Links July 18, 07

1) Steve Hsu gives several links to the Many world theory of Hugh Everitt http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2007/07/50-years-of-many-worlds.html and quotes extensively from Max tegmark's aricle in recent Nature.
2) Steve Hsu discusses Behavioural Economics http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2007/07/behavioral-economics.html
3) John Quiggin on the risk management aspects of social democracy http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2007/07/16/risk-and-social-democracy/
4) 3quarksdaily links to Matt Castle's article on William Coley's cancer killing concoction http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2007/07/coleys-cancer-k.html
5) Mark Thoma links to an article by James Galbraith on the decline of good governance in the US http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2007/07/government-will.html
6) Mirror neurons again. From http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-07/uoc--urs071607.php (via Mark Thoma):
"The researcher’s used two actors, one an American, the other a Nicaraguan, to perform a series of gestures--American, Nicaraguan, and meaningless hand gestures, to a group of American subjects. A procedure called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was used to measure the levels of so-called “corticospinal excitability” (CSE)—which scientists use to probe the activity of mirror neurons.

They found that the American participants demonstrated higher mirror neuron activity while observing the American making gestures compared to the Nicaraguan. And when the Nicaraguan actor performed American gestures, the mirror neuron activation of the observers dropped.

“We believe these are some of the first data to show neurobiological responses to culture-specific stimuli,” said Molnar-Szakacs. “Our data show that both ethnicity and culture interact to influence activity in the brain, specifically within the mirror neuron network involved in social communication and interaction.”"