The Science Category Archive

Welcome to the Science archives. The posts are listed in chronological order. Click the post title to read more.

March 3rd, 2009

You’ll Pay to Know What You Really Feel

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In two new studies, researchers who study consumer behavior argue that interrupting an experience, whether dreary or pleasant, can make it significantly more intense.

“The punch line is that commercials make TV programs more enjoyable to watch. Even bad commercials,” said Leif Nelson, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of California, San Diego, and a co-author of the new research. “When I tell people this, they just kind of stare at me, in disbelief. The findings are simultaneously implausible and empirically coherent.” [...]

The new consumer research analyzed similar dynamics at a moment-to-moment level. In one experiment, Dr. Nelson, along with Tom Meyvis and Jeff Galak of New York University, had 87 undergraduates watch an episode of the sitcom “Taxi.” Half watched it as it was originally broadcast, with commercials for the Jewelry Factory Store and the law office of Michael Brownstein, among other ads. The other half watched the show straight through, without commercials.

After the show was over, the students rated how much they enjoyed it, using an 11-point scale and comparing it with the sitcom “Happy Days,” which they were all familiar with.. Those who saw “Taxi” without commercials preferred “Happy Days”, but those who saw the original show, Jewelry Factory Store and all, preferred “Taxi” by a significant margin.

Seriously — It’s worth reading the Full Article at The New York Times

March 3rd, 2009

Apparently, People Don’t Steal As Much Porn in Utah

s640x480A study by a Harvard Business School professor shows that Utah outpaces the more conservative states — which all tend to purchase more Internet porn than other states.

Online porn subscription rates are higher in states that enacted conservative legislation banning same-sex marriage or civil unions and where surveys show support for conservative positions on religion, gender roles and sexuality, according to an analysis published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. [...]

Utah has the nation’s highest online porn subscription rate per thousand home broadband users, at 5.47, while the nearby states of Idaho and Montana showed the lowest rates of 1.98 and 1.92, respectively, according to the study.

Full Article at The Salt Lake Tribune (via KFB)

January 26th, 2009

Jim Beam Has A Postive Effect On Erections

b6y6iwDespite traditional views about the effects of booze on male performance, new research suggests that moderate drinking actually protects against impotence in the long term – perhaps for the same reason a glass or two of wine a day cuts the odds of suffering from heart disease. [...]

After accounting for differences due to age, smoking and heart disease – all risk factors for ED – Chew and colleagues found that drinkers experienced rates of impotence 25% to 30% below those of teetotallers.

From The New Scientist (via Boing Boing)

January 17th, 2009

Some People Are Just Always Running Their Fool Mouths

dispose-of-your-ugly-children-hereNOBODY likes to admit an uncomfortable truth about himself, especially when charged issues such as race, sex, age and even supersized waistlines come into play. That makes the task of the behavioural scientist a difficult one. Not only may participants in a study be lying to those running a test, but they may also, fundamentally, be lying to themselves. [...]

In a paper to be published next month in Social Cognition, a group of researchers led by Eugene Caruso of the University of Chicago report their use of a technique called conjoint analysis, which they have adopted from the field of market research and adapted to study implicit biases in more realistic situations. [...]

In their first study, Dr Caruso and his team recruited 101 students and asked them to imagine they were taking part in a team trivia game with a cash prize. Each student was presented with profiles of potential team-mates and asked to rate them on their desirability.

The putative team-mates varied in several ways. Three of these were meant to correlate with success at trivia: educational level, IQ and previous experience with the game. In addition, each profile had a photo which showed whether the team-mate was slim or fat. After rating the profiles, the participants were asked to say how important they thought each attribute was in their decisions. [...]

They would trade 11 IQ points—about 50% of the range of IQs available—for a colleague who was suitably slender. [...]

n a second study the team asked another group, this time of students who were about to graduate, to consider hypothetical job opportunities at consulting firms. [...]

In effect, they were willing to pay a 22% tax on their starting salary to have a male boss. [...]

From The Economist

January 6th, 2009

And We’re Back….

7f63dc-23_0Scientists have begun to examine how the city affects the brain, and the results are chastening. Just being in an urban environment, they have found, impairs our basic mental processes. After spending a few minutes on a crowded city street, the brain is less able to hold things in memory, and suffers from reduced self-control. While it’s long been recognized that city life is exhausting — that’s why Picasso left Paris — this new research suggests that cities actually dull our thinking, sometimes dramatically so. [...]

One of the main forces at work is a stark lack of nature, which is surprisingly beneficial for the brain. Studies have demonstrated, for instance, that hospital patients recover more quickly when they can see trees from their windows, and that women living in public housing are better able to focus when their apartment overlooks a grassy courtyard. [...]

The reason such seemingly trivial mental tasks leave us depleted is that they exploit one of the crucial weak spots of the brain. A city is so overstuffed with stimuli that we need to constantly redirect our attention so that we aren’t distracted by irrelevant things, like a flashing neon sign or the cellphone conversation of a nearby passenger on the bus. This sort of controlled perception — we are telling the mind what to pay attention to — takes energy and effort. The mind is like a powerful supercomputer, but the act of paying attention consumes much of its processing power.

Natural settings, in contrast, don’t require the same amount of cognitive effort. This idea is known as attention restoration theory, or ART, and it was first developed by Stephen Kaplan, a psychologist at the University of Michigan. While it’s long been known that human attention is a scarce resource — focusing in the morning makes it harder to focus in the afternoon — Kaplan hypothesized that immersion in nature might have a restorative effect.

Read More at the Boston Globe, How The City Hurts Your Brain

December 12th, 2008

The Unexpected Results of Making Out in Hong Kong

A young Chinese woman was left partially deaf following a passionate kiss from her boyfriend.

“While kissing is normally very safe, doctors advise people to proceed with caution,” wrote the China Daily.

The doctor who treated the girl in hospital was quoted in the paper explaining what had happened.

The chorus of warnings was echoed by the Shanghai Daily, which wrote: “A strong kiss may cause an imbalance in the air pressure between two inner ears and lead to a broken ear drum.”

Article from the BBC (via The New Shelton Wet/Dry)

December 11th, 2008

The Death of a Dear Friend, RIP The Mischke Broadcast: 1992 – 2008

The Mischke Poem

I can’t think of many people that I’ve spent more cumulative time with in my entire life than TD Mischke.  Though I only, briefly, met him 3 times …  I always felt as if the time we spent together (Me, listener…. Tommy, broadcaster) was more of a two way street than was ever possible.  As a teenager I’d listen to him before I went to bed….  then he become a staple of evenings… and later, my constant podcasting co-pilot during a long commute.

Perhaps it’s the right time to call the guy up, meet him for a hundred Summits at the Dubliner, and finally tell him that long, seemingly fabricated story about me and the city of Milwaukee (and the government agencies it involved) that took place in the fall of 2001.

Tommy, thanks for everything.  I look forward to hearing you wherever you land.

Mick Anselmo, Are you fucking listening??

December 6th, 2008

Carpe Diem

He knew his name. That much he could remember.

He knew that his father’s family came from Thibodaux, La., and his mother was from Ireland, and he knew about the 1929 stock market crash and World War II and life in the 1940s.

But he could remember almost nothing after that.

In 1953, he underwent an experimental brain operation in Hartford to correct a seizure disorder, only to emerge from it fundamentally and irreparably changed. He developed a syndrome neurologists call profound amnesia. He had lost the ability to form new memories.

For the next 55 years, each time he met a friend, each time he ate a meal, each time he walked in the woods, it was as if for the first time.

And for those five decades, he was recognized as the most important patient in the history of brain science. As a participant in hundreds of studies, he helped scientists understand the biology of learning, memory and physical dexterity, as well as the fragile nature of human identity.

On Tuesday evening at 5:05, Henry Gustav Molaison — known worldwide only as H. M., to protect his privacy — died of respiratory failure at a nursing home in Windsor Locks, Conn. His death was confirmed by Suzanne Corkin, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who had worked closely with him for decades. Henry Molaison was 82. [...]

“He was a very gracious man, very patient, always willing to try these tasks I would give him,” Dr. Milner, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the Montreal Neurological Institute and McGill University, said in a recent interview. “And yet every time I walked in the room, it was like we’d never met.” [...]

Living at his parents’ house, and later with a relative through the 1970s, Mr. Molaison helped with the shopping, mowed the lawn, raked leaves and relaxed in front of the television. He could navigate through a day attending to mundane details — fixing a lunch, making his bed — by drawing on what he could remember from his first 27 years.

He also somehow sensed from all the scientists, students and researchers parading through his life that he was contributing to a larger endeavor, though he was uncertain about the details, said Dr. Corkin, who met Mr. Molaison while studying in Dr. Milner’s laboratory and who continued to work with him until his death.

Continue reading at the New York Times.

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