Why Clowns Are So Scary

Posted on October 31, 2016 by | 5 comments

As far as I remember, it has always been an acceptable and popular choice to dress up as a clown for Halloween.

The same really can’t be said for this year.

The past few months have made the public seriously afraid of clowns. Typically, with a fear like this, people would say that it’s irrational and unfounded. But in this case, I think the fear is fairly justified. There have been numerous reported sightings of ‘creepy clowns’ all over North America and the UK. There have even been some eerie sightings locally, in the Greater Vancouver area.

Of course, part of the public fear is grounded in the fact that these individuals have displayed threatening behaviour. However, the question is, what is it about the sheer idea of a clown that frightens us?

There are several plausible psychological reasons behind why clowns often trigger a fear response in us. In my opinion, the most significant aspect of this phenomenon may be the fact that clown make-up or masks conceal facial expressions. Humans rely on the interpretation of facial expressions to gauge intentions. When this is lost, an individual naturally becomes scary to us, because we can’t tell who they are or what they want.

This leads me to my next point. Clowns are unpredictable. This is meant to be a part of their amusing demeanour–after all, it is the unpredictability of humour that makes us laugh. However, this trait of clowns can also be taken in a negative light, because it can be scary to not know what someone might do.

Both of these psychological reasons have touched on the theme of the human desire to gain familiarity with other individuals. We often find that the more familiar and similar someone is, the more we may like them. We also find the opposite to be true, where we may not feel warmth for people who are different or foreign to us (which is why some North Americans easily reject foreign refugees–but that’s another matter).

This could be another element of our fear of clowns. The clown character is constructed to be very different than the average person, with the goal of amusing people through surprisingly strange and quirky behaviours. However, this difference from human norm can be so large that it makes people entirely unable to relate to clowns, thus making them scary.

It appears that these psychological ideas are something that filmmakers have long understood. There have been many movies where the villain is a clown. The success of these movies often partially relies on the ability of the portrayed villain to scare the audience.

With all that being said, there are some really nice people in the clown profession.

It is unfortunate that their professions may be harmed because of the spread of this fear. However, this phenomenon poses intriguing questions about the line between what we find amusing and scary.

Uzair Ahmed

 

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Liar, Liar… Brain on Fire

Posted on October 31, 2016 by | 4 comments

Whether you lied to get out of homework, or to get out of work, or even just lying to your friend to make them feel better… we have all been there. Lying is a part of the human condition, but have you ever wondered what triggers you to tell that lie? I’ll admit that there have been many instances where I have lied. For example, I’ve told my friend many times her hair  looks great – when it really doesn’t.

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Image Courtesy of Pinterest.com

Studies in the field of neuroscience show there may be a biological explanation behind why lies escalate over time.

 

Image Courtest of: Huffingtonpost.com

Image Courtesy of: Huffingtonpost.com

So what triggers a lie? Psychologist Tali Sharot from the University College of London suggests that the brain becomes numb from the aching it causes, thus lying becomes a routine.  This explains why people progress easily from smaller to bigger lies; they become used to the fabrication.

Sharot and colleagues suggest that the “emotional adaptation” is the logic behind the acceleration of dishonesty. A little white lie can’t hurt anyone, right? You’re inclined to feel slightly bad from your first lie, but what about the few dozen after that? Will it feel just as bad? I’ve lied many times as a child and used to feel incredibly guilty, but now making the same lies just doesn’t feel as bad.

Sharot then conducted a study with 80 volunteers. These volunteers were to scrutinize jars containing pennies and estimate how much money was in them. The volunteers had partners who had to estimate as well, but had blurry pictures. Thus, the partners had to rely on the volunteer’s advice to estimate. Some volunteers were told that the more accurate their guess, the more the both of them would win; an incentive to send the truest estimate. In other instances, the more the partner overstated the money the jar contained, the more the volunteer would win and the less the partner would; an incentive for the volunteer to give the partner false information. Of the two cases, the second situation had partners lie more.

Next, 25 volunteers underwent neuroimaging when they were providing information to their partners. The amygdala, the part of the brain that responds to processes encountering emotional experiences, spew out activity after the first lie. This represents the idea that lying is unpleasant.

Image Courtesy of: http://brainmadesimple.com

Image Courtesy of: http://brainmadesimple.com

However, activity experiences by the amygdala decreased before subsequent lies. The larger they decreased, the more lies were detected by the volunteers in the next rounds. This suggests that the more decrease in amygdala activity, the more comfort one will experience when lying.

“Think about it like perfume. You buy a new perfume, and it smells strongly. A few days later, it smells less. And a month later, you don’t smell it at all.” 

    – Tali Sharot, a psychologist at the University of University College of London.

Image Courtesy of: Pinterest.com

Image Courtesy of: Pinterest.com

This idea of emotional adaptation relates to every human, because let’s be real… we all lie when we think we can get away with it. You experience less guilt when you easily get away with lying. The moral of the story is, don’t become a liar, because a little white lie doesn’t end just there. It begins to snowball. Also, you wouldn’t want your nose keep growing like Pinocchio, I know I wouldn’t.

Image Courtesy of

Image Courtesy of  www.disneyclips.com

By: Harmen Tatla

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Posted in Science Communicators, Science in the News, Uncategorized

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AI-based advertising vs. traditional advertising: which one is more powerful?

Amazon suggested product

Youtube Advertising

  Over the past decade, the industry of information technology has developed at a surprising speed. Also, the way that advertisements are designed and served has changed significantly. Compared with the advertisements in the 1990s, there are more forms of advertising. One of the most special forms is the Artificial Intelligence(AI) based advertisement. When you go to Amazon for online shopping, what pops up on the screen is no more the best-seller, but the item that you wish to buy. Similarly, you will find that the advertisements before YouTube videos are more and more attractive and relevant to you. These are all examples of AI-based advertising. Then there is a debate over whether the new form of advertising is more powerful than tradition advertising.

  What are the advantages of tradition advertising? Obviously, it’s more creative than the AI-sorted data. It’s more reliable since they are well sorted by advertisement agencies, and it’s easy to be widely spread with traditional media. Also, it lasts longer by leaving deep impression to people and spread among individuals. The slogan ”A diamond is forever” by De Beers is a typical example of successful traditional advertising.

Story of “A diamond is forever”. Source: De beers.

Story of “A diamond is forever”.

What about AI-based advertising? It has many unique features that traditional advertising can never achieve. Firstly, it provides sufficient feedback for advertisement agencies by big-data analysis. Hence, advertisers can know the effectiveness easily. Secondly, AI knows customers better since it can analyze their personal tastes from their searching or reading history. For example, if you bought a headphone from Amazon, then they will suggest you with the complementary products that customers who bought this item also bought. Besides, AI-based advertisements are more attractive because it’s well relevant to your life. What’s more, AI can analysis people’s need and develop potential customers. Here we got a video showing an example of AI-advertising.

For all these reasons, it’s clear that AI-advertising wins the battle. The AI-based advertisements have better efficiency and effectiveness than traditional advertisements. However, it will be better if advertisement agencies can combine them together and make AI-based advertising more creative. The commercial industry has already changed a lot by AI, and there will be more major changes as the information technology industry develops.

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Posted on October 17, 2016 by in Science in the News

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Finding Dory! And Save Them!

Posted on October 17, 2016 by | 1 comment

This summer, there was another Pixar cartoon movie “Finding Dory” became really popular. The story is interesting; the animals are cute.  But the movie itself actually have negative impact to the nature. And you may ask why?

DORY

DORY Image from Flickr

Here are some stories, after the last ocean movie “finding nemo” in 2003, what people didn’t expect is an 40% increase of the nemo fish in the pet fish market and aquarium trade. Nemo fish is actually belong to the clownfish family. And every year, over 1 million of them was taken from the ocean. That happened in 2003, after the movie became successful. Now, marine biologists Rene Umberger and Craig Downs worried about that this will happen again, to royal blue tang fish- the dory. Actually, the data showed that the royal blue tang has been ranked as high as 10th among all 2,300 saltwater aquarium fish species imported to US. And in 2009, the number was 130,000, before the movie. Also, according to Umberger and Downs, about 50 percent of wild-caught aquarium fish were detected with different levels of cyanide. And cyanide will not only the “Sudden Death Syndrome,” which is spontaneous death of the fish. It can kill nearby non-target fish, invertebrates and coral reefs as well. Also, they help to keep the reef healthy, as they eat nothing but algae, therefore they prevents the algae from overgrowing and suffocating the coral. Here is an interesting fact the flesh of dory is poisoning. Although it would not be able to kill you, I doubt anyone would eat them.

DORY AND NEMO

DORY AND NEMO

There are some scientists actually start a program called “ Saving Nemo Conservation Fund” after 2003.And, they are trying an alternative to collecting wild clownfish from the ocean. Nursery breeding is an easy way to prevent over collection of clownfish in the wild. And for the 7 out of 28 species of clownfish are bred in Australia. Unfortunately, none of the ten host anemone species are bred in captivity for aquariums. But, it is lucky for dory, as the University of Florida Tropical Aquaculture Lab announced that blue tangs has been bred in captivity for the first, and it is a big step to save these beautiful wild fish.

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Disappearing Glaciers

Glaciers are consistent bodies of moving ice sheets that usually exist in high latitude areas and high mountain areas. They are formed by huge amounts of high-density ice that have been condensed and refrozen. 97% of total glaciers and 99% of total ice amount on earth are contained in the Antarctic ice sheet and the Greenland ice sheet that are located in the Polar regions. The ice contained in these ice sheets is the largest fresh water bank on earth such that it has the ability to change the climate throughout our world.

图片搜索结果

Credit: http://www.onlyonesolution.org/albedo.html

 

The melting ice sheets throughout the world have drawn much attentions from the news media in recent years. The public has noticed that climate change has become one of the major troubles that human beings are facing. Also, it has been reported that the average thickness of glaciers on earth has decreased by 11.5 meters since 1980, and this phenomenon is caused by people using fossil fuels recklessly. Additionally, energy companies are still searching and drilling for more oil and gas in the Arctic and this will make the climate issue worse.

图片搜索结果

Credit: http://climatechangeconnection.org/

Now you see it, now you don't - Climate 365 graphic

Credit:NASA Climate 365 project, http://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/4/

Scientists have been collecting temperature data since the 18th century. According to those data, our planet is getting warm constantly since the industrial revolution. Many people still hold the viewpoint that the increasing density of greenhouse gases is the main reason for Global Warming. However, scientists have found that the change of greenhouse gases’ density does not match the exponentially increasing trend of the average temperature. Meanwhile, glaciologists have claimed that the ice contained in the Polar regions has the ability to affect the global climate. In fact, as so much ice sheets have disappeared in the past few decades, lots of area on the surface of earth have turned from bright color of ice into dark color of water. Since dark colors can absorb heats faster than bright colors, our earth is now absorbing much more heats than in the past. Consequently, the melting glaciers have much greater influence on the climate than the greenhouse gases.

Credit:NASA, http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/global_warming/global_cooling.html

Last but not the least, the melting glaciers can result in much more serious consequences than just higher temperature. Melted sea ice produces a huge amount of water as ice sheets are the biggest water bank in the world. Also, it has been reported that about 40% of total glaciers have melted in the past four decades and the sea levels is rising slowly since 19th century by 0.1-0.15 m every 100 years. Many people still think that it does not matters since rising sea levels seems not so dangerous and it’s coming very slow. However, the rising sea levels may destroy many cities throughout the world.

Credit: The daily conversation from Youtube

In my opinion, the melting glaciers is just the start of  the disaster that may cause human’s extinction. Also, the masses have not fully realized the trouble that mankind is facing. Our planet will survive in extreme weathers as it has survived for 4.6 billion years. But we may be the generation that decides if human being can still live on earth. Therefore I suggest that everyone should start to think the changes that people need to make in order to protect our world.

 

Yitao Gu

 

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Posted on October 3, 2016 by in Issues in Science, Uncategorized

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Frictions

You must know frictions. And, you probably can tell the roughness of surfaces is the reason why there are frictions. But, have you think about what happened micro-cosmically? I am pretty sure you would say no. So, let’s have a look.

http://umdberg.pbworks.com/w/page/46117252/Friction

Imagine you are pushing a heavy box. The bottom of the box may look smooth, but you will see many microscopic hills and valleys if you consider its micro-structure, so does the ground. Due to the gravity, the box is pushing the ground, so the hills of the box are pushed into the valleys of the ground, and vice versa. To move the box, there must be an applied force which is large enough to squeeze those hills and flat the surfaces. The resistance from the hills prevent being squeezed is known as frictions.

Frictions are very important in our life, but they also cause some wastes of energy. People have worked out many ways to minimize frictions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glXGDpEOU58

Video source( Flexiguru from YouTube)

Minimization of frictions benefits us a lot. The most representative achievement is maglev. Maglev trains are a transport method that uses magnetic levitation to move vehicles without contacting the track. For maglev, there is no friction between its wheels and tracks, so it can have a very high speed. The maximum speed of normal trains is around 300 km/h, but maglev can achieve 600 km/h which is 2/3 speed of civil airplanes. Moreover, maglev trains move more smoothly and more quietly.

The newest commercial maglev train was built in Shanghai. If you go to Shanghai, don’t miss it.

 

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