The Zen of Rats

Dostoevsky's "Underground Man" stated that twice-two is four. We know that to be true. But more importantly, we know that we know that to be true. But what about 300467 divided by 6.345? We know that we don't know that as well (unless you were Rain Man). This is our metacognition at work. "Thinking about thinking" - it can be seen as a defining aspect of our existence. You can ask almost anyone and they can tell you whether they know something or not. But that's just it, they can tell you. What about our little critter friends scampering about our attics, restaurant kitchens, and laboratories?

This year, A. Foote and J. Crystal - University of Georgia - published a paper that suggests that rats also have metacognition. They did this through what they called a "duration-discrimination test", which is a great name that perfectly describes the test. The rats had to differentiate between long and short sound cues. Correct answers being paired with large food rewards and wrong answers paired with nothing (starvation). The curious thing was that the rats were also given the choice of not taking the test at all which guaranteed the rat a much smaller reward.

What was shown was that when presented with more difficult tests (say a medium length sound cue) the rats would almost always choose to decline the test. They refused to gamble and instead went for the smaller prize.

This means that the rats know that they don't know the answer. If that wasn't true they'd just guess and bank on luck. This leads to some new questions. It was believed that only primates are capable of metacognition and self-awareness, but if rats can be shown to have metacognition... what about other animals of "higher" intelligence? Are rats conscious beings? Do rats know that they exist? Maybe "Ratatouille" isn't so farfetched?

I don't think there is such a thing as Rat-Zen but this was an interesting read and I'm glad for the work that Foote and Crystal did on this subject. Keep the good science coming.

I know that I don't know who's reading this blog right now but since I am 80 minutes away from a new year, I wish you the best 2008 of your lifetime.

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A History of Violence...

After Sama woke up and created this Blog, he invited the rest of us to be authors. I'm in because, well, whenever Sama has an idea, I generally agree without asking questions. No Longer! Anyway, I asked Sama what I could possibly contribute and he recommended writing about what interests me. After carefully considering my options I realized I am interested in
War...and getting into Graduate school.

Now, I have been rude. My name is Bobylon. I'd like to tell you I was nicknamed after that much fabled and powerful city of times old but the name really came from a song. Well, sorta. Long story. Leave a comment if you really want me to write about it.

Anyway, back to War and Grad school. Now like Sama, I am an engineer, not an English major. As such, my writing will be particularly crude because I rarely review my work well. Anyway, my next major goal in life, is to get into Grad school for engineering. As such, I have to set little goals and objectives along the way. Here comes the War part. Like many other authors
on the topic, I believe you can relate life to battle in just about every aspect. You have an objective and you attain it through force, deception, subversion, or other methods. Using the teachings of Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, Musashi Miyamoto, and the like, you can master your surroundings as well as yourself.

There is a deeper part to all of this though. I mean, why does violence occur? Why is it necessary? Could the world ever truly be peaceful? (for the record, I am actually a very optimistic person). And... I'm sure Violence, War, and Grad School won't be all I talk about, but it's a start.

Until next time,. Viva Le' Revolution!

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The French Paradox

"The French Paradox" - an age old observation that questions how the French can eat such rich (read: fatty) food and yet stay so slim as a population. Brad Marshal cleverly wrote about the "axis of paradox" as he explains why this phenomenon isn't exclusively French. He concludes, after a showcase of tables and graphs, that France is merely an extreme case in what he deems a general European trend. But it boils down to whether this is actually a paradox at all.

There has been a think shift in ideas. The spotlight has split over from focusing only on "what you eat" to "how much you eat". Portions!! Anyone who has eaten too much and suffered from a food coma or, as the writers for "The Boondocks Series" might prefer, the "Itis", knows that eating too much is, well, bad for you. But how much is bad for you? And how bad is it for you? Let's focus back on the French "Paradox" for the answer.

Paul Rozin - psychology department of University of Pennsylvania - and colleagues compared eleven different eateries in Philly and Paris and found that the average portion size is 25% larger in Philly. The full article can be found here -- pretty interesting read if you ask me. It explains why the French have managed to stay so slim all these years while Americans - or at least Philadelphians - have generally gotten heavier. There is no paradox if it's a question of portion size; sounds dumb but... eat less, stay thin. But don't starve yourself by skipping meals! Just eat until you're satisfied... not full. Food is good you know.

I know, I know. This isn't the cure all solution but it is helpful. There are plenty more factors that come into play when dealing with obesity and it's related health issues -- genetics, environmental pressures, fitness, etc. And now we can't even blame the French for our problems. So what should one do?

Asking for less spaghetti and meatballs next time you visit Maggiano's is a good start I think.

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Technical Writing

Well I woke up about 15 minutes ago and decided on starting this blog. I hope to God that I can contribute something useful to the community of idea hungry readers in hopes that they do "eat this stuff up". It is difficult -- writing I mean. I'm studying to be a bioengineer and the opportunities for writing stories, essays, and poems are, well, almost never there. I'm smirking as I actually think about it.

There is plenty of practice writing technical research papers full of the typical abstracts, methods, results and conclusions. The formula is certain and will most likely never change. But this generally leads to boring research papers where, quite frankly, finding an attention holding article on pubmed is as easy as finding the cliché needle in the haystack.

Or maybe I'm not looking in the right places.

I'm sorry but I can't place blame on the format. Without it we would be lost in an outpour of information without any decent filtering system in place. We need the format. But what we want is interesting reads. It would be nice to have a superhero that reviews papers for writing creativity. But it would be even nicer to show students who will later become engineers and scientists the value of fascinating writing.

A simple interest in reading is a good start I think.

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