Verb tense is more important than you may think, especially in how you form or perceive intention in a narrative.

In recent research studied in Psychological Science, William Hart of the University of Alabama states that “when you describe somebody’s actions in terms of what they’re ‘doing,’ that action is way more vivid in [a reader’s] mind.” Subsequently, when action is imagined vividly, greater intention is associated with it. (…)

Those who read that the defendant “was firing gun shots” believed a more harmful intent of the defendant than those who read that he “fired gun shots”.

{ APS | Continue reading }

screenshot { Cowboys and Aliens, 2011 }

“Worrying is always bad for your health.” Wrong. A study lasting for more than 80 years debunks conventional wisdom.

(…)

Philip was one of 1,500 bright children who were tracked for more than 80 years in a massive longitudinal study begun in 1921 by psychologist Lewis Terman. Terman and his successors—he died before many of the children—collected millions of details about these subjects, including whether they were breast-fed, how much they exercised, what their marriages were like, how satisfying their sex lives were, how satisfying their jobs were. (…)

Optimistic people have a tendency to ignore details, meaning they don’t follow doctor’s orders correctly or lead themselves into unhealthy situations or addictions. It was the conscientious people—careful, sometimes even neurotic, but not catastrophizing—who lived longer, write Friedman and Martin, researchers at the University of California, Riverside. And, their studies show, some of what we think will benefit our children may actually rob them of years later in life. In the Terman study, precocious, active children who were sent to school a year early, as Philip was, tended to have emotional problems that led to unhealthy behaviors and shortened life span.

{ The Atlantic | Continue reading }

polaroid { Melvin Sokolsky | more }

That sex reduces stress –- or that no sex increases stress –- is hardly a new observation. A team of German researchers, though, is arguing that sexual frustration is a complex phenomenon not to be underestimated. It can precipitate a downward spiral, pulling couples helplessly and unbeknownst into a swirling vortex of all work and no nookie.

Ragnar Beer of the University of Göttingen surveyed almost 32,000 men and women for his Theratalk Project (2007), which has found that the less sex you have, the more work you seek. Indeed, the sexually deprived have to find outlets for their frustrations: they often take on more commitments and work.

{ Der Spiegel | Continue reading }

photo { Helmut Newton }

Jellyfish have traditionally been considered simple and primitive. When you gaze at one in an aquarium tank, it is not hard to see why.

Like its relatives the sea anemone and coral, the jellyfish looks like a no-frills animal. It has no head, no back or front, no left or right sides, no legs or fins. It has no heart. Its gut is a blind pouch rather than a tube, so its mouth must serve as its anus. Instead of a brain, it has a diffuse net of nerves.

A fish or a shrimp may move quickly in a determined swim; a jellyfish pulses lazily along.

But new research has made scientists realize that they have underestimated the jellyfish and its relatives - known collectively as cnidarians (pronounced nih-DEHR-ee-uns). Beneath their seemingly simple exterior lies a remarkably sophisticated collection of genes, including many that give rise to humans’ complex anatomy.

These discoveries have inspired new theories about how animals evolved 600 million years ago. The findings have also attracted scientists to cnidarians as a model to understand the human body.

“The big surprise is that cnidarians are much more complex genetically than anyone would have guessed,” said Dr. Kevin J. Peterson, a biologist at Dartmouth. “This data have made a lot of people step back and realize that a lot of what they had thought about cnidarians was all wrong.”

Renaissance scholars considered them plants. Eighteenth-century naturalists grudgingly granted them admittance into the animal kingdom, but only just. They classified cnidarians as “zoophytes,” somewhere between animal and plant.

It was not until the 19th century that naturalists began to understand how cnidarians developed from fertilized eggs, their body parts growing from two primordial layers of tissue, the endoderm and ectoderm.

Other animals, including humans and insects, have a third layer of embryonic tissue, the mesoderm, wedged between the ectoderm and the endoderm. It gives rise to muscles, the heart and other organs not found in cnidarians.

Cnidarians also have a simpler overall body plan. Fish, fruit flies and earthworms all have heads and tails, backs and fronts, and left and right sides. Scientists refer to animals, including humans, with this two-sided symmetry as bilaterians. In contrast, cnidarians seem to lack such symmetry completely. A jellyfish, for example, has the symmetry of a bicycle wheel, radiating from a central axis.

{ NY Times [2005] | Continue reading }

print { Constance Jacobson }

Red Bull is a carbonated beverage that initially gained wide popularity in the U.S. during the late nineties. Taking root amongst college campuses, it appeared throughout underground clubs and eventually entered mainstream pop-culture. The manufactures claim that drinking Red Bull enhances physical endurance, concentration and reaction speed. The main ingredients of Red Bull include sugar, taurine, glucuronolactone and caffeine. It is hypothesized that the combinatorial influences of these ingredients are responsible for Red Bull’s proposed effects. This report critically reviews these claims and concludes that caffeine alone may be responsible for the proposed effects.

{ Debunking the Effects of Taurine in Red Bull Energy Drink | eScholarship | Continue reading }

collage { Lola Dupre }

{ Franz Xaver Messerschmidt (1736 – 1783) was a German-Austrian sculptor most famous for his “character heads,” a collection of busts with faces contorted in extreme facial expressions. | Wikipedia | Continue reading | More: I have been researching franz xaver messerschmidt and his «mad heads» (as i like to call them) between 1990 and 2003 }

Of the 50 dommes she interviewed in New York, 39 percent had gone to graduate school, including three who attended Columbia University.

The Upper Breast Side is Manhattan’s leading lactation and breastfeeding resource center and retail store with a pun in its name. A valuable resource for befuddled and sore-titted moms.

NYC’s Ten Worst Tenants.

For decades, Chinatown Fair welcomed everyone — misfits, cool kids, world champions, novices, dancers, fighters, strategists, tourists carrying leftover dumplings from their dinner across the street. Then, two weeks ago, it disappeared.

The crown and other interior portions of the Statue of Liberty will temporarily close to the public Nov. 1 to allow for the installation of extra safety features, a spokeswoman for the National Park Service.

Ping-Pong Table Coming to Tompkins Square Park.

Best Business Cards from Around New York’s Tech Scene.

Don Figlozzi, the First TV Animator? Don Figlozzi (1909-81), spent the first half of his career in animation and the second half at the New York Daily News, where his cartoons, signed “Fig,” became a fixture.

An interview with Colleen Nika.

Steven Brahms at 3rd Ward (Friday, March 18).

Tim Davis, The Upstate New York Olympics, 2011

“Women Artists Reconfigure the Signs of Power, 1973-1991” at the Neuberger Museum of Art.

Fireman Reminds You To Set Your Clocks Ahead an Hour.

There is no single, clear measure of sex drive. So we approached the problem like this. Imagine two women (or two men for that matter), such that one of them has truly a stronger sex drive than the other. What differences in preferences and behavior would you expect to see between the two of them? For example, the one with the stronger sex drive would presumably think about sex more often; have more fantasies, desire, and actual sex more often; have more partners; masturbate more often; and devote more effort to having sex than the other. The reverse is quite implausible. That is, it is hard to imagine the woman with a weaker sex drive having more frequent sexual fantasies than the woman with the stronger sex drive.

And so we searched for studies that compared men and women on these types of behaviors.

After months of reading and compiling results, the answer was clear. There is a substantial difference, and men have a much stronger sex drive than women. To be sure, there are some women who have frequent, intense desires for sex, and there are some men who don’t, but on average the men want it more.

{ Oxford University Press | Continue reading }

acrylic on board { Hajime Sorayama }

Q. Is anesthesia like a coma?

A. It’s a reversible drug-induced coma, to simplify. As with a coma that’s the result of a brain injury, the patient is unconscious, insensitive to pain, cannot move or remember. However, with anesthesia, once the drugs wear off, the coma wears off.

{ Interview with Dr. Emery Neal Brown, professor of anesthesiology at Harvard Medical School | NY Times | Continue reading }

quote { Eulogy for Things Left Unsaid | video }

My own research into gender differences stems from my interest in the neurodevelopmental condition of autism. (…)

What we know is that girls, on average, make more eye contact than boys from at least 12 months of age and that, on average, language develops faster in girls than in boys, measured at 18 and 24 months of age. The question is: “Why?” Given that reduced eye contact and delayed language are two of the signs of classic autism in preschoolers, it seems necessary to consider whether autism is an extreme form of the typical male pattern of development.

{ NewStateman | Continue reading }

photo { Bill Owens }

Anyone who sets out to write an essay — for a school or college class, a magazine or even the book review section of a newspaper — owes something to Michel de Montaigne, though perhaps not much. Montaigne was a magistrate and landowner near Bordeaux who retired temporarily from public life in 1570 to spend more time with his library and to make a modest memento of his mind. He called his literary project “Essais,” meaning “attempts” or “trials,” and the term caught on in English after Francis Bacon, the British philosopher and statesman, used it for his own collection of short pieces in 1597. (…)

Oddly, Montaigne learned to speak Latin before he learned to speak anything else, thanks to his father’s strict ideas about schooling. But he chose to write in French, which he expected would change beyond recognition within 50 years, rather than a more “durable” tongue.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

photo { Annabel Mehran }

John Gapper makes a good point: management consultants in general, and McKinsey consultants in particular, have made their entire business out of exploiting the moral grey zone surrounding confidential information.

The reason you hire McKinsey is that its consultants have seen strategic business issues like yours before, and therefore might have developed good insights into how to approach them. But the reason they’re familiar with those issues is that they’ve been given highly confidential information about your competitors. So when you hire McKinsey you’re essentially trying to acquire, for a very high hourly fee, the kind of corporate intelligence that can only be built up through long exposure to highly-sensitive commercial information. (…)

In this sense, a management consultant is a bit like an art dealer, or anybody else who traffics in valuable information asymmetries. The consultant knows more than the client, when it comes to strategic issues within the industry in question. If the client wants access to that knowledge, he has to open his own kimono to get it, thereby putting the consultant at yet more of an information advantage.

{ Felix Salmon/Reuters | Continue reading }

The magnitude-8.9 quake that struck off Japan’s coast on March 11 is the largest in the country’s recorded history.

Map of the Damage From the Japanese Earthquake.

Japan’s Strict Building Codes Saved Lives. From seawalls that line stretches of Japan’s coastline, to skyscrapers that sway to absorb earthquakes, to building codes that are among the world’s most rigorous, no country may be better prepared to withstand earthquakes than Japan. More: Some Perspective On The Japan Earthquake.

When Tsunami Warning System Works, And When It Doesn’t

Japan Earthquake Demonstrates the Limits—and Power—of Science.

photo { Replica of seismograph invented by Zhang Heng in China in the 2nd century A.D. }

Swedish Bank Robber Busted by Forgotten Urine.

Lockheed Martin Tried to Trade F-16s for Frozen Chickens.

China Threatens Death Penalty for Food Safety Violations.

Boy found dead in oven at his family’s home.

“I Just Broke Into A House And The Owner Came Home,” Intruder Tells 911 Operator. “I think she’s got guns.”

People in Seattle who would never touch heroin are trying fentanyl. What they don’t know is that it’s basically the same thing, only stronger.

Less educated police officers are found to be more likely to use force.

Idaho Rancher Revealed as Gangster From Boston. A wanted man started over with a new name and a new life in Idaho, but then his past caught up with him.

Big-screen TV stolen in reverse prison break.

More than 60 people, including ‘Snoop’ of ‘The Wire,’ arrested in drug raids in Baltimore.

‘Half-fro’ mug shot of dealer caught mid-haircut.

About one in 20 survey participants reported they’d dozed off while driving at least once in a month.

Where does WikiLeaks keep its secrets? In a former military bunker and nuclear shelter under Stockholm’s city streets.

The government’s unnoticed Europe crisis.

Daniel Kish has been sightless since he was a year old. Yet he can mountain bike. And navigate the wilderness alone. And recognize a building as far away as 1,000 feet. How? The same way bats can see in the dark.

Professor Tim Birkhead is one of the pioneers of spermatology. He explains how promiscuous females can be selective about sperm, even after multiple inseminations.

Has Viagra helped endangered species by reducing demand for rhino horn, etc?

How anger can make us more rational.

How well our brain functions is largely based on our family’s genetic makeup, according to a new study.

Tropical Water Ice Discovered On Mars.

India’s space agency announced it had discovered an enormous volcanic cave under the surface of the moon.

In this article, I focus on the definition of one word in particular: probability.

Introduction to Sociosystemics: Science About the Utilizing of Social Sciences. And (whatever that means): The semiotic organization of the research process in the social sciences.

Should Computer “Languages” Qualify as Foreign Languages for Ph.D.s?

Data Mining: How Companies Now Know Everything About You.

Is Twitter Worth More Than We Think? CNBC’s John Melloy mentions what may be the best analysis I’ve seen on the “Charlie Sheen effect.”

Can Punk Change the Way We Think About Law?

A Dynamic Theory of Battle Victory and Defeat.

Notes On Asymmetric War.

Did Archaeologists Uncover Blackbeard’s Treasure? Cannons. Gold dust. Turtle bones. For archaeologists researching the notorious pirate’s flagship, every clue is priceless.

After earning a fortune processing online-porn payments, Chris Mallick spent $32 million to make Middle Men, a movie about his fabulous rise. It bombed; but that was just the beginning of his problems.

Dan Savage, the brilliant and foul-mouthed sex columnist, has become one of the most important ethicists in America. Are we screwed?

The MGM follies began in 2004, when its owner, Kirk Kerkorian, who had made a fortune buying and selling MGM, decided the time was ripe to sell it yet again.

The Confidence Man. How Lalit Modi, possessed of inhuman energy, ambition and audacity, built a billion-dollar cricket kingdom—only to be rudely ejected from its throne.

Two of Wall Street’s savviest value investors, Bruce Berkowitz and David Einhorn, pride themselves on their rigorous analysis. Now they’re locked in a scorched-earth dispute over the value of some Florida real estate. How could they look at the same facts and reach such wildly different conclusions, and what does that say about the “value” of value investing?

‘Tiger, Tiger’ by Margaux Fragoso: The Incandescent Memoir of a Real-Life Lolita.

Is it possible for fraternal twins to have different fathers?

Tom Waits has teamed up with The David Lynch Foundation to help launch DLF Music and their ‘Download for Good’ campaign on PledgeMusic.

The Story of Eames Furniture: Marilyn Neuhart with John Neuhart - Interview. [video]

The complexities of our brain. [video]

The 10 Most Innovative Companies in Music.

How to make really good coffee.

Start watching the video above and you may not believe that it features an ordinary chessboard.

Alexander Calder’s code.

Insane asylum plans.

Writes 2 kms.

Florida church billboard welcomes “Scumbags.”

Art Boobs.

For Y’ur Height Only.

Woman on the phone.

Whoopla.

Mankind may have unleashed the sixth known mass extinction in Earth’s history, according to a paper released by Nature.

Over the past 540 million years, five mega-wipeouts of species have occurred through naturally-induced events.

But the new threat is man-made, inflicted by habitation loss, over-hunting, over-fishing, the spread of germs and viruses and introduced species and by climate change caused by fossil-fuel greenhouse gases, says the study.
Evidence from fossils suggests that in the “Big Five” extinctions, at least 75 percent of all animal species were destroyed.

Palaeobiologists at the University of California at Berkeley looked at the state of biodiversity today, using the world’s mammal species as a barometer.

Until mankind’s big expansion some 500 years ago, mammal extinctions were very rare: on average, just two species died out every million years.

But in the last five centuries, at least 80 out of 5,570 mammal species have bitten the dust, providing a clear warning of the peril to biodiversity.

{ The Independent | Continue reading }

images { 1. Erik Foss | 2. Alejandro Garcia }

Sex would be a very different proposition for humans if — like some animals including chimpanzees, macaques and mice — men had penises studded with small, hard spines.

Now researchers at Stanford University in California have found a molecular mechanism for how the human penis could have evolved to be so distinctly spine-free. They have pinpointed it as the loss of a particular chunk of non-coding DNA that influences the expression of the androgen receptor gene involved in hormone signalling.

The research also suggests a molecular mechanism for how we evolved bigger brains than chimpanzees and lost the small sensory whiskers that the apes — who are amongst our closest relatives and with whom it has been estimated we share 96% of our DNA — have on their face.

{ Nature | Continue reading }

artwork { Tom Gallant, Japanese Iris, 2010 | Cut paper, glass, wood }

The brain may manage anger differently depending on whether we’re lying down or sitting up, according to a study published in Psychological Science that may also have worrying implications for how we are trying to understand brain function. (…)

A field of study called ‘embodied cognition‘ has found lots of curious interactions between how the mind and brain manage our responses depending on the possibilities for action.

For example, we perceive distances as shorter when we have a tool in our hand and intend to use it, and wearing a heavy backpack causes hills to appear steeper.

{ Mind Hacks | Continue reading }

The principle of all things entrails made


Of smallest entrails; bone, of smallest bone,


Blood, of small sanguine drops reduced to one;


Gold, of small grains; earth, of small sands compacted


Small drops to water, sparks to fire contracted.

{ Lucretius quoted by Ralph W. Emerson | Continue reading }

{ Bon Jane }

In the mid 1920s, Berger invented the electroencephalagraph (EEG), a technique for measuring the electrical activity of brains. Unfortunately, Berger didn’t understand electricity very well, so didn’t have a clear understanding of what his recordings might mean. But he revolutionized the study of human brains.

Perhaps nowhere was Berger’s invention put to greater use than in the study of sleep. Before that, what did we know of brains while we slept? (…)

Berger’s invention continues to deepen our understanding of sleep, nearly a century after its invention, as shown by a new paper by KcKinney and colleagues.

{ NeuroDojo | Continue reading }

related { Short on sleep, the brain optimistically favors long odds }

painting { John Kacere }