Your brain relies a lot on context to tell you what sounds are bouncing around in your ears, and without enough of that context it can get a little confused.
9 August 2018
Vox: How reliable is fingerprint analysis?
Fingerprinting is used by law enforcement all over the world, but it may not be as reliable as you think.
Fingerprinting has been a vital tool in forensic science since 1911 when the first conviction was handed out based on fingerprint evidence. It’s been used in countless investigations to help convict or rule out suspects, but is it as reliable as we think?
According to one study, researchers found that fingerprint analysts had a false positive rate (i.e. when they incorrectly conclude two prints are a match) of 0.1%. That may seem low, but that percentage reveals that innocent people are still being implicated in crimes.
Brandon Mayfield is one of the most famous examples of a false positive identification. The FBI arrested him for the 2004 Madrid train bombing based on a wrongful fingerprint match.
Most people agree that it’s a useful tool, but we might want to exercise a bit more skepticism when it comes to trusting fingerprints.
Vox: The decline of Hong Kong's iconic neon glow
Master Wu started making neon signs in the ’80s and has been filling Hong Kong’s streets with bright neon signs ever since. But recently, Master Wu has seen his business slow down as brighter-burning and more energy-efficient LED signs emerge. In addition to getting fewer requests, Hong Kong’s iconic neon landscape is also losing thousands of signs per year, ushering in the end of the city’s neon era.
As Hong Kong’s neon lights start to fade, I spent some time with Master Wu at his neon shop, where he showed me how he makes neon signs, and took a look at Hong Kong’s changing cityscape.
The Guardian: Mexico's failing war on drugs: after 200,000 dead, Amlo pledges to end the violence
In few places can the ferocity and futility of Mexico’s war on drugs be felt more than Tecomán, a once tranquil coastal community. Last year its murder rate of a reported 172.51 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants resembled that of a war zone.
Experts blame Mexico’s militarized assault on the drug cartels – launched by former president Felipe Calderón in 2006 – for fragmenting them into smaller, warring factions and sparking a turf war that has turned Tecomán and neighboring municipalities along its strategic west coast into some of the country’s deadliest. [...]
Indira Vizcaíno, Amlo’s point-person in Colima state, where Tecomán is located, said security policy would no longer “just be a matter of fighting fire with fire”. “Crime rates aren’t going up because the people feel like being bad. Crime rates are going up because people need to eat.” [...]
Instead, Lessing said he believed Amlo should adopt a “violence minimisation” strategy designed to slash Mexico’s homicide rate by targeting cartels that insisted in perpetrating acts of deadly violence such as those ravaging Tecomán.
JSTOR Daily: Crows Are Even Smarter Than We Thought
There is tool use and there is tool use. To pick up a stick to help remove objects from a small hole is tool use. New Caledonian Crows go much further than that, and actually modify existing objects to create tools. The crows use some simple manufacturing techniques, folding the edged pieces of screw pine leaves into a bent shape to access grubs in holes. But they have also been observed to follow very complicated procedures. To make twig hooks, the crows first select a twig, trim the edges then bend it into a hook shape. Finally, and most remarkably, the crows shape and sharpen the point of the hook using their beaks.
Further evidence of the crows’ acute intelligence comes from complicated tests administered to captive crows. Some crows were able to solve a complicated treasure hunt involving a task where they needed to use find one tool, use that tool to obtain another tool, and then use that second tool to extract food from a box. Most of the crows required several tries, but at least one was able to solve the problem first try. The exact reasoning behind the task is subject to interpretation; it’s possible that they simply eventually figured out the task through conditioning after receiving the reward for successful completion. But the researchers believe that this may be evidence of complicated thought and innovation, especially because they persisted through the first stages of the test without an immediate reward.
Why did crows develop these incredible abilities? To evolve a brain capable of such tasks carries a cost in terms of the energy needed to run it. But nothing happens without an evolutionary reason. It turns out that larvae found burrowed inside wood are some of the most nutritious prey available, and only sophisticated tools can fish these morsels easily out of their holes. To capitalize on this food source, crows first had to develop new abilities.
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