Минздрав предупреждает!

Бухаете - тогда я иду к вам! Креатив от Минздрава, который устал предупреждать...

Symmetry

"In everything… uniformity is undesirable. Leaving something incomplete makes it interesting, and gives one the feeling that there is room for growth… Even when building the imperial palace, they always leave one place unfinished.”

- Japanese Essays In Idleness, 14th Century

The world turns on symmetry -- from the spin of subatomic particles to the dizzying beauty of an arabesque. But there's more to it than meets the eye. Here, Oxford mathematician Marcus du Sautoy offers a glimpse of the invisible numbers that marry all symmetrical objects.

Feynman on 'Why' Questions, Nature and Chess

humorous encounter of a physicist and a person...



while I'm at it, here is Feynman's cool talk on the laws of nature and chess:

"But if you realise all the time what's kind of wonderful that is if we expand our experience into wilder and wilder regions of experience every once and a while we have these integrations in which everything is pulled together in a unification which turns out to be simpler than it looked before."

Symphony of Science

Neat!! Music and accompanying video is made by synthesizing speeches of many brilliant scientists (Feynman, Sagan, Hawkins etc.,) talking about science, life and the universe!





If you'd like to hear more (or download) visit the Symphony of Science website.

Liquid Helium II: The Superfluid

Professor Alfred Leitner walks you through and acquaints you with the many interesting properties of liquid helium. I can't resist to comment on the difference in quality of the content between this video and many 'science' videos on Discovery Channel...it's like a difference between watching a good quality movie, for example "Becket" (1964), versus not-so-good-quality movie, for example "Dude, Where is my car? (2000)". I hope Discovery channel takes a note of this video and draws appropriate conclusions hopefully resulting in less 'hype' and greater quality. Good videos are not only visually pleasing but also intellectually invigorating.
     

Biomimetic Nanoadhesives

Research Papers: Read & Write

Another useful resources to check out:
1. Prof. Whitesides' group: Writing a Paper
2. Keshav - How to Read a Research Paper

Secrets of the Neuron

Ever wondered how the neurons in your brain operate? Well you are in luck! These are really cool, "old school" videos related neuroscience field. Enjoy!

Ave Maria

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Plagiarism in USSR

It came to my attention recently how many literary works coming out of Russia (especially during the time of USSR) was plagiarism! I remember as a little boy reading these stories and always thought that they were Russian because of the Russian author on the cover of the book (it never said 'translated by' followed by the Russian name, it was always 'Author' followed by the Russian name). Sad indeed, but I guess it is not very uncommon occurrence in this world. In Russia they even have a joke that goes something like this:

Copying from one source - plagiarism; from two - compilation; from three or more - dissertation!

Ideas!...

Весна!

Emotions

I'm currently reading couple books and decided to write a brief synopsis to enable myself to remember better what I've read.

Quickly bypassing the era of Darwinism in the view of emotions, where the emotions were traced to the instinctive and apparently superfluous, dying-out, remains of our primitive ancestor's coping with the environment. These ideas of emotions were largely formulated from Darwin's views of the relationship between the living organisms and the environment. The 'mistake' was to translate these ideas of emotions within the animal world to the emotions within the human mind.

William James, an unorthodox psychologist and a philosopher, reinvigorated our understanding of the emotions in humans. Prior to William James, the dynamics of the emotional process was the following: first stage involves an outside or inner event, the reception of which prompts an emotion (ex. encounter with danger), then comes the experience of the emotion itself (feeling of fear) and then follows the corresponding bodily, organic expression (heart-beating, paleness, shivering etc - all the symptoms accompanying fear). Thus, early psychologists identified the following sequence: reception, experience (feeling), expression. Per contra, James suggested an alternative view pointing to the fact that immediately following the reception of an event, emerge reflex-based organic changes (to James, these changes occurred within the inner organs). These changes, occurring in a reflex-based way  (fear or other emotions), are received by us and the reception of our own organic reactions is what comprises the essence or the core of our emotions.  

There is an extensive literature on this view of emotions (James-Lange theory). However, the apparent fundamental downside of James' theory is that he ties the origin of the emotions to the most unchanging, lowest in the historical development human organs - inner organs which, according to James, are the true carriers of the emotions. Viewing emotions as an isolated, separated from the whole, from the rest of the human psychological nature - an anatomico-physiological justification and nothing more. In this regard, his theory of emotions can be viewed as a step back in our process of understanding, of having a supra-Darwinian model of emotions. His theory, just like the preceding theory, essentially precludes any formulation of the question of the emotional development and genesis. 

"Emotions are reflections in our consciousness of organic changes" - W. James

Then came Walter B. Cannon who, with his experiments on cats with removed sympathetic nervous system, showed that an animal possesses an emotional state even under the absence of vegetative reactions, thereby disproving James' first thesis of mentally suppressed emotional symptoms. That is, if one suppresses or subtracts mentally, from the emotion of fear, it's symptoms such as shivering etc., then one would find, according to James, that the emotion is no longer present. Cannon's experiments showed otherwise. 

James' second thesis: if one brought out outer expression, accompanying an emotion, then that emotion will follow - ends up, also, being incorrect. This was shown by conducting experiments whereby, the subjects (humans and animals) were  given an injection that causes artificial organic changes analogous to those that are observed during a strong emotion. It was shown that elicitation of appropriate organic changes in animals is possible without appearance of the known, associated, emotions. The same experimental work on humans however brought a slight refinement for it was found, contrary to Cannon's belief at the time, that organic expressions of emotions are not at all irrelevant for the emotional state of a human being. 

Cannon established many experiments to verify, correct and reshape his understanding of emotions. Whoever wishes may read about his experiments in more detail. Here I'm only mentioning him to give a feel for the pattern, progression of thought regarding emotions and their development. Bottom line is that Cannon and his students have shown that what 'dies' is not emotion itself (as was thought earlier) but the instinctive component of it. Another words, the role of the emotions in the human psyche is different - they become isolated from the kingdom of instincts and transpose to a totally new plane. Cannon's works shift the center of mass from the periphery (organs) as was theorized by James and moved it to the center i.e. the brain itself thus, tying the mechanism of emotions with the brain. Doing so shed some light on and connected the experimental findings of other psychologists that found a close connection and dependence between the development of emotions and development of other sides of a human psychological life (human psyche). 

Freud's understanding of emotions was also incorrect but, like the people mentioned above, he brought something new to the field of study - valuable insights and a different perspective. Freud, contrary to the classical conceptions of emotions as static, showed the unusually colorful dynamics of emotional life. According to Freud, fear is explained as, in a sequence of neurological changes, a suppressed sexual desire that turns into fear. Particulars aside, his most important contribution to the study of emotions lies in the understanding that the emotions now are not the same as the emotions before. That they are not separate but can be understood in the context of the whole dynamic of the human life. Only here do the emotional processes receive their meaning and sense. 

What is Synergetics?

If you look in your typical dictionary you will find that the word 'synergetics' does not appear there (at least, it didn't in mine), but the word 'synergy' does and is defined as "a combined effect of drugs, organs, etc., that exceeds the sum of their individual effects. It's derived from the Greek 'synergos' meaning working together. Synergetics was introduced in the late 1970s by Hermann Haken who noticed profound similarities between the fundamental mathematical models which are used to describe the cooperative behavior of various active systems in physics, chemistry, biology, and social sciences.

Synergetic is a science of structure and it seeks to find general laws that govern the formation of these structures. By structures one means everything from the shape of the galaxies to that of snow crystals; from ant colonies to biological cells; structures emerging out of chaos and of the human mind. The latter being, perhaps, most pertinent if we consider that physics, chemistry, psychology, sociology, theology etc., are all, in essence, structures of the human minds. If one is able to extract the governing dynamics of the formation of the structures of the human mind…we'll be able to see the universe and ourselves in a whole new way!

So, in a sense, synergetic can be thought of as a shop where fundamental models of cooperative behavior (structure formation) are worked up and their careful mathematical analysis is performed. The fact that it's possible to extract the laws and patterns of cooperative behavior of active systems seems, at first glance, to be surprising and not at all representative of biological or social systems. Even a single prokaryote represents an extremely complicated object, not to mention the extreme complexity of human beings who are individual elements of social systems. However! In cooperative interactions these elements often act is if they were simple units that can be described by a set of a few variables. Their vast internal complexity is not directly manifested in their interactions. This, perhaps, is a direct consequence of evolution for if one were to allow the elements to reflect all their internal complexity in the interactions, then the system as a whole would most probably not be able to display any stable and predictable behavior.

Thus, the wide variety found in the interactions and activities of the living systems emerges out of interplay of many simple ordered patterns that correspond to different structural levels. Ultimately, it is this notion that makes the mathematical description of the living systems feasible. (Note that concept of the order-parameter and the enslavement, which are at the heart of synergetics, emerged out of Ginzburg-Landau Theory of phase transitions).

It seems fair to conclude that this self-organizations phenomenon, or emergence of structures, differs in inorganic and biological systems not in the type of individual patterns but rather in the complexity of the emerging hierarchical structures with the latter system exhibiting higher complexity.

Reflex vs. Instinct

In the previous post I've defined reflex and gave some examples of it in the newborns. I've also said that heritable reactions can be further subdivided into reflexes and instincts. While the concept of reflex is now tractable, the concept of instinct demands further explanation.

Generally, people think of the instincts as the more-complex forms of the heritable behavior. Some scientists claim that one must view instincts as a complex or chain-reaction-like reflex. By that one means a certain kind of connection between the chain of reflexes whereby the response part of one reflex serves as an irritant for the next reflex. Then an insignificant impulse from the outside or some irritant can cause a complex sequence of actions and behaviors, connected among each other in such a way that every activity/action will automatically cause the next one to occur. Not unlike the dominos falling or a trigger wave in bistable or excitable media.

Such view, however, appears to be inadequate. First of all, it suggests that instinct exists in strongly-bounded and exact connection with the elements of the environment. Reflex is a unique, well defined and deterministic connection with the environment. On the contrary, instinct connection is less determined and freer.

Young squirrels, separated from their mothers from birth and always kept in a room (never being outside, never seeing the ground or the trees) and fed always by a human hand, during the Fall season begin to develop an instinct of collecting and storing food for the winter. Squirrel buries the nuts in the rug, sofa, armchair or collects them all in the conner of the room. Such conditions rule out the possibility of learning and negate all those elements of the environment that usually precede development of the instinct. Therefore, one must adopt a more extendable and pliable connection between the instinctive reaction and the environment.

Further, instinctual actions can never be divined and considered, completely, ahead of time; never forming an exact pattern and vary from instance to instance.

Thirdly, the uniqueness of the instinct is contained in the large complexity of the performed actions. While reflex, typically, causes activity of one organ; instinct, typically, causes a large number of cooperating activities of various organs. In other words, it's fair to say that reflex represents a reaction of one organ while instinct represents a reaction (behavior) of the whole organism.

To illustrate the distinction between the instinct and the reflex it's illuminating to look at the mating behavior of the headless flies. Headless flies are capable of mating but only under the condition of one headless fly and one normal fly. All the actions performed before the connection, which can not be considered and predicted ahead of time and that involve participation of various organs, are performed by the normal fly. But the actual act of mating even the headless fly is capable of performing. In this instance, experimental observations differentiate the behavior into reflexorial and instinctual forms. All the actions performed prior to connection must be attributed to the instinctual behavior tied to the workings of the head(nervous) centers. While the actual act of connection ends up being a simple reflex, not requiring the participation of the head(nervous) centers.

Reactions

The basic elements which comprise the entire behavior of an animal or human being, in simplest and complex forms, is sometimes called - 'reactions'. In psychology reaction is the response of an organism instigated by an irritant or stimulus. It is generally assumed that our every behavior is preceded by its cause or reason in a form of either outside factors, events, internal wants/tensions, thoughts etc. All these motives of behavior will be irritants of our reactions. So to that extent one can understand reaction to be a known connection between an organism and its surrounding environment. It's worthy to point out that reactions are not unique to animals and humans (where sometimes reactions can be confused with reflexes) rather it's a much more general concept applying equally to those animals lacking nervous systems, plants, bacteria etc.

Any reaction, starting from the simplest forms in the simplest of organisms to the very complex forms found in the conscious acts of human beings, will always include three essential moments. First - reception of some irritants from the outside environment (sensorial). Followed by the second moment of conversion (informational digestion :) ) of the incoming irritant within the inner processes of an organism, stimulating activity. Finally, third moment, is a response activity (mostly in the form of a movement) developed as a result of the inner processes. This third moment is sometimes called motorial. Second moment is intimately connected to the functioning of the central nervous system and, as a result, sometimes referred to as 'central'. These three moments - sensorial, central and motorial or irritant reception, its conversion (digestion) and response activity - are necessarily present in any reaction.

Examples are abundant: heliotropism (orientation of the plant towards the sun as they grow), moth flying towards the light, dog salivating in response to the meat placed in its mouth, or human, upon hearing the door bell proceeds to opening the door - in all these instances its simple to see the existence of all three moments of a reaction. Note, that it is not always easy (as in examples above) to identify clearly all three moments of a reaction, especially in the complex forms of the human behavior, but according to the model even the most complex reactions follow the same outline as the simple reactions dictated by the three moments.

One word on the distinction between reaction and reflex. As said before reaction is a more general concept of which reflex is a particular instance. In animals possessing the central nervous system (CNS) reactions often take the form of a reflex. In fact, reflex is nothing more then a reaction of animal's nervous system. Thus, reflex is a narrow physiological concept; reaction is a wider biological concept. Reflex are absent in plants or animals not having the CNS yet one can still talk about reactions. Finally, it is not at all obvious (and there are evidence to support this) that there do not exist, in humans, reactions which are not related to the reflexory process rather then those that emerge as a consequence of chemical irritation/stimulation of the CNS from within.

Even the most basic observation of the human and animal behavior allows one to differentiate between reactions of various, distinct originations.

Some of reactions are what could be termed - heritable or congenital - and are given to a child either in the first moments of birth or form during the process of growth without any learning, studying, memorizing or external influences. Examples of heritable reactions are abundant in the newborns: crying reflex, swallowing, sucking etc, are noticeable in the first hours following the birth and remain, for the most part, unchanged throughout the life. These heritable forms of behavior can be further subdivided into reflexes and instincts.

Other reactions, per contra, form during the process of personal experience (various points in life) and come not from the inherited organization but, instead, originate as a result of the uniqueness of an individual's experience. Call these - acquired reactions.

In heritable reactions, forms of behavior, there is a lot of commonality between the animals and the human beings. On the contrary, acquired reactions are quiet distinct depending on the historical, geographical, gender based, social class and individual uniquenesses.

Following Majority

At the beginning of fifties a report was published in the United States about an experiment performed more than fifty times by the social psychologist Solomon Asch. Volunteers had to estimate the length of various lines as a ratio to a reference line. It was an easy task - or so it appeared at first glance - because the line in agreement could be readily identified. Eight to nine persons participated in the experiment, which proceeded as follows: as soon as the three comparison lines were suspended next to the reference line, each person, in the sequence from left to right, indicated which of the three lines corresponded in his or her opinion to the reference line. Each experiment had to performed twelve times, with twelve repetitions.

The following test was now carried out: after all the volunteers had agreed on the correct line during the first two runs, the experimenter changed the situation. His assistants, who knew the purpose of the experiment, all indicated too short a line as being in agreement with the reference line. The behavior of a naive volunteer, the only person unaware, who sat at the end of the row, was now examined under the the pressure of a dominant different opinion. Would he begin to waver? Would he agree with the majority verdict, no matter how much it contradicted his own? Or would he uphold his own judgement?

Results: of ten volunteers, two could not be persuaded to change their minds; two agreed only once or twice during ten test runs, but six out of ten indicated several times the obviously wrong minority view as their own. From this one might conclude that even in the harmless question and in a rather indifferent situation that does not affect their real interest most people follow the opinion of the majority even when they can have no doubt that it is incorrect.