Wednesday Wows

Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

UP AND AWAY:  This afternoon, we watched Northrop Grumman launch its Antares rocket carrying a Cygnus cargo spacecraft. Lift off from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia was at 1:46 our time, and everything appeared 'nominal' during and after the launch. The capsule is headed to the International Space Station. On board are 7,600 pounds of research, crew supplies and hardware. The Cygnus Cygnus spacecraft, the SS Roger Chaffee, is set to arrive at the ISS on Friday, April 19, at  2:30 a.m., West Coast time.

Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

ZOMBIE PIGS: A headline caught my eye this morning. It read: 

Scientists Restore Some Function In The Brains Of Dead Pigs

It was from NPR, so I figured it was almost certainly true, and read the story. And then I asked the kids to read the story. Here's what CJ had to say about it. ... 

According to an NPR article with a clickbaity headline (it implies that scientists have somehow brought pig brains back to life), recently, scientists at the Yale University research team have announced that they have been able to restore and/or preserve cellular activity in the brains of dead pigs, just a matter of hours following slaughter. BrainEx, the technology developed and used to restore cellular activity, is (currently) incapable of restoring life, though the scientists are kidding themselves if they don't think it's going to be developed and (ab)used to actually restore life in the future.

The possibility of restoring cellular activity in and of itself is filled with potential for previously-unthinkable experiments, and raises ethical questions about the difference between life and death. Perhaps needless to say, I don't think it will be terribly long before human brains start being subject to BrainEx experimentation. One can only wonder if religious fundamentalists will declare BrainEx to be satanic, in the same vein as stem cell research. 

Here's what Annabelle has to say about the news. ...

With the advent of BrainEx, there are a number of questions about whether the ethics of potentially reanimating dead brains would have an impact on how the technology is used. If the BrainEx program reaches a level where it can truly "revive" a human brain, it would be of extreme use to doctors around the world and could possibly even restore some functions to people classified as "braindead." It would also allow scientists to properly study the brain as a full organ instead of having to dissect and use the already-dead tissue.

On the other hand, there could be a number of cons to this practice such as the aforementioned ethical issues. It could also cost a lot of money to get the chemicals and technology necessary to even start attempting to revive the brains. Finally, it's not even guaranteed that this would revive the brains so much as make the cells begin to function again - and of course there's the obvious fear of "zombies" arising from this.

"AH HA!" MOMENT: We took just a couple of minutes midday to watch this video: "Why There’s No Such Thing As A Good Or Bad Memory" by "brain coach" Jim Kwik. It was really interesting, IMHO.

I found his point about the brain being a "super computer" and that our self talk is how we program it especially helpful. For example, if you tell yourself you're bad at remembering names, well, guess what? You're programming your brain to think that. Makes sense. He also pointed out that something like memory or focus is something you DO, not something you HAVE. In essence, it's a verb, not a noun. 

Good stuff. We watched the video twice and talked about it afterward.