- August 23, 2008
- 09:50 PM
- 1,427 views
The smell of fear
by Mo in Neurophilosophy
Nearly 70 years ago, Karl von Frisch described the alarm response in a species of small freshwater fish called the European minnow (Phoxinus phoxinus). Frisch, who was one of the founders ethology - the scientific study of animal behaviour - demonstrated that when a minnow was eaten by a predator, a chemical released from its damaged skin elicited defensive behaviour in other minnows that were close by. In response to the chemical, they would at first dart about randomly, form a tight school and........ Read more »
J Brechbuhl, M Klaey, & M-C Broillet. (2008) Grueneberg Ganglion Cells Mediate Alarm Pheromone Detection in Mice. Science, 321(5892), 1092-1095. DOI: 10.1126/science.1160770
- August 23, 2008
- 07:53 AM
- 1,496 views
Associations between iris characteristics and personality in adulthood
by Doctor Spurt in Effortless Incitement
There's a body of data, some of it contested, relating eye colour, or eye colour at some ages, with personality traits. Among other things its been reported that there are associations between dark eyes and traits like extroversion (Gentry et al, 1965), and that among kindergarten children below certain ages blue-eyed children were disproportionately likely to be extremely withdrawn (Rubin and Both 1989). Apparently researchers in the area came to agree that eye colour had very little to do with........ Read more »
M LARSSON, N PEDERSEN, & H STATTIN. (2007) Associations between iris characteristics and personality in adulthood. Biological Psychology, 75(2), 165-175. DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2007.01.007
- August 22, 2008
- 08:00 PM
- 1,251 views
Guided by the (blue) light
by Michael Clarkson in Conformational Flux
The ability to sense and respond to magnetic fields is a fundamental aspect of behavior in many animals. While migratory birds famously use the earth's magnetic field to navigate during, magnetic field responses occur in all manner of animals, from eels to invertebrates. Even the lowly fruit fly, best known as a reminder that you really should have taken the garbage out two days ago, can react to magnetism. While various explanations have been put forward in different species, magnetosensitivity........ Read more »
Robert J. Gegear, Amy Casselman, Scott Waddell, & Steven M. Reppert. (2008) Cryptochrome mediates light-dependent magnetosensitivity in Drosophila. Nature, 454(7207), 1014-1018. DOI: 10.1038/nature07183
- August 22, 2008
- 02:28 PM
- 1,729 views
How the chili got its hots
by Jeremy Yoder in Denim and Tweed
In this week's PNAS: capsaicin, the stuff that makes chili peppers hot, may have originally evolved as an anti-fungal agent [$-a].
.flickr-photo { }.flickr-frameleft { float: left; text-align: left; margin-right: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }
Photo by bleu celt.Tewksbury et al. examine variation in "pungency" (that is, concentration of... Read more »
J. J. Tewksbury, D. J. Levey, M. Huizinga, D. C. Haak, & A. Traveset. (2008) Costs and benefits of capsaicin-mediated control of gut retention in dispersers of wild chilies. Ecology, 89(1), 107-17. DOI: 10.1890/07-0445.1
J. J. Tewksbury, & G. P. Nabhan. (2001) Seed dispersal: Directed deterrence by capsaicin in chilies. Nature, 412(6845), 403-4. DOI: 10.1038/35086653
J. J. Tewksbury, K. M. Reagan, N. J. Machnicki, T. A. Carlo, D. C. Haak, A. L. C. Penaloza, & D. J. Levey. (2008) Evolutionary ecology of pungency in wild chilies. PNAS, 105(33), 11808-11. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0802691105
- August 22, 2008
- 12:09 PM
- 1,652 views
When It Comes to Health, Adults Shortchange Kids
by Shaheen Lakhan in Brain Blogger
The problems of childhood obesity are not exclusive to American soil. Both the U.S. and many European countries face this crisis. Various solutions have been proposed and executed. Everything from promoting exercise to teaching children about the origin of their food to banning candy or sweets on school campuses.
Now the European Commission has put forth [...]... Read more »
R Watson. (2008) European Commission plans free fruit and vegetable scheme in schools. BMJ, 337(jul15 1). DOI: 10.1136/bmj.a829
- August 22, 2008
- 03:00 AM
- 1,027 views
How the fluency of your own actions affects your judgment of others
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
Last year the psychologists Steven Tipper and Patric Bach asked students to perform an identification task with a difference. Two men were shown either kicking a ball or typing at a keyboard. Crucially, the students had to signal their recognition of the men by either pressing a keyboard key or pushing a foot-pedal. The interaction between the men's activities and the students' mode of response led to some intriguing effects.If a man was shown typing and students had to respond with a keyboard k........ Read more »
S TIPPER, & P BACH. (2008) Your own actions influence how you perceive other people: A misattribution of action appraisals. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44(4), 1082-1090. DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2007.11.005
- August 22, 2008
- 01:05 AM
- 2,765 views
Adolescent Violence Prevention
by Dr Shock in Dr Shock MD PhD
In the United States adolescents presenting to an inner-city emergency department (ED) are more likely to die from violence than from any other condition for which they seek ED care. They also lack a primary care physician and irregularly attend their school. They use Internet more often than adults.
This makes their visits to the [...]... Read more »
M WALTON, R CUNNINGHAM, Y XUE, M TROWBRIDGE, M ZIMMERMAN, & R MAIO. (2008) Internet Referrals for Adolescent Violence Prevention: An Innovative Mechanism for Inner-city Emergency Departments. Journal of Adolescent Health, 43(3), 309-312. DOI: 10.1016/j.jadohealth.2008.01.016
- August 21, 2008
- 11:46 PM
- 1,220 views
How Representative are Volunteers?
by Neural Outlaw in Neural Interface
As if by magic, another item at the BPS Research Digest which is also relevant to my recent forays discusses the question of whether participants in psychology studies are "representative" of the total sample under review. It seems like the majority of those who take part in psychology studies are generally more "stable and outgoing", which begs questions about whether said studies are reliable in their testing of depression measures, for example.To give some background, the popular five-factor ........ Read more »
Jan-Erik Lönnqvist, Sampo Paunonen, Markku Verkasalo, Sointu Leikas, Annamari Tuulio-Henriksson, & Jouko Lönnqvist. (2007) Personality characteristics of research volunteers. European Journal of Personality, 21(8), 1017-1030. DOI: 10.1002/per.655
- August 21, 2008
- 09:40 PM
- 1,462 views
Growth factor receptor governs neurogenesis & sensitivity to antidepressants
by Mo in Neurophilosophy
In 2000, researchers from the Yale University School of Medicine made a surprising discovery that would start to change the way we think about the causes of depression. Ronald Duman and his colleagues chronically administered different classes of antidepressants to rats, and found that this stimulated the growth of new neurons in the hippocampus. As a result, researchers and clinicians began to think of depression as something like a mild neurodegenerative disorder, rather than as a chemical imb........ Read more »
Y LI, B LUIKART, S BIRNBAUM, J CHEN, C KWON, S KERNIE, R BASSELDUBY, & L PARADA. (2008) TrkB Regulates Hippocampal Neurogenesis and Governs Sensitivity to Antidepressive Treatment. Neuron, 59(3), 399-412. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2008.06.023
- August 21, 2008
- 05:04 PM
- 693 views
Redefining “Natural” in Agriculture: A review of Tomorrow’s Table in PLoS Biology
by Pamela Ronald in Tomorrow's Table
Check out the latest review of "Tomorrow’s Table" published in PLoS Biology.Here is a response to one of the points raised in the review as to what is “natural” or appropriate for agriculture.Because plants are rich in sugars, proteins, vitamins and minerals, they make obvious and tempting treats for various predators. Plants cannot run away, so instead they have evolved a set of defenses to protect themselves. Celery is seemingly benign, yet it produces toxic compounds called psoralens to........ Read more »
Tony Trewavas. (2008) Redefining “Natural” in Agriculture. PLoS Biology, 6(8). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0060199
- August 21, 2008
- 02:32 PM
- 1,460 views
What conductors are doing when they wave their hands around -- and what we get out of it
by Dave Munger in Cognitive Daily
As a child (and like most children, I imagine) I used to think conducting an orchestra entailed something like what Bugs Bunny does in this video:
Waving the hands, as conductors frequently do, seemed largely for show. The conductor appeared to me to be more dancing along with the music than actually leading the musicians in any meaningful way. It wasn't until I married an amateur musician that I actually learned that the conductor could have an important influence on the way an orchestra sound........ Read more »
Geoff Luck, & John Sloboda. (2008) Exploring the Spatio-Temporal Properties of Simple Conducting Gestures using a Synchronization Task. Music Perception, 25(3), 225-239. DOI: 10.1525/mp.2008.25.3.225
- August 21, 2008
- 01:00 PM
- 1,171 views
Do nice guys really finish last?
by eHarmony Labs in eHarmony Labs Blog
The nice guy stereotype argues that women often say they wish to date kind, sensitive men, but in reality, still choose to date jerks over nice guys. Is the stereotype true?... Read more »
D Buss, & M Barnes. (1986) Preferences in human mate selection. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50(3), 559-570.
Geoffrey Urbaniak, & Peter R Kilmann. (2006) Niceness and Dating Success: A Further Test of the Nice Guy Stereotype. Sex Roles, 55(3-4), 209-224. DOI: 10.1007/s11199-006-9075-2
- August 21, 2008
- 12:44 PM
- 1,535 views
Mirror neurons, hubs, and puppet masters
by Greg Hickok in Talking Brains
Hubs are IN in cognitive neuroscience. Griffiths and Warren have their computational hub in the planum temporale, and Patterson et al. have their semantic hub in the anterior temporal lobe. Long before the hub we had the convergence zone of Antonio Damasio and the transmodal node of Marcel Mesulam which he described as an "epicenter" (I like that term -- sounds very important). Despite the variation in terminology, the basic idea behind all these proposals is similar: there are regions in ........ Read more »
Antonio Damasio, & Kaspar Meyer. (2008) Behind the looking-glass. Nature, 454(7201), 167-168. DOI: 10.1038/454167a
- August 21, 2008
- 10:00 AM
- 1,564 views
When clinical trials are designed by the marketing department
by Orac in Respectful Insolence
I must be slipping.
Well, not really. It doesn't bother me that blog bud and fellow skeptical physician PalMD beat me to an important publication that came out a couple of days ago in the Annals of Internal Medicine. I'm a surgeon and a translational/basic scientist; so Annals is not usually one of the journals I read regularly. I usually read individual studies as I find out about them referenced elsewhere, usually Eureka Alert! or when an Annals study sufficiently interesting to motivate me t........ Read more »
Kevin Hill, Joseph S. Ross, David S. Egilman, & Harlan M. Krumholz. (2008) The ADVANTAGE Seeding Trial: A Review of Internal Documents. Annals of Internal Medicine, 149(4), 251-258. http://annals.org/cgi/content/full/149/4/251
Harold Sox, & Drummond Rennie. (2008) Seeding Trials: Just Say \"No\". Annals of Internal Medicine, 149(4), 279-280. http://annals.org/cgi/content/full/149/4/279
- August 21, 2008
- 08:00 AM
- 1,587 views
Feed Marketing a Non-starter
by David Bradley in Sciencetext
Having waxed lyrical on repeated occasions about RSS newsfeeds and Feedburner feedcounts, I thought it was time I did some more formal study into the subject. However, I came across an intriguing research paper in the International Journal of Technology…... Read more »
Ingi Edvardsson, & Nik J Whitehead. (2008) RSS as a new international e-marketing opportunity. International Journal of Technology Marketing, 3(3), 293. DOI: 10.1504/IJTMKT.2008.019926
- August 21, 2008
- 02:50 AM
- 2,081 views
Exceptional longevity does not result in excessive levels of disability
by Dr Shock in Dr Shock MD PhD
A person 90 years old or between 90 and 100 years old has a high risk of losing independence, but the
prevalence of independence still declines only very modestly from age 92 to 100 years.This has the advantage of little societal care cost. So with the expansion of the life span at high age, above 90 [...]... Read more »
K. Christensen, M. McGue, I. Petersen, B. Jeune, & J. W. Vaupel. (2008) Exceptional longevity does not result in excessive levels of disability. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0804931105
- August 21, 2008
- 02:40 AM
- 1,105 views
Is Seeing Into the Future More Than an Optical Illusion?
by Shaheen Lakhan in Brain Blogger
Most humans do not have the power to predict the future, but we can see it. At least we can see one-tenth of a second of it. The May-June issue of the journal Cognitive Science published a review by Mark Changizi of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, claiming that the human visual system has evolved to allow [...]... Read more »
Mark Changizi, Andrew Hsieh, Romi Nijhawan, Ryota Kanai, & Shinsuke Shimojo. (2008) Perceiving the Present and a Systematization of Illusions. Cognitive Science: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 32(3), 459-503. DOI: 10.1080/03640210802035191
- August 21, 2008
- 02:23 AM
- 1,432 views
The spontaneous expression of pride and shame: Evidence for biologically innate nonverbal displays
by Doctor Spurt in Effortless Incitement
The picture on the left shows two different judo competitors, just after winning a bout. One of them is sighted, the other congenitally blind. Can you tell which is which?It took longer than it should for the case that facial expressions of emotion are largely human universals to be made (in fact wider than human, and conserved across many species). Paul Ekman is a leading figure here, and his introduction to one of the many editions of Darwin's The expression of the emotions in man and animals ........ Read more »
J Tracy, & D Matsumoto. (2008) The spontaneous expression of pride and shame: Evidence for biologically innate nonverbal displays. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(33), 11655-11660. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0802686105
- August 21, 2008
- 12:00 AM
- 1,628 views
Suppression and Enhancement of Collisions in Optical Lattices
by Chad Orzel in Uncertain Principles
A paper showing that putting atoms in an optical lattice can both raise and lower the collision rate, depending on the conditions... Read more »
J. Lawall, C. Orzel, & S. L. Rolston. (1998) Suppression and Enhancement of Collisions in Optical Lattices. Physical Review Letters, 80(3), 480-483. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.80.480
- August 20, 2008
- 11:11 PM
- 1,329 views
How Clinical is Non-Clinical?
by Neural Outlaw in Neural Interface
So far in my budding career I've been involved in three psychology studies, all of which required the recruitment of non-clinical participants. Even before that, my psych undergraduate final-year project on schizophrenia was carried out by surveying non-clinical participants. For the benefit of lay readers, non-clinical participants refers to "normal" people who are recruited to take part in the study and are different to results gleaned from sufferers of psychosis, anxiety or oth........ Read more »
Idia B. Thurston, Jessica Curley, Sherecce Fields, Dimitra Kamboukos, Ariz Rojas, & Vicky Phares. (2008) How nonclinical are community samples?. Journal of Community Psychology, 36(4), 411-420. DOI: 10.1002/jcop.20223
topics
join us!
Do you write about peer-reviewed research in your blog? Use ResearchBlogging.org to make it easy for your readers — and others from around the world — to find your serious posts about academic research.
If you don't have a blog, you can still use our site to learn about fascinating developments in cutting-edge research from around the world.
