Here are some of the stories going on right now! :
“Instead of investing in their own computer research and development, engineers at the NASA Ames Research Center are looking to cellphones and off-the-shelf toys to power the future of low-cost satellite technology.”
“The Lancet reports that Naltrexone, commonly used to treat alcoholics and heroin addicts, and the anti-smoking drug bupropion led to greater weight loss than diet and exercise alone.”
“….serial daters might perpetually be living at the whim of their latest impulse, and now research is getting to the biological basis of their seemingly random behavior.
“…anyone who has felt the sting of tears while listening to a bugler play “Taps,” swooned to a love song or cringed with irritation as a neighbor cranked the heavy metal knows that music can exert a powerful emotive effect.”
“If the new test used by the Northwestern researchers had been used in such a real-world situation with the same type of outcome that occurred in the lab, the study suggests, culpability extracted from the chatter could be confirmed.”
“In laboratory tests, right- and left-handers associate positive ideas like honesty and intelligence with their dominant side of space and negative ideas with their non-dominant side,” says Daniel Casasanto of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. To find out whether people link ‘good’ with ‘dominant’ beyond the laboratory, Casasanto and co-author Kyle Jasmin examined spontaneous gestures during positive and negative speech in the final debates of the most recent US presidential elections.”
“Michelangelo, the 16th century master painter and accomplished anatomist, appears to have hidden an image of the brainstem and spinal cord in a depiction of God in the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling, a new study by Johns Hopkins researchers reports. These findings by a neurosurgeon and a medical illustrator, published in the May Neurosurgery, may explain long controversial and unusual features of one of the frescoes’ figures.”
My dissertation advisor was fond of repeating a quote attributed to Albert Einstein–”If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.” One might assume that physics is harder to explain than psychology, but that is not always the case. In spite of over 30 years in the classroom, I occasionally find myself thinking–there has to be a better way to get this across to students.
Enter Wray Herbert, who combines a true love of things psychological and extensive experience in journalism. Not only is Wray a wonderful blogger, who participated as our discussant in our Psychology Blogging symposium at 2008 APS, but he has now ventured into writing books about psychology. His latest is On Second Thought: Outsmarting Your Mind’s Hard-Wired Habits, due out September 14 for Random House. In On Second Thought, Wray tackles the extensive, and often difficult and jargon-infested, literature on decision-making. Although our ancestors obviously had good enough decision-making skills to survive, they left us with some predispositions that lead us in some seemingly crazy directions–launching the Challenger, the Bay of Pigs invasion, and those everyday little things we decide to do that leave us scratching our heads later–What was I thinking?
Time to brush up on those decision-making skills...
We can all brush up on decision-making, and finding out where we go astray is a terrific first step. Wray not only educates with his usual classy clarity, but provides real-world examples that draw you along, learning a lot without really being aware that you’re learning a lot. You can check out an excerpt, in which he applies decision-making theories to a real-life case of backcountry skiers versus an avalanche. Teaching social is going to be a lot easier this year. Thanks, Wray!
We have a beautiful grape trellis with Concord Grapes running 30 feet or more. This may not sound too unusual, unless you realize what part of California we are in. CLICK on the picture to see what I am really thinking about!
Here are a couple of stories that might be amusing! :
“The bad news for people trying to talk about food and sleep is that . . . generally it’s hard to find foods that help with sleep,” says Michael Grandner, a sleep researcher at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Sleep and Respiratory Neurobiology.”
“Doses of Depo-Provera, a common contraceptive for people, shift the odor secretions of female lemurs so dramatically that their scents no longer give clear cues to kinship, identity and genetic quality”
after 3 monthes of use, I still love the iPad!
Here are a few readings for today:
“Experts from the university’s School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development have shown for the first time that a pig’s mood mirrors how content he is, highlighting that pigs are capable of complex emotions which are directly influenced by their living conditions.”
“Why do new college textbooks cost so much? It’s a perennial complaint, but with the growing concerns over student debt levels and the spiraling costs of higher education generally, students and their parents are not the only ones asking that question.”
When I finally reached my goal weight of 135 lbs. (thank you Jenny Craig!), actually settling out to 131, in August of 2007, I was thrilled to join the National Weight Control Registry run by Rena Wing of Brown University and James Hill of the University of Colorado. I was so impressed by all the success stories of the people on the Registry, and felt honored and humbled to join them. Being a Skinnerian behaviorist at heart, I also appreciated the negative reinforcement potential of joining–I would be horrified and humiliated to have to write to these people and tell them to take me off the Registry because I’d gained my weight back. Hey, whatever works, right?
My 70 lb plus weight loss on Jenny Craig
This year, I expected to see the enormous packet I had filled out the previous two years, in which I was asked exactly how much of everything I ate every day. I guess I must have passed a milestone now, because I got a two-page questionnaire asking me if I had gained, lost, or stayed the same, and how I felt about it (I answered “extremely happy.”)
Along with my questionnaire, I received a xerox copy of an article from Time in 2004 about some of the members of the National Weight Control Registry entitled “The Secrets of their Success.” If you’re looking for some diet inspiration, this isn’t a bad place to start.
My funniest moment with the NWCR came after I submitted my very first questionnaire. I reported that I walk approximately 4 miles a day, and they emailed me back to make sure that I hadn’t made a mistake. I DO walk at least 4 miles a day (2 miles back and forth to our favorite coffee shop each afternoon for a writing break and another 2 after dinner around our nearby lake–pretty). That doesn’t count the walking I do up and down the hills at Cal Poly when school is in session or the 12 hours of pacing around my classrooms each week while I teach. I don’t consider myself very active (I haven’t done anything sweaty in years), but maybe this sounded like a lot to them.
In the meantime, I’m just keeping doing what I’ve been doing–seems to be working. The longer I keep my weight down, the more natural it seems. Friends who do drug rehab work tell me that it usually takes an addict about 5 years of abstinence to “reset” their physiology. I’m guessing the same is true of weight loss. But it does get easier.
