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Iowa City police are investigating an early morning assault in which a man accused another of being a zombie, then punched him twice. Police said the assault occurred at 1:17 a.m. Sunday at an Iowa City restaurant south of the University of Iowa campus. A man was ordering food when he was approached by another man who called him a zombie, then hit him in the eye. When the victim tried to call police on his cell phone, the man punched him again, breaking his nose. The man then ran out a back door. The victim was taken by ambulance...

Facebook fun Fact of the Day- Starfish have no brain* . *- Them, and Obama supporters.

Look no farther than Portland's Eastern Promenade for proof on Sunday as the walking dead take to the baseball fields to play the time-honored sport of kickball. Picnics will be ruined, dog walks disrupted, and bike rides seriously altered. And it could be just the beginning – we could be looking at zombie scavenger hunts (for brains), zombie capture the flag (for brains) and zombie marches (for equal rights ... and brains). This is the third straight year of Zombie Kickball. Typically the pastime of elementary schoolers (and occasionally low-watt thrill-seeking 20- and 30-somethings), kickball has an unknown appeal to...

When It Comes to Brains, Size MattersIn a study of 200 university students, the researchers found that women and men performed similarly on tests of language and reading skills. Differences in brain organization between men and women may be driven by sex differences in brain size, they said. “People have said women have relatively larger language areas of the brain,” said Christine Chiarello, UCR professor of psychology. “In none of our language tasks were women better than men. When you account for differences in brain size between men and women there are few differences in the relative size of areas....

Though they perch far apart on the avian family tree, birds with the ability to learn songs use similar brain structures to sing their tunes. Neurobiologists at Duke University Medical Center now have an explanation for this puzzling likeness.In all three groups of birds with vocal learning abilities -- songbirds, parrots and hummingbirds -- the brain structures for singing and learning to sing are embedded in areas controlling movement, the researchers discovered. The team also found that areas in charge of movement share many functional similarities with the brain areas for singing. This suggests that the brain pathways used for...

Boys And Girls Brains Are Different: Gender Differences In Language Appear BiologicalNew research shows that areas of the brain associated with language work harder in girls than in boys during language tasks, and that boys and girls rely on different parts of the brain when performing these tasks. (Credit: iStockphoto/Rich Legg) ScienceDaily (Mar. 5, 2008) — Although researchers have long agreed that girls have superior language abilities than boys, until now no one has clearly provided a biological basis that may account for their differences. For the first time -- and in unambiguous findings -- researchers from Northwestern University and...

A study published Monday found that teens who regularly get into fights with their parents have significantly different brain structures than their more laid-back peers. - Snip - It's also possible that these biological changes are in response to the home environment, Allen said of the study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Other studies have found that extreme neglect and sexual and physical abuse can impact brain development. A stressful home environment has also been linked to the early onset of puberty in girls, he said. "What we don't know anything about is, is there...

In this undated photo released by Tokyo University's Department of Biophysics and Biochemistry Graduate School of Science, a genetically modified mouse approaches a cat in Tokyo. Using genetic engineering, scientists at Tokyo University say they have successfully switched off the rodents' instinct to cower at the smell or presence of cats, showing that fear is genetically hardwired and not leaned through experience, as commonly believed. (AP Photo/Ko and Reiko Kobayakawa, Tokyo University Department of Biophysics and Biochemistry Graduate School of Science, HO) Cat and mouse may never be the same. Japanese scientists say they've used genetic engineering to create...

MRIs link pedophilia to problems in brain development For Immediate Release – November 28, 2007 (TORONTO) – Pedophilia might be the result of faulty connections in the brain, according to new research released by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). The study used MRIs and a sophisticated computer analysis technique to compare a group of pedophiles with a group of non-sexual criminals. The pedophiles had significantly less of a substance called “white matter” which is responsible for wiring the different parts of the brain together. The study, published in the Journal of Psychiatry Research, challenges the commonly held...

The Zombeatles sing a Halloween song fer ya!

British brains dominate list of living geniuses By Aislinn Simpson Last Updated: 1:07am GMT 29/10/2007 Britain has more living geniuses per head of population than anywhere else in the world, according to a new survey which reveals the country's influence on science, technology, business and the arts. Almost a quarter of those featured in the list of 100 living geniuses are Britons, including Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the world wide web, in joint first place, and physicist Stephen Hawking at seven in the list. British artists and musicians feature heavily, including Brit Art leader Damien Hirst at number 15,...

Baroness Greenfield, the well known neuroscientist and director of the Royal Institution, has joined the likes of Nicole Kidman and Chris Tarrant by putting her name to a computer game designed to train the brain. ** Train your brain: Take the MindFit test At the House of Lords she helped to launch a new fitness routine to play on the insecurities of the masses - the brain workout - and described the results of a trial that suggests that it could help arrest the ageing of the body's most complex organ. "You are your brain and it is vital your...

One of our biggest arguments with Karl Rove was over the Bush Administration's first-term steel tariffs. We opposed them, and in one editorial calling for their repeal we scored "Secretary of State Rove" for letting politics trump U.S. interests. Mr. Rove never gave any quarter, and when trade promotion authority passed Congress in 2002 by 215-212, he tracked us down to read a list of Members who had voted aye: They all belonged to the Steel Caucus. The episode captures the essential Rove--the political strategist whose larger purpose was always to advance President Bush's policy goals. In this case, he...

BE HERE, OR BE NOWHERE!

MENLO PARK, Calif (Reuters) - Venture capitalists in Silicon Valley have been searching for the next big thing in high-tech for years, but now many have switched to greener pursuits -- finding technology to help cut global warming. Although commercial success could take years, venture capitalists are pouring cash into solar power, fuel cells, wind energy, biofuels, new lighting microchips, "smart" power grids, and other innovative energies. "The best brains in the country are no longer working on the next pharmaceutical drug or the next Silicon Revolution. They want to work on energy," said Vinod Khosla, a top venture capitalists...

Swedes smash Christmas SMS record Swedes set a new record for text messages on Christmas Eve, according to Telia. On December 24th a total of 9.3 million text messages were sent via the Swedish telecom giant's network. That compares to just 6.2 million SMS messages sent on Christmas Eve last year. In Telia's annual Christmas survey, 12 percent of customers said that they would prefer to send their seasonal greeting by SMS, while 16 percent would rather make a phone call. The majority, 64 percent, sent their greetings in the morning but a quarter left it until after 4pm, when...

One of the fastest-evolving pieces of DNA in the human genome is a gene linked to brain development, according to findings by an international team of researchers published in the Aug. 17 issue of the journal Nature. In a computer-based search for pieces of DNA that have undergone the most change since the ancestors of humans and chimps diverged, "Human Accelerated Region 1" or HAR1, was a clear standout, said lead author Katie Pollard, assistant professor at the UC Davis Genome Center and the Department of Statistics. "It's evolving incredibly rapidly," Pollard said. "It's really an extreme case." As a...

How smart is George W. Bush? Genius Bright Average Dull Moron

Linda Burnett, 23, a resident of Palm Springs, CA, was visiting her in-laws and while there went to a nearby supermarket to pick up some groceries. Several people noticed her sitting in her car with the windows rolled up and with her eyes closed, with both hands behind the back of her head. One customer who had been at the store for a while became concerned and walked over to the car. He noticed that Linda's eyes were now open, and she looked very strange. He asked her if she was okay, and Linda replied that she'd been shot in...

Modelling may not be brain surgery, as J K Rowling pointed out last week when she pilloried "empty-headed toothpicks", but it seems that brain surgeons can be models.Megan McGill, a well-travelled American fashion model with a degree in neuroscience, yesterday defended her trade against the author's scathing criticism. She said she was appalled by the confrontational nature of Miss Rowling's comments, adding: "You are the most loved woman by every child in the world, how can you be so bitter?" Miss McGill, who is based in London but will move to New York in the autumn to study neurology at...

The brains of highly intelligent children develop in a different pattern from those with more average abilities, researchers have found after analyzing a series of imaging scans collected over 17 years. The discovery, some experts expect, will help scientists understand intelligence in terms of the genes that foster it and the childhood experiences that can promote it. "This is the first time that anyone has shown that the brain grows differently in extremely intelligent children," said Paul M. Thompson, a brain-imaging expert at the University of California, Los Angeles. The finding is based on 307 children in Bethesda, Md., an...

Peru museum has diseases on the brain Wed Mar 8, 1:04 PM ET LIMA (AFP) - Thousands of human brains float in jars of formaldehyde at a unique museum that gives visitors to Lima an up-close view of brain diseases, from trichinosis to stroke. More than 2,500 brains are on display in a modest museum in Lima sponsored by the National Institute of Neurological Sciences (INCN). Visitors can see brains of persons felled by AIDS, Alzheimers, clots, hemorrhages, heart attacks and a myriad of tumors. The museum is the proud owner of a brain that died of Creutzfeld-Jacob disease, the...

Source Republicanism Caused By Brain Disorder, Mutation Location: Karl Marx Treatment Center Posted: 1/31/2006, 12:06 pm * * * Scientists have finally identified a fatal brain disorder responsible for the behavior of Republicans, Conservatives, and other capitalist class enemies. After the Washington Post reported on a revolutionary study, in which progressive researchers scanned Republican brains for signs of deformation, we contacted the institute that conducted the study, the Karl Marx Treatment Center. The Center provided us with blood-chilling CAT images that show what happen s to a brain that is allowed to grow without the caring guidance of the...

Sci/Tech > Environment from the October 26, 2005 edition Why your dog is smarter than a wolf By Colin Woodard | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor BUDAPEST, HUNGARY – At Eotvos Lorand University's Department of Ethology, visitors are usually greeted not by a security guard, but by a delegation of friendly mongrels, tails wagging. Dogs have the run of the place. They play in classrooms, visit faculty members in their offices, or nap in the laboratories. Animals here are no surprise - ethology is the zoological study of animal behavior - but the total lack of cages is. And...

Man: Flesh-eating aliens were chasing me when I caused fatal car crash By Emanuella GrinbergCourt TV A California man facing life in prison for crashing his car into a UPS truck will not dispute that his actions resulted in the death of the driver when his trial opens Monday in Nevada County Superior Court.Instead, Scott Krause's defense will argue that the defendant believed he was trying to escape man-eating subterranean beings when he ran into Drew Reynolds' truck on Jan. 6, 2004.Krause has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to five felony counts, including first-degree murder, carjacking, and burglary,...

Of the millions of gamblers who have rushed to play Texas Hold 'Em and other fast-growing poker games online, Roger Gabriel isn't the most intimidating. The 30-year-old Newport Beach engineer started playing for money only a month ago. He lurks online at the tables for the chicken-hearted; even there, where the biggest ante is 4 cents, he can't win consistently. But Gabriel has a potentially powerful alter ego. In his spare time, he's perfecting a computer program to go online and play the game for him. His BlackShark software is still a work in progress, but Gabriel has no doubt...

For decades, neuroscientists have recognized that the brain has three distinct systems. One is derived from primitive reptiles that were adept at survival strategies. Another includes the limbic system – often called the “seat of emotions.” The third includes the neocortex and prefrontal lobes (comprising the right and left hemispheres of the brain) that account for thinking, verbal abilities and other “higher” functions. My theory is that Terri’s putative husband Michael, his attorney George J. Felos, and Judge George Greer – who ruled for years against Terri’s right to life – have highly developed reptilian brains and prefrontal lobes, but...

SEATTLE -- More grieving families stepped forward on Friday with accusations that the King County Medical Examiner's Office sold brains for profit without getting consent. Thursday night, KIRO Team 7 Investigators first exposed how King County shipped about 180 brains to a private research facility out of state. In return, it got more than $1 million. Investigative Reporter Chris Halsne has discovered information about missing consent forms and at least one brain that should never have been harvested. For privacy reasons, we'll call this case 98-1218. That's the label King County slapped on the file of a dead man before...

SEATTLE -- The King County Medical Examiner's Office has been harvesting brains from the corpses of mentally ill clients and quietly trading the tissue for money, KIRO Team 7 Investigators reported. In the past seven years, the medical examiner's office received more than $1 million for collecting brains of people with schizophrenia. In return for the money, county pathologists shipped at least 180 brains to a private research facility. A Team 7 Investigation raises serious questions about consent...

It will look like any ordinary mouse, but for America's scientists a tiny animal threatens to ignite a profound ethical dilemma.In one of the most controversial scientific projects ever conceived, a group of university researchers in California's Silicon Valley is preparing to create a mouse whose brain will be composed entirely of human cells. Researchers at Stanford University have already succeeded in breeding mice with brains that are one per cent human cells. In the next stage they plan to use stem cells from aborted foetuses to create an animal whose brain cells are 100 per cent human. Prof Irving...

Birdbrain has long been a colloquial term of ridicule. The common notion is that birds' brains are simple, or so scientists thought and taught for many years. But that notion has increasingly been called into question as crows and parrots, among other birds, have shown what appears to be behavior as intelligent as that of chimpanzees. The clash of simple brain and complex behavior has led some neuroscientists to create a new map of the avian brain. Today, in the journal Nature Neuroscience Reviews, an international group of avian experts is issuing what amounts to a manifesto. Nearly everything written...

Baird wants to make sales tax deduction permanent Thursday, January 27, 2005 The Columbian Congressman Brian Baird, D-Vancouver, will introduce legislation that would extend a two-year tax cut expected to save Washington residents $500 million this year. Baird announced Wednesday that he and Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, will sponsor legislation so taxpayers in seven states can permanently deduct state and local sales taxes when filing their federal tax returns. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., will introduce companion legislation in the Senate. Washington lost the deduction when Congress rewrote the tax code in 1986, but taxpayers in Oregon and other states have...

Upcoming appearances of Ann Coulter on Television:

IT was in the parking lot of Cramer's Home Center in Pocono Summit, Pa., less than seven miles from a NASCAR track, in a pivotal battleground state, on the back of a battered work van, that we saw the first one "Somewhere in Texas," the bumper sticker said, "A Village Is Missing Its Idiot." The next showed up at the Home Depot on the back of an equally battered pickup driven by a tough-looking kid dressed for construction work. It said: "Bush," and then, "Like a Rock Only Dumber." These are signs of the fierce conviction of some voters —...

When researchers studied the brains of Romanian orphans - children who had been left to cry in their cots from birth and denied any chance of forming close bonds with an adult - they found a "virtual black hole" where the orbitofrontal cortex should have been. This is the part of the brain that enables us to manage our emotions, to relate sensitively to other people, to experience pleasure and to appreciate beauty. These children's earliest experiences had greatly diminished their capacity ever to be fully human. Sue Gerhardt's book Why Love Matters shows that early experience has effects on...

Vittorio Luzzati/National Portrait Gallery, London Hedy Lamarr, the movie star who is less well known as an inventor. n 1933, at age 19, she swam in the nude in the notorious Czech film "Ecstasy." Often called the most beautiful woman in the world, she married badly — to a domineering Austrian munitions manufacturer — and escaped by drugging the maid and climbing out a window. She made her way to Hollywood, where she starred in movies with Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable and Jimmy Stewart. Then there is the less known chapter of her life. In World War II, she...

June Alexander and Doris Miller weren't going to let the hype over a single sick Holstein kill their appetite for one of their favorite Hilltop Inn specialities. About two weeks after news broke of the first case of mad cow disease in the United States, the Evansville women were at the West Side restaurant dining on battered and deep-fried beef brains. They'd intended to come back for more soon. But new restrictions on the beef industry, which take effect today, could make it harder to find beef brains.

Meat laws give Latino stores a jolt This story was published Wednesday, December 31st, 2003 By Mary Hopkin and Jeff St. John Herald staff writers A large sign advertising whole cow heads for $20 greeted customers at The Valley's Market in Sunnyside this week. The market sold about 40 of the heads before Christmas, but there hasn't been much demand since the Dec. 23 announcement that the first U.S. case of mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, was confirmed in a cow from a dairy less than 20 miles away. Cow heads are a popular Hispanic holiday fare. The...

Man puts wife's brain on eBayA man has put his wife's brain up for sale on the eBay as a joke.Kevin Dulake says the brain is brand new and has never been used.His ad also features a photo of his wife Verena's head and boasted her brain is "still in its box".Kevin paid £1.40 to put the ad on the site. He told punters the brain was an "unwanted gift" and said he was happy to ship it abroad.Nearly 200 people read the ad in its first week, but only four made bids. The highest for £2.20, saysThe Sun.Kevin said:...

British Doctors Remove 20,000 Brains Without Permission Practice Explicitly Outlawed In 1999 POSTED: 11:48 a.m. EDT May 12, 2003 LONDON -- British doctors and morticians removed at least 20,000 brains for research from 1970 to 1999 without obtaining families' consent, according a government report published Monday. The figure includes only those brains still held by hospitals and universities in England, and many more could have been taken and destroyed, Dr. Jeremy Metters, Her Majesty's Inspector of Anatomy, said in the report. Removing organs without families' permission was explicitly outlawed in 1999. A law passed in 1961 said organs should only...

UK medics took thousands of brains without consent -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Gideon Long LONDON, May 12 (Reuters) - British pathologists removed the brains from tens of thousands of human corpses over a period of 30 years without the permission of the victims' relatives, the government acknowledged on Monday. In a sinister reminder of scandals in the late 1990s, when hospitals were found to have secretly kept the hearts of dead children for research purposes, the government said the illicit removal of brains had been "widespread in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s". It said the true scale of the scandal would...

LONDON (Reuters) - The brain, not the genitals, could be the determining factor in whether a person is male or female. American scientists have discovered that before male or female mice develop sex organs in the womb their brains may already be wired to be a particular sex. If the same holds true for humans, it could help to determine the "brain sex" of babies born with ambiguous sex organs, New Scientist magazine said Wednesday. Biologists believe that embryos develop ovaries and become female unless a gene called SRY on the Y chromosome switches on and testes are developed instead....

Men and women's brains use different strategies to remember highly emotional images, according to a new brain imaging study. The discovery helps explain how women manage to remember emotional events better than men, something psychologists have known for years. "It's hard evidence that there are differences in the brains of men and women," says Stephen Maren, of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, commenting on the research. He thinks that evolution may explain the differences. Women tend to be caregivers, more empathetic and more verbal: "Those traits are reflected in brain mechanisms." In the study, Turhan Canli, at the...