Reflections on some important contributions made by Lotfi A. Zadeh that have impacted my own research

Contributions to the field of neurotransmitters by Japanese scientists, and reflections on my own research

PART I DESCRIBES IMPORTANT CONTRIBUTIONS MADE BY SOME JAPANESE PIONEERS IN THE FIELD OF NEUROTRANSMITTERS: (their achievements in parentheses) J. Takamine (isolation and crystallization of adrenaline); K. Shimidzu (early hint for acetylcholine as a neurotransmitter); F. Kanematsu (donation of the Kanematsu Memorial Institute in Sydney); T. Hayashi (discovery of the excitatory action of glutamat...

Mistakes I Have Made in My Research Career.

I started in psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital and Institute of Psychiatry, London, in October 1972, and spent the next 3 years completing my basic training. I was then offered a research post studying the excretion of dimethyltryptamine (DMT) in patients with schizophrenia. DMT is a hallucinogen used by Amazonian Indians in their religious ceremonies, as well as a minor street drug, and the ...

Me, my Self and my Avatar Some microsociological reflections on "Second Life"

More than most other web applications, Second Life illustrates the potential of the Internet to amplify the fragmentation of human personality by inducing a manifold of "dummy identities" strictly dissociated from the piloting core personality behind the screen. In contrast to partialized offline identities as they emerge as correlates of "crossing social circles" (Georg Simmel), they transport...

Reflections on my daughter's DNA

I have spent the last 11 years seeking those answers on behalf of my daughter Beatrice. Our third child, Beatrice or Bea, was born in 2003 with contracted fingers (arthropgryposis) andwide eyes (hypertelorism). The attending pediatrician noted shewas a bit floppy. Yet no connections among these or other clinical findings were known to medicine. Those highly directed, system-specific physical ex...

‘Simply my own’