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expertise

Science in Review: It Ain’t Rocket Science

Photo of space shuttle in flight
As significant an achievement as this photo represents, even harder challenges may still remain here on Earth. (Photo by NASA-Imagery)

Who doesn’t love space? We found out this week that a possibly habitable planet is just next door orbiting the star closest to us, and the Internet erupted with travel plans. People who might otherwise be complaining about an extra 10 minutes added to their commute were suddenly contemplating a journey that would take longer than all of recorded human history. Last year, more than four thousand folks paid actual money just for the chance to be considered for a mission to Mars that almost certainly won’t happen, probably wouldn’t succeed if it were attempted, and can’t possibly take more than a handful of people. The allure of space is strong, even though every single one of us is already an astronaut on a spacecraft traveling 250,000 miles per hour en route to the Andromeda Galaxy. I guess some of us are just really desperate to get away from (a Trump-led America | the European Union | a Clinton-led America | geopolitically topical punchline).
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Science Corner: Shape of My Brain

sting photo
I’m pretty sure my wife’s brain reacts differently from mine when listening to the music of Sting. (Photo by Jonathan Bayer )

Following last week’s discussion of expertise (be sure to see the comments also) comes an entirely different perspective on the subject. Sting, formerly of The Police and more recently a genre-spanning solo musician, had his brain scanned while listening to a variety of music selections. The songs were grouped by the way Sting’s brain responded while hearing them. Other music comparison algorithms, like the one used by Pandora to recommend songs, rely on features of the music that are quantified in a more objective and explicit fashion and tend to include either genre or genre-specific qualities. Using Sting’s subjective reaction to the songs revealed connections that wouldn’t necessarily show up from other analyses because of the obvious dissimilarities. For example, Libertango by Astor Piazzola, instrumental dance music from Argentina, and Girl by The Beatles, a British folk rock song, were judged among the most similar pairs by Sting’s brain.
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