that way, and maybe they will do the same at some point, giving us a world of information to sift through. Imagine the advancements if we can understand any of it, and imagine the generations of work if their language or thought is beyond us.
There's really nothing to be done if they are superior and malevolent and on the way, so why not assume they want to be friends?
Should they or we do as you say, offer a copy of everything digital, the other should consider that an act of aggression if not war. Sturgeon's Law applies: "90% of everything is crap." Digital makes it so much easier to create that the 10% is predominantly mediocre and the 90% is crappier than ever before.
Dr Andrew Boyd Associate Research associate, information flow David Brown Founding Director British Library. Journal publishing Elizabeth A. Chapman Associate Deputy Director of Library Services, UCL Andy Dawson Researcher UCL Dr Tom Dobrowolski Founding Director University of Warsaw, web policy Professor Barrie Gunter Director University of Leicester, mass communications John Haynes Director Institute of Physics Publishing Paul Huntington Senior Research Fellow UCL, data mining and web metrics Hamid R. Jamali Researcher UCL, virtual scholar, digital information seeking Professor Michael Mabe Founding Director Director, Elsevier Science, publishing strategy Professor Michel Menou Associate Founding Director Consultant, information and development Dr Rob Miller Researcher UCL Professor David Nicholas Managing Director UCL, deep log analysis, digital information seeking and the evaluation of digital information systems/libraries Dr Ian Rowlands Managing Director City University, information policy. Bill Russell Founding Director Director, Emerald - marketing and sales Chris Russell Associate Co-founder, eDigitalResearch.com Dr Iain Stevenson Associate City University, publishing strategy Dr Carol Tenopir Honorary senior research fellow University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Milverton Wallace Associate Consultant, NetMedia, new media Professor Anthony Watkinson Founding Director Consultant, digital transition Dr Berenika Webster Researcher University of Wellington, bibliometrics Peter Williams Senior Research Fellow UCL, consumer health information Richard Withey Director Independent Digital, new media strategies
Find bios/vitae for each. Find out what professional organizations each belong to. Get the ethics policies from each. For each that has an ethics statement regarding fabrication, submit a complaint about that person, attaching the work in question and subsequent research showing the falsifications.
Make copies of each such complaint and compile them into two volumes. Send one to the UCL ethic committee at https://www.ucl.ac.uk/staff/committees/ethics/ and one to the provost http://www.ucl.ac.uk/provost/ . Send copies to media outlets that display some leanings towards ethical behavior (as opposed to simply publishing expose type junk stories; you don't want to poison your own well). If they publish this, make copies of each and send them as follow ups to the ethics committee and provost as above.
Of course this requires that people care enough to do something more than simply publish stories about it saying how awful it is, and publish links and summaries elsewhere so those people can 'discuss' how awful it is. The proportion of stories and discussions regarding such awfulisms compared to submissions to ethics committees on science/journalism fraud indicates that damn near all people care more about talking about it than making it stop. Doing something about it doesn't require academic/scientific credentials, just a bit of work with careful attention to getting the facts right (ie. researching the sources back to the original). It needs to be good enough that the probable threats of libel lawsuits can be countered with accusations of barratry, as the facts presented serve as proof no libel occurred.
Regarding the Guardian's article: there was no science done here. Research, yes (very poor, yes) but science, no. The numbers tossed about are just that, not statistics in the scientific (inferential stats) sense. There's a tendency to call numbers used in support of statements 'statistics'. Such weak connotations do not add up to the denotation no matter how many times it is repeated. Even had there
I'm pretty sure EEG's never gonna be good enough for the kind of cursor control gamers are thinking about. People have been trying to work with the signals for a long time, and even though they can get crappy 2D control now, the signal to noise ratio is just too high for anything much better.
S/N isn't really much of a problem in EEG any more. There are many computational ways to get around any noise issues. Previously they were only feasible for post-collection data manipulation because computational power/speed wasn't sufficient to do it on the fly and still keep up with data collection. Now we have speed and power sufficient to collect from 256 electrodes at 1 kHz, segment by stimulus trigger +/- a given range, sort according to stimulus type, and analyze as time/frequency mapping via continuous wavelet transform with 1 Hz frequency resolution and 1 msec temporal resolution. That's far more strenuous than a measure more suited to the applications mentioned, such as detecting synchronization/desynchronization in 1 Hz bands between 4 Hz theta and 40 Hz gamma, including localization to nearest electrode, mapped with 10 msec timing. Cursor control could be done by picking 3 bands each for X and Y (ie. X = 4, 16, 28; Y = 10, 22, 34), actuation only being allowed with 2 of the 3 bands agree. If such a control system were actually built, users would have to deal in real time with an effect already seen in high speed cognition research -- they'd be surprised by the fact that while they had consciously thought they were trying to make a certain thing happen their brain was making decisions including changing its intention in preconscious processing. Consciousness lags behind cognitive processing and decision making, we just don't naturally have the ability to detect that. It would be quite a shock to find there's a ghost in the machine, and the ghost is us.
Some rough estimates and finger counting calculations:
If 10 lunar sites were set aside, the surface area protected would be 100000 mi^2
The moon has 10 times the surface area of the US, so consider it as 10000 mi^2 of US land set aside.
The US National Park Service holdings total 10 times that. Just the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and Death Valley total just a bit more than the 10000 mi^2
The amount suggested to be protected is not excessive. The distance is. There's no reason craft can't land or crawl closer.
A better suggestion might be to set a smaller radius for powered travel that would protect the areas from dust being blasted over the artifacts. Say 10 miles for landers and 1 for crawlers. Landers could overfly on a slow ballistic trajectory without firing, allowing overhead viewing. Crawlers could get close enough for people to walk up to fencing protecting the sites and the exact areas determined to have markings or artifacts of interest.
The time is now to set up a Lunar Park Service, determine the sites and boundaries, and send up the park rangers to put up the fencing.
That said, feel free to mod this off topic if you like, but the question in the title made some of the voices in my head yell stuff at me that makes sense, of a sort.
The author of TFA went to cellular phone only, dropping wired service. In most cases/comparisons cell service costs more than wired service. That comes with benefits, primarily portability, but the fact remains.
I used to install home TV antennae for my dad's TV shop. For $200 or less a home could get 5 to 10 years of service picking up signals broadcast over the air. Portable TVs could with rabbit ears and loops could, in our area, pick up the same 10 stations (VHF and UHF) as the big rig fed to the house. For that matter even larger TVs came with rabbit ears back then, making the rooftop gear unnecessary. Then along came cable and direct satellite, and we get our TV fed to us by wire and/or receiver boxes, and pay a good deal for the feed.
In the first case we trade hard wired for unwired, and we pay more. In the second we trade soft- or unwired for hardwired, and we pay more. As I said, it makes sense of a sort, but some of the voices keep saying "huh?".
Laying an electrocorticogram array (that's what they're using -- it's not new) on the surface of the brain requires removing a section of the scalp, skull and dura mater. There's nothing about it that's not invasive as well as dangerous. Single cortical or deep electrodes can be put in through very small drilled holes. The former requires a full neurosurgical suite/team. The latter can be done in a clinic visit if localization isn't critical, or else in a CT or MR scanner with no more invasive electrode technology than the clinic version. The draw back to implanted electrodes is that inserting them into proximity of the neurons of interest can cause them to die off immediately, and will cause them to die off eventually.
Both are unnecessary for the application. In 1994 a researcher working at Radford University with Karl Pribram developed an EEG analysis program that could recognize various shapes, sizes and colors (various combinations thereof) of objects both seen and only internally visualized, with a 95% accuracy. Such accuracy among the many permutations of possible signals could very easily translate into control signals sent to another device. Fully designed but not built around this technology was such a control device intended to run an 8 stepper motor robotic arm using a standard parallel printer port. Since it rests on the scalp, an EEG electrode such as we used here is not invasive in the least. Well, the sticky glue electrode paste necessary to keep the electrode on and conducting for several hours tend to pull out hair, but that's annoying and slightly painful, but not invasive.
Animals have valves in their veins to help regulate blood flow and pressure.
Present day long necked animals called giraffes can quickly raise their head from ground to high up or lower it as quickly without passing out or having a stroke, thanks to that regulatory device.
As a species, paleozoologists react to a threat (like publication precedence) by jumping from one precariously perched presumption to its complete opposite, all the while flying in the face of data from present day animals despite claims this was their basis for the jump.
" 'Discourse at this level can't possibly accomplish anything beyond giving people some simulation of justification for what they wanted to believe in the first place.' "
Stated 100 years ago as "Most people think they are thinking when what they really are doing is rearranging their prejudices." (William James)
The observation, thus the problem, persists without solution or probably in hope thereof. The addition of modern technology 'doesn't mean shit to a tree' (Saint Gracie of Slick, "Eskimo Blue Day").
Training through Neurofeedback (EEG biofeedback) kids with ADD to be able to maintain attention despite distractions.
Preliminary testing of helicopter pilot trainees in the Hungarian air force; testing ability to maintain attention with increased activity. EEG was used to validate the early results, but the after that the game score itself was adequate.
As for Pajitnov not getting his due, it was after all, Soviet Russia. Nobody got, or could even expect, getting something due them across the Iron curtain. This was only a game. There was an complete cyrillic based Apple//e system produced over there for years. The major stimulus for that? AppleWorks 1.3 was being used as the primary inventory data handling app by the Red Army from the unit level up. Version 1.4 was hacked to work on their cyrillic machine. Apple never saw dime one from any of that.
If one does not show the validity of (many different) measurement instruments such as the surveys (re-)examined in TFA, it is fairly impossible to draw any valid conclusions in any meta-analysis. The alternative is to assume the validity of the originals. In this case, we are to assume that that the responses provided by people who are saying that they have not been honest are true, as well as assuming that the person(s) who created the instruments and/or reports derived from them and not just fabricating the results in part or in whole. And now with this meta-analysis we have to add another layer of unsupportable assumption of validity. Cripes, what a mess. But once you ask the question you have to ask it all the way down, and the question has to be asked.
One solution is to do independent replication. But for replications to be used to test the original results, enough of them have to be done to give an adequate statistical test of the comparison. It's tough enough just to get a decent experiment funded -- getting a replication funded is nigh impossible. And multiple replications? Forget it. Plus, in the publish-or-perish climate, damn few are willing to devote their time and energy to extensive work that gets little to no publishing credit. It's amazing we get anything done, much less further the progress of the science.
The plural of anecdote is not data. The 'research' done on Koko was nothing but grant-draining. Anyone can teach an ape to copy - we even have a specific word in our language to describe this.
A single word? Perhaps. I can think of a few phrases that would cover it. How very clever of you to craft your assertion in the form of an example. Or should that be how clever of who ever it was who taught you. You/they did very well, except for choosing to copy the same unsupported assertions as the other copying apes. That's always a major tip off.
Another is making statements that indicate no grasp of the concepts you're slinging, like 'teach an ape to copy'. Nobody has to teach an ape, or any other species, to copy. This is an instinctive process called 'observational learning'. And this too requires no understanding of the content or context beyond recognizing and reacting to a cue. It's probably more relevant here because very few need to be taught to act out object lessons illustrating their ignorance. You could sum it up as 'the less monkey knows, the more monkey see, monkey do'. This is pretty much exactly the opposite as generating entirely novel responses on one's own, such as the 200+ signs/words Koko invented, an entirely different set than the compounded signs she generated. If you're interested in learning more, as I said, Koko is giving lessons.
TF(academic)A is a very well done piece of work. I'm glad to see this, as opposed to the junior high school comprehension level press releases usually presented as science. As such, my criticisms are offered respectfully.
The FOXP2 gene cannot be said to be directly involved in language. The referenced works state that altering it disrupts some aspects of language production. There are many more ways that disruptions can occur through third variables or more general systems. In this case, altering the gene causes alteration in the dopamine system, which feeds the spiny neurons. Dopaminergic activity on spiny neurons causes inhibitory signals in the gamma range (~40 HZ) to be sent to the neurons in Hebbian cellular assemblies (a primary processing unit), synchronizing them and causing them to perform their function. This may well happen in the basal ganglia, but also happens over much of the cortex. This is a general system, responsible for a great deal of brain function. To claim it is part of language is not wrong, but is improper in that it is inaccurate due to over-specificity. As evidence, the well studied dopaminergic disorder Parkinson's does cause language disruption as noted in TFA, but clearly does so only as a specific example of a global phenomenon.
Similarly, specific changes due to specific allele substitutions can only be said to be true if and only if substituting other alleles into the same locations do not cause similar changes. There is no evidence that the example referenced is as specific as is implied by the statement as presented.
The statement that studying mice as 'the only feasible way' to study the relationship between humans and chimps appears so skewed that I wonder if it is a misstatement or misinterpretation. In any case, direct comparison studies have been done with excellent results. My old boss at NIH did volumetric comparisons on chimps brains using MRI, looking for left/right asymmetry in the language areas. In all of a dozen or so cases, he found it, to a degree similar to that in humans. In all but one cases, the left was greater than the right, also as found in humans. The one exception is not a difference, but rather a supporting similarity. The language centers are usually on the left because they are usually contralateral to the dominant hand, usually the right. In a dozen or so humans, chances are one or so will be left handed, with language centers on the right, just as was seen in the chimps. Studying mice is certainly fruitful and the results may well generalize to primate comparison studies. But to say it's the only feasible way to compare primate data is very wrong.
What I wouldn't pay for a mouse that could curse. Or good god a monkey. Give me a cursing monkey and I'll tithe you every paycheck 'til I die.
A marker of language as opposed to verbal signaling is that speech is 'productive'. That is, it evolves. This can be done by compounding -- simplifying multiple elements into a single one. An example of Koko the gorilla doing comes from Penny Patterson's dissertation. Koko took the signs for 'apple' and 'drink' and formed a single compound sign for 'apple juice'. This example has been passed around for years as good evidence Koko was actually using language.
Another example from the same source but not made as public was Koko's compounding 'dirty', 'toilet' and 'stink' into a sign referring to feces. Not terribly surprising in normal use. But she used it in another context. When her intended mate Mike was introduced, Koko didn't care for him at all. One time when Penny was trying to cajole Koko into accepting Mike, she said "Mike is a smart gorilla. I like Mike." Unimpressed, Koko replied "Mike dirty-toilet-stink", ie. 'Mike is shit'.
There's your cursing monkey (actually, ape). You can find it in her dissertation, "Linguistic Capabilities of a Lowland Gorilla", Stanford, 1979. Or you can call Koko's humans at 1-800-ME-GO-APE (634-6273), I dirty-toilet-stink you not. If you're serious about your paycheck to even the slightest degree, feel free to visit koko.org and donate to her Conservation Education Project: Koko is teaching sign language in Cameroon, to deaf children as well as to hearing children interested in becoming sign language interpreters. If anyone still doubts Koko's linguistic abilities in light of this fact, I would doubt their linguistic comprehension more than I would Koko's.
New technologies may well work, but the old works so well so as to make it superfluous.
Joel Lubar of East Tennessee State pioneered the use of EEG for a diagnostic for ADD 20 years or so ago, using technology that wasn't new even then (up to 16 channel, 40 Hz). 10 years ago I used an experimental high density, high speed (128 channel, 200 Hz) EEG machine to try to improve on his results and couldn't.
He also developed its use as a biofeedback (ie. 'neurofeedback') device, and has trained ADD 'out' of children in 6 to 8 weeks -- no drugs, no side effects, no stigma. He can get good results where they can be had, but 'soft' diagnoses by the misguided and self-serving far outnumber diagnoses validated by his or other objective and direct means. The depth, breadth and pathological thinking behind ADD over-diagnosis was so well presented by Diane McGuiness in "When Children Don't Learn" (chapters 9 and 10) that the APA invited her to write a dissenting opinion piece for the DSM IV.
The assertion that a kid that can sit still for something for 15 minutes does not have ADD is as wrong as the 'pill-kills-ills' school. ADD rarely means inability to attend to something alone. Mostly it means being unable to attend consistently while blocking out distractions. Many ADD kids can sit for an hour or two playing a video game if there isn't distraction. In fact it's how Lubar's neurofeedback works.
"Now, the researchers show that flies and mice treated with erlotinib also grow more sensitive to alcohol. What's more, rats given the cancer-fighting drug spontaneously consumed less alcohol when it was freely available to them. Their taste for another rewarding beverage -- sugar water -- was unaffected."
Ethanol -> acetaledhyde -> acetate + water The middle product is a toxin. Limit the 2nd reaction rate so that builds up and the organism gets sick and learns to avoid, or dies. It's simple conditioning, accomplished quite easily for decades with disulfarim (Antabuse).
First, DO NOT have him treated by anyone who considers a purely behavioral problem to be an "addiction". Addiction requires biological adaptation to a substance. If you go to see any kind of counselor or psychologist for this, on the first session they'll ask if he's ever been to a 12 step meeting, on the second meet they'll suggest it, on the third they'll require it. They're charging you money for you going and getting 'treatment' elsewhere. He can go to meetings himself without paying through the nose simply to get a referral.
Second, his behavior is obsessive/compulsive. If he needs treated for that, it's in the realm of psychiatry.
His behavior may be the proper response to a situation, including an internal one involving feelings. If the former, talking through it might help. If the latter, just being there while he goes through it may be the best you can do. Ask him what's going on. If he tells you, tell him you two can talk if he wants, If he can't, tell him you'll be there with him and for him.
Finally, an analogy: The king called his wise man to his chambers one day. It seems the king's son had taken it into his head that he was a chicken. It kept the kitchen staff amused, but if word got out that the prince was a chicken, there may be war. The wise man said he'd take care of things. For the next meal the wise man came to sat with the king, and down on the floor, naked, and eating bird seed, was the prince. So the wise man took of his robes, got under the table and started eating the seeds. The boy stared at him and said 'What are you doing?' The wise man replied, I'm a chicken, I'm eating seeds. Why do you ask?' So the went back to eating. A little while later the wise man said, "I sure am cold. Let's put on our robes to keep warm. We can still be chickens though." The boy shrugged, and they got into their robes.
In the interest of brevity, the process gets repeated for 'eating regular food' and 'sitting in the chair'. When the king asked the wise man if he'll cure the boy of thinking he's a chicken. The wise man said, 'It is of no consequence what others think of us, our us them, or each of us ourselves, so long as we are satisfied with ourselves. So grab a controller, get in ther and play along. Ans ask him.
And NASA can condemn your real property (ie. home and land), throw you off of it, and proceed to use it in any way they see fit.
And the FDA has a swat team, and uses it.
I swear these are true. The first is in NASA'a charter, the second came to light when FDA raided a doctor (74 years old) associated with the old Oxytherapy web site. They then confiscated his property and attached his funds. He later got back about US$3000 of his much greater retirement account. That was 10 years ago. The FDA SWAT team hasn't gotten any better at this: http://wholefoodusa.wordpress.com/2009/04/19/1058/
There will be a new administration then. It's very common for a new administration to scrap the old one's goals. There's a good chance this one will be rolled back.
Without having authority to enforce it, or being willing and able to enforce it by assuming authority, such a document is simply a set of assertions. As a purely academic exercise and basis for discussion, the concept is admirable. But without it being accepted as its own source of authority or being associated with such a source (such as the Bill of Rights of the US constitution) or else being a summary of rights bestowed by an external authority with the means and ability to enforce the laws from which the summary is derived (such as the Patient's Rights statements offered at most US hospitals -- maybe elsewhere?), it remains purely academic.
Most statements that assume the assertions therein are rights fail to account for the corresponding duties. In order for something to be a right, there must be a corresponding duty to validate, protect and enforce it (except "natural" rights which are assumed a priori as valid rights; even so, these are a rewrite of "God given" rights, authority from the ultimate source). When the work is a summary based on existing laws, the authority behind those laws has the duty to enforce them (indeed, may have been created at least in part for this purpose). without such authority, or when there is such an authority but it hasn't been consulted as to whether it will validate them as rights and agree to protect them, the work is simply a list of good ideas.
In this particular instance it appears as though most of the assertions are derived from and are protected by existing laws (at least in the US). Unfortunately it also seems to be a summary of those laws which have been significantly eroded as of late. While the work may not carry authority, it can serve as a starting point for protecting the rights it claims and for regaining the eroded portions of the laws from which it is derived.
Of course this too is academic. I taught this stuff as an introduction to bioethics. It comes from philosophy. In my opinion philosophy exists in large part to debate such things. I fully expect most of it could be argued against. Hell, I could, thanks to philosophy. In any case there's a decent summary of rights and duties at http://www.osjspm.org/rights_and_duties.aspx . Despite being Catholic social teaching, it is fairly even handed.
Myself and others wax scientific and rant extensively about the problems associated with using this technique. I'll keep mine short this time by keeping it to an example. From TFA in that eminent science journal Esquire:
"When you speak, blood flows to the language centers. When you blink your eyes, it flows to the eye-blinking centers."
The same region that makes something happen is also responsible for inhibiting that action. Each contains both accelerator and brakes. When you withhold speech, blood flows to the language centers. When you prevent your eyes from blinking, blood flows to the eye blinking centers. When the reaction is "I love my wife", blood flows to the I love my wife centers. When the reaction is "I don't love my wife", blood flows to the I love my wife centers.
It is not possible for fMRI to tell the difference between a positive and negative reaction, and is in fact measuring both reactions being considered prior to resolution in the sampling time. The two reactions may use some different Hebbian neural assemblies within the same region, but the low (ie. several cubic millimeters) spatial resolution of MRI catches both of them plus much more in the same voxel (3D pixel). The same problem emerges when different regions "light up" in the different conditions. It can't be determined whether that is excitatory or inhibitory activity.
By way of providing a reference, the above is what I was taught by a biophysicist who was working on his dissertation on this subject under Peter Fox, originator of the use of MRI for functional testing (ie. 'boxcar' design), including the use of SPM (statistical probability mapping) for analysis in comparing the MRI results in the different conditions. The above should also make it clear that using fMRI as a "lie detector" is fruitless.
"Steven Johnson took Gibson's insight to heart and argued that if we want to know what the networked journalism of the future might be like, we should look now at how the reporting of technology has evolved over the past few decades."
Things are not only unevenly distributed, they're changing faster than people think. Not just the past few decades, but the last few years have seen a pandemic of text editor operators masquerading as journalists. Many stories are lifted whole or in chunks from a source that probably didn't verify their material, or as in cases such as science reporting, are simply quoting a press release. Secondary "journalists" sometimes rewrite parts of the original. Sometimes. The better ones (as in an impacted wisdom tooth is better than losing a limb to gangrene) pull pieces from two sources. Very few real journalists of integrity exist, partly because trying to fill the net requires enormous manpower, but also because it's cheaper.
And yes, Rupert Murdoch's outlets do it too. He wants to make money at it but won't pay to make it worth buying by hiring real journalists and letting them do real journalism.
Slashdot Mirror
There's nothing about Wii that makes it any better than any other similar exercise. We used the Apple //GS "tour" program for the same thing, back when it was brand new. We also used a computerized version of the old psych-test "trail making test" on a Mac 128, back when it was new too.
Fact is, it's not really the exercise that does the trick, it's giving the brain a task where it can plan a trajectory of movement. You can get the same effect almost instantly by giving a Parky a cane. They don;t need it to walk, they place it out in front of themselves and walk towards it. Planning that trajectory makes execution much easier. Once the trick is learned, games and canes are not longer needed. For a while.
Using these doesn't increase dopamine levels. What they do is give the brain reason to make more use of what little there is. It grows more receptors in response. It has the same effect of increasing dopamine. It's preferable to dopaminerigic drugs which have nasty side effects much like antipsychotics (extrapyramidal symptoms, like tardive dyskenesia). Newer drugs like pramipexole (Mirapex) don't have those side effects, but are fairly expensive. A cane is much cheaper.
Why isn't thesandbender posting a loaded question to /. that's contradicted by data?
Why isn't samzenpus passing along ridiculous material without bothering to look at whether it's a troll?
Why isn't dynasoar posting a reply with a link to NFS's summaries of federal research budgets 1955 to present?
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf08315/content.cfm?pub_id=3880&id=2
"The US government has little experience with commercial enterprise."
WTF? The US government controls the very basis of commercial enterprise, the economy. It exists in large part to support commercial enterprise. Very few high level legislative officials haven't been directly involved in operating a commercial enterprise.
How come it is that the cancellation of regular increases in the manned spaceflight program during a period when no manned spaceflight is planned is being called the "dismantling of the manned spaceflight program" in the summary? NASA's budget and program planning show an intent to keep the program running at the present level while they decide on what the next program is to be. Per TFA:
"In his opening statement at the markup hearing, Mollohan said the cut should not be viewed as a diminution of the subcommittee's support for NASA's human spaceflight activities. "Rather, it's a deferral taken without prejudice; it is a pause, a time-out, to allow the president to establish his vision for human space exploration and to commit to realistic future funding levels to realize this vision."
A summary so clearly contrary to TFA without the summary calling TFA wrong or a lie indicates no attention being paid to the facts. Could be an agenda with no support looking for an outlet, could be just a wild guess used instead of reading TFA. Either way, it's a good case for /. editors doing at least minimal research comparing the summary and TFA. Not doing so causes them to make the same mistake as the submitter.
It's criticism, in my opinion warranted, plainly presented, posted calmly, and you can like it or not. It is therefore not, per moderator guidelines, flame bait.
The proper greeting requires one to drop trou and present one's anatomical Antarctica. What do you think all that anal probing was about? The reason they've just dropped all abductees right back off is because every time they've said 'hello', they were ignored. If we return the gesture properly we get the secrets of nuclear powered personal jet packs, flying cars, and chrome jump suits with big fins around the shoulders, just like in the pictures. Improperly, and the greeter goes FOOM. The difference is the little light bulb embedded in the tip. Good luck
I suggest that we line up every piece of digital information that we have and send it all. They can get a half decent view of us that way, and maybe they will do the same at some point, giving us a world of information to sift through. Imagine the advancements if we can understand any of it, and imagine the generations of work if their language or thought is beyond us.
There's really nothing to be done if they are superior and malevolent and on the way, so why not assume they want to be friends?
Should they or we do as you say, offer a copy of everything digital, the other should consider that an act of aggression if not war. Sturgeon's Law applies: "90% of everything is crap." Digital makes it so much easier to create that the 10% is predominantly mediocre and the 90% is crappier than ever before.
Take this list (from CIBER site):
Dr Andrew Boyd Associate Research associate, information flow
David Brown Founding Director British Library. Journal publishing
Elizabeth A. Chapman Associate Deputy Director of Library Services, UCL
Andy Dawson Researcher UCL
Dr Tom Dobrowolski Founding Director University of Warsaw, web policy
Professor Barrie Gunter Director University of Leicester, mass communications
John Haynes Director Institute of Physics Publishing
Paul Huntington Senior Research Fellow UCL, data mining and web metrics
Hamid R. Jamali Researcher UCL, virtual scholar, digital information seeking
Professor Michael Mabe Founding Director Director, Elsevier Science, publishing strategy
Professor Michel Menou Associate Founding Director Consultant, information and development
Dr Rob Miller Researcher UCL
Professor David Nicholas Managing Director UCL, deep log analysis, digital information seeking and the evaluation of digital information systems/libraries
Dr Ian Rowlands Managing Director City University, information policy.
Bill Russell Founding Director Director, Emerald - marketing and sales
Chris Russell Associate Co-founder, eDigitalResearch.com
Dr Iain Stevenson Associate City University, publishing strategy
Dr Carol Tenopir Honorary senior research fellow University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
Milverton Wallace Associate Consultant, NetMedia, new media
Professor Anthony Watkinson Founding Director Consultant, digital transition
Dr Berenika Webster Researcher University of Wellington, bibliometrics
Peter Williams Senior Research Fellow UCL, consumer health information
Richard Withey Director Independent Digital, new media strategies
Find bios/vitae for each. Find out what professional organizations each belong to.
Get the ethics policies from each.
For each that has an ethics statement regarding fabrication, submit a complaint about that person, attaching the work in question and subsequent research showing the falsifications.
Make copies of each such complaint and compile them into two volumes. Send one to the UCL ethic committee at https://www.ucl.ac.uk/staff/committees/ethics/ and one to the provost http://www.ucl.ac.uk/provost/ . Send copies to media outlets that display some leanings towards ethical behavior (as opposed to simply publishing expose type junk stories; you don't want to poison your own well). If they publish this, make copies of each and send them as follow ups to the ethics committee and provost as above.
Of course this requires that people care enough to do something more than simply publish stories about it saying how awful it is, and publish links and summaries elsewhere so those people can 'discuss' how awful it is. The proportion of stories and discussions regarding such awfulisms compared to submissions to ethics committees on science/journalism fraud indicates that damn near all people care more about talking about it than making it stop. Doing something about it doesn't require academic/scientific credentials, just a bit of work with careful attention to getting the facts right (ie. researching the sources back to the original). It needs to be good enough that the probable threats of libel lawsuits can be countered with accusations of barratry, as the facts presented serve as proof no libel occurred.
Regarding the Guardian's article: there was no science done here. Research, yes (very poor, yes) but science, no. The numbers tossed about are just that, not statistics in the scientific (inferential stats) sense. There's a tendency to call numbers used in support of statements 'statistics'. Such weak connotations do not add up to the denotation no matter how many times it is repeated. Even had there
I'm pretty sure EEG's never gonna be good enough for the kind of cursor control gamers are thinking about. People have been trying to work with the signals for a long time, and even though they can get crappy 2D control now, the signal to noise ratio is just too high for anything much better.
S/N isn't really much of a problem in EEG any more. There are many computational ways to get around any noise issues. Previously they were only feasible for post-collection data manipulation because computational power/speed wasn't sufficient to do it on the fly and still keep up with data collection. Now we have speed and power sufficient to collect from 256 electrodes at 1 kHz, segment by stimulus trigger +/- a given range, sort according to stimulus type, and analyze as time/frequency mapping via continuous wavelet transform with 1 Hz frequency resolution and 1 msec temporal resolution. That's far more strenuous than a measure more suited to the applications mentioned, such as detecting synchronization/desynchronization in 1 Hz bands between 4 Hz theta and 40 Hz gamma, including localization to nearest electrode, mapped with 10 msec timing. Cursor control could be done by picking 3 bands each for X and Y (ie. X = 4, 16, 28; Y = 10, 22, 34), actuation only being allowed with 2 of the 3 bands agree. If such a control system were actually built, users would have to deal in real time with an effect already seen in high speed cognition research -- they'd be surprised by the fact that while they had consciously thought they were trying to make a certain thing happen their brain was making decisions including changing its intention in preconscious processing. Consciousness lags behind cognitive processing and decision making, we just don't naturally have the ability to detect that. It would be quite a shock to find there's a ghost in the machine, and the ghost is us.
Some rough estimates and finger counting calculations:
If 10 lunar sites were set aside, the surface area protected would be 100000 mi^2
The moon has 10 times the surface area of the US, so consider it as 10000 mi^2 of US land set aside.
The US National Park Service holdings total 10 times that. Just the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and Death Valley total just a bit more than the 10000 mi^2
The amount suggested to be protected is not excessive. The distance is. There's no reason craft can't land or crawl closer.
A better suggestion might be to set a smaller radius for powered travel that would protect the areas from dust being blasted over the artifacts. Say 10 miles for landers and 1 for crawlers. Landers could overfly on a slow ballistic trajectory without firing, allowing overhead viewing. Crawlers could get close enough for people to walk up to fencing protecting the sites and the exact areas determined to have markings or artifacts of interest.
The time is now to set up a Lunar Park Service, determine the sites and boundaries, and send up the park rangers to put up the fencing.
Leave the wires alone. You may need them again.
That said, feel free to mod this off topic if you like, but the question in the title made some of the voices in my head yell stuff at me that makes sense, of a sort.
The author of TFA went to cellular phone only, dropping wired service. In most cases/comparisons cell service costs more than wired service. That comes with benefits, primarily portability, but the fact remains.
I used to install home TV antennae for my dad's TV shop. For $200 or less a home could get 5 to 10 years of service picking up signals broadcast over the air. Portable TVs could with rabbit ears and loops could, in our area, pick up the same 10 stations (VHF and UHF) as the big rig fed to the house. For that matter even larger TVs came with rabbit ears back then, making the rooftop gear unnecessary. Then along came cable and direct satellite, and we get our TV fed to us by wire and/or receiver boxes, and pay a good deal for the feed.
In the first case we trade hard wired for unwired, and we pay more. In the second we trade soft- or unwired for hardwired, and we pay more. As I said, it makes sense of a sort, but some of the voices keep saying "huh?".
Laying an electrocorticogram array (that's what they're using -- it's not new) on the surface of the brain requires removing a section of the scalp, skull and dura mater. There's nothing about it that's not invasive as well as dangerous. Single cortical or deep electrodes can be put in through very small drilled holes. The former requires a full neurosurgical suite/team. The latter can be done in a clinic visit if localization isn't critical, or else in a CT or MR scanner with no more invasive electrode technology than the clinic version. The draw back to implanted electrodes is that inserting them into proximity of the neurons of interest can cause them to die off immediately, and will cause them to die off eventually.
Both are unnecessary for the application. In 1994 a researcher working at Radford University with Karl Pribram developed an EEG analysis program that could recognize various shapes, sizes and colors (various combinations thereof) of objects both seen and only internally visualized, with a 95% accuracy. Such accuracy among the many permutations of possible signals could very easily translate into control signals sent to another device. Fully designed but not built around this technology was such a control device intended to run an 8 stepper motor robotic arm using a standard parallel printer port. Since it rests on the scalp, an EEG electrode such as we used here is not invasive in the least. Well, the sticky glue electrode paste necessary to keep the electrode on and conducting for several hours tend to pull out hair, but that's annoying and slightly painful, but not invasive.
Animals have valves in their veins to help regulate blood flow and pressure.
Present day long necked animals called giraffes can quickly raise their head from ground to high up or lower it as quickly without passing out or having a stroke, thanks to that regulatory device.
As a species, paleozoologists react to a threat (like publication precedence) by jumping from one precariously perched presumption to its complete opposite, all the while flying in the face of data from present day animals despite claims this was their basis for the jump.
" 'Discourse at this level can't possibly accomplish anything beyond giving people some simulation of justification for what they wanted to believe in the first place.' "
Stated 100 years ago as "Most people think they are thinking when what they really are doing is rearranging their prejudices." (William James)
The observation, thus the problem, persists without solution or probably in hope thereof. The addition of modern technology 'doesn't mean shit to a tree' (Saint Gracie of Slick, "Eskimo Blue Day").
Two uses Tetris has been put to over the years:
Training through Neurofeedback (EEG biofeedback) kids with ADD to be able to maintain attention despite distractions.
Preliminary testing of helicopter pilot trainees in the Hungarian air force; testing ability to maintain attention with increased activity. EEG was used to validate the early results, but the after that the game score itself was adequate.
As for Pajitnov not getting his due, it was after all, Soviet Russia. Nobody got, or could even expect, getting something due them across the Iron curtain. This was only a game. There was an complete cyrillic based Apple //e system produced over there for years. The major stimulus for that? AppleWorks 1.3 was being used as the primary inventory data handling app by the Red Army from the unit level up. Version 1.4 was hacked to work on their cyrillic machine. Apple never saw dime one from any of that.
If one does not show the validity of (many different) measurement instruments such as the surveys (re-)examined in TFA, it is fairly impossible to draw any valid conclusions in any meta-analysis. The alternative is to assume the validity of the originals. In this case, we are to assume that that the responses provided by people who are saying that they have not been honest are true, as well as assuming that the person(s) who created the instruments and/or reports derived from them and not just fabricating the results in part or in whole. And now with this meta-analysis we have to add another layer of unsupportable assumption of validity. Cripes, what a mess. But once you ask the question you have to ask it all the way down, and the question has to be asked.
One solution is to do independent replication. But for replications to be used to test the original results, enough of them have to be done to give an adequate statistical test of the comparison. It's tough enough just to get a decent experiment funded -- getting a replication funded is nigh impossible. And multiple replications? Forget it. Plus, in the publish-or-perish climate, damn few are willing to devote their time and energy to extensive work that gets little to no publishing credit. It's amazing we get anything done, much less further the progress of the science.
The plural of anecdote is not data. The 'research' done on Koko was nothing but grant-draining. Anyone can teach an ape to copy - we even have a specific word in our language to describe this.
A single word? Perhaps. I can think of a few phrases that would cover it. How very clever of you to craft your assertion in the form of an example. Or should that be how clever of who ever it was who taught you. You/they did very well, except for choosing to copy the same unsupported assertions as the other copying apes. That's always a major tip off.
Another is making statements that indicate no grasp of the concepts you're slinging, like 'teach an ape to copy'. Nobody has to teach an ape, or any other species, to copy. This is an instinctive process called 'observational learning'. And this too requires no understanding of the content or context beyond recognizing and reacting to a cue. It's probably more relevant here because very few need to be taught to act out object lessons illustrating their ignorance. You could sum it up as 'the less monkey knows, the more monkey see, monkey do'. This is pretty much exactly the opposite as generating entirely novel responses on one's own, such as the 200+ signs/words Koko invented, an entirely different set than the compounded signs she generated. If you're interested in learning more, as I said, Koko is giving lessons.
TF(academic)A is a very well done piece of work. I'm glad to see this, as opposed to the junior high school comprehension level press releases usually presented as science. As such, my criticisms are offered respectfully.
The FOXP2 gene cannot be said to be directly involved in language. The referenced works state that altering it disrupts some aspects of language production. There are many more ways that disruptions can occur through third variables or more general systems. In this case, altering the gene causes alteration in the dopamine system, which feeds the spiny neurons. Dopaminergic activity on spiny neurons causes inhibitory signals in the gamma range (~40 HZ) to be sent to the neurons in Hebbian cellular assemblies (a primary processing unit), synchronizing them and causing them to perform their function. This may well happen in the basal ganglia, but also happens over much of the cortex. This is a general system, responsible for a great deal of brain function. To claim it is part of language is not wrong, but is improper in that it is inaccurate due to over-specificity. As evidence, the well studied dopaminergic disorder Parkinson's does cause language disruption as noted in TFA, but clearly does so only as a specific example of a global phenomenon.
Similarly, specific changes due to specific allele substitutions can only be said to be true if and only if substituting other alleles into the same locations do not cause similar changes. There is no evidence that the example referenced is as specific as is implied by the statement as presented.
The statement that studying mice as 'the only feasible way' to study the relationship between humans and chimps appears so skewed that I wonder if it is a misstatement or misinterpretation. In any case, direct comparison studies have been done with excellent results. My old boss at NIH did volumetric comparisons on chimps brains using MRI, looking for left/right asymmetry in the language areas. In all of a dozen or so cases, he found it, to a degree similar to that in humans. In all but one cases, the left was greater than the right, also as found in humans. The one exception is not a difference, but rather a supporting similarity. The language centers are usually on the left because they are usually contralateral to the dominant hand, usually the right. In a dozen or so humans, chances are one or so will be left handed, with language centers on the right, just as was seen in the chimps. Studying mice is certainly fruitful and the results may well generalize to primate comparison studies. But to say it's the only feasible way to compare primate data is very wrong.
What I wouldn't pay for a mouse that could curse. Or good god a monkey. Give me a cursing monkey and I'll tithe you every paycheck 'til I die.
A marker of language as opposed to verbal signaling is that speech is 'productive'. That is, it evolves. This can be done by compounding -- simplifying multiple elements into a single one. An example of Koko the gorilla doing comes from Penny Patterson's dissertation. Koko took the signs for 'apple' and 'drink' and formed a single compound sign for 'apple juice'. This example has been passed around for years as good evidence Koko was actually using language.
Another example from the same source but not made as public was Koko's compounding 'dirty', 'toilet' and 'stink' into a sign referring to feces. Not terribly surprising in normal use. But she used it in another context. When her intended mate Mike was introduced, Koko didn't care for him at all. One time when Penny was trying to cajole Koko into accepting Mike, she said "Mike is a smart gorilla. I like Mike." Unimpressed, Koko replied "Mike dirty-toilet-stink", ie. 'Mike is shit'.
There's your cursing monkey (actually, ape). You can find it in her dissertation, "Linguistic Capabilities of a Lowland Gorilla", Stanford, 1979. Or you can call Koko's humans at 1-800-ME-GO-APE (634-6273), I dirty-toilet-stink you not. If you're serious about your paycheck to even the slightest degree, feel free to visit koko.org and donate to her Conservation Education Project: Koko is teaching sign language in Cameroon, to deaf children as well as to hearing children interested in becoming sign language interpreters. If anyone still doubts Koko's linguistic abilities in light of this fact, I would doubt their linguistic comprehension more than I would Koko's.
New technologies may well work, but the old works so well so as to make it superfluous.
Joel Lubar of East Tennessee State pioneered the use of EEG for a diagnostic for ADD 20 years or so ago, using technology that wasn't new even then (up to 16 channel, 40 Hz). 10 years ago I used an experimental high density, high speed (128 channel, 200 Hz) EEG machine to try to improve on his results and couldn't.
He also developed its use as a biofeedback (ie. 'neurofeedback') device, and has trained ADD 'out' of children in 6 to 8 weeks -- no drugs, no side effects, no stigma. He can get good results where they can be had, but 'soft' diagnoses by the misguided and self-serving far outnumber diagnoses validated by his or other objective and direct means. The depth, breadth and pathological thinking behind ADD over-diagnosis was so well presented by Diane McGuiness in "When Children Don't Learn" (chapters 9 and 10) that the APA invited her to write a dissenting opinion piece for the DSM IV.
The assertion that a kid that can sit still for something for 15 minutes does not have ADD is as wrong as the 'pill-kills-ills' school. ADD rarely means inability to attend to something alone. Mostly it means being unable to attend consistently while blocking out distractions. Many ADD kids can sit for an hour or two playing a video game if there isn't distraction. In fact it's how Lubar's neurofeedback works.
"Now, the researchers show that flies and mice treated with erlotinib also grow more sensitive to alcohol. What's more, rats given the cancer-fighting drug spontaneously consumed less alcohol when it was freely available to them. Their taste for another rewarding beverage -- sugar water -- was unaffected."
Ethanol -> acetaledhyde -> acetate + water
The middle product is a toxin. Limit the 2nd reaction rate so that builds up and the organism gets sick and learns to avoid, or dies. It's simple conditioning, accomplished quite easily for decades with disulfarim (Antabuse).
First, DO NOT have him treated by anyone who considers a purely behavioral problem to be an "addiction". Addiction requires biological adaptation to a substance. If you go to see any kind of counselor or psychologist for this, on the first session they'll ask if he's ever been to a 12 step meeting, on the second meet they'll suggest it, on the third they'll require it. They're charging you money for you going and getting 'treatment' elsewhere. He can go to meetings himself without paying through the nose simply to get a referral.
Second, his behavior is obsessive/compulsive. If he needs treated for that, it's in the realm of psychiatry.
His behavior may be the proper response to a situation, including an internal one involving feelings. If the former, talking through it might help. If the latter, just being there while he goes through it may be the best you can do. Ask him what's going on. If he tells you, tell him you two can talk if he wants, If he can't, tell him you'll be there with him and for him.
Finally, an analogy: The king called his wise man to his chambers one day. It seems the king's son had taken it into his head that he was a chicken. It kept the kitchen staff amused, but if word got out that the prince was a chicken, there may be war. The wise man said he'd take care of things. For the next meal the wise man came to sat with the king, and down on the floor, naked, and eating bird seed, was the prince. So the wise man took of his robes, got under the table and started eating the seeds. The boy stared at him and said 'What are you doing?' The wise man replied, I'm a chicken, I'm eating seeds. Why do you ask?' So the went back to eating. A little while later the wise man said, "I sure am cold. Let's put on our robes to keep warm. We can still be chickens though." The boy shrugged, and they got into their robes.
In the interest of brevity, the process gets repeated for 'eating regular food' and 'sitting in the chair'. When the king asked the wise man if he'll cure the boy of thinking he's a chicken. The wise man said, 'It is of no consequence what others think of us, our us them, or each of us ourselves, so long as we are satisfied with ourselves. So grab a controller, get in ther and play along. Ans ask him.
And NASA can condemn your real property (ie. home and land), throw you off of it, and proceed to use it in any way they see fit.
And the FDA has a swat team, and uses it.
I swear these are true. The first is in NASA'a charter, the second came to light when FDA raided a doctor (74 years old) associated with the old Oxytherapy web site. They then confiscated his property and attached his funds. He later got back about US$3000 of his much greater retirement account. That was 10 years ago. The FDA SWAT team hasn't gotten any better at this: http://wholefoodusa.wordpress.com/2009/04/19/1058/
"...under an Obama administration move..."
There will be a new administration then. It's very common for a new administration to scrap the old one's goals. There's a good chance this one will be rolled back.
Without having authority to enforce it, or being willing and able to enforce it by assuming authority, such a document is simply a set of assertions. As a purely academic exercise and basis for discussion, the concept is admirable. But without it being accepted as its own source of authority or being associated with such a source (such as the Bill of Rights of the US constitution) or else being a summary of rights bestowed by an external authority with the means and ability to enforce the laws from which the summary is derived (such as the Patient's Rights statements offered at most US hospitals -- maybe elsewhere?), it remains purely academic.
Most statements that assume the assertions therein are rights fail to account for the corresponding duties. In order for something to be a right, there must be a corresponding duty to validate, protect and enforce it (except "natural" rights which are assumed a priori as valid rights; even so, these are a rewrite of "God given" rights, authority from the ultimate source). When the work is a summary based on existing laws, the authority behind those laws has the duty to enforce them (indeed, may have been created at least in part for this purpose). without such authority, or when there is such an authority but it hasn't been consulted as to whether it will validate them as rights and agree to protect them, the work is simply a list of good ideas.
In this particular instance it appears as though most of the assertions are derived from and are protected by existing laws (at least in the US). Unfortunately it also seems to be a summary of those laws which have been significantly eroded as of late. While the work may not carry authority, it can serve as a starting point for protecting the rights it claims and for regaining the eroded portions of the laws from which it is derived.
Of course this too is academic. I taught this stuff as an introduction to bioethics. It comes from philosophy. In my opinion philosophy exists in large part to debate such things. I fully expect most of it could be argued against. Hell, I could, thanks to philosophy. In any case there's a decent summary of rights and duties at http://www.osjspm.org/rights_and_duties.aspx . Despite being Catholic social teaching, it is fairly even handed.
Myself and others wax scientific and rant extensively about the problems associated with using this technique. I'll keep mine short this time by keeping it to an example. From TFA in that eminent science journal Esquire:
"When you speak, blood flows to the language centers. When you blink your eyes, it flows to the eye-blinking centers."
The same region that makes something happen is also responsible for inhibiting that action. Each contains both accelerator and brakes. When you withhold speech, blood flows to the language centers. When you prevent your eyes from blinking, blood flows to the eye blinking centers. When the reaction is "I love my wife", blood flows to the I love my wife centers. When the reaction is "I don't love my wife", blood flows to the I love my wife centers.
It is not possible for fMRI to tell the difference between a positive and negative reaction, and is in fact measuring both reactions being considered prior to resolution in the sampling time. The two reactions may use some different Hebbian neural assemblies within the same region, but the low (ie. several cubic millimeters) spatial resolution of MRI catches both of them plus much more in the same voxel (3D pixel). The same problem emerges when different regions "light up" in the different conditions. It can't be determined whether that is excitatory or inhibitory activity.
By way of providing a reference, the above is what I was taught by a biophysicist who was working on his dissertation on this subject under Peter Fox, originator of the use of MRI for functional testing (ie. 'boxcar' design), including the use of SPM (statistical probability mapping) for analysis in comparing the MRI results in the different conditions. The above should also make it clear that using fMRI as a "lie detector" is fruitless.
"Steven Johnson took Gibson's insight to heart and argued that if we want to know what the networked journalism of the future might be like, we should look now at how the reporting of technology has evolved over the past few decades."
Things are not only unevenly distributed, they're changing faster than people think. Not just the past few decades, but the last few years have seen a pandemic of text editor operators masquerading as journalists. Many stories are lifted whole or in chunks from a source that probably didn't verify their material, or as in cases such as science reporting, are simply quoting a press release. Secondary "journalists" sometimes rewrite parts of the original. Sometimes. The better ones (as in an impacted wisdom tooth is better than losing a limb to gangrene) pull pieces from two sources. Very few real journalists of integrity exist, partly because trying to fill the net requires enormous manpower, but also because it's cheaper.
And yes, Rupert Murdoch's outlets do it too. He wants to make money at it but won't pay to make it worth buying by hiring real journalists and letting them do real journalism.