I have been having a 140 character discussion with Ciarán Brewster (@macbruski) via twitter.  And while it’s kind of interesting to force complex subject matter into very few characters, it is limiting the discussion, so I will summarize it so far here and hopefully others can weigh in too. ...

In “Game Theory: Can a Round of Poker Solve Afghanistan’s Problems?” Major Richard J.H. Gash creates a simple two player game to show how game theory can be used to influence military planning. Gash’s game involves two villages in Afghanistan with the choice to either support the...

Despite hundreds of billions of dollars appropriated for cancer research, as well as the efforts of thousands of the world’s best minds, progress in preventing or curing cancer has been almost non-existent. I find this unacceptable. We should be doing better. We need to be doing better. So what’s...

Many users, and friends of users of marijuana report experiencing a “contact high.” That is, they purport to experience some of the effects of marijuana simply by being in contact with or around those using marijuana. Virtually all users wrongly attribute this experience to the inhalation of...

Yesterday, from the Director of the National Cancer Institute, addressing one of the two largest cancer research conferences of the year: NCI commenced a series of workshops that began to bring aspects of the physical sciences to the problem of cancer. We discussed how physical laws governing short-range and...

I remember reading this Wired article in 1998 suggesting that the “debunking” of cold fusion may have been way premature.  Last night, 60 Minutes did a pretty convincing piece claiming that more than 20 labs around the world have reported “excess heat” from cold fusion...

As I’ve made clear before, I remain skeptical that carbon emissions pose a significant marginal threat of climate change. The likely climate sensitivity to CO2 is substantially less than the natural variability over human timescales.  Seeing as how temperature trends over geologic time scales are...

The import of this talk goes way beyond the specific and stunning work that Bassler and her team have done on quorum sensing.  In my mind, this is the prototype for good biological...

I happened to come across two interesting posts with Singularity implications that I thought you might be interested in.  First, the Singularity Hub reports that Osiris has a promising phase II trial underway for a treatment that uses foreign stem cells to repair the muscle damage from heart attacks.  If...

One of my favorite talks of all time is Ken Robinson’s on how children are born naturally innovative and the process of schooling and growing up in our society beats it out of them by the time they are adults.  More recently, Elizabeth Gilbert (of Eat Pray Love fame) opened some eyes with this talk on...

As I mentioned in this post, one of the three primary planks of my worldview is that, “…the human brain is a woefully inadequate decision making substrate.” I started adopting this posture in graduate school and have refined it with constant input from the cognitive psychology and...

Via a post at the always terrific Watts Up with That, a pre publication version of this paper examines the non-linear coupling dynamics of the climate. Its hypothesis is based on the mathematics of synchronized chaos (sorry, no good introductory link available). ...

Debbie Maier asks us on the Upcoming Topics page to address Crohn’s Disease. I don’t know too much about it except that it’s an autoimmune disease and has a complex, multi-causal etiology and pathology.  In my reading on autoimmune diseases in general there seems to be a direct link...

Whenever I have a question about health matters that is too complex for an MD or academic researcher to get right, I ask Kevin.  Nobody I know has a better combination of broad-based current knowledge of the primary literature, plus a whole-system view and understanding of compex dynamics, plus the...

Gary Marcus says he’d like for there to be a course on metacognition for kids: Call it “The Human Mind: A User’s Guide,” aimed at, say, seventh-graders.  Instead of emphasizing facts, I’d expose students to the architecture of the mind, what it does well, and what it...

I try not to practice false modesty (those of you who know me well probably just did a spit take at that understatement).  So while I try to stand up and admit when I’m wrong, I also like to stand up and point out where I’m right. It shouldn’t be a surprise to any of you that I came to the...

In the comments to this post, Rafe and Daniel asked me to tell them the punch line of Lightness of Being.  I’ll do my best.  Spoilers ahead. ...

I apologize for the posting lull.  I’ve had a bad cold and been struggling to add Monte Carlo simulation to my discrete stochastic model of the startup lifecycle (if anyone is planning on using Oracle’s Crystal Ball, I can tell you the good and bad). But I’m almost finished with my next...

Here is the scariest image in all of cancer: Graph from Fortune Magazine article. ...

Click here to read part 4 in this series. As 2008 closes, it appears that momentum is picking up for the somatic evolution view of cancer.  Here are three recently published papers of note: The Evolution of Cancer (Goymer, et al, Aug 2008, Nature) Cancer Research Meets Evolutionary Biology (Pepper, et al,...

@ Yahoo! Video The reason I like this talk so much (besides that it’s well-presented) is that it introduces us to the idea of invisible etiology.  Such a powerful concept, one that I feel has the power to help us solve so many mysteries, once we take it seriously. Something that I’ve been...

This is from a recent Seed Magazine article.  Click on the image to enlarge...

The following is a recent paper by Henry Heng published in JAMA.  I’ve linked concepts mentioned in the paper to corresponding explications from this blog. JAMA. 2008;300(13):1580-1581. The Conflict Between Complex Systems and Reductionism Henry H. Q. Heng, PhD Author Affiliations: Center for...

[ I'm asking for your help in answering this question, read past the fold to see how ] In my post on invisible etiology, I challenged us all to be as open-minded as possible when dealing with our most complex problems, for this is the only way to make the invisible become visible.  Here’s where I...

One of the most poignant moments of this year’s Pop!Tech for me — which, BTW had many — was Gary Slutkin’s talk on the idea of violence being a virus.  You may have heard about his work in stopping violence in Chicago in a NY Times Magazine cover article earlier this year.  The...