jaymug:

Andru - Android Robot USB Device Charger

Sweet.

A shoutout to my girl Debbie. She has some really sweet art, photography, and mixed media. Give her stuff a looksee.

sceaterian:

This is for @mandershmander. 

I wanted you to hear this excerpt because it reminded me of some of our conversations. Please excuse my ridiculous voice.

“meander, v.” from David Levithan’s A Lover’s Dictionary

America: Mind your tongues.
Lost in a sea of supersweet molecules, tastebuds lose sense of real flavor. Love is…

You tell me that your skin is brown. Objectively, everything is relative to everything else.
Understated carbon. Already the same sugar, sugar.

Nothing seems more PC than saying nothing at all. Exception: pointing out how good you are at not saying anything.
Eventually, everyone just becomes everyone else. Dyed and crystallized in artificial flavor.

“I don’t know what brown means.” “Something like, earth and trees and richness and warmness and depth.” You say.

Listen close and you might notice me. Obsessive overcompensation never fixed your problems before. Volatile combinations of ego and sympathy set aside. Everything becomes more simple, sugar …all you need.

*on the page the line breaks are different. Will be published in April in Temanos. I hope I spelled that right or Amee will kill me.

skepttv:

Irish Elements - Periodic Table of Videos

We visit a display of elements in Dublin, Ireland, including some quirky periodic tables. Our own Irishman, Darren Walsh, pays a visit to the Science Gallery.

The list of elements in Darren’s body can be found at http://periodicvideos.blogspot.com/2011/07/recipe-for-dr-walsh.html

Fun.

(via skeptv)

(via limmynem)

limmynem:

CSS Sayings…

(via limmynem)

houseofmind:

Dyslexia

When most people think of dyslexia, they think reading disability. Early explanations of dyslexia attributed it to defects in the visual system. With time, subsequent research implicated the language system and related structures. Currently, dyslexia is thought to reflect a deficient processing of the most basic linguistic units (phonemes), which are the building blocks of spoken and written language.

Words are made up of different combinations of phonemes, or phonetic units. Before a word is identified, gains meaning, is understood or stored in memory, the brain must first break it down into its phonetic units. In spoken language, this process is thought to occur automatically. According to Noam Chomsky and Steve Pinker, language is instinctive and predetermined, which means that humans are prone towards learning and using language (see Universal Grammar Theory). In this model, the speaker automatically assembles the phonemes into words with meaning via the human speech apparatus, including the larynx, palate, tongue and lips. Thus, this merging of phonemes results in a unit of sound that has meaning. 

Although speaking is thought to occur naturally and automatically, reading is not. In contrast to speaking, reading requires constructing invented sounds and must occur at a conscious level. What exactly do you do when you read? Reading is basically transforming visual information by “recoding” graphemes (written letters) into phonemes. Thus, in order for a reader to understand the written words in a page, he or she must first have a conscious awareness that the letters in the page represent the sounds of spoken words as well as the structure of these words and their sequence in the page, all of which confer meaning.

According to the phonological deficit hypothesis, when a child is dyslexic, a deficit at the phonological level of the language system hinders the child’s ability to segment the written word into its basic phonological components. The phonological model of dyslexia suggests that a deficit in phonological processing impairs decoding and recoding of written words- preventing word identification. Because the dysfunction is at basic level (phonemes) linguistic function, it blocks other higher order linguistic processes. Although language processes implicated in word comprehension and meaning may be intact in dyslexics, they are “blocked” by the inability to identify the phonemes that make up the word. Evidence for this model came from studies conducted in the 1970s/1980s, which found that the development of phonologic awareness parallels the acquisition of language suggesting that these 2 processes are related. Other studies by Bradley and Bryant found that not only phonological aptitude predicts future reading skills in preschool children, but also that training in phonological awareness improves a child’s ability to read. Finally, studies in the 1990s highlighted phonological deficits as the most significant cognitive marker of dyslexic children.

With the development of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), scientists have been able to explore into the neurobiology of reading. Areas found to be relevant to reading and related processes include:

• Extrastriate cortex (in occipital lobe): involved in the identification of letters.

• Inferior frontal gyrus: involved in phonological processing. This structure’s role in phonological procesing is very exciting because gender differences have been found: men primarily show unilateral activation while women show bilateral activation.

• Middle/superior temporal gyri: implicated in meaning.

 

Neuroimaging in dyslexics have also found differences in brain structures including:

• Reduced size in temporo-parietal language regions

• Increased size in corpus callosum (splenium and isthmus)

• Abnormal maturation of cortical brain areas

• Broca’s area (left inferior frontal cortex)

• Weak connectivity between anterior/posterior language areas

 

Additionally, newer studies are suggesting possible involvement of cerebellar regions in dyslexia.

So what do you guys think? Is dyslexia really a reading disability, or can it be considered a learning disorder? 

References:

Heim, S & Andreas Keil. 2004.Large-scale neural correlates of developmental dyslexia. European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. 12: 125-140. DOI 10.1007/s00787-004-0361-7

Shaywitz, Sally E. 1996. Dyslexia. Scientific American.