Search Results for: Science

The Two Year Window

Longreads Pick

But a scientific revolution that has taken place in the last decade or so illuminates a different way to address the dysfunctions associated with childhood hardship. This science suggests that many of these problems have roots earlier than is commonly understood—especially during the first two years of life. Researchers, including those of the Bucharest project, have shown how adversity during this period affects the brain, down to the level of DNA—establishing for the first time a causal connection between trouble in very early childhood and later in life. And they have also shown a way to prevent some of these problems—if action is taken during those crucial first two years.

The first two years, however, happen to be the period of a child’s life in which we invest the least. According to research by the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, children get about half as many taxpayer resources, per person, as do the elderly. And among children, the youngest get the least. The annual federal investment in elementary school kids approaches $11,000 per child. For infants and toddlers up to age two, it is just over $4,000. When it comes to early childhood, public policy is lagging far behind science—with disastrous consequences.

Published: Nov 9, 2011
Length: 15 minutes (3,921 words)

Featured Longreader: Gabrielle Gantz, arts & culture blogger/publicist at Viking & Penguin. See her story picks from The Christian Science Monitor, Bloomberg Businessweek and more on her #longreads page.

“At Twitter, where anxiety and optimism are never far from one another, the leadership is surprisingly frank about these problems. To start with, the audience is alarmingly fickle. Nielsen estimated that user-retention rates were around 40 percent. Twitter was easy to use at an entry level, but after a while it was hard for some people to see the point. Twitter has claimed as many as 175 million registered users, but numbers leaked to the online news site Business Insider in March put the number of actual people using it closer to 50 million, correcting for dead and duplicate accounts, automated ‘bots’ and spam.”

“Tweet Science.” — Joe Hagan, New York magazine

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“This should have been Felisa Wolfe-Simon’s moment in the sun. But within days, researchers began to question Wolfe-Simon’s methodology and conclusions. Many of them cast aside traditions of measured commentary in peer reviewed periodicals and voiced their criticism directly on blogs and Twitter. Then, as the conflict spilled into the mainstream, the scientific community witnessed something few would have predicted: meaningful public engagement over a serious scientific issue.”

“Scientist in a Strange Land.” — Tom Clynes, Popular Science [Not single-page] 

See more #longreads from Popular Science

Scientist in a Strange Land

Longreads Pick

[Not single-page] The research, financed mostly by NASA and published initially in the online edition of Science, jolted the scientific community. If confirmed, scientists said, the discovery would mean that this high mountain lake hosts a form of life distinct from all others known on Earth. It would open up the possibility of a shadow biosphere, composed of organisms that can survive using means that long-accepted rules of biochemistry cannot explain. And it would give Mono Lake, rather than Mars or one of Jupiter’s moons, the distinction of being the first place in our solar system where “alien” life was discovered.

Author: Tom Clynes
Source: Popular Science
Published: Sep 26, 2011
Length: 22 minutes (5,736 words)

Radiolab: An Appreciation by Ira Glass

Longreads Pick

I marvel at Radiolab when I hear it. I feel jealous. Its co-creators Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich have digested all the storytelling and production tricks of everyone in public radio before them, invented some slick moves of their own, and ended up creating the rarest thing you can create in any medium: a new aesthetic. Take the opening of their show on the mathematics of random chance, stochasticity. The first aesthetic choice Jad and Robert make is that they don’t say you’re about to listen to a show about math or science. They don’t use the word stochasticity. They know those things would be a serious turn off for lots of people. In doing this, Jad and Robert sidestep most of the conventions of a normal science show – hell, of most normal broadcast journalism.

Author: Ira Glass
Source: transom.org
Published: Sep 19, 2011
Length: 18 minutes (4,686 words)

9/11: The Winners

Longreads Pick

The September 11, 2001 attacks have been a symbol of many things and many causes, but like the lavish, flag-draped rebuilding of the site, it has also been a vehicle for enrichment. From corporations to politicians to government officials to nonprofits to the security industry to publishers to the health industry (not to mention the incidents of outright fraud over the years), many people have found ways to profit from one of the nation’s biggest disasters. 9/11 has created an economy all its own. “The intersection of 9/11 and money is a busy intersection,” says retired New York City firefighter Kenny Specht. Glenn Corbett, a professor of fire science at John Jay College, active in a range of 9/11 issues, puts it this way: “Lots of people have got their hand in the till. A lot of people and a lot of companies have made a lot of money off of 9/11.” Is it sacrilege to point this out? #Sept11

Source: Village Voice
Published: Aug 31, 2011
Length: 25 minutes (6,311 words)

Someone I’d Like You to Meet

Longreads Pick

(Fiction) Veblen MacKay-Sim was engaged to Paul Vreeland, a postgraduate research fellow in neuroscience, and the time had finally come to bring him home to meet the family. A classic rite of passage, except that the irregularities of her mother’s personality held a certain terror for her. She was often reminded that humans were flawed, no families faultless, and no matter what happened that day, it was all part of the rich tapestry of life. Her mother would surely rise to such an occasion. And Paul, who routinely examined brain-injured cadavers, could surely endure it too.

Source: The Atlantic
Published: Aug 14, 2011
Length: 26 minutes (6,690 words)

Can Sheryl Sandberg Upend Silicon Valley’s Male-Dominated Culture?

Longreads Pick

Several female computer-science majors at Stanford pointed to the depiction of women in films like “The Social Network,” where the boys code and the girls dance around in their underwear. Sandberg says that the impact of popular culture struck her when her son was playing a Star Wars game. “When I grow up, I want to live in space and be a Star Wars person as a job,” he told his mother. “I’d like to come, too,” she responded, “because I always want to live near you.” “You can’t come,” he said. “I’ve already invited my sister, and there’s only one girl in space.”

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Jul 11, 2011
Length: 32 minutes (8,099 words)

Did My Brother Invent E-Mail With Tom Van Vleck?

Longreads Pick

“In 1965, at the beginning of the year, there was a bunch of stuff going on with the time-sharing system that Noel and I were users of. We were working for the political science department. And the system programmers wrote a programming staff note memo that proposed the creation of a mail command. But people proposed things in programming staff notes that never got implemented. And well, we thought the idea of electronic mail was a great idea. We said, ‘Where’s electronic mail? That would be so cool.’ And they said, ‘Oh, there’s no time to write that. It’s not important.’ And we said, ‘Well, can we write it?’ And we did. And then it became part of the system.”

Published: Jun 19, 2011
Length: 24 minutes (6,093 words)