Come here for all your EB 2012 News!

Well, all the ASPET news anyway. [More]


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A Fun DIY Science Goodie: The Behavioral Economics of Agreement (And Why Negotiations Fail)

Why do people have such a hard time reaching a compromise? Blame fairness.

Image: Flickr/EdwardDalmulder, cc license

#SciAmBlogs Wednesday - feathered tyrannosaurs, coral transplants, nanomedicine, Kawasaki Disease, and more.

Yes! We’ve made it! Forget NYTimes or BBC or NPR SciAm Blogs were featured in The Onion! That is the pinnacle nowhere higher to go. We are now part of the popular culture see the video… of course, we made it our newest Video of the Week

And now back to more serious fare…

#SciAmBlogs Officially Pop Culture Icon

Video of the Week #37 April 4th, 2012

Imposter Syndrome: could we learn something from sports?

At Neurotic Physiology today , I’m talking about Imposter Syndrome . [More]


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A Psychologist Goes To The Zoo: An Interview with Terry L. Maple

I first became aware of Dr. Terry L. Maple when I read his article in the latest issue of The Observer , the magazine of the Association for Psychological Science . Maple is former president and CEO of the Zoo Atlanta as well as the Palm Beach Zoo , and is currently a professor in the departments of psychology and integrative biology at the Harriett Wilkes Honors College at the Boca Raton campus of Florida Atlantic University.

Consciousness Does Not Reside Here

What is the relation between selective attention and consciousness? When you strain to listen to the distant baying of coyotes over the sound of a campsite conversation, you do so by attending to the sound and becoming conscious of their howls. When you attend to your sparring opponent out of the corner of your eye, you become hyperaware of his smallest gestures. Because of the seemingly intimate relation between attention and consciousness, most scholars conflate the two processes.

#SciAmBlogs Tuesday - DNA Patents, Supernova, Power of Mindset, Bat-Killing Fungus, and more.

News tidbit of the day? The #SciAmBlogs make an appearance in an Onion video (around 1:57-2:04).

Intelligence and Other Stereotypes: The Power of Mindset

Walter Mischel, no longer nine years old. Image credit: Dieter Hoppe (www.berlin-fotografie.de)

Walter Mischel was nine years old when he started kindergarten. It wasn t that his parents had been negligent in his schooling. It was just that the boy couldn t speak English. It was 1940 and the Mischels had just arrived in Brooklyn; they d been one of the few Jewish families lucky enough to escape Vienna in the wake of the Nazi take-over in the spring of 1938. The reason had as much to do with luck as with foresight: they had discovered a certificate of U.S. citizenship from a long-since-dead maternal grandfather. Apparently, he had obtained it while working in New York City around 1900, before returning once more to Europe.

Why 'Uncanny Valley' Human Look-Alikes Put Us on Edge

When Pixar screened a computer-animated short film called "Tin Toy" in 1988, test audiences hated the sight of the pseudo-realistic baby named "Billy" who terrorized the toys. Such a strong reaction persuaded Pixar to avoid making uncannily realistic human characters -- it has since focused its efforts on films about living toys, curious robots and talking cars to win Academy Awards and moviegoers' hearts.

Published! Cortical Thickness, Reading Skill, and Reading Experience

I received my masters degree in 2009. After a loooong review process, the research that I conducted for my masters thesis my first first-author publication is finally published and online!

Before beginning the research I’m currently doing, I started grad school conducting MRI research of reading and dyslexia. In this study, I established a connection between two disparate lines of reading research, by showing a relationship between reading experience and cortical thickness in parts of the brain we know to be involved in reading.

Editor's Selections: Throwing Words, Deceptive Spider Sex, and Littering

Here are my Research Blogging Editor’s Selections for this week:

Decoding the Body Watcher

What's the difference between noticing the rapid beat of a popular song on the radio and noticing the rapid rate of your heart when you see your crush? Between noticing the smell of fresh baked bread and noticing that you're out of breath? Both require attention. However, the direction of that attention differs: it is either turned outward, as in the case of noticing a stop sign or a tap on your shoulder, or turned inward, as in the case of feeling full or feeling love. 

Diversity in Science Carnival for April: Imposter Syndrome!!

Sci is hosting this month’s Diversity in Science Carnival over at Neurotic Physiology , where we will be covering IMPOSTER SYNDROME, the nasty, insidious idea that you’re not qualified enough for the job you already have. We’re interested in who gets it, what they do about it, and what institutions could do as a whole to help fight it.

The idea behind a blog carnival is that people write their own pieces on their own blogs, tumblrs, heck you can tell your story in Tweets and Storify them. Then please submit your posts via the form *. I will gather them together and set them up so that they will be easy to read, providing traffic to your post of people who might not otherwise see it. So send me your stuff! I want to see what you all think of Imposter Syndrome, and what we can all do about it!

Are DNA Patents Doomed?

DNA is special. Unlike other body parts, it holds information. Even discarding a blood spot or saliva sample doesn t necessarily prevent the telltale DNA sequences from living on in a database.

We guard our DNA data in a way that we don t other test results, such as cholesterol levels. Genes are uniquely ours. They say something about us at some fundamental level, more than a mammogram or a Pap smear or an x-ray, said James Evans, MD PhD, professor of genetics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, at a symposium on DNA patenting at the International Congress of Human Genetics in Montreal in October 2011.

Why Some Pain Relievers Cause Intense Itching

Millions of patients benefit from opioids such as morphine and codeine, but the pain relief they provide often comes with intense itching. In some cases, the irritation is so bad that patients will opt to cut back on painkillers. Now a study in the October 14 issue of Cell has found a possible explanation--the first step to creating drugs that will not make patients choose between experiencing itchiness and pain.

Flirting under Moonlight on a Hot Summer Night, or, The Secret Night-Life of Fruitflies

I originally published this post on May 19, 2007 .

As we mentioned just the other day (May 2007), studying animal behavior is tough as “ animals do whatever they darned please “. Thus, making sure that everything is controlled for in an experimental setup is of paramount importance. Furthermore, for the studies to be replicable in other labs, it is always a good idea for experimental setups to be standardized. Even that is often not enough. I do not have access to Science but you may all recall a paper from several years ago in which two labs tried to simultaneously perform exactly the same experiment in mice, using all the standard equipment, exactly the same protocols, the same strain bought from the same supplier on the same date, the same mouse-feed, perhaps even the same colors of technicians’ uniforms and yet, they got some very different data!

#SciAmBlogs Monday - Craigs List Avenue, Religion and Medical Care, Words With Rocks, Bad doctors, Futuristic Foods and more.

Most important news of the day we have a new blog! Check out Rosetta Stones !

Second, as it is Monday, we have a new Image of the Week .

The Celestial Goldfish

Image of the Week #36, April 2nd, 2012:

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How Useful Is Whole Genome Sequencing to Predict Disease?

A $1,000 genome sequence is close to being available. What will your sequence tell you about your actual risk for certain diseases?