Clipmarks | haraya's Research collection

Culture Machine: Generating Research in Culture & Theory

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 11:20:18 GMT

clipped by: haraya
clipper's remarks:

The aim of Culture Machine is to seek out and promote the most provocative of new work, and analyses of that work, in culture and theory from a diverse range of international authors. Culture Machine is particularly concerned to promote research which is engaged in the constitution of new areas of inquiry and the opening of new frontiers of cultural and theoretical activity. It is also committed to the generation of possibilities for new scholarship and research.

Clip Source: culturemachine.tees.ac.uk

Culture Machine is a series of experiments in culture and theory.

Clip Source: culturemachine.tees.ac.uk

The Journal

CULTURE MACHINE 9 (2007)
Recordings

Edited by
Paul Hegarty and Gary Genosko

Editorial Recordings

Eugene Thacker Pulse Demons

Greg Hainge Vinyl is Dead, Long Live Vinyl: The Work of Recording and Mourning in the Age of Digital Reproduction

Paul Hegarty The Hallucinatory Life of Tape

Jérôme Hansen Mapping the Studio (Fat Chance Matmos): Sonic Culture, Visual Arts and the Artist's Studio

Gary Genosko 8 Track Rhapsody

Ross Harley and Andrew Murphie Rhythms and Refrains: A Brief History of Australian Electronica

Dan Hays Painting in the Light of Digital Reproduction

Clip Source: culturemachine.tees.ac.uk

Issue 1 (1999) Taking Risks With The Future

Issue 2 (2000) The University Culture Machine

Issue 3 (2001) Virologies: Culture and Contamination

Issue 4 (2002) The Ethico-Political Issue

Issue 5 (2003) The e-Issue

Issue 6 (2004) Deconstruction is/in Cultural Studies

Issue 7 (2005) Biopolitics

Issue 8 (2006) Community

Tags: resources, culture, studies, theory, papers, discussion, ideas

Scientists say menstrual blood can repair hearts

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 17:26:02 GMT

clipped by: haraya

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

TOKYO (AFP) - The monthly discomfort many women see as a curse could pay off someday as Japanese researchers say menstrual blood can be used to repair heart damage.

Scientists obtained menstrual blood from nine women and cultivated it for about a month, focusing on a kind of cell that can act like stem cells.

Some 20 percent of the cells began beating spontaneously about three days after being put together in vitro with cells from the hearts of rats. The cells from menstrual blood eventually formed sheet-like heart-muscle tissue.

The success rate is 100 times higher than the 0.2-0.3 percent for stem cells taken from human bone marrow, according to Shunichiro Miyoshi, a cardiologist at Keio University's school of medicine, who is involved in the research.

Separate in-vivo experiments showed that the condition of rats who had suffered heart attacks improved after they received the cells derived from menstrual blood.

Miyoshi said women may eventually be able to use their own menstrual blood

Tags: blood, women, science, research, health, heart, cells, medicine, biology, body

Which Existed First: God or the Human Imagination?

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 10:36:16 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

French-British anthropologist, Maurice Bloch, of the London School of Economics believes that humans alone practice religion because they're the only creatures to have evolved imagination. The development of imagination occurred at the time of the Upper Palaeolithic 'revolution' 40-50,000 years ago. Bloch challenges the popular notion that religion evolved and spread because it promoted social bonding, as has been argued by some anthropologists.

According to Bloch's theory, initially humans had to develop the essential brain architecture to imagine things and beings that don't exist physically, and the possibility that people somehow survive on after their death.

Once this was acquired, we had access to a form of social interaction unavailable to any other creatures on the planet. Exclusively, humans could use what Bloch calls the "transcendental social" to unite with groups, such as nations and clans, or even with imaginary groups such as the dead

Tags: imagination, social, brain

The Limits of Memory: We Can Only Remember Four Things at a Time

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 10:20:28 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

New research in to our minds capabilities to retain knowledge has shed light on a question that has been discussed for many years; how much, can our mind remember, at a time?

The study focused on ‘working memory’, that part of our mind which refers to the temporary storage of information that still allows us to pay attention and manipulate it. Some believe that working memory is separate to any of our other memory storages, many believe that working memory is simply that part of our long-term memory that we can currently access.

Research originally suggested that our working memory cut off point was around the seven items mark. However scientists are revising that idea, when adding the limitation of no memory tricks, such as repeating items over and over or grouping them together.

"The information you can hold in your mind at one time is the information you can interrelate. If you have a better working memory we believe that your problem-solving abilities are better."

Tags: intelligence, memory, 4?, 7?, mind

Face Value

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 14:06:51 GMT

clipped by: haraya
clipper's remarks: More studies at the source.

Clip Source: www.economist.com

The ugly are one of the few groups against whom it is still legal to discriminate. Unfortunately for them, there are good reasons why beauty and success go hand in hand

There is a feedback loop between biology and the social environment that gives to those who have, and takes from those who have not.

That happens because beauty is a real marker for other, underlying characteristics such as health, good genes and intelligence. It is what biologists call an unfakeable signal

That brings the beautiful opportunities denied to the ugly, which allows them to learn things and make connections that increase their value still further. If they are judged on that experience as well as their biological fitness, it makes them even more attractive. Even a small initial difference can thus be amplified into something that just ain't—viewed from the bottom—fair.

But can you really fake the unfakeable signal?

research suggests that you can but, sadly, that it is not cost-effective

Tags: perception, research, career, beauty, performance, genetics, assessment, study, society, discrimination

Eight of the funniest research projects ever

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 12:16:59 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.cosmosmagazine.com

SYDNEY: Strange things are done in the name of research and the more memorable are commemorated by the Ig Nobel prizes, brainchild of the Annals of Improbable Research magazine, which aims to honour achievements that make people laugh and then think.

RODENT JETSETTERS

How does a hamster feel when you simulate jetlag?

SURPRISING FLAVOUR

Vanilla can come from the most unlikely of sources.

for developing a way to extract vanillin from cow faeces. Why cow dung? It's cheaper

FLAT BEER

How many mathematicians do you need to watch beer go flat? Just the one

the observation will lead to a proof that beer froth obeys the law of exponential decay

REINVENTING THE WHEEL

I REALLY, REALLY LOVE YOU

It might be roses and moonlight to you, but to your friends, obsession with your new love may seem more like a disease

MURPHY'S TOAST

Does toast more often land buttered-side down?

SMELLY FEET

It might be sweat and bacteria, but the main factor in how bad your feet smell is how you feel about them

HAPPY CLAMS

Tags: strange, research, projects

"Dumber in English"

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 14:58:23 GMT

clipped by: haraya
clipper's remarks:

Biophysicist and author Stefan Klein wants to ensure the future of German as a language of science. Our academic language is on the verge of atrophy, he says.
...
Anyone who only encounters scientific research in a foreign language pays a heavy price, even if he is a master of the idiom. "We are dumber in English" – this was the conclusion that researchers came to in Sweden and the Netherlands, where children were introduced to English on their first day of school. Lectures in English are part of every subject, but nevertheless, the test results are about ten percent lower on average than in courses taught in the mother tongue. In English seminars, students ask and answer fewer questions; they give the overall impression of being somewhat more helpless. Neither students nor teachers are generally aware of the problem, because they all overestimate their expertise in English.

The entire article is interesting.

Clip Source: www.signandsight.com

Five hundred hears ago, Luca Pacioli, a pioneer of modern mathematics and accounting, bade farewell to Latin as the language of contemporary science. Galileo Galilei followed suit, 100 years later.

a significant part of their contribution was in creating new terminologies for their new ideas, in the vernacular. Knowledge was to be accessible for all.

Today, scientists are headed towards a reversal of Pacioli's revolution. But how do they expect to win the sympathy of a public with which they no longer even have language in common? And will we soon reach a point where we no longer can discuss the results of new research in German because we can't find the vocabulary? Society is threatening to split: On one side will be those who employ an elite language, and on the other, all those who miss out on the latest developments. So the issue of whether German remains a language for science is not merely a question of national pride. It has to do with something far more momentous: democracy.

Tags: language, understanding, vernacular, science, communication, education, german, english

The new age of ignorance

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 11:35:36 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: observer.guardian.co.uk

It is an immutable law of nature that acute embarrassment can make a few short seconds last pretty much for ever. The longest two minutes of my life occurred in the company of James Watson, one half of the famous double act who discovered the double helix. I was interviewing Watson, then in his late seventies, at his lab in Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island. At one point, I referred blithely to the 'perfect simplicity' of his and Francis Crick's findings about the code of life.

What followed - a tangled, stuttering stream of consciousness reflecting distant O-level biology and recent half-understanding of Watson's brilliant books, punctuated with words like 'replication' and 'mutation' and meaning nothing much - gave new resonance to the notion of floundering.

Watson, resisting the temptation to laugh, correct or comment, simply moved on, having categorically established our respective levels of evolution.

Tags: science, culture, ignorance

List of German Expressions in English

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 04:14:44 GMT

clipped by: haraya

Clip Source: en.wikipedia.org

This is a list of German expressions used in English; some relatively common (e.g. hamburger), most comparatively rare. In many cases, the German borrowing in English has assumed a meaning substantially different than its German forebear.

1 German terms commonly used in English

1.1 Food and drink
1.2 Sports and recreation
1.3 Other aspects of everyday life

2 German terms common in English academic context

2.1 Academia
2.2 Architecture
2.3 Arts
- 2.3.1 Theatre
2.4 Biology
2.5 Economics
2.6 Geography
2.7 Geology
2.8 History
2.9 Linguistics
2.10 Literature
2.11 Mathematics and formal logic
2.12 Medicine
2.13 Music
2.14 Philosophy
2.15 Physical sciences
2.16 Politics
2.17 Psychology
2.18 Sociology
2.19 Theology

3 German terms mostly used for literary effect

4 German terms rarely used in English

5 Quotations

6 Music

Tags: language, english, german, list, linguistics, literature, resource, vocabulary

Rigveda selected for UNESCO's Memory of the World

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 18:41:33 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.pib.nic.in

The Rig Veda manuscripts from Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune, have been selected for inscription in UNESCO’s “Memory of the World” Register 2007. The programme for the Memory of the World was started in UNESCO fifteen years back to honour significant landmarks in the documentary heritage and record them in its “Memory of the World Register” as world’s inheritance. The Memory of the World programme seeks to guard against collective amnesia, calling upon the preservation of the valuable archival holdings and library collections all over the world, ensuring their wide dissemination. The National Mission for Manuscripts of the Ministry of Culture submitted the nomination on behalf of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. The documentary heritage reflects the diversity of languages, peoples and cultures. So far, India has had three other nominations inscribed on the Register

Tags: india, hinduism, culture, scripture, religious

The process of positive deconstruction

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 02:34:35 GMT

clipped by: willhelm

Clip Source: www.bethinking.org

1. Identifying the worldview

Most people seem unaware of the worldviews they have absorbed, which now underlie their beliefs and values. That is why it is so rare for people to articulate a worldview. Normally they will simply express a belief or live in a certain way, without knowing or even thinking about the worldview from which their belief or behaviourderives.

2. Analysing the worldview

Essentially, we have to ask, ‘Is it true?’ To do this I find it best to employ the three standard philosophical tests of truth – the coherence, correspondence and pragmatic tests.

3. Affirming the truth

this has nothing to do with reaching others; it is to stop us from backing off into error ourselves. Whether we like it or not, other worldviews contain truth.

4. Discovering the error

When we analyse a worldview using the three criteria of truth, we are attempting not only to affirm truth but also to discover those errors.

Tags: worldview, thinking, truth, logic, philosophy

Save the languages, save the world

Fri, 04 May 2007 22:37:56 GMT

clipped by: bignosemousie
clipper's remarks: Linguistic integrity is as important to our survival as a species as environmentalism. Check out the source to see why. Many resources and information at www.terralingua.org.

Clip Source: www.terralingua.org

As with biological species, languages and cultures naturally evolve and change over time. But just as with species, the world is now undergoing a massive human-made extinction crisis of languages and cultures.

People who lose their linguistic and cultural identity may lose an essential element in a social process that commonly teaches respect for nature and understanding of the natural environment and its processes. Forcing this cultural and linguistic conversion on indigenous and other traditional peoples not only violates their human rights, but also undermines the health of the world's ecosystems and the goals of nature conservation.

Tags: linguistics, language, science, biodiversity, anthropology, biology, charity

Advanced Stone Age Culture Discovered in China

Fri, 04 May 2007 19:00:37 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks:

Technologically they were very similar to European Mousterian cultures, which were characterized by flint flake tools dating from 70,000 to 32,000 BC and named after archaeological finds in the cave of Le Moustier, Dordogne, France. The Levalloisian technique describes the flaking method and is named after the French town of Levallois-Perret where it was identified.

Clip Source: www.chinadaily.com.cn

Stone Age site yields evidence of advanced culture

Chinese archaeologists say they have uncovered strong evidence that Stone Age people in southern East Asia were at least as technologically advanced as their European cousins -- challenging the long-standing theory of "two cultures".

Excavations at the Dahe Stone Age site, in southwest China's Yunnan Province, had revealed elaborate stone tools and instruments that rivaled those of the Mousterian culture that existed at that time in Europe, said Ji Xueping, chief archaeologist at the site.

Dated as 36,000 to 44,000 years old, the Dahe site has since 1998 yielded cores -- stones or flints from which flakes had been removed -- including Levalloisian tortoiseshell-shaped and cylindrical blade cores,semicircular scrapers,end scrapers, denticulations (evenly spaced rectangular blocks set in a row), Mousterian-type points and beak-shaped stones.

Tags: archaeology, anthropology, stone age, civilization, china, science

The World's Worst Sound?

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 04:42:53 GMT

clipped by: haraya

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

1. Vomiting
2. Microphone feedback
3. Wailing babies
4. Train scraping on tracks
5. Squeaky seesaw
6. Poorly played violin
7. Whoopee cushion
8. Argument in a soap opera
9. Mains hum
10. Tasmanian devil

The study, set up by Trevor Cox, a professor of acoustic engineering at Salford University, sought opinions on 34 sounds at the website www.sound101.org in the hope of learning what makes certain noises so objectionable.

"From a scientific perspective, we really don't understand why some sounds are so horrible, but our reactions are part of what makes us human. If, as engineers, we can learn what offends people then, in some cases, we may be able to engineer them out of existence or at least reduce their impact," he said.

The survey revealed a stark gender divide, with women voting 25 of the noises as more repellent than did men. Of the sounds men ranked as more distressing two were variations on babies crying.

"This may be because women play a role in protecting both themselves and their offspring from attack. It could be that females have become habituated to the sound of babies crying," Prof Cox said.

The researchers expected sounds that evoke disgust to be near the top of the list, such as vomiting, coughing and spitting, eating an apple with the mouth open and a lengthy blast from a whoopee cushion. Revulsion to such sounds is partly governed by culture and partly an evolutionary legacy that helps us avoid picking up diseases.

Tags: research, science, entertainment, survey, lists, study, noise, sound, society, gender, man, world

Oranges cure cancer?

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 04:28:02 GMT

clipped by: junglejunkie

Clip Source: www.impactlab.com

Is mainstream medical science ignoring an inexpensive, painless, readily available cure for cancer? Mark Levine mulls this loaded question.

The government nutrition researcher has published new evidence that suggests vitamin C can work like chemotherapy - only better. But so far, he hasn't been able to interest cancer experts in conducting the kind of conclusive studies that, one way or the other, would advance treatment.

"If vitamin C is useful in cancer treatment, that's wonderful. If it's not, or if it's harmful, that's fine, too," said Levine, a Harvard-educated physician at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. "The goal is: Find what's true. Either way, the public wins, clinicians win, and patients win."

If Linus Pauling, the two-time Nobel laureate turned vitamin C zealot, had taken an equally dispassionate stance 30 years ago, who knows where the vitamin would be in oncology today. Surely not where it is: a dubious alternative on the fringes of medicine, despite its continuing links to remissions and cures.

This is not about popping supplements. It's about putting high-dose vitamin C, or ascorbic acid, into a vein, which requires needles and trained professionals.

Tags: oranges, health, cure, cancer, vitamin, medical, government, science, treatment.