I’m sure you’ve all seen crude videos on the internet where Nicholas Cage or some other person’s face is superimposed upon somebody else’s body, creating a (normally obviously fake) funny illusion. However these can also be used for far more sinister purposes. Instead of pretending to have one person be someone else, they can be used to fake somebodies facial expressions and voice, letting them make somebody rather convincingly say anything they want them to. 

This has terrifying consequences. Politicians can be made to say things they have not. People are already consistently misquoted in Facebook macro images (commonly referred to as memes), and many believe them without any scrutiny. A video of somebody saying something will be believed by many without a shadow of a doubt, and the people who do know about deepfakes will become sceptical about any video ever greater age of total media distrust. Troubling times indeed. 

I often struggle with how much my actions actually matter in a grand scheme. It is far easier to see how relevant more personal and relationship based actions affect others, and why what I do in those areas is ‘important’, but far less when I think about my political or environmental efforts. Whether I, and frankly whether New Zealand or any other country that is not huge, make effort towards helping reduce resource consumption, ocean acidification, average global temperature etc, little to no effect will be seen. Certainly, actions I personally take will have such a tiny effect on Climate Change that they are essentially non existent. However this is a poisonous attitude, as if everybody were to take actions towards climate change certainly at least some effect would come about.

This is closely related to a common phenomenon in game theory and real life called the prisoner’s dilemma, in which two co-criminals are in prison. If only one of them blames the other person for the crime, they go free and the other person goes to prison for 3 years. However if they both blame each other, they both go to prison for 2 years, and if neither of them blame each other, they both go to prison for 1 year. As an individual, it is always rational for you to blame the other. If they blamed you, you reduce your prison sentence by a year, and if they didn’t blame you you can get out immediately instead of waiting a year. However two people acting this way will lead to both going to prison for 2 years.

We may be in luck however, as studies have shown{1} that when humans are placed in this situation they typically do not act rationally, instead choosing to cooperate with the other player even though it is not their best option.

1: http://www.iwp.jku.at/born/mpwfst/04/nature02043_f_born.pdf

While the octopus has a fairly large brain when compared to the rest of its body size, about two thirds of its neurons are distributed around its arms, in clusters called ganglia. This means that when the octopus senses information about the environment through a sucker, it can react faster than if a signal travelled all the way up to the brain and back down into the effector muscle in the arm. This has been tested numerous times by severing nerves between the arm and brain of an octopus, and the result was no change of the arm movements when exposed to stimulation, even though unconnected to the brain!

The arms of an octopus are almost entirely made of muscle so have practically unlimited flexibility. However, they can also function similar to a human arm, where some parts are rigid so it folds at precise places. These arms are used for a wide variety of things: including mating, and motility (they can propel octopi up to 40kmp!). The arms also have a neural ring, allowing them to share information with each other without including the brain for maximum proprioception and spacial awareness.

Each sucker on an arm of an octopus has millions of neurons, which means as it walks along the sea floor it gathers information and even food.

FYI: the most acceptable plural of Octopus is Octopuses. While Octopi is generally accepted, it is not technically accurate because the ending ‘i’ is plural in Latin, whereas the word octopus is originally greek.

https://animals.howstuffworks.com/marine-life/octopus3.htm

https://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-how-octopus-arms-make-decisions-without-input-from-the-brain

https://www.infoplease.com/askeds/plural-octopus

The other day I was lying at the base of a tree, my eyes travelling up the line of trunk up till where the branches perpendicularly fought against the anti-gravitational growth of their producer. As I observed the direction of the branches, I was reminded of the beautiful phenomenon that is the fibonacci sequence. The fibonacci sequence is one of these fantastic collisions of mathematics and biology, and is so beautiful and prevalent around us that I thought I’d just remind you all of it.  

Although always present in nature, it was first acknowledged by 11th century Italian mathematician, Leonardo Pisano. He wondered how many rabbits could a single rabbit produce given optimal conditions. The results are the sequence 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, etc… where every number is the sum of the two prior to that. This came to be known as the Fibonacci sequence. When put in ratio, these numbers had a value of 1.618, also known as the ‘divine number’ or ‘golden ratio’.  

The numbers can also be expressed in the following pattern, which as you can see strongly resembles a nautilus sea shell.

Other examples include the pistils in flower centres, many different types of flower petals, pinecone seeds, a dangling Monarch about to form a chrysalis, the shape of an egg, even the curve of your own ear! As well as the physical curve being plentifully represented, the golden ratio is also very common, for example your height divided by the hight of your torso. 

The neat thing about trees is that both curve and ratio is represented. The branches sprout out in a spiral from the trunk (for example the almond tree in which it takes 8 branches to spiral 3 times around, a fibonacci ratio of 3/8). Not only this but if you look directly up a trunk, you can make out a distinctive anti-spiral curve of the individual branches originating at the trunk and curving around the tree. The advantage of this pattern in trees is the efficiency of sunlight access for photosynthesis. (I’d just like to note that not all trees follow this pattern, not all species have this anticlockwise curve)

so next time you’re strolling amongst trees, on a beach, breeding rabbits (I guess??), or by a flower garden, I encourage you to look with an observant eye for this beautiful pattern in nature. 

 

Clown fish are sequential hermaphrodites – they are born one gender but have the ability to switch to the other gender. This is because they have both testicular tissue and ovarian tissue so they are able to develop both reproductive organs, and somehow also instinctively know how to perform the actions that is controlled by both genders.

A group of clown fish consists of two large fish – the sexually mature male and female pair – and a larger collection of smaller fish. All the smaller fish are males as they are a protandrous species (meaning they start out as male and switch to female when needed). The one female fish produces all the eggs, and then if she is removed or killed, her mate who was the only sexually mature male fish transforms into a female, and another male fish matures to be the partner of the newly changed male-come-female fish. This gender change takes about two months, and is not yet fully understood. Somehow, the fish’s detection of a change in the social environment can lead to an a physiological change in its anatomy.

A 2016 study looked into the sex steroidogenic machinery within Clownfish and found the aromatase gene to play a significant role, affecting both the brain and gonads. Hopefully more study will be done in the future on this bizarre topic! 

https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/fishtree_07

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep35461.ris

A fallacy is a logical reasoning process that is incorrect. For instance, the Ad Hominem Fallacy involves rejecting an argument based on the personal characteristics of the person arguing for it. The Fallacy Fallacy occurs when the reasoner recognises that an argument is fallacious, thus determining the argument is not true and from that concluding the arguments conclusion must be false. However, if you look close enough this is just an extension of the ‘Denying the Antecedent’ formal fallacy; ‘If P then Q. Not P, therefore, not Q’ (where P and Q are the argument given).

Since P and Q represent the argument, this can actually be extended to the Fallacy Fallacy Fallacy since its psychologically easy to dismiss an argument once you have pointed out there is a fallacy (i.e. the Fallacy Fallacy). However, in doing this, you are also committing a fallacy (hence the Fallacy Fallacy Fallacy). Perhaps this ought to be better conveyed through an example; if you point out someone has used the Fallacy Fallacy, and from that dismiss their claim, then you have committed the Fallacy Fallacy Fallacy. Furthermore, this can be extended infinitely many times! You can commit the Fallacy Fallacy, the Fallacy Fallacy Fallacy or even the Fallacy Fallacy Fallacy Fallacy Fallacy! Be careful as to not falling into this never-ending fallacious cycle.

Procrastination is defined as the action of delaying or postponing something. This is usually a bad habit because we often tend to procrastinate important assignments and essays in favour of other more fun activities. Sometimes even mundane chores such as cleaning become more interesting than sitting down and studying. As University students we all know about it and to at least some extent have experienced it ourselves, but what exactly causes it and why does it happen?

When we are given a task, we use our willpower and self-control to complete it. This self-control is supported by our motivation, both intrinsic and externally motivated i.e. we know there will be some kind of reward once we have completed the task. However, at the same time we are also faced with demotivating and hindering factors. For instance, the fear of failure, anxiety, it can even be hard to conceptualise the rewards if they are not immediate and are in the far future. It is a well-known fact that people find it difficult to place priority on long-term rewards as opposed to short term ones. Sometimes these simple hindrances stack up and create a huge mental barrier. Often, we will become stressed and find it hard to focus and concentrate, or sometimes the tasks seem too complicated and abstract to do – almost becoming scary. This creates a downwards spiral which leads to a very destructive lifestyle. It is when these negative influences outweigh the positive ones that we start to procrastinate.

However, being aware of these factors can help to lift some of that mental stress. Keeping organised mentally is a very important skill to have, and is one that can be used to help overcome these negative hindrances.

The framing effect affects how you perceive information. Under it, people will typically pick the more positive sounding option as opposed to the negatively presented one. For instance, suppose you had to undergo surgery. The doctor offers to do one procedure that has a 50% success rate, and another that has a 50% fail rate. Most people would pick the option with the 50% success rate, even though the two are exactly the same. This is because the former option ‘sounds better’ than the latter one due to what is known as the framing effect.

Now this can be extended to a related phenomenon in which positive and negative diction can affect people’s moods and thought-processes. Take for instance the following two statements.

1. Be calm.
2. Don’t worry.

In the first instance, the use of affirmative words helps to create a more positive sentiment and helps the reader to feel more tranquil. In the second instance, the reader is left with the anxious undertones of ‘worry’. It also almost implies that there is a problem to be concerned about and leaves the reader feeling somewhat negative (despite its positive idea).

While these are both statements which express the same concept, the first one would be better for someone who is worrying or upset. In both cases the reader will linger on the last word which sets the tone of the sentence. It is better for someone to subconsciously have ‘calm’ floating in their mind than ‘worry’.

A new study has shown that honeybees are able to understand numbers higher than four, provided we give feedback for whether or not they have done it correctly or incorrectly. This actually happens to be better than humans, because we tend to struggle to count anything greater than four. This sounds incorrect but if you do some simple tests, you’ll find it’s easy for you to recognise groups of four but difficult to estimate or deal with groups that are larger than four. This isn’t unique to humans, fish also have a threshold for accurate estimating which is approximately four also. 

A theory that explains this seemingly random (and surprisingly low) threshold is that perhaps counting isn’t actually counting. It may simply be that our brains are able to recognise groups of up to four items, whereas any groups with greater numbers would require counting and therefore more thinking. 

Bees are actually quite good at math and can even be taught to associate pictures/symbols with a particular quantity, very similar to our own numbering system. The bees are able to learn this by a repeated process of right and wrong; they are given a sugary liquid when correct and a bitter one when wrong. 

There were two groups in this experiment. One group of bees were only given a reward when they did it correctly, and no punishment (bitter liquid) when done incorrectly. The second group of bees were given both a reward and punishment. 

Interestingly, they discovered that the group only given rewards were not able to distinguish groups greater than four but the group that had both rewards and punishments were able to discern groups of four from greater groups of numbers. Therefore it seems that the bee’s ability to discern numbers depends also on the amount of risks and rewards, not just innate ability. 

This limit of four seems to span across both vertebrates and invertebrates, and this common threshold might hold the key to understanding how brains tackle the concept of quantities. The results of this study indicate that under the right conditions and training done in the correct way, the bees were able to learn how to process higher numbers. This may mean that humans would be able to adapt in a similar way, provided we are trained the right way. 

An organism is about to be unveiled at the Paris Zoological Park and has been called “The Blob”. It is a yellow(ish) well…blob. But it’s not just any blob. This blob has nearly 720 sexes, is able to heal itself in approximately 2 minutes if cut in half, has no mouth but can detect and consume food, and scariest of all, despite not having a brain, it is able to remember things and solve simple problems. 

This blob’s name technically calls it a slime mould, but scientists now think it isn’t related to fungi and might instead be more similar to amoeba. But one things for certain: this blob is neither an animal nor a plant, yet can do some pretty amazing things. The blob has been around for as many as a million years, so clearly it’s been doing pretty well.

The blob has no brain and no nervous system yet is capable of advanced decision making, learning and long-term memory storage. And not only that, the blob can also merge with other friendly blobs and share their respective knowledge. Blobs are able to find their way through mazes, configure themselves into shapes to replicate objects and are able to solve the “Travelling Salesman’s Problem” and did not take any extra time even when the complexity of the problem was increased. 

Enemies of the blob are light, drought, salt and caffeine. But blobs could be taught to avoid caffeine for example, and after fusion with other blobs, that knowledge would be passed on. 

These blobs are actually found in many places such as soil and the remainders of dead trees. So keep an eye out for the blobs and maybe they might remember you.

(PS. The blob really likes oats for some reason)