Wednesday Round Up #61

So after the favs, it’s some evolution (hobbits and phalluses, anyone?), then anthro and neuro, onto education and finishing off with some stuff on Colombia. Enjoy!

Top of the List
fibroblast-and-nanowires
Courtney Humphries, Untangling the Brain: From Neuron to Mind
Feature article from Harvard Magazine which addresses the question, “how do individual neurons link to one another in networks that somehow result in complex brain functions?”
The striking picture at right leads off the article, and shows a human fibroblast on a bed of nanowires. They also have some good online videos about simple creatures and how they navigate the world.

Roberto Casati, Book Review: The Art Instinct by Dennis Dutton
Culture & Cognition takes on the claims of art by evolution while preserving sympathy for the overall evolutionary effort. For the fun version, see Colbert’s interview with Dutton – art for propagation!

Heather Tompkins, Derek Albeck
Street Art! Skulls meets urban portraiture! Hat-tip to Sue!

The Neurocritic, Neural Correlates of Admiration and Compassion and Envy and Schadenfreude
Both critical and informative on the blow-up of novel research and media sensationalism

Declan Butler, Web Usage Data Outline Map of Knowledge
Pdf of a recent Nature News piece – here’s what impressed me about this take on the PLoS paper, “A striking difference in the usage maps is that journals in the humanities and social sciences figure much more prominently than in citation-based maps. Along with journals in some other fields, such as psychology and the environment, they also emerge as gateways between clusters that are otherwise poorly connected, and so act as key bridges between disciplines.”

Evolution

Continue reading “Wednesday Round Up #61”

Anthropology on Cambridge DSpace

dspace-anthropology
One of our readers, Laurence (thanks!), pointed out a great resource yesterday, Cambridge DSpace (Digital Space), the university’s “institutional repository… to facilitate the deposit of digital content of a scholarly or heritage nature.”

Laurence sent us the link for all the video lectures and other materials under “Department of Social Anthropology” at Cambribge. These resources include interviews with a wide range of scholars, from Paul Rabinow to Colin Renfrew and Simon Schaeffer and many others. This section shows 471 results, so plenty to explore.

There is a whole range of intellectual communities on Cambridge DSpace, from horse paleopathology (only 1 item, but still I had to mention it!) to the Literary and Linguistic Computing Centre. The Department of Economics has their collection of working papers up, including this 2004 one on bounded rationality and neural networks. But it really seems that the Department of Social Anthropology has taken the greatest advantage of DSpace, so go explore.

What Is Social Anthropology? by Alan Macfarlane

I found the following video quite good – rather like getting to sit down in a tutorial and listen to a master speak. Your tutor is Alan Macfarlane, professor in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge.

If you’re interested in comparing the master class to the group document, here’s the Wikipedia entry on social anthropology.

Macfarlane’s most recent book is Letters to Lily: On How the World Works, where he brings together his work as historian and anthropologist to answer his granddaughter’s questions, What is love? Why are families so difficult? How do we get justice? How well does democracy work? Who is God? What makes us individuals? And why are we here in the first place?

You can get the full list of questions and some background and a taste of how he answers the questions at Macfarlane’s website.

Macfarlane has written many books, including The Glass Bathyscape: How Glass Changed the World (publishing in the US as Glass: A World History), written with Gerry Martin. The two published a synopsis of the book in Science, Beyond the Ivory Tower: The World of Glass. Macfarlance has also provided us a set of video clips on glass, its making and uses, which highlight the conclusion to the Science piece:

“The different applications of glass are all interconnected–windows improved working conditions, spectacles lengthened working life, stained glass added to the fascination and mystery of light and, hence, a desire to study optics. The rich set of interconnections of this largely invisible substance have made glass both fascinating and powerful, a molten liquid that has shaped our world.”

Also, with a hat-tip to Kerim at Savage Minds, Macfarlane has interviewed an extraordinary range of social scientists in his “Ancestors” page, from Frederick Barth to Roy Wagner, with full audiovisual files available.

Wednesday Round Up #60

Besides the normal, neuro (enhancing!) and anthro, there’s a round-up on stuff related to addictions – drug war controversy, video games, sex, social learning, and even some contingent incentives for treatment.

Top

The Neurocritic, The Neurology of Twitter
Oh you critic you! See, I did it in 140 characters. Well, less!

Christine Rosen, It’s Not Theft, It’s Pastiche
The Wall Street Journal reviews the new book, My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture, by my great colleague Susan Blum, on routine plagiarism by students and the college culture that helps make sense of that

Strange Maps, US States Renamed for Countries with Similar GDPs
Thanks to Paul Mason and his dad for this one. The US is 50 countries in one – and now there is a map that shows off the economics of it.

Eugene Raikhel, Ian Hacking on Commercial Genome-Reading
Somatosphere provides a good overview on an on-going Net discussion from some heavy hitters. And the NY Times just reported that Genes Show Limited Value in Predicting Diseases

American Anthropological Association, April AN Addresses Visual Ethics and Multisensory/Multimedia Anthro
The latest Anthropology News, and for once you can just get the pdfs online.

Neuro

Margaret Talbot, Brain Gain: The Underground World of “Neuroenhancing” Drugs
The New Yorker on this emerging synergy of demand, competition, self and neuro-medicine. For some good commentary, see Mind Hacks.

Continue reading “Wednesday Round Up #60”