Kurt Kleiner
Scientific American Mind - December2006/January 2007
What stops a few popular websites from dominating the global exchange of ideas on the internet? Human curiosity powered by search engines, researches say.
Visitors view and link to a few websites such as Yahoo, eBay and MySpace often, whereas most sites are hardly noticed. Some experts worry that search engines such as Google exaggerate this trend, because they rank search results partly by how popular a website already is. As a result, big sites could get ever more popular and small sites could grow relatively more obscure-an increasingly undemocratic result that that critics deride as a "Googlearchy".
But Filippo Menczer, who teaches cognitive and computer science at Indiana University found that this is not the way it works in the real world. His team studied database of search terms and webpage traffic and then created a mathematical model to explain the observed patterns. It turns out that even though search engines reward pages for being popular, they also boost traffic to remote sites.
Menczer's model suggests that this effect occurs because people use search engines when they are looking for very specific information. So a small site that closely matches their individual interests will beat out a match more popular site that does not.
"That's a piece of behavioral data that the previous model did not consider. If you do no consider it, you assume everybody thinks the same way; everybody's interested in the same things, but that's not the case," Menczer says.
For example, if you search Google for "windows", the first hit will be Microsoft Corporation, maker of the Windows operating system and one of the world's most popular websites. But if you search "double-hung windows", you will come up with the little known website for Iowa-Based Pella Corporation, which makes actual windows.
Menczer's model suggests that search engines introduce people to 20 percent of more websites than they would find if they were forced to simply to surf from site to site—as web users did in the old days before search engines.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
The Marquise du Chatelet on Women's Education
The Marquise du Chatelet, circa 1735.
"I feel the full weight of the prejudice which so universally excludes us from the sciences; it is one of the contradictions in life that has always amazed me, seeing that the law allows us to determine the fate of great nations, but that there is no place we are trained to think. Let the reader ponder why, at no time in the course of so many centuries, a good tragedy, a good poem, a respected tale, a fine painting, a good book on physics has ever been produced by women. Why these creatures who's whose understanding appears in every way similar to that of men, seem to be stopped by some irresistible force, this side of barrier. Let the people give a reason, but until they do, women will have reason to protest against their education.
If I were a king, I would redress and abuse which cuts back, as it were, one half of human kind. I would have women participate in all human rights, specially those of the mind. The new education would greatly benefit the human race. Women would be worth more and men would gain something new to emulate. I am convinced that either many women are unaware of their talents by reason of the fault in their education or that they bury them on account of prejudice for want of intellectual courage. My own experience confirms this. Chance made me acquainted with men of letters who extended the hand of friendship to me. I then began to believe that o was being with a mind."
"I feel the full weight of the prejudice which so universally excludes us from the sciences; it is one of the contradictions in life that has always amazed me, seeing that the law allows us to determine the fate of great nations, but that there is no place we are trained to think. Let the reader ponder why, at no time in the course of so many centuries, a good tragedy, a good poem, a respected tale, a fine painting, a good book on physics has ever been produced by women. Why these creatures who's whose understanding appears in every way similar to that of men, seem to be stopped by some irresistible force, this side of barrier. Let the people give a reason, but until they do, women will have reason to protest against their education.
If I were a king, I would redress and abuse which cuts back, as it were, one half of human kind. I would have women participate in all human rights, specially those of the mind. The new education would greatly benefit the human race. Women would be worth more and men would gain something new to emulate. I am convinced that either many women are unaware of their talents by reason of the fault in their education or that they bury them on account of prejudice for want of intellectual courage. My own experience confirms this. Chance made me acquainted with men of letters who extended the hand of friendship to me. I then began to believe that o was being with a mind."
Water on Mars
JR Minkle Scientific
American - February, 2007.
Deposits formed on Martian gullies during the past seven years suggest that liquid water exists in Mars today. An image taken by the Mars Global surveyor spacecraft in 2005 shows a downhill track on the wall of a crater that was not present in the previous image of the crater, taken less than four years earlier. In subsequent views of the deposit, the sun's light is coming in at different angles, but the light colored material remains, suggesting it is not a trick of the light or the result of dry erosion. Similarly, images of another crater from February 2004 show the beginnings of a second deposit, which has grown in subsequent images.
American - February, 2007.
Deposits formed on Martian gullies during the past seven years suggest that liquid water exists in Mars today. An image taken by the Mars Global surveyor spacecraft in 2005 shows a downhill track on the wall of a crater that was not present in the previous image of the crater, taken less than four years earlier. In subsequent views of the deposit, the sun's light is coming in at different angles, but the light colored material remains, suggesting it is not a trick of the light or the result of dry erosion. Similarly, images of another crater from February 2004 show the beginnings of a second deposit, which has grown in subsequent images.
Cordless Charging
JR Minkle Scientific
American - February, 2007.
To charge portable electronics, scientists hope to perfect a method for transmitting electrical energy wirelessly. The effect, which has not yet been demonstrated, would take advantage of induction, in which a varying magnetic field can induce electrical flow in a nearby conductor. To boost the range and power, Massachusetts Institute of Technology researches propose introducing a short gap in a metal loop and attaching two small disks at each end. When electrified, such an object has a natural frequency that results from current flowing back and forth along the loop from one disk to the other. If a second loop has the same frequency, it should be able to receive energy from the other through magnetic field. From a few meters away, the rate of energy transferred might reach tens of watts, or enough to power a laptop.
American - February, 2007.
To charge portable electronics, scientists hope to perfect a method for transmitting electrical energy wirelessly. The effect, which has not yet been demonstrated, would take advantage of induction, in which a varying magnetic field can induce electrical flow in a nearby conductor. To boost the range and power, Massachusetts Institute of Technology researches propose introducing a short gap in a metal loop and attaching two small disks at each end. When electrified, such an object has a natural frequency that results from current flowing back and forth along the loop from one disk to the other. If a second loop has the same frequency, it should be able to receive energy from the other through magnetic field. From a few meters away, the rate of energy transferred might reach tens of watts, or enough to power a laptop.
Think of Money, be Less Happy
Money is an incentive to work hard, but also promotes selfish behavior. Those conclusions may not be surprising, but psychologists at the University of Minnesota recently found that merely thinking of money makes people less likely to give help for others. Researches subconsciously reminded some volunteers of money by showing them lucre-related words such as "salary" or by revealing a poster with currency on it. Other participants were primed with play money or neutral stimuli. All those involved in the study then preformed different tasks that were unrelated to money but that assessed their behavior in social situations. When money is on the brain, people become disinclined to ask for help when faced with difficult or even impossible puzzle, and individuals who think; even subconsciously, about money are less helpful than others.
Ciara Curtin
Scientific American - February, 2007
Ciara Curtin
Scientific American - February, 2007
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