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"What kind of information seeker are you?"

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Russ Roberts (https://hawaiisciencejournal.blogspot.com).

 

February 4, 2025: How you search Wikipedia shows what kind of curiosity you have, bonobos have theory of mind, and cannabis increases the risk of psychosis in teens. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor

TODAY'S NEWS

Female bonobo. Anup Shah/Getty Images

• An experiment shows that bonobos can understand when a human doesn't know something and points them in the right direction. The ability to infer others' mental states is called "theory of mind." | 3 min read • Two judges have ordered the Trump administration to lift a freeze on spending, including at the EPA. But nonprofits and states still can’t get money for contracts that are backed by the Inflation Reduction Act. | 2 min read

• The latest on an outbreak of tuberculosis in Kansas and the detection of highly pathogenic H5N9 bird flu in poultry. | 11 min listen

• How many words can you find in today's Spellements puzzle?

More News

TOP STORIES

Busybodies and Hunters What kind of information seeker are you? Wikipedia, the world’s largest encyclopedia, is helping researchers understand different types of curiosity. Scientists traced the click-paths of 482,000 volunteers using Wikipedia’s mobile app in 50 countries or territories and 14 languages. They determined three different types of information seekers: the “busybody,” the “hunter” and the “dancer.”  How they did it: Researchers charted study participants’ paths on Wikipedia using “knowledge networks” of connected information, which depict how closely one search topic (a node in the network) is related to another. The team then devised a score for each users’ search behavior that also accounted for location-based indicators of well-­being, inequality, and other measures. The types: A “busybody” follows a zigzagging route through many often distantly related topics. A “hunter” searches with sustained focus, moving among a relatively small number of closely related articles. The “dancer” type creatively links together highly disparate topics as a way of synthesizing new ideas. The synthesis: The researchers also analyzed topics of interest, ranging from physics to visual arts, for busybodies compared with hunters (graphic below). Hunters sure seem to hunger for math answers. And busybodies gravitate toward space subjects. Luckily Scientific American has both covered.

Amanda Montañez; Source: “Architectural Styles of Curiosity in Global Wikipedia Mobile App Readership,” by Dale Zhou et al., in Science Advances, Vol. 10, No. 43; October 25, 2024 (data)

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EXPERT PERSPECTIVES

• New strains of cannabis are highly potent, making them more addictive and potentially more dangerous, especially to teenagers, writes Carrie E. Bearden, a professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences and psychology at UCLA. The risk of psychosis increases with higher levels of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the intoxicating component of the cannabis plant. Why are teens particularly affected? The same molecules in the brain that interact with THC (known as the endocannabinoid system) play an essential role in brain development. "There is growing evidence from both animal and human studies that early cannabis exposure can disrupt the way brain cells, or neurons, respond to what we experience, and how they talk to each other to make those experiences memories," she says. | 5 min read

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WHAT WE'RE READING

• The federal webpage for an observatory named for the late female astronomer Vera Rubin was edited to remove any mention of astronomy being a male-dominated field. | ProPublica • Rather than landfilling 50,000 lbs. of excess clothing donations collected during the California wildfires, some businesses are rescuing them: sorting and upcycling by professional designers and seamstresses/seamsters. | The Guardian

• An inside look at what's been happening inside the NIH and NSF. | Science

Wikipedia is probably the biggest source of training data for large language models that power generative AI tools on search engines: “Without Wikipedia, generative A.I. wouldn’t exist,” Nicholas Vincent, an AI researcher at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, told the New York Times in 2023. All that knowledge was (and continues to be) assembled, over decades, by humans. If you've ever lost an hour on the site chasing a trail of information that started with an explanation of quantum superposition and ended with tuberculosis in Egyptian mummies, then you know what a treasure trove Wikipedia is.

So how do you satisfy your curiosity? Let me know by emailing: newsletters@sciam.com.  Until tomorrow.

—Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor

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