Monthly Archives: January 2008

Back in the early 1980’s, the Wilhelmina Zoo in Stuttgart was looking into various types of seaweed for use in their aquarium displays. They settled on a species known as Caulerpa taxifolia, since its bright green, feathery fern-like fronds were quite pretty, and it was both hardy and fast-growing. In addition, it produces chemicals that make it taste awful to marine animals, so it wouldn’t get eaten.

By repeatedly subjecting specimens to harsh aquarium conditions and selecting the ones that survived the best, researchers developed Caulerpa taxifolia (Vahl) C. Agandh, a new-and-improved, genetically distinct strain which was particularly hardy and fast-growing. This variety was ideal for their purposes and it was shared with other museums and aquariums. For a time, all was well and good in the world of marine botany. In 1984, however, a square meter patch of this new variety of Caulerpa was found in the Mediterranean off the shore of Monaco, right outside the Oceanographic Museum.

Evidently a little piece of it was flushed down a drain. But while those organizations involved in dealing with the accidental release exercised their blame-pointing fingers, Caulerpa spread. It was, after all, particularly hardy and fast-growing. By the time anyone got around to doing anything about it, the infestation covered several acres and was beyond anyone’s control. By 2001, there were thousands of acres of this remarkably prolific plant clogging coastal waters around the Mediterranean.

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“I don’t think I feel things the same way you do.”

The man sits at the table in the well-fitted attire of success—charming, witty, and instantly likeable. He is a confident, animated speaker, but he seems to be struggling with this particular point.

“It’s like… at my first job,” he continues, “I was stealing maybe a thousand bucks a month from that place. And this kid, he was new, he got wise. And he was going to turn me in, but before he got the chance I went to the manager and pinned the whole thing on him.” Now he is grinning widely. “Kid lost his job, the cops got involved, I don’t know what happened to him. And I guess something like that is supposed to make me feel bad, right? It’s supposed to hurt, right? But instead, it’s like there’s nothing.” He smiles apologetically and shakes his head. “Nothing.”

His name is Frank, and he is a psychopath.

In the public imagination, a “psychopath” is a violent serial killer or an over-the-top movie villain, as one sometimes might suspect Frank to be. He is highly impulsive and has a callous disregard for the well-being of others that can be disquieting. But he is just as likely to be a next-door neighbor, a doctor, or an actor on TV—essentially no different from anyone else who holds these roles, except that Frank lacks the nagging little voice which so profoundly influences most of our lives. Frank has no conscience. And as much as we would like to think that people like him are a rare aberration, safely locked away, the truth is that they are more common than most would ever guess.

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An EEG machineWithin a nondescript university laboratory, a neurobiologist reads aloud from her list of prepared phrases. In the adjoining room, a volunteer listens attentively with a collection of colorful wires trailing from his head. The needles on the electroencephalograph (EEG) flutter with each utterance, but most of the phrases prompt little discernible reaction from the testee. Among the long list of experimental sentences, however, a few provoke a peculiar response. The volunteer’s face muscles contract, and his body begins to convulse. His breathing becomes spasmodic, and he makes a series of involuntary, repeated vocalizations. For one informative moment, the EEG’s mechanical scribblings flap rapidly from margin to margin, providing a nugget of neurological gold.

The affliction under study is surprisingly common among humans. Though the episodes are usually transitory, they will occasionally erupt as intense, prolonged outbursts where bodily fluid containment is placed in jeopardy as the hapless victim collapses into a moist, quivering, rhythmically-vocalizing mass. Alarmingly, the phenomenon is highly contagious, and in extreme cases, it can even lead to death. Taken together, these remarkable bizarre symptoms are known as laughter, and although it is universal among human races and cultures, its processes and purpose are not yet fully understood.

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Goliath Beetle, robert j. lang origamiSince childhood Dr. Robert Lang has practiced origami. It was the convergence of his intensely creative mind and this ancient Japanese tradition that gave rise to his unique style of origami, which he developed into a renewed art and ultimately a science of practical application.

His intricate paper insect creations were a departure from the standard boats and cranes that have long been the tradition of origami. Over time his works grew more complex, featuring hundreds of folds and multiple pieces of paper, such as a full-scale cuckoo clock. Between his efforts to earn a PhD in applied physics, his job at NASA’s Jet Propulsion laboratory, his eighty technical papers, and his forty-six patents in optoelectronics and lasers, he somehow found time to implement and evolve a number of original origami designs.

The practicality of his scientific research began to influence his origami designs, until the line between the two began to blur. He participated in a project at EASi Engineering to develop complicated crease patterns for airbag folding designs. Lang also worked to design a mesh wire heart support to be folded and implanted in congestive heart failure patients; once inside, it would expand, protecting the heart. His most ambitious project to date, however, is shared with a team at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, with whom he has developed a space telescope – one that is forty times larger than the Hubble and collapsible for space travel through a series of precise origami folds.

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