Linguistic evidence supports date for Homeric epics.

The Homeric epics are among the greatest masterpieces of literature, but when they were produced is not known with certainty. Here we apply evolutionary-linguistic phylogenetic statistical methods to differences in Homeric, Modern Greek and ancient Hittite vocabulary items to estimate a date of approximately 710-760 BCE for these great works. Our analysis compared a common set of vocabulary items among the three pairs of languages, recording for each item whether the words in the two languages were cognate - derived from a shared ancestral word - or not. We then used a likelihood-based Markov chain Monte Carlo procedure to estimate the most probable times in years separating these languages given the percentage of words they shared, combined with knowledge of the rates at which different words change. Our date for the epics is in close agreement with historians' and classicists' beliefs derived from historical and archaeological sources.

Extant blood samples to deduce the strains of the 1890 and possibly earlier pandemic influenzas.

Influenza outbreaks in 1918, 1957 and 1968 caused some of the highest infectious disease mortality in the 20th century. In particular the 1918 pandemic caused more than 50 million deaths worldwide-the most deaths caused by any infectious disease ever in human history. Influenza pandemics in 1890 and earlier in the 19th century and back until at least the 16th century also caused non-trivial mortality. The excessively high mortality from flu in these years is thought to be due to major antigenic shifts in influenza strains, as opposed to smaller drifts in flu strains in years between pandemics. It is also thought that flu strains cycle naturally; however, as the 1918 pandemic was caused by an H1N1 strain, the 1957 pandemic by an H2N2 strain and the 1968 pandemic by an H3N2 flu, there have not been sufficient strains in an era when they could be evaluated molecularly to prove natural flu cycling in the human population. We have searched databases and institutions and here report finding extant preserved samples of sera of sufficient age and drawn at appropriate times to elucidate the strain of the 1890 pandemic and possibly shed light on influenza strains prior to that.

The Wertheimer-Benary effect does not invert, and a nulled Wertheimer-Benary effect.

More than three-quarters of a century ago Wertheimer and Benary demonstrated an ingenious and clear, though, interestingly, small effect: a grey triangle just inside an arm of a black cross on a white background appears slightly lighter than an identical triangle immediately adjacent to the cross, despite both triangles having the same perimeter exposure to black and white. Over a generation ago White discovered an apparently related, but far stronger effect: when short grey (test) bars are placed onto either black or white alternating long bars, the short test bars placed on the long black bars appear much lighter than those placed on the long white bars. A decade ago Spehar, Gilchrist, and Arend found that, enigmatically, if the short test bars in White's effect are the lightest stimulus in a figure, then the relative lightness of the test bars inverts compared with the standard version of White's effect. Here we show that the Wertheimer-Benary effect does not invert, but instead produces a very weak version of the standard effect. We also demonstrate a novel, nulled Wertheimer-Benary effect.

Thickness and the Koffka ring effect.

Over seven decades ago Gestalt psychologist Kurt Koffka described a remarkable effect: when a contiguous gray ring is placed on a background half of one shade of gray, half of another, the ring appears homogeneous. However, if the ring is slightly divided, the two halves of the ring appear different shades of gray, the half of the ring on the darker background appearing lighter than the half of the ring on the lighter background. The Gestalt principle of continuity is used to explain this effect. We show that when the ring is made thinner it appears heterogeneous even when contiguous. We also illustrate this in the additional material with a colored background with more than two regions.

Play with online virtual pets as a method to improve mirror neuron and real world functioning in autistic children.

Autism is a severe disease with no known cause and no cure or treatment. Recently, ourselves and subsequently others found that so-called "mirror neurons" - neurons that respond not only when a person moves, but upon observation of movement in another - are dysfunctional in autistic children. Here I suggest an easy, simple, inexpensive and fun method to improve mirror neuron functioning in autistic children, increase appreciation in autistic children for the theory of mind and thinking of others, and most importantly hopefully to improve real world functioning: play with virtual online pets that are the "embodiment" of a stuffed animal the child has. Adoption and then care and play with online pets forces, in a fun way, one to think about the world through the eyes and needs of the pet. A simple method to test this play with online virtual pet therapy is described.

Symmetric four-dimensional polytope and visualization method in four, eight, and sixteen dimensions using Hopf maps.

Inspired by, and using methods of optimization derived from classical three-dimensional electrostatics we have found a four-dimensional polytope, new to our knowledge, with a high degree of symmetry in terms of the lengths of sides--64 of the 80 vertices have twelve nearest neighbors with the same four nearest neighbor distances, and the other 16 vertices have ten nearest neighbors with distances that are two of the four nearest neighbor distances for the set of 64 vertices. We give and illustrate a simple geometric method to visualize this configuration and other configurations in four, eight, and sixteen dimensions.

A simple method to stand outside oneself.

Here we outline a simple method of using two mirrors which allows one to stand outside oneself. This method demonstrates that registration of vision with touch and proprioception is crucial for the perception of the corporeal self. Our method may also allow the disassociation of taste from touch, proprioception, and movement.

Consideration of use of phenothiazines in particular trifluorperazine for epidermal growth factor receptor associated cancers.

Papers from a generation ago suggested that phenothiazines--in particular trifluorperazine (Stelazine) a medicinal approved by the FDA and still commonly used for schizophrenia--downregulate the epidermal growth factor receptor. As numerous cancers--e.g., colon cancer, breast cancer, pancreatic cancer and glioblastoma--are dependent on signaling via this receptor, we here suggest that phenothiazines such as trifluorperazine be considered for use in epidermal growth factor receptor associated cancers.

Consideration of acamprosate for treatment of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a fatal disease of degeneration of motor neurons. There is no known cure or life extending treatment. Much recent work has suggested that a possible cause of ALS is constitutive opening of the calcium pore in glutamate sensitive AMPA channels secondary to a failure of RNA editing that would change a crucial glutamate in the channel to arginine. Here, we point out that the small molecule pharmaceutical acamprosate, usually used as a drug to maintain alcohol abstinence, may block this calcium pore--as do the related molecules endogenous polyamines such as putrescine, cadaverine, spermidine and spermine--and thus might have use in ALS.

"Stroop concordant" coloring of letters for remediation of dyslexia.

In the modern society of the printed word dyslexia can be distressing and disabling. Commonly dyslexia manifests as a difficulty reading often caused by confusion or reversal of certain letters such as 'b' and 'd', and 'p' and 'q' and 'g'. Here we suggest that one method of remediation or amelioration is to print letters in color such as a 'b' in blue print, an 'r' in red, 'g' in green and 'p' in pink. Such coloring of letters takes advantage of the well-known association of vision of the color with the color's name--and therefore enunciation of the color's first letter.

Co-administration of ramelton and fluvoxamine to increase levels of interleukin-2.

Ramelton is a medication recently approved by the FDA for treatment of insomnia. Ramelton is an analogue of melatonin with a higher affinity even than that of the natural ligand. Clinically this potentially strong effect of the ligand is blunted by the fact that upon oral ingestion there is first pass metabolism of greater than 95%. This liver metabolism is mediated by the CYP1A2 enzyme. It turns out that the medication fluvoxamine approved by the FDA for the treatment of obsessive compulsive disorder is a potent inhibitor of the CYP1A2 enzyme, with the effect that co-administration of ramelton and fluvoxamine increases blood levels of ramelton by 100-200 fold. It turns out that lymphocytes bear the melatnonin receptors and stimulation of these receptors on lymphocytes cause the lymphocytes to elaborate the pro-inflammatory cytokine interleukin-2 (Il-2). Thus, here we point out that co-administration of ramelton and modest doses of fluvoxamine may be able to smoothly produce increased levels of Il-2, this may be useful in diseases and conditions such as metastatic cancer and maintenance of suppression of the HIV virus.

Strenuous, intensive, long-term exercise does not prevent or delay the onset of Huntington's disease.

Recent work in mice has suggested that an enriched environment can delay disease onset in models of Huntington's disease (HD). The component of an enriched environment most likely able to be translated to humans is increased exercise. But here I note that a recently reported case of HD in a marathon runner who had, for many years before becoming symptomatic with HD, been running at an advanced amateur/semiprofessional level, suggests that in humans exercise is not able to prevent or even delay onset of HD. In general study of marathon runners may be useful to study if exercise can prevent or delay onset of genetic diseases.

Situational therapy for Wernicke's aphasia.

Patients with Wernicke's or expressive aphasia are able to produce fluent speech, however, this speech may be complete gibberish sounds and totally incomprehensible, or even when comprehensible to a degree is often laced with severe errors and abnormalities such as verbal and phonemic paraphasias and neologisms. Furthermore, patient's with Wernicke's aphasia have poor to no understanding of speech or language. There is no proven method for rehabilitation of Wernicke's aphasia, or even much guidance for physicians or speech therapists to treat Wernicke's aphasia patients. In contrast to their poor to non-existent communication skills using speech or other forms of language, it has long been appreciated informally and formally that Wernicke's aphasia patients are able to communicate well, even normally, using non-verbal means such as actions, movements, props, gestures, facials expressions, and affect. Furthermore, in non-language domains Wernicke's aphasia patients can show normal memory and learning abilities. Thus, we here suggest that the non-language communication channels of Wernicke's aphasia patients be channeled and utilized in their functional rehabilitation: Specifically, we suggest that therapy for Wernicke's aphasia patients should consist of placing patients in real or simulated important functional situations--e.g., buying food, taking transport--and let the patients train and learn to use and hone their non-language communication means and skills for improved practical functioning.

Defect-free global minima in Thomson's problem of charges on a sphere.

Given unit points charges on the surface of a unit conducting sphere, what configuration of charges minimizes the Coulombic energy SigmaN i>(j=1)1/r(ij)? Due to an exponential rise in good local minima, finding global minima for this problem, or even approaches to do so has proven extremely difficult. For N=10(h2+hk+k2)+2 recent theoretical work based on elasticity theory, and subsequent numerical work has shown, that for N approximately same or greater than 500-1000, adding dislocation defects to a symmetric icosadeltahedral lattice lowers the energy. Here we show that in fact this approach holds for all N, and we give a complete or near complete catalogue of defect free global minima.