TDDPirate’s Ideas

The story starts at the late 1980’s, at which time I did my M.Sc. work under Prof. Jacob Klein.  It was a strike of luck for me, as I did not set out to look for a top notch advisor, but ended up having such an advisor.

Twenty years later, as one of his former M.Sc. students, I was invited to a workshop, which was dedicated to his 60th birthday, and which was held between 21-23 June this year.  I was happy to attend it, soak some science, and meet old acquaintances.

The workshop was relatively small and intimate.  There were few tens of participants, and several of them also lectured and presented posters.  Most of them were students, collaborators or colleagues of Prof. Klein.  At the workshop’s end, people remarked about the high quality of research described in the lectures.  Scientists were also not afraid to venture forth from their zones of comfort and discuss also subjects about which they did not have all the answers.  So one could notice that some post-lecture questions were answered by “I do not know”.

Rachel Yerushalmi-Rozen, one of the workshop organizers, arranged for me full coverage of notetakers so that I could follow all lectures.  They did good enough work so that I was not bored, even though fundamental cognitive and motor limits of humans prevented them from writing down everything that was being said during the lectures.  The notetakers had to be proficient with the terminology used in the lectures, so they were students of the workshop’s organizers.

The first part of the workshop was held in Schmidt Auditorium in Weizmann Institute of Science, and when it ended, a group photo of the participants was taken.  Such group photos often end up in biographies of scientists, who participated in them.  The caliber of the workshop’s participants was such that several of them are current or future prominent scientists.

In one of the evenings we were treated to a dinner and a rare night visit in the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo (see also in the Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_Biblical_Zoo).  After the night tour, still in the zoo, Prof. Klein blew out candles on his birthday cake and we were treated to a presentation of photos of highlights of his life, so that the 3-day workshop would qualify also as a birthday party.

As I was enjoying the article DNA seen through the eyes of a coder, a link caught my eye and it directed me to Ensembl Human Web site, which lets you explore the Homo sapiens genome.
The home page showed the usual 23 chromosome pairs. However I was startled to find yet another chromosome mentioned - MT.
I made the quick guess that it is the mitochondrial chromosome, and wanted to confirm or refute this guess. However, the Web site search function yielded nothing when I looked for the phrase “chromosome mt”. I was provided instead with a form for sending E-mail to the Web site’s helpdesk. I took advantage of this.
Few minutes later, they answered me - yes, it is indeed the mitochondrial chromosome.

One additional comment in their answer was made, because I phrased my question in an highly emotional way, as follows:
“I was looking for a short paragraph describing what the hell is ‘Chromosome MT’.”

The comment woke in me nightmare past memories of a primary school teacher in USA, who subscribed to the DEAF-L mailing list (a mailing list devoted to deafness related issues), but her censorware filtered out innocent messages because they included phrases, which could have been interpreted in objectionable ways. And furthermore, there was no way to bypass the censorware to tell her that a legitimate message has been blocked.

Yesterday I spent all day reading Sue Ellen Pressman’s Ph.D. dissertation “A NATIONAL STUDY OF DEAF ENTREPRENEURS AND SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS: IMPLICATIONS FOR CAREER COUNSELING”. As far as Pressman and I know, this is the first time such a study was undertaken.

I have a methodological note: the study claims to be based upon a representative sample of the deaf entrepreneurs in USA. However this claim is not supported by the methodology used. The sample was self-selected by consent to answer a questionnaire, and by being member of (or known to) Deaf and hard of Hearing Entrepreneurial Council (DHHEC) i.e. included in DHHEC’s mailing list.

There also seem to be few non sequiturs. Most entrepreneurs had some postsecondary school experience (some of them having college degree), but it does not by itself imply necessity of postsecondary school experience for success in business. Similarly, the fact that most of the entrepreneurs use voice to communicate with hearing customers and employees - does not by itself imply that voice is necessary or advisable for business success.

The following study findings are not obvious:

• Deaf entrepreneurs usually had hearing employees and hearing customers.
• Percentage of college graduates among Deaf entrepreneurs is higher than that among hearing entrepreneurs.
• To communicate with hearing employees and customers, about 60% of the Deaf entrepreneurs used writing.

I made the following mental notes upon reflecting upon the study:

• Cultivation of relay services goes together with development of deaf owned businesses.
• There is a problem (not mentioned in the study) of lack of mutual trust among the Deaf in business, at least in Israel.

In USA, there is now a battle between science supporters and “Intelligent Design” supporters over incorporation of “Intelligent Design” in science education standards. See, for example, Creationism in the Classroom: Florida and Texas, Then the Nation.

Due to the fundamental role of evolution in understanding biological processes, may I suggest that venture capitalists, investors and businesses specializing in medical, pharmaceutical and biotech technologies - boycott districts, states and countries, in which the educational establishment promotes “Creationism” and “Intelligent Design” over objections by scientists.

Furthermore, it would be a good idea to move existing factories out of those regions, in which the educational establishment does not meet its duty of educating, in science, future employees for those establishments.

2008 Mar 04 update:   see also Creationist Biologist Says Civil Rights Violated by Employer’s Insistence on Evolution.  This is a case, in which a research establishment, in which evolution plays a fundamental role, was sued by a creationist, who was asked to resign from his job there after revealing his creationist beliefs.

Arie Hashbia translated the book into Hebrew, and the Hebrew translation was published at 2007 by Korim (1995) LTD. The original was published by Bantam Dell Pub Group (2003), ISBN-10: 0553815229.

The book provides a fascinating account about world discoveries made by Chinese sailors before Columbus and his colleagues.

“Discoverer” - a legal term

It is often overlooked that the European usage of the term “discoverer” is in legal context, rather than being a statement of fact. This is much like assigning a patent to someone, who has the rights over an invention, rather than to the true inventor.

In practically all cases, lands discovered by “discoverers” were already populated by native humans. Those natives are presumably descendants of the original and true discoverers, whose accounts were lost to history.

To be a legal discoverer, one usually needed to be sponsored by a king, bring with him ships, and know how to negotiate agreements with the natives. Even Europeans like Leif Ericson, who discovered new lands without having been sponsored by a king, are not regarded as official discoverers.

Therefore, the claim that China discovered the world does not really contradict the claim that certain Europeans are “discoverers” of certain parts of the world.

Criticism about the book

The ideas given by the book are hotly disputed, and I am sure that the dispute is abetted by some oversights and shortcomings of the book, even though in general it respects the scientific method. The following details some problems, which I found in a single reading of the book.

Missing content

• There are no details about the trip in the northeast passage (north of Siberia).
• The Chinese seem to have discovered Australia well before 1421. Yet there is no account about the time and circumstances of the original Australian discovery.
• There are no more details about hypotheses why the Chinese were not in regular contact with the 15th century Europeans.

Superfluous content

• Relatively much space was devoted to the early explorations of the Portuguese (like the hypothetical pre-Colombus Antillean islands settlement).

Style comments

Note: the style comments apply to the Hebrew translation of the book, which I actually read. The original English version of the book may be free of those style problems.

• Refers to Portuguese as Portugals.
• There is no index.
• The book is missing modern maps, which mark all the islands, rivers and geographical places mentioned in the trip accounts. Those maps would have provided some contextual information. There are some maps, which show sites of archeological findings, but they do not have names.

Methodology

In spite of the general respect to the scientific method exhibited by the book, there are some methodological shortcomings.

• The work ought to have been done as a Ph.D. thesis with the help of an advisor. There are several statements, which were not adequately supported by fact, and which reveal that the work was not done with help of an academic advisor. In other cases, lack of cooperation with authorities was mentioned as a reason for failure to obtain some crucial evidence. A Ph.D. student would have found it easier to get cooperation than an autodidect investigator.
• Page 444 in the Hebrew version mentions a New York Times article, which criticized the book. However, the Hebrew edition of the book failed to reproduce the major critical points and their refutation by the author. So it was not intellectually courageous.
• There was mention of plants brought by the Chinese from some areas of the world to other areas. However, it was not explained how do we know that a plant came from territory A to territory B, rather than vice versa.

Follow-on Work

Answers to the following questions would have expanded the book’s scope, so they are suitable for follow-on work.

• Put the 1421-1423 trips in the context of a larger epic of Chinese explorations of the world - Chinese Sea, Isles of Spices, Australia/New Zealand; and then Africa, Americas, Europe?
• The history of Indonesia and the isles of spices could be interesting reading at its own right (including account of islamization of the area).
• Could the Chinese know about America even before 1421?
• Did the Chinese perform any preliminary research to find the regime of winds and sea currents, so that they’ll know that they’ll eventually return? Such a research could have been performed by floating bottles in the waters.

Did you think that mad scientists exist only in pulp Sci-Fi stories and in James Bond 007 movies?

If so, The Top 20 Most Bizarre Experiments of all time will set you right!

This Web page is not for the squeamish, and it features delightful experiments such as two-headed dogs, human-ape hybrids, and getting people to kill puppies by electrical shocks.  Reading that several of the experiments were performed by Soviet scientists made me feel as if I am reading a real life enactment of the secret labs of Luthor Corp.

Few months ago, I at last bought my copy of “A New Kind of Science” by Stephen Wolfram (ISBN 1-57955-008-8). I expect to finish reading the entire book few months from now, and then go on to reading other books.

The book fulfilled my expectations of being interesting and intellectually stimulating book.

The first observation, which I made from reading the book was that (more…)

There is a book called “On Intelligence” by Jeff Hawkins, and it is about yet another theory of the human brain’s operation. The author pointed out several gaps in current researches in neurology and AI.

However, the book dealt with static aspects of the brain’s structure. It omitted the dynamics. In particular, the following points were not covered:

1. Factors affecting formation, destruction and strength of synapses connecting two neurons to each other (see also: Hebbian learning).
2. Growth of axons and dendrites - where do they prefer to grow?
3. Initial wiring in a fetus’ brain.
4. Existence and effect of any chemical means for non-local communication between neurons.
5. How are new neurons created and how do they integrate into the existing network?

The only dynamic aspect of brain operation, which was dealt with by the book, was the firing pattern of neurons.

According to the article Mathematical proofs getting harder to verify, it is now very difficult and sometimes impossible to be certain about the correctness of mathematical proofs.

I can envision the rise of the special profession of mathematical patching. It would work as follows.

1. A fundamental theorem is proved, but its proof is difficult to verify.
2. A lot of mathematics is being based upon that theorem.
3. Another fundamental theorem is proven and receives similar honorable status in mathematics.
4. A contradiction is found, which means that both theorems cannot be both true.
5. In order to save the rest of mathematics, the theorems are patched.

Patching, in this context, means adding qualifications to the theorems, so that fully-qualified versions of the theorems do not contradict each other. The qualifications will be based upon the actual way the theorems are used in subsequent mathematical development, which is normally less than the full generality of the theorem.

Neuroscience Tutorial - an illustrated guide to the essential basics of clinical neuroscience.
Neurosciences on the Internet.
There are also other related Web sites.