onemonkey.org

Viewing cute images increases behavioral carefulness.
Emotion. 2009 Apr;9(2):282-6.
Sherman GD, Haidt J, Coan JA.

Infantile physical morphology—marked by its “cuteness”—is thought to be a potent elicitor of caregiving, yet little is known about how cuteness may shape immediate behavior. To examine the function of cuteness and its role in caregiving, the authors tested whether perceiving cuteness can enhance behavioral carefulness, which would facilitate caring for a small, delicate child. In 2 experiments, viewing very cute images (puppies and kittens)—as opposed to slightly cute images (dogs and cats)—led to superior performance on a subsequent fine-motor dexterity task (the children’s game “Operation”). This suggests that the human sensitivity to those possessing cute features may be an adaptation that facilitates caring for delicate human young.

via neurocritic

Does scent enhance consumer product memories?
December 14, 2009

It may seem odd to add scent to products like sewing thread, automobile tires, and tennis balls, as some companies have done. But a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research says scent helps consumers remember product information.

"Product scent may be particularly effective at enhancing memory for product information as a function of its ability to enhance a product's distinctiveness within its surrounding context..

http://www.physorg.com/news180025995.html

Following on from the less than exemplarly behaviour of Bishop Donal Murray, a formare professor of moral philosophy, it's a good time to read the the instant classic study by Eric Schwitzgebel that found that professional ethicists are none too ethical.
Inferred from the fact that books on the Ethics are 50% more likely to get stolen from university libraries than equivalently popular academic philosophy wworks

DO Ethicists steal more books?
Eric Schwitzgebel

Philosophical Psychology, 22 (2009), 711-725
Abstract:

If explicit cognition about morality promotes moral behavior then one might expect ethics professors to behave particularly well. However, professional ethicists behavior has never been empirically studied. The present research examined the rates at which ethics books are missing from leading academic libraries, compared to other philosophy books similar in age and popularity. Study 1 found that relatively obscure, contemporary ethics books of the sort likely to be borrowed mainly by professors and advanced students of philosophy were actually about 50% more likely to be missing than non-ethics books. Study 2 found that classic (pre-1900) ethics books were about twice as likely to be missing.

[link]

Link: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0008251

Or (S)-2 for short.

The Acrylamide (S)-2 As a Positive and Negative Modulator of Kv7 Channels Expressed in Xenopus laevis Oocytes

from PLoS ONE Alerts: Neuroscience by Sigrid Marie Blom et al.

Background

Activation of voltage-gated potassium channels of the Kv7 (KCNQ) family reduces cellular excitability. These channels are therefore attractive targets for treatment of diseases characterized by hyperexcitability, such as epilepsy, migraine and neuropathic pain. Retigabine, which opens Kv7.2-5, is now in clinical trial phase III for the treatment of partial onset seizures. One of the main obstacles in developing Kv7 channel active drugs has been to identify compounds that can discriminate between the neuronal subtypes, a feature that could help diminish side effects and increase the potential of drugs for particular indications.
Methodology/Principal Findings

In the present study we have made a thorough investigation of the Bristol-Myers Squibb compound (S)-N-[1-(4-Cyclopropylmethyl-3,4-dihydro-2H-benzo[1], [4]oxazin-6-yl)-ethyl]-3-(2-fluoro-phenyl)-acrylamide [(S)-2] on human Kv7.1-5 channels expressed in Xenopus laevis oocytes. We found that the compound was a weak inhibitor of Kv7.1. In contrast, (S)-2 efficiently opened Kv7.2-5 by producing hyperpolarizing shifts in the voltage-dependence of activation and enhancing the maximal current amplitude. Further, it reduced inactivation, accelerated activation kinetics and slowed deactivation kinetics. The mechanisms of action varied between the subtypes. The enhancing effects of (S)-2 were critically dependent on a tryptophan residue in S5 also known to be crucial for the effects of retigabine, (S)-1 and BMS-204352. However, while (S)-2 did not at all affect a mutant Kv7.4 with a leucine in this position (Kv7.4-W242L), a Kv7.2 with the same mutation (Kv7.2-W236L) was inhibited by the compound, showing that (S)-2 displays a subtype-selective interaction with in the Kv7 family.
Conclusions/Significance

These results offer further insight into pharmacological activation of Kv7 channels, add to the understanding of small molecule interactions with the channels and may ,contribute to the design of subtype selective modulators.

Link: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/irish-bishop-is-first-to-quit-over-child-sex-abuse-scandal-1836062.html

The heads are finally starting to roll in the Irish church..

An Irish bishop flew to Rome yesterday to hand in his resignation after days of angry and intense pressure over his handling of cases of child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church.

Donal Murray, Bishop of Limerick, gave every sign of acting with great reluctance, after spending some days apparently playing for time in the hope of keeping his post. But the wave of shock and horror which followed publication of a damning report, which revealed a systematic high-level church cover-up of the abuse of children by priests, is in effect sweeping him from office.

Murray used to be a professor of moral philosophy who lectured extensively on ethics.. But that was clearly well before became a Catholic Bishop.

I don't know much about moral philosophy but I know a cunt when i see one.

Link: http://laughing-stalk.blogspot.com/2008/12/scottish-cops-learn-difference-between.html

Al Gore's Third Law of the internet:
For every act of stupidity found on the internet, there is an equal and opposite bit of idiocy to be found.

Scottish police apparently can't tell the difference between tomato plants and pot plants. Which is why they conducted a full-scale raid on 79-year-old Lulu Matheson's house in Sieldaig, Scotland.

It took three squad cars, seven officers and drug dogs several hours of ransacking her house to conclude that the plants they saw in the window 'the ones with red, apple-sized balls hanging from them' were tomatoes after all.

via laughing stalk

Link: http://www.dosenation.com/listing.php?id=6908

Green fingers & brass neck..

A British prisoner convinced guards his marijuana plants were tomato plants -- and they even allowed him to decorate one as a Christmas tree, a source said.

Mohamed Jalloh, 28, of Brent, North London, grew his pot plants at Verne Prison in Portland, Dorset, in southern England, and for five months, guards admired his gardening, The Sun reported Saturday.

But after another inmate told guards what the plants really were, they checked out photos of marijuana plants on the Internet, and the jig was up.

via dose nation

Pic of the day

Word of the day - Deuteranomaly

Colour blindness not all it seems

Specialised cells detect colour differences
Forms of colour blindness may actually give people enhanced perception of some colours, research suggests.

Researchers asked people with a form of colour blindness called deuteranomaly - the most common form of the condition - to assess pairs of colours.

The University of Cambridge team found these people were able to distinguish between pairs that looked identical to those with "normal" colour vision.

The study is published in the journal Current Biology.

from bbc news

Link: http://mindblog.dericbownds.net/2009/12/hows-your-gaydar.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A Mindblog %28MindBlog%29&utm_content=Google Reader

Scientists have previously shown that everyone's got gaydar and now they show we've all got lesdar as well.

From the random samples section of the Nov. 27 issue of Science:

Can you guess a woman's sexual orientation just from her face? Surprisingly, your guess would be better than flipping a coin....Psychologist Nicholas Rule of Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, and colleagues asked 21 college students the same question about 192 photos (cropped to eliminate hair and ears) of gay and straight women from dating Web sites. The undergraduates guessed right 64% of the time and scored better than chance%u201453%%u2014even when they saw only the women's eyes, the researchers report this month in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. In 2008, Rule reported similar results with male faces.

from Deric Bownes

the chandelier in the laboratory at home.

Link: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2009/12/01/higgs-in-space/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A CosmicVarianceBlog %28Cosmic Variance%29&utm_content=Google Reader

A new paper uploaded to the arxiv physics preprint server today:

Higgs in Space!
C.B. Jackson, Geraldine Servant, Gabe Shaughnessy, Tim M.P. Tait, Marco Taoso

Abstract: We consider the possibility that the Higgs can be produced in dark matter annihilations, appearing as a line in the spectrum of gamma rays at an energy determined by the masses of the WIMP and the Higgs itself. We argue that this phenomenon occurs generally in models in which the the dark sector has large couplings to the most massive states of the SM and provide a simple example inspired by the Randall-Sundrum vision of dark matter, whose 4d dual corresponds to electroweak symmetry-breaking by strong dynamics which respect global symmetries that guarantee a stable WIMP. The dark matter is a Dirac fermion that couples to a Z’ acting as a portal to the Standard Model through its strong coupling to top quarks. Annihilation into light standard model degrees of freedom is suppressed and generates a feeble continuum spectrum of gamma rays. Loops of top quarks mediate annihilation into gamma Z, gamma h, and gamma Z’, providing a forest of lines in the spectrum. Such models can be probed by the Fermi/GLAST satellite and ground-based Air Cherenkov telescopes.

via cosmic variance

Link: http://sidewalkfox.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/100-days/

The good peep at Sidewalk Fox is participanting too...

See here. & hurrah.

You can see the rest of the (official) participants here

Some of my favourites:

A-Blam will do something creative: practice the concertina, take a beautiful photograph, write a line of my amazing zombie film that is trapped in my head...

amythibodeau will look on the bright side and try to assume the best of everything and everyone (until I'm proven wrong!).

amywoof will I will do whatever David Horvitz (of Davidhorvitz.tumblr.com) tells me to.

Don Key Hotay will Lance a windmill

Mairead Ni Doibhlin will will learn a proveb from 100 countries

Link: http://hundreddays.net

Do you want to one thing to do for each the next hundred days to make things better?

Tessa and I are both going to do it. And we are not the only ones.

Each day she is going to write down the best about her day and about someone else's.

Each day I am going to write a love letter.

I am going to do a bunch of other stuff too to try and make up for the failure i made of nanowrimo and of dailiy life in general.

my list..

each and every day i shall..

WORK

• 1+ hour TIME project
• 30+ min SPACE project

REST

• 5+ min tai chi
• listen to 1+ new song
• read 10+ pages of fiction
• read 10+ pages of non-fiction

WRITE

• 200+ words fiction
• 1 blog post
• 5 new sentences dutch
• 1 love letter

PLAY

• take 1+ photograph
• 12+ kisses
• 1+ orgasm whether i need it or not

Those google predictions while you type are often frighteningly prescient but what happens when they've only got the first letter to go on? Well, it seems to me that rather than returning the most frequent queries (B is for Britney, P is for porn, etc.) they have sold most of the alphabet to US corporations.

A is for Amazon
B is for Best Buy
C is for Craigslist
D is for Dictionary
E is for Ebay
F is for Facebook
G is for Gmail
H is for Hotmail
I is for imdb
J is for Jet Blue
K is for Kohls
L is for Lowes
M is for MapQuest
N is for Netflix
O is for Old Navy
P is for Pandora
Q is for quotes
R is for Realtor.com
S is for Soutwest Airlines
T is for Target
U is for USPS
V is for Verizon Wireless
W is for Walmart
X is for XM Radio
Y is for youtube
Z is for Zillow

They don't seem to have sold all the integers yet.

1 is 1800flowers
2 is 2009 calendar
3 is 3oh 3
4 is 4chan
5 is 500 days of summer
6 is 60 minutes
7 is 7zip
8 is 8000 tax credit first time
9 is 90210
0 is 0 balance transfer

PEnguin have produced a trailer for Thomas Pynchon's latest novel. The voice-over is provided by the man himself.

[via Cosmic Variance]

Link: http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v86/i15/p3423_1

Reverse Brazil Nut Problem: Competition between Percolation and Condensation

Daniel C. Hong, Paul V. Quinn and Stefan Luding

Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 3423 - 3426 (2001)

In the Brazil nut problem (BNP), hard spheres with larger diameters rise to the top. There are various explanations (percolation, reorganization, convection), but a broad understanding or control of this effect is by no means achieved. A theory is presented for the crossover from BNP to the reverse Brazil nut problem based on a competition between the percolation effect and the condensation of hard spheres. The crossover condition is determined, and theoretical predictions are compared to molecular dynamics simulations in two and three dimensions.

Link: http://blog.newhumanist.org.uk/2009/07/competition-time-whats-your.html

My old mates at the New Humanist tried and largely failed to interview Genesis P-Orridge for their last issue but it's not all bad news because it has spawned a new game and competition:

combine your favourite book of the Bible with your favourite breakfast food (must take the same hyphenated form as "P-Orridge") to create your very own meaningless cult moniker.

my favourites so far:

Malachi F-Rootloops

and

Maccabees R-Icicles

Link: http://brainstimulant.blogspot.com/2009/05/neuro-brain-thermodynamics.html

Rather tickled to discover that contrary to the belief of some ancient greeks, it seems that the brain isn't an organ for cooling the blood:

Increasing [cerebral blood flow] in a specific deep brain region can cause a resultant decrease in brain temperature there. According to the author mammal's brains can sustain a temperature upwards of 42 Celsius without becoming damaged. Though, the optimum temperature may be much lower than that. Certain drugs have the ability to increase the brain's temperature in part by vasoconstriction. Cerebral blood flow only acts as a coolant inside deeper brain regions where the blood is cooler than the surrounding brain tissue. So it's really not a coolant in the same manner as that in a heat engine. The cbf actually heats up more superficial brain regions that are closer to the skull so the mechanism is not uniform. The main purpose of cerebral blood flow is to bring glucose to neurons for their basic energy need. So the cooling ability is sort of a secondary aspect of blood flow and is probably not ideally suited for that purpose. Evolution has basically co-opted one process for a different purpose entirely. The blood flow's ability to cool is more important for larger brained mammals and less relevant for smaller brained ones where heat can dissipate from the head easier.

This comes in the context of a paper that applies thermodynamics to answer the question of how big (and powerful) brains can potentially get.

Click here for the answer... [Brainstimulant blog]