Crime and punishment: From the neuroscience of freewill to legal reform
This week’s Soapbox Science guest post is by Mark Stokes, a senior research scientist at the Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity, University of Oxford. He looks at whether it’s possible that a brain tumour could cause a person to commit mass murder. He recalls the story of Charles Whitman as a case study:
Charles Whitman – Source: Wikimedia commons
On August 1st 1966, Charles Whitman ascended the Tower of the University of Texas Austin and opened fire on innocent bystanders, having already killed his wife and mother. In his apparent suicide note, he wrote:
“I do not really understand myself these days. I am supposed to be an average reasonable and intelligent young man. However, lately (I cannot recall when it started) I have been a victim of many unusual and irrational thoughts”.
He suspected that there was something wrong with his brain, and indeed subsequent autopsy revealed an extremely aggressive tumour that was impinging on brain tissue.
Mark’s post ties in with Brain Awareness Week and March’s SpotOn NYC (#SoNYC) event on “Communication and the Brain.”
Over on the SpotOn NYC blog you will also find a collection of related blog posts with contributions from Mo Costandi, Vaughan Bell and The Neurocritic and others.
Tackling Mental Illness In Africa
Traditional Medicine
In another post to tie in with March’s SpotOn NYC event, Scitable’s blogger Khalil A. Cassimally looks at mental illness in Africa:
In October last year, Human Rights Watch released a damning report which documented the inhumane treatment of Ghanaian sufferers of mental illnesses. In a country where an estimated three million people live with mental disabilities, the report describes the overcrowding and unsanitary conditions of three public psychiatric hospitals. The report also sheds light on so-called spiritual healing centers, presided by independent faith healers. Nearly all patients in the eight centers inspected were chained to trees by their ankles and left to sleep, urinate, defecate and bathe in that same spot. Some of the patients had been chained as such for five months. Some of the patients were less than 10 years old.
Learn more about these issues in Khalil’s post.
From tumours to tapeworms
On the map: Taenia solium
SHUTTERSTOCK
Yevgeniy Grigoryev explains in the Spoonful of Medicine Blog, commonly used cancer drugs could be repurposed to help eliminate tapeworm infections:
A team led by Matthew Berriman, a geneticist who studies parasites at the Welcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, UK, sequenced the genomes of three human-infective tapeworm species as well as a fourth tapeworm that lives in the intestines of rats and mice. Their analysis, published online today of Nature found that among more than 1,000 gene products that are predicted to be druggable in the parasite responsible for echinococcosis—a disease that affects an estimated 2–3 million people worldwide—more than 200 already have existing therapies (many in the oncology space) that block them.
The potential for new pharmacological interventions doesn’t end there. You can find out more in Yevgeniy’s post.
Fight for clinical data ‘needs to go global’
More needs to be done at the global level to ensure that researchers release all relevant data from clinical trials. Daniel Cressey explains in the News Blog:
High on the agenda at today’s opening evidence session in an inquiry by Parliament’s Science and Technology Select Committee is whether pharmaceutical companies withhold data that might paint their drugs in a bad light, a subject that is attracting increasing attention in Europe and elsewhere in the world.
“We are eroding belief in medicines because people can’t trust the results that are published,” said Keith Bragman, president of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine.
Fiona Godlee, editor in chief of the BMJ – which has published a number of articles attacking drug companies for lack openness on clinical trial data, notably regarding access to data on Roche’s Tamiflu – said, “We recognise it’s a problem across the research enterprise.”
Continue to Daniel’s post to find out more.
Students launch popular science magazine
Mohammed Yahia reveals in the House of Wisdom Blog, there are only a few really good initiatives to engage the public with science in the Arab World, such as FameLab or Stars of Science. However, a group of students who are passionate about science decided to take their interest a step further and launch the first student popular science magazine in Egypt:
The magazine, which they are calling The Vector, will start by covering research on and off the GUC campus in a format accessible to anyone interested in science. It will also cover research happening internationally, with articles that span both physical and biological sciences.
“With a heritage of poor science curricula in terms of content, approach and presentation simply speaking the world ‘science’ is sufficient to invoke a string of dull memories to the average Egyptian,” says Youssef George, the editor-in-chief of the new magazine. To counter this, he suggests the written word will not be enough. “In a community in which most individuals gather information from audio-visuals, it is inevitable to go for that at a later phase.”
The magazine will start as an online publication, launching its first issue next May. However, the students hope to have a monthly print edition by September 2013.
More information on The Vector, in Mohammed’s post.
To Get Twitter Followers, Be Nice and Be Useful
In his latest post, SciLogs blogger Matt Shipman looks at a forthcoming paper that examines factors related to getting Twitter followers:
The researchers found that tweets, or Twitter messages, containing positive sentiments (e.g., “This study is really interesting”) are positively associated with gaining followers. It’s not a huge boost, but it’s there. By the same token, tweets with negative sentiments (e.g., “This study is a waste of time”) are negatively associated with gaining followers. The impact here is a little more pronounced.
The researchers hypothesize that this is because Twitter is a platform where users are usually connected by weak social ties – they don’t know each other very well. And, as the paper says, “negative sentiment from strangers may be unpleasant or uncomfortable for a potential new follower to see.”
Matt encourages readers to take a look at the paper.