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POPSLearning Changes Brain: Children Bruce McCandliss, a researcher in educational neuroscience is exploring how children's brains respond and change while learning. He states, “We’re starting to learn how children differ within particular educational domains, such as reading and mathematics, and how such differences may be linked to variation in brain structures and patterns of brain activation,” he says. “The chance to explore these topics in children as they progress through education is a really exciting opportunity, and a really exciting time in science. The idea is to match educational style with learning style as demonstrated by brain activity. This new science may be breaking ground on new approaches to education.
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POPSScience confirms it: driving a Porsche really does make you more of a man A creative and elegant study has found that for men, driving a Porsche (and presumably other high-end, powerful vehicles) increases your testosterone levels, even -- and here's the kicker -- if no one ever sees you drive it. That means it's hard-wired, not just a "social construct." (That's what this author says, anyhow, though it's not obvious to me that that's the only explanation.) The post then goes on to say, interestingly, that this is going to be a big problem for auto designers of the future who want to be environmentally responsible, because, presumably, environmentally responsible cars aren't sexy. They'll have to "figure out how to make hybrid and electric cars cool." As in, like, raise-your-testosterone-level cool. My question is, why? Is the post implying that if electric cars don't get sexier, then we'll just continue to destroy the environment? Are those really the only two options?
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POPSFree Lectures and Courses... This was clipped some time ago by someone to whom I add thanks. Newer clippers may find it interesting. I've detailed the astronomy items as that is what I was searching for.
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POPSThe evolution of religion "Religion arose out of a hodgepodge of genetically based mental mechanisms designed by natural selection for thoroughly mundane purposes," he writes. Those mechanisms include conformist bias (believing what your peers believe, in order to get along), a tendency to explain events in terms of personal agency (since our mental machinery for thinking about causality evolved in the context of social interaction), and interest in remote control (a bias toward beliefs that promise influence over predators, diseases, and bad weather). Given these biases, we're prone to believe in powerful, jealous, tempestuous personal deities.
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POPSThe Mysterious Downfall of the Neandertals An interesting point: <!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0pt; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:595.3pt 841.9pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:35.4pt; mso-footer-margin:35.4pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> Second, they had more time over which to acquire specialized knowledge and pass it on to the next generation"where to find drinking water in times of drought, for instance. “Long-term survivorship gives the potential for bigger social networks and greater knowledge stores,” Stringer comments. Among the shorter-lived Neandertals, in contrast, knowledge was more likely to disappear, he surmises.
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POPSMonkey see, monkey do... "These four kinds of behavior — empathy, the ability to learn and follow social rules, reciprocity and peacemaking — are the basis of sociality. De Waal sees human morality as having grown out of primate sociality, but with two extra levels of sophistication. People enforce their society's moral codes much more rigorously with rewards, punishments and reputation building. They also apply a degree of judgment and reason, for which there are no parallels in animals." Natural selection favors organisms that survive and reproduce, by whatever means. And it has provided people, he writes in "Primates and Philosophers," with "a compass for life's choices that takes the interests of the entire community into account, which is the essence of human morality."
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POPSShe's Her Own Twin In human biology, a chimera is an organism with at least two genetically distinct types of cells -- or, in other words, someone meant to be a twin. But while in the mother's womb, two fertilized eggs fuse, becoming one fetus that carries two distinct genetic codes -- two separate strands of DNA. The twin is invisible, but for chimeras the twin lives microscopically inside the body as DNA.
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POPSSynthetic biology gets ethical An interesting and important move. In these days there is a real need to implement ethical thinking together with the technological developments. Only then will the transition to a new era may become smoother.
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POPSProvocative Biocultural Bullet Points * Diseases are disease entities. * If you divide truths in half you get half-truths. * If you divide knowledge, your knowledge is divided. * Pain is always in your head because your brain is. * Nothing human is universal or atemporal. * Embodiment is necessarily biological, and knowledge is always embodied. * A fact is a socially produced conclusion. * Bodies are always cultural and biological. * Selves today are embodied, biologized, shaped by medical knowledge. * The body—whose, what, when, where—is always in question. * The boundary between organic and inorganic is no longer clear. * Technology has become human; humans have become technologies. * Patients and experimental subjects are part of the decision-making process. * Science can be postmodern; postmodernisms can be scientific. * Biology, as a science, cannot exist outside culture; culture, as a practice, cannot exist outside biology."
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POPS'Get off Facebook and get a life'
He said: "Social networking is the internet's biggest growth area, particular among young children. "A quarter of British children have a laptop or computer in their room by the age of five and they have their own social networking sites, like the BBC's myCBBC. It's causing huge changes." Dr Sigman said 209 "socially regulated" genes have been identified, including ones involved in the immune system, cell proliferation and responses to stress. Electronic media is also undermining the ability of children and young people to learn vital social skills and read body language, he said. Dr Sigman continued: "One of the most pronounced changes in the daily habits of British citizens is a reduction in the number of minutes per day that they interact with another human being. "In less than two decades, the number of people saying there is no one with whom they discuss important matters nearly tripled. "Parents spend less time with their children than they did only a decade ago
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POPS(Rethinking) Gender " What is gender anyway? It is certainly more than the physical details of what's between our legs".
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POPSWhy Truth Matters Why Truth Matters is an excellent example of philosophy done well but also, and not coincidentally, made accessible and exciting.Modern media reporting allows you to see daily events daily in a transparent way.
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POPSCousin Marriage OK by Science "Ultimately it's a political question about what you allow individuals to do, and what that says about the structure of society," said Spencer. With seven billion people on the face of the planet, one should think it would be doable to find a partner who is not a relative. Science or not, I still think inter-breeding among families is just plain yucky.
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POPSIncest isn't so bad suggest scientists continues: The US "cousin marriage" prohibition stretches back to the 1858, when Kansas barred such marriages; Texas was the most recent state to pass a ban, in 2005, write Diane Paul, a political scientist emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and Hamish Spencer, head of zoology at the University of Otago in New Zealand. (European countries didn’t ban the practice because there, "the rich and noble were marrying" their cousins, Spencer tells us. "In America it was immigrants and the rural poor — a much easier target of legislation than your monarch.")
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POPSTABOO OR NOT? INCEST More food for thought on the subject of incest. Law and morality based on superstition and not on facts?
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POPSAmoebas turn to family during tough times It is absolutely fascinating how certain patterns which we tend to associate with very high levels of complexity and organization, are present in very simple organisms and serve in fact the primordial imperative of survival.
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