- October 30, 2008
- 12:41 AM
- 1,650 views
What Kind of a Person Writes on Wikipedia or Blog or Medblog?
by Dr Shock in Dr Shock MD PhD
Wikipedia members tend to locate their “real me” on the Internet as compared with non-Wikipedia members. This it indicates that Wikipedia members feel more comfortable expressing themselves on the net than they do off-line. Wikipedia members scored lower on agreeableness and openness. Introverted women were more likely to be Wikipedia members as compared with extroverted [...]... Read more »
Yair Amichai–Hamburger, Naama Lamdan, Rinat Madiel, & Tsahi Hayat. (2008) Personality Characteristics of Wikipedia Members. CyberPsychology , 2147483647-3. DOI: 10.1089/cpb.2007.0225
- October 30, 2008
- 12:00 AM
- 1,052 views
On playthings and tools
by Mark D. in The Ideophone
Let me draw your attention to the newly added quote at the top right of this page: “…they are playthings, not the tools of language.” The quote comes from Max Müller’s Lectures on the Science of Language (I’m citing the 1862 edition). I wrote a little about the historical context of that quote recently but [...]... Read more »
Janis B. Nuckolls. (1995) Quechua texts of perception. Semiotica, 103(1/2).
- October 29, 2008
- 06:43 PM
- 2,130 views
Common pesticide is good news for parasites, bad news for frogs
by Ed Yong in Not Exactly Rocket Science
Our amphibians are not doing well. Populations of frogs, toads, salamanders and newts the world over are falling dramatically. Their moist, permeable skins and their need for water to reproduce make them vulnerable to a multitude of threats including drought brought on by climate change, a deadly fungus, and other infectious diseases. Now, we can point an accusatory finger at another culprit - a chemical called atrazine that is second most commonly used pesticide in the United States, and perhap........ Read more »
Jason R. Rohr, Anna M. Schotthoefer, Thomas R. Raffel, Hunter J. Carrick, Neal Halstead, Jason T. Hoverman, Catherine M. Johnson, Lucinda B. Johnson, Camilla Lieske, Marvin D. Piwoni.... (2008) Agrochemicals increase trematode infections in a declining amphibian species. Nature, 455(7217), 1235-1239. DOI: 10.1038/nature07281
- October 29, 2008
- 08:00 AM
- 1,652 views
Revolutionary Solids
by sciencebase in Sciencebase Science Blog
History teachers can always turn to the significant figures and battles to enliven their lessons, biology education has the enormously diverse range of species to point to, and even physics can pull in metaphors and anecdotes for the more esoteric aspects, try teaching gravity without mentioning Galileo and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. But, teachers [...]... Read more »
Annunziata Cascone, Gerardo Durazzo, & Valentina Stile. (2008) Solids by revolution: materialising an idea. International Journal of Knowledge and Learning, 4(2/3), 140. DOI: 10.1504/IJKL.2008.020651
- October 29, 2008
- 07:59 AM
- 1,096 views
A Cure for the Common Cold
by David Bradley in SciScoop Science Forum
Scientists have taken the first-ever look at how the entire human body reacts on the genomic level to the most common disease in the world - the common cold.... Read more »
D. Proud, R. B. Turner, B. Winther, S. Wiehler, J. P. Tiesman, T. D. Reichling, K. D. Juhlin, A. W. Fulmer, B. Y. Ho, A. A. Walanski.... (2008) Gene Expression Profiles during In Vivo Human Rhinovirus Infection: Insights into the Host Response. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, 178(9), 962-968. DOI: 10.1164/rccm.200805-670OC
- October 29, 2008
- 06:17 AM
- 1,764 views
A Bite of Beta-Carotene for Better Twitterpation
by Student @ Fresno State in Darwin's Bulldogs
Submitted by Pedro Garcia for EvolutionBirds, birds, and more birds, with over 10,000 species of birds well known and classified, one can get an array of different colors which would make even the most non-bird lover’s staring in awe. With some species having such intricate combinations of reds, yellows, greens, and blues, (such as the scarlet macaw of South America) one might ask, “Why do they have such vibrant and magnificent plumage?” (or something along those lines). It’s a well know........ Read more »
J. J. Negro, G. R. Bortolotti, J. L. Tella, K. J. Fernie, & D. M. Bird. (1998) Regulation of integumentary colour and plasma carotenoids in American Kestrels consistent with sexual selection theory. Functional Ecology, 12(2), 307-312. DOI: 10.1046/j.1365-2435.1998.00176.x
- October 29, 2008
- 05:23 AM
- 1,406 views
Are brain damaged people who confabulate even trying to remember?
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
When a patient with brain damage provides bizarre answers to questions about their life or their recent activities, they are said to be confabulating. It's nearly always associated with damage to the frontal cortex and has traditionally be construed as a problem with memory retrieval - a mixing up of real memories with imagined facts. But now Gian Zannino and his associates have proposed a new explanation. Their suggestion is that confabulation often doesn't involve memory at all. Rather, they s........ Read more »
Gian Daniele Zannino, Francesco Barban, Carlo Caltagirone, & Giovanni Carlesimo. (2008) Do confabulators really try to remember when they confabulate? A case report. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 25(6), 831-852. DOI: 10.1080/02643290802365078
- October 29, 2008
- 12:00 AM
- 1,372 views
To be cited or not to be cited
by Pablo Artal in Optics confidential
Citations etiquette is a very important part of scientific research. Some comments on the topic and a practical example of one of my early papers where I first describe how to simulate retinal images of any object in real eyes for different conditions. The approach was widely used later but the paper poorly cited...... Read more »
P. Artal. (1990) Calculations of two-dimensional foveal retinal images in real eyes. J.Opt.Soc.Am.A., 1374-1381.
- October 28, 2008
- 08:05 PM
- 1,872 views
Why Are Female Blue Tits Unfaithful?
by GrrlScientist in Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)
tags: blue tit, Cyanistes caeruleus, extrapair fertilization, genetic benefit hypothesis, genetic similarity, plumage color, birdsong, ornithology, behavioral ecology
Blue tit, Cyanistes caeruleus.
Image: Paul Hillion, 26 April 2008.
Even though most bird species form social bonds with their mates, they are not always faithful partners to each other. It's easy to figure out why male birds engage in extrapair copulations: this increases the number of their offspring -- and this increases thei........ Read more »
A. N. DREISS, N. SILVA, M. RICHARD, F. MOYEN, M. THÉRY, A. P. MØLLER, & É. DANCHIN. (2008) Condition-dependent genetic benefits of extrapair fertilization in female blue tits . Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 21(6), 1814-1822. DOI: 10.1111/j.1420-9101.2008.01578.x
- October 28, 2008
- 06:45 PM
- 1,267 views
How religion makes people vote right-wing
Apparently there's some sort of election going on over in the US, so here's a topical question: why is it that religion encourages the poor to vote for right-wing parties? By 'right wing' here I mean 'fiscally conservative' - the sorts of parties that are against government social welfare programmes. Now, there are all sorts of arguments for and against wealth redistribution, which I'm not going to get into. But the fact remains - and it's one that's relevant to understanding the US elections - ........ Read more »
A. L. De La O, & J. A. Rodden. (2008) Does Religion Distract the Poor?: Income and Issue Voting Around the World. Comparative Political Studies, 41(4-5), 437-476. DOI: 10.1177/0010414007313114
- October 28, 2008
- 01:15 PM
- 1,729 views
An eye-opening view of visual development
by Mo in Neurophilosophy
The pioneering experiments performed by Hubel and Weisel in the late 1950s and early 60s taught us much about the development of the visual system. We now know, for example, that neurons in the visual cortex are organized into alternating ocular dominance columns which receive inputs from either the left or right eye and that groups of cells within each of these columns respond selectively to bars or edges of a specific orientation moving in a specific direction.
Hubel and Weisel also found tha........ Read more »
Ye Li, Stephen D. Van Hooser, Mark Mazurek, Leonard E. White, & David Fitzpatrick. (2008) Experience with moving visual stimuli drives the early development of cortical direction selectivity. Nature. DOI: 10.1038/nature07417
- October 28, 2008
- 10:00 AM
- 1,363 views
Using placebos outside of clinical trials
by Orac in Respectful Insolence
The other day, I thought it was about time that I did some of that cool and fancy ResearchBlogging.org stuff, you know, to keep this blog from being nothing more than a collection of not-so-Respectfully Insolent spleen venting at generalized stupidity. I realize that those are some of the funnest posts here and that people like them, but a little variety is required. No study, however, had quite floated my boat, and I was almost to the point of being desperate enough for blog fodder that I consi........ Read more »
J. C Tilburt, E. J Emanuel, T. J Kaptchuk, F. A Curlin, & F. G Miller. (2008) Prescribing "placebo treatments": results of national survey of US internists and rheumatologists. BMJ, 337(oct23 2). DOI: 10.1136/bmj.a1938
- October 28, 2008
- 12:51 AM
- 2,881 views
Sex and Neuroscience, a new series
by Dr Shock in Dr Shock MD PhD
The coming week I will post articles about gender and/or sex and neuroscience. Topics with sex or gender and brains will be chocolate, computer game play, depression, medical education and brain sex differences, so stay tuned.
Now what is the difference between gender and sex?
Sex = male and female
Gender = masculine and feminine
So in essence:
Sex refers [...]... Read more »
Larry Cahill. (2006) Why sex matters for neuroscience. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 7(6), 477-484. DOI: 10.1038/nrn1909
- October 28, 2008
- 12:30 AM
- 1,182 views
*blink blink* Cocaine?
by Evil Monkey in Neurotopia
Until I read this paper, I seriously had no idea that spontaneous eyeblink was a clinical indicator for dopaminergic function. I guess this shows you how divorced the pure research side can be from the clinic.
But before I cover this article, I must make a plea on behalf of all over-read and over-worked grad students out there: please, if you are going to publish your data (not a review article), PLEASE present your data in a pretty pretty graph. Data tables SUCK. Nobody likes them. I see ........ Read more »
Lorenza S. Colzato, Wery P. M. van den Wildenberg, Bernhard Hommel, & Antonio Verdejo García. (2008) Reduced Spontaneous Eye Blink Rates in Recreational Cocaine Users: Evidence for Dopaminergic Hypoactivity. PLoS ONE, 3(10). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0003461
- October 28, 2008
- 12:00 AM
- 1,161 views
Development shapes evolution in silico
by Bjørn Østman in Pleiotropy
Why are there so few extant phyla or basic body-plans? There are only about 35 phyla, and nine of them include 96% of all living species. There used to be many more, back in the early days of the cambrian explosion, so one has to wonder why so many phyla were singled out for extinction, and just a few have gone on to do very well.The usual way to learn about our evolutionary history is to look at fossils. Unfortunately, fossils don't tell us very much about how the organisms developed, and this ........ Read more »
Elhanan Borenstein, David C. Krakauer, & Carl T. Bergstrom. (2008) An End to Endless Forms: Epistasis, Phenotype Distribution Bias, and Nonuniform Evolution. PLoS Computational Biology, 4(10). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000202
- October 27, 2008
- 08:00 PM
- 1,132 views
'Stuttered' treatment withdrawal in the ICU
by Pallimed Bloggers in Pallimed: a Hospice & Palliative Medicine Blog
American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine has a paper looking at the duration of life-support withdrawal and family satisfaction. The data come from a multicenter trial in Washington State which looked at various aspects of end-of-life care in the ICU. This analysis looks at ~584 family member surveys of patients who died after some withdrawal of life-sustaining therapies (WLST): patients died in an ICU or within 24 hours of transfer out. (There were 2000 ICU deaths in ........ Read more »
E. Gerstel, R. A. Engelberg, T. Koepsell, & J. R. Curtis. (2008) Duration of Withdrawal of Life Support in the Intensive Care Unit and Association with Family Satisfaction. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, 178(8), 798-804. DOI: 10.1164/rccm.200711-1617OC
- October 27, 2008
- 07:10 PM
- 1,010 views
Being closer to god linked to more depression
Religion is supposed to be good for your mental health. People who have a good dose of religion tend to be happier, for example. And earlier this year researchers including Joanna Maselko (at Temple University in Philadelphia) reported that women who stop going to religious services are three times as likely to suffer generalised anxiety disorder or drug/alcohol abuse as are women who keep up their attendance (men, on the other hand, are actually less likely to suffer depression if they stop goi........ Read more »
J. Maselko, S. E. Gilman, & S. Buka. (2008) Religious service attendance and spiritual well-being are differentially associated with risk of major depression. Psychological Medicine, 1. DOI: 10.1017/S0033291708004418
- October 27, 2008
- 06:30 PM
- 1,822 views
Should you let your toddler watch TV?
by Dave Munger in Cognitive Daily
When Jimmy was around 18 months old, Greta and I were both in graduate school. I attended classes at night and Greta taught and worked in the lab during the day. In the late afternoon I'd drive into the city with Jimmy in the car seat, and we'd swap -- she'd drive back home and I'd go to class, taking the train back home when I was done.
At this point, Greta was extremely pregnant with Nora. She was exhausted at the end of her workday, but Jimmy had usually taken a nap in the car, so he was usu........ Read more »
F. J. Zimmerman, & D. A. Christakis. (2007) Associations Between Content Types of Early Media Exposure and Subsequent Attentional Problems. PEDIATRICS, 120(5), 986-992. DOI: 10.1542/peds.2006-3322
- October 27, 2008
- 05:10 PM
- 1,316 views
Do physicians really believe in placebos?
by PalMD in denialism blog
This article is cross-posted at Science-Based Medicine. Check it out. --PalMD
In a previous post, I argued that placebo is an artifact of certain clinical interactions, rather than a treatment that we can exploit. Apparently, there are a whole lot of doctors out there who don't agree with me. Or are there?
A recent study published in the British Medical Journal is getting
a lot of enk (e-ink) in the blogosphere. As a practicing internist, I have some pretty strong opinions (based in fact,........ Read more »
J. C Tilburt, E. J Emanuel, T. J Kaptchuk, F. A Curlin, & F. G Miller. (2008) Prescribing "placebo treatments": results of national survey of US internists and rheumatologists. BMJ, 337(oct23 2). DOI: 10.1136/bmj.a1938
T. J Kaptchuk, J. M Kelley, L. A Conboy, R. B Davis, C. E Kerr, E. E Jacobson, I. Kirsch, R. N Schyner, B. H. Nam, L. T Nguyen.... (2008) Components of placebo effect: randomised controlled trial in patients with irritable bowel syndrome. BMJ, 336(7651), 999-1003. DOI: 10.1136/bmj.39524.439618.25
A Hróbjartsson. (2002) What are the main methodological problems in the estimation of placebo effects?. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 55(5), 430-435. DOI: 10.1016/S0895-4356(01)00496-6
- October 27, 2008
- 01:05 PM
- 1,510 views
First case study of developmental phonagnosia
by Mo in Neurophilosophy
The term phonagnosia refers to an inablity to recognize familiar voices or to discriminate between unfamiliar ones. This is a rare condition that is usually associated with brain damage: the ability to recognize familiar voices is impaired by damage to several regions of the right parietal lobe, and impaired voice discrimination is associated with damage to the temporal lobe in both hemispheres.
Researchers from UCL now report the first known case of developmental phonagnosia. In the journal Ne........ Read more »
L GARRIDO, F EISNER, C MCGETTIGAN, L STEWART, D SAUTER, J HANLEY, S SCHWEINBERGER, J WARREN, & B DUCHAINE. (2008) Developmental phonagnosia: A selective deficit of vocal identity recognition. Neuropsychologia. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2008.08.003
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