With social networking sites enabling the romantically inclined to find out more about a potential lover before the first superficial chat than they previously would have in the first month of dating, this is an important question for the future of romance.
A link between romantic love and face recognition and sexual desire and verbal recognition is suggested. When in love, people typically focus on a long-term perspective which enhances global perception, whereas when experiencing sexual encounters they focus on the present which enhances a perception of details. Because people automatically activate these processing styles when in love or sex, subtle reminders of love versus sex should suffice to change ways of perception. Global processing should further enhance face recognition, whereas local processing should enhance recognition of verbal information. In two studies participants were primed with concepts and thoughts of love versus sex. Compared to control groups, recognition of verbal material was enhanced after sex priming, whereas face recognition was enhanced after love priming. In Experiment 2 it was demonstrated that differences in global versus local perception mediated these effects. However, there was no indication for mood as a mediator.
{ Bryan Formhals }
{ A beam of light is depicted travelling between the Earth and the Moon in the same time it takes light to scale the distance between them: 1.255 seconds at its mean orbital (surface to surface) distance. The relative sizes and separation of the Earth–Moon system are shown to scale. | Wikipedia | Related: Where is the best clock in the universe? The widespread belief that pulsars are the best clocks in the universe is wrong, say physicists. }
Does playing hard to get work?
‘Easy things nobody wants, but what is forbidden is tempting.’ –Ovid
Back in the 60s and 70s, before the sexual revolution had really taken hold, the standard dating advice for women was play hard to get. In some quarters it still is.
Like the Roman poet Ovid 2,000 years earlier, social scientists in the 1960s accepted the cultural lore that women could increase their desirability by being coy. When interviewed, men seemed to agree: they said that hard to get women were probably more popular, beautiful and had better personalities.
Unfortunately every time psychologists used an experiment to test the idea that playing hard to get is a good dating strategy, their results didn’t make any sense. At least not until 1973 when Elaine Walster and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin finally hit upon a method that teased out the subtleties. (…)
So this experiment suggests that playing hard to get only works in the sense that it signals selectivity. But for the person you are after, you should be easy to get because otherwise they’ll assume you’re hard work.
In the light of this experiment we can remix Ovid’s quote to: “Easy things are tempting, but only if they are forbidden to others.”
illustration { Imp Kerr & Associates, 2010 }
related { Abdi Assadi, Relationship as Yoga 1 & 2 | Podcast | iTunes }
Is the happy life characterized by shallow, happy-go-lucky moments and trivial small talk, or by reflection and profound social encounters? Both notions—the happy ignoramus and the fulfilled deep thinker—exist, but little is known about which interaction style is actually associated with greater happiness (King & Napa, 1998). In this article, we report findings from a naturalistic observation study that investigated whether happy and unhappy people differ in the amount of small talk and substantive conversations they have. (…)
Naturally, our correlational findings are causally ambiguous. On the one hand, well-being may be causally antecedent to having substantive interactions; happy people may be “social attractors” who facilitate deep social encounters (Lucas & Dyrenforth, 2006). On the other hand, deep conversations may actually make people happier. (…)
Remarking on Socrates’ dictum that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” Dennett (1984) wrote, “The overly examined life is nothing to write home about either” (p. 87). Although we hesitate to enter such delicate philosophical disputes, our findings suggest that people find their lives more worth living when examined―at least when examined together.
collage { never always }
When pain is pleasant
Ever prodded at an injury despite the fact you know it will hurt? Ever cook an incredibly spicy dish even though you know your digestive tract will suffer for it? If the answers are yes, you’re not alone. Pain is ostensibly a negative thing but we’re often drawn to it. Why?
According to Marta Andreatta from the University of Wurzburg, it’s a question of timing. After we experience pain, the lack of it is a relief. Andreatta thinks that if something happens during this pleasurable window immediately after a burst of pain, we come to associate it with the positive experience of pain relief rather than the negative feeling of the pain itself. The catch is that we don’t realise this has happened. We believe that the event, which occurred so closely to a flash of pain, must be a negative one. But our reflexes betray us.
Andreatta’s work builds on previous research with flies and mice. If flies smell a distinctive aroma just before feeling an electric shock, they’ll learn to avoid that smell. However, if the smell is released immediately after the shock, they’re actually drawn to it. Rather than danger, the smell was linked with safety. The same trick works in mice. But what about humans?
quote { Charles Baudelaire, The Man Who Tortures Himself, 1857 }
{ Thanks Glenn }
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{ Death In Vegas, Dirt | Directed by Andrea Giacobbe | via Colleen Nika } |
{ Aphex Twin - Come to daddy | Directed by Chris Cunningham } |
Although humans usually prefer mates that resemble themselves, mating preferences can vary with context. Stress has been shown to alter mating preferences in animals, but the effects of stress on human mating preferences are unknown. Here, we investigated whether stress alters men’s preference for self-resembling mates. (…) Our findings show that stress affects human mating preferences: unstressed individuals showed the expected preference for similar mates, but stressed individuals seem to prefer dissimilar mates.
When the University of Massachusetts Lowell launched its nanotechnology center six years ago, scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs were dreaming big dreams about small things, like miniature generators to replace batteries and microscopic robots to repair human tissues.
State officials and economic developers imagined new industries and jobs. Universities jockeyed for billions in research money. The news media hyped it as the next big thing.
So what happened?
A lot, actually. While nanotechnology — working at a scale that is one-thousandth the width of a human hair — may have faded from the public’s imagination, the field has made substantial progress in recent years, opening new frontiers in electronics, medicine, and materials.
Nanotech products have begun to enter commercial markets. Components such as nanoparticles and tiny conductive wires called carbon nanotubes are being standardized and mass-produced. New discoveries are being made. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example, researchers recently found that carbon nanotubes can not only conduct electricity, but generate it.
“Nanotechnology may have faded from view,’’ said Michael Strano, who led the MIT team that made the discovery, “but it has dissolved into a sea of science.’’At UMass Lowell, researchers have built working prototypes of sensors with components smaller than a grain of sand, able to detect chemical weapons, biological weapons, and previously undetectable cracks that threaten the integrity of ceramic body armor. They have also developed a process, similar to ink jet printing, to rapidly apply the sensors to soldiers’ equipment. (…)
Nanotechnology is at about the point that IT had reached in 1975, said Roco, but has gotten there much faster. Roco estimates nanotechnology will reach IT’s 1995 stage by 2020.
{ Boston Globe | Continue reading | via Josh Wolfe }
{ A new study suggests that darkness encourages cheating, even when it makes no difference to anonymity. | BPS | full story }
Did you hear about the Bangladeshi brick company that beheaded an employee to improve the color of its bricks?
This tragic incident raises many questions. The article is vague, but I assume a supervisor or some sort of boss was leading this strategy. So I wonder how the employee was chosen? Was he the worst worker, the biggest complainer, or the guy who looked the most like a brick? (…)
I wonder how the boss broke the news to the employee. Did he work up to it with a list of criticisms about the employee’s job performance? As a boss, you don’t want to start that sort of conversation with the beheading part. Begin with something like “I noticed you’ve been late twice this week.” That way it isn’t such a cruel shock when you get to the decapitation scenario.
Buildings consume more energy and materials than any other human activity – a reality that, for decades, has fueled interest in any improvements able to save energy and reduce costs. As energy prices continue to rise and resources dwindle, interest in “green buildings” has sparked a growing industry. According to a new report from Lux Research, the market for energy saving green buildings technologies will expand from $144 billion today to $277 billion in 2020, representing a 6.1% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). (…)
“The developed world’s 728 billion square feet of residential, commercial, and government floor space account for nearly 40% of its primary energy use, and consume 72% of its electricity,” said Michael LoCascio, a Senior Analyst at Lux Research, and the report’s lead author. “But while there’s increasing interest in cost-saving green building technologies, the market remains poorly defined.” (…)
The report focuses on energy-saving green building technologies, and examines the prospects for more than thirty “established green” and “emerging green” technologies, based on primary interviews with engineers, contractors, architects, and technology suppliers, as well as rigorous secondary research of technology development and pricing trends. Among its key conclusions:
1.) The energy-saving equipment category will gear up to reach $146 billion in 2015. The market’s largest segment, green building equipment, comprises lighting, HVAC and water heating systems; as well as energy-generation technologies, such as rooftop solar, building-integrated PV, and combined heat and power systems. The segment represented an impressive $67 billion in 2009, but new growth in LEDs, smart lighting, and advanced heat technologies will help sustain a 7.3% CAGR through 2015.
2.) The services segment will deliver the most robust growth. The green services category encompasses energy service companies (ESCOs), demand response, building energy management, and smart meters. In 2009, it represented only 11% of the green building market with $16 billion in revenues. But strong expansion of emerging technologies, like demand response, will expand the segment’s revenues to $55 billion in 2020, reflecting a robust 12% CAGR.
3.) Materials are the slowest growing segment, with a few bright spots. Energy-saving green building materials, such as insulation, windows, and structural materials amounted to $62 billion in 2009; the segment will reach $75 billion in 2015, a relatively slight 2% CAGR. Emerging technologies to watch, however, include electrochromic, thermochromic, and thermoreflective windows, which control how much sunlight windows admit.
“The adoption cycle for green building technologies is comparatively long, and growth will rely in part on subsidies,” said LoCascio. “The biggest driving factor, however, is straight-up economics. Technologies that can provide a payback in three years are more likely to be adopted by commercial building owners. Those providing payback in five years, however, are still attractive for government buildings.”
{ Jennifer Reed Bike Crash Portrait | Crash portraits | more }
This week, a study found that drinking habits are socially transmissible. Last month, a paper said that both cooperation and selfishness can spread like a virus. In February, a study found that poor sleep and pot smoking are contagious among teens. All of these revelations come from the works of two scientists, Harvard’s Nicholas Christakis and U.C. San Diego’s James Fowler. They first brought fame to contagion in 2007 with a widely publicized paper suggesting that obesity is “socially contagious” and that it can spread like a pox from one friend to another, and then another, and then to one more. More contagions (depression and divorce) are in the works. In their 2009 book, Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives, Christakis and Fowler write that connection and contagion are “the anatomy and physiology of the human superorganism,” and that “everything we think, feel, do, or say can spread far beyond the people we know.”
The studies have provoked excitement in the public health community but also some head-scratching. Many were surprised by the claim that obesity, for example, could be transmitted from one person to another. We thought we knew the major causes of fatness: genes, for one thing, along with eating too many calories and living a sedentary lifestyle. The finding that loneliness can be contagious also caught some readers off-guard
photo { Bryan Formhals }
Lines at the grocery store might become as obsolete as milkmen, if a new tag that seeks to replace bar codes becomes commonplace.
Researchers from Sunchon National University in Suncheon, South Korea, and Rice University in Houston have built a radio frequency identification tag that can be printed directly onto cereal boxes and potato chip bags. The tag uses ink laced with carbon nanotubes to print electronics on paper or plastic that could instantly transmit information about a cart full of groceries.
“You could run your cart by a detector and it tells you instantly what’s in the cart,” says James M. Tour of Rice University, whose research group invented the ink. “No more lines, you just walk out with your stuff.”
logotype { Forest Young }
Deciding what is and isn’t a planet is a problem on which the International Astronomical Union has generated a large amount of hot air. The challenge is to find a way of defining a planet that does not depend on arbitrary rules. For example, saying that bodies bigger than a certain arbitrary size are planets but smaller ones are not will not do. The problem is that non-arbitrary rules are hard to come by.
In 2006, the IAU famously modified its definition of a planet in a way that demoted Pluto to a second class member of the Solar System. Pluto is no longer a full blown planet but a dwarf planet along with a handful of other objects orbiting the Sun.
The IAU’s new definition of a planet isan object that satisfies the following three criteria. It must be in orbit around the Sun, have sufficient mass to have formed into a nearly round shape and it must have cleared its orbit of other objects.
Pluto satisfies the first two criteria but fails on the third because it crosses Neptune’s orbit(although, strangely, Neptune passes).
Such objects are officially called dwarf planets and their definition is decidedly arbitrary. In its infinite wisdom, the IAU states that dwarf planets are any transNeptunian objects with an absolute magnitude less than +1 (ie a radius of at least 420 km).
Today, Charles Lineweaver and Marc Norman at the Australian National University in Canberra focus on a new way of defining dwarf planets which is set to dramatically change the way we think about these obects.
The problem boils down to separating the potato-shaped objects in the Solar System from the spherical ones.
photo { Max Langhurst }
In safety study, sheep on meth are shocked with tasers.
Evil Clown hired for stalking, threats and a pie in the face.
In the years before its collapse, Lehman Brothers used a small company to shift investments off its books. It was like a hidden passage on Wall Street, a secret channel that enabled billions of dollars to flow through Lehman.
Paul Krugman vs Andrew Sorkin. The Nobel laureate demands an apology from the author of “Too Big To Fail.” He doesn’t get one. More: Andrew Ross Sorkin: I read your blog post about my column in Tuesday’s newspaper… }
If Amazon could re-run history, here’s how it should have handled pricing best-selling e-books.
Mind controlling an ant… with a fungus.
Two views of brain function: Reflexive/reactive or Intrinsic/proactive?
First evidence that quantum processes generate truly random numbers.
Do quasars break the laws of physics?
What alcohol does to your mind.
How the English breakfast has changed with Britain.
Why Twitter is worth more than Facebook (at least to me)
Window seat or aisle? Ever since I was a small child, there’s been only one answer.
What actually gets taught on a homeopathy course.
The Most Controversial Dictionary in the English Language.
Another NYC coyote invasion expected in fall.
Why do some water fountains produce two streams of water that merge into one?
Steve McQueen: 20 Never-Seen Photos.
David Lynch Favorites Movies and FilmMakers.
An artist used a freeway as his canvas. The fake freeway sign became a real public service.
Dimitri Tsykalov, Cultura carnivora.
Noah Sheldon: Cats Wearing Clothes.
Your pet’s portrait will become an instant masterpiece when incorporated into a replica of one of your favorite paintings. [Thanks Daniel!]
