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Why Aren’t We Building ‘Emotionally Connected’ Cities?
Not long ago, the medical community discounted the idea that sunlight, plants, laughter and human proximity were inside the serious discussion of medicine. Today, the best hospitals like the Mayo Clinic employ design teams to incorporate gardens, social activity rooms, and more to improve patient outcomes. These elements do not take away from the core science and technology, but rather provide a necessary compliment to our overall approach to health.
So why is it so hard to think about these elements for our cities today?Mica Reveals Transportation Reauthorization Plan: $230 Billion over 6 Years
The long-awaited transportation reauthorization plan has arrived. Yesterday John Mica, chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, rolled out a proposal that would authorize $230 billion for transportation infrastructure spending over six years. The distribution will begin with $35 Read more ›Building America’s Future Responds to Chairman Mica’s Reauthorization Proposal
This is a guest post by Marcia Hale, President of Building America’s Future, a bipartisan and national infrastructure coalition. Yesterday, U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica hosted a briefing for infrastructure and transportation stakeholders on his proposal to reauthorize Read more ›No Higher Gas Tax? Then Prepare for a Transportation-Funding Meltdown
This is a guest post by James Russell, architecture columnist for Bloomberg News and author of ‘The Agile City: Building Well-being and Wealth in an Era of Climate Change.’ The bizarre debt-ceiling debate in Washington may well affect what kind Read more ›Would a 56-mpg Fuel Standard Really Hurt the Auto Industry?
When the Obama administration announced its new fuel economy standard in early 2010 — 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016 — Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood called it “the most aggressive fuel-economy standard ever set” in the United States. It remains Read more ›Last week, the New York Times stuck its toe in the waters of New York City’s bicyclist gender divide, and draws several conclusions. We’ve addressed the “Why don’t more women bike?” question before, but as biking sees an unprecedented rise Read more ›
Generally speaking people associate criminal activity with the nighttime, and most movies, novels, comic books, etc., do little to disabuse us of this belief. But police data paint a different picture — at least as analyzed by Trulia Insights, a Read more ›
Will New FAA Rules Keep Air Traffic Controllers from Falling Asleep on the Job?
Late last week the Federal Aviation Administration announced a new set of “fatigue recommendations” (pdf) intended to help air traffic controllers with their troublesome habit of working with their eyes wide shut. The key new guidelines, which are the result of months Read more ›The Morning Dig: How to Move L.A. Toward Public Transit
NETWORK_LA transit from tam thien tran on Vimeo. • A design proposal (above) looks at what can be done to increase the use of public transportation in L.A. (Gensleron.com) • On Thursday, China opened the world’s longest sea bridge — Read more ›Something about the major holidays brings out the best in the New Starts program. Last Christmas the program found $182 million under the tree, and now in advance of July 4th Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has gotten all patriotic and Read more ›
The Morning Dig: Study Links Cities and Stress
• A newly-released study done in Germany is raising questions about whether people who live in urban areas may “react more vigorously to stress”. (AP) • The biking-friendly city of Minneapolis has added its first self-service bike repair station. (Good.is) Read more ›Milestones leading up to the Good Singularity?
what are we to do… those of us who think that (1) past efforts at self-improvement actually worked… and hence (2) more efforts at vigorous self-improvement should be high on our agenda?*
The solution? To keep on plugging away! To persevere. Continue fighting to make our kids and their kids better than us, the way our parents and grandparents tried to do that -- and succeeded -- with us, By proudly endeavoring to make the next generation both more ethical and vastly more scientifically/technological powerful – because only that combination can save the world.
With me so far? Then let’s look for examples of our side in this civil war… or rather, our center… fighting back:
Tinkerers Amazon
Computerworld Magazine Why Johnny Can't Code Quite Basic
Singularities and Nightmares : Extremes of Optimism and Pessimism about the Human Future.
The Information : a history, a theory, a flood
I am finally finishing a great Big Brin Book… a novel more sprawling and ambitious than EARTH … entitles EXISTENCE.
Arms Control Wonk
Memo from Jong Byong Ho
The Washington Post has just published its latest story by R. Jeffrey Smith based on a document supplied by A.Q. Khan to English journalist and would-be Khan biographer Simon Henderson. This one is different – it’s not one of Khan’s confessionals, but a one-page memo to Khan from Jon Byong Ho, North Korea’s most senior missile and nuclear import-export manager.When we last saw Mr. Jon, he was toasting a Burmese general (photo above). According to the South Korean press, he’s since been put out to pasture.
...The single person who comes off the worst has to be former Chief of Army Staff General Jehangir Karamat, one of two senior Pakistani officials fingered as taking bribes from the North Koreans to facilitate or look the other way as Pakistani enrichment technology – URENCO enrichment technology, to put it another way – whisked off to Pyongyang or thereabouts. Since then, Karamat has become a distinguished international figure. He’s served as Islamabad’s ambassador to Washington and as a commissioner on the ICNND. That’s the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament!
Here, in the midst of the Agreed Framework period, when North Korea’s plutonium program was frozen, we get almost a firsthand glimpse of Jon Byong-ho, Kim Jong-il’s champion arms salesman and nukes acquisition specialist, going behind America’s and South Korea’s backs to acquire a different fissile material production technology, one they had forsworn in the Joint Denuclearization Declaration of 1992. And there is A.Q. Khan organizing the payment of bribes to Gen. Jehangir Karamat and Lt. Gen. Zulfiqar Khan (not to be confused with the late Air Chief Marshal Zulfiqar Ali Khan) so he could swap gas centrifuge technology for missile production technology.
Within no more than a year or so of this letter, Khan was already trying to sell missiles to a third country. And within a couple of years, he was organizing the shipment of North Korean uranium hexafluoride to his customers in Libya. It was a fruitful relationship for both sides.
Summer Reading for the Well-Read Wonk
The Nonproliferation Review
“Nuclear Islands: International Leasing of Nuclear Fuel Cycle Sites To Provide Enduring Assurance of Peaceful Use” (November 2010)
Everyone complains about the inability of the international community to keep determined states from using overt or covert nuclear energy programs as a means to acquire nuclear weapons, but Chris Paine and Tom Cochran, building on the work of others over the years, actually created a detailed, feasible plan to solve that problem.“When Does a State Become a ‘Nuclear Weapon State’”? An Exercise in Measurement Validation” (March 2010)
Jacques Hymans tackles the slippery question of when a state is considered to have joined the nuclear club, and why it matters how we define that milestone.
“The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence” (November 2008)
In a well-argued and detailed article, Ward Wilson challenges many of the presumptive benefits of nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence.
“Countering Proliferation: Insights from Past ‘Wins, Losses, and Draws’” (November 2006)
Lewis Dunn offers a valuable and thoughtful assessment of what has worked–and what hasn’t–when it comes to preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.
“Nuclear Terrorism and the Global Politics of Civilian HEU Elimination” (July 2008)
In an engaging article, William Potter examines the risks of nuclear terrorism posed by the estimated 50-100 metric tons (MT) of non-military highly enriched uranium stockpiled around the world, describes the various uses of this material, and explores the economic, political, and strategic obstacles to international efforts to end the use of HEU for commercial and research purposes.
“Anticipating Nuclear Proliferation: Insights from the Past” (November 2006)
Torrey Froscher considers the mixed historical record on the role of intelligence in warning, or failing to warn, of states seeking nuclear weapons, as well as the best means of ensuring a productive relationship between analysts and policymakers.
“Is There a Theory of Nuclear Proliferation? An Analysis of the Contemporary Debate” (Fall 1996)
Tanya Ogilvie-White explores how organizational, psychological, and sociological factors influence whether and how proliferation occurs, and how such factors shed light on alternative approaches to preventing it.
“Revisiting Fred Iklé’s 1961 Question, ‘After Detection – What?’” (Spring 2001)
Brad Roberts looks back at Fred Iklé’s Foreign Affairs article, considers how the world has changed over four decades, and assesses how best to address the challenges of arms control noncompliance in Iraq, North Korea, Russia, and other countries.
“Surprise Down Under: The Secret History of Australia’s Nuclear Ambitions” (Fall 1997)
Jim Walsh considers the surprising history of Australia’s efforts to acquire nuclear weapons from the mid-1950s and until the early 1970s, and what it says about states seeking to build the bomb, what policies stand the best chance of dissuading such states, and how Australia transformed itself from a nuclear aspirant to a leading advocate for nonproliferation.
crazy talk
Talking to an (almost-ex, I suspect) Republican last night, he noted that "The cognitive dissonance involved in belonging to the party used to be like a loud clock on the wall; it was annoying, but you could ignore it. Now it's more like a guy in the room constantly slapping you in the face."
Saturn : a turbulent early spring
a storm that covers an area eight times the surface area of Earth
Is the Space Age over ?
The new reality is emerging in the symbolic end of the Space Shuttle program and the eventual de-orbiting of the International Space Station. It’s a reality based on a space program that fares no higher than geostationary orbit and the growing technosphere that encloses us like a planetary ring.
The End of the Space Age is a cautionary tale about an all too real possibility, one that dismisses those anxious to move into the Solar System as ‘space cadets,’ while invoking the space ideas of the 1950s and 60s as an almost surreal excursion that quickly gave way to the outright fantasy of ‘Star Trek.’ The Economist will have none of the old optimism, the vision of ever expanding humanity pushing out to build an infrastructure throughout the inner planets and beyond. The view is stark. Declaring that the Space Age is probably over, the article adds:The future… looks bounded by that new outer limit of planet Earth, the geostationary orbit. Within it, the buzz of activity will continue to grow and fill the vacuum. This part of space will be tamed by humanity, as the species has tamed so many wildernesses in the past. Outside it, though, the vacuum will remain empty. There may be occasional forays, just as men sometimes leave their huddled research bases in Antarctica to scuttle briefly across the ice cap before returning, for warmth, food and company, to base. But humanity’s dreams of a future beyond that final frontier have, largely, faded.I bring you this counterbalance to our usual explorations as a way of pointing out that missions to the stars — or even the outer planets — are by no means inevitable
Spacetime beyond the Planck scale
Is the universe at the deepest level grainy? In other words, if you keep drilling down to smaller and smaller scales, do you reach a point where spacetime is, like the grains of sand on a beach, found in discrete units? It’s an interesting thought in light of recent observations by ESA’s Integral gamma-ray observatory, but before we get to Integral, I want to ponder the spacetime notion a bit further, using Brian Greene’s superb new book The Hidden Reality as my guide. Because how spacetime is put together has obvious implications for our philosophy of science.Consider how we measure things, and the fact that we have to break phenomena into discrete units to make sense of them. Here’s Greene’s explanation:
For the laws of physics to be computable, or even limit computable, the traditional reliance on real numbers would have to be abandoned. This would apply not just to space and time, usually described using coordinates whose values can range over the real numbers, but also for all other mathematical ingredients the laws use. The strength of an electromagnetic field, for example, could not vary over real numbers, but only over a discrete set of values. Similarly for the probability that the electron is here or there.By ‘limit computable,’ Greene refers to ‘functions for which there is a finite algorithm that evaluates them to ever greater precision.’ He goes on to invoke the work of computer scientist Jürgen Schmidhuber:
Schmidhuber has emphasized that all calculations that physicists have ever carried out have involved the manipulation of discrete symbols (written on paper, on a blackboard, or input to a computer). And so, even though this body of scientific work has always been viewed as involving the real numbers, in practice it doesn’t.
Greene points out in The Hidden Reality that Isaac Newton himself never thought the laws he discovered were the only truths we would need. He saw a universe far richer than those his laws implied, and his statement on the fact is always worth quoting:
Cosmos and Culture : a Review
It is often difficult to get a wider perspective on existence, especially when you and the rest of your species have been stuck in one place for all but the smallest and most recent of times. This has certainly been the case with the species known as humanity. While a few ancient philosophers guessed that we live on a world surrounded by an immense amount of stars and space, it has only been in the last few centuries that both the scientific and general communities came to accept this state of existence as a fact. It has been an even shorter period of time – mere decades – since we have sent our mechanical emissaries and a relative handful of actual humans into the nearest regions of our cosmic neighborhood.
Why are we fascinated with a realm that is unimaginably vast, difficult to attain, and even dangerous? Does that which occurs in space affect life on Earth, and in what ways? Are there other intelligent beings in the Universe and what may result if we should ever encounter one another? What will be the fate of all life far down the cosmic road?
Tackling these mighty subjects is a book titled Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context (NASA SP-2009-4802), edited by Steven J. Dick and Mark L. Lupisella. Most NASA publications deal with the illustrious history of the US space program, often going into great detail about the people, processes, and machines. Cosmos & Culture looks at the ultimate reasons why we want to explore and settle space and how that decision will affect our society and species.
Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context is available online.
Celebrity Dissent : Craig Murray
I am about to start the tortuous Sunday rail journey between Ramsgate and Diss, in order to attend Julian Assange’s fortieth birthday party at Ellingham Hall.
I am not sure who else is going, but the initial invitation did not give train information, but did tell you where to land your private plane or helicopter. I am going because I think Wikileaks do essential work and because I think Julian is an extraordinary mand and is being stitched up – his appeal against extradition is on Tuesday and this week he could be in a cell in Sweden on those entirely ludicrous sexual assault charges. I am also gong because I hope that some of the whistleblowing community might be there. And I am going because it says “party”!
Nonetheless, I worry that the amusing fact that the invitation tells you where to land your private jet or helicopter, actually is an indication of where Wikilleaks is going wrong.
That is perhaps strange for me to say of a thriving organisation with funds and staff, who have exposed much more of government wrongdoing than I ever managed. But I could not understand why Julian was using the celebrity media lawyer Stephens rather than one of our great, solid human rights lawyers. I emailed wikileaks several times before the trial to say they had absolutely the wrong kind of lawyer, and that there were several much more appropriate human rights lawyers used to dealing with politically motivated criminal charges, with a terrific record and respect in the courts, and who may well take it on pro bono. I got no reply. I presumed that this was because Wikileaks were being loyal to lawyers who believed in them, had been their lawyers before criminal charges arose, and who worked for them for nothing. But I now read that Assange has unpaid legal bills of £200,000.
“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have only been a boy playing on the seashore, diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay before me all undiscovered.”
Cosmos and Culture : a Review
It is often difficult to get a wider perspective on existence, especially when you and the rest of your species have been stuck in one place for all but the smallest and most recent of times. This has certainly been the case with the species known as humanity. While a few ancient philosophers guessed that we live on a world surrounded by an immense amount of stars and space, it has only been in the last few centuries that both the scientific and general communities came to accept this state of existence as a fact. It has been an even shorter period of time – mere decades – since we have sent our mechanical emissaries and a relative handful of actual humans into the nearest regions of our cosmic neighborhood.
Why are we fascinated with a realm that is unimaginably vast, difficult to attain, and even dangerous? Does that which occurs in space affect life on Earth, and in what ways? Are there other intelligent beings in the Universe and what may result if we should ever encounter one another? What will be the fate of all life far down the cosmic road?
Tackling these mighty subjects is a book titled Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context (NASA SP-2009-4802), edited by Steven J. Dick and Mark L. Lupisella. Most NASA publications deal with the illustrious history of the US space program, often going into great detail about the people, processes, and machines. Cosmos & Culture looks at the ultimate reasons why we want to explore and settle space and how that decision will affect our society and species.
Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context is available online.
Celebrity Dissent : Craig Murray
I am about to start the tortuous Sunday rail journey between Ramsgate and Diss, in order to attend Julian Assange’s fortieth birthday party at Ellingham Hall.
I am not sure who else is going, but the initial invitation did not give train information, but did tell you where to land your private plane or helicopter. I am going because I think Wikileaks do essential work and because I think Julian is an extraordinary mand and is being stitched up – his appeal against extradition is on Tuesday and this week he could be in a cell in Sweden on those entirely ludicrous sexual assault charges. I am also gong because I hope that some of the whistleblowing community might be there. And I am going because it says “party”!
Nonetheless, I worry that the amusing fact that the invitation tells you where to land your private jet or helicopter, actually is an indication of where Wikilleaks is going wrong.
That is perhaps strange for me to say of a thriving organisation with funds and staff, who have exposed much more of government wrongdoing than I ever managed. But I could not understand why Julian was using the celebrity media lawyer Stephens rather than one of our great, solid human rights lawyers. I emailed wikileaks several times before the trial to say they had absolutely the wrong kind of lawyer, and that there were several much more appropriate human rights lawyers used to dealing with politically motivated criminal charges, with a terrific record and respect in the courts, and who may well take it on pro bono. I got no reply. I presumed that this was because Wikileaks were being loyal to lawyers who believed in them, had been their lawyers before criminal charges arose, and who worked for them for nothing. But I now read that Assange has unpaid legal bills of £200,000.
For those of us who experienced a surge of naive hope that News International have been referred to Ofcom for a ruling on the “Fit and Proper Persons” test, here is a bucket of cold water. Rather than being disinterested public servants, the Board of Ofcom represent the political and financial establishments which are so irreversibly penetrated by the spores of News International. Many of them hold directorships of companies – like banks and insurance companies – which have a direct interest in seeing no further plunge in News Corp/News International share price. They are also beneficiaries of the policies Murdoch has championed – private equity firms and privatised utilities, for example.
Bluntly, there is no chance that a body of which the Chairman, Colette Bowe, is a Director of Morgan Stanley and of Electra Private Equity is going to pull the rug on News Corp.
Here is but a selection of some of the Directorships held by Ofcom board members:
Morgan Stanley
Electra Private Equity
Thames Water
Axa
Betfair Group
JJB Sports
Pace Plc – supplier of set top boxes to Murdoch’s Sky
Nujira Ltd – defence contractors to US military
Standard Life
How on earth did we come to have a regulatory body for the communications industry composed of these kind of parasites? Why is it so overpacked with businessmen and so devoid of intellectuals? Again, to put that simply, why the Chairman of JJB Sports and no Eric Hobsbawm?
Our entire fabric of government is a sick fucking joke.
( Part of Craig's outlook that puzzles is that he can say something like that...while giving no evidence that he has internalized it on a visceral level ; as if he was being caustic instead of merely truthful. )
Plainly not fit and proper persons
Revealed : Defence confusion over POWs
Australia went to war in Afghanistan without a clear policy on how to deal with enemy detainees, secret papers reveal.
( Any bets they were alone in that regard ? Where does consciousness reside in politics anyway ? )
Ten Simple Rules for Building and Maintaining a Scientific Reputation
PLoS Computational Biology
What these students and editors identified en masse is one important side of a scientific reputation that is defined by data; but they also identified a much more nebulous side, that, while ill-defined, is a vital element to nurture during one's career. A side defined to include such terms as fair play, integrity, honesty, and caring. It is building and maintaining this kind of less tangible reputation that forms the basis for these Ten Simple Rules. You might be wondering, how can you define rules for developing and maintaining something you cannot well describe in the first place? We do not have a good answer, but we would say a reputation plays on that human characteristic of not appreciating the value of something until you do not have it any more.
Bluntly, there is no chance that a body of which the Chairman, Colette Bowe, is a Director of Morgan Stanley and of Electra Private Equity is going to pull the rug on News Corp.
Here is but a selection of some of the Directorships held by Ofcom board members:
Morgan Stanley
Electra Private Equity
Thames Water
Axa
Betfair Group
JJB Sports
Pace Plc – supplier of set top boxes to Murdoch’s Sky
Nujira Ltd – defence contractors to US military
Standard Life
How on earth did we come to have a regulatory body for the communications industry composed of these kind of parasites? Why is it so overpacked with businessmen and so devoid of intellectuals? Again, to put that simply, why the Chairman of JJB Sports and no Eric Hobsbawm?
Our entire fabric of government is a sick fucking joke.
( Part of Craig's outlook that puzzles is that he can say something like that...while giving no evidence that he has internalized it on a visceral level ; as if he was being caustic instead of merely truthful. )
Plainly not fit and proper persons
Rebekah Brooks has now laid down several hundred jobs to save her own. She has also made way for the brand new super soaraway Sunday Sun. News International have evidently decided to gamble on the idea that there is no end to the gullibility of the British mass public.
But let us stop and consider. A great part of British newspaper history, a paper that supported imprisoned Chartists , has just been lost. With it have gone hundreds of jobs. It has been lost because the management of News International at the News of the World was either criminally involved or culpably negligent – there are no other choices. By their destruction of the News of the World, News Corp have proven beyond any doubt that they are not fit and proper persons to run media in this country. Ofcom must now act on this to use its powers to disbar unfit persons, and force News Corp to sell all its media interests in the UK.
Dave Bath's shared items
Government Advertising ( Accountability ) Bill 2011
from New Senate Committee Inquiries The Senate Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee has a new inquiry into the Government Advertising (Accountability) Bill 2011 (Australia)
Toward a Brain-Based Theory of Beauty
We wanted to learn whether activity in the same area(s) of the brain correlate with the experience of beauty derived from different sources. 21 subjects took part in a brain-scanning experiment using functional magnetic resonance imaging.
Media driven decision making
Recent political decisions demonstrate how our politicians are acquiescing to aggressive media campaigns.
( Um. They do not demonstrate which came first....in a chicken or egg conundrum )
Big polluters to dodge carbon tax
Only around 500 of Australia's pollution-emitting companies will pay the carbon tax, despite repeated statements by the Government that the "1,000 biggest polluters" will pay.
Monkey sacrifices food to peace and quiet
What does a bookworm have in common with a black-tufted marmoset? They both like a little quiet. Or so say scientists in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters . [Marina Duarte et al., " Noisy Human Neighbours Affect Where Urban Monkeys Live "]
As urban areas continue to expand, their human inhabitants spread all sorts of pollution: air pollution, light pollution, even noise pollution. Each of these environmental encroachments affects the survival and behavior of local wildlife. And monkeys are no exception. [More]
But let us stop and consider. A great part of British newspaper history, a paper that supported imprisoned Chartists , has just been lost. With it have gone hundreds of jobs. It has been lost because the management of News International at the News of the World was either criminally involved or culpably negligent – there are no other choices. By their destruction of the News of the World, News Corp have proven beyond any doubt that they are not fit and proper persons to run media in this country. Ofcom must now act on this to use its powers to disbar unfit persons, and force News Corp to sell all its media interests in the UK.
Dave Bath's shared items
Government Advertising ( Accountability ) Bill 2011
from New Senate Committee Inquiries The Senate Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee has a new inquiry into the Government Advertising (Accountability) Bill 2011 (Australia)
Toward a Brain-Based Theory of Beauty
We wanted to learn whether activity in the same area(s) of the brain correlate with the experience of beauty derived from different sources. 21 subjects took part in a brain-scanning experiment using functional magnetic resonance imaging.
Media driven decision making
Recent political decisions demonstrate how our politicians are acquiescing to aggressive media campaigns.
( Um. They do not demonstrate which came first....in a chicken or egg conundrum )
Big polluters to dodge carbon tax
Only around 500 of Australia's pollution-emitting companies will pay the carbon tax, despite repeated statements by the Government that the "1,000 biggest polluters" will pay.
Monkey sacrifices food to peace and quiet
What does a bookworm have in common with a black-tufted marmoset? They both like a little quiet. Or so say scientists in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters . [Marina Duarte et al., " Noisy Human Neighbours Affect Where Urban Monkeys Live "]
As urban areas continue to expand, their human inhabitants spread all sorts of pollution: air pollution, light pollution, even noise pollution. Each of these environmental encroachments affects the survival and behavior of local wildlife. And monkeys are no exception. [More]
Web service Move2Picasa migrates all your photos from Facebook to Google Plus. Just visit the site, log in with Facebook, and let it do its work. More »
( Timed out. Related :
We say NO to VIDEOS on FLICKR
HOW TO MOVE YOUR FACEBOOK PHOTOS TO PICASA (SOON, GOOGLE PHOTOS) IN A FLASH
Using Picasa on Multiple Computers – The Updated Definitive Guide
Problems moving + renaming files within Picasa
I don't seem to share others' preferences...which isn't unusual itself it seems. For starters, although I have used Picasa as a master file adjunct to my built in filing systems for years, I have downloaded photos under the agreement they were protected by copyright and for my own use only. So I file sharable photos with an added modifier on the photo identifier : Creative Commons works start with CC
That meant I could start a publicly available photo collection without worrying about copyright infringement. Frankly, I don't know how this is dealt with : nor do I want all my files public !
That is why I have Best Pics )
from
by Stefan Bode, Anna Hanxi He, Chun Siong Soon, Robert Trampel, Robert Turner, John-Dylan Haynes
Recently, we demonstrated using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) that the outcome of free decisions can be decoded from brain activity several seconds before reaching conscious awareness. Activity patterns in anterior frontopolar cortex (BA 10) were temporally the first to carry intention-related information and thus a candidate region for the unconscious generation of free decisions. In the present study, the original paradigm was replicated and multivariate pattern classification was applied to functional images of frontopolar cortex, acquired using ultra-high field fMRI at 7 Tesla. Here, we show that predictive activity patterns recorded before a decision was made became increasingly stable with increasing temporal proximity to the time point of the conscious decision. Furthermore, detailed questionnaires exploring subjects' thoughts before and during the decision confirmed that decisions were made spontaneously and subjects were unaware of the evolution of their decision outcomes. These results give further evidence that FPC stands at the top of the prefrontal executive hierarchy in the unconscious generation of free decisions.
Recently, we demonstrated using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) that the outcome of free decisions can be decoded from brain activity several seconds before reaching conscious awareness. Activity patterns in anterior frontopolar cortex (BA 10) were temporally the first to carry intention-related information and thus a candidate region for the unconscious generation of free decisions. In the present study, the original paradigm was replicated and multivariate pattern classification was applied to functional images of frontopolar cortex, acquired using ultra-high field fMRI at 7 Tesla. Here, we show that predictive activity patterns recorded before a decision was made became increasingly stable with increasing temporal proximity to the time point of the conscious decision. Furthermore, detailed questionnaires exploring subjects' thoughts before and during the decision confirmed that decisions were made spontaneously and subjects were unaware of the evolution of their decision outcomes. These results give further evidence that FPC stands at the top of the prefrontal executive hierarchy in the unconscious generation of free decisions.
Australia went to war in Afghanistan without a clear policy on how to deal with enemy detainees, secret papers reveal.
( Any bets they were alone in that regard ? Where does consciousness reside in politics anyway ? )
Ten Simple Rules for Building and Maintaining a Scientific Reputation
PLoS Computational Biology
While we cannot articulate exactly what defines the less quantitative side of a scientific reputation, we might be able to seed a discussion. We invite you to crowd source a better description and path to achieving such a reputation by using the comments feature associated with this article. Consider yourself challenged to contribute.At a recent Public Library of Science (PLoS) journal editors' meeting, we were having a discussion about the work of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE; http://www.publicationethics.org/), a forum for editors to discuss research and publication misconduct. Part of the discussion centered on the impact such cases have on the scientific reputation of those involved. We began musing: What on earth is a scientific reputation anyway? Not coming up with a satisfactory answer, we turned to a source of endless brainpower—students and other editors. Having posed the question to a group of graduate students, PLoS, and other editors, we got almost as many different answers as people asked, albeit with some common themes. They all mentioned the explicit elements of a reputation that relate to measurables such as number of publications, H factor, overall number of citations etc., but they also alluded to a variety of different, qualitative, factors that somehow add up to the overall sense of reputation that one scientist has for another.
What these students and editors identified en masse is one important side of a scientific reputation that is defined by data; but they also identified a much more nebulous side, that, while ill-defined, is a vital element to nurture during one's career. A side defined to include such terms as fair play, integrity, honesty, and caring. It is building and maintaining this kind of less tangible reputation that forms the basis for these Ten Simple Rules. You might be wondering, how can you define rules for developing and maintaining something you cannot well describe in the first place? We do not have a good answer, but we would say a reputation plays on that human characteristic of not appreciating the value of something until you do not have it any more.
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