Anche il Drosophila melanogaster’s Genetics & Neuroscience Fan Club è molto dispiaciuto di dover dare la notizia della morte di John Sulston, il più gentile tra i leader del Progetto genoma umano, premio Nobel per aver decodificato il genoma e scoperto i geni dell’apoptosi della Caenorhabditis elegans, co-autore del manifesto di Manchester e promotore con Joseph Rotblat di un “codice etico” per gli scienziati:
“For individual scientists, it may be helpful to have a clear professional code of conduct – a Hippocratic oath as it were,” he wrote [in The Biochemist, 2001].
“The aim would be both to require qualified scientists to cause no harm and to be wholly truthful in their public pronouncements, and also to protect them from discrimination by employers who might prefer them to be economical with the truth.”
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Dato il ruolo dell’ippocampo nella memoria e l’ipotesi prevalente di una neurogenesi lenta, poca, ma – data la presenza di cellule staminali cerebrali – probabilmente continua per decenni, fa discutere già dal titolo il paper di Shawn Sorrels et al. anticipato on line da Nature,
Human hippocampal neurogenesis drops sharply in children to undetectable levels in adults
Commento cauto di Jason Snyder e uno più lungo sul suo blog – che se fosse scritto in grigio più scuro, si leggerebbe meglio…
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Nel Parco delle Bufale, parlavo di terapeuti emiliani che con la meditazione tibetana dicono di teletrasmettere “mentalmente”, anche dalla propria schiena (rif. Photoshop sopra), fasci di “biofotoni” entangled azzurri, rosa e lillà (fucsia, secondo loro) ai pazienti. Che facciano come Rosina al suo re è già stato scoperto dagli stessi terapeuti, ma pensavo che su di loro la meditazione avesse un qualche effetto positivo.
Non quello che immaginavo.
Su Scientific Reports, Ute Keplin et al. analizzano 54 ricerche
The methodological quality of the studies was generally weak (61%), while one third (33%) was graded as moderate, and none had a grading of strong
Le meno indegne su un totale di 4517 pubblicate dal 2004 al 2015.
Five types of social behaviours were identified: compassion, empathy, aggression, connectedness and prejudice. Although we found a moderate increase in prosociality following meditation, further analysis indicated that this effect was qualified by two factors: type of prosociality and methodological quality. Meditation interventions had an effect on compassion and empathy, but not on aggression, connectedness or prejudice.
Gli empatici e i compassionevoli meditano, il che ne migliora la presunzione:
compassion levels only increased under two conditions: when the teacher in the meditation intervention was a co-author in the published study; and when the study employed a passive (waiting list) control group but not an active one.
Weak indeed…
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Nel 2011, quando era presidente Obama,
Only 30 percent of white evangelicals felt an immoral politician could behave ethically in their public life — fewer than white mainline Protestants and Catholics.
Last year, PRRI has conducted the same survey and the results are stunning. The number of white evangelicals who believe a politician can still behave ethically despite immoral behavior rocketed up from 30 percent to 72 percent. The group went from the least likely to ignore a politicians’ personal immoral behavior to the most likely.[…]
The obvious reason for this is the election of President Donald Trump, who carried 80 percent of the white evangelical vote.
Stando alle elezioni locali, la maggioranza degli americani mi sembra tollerare un po’ meno i “politici immorali”.
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Martin “Pharma Bro” Shkreli è stato condannato in appello a 84 mesi di carcere non per aver aumentato del 5000% il prezzo di un farmaco dopo aver comprato l’azienda che lo produceva – un aumento legale in USA – ma perché
he was lying to fellow rich people.
The feds alleged that Shkreli tanked a couple of hedge funds, repeatedly misled his investors, and then paid them back with money he stole from his own drug company. His attorney countered by arguing that, because none of those investors lost money, no crime was committed—or at least no one really got hurt. Problem is, that isn’t how the law works, and Judge Matsumoto decided Shkreli caused losses of more than $7 million. If he can’t come up with the money, some of his rich-guy assets will be sold—including a brokerage account with about $5 million in it, as well as a Picasso painting and those two ultra-rare rap albums.