Blogs / Discoblog

18 years of sadness begins

Americans will make more phone calls this Sunday than on any other day of the year, showering their mothers with love and gratitude. A month from now, fathers will receive a similar deluge of calls and, although the calls are far more likely to be of the collect variety, the sentiment will be the same. But are phone calls, cards, flowers, and brunches really enough? Research by social psychologist Daniel Gilbert reveals that people sacrifice more than “just” money, sleep, and a social life when they have children: They sacrifice their happiness.

Today at the “Happiness and its Causes” conference in Sydney, Gilbert revealed that kids are not the cuddly bundles of sunshine many parents wish to believe. Although married people are happier than unmarried people—they live longer, earn more more money, have more sex and enjoy it more—kids can completely kill the buzz.

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Life isn’t fair for the vertically challenged. They can’t see the stage at concerts, can’t reach the top shelf at the grocery store, have to hem their pants, and make less money and have less power than their taller peers. Well, I’m afraid new research shows that it doesn’t get much better. People, particularly women, with shorter arms and legs are at a higher risk for developing dementia. The study, performed by researchers from The Johns Hopkins University and Tufts University, came out in the May 6 issue of Neurology.

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Ever wonder what spurred you to order that bottle of Chablis? As it turns out, researchers are hard at work deciphering the answer to your question. Brock University in Ontario has announced the opening of its Consumer Perception and Cognition Lab, which is touted by the Calgary Herald as the “first academic facility in North America dedicated exclusively to studying the link between consumer approval and wine’s origins and flavours.”

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Given that the ability to sense the Earth’s magnetic field comes in pretty handy for pigeons, it’s worth asking: Can humans sense it too? Oleg Shumilov of Russia’s Institute of North Industrial Ecology Problems set out to answer this question, as Catherine Brahic reports in the New Scientist. After examining the planet’s geomagnetic field activity from 1948 to 1997, he found that it peaked consistently three times a year: March through May, July, and October. A little cross-checking on the data revealed that those time periods coincided with the peaks in the number of suicides in Kirovsk, a city of around 30,000 people in the cold depths of northern Russia.

Thanks to the handy rule of correlation vs. causation, Shumilov’s discovery is a long way from providing definitive evidence that human sensitivity to magnetic field activity equals greater numbers of suicides at certain times.

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Eric Schwitzgebel, an associate professor of philosophy at the University of California at Riverside, has written a paper, “Do Ethicists Steal More Books?” seeking to answer the timeless question of whether ethicists (i.e., people devoted to the study and philosophy of ethical codes) are concurrently more likely to hold themselves to higher standards of behavior (i.e., practice what they preach). His finding? Not so much.

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A University of Chicago study on happiness that’s been called “one of the most thorough examinations of happiness ever done in America” has found that the oldest Americans are also the happiest, and that different population groups reach greater and more equal happiness levels as they age. Among its other reported findings: African Americans are less happy than white people, men are less happy than women (a topic that’s been discussed at length recently), and happiness levels can “rise and fall between eras.”

Also among the findings: Despite their advancing age, which would seem to bring increased happiness, baby boomers, even with their high earning power and societal influence, are less happy than all the other generations surveyed.

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The AP reports that the lower house of the French parliament has passed a bill that would criminalize the “public inciting of extreme thinness.” This controversial (and totally unprecedented) law is aimed straight at the fashion industry—designers, magazines, and advertisers in particular—which has long genuflected before the image of über-skinny models as a beauty ideal. (more…)

The Daily Mail has a profile of ten-year-old Jennifer Lloyd, who suffers from polyglandular Addison’s disease. The incredibly rare disease—so rare, in fact, that only six people on earth are known to have it—leaves her body unable to produce adrenaline when she’s exposed to any sudden emotional or physical stress, including fear.

Without adrenaline (also called epinephrine), the hormone that readies the body for “fight or flight” by increasing the flow of oxygen and glucose to the brain and muscles, Lloyd can go into shock and suffer organ failure from something as minor as a scare from a TV program. The disease has already wreaked havoc on her blood pressure and salt levels, and she suffers from accompanying stomach and kidney problems that require “a complex range of medication.” As a result, her parents keep a close eye on her TV watching, while Lloyd herself censors her viewing of scary scenes like the CGI spider bonanza in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The family has also set up a fund to raise money for research on the condition.

Of course, on the plus side, she’ll never have to come up with an excuse for missing Saw V.

The last time you were in an airport, did you feel your heart rate jump at the sight of vigilant German Shepherds sniffing your bags? While your suitcase may have been entirely contraband-free, the idea that smells, often uncontrollable and undetectable to the human nose, can reveal secrets about you is enough to make even a seasoned traveler nervous.

Use of odor detection by law enforcement is on the rise, as defense attorney and surveillance expert Amber Marks writes in the Guardian. For police forces worldwide, smells are being increasingly relied on to detect drugs, weapons, and stolen goods. A smell alone, in the U.K. at least, can even be considered sufficient evidence to convict someone of a crime. Meanwhile, the technology of smell detection is rushing to meet tightened security needs: canine trainers are teaching dogs to sniff out emotions such as guilt and fear, while electronic noses can now be programmed to identify the “odor signature” of different races or ethnic groups. (more…)

You might not have heard this from other Web sites out there, but today has been the biggest science news day in history. Truly, the events that have befallen our planet—and our universe—over the past 17 hours have been remarkable. So we here at DiscoBlog have rounded up the most important headlines from around the Internet. Here they are:

— Fungus with a Sweet Tooth Breathes Nectar of the Gods
— German Doc Prescribes Arsenic for Scare “Down There”
— Physicist’s Creepy Photos Show Wife’s Wedding Ring—and Skeleton!
— Animal-Lover Adopts Gaggle of Geese, Leads Them on Walks and Swims
— Cryptic Poetry Book Reveals Greater Truth About … Nothing
— Biology Lab Invaded by Unidentified Pest; Valuable Bacteria Sample Destroyed
— Physicist’s Cat Is Stuck in a Tree—and Not Stuck in a Tree
— Living Blob Devours Bystanders, Transforms Into New Form of Life
— Cyclist Becomes Possessed by Demons As Furniture Explodes into Colored Fountains
— Bicycle Maker Makes Apparent Suicide Leap on North Carolina Beach; Brother, Friends Bring Him Back to Earth
— Stuff Now Exists! (But What Came Before?)
— Shy Professor Injured by Falling Apple; Says He Knows Why

Hat tip to Overcoming Bias for pointing out the impressive magnitude of what’s going on.

When cafés place signs that boast “Free Wi-Fi” in their windows, they usually intend to lure patrons in—not drive them away. But in response to Sonic.net’s offer to provide free Wi-Fi to the small town of Sebastopol, California, its residents whipped out their tinfoil hats and rejected the offer due to “potential risks to the health of our community” (although they thanked Sonic for the “very nice gesture”).

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TED (Technology Entertainment Design) is an annual conference that features some fascinating lectures on a broad range of topics, including science. All the talks are videotaped and available for free (as audio or video) at their Web site, and they’re definitely worth checking out.

There’s one particularly compelling video given by neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor. Taylor has a deep, visceral understanding of the brain that few neuroscientists have achieved: A blood vessel exploded in her brain in 1996. In her talk, she recounts the experience of witnessing her body and mind deteriorate, as over the course of 4 hours she lost her ability to walk, talk, read, write, and recall any memories. Well aware that she was having a stroke, she managed to study and remember every moment, thinking “Wow, this is so cool, how many brain scientists have the chance to study that from the inside?”

Dolphins always seem to find the most bizarre ways to make the headlines. In their most recent adventure, it appears that a dolphin named Moko has come to the rescue of two beached pygmy whales—by “communicating with the whales and leading them to safety,” according to the BBC.

According to conservation officer Malcolm Smith, who was at the scene, “there was obviously something that went on because the two whales changed their attitude from being quite distressed to following the dolphin quite willingly and directly along the beach and straight out to sea,” as quoted by the BBC. This extraordinary tale of cetacean correspondence was also covered by CNN, The LA Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail, and various Australian papers.

So what happened out there between Moko and the whales? Did she really communicate with them? If so, do these animals share a language—dolphinese perhaps?

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The original seven deadly sins laid out by the Catholic Church—pride, envy, gluttony, greed, lust, wrath, and sloth—are the classics of immorality, the same basic flaws humans have evinced since coming out of the trees (and, perhaps, even before). But in our booming, globalized, highly networked world, there are some new and very harmful errors at our disposal. And while the Vatican doesn’t have a Facebook page yet (unlike Discover), they do recognize that modern times call for modern vices.

In an interview headlined “New Forms of Social Sin,” Gianfranco Girotti, head of the Vatican’s Apostolic Penitentiary, insisted that “new sins have appeared on the horizon of humanity as a corollary of the unstoppable process of globalization.” The list of “mortal sins,” as they have now been classified, came at the end of a week-long seminar in Rome that intended to deal with the dismal turnout at recent confessions. Seems logical: If a wider range of souls are in danger of eternal damnation, more will seek absolution. So, what are the new ways to fall from grace?

Girotti devotes some space to a familiar type of don’t-treat-your-brother-poorly admonitions—like social injustice that causes poverty or “the excessive accumulation of wealth by a few”—but many of the new rules concern modern science, stuff that the sixth-century pope Gregory the Great never dreamed of.

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Hello sunshine! Unless you strolled into work an hour late today, you’re probably celebrating the commencement of daylight saving time. Here in New York City, an hour of sunshine has moved from about 6:15 am—when we shrink from it and exclude it from our bedrooms—to 6:15 pm, when we can emerge from our offices to luxuriate in its warmth and embrace the opportunities for outdoor leisure activities. Even if the “lost” hour of sleep makes you drag a bit on the first morning, the sunnier afternoons are well worth that supplementary cup of coffee.

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Have you ever wondered what ovulation looks like from the viewpoint of the egg? Or wished you could cruise along the lymphatic system through a tangled web of capillaries? Now, your childhood dreams of having Ms. Frizzle for a teacher can be (practically) fulfilled: A new interactive Web site called Visible Body is the Magic School Bus of the 21st century. The psychedelic site just launched on Tuesday, and is the first free (with registration), Web-based, 3D interactive model of the human body. The site includes eye-popping videos and images, including the screenshots posted here.

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We humans are slowly starting to grasp the limits of our intellectual superiority, particularly with respect to chimpanzees. Just in the past year, scientists have caught chimps hunting with spears, passing on cultural traditions, displaying altruism, and beating college students (at least some of whom were sober) at memory games. Now, a new study in Current Biology shows they may actually have the capacity for a communication system far more complex than we thought.

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Defining intelligence is highly problematic. Was Einstein smarter than Mozart? Are either smarter than Shakespeare? What about Gandhi and Buddha? Intelligence is a broad and complex entity—and nearly impossible for neuroscientists to study. We do know that there’s an area in the very front of the brain—the prefrontal cortex (PFC)—that’s important for the qualities most people associate with intelligence. The PFC is important for logic, rational thought, abstract thinking, concentration, planning, and impulse control—the latter colorfully demonstrated when a three-foot iron pole blasted through a man’s forehead in 1848, sparing his life but leaving him rude and irritable. But as important as the PFC is for intelligent human behavior, there may be one process that doesn’t really need it—creativity.

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Last night DiscoBlog traipsed down to the fairly swanky headquarters of giant advertising firm Saatchi & Saatchi, where the British-based ad folks recognized 10 “world-changing ideas”—inventions to improve people’s lives in one way or another.

The winner among the finalists was the LifeStraw, a foot-long filtering tube that purports to let you (or your friends in the developing world) drink even the filthiest, most microbe-infested water without getting sick. We’re not sure what the criteria were for winning this award—the LifeStraw isn’t exactly new, having been named a Best Invention of the Year by Time in 2005—but it seems a legitimately great item. Wiley event attendees insist they knew it would win because it fit in with what Saatchi chose in the past.

Whereas LifeStraw may indeed be the most world-changing “idea” at the event, it did not have the most compelling presentation. (Perhaps it was handicapped in this regard by the fact that the plentiful Saatchi-provided wine seemed to be downright hygienic.)

Some other finalists’ presentations were both more future-looking and more exciting for the short-attention-spanned blogger in all of us.

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Psychologists and neuroscientists got together today for a dive into the imaginitive mind. What parts of our brains allow us to experience the past, the future, and the perspective of others? What goes on in our brains during those processes? (more…)