Although some sources close to Ralf Schumacher revealed the fact that the German driver turned down a good offer to return to Formula One a few weeks ago, the reports about his potential comeback with one of the existing teams in the series are starting to make the headlines.
The German allegedly received an offer from one of the newly-entrants, which may very well be the reason why he turned down such a challenge. However, should he be handed a new offer from outfits like Renault… (read more)
‘So if you want to wreak widespread
death and destruction, sign up with the US government rather than Al
Qaeda’s shoe-bombing division. Groin-grenades are apparently even
less lethal, judging from Abdulmutallab, not to mention their built-in
deterrent for faithful fanatics: what fun can a guy have with all those
virgins in Paradise if he’s burnt a certain area to a crisp?
Groin-grenades may be ineffective WMD’s, but they’re as
good as shoe-bombs at growing government’s power. If a lone wacko
with a bit of explosive in his sneaker excuses the TSA’s
foot-fetish, imagine the hay Leviathan can make from one with a bomb in
his crotch: “I think we have to head in that direction [of virtual
strip-searches with millimeter-wave scanning],” the histrionic Pete
King intoned. “Yes, there is some brief violation of privacy with a
full body scan. But on the other hand, if we can save thousands of
lives, to me, we have to make that decision”.’
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‘The appearance of
RH-negative blood did not follow the usual evolutionary path. In fact,
evolution would seem to be ruled out as a possible cause of the
anomaly. It has been proven that blood is the least likely to mutate.
There are no other blood mutations. The introduction of the RH-negative
blood type was not a naturally occurring part of human evolution.
This would lend credence
that the RH-negative factor was introduced from an outside source.
Could the source be from human like beings from another planet? Or
maybe we are just as alien as they are, in that, we are a product of
their manipulation and interference. Could they have come here and
manipulated life forms already present on earth to create modern man?’
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Filed under: Fitness, Healthy Eating
When women exercise too much and eat too little, amenorrhea can set in, causing a woman who has been menstruating regularly to miss periods. We asked sports nutritionist Nancy Clark, author of Sports Nutrition Guidebook, to explain the connection between fitness and amenorrhea, and how you can keep your body healthy.
Q: What is the relationship between amenorrhea and fitness?
A: It’s more about nutrition. When a person is doing a lot of exercising and not eating enough to support normal body functions, the body has to conserve energy. One way it conserves energy is to stop menstruating. Women have to know that it’s not normal. They sometimes think it’s just because they’ve been training really hard and they see it as being positive and they’re happy to be rid of the inconvenience of their period. But it’s normal for a woman’s body to have regular menstrual periods and abnormal for it not to. It’s your body sending you a sign that something is wrong.
Q: How drastic does your caloric deficit have to be before you stop menstruating?
Continue reading The Danger of Too Much Exercise and Not Enough Food
October 2009 featured World Mental Health Day (October 10th) reminding people of the importance of mental wellbeing. There were a number of papers reviewed covering in particular mental health informatics and cognitive impairment. Blogs reviewed focused on mental health informatics topics including an open-source healthcare database MRS. There were some interesting podcasts reviewed which included an interview with Professor Sir David Goldberg as well as a lecture in which the benefits of bringing positive psychology into psychiatry were considered. Books reviewed covered evolution, psychoanalytic and related theories and sociological topics. In the news there was a look at studies on olive oil and amyloid plaques, an association between cholesterol in middle-age and subsequent Alzheimer’s Disease, the efficacy of telephone-based delivery of CBT, an increase in antidepressant prescriptions in the UK, new electrophysiological findings about the functioning of Broca’s area, a Japanese supercomputing project to simulate life, new findings about Dimebolin’s receptor sensitivity and the development of the Neuroscience Information Framework Version 2.0.
Book Review
Book Review: The Greatest Show on Earth
Book Review: Alfred Adler on The Education of Children
Podcast/Media Reviews
Podcast Review: Nature Neuropod Oct 28th 2009
Podcast Review: October 2009 Edition of American Journal of Psychiatry
Podcast Review: Nature Podcasts from October 2009
Podcast Review: Acta Scandinavica Psychiatrica Interview with Professor Sir David Goldberg
Podcast Review: Bringing Psychology’s ‘Positive Psychology’ to Psychiatry
Blog Review
Blog Review: Doctor Dymphna’s Diliberations
Blog Review: Medical Ethics Blog
Blog Review: Mobile Healthcare
Blog Review: New Media Medicine Blog
Social Psychiatry Article Reviews
Review: Accuracy of Prevalence Rates in Multiple Sclerosis
Review: The Genetic Epidemiology of Neurodegenerative Disease
Review: Mobile and Fixed Computer Use by Doctors and Nurses on Hospital Ward
Review: YouTube and ‘Neurological Knowledge’
Psychology/Psychotherapy Article Reviews
Review: Implicit and Explicit Aspects of Sequence Learning in Presymptomatic Huntington’s Disease
Review: Cognitive Impairment in MS: Evidence-based analysis
Review: Differential Cognitive Impairment for Diverse Forms of Multiple Sclerosis
Review: Vascular Cognitive Impairment No Dementia (VCIND)
Biological Psychiatry Article Reviews
Review: Beyond the Brain in Huntington’s Disease
Review: Autophagy in Neurodegeneration and Development
Review: Striosomes and Mood Dysfunction In Huntington’s Disease
Miscellaneous
News Round-Up October 2009
In this article there is coverage of a prospective cohort study in Honolulu which includes post-mortems to clarify the processes leading to the dementia. The study has been going on for many decades and the researchers have now accumulated data from close to 800 autopsies and are able to compare this with neuropsychological and other data. NHS Choices discuss a study involving Olive Oil and finding that it binds to A Beta-derived diffusible ligands (ADDLs) and influences in turn their binding to synapses which may have implications for the disease process in Alzheimer’s Disease. In America, a group of neurologists have developed consensus guidelines for the use of cognitive enhancers in adults without dementia. Another study involved contacting retired American Football (NFL) players and conducting a survey over the phone. The researchers found a much higher prevalence of dementia in the NFL players than the national average. In one study there was found to be an association between plasma levels of ABeta42 and risk of conversion from Mild Cognitive Impairment to Alzheimer’s Disease and it will be useful to see further replication of these findings. Levels of a class of transcription factors NFAT’s (Nuclear Factors of Associated T-Cells) was significantly elevated in the hippocampi of subjects with Mild Cognitive Impairment or Alzheimer’s Disease compared to controls and at least one pathway has been suggested between activation by Amyloid plaques and expression of regulated genes.
A prospective California study with 9000 subjects provided evidence of an association between higher levels of cholesterols in people aged in their 40’s and the subsequent prevalence of Alzheimer’s Disease in their 60’s to 80’s. The article is freely available here. Analysis of the data from the Nun study continues with over 500 brains obtained post-mortem. The Nun study followed up several hundred nuns, examining a large number of factors and identifying associations with Alzheimer’s Disease. In this article you can watch an interesting video containing interviews with some of the nuns as well as a post-mortem dissection of a brain with enlarged ventricles. The Nuns have been very generous in ensuring that their brains can be used for research after their death and this type of research is very important in coming to a better understanding of the disease process. A study has provided evidence of a possible association between a virus XRV and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. In a study of people with Parkinson’s disease using a driving simulator and comparing this group to age-matched controls, the Parkinson’s subjects were significantly more likely to experience a crash under low visibility settings than the control group. There were a number of factors including visual processing speed which were significantly associated with driving performance in the simulator. A phase 1 clinical trial is currently underway to examine the potential neuroprotective role of the antibiotic Minocycline in acute ischaemic stroke. Experimental evidence has shown that expression of IL-6 in murine brain can lead to removal of amyloid plaque by microglial cells. There has been significant evidence to suggest a role for inflammation in the disease process and these new findings show that the relationship between inflammation and build up of Amyloid Plaques in the brain is complex.
An American study provided evidence of the cost-effectiveness of telephone-based Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for depression in primary care (covered here and here) although the application of these results will depend on local protocols and service structure. The study is in the Archives of General Psychiatry. Aaron Beck who developed CBT was awarded the Lasker prize for clinical research. A prospective study involving 10,094 subjects over 4 years looked at adherence to a Mediterranean diet and new-onset depression and found evidence of an inverse relationship between increasing adherence to the diet and incidence of new-onset depression. A study in the BMJ showed an increase in the number of prescriptions of antidepressants from 1993 to 2004 and this was attributed to the use of long term prescriptions. There is further coverage here. In a cross-sectional study of symptoms in people with bipolar disorder (n=88) published in the journal of the World Psychiatric Association, the researchers found a significant association between the mixed affective state and negative cognition and hyperactivity (article freely available here). In a study of people in the Andean highlands in Ecuador (n=167), the researchers used the Spanish version of the Beck Depression Inventory II and identified that the scores on the somatic component of the scale were significantly higher than the cognitive component (article freely available here). The researchers interpreted this as resulting from the influence of culture on the expression of the depressive illness.
Scientific American have coverage of some studies supporting the hypothesis that long term relationships foster creativity. In the studies they contrasted analytical with creative thinking. The types of relationships considered were tested indirectly by the use of imagination or by presentation of words with subtle meanings related to the paradigm. However it could be argued that the relationship status of the subject would provide more convincing evidence. A conference on empathy took place at the end of September 2009 and the conference website can be found here. There has been a relative large study comparing people with Tourette’s and OCD with healthy controls and finding no significant evidence of the former conditions with Streptococcal throat infection. There is contrary evidence which suggests that Strep throat infections can be associated with autoimmune processes which involve the central nervous system and these are termed PANDAS. In an intracranial electrophysiological study published in Science, the researchers provided evidence that language processing occurs in Broca’s area and is divided into processes for grammar, meaning and articulation with each process being separated by milliseconds. There is a preliminary report on a new technology which measures electrical signals between the central nervous system and the vestibular apparatus in the ear. The Australian research team state that they are able to characterise responses in a number of central nervous system disorders and they include depression. There is a website which details the technology and which also contains a link to a promotional video. Using Medline, I was able to find 5 studies including 1 on schizophrenia and 1 on depression, although both had small sample sizes they provided data on the application of the technology. It will be interesting to see further published data with larger sample sizes as this becomes available.
A 1 Billion dollar Japanese project to create a supercomputer which will amongst it’s many functions will aim to simulate life is currently underway and is covered here. In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences there is a paper on the use of a new genome sequencing technology – whole exome sequencing (which focuses on genes coding for proteins rather than the entire genome sequence) in a case which resulted in a rapid diagnosis and it will be interesting to see further developments in this area. The Natural Health Service is an ambitious project being undertaken in the NHS to plant 1.3 million trees which should reduce the carbon footprint of the NHS.
Research In Dementia
The researchers found that gamma-secretase, an enzyme implicated in Alzheimer’s Disease pathology binds to a class of transmembrane proteins known as tetraspanins (Wakabayashi et al, 2009) as well as to a number of other proteins. The tetraspanins have a number of different functions within the cell and it will be interesting to see how gamma secretase relates to these functions. There is further coverage here. An in-vivo study has provided evidence that Dimebolin has a high affinity for the Serotonin 5HT6 receptor in vivo (Schaffhauser et al, 2009). Dimebolin under the name Dimebon was trialled in Alzheimer’s Disease and showed promising results. There may be a focus on this receptor for therapeutics if these results are replicated. A small study of people with Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) compared with people with mild cognitive impairment and healthy controls (n=55) provided evidence that there was a correlation between the PET and CSF markers of ABeta but that they did not correlate significantly with cognitive impairment (Jagust et al, 2009). There is an interesting article on the National Dementia Research Brain Bank here. A meta-analysis of prospective and case-control studies examining the relationship between smoking and Alzheimer’s Disease which adjusted for a number of factors including tobacco company affiliation of the studies showed that smoking was a significant risk factor for Alzheimer’s Disease (Cataldo et al, 2009). A post-mortem study comparing the brains of people who had Alzheimer’s Disease and hyperphagia with those who did not found a significant reduction in 5HT4 receptors in the former group (Tsang et al, 2009).
Evolutionary Psychiatry
There is also evidence that neighbouring groups of Chimpanzees approach the same problem in different ways which the researchers have interpreted as cultural differences. Such interpretations may have implications for developing models of human culture. Steve Peters, psychiatrist and coach for the Olympic Cyclists is appearing on a television program to work with members of the public to improve their fitness. In this article that covers the story, Steve Peters discusses some of the underlying theory he uses (which appears to relate to evolutionary psychology). An anthropological study looked at old world monkeys and found that increasing neocortical size was associated with the ability to form large social networks. Researchers have provided indirect evidence that Macaque monkeys experience the ‘Uncanny Valley‘ effect. This effect describes the tendency for people, or monkeys in this case, to become uncomfortable if computer simulations of members of their species are too realistic. The finding in monkeys suggests an evolutionary basis for this effect. It will be interesting to see if this has implications for social bonding. An fMRI study in monkeys and humans provided evidence of activation of the inferior Parietal lobe in humans alone when watching tool-using activities. There were a number of other areas that were activated in both humans and monkeys when undertaking this task. There is an estimate from one study that each person has roughly 100 new mutations in their genome based on an analysis of the difference in genes in two chinese men who shared an ancestor at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Psychiatry 2.0
Over at Science Life there is coverage of the Neuroscience conference in Chicago which amongst other items reports on a talk by Erik Kandel, the genetics of anxiety and neuroscience in social media. October 19-23rd was Open Access week and over at Beta Science, Morgan Langille writes about the use of an open-access website BioTorrents for sharing data and other resources. Over at Medical News Today there is a look at an association between gamma synuclein and depression. Software Advice has an article on iPhone applications for doctors and medical students. The Neuroscience Information Framework Version 2.0 is now online. The NIF is described as
‘A dynamic inventory of web-based neuroscience resources: data, materials, and tools accessible via any computer connected to the internet‘
The NIF is also described as a National Institute of Health Blueprint for Neuroscience Research initiative (see also this review of a paper on the Neuroscience Information Framework). The NIF Tools include a registry of electronic catalogues of neuroscience resources, a ‘deep web’ resource – the NIF Data Federation, the NIF Web Index – essentially a search tool for neuroscience information on the internet and the NIF vocabulary which includes Neurolex. Neurolex is a neuroscience lexicon which at the time of writing contains 7972 terms. Such a lexicon has implications not just for the ability to find relevant information on the internet but also has potential for facilitating neuroscience dialogue.
References
Cataldo JK, Prochaska JJ, Glantz SA. Cigarette Smoking is a Risk Factor for Alzheimer’s Disease: An Analysis Controlling for Tobacco Industry Affiliation. J Alzheimers Dis. 2009 Oct 8. [Epub ahead of print]
Jagust WJ, Landau SM, Shaw LM, Trojanowski JQ, Koeppe RA, Reiman EM, Foster NL, Petersen RC, Weiner MW, Price JC, Mathis CA; Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative. Relationships between biomarkers in aging and dementia. Neurology. 2009 Oct 13;73(15):1193-9.
Schaffhauser H et al. Dimebolin is a 5-HT6 antagonist with acute cognition enhanching activities. Biochemical Pharmacology. Vol 78. Issue 8. pp 1035-42. 2009.
Tsang SW, Keene J, Hope T, Spence I, Francis PT, Wong PT, Chen CP, Lai MK. A serotoninergic basis for hyperphagic eating changes in Alzheimer’s disease. J Neurol Sci. 2010 Jan 15;288(1-2):151-5. Epub 2009 Oct 8.
Wakabayashi T, Craessaerts K, Bammens L, Bentahir M, Borgions F, Herdewijn P,Staes A, Timmerman E, Vandekerckhove J, Rubinstein E, Boucheix C, Gevaert K, De Strooper B.Nat Cell Biol. 2009 Oct 18. [Epub ahead of print]. Analysis of the gamma-secretase interactome and validation of its association with tetraspanin-enriched microdomains.
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Disclaimer
The comments made here represent the opinions of the author and do not represent the profession or any body/organisation. The comments made here are not meant as a source of medical advice and those seeking medical advice are advised to consult with their own doctor. The author is not responsible for the contents of any external sites that are linked to in this blog.
The acclaimed avalanche-to-come of electric vehicles, most with pretty good performance levels (read range) received a serious dent from Dr. Lyle Dennis, a lucky man who managed to lease a MINI E from BMW for one year. Or lucky he thought he was, before hitting, head on, a 23 degree weather front (-5 degrees Celsius)…
The story goes a bit like this. Have you ever noticed how the battery indicator on your lithium-ion powered cell phone goes nuts in cold weather and, despite havin… (read more)
American carmaker General Motors is currently facing another recall, this time the first for the 2010 Chevrolet Equinox and 2010 GMC Terrain models. On a recent safety notice posted on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) website, GM announced that 59,031 units of the CUVs are to be recalled due to a potential problem in the HVAC system.
According to the official recall notification, the vehicles are being recalled for failing to comply with the requirements … (read more)
Filed under: Love & Relationships, Advice
Infidelity has been much discussed of late (thanks, Tiger Woods), so we asked sexpert Dr. Trina Read, author of Till Sex Do Us Part, to weigh in on the causes and signs of cheating, and whether there’s anything you can do to infidelity-proof your marriage.
Q: Why do people cheat? Are there certain things in a relationship that can cause it?
A: I have no scientific proof on this, but my observations tell me that half of the population is naturally monogamous and half is not. Some people feel comfortable with fidelity and others don’t. And when you go into a long-term relationship, no one tells you how difficult it’s going to be. We do our best, but there’s a tendency for both people to start taking each other for granted and for both members of the couple to get into a really big rut of habits. You get up, you go to work, you come home and make dinner, and you go to bed. All of a sudden you meet someone, and those love chemicals go off and it’s exciting and you feel alive. Everything that happens chemically at the beginning of a new relationship also happens when you cheat. If you talk to people who have cheated on their partner, they say that it was very, very easy — even if they feel guilty about it.
Q: Is cheating always a sign that there’s a problem in the relationship or does cheating sometimes happen to perfectly good relationships?
Continue reading Can You Infidelity-Proof Your Relationship?
Business social network LinkedIn made a major upgrade to its iPhone app tonight but coming from a service with such incredible potential, there remain some major disappointments.
The new app looks a lot like a less elegant, less customizable version of the Facebook iPhone app. There are a variety of useful new features, from faster invite sending to importing contact info to your phone, but the app remains based on the company’s mistaken desire of late to be your all-in-one social-media-messaging platform. It also fails to deliver the features that would make it most useful. If you’re looking for good news about new features, you can find it in the self-flattering company blog post. Here are the three things that disappoint me most about this new app; hopefully it’s a work in progress and will improve soon.
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For some reason LinkedIn will not deliver you a simple feed of the new jobs that contacts of yours have taken – not by email, not by RSS, not through its fancy new API and not on this new iPhone app. Update feeds are cluttered with imported ephemera from Twitter and all too often job changes are obscured behind the phrase “contact X has updated their profile.” They have? How did they update it? It’s maddening.
LinkedIn says it’s working on solving this problem, but it doesn’t seem to be a very high priority. Prompting users to click more and engage with a wider variety of message types seem more in line with LinkedIn’s strategy. The company clearly wants to be Facebook and Twitter for the business world – not just a place where we all go to find out essential work information that we use while doing other forms of social networking on other sites better suited for things like short, trivial messages.
Perhaps LinkedIn isn’t to blame for this, but the ability to import LinkedIn contacts’ info onto your phone is rendered a whole lot less useful by the inability to merge that info with existing contacts. Say you’ve got someone’s name and phone number on your phone already – it’s a headache to pull in a person’s LinkedIn profile info and then merge the two manually.
Of course your phone number isn’t an optional field you can fill out on LinkedIn, so all those imported contacts will be people you’re unable to call. You won’t even be able to look them up on LinkedIn again from your phone’s contact list – peoples’ LinkedIn profile page URLs aren’t included in the contact info that gets imported.
This is a professional application that people use on the iPhone – shouldn’t it include push notifications? LinkedIn is used by tons of sales people, for example – you know they’d like to get some of these updates pushed to them. As a writer, I would too.
Look at it this way. Last month my LinkedIn contact Tara Hunt changed her profile to show that she’s founded a new company called Shwowp. I want to know that, preferably right away. But I don’t know about it until a month later because I didn’t want to fish through a bunch of cross-posted Twitter updates inside LinkedIn to catch Tara’s news, and I didn’t want to click through three screens starting with the bland “Tara Hunt has updated her profile” in order to see if she’s happened to change jobs or just noted a new personal interest on her profile page.
When someone who has accepted my contact request changes jobs, I want a push notification about what the new job is and the option to call them on the phone immediately to discuss it. That doesn’t seem like too much to ask, and that’s when I’ll know that LinkedIn is really serving my professional life.
Update: LinkedIn’s Adam Nash, author of the company’s announcement blog post, responded on Twitter saying: “we’ve discussed all three of these enhancements internally. Some are harder than others. All in the queue…Rest assured, we wouldn’t have broken out profile updates into its own module if we didn’t have big plans for it. :)”
LG just announced its first commercial products for the fledgling US Mobile DTV standard approved in October. First up is what appears to be a DTV-ified LG Lotus clamshell — a phone first introduced in 2008 but now capable of extracting digital TV from the aether with an assist from that telescoping antenna. Also set for a CES launch is that DP570MH portable DVD player that lets viewers watch up to 4-hours of ATSC-approved Mobile DTV broadcasts before heading back for a charge. LG’s also promising more ATSC Mobile DTV devices from Dell (laptops), Kenwood, and others including in-car receivers all using LG’s LG2160A ATSC-M/H tuner chip. Still, mobile antennas and DVD players… how can something so new feel so retro?
LG goes nouveau nostalgic with first US Mobile DTV devices originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 29 Dec 2009 02:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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With the Dakar Rally ready to roll in a few days, most of the event’s main contenders are now preparing the last details of their racing programmes for the South American adventure next month. For the second time in a row, the Dakar Rally will be hosted by Argentina and many of last year’s front-runners already have a clue on what’s in store for them from the early days of January.
Such is the case of Sprint Cup driver Robby Gordon, who will be entering his 6th Dakar Rally in care… (read more)
More competition is the color E-book market can only be a good thing. The Nook is just sort of in color, the Kindle is the 800 pound gorilla, and no one knows what exactly Apple’s got planned. Now there’s this new guy Paradigm Shift, talking about launching a full-color e-book reader at CES. Bet they wish they’d come to market before the holidays.
Only thing is, I’m not 100% sure this is an e-book reader. It looks more like a tablet to me – it runs Windows CE, it’s available in 5 and 7 inch screens, and has built in wifi. Windows CE has had ebook readers for years, I first got started using a HP Ipaq as an ebook reader many years ago. Now the $150 price sounds tasty, and the built in 2GB of ram will definitely do the job. I dunno. Windows CE is so quaint. I’d rather hear that they have a custom OS or are running some Linux thing then Windows CE.
MSRP will start at $150 for the 5-inch model, and expect the price to be significantly higher for the 7-inch. Retailers that want it should have the device sometime in late February.
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With the Hummer brand almost in Chinese hands, everybody is wondering how would the Asian ownership would influence the brand’s products in terms of design and engineering. What no one is wondering is how would a Hummer look like and perform if it were to be drawn and built by a Romanian.
No one except Andrus Ciprian that is, the man behind what you see in the pictures here: the Hummer HB concept. Built as a green extreme off-roader (the car is intended to be powered by a V6 engin… (read more)
It’s no secret that many ISPs prefer to have a monopoly. We’ve seen it over and over again in efforts to block competitors from getting into the space, while at the same time they lobby the government for more rights of way and other benefits. The latest example is CenturyLink (a combination of CenturyTel and Embarq) in North Carolina. The company has made it clear that it won’t provide DSL to certain “low density” areas. And if that’s what it wants to do, fine. But, it shouldn’t then try to block those who do want to offer broadband, such as Electronic Solutions Inc., which Broadband Reports notes has applied for federal broadband stimulus funds to offer wireless broadband services in those areas. Yet, CenturyLink has filed a complaint with the government saying that because it offers broadband in “some or all” (see what it did there?) of the areas ESI wants to provide service in, CenturyLink is suggesting that the feds shouldn’t give ESI the money it’s asking for.
Now, this is a case where accurate data on broadband penetration might be helpful, but when Connected Nation keeps winning contracts to provide such maps — and Connected Nation is set up by the same broadband incumbents who don’t want competition, guess how accurate those maps will be?
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Eco Factor: Zero-emission electric car powered by hydrogen fuel cells.
Kia has released new footage of their latest fuel cell prototype vehicle, the Borrego FCEV. The vehicle is a rear/all-wheel drive SUV, where the front wheels are propelled via a 110KW AC electric motor. The vehicle gets its juice from a 115KW fuel cell stack located under the passenger compartment.
Today (Dec 29th, 2009) is Prof. Ronald Coase’s 99th birthday. I like to wish him a happy birthday and good health. I’ve added time codes and brief notes to his 2003 Coase Lecture (in 6 parts). Enjoy.
(note: This is a followup to an earlier entry.)
Part 1
Time Codes added to the Youtube info
0:30 Coase Lecture,
1:21 Law and Economics,
1:40 Mr. Toad The Wind in the Willows,
2:14 First year students,
2:40 What Coase did as a young student,
3:14 The events that lead to the emergence of the subject known as Law and Economics,
3:36 Professor of Economics and not a Professor of Law and Economics,
3:47 knowledge of law as an undergraduate,
4:32 following the precedence,
4:44 The Law Courts,
5:03 American cases
Part 2
Time codes
0:00 Theory of international trade. (Never thought I would laugh so hard!)
1:24 More likely to become a lawyer than an economist in university. Study of industrial law.
2:25 Go to US to study why industries are organized in different ways.
3:28 Plant was opposed to government’s schemes of coordinating production.
4:00 Benefited from taking a B.Comm degree rather than an economics degree. Visited factories and businesses in America and talk to businessmen.
4:45 By the summer of 1932, Coase got the answers to his questions. Firms vs market transactions. Transaction costs.
5:43 The explicit introduction of the concept of transaction costs
6:00 Return from America to UK. Appointed assistant lecturer.
6:15 Content of first lecture. The argument of “The Nature of the Firm”.
7:02 In 1934, completed first draft of “The Nature of the Firm”. Published in 1937.
7:20 How the paper was received by Coase’s elders was “extremely instructive”. And how this should be a lesson.
8:15 The only support Coase got was from his contemporary. “… new ideas are most likely to come from the young who are also the group who are most likely to recognize the significance of those ideas.”
9:00 The problem of social cost.
Part 3
Time Codes
0:00 British Broadcasting: A Study in Monopoly (1950)
0:18 Visited US in 1948 to find how a commercial broadcasting station operated. Migrated to US in 1951. And later wrote the famous FCC paper which lead to the modern subject of law and economics.
1:00 About that student note in University of Chicago Law Review. Coase clarified the misconception of who actually originated the idea of using price to determine the use of frequency spectrum. Idea of FCC should lease a frequency channel to the highest bidder.
2:26 The weak reply from FCC that convinced Coase the merit of using price to determine the use of frequency spectrum.
4:06 Wrote the article on FCC in 1958 & 1959.
4:50 Talk about Pigou and a few examples.
7:42 The way resources are used are independent of the legal decision of ownership.
Part 4
Time Codes
0:00 To cover cost and to maximize profit are essentially two ways of expressing the same thing.
0:45 Discussion of Chicago economists’ objections of Coase’s FCC idea.
2:19 The famous 2 hour long meeting of the minds of Coase at Aaron Director’s home with Milton Friedman, George Stigler, and others.
4:19 Coase correcting Stigler’s account of the discussion at Director’s home.
5:00 The Problem of Social Cost.
6:28 Talking about “Coase Theorem” (or more precisely, Stigler’s “Coase Theorem”).
Part 5
Time Codes
0:00 Discussing the cave example. Coase’s humour.
1:37 Concluding comments on Law and Economics.
Part 6 Q&A
Time Codes
0:30 Q1&A Can the highly mathematical approach of modern economics incorporate ideas and methodologies that re so different from it?
2:10 Q2 (part 1) The first year law students might find it disheartening to discover the wrongfulness means that which reduces transaction cost. Before they encountered law and economics they didn’t think that the purpose of law is just about allocating resources most efficiently. Q2 (part 2) &A Do you think that since you introduced these ideas there has been a growing acceptance or resistance to that notion of wrongfulness and what do you see in the future?
4:02 Q3 (part 1) In a lot of the behaviour empirical work done in economics, the people who are studying things use the answers people give on surveys to try and reveal how people are not rational actors. Q3 (part 2) &A Do you believe that the answers on the surveys are a good source of empirical data or do you think you need to go to competitive markets to really see true prices?
Posted in Economics, GreatMindsOfOurTime, Law, Nobel-Prize, Ronald Coase, World, World Affairs 
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Never let a group of scientists have too much time on their hands. While a fusion reactor was down for improvements, scientists at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory unleashed their inner child and built a model train track inside the reactor. A toy train then chugged around the track for three days, according to The New York Times:
It was not an exercise in silliness, but in calibration.
The modified model of a diesel train engine was carrying a small chunk of californium-252, a radioactive element that spews neutrons as it falls apart.
In the past, scientists used a stationary neutron source to calibrate the reactor and to make sure it was accurately measuring emitted neutrons, but that doesn’t recreate how neutrons actually bounce around. Tossing a lump of californium on the moving train improved the accuracy 10-fold, according to the scientists.
Researchers at Princeton used toy trains for calibration decades ago in an older reactor, but anytime scientists build radioactive trains, people tend to pay attention.
An no, the train didn’t glow bright green or gain super powers—californium is only slightly radioactive, after all, and the toy train is now chugging around the Christmas tree in the lab’s lobby.
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Image: flickr / drcorneilus
Christian Klien is only one of the many drivers aiming at the second Sauber F1 team next year, but he recently received a boost from none other than the very boss of Formula One, Bernie Ecclestone. The 79-year old billionaire admitted that he would like to see the Austrian driver secure an F1 seat in 2010, despite the valuable competition he faces for that spot.
Much more experienced drivers Pedro de la Rosa and Nick Heidfeld are also competing for the Sauber job, with the latter … (read more)
Eco Factor: Energy-saving monitor made from recycled materials.
BenQ Korea has unveiled two new ecofriendly monitors dubbed the ‘V2400 Eco/ V2200Eco’ that feature energy-saving LED backlight. The monitors are made from recycled plastic and are launched in two different sizes including a 22-inch and a 24-inch model.
