Events at Physics |
Events on Tuesday, October 14th, 2008
- Chaos & Complex Systems Seminar
- A perspective on evolution and psychiatry
- Time: 12:05 pm
- Place: 4274 Chamberlin (Refreshments will be served)
- Speaker: Russ Gardner, UW Department of Psychiatry
- Abstract: This presentation summarizes key points in the troubled 20th century history of psychiatry and its guiding paradigms. These include, for example, a oddly restricted definition of the word "biology" - a definition that de facto includes cellular-molecular biology only. Psychiatric disorders presently appear out of the blue understood as molecular in origin with corrections to be achieved with medications in short impersonal sessions. The specialty does not exhibit parallels to other specialties such as pulmonology and orthopedics for which lung and bone anatomies represent physical organs substrate to their respective physiologies and rationalize their respective "pathophysiologies" that describe disease as deviation from how the body works normally.
Reasons stem from major opposing figures of the twentieth century: (1) Freud who did present pathophysiologies but not based on a real nervous system - his writings did not mention the brain after 1900 despite his prior researcher and neurologist credentials. (2) "Biological" psychiatrists typified and led by Eli Robins who reacted to the untested therapies that made claims based on authority and that eschewed data-gathering. But they threw out the pathophysiology baby with the bathwater and suggested any "future" pathophysiologies would primarily involve cellular-molecular foundations - without need of other levels of analysis, an assumption that presently seems as without foundation as Freud's neglect of an actual brain.
Both traditions implied that the free-standing individual separable from other people suffices for their models. But although research shows psychotherapies of all kinds work effectively and that placebos account for much variance in drug treatment, these paradigmatic features persist in present day psychiatry, augmented in part by corporate financial factors. A psychiatric basic science with a focus on an evolved "social brain" with the physiological function of "relational neurobiology" would help provide order for psychiatry's disorder. Social factors account for much larger human brain size compared, for example, to chimpanzee brains (3x larger by weight) despite close genomic identity. An approach that dissects pathophysiological mechanisms includes communicational states that transcend species combined with communicational features seemingly unique to humans.
- Astronomy Colloquium
- Testing Models for Interstellar Dust
- Time: 3:30 pm
- Place: 6515 Sterling Hall
- Speaker: Bruce Draine, Princeton University
- Abstract: The basic properties of interstellar dust continue to be controversial. We are quite sure that much of the dust mass is composed of amorphous silicates. There is wide agreement that interstellar dust includes a substantial population of ultrasmall grains consisting of large PAH molecules. All authors agree that carbonaceous material contributes an appreciable fraction of the overall grain mass. Beyond this, there remains uncertainty over fundamental issues. For example, grain morphology -- is the overall dust mass dominated by grains that are compact, or by grains that are loose, fluffy aggregates?<br><br>
I will discuss some recent work on interstellar dust, including:<br><br>
(1) models vs observations of IR emission from star-forming galaxies;<br><br>
(2) predicting polarization of FIR/submm emission from interstellar dust;<br><br>
(3) conflict between current interstellar dust models and observations of interstellar dust entering the heliosphere. - Host: Prof Alexander Lazarian