Research / Scholarship posts
- May 16, 2013
- 11:16 AM
- 17 views
'Vocal mimicry hypothesis' falsified? [Part 2]
by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters
A few entries ago I uploaded a fragment from a study that discusses an intriguing experiment with three chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) which were trained to tap regularly on a piano keyboard...... Read more »
Hattori, Y., Tomonaga, M., & Matsuzawa, T. (2013) Spontaneous synchronized tapping to an auditory rhythm in a chimpanzee. Scientific Reports. DOI: 10.1038/srep01566
Hasegawa, A., Okanoya, K., Hasegawa, T., & Seki, Y. (2011) Rhythmic synchronization tapping to an audio–visual metronome in budgerigars. Scientific Reports. DOI: 10.1038/srep00120
Honing, H., Merchant, H., Háden, G., Prado, L., & Bartolo, R. (2012) Rhesus Monkeys (Macaca mulatta) Detect Rhythmic Groups in Music, but Not the Beat. PLoS ONE, 7(12). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0051369
- May 15, 2013
- 09:46 AM
- 30 views
Male Black Widows Sniff Out Femme Fatales
by Miss Behavior in The Scorpion and the Frog
I am thrilled to announce that this month I am joining a new top-notch science blogging team at Scitable, Nature Education’s award-winning science education website! (But don’t worry, friends. I will continue to post here about animal physiology and behavior every Wednesday). Next week, Scitable will be launching eleven new blogs covering topics like neuroscience, genetics, oceanography, physics and more. I will be co-authoring an evolution blog called Accumulating Glitches together with Se........ Read more »
Johnson, J., Trubl, P., Blackmore, V., & Miles, L. (2011) Male black widows court well-fed females more than starved females: silken cues indicate sexual cannibalism risk. Animal Behaviour, 82(2), 383-390. DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2011.05.018
- May 14, 2013
- 02:00 AM
- 19 views
Measuring scientific coverage of @Wikipedia: Fellows of the Wiki Society Index 2013
by Duncan Hull in O'Really?
A quick-and-dirty measure of the scientific coverage of wikipedia is the percentage of these fellows that have a profile on wikipedia at the time of their election to the prestigous Society. Let’s call it the Fellows of the Wiki Society Index (FWSi)...... Read more »
Moy, C., Locke, J., Coppola, B., & McNeil, A. (2010) Improving Science Education and Understanding through Editing Wikipedia. Journal of Chemical Education, 87(11), 1159-1162. DOI: 10.1021/ed100367v
- May 13, 2013
- 09:45 AM
- 26 views
A Quantum Version of Google
by Carian Thus in United Academics
A team of computer scientists in Spain applied a quantum PageRank algorithm to a network with 7 webpages. They found that the quantum PageRank sometimes ordered the webpages differently in terms of importance, but averaging the quantum PageRank score over time recovered the classical ordering.... Read more »
Paparo, G., & Martin-Delgado, M. (2012) Google in a Quantum Network. Scientific Reports. DOI: 10.1038/srep00444
- May 9, 2013
- 11:05 PM
- 21 views
Stop to smell the flowers. Especially lavender.
by Cobb & Hecht in Do You Believe In Dog?
(source)Hi Julie, WOW!Dogs in clothes. Corgis in bikinis at the beach. Greyhounds in onesies. We people do some weird things to our canine friends, no?! I'm pretty sure I wouldn't enjoy being dressed up in a padded outfit all day long, so I think I'll pass on sharing that experience with my dogs. As you said, cultural perceptions, ethics and expectations add a whole layer of extra consideration. It's not always easy to work out what dogs want or need. That's why I like........ Read more »
Wells Deborah L. (2009) Sensory stimulation as environmental enrichment for captive animals: A review. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 118(1-2), 1-11. DOI: 10.1016/j.applanim.2009.01.002
Graham Lynne, Wells Deborah L., & Hepper Peter G. (2005) The influence of olfactory stimulation on the behaviour of dogs housed in a rescue shelter. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 91(1-2), 143-153. DOI: 10.1016/j.applanim.2004.08.024
Wells Deborah L. (2006) Aromatherapy for travel-induced excitement in dogs. Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, 229(6), 964-967. DOI: 10.2460/javma.229.6.964
MOTOMURA NAOYASU, SAKURAI AKIHIRO, & YOTSUYA YUKIKO. (2001) REDUCTION OF MENTAL STRESS WITH LAVENDER ODORANT. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 93(3), 713-718. DOI: 10.2466/pms.2001.93.3.713
- May 9, 2013
- 09:57 AM
- 12 views
Taking memory research to Parliament
by Kamar Ameen-Ali in NC3Rs Blog
NC3Rs-funded PhD student Kamar Ameen-Ali, Department of Psychology, Durham University, takes us on a trip to the House of Commons SET for BRITAIN event, where she presented her research recently to MPs and VIPs.... Read more »
Ameen-Ali, K., Eacott, M., & Easton, A. (2012) A new behavioural apparatus to reduce animal numbers in multiple types of spontaneous object recognition paradigms in rats. Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 211(1), 66-76. DOI: 10.1016/j.jneumeth.2012.08.006
- May 8, 2013
- 09:50 AM
- 45 views
Thanks Mom!
by Miss Behavior in The Scorpion and the Frog
Like Mother, like baby! Photo from freedigitalphotos.net.Moms give us so much more than we ever give them credit for. Biologically speaking, we all have a mom and a dad (unless you’re a flatworm or some other species that can reproduce without sex) that provide us with one of each chromosome type (our chromosomes contain our genes, commonly thought of as our “biological blueprints”). So it makes sense that we tend to think of ourselves as being half-our-mom and half-our-dad. But not so! Al........ Read more »
BERNARDO, J. (1996) Maternal Effects in Animal Ecology. Integrative and Comparative Biology, 36(2), 83-105. DOI: 10.1093/icb/36.2.83
Wolf, J., & Wade, M.J. (2009) What are maternal effects (and what are they not)?. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B, 1107-1115. info:/
- May 8, 2013
- 08:10 AM
- 38 views
http://blog.dolotest.com/2013/05/08/pain-and-depression-linked-to-the-immune-system/
by Kim Kristiansen in Picture of Pain
epression together with pain, but not pain alone, may increase activity in the immune system and inflammation. These are the important findings of a new study just published in the journal “Pain Medicine”.... Read more »
Kim Kristiansen, M.D. (2013) Pain and Depression Linked to the Immune System. Picture of Pain Blog. info:/
- May 5, 2013
- 05:22 AM
- 68 views
The (Lack of) Changes in Ecological Research
by gunnardw in The Beast, the Bard and the Bot
Ecology is a rapidly changing, dynamic field of research. In recent decades, there’s been a major shift from considering ecosystems as stable and poised to seeing them as systems that are in constant flux. At least, that’s what ecologists want (us) to believe. But how much of this claimed change has been able to seep [...]... Read more »
Carmel, Y., Kent, R., Bar-Massada, A., Blank, L., Liberzon, J., Nezer, O., Sapir, G., & Federman, R. (2013) Trends in Ecological Research during the Last Three Decades – A Systematic Review. PLoS ONE, 8(4). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0059813
- May 3, 2013
- 03:40 PM
- 64 views
Why blogging science is rewarding!
by Ragothamanyennamalli in Getting to know Structural Bioinformatics
... Read more »
Bik HM, & Goldstein MC. (2013) An introduction to social media for scientists. PLoS biology, 11(4). PMID: 23630451
- May 2, 2013
- 05:30 PM
- 48 views
Elite journals: to hell in a handbasket?
by Hadas Shema in Information Culture
Once upon a time, journals were made of paper and ink. However, we left the dark ages of dead woods behind us and moved forward to an age in which authors don’t need to publish in journals (but still want to). There’s an increasing decoupling between the individual article and its publishing journal, created by [...]
... Read more »
Vincent Lariviere, George A. Lozano, & Yves Gingras. (2013) Are elite journals declining?. ArXiv. arXiv: 1304.6460v1
George A. Lozano, Vincent Lariviere, & Yves Gingras. (2012) The weakening relationship between the Impact Factor and papers' citations in the digital age. ArXiv. arXiv: 1205.4328v1
- May 2, 2013
- 10:38 AM
- 76 views
Redefining Mental Disorders as Brain Disorders: TED Talk of Thomas Insel
by William Yates, M.D. in Brain Posts
Components of Brain Limbic SystemAdvances in the diagnosis and treatment of brain disorders like bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and autism are a public health priority.Dr. Thomas Insel, director at NIMH recently presented a TED talk that emphasized the need to rethink how we conceptualize and study these types of disorders. He argues for a need to redefine mental disorders as brain disorders. Advances in brain research tools are likely to provide improvements in early diagnosis and ........ Read more »
Collins, P., Insel, T., Chockalingam, A., Daar, A., & Maddox, Y. (2013) Grand Challenges in Global Mental Health: Integration in Research, Policy, and Practice. PLoS Medicine, 10(4). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1001434
Insel, T. (2011) A bridge to somewhere. Translational Psychiatry, 1(4). DOI: 10.1038/tp.2011.4
- May 1, 2013
- 11:16 AM
- 55 views
Getting Science Right: Blacklist For Fake Journals
by Katja Keuchenius in United Academics
He saw respected journals getting hijacked, bogus articles being published quasi-professionally and so-called open access websites covered with “BUY NOW” buttons. So librarian Jeffrey Beall decided to do something about it. He created a black list of all the journals (343!) he thinks are questionable and put it on his website scholaryoa.com. In this interview he explains why.... Read more »
Beall, J. (2012) Predatory publishers are corrupting open access. Nature, 489(7415), 179-179. DOI: 10.1038/489179a
- April 27, 2013
- 07:51 AM
- 58 views
A Year of Blogging
by gunnardw in The Beast, the Bard and the Bot
Exactly one year ago, The Beast, the Bard and the Bot were born. Time for some reflection. But first, a bit of numerical material (current at the time of writing). Some Numbers Posts: 96, including this one. Total views: 19672 Max views on single day: 631 Top 5 countries providing visitors: United States (8264) United [...]... Read more »
Fausto, S., Machado, F., Bento, L., Iamarino, A., Nahas, T., & Munger, D. (2012) Research Blogging: Indexing and Registering the Change in Science 2.0. PLoS ONE, 7(12). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0050109
Shema, H., Bar-Ilan, J., & Thelwall, M. (2012) Research Blogs and the Discussion of Scholarly Information. PLoS ONE, 7(5). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0035869
- April 25, 2013
- 12:43 AM
- 84 views
A room with a view: what do dogs want?
by Cobb & Hecht in Do You Believe In Dog?
Putting the woof in tweet! (source)Hi Julie,Wow! Thanks for sharing the amazing fun tweet-week we had posting for @realscientists on Twitter. It was great to engage with so many people about so many areas of dog (and other animal!) behaviour and research. And poo. So many questions about dog poo! Some things can be relied upon in life; it’s good to know people are always curious about dog poo.If you want to revisit any of those posts or links we exchanged as part of the Real Scienti........ Read more »
Wells Deborah L., & Hepper Peter G. (1998) A note on the influence of visual conspecific contact on the behaviour of sheltered dogs. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 60(1), 83-88. DOI: 10.1016/S0168-1591(98)00146-4
Taylor K, & Mills D. (2007) The effect of the kennel environment on canine welfare: a critical review of experimental studies. Animal Welfare, 16(4), 435-447. http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ufaw/aw/2007/00000016/00000004/art00003
Sop Shin Won. (2007) The influence of forest view through a window on job satisfaction and job stress. Scandinavian Journal of Forest Research, 22(3), 248-253. DOI: 10.1080/02827580701262733
Verderber Stephen, & Reuman David. (1987) Windows, views, and health status in hospital therapeutic environments. Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, 4(2), 120-133. http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1988-30782-001
- April 23, 2013
- 10:31 AM
- 88 views
Low Back Pain – What Healthcare Professionals THINK They Do and ACTUALLY Do
by Kim Kristiansen in Picture of Pain
Does good will and intentions equals what primary care physicians actually do when helping patients with non-specific pain complains like low back pain?
No, according to a new study.
... Read more »
Kim Kristiansen, M.D:. (2014) Low Back Pain – What Healthcare Professionals THINK They Do and ACTUALLY Do. Picture of Pain. info:/
- April 22, 2013
- 03:26 PM
- 59 views
The Leiden University Ranking
by Hadas Shema in Information Culture
The new Leiden Ranking (LR) has just been published, and I would like to talk a bit about its indicators, what it represents and equally important – what it doesn’t represent. The LR is a purely bibliometrical ranking, based on data from Thomson-Reuters’ Web of Science database (there’s another bibliometrical ranking, Scimago, but it’s based [...]
... Read more »
Ludo Waltman, Clara Calero-Medina, Joost Kosten, Ed C. M. Noyons, Robert J. W. Tijssen, Nees Jan van Eck, Thed N. van Leeuwen, Anthony F. J. van Raan, Martijn S. Visser, & Paul Wouters. (2012) The Leiden Ranking 2011/2012: Data collection, indicators, and interpretation. ArXiv. arXiv: 1202.3941v1
- April 21, 2013
- 11:23 AM
- 85 views
Was Steven Pinker right after all? [Part 2]
by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters
Last week Science published a study (a follow-up of Salimpoor et al., 2011) in which Canadian researchers showed that music can arouse feelings of euphoria and craving, similar to tangible rewards that involve the striatal dopaminergic system. ... Read more »
Salimpoor, V., van den Bosch, I., Kovacevic, N., McIntosh, A., Dagher, A., & Zatorre, R. (2013) Interactions Between the Nucleus Accumbens and Auditory Cortices Predict Music Reward Value. Science, 340(6129), 216-219. DOI: 10.1126/science.1231059
Salimpoor, V., Benovoy, M., Larcher, K., Dagher, A., & Zatorre, R. (2011) Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music. Nature Neuroscience. DOI: 10.1038/nn.2726
- April 21, 2013
- 08:00 AM
- 25 views
Interdisciplinitis: Do entropic forces cause adaptive behavior?
by Artem Kaznatcheev in Evolutionary Games Group
Physicists are notorious for infecting other disciplines. Sometimes this can be extremely rewarding, but most of the time it is silly. I’ve already featured an example where one of the founders of algorithmic information theory completely missed the point of Darwinism; researchers working in statistical mechanics and information theory seem particularly susceptible to interdisciplinitis. The [...]... Read more »
Wissner-Gross, A.D., & Freer, C.E. (2013) Causal Entropic Forces. Phys. Rev. Lett., 110(16), 168702. info:/10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.168702
- April 21, 2013
- 04:31 AM
- 133 views
Heavy Stubble Is Most Attractive, Research Finds
by Andrew Porterfield in United Academics
It’s not quite clear why human males continue to have facial hair. There are other ways to keep warm, and we’ve lost our hair over most of the rest of our bodies (or they’re at best residual). But facial hair serves another important purpose—determining male attractiveness to females... Read more »
Dixson, B., & Brooks, R. (2013) The role of facial hair in women's perceptions of men's attractiveness, health, masculinity and parenting abilities. Evolution and Human Behavior, 34(3), 236-241. DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2013.02.003
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