Clipmarks | abailart's 'complexity' clips

Friendship: The Laws of Attraction

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 10:45:24 GMT

clipped by: Xeneri
clipper's remarks: Friendship: The Laws of Attraction
The conventional wisdom is that we choose friends because of who they are. But it turns out that we actually love them because of the way they support who we are.
By:Karen Karbo

Clip Source: www.psychologytoday.com

Built To Last: How To Stay Friends

From young adulthood onward, our notion of what makes a good friendship changes very little, but our capacity to maintain one does. It's a poignant reality; we know what it means to be and have friends, but after we graduate from college and go our separate ways—launching our careers, getting married, having children, getting divorced, caring for aging parents—we're often unable to muster the time and energy to maintain friendships we profess to value. Like anything else in life, if we want to remain friends with someone, it requires a little work. Simply put, we must show up.

According to Marquette University psychologist Debra Oswald, who has studied the nature and complexity of high school "best" friendships, there are four basic behaviors necessary to maintain the bond. And they hold true whether we're 17 or 70.

Communication facilitates the first two essential behaviors: self-disclosure and supportiveness, both necessary for intimacy. We must be willing to extend ourselves, to share our lives with our friends, to keep them abreast of what's going on with us. Likewise, we need to listen to them and offer support.

Interaction is the third essential in tending to a friendship. You've got to write, you've got to call, you've got to visit. Find the nearest Starbucks and take time to catch up. "The specific activity doesn't matter," says Oswald. "The important thing is to interact."

The last and most elusive behavior necessary for keeping friends is being positive. Social psychologists tout the necessity of self-disclosure, but that doesn't mean an unrestricted license to vent. At the end of the day, the intimacy that makes a friendship thrive must be an enjoyable one, for the more rewarding a friendship, the more we feel good about it, the more we're willing to expend the energy it takes to keep it alive.

Tags: friendship, friends, life, relationships, psychology, behavior, lifehacks, health, mind, advice

The Mathematical Lives of Plants

Mon, 07 May 2007 00:43:06 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks:

The seeds of a sunflower, the spines of a cactus, and the bracts of a pine cone all grow in whirling spiral patterns. Remarkable for their complexity and beauty, they also show consistent mathematical patterns that scientists have been striving to understand.
...
Scientists have puzzled over this pattern of plant growth for hundreds of years. Why would plants prefer the golden angle to any other? And how can plants possibly "know" anything about Fibonacci numbers?

For the first time, scientists have found convincing biochemical mechanisms responsible for the interlocking spiral growth patterns seen in many plants. (The Romanesco broccoli plant is a striking example.) The video of the experiment with magnetized liquid iron droplets demonstrates how the geometry of such growth could occur in nature.

Clip Source: www.sciencenews.org

Each yellow nub in the center of this daisy is actually its own miniature flower, complete with a full set of reproductive organs. The buds form interlocking clockwise and counterclockwise spirals.
Scott Hotton

The golden angle is the angle subtended by the smaller (red) arc when two arcs that make up a circle are in the golden ratio.
Wikipedia

This sunflower has 21 clockwise and 34 counterclockwise spirals.
Scott Hotton

Plants form new seeds or buds from the center. In this picture, the circle labeled 1 would be the most recent bud. The circle labeled 2 would have been formed just previously, and it forms the golden angle with bud 1

An image of the tip of a Norway spruce branch, viewed through an electron microscope, shows small buds that are primordial. In this case, they will eventually turn into needles. The primordia form at the tip and then move outward and downward.
R. Rutishauser

This cactus, a Mammilaria moellerana, has golden-angle spirals.
Eleanor Farrington

Tags: math, plants, biology, symmetry, sprial, science, nature, geometry, fibonacci, patterns

Best Science Images of 2007

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 03:36:56 GMT

clipped by: bioplasmik

Clip Source: news.nationalgeographic.com

September 27, 2007—A striking image of seaweed shows the complexity of even the simplest organisms.

Seen here is Irish moss—Chondrus crispus—a common Atlantic red alga that is routinely harvested for its carrageenan. The chemical is used as a thickener in many processed foods.

Clip Source: news.nationalgeographic.com

It may look like a strange insect , but this is actually a CT image revealing the delicate structures underlying the human nose.

Clip Source: news.nationalgeographic.com

Metal with the consistency of ribbon garnered engineering graduate student Adam Siegel and chemist George M. Whitesides of Harvard University an honorable mention in the photography category of the 2007 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge.

Clip Source: news.nationalgeographic.com

A still image from a 3-D animation shows how nicotine stimulates nerve impulses to the pleasure center of the brain.

Clip Source: news.nationalgeographic.com

Understanding even basic geometrical transformations can be difficult—unless you get a little perspective.

Tags: science

The Anasazi mystery

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 19:32:01 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

about 30 miles east of Tucson, the ancient stone ruin archaeologists call the Davis Ranch Site doesn’t seem to fit in. Staring back from the opposite bank, the tumbled walls of Reeve Ruin are just as surprising

Some 700 years ago, as part of a vast migration, a people called the Anasazi, driven by God knows what, wandered from the north to form settlements like these, stamping the land with their own unique style

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

These Anasazi newcomers

were distinctive in other ways. They liked to build with stone

Why, in the late 13th century, did thousands of Anasazi abandon Kayenta, Mesa Verde and the other magnificent settlements of the Colorado Plateau and move south into Arizona and New Mexico?

Looking beyond climate change, some archaeologists are studying the effects of warfare and the increasing complexity of Anasazi society. They are looking deeper into ancient artifacts and finding hints of an ideological struggle, clues to what was going through the Anasazi mind.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

A New Kind of Science - Stephen Wolfram (Lecture)

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 18:23:46 GMT

clipped by: Djiezes
clipper's remarks: worth watching,

on cellular automata, complexity, randomness, nature, mathematics, science, biology, natural selection, networks, space-time, physics, causality, relativity, determinism, quantum mechanics, computational irreducibility, ...
(not necessarily in that order)

His book is freely available online: http://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/toc.html

(see also The Nature of Code)

Clip Source: video.google.com

[Video]

A New Kind of Science - Stephen Wolfram

Noted scientist Stephen Wolfram shares his perspective of how the unexpected results of simple computer experiments have forced him to ... all » consider a whole new way of looking at processes in our universe. Series: "Frontiers of Knowledge" [Science] «

Tags: video, google video, wolfram, stephen wolfram, science, programming, complexity, nature, mathematics, math

Mirrors Don’t Lie.. : -)

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 07:34:05 GMT

clipped by: einbar
clipper's remarks: “When people are made to be self-aware, they are likelier to stop and think about what they are doing,” Dr. Bodenhausen said. “A byproduct of that awareness may be a shift away from acting on autopilot toward more desirable ways of behaving.” Physical self-reflection, in other words, encourages philosophical self-reflection, a crash course in the Socratic notion that you cannot know or appreciate others until you know yourself. "

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

For the aging narcissist of Shakespeare’s 62nd sonnet, the mirror delivered a much-needed whack to his vanity, the sight of a face “beated and chopp’d with tann’d antiquity” underscoring the limits of self-love.

To scientists, the simultaneous simplicity and complexity of mirrors make them powerful tools for exploring questions about perception and cognition in humans and other neuronally gifted species, and how the brain interprets and acts upon the great tides of sensory information from the external world.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

How can we be so self-delusional when the truth stares back at us? “Although we do indeed see ourselves in the mirror every day, we don’t look exactly the same every time,”

“Which image is you?”

“Our research shows that people, on average, resolve that ambiguity in their favor, forming a representation of their image that is more attractive than they actually are.”

Multimedia

Graphic

Mirror Images

natural architecture

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 15:12:43 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.designboom.com

the natural environment still manages to fill us with a sense
of awe and amazement. despite the amount of scientific
knowledge mankind has gathered, nature still holds great
mysteries that we may never be able to unravel.
this complexity has continually daunted man. in frustration, we
try to control nature by enforcing order. as a result,
we have distanced ourselves from the earth, even though
our survival is completely dependent on it. we are now trying
to regain our close connection to nature.

Tags: natural architecture, photo, land art

The Evolution of Evolution: how culture changes genes

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 08:38:38 GMT

clipped by: abailart
clipper's remarks: Not, as stated, a new idea: been around a long time in complexity theory, and quantum consciousness theory, for instance. This is a short, pithy statement of the claim, read it in a couple of minutes.

Clip Source: www.slate.com

Now we're in the midst of the next mutation in evolutionary theory: Human evolution didn't slow as we advanced from nature to culture. It accelerated and changed. Culture, born of natural selection, became natural selection's driving force.

This is the message of a new study of the human genome. If true, it radically complicates the debate between nature and nurture. The question is no longer simply whether our genes are the source of civilization, but whether they're also its product.

Organisms evolve in response to changing environments. This can lead, paradoxically, to the evolution of traits that change the environment. Once that happens, the process becomes dialectical, and its speed increases, because culture changes more rapidly than nature does.

Much of what now passes for "natural selection" isn't exactly natural. It's social.

It may be true that today's God a human creation. But so, in a way, is today's evolution.

Humans Can Only Think About Four Things At Once

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 12:54:49 GMT

clipped by: splendidus
clipper's remarks: My built-in limit is certainly one, and two at the utmost.

Clip Source: www.informationweek.com

Researchers at the University of Oregon have concluded that the human brain has a built-in limit on the number of discrete thoughts it can entertain at one time. The limit for most individuals is four, according to the research team led by University of Oregon psychology professors Edward Awh and Edward Vogel.

The multitasking cap is not affected by the complexity of one's thoughts. Surprisingly, as many complex concepts can be retained in short-term memory as simple thoughts, the researchers found.

That makes the human brain dissimilar to an electronic gadget

link between short-term memory capacity and intelligence. "People with high IQs can think about more things at once," according to the study.

The results were recently published in the journal Psychological Science.

Tags: brain, multitasking

6 iconoclastic discoveries about the brain

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 10:02:06 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: let go of the dogma

Clip Source: scienceblogs.com

Neuroscience, like all other branches of science, is fraught with dogmatic ideas about its subject matter. A number of principles have emerged, principles that have been regarded as fundamental to our understanding of brain function.

But the human brain is an organ of bewildering complexity - it is often referred to as the most complex object in the known universe - which doesn't give up its secrets easily. After 100 years of scientific investigation, we still know very little about it.

Dogma 1:

The adult human brain is not plastic.

Dogma 2: The adult human brain cannot regenerate

Dogma 3:

Neurons are the functional elements of the nervous system

Dogma 4:

Neurotransmitters are released from the nerve terminal

Dogma 5:

Neurons are binary switches.

Dogma 6:

Neurons communicate with each other by propagating action potentials

Tags: brain, discoveries, neuroscience, clipversity

Evolution Beyond Darwin — Way Beyond

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 11:06:53 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.wired.com

Highly complex honeybee communities are one example of phenomena that some scientists think can't be explained by the mainstream theory of evolution alone, but instead by a theory of self-organization.
Courtesy AlainB/Flickr

Nearly 150 years after Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, evolution has been widely accepted by scientists -- and, except for a few religious dogmatic types, the public -- as the blueprint for the engine of life.

But not every scientist thinks that evolution as it's now understood and applied is complete. They want to scale it up to the level of populations, even whole ecosystems. Moreover, they say evolution is intertwined with other dynamics that science is just starting to understand.

"The process of evolution is fundamental to the universe. Biology is the most obvious manifestation of it," said Carl Woese, a legendary microbiologist and one of the first proponents of this newly revised evolutionary framework.

Tags: complexity, evolution, darwin

Importance of Teaching Evolution Noted

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 11:09:11 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: news.wired.com

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Scientific advisers to the government emphasize in a report the importance of teaching evolution in public schools.

The report by the National Academy of Sciences and its Institute of Medicine follows up on similar past publications, the last of which came out in 1999. The new document includes recently discovered evidence supporting evolution, including an important fossil find.

The report released Thursday also takes swipes at creationism and other anti-evolution views.

"Despite the lack of scientific evidence for creationist positions, some advocates continue to demand that various forms of creationism be taught together with or in place of evolution in science classes," the report says.

Intelligent design holds that the universe's order and complexity are so great that evolution cannot explain it.

Tags: evolution, education

New Research On Octopuses Sheds Light On Memory

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:39:13 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: It is not completely understood how these two systems are interconnected, if at all. However, the organization in the octopus demonstrates a sophistication that was not described yet in other animals. In the octopus, the short-term and long-term systems are working in parallel, but not independently. This is so because the long-term memory area -- in addition to its capacity to store long-term memories -- also regulates the rate at which the short-term memory system acquires short-term memories. This regulatory mechanism is probably useful in cases where faster learning is significant for the octopus' survival in emergency or risky situations.

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

Research on octopuses has shed new light on how our brains store and recall memory,

Why octopuses?

Octopuses and other related creatures, known as cephalopods, are considered to be the most intelligent invertebrates because they have relatively large brains and they can be trained for various learning and memory tasks, says Dr. Hochner.

Their behavior repertoire and learning and memory abilities are even comparable in their complexity to those of advanced vertebrates. However, they are still invertebrate mollusks with brains that contain a much fewer number of nerve cells and much simpler anatomical organization than that of vertebrate brains. This unique constellation was utilized to tackle one of the most interesting questions in modern neuroscience, which is how the brain stores and recalls memories

Tags: octopuse, memory

The Psychology of Conservatism

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 09:47:41 GMT

clipped by: abailart
clipper's remarks: But of course, 'liberalism' is a mental illness.

Clip Source: blogs.psychologytoday.com

We are talking about someone full of fear, with a poor sense of self, and a lack of mental dexterity. I always tell my students that tolerance of ambiguity is one especially excellent mark of psychological maturity. It isn’t a black and white world. According to the research, conservatives possess precisely the opposite: an intolerance of ambiguity and an inability to deal with complexity.

A meta-analysis culled from 88 samples in 12 countries

revealed that “several psychological variables predicted political conservatism.”

Death anxiety, system instability, dogmatism/intolerance of ambiguity, closed-mindedness, low tolerance of uncertainty, high needs for order, structure, and closure, low integrative complexity, fear of threat and loss, and low self-esteem. The researchers conclude, a little chillingly, that “the core ideology of conservatism stresses resistance to change and a justification of inequality

Tags: humour

Building 'The Matrix'

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 12:57:09 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: Feynman envisioned, a general purpose, programmable quantum computer could itself carry out quantum simulations. But such machines are still decades away, most researchers say, while machines designed only for quantum simulations may become available sooner.

Clip Source: www.sciencenews.org

Simulating the complexity of quantum physics would quickly overwhelm even the most advanced of today’s computers.

If The Matrix really existed, it would probably have to be a quantum simulator. The fictional computer in that story can create virtual worlds indistinguishable from the real one and project them into people’s minds. But the real world includes quantum phenomena, something ordinary computers can’t fully simulate.

Now physicists have created a rudimentary prototype of a machine that simulates quantum phenomena using quantum physics, rather than using data kept in a classical computer. While the new device can't make people fly like the Matrix does, it demonstrates a technique that could enable physicists to create, in the virtual world, materials that don't yet exist in nature and perhaps figure out how to build, in the real world, superconductors that work at room temperature, for example.

Tags: complexity, quantum mechanics, matrix