High bias rescue

Hybrid vehicles don't just have a 12-V battery, they have a 500-V battery. This packs a punch if your body completes the circuit to ground, as it would if you were, say, a rescue worker cutting open a Prius to save someone trapped inside.

Hale, the company that manufactures the "jaws of life" and other tools for rescuing people, has come out with new models in their Centaur line of products designed to be safe in high bias situations. Rescuers will not be injured cutting through the electrical cables.

"There is a real need for rescue workers to take extra precautions when dealing with hybrid vehicles," states Bob Linster, Vice President of Sales & Marketing.

The Cen SC14 Fi Combination tool and the Cen C9 Fi Cutter tool are safer for an object voltage of 1500 V DC or 1000 AC. All tool components coming in contact with the operator, such as handles, valves and actuators, are covered with non-conductive insulated materials. What's more, the insulation reacts to electrical exposure visually.

A friend-of-a-friend who is a paramedic had to go to a special training session recently in order to learn how to safely rescue people from hybrid vehicles. Although one could use this as another way to criticize hybrids, it could also be seen as beneficial to have more people trained in understanding how to handle high voltages.

How would you fare in an oil crisis?

We've had an "oil crisis" before-- remember the early 70s, when people lined up for gas and were only allowed to buy it on odd or even days? (Probably a lot of the Internet community is too young to remember that, but it did happen.) Now think about a more serious crisis, when the price of gas is not just $3/gallon, but $5 or even $8/gallon. Some say this is entirely possible in the not-too-distant future.

SustainLane has done a study about the transportation, food, and communication infrastructure of American cities, and come up with a list of the ten U.S. cites best prepared for an oil crisis.

Here they are:

1. New York City
   
2. Boston
   
3. San Francisco
   
4. Chicago
   
5. Philadelphia
   
6. Portland
   
7. Honolulu
   
8. Seattle
   
9. Baltimore
   
10. Oakland
    

Intriguing. As noted in the article, they are all port cities, most are dense and have low sprawl, and they tend to be among the oldest cities in their respective states. But it is possible to criticize the study parameters-- for example, perhaps greater attention should have been paid to the cities' power grid and water infrastructure, which would surely also be affected in an oil crisis. Perhaps this might shuffle the results.

But rather than delve into those details, I would like simply to point out the meta-data here: No one has bothered to rank cities by their ability to survive an oil crisis before. Now that someone has done it, the debate can begin about whether it makes sense, what else might be done, how poorly-ranked cities can improve, etc. Having the data-- and having the insight (and perhaps courage) to analyze data in new ways and start talking about it-- can set change in motion. Just by opening up people's awareness and playing off their natural desire to be ranked highly and to be prepared for the future.

This is a more refined response to potential crises than buying duct tape and plastic sheeting. Let's work together to make our cities and societies robust. Even if the oil crisis never comes, it will be worth the effort! (Can't say the same for all that duct tape, eh?)

A chance to be a Lady

I am going to Japan in April on a business trip, and my colleague there booked me in a new hotel. Literally new-- it opened in late 2004, and still has not put in facilities to serve lunch or dinner.

But they have a number of "special rooms" with themes, such as the Healing Room (equipped with a foot massager, negative-ion generator(*), and "low-resistance" pillows) and the Premier Business Room (with a desk and computer included).

Hilariously, I am staying in the "Ladies Room." This one comes with a foot massager, negative-ion moisture regulator, negative-ion hairdryer, washball (for body washing), make-up remover, facial wash, moisturising mask, skin milk, cotton wool, cotton buds, and hairclip. The real reason he booked me here is because the Ladies Rooms are guaranteed to be non-smoking, which is hard to find in Japan. But I will see what I can do with all the other stuff.

The hairclip is right out-- my hair is really short. Ditto for the make-up remover since I don't wear make-up. We'll have to see what the skin milk and facial wash are, but they could be OK if not overly scented. What the heck is a washball? Hmmmm. I think perhaps I will learn what I'm supposed to do as a "Lady" by staying in this room. Could be educational.

(*) These things are all the rage in Asia. My colleague in Taiwan has one that plugs into the cigarette lighter in his car. He assiduously put it in place every time we got in the car. "It's healthy!" he says.

Spring approaches softly

Here we are, a few days past the vernal equinox. Is it spring? Today, I knew the answer was yes.

There is a day each spring when I walk outside and the air feels soft. Yes, soft. The air may still be chilly, the sunshine a little weak, but the breeze has lost some undertone, some sharp edge, that it has during winter. The metallic feel transforms to velvet. Today, I felt that. And there is no going back.

Reaching for the sun

What's the first new building that was built in lower Manhattan after 9/11?

The Solaire!

It's a residential building based on green architecture with green amenities. I'm sure it costs plenty of green to live in, too, but check out what it's got (from an article on EC&M):

The 30-story, $100 million building features 33kW of photovoltaic systems, energy-efficient lighting, and energy-saving appliances. Two systems are located on the south and west wall of the buildings' mechanical bulkhead, and custom German-manufactured solar panels are integrated into the building's glass curtain wall and clear glass entrance canopy. [...]

Solaire is 30% more efficient than any other building constructed in Manhattan to date, Pereira says. During the construction project, the team had to purchase as many materials as possible from within a 500-mile radius of the jobsite, recycle building materials, and use paints and finishes with low volatile organic compounds. The contractors even installed photovoltaic panels on their jobsite trailers to save energy during the construction process.

Cool.

Taiwan in four words

I am just back from Taiwan, where I happened across a newspaper article that gave the official UN designation for Taiwan. Most countries have agreed to accept this wording, which is a bundle of diplomatic compromises.

So here it is: Taiwan is an...

independent, democratic, Chinese non-state.

Okay. So what is an "independent non-state"? And how can something Chinese be democratic? It's a wonderful contradiction that allows people to pick out the parts they like and ignore the rest. Kind of brilliant, actually.

Taiwan feast

I hopped down to Taiwan on Sunday, and have been doing meetings all week. But it happens that the guy hosting me is fond of fancy lunches, knows all the good places, and knows that I like seafood. It's been a veritable parade of intriguing food.

Shrimp roll-ups. These are Shanghainese-- there's a mixture of cooked shrimp, green onions, and other veggies in sauce, and you load it into a lettuce leaf like a burrito.

Cantaloupe seafood gratin. It's a slice of cantaloupe topped with fish, gingko nuts, and a couple of mushrooms, then covered with cheese. The whole thing is baked to perfection, and turns out to be a wonderful combination.

Fried crab balls. Basically tempura crab. Nice and light, not like deep-fried American food.

Ginger mussels. I had to be brave to go for this one, as I am not really a mussel fan. But these were fresh, fully cooked, and marinated in a ginger-garlic-soy sauce that masked any fishiness. Actually quite edible!

Baby octopus with sweet and sour sauce. Another one where I felt some trepidation, as I generally find octopus very chewy and not very flavorful. But these little guys were again marinated, and the effect was both to soften the texture and to improve the flavor.

Holy cow, giant oysters. These were the BIG guys, with shells the size of shoes-- no wimpy little bite-sized oysters on the halfshell. They were baked with some kind of cheese gratin topping, but I could still smell the strong oysterness. I drew the line at this one and didn't eat it. They are just too slimy and fishy for me, especially when one oyster is about 3 bites.

Passion-fruit jam. A breakfast item-- it's orange with enormous black seeds that have the same texture as kiwifruit seeds. Very tart also, which was quite pleasant.

Malt juice. I didn't get to try this one, but several people ordered it at a coffee shop we went to. It seems to be sweetened non-alcoholic beer. The bottle even looks like a beer bottle and comes from Germany. I have a friend who dislikes beer, calling it "barley soda"-- I think this might literally have been barley soda!

Peach tea. You know, Asian tea is just vastly superior to the packaged imitation we have in America. They can make tea with powerful flavor that is nonetheless not overly bitter. You can buy peach tea in the US, but you have to use your imagination to taste the peach, and if you try to brew it up stronger so you get more flavor, it goes out of balance and becomes bitter. Asian tea is even better than British tea.

Coconut cream with gelatin. Sweetened coconut milk with little gelatin balls like minature boba tea balls. It's a perfect balance of smooth, thick cream with enough texture to make it interesting. Like a well-balanced soup.

California orange?. I came all the way to Taiwan to get... a California orange in my room. (This hotel provides fresh fruit each day). But it wasn't like any orange I could buy at home. It was only a little bigger than a golf ball! This is actually a really nice size for an orange, and I was wishing we could have such small ones. But Americans want everything supersized, apparently including fruit. The nice little ones get shipped to Taiwan.

I have to stop or I'll get hungry. Tomorrow I head back home!

Cyber-surgery

One prominent feature of the Internet is its ability to bring us information we just don't have access to otherwise. This can be plain-old factual information, or it can be access to people who are far away and we wouldn't have met otherwise. And with the advent of high-speed streaming video, we can witness events that we cannot be present for.

Such as observing surgery. Welcome to OR-Live.

There are scheduled events that you can watch like TV programs (I wonder when we'll get TiVo for live-streamed video. Sure, there might be an archive, but I mean something where I can set my computer to grab the downloaded information as it is streamed and save it in a file for me. Or does that exist already?).

Anyway, I see they are doing a minimally-invasive knee replacement surgery on March 28. This is what my mom had done, so I'm interested in taking a look.

Tidbits

A few other little items from Korea...

From the intriguing food department:

Coco-grape yogurt. Yes, it's a combination of coconut and grape (not just any grape, but full-fledged Concord grape, like grape soda). And it has little bits of gelatin floating in it, like boba tea does. It sounds totally revolting, but it's actually pretty good.

Persimmon tea. Yum! This is a chilled tea that comes in a little can. It's sweet and has undertones of cinnamon.

Pomegranate juice. Also quite tasty. You can get something like this in the US (called POM), but I think this stuff was sweeter and more intensely flavored.

Clam juice soup. This is a clear broth that is basically like clam juice, served warm with a few green onions and, in fancy restaurants, an open clam submerged in it. It looks deceptively like clear miso soup, but tastes... much clammier.

I also learned how Korean children's ages are counted. When the kid is born, they are already 1 year old. And at the turn of the first new year, they get another year added. One of my contacts just had a baby in December, so by March the kid is already considered to be 2 years old. Of course they keep official track of how old a person is in real time, but this system gives the "traditional" age.

Finally, I saw some really cool interactive floor tiles. They were advertising panels, consisting of a low-quality LCD covered with a thick plastic layer that you could walk over. In fact, some of the content being shown would change as you stepped on the panel, so it was somehow touc sensitive and had a feedback mechanism. I noticed that often the adults just walked over, already well-trained to ignore anything that looked like an ad. But children-- who are closer to the ground anyway-- loved them. Toddlers happily ran around on the panels, laughing with glee that they could make the image change. For example, one was an ad for Coca-Cola that showed bubbles in a glass. The bubbles would move and skitter away from the place you were stepping, so by running around on the panel, you could "herd" the bubbles along.

My friend loved them too, revealing her child-at-heart. She helped the kids play with them. I was reminded of her showing me the video game Dance Dance Revolution five years ago when it was a new phenomenon. I guess she particularly enjoys moving her feet!

Today I moved to Taiwan, where it is gray and drizzly. I was hoping for spring weather, but perhaps this actually fits the bill...

Swallowing Korea

Today was a free day in Seoul! I started out by heading across the street to the Buddhist temple. It's amazing to have a traditional temple right next to the COEX Mall and Korea World Trade Center, but there it is. It's been there for at least a century.

I had no particular plan except to see what it looked like, but as I approached the main hall, a monk entered ahead of me. I had arrived just in time for the morning chants. So I took a mat, sat down, and meditated while the other patrons, led by the monk, chanted (I don't know the words). It was a beautiful hall with traditional painted ceilings, and many people (50?) were there on a Saturday morning. I don't know much about Korean Buddhism except that it is more ritualistic than American Buddhism, and the contemplative practice focuses on the basic question, "What is this?"

I departed after 30 minutes and headed back across the street. The weather was truly awful. Every spring the sands of the Gobi Desert in China blow across the Korean Penninsula, coating everything with a fine layer of yellow dust. The sky was totally yellow, and the visibility was like a thick San Francisco fog-- you could see nearby buildings, but that was about it. Some people wore surgeon masks, and many were coughing or had irritated eyes. Apparently this goes on for weeks every spring. Korea sends money to China each year to plant trees at the eastern edge of the desert, but it seems to be a losing battle. Erosion loosens the sand, and the Gobi Desert is in general getting larger every year.

Then I met my friend, whom I know because my father is a friend of her thesis adviser (yeah, it's a remote connection, but she and I are really compatible). We didn't want to spend too much time outside, but we did start by visiting a traditional Korean village. It's sort of a tourist site, but did have an interesting set-up.

Old Korean houses used floor heating supplied by burning wood in brick ovens beneath the floors. We also saw replicas of old-style fermentation barrels, kitchen and farm implements, and a device for brewing rice wine. Amazingly, they were giving out little samples of the rice wine, which we tried. Not bad-- tasted like sake.

We had lunch on the premises-- another dose of bibim bap! And afterward we had sweet honey-citron tea with candied citron rinds and pine nuts floating in it. Yum! This came with traditional rice cookies, which are basically rice puffs, flash-fried, then coated in honey and sesame. They were very light.

Then we walked to a stream that flows through the middle of Seoul. Seoul is divided by the Han River, and this stream is a tiny tributary. It used to be underground-- they paved over it to make a big road. But later, people wanted more natural areas within Seoul, so they actually dug it up and made a walking trail beside the stream. We strolled past the garment district, which is apparently a fashion hub in Korea. The designs are created right there, then made into clothing at a bunch of small, independent clothing stores right in the vicinity. It's about two days from design to on-the-rack, a very efficient supply chain.

One thing about this stream trail that was amazing to me was that all along it, there were stepping stones to get across. The stream was only about 3-4 feet deep and flowed gently, but still, these stepping stones were right out there in the middle of it. In the US, some kid would fall off and drown, and the resulting lawsuit would require the removal of all those unsafe stepping stones.

Along the way, we ran into a couple looking for a tourist destination called the Korea House. They looked Korean, and were about 50 years old, but they had perfect American English. They asked us because I was a Westerner, so they figured we would know English (they didn't know any Korean). They must have been very early Korean-Americans because they were obviously second-generation. I bet they had trouble in Korea because everyone would assume they spoke Korean. My friend commented that she had that trouble in Japan, where many people didn't realize that wasn't a Japanese speaker.

Then we took the subway over to the National Museum of Korea. It was typical of a national museum (I've seen the one in Taipei, and also the Louvre, British Museum, and Smithsonian). In other words, it was a subtle glorification of the country. It was really crowded because parents like to take their kids there for educational reasons, plus the sand was making the outdoors unpleasant.

I noticed that several exhibits were called something like "intercultural exchange," and talked about how Korean culture had been a big influence on some aspects of Japanese culture. You would never in a zillion years see a Japanese museum talking about how Korea had influenced its culture.

Anyway, it's a very nice musuem. And I even learned some Korean history about the Three Empires, which became the Two Empires, etc, etc. There was a huge historical timeline, much like the one I saw in Taipei (which was the Chinese view of the world). This one had four parallel tracks: Korea, Japan, China, and "World" (which seemed to be Europe and the Americas). I have no idea what happened to Africa, which should have started the whole thing off, or anywhere else in the world.

We persevered to see basically all of it, which took several hours. By this time, it was nearly 6 pm, and definitely time to head home! But we had one more event. When we got back to my hotel, where we were planning to eat in the fancy Asian restaurant, my friend pointed out that her former colleague at university was getting married at the hotel that evening. We had already missed the ceremony, but it was time for the banquet. We headed downstairs, and she actually talked her way in!

Wearing our grubby jeans and sneakers, we attended a Korean wedding meal. I was the only Westerner there.

The menu was Western! Apparently it gives the appearance of high class to serve a Western banquet at a wedding. My friend commented that when she needed to "restore her power" in Paris, she had found a Korean restaurant. So her idea was that this meal might restore my power.

Here was the menu: Crabmeat salad with cucumber, greens, and citrus dressing. Lentil soup with aspargus. Beef tenderloin with mushroom reduction, mashed potatoes, roasted garlic, and asparagus. Ceasar salad with bacon bits. Korean wedding noodles, which means long noodles (for long life and happiness) in a spicy broth with kimchee floating on top. And finally, light cheesecake with blueberries and currants, topped with vanilla bourbon sauce. The meal was served with a decent Cabernet Sauvignon (French). And the portions were actually Asian-sized, so the whole thing wasn't overwhelming (although I only ate a couple bits of meat; I don't eat much beef anyway).

Anyway, then there were some toasts and the bride and groom walked around. Just like in America, they didn't get to eat. When they came by, the groom asked my friend who I was, and she replied casually that I am the daughter of (my father). He nodded in recognition-- according to her, my dad is fairly well known in this circle of Korean physicists! Hmm. Well, at least there was some plausible reason for me to be at this wedding, and I wasn't totally crashing it.

Overall, I was thrilled to have the chance to participate! It's really fun to see the fundamental rituals in a foreign country (wedding, funeral, gift-giving, etc).

At the end of the day, I felt like I had swallowed Korea, from Buddhist chanting, to 10,000 years of history and art, to a modern-day hotel wedding. (And I swallowed some Gobi Desert dust too).

Culture around the edges

As always, I find ways to sneak in culture around the edges of my business meetings. This trip, I met a new sales rep we just hired in Seoul. She seems easy to talk to and has very good English, so we've been chatting. First I learned how she chose her laptop: She didn't want to offend either LG or Samsung (the two major clients she will be dealing with) by purchasing a computer from the other. So she got a Sony Vaio. It's a cool widescreen one, by the way.

Over coffee, she told me about various holidays they've been having. Valentine's Day has been exported to Asia, but in Korea, that is the day when women give chocolates to men. The next month, on March 14, it is White Day, when men give women candies. (She says women are eternally disappointed because they really want chocolates, but somehow the tradition has become for them to get other candies). And then companies started realizing that they could create holidays in order to make more money-- I guess we've exported our marketing techniques too-- and so on April 14, it is Black Day. People who didn't get or give anything for Valentine's Day or White Day are supposed to eat black Chinese noodles together on Black Day.

We had a little extra time after lunch, so we strolled up the street to a palace called Deoksugung. It had gorgeous painted woodwork around the eaves and on the ceiling indoors. According to the little blurb on the back of the ticket, it was originally built as a residence for Prince Wolsandaegun sometime before the 16th century. At various times during the Korean Empire, it was the main palace used by the King, and at other times it was a secondary residence.

One item that intrigued me was a model of an early weapon used to defend the palace. I can't recall the name of it, but it was a projectile weapon by which metal-tipped arrows were fired out of a matrix of slots using a small gunpowder explosion at the end of each. It wasn't a hand weapon; the matrix was mounted on a pole about 6 feet long, and connected to a cart with wheels. So it was more like a cannon. I had bought into the Western myth that gunpowder was invented in China but never used for weapons, only fireworks, until the Europeans created guns. But this weapon was used in the 15th century! Now, the arquebus was invented around 1475, but it wasn't anything like this weapon, so I suspect this one was home-grown. So much for the myth? Hmm.

Just as we were leaving the palace, we ran into a ceremony! It was about 30 men dressed in traditional Korean garb, marching like an army (some with flags, some with traditional instruments). They came to the palace and enacted some kind of ritual where their leader had to have a password to enter the grounds. There was an announcer explaining what was happening in both Korean and English, but we didn't end up understanding! The Korean was very traditional language, and my co-worker claimed she actually couldn't understand it. I hadn't realized that older forms of language could still be spoken, as if we were to use Chaucerian English to narrate a ceremony. And the English the announcer used was too sparse to piece together what was happening (she said things like, "Now the leader will start the ceremony with the password"). Um, why? How? When would this have happened?

I was gaping at them, fascinated, when my colleague said, "You aren't thinking this is real, are you?"

I have discovered, by the way, that I like bibim bap. It's a bunch of sliced vegetables, possibly with a raw egg yolk on top, sitting on rice. Plus some red chili sauce, of course. I kind of liked having the ingredients all neatly arranged, but I was told that the proper way to eat it is by mixing it all up with your chopsticks until it's a big mush.

I have also learned the name for the sushi-like roll that contains crabmeat, veggies, rice, and sometimes mayonnaise inside of seaweed: kim bap. (It's probably an abomination to call it sushi-like. The Japanese would be offended by the inclusion of something rich like mayo, while the Koreans would be offended to have their dish likened to a Japanese one). Kim bap can also be really good.

But I'm still not a kimchee fan. Maybe it grows on you.

Change the station

One interesting thing about this voyage was that there were many military personnel arriving in Korea for a permanent station change. There were a bunch on the flights I took-- Air Force, mainly-- but also, at Incheon Airport, there was an announcement over the PA that arriving personnel were supposed to clear customs at a particular station. It must be quite a few coming in if they would have a special announcement at the airport to handle them.

It made me wonder... is something up with North Korea? That is pure speculation because I have no way of knowing if we are actually bringing in more troops to South Korea, or merely moving them around (or even shipping more out than we are bringing in). Just a thought.

As an amusing aside, there was a senior officer (in uniform) at the airport helping to direct the people arriving on my flight, who were not traveling in uniform. As I passed by, clearly striding toward a different customs exit than the military one, he said, "Ma'am, are you military?"

Long haul

Off to Korea!

On the plane, I sat next to a couple of Korean women, one silent, one a talker. I was amazed at the number of little plastic bags of provisions the talker was carrying — a seemingly endless supply of chocolate, gum, beef sticks, makeup, hand lotion, chapstick, and other things, all stuffed into a huge leather purse. She drank a couple bottles of wine with dinner, then told me a bit about her trip. Apparently she had come for some kind of conference followed by a vacation, but I couldn’t understand what the conference was about. She declared that her English was excellent because she had an American husband. He must be able to understand her accent better than me. He is some kind of telecom engineer working in Korea, and they live there with their teenage daughter.

But her secret desire is to come live in America. Korea is too cramped, she said, while America has lots of space. Actually, this is the reason cited by every Asian I have ever heard talk about wanting to come to America. We have wide open spaces. And if you’ve seen Asia, you can understand this.

I was also intrigued by the woman across the aisle. She was an elderly Japanese woman with an American passport, traveling with a young woman who was apparently a personal attendant. She looked like some variety of Pacific Islander, and her job seemed to be taking care of the older woman’s bag, picking up her cane when it slipped to the floor, making sure her utensils and napkin were in order when the meals came, etc. The elderly lady wore hearing aids, but otherwise looked quite healthy and lucid, and didn’t have a lot of trouble walking. It was an interesting arrangement. I also noticed that she spent the whole flight watching the four movies they showed — all pretty bland and dismal Hollywood fare. I was surprised they would appeal to an older Japanese woman who traveled in style with a personal attendant.

The flight first stopped at Narita (Tokyo). Clearing customs there for an international transfer is amazingly efficient; it never takes more than about 15 minutes. (Compare to London Heathrow, where it never takes less than an hour, and they have signs posted prominently telling you that verbal threats or insults to the airport staff will be considered a criminal offense).

Ah, Japan. It’s been too long, but I have to wait until next month to stay here more than two hours. I spent the time at a gate, where I found an American-style outlet to run my computer. There was also a cute Japanism — a bank of leather electric massage chairs arrayed before a panoramic window. For 200 yen, you could run one of them like an amusement park ride. Alas, I had no yen despite a yen to try one.

We finally got to Korea at night, and by the time I got to my hotel, it was near 11 pm. Bedtime!

Give me latitude-- and some longitude, too

I am leaving today for Korea, and then Taiwan. I hope to post here during the trip!

The habit of noise

Yesterday I rode with a friend who has a Honda Civic hybrid. It's a nice car, although she told me that it didn't get as good mileage as the Prius or Insight-- "only" about 43 mpg.

Another friend with us mentioned an article she had read criticizing hybrids as "dangerous" because they make so little noise. People sometimes aren't aware of them and can be taken by surprise.

It's worth pointing out this danger for a number of reasons. Children, elderly people, and animals would be especially vulnerable to not hearing a quiet car. It would be useful for drivers of hybrids to realize this, so that they will not assume people are aware of their car. And of course, anyone who would be a pedestrian or bicyclist would want to be aware that hybrids are quieter than usual also.

But does this make hybrids "dangerous"? Of course not. It simply points out the habit we have (quite naturally) developed, whereby we become aware of a car's presence by using our ears. When that automatic habit is disrupted by a quiet car, we blame the car -- "my habit isn't working!" -- when it is really just a matter of retraining our habits. Perhaps we will have to use our eyes more. This takes a little effort and time, but it can be done.

After all, there was a time when we had to get used to neighborhoods having a lot of car noise. If we can do that, we can get used to quiet neighborhoods too.

Neurogenesis

For a long time, we believed that the brain never makes new cells. Every organ in your body is constantly recycling, regenerating, and growing, except for neurons, which never divide for your entire life. Sounds pretty implausible, doesn't it? And yet it has been ingrained as a paradigm of neuroscience.

Luckily, some recent researchers have begun to see differently. The concept of neurogenesis-- making new neurons-- is gaining ground from a series of detailed experiments. This article delves into the details of how the paradigm is being shifted, chiefly by Professor Elizabeth Gould of Princeton.

Please persevere through the whole article, or you might get the wrong impression. The old paradigm is one of genetic determinism: You are stuck with the brain you are born with. The beginning of the article replaces this notion with equally oppressive environmental determinism.

First we learn that Gould discovered that neurogenesis actually does occur. Hallelujah! We aren't stuck with the brain we were born with. But hope is immediately dashed by environmental determinism:

Gould’s insight was that understanding how stress damages the brain could illuminate the general mechanisms — especially neurogenesis — by which the brain is affected by its environ-mental conditions. For the last several years, she and her post-doc, Mirescu, have been depriving newborn rats of their mother for either 15 minutes or three hours a day. For an infant rat, there is nothing more stressful.[...]

Gould and Mirescu’s disruption led to a dramatic decrease in neurogenesis in their rats’ adult brains. The temporary trauma of childhood lingered on as a permanent reduction in the number of new cells in the hippocampus. The rat might have forgotten its pain, but its brain never did.

So, if we are allowed to extrapolate from rats to humans, it could be concluded that a traumatic or deprived childhood cannot be recovered from. The brain has been permanently damaged.

But wait. That's not actually a statement Gould would agree with. Luckily she didn't stop after the rat experiments, but went on to uncover more of the truth.

Neurogenesis is an optimistic idea. Though Gould’s lab has thoroughly demonstrated the long-term consequences of deprivation and stress, the brain, like skin, can heal itself, as Gould is now beginning to document, finding hopeful antidotes to neurogenesis-inhibiting injuries. “My hunch is that a lot of these abnormalities [caused by stress] can be fixed in adulthood,” she says. “I think that there’s a lot of evidence for the resiliency of the brain.”

[...]

The mind is like a muscle: it swells with exercise. Gould’s and Kozorovitskiy’s work reminds us not only how easy it is to hurt a brain, but how little it takes for that brain to heal.

Yes.

The mind is incredibly plastic. It can change in dramatic ways that you yourself have a hand in shaping. We are self-organizing creatures in ways beyond what the conscious mind can comprehend. (Gould doesn't say this; I'm adding my own views here).

I noticed also that there is some irony in Gould's own lifestyle. She has proven that chronic stress increases the chances of debilitating mental states while decreasing creativity, and yet...

Four days after giving birth to her third child, Gould was back at work, lecturing to a room full of undergraduates. She has always worked long hours, and expects nothing less of her employees. (Saturdays in the Gould lab are indistinguishable from Mondays.)

Nope. No chronic stress there!

And now, off to create some more neurons...