ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 321

Brain Stimulation Is All the Rage—But It May Not Stimulate the Brain

By Helen Shen

Noninvasive brain stimulation is having its heyday, as scientists and hobbyists alike look for ways to change the activity of neurons without cutting into the brain and implanting electrodes. One popular set of techniques, called transcranial electrical stimulation (TES), delivers electrical current via electrodes stuck to the scalp, typically above the target brain area. In recent years a number of studies have attributed wide-ranging benefits to TES including enhancing memory, improving math skills, alleviating depression and even speeding recovery from stroke. Such results have also spawned a cottage industry providing commercial TES kits for DIY brain hackers seeking to boost their mind power.

But little is known about how TES actually interacts with the brain, and some studies have raised serious doubts about the effectiveness of these techniques. A study published on February 2 in Nature Communicationsups the ante, reporting that conventional TES techniques do not deliver enough current to activate brain circuits or modulate brain rhythms. The electrical currents mostly fizzle out as they pass through the scalp and skull. “Anybody who has published a positive effect in this field is probably not going to like our paper,” says György Buzsáki, a neuroscientist at New York University and a senior author of the study.

The mechanisms behind TES have remained mysterious, in part because without penetrating the skull, researchers cannot measure neural responses while they apply stimulation. Conventional TES methods produce electrical noise that swamps any brain activity detected on the scalp.

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Record number of scientists running for office in 2018

By Julia Manchester

At least 200 individuals with backgrounds in science, math, engineering and technology have launched bids for state House seats across the country, according to HuffPost.

The number marks the largest number of scientists to run for office in modern history.

The PAC 314 Action told the outlet that the candidates were running in elections for 7,000 state legislature seats.

“The sheer number is really astonishing,” the group’s founder, Shaughnessy Naughton, told the outlet.

The PAC’s membership expanded from 4,000 to 400,000 in 2017. 

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Iowa Considers ‘License to Discriminate’ Bill, Plus Restroom Restrictions

By Trudy Ring

Iowa lawmakers are considering a couple of anti-LGBT bills – a “religious freedom” measure that could allow widespread discrimination and a “bathroom bill” limiting access for transgender people.

State Sen. Dennis Guth, who has a history of homophobic statements, introduced Senate Bill 2154, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, Thursday. It is designed to give individuals a defense when accused of violations of state or local law for actions related to their exercise of religion, “including any action that is motivated by a sincerely held religious belief, whether or not the exercise is compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief,” according to the bill’s text.

“What we have now is we have the freedom to worship as long as you’re worshiping at your church all by yourself. … You’re allowed to have your faith as long as you keep it to yourself, where we really should be able to openly carry our faith,” Guth, a Republican, told the Des Moines Register last month as he was preparing the legislation.

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Iowa Rep. Won’t Back Qur’an Classes in School Because “The Bible is Different”

By Hemant Mehta

Iowa State Rep. Skyler Wheeler is the anti-science legislator who, last year, co-sponsored a bill that would have required public school teachers who taught evolution, global warming, the origins of life, or human cloning to “include opposing points of view or beliefs relating to the instruction.” Even when there was no credible opposing point of view. If a teacher taught climate change, Wheeler wanted her to teach climate denial, too.

The bill died in committee, thankfully, but Wheeler wasn’t done arguing with people about it. The graduate of Pat Robertson‘s Regent University kept pushing his anti-science ideas on Facebook and deleting any criticism.

Wheeler’s latest attempt at making Iowa as ignorant as he is comes in the form of House File 2031, which he co-sponsored and which we’ve written about before. It would allow public schools to teach classes on the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament in order for students to learn (among other things) of their influence on “law, history, government, literature, art, music, customs, morals, values, and culture.”

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Next ‘Serious leadership’ not a ‘pandering hairdo’: Secular group schools Eric Trump on founding principles of America

By Sarah K. Burris

The Freedom from Religion Foundation is trolling Eric Trump after the president’s son made an appearance on “Fox & Friends” Wednesday demanding people clap for his father.

“I mean, [congressional Democrats] didn’t stand for anything,” Trump whined. “When he said ‘In God We Trust’ — when my father mentioned ‘In God We Trust,’ the guiding principle of this country, no one stood. … I think it’s actually very sad, I think it’s sad. There are things as Americans we should be united on and if we can’t be united on God…”

The FFRF called the comments nothing more than “ahistorical incoherence.” The guiding principle of the United States might differ from person to person. For over 150 years, the defacto motto of the USA was “E pluribus unum,” which means, “Out of many, one.” The idea was when the 13 colonies joined together as a united group of states to form one nation. It wasn’t until the mid 1950s when “In God We Trust” became the official motto as a means of distinguishing itself from communism and the former Soviet Union.

“Americans are not now, nor have we even been, ‘united on God,’” FFRF said in the letter to Trump.

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Physicists harness twisted mathematics to make powerful laser

By Davide Castelvecchi

Researchers have exploited the twisty nature of topological physics to produce a high-quality beam of laser light — a step that could lead to the first practical application of this burgeoning field. A team of physicists describes its device, and the theory behind the technology, in two studies1,2 published on 1 February in Science.

The demonstration “brings topological photonics substantially closer to real applications”, says Marin Soljačić, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

Topology is a branch of mathematics that studies shapes and their possible arrangements in space — from simple knotted loops to the higher-dimensional universes of string theory. Since the 1980s, physicists have discovered a number of states of matter that derive odd properties from topological phenomena, such as the way that magnetization — pictured as a field of arrows — winds around a material. (Some of the founders of the field received the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics.)

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Mississippi Bill Forcing Teachers to Recite the Ten Commandments Daily Is Dead

By Hemant Mehta

Well, that didn’t take long.

A Mississippi Democrat’s bill to force teachers to recite the Ten Commandments at the beginning of every school day is dead, a mere 15 days after being introduced.

House Bill 1100, sponsored by State Rep. Credell Calhoun, would have amended the law by requiring a moment of silence at the beginning of every school day (rather than keeping it optional), requiring a copy of the Ten Commandments to go up in every classroom (in addition to the already-required “In God We Trust” signs), and requiring teachers to say the Ten Commandments (unless they opted out of it).

I have no idea why Calhoun thought kindergartners needed a daily reminder not to commit adultery, but nothing in the bill was useful or constitutional. Had it passed, it would likely have been the subject of lawsuits from various church/state separation groups.

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Alabama lawmakers again consider church daycare regulations

By The Associated Press

Alabama lawmakers are holding a public hearing on legislation that would allow the state to inspect church-affiliated day cares.

The House Children and Senior Advocacy Committee on Tuesday will discuss the proposal to allow the inspections at least once yearly. The centers would also have to submit insurance proof and the names of workers and their criminal histories.

Alabama for years has exempted faith-based facilities from licensure and regulations such as maximum child-to-worker ratios. Nearly half of the 1,914 day cares in the state claim the religious exemption.

Exempt centers have come under increasing scrutiny after recent incidents.

A 5-year-old in Mobile died last year after being left inside a van. Eighty-six children were sickened in 2015 at a Montgomery facility after eating food that had been left out overnight.

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Creationist dinosaur program stirs controversy

By Deron Molen

EFFINGHAM, Ill. (WAND) — For Jeanette Bushur’s kids, dinosaurs are dynamite. But this past Saturday, she says they got more than they bargained for at Central Grade School in Effingham.

“[They said] tyrannosaurus rexes ate vegetables,” Bushur said. “[They said] there were dinosaurs with Noah on the ark and that evolution was a myth.”

A dinosaur exhibit on creationism.

“We thought it would be something like a museum that you could walk through and see individual exhibits,” Bushur’s boyfriend Daniel Douglas said.

The Creation Truth Foundation put on the event at Central as well as another presentation at Christ’s Church in Effingham.

“I think it was something that was done with the best intentions and we definitely appreciate that,” Douglas said. “We were just not expecting it to be what it was.”

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How Mike Pence expanded Indiana’s controversial voucher program when he was governor

By Valerie Strauss

This is the second of three pieces about school “reform” in Indiana, where Vice President Pence was governor from 2013 to 2017 and pushed policies to expand school choice.

The choice program started in 2011, when Mitch Daniels was governor, and continued under Pence, who drove an effort to expand charter schools and loosen eligibility requirements to expand the voucher program’s reach. A Washington Post story on Indiana’s voucher program, published in December 2016, said in part:

Indiana lawmakers originally promoted the state’s school voucher program as a way to make good on America’s promise of equal opportunity, offering children from poor and lower-middle-class families an escape from public schools that failed to meet their needs.

But five years after the program was established, more than half of the state’s voucher recipients have never attended Indiana public schools, meaning that taxpayers are now covering private and religious school tuition for children whose parents had previously footed that bill. Many vouchers also are going to wealthier families, those earning up to $90,000 for a household of four.

The first post looked at the roots of the reform program in Indiana under then-Gov. Mitch Daniels, and this one discusses Pence’s role in the expansion of vouchers, as well as the misuse of public tax dollars in Indiana’s charter and voucher sector. Pence’s support for vouchers and other school choice programs is shared by President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

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