Fiona A new paper in Science [link]: Experimental Study of Inequality and Unpredictability in an Artificial Cultural Market by Salganik et al. In a web experiment, the researchers created an artificial database of music (from unknown bands) and allowed people to download songs after rating them. In some conditions, people could see which songs had been … Read more
sympatric speciation // hooke’s royal society notes // open peer reviews // scientific balance of power // artificial cultural market [an experimental entry mainly for my own benefit]
I dug out my PDA (a Visor Neo, in up-to-the-minute monochrome) this weekend and have just synched it all up with the Oyster1. My mac is probably having hissy fits about being attached to such an antique piece of technology, but it’s plenty good enough for the diary and contacts function, which is what I … Read more
The judges for FameLab are an impressive bunch of people!
Wow. The 1661-1682 minutes of The Royal Society were found in a Hampshire home and are up for auction at Bonhams on the 28th of March. They’re expected to fetch a million pounds, which the Royal Society doesn’t have. The unnamed family in whose home they were found didn’t know what they had, and claim … Read more
Two articles about peer reviewing from The Scientist: Is Peer Review Broken: a state-of-the-system report. The table with odds for publication is especially interesting, for a given value of interesting = argh. Truth or Myth: 3 common complaints about the peer review process examined. The discussion regarding signing reviews is thought-provoking: Nature journals let reviewers … Read more
That’ll be the newspaper taglines, at least. Behavioural inhibition in young children appears to be more frequent in blue-irised American children, and now in blond(er) German children. The putative link is made between melanocyte-stimulating hormones and cortisol (stress-related) stimulators as the underlying mechanism. Interesting stuff, and will no doubt be picked up on for its … Read more
Once upon a time I considered becoming an evolutionary bat biologist1. Bats are cool. They’re close to primates on the mammal phylogeny, they have interesting social systems, and some of them have astoundingly sophisticated echolocation systems. Gareth Jones and Emma Teeling have a paper in TREE: The evolution of echolocation in bats, discussing the phylogenetic … Read more
Of interest: 1. A modelling paper demonstrating the effects of the global airline network on the spread of epidemic diseases such as SARS. Colizza et al, abstract here. 2. Population genetics paper demonstrating the clustering of human genetic gradients in ancient centres of agricultural origin, and clustering near to coastlines. Amos & Manica, abstract here.
Re yesterday’s post: It’s an interesting essay. I think Science were right to reject it on the basis that it presented no positive suggestions for action. One could be left with only the message that the status quo is acceptable in some situations, if we accept that men and women bring different plates to the … Read more