My wife was taking her usual 45 minute shower yesterday before we were to go up to her parent’s place for a Memorial Day grill out. Knowing I’d have ample time to kill, I started surfing the net and soon stumbled upon at advertisement for something called “Liquid Trust Enhanced”. Mildly intrigued, I clicked on the link for the product’s website.

The website declared that Liquid Trust Enhanced “has been specially designed to give a boost to the dating and relationship area of your life.” It went on to say that for the first time in your life, you can create a TRUSTING and PASSIONATE atmosphere. The stuff comes in a nasal spray bottle. I guess that once you shoot it up your honker, you instantly trust everbody around you and everybody trusts you- when they smell it on you. Heh heh.

Gee, it certainly sounds stronger than that pungent Axe armpit stuff so many guys are wearing these days to attract the ladies.

I don’t know if the claims of that website are true or not. I’m skeptical, to say the least. But what I found that was more fascinating was that one of the ingredients is something called oxytocin. And oxycotin is very real.

Oxytocin is a mammalian hormone that also acts as a neurotransmitter in the brain. Oxytocin is thought to be released during hugging, touching and orgasm in both sexes. In the brain, it is involved in social recognition and bonding. Pitocin and Syntocin are synthetic forms of Oxytocin and are sold as medication.

Upon further study, I found that Swiss researchers have shown that the hormone, first discovered for its role in labor, birth and breastfeeding, actually helps people to learn to trust again after betrayal.

“When trust has been broken, something has to allow you to move on with your life and learn to trust again,” says Mauricio Delgado, a cognitive neuroscientist at Rutgers University in Newark, N.J. That something is oxytocin, according to Delgado.

The chemical is important in being able to balance forgiving and forgetting with learning from mistakes, he says.

Researchers led by Thomas Baumgartner at the University of Zurich in Switzerland gathered 49 male volunteers to play games of trust and risk while in an fMRI scanner. Some of the volunteers got a nasal spray of oxytocin, while the rest received a squirt of placebo. The men could not tell the difference between the two nasal sprays.

Let The Games of Trust Begin

Baumgartner began testing his theories about the effects of oxycotin by creating games for his volunteers. The game involved the volunteers “investing” money (provided by the researchers) with a trustee. Half the time the trustee would share money with the investor. The rest of the time, the trustee pocketed all of the cash, violating the investor’s trust. In the other game, the volunteers played the lottery. This lottery paid off half the time just like the investment with the trustee, but the men didn’t feel betrayed if the lottery didn’t pay off. Researchers used the lottery game to determine how likely the men were to take risks.

The men that got the placebo spray, after being “betrayed” by the trustee, were less likely to want to invest with a new trustee. The men that got the oxycotin were quicker to hand over money to another trustee.

Brain scans of the volunteers revealed that oxytocin dampened activity in the amygdala, a part of the brain that helps regulate emotions such as fear. The amygdala has been shown to be involved with judging the trustworthiness of faces, but the new study is the first to show that oxytocin can alter activity in that part of the brain during a trust exercise, Baumgartner says.

The study helps to show oxytocin’s role in people’s general trust for other human beings after being betrayed, but does not show how oxytocin alters the outlook of a relationship when a family member, mate or friend screws you over and betrays that trust. The study also took place under controlled laboratory conditions and doesn’t address what happens in the real world.

In other words, oxycotin may encourage or heighten one’s ability to trust, but trust is not guaranteed by a squirt up the nose. There are just too many factors in play when it comes to the complex behavior of human beings.

From the author of http://psychocarnival.blogspot.com/

The Large Hadron Collider will either affirm or obliterate some of the most important theories in physics. The downside? It also might destroy the earth.

The video below does a good job of explaining the importance of Higgs Particles. The LHC will either confirm or debunk the existence of Higgs Particles. In order to explain gravity, the Standard Model depends on the existence of Higgs Particles.



The Standard Model is currently the closest thing we have to a scientifically proven theory that explains everything. The widely debated String Theory depends on the Standard Model’s premise that everything can be explained by particles. Among other things, String Theory has the add on that all of these particles are the result of strings.

Some physicists think that the collisions in the LHC will cause miniature black holes. However, the theories that predict these miniature black holes depend on extra dimensions that might not exist. If these theories are correct and the black holes are created, most believe that they will not be sustained and will immediately evaporate.

However, extremely unlikely is much different than impossible. I trust that the physics community pushing this is much more knowledgeable than me, and would not carry out the experiment if they thought the earth would be destroyed. But, it is still a little disconcerting. If we are still alive in about three months, we will know that the LHC didn’t create an earth-consuming blackhole.

This post was inspired by one of Kelly’s comments. His blog, Psycho Carnival, takes a humorous look at the insanity of society, and the topics covered are often related to scifi.

Podclusters are an idea that Blake Riley and I came up with. As far as I know, this is an original idea. Although, it seems simple enough that it’s possible someone has already thought of it. If you’ve heard of something similar somewhere else, please let me know.

Private space travel has begun, and within a couple of generations it will probably be affordable. I think the first large colonies will be podclusters.

A podcluster is a community of small spaceships(pods) that can attach to each other. Once one pod attaches to another, a hallway is formed between the pods. This hallway is separated from living spaces, allowing the owner of the pod to choose to have their living space locked or open depending on what’s convenient. It would be a little like going through a hallway in a hotel. This would make also make it easy for someone to travel through a pod to get to the next pod.

If a pod wanted to leave a cluster, it could do so easily. First it would send a signal telling the adjacent pods to seal and detach. After the adjacent pods sealed, it would seal, detach, and leave.

Podclusters would result in people having more freedom than they’ve ever had before. People would be able to choose their community. Good communities would be encouraged, because few pods would choose to join communities with bad reputations. In addition to being able to choose their community, people would able to optimize their environment to their needs. Pods would naturally lend themselves to being optimized by residents, because they would be small, enclosed and mostly self sustaining.

Why do I think podclusters are likely?

Mass production of spaceships is inevitable, as soon as space travel becomes cheap. Living in space would be cheaper than living on any of the nearby planets. This is because getting on and off a planet would requires lots of time and resources. It would be much harder to create a cheap way of getting into space on another planet, then it would be to create such a system on earth.

Space stations will also exist, but I think podclusters will be more popular. Space stations would require more time and money to set up. More important, podclusters would be better at catering to peoples needs. It would be easier to join a podcluster, pods would tend to be more optimized for the individuals wants and needs than buying a room, and podclusters would give people more freedom and require less commitment.

Podclusters would also be more adaptable than space stations. It would be easier for them to relocate and restructure. There are many situations where this would be desirable. If there were a threat in the environment like a large asteroid, it would be less of a problem for a podcluster. The pods would just need to detach from eachother until the threat passed, and then they could reattach. Podclusters would have an easier time relocating to advantageous areas. If it was discovered that an area has a desirable resource or even just a better view, a few pods could detach and move there. This would start the beginning of a new community. A space station would have a much harder time making such a move. What if all of the space stations residents did not agree with the move?

Pod clusters seem especially likely since communication and robotics are going to keep improving. More and more work is not going to require a physical presence. Despite people not needing to be located near fellow employees, being in community would still be advantageous. It would be safer since their would be more eyes and nearby hands if something goes wrong. Large communities would also be much better off for trading purposes. Smaller communities would have to pay more, and importing goods would be the most expensive for loners. Large communities would have frequent and relatively cheap imports. While small podcludsters would have difficulties, they would still be better off than small space stations. Because of the reasons mentioned above, and because they could easy join up with a large cluster if it was ever needed. Podclusters would usually be the best at fitting the mold regardless of the communities size.

If it happens, remember that you heard it here!

If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.

Frank Herbert

This blogger creates graphical programs that simulate cellular processes.

Have a look!

planetary gear

This is a startling example of the trend towards merging software and biology. It might be a ways off, but eventually we will be able to create entire organisms. If you created a sentient organism, would deleting it be murder?

Creating software based organisms could lead to incredible insights on evolution. If a method for reproduction was created that leads to diversity(like meiosis), then organisms could evolve. An environment could be created where only the most intelligent programs survive and have offspring. With the ability to create an environment that doesn’t need to abide by the same rules, evolution could be unimaginably faster.

Robotics, virtual reality, material construction, and medicine are a few of many additional areas that will benefit from this kind of research.

*update*

I emailed the images creator. Below is my email and his helpful reply.

“I wrote a post linking to your web page here: xxxx
I’m confused about how to describe the image. What would a planetary gear do? Are your designs generally for nanobots?

Any help will be appreciated

thanks,”

———————-

“Hi,

Thanks for the link!

The gear was first designed by Eric Drexler and Ralph Merkle; I just did a computer simulation. You can think of it as a torque converter that changes the mechanical advantage from the input and out shafts. It is also a speed reducer. I try to focus on things that can be built in the laboratory now (DNA or carbon nanotube stuff) or this year, instead of way in the future, but of course I dig the far out nano-bots and stuff.

You could definitely use a torque converter in a nanorobot.

Tom”

Thanks for the informative reply!