Skip to main content

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to upgrade your browser.

  • Medicine, Neuroscience, Endocrinology, Cardiology, Biology, Cognitive Science, and 66 moreedit
  • Castalia, in Greek myth, was a fetching maiden whom Apollo, after pursuing her and failing to capture her attentions,... moreedit
Viremia that is not suppressed by combination antiretroviral therapy (ART) is generally attributed to incomplete medication adherence and/or drug resistance. We evaluated individuals referred by clinicians for nonsuppressible viremia... more
Viremia that is not suppressed by combination antiretroviral therapy (ART) is generally attributed to incomplete medication adherence and/or drug resistance. We evaluated individuals referred by clinicians for nonsuppressible viremia (plasma HIV-1 RNA above 40 copies/mL) despite reported adherence to ART and the absence of drug resistance to the current ART regimen. Samples were collected from at least 2 time points from 8 donors who had nonsuppressible viremia for more than 6 months. Single templates of HIV-1 RNA obtained from plasma and viral outgrowth of cultured cells and from proviral DNA were amplified by PCR and sequenced for evidence of clones of cells that produced infectious viruses. Clones were confirmed by host-proviral integration site analysis. HIV-1 genomic RNA with identical sequences were identified in plasma samples from all 8 donors. The identical viral RNA sequences did not change over time and did not evolve resistance to the ART regimen. In 4 of the donors, viral RNA sequences obtained from plasma matched those sequences from viral outgrowth cultures, indicating that the viruses were replication competent. Integration sites for infectious proviruses from those 4 donors were mapped to the introns of […] BACKGROUND. HIV-1 viremia that is not suppressed by combination antiretroviral therapy (ART) is generally attributed to incomplete medication adherence and/or drug resistance. We evaluated individuals referred by clinicians for nonsuppressible viremia (plasma HIV-1 RNA above 40 copies/mL) despite reported adherence to ART and the absence of drug resistance to the current ART regimen.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Here we share the details of lawsuit just filed in Ohio and a video interview we captured with the attorney who filed it...and his reasoning, including as well, the unique dependence of this litigation on the foundation of political... more
Here we share the details of lawsuit just filed in Ohio and a video interview we captured with the attorney who filed it...and his reasoning, including as well,  the unique dependence of this litigation on the foundation of political actions on the basis of the presumed 'truth" of scientific facts which are never demonstrated....and where that can lead a society.

OHIO ATTORNEY TOM RENZ FILES LAWSUIT AGAINST RUNAWAY GOVT TYRANNY BASED ON FAKE SCIENCE

The detailed interview video is here:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/rybZHEmjn47a/

Here we quote directly from the Ohio Litigation in regard to 'science" as the basis for infringement on human rights,

The Filed Complaint as it reads in Court, states:'

1. Over 110 years ago, at a time when medicine was not yet sufficiently advanced to have developed penicillin and the germ theory of medicine was still new, the Supreme Court of the United States made a ruling related to a citizen's rights in healthcare that has remained largely unaddressed to this day. Over the century plus of time that has since passed the court has decided many critical cases revolving around individual rights that have never been squared with Jacobson. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905).

2 A century ago many of our most sacred and fundamental rights were still being sorted out. Suffrage had not yet occurred, civil rights barely existed, critical cases on fundamental rights such as interstate travel and bodily privacy had not come into play and the administrative state that we live in today simply did not exist.

5. In recent months, entire states have been imprisoned without due process and with the clear
rights have been devastated , numerous business takings without compensation, and many regulations being implemented without statutory process requirements under the guise of a health  threat to impose such lockdowns again , interstate travel has been severely restricted , privacy rights have been devastated , numerous business takings without compensation, and many regulations being implemented without statutory process requirements under the guise of a health emergency that is roughly as dangerous as a seasonal influenza outbreak .

The plaintiffs in this case have all been injured in various capacities by these unconstitutional actions, and without action by the Court, will be left without redress. More terrifying, without action by the Court, the Court will be setting future precedent that will allow states to withhold fundamental Constitutional rights, in violation of US Supreme Court precedent, circumventing the various levels of scrutiny applied to such rights, and justify such actions under public health emergency orders without subjecting those orders to any real review – just trust the bureaucrats because they are the experts.

6. We humbly ask the Court in this case to:

1. Reaffirm its position as a coequal branch of the government.

2. Reaffirm the US Constitution is the supreme law of the land and that rights, especially
fundamental rights, may not be abridged unless necessary to serve a compelling governmental interest, and that even then, those restrictions must be narrowly tailored to meet a compelling governmental interest.

3. Ensure there is an opportunity for redress under any emergency declaration

4. Recognize that the political process and operative orders are invalid if based on false or misleading information (cite rulemaking case in admin law) and recognize the criticality that all future emergency orders be based and maintained on clear, honest facts - particularly when such orders are infringing on Constitutional rights.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The degree of suppression of information available to the public on Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) is so pervasive and intense that there is even a Taboo in mentioning the name in the title of the study. The actual and quite momentous... more
The degree of suppression of information available to the public on Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) is so pervasive and intense that there is even a Taboo in mentioning the name in the title of the study. The actual and quite momentous significance of this study is that it demonstrates that the HCQ Protocol is the research is in truth ALL about, actually shows nearly 100% efficacy in prevention of either ICU Admissions or Covid Deaths in hospitalized patients….IF, that is, the patients are supplemented with Vitamin D derivative, Calcifediol, to assure that they are not Vitamin D deficient during the treatment We will leave the comically tortuous contrived title of this study down below with the 'preprint" provided. We have here a whopping Triple-Barreled Demonstration: (1) Why HCQ Treatment was less than optimal in most prior studies? Vitamin D Deficiency (2) How HCQ Protocol Treatment can be made 100% Effective? Supplementation with Calcifediol. 3) How to Prevent the Disastrous Consequences of Covid Infection in the First place?  Do not be Vitamin D Deficient.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Graphical Abstract Highlights d Measuring immunity to SARS-CoV-2 is key for understanding COVID-19 and vaccine development d Epitope pools detect CD4 + and CD8 + T cells in 100% and 70% of convalescent COVID patients d T cell responses... more
Graphical Abstract Highlights d Measuring immunity to SARS-CoV-2 is key for understanding COVID-19 and vaccine development d Epitope pools detect CD4 + and CD8 + T cells in 100% and 70% of convalescent COVID patients d T cell responses are focused not only on spike but also on M, N, and other ORFs d T cell reactivity to SARS-CoV-2 epitopes is also detected in non-exposed individuals
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Zn(II) is an inhibitor of SARS-CoV-2 s RNA-dependent RNA polymerase, and chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are Zn(II) ionophores-this statement gives a curious mind a lot to think about. We show results of the first clinical trials on... more
Zn(II) is an inhibitor of SARS-CoV-2 s RNA-dependent RNA polymerase, and chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are Zn(II) ionophores-this statement gives a curious mind a lot to think about. We show results of the first clinical trials on chloroquine (CQ) and hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) in the treatment of COVID-19, as well as earlier reports on the anticoronaviral properties of these two compounds and of Zn(II) itself. Other FDA-approved Zn(II) ionophores are given a decent amount of attention and are thought of as possible COVID-19 therapeutics.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Note: You may first need to download this PDF document to activate its links. It does not show up here within Academia, but the downloaded PDF works just fine. This PDF document contains links to more than 30 videos about HCQ, most... more
Note: You may first need to download this PDF document to activate its links.  It does not show up here within Academia, but the downloaded PDF works just fine.

This PDF document contains links to more than 30 videos about HCQ, most of them from real life physicians using HCQ in real life treatments.

These first hand testimonials have been suppressed or shadow banned by major news and social media.  Outrageously a real treatment success reported by a physician as successful is then termed 'misinformation" by the censors at YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. What's next we may ask.

Soon all this information will be suppressed, shadow banned from the main digitial sources, and as with burned books in the past there will be no freedom of speech or right to assemble left for us unless we have copies of these historical facts on our own hard drives.

Take a look at these documented videos or actual physicians and what they are seeing and trying to tell us that they see....every day as they treat COVID with Hydroxychloroquine.

Share with those whose health you care about
Share with those whose scientific work you about.
Share with those whose freedom you care about

It is one thing to fool the public by claiming that hundreds of patients treated by Raoult or Zelenko cave have "gotten over" the Covid and have survived anyway because their academically moronic mantra of placebo, randomization, etc has not been followed.

But don't we all know that when a nursing home full of ilil and vulnerable seniors who positively test for Covid are all miraculously successfully treated by HCQ, that they would otherwise show a death rate of between 50% and 80%, as they have throughout the United States.

It is one thing to keep misinforming the public about the "safety profile" but we have many tens of thousands of persons treated with HCQ here with no adverse effects. 

Just yesterday the Australian Health Authorities considered HCQ "safe" to administer in a "trial". to over 600 frontline medical workers to test its preventive/prophylactic benefits. 

It is one thing to believe the lies of the academic bureaucrats which tell you that all facts and events must be denied if they are not substantiated in  incompetently designed studies doomed to not be 'conclusive", but it is another to see videos of people in ICU's who tell you that they had been deteriorating there for days and weeks until they were given a chance to take HCQ.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
More than 1.6 million Americans have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 and >10 times that number carry antibodies to it. High-risk patients presenting with progressing symptomatic disease have only hospitalization treatment with its high... more
More than 1.6 million Americans have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 and >10 times that number carry antibodies to it. High-risk patients presenting with progressing symptomatic disease have only hospitalization treatment with its high mortality.

An outpatient treatment that prevents hospitalization is desperately needed. Two candidate medications have been widely discussed: remdesivir, and hydroxychloroquine+azithromycin. Remdesivir has shown mild effectiveness in hospitalized inpatients, but no trials have been registered in outpatients.

Hydroxychloroquine+azithromycin has been widely misrepresented in both clinical reports and public media, and outpatient trials results are not expected until September. Early outpatient illness is very different than later hospitalized florid disease and the treatments differ. Evidence about use of hydroxychloroquine alone, or of hydroxychloroquine +azithromycin in inpatients, is irrelevant concerning efficacy of the pair in early high-risk outpatient disease.

Five studies, including two controlled clinical trials, have demonstrated significant major outpatient treatment efficacy.

Hydroxychloroquine+azithromycin has been used as standard-of-care in more than 300,000 older adults with multicomorbidities, with estimated proportion diagnosed with cardiac arrhythmias attributable to the medications 47/100,000 users, of which estimated mortality is <20%, 9/100,000 users, compared to the 10,000 Americans now dying each week.

These medications need to be widely available and promoted immediately for physicians to prescribe.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
On Winning the War vs Corona Virus "Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win” “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” ― Sun Tzu,... more
On Winning the War vs Corona Virus

"Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win”

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Research Interests:
Right now we all find ourselves abandoned to the song and dance of a circus or burlesque. How tragic comic is this? Well, rather differently, in India they have had the foresight to attempt to prophylactically treat their medical... more
Right now we all find ourselves abandoned to the song and dance of a circus or burlesque. How tragic comic is this?

Well, rather differently, in India they have had the foresight to attempt to prophylactically treat their medical personnel.... with Hydroxy-chloroquine

They managed to muster the common sense to take some sort of human action, even while they realized that they had to wait for months and months for orthodox clinical trials to be set up, conducted and analyzed.

Somehow they managed to consider the fact of saving lives as taking primacy over their following the devout gospel of lesser minds, the so called "scientific method".

Here, in our country, we have a truly moronic medical research industry that distorts and misrepresents the medicine pertaining to Chloroquine or to Zinc..and indeed to Azithromycin, as well .

The researchers at Columbia, at NEMJ and the NIH are completely incoherently ignorant of just about any of the basic research on these substances and the mechanisms of their usage. All they know is the participation in the idiot's delight, the placebo, controlled, double blind experiment with a good measure of unconvincing statistical massage thrown in.

In the meantime, they labor in utter ignorance of the manner which these substances work and work together and also in regard to how Vitamin D levels works. The latter is, unbeknownst to our 'experts' actually a crucial underlying factor in the efficacy of the three step cocktail, first articulated by Dr. Zelenko in upstate New York and explicated in his interview with Rudy Giuliani. Yet the blindly their little cabaret jig for the cameras, every day a different prediction, and every day another substitute for a bonafide opinion about anything of use.

What we have developed now is a situation where the medical personnel, physicians, first responders are dying by the thousands and, what's as bad, they are walking sources of further contagion since they are not properly medically protected by HCQ. Instead of taking notice that the weakest link in the chain of infection is the very medical personnel who are constantly exposed, carrying latent and asymptomatic viruses and then either dying themselves or spreading the contagions like wild fire in the urban city areas, they expose their medics without offering any protection.

Given the demonstrated value of the hyrdoxy-chloroquine cocktail, which, mercifully, has finally been preliminarily assessed by New York University over the past few days, we wonder whether an ounce of civility and/or intelligence will surface amidst our medical apes.

We need not be mathematical wizards to understand that by treating patients with personnel who are in turn infected and who then go out and infect their own friends and families..and so on...we are supporting a cyclic chain reaction which will lead to continued death rate levels that are astonishing.

It is frightening to think of how many good people, physicians, nursing, medical employees, first responders are dying each day by NOT being protected in most nations. And it is even more frightening to realize what sort of multiplier of infection and death those personnel constitute even if they are not symptomatic.

The political/medical establishment here refuses to wholeheartedly administer the HCQ either to patients ---until it is too late the pull them back up on the cliff...or to medical personnel who are a multiplier of infection..if they are not protected by the HCQ.

Some grotesque inner calculation must be driving them to forfeit lives by the thousands while concerned about an odd person here or there who might show one of the rare alleged side effects which purportedly are the obstacle to the use of the cocktail.

However we might note in listening the incoherent and incompetent babble when they discuss these medications, the underlying problem might well be that they are just clueless about the entire entire of medicine.

This particular society (stampeding herd) is surely doomed if we continue to allow oursevles to be herded in this manner..and we are as doomed as well unless we disregard ajust bout everything th the ape tricks tell us
Research Interests:
This is an extension of the 'abstract/introduction" to our 'Winning the War" post here.

It concludes with some thoughts about this video from Medcram
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fya6Zwxch88
Research Interests:
On Winning the War vs Corona Virus "Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win” “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” ― Sun Tzu, The Art... more
On Winning the War vs Corona Virus

"Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win”

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Research Interests:
Essential Background for understanding why Corona Treatments Work and why they Don't Work Mitochondria are organelles that are virtually cells within a cell. They probably originated billions of years ago when a bacterial cell was... more
Essential Background for understanding why Corona Treatments Work and why they Don't  Work

Mitochondria are organelles that are virtually cells within a cell. They probably originated billions of years ago when a bacterial cell was engulfed when visiting what was to become a host cell. The bacterial cell was not digested and stayed on in symbiotic relationship. A true story of a visitor that stayed on and on……for ever.

What happens during conditions which result in inflammation and then various modes of cellular defense, culminating in varieties of strategic "death" such as apoptosis or what is called 'necroptosis". and, more recently, the addition of 'NET-osis"  usually involved  a preliminary stage known as 'autophagy" a notion so ambiguous that is has come to be misused as often as it  is used.

The thinking of medicine in regard to the cell's steps towards a possible self destruction shapes itself as an attempt to think in Darwinian fashion.  the actions of the cell are taken as decisions which might serve to assure its preservation and the preservation of its other cells.

Mitochondria are vaguely and silently included/excluded in the modes of 'death" although they are involved centrally in the issuance of signals that  precipitate any autophagous decision-tree that might lead to one of the varieties of cell death.. 

There can only be paradox and confusion and inconsistency in the attempt to make sense of the various mechanisms  which they are misdefined as part of any such autophagous 'inclination" serving the 'self interest' of the cell and its "selfish genome"

The reason  for this 'fog " which characterizes the 'war between our cells  and threats to their proper functioning is the failure to realize that, as we say here, who is working for whom.

On the contrary the mitochondrial actions can best be understood and defined in some coherent relation to one another only when we realize that mitochondria are interested in 'how they are doing', and, very much as is the case with the parasitic ancestors from related to bacteria and rickettsia in some still undefined way, the mitochondria will gladly sacrifice the cell in which is has prospered and reproduced so successfully, if that is necessary to assure its own continued existence.  Once the cell is coaxed into self destruction, the mitochondria are often...not part of that' Phagy" so "mitophagy" does not necessarily occur. And they are free to move on to more fertile ground.

it is the case however, that if the mitochondria themselves are damaged to such an extent that their estimate of their own survivability is low then they will induce a situation of 'autophagy' that includes 'mitophagy" in its glory of sacrificial death.  The Darwinian 'motive' of the mitochondria will then be to preserve their fellow mitochondria from the same source of damage by not perpetuating it

Thus autophagy can be understood and then, hopefully, its tangle of seemingly contradictory mechanisms untangled when it is understood that mitophagy while sufficient for autophagy is not at all a. necessary condition for that process to begin to unfold.

Without looking through that prism of the mitochondria being in the drivers' seat and the cell and its genome being the vehicle which it drives to produce the proteins which serve its purposes and its reproduction within the cell....reaching at least 2000 mitochondria and thus 2000 mitochondrial genomes in a single liver cell....we are not able to view the autophagy unfolding as.navigating along a decision-tree in multiple dimensions rather than compressed into a simple two dimensional jigsaw puzzle of pieces which we know not how to 'fit', because we have no idea of the picture on the cover of the jigsaw box.

Autophagy and the relation between mitochondria and the cell  are bound to be inscrutable until we can 'anticipate' the nature of the 'missing moves" we have not  yet found and that must be done by realizing which is the 'tail' and which is the 'dog', nuclear genome of the cell or the under appreciated mitochondrial "tail"...much more than a mere and convenient "powerhouse" for the cells' benefit.

Why, after all, should the mitochondria  'call it quits" unless  they could not much less unhappily terminate the cell and the nuclear genome which it no longer needs  and by so doing  continue its own existence.

Why should not the Corona virus not make use of the fact that it is the mitochondria,  ancestor of the bacteria with which it has been at war for millions of years. which is deciding what happens to the defenses of the cell against it.  This enables the virus to also influence the path of the cell along the decision tree  of autophagy
Research Interests:
It's all in the abstract/introduction to the article ...but 'clicking" the links helps ; )>>> There is no evolution theory without the 'Big Bang" equivalent of how multicellular organisms arose and how the organisms of plant and animal... more
It's all in the abstract/introduction to the article ...but 'clicking" the links helps ; )>>> There is no evolution theory without the 'Big Bang" equivalent of how multicellular organisms arose and how the organisms of plant and animal nature (chloroplasts and mitochondria) began.  Margulies, also known as Carl Sagan's wife and the co author of the GAIA hypothesis had to struggle for decades.  Her observation that constituent parts of the same cell had different genetic histories was largely written off as crank science in 1964 when she started submitting her paper on the topic to academic journals. No one wanted it.

After more than a dozen rejections, the Journal of Theoretical Biology published “On the Origin of Mitosing Cells” in 1967, and then something very interesting happened. Requests for reprints started pouring in, more than eight hundred in all. “Nothing like that had ever happened in the Boston University biology department,” Margulis says. Although she was a part-time adjunct professor there at the time, she won a prize for faculty publication of the year. Eventually, a full-time position that lasted twenty-two years followed.

But in spite of, or maybe because of, this modicum of recognition, the scientific establishment viewed her skeptically, if not with outright hostility. Her grant proposals weren’t funded. Margulis tells of being recruited for a distinguished professorship at Duke University, only to have it subverted at the last minute by a whispering campaign.

Margulis innovation was probably the single most important idea in evolution theory since Darwin's.  We say that because we believe that its full significance has not yet been even dimly sighted.  Its appreciation...which is still not appreciated changes the entire nature and outlook of all of our medicine. Which can no longer be viewed as fights or wars against invader pathogens but as the outcome of a symbiotic relation which still endures and has grown into the relation between the mitochondria and their genes with the cell and its genes, those on the chromosomes.

By showing how the inner life of the cells within ourselves and other organisms is dependent on the settling in of a parasite bacterial/rickkettsial cell, which then has evolved and endured as our mitochondria she has set the stage for a remarkable and necessary revolution in medicine, whose urgency is only shockingly signaled by this Corona Virus situation and the puzzlement which still seems to afflict our 'experts"

The situation is not unlike that of the Copernican revolution which forced us to see a non egocentric vision of the universe/solar  system with humans and our planet being far from the central actor on the stage of the unfolding drama of humanity.  However it took centuries thereafter until that insight gave birth to Newton's laws of mechanics which connected that initial glimpse of true situatedness and the practicalities of resolution of mechanics down here on earth.  It took that long for the articulation of the connection between the earth revolving around the sun and the apple falling off the tree right in front of our eyes.

Even with Margulis' forcing of the change in evolution theory to finally reoognized our own organismic situatedness as determined not by us or for us, or for that matter, by our own genes and our own highly touted 'genome",  we still have not recognized how the understanding of the mitochondria as bacteria-like parasites allows us to make sense of much of the chaos of modern medicine...

This is not a chaos due to the lack of knowledge or the failure to discover masses of fascinating data, but it is a chaotic perplexity due to an inability to understand the marvelous findings of our technology. 

We have not yet drawn the necessary tight relation between the nature of evolution which seems still so distant from our immediate medical concerns and re- interpreting those concerns in terms of the dominant evolution based role of the mitochondria and their genome  We surely do have the 'tail and the dog' mixed up.

A set of understandings that arrives finally at some semblance of 'rules' for understanding medicine and its 'mechanics" can only arise if we finally appreciate that the mitochondrion is the charismatic star on center stage, and we,  and our individual cells with their vastly overrated 'genomes", ,  as' 'hosts" are merely the supporting actors.

The gist of this "Notebook is to encourage those who are the active 'experts' in the field of medicine and evolution to coordinate their notions and to develop a medicine which is not confounded by events in almost every area of practice by the failure to realize that that medical problems of today can only be solved by seeing the Copernican re interpretation that we have had since Margulis epic paper.

The time of the 'selfish gene" and the selfish genome" is long past.  That age old wisdom of 'ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" was not quite right.  But we can see now that the 'ontogenetic actions of mitochondria reflect the historical evolution of the species of which mitochondria were not only a historical contributor but which those mitochondria determine, as we write, by further providing for the organism's 'evolvability" which is behind all observations of 'evolution"
Research Interests:
The Rickettsia are α-proteobacteria that multiply in eukaryotic cells only. R. prowazekii is the agent of epidemic, louse-borne typhus in humans Because it is the descendent of free-living organisms, its genome provides insight into... more
The Rickettsia are α-proteobacteria that multiply in eukaryotic cells only. R. prowazekii is the agent of epidemic, louse-borne typhus in humans

Because it is the descendent of free-living organisms, its genome provides insight into adaptations to the obligate intracellular lifestyle, with probable practical value.

Phylogenetic analyses based on sequences of ribosomal RNA and heat- shock proteins indicate that mitochondria may be derived from the α-proteobacteria , . Indeed, the closest extant relatives of the ancestor to Mitochondria seem to be the Rickettsia

The functional profiles of these genes show similarities to those of mitochondrial genes: no genes required for anaerobic glycolysis are found in either R. prowazekii or mitochondrial genomes, but a complete set of genes encoding components of the tricarboxylic acid cycle and the respiratory-chain complex is found in R. prowazekii. In effect, ATP production in Rickettsia is the same as that in Mitochondria.

Many genes involved in the biosynthesis and regulation of biosynthesis of amino acids and nucleosides in free-living bacteria are absent from R. prowazekii and mitochondria. Such genes seem to have been replaced by homologues in the nuclear (host) genome.

Also, still unexplained, The R. prowazekii genome contains the highest proportion of non-coding DNA (24%) detected so far in a microbial genome.
Another Great Article from Quanta Magazine.show us how CORONA must be fought Not in the trenches within the cell or the nucleus, but outside the cell in the Neutrophil Extracellular Traps:", known as the NETS, after.a controlled.... more
Another Great Article from Quanta Magazine.show us how CORONA must be fought

Not in the trenches within the cell or the nucleus, but outside the cell in the Neutrophil Extracellular Traps:", known as the NETS, after.a controlled. NETosis.

CRISPR is not the first time a scientist haS borrowed a trick from microbes to build a tool. Some microbes defend themselves from invasion by using molecules known as restriction enzymes.

The enzymes chop up any DNA that isn’t protected by molecular shields. The microbes shield their own genes, and then attack the naked DNA of viruses and other parasites. In the 1970s, molecular biologists figured out how to use restriction enzymes to cut DNA, giving birth to the modern biotechnology industry.

Restriction enzymes did not evolve to make precise cuts — only to shred foreign DNA. As a result, scientists who used restriction enzymes for biotechnology had little control over where their enzymes cut open DNA.

The CRISPR-Cas system in bacteria, Doudna and her colleagues realized, had already evolved to exert just that sort of control.

Doudna and her colleagues figured out how to supply Cas9 with an RNA molecule that matched a sequence of DNA they wanted to cut. The RNA molecule then guided Cas9 along the DNA to the target site, and then the enzyme made its incision.

Using two Cas9 enzymes, the scientists could make a pair of snips, chopping out any segment of DNA they wanted. They could then coax a cell to stitch a new gene into the open space.

Doudna and her colleagues had appropriated from bacteria a biological version of find-and-replace — one that could work in virtually any species they chose to work on.  This would be likely be so since viruses are defended against by bacterial descendants mitochondria in virtually all species.

CRISPR, microbiologists realized, is also an adaptive immune system. It lets microbes learn the signatures of new viruses and remember them. And while we need a complex network of different cell types and signals to learn to recognize pathogens, a single-celled microbe has all the equipment  necessary to learn the same lesson on its own, as do our cells mitochondria residing within

and they can use these techniques, it seems, in two ways. The first of these is to find those viruses within the cell and already inserted into the chromatin world of the nucleus...and if the cell is irredeemable, then a process like the NET can expel fragments of DNA/RNA bound together by LL-37 so use similar principles to trap and kill viruses outside the cell..before they each have entered.

This is why the seminal work on NETS, "Neutrophic Extracellular Traps" raises that very question. 'Is Chromatin an Immunological Weapon"

As Quanta points out< microbes carry stretches of DNA called mobile elements that act like parasites. The mobile elements contain genes for enzymes that exist solely to make new copies of their own DNA, cut open their host’s genome, and insert the new copy. Sometimes mobile elements can jump from one host to another, either by hitching a ride with a virus or by other means, and spread through their new host’s genome". And this is very much how mitochondria have effected their radical shaping and reshaping of the nuclear genome on those chromosomes we talk so much about.. even as our 'expert have been prone to dismiss other nucleotide configurations as 'junk DNA"

This battefield has  blossomed into a tremendous diversity of molecules. Koonin is convinced that viruses are responsible for this. Once they faced CRISPR’s powerful, precise defense, the viruses evolved evasions. Their genes changed sequence so that CRISPR couldn’t latch onto them easily. And the viruses also evolved molecules that could block the Cas enzymes.

The microbes responded by evolving in their turn. They acquired new strategies for using CRISPR that the viruses couldn’t fight. Over many thousands of years, in other words, evolution behaved like a natural laboratory, coming up with new recipes for altering DNA.

It appears however that the puzzlement of the phenotypic change in smoker's neutrophils was anticipated here. . In other words, the experiences that these organisms have alter their genes, and that change is inherited by future generations.

The advent of genetics seemed to crush this idea. There didn’t appear to be any way for experiences to alter the genes that organisms passed down to their offspring. But CRISPR revealed that microbes rewrite their DNA with information about their enemies — information that Barrangou showed could make the difference between life and death for their descendants.

When we read about how Vitamin D production by the skin has evolved into a means for producing power antimicrobials nest in neutrophilic 'secondary" granules and that this LL-37 is released and entwined with the chromatin fragments expelled during NETosis...we realize that this CRISPR mode of defense must be what and how the LL-37 and our sunlight is doing for us in the battle against microbes.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The Immune System as a Sensor of the Metabolic State Immunity, Studies of immune system metabolism ("immunometabolism") segregate along two paths. The first investigates the effects of immune cells on organs that regulate whole-body... more
The Immune System as a Sensor of the Metabolic State Immunity,

Studies of immune system metabolism ("immunometabolism") segregate along two paths. The first investigates the effects of immune cells on organs that regulate whole-body metabolism, such as adipose tissue and liver. The second explores the role of metabolic pathways within immune cells and how this regulates immune response outcome.

Distinct metabolic pathways diverge and converge at many levels, and, therefore, cells face choices as to how to achieve their metabolic goals. There is interest in fully understanding how and why immune cells commit to particular metabolic fates and in elucidating the immunologic consequences of reaching a metabolic endpoint by one pathway versus another.

Metabolic commitment is influenced not only by substrate availability but also by signaling pathways elicited by metabolites. Thus, metabolic choices in cells enforce fate and function

The immune system encompasses a heterogeneous population of cells that, for the most part, are relatively quiescent in the steady state but share the ability to rapidly respond to infection, inflammation, and other perturbations. Responses are regulated by a broad range of cell-type-specific and/or shared activating and inhibitory receptors that are responsive to pathogen-derived or immune-system-intrinsic signals.

The response that is mounted by immune cells typically involves changes in the expression of large numbers of genes and results in the acquisition of new functions, such as the high output production of cytokines, lipid mediators, tissue remodeling enzymes, toxic gases, and the ability to migrate through tissues and/or undergo cellular division.

Thus, as might be expected, cells have several options for producing ATP, and activity between different metabolic pathways will be influenced, to a great extent, by the relative availability of glucose, glutamine, and fatty acids and whether there is sufficient oxygen to utilize OXPHOS.

Interconnections between metabolic pathways are notoriously complex, and, therefore, superficially simple choices between aerobic glycolysis, or the oxidation of various substrates in the mitochondria for ATP production, will have enormous ramifications on the outcomes of key ancillary metabolic processes, such as the pentose phosphate pathway (PPP, an offshoot of glycolysis that generates reducing equivalents in the form of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate [NADPH] and, ultimately, is important for the synthesis of pentose sugars), the synthesis of fatty acids, and the production of lipid ligands for nuclear hormone receptors.

Thus, regulated changes in metabolism are key to function. The focus of this article is  is centered around growing interest in determining the extent to which, during changes in immune cell function, metabolic changes are instructive versus responsive. Further, the emphasis on T cells, macrophages, and dendritic cells reflects not only our research interests but also the fact that there is relatively little known, or nothing published, on other immune cell types.
Research Interests:
Autophagy is a catabolic cellular process required to maintain protein synthesis, energy production and other essential activities in starved cells. While the exact nutrient sensor(s) is yet to be identified, deprivation of amino... more
Autophagy is a catabolic cellular process required to maintain protein synthesis, energy production and other essential activities in starved cells.

While the exact nutrient sensor(s) is yet to be identified, deprivation of amino acids, glucose, growth factor and other nutrients can serve as metabolic stimuli to initiate autophagy in higher eukaryotes.

Autophagy is robustly triggered by amino acid deficiency but not by glucose depletion.
iIn the early-branching unicellular parasite Trypanosoma brucei, which can proliferate as procyclic form (PCF) in the tsetse fly or as bloodstream form (BSF) in animal hosts,

We have shown that autophagic activity depends on the levels of cellular ATP production, using either glucose or proline as a carbon source, by taking advantage of the clearly defined adenosine triphosphate (ATP) production pathways in T. brucei, .

While autophagosome formation positively correlates with cellular ATP levels; perturbation of ATP production by removing carbon sources or genetic silencing of enzymes involved in ATP generation pathways, also inhibited autophagy.

This obligate energy dependence and the lack of glucose starvation-induced autophagy in T. brucei may reflect an adaptation to its specialized, parasitic life style.
Mitochondria play key roles in activating apoptosis in mammalian cells. Bcl-2 family members regulate the release of proteins from the space between the mitochondrial inner and outer membrane that, once in the cytosol, activate caspase... more
Mitochondria play key roles in activating apoptosis in mammalian cells. Bcl-2 family members regulate the release of proteins from the space between the mitochondrial inner and outer membrane that, once in the cytosol, activate caspase proteases that dismantle cells and signal efficient phagocytosis of cell corpses. Here we review the extensive literature on proteins released from the intermembrane space and consider genetic evidence for and against their roles in apoptosis activation. We also compare and contrast apoptosis pathways in Caenorhabditis elegans, Drosophila melanogaster, and mammals that indicate major mysteries remaining to be solved.
While we hear the double talk and confusion from the self professed 'experts' in our bureaucracy about the relation of corona virus infection and the presence of antibodies...and the confusion over whether and how long the antibodies... more
While we hear the double talk and confusion from the self professed 'experts' in our bureaucracy about the relation of corona virus infection and the presence of antibodies...and the confusion over whether and how long the antibodies last....

It is self evident that the immune system is more complicated than your dad's lawnmower and that other aspects of immunity must be considered.  Among them are the neutrophils, whose basic function is twisted into deceptive and distorted secondary and tertiary signaling by the virus.

In this study they review all these basic truths about neutrophils " the most abundant leukocytes in peripheral blood and respond rapidly to danger, infiltrating tissues within minutes of infectious or sterile injury."

They go on to tell us, "Neutrophils were long thought of as simple killers, but now we recognise them as responsive cells able to adapt to inflammation and orchestrate subsequent events with some sophistication."

In this review they discuss how these rapid responders release mediators which influence later adaptive T cell immunity through influences on DC priming and directly on the T cells themselves.

Lo and Behold, they tell us that the 'NETOSIS about which we have been writing here on this page is a key determinant of how and in which way...T cells and thus the antibodies of our immune system are produced.

They point to the release of 'granule' contents as we have discussed at length here and which is presumably what the HydroxyChloroquine Cocktail generates....

In detail, they then consider how the release of granule contents by neutrophils-through NETosis or degranulation-is one way in which the innate immune system directs the phenotype of the adaptive immune response."

Sounds like this should have been read by all those expert schmucks' of the bureaucracy before they embarked on their trial and error blind research...and before they prejudged the efficacy of HCQ treatment during the first stages of infection.

Nowhere, not even once have we heard a single word about NETosis by the neutrophils...or about those "granules" ...we only hear about HCQ as 'that malaria drug'....and the rest of the children's fairy tale story of 'the bad bad 'cytokine storm"...
Research Interests:
Ribonucleic acids (RNAs) mainly played auxiliary roles in regulations of genetic processes while recent explorations into small non-coding RNAs (sRNAs) in bacteria have broadened the scope of RNAs studies in these processes. sRNAs have... more
Ribonucleic acids (RNAs) mainly played auxiliary roles in regulations of genetic processes while recent explorations into small non-coding RNAs (sRNAs) in bacteria have broadened the scope of RNAs studies in these processes. sRNAs have been demonstrated to be involved in various genetic processes and to regulate a variety of bacterial physiologies. Comparatively, quorum sensing (QS) is a mature bacterial cell signaling system which regulates bacteria physiologies as well. Prokaryotic sRNAs studies in the status quo have revealed an emerging picture of trans-kingdom signaling regulation and increasing investigations have demonstrated the feasibility of inter-kingdom signaling as the consequence of QS. We therefore review such phenomena and their similarities to investigate the potential of prokaryote-sourced interkingdom signaling and regulation.
Research Interests:
Quorum sensing is a cell-cell communication mechanism that bacteria use to collectively regulate gene expression and, at a higher level, to coordinate group behavior. . In bacteria, sRNAs post-transcriptionally regulate genes involved... more
Quorum sensing is a cell-cell communication mechanism that bacteria use to collectively regulate gene expression and, at a higher level, to coordinate group behavior. .

In bacteria, sRNAs post-transcriptionally regulate genes involved in responses to conditions such as limited iron, sugar–phosphate stress, cell surface stress, and oxidative stress 

This research proposes that, in  the bioluminescent marine bacterium Vibrio harveyi, the multiple sRNAs function to translate increasing AI concentrations into a precise gradient of LuxR protein. LuxR, in turn, induces a gradient of expression of quorum-sensing target genes

Sensory information from three independent quorum-sensing systems converges on the shared response regulator LuxO.  Surprisingly, unlike in V. cholerae where the sRNAs act redundantly, in V. harveyi, the Qrr sRNAs function additively to control quorum sensing. This latter mechanism produces a gradient of LuxR that, in turn, enables differential regulation of quorum-sensing target genes.


This behavior, seemingly sophisticated, for a single celled organism, is related to mitochondrion microRNAS from thousands of mitochondrial genomes in the same cell and in relation to the genomes in neighboring cells

Many bacterial sRNAs require Hfq, an RNA chaperone similar in sequence and structure to eukaryotic Sm proteins involved in RNA splicing  When LuxO is phosphorylated, it activates the expression of a putative repressor that destabilizes the mRNA encoding the master quorum-sensing transcriptional regulator LuxR.

In V. harveyi, each of the three AI signals is detected by a distinct membrane-bound autophosphorylating histidine sensor kinase protein.  All three sensors deliver phosphate to the histidine-containing phosphotransfer protein, LuxU, which in turn transfers the phosphoryl group to the conserved

Under conditions of low cell density (i.e., when AIs are at negligible concentrations), the three sensors act as kinases, and phosphate is transferred to LuxO. LuxO∼P, in conjunction with σ54, indirectly represses expression of the genes encoding luciferase (lux), so no light is produced under this condition

At high cell densities (i.e., when AIs are at detectable concentrations), the interactions of the sensors with their cognate AIs cause the sensors to switch from kinase mode to phosphatase mode, leading to dephosphorylation of LuxO  .
This sequence of events inactivates LuxO, leading to expression of the lux operon, and light is produced 

LuxO functions by indirectly regulating the expression of luxR. LuxR directly activates the lux operon and directly or indirectly controls all other known quorum-sensing target genes

They further propose that the multiple sRNAs serve as the focal point through which additional metabolic cues feed into the quorum-sensing circuit to regulate global gene expression.
Research Interests:
Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) are the most common human adult-onset neurodegenerative diseases. They are characterized by prominent age-related neurodegeneration in... more
Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) are the most common human adult-onset neurodegenerative diseases.

They are characterized by prominent age-related neurodegeneration in selectively vulnerable neural systems. Some forms of AD, PD, and ALS are inherited, and genes causing these diseases have been identified. Nevertheless, the mechanisms of the neuronal cell death are unresolved.

Morphological, biochemical, genetic, as well as cell and animal model studies reveal that mitochondria could have roles in this neurodegeneration.

The functions and properties of mitochondria might render subsets of selectively vulnerable neurons intrinsically susceptible to cellular aging and stress and overlying genetic variations, triggering neurodegeneration according to a cell death matrix theory.

Transgenic mouse models of human neurodegenerative disease are beginning to reveal possible principles governing the biology of selective neuronal vulnerability that implicate mitochondria and the mitochondrial permeability transition pore.

This review summarizes how mitochondrial pathobiology might contribute to neuronal death in AD, PD, and ALS and could serve as a target for drug therapy.

In AD, alterations in enzymes involved in oxidative phosphorylation, oxidative damage, and mitochondrial binding of A and amyloid precursor protein have been reported. In PD, mutations in putative mitochondrial proteins have been identified and mitochondrial DNA mutations have been found in neurons in the substantia nigra. In ALS, changes occur in mitochondrial respiratory chain enzymes and mitochondrial cell death proteins.

OPEN ACCESS
Autophagy, which is an evolutionarily conserved process according to the lysosomal degradation of cellular components, plays a critical role in maintaining cell homeostasis. Autophagy and mitochondria autophagy (mitophagy) contribute to... more
Autophagy, which is an evolutionarily conserved process according to the lysosomal degradation of cellular components, plays a critical role in maintaining cell homeostasis. Autophagy and mitochondria autophagy (mitophagy) contribute to the preservation of cardiac homeostasis in physiological settings.

However, impaired or excessive autophagy is related to a variety of diseases. Recently, a close link between autophagy and cardiac disorders, including myocardial infarction, cardiac hypertrophy, cardiomyopathy, cardiac fibrosis, and heart failure, has been demonstrated.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of small non-coding RNAs with a length of approximately 21-22 nucleotides (nt), which are distributed widely in viruses, plants, protists, and animals. They function in mediating the post-transcriptional gene silencing.

A growing number of studies have demonstrated that miRNAs regulate cardiac autophagy by suppressing the expression of autophagy-related genes in a targeted manner, which are involved in the pathogenesis of heart diseases.

This review summarizes the role of microRNAs in cardiac autophagy and related cardiac disorders. Furthermore, we mainly focused on the autophagy regulation pathways, which consisted of miRNAs and their targeted genes.

see also our eerie Notebook Entry from JAMA posted the next day: https://www.academia.edu/42647537/NB_3.2_The_Mystery_of_Heart_Rate_Deaths_Greater_in_Corona_Patients_with_no_prior_HEART_INJURY_Than_Prior_Heart_Disease_Patients.-_JAMA_Editorial_

We originally posted the review of the cardiac autophagy dilemma to show that this kind of perverse delay via autophagy was articulated as causing disease elsewhere..  It was only the next day that we came across the puzzling heart failure data from JAMA..

This means the neutrophils and their mitochondria are being similarly triggered by the Covid 19 in both cases.

There is evidence to indicate that kidney and brain diseases such as Alzhzeimers also are the result of autophagy gone amuck and thus preventing the generation of the 'nuclear option" for neutrophils, the death by NETs. (see our NB entry on NET-osis, a more recently discovered way of killing viruses...  ( https://www.academia.edu/42523191/NB_4_Winning_the_War_with_the_Corona_Virus_Covid_19_Neutrophilic_Extracellular_Traps_NETS_Must_Be_the_Battlefield_Is_immunity_the_second_function_of_chromatin )

The perpetuation of autophagy by the mitochondria prevents the neutrophils from using their most powerful weapon and permits the virus to replicate and ineffective neutrophils to continue being 'ineffective".
Patients who had heart disease before their coronavirus infections were much more likely to show heart damage afterward. But some patients with no previous heart disease also showed signs of cardiac damage. In fact, patients with no... more
Patients who had heart disease before their coronavirus infections were much more likely to show heart damage afterward. But some patients with no previous heart disease also showed signs of cardiac damage.

In fact, patients with no preexisting heart conditions who incurred heart damage during their infection were more likely to die than patients with previous heart disease but no COVID-19-induced cardiac damage.

See Our NOTEBOOK ENTRY HERE:"Cardiac MicroRNAs Associated with Decisions by Mitochondria  to use Autophagy to NOT Push the  Cell to Death Found to  Lead  to Increased Severity of Heart Disease". (https://www.academia.edu/42631302/NB_3.1_Cardiac_Disease_Associated_with_Patterns_Corona_Virus-like_Inflammation_MicroRNAs_Associated_with_Decisions_by_Mitochondria_to_use_Autophagy_to_NOT_Push_the_Cell_to_Immediate_Death )

They discuss the data actually provided by the Chinese study but which only have led to puzzlement among" the experts" but they also bring up the well-documented case of acute myocarditis following a COVID-19–associated respiratory infection in a 53-year-old Italian woman with no previous heart disease, also reported in this issue of JAMA

Mortality rates by Guo et al  in those with elevated TnT levels without prior cardiovascular disease (6 of 16 [37.5%]).were found to be HIGHER than mortality rates  in 187 pa- tients hospitalized with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19, of whom 52 (27.8%) had myocardial injury as determined by el- evated levels of troponin T (TnT)

Even here In JAMA, they soft peddle or euphemism this data relation by expressing it in a difference phrasing which conceals its pointedness.

The JAMA writers tell us that there is a  link  between myocardial injury and severity of inflammation and ventricular dysfunction rather than with access to military style invasion by the Corona Virus.

Our central question in this Notebook is whether the virus merely seeks to achieve its end point, the use of the nuclear genome of the cell, by manipulating the communications and the signals between mitochondria and the the nucleus to achieve delay of the varieties of strategic death.

This entails the neutrophils being cajoled into auto-hey which does not culminate and which merely increases the extent and intensity of inflammation while the virus is allowed by its interference in the signaled to maintain the cell alive.

The mitochondrion is complicitous in this strategy by only needing to "know" that its own life is in danger and being perfectly willing to compromise or sacrifice the life of the cell in which it is still parasitically ensconced.and well.

Guo et al  provide additional novel insights that TnT levels are significantly associated with levels of C-reactive protein and N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP),    Their data also show progressive serial increases in both TnT and NT- proBNP levels during hospitalization in patients who follow a deteriorating clinical course toward death, whereas those with a more favorable outcome with less severe illness, successful

We originally posted the review of the cardiac autophagy dilemma to show that this kind of delay in autophagy was articulated elsewhere..  It was only the next day that we came across the puzzling heart failure data from JAMA.. This means the neutrophils and their mitochondria are being similarly triggered by the Covid 19 in both cases.

There is evidence to indicate that kidney and brain diseases such as Alahzeimers also are the result of autophagy gone amuck and thus preventing the generation of the 'nuclear option" for neutrophils, the death by NETs.
There is puzzlement in the recent findings of the ability of mitochondria to move from cell to cell and by so doing, to change the expression of the genome of new cells to become Tumorous. This is not that puzzling when one... more
There is puzzlement in the recent findings of the ability of mitochondria to move from cell to cell and by so doing, to change the expression of the  genome  of new cells to  become Tumorous.

This is not that puzzling when one realizes that the mitochondria of today go back to a past a couple of billion years ago when bacteria much like them did much the same as this cancer research shows.  They entered a new cell and took up residence there, altering the functioning and the existence of its genes.

Recent research has shown that stromal cells can also affect tumor growth through the donation of mitochondria to respiration-deficient tumor cells, restoring normal respiration. Nuclear and mitochondrial DNA mutations affecting mitochondrial respiration lead to some level of respiratory incompetence, forcing cells to generate more energy by glycolysis.  The highly glycolytic cancer cells then  tend to be very aggressive and invasive with poor patient prognosis.

However, purely glycolytic cancer cells devoid of mitochondrial DNA cannot form tumors unless they acquire mitochondrial DNA from adjacent cells.

This perspective article  addresses this apparent conundrum of highly glycolytic cells and covers aspects of intercellular communication with particular emphasis on intercellular mitochondrial transfer. 

We cannot help but notice that the transfer of mitochondria from nearby cells can either facilitate or harm the overall respiratory function of the cell.  This can occur, as they point out here,  by medical insertion of properly functioning mitochondria or it can occur by perpetuation of spread by improperly functioning mitochondria.

If the cell is sustained sufficiently to allow the mitochondria to survive while it is still not functioning properly....that allows any virus in the vicinity to further its life cycle while the cell is stuck in limbo.

When a neutrophil is altered in its communications between mitochondria and nucleus sufficiently to lead to one of the varieties of death  it is noteworthy that we nowhere here about what fate transpires for the mitochondria which have engineered the apparent ''suicide"

It seems that if indeed, as seems quite possible, they will seek to cause the destruction of the nuclear genome which no longer serves them well, that they might just look forward to survive  themselve  to further their goals by entering other cells and causing them to express their genomes anew in the way favorable  for the survival of those particular mitochondria.

And 46 more

"As long as the brain is a mystery, the universe, the reflection of our brain, will also be a mystery'-Ramon Y Cahal What we see in the video here , from which we present four still frames below, is not simply an interesting graphic,... more
"As long as the brain is a mystery, the universe, the reflection of our brain, will also be a mystery'-Ramon Y Cahal

What we see in the video here , from which we present four still frames below, is not simply an interesting graphic, or an illusion, or a metaphor for something else or a mathematical/geometrical curiosity...but this graphic shows us much, much more. It demonstrates, perhaps, the most fundamental underlying aspect of how our brains engage in their 'Minding" and the foundational aspect of all that we 'experience" in this world of ours.

At the same time what we "see" here is at the bottom of the puzzlements of the quantum physics/relativity irreconcilability.
Research Interests:
Some of the greatest, most revolutionary advances in science have been given their initial expression in attractively modest terms, with no fanfare.
Research Interests:
"The Empty Brain" - An Effort by Dr. Robert Epstein to Get Metaphors in Order / But "the Brain is not a Computer" is only a First Step Not enough said or achieved here. He says, ""We are organisms, not computers. Get over it. Let’s get... more
"The Empty Brain" - An Effort by Dr. Robert Epstein to Get Metaphors in Order / But "the Brain is not a Computer" is only a First Step

Not enough said or achieved here.
He says, ""We are organisms, not computers. Get over it. Let’s get on with the business of trying to understand ourselves, but without being encumbered by unnecessary intellectual baggage. The IP metaphor has had a half-century run, producing few, if any, insights along the way. The time has come to hit the DELETE key."

We add, "But he goes no further and thus he makes a reasonable claim but he only seems to provide us with a glimmer of a “replacement” metaphor for various kinds of machines.

Regrettably, when that happens it often results in only trying to speak of organisms in terms that are “NOT machines”

It is time that we upgraded our way of speaking about what transpires in the brain to reflect more of how organismic life evolves, adapts and self organizes.

The impressive network of wiring like connections of our neurons that lends itself to all that "computer talk" is only the tail and not the dog. More interesting life forces do the wagging.  If we venture into the new findings of neuroscience we will find clues everywhere as to how to develop the terms of speaking of the human and of its brain in an apt 'organismic" way.
We should not be satisfied with lingering in the constraints of metaphors from a time long ago that do not do just the brain as living aspect of an organism. If we do, we will only continue to find ourselves speaking nonsense and our culture’s so called “hard problem” that of coming to terms with the notion of “consciousness”, will get even harder.…
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
(currently being revised and expanded)
Research Interests:
Alan Turing was neither a biologist nor a chemist, and yet the paper he published in 1952, 'The chemical basis of morphogenesis', on the spontaneous formation of patterns in systems undergoing reaction and diffusion of their ingredients... more
Alan Turing was neither a biologist nor a chemist, and yet the paper he published in 1952, 'The chemical basis of morphogenesis', on the spontaneous formation of patterns in systems undergoing reaction and diffusion of their ingredients has had a substantial impact on both fields, as well as in other areas as disparate as geomorphology and criminology. Motivated by the question of how a spherical embryo becomes a decidedly non-spherical organism such as a human being, Turing devised a mathematical model that explained how random fluctuations can drive the emergence of pattern and structure from initial uniformity. The spontaneous appearance of pattern and form in a system far away from its equilibrium state occurs in many types of natural process, and in some artificial ones too. It is often driven by very general mechanisms, of which Turing's model supplies one of the most versatile. For that reason, these patterns show striking similarities in systems that seem superficially to share nothing in common, such as the stripes of sand ripples and of pigmentation on a zebra skin. New examples of 'Turing patterns' in biology and beyond are still being discovered today. This commentary was written to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.
Research Interests:
It is suggested that a system of chemical substances, called morphogens, reacting together and diffusing through a tissue, is adequate to account for the main phenomena of morphogenesis. Such a system, although it may originally be quite... more
It is suggested that a system of chemical substances, called morphogens, reacting together and diffusing through a tissue, is adequate to account for the main phenomena of morphogenesis. Such a system, although it may originally be quite homogeneous, may later develop a pattern or structure due to an instability of the homogeneous equilibrium, which is triggered off by random disturbances. Such reaction-diffusion systems are considered in some detail in the case of an isolated ring of cells, a mathematically convenient, though biolo:~irall, unusual system. The investigation is chiefly concerned with the onset of instability. It is faund that there are six essentially different forms which this may take. In the most interesting form stationary waves appear on the ring. It is suggested that this might account, for instance, for the tentacle patterns on Hydra and for whorled leaves. A system of reactions and diffusion on a sphere is also considered. Such a system appears to account for gastrulation. Another reaction system in two dimensions gives rise to patterns reminiscent of dappling. It is also suggested that stationary waves in two dimensions could account for the phenomena of phyllotaxis. The purpose of this paper is to discuss a possible mechanism by which the genes of a zygote may determine the anatomical structure of the resulting organism. The theory does not make any new hypotheses; it merely suggests that certain well-known physical laws are sufficient to account for many of the facts. The full understanding of the paper requires a good knowledge of mathematics , some biology, and some elementary chemistry. Since readers cannot be expected to be experts in all of these subjects, a number of elementary facts are explained, which can be found in textbooks , but whose omission would make the paper difficult reading. I n this section a mathematical model of the growing embryo will be described. This model will be a simplification and an idealization, and consequently a falsification. I t is to be hoped that the features retained for discussion are those of greatest importance in the present state of knowledge. The model takes two slightly different forms. In one of them the cell theory is recognized but the cells are idealized into geometrical points. I n the other the matter of the organism is imagined as continuously distributed. The cells are not, however, completely ignored, for various physical and physico-chemical characteristics of the matter as a whole are assumed to have values appropriate to the cellular matter. With either of the models one proceeds as with a physical theory and defines an entity called 'the state of the system'. One then describes how that state is to be determined from the state at a moment very shortly before. With either model the description of the state consists of two parts, the mechanical and the chemical. The mechanical part of the state describes the positions, masses, velocities and elastic properties of the cells, and the forces between them. I n the continuous form of the theory essentially the same information is given in the form of the stress, velocity, density and elasticity of the matter. The chemical part of the state is given (in the cell form of theory) as the chemical composition of each separate cell; the diffusibility of each substance between each two adjacent cells rnust also VOL.237. B. 641. (Price 8s.) 5 1 4August I 952 [P~~btished
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Euclid and the Elements published for thousands of years under his name are a historically legendary text. Over its more than two thousand years of dissemination and study, the book is likely the second most continuously widely read and... more
Euclid and the Elements published for thousands of years under his name are a historically legendary text. Over its more than two thousand years of dissemination and study, the book is likely the second most continuously widely read and published book of all time, only surpassed by the Bible,. In some ways, it is very much the equivalent of the Bible to those traditionally engaged in mathematical and logical enterprises. As is the case with the Bible, the putting together of the Elements, over thousands of years, when there were no written records of every action and step taken, but where the ultimate project depended on word of mouth by those living centuries after the earlier writings were formulated, there are all sorts of questions as to authorship of the various parts and just how the versions in our hands today actually found their way into our hands The almost non-existent background information on Euclid makes one wonder as to the facts of his life is, as we have about the life of other historical personages for whom most of their available
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Truth o Mania, 1931 -- Don't Miss it!! On the Nature of Reality: Or , perhaps, more aptly "The truth about the reality of the truth of reality" Albert Einstein vs Rabindranath Tagore ----who visited Einstein’s house in Caputh,... more
Truth o Mania, 1931 --  Don't Miss it!!

On the Nature of Reality:  Or , perhaps, more aptly
"The truth about the reality of the truth of reality"

Albert Einstein vs Rabindranath Tagore ----who visited Einstein’s house in Caputh, near Berlin, on July 14, 1930..as part of a year long tour that included a prolonged stay in the UK during which Tagore delivered a series of lectures at Oxford University in May of that year,  exploring human nature, spirituality, and our experience of reality.

The following year, they were collected in "The Religion of Man"

The discussion between the two great men was recorded, and was subsequently published in the January, 1931 issue of Modern Review.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Intuitionism is based on the idea that mathematics is a creation of the mind. The truth of a mathematical statement can only be conceived via a mental construction that proves it to be true, Mathematics is a languageless creation of... more
Intuitionism is based on the idea that mathematics is a creation of the mind. The truth of a mathematical statement can only be conceived via a mental construction that proves it to be true,

Mathematics is a languageless creation of the mind. Time is the only a priori notion, in the Kantian sense be conceived via a mental construction that proves it to be true,

Brouwer construes logic as the study of patterns in linguistic renditions of mathematical activity, and therefore logic is dependent on mathematics (as the study of patterns) and not vice versa.

The first act of intuitionism is:
Completely separating mathematics from mathematical language and hence from the phenomena of language described by theoretical logic, recognizing that intuitionistic mathematics is an essentially languageless activity of the mind having its origin in the perception of a move of time.

In Brouwer's view, language is used to exchange mathematical ideas but the existence of the latter is independent of the former.

He wrote “Mathematics can deal with no other matter than that which it has itself constructed;”

"The theorems which are usually considered as proved in mathematics, ought to be divided into those that are true and those that are non-contradictory.”

"From these basic principled  it can be concluded that intuitionism differs from Platonism and formalism, because neither does it assume a mathematical reality outside of us, nor does it hold that mathematics is a play with symbols according to certain fixed rules."
Research Interests:
Turing's Classic and Monumental Paper where " The Imitation Game" was Introduced was published in MIND, a philosophy journal. It starts as follows: "I propose to consider the question, "Can machines think?" This should begin with... more
Turing's Classic and Monumental Paper where  " The Imitation Game" was Introduced was published in MIND, a philosophy journal. 

It starts as follows:

"I propose to consider the question, "Can machines think?" This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms "machine" and "think." The definitions might be framed so as to reflect so far as possible the normal use of the words, but this attitude is dangerous,

If the meaning of the words "machine" and "think" are to be found by examining how they are commonly used it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the meaning and the answer to the question, "Can machines think?" is to be sought in a statistical survey such as a Gallup poll.

But this is absurd. Instead of attempting such a definition I shall replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words.

The new form of the problem can be described in terms of a game which we call the 'imitation game."

It is played with three people, a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room apart front the other two.

The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them by labels X and Y, and at the end of the game he says either "X is A and Y is B" or "X is B and Y is A." The interrogator is allowed to put questions to A and B thus:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
NOTE: This Document is only EXHIBITS/Rough Notes for Convenient Reference from within the Session on Euclid and the 4th Dimension You are. invited to join the Session:... more
NOTE: This Document is only EXHIBITS/Rough Notes for Convenient Reference from within the Session on Euclid and the 4th Dimension

You are. invited to join the Session:

https://www.academia.edu/s/b7124d9d65/euclid-biography-did-he-really-exist-working-two?source=link
This paper is based on the talk given on 5 June 2004 at the conference at Manchester University marking the 50th anniversary of Alan Turing’s death. It is published by the British Computer Society Half a century after Alan Turing's... more
This paper is based on the talk given on 5 June 2004 at the conference at Manchester University marking the 50th anniversary of Alan Turing’s death. It is published by the British Computer Society

Half a century after Alan Turing's death in 1954, we can ask whether computing can go beyond the framework of computability that he set out in his classic 1936 paper On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem. We shall do so in the light of what Turing himself did, starting with his work in 1936.
Research Interests:
CLASSICS of MIND: A Key Section from the Legendary Gregory Bateson's Famous Lectures in 1970, later published in Steps to an Ecology Mind. Several of the key ideas of todays world of biology and psychology can be seen for the first... more
CLASSICS of MIND:

A Key Section from the Legendary Gregory Bateson's Famous Lectures in 1970, later published in Steps to an Ecology Mind.

Several of the key ideas of todays world of biology and psychology can be seen for the first time in this essay.

https://the-minding-brain.com/2017/02/19/974/

It is being added to our CLASSICS" section of our Website works which noone involved in todays study of the Brain should not be privy to see first hand.

Come to our Website and enjoy our curating of these great works of our greatest minds.

IOGRAPHY

Gregory Bateson [1904 - 1980] - Anthropologist, Social Scientist, Cyberneticist - known as Gregory - was one of the most important social scientists of this century.

Strongly opposing those scientists who attempted to ‘reduce’ everything to mere matter, he was intent upon the task of re-introducing ‘Mind’ back into the scientific equations - writing two famous books Steps to an Ecology of Mind, and Mind & Nature as part of this task.

From his point of view Mind is a constituent part of ‘material reality’ and it is thus nonsensical to try to split mind from matter. Before being championed by the counter-culture of the 1960’s Bateson had been busy in the 20’s and 30’s as an anthropologist in Bali, and in helping to found the science of cybernetics among many other things. Bateson's first marriage, in 1936, was to American cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead.

In Palo Alto, California,  In 1956 in Palo Alto, Bateson and his colleagues Donald Jackson, Jay Haley, and John Weakland[5] articulated a related theory of schizophrenia as stemming from double bind situations. The double bind refers to a communication paradox described first in families with a schizophrenic member.

Bateson's interest in systems theory and cybernetics forms a thread running through his work. He was one of the original members of the core group of the Macy conferences in Cybernetics, and the later set on Group Processes, where he represented the social and behavioral sciences.

Bateson was interested in the relationship of these fields to epistemology. His association with the editor and author Stewart Brand helped to widen his influence. From the 1970s until his last years, a broader audience of university students and educated people working in many fields came to know his thought.

In his book Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Bateson applied cybernetics to the field of ecological anthropology and the concept of homeostasis
He saw the world as a series of systems containing those of individuals, societies and ecosystems. Within each system is found competition and dependency. Each of these systems has adaptive changes which depend upon feedback loops to control balance by changing multiple variables.

Bateson believed that these self-correcting systems were conservative by controlling exponential slippage. He saw the natural ecological system as innately good as long as it was allowed to maintain homeostasis[29] and that the key unit of survival in evolution was an organism and its environment.

Adopted by many thinkers in the anti-psychiatry movement because he provided a model and a new epistemology for developing a novel understanding of human madness, and also for his invention of the theory of the double bind.

He helped to elaborate the science of cybernetics with colleagues Warren McCulloch, Gordon Pask, Ross Ashby, Heinz von Foerster, Norbert Wiener, etc.

His most famous quote, that most of us have heard at one time or another, is "Information is the difference that makes a difference"

Basically, he was on the really smart guys. And he scarcely ever found himself confined inside a university. To begin with, he proposed above all a way of looking at phenomena; he was visionary in the sense that one of his models, William Blake, was - he "saw" in a particular, unified, and in relation to many of his auditors and readers, original way.

As Roger Keesing (1974) put it in his review of Steps to an Ecology of Mind, "To have a vision of the world one's fellow men do not share is lonely and even frightening. . . . Gregory Bateson has been blessed, and cursed, with a mind that sees through things to a world of pattern and form that lies beyond."

He inspired several different models and approaches in the area of psychotherapy, notably that of the MRI Interactional school of Weakland, Jackson, and Watzlawick, and many other later schools of family therapy [including that of the Milan school of Palazzoli], and he directly influenced family therapists such as Brad Keeney, Tom Andersen, Lynn Hoffman and many others. 

http://www.oikos.org/baten.htm

ARTICLES

Chapters II and III of Gregory Bateson's and Mary Catherine Bateson's ANGELS FEAR  [01.23.00]

Chapters II and III of Gregory Bateson's MIND AND NATURE [01.03.00]

NEW FOREWORD to STEPS TO AN ECOLOGY OF MIND by Mary Catherine Bateson [10.11.99]

An interview with Anatol Holt  by Vincent Kenny [08.06.99]

Towards an Ecology of Conversation by Vincent Kenny [03.20.99]

Mind / Body Dualism Conference Invitational Paper by Gregory Bateson [9.28.98]

Gregory Bateson's Notion of the Sacred - What can it Tell Us about Living Constructively? by Vincent Kenny [12.24.97]

Allegory by Gregory Bateson [9.22.97]

Number is Different from Quantity by Gregory Bateson [9.18.97]

They Threw God Out Of The Garden Letters from Gregory Bateson to Philip Wylie and Warren McCulloch [9.13.97]

For God's Sake, Margaret Conversation between Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead [9.09.97]

Six Days Of Dying - by Mary Catherine Bateson

Personal Snapshots from Old Hawaii Memories of Bateson, Dolphins & Aloha shirts
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This is the first part of several in which we hope to elucidate the nature of events both in the clinic and within our brains that relate to the recent and highly encouraging “re-discovery” of psychedelics We were prompted to write... more
This is the first part of several in which we hope to elucidate the nature of events both in the clinic and within our brains that relate to the recent and highly encouraging “re-discovery” of psychedelics

We were prompted to write this essay, because, while we were truly pleased with the recent turn of events in the clinical/research world, we were, frankly, appalled at the truly unfortunate manner in which the well-meaning advocates for the realization of the potential of the magic of those mushrooms were proceeding in both their research efforts and in the  essentially self-sabotaging and bewildering message they were sending to the medical paparazzi of the media 

PART 2 is now being edited but we are told that the material in this Part, PART 1, would be helpful in the reading of Part 2.  This second Part. is an express tracing of how the "message" of Huxley's in Doors of Perception" is entirely opposite to the narrative scheme of current neuroscience, such as Carhart-Harris....and, by the same token, lays the groundwork for a more adequate, relevent and less "silly" neuroscience account of psyilocybin and psychedelic use.  Huxley's "mind at large" is precisely the opposite of CH's  ridiculous "ego dissolution and regression to infantial unleashing of emotion"
Huxleys rejected  "hallucination" as relevant in favor of enhanced "insight.  Importantly Huxley utterly rejected the dissolution or fragmenting of "intellect's structures in favor of appreciation of how the 'will" or inclination to rely on standard resources was paramount.

PART 3.. Then traces in terms of specific neuroscience findings how the Huxley actual experience and his insights during it can be supported and used as the means for futher neuroscience exploration of areas such as the Posterior Cingulage, the Default Mode Network (not the coloring book version used by Carhart-Harris) the language use areas of the brain, and the MidBrain...including the interaction of the Striatum and Basal Ganglia...which is the 'core" brain..as we see it....that is, where "reward" (in a more meaningful sense than mere reinforcement of observed actions) is fueled by critical dopamine events.
Research Interests:
I had posted this in hoping to find some mathematicians, logicians, and most importantly philosophers of mathematics and logic to comment and clarify this controversy....but we seem to live in world which doesn't enable that to... more
I had posted this in hoping to find some mathematicians, logicians, and most importantly philosophers of mathematics and logic to comment and clarify this controversy....but we seem to live in world  which doesn't enable that to occur..

My own impression seems (as best as I can translate it into Wittgenstein's "style") very much the same lack of enthusiasm as he showed for the endless chatter by secondary sources about the ordinary cultural interpretations of Godel's proofs. 

Moreover, the ongoing discussion of "truth" , some of which has roots in Godel's own metaphysical and Platonist eccentriciites only further buries the more interesting consideration that Wittgenstein brought up.

Of course, his "discussion" of the Godel work was only in the form of informal and posthumously collated notes so it is not unreasonable to yearn to have heard more of what he might have said in discussing Godel's work in 'full".

To me, Turing's work and his series of achievements pretty much demonstrates that we can indeed  dispense  with the need to consider Godel's proofs  beyond their being a virtuoso demonstration of the limitations of formal systems..and certainly without any relevance to  to any notion of mythology of ""truth"...
Research Interests:
Here is how an account by a successful person, diagnosed as exhibiting ADHD , shows us how inept our education system is, especially in the teaching of mathematics… and, consequently, is the 'losing' of many of our best and brightest... more
Here is how an account by a successful person, diagnosed as exhibiting ADHD , shows us how inept our education system is, especially in the teaching of mathematics… and, consequently, is the 'losing' of many of our best and brightest students

"I used to see all this (her ADHD), primarily as a deficit but, having built a career that helped me better understand what I struggled with and which put those selfsame 'deficits' to good purpose, I no longer view things that way. Instead, these days I see my own distracted nature as a source of keen awareness for the fragility of all attention" Sarah Stein Lubrano is a DPhil student at the University of Oxford and the head of content at the School of Life, where she designs the TSOL for business curriculum. She is interested in how to make learning about the most important topics accessible, engaging and memorable
Research Interests:
An exhilaratingly brilliant piece, by a world class mathematician and topologist directing his attention back in time to Charles Peirce...as we digest what Professor Kauffman writes, we realize that he is taking us 'back to the future'... more
An exhilaratingly brilliant piece, by a world class mathematician and topologist directing his attention back  in time to  Charles Peirce...as we digest what Professor Kauffman writes, we realize that he is taking us 'back to the future' to the cutting edge  of most pressing issues of mathematics, computation and science.
Research Interests:
As Peirce introduces his own great essay, informative of the very core of his thinking, "COME on, my Reader, and let us construct a diagram to illustrate the general course of thought; I mean a System of diagrammatization by means of... more
As Peirce introduces his own great essay, informative of the very core of his thinking,
"COME on, my Reader, and let us construct a diagram to illustrate the general course of thought; I mean a System of diagrammatization by means of which any course of thought can be represented with exactitude.

"But why do that, when the thought itself is present to us?" Such, substantially, has been the interrogative objection raised by more than one or two superior intelli-  gences, among whom I single out an eminent and glorious General.

Recluse that I am, I was not ready with the counter-question, which should have run, "General, you make use of maps during a campaign, I believe. But why should you do so, when the country they represent is right there?"

Thereupon, had he replied that he found details in the maps that were so far from being "right there," that they were within the enemy's lines, I ought to have pressed the question, "Am I right, then, in understanding that, if you were thoroughly and perfectly familiar with the country, as, for example, if it lay just about the scenes of your childhood, no map of it would then be of the smallest use to you in laying out your detailed plans?"

To that he could only have rejoined, "No, I do not say that, since I might probably desire the maps to stick pins into, so as to mark each anticipated day's change in the situations of the two armies."

To that again, my sur-rejoinder should have been, "Well, General, that precisely corresponds to the advantages of a diagram of the course of a discussion. Indeed, just there, where you have so clearly pointed it out, lies the advantage of diagrams in general.

Namely, if I may try to state the matter after you, one can make exact experiments upon uniform diagrams; and when one does so, one must keep a bright lookout for unintended and unexpected changes thereby brought about in the relations of different significant parts of the diagram to one another.

Such operations upon diagrams, whether external or imaginary, take the place of the experiments upon real things that one performs in chemical and physical research.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
ELEVEN DIMENSIONS REVEALED IN THE BRAIN: What is Algebraic Topology? Geometry as a Way of Seeing, Speaking & Thinking https://www.academia.edu/33563184/ELEVEN_DIMENSIONS_REVEALED_IN_THE_BRAIN A few days ago, we came across some research... more
ELEVEN DIMENSIONS REVEALED IN THE BRAIN:
What is Algebraic Topology? Geometry as a Way of Seeing, Speaking & Thinking

https://www.academia.edu/33563184/ELEVEN_DIMENSIONS_REVEALED_IN_THE_BRAIN

A few days ago, we came across some research on recent and adventurous utilization of algebraic topology those who ere not at all the usual neuroscience suspects  As we often do, we found it to be quite interesting enough  to share with folks on Facebook who follow our Pages. 

Only after a day or two did we realize that, while the research surely resonated with us on a variety of grounds so that we surely intuitively appreciated what they had done, we had not bothered to examine and expressly articulate just why it seemed so fascinating.

The beginning of the reportage of the research read, “Neuroscientists have recently  used a classic branch of mathematics  in a totally new way to peer into the structure of our brains”.. They go on “ What researchers have discovered is that the brain is full of multi-dimensional geometrical structures operating in as many as 11 dimensions” 

The media blathering went on, “We’re used to thinking of the world from a 3-D perspective, so this may sound a bit tricky, but the results of this new study could be the next major step in understanding the fabric of the human brain - the most complex structure we know of.” 

That we could  ourselves conjure up no clear  notion of just where or how they had spotted these “geometrical structures” operating so many dimensions, intrigued us and meant that we had to start wondering about how that kind of “talk” emerged and had reached us via the usual network of medical paparazzi who disseminate the press releases from various medical institutions.  We could not make any clear sense of the excerpted statement from the lead researcher “We found a world that we had never imagined”

When the lead researcher  says,'"We found a world that we had never imagined,” he is talking about a world that he and his approach can see as deriving a set of mathematical intuitions, going back all the way to Euler, which allow the projecting of relations and paths of connection within that “real world” of data onto a geometric modeled in order to allow the solution of problems which would otherwise not be soluble, if they failed to focus on the “connections” as the primary aspect to be ‘seen”.

And what they "see' is the model of geometrical figures and forms upon which our age old intuitions can thrive and somehow produce  better narratives and by means of those narratives to trigger insights into further exploration that the  accessible geometrical model...and its edges, surfaces, shapes, and holes, and cliques and cavities...suggests to the mind engaged in relying on this strategic modeling.

What we realized was that in some unique sense, but not at all in the way a reasonable person might interpret, the realm of algebraic topology did indeed provide the researcher with “ a world that we had never imagined’.  Of course, this was  world of a fascinating geometric model/metaphor upon which much of work algebraic topology rests. 

The exploitation of this geometric model by neuroscience researchers surely might provide a glimpse of a world of metaphor, albeit extremely useful metaphor,  with its own vocabulary that allows an “understanding’ of events within the brain that attempting to directly look into the so called “real world” would never allow.

The essence of the research can be better found in this statement by the authors, "The lack of a formal link between neural network structure and its emergent function has hampered our understanding of how the brain processes information.  These observations indicate that the emergence of correlated activity, while its elucidation cannot be found in the specifics of the local millions of data points from which that patterning emerges, mirrors the topological complexity of the network.  “ So let’s see what they might mean by that.
Research Interests:
Feynman allows us to see how the use of language is an act of creativity and not a representation of thought, and for him language use was a constraint and impediment to insight...while the preferred mode of action was by hand exemplifed... more
Feynman allows us to see how the use of language is an act of creativity and not a representation of thought, and for him language use was a constraint and impediment to insight...while the preferred mode of action was by hand exemplifed in the act of drawing which affords more than language use when the concepts required of our minding brains become more complex...

We view Feynman's "diagrams" as a mode of thinking, in the context of the semiology of Peirce, Brouwer's "intuitionism", Goethe arguments for drawing over the use of language, and Darwin's 'diagramming of the tree of life"..as well as the details of his own life and childhood learning issues...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
“Each time I hear the ninety-first fragment of Heraclitus “You shall not go down twice to the same river, “ I admire its intellectual dexterity, because the ease with which we accept the first meaning (“The river is different”)... more
“Each time I hear the ninety-first fragment of Heraclitus

“You shall not go down twice to the same river, “

I admire its intellectual dexterity, because the ease with which we accept the first meaning (“The river is different”) clandestinely imposes upon us the second meaning (“I am different”) and grants us the illusion of having invented it.”
                                                                        - Jorge Luis Borges

As our civilization wandered its way through several millennia...we had the chance to hear the voices of these three poets........They could have been heard in unison in a chorus together but their words were spaced out over many centuries.....Heraclitus, William Blake, and Jose Luis Borges.

Very much the same message...and very much a message which we still need to hear today.  Heracitus was perhaps the original Mystic, despite  his wisdom being distorted and trivialized by those who followed, Plato and Aristotle, spoke  in a way sufficiently powerful that it was echoed in later years by Blake and then by Borges. 

Blake and his reputation and legacy, too, suffered after  having his words and wisdom distorted and trivialized by those in his era, who were scandalized by his eccentric life as much  as  by his critique of the direction that civilization was taking even back then.

But he and Heraclitus were both heard very clearly by Borges.

He too never was appreciated for the depths of vision that his works contained....he could be said to have been a 'mystic" for these modern times, his words couched in mathematical and epistemological sophistication....truly were labyrinths....arising in very much the same mix of paradox, poetry, and profundity that could be seen in Heraclitus and Blake, 

What was truly mysterious was that they were simply shunted aside as mystics, while their insights into the society, language, and science of their times were vastly beyond their contemporaries.

The "must read" Classic Essay from Borges collection "Labyrinths" is the beginning of our trying to come to terms with the powerful common voice with which all three poets speak....and it is very much related to our ongoing project of unriddling the mysteries of psychedelics and so called "hallucinations' were often seem to have more "truth" behind them than the supposed veridical truth of our everyday perceptions.

Available at Amazon: http://amzn.to/2x1PEJ9
Research Interests:
The intuitive difficulty of "seeing through" the moment to the underlying nature of time, not as a layer lower, but in a novel sense "contained within that moment" in a non-geometric way, is itself an index of how tightly locked we are... more
The intuitive difficulty of "seeing through" the moment to the underlying nature of time, not as a layer lower, but in a novel sense "contained within that moment" in a non-geometric way, is itself an index of how tightly locked we are into the notion of
"time" as spatial and Euclidean geometric.
This difficulty is not different , but of immeasurably of greater magnitude, than our historic inability to look out at space and notice that the world of nature was organized everywhere around us in terms of a fractal geometry,
even while these fractals were staring us in the face for millennia.
Clearly the other “side” of adjusting our sense of “closeness” is the concordant adjustment of our sense of “vastness” implicated in each moment.
That is sensing “consciousness” from within.
We do not share the sense of the great poet, Borges, that “the world, unfortunately is
real” with follow the closing of his memorable essay on time,
“Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it
is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire.“
What is “unfortunate” still is that we have not yet escaped from the Euclidean model of “time” that has no place within our “realness” ———and for that we
require poetry of another kind


In 2010, a startling rumor filtered through the number theory community. Apparently, some graduate student at the University of Bonn in Germany had written a paper that redid " Harris-Taylor "

The 22-year-old student, Peter Scholze, had found a way to sidestep one of the most complicated parts of the proof, which deals with a sweeping connection between number theory and geometry
Research Interests:
In 1949 the great logician Kurt Gödel constructed the first mathematical models of the universe in which travel into the past is, in theory at least, possible. Within the framework of Einstein’s general theory of relativity Gödel... more
In 1949 the great logician Kurt Gödel constructed the first mathematical models of the universe in which travel into the past is, in theory at least, possible.

Within the framework of Einstein’s general theory of relativity Gödel produced cosmological solutions to Einstein’s field equations which contain
closed time-like curves, that is, curves in spacetime which, despite being closed, still represent possible paths of bodies.

An object moving along such a path would travel back into its own past, to the very moment at which it “began” the journey


Many other Papers by philosophyer John L. Bell can be found here:

https://philpapers.org/asearch.pl?strict=1&searchStr=Bell,%20John%20L.&filterMode=authors
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The extent to which we regard something as behaving in an intelligent manner is determined as much by our own state of mind and training as by the properties of the object under consideration. If we are able to explain and predict its... more
The extent to which we regard something as behaving in an intelligent manner is determined as much by our own state of mind and training as by the properties of the object under consideration. If we are able to explain and predict its behaviour or if there seems to be little underlying plan, we have little temptation to imagine intelligence.

With the same object therefore it is possible that one man would consider it as intelligent and another would not; the second man would have found out the rules of its behaviour.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
We take some interest in this recent research because it exemplifies a progressive shift to escape from the perpetual muddle of trying to relate language usage based narratives of 'psychological events" to various mathematical equations... more
We take some interest in this recent research because it exemplifies a progressive shift to escape from the perpetual muddle of trying to relate language usage based narratives of 'psychological events" to various mathematical equations and expression by recourse to a 'geometric" expression which transcends the gap between the language based narrative and the quantitative measurement based equations is being seen throughout science.

When they speak of their 'observations" in terms of various geometric conceptions, they have more latitude for expression and for articulation concepts and "predictions" that are not as likely to reveal 'inconsistency" with the mathematical representations such as those that come with the use of Bayesian concept.

For decades, they note, "research has shown that our perception of the world is influenced by our expectations" Precisely what that means is anybody's guess since the notions of 'perception' and "expectation" and even of 'world" are more or less a sloppy pudding and there has never been nor will be any "proof in the pudding that such words present'.

S
Research Interests:
A bold and promising initial step at understanding the interaction of the Vagus Nerve, the Gut, the Immune System and our Brains. This Hypothesis, from a few years ago was ahead of it's time. With developments in neuroscience and... more
A bold and promising initial step at understanding the interaction of the Vagus Nerve, the Gut, the Immune System and our Brains.

This Hypothesis, from a few years ago was ahead of it's time. With developments in neuroscience and immunology of the past five years....we believe the time has finally arrived for full appreciation and follow through of its main point: The intimatcy association between the Vagus Nerve and remarkable Body/Brain connectedness of our human species.

Although it was formulated  specificlally from a focuis on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, the implications of the material are vast and encompass all brain function and all neuro-psychiatric conditions.
Research Interests:
A poem is definitely not prose...and we hope not prosaic. The very notion of prose uneasily straddles the Scylla and Charybdis of either being immediately raising the quetions of whether it ought to be considered "Non-Fiction' or... more
A poem is definitely not prose...and we hope not prosaic.

The very notion of prose  uneasily straddles the Scylla and Charybdis of either being immediately raising the quetions of whether it ought to be considered "Non-Fiction' or "Fiction".   

In science, the typical ritual demands a  form of prose presentation which has to justify itself by stiffly posturing as providing  answers and producing 'findings"...

A poem, however, is not reduceable  to one or the other, fiction or non fiction.. It only seeks to be 'adequate

The life of the mind derives from  the dance which comes from the posing of questions instead of the parade march of those presumed "answers" like wooden soldiers on the page. '
Research Interests:
The purpose of this post is to describe how newer understandings of the prominent role of the human cerebellum in the cerebro-cerebellar development of science and in culture can be extended to provide a way to address the long-standing "... more
The purpose of this post is to describe how newer understandings of the prominent role of the human cerebellum in the cerebro-cerebellar development of science and in culture can be extended to provide a way to address the long-standing " mystery " of underpinnings of all cognition…and including the workability of mathematics in the real world. Based on extensive research studies argued that the " signal from the dentate to the prefrontal and posterior parietal areas of the cortex [working memory, executive functions and rule-based learning] is as important to their function as the signal the nucleus sends to motor areas of the cerebral cortex " (Cerebellar networks with the cerebral cortex and basal ganglia) There is a cerebellar mechanism of sequence detection, they show, that is yoked to ontogenetic cerebellar dorsal-to-ventral dentate development as they apply to all forms of movement, cognition Recent anatomical studies demonstrate that the output of the cerebellum targets multiple nonmotor areas in the prefrontal and posterior parietal cortex, as well as the cortical motor areas. The projections to different cortical areas originate from distinct output channels within the cerebellar nuclei (Cerebellum and Nonmotor Function The cerebral cortical area that is the main target of each output channel is a major source of input to the channel. Thus, a closed-loop circuit represents the major architectural unit of cerebro-cerebellar interactions. The outputs of these loops provide the cerebellum with the anatomical substrate to influence the control of movement and cognition. Neuroimaging and neuropsychological data supply compelling support for this view. The range of tasks associated with cerebellar activation is remarkable and
Research Interests:
Neuropsychology, Philosophy of Mind, Learning and the Brain, Eye tracking, Eye Tracking and Oculomotor Control, and 38 more
Research Interests:
THE REAL STORY OF OUR BRAINS and of CONSCIOUSNESS: We have included here an incredibly interesting publication. It is hard to tell just what category to put it in. It is surely a review of great magnitude and scope. And, yes, it is... more
THE REAL STORY OF OUR BRAINS and of CONSCIOUSNESS:

We have included here an incredibly interesting publication.  It is hard to tell just what category to put it in.

It is surely a review of great magnitude and scope.  And, yes, it is the the first few steps along the "treasure map" to understanding how the brain really functions and unraveling the paradox of "consciousness", as well

The still undiscovered riddle of all life processes is how in the world cells manage to communicate with each other, to organize, to coordinate, and to mature into collective communities and structures within organs and tissues.

The phenomenon, "Quorum sensing", which the author addresses and then expands upon both in scientific detail as well as with a bit of poetic license, is perhaps one of the most critical if not the most critical single concept in any discussion of any life on our planet. It provides the answers or the path to the answers to everything having to do with life and mind....

This article is surely one  which will leave you forever changed and aware on a new level of how it is that our brains function, especially via the recently discovered scaffolding that characterizes astrocytes and how they manage the affairs of cognition,

It provides insight into how all cells that are found in multicellular organisms must rely on direct immediate contact...the old fashioned way...touching each other and creating structures.

A Biological Rosetta Stone: Gap Junctions and Cell-Cell Communication during Evolution

https://www.academia.edu/31091556/A_Biological_Rosetta_Stone_Gap_Junctions_and_Cell-Cell_Communication_during_Evolution_by_James_E._Trosko

This is also how our organs and tissues are composed...the very same principles which describe how bacteria function, colonize and evade antibiotics. This also is the answer to how stem cells become pluripotent progenitor cells and how they conduct themselves through multiplication and maturity.

For those who would like to know what cancer truly is and how it might most likely be first understood properly and then tackled...this article also ties in the cancer issue with the very basis of our life, the constant birth and maturation of stem cells in each of our organs and tissues.

(see the chapter heading of this long review down below)

One of the most important books that I ever read was not written by any of the great minds whose books also shaped my view of the world but it was a book written by a neurosurgeon, Frank Vertasick,  that spent considerable time on the NY Times Best Seller List, and which a friend gave me as a birthday gitt.

The book was called "The Genius Within" and it was the first time I appreciated the intelligence that arises from collective synchrony of various creatures and indeed various cells, It alerted me for the first time to the phenomenon of 'quorum sensing" in bacteria.

https://www.amazon.com/Genius-Within-Discovering-Intelligence-Living/dp/0151005516

Over the years, whenever I have dealt with medical and neuroscience issues, I have always remembered the lessons of that book, and how the bacteria in so called "bio films" gathered together, formed contact and communites, engaged in epigenetic modulation of the expression of their genotypes and totally outsmarted the legions of pharmaceutical warrior seeking to eliminate them

If we wish to know how the immune cells of our body or the glial cells of the brain or the endocrine cells of our glands managed to "get together" and act intelligently and how they must, after all, have a means of achieving synchronized pulses, rhythms and other activity, this book "the Genius Within" is a first step in discovering this whole new playing field of medicine and biology

The article to which I link here is the 2015 updating by an admittedly speculative and good hearted writer who has compiled an incredible amount of wisdom for those who wish to totally widen their view of all life processes. The key word here is 'GAP JUNCTION"...please take note of it. We will be talking about it much, much more

These are the Section Headings of the Article:

Introduction: A Biological Rosetta Stone: Understanding the Roles of Cell-Cell Communication during the Evolution of All Living Organisms in Their Struggles for Life and Reproduction in an Ever-Changing Physical, Chemical, Social,and Cultural World

The Transition from an Anaerobic to an Aerobic Environment Forcedthe Selection from Quorum Sensing of Single-Celled Organisms and to GapJunctional Intercellular Communication Needed for Metazoans

Biological Evolution of the Gap Junctional Intercellular Communication with the Appearance of Stem Cells and Cell Differentiation

. The Normal or Dysfunctional Consequences of Cell-CellCommunication in Various Cell Types

Role of Adult Stem Cells and Modulated Cell-Cell Communication inthe Multi-Stage, Multi-Mechanism Process of Carcinogenesis

Senescence and Aging: The Price We Pay for the EvolutionaryAppearance of Stem Cells and Differentiation

Use of Human Cancer Stem Cells in 3D Organoids to Screen for Epigenetic Agents that Can Stimulate or Inhibit Their Growth

The Authors Abstract: The Biological Evolution of Brain Stem Cells, Neurons, Cellular, andMind Communication Can Lead to a Cultural Evolution of Global Quorum Sensing of Pluralistic Cultures

The first anaerobic organism extracted energy for survival and reproduction from its source of nutrients, with the genetic means to ensure protection of its individual genome but also its species survival.

While it had a means to communicate with its community via simple secreted molecules (" quorum sensing "), the eventual shift to an aerobic environment led to multi-cellular metazoan organisms, with evolutionary-selected genes to form extracellular matrices, stem cells, stem cell niches, and a family of gap junction or " connexin " genes.

These germinal and somatic stem cells responded to extracellular signals that triggered intra-cellular signaling to regulate specific genes out of the total genome. These extra-cellular induced intra-cellular signals also modulated gap junctional intercellular communication (GJIC) in order to regulate the new cellular functions of symmetrical and asymmetrical cell division, cell differentiation, modes of cell death, and senescence.

Within the hierarchical and cybernetic concepts, differentiated by neurons organized in the brain of the Homo sapiens, the conscious mind led to language, abstract ideas, technology, myth-making, scientific reasoning, and moral decision–making, i.e., the creation of culture.

Over thousands of years, this has created the current collision between biological and cultural evolution, leading to the global " metabolic disease " crisis. " …, since the mechanism of cell communication itself is universal in biology, in keeping with a Kuhnian paradigm shift. This approach may even elucidate the nature and evolution of consciousness as a manifestation of the cellular continuum from unicellular to multicellular life.

We need such a functional genomic mechanism for the process of evolution if we are to make progress in biology and medicine. " John S. Torday, Prospect Biol. Med. 56: 455, 2014.
Research Interests:
Evolutionary Biology, Microbiology, Neuroscience, Cognitive Science, Oncology, and 42 more
Research Interests:
In this recent research…it seems….that they have hit upon a truly novel finding… and a remarkably one that potentially can open many doors both to understanding the thymus and the immune system…and offering some tantalizing direct ways to... more
In this recent research…it seems….that they have hit upon a truly novel finding… and a remarkably one that potentially can open many doors both to understanding the thymus and the immune system…and offering some tantalizing direct ways to impact on the immune system It seems that the secrets to the truly wizard-like regulation of our immune systems has to to do with a phenomenon much like that with which we are all familiar…that of our taste buds  Self-tolerance is the ability of the immune system to recognize self-produced antigens as a non-threat while appropriately mounting a response to foreign substances. The thymus is responsible for generating a diverse yet self-tolerant pool of T cells.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
(still in progress of revision and clarification)...suggestions are welcome.. Researchers in the study linked below (Inversely Active Striatal Projection Neurons and Interneurons Selectively Delimit Useful Behavioral Sequences)... more
(still in progress of revision and clarification)...suggestions are welcome..

Researchers in the study linked below (Inversely Active Striatal Projection Neurons and Interneurons Selectively Delimit Useful Behavioral Sequences) demonstrate that accentuated activity of striatal projection neurons (SPNs) at the beginning and end of such behavioral repertoires is a supraordinate representation specifically marking previously rewarded behavioral sequences independent of the individual movements making up the behavior. These findings suggest that the striatum contains networks of neurons representing acquired sequences of behavior at a level of abstraction higher than that of the individual movements making up the sequence. And at the same time, they have caused us to comment a bit more than usual. Our daily lives include., rushing our teeth, driving to work, or putting away the dishes are just a few of the tasks that our brains have automated to the point that we hardly need to think about them. We may think of each of the routines including in the hundreds of routine habits in our daily lives as a single task. And surely that is not unconnected with the fact that we have, in our ordinary language use, a word for each task…and that those words seem to refer to " something " , an entity, that 'task, in very much a Platonic way of thinking that is still with us.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Alzheimer's is a devastating disease whose incidence is clearly on the rise in America. Fortunately, a significant number of research dollars are currently being spent to try to understand what causes Alzheimer's. ApoE-4, a particular... more
Alzheimer's is a devastating disease whose incidence is clearly on the rise in America. Fortunately, a significant number of research dollars are currently being spent to try to understand what causes Alzheimer's. ApoE-4, a particular allele of the apolipoprotein apoE, is a known risk factor. Since apoE plays a critical role in the transport of cholesterol and fats to the brain, it can be hypothesized that insufficient fat and cholesterol in the brain play a critical role in the disease process. In a remarkable recent study, it was found that Alzheimer's patients have only 1/6 of the concentration of free fatty acids in the cerebrospinal fluid compared to individuals without Alzheimer's. In parallel, it is becoming very clear that cholesterol is pervasive in the brain, and that it plays a critical role both in nerve transport in the synapse and in maintaining the health of the myelin sheath coating nerve fibers. An extremely high-fat (ketogenic) diet has been found to improve cognitive ability in Alzheimer's patients. ! 1 These and other observations described below lead me to conclude that both a low-fat diet and statin drug treatment increase susceptibility to Alzheimer's,
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
NOTE: This is only the beginning of this story of how it is that a bone hormone, osteocalcin, can be pivotal in the promotion of various aspects memory in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus. There are several upgrades on the way,... more
NOTE: This is only the beginning of this story of how it is that a bone hormone, osteocalcin, can be pivotal in the promotion of various aspects memory in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus. 

There are several upgrades on the way, and some more material already added.

We believe  that this exploration promises to offer a radical new understanding of neurogenesis and rejuvenation as it relates to all tissues and the development and maturation of all pluripotent progenitor cells
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
It is known that geometry assumes, as things given, both the notion of space and the first principles of constructions in space. She gives definitions of them which are merely nominal, while the true determinations appear in the form of... more
It is known that geometry assumes, as things given, both the notion of space and the first principles of constructions in space. She gives definitions of them which are merely nominal, while the true determinations appear in the form of axioms. The relation of these assumptions remains consequently in darkness; we neither perceive whether and how far their connection is necessary, nor a priori, whether it is possible. From Euclid to Legendre (to name the most famous of modern reforming geometers) this darkness was cleared up neither by mathematicians nor by such philosophers as concerned themselves with it.
Research Interests:
If our culture/civilization may be said to have been suffering from a chronic intellectual disease, it is the assumption that so called 'experience" is the foundation of all knowledge, access to truth, and so called 'truth-telling".....it... more
If our culture/civilization may be said to have been suffering from a chronic intellectual disease, it is the assumption that so called 'experience" is the foundation of all knowledge, access to truth, and so called 'truth-telling".....it is assumed the experience results somehow from our  engaging ,via our bodies, in perception....as a sensory like access to things and events in the physical world an then, subsequently, somehow those 'inputs" of the senses must then be massaged by some higher, rational faculty replete with logic in order to emerge in intelligent and intelligable narratives of the world.

This...which is articulated by Russell... is what Einstein comments about and which he seeks to place in some more sensible context. 

It was the essentially 'voo doo" like nature of this assumptional framework, which Aristotle himself, appreciated had severe flaws, and which he sought to address by means of the concept of 'nous" .  That that conception , he sought to account for how we were 'intuitiviely"  enabled  to have 'experience" of the world and then to somehow apply that intuition to the making sense of experience by means ofthe  syllogistic reasoning of the logic developed by him...as our means of being 'homo sapiens".  But, for the most part, his writings on "nous" and this problem have been glibly overlooked for centuries by academic commentators. 

Instead they have left us with two 'Trees" standing far apart....with nothing but our own 'wish fulfillment" fantasies to connect 'the world of the sensorimotor" and the world of reason and logic". Somehow...our act of speaking has been imbued with the requisiste 'magic" to establish the linkage between the sensory "experience' and that wisdom and 'knowledge" which some of us, the 'angels' of which Blake and then Huxley wrote. pride themselves upon...

Kant tried to patch this odd and unconvincing framwork up by claiming that 'experience" was not pure the outcome of a input via perception of the things themselves  of the world...t .but instead he tried to turn the problem on its head...and offered us a fix which essentially iinjected into the acts of perception -as its precondition and 'magic' ingredient....the framework of logic and concept by means of which the inputs  of 'noumena' presumably could be rendered coherent and sensible "phenomena"

.Thus, his transcendental  ego .was the new 'voo doo' r to allow us to speak to those who would listen...of how we might create sensible and logical scientific narratives, via sythetic apriori statements, based  on "experience" of  encounters  sensormotor nature with the extenral world via our perceptions

This, of course, did nothing to solve the problem in the long run...other than to  hide  the problem and that left us ...and those such as Russell...to have to find the hiding spot of the voo too magic somewhere within our physical presence in the world...so that the inputs could be pre  determined to guarantee that Aristotle's problem could be rendered less conspicuous.  It was some sort of "intuition" of the sort that Aristotel sought  of which Kant fabricated his facsimile....

Ever since, in one way or another...there has been a search for the source of the magic.....With the advent of "neuroscience", nowadays that "nous' which allows our self depiction  of our speaking as intelligent and knowledgeable...and even occasionaly as 'true'....is heaping somewhere iwthin the events of the 'brain".  The brain itself is truly not regarded in any serious way...except as an ad hoc convenient means of talking the talk that allows. reason and experience to be combined in our verbalizations.
Research Interests:
In this recent publication, they have demonstrated that when you record directly from the human hippocampal region, as the sentence becomes more constraining, the hippocampus becomes more active, as it does in other areas of memory use... more
In this recent publication, they have demonstrated that when you record directly from the human hippocampal region, as the sentence becomes more constraining, the hippocampus becomes more active, as it does in other areas of memory use when non-routine decisions as to implementation of past experience in dealing with a present situation is required " "The hippocampus started building up rhythmic theta activity that is linked to memory access and memory processing. " The authors state, "Our findings specify that the hippocampal complex contributes to language in an active fashion, relating incoming words to stored semantic knowledge, a necessary process in the generation of sentence meaning. We focus on this research because, one of the truly unfortunate aspects of the history of language is that is primarily and immediately taken as a written form and not nearly enough attention is paid to the fact that it is primarily speaking and emerges from motor based actions much like those which the hippocampus, among other areas of the brain (including the cerebellum) evolved to coordinate
Research Interests:
Contemporary cell biology has made it possible for some years now to put forth the characteriza- tion of this basic living organization—a bio-logic— as that of an autopoietic system (from Greek: self- producing—Maturana & Varela 1980;... more
Contemporary cell biology has made it possible for some years now to put forth the characteriza- tion of this basic living organization—a bio-logic— as that of an autopoietic system (from Greek: self- producing—Maturana & Varela 1980; Varela et al. 1974).

An autopoietic system—the minimal living organization—is one that continuously produces the components that specify it, while at the same time realizing it (the system) as a concrete unity in space and time, which makes the network of production of components possible.

More precisely defined: An autopoietic system is organized (defined as unity) as a network of processes of production (synthesis and destruction) of components such that these components:

(i) continuously regenerate and realize the network that produces them, and

(ii) constitute the system as a distinguishable unity in the domain in which they exist.

Thus, autopoiesis attempts to capture the mech- anism or process that generates the identity of the living, and thus to serve as a categorical distinction of living from non-living.

This identity amounts to self-produced coherence: the autopoietic mecha- nism will maintain itself as a distinct unity as long as its basic concatenation of processes is kept intact in the face of perturbations, and will disappear when confronted with perturbations that go beyond a certain viable range which depends on the specific system considered.

Obviously, all of the biochemical pathways and membrane formation in cells, can be immediately mapped onto this definition of au- topoiesis.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Consciousness is a bewildering notion to both philosophers and neuroscientists. Classical neurology holds that arousal and awareness are two critical components of consciousness It's treated as if its an almost mythical hybrid of two... more
Consciousness is a bewildering notion to both philosophers and neuroscientists. Classical neurology holds that arousal and awareness are two critical components of consciousness It's treated as if its an almost mythical hybrid of two everyday concepts, whose overall functioning is somehow greater than its abstracted component functions derived from ordinary behavioral observations, and thus not likely to be the best
Research Interests:
Sadly, most of the foundational history of the talk of hypnosis is based on the nearly comical and primitive behaviorism of academic researchers more at home the learning of rats in the laboratory than having anything to do with real... more
Sadly, most of the foundational history of the talk of hypnosis is based on the nearly comical and primitive behaviorism of academic researchers more at home the learning of rats in the laboratory than having anything to do with real life.

The past century of hypnosis 'theorizing" is truly nothing more than an abyss, First dominated by Clark Hull and his laboratory at Yale and then for decades, by another rat aficionado, Ernst Hilgard and his laboratory at Stanford.

Together these two set the tone for not every truly devoting any thought or further depth of consideration to what hypnosis might be, but, rather instead going to various vaudefilll  shows or grade B movies..and collecting "behaviors' seen in those contexts...and then producing a motley and incoherent assemblage of "task" scored by superficial measurements of movement...which they call "behavior"

Perversely enough the measurement of these behaviors became the implicit definition of hypnosis....leaving it without any conceptual or theoretical understanding for the past many decades. 

The patently nonsensical notion of the "domain of hypnosis" was concocted by Hilgard...to somehow claim that hypnosis was not just hypnosis but more than hypnosis...and indeed that hypnotic induction was not even a necessary part of hypnosis. 

So we have been left with a still used measurement of 'hypnotic 'susceptibility"...the Stanford Scales..used all the time by researchers to speak about hypnosis..but the measure itself has no underlying theoretical model or foundation....it just "is what it is".  And oh yes...since hypnosis has been spotted in certain contexts..then everything else in that context is also part of the 'domain of hypnosis"...even thought it is only by association in the context.

It is refreshing to see a writer like James deal with it and without the clap trap and primitive behaviorist approach that has characterized academia for the past century or so....
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
There seems to be good evidence for the age-old belief that the brain has something to do with the mind. Or, to use less dualistic terms, when behavioral phenomena are carved at their joints, there will be some sense in which the analysis... more
There seems to be good evidence for the age-old belief that the brain has something to do with the mind. Or, to use less dualistic terms, when behavioral phenomena are carved at their joints, there will be some sense in which the analysis will correspond to the way the brain is put together. Psychological problems may not be solved by making measurements on the brain; but some more modest aim may be accomplished. A psychological analysis that can stand up to the neurological evidence is certainly better than one that can not. The catch, obviously, is in the phrase "stand up to," since considerable prejudice can be involved in its definition. In any case, each time there is a new idea in psychology, it suggests a corresponding insight in neurophysiology, and vice versa. The procedure of looking back and forth between the two fields is not only ancient and honorable-it is always fun and occasionally useful [Miller, Galanter, & Pribram, 1960, p. 196).
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
A poem is definitely not prose...and we hope not prosaic. The very notion of prose uneasily straddles the Scylla and Charybdis of either being immediately raising the quetions of whether it ought to be considered "Non-Fiction' or... more
A poem is definitely not prose...and we hope not prosaic.

The very notion of prose  uneasily straddles the Scylla and Charybdis of either being immediately raising the quetions of whether it ought to be considered "Non-Fiction' or "Fiction".   

In science, the typical ritual demands a  form of prose presentation which has to justify itself by stiffly posturing as providing  answers and producing 'findings"...

A poem, however, is not reduceable  to one or the other, fiction or non fiction.. It only seeks to be 'adequate

The life of the mind derives from  the dance which comes from the posing of questions instead of the parade march of those presumed "answers" like wooden soldiers on the page. '
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Paz aays in the first attachment, more recently written, of the work with Varela, that Immunologists are mainly concerned with self/nonself discrimination. "Our 1978 paper described the immune system as a closed network of... more
Paz aays in the first attachment, more recently written, of the work with Varela, that Immunologists are mainly concerned with self/nonself discrimination.

"Our 1978 paper described the immune system as a closed network of inter-actions, such that whatever fell outside thisdomain, simply had no sense so far as the im-mune system was concerned ,outside was irrelevant."

This denied the importance of self/nonself discrimination. We also claimed thatoral tolerance resulted from the assimilation of proteins encountered as food or as products of the gut0 flora into this network of interactions.

Thus, in addition to the attempt to add the notion of organizational closure to Jernes (idiotypic) net-work (Jerne, 1974a, 1974b), we proposed tha tphysiological contacts with potential antigen sinvolved assimilation into the immune network rather than rejection of these materials (Vaz andVarela, 1978).

in our paper, we explicitly claimedthat... the transformations of the cognitive domainof the immune network in an organism sontogeny are a combination of its recursivity (its closure) and the fact that it is exposed torandom perturbations or fluctuations from the environment (its openness). In other words, it exhibits self-organization, the transformation of environmental noise into adaptive functional order, in a manner similar to many other bio-logical systems such as cells, nervous systems, and animal populations. (Vaz and Varela,1978; p. 33 )

Coutinho confounded the idea of closurewithsolipsism and insisted to put the network back into the body although Varela himself is carefulin explaining that, although closed in itsorganization, the system is open for interactions(see Varela and Johnson, 1976; p. 4).

I can only ascribe the conciliation of these opposing views toVarela s great personal talent in establishing asso-ciations with other scientists"


from THE EDGE:
https://www.edge.org/conversation/francisco_varela-chapter-12-the-emergent-self

Stuart Kauffman says of Varela:
(Professor of Biological Sciences, Physics, Astronomy, University of Calgary; Author, Reinventing the Sacred)

"Francisco Varela is amazingly inventive, freewheeling, and creative. There's a lot of depth in what he and Humberto Maturana have said. Conversely, from the point of view of a tied-down molecular biologist, this is all airy-fairy, flaky stuff. Thus there's the mixed response. That part of me that's tough-minded and critical is questioning, but the other part of me has cottoned on to the recent stuff he's doing on self- representation in immune networks. I love it.

The work Francisco is doing on the core immune network, which is representing self, and the peripheral system, which is responding to an outside world, is very intriguing. I'm not sure whether he's correct in his thesis that the immune repertoire evolved as a means of representing self, and that an evolutionary consequence was the capacity to recognize and ward off nonself. Whether or not one agrees with that sort of ontological and evolutionary argument, the work he's doing is very nice. It's imaginative, it's tied down to facts in places where it can be tied down. He is very smart, utterly charming and graceful, and his capability in any one of a large number of languages astonishes me.

I first got to know Francisco, indirectly, in 1983, when I met Humberto Maturana in India. They'd come up with their theory of autopoiesis, which was considered gobbledygook by many tough- minded scientists if they paid any attention to it at all. After listening to Humberto, I returned to my work on autocatalytic sets, which I'd begun in 1971 and then set aside. I believe that my autocatalytic-polymer-set story is the clearest instance I know of, in terms of a formally described model, of what they mean by autopoiesis.

It's likely that 99 percent of serious biologists have never heard of Francisco. This is for two reasons. First, he's not American or English, and the bulk of serious molecular biology is done in America and England, with some being done in France, Switzerland, and Germany. Francisco, after all, comes from South America. He's not from the "right" part of the world — that is, the kind of place that usually produces biologists. Second, Francisco is a good theoretical biologist, and theory in biology is in low repute. He's done detailed simulations of immune networks and neural networks that actually function — at least on the computer — so it's good solid theoretical biology. It ties in with our work at the Santa Fe Institute on emergent collective phenomena.

I'm less florid than Francisco. Although his theoretical style may appeal to some of us theoreticians, it wouldn't appeal to tough-minded colleagues, or even to more facile experimental colleagues, who wouldn't see what the next experiment is.

This is a problem that's hard to get your mind around, if you aren't trained as a biologist. Unlike physics and chemistry, which are concept-driven and theory-driven, biology is essentially experiment-and grungy-fact-driven. Organisms are complicated, ad-hoc contraptions. That's been our view since Darwin.

Organisms are ad-hoc solutions to design problems. The standard view is that there are no deep theories of the deep meaning of ad-hoc contraptions. You take the things apart and find out how they work. Most biologists adhere to that view. Notions of underlying deep principles are not an anathema to them — they're just considered foolish.

Francisco is a philosopher, in a way. He and Humberto Maturana are right about their idea of autopoiesis. But he hasn't had a large impact in the United States. The main reason he's dismissed is that he's seen just as a philosopher. Along with Francisco, I'm among those who hold that such deep principles exist, and I'm trying to find them. I have a hard time being heard by my experimental colleagues. I would expect that Francisco has almost never been heard. In the pantheon of biological scientists, he's probably unknown.\

Varela himself writes in this interesting exchange of opinions:

"My autopoiesis work was my first step into these domains: defining what is the minimal living organization, and conceiving of cellular-automata models for it. I did this in the early 1970s, way before the artificial-life wave hit the beach. This work was picked up by Lynn Margulis, in her research and writings on the origins of life, the evolution of cellular life, and, with James Lovelock, the Gaia hypothesis. Humberto Maturana and I invented the idea of autopoiesis in 1970. We worked together in Santiago, during the Socialist years. The idea was the result of suspecting that biological cognition in general was not to be understood as a representation of the world out there but rather as an ongoing bringing-forth of a world, through the very process of living itself.

Autopoiesis attempts to define the uniqueness of the emergence that produces life in its fundamental cellular form. It's specific to the cellular level. There's a circular or network process that engenders a paradox: a self-organizing network of biochemical reactions produces molecules, which do something specific and unique: they create a boundary, a membrane, which constrains the network that has produced the constituents of the membrane. This is a logical bootstrap, a loop: a network produces entities that create a boundary, which constrains the network that produced the boundary. This bootstrap is precisely what's unique about cells. A self-distinguishing entity exists when the bootstrap is completed. This entity has produced its own boundary. It doesn't require an external agent to notice it, or to say, "I'm here." It is, by itself, a self- distinction. It bootstraps itself out of a soup of chemistry and physics."
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The authors of this fabulously informative and also historically fascinating article were among the earliest researchers to grasp the significance of ATP in the determination and guidance of how life functions on our planet… " As they... more
The authors of this fabulously informative and also historically fascinating article were among the earliest researchers to grasp the significance of ATP in the determination and guidance of how life functions on our planet… " As they state here, " One of the first and most enduring facts most students learn in biology class is that all living cells use a small molecule called adenosine triphosphate (ATP) as fuel. That universal energy currency drives the biological reactions that allow cells to function and life to flourish—making ATP a crucial player in the biological world "

However this first role of as the everpresent fuel for cellular functioning, evolutionarily conserved throughout species was merely the beginning of the awareness of its importance. We suspect that, partly due to our science's never escaped tendency to view events, in life as well as elsewhere in nature as mechanistically determined, the ATP molecules and its metabolites were typecast as fuel for the functioning of cells.

Within the brain where the processes of cognition and the neurons involved demand high levels of energy, ATP was thus respected as a key fuel of brain activity, but it was not considered that since the brain does not truly function like a mechanical device, the same molecule that serves intracellularly as fuel would also be released extracellularly by those neurons (and more recently by the astrocytic cells which support them) as a messenger and signal to other cells in the brain.

What we today know from other recent research on astrocytes find can truly appreciate after seeing the history of the increase in respect for ATP and the various purinergic receptors through which it acts so crucially within the brain, is that ATP is unsurprisingly the key to the communication and synergy because the fundamental life of the astrocyte scaffolding of interconnected glial cells and the many neuronal assemblies and networks of the brain.

ATP is how they talk to each other and manage to support each other and, as manifest in most of the phenomena of so-called " consciousness' to synergize and synchronize with each other. And why should not the very elixir of life, in a manner of speaking, the energy source of ATP, not be chosen by evolution and intelligent design of whatever kind we might prefer to speak of as the most effective messenger to other cells of just how things are going, for better or worse as the organized tissues of the body continue to function as best as they can?

We find that we cannot possibly understand anything in neuroscience nowadays with an awareness and further exploration of how indeed it is that there are receptors on both neurons and glial cells that are triggered by extracellular ATP that is released and due to other cells and then, among a multitude of other effects, manages to regulate the crucial Ca++ events in the cell, sometimes opening up various channels to accept incoming Calcium ions and sometimes triggered other receptors to stimulate release of Calcium from internal stores. This Calcium conversation is the language by means of which the ATP molecules contrive to allow the cells and, importantly, the assemblies and networks of cells in the brain to talk to each other…and to work together.

What we find out is , again, not so surprisingly in retrospect. is that if the living organism is not considered to be either a mechanical device or some sort of " obscure " information exchanging device , then  life has managed to give 'meaning " to what seem like basic mechanistic events.  This allows  conversation to occur on a level far beyond that of brute information (which is essentially a fairy tale to rationalize observations retrospectively but without providing any clue as to the nature and meaning of any constituent processes that might lead to the observation of those who chant the " information " mantra. "Information" much like 'Emergence" is another sugar coated story for scientists and philosophers to fall back upon ---when they can't have anything useful to say…in order to give the appearance of some sort of explanatory narrative which doesn't truly explain anything.

If the organism is to function most effectively , then the ATP would be a signal devised by life as it organizes, that is pregnant and overflowing with meaning. It would indicate the effectiveness of the metabolic process in simply producing ATP, then the demands and utilization of the energy containing within the ATP, and then the possible adverse effect to cells which might via damage of one kind or another release the ATP, or which through life circumstances would require a heightened level of coordination among the constituent other cells performing in their network and relates networks of astrocytes, and then, as well, to determine when and how the ongoing advent of progenitor cells would be triggered if and when needed and when the milieu is appropriate.

Thus the molecules of ATP speak volumes about the global picture in which each cell is functioning via the sharing of that niche with other " like-kinded " or " like-minded " cells with common function. Today, we can go even further and explore the key role that ATP messaging and the related aspects of that messaging, such as the entire new world of microRNA's which intertwine so intimately with ATP have in the disarray that occurs in the systems of various tissues when we note cancer.

The manner in which energy is produced, dispersed, and consumed ..or believed to be via the nature of the communications pertaining to it…. is not only critical to all the turf wars in our world of politics today, but is crucial to the stability of our inner world of our bodies as much as it is to the stability of our outer geopolitical status.

As a final note, we can see again from an intimate insider's perspective how arduous and prolonged the struggle to bring to light various key insights can be. The quest by these authors to overcome the reluctance to view ATP as a messenger while being blinded because it is importance as energy is also a revelation, although it should not be by now, after many such instances of what is practically " self-evident " not being evident at all to the more limited perspectives and self sabotaging conceptual models of the research community.

PART DEUX:
Inseparable Tandem:  Evolution Chooses ATP and Ca++  to Control Life, Death and Cellular Signalling

For those who either do not believe our enthusiastic assertions about the incredible importance of the ATP/Calcium connection or who wish to follow up the consequences of this general picture which we painted here in regard to the publication of a few years by the pioneers in ATP research, here is a very recent publication that begins to spell out just how important the ATP/Calcium connection is for all life and especially for our Brains:

http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/371/1700/20150419

This is an entire volume of research on this theme: They introduce it as follows:

"From the very dawn of biological evolution, ATP was selected as a multipur- pose energy-storing molecule. Metabolism of ATP required intracellular free Ca++ to be set at exceedingly low concentrations, which in turn provided the background for the role of Ca++as a universal signalling molecule.

The early-eukaryote life forms also evolved functional compartmentalization and vesicle trafficking, which used Ca++ as a universal signalling ion; simi- larly, Ca++is needed for regulation of ciliary and flagellar beat, amoeboid movement, intracellular transport, as well as of numerous metabolic pro- cesses.

Thus, during evolution, exploitation of atmospheric oxygen and increasingly efficient ATP production via oxidative phosphorylation by bac- terial endosymbionts were a first step for the emergence of complex eukaryotic cells.

Simultaneously, Ca++ started to be exploited for short- range signalling, despite restrictions by the preset phosphate-based energy metabolism, when both phosphates and Ca++interfere with each other because of the low solubility of calcium phosphates.

The need to keep cytosolic Ca++ low forced cells to restrict Ca++signals in space and time and to develop energetically favourable Ca++ signalling and Ca++ microdomains.

These steps in tandem dominated further evolution.

The ATP molecule (often released by Ca++-regulated exocytosis) rapidly grew to be the universal chemical messenger for intercellular communication; ATP effects are mediated by an extended family of purinoceptors often linked to Ca++ sig- nalling. Similar to atmospheric oxygen, Ca++ must have been reverted from a deleterious agent to a most useful (intra- and extracellular) signalling molecule.

Invention of intracellular trafficking further increased the role for Ca++ homeostasis that became critical for regulation of cell survival and cell death. Several mutually interdependent effects of Ca++and ATP have been exploited in evolution, thus turning an originally unholy alliance into a fascinating success story.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Neuroscience, Cognitive Psychology, Neuropsychology, Mathematics, Number Theory, and 41 more
We have apparently been banned by Facebook from posting and sharing posts....??? Apparently we have "violated standards". But the Catch-22 is that they refuse to tell us what the standards might be. They just ban us from posting in... more
We have apparently been banned by Facebook from posting and sharing posts....???    Apparently we have "violated standards".  But the Catch-22 is that they refuse to tell us what the standards might be. They just ban us from posting in groups and sharing elsewhere....? 

Could it be that we just mentioned "Facebook" in a post where we commented on the profusion of medically inflated stories by medical paparazzi and medical institution PR departments?

Who knows?  But we are now banned from Facebook?  For mere mention of their name...speaking of their name in Vain as it were is a mortal sin on Facebook.

Presumably since we mentioned them here...they will ban us from posting and sharing this as well??? Who knows?

Presumably the totalitarian lesson to be learned is that one can never comment about Facebook within Facebook????  Nice???
Research Interests:
Here is a classic paper. It redefines the trait of 'hypnotizability" and what the very nature of the Hypnosis experience is. At the time it was written, it was heavily opposed by the standard Academic psychologists who remained wedded to... more
Here is a classic paper. It redefines the trait of 'hypnotizability" and what the very nature of the Hypnosis experience is.

At the time it was written, it was heavily opposed by the standard Academic psychologists who remained wedded to the 19th century model of "mesmerism", "suggestibility" and defining hypnotizability as the susceptibility to being made to do something you do not wish to do.  Utter nonsense, you might say. We agree.

However, both Stanford and Harvard collaborators in this weirdness and they each produced a "test" for hypnotizability, which, lamentably, is often still used today for research on hypnosis.

One of the reasons that the phenonenon of hypnosis which, when treated competently and with an intellectual foundation can be found to rather illuminating about both personality and neuroscience, has not been given the respect it deserves, is precisely because these rather foolish (we can use stronger words) establishment 'tests" of hypnotizability have been used in so much research seeking to explore the meaning of hypnosis.

Cleary if a researcher utilizes an idiotic measure such as the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale or the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, they  will get absurd results  So much for the past.

We present this article because it unveiled for the first time, an alternate means of assessing a person's inclination to experience hypnosis and it did so in an intelligent and extremely relevant way. 

We shall soon be posting various studies on hypnosis and the manner in which the phenomena of hypnosis can be rescued from the 19th century occult foolishness of those investigators back then at Stanford and Harvard, and integrated with the latest research via function MRIs on connectivity networks

If we better understand hypnosis, through this new prism provide by this research which has since been extended into a book, "Trance and Treatment" and which has guided recent fMRI studies showing how the various networks that we hear so much about, we will be able to better understand the Default Mode Network, the Salience Network, and the Task Network and the manner in which they work together under diverse circumstances. interplay.

For those who wish to peak ahead at what we will be exploring here, there was a paper published recently, "The Functional Brain Basis of Hypnotizability" which reported"

http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/1370571

"Our results provide novel evidence that altered functional connectivity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex may underlie hypnotizability. Future studies focusing on how these functional networks change and interact during hypnosis are warranted."

Those 'future" studies have now been done and will be the basis of our discussions of the relation of the Salience and Default Mode Networks.  We have seen remarkable connections between how hypnosis works and the insights provided by the new technologies and the concept of connectivitiy networks,  And, yes, the cingulate gyrus will come up as a key aspect of much of the work in functional connectivity and hypnosis studies give us an additional "handle" on it.

The principal author on these recent studies has been Dr. David Spiegel, the son of Herbert Spiegel who authored the posted article and the principal developer and innovator of the concept of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) . We are happy to see that he has not returned to uncovering the riddles of hypnosis, now that functional MRI technology is available. 

We hope you take a look at this publication...and are sure that you will see "hypnosis" in a new light, both in your scientific perspectives and in how it relates directly to you and the people in your life.

We hope you will also be able  refer to that reading in enjoying future posts of ours.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This review assesses the abuse potential of medically-administered psilocybin, following the structure of the 8 factors of the US Controlled Substances Act (CSA). Research suggests the potential safety and efficacy of psilocybin in... more
This review assesses the abuse potential of medically-administered psilocybin, following the structure of the 8 factors of the US Controlled Substances Act (CSA). Research suggests the potential safety and efficacy of psilocybin in treating cancer-related psychiatric distress and substance use disorders, setting the occasion for this review. A more extensive assessment of abuse potential according to an 8-factor analysis would eventually be required to guide appropriate schedule placement. Psilocybin, like other 5-HT2A agonist classic psychedelics, has limited reinforcing effects, supporting marginal, transient non-human self-administration. Nonetheless, mushrooms with variable psilocybin content are used illicitly, with a few lifetime use occasions being normative among users. Potential harms include dangerous behavior in unprepared, unsupervised users, and exacerbation of mental illness in those with or predisposed to psychotic disorders. However, scope of use and associated harms are low compared to prototypical abused drugs, and the medical model addresses these concerns with dose control, patient screening, preparation and follow-up, and session supervision in a medical facility. Conclusions: (1) psilocybin has an abuse potential appropriate for CSA scheduling if approved as medicine ; (2) psilocybin can provide therapeutic benefits that may support the development of an approv-able New Drug Application (NDA) but further studies are required which this review describes; (3) adverse effects of medical psilocybin are manageable when administered according to risk management approaches; and (4) although further study is required, this review suggests that placement in Schedule IV may be appropriate if a psilocybin-containing medicine is approved. This article is part of the Special Issue entitled 'Psychedelics: New Doors, Altered Perceptions'.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
It is truly amazing to note that this research can claim to be an investigation of 'neurogenesis"...which is essentially at the core or essence of life...as if it were some sort of spontaneous generation or immaculate birthing that... more
It is truly amazing to note that this research can claim to be an investigation of 'neurogenesis"...which is essentially at the core or essence of life...as if it were some sort of spontaneous generation or immaculate birthing that did not rely on the complex looping and relations between the other aspects/facets of life..such as movement and availability of sensing of the movement and the ongoing energizing of that movement. Nary a word is mentioned. We might as well be discussing a machine like device here...and not one of the central aspects of 'life" at all.

We know how both in humans, where exercise is a key trigger of neurogenesis, and in recent recent on zebrafish that movement, which is essentially a primary index of life, is a key feedback mechanism which not only promotes proliferation of pluripotent progenitors, but without which such proliferation ceases. In other words, put most simply, death is pretty much a guarantee of no such phenomenon as "moving' on any level occurring and the feedbacks that relate movement and life to neurogenesis are truncated.

That is enough to make us wonder. And to make us wonder what these researchers might think they were up to by simply proceeding with dead organisms and dead tissue by means of the same techniques used in living organism....and, worse, by not even uttering a word of discussion or consideration or analysis about how the. very phenomenon that they claim to be studying.....might be and likely is part of some sort of dynamic "loop" of ongoing "life" without which there is no such loop.
Research Interests:
The Distinction of Past and Future; click to view "Let us consider first what we mean by time. What is time? It would be nice if we could find a good definition of time. Webster defines "a time" as "a period," and the latter as "a... more
The Distinction of Past and Future; click to view

"Let us consider first what we mean by time. What is time? It would be nice if we could find a good definition of time. Webster defines "a time" as "a period," and the latter as "a time," which doesn't seem to be very useful. Perhaps we should say: "Time is what happens when nothing else happens." Which also doesn't get us very far. Maybe it is just as well if we face the fact that time is one of the things we probably cannot define (in the dictionary sense), and just say that it is what we already know it to be: it is how long we wait!"
Research Interests:
Here is an Essay submitted by Professor Tim Palmer of Oxford earlier this year to the Foundational Questions Institute Essay Contest (https://fqxi.org) An uncomputable class of geometric model is described and used as part of a... more
Here is an Essay submitted by Professor Tim Palmer of Oxford earlier this year to the Foundational Questions Institute Essay Contest (https://fqxi.org)

An uncomputable class of geometric model is described and used as part of a possible framework for drawing together the three great but largely disparate theories of 20th Century physics: general relativity, quantum theory and chaos theory.

This class of model derives from the fractal invariant sets of certain nonlinear deterministic dynamical systems.

It is shown why such subsets of state-space can be considered formally uncomputable, in the same sense that the Halting Problem is undecidable.

In this framework, undecidability is only manifest in propositions about the physical consistency of putative hypothetical states. By contrast, physical processes occurring in space-time continue to be represented computably.

This dichotomy provides a non-conspiratorial approach to the violation of Statistical Independence in the Bell Theorem, thereby pointing to a possible causal deterministic description of quantum physics. The Disunity of 20th Century Physics Three of our greatest theories of physics were formulated in the 20th Century: general relativity theory, quantum theory and chaos theory.

There is hardly any aspect of human endeavour in the 21st Century that has been untouched by the consequences of at least one of these theories. However, each is remarkably disparate from the others, the very antithesis of the unity to which most physicists aspire in their search for laws which govern the universe.

To be specific: • Our inability to synthesise general relativity theory and quantum theory into a satisfactory quantum theory of gravity is legendary and is widely regarded as the single biggest challenge in contemporary theoretical physics. •

There are profound differences between quantum theory and chaos theory despite the fact that unpredictability lies at the heart of both theories. In conventional interpretations of quantum theory, unpredictability arises from the randomness of the measurement process in what is otherwise a linear theory.

By contrast, unpredictability arises in chaos theory from the instability and nonlinearity of its deterministic equations of motion. However, there is more than this.

By virtue of its determinism, chaos has not been seen as a route to understand the phenomenon of quantum entanglement: in order to violate the Bell inequality a conventional chaotic model of quantum physics would have to be explicitly nonlocal, a property inimical to the goal of synthesising with a causal theory of gravity.

The way chaos is typically defined is incompatible with the principles of relativistic invariance. In particular, a defining characteristic of a chaotic system is instability, characterised by the fact that two states which are initially close can diverge exponentially in time, implying the existence of positive so-called Lyapunov exponents .

However, such divergence can be eliminated by a logarithmic reparametrisation of time suggesting that, in terms of the standard definitions at least, the phenomenon of chaos is not coordinate independent  .

The purpose of this essay is to provide some basis for believing that these theories can be brought closer together through the unifying concept of non-computability.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The RETURN of PILOT WAVES Or, why Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli, Born, Schr ̈odinger, Oppenheimer, Feynman, Wheeler, von Neumann and Einstein were all wrong about quantum mechanics. ----Cambridge University Physical Society, 21st October 2009... more
The RETURN of PILOT WAVES
Or, why Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli, Born, Schr ̈odinger, Oppenheimer, Feynman, Wheeler, von Neumann and Einstein were all wrong about quantum mechanics.
----Cambridge University Physical Society, 21st October 2009

We find ourselves living in a Fragmented Universe..With a Quantum world which makes no sense but which we are told we must accept since it seems to work...

As this document, drawn from a lecture series, so aptly says,
"Quantum mechanics is not only weirder than you think.. ..it’s weirder than you can possibly imagine!"

And THAT is the problem, indeed. While there may be great minds out there, who have been 'plying their trade" with remarkable genius, we cannot help feeling that just as the Greeks who panicked at the possible "presence" of irrational numbers.... or those who doggedly pursued "phlogiston" and that "ether" that constrained the advance of science prior to Relativity, these great minds are forgetting to think in equally adapt fashion about the farmework in which their "other' thinking in terms of physics and its 'language game" is proceeding.

"With hindsight we can now see how impractical, inhibiting ideas came to dominate and distort the entire development of quantum theory. The early quantum physicists attributed to nature a limitation we can now see was simply a deficiency of contemporary thought. [Holland, 1993]

For example, in one recent popular book one reads:...there is quite a rabbit hole, indeed, to which we are led by the incompleteness of quantum theorizing.  It is not a 'complete theory" which points out to us the "incompleteness of the world around us."  On the contrary, it itself is woefully "incomplete" and insufficiently "self examined"

“Something strange is going on in physics... This weirdness is taking place in the branch of physics known as quantum mechanics... The notorious weirdness is this: In the quantum realm, particles don’t acquire some of their characteristics until they’re observed by someone. They seem not to exist in a definite form until scientists measure them.. It has caused some people to speculate that reality is subjective... that the universe is a product of our imagination.”
or the now Legendary Richard Feynman has told us all (no doubt himself having climbed the mountain and been given the tablets)

“A phenomenon which is impossible, absolutely impossible, to explain in any classical way, and which has in it the heart of quantum mechanics. In reality it contains the only mystery.”

“How does it really work? What machinery is actually producing this thing? Nobody knows any machinery. Nobody can give you a deeper explanation of this phenomenon than I have given; that is, a description of it.”

As David Bell recently commented, however,

"The problem of measurement and the observer is the problem of where the measurement begins and ends, and where the observer begins and ends. . . . I think that – when you analyse this language that physicists have fallen into, that physics is about the results of observation – you find that on analysis it evaporates, and nothing very clear is being said.”
J.S. Bell (1986, Interview in Davis and Brown’s The Ghost in the Atom)

Much of the current ambiguity and incompleteness of our world view is due to the Incredible Neglect by Physics of Alternative and more Coherent Ways of Viewing Those Phenomena. The alternatives were first presented  by De Broglie in the 1920s, in line with Einstein's view at the time and subsequently, and revived by Bohm in his Pilot Wave theories of the 1950s

Perhaps we should consider the "PIlot Wave" theorizing that is covered so well in this extensive document:
“Bohr brainwashed a whole generation of physicists into believing that the problem had been solved.” [Murray Gell-Mann]

“As for Pais and the rest of the ‘Princetitute’ what those little farts think is of no consequence to me. In the past six years, almost no work at all has come out of that place.. I am convinced that I am on the right track.” [Bohm, 1953]

“In 1952 I saw the impossible done. It was in papers by David Bohm. Bohm showed explicitly how parameters could indeed be introduced, into nonrelativistic wave mechanics, with the help of which the indeterministic description could be transformed into a deterministic one. More importantly, in my opinion, the subjectivity of the orthodox version, the necessary reference to the “observer,” could be eliminated. ... But why then had Born not told me of this “pilot wave”? If only to point out what was wrong with it? ... Why is the pilot wave picture ignored in text books? Should it not be taught, not as the only way, but as an antidote to the prevailing complacency? To show us that vagueness, subjectivity, and indeterminism, are not forced on us by experimental facts, but by deliberate theoretical choice?” [John Bell, Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics, 1987]

What has gone on since is nothing more than an example of a brutish herd instinct and societal self paralysis whereby those working in the field are too busy working to think, and those thinking in the field are too afraid to think of something "different".

Today, this alternative view of our 'world' which does not entail the kind of Alice In Wonderland excursions into alternative universes, unreality of reality. "observers" which don't and can't "observe"..and so on...is experiencing a revival
Research Interests:
It is often said that in general relativity time does not exist. This is because the Einstein equations generate motion in time that is a symmetry of the theory, not true time evolution. In quantum gravity, the timelessness of general... more
It is often said that in general relativity time does not exist. This is because the Einstein equations generate motion in time that is a symmetry of the theory, not true time evolution. In quantum gravity, the timelessness of general relativity clashes with time in quantum theory and leads to the " problem of time " which, in its various forms, is the main obstacle to a successful quantum theory of gravity

There are two kinds of people in quantum gravity. Those who think that timelessness is the most beautiful and deepest insight in general relativity, if not modern science, and those who simply cannot comprehend what timelessness can mean and see evidence for time in everything in nature.

What sets this split of opinions apart from any other disagreement in science is that almost no one ever changes their mind, there is practically no crossing camps on the issue of time.

On some days, this makes me wonder if the split is truly on scientific grounds or something deeper. But for the purposes of this essay, we will stay on the fairly hard science and I will argue that time exists and that the problem of time in quantum gravity should be seen as a paradox.

Paradoxes are usually resolved when we realize that a certain unstated assumption is lurking in the background which, under closer inspection, we see is false. 

What is the reason to believe that time does not exist, despite our obvious experience to the contrary?

I argue that the problem of time is a paradox, stemming from an unstated faulty premise.

Our faulty assumption is that space is real. I propose that what does not fundamentally exist is not time but space, geometry and gravity.

The quantum theory of gravity will be spaceless, not timeless. If we are willing to throw out space, we can keep time and the trade is worth it.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
It is argued that in order to address the mind/matter relationship, we will have to radically change the conceptual structure normally assumed in physics. Rather than fields and/or particles-in-interaction described in the traditional... more
It is argued that in order to address the mind/matter relationship, we will have to radically change the conceptual structure normally assumed in physics. Rather than fields and/or particles-in-interaction described in the traditional Cartesian order based a local evolution in spacetime, we need to introduce a more general notion of process described by a non-commutative algebra. This will have radical implications for both for physical processes and for geometry. By showing how the Bohm interpretation of quantum mechanics can be understood within a non-commutative structure, we can give a much clearer meaning to the implicate order introduced by Bohm. It is through this implicate order that mind and matter can be seen as different aspects of the same general process.
Research Interests:
We review some o f the essential novel ideas introduced by Bohm through the implicate order and indicate how they can be given mathematical expression in terms o f an algebra. We also show how some o f the features that are needed in... more
We review some o f the essential novel ideas introduced by Bohm through the implicate order and indicate how they can be given mathematical expression in terms o f an algebra.

We also show how some o f the features that are needed in the implicate order were anticipated in the work o f Grassmann, Hamilton, and Clifford.

By developing these ideas further we are able to show how the spinor itself, when viewed as a geometric object within a geometric algebra, can be given a meaning which transcends the notion o f the usual metric geometry in the sense that it must be regarded as an element o f a broader and more general pregeometry.
Research Interests:
We establish a direct connection between scattering amplitudes in pla-nar four-dimensional theories and a remarkable mathematical structure known as the positive Grassmannian. The central physical idea is to focus on on-shell diagrams as... more
We establish a direct connection between scattering amplitudes in pla-nar four-dimensional theories and a remarkable mathematical structure known as the positive Grassmannian. The central physical idea is to focus on on-shell diagrams as objects of fundamental importance to scattering amplitudes. We show that the all-loop integrand in N = 4 super Yang-Mills (SYM) is naturally represented in this way. On-shell diagrams in this theory are intimately tied to a variety of mathematical objects, ranging from a new graphical representation of permutations to a beautiful stratification of the Grassmannian G(k, n) which generalizes the notion of a simplex in projective space. All physically important operations involving on-shell diagrams map to canonical operations on permutations-in particular, BCFW deformations correspond to simple adjacent transpositions. Each cell of the positive Grassmannian is naturally endowed with "positive" coordinates α i and an invariant measure of the form i dlog α i which determines the on-shell function associated with the diagram. This understanding allows us to classify and compute all on-shell diagrams, and give a geometric understanding for all the non-trivial relations among them. The Yangian invariance of scattering amplitudes is transparently represented by diffeomorphisms of G(k, n) which preserve the positive structure. Scattering amplitudes in (1+1)-dimensional integrable systems and the ABJM theory in (2+1) dimensions can both be understood as special cases of these ideas. On-shell diagrams in theories with less (or no) supersymmetry are associated with exactly the same structures in the Grass-mannian, but with a measure deformed by a factor encoding ultraviolet singularities. The Grassmannian representation of on-shell processes also gives a new understanding of the all-loop integrand for scattering amplitudes-presenting all integrands in a novel "dlog" form which is a direct reflection of the underlying positive structure. arXiv:1212.5605v2 [hep-th]
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
ABSTRACT / OUTLINE In 2010, a startling rumor filtered through the number theory community. Apparently, some graduate student at the University of Bonn in Germany had written a paper that redid " Harris-Taylor " The 22-year-old... more
ABSTRACT / OUTLINE

In 2010, a startling rumor filtered through the number theory community. Apparently, some graduate student at the University of Bonn in Germany had written a paper that redid " Harris-Taylor " The 22-year-old student, Peter Scholze, had found a way to sidestep one of the most complicated parts of the proof, which deals with a sweeping connection between number theory and geometry.

(1) All of Western philosophy, science and civilization are founded on the initial work of Euclid and the "self evidence" of various axiomatic grasping at “truths “developed prior to Aristotelian metaphysics

(2) It is through its foundation in the tacit presupposition of Euclidean geometry that the Aristotelian metaphysics has dominated our Western thinking.  Kantian metaphysics of course which just an extension of notions of Euclidean geometry via Newtonian physics

(3) Given the fact that an alternate formulation of the relation between the discreteness of rationals and the continuous domain is now surfacing via Scholze's work,  we are curious as to how that novel notion of "closeness", not determined by Euclidian measure and independent of the geometricized “reals” will impact on thinking in science and philosophy

(4)The fact that the perfectoid approach to alternatives to discrete rationals can still provide the foundation of a calculus implies that the P-Adics ought to have a wide range of applicability to the continuous domain of science and life

(5) Perhaps the most vexing unresolved philosophical, metaphysics, scientific issue of our Western civilization today is the paradox and lack of coherent way of speaking about 'time'.  Not only in neuroscience, and in our lives, but pointedly in physics where the ultimate limits of the Euclidean model have been reached. It is not coincidental that quantum physics and relativity physics stand in the uneasy relation to each other very much as do discrete numbers and the  continuous domain  ” which is construed on the model of “reals” and there resulting difficulties

Our glaring  inability to reconcile the "instant" by instant discrete integral sense of time with the continuous domain of duration seems to be an ideal occasion for the examination of how the Scholze work and the alternative "geometry" he offers can help tackle the paradox of time.

If there is a new “bridge" not afflicted with ancient Euclidean geometric assumptions available to mediate between narratives in terms of the rationals relationship to  the continuous domain....then that bridge holds as much or more promise for the re interpretation of time as any other area it will impact

(7) For those who insist that the mathematics of today is  nothing but totally esoteric abstraction with no relevance to science or life, they should only consider how the history of science and mathematics is filled with mathematics being developed decades and centuries before its applicability was realized by scientists.

(8)The intuitive difficulty of "seeing through" the moment to the underlying nature of time,  not as a layer lower,  but in a novel sense "contained within that moment"  in a non-geometric way,  is itself an index of how tightly locked into the notion of
"time" as spatial and  Euclidean geometric.

This difficulty is not different , but of  immeasurably of  greater magnitude, than our historic inability to look out at  space and notice that the world of nature was organized everywhere around us in terms of a fractal geometry,
even while these fractals were staring us in the face for millennia.

Clearly the other “side” of adjusting our sense of “closeness” is the concordant adjustment of our sense of “vastness” implicated in each moment.
Research Interests:
Mathematics, Number Theory, Applied Mathematics, Fractal Geometry, Mathematical Physics, and 35 more
Research Interests:
A Sweeping Connection between Number Theory and Geometry In 2010, a startling rumor filtered through the number theory community Apparently, some graduate student at the University of Bonn in Germany had written a paper that redid... more
A Sweeping Connection between Number Theory and Geometry

In 2010, a startling rumor filtered through the number theory community  Apparently, some graduate student at the University of Bonn in Germany had written a paper that redid “Harris-Taylor”—a 288-page book dedicated to a single impenetrable proof in number theory—in only 37 pages.

The 22-year-old student, Peter Scholze, had found a way to sidestep one of the most complicated parts of the proof, which deals with a sweeping connection between number theory and geometry.

We read this statement from a mathematical review, “One does occasionally hear dark warnings about disciplines dominated by cliques that expand their influence by favorably reviewing one another's papers, but by and large, when a field as established and prestigious as arithmetic geometry asserts unanimously that a young specialist is the best one to come along in decades, our colleagues in other fields defer to our judgment.” -

Discussing mathematics with Scholze is like consulting a “truth oracle,” according to one mathematician . “If he says, ‘Yes, it is going to work,’ you can be confident of it; if he says no, you should give right up; and if he says he doesn’t know — which does happen — then, well, lucky you, because you’ve got an interesting problem on your hands.” .

Scholze’s work might indeed be rattling that cage in more ways than one...and letting some revolutionary aspects of our views of the world escape into expression in mathematics new formalisms.

Changing the way mathematicians “think” is a great start at changing the way we all “think”….about “everything”.

Just ask Euclid.

Or ask Turing.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Although the notion of superdeterminism can, in principle, account for the violation of the Bell inequalities, this potential explanation has been roundly rejected by the quantum foundations community. The arguments for rejection, one of... more
Although the notion of superdeterminism can, in principle, account for the violation of the Bell inequalities, this potential explanation has been roundly rejected by the quantum foundations community. The arguments for rejection, one of the most substantive coming from Bell himself, are critically reviewed. In particular, analysis of Bell's argument reveals an implicit unwarranted assumption: that the Euclidean metric is the appropriate yardstick for measuring distances in state space. Bell's argument is largely negated if this yardstick is instead based on the alternative p-adic metric. Such a metric, common in number theory, arises naturally when describing chaotic systems which evolve precisely on self-similar invariant sets in their state space. A locally-causal realistic model of quantum entanglement is developed, based on the premise that the laws of physics ultimately derive from an invariant-set geometry in the state space of a deterministic quasi-cyclic mono-universe. This dynamically invariant self-similar subset is locally homeomorphic to Z2 × R where Z2 denotes the set of 2-adic integers and R denotes a state-space trajectory, or history. Based on this, the notion of a complex Hilbert vector is reinterpreted in terms of an uncertain selection from a finite sample space of states, leading to a novel form of 'consistent histories' based on number-theoretic properties of the transcendental cosine function. For example, for a Mach-Zehnder experiment with phase angle φ, histories where cos φ and φ/π are describable by a finite number of bits are, by number theory, almost always mutually incompatible, all supplementary variables being equal. This leads to novel realistic interpretations of position/momentum non-commutativity, EPR, the Bell Theorem and the Tsirelson bound. In this inherently holistic theory-neither conspiratorial, retrocausal, fine tuned nor nonlocal-superdeterminism is not invoked by fiat but is emergent from these 'consistent histories' number-theoretic constraints. Because of finite experimental precision, experimenters have no direct control on whether cos φ is finitely describable or not. Hence, Bell inequalities are violated without constraining experimenter free will. Quantum decoherence is described by chaotic riddled-basin dynamics, leading to a natural clustering of trajectories ('measurement eigenstates') on the invariant set. The algebraically closed complex Hilbert Space and associated Schrödinger/Dirac equation arise in the singular limit when a fractal parameter N goes to infinity. Invariant set theory provides new perspectives on many of the contemporary problems at the interface of quantum and gravitational physics, and, if correct, may signal the end of particle physics beyond the Standard Model.
Research Interests:
A paper by Igor V. Volovich from the Steklov Mathematical Institute, Much of this paper makes it remarkably clear why and how P-Adic Numbers may be the best hope for reconciling the key Issues of Quantum Physics and Relativity... more
A paper by  Igor V. Volovich from the Steklov Mathematical Institute,

Much of this paper makes it remarkably clear why and how P-Adic Numbers may be the best hope for reconciling the key Issues of Quantum Physics and Relativity Theory

At the Planck scale doubt is cast on the usual notion of space-time and one cannot think about elementary particles. Thus, the fundamental entities of which we consider our Universe to be composed cannot be particles, fields or strings. In this paper the numbers are considered as the fundamental entities. We discuss the construction of the corresponding physical theory. A hypothesis on the quantum fluctuations of the number field is advanced for discussion. If these fluctuations actually take place then instead of the usual quantum mechanics over the complex number field a new quantum mechanics over an arbitrary field must be developed. Moreover, it is tempting to speculate that a principle of invariance of the fundamental physical laws under a change of the number field does hold. The fluctuations of the number field could appear on the Planck length, in particular in the gravitational collapse or near the cosmological singularity. These fluctuations can lead to the appearance of domains with non-Archimedean p-adic or finite geometry. We present a short review of the p-adic mathematics necessary, in this context.
Research Interests:
A finite realistic theory of multi-qubit physics is proposed based on the assumed primacy of a fractal-like geometry IU in cosmological state space. The primacy of IU dictates a non-Euclidean metric gN in state space, closer to the p-adic... more
A finite realistic theory of multi-qubit physics is proposed based on the assumed primacy of a fractal-like geometry IU in cosmological state space. The primacy of IU dictates a non-Euclidean metric gN in state space, closer to the p-adic of number theory, making the proposed theory non-classical though deterministic and locally causal. Using symbolic representations of IU incorporating quaternionic structure, a novel representation of the Dirac equation is derived. The processes of decoherence and measurement are defined by divergence and clustering of trajectory segments on IU. Overall this leads to a geometric picture whereby trajectory segments on IU have fractal helical structure. A statistical description of such helical structure is provided by complex Hilbert vectors with rational squared amplitudes and rational complex phase angles. Hilbert vectors without such rational attributes are ontically undefined. Niven's theorem and gN together provide a number-theoretic basis for a realistic descriptions of quantum complementarity, and of the GHZ state, the sequential Stern-Gerlach experiment, the Leggett-Garg inequality and the Bell Theorem. Quantum theory arises as a singular limit at p = N = ∞. Such a finite theory may be more capable of synthesis with general relativity theory than is quantum theory.
Research Interests:
A new law of physics is proposed, defined on the cosmological scale but with significant implications for the microscale. Motivated by nonlinear dynamical systems theory and black-hole thermodynamics, the Invariant Set Postulate proposes... more
A new law of physics is proposed, defined on the cosmological scale but with significant implications for the microscale. Motivated by nonlinear dynamical systems theory and black-hole thermodynamics, the Invariant Set Postulate proposes that cosmological states of physical reality belong to a non-computable fractal state-space geometry I , invariant under the action of some subordinate deterministic causal dynamics D I. An exploratory analysis is made of a possible causal realistic framework for quantum physics based on key properties of I. For example, sparseness is used to relate generic counterfactual states to points p / ∈ I of unreality, thus providing a geometric basis for the essential contextuality of quantum physics and the role of the abstract Hilbert Space in quantum theory. Also, self-similarity, described in a symbolic setting, provides a possible realistic perspective on the essential role of complex numbers and quaternions in quantum theory. A new interpretation is given to the standard 'mysteries' of quantum theory: superposition, measurement, non-locality, emergence of classicality and so on. It is proposed that heterogeneities in the fractal geometry of I are manifestations of the phenomenon of gravity. Since quantum theory is inherently blind to the existence of such state-space geometries, the analysis here suggests that attempts to formulate unified theories of physics within a conventional quantum-theoretic framework are misguided, and that a successful quantum theory of gravity should unify the causal non-Euclidean geometry of space-time with the atemporal fractal geometry of state space. The task is not to make sense of the quantum axioms by heaping more structure, more definitions, more science fiction imagery on top of them, but to throw them away wholesale and start afresh. We should be relentless in asking ourselves: From what deep physical principles might we derive this exquisite structure? These principles should be crisp, they should be compelling. They should stir the soul. Chris Fuchs (Gilder 2008, p. 335)
Research Interests:
The results of this paper show how fractal geometry and computability theory are related. A relationship between the classical theory of computation and fractal geometry is established with Iterated Function Systems being used as tools... more
The results of this paper show how fractal geometry and computability theory are related.  A relationship between the classical theory of computation and fractal geometry is established with Iterated Function Systems being used as tools to define fractals. 

We were led to it by the papers by Palmer we have posted here, in which a new interpretation is given  to the standard ‘mysteries’ of quantum theory: superposition, measurement, non-locality, emergence of classicality and so on.  It is proposed that heterogeneities in the fractal geometry  are manifestations of the phenomenon of gravity.

This older work by Dube, referenced expressly by Palmer,  is part of the demonstration that  that these three scientifically rich disciplines  computability, fractal geometry, and complex systems are closely related.  They are then synthesized in the argument for Invariant Set Theory as a novel basic for Quantum Theorizing.

Here they show  that the invariant sets of iterated function systems emulate the non-halting states of Turing machines, and that undecidable problems in the classical theory of computation have a corresponding geometric interpretation.

This paper  by Dube was motivated by a conjecture by Penrose in his book  that the Mandelbrot set is undecidable under any reasonable model of computation over the real numbers. He speculated that fractals might be a graphical way of looking at non-recursive mathematics. Penrose (1989) has given arguments for why non-computability might lie at the heart of fundamental physics

Palmer's papers,  building on this finding, propose  that the undecidability of the  invariant sets provides the fundamental basis for quantum uncertainty, i.e.uncertainty as to whether or not a specific quantum state vector can be associated with an underlying sample space.

Since quantum theory is inherently blind to the existence of such state-space geometries, the analysis by Palmer suggests that attempts to formulate unified theories of physics within a conventional quantum-theoretic framework are misguided, and that a successful quantum theory of gravity should unify the causal non-Euclidean geometry of space–time with the atemporal fractal geometry of state space . 

The intuitive fact that fractals are complex objects is made precise in this present paper, from a computational point of view , by proving that there do not exist algorithms to answer certain simple questions about fractals.

They show here that iterative methods can simulate the workings of a Turing machine and hence produce complicated sets. The Turing machine provides the role of a dynamical system and the fractal image associated with it encodes its "chaotic" set (the words which are not accepted by the Turing machine and may lead to an infinite behavior in which the machine never halts).

For every Turing machine there exists a fractal set which can be viewed, in a certain sense, as geometrically encoding the complement of the language accepted by the machine. One can build a fractal-based geometrical model of computation which is computationally universal.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Background: Vitamin D deficiency has been described as being pandemic, but serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] distribution data for the European Union are of very variable quality. The NIH-led international Vitamin D Standardization... more
Background: Vitamin D deficiency has been described as being pandemic, but serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] distribution data for the European Union are of very variable quality. The NIH-led international Vitamin D Standardization Program (VDSP) has developed protocols for standardizing existing 25(OH)D values from national health/nutrition surveys. Objective: This study applied VDSP protocols to serum 25(OH)D data from representative childhood/teenage and adult/older adult European populations, representing a sizable geographical footprint, to better quantify the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in Europe. Design: The VDSP protocols were applied in 14 population studies [reanalysis of subsets of serum 25(OH)D in 11 studies and complete analysis of all samples from 3 studies that had not previously measured it] by using certified liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry on biobanked sera. These data were combined with standardized serum 25(OH)D data from 4 previously standardized studies (for a total n = 55,844). Prevalence estimates of vitamin D deficiency [using various serum 25(OH)D thresholds] were generated on the basis of standardized 25(OH)D data. Results: An overall pooled estimate, irrespective of age group, ethnic mix, and latitude of study populations, showed that 13.0% of the 55,844 European individuals had serum 25(OH)D concentrations ,30 nmol/L on average in the year, with 17.7% and 8.3% in those sampled during the extended winter (October-March) and summer (April-November) periods, respectively. According to an alternate suggested definition of vitamin D deficiency (,50 nmol/ L), the prevalence was 40.4%. Dark-skinned ethnic subgroups had much higher (3-to 71-fold) prevalence of serum 25(OH)D ,30 nmol/L than did white populations. Conclusions: Vitamin D deficiency is evident throughout the Euro-pean population at prevalence rates that are concerning and that require action from a public health perspective. What direction these strategies take will depend on European policy but should aim to ensure vitamin D intakes that are protective against vitamin D deficiency in the majority of the European population. Am J Clin Nutr 2016;103:1033-44.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
WHO declared SARS-CoV-2 a global pandemic. The present aim was to propose an hypothesis that there is a potential association between mean levels of vitamin D in various countries with cases and mortality caused by COVID-19. The mean... more
WHO declared SARS-CoV-2 a global pandemic. The present aim was to propose an hypothesis that there is a potential association between mean levels of vitamin D in various countries with cases and mortality caused by COVID-19. The mean levels of vitamin D for 20 European countries and morbidity and mortality caused by COVID-19 were acquired. Negative correlations between mean levels of vitamin D (average 56 mmol/L, STDEV 10.61) in each country and the number of COVID-19 cases/1 M (mean 295.95, STDEV 298.7, and mortality/1 M (mean 5.96, STDEV 15.13) were observed. Vitamin D levels are severely low in the aging population especially in Spain, Italy and Switzerland. This is also the most vulnerable group of the population in relation to COVID-19. It should be advisable to perform dedicated studies about vitamin D levels in COVID-19 patients with different degrees of disease severity.
Research Interests:
Cathelicidins are host defense peptides with antimicrobial and immunomodulatory functions. These effector molecules of the innate immune system of many vertebrates are diverse in their amino acid sequence but share physicochemical... more
Cathelicidins are host defense peptides with antimicrobial and immunomodulatory functions. These effector molecules of the innate immune system of many vertebrates are diverse in their amino acid sequence but share physicochemical characteristics like positive charge and amphipathicity. Besides being antimicrobial, cathelicidins have a wide variety in immunomodulatory functions, both boosting and inhibiting inflammation, directing chemotaxis, and effecting cell differentiation, primarily towards type 1 immune responses. In this review, we will examine the biology and various functions of cathelicidins, focusing on putting in vitro results in the context of in vivo situations. The pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory functions are highlighted, as well both direct and indirect effects on chemotaxis and cell differentiation. Additionally, we will discuss the potential and limitations of using cathelicidins as immunomodulatory or antimicrobial drugs.
Research Interests:
Introduction: Decreased production of cathelicidin antimicrobial protein-18 (hCAP18) has been proposed to be a key mechanism linking decreased 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25D) levels with adverse outcomes among critically ill patients. However,... more
Introduction: Decreased production of cathelicidin antimicrobial protein-18 (hCAP18) has been proposed to be a key mechanism linking decreased 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25D) levels with adverse outcomes among critically ill patients. However, few studies in humans have directly assessed plasma hCAP18 levels, and no study has evaluated the association between hCAP18 levels and adverse outcomes among critically ill patients. Methods: We performed a single-center, prospective cohort study among 121 critically ill patients admitted to intensive care units (ICUs) between 2008 and 2012. We measured plasma hCAP18, 25D, D-binding protein, and parathyroid hormone levels on ICU day 1. The primary endpoint was 90-day mortality. Secondary endpoints included hospital mortality, sepsis, acute kidney injury, duration of mechanical ventilation, and hospital length of stay. Results: ICU day 1 hCAP18 levels were directly correlated with 25D levels (Spearman's rho (r s) = 0.30, P = 0.001). In multivariate analyses adjusted for age and Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II (APACHE II) score, patients with hCAP18 levels in the lowest compared to highest tertile on ICU day 1 had a 4.49 (1.08 to 18.67) greater odds of 90-day mortality, and also had greater odds of sepsis. ICU day 1 levels of other analytes were not associated with 90-day mortality.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Macrolide antibiotics have been shown to act as immunomodulatory molecules in various immune cells. However, their effect on neutrophils has not been extensively investigated. In this study, we investigated the role of macrolide... more
Macrolide antibiotics have been shown to act as immunomodulatory molecules in various immune cells. However, their effect on neutrophils has not been extensively investigated. In this study, we investigated the role of macrolide antibiotics in the generation of neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs).

By assessing ex vivo and in vivo NET formation, we demonstrated that clarithro-mycin is able to induce NET generation both in vitro and in vivo.

These NETs are decorated with antimicrobial peptide LL-37. Clarithromycin-induced NETs are able to inhibit Acinetobacter bau-mannii growth and biofilm formation in an LL-37-dependent manner.

Additionally, LL-37 antimicrobial function depends on NET scaffold integrity. Collectively, these data expand the knowledge on the immunomodulatory role of macrolide antibiotics via the generation of LL-37-bearing NETs, which demonstrate LL-37-dependent antimicrobial activity and biofilm inhibition against A. baumannii.
Research Interests:
As part of the innate host response neutrophils release neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs), protein:DNA complexes that contain a number of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), such as cathelicidin. Human catheli-cidin in its active form,... more
As part of the innate host response neutrophils release neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs), protein:DNA complexes that contain a number of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), such as cathelicidin.

Human catheli-cidin in its active form, LL37, has potent antimicrobial activity against bacteria. However, whether LL37 derived from NETs contributes to antimicrobial activity against intracellular pathogens remains unclear.

Here, we report that NETs induced by mycobacteria contain cathelicidin. Human macrophages internalized NET-bound cathelicidin, which is transported to lysosomal compartments.

Furthermore, using a model of in vitro-generated LL37:DNA complexes we found that LL37 derived from such complexes attacks mycobacteria in macrophage phagolysosomes resulting in antimicrobial activity.

Taken together, our results suggest a mechanism by which LL37 in complex with DNA contributes to host defence against intracellular bacteria in human macrophages.
The only promising research we see is usually NOT done by medically 'mis-trained and insufficiently educated" bureaucrats in academic corporate hierarchies. It is increasingly appearing in journals produced by those involved in AI,... more
The only promising  research we see is usually NOT done by medically 'mis-trained and insufficiently educated" bureaucrats in academic corporate hierarchies.  It is increasingly appearing in journals produced by those involved in AI, machine learning, and the newer variants of AI that are called 'deep learning" and even those which rely on models such as the 'tensor graphics" to push even further out of the darkness which beclouds medical science today.

We ,sadly, only rarely see "medical research'  which Is not glaringly incompetent and ill informed such as this direct and strikingly relevant documentation of much common sense and various medical facts of which the researcher were not even aware but which consolidate their point.

If left in the hands of the medical experts at Academic cloisters chanting their hari hari Krishna mantra of 'placebo, controlled, double-blind" trials we only get astonighingly moronic 'crap'. Yes I 'm speaking of Columbia University here, or the NIH, or Cambridge...and the rest of the intellectual eunuchs working in academia and presenting the public horse manure as 'medical research".

As has long been known in the physical science,  that science has been saved from being mired in the bottomless quicksand of ordinary language verbiage only by mathematical thinking of a sufficiently abstract kind to enable some intelleigent 'modeling" and consolidation of conjectures to be verified.  As Einstein put it, language use is the very last step of the process when the publication or explanation in some 'cartoon form' is needed. 

Richard Feynman echoed the same sense of the distraction by means of ordinary language from underlying events which could easily be 'described" in any of numbers linguistic modes, with none of them any more content than the others, when only viewed in terms of the concrete excretions of language use.

Here we have a direct confrontation with the obvious facts of life which, however, have seemed far from obvious to the theological approach of those who have preempted for themselves (with taxpayer funding) the prerogatives of shepherding our flock through the travails of an ever increasingly complex world.

We applaud them and now encouraged them to look into very available basics of Vitamin D physicology and biochemistry in the body. These aspects are spelled out everywhere, although the medical researcher seems unable or unwilling to have learnt from them

Vitamin D is the very direct basis of the production of the crucial 'granules' within our innate immune cells (yes, the ones which are sabotaged by the corona virus).

The granules,  LL-37, are perhaps the most potent anti microbial force in nature, developed over billions of years by bacteria and rickettsia to fend off viruses and phages. Without Vitamin D, there are no such granules. Without sufficient wavelengths of sunlight there is no Vitamin D. Period. Then there is no power to the function of the neutrophils beyond their initial phagocytosis.

The so called NETS about which we have written would not be efficacious since the granules which are released during the generation of these 'neutrophilic extracellular traps" would not be there.  End of story.

We have posted as well about how it is that a chloroquine based treatment can provokes such a controlled 'nuclear option" where the explosive is a composite of LL-37 and the chromatin of the self destructed nucleus of the infected cell.

We have posted how macrolides, of which Azithromax, is the most recently developed exemplar, are found to be associated with the release of significant amounts of LL-37 in the killing of various microbes.

That is, presumably, one good reason why those who are not chanting in isolated prayer in their medical research cloister are advocating the use of Azithromax to assure the potency of the NETs along with the hydroxychloroquine to help precipitate the 'NETS" as so essential in the first stages of the corona infection.

Again, in this research on Vitamin D, the intellectual battle must be fought by those outside the "church" , those who are prepared to indulge in the blasphemous rejection of the devout 'know nothing" blind every which way 'clinical trials' designed by ignorant and poorly trained apes. 

We have used the iconic Planet of the Apes in some of our memes.  Please do some reading on the actual science involved in the Covid 19 battlefield and tell us that this is not a planet where our expertise in medicine and , increasingly, other areas is run as 'pretend science" by pretending 'apes' who pretend to have read what they have not, and have never even seen the Statue of Liberty which our laxness helped destroy while empowered simians to run our lives..... Simians who now are second rate imitations of 'AI"...while the real AI is more akin to that intuitive, creative impulse that only comes from being outside the monastery. monkey house antic have  the apes

in the meantime, ironically, it is the computational scientists who are bringing us back to the innate ability to reason and act which we share with the bacteria and viruses of this world.

Computation today is not some dim and dimwittedly professed imitation of the  fiction of 'mind" or 'thinking' by some 'machine",  but it is close and ever closer to the real thing, the processes of 'biology" which have allowed evolution  and which every day allow for intelligent action----although one would never suspect that from any observational study of the medical research bozos such as those at Columbia University or the NIH
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Finally, the awareness of the sabotaging of the demonstration of the impact of Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin on the nature of the Covid-19 Infection and Innate Immune Response is beginning to breakthrough the 'fog" of the... more
Finally, the awareness of the sabotaging of the demonstration of the impact of Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin on the nature of the Covid-19 Infection and Innate Immune Response is beginning to breakthrough the 'fog" of the bureaucratic expert caste.

The importance of Vitamin D status of either prevention or the worsening of infection is now he first step in beginning to understand how the innate immune response of our neutrophils is dependent on Vitamin D levels.

Without those levels, the patients will suffer more intense disease and how hydroxychloroquine will be impeded in its chances of providing effective treatments.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
MINERALOCORTICOID RECEPTORS in the Brain: The Key to Inability to Cope with Stress, Memory Loss, and, MAJOR DEPRESSION and, oh yes, the SUICIDE EPIDEMIC in the Transgender Community ! ! Why, because they are the first line of defense... more
MINERALOCORTICOID RECEPTORS in the Brain: The Key to Inability to Cope with Stress, Memory Loss, and, MAJOR DEPRESSION

and, oh yes,  the SUICIDE EPIDEMIC in the Transgender Community ! !

Why, because they are the first line of defense that allows proper coping with stress (and cortisol) in both the HIPPOCAMPUS and the AMYGDALA  and ultimately they are directly indicated in facilitating neurogenesis. Below are 16 Research Publications cited. We selected only a few comments verbatim from each. Truly they are a revelation

But first a word about something that the renowned Hans Selye said once, a long, long time ago, but which bears repeating.  We often speak about people being exposed to”stress”.  The first thing this understanding of the MR receptors might show us is how right Selye was when he said, “Stress is not what happens to us, but it is how we react to events in the environment”

Medical researchers themselves have been puzzled, shocked and astonished at how crucially  important to most things in life is the MR (mineralocorticoid receptor...including all our brain function).  They will talk about “stress” but they will show us that when the MR receptor is not working or blocked or not genetically normal, our reaction to events will be very different. And part of that reaction will be augmented and even uncontrolled cortisol activation in situations which don’t require it and a spiral of increasing depression.

It is also crucial to realize that with this neuroscience concern, as with ALL neuroscience concerns, ultimately the causation and thus the remediation depends on neurogenesis in the SVZ and the Dentate Gyrus.  In this instance, the MR receptor status and the actions of Aldosterone at the MR receptors are crucial in the modulation of ongoing neurogenesis that occurs every day in every way in the Amygdala and Hippocampus.
Research Interests:
Endocrinology, Neuroscience, Neuropsychology, Developmental Psychopathology, Memory (Cognitive Psychology), and 35 more
Research Interests:
Trans Women Cannot Achieve Cis Female Breast Appearance through HRT, but the failure of the Transition Remediation is Ignored by Trans Organizations who do not Press for adequate Medical Insurance Coverage. Researchers followed 229... more
Trans Women Cannot Achieve Cis Female Breast Appearance through HRT, but the failure of the Transition Remediation is Ignored by Trans Organizations who do not Press for adequate Medical Insurance Coverage.

Researchers followed 229 people transitioning from male to female for one year after they started taking what's known as cross-sex hormones. Only 21 of the trans women attained a bra size of an "A" cup or larger after one year of hormone therapy, the study found.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This essay is really two essays…two threads which entwine. They arise from two distinct motives. One is the need as neuroscientists o begin to grasp the many implications of the striking discovery of the multifaceted functional role... more
This essay is really two essays…two threads which entwine. They arise from two distinct motives.

One is the need as neuroscientists o begin to grasp the many implications of the striking discovery of the multifaceted functional role of the meninges, in particular as to how we already realize that a host of neuropsychiatric disorders can arise from the loss of functionality of the structures within those membranes.

This new finding from Finland will reverberate with increasing force in the coming years as it further clinches the key intersection of the neurological with the immunological, and will often as yet unimagined avenues for developing our awareness of how these two heretofore seemingly only tangentially related domains synergize so intimately.

Currently there is a critical situation whereby the Transgender Guidelines Organizations such as WPATH and the physicians working with them continue to either recommend or prescribe cyproterone with damages the tissues within the Meninges by causing a less than maximally malignant tumor growth, a meningioma, in the tissues within the meninges

The situation we cover in this essay is as follows:

Trans organizations and medical professionals foolishly and incorrectly believe that anti androgens are necessary aspect of Transition for the Trans Person

In the United States they use Spironolactone, but in Europe they realize it is toxic so they don’ t use it.  Instead they use Cyproterone, but in here we realize that it is toxic so we don’t use it . 

However many in the Us and elsewhere obtain various transition medications and hormones online…because they are less expensive and because they can’t debate endlessly with poorly educated physicians

It has been known for some time now that Cyproterone can and often does lead to a relatively benign cancerous growth in the Brains’ meninges…

More over, the takin go f cyproterone is known to be frequently accompanied by extreme cognitive/emotional disturbance.

There is some indication that stopping the cyproterone will result in a remission of the tumor, that is, no further growth of aberrant cells within the tissues of the meninges.

Very Recently European health agencies have stopped using it for some purposes and where it continues they insist now on regular MRI scans to make sure that the tumor’s are not growing and out of control.

However over the past few years, neuroscientists have realized that the meninges are not simply protective layers or membranes surrounding the brain, but contain within them a crucial system of lymphatic circulation vessels which are necessary to clear the fluids in the brain on a regular basis, in fact intensely every night.

They also realize that when these lymphatic drainage vessels are not working well…as in aging…the fluids in the brain tend to accumulate proteins such as amyloid which are associated with dementia and Alzheimers

When the meninges experience tumorous growth of dysfunctional cells within that of necessity will disrupt the vessels within them and disrupt the lymphatic clearance process which is part of our immune systems’ function. and so that has to impact on the assumption of Alzheimer’s and cognitive deficit causing proteins and other substances

Ceasing the dosage of cyproterone is like patching a hole in a dike once the flood waters have come in and damaged the homes and property within insofar as the proteins that were not cleared have been there and whatever damage they have done over the years to the cognitive function cells have already been done.

Thus taking of cyproterone can, depending on the person, cause a deterioration in cognitive function in less than a year that might otherwise build up over aging and lead to dementia only in later life

So this means that even if these tumors caused by Cyproterone are monitored (rather preposterously, in fact, with brain MRI) once they are found, even if the Cyproterone administration is ceased and the tumors stop growing, there is no telling how much damage to the underlying neurons and cognitive function cells has already been caused.

So that the taking of Cyproterone is a recipe for accelerated and irreversible cognitive decline and dementia

The Trans organizations such as WPATH are fully aware of this, and continue to recommend dispensing Cyproterone and do not even make any effort to warn Trans persons of the serious risks to their future well-being  and health.
Research Interests:
RUTIN: Quite possibly a wonder drug for those relying on Estradiol Hormone Replacement and concerned about the risk of Venous Clotting and Deep Venous Thrombosis (DVT) Even though the risk of DVIT it is much more minor than the scare... more
RUTIN:

Quite possibly a wonder drug for those relying on Estradiol Hormone Replacement and concerned about the risk of Venous Clotting and Deep Venous Thrombosis (DVT) 

Even though the risk of DVIT it is much more minor than the scare produced by the Women’s Health Initiative of 2002-3 and virtually non existent if transdermal Estradiol is used, this flavonoid should be considered

It is, readily available and inexpensive, actually works without the adverse side effects of Aspirin, and unlike Aspirin, which is primarily useful for preventing clotting in the arteries, Rutin works both in the Veins and Arteries.  Additionally, as time goes by, various other medical benefits of Rutin are being discovered.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
There has been a vast amount of new understanding of how hormone receptors… and progesterone and estradiol receptors, in particular work. This has only occurred in the past ten or less years….and is, of course, now available to more... more
There has been a vast amount of new understanding of how hormone receptors… and progesterone and estradiol receptors, in particular work. This has only occurred in the past ten or less years….and is, of course, now available to more directly critique the Progesterone use and Progesterone cycling situation. Naturally none of this actually legitimate and revealing research is taken into account in most of the HRT pronouncements…or research methodology….or guidance offered as " guidelines' for either genetic or trans women One interesting fact in all this is that the manner in which Progesterone and Estrogen act…and do so in puzzling fashion for researchers up until recently….is very much analogous in all the various areas in which there is. puzzlement, dispute , and then the state of being " utterly lost " and blind-guessing that results, including metabolism and obesity , osteoporosis, breast development…and of course cognitive reactions to the moment….and just about any and every tissue of the body when it affords the opportunity for further research and thinking. This of course implies, not earthshakingly, that all or most of the tissues of the body have something in common. Now it may be some wondrous and mysterious magical quality that renders the problems of progesterone and estrogen and how they
Research Interests:
Neuroscience, Gender Studies, Sexual and Reproductive Health, Gender History, Transgender Studies, and 49 more
Research Interests:
THE “MALE BRAIN” vs the “FEMALE BRAIN” Curioser and Curiouser : “MALE BRAIN” vs “FEMALE BRAIN” Why the "Male Brain vs Female Brain" question is Nonsense ---which leads to nonsense of a more mundane sort by the Press: “Our results”,they... more
THE “MALE BRAIN” vs the “FEMALE BRAIN”

Curioser and Curiouser : “MALE BRAIN” vs “FEMALE BRAIN”

Why the "Male Brain vs Female Brain" question is Nonsense ---which leads to nonsense of a more mundane sort by the Press:

“Our results”,they report, “ demonstrate that regardless of the cause of observed sex/gender differences in brain and behavior (nature or nurture), human brains cannot be categorized into two distinct classes: male brain/female brain.”

"Here we show that, although there are sex/gender differences in brain and behavior, humans and human brains are comprised of unique “mosaics” of features

For those who are curious about how bad logic leads to bad science...which leads to even worse news coverage: the current media inflation and then apparent deflation of the "Male Brain" vs the 'Female Brain"

Russell, who has been compared by those who knew men as somewhat of a “Mad Hatter” himself,  said during the first decades of the twentieth century (It should sound awfully reminiscent of this inadvertent  "nonsense" by the researchers in this study:

"Suppose that we suggest the definition

A typical Englishman is one who possesses all the properties possessed by a majority of Englishmen.

It is clear that most Englishmen do not possess all the properties that most Englishmen possess.

Therefore, a typical Englishman, according to this definition, should be untypical.

The problem, according to Russell, is that the word “typical” has been defined by a reference to all properties and has been treated as itself a property.

The ‘mosaic”, for Darwin,  did not serve as a dodge to providing an answer to a conveniently posed “nonsense” question. Instead it is the means of finding a bonafide  answer to a  more useful question more genuinely posed.

It is nowhere more sadly true that where the advent of wonderful technologies and refinements of sciences have shown neuroscientists a "mosaic" within our brains on a cellular and molecular level beyond anything we might have dreamt of, and which points us to the moon and beyond, these researchers just haplessly point to the mosaic, the finger rather than the moon.

Or, then again, as Wittgenstein, who was, by the way, a huge fan of Carroll’s, “Alice in Wonderland”, said,  in his Philosophical Investigations: 

My aim here has been " to show you how to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense.”
Research Interests:
Researchers have recently found that a hormone in the brain, (appropriately) called kisspeptin, drives both attraction to the opposite sex and sexual behavior. Here, we demonstrate that neurons controlling ovulation in the mammalian brain... more
Researchers have recently found that a hormone in the brain, (appropriately) called kisspeptin, drives both attraction to the opposite sex and sexual behavior. Here, we demonstrate that neurons controlling ovulation in the mammalian brain are at the core of a branching neural circuit governing both mate preference and copulatory behavior. In many animals, sexual behavior is timed to occur with ovulation to ensure the highest possible chance of fertilization and therefore, continuation of the species. Until now, little was known about how the brain ties together ovulation, attraction and sex. Now we know that a single molecule-kisspeptin-controls all
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) in young postmenopausal women is a safe and effective tool to counteract climacteric symptoms and to prevent long-term degenerative diseases, such as osteoporotic fractures, cardiovascular disease,... more
Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) in young postmenopausal women is a safe and effective tool to counteract climacteric symptoms and to prevent long-term degenerative diseases, such as osteoporotic fractures, cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus and possibly cognitive impairment. The different types of HRT offer to many extent comparable efficacies on symptoms control; however, the expert selection of specific compounds, doses or routes of administration can provide significant clinical advantages. This paper reviews the role of the non-oral route of administration of sex steroids in the clinical management of postmenopausal women. Non-orally administered estrogens, minimizing the hepatic induction of clotting factors and others proteins associated with the first-pass effect, are associated with potential advantages on the cardiovascular system. In particular, the risk of developing deep vein thrombosis or pulmonary thromboembolism is negligible in comparison to that associated with oral estrogens. In addition, recent indications suggest potential advantages for blood pressure control with non-oral estrogens. To the same extent, a growing literature suggests that the progestins used in association with estrogens may not be equivalent. Recent evidence indeed shows that natural progesterone displays a favorable action on the vessels and on the brain, while this might not be true for some synthetic progestins. Compelling indications also exist that differences might also be present for the risk of developing breast cancer, with recent trials indicating that the association of natural progesterone with estrogens confers less or even no risk of breast cancer as opposed to the use of other synthetic progestins. In conclusion, while all types of hormone replacement therapies are safe and effective and confer significant benefits in the long-term when initiated in young postmenopausal women, in specific clinical settings the choice of the transdermal route of administration of estrogens and the use of natural progesterone might offer significant benefits and added safety.
Research Interests:
Accepting estrogen after a sex-confirming operation improves brain connections, a key to memory, learning and emotions in transsexual women. Estradiol strengthens connections between areas of the brain involved in fine motor skills,... more
Accepting estrogen after a sex-confirming operation improves brain connections, a key to memory, learning and emotions in transsexual women. Estradiol strengthens connections between areas of the brain involved in fine motor skills, learning, emotions and sensory perception, according a study to be presented Monday at ENDO 2019, the Endocrine Society's annual meeting in New Orleans, La. This not only shows that trans-women have to maintain hormone therapy after surgery, but also highlights the deep link between hormones and brain connectivity.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
In the history of medicine, no single drug has been so singularly attacked by the media, World Health Organization, government officials and institutional health experts as hydroxychloroquine. Approved as a “safe and cost-effective”... more
In the history of medicine, no single drug has been so singularly attacked by the media, World Health Organization, government officials and institutional health experts as hydroxychloroquine. Approved as a “safe and cost-effective” essential medicine by the WHO, CDC and regulatory authorities across Europe, hydroxychloroquine has been prescribed to millions of patients over the past 65 years. Despite decades of known safety, hydroxychloroquine was labelled “dangerous” and a “poisonous substance” after showing promise as a therapeutic for COVID-19.

Many attribute this negative publicity to anti-Trump sentiment from mainstream media outlets including CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, New York Times and Huffington Post. This thesis does not entirely hold up to scrutiny though. President Trump named both hydroxychloroquine and Gilead’s remdesivir as a “game changer” in his breaking March 19th press conference.

There are promising therapies produced by Gilead, and that’s remdesivir. Remdesivir. And that’s a drug used for other purposes that’s been out and has had very good results for other purposes, but it seems to have a very good result, having to do with this virus...So you have remdesivir and you have chloroquine and hydro- — hydroxychloroquine. So those are two that are out now, essentially approved for prescribed use. And I think it’s going to be very exciting. I think it could be a game changer...Very powerful. They’re very powerful.

- President Donald J. Trump, March 19th, 2020. 11:31 AM EDT [1]

At the time of the press conference, there was only in vitro evidence of remdesivir’s effectiveness against SARS-CoV-2. No clinical trial existed showing remdesivir to be effective. [2] The preliminary results from the NIH clinical trial were not available until over a month later on April 29. [3] The evidence of its efficacy primarily stemmed from a few in vitro studies that included an article published in the Nature-owned journal Cell Research. Interestingly, the Nature publication demonstrated that both remdesivir and chloroquine were effective against SARS-CoV-2, stating “remdesivir and chloroquine are highly effective in the control of 2019-nCoV infection in vitro.” [4] While there was only in vitro evidence of successes with remdesivir, there was both in vitro and clinical evidence of hydroxychloroquine’s efficacy. [5] Nevertheless, scientists, including Dr. Fauci, as well as the WHO and media outlets worldwide criticized Trump for providing false hope on the therapeutic effect of hydroxychloroquine while staying quiet about remdesivir.

It’s possible that the effort to undermine hydroxychloroquine may have even begun months prior to Trump’s announcement. Chloroquine was first shown to have strong antiviral effects on SARS-CoV infection in primate cells back in the 2005 publication Chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection. [6] Pharmaceutical companies were likely aware that if hydroxychloroquine was shown to be effective against SARS-CoV-2 it would diminish the value of patented therapeutics or vaccines. Through lobbying efforts, regulation may have been the first step to control the availability of hydroxychloroquine.

This may have been what occurred in France. Hydroxychloroquine was available without prescription in France for years. This came to an end on January 13, 2020, when hydroxychloroquine was classified “in all its forms” as a “list II poisonous substance.” [7] After decades of widespread use, hydroxychloroquine quickly became a restricted substance in France in the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Just several weeks later, Dr. Didier Raoult in the South of France would report his landmark clinical trial demonstrating hydroxychloroquine’s efficacy against COVID-19. [5]

Why was hydroxychloroquine—a drug safely used for over half a century—aggressively labelled dangerous while an HIV medication with an unknown safety profile got a pass? Herein I outline the evidence showing hydroxychloroquine to be a direct threat to Gilead’s success as well as the massive sphere of influence Gilead has over government taskforces, the World Health Organization, medical journals, academic institutions and research scientists. These organizations provided ammunition for the media’s war on doctors prescribing hydroxychloroquine.

Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of the NEJM, writes in"The Truth About the Drug Companies"

"Now primarily a marketing machine to sell drugs of dubious benefit, this industry uses its wealth and power to co-opt every institution that might stand in its way, including the U.S. Congress, the Food and Drug Administration, academic medical centers, and the medical profession itself."

Read this full text detailed discussion and weep.

Or better yet...ACT.

-
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
see expanded revised and updated version (above) dated May 6... more
see expanded revised and updated version (above) dated May 6

https://www.academia.edu/42955978/CORONA_VIRUS_JUST_a_MATTER_of_TIME_The_Disease_is_US_and_not_the_Virus_-_CHLOROQUINE_TRUMP_Fake_News_and_Clinical_Trials_by_BRAZILIAN_BUFFOONs

The BRAZILIAN BUFFOONs” Pretend
to Conduct a TRIAL of HYDROXY-CHLOROQUINE

How fake News Can Kill Thousands and Fan the Flames of Holocaust Throughout a Society

Yet we all remain paralyzed silent and simply waiting for doom to strike....harder yet...

The Mantra of today is "there's nothing we can do"?
Research Interests:
Pandemic Covid-19 pneumonia, of SARS-CoV-2 ae ology, presents an existen al threat to health care systems globally. Mul ple therapeu c and prophylac c agents are currently undergoing clinical trial, including 23 clinical trials of... more
Pandemic Covid-19 pneumonia, of SARS-CoV-2 ae ology, presents an existen al threat to health care systems globally. Mul ple therapeu c and prophylac c agents are currently undergoing clinical trial, including 23 clinical trials of (hydroxy)chloroquine in China. While progress towards a cura ve agent or vaccine is promising, the principal limi ng factor in public health emergency is me, and therefore a pre-exis ng licensed therapeu c would o,er reprieve to health care systems opera ng at the edge of capacity. In this brief communica on, the author argues that Covid-19 has high probability of being more than a disease of pneumonia, and that cri cal Covid-19 pa ents may be experiencing a form of acquired acute porphyria. Readily available interven ons exist to treat acute porphyria and the posi on is advanced that urinalysis of cri cal Covid-19 pa ents would diagnose this pathology.
A głowiono compendium on the real science behind the clinical efforts of today's medicine...with a focus on Corona Virus and how it reveals the inadequacy of our medicine in almost every area....for the very same reasons which are... more
A głowiono compendium on the real science behind the clinical efforts of today's medicine...with a focus on Corona Virus and how it reveals the inadequacy of our medicine in almost every area....for the very same reasons which are illustrated by the Corona fiasco.
This is a fantastic and clear explanation of what 'NETS" are by one of the pioneers in the development of that concept These are 'Neutrophilic Extracellular Traps". Neutrophils are known as the core of the 'innate immune systems". ... more
This is a fantastic and clear explanation of what 'NETS" are by one of the pioneers in the development of that concept These are 'Neutrophilic Extracellular Traps".

Neutrophils are known as the core of the 'innate immune systems".  They are our 'first responders" to any imminent medical holocaust. 

Until we begin to look at this novel and powerful system as the battlefield where the Corona Virus and other pathogens seek to defend themselves against us and achieve their end goal of perpetuating their own reproductive cycle at our expense, we will have no idea how to cope with them.

All the various 'clues' that we have been given point to NETS, 'Neutrophilic Extracellular Traps" as the battlefield.

These powerful products of our neutrophils are essentially a nuclear option against the pathogens. As such they do whatever they can to prevent that explosive death of the neutrophil that will ensnare them 

For the Neutrophil, 'dying is their life".  They are produced by the billions each day and live no more than a day or two. Their mission is to chemotactically arrive on the scene as our 'first responders".

They have two stages of eliminating pathogens. The first is by means of 'phagocytosis", essentially incorporating the microbe into a contained area with themselves and then lysing it with toxic substances that the neutrophil carries within its various granules.

If that fails, the neutrophil, as has recently been discovered. can commit a heroic suicide by engaging in the creation of 'neutrophilic extracellular traps".

This entails taking its own DNA and extruding it from its nucleus and mingling it with various granules it has stored; then dying and releasing these fibrous "traps" of DNA/chromatin bound to granular protein, especially LL-37  (a Vitamin D derivative) and hopefully finalizing the threat.

For bacteria and viruses, their goal of survival entails first avoiding, by whatever means they have, the phagocytosis efforts and then countering the next move of the neutrophils, their death by NETosis. 

To attempt this, they seek to manipulate the communications between mitochondria and the cell  so as to stall the Neutrophil in a limbo known as "autophagy" while the microbe can continue to reproduce and spread.

Viruses are bacteria have evolved over millions of years as each others nemeses, long before we were on the scene, thus the virus is naturally inclined to maniupulate the mitochrondira and by means of that to in turn manipulate the entire cell which is driven by the mitochondria and their needs.

The essential treatment for Corona Virus infection is to assure that once the phagocytosis fails....which it often does...that the neutrophils are not stalled from their productive and special death with its Neutrophilic Extracellular Trap creation...which releases the remarkable power of their own DNA to act as a potent immune system weapon against microbes.

We would not be surprised if the CRISPR technology which is now surfacing with so much promise is not an aspect of the manner in which DNA/chromatin sections can be used productively to kill viruses...as they have been used for millennia, apparently, by bacteria.

In summary

• Previous smoking habit is highly associated with the dire effects of Corona Infection....and it also  leads to a maladaptive tendency towards' "autophagy" which renders those persons'  neutrophils unable to engage in "NETosis " and create "NETS""t

• Smokers neutrophils seem to have phenotypically altered over the course of their previous smoking habit so that they are unable to properly engage in their intense first line of defense, phagocytosis (via NADPH mechanisms). 

Normally, the generation of the ROS products via phagocytosis is a prerequisite for the subsequent death via NETosis....if that first neutrophilic weapon has not worked to eliminate the pathogen

•It has however been found that even when the initial phagocytosis does not occur, that if system can be induced downstream to generate ROS, then NETosis is still possible.

• Chloroquine is known to be an "autophagy preventer" in that it can serve to rescue the neutrophil system from being stuck in  'autophagy" and thus precipitate the creation of 'NETS.  It seems to achieve a mobilization of the NET trap system even though phagocytosis has not succeeded

It appears that it is optimal to administer chloroquine early, in the initial period only after the first phagocytosis efforts of the neutrophil system  but  before the virus has seized the opportunity, by manipulating the communications between mitochondria and the cell, to spread and do maximum damage.

•Chloroquine's role as a countermeasure to the stalling of the Neutrophil system in some sort of autophagy limbo AFTER an infection has already occurred tells us why it has failed as a preventive (in previous bad research by the so called 'experts") and why it may be harmful to take it prophylactically

• The population which has been dying from Corona virus infection have consistently  been skewed towards Males t (although this may be partially due to the previous tendency to smoke among men).  However, it has also been been found that estradiol helps females generate  "NETS" via the estrogen beta receptor as well as. G protein receptor

• Azithromycin (and likely other macrolides)  can interfere with mitochondrial ribosome function and thus  help the generation of 'NETS" when the mitochondria are forced into failure. Additionally the viral gambits meant to manipulate the mitochondrial/cellular communications and signals are  also disarmed.

• Notably, among the results of Clarithromycin treatment of various diseases is the increase in visibility of LL-37, an anti-microbial peptide, stored in the secondary granules of Neutrophils, which is a key component of 'NETS" and, perhaps the central one, by means of its cationic binding to chromatin strands and enabling their joint toxicity to microbes

• importantly, this powerful antimicrobial  LL-37 is produced from Vitamin D which in turn is produced by our skin cells from exposure to UV light from sunshine.  Its role as a key component of NETS speaks to the need for proper Vitamin D levels PRIOR to or at the very outset of infections.

• the fact that chloroquine works synergistically with zinc suggests that the zinc overload enabled by the chloroquine may be propelling the neutrophils' mitochondria into a collapse/status which also contributes to the otherwise prevented NETosis"
Research Interests:
The Story of Our Civilization and of Our Minds "As long as the brain is a mystery, the universe, the reflection of our brain, will also be a mystery'-Ramon Y Cahal What we see in the video here , from which we present four still frames... more
The Story of Our Civilization and of Our Minds "As long as the brain is a mystery, the universe, the reflection of our brain, will also be a mystery'-Ramon Y Cahal What we see in the video here , from which we present four still frames below, is not simply an interesting graphic, or an illusion, or a metaphor for something else or a mathematical/geometrical curiosity...but this graphic shows us much, much more. It demonstrates, perhaps, the most fundamental underlying aspect of how our brains engage in their 'Minding" and the foundational aspect of all that we 'experience" in this world of ours. At the same time what we "see" here is at the bottom of the puzzlements of the quantum physics/relativity irreconcilability.
Research Interests:
The Story of Our Civilization and of Our Minds "As long as the brain is a mystery, the universe, the reflection of our brain, will also be a mystery'-Ramon Y Cahal What we see in the video here , from which we present four still frames... more
The Story of Our Civilization and of Our Minds "As long as the brain is a mystery, the universe, the reflection of our brain, will also be a mystery'-Ramon Y Cahal What we see in the video here , from which we present four still frames below, is not simply an interesting graphic, or an illusion, or a metaphor for something else or a mathematical/geometrical curiosity...but this graphic shows us much, much more. It demonstrates, perhaps, the most fundamental underlying aspect of how our brains engage in their 'Minding" and the foundational aspect of all that we 'experience" in this world of ours. At the same time what we "see" here is at the bottom of the puzzlements of the quantum physics/relativity irreconcilability.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This is a vastly expanded version of our first draft which was posted here a few days ago. We begin a thorough re-examination of Julian Jaynes historical book.....and the beginning of raising the quesiton of just how much more truth... more
This is a vastly expanded version of our first draft which was posted here a few days ago.

We begin a thorough re-examination of Julian Jaynes historical book.....and the beginning of raising the quesiton of just how much more truth there was in what he proposed than we understood at the time.... 

Several no doubt radical ideas are proposed on escaping the reliance on undefined notions of language use  and  of  f consciousness  and , then, of developing more adequate definitions and understandings of these two notions.

A culture of neuroscience and philosophy...and the worst of both worlds...'neuro=philosophy' was unable to understand what he was saying 50 years ago. Some of that chronic disability of the academic mind is still with us today.
At that time, before so much new awareness of our brains 'minding', Jaynes, himself, could only point to the horizon but was not able to take us closer to the clarification of his thesis. 

Ultimately we are certain that his thesis will be proven to be more 'right' than 'wrong'...

In this draft, we begin to outline the path towards integrating consciousness and language use.
"Of course, if water boils in a pot, steam comes out of the pot and also pictured steam comes out of the pictured pot. But what if one insisted on saying that there must also be something boiling in the picture of the... more
"Of course, if water boils in a pot, steam comes out of the pot and also pictured steam comes out of the pictured pot.

But what if one insisted on saying that there must also be something boiling in the picture of the pot?"

                                                                                                ------ Wittgenstein
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
We shall seek to draw comparisons about how we have struggled as a civilization via explorations in the foundations of mathematics, to have confidence in regard to how mathematical sense has allowed us engage in 'constructions' that are... more
We shall seek to draw comparisons about how we have struggled as a civilization via explorations in the foundations of mathematics, to have confidence in regard to how mathematical sense has allowed us  engage in 'constructions' that are part of such actions...Similarly we shall see if we can  justify or somehow derive confidence in the ongoing cognitive constructions embodied in the workings of our language and the ‘language games” of Wittgenstein, which we feel are still not fully appreciated in terms of their vast reach and scope.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
updated version of an earlier draft
Research Interests: