Terri’s musings on consciousness, agency, networks, cellular communication, computing, and whatever else is on her mind. Explore, contribute and join the discussion.
Researchers have found evidence that the network of cellular communication known as extracellular matrix (ECM) is a critical part of the formation of malignant cells.
As reported at Cloning Resources “It has been demonstrated that interactions between an epithelial breast cell and its ECM play a major role in determining whether that cell becomes cancerous, pointed the way to the idea that the ultimate fate of a stem or progenitor cell is heavily influenced by interactions with its neighboring microenvironments.”
It appears that “that a stem or progenitor cell is receiving instructional information from its surroundings”.
Not much has changed in the last few months. Credit is tight. Many loan products have disappeared pushing would be buyers out of the market all together. Thus, putting continued pressure on home prices. Unemployment is up also putting pressure on home prices through forced sales and increased inventory. It will take time to work through the existing inventory, the mortgage resets, and get to a place where the market is at least stable. Once that happens the old appreciation triggers of increasing employment, population and income will begin to put upward pressure on home prices and we will then have a bottom. Until then, watch the inventory numbers because pressure on price will NOT abate until inventory comes down.
On the commercial side, financing continues to be an obstacle to deal making as does the short term economic outlook. Look for further deterioration in occupied space especially in Riverside County and areas east of Riverside.
I have decided to take this site in a new direction and will begin posting on whatever is on my mind. Professionally, I am employed in computer networking and my outside interests include the stock market and real estate. So while I long to have time to write about consciousness, biophysics, and related topics what I have time to write about is politics and investing. Thus, this blog will be more about whatever is on my mind than originally planned.
Much of the New Age or New Thought movement begins with the premise that thought can be a cause. That is, thought can interact with physical entities. This is far from generally accepted science. In contemporary philosophy, medicine and science it is not accepted that thoughts can effect your body, your mind, or anything else.
This is probably one of the biggest gulfs between lay people and professional academics in many fields. There are some philosophers whose ideas remain unproven, who argue that the seeds of conscious must be present in matter. They argue that if this were not the case then consciousness could not arise naturally. Generally speaking though mind/matter interaction is avoided.
This results is that much of contemporary philosophy is far removed from everyday experience and the sciences. Thus, it is difficult to use the work of contemporary philosophy to either support or negate a view about experience. Additionally, much of contemporary science is very technical in nature and also removed from everyday experience. Even the scale at which biological process occur is difficult to fathom.
It is in this environment that some rush to fill the gap with resurrected New Age and New Thought philosophies that are are neither grounded in either contemporary philosophy or science. Intuitively, we want to believe that if we think positively, give to others, make and work toward goals that we can be at cause. However, the evidence of that is small and not generally accepted.
The current accepted view is that thought cannot and does not effect matter. However, that does not seem to be the case. So either our consciousness deceives us, as many philosophers contend, or we are still missing a great deal of knowledge about reality.
While my hunch is that our thoughts can and do effect our choices and our actions effect our brains, possibly through epigenetics, there is little well documented and researched material.
So for the last few months I have been reading and researching. In the months ahead I hope to bring more substantive information.
One is an interview with Stuart Kauffman. His work on defining life in terms of networks is novel and at present unproven. He thinks and write of life, the biosphere, the universe, the cell in turn of networks. This one sentence synopses of his work is extraordinary simplified and the video will give you a much better appreciation of his work.
My interest in his work is the possibility of network thinking may have on the idea that the mind is not solely located in the brain. That the mind is, at least in part, a whole body phenomena and an energetic one at that. Of course, this is total speculation and NOT part of his work at all.
The second video is the most graphic way I have seen cell processes displayed. So much of what happens in a cell cannot be seen and when it can it happens so slowly that it is difficult to comprehend. Acutually stunning is the best way I have of describing this video. Well worth the 3 minutes of time it takes to watch it. You will want to watch it again; its that good. The full narrated version and other video can be found at the Multimedia Production Site at Harvard.