VII. Our Earthuman Ascent: A Major Evolutionary Transition in Twndividuality

5. Half the UniVerse: A Woman's 2020 Wisdome

Szalkai, Balazs, et al. Graph Theoretical Analysis Reveals Women’s Brains are Better Connected than Men’s. PLoS One. 10/7, 2015. (arXiv:1501.00727) By an employ of the latest diffusion MRI structural human neuroimaging methods and computational techniques, Eotvos University, Budapest, bioinformatics researchers are able to quantify that women and men have different neural architectures by which they think and act.

Deep graph-theoretic ideas in the context with the graph of the World Wide Web led to the definition of Google's PageRank and the subsequent rise of the most-popular search engine to date. Brain graphs, or connectomes, are being widely explored today. We believe that non-trivial graph theoretic concepts, similarly as it happened in the case of the World Wide web, will lead to discoveries enlightening the structural and also the functional details of the animal and human brains. In the present work we have examined brain graphs, computed from the data of the Human Connectome Project, recorded from male and female subjects between ages 22 and 35. Significant differences were found between the male and female structural brain graphs: we show that the average female connectome has more edges, is a better expander graph, has larger minimal bisection width, and has more spanning trees than the average male connectome. Since the average female brain weights less than the brain of males, these properties show that the female brain is more "well-connected" or perhaps, more "efficient" in a sense than the brain of males. (Abstract)

Szalkai, Balazs, et al. The Advantage is at the Ladies: Brain Size Bias-Compensated Graph-Theoretical Parameters are Also Better in Women's Connectomes. arXiv:1512.01156. As a function of the Human Connectome Project, Eotvos University, Bioinformatics Group neuroscientists continue a novel discernment of real differences between female and male cerebral architecture. A data site is the Budapest Reference Connectome Server at http://connectome.pitgroup.org. In accord with independent findings by a 2015 University of Pennsylvania study (Ingalhalikar) women’s neural faculties are definitively graced by a deeper, extensive network connectivity.

In our previous study (Szalkai,1501.00727)we have shown that the female connectomes have significantly better, deep graph-theoretical parameters, related to superior "connectivity", than the connectome of the males. Since the average female brain is smaller than the average male brain, one cannot rule out that the significant advantages are due to the size- and not to the sex-differences in the data. To filter out the possible brain-volume related artifacts, we have chosen 36 small male and 36 large female brains such that all the brains in the female set are larger than all the brains in the male set. For the sets, we have computed the corresponding braingraphs and computed numerous graph-theoretical parameters. We have found that (i) the small male brains lack the better connectivity advantages shown in our previous study for female brains in general; (ii) in numerous parameters, the connectomes computed from the large-brain females, still have the significant, deep connectivity advantages, demonstrated in our previous study. (Abstract)

Sze, Amy Chan Kit. When Cyberfeminism Meets Chinese Philosophy: Computer, Weaving, and Women. Gender, Technology and Development. 7/3, 2003. Rather than a dualism of zero and one computational bytes, a Taoist image of complementary diversity is more appropriate. Sze’s working metaphor is then the weaving of fabric, the only technology women are allowed to have invented.

Szell, Michael and Stefan Thurner. How Women Organize Social Networks Different from Men. Nature Scientific Reports. 3/1214, 2013. With vast amounts of online social network data now available, Medical University of Vienna systems scientists studied the gendered behavior of some 400,000 people playing the game Pardus (synopsis below). Although basically a male fight for fame, women as less risk-taking did better than men in its fortune. Girls tended to more positive, communal relations, than competitive, off-putting boys. They had “more communication partners, organized into clusters, reciprocated friendships,” which are seen as stronger network characteristics. And in any of these webwide reports, one could imagine they might just as well describing an actual (global) brain/mind.

Superpositions of social networks, such as communication, friendship, or trade networks, are called multiplex networks, forming the structural backbone of human societies. Novel datasets now allow quantification and exploration of multiplex networks. Here we study gender-specific differences of a multiplex network from a complete behavioral dataset of an online-game society of about 300,000 players. On the individual level females perform better economically and are less risk-taking than males. Males reciprocate friendship requests from females faster than vice versa and hesitate to reciprocate hostile actions of females. On the network level females have more communication partners, who are less connected than partners of males. We find a strong homophily effect for females and higher clustering coefficients of females in trade and attack networks. Cooperative links between males are under-represented, reflecting competition for resources among males. These results confirm quantitatively that females and males manage their social networks in substantially different ways. (Abstract)

Pardus is a free graphic-based Massive Multiplayer Online Browser Game (MMOBG), also known as a Persistent Browser Based Game (PBBG). Set in a futuristic universe, traders, pirates, smugglers and other pilots of various professions, races and factions strive to gain wealth and fame in space. Located in a technologically advanced but war-torn universe, you are an adventurer who roams through a multitude of diverse galaxies in your spacecraft while striving to obtain wealth and power - as are many others. There are various ways to work towards these goals: Mining raw materials, constructing buildings which manufacture sellable goods, carrying out assignments, developing profitable trade routes, bounty hunting, plundering buildings and ships, smuggling illegal contraband, commanding a starbase and countless other possibilities.

You may struggle to rise to fame and fortune on your own or perhaps you prefer the safety and support offered by one of the numerous player-made alliances - or even found your own alliance. You may want to build your wealth in the economic stability of a well-populated and well-developed sector, or you might risk everything to be a pioneer in the outermost regions of space. You may find yourself outfitting your first fighter ship to help rid the universe of the numerous creatures lying in wait for unwary prey – or perhaps you will be hunting prey of your own. Whether by building and trading, honing your battle skills on hostile space-monsters, advancing your rank and reputation or smuggling and vicious pirating, there are as many ways to play Pardus as there are players. The universe is waiting for you to make your mark. (www.pardus.at)

Szocik, Konrad and Rakhat Abylkasymova. Feminism and Gender in Thinking about Extraterrestrial Intelligence. International Journal of Astrobiology. February, 2023. Yale University, Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics philosophers show how prior views of life’s celestial expanse can illustrate a masculine sense of a exo-civilizations as combative, alien, enemies, rather than peaceable cultures. We deign to offer an example that "Guardians of the Galaxy" could be amended by "Gardeners of the Galaxy."

In this paper, we offer an outline of a feminist approach to considering the issue of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI). Dominant ways of discussing ETI, particularly first-contact scenarios and protocols, are characterized by what feminism terms male bias. As with other cultural texts and disciplines, ETI studies can also be enriched by a feminist perspective. In this paper, we propose two possible applications of a feminist approach to considering ETI, such as using feminist categories to analyse our discourse about ETI, as well as understanding ETI in terms of sex and gender. We also propose a vision of ETI as genderless. (Abstract)

Tadic, Bosiljka, et al. Functional Geometry of Human Connectome and Robustness of Gender Differences. arXiv:1904.03399. Jozef Stefan Institute, Lujbljana, Slovenia (search), University of Belgrade and Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Canada system mathematicians achieve a new phase of sophistication with regard to network cerebral relative to female and male genders. As the quotes say, a woman’s brain appears to have a more intricate, better connected, multiplex form than a man’s faculty.

Mapping the brain imaging data to networks, where each node represents a specific area of the brain, has enabled an objective graph-theoretic analysis of human connectome. However, the latent structure of higher-order connections remains unexplored, where many brain regions acting in synergy perform complex functions. Here we analyse this hidden domain using the simplicial complex parametrisation where the shared faces encode higher-order relationships between groups of nodes and an emerging hyperbolic geometry. By providing new insights into the internal organisation of anatomical brain modules as well as into the links between them that are essential to dynamics, these results also highlight the functional gender-related differences. (Abstract)

Our analysis has revealed that the human connectome possesses a hyperbolic geometry and a complex structure on the scale between the node’s edges and the mesoscopic anatomical communities within the cerebral hemispheres. This structure, composed of simplicial complexes of different sizes and cycles describes the higher-order connectivity among different regions of the brain, divided into anatomical modules. Therefore, it can provide a reliable basis for understanding the functional complexity of the brain. Moreover, the female connectome appears to have a structure different from the common F & M connectome, not only in the number of edges but also in its organization expressed by these higher-order connections. It might be conjectured that these excess connections imply additional functionality of the female connectome, which can have evolutionary, biological, biochemical, and even social origins. (11)

Tarnas, Richard. Understanding Our Moment in History. www.scottlondon.com/nsight/scripts/tarnas.html. In a 2003 interview, philosopher Tarnas contends that for many centuries human societies have been masculine in kind to a fault and that at this unique moment of planetary transformation, any hope of resolve and advance depends on a recovery of the lost, oppressed feminine.

My sense is that the crisis of modern man is a masculine crisis. The resolution of this crisis is emerging in our own time in a tremendous empowerment and resurgence of the feminine. It’s visible not only in feminism itself – in the empowerment of women and the new sense of the importance of feminine values in both men and women – but also in a whole new sensibility of the interconnectedness of all life – the ecological identity, the sense that my self is not me as a human being, but that I am rooted in a whole matrix that includes all of nature, the planet, the cosmos itself. (3)

Teich, Erin, et al. Citation Inequity and Gendered Citation Practices in Contemporary Physics. arXiv:2112.09047. Eleven scholars based at the University of Pennsylvania (5 women and 6 men) including Daniele and Lee Bassett post an extensive study of the deeply vested bias toward publications by men rather than by women. Search A. C. Grayling and Jessica Riskin herein for proof of a total male dominance across history in philosophy and science. In my regard, I was long involved in technical R & D day jobs and whence women were more often smarter than men. They stayed on message, got the task done, did not make mistakes. Nobel neuroscientist Eric Kandel also voiced this opinion in a TV interview.

The historical and contemporary under-attribution of women's contributions to scientific scholarship is well-known. One measure of this under-attribution is the so-called citation gap between men and women. We explore the citation gap in contemporary physics, analyzing over one million articles published in the last 25 years in 35 physics journals that span many subfields. Using a model that predicts papers' expected citation rates, we find a global bias wherein papers by women are significantly under-cited, and papers by men are way over-cited. We discuss several strategies for the mitigation of these effects, including conscious behavioral changes at the individual, journal, and community levels. (Abstract excerpt)

Thomson, Peninah and Jacey Graham. A Woman’s Place is in the Boardroom. Hampshire, UK: Macmillan Palgrave, 2005. The book was highlighted in a December 30, 2009 news note “Womenomics” in The Economist as a good survey of an historic change in business cultures. A point is made that if Lehman Brothers were Sisters, the banking debacle would likely have not occurred. Whereas men can be greedy competitors to a fault, women tend to more networked, interactive nuances able to notice and avoid such risk-taking before it is too late. The British business consultant authors here achieve a cogent capsule of a 21st century resolve of the “feminist revolution” that began in the 1970s. In the interim strident efforts tried to define and forge for women an equivalent role to men. But after decades of studies, examples noted in this section, it can be realized that, as we all really know, women are not men and do indeed have their own unique, archetypal qualities. But importantly these abilities are to be understood as not in competition with men, nor an attempt to replace, but to complement in a quite salutary way. Many case studies are then cited of enlightened, successful companies that now intentionally seek a gender balanced, more effective workforce. (See also Cynthia Darlington for a similar clarification of brain hemisphere attributes.)

Whatever their origins, these gender differences transcend cultures. Studies have shown that men in all cultures aspire to be seen as practical, shrewd, assertive, dominant, competitive, critical and self-controlled, while women aspire to be seen as loving, affectionate, impulsive, sympathetic, generous and of service to society. (22) She (Carlotta Tyler) regards these two models as manifestations of the “complementarity” of the sexes in nature. They’re yin and yang; two parts of a whole, rather than opposites. (116)

Tunc, Birkan, et al. Establishing a Link Between Sex-Related Differences in the Structural Connectome and Behavior. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. Vol.371/Iss.1688, 2016. As the Abstract details, in a special Multifaceted Origins of Sex Differences in the Brain issue, a ten person team of University of Pennsylvania neuroscientists including Raquel and Ruben Gur and Ted Satterthwaite find relative degrees of neural network connectivities are an architectural basis for perceived male/female characteristic traits. See also an introduction with the issue title by Margaret McCarthy for a survey of these research-based endeavors, abstract below.

While the presence of sex differences in human behaviour is well documented, our knowledge of their anatomical foundations in the brain is still relatively limited. Using a large sample of healthy young individuals, each assessed with diffusion MRI and a computerized neurocognitive battery, we conducted a comprehensive set of experiments examining sex-related differences in the meso-scale structures of the human connectome and elucidated how these differences may relate to sex differences at the level of behaviour. Our results suggest that behavioural sex differences, which indicate complementarity of males and females, are accompanied by related differences in brain structure across development. When using subnetworks that are defined over functional and behavioural domains, we observed increased structural connectivity related to the motor, sensory and executive function subnetworks in males. In females, subnetworks associated with social motivation, attention and memory tasks had higher connectivity. Males showed higher modularity compared to females, with females having higher inter-modular connectivity. (Tunc Abstract)

Studies of sex differences in the brain range from reductionistic cell and molecular analyses in animal models to functional imaging in awake human subjects, with many other levels in between. Interpretations and conclusions about the importance of particular differences often vary with differing levels of analyses and can lead to discord and dissent. In the past two decades, the range of neurobiological, psychological and psychiatric endpoints found to differ between males and females has expanded beyond reproduction into every aspect of the healthy and diseased brain, and thereby demands our attention. A greater understanding of all aspects of neural functioning will only be achieved by incorporating sex as a biological variable. The goal of this review is to highlight the current state of the art of the discipline of sex differences research with an emphasis on the brain and to contextualize the articles appearing in the accompanying special issue. (McCarthy Abstract)

Veltman, Andrea and Mark Piper, eds. Autonomy, Oppression, and Gender. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. A volume edited by James Madison University philosophers that makes a definitive point about what personal independence means with regard to its feminine essence. As chapters by Catriona Mackenzie, Marilyn Friedman, and others explain, women prefer a “relational autonomy” as a nurturing, empathic balance of individuality and community.

vidotto, Francesco.. How could science be different? Ask a feminist!. fqxi.org/competitions/home. This entry by the University of Western Ontario physicist (search) won first place in the curreny Foundational Questions Institute essay contest about this title subject. Her latest team paper is On the tensorial structure of general covariant quantum systems at arXiv:2312.13374.

It is possible for science to be different? Science has already changed, as new perspective on it opened to us. In this essay I consider the perspective accessible from the standpoint of women in science. I review the novelties that such a perspective has brought to science in past decades, and I highlight the conceptual tools that feminism can offer to imagine the science we wish for. The case of women in science provides an inspiration to find effective ways to support other groups that are marginalized currently in scientific institutions, and includes new desirable feature for a future better science. (Abstract)

Previous   1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10  Next