Hyperlexia: an explanation of why we can read? (washingtonpost.com)

Studying Hyperlexia May Unlock How Brains Read (washingtonpost.com)

Understanding hyperlexia may also help explain how normal brains accomplish the feat of reading. Unlike seeing and hearing, skills acquired through evolution, reading is usually not acquired naturally. Humans have been reading for only a few thousand years, and the pressure for everyone to become good readers has become intense in only the past couple of centuries.

Reading involves a complex series of brain activities: Visual centers must first perceive variable, tiny features of printed symbols on a page, then those changes must be mentally converted into strings of sound, and finally the patterns of sound must be interpreted by language centers in the brain to register their meaning.

'Hyperlexia is the antithesis of dyslexia,' said Guinevere Eden, director of Georgetown University's Center for the Study of Learning, who has studied Alex. 'We spend all our time studying individuals who have a hard time learning to read, and here are these children who acquire reading in a spontaneous way. It's as if they know it already.'

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Twenty years ago, when I first did a neuropsych course, I thought the "miracle of reading" was the most interesting question in human evolution. I guessed, as have many, that it developed from sign language. Indeed, if sign language preceded fluent verbalization, it may be that reading is more fundamental than speaking.

That would fit this story -- hyperlexic children often have difficulty with speech. We know from brain injured patients that speaking and reading abilities are likewise somewhat independent.

It would be very interesting to know how quickly hyperlexic children learn to sign, and whether there's a relationship in deaf children between signing ability and reading ability.

Science fights back: Citizens for Science vs. the Discovery Institute

NYT: Montana Creationism Bid Evolves Into Unusual Fight

[Update May 2004]:

The June 2004 issue of Wired has an essay by Bruce Sterling on the societal disease of Lysenkoism. I'll try to remember to link to it when it's available online. Lysenkoism is what happens when political pseudoscience, as in evangelical biology, wins. Lysenkoism played an important role in the collapse of the old Soviet Empire. Same topic as this one. [EndUpdate]

In early December, a local Baptist minister, Curtis Brickley, put up handbills inviting residents of this town, population 754, to a meeting in the junior high school gym. The topic was the teaching of evolution in the Darby schools.

Two hundred people from Darby and surrounding Ravalli County, which nurtures a deep vein of conservative religious sentiment, filed into the gym on Dec. 10. There, the well-spoken minister delivered an elaborate PowerPoint presentation challenging Charles Darwin's theories.

There was nothing particularly unusual about Mr. Brickley's message. For years, opponents of evolutionary theory have been pressing their case, with similar arguments, in statehouses and school systems around the country. What was unusual was the response.

Within days, a group of parents, business people, teachers, students and other residents mobilized to defend Darwin against Mr. Brickley's challenge. The group, Ravalli County Citizens for Science, phoned a biotechnology firm in nearby Hamilton asking for help and was connected with Dr. Jay Evans, a research immunologist. He began looking into Mr. Brickley's claims, which were drawn in part from materials from the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based organization affiliated with many conservative causes.

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This is not a particularly well written article, but it appears the Citizens for Science movement started with the Kansas Chapter. Citizens for Science is state based, but the National Center for Science Education is, well, national.

Minnesota is following the path of Montana. Evangelical Republicans are moving on many fronts here to attack the models of natural selection and the theories of biological evolution. They are winning, but it is good to learn that a counter-attack is stirring. Of course if these Evangelicals really do manage to destroy science education, they'll also end up destroying the public school system as secular scholars move en masse to private schools.

Natural selection is one of the most powerful theories in the past two hundred years. It has been applied to a variety of systems, including political systems, economics, corporate behavior, and a very wide range of biological systems from the molecular level to the species level. It's even been applied to cosmology and the evolution of black holes.

Ironically, and this is the point that often gets missed, natural selction and Darwin's work are not inconsistent with "intelligent design". Indeed, were the universe designed, it's likely that the designer also experienced the effects of natural selection in action ...

The Russian nuclear fuel trade

Uranium Traveled to Iran Via Russia, Inspectors Find

In a report on Tuesday, the International Atomic Energy Agency said that its inspections had found that centrifuge equipment made indigenously in Iran — but not imported gear — showed many traces of the concentrated fuel, leading experts to doubt the Iranian explanation and suggest that Iran had enriched the uranium itself. Its purity was 36 percent U-235 — short of the 90 percent needed for most nuclear bomb designs but greater than that needed for most nuclear reactors.

On Friday, however, European diplomats said the agency's laboratory at Seibersdorf, Austria, had discovered a likely match between the atomic signatures of Russian uranium and samples agency inspectors had gathered from Iranian centrifuges.

In its sleuthing, the lab studies such things as a sample's isotopes — atoms of the same element that have different numbers of neutrons. A distinctive mix of such isotopes can amount to a fingerprint that experts check against atomic databanks.

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One day Malaysia, the next Russia. I emphasized the word most above. What enrichment level is needed for the Pakistan/North Korea design? Does anyone think this trade can be contained -- or just slowed?

Putin must worry about a Chechen bomb.

How GWB boosts manufacturing and overall employment -- the ketchup maneuver

Molly Ivins, Star Telegram | 02/26/2004 | No bad idea left behind

Reagan famously reduced the federal cost of school lunches by defining ketchup as a vegetable. GWB extends the master's legacy:

My personal favorite among Bush's recent moves is the proposal in his economic report to Congress to reclassify fast-food restaurants, moving them from the service sector to 'manufacturing.' This is a concept. In case you're puzzled over why your burger-flippers should now be classified with autoworkers, it's so when the administration has to report the statistics on how many manufacturing jobs we've lost, they won't look so bad.

This administration is very clever about redefining its problems. For example, when the figures indicated that the Bushies had lopsidedly benefited huge corporations as compared to small business, they just changed the definition of 'small business' to include some of the biggest corporations in the country.

The Lion King: Being a safe and relatively benevolent carnivore

Whence the Beef? - The gruesome trip from pasture to platter (and how to ensure that it's not so bad). By Laurie Snyder

It's not that easy to be a Lion King -- ironically it's easiest for beef. Just as with any consumer good, brands matter. It's the reputation of the brand that validates the labels, not any regulatory agency. The early 21st century is an age where identity and reputation are fundamental, just as in the early 19th century, in part due to a libertarian current in our cultural evolution. For meat as with email ....

[beef]... To be certified "organic," cattle must be raised without hormones or antibiotics of any kind and must eat only pesticide-free vegetarian feed. Beef labeled "grass-fed" is the favorite of many animal rights activists. ... keep an eye out for labels that read "never confined to a feedlot." .... Two for grass-fed beef are www.meadowraisedmeats.com and www.eatwild.com.

[pork] ... As with organic beef, organic pork is vegetarian, and antibiotic- and hormone-free, but may have spent months in cramped CAFOs. Some producers also sell what they call free-range or meadow-raised pork, meaning pigs that are pastured for much of the year... But there are no restrictions on the use of these terms, so be sure to ask for the details.

[turkey - the author didn't have any alternative to suggest! Sounds like wild turkeys can't be effectively harvested. Too fast!]

[eggs - she only mentions McDonald's?] Fast-food giant McDonald's announced in 2000 that all producers who supply its eggs must give hens 72 square inches each (more than three times what they typically get), cannot use forced-molting, and should stop de-beaking chicks.

[poultry] ....According to activists, turkeys and chickens labeled "free range" didn't necessarily enjoy much more mobility than their CAFO-raised peers. In the United States, poultry can be labeled free-range as long as there's some access to the outdoors, for some of the birds in a flock. Free-range chicks are still often de-beaked, and free-range egg-laying hens still spend their days in battery cages—they just have a bit more room to move about. One term to keep an eye out for is "cage free"—fowl raised in open spaces are likely a bit better off.

Krugman on free trade

Op-Ed Columnist: The Trade Tightrope

The point is that free trade is politically viable only if it's backed by effective job creation measures and a strong domestic social safety net.

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Economists argue about a lot of things, but the benefits of trade are to economics as natural selection is to biology. Krugman defends free trade as he must and should.

Economists do fight about how best to help the "losers" free trade produces. Conservatives favor tax cuts, liberals favor training and unemployment insurance. That's a legitimate fight. I favor 529 plans to cover living costs when unemployed and retraining with mandatory contributions when employed. That's a policy many Republicans would accept.

Where Republicans are vulnerable is health care and benefits. These need to be removed from employment. Krugman is starting to talk about this. It's a winner for Kerry.

Great NYT Review on Autism

Lifting the Veils of Autism, One by One by One

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Very interesting. The NYT has had very good autism coverage.

Dietary supplements stop dementia in beagles? AAAS proceedings

In beagles, at least, there's evidence that diet can impact brain health ...

Economist.com | Dogs and medicine - Anti-oxidant anti-dementia therapy (for Beagles): Vitamin C, Vitamin E, alpha-lipoic acid, acetyl-l-carnitine.

... Carl Cotman and his colleagues at the University of California, Irvine, have been using beagles to investigate the effects of diet on the decline of brain function that accompanies ageing. Dogs are a useful stand-in for people in such experiments because the way memory declines in the two species seems comparable. Memory loss in dogs is accompanied by the formation of so-called amyloid plaques in the brain. Rodents, the usual stand-in mammals used in medical research, do not tend to accumulate such plaques as they age. In people, amyloid plaques are one of the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease.

... Dr Cotman wanted to know whether a diet rich in antioxidants, such as vitamins C and E, could relieve the symptoms of an ageing brain. Oxidative stress within the brain, which causes the production of molecules known as free radicals, increases with age. Free radicals can damage—and eventually kill—brain cells.

The results astonished the researchers. Not only did the antioxidant-rich diet halt age-related decline, it actually reversed it. While beagles on a normal diet continued to lose their cognitive abilities as they got older, those on the experimental diet showed improvements in learning and memory. These dogs could do much more complicated tasks, and made fewer mistakes. They could also re-learn tasks that they could do when they were younger, but had forgotten. And the diet (which, besides the vitamins, contained two food supplements called alpha-lipoic acid and acetyl-l-carnitine, that help to stop free radicals forming in the first place) also reduced the accumulation of amyloid plaques in the beagles' brains...

Ok. Why wasn't this a headliner in all the science summaries I review? There are so many implications of this research.

First, what's with dogs? I love dogs as much as the next geek, but they are starting to seem a bit odd. How much do they have in common with humans, anyway? In a previous posting I joked about dogs being a synthetic species designed to civilize pre-agricultural humanity...

Lunatic speculation aside, there are other implications here. Such as ...

1. Would I add this to my elderly dog's dinner?
2. Would I recommend it to everyone over 80 with memory problems?
3. Will I (44yo) start taking it myself?

But first, the caveats (lots of them):

1. Results like this are often misinterpreted or reversed on appeal. On the other hand, this isn't the first result of this sort, only the most dramatic.
2. When a "natural" "supplement" alters physiology, it's a drug. These substances are being administered in doses much higher than in a human or canine diet. They're acting like medications, "natural" or not, they're drugs. Most drugs have side-effects and drug interactions, good sides and bad sides. These will be no exception.
   We don't really know what role antioxidants play in disease. In 1996 the CARET study found an increased rate of lung cancer among clinical trial smokers taking antioxidants. Since then researchers have wondered if antioxidants are a key part of the tumor surveillance system. So one big caveat is the relationship between Alzheimer's dementia and brain tumors. What if suppressing oxidative stress reduced the risk of plaque-associated dementia, but increased the risk of brain tumors? That would not be a great trade-off.
   

And now, the opinions:

1. If my dog Molly, aged 14, didn't have a terminal disease, I'd add it to her diet. This is about as good evidence as we'll get for dogs.
2. It's very tempting to consider for elderly people experiencing early Alzheimer's disease. A few tabs of ibuprofen, some antioxidants … . Dementia is a devastating disease, and many people would assume many risks to avert it. But see the caveats above. What if the therapy increased the risk of strokes, or lung cancer? What about interactions with other medications? Does one need all the supplements, or just some of them? How critical is the balance? Could an unbalanced regimen worsen the underlying process? How does this really work, anyway? Above all, how similar are beagles to people? We may not know the answer to these questions for decades.
3. It's a huge leap from dogs to middle-aged humans. See all of the above. True, my memory isn't what I'd like -- but I'm probably at average risk for age 70-80 dementia, which implies significant impairment starting in about 10 years. Again, what if this antioxidant therapy knocked out a major component of the body's tumor suppression mechanism? OTOH, if I were at high risk for impairment within a 10 year time frame, I'd be phoning my neurologist now. Just to get them thinking.

Bottom line, very interesting. Alzheimer's is one of the major causes of dementia. Preventing Alzheimer's would, all by itself, resolve our social security and medicare crises. It would mean more people could be economically productive longer.

India and outsourcing: Friedman 1, Kristof 0

NYT Friedman: Meet the Zippies

With 54 percent of India under the age of 25 — that's 555 million people — six out of 10 Indian households have at least one zippie, Outlook says. And a growing slice of them (most Indians are still poor village-dwellers) will be able to do your white-collar job as well as you for a fraction of the pay. Indian zippies are one reason outsourcing is becoming the hot issue in this year's U.S. presidential campaign.

About two weeks ago Kristof, one of my favorite columnists, wrote a very atypically dumb column on this topic. Kristof said then that America needs to invest in more college education to meet the new age. Duh.

Friedman wins this match. Great column. Reich's recommendations are mine as well, except I think wage insurance won't fly. I do think that the 401K and its equivalents need to become life-event rather than age driven, and all benefits need to be unrelated to employment. Employment should be wages, nothing else.

Friedman/Reich point out that outsourcing is a tax deductible business expense. The tax code should NOT be facilitating outsourcing. It shouldn't obstruct it, but neither should it encourage it. That can be changed.

The world needs China and India to be wealthy. These are two sources of extraordinary power and vigor, and the US is acting as a short-circuit between them. If we capture a fraction of that current we can share in the wealth, but we can't do it with our current social support network. We need another solution.

BTW, Robert Cringely is another writer who's got it.

Good for Friedman. Even if he is a Bush apologist.

On the brilliance of dogs

Economist.com | Dog behaviour

... Dr Hare's hypothesis is that dogs are superbly sensitive to social cues from people. That enables them to fit in with human society. On one level, this might sound common sense. But humans are such sociable animals that they frequently fail to realise just how unusual are their own skills at communicating. Dr Hare therefore decided to test his idea by comparing the abilities of dogs with those of chimpanzees, which are often regarded as second only to people in their level of innate intelligence.

His experiment was simple. He presented his animal subjects with two inverted cups. Then he hid the cups behind a screen, put a small piece of food under one of them, and took the screen away. The animal had to choose which cup to look under. If the experimenter gave no cue, both species got it right 50% of the time, as would be expected. However, if he signalled in some way which was the right cup, by pointing at it, tapping it, or even just gazing at it, a dog would choose correctly every time, while a chimpanzee would still do only slightly better than chance. Chimps simply did not get the idea of social signals of this sort, however many times the experiment was repeated.

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For years dogs were the neglected research subject. Domesticated, they were not nearly as romantic a subject as wolves, eagles, whales, etc.

That's changed. Dogs are a peculiar animal. They demonstrate astonishing plasticity in morphology and, now, in cognition. They are a single species with a 300% range in aging velocity. In a fairly brief period of time, only about 15,000 years, they adapted with astonishing speed to a new ecological niche -- the human host. They wormed their way into our society, becoming the second most prolific large mammal in the history of the planet. I suspect they also changed humanity, and the balance of power within early human social networks.

Hmm. Makes one think of a great idea for a science fiction short story. A hopelessly psychotic species is civilized by introducing an adaptive parasite that alters human evolution ...

One also wonders what would become of dogs if humans were to disappear? They might continue to prove themselves quite adaptable.

Ralph Nader -- funding by Rove?

BBC NEWS | Americas | Nader announces presidential bid

Our correspondent says with so much antagonism, even among his own former supporters, Ralph Nader's first problem will be getting enough signatures even to get himself onto the ballot in many states.

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The most charitable explanation is that Nader truly believes that American democracy has collapsed. There are many people worried about the health of American democracy, but maybe Nader thinks we're gone over the edge into a covert police state.

A less charitable explanation is that he's an insane megalomaniac who'll take down the world to feed his ego.

Either way, he has guaranteed funding. A tiny portion of the Rove/Bush bankroll will ensure Nader gets the 1-3% of the vote needed to tip the election to Bush. The only mystery is whether Rove need be all that covert about how he funds Nader. After all, if Ralph believes the system is hopelessly corrupt, he might as well take Rove's money.

Neo-Feudalism: Return of the Trades

Essay: A Prettier Jobs Picture?

[The Bureau of Labor Statistics] ... is much less adept at counting employees in small businesses, simply because there are too many small enterprises to representatively sample them. The bureau's occupational survey, which might suggest which jobs are growing, doesn't count self-employed people or partners in unincorporated businesses at all. And many of today's growing industries, the ones adding jobs even amid the recession, are comprised largely of small companies and self-employed individuals. That is particularly true for aesthetic crafts, from graphic designers and cosmetic dentists to gardeners. These specialists' skills are in ever greater demand, yet they tend to work for themselves or in partnerships.

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Ahh, yes. The aesthetic crafts. Minstrels and gardeners, servants and carpenters. I had quite an interesting discussion the other day with a master carpenter who makes a fine living doing cabinets ... on yachts.

No more inheritance tax. Increasing concentration of wealth by inheritance, network effects ("winner take all"), regressive taxation and tax avoidance. It all adds up to an increasingly wealthy and powerful elite and an army of gardeners, entertainers, tradesman and craftsman to serve them. Don't send your children to college, let them be minstrels.

The last time we did this there were barons and kings upon the land, and the wealthy lived in walled cities surrounded by the heaving masses ...

Tne Malaysian Connection: the diffusion of nuclear weapons (washingtonpost.com)

Insider Tells Of Nuclear Deals, Cash (washingtonpost.com)

Tahir, however, had turned his attention to Malaysia, marrying the daughter of a former Malaysian diplomat in a society wedding in 1998 and gaining permanent residency there.

He also saw business opportunities. Though he had planned in 2001 to manufacture centrifuge components in Turkey with a Turkish associate, police said, Tahir changed his mind and suggested that the parts be produced by a politically connected Malaysian company, Scomi Precision Engineering.

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An astounding story is unraveling, beyond the best of Ian Fleming. A wonderful and terrible example the power of markets.

Tahir was a key player in the China-Pakistan-Libya-Malaysia-Iran (more to come) nuclear weapons trade. The Malaysia connection is highly interesting. Malaysia is a high tech manufacturing nation ruled by Mahathir (semi-retired), an autocratic tyrant with a record of successful rule and a hatred of the "West". It is a police state. Did Mahathir know that a Malaysian engineering firm was doing high tech manufacturing for Libya's bomb?

The other thread in this story is the astounding capabilities of the IAEA and Mohammed el Baradei. Maybe he could assume command of the CIA?

Science and the media: brain rot from electric motors?

ScienceDaily News Release: Exposure To Low-level Magnetic Fields Causes DNA Damage In Rat Brain Cells, Researchers Find

Since Lai first reported findings of magnetic field-induced DNA damage in 1995, several laboratories in Europe and India have reported similar effects.

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The other day I commented on how responsibly one journalists had handled the peculiar association between heavy antibiotic use and breast cancer. Now we have the other side of the coin.

The journalist mentions the results of an earlier study were validated by "several laboratories in Europe and India". A corollary of this statement is that NO lab in North America has been able to duplicate the earlier results.

That's a heck of a red flag.

And not pointing that out is cruddy journalism.

The fall of Howard Dean

NYT, Jon Margolis - Howard’s End

In Vermont, Dr. Dean was never a very good politician. He was quite a good governor. He was a prudent steward of the state's finances. He expanded social services while reducing taxes. During the debate over civil unions in 2000, he not only kept his word but he also kept his cool.

On the campaign trail, though, Dr. Dean was a dud. Here was a man with neither a thirst for the political jugular nor a sense of timing.

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Clinton was a very able President, a tremendous politician, and a flawed human being. Roosevelt and Kennedy were rather similar. Washington was a weak campaigner, but never had to campaign. Lincoln had it all. Churchill, despite his tremendous oratorical skills, was (I think!) weak on the campaign trail.

I don't agree with Mr Margolis that Howard Dean was a poor politician. I think to be a an effective governor, which he was, one has to be skilled in many aspects of politics. He was, however, a very weak entertainer. He was not strong in debate. He couldn't manage an attack. He lacked the skills that lawyers learn. He was not a campaigner.

It is a cliche that the very best person to be president would never run, and were they to be forced to run they would never have the campaign skills. There's some truth to that. We're stuck with entertainers.