2007 Weblog Awards?

I’m surprised to see Pharyngula has been nominated for Best Science Blog in The 2007 Weblog Awards — I hadn’t been paying attention at all. I am a bit disturbed by the company I’m keeping over there, though: I’m in the running with a couple of conservative junk science blogs. Go vote for one of the other people: I like In the Pipeline, Invasive Species is terrific, bootstrap analysis ought to do well, and they’ve even got that space-case, Bad Astronomy in there…sure, you can give him one or two votes (this is the one where you get to vote every day).

There’s also this odd blog called “Paryngula” — I’m pretty sure that’s me.

Student Post: It’s my party and I’ll change my receptor compositions if I want to.

Tomorrow is the big day. Much to my liver’s dismay, I’m turning 21, so I thought it would be appropriate to discuss the effects on alcohol on the brain in this post.

I searched through article databases reading abstracts about how alcohol shrinks the brain, depletes white mater, inhibits growth of and destroys neurons etc…, until I stumbled on a study that examined acutely intoxicated rat brains. Over hour intervals after alcohol exposure, researchers were able to document neuroplastic changes involving tyrosine hydroxylase, proenkephalin and cannabinoid CB(1) receptor gene expressions. That alcohol alters receptor expression in neurons is a sobering thought. It turns “I only like you when I’m drunk,” into “I only like you when I slowly alter the chemical and physical composition of my brain.” The researchers hypothesize this may play a role in addiction and the immediate feel-good affects of alcohol.

I thought about volunteering my services if the authors ever wished to document their findings in human subjects until I learned I’d have to consume 3g/kg of alcohol (which works out to be about 18 standard drinks for me… a bit too life-threatening for comfort) and that the rats were killed by decapitation (I’m attached to my head). I guess the more I think about it the less I’m interested in incurring a great deal of brain damage this weekend; I’m not sure I could make it through the rest of Neurobio firing on a few less cylinders. I might just take my shiny new ID down to the grocery store and pick me up some O’Doul’s.

Reference: Oliva JM, Ortiz S, Pérez-Rial S, Manzanares J.Time dependent alterations on tyrosine hydroxylase, opioid and cannabinoid CB(1) receptor gene expressions after acute ethanol administration in the rat brain. Eur Neuropsychopharmacol. 2007 Oct 24; [Epub ahead of print

PZ Myers at the Scripps

While I’m here in San Diego, I’ll also be giving a talk/hosting a discussion at the Scripps Institute on Friday at 3:00. The title is:

Sharing science: education, activism, and advocacy

I’m planning on telling the attendees the secret to getting a million visits per month to their blogs. No, actually — I’m going to discuss and justify diverse approaches to getting the public engaged in science issues, and I plan to mention both what I consider to be successes (but which may not change the wider conversations) and failures (which even so are of value). And it’s open to the public! Come on down to Vaughn 100 on the Scripps Institution of Oceanograph (map), and join in the conversation.

Wish you were here!

I’m having a lovely time here at Beyond Belief 2 — you should all be here (and of course, you will be; as they did last year, everything will be available after the meeting on the web.) It’s an eclectic mix of all kinds of interesting stuff outside of my usual range: yesterday, we had terrific sessions on the history of the Enlightenment, evolutionary economics, evolution of religion, and some speculation and cosmology. It was vastly entertaining, and lest you think this was a bunch of thugly atheists preaching to the choir, let me reassure you that I disagreed with about a third of what I heard.

[Read more…]