How a committed minority can change society

Over the last year, handshakes have been replaced by fist or elbow bumps as a greeting. Its the pandemic effect and it shows that age-old social conventions can not only change, but do so suddenly. 

But how does this happen? How do social conventions change? 

Robotic engineers and marketing scientists joined forces to study this phenomenon, combining online experiments and statistical analysis into a mathematical model that shows how a committed minority can influence the majority to overturn long-standing practices.

This is studied in many ways mostly is relying on lots of data from observations and experiments. Ming Cao, Professor of Networks and Robotics at the Faculty of Science and Engineering at the University of Groningen, has studied complex group behaviour in robots by using agent-based simulations, among other methods. These agents follow a limited number of simple rules, often inspired by nature, which can lead to realistic complex behaviour. 'Swarming birds or schools of fish are a good example', Cao explains, 'their movements can be reproduced by agents that follow a few simple rules on keeping a certain distance and heading in the same direction as their neighbours.'

A PhD at 50? (or why do I keep going back to school)

"Why would anyone in their right mind go back to school, once again, instead of relaxing and taking advantage of the golden years?" or "haven't you had enough of school?" - I have received some of these reactions when sharing that I have finally taken the step of facing a PhD. Yep ... 1st year of my PhD is starting at ISEG! 

Why now? Well, the fact is that this is an idea (desire) that I have had for many years, but kept it in the draw. I love studying and this passion has taken me back to school for several different courses and post graduation studies. 

I like to think that I am part of a an entire population dedicated to life-long learning. Being part of that bulk of people that often goes back to school to complete degrees as payed-off. Learning and researching has helped me live and work with open-mindedness and intellectual honesty.

  

At this stage in life, I feel (even more) pragmatic and resilient, willing to ask questions and take this risk in my life. 

#lifeinterrupted #dorabailao

#lifeinterrupted #dorabailao

Rocking life and smiling was her motto.

Another heart breaking loss; we all love(d) greatly you and your spirit.

Today has fallen the brave. Fair well.

Trust me, I'm a chatbot

More and more companies are using chatbots in customer services. Due to advances in artificial intelligence and natural language processing, chatbots are often indistinguishable from humans when it comes to communication. But should companies tell customers they are communicating with machines and not with humans? Researchers investigated. Their research found that consumers tend to react negatively when they learn that the person they are talking to is, in fact, a chatbot.


Göttingen University researchers investigate effect of non-human conversation partners in customer services

AI learns to predict human behavior from videos

In a new study, Columbia Engineering researchers unveil a computer vision technique for giving machines a more intuitive sense for what will happen next by leveraging higher-level associations between people, animals, and objects.

Predicting what someone is about to do next based on their body language comes naturally to humans but not so for computers. When we meet another person, they might greet us with a hello, handshake, or even a fist bump. We may not know which gesture will be used, but we can read the situation and respond appropriately.


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Explaining habits: new concepts for the cognitive science of bad habits and addictions

Habits are the topic of a venerable history of research that extends back to antiquity, yet they were originally disregarded by the cognitive sciences. They started to become the focus of interdisciplinary research in the 1990s, but since then there has been a stalemate between those who approach habits as a kind of bodily automatism or as a kind of mindful action. This implicit mind-body dualism is ready to be overcome with the rise of interest in embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive (4E) cognition.


This article by Susana Ramírez-Vizcaya and Tom Froese reviews the enactive approach and highlights how it moves beyond by integrating both autonomy and sense-making into its theory of agency. It defines a habit as an adaptive, precarious, and self-sustaining network of neural, bodily, and interactive processes that generate dynamical sensorimotor patterns.


Habits constitute a central source of normativity for the agent. The enactive approach views habits as constituting an interdependent whole on whose overall viability the individual habits depend. The consistent theoretical framework of enactivism sees cognition as “an embodied engagement in which the world is brought forth by the coherent activity of a cogniser in its environment” (Di Paolo, 2009a, p. 12).

How breathing and metabolism are interconnected (and where does fat goes when losing weight)

Ruben Meerman shares his knowledge in this TED talk on how to breathe yourself thin by explaining where fat goes when you lose weight.

Better known to aussie kids as the Surfing Scientist, Ruben has and appeared on Australian television shows to educate the public on science topics and published in the British Medical Journal, author also of the book "Big Fat Myths".

He surveyed 150 doctors, dieticians and personal trainers and asked them what where fat goes when losing weight; and what many think happens is impossible, because fat can not turn into energy, since it’s made of atoms.

The enlightening facts about fat metabolism, accordingly to Ruben, is that fat is converted to carbon dioxide and water. You exhale the carbon dioxide and the water mixes into your circulation until it’s lost as urine or sweat. If you lose 10kg of fat, precisely 8.4kg comes out through your lungs and the remaining 1.6kg turns into water. In other words, nearly all the weight we lose is exhaled.


So if fat turns into carbon dioxide, could simply breathing more make you lose weight? Unfortunately not. Huffing and puffing more than you need to is called hyperventilation and will only make you dizzy, or possibly faint. The only way you can consciously increase the amount of carbon dioxide your body is producing is by moving your muscles.

The Social Dilemma

The Social Dilemma is a Netflix documentary-drama hybrid that explores the dangerous human impact of social networking, with tech experts sounding the alarm on their own creations. It focuses on how big social media companies manipulate users by using algorithms that encourage addiction to their platforms. It also shows, fairly accurately, how platforms harvest personal data to target users with ads – and have so far gone largely unregulated.

Worth to watch 'till the last second!

Artificial Intelligence: Risks and Advantages in Medicine

Artificial intelligence has developed rapidly in recent years, and significant social and economic impacts are already being felt. Major companies such as Facebook and Amazon have been implicated in data collection scandals and machine automation raises fears no longer just about massive job losses, but also the emergence of other risks, such as potentially biased decisions by machines. 

This rapid and potentially invasive growth of AI raises many questions.

• Automation-spurred job loss.
• Privacy violations.
• 'Deepfakes'
• Algorithmic bias caused by bad data.
• Socioeconomic inequality.
• Market volatility.
• Weapons automatization

However, Artificial Intelligence is a powerful technology that promises to vastly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of health-care delivery, and usher in the era of precision medicine, transforming our everyday lives. It is helping accelerate basic biomedical research, delivering insights into disease pathophysiology, and guiding new treatment discovery. It is optimizing clinical trials and translational research, bringing us closer to new treatments faster. 

At a time when the health-care system is under more strain than ever, AI promises to revolutionize health-care delivery by capitalizing on the totality of health-related data in order to optimize clinical decision-making for each individual and improve access to health-care for all. 

To deliver such promises, it is required to bring together basic and applied researchers, engineers, and clinicians to address the many outstanding challenges in a timely and responsible manner.  And here is a great reading on such interesting theme.

The Science of Learning

The Science of Learning summarizes existing cognitive-science research on how students learn, and connects it to practical implications for teaching. The report is a resource for teacher-educators, new teachers, and anyone in the education profession who is interested in how learning takes place.


Deans for Impact believes all teacher-candidates should know the cognitive-science principles explored in The Science of Learning. And all educators, including new teachers, should be able to connect those principles to their practical implications for the classroom.

Click to download

When it comes to change, "tiny is mighty"

Changing behaviors can feel like a monumental task. The most common is the pressure we put in ourselves to GO BIG or nothing. Not surprisingly, big expectations are often unrealistic, a recipe for disappointment and self-criticism.

B.J.Fogg defends we should think small because tiny behaviors that can become strong habits. And, when it comes to change, tiny is mighty. So, start with two pushups a day, not a two-hour workout. Take 5 deep breaths each morning rather than 1 hour of meditation.  Make it easy, make it fit to your life, and make it rewarding. 

https://tinyhabits.com/book/

The myth of bringing your full, authentic self to work

Calls for authenticity at work ask for passionate people with diverse, fresh perspectives who challenge old ways of thinking. But too often workplace culture fails to support the authenticity of professionals of color and other groups, leading instead to backlash and fewer opportunities. 

Writer Jodi-Ann Burey outlines steps toward exposing privilege and achieving true equity on the job, and implores those in leadership positions to accept responsibility for change. What a wonderful tak at TED, last November 2020.