The Stanford Prison Experiment

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=677084988379129606#

It’s important not to think of this as prisoner and guard in a real prison. The important issue is the metaphor prisoner and guard. What does it mean to be a prisoner? What does it mean to be a guard? And the guard is somebody who limits the freedom of someone else, uses the power in their role to control and dominate someone else, and that’s what this study is about.

In the summer of 1971, Philip Zimbardo, Craig Haney, and Curtis Banks carried out a psychological experiment to test a simple question. What happens when you put good people in an evil place-does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph?

To explore this question, college student volunteers were pretested and randomly assigned to play the role of prisoner or guard in a simulated prison at Stanford University. Although the students were mentally healthy and knew they were taking part in an experiment, some guards soon because sadistic and the prisoners showed signs of acute stress and depression.

After only six days, the planned two-week study spun out of control and had to be ended to prevent further abuse of the prisoners. This dramatic demonstration of the power of social situations is relevant to many institutional settings, such as the Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq.

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God on the Brain

 

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7991385426492181792#

 

Rudi Affolter and Gwen Tighe have both experienced strong religious visions. He is an atheist; she a Christian. He thought he had died; she thought she had given birth to Jesus. Both have temporal lobe epilepsy.

Like other forms of epilepsy, the condition causes fitting but it is also associated with religious hallucinations. Research into why people like Rudi and Gwen saw what they did has opened up a whole field of brain science: neurotheology.

The connection between the temporal lobes of the brain and religious feeling has led one Canadian scientist to try stimulating them. (They are near your ears.) 80% of Dr Michael Persinger’s experimental subjects report that an artificial magnetic field focused on those brain areas gives them a feeling of ‘not being alone’. Some of them describe it as a religious sensation.

His work raises the prospect that we are programmed to believe in god, that faith is a mental ability humans have developed or been given. And temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) could help unlock the mystery.

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Absolute Zero

 

 

This two-part scientific detective tale tells the story of a remarkable group of pioneers who wanted to reach the ultimate extreme: absolute zero, a place so cold that the physical world as we know it doesn’t exist, electricity flows without resistance, fluids defy gravity and the speed of light can be reduced to 38 miles per hour.

Each film features a strange cast of eccentric characters, including: Clarence Birds Eye; Frederic ‘Ice King’ Tudor, who founded an empire harvesting ice; and James Dewar, who almost drove himself crazy by trying to liquefy hydrogen.

Absolute zero became the Holy Grail of temperature physicists and is considered the gateway to many new technologies, such as nano-construction, neurological networks and quantum computing. The possibilities, it seems, are limitless.

The bizarre story of how one court magician’s use of alchemy made a King shiver. Could the future become a strange quantum world as physicists get within a few millionths of a degree of this absolute zero?

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Scientific American Frontiers

Part 1:  Surgical Slimmers.

In spite of the risks, people are lining up to solve their weight problems in the operating room. And if the latest device – an implantable stomach “pacer” – works out, millions more will be taking the surgical way out.

 

 

Part 2:  Cars that Think.

The fully automatic car may be down the road a ways, but cars that do your thinking for you are just around the corner – they watch out for hazards, they listen to you, they read your lips, they even know when you’re distracted.

 

 

Part 3:  Going Deep.

A look back at the decades of effort that culminated in the deep sub Alvin reaching the ocean floor, and a look forward to what’s next now Alvin’s retiring.

 

 

Part 4:  Chimp Minds.

A visit with an engaging if unruly bunch of cousins that we formally broke up with about 6 or 7 million years ago – with whom we share almost all of our genes but not a lot of our lifestyle. Why the difference? Maybe it’s in how we learn.

 

 

Part 5:  Hot Planet – Cold Comfort.

So you think global warming won’t affect you? Wait until the great Atlantic Conveyor shuts down. And find out what’s already happening in Alaska.

 

 

Part 6:  Hydrogen Hopes.

Hydrogen may be the fuel of the future, but what will it take to safely and efficiently make the transition from today’s fossil fuels?

 

 

Part 7:   Hidden Motives.

If you think you know why you do things, you’re probably wrong. How does the unconscious mind determine human behavior?

 

 

Part 8:  The Secret Canyon.

The best kept secret of American archeology is now revealed – an entire canyon of perfectly preserved 1,000-year-old remains.

 

 

Part 9:  Cybersenses.

Replacement synthetic senses for people are now a reality. Children as young as 12 months are already getting artificial hearing – while the first trials of electronic retinas for the blind are just beginning.

 

 

Part 10:  Robot Pals.

To be really useful, robots need to behave as cooperative partners rather than mindless machines. We’ll meet three robots – including a future member of an astronaut team – that are trying to better understand us.

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Battle of the Brains

Can you think of 100 different uses for a sock? How would you cope with glasses that turn everything upside down? What’s your emotional intelligence? Can you create a work of art in 10 minutes? Horizon takes seven people who are some of the highest flayers in their field: a musical prodigy, a quantum physicist, an artist, a dramatist, an RAF fighter pilot, a chess grandmaster and a Wall Street trader, and puts them through a battery of tests to measure their intelligence. Who is the most intelligent?

The principle way that we measure intelligence, the IQ test, is based on research done before even Einstein was in his prime. Because these tests label us with a single number they are still a popular and convenient way to divide people into clever clogs and dunces. But most psychologists agree that they only tell half the story, at most. Where they disagree is how we measure intelligence, for the very good reason that they still don’t know exactly what it is.

Horizon looks for evidence of intelligence in the brain, in our genes and in our upbringing and tests some of the latest theories using them to see which of the seven has the highest intelligence. Wall Street Trader, Nathan Hasselbauer has an IQ of 167, but is he creative? Artist Stella Vine left school at 13 how would she know the distance from London to Hong Kong? Dramatist and critic Bonnie Greer has got a great vocabulary, but what’s she like at inductive logic?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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