How Many More Are Innocent? - Reason Magazine

How Many More Are Innocent? - Reason Magazine: "

Calculating the percentage of innocents now in prison is a tricky and controversial process. The numerator itself is difficult enough to figure out. The certainty of DNA testing means we can be positive the 250 cases listed in the Innocence Project report didn't commit the crimes for which they were convicted, and that number also continues to rise. But there are hundreds of other cases in which convictions have been overturned due to a lack of evidence, recantation of eyewitness testimony, or police or prosecutorial misconduct, but for which there was no DNA evidence to establish definitive guilt or innocence. Those were wrongful convictions in that there wasn't sufficient evidence to establish reasonable doubt, but we can't be sure all the accused were factually innocent."

Never Before Seen Photos of World Trade Center - ABC News

Never Before Seen Photos of World Trade Center - ABC News:

"Looking at these images never gets any easier. The photos that follow depict the horrible images of the September 11, 2001 attacks and the aftermath of the recovery efforts where some 2800 innocent people died, including those aboard hijacked flights American 11 and United 175. ABC News recently obtained these images after filing a Freedom of Information Act request in 2009 with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which had collected as part of an investigation into the collapse of the World Trade Center. (Det. Greg Semendinger/NYC Police Aviation Unit)"

Vegetative Patients Talk With Brain

Vegetative Patients Talk With Brain:

"A few patients who appear to be in a persistent vegetative state may in fact be aware of themselves and their surroundings.

Remarkably, such patients may be able to learn to 'speak' using only their brains, suggest findings by Martin M. Monti, PhD, of the UK Medical Research Council, and colleagues.

'If someone can produce a mental state on command, it is like having a language,' Monti tells WebMD. 'We had 23 apparently vegetative patients, and four were really aware -- as we could tell by MRI [brain scans]."

Ivy Leaguers’ Class for Poor Becomes ‘Platinum’ Charter Schools - Bloomberg.com

This was written up in Outliers:

Ivy Leaguers’ Class for Poor Becomes ‘Platinum’ Charter Schools - Bloomberg.com:

"A 2005 study by the Educational Policy Institute in Virginia Beach, Virginia, found “large and significant gains” among fifth graders in KIPP schools nationwide on the Stanford Achievement Test, a standardized assessment used by school districts. The students scored an average of 9 to 17 points higher in reading, language and math, on a scale of 99 points, than they had the previous year elsewhere.

KIPP has an 85 percent college matriculation rate, compared with 40 percent for low-income students nationwide, according to a 2008 report card on the organization’s Web site"

Wednesday whales take down Twitter - CNN.com

Wednesday whales take down Twitter - CNN.com:

"In a Twitter post on January 12, company CEO Evan Williams wrote that the site continues to grow.

'Across all metrics that matter, yesterday was Twitter's highest-usage day ever. (And today will be bigger.),' he wrote."

Adult Learning - Neuroscience - How to Train the Aging Brain - NYTimes.com

Adult Learning - Neuroscience - How to Train the Aging Brain - NYTimes.com:

"Educators say that, for adults, one way to nudge neurons in the right direction is to challenge the very assumptions they have worked so hard to accumulate while young. With a brain already full of well-connected pathways, adult learners should “jiggle their synapses a bit” by confronting thoughts that are contrary to their own, says Dr. Taylor, who is 66.

Teaching new facts should not be the focus of adult education, she says. Instead, continued brain development and a richer form of learning may require that you “bump up against people and ideas” that are different. In a history class, that might mean reading multiple viewpoints, and then prying open brain networks by reflecting on how what was learned has changed your view of the world"

The Decade of Zero? Measuring Your Fulfillment in the 2000's | Psychology Today

The Decade of Zero? Measuring Your Fulfillment in the 2000's | Psychology Today:

"...it remains the case that economists, naturally enough, tend to gauge human achievement in terms of gains measured in indexes such as the GDP, GNP, and so on. When they do look at happiness, at least professionally, they tend to rely on pretty unsophisticated measures such as your answer to the question 'how happy are you?' The answers they receive, if you trust them, show certain trends in the huge aggregate but really don't say much about one individual's particular happiness and what affects it."

I have to agree, survey data of happiness data is notoriously fickle.