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Functional magnetic resonance imaging | Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry - 0 views

shared by katedriscoll on 03 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • A variety of methods have been developed over the past few decades to allow mapping of the functioning human brain. Two basic classes of mapping technique have evolved: those that map (or localise) the underlying electrical activity of the brain; and those that map local physiological or metabolic consequences of altered brain electrical activity. Among the former are the non-invasive neural electromagnetic techniques of electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG). These methods allow exquisite temporal resolution of neural processes (typically over a 10–100 ms time scale), but suffer from poor spatial resolution (between 1 and several centimetres). Functional MRI (fMRI) methods are in the second category. They can be made sensitive to the changes in regional blood perfusion, blood volume (for example, using injected magnetic resonance contrast agents), or blood oxygenation that accompany neuronal activity. Blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) fMRI, which is sensitive primarily to the last of these variables, allows an image spatial resolution that is of the order of a few millimetres, with a temporal resolution of a few seconds (limited by the haemodynamic response itself). An accessible and more detailed introduction to the technique than is possible in this brief review is found in a recent book.1
  • Methods such as positron emission tomography (PET) provide an absolute measure of tissue metabolism. In contrast, BOLD fMRI can at present be used only for determining relative signal intensity changes associated with different cognitive states during a single imaging session. The most time efficient approach for comparing brain responses in different states during the imaging experiment is the “block” design19 (fig 3). This design uses relatively long alternating periods (for example, 30 seconds), during each of which a discrete cognitive state is maintained. In the simplest form, there may only be two such states, which are alternated throughout the experiment in order to ensure that variations arising from fluctuations in scanner sensitivity, patient movement, or changes in attention have a similar impact on the signal responses associated with both states.
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    In TOK we talked about an experiment that used fMRI, so I thought this article was very interesting in understanding fMRI in a more broader context.
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No, You're Not Left-Brained or Right-Brained | Psychology Today - 0 views

  • there’s no such thing as right-brained or left-brained.
  • The left cerebral hemisphere controls the right side of the body, and about 90 percent of people prefer to write with their right hand, indicating left brain motor dominance.
  • language skills are left lateralized, or largely controlled by the left hemisphere, in over 90 percent of people. That includes 78 percent of people who are not right-handed.
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  • The left cerebral hemisphere is to the “right-brained” poet or novelist as the hamstrings and quadriceps are to a competitive sprinter
  • Because the ability to understand and produce language is focused in the left side of the brain in almost everyone, caricaturing these creative types as using their right brain more than their left brain is silly.
  • visual-spatial abilities—localized to the right cerebral hemisphere—are skills that are absolutely critical for “left-brained” talents like science or engineering.
  • But much of our obsession with the brain’s left and right cerebral hemispheres may have started with studies of split brain patients in the ‘50s. During this time, people who suffered multiple seizures a day underwent intense surgery to treat their epilepsy.
  • To calm the electrical storms that ravaged these patients’ brains, the nerve fibers connecting the left and right hemispheres of the brain were cut. These fibers are collectively known as the corpus callosum
  • Once the corpus callosum is severed on the operating table, the new split brain patient appears astonishingly normal at first glance
  • But careful experiments reveal that this person is really two persons, two streams of consciousness in one body
  • only the left hemisphere can speak
  • The right hemisphere cannot speak, but it can point to words like “yes” or “no” to answer a question
  • Each hemisphere, it seems, maintains independent beliefs and personalities, challenging the notion that we are each an indivisible “self.”
  • We are all “brain-ambidextrous.”
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Superstitions don't rule the US Women's National Team - but they definitely have some - 0 views

  • Superstitions don't rule the US Women's National Team — but they definitely have some
  • Whether you call it paranoid or just a ritual, some players just need their routines. Here are some of the United States Women's National Team members' rituals (or superstitions) that get them prepped for game day:
  • Carli Lloyd says she plays her best game when she knows the pressure of the eyes of her family and friends aren't there to throw her off.
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  • "I've been known as the player that doesn't want anybody to come to their events," she told The Inquirer. "It's not a superstitious thing, it's just something that works for me. In order for me to be at my best -- and if I'm at my best, that essentially helps the team -- I just want to go over there and do my thing."
  • Co-captain Alex Morgan likes to go against the grain, so it's no surprise that she's made 13 her lucky number. In a video for Team USA, Morgan said she found the superstitions toward the number strange and decided to make it her own.
  • Rapinoe told POPSUGAR that her diet is something she makes sure is consistent. According to the publication, she said there are certain things she absolutely must eat in order to get ready for a game, and her special diet is something she just can't deviate from.
  • The Rapinoe diet:Breakfast: She has a cup of coffee and a breakfast sandwich consisting of two eggs, sauteed onions and spinach on an English muffin.Lunch: Avocado toast with a chicken thigh and a side of fruit.Dinner: Two chicken thighs, sweet potatoes and asparagusPregame snack: Energy bar or a handful of almonds.
  • Every player has their own ritual for preparing for game day: For some it may be relaxing and focusing on the game -- for Christen Press, it's yoga and shopping.
  • Press said she likes to start her day by meditating, having a good breakfast, doing some yoga and she prefers to wrap it all up with some shopping at the mall.
  • Press said she also likes to make "a really big purchase" on game day "maybe like a fancy pair of shoes or a purse I would not normally splurge on." She says if she plays well, scores, or it's a good game, she gets to keep it.
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    This article describes the U.S. Women's National Team's superstitions on game day.
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You Asked About CES 2018. We Answered. - The New York Times - 0 views

  • You Asked About CES 2018. We Answered. By BRIAN X. CHEN At the International Consumer Electronics Show this week in Las Vegas, thousands of tech companies showcased some of the hottest new innovations: artificial intelligence, self-driving car tech, the smart home, voice-controlled accessories, fifth-generation cellular connectivity and more.Curious about the new products and how they will affect your personal technology? Readers asked Brian X. Chen, our lead consumer technology writer who is attending the trade show, their questions about wireless, TV and the Internet of Things. 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  • At the International Consumer Electronics Show this week in Las Vegas, thousands of tech companies showcased some of the hottest new innovations: artificial intelligence, self-driving car tech, the smart home, voice-controlled accessories, fifth-generation cellular connectivity and more.
  • Curious about the new products and how they will affect your personal technology? Readers asked Brian X. Chen, our lead consumer technology writer who attended the trade show, their questions about wireless, TV and the Internet of Things. (In addition,
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Why We Get Mad | Psychology Today - 0 views

  • why some people get angry more intensely or more often than others. 
  • always some sort of event that happens right before someone gets angry that serves as the trigger
  • whether or not we get angry in response to a particular situation has to do with how we appraise or evaluate the situation.
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  • personality traits and the pre-anger state.
  • there are certain characteristics that make people more likely to experience anger
  • the preanger state, includes how the person was feeling physiologically and psychologically right before the situation.
  • First, there are the characteristics of the individual
  • our appraisals of the event were very different
  • cognitive appraisal
  • we get angry when we appraise a situation as blameworthy, unjustified, punishable, etc.
  • a person's anger-inducing interpretation or appraisal of a situation isn't necessarily inaccurate.
  • sometimes people are absolutely correct in their appraisal that they have been treated unfairly and, in those cases, anger is a perfectly reasonable emotion to feel.
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Death and Its Concept - The Philosophers' Magazine - 0 views

  • Death and its concept are absolutely empty.
  • As there are already many speculations about some sort of 'next life,' I will focus on the view that death is real and marks the final end of an individual's life.
  • All we see when we look at death is a reflection of our own lives.
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  • As Ludwig Wittgenstein famously put it, “Death is not an experience in life.”
  • Obsessive rumination on death, on the other hand, can lead us away from life.
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Donald Trump's twisted definition of toughness - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • "Today, I have strongly recommended to every governor to deploy the National Guard in sufficient numbers that we dominate the streets," he said.
  • "One law and order, and that is what it is, one law. We have one, beautiful law," he said.
  • D.C. had no problems last night," Trump tweeted Tuesday morning. "Many arrests. Great job done by all. Overwhelming force. Domination. Likewise, Minneapolis was great (thank you President Trump!)."
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  • The whole thing -- the speech punctuated with talk of "law and order" and the need to "dominate," the walk across ground that had been the site of protests moments before -- was orchestrated to push back against a story that had broken over the weekend: That amid the protests on Friday night outside the White House, Trump had been taken to the bunker under the White House for his protection.
  • The image of Trump cowering in a bunker while people take to the streets to protest the death of a(nother) unarmed black man immediately became fodder for Trump's two preferred mediums of communication: cable TV and Twitter. "Trump's Bunker" trended on Twitter. Cable TV repeatedly ran the story of a President being whisked away to safety.
  • And the world is split between people willing to use their power over others and those too afraid to exert it.
  • On the campaign trail in 2016, Trump repeatedly defended the use of waterboarding and other methods of torture to get information out of enemy combatants. "Don't tell me it doesn't work — torture works,"
  • Trump urged officers to treat arrested gang members rougher. He said this: "When you guys put somebody in the car and you're protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over? Like, don't hit their head, and they just killed somebody -- don't hit their head," Trump continued. "I said, you can take the hand away, OK?"
  • Throw them out into the cold," Trump famously/infamously said of protesters at a rally in Burlington, Vermont, in January 2016. "Don't give them their coats. No coats! Confiscate their coats."
  • Get tough Democrat Mayors and Governors," Trump urged in response to the protests. "These people are ANARCHISTS. Call in our National Guard NOW. The World is watching and laughing at you and Sleepy Joe. Is this what America wants? NO!!!"
  • There is nothing Trump cares more about -- and, of course, fears more -- than being perceived as weak and being mocked and laughed at for it. He is willing to say and do absolutely anything to keep from being put in that situation. So when he was being mocked for retreating to the White House bunker, his response was immediate: I'll show them. ... I'll walk right across the ground they were protesting on!
  • oughness is not always about exerting your dominance because you can. True strength is rooted in the actions you don't take, the ability to understand that brute force should be your last resort, not your first instinct.
  • But it's especially true for a President of the United States faced with protests on American streets driven by the death of yet another black man at the hands of the police. Truly tough people, truly strong people -- they don't need to show and tell everyone how strong and tough they are. It's in their restraint, in their understanding that might doesn't make right that their true strength shines through.Donald Trump doesn't know that.
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Less money can mean more contentment, study says - CNN - 0 views

  • People at the lower end of the income scale take more pleasure in their relationships and enjoy caring for and connecting with others, according to a study published Monday in the journal Emotion.
  • "People who are poorer are more reliant on others to get by," said Paul Piff, lead author of the study and an assistant professor of psychology and social behavior at the University of California, Irvine. "They really prioritize relationships because of their reduced resources, and so they are more likely to really focus on emotions that bind them to one another and find satisfaction and delight in relationships through compassion and love."
  • For the new study, "We break happiness down into all of its emotional components: all the different kinds of positive emotions we want to experience on a daily basis," he said.
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  • "As income increases, as you rise in the rankings of household income, your tendencies -- or daily experiences -- of pride, amusement, contentment go up, and your experience of compassion and love and awe go down," Piff said. Enthusiasm was the one emotion unaffected by wealth, with both rich and poor experiencing the same level.
  • "But of course these aren't absolute differences; it's not the case that wealthy people don't feel any compassion or any love," Piff said. "It's just that wealth sort of buffers you from experiencing as much of it as perhaps you should or as other people do."
  • "There is a very large literature showing happiness and life satisfaction is related to income," he said. One example is this study that found higher income increases access to social support, self-esteem and opportunities and so enhances happiness.
  • The holiday season gets "people to think about the larger communities that they're a part of and the important people in their lives," he noted. But sometimes we think, "If only we could have more money!" Then, we believe, we could get all the things we want and achieve all those things we think are meaningful or important, he explained.
  • "Even in the absence of wealth, you can still extract all kinds of meaning and all kinds of happiness and all kinds of joy by reminding yourself and surrounding yourself with all the people you love," Piff said.
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What the author of 'The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History... - 0 views

  • No. 1, authorities need to tell the truth, even when it's uncomfortable -- especially when it's uncomfortable. This is important for two reasons. First, it lessens fear. People are always more afraid of the unknown. When people don't think they're getting a straight message they feel uncertain. In a horror movie, it's always scariest before the monster appears. Once the fear becomes concrete we can deal with it. We can deal with reality. Second, if you want people to comply with your recommendations -- and compliance is crucial to success -- they have to believe you and trust you. If they doubt you they will ignore you. In Singapore, the Prime Minister told blunt truths at the beginning, ended panic buying and, more importantly, it's one reason Singapore has gotten way ahead of the virus.
  • The 1918 virus was deadlier than Covid-19, but in the West it had about a 2% case mortality rate.
  • There is absolutely no indication -- zero, not the slightest hint anywhere in the world -- that Covid-19 will become more virulent than it is now,
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Martin Luther King and the 'polite' racism of white liberals - The Washington Post - 0 views

  • The year was 1965, and the Voting Rights Act had just passed. Many Californians were shocked by the uprising. Gov. Pat Brown maintained that California was “a state where there is no racial discrimination.”ADBut Martin Luther King Jr. had come to Los Angeles numerous times before to join black Angelenos’ struggles against police brutality and school and housing segregation. In an essay three months after the Watts uprising, King called out the disingenuous surprise, knowing firsthand how Californians, New Yorkers and others had brushed off years of local black movements.
  • “As the nation, Negro and white, trembled with outrage at police brutality in the South, police misconduct in the North was rationalized, tolerated, and usually denied,”
  • Presidential Democratic candidates former vice president Joe Biden, former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg and former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg have presided over policies that perpetuate racial injustice in law enforcement.
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  • In 1964, some of King’s fellow civil rights leaders called on him to denounce a planned “stall-in” by the Brooklyn Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a civil rights group protesting job discrimination and housing and school segregation.
  • King was familiar with being welcomed by leaders who saw themselves as liberal and anti-racist only to have them react furiously when attention turned to the need for local change.
  • On this King holiday, in this election year, we need to listen to the King who called out the hypocrisy of liberal allies who praised the struggle in the South while decrying disruptive black activism at home;
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Chicago youth unemployment hits African Americans hardest, driving population declines ... - 0 views

  • More African Americans are out of school and out of work than among any other racial group in Chicago, according to a new report released recently by the Great Cities Institute of the University of Illinois at Chicago.
  • Between 2010 and 2017 alone, Illinois’ lost 99,682 residents — in absolute numbers and that’s more than any other U.S. state, according to an earlier Great Cities Institute report from July.
  • In 1980, when Chicago’s black population reached its peak, there were 29 majority black neighborhoods in town. This has dropped down to 26.
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  • A decline in the manufacturing and related industrial jobs since the 1980s, coupled with inadequate affordable housing and quality schools are driving Chicagoans out, Cordova said.
  • In the age group of 16-19 years, about 11.5% of African Americans are neither in school nor working compared to about 5.3% of whites and 7.9% of Latinos, according to the report. The numbers are  based on the latest census data.
  • If the trend continues, demographers predict Houston could overtake Chicago’s place as the third largest city in the country and Chicago, once the second largest U.S. city behind New York, would drop to fourth place.
  • “Chicago is the only global city in America whose population is declining, and do you know why? Because African American families are leaving this city by the thousands,” said Chicago planning department chief Maurice Cox at the recent kickoff event in Austin for the INVEST South/West initiative. “This is a troubling trend.”
  • “I would argue for as much population and thousands that have left there are hundreds of thousands who have stayed and those are the folks we are going to build this strategy for,” Cox said.
  • “Many businesses on the North Side have been here for decades. Naturally, they have built relationships with other neighbors and business owners so when they are hiring, they lean towards who they are familiar with,” Edwards said.
  • “If you don’t have a black face in the market, the chances of black people getting a job in that neighborhood are cut down,” he said.
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40 years later, the mothers of Argentina's 'disappeared' refuse to be silent | World ne... - 0 views

  • Haydée Gastelú was among the first to arrive. “We were absolutely terrified,” she recalls.
  • Four decades on and 2,037 marches later, the mothers are still marching, though some of them must now use wheelchairs.
  • “Argentina’s new government wants to erase the memory of those terrible years and is putting the brakes on the continuation of trials,” says Taty Almeida, 86, whose 20-year-old son, Alejandro, disappeared in 1975.
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  • But the mothers – most of them now in their late 80s – warn that the current era of alternative facts and revisionist history poses a new kind of threat for the country.
  • “People were scared,” recalls Gastelú, now 88. “If I talked about my kidnapped son at the hairdresser or supermarket they would run away. Even listening was dangerous.
  • “Among us there are mothers who escaped from the Nazi Holocaust, only to lose their Argentinian-born children to another dictatorship – so we know for a fact that these tragedies can repeat themselves,” Gastelú says.
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A.I. Comes to the Operating Room - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Brain surgeons are bringing artificial intelligence and new imaging techniques into the operating room, to diagnose tumors as accurately as pathologists, and much faster, according to a report in the journal Nature Medicine.
  • The traditional method, which requires sending the tissue to a lab, freezing and staining it, then peering at it through a microscope, takes 20 to 30 minutes or longer. The new technique takes two and a half minutes.
  • In addition to speeding up the process, the new technique can also detect some details that traditional methods may miss, like the spread of a tumor along nerve fibers
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  • The new process may also help in other procedures where doctors need to analyze tissue while they are still operating, such as head and neck, breast, skin and gynecologic surgery, the report said. It also noted that there is a shortage of neuropathologists, and suggested that the new technology might help fill the gap in medical centers that lack the specialty. Video Advertisement LIVE 00:00 1:05
  • Algorithms are also being developed to help detect lung cancers on CT scans, diagnose eye disease in people with diabetes and find cancer on microscope slides.
  • The diagnoses were later judged right or wrong based on whether they agreed with the findings of lengthier and more extensive tests performed after the surgery.The result was a draw: humans, 93.9 percent correct; A.I., 94.6 percent.
  • At some centers, he said, brain surgeons do not even order frozen sections because they do not trust them and prefer to wait for tissue processing after the surgery, which may take weeks to complete.
  • Some types of brain tumor are so rare that there is not enough data on them to train an A.I. system, so the system in the study was designed to essentially toss out samples it could not identify.
  • “It won’t change brain surgery,” he said, “but it’s going to add a significant new tool, more significant than they’ve stated.”
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The Paradox of Freedom: The Great Humanistic Philosopher and Psychologist Erich Fromm o... - 0 views

  • “Freedom is not something that anybody can be given,” James Baldwin wrote in contemplating how we imprison ourselves, “freedom is something people take and people are as free as they want to be.” It is hard not to instinctually bristle at this notion — we all like to see ourselves as autonomous agents of our own destiny who would never willfully relinquish our freedom. And yet we do — beyond the baseline laws of physics and their perennially disquieting corollary regarding free will, which presupposes that even the nature of the faculty doing the relinquishing is not the sovereign entity we wish it were, we are governed by myriad ideological, social, economic, political, and psychological forces that mitigate the parameters of our freedom. Neuroscientist Christoph Koch put it perfectly in his treatise on free will: “Freedom is always a question of degree rather than an absolute good that we do or do not possess.”
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Climate Researchers Enlist Big Cloud Providers for Big Data Challenges - WSJ - 0 views

  • “Sustainability, climate mitigation and climate adaptation is incredibly data-intensive. You’re talking about large amounts of data and you’re talking about large complex data sets,” he said. “Absolutely, cloud will play an increasingly important role.”
  • Microsoft Corp.’s AI for Earth program, for example, offers grants and technical help from Azure, its cloud division, for just such projects.
  • More broadly, tools like Amazon SageMaker, launched in 2017, allow software developers in any industry to build, train and use machine-learning models more quickly and with less technical complexity than in years prior, he said.
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The US was once the uncontested world leader in science and engineering. That's changed... - 0 views

  • he United States was once the dominant, global leader in science and engineering, but that ranking has dropped as other countries invest in research and development, according to a new report.
  • The findings were presented this week in the State of US Science and Engineering 2020 report, compiled and published by the National Science Board and the National Science Foundation. The report is published every two years and submitted to Congress."Our latest report shows the continued spread of [science and engineering] capacity across the globe, which is good for humanity because science is not a zero-sum game," said Diane Souvaine, National Science Board chair, in a statement. "However, it also means that where once the US was the uncontested leader in S&E, we now are playing a less-dominant role in many areas."
  • "Federal support of basic research drives innovation. Only the federal government can make a strategic, long-term commitment to creating new knowledge that [could] to lead to new or improved technologies, goods or services," said Julia Phillips, chair of the National Science Board's science and engineering policy committee. "Basic research is the 'seed corn' of our US S&E enterprise, a global competitive advantage, and the starting point for much of our GDP growth since World War II."
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  • "The United States has seen its relative share of global S&T [science and technology] activity flatten or shrink, even as its absolute activity levels kept rising," the authors wrote in the report. "As more countries around the world develop R&D and human capital infrastructure to sustain and compete in a knowledge-oriented economy, the United States is playing a less dominant role in many areas of S&E [science and engineering] activity."
  • "Research is now a truly global enterprise. Opportunities are everywhere and humanity's collective knowledge is growing exponentially," Souvaine said. "To remain a leader, we need to tap into our American 'can do' spirit and recommit to strong partnerships among government, universities and industry that have been the hallmarks of our success. I believe we should react with excitement, not fear, because we are well positioned to compete, collaborate and thrive."
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In race for coronavirus vaccine, hurled insults and the wisdom of Spider-Man - CNN - 0 views

  • Ethicists and physicians are concerned that, amid a desire to put an end to the Covid-19 pandemic, developers of drugs and vaccines have become overly enthusiastic about the chances their products will work.
  • Oxford has recently walked back some of its optimism, but for months, it set a tone that its vaccine was the most promising, without any solid evidence that this was based in fact.
  • Third, one leader in the Oxford team has gone so far as to denigrate other teams trying to get a Covid vaccine on the market, calling their technology "weird" and labeling it as merely "noise." Such name-calling is highly unusual and aggressive among scientists.
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  • "At this point, the Oxford researchers have no idea whether they have something or not," Offit said. "You just get so tired of this 'science by press release.' "
  • There are currently 10 vaccines in human clinical trials worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Four of the teams are in the United States: Moderna, Pfizer, Inovio and Novavax.
  • Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel referred to the results as "positive interim Phase 1 data" and that "the Moderna team continues to focus on moving as fast as safely possible to start our pivotal Phase 3 study in July."
  • Moderna is collaborating on its vaccine development with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of NIAID, said while Moderna's numbers were limited, "it was good news" and he was "cautiously optimistic" about the vaccine.
  • Inovio and Moderna have said they expect their large-scale clinical trials, known as Phase 3 trials, to last around six months. Pfizer hasn't given a timetable for its Phase 3 trial.
  • "I've not seen anyone wrap up a Phase 3 trial in a month to six weeks," said Dr. Saad Omer, a Yale University infectious disease expert who's done clinical trials on polio, pertussis and influenza vaccines. "We need to benchmark this against realistic expectations."
  • "As vaccine researchers like to say, mice lie and monkeys exaggerate," Offit said.
  • One big stumbling block for any vaccine trial is that Covid-19 infection rates in many areas of the world are flattening out or declining.
  • The Oxford vaccine uses what's called an adenovirus vector. Adenoviruses cause the common cold, but in this case, the adenoviruses are weakened and modified to deliver genetic material that codes for a protein from the novel coronavirus. The body then produces that protein and, ideally, develops an immune response to it.
  • "Compared to previous vaccines, this method is more robust, more versatile, and yet, equally efficient," according to the blog, which notes that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation invested $53 million in a German biotech company that specializes in RNA vaccines.
  • Inovio's technology uses a brief electrical pulse to deliver plasmids, or small pieces of genetic information, into human cells. Inovio says those cells then produce the vaccine, which leads to an immune response.
  • On April 19, the BBC's Andrew Marr said he asked Gilbert "if it's guaranteed that a workable vaccine can actually be produced."
  • "Nobody can be absolutely sure it's possible. That's why we have to do trials. We have to find out. I think the prospects are very good, but it's clearly not completely certain,"
  • "It certainly worked in monkeys," Oxford's Hill told CNN's Burnett May 15. "That was quite an impressive impact and that was our first try, if you like, with a standard dose, a single dose of vaccine."
  • "I buy that this is a pandemic and we may need to show progress and show steps, and I'm OK with making forecasts if decision makers want that, but do it with a level of uncertainty, because that's what's warranted," said Omer, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health.
  • "Now researchers can't wait to step out to the microphone -- and there are so many microphones out there -- to say, 'I've got it! This looks really good!' " Offit said.
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What Makes a Good Scientist? | American Scientist - 0 views

  • Those looking for practical advice about the job market would be better served seeking counsel from those who have more recently experienced it. Instead, he builds his book around a more fundamental and timeless career question: What makes a good scientist?
  • he encourages the reader to daydream, work hard, and mess around. Wilson relates several examples of “messing around” in his own career. Some led to major discoveries—for example, developing a new “chilling and mixing” method for swapping ant queens of different species to determine whether trait differences are genetically determined.
  • Most young scientists are not prepared for the level and number of setbacks they are likely to encounter in their early careers. As scientific funding has been cut and tenure-track jobs have grown scarce, today’s young scientists will be rejected more than any scientists of equal caliber in the past century.
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  • Graduate students will inevitably encounter failed experiments, failed teachable moments in the classroom, and time spent on research that never gets funded or never comes to fruition. Wilson counsels patience: “A strong work ethic is absolutely essential. There must be an ability to pass long hours in study and research with pleasure even though some of the effort will inevitably lead to dead ends.”
  • Scientists, he claims, tend to be introverted and prone to daydreaming. They reject authority and therefore dislike being told what to do. Their attention wanders. This pigeonholing made me uncomfortable, because I think science benefits from incorporating a diversity of personalities
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UK mathematician wins richest prize in academia | Mathematics | The Guardian - 0 views

  • Martin Hairer, an Austrian-British researcher at Imperial College London, is the winner of the 2021 Breakthrough prize for mathematics, an annual $3m (£2.3m) award that has come to rival the Nobels in terms of kudos and prestige.
  • Hairer landed the prize for his work on stochastic analysis, a field that describes how random effects turn the maths of things like stirring a cup of tea, the growth of a forest fire, or the spread of a water droplet that has fallen on a tissue into a fiendishly complex problem.
  • His major work, a 180-page treatise that introduced the world to “regularity structures”, so stunned his colleagues that one suggested it must have been transmitted to Hairer by a more intelligent alien civilisation.
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  • After dallying with physics at university, Hairer moved into mathematics. The realisation that ideas in theoretical physics can be overturned and swiftly consigned to the dustbin did not appeal. “I wouldn’t really want to put my name to a result that could be superseded by something else three years later,” he said. “In mathematics, if you obtain a result then that is it. It’s the universality of mathematics, you discover absolute truths.”
  • Hairer’s expertise lies in stochastic partial differential equations, a branch of mathematics that describes how randomness throws disorder into processes such as the movement of wind in a wind tunnel or the creeping boundary of a water droplet landing on a tissue. When the randomness is strong enough, solutions to the equations get out of control. “In some cases, the solutions fluctuate so wildly that it is not even clear what the equation meant in the first place,” he said.
  • With the invention of regularity structures, Hairer showed how the infinitely jagged noise that threw his equations into chaos could be reframed and tamed.
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Poker and Decision Making - 2 views

  • our tendency to judge decisions based on how they turn out, known in poker as “resulting.”
  • our strategy is often based on beliefs that can be biased or wrong. We are quick to form, and slow to update our beliefs. We tend towards absolutes, and indulge in “motivated reasoning,” seeking out confirmation while ignoring contradictory evidence
  • solution is to embrace uncertainty by calibrating our confidence
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  • Duke offers a road map for creating a group “decision pod” that can provide us with feedback. Focus on accuracy, accountability, and openness to diverse views. Set clear rules: Court dissent and differing perspectives, and take responsibility even when doing so is painful.
  • formed to improve viewpoint diversity in academia: Commit to transparency and sharing information; apply consistent standards to claims made by separating information from who is providing it; cultivate disinterestedness; seek “outcome blindness” to the hypothesis being tested; and encourage skepticism and dissent.
  • Duke explores how we can reduce conflict by shifting perspective among our past, present and futures selves via “mental time travel.” She suggests several techniques, including backcasting, premortems, and Ulysses contracts.
  • Duke also addresses how we outweigh the present over the future. When we reach for a donut instead of an apple, we’re doing so at the expense of our future self
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