For THEY do not know what THEY are doing

Do researchers know what they are doing?

What the Bees Know and What They Do Not Know

I. Honeycombs. The honeycomb of the bees is a loose tissue of wax forming a plane layer. The first things on it which catch one's eye are the regular hexagonal patterns on both sides. The hexagons are the openings of prismatic vessels, called bee-cells. Kepler described the shape of the bee-cells more fully. It turned out that the bottom of a cell consists of three equal rhombi as shown in Figu...

Understanding What They Do with What They Know (Short Paper)

This work seeks to understand what “they” (Web advertisers) actually do with the information available to them. We analyze the ads shown to users during controlled browsing as well as examine the inferred demographics and interests shown in Ad Preference Managers provided by advertisers. In an initial study of ad networks and a focused study of the Google ad network, we found many expected cont...

Gigantic clusters: where are they and what are they doing

C lusters are like skyscrapers—mammoth structures towering above their smaller counterparts—except that skyscrapers have longer lives. The race to build ever bigger clusters is on, largely driven by emerging scientific and engineering applications. Several research efforts are underway at various universities and US research laboratories. In this article, I examine some of the largest clusters ...

Do animals know what they know ?

Using well-established paradigms for studying animal perception and memory, researchers have begun to ask whether animals can monitor the status of their knowledge in a behaviour al task whether they know what they know. Generally, such metacognitive ability is tested by giving animals the opportunity to avoid (or ‘escape’) a test of memory or perceptual discrimination. The pattern of escapes c...