We give up. How many scientists does it take for them to realize there are too many of them?
Complex 'Wicked' Problems Better Solved Individually Than Through Internet Groups
ScienceDaily (Dec. 5, 2007) — What’s the best way to solve a wicked problem — by working in a large group sharing ideas via the intranet or as individuals? That’s the question George S. Davidson and his research team at Sandia National Laboratories attempted to resolve this summer.
The research, conducted by Davidson, Courtney Dornburg, Susan Stevens, Stacey Hendrickson, Travis Bauer and Chris Forsythe, had some surprising results.
“In this day and age of email and the internet, our expectations were that computer-mediated group brainstorming, i.e. across the web with no face-to face contact, was going to have the best results,” Davidson says. “What we found, however, was that people working as individuals were at least as effective and possibly more so than those brainstorming in a group over the web when trying to solve ‘wicked,’ tangled problems, both in terms of quality and quantity.”
The experiment was funded by Sandia’s internal Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program.
Wicked problems are those problems that by their very definition are so tangled that there is no agreement about their definitions, much less their solutions.
Davidson assembled a team that consisted of himself, three psychologists (two of them PhD students), and two cognition researchers to investigate tools and methods for bringing very large numbers of people together to solve difficult problems via the intranet. The team anticipated that the group brainstorming could result in a huge pool of ideas that might lead to solutions. They decided to pursue an electronic brainstorming experiment built around the very common face-to-face technique used at Sandia where people submit ideas written on Yellow Sticky Post-It ® Notes.
As the team designed the experiment, the initial issue was deriving a wicked problem with no predefined “right or wrong answer,” Dornburg says. In June Dornburg, a psychologist who has worked at Sandia for two years, attended a new-hire breakfast hosted by Labs President and Director Tom Hunter. During the breakfast, Hunter posed the new hires with a challenge, asking them to think about the implications of two popular models in management theory. In one view workers are just another natural resource to be used. In contrast, the second model sees employees as assets, which can be made more valuable by investing in their development. Dornburg shared the question with the team, and they unanimously decided to make it the wicked problem for the experiment.
They recruited 120 Sandia employees and contractors and 26 student interns through an internal online daily newsletter and word of mouth to participate in the experiment that lasted four days in August. The participants were broken into two groups, those who worked alone and did not see the ideas of the other participants and those who worked in a group and were able to see and build on the ideas of the other members in the group via the Labs’ intranet. Of the 120 employees and contractors, 69 contributed ideas.
While we always thought the correct term for a group of scientists is "pile," as in "look at that pile of scientists," the always astute David Insley reports that the correct term is "beaker," as in "look at that beaker of scientists."
These headlines seemed linked. They’re both taken from the Obscure Store.
Man says stealing blow-up dolls was a "drunken, stupid thing"
(Wisconsin State Journal)
Reward offered for return of 42-foot tall inflatable snowman (Tyler, TX Morning Telegraph)
Stolen blow-up dolls? Stolen inflatable snowman? Call us romantics, but we hear wedding bells.
Earth is the Oreo and life is the cream filling?
Life On Earth May Have Originated As The Organic Filling In A Multilayer Sandwich Of Mica Sheets
ScienceDaily (Dec. 5, 2007) — Life may have begun in the protected spaces inside of layers of the mineral mica, in ancient oceans, according to a new hypothesis.
The hypothesis was developed by Helen Hansma, a research scientist with the University of California, Santa Barbara and a program director at the National Science Foundation.
The Hansma mica hypothesis proposes that the narrow confined spaces between the thin layers of mica could have provided exactly the right conditions for the rise of the first biomolecules ---- effectively creating cells without membranes. The separation of the layers would have also provided the isolation needed for Darwinian evolution.
"Some think that the first biomolecules were simple proteins, some think they were RNA, or ribonucleic acid," said Hansma. "Both proteins and RNA could have formed in between the mica sheets."
RNA plays an important part in translating the genetic code, and is composed of nitrogenous bases, sugar, and phosphates. RNA and many proteins and lipids in our cells have negative charges like mica. RNA's phosphate groups are spaced one half nanometer apart, just like the negative charges on mica.
Mica layers are held together by potassium. The concentration of potassium inside the mica is very similar to the concentration of potassium in our cells. And the seawater that bathed the mica is rich in sodium, just like our blood.
The heating and cooling of the day to night cycle would have caused the mica sheets to move up and down, and waves would have provided a mechanical energy source as well, according to the new model. Both forms of movement would have caused the forming and breaking of chemical bonds necessary for the earliest biochemistry.
Thus the mica layers could have provided the support, shelter, and an energy source for the development of precellular life, while leaving artifacts in the structure of living things today.
And to think they let these people vote
Labeling Keeps Our Knowledge Organized, Study Shows
ScienceDaily (Dec. 5, 2007) — A popular urban legend suggests that Eskimos have dozens of words for snow. As a culture that faces frigid temperatures year-round, it is important to differentiate between things like snow on the ground ("aput") and falling snow ("qana"). Psychologists are taking note of this phenomenon and are beginning to examine if learning different names for things helps to tell them apart.
In a new study Carnegie Mellon University researchers Gary Lupyan and David Rakison, and their colleague James McClelland of Stanford University asked whether all other things being equal, learning names for unfamiliar items or people really makes it easier to learn to categorize them.
In a series of experiments, college undergraduates played a game where they were asked to imagine that they were explorers on planet "Teeb" while subtly distinct "aliens" would appear individually on a computer screen in front of them. Their goal was to categorize these aliens into two types: those to be avoided and those to be approached.
Participants pressed different keys to indicate which aliens they believed they should approach and which should be avoided. After each response, they would hear a buzz or a beep to let them know if their response was correct.
One group of participants was told that previous visitors to the planet have found it useful to refer to the two types of aliens as "grecious" and "leebish." After each response, participants in this group saw or heard the label that corresponded with the friendly aliens and those to be avoided. The other group completed the categorization task without the labels.
Even though all participants had the same amount of practice categorizing the aliens, the group that learned names for the two kinds of aliens learned to categorize them much faster.
These results suggest that regardless of familiarity, having different names for things makes it easier to place them into the correct categories. In other words, a Southern Californian could differentiate the many different types of snow just as well as an Eskimo, as long as they learned the proper labels.
The article, "Language Is Not Just For Talking: Redundant Labels facilitate Learning of Novel Categories" is published in the December issue of Psychological Science, a journal of Association for Psychological Science.
"Psychologists are taking note of this phenomenon and are beginning to examine if learning different names for things helps to tell them apart." That’s deep. This guy must hold the Buckaroo Bonzai Chair of Figuring Things Out at Whatsamatta U.
The real Inna Gadda Da Vida
Madagascar birds burst into song
Rarely-heard recordings of birdsong from the biodiversity hotspot of Madagascar have been compiled and released by the British Library.
The 127 Madagascar birds featured on its new CD include threatened species such as the long-tailed ground-roller and Benson's rock thrush.
Conservationists prize the island for its unique species, notably lemurs.
But deforestation and destruction of other habitats is taking many towards the brink of extinction.
Most of the bird recordings have never before been published.
Among the unusual calls are the drumming sounds of a Madagascar snipe, the screeching alarm of the red-capped coua, and the "rattle and whistle" duet of the white-throated oxylabes.
The call of the red-shouldered vanga was recorded in 1997 on the occasion of the species' first reported observation in the wild.
The British Library Sound Archive compiled its CD with the environment group Conservation International which is heavily involved in projects aiming to conserve Madagascar's unique biological legacy.
What, no video?
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