Science Friday: Broken Hearted Girl Syndrome, urban planning with slime moulds and facebook, and curating like a gangsta

Broken Hearted Girl Syndrome

It's not the feeling you get when you miss a Science Gallery show.  Broken Hearted Syndrome actually "appears to have little connection with coronary artery disease. Instead, it is typically triggered by acute emotion or physical trauma that releases a surge of adrenaline that overwhelms the heart." more on this Love Lab-esque discovery at the WSJ.

If you think they're just making this up...

Between Broken Hearts and Restless Leg Syndrome, it's easy to see the role that cultural definition plays in determining what is and isn't a normal.  That's no more apparent than the revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders that's going on right now. From the NYT: "Far fewer children would get a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. “Binge eating disorder” and “hypersexuality” might become part of the everyday language. And the way many mental disorders are diagnosed and treated would be sharply revised."

If the proposed changes make it into the final version, it could mean that thousands and thousands of people diagnosed with bipolar disorder would be reclassified as having behavioral disorders, which could precipitate a switch away from prescriptive meds towards behavioral therapy for such cases.

Planning the train superhubs

FINALLY, the US might get high-speed intercity rail lines.  Wired have a good article outlining the plan.  It's especially interesting to compare the proposed rail hubs, and how PeteSearch breaks up the US according to Facebook profile analysis.

And if you're wondering, Irish profiles are indeed connected to the usual suspects.

Urban planning with slime moulds

Forget the Obama bullet-train think tank.  Slime moulds are the new urban planners:

Interested in testing the slime mold Physarum polycephalum’s response to a complicated pattern, researchers in Japan allowed it to grow on a damp surface that they populated with oat flakes that mimicked the location of cities around Tokyo. Over the next 26 hours, the slime mold sent out plasmodia and, by the end of the experiment, the organism had a series of branches that looked remarkably like the real Tokyo rail system connecting those communities. What took people years to design took the slime mold hours. (via)

Try mapping the galaxy that way.

It looks like the London tube map, but the stops have titles like Cygnus, Orion Nebula, and Galactic Center.  It's one of the coolest maps you'll probably never have any use for.

Plan like a slime mold, curate like Ludacris

You know Science Gallery was nominated for European Museum of the Year?  Amongst other things, it shows the idea of what makes a 'museum' is becoming more fluid and explored.  Indeed, even the idea of what a curator does is being reinterpreted.  Over at the American Association of Museums, they've taken this a step further with "A New Spin: Are DJs, rappers and bloggers ‘curators’?"

The article leaps off from a 2008 NYT review that referred to a Ludacris concert laden with guest-rappers as "a showcase of New York hip-hop history with a devoted fan as curator."  Read it yourself to decide whether this is 'definition creep' and misuse, or just a bold new era where everything from coffee-tables to Facebook pages are curated.

If you can curate it, you can cook it

Lastly, it's fitting that Kitchen Budapest didn't use Powerpoint to give a run-down of the amazing science/media/art goings on that are happening over there.  Check it out http://prezi.com/r9usw9lh5_nu/