Even if there was a highly advanced and intelligent alien species out there and it was starved of resources after tens of millions of years of existence in one form or another, we wouldn’t be a likely destination for invasion. We’d probably be too far away and too expensive to attack for a pretty minor payoff.

Everything aliens could find on our planet could be found in greater abundance and higher densities in asteroid belts and comet-rich clouds left over from solar system formation.

{ Weird things | Continue reading }

Every time some human attribute is said to be unique, whether tool-making or language or warfare, biologists soon find some plausible precursor in animals that makes the ability less distinctive.

Still, humans are vastly different from other animals, however hard the difference may be to define. A cascade of events, some the work of natural selection, some just plain accidents, propelled the human lineage far from the destiny of being just another ape, down an unexpected evolutionary path to become perhaps the strangest blossom on the ample tree of life.

And what was the prime mover, the dislodged stone that set this eventful cascade in motion? It was, perhaps, the invention of weapons — an event that let human ancestors escape the brutal tyranny of the alpha male that dominated ape societies.

Biologists have little hesitation in linking humans’ success to their sociality. The ability to cooperate, to make individuals subordinate their strong sense of self-interest to the needs of the group, lies at the root of human achievement.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

photo { Lynn Davis }

The Ides of March is the name of 15 March in the Roman calendar, probably referring to the day of the full moon.

The term ides was used for the 15th day of the months of March, May, July, and October, and the 13th day of the other months.

In modern times, the term Ides of March is best known as the date that Julius Caesar was killed in 44 B.C. Julius Caesar was stabbed (23 times) to death in the Roman Senate led by Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus and 60 other co-conspirators.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading | More: Assassination of Julius Caesar }

related { Each of the suspects stabbed Ratchett once, so that no one could know who delivered the fatal blow. }

painting { Vincenzo Camuccini, Morte di Giulio Cesare (Death of Julius Caesar), 1798 }

When forming first impressions about individuals, we often categorize them as belonging to a specific social group, based on very little information. Certain aspects in the way a person looks, or information about a certain trait they possess, may lead us to identify them as belonging to a high- or low-status social group. (…)

The idea of a correlation between various traits has been demonstrated in the ‘halo effect’ (Thorndike, 1920), showing the tendency to attribute all-positive or all-negative traits to individuals, based on one positive or negative initial trait. (…)

A variety of variables of physical appearance, such as dress, bodily posture, weight and perceived attractiveness have been shown to have an effect on the impression individuals make. Gender schemas are one of the parameters through which we infer personality traits, and have been demonstrated to have a strong influence on the impression formation. Males are generally perceived as possessing more high-status traits, such as assertiveness and competence, than females. (…)

Listening to music is an activity that plays an important role in people’s lives, especially in adolescence and young adulthood. Individuals consider the music they like as an important part of themselves, and believe their taste in music reveals aspects of their own personality, more than preferences for books, clothing, food, movies and television shows. The idea that personal musical taste is related to other aspects of personality has in fact received further confirmation in various studies relating musical preferences and particular personality traits. Thus, for example, liking for rock, heavy metal and punk were found to be positively related to sensation-seeking; extraversion and psychoticism were found to be related to liking for music with ‘exaggerated bass’ such as rap and dance music, and to stimulating music such as rock-and-roll and pop; rebelliousness was found to be related to liking for defiant music. (…)

Studies suggest that knowing a person’s musical taste has a powerful effect on how they are perceived and evaluated.

{ Psychology of Music, The effect of looks and musical preference on trait inference, 2008 | Continue reading | PDF }

Preventing preterm births just got 150 times more expensive, now that KV Pharmaceuticals has gained exclusive rights to produce a progesterone shot used to prevent premature births in high-risk mothers.

Although the shot has been available in unregulated form from specialty compounding pharmacies for years for $10 a pop, the Food and Drug Administration recently granted KV Pharmaceuticals sole rights to produce the drug, which will be marketed as Makena and cost $1,500 per dose — an estimated $30,000 in total per pregnancy. (…)

Because FDA laws prohibit compounding pharmacies from making FDA-approved products, doctors will be legally obligated to stop using the cheaper version of this drug.

{ ABC News | Continue reading }

photo { Julie Anderson and E.J. photographed by Tyen }

{ Matt McAllister broke the record for ‘most tee-shirts worn by one person’ in October 2010. | Photo: Filo/AP }

In 1978, the NASA scientist Donald Kessler predicted that a collision between two pieces of space junk could trigger a cascade of further impacts, creating dangerously large amounts of debris.

Kessler pointed out that when the rate at which debris forms is faster than the rate at which it de-orbits, then the Earth would become surrounded by permanent belts of junk, a scenario now known as the Kessler syndrome.

By some estimates, the Kessler syndrome has already become a reality. In January 2009, a collision between the Iridium 33 and Cosmos 2251 satellites created just this kind of cascade. Two years earlier, the Chinese military tested an anti-satellite weapon by destroying one of its own satellites called Fengyun 1C. Both incidents took place at altitudes of about 800 km. (…)

Various ideas have been floated for removing space junk, most of them hugely expensive.

Today, James Mason at NASA Ames Research Center near Palo Alto and a few buddies describe a much cheaper option. Their idea is to zap individual pieces of junk with a ground-based laser, thereby slowing them down so that they eventually de-orbit.

{ The Physics arXiv Blog | Continue reading }

New consumer research conducted by UK home insurer Esure provides insight into the way British consumers manage their household keys:

The average Brit owns or carries a total of nine keys but has no idea what at least three of them are for.

27% of those polled said that they own between 10 and 15 different keys, with a further 9% possessing 21 or more separate keys.

20% keep the keys to their old home after moving but only 30% change the locks when moving into a new home.

{ NFC | Continue reading }

drawings { Keith Haring }

{ Edward Weston, White Sands, 1946 }

related { The Cloud: Battle of the Tech Titans. Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are going up against traditional infrastructure makers like IBM and HP as businesses move their most important work to cloud computing, profoundly changing how companies buy computer technology. | Business week | full story }

{ Poker Bots Invade Online Gambling }

Verb tense is more important than you may think, especially in how you form or perceive intention in a narrative.

In recent research studied in Psychological Science, William Hart of the University of Alabama states that “when you describe somebody’s actions in terms of what they’re ‘doing,’ that action is way more vivid in [a reader’s] mind.” Subsequently, when action is imagined vividly, greater intention is associated with it. (…)

Those who read that the defendant “was firing gun shots” believed a more harmful intent of the defendant than those who read that he “fired gun shots”.

{ APS | Continue reading }

screenshot { Cowboys and Aliens, 2011 }

“Worrying is always bad for your health.” Wrong. A study lasting for more than 80 years debunks conventional wisdom.

(…)

Philip was one of 1,500 bright children who were tracked for more than 80 years in a massive longitudinal study begun in 1921 by psychologist Lewis Terman. Terman and his successors—he died before many of the children—collected millions of details about these subjects, including whether they were breast-fed, how much they exercised, what their marriages were like, how satisfying their sex lives were, how satisfying their jobs were. (…)

Optimistic people have a tendency to ignore details, meaning they don’t follow doctor’s orders correctly or lead themselves into unhealthy situations or addictions. It was the conscientious people—careful, sometimes even neurotic, but not catastrophizing—who lived longer, write Friedman and Martin, researchers at the University of California, Riverside. And, their studies show, some of what we think will benefit our children may actually rob them of years later in life. In the Terman study, precocious, active children who were sent to school a year early, as Philip was, tended to have emotional problems that led to unhealthy behaviors and shortened life span.

{ The Atlantic | Continue reading }

polaroid { Melvin Sokolsky | more }

That sex reduces stress –- or that no sex increases stress –- is hardly a new observation. A team of German researchers, though, is arguing that sexual frustration is a complex phenomenon not to be underestimated. It can precipitate a downward spiral, pulling couples helplessly and unbeknownst into a swirling vortex of all work and no nookie.

Ragnar Beer of the University of Göttingen surveyed almost 32,000 men and women for his Theratalk Project (2007), which has found that the less sex you have, the more work you seek. Indeed, the sexually deprived have to find outlets for their frustrations: they often take on more commitments and work.

{ Der Spiegel | Continue reading }

photo { Helmut Newton }

Jellyfish have traditionally been considered simple and primitive. When you gaze at one in an aquarium tank, it is not hard to see why.

Like its relatives the sea anemone and coral, the jellyfish looks like a no-frills animal. It has no head, no back or front, no left or right sides, no legs or fins. It has no heart. Its gut is a blind pouch rather than a tube, so its mouth must serve as its anus. Instead of a brain, it has a diffuse net of nerves.

A fish or a shrimp may move quickly in a determined swim; a jellyfish pulses lazily along.

But new research has made scientists realize that they have underestimated the jellyfish and its relatives - known collectively as cnidarians (pronounced nih-DEHR-ee-uns). Beneath their seemingly simple exterior lies a remarkably sophisticated collection of genes, including many that give rise to humans’ complex anatomy.

These discoveries have inspired new theories about how animals evolved 600 million years ago. The findings have also attracted scientists to cnidarians as a model to understand the human body.

“The big surprise is that cnidarians are much more complex genetically than anyone would have guessed,” said Dr. Kevin J. Peterson, a biologist at Dartmouth. “This data have made a lot of people step back and realize that a lot of what they had thought about cnidarians was all wrong.”

Renaissance scholars considered them plants. Eighteenth-century naturalists grudgingly granted them admittance into the animal kingdom, but only just. They classified cnidarians as “zoophytes,” somewhere between animal and plant.

It was not until the 19th century that naturalists began to understand how cnidarians developed from fertilized eggs, their body parts growing from two primordial layers of tissue, the endoderm and ectoderm.

Other animals, including humans and insects, have a third layer of embryonic tissue, the mesoderm, wedged between the ectoderm and the endoderm. It gives rise to muscles, the heart and other organs not found in cnidarians.

Cnidarians also have a simpler overall body plan. Fish, fruit flies and earthworms all have heads and tails, backs and fronts, and left and right sides. Scientists refer to animals, including humans, with this two-sided symmetry as bilaterians. In contrast, cnidarians seem to lack such symmetry completely. A jellyfish, for example, has the symmetry of a bicycle wheel, radiating from a central axis.

{ NY Times [2005] | Continue reading }

print { Constance Jacobson }

Red Bull is a carbonated beverage that initially gained wide popularity in the U.S. during the late nineties. Taking root amongst college campuses, it appeared throughout underground clubs and eventually entered mainstream pop-culture. The manufactures claim that drinking Red Bull enhances physical endurance, concentration and reaction speed. The main ingredients of Red Bull include sugar, taurine, glucuronolactone and caffeine. It is hypothesized that the combinatorial influences of these ingredients are responsible for Red Bull’s proposed effects. This report critically reviews these claims and concludes that caffeine alone may be responsible for the proposed effects.

{ Debunking the Effects of Taurine in Red Bull Energy Drink | eScholarship | Continue reading }

collage { Lola Dupre }

{ Franz Xaver Messerschmidt (1736 – 1783) was a German-Austrian sculptor most famous for his “character heads,” a collection of busts with faces contorted in extreme facial expressions. | Wikipedia | Continue reading | More: I have been researching franz xaver messerschmidt and his «mad heads» (as i like to call them) between 1990 and 2003 }

Of the 50 dommes she interviewed in New York, 39 percent had gone to graduate school, including three who attended Columbia University.

The Upper Breast Side is Manhattan’s leading lactation and breastfeeding resource center and retail store with a pun in its name. A valuable resource for befuddled and sore-titted moms.

NYC’s Ten Worst Tenants.

For decades, Chinatown Fair welcomed everyone — misfits, cool kids, world champions, novices, dancers, fighters, strategists, tourists carrying leftover dumplings from their dinner across the street. Then, two weeks ago, it disappeared.

The crown and other interior portions of the Statue of Liberty will temporarily close to the public Nov. 1 to allow for the installation of extra safety features, a spokeswoman for the National Park Service.

Ping-Pong Table Coming to Tompkins Square Park.

Best Business Cards from Around New York’s Tech Scene.

Don Figlozzi, the First TV Animator? Don Figlozzi (1909-81), spent the first half of his career in animation and the second half at the New York Daily News, where his cartoons, signed “Fig,” became a fixture.

An interview with Colleen Nika.

Steven Brahms at 3rd Ward (Friday, March 18).

Tim Davis, The Upstate New York Olympics, 2011

“Women Artists Reconfigure the Signs of Power, 1973-1991” at the Neuberger Museum of Art.

Fireman Reminds You To Set Your Clocks Ahead an Hour.

There is no single, clear measure of sex drive. So we approached the problem like this. Imagine two women (or two men for that matter), such that one of them has truly a stronger sex drive than the other. What differences in preferences and behavior would you expect to see between the two of them? For example, the one with the stronger sex drive would presumably think about sex more often; have more fantasies, desire, and actual sex more often; have more partners; masturbate more often; and devote more effort to having sex than the other. The reverse is quite implausible. That is, it is hard to imagine the woman with a weaker sex drive having more frequent sexual fantasies than the woman with the stronger sex drive.

And so we searched for studies that compared men and women on these types of behaviors.

After months of reading and compiling results, the answer was clear. There is a substantial difference, and men have a much stronger sex drive than women. To be sure, there are some women who have frequent, intense desires for sex, and there are some men who don’t, but on average the men want it more.

{ Oxford University Press | Continue reading }

acrylic on board { Hajime Sorayama }

Q. Is anesthesia like a coma?

A. It’s a reversible drug-induced coma, to simplify. As with a coma that’s the result of a brain injury, the patient is unconscious, insensitive to pain, cannot move or remember. However, with anesthesia, once the drugs wear off, the coma wears off.

{ Interview with Dr. Emery Neal Brown, professor of anesthesiology at Harvard Medical School | NY Times | Continue reading }

quote { Eulogy for Things Left Unsaid | video }

My own research into gender differences stems from my interest in the neurodevelopmental condition of autism. (…)

What we know is that girls, on average, make more eye contact than boys from at least 12 months of age and that, on average, language develops faster in girls than in boys, measured at 18 and 24 months of age. The question is: “Why?” Given that reduced eye contact and delayed language are two of the signs of classic autism in preschoolers, it seems necessary to consider whether autism is an extreme form of the typical male pattern of development.

{ NewStateman | Continue reading }

photo { Bill Owens }