These days we hear a lot about people affected by COVID-19 and also about people arrested for spreading misinformation on the disease. Just two related topics? When experts try to forecast the spread of anything across populations (anything from COVID-19 to false news), they rely on complex mathematical models. Typically they study the first few steps in which the subject spreads and use the estimated rate to project how far and wide the spread will go. What is amiss in this process is the evolutionary perspective. What happens if a pathogen mutates, or the information becomes modified, changing the speed at which it spreads? What happens if a seemingly boring piece of information evolves into a viral Tweet? Whether a piece of information goes viral or not can depend on how its original form is tweaked. Carnegie Mellon scholar Osman Yagan said, “If you don’t consider the potential changes over time, you will be wrong in predicting the number of people that will get sick or the number of people who are exposed to a piece of information.”
SNEAK PEEK
1. Earth was faster
It would be amazing if we can look at a day 70 million years ago. Earth turned faster at the end of the time of the dinosaurs than it does today. The planet rotated 372 times a year! Who deduced it accurately from the daily growth rings visible in some ancient shells?
1. Geochemist Niels de Winter (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
2. The lost tongue
A language learned very early on in life can be subconsciously retained even if no knowledge of the early experience lingers in your mind. This can be tapped to speed up learning how to rightly pronounce the sounds of the lost tongue. Who noted it in adoptees from abroad?
2. Mirjam Broersma (Radboud University)
3. It’s all in packing
If stretched out, all the DNA molecules of a cell would expand to 2 metres. The DNA strands must be coiled and twisted to form space-saving structures (chromosomes). It is the arrangement of these structures that determine the activity of genes. Who figured it out?
3. Susan E Mango (Biozentrum, University of Basel)
4. Noise affects all
Shore crabs slowly change their shell colour to match the rocky shores they live in, but prolonged exposure to the sounds of ships weakens this ability and leaves the crabs more open to attack. Who said that noise pollution can impact behaviours unrelated to noise?
4. Research student Emily E. Carter (University of Exeter)
5. Right word leaping
When you look at a picture of a mug, it activates a host of neurons that code for associations (coffee, spoon, plate, breakfast) and also the neurons that store your concept of “mug”. How the word leaps from your brain to the tongue is a complex process. Who found it?
5. San Diego State University neuroscientist Stephanie Ries
6. Power of storytelling
Telling stories can make a speaker appear more trustworthy, as opposed to putting something in another way (through figures or statistics). This is how story-tellers get away with spreading myths — about crop circles or extraterrestrial visits. Who studied how it works?
6. Melanie Green (UB College of Arts and Sciences)
7. Violence as well
In trophy-taking, the victor removes a part of the loser — scalps, hands, feet, heads. The first evidence seems to have happened at the same time as plant management. Who claimed that it’s farming that spawned the uniquely human cooperation, and violence as well?
7. Elic M. Weitzel (Affiliation: University of Connecticut)
8. A pulse in a fiber
You send a pulse through an optical fiber and it exists at the other end even before the peak of the pulse has entered the fiber. How come? Actually, the pulse inside the fibre was moving backwards, linking the input and output pulses.” Who demonstrated this eerie effect?
8. Physicist Robert William Boyd (University of Rochester)
9. Unmasking god
One of the Upanishads has it that the face of Truth is covered by a golden veil. Perhaps it’s up to us to “rise behind God’s masking, to see through the masks of God.” Which work by an ace sci-fi writer explores the “becoming” of man through the shattering of masks?
9. ‘The God in Science Fiction’ (1977) by Ray Bradbury
[ANSWERS]
1. Geochemist Niels de Winter (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
2. Mirjam Broersma (Radboud University)
3. Susan E Mango (Biozentrum, University of Basel)
4. Research student Emily E. Carter (University of Exeter)
5. San Diego State University neuroscientist Stephanie Ries
6. Melanie Green (UB College of Arts and Sciences)
7. Elic M. Weitzel (Affiliation: University of Connecticut)
8. Physicist Robert William Boyd (University of Rochester)
9. ‘The God in Science Fiction’ (1977) by Ray Bradbury
QUIZ No. 945
1. Who found that 20 minutes of mindfulness can help us handle pain and negativism?
– Hedy Kober
– Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
– Lisa Feldman Barrett
1. Hedy Kober
2. Who used the physics of bubbles in explaining how dialects originate and develop?
– Dr James Burridge
– William Henry Carpenter
– Rodney Huddleston
2. Dr James Burridge
3. Who proposed that drivers of expensive cars are less likely to stop for pedestrians?
– Courtney Coughenour
– Martin Elias P. Seligman
– Roger N. Shepard
3. Courtney Coughenour
4. Who named an asteroid after the legendary Finnish runner Paavo Johannes Nurmi?
– Donald Wayne Kurtz
– Eugene Newman Parker
– Yrjo Vaisala
4. Yrjo Vaisala
5. The title of which play came from bits of a bathroom graffito seen by the playwright?
– The Grass is Greener
– The Marriage-Go-Round
– The House of Yes
5. The House of Yes