Volcanic clouds have silver linings. But not all is Eyjafjallajokull. There's more on who owns genes. Also, how to improve your brain. Really.
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EVEN VOLCANIC CLOUDS HAVE SILVER LININGS. You may think you know enough about the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland, but you might still profit from a look at Eruptions, the volcanism blog from geologist Erik Klemetti. He calls the Eyjafjallajokull Event one of the most fascinating in recent memory. That's partly because it's been what he calls a "wired" eruption that people could enjoy — or cuss — 24/7, not just with TV coverage, but the panoply of communications technology, ranging from satellite images to webcams.
Perhaps more important, he says, is the coming political fallout from disruption of air traffic. Decisions to shut down air travel were based largely on models because that's the tool prognosticators have. But models, as science writers have reason to know, are imperfect at best. One bright spot is that there may be increased willingness to spend money to make them better.
Klemetti links to a post by John Leyden at The Register describing how the challenge of spelling Eyjafjallajokull has stymied 'Net scammers. Not that it hasn't posed a challenge for the rest of us, too, getting all those consonants to line up in the correct order. Blessings forever upon the unsung genius who has saved our collective bacon billions of times by inventing copy-and-paste.
At Xchange, the Nightly Business Report blog, Steven Horwitz lists economic benefits resulting from Eyjafjallajokull's antics. The big boost to the lodging industry and money spent on cleanup, for instance. He intends irony, but I wonder. It must be true that British Airways's loss is the Dorchester's gain. And I am gobsmacked to learn that John Cleese spent $5100 on a taxi ride from Oslo to Brussels. Who knew that you could even get from Oslo to Brussels by taxi? I suspect ferries figured into the transit arrangements.
At Green Economics, a blog from the Christian Science Monitor, economist Matthew Kahn mulls over some research projects that might grow out of the eruption. An especially useful one would be to study whether this kind of particulate matter damages human health. He thinks it might also be possible to accumulate data relevant to geo-engineering claims that particulates in the atmosphere could reduce global warming by blocking sunlight. Jason Goldman at The Thoughtful Animal urges studies of pregnant women in Iceland to track effects on children — especially cognitive effects.
And Larry Greenemeier at SciAm's Observations describes how scientists are already swinging into action, using weather balloons and miniature lasers to measure ash plumes over Scotland. In Denmark researchers are tracking the ash plume across their country with light detection and ranging technology (lidar.}
WHO OWNS YOUR GENES? PART II. The Havasupai Indians, who live in the Grand Canyon, have settled their $75 million lawsuits against Arizona State University and some of its researchers for $700,000. The researchers began in 1990 to study Havasupai blood samples mostly for genetic clues to their high rate of diabetes, but also used the blood to study other things, like mental illness, degree of inbreeding, and clues to the tribe's migration from Asia to Arizona.
At issue was whether the researchers got informed consent to study the samples. The tribe argued they hadn't, which they deny. Nature's Rex Dalton has a long post at the Great Beyond that describes intriguing side tales, accusations, and juicy counter-accusations that are a regular water-muddying feature of long-running litigation.
Because the suit was settled out of court, it may have no bearing on the DNA ownership questions posed by the recent gene patenting decision discussed here a couple weeks ago. But the suit also makes clear that "ownership" is not only a matter of who profits financially. Also at stake are folks' beliefs about their origins and kin relationships, which may be contradicted by the genetic evidence. Those issues are explored a bit by Razib Khan at a Discover blog; see also the comments.
One casualty may be genetic research. Dispelling the suspicion that these ethnic gene ownership hassles have engendered is not simply a matter of researchers being a lot more careful to explain to subjects what the research is about and to get truly informed consent to participate. This litigation alerts other potential groups of study subjects, making them suspicious of researchers' motives and less likely to sign up.
That may mean geneticists will lose opportunities to study the world's few remaining isolated human populations. Those groups possess unique gene variants that can answer questions on everything from disease prevention and treatment to human evolution. But the global village is absorbing everybody, and they will not remain isolated genetically for long.
HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR BRAIN. Haven't seen much in the MSM about the great big Nature study showing that online games designed to boost specific cognitive abilities like attention, memory, and reasoning ability do improve the particular abilities but don't generalize to improve any of the others. Fortunately, there's been high-quality bloggery about it.
Obviously it would be delightful to be able to improve one brain skill while simultaneously improving others — cognitive scientists call this "far transfer." But it has never been demonstrated convincingly, and there are a lot of studies showing that it doesn't work. This here's another one. Because of its size, some 11K study subjects, it's a pretty big deal. I guess we can draw some comfort from its clear demonstration that, with respect to a specific skill, Grandma was right: Practice does make perfect.
Both Ed Yong at Not Exactly Rocket Science and >Steven Novella at Science-Based Medicine explain this study well. And both emphasize the stickiest aspect of brain-training: It is a commercial enterprise with huge profit potential — and thus a home for what are at best unproven claims and sometimes outright scams. Even though there are folks in the brain-training industry who want very much to keep it honest and are trying to do real research on their products. And good luck to them.
Here's the way to really improve your brain, although you may not want to hear it. There is solid evidence that one activity does boost cognitive function overall. It's exercise.
