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Guang Jun Chong's List: science and technology

Getting connected: a history of modems | News | TechRadar UK

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history technology modem on 2009-12-27 and saved by 3 people
The Technium: Amish Hackers

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amish technology science history on 2009-12-26 and saved by 27 people
The Mechanics of Mind Reading: Scientific American

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mindreading multivariatepatternanalysis on 2009-12-26
- This new, far more sensitive, method, known as multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA), effectively works like a form of AI. The program will learn to link some mental event with a particular pattern of brain activity, and then make predictions about how new brain data relates to mental states, based on these prior lessons. It is these predictions that now allow neuroscientists potentially to read minds.
- If competing images are presented to each eye, using a technique called binocular rivalry, we consciously perceive only one image at a time, even though our eyes are viewing both images.
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- - Haynes set his MVPA algorithm to learn which patterns corresponded with this decision, astoundingly he found strong signals in the prefrontal and parietal cortex up to 10 seconds before the volunteer had consciously intended to act.
MIND Reviews: Doctoring the Mind : Scientific American

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books reviews psychiatry science on 2009-12-26
Inside the Mind of a Savant: Scientific American

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kimpeek savant brain science homosapiens memory personalities on 2009-12-26
The Mechanics of Mind Reading: Scientific American

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mindreading science brain homosapiens on 2009-12-26
How the brain encodes memories at a cellular level

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brain science memory homosapiens on 2009-12-26 and saved by 7 people
The Myths About Mr. and Ms. | Sex & the Brain | DISCOVER Magazine

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gender science on 2009-12-24
How to Cure 1 Billion People?--Defeat Neglected Tropical Diseases: Scientific American

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diseases homosapiens development science medical on 2009-12-24
Kinkiness Beyond Kinky | The Loom | Discover Magazine

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duck evolution biology animals science on 2009-12-24
Nano-Risks: A Big Need for a Little Testing: Scientific American

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nanotechnology pollution risk management technology environment on 2009-12-24
Gal Gamers Geekier Than Guys: Scientific American Podcast

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geeky gaming gender on 2009-12-24
Molecular Breeding Makes Crops Hardier and More Nutritious: Scientific American

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genetic modification technology science agriculture molecular breeding on 2009-12-24 and saved by 2 people
Accept Defeat: The Neuroscience of Screwing Up | Magazine

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neural science thoughts history development homosapiens on 2009-12-23 and saved by 22 people
- Dunbar realized that the vast majority of people in the lab followed the same basic strategy. First, they would blame the method.
- The surprising finding was classified as a mere mistake; perhaps a machine malfunctioned or an enzyme had gone stale.
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- - The experiment would then be carefully repeated. Sometimes, the weird blip would disappear, in which case the problem was solved. But the weirdness usually remained, an anomaly that wouldn’t go away.
  - This is when things get interesting. According to Dunbar, even after scientists had generated their “error” multiple times — it was a consistent inconsistency — they might fail to follow it up. “Given the amount of unexpected data in science, it’s just not feasible to pursue everything,” Dunbar says. “People have to pick and choose what’s interesting and what’s not, but they often choose badly.” And so the result was tossed aside, filed in a quickly forgotten notebook. The scientists had discovered a new fact, but they called it a failure.
  - The reason we’re so resistant to anomalous information — the real reason researchers automatically assume that every unexpected result is a stupid mistake — is rooted in the way the human brain works
  - Although we pretend we’re empiricists — our views dictated by nothing but the facts — we’re actually blinkered, especially when it comes to information that contradicts our theories. The problem with science, then, isn’t that most experiments fail — it’s that most failures are ignored.
  - When physics students saw the Aristotelian video with the aberrant balls, their DLPFCs kicked into gear and they quickly deleted the image from their consciousness. In most contexts, this act of editing is an essential cognitive skill. (When the DLPFC is damaged, people often struggle to pay attention, since they can’t filter out irrelevant stimuli.) However, when it comes to noticing anomalies, an efficient prefrontal cortex can actually be a serious liability. The DLPFC is constantly censoring the world, erasing facts from our experience. If the ACC is the “Oh shit!” circuit, the DLPFC is the Delete key. When the ACC and DLPFC “turn on together, people aren’t just noticing that something doesn’t look right,” Dunbar says. “They’re also inhibiting that information.”
  - The lesson is that not all data is created equal in our mind’s eye: When it comes to interpreting our experiments, we see what we want to see and disregard the rest
  - 1
    Check Your Assumptions
    
    Ask yourself why this result feels like a failure. What theory does it contradict? Maybe the hypothesis failed, not the experiment.
    
    2
    Seek Out the Ignorant
    
    Talk to people who are unfamiliar with your experiment. Explaining your work in simple terms may help you see it in a new light.
    
    3
    Encourage Diversity
    
    If everyone working on a problem speaks the same language, then everyone has the same set of assumptions.
    
    4
    Beware of Failure-Blindness
    
    It’s normal to filter out information that contradicts our preconceptions. The only way to avoid that bias is to be aware of it.
  - When Dunbar reviewed the transcripts of the meeting, he found that the intellectual mix generated a distinct type of interaction in which the scientists were forced to rely on metaphors and analogies to express themselves.
  - These abstractions proved essential for problem-solving, as they encouraged the scientists to reconsider their assumptions. Having to explain the problem to someone else forced them to think, if only for a moment, like an intellectual on the margins, filled with self-skepticism.
Observations: Going the distance: A new study finds that the reward center in the brains of depressed people lacks endurance

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science homosapiens neural behaviourial on 2009-12-22
Putting the squeeze on data

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data compression technology algorithm linear on 2009-12-21
Observations: Humans feasting on grains for at least 100,000 years

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homosapiens history agriculture grains food on 2009-12-19
The Atlantic Online | December 2009 | The Science of Success | David Dobbs

This article seeks to discuss the implications of the interactions between genetics and environment. First, it relates how the variability of risk alleles could be significant in evolutionary trajectory of a species-especially humans.

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stress diathesis behaviourial science psychiatry genetic on 2009-12-19 and saved by 3 people
- testing a radical new hypothesis about how genes shape behavior
- Of special interest to the team was a new interpretation of one of the most important and influential ideas in recent psychiatric and personality research: that certain variants of key behavioral genes (most of which affect either brain development or the processing of the brain’s chemical messengers) make people more vulnerable to certain mood, psychiatric, or personality disorders.
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- - “stress diathesis” or “genetic vulnerability” model
  - The genetic sensitivities to negative experience that the vulnerability hypothesis has identified, it follows, are just the downside of a bigger phenomenon: a heightened genetic sensitivity to all experience.
  - Most primates can thrive only in their specific environments. Move them and they perish. But two kinds, often called “weed” species, are able to live almost anywhere and to readily adapt to new, changing, or disturbed environments: human beings and rhesus monkeys. The key to our success may be our weediness. And the key to our weediness may be the many ways in which our behavioral genes can vary.
  - All of the important threads he’d been weaving together in his research were on display in this revolt: the importance of early experience; the interplay of environment, parenting, and genetic inheritance; the maddening primacy of family and social bonds; the repercussions of different traits in different circumstances. And now, in light of the orchid hypothesis, he was beginning to see that the threads might be woven together in a new way.
  - Robin Dunbar, a British evolutionary psychologist who argues that a species’ group limit reflects how many social relationships its individuals can manage cognitively. Berman’s observations suggested that the Dunbar number of a species reflects not just its cognitive powers but its temperamental and behavioral range as well.
  - All of this helps answer that fundamental evolutionary question about how risk alleles have endured. We have survived not despite these alleles but becauseof them.
The Psychology of Social Status: Scientific American

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psychology social status behaviourial homosapiens science on 2009-12-18
Kepler’s New Astronomy | Math-Blog

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astronomy johanneskepler mars orbit heliocentric theory science on 2009-12-18

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Guang Jun Chong

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Updated on 2009-12-27
Created on 2009-10-28

Category: Science

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Guang Jun Chong's List: science and technology

Getting connected: a history of modems | News | TechRadar UK

The Technium: Amish Hackers

The Mechanics of Mind Reading: Scientific American

MIND Reviews: Doctoring the Mind : Scientific American

Inside the Mind of a Savant: Scientific American

The Mechanics of Mind Reading: Scientific American

How the brain encodes memories at a cellular level

The Myths About Mr. and Ms. | Sex & the Brain | DISCOVER Magazine

How to Cure 1 Billion People?--Defeat Neglected Tropical Diseases: Scientific American

Kinkiness Beyond Kinky | The Loom | Discover Magazine

Nano-Risks: A Big Need for a Little Testing: Scientific American

Gal Gamers Geekier Than Guys: Scientific American Podcast

Molecular Breeding Makes Crops Hardier and More Nutritious: Scientific American

Accept Defeat: The Neuroscience of Screwing Up | Magazine

Observations: Going the distance: A new study finds that the reward center in the brains of depressed people lacks endurance

Putting the squeeze on data

Observations: Humans feasting on grains for at least 100,000 years

The Atlantic Online | December 2009 | The Science of Success | David Dobbs

The Psychology of Social Status: Scientific American

Kepler’s New Astronomy | Math-Blog

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