Life is not a long slow decline from sunlit uplands towards the valley of death. It is, rather, a U-bend.

When people start out on adult life, they are, on average, pretty cheerful. Things go downhill from youth to middle age until they reach a nadir commonly known as the mid-life crisis. So far, so familiar. The surprising part happens after that. Although as people move towards old age they lose things they treasure—vitality, mental sharpness and looks—they also gain what people spend their lives pursuing: happiness.

This curious finding has emerged from a new branch of economics that seeks a more satisfactory measure than money of human well-being. Conventional economics uses money as a proxy for utility—the dismal way in which the discipline talks about happiness. But some economists, unconvinced that there is a direct relationship between money and well-being, have decided to go to the nub of the matter and measure happiness itself.

{ The Economist | Continue reading }

photo { The Haven of Contentment }

When it comes to genes, evolutionary biologists have traditionally favored seniority. Genes thought to be most essential to life must be ancient and conserved, the assumption goes, handed down from species to species as the basic instructions of life. That sharing is evident in early developmental stages, which 19th-century biologist Ernst Haeckel observed to be very similar between different organisms in his famed recapitulation theory. The genes that drive those early stages of development are also shared by creatures as different as flies, mice, and humans, lending support to the idea that the most important genes for life go a long way back on the evolutionary tree.

By comparison, new genes haven’t gotten nearly as much credit. Arising more recently in evolution’s history, rookies that only count their age in tens of millions of years were thought to be less important - providing new functions and features that were nice, but not essential. If old genes were the bread and butter of life…

“Maybe the new genes serve a function like vinegar or soy sauce,” said Manyuan Long, professor of ecology & evolution at the University of Chicago. “They make your life better, change behavior, help a male find females more efficiently, but that’s all.”

But that ageist perspective is shaken in this week’s Science, courtesy of an exciting new study from Long’s laboratory. Using the fly species Drosophila melanogaster, Long, graduate student Sidi Chen, and postdoctoral researcher Yong Zhang tested whether silencing a new gene would be as fatal as silencing an old one. (…)

Another surprise implication of the data is the speed with which new genes can become an indispensable part of a species’ genome. When a new gene appears in a species due to evolution, one would not expect it to be immediately crucial - otherwise, how did the species survive before its arrival? But like a new employee in an office, a new gene can make itself essential by forming relationships with older, essential genes through what are called gene-gene interactions. Before long, the new gene has become a key part of the species’ survival…and there’s no turning back.

{ University of Chicago | Continue reading }

photo { Jeremy Liebman }

In a study published in May, Fisher and her colleagues asked 15 people who had recently been dumped but were still in love to consider two pictures—one of the former partner and one of a neutral acquaintance—while an MRI scanner measured their brain activity. When looking at their exes, the spurned lovers showed activity in parts of the brain’s reward system, just as happy lovers do. But the neural pathways associated with cravings and addictions were activated too, as was a brain region associated with the distress that accompanies physical pain.

Rejected lovers also showed increased neural response in regions involved in assessing behavior and controlling emotions. “These people were working on the problem, thinking, what did I do, what should I do next, what did I learn from this,” Fisher says. And the longer ago the breakup was, the weaker the activity in the attachment-linked region. In other words: Love hurts, but time heals.

{ Discover | Continue reading }

photo { Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster, From Here to Eternity, 1953 }

New research in Psychological Science found that the fear of being the target of malicious envy makes people act nicer to people they think might be jealous of them.

There are two types of envy says Niels van de Ven of Tilburg University and his coauthors: benign envy and malicious envy. People with benign envy are motivated to improve themselves, so they could be more like the person they envied. People with malicious envy want to bring the people above them down.

{ APS | Continue reading }

photo { David Stewart }

One in every 10,000 chickens is born gynandromorphic: half male and half female.

Developmental biologist Michael Clinton expected to find that the birds had abnormal cells. Instead he found healthy male and female cells. These cells keep their identity even when injected into an embryo of the opposite sex, indicating that their gender is innate.

The discovery that each cell in a chicken can be inherently male or female is a huge departure from biological dogma, which holds that hormones control sex characteristics in vertebrates. Gender-imprinted cells may exist in us, too. Male and female cells might respond slightly differently to hormonal signals, which may partially explain differences in male and female behavior and susceptibility to some diseases. 

{ Discover | Continue reading }

photo { Brandon Pavan }

Harder-to-read fonts boost student learning. Connor Diemand-Yauman and his colleagues think the effect occurs because fonts that are more awkward to read encourage deeper processing of the to-be-learned material.

{ BPS | Continue reading }

The leg-to-body ratio (LBR) is a morphological index that has been shown to influence a person’s attractiveness. In our research, 3,103 participants from 27 nations rated the physical attractiveness of seven male and seven female silhouettes varying in LBR. We found that male and female silhouettes with short and excessively long legs were perceived as less attractive across all nations. Hence, the LBR may significantly influence perceptions of physical attractiveness across nations.

{ JCC/SAGE | Continue reading }

{ James Joyce }

Although fiction treats themes of psychological importance, it has been excluded from psychology because it is seen as flawed empirical method. But fiction is not empirical truth. It is simulation that runs on minds of readers just as computer simulations run on computers. In any simulation coherence truths have priority over correspondences. Moreover, in the simulations of fiction, personal truths can be explored that allow readers to experience emotions — their own emotions — and understand aspects of them that are obscure, in relation to contexts in which the emotions arise.

{ Fiction as Cognitive and Emotional Simulation by Keith Oatley | Continue reading }

images { 1. Pinocchio | 2. Maurizio Cattelan, Daddy Daddy, 2008 | 3 }

Is the desire to know other people’s secrets a natural instinct – or a vulgar vice?

The need to maintain a barrier against the outside world may be one of our most basic human urges; but another is the lust to know the unknown, to observe and indulge in the privacy of others. In his book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life the sociologist Erving Goffman demonstrates how we all perform in various guises and to different groups of people, as if we were on stage. We preserve our “backstage” selves as an essential part of our identity – and it is this protected part of our personality that we attempt to mask, while harbouring a strong desire to penetrate those of others.

{ New Humanist | Continue reading }

photo { Man Ray }

A link between quantum mechanics and topology implies the existence of an entirely new state of matter. And physicists have already found the first example. (…)

A key point here is that the circles in a flat 2 dimensional plane cannot form a Borromean ring.

{ The Physics arXiv Blog | Continue reading }

Evolutionary biologists suggest there is a correlation between the size of the cerebral neocortex and the number of social relationships a primate species can have. Humans have the largest neocortex and the widest social circle — about 150, according to the scientist Robin Dunbar. Dunbar’s number — 150 — also happens to mirror the average number of friends people have on Facebook. Because of airplanes and telephones and now social media, human beings touch the lives of vastly more people than did our ancestors, who might have encountered only 150 people in their lifetime. Now the possibility of connection is accelerating at an extraordinary pace. As the great biologist E.O. Wilson says, “We’re in uncharted territory.”

{ TIME’s 2010 Person of the Year: Mark Zuckerberg | Continue reading | A map of the world, as drawn by Facebook }

The question now, as humanity pours greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at an accelerating rate, is not whether Antarctica will begin to warm in earnest, but how rapidly. The melting of Antarctica’s northernmost region — the Antarctic Peninsula — is already well underway, representing the first breach in an enormous citadel of cold that holds 90 percent of the world’s ice.

{ Environment 360 | Yale | Continue reading }

photo { Tony Stamolis }

By most all accounts a brilliant mind, Fischer was perhaps the most visionary chess player since José Raul Capablanca, a Cuban who held the world title for six years in the 1920s. Fischer’s innovative, daring play — at age 13, he defeated senior master (and former U.S. Open champion) Donald Byrne in what is sometimes called “The Game of the Century” — made him a hero figure to millions in the United States and throughout the world. In 1957, Fischer became the youngest winner of the U.S. chess championship — he was just 14 — before going on to beat Spassky for the world title in 1972.

But Fischer forfeited that title just three years later, refusing to defend his crown under rules proposed by the World Chess Federation, and he played virtually no competitive chess in ensuing decades, retreating, instead, into isolation and seeming paranoia. Because of a series of rankly anti-Semitic public utterances and his praise, on radio, for the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, at his death, Fischer was seen by much of the world as spoiled, arrogant and mean-spirited.

In recent years, however, researchers have come to understand that Bobby Fischer was psychologically troubled from early childhood. Careful examination of his life and family shows that he likely suffered with mental illness that may never have been properly diagnosed or treated.

{ Miller-McCune | Continue reading | Donald Byrne vs Robert James Fischer, “The Game of the Century,” 1956 | select Java Viewer and press set }

One of the most surprising findings is that people have a natural aversion to inequality. We tend to prefer a world in which wealth is more evenly distributed, even if it means we have to get by with less.

Consider this recent experiment by a team of scientists at Caltech, published earlier this year in the journal Nature. The study began with 40 subjects blindly picking ping-pong balls from a hat. Half of the balls were labeled “rich,” while the other half were labeled “poor.” The rich subjects were immediately given $50, while the poor got nothing. Such is life: It’s rarely fair.

The subjects were then put in a brain scanner and given various monetary rewards, from $5 to $20. They were also told about a series of rewards given to a stranger. The first thing the scientists discovered is that the response of the subjects depended entirely on their starting financial position. For instance, people in the “poor” group showed much more activity in the reward areas of the brain (such as the ventral striatum) when given $20 in cash than people who started out with $50. This makes sense: If we have nothing, then every little something becomes valuable.

But then the scientists found something strange. When people in the “rich” group were told that a poor stranger was given $20, their brains showed more reward activity than when they themselves were given an equivalent amount. In other words, they got extra pleasure from the gains of someone with less.

{ Wall Street Journal | Continue reading }

photos { David Stewart | Valerie Chiang }

Repetition is used everywhere—advertising, politics and the media—but does it really persuade us?

It seems too simplistic that just repeating a persuasive message should increase its effect, but that’s exactly what psychological research finds (again and again). Repetition is one of the easiest and most widespread methods of persuasion. In fact it’s so obvious that we sometimes forget how powerful it is.

People rate statements that have been repeated just once as more valid or true than things they’ve heard for the first time. (…)

Easy to understand = true

This is what psychologists call the illusion of truth effect and it arises at least partly because familiarity breeds liking. As we are exposed to a message again and again, it becomes more familiar. Because of the way our minds work, what is familiar is also true. Familiar things require less effort to process and that feeling of ease unconsciously signals truth (this is called cognitive fluency). (…)

Repetition is effective almost across the board when people are paying little attention, but when they are concentrating and the argument is weak, the effect disappears (Moons et al., 2008). In other words, it’s no good repeating a weak argument to people who are listening carefully.

{ PsyBlog | Continue reading }

Many procrastinators do not realize that they are perfectionists, for the simple reason that they have never done anything perfectly, or even nearly so. They have never been told that something they did was perfect. (…)

Perfectionism is a matter of fantasy, not reality. Here’s how it works in my case.  I am assigned some task, say, refereeing a manuscript for a publisher. I accept the task. (…) Immediately my fantasy life kicks in. I imagine myself writing the most wonderful referees report. (…)

This is perfectionism in the relevant sense. It’s not a matter of really ever doing anything that is perfect or even comes close. It is a matter of using tasks you accept to feed your fantasy of doing things perfectly, or at any rate extremely well. (…)

Well, seven or eight hours later I am done setting up the proxy server. (…)

Then what happens? I go on to other things. Most likely, the manuscript slowly disappears under subsequent memos, mail, half-eaten sandwiches, piles of files, and other things. (See the essay on “Horizontal Organization”.)  I put it on my to do list, but I never look at my to do list. Then, in about six weeks, I get an email from the publisher, asking when she can expect the referee  report. Maybe, if she has dealt with me before, this email arrives a bit before I promised the report. Maybe if she hasn’t, it arrives a few days after the deadline.

At this point, finally, I snap into action. My fantasy structure changes. I no longer fantasize writing the world’s best referee job ever. (…) At this point, I dig through the files, sandwiches, unopened correspondence, and, after a bit of panic (…) I find it. I take a couple of hours, read it, write a perfectly adequate report, and send it off.

{ John Perry | Continue reading }

The brain may manage anger differently depending on whether we’re lying down or sitting up, according to a study published in Psychological Science. (…)

A field of study called ‘embodied cognition‘ has found lots of curious interactions between how the mind and brain manage our responses depending on the possibilities for action.

For example, we perceive distances as shorter when we have a tool in our hand and intend to use it, and wearing a heavy backpack causes hills to appear steeper.

Anger is a prime example where we feel motivated to ‘do something’. In the sitting position we’re much more ready to approach whatever’s annoying us than when we’re flat on our backs, and the researchers wondered whether these body positions were interacting with our motivations to change the brain’s response.

{ MindHacks | Continue reading }

photo { Tierney Gearon }

{ Will initials carved on the side of a tree always remain at the same height? Yup. | The Straight Dope | Continue reading }

{ Scientific American | full story }

related { Astronomers Find First Evidence Of Other Universes }

“The Library of Babel” is a short story by Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), conceiving of a universe in the form of a vast library containing all possible 410-page books of a certain format.

Borges’s narrator describes how his universe consists of an enormous expanse of interlocking hexagonal rooms, each of which contains the bare necessities for human survival—and four walls of bookshelves. Though the order and content of the books is random and apparently completely meaningless, the inhabitants believe that the books contain every possible ordering of just a few basic characters (letters, spaces and punctuation marks). Though the majority of the books in this universe are pure gibberish, the library also must contain, somewhere, every coherent book ever written, or that might ever be written, and every possible permutation or slightly erroneous version of every one of those books. The narrator notes that the library must contain all useful information, including predictions of the future, biographies of any person, and translations of every book in all languages.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }

Helbing’s list of websites that are potential sources of data for an Earth Simulator (…)

Internet and historical snapshots

The Internet Archive / Wayback machine offers permanent access for researchers, historians, scholars, people with disabilities, and the general public to historical collections that exist in digital format. Founded in 1996, now the Internet Archive includes texts, audio, moving images, and software as well as archived

The Knowledge Centers is a collection of links to other resources for finding Web pages as they used to exist in the past.

Whenago provides quick access to historical information about what happened in the past on a given day.

(…)

Text mining on the Web

The Observatorium project focuses on complex network dynamics in the Internet, proposing to monitor its evolution in real-time, with the general objective of better understanding the processes of knowledge generation and opinion dynamics.

We Feel Fine 
is a database of several million human feelings, harvested from blogs and social pages in the Web. Using a series of playful interfaces, the feelings can be searched and sorted across a number of demographic slices. Web api available as well.

CyberEmotions focuses on the role of collective emotions in creating, forming and breaking-up ecommunities. It makes available for download three datasets containing news and comments from the BBC News forum, Digg and MySpace, only for academic research and only after the submission of an application form.

{ The Physics arXiv | Continue reading }