Color and Signaling

Posted on October 13, 2010 by Bill Petti

The idea that certain colors elicit different emotional and behavior responses in humans isn’t all that new, but a new research paper suggests that the effect is stronger than we may have thought. The research team built on the physical signal of the color red, which is displayed on the body of female chimps prior to ovulation: [...]

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Speeding Up Evolution?

Posted on August 17, 2010 by Bill Petti

Apparently, George Church has figured out a way to do it: [Church] and his team of researchers at Harvard Medical School in Boston invented a table-top machine that can generate multiple changes in the DNA of bacteria all at once, speeding up the evolutionary process. The technology, known as multiplex automated genetic engineering, or MAGE, [...]

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Hardwired to see Patterns

Posted on March 2, 2010 by Bill Petti

Alan Turing, one of the most brilliant minds to have graced the earth, devised a test to determine whether or not a machine possessed intelligence.  This test became known as the Turing Test. A pair of researchers have developed a similar test to determine whether humans can tell the difference between actual financial market returns [...]

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Visualizing the ‘Evolution’ of Darwin’s Dangerous Idea

Posted on September 7, 2009 by Bill Petti

Via FlowingData, a great visualization by Ben Fry.  Fry looks at how The Origin of Species changed from the first edition to the sixth edition, noting which passages were added, removed, edited, etc.  You can watch the text change by edition as well as scroll over each section to see the actual text by edition. [...]

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