A couple of months ago I attended a lecture by Saul Kripke at CUNY’s Graduate Center. Kripke is one of the most influential philosophers of the late 20th century, someone who you simply have to go see give a talk if you have the chance, on the sole basis of his legendary status. As in many such cases, it is not unlikely that one is going to be disappointed, given the extremely high expectations.
Dear TV and Movie Producer Person,
I realize that you receive letters all the time complaining about the gratuitous sex and violence on television and in movies. This is not one of those letters. In a sense, I want more sex and violence. Let me explain.
It is worth reminding ourselves why we watch TV and movies. First and foremost, we watch to be entertained. And, secondly, we watch because we get to watch. That is, we watch TV and movies because the visual modality of the experience brings an evocativeness of its own, one that we seem to like. Sure, we like the dialog and the plot twists, but we could have dialog and plot twists via reading or listening to books. We watch TV and movies because, in addition, we get that visual evocativeness.
Potentially fatal mosquito-borne West Nile fever (WNF) can become much more widespread in Europe than previously thought, say scientists in a new report just out in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology(1). The disease in temperate climates is carried by a population of Culex pipiens mosquitoes that only bites birds - the disease reservoir host - but Bruno Gomes and colleagues from the Centre for Malaria and Tropical diseases and Institute of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in Portugal found high numbers of hybrids between this population and another one that bites on humans. These hybrids, by feeding on both humans and birds, can act as a bridge transmitting the disease to humans.
A devastating drought, possibly the worst of the last century, is sweeping through Kenya-- killing children, spreading malnutrition, crippling economies and resulting in the death of livestock and wildlife reserve. Rewind 30 years. Reports on the worst famine in West Africa—Mali, Mauritania, Chad and Sudan— during the 1970’s and early 1980’s made headlines across the world.
In 1989, the Russian chess champion Garry Kasparov easily defeated the computer Deep Thought (name drawn from the Douglas Adams book). In 1997 Deep Blue kicked his ass, spawning accusations of cheating (which IBM denied). In a million-dollar rematch in 2003, Kasparov fought Deep Junior to a draw.
If, as Marcel Duchamp said, chess has “all the beauty of art and more,” do Kasparov’s break-even results mean that computers have drawn abreast of human creation, soon to overtake our brain’s ability to interpret, create and learn?
Researchers and developers of Artificial Intelligence say yes—yes, it does. Soon, they say, humans will be at best slaves and more likely relegated to distant, digitally archived memory (for better or for worse).
Not only is cardiovascular health good for children physically, it turns out that it may also promote intelligence. In a study published this week in PNAS, researchers say they have demonstrated a clear positive association between adolescent fitness and adult cognitive performance.
The results of the study also show the importance of getting healthier between the ages of 15 and 18 while the brain is still changing.
Despite the considerable amount of concern generated by the H1N1 outbreak earlier this year, the authors of a new study featured in PLoS Medicine believe it's impact will be relatively mild this flu season, with the number of hospitalizations and deaths related to the virus likely to remain much lower than anticipated.
"As more detailed data have become available, we have been able to improve our estimates of how severe this disease is. Early on, it was difficult to measure the flu's impact and it was crucial to plan for the full range of possible outcomes. Fortunately, the virus now appears to be near the milder end," said Marc Lipsitch, professor of epidemiology at HSPH and the study's senior author.
Astronomers at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy have discovered and directly imaged a faint celestial body that orbits the star GJ 758. Its mass is estimated to be between 10 and 40 Jupiter masses.
Accordingly, it is either a giant planet or a brown dwarf, a would-be sun. One thing is certain: with a temperature of around 330 degrees Celsius, GJ 758 B is the coldest companion of a Sun-like star ever to be directly imaged. The discovery is detailed in Astrophysical Journal Letters
Social isolation and stress are two environmental mechanisms likely to contribute to breast cancer susceptibility, researchers from the University of Chicago said this week.
Their study, published in PNAS, found that isolation led to higher production of a stress hormone, corticosterone, among rats that were kept alone and subjected to the disturbances of colony life as well as stressful situations, such as the smell of a predator or being briefly constrained. Additionally, the isolated rats took longer to recover from a stressful situation than rats that lived together in small groups.
A study appearing in Nature Geoscience this week claims that Earth's temperature may be 30-50% more sensitive to atmospheric carbon dioxide than previous estimates suggest, and the effects of this increased sensitivity could make climate change an even bigger threat than it already is.
The results of the study show that the models currently used to forecast climate change often neglect components of the Earth's climate system that vary over long timescales and have an important effect on temperature sensitivity--such as land-ice and vegetation.
