Thursday, January 24, 2008

Ethnology

Ethnology (from the Greek ethnos, meaning "family, lineage, people") is the branch of anthropology that compares and analyses the origins, distribution, technology, religion, language, and social structure of the ethnic, racial, and/or national divisions of humanity. Compared to ethnography, the study of single groups through direct contact with the culture, ethnology takes the research that ethnographers have compiled and then compares and contrasts different cultures.

The term ethnology is credited to Adam Franz Kollár who used and defined it in his Historiae ivrisqve pvblici Regni Vngariae amoenitates published in Vienna in 1783. Kollár's interest in linguistic and cultural diversity was aroused by the situation in his native multi-lingual Kingdom of Hungary and his roots among its Slovaks, and by the shifts that began to emerge after the gradual retreat of the Ottoman Empire in the more distant Balkans.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Paraspeckles

Paraspeckles are irregularly shaped compartments in the nucleus' interchromatin space. First documented in HeLa cells, where there are generally 10–30 per nucleus, paraspeckles are now known to also exist in all human primary cells, transformed cell lines and tissue sections. Their name is derived from their distribution in the nucleus; the "para" is short for parallel and the "speckles" refers to the splicing speckles to which they are always in close proximity.

Paraspeckles are dynamic structures that are altered in response to changes in cellular metabolic activity. They are transcription dependent and in the absence of RNA Pol II transcription, the paraspeckle disappears and all of its associated protein components (PSP1, p54nrb, PSP2, CFI(m)68 and PSF) form a crescent shaped perinucleolar cap in the nucleolus.

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Biological psychology

Biological psychology is the scientific study of the biological bases of behavior and mental states. Because all behavior is controlled by the central nervous system, it is sensible to study how the brain functions in order to understand behavior. This is the approach taken in behavioral neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, and neuropsychology. Neuropsychology is the branch of psychology that aims to understand how the structure and function of the 'brain' relate to specific behavioral and psychological processes. Often neuropsychologists are employed as scientists to advance scientific or medical knowledge. Neuropsychology is particularly concerned with the understanding of brain injury in an attempt to work out normal psychological function.

The approach of cognitive neuroscience to studying the link between brain and behavior is to use neuroimaging tools, such as to observe which areas of the brain are active during a particular task.

Thursday, January 03, 2008

Ontology

Ontology is a study of conceptions of reality and the nature of being. In philosophy, ontology is the study of being or existence and forms the basic subject matter of metaphysics. It seeks to describe or posit the basic categories and relationships of being or existence to define entities and types of entities within its framework.
Some philosophers, notably of the Platonic school, contend that all nouns refer to entities. Other philosophers contend that some nouns do not name entities but provide a kind of shorthand way of referring to a collection (of either objects or events). In this latter view, mind, instead of referring to an entity, refers to a collection of mental events experienced by a person; society refers to a collection of persons with some shared interactions, and geometry refers to a collection of a specific kind of intellectual activity.