Group items tagged

""We wondered how individuals assess the credibility of other people in simple social interactions," said Read Montague, director of the Human Neuroimaging Laboratory and the Computational Psychiatry Unit at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute, who led the study. "We found a strong correlation between the amygdala and a baseline level of distrust, which may be based on a person's beliefs about the trustworthiness of other people in general, his or her emotional state, and the situation at hand"

"I simply cannot believe that John Cook of Skeptical Science and psychologist Stephan Lewandowsky managed, in just 8 pages, to create something as magnificent as their new Debunking Handbook. It is packed not only with wonderful graphics, but also with a clear explanation of why many attempts to defeat misinformation fail, and what steps must be taken to do a better job. The core issue, of course, is one that I've written much about-too many scientists assume that that facts win out on their own, but that isn't actually true"

"We often think that the limiting factors to doing science are intellectual or technological. There are many unsolved scientific problems that we know how to answer. We aren't waiting for any conceptual breakthroughs or new technologies. We're waiting for people. We need "hands at the bench" to put in the time to collect the data. The instabilities of salary is a major limiting factor for science and is probably a big reason a lot of them get out of science: they don't see a way to pay the bills. Creating permanent, stable positions for scientists would release a lot of scientific research."

"Performing short cycle sprints three times a week could be enough to prevent and possibly treat type 2 diabetes, a study suggests. Scientists at the University of Bath asked volunteers to perform two 20-second cycle sprints on exercise bikes, three times per week. After six weeks, researchers in the university's department of health saw a 28% improvement in their insulin function."

Science is an assault on ignorance, Its legacies are concepts, technologies and databases. As with many walks in life, the most glamorous legacies tend to get the most attention and the least are neglected

"Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - The Joy of Stats" human development last 200 years

"We are a superficial species. And this brings me to a fascinating new paper by an all star team of psychologists, including Kurt Gray, Joshua Knobe, Mark Sheskin, Paul Bloom and Lisa Feldman Barrett.. we automatically assume that the capacity to think and the capacity to feel are in opposition. It's a zero sum game. What does all this have to do with nakedness? The psychologists demonstrated it's quite easy to shift our perceptions of other people from having a mind full of agency to having a mind interested in experience: all they have to do is take off their clothes."

""It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others." - M.F.K. Fisher Human beings are notoriously terrible at knowing when we're no longer hungry. Instead of listening to our stomach - a very stretchy container - we rely on all sorts of external cues, from the circumference of the dinner plate to the dining habits of those around us. If the serving size is twice as large (and American serving sizes have grown 40 percent in the last 25 years), we'll still polish it off. And then we'll go have dessert."

"In our recent paper, we take a different approach. We consider how measurements work in the macroworld, finding that some quantum features are simply unobservable. Most remarkably, this approach shows that something called quantum nonlocality disappears for objects big enough to contain roughly the Avogadro number of atoms-the number of atoms you'd expect in a few grams of matter."

Matthias Bohn: G 8 ist gescheitert

"Home 27 Fälle irrationalen Verhaltens bei Entscheidungen Aus: Franz Eisenführ, Martin Weber: Rationales Entscheiden. Heidelberg: Springer 4. Aufl. 2003, Seiten 366-372 (leicht gekürzt) im Kapitel 14: Deskriptive Präferenztheorien"

"Das Ergebnis: Die Teilnehmer erkannten die ursprünglichen Männerfotos viel schlechter, wenn sie falsch herum gezeigt wurden. Bei den Frauenfotos war das nicht der Fall. Tatsächlich machte es kaum einen Unterschied, ob die Frauen auf dem Kopf standen oder nicht. Männer werden eher als Personen wahrgenommen Die Schlussfolgerung der Forscher: Männer werden eher als Personen, Frauen hingegen eher als Objekte wahrgenommen, schreiben sie im Fachmagazin "Psychological Science". Das Erstaunliche: "Wir können das nicht nur auf die Männer schieben. Frauen nehmen andere Frauen auf die gleiche Weise war", erläutert Sarah Gervais, Professorin für Psychologie an der amerikanischen University of Nebraska und Mitautorin der Studie."

"Based on data from a randomized sample of universities and online volunteers who completed a survey, men and women who pursue STEM degrees tend to become interested in science in elementary school. When asked which people and experiences helped to spark their interest, women were more likely than men to select a teacher, a class at school, solving math problems and spending time outdoors, whereas men were more influenced by tinkering, building and reading. As men and women enter college, passion for the field far outweighs all other influences as the main reason for their persistence"

""Frauen fühlen sich von einer Hebamme besser betreut, wenn die etwas macht oder ihnen etwas gibt. Das ist bei einem Arzt nicht anders", sagt Regine Knobloch, beratende Hebamme beim Deutschen Hebammenverband. In Deutschland spiele auch der Wettbewerb unter Hebammen eine Rolle, sagt Knobloch. Wer in der Begleitung von Schwangeren oder der Wochenbettbetreuung keine Homöopathie, Aromatherapie oder ähnliche Verfahren anbiete, finde womöglich weniger Kundinnen. Der Einsatz alternativer Therapien sei "kongruent mit der Philosophie von Hebammen", schreibt Helen Hall etwas sperrig. Was das heißt? "Viele sehen sich in der Tradition alter Kräuterfrauen, die Hebammen früher waren", sagt Knobloch. "Gleichzeitig fechten Hebammen seit mindestens dem 18. Jahrhundert einen Macht- und Verteilungskampf mit der Ärzteschaft aus", sagt der Historiker Robert Jütt"

"Empathy Linked to Gene -- and We Can Tell Variations in the genes for oxytocin receptors may influence empathy -- and we can tell who's got them in 20 seconds. In the study, by Aleksandr Kogan of UC Berkeley, 24 couples provided DNA samples and then the couples recounted to each other a time when they had suffered. The conversations were videotaped. Then, observers wached 20-second segments of the videos and were asked to rate each person as kind, trustworthy and compassionate. The observers tended to pick the people in the couples who had a variation in the oxytocin receptor gene known as the GG genotype. It's interesting enough that empathy might be linked to variations in our genes. And also interesting that we humans are so exquisitely sensitive to social cues that we can easily and quickly pick this out."

"Formal education must adapt to these changes, taking advantage of new strengths in visual-spatial intelligence and compensating for new weaknesses in higher-order cognitive processes: abstract vocabulary, mindfulness, reflection, inductive problem solving, critical thinking, and imagination. These develop through the use of an older technology, reading, which, along with audio media such as radio, also stimulates imagination. Informal education therefore requires a balanced media diet using each technology's specific strengths in order to develop a complete profile of cognitive skills. "

"Autisten können sich schlecht selbst darstellen und auch nicht gut verkaufen. Außerdem haben sie massive Probleme mit sozialer Interaktion und Kommunikation.. Die meisten Autisten sind extrem gut in analytischem und logischem Denken."

"The problem, as I see it, is that we are not doing very much to remedy these issues, and that a lot of people have already accepted that "true science" is simply an ideal that will inevitably disappear with the current system proceeding along as it is. As such, why risk our careers and reputations to fight for some noble cause that most of academia won't really appreciate anyway?"

University of Michigan researchers George Mashour, M.D., Ph.D., and Jimo Borjigin, Ph.D., provide the first scientific framework for near-death experiences. "The "near-death experience" reported by cardiac arrest survivors worldwide may be grounded in science, according to research at the University of Michigan Health System. Whether and how the dying brain is capable of generating conscious activity has been vigorously debated"

"Wie es zu diesen Erfahrungen kommt, ist wissenschaftlich umstritten. Frühere Studien brachten falsche Sauerstoff- und Kohlendioxid-Konzentration im Gehirn damit in Verbindung. So ließen Mediziner der Virchow-Klinik 1994 gesunde Versuchspersonen schnell und hastig atmen und versetzen sie anschließend in Ohnmacht. Die Freiwilligen hatten ähnliche Erlebnisse wie Sterbende. Sie verließen ihren Körper oder sahen ihr Leben im Film. Bei den Herzstillstand-Patienten der oben erwähnten britischen Studie jedoch war Sauerstoffmangel nicht die Ursache für die Erlebnisse. Wie der Studienleiter Dr. Sam Parnia von der Universität Southampton berichtet, wiesen die sieben Patienten mit Nahtod-Erfahrung sogar höhere Sauerstoffkonzentrationen auf als Patienten ohne ein solches Erlebnis. Auch mit Halluzinationen ließen sich die Patientenerfahrungen nicht klären"