dmunger | October 18, 2007According to a report in the New York Times, frequently-used words evolve more slowly than rarely used ones:
Some words evolve rapidly, with a result that there are many different word forms, what linguists call cognates, for meanings across languages. "Bird," for example, takes many disparate forms across other Indo-European languages: oiseau in French, vogel in German and so on.
But other words, like the word for the number after one, have hardly evolved at all: two, deux (French) and dos (Spanish) are very similar, derived from the same ancestral sound.
Seems reasonable. In our travels…
dmunger | October 17, 2007John Mashey made a comment over at Deltoid that was so incisive, Tim Lambert decided to turn it into a post of its own. In the comment/post, Mashey outlines several steps scientists can take to pressure reporters to do a better job reporting science. Indeed, the list is a little daunting. Among other things, he recommends that you
Pick a modest handful of reporters with which to build up rapport, even if it takes a couple years, and half a dozen emails. In particular, try to take good care of any reporter who actually replies (non-negatively) to an email.
That's a pretty big commitment. A…
dmunger | October 16, 2007
Does religion increase "virtuous" behavior? So far the research on the topic has been inconclusive. A big problem with most studies is that they tend to be correlational. For example, religious people are more likely to say they are willing to help others. But are they willing to help others because they are religious, or is it the other way around? Or could some other factor cause both the religiosity and the helpfulness?
Few experimental studies have been conducted on the effect of religion, but Azim Shariff and Ara Norenzayan believe they have come up with a paradigm that does demonstrate…
dmunger | October 16, 2007
Proust Was A Neuroscientist
Fellow ScienceBlogger Jonah Lehrer's long-awaited book Proust Was a Neuroscientist is now shipping. Any chance you'll send a copy CogDaily's way, Jonah?
Should scientists communicate more like hackers do?
Aaron Rowe suggests that scientists could profit by emulating the high-speed communications methods used by programmers and hackers. Anyone know of a science networking site?
Mixing Memory : Women in Math, Science, and Engineering: Is It About the Numbers (And Not the Ones You Might Think)?
How ambiguous racism can be more harmful than the blatant variety…
dmunger | October 16, 2007You don't have to go far to hear someone say something bad about gossip. People even gossip about gossip. One good thing about gossip: it may have had some role in the origin of human speech, as John Tierney reminds us:
Language, according to the anthropologist Robin Dunbar, evolved because gossip is a more efficient version of the "social grooming" essential for animals to live in groups.
Speech enabled humans to bond with lots of people while going about their hunting and gathering. Instead of spending hours untangling hair, they could bond with friendly conversation ("Your hair looks so…
dmunger | October 15, 2007
Stores make customer testing for their products too easy
The result: Customers overestimate their ability and buy fancier stuff than they need
Audiophiles and the limitations of human hearing
Can we *really* hear the difference $7,000 speaker cables make? What about $100 cables?
Radiohead lets fans decide how much to pay for their album
Notes on the psychology behind this plan
Did language originate with hand gestures?
A flaw in the ganzfeld parapsychology experiment?
I sense a disturbance in the literature about parapsychology
Artificial erections
They may be good for business,…
dmunger | October 15, 2007The idea of a human falling in love with a creation made of steel and silicon seems rather far-fetched today -- even the most "realistic" robots seem more creepy than endearing. But people already do form attachments to their robots. People treat Roombas like pets, and soldiers form strong bonds with their minesweeping robots.
Men have purchased inflatable dolls as sex-toys for decades, and those toys are becoming increasingly realistic. Will artificial intelligence and animatronics actually make these dolls so appealing that people will want to marry them? An MSNBC report cites one scientist…
dmunger | October 12, 2007When I was a kid, I participated in all sorts of fund raisers for charity. It wasn't hard to get people to donate -- all I had to do was go door to door and ask for donations. One year I raised over $1,500 for a local children's hospital. Who can resist a face like this?
Typically at least half the people I asked would donate $10 or $15. Somehow I don't think the same strategy would work as well today, now that I'm a big, bearded adult. Clearly my charitable efforts aren't as effective over the internet, where fewer than one percent of our readers donate.
That got me to wondering: what…
dmunger | October 12, 2007
More revisions on the BPR3 icon
The BPR3 icon is in nearly-final form. Make comments over at the BPR3 site.
That lap dancing study
I'll resist puns with this one, but Kate has a nice write-up
Cheap trainers still protect feet
Translation into American English: Expensive running shoes aren't worth the money
Being paid by the hour changes the way we think about time
Phishing Education Called Inadequate
The best approach seems to be a child's video game
Oppression and the psychology of the Burmese state
What living under a dictatorship does to your mental health
Visualizing the…
dmunger | October 12, 2007Seed has upped the ante in the Donors Choose Blogger's challenge. Now if you donate to any of the challenges, you can have the chance to win any of an astonishing array of prizes! They're not only matching your gift up to a total of $15,000, they're also personally rewarding you for contributing. Here are some of the prizes you can win:
1 fresh, new iPod nano
21 "Seed Hearts Threadless" tee shirts (design here)
21 ScienceBlogs mugs
21 subscriptions to Seed magazine
9 copies of "The Best American Science Writing 2007"
So what are you waiting for? While last week's two graphs post did cause…
dmunger | October 11, 2007Yesterday, in our post on perfect pitch (usually called absolute pitch in research reports), we offered a quick test to see if we could identify the portion of our readers with absolute pitch. At first, things were looking good for the absolute pitch crowd. Readers listened to this note:
A whopping 18.8 percent of the 165 respondents identified it correctly as E. Since random chance would predict that just 8.33 percent of responses would guess this note, it would appear that over 10 percent of our readers have absolute pitch.
But some readers pointed out that many string instruments have an…
dmunger | October 10, 2007
There are lots of people who, with training, can identify musical notes when they know the starting point -- when they hear a song starting with "C," they can name the rest of the notes in the song. But much rarer is the ability to identify musical notes without any context. This is what people are talking about when they talk about "perfect pitch" or "absolute pitch."
Let's do a quick test to get a rough sense of how many CogDaily readers have absolute pitch. Listen to this note:
Now, what note is it?
Obviously these results won't be perfect, but they should give us a general idea. I'll…
dmunger | October 10, 2007
Encephalon, Thirty-Third Edition
Laboratory Website and Video Awards
The Scientist is holding a contest for the best lab web site. Nominate your favorite!
Scientific literacy
I think Cognitive Daily stands as an excellent example of what Kate is talking about here: People really are interested in the details about science.
Five Keys to Selling to Spendthrifts
It's not as easy as you think!
Contrary to Research, British Believe Moderate Exercise Healthier Than Vigorous
This is a case study in the principle that when the government says something, people believe it
dmunger | October 9, 2007
The five best and worst sites, Part IV
I was relieved to see we weren't one of the "worst" sites...
Vote for the Winner of the 2007 Blogging Scholarship
I'm not picking any favorites, other than to note that fellow ScienceBlogger Shelley Batts is in the running.
Hammers and Distributed Memory
"There is no single place of our brain where we will find an entry with the word hammer followed by a neat dictionary definition of what a hammer is."
Diet Education Had No Long Term Impact On Childhood Obesity
Can nurture save you from your own genes? Genes, environment and depression
dmunger | October 9, 2007If kids are going to be prepared for the careers of tomorrow, learning mathematics is essential. Math forms a critical foundation for work in high-tech and research careers. Even in our work on Cognitive Daily, Greta and I have found that our math knowledge has been stretched to the absolute limit (I've considered taking a brush-up statistics course to help me with some of the more numbers-heavy papers I read -- and these come primarily from the social end of psychology research).
So when kids learn the most basic concepts in mathematics, starting in elementary school and moving beyond,…
dmunger | October 8, 2007
Weather impacts outlook on life
Want to show that most college students have a negative attitude about their life's goals? Ask them while it's raining.
For Schools, Lottery Payoffs Fall Short
North Carolina recently started an "education lottery." The New York Times assesses its success.
Shocking news: Omni Brain has a serious post!
A thoughtful article: The Real Mozart Effect and why we should support music education
Abundant Delicious Food Could Result In 'Food Addiction', Analysis Suggests
X Wing Rocket video
If you haven't seen this video yet, here's your chance. A sad day for…
dmunger | October 8, 2007A couple weeks ago, a CogDaily commenter wondered if some of the science achievement differences between men and women might be related to the fact that boys play more video games than girls:
There are many more boys playing video games than girls. Could the mental sweat caused by video games strengthen the areas of the brain more involved in mathematics?
Good question, Lauren. As it turns out, a recent study discussed by Fernette and Brock Eide suggests you might be on to something. We've reported here that the video game Medal of Honor can increase performance on several different vision…
dmunger | October 6, 2007Last week we wondered how thorough news reporters were being when they conducted "person on the street" interviews with questions from the U.S. citizenship test. We decided to administer the test a bit more systematically (but still not scientifically). Over 680 people responded to our study, allowing us to get some pretty solid results.
The headline is what we stated above: Most U.S. citizens didn't get a passing grade on the test -- even though we were very generous in grading the tests. We didn't even count off for spelling errors and accepted answers that were only partially correct. But…
dmunger | October 5, 2007I'm not quite finished analyzing the data from last week's Casual Friday's study and I've got some personal business to attend to this afternoon, so I'm going to have to postpone my writeup of the results until tomorrow. Sorry!
One item of interest from today's results: Some commenters this morning wanted to know what percentage of our readers are Americans. Here's the breakdown based on this study (however I think it's quite possible that non-Americans weren't as interested in this study as usual):
So 78 percent of our readers are U.S. Citizens living in the U.S., and just 12 percent are…
dmunger | October 5, 2007I'm not going to lecture you; I'm just going to show you two graphs:
I think you know what to do.