No One Is Good at Multitasking

Posted on April 22, 2011 by Conrad Halling

Multitasking is a topic that is popping up on the blogs I read. Recent studies are demonstrating that no one is good at multitasking—especially the people who think they are good at multitasking. (I know that I’m not.)

On Wednesday, Matt Richtel posted “Message to Executives: Stop Multitasking” on the Bits blog at the New York Times.

Yesterday, Chad Orzel posted “On Multitasking” on his Uncertain Principles blog. This post contains several links to good articles about the perils of multitasking.

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Three Enterotypes (So Far)

Posted on April 21, 2011 by Conrad Halling

Biologists are beginning to make a thorough exploration of the human microbiome, the approximately hundred trillion bacterial cells associated with each human body.

Yesterday members of the Metagenomics of the Human Intestinal Tract (MetaHIT) Consortium published a paper in Nature stating that they have found that human gut biomes fall into three major classes, or enterotypes. These enterotypes are not correlated with the national or even continental origin of the humans studied.

I find these results surprising (not that I know anything about the human microbiome, but the results run counter to my intuition about biology), and I wonder if the classification is an artifact of the analysis. We’ll know soon, since this is a booming area of research powered by high-throughput sequencing and computational analysis.

Excellent summaries of this research can be found on Ed Yong’s Not Exactly Rocket Science blog (“Divided by language, united by gut bacteria—people have three common gut types”) and in an article by Carl Zimmer in The New York Times (“Bacteria Divide People Into 3 Types, Scientists Say”). Carl Zimmer has further comments on his own blog, The Loom (“Blood type, meet bug type: My new story for the New York Times”).

Reference:

Arumugam, Raes, et al. 2011. Enterotypes of the human gut microbiome. Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature09944.

 

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How to Live a Long Time?

Posted on April 20, 2011 by Conrad Halling

In the April 18, 2011, issue of The New York Times, Katherine Bouton contributes a long article covering a new book, The Longevity Project, written by Howard S. Friedman, Ph.D., and Leslie R. Martin, Ph.D.

So, what’s the secret? Ms. Bouton writes (and quotes):

The key traits [for long life] are prudence and persistence. “The findings clearly revealed that the best childhood personality predictor of longevity was conscientiousness,” they write, “the qualities of a prudent, persistent, well-organized person, like a scientist-professor — somewhat obsessive and not at all carefree.”

According to Ms. Bouton, the authors of the book find that the genetic component to long life explains only about one-third of long-life factors. The other two-thirds are the results of lifestyles and chance. Ms. Bouton then explores three possible explanations for how conscientiousness might promote long life. She finishes up by exploring other personality traits that might be related to living a long time.

The article is well worth reading, and I have put the book on my list of must-reads.

 

Posted in Books, Living | 1 Comment

NetNewsWire

Posted on April 19, 2011 by Conrad Halling

Today on carpeaqua, Justin Williams waxes nostalgic about NetNewsWire, the RSS and Atom reader for the Macintosh computer and iOS devices. Brent Simmons, the author of NetNewsWire, has responded on his own blog, inessential.com.

I use NetNewsWire (paid user, only $15) to track more than 150 blogs about science and computers. I couldn’t possibly keep up with these blogs any other way, and if you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll have already figured out that I come up with many of my blog topics from reading other blogs.

 

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Information Is Beautiful

Posted on April 19, 2011 by Conrad Halling

I love it when I stumble across a fascinating website that I haven’t seen before.

Yesterday’s discovery was David McCandless’s Information Is Beautiful site. There is plenty to explore here. I especially like “Books Everyone Should Read: A Consensus Cloud,” created by David McCandless, Miriam Quick, and Matt Hancock for The Guardian (click the image to see the entire thing).

 

Posted in Computing, Statistics | Leave a comment

Lack of Sleep Makes Us Stupid

Posted on April 18, 2011 by Conrad Halling

This weekend’s New York Times Magazine contains an eye-opening article by Maggie Jones, “How Little Sleep Can You Get Away With?”

A quick summary of the results:

  • Eight hours of sleep each night for two weeks: No cognitive impairment.
  • Six hours of sleep each night for two weeks: Cognitive impairment equal to 24 hours without sleep, which is equivalent mentally to being legally drunk.
  • Seven hours of sleep each night: Some cognitive impairment that does not get worse after three days.
  • Sleep-deprived subjects underestimate their impairment.

Get more sleep.

 

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Visualizing Biological Data

Posted on April 17, 2011 by Conrad Halling

On March 16–19, 2011, the Workshop on Visualizing Biological Data was held at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, less than a mile from where I work. I am deeply interested in this topic, and I would have loved to have attended.

I learned about the workshop from Jan Aerts’s blog, Saaien Tist. Dr. Aerts provides a good summary of the workshop in his post, where he mentions that the videos from the workshop will soon appear. Unfortunately, this year’s videos haven’t appeared yet, although 26 videos from the 2010 workshop are available. This is a wonderful resource, and I need to find the time to watch these.

Dr. Aerts mentioned in his post that Tamara Munzner has already posted her slides from her keynote talk on her own website. Dr. Munzner has a well-organized web page with links to slides and other materials from her presentations going back to 1995. I spent some time last night viewing her slides from VizBi 2011, and even without the speaking notes, they were easy to understand. If you’re interested in this topic, then I highly recommend viewing them.

 

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