National clown shortage may be approaching, trade organizations fear
11 arrested for serving human meat at Nigerian hotel restaurant.
In U.S., 14% of Those Aged 24 to 34 Are Living With Parents
Even fact will not change first impressions
Findings suggest that ovulating women have evolved to prefer mates who display sexy traits – such as a masculine body type and facial features, dominant behavior and certain scents – but not traits typically desired in long-term mates.
For mainstream listening, about 30% of the artists in a typical male’s listening rotation won’t be found in a typical female listening rotation, and vice versa.
In this new study, the research team sought to identify which areas of the brain differentiate high and low dream recallers.
The truth about the left brain / right brain relationship
How Aspirin Works Against Cancer
The Full-Fat Paradox: Whole Milk May Keep Us Lean
Smoking cessation is associated with reduced depression, anxiety, and stress and improved positive mood and quality of life compared with continuing to smoke.
Why Does White Noise Help People Sleep?
People think that there’s a DNA test that can prove if somebody is Native American or not. There isn’t.
Termite-Inspired Robots Build With Bricks
Target’s cybersecurity team raised concerns months before hack
Apple and Google say they’re tired of being slapped with baseless patent suits that cost them millions in legal fees.
Subscriptions to music services are expected to more than double by 2017, but because those services pay 60% to 70% of their revenue to record labels and artists, the entire sector is intrinsically unprofitable.
US police deploy 3D scanner to capture accidents and crime scenes Related: A Gadget Used to Scan the Tower of Pisa Is Helping Police Fight Crime
Biofeedback: This video game knows when you’re scared—and gets scarier.
List of unsolved problems in philosophy
Is the Universe a Simulation? [NY Times]
The words ‘here’ and ‘there’ in Japanese, Korean and Tamil
Cameron Diaz Encourages Women to Keep Their Pubic Hair in Her New Book English syntax provides you with many ways to phrase things, and many options for ensuring that you don’t puzzle your readers.
Vice Seeks Copy Editor “for it’s upcoming Vice News website”
How to succeed
How Not to Die: 20 Survival Tips You Must Know
Nike to release self-tying shoes based on the pair worn by Marty McFly in “Back to the Future II.”
Maps of Paradise
Crystal Head Vodka Forensic Facial Reconstruction
every day the same again |
February 17th, 2014
It was about a study by Dean Snow reporting that, contrary to decades of archaeological dogma, many of the first artists were women. […]
Another group of researchers is claiming the study’s methods were unsound. […] Snow’s study focused on the famous 12,000- to 40,000-year-old handprints found on cave walls in France and Spain. Because these hands generally appear near pictures of bison and other big game, scholars had long believed that the art was made by male hunters. Snow tested that notion by comparing the relative lengths of fingers in the handprints […] because among modern people, women tend to have ring and index fingers of about the same length, whereas men’s ring fingers tend to be longer than their index fingers. […] Snow developed an algorithm that could predict the sex of a given handprint. […]
The new study, published Monday in the Journal of Archaeological Science, found that Snow’s algorithm predicted female hands fairly well, but was useless for males, making it overall a bad predictor of sex.
{ Phenomena | Continue reading }
flashback, genders, science |
February 14th, 2014
Experiments on mice are widely used to help determine which new cancer therapies stand a good chance of working in human patients. Such studies are not perfect and, all too often, what works in a rodent produces little or no benefit in people. This has led researchers to explore the ways in which mice and men are dissimilar, in order to pick apart why the responses are different. A new study now proposes that the temperature in which lab mice are kept is one thing that does matter.
{ The Economist | Continue reading }
animals, science |
February 14th, 2014
Researchers say ‘outsourcing’ parts of a relationship could improve it. An agreed, non-monogamous relationship would, in some cases, improve the relationship.
{ Daily Mail | Continue reading | via gettingsome }
related { High divorce rates and low marital satisfaction are a direct result of partners’ inability to meet ‘psychological expectations’ }
relationships |
February 14th, 2014
This article examines cognitive links between romantic love and creativity and between sexual desire and analytic thought based on construal level theory. It suggests that when in love, people typically focus on a long-term perspective, which should enhance holistic thinking and thereby creative thought, whereas when experiencing sexual encounters, they focus on the present and on concrete details enhancing analytic thinking. Because people automatically activate these processing styles when in love or when they experience sex, subtle or even unconscious reminders of love versus sex should suffice to change processing modes. Two studies explicitly or subtly reminded participants of situations of love or sex and found support for this hypothesis.
{ Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin | PDF }
art { Horyon Lee }
psychology, relationships |
February 13th, 2014
Now there is hope in the form of new genome-engineering tools, particularly one called CRISPR. This technology could allow researchers to perform microsurgery on genes, precisely and easily changing a DNA sequence at exact locations on a chromosome. Along with a technique called TALENs, invented several years ago, and a slightly older predecessor based on molecules called zinc finger nucleases, CRISPR could make gene therapies more broadly applicable, providing remedies for simple genetic disorders like sickle-cell anemia and eventually even leading to cures for more complex diseases involving multiple genes.
{ Technology Review | Continue reading }
genes |
February 11th, 2014
Exposure to bright light is a second possible approach to increasing serotonin without drugs. Bright light is, of course, a standard treatment for seasonal depression, but a few studies also suggest that it is an effective treatment for nonseasonal depression and also reduces depressed mood in women with premenstrual dysphoric disorder39 and in pregnant women suffering from depression. […]
The fourth factor that could play a role in raising brain serotonin is diet. […] The idea, common in popular culture, that a high-protein food such as turkey will raise brain tryptophan and serotonin is, unfortunately, false. Another popular myth that is widespread on the Internet is that bananas improve mood because of their serotonin content. Although it is true that bananas contain serotonin, it does not cross the blood–brain barrier.
{ Journal of Psychiatry & Neuroscience | Continue reading }
food, drinks, restaurants, health, neurosciences |
February 11th, 2014
drugs |
February 10th, 2014
Recent research on circadian rhythms has suggested a reliable method to reduce or even completely prevent jet lag. […]
Circadian rhythms are the roughly 24-hour biological rhythms that drive changes within humans and most other organisms. […] Usually these rhythms align with the environment’s natural light and dark cycle. […]
Whether circadian rhythms align with the environment is determined by factors such as exercise, melatonin, and light. Bright light exposure is the most powerful way to cause a phase shift — an advance or delay in circadian rhythms. Light in the early morning makes you wake up earlier (“phase advance”); light around bed time makes you wake up later (“phase delay”).
This simple insight can be used to minimise jet lag. For example, Helen Burgess and colleagues from the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago studied whether jet lag could be prevented by phase shifting before departing. After three days of light exposure in the morning, the participants’ circadian rhythms shifted by an average of 2.1 hours. This means they would feel less jet lagged, and would be fully adjusted to the new time zone around two days earlier. Several field studies have reached similar conclusions.
{ Scientific American | Continue reading }
Narcolepsy is a disorder of the immune system where it inappropriately attacks parts of the brain involved in sleep regulation. The result is that affected people are not able to properly regulate sleep cycles meaning they can fall asleep unexpectedly, sometimes multiple times, during the day.
One effect of this is that the boundary between dreaming and everyday life can become a little bit blurred and a new study by sleep psychologist Erin Wamsley aimed to see how often this occurs and what happens when it does.
{ Mind Hacks | Continue reading }
related { The U.S. is addicted to advice. Americans honestly believe that someone out there knows how to fix all our problems. }
art { Nathan James }
guide, sleep |
February 10th, 2014
One of them had a connection with dealers from South Jamaica — and brokered an arrangement where the New Yorkers would purchase narcotics from their California partners and then sell the drugs on consignment in the city, the sources said.
Their first transaction went smoothly, with the California trio shipping one kilo to their Queens partners, who sold the coke and promptly mailed a share of the money back to California, according to the sources.
But the New York dealers were slow sending the Californians their cut after a second transaction, the sources said.
And in their third and final deal, the South Jamaica goons not only kept all the proceeds after selling three kilos — they then tried to lure their business partners to New York City to assassinate them, according to the sources.
But only Woodard showed up on Dec. 10, 2012 […] and was murdered execution-style by a gunman in broad daylight on busy West 58th Street off Seventh Avenue.
{ NY Post | Continue reading }
drugs, guns, new york |
February 10th, 2014
There are two basic critical responses to today’s art market. One argues that the market has nothing to do with art, and that whatever happens in the market is irrelevant to the actual content, meaning and love of art. Art is to the art market as sailing is to the business of hawking mega-yachts to multibillionaires. The other view, succinctly stated by Perl, is more pessimistic: The art market is ruining art, spiritually and as a cultural practice.
{ Washington Post | Continue reading | via gettingsome }
art, economics |
February 9th, 2014
{ North Brother Island was in use by New York City from 1885 to 1963 as a hospital complex to quarantine and treat people suffering from smallpox and typhoid fever then a rehab center and a housing project for WWII vets. In the 1950s a center opened to treat adolescent drug addicts. Heroin addicts were confined to this island and locked in a room until they were clean. By the early 1960s widespread staff corruption and patient recidivism forced the facility to close. It is now uninhabited and designated as a bird sanctuary. | Rsvlts | more photos | Read more: NY Times, Wikipedia }
architecture, new york |
February 6th, 2014
He booted up a smartphone in a Moscow café and watched as unidentified attackers immediately began to cyber-assault it.
{ Slashdot | Continue reading }
spy & security, technology |
February 6th, 2014
The group of people who took revenge even after a period of time still struggled with more vengeful feelings than the people who did not take revenge. Although 58% experienced satisfaction and 16% experienced triumph, only 19% reported their vengeful feelings to be completely gone, compared with 40% of the people who did not take revenge.
{ International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology | via Mind Hacks | Continue reading }
As with hipsters, few people cop to being haters. Yet visit almost any well-trafficked comment thread and haters outnumber the rest.
{ TNI | Continue reading }
psychology |
February 5th, 2014
Biker is buried in leathers astride his Harley in a huge transparent casket
Jewellery store thief who kissed a hostage out of compassion was tracked down through his DNA.
The globe is facing a “tidal wave” of cancer, and restrictions on alcohol and sugar need to be considered, say World Health Organization scientists.
Researchers Develop “Envy-Free” Algorithm for Settling Disputes from Divorce to Inheritance
Study finds evidence that stock prices can be predicted.
The exhaustion of a normal day decreases your capacity for self-control: At night, you are more likely to lie and cheat
Psychologists explain how attractiveness prevents the recognition of faces
Study finds feeling ‘in control’ may increase longevity
Studies find new links between sleep duration and depression; Sub-optimal sleep may activate depressive genes, increase risk for major depression.
Weird effect of outer space: Low gravity may inhibit the growth and spread of thyroid cancer cells
Exposure to farming in early life protects against development of asthma, hay fever, and allergies
Many of us instinctively turn to sad music when we’re feeling down. Does this counter-intuitive strategy really work? Newly published research suggests it can.
The musical deficits associated with amusia (tone deafness) may have been exaggerated.
Scientists create bone-like material that is lighter than water but as strong as steel
Why the Promise of Cheap Fuel from Super Bugs Fell Short
Evidence Emerges That Google’s Quantum Computer May Not Be Quantum After All
Fraudster paid UK government to help promote fake bomb detectors
Confessions of an ex-TSA agent
Many gang members have been priced out of the neighborhood, but on Fridays and Saturdays, they make a pilgrimage back to their roots.
Diagnosing Mental Illness in Ancient Greece and Rome
A world where women could vote and had taken the traditional place of men as drinking, smoking, gambling barflies (1908)
Can the sum of all positive integers = -1/12? It can, sort of…
Why your ears keep ringing (and what you can do about it)
A porn star’s guide to sexual consent
Couple having car sex in garage die of carbon monoxide poisoning
Carma Sutra
Tampon flasks [Thanks Tim]
every day the same again |
February 5th, 2014
{ Journalists at Sochi are live-tweeting their hotel experiences }
The colossal project, which cost more than $50 billion – more than all previous Winter Olympics combined – was expected to turn Sochi into a sporting paradise, packed with arenas and a new airport. Instead, corruption and construction accidents have plagued preparations, with hotels still unfinished just days before the opening ceremony.
{ Zero Hedge | Continue reading }
economics, haha, press, sport |
February 5th, 2014
Memory is a cognitive process which is intrinsically linked to language. One of the fundamental tasks that the brain carries out when undertaking a linguistic activity - holding a conversation, for example - is the semantic process.
On carrying out this task, the brain compares the words it hears with those that it recalls from previous events, in order to recognise them and to unravel their meaning. This semantic process is a fundamental task for enabling the storing of memories in our brain, helping us to recognise words and to memorise names and episodes in our mind. However, as everyone knows, this is not a process that functions 100% perfectly at times; a lack of precision that, on occasions, gives rise to the creation of false memories.
{ Basque Research | Continue reading }
Our memory is a poor way of recording events, a study has found, as it rewrites the past with current information, updating recollections with new experiences. […] Their results raise questions over the reliability of eyewitness court testimony, the team concluded.
{ Independent | Continue reading }
photo { Andrew and Carissa Gallo }
memory |
February 5th, 2014
