Category: ideas

When the web site, RateMyProfessors.com, was launched six years ago, most academic insitutions viewed it as an occasionally hurtful but harmless outlet for student opinion. But the site, on which students at colleges and universities around the world can evaluate their teachers’ performance with impunity, has grown to the point that it is now affecting class enrollment at some schools. Professors and administrators hate the site, and lawsuits are regularly threatened against its owner. But the site is far from a vitriolic free-for-all, with positive comments outnumbering negative ones, and a group of volunteer “student administrators” assigned to keep an eye on verifiable claims.

Researchers have discovered that MRI scans can detect when people are lying. “The MRI images show that more blood flows to parts of the brain associated with anxiety and impulse control when people lie. More blood also flows to the part of the brain handling multitasking because it is hard for people to keep track of lies they have told.”

A heart surgeon has devised a new heart procedure after studying drawings of the heart made by Leonardo da Vinci. “The drawings allowed him to work out how to restore normal opening and closing function of the mitral valve, one of the four valves in the heart. Until now, surgeons have repaired a floppy valve by narrowing its diameter. However, this can restrict the blood flow further when the individual is exercising and working their heart to the maximum. It’s a complete rethink of the way we do the mitral valve operation.”

“Cursing, they say, is a human universal. Every language, dialect or patois ever studied, living or dead, spoken by millions or by a small tribe, turns out to have its share of forbidden speech. Some researchers are so impressed by the depth and power of strong language that they are using it as a peephole into the architecture of the brain, as a means of probing the tangled, cryptic bonds between the newer, “higher” regions of the brain in charge of intellect, reason and planning, and the older, more ‘bestial’ neural neighborhoods that give birth to our emotions.”

Traditionally, linguists have tried to decipher ancient languages by matching vocabulary. But “findings published in the journal Science indicate that a linguistic technique that borrows some features from evolutionary biology tools can unlock secrets of languages more than 10,000 years old.”

Ray Kurzweil believs that “today’s human beings, mere quintessences of dust, will be as outmoded as Homo Erectus. All this, Kurzweil believes, will come about through something called The Singularity.” What is the Singularity? “It refers to the future point at which technological change, propelled by the explosive growth of artificial intelligence, will accelerate past the point of current human comprehension. In Vinge’s prevision, once artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence there will be no turning back, as ever more intelligent computers create ever more superintelligent offspring.”

“An international argument has developed between British astronomers and scientists working for American telecommunications firms who have called for the abolition of the “leap second” – the additional time unit used to keep modern atomic time-measuring systems in line with the earth’s movement round the sun. Removing that extra second would make some communication systems run more smoothly, but very slowly the clock would start to fall out of sync with the sun, eventually leading to 12 noon falling in the middle of the night.”

The internet is changing the way scientific research is being shared and published. “The internet—and pressure from funding agencies, who are questioning why commercial publishers are making money from government-funded research by restricting access to it—is making free access to scientific results a reality. This week, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) issued a report describing the far-reaching consequences of this. The report… makes heavy reading for publishers who have, so far, made handsome profits. But it goes further than that. It signals a change in what has, until now, been a key element of scientific endeavour.”

Mark Ravenhill likes American culture. “The problem, then, isn’t that American culture is a bad thing, just that it’s a very dominant thing. And sometimes it’s the only thing. So, a couple of months ago, I devised The Diet. If Dr Atkins could cut out the carbs, then I figured I could cut out the American culture. I’d set myself a date, do it for a month and see how it felt.”