From page 11 of a European Commission survey….

The Agitator is doing a fine job on the play-by-play following the Kathryn Johnston shooting. These are your drug war tax dollars at work. For a weak-willed waffler like myself it is nice to come across a policy area where the side of reason and justice is so obvious. Rapidly approaching single issue voter status.

By conservative estimates, there are about 110 of these types of raids per day in America. The vast majority are for drug crimes. Think this was the only one conducted after shoddy police work? Think this was the only one conducted based solely on the word of an informant? Think it’s pure coincidence that in the one raid that made national attention last week, we now learn that something went severely wrong in the investigation that led to it?

Of course not. This is standard operating procedure. This the way it’s done in a huge number of jurisdictions across the country. Not all. But far too many. I’ve had police officers tell me raids are never launched based solely on the word of an informant. But this one was. I’ve had police officers tell me there’s always extensive corroborating investigation to verify the address, house, and suspect. But not this time. I’ve had police officers tell me paramilitary raids are only conducted with the suspect is extremely dangerous, and has a history of violent behavior. Not this time. I’ve had police officers tell me they only target big suppliers with these raids, not small-time dealers or users. Again — that wasn’t the case, here.

I find it hard to believe that the only time time these shortcuts have been used are in those raids we read about in the newspaper — where an innocent person dies.

These assaults on people’s homes are high-stakes and have an extremely thin margin for error. Couple that with the inherent shortcomings of relying on shady informants — a critical tool in drug policing — and you get a recipe for hundreds of innocent people wrongly terrorized, and dozens more who end up dead. By my count, Kathryn Johnston is number 41. Throw in nonviolent offenders and she’s number 61 — at least (I’m sure I haven’t found all of those cases).

And all of this — for what?

To stop people from getting high.

Science Daily summarizes findings that Neandertal teeth grew at the same rate as modern humans. John Hawks applies the skeptical eye of a scientist. N matters….

Free Exchange has a comment on a comment on an article about the ability of genomics-informed medicine to break the game of chance at the very core of the insurance industry. The analogy to learning not to build houses in natural disaster areas is made, but with certain diseases no prevention (post-natally) is possible.

An interesting point though re: insuring the poor. Probably you’ve all thought of it this way before:

But what about the poor? It is hard to see any reason why insurance companies should subsidize them. If society thinks that poor families should have insurance, then society should pay for it through the tax code, not slap regulations on insurance companies to keep information from reaching the market.

In a related note, there is a Google Techtalk available featuring Russ B. Altman, the guy heading PharmGKB, an ambitious project to link SNPs to pharmacological outcomes. As a for instance, something like 7% of people have SNPs that disable the enzyme that turns codeine into morphine, so they get no pain relief from Tylenol 3. So let’s not waste the insurance money buying them that medication.

If you like watching videos of people being cool on the internet, you might also want to check out TEDTalks. In one of my favorites, Dr. Robert Fischell shoots magnet guns at peoples’ heads and disrupts migraines before they start.

Are bloggers more like sharks in a feeding frenzy or vultures on deadmeat?

See the populist rally the mob:

Ah… the Perfumed Class. Our Lords and Masters, the Principle Investigator Princes wandering over their incandescent domains, bestowing upon their peasant postdocs, their servile grad students, their precious beneficence… Don’t you love them?
…
In summary, I am sorry, but I have to say to you that at present and under the present circumstances, I do not feel comfortable at all to have you here as a junior faculty colleague.
Step off Logan Airport, and I’ll dip you in tempura batter, fry you in peanut oil and eat you for dinner.

I love that he is able to riff off of Tonegawa’s ethnicity with such dexterity.

Oh and here’s one who was even more clever with Tonegawa’s name. See how she replaced Tone with Toady! So CLEVER! Wish I could pat her on the head for it. “I like to think he was strong-armed into stepping down.”

Let’s do something besides join the dogpile.

Tonegawa won the Nobel Prize in 1987.

Susumu Tonegawa was the one who finally answered the question how the gene material in B cells could suffice to create the structures of a seemingly endless number of different antibodies. In 1976 he could in a convincing and elegant manner show how different immunoglobulin genes which were far apart in the embryonic cell in the B lymphocyte had been moved in closer contact. Under development from the germ cells (the sperm and egg cell) to an antibody producing B lymphocyte the genes forming the immunoglobulins had accordingly been redistributed. In subsequent experiment Tonegawa could clarify how different pieces of the genome were moved around, recombined and even could be “lost” to finally give rise to the DNA which is found in the mature B lymphocyte.

Since then he has been a leader in the development of transgenic technologies:

Using the phage P1-derived Cre/loxP recombination system, we have developed a method to create mice in which the deletion (knockout) of virtually any gene of interest is restricted to a subregion or a specific cell type in the brain such as the pyramidal cells of the hippocampal CA1 region. The Cre/loxP recombination–based gene deletion appears to require a certain level of Cre protein expression. The brain subregional restricted gene knockout should allow a more precise analysis of the impact of a gene mutation on animal behaviors.

These technologies have become indispensable in the study of memory. You can knockout whatever gene you want in just the portion of the brain circuitry that theory has pointed to as important. One of the first (if not the first) applications was the production of mice lacking NMDA-type glutamate receptors in the CA1 region of the hippocampus. The casual reader or layperson can basically equate NMDA receptors with synaptic plasticity, meaning the changes in neural transmission that underlie memory. These CA1-NMDAR KO mice suck at memory.

But Tonegawa also provides a refined behavioral and theoretical approach. The hippocampus has a strong flow of connectivity from area DG to CA3 to CA1. CA3 has highly recurrent connections and thus has been modeled as a pattern completion module. Knocking out CA3 NMDA receptors doesn’t have an obvious effect on memory like the CA1 version. Instead, one has to dig and understand clearly the role of different hippocampal subregions to find the CA3-KOs’ specific deficit.

Pattern completion, the ability to retrieve complete memories on the basis of incomplete sets of cues, is a crucial function of biological memory systems. The extensive recurrent connectivity of the CA3 area of hippocampus has led to suggestions that it might provide this function. We have tested this hypothesis by generating and analyzing a genetically engineered mouse strain in which the N-methyl-D-asparate (NMDA) receptor gene is ablated specifically in the CA3 pyramidal cells of adult mice. The mutant mice normally acquired and retrieved spatial reference memory in the Morris water maze, but they were impaired in retrieving this memory when presented with a fraction of the original cues. Similarly, hippocampal CA1 pyramidal cells in mutant mice displayed normal place-related activity in a full-cue environment but showed a reduction in activity upon partial cue removal. These results provide direct evidence for CA3 NMDA receptor involvement in associative memory recall.

More recently Tonegawa and colleagues have emphasized the role of regulation of protein synthesis in memory storage, showing that certain pathways many equate with regulation at the level of mRNA synthesis (transcription) also regulate translation factors directly. This short circuits the loop. There is no need for a signal to travel from synapse to nucleus and back in order to make changes in the structure of a synapse. The same group has provided a unique theoretical insight in developing the clustered plasticity model in which changes involved in memory storage are coordinated at neighboring synapses.

The papers in the Arc-stravaganza a couple weeks ago all cited Tonegawa (and other very important PI’s: Sur and Majewska) as early empirical evidence that Arc plays a role in reducing noise in synaptic plasticity rather than directly increasing the strength of “signal” synapses as many predicted.

Just some light reading in case you get tired of too much cleverness. As I mentioned at Shelley’s blog, I think the peanut gallery could stand to quiet down some until they understand in technical detail the degree to which Karpova and Tonegawa were trying to achieve the same technology. I also agree with the original ad hoc report that we shouldn’t be privy to those emails. Unfortunately, we are privy because of some highly unprofessional and noncollegial media wagging performed by somebody besides our latest burning patriarchy effigy.

Orac has a rather thorough post on eugenics, and what Richard Dawkins has recently had to say on it. Here is the dictionary.com definition of eugenics:

…the study of or belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population, esp. by such means as discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits (negative eugenics) or encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits (positive eugenics).

Read More

A few days ago, I came across a very interesting article on lexical-gustatory synaesthesia (via Language Hat):

Lexical-gustatories involuntarily “taste” words when they hear them, or even try to recall them, she wrote in a study, “Words on the Tip of the Tongue,” published in the issue of Nature dated Thursday. She has found only 10 such people in Europe and the United States.

Magnetic-resonance imaging indicates that they are not faking, she said. The correct words light up the taste regions of their brains. Also, when given a surprise test a year later, they taste the same foods on hearing the words again.

(Synaesthetes are hardly ever described as “suffering from” the syndrome, because their doubled perceptions excite envy in many of us mere sensual Muggles.)

It can be unpleasant, however. One subject, Dr. Simner said, hates driving, because the road signs flood his mouth with everything from pistachio ice cream to ear wax.

Now Amnestic points me to a fascinating video of V.S. Ramachandran talking about the subject. Some reactions to the video:

1. So synaesthesia is was LSD users report!
2. Synaesthesia can be good for something – e.g. patterns jump out at you
3. Einstein might have had some type of synaesthesia
4. I can easily see how some kind of synaesthesia could give rise to new “modules” – e.g. a prime number identifier

One of the most interesting things about the Language Hat link was that quite a few synaesthetes, of various kinds, showed up to share their perceptions. I was wondering if any GNXP readers had something to share? In particular, I am interested in ways synaesthesia is good (or bad) for you.

UPDATE: This sounds like some kind of synaesthesia:

“Squaring numbers is a symmetrical process that I like very much,” he says. “And when I divide one number by another, say, 13 divided by 97, I see a spiral rotating downwards in larger and larger loops that seem to warp and curve. The shapes coalesce into the right number. I never write anything down.”
 
His mathematical abilities are so extraordinary that it took a long time for them to be recognised. Daniel struggled at school (why, he wondered, were the numbers in the textbook not printed in their true colours, nine in blue, and so on?). He got a B at Maths GCSE. He wasn’t diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome until three years ago, at 25. Sooner would have been better “both for me and my parents”; consciousness-raising is part of his motivation for writing his book. “My condition is invisible otherwise.”

Scientists at California’s Center for Brain Studies were astounded when, two years ago, they discovered his facility for discerning prime numbers. They had assumed he must have been trained to do it. But to him, it is more like an instinctive process: “Prime numbers feel smooth, like pebbles”.

Wanted: Biologists who can speak ‘math,’ engineers fluent in genetics

Biologists, computer scientists and engineers speak different languages: Mention “vector” to a molecular biologist and a plasmid (a circular piece of bacterial DNA used in gene cloning) comes to mind. Say “vector” to an engineer, and she thinks of a mathematical concept. Similarly with “expression”: To a biologist, it means protein production from a gene; to an engineer, it’s an equation.

Cute, but there’s discussion of more serious topics.

Lidstrom, who conducts an elective biology class for engineers, has found that biologists are motivated by the “what,” while engineers are motivated by the “how.” She told a room packed with MIT students and faculty that “engineering students tend to view biology as magic because they don’t see us using differential equations. And often they don’t even necessarily want to understand the ‘what’ of biology–they just want to use it.

I’m not sure that helpfully describes the situation, but there’s a more interesting question. How do you teach engineers biology (esp. genetics)? The undergrad classes run out of Lewis-Sigler at Princeton seem like a good move in the opposite direction: training natural scientists in quantitative thinking.

Update: Chris has a follow up post.
Chris leaves nothing unsaid. A sample:

In that talk Dawkins sounds, at times, like a 5-year old with the vocabulary and factual knowledge of a world-renowned scientist….
I find it hypocritcal and, as an atheist, more than a little embarrassing that these fundamentalist, Dawkinsian, scientistic, self-styled free thinking atheists, who know jack about the history of religion, or serious philosophy and theology, feel that they can criticize religious fundamentalists for saying things about science (in the evolution-creationism debate, for example) when those religious fundamentalists are clearly ignorant of the science, but have no problem making grand claims about the rationality of religion or its practical implications. I can’t help but think that they feel they’re justified in this because they have a distinct sense of intellectual and, perhaps, moral superiority over the religious….

Well, I’ve stated that a diversity of viewpoints is necessary, and this needed to be said too. I think fundamentally a problem that too many intellectual atheists have, and Chris alludes to this, is to reduce religion to scriptural literalism and the general movement which is fundamentalism. Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris argue strongly for a necessary connection between non-fundamentalist monotheism and fundamentalist monotheism precisely because their assault against the latter need not be repeated for the former if you view the latter as simply an extention upon the bedrock placed upont he former. I think this is something of a nasty rhetorical trick myself, I can see where they are coming from, but I feel that their motives are more driven by tactics than strategic sincerity. Additionally, fundamentalist religion in its extoric avowed trappings is not difficult to comprehend for those who are not religious, it is naturally easy to confuse the bare totems of fundamentalist religion, righteous fidelity to text, tight community and a powerful clerical class (in practice, often not in theory) as the essence of religion. But what if it’s not? One can not see the psychology of the religious, one must study it, if one can not partake of it in a direct fashion. And that is where Harris and Dawkins seem to go wrong in their emphasis, they confuse the exoteric elements of fundamentalism for being an increase in magnitude of the vector when it is in fact somewhat orthogonal to the root of basal psychological religiosity.
Ezekiel 16:20-21 Moreover thou hast taken thy sons and thy daughters, whom thou hast borne unto me, and these hast thou sacrificed unto them to be devoured. Is this of thy whoredoms a small matter, That thou hast slain my children, and delivered them to cause them to pass through the fire for them?

Interesting article which surveys the confusion in Europe right now as countries whose electoral systems are based on proportional representation are seeing a tendency by the populace to vote for parties of the far Right and far Left. This has resulted in unwieldly and unstable coalitions drawn from the ever shrinking center. Many Americans (and some Brits) have long complained of “winner take all” districts which results in ideologically impure parties who offer milquetoast alternatives. The flip side though of course is that small popular vote majorities tend to yield very sizable representative majorities. Myself, I tend to favor proportional representation, despite its instability, because I think it more accurately reflects the ideological divisions within the electorate. The “big tent” negotiation which goes on in backrooms in a two-party systems occur more transparently when coalitions are necessary.
Genesis 38:24 – And it came to pass about three months after, that it was told Judah, saying, Tamar thy daughter in law hath played the harlot; and also, behold, she is with child by whoredom. And Judah said, Bring her forth, and let her be burnt.