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| livin' fast. 28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ld2mkoctzF1qa9pnro1_400.jpg |
2012年12月31日星期一
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| 50 Unexplainable Black & White Photos: Pics, Videos, Links, News s-ak.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/terminal01/2011/3/18/15/enhanced-buzz-32470-1300477616-27.jpg |
LIKE MATH? THANK YOUR MOTIVATION, NOT IQ
From Scientific American:
Looks like Tiger Mom had it half-right: Motivation to work hard and good study techniques, not IQ, lead to better math skills, a new study shows. But there's a catch: The findings, published this month in the journal Child Development, show that keeping children's heads in the math booksby force probably won't help. The analysis of more than 3,500 German children found those who started out solidly in the middle of the pack in 5th grade could jump to the 63rd percentile by 8th grade if they were very motivated and used effective learning strategies, said lead author Kou Murayama, a psychology researcher at the University of California Los Angeles. "The growth in math achievement was predicted by motivation and learning strategies," Murayama told LiveScience. "Given that IQ did not show this kind of effect, we think this is impressive."
More here.
MEN AND WOMEN CAN'T BE "JUST FRIENDS"
From Scientific American:
Can heterosexual men and women ever be “just friends”? Few other questions have provoked debates as intense, family dinners as awkward, literature as lurid, or movies as memorable. Still, the question remains unanswered. Daily experience suggests that non-romantic friendships between males and females are not only possible, but common—men and women live, work, and play side-by-side, and generally seem to be able to avoid spontaneously sleeping together. However, the possibility remains that this apparently platonic coexistence is merely a façade, an elaborate dance covering up countless sexual impulses bubbling just beneath the surface.
New research suggests that there may be some truth to this possibility—that we may think we’re capable of being “just friends” with members of the opposite sex, but the opportunity (or perceived opportunity) for “romance” is often lurking just around the corner, waiting to pounce at the most inopportune moment. In order to investigate the viability of truly platonic opposite-sex friendships—a topic that has been explored more on the silver screen than in the science lab—researchers brought 88 pairs of undergraduate opposite-sex friends into…a science lab. Privacy was paramount—for example, imagine the fallout if two friends learned that one—and only one—had unspoken romantic feelings for the other throughout their relationship. In order to ensure honest responses, the researchers not only followed standard protocols regarding anonymity and confidentiality, but also required both friends to agree—verbally, and in front of each other—to refrain from discussing the study, even after they had left the testing facility. These friendship pairs were then separated, and each member of each pair was asked a series of questions related to his or her romantic feelings (or lack thereof) toward the friend with whom they were taking the study.
The results suggest large gender differences in how men and women experience opposite-sex friendships. Men were much more attracted to their female friends than vice versa.
More here.
2012年12月29日星期六
提供快乐是谁的职责？
民众的快乐与幸福，是全民对话关键的议题之一。
上个月，《海峡时报》评论员朱艾达（Zuraidah Ibrahim）发表了一篇题为“提供快乐是谁的职责？”（Whose job is it to provide happiness？）的评论，相当全面地讨论了这个问题。原以为在华社圈子里，会引起一些回响，不过直到今天，不论在华文报章或网络上，似乎都还没有看到这方面的讨论。现在在这里开个头，谈谈个人的看法，希望抛砖引玉，引出有识者的论见。
国民幸福的责任所在，是各种政治意识形态不可回避的、必须宣示的一个预设立场。
当代思想家肯·威尔伯（Ken Welber）认为，所谓左派与右派的分野就在这里。他说，谈到造成人民生活困苦的原因时，左派总爱归咎于外在客观因素，而右派则倾向于归咎内在主观因素。如果一个人贫困潦倒，左派会把矛头指向社会，认定他是被制度所剥削，受到不公平的待遇；右派则大多会认为，这个人不够努力、没有志气、咎由自取。于是，左派会建议社会干预，如重新分配社会财富、改革制度，使之更为公平、追求人人平等；右派则会主张重整道德价值、加强个人的责任感、鼓励良好的工作态度、奖励成就、确保合理回报等等。
如果按照威尔伯的区分法，释迦牟尼肯定是个右派。他说因果论，认为个人今世的境遇，都是往世业果报应。就算受到恶人的欺凌谤谗，也是个人的业报。要脱离痛苦追求快乐，全凭自己努力，做好事种善因，修心成佛。
其实，东西方许多哲人，都认为追求快乐主要靠自己。例如，亚里士多德相信，幸福来自美德的践行。孔孟也同样认为，快乐主要是个人修养的结果，主张反求诸己。有修养的人，就算在恶劣的环境中，也能自得其乐。最好的例子是那位“一箪食，一瓢饮，在陋巷，人不堪其忧”，也不改其乐的颜回。现代许多关心人类心灵的思想家，也认为要有美满的人生，就必须善于生活。而生活这门艺术，就和文艺绘画音乐舞蹈一样，必须付出一定心力，去学习与探索，才能完善掌握。
谈到政府与民众快乐的关系时，往往令人想起美国的独立宣言。美国“国父”之一托马斯·杰斐逊在《独立宣言》的前言中宣称：“生存权、自由权和追求幸福的权利，是每个人不可让渡的天赋权利”。不过要注意的是，杰斐逊也没有让政府负起“提供”民众快乐的责任的意思，重点是每个人都有“追求”幸福的权利，而政府不可阻扰人民对幸福的追求。至于幸福是什么，则没有共同的定义。所以，在美国，个人自由的空间很大，各种千奇百怪的行为，只要不触犯法律或损害他人的权利，都能以追求幸福的名义，得以公开进行。
快乐或幸福的主观性质，是很多自由主义者，反对政府涉入这个私人范畴的原因。他们认为，如何定义“快乐”或“幸福”，是每个人的权利，不容当权者侵犯。既然对快乐的定义没有共识，当然谈不上由政府“提供”了。所以，有些自由主义者主张，政府的责任主要在建立一个让民众可以安居乐业的环境，确保经济的繁荣，机会平等。至于人民要追求怎样的幸福，那是他们自己的事。
有些人却指出，近年来由于“快乐科学”研究的发展，快乐的定义与测量也越来越科学客观。似乎指向一个能够达到共识的方向。不过，持久深沉的幸福感，毕竟是与个人价值切切相关的。而个人价值这个领域，则是自由主义者眼中不容侵犯的空间。例如，近年来，科学家已经能够通过脑波的测量，得知一个人快乐的程度。最近威斯康星大学的神经研究人员宣称，他们找到了自有科学测量以来，世界上最快乐的人——一个法国分子生物学家李卡德（Matthieu Ricard）。研究人员发现，他具有惊人的幸福感和积极情绪倾向。他获得高度幸福感的秘诀是禅修。
禅修可以促进幸福感
根据十多年研究众多禅修者的结果，研究人员已经相当肯定，禅修可以重塑人脑。通过禅修训练，确实可以增进人的幸福感。可是，虽然有科学证据，试问有哪几个世俗民主政府，为了增进国民幸福感，敢在学校里开办禅修课程，或在公众领域公然提倡禅修？
可见，如果要讲民主自由，当权者越俎代庖为个人的幸福/快乐来个官方的定义，是不易为现代民众所接受的。如此看来，既然连快乐幸福是什么都莫衷一是，更不用说应由谁“提供”了。这样说，难道政府的职责，只能够如右派自由主义者的看法那样，仅专注于维护大环境自由公正的秩序吗？
稍有社会常识的人都知道，政府的种种政策措施，种种环境设计，都直接或间接地影响民生。从这个角度看，政府对国民幸福的责任，是无可推托的。问题在于，国民幸福是一个多面向复杂的概念，有其具体与抽象的层次。看似明显，却不易定义。传统上很多国家都把国内生产总值（GDP），当成衡量国民幸福。不过，近年来，国民财富成就的局限越来越明显。人们发觉，较有钱的国家，其国民不一定相对更幸福。所以，把GDP主义搬下神坛，建立幸福指数的呼声，此起彼伏。
于是，阿玛蒂亚·森等人提出人类发展指数，不仅考虑到人均GDP，也考虑到教育指标以及健康指标，幸福信息的涵盖面更广。这些指数的特点是易于量化与测量，包括了：出生时预期寿命、成人识字率、综合入学率以及人均收入。
自此，学界对幸福指标的分析，越来越细腻。除了教育与健康外，还包括了环境、管理、时间、文化多样性和包容性等等。这些指数，简单的可以分为两类：即客观指数与主观指数。客观指数（如上述的人类发展指数），一般比较具体，易于观察与量化。主观指数则比较抽象含糊，主要依靠被调查者主观报告内在的感受。这方面的数据，容易受到文化差异与个人价值与认识的干扰，准确性与普遍性往往受到质疑。
相信由于这些原因，美国政界虽也认识到，把GDP当做衡量国家总体福利唯一尺度是不够的，不过他们并没有采用不丹王国的“国民幸福指数”，而是计划用一个名为“美国状况”综合性的指标系统，来取代GDP系统，以评价“美国的进步”。这个系统非常多元，最终将记录大约300项指标，涵盖犯罪率、能源、基础设施、住房、医疗、教育、环境、文化多样性与包容性等领域。这些指标大都属于比较易于观察与量化客观指标。
我在这里兜了一个圈子谈客观指数与主观指数的问题，主要是想指出，一般上，上面说的客观指数，正好是那些政府有直接影响力的项目，这也正是政府的职责所在。至于，在把这一切都搞好之后，最终会不会转化为民众个人主观的幸福感，在很大的程度上，就要看个人的修为与选择了。
物质的充裕，在超过了某个程度之后，对个人幸福感，往往就会出现递减效应。最佳的例子，是那些生在豪门，身在福中不知福，一天到晚喊闷，精神无所寄托的纨绔子弟。一些比较有灵性的，如古代的释迦牟尼者，甚至会选择从这养尊处优的环境出走，勇敢地探索人生的真义。
近来听到许多人申诉社会竞争剧烈，从而影响个人幸福感。其实，他们不是完全没有选择的。如果不愿为五斗米折腰，尽可采菊东篱下，选择较简朴的生活方式。归根结底，是个人“怕不怕输”和“放不放得下”的问题。总不能要求地球放慢运转，来迁就个人。
联合早报 言论版 2012年12月29日
上个月，《海峡时报》评论员朱艾达（Zuraidah Ibrahim）发表了一篇题为“提供快乐是谁的职责？”（Whose job is it to provide happiness？）的评论，相当全面地讨论了这个问题。原以为在华社圈子里，会引起一些回响，不过直到今天，不论在华文报章或网络上，似乎都还没有看到这方面的讨论。现在在这里开个头，谈谈个人的看法，希望抛砖引玉，引出有识者的论见。
国民幸福的责任所在，是各种政治意识形态不可回避的、必须宣示的一个预设立场。
当代思想家肯·威尔伯（Ken Welber）认为，所谓左派与右派的分野就在这里。他说，谈到造成人民生活困苦的原因时，左派总爱归咎于外在客观因素，而右派则倾向于归咎内在主观因素。如果一个人贫困潦倒，左派会把矛头指向社会，认定他是被制度所剥削，受到不公平的待遇；右派则大多会认为，这个人不够努力、没有志气、咎由自取。于是，左派会建议社会干预，如重新分配社会财富、改革制度，使之更为公平、追求人人平等；右派则会主张重整道德价值、加强个人的责任感、鼓励良好的工作态度、奖励成就、确保合理回报等等。
如果按照威尔伯的区分法，释迦牟尼肯定是个右派。他说因果论，认为个人今世的境遇，都是往世业果报应。就算受到恶人的欺凌谤谗，也是个人的业报。要脱离痛苦追求快乐，全凭自己努力，做好事种善因，修心成佛。
其实，东西方许多哲人，都认为追求快乐主要靠自己。例如，亚里士多德相信，幸福来自美德的践行。孔孟也同样认为，快乐主要是个人修养的结果，主张反求诸己。有修养的人，就算在恶劣的环境中，也能自得其乐。最好的例子是那位“一箪食，一瓢饮，在陋巷，人不堪其忧”，也不改其乐的颜回。现代许多关心人类心灵的思想家，也认为要有美满的人生，就必须善于生活。而生活这门艺术，就和文艺绘画音乐舞蹈一样，必须付出一定心力，去学习与探索，才能完善掌握。
谈到政府与民众快乐的关系时，往往令人想起美国的独立宣言。美国“国父”之一托马斯·杰斐逊在《独立宣言》的前言中宣称：“生存权、自由权和追求幸福的权利，是每个人不可让渡的天赋权利”。不过要注意的是，杰斐逊也没有让政府负起“提供”民众快乐的责任的意思，重点是每个人都有“追求”幸福的权利，而政府不可阻扰人民对幸福的追求。至于幸福是什么，则没有共同的定义。所以，在美国，个人自由的空间很大，各种千奇百怪的行为，只要不触犯法律或损害他人的权利，都能以追求幸福的名义，得以公开进行。
快乐或幸福的主观性质，是很多自由主义者，反对政府涉入这个私人范畴的原因。他们认为，如何定义“快乐”或“幸福”，是每个人的权利，不容当权者侵犯。既然对快乐的定义没有共识，当然谈不上由政府“提供”了。所以，有些自由主义者主张，政府的责任主要在建立一个让民众可以安居乐业的环境，确保经济的繁荣，机会平等。至于人民要追求怎样的幸福，那是他们自己的事。
有些人却指出，近年来由于“快乐科学”研究的发展，快乐的定义与测量也越来越科学客观。似乎指向一个能够达到共识的方向。不过，持久深沉的幸福感，毕竟是与个人价值切切相关的。而个人价值这个领域，则是自由主义者眼中不容侵犯的空间。例如，近年来，科学家已经能够通过脑波的测量，得知一个人快乐的程度。最近威斯康星大学的神经研究人员宣称，他们找到了自有科学测量以来，世界上最快乐的人——一个法国分子生物学家李卡德（Matthieu Ricard）。研究人员发现，他具有惊人的幸福感和积极情绪倾向。他获得高度幸福感的秘诀是禅修。
禅修可以促进幸福感
根据十多年研究众多禅修者的结果，研究人员已经相当肯定，禅修可以重塑人脑。通过禅修训练，确实可以增进人的幸福感。可是，虽然有科学证据，试问有哪几个世俗民主政府，为了增进国民幸福感，敢在学校里开办禅修课程，或在公众领域公然提倡禅修？
可见，如果要讲民主自由，当权者越俎代庖为个人的幸福/快乐来个官方的定义，是不易为现代民众所接受的。如此看来，既然连快乐幸福是什么都莫衷一是，更不用说应由谁“提供”了。这样说，难道政府的职责，只能够如右派自由主义者的看法那样，仅专注于维护大环境自由公正的秩序吗？
稍有社会常识的人都知道，政府的种种政策措施，种种环境设计，都直接或间接地影响民生。从这个角度看，政府对国民幸福的责任，是无可推托的。问题在于，国民幸福是一个多面向复杂的概念，有其具体与抽象的层次。看似明显，却不易定义。传统上很多国家都把国内生产总值（GDP），当成衡量国民幸福。不过，近年来，国民财富成就的局限越来越明显。人们发觉，较有钱的国家，其国民不一定相对更幸福。所以，把GDP主义搬下神坛，建立幸福指数的呼声，此起彼伏。
于是，阿玛蒂亚·森等人提出人类发展指数，不仅考虑到人均GDP，也考虑到教育指标以及健康指标，幸福信息的涵盖面更广。这些指数的特点是易于量化与测量，包括了：出生时预期寿命、成人识字率、综合入学率以及人均收入。
自此，学界对幸福指标的分析，越来越细腻。除了教育与健康外，还包括了环境、管理、时间、文化多样性和包容性等等。这些指数，简单的可以分为两类：即客观指数与主观指数。客观指数（如上述的人类发展指数），一般比较具体，易于观察与量化。主观指数则比较抽象含糊，主要依靠被调查者主观报告内在的感受。这方面的数据，容易受到文化差异与个人价值与认识的干扰，准确性与普遍性往往受到质疑。
相信由于这些原因，美国政界虽也认识到，把GDP当做衡量国家总体福利唯一尺度是不够的，不过他们并没有采用不丹王国的“国民幸福指数”，而是计划用一个名为“美国状况”综合性的指标系统，来取代GDP系统，以评价“美国的进步”。这个系统非常多元，最终将记录大约300项指标，涵盖犯罪率、能源、基础设施、住房、医疗、教育、环境、文化多样性与包容性等领域。这些指标大都属于比较易于观察与量化客观指标。
我在这里兜了一个圈子谈客观指数与主观指数的问题，主要是想指出，一般上，上面说的客观指数，正好是那些政府有直接影响力的项目，这也正是政府的职责所在。至于，在把这一切都搞好之后，最终会不会转化为民众个人主观的幸福感，在很大的程度上，就要看个人的修为与选择了。
物质的充裕，在超过了某个程度之后，对个人幸福感，往往就会出现递减效应。最佳的例子，是那些生在豪门，身在福中不知福，一天到晚喊闷，精神无所寄托的纨绔子弟。一些比较有灵性的，如古代的释迦牟尼者，甚至会选择从这养尊处优的环境出走，勇敢地探索人生的真义。
近来听到许多人申诉社会竞争剧烈，从而影响个人幸福感。其实，他们不是完全没有选择的。如果不愿为五斗米折腰，尽可采菊东篱下，选择较简朴的生活方式。归根结底，是个人“怕不怕输”和“放不放得下”的问题。总不能要求地球放慢运转，来迁就个人。
联合早报 言论版 2012年12月29日
2012年12月28日星期五
BRAIN WATCHING
I BEGAN THINKING ABOUT why these scientific methods and the resulting images have such a hold on our imaginations a couple of years ago, when I started shadowing a team of cognitive neuroscientists as they developed a study about the neural and cognitive bases of semantic knowledge. We eventually decided I’d be one of the test subjects. The study, which began late last spring, has given me first-hand experience with the fMRI machine and how data are collected and interpreted into usable results. Scientists are now employing fMRI technology—which has been in practical use since the 1980s—to study a wide range of neurological phenomena: visual perception, object recognition, memory, the effects of stroke and brain injury, depression, schizophrenia, degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, personality traits, fear, racial attitudes, deception, our relationship to food and sex, how we make financial and political decisions, and so on.more from Jan Estep at Triple Canopy here.
SECRET CÉZANNE
Artists are greedy to learn and art is self-devouring; the handover from the nineteenth to the twentieth century was swiftly done. As was the handover from one kind of artist to another. Cézanne was an obscure figure even when famous; he was secretive, frugal, unacquisitive; he would often go missing for weeks on end; his emotional life, such as it was, remained deeply private and protected; and he had no interest in what the world called success. Braque was a dandy with a chauffeur; while Picasso single-handedly embodied the twentieth century’s ideal of an artist – public, political, rich, successful in all the meanings of the word, camera-loving and concupiscent. And if Cézanne might have thought Picasso’s life vulgar – in the sense that it detracted from the time, and the human integrity, required to make art – how austere and high-minded Picasso would come to seem compared to the most “successful” artists of the twenty-first century, flogging their endless versions of the same idea to know-nothing billionaires.more from Julian Barnes at the TLS here
科学: 同性恋始于子宫？
如果从严格意义的达尔文主义来说，同性恋是不应该继续存在的。它并不是传递个体基因的最佳方式，并且使问题进一步复杂化，甚至没有“同性恋基因”被鉴别出来。根据最近发布的一项假设，其中的原因可能并不在于DNA本身。事实上，随着胚胎的发育，作为对母亲和孩子在子宫中形成的性激素水平波动的响应，与性别有关的基因会被开启和关闭。这种拉锯战可使未出生的孩子受益，保持男性或女性以一种稳定的状态发育，即便面临性激素的峰值时也是如此。但是研究显示，一旦这些所谓的表观遗传变化在孩子出生后持续存在，并直至他们有了自己的后代，那么其中的一些后代便很有可能成为同性恋者（中文）。
探寻欧洲崛起之谜，反观中国崛起
田方萌为纽约时报中文网撰稿 2012年12月27日
“欧洲崛起”颇似罗生门，学者们至今争吵不休。 为什么是欧洲，而不是中国或中东？反过头来，追溯欧洲的崛起，也对今日新经济体的崛起——比如中国，有对照观看的意义。
探寻欧洲崛起之谜，反观中国崛起
2012年12月27日星期四
David Hamilton
这是 David Hamilton 的相片。
买他第一部摄影集时，很不好意思，因为摄影集用透明纸密封，摆放在收银柜台的后面，封面上是一个看似还没有达到法定年龄的裸女。当年，我才二十来岁，脸皮尚薄，常莫明其妙的不好意思这个，不好意思那个。
买他第一部摄影集时，很不好意思，因为摄影集用透明纸密封，摆放在收银柜台的后面，封面上是一个看似还没有达到法定年龄的裸女。当年，我才二十来岁，脸皮尚薄，常莫明其妙的不好意思这个，不好意思那个。
2012年12月26日星期三
2012年12月24日星期一
2012年12月21日星期五
BEGGING TO DIFFER
Catherine Z. Elgin in The Philosophers' Magazine (image from Wikimedia commons):
Disagreement abounds. People disagree about everything from sports and politics to science and child rearing. When disagreements stem from the manifest ignorance, bias, or stupidity of one of the disputants, they are epistemologically benign. That someone who clearly does not know what he is talking about disagrees with you gives you no reason to rethink your position. But some disagreements are more worrisome. Equally intelligent, knowledgeable, thoughtful and open-minded people often disagree. Let us call such parties intellectual equals. Should disagreements among intellectual equals give us pause?
Epistemologists disagree. Conciliatory thinkers such as Hilary Kornblith hold that it should. If Fred recognises George as his intellectual equal, he has no basis for thinking that his opinion is better than George’s (or that George’s is better than his). So when they disagree, conciliationists maintain, both should suspend judgement. Advocates of resoluteness such as Thomas Kelly recommend holding fast. If intellectual equals who disagree are always required to suspend judgement, scepticism looms. Given the range of topics on which we disagree with our intellectual equals, we know very little. Resoluteness is permissible, they maintain, because everyone makes mistakes. It is open to Fred to think that where they disagree, George must be mistaken. He is then within his rights to dismiss George’s opinion. Unfortunately, George can think the same about Fred. Resoluteness fosters dogmatism; we are always entitled to dismiss the opinions of intellectual equals who disagree with us by assuming they have made a mistake. Neither scepticism nor dogmatism is an attractive option. A third alternative is that disagreement among intellectual equals provides some reason to rethink one’s position but does not require revising or repudiating it. In that case, parties could reasonably agree to disagree. The challenge is to make room for this position.
INNOVATION CRISIS OR FINANCIAL CRISIS?
Kenneth Rogoff in Project Syndicate:
As one year of sluggish growth spills into the next, there is growing debate about what to expect over the coming decades. Was the global financial crisis a harsh but transitory setback to advanced-country growth, or did it expose a deeper long-term malaise?
Recently, a few writers, including internet entrepreneur Peter Thiel and political activist and former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, have espoused a fairly radical interpretation of the slowdown. In a forthcoming book, they argue that the collapse of advanced-country growth is not merely a result of the financial crisis; at its root, they argue, these countries’ weakness reflects secular stagnation in technology and innovation. As such, they are unlikely to see any sustained pickup in productivity growth without radical changes in innovation policy.
Economist Robert Gordon takes this idea even further. He argues that the period of rapid technological progress that followed the Industrial Revolution may prove to be a 250-year exception to the rule of stagnation in human history. Indeed, he suggests that today’s technological innovations pale in significance compared to earlier advances like electricity, running water, the internal combustion engine, and other breakthroughs that are now more than a century old.
I recently debated the technological stagnation thesis with Thiel and Kasparov at Oxford University, joined by encryption pioneer Mark Shuttleworth. Kasparov pointedly asked what products such as the iPhone 5 really add to our capabilities, and argued that most of the science underlying modern computing was settled by the seventies. Thiel maintained that efforts to combat the recession through loose monetary policy and hyper-aggressive fiscal stimulus treat the wrong disease, and therefore are potentially very harmful.
These are very interesting ideas, but the evidence still seems overwhelming that the drag on the global economy mainly reflects the aftermath of a deep systemic financial crisis, not a long-term secular innovation crisis.
GENES, CELLS AND BRAINS
From The Guardian:
We have outsourced the job of interpreting ourselves to the modern life sciences. The decoding of the human genome will tell us who we really are, pledged the gene-merchants. Brain scans will tell us who we really are, swore the neuro-hustlers. And what did we get? We got suckered. It turns out that humans have roughly as many protein-encoding genes as a fruit fly, and that fMRI scanning is still such an inexact art that a team of satirical neuroscientists have demonstrated significant "brain activity" in a dead salmon. This fascinating, lucid and angry book by the sociologist Hilary Rose and the neurobiologist Steven Rose (they are married) boasts abundant targets and a lethally impressive hit ratio. They decry the entrepreneurialisation of science – "wealth creation is now unabashedly formalised as the chief objective of science and technology policy" – not least because it actually impedes science. ("PhD students can work for months on a project only to find that they cannot continue as they have run into a patent.") They lambast the "armchair" theorising of evolutionary psychology, with its ungrounded assumption that we have "stone-age minds in the 21st century". They scorn the "neuromyths" sold to the educational establishment, with the result that schoolchildren become the unwitting subjects of uncontrolled experiments in applying alleged lessons from animal psychology to the classroom.
The book performs in high style the necessary public service of recomplicating the simplistic hogwash hysterically blasted at us by both uncritical science reporters and celebrity scientists. (The authors are very funny about Richard Dawkins, who clearly doesn't understand what a metaphor is.) Here are the knotty histories of molecular biology and evolutionary theory, with explanations of why evo-devo and epigenetics make the old genetic determinism untenable, and why there is hardly ever "a gene for" something. ("Ninety-five genetic loci have been found related to blood lipid levels," the authors write, "possibly hundreds of genes might be implicated in coronary heart disease, and around a hundred in schizophrenia.") They show how and why both genomics and stem-cell therapy have thus far failed to usher in a miraculous new age of medicine, and observe sorrowfully that, even as the media storm of neurogibberish rages unabated, Big Pharma is shutting down research into mental health disorders in favour of more tractable (and so profitable) diseases.
More here.
DNA BLUEPRINT OF A SINGLE HUMAN CELL
From Nature:
Humans, strawberries, honeybees, chickens and rats are among the many organisms to have their DNA sequenced. But although sequencing an individual species is challenging, it is much harder to sequence the DNA of a single cell.
To get enough DNA for sequencing, thousands or even millions of cells are usually required. And finding out which mutations are in which cells is almost impossible, and mutations present in only a few cells (like early cancerous cells) are hidden altogether. But a technique reported today in Science1 provides a way to copy DNA so that more than 90% of the genome of a single cell can be sequenced. The method also makes it easier to detect minor DNA sequence variations in single cells and, so, to find genetic differences between individual cells. Such differences can help to explain how cancer becomes more malignant, how reproductive cells emerge and even how individual neurons differ.
More here.
2012年12月19日星期三
FIRST ROAD MAP OF HUMAN SEX-CELL DEVELOPMENT
From Nature:
The causes of infertility, which affects around 10% of couples, are often unknown, but may in some cases result from the body's inability to produce viable gametes — also known as sperm and egg cells. The first study of the development of such 'germ cells' from humans could help scientists to learn how to create them in the laboratory instead. Even though the reproductive age for humans is around 15–45 years old, the precursor cells that go on to produce human eggs or sperm are formed much earlier, when the fertilized egg grows into a tiny ball of cells in the mother’s womb. This ball of cells contains ‘pluripotent stem cells’ — blank slates that can be programmed into any type of cell in the body — and researchers are hoping to use these stem cells to treat various conditions, including infertility. But little is known about the early developmental stages of human gametes — owing to the sensitivity of working with human tissue — and most work in this area has been conducted using mice. In a Nature Cell Biology paper today1, researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, trace the development of early germ cells in human fetuses of between 6 to 20 weeks and analysed when genes were turned on or off.
The DNA within these early germ cells carries 'epigenetic modifications' — structural changes that do not affect the DNA sequence itself but do affect the way that genes are expressed. These changes may have accumulated during the parents’ lives, and need to be erased during the fetal stage. The study found two major events that wipe out, or reprogram, epigenetic modifications. Most of this reprogramming happened before 6 weeks, but the authors found a second event that completes the reprogramming after 6 weeks. “This is an important and fundamental paper for understanding human germ-line cells and finding the basic information about human germ-cell biology,” says reproductive biologist Evelyn Telfer of the University of Edinburgh, UK. “The researchers are clearly working in an uncharted area.”
More here.
Higgs Boson and the Fundamental Nature of Reality - Sean Carroll - Skepti
A truly excellent talk by Sean Carroll. Make the time to see it if you can:
THE SOLAR-POWERED BIKE-CAR THINGY WE’VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR
Scott Huler in Scientific American:
You want to see my next vehicle? I’m going to get a TruckIt, a tiny little recumbent-bicycle deal with an electric motor — it’s called a velomobile, if you want to know. It costs $5,500, recharges its battery with its own rooftop solar panels, can legally take you on the road,
And hokey smokes, it’s made right here in the U.S.A., by Organic Transit, in a renovated furniture warehouse in downtown Durham, NC.
The thing — and the Elf, its more carlike little sister — is limited to 20 mph on pure electricity (to remain classified as a bicycle), but it can take you up and down hills with or without your pedaling. Every New Urbanist, transit focused downtown renovation should all but give these things away for free. If you live and work in a walkable downtown that lacks — as so many do — a grocery store, instead of needing a second car, all you’ve done is given purpose to your workout. “Going out for a ride, dear — got that grocery list?”
More here.
AN AMATEUR LINGUIST LOSES CONTROL OF THE LANGUAGE HE INVENTED
Joshua Foer in The New Yorker:
Languages are something of a mess. They evolve over centuries through an unplanned, democratic process that leaves them teeming with irregularities, quirks, and words like “knight.” No one who set out to design a form of communication would ever end up with anything like English, Mandarin, or any of the more than six thousand languages spoken today.
“Natural languages are adequate, but that doesn’t mean they’re optimal,” John Quijada, a fifty-four-year-old former employee of the California State Department of Motor Vehicles, told me. In 2004, he published a monograph on the Internet that was titled “Ithkuil: A Philosophical Design for a Hypothetical Language.” Written like a linguistics textbook, the fourteen-page Web site ran to almost a hundred and sixty thousand words. It documented the grammar, syntax, and lexicon of a language that Quijada had spent three decades inventing in his spare time. Ithkuil had never been spoken by anyone other than Quijada, and he assumed that it never would be.
More here.
THE NEW SCIENTISM
In contrast to reason, a defining characteristic of superstition is the stubborn insistence that something — a fetish, an amulet, a pack of Tarot cards — has powers which no evidence supports. From this perspective, scientism appears to have as much in common with superstition as it does with properly conducted scientific research. Scientism claims that science has already resolved questions that are inherently beyond its ability to answer. Of all the fads and foibles in the long history of human credulity, scientism in all its varied guises — from fanciful cosmology to evolutionary epistemology and ethics — seems among the more dangerous, both because it pretends to be something very different from what it really is and because it has been accorded widespread and uncritical adherence. Continued insistence on the universal competence of science will serve only to undermine the credibility of science as a whole. The ultimate outcome will be an increase of radical skepticism that questions the ability of science to address even the questions legitimately within its sphere of competence. One longs for a new Enlightenment to puncture the pretensions of this latest superstition.more from Austin L. Hughes at The New Atlantis here.
2012年12月18日星期二
科学: 科学家发现可能有两种不同的希格斯玻色子
大强子对撞机Atlas实验的物理学家公布了最新的实验结果，他们发现了不同寻常的东西。数据显示似乎有两个希格斯玻色子，其中之一的质量是 123.5 GeV，另一个质量是126.6 GeV，两个粒子的质量相差约3 GeV。Atlas物理学家可能花了一个月时间去研究是否哪里出错了，但收效甚微。难道真的有两种希格斯玻色子？虽然粒子物理标准模型的某些扩展预言有多种希格斯玻色子的存在，但实验结果与预言相去甚远——质量为123.5 GeV的希格斯玻色子衰减成两个Z粒子，而另一个希格斯玻色子则衰减成两个光子——都与预言不吻合。粒子物理学家 Adam Falkowski认为结果很可能是系统性问题的一个迹象。也许结果需要明年3月公布的下一批数据才能揭晓。
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科学: NASA反驳世界末日预言
2012年12月21日是世界末日？中国警方已为此抓了一百多人以遏制谣言传播，NASA则早就设立了专门网站反驳世界末日预言。在最新的视频中，NASA解释说，2012年并不特别，我们的地球已经安然度过了40多亿年，NASA确信2012年12月21日世界不会结束。这则视频简单但扼要的说明了玛雅历的起源，以及为什么2012年12月21日会被错误解释了末日。玛雅文明创造了最复杂的日历系统，日历第一天被记为13.0.0.0.0，而2012年12月21日回到了13.0.0.0.0，这类似一个四位十进制计数系统，当到达9999之后，接下来会还原到0000。NASA科学家指出，2012年没有小行星彗星或流浪行星会与地球相撞，而燃烧了数十亿年的太阳也不会威胁到地球。
2012年12月17日星期一
THE PARTICLE AT THE END OF THE UNIVERSE
As Carroll writes, one of the most astonishing insights of modern physics, and one of the hardest to grasp, is that sufficiently powerful symmetries give rise to forces of nature. Piecing together the broken bits to see the elegance of the underlying symmetries is “like being able to read poetry in the original language, instead of being stuck with mediocre translations”. With such difficult concepts, analogies may offer a useful insight to the non-technical reader, although they are inevitably misleading to a greater or lesser extent. Carroll came up with a good one for a television programme to explain the Higgs field. Imagine little robots scooting about on the floor of a large vacuum chamber, identical apart from the fact that they are fitted with sails of various sizes. When the space is completely evacuated the sails are irrelevant because there is no air for them to feel, so all the robots move at the same speed. When the atmosphere is let in, the robots with larger sails (greater mass) are impeded more by the air than those with smaller sails (less mass) so they move more slowly.more from Clive Cookson at the FT here.
PROMISCUOUS MALES AND CHOOSY FEMALES? CHALLENGING A CLASSIC EXPERIMENT
Barbara J. King in Cosmos & Culture:
Of the 100 "top science stories for 2012" chosen by Discover Magazine, I am most fascinated by #42: "The Myth of Choosy Women, Promiscuous Men." It reports a serious challenge to an experiment that has remained a touchstone in evolutionary biology for over 50 years.
The study, on fruitfly mating, was done in 1948 by geneticist A.J. Bateman. Bateman showed that the male insects' strategy was to mate with many females, whereas the females' strategy was to be discriminating in their choice of partners. Male reproductive success, in other words, correlated positively with number of mates, but female reproductive success did not.
Now, ecologist and evolutionary biologist Patricia Gowaty and her colleagues Yong-Kyu Kim and Wyatt Anderson have repeated that study. They conclude something startling: Bateman blew it.
Before I explain where they say Bateman went wrong, I need to show how Bateman's conclusions rippled far beyond the scholarly world of fruitfly sex. His findings — promiscuous males, choosy females — seemed to strike a cultural chord. After biologist Robert Trivers cited it in a key 1972 paper on parental investment, the "Bateman principle" turned up everywhere. In my own field of primate behavior, for instance, field researchers expected to see (and thus often did) male primates with highly active sex lives and females who were coy, verging on sexual passivity.
More here.
INTERVIEW: HOWARD GOLDBLATT, TRANSLATOR OF MO YAN
Sophia Efthimiatou in Granta:
SE: Were you familiar with Mo Yan’s work before you started translating him?
HG: Yes, I was. In 1985 I spent the year in Manchuria, in Hardin, writing on literature during the Japanese occupation, and it was getting really boring. So I started reading a book of stories that had just been published, calledChinese Fiction in 1985. It was badly done. There were six or eight stories in there by writers that subsequently became well known, and his was one. It was only a few years after the Cultural Revolution so writers were still trying to feel their way. Mo Yan’s was a terrific story, really unusual, quite revolutionary. Then two or three years later, after I had come back to Colorado, a friend of mine in Hong Kong sent me a literary quarterly from China. The Garlic Ballads appeared in that issue in its entirety. I was absolutely knocked out. I had never been so stunned by a piece of literature. So I immediately wrote to Mo Yan, introduced myself, and told him I wanted to translate it in English. He said, ‘Sure.’
More here.
INEQUALITY IS KILLING CAPITALISM
Robert Skidelsky in Project Syndicate:
Impaired banks that do not want to lend must somehow be “made whole.” This has been the purpose of the vast bank bailouts in the US and Europe, followed by several rounds of “quantitative easing,” by which central banks print money and pump it into the banking system through a variety of unorthodox channels. (Hayekians object to this, arguing that, because the crisis was caused by excessive credit, it cannot be overcome with more.)
At the same time, regulatory regimes have been toughened everywhere to prevent banks from jeopardizing the financial system again. For example, in addition to its price-stability mandate, the Bank of England has been given the new task of maintaining “the stability of the financial system.”
This analysis, while seemingly plausible, depends on the belief that it is the supply of credit that is essential to economic health: too much money ruins it, while too little destroys it.
But one can take another view, which is that demand for credit, rather than supply, is the crucial economic driver. After all, banks are bound to lend on adequate collateral; and, in the run-up to the crisis, rising house prices provided it. The supply of credit, in other words, resulted from the demand for credit.
This puts the question of the origins of the crisis in a somewhat different light. It was not so much predatory lenders as it was imprudent, or deluded, borrowers, who bear the blame. So the question arises: Why did people want to borrow so much? Why did the ratio of household debt to income soar to unprecedented heights in the pre-recession days?
Let us agree that people are greedy, and that they always want more than they can afford. Why, then, did this “greed” manifest itself so manically?
To answer that, we must look at what was happening to the distribution of income.
AT HOME: STEVEN PINKER
Annie Maccoby Berglof in the Financial Times:
Armed with a mug of tea, Pinker seats himself on a contemporary, Danish-designed sofa in the middle of his open-plan loft to discuss his most recent book, The Better Angels of Our Nature , which makes surprising claims about our species: that we’ve become gentler and less aggressive than our ancestors. The proof, argues Pinker, is in comparative statistics on violence so convincing that not even two world wars can dent the evidence. “Conventional wisdom is that we’re living in violent times. The data sets say otherwise. Contrary to stereotyping – and I’ve confirmed the stereotype in a survey – the Middle Ages were much bloodier.”
The apartment, a converted leather warehouse where Pinker lives with his third wife, the novelist and philosopher Rebecca Goldstein, is located a few blocks from Boston’s financial district. “This was once an industrial space. There were tanneries in the area,” says Pinker. Divided into three rooms, it has 14ft-high ceilings and exposed brick walls. The supporting beams in the main room are from the original 19th-century construction. “They are nine inches across. You would be unlikely to see construction like this today,” he adds.
The building has an intriguing past. Pinker’s former sister-in-law once lived here. “She was here illegally,” Pinker says. “She was a painter and her partner was a sculptor. They put in their own plumbing. At some point the developers came in, young urban professionals started pricing them out and by sheer coincidence, decades later, we bought an apartment here, by which point all the artists had been driven out. This is a common urban sequence.”
More here.
IT’S OFFICIAL: AUSTERITY ECONOMICS DOESN’T WORK
John Cassidy in The New Yorker:
In making his annual Autumn Statement to the House of Commons on Wednesday, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was forced to admit that his government has failed to meet a series of targets it set for itself back in June of 2010, when it slashed the budgets of various government departments by up to thirty per cent. Back then, Osborne said that his austerity policies would cut his country’s budget deficit to zero within four years, enable Britain to begin relieving itself of its public debt, and generate healthy economic growth. None of these things have happened. Britain’s deficit remains stubbornly high, its people have been suffering through a double-dip recession, and many observers now expect the country to lose its “AAA” credit rating.
One of the frustrations of economics is that it is hard to carry out scientific experiments and prove things beyond reasonable doubt. But not in this case. Thanks to Osborne’s stubborn refusal to change course—“Turning back would be a disaster,” he told Parliament—what has been happening in Britain amounts to a “natural experiment” to test the efficacy of austerity economics. For the sixty-odd million inhabitants of the U.K., living through it hasn’t been a pleasant experience—no university institutional-review board would have allowed this kind of brutal human experimentation. But from a historical and scientific perspective, it is an invaluable case study.
At every stage of the experiment, critics (myself included) have warned that Osborne’s austerity policies would prove self-defeating. Any decent economics textbook will tell you that, other things being equal, cutting government spending causes the economy’s overall output to fall, tax revenues to decrease, and spending on benefits to increase. Almost invariably, the end result is slower growth (or a recession) and high budget deficits. Osborne, relying on arguments about restoring the confidence of investors and businessmen that his forebears at the U.K. Treasury used during the early nineteen-thirties against Keynes, insisted (and continues to insist) otherwise, but he has been proven wrong.
More here.
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