HLHS

///////////////Earlier studies in animals indicate HLHS may develop because of embryonic alterations in blood flow, such as a premature narrowing of the aortic valve and foramen ovale (which in the fetal heart allows blood to enter the left atrium from the right). Other studies have pointed to the role of certain genes (TBX5 and IRX1) in the formation of defective heart chambers with distinct shapes, functionality and molecular structure. Based on analysis of how these genes function, scientists hypothesize that HLHS may result from a primary defect in the growth of muscle tissue during the heart’s development.
“Currently there are no experimental models to clarify the relative contributions of these two hypotheses to the development of HLHS,” Dr. Hinton said. “An important step forward in this research will be to understand the degree to which these hypothetical causes actually contribute to the condition.”



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++ The nicer you are to your parents, the nicer they will be to you (for the most part).++ Make friends as soon as possible with a new neighbor. You have no idea how much this will ease certain encounters in the future. It's easier to have a big party or just generally be loud in your room if you know that the upstairs (or wherever) neighbor is cool with you.++ Make friends at the university. This is especially important for you career-minded individuals. Getting on a professor's good side is one of the most important things you can do at university. If you see someone sitting in the lunch room by themselves and they aren't studying or doing homework, go sit at their table and talk to them. Get their name and what they're studying and BAM, you've got an aquaintance. Then, when you see them around campus/town again, say 'hi'.++ Even though you may be nervous about talking to random people, the worst you can get is "Go away."++ Making friends with janitors at school is a great hint. Feel like having a day off school? Do it. He'll write you a note, because even though he's kinda weird, he's pretty cool.++ If you're in a large group that's singing, and you know the tune of the song but not the words, you can just mouth "Watermelon" over and over. No one watching will be able to tell, except the deaf.++ Guys, when everything is going perfectly with your relationship, send your girlfriend flowers or a Vermont Teddybear. If you can do it well, cook her a surprise meal.++ If you're standing in a line at the grocery store or wherever, turn to the person behind you and make small talk.
++ Do not buy your girlfriend or wife flowers in an attempt to make nice after you pissed her off. Every time she looks at the flowers, she will just be reminded that you pissed her off, unless she has the memory span of a goldfish.++ If you occasionally feel like feeding the hungry looking guy with the sign at the intersection, don't give him money. Your desire to help him get some hot food may end up being exploited to get things you don't intend. Carry meal coupons to local restraunts. Its real hard to exchange a $5.00 Quiznos coupon for alchohol or drugs, but it will get them a toasted sub.++ Learn to apologize. Swallow your pride and do it. It will make your life so much better in the end.++ Repair your messed up relationships if at all possible.++ If you're at a party and you don't know anyone, make it a point to meet the host and introduce yourself. The host can introduce you to other guys/girls and it scores you points so you get invited back.++ Don't loan money to friends.++ Spend some effort staying in touch with friends.++ If you're in a foreign country, never assume that a particular type of humor is universal. Your clever sarcastic comment might not go over well at all if the listener isn't familiar with the concept of sarcasm.++ Remember when you were little and were intimidated by adults and big kids? Play with little kids and don't think they're dumb, they're smarter than you think. Kids will listen and behave better around you if you do that.++ Have a firm handshake.++ Relearn childhood skills or hobbies that you decided were stupid. They'll often inexplicably impress people later on.++ Pay attention to how your coworkers treat waitstaff. It's is generally a good indicator of how they'll treat people they feel they have some power or control over.++ Take your hat off during dinner of say, a significant other, or a friend's family that you aren't too comfortable with yet. It just looks bad to be an impolite punk who doesn't show any manners.++ If you get in trouble with an authority figure, be as nice as possible, sometimes they let you off if you display that you have regretted your mistake or are willing to accept consequences.


http://members.optusnet.com.au/argyle85/social.html


///////////////////To me, the analogy of hardware/software is very pertinent to an understanding of mind. In humans, mind is the interface between brain and culture. Many things attributed to the hardware, such as intentionality, are either partially or totally products of the culture. Language does not just contain signs, it also contains applets. For example, the meaning of the word "intentionality" contains the applet for being intentional. The notion of mind does not reduce to brain (as scientism insists), but expands outward to the entire cultural and natural history of the human species. This is why there is such a thing as brain science, but not such a thing as mind science.Thomas

////////////mind is the interface between brain and culture.



/////////////////////AL GORE-ALARMISM-EXAGGERATION



//////////////////////One man's meat is another man's poison.~Proverb, (Latin)~




////////////////////////MA KA NAM PATA NEHI,BAP KA NAM JORURI NEHI


//////////////////////The Power of Symmetry
David W. Farmer
Why Beauty is Truth: A History of Symmetry. Ian Stewart. xiv + 290 pp. Basic Books, 2007. $26.95.
click for full image and caption

Symmetry is a fundamental concept pervading both science and culture. In popular terms, symmetry is often viewed as a kind of "balance," as when Doris Day's character in the 1951 movie On Moonlight Bay insists that if her beau kisses her on the right cheek, then he should kiss her on the left cheek too. But in mathematics, symmetry has been given a more precise meaning. In his new history of mathematical symmetry, Why Beauty Is Truth, Ian Stewart gives this definition: "A symmetry of some mathematical object is a transformation that preserves the object's structure." So a symmetrical structure looks the same before and after you do something to it. A butterfly looks the same as its mirror image. The (idealized) wheel of a car may look the same after being rotated on its axle by 90 degrees (or possibly by 72 or 120 degrees, depending on the particular design).
Although mathematical symmetry may bring to mind a regular polygon or other geometric pattern, its roots (pun unavoidable) lie in algebra, in the solutions to polynomial equations. Thus Stewart begins his account in ancient Babylon with the solution to quadratic equations. The familiar quadratic formula gives the two roots of the degree-two polynomial equation ax 2 + bx + c = 0. The Babylonians didn't have the algebraic notation to write down such a formula, but they had a recipe that was equivalent to it.


//////////////////HAPPILY NEVER AFTER



///////////////////Not Just a Pantomime
Michael C. Corballis
Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals about the Mind. Margalit Fox. xii + 354 pp. Simon and Schuster, 2007. $27.
The Gestural Origin of Language. David F. Armstrong and Sherman E. Wilcox. x + 151 pp. Oxford University Press, 2007. $39.95.
Throughout the world, and dating back to antiquity, deaf people have communicated with one another by means of sight rather than sound, using their hands and faces. Signed languages are still often regarded as vastly inferior to speech and are perceived as relying on mere mimicry or pantomime to convey meaning. And historically, the deaf have been treated as though they were mentally disabled. Spurred in part by the late, legendary William C. Stokoe of Gallaudet University, most linguists have now come to accept that sign languages have all of the grammatical and expressive sophistication of true language. Not all linguists have seen the light, though—as recently as late 2005, at the end of a talk in which I made reference to sign language, a prominent linguist stood up and informed the audience that sign language was a primitive pantomime invented in the 18th century and had no relevance to the understanding of true language or its evolution. The two books under review, Talking Hands and The Gestural Origin of Language, are powerful correctives to that antediluvian view.
The author of Talking Hands, Margalit Fox, is a journalist with a linguistic background who joined a team of linguists studying the sign language developed by a Bedouin community known as the Al-Sayyid in the Negev desert in Israel. The community is made up of some 3,500 individuals, and because many of them intermarry, some 150 of the people living there have inherited a condition that has left them profoundly deaf. Although the deaf are in the minority, Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL) is widely used in the community, along with a spoken dialect of Arabic



/////////////////////Evolution-Once More, with Feeling
Robert T. Pennock
Darwin Loves You:Natural Selection and the Re-enchantment of the World. George Levine. xxx + 304 pp. Princeton University Press, 2006. $29.95.
Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think about Our Lives. David Sloan Wilson. x + 390 pp. Delacorte Press, 2007. $24.
Most people would not expect a scientist to speak of love, except perhaps in terms of endorphins or pheromones. And who would want to hear love reduced to that? Is the heart but a pump and not the seat of the soul? Though science may clock the beats of a racing pulse, such a sterile accounting of the muscle in our breast is cold and, well, bloodless. Isn't such a heartless picture of the world always what science leaves us with after it has explained (or explained away) some previously mysterious miracle of nature?
Such antipathy toward science and its purported effects is probably more common than scientists would like to admit. The German sociologist Max Weber was the best-known figure to articulate this worry about science. In his 1918 lecture "Science as a Vocation," for instance, Weber spoke of the "disenchantment of the world," which he suggested is the result of its modern worldview. He thought that the scientific idea that everything in nature can, at least in principle, be explained in natural terms effectively drains the world of mystery and thereby of transcendent purpose and meaning as well. For many, the world as science explains it is a bleak and unfeeling place.



///////////////////Oct. 7, 2007, 7:49PMProfessors asking students not to bring laptops to classThere's a concern that too many are surfing the Web during lectures
By AMY ROLPHSeattle Post-Intelligencer
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SEATTLE — A silent college classroom is rare.
The lecturer pauses for a sip of water. Students aren't talking. And no one's cell phone is vibrating, trilling or playing the latest Billboard-chart favorite.
Yet, the faint clatter of typing rises from at least one set of fingers — an ever-present sign that today's students would rather come to class with laptops than with a pen and paper. After all, it's awfully hard to check your e-mail, surf the Web or chat with friends using a spiral notebook.
But a growing number of professors, including some at Seattle's three universities, are asking students to leave the laptops in their bags or at home.
"There's a concern that students will be surfing the Web, especially with YouTube so readily available," said Therese Huston, director of Seattle University's Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. Huston often sits in on classes to gauge what kind of support faculty members need, and she said she can attest to how frequently the video site pops up during lectures.
"There will be the occasional student who will forget to turn the sound down," she said.



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