This coming Monday is the new moon, which means by tonight we are in the soup. There’s nothing to block the stars but us…and clouds. Every month has its dark nadir and we’re pretty much there, stars as bright and numerous as they’ll ever be. That’s the thing about a full night sky, as dark and rich now as it would have been 10,00 years ago, if you’re in the right place. A big moon all bright and milky is one kind of night sky. No moon at all, we see our galaxy from the inside out. A book of…

Roughly 10 percent of the U.S. population is afflicted with major depressive disorder at any given time, and up to 20 percent will exhibit MDD symptoms over their lifetimes. Yet despite its prevalence, methods to treat MDD often fall short for a not-insignificant portion of the population. Antidepressants — the standard of treatment — don\’t work for 30 percent with MDD. When infused at a low dose ketamine shows remarkable efficacy as a rapidly acting antidepressant, with effects observed within hours even in patients who have been resistant to other antidepressant treatments. However, consistent infusions of ketamine are needed to…

Oliver Selfridge was an early pioneer of artificial intelligence, and in 1959 wrote a classic paper outlining a system by which simple units, each carrying out a specialised function, could be connected together to perform complex, cognitive tasks. This ‘pandemonium architecture‘ inspired research in neural networks, which in turn led to modern machine learning about which we hear so much these days. The Pandemonium model is best known through some fantastically characteristic illustrations by Leanne Hinton in Lindsey & Norman’s 1977 introductory psychology textbook ‘Human Information Processing’. Here’s one: One internet citizen described the illustrations as ‘an attempt to explain…

A journal has finally issued a correction following a seven-year-old exchange on PubPeer in which the authors promised to fix issues “as soon as possible.” But after following up with the authors and the journal, it’s still not clear where the delay occurred. Neuron published the paper, “Common DISC1 Polymorphisms Disrupt Wnt/GSK3β Signaling and Brain Development,” in 2011. It has been cited 101 times, 28 of which came after concerns were first raised, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.  It first appeared on PubPeer in April 2018, when commenter Epipactis voethii first pointed out figures 2 and 3 of the…