Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, Ph.D.

I study people, technology, and the worlds they make

Category: Science (page 1 of 19)

Vision and the movement of fish from water to land

March 8, 2017 / / Comments Off on Vision and the movement of fish from water to land

Specimens at the California Academy of Sciences
Not a land-dwelling fish, by the way. Just a cool picture.

Ed Yong in The Atlantic writes about new research on the relationship between the evolution of vision and the movement of fish from water to land. Scientists have long known that some species of fish started hanging out near the shore, then venturing on land, and eventually living on land full-time, starting about 385 million years ago. During this process, Yong writes, “their flattened fins gradually transformed into sturdy legs, ending in feet and digits. Rather than paddling through water, they started striding over solid ground.”

Naturally the evolution of legs has gotten lots of attention among paleontologists, but in a new article, a team led by Northwestern University professor Malcolm MacIver argues that changes in vision played a very significant role in the transition, too. Continue reading

Something else to look forward to when the 1% get even more: Human sacrifice

June 8, 2016 / / Comments Off on Something else to look forward to when the 1% get even more: Human sacrifice

Anthropologists and historians have put forward the ‘social control hypothesis’ of human sacrifice. According to this theory, sacrificial rites served as a function for social elites. Human sacrifice is proposed to have been used by social elites to display their divinely sanctioned power, justify their status, and terrorise underclasses into obedience and subordination. Ultimately, human sacrifice could be used as a tool to help build and maintain systems of social inequality…. However, up until now, this idea had not been rigorously tested.

With my colleagues at the University of Auckland and elsewhere, we recently tested the social control hypothesis using a sample of 93 Austronesian-speaking cultures, and published our findings in Nature. The Austronesian family of cultures originated in Taiwan, developed outrigger canoes, and were some of the greatest ocean voyagers in human history. Thousands of years before the Viking sagas, the Austronesians had begun their great expansion, sailing west to Madagascar, east to Easter Island and south to Aotearoa – a total area covering more than half the world’s longitude….

We found strong support for the social control hypothesis: human sacrifice helped to build strictly inherited class systems, and prevented cultures from becoming more egalitarian. The overlap in religious and political authority allowed ritualised human sacrifice to be used by social elites to build and maintain social inequality. In Austronesian cultures, specialist religious knowledge, such as how to perform elaborate prayers or magic rituals, could be handed down through elite family lineages. In many c

Source: How human sacrifice helped to enforce social inequality | Aeon Ideas

The rubber-hand illusion can be produced by smartphones

June 6, 2016 / / Comments Off on The rubber-hand illusion can be produced by smartphones

It seems to be the stuff of pure fantasy: a hand made of rubber feels as if it belongs to the owner’s body. Although it is hardly conceivable, it is an illusion which is in fact well-known in the field of psychology – and one that can be produced in skillful experimental setups. Psychologists have now shown for the first time how test persons can also integrate their own smartphones into their bodily selves. This means that whether an object is felt to belong to the owner’s own body does not only depend on

Source: My Smartphone and I: Scientists show that rubber-hand illusion can be produced by smartphones: Experience in using it is important — ScienceDaily

Chocolate and “likes” activate the same parts of the teenage brain

June 6, 2016 / / Comments Off on Chocolate and “likes” activate the same parts of the teenage brain

The same brain circuits that are activated by eating chocolate and winning money are activated when teenagers see large numbers of “likes” on their own photos or the photos of peers in a social network, according to a first-of-its-kind UCLA study that scanned teens’ brains while using social media.

The 32 teenagers, ages 13-18, were told they were participating in a small social network similar to the popular photo-sharing app, Instagram. In an experiment at UCLA’s Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center, the researchers showed them 148 photographs on a computer screen for 12 minutes, including 40 photos that each teenager submitted, and analyzed their brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI. Each photo also displayed the number of likes it had supposedly received from other teenage participants — in reality, the number of likes was assigned by the researchers. (At the end of the procedure, the participants were told that the researchers decided on the number of likes a photo received.)

“When the teens saw their own photos with a large number of likes, we saw activity across a wide variety of regions in the brain,” said lead author Lauren Sherman, a researcher in the brain mapping center and the UCLA branch of the Children’s Digital Media Center, Los Angeles.

Source: Teenage brain on social media: Study sheds light on influence of peers and much more — ScienceDaily

Bare feet, better grades!

June 2, 2016 / / Comments Off on Bare feet, better grades!

This is really fascinating:

Schoolchildren who attend their lessons wearing no shoes are likely to obtain better grades and behave better than those who wear them, a decade-long academic research has revealed.

‘Shoeless’ children are more likely to arrive to school earlier, leave later and read more, according to new research by Bournemouth University.

Researchers have observed tens of thousands of children who leave their shoes outside the classroom and found that pupils are more engaged in their lessons, which in turn leads to better academic attainment.

Source: Schoolchildren with no shoes on ‘do better and behave better in the classroom’, research shows

The Astonishing Age of a Neanderthal Cave Construction Site - The Atlantic

May 31, 2016 / / Comments Off on The Astonishing Age of a Neanderthal Cave Construction Site - The Atlantic

Ed Yong describes recent work on an ancient cave, containing evidence of a built structure (maybe for ceremonial purposes) that turns out to be far older than scientists ever imagined.

A rock structure, built deep underground, is one of the earliest hominin constructions ever found.

Source: The Astonishing Age of a Neanderthal Cave Construction Site - The Atlantic

Persian Gulf cities are built with foreign labor on imported sand

June 28, 2014 / / Comments Off on Persian Gulf cities are built with foreign labor on imported sand

Sand is used in everything from silicon chips, to toothpaste, to glass, to buildings. It’s our most-used natural resource after water and air. Huge amounts of sand are used in construction— 200 tons to build a house, 3000 tons for a hospital, 30,000 tons for a kilometer of highway— but it turns out that it has to be the right kind of sand. This has led, incredibly, to a situation in which 3,500 Australian companies now export sand to the Middle East.

That’s right. Cities that are located on the edge of deserts are importing their sand from the Indian Ocean and Pacific, just like they’re importing their labor. Pretty mind-boggling.

Savina Venkova, a former intern at the Earth Policy Institute and future sustainable development scholar, writes about this strange situation, and its serious environmental consequences.

“We’re losing the stars”: on the disappearance of dark nights

March 13, 2014 / / Comments Off on “We’re losing the stars”: on the disappearance of dark nights

“Think about it this way: For 4.5 billion years, Earth has been a planet with a day and a night. Since the electric light bulb was invented, we’ve progressively lit up the night, and have gotten rid of it. Now 99 percent of the population lives under skies filled with light pollution.” -Astronomer Tyler Nordgren, quoted in "Falling in Love With the Dark"

“we feel too little of those creative emotions from which a good life springs”

August 13, 2012 / / Comments Off on “we feel too little of those creative emotions from which a good life springs”

From the conclusion of Bertrand Russell’s 1948 BBC Reith Lectures on “Authority and the Individual” (mp3, or transcript):

We know too much and feel too little. At least we feel too little of those creative emotions from which a good life springs. In regard to what is important we are passive; where we are active it is over trivialities.

Word.

“autism has played a significant role in crafting much of what we consider to be modern culture”

July 27, 2012 / / Comments Off on “autism has played a significant role in crafting much of what we consider to be modern culture”

Interesting article in Jezebel/io9 (choose your Gawker media outlet) about autism and its growing influence in high-tech culture:

autism has played a significant role in crafting much of what we consider to be modern culture — from the music and books we read, to the technological devices we all take for granted. The acceptance of radically different ways of thinking, it turns out, can be seen as an integral part of a rich and diverse overarching culture….

The signs of autism’s reach are beginning to been seen virtually everywhere. People on the spectrum are driving the creation of alternative forms of expression, new businesses and institutions, and cutting-edge technologies. “And not only do they make these things comfortable for themselves,” noted [wired author Steve] Silberman, “they’re useful for all of us.”

Whole piece is worth reading.

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