Technology Review provides an illustrated “time travel through the brain“:

Over the 100-year history of modern neuroscience, the way we think about the brain has evolved with the sophistication of the techniques available to study it. Improvements in microscope design and manufacture, together with the development of cell-staining techniques, afforded neuroscientists their first glimpse at the specialized cells that make up the nervous system. Microscopes with more magnifying power enabled them to probe nerve cells in greater detail, revealing distinct compartments. Newer techniques expose the connections between nerve cells, revealing the complex organization of the brain.

More images and history of neuroscience here.

The fun theory:

Via TED:

William Kamkwamba, from Malawi, is a born inventor. When he was 14, he built an electricity-producing windmill from spare parts and scrap, working from rough plans he found in a library book called Using Energy and modifying them to fit his needs. The windmill he built powers four lights and two radios in his family home.

Jon Stewart recently interviewed William, who has since become known as (and written a book titled) The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. Be sure to watch the interview here, as it is one of the more amazing examples of creativity, imagination, resourcefulness, and resilience.

Below is the second of two presentations featuring William at a TED conference.

“Disorientation begets creative thinking.”

As reported in the NYT article, “How nonsense sharpens the intellect,” college students who read an absurd short story by Frank Kafka prior to their participation in a pattern recognition and recall test engaged in significantly more implicit learning (“knowledge gained without awareness”) than a peer group who read a coherent short story.

This is one area of psychology where the theory of mind is racing to catch-up with research:

In a series of new papers, Dr. Proulx and Steven J. Heine, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, argue that these findings are variations on the same process: maintaining meaning, or coherence. The brain evolved to predict, and it does so by identifying patterns.

When those patterns break down — as when a hiker stumbles across an easy chair sitting deep in the woods, as if dropped from the sky — the brain gropes for something, anything that makes sense. It may retreat to a familiar ritual, like checking equipment. But it may also turn its attention outward, the researchers argue, and notice, say, a pattern in animal tracks that was previously hidden. The urge to find a coherent pattern makes it more likely that the brain will find one.

“There’s more research to be done on the theory,” said Michael Inzlicht, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, because it may be that nervousness, not a search for meaning, leads to heightened vigilance. But he added that the new theory was “plausible, and it certainly affirms my own meaning system; I think they’re onto something.”

More here.

Jonah Lehrer has another fantastic post on “Nature and compassion“:

Even a glimpse of greenery can make us behave in kinder, gentler ways.

[A recent] study consisted of several experiments with 370 different subjects. In each experiment, people were exposed to either natural settings (pristine lakes, wooded forests, remote deserts) or man-made environments (cityscapes, skyscrapers and highways). They were then tested for a variety of “prosocial” behaviors, such as compassion and generosity. For instance, two of the experiments used a simple trust task, in which a person is given a $5 prize and told that they could share their prize with an anonymous stranger, who would then be given an additional $5. (There was no guarantee that the second person would return any of the winnings.)

The scientists found that subjects exposed to nature were significantly more likely to open their wallets. Furthermore, increased exposure to nature led to an increased willingness to share with strangers.

Jonah’s explanations and interpretations of this study are here.

From The Guardian’s “Will California become America’s first failed state?“:

The percentage of 19-year-olds at college in the state dropped from 43% to 30% between 1996 and 2004, one of the highest falls ever recorded for any developed world economy. California’s schools are ranked 47th out of 50 in the nation.

Related read: Bob Herbert’s NYT op-ed, “Cracks in the future.”

From TED: “Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.”

The talk gets especially interesting around the 8:30 mark when Sir Robinson observes the ways in which school (and society) champion the disembodied mind and “educates people out of their curiosity.” His call-to-action for a new human ecology — rooted in the reimagination of intelligence as diverse, dynamic, and distinct — is an absolute “must watch.”

More about Sir Ken Robinson can be found here.

Via kottke:

The ball used contains a beeping device that is loud enough to aid in sightless location. The six players on the field are helped by a sighted pitcher, who announces “pitch” or “ball” as they toss to a sighted catcher. Batters are allowed four strikes and one pass, but the fourth swing must be a clear, defined miss. The game has six innings, the standard three outs per inning, and two bases, not three.

Baseball’s traditional tile-like bases are replaced with padded cylinders that stand four feet tall and give off a distinct buzz once activated. The batter doesn’t know which base will be activated, but must run to whichever sounds, tackling the base before defense has a chance to field the ball. If the runner makes it in time, a run is scored. Two sighted “spotters” also play the field and call out which direction the ball has headed using a system based on numbers assigned to each outfielder. Spotters can only announce one number, and the outfielders must communicate with each other to locate the ball. Cheering is discouraged because it interferes with play.

Randy Cohen, the NYT’s ethicist, without hesitation or equivocation, says, “Do not donate to Harvard.”

To do so is to offer more pie to a portly fellow while the gaunt and hungry press their faces to the window (at some sort of metaphoric college cafeteria, anyway). Even after last year’s losses, Harvard’s endowment exceeds $26 billion, the largest of any American university,greater than the G.D.P. of Estonia. By contrast, among historically black colleges and universities, Howard has the largest endowment, about $420 million, a mere 1.6 percent the size of Harvard’s. (Donors gave Harvard more than $600 million just this fiscal year.) The best-endowed community college,Valencia, in Orlando, Fla., has around $67 million, or 0.26 percent of Harvard’s wealth. This is not to deny that Harvard does fine work or could find ways to spend the money but to assert that other schools have a greater need and a greater moral claim to your benevolence.

More on this topic can be found here.

Former players of the National Football League who are in their 30s and 40s are nearly 20 times as likely to suffer from memory-related diseases, including Alzhemeir’s, when compared to the national population.

This is one of the frightening findings of a report from the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research. More than 1,600 former professional players participated in the health survey. Even though the report was commissioned by the NFL, the league is questioning its reliability. The NFL hopes to publish the results from its own “rigorous study of 120 retired [football] players” within a few years.

In the meantime, Dr. Julian Bailes, chairman of the department of neurosurgery at the West Virginia University School of Medicine and a former physician for the Pittsburgh Steelers notes that he found similar links between football participation and dementia/cognitive decline four years ago.

“They always say, ‘We’re going to do our own studies.’ And now they have.”

Sean Morey, an Arizona Cardinals player who has been vocal in supporting research in this area, said: “This is about more than us — it’s about the high school kid in 2011 who might not die on the field because he ignored the risks of concussions.”

The NYT article on this issue can be found here.

A NYT video on “high school football’s hidden danger” for youth participants can be found here. Parents and players may want to pay attention to the fact that 50% of high school football players have suffered a concussion, and 35% have had more than one.

**Related: How to blow through $20M.

Somewhat related to my previous post, at least in terms of examining the power of social influence, a 30-year follow-up study of 14,000 people born in Stockholm, Sweden has found that “children who are popular and exert power among their school classmates enjoy better health as adults” (source).

Ylva Almquist authored the research report for the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, titled “Peer status in school and adult disease risk: A 30-year follow-up study of disease specific morbidity in a Stockholm cohort.” From the extended abstract:

Background: Children have a social status position of their own, apart from that of the family, that may have an impact on short-term and long-term health. The aim of the present study was to analyse the associations between childhood social status in school, i.e. peer status, and disease-specific morbidity in adulthood.

Methods: Data was derived from a longitudinal study using a 1953 cohort born in Stockholm, Sweden: The Stockholm Birth Cohort Study (1953-2003). Peer status was sociometrically assessed in 6th grade (1966). Hazard ratios for adult disease-specific morbidity based on information on in-patient care (1973-2003) were calculated by peer status category for men and women separately, using Cox regression.

Results: The results indicate that the lower the childhood peer status, the higher the overall adult disease risk. There were however differences in the degree and magnitude to which disease-specific in-patient care varied with peer status. Some of the steepest gradients were found for mental and behavioural disorders (e.g. alcohol abuse and drug dependence), external causes (e.g. suicide) and various lifestyle-related diseases (e.g. ischaemic heart disease and diabetes). The results were not explained by childhood social class.

Conclusion: The present study underscores the importance of recognizing children’s social position, apart from that of their family, for later health. Not only psychologically related diseasesbut also those related to behavioural risk factors demonstrate some of the largest relative differences by peer status, suggesting that health-related behaviour may be one important mechanism in the association between peer status and morbidity.

Medical News Today has a fantastic article summarizing Almquist’s research:

Researchers reviewed more than 14,000 children who were born in Sweden in 1953 and who were part of the Stockholm Birth Cohort Study. This monitors the long term health of children born between 1953 and 2003.

When the children reached sixth grade in 1966 and were 12 to 13 years old, the degree of popularity, power, and status enjoyed by each child was evaluated. It was assessed by asking them who they most preferred to work with at school.

The answers were then ranked into five status bands:
• marginalized (no nominations)
• peripheral (one nomination)
• accepted (two to three nominations)
• popular (four to six nominations)
• favorite (seven or more nominations)

Using national hospital discharge records, this information was then matched to data on subsequent hospital admissions for the period between 1973 and 2003.

Investigation revealed that children who were the least popular at school had the highest overall risk of serious health illness as an adult. The pattern was obvious for both men and women. But there were differences in the types of health illness they developed.

Children who were the least accepted and dominant at school were more than four times as likely to require hospital treatment for hormonal, nutritional, and metabolic diseases as their most popular and powerful classmates.

In addition, they were more than twice as likely to develop mental illness and behavioral problems, including suicide attempts and self harm.

They were more than five times as likely to be admitted for unintentional poisoning, while those classified as “peripheral” were more than seven times as likely to require hospital care for this same event.

They were also considerably more likely to develop drug and alcohol addiction problems and nine times more likely to develop ischaemic heart disease.

Childhood social class was not considered in the account of the findings.

The authors suggest that “peer status in childhood is linked to adult health through behavioral and psychological factors that influence the development of disorders and diseases in which these factors feature.”

PhysOrg.com reports on “a study of Oxford rowers [that] shows members of a team who exercise together are able to tolerate twice as much pain as when they train on their own.”

In the study, published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters, researchers from the University of Oxford’s Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology found the pain threshold of 12 rowers from the Oxford Boat Race squad was greater after group training than after individual training.

Each of the 12 rowers participated in four separate tests. They were asked to row continuously for 45 minutes in a virtual boat in the gym (as in normal training), in an exercise carried out in two teams of six and then in a separate session as individuals, unobserved by other team members. After each of the sessions, the researchers measured their pain threshold by how long they could stand an inflated blood pressure cuff on the arm.

The study found there was a significant increase in the rowers’ pain threshold following exercise in both individual and group sessions (a well established response to exercise of any kind). However, after the group training there was a significantly larger increase as compared with training carried out individually.

Since close synchrony is the key to successful competition-class racing, these results suggest that doing a synchronised activity as a group increases the endorphin rush that we get from physical exertion. The study says that since endorphins help to create a sense of bonhomie and positive effect, this effect may underlie the experience of warmth and belonging that we have when we do activities like dancing, sports, religious rituals and other forms of communal exercise together.

Professor Robin Dunbar, Head of the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at Oxford University, said: ‘Previous research suggests that synchronised physical activity such as laughter, music and many religious activities makes people happier and is part of the bonding process. We also know that physical exercise creates a natural high through the release of endorphins. What this study shows us is that synchrony alone seems to ramp up the production of endorphins so as to heighten the effect when we do these activities in groups.’

The entire article, “Rowers’ high: Behavioral synchrony is correlated with elevated pain thresholds,” by Emma E. A. Cohen, Robin Ejsmond-Frey, Nicola Knight, and R.I.M. Dunbar, is available online.

As summarized by the Bay Area Edupreneur News Bulletin:

Over the last few years, a new buzz phrase has emerged among scholars and scientists who study early-childhood development, a phrase that sounds more as if it belongs in the boardroom than the classroom: executive function. Originally a neuroscience term, it refers to the ability to think straight: to order your thoughts, to process information in a coherent way, to hold relevant details in your short-term memory, to avoid distractions and mental traps and focus on the task in front of you. And recently, cognitive psychologists have come to believe that executive function, and specifically the skill of self-regulation, might hold the answers to some of the most vexing questions in education today.

The ability of young children to control their emotional and cognitive impulses, it turns out, is a remarkably strong indicator of both short-term and long-term success, academic and otherwise. In some studies, self-regulation skills have been shown to predict academic achievement more reliably than I.Q. tests.

The problem is that just as we’re coming to understand the importance of self-regulation skills, those skills appear to be in short supply among young American children. In one recent national survey, 46 percent of kindergarten teachers said that at least half the kids in their classes had problems following directions. In another study, Head Start teachers reported that more than a quarter of their students exhibited serious self-control-related negative behaviors, like kicking or threatening other students, at least once a week. Walter Gilliam, a professor at Yale’s child-study center, estimates that each year, across the country, more than 5,000 children are expelled from pre-K programs because teachers feel unable to control them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/magazine/27tools-t.html?em

In browsing through a collection of “stories of interest,” I came across a NYT article from February of this year about how some classrooms are being redesigned without chairs. By forcing students to stand (rather than sit) at their desks, teachers are reporting an decrease in fidgety behavior among their students and an increase in attention paid to academics. From “Student stand when called upon, and when not“:

Dr. James A. Levine, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic, advocates what he calls “activity-permissive” classrooms, including stand-up desks.

“We can’t say for sure that this has an impact on those two things, but we’re hypothesizing that they may,” said Beth A. Lewis of the School of Kinesiology, or movement science, at the University of Minnesota. “I think we’re so used to the traditional classroom it’s taken a while for people to start thinking outside the box. I think it’s just a matter of breaking the mold.”

“Having many children sit in a classroom isn’t the craziest idea, but look at how children have changed,” Dr. Levine said of the sedentary lives of many. “We also have to change, to meet their needs.”

Teachers in Minnesota and Wisconsin say they know from experience that the desks help give children the flexibility they need to expend energy and, at the same time, focus better on their work rather than focusing on how to keep still.

Researchers should soon know whether they can confirm those calorie-burning and scholastic benefits. Two studies under way at the University of Minnesota are using data collected from Ms. Brown’s classroom and others in Minnesota and Wisconsin that are using the new desks. The pupils being studied are monitored while using traditional desks as well, and the researchers are looking for differences in physical activity and academic achievement.

I wrote a similar-themed post on an older (now defunct) blog back in 2007:

In today’s in-front-of-the-television, in-the-car, on-the-computer culture, getting 30-60 minutes of vigorous exercise and eating a healthy, well-balanced diet is not enough to help us lose weight. We also need to (drum roll please)… Stand up!

In a new study from scientists at the University of Missouri, reported by ABC News, “scientists say just standing up may be as important as exercise” in maintaining overall fitness and health.

The peer-reviewed study was published this month in the academic journal Diabetes. Marc Hamilton is the associate professor of biomedical sciences at the University of Missouri-Columbia and leader of the research team that conducted this study. According to the ABC News summary of the study, “We have to pay more attention to what’s happening when we aren’t in the gym, because the body’s ability to dispose of fat virtually shuts down, at least if we’re sitting down.”

As for how to best stimulate the body during our often sedentary workdays, it doesn’t take much — simple puttering gets the blood flowing. But if taking a two minute walk break every hour to the bathroom or office kitchen is too difficult to manage in one’s always-on-always-working workday, simply standing up works the large leg and back muscles necessary for helping to burn fat. When we sit, the enzyme responsible for burning fat is suppressed.

This reminds me of an anecdote I heard of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Apparently, annoyed about attending a meeting that easily stretched into the longer end of an hour, he took all the chairs out of the conference room. The next meeting, people were forced to stand. The result: the meeting was over in less than 15 minutes.

**

Related: “Spending the workday at 1 MPH“

Play As If Your Life Depends on It is Frank Forencich’s manifesto about the benefits — nay, the necessity — of re-integrating play into our daily lives.

The book, while an important meditation on physical movement and a call to action, may be hard to track down. Fortunately, back when PAIYLDOI was self-published in 2003, ABC News published an excerpt that introduced Frank’s “[three] principals for building an effective and enjoyable physical fitness program”:

After two decades of study, struggle and experimentation I’ve come to the conclusion that what we need is a paradigm for human fitness that meets a few simple conditions: it’s got to have some relevance to human origins, it’s got to speak to the functional performance of the human body and it’s got to be fun. In other words, we need a paradigm for exercise and fitness that’s primal, practical and playful.

The entire excerpt can be found here; Frank’s companion blog, complete with videos of various movement games, can be found at http://goanimal.typepad.com http://blog.exuberantanimal.com.

Exuberant Animal also has a collection of functional fitness games to tap into your inner animal.

Below is a great video of Frank giving a presentation titled, “A Body Centered Curriculum: The Primate’s Predicament.” One of my favorite parts of his presentation is the observation that health professionals are required to provide a warning that says, “Before beginning an exercise program, see your doctor” — an announcement that suggests vigorous physical activity is somehow outside the norms of modern human living.

Frank suggests an amendment to the current label, such that it reads: “Before you begin a program of physical inactivity, consult your physician.” According to the Archives of Internal Medicine, there are 300,000 premature deaths due to inactivity and poor diet every year (!); thus, the standard announcement should warn us that “Physical inactivity is abnormal and dangerous to your health.”

The crisis is more about our physical health, however; it’s an epidemic of lost physicality — of the fact that we no longer use and experience our bodies in any meaningful way. Despite “the mismatch between physiology and the modern world,” Frank’s message is hopeful and prescriptive, reminding us that our bodies are designed to help us engage in exuberant, playful, physical experiences. We simply need to go primal!

“Fall Forward”: Another Power 10 spinning mix…

The summary of this film doesn’t do it justice: “Set against the breathtaking backdrop of the Himalayas, BLINDSIGHT follows the gripping adventure of six Tibetan teenagers who set out to climb the 23,000-foot Lhakpa Ri on the north side of Mount Everest. The dangerous journey soon becomes a seemingly impossible challenge — made all the more remarkable by the fact that the teenagers are blind.”

Blindsight is, simply, one of the more affecting movies about adventure, struggle, and the human spirit that I have watched. A truly inspiring documentary.

The entire movie can be watched for free on Hulu; its official website is here.

With the ICC Cricket Champions Trophy still up-for-grabs, the coach of India’s national team is encouraging his athletes to engage in some — um, performance-enhancing shenanigans.

According to a “secret document” being passed around the team by its coach and mental conditioning expert, having sex before a competitive contest increases physical performance:

From a physiological perspective, having sex increases testosterone levels, which cause an increase in strength, energy, aggression and competitiveness. Conversely, not having sex for a period of a few months causes a significant drop in testosterone levels in both males and females, with the corresponding passiveness and decrease in aggression.

According to a front-page article in the Hindustan Times and summarized by Breitbart:

“If you want sex but do not have someone to share it with, one option is to go solo whilst imagining you have a partner, or a few partners, who are as beautiful as you wish to imagine,” the document said.

“No pillow talk and no hugging required. Just roll over and go to sleep.”

Enforced celibacy may also affect performance, the advice said.

“You may experience that your mind spends more time focusing on the fire in your groin than on good sport practice, preparation and sleep,” the document said.

The document also stresses the importance of being aggressive on the field from the start, self-improvement and healthy eating.

Earlier this week, the National Governors Association released its draft of Common Core State Standards (essentially a blueprint for a nationally-shared definition of proficiency in math and English). In its wake, the NYT hosted a discussion with education practitioners, researchers, professors, and reformers about the merits and weaknesses of this initiative. Read the debate about national academic standards here.

From TED: A pioneer in research on play, Dr. Stuart Brown says humor, games, roughhousing, flirtation and fantasy are more than just fun. Plenty of play in childhood makes for happy, smart adults — and keeping it up can make us smarter at any age.

I recently learned of Exuberant Animal, which bills itself as (1) a philosophy of holistic body development and (2) an organization that advances a “virtuous cycle of positive physicality, improved performance, and creative responses to the challenges of the day.”

EA is hosting an event in Baltimore on November 7-8 that looks to offer a fantastic introduction to mindful play. One of my areas of research is concerned with the relationship between physical activity and cognitive development — coupled with my interest in the philosophy of play, I very much look forward to attending the Exuberant Animal East Coast Jam.

To all physical educators, body workers, kinesthetic learners, barefoot runners, and those simply interested in remembering how to play (especially if you live in the mid-Atlantic region), I encourage you to check-out this event. Here are the details:

Exuberant Animal East Coast Jam

In partnership with Gerstung Sport Education

November 7-8, 2009

Baltimore, Maryland

Join Frank Forencich, creator of Exuberant Animal and author of Play as if Your Life Depends on It, for this exciting and inspirational event. This innovative two-day workshop will offer a powerful new perspective on human performance, health and physical happiness. Ideal for all fitness, movement and body professionals, the seminar offers an approach that is invigorating, liberating and life-changing.

Content includes:

• Vigorous movement sessions and functional fitness games
• An overview of the human predicament and the state of the body
• Functional movement concepts including the importance of barefooting
• Robust athletic core training by the partner-resist method

Special guest presenters including Dr. Kwame Brown on “The Power of Play and child development.”

We will also feature a Sunday morning kids class. This class (9:00-10:00am) is open to children ages 7 and up.

To register and learn more, click here.

Below is a video Lauren Mooney of Physical Mind produced for Dr. Stuart Brown, Founder and President of the National Institute for Play — the footage is from a physical play workshop organized by Exuberant Animal.

Volunteers were asked to identify fifty famous faces, including that of former U.S. president Richard Nixon and actor Winona Ryder. The photos were digitally altered and shown either without eyebrows or without eyes. When celebrities lacked eyes, subjects could recognize them nearly 60 percent of the time. However, when celebrities lacked eyebrows, subjects recognized them only 46 percent of time. The lesson: eyebrows are crucial to your identity — they’re at least as important as your eyes, if not more so.

(via Daily Dish)

Yahoo! Sports notes that the minimum salary for rookies in the NFL is more than $300,000. After two-years in the league, the guaranteed minimum is close to $500,000. So how is it that “within two years of retirement, 78% of NFL players are bankrupt or in severe financial distress?” (This is one of the staggering statistics buried within SI’s cover-story in March of this year, “How (and Why) Athletes Go Broke.”)

The Yahoo! article references yesterday’s Business Insider explanation of 10 ways that sports stars go from riches to rags for some answers. One highlight:

Rocket Ismail also squandered a fortune funding an inspirational movie; the music label COZ Records; a cosmetics procedure whereby oxygen was absorbed into the skin; a plan to create nationwide phone-card dispensers; a Rock N’ Roll Café, a theme restaurant in New England; and recently, three shops dubbed It’s in the Name, where tourists could buy framed calligraphy of names or proverbs of their choice.

One of my favorite studies of self-control… As summarized by HuffPo:

In the late 1960s, psychologist Walter Mischel performed a series of tests on preschoolers referred to as The Marshmallow Tests. Mischel would give a child a single marshmallow, then leave him or her alone in the room with it. Before he departed, he’d make each kid an offer: if they wanted to, they could eat it immediately — but if they waited for him to return, they’d get two marshmallows. The tests were designed to examine willpower and the mental processes behind delayed gratification.

From PBS:

The Principal Story tells two stories, painting a dramatic portrait of the challenges facing America’s public schools — and of the great difference a dedicated principal can make. Tresa Dunbar is a second-year principal at Chicago’s Nash Elementary, where 98% of students come from low-income families; in Springfield, Illinois, Kerry Purcell has led Harvard Park Elementary, with similar demographics, for six years. Tod Lending and David Mrazek followed both women over the course of a school year, discovering each one’s unique styles yet similar passions. The Principal Story takes the viewer along for an emotional ride that reveals what effective educational leadership looks like in the 21st century.

Now, through December 14, you can watch The Principal Story online.

From the Harvard GSE press release:

Harvard University today announced the launch of a new, practice-based doctoral program to prepare graduates for senior leadership roles in school districts, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and the private sector.

The new tuition-free Doctor of Education Leadership Program (Ed.L.D.) will be taught by faculty from the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), the Harvard Business School (HBS), and the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS). The program offers an unprecedented approach to preparing leaders equipped to transform the American education system in order to enable all students to succeed in a 21st-century world. The three-year program will begin in August 2010 and initially enroll 25 students per year.

Based at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, the Ed.L.D. will be the first new degree offered in 74 years by the school. The degree is a practice-based doctorate designed to equip students with a deep understanding of learning and teaching as well as the management and leadership skills necessary to reshape the American education sector.

In the first two years of the program, students will participate in a new customized curriculum of classes, modules, and practice-based experiences. In the concluding year, students will enter a year-long residency in a partner education organization pursuing transformational change where they will receive hands-on training and lead a capstone project to complete the doctoral degree.

More information here and here.

Predictably Irrational, by Dan Ariely, is a fascinating collection of research about decision-making psychology.

Above is a great video produced by FORA.tv of Ariely, a professor of behavioral economics at Duke University, presenting examples of cognitive illusions during last year’s The Entertainment Gathering (EG).

Over at Coding Horror, Jeff Atwood (no relation, though my brother has the same name) explains “nine ways marketing weasels [use behavioral economics] to manipulate you” and “how we can avoid falling in the rut of predictably irrational behavior”:

#3: It’s “Free”!

Ariely, Shampanier, and Mazar conducted an experiment using Lindt truffles and Hershey’s Kisses. When a truffle was $0.15 and a kiss was $0.01, 73% of subjects chose the truffle and 27% the Kiss. But when a truffle was $0.14 and a kiss was free, 69% chose the kiss and 31% the truffle. According to standard economic theory, the price reduction shouldn’t have lead to any behavior change, but it did.

Ariely’s theory is that for normal transactions, we consider both upside and downside. But when something is free, we forget about the downside. “Free” makes us perceive what is being offered as immensely more valuable than it really is. Humans are loss-averse; when considering a normal purchase, loss-aversion comes into play. But when an item is free, there is no visible possibility of loss.

You will tend to overestimate the value of items you get for free. Resist this by viewing free stuff skeptically rather than welcoming it with open arms. If it was really that great, why would it be free?

Free stuff often comes with well hidden and subtle strings attached. How will using a free service or obtaining a free item influence your future choices? What paid alternatives are you avoiding by choosing the free route, and why?

How much effort will the free option cost you? Are there non-free options which would cost less in time or effort? How much is your time worth?

When you use a free service or product, you are implicitly endorsing and encouraging the provider, effectively beating a path to their door. Is this something you are comfortable with?

More about Ariely and his must-read book can be found at the official Predictably Irrational website.

There are 22,471 TV channels in the UK, and yet the BBC maintains a 30% share of viewership. — BARB

This and other fun factoids can be found by browsing and searching Google Internet Stats. From the NYT:

Without any fanfare, Google has launched a new resource called “Google Internet Stats” which brings together industry facts and insights from across five different industries. Using a number of third party vendors as sources, the stats tool parses through online data to reveal Twitter-sized snippets and factoids like: ”Over 90% of online merchants are planning to add rich media and social networking functions in 2009 -Internet Retailing” or “Runners have collectively logged over 93 million miles on nikeplus.com – BusinessWeek.”

The collection of statistics is broken down into five main areas of focus: Technology, Macro Economic Trends, Media Landscape, Media Consumption, and Consumer Trends. Within each topic are subcategories focusing on a particular aspect of that subject area. For example, within Technology, you can drill down into Broadband, Mobile, Devices, and Speed. While that’s obviously not a comprehensive look at all of technology, the stats available are compelling.

More here and here.

Via Jonah Lehrer:

I won’t waste too many words trying to explain this stunning video, which is by Will Hoffman and the folks at Radio Lab. At first glance, it’s a mere collection of ordinary moments – a falling teardrop, an escaped balloon, a dive into a pool – but I think it’s also evidence that the things we see everyday, when carefully framed, can ache with ignored beauty.

Race Across the Sky documents the drama and human spirit from the 2009 Leadville Trail 100 Mountain Bike Race, and features the battle between seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong and six-time Leadville champion Dave Wiens.