Eric’s Enlightenment for Thursday, June 4, 2015

1. IBM explains how Watson the computer answered the Final Jeopardy question against Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.  (In a question about American airports, Watson’s answer was “What is Toronto???”  It’s not as ridiculous as you think, and Watson didn’t wager a lot of money for this answer – so it still won by a wide margin.)
2. Two views on how to reform FIFA by Nate Silver and Branko Milanovic – this is an interesting opportunity to apply good principles of institutional design and political economy.
3. How blind people navigate the Internet.
4. The Replication Network – a web site devoted to the study of replications in economics.
5. Cryptochromes and particularly the molecule flavin adenine dinucleotide (FAD) that forms part of the cryptochrome, are thought to be responsible for magnetoreception, the ability of some animals to navigate in Earth’s magnetic field.  Joshua Beardmore et al. have developed a microscope that can detect the magnetic properties of FAD – some very cool work on radical pair chemistry!