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Lessons From Networks, Online and Other |
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| Topic: Science |
6:01 am EDT, Jun 23, 2002 |
Albert-Lazlo Barabasi, a professor of physics at the University of Notre Dame, became fascinated with the structure of the Internet in 1998. He and his student researchers designed software robots that went out on the Net and mapped as many of its nodes, hubs and links as they could. He then began studying other networks and found that they had similar structures. The Internet in particular, he found, had taken on characteristics of a living ecosystem. That made for a valuable insight in itself. But Professor Barabasi went a step further and analyzed the genetic networks of various living organisms, finding that their genes and proteins interacted in much the same networked way as the Internet. This conclusion, described in Professor Barabasi's new book, "Linked: The New Science of Networks", could alter the way we think about all the networks that affect our lives. I've already recommended this book, but today's NYT interview provides some additional background in case you haven't already bought the book. Lessons From Networks, Online and Other |
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In Test, Students Lack Geography Knowledge |
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| Topic: Science |
11:49 pm EDT, Jun 21, 2002 |
When given a map of the United States, 1 in 3 fourth-graders could not identify the state in which they lived and 16% of eighth-graders could not locate the Mississippi River. 40% of eighth-graders did not know that Florida is a peninsula. Only 61% of fourth-graders and 71% of eighth-graders knew that the Pacific Ocean is the world's largest. 50% of eighth-graders and 61% of seniors knew that Hinduism is the most widely practiced religion in India. Secretary of Education: "Teaching students to read is beneficial." [Duh!] People are stupid, and kids are people, too. In Test, Students Lack Geography Knowledge |
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What's So New in a Newfangled Science? |
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| Topic: Science |
6:45 am EDT, Jun 16, 2002 |
Science is a cumulative, fairly collegial venture. But every so often a maverick, working in self-imposed solitude, bursts forth with a book that aims to set straight the world with a new idea. Some of these grand schemes spring from biology, some from physics, some from mathematics. But what they share is the same unnerving message: everything you know is wrong. ... By short-circuiting the traditional formalities of scientific publication, Stephen Wolfram has managed to offend not just scientists who think he is wrong but also some who think he is right. ... Interesting ideas rarely spring up in isolation. ... Last year, MIT's Dr. Seth Lloyd created a stir on Edge.org when he proposed "Lloyd's hypothesis": "Everything that's worth understanding about a complex system can be understood in terms of how it processes information." It's the kind of book some of Wolfram's peers may wish they had written. Stephen Wolfram's "new kind of science" has been developing collectively over the past 20 years, and some who followed the one-peer-reviewed-paper-at-a-time strategy are upset with Wolfram's approach. What's So New in a Newfangled Science? |
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Evolution: Retrospective -- Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) | _Science_ |
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| Topic: Science |
1:49 pm EDT, Jun 15, 2002 |
In an eloquent retrospective, Richard Fortey reminisces about the many accomplishments and endearing qualities of his colleague, the essayist, historian, and paleontologist, Stephen Jay Gould. [Gould] was one of the few scientific intellectuals to whom the overworked phrase "Renaissance man" could be applied without blushing. As essayist, historian, and author, his influence on the wider cultural scene was exceptional. ... A few months before his death his last, massive work, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, appeared, summarizing his thoughts on evolution (the mere thought of reading its 1400 pages is intimidating). It is almost as if the reappearance of cancer was held in check by force of will until this book, his magnum opus, was completed. Subscription required for access to full text. Evolution: Retrospective -- Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) | _Science_ |
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| Topic: Science |
6:21 am EDT, Jun 11, 2002 |
A new study confirms what many already suspect: Adolescents who get tattoos or body piercings are more likely than their undecorated age-mates to have sex, drink excessively, do drugs and even consider suicide. But the association between looking bad and being bad surprised even the researchers, who thought that the increasing prevalance of teens' tattoos and piercings would weaken the link. "With tattoos and piercings becoming much more common these days, I didn't expect the correlation to be as strong as it was," said Army doctor Sean Carroll, the study's lead author. Marked for Trouble |
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Did This Man Just Rewrite Science? |
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| Topic: Science |
5:41 am EDT, Jun 11, 2002 |
You can try this at home. Take a sheet of graph paper that has been divided into grids. Color a square in the middle of the top row black. Drop down to the next row. Now invent a rule that will decide if a square should be black or white, based on the square above it and that square's neighbors -- for example, that a square should be the same color as the one above it unless that square has a black neighbor. Go across the second row filling in squares accordingly, then repeat the process, following the same rule, for the third row, the fourth row, and so on. Today's NYT has an article on Stephen Wolfram's new book. This one is more interview-and-reaction than the book review published in the June 9 NYT. Did This Man Just Rewrite Science? |
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Six Degrees of Speculation | Discover - 6 June 2002 |
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| Topic: Science |
10:21 pm EDT, Jun 10, 2002 |
"Even in a small world, there's room for disagreement." Some skeptical scientists aren't yet buying into the small-worlds theory. They contend that although short paths may exist between two points in the network, the problem is finding them. "The models we developed to show that these short paths actually exist don't explain how you can find them." ... How people recognize the routes to their distant affiliates is the next big small-world question. Sounds like they're in search of a reputation system! Six Degrees of Speculation | Discover - 6 June 2002 |
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Identity and Search in Social Networks | Science |
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| Topic: Science |
10:17 pm EDT, Jun 10, 2002 |
Social networks have the surprising property of being "searchable": Ordinary people are capable of directing messages through their network of acquaintances to reach a specific but distant target person in only a few steps. We present a model that offers an explanation of social network searchability in terms of recognizable personal identities: sets of characteristics measured along a number of social dimensions. Our model defines a class of searchable networks and a method for searching them that may be applicable to many network search problems, including the location of data files in peer-to-peer networks, pages on the World Wide Web, and information in distributed databases. Researchers from Columbia and the Santa Fe Institute in the 17 May issue of _Science_. Identity and Search in Social Networks | Science |
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Could It Be A Big World After All? |
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| Topic: Science |
10:16 pm EDT, Jun 10, 2002 |
Abstract: The idea that people are connected through just "six degrees of separation," based on Stanley Milgram's "small world study," has become part of the intellectual furniture of educated people. New evidence discovered in the Milgram papers in the Yale archives, together with a review of the literature on the "small world problem," reveals that this widely-accepted idea rests on scanty evidence. Indeed, the empirical evidence suggests that we actually live in a world deeply divided by social barriers such as race and class. An explosion of interest is occurring in the small world problem because mathematicians have developed computer models of how the small world phenomenon could logically work. But mathematical modeling is not a substitute for empirical evidence. At the core of the small world problem are fascinating psychological mysteries. Could It Be A Big World After All? |
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'A New Kind of Science': You Know That Space-Time Thing? Never Mind |
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| Topic: Science |
5:32 pm EDT, Jun 8, 2002 |
Among a small group of very smart people, the publication of "A New Kind of Science," by Stephen Wolfram, has been anticipated with the anxiety aroused in literary circles by, say, Jonathan Franzen's recent novel, "The Corrections." For more than a decade, Wolfram, a theoretical physicist turned millionaire software entrepreneur, has been laboring in solitude on a work that, he has promised, will change the way we see the world. Now, weighing in at 1,263 pages (counting a long, unpaginated index) and 583,313 words, the book could hardly be more intimidating. But that is the price one pays for a first-class intellectual thrill. ... From the very beginning of this meticulously constructed manifesto, the reader is presented with a stunning proposal: all the science we know will be demolished and reassembled. An ancient error will be corrected, one so profoundly misguided that it has led science down the wrong avenue, until it is approaching a cul-de-sac. ... Wolfram contends: the algorithm is the pure, elemental expression of nature; the equation is an artifice. That is because the continuum is a fiction. Time doesn't flow, it ticks. Space is not a surface but a grid. Considering its immense size, Wolfram's book is quite affordable, and it is readily available (alongside Stephen Jay Gould's giant life's-work book) at mainstream bookstores. 'A New Kind of Science': You Know That Space-Time Thing? Never Mind |
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