When a disputed Kenyan election turned violent in 2007, an organization called Ushahidi emerged to map the destruction and killings that broke out across the country. Ushahidi, which means ''testimony'' in Swahili, used text messages from eyewitnesses to create an easily understood graphic depiction of the violence taking place. Their software was later used in the Congo and by Al Jazeera to depict the war in Gaza that took place at the end of 2008.

Ushahidi is just one of many nonprofits, governmental agencies, and human rights lobbying agencies using maps for humanitarian work. Unfortunately, these organizations are notoriously bad at sharing data, according to Patrick Meier. To solve this problem, Meier recently started the International Network of Crisis Mappers (INCM), which aims to connect people and organizations using maps for good.

When a natural disaster strikes or violence breaks out in a country, a map can change the nature of that crisis. The simple act of getting people in front of a map and asking for input can build consensus between warring parties. Maps can also ensure that humanitarian resources are used more effectively and get to the people who need them more quickly.

Crisis mapping is more than simply mapping crises, according to Meier. New technology—including text messages, Twitter, and satellite imagery—is changing the way that data for maps are being collected. Anyone with a cell phone can now help update aid workers on natural disasters or violent altercations in real time. Designers are constantly coming up with new and interesting ways to create visualizations of that data to make it look more appealing. Researchers are then using the data from maps to look for patterns. The information and maps are then pushed out into the field to give support tools to the activists and the nonprofits trying to help the people caught in a crisis.

Organizations don't always want to spend time and resources sharing data in the midst of a crisis, but more collaboration is often needed. Meier’s INCM makes it easier and less time-consuming for organizations to collaborate with each other, so that everyone can start helping people more effectively. When typhoons recently rocked the Philippines, for example, INCM connected a half dozen groups, including Open Street Map, to share information that may have helped deploy humanitarian aid more effectively. Meier hopes this burgeoning movement will continue to connect different mapping projects and humanitarian agencies to make collaboration happen more quickly and easily.

Source: International Network of Crisis Mappers

Image from  Ushahidi .

To view examples of crisis maps, watch the slideshow below:

Students who want to learn something should probably try failing first. According to new research highlighted in the Scientific American, “learning becomes better if conditions are arranged so that students make errors.” In other words, people who take a test that they are bound to fail before studying the material, actually end up learning better. People who fail first remember things better an longer than people who don’t. According to the article, this could have profound effects on educational programs that specifically try to avoid students making errors. The authors write: “Trying and failing to retrieve the answer is actually helpful to learning.”

Source: Scientific American 

America has been a nation of sports nuts for even longer than you might imagine—a thousand years, in fact. In “America’s First Pastime,” Archaeology magazine (Sept.-Oct. 2009) writes about the early Native American game of chunkey, which involved throwing spears or sticks at a rolling, hockey-puck-size stone disk. The game was an important tradition in the culture that sprang up around the great prehistoric city called Cahokia, which existed near where St. Louis, Missouri, now lies. And apparently it was much more than just a game, being used to win converts, settle scores, and spread culture:

The people of Cahokia practiced human sacrifice, incorporated obelisk-like timber posts into their worship, told stories of superhuman men and women, used Mesoamerican-style flint daggers, and understood the cosmos in ways similar to Mesoamerican notions. They then spread this new way of life, which included intensified maize agriculture, across the Midwest and into the South and Plains with a religious fervor. Archaeologists refer to the culture as Mississippian, after the river that flows by many of its known sites.

One of the primary vehicles for the growth of this new civilization may have been Cahokian envoys who carried chunkey stones in one hand and war clubs in the other as they ventured into the hinterlands with the purpose of making peace or political alliances. These emissaries seem to have established and enforced a region-wide peace of sorts, a veritable Pax Cahokiana, an important element of which may have been the game of chunkey.

The article describes the biggest chunkey contests as great spectacles taking place on large town plazas with a 30- or 40-foot-tall obelisk or wooden post in the center on a raised mound. And if you think things get crazy when Manchester plays Liverpool or the Packers play the Vikings, consider that other nearby posts were used to exhibit enemy scalps, skulls, and recently captured foes who would soon be killed. “Not only was chunkey an important event,” the magazine writes, “but there were other possible associations, direct or indirect, with warfare and enemy executions.” Suddenly, burning a Brett Favre effigy seems almost tame by comparison.

The story of Cahokia itself, with its cultural undercurrents of brutality and power, is an incredible tale in its own right. The author of the Archaeology story, Timothy Pauketat, writes more extensively about it in his book, Cahokia: Ancient America’s Great City on the Mississippi, which is the subject of a recent Salon article, “Sacrificial Virgins on the Mississippi.” “Some of Pauketat’s ideas,” writes Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir, “are both speculative and controversial”—but with characters like “He-who-wears-human-heads-as-earrings,” they certainly are fascinating.

Source: Archaeology (abstract only online), Chippewa Valley Newspapers, Salon

Image by TimVickers, licensed under Creative Commons.

There’s a good reason that people say you should “sleep on it” when facing a tough problem—it helps! A new study suggests dreaming is beneficial for problem solving. Psychology Today reports, “In REM sleep, cortical activation spreads from whatever one’s been pondering to marshal associated ideas, thanks to changes in levels of the neurotransmitters norepinephrine and acetylcholine.” Jasper Johns, Jack Nicklaus and many others have credited their dreams for successful ideas. A co-author of the study adds: “So many times, we already have the solution somewhere in our brain. It just needs an extra 'boost' before it can be accessed.”

Source: Psychology Today

Australian Professor Thomas Parnell’s Pitch Drop Experiment has been occurring since 1927—just ever-so-slowly, and unseen by anyone. Cabinet reports that the professor wanted to illustrate to his class that even though some substances seem to be solid, they may actually be fluid, so he rigged up a glass container with a heated sample of pitch, a petroleum substance, and let the magic begin. Unfortunately, none of his students have been able to observe the lesson. It took eight years for the first drop to fall through the funnel-shaped container, and subsequent drips have taken between seven and 12 years to fall. Eight drops have fallen so far, and in 2000, “the viscosity of the pitch was finally calculated to be roughly one hundred billion times that of water.”

“The closest anyone has ever come was in April 1979 when Professor John Mainstone, who now maintains the experiment, came to work on a Sunday afternoon. He noted that the pitch drop was just about to touch down, but he did not have time to say and watch. On returning the following morning, Mainstone saw, much to his chagrin, that the drop had fallen. Even modern technology has been foiled in its attempt to capture direct evidence of the pitch’s clandestine maneuvers; a video camera placed to monitor the experiment happened to fail at the very moment the eighth drop fell.”

Source: Cabinet (article not available online)

Image by AMagill, licensed under Creative Commons.

People in need of a creative boost should take a long nap, according to new research highlighted by ScienCentral. The researchers found that naps increase people’s ability to solve problems creatively, but only if the nap includes REM, the deep sleep when dreams occur. REM sleep happens only after about an hour of sleeping, so a long nap is recommended. According to researcher Sara Mednick, “if you take a nap with REM sleep, you’re actually going to be boosting your ability to make these new associations in creative ways.” Mednick has tried to put her findings to good use by taking a nap at least three times each week.

You can watch a video of the study below:

Source: ScienCentral

Image by procsilas, licensed under Creative Commons.

Family feuds can be deadly, especially when the two sides have armies. Research reported by Foreign Policy indicates that “countries are far more likely to go to war with other countries whose populations are genetically similar to their own.” The problem isn’t simply that genetically similar populations are close to each other. The trend holds true even when correcting for proximity by removing countries that border each other or are close together. Since genetically similar people tend to have more interaction, the research validates the old saw: Familiarity breeds contempt.

Source: Foreign Policy