“The social brain hypothesis has suggested that social network size (and structure) is constrained by a combination of cognitive processes and the time required to service social relationships. We test this hypothesis in humans using a unique 18-month mobile phone dataset by examining changes in the structure of social networks across a major change in subjects’ social and geographical circumstances. Our analysis reveals that the time allocation patterns of call frequency by participants to network members have a distinctive overall shape, where a small number of top-ranked network members received a disproportionately large fraction of calls, with some individual variation. However, importantly, whilst there was a large turnover of individual network members, these changes have little effect on the time allocation patterns of each individual: individuals thus displayed a distinctive “social signature” that was both persistent over time and independent of the identities of the network members. *This provides the first direct evidence that social networks are constrained by a combination of cognitive constraints and the time individuals have available for social interaction, confirming one of the key assumptions of the social brain hypothesis.*” Bruno Gonçalves originally shared this post: The persistence of social signatures in human communication. (arXiv:1204.5602v1 [physics.soc-ph]) The social brain hypothesis has suggested that social network size (and structure) is constrained by a combination of cognitive processes and the time required to service social relationships. We test this hypothesis in humans using a unique 18-month mobile phone dataset by examining changes in the structure of social networks across a major change in subjects’ social and geographical circumstances. Our analysis reveals that the time allocation patterns of call frequency by participants to ne…

“Hammond assures me I have nothing to worry about. This robonews tsunami, he insists, will not wash away the remaining human reporters who still collect paychecks. Instead the universe of newswriting will expand dramatically, as computers mine vast troves of data to produce ultracheap, totally readable accounts of events, trends, and developments that no journalist is currently covering.” “That’s not to say that computer-generated stories will remain in the margins, limited to producing more and more Little League write-ups and formulaic earnings previews. Hammond was recently asked for his reaction to a prediction that a computer would win a Pulitzer Prize within 20 years. He disagreed. It would happen, he said, in five.” h/t +Michael Fagan Rob Malda originally shared this post: Algorithms that write the news http://m.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/04/can-an-algorithm-write-a-better-news-story-than-a-human-reporter/all/1 Can an Algorithm Write a Better News Story Than a Human Reporter? | Gadget Lab | Wired.com Had Narrative Science — a company that trains computers to write news stories—created this piece, it probably would not mention that the company’s Chicago headquarters lie only a long baseball tos…

There’s some discussion going around about the number line and innate intuition. This is a good time to talk about Meno’s Paradox! The paradox is raised by the sophist Meno as Socrates attempts to engage him in some philosophical inquiry. Meno wonders how we could possibly inquire into anything without already knowing the subject we are inquiring in to. Here’s the official statement of the paradox from Plato’s dialogue: Meno: And how will you enquire, Socrates, into that which you do not know? What will you put forth as the subject of enquiry? And if you find what you want, how will you ever know that this is the thing which you did not know? Socrates: I know, Meno, what you mean; but just see what a tiresome dispute you are introducing. You argue that man cannot enquire either about that which he knows, or about that which he does not know; for if he knows, he has no need to enquire; and if not, he cannot; for he does not know the, very subject about which he is to enquire. Socrates rejects the paradox immediately. Instead, he cites “priests and priestesses” who discuss something like reincarnation of the soul. Socrates says that if the soul is reincarnated, then we never really learn anything new. Instead, we simply recall things we’ve already experienced before. He says: “The soul, then, as being immortal, and having been born again many times, rand having seen all things that exist, whether in this world or in the world below, has knowledge of them all; and it is no wonder that she should be able to call to remembrance all that she ever knew about virtue, and about everything; for as all nature is akin, and the soul has learned all things; there is no […]

Facebook, Google+, and Internet Environmentalism I know FB/G+ comparisons are tired and lame, but I wrote up this comment in +Ciro Villa’s thread, and it seems to lay out a position that I’m not sure has been explicitly stated before. Comments or suggestions in either thread would be appreciated! _ The typical complaint about G+ relative to FB is that “there’s no one here”. This is a curious sort of argument that pervades many aspects of the contemporary popular discussion. It is a kind of argumentum ad populum: an appeal to the people. Consider the following arguments that share a similar form: I’m not going to put solar panels on my roof because no one else on my block is doing it, and I don’t want to be different. I’m not going to conserve energy and reduce consumption, because no one else is doing it and I want to keep up with their lifestyles. I’m not going to reduce my meat consumption, because everyone else’s meat consumption is going up and I don’t want to be left behind. Etc. You get the point. These are obviously bad arguments, but they share the same formal structure of the justifications used to rationalize the use of Facebook. Regardless of the context used, an appeal to the people is a logical fallacy. G+ is a better social network, not just in the “easier to use and I like it more” sense, but in the much more important sense of “open, inclusive, and user-controlled”. I think we have an ethical obligation to prefer open networks over closed networks not just for our own networking experiences, but for the sake of the networks themselves. Moving to G+ for me is closer to a kind of “internet environmentalism” whereby I’m trying to make choices that I […]

Simple G+ Stream Management There are lots of good resources for managing circles. This is how I manage my stream. You can have as many circles as you’d like and you don’t need to change the way you manage them. Instead, you want to build 3 meta-circles to manage the stream. These circles are: Internet: Add everyone to this circle. Seriously, everyone. Every time someone adds you, add them to this circle. All of them. Don’t discriminate at this step, there will be time for that later. Main Stream: Add people to this circle if I don’t want to miss any of their posts. This circle is made from people who I have in other circles related to our shared interests, but they are also in this circle because I want to make sure they appear in my stream. Junk: Add people to this circle that you never want to see on your home stream. I arranged my circles so that the Main Stream is first and the Internet circle is second, so they’ll appear in my circle tabs on the home screen. Then, I set the main stream to full blast, the internet cicle to a drip, and the junk circle to zero, as indicated in the picture below. I have lots of other circles for my special interests, but with only a few exceptions those circles are also set to zero. In other words, my home stream is controlled entirely by the Main Stream and Internet circles. That’s it! I’ve circled over 3,000 people this way, and I’m able to manage my stream without much effort. I can’t keep up with everything, of course, but with this method I have better control over what I’m expected to keep up with. Try it out, let me know what you […]

“There is currently little research exploring neuroscience’s public image. The mass media are the main vectors in the transmission of scientific research. To date, systematic analysis of neuroscience in the media has only addressed the area of media coverage of specific neurotechnologies such as fMRI, PET, and TMS (Racine et al., 2005,Racine et al., 2006,Racine et al., 2010). This research identified three emerging trends in media interpretations of neuroimaging. Neurorealism describes the use of neuroimages to make phenomena seem objective, offering visual proof that a subjective experience (e.g., love, pain, addiction) is a “real thing.” Neuroessentialism denotes depictions of the brain as the essence of a person, with the brain a synonym for concepts like person, self, or soul. Finally, neuropolicy captures the recruitment of neuroscience to support political or policy agendas.” “These studies provide intriguing data, but the exclusive focus on neurotechnologies restricts their scope. To be included in the analysis, media articles had to contain quite technical terms like fMRI or PET: the research therefore overlooked articles that discussed brain research without naming specific technologies or that used lay terms for them (e.g., “brain scans”). Here, we consider how brain science, defined more generally, manifests in the mainstream media.” Matteo Cerri originally shared this post: Neuron – Neuroscience in the Public Sphere Neuroscientists and philosophers nowadays claim that the problem of phenomenal consciousness is a scientific problem. Increasing knowledge of the neural correlates of consciousness is expected to yiel…

This is the Digital Age. Get used to it, we’ll be here a while =D h/t +Peter Smalley Amanda Patterson originally shared this post: The Internet’s population has doubled in five years. Africa has gone from 34 million to 140 million, a 317% increase. Asia has gone from 418 million to over 1 billion, a 143% increase. Europe has gone from 322 million to 501 million, a 56% increase. The Middle East has gone from 20 to 77 million, a 294% increase. North America has gone from 233 to 273 million, a 17% increase. Latin America (South & Central America) has gone from 110 to 236 million, a 114% increase. Oceania (including Australia) has gone from 19 to 24 million, a 27% increase. The Internet’s Population Doubled Over the Last… The Internet’s Population Doubled Over the Last Five Years Royal Pingdom susses out some interesting trends about the world’s 2.27 billion Internet users: • Africa has gone from 34 million to 140…

Disappearing inhibitors Earlier research found that approximately one fifth of the synapses in the brain inhibit rather than excite other nerve-cell activity. Neuroscientists have now shown that many of these inhibitory synapses disappear if the adult brain is forced to learn new skills. They reached this conclusion by labelling inhibitory synapses in mouse brains with fluorescent proteins and then tracking them for several weeks using a specialised microscope. They then closed one of the mice’s eyes temporarily to accustom them to seeing through just one eye. After a few days, the area of the brain that processes information from both eyes began to respond more actively to the open eye. At the same time, many of the inhibitory synapses disappeared and were later replaced by new synapses. Regulating the information network Inhibitory synapses are vital for the way networks function in the brain. “Think of the excitatory synapses as a road network, with traffic being guided from A to B, and the inhibitory synapses as the matrix signs that regulate the traffic,” explains research leader Christiaan Levelt. “The inhibitory synapses ensure an efficient flow of traffic in the brain. If they don’t, the system becomes overloaded, for example as in epilepsy; if they constantly indicate a speed of 20 kilometres an hour, then everything will grind to a halt, for example when an anaesthetic is administered. If you can move the signs to different locations, you can bring about major changes in traffic flows without having to entirely reroute the road network.” Brad Morris originally shared this post: Learning mechanism of the adult brain revealed They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Fortunately, this is not always true. Researchers have now discovered how the adult brain can adapt to new situations. Their study may be significant in…

Ward Plunet originally shared this post: Mapping the Flow of Musical Tastes Interesting mining of data from a social music site (last.fm). By tapping into the last.fm API, these Irish researchers modeled the geographic flow of musical influence. They were able to identify where certain tastes frequently originated, and draw a hierarchy of influential cities (like the chart shown above for North America). note – top ranked North American cities: Atlanta, Montreal, Toronto, Chicago. from original article (http://arxiv.org/pdf/1204.2677v1.pdf): _For us, the most surprising features of ?g. 3 are (1) the middle ranking positions of some of the largest cities, such as NYC and LA in ?g. 3a and NYC and Chicago in ?g. 3b and (2) the prominent position of Canadian cities, especially in ?g. 3b._ Using Data to Map Geographic Flow of… Using last.fm Data to Map Geographic Flow of Music By tapping into the last.fm API, these Irish researchers modeled the geographic flow of musical influence. They were able to identify where certain…..

“In one simple task, a plate of food was presented to the wolf pups (at 9 weeks) or to the dog puppies (both at 5 weeks and at 9 weeks). However, the food was inaccessible to the animals; human help would be required to access it. The trick to getting the food was simple: all the animals had to do was make eye contact with the experimenter, and he or she would reward the dog with the food from the plate. Initially, all the animals attempted in vain to reach the food. However, by the second minute of testing, dogs began to look towards the humans. This increased over time and by the fourth minute there was a statistical difference. Dogs were more likely to initiate eye contact with the human experimenter than the wolves were. This is no small feat; initiating eye contact with the experimenter requires that the animal refocus its attention from the food to the human. Not only did the wolf pups not spontaneously initiate eye contact with the human experimenter, but they also failed to learn that eye contact was the key to solving their problem.” Bora Zivkovic originally shared this post: Dogs, But Not Wolves, Use Humans As Tools | The Thoughtful Animal, Scientific American Blog Network Sometime between fifteen and thirty thousand years ago, probably in the Middle East, the long, protracted process of domestication began to alter the genetic code of … POST NAVIGATION