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Sean Nash

Study traces an infectious language epidemic | ScienceDaily - 0 views

  • Rho's work is grounded in a social science framework called Fuzzy Trace Theory that was pioneered by Valerie Reyna, a Cornell University professor of psychology and a collaborator on this Virginia Tech project. Reyna has shown that individuals learn and recall information better when it is expressed in a cause and effect relationship, and not just as rote information. This holds true even if the information is inaccurate or the implied connection is weak. Reyna calls this cause-and-effect construction a "gist."
    • Sean Nash
       
      Fuzzy Trace Theory looks interesting for this, and perhaps many other reasons. I want to learn more about this myself, and I'm wondering if this theory could be put to work in other potential behavioral science projects. What do you think?
emmarrogers

Science: Crayfish Can Be Calmed With Anti-Anxiety Medication | American Association for... - 0 views

  • "There have been very few studies of the crayfish brain,"
  • crayfish normally prefer darkness,
  • non-shocked, non-stressed crayfish did.
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  • chlordiazepoxide
    • emmarrogers
       
      Do other drugs also work to calm the crayfish's anxiety. Also, in the future, could tests on crayfish be used to find more/ different anxiety medicines in humans. Also, do they show side affects just like humans, or similar that we could document the side affects?
Sean Nash

Applied Sciences | Free Full-Text | Method for Prolonging the Shelf Life of Apples afte... - 1 views

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    (A pretty fancy piece of equipment is needed here, but I like the concept of this sort of project. Rigorous life science concepts, ability to generate a ton of data, super applicable to real life immediately, etc.)
emmarrogers

Bumblebees use Lego blocks to build science and recognise the value of teamwork | Unive... - 1 views

  •  
    Interesting. The video clips are especially valuable for understanding their methods. So, these tests have been done... but what other sorts of learning tests might be possible? Are there any that might even show value in this species beyond just "what is possible for the bee nervous system to accomplish?"
Sean Nash

The Incomplete Guide to the Art of Discovery - 0 views

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    Link on the left here for free download of a PDF book about the nature of science, discovery, and research. This would make a great summer read!
nataliegomes

Do Invertebrates Have Emotions? | The Scientist Magazine® - 1 views

  • He adds that he doubts that the findings are applicable to other insect species, which still might act purely on instinct.
  • Invertebrate nervous systems, physiology, and sensory experiences are dissimilar to ours, and designing experiments to measure their emotions has been challenging. 
  • If the responses weren’t purely reflexive, it would open up the possibility that the animals could feel pain. 
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  • After placing acetic acid—a mild irritant—on the crabs’ antennae, they found that the crabs rubbed their antennae against the glass of their aquarium, seemingly in an attempt to take the acid off.
    • nataliegomes
       
      The use of an invisible irritant rather than a notable injury shows that they can feel the pain, instead of just noticing an injury to their body.
Kylie John

Stony coral tissue loss disease indirectly alters reef communities | Science Advances - 2 views

  • Butterflyfishes, which are facultative corallivores in this region, have even been found to prefer SCTLD-infected coral
    • Kylie John
       
      Some species like the infected coral Maybe it has different properties or something
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    You know, there are repositories of publicly available image/video data from coral reef surveys.... somewhere online. They make them available for people to devise creative ways of pulling data out of such raw material. Might be something to look into.
Kylie John

Dice snakes fake their own death, smearing themselves with blood and poop to make the p... - 1 views

  • Only one juvenile snake bled from the mouth
    • Kylie John
       
      How do they do that??
Kylie John

Dams trigger exponential population declines of migratory fish | Science Advances - 0 views

  • When the GD, the first dam across the mainstream of the Yangtze River, was built in the 1970s, the Chinese government explicitly demanded that the dam consider the conservation of fish.
  • Dams can harm migratory fish by disrupting their life cycles and then causing population extinctions.
    • Kylie John
       
      Is it possible to give the fish a different area to migrate to and from?
  • We divide the species population into spawning stock (spawners), which are sexually mature adults participating in the current year’s breeding, and recruitment stock, which includes larvae, juveniles, and subadults that have not reached the reproductive age and sexually immature adults/post-spawners that do not participate in the current year’s breeding.
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  • The sixth misjudgment concerns the assertion that fishways are unnecessary in dams. The 1982 GD-FRP suggested that fishways were not needed for the Chinese sturgeon (14). The TGD, built in 1993, followed this idea and did not include fishways.
  • This study has certain limitations, such as the need for larger sample sizes of fish to improve the accuracy of the precision of fish life cycle models.
Kylie John

Source reservoir controls on the size, frequency, and composition of large-scale volcan... - 0 views

  • Fig. 1. Source reservoir processes that may supply a large volcanic eruption.
    • Kylie John
       
      How did they figure out what caused the volcanos to erupt? Can you see how a specific volcano erupted based off of that?
  • Development of buoyancy overpressure at the top of a magma layer
  • Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities develop naturally whenever buoyant magma layers form.
emmarrogers

Anxiety medication: List, types, and side effects - 0 views

  • chlordiazepoxide (Librium)
    • emmarrogers
       
      This is the same medication used in a different study (https://www.aaas.org/news/science-crayfish-can-be-calmed-anti-anxiety-medication) Do only this group of Anti-anxiety medications work in crayfish?
Kylie John

Extreme solar storm generated aurorae-and 'surprise' | Science | AAAS - 0 views

  • Although this weekend’s storm didn’t appear to take out any satellites, it may shorten some of their life spans.
    • Kylie John
       
      I just find it interesting that these solar storms effect satellites
Sean Nash

Scientists develop visual tool to help people group foods based on their levels of proc... - 0 views

  • Scientists studying ultra-processed foods have created a new tool for assessing the rewarding and reinforcing properties of foods that make up 58 percent of calories consumed in the United States. The foods have been linked to a wide range of negative health outcomes.
    • Sean Nash
       
      I couldn't locate this imageset and associated tools online, but I am willing to bet they might make it available to us, and the generation of more future research in this area is a key purpose of this work.
  • provides a collection of carefully curated images of minimally processed and ultra-processed foods matched on 26 characteristics, including macronutrients, sodium, dietary fiber, calories, price, and visual characteristics such as a color and portion size
    • Sean Nash
       
      Perhaps we just need to get the full journal article to get the raw materials (images) created and used.
  • The scale has its detractors. "A major criticism of the NOVA scale is that it's difficult to use or that foods are classified differently by different people," said Alexandra DiFeliceantonio, corresponding author and assistant professor at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute. "We found that people with education in nutrition generally agreed on the food classifications, providing some data that it might not be a valid criticism."
    • Sean Nash
       
      See... this is the sort of thing I see as an opportunity. If the scale has detractors or isn't yet perfect, perhaps there is an opening here for a project. Perhaps there is even an opening to create something focused on teens (who I would argue are at most risk for the consumption of ultra-processed foods). This is an interesting area to me, not only behavioral science, but human diet in general.
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  • To develop the picture set, a team of psychologists, neuroscientists, and registered dietitians selected foods to represent either minimally processed or ultra-processed foods.
  • The foods were prepared in a lab, visually represented through professional photography, and controlled for consistency. Researchers also gathered price, food weights, and nutritional information -- calories, macronutrients, sodium, and dietary fiber -- for the food in each image.
  • researchers recruited 67 nutrition professionals and asked them to classify the foods as minimally or ultra-processed
  • "There is very little experimental research on ultra-processed foods, and part of what's been holding us back is better tools for measuring and assessing their effects,"
    • Sean Nash
       
      Another big GREEN flag that this is an area ripe for new and creative approaches!
  • The Virginia Tech team is making the pictures and associated data accessible through the Virginia Tech Data Repository of the Virginia Tech University Libraries. This will allow scientists to test hypotheses in behavioral economic and neuroimaging studies.
    • Sean Nash
       
      This states that the images/research tools WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE (if not already). This is very cool. So, could the already-existing tool be leveraged in a novel way compared to what the researchers used it for, or does this provide somewhat of a template for someone to create a better or more-helpful tool perhaps for teens?
  • Story Source: Materials provided by Virginia Tech. Original written by Leigh Anne Kelley. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
  • Journal Reference: Zach Hutelin, Monica Ahrens, Mary Elizabeth Baugh, Mary E. Oster, Alexandra L. Hanlon, Alexandra G. DiFeliceantonio. Creation and validation of a NOVA scored picture set to evaluate ultra-processed foods.. Appetite, 2024; 198: 107358 DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2024.107358
Sean Nash

What the Heck Is Seaweed Mining? | Hakai Magazine - 5 views

  • “It’s pure chemistry,” Umanzor says. “Positive with negative, and then it just collects.”
    • Sean Nash
       
      For those interested in chamistry topics, this looks really interesting.
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