The wrinkles that develop on wet fingers could be an adaptation to give us better grip in slippery conditions, the latest theory suggests.

The hypothesis, from Mark Changizi, an evolutionary neurobiologist at 2AI Labs in Boise, Idaho, and his colleagues goes against the common belief that fingers turn prune-like simply because they absorb water.

Changizi thinks that the wrinkles act like rain treads on tyres. They create channels that allow water to drain away as we press our fingertips on to wet surfaces. This allows the fingers to make greater contact with a wet surface, giving them a better grip.

{ Nature | Continue reading }

There are numerous comparisons between Google’s new Google+ social offering and Facebook, but most of them miss the mark. Google knows the social train has left the station and there is a very slim chance of catching up with Facebook’s 750 million active users. However, Twitter’s position as a broadcast platform for 21 million active publishers is a much more achievable goal for Google to reach. (…)

While Facebook is not sweating about Google+, the threat to Twitter is significant. Google has the opportunity to displace Twitter if it gets publishers and celebrities to encourage Google+ follows on their websites as well as pushing posts to the legions of Google users while they are in Search, Gmail and YouTube. Google was turned down when it tried to buy Twitter for $10 billion, and now it is going to try to replicate it.

{ Social Beat | Continue reading }

photo { Jay Van Dam }

related { Invite your entire Facebook graph into Google Plus | Searching through other people’s photographs as soon as they’ve taken them is now possible thanks to a new search service. }

For a long time, the mechanisms of taste seemed relatively straightforward. (…) Ever since Democritus hypothesized in the fourth century B.C. that the sensation of taste was an effect of the shape of food particles, the tongue has been seen as a simple sensory organ. (…) Plato believed Democritus. (…) Aristotle believed Plato. In De Anima, the four primary tastes Aristotle described were the already classic sweet, sour, salty, and bitter.

Over the ensuing millennium, this ancient theory remained largely unquestioned. The tongue was seen as a mechanical sensor, in which the qualities of foods were impressed upon its papillaed surface. The discovery of taste buds in the 19th century gave new credence to this theory. Under a microscope, these cells looked like little keyholes into which our chewed food might fit, thus triggering a taste sensation. By the start of the 20th century, scientists were beginning to map the tongue, consigning each of our four flavors to a specific area. The tip of our tongue loved sweet things, while the sides preferred sour. The back of our tongue was sensitive to bitter flavors, and saltiness was sensed everywhere. The sensation of taste was that simple.

If only. We now know that our taste receptors are exquisitely complicated little sensors, and that there are at least five different receptor types scattered all over the mouth, not four. (The fifth receptor is sensitive to the amino acid glutamate, aka umami.) Furthermore, the tongue is only a small part of flavor: As anyone with a stuffy nose knows, the pleasure of food largely depends on its aroma. In fact, neuroscientists estimate that up to 90 percent of what we perceive as taste is actually smell. (…)

Perhaps the most shocking discovery from this new science of taste, however, is that the act of eating is not the only source of gustatory pleasure. Instead, a big chunk part of our sensory delight — the joy that makes us crave particular foods — comes afterwards, when the food is winding its way through the gut.

{ Wired | Continue reading }

{ Wayne Levin }

Schizophrenia is a serious mental illness, the causes of which are not yet well understood. It afflicts about 1% of the population, typically emerging in late adolescence or early adulthood. Neuroimaging and functional testing identify diminished brain volume in key areas and declining cognitive and social functioning at the time that symptoms of the disease emerge. After onset, the symptoms persist, although their intensity fluctuates and some long-term research has identified patients in whom symptoms have dissipated many years after onset. Psychotropic drugs relieve symptoms such as hallucinations and paranoid delusions for some patients, but they have no effect on cognitive or social functioning.

{ Housing and Mental Illness | Harvard University Press | Continue reading }

artwork { Izumi Kato }

{ Greg Sand | more }

{ Life magazine, 1954 | more }

{ 1 | 2. James Dodd }

We don’t quite understand small probabilities.

You often see in the papers things saying events we just saw should happen every ten thousand years, hundred thousand years, ten billion years. Some faculty here in this university had an event and said that a 10-sigma event should happen every, I don’t know how many billion years.

So the fundamental problem of small probabilities is that rare events don’t show in samples, because they are rare. So when someone makes a statement that this in the financial markets should happen every ten thousand years, visibly they are not making a statement based on empirical evidence, or computation of the odds, but based on what? On some model, some theory.



So, the lower the probability, the more theory you need to be able to compute it. Typically it’s something called extrapolation, based on regular events and you extend something to what you call the tails. (…)

The smaller the probability, the less you observe it in a sample, therefore your error rate in computing it is going to be very high. Actually, your relative error rate can be infinite, because you’re computing a very, very small probability, so your error rate is monstrous and probably very, very small. (…)

There are two kinds of decisions you make in life, decisions that depend on small probabilities, and decisions that do not depend on small probabilities. For example, if I’m doing an experiment that is true-false, I don’t really care about that pi-lambda effect, in other words, if it’s very false or false, it doesn’t make a difference. (…) But if I’m studying epidemics, then the random variable how many people are affected becomes open-ended with consequences so therefore it depends on fat tails. So I have two kinds of decisions. One simple, true-false, and one more complicated, like the ones we have in economics, financial decision-making, a lot of things, I call them M1, M1+.

{ Nassim Nicholas Taleb/Edge | Continue reading }

{ A black-headed female Gouldian finch, Erythrura gouldiae, chooses her mate. Having a genetically incompatible mate can increase a female bird’s stress hormone levels which then can affect the sex ratio of her offspring. | Nature | Continue reading }

related { Effects of stress can be inherited, and here’s how }

Lanchester Theory and the Fate of Armed Revolts

Major revolts have recently erupted in parts of the Middle East with substantial international repercussions. Predicting, coping with and winning those revolts have become a grave problem for many regimes and for world powers. We propose a new model of such revolts that describes their evolution by building on the classic Lanchester theory of combat.

The model accounts for the split in the population between those loyal to the regime and those favoring the rebels. We show that, contrary to classical Lanchesterian insights regarding traditional force-on-force engagements, the outcome of a revolt is independent of the initial force sizes; it only depends on the fraction of the population supporting each side and their combat effectiveness.

{ arXiv | Continue reading | Related: Lanchester’s Theory of Warfare }

photo { Clint Eastwood photographed by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin }

Nicotine is not only very, very addictive, as a central nervous system stimulant it can also affect our motivations and behaviors in a wider sense. One of the behaviors it can modify is appetitive behavior. It’s a well-funded fact that smokers tend to have a lower body-mass than non-smokers, and that smokers who quit have a tendency to gain weight, although until now the neurobiological mechanism for this modulation was unknown.

Recent findings from two different publications reveal parts of this mechanism, but while most reports have pin-pointed the results involving appetite suppression through pro-opiomelanocortin neurons, there is evidence that the complete picture is more complicated than that.

{ Ego Sum Daniel | Continue reading }

photo { Penny Cottee }

Previous studies have shown that dogs are capable of a remarkable range of human-like behaviours; they have been shown to perform as well or even better than chimpanzees at responding to human body language, verbal commands and attention states.

This has led to debate as to whether dogs are aware of people’s behaviour and can predict how a person will act as a result of it, or whether they are simply responding to the presence or absence of certain stimuli.

Publishing in the journal Learning & Behaviour, Udell and colleagues carried out two experiments to test the ability of pet dogs, rescue shelter dogs and wolves, to successfully beg for food from an attentive individual, versus an inattentive individual. (…)

In the first experiment, two people simultaneously offered food to the subject dog or wolf. One person was always attentive, giving the animal eye contact, while the other was unable to see the animal as they either had a camera or book obscuring their eyes, their back turned or a bucket over their head. (…)

The results showed, for the first time, that wolves as well as domestic dogs tended to beg for food from an attentive individual rather someone who was not paying attention. (…)

“The logical conclusion of the study must be that both genetics and the environment can play a role in the dogs’ behaviour, but the fundamental aspect seems to be genetic with only fine tuning being done by the dogs’ experience in the human environment,” he added.

{ Cosmos | Continue reading }

{ Ogilvy Malaysia hired some local Lego artists to create the posters that play off of the surrounding environment. | copyranter | more }

Police in Colorado are hunting for a man who hid in the basin of a portable toilet at a weekend yoga festival before being spotted and taking off “covered in feces.”

Police charge man with using pool as commode.

A woman accused of spraying sheriff’s deputies with breast milk is facing charges including disorderly conduct.

A power company lineman uses a pole to remove a young deer carcass that was dropped onto a power line after being snatched by an eagle in Montana. The incident caused a brief power outage.

According to New York state law it is legal to videotape a police officer in public, but Emily Good, 28, was arrested anyway.

An off-duty Chicago police officer dressed up as a clown for a fundraiser shot and killed a teen who held him at gunpoint after the event.

Iran plans to send a live monkey into space.

A home-made heroin substitute is having a horrific effect on thousands of Russia’s drug addicts.

British consumers have a nasty habit of serving their dinner guests food that has been dropped on the floor or past the recommended date for its sale and consumption, a new survey showed.

It is hard to think of a time when both the U.S. and the E.U., the two biggest players in the international economy, were in such miserable shape. We are talking about two giants with a total of 50 percent of global GDP.

Corrupt officials funnelled £76bn out of China.

Five economic lessons from Sweden, the rock star of the recovery.

Deep underground, giant experiments are detecting something very odd. Could this be the first real hint of dark matter?

Earlier this year, molecular biologists announced that 20 per cent of nonhuman genome databases are contaminated with human DNA, probably from the researchers who sequenced the samples.

A prion is a misshapen protein that acts like an infectious agent (hence the name, which comes from the words protein and infection). Prion Disease: Secret of Immunity Revealed.
The United Nations is officially declaring that for only the second time in history, a disease has been wiped off the face of the earth.

A common belief about teenagers is that they implicitly assume that they are invincible or immortal and think little about their own deaths. A study shows this to be a myth, as they vastly over-estimate their chances of dying within the next year.

French psychiatrist diagnosed Anakin Skywalker and his evil alter-ego, Darth Vader, with borderline personality disorder.

The problem with psychopaths lies in their lack of compassion, their willingness to destroy lives out of self-interest, malice or even boredom.

Researchers pinpoint reasons for dramatic rise in cesarean births.

Parent-adolescent cell phone conversations reveal a lot about the relationship.

A brief, voluntary conversation with an adult led to up to a 20 percent decrease in marijuana use for teenagers who frequently used the drug.

More Evidence Vitamin D Boosts Immune Response.

Mood and anxiety disorders are more prevalent in city dwellers and the incidence of schizophrenia is strongly increased in people born and raised in cities.

Shiatsu is Japanese for “finger pressure,” and consists of finger and palm pressure, stretches, and other massage techniques. Shiatsu is traditionally performed on a futon mat, with clients fully clothed. There is no scientific evidence proving that shiatsu can treat any disease.

No scientific evidence supports the alleged benefits of colon cleansing.

Marriage improves odds of surviving colon cancer.

Thanks to decades of research, survival from cancer has doubled in the last 40 years, giving thousands of people more time with their loved ones. But this progress simply wouldn’t have been possible without animal research.

With the introduction of psychoactive drugs in the 1950s, and sharply accelerating in the 1980s, the focus shifted to the brain. Psychiatrists began to refer to themselves as psychopharmacologists, and they had less and less interest in exploring the life stories of their patients.

The Antikythera mechanism is an ancient mechanical computer designed to calculate astronomical positions. It was recovered in 1900-1901. Its significance and complexity were not understood until decades later. Its time of construction is now estimated between 150 and 100 BC.

Wrangham believes that humanity was launched by an ape learning to cook. In a burst of evolution around two million years ago, our species developed the family relations that make us such a peculiar kind of animal.

Jungle Geometry: Who Needs Euclid?

How stressed-out KPMG employees learned to train their brains for higher levels of happiness at work.

Why Wall Street went for gay marriage.

24/7 Wall St. has created a new list of brands that will disappear in 2012. (Sony Pictures, American Apparel, Nokia…)

How Google Finds New Recruits.

Google Introduces Facebook Competitor, Emphasizing Privacy. And: On Facebook I overshare. On Twitter, I undershare. If Google hits that spot in the middle…

Here are six ways Google Ventures is attempting to disrupt the VC industry.

Shazam Raises $32 Million. Music is only the beginning for the company — next, they’re taking on television.

In February 2011, News Corp., which bought Myspace and its parent company, Intermix, in 2005 for $580 million, started officially looking for a potential buyer at an asking price of $100 million. The Rise and Inglorious Fall of Myspace.

Before leaving town I was determined to scope out that $1 billion Apple data center in Maiden, NC. So I drove over, took some pictures, and talked to folks at the convenience store down the road. My conclusions from this unscientific research is that the giant Apple facility is mainly empty.

We thought the idea of electronic mail was a great idea. We said, “Where’s electronic mail? That would be so cool.” And they said, “Oh, there’s no time to write that. It’s not important.” And we said, “Well, can we write it?” And we did. And then it became part of the system.

Reid Hoffman. The venture capitalist on how to hit a fast-moving target in the second-wave Web boom.

Intel: The Museum of Me.

In my philosophy class of 36 students I had six instances of plagiarism. One is a case of self-plagiarism, in which the third paper was turned in a second time for the fourth paper. He changed the introduction and the conclusion, but left the body paragraphs the same.

“No one will ever thank you for saving money at Conde Nast magazines,” Liberman once scolded an editor. “They’ll only thank you for making a great magazine.” Cosmopolitan, the popular Hearst monthly that competes directly with a number of Conde Nast titles, made nearly as much money last year as all of Conde Nast put together.

In 1995, Might Magazine published an essay by Phil Campbell about the first convention of people named Phil Campbell, which took place in Phil Campbell, Alabama.

When The Mob Ruled Hollywood.

X-Ray Specs, Sea-Monkeys… Von Braunhut’s adventures in American kitsch.

He also began to believe that the power of orgasm, called orgone, could be stored in batteries and could be absorbed from the sky by the use of a special machine called a cloudbuster. Related: The current consensus of the scientific community is that orgone theory is pseudoscience. And: Reich with one of his cloudbusters.

10 myths about introverts.

Wood models of human heads. Inscription on bottom of models reads “National Bureau of Standards 6-1-1946. Size 7″. Some heads are also inscribed “Size 7.5″. We have some artifacts in our collection we want to identify, so we thought we could exhibit them online and ask for help.

Humans may be near the top of the food chain now, but who were our ancestors’ biggest predators? The Top Ten Deadliest Animals of Our Evolutionary Past.

Does the Smithsonian consider tattoos works of art?

How the Hippies Saved Physics.

Why Do Tennis Balls Bounce Faster on Wimbledon’s Grass?

Who started photography?

What’s actually cracking when you crack your knuckles?

How to Know if Hackers Have Stolen Your Password.

Why you should eat fruits and vegetables.

Could Shakespeare’s Bones Tell Us if He Smoked Pot?

The brown note is a theoretical infrasonic frequency that would cause humans to lose control of their bowels due to resonance. There is no scientific evidence to support the claim that a “brown note” exists.

Grossinger’s was once an upscale retreat for the wealthy. Since closing its doors nearly 35 years ago, the resort has remained abandoned and untouched in the New York countryside.

Chinese Ghost Town That Looks Like It Was Plucked From The British Countryside.

657 new islands have been discovered around the world.

Photos of the world at night. Related videos: Milky Way.

The average color of the New York City sky, updated every 5 minutes. [Thanks Tim]

One Year of the Moon in 2.5 Minutes. [Thanks Chris]

Over or Under: The Great Toilet Paper Debate.

Elvis-related photos.

Toyota plant in Valenciennes, France

The making of a Coca-Cola neon sign, 1954.

Once Upon a Time in the West.

State of Vermont Pure Maple Syrup.

Vincent van Gogh, Couple Making Love, 1883

Wedding dress.

Findings suggest that, at least at the level of the male hormone, marriage doesn’t matter.

{ Psych Your Mind | Continue reading }

At some point, the Mongol military leader Kublai Khan (1215–1294) realized that his empire had grown so vast that he would never be able to see what it contained. To remedy this, he commissioned emissaries to travel to the empire’s distant reaches and convey back news of what he owned. Since his messengers returned with information from different distances and traveled at different rates (depending on weather, conflicts, and their fitness), the messages arrived at different times. Although no historians have addressed this issue, I imagine that the Great Khan was constantly forced to solve the same problem a human brain has to solve: what events in the empire occurred in which order?

Your brain, after all, is encased in darkness and silence in the vault of the skull. Its only contact with the outside world is via the electrical signals exiting and entering along the super-highways of nerve bundles. Because different types of sensory information (hearing, seeing, touch, and so on) are processed at different speeds by different neural architectures, your brain faces an enormous challenge: what is the best story that can be constructed about the outside world?

The days of thinking of time as a river—evenly flowing, always advancing—are over. Time perception, just like vision, is a construction of the brain and is shockingly easy to manipulate experimentally. We all know about optical illusions, in which things appear different from how they really are; less well known is the world of temporal illusions. When you begin to look for temporal illusions, they appear everywhere.

{ David M. Eagleman/Edge | Continue reading }

photos { Henri Cartier-Bresson | Ruben Natal-San Miguel }

‘Your own life while it’s happening to you never has any atmosphere until it’s a memory.’ –Warhol. I like that.

Wish I was back in school so I could do a thesis on how things like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc are technology’s attempt to ’solve’ this problem, effectively making us nostalgic for the present as we advertise it, not live it.

{ Colleen Nika }

photo { Becky Ninkovic }