Why aren't there more female scientists

post from Machines Like Us - Science at the speed of thought on 15 December 2010 09:11:54 PM. © Machines Like Us - Science at the speed of thought

Women have achieved or exceeded parity with men in most academic fields yet continue to be outnumbered in the physical sciences, engineering, and math. Is the dearth of women scientists the result of gender bias?

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Paolo Nespoli Heads To ISS On MagISStra Mission

post from Space Tourism, Space Transport and Space Exploration News on 15 December 2010 07:17:04 PM. © Space Tourism, Space Transport and Space Exploration News

Paris, France (ESA) Dec 16, 2010
ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli is on his way to the International Space Station with crewmates Dmitri Kondratyev and Catherine Coleman aboard their Soyuz spacecraft following liftoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 20:09:25 CET today. Twenty main rocket nozzles beneath the venerable Soyuz launcher came to life at 01:09:25 local time at the cosmodrome and Soyuz TMA-20 rose into s

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Europe-sized cyclone batters Saturn for five
years

post from Space Tourism, Space Transport and Space Exploration News on 15 December 2010 07:17:04 PM. © Space Tourism, Space Transport and Space Exploration News

Madrid (AFP) Dec 15, 2010
A whirlwind the size of Europe lashed Saturn for five years, becoming the longest-lasting cyclone ever seen on the Solar System's great planets, scientists reported Wednesday. The cyclone, with a vortex 4,000 kilometres (2,500 miles) wide, is being tracked by Spanish scientists with images from the pioneering US spacecraft Cassini. "Our observations make this cyclone the longest-lasting

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ears_999.html

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Cyclone Lasting More Than Five Years Is Detected
On Saturn

post from Space Tourism, Space Transport and Space Exploration News on 15 December 2010 07:17:04 PM. © Space Tourism, Space Transport and Space Exploration News

Barecelona, Spain (SPX) Dec 16, 2010
Researchers from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) have been monitoring a cyclone on Saturn for more than five years. This makes it the longest-lasting cyclone detected to date on any of the giant planets of the Solar System. Images from the Cassini probe were used to carry out this study. "Cyclones - where the wind turns in the same direction as the planet - do not usually la

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ed_On_Saturn_999.html

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NCBI ROFL: Does your left armpit smell different
from your right

post from Discoblog » NCBI ROFL on 15 December 2010 07:00:12 PM. © Discoblog » NCBI ROFL

Human axillary odor: are there side-related perceptual differences?“Most studies on perception of human social odors in axillary sweat do not distinguish between samples from the right and left axillae. However, each axilla might not produce identical odor samples due, for instance, to the increased use of one arm as a result of lateralization. The aim [...]

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Videos From Singularity Summit 2010 Now Available
for Free Online

post from Singularity Hub on 15 December 2010 06:26:43 PM. © Singularity Hub

This year’s Singularity Summit was a great collection of lectures, debates, and impromptu discussions among the technologically minded. Now, thanks to the Singularity Institute, you can share in those events by watching videos available online. SI recently uploaded several of the lectures and the debates from Singularity Summit 2010 to Vimeo, with more on their [...]

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lable-for-free-online/

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Wordless Wednesday: Simply Red

post from Urban Science Adventures! © on 15 December 2010 05:59:00 PM. © Urban Science Adventures! ©

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nesday-simply-red.html

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Door 15 in the 2010 advent calendar

post from Planetary Society Weblog on 15 December 2010 05:51:35 PM. © Planetary Society Weblog

Time to open the fourteenth door in the advent calendar. Until the New Year, I'll be opening a door onto a different landscape from somewhere in the solar system. Where in the solar system is this cratered world?Click to enlarge >Door 15This image has a resolution of 31 meters per pixel. Credit: NASA / JPL With a view that shows this much of the body of this solar system object, you'd expect it to be quite recognizeable. But I certainly ....

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The evolution of dissent

If religion is a virus, then perhaps the spread of religion can be understood through the lens of evolutionary theory. Perhaps cultural evolution can be modelled using the same mathematical tools applied to genetic evolution.

Well, that's overly simplistic, of course - as anyone who's followed the 'meme' controversy over the years will know. In fact, the authors of the paper I'm writing up today - Michael Doebli and Iaroslav Ispolatov at the University of British Columbia - studiously avoid using the term.

Want they set out to model was the development of religious schisms. Such schisms are a recurrent feature of religion, especially in the West. The classic example is the fracturing of Christianity that occured after the reformation.

Their model made two simple assumptions. Firstly, that religions that are highly dominant actually induce some people to want to break away from them. When a religion becomes overcrowded, then some individuals will lose their religion and take up another.

That could happen, they say, when religions are hierarchical, providing greatest benefit to a few at the top. Eventually, for those cut out from the power structure, the benefit of striking out with their own, new religion might outweigh the costs.

Second, they assume that every religion has a value to the individual that is composed of it's costs and benefits. That value varies between religion, but is the same for all individuals. It's a pretty simplistic assumption, but even so they get some interesting results.

At each generation, the religion can mutate a little, just like a virus.

With these simple assumptions, they get a range of results depending on how they tweak the parameters. In one, they end up with a wide, even spread of religions - and infinite range of religions, clustered around a central, average, archetype.

But tweak the parameters a bit more,and you get a discrete number of stable schisms - just like the religious sects seen in real life.

Now, this is a very simple model, and so the results shouldn't be over-interpreted. But it's a fascinating result for a couple of reasons.

It shows how new religious 'species' can come into being in a mixed population - no need for geographical separation. That's such a common feature of religion - from the Judaeo-Christian religions to examples from Papua New Guinea - that it's worth trying to understand what drives it.
What's more, this is the first time that anyone has attempted to model the transmission of religious ideas in evolutionary terms. It's a first step, to be sure, but just showing that it can be done is a significant achievement.

The value comes because it shifts the focus from thinking about how culture benefits the host, and instead asks how the cultural trait is adaptive in it's own right. What is important is not whether or not the human host benefits from the trait, but rather whether the trait can successfully transmit and reproducing itself (see Bible Belter for an example of how this could work).

Even more intriguing is the implications for understanding cultural-genetic co-evolution. After all, we know that viruses and their hosts co-evolve in a kind of arms race - sometimes ending up in a relationship that benefits both.

Genetic evolution in humans occurs in an environment shaped by culture - and culture, in turn is shaped by genetics. There are clearly some very deep relationships here, and the kinds of models introduced by Doebeli offer a way to untangle them.

Doebeli M, & Ispolatov I (2010). A model for the evolutionary diversification of religions. Journal of theoretical biology, 267 (4), 676-84 PMID: 20854828

This article by Tom Rees was first published on Epiphenom. It is licensed under Creative Commons.

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t.html

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Lunar Eclipse, the Moons Interior, and the Holy
GRAIL

In addition to the awesome views they offer, lunar eclipses have always provided scientific clues about the moon's shape, location and even surface composition.

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http://blogs.jpl.nasa.gov/?p=75

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