Culture
cortex | February 8, 2007It's only fitting that Harvard, the birthplace of pragmatism, is trying to reform its pedagogy by making learning more practical and "active". Here's the Boston Globe:
In his 2006 book, "Our Underachieving Colleges," Bok cited a study that found that students remembered only 42 percent of what they heard in a lecture by the end of the lecture and only 20 percent a week later. He argued that students learn far more when they are actively engaged in activities related to the course.
As an illustration of how to make learning more active, students in an art course might meet with performers or…
cortex | February 7, 2007Molecular gastronomy, a movement of chefs devoted to the experimental tools of the modern science lab, now has its own Italian convention:
For three days last week some of the biggest names in "molecular gastronomy" (Ferran Adrià , Wylie Dufresne) were mixing and matching secrets with more traditional chefs from Italy, France, Scandinavia, even Japan. The result was a dazzling exploration of new ways to cook fish, present pasta and generally make a restaurant meal more like a night at La Scala. Throw in sugar surrealism for dessert and it was hard to remember this was all happening in the…
cortex | February 7, 2007It doesn't get much more romantic than this:
This pair of embracing human skeletons was found at a Neolithic archaeological dig site near Mantova, Italy, in this photo released by Reuters on February 6, 2007. Archaeologists believe the couple was buried 5000-6000 years ago, their arms wrapped around each other.
Update: This is from the AP:
Buried between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago, the prehistoric pair are believed to have been a man and a woman and are thought to have died young, as their teeth were found intact, said Elena Menotti, the archaeologist who led the dig.
"As far as we know, it'…
cortex | February 6, 2007Nick Bostrom offers up a great suggestion for a new academic field:
Perhaps we need a new field of "cognitive forensics" for analyzing and investigating motivated scientific error, bias, and intellectual misconduct. The goal would be to develop a comprehensive toolkit of diagnostic indicators and statistical checks that could be used to detect acts of irrationality and to make it easier to apprehend the culprits. (Robin's recent post gives an example of one study that could be done.) Another goal would be to create a specialization, a community of scholars who had expertise in this subfield,…
cortex | February 6, 2007Freud would be thrilled. Talk therapy seems to be effective, at least when it comes to panic attacks:
Last week, a team of New York analysts published the first scientifically rigorous study of a short-term variation of the therapy for panic disorder, a very common form of anxiety. The study was small, but the therapy proved to be surprisingly effective in a group of severely disabled people.
The paper, which appeared in psychiatry's flagship journal, The American Journal of Psychiatry, is one of the most significant steps in a small but growing effort to study how this so-called…
cortex | February 5, 2007There's a pretty interesting interview with the philosopher John Searle in the Boston Globe:
IDEAS: You think that questions about the mind are at the core of philosophy today, don't you?
SEARLE: Right. And that's a big change. If you go back to the 17th century, and Descartes, skepticism -- the question of how it is possible to have knowledge -- was a live issue for philosophy. That put epistemology -- the theory of knowledge -- at the heart of philosophy. How can we know? Shouldn't we seek a foundation for knowledge that overcomes skeptical doubts about it? As recently as a hundred years…
cortex | February 3, 2007What you believe about your body affects your body:
Psychology researcher Ellen Langer of Harvard University has long been intrigued by mind-over-body effects. She and student Alia Crum therefore invited 84 women, ages 18 to 55 years old, who worked as housekeepers at seven Boston hotels, to participate in a study. Those in four hotels were told that their regular work was good exercise and met the guidelines for a healthy, active lifestyle. After all, the women cleaned about 15 rooms a day, taking 20 to 30 minutes for each, so they did get a bit of a workout. Those in the other three hotels…
cortex | February 2, 2007Ezra Klein laments his dental inheritance:
I have weak teeth. Always have. My father has weak teeth, my mother has weak teeth, and I, their dutiful son, possess weak teeth. My sister doesn't suffer from this malady. I remember a joint dentist appointment we had, where the doctor returned with our X-Rays, informed me that I had no cavities, and told my sister she had eight. But I had barely commenced my big brotherly gloating when he glanced back at the films and said, "Oh wait, nevermind. Lili, you have no cavities, and as for you, Ezra..."
Well, today I beat my own record. I need eight…
cortex | February 1, 2007Your unconscious brain is better at processing information than you are. Here's Ap Dijksterhuis:
We gave our subjects information pertaining to a choice--for example, which of four apartments was the most attractive, or which of four cars was the best. They had three options: They could make a choice immediately; they could take time for conscious deliberation; or they could figuratively sleep on it--that is, engage in unconscious thought. The subjects who chose the third option were first given information about the decision in question and then given information about an unrelated task, to…
cortex | February 1, 2007This will surely rank as one of the major scientific breakthroughs of the 21st century*:
This winter, a sparkling diamond landed in front of a technician at the Gemological Institute of America in New York City. He ran tests, noted the stone was man-made, and graded it as he would any diamond. It was the gem industry's strongest acknowledgment yet that lab-grown diamonds are just as real as natural ones.
For years, De Beers, the world's largest purveyor of natural diamonds, argued against the acceptance and GIA grading of lab-grown stones. But since 2003, synthetic diamond production has…
cortex | February 1, 2007Over at Scientific American, David Dobbs has introduced a wonderful new "seminar blog" in which researchers discuss a specific topic or paper. This week's topic is the prevalence of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) among Vietnam veterans. The catalyst is a Science paper by Bruce Dohrenwend published last year which concluded that actual rates of PTSD were roughly 40 percent lower than previous studies had shown.
But that reduction in PTSD - a statistic that the popular media trumpeted - occludes the larger lesson of the study:
The Dohrenwend study provides not a refutation or even a "…
cortex | January 31, 2007Over at Slate, Gregg Easterbrook argues that the President's recent proposal to increase the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard by 4 percent a year is a brilliant and bold policy that will "reverse [oil] consumption trends". He blames the liberal media for not giving Bush the credit he deserves.
I'm skeptical. While I'm glad Bush has agreed to strengthen CAFE standards, I also think that CAFE standards are relatively useless. There are simply too many loopholes. Automakers can avoid CAFE standards by building trucks and SUV's - Bush wants "to extend the current Light Truck Rule…
cortex | January 30, 2007In the 2004 documentary Super Size Me, Morgan Spurlock decided to eat nothing but McDonald's for 30 days. He ended up gaining lots of weight, suffering liver damage, and enduring intense mood swings. But now Spurlock's movie has been repeated under experimental conditions. The results are good news for McDonald's:
A Swedish researcher put 18 volunteers on the same diet that filmmaker Morgan Spurlock went on while filming "Super Size Me."
To his great surprise, the researcher discovered that eating mass quantities of junk food affected each participant differently. While one volunteer gained…
cortex | January 30, 2007For some reason, I find the death of Barbaro rather upsetting. The first two horse races I've ever watched on television were his victory at the Kentucky Derby and his injury at the Preakness. I've since followed his medical travails with baited breath, rooting for his left foot, then his right foot, and then his left foot.
That said, some of this Barbaro commentary is just silly. This morning, while listening to NPR and watching the news, I've heard Barbaro being compared to Mozart, Beethoven and Muhammad Ali. His graceful movements are "like a symphony". He ran so beautifully "because he…
cortex | January 29, 2007There's a new collection of Einstein's personal letters that are about to be published. They give us a portrait of the young scientist before he revolutionized science. At the time these letters were written, Einstein was insecure, poor and struggling to publish. In other words, he was just like every other post-doc:
In 1915, as Western civilization teetered on the brink, Albert Einstein stood at the threshold of a scientific achievement so bold that it would forever change him and the world.
His general theory of relativity, which described how large bodies warped space and time, would…
cortex | January 27, 2007It almost seems as if the faddish claims of nutritional science have an inverse relationship with reality. If a nutrient is supposed to be good for us, chances are that later research will contradict the claim. Here's Michael Pollan in the Times Magazine:
Last winter came the news that a low-fat diet, long believed to protect against breast cancer, may do no such thing -- this from the monumental, federally financed Women's Health Initiative, which has also found no link between a low-fat diet and rates of coronary disease. The year before we learned that dietary fiber might not, as we had…
cortex | January 23, 2007Is this true? Are neuroscientists really the cool kids? If so, then what is the "coolest" avenue of neuroscience research? (And please don't say consciousness studies.)
Q. Among biologists, is sperm research very respected?
A. Well, in biology, all the glamour is in neuroscience. The common thing said is: "Learning and memory, that's the theoretical physics of biology." In terms of prestige, reproduction is far down the line. Another thing: because reproductive research is about sex and possibly about contraception, it doesn't get a lot of funding. That too has something to do with its low…
cortex | January 22, 2007This is an important medical story about the spread of a drug-resistant strain of bacteria called Acinetobacter baumannii. The spread of this superbug - it's known as an opportunistic pathogen, since it preys on the old, young and weak - seems to largely be a consequence of war. Here's Steve Silberman of Wired:
The first news that US troops had engaged an unforeseen enemy in Iraq appeared on a physicians' email list called ProMED on April 17, 2003. A communicable-disease expert in the Navy named Kyle Petersen posted a request for information about unusual infections he was seeing aboard the…
cortex | January 22, 2007Last night's Colts-Patriots game was a painful experience. (As you probably guessed, I'm a Patriots fan.) But it wasn't just painful because the Pats lost the game: it was how they lost the game. The Pats dominated the 1st half, only to have their 18 point lead slowly chipped away by Manning's precision passes. The Colts scored the go-ahead touchdown with one minute remaining in the 4th quarter.
Based upon a careful introspection of my own Sunday night misery, I'm hereby proposing a new law of sports fandom: the inverse peak-end rule. This is an altered version of the traditional peak-end…