Archive for popscience
Science of Romance
December 29th, 2009 popscience
Romance may be nothing more than reproductive filigree, a bit of decoration that makes us want to perpetuate the species and ensures that we do it right. But nothing could convince a person in love that there isn’t something more at work–and the fact is, none of us would want to be convinced. That’s a nut science may never fully crack.
Read more: Science of Romance
Instructions on how to fall in love:
Find a complete stranger. Reveal to each other intimate details about your lives for half an hour. Then, stare deeply into each other’s eyes without talking for four minutes.
Emotional Eating
September 22nd, 2009 popscience
A conversation this morning amongst colleagues on a newspaper became quite interesting as the debate went on. A young journo had approached some doctors for weight loss pills. A female doctor told the journo to skip one meal and have a daily coffee instead. I saw nothing wrong said that skipping a meal isn’t bad advice. I had heard on one of the science podcasts (Groks? In Conversation?) that calorie restriction (such as fasting) slows aging but colleagues were adamant that traditional advice such as exercise, eating better food ought to be dispensed. “But no one would die from skipping a meal,” I said. Yes, but as a doctor, this is not something that
should be said – it is not good advice. I tried to clarify, “So, the doctor’s advice to eat a meal lesser – is it wrong?”
It seemed that being a licensed doctor meant that advice such as skipping a meal is irresponsible because it is not traditional – what if something happened to the patient? At this point of the conversation, I was starting to find it humourous that there was general agreement that having one meal lesser doesn’t hurt anyone but it was still bad advice. It struck me that my colleague had earlier said eating better food (ie, not dieting). Perhaps hearing about calorie restriction was upsetting. This was getting quite interesting. I tried to push the conversation further. “I still don’t get it,” I said. “Nothing would happen if you skip a meal.” My colleague exasperated, said I had been brained washed, that it was unprofessional for a doctor to give such advice. (”What if the person fainted from following such advice?”) Unfortunately it was lunch and the conversation ended as we all separately rush to feed ourselves.
Dieters know from experience that it is impossible to diet with people knowing you’re dieting. Everyone would always encourage eating more, rather than eating less. (”Don’t be silly, you’re fine.”) Some time ago, I came across an article suggesting that calorie loading induces brain happiness (this is in mice for now but I’m positive it applies to humans too). What if, this knowledge of calorie loading = happiness is ingrained in our minds since way back? This would explain why the idea of calorie restriction produces the empathy similar to letting a child crawling towards an open road. That is, all eating is emotional and thinking about not eating makes the brain think of torture.
Morality Play
September 8th, 2009 popscience
I like this article on the development of moral reasoning in children but I don’t know what to make of it. Surely, culture would shape the patterns rather than not?
“It’s remarkable how little cultural variation we have found in developmental patterns of moral reasoning,” says Helwig, who presented his results in Park City, Utah, at the recent annual meeting of the Jean Piaget Society.
…
“Chinese adolescents showed desires for freedom, independence and individuality, much like teenagers of diverse ethnicities in the United States,” Chen says.
…
Preferences for democratic rule develop everywhere, even if they are most obvious in Western societies, Helwig proposes. “Adolescents reflect on and evaluate forms of political organization in ways that go beyond official cultural ideologies,” he says.
Television watching for the lonely
July 30th, 2009 popscience
McCabe: Are you bored, fat and lonely? Watch BBC television. They put the more in moron. (From Absolute Power – radio series)
Television watching provides some emotional relief. Not exactly groundbreaking news – but explains why really bad Taiwanese drama or reality television get followers.
Flash Dance
June 30th, 2009 popscience
The male, flying around, releases a certain pattern of flashes–a single one second pulse followed by a five second in the case of Photinus pyralis, for one example. And if a female P. pyralis, sitting on a blade of grass, likes what she sees, she responds three seconds later. Not one. Not six. Three. If she responds at the right interval, he knows he’s found a female of his own species and zeroes in, sending more flashes. She may also be signalling other males at the same time; which male she chooses may come down to subtle features of the flash pattern–for example, a rapid series of pulses as opposed to a slow one.
Put shopping into perspective
May 19th, 2009 popscience
From an interview with Dr. Hotness
…in his new book, “Spent: Sex, Evolution and Consumer Behavior.” he argues that people displaying stuff isn’t an effective signal of fitness because it doesn’t persuade (or fool) the people who matter in your life — the people who talk to you, thereby getting a far better gauge of your personality and intelligence than anything that could be signaled by your possessions. He urges you to put shopping in perspective by performing the following exercise:
List the ten most expensive things (products, services or experiences) that you have ever paid for (including hosues, cars, university degrees, marriage ceremonies, divorce settlements and taxes). Then, list the ten items that you ahve ever bought that gave you the most happiness. Count how many items appear on both lists.
Also practical for skintflints: you may be skimping on the wrong things that don’t make you happy.
This is quite tricky. On one hand, buying important things like education, a roof (with walls attached), paying taxes, expenditure on cosmetic may not provide a lot of happiness but it does signal that I care enough about belonging to society/people around me (displaying agreeableness) to obey its rules. Which means, if I give up the stuff I enjoy, I could be caring more about belonging than the other stuff that makes me, as a person, happy, on the assumption that society/people around me gives a crap that I care.
Ignoring brain pain for the moment, because this is really important: I have to pay taxes soon, I have to think this through. Is Miller (does he get panties flung at him like Tom Jones?) right then when the article says, “The fundamental consumerist delusion, as he calls it, is that purchases affect the way we’re treated.” ? Clearly purchases do affect the way we’re treated: I don’t think IRAS will let me go if they knew I was evading tax because paying tax doesn’t make me happy. The likelihood I could get by with only 1 job comfortably if not for a degree is not as high as I would like it to be. So even if “The audience for our signals — prospective mates, friends, rivals — care more about the permanent traits measured in tests of intelligence and personality” , I don’t know if I can live without some consumptions that don’t make me happy.
Miller has a new book!
May 9th, 2009 popscience
Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior (Hardcover)
If I say on a second date that “the sugar maples in Harvard Yard were so beautiful every fall term,” I am basically saying “my SAT scores were sufficiently high (roughly 720 out of 800) that I could get admitted, so my IQ is above 135, and I had sufficient conscientiousness, emotional stability, and intellectual openness to pass my classes. Plus, I can recognize a tree.” The information content is the same, but while the former sounds poetic, the latter sounds boorish.
More Brain Science
April 19th, 2009 popscience
V. Ramachandran on TED! Oh, he repeats his stories from way back. 
Left and Right Brain
April 18th, 2009 popscience
Brain science: The Big Similarities & Quirky Differences Between Our Left and Right Brains
Neuroscientists know that the hemispheres work together and that they do so by communicating through the corpus callosum. But exactly how the hemispheres cooperate is not so clear. Perhaps paired regions take turns being dominant. That is known to happen in some animals. For instance, dolphins use this strategy to sleep and swim at the same time: One hemisphere remains active for hours, then fades while the other takes over. Bird brains switch as well. In order to sing, a songbird makes the two sides of its lungs open and close. The two hemispheres of the bird’s brain take turns controlling the song, each dominating for a hundredth of a second.
The Great Oxidation Event
April 13th, 2009 popscience
The earth’s original atmosphere would have been unpleasant—deadly in fact—to any organisms that breathe oxygen. There wasn’t any. Not until about 2.4 billion years ago anyway. That’s the time of what scientists call the Great Oxidation Event. Now researchers believe they’ve found clues as to what may have caused the change. They published their report in the April 9 edition of the journal Nature.
Researchers analyzed trace elements in sedimentary rock from dozens of sites. Turns out nickel was 400 times more abundant in primordial oceans than in today’s waters. Micro-organisms called methanogens love nickel-rich water, and they release methane into the atmosphere. Methane prevents a build-up of oxygen.
Scientists testing the rocks saw that around 2.7 to 2.4 billion years ago, ocean-dissolved nickel dropped off. This corresponds to the Great Oxidation Event. Lack of nickel could have killed off methanogens and left room for algae and other life forms that release oxygen during photosynthesis.
Researchers don’t know exactly why nickel decreased—possibly because of the cooling and solidifying of the earth’s mantle. But the nickel disappearance is one more clue about how the planet went from suffocating to a place where a terrestrial tetrapod could take a deep breath.
