having been attacked by a bird recently, this is wildly fascinating

Wild crows can recognise individual human faces and hold a grudge for years against people who have treated them badly. This ability – which may also exist in other wild animals – highlights how carefully some animals monitor the humans with whom they share living space.

via newscientist.com

Field biologists have observed that crows seem to recognise them, and a few researchers have even gone to the extreme of wearing masks when capturing birds to band (or "ring") them, so that they could later observe the birds without upsetting them. However, it was unclear whether the birds distinguish people by their faces or by other distinctive features of dress, gait or behaviour. To find out,

via newscientist.com

having been attacked by a bird recently, this is wildly fascinating Wild crows can recognise individual human faces and hold a grudge for years against people who have treated them badly. This ability – which may also exist in other wild animals – highlights how carefully some animals monitor the hu ...»See Ya

A five-point guide to getting your tweets retweeted

Cian O'Luanaigh | -->11:25 29 June 2011

Twitter

(Image: Dan Kitwood/Getty)

What makes one tweet get passed on, and not another?

On Twitter, your followers can repeat your messages to their own followers. Getting such retweets is a way to increase your profile and network size, and it's arguably part of the reason why many users keep coming back: that little dopamine squirt you get when you discover somebody has liked your wittering can be addictive.

Retweeting is also one of the main ways that information spreads across the social network, so researchers, companies and governments want to know how it works. Previous research has shown that if your message is retweeted it will reach, on average, 1000 people, no matter how many followers you have.

International Conference on Web Science 2011 in Koblenz, Germany.

In general, tweets containing URLs, usernames, and hashtags - usually used to denote topics - were more likely to be retweeted than those without such paraphernalia. But not in isolation - other factors matter. Naveed and colleagues identified five such rules to increase your chances of a retweet:

1) Watch your punctuation
Tweets with exclamation marks were unlikely to be retweeted. The opposite was true of question marks. The researchers speculate that in some cases this could be because tweets that pose questions are passed on to provide or find an answer.

2) Nice words trump nasty
Tweets containing strong positive words like "great" or "excellent" and negative terms such as "suck" or fail" were likely to be retweeted. But positive terms were slightly more so. The researchers suggest that this might be because people could be a bit more reluctant to retweet rude or harsh terms.

3) Use emoticons wisely
Conversely, including a positive emoticon, such as :-), is a sure way to lower your probability of a retweet. A negative one, such as :-( increases the chances.

4) Be relevant
The team identified more than 100 different topics that people tweeted about. Not surprisingly, those that addressed broader public interest were more likely to be retweeted than, for example, messages about how users felt that day, or messages directed specifically at another person (@replies). The most popular retweeted topics in the dataset concerned social networking, public holidays and the economy. The researchers reckon this suggests Twitter is better suited as a service for channelling news than for personal communication.

5) Bad news is good
The researchers studied the sentiments expressed in their dataset of tweets, by looking for words that are known to correspond to certain feelings. These were given a numerical value on various scales that range from, for example, pleasure to displeasure, or excitement to calmness. They found that tweets which were annoying or not pleasant tend to get retweeted often. Likewise for tweets that expressed exciting or intense sentiments. In other words, they say, bad news travels fast on Twitter.

via newscientist.com

A five-point guide to getting your tweets retweeted Cian O'Luanaigh | --> 11:25 29 June 2011 Twitter (Image: Dan Kitwood/Getty) What makes one tweet get passed on, and not another? On Twitter, your followers can repeat your messages to their own followers. Getting such retweets is a way to increase ...»See Ya

Sacked scientist promises impartial drugs advice

Michael Marshall | -->15:25 15 January 2010

Andy Coghlan, reporter

The scientist sacked by the British government for allegedly criticising government drugs policy today made good on his promise to set up his own committee to investigate and publicise the science of recreational drugs.

"We will provide the truth about drugs unfettered by any political interference," said David Nutt of Imperial College London, and the former head of the government's asked to leave last October by Home Office minister, Alan Johnson.

Now, true to his promise, Nutt is chairman of his newly created Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, and today proudly announced that its first meeting took place yesterday.

So far it has 14 members, including four of the five who resigned from the ACMD last October in protest at the sacking of Nutt. "This is the strongest grouping of scientists we've ever had in this country [who are experts on recreational drugs]," said Nutt. "The best science will come from us."

Already, the new committee has decided on its first three programmes.

The first will investigate the dangers of "not outlawed but which may be causing serious harm to users who buy them freely on the internet.

They include substances such as mephadrone, described by committee member Les King, an adviser to the government on new psychoactive substances, as a cross between amphetamines, Ecstasy and cocaine. ">not outlawed but which may be causing serious harm to users who buy them freely on the internet.

They include substances such as mephadrone, described by committee member Les King, an adviser to the government on new psychoactive substances, as a cross between amphetamines, Ecstasy and cocaine. "People assume they're safe, but we don't know," says King.

Next up will be a re-assessment of the relative harms of different recreational drugs, both legal and illegal.

Nutt is particularly keen to highlight what he describes as ">legal and illegal.

Nutt is particularly keen to highlight what he describes as "aberrations" in the current UK government classification of certain drugs, with relatively safe ones such as alcohol not classified at all.

"At some point, we will put together an assessment of drug harms which will challenge some of the aberrations," says Nutt.

The third project will focus on ketamine, also known as "special K", a drug that is rising in recreational usage. Val Curran of University College London, who will head the study, says that ketamine is already "showing a clear profile of addiction".

In heavy users, it is also causing such serious bladder damage that some have had to have their bladders surgically removed. Two users died drowning in the bath, she says.

The birth of the new committee does raise some interesting questions. First: can it be trusted to be truly impartial? Does it represent a true consensus, and where does it get its funding from?

Equally, where does it leave the ACMD? Some founder members of the new committee are also on the ACMD.

Nutt did turn slightly prickly when asked by a reporter whether his committee would admit ">are also on the ACMD.

Nutt did turn slightly prickly when asked by a reporter whether his committee would admit "dissident" scientists whose views clash with those prevailing among the founder members. Some scientists, for example, say there's evidence that Ecstasy and cannabis are more dangerous than portrayed by Nutt and other scientists.

In response, Nutt said that, "if the science is good enough, there should be no reason why people shouldn't join us".

And who is funding it all? Not the head of a Colombian drugs cartel, we hope. It turns out to be a wealthy benefactor, Toby Jackson, who is a hedge-fund manager.

"He wants policy driven by scientific evidence," says Nutt. Nutt says that funding is assured for at least three years, costing around £150,000 per year, but the hope is that other sources of funding and public donations will swell the kitty and consolidate the committee.

Another possible source of money could be projects commissioned by the government.

And where does it leave the ACMD? Nutt says that the new chairman, Les Iversen of the University of Oxford, has already sent Nutt his best wishes for the new committee, expressing the hope they can "work together".

But the arrival of the new committee is clearly and deliberately a middle-finger salute to a government seen by Nutt and others as unwilling to grant true independence to its scientific advisers.

Stung by the criticism that advisers could be new principles setting out the ground rules for ensuring independence of advice.

But Nutt today described these as "so watered-down" that they made the situation worse than before he was sacked.

The big worry now, of course, is that the public can never again be sure when the ACMD - or any other of its independent scientific advisory committees - is being leant on to produce advice in keeping with government policy. "The ACMD is now working in conditions that fetter them even more," says Nutt.

More broadly, the creation of the committee could set up a whole new paradigm for providing scientific advice without the burden of political interference. Why stop at recreational drugs? Why don't top scientists set up committees to give the unshackled "truth" on climate change, abortion, evolution, nutrition, food and health, nuclear power and so on.

The difficulty, of course, is that such groups could turn out to be self-selecting, choosing among their number only those who are "on-message". But that may be the lesser of two evils compared with government interference.

"It's a very interesting model, with bottom-up scientists coming together to give politically-free independent advice," says Nutt.

via newscientist.com

Sacked scientist promises impartial drugs advice Michael Marshall | --> 15:25 15 January 2010 Andy Coghlan, reporter The scientist sacked by the British government for allegedly criticising government drugs policy today made good on his promise to set up his own committee to investigate and publicis ...»See Ya

thaumatrope

via facweb.cs.depaul.edu

via facweb.cs.depaul.edu ...»See Ya