Let's talk about science.

Jeff gives us word of this Wired article describing races around the country in which scientific issues may play a major role.

Also, some may be interested in joining Scientists and Engineers for America, a group formed in September to lobby for good scientific policy.

Science has several articles of interest this week. First, on our recent topic of Pentecostals and speaking in tongues, some scientists at U. Penn have put some Pentecostals in MRIs to see what parts of the brain are activated when people get the spirit in them. Turns out, it's not an activation of the brain so much as a inactivation of the frontal cortex.

In each case, the scientists gave the subjects an intravenous injection of a radioactive tracer that provided, in effect, a freeze-frame of which brain areas were most active during the behavior, as indicated by increased blood flow. This was captured by then scanning the women's brains in a single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) machine.

Glossolalia produced a significantly different pattern of brain activity than singing, the team reports in the November issue of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging. Perhaps the most important difference was a decrease in frontal lobe function, Newberg says. "The part of the brain that normally makes them feel in control has been essentially shut down." Another notable change was increased activity in the parietal region--the part of the brain that "takes sensory information and tries to create a sense of self and how you relate to the rest of the world," Newberg says. The findings make sense, says Newberg, because speaking in tongues involves relinquishing control while gaining a "very intense experience of how the self relates to God." Interestingly, he notes, the glossolalia responses were the opposite of those seen in subjects in a meditative state. When people meditate on a particular sacred object, Newberg has found that their frontal lobe activity increases, while their parietal activity goes down. This conforms with the notion that in meditation one has a controlled focus while losing a sense of self.

Science also reports that marine biodiversity is suffering, and they predict a collapse of the worlds fisheries by 2048 if measures aren't taken to correct these trends.

Our data highlight the societal consequences of an ongoing erosion of diversity that appears to be accelerating on a global scale (Fig. 3A). This trend is of serious concern because it projects the global collapse of all taxa currently fished by the mid–21st century (based on the extrapolation of regression in Fig. 3A to 100% in the year 2048). Our findings further suggest that the elimination of locally adapted populations and species not only impairs the ability of marine ecosystems to feed a growing human population but also sabotages their stability and recovery potential in a rapidly changing marine environment.

The data are pretty scary, lots of lines that are showing exponential decreases in populations.

This week has also been interesting in terms of science about extending life. First it was extending life by not eating. Then it was by consuming the equivalent of 100 bottles of wine in resveratrol to extend life. Now, Science reports we can extend life by lowering core body temp.

So that's it people, the secret to longevity. Not eating, drinking enough booze to kill you, and being cold all the time. Life would certainly seem longer.

In JCI, they are discussing the future of drug innovation. Basically they're saying what Marcia Angell's been saying for years, drug companies don't innovate. And to instill innovation in pharmacology research more should be invested in universities and nonprofit scientific institutions. Lot's of other things are interesting in the article, including the idea that the reason that 90% of drugs fail to get through testing to the market isn't because the drugs fail for technical reasons, but the drug companies fail to figure out a way to market and profit from the drugs. Ah, the free market, is there anything it can do?

Finally, one of these articles I see all the time in Science about new fuel cell technologies. In this case, a self-sustaining catalytic reaction was created that was able to convert fuels such as soy, sugar water, and biofuel into hydrogen without generating carbon waste. Pretty cool, but I see about one of these a week, and wonder if there is enough interest in fast-tracking some of this technology to make a serious difference in how we utilize energy in this country. But that's why we want to elect Democrats.