The world’s shiniest living thing is an African fruit that looks like a pointillist bauble | Not Exactly Rocket Science. In the forests of central Africa, there’s a plant that looks like it’s growing its own Christmas decorations. Shiny baubles sprout from between its leaves, shimmering in a vibrant metallic blue. Look closer, and other colours emerge – pinpricks of red, orange, green and violet. It looks as if Seurat, or some other pointillist painter, had turned their hand to sculpture. But these spheres, of course, are no man-made creations. They’re fruit. They are the shiniest fruits in the world. Actually, they are the shiniest living materials in the world, full-stop. They belong to a plant called Pollia condensata, a tropical metre-tall herb that sprouts its shiny berry-like fruits in clusters up to 40-strong.
In the animal kingdom, such tricks are commonplace – you can see them at work on the wings of a butterfly, the shells of jewel beetles, or the feathers of pigeons, starlings, birds or paradise and even some dinosaurs. Many animals use such structures to produce colour. More on iridescence: The Neuroscience of Your Brain On Fiction.
The Forgetting Pill Erases Painful Memories Forever | Wired Magazine. Photo: Dwight Eschliman Jeffrey Mitchell, a volunteer firefighter in the suburbs of Baltimore, came across the accident by chance: A car had smashed into a pickup truck loaded with metal pipes. Mitchell tried to help, but he saw at once that he was too late. The car had rear-ended the truck at high speed, sending a pipe through the windshield and into the chest of the passenger—a young bride returning home from her wedding. There was blood everywhere, staining her white dress crimson. Mitchell couldn’t get the dead woman out of his mind; the tableau was stuck before his eyes.
He tried to tough it out, but after months of suffering, he couldn’t take it anymore. Pushing to remember a traumatic event soon after it occurs doesn’t unburden us—it reinforces the fear and stress. Miraculously, that worked. Even though PTSD is triggered by a stressful incident, it is really a disease of memory. The problem is, CISD rarely helps—and recent studies show it often makes things worse.
The Star Wars Saga: Suggested Viewing Order » Absolutely No Machete Juggling. Brace yourselves, what follows is an amazingly long blog post about the best order in which to watch Star Wars. First, let me say this: for people that couldn't care less about the prequel trilogy, I suggest Harmy's Despecialized Editions. They are 720p videos that are the result of "Harmy" from The Original Trilogy forums painstakingly reconstructing the theatrical releases of all three films utilizing a wide variety of video sources as well as custom mattes.
Downloading, burning, labeling, and printing cases for these films is one of the neckbeardiest things I've done (aside from writing this blog post), and I'm extremely glad I did it. If the "proper order" for Star Wars for you is the original trilogy and nothing else, stop reading now and find the Despecialized Editions. So, with that out of the way, what can you do if you do wish to involve the prequel trilogy? There are two obvious options for watching the Star Wars saga. What Gets Removed? The wrong and right way to learn a foreign language - The Answer Sheet. This was written by linguist Stephen Krashen, professor emeritus at the University of Southern California, is an educational researcher and activist.
He has written hundreds of articles and books in the fields of second language acquisition, bilingual education, and reading. By Stephen Krashen In a recent issue of the Washington Post Express, Andrew Eil, a staffer who works at the U.S. State Department on international climate change, recommends that foreign language students start with “boot camp:” Study grammar very hard, drill vocabulary every day, and force yourself to talk.
This regimen, he claims, put him in a position to develop high levels of competence in several languages; he now speaks Russian and French fluently and can converse in Mandarin and Kazakh. Most of us who have taken foreign languages classes that emphasize heavy grammar instruction and memorizing vocabulary would disagree with his recommendations, and so does the research. Grammar Vocabulary Forced speech Sources: The Neuroscience of Your Brain on Fiction. 8 Visionaries on How They Spot the Future | Epicenter. Paul Saffo A longtime technology forecaster, Saffo is a managing director at the Silicon Valley investment research firm Discern. Formerly the director of the Institute for the Future, he is also a consulting professor in Stanford University’s engineering department.
There are four indicators I look for: contradictions, inversions, oddities, and coincidences. In 2007 stock prices and gold prices were both soaring. Usually you don’t see those prices high at the same time. The second indicator is an inversion, where you see something that’s out of place. Then there are oddities. Finally, there are coincidences. Illustration: Andrew Zbihlyj; Brant Ward/Corbis Pages: 1 2345678View All. Annie Murphy Paul: The Myth of 'Practice Makes Perfect' How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice. In a groundbreaking paper published in 1993, cognitive psychologist Anders Ericsson added a crucial tweak to that old joke. How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
Deliberate practice. It’s not a minor change. (MORE: Paul: How Your Dreams Can Make You Smarter) I was reminded of the importance of deliberate practice by a fascinating new book, Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning. “Hundreds of thousands of people took music lessons when they were young and remember little or nothing,” he points out, giving lie to the notion that learning an instrument is easiest when you’re a kid. So how does deliberate practice work? (MORE: Paul: The Power of Smart Listening) It sounds simple, even obvious, but it’s something most of us avoid. The best pianists, they determined, addressed their mistakes immediately. Without deliberate practice, even the most talented individuals will reach a plateau and stay there.
How Geniuses Think. 109Share Synopsis Thumbnail descriptions of the thinking strategies commonly used by creative geniuses. How do geniuses come up with ideas? What is common to the thinking style that produced "Mona Lisa," as well as the one that spawned the theory of relativity? What characterizes the thinking strategies of the Einsteins, Edisons, daVincis, Darwins, Picassos, Michelangelos, Galileos, Freuds, and Mozarts of history? What can we learn from them? For years, scholars and researchers have tried to study genius by giving its vital statistics, as if piles of data somehow illuminated genius.
Academics also tried to measure the links between intelligence and genius. Genius is not about scoring 1600 on the SATs, mastering fourteen languages at the age of seven, finishing Mensa exercises in record time, having an extraordinarily high I.Q., or even about being smart. Most people of average intelligence, given data or some problem, can figure out the expected conventional response. GENIUSES PRODUCE. What Is Your Dog Thinking? A Lot. The Secrets Inside Your Dog's Mind. Brian Hare, assistant professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University, holds out a dog biscuit. "Henry! " he says. Henry is a big black schnauzer-poodle mix--a schnoodle, in the words of his owner, Tracy Kivell, another Duke anthropologist. Kivell holds on to Henry's collar so that he can only gaze at the biscuit.
"You got it? " Hare asks Henry. Hare then steps back until he's standing between a pair of inverted plastic cups on the floor. Henry could find the biscuit by sniffing the cups or knocking them over. Henry the schnoodle just did a remarkable thing. It's no coincidence that the two species that pass Hare's pointing test also share a profound cross-species bond.
Trying to plumb the canine mind is a favorite pastime of dog owners. This fall, Hare is opening the Duke Canine Cognition Center, where he is going to test hundreds of dogs brought in by willing owners. Download the new TIME BlackBerry or iPhone app at app.time.com. The Science of Success - Magazine. Most of us have genes that make us as hardy as dandelions: able to take root and survive almost anywhere.
A few of us, however, are more like the orchid: fragile and fickle, but capable of blooming spectacularly if given greenhouse care. So holds a provocative new theory of genetics, which asserts that the very genes that give us the most trouble as a species, causing behaviors that are self-destructive and antisocial, also underlie humankind’s phenomenal adaptability and evolutionary success. With a bad environment and poor parenting, orchid children can end up depressed, drug-addicted, or in jail—but with the right environment and good parenting, they can grow up to be society’s most creative, successful, and happy people.
Vault49 At the outset of their study, Bakermans-Kranenburg and her colleagues had screened 2,408 children via parental questionnaire, and they were now focusing on the 25 percent rated highest by their parents in externalizing behaviors. Are Kids “Learning To Be Distracted”? Annie Murphy Paul: Your Morning Routine Is Making You Dull. Brrriiinnng. The alarm clock buzzes in another hectic weekday morning. You leap out of bed, rush into the shower, into your clothes and out the door with barely a moment to think. A stressful commute gets your blood pressure climbing. Once at the office, you glance through the newspaper, its array of stories ranging from discouraging to depressing to tragic. With a sigh, you pour yourself a cup of coffee and get down to work, ready to do some creative, original problem solving.
Good luck with that. (MORE: Paul: The Myth of ‘Practice Makes Perfect’) As several recent studies highlight, the way most of us spend our mornings is exactly counter to the conditions that neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists tell us promote flexible, open-minded thinking. Your commute filled with honking cars or sharp-elbowed fellow passengers doesn’t help, either. (MORE: Paul: The Bigger Ball Drops Faster — and Other Myths of Physics) (MORE: What If Introverts Ruled the World?) How Creativity Works in Cities - Arts & Lifestyle. The human imagination is a bewildering process. How the brain comes up with great ideas is mysteriously complex. Jonah Lehrer's ambitious new book, Imagine: How Creativity Works, takes a fascinating dive into the world of creativity and how it all works, not to mention devoting a chapter entirely to cities. Lehrer recently took some time to chat with Atlantic Cities and expand on his ideas concerning the nexus of creativity and cities.
You title your chapter on cities "Urban Friction"and you go on to talk about the pioneering work of Geoffrey West, Luis Bettencourt, and their colleagues at the Santa Fe Institute on "urban metabolism. " I think the basic logic was outlined long ago by one of our mutual heroes, Jane Jacobs. These sidewalk conversations came with real benefits. What’s interesting is that the sheer disorder of the metropolis maximizes the amount of spillover. I see it as resulting from the same basic phenomenon, which is that blending of knowledge into new forms. Absolutely. Are We Wringing the Creativity Out of Kids? Do you think you’re creative?” Ask this question of a group of second-graders, and about 95 percent of them will answer “Yes.” Three years later, when the kids are in fifth grade, that proportion will drop to 50 percent—and by the time they’re seniors in high school, it’s down to 5 percent.
Author Jonah Lehrer recently discussed the implications of these sobering statistics for education in his new book, Imagine: How Creativity Works. In a talk and question-and-answer session he participated in at the Commonwealth Club in Palo Alto, California, last month, Lehrer talked about why children lose their playful sense of creativity as they get older, and how we can help them hang on to it. Lehrer began by quoting Picasso: “Every child is born an artist.
The problems begin once we start to grow up.” Actually, Lehrer noted, the problems begin in a very specific time frame: the years covering third, fourth, and fifth grade. Related. Leonardo's To-Do List : Krulwich Wonders... Here's something you can't do every day: How about you and I slip into Leonardo da Vinci's head for moment? Deep in. Thanks to historian Toby Lester, we can. In a book soon to be published, Lester says Leonardo used to travel with a small notebook hanging from his belt, and "whenever something caught his eye," he would make a note, or begin "sketching furiously. " "It is useful," Leonardo wrote, to "constantly observe, note, and consider. " But when you are Leonardo, what sorts of things are buzzing around in your head? Well, Toby Lester describes what is essentially a "To Do" list buried in one of those notebooks, a bunch of things Leonardo planned to do one week, or month, in the early 1490's.
I know what my To Do list would look like, and it would look nothing, not even remotely like this one. Here's what was on his mind, stuff he wanted to do. Wendy MacNaughton for NPR What a jumble! Another giant, Michel Montaigne, the inventor of the essay, wrote that no single idea could hold him. The Reinvention of the Self.
Just as Duman was beginning to see the biochemical connections between trophins, stress, and depression, Gould was starting to document neurogenesis in the hippocampus of the primate brain. Reading Altman’s and Kaplan’s papers, Gould had realized that her neuron-counting wasn’t erroneous: She was just witnessing an ignored fact. The anomaly had been suppressed. But the final piece of the puzzle came when Gould heard about the work of Fernando Nottebohm, who was, coincidentally, also at Rockefeller. Nottebohm, in a series of beautiful studies on birds, had showed that neurogenesis was essential to birdsong. To sing their complex melodies, male birds needed new brain cells.
Despite the elegance of Nottebohm’s data, his science was marginalized. But Gould, motivated by the strangeness of her own observations, connected the dots. She would spend the next eight years quantifying endless numbers of radioactive rat hippocampi. He immediately set to work to test this hypothesis. But it did. Schumpeter: Angst for the educated. Teenage Brains. Although you know your teenager takes some chances, it can be a shock to hear about them. One fine May morning not long ago my oldest son, 17 at the time, phoned to tell me that he had just spent a couple hours at the state police barracks.
Apparently he had been driving "a little fast. " What, I asked, was "a little fast"? Turns out this product of my genes and loving care, the boy-man I had swaddled, coddled, cooed at, and then pushed and pulled to the brink of manhood, had been flying down the highway at 113 miles an hour. "That's more than a little fast," I said. He agreed. He did, however, object to one thing. "Well," I huffed, sensing an opportunity to finally yell at him, "what would you call it? " "It's just not accurate," he said calmly. " 'Reckless' sounds like you're not paying attention. "I guess that's what I want you to know.
Actually, it did make me feel better. Through the ages, most answers have cited dark forces that uniquely affect the teen. News Desk: Steve Jobs: “Technology Alone Is Not Enough” Why Does Beauty Exist? | Wired Science. The Cognitive Cost Of Expertise | Wired Science. Need to Create? Get a Constraint | Wired Science Jonah Lehrer - La Ciudad de las Ideas 2010 - The Origins of the Future. Marcel Proust: neurocientífico (entrevista a Jonah Lehrer) 15 Ways to Boost Your Confidence at College - Professors' Guide. 10 Tips for Women Students in Science Fields - Professors' Guide. The Brain: Use it or Lose it by Marian Diamond.