Delighted to get this published

The fact that these exist makes me a happier humanoid.

So put down that paper IMMEDIATELY - and bury your face in to some of these classics.


How many lies could Pinocchio tell before it became lethal?
Does Winnie the Pooh have a B12 Deficiency?
If Clouds Really Had Silver Linings
Defecating a Brick
Powering Disney’s Frozen with a Carnot Refrigerator
Effects of Dumping Pig Manure into a Lake –The Simpsons Movie
How much energy would be required for Game of Thrones dragon Viserion to destroy the Wall?
The Viability of coming in like a Wrecking Ball
Playing ‘The Floor is Lava’ in Real Life
Breaking Bad: Gus Fring’s Face Blown Off
How Long Would It Actually Take To Catch Them All?
Simply Walking into Mordor: How Much Lembas Would the Fellowship Have Needed?
"So hungry I could eat a horse!" - Could it be done?
Unbelievable Tekkers
How fast could a mermaid swim?
How far would The Proclaimers walk for you?
Temperature decrease in the brain from a Slush Puppie
Is purple rain possible?
Buddy the Elf’s Health Problems
The Range of the Dragon Shout in Skyrim
Could you survive on celery alone?
Slapping Someone Into Next Week
Are the Hometrees in James Cameron’s Avatar Structurally Possible?
Spidey Motion
Is it possible to cry a river?
The Viability of Throwing Giant Tortoises onto Mines


Pdfs for these available and many other page-turners here: Journal of Interdisciplinary Science Topics

Your eyes will fizz. Thank me later.

Cocaine cues and dopamine

In 2006 at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, New York, a set of experiments was conducted to discover the true nature of cocaine addiction. Mexican born scientist, Prof Nora Volkow, is one of America's leading specialists on drug addiction. She's on a personal mission to understand the cause of addiction, driven by memories of her alcoholic uncle. ''He was rejected by the system...not even being accepted from the perspective of him having a medical disease''.

 

Prof. Nora Volkow

What fascinates Prof Volkow is the nature of cocaine addiction. As late as the 1980's, many scientists and politicians believed cocaine was non-addictive, and she wants to prove them wrong.

 

She took fMRI images of people under the influence of cocaine to try and identify areas of the brain, and the proteins in the brain that get disrupted by use of drugs in people that lose control of their drug intake at the expense of everything else in their life.

 

 

Her images showed that cocaine changes the brains structure. ''Repeated exposure produces changes in the way that the brain gets connected, and functions that result in pathological behaviour'', and this is why she argues in favour of it being regarded as a disease.

 

Trying to understand the nature of this disease, Prof Volkow scanned hundreds of users and ex-users. While scanning the brains of ex-users she noticed an irregularity. When subjects were discussing cocaine their dopamine levels rose. She argues that you could make a case that people become addicted to the lifestyle of cocaine use. Their brains have started to respond to the lifestyle, that is; the environment, their friends, and their situations. Her team later conducted experiments to test the theory.

 

Subjects were placed in an fMRI scanner and shown images of people preparing and snorting lines of cocaine. Viewing the images resulted in a significant increase of dopamine levels in the brains of the subjects who were current users.

 

The neurological effect of cocaine

''When we exposed them with stimulants that have been linked with drugs, what we observe is a significant increase in dopamine signalling in those areas of the brain that drive the motivation of drug behaviour''.

 

Prof Volkow's research showed that cocaine is so addictive that simply showing images of its use is enough to increase a subjects dopamine levels and lead them into a relapse.

 

Law enforcement treats cocaine users as criminals rather than people suffering from a disease. Over the past ten years, the government in the U.S. has repeatedly slashed funding for drug rehabilitation programmes and increased funding for prisons. The result: a million Americans are imprisoned on drug related charges, costing the American taxpayer 12.5 billion dollars per year.

 

Prof Volkow believes that the government's approach of criminalising and imprisoning drug use without proper treatment is misguided and statistics support her claims. Cocaine users are likely to relapse after leaving prison and end up re-incarcerated with 40% of cocaine users and 77% of crack convicts being re-offenders.
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Volkow, N.D., Wang, G.J., Telang, F., Fowler, J.S., Logan, J., Childress, A.R., Jayne, M., Ma, Y., Wong, C.J. (2006). Cocaine cues and dopamine in dorsal striatum: mechanism of craving in cocaine addiction. Journal of Neuroscience 14; 26 (24): 6583-8

If you're not learning science...then shut the hell up!

Struggling to learn something? Can't quite get your head around that theory? That's your problem. . Sometimes I'm truly glad that I did not devote myself to studying science. Because theories are always being changed to account for new observations, they are never properly digested or simplified so that ordinary people can understand them. You have to be a specialist, and even then you can only hope to have a proper grasp of a small proportion of the scientific theories.

 

Further, the rate of progress is so rapid that what you learn at school or college is always a bit out of date. Only a few people can keep up with the rapidly advancing frontier of knowledge, and they have to devote their whole time to it and specialize in a small area. The rest of the population has little idea of the advances that are being made or the excitement they are generating.

 

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As the biggest library, if it is in disorder - is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself    ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

I think, therefore I am...unemployed

Up to now, most scientists have been too occupied with the development of new theories that describe what the universe is, as opposed to why it is. On the other hand, the people whose business it is to ask why - The Philosophers, have not been able to keep up with the advance of scientific theories.

 

In the 18th century, philosophers considered the whole of human knowledge, including science, to be their field and discussed questions such as whether the universe had a beginning. However, in the 19th and 20th centuries, science became too technical and mathematical for the philosophers, or anyone else except a few specialists. Philosophers reduced the scope of their inquiries so much that Wittgenstein, the most famous philosopher of the 20th century, said, ''The sole remaining task for philosophy is the analysis of language.''

 

What a comedown from the great tradition of philosophy from Aristotle to Kant!

    

                                                                                                                                                                   (Hawkin & Mlodinow)

 

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Forget the economic downturn, it's pesky science that's putting people out of work!