26
POPSPolitical Junkies: Why it Feels Good to Be an Extremist In The Political Brain , psychologist Drew Western summarizes fMRI experiments exploring the neuro-psychology of systematic bias and rationalization in the brains of political extremists. Finding ways to dismiss contradictory evidence triggers pleasant emotional releases in partisans' brains, eventually becoming a pleasurable, learned behavior. Once partisans had found a way to reason to false conclusions, not only did neural circuits involved in negative emotions turn off, but circuits involved in positive emotions turned on. The partisan brain didn't seem satisfied in just feeling better. It worked overtime to feel good, activating reward circuits that give partisans a jolt of positive reinforcement for their biased "reasoning." These reward circuits overlap substantially with those activated when drug addicts get their "fix," giving new meaning to the term political junkie.
19
POPSSocial Networking for Zebras Ecologists have turned to computer scientists to develop dynamic graphs of social behavior among Zebra populations, revealing why some are thriving while others are endangered: The difference showed that the Grevy's zebras tended to hang out in cliques, whereas the onagers spent time with different buddies on different days. The methods developed turn out to applicable to human networks, too: In the meantime, Berger-Wolf is testing her methods on other datasets, including the records of e-mails exchanged at Enron that became available after they were subpoenaed. She has found some surprising connections between the two kinds of networks. "We can see that our method to detect when a lion was in the area of zebras detects very well when the subpoena was issued at Enron," she says. When faced with a lion, the zebras flee and follow one lead zebra. Similarly, after the subpoena was issued, e-mail traffic to the lawyers increased dramatically.
21
POPSThe Physics of Dance Notes from a presentation by physics professor George Gollin on the physical laws which every ballet dancer must eventually master, whether explicitly aware of them or not. It must be noted that professor Kenneth Laws has written three books on the physics of dance and just had an interesting interview with Studio 360 on the subject.
45
POPSAncient Blueprints of Calculus Uncovered in Archimedes Text Details have been released from the nine-year-long reconstruction project to recover the Greek mathematician's writings from this one-of-a-kind find and the results are fascinating. Buried beneath the surface of this gilded palimpsest, researchers discovered more extensive demonstrations of concepts such as infinite series, approximations, limits, and integral calculus than had been known to exist in ancient times. Archimedes wrote The Method almost two thousand years before Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz developed calculus in the 1700s. Reviel Netz, an historian of mathematics at Stanford University who transcribed the text, says that the examination of Archimedes' work has revealed "a new twist on the entire trajectory of Western mathematics."
9
POPSWhy Hawks Win The psychological biases for conflict and against peaceful resolution are numerous, deep-seated, and often irrational; properties that are amplified when extended by all-too-human leaders to countries' foreign policies. People prefer to avoid a certain loss in favor of a potential loss, even if they risk losing significantly more. When things are going badly in a conflict, the aversion to cutting one’s losses, often compounded by wishful thinking, is likely to dominate the calculus of the losing side.
16
POPSSeparate Is Never Equal
Unfortunately, the tendency of self-segregation amongst races in America persists in spite of the economic repercussions it passes on to future generations. The model incorporated the idea that parents tend to invest more heavily in giving their children the skills that employers value when they expect that investment to pay off later in higher wages. It also included the fact that children are more likely to succeed when they are surrounded by other children who are succeeding. For example, studies show that having friends with strong vocabularies helps a child to pick up more words with less effort. The latter effect makes informal, social segregation particularly damaging, the researchers found. People who have been subject to discrimination in the past are less likely to have acquired the skills needed for high-wage jobs, compared with those who were not subject to discrimination. Their children, then, are less likely to pick up those skills naturally at home.
8
POPSNo Shortcuts to First-World Wealth New cluster-analysis of the world's product export space reveals the differences in connectivity and diversity between nations' production capacities as well as the very sizable developmental gaps in this network that keep poorer countries on the industrial fringes. The rich countries of the industrialized world tend to have broad portfolios of industries, and accordingly occupy large areas of the product space, usually including much of the network's core. Fast-growing developing countries such as China, Thailand, and Hungary are strong in some of those central, well-connected regions. The poorest countries, especially those in sub-Saharan Africa, tend to specialize in a few of the peripheral products—such as oil for Nigeria and copper for Zambia. EDIT :My first title was too generic ("Mapping the Wealth of Nations.")
36
POPSAtheists Need to Chill Michael Shermer makes a point that needs to be made. Atheists need to remember what they stand for , not merely what they are against . Ridicule and contempt have no place in science, and haters should not tarnish its reputation by association. In the words of the greatest consciousness raiser of the 20th century, Martin Luther King, Jr., in his epic "I Have a Dream" speech: "In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline." If atheists do not want theists to prejudge them in a negative light, then they must not do unto theists the same.
14
POPSDaniel Dennett: Can We Know Our Own Minds? Another outstanding TED talk and Dennett's best, in my opinion. Dennett demonstrates convincingly that if you think you know what's going on with your own perception and consciousness, you're mistaken. Philosopher Dan Dennett makes a compelling argument that not only don't we understand our own consciousness, but that half the time our brains are actively fooling us. As he puts it, our bodies are made up of 100 trillion little robots, none of them with an individual consciousness. So what makes us feel we have one? Or that we're in control of it? Dennett's hope is to show his audience that "Your consciousness is not quite as marvelous as you may have thought it is." He uses thought experiments and optical illusions to demonstrate to the TED audience that even very big brains are capable of playing tricks on their owners. (I was lucky enough to see him give an earlier version in person when he visited my college and got to meet the man afterwards for a bit.)
26
POPSNew Math Theory Explains Toddler's "Word Spurt" A bell-shaped word distribution and a steady child learning rate turn out to be enough to bring about the extraordinary explosion seen in children's vocabularies around this age. McMurray notes that languages have only a small number of very easy-to-learn words and many more intermediate words. So when a baby has been exposed to enough language to learn the easy words, she will acquire just a few words. As she is exposed to more language, she begins to learn the medium words. And because there are a lot of medium words, she is likely to pick up a lot of words at this stage. This, McMurray says, is the vocabulary explosion.
30
POPSWho's Minding the Mind? New studies have found that people tidy up more thoroughly when there’s a faint tang of cleaning liquid in the air; they become more competitive if there’s a briefcase in sight, or more cooperative if they glimpse words like “dependable” and “support” — all without being aware of the change, or what prompted it. In describing my own research or cognitive science in general to people, the most difficult obstacle I would eventually encounter was the stubborn human belief that there was a independent entity — a free will — in charge of everything important that goes on in their brain. While science has been steadily dismantling this understandable misconception for decades, recent studies on subconscious social priming like these would have helped me demonstrate my point. To be fair, it's more than a little disconcerting to realize what a messy mix of competing, semi-independent, multi-layered neural modules are responsible for producing our daily behavior.
15
POPSMath as a Civil Right The ubiquity of computers makes abstract, quantitative reasoning skills critical to a wide range of job opportunities. "Information age technology put math on the table as a literacy requirement in the same way that industrialism made reading literacy a requirement," says Moses. For that reason, he says, the country needs to raise math education standards for all students.
12
POPSThe Danger of Cognitive Blinkers From Steven Pinker's preface to What Is Your Dangerous Idea?: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Unthinkable . In this regard, it's disconcerting to see the two institutions that ought to have the greatest stake in ascertaining the truth — academia and government — often blinkered by morally tinged ideologies.
29
POPSWhy Are We So Bad at Spotting Lies? By nature, we are a rather trustful species and (unless you lie or detect lies for a living) chances are good that you harbor false assumptions of what deceitful behavior looks like. So says famous psychologist Richard Wiseman in this summary of his research into the universal, cross-cultural trait of human deception. Among other things, Wiseman shows that by the time they are five, even our own kids can fool us with ease and abandon! The simple fact is that the real clues to deceit are in the words that people use, not the body language.
11
POPSHow to Survive In a Black Hole... ...or, more precisely: How to squeeze out a few more hours during which to contemplate the highs and lows of your life and what you could have done differently to avoid having it end in the middle of a damn black hole. :) The analysis is usually done by thinking about a person who falls into the black hole starting from a state of rest at the event horizon.... But in general a person falling past the horizon won't have zero velocity to begin with. Then the situation is different — in fact it's worse. So firing the rocket for a short time can push the astronaut back on to the best-case scenario: the trajectory followed by free fall from rest.
9
POPSThe Importance of Self-Deception in Politics Almost nothing is more human and yet more dangerous than the capability for self-deception. When amplified through politics, it has the power to change the course of history. More on this Trivers podcast . "Remember, Jerry: It's not a lie if you believe it" — George Costanza
24
POPSStunning Photo of Saturn Backlit By the Sun With our sun behind it, Saturn carves out a majestic silhouette against the vastness of space. And the tiny speck peeking through the rings? That's us! Click on images for full-size. (Transmitted by the Cassini probe looking back at the Earth from a billion-mile-out vantage point. Background behind the image's creation.)
14
POPSStunning Photo of Saturn Backlit By the Sun With our sun behind it, Saturn carves out a majestic silhouette against the vastness of space. And the tiny speck peeking through the rings? That's us! Should be seen full-size: 1 , 2 . (Transmitted by the Cassini probe looking back at the Earth from a billion-mile-out vantage point. Background behind the image's creation.)
9
POPSNew Math For Analyzing Evolutionary Trees "What this tells me is that you don't know what kind of mathematics is going to be useful to biology," Billera says. "It wasn't clear before this that geometry and topology would be useful to biology. Who would think they had anything to do with each other?" Ernst Haeckel's classic hand-drawn diagram is just for fun—it's one of those wonderful diagrams that functions as both science and art.
52
POPSThe Mathematical Lives of Plants The seeds of a sunflower, the spines of a cactus, and the bracts of a pine cone all grow in whirling spiral patterns. Remarkable for their complexity and beauty, they also show consistent mathematical patterns that scientists have been striving to understand. ... Scientists have puzzled over this pattern of plant growth for hundreds of years. Why would plants prefer the golden angle to any other? And how can plants possibly "know" anything about Fibonacci numbers? For the first time, scientists have found convincing biochemical mechanisms responsible for the interlocking spiral growth patterns seen in many plants. (The Romanesco broccoli plant is a striking example.) The video of the experiment with magnetized liquid iron droplets demonstrates how the geometry of such growth could occur in nature.
38
POPSWhy The Loudest are Often the Most Wrong This classic paper by Kruger and Dunning, Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments , examines the psychological reasons for the unfortunately common correlation between ignorance and confidence. We argue that when people are incompetent in the strategies they adopt to achieve success and satisfaction, they suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it. Instead, like Mr. Wheeler, they are left with the mistaken impression that they are doing just fine. As Miller (1993) perceptively observed in the quote that opens this article, and as Charles Darwin (1871) sagely noted over a century ago, "ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." ( PDF here .)
14
POPS248-Dimensional Mathematical Map Calculated "The calculation was known to be possible in principle, but it was thought to be hopeless in practice," says Adams. "But four years ago a group of us said let's really try to do it. We're pretty sure we've got it right, but it's hard to be 100% sure." "It's probably one of the most complicated pure mathematical calculations anyone's ever done," says Stewart. "Each entry is difficult to calculate — it's amazing they managed to do this."
15
POPSDetecting Photographic Forgeries Automatically detecting manipulated photographs is becoming more and more necessary in today's newsroom. "The eyes are a partial mirror into the world in which you're photographed," Farid says. If there are two white dots in each eye, there had to have been two separate light sources. So, if a photo shows two dots in one person's eyes and only one dot in another person's eyes, it must have been spliced together from two different originals.
10
POPSGiant Bioluminescent Squid Captured on Video for First Time! Terrifying! The YouTube link is OK, but see the full-size, high-frame-rate Quicktime version on nature.com to see this rare animal in all its lit-up glory. Like something out of a James Cameron movie.... Remains of Taningia danae often show up in the stomachs of sperm whales. The squid's flabby flesh led experts to think that it floats in the water column like a neutrally buoyant scuba diver. But the new footage shows it can reach speeds of up to 9 kilometres per hour. When presented with bait, the squid attacked, flashing its luminescent spots, or 'photophores', which contain glowing bacteria. It produced longer glows when faced with the bait rig's lights, suggesting that it was performing some sort of mating dance.
4
POPSEnron, intelligence, and the perils of too much information - Malcolm Gladwell Malcolm Gladwell on the qualitatively different natures of "mysteries" and "puzzles" from an information theoretic point of view. Among other things, Gladwell implies that entities like Enron and Al Qaeda were allowed to thrive not despite the public nature of their operation but because of it. If things go wrong with a puzzle, identifying the culprit is easy: it’s the person who withheld information. Mysteries, though, are a lot murkier: sometimes the information we’ve been given is inadequate, and sometimes we aren’t very smart about making sense of what we’ve been given, and sometimes the question itself cannot be answered. Puzzles come to satisfying conclusions. Mysteries often don’t.
35
POPS25 Greatest Science Books of All Time The Origin of Species (1859) Darwin's masterwork is, undeniably, The Origin of Species , in which he introduced his theory of evolution by natural selection. Prior to its publication, the prevailing view was that each species had existed in its current form since the moment of divine creation and that humans were a privileged form of life, above and apart from nature. Darwin's theory knocked us from that pedestal. Wary of a religious backlash, he kept his ideas secret for almost two decades while bolstering them with additional observations and experiments. The result is an avalanche of detail—there seems to be no species he did not contemplate—thankfully delivered in accessible, conversational prose. A century and a half later, Darwin's paean to evolution still begs to be heard: "There is grandeur in this view of life," he wrote, that "from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."
67
POPSHow to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic (FAQ) More common questions and myths answered at the source, thoroughly cross-referenced and conveniently categorized and sub-categorized by type of argument: Stages of Denial Scientific Topics Types of Argument Levels of Sophistication A nice reference that's updated with fresh comments. Many "skeptics" often are unaware (by choice or by circumstance) that their common questions have already been addressed by scientists long ago.
3
POPSTransitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ Far from a complete list, this FAQ highlights several hundred of the more interesting examples of the thousands of historical species-to-species transitions documented in the fossil record at the time of writing. New examples are found almost every day, filling in our paleontological knowledge of life on Earth piece by piece. For brevity's sake, the author limited examples only to those lineages that left modern ancestors, which excludes the vast number of historical lineages we know about that did not. And, of course, this list only covers the Vertebrata subphylum, just a tiny portion of the enormous animal kingdom, not to mention life in general.
17
POPSThe Myth of Prodigy and Why it Matters Science writer, Malcolm Gladwell, debates the worth of placing so much attention on childhood prodigies and whether the notion of childhood prodigy hasn't been romanticized beyond it's importance. Our romanticized view of precociousness matters. When certain kids are singled out as gifted or talented, Gladwell suggested, it creates an environment that may be subtly discouraging to those who are just average. “In singling out people like me at age 13 for special treatment, we discouraged other kids from ever taking up running at all. And we will never know how many kids who might have been great milers had they been encouraged and not discouraged from joining running, might have ended up as being very successful 10 years down the road.”
11
POPSHomosexuality and Child Sexual Abuse: Science, Religion, and the Slippery Slope In the wake of the scandal of former Congressman Mark Foley’s inappropriate behavior involving teenage male pages, a number of conservative commentators and organizations are reviving an old charge that homosexuals are more likely to sexually abuse children. But, as the author points out, this research has been debunked for decades now and is only being resurrected again for campaigning purposes. The numerous citations of the scientific literature by social conservatives initially look impressive. However, when one examines the original studies that have been cited, one finds that the conclusions of the original studies are contrary to the claims made by those citing the studies. Most significantly, while social conservatives claim that all the cases of sexual molestation of young boys by adult males are committed by homosexuals, the scientists whom they cite explicitly reject this assertion. Let us examine the actual claims of the scientists, one by one.
8
POPSHow a Lunar Eclipse Rescued Columbus Such a dramatic episode didn't escape the attention of novelists, who later used eclipse occurrences in a similar way to further their own plots. You'll find the device in H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines, Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and even in Hergé's Tintin adventure Prisoners of the Sun. In some cases, the event is a solar rather than a lunar eclipse. And the details of the eclipse aren't always astronomically correct, especially in the movie versions of the books. But it worked for Columbus.
19
Clips
Latest Pops
Latest Comments
Most Pops
Tags
Print
Save
Turn on live update