Corante: technology, business, media, law, and culture news from the blogosphere
OUR PUBLICATIONS:
Corante is a trusted, unbiased source on technology, business, law, science, and culture that’s authored by leading commentators and thinkers in their respective fields. Corante also produces premium conferences and publications that help decision-makers better understand their industries and the world around them.
Corante Blogs
Corante Blogs examine, through the eyes of leading observers, analysts, thinkers, and doers, critical themes and memes in technology, business, law, science, and culture.
Vin Crosbie, on the challenges, financial and otherwise, that newspaper publishers are facing: "The real problem, Mr. Newspaperman, isn't that your content isn't online or isn't online with multimedia. It's your content. Specifically, it's what you report, which stories you publish, and how you publish them to people, who, by the way, have very different individual interests. The problem is the content you're giving them, stupid; not the platform its on."
by Vin Crosbie in Rebuilding Media
There's a problem in the drug industry that people have recognized for some years, but we're not that much closer to dealing with it than we were then. We keep coming up with these technologies and techniques which seem as if they might be able to help us with some of our nastiest problems - I'm talking about genomics in all its guises, and metabolic profiling, and naturally the various high-throughput screening platforms, and others. But whether these are helping or not (and opinions sure do vary), one thing that they all have in common is that they generate enormous heaps of data.
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Now that the Web labor market is saturated and Web design a static profession, it's not surprising that 'user experience' designers and researchers who've spent their careers online are looking for new worlds to conquer. Some are returning to the “old media” as directors and producers. More are now doing offline consulting (service experience design, social policy design, exhibition design, and so on) under the 'user experience' aegis. They argue that the lessons they've learned on the Web can be applied to phenomena in the physical and social worlds. But there are enormous differences...
by Bob Jacobson in Total Experience
Clay Shirky, in deconstructing Second Life hype: "Second Life is heading towards two million users. Except it isn’t, really... I suspect Second Life is largely a 'Try Me' virus, where reports of a strange and wonderful new thing draw the masses to log in and try it, but whose ability to retain anything but a fraction of those users is limited. The pattern of a Try Me virus is a rapid spread of first time users, most of whom drop out quickly, with most of the dropouts becoming immune to later use."
by Clay Shirky in Many-to-Many
Over the last few years we've seen old barriers to creativity coming down, one after the other. New technologies and services makes it trivial to publish text, whether by blog or by print-on-demand. Digital photography has democratised a previously expensive hobby. And we're seeing the barriers to movie-making crumble, with affordable high-quality cameras and video hosting provided by YouTube or Google Video and their ilk... Music making has long been easy for anyone to engage in, but technology has made high-quality recording possible without specialised equipment, and the internet has revolutionised distribution, drastically disintermediating the music industry... What's left? Software maybe? Or maybe not."
by Suw Charman in Strange Attractor
Derek Lowe on the news that the Nobel Prize for medicine has gone to Craig Mello and Andrew Fire for their breakthrough work: "RNA interference is probably going to have a long climb before it starts curing many diseases, because many of those problems are even tougher than usual in its case. That doesn't take away from the discovery, though, any more than the complications of off-target effects take away from it when you talk about RNAi's research uses in cell culture. The fact that RNA interference is trickier than it first looked, in vivo or in vitro, is only to be expected. What breakthrough isn't?"
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Andrew Phelps: "Recently my WoW guild has been having a bit of a debate on the merits of Player-vs.-Player (PvP) within Azeroth. My personal opinion on this is that PvP has its merits, and can be incredible fun, but the system within WoW is horridly, horribly broken. It takes into account the concept of the battle, but battle without consequence, without emotive context, and most importantly, without honor..."
From later in the piece: "When I talk about this with people (thus far anyway) I typically get one of two responses, either 'yeah, right on!' or 'hey, it’s war, and war isn’t honorable – grow the hell up'. There is a lot to be said for that argument – but the problem is that war in the real historical world has very different constraints that are utterly absent from fantasized worlds..."
by Andrew Phelps in Got Game
Derek Lowe: "So, you're developing a drug candidate. You've settled on what looks like a good compound - it has the activity you want in your mouse model of the disease, it's not too hard to make, and it's not toxic. Everything looks fine. Except. . .one slight problem. Although the compound has good blood levels in the mouse and in the dog, in rats it's terrible. For some reason, it just doesn't get up there. Probably some foul metabolic pathway peculiar to rats (whose innards are adapted, after all, for dealing with every kind of garbage that comes along). So, is this a problem?.."
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Bob Jacobson, on shopping at his local Albertsons supermarket where he had "one of the worst customer experiences" of his life: "Say what you will about the Safeway chain or the Birkenstock billionaires who charge through the roof for Whole Foods' organic fare, they know how to create shopping environments that create a more pleasurable experience, at its best (as at Whole Foods) quite enjoyable. Even the warehouses like Costco and its smaller counterpart, Smart & Final, do just fine: they have no pretentions, but neither do they dump virtual garbage on the consumer merely to create another trivial revenue stream, all for the sake of promotions in the marketing department..."
by Strange Attractor in Total Experience
Kevin Anderson: "First off, I want to say that I really admire the ambition of the Guardian Unlimited’s Comment is Free. It is one of the boldest statements made by any media company that participation needs to be central to a radical revamp of traditional content strategies... It is, therfore, not hugely surprising to find that Comment is Free is having a few teething troubles..."
by Kevin Anderson in strange
Corante Developments
Here you will find the latest news from Corante including updates on upcoming events, new initiatives, product and publication launches, and more.
It was with shock that I returned home from a night out last night to hear the news of Russell's passing. How terribly, terribly sad. Most of all for him, as he'd seemed buoyant, healthier, and content when I'd last seen him several months ago when he was in town - he was happy that work was busy and rewarding and was having fun with it but most of all was thrilled about how things were going with his girlfriend, Ellen.
I've known Russ for what seems like ages now (in a good way) though in fact it's only been about six or seven years since the early days of "commercial" blogging when he started working on various projects at and around Corante. He was a diligent, committed, and prolific journalist who had impressively and more ably than others been able to make the transition from the old-school way of doing things to the new. He had his quirks, as we all do, but I greatly valued that he was good-natured, collegial, reliable, quick to adopt, trustworthy, eager to learn, and earnest in his interest in helping others better understand what he wrote about.
He was also, it should be said, a kind and thoughtful soul and it was the rare conversation in which he didn't ask, with sincerity, about what he knew of my life, e.g. our new babe, and we didn't talk as seemingly old friends about our lives and respective paths. I can't say I knew him very well, of course, but in our half-dozen get-togethers over the years and dozens of conversations I got a good sense of the man: he cared about learning and sharing and his bearing was earnest and ego-less and we'll miss him for that and more.
We wanted to let you know about a discount to New Comm Forum, the annual event event put on by our friends at the Society for New Communications Research. The conference, which runs from April 22-25, will feature many of the field's leading observers and is an important event for those looking, in the words of SNCR, to "better understand new communications tools, technologies and emerging modes of communication, and their effect on traditional media, professional communications, business, culture and society."
Check out the event's website and, if you're interested in attending, be sure to use the code supplied below for a special discount.
EARLY BIRD PRICING - NOW UNTIL FEB. 15th
NewComm Forum Conference - $995.
Pre-conference or post-conference session - $195.
SNCR Jam only - $75.
REGULAR PRICING - AFTER FEB. 15th
NewComm Forum Conference - $1095.
Pre-conference or post-conference session - $249.
SNCR Jam only - $75.
CORANTE READER DISCOUNTS
NewComm Forum Conference - save an additional $100
Use discount code: NCF08100
Pre-conference or post-conference session - save an additional $45.
Use discount code: NCF0845
We've been remiss in letting you know about two new independent blogs we've helped launch in the past month or so.
The first - the ConversationHub - is a companion blog to Supernova 2007, the latest edition of Kevin Werbach's excellent conference on all things connected. As the conference site says: "Supernova examines the effects of an increasingly connected world on business, life, and public policy. As disparate physical and social networks link with one another, a new societal network is rapidly evolving... The New Network is greater than the sum of its parts. It challenges us to re-create everything from the software and hardware we use...to the business models we employ...to the information and entertainment we encounter...to the ways we work and play."
Visit the ConversationHub and you'll find several dozen leading thinkers and doers, led by a few notable ringleaders, weighing in on the themes and trends of the day in technology and business. We encourage you to tune in - feel free to comment and even suggest topics and ideas for posts.
The second blog - Mobile Messaging 2.0 - convenes about a dozen top observers of the mobile messaging space for an intense discussion of the industry and where it's headed. Among its contributors are leading commentators, journalists and players in the field - tune in and you'll find them touching on topics such as mobile device design, messaging platforms, market pressures, user-generated content, interface design, and much, much more.
Also, if you visit the site, which is sponsored by Airwide Solutions, this week, you'll find live coverage and commentary from Global Messaging 2007, to which several of our contributors have traveled to hear about the latest developments from a broad spectrum of the industry's players and providers.
Be sure to catch the Office 2.0 Conference and hear from and engage with leading thinkers and doers in this exciting new market. Find out more here and be sure to use the code "GLDRK" for a special discount for Corante readers.
In the Pipeline: Don't miss Derek Lowe's excellent commentary on drug discovery and the pharma industry in general at In the Pipeline
Whose Brain Is It Anyway? (The Further Hobbit Adventures)
Posted by Carl Zimmer
Finally, more brains.
On Tuesday I wrote about how the second batch of Homo floresiensis bones had at last seen the scientific light of day. Today the critics who don't think the Hobbit is a new species are making their way into scientific journals as well. They're saying that the Hobbit brain looks an awful lot like a human brain.
Last year, as I described here, Dean Falk of Florida State University and her colleagues reported on a scan they had made of the braincase of Homo floresiensis. They compared it to the braincase of normal humans, of a human born with a congenital defect called microcephaly, and the braincases of other hominid species. Falk concluded that the brain did not belong to a human. While the Hobbit brain is small (about a third the size of a normal brain) it had several key differences in shape compared to the microcephalic brain.
In today's issue of Science, a neursurgeon and two anthropologists from Germany published a "Technical Comment" on last year's scan. The researchers had access to a collection of microcephalic brains, and they analyzed 19 of them. One brain drew their attention in particular, shown here in the top picture. The human microcephalic is on the left, and the Hobbit is on the right. They certainly look similar, and the German team report that they are almost identical in size (415 cc for the human, 417 cc for the Hobbit) and they have similar proportions, such as breadth to length (85% versus 86%).
In last year's report, Falk's team pointed out an area on the front of the Hobbit brain that was remarkably enlarged. Known as Brodmann's area 10, it is also enlarged in humans, and is associated with planning and taking iniative. Given that the Hobbit bones were found alongside stone tools, one could imagine that this sort of mental equipment allowed them to make the tools despite having chimp-sized brains. But the German team found seven brains in their collection that had enlarged Brodmann's area 10. Their medical records show that one of these individuals couldn't even speak a few words, which suggests that one shouldn't read too much in this particular bulge.
On a more general note, the German team points out that human microcephalic brains come in a wide range of sizes and shapes. The 19 brains they studied varied in size from 280 to 591 cc, for example, a range in which the Hobbit's 417 cc fits comfortably. And so even if no single brain from their collection matches all of the details of the Hobbit brain, their variability show that it could plausibly be produced by microcephaly. Since only a single Hobbit braincase has yet been found, the German scientists conclude, "it is premature to exclude LB1 [the technical name of the fossil] from any pathological anatomy. Analysis of other skulls from the Indonesian island of Flores wil help address the correct taxonomy of the small-brained hominid."
The nice thing about Technical Comments is that they allow scientists to respond immediately to their critics. And the most powerful response Falk has is to publish a picture of her own, shown here.
Falk and her colleagues accuse the Germans of some basic mistakes--most significantly not measuring their brains in a conventional way, as Falk did. Falk tilted the human microcephalic braincase to the same orientation as the Hobbit brain. The second illustration here shows the human microcephalic braincase from Falk's study to the left, the tilted microcephalic braincase in the middle column, and the Hobbit braincase to the right. Suddenly, the human braincase from the German report looks a lot more like Falk's human than the Hobbit, particularly in the side view in the bottom row. As for Brodmann's area 10, Falk's team points out that it is smooth on the microcephalic brains shown in the German report and convoluted on the Hobbit's.
Falk's team make one particularly sharp accusation. They point out that one view of the human microcephalic braincase in the Germany report (the top middle braincase in Falk's figure here) has a striking tip, but the side view doesn't seem to show it (the bottom middle braincase). "We do not believe these images represent the same individual," they write.
"If this is the best evidence that can be produced froma sample of 19 microcephalics," they conclude, "we suggest that the authors reconsider their position on the microcephalic hypothesis regarding Homo floresiensis."
It's nice to see the debate move beyond sound bites on cable TV, but I found it odd that Science's editors didn't get more involved in this exchange. These sorts of arguments can only be settled if everyone plays by the same rules. So why didn't both teams settle on exactly how to orient the braincases? And why didn't the German team satisfy Falk's group that they hadn't mixed pictures of two braincases together? That seems like pretty simple procedural stuff.
More significantly, it seems odd that the German team wasn't required to consider all of the evidence assembled so far about Homo floresiensis--including the various jaws, limb bones, and other remains from several individuals scattered across 80,000 years. It's not just LB1's braincase that's weird--the jaw has no chin, some of its teeth have strange double roots, the arms are long, and some of the limb bones have peculiar twists. What's more, all the evidence at hand suggests that they were all about three feet high. So if LB1's braincase does belong to a microcephalic human, as the Germans suggest, then what's their explanation for all the other bones? Could they have all belonged to humans too? Biologists learned a long time ago that they had to consider the total evidence when it comes to figuring out how individuals are related to one another, because of the complexities of evolution. In one particularly famous screw-up, scientists thought they had isolated DNA from a dinosaur fossil. Only when they had considered all the evidence (in other words, all the potential sources of the DNA) did it turn out to be a bit of contamination from a human. I know this new Hobbit paper was written as a technical comment on Falk's study in particular, but it leaves lots of unanswered questions.
Admittedly, the total evidence is pretty sparse when it comes to Homo floresiensis. Just a single additional braincase would help enormously, and a tiny fragment of DNA could close the case. Which makes the ban on digging in the cave where the Homo floresiensis bones were found all the more incomprehensible. Fortunately, this new article from BBC reports that the Hobbit team is expanding their search to other sites, even on other islands in Indonesia. Let's hope the braincases come rolling out like bowling balls.
1. Anaitys-t on October 14, 2005 12:46 PM writes...
I'd wonder why the teeth are considered "too valuable" to be drilled, when DNA evidence could potentially be the key to determining how "valid" the Hobbit-hominid theory is, and therefore how "valuable" or at least "novel" the fossil bones are in the first place. How can the tooth be more "valuable" than the DNA evidence without the DNA evidence? Realizing it can be a long-shot to get viable DNA, that seems like circular reasoning used to reach an excuse not to try it. Also, of course, it's hard to say what the DNA would reveal, it's possible similar mutations to those causing microencephaly might be central to a phenotype such as this, arguments will still be made by both groups in both directions.
2. Greg Peterson on October 14, 2005 03:29 PM writes...
Realizing that an argument from statistics may be scientifically lame, I wonder what the odds are that the one brain case that's been found would be that of a microencaphalic. There seems to be some analogy here to notion that if you hear hoofbeats in Central Park, think horses, not zebras. But what's the horse and what's the zebra? Which is actually more surprising--that the so-far sole representative of a human tribe would be an anomaly, or that the whole "tribe" would be anomalous, and this single sample a representative one? I write this because I really don't know.
3. Emanuel Klein on October 14, 2005 05:46 PM writes...
Would anyone comment on the signifcance of the establishment of Homo floresiensis as a new Homo
species to Creationist's contention that there is
no evolutionary fossils showing other human species besides Homo sapiens?
Does the alleged softness of the Hobitt's remains
signify that the find is not a true fossil?
"For whatever it is worth, the Weber et al stuff proves nothing. None of the so-called 19 microcephalics studied by Weber et al have the shape of LB1. Microcephalics do not have large cerebral lobes over-riding small cerebellar lobes, and that is what LB1 has. The size issue cannot be used to claim microcephaly as pathology. However, I think Falk is wrong concerning the area 10 region."
On our public broadcaster's weekly TV science show here in Australia there was a brief interview and update on the Hobbits and the new bones. Seems the scientists involved in the dig are coming around to Peter Brown's view that the Hobbits were actually derived from Australopithecines due to the strange dental root structures and limb proportions.
If so and the tool use is confirmed for the Hobbits then it really throws the cat in amongst the pigeons for everything we thought we knew about brain size and tool use. But I guess our experiences with captive chimps and Caledonian crows should have caused a rethink of that truism many years ago.
"The new mandible does not differ much from the one of LB1 which falls into modern human range in both metric and descriptive characteristics. This also includes those features that are suggested to be species-specific for H. floresiensis: receding chin, large crowns of premolars and Tomes's roots of premolars. Receding chin and Tomes roots occur among modern Australomelanesians (Tomes roots at a frequency of about 20% - not a rarity!) while enlarged premolar crowns were described in 3 American living patients (Sheldon Peck in December 2004 issue of "Dental Anthropology") and in August I have seen another one in a Polish living patient described at the 13th International Symposium on Dental Morphology (proceedings to be published early in 2006). When studying pictures of mandibles do not forget that Europeans are not the standard for "modern humans", especially not for those in southeastern Asia."
7. Bill Prange on October 20, 2005 06:33 PM writes...
I recall reading that the finding of a Neanderthal with a whithered arm was considered exciting evidence that Neanderthals had the social inclination to support a disabled member of their group rather than letting him or her perish.
It would seem that a microcepalic individual in an early stone age culture would be a serious burden on the group - rather more than one with a whithered arm. Could the argument be made that it is unlikely that a microcephalic would survive for long in such a situation?
Corante: technology, business, media, law, and culture news from the blogosphere
OUR PUBLICATIONS:
Corante is a trusted, unbiased source on technology, business, law, science, and culture that’s authored by leading commentators and thinkers in their respective fields. Corante also produces premium conferences and publications that help decision-makers better understand their industries and the world around them.
Corante Blogs
Corante Blogs examine, through the eyes of leading observers, analysts, thinkers, and doers, critical themes and memes in technology, business, law, science, and culture.
Vin Crosbie, on the challenges, financial and otherwise, that newspaper publishers are facing: "The real problem, Mr. Newspaperman, isn't that your content isn't online or isn't online with multimedia. It's your content. Specifically, it's what you report, which stories you publish, and how you publish them to people, who, by the way, have very different individual interests. The problem is the content you're giving them, stupid; not the platform its on."
by Vin Crosbie in Rebuilding Media
There's a problem in the drug industry that people have recognized for some years, but we're not that much closer to dealing with it than we were then. We keep coming up with these technologies and techniques which seem as if they might be able to help us with some of our nastiest problems - I'm talking about genomics in all its guises, and metabolic profiling, and naturally the various high-throughput screening platforms, and others. But whether these are helping or not (and opinions sure do vary), one thing that they all have in common is that they generate enormous heaps of data.
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Now that the Web labor market is saturated and Web design a static profession, it's not surprising that 'user experience' designers and researchers who've spent their careers online are looking for new worlds to conquer. Some are returning to the “old media” as directors and producers. More are now doing offline consulting (service experience design, social policy design, exhibition design, and so on) under the 'user experience' aegis. They argue that the lessons they've learned on the Web can be applied to phenomena in the physical and social worlds. But there are enormous differences...
by Bob Jacobson in Total Experience
Clay Shirky, in deconstructing Second Life hype: "Second Life is heading towards two million users. Except it isn’t, really... I suspect Second Life is largely a 'Try Me' virus, where reports of a strange and wonderful new thing draw the masses to log in and try it, but whose ability to retain anything but a fraction of those users is limited. The pattern of a Try Me virus is a rapid spread of first time users, most of whom drop out quickly, with most of the dropouts becoming immune to later use."
by Clay Shirky in Many-to-Many
Over the last few years we've seen old barriers to creativity coming down, one after the other. New technologies and services makes it trivial to publish text, whether by blog or by print-on-demand. Digital photography has democratised a previously expensive hobby. And we're seeing the barriers to movie-making crumble, with affordable high-quality cameras and video hosting provided by YouTube or Google Video and their ilk... Music making has long been easy for anyone to engage in, but technology has made high-quality recording possible without specialised equipment, and the internet has revolutionised distribution, drastically disintermediating the music industry... What's left? Software maybe? Or maybe not."
by Suw Charman in Strange Attractor
Derek Lowe on the news that the Nobel Prize for medicine has gone to Craig Mello and Andrew Fire for their breakthrough work: "RNA interference is probably going to have a long climb before it starts curing many diseases, because many of those problems are even tougher than usual in its case. That doesn't take away from the discovery, though, any more than the complications of off-target effects take away from it when you talk about RNAi's research uses in cell culture. The fact that RNA interference is trickier than it first looked, in vivo or in vitro, is only to be expected. What breakthrough isn't?"
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Andrew Phelps: "Recently my WoW guild has been having a bit of a debate on the merits of Player-vs.-Player (PvP) within Azeroth. My personal opinion on this is that PvP has its merits, and can be incredible fun, but the system within WoW is horridly, horribly broken. It takes into account the concept of the battle, but battle without consequence, without emotive context, and most importantly, without honor..."
From later in the piece: "When I talk about this with people (thus far anyway) I typically get one of two responses, either 'yeah, right on!' or 'hey, it’s war, and war isn’t honorable – grow the hell up'. There is a lot to be said for that argument – but the problem is that war in the real historical world has very different constraints that are utterly absent from fantasized worlds..."
by Andrew Phelps in Got Game
Derek Lowe: "So, you're developing a drug candidate. You've settled on what looks like a good compound - it has the activity you want in your mouse model of the disease, it's not too hard to make, and it's not toxic. Everything looks fine. Except. . .one slight problem. Although the compound has good blood levels in the mouse and in the dog, in rats it's terrible. For some reason, it just doesn't get up there. Probably some foul metabolic pathway peculiar to rats (whose innards are adapted, after all, for dealing with every kind of garbage that comes along). So, is this a problem?.."
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Bob Jacobson, on shopping at his local Albertsons supermarket where he had "one of the worst customer experiences" of his life: "Say what you will about the Safeway chain or the Birkenstock billionaires who charge through the roof for Whole Foods' organic fare, they know how to create shopping environments that create a more pleasurable experience, at its best (as at Whole Foods) quite enjoyable. Even the warehouses like Costco and its smaller counterpart, Smart & Final, do just fine: they have no pretentions, but neither do they dump virtual garbage on the consumer merely to create another trivial revenue stream, all for the sake of promotions in the marketing department..."
by Strange Attractor in Total Experience
Kevin Anderson: "First off, I want to say that I really admire the ambition of the Guardian Unlimited’s Comment is Free. It is one of the boldest statements made by any media company that participation needs to be central to a radical revamp of traditional content strategies... It is, therfore, not hugely surprising to find that Comment is Free is having a few teething troubles..."
by Kevin Anderson in strange
Corante Developments
Here you will find the latest news from Corante including updates on upcoming events, new initiatives, product and publication launches, and more.
It was with shock that I returned home from a night out last night to hear the news of Russell's passing. How terribly, terribly sad. Most of all for him, as he'd seemed buoyant, healthier, and content when I'd last seen him several months ago when he was in town - he was happy that work was busy and rewarding and was having fun with it but most of all was thrilled about how things were going with his girlfriend, Ellen.
I've known Russ for what seems like ages now (in a good way) though in fact it's only been about six or seven years since the early days of "commercial" blogging when he started working on various projects at and around Corante. He was a diligent, committed, and prolific journalist who had impressively and more ably than others been able to make the transition from the old-school way of doing things to the new. He had his quirks, as we all do, but I greatly valued that he was good-natured, collegial, reliable, quick to adopt, trustworthy, eager to learn, and earnest in his interest in helping others better understand what he wrote about.
He was also, it should be said, a kind and thoughtful soul and it was the rare conversation in which he didn't ask, with sincerity, about what he knew of my life, e.g. our new babe, and we didn't talk as seemingly old friends about our lives and respective paths. I can't say I knew him very well, of course, but in our half-dozen get-togethers over the years and dozens of conversations I got a good sense of the man: he cared about learning and sharing and his bearing was earnest and ego-less and we'll miss him for that and more.
We wanted to let you know about a discount to New Comm Forum, the annual event event put on by our friends at the Society for New Communications Research. The conference, which runs from April 22-25, will feature many of the field's leading observers and is an important event for those looking, in the words of SNCR, to "better understand new communications tools, technologies and emerging modes of communication, and their effect on traditional media, professional communications, business, culture and society."
Check out the event's website and, if you're interested in attending, be sure to use the code supplied below for a special discount.
EARLY BIRD PRICING - NOW UNTIL FEB. 15th
NewComm Forum Conference - $995.
Pre-conference or post-conference session - $195.
SNCR Jam only - $75.
REGULAR PRICING - AFTER FEB. 15th
NewComm Forum Conference - $1095.
Pre-conference or post-conference session - $249.
SNCR Jam only - $75.
CORANTE READER DISCOUNTS
NewComm Forum Conference - save an additional $100
Use discount code: NCF08100
Pre-conference or post-conference session - save an additional $45.
Use discount code: NCF0845
We've been remiss in letting you know about two new independent blogs we've helped launch in the past month or so.
The first - the ConversationHub - is a companion blog to Supernova 2007, the latest edition of Kevin Werbach's excellent conference on all things connected. As the conference site says: "Supernova examines the effects of an increasingly connected world on business, life, and public policy. As disparate physical and social networks link with one another, a new societal network is rapidly evolving... The New Network is greater than the sum of its parts. It challenges us to re-create everything from the software and hardware we use...to the business models we employ...to the information and entertainment we encounter...to the ways we work and play."
Visit the ConversationHub and you'll find several dozen leading thinkers and doers, led by a few notable ringleaders, weighing in on the themes and trends of the day in technology and business. We encourage you to tune in - feel free to comment and even suggest topics and ideas for posts.
The second blog - Mobile Messaging 2.0 - convenes about a dozen top observers of the mobile messaging space for an intense discussion of the industry and where it's headed. Among its contributors are leading commentators, journalists and players in the field - tune in and you'll find them touching on topics such as mobile device design, messaging platforms, market pressures, user-generated content, interface design, and much, much more.
Also, if you visit the site, which is sponsored by Airwide Solutions, this week, you'll find live coverage and commentary from Global Messaging 2007, to which several of our contributors have traveled to hear about the latest developments from a broad spectrum of the industry's players and providers.
Be sure to catch the Office 2.0 Conference and hear from and engage with leading thinkers and doers in this exciting new market. Find out more here and be sure to use the code "GLDRK" for a special discount for Corante readers.
Finally, more brains.
Falk and her colleagues accuse the Germans of some basic mistakes--most significantly not measuring their brains in a conventional way, as Falk did. Falk tilted the human microcephalic braincase to the same orientation as the Hobbit brain. The second illustration here shows the human microcephalic braincase from Falk's study to the left, the tilted microcephalic braincase in the middle column, and the Hobbit braincase to the right. Suddenly, the human braincase from the German report looks a lot more like Falk's human than the Hobbit, particularly in the side view in the bottom row. As for Brodmann's area 10, Falk's team points out that it is smooth on the microcephalic brains shown in the German report and convoluted on the Hobbit's. 
1. Anaitys-t on October 14, 2005 12:46 PM writes...
I'd wonder why the teeth are considered "too valuable" to be drilled, when DNA evidence could potentially be the key to determining how "valid" the Hobbit-hominid theory is, and therefore how "valuable" or at least "novel" the fossil bones are in the first place. How can the tooth be more "valuable" than the DNA evidence without the DNA evidence? Realizing it can be a long-shot to get viable DNA, that seems like circular reasoning used to reach an excuse not to try it. Also, of course, it's hard to say what the DNA would reveal, it's possible similar mutations to those causing microencephaly might be central to a phenotype such as this, arguments will still be made by both groups in both directions.
Permalink to Comment2. Greg Peterson on October 14, 2005 03:29 PM writes...
Realizing that an argument from statistics may be scientifically lame, I wonder what the odds are that the one brain case that's been found would be that of a microencaphalic. There seems to be some analogy here to notion that if you hear hoofbeats in Central Park, think horses, not zebras. But what's the horse and what's the zebra? Which is actually more surprising--that the so-far sole representative of a human tribe would be an anomaly, or that the whole "tribe" would be anomalous, and this single sample a representative one? I write this because I really don't know.
Permalink to Comment3. Emanuel Klein on October 14, 2005 05:46 PM writes...
Would anyone comment on the signifcance of the establishment of Homo floresiensis as a new Homo
species to Creationist's contention that there is
no evolutionary fossils showing other human species besides Homo sapiens?
Does the alleged softness of the Hobitt's remains
Permalink to Commentsignify that the find is not a true fossil?
4. Jason Malloy on October 15, 2005 02:32 AM writes...
Comment from Ralph Holloway:
"For whatever it is worth, the Weber et al stuff proves nothing. None of the so-called 19 microcephalics studied by Weber et al have the shape of LB1. Microcephalics do not have large cerebral lobes over-riding small cerebellar lobes, and that is what LB1 has. The size issue cannot be used to claim microcephaly as pathology. However, I think Falk is wrong concerning the area 10 region."
Permalink to Comment5. Adam on October 15, 2005 08:00 AM writes...
Hi Carl
On our public broadcaster's weekly TV science show here in Australia there was a brief interview and update on the Hobbits and the new bones. Seems the scientists involved in the dig are coming around to Peter Brown's view that the Hobbits were actually derived from Australopithecines due to the strange dental root structures and limb proportions.
If so and the tool use is confirmed for the Hobbits then it really throws the cat in amongst the pigeons for everything we thought we knew about brain size and tool use. But I guess our experiences with captive chimps and Caledonian crows should have caused a rethink of that truism many years ago.
Permalink to Comment6. Jason Malloy on October 15, 2005 11:53 PM writes...
Comment from Maciej Henneberg:
"The new mandible does not differ much from the one of LB1 which falls into modern human range in both metric and descriptive characteristics. This also includes those features that are suggested to be species-specific for H. floresiensis: receding chin, large crowns of premolars and Tomes's roots of premolars. Receding chin and Tomes roots occur among modern Australomelanesians (Tomes roots at a frequency of about 20% - not a rarity!) while enlarged premolar crowns were described in 3 American living patients (Sheldon Peck in December 2004 issue of "Dental Anthropology") and in August I have seen another one in a Polish living patient described at the 13th International Symposium on Dental Morphology (proceedings to be published early in 2006). When studying pictures of mandibles do not forget that Europeans are not the standard for "modern humans", especially not for those in southeastern Asia."
Permalink to Comment7. Bill Prange on October 20, 2005 06:33 PM writes...
I recall reading that the finding of a Neanderthal with a whithered arm was considered exciting evidence that Neanderthals had the social inclination to support a disabled member of their group rather than letting him or her perish.
Permalink to CommentIt would seem that a microcepalic individual in an early stone age culture would be a serious burden on the group - rather more than one with a whithered arm. Could the argument be made that it is unlikely that a microcephalic would survive for long in such a situation?