Before the reels on a slot machine stop spinning, a gambler’s brain is already anticipating the potential rewards. And although two bananas on the pay line with a third just barely visible won’t pay a gambler any more than three random fruits, such near misses have the well-documented, if irrational, effect of enticing gamblers to try again. The reason, according to a new study, is that these near misses activate the same reward signals in the brain as a win.
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The University of Cambridge rang in its 800th anniversary with church bells and a light show on Saturday the 17th. The light show, created by projection artist Ross Ashton, included specially commissioned illustrations of Cambridge alumni Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton by Roald Dahl’s illustrator, Quentin Blake. Above, a graying Darwin ponders the tree of life, whose branches recapitulate the origins of the species. Other images evoked the scientific, musical, and debaucherous achievements of 800 years of Cambridge students and alumni.
See all the photos at Science Magazine’s new Darwin blog [html].
Cameron Hummels in his observatory, 2009. Photo: Lucas Laursen.
The telescope room atop Pupin Hall at Columbia University offers a stunning view of the night sky and the New York City skyline. Astronomy Ph.D. candidate Cameron Hummels even considered moving his desk and computer up to the rooftop shed before concluding that his computer would not last long without heat or air conditioning. As much as Hummels would like to be near the telescopes all the time, the discoveries he wants to make also require computers, and there’s a lot at stake: “I love the fact that I could potentially make a difference,” he says, “in how we identify the underlying principles of nature.”
Sarah Addou stared hard at her computer screen, willing the code in front of her to compile properly. “When you don’t have any experience writing code, it’s a steep learning curve,” she recalls today, 8 years after that summer internship experience at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) in New York state.
Before the reels on a slot machine stop spinning, a gambler’s brain is already anticipating the potential rewards. And although two bananas on the pay line with a third just barely visible won’t pay a gambler any more than three random fruits, such near misses have the well-documented, if irrational, effect of enticing gamblers to try again. The reason, according to a new study, is that these near misses activate the same reward signals in the brain as a win.
