So this week it’s the food crisis, then neuroscience and anthropology, and finally language. Enjoy.
I will be on vacation next week, so won’t post the Wed round up until Saturday August 8th. So you’ll just have to wait a couple days while we’re camping.
Top of the List
Vaughan Bell, A War of Algorithms
Mind Hacks provides overview and commentary on the latest in artificial intelligence and the potential to wreak war and the need for limitations
Adam Henne, Whale Relations
Looks like a good new blog by an anthropology, Nature/Culture, with a focus on the environment and anthropology. I had wanted to discuss this recent NY Times magazine piece on whales. Adam did it for me.
Peter Deeley, The Religious Brain: Turning Ideas into Convictions
Scribd article looking at how cultural beliefs actually work their impact on specific people
Kay Redfield Jamison, The Importance of Restlessness and Jagged Edges
The psychologist and author of An Unquiet Mind shares her This I Believe: “I believe that curiosity, wonder, and passion are defining qualities of imaginative minds and great teachers; that restlessness and discontent are vital things; and that intense experience and suffering instruct us in ways less intense emotions can never do.”
Ed Yong, Your Brain on Oprah and Saddam (and what that says about Halle Berry and your grandmother)
Or even the researcher himself – he found a neuron that responded specifically to him during the research, despite having never met the volunteer previously. But really, the change is from the idea of a single neuron encoding singular info to groups of neurons encoding info through patterns of activity
The Food Crisis
-Many thanks to Craig Hadley for highlighting these selections-
Grain, The Other “Pandemic”
It’s not just the financial crisis and swine flu sweeping the world – the food crisis is killing a lot more people
Bapu Vaitla et al., Seasonal Hunger: A Neglected Problem with Proven Solutions
PLoS Medicine article about what we can do about the main cause of acute hunger and undernutrition, seasonal shortages due to dwindling stocks, high prices, or scarce jobs
Neuroanthropology 