Interesting Articles: Q3 2011

Politics & Media:
* Why Political Coverage is Broken (Jay Rosen's PressThink). An interesting article arguing that writing about an election like a horse race is wrong. (That's two of his three points and thing that resonated the strongest with me.)

Also, a radio segment, A Media Post Mortem on "Death Panels" (WNYC's On the Media via NPR), describes another facet of political coverage that bothers me. This piece explores how the media can debunk a claim while simultaneously printing quotes and statements made by the people on the wrong side of the facts. (Yes, it's an odd dialectic.) There is no reason we should pay any attention to things people say that are wrong.

Statistics, Academics, and Media:
* The statistical error that just keeps on coming (The Guardian). Fundamentally, making precise statistical statements requires a lot of careful thought and phrasing.

They've identified one direct, stark statistical error so widespread it appears in about half of all the published papers surveyed from the academic neuroscience research literature.

Interesting Articles: Q1 2011

Culture and Media:
* The Formula for a Most-Emailed Story (WNYC's On The Media via NPR). Reports on a study that examined what features make some articles more shared than others. The main factors include the obvious (prominent placement, famous author, usefulness) but also the less obvious (inducing high-arousal emotions, especially awe and anger; also, surprisingness). This pattern holds for every subject area (science, finance, politics, etc.). One caveat, however, that many commenters pointed out: this only measured people using the "e-mail this story" link, not using other ways of sharing articles; this may be an unrepresentative sample of how most people share articles. This story was also reported in the New York Times itself: Will You Be E-Mailing This Column? It’s Awesome.

Politics and Psychology:
* Does Metaphorical Framing Really Work? (WNYC's On The Media via NPR). In short, the answer is yes, that how politicians frame a problem influences how people interpret evidence and think about possible solutions. And the effect is surprisingly strong. And people don't know the metaphor has influenced them. There's also some interesting commentary on the failure of the French label (freedom fries, etc.) in this segment.

Culture and Technology:
* Don’t Call Me, I Won’t Call You (New York Times). A true observation on modern life.

Interesting Articles: Q4 2010

Investing:
* I spotted a Vanguard Blog post, Emerging markets: Innocents abroad?, that points out that something I always assumed was true is actually a fallacy: that emerging markets' higher rates of growth naturally mean their stock markets provide higher rates of return. The Vanguard Research article, Investing in emerging markets: Evaluating the allure of rapid economic growth (PDF), has the argument that there need not be a relationship between these two things. Indeed, it has evidence that there is no correlation between them!

Medicine:
* Sugar Pills Help, Even When Patients are Aware of Them (ABC News). The placebo effect is even more powerful than previously thought.

Media and Social Change:
* The Future of Gaming (WNYC's On The Media via NPR). Beginning at 4:35 in this segment, two enthusiastic speakers present their views on how video games can change people and change the world for the better. It's a powerful vision. I hope it comes to pass.

Cultural History:
* Fallon and Timberlake give rap history lesson (NBC Late Night with Jimmy Fallon) (copy on youtube). Okay, this isn't an article and not really intellectual in any way (unless you want a pastiche/history of hip-hop music), but it cracked me up and I wanted to save the link for posterity.

Interesting Articles: Q3 2010

Psychology:
* Smart spending buys happiness (American Public Media's Marketplace). A short segment interviewing a psychology professor who reviewed the literature on the connection between money and happiness. Listen, then read the criticisms in the story's comments; some are rather astute about the implicit assumptions in the professor's work and psychology literature in general. I also found it worthwhile to read her academic paper: If Money Doesn't Make You Happy Then You Probably Aren't Spending It Right (PDF) (Journal of Consumer Psychology). Though long, it's actually only a survey paper reviewing the psychological studies and giving a list of principles (with the scientific evidence to support them) about how to make your money go farther in making you happy.
* What’s Really Human? The trouble with student guinea pigs (Newsweek). How studying U.S. undergraduates leads to misleading conclusions about universal cognitive processes. (Expands on the criticisms in the comments in the happiness radio segment.)

Cartography & History:
* Making Maps, the Google Way (WNYC's On The Media via NPR). An interesting tale about how cartography and in particular the techniques of map-making have changed over time. Although the segment could've been better made, I found it thought provoking enough that I checked out a book on the history of cartography.

Physics:
* The strange case of solar flares and radioactive elements (Stanford Report). A striking result that indicates our understanding of physics may be incorrect. It's not a result in a part of physics that we know we don't fully understand; it's something that we thought we understood and new evidence suggests we may not.

Interesting Articles: Q2 2010

Or should I say article? There's only one this quarter:
* Happiness May Come With Age, Study Says (New York Times). Although the causality isn't clear, the correlations and implications about different stages of life are nonetheless interesting.

Interesting Articles: Q1 2010

Food, Deception (by the Government):
* The Chemist's War: The little-told story of how the U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition with deadly consequences. (Slate). Okay, I admit this isn't news; it's history. Nevertheless, it's a tale I didn't know and I don't think many other people do. I think people should know it. Perhaps those people who worry about fluoride have a leg to stand on...

Food, Deception (by Corporations):
* FDA pressured to combat rising 'food fraud' (The Washington Post). The examples cited in the article are interesting. By the way, the title is misleading: it's not clear that 'food fraud' is increasing but rather that improved detection techniques (especially DNA analysis) makes it easier to detect the amount of fraud out there.

The techniques have become so accessible that two New York City high school students, working with scientists at the Rockefeller University and the American Museum of Natural History last year, discovered after analyzing DNA in 11 of 66 foods -- including the sheep's milk cheese and caviar -- bought randomly at markets in Manhattan were mislabeled.

John Spink, an expert on food and packaging fraud at Michigan State University, estimates that 5 to 7 percent of the U.S. food supply is affected but acknowledges the number could be greater. "We know what we seized at the border, but we have no idea what we didn't seize," he said.

Technology & Culture:
* Don't Touch That Dial! A history of media technology scares, from the printing press to Facebook (Slate). A story about how we're always afraid of and overwhelmed by new things, technology in this case.
* Search and Destroy (WNYC's On The Media via NPR). A story about how social norms are enforced (even online) in China: if a behavior is egregious enough, people get together, find the individual's real identity, and threaten or embarrass him or her. Sometimes this can go too far and become a form of mob rule, but it nevertheless does seem effective at making people more careful about what they say online, even under what they think is an anonymous id.

Technology, Psychology, and Media:
* The Uncanny Valley (WNYC's On The Media via NPR). While I subconsciously always knew about this phenomenon, it's interesting to hear it discussed at an intellectual level, and even hear about how its effects are seen at the box office.

Interesting Articles: Q4 2009

I'm sorry to offer only a small selection of interesting articles this quarter, and a bit disappointed to notice they all come from the same source.

* Online and Isolated? (WNYC's On The Media via NPR). New research suggests internet use doesn't increase social isolation.
* TV's Unlikely Ally (WNYC's On The Media via NPR). A little-publicized story about how a new technology the television industry once decried--the DVR--has turned out to help it. Makes one think about, say, the newspaper industry and the web.
* News Ex Machina (WNYC's On The Media via NPR). A portrait of a large company that generates content at low cost and tries to get the content to rank highly on search engines in order to run automatically-targeted internet ads against it. This is a side of the search engine / online advertising market that I never previously had seen reported on.

Interesting Articles: Q3 2009

* Rating Attractiveness: Consensus Among Men, Not Women, Study Finds (ScienceDaily). Interesting.
* Researchers: Social Security Numbers Can Be Guessed (Washington Post). More things that can be done with data. I'm not surprised. The government always told businesses never to use them as an identifier. Even worse:

Linda Foley, founder of the Identity Theft Resource Center, a San Diego based nonprofit, cited another potential problem. She said many businesses have errantly rely upon or have moved to redact all but the last four digits of a person's SSN, the very digits that are most unique to an individual.

"Because of the way the SSN has been designed, asking for the last four numbers of the SSN puts people at risk because those are the only numbers that are unique to you and cannot be guessed easily by someone who might want to use your identity," Foley said.

* Covering Big Food (WNYC's On The Media via NPR). This interview with the producer/director of the movie Food, Inc. is disturbing. The filmmaker had to conquer a wall of silence and multiple legal threats. Listen to the interview to learn what he couldn't put in the film for fear of litigation.
* Hot! Hot! Hot! How Much Heat Can You Take? (NPR). Listen to the radio story. (Don't watch the video.) The human body can survive temperatures higher than the boiling point of water!
* Buybacks (WNYC's On The Media via NPR). Some news that I never heard about regarding companies (amazon, walmart) using DRM to revoke customers' rights to what they bought.
* A Fair Slice: New method makes for equitable eating (Science News via the Internet Archive). Interesting. The I-cut-you-choose method of splitting cake gives each person a piece they're happy with, but, due to differing tastes, both people might not be equally happy with their respective pieces. This new method solves that problem.
A longer article, Cutting a Pie Is No Piece of Cake (Science News's Math Trek), describes this in more depth and also covers the situation with round object (pie) and when there are more than two people involved. Or, if you're having trouble understanding the procedure, the simplest explanation is in How to Slice a Cake Fairly (Science News for Kids). Of course, if you're all over this procedure, you may want to dive more into it by reading a source article, Better Ways to Cut a Cake (Notices of the American Mathematical Society), about the procedure, its extensions, and even existence (or non-existence) proofs of procedures that have these properties in more complex settings. Another source article, more recent, Two-Person Pie-Cutting: The Fairest Cuts (College Mathematics Journal), develops a envy-free procedure for cutting round things (i.e., pies).

Interesting Articles: Q2 2009

Journalism:
* Wikipedia hoax points to limits of journalists' research (Ars Technica). On journalists' laziness. In related news, this On The Media story, Pulp Fictions, describes some extreme instances of journalists consciously lying, certainly not doing their jobs. (Note: according to the online comments about that piece (1,2), some of the facts about Samuel Johnson in the segment are incorrect or misleading.)

Society & Culture:
* Qapla! (WNYC's On The Media via NPR). A cute, long retrospective on the evolution of and social and cultural statements made by Star Trek.

Politics & Statistics:
* The Devil Is in the Digits (Washington Post). Using statistics to investigate possible election fraud in Iran. It's an intriguing prospect, but I'm not quite sure how I should take these results.

Finance & Statistics:
* What Does Your Credit-Card Company Know About You? (New York Times). On how credit card companies mine their data. (Only the first half of the article is on this subject and worth reading.) While the article only describes how the data is being used to influence how the company manages the relationship with the consumer (e.g., setting credit limits, thinking about risk of bankruptcy, deciding when to call), I can think of many more insights the companies could derive from their data that they're not doing. This is just the tip--although an interesting one--of the iceberg.

Chemistry:
* Chemist Shows How RNA Can Be the Starting Point for Life (New York Times). Mostly posted because I think it's cool a chemist got an article in the New York Times.

Evolutionary Biology:
I recently discovered a London-based academic, Dr. Satoshi Kanazawa, who does interesting research in the area of evolutionary biology:

• Big and tall parents have more sons:Further generalizations of the Trivers–Willard hypothesis (pdf) (Journal of Theoretical Biology)
• Beautiful parents have more daughters: A further implication of the generalized Trivers–Willard hypothesis (gTWH) (pdf) (Journal of Theoretical Biology)
• Why beautiful people are more intelligent (pdf) (Intelligence)

Misc:
* The best optical illusion I have seen all year (Richard Wiseman blog). Astounding. The title is apt.

Interesting Articles: Q1 2009

Psychology & Culture:
* The Witnesses That Didn't (WNYC's On The Media via NPR). A story I heard a few times in psychology classes (about many people witnessing a murder and no one calling the police) that didn't happen the way it was told. Posted here so I can always find the reference to the truth.

Psychology & Economics:
* When people cheat on Wall Street (American Public Media's Marketplace). Though the results of the experiment aren't surprising, I'm simply impressed that someone designed such an interesting experiment. I liked the original research question, and the twist was icing on the cake.

Economics & Academia:
* What's in a Surname? The Effects of Surname Initials on Academic Success (pdf) (Journal of Economic Perspectives). An interesting analysis of the discrimination created in academic disciplines that order authors' names alphabetically, not by contribution. I wonder why the observed effect of higher tenure rates for earlier surnames occurs only at elite institutions (top 10).

Politics & Economics:
* In this On The Media piece (WNYC via NPR) about Treasury Secretary Geithner's inability to connect empathically, one person had a comment likening him and other political figures to Star Trek characters that I found so humorous, I'm posting it here.

Biology:
* Sound Output Levels of the iPod and Other MP3 Players: Is There Potential Risk to Hearing? (Noise-Induced Hearing Loss in Children Meeting) (internet archive version in case the link is broken). Finally, a definitive study providing guidelines on how loud iPods can and should be played.

Fun:
* Bowl Mitzvah (Stanford Magazine). What a cute, giving idea.

Interesting Articles: July-December 2008

Psychology:
* Ghost of Bradley Present (WNYC's On The Media via NPR). About the history of the non-existent Bradley Effect.

Politics:
* The Mobilization Equation (WNYC's On The Media via NPR). An interesting, though not surprising, segment summarizing the effectiveness of different get-out-the-vote tactics (and in particular their cost per vote). I hadn't realized that whether someone voted is public record. For details about one of the more personal (and slightly disturbing) interventions, read Your Neighbors Could Find Out, So You'd Better Vote (Washington Post).

Online Media:
* Comments on Comments (WNYC's On The Media via NPR). An interesting, accurate, yet biased screed against the widespread allowing of comments on new stories and the like. Includes a discussion with Ira Glass about the period when This American Life hosted comments on its web site. The add-on stories aren't bad: Hellhounds On My Trail and Aren't We There Yet?. A few weeks later, On The Media read letters responding to the original story. I often read comments because some are insightful, but usually find too many are stupid and I end up feeling afterwards like I wasted my time. Other times, the comments provide a useful critique, such as the comments on the first segment linked here. (In that case, the comments discuss what makes forums constructive.) Yet, there are so many comments it requires a lot of patience to read them all.
* The New Hacker and Click to Agree (both from WNYC's On The Media via NPR). Together, these two segments provide interesting coverage on how people treat online terms of service agreements, their legal effect, and some examples of unusual ones.

Language:
* Using Everyday Language To Teach Science May Help Students Learn, Study Finds (Stanford Report). I think I always taught like this. Now I have a reason, and will try to consciously do so more.

Food & Health:
* Brain's reaction to yummy food may predict weight (Associated Press). Why I'll probably not get fat: the people who tend to take more pleasure in food than those who do not have a lower likelihood of becoming overweight.
* Exercise in a Pill? (NPR's Science Friday). A cool new development. I wonder if the increased endurance the pill gives you is actually good for your health, or if endurance is only good for your health when brought about by regular exercise.

Interesting Articles: April-June 2008

Media:
* Real Noticias (WNYC's On The Media via NPR). Spanish-language news in the United States has more substance than English news. The Washington Post article, Switch to Español, that inspired this radio segment has a more detailed comparison of the differences between English and Spanish news broadcasts.
* Space Odyssey (WNYC's On The Media via NPR). A thoughtful, analytical piece about how our consumption of media has changed and how it connects to interpersonal relationships and society. It begins by focusing on the Japanese phenomenon of "immersion pods" and expands from there.

Travel:
* Travels and Tribulations (WNYC's On The Media via NPR). An interview with the author of what sounds like an interesting new book, Do Travel Writers Go to Hell? The latter web site provides links to many reviews.

Food:
* Navigating Food Labels (NPR). Although I've read countless articles describing, commenting on, and criticizing the FDA's stance on various organic/natural/whatever food labels, I found this summary very concrete. It's likely to be handy as a reference.

Interesting Articles: January-March 2008

First, let me say that I'm no longer subscribed to Science News, nor do I have the time to read articles online. Thus, I'm not going to post any more Science News articles here. Yes, I know this was my bread-and-butter (along with On The Media) for many of these "interesting articles" posts. You're on your own to hear about scientific advances.

Media & Journalism:
* Bugging Out (WNYC's On The Media via NPR) or Hmm. Tiny, Evil -- And Everywhere? (Washington Post). A new version of "if it bleeds, it leads"? Or, how alarmist journalism is as hard to kill as urban myths.
* Prank Calling (WNYC's On The Media via NPR). Alan Abel serves as a good reminder of how not everything you hear on the news is true. I'm going to try to track down the associated movie.

Design, Politics & Culture:
* Character Matters (WNYC's On The Media via NPR). An interesting article about the typefaces various campaigns use for their political logos. It resonated with me because I saw a movie recently that talked about the importance of typefaces, especially Helvetica.

Technology & Culture:
* Search Terms (WNYC's On The Media via NPR). How do you think about the contents of your hard drive?

Sociology & Culture:
* We don't hang out with our coworkers (American Public Media's Marketplace). The workplace sees the bowling alone effect. (My first thought was, "vacation with coworkers? Crazy." Then I realized I'd done it.)

Crime & Statistics:
* Immigration Has Little To Do With California Crime (Public Policy Institute of California). I'd like to do statistical analysis like that in this policy-influencing study.

And, although it's not an article, here's a cool flash mob event: Time stops at Grand Central.

Interesting Articles: December 2007

* Escaping flatland (Science News). An article about how cells grown in a flat medium such as a petri dish behave differently than in a real, three-dimensional setting. At the core of the result is the idea that sometimes one must question the most basic simplifying assumptions in experimental science.
* Airy theory, but true (Science News). Frankly, I find this physical phenomenon unbelievable and incomprehensible. I found a longer article on the topic, Scientists make first observation of Airy optical beams (PhysOrg.com), but it makes the effect no more understandable to me.

Interesting Articles: November 2007

Deinonychus' claws were hookers, not rippers (Science News).

Many paleontologists have presumed that the claw enabled the lithe predators (raptors) to disembowel victims with a single slash, but two analyses suggest that the claws were instead used to grip and climb large prey.

You mean some things I learned from Jurassic Park are wrong?

Interesting Articles: October 2007

Linguistics:
* Shifty Talk: Probing the process of word evolution (Science News). The researchers smartly use statistical data to analyze and predict language evolution.
* Song Sung Blue: In brain, music and language overlap (Science News). Heard of linguistic priming? Well, there's also auditory priming of words using classical music. It's interesting to think about / test which pieces prime which words. (Note: this article was published in 2004. I only now found the note that I wanted to post it.)

Biology & Health:
* Good Buzz: Tiny vibrations may limit fat-cell formation (Science News). I always wondered when scientists would find something that has the effect of exercising yet doesn't actually require exercising. The source article, Adipogenesis is inhibited by brief, daily exposure to high-frequency, extremely low-magnitude mechanical signals (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), is freely available online.
* They fertilized with what? (Science News). The abstract (or, indeed, the title) of the source article says it all: Use of human urine fertilizer in cultivation of cabbage (Brassica oleracea)—Impacts on chemical, microbial, and flavor quality (Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry). Would such a cabbage be certified organic? ;) (Incidentally, some researchers did a similar study with cucumbers, with similar results.)

Other:
* The Price of a Four-Star Rating (The Wall Street Journal). An interesting though not surprising assessment of review web sites such as yelp and chowhound. If you're too lazy to read the article, or want more depth, there's an interview with the journalist in the sidebar. Also, there's another interview with the journalist in Site Proves Everyone's a Critic (NPR's The Bryant Park Project); this interview is a bit more casual and is more colorful/fun.

Interesting Articles: September 2007

Psychology:
* Persistence of Myths Could Alter Public Policy Approach (Washington Post). A clear article summarizing psychological literature on why myths remain, and why it's often not a good idea to try to counter a myth. If you don't feel like reading it, listen to the story The Truth of False (WNYC's On The Media via NPR).
* The Marketing Sí Change (WNYC's On The Media via NPR). An interesting piece about the ways in which marketers target hispanics and how it's different from targeting anglos. I especially enjoyed the discussion of the problems translating the Got Milk campaign into Spanish and how they decided to fix it. That part starts at 2:50. If you're interested in the topic, read the lengthy original article, How Do You Say 'Got Milk' En Español? (New York Times). The radio segment is simply a few of the article's highlights.

Technology:
* The Sex Drive (WNYC's On The Media via NPR). One often hears about pornography being a major impetus of technology, pushing the advancement of, for example, the printing press, photography, and motion pictures. This radio segment is interesting because it describes how pornography isn't pushing the edge of the latest technology: Web 2.0. Sure, pornography's at the forefront (in fact, judging by the segment, pornography's using more Web 2.0 interactivity and community features than I expected), but it isn't driving the technological improvements.

Economics:
* The Wealth of Nations: A country's competitive edge can spread industry to industry, like a disease (Science News). This is the sort of research I want to do: discover interesting patterns from mounds of data.

Mathematics:
* Ancient Islamic Penrose Tiles (Science News's MathTrek). I'm not surprised to hear that old architectural designers implicitly used knowledge of complex mathematical techniques. Nonetheless, it's still an interesting story about how Islamic buildings managed to have such large and perfect decorative patterns.

Biology:
* Rethinking Bad Taste: How much mimicry is outright cheating? (Science News). It's nice to see such fairly realistic, outside-the-lab biology studies. If you want a copy of the article, ask.

Health:
* Believers gain no health advantage (Science News). Surprisingly, a study found no psychological advantage to holding spiritual beliefs--i.e., there's no belief-in-god placebo effect. The abstract of the source article, Spirituality, religion, and clinical outcomes in patients recovering from an acute myocardial infarction (Psychosomatic Medicine), is freely available.

Other:
* Times to Stop Charging for Parts of Its Web Site (New York Times). In short, if there were some interesting articles I've mentioned that you previously couldn't read because of the Times's old policy of only leaving articles freely available for a couple of weeks, you can read them now. And you can read the columnists for free, too.

Interesting Articles: August 2007

Sociology:
* Weighting for Friends: Obesity spreads in social networks (Science News). In short, if your friend becomes obese, you become more likely to gain weight as well. While not surprising, it's cool that they actually gathered enough data to prove it. What I found more surprising is that (i) the effect is equally strong regardless of distance and that (ii) the effect doesn't appear for people you're around a lot but don't consider a friend (e.g., a neighbor). It's also neat that obesity mainly spreads via same-sex friendships. Although the Science News article is freely available online, if you desire you can also refer to the source article, The spread of obesity in a large social network over 32 years (New England Journal of Medicine).
* Oldest siblings show slight IQ advantage (Science News). Note that the effect, though small, comes from social birth order, not physical birth order. (I.e., children who become the oldest after the death in infancy of an older sibling also display the advantage.) The source article, Explaining the relation between birth order and intelligence (Science), has the full details.

Maintaining Health:
* Lobes of Steel (New York Times). Exercise: it'll make you smarter.
* Easing Jet Lag By Resetting The Body Clock (New York Times). A handy, though old, article that describes how to carefully control exposure to light in order to reset one's circadian rhythm quickly and thereby avoid jet lag.

Food:
* Sour Genes, Yes—Salty Genes, No (Science News's Food for Thought). Liking of sour foods is mostly genetic, yet liking salty foods is more environmental. This partially explains similarities in taste within families. Incidentally, I'm surprised to read sensitivities to these flavors can differ up to two orders of magnitude between individuals. I know (and am jealous of) people who are substantially more sensitive to tastes than I am, but wasn't aware the differences could be that large.

Biology:
* Bad News for Cats: Cat allergen hits all allergic people (Science News). In short, even if you're not specifically allergic to cats (but are allergic to other things), something about cats will aggravate your other allergies and impair your lung function. Hmph. The abstract of the source article, Bronchial responsiveness in atopic adults increases with exposure to cat allergen (American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine), is available online.
* High Volume, Low Fidelity: Birds are less faithful as sounds blare (Science News). Noise pollution has some subtle, unexpected effects. The abstract of the source article, High levels of environmental noise erode pair preferences in zebra finches: Implications for noise pollution (Animal Behaviour), is available online.

Climate:
* Summer Reading: The Heat Is On (Science News). A concise summary/review of the book Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum: How Humans Took Control of Climate by William Ruddiman. Ruddiman's theory is thought provoking: that humans have been affecting climate for millennia through activities like rice farming, deforestation, and, well, mass human deaths through plagues.

Physics:
* Dropping the Ball: Air pressure helps objects sink into sand (Science News). About what happens when one drops a ball into sand at various air pressures (e.g., on other planets). I find the results pretty surprising. I can't explain the results concisely. If you want a copy of the Science News article, do as you would with any other Science News article and simply ask me. Or you can read the dense and technical source article, Gas-mediated impact dynamics in fine-grained granular materials (Physical Review Letters).

Education:
* More math helps young scientists (Science News). If only the study were causal. The one sentence abstract of the source article, The two high-school pillars supporting college science (Science), is available online.

Interesting Articles: June and July 2007

Media
* Pulling Back the Curtain (WNYC's On The Media via NPR). A lively, entertaining story about why radio sounds so polished and how much editing radio interviews undergo. (Listen to it; don't read the transcript!) I always knew at some level how interviews were edited but hearing it explicitly made it much more concrete. I'm generally not bothered by these practices, but I do find the different standards for print and for radio disconcerting. For instance, I appreciate the appearance of ellipses in quotes. Yet radio isn't required to disclose where cuts are made. Another segment, Just Email Me, on the same program discussed why many prominent figures are only doing written interviews. By making a record, it gives the sources a recourse if they feel like they've been misquoted. It's a good follow-up to the first story. It's not surprising On The Media received many letters from listeners about these stories.
* Worst...P.R....Ever (WNYC's On The Media via NPR). I'm only linking to this piece, an interview with the man who wrote a major book on public relations, because a minute from the end he clearly distinguishes advertising and public relations. Previously these two concepts were nearly interchangeable in my mind.

Food
* Food That Travels Well (New York Times). A column that argues, with evidence, that buying food locally to save oil/gas by reducing transportation miles often doesn't make sense. Sometimes it's more energy efficient to import rather than grow locally.

Biology, Psychology, and Neurology
* Broadband Vision (Science News). I was taught in high school biological and college psychology of perception that the inverted structure of the eye (with the rods and cones hidden behind other cells) was a fluke of evolution and that we are lucky some light gets through those other cells. I was taught wrong. It turns out the eye has cells that act like optical fibers, routing light past the frontal cells to the sensing ones. It's a much better structure than scientists previously imagined. The abstract of the source article, Müller cells are living optical fibers in the vertebrate retina (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), is freely available online.
* Face Talk: Babies see their way to language insights (Science News). Babies can distinguish which language someone is speaking by watching the speaker. No sound is necessary. It's too bad we lose this visual perceptual ability as we age. The abstract of the source article, Visual language discrimination in infancy (Science), summarizes the study well and is freely available online.
* Visualizing Cancer: Images of tumors can detect gene expression (Science News). I always like it when scientists discover how to use old data in novel ways. In this case, the data is the result of a CT scan. The abstract of the source article, Decoding global gene expression programs in cancer by non-invasive imaging (Nature Biotechnology), is freely available online.
* Named medical trials garner extra attention (Science News). If, as the research claim, they correctly factored in the quality and funding of the medical trials, that means many studies aren't getting the attention they deserve. An excerpt from the source article, Acronym-named randomized trials in medicine—the ART in medicine study (New England Journal of Medicine), is available online. With a little searching, one can find a copy of the whole article.

Engineering
* Spinning into Control: High-tech reincarnations of an ancient way of storing energy (Science News). Who need fuel cells? Use a flywheel! This alternative needs more attention from the media. You need to e-mail me if you want a copy of the article.
* Carbon Sequestration & Producing Hydrogen (Science Friday). The latter two segments of the program are amazing. The first of this pair describes a new device that'll extract carbon from the atmosphere in an energy efficient manner. Technology for this is much further along than I'd previously thought. Likewise, the second of the pair describes another technological advance: a chemical catalyst that converts water to hydrogen, thus allowing hydrogen fuel cell cars to run without the need for hydrogen filling stations. While it's not a panacea, it's good that there are vaguely plausible ideas like this floating around.
* Tapping out a TAI-CHI tune (Science News). I've seen demonstrations of a system in which a camera is pointed at a surface and that surface can then be used a input device as such a keyboard. This device, however, is new. Rather than using a camera, it uses audio triangulation. The abstract of the talk, Tangible acoustic interfaces for computer-human interaction (Euroscience Open Forum), is available online. The project has a web site.
* Are Computer Keyboards Dishwasher Safe? (NPR's Morning Edition). Wash your keyboard!

Interesting Articles: April 29th-June 5th 2007

Media:
* Juiciest Beef in Town: Restaurateur, Steamed, Says He Was Burned (Washington Post). Many of you likely heard of this spat between a restaurateur and the New York Times food critic in which the restaurateur said he'd start a blog and follow the food critic around to criticize the same restaurants and in the process criticize the critic's reviews. This hubbub got lots of attention in the press and food blogs several months ago. However, it's gotten no attention for the last couple months, as the restaurateur hasn't posted anything on his blog in ages. I'm really disappointed. While I wasn't expecting greatness, I'm more disappointed that he promised (in the New York Times, even) to do something and didn't follow through with it.
* Clearing The Air (WNYC's On The Media via NPR). Sao Paulo bans all outdoor advertising. How cool is that? (That's a real question: it's not rhetorical.) I'm surprised I haven't heard this reported from any other source.
* "If I controlled the Internet" (a poem) (TED Talks). I always assumed it was hard to get videos of good slam poetry on the web. It appears I was wrong. The TED video inspired me to browse YouTube for a while. YouTube has number of slam poetry videos of widely varying quality. Here are some I liked:

• a creative performance about Nintendo games
• an awesome poem with three people about domestic violence / sexism / gender inequality
• a fifteen minute clip about poetry slams, with some example performances. Listed because I love the one that starts at 3:40.
• a poem of powerful praise for teachers
• a meta-poem about poem topics. It's a good way to end this list.

Emergent Behavior:
* Formula for Panic: Crowd-motion findings may prevent stampedes (Science News). A practical application of the science of complexity / emergent behavior.

Research Methods:
* Sleep on It: Time delay plus slumber equals memory boost (Science News). Posted because I really like the study's method of implicitly teaching subjects an item ordering and then testing their knowledge of the total order. The abstract of the source article, Human relational memory requires time and sleep (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), available online, briefly describes this experimental design.

Physics:
* Meet me at 79°50' N, 56° W (Science News). Modified Newtonian Dynamics, an alternative to the theories using dark matter, may be testable. You gotta love how the test would work:

The trick is to position an instrument within 7 centimeters of a specific latitude and longitude. Only two spots would qualify: one in Antarctica and one in northern Greenland. And just like many ancient rituals, the experiment could take place only during an equinox.

The abstract of the source article, Is violation of Newton's second law possible? (Physical Review Letters), is available online.

Engineering:
* Is Your Phone Out of Juice? Biological fuel cell turns drinks into power (Science News). What a novel idea!

Nutrition:
* Genes Take Charge, and Diets Fall by the Wayside (New York Times). Yet another piece about the strong genetic influences on weight.

Biology:
* Gene predicts sleepy performance (Science News); more colloquial version of the article (Science News for Kids). I wonder how much this one gene correlates with students attending top colleges. The abstract of the source article, PER3 polymorphism predicts sleep structure and waking performance (Current Biology), is available online.
* Two groups of scientists, using relatively simple alterations, each have genetically engineered flies to resist malaria in a way that allows those flies to out-compete regular flies. Someone should show these results to the groups that protest all uses of genetic engineering.

• Not So Wimpy: Antimalarial mosquito has an edge in tests (Science News).
  The abstract of the source article: Transgenic malaria-resistant mosquitoes have a fitness advantage when feeding on Plasmodium-infected blood (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).
• Kill-save gene combo might fight malaria (Science News).
  The abstract of the source article: A synthetic maternal-effect selfish genetic element drives population replacement in Drosophila (Science).

* Spider blood fluoresces (Science News). The title says it all. Probably one of the many reasons people find spiders creepy. The source article, Spiders fluoresce variably across many taxa (Biology Letters), available online, includes pictures. I'm sure a simple Google search would get you more.