Flirting with old-tyme racism. Is anyone paying attention? The ability to extract DNA from archeological bone specimens has opened a new area for research to reconstruct the past, but in some senses, this is allowing the field of anthropology to recapitulate its sometimes questionable history.
Anthropology has always been the study of groups of people, often characterized categorically, that is, as if their members were all alike, and were quite different from other groups. There's a fine line between this kind of typological thinking and the hierarchical ranking of groups, often been aided and abetted by the technologies of the day, from phrenology in the 19th century, which could be used to show, for example, that Africans were born to be slaves, and in need of masters, to the use of DNA markers today, which have been interpreted by some to confirm the existence of biological races, and the primacy of genes over environment in the determination of who we are. How to Really Find Your Passion. Does IQ Really Predict Job Performance? Why we're psychologically hardwired to blame the victim. “Why I stayed” is the title of the blog entry.
In it, Jennifer Willoughby, the ex-wife of former White House staff secretary Rob Porter, lists abuses she says she endured, including being called a “fucking bitch”, and being physically prevented from leaving the house. But even in the face of clear evidence of guilt by perpetrators, victims of domestic violence feel compelled to justify their actions.
This is the culture of victim-blaming in action. Rape and sexual assault survivors are asked about what they wore and how they fought back. What Scientists Mean When They Say 'Race' Is Not Genetic. Insights into Sexism: Male Status and Performance Moderates Female-Directed Hostile and Amicable Behaviour. Abstract Gender inequality and sexist behaviour is prevalent in almost all workplaces and rampant in online environments.
Although there is much research dedicated to understanding sexist behaviour, we have almost no insight into what triggers this behaviour and the individuals that initiate it. New neuroscience reveals 4 rituals that will make you happy. You get all kinds of happiness advice on the internet from people who don’t know what they’re talking about.
Don’t trust them. Actually, don’t trust me either. Trust neuroscientists. Is the Hard Problem of Consciousness Connected to the Hard Problem in Physics? Artistic Expressions of Math Over Seven Centuries. In 2015, the Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired a series of prints of the most beautiful equations, as drawn by 10 prominent mathematicians and scientists.
Mathematician Stephen Smale, for example, chose the relatively simplified numerical analysis equation known as Newton’s Method, first published in the 17th century, while theoretical physicist Steven Weinberg’s demonstration of the Lagrangian of the Electroweak Theory, which contributed to his 1979 Nobel Prize, flows over four dense lines. The 10 prints of mathematical expressions known as the Concinnitas portfolio are the core of Picturing Math: Selections from the Department of Drawings and Prints, currently on view in the Met’s Robert Wood Johnson, Jr.
Gallery. Myth: No Studies Compare the Health of Unvaccinated and Vaccinated People. I’ve heard this claim several times.
Ever since I found out that it is not true, I have been amazed how it just keeps resurfacing. I would like to put this myth to rest. Edge.org. Sexist Men Are More Likely To Be Depressed. The more men act like the stereotype of a real man’s man, the more mental health problems they run into.
A new study finds a man’s sexism isn’t just a problem that women have to deal with, but it’s also closely linked with psychological issues like depression, substance abuse, and body image problems. (And yes, we understand if you’re not exactly overflowing with sympathy right now.) “What we found was the more people adhere or conform to masculine norms, the poorer individuals’ mental health outcomes,” Indiana University researcher S. Joel Wong told Vocativ. How 'neurosexism' is holding back gender equality – and science itself.
People looking for proof that men and women learn, speak, solve problems or read maps differently often think brain scanners are the ultimate answer.
And it’s easy to see why. Whether you want to advocate separate schools for girls and boys or sex-segregated training of our armed forces, you can be sure to find brightly colour-coded maps highlighting differences between males and females in various brain areas – potentially backing up your argument. The power of “neuro” has been firmly harnessed in the ongoing debate about the differences between men and women.
Enthusiastic references to “cutting edge neuroscience” are constantly used by people making assumptions about sex differences – ranging from marketers to politicians and pressure groups. The idea that the brain is responsible for sex/gender differences or imbalances has been with us for a long time. How to Be an Optimal Human - Scientific American Blog Network. What does it take to be an optimal human being?
Throughout history there has been much speculation. For Aristotle, the highest human good was eudaimonia. For Carl Rogers, it was the "fully functioning person". The Extraordinary Link Between Deep Neural Networks and the Nature of the Universe. In the last couple of years, deep learning techniques have transformed the world of artificial intelligence.
One by one, the abilities and techniques that humans once imagined were uniquely our own have begun to fall to the onslaught of ever more powerful machines. Deep neural networks are now better than humans at tasks such as face recognition and object recognition. The modern human colonization of western Eurasia. Like Humans, Chimps Reward Cooperation and Punish Freeloaders. Although humans love the playful ways and toothy grins of chimpanzees, our primate cousins have the reputation of being competitive, churlish and, at times, aggressive. New research published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that despite being prone to occasional violent behavior, chimps actually much prefer cooperating over competing.
In fact, the work shows that chimps work together at similar rates as humans—and that when violence does occur among apes, it is often directed toward an individual that is not being a team player. Working with 11 chimps housed in a large outdoor enclosure at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University, researchers devised an experiment to assess cooperation, defined as two or more chimps working together to access a food reward. Initially two chimps had to team up, with one lifting a barrier and the other pulling in a tray baited with small pieces of fruit. It’s Time These Ancient Women Scientists Get Their Due. Women are woven deeply into the history of science, stretching back to ancient Egypt, over 4,000 years ago. But because their contributions often go unacknowledged, they fade into obscurity—and the threads of their influence today aren’t as apparent as they ought to be. As a Wikipedia editor, I have tried to make women’s contributions more apparent by writing entries on figures whose lives haven’t been completely lost, such as Agnodike and Aglaonike, two ancient Greek women, one a brave physician, the other a beguiling astronomer.
And fortunately, information about other remarkable women of science has survived, too, thanks in part to pop culture. Although it wasn’t a big hit, Agora, a 2009 film, spotlighted an important female astronomer and mathematician in late 4th century CE Roman Egypt: Hypatia (portrayed by Rachel Weisz). Your brain does not process information and it is not a computer. No matter how hard they try, brain scientists and cognitive psychologists will never find a copy of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony in the brain – or copies of words, pictures, grammatical rules or any other kinds of environmental stimuli. The human brain isn’t really empty, of course. But it does not contain most of the things people think it does – not even simple things such as ‘memories’. Our shoddy thinking about the brain has deep historical roots, but the invention of computers in the 1940s got us especially confused.
A civil servant missing most of his brain challenges our most basic theories of consciousness — Quartz. Not much is definitively proven about consciousness, the awareness of one’s existence and surroundings, other than that its somehow linked to the brain. But theories as to how, exactly, grey matter generates consciousness are challenged when a fully-conscious man is found to be missing most of his brain. And yet the man was a married father of two and a civil servant with an IQ of 75, below-average in his intelligence but not mentally disabled. Doctors believe the man’s brain slowly eroded over 30 years due to a build up of fluid in the brain’s ventricles, a condition known as “hydrocephalus.”
His hydrocephalus was treated with a shunt, which drains the fluid into the bloodstream, when he was an infant. The code that took America to the moon was just published to GitHub, and it’s like a 1960s time capsule — Quartz. When programmers at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory set out to develop the flight software for the Apollo 11 space program in the mid-1960s, the necessary technology did not exist. They had to invent it. They came up with a new way to store computer programs, called “rope memory,” and created a special version of the assembly programming language. Assembly itself is obscure to many of today’s programmers—it’s very difficult to read, intended to be easily understood by computers, not humans.
For the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC), MIT programmers wrote thousands of lines of that esoteric code. Here’s a very 1960s data visualization of just how much code they wrote—this is Margaret Hamilton, director of software engineering for the project, standing next to a stack of paper containing the software: Violence in Blue. Australia's gun laws stopped mass shootings and reduced homicides, study finds. How physical exercise makes your brain work better. Genetically modified Golden Rice falls short on lifesaving promises. Kate Tieje Gets A Prize. Mesmerising fractals and space-filling curves give a window into infinity. Can a Neuroscientist Understand Donkey Kong, Let Alone a Brain? 5 Reasons to Avoid Almond Flour. The pseudoscience of immune system boosting. Great moments in australian history: when 360 interrogated dr karl on mayan apocalypse theories.
Australian Chiropractor Ian Rossborough Promises to Stop Treating Children…for Twenty Days. Is Time Linear, or Can the Future Influence the Past? Why Walking through a Doorway Makes You Forget. Badscienceshenanigans: 0hcicero: ... John Oliver exposes how the media turns scientific studies into "morning show gossip" What Is 'Natural' Food? A Riddle Wrapped In Notions Of Good And Evil. Did Psychedelic Mushrooms and Group Sex Play a Role in Human Evolution? In Narcisse, Around 75,000 Snakes Are Waking Up From a Nap. Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything? This Scientist Thinks So. Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything? This Scientist Thinks So. What Neuroscience Says about Free Will. Ode to a Flower: Richard Feynman’s Famous Monologue on Knowledge and Mystery, Animated. A Conversation With Jamie Holmes, Author of 'Nonsense,' About Humans' Discomfort With Uncertainty. A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature’s Deep Design by Frank Wilczek – review.
Untitled. How to Create Art With Mathematics. Lucky numbers: Marcus du Sautoy explains the mathematics of chance video. Lucky numbers: Marcus du Sautoy explains the mathematics of chance video. Margaret Wertheim: The beautiful math of coral. Margaret Wertheim: The beautiful math of coral. A classic formula for pi has been discovered hidden in hydrogen atoms. Infinity Is a Beautiful Concept – And It's Ruining Physics.