SCIENCE

THE Q&A: OLIVER SACKS, NEUROLOGIST

Ariel Ramchandani — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 23:07:38 +0000

Prosopagnosia, or face-blindness, affects 2.5% of the population. Those afflicted cannot recognise faces, even ones they have seen before and know well. They must learn to rely on other cues such as gait, spectacles and manner of dress.

Oliver Sacks, a neurologist and writer, is himself face-blind. He has also been living with ocular cancer. In his latest book, "The Mind's Eye", he considers six cases of people who have had to adjust to big changes in their vision, including himself. The stories, some previously published in the New Yorker, are heartbreaking: a writer who loses the ability to read, a pianist who can no longer read music, Dr Sacks's own face blindness and loss of stereo vision as a result of cancer. His stories humanise his subjects and give shape to conditions that seem otherwise impossible and unliveable. Yet these are hardly sob stories. Rather, Dr Sacks offers up many examples of the plasticity of the human brain, which can adapt to almost anything.

More Intelligent Life spoke to Dr Sacks over the phone about face-blindness, the line between biology and biography, and what it was like for him to become one of his own subjects. read more »

THE Q&A: NATALIE JEREMIJENKO, THINGKER

Melissa Goldstein — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 20:15:17 +0000

Natalie Jeremijenko, an artist and engineer, is not constrained by what exists. Rather, she is solely interested in what should exist. On a small scale this applies to things such as words and titles (professionally she prefers to be called a "thingker"—her own linguistic invention). Among her weightier concerns, she hopes to transform personal aviation from an environmental blight to an ecologically productive exploit. The latter lies at the heart of Jeremijenko’s latest project, xAirport, an installation that proved to be a highlight of this year’s 01SJ Biennial in San Jose, California, over the weekend.

The project took place on a strip of wetland designed for landing recreational sport aircraft (ie, a "wetlanding" strip). Visitors had the chance to earn their own “pilot’s license” (via a multiple-choice test administered throughout the weekend), design their own 16-foot-wide set of wings and “test drive” the strip on a 21-foot high zip-line mounted above the wetland (“high enough to be thrilling, but not high enough to be really dangerous,” says Jeremijenko). The point was to both explore the possibility of environmentally friendly flight infrastructure and to remind us of the wonder of flight—something that has otherwise succumbed to the drudgery of commercial aviation, "where you surrender your tweezers and get padded down and lose all civil liberties and chew on expensive peanuts,” observes Jeremijenko. read more »

FIVE THINGS: ON SEEING DEAD PEOPLE

Molly Young — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 03:57:33 +0000

"On entering the waiting area," writes Michelle Williams of her interview to become a mortuary technician, "I saw a woman dressed from head to toe in black gothic clothing with very long curly straw-like red hair, who was one of the other applicants. She greeted me cautiously; I smiled faintly at her and decided to sit on the other side of the room."

The plucky Williams, a former health-care assistant who worked with learning-disabled patients, impulsively decided to take up work in a hospital morgue in Gloucestershire. "Down Among the Dead Men: A Year in the Life of a Mortuary Technician" is a memoir of her first year on the job. Not surprisingly, the scenarios range from ghastly to extremely ghastly. During her first weeks of training, the 36-year-old Williams encounters maggot-eaten bodies, severed limbs and a 560-pound dead man whose cadaver, too large to fit inside a refrigerated compartment, slowly decomposes in the laboratory while technicians wait desperately for the sign-off authorising a postmortem. There's also the motorcycle rider, decapitated in an accident, who arrives on a gurney with his head riding shotgun. Her reaction to such sights is often to murmur a curse and fetch a cup of instant coffee. Williams is a cool customer, and her writing style is correspondingly concise and sportive. More Intelligent Life has extracted a few bits of underworld knowledge from this engaging memoir.

On avoiding mistakes:

Checking the identification on a body—via tags affixed to the big toe and wrist—is a technician's most important responsibility. "Every so often the wrong body gets eviscerated," Williams is told by her supervisors, "and what follows is a tidal wave of trouble." read more »

AGED TO PERFECTION

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 21:20:24 +0000

The Telegraph has just reported what The Economist noted back in July: scientists have discovered just how Leonardo da Vinci achieved his mesmerising sfumato effect on the Mona Lisa.

Many have long wondered just how the artist achieved such delicate shading on this woman's face, and especially around the mouth. Prolonged staring reveals nary a brushstroke; only a somewhat sly smile "that seems to disappear when looked at directly". Finally, after the use of a technique called X-ray fluorescence (instead of the more invasive and controversial paint sample for chemical analysis), scientists have proven that da Vinci created his trademark shadowing "by applying up to 40 layers of extremely thin glaze thought to have been smeared on with his fingers."

The Telegraph then notes that with "the drying times for the glaze taking months, such effects would have taken years to achieve."

Something about this detail suddenly throbbed with metaphor, I'm afraid. That is, of course it takes many, many years for a woman to cultivate a smile that one suspects is there, but one can't be sure of, and which certainly disappears when scrutinised head on.

THE OPPOSITE OF A BICHON FRISE

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 22:31:20 +0000

In the New York Times yesterday, scientists gave the official biological reasons why we find some creatures heinous:

"The star-nosed mole"...said Nancy Kanwisher, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "is disturbing because it looks like the animal has no face."

"...It looks like if you handled it [the blobfish],” said Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of New Mexico, “at the very least you’d get some kind of rash.”

Jokes aside, the real reasons that we find these creatures to be so ugly are fairly self-explanatory (and something we've considered before): we are especially sensitive to creatures whose features look somewhat like our own. Humans are biologically prone to find most baby animals "cute", because we are wired to respond compassionately to signs of infantile need. We are also a bit disgusted by traits in animals that echo unhealthy or undesirable attributes among ourselves, such as asymmetricality, splotches, bumps and patchy hair. (The wrinkly, squinty adorability of shar-peis, however, are another matter.)

Scientists are not immune to this ew-factor. They tend to discriminate against ugly animals in their work—"researchers found 1,855 papers about chimpanzees, 1,241 on leopards and 562 about lions," the NYT reports, "but only 14 for that mammalian equivalent of the blobfish, the African manatee." read more »

FIVE THINGS: MARY ROACH IN SPACE

Molly Young — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 12:42:49 +0000

Given that Mary Roach has written about sex, cadavers, leeches and the human soul, it should come as no surprise that her forthcoming book, "Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void", addresses such phenomena as “fecal popcorning”, weightless burping, and the exigencies of puking in your helmet during a spacewalk.

Her newest endeavour is an exploration of the human relationship with outer space. It takes the author on a shiver-inducing tour through simulation facilities, isolation chambers and NASA research centres, where she asks the questions a layperson might be too embarrassed to articulate. The book that results is a space manual filtered through the lens of Roach’s ingenious reporting and wry humour. Herewith, five things More Intelligent Life learned along the way: read more »

INSULT + INJURY

The Editors — Wed, 05 May 2010 19:09:38 +0000

It seems the mysteries and anxieties of sleep and insomnia could become even more haunting. Today we learn this (via the Independent):

Sleeping less than six hours a night increases the risk of early death, it was claimed today.

Scientists arrived at the result after analysing data from 16 studies involving more than 1.5 million participants.

They found "unequivocal evidence" of a direct link between sleeping less than six hours a night and dying prematurely.

Yet smug sleepers needn't laugh too readily:

An association was also seen between sleeping more than nine hours a night and early death. This was thought to be due to long-sleeping being a marker of serious underlying illness rather than any effect of sleep itself.

Professor Francesco Cappucio, head of the Sleep, Health and Society Programme at the University of Warwick, said: "Whilst short sleep may represent a cause of ill-health, long sleep is believed to represent more an indicator of ill-health.

Scientific studies are perversely satisfying when nearly everyone loses.

Picture credit: schani (via Flickr)

SLEEPLESS NIGHTS

Emily Bobrow — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 19:59:28 +0000

"How long can you go without sleep?" asks an article in the New Scientist. Perhaps no longer than Randy Gardner, who set the record in 1963 by staying awake for 264 hours at the gentle age of 17.

He did it on a whim, under the observation of William Dement, a sleep scientist at Stanford University. This cursory description of Gardner's symptoms in the New Scientist is a little amusing:

Gardner experienced mood swings, memory and attention lapses, loss of coordination, slurred speech and hallucinations, but was otherwise fine.

Otherwise fine. Thomas Bartlett, a contributor to All-Nighters, an inspired blog about "insomnia, sleep and the nocturnal life" from the New York Times, further describes Gardner as someone who "temporarily lost touch with reality. At one point, he saw a path leading to a quiet forest, even though he was indoors at the time. The white teenager also believed himself to be the black running back for the San Diego Chargers."

The brief New Scientist article offers two interesting points, before throwing away the subject entirely:

1. Sleep-deprived people slip in and out of "microsleeps", which are "seconds of sleep that occur without you noticing them, often with your eyes open." read more »

WILL HEALTH-CARE REFORM COVER THIS?

The Editors — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 16:33:23 +0000

America's new health-care reform bill, signed into law today, is good news for some 32m previously uncovered people who are now covered. “We have now just enshrined…the core principle that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their health care,” President Obama announced earlier at the White House. (This short audio segment from The Economist offers a great round-up of what the bill means; this piece from CNN breaks the reform down into meaningful scenarios.)

Artists are thrilled, because reasonable health insurance will now be available to the self-employed. According to Artists United for Health Care, an advocacy group, passage of the reform plan "has done more for the health and well-being of the visual and performing arts and entertainment communities than any piece of legislation in the past fifty years."

But one wonders just how many musicians will have access to the astounding procedure experienced by Roger Frisch, a concert violinist, to treat his essential tremors. For his surgeons to pinpoint the exact place in the brain to plant electrodes, Frisch was asked to play the violin during the operation. (It turns out the brain lacks pain receptors, so patients can be awake during brain surgery.) Frisch's oddly cerebral recital is captured below. read more »

ONE MAN AND HIS ISLAND

Tim de Lisle — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 20:08:25 +0000

At the grand old age of 241, the Royal Academy is letting its hair down. After allowing itself to be spattered with red wax by Anish Kapoor, it now welcomes a gaggle of artists with a green tinge. For the second GSK Contemporary show, “Earth: Art of a changing world”, Burlington House will have a giant molecular structure growing out of its venerable facade. The RA's new exhibitions director, Kathleen Soriano, gave us a sneak preview of the show, and as she flipped through her laminated folder, the images that lingered longest were the photographs by Antti Laitinen (pictured, "It's My Island I") .

At first glance they are just gorgeous shots of the sea. On closer inspection there is an island, the kind you see in cartoons. Laitinen, who is Finnish, made the island himself, lugging sandbags out into the Baltic in a rowing boat for six weeks solid: a Sisyphus on sea. “Yes, it was like that,” Laitinen says. “I think life is quite a Sisyphean struggle in general, but I don’t consider it a bad thing at all.” read more »