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POPSNo Shortcuts to First-World Wealth New cluster-analysis of the world's product export space reveals the differences in connectivity and diversity between nations' production capacities as well as the very sizable developmental gaps in this network that keep poorer countries on the industrial fringes. The rich countries of the industrialized world tend to have broad portfolios of industries, and accordingly occupy large areas of the product space, usually including much of the network's core. Fast-growing developing countries such as China, Thailand, and Hungary are strong in some of those central, well-connected regions. The poorest countries, especially those in sub-Saharan Africa, tend to specialize in a few of the peripheral products—such as oil for Nigeria and copper for Zambia. EDIT :My first title was too generic ("Mapping the Wealth of Nations.")
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POPSAtheists Need to Chill Michael Shermer makes a point that needs to be made. Atheists need to remember what they stand for , not merely what they are against . Ridicule and contempt have no place in science, and haters should not tarnish its reputation by association. In the words of the greatest consciousness raiser of the 20th century, Martin Luther King, Jr., in his epic "I Have a Dream" speech: "In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline." If atheists do not want theists to prejudge them in a negative light, then they must not do unto theists the same.
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POPSWho's Minding the Mind? New studies have found that people tidy up more thoroughly when there’s a faint tang of cleaning liquid in the air; they become more competitive if there’s a briefcase in sight, or more cooperative if they glimpse words like “dependable” and “support” — all without being aware of the change, or what prompted it. In describing my own research or cognitive science in general to people, the most difficult obstacle I would eventually encounter was the stubborn human belief that there was a independent entity — a free will — in charge of everything important that goes on in their brain. While science has been steadily dismantling this understandable misconception for decades, recent studies on subconscious social priming like these would have helped me demonstrate my point. To be fair, it's more than a little disconcerting to realize what a messy mix of competing, semi-independent, multi-layered neural modules are responsible for producing our daily behavior.
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POPSStunning Photo of Saturn Backlit By the Sun With our sun behind it, Saturn carves out a majestic silhouette against the vastness of space. And the tiny speck peeking through the rings? That's us! Click on images for full-size. (Transmitted by the Cassini probe looking back at the Earth from a billion-mile-out vantage point. Background behind the image's creation.)
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POPSStunning Photo of Saturn Backlit By the Sun With our sun behind it, Saturn carves out a majestic silhouette against the vastness of space. And the tiny speck peeking through the rings? That's us! Should be seen full-size: 1 , 2 . (Transmitted by the Cassini probe looking back at the Earth from a billion-mile-out vantage point. Background behind the image's creation.)
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POPS80-Year-Old Indian Math Mystery Solved A few months into 2007 and already another long-standing mathematical mystery has been more-or-less put to rest. It will be hard to top Perelman's stunning proof of the legendary Poincaré Conjecture from last year, but in math and science, you never know when the next breakthrough will come. (If you haven't already, read up on some of the incredible anecdotes about the life of the Indian genius, Ramanujan. He was truly one of a kind.)
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POPSMath Behind Ancient Islamic Tile Patterns Decoded When Peter J. Lu traveled to Uzbekistan, he had no idea of the mathematical journey that he was about to embark on as well. See the full research article as published in Science . It's a wonderful example of original, multidisciplinary academic research bridging history and mathematics that happens to force us to re-think the sophistication of ancient geometrical knowledge. When Lu looked at photographs of Islamic buildings, he found that he could break the patterns on their surfaces up into the same shapes, even though the shapes often weren't immediately visible. "I couldn't sleep for days," he said. "I skipped Christmas break to work on it."
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POPSGiant Bioluminescent Squid Captured on Video for First Time! Terrifying! The YouTube link is OK, but see the full-size, high-frame-rate Quicktime version on nature.com to see this rare animal in all its lit-up glory. Like something out of a James Cameron movie.... Remains of Taningia danae often show up in the stomachs of sperm whales. The squid's flabby flesh led experts to think that it floats in the water column like a neutrally buoyant scuba diver. But the new footage shows it can reach speeds of up to 9 kilometres per hour. When presented with bait, the squid attacked, flashing its luminescent spots, or 'photophores', which contain glowing bacteria. It produced longer glows when faced with the bait rig's lights, suggesting that it was performing some sort of mating dance.
18
POPSMust-know terms for the 21st Century intellectual One author's mostly optimistic prediction of the ideas that will come to define our collective future. Nicely done. Open Source : This is a term that most people are familiar with, but it’s worth re-stating. The open source revolution, where information is freely distributed and editable, is already reshaping a number of industries and upsetting traditional economic and intellectual property models. Wikipedia has very quickly become the world’s largest repository of encyclopedic information. Linux and other open source software continue to rival the big players. And looking further down the line, there’s the potential for open source science, culture, and the disturbing potential for open source warfare.
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POPS25 Greatest Science Books of All Time The Origin of Species (1859) Darwin's masterwork is, undeniably, The Origin of Species , in which he introduced his theory of evolution by natural selection. Prior to its publication, the prevailing view was that each species had existed in its current form since the moment of divine creation and that humans were a privileged form of life, above and apart from nature. Darwin's theory knocked us from that pedestal. Wary of a religious backlash, he kept his ideas secret for almost two decades while bolstering them with additional observations and experiments. The result is an avalanche of detail—there seems to be no species he did not contemplate—thankfully delivered in accessible, conversational prose. A century and a half later, Darwin's paean to evolution still begs to be heard: "There is grandeur in this view of life," he wrote, that "from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."
7
POPSWhat Did Descartes Really Know? (Book Review) Great review of two new Descartes biographies that set some of the records straight on the great naturalist's works. Despite his current reputation, the man himself seems to have been less interested in metaphysics than in applying algebra to geometry and delving into the innards of cows. He turned to philosophy relatively late in life, and out of fear that the Catholic Church would condemn his science. He would have been surprised at how he is remembered. Most of all, he would have been aghast at the way in which “I think, therefore I am” has been ripped from its context, inflated into a one-sentence summary of his ideas, and turned into something absurd. The rot set in at the start of the nineteenth century, when Hegel made heavy weather of “I think, therefore I am” and took it to mean that thought and being are fundamentally the same thing.
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POPSHow to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic (FAQ) More common questions and myths answered at the source, thoroughly cross-referenced and conveniently categorized and sub-categorized by type of argument: Stages of Denial Scientific Topics Types of Argument Levels of Sophistication A nice reference that's updated with fresh comments. Many "skeptics" often are unaware (by choice or by circumstance) that their common questions have already been addressed by scientists long ago.
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POPSThe Myth of Prodigy and Why it Matters Science writer, Malcolm Gladwell, debates the worth of placing so much attention on childhood prodigies and whether the notion of childhood prodigy hasn't been romanticized beyond it's importance. Our romanticized view of precociousness matters. When certain kids are singled out as gifted or talented, Gladwell suggested, it creates an environment that may be subtly discouraging to those who are just average. “In singling out people like me at age 13 for special treatment, we discouraged other kids from ever taking up running at all. And we will never know how many kids who might have been great milers had they been encouraged and not discouraged from joining running, might have ended up as being very successful 10 years down the road.”
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POPSHomosexuality and Child Sexual Abuse: Science, Religion, and the Slippery Slope
In the wake of the scandal of former Congressman Mark Foley’s inappropriate behavior involving teenage male pages, a number of conservative commentators and organizations are reviving an old charge that homosexuals are more likely to sexually abuse children. But, as the author points out, this research has been debunked for decades now and is only being resurrected again for campaigning purposes. The numerous citations of the scientific literature by social conservatives initially look impressive. However, when one examines the original studies that have been cited, one finds that the conclusions of the original studies are contrary to the claims made by those citing the studies. Most significantly, while social conservatives claim that all the cases of sexual molestation of young boys by adult males are committed by homosexuals, the scientists whom they cite explicitly reject this assertion. Let us examine the actual claims of the scientists, one by one.
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POPS"Spore": The Long Zoom Great article about what looks to be an incredible online, massively-multiplayer game (from the creator of the Sims and SimCity series) where "players" master the entire phenomenon of life; from ecology, to atmospheric science, to anatomy, to evolution, to civilization, to planetary politics, and on to galactic diplomacy. If anyone can pull it off, it’s Will Wright. This is the guy who made the urban planning simulation SimCity into one of the all-time top-selling games in history. There is probably no one alive who has a comparable track record of combining arcane scientific theories and compulsively addictive entertainment.
5
POPSSurvey of Contributions of High-Skilled Immigrants in the US The fact that the US has recently become home to an extraordinary number of immigrants also may indicate a new direction for the country as it moves on toward 400 million people, probably sometime in the middle of the century. "It says that we're going to be a country that is more outwardly reaching to the rest of the world, that we'll be more multicultural than we've been in the recent past," says William Frey, a demographer at the University of Michigan and the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington.
4
POPSOrthodox Jews and Belief in Evolution & Science The author of this study was surprised by the extent of anti-evolution and anti-science beliefs expressed by a survey of Orthodox Jewish college students, even amongst the "modern" ones who are allowed to pursue secular degrees. What's worse is that science majors seem to be even less likely to believe in evolution, apparently because of undergoing more thorough "preparation" against "heretical views" by their rabbinical elders. From the Introduction: Ultra-orthodox Jews have always forbidden members to get a secular education. Modern and Centrist Orthodox Jews are allowed a secular education only for reasons of parnasa, to make a living. In the last couple of decades two phenomena have interacted to shape Centrist Orthodoxy’s relationship with secular education. First the entire Orthodox spectrum has moved radically to the right. Modern Orthodoxy is in tremendous decline, the name itself becoming a term of disdain for those not “really religious,” i.e. “modern.”
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POPSIndex of Answers to Creationist Claims (Talk.Origins) It's futile to spend too much time answering the creationist/ID claims that pop up here from time to time when all of them have already been addressed and debunked by the scientific community in overwhelming detail. This continually updated index addresses every single creationist/ID claim that has been made to date with short responses and hyperlinks to papers and references with detailed responses. (Most claims go back decades, if not centuries...there is very little new in the way of creationist claims any more. ID so far has made no new claims that creationists hadn't already made in the 60s/70s with different terminology.) While this a handy resource for debates on origins, its primary worth is as a doorway to education in the entire field of modern science and the scientific process, with a focus on the historical fields of evolution, anthropology, biology, and geology...with a healthy dose of religion and philosophy of science thrown in as well.
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POPSShort Excerpt from "Why Darwin Matters" by Michael Shermer Shermer continues: This general fear leads to six specific fears about evolution. A general resistance to science. Belief that evolution is a threat to specific religious tenets. Misunderstanding of evolutionary theory. The fear that evolution degrades our humanity. The equation of evolution with ethical nihilism. The fear that evolutionary theory implies we have a fixed human nature. See the source (and book) for full discussion of why " ll of these fears are baseless." I've read Shermer's other works and they're remarkably readable and informative for specialists and non-specialists alike. He's one of the leading writers bringing scientific ideas into the popular domain. I'm sure this new book will be well worth reading also.
2
POPSRare Half-Female, Half-Male Crab Caught Researching info on crustacean development for Rare Two-Toned Lobster Caught led me to this instance of equally rare bilateral gynandromorphy seen in this crab specimen caught in 2005. Half female, half male — split straight down the middle of a live specimen! Nature can be weird! First paragraph: (June 15, 2005) Researchers at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science are holding an extremely rare type of crab that was pulled from the Chesapeake Bay last month by watermen David Johnson and Robert Watson of Deltaville.
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POPSScientists Find a Second Code Hidden in DNA How cool is this? A secondary DNA meta-code has been discovered superimposed on top of the same "genetic code" whose transcription it influences! (Douglas Hofstadter would have had a field day with this!) Highly efficient from an information science point of view. There are so many wonders to be discovered within our very selves!
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POPSBrain Study Shows Why Revenge Is Sweet "Theory and experimental evidence shows that cooperation among strangers is greatly enhanced by altruistic punishment," Fehr said. "Cooperation among strangers breaks down in experiments if altruistic punishment is ruled out. Cooperation flourishes if punishment of defectors is possible."
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