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Long before the crash, Airbus had recommended that airlines replace parts, called Pitot tubes, that scoop in air to help planes measure their air speed. The company said in its new message that for now, airlines could continue flying with older Pitot tubes. [url]
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Host: Ear Plugs to Lasers: The Science of Concentration — “Multitasking is a myth,” Ms. Gallagher said. “You cannot do two things at once. The mechanism of attention is selection: it’s either this or it’s that.” She points to calculations that the typical person’s brain can process 173 billion bits of information over the course of a lifetime. “People don’t understand that attention is a finite resource, like money,” she said. “Do you want to invest…
Host: Is Facebook Growing Up Too Fast? — That’s a change that may irk users like Ms. Rabban, who don’t like how busy their pages have become. Facebook executives counter that it will help users share more information, and that they will eventually come to appreciate it, just as they have with previous changes that were initially jarring. “It’s not a democracy,” Mr. Cox says of his company’s relationship with users. “We are here to build…
Host: Letting Scientists Off the Leash — As we think about how to heed President Obama’s call to “put science back in its rightful place,” I wonder if this should also be the time to rethink the basic foundations of how science is funded. Could we stimulate more discovery and creativity if more scientists had the security of their own salary and a long-term commitment to a minimal level of research support? Would this encourage…
Host: What Life Asks of Us — The rules of a profession or an institution are not like traffic regulations. They are deeply woven into the identity of the people who practice them. A teacher’s relationship to the craft of teaching, an athlete’s relationship to her sport, a farmer’s relation to her land is not an individual choice that can be easily reversed when psychic losses exceed psychic profits. Her social function…
Host: Edgy, Yet Still Aerodynamic — Still, the wind tunnel continues to bring new discoveries. “Aero,” said Michael Simcoe, a veteran exterior designer at G.M., “remains a black art.” [url]
Host: What Has Driven Women out of Computer Science? — What’s particularly puzzling is that the explanations for under-representation of women that were assembled back in 1991 applied to all technical fields. Yet women have achieved broad parity with men in almost every other technical pursuit. When all science and engineering fields are considered, the percentage of bachelor’s degree recipients who are women has improved to 51 percent in 2004-5 from…
