The idea of artificial intelligence has been the fascination of science fiction since its inception. While science fiction’s depiction of artificial intelligence is often insidious, it brings with it the promise of technologies that are more effective and more efficient. What was once fiction may be reality thanks to a group of researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Although countless technologies have attempted to emulate the computing power of the human brain, few have come as close as the diffusive memristor. In essence, they succeeded in the production of a man-made neuron that has the unique ability to mimic the connections present in the human brain.

This new technology has the potential to create a new class of neuromorphic computers that bring with them the promise of energy efficiency and an increased capacity for learning. Previous efforts to duplicate the phenomenon of biological synapses have had limited success. The secret of this new class of artificial neurons lies in their ability to imitate the “synaptic Ca²⁺ dynamics that occur in biological systems” (Wang et al. 2016). The ability of memristors to incorporate these types of Ca²⁺ dynamics gives rise to both long- and short-term plasticity. Synaptic plasticity, the ability of synapses to strengthen or weaken over time in response to their level of activity, has been linked to postsynaptic calcium release. Rather than using calcium, memristors make use of silver nanoclusters.

The basis on which the device functions can best be understood by investigating its structure. The diffusive memristor consists of two platinum or gold electrodes that sandwich a film with embedded silver nanoclusters. When a current passes from one electrode to the other, the silver nanoparticles begin bridging the gap between the electrodes. This results in a conductive channel that dramatically increases conductivity, and thus the speed of signal transmission. This conductive channel is only maintained in the presence of an electric current. Once the current stops running through the system, the silver particles relax back to their ground state and the conductive channel is broken.

Now we can observe how this tendency of the memristors can give rise to plasticity. If the time between pulses is shorter than the time it takes for the silver particles to relax, more particles are pushed into the gap. Over time, this can result in the formation of a fully conductive bridge. The researchers that observed this phenomenon called it “paired-pulse facilitation, or PPF” (Wang et al. 2016). PPF is similar to the way in which neurons increase the fidelity and strength of the signals they transmit in short-term plasticity. On the other hand, if a pulse excites the silver particles for too long, they being to migrate to one electrode. This decreases the number of silver nanoparticles in the gap between the two electrodes, and results in slower signal transmission. This phenomenon was deemed “paired-pulse depression, or PPD” (Wang et al. 2016). PPD is analogous to the refractory period that occurs after exciting a neuron.

Finally, when diffusive memristors were assembled into simple networks they gave rise to spike-timing-dependent plasticity. In other words, memristors that fired together reinforced each other by increasing the speed and strength at which a signal traveled through that frequently-used network. Networks of memristors that were not used as often had weaker signal transmission that those that were used frequently. This phenomenon arises without the need for complex pulse engineering and can lead to long-term plasticity. The remarkable promise that this technology shows in these early stages lends itself to the usefulness of its possible applications.

Summarizing a research article in a way that can be understood by a larger audience is a task I severely underestimated. Primary literature often has a narrow audience of highly trained experts and students, due to its reliance on jargon. For this reason, I had to carefully comb through the article and decide what I wanted to include in my summary. Often, I found myself having to look up words and concepts so I could better explain these crucial elements in my summary. It was a challenge to find a balance between including critical parts of the study and excluding nonessential, convoluted details.

I based what I included in my article in part on what the news article included from the study. While the news article did an adequate job summarizing the important findings of the study, it lacked essential background knowledge and the mechanism behind memristor plasticity. When I first read the article, I had to look up several key terms, like plasticity and spike-timing-dependent plasticity. This could be because the article is intended for an audience that has a scientific background however, it still detracted from the flow of the article. This problem could easily be solved by including short definitions of key terms. This is why I chose to include definitions of words that a general audience may not know in my summary. Furthermore, the article lacked an explanation for the mechanism behind memristor plasticity. While this may be a personal preference, I found the mechanism behind the machinery to be an important discovery that was easy to simplify.

Putting myself in the shoes of a journalist has developed my respect for the unique challenges they face. Their task is to provide an accurate summary of the material in a study while capturing the attention of a large audience. Understanding a research article thoroughly enough to decided what should be summarized and what should be excluded requires a great deal of experience and intuition.

References

Wang Z., Joshi S., Savel’ev S. E., Jiang H., Midya R., Lin P., Hu M., Ge N., Strachan J. P., Li Z., Wu Q., Barnell M., Li G. L., Xin H. L., Williams R. S., Xia O., Yang J. J. (2016 March 23). Nature Materials, 16, 101-108. Retrieved Mary 10, 2017.

News article- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-artificial-synapse-gets-closer-to-mimicking-brain-connections/

The research article had no link to it since it was sent to me in the form of screenshots.

The idea of artificial intelligence has been the fascination of science fiction since its inception. While science fiction’s depiction of artificial intelligence is often insidious, it brings with it the promise of technologies that are more effective and more efficient. What was once fiction may be reality thanks to a group of researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Although countless technologies have attempted to emulate the computing power of the human brain, few have come as close as the diffusive memristor. In essence, they succeeded in the production of a man-made neuron that has the unique ability to mimic the connections present in the human brain.

This new technology has the potential to create a new class of neuromorphic computers that bring with them the promise of energy efficiency and an increased capacity for learning. Previous efforts to duplicate the phenomenon of biological synapses have had limited success. The secret of this new class of artificial neurons lies in their ability to imitate the “synaptic Ca²⁺ dynamics that occur in biological systems” (Wang et al. 2016). The ability of memristors to incorporate these types of Ca²⁺ dynamics gives rise to both long- and short-term plasticity. Synaptic plasticity, the ability of synapses to strengthen or weaken over time in response to their level of activity, has been linked to postsynaptic calcium release. Rather than using calcium, memristors make use of silver nanoclusters.

The basis on which the device functions can best be understood by investigating its structure. The diffusive memristor consists of two platinum or gold electrodes that sandwich a film with embedded silver nanoclusters. When a current passes from one electrode to the other, the silver nanoparticles begin bridging the gap between the electrodes. This results in a conductive channel that dramatically increases conductivity, and thus the speed of signal transmission. This conductive channel is only maintained in the presence of an electric current. Once the current stops running through the system, the silver particles relax back to their ground state and the conductive channel is broken.

Now we can observe how this tendency of the memristors can give rise to plasticity. If the time between pulses is shorter than the time it takes for the silver particles to relax, more particles are pushed into the gap. Over time, this can result in the formation of a fully conductive bridge. The researchers that observed this phenomenon called it “paired-pulse facilitation, or PPF” (Wang et al. 2016). PPF is similar to the way in which neurons increase the fidelity and strength of the signals they transmit in short-term plasticity. On the other hand, if a pulse excites the silver particles for too long, they being to migrate to one electrode. This decreases the number of silver nanoparticles in the gap between the two electrodes, and results in slower signal transmission. This phenomenon was deemed “paired-pulse depression, or PPD” (Wang et al. 2016). PPD is analogous to the refractory period that occurs after exciting a neuron.

Finally, when diffusive memristors were assembled into simple networks they gave rise to spike-timing-dependent plasticity. In other words, memristors that fired together reinforced each other by increasing the speed and strength at which a signal traveled through that frequently-used network. Networks of memristors that were not used as often had weaker signal transmission that those that were used frequently. This phenomenon arises without the need for complex pulse engineering and can lead to long-term plasticity. The remarkable promise that this technology shows in these early stages lends itself to the usefulness of its possible applications.

Summarizing a research article in a way that can be understood by a larger audience is a task I severely underestimated. Primary literature often has a narrow audience of highly trained experts and students, due to its reliance on jargon. For this reason, I had to carefully comb through the article and decide what I wanted to include in my summary. Often, I found myself having to look up words and concepts so I could better explain these crucial elements in my summary. It was a challenge to find a balance between including critical parts of the study and excluding nonessential, convoluted details.

I based what I included in my article in part on what the news article included from the study. While the news article did an adequate job summarizing the important findings of the study, it lacked essential background knowledge and the mechanism behind memristor plasticity. When I first read the article, I had to look up several key terms, like plasticity and spike-timing-dependent plasticity. This could be because the article is intended for an audience that has a scientific background however, it still detracted from the flow of the article. This problem could easily be solved by including short definitions of key terms. This is why I chose to include definitions of words that a general audience may not know in my summary. Furthermore, the article lacked an explanation for the mechanism behind memristor plasticity. While this may be a personal preference, I found the mechanism behind the machinery to be an important discovery that was easy to simplify.

Putting myself in the shoes of a journalist has developed my respect for the unique challenges they face. Their task is to provide an accurate summary of the material in a study while capturing the attention of a large audience. Understanding a research article thoroughly enough to decided what should be summarized and what should be excluded requires a great deal of experience and intuition.

References

Wang Z., Joshi S., Savel’ev S. E., Jiang H., Midya R., Lin P., Hu M., Ge N., Strachan J. P., Li Z., Wu Q., Barnell M., Li G. L., Xin H. L., Williams R. S., Xia O., Yang J. J. (2016 March 23). Nature Materials, 16, 101-108. Retrieved Mary 10, 2017.

News article- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-artificial-synapse-gets-closer-to-mimicking-brain-connections/

The research article had no link to it since it was sent to me in the form of screenshots.

The idea of artificial intelligence has been the fascination of science fiction since its inception. While science fiction’s depiction of artificial intelligence is often insidious, it brings with it the promise of technologies that are more effective and more efficient. What was once fiction may be reality thanks to a group of researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Although countless technologies have attempted to emulate the computing power of the human brain, few have come as close as the diffusive memristor. In essence, they succeeded in the production of a man-made neuron that has the unique ability to mimic the connections present in the human brain.

This new technology has the potential to create a new class of neuromorphic computers that bring with them the promise of energy efficiency and an increased capacity for learning. Previous efforts to duplicate the phenomenon of biological synapses have had limited success. The secret of this new class of artificial neurons lies in their ability to imitate the “synaptic Ca²⁺ dynamics that occur in biological systems” (Wang et al. 2016). The ability of memristors to incorporate these types of Ca²⁺ dynamics gives rise to both long- and short-term plasticity. Synaptic plasticity, the ability of synapses to strengthen or weaken over time in response to their level of activity, has been linked to postsynaptic calcium release. Rather than using calcium, memristors make use of silver nanoclusters.

The basis on which the device functions can best be understood by investigating its structure. The diffusive memristor consists of two platinum or gold electrodes that sandwich a film with embedded silver nanoclusters. When a current passes from one electrode to the other, the silver nanoparticles begin bridging the gap between the electrodes. This results in a conductive channel that dramatically increases conductivity, and thus the speed of signal transmission. This conductive channel is only maintained in the presence of an electric current. Once the current stops running through the system, the silver particles relax back to their ground state and the conductive channel is broken.

Now we can observe how this tendency of the memristors can give rise to plasticity. If the time between pulses is shorter than the time it takes for the silver particles to relax, more particles are pushed into the gap. Over time, this can result in the formation of a fully conductive bridge. The researchers that observed this phenomenon called it “paired-pulse facilitation, or PPF” (Wang et al. 2016). PPF is similar to the way in which neurons increase the fidelity and strength of the signals they transmit in short-term plasticity. On the other hand, if a pulse excites the silver particles for too long, they being to migrate to one electrode. This decreases the number of silver nanoparticles in the gap between the two electrodes, and results in slower signal transmission. This phenomenon was deemed “paired-pulse depression, or PPD” (Wang et al. 2016). PPD is analogous to the refractory period that occurs after exciting a neuron.

Finally, when diffusive memristors were assembled into simple networks they gave rise to spike-timing-dependent plasticity. In other words, memristors that fired together reinforced each other by increasing the speed and strength at which a signal traveled through that frequently-used network. Networks of memristors that were not used as often had weaker signal transmission that those that were used frequently. This phenomenon arises without the need for complex pulse engineering and can lead to long-term plasticity. The remarkable promise that this technology shows in these early stages lends itself to the usefulness of its possible applications.

Summarizing a research article in a way that can be understood by a larger audience is a task I severely underestimated. Primary literature often has a narrow audience of highly trained experts and students, due to its reliance on jargon. For this reason, I had to carefully comb through the article and decide what I wanted to include in my summary. Often, I found myself having to look up words and concepts so I could better explain these crucial elements in my summary. It was a challenge to find a balance between including critical parts of the study and excluding nonessential, convoluted details.

I based what I included in my article in part on what the news article included from the study. While the news article did an adequate job summarizing the important findings of the study, it lacked essential background knowledge and the mechanism behind memristor plasticity. When I first read the article, I had to look up several key terms, like plasticity and spike-timing-dependent plasticity. This could be because the article is intended for an audience that has a scientific background however, it still detracted from the flow of the article. This problem could easily be solved by including short definitions of key terms. This is why I chose to include definitions of words that a general audience may not know in my summary. Furthermore, the article lacked an explanation for the mechanism behind memristor plasticity. While this may be a personal preference, I found the mechanism behind the machinery to be an important discovery that was easy to simplify.

Putting myself in the shoes of a journalist has developed my respect for the unique challenges they face. Their task is to provide an accurate summary of the material in a study while capturing the attention of a large audience. Understanding a research article thoroughly enough to decided what should be summarized and what should be excluded requires a great deal of experience and intuition.

References

Wang Z., Joshi S., Savel’ev S. E., Jiang H., Midya R., Lin P., Hu M., Ge N., Strachan J. P., Li Z., Wu Q., Barnell M., Li G. L., Xin H. L., Williams R. S., Xia O., Yang J. J. (2016 March 23). Nature Materials, 16, 101-108. Retrieved Mary 10, 2017.

News article- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-artificial-synapse-gets-closer-to-mimicking-brain-connections/

The research article had no link to it since it was sent to me in the form of screenshots.

The idea of artificial intelligence has been the fascination of science fiction since its inception. While science fiction’s depiction of artificial intelligence is often insidious, it brings with it the promise of technologies that are more effective and more efficient. What was once fiction may be reality thanks to a group of researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Although countless technologies have attempted to emulate the computing power of the human brain, few have come as close as the diffusive memristor. In essence, they succeeded in the production of a man-made neuron that has the unique ability to mimic the connections present in the human brain.

This new technology has the potential to create a new class of neuromorphic computers that bring with them the promise of energy efficiency and an increased capacity for learning. Previous efforts to duplicate the phenomenon of biological synapses have had limited success. The secret of this new class of artificial neurons lies in their ability to imitate the “synaptic Ca²⁺ dynamics that occur in biological systems” (Wang et al. 2016). The ability of memristors to incorporate these types of Ca²⁺ dynamics gives rise to both long- and short-term plasticity. Synaptic plasticity, the ability of synapses to strengthen or weaken over time in response to their level of activity, has been linked to postsynaptic calcium release. Rather than using calcium, memristors make use of silver nanoclusters.

The basis on which the device functions can best be understood by investigating its structure. The diffusive memristor consists of two platinum or gold electrodes that sandwich a film with embedded silver nanoclusters. When a current passes from one electrode to the other, the silver nanoparticles begin bridging the gap between the electrodes. This results in a conductive channel that dramatically increases conductivity, and thus the speed of signal transmission. This conductive channel is only maintained in the presence of an electric current. Once the current stops running through the system, the silver particles relax back to their ground state and the conductive channel is broken.

Now we can observe how this tendency of the memristors can give rise to plasticity. If the time between pulses is shorter than the time it takes for the silver particles to relax, more particles are pushed into the gap. Over time, this can result in the formation of a fully conductive bridge. The researchers that observed this phenomenon called it “paired-pulse facilitation, or PPF” (Wang et al. 2016). PPF is similar to the way in which neurons increase the fidelity and strength of the signals they transmit in short-term plasticity. On the other hand, if a pulse excites the silver particles for too long, they being to migrate to one electrode. This decreases the number of silver nanoparticles in the gap between the two electrodes, and results in slower signal transmission. This phenomenon was deemed “paired-pulse depression, or PPD” (Wang et al. 2016). PPD is analogous to the refractory period that occurs after exciting a neuron.

Finally, when diffusive memristors were assembled into simple networks they gave rise to spike-timing-dependent plasticity. In other words, memristors that fired together reinforced each other by increasing the speed and strength at which a signal traveled through that frequently-used network. Networks of memristors that were not used as often had weaker signal transmission that those that were used frequently. This phenomenon arises without the need for complex pulse engineering and can lead to long-term plasticity. The remarkable promise that this technology shows in these early stages lends itself to the usefulness of its possible applications.

Summarizing a research article in a way that can be understood by a larger audience is a task I severely underestimated. Primary literature often has a narrow audience of highly trained experts and students, due to its reliance on jargon. For this reason, I had to carefully comb through the article and decide what I wanted to include in my summary. Often, I found myself having to look up words and concepts so I could better explain these crucial elements in my summary. It was a challenge to find a balance between including critical parts of the study and excluding nonessential, convoluted details.

I based what I included in my article in part on what the news article included from the study. While the news article did an adequate job summarizing the important findings of the study, it lacked essential background knowledge and the mechanism behind memristor plasticity. When I first read the article, I had to look up several key terms, like plasticity and spike-timing-dependent plasticity. This could be because the article is intended for an audience that has a scientific background however, it still detracted from the flow of the article. This problem could easily be solved by including short definitions of key terms. This is why I chose to include definitions of words that a general audience may not know in my summary. Furthermore, the article lacked an explanation for the mechanism behind memristor plasticity. While this may be a personal preference, I found the mechanism behind the machinery to be an important discovery that was easy to simplify.

Putting myself in the shoes of a journalist has developed my respect for the unique challenges they face. Their task is to provide an accurate summary of the material in a study while capturing the attention of a large audience. Understanding a research article thoroughly enough to decided what should be summarized and what should be excluded requires a great deal of experience and intuition.

References

Wang Z., Joshi S., Savel’ev S. E., Jiang H., Midya R., Lin P., Hu M., Ge N., Strachan J. P., Li Z., Wu Q., Barnell M., Li G. L., Xin H. L., Williams R. S., Xia O., Yang J. J. (2016 March 23). Nature Materials, 16, 101-108. Retrieved Mary 10, 2017.

News article- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-artificial-synapse-gets-closer-to-mimicking-brain-connections/

The research article had no link to it since it was sent to me in the form of screenshots.

In today’s society, it seems that we’re all just trying to seek out happiness in whatever form we can find it. We look at self-help books, treat ourselves to physical pleasures, search for love, and work a job to afford these things all in an effort to achieve the goal that every person before us has to achieve. Happiness, however, is an elusive creature and even trying to pin down exactly what it is can be difficult. Thankfully, there seems to be no shortage of intellectuals from various fields that are happy to contribute their research to the patchwork quilt that makes up our understanding of what happiness is and how to attain it. One such study was published in January of 2017 by a coalition of computer scientists and psychologists at the University of Cambridge.

This study was conducted to determine if there might be a correlation between movement and happiness. It has already been shown in multiple studies that physical exercise has a variety of benefits both physical and mental, but the authors of this study wanted to see if there was a positive correlation between less strenuous forms of movement and happiness. In order to test this hypothesis, an app was developed that would help collect data to see if the correlation existed. The app, released to users of Android cell phones, periodically questioned the user throughout the day about when they had last been active and what their mental state was like. The physical aspect of the data was corroborated by the accelerometers in the phones. Data was collected from February 2013 to June 2014 and when the data was analyzed the results seemed to support the original hypothesis. There does seem to be a positive correlation between physical movement, even as relaxed as walking, and happiness.

That being said, it is very important to point out somethings about the nature of this study and of correlations themselves. First, by the definition of a correlation, we cannot determine a causal relationship based on this study alone. We do not know if people who move often are happier than others or if happy people ae more likely to move than others. Second, there are some limitations built into the study itself. The study was conducted only with people who had access to the Google Play store during the time when the study was conducted and as it was entirely volunteer based, results of this study can only technically be applied to those who participated and not to the populace at large. Another flaw, however unavoidable, in this study was that the measure of people’s happiness was determined by self-report and furthermore happiness was defined based on people’s moods and whether they identified with certain adjectives such as “calm” or “anxious” which, it could be argued, is not a very good operationalization of happiness.

Regardless of the limitations of the study, I certainly thing that it’s interesting to think about and I can’t see any harm doing a little study of your own and to see if your overall sense of happiness is affected if you make an effort to increase the level of physical activity in your life.

Original News Article

Scholarly Article

Reflection:

Over the course of this project, I have learned quite a bit about the difficulties associated with both journalistic writing in general as well as the coverage of psychology in journalism as well. I was very lucky in that I chose a fairly decent article to begin with so I had a good model of what I wanted to accomplish. In this case I didn’t struggle to keep myself within the confines of the limit set by the original news article, but I didn’t go into an extreme amount of detail and focused primarily on the premise of the study, how it was conducted and the results. Even in regard to those topics, I didn’t get into as much detail as I could have for two primary reasons. First, I didn’t feel like all of it was crucial for the understanding of the study. Second, there were some aspects of the study especially in regard to how the results were calculated and technicalities involving the app that I can’t describe because even I don’t fully understand them.

When I first started this project, I couldn’t understand why journalists and news outlets would produce news that was so sensationalized and sometimes misleading. Now I have a better understanding of why they do it once I found myself in the position of trying to summarize a scholarly article with limited words and an audience that may or may not have a background in psychology. It’s hard to cover all the bases when you have limited space and still want your article to seem relevant to people. Hearing that movement has a positive correlation to a very specific definition of happiness, but only verifiably for a specific group of people isn’t really sexy or groundbreaking. It’s much more attractive to just say that movement probably makes you happier and leave it at that. In the future, I will be much more skeptical of pop psychology reports in the future.

In today’s society, it seems that we’re all just trying to seek out happiness in whatever form we can find it. We look at self-help books, treat ourselves to physical pleasures, search for love, and work a job to afford these things all in an effort to achieve the goal that every person before us has to achieve. Happiness, however, is an elusive creature and even trying to pin down exactly what it is can be difficult. Thankfully, there seems to be no shortage of intellectuals from various fields that are happy to contribute their research to the patchwork quilt that makes up our understanding of what happiness is and how to attain it. One such study was published in January of 2017 by a coalition of computer scientists and psychologists at the University of Cambridge.

This study was conducted to determine if there might be a correlation between movement and happiness. It has already been shown in multiple studies that physical exercise has a variety of benefits both physical and mental, but the authors of this study wanted to see if there was a positive correlation between less strenuous forms of movement and happiness. In order to test this hypothesis, an app was developed that would help collect data to see if the correlation existed. The app, released to users of Android cell phones, periodically questioned the user throughout the day about when they had last been active and what their mental state was like. The physical aspect of the data was corroborated by the accelerometers in the phones. Data was collected from February 2013 to June 2014 and when the data was analyzed the results seemed to support the original hypothesis. There does seem to be a positive correlation between physical movement, even as relaxed as walking, and happiness.

That being said, it is very important to point out somethings about the nature of this study and of correlations themselves. First, by the definition of a correlation, we cannot determine a causal relationship based on this study alone. We do not know if people who move often are happier than others or if happy people ae more likely to move than others. Second, there are some limitations built into the study itself. The study was conducted only with people who had access to the Google Play store during the time when the study was conducted and as it was entirely volunteer based, results of this study can only technically be applied to those who participated and not to the populace at large. Another flaw, however unavoidable, in this study was that the measure of people’s happiness was determined by self-report and furthermore happiness was defined based on people’s moods and whether they identified with certain adjectives such as “calm” or “anxious” which, it could be argued, is not a very good operationalization of happiness.

Regardless of the limitations of the study, I certainly thing that it’s interesting to think about and I can’t see any harm doing a little study of your own and to see if your overall sense of happiness is affected if you make an effort to increase the level of physical activity in your life.

Original News Article

Scholarly Article

Reflection:

Over the course of this project, I have learned quite a bit about the difficulties associated with both journalistic writing in general as well as the coverage of psychology in journalism as well. I was very lucky in that I chose a fairly decent article to begin with so I had a good model of what I wanted to accomplish. In this case I didn’t struggle to keep myself within the confines of the limit set by the original news article, but I didn’t go into an extreme amount of detail and focused primarily on the premise of the study, how it was conducted and the results. Even in regard to those topics, I didn’t get into as much detail as I could have for two primary reasons. First, I didn’t feel like all of it was crucial for the understanding of the study. Second, there were some aspects of the study especially in regard to how the results were calculated and technicalities involving the app that I can’t describe because even I don’t fully understand them.

When I first started this project, I couldn’t understand why journalists and news outlets would produce news that was so sensationalized and sometimes misleading. Now I have a better understanding of why they do it once I found myself in the position of trying to summarize a scholarly article with limited words and an audience that may or may not have a background in psychology. It’s hard to cover all the bases when you have limited space and still want your article to seem relevant to people. Hearing that movement has a positive correlation to a very specific definition of happiness, but only verifiably for a specific group of people isn’t really sexy or groundbreaking. It’s much more attractive to just say that movement probably makes you happier and leave it at that. In the future, I will be much more skeptical of pop psychology reports in the future.

In today’s society, it seems that we’re all just trying to seek out happiness in whatever form we can find it. We look at self-help books, treat ourselves to physical pleasures, search for love, and work a job to afford these things all in an effort to achieve the goal that every person before us has to achieve. Happiness, however, is an elusive creature and even trying to pin down exactly what it is can be difficult. Thankfully, there seems to be no shortage of intellectuals from various fields that are happy to contribute their research to the patchwork quilt that makes up our understanding of what happiness is and how to attain it. One such study was published in January of 2017 by a coalition of computer scientists and psychologists at the University of Cambridge.

This study was conducted to determine if there might be a correlation between movement and happiness. It has already been shown in multiple studies that physical exercise has a variety of benefits both physical and mental, but the authors of this study wanted to see if there was a positive correlation between less strenuous forms of movement and happiness. In order to test this hypothesis, an app was developed that would help collect data to see if the correlation existed. The app, released to users of Android cell phones, periodically questioned the user throughout the day about when they had last been active and what their mental state was like. The physical aspect of the data was corroborated by the accelerometers in the phones. Data was collected from February 2013 to June 2014 and when the data was analyzed the results seemed to support the original hypothesis. There does seem to be a positive correlation between physical movement, even as relaxed as walking, and happiness.

That being said, it is very important to point out somethings about the nature of this study and of correlations themselves. First, by the definition of a correlation, we cannot determine a causal relationship based on this study alone. We do not know if people who move often are happier than others or if happy people ae more likely to move than others. Second, there are some limitations built into the study itself. The study was conducted only with people who had access to the Google Play store during the time when the study was conducted and as it was entirely volunteer based, results of this study can only technically be applied to those who participated and not to the populace at large. Another flaw, however unavoidable, in this study was that the measure of people’s happiness was determined by self-report and furthermore happiness was defined based on people’s moods and whether they identified with certain adjectives such as “calm” or “anxious” which, it could be argued, is not a very good operationalization of happiness.

Regardless of the limitations of the study, I certainly thing that it’s interesting to think about and I can’t see any harm doing a little study of your own and to see if your overall sense of happiness is affected if you make an effort to increase the level of physical activity in your life.

Original News Article

Scholarly Article

Reflection:

Over the course of this project, I have learned quite a bit about the difficulties associated with both journalistic writing in general as well as the coverage of psychology in journalism as well. I was very lucky in that I chose a fairly decent article to begin with so I had a good model of what I wanted to accomplish. In this case I didn’t struggle to keep myself within the confines of the limit set by the original news article, but I didn’t go into an extreme amount of detail and focused primarily on the premise of the study, how it was conducted and the results. Even in regard to those topics, I didn’t get into as much detail as I could have for two primary reasons. First, I didn’t feel like all of it was crucial for the understanding of the study. Second, there were some aspects of the study especially in regard to how the results were calculated and technicalities involving the app that I can’t describe because even I don’t fully understand them.

When I first started this project, I couldn’t understand why journalists and news outlets would produce news that was so sensationalized and sometimes misleading. Now I have a better understanding of why they do it once I found myself in the position of trying to summarize a scholarly article with limited words and an audience that may or may not have a background in psychology. It’s hard to cover all the bases when you have limited space and still want your article to seem relevant to people. Hearing that movement has a positive correlation to a very specific definition of happiness, but only verifiably for a specific group of people isn’t really sexy or groundbreaking. It’s much more attractive to just say that movement probably makes you happier and leave it at that. In the future, I will be much more skeptical of pop psychology reports in the future.

In today’s society, it seems that we’re all just trying to seek out happiness in whatever form we can find it. We look at self-help books, treat ourselves to physical pleasures, search for love, and work a job to afford these things all in an effort to achieve the goal that every person before us has to achieve. Happiness, however, is an elusive creature and even trying to pin down exactly what it is can be difficult. Thankfully, there seems to be no shortage of intellectuals from various fields that are happy to contribute their research to the patchwork quilt that makes up our understanding of what happiness is and how to attain it. One such study was published in January of 2017 by a coalition of computer scientists and psychologists at the University of Cambridge.

This study was conducted to determine if there might be a correlation between movement and happiness. It has already been shown in multiple studies that physical exercise has a variety of benefits both physical and mental, but the authors of this study wanted to see if there was a positive correlation between less strenuous forms of movement and happiness. In order to test this hypothesis, an app was developed that would help collect data to see if the correlation existed. The app, released to users of Android cell phones, periodically questioned the user throughout the day about when they had last been active and what their mental state was like. The physical aspect of the data was corroborated by the accelerometers in the phones. Data was collected from February 2013 to June 2014 and when the data was analyzed the results seemed to support the original hypothesis. There does seem to be a positive correlation between physical movement, even as relaxed as walking, and happiness.

That being said, it is very important to point out somethings about the nature of this study and of correlations themselves. First, by the definition of a correlation, we cannot determine a causal relationship based on this study alone. We do not know if people who move often are happier than others or if happy people ae more likely to move than others. Second, there are some limitations built into the study itself. The study was conducted only with people who had access to the Google Play store during the time when the study was conducted and as it was entirely volunteer based, results of this study can only technically be applied to those who participated and not to the populace at large. Another flaw, however unavoidable, in this study was that the measure of people’s happiness was determined by self-report and furthermore happiness was defined based on people’s moods and whether they identified with certain adjectives such as “calm” or “anxious” which, it could be argued, is not a very good operationalization of happiness.

Regardless of the limitations of the study, I certainly thing that it’s interesting to think about and I can’t see any harm doing a little study of your own and to see if your overall sense of happiness is affected if you make an effort to increase the level of physical activity in your life.

Original News Article

Scholarly Article

Reflection:

Over the course of this project, I have learned quite a bit about the difficulties associated with both journalistic writing in general as well as the coverage of psychology in journalism as well. I was very lucky in that I chose a fairly decent article to begin with so I had a good model of what I wanted to accomplish. In this case I didn’t struggle to keep myself within the confines of the limit set by the original news article, but I didn’t go into an extreme amount of detail and focused primarily on the premise of the study, how it was conducted and the results. Even in regard to those topics, I didn’t get into as much detail as I could have for two primary reasons. First, I didn’t feel like all of it was crucial for the understanding of the study. Second, there were some aspects of the study especially in regard to how the results were calculated and technicalities involving the app that I can’t describe because even I don’t fully understand them.

When I first started this project, I couldn’t understand why journalists and news outlets would produce news that was so sensationalized and sometimes misleading. Now I have a better understanding of why they do it once I found myself in the position of trying to summarize a scholarly article with limited words and an audience that may or may not have a background in psychology. It’s hard to cover all the bases when you have limited space and still want your article to seem relevant to people. Hearing that movement has a positive correlation to a very specific definition of happiness, but only verifiably for a specific group of people isn’t really sexy or groundbreaking. It’s much more attractive to just say that movement probably makes you happier and leave it at that. In the future, I will be much more skeptical of pop psychology reports in the future.

In today’s society, it seems that we’re all just trying to seek out happiness in whatever form we can find it. We look at self-help books, treat ourselves to physical pleasures, search for love, and work a job to afford these things all in an effort to achieve the goal that every person before us has to achieve. Happiness, however, is an elusive creature and even trying to pin down exactly what it is can be difficult. Thankfully, there seems to be no shortage of intellectuals from various fields that are happy to contribute their research to the patchwork quilt that makes up our understanding of what happiness is and how to attain it. One such study was published in January of 2017 by a coalition of computer scientists and psychologists at the University of Cambridge.

This study was conducted to determine if there might be a correlation between movement and happiness. It has already been shown in multiple studies that physical exercise has a variety of benefits both physical and mental, but the authors of this study wanted to see if there was a positive correlation between less strenuous forms of movement and happiness. In order to test this hypothesis, an app was developed that would help collect data to see if the correlation existed. The app, released to users of Android cell phones, periodically questioned the user throughout the day about when they had last been active and what their mental state was like. The physical aspect of the data was corroborated by the accelerometers in the phones. Data was collected from February 2013 to June 2014 and when the data was analyzed the results seemed to support the original hypothesis. There does seem to be a positive correlation between physical movement, even as relaxed as walking, and happiness.

That being said, it is very important to point out somethings about the nature of this study and of correlations themselves. First, by the definition of a correlation, we cannot determine a causal relationship based on this study alone. We do not know if people who move often are happier than others or if happy people ae more likely to move than others. Second, there are some limitations built into the study itself. The study was conducted only with people who had access to the Google Play store during the time when the study was conducted and as it was entirely volunteer based, results of this study can only technically be applied to those who participated and not to the populace at large. Another flaw, however unavoidable, in this study was that the measure of people’s happiness was determined by self-report and furthermore happiness was defined based on people’s moods and whether they identified with certain adjectives such as “calm” or “anxious” which, it could be argued, is not a very good operationalization of happiness.

Regardless of the limitations of the study, I certainly thing that it’s interesting to think about and I can’t see any harm doing a little study of your own and to see if your overall sense of happiness is affected if you make an effort to increase the level of physical activity in your life.

Original News Article

Scholarly Article

Reflection:

Over the course of this project, I have learned quite a bit about the difficulties associated with both journalistic writing in general as well as the coverage of psychology in journalism as well. I was very lucky in that I chose a fairly decent article to begin with so I had a good model of what I wanted to accomplish. In this case I didn’t struggle to keep myself within the confines of the limit set by the original news article, but I didn’t go into an extreme amount of detail and focused primarily on the premise of the study, how it was conducted and the results. Even in regard to those topics, I didn’t get into as much detail as I could have for two primary reasons. First, I didn’t feel like all of it was crucial for the understanding of the study. Second, there were some aspects of the study especially in regard to how the results were calculated and technicalities involving the app that I can’t describe because even I don’t fully understand them.

When I first started this project, I couldn’t understand why journalists and news outlets would produce news that was so sensationalized and sometimes misleading. Now I have a better understanding of why they do it once I found myself in the position of trying to summarize a scholarly article with limited words and an audience that may or may not have a background in psychology. It’s hard to cover all the bases when you have limited space and still want your article to seem relevant to people. Hearing that movement has a positive correlation to a very specific definition of happiness, but only verifiably for a specific group of people isn’t really sexy or groundbreaking. It’s much more attractive to just say that movement probably makes you happier and leave it at that. In the future, I will be much more skeptical of pop psychology reports in the future.