Researchers found that name pronunciation plays a major role in the way people are perceived by colleagues and friends - and that those with more complicated names suffer at work.



The team of American and Australian scientists claim that the easier a person’s name is to say, the better their success in the work place and the more likely they are to get promoted.

{ Marie-Claire | Continue reading | Thanks Tim! }

photo { Pari Dukovic, Backstage at Prada, Milan }

Many academics are excited about the future of instant distribution of research. Right now the time lag between finishing a paper, and the relevant worldwide research community seeing it, is between 6 months and 2 years. This is because during that time, the paper is being peer reviewed, and peer review takes an incredibly long time. 2 years is roughly how long it used to take to send a letter abroad 300 years ago.

Many platforms are springing up which enable research distribution to be instant, so that the time lag between finishing a paper, and everyone in the relevant research community worldwide seeing it, is measured in hours and days, rather than months and years. Some of the strong platforms are Academia.edu, arXiv, Mendeley, ResearchGate and SSRN.

{ Richard Price/TechCrunch | Continue reading }

embroidery { Isabelle Boinot }

A new study led by two Florida State University marketing professors finds that some frontline service employees who are rewarded for hikes in customer loyalty and satisfaction also may engage in “service sweethearting,” a clandestine practice that costs their employers billions of dollars annually in lost revenue.

The study, the first to examine the employee and customer sides of this activity, will appear in the upcoming issue of the Journal of Marketing, a publication of the American Marketing Association. It identifies traits that may predispose some employees toward service sweethearting and may aid employers in weeding them out of the candidate pool. The study also reveals that in cases of sweethearting, customer loyalty is tied to the rogue employee rather than the company, so that firing the employee actually hurts the firm’s ability to retain customers.

The term service sweethearting describes the behavior of employees who provide friends and acquaintances with food and beverages or other free services that never appear on the bill. Though the practice is most prevalent in the hospitality industry, the potential for such behavior exists in any industry in which employees interact with customers at the point of sale, according to the study. In a retail setting, for example, a cashier may slide a product around a bar-code scanner, giving the false impression that a friend is paying for the item.

{ EurekAlert | Continue reading }

I’m sure you’ve had the conversation, at some point in your life, where you’ve discussed the fact that some words have prefixes or suffixes that indicate an antonym, but no antonym exists. For example, we say someone or some act is uncouth, but not couth; our hair can be unkempt, but not kempt; you can be disgruntled, but not gruntled. Those examples all depend on simple prefix removal, but such words need not be constrained in that way. Consider, for example, feckless, which might be matched with a term like feckful (but isn’t). These terms are frequently referred to, unimaginatively, as unpaired words.

A related issue is the cranberry morpheme, one of my favorite terms in linguistics. (…) Cranberry morphemes don’t have a meaning separate from their particular bound morphemes. You know what pre- means even if I don’t type out the rest of a word. Contrast that with the most common cranberry morphemes, such as -ceive in perceive, receive, or conceive. -ceive is not a suffix; it has no meaning outside of the context of the morphemes it attaches to. (…) So with cran-: unlike, say, the black in blackberry (an unbound morpheme), cran- has no intrinsic semantic definition.

{ Fredrik deBoer | Continue reading }

artwork { Robert Indiana, Source I, 1959 }

When you think about science fiction theme tunes, chances are there are a few that are especially stirring and heroic. Star Wars. 2001: A Space Odyssey. Star Trek: The Next Generation. Superman: The Movie. And all of these theme tunes have something in common: they rely on the same basic intervals.

We talked to music experts — including legendary composer Bear McCreary — to find out why so many famous theme tunes use the “perfect fifth” for their hook.

Most people will instantly recognize the first few notes in 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was originally known as “Also sprach Zarathustra” by Richard Strauss. It starts with a low C, and then goes up five notes to a G — that’s a perfect fifth right there. And then the next note is another C, up an octave from the first C.

But the Star Wars theme, by John Williams, relies on a similar progression. The first few sustained notes in Star Wars are a G, going up a perfect fifth to a D, and then a higher G. Williams also plays with a descending perfect fifth in the Superman: the Movie score. And his E.T.: The Extraterrestrial theme also starts with an ascending perfect fifth. (…)

“It has its basis in physics,” says McCreary. “It’s a physical reality.” There’s an actual physical phenomenon behind the perfect fifth, and the octave above that, called the “overtone series.” Here’s how it works, according to McCreary:

{ Wired | Continue reading }

By the late nineteen-nineties, olive oil—often cut with cheaper oils, such as hazelnut and sunflower seed—was the most adulterated agricultural product in the European Union. The E.U.’s anti-fraud office established an olive-oil task force, “yet fraud remains a major international problem,” Mueller wrote. “Olive oil is far more valuable than most other vegetable oils, but it is costly and time-consuming to produce—and surprisingly easy to doctor.”

Nearly five years later, fraud remains a problem.

{ The New Yorker | Continue reading }

To explain the pervasive role of humor in human social interaction and among mating partner preferences, Miller proposed that intentional humor evolved as an indicator of intelligence. To test this, we looked at the relationships among rater-judged humor, general intelligence, and the Big Five personality traits in a sample of 185 college-age students (115 women, 70 men).

General intelligence positively predicted rater-judged humor, independent of the Big Five personality traits. Extraversion also predicted rater-judged humor, although to a lesser extent than general intelligence. General intelligence did not interact with the sex of the participant in predicting rating scores on the humor production tasks.

The current study lends support to the prediction that effective humor production acts as an honest indicator of intelligence in humans. In addition, extraversion, and to a lesser extent, openness, may reflect motivational traits that encourage humor production.

{ Evolutionary Psychology | PDF }

In 50-200 million years all of Earth’s continents will meet again to form a single massive supercontinent around the North Pole. Move over Pangaea, meet our next supercontinent: Amasia.

{ Smaller Questions | full story }

photo { Robert Adams }

“Nor” expresses a negative condition. It literally means “and not.” You’re obligated to use the “nor” form if your sentence expresses a negative and follows it with another negative condition. “Neither the men nor the women were drunk” is a correct sentence because “nor” expresses that the women held the same negative condition as the men. The old rule is that “nor” typically follows “neither,” and “or” follows “either.” However, if neither “either” nor “neither” is used in a sentence, you should use “nor” to express a second negative, as long as the second negative is a verb. If the second negative is a noun, adjective, or adverb, you would use “or,” because the initial negative transfers to all conditions. e.g., He won’t eat broccoli or asparagus. The negative condition expressing the first noun (broccoli) is also used for the second (asparagus).

“May” implies a possibility. “Might” implies far more uncertainty. (…)

“Since” refers to time. “Because” refers to causation. e.g., Since I quit drinking I’ve married and had two children. e.g., Because I quit drinking I no longer wake up in my own vomit. (…)

Contrary to almost ubiquitous misuse, to be “nauseous” doesn’t mean you’ve been sickened: it actually means you possess the ability to produce nausea in others.

{ 20 Common Grammar Mistakes | Lit Reactor | Continue reading }

Police hold man on suspicion of stealing five tones of ice from a glacier in Patagonia to sell as designer ice cubes for cocktails.

Giant Crack in Antarctica About to Spawn New York-Size Iceberg.

After lifting a ban on porcupine hunting, the Pennsylvania Game Commission ran into a thorny problem: reports of a new black market for the rodents’ meat in Southeast Asia.

Cannibal who ate head of former lover proposes to Satan-worshipping vampire girlfriend behind bars of psychiatric unit.

Forever 21 condemned for selling Kurt Cobain’s Flipper shirt.

Wealthy Chinese have been snapping up contemporary art, top wines and some the world’s most expensive cars. Now they’re adding pigeons to their must-have list.

A study just published in Plos Biology has shown for the first time that human speech can been reconstructed from brain waves.

Just how ants create the highly efficient network of trails around their nests has never been fully understood. Now researchers think they’ve cracked it.

Design Performs a Key Role in Spider Webs, Scientists Say.

Are sexual and emotional infidelity equally upsetting to men and women?

Sex differences in feelings of guilt arising from infidelity.

An abundance of unwanted sexual opportunities perpetrated by insensitive, physically and sexually abusive men may be a factor in the expression of homosexuality in some women.

The young women were more likely to modulate their eating according to the eating pace of their same-sex dining companion.

The science of belly button fluff.

The synapse: where the magic happens.

The Direction of Gravity.

How Snowflakes Are Formed.

Cats–and most other animals–have a third eyelid. Related: The nictitating membrane (from Latin nictare, to blink) is a transparent or translucent third eyelid present in some animals.

The mismeasure of neuroscience.

Does online dating really work?

Online dating’s said to be the future of relationships, now that we’re all too busy to meet people in real life. But claims that websites can match you with your ideal partner using scientific algorithms are bull, according to a team of psychologists.

Being single is more expensive than being married.

How to Predict The Spread of News on Twitter. Computer scientists have discovered the four factors that make news stories popular on Twitter.

Facebook is not your typical dot.com but I believe it is heading for the same fate as many of the tech bubble dinosaurs of 10 years ago.

Sprint to lose money on iPhone until 2015. And: The iPhone is a nightmare for carriers.

Google’s Biggest Advertisers.

Google Maps Help Predict Meth Labs Before They Open.

How to skip ads on YouTube.

The logic of a Thomson Reuters takeover of the Financial Times.

The Mystery Monk Making Billions With 5-Hour Energy.

How Tumblr’s David Karp built a £500 million empire.

Youth unemployment across Europe.

Related: More evidence emerges that Spain and Portugal may bypass recession and go straight to depression.

Trent Arsenault has never had sex, but he’s the father of fifteen children—and counting. The more he antagonizes the FDA, and unnerves television audiences across America, the more his in-box is flooded with requests for his sperm.

What does the law say about autonomous vehicles?

Frank Ahearn, a forty-nine-year-old man who helps people disappear. See also: There are three key steps to disappearing. First, destroy old information about yourself.

NYC Still Marijuana Arrest Capital Of The World: Arrests Rose Again Last Year. Since 1977, marijuana possession in New York State has been decriminalized for amounts of 25 grams or less, as long as it’s not in public view.

The Department of City Planning recently completed its most ambitious study of parking in Manhattan in three decades. [NY Times]

Chicago Has Half Of The 10 Most Expensive Restaurants In America.

A young cowboy from Texas who joined the elite US Navy Seals became the most deadly sniper in American history. In a book published this month he provides an unusual insight into the psychology of a soldier who waits, watches and kills.

Nice Things to Say About Attila the Hun.

The plot was conceived over a round of drinks.

What did people do in a Medieval City?

The rise and fall of lap dancing.

The telling reasons why, at least in football, China is unlikely to rule the world in the near future.

New legal brief filed in Gordon vs.McGinley appeal.

Why @GSElevator Is a Fake.

Romanian model Ioana Spangenberg, “The Human Hourglass.”

Tragic divorced mail order bride is the new goth.

Horizontal Shower.

Bounce.

Transformer.

George Clooney lookalike winner.

Key cleaner.

How did we end up with a drinking age of 21 in the first place?

In short, we ended up with a national minimum age of 21 because of the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984. This law basically told states that they had to enact a minimum drinking age of 21 or lose up to ten percent of their federal highway funding. Since that’s serious coin, the states jumped into line fairly quickly. Interestingly, this law doesn’t prohibit drinking per se; it merely cajoles states to outlaw purchase and public possession by people under 21. Exceptions include possession (and presumably drinking) for religious practices, while in the company of parents, spouses, or guardians who are over 21, medical uses, and during the course of legal employment.

{ Mental Floss | Continue reading }

photo { Miss Aniela }

{ Product Differentiation by Aesthetic and Creative Design: A Psychological and Neural Framework of Design Thinking, 2010 | Continue reading }

photo { Christian Patterson }

Scientists have disagreed for decades about how the brain processes metaphors, those figures of speech that liken one thing to another without using “like” or “as.” One camp claims that when we hear a metaphor—a friend tells us she’s had a rough day—we understand the expression only because we’ve heard it so many times. The brain learns that “rough” means both “abrasive” and “bad,” this camp says, and it toggles from one definition to the other. The other camp claims the brain calls on sensory experiences, such as what roughness feels like, to comprehend the metaphor. Researchers from both camps have scanned the brain for signs of sensory activity triggered by metaphors, but these past studies, which tested a variety of metaphors without targeting specific senses or regions of the brain, have come up dry.

Neurologist Krish Sathian of Emory University in Atlanta wondered whether using metaphors specific to only one of the senses might be a better strategy. He and his colleagues settled on touch and asked seven college students to distinguish between different textures while their brains were scanned. (…)

The result suggests the brain’s grasp of metaphors is grounded in perception, the team reports online this month in Brain & Language. “We were really excited. This is pretty clear evidence” for the metaphor-through-perception camp, Sathian says.

{ Science | Continue reading }

{ 1 | 2 }

On March 14, 1932, Eastman died by suicide with a single gunshot to the heart, leaving a note which read, “To my friends: my work is done. Why wait?”

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }

photo { Gregory Crewdson }

Since 2007, Bill Gates has given away $28B, 48% of his net worth. Frugal Dad estimates that he’s saved almost 6 million lives. I haven’t double-checked his sources, but it’s a plausible estimate.

Back in the nineties, Bill Gates was experiencing far less favorable publicity - and legal persecution.  The U.S. government sued Microsoft for antitrust violations. In 2000, Alex Tabarrok estimated that the antitrust case had cost Microsoft shareholders $140B. Yes, Microsoft ultimately reached a relatively favorable settlement. But Gates probably would have been billions richer if antitrust laws didn’t exist.

You might say, “Who cares? He can afford it.” But hold on. We’re talking about a great philanthropist. If Bill Gates were $5B richer, he almost certainly would have increased his charitable giving. A conservative assumption is that he would have stuck with his current ratio, giving away 48% of the extra $5B. (…) If Gates’ philanthropy is as efficacious as most people think, there’s a shocking implication: The antitrust case against Microsoft had a massive body count.

{ EconLib | Continue reading }

Discoveries of modern biology are forcing a re-evaluation of even the central pillars of neo-Darwinian evolution. Anthropologists study the processes and results of biological and biocultural evolution, so they must be aware of the scope and nature of these changes in biology. (…)

Three decades of intense microbiological, biochemical, and genome research have resulted in significant new understanding of the evolutionary process. Central to this understanding has been the sequencing and functional decoding of the genomes of many species, including Homo sapiens sapiens. In short, biology is currently negotiating a synthesis of the same gravity as the modern synthesis of mid-20th century.

In 2009 E.V. Koonin wrote that “in the post-genomic era, all the major tenets of the modern synthesis have been, if not outright overturned, replaced by a new and incomparably more complex vision of the key aspects of evolution.”

{ eJournal of
Anthropological and Related Sciences | Continue reading }

photo { Graham Smith }

Do People Know What They Want: A Similar or Complementary Partner?

In the last few decades numerous studies have been carried out on the characteristics individuals value most in a mate. Several studies have, for instance, shown that individuals, especially men, highly value a potential mate’s physical attractiveness.

Much more scarce are studies that relate individuals’ own characteristics to those they desire in a potential mate. With regard to these “relative” mate preferences two hypotheses have been presented.

First, according to the “similarity-attraction hypothesis” individuals feel most attracted to potential partners who, in important domains, are similar to themselves. Similar individuals are assumed to be attractive because they validate our beliefs about the world and ourselves and reduce the risk of conflicts. Not surprisingly therefore, similarity between partners contributes to relationship satisfaction. Because a happy and long-lasting intimate relationship contributes to both psychological and physical health, similarity between partners increases their own and their offspring’s chances of survival by helping maintain (the quality of) the pair bond.

In contrast, according to the “complementarity hypothesis” individuals feel most attracted to potential partners who complement them, an assumption that reflects the saying that “opposites attract.” Complementary individuals are assumed to be so attractive because they enhance the likelihood that one’s needs will be gratified. For example, young women who lack economic resources may feel attracted to older men who have acquired economic resources and therefore may be good providers. In addition, from an evolutionary perspective, one might argue that seeking a complementary mate, rather than a similar one, may help prevent inbreeding.

Studies on mate selection have consistently found support for the “similarity- attraction” hypothesis. Homogamy has been reported for numerous characteristics such as physical attractiveness, attachment style, political and religious attitudes, socio-economic background, level of education and IQ. In contrast, support for the “complementarity hypothesis” is much scarcer. Although many individuals occasionally feel attracted to “opposites,” attractions between opposites often do not develop into serious intimate relationships and, when they do, these relationships often end prematurely.

{ Evolutionary Psychology | PDF }

How would things change if Google and Bing went down for 24 hours, and there wasn’t a way around the block?

If your first thought is to do your online searches through Yahoo!, you will run into another roadblock. Since 2010, Yahoo! searches are powered by Bing. Can you name any other search engine sites off the top of your head? (…)

Losing search sites is only the tip of the iceberg. Google and Bing also provide extensive services in other areas, one of the most obvious being email—Gmail alone has 350 million users. Blacking out Gmail would certainly affect all these people, but it would also affect everyone trying to reach them.

{ Naked Capitalism | Continue reading }

Last week, I got a notice from Twitter saying the Manhattan District Attorney’s office had subpoenaed my account activity for a three-month period between September and December of last year. On October 1, I was arrested along with 700 or so other people marching across the Brooklyn Bridge as part of an early Occupy Wall Street demonstration. (…)

Why was it Twitter who got subpoenaed even though they’re my words the DA wants to see?

The short answer is: they’re not my words. Not in the legal sense at least. Part of the Twitter user agreement is that the Tweets belong to the company, not to the user. As far as the law is concerned, my online self is an informational aspect of a legal entity named Twitter, not me. That means if someone wants to use my statements against me in court, it’s not me they have to call, it’s that little blue birdie. In this context the term “microblogging” gets some new meaning: Twitter’s users really are unpaid content producers for a giant microblog hosting site.

{ Malcolm Harris/Shareable | Continue reading }

related { Will the Web Break? }

photo { Guy Bourdin }