Technology
razib | November 2, 2009As I gave a nod to statistical tricks and subtle shell games very recently, the material I review subsequently should be viewed with skepticism and caution. A few days ago I also pointed to a paper which describes and models intergenerational transfers of wealth across various societies. In other words, what parents transmit to children. From the perspective of someone who reads this blog, obviously parents transmit genes to their offspring.
To the left is an old scatterplot from Francis Galton which shows the dependence of the height of children upon the average height of parents.…
gsmith | November 1, 2009
image: illustration from the POWEr technical rider
In discussing fruitful interdisciplinary collaborations Edward Einhorn identifies a pair of independent theatre collectives that incorporate advanced projection technology and even a Tesla coil into their performances. These groups (3LD and the Collective Unconscious) exemplify how far production and set design has come since the era of Einstein on the Beach—science is not only the stuff of inspiration, or a means to create illusions onstage but experimental technologies can be directly incorporated into a production and foregrounded as…
razib | October 31, 2009Intergenerational Wealth Transmission and the Dynamics of Inequality in Small-Scale Societies:
Small-scale human societies range from foraging bands with a strong egalitarian ethos to more economically stratified agrarian and pastoral societies. We explain this variation in inequality using a dynamic model in which a population's long-run steady-state level of inequality depends on the extent to which its most important forms of wealth are transmitted within families across generations. We estimate the degree of intergenerational transmission of three different types of wealth (material,…
jwilbanks | October 30, 2009I was asked in an interview recently about "open source science" and it got me thinking about the ways that, in the "open" communities of practice, we frequently over-simplify the realities of how software like GNU/Linux actually came to be. Open Source refers to a software worldview. It's about software development, not a universal truth that can be easily exported. And it's well worth unpacking the worldview to understand it, and then to look at the realities of open source software as they map - or more frequently do not map - to science.
The foundations of open source software are…
gsmith | October 29, 2009
Below, Edward Einhorn answers our final question.
Writing theater about science, in general, has become somewhat more popular, thanks partly (but by no means wholly) on the fact that technology has slowly become a more integral part of theater. This is especially true in small, independent theaters where the technology is not just there to support the work but, in a way, take center stage. Â This fascination ranges from modern technology, such as in the work of the group 3LD, which uses advance projection technology in every show, to technology of a definitely less modern sort—the…
clock | October 27, 2009The series of interviews with some of the participants of the 2008 Science Blogging Conference was quite popular, so I decided to do the same thing again this year, posting interviews with some of the people who attended ScienceOnline'09 back in January.
Today, I asked my Scibling, Blake Stacey from the Science After Sunclipse blog to answer a few questions.
Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? For example, what is your Real Life job?
Nominally, I do "complex systems modeling and analysis", but the projects I work on are…
jdupuis | October 19, 2009As I mentioned in my previous post, I did a little Q&A about the new outsourcing arrangement that CISTI has negotiated with Infotrieve.
Q1. What's the effect on jobs at CISTI from this move?
As you may know, NRC-CISTI is transforming itself to be well positioned to serve the needs of Canadian knowledge workers now and in the future. This transformation is a major undertaking for the organization and will require a significant transition for NRC-CISTI's workforce.
NRC is working to mitigate the effect on employees by seeking to place as many of the affected employees as possible within…
cortex | October 13, 2009Over at Mind Matters, Chadrick Lane reviews a fascinating experiment that revealed the rewarding properties of information, regardless of whether or not the information actually led to more rewards:
In the experimental design, monkeys were placed in front of a computer screen and were trained to perform a saccade task, in which they learned to direct their gaze at specific areas. The monkeys were first given the option of choosing between one of two colored targets. One of these targets would give the monkey advance information about its future reward. The advance information came in the form…
nisbetmc | October 13, 2009
Tonight, the AU School of Communication's American Forum series focuses on "Change + 1: Are young voters talking back to Obama?" A diverse panel of experts will look not only at how the Millennial generation views Obama personally but also how this age-group views the important issues facing the country today, including the economy and health-care as these issues affect them, transparency in government and the effectiveness of social-networking to govern versus social-networking to get elected.
Panelists include David Gregory, moderator, NBC's Meet the Press and AU alum; Jose Antonio…
gregladen | October 12, 2009 17th century Arabic anatomy drawing, from the Advances of Islamic Sciences web site. In some Islamic sects, drawing living things is not allowed. As a very practical matter, this excludes students from taking part in certain activities in science classrooms.
During the Bell Museum Slapdown panel last week, Myers brought up differences between countries in public attitudes towards education. Mooney and Nisbet brought up the difficulty of making fundamental changes via “Popular Science” approaches, which I take to include public, popular culture as well as standard education (which is,…
clock | October 9, 2009Yesterday, North Carolinians woke up to some very unpleasant news that Dell decided to close its computer manufacturing plant in Winston-Salem, Forsyth Co, NC by the end of this year and lay off its entire workforce of 905 employees.
While I may not like it, I can understand the economics of shutting down a textile mill or a furniture plant. It's a new world we are living in. But Dell? Computers?! If the leading computer manufacturer is suffering during the recession, what can anyone else hope for? Is there any industry that can still compete and grow?
And it seems that the answer may,…
pharyngula | October 9, 2009The dishonor goes to ABC News, which put together an appalling mess of an article that gives credibility to creationist denialists. Right from the beginning, you know this article is bunk.
But despite the excitement from the paleontology community, another group of researchers, many of them with advanced degrees in science, are unimpressed by Ardi, who they believe is just another ape -- an ape of indeterminate age, they add, and an ape who cannot be an ancestor of modern man for a range of reasons, including one of singular importance: God created man in one day, and evolution is a fallacy…
revere | October 9, 2009Skeptical, but Hope Springs Eternal.
The heaviest of the heavy-hitter science journals in the US is Science Magazine, a publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). It publishes in all aspects of science. Its main competitor is the venerable Nature magazine in the UK. I subscribe to both. They come every week. Since I am overwhelmed by work and scientific papers in general and have a journal of my own to edit (full disclosure), these weekly news and science sources more likely than not pile up unread. But because I subscribe I can easily get the latest hot…
hrynyshyn | October 8, 2009Let's just make one thing clear: I believe anthropogenic climate change constitutes the most serious public policy challenge of our time, second only in the history of civilization to global thermonuclear warfare. It's hard to overstate the danger of business as usual when it comes to our fossil-fuel emissions. If, as a growing number of climatologists believe, we are headed for a world that is 4 °C warmer than pre-industrial norms by the latter half of this century, then averting that scenario should be at the top of everyone's priority list.
Still, it is still possible to exaggerate the…
clock | October 3, 2009Crossing the Line? Biomedical Technology in Sports
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
6:30-8:30 pm with discussion beginning at 7:00 followed by Q&A
Location: Tir Na Nog 218 South Blount Street, Raleigh, 833-7795
In the end, it was a split second rather than an International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) ruling that kept double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius from competing in the Beijing Summer Olympics. He didn't hit the 400-meter qualifying time of 45.55 seconds, despite running a personal best 46.25 on his carbon-fiber prosthetic legs at a track meet in Lucerne, Switzerland. In…
mspringer | September 23, 2009Ideas about the nature of light have been around for thousands of years, but until Newton came along in the 17th century most of these attempts were little more than speculation. Newton himself held to the view of light as composed of huge numbers of tiny "corpuscles", or particles, which bounce of mirrors and are absorbed by dark objects, etc. It wasn't a bad idea, really. It explains shadows very well, for instance. If you stand in the way of particles, they can't go through you and so you'll leave a shadow behind you where the light particles have failed to hit.
Particles weren't the…
grrlscientist | September 18, 2009Everyone loves free books, right? Well, I know I do, and since I've got a huge stack of books in my apartment that are seeking a loving home, I want to share them with you. These books are duplicates of review copies, advance reading copies and uncorrected proofs as well as some books that I purchased or somehow obtained. All books are in excellent (like new) shape, unless otherwise noted. I am offering them to you several times per week for the next few months, free of charge, although I will ask you to pay the cost of the shipping envelope and postage for mailing each book to you. Below the…
jstemwedel | September 17, 2009In a recent column at Business Week, Bruce Weinstein (aka "The Ethics Guy") argues that multitasking is unethical. He writes of his own technologically assisted slide into doing too many tasks at once:
I noticed that the more things I could do with ease on my computer, the harder it was to focus on any one activity. My natural inclination to jump from one thing to another prematurely was now aided and abetted by technology--the very thing that was supposed to be helping me. Then, after the PDA and cell phone became a part of my daily life, I found myself, like millions of others, faced with…
ddobbs | September 11, 2009The ever-valuable Neuroskeptic, channeling Stanley Kowalski ("I knew a girl once said she was the glamorous type. She said to me, 'I am the glamourous type.' I said, 'So what?'"), asks just WTH it means to show that brain scans of earthquake survivors show that "trauma alters brain function."
The authors link their findings to previous work with frankly vague statements such as "The increased regional activity and reduced functional connectivity in frontolimbic and striatal regions occurred in areas known to be important for emotion processing". But anatomically speaking, most of the brain…
cwilcox | September 9, 2009Last night I had this wonderful dream. It was a normal day in just about every way except I had this amazing ability. When I jumped, I was able to leap great distances and almost fly. No wings were involved - it was almost like I was able to levitate, and slowly drift between places. It was a very calm, serene feeling.
Perhaps that's how the mice in Dr. Liu's lab felt. Advances in Space Research has published online today an accepted manuscript where researchers levitated mice. And, according to their observations, the mice took to the free-floating existence quite readily.
The team first…