Besides life getting busy one major reason why I have not been posting much is that I have been busy organizing the family genealogy. I inherited the old family pictures when my grandparents died so I recently scanned them and posted them all on Flickr.com for family members who are computer literate. Through Flickr's association with Qoop I was able to print these pictures for each grandparent line into a nice high quality book. One can get a custom 100 page photo book for $50.00. I took these books and showed them to my relatives this past Thanksgiving with the result that my parent's are giving copies to everyone in the extended family for Christmas.

Related to this I have started putting all the genealogy information I have gathered over the years onto ancestry.com. This is the best online genealogy site in my opinion. One can post family trees, biographies, pictures, and even automatically connect ancestors to public records like census data, etc. After some crosschecking they even combine all entered family trees into what they call a One World Tree so one can connect to that as well. By connecting to the World Tree the weekend before Thanksgiving I found out I was a direct descendant of John Alden and Priscilla Mullins who came over on the Mayflower. John was one of the leaders of the Pilgrims. So the timing could not have been better to make this announcement to the family over Thanksgiving. If one can get a line back to New England with their church christening records one line can go way back.

While at my parent's house I collected pictures of when I and my brothers were young so now I need to scan them. More to do!

Biblical scholars have long realized that the flood myth in the Bible is compilation of two older but parallel stories, one from the northern kingdom of Israel (called the E source) and the other from the southern kingdom of Judah (called the J source). These stories were combined by some priestly group (the P source) in Jerusalem after the northern kingdom was destroyed by Assyria in 720 BC. The influx of northern refugees into the south required that a new common history be created by merging the slightly different traditions of their common religion. The editorial P source was very concerned with an orderly history which explains its emphasis on genealogy and the covenant theology which gives a framework in which to understand Israel's history (both is triumphs and defeats). A review of a book that attempts to recreate the J source can be found here. What follows is my attempt at separating the two parallel sources.

Rationale for the Flood

J source

6:5 The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. 6 The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. 7 So the LORD said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them." 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.

P source editorial introduction

9 This is the account of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God. 10 Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth.
 

E source

11 Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight and was full of violence. 12 God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. 13 So God said to Noah, "I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth.

Comments

In this New International Version of the Bible "LORD" is a translation of the Hebrew word "Yahweh" while God is a translation of the Hebrew word "Elohim". These two different terms for the divinity are the primary characteristics of their respective sources.

Construction Commands

E source

13 So God said to Noah, "I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. 14 So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. 15 This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high. 16 Make a roof for it and finish the ark to within 18 inches of the top. Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks. 17 I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. 18 But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark (P editor insert) —you and your sons and your wife and your sons' wives with you. 19 You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. 20 Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. 21 You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them."

 22 Noah did everything just as God commanded him.

J Source

7:1 The LORD then said to Noah, "Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation. 2 Take with you seven of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, 3 and also seven of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth. 4 Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made."

 5 And Noah did all that the LORD commanded him.

Comments

Verse 15 in Hebrew is:  300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits high (about 140 meters long, 23 meters wide and 13.5 meters high).

Notice the difference between the sources in the number and type of animals that Noah was to bring onto the ark.

Entering the Ark

E Source

6 Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came on the earth. 7 And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood. 8 Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground, 9 male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as God had commanded Noah. 10 And after the seven days the floodwaters came on the earth.

J Source

11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. 12 And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.

P Source adds this editorial summary

13 On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark. 14 They had with them every wild animal according to its kind, all livestock according to their kinds, every creature that moves along the ground according to its kind and every bird according to its kind, everything with wings. 15 Pairs of all creatures that have the breath of life in them came to Noah and entered the ark. 16 The animals going in were male and female of every living thing, as God had commanded Noah. Then the LORD shut him in.

The Flood Begins

J Source

 17 For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth.

E source

18 The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. 19 They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. 20 The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than twenty feet. 21 Every living thing that moved on the earth perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. 22 Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. 23 Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; men and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds of the air were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.  24 The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days.

The Flood Ends

E source

8:1 But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. 2 Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky. 3 The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, 4 and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. 5 The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible.

J Source

 6 After forty days Noah opened the window he had made in the ark 7 and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. 8 Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. 9 But the dove could find no place to set its feet because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. 10 He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. 11 When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. 12 He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him. 13 By the first day of the first month of Noah's six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry. 14 By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry.

Comments

Notice that the drying of the earth took much longer in the E source (more than 10 months) than in the J source (two months). Apparently the rest of the E source flood ending was deleted since it does not go all the way to the dry land stage.

Out of the Ark

E Source

 15 Then God said to Noah, 16 "Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. 17 Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you—the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground—so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number upon it."

 18 So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons' wives. 19 All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds—everything that moves on the earth—came out of the ark, one kind after another.

J Source

20 Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. 21 The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

 22 "As long as the earth endures,
       seedtime and harvest,
       cold and heat,
       summer and winter,
       day and night
       will never cease."

Final Comment

Notice how well the story line of each source flow together, a flow that is lost in the combined version.

Also notice that this flood myth is not based on a raging river flood analogy. Instead the extra water came from a combination of springs and rain that smoothly rose.

Some recent news from archeology seems to confirm to the historical accuracy of the book of Jeremiah. The full article can be found in the latest issue of Archeology.

Austrian Assyriologist Michael Jursa recently discovered the financial record of a donation made a Babylonian chief official, Nebo-Sarsekim. The find may lend new credibility to the Book of Jeremiah, which cites Nebo-Sarsekim as a participant in the siege of Jerusalem in 587 B.C.

The tablet is dated to 595 B.C., which was during the reign of the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar II. Coming to the throne in 604 B.C., he marched to Egypt shortly thereafter, and initiated an epoch of fighting between the two nations. During the ongoing struggle, Jerusalem was captured in 597, and again in 587-6 B.C. It was at this second siege that Nebo-Sarsekim made his appearance.

He ordered Nebo-Sarsekim to look after Jeremiah: "Take him, and look well to him, and do him no harm; but do unto him even as he shall say unto thee." (Jeremiah 39.12)

As the biblical story goes, the victorious Babylonian king departed the city with numerous Jewish captives. Desiring to spare the prophet Jeremiah, he ordered Nebo-Sarsekim to look after him: "Take him, and look well to him, and do him no harm; but do unto him even as he shall say unto thee." (Jeremiah 39.12). Nebo-Sarsekim obeyed these orders by taking Jeremiah out of the Babylonian court of the prison, and ensuring he was escorted home to Jerusalem to live among his people.

The full 39th chapter of Jeremiah can be found here.

In an era when many many moral rules seem to be arbitrarily based on culture we need a deeper foundation.

Simple observation shows that humans are motivated by various and often different interests and desires. We know now that these interests are a combination of genetic, cultural, and upbringing factors. Initially one can not say one interest or motivation is inherently better than another. To do so is to arbitrarily value one interest or motivation more than the others then use that one as the rule by which others are valued.

If all individual interests and motivations are equally valued then society as a whole must maximize the expression of these interests. Consequently this maximization process thus should be the source for all moral guidelines because  the expression of certain interests by individuals will inhibit the expression of other interests by other individuals. In addition immediate expression of certain interests by a single individual can inhibit the expression of a greater number of their interests or some more highly valued interests over a longer term.

Since this morality involves working well with others in groups one should not be surprised that its core has been provided by our own evolution.

The maximization of the group experiential requires that each human develop wisdom which involves a deep understanding of how human emotions work within oneself and others combined with a knowledge of how the world works (its causal flows). All religions value wisdom yet wisdom never seems to be at the primary concern.

Wisdom stands upon three legs. The first leg is the development of one's spirituality, the understanding of oneself in the fullest sense realizing one's emotions and motivations are some unknown mix of genetics, culture, upbringing, and immaterial conscious sensations. In practice this requires the development of a certain level of emotional detachment so one can investigate ones own motivations and (often unexpected) emotional responses. This requires one seek out and explore emotion laden experiences. Our brains will inevitably put our experiences into some sort of mental framework that most closely matches what we feel depending on which frameworks we have run across in our life. To suppress this  direct experiential "natural" framework in preference to a framework that is supposed to be true based upon culture or rationality is to inhibit one's spirituality. Rationality and emotions are handled by two different regions of the brain so one should not expect them to be coherent. There is an appropriate time for each.

The second leg for developing wisdom is the understanding the motivations and emotions of others. This requires the development of empathy (love) in preference to a quick judgment. The key here is the realization that everyone may have a different spirituality, only some of which you may directly understand for unless you have experienced something similar you will really not understand it. Yet the maximization of the group experiential means you must accept it unless it is inhibiting to the long term experiences of everyone. Those with similar spiritual experiences will tend to group together to form various religions or spiritual movements so freedom of religion is a basic moral issue.

The third leg is the understanding causal flows, the cause and effect of everything. Like the development of spirituality this also requires the development of a certain level of emotional detachment so that one can analyze worldly evidence without having one's judgment blinded by one's own cultural biases. The scientific method with its mathematical theories that describe causal flows is a method that has proven itself successful at this. If one must make decisions that affect others one had better understand causal flows well for the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. One should not try to convince others to believe a certain way unless one is prepared to present evidence of causal flows. Often various religions revert to immoral coercion or propaganda methods to gain converts instead of allowing each human to discover their own spirituality in their own time. One can never have too much education although such education does not need to be formal.

Some information is finally beginning to leak out about why Israel bombed a certain place in Syria recently. Some in the U.S. government led by Vice President Dick Cheney believe Israeli intelligence when they claim that the work was nuclear related. Others led by Secretary of State Condolezza Rice and Defense Secretary Bill Gates say the evidence is not conclusive. The New York Times article is here. (this is the best one I have seen on the subject so far)

It has long been known that North Korean scientists have aided Damascus in developing sophisticated ballistic missile technology, and there appears to be little debate that North Koreans frequently visited a site in the Syrian desert that Israeli jets attacked Sept. 6. Where officials disagree is whether the accumulated evidence points to a Syrian nuclear program that poses a significant threat to the Middle East.

Last week, Turkish officials traveled to Damascus to present the Syrian government with the Israeli dossier on what was believed to be a Syrian nuclear program, according to a Middle East security analyst in Washington. The analyst said that Syrian officials vigorously denied the intelligence and said that what the Israelis hit was a storage depot for strategic missiles.

That denial followed a similar denial from North Korea. Mr. Hill, the State Department’s assistant secretary for East Asia and Pacific affairs, raised the Syria issue with his North Korean counterparts in talks in Beijing in late September. The North Koreans denied providing any nuclear material to Syria.

Publicly, Syrian officials have said Israeli jets hit an empty warehouse.

So what to believe?

Still, Mr. Riedel said Israel would not have launched the strike in Syria if it believed Damascus was merely developing more sophisticated ballistic missiles or chemical weapons.

“Those red lines were crossed 20 years ago,” he said. “You don’t risk general war in the Middle East over an extra 100 kilometers’ range on a missile system.”

Another former intelligence official said Syria was attempting to develop so-called airburst capability for its ballistic missiles. Such technology would allow Syria to detonate warheads in the air to disperse the warhead’s material more widely.

I find it very hard to believe Syria was attempting to make a nuclear bomb since that attempt would have been detected earlier but this airburst comment suggests that they might be seeking to make a large dirty bomb to put on top of a missile. If so that would be scary.

All analyzes I have seen on dirty bombs assume some terrorist gets a hold of some small amount of reactor produced radioactive material and put that in a small bomb (10 to 20 pounds). None have considered the effect of what a large amount of radioactive material would have if a 500 pound airburst bomb goes off.

For a fine analysis of small dirty bombs see here.

The very good Wikipedia article explaning that dirty bomb material only comes from nuclear reactors is found here.

With all the concern about Iran's nuclear program and its potential for nuclear proliferation and war I though I had better start tracking developments more closely in an attempt to cut through the political posturing.

A good article on the history behind Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant and the recent deal to prevent Iran from getting plutonium out of it can be found here.

"On 13 February 2004 a Russian Energy Ministry official said that Iran and Russia might sign the protocol on exporting Russian nuclear fuel to Iran`s Bushehr Nuclear Plant and return of the use fuel to Russia within the next two weeks. The official said "The controversial protocol, that would pave the way for making functional Iran`s Bushehr Nuclear Plant, and Russia`s access to the major part of its money for completing the said plant, would be signed very soon, and no later than a fortnight from now." He emphasized"

The deal was eventually signed February 7, 2005 so there must have been some resistance from Iran.

A listing of all Iran's nuclear facilities built or under construction as of 2003 can be found here. Interestingly only one power plant (Bushehr) is listed.

There remain significant such open question related to Iran's enrichment program. The 26 August 2003 IAEA report provides information making clear Iran has consistently misled the Agency about its enrichment program. First, as paragraph 30 reveals, Iran's centrifuge enrichment program did not begin in 1997, as Iran initially told the Agency, but in 1985,

This New York Times article from Feb 2007 gives a brief history of international inspections of Iran's nuclear fuel enrichment program based upon centrifuges.

At first, inspectors from the international atomic agency in Vienna had wide latitude to travel through Iran in an effort to comprehend the depth and breadth of the enrichment project — and assess its true nature, whether for war or peace. They toured centrifuge factories, found a hidden centrifuge factory behind a false wall in a small electric facility in downtown Tehran and hunted for signs of weapons-grade enrichment. They visited the cavernous hall at Natanz, until recently a huge, empty basement.

By the atomic agency’s estimates, Iran could produce upwards of 100 centrifuges a month, and was stockpiling them.

Then, last February (that would be Feb. 2006 , SS), after three years of unusual openness, Iran reacted to the growing pressure from Washington and Europe to suspend its enrichment — or face sanctions — by drastically reducing the access of international inspectors to Natanz and dozens of other atomic sites, programs and personnel.

Iran's nuclear fuel enrichment program was secret until 2002 according to this article until an opposition group revealed its existence. Until recently Iran tended to downplay its commitment to the enrichment process.

The agency has repeatedly asked Iran for information, but Iran has insisted that it abandoned work on the P-2 centrifuge three years ago. Then in April, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, announced that Tehran was “presently conducting research” on the P-2 and boasted that it would quadruple Iran’s enrichment powers.

The Iranians seem to be researching pure plutonium which is only used in nuclear bombs and not for power production according to this NY Times article. Plutonium is only produced in a nuclear power plant.

The report also documents a number of contradictions between claims by Iranian authorities and the inspectors' evidence.

An example of the serious discrepancies found by the atomic agency center on Iranian research on plutonium, one of the main fuels of nuclear arms. The report said the agency took a number of Iranian plutonium disks to Vienna for analysis of their makeup.

The investigators found a major disagreement between the disks and what was said to be the solution from which they were made. The analysis revealed that eight of the disks had "significantly lower" amounts of plutonium 240. That finding is important because plutonium 240 is considered a pollutant in the making of nuclear arms, and nuclear engineers work hard to limit its presence.

The report made no link between the plutonium 240 finding and its potential usefulness for making nuclear arms. Rather, in the agency's usual understated style, it simply noted the discrepancy.

"The story is not as straight as it has been presented to us," said a senior official with knowledge of the agency's investigation.

After a short period of shutting down their uranium enrichment program the Iranians broke the U.N. inspector's seals on the equipment in January 2006 according to this article here.

Iran received nuclear weapons technology from Pakistan just like North Korea according to this August 2005 NY Times article.

Dr. Khan publicly confessed in January 2004 to having provided nuclear weapons technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya, but he gave few details. General Musharraf pardoned him, citing his status as a national hero. Pakistani officials are investigating Dr. Khan, but General Musharraf has barred American or United Nations investigators from directly questioning him.

From this initial review of the evidence I think the odds favor the idea that Iran is seeking to develop plutonium nuclear weapons.

The key facts are:

1. Iran does not have plans for a large number of nuclear power plants for the purpose of generating electricity. It is only building one nuclear reactor. So why is it spending tons of money to enrich uranium in a quantities for a whole electrical generation industry for only one nuclear plant?
   
2. The uranium enrichment program began in 1985 during the Iran - Iraq war meaning that it was started as a military program and then never completely stopped.
3. The Iranian uranium enrichment program only re-started again in January 2006 after the Russians refused to allow Iran to get plutonium from the spent fuel of their one nuclear reactor (in February 2005).  Even only enriching uranium to fuel levels will allow Iran to fuel their own nuclear power plant and that will get them the plutonium which is need to make lightweight nuclear bombs suitable for placement on missiles. See this link and this link for nuclear bomb information.

The last few months has seen significant progress with North Korea. Yesterday North Korea agreed to begin dismantling its key nuclear facilities. A good report on that is from the Washington Post here . Today North and South Korea agreed to work towards a formal peace agreement ending the Korean War. A report on that in USA Today here.

Given North Korea's past behavior there will be setbacks on this road but the trend is clear.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice deserves most of the credit on the U.S. side for showing flexibility.

The goal of world peace needs to pursued in layers with the greatest threats given the most priority. In my opinion the spread of nuclear weapons is the greatest threat we face since the consequences of a nuclear war are so devastating and long term.

So now only Iran remains to worry the world.

The New York Times has just published a post by the A.P. in which a judge has just overturned a Bush Executive order allowing Presidents to prevent the publication of any thing coming out of the executive office. The article is here

Here is a copy:

Judge Invalidates Bush Order on Records

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: October 1, 2007

Filed at 5:58 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal judge on Monday invalided part of a 2001 order by President Bush allowing former presidents to review executive documents before they can be released under open records laws.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled that the presidential order eliminated the discretion of the National Archives to control the release historical records. She said the executive order allowed former presidents to delay the release of those records ''presumably indefinitely.''

The ruling was made in a lawsuit filed by the American Historical Association and other organizations, which argued that Bush's Executive Order 13,233 was an ''impermissible exercise of the executive power.''

A bill that would overturn the order is pending in the Senate.

This is another example of a pattern in which the Bushies think they above the law. Thinking an executive order trumps a law is a good way down the road to tyranny.

I also wonder why he thought he needed this power. What is he trying to hide?

This is a book mostly about the human pre-frontal cortex by a leading psychological neurologist who escaped from the Soviet Union. So not only will you get some brain information but also the story of the author's professional life.

To hear an podcast interview with Elkhonon Goldberg by fellow Voxer Ginger Campbell go here.

The prefrontal cortex has two functions. A motivation defining function in which basic internal motivations (goals) are modified and refined to conform with the external environment and an executive function in which a coordinated set of actions and thoughts are defined and maintained. Like all cortex regions the prefrontal cortex extends the abilities of  certain sub-cortical regions.

In the case of the executive function the reticular formation in the brain stem is its sub-cortical analog. The hypothalamus feeds fundamental motivation signals (food search, flee, mate, security search, etc) into the reticular formation which based upon environmental conditions regulates the expression of various actions. For example, slowly increasing electrical stimulation of the Hypothalamic region in birds that initiates the flee response will first trigger a walk, then a run, then a flight. If the bird is trapped then it will fight. These actions are all part of a coordinated set belonging to the response.

The conformance of motivation signals to the environment has their subcortical analogs as well. These subcortical regions include the amygdala, septum, and others. This is discussed in my review of The Emotional Brain.

The prefrontal cortex accounts for 29% of the total cortex in humans, 17% in the chimpanzee, 11.5% in the gibbon, 8.5% in the lemur, 7% in the dog, and 3.5% in the cat. (page 33)

For me the most significant new idea was Goldberg's suggestion that the underlying difference between the two brain hemispheres is based upon their learning rate in response to novelty (page 40). In all learning, a system has to make a trade-off between the speed of learning and the accuracy of learning. Those associations, as formed by conditioned learning, formed after only one or a few observed event correlations have a high probability of being wrong (the correlation could just be a coincidence) compared to associations formed after a longer observation time. It would be advantageous for any animal to be able to work with either the uncertain or certain associations depending on the task at hand. This pre-adaptation of the hemispheres is why language is most often found on the left side because of the tight context rules for grammar. Setting up a context involves making many more associations that cannot be contradictory if context control is to work. In contrast the right side of the brain would tend to be the more intuitive  since it works with uncertain associations but these are associations that would not yet exist on the left side. Brain scan observations show that the right hemisphere is more active when a task is novel while the left hemisphere is more active when the task is practiced (page 49).

Interestingly males (40% to 22%) exhibit more context dependent decision making than females (15% to 12%) in a test called the Cognitive Bias Task (page 90). In this test a "target" object was shown along with 2 choice objects. The subjects had to choose the object they liked the most. The choice strategies tended to be consistent for each individual subject with the context dependent types choosing the object most similar to the target object. In contrast the context independent types would choose objects based upon color, shape, or some other parameter. Still context types are a minority in both genders.

Males with damaged right frontal lobes behaved in an extremely context dependent fashion while those with damaged left frontal lobes behaved in an extremely context independent fashion. In contrast damage to either lobe in females produced extremely context dependent behaviors (page 95).

The two major syndromes (or end points in a damage continuum) that arise from damage to the prefrontal cortex correspond to deficits in one of the two prefrontal cortex functions. The dorsolateral syndrome (chapter 8) comes from damage to the medial areas of the prefrontal cortex and it produces pseudo-depression. Like depression this patient has an inability to initiate behaviors. Yet when behaviors can be induced after much effort they tend to persist without stopping.  In severe cases the patient will lie passively in bed, neither eating nor drinking. Patients with this syndrome are no longer bothered by pain even though they can describe the pain they feel just like normal people. Most of these patients will also have Anosognosia in which they are unable to recognize their limitations with the result that they have no motivation to undergo rehabilitation excercises. Minor or slowly developing dorsolateral syndromes can be very hard to recognize since people assume that the person is becoming lazy or simply disinterested in things due to age.

The orbitofrontal syndrome (chapter 9) is a condition in which the patient is emotionally disinhibited and impulsive. They are not able to defer immediate gratification and cannot see the consequences of their actions. They will say what is on their minds without regard to the social consequences as well. If these actions seem childish, well, they are. The prefrontal cortex is the last brain region to mature and it does not become mature until around age 18 (page 144). The author also discusses the consequences of this sort of pre-frontal cortex damage in regards to criminal responsibility.

Chapter 10 describes the groundbreaking investigation of "Kevin" who because of a horse fall damaged his reticular formation and the temperoparietal brain regions (thus his reduction in ability to form new memories). After Keven had recovered physically from the event he still had the following mental deficits (Page 158).

"Keven was perseverative: that is, his behavior invariably fell into repetative stereotypes. Every evening he would arrange his clothes for the following day and the clothes were always the same.... Despite his superficial flair, any conversation with Kevin rapidly deteriorated into a rather vacuous activity such as simple card games. He had a small repertoire of rehearsed stock topics, and the conversation would predictably and quickly drift toward one of them, say, a discussion of some of his friends.

"In the restaurant he tended to order every item on the menu, 10 or 20 items in all .... He spent most of his time though, languishing in his apartment, occasionally asking people to play simple card games .... His behavior during the games was childlike. He would clap his hands with joy after winning and throw temper tantrums after losing. He was not above cheating.

"Keven's affect (mood) was constantly oscillating between euphoria and superficial rage. These mood swings were abrupt, extreme, and could be precipitated by the most trivial events - like a waitress in a restaurant asking him if he wanted more coffee"

"Kevin had no insight into his condition"

"Kevin's mind was astoundingly concrete. When I once said that it was time to repeat the AT scan, this was meant with genuine puzzlement. Why the CAT scan, Keven marveled, if after all he had been hurt by a horse, not a cat?"

Second generation CAT scans showed Kevin's ventral tegmental region of the reticular formation was completely destroyed. This region sends massive amounts of dopomine neurons to the prefrontal cortex (page 161) probably for the purpose of defining the top level motivational contexts which the frontal cortex then refines.

Overall another great book for one's neuroscience collection.

 

This must be frog week. A news post from Yahoo News here reports that researchers in Japan have bred a line of frogs with skin you can see-through. The full article is here since I don't think Yahoo News keeps their news posts up for archival purposes:

by Miwa Suzuki Thu Sep 27, 2:54 PM ET

TOKYO (AFP) - Japanese researchers have succeeded in producing see-through frogs, letting them observe organs, blood vessels and eggs under the skin without performing dissections.

"You can see through the skin how organs grow, how cancer starts and develops," said the lead researcher Masayuki Sumida, professor at the Institute for Amphibian Biology of state-run Hiroshima University.

"You can watch organs of the same frog over its entire life as you don't have to dissect it. The researcher can also observe how toxins affect bones, livers and other organs at lower costs," he told AFP.

Dissections have become increasingly controversial in much of the world, particularly in schools where animal rights activists have pressed for humane alternatives such as using computer simulations.

Sumida said his team, which announced the research last week at an academic conference, had created the first transparent four-legged creature, although some small fish are also see-through.

The researchers produced the creature from rare mutants of the Japanese brown frog, or Rena japonica, whose backs are usually ochre or brown.

Two kinds of recessive genes have been known to cause the frog to be pale.

Sumida's team crossed two frogs with recessive genes through artificial insemination and the offspring looked normal due to the presence of more powerful genes. But crossing the offspring led to a frog whose skin is transparent from the tadpole stage.

"You can see dramatic changes of organs when tadpoles mutate into frogs," said Sumida, whose team is seeking a patent.

Such frogs could theoretically exist in the wild but it is "virtually impossible" they would naturally inherit so many recessive genes, Sumida said.

The transparent frogs can also reproduce, with their offspring inheriting their parents' traits, but their grandchildren die shortly after birth.

"As they have two sets of recessive genes, something wrong must kick in and kill them," Sumida said.

While the researchers relied on artificial insemination, they said that genetic engineering could also produce transparent and even illuminating frogs.

Sumida said researchers could also inject into the transparent frogs an illuminating protein attached to a gene, which would light up the gene once it manifests -- for example, showing at what stage cancer starts.

Sumida said it would be unrealistic to apply the same method to mammals such as mice as their skin structure is different.