It really drives you insa-a-a-a-ane

Hernandez-Gonzalez M, Guevara MA, Agmo A (2008). Motivational influences on the degree and direction of sexual attraction. Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 1129: 61–87

Motivation can be defined as a class of central nervous processes determining the likelihood of display of a behavior and the intensity of the behavior if displayed. All behavior is, according to this definition, caused and controlled by motivation. Although the concept of motivation eventually could be replaced by an entirely mechanistic explanation of the causes of behavior, in terms of neural events, such explanations would be overly complex for everyday use. This is particularly the case with regard to the momentaneous fluctuations in the intensity of a behavior, like those occurring during copulation in rats. Thus, the concept of motivation will remain useful even when mechanistic explanations become available. Even though the propensity to perform sexual responses is determined by sexual motivation, another element is required for the execution of such responses. This other element is an appropriate stimulus, a sexual incentive. For a male rat, an appropriate incentive could be a sexually receptive female. For a human, it could be a mental representation of a sexual partner. The incentive activates approach behaviors, and the intensity of these behaviors will be determined by motivation and by the quality of the incentive stimulus, its attractivity. Much work has been done with the purpose of identifying the nature of the incentive stimulus or stimuli emitted by rats and other mammals. While visual stimuli seem to be of limited importance, auditory and particularly olfactory stimuli have been found to have incentive properties. Soluble chemicals may be important for some aspects of copulation, but copulatory motor patterns are basically under the control of tactile stimuli. The processing of sexual incentives in the rat brain has been studied with electroencephalographic techniques, and data show that the prefrontal cortex (PFC) participates in the identification of sexual incentives. Furthermore, there are important differences between the medial and orbital frontal cortices. The medial PFC, as well as the ventral tegmental area, also seem to participate in the generation of pelvic thrusting.

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If this doesn't eradicate creationism at all, the world will probably go to pot

Via my friend Bill.

Bacteria Make Major Evolutionary Shift in the Lab

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Great ape personhood

www.greatapeproject.org

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Architeuthis peezeemyers

...has been discovered lurking somewhere in Lake Superior. It is the first species of squid known to reside in the Midwest.

Catch footage of it here, along with one of its three offspring:




Spore may not be strictly an evolution game, but it features it as a theme. Spore is about the biological pressures on a species. Check out the Creature Creator.

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A short history of human civilization

Contains some gore and genitals. May not want to maximize this if at work.

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LOLPLoS

Via A Blog Around the Clock, the LOLPLoS submissionfest.

Science is awesome. Science humor is nearly as awesome.

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The stupidity of dignity

Via EvolutionBlog, an article on the stupidity of dignity, which is a much-needed topic to discuss.

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Florida sucks, and the evolutionary significance of amusing gastric phenomena .

Florida should not be a state.

Luckily, however, we have one more piece of evidence to add to the already-quite-massive amount of evidence for evolution: hernias, farts, and hiccups prove we evolved.

Farts: our surprising ally in the quest for a more reasonable America.

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A rant on funding, again

We need a science White House. At this point, I am almost past caring whether it is Democratic (though I would prefer a Democratic White House) or Republican (OH SWEET REASON NO), I just want them to give more money to the NIH and NSF. The Department of Defense doesn't need all the crap it gets. No military in the world is nearly as technologically advanced as ours.

The reason I say this is because there is good research that is getting tossed by the wayside because it doesn't have enough money or there are laboratories that cannot afford to hire an adequate number of researchers.

For example, John McCain showed his ignorance of all but the most obvious research when he made a snide comment about a bear DNA investigation that was part of investigating ecological dynamics in a key species. McCain is a man who has no understanding of science, although we can't fault him more than a reasonable amount because he's not science-educated.

There are plenty of PhDs who are unemployed because of the shortage of fundings. GrrlScientist is an ornithologist who has been unemployed for the past while, for example, and she delivers an interesting and rather exquisite rant on her own unemployment.

This is research not getting done because of governmental ignorance. How much development would we have had if Bush was not in office? Let's think of research topics that might be done if the government gave us more money:

- topics concerning keystone species which are vital to their environment
- research into rare diseases
- more investigation of the neural bases of intelligence
- MORE STEM CELL RESEARCH

There is also a lamentable lack of science education. We American-born scientists (in this number are also counted mathematicians, computer scientists, and engineers in addition to biology, chemistry, physics, and medicine) are a small bunch; apparently, we have to import the rest of our colleagues from Asia and Europe because the vast majority of the rest of you can't be arsed to have as motivation for your job anything other than money. I don't give a flying crap how much I earn as long as I'm doing neuroscience; I would live in a space similar to my friend Bill's crusty old attic if I had to (although with sufficient weatherproofing and maybe a space heater).

We would have more American-born scientists if the vast majority of the aforementioned rest of you stopped being greedy and had some discipline and actually knew something about science. (Interestingly, this reminds me of a discussion I had at Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics at UW-Madison, the atheist group that I am a member in, when we were talking about the theists' so-called 'miracles'. None of the theists who were arguing this point - I say this because the only theist who usually sides with us, my friend Rachel the Spinozan panentheist, is as far as I know majoring in science and wasn't really participating in the conversation, and the theists I personally know who are scientists are comparably sane to my fellow scientist atheists - were majors in science, and Chris, Nick, Travis and I, who are all science majors and all atheists - well, Chris is also a philosophy major - were using probably the most substantive arguments which arise mainly from science to argue that the rather fundamentalist theists were full of shit, and our arguments apparently went over their heads - they apparently went over the heads of the other atheists, too.)

And no, we're not going to resort to framing and marketing it like some sort of product. Is the American public really this stupid?

Seriously, if it gets much worse, I WILL bail on the United States after I get my PhD, as one more scientist who takes their talent to where it will be acknowledged. You can say hello to me in Amsterdam.

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Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins is coming to Wisconsin next week! I bought a ticket and will be showing up in the scarlet letter A t-shirt from his website. Also, AHA is doing a table there. I am excited, and will be bringing my The God Delusion book in the hope of getting it signed by Richard Dawkins, who is one of my heroes.

I encourage all of you to visit the OUT Campaign website, where there is a bunch of good merchandise for purchase.

We watched a documentary on the Dover trial last night, and it provided a glimpse into how ignorant people can be - even Michael Behe, a surprisingly credentialed biochemist (surprisingly credentialed as in 'how the fuck did he get his credentials?'.), who apparently thinks the bacterial flagellum did not evolve from the poison spine on Yersinia pestis when the author of the only article he cited to make his statement says the flagellum DID evolve from the poison spine.

I have an idea. It is a radical one, but one that I think needs to be implemented.

Require that every college student takes a full year of biology, chemistry, and physics. Require everyone who teaches anything, from the university level down to the elementary level, to have a PhD. Abolish religious schools (it is abominable to brainwash young people). Require that every citizen get a college education, and support them when they have familial or financial hardship. (This includes the Amish - I don't give a shit what they think about education and their imaginary friend, we do not need uneducated people running around the country.)

If we can make our university system anything similar to the Irish university system in this respect, where anyone who has the ability can go to college there, that would be a big step.

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