The weekend is coming! Some are partying, some are outdoors and some are studying and getting ahead! 😉
Here’s what I am reading:
“In 2005, researchers discovered a remarkably complete ancient hominin skull at Dmamisi, Georgia, a site that holds the earliest human ancestors found outside of Africa. Dated to about 1.8 million years ago, the skull, shown partly excavated, preserves delicate parts of the face that are rare in other fossils. As reported online today in Science, this ancient man had some strikingly primitive features, including a small brain and protruding jaw.”
“”This research suggests brain connectivityas a neural signature of autism and may eventually support clinical testing for autism,” said Rajesh Kana, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology and the project’s senior researcher. “We found the information transfer between brain areas, causal influence of one brain area on another, to be weaker in autism.””
“For starters, cats’ visual fields are broader than ours, spanning roughly 200 degrees instead of 180 degrees, and their visual acuity isn’t as good. So, the things humans can sharply resolve at distances of 100-200 feet look blurry to cats, which can see these objects at distances of up to 20 feet. That might not sound so great, but there’s a trade-off: Because of the various photoreceptors parked in cats’ retinas, they kick our asses at seeing in dim light. Instead of the color-resolving, detail-loving cone cells that populate the center of human retinas, cats (and dogs) have many more rod cells, which excel in dim light and are responsible for night-vision capability. The rod cells also refresh more quickly, which lets cats pick up very rapid movements — like, for example, the quickly shifting path a marauding laser dot might trace.”
“As sanctuary-kept chimpanzees grow from infant to juvenile, they develop increased susceptibility to human yawn contagion, possibility due to their increasing ability to empathize, says a study published October 16, 2013, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Elainie Madsen and colleagues from Lund University.”
“The FDA was asked to look into the issue by developmental biologist Shoukhrat Mitalipov at Oregon Health and Science University in Beaverton, who last year created early human embryos with the technique (see Nature http://doi.org/n76; 2012). When the manipulated eggs were fertilized, genetic abnormalities were detected in half of them — but seemingly normal embryonic stem-cell lines could be extracted from 38% of the rest.”
“”Our lab studies the rate of brain tissue loss in elderly people, trying to discover factors that protect you as you age,” said Paul M. Thompson, Ph.D., USC professor of neurology, psychiatry, engineering, radiology and ophthalmology and the study’s principal investigator. “We have never seen such a dramatic effect as with this genetic variant. If you carry this genetic mutation, we’ve found that there is this wildfire of tissue loss in the brain.””
“In a study recently published in Infancy: The Official Journal of the International Society on Infant Studies, psychology researchers Sabrina Chiarella and Diane Poulin-Dubois demonstrate that infants can detect whether a person’s emotions are justifiable given a particular context. They show that babies understand how the meaning of an experience is directly linked to the expressions that follow.”
“Researchers also asked the participants to choose the voice they thought was more attractive for a long-term versus a short-term relationship.
“From an evolutionary perspective, these perceptions of future sexual infidelity may be adaptive,” explains David Feinberg, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour.”
“Now, researchers in Costa Rica have found that the tube-shaped leaves may make both kinds of calls easier for other bats to hear. For a bat issuing response calls from within a roost, the leaf acts like a megaphone, amplifying its invitations by 1 to 2 decibels.”
“Freelance writer and meditation teacher Michael Taft has experienced his own version of cerebral congestion. “In a normal working day in modern America, there’s a sense of so much coming at you at once, so much to process that you just can’t deal with it all,” Taft says. In 2011, while finalizing plans to move from Los Angeles to San Francisco, he decided to take an especially long recess from work and the usual frenzy of life….”
15 Comments
emilyhinkamp · October 20, 2013 at 3:16 pm
In response to the three-parent fertilization article, the new technology does not only face ethical questions about the concept of manipulating cells for a fitter embryo, but also opens a new box of trouble surrounding having three parents: what if, with further development into this practice, it is mandated that a child know the identities of all “contributers?” So many interesting topics may stem in a butterfly effect about the ethical dilemmas. Let’s start with this one: will birth certificates soon be reformatted to have more than two spaces for the parents’ names? Procreation as we know it has already been redefined.
emilyhinkamp · October 21, 2013 at 1:26 pm
The article about the attractiveness of low-voiced men leaves me somewhat confused about the actual correlation between lower-registered voices and true fidelity patterns. When reviewing the starting sentence “Men with low-pitched voices have an advantage in attracting women, even though women know they’re not likely to stick around for long,” I am left me questioning the grounds on which to say that “women know” that these men will cheat. Granted, the study’s results show that women are not as likely to trust the long-term fidelity of a man with a lower voice, but, once again, this sounds more like a topic of perception rather than prognostication: “those men were also seen as more likely to cheat.” Here, the statement embraces that these women did not know about the men’s future tendencies, but only had the feeling.
The complementing article linked to “Explore Further” discusses how deliberate vocal modulation exposes our social intentions (romantic vs. platonic). The article gives some hope for deep-voiced men because it addresses that everyone’s relationship statuses can be judged on vocal alteration alone. After all, to pigeon-hole all lower-voiced males to be cheaters is simply unfair and untrue; that could potentially imply that there is a genetic “cheating” trait.
daniellezezoff · October 22, 2013 at 7:15 pm
In response to how cats see the world; It would be interesting to see the “raw images” of the cat and human to see how differently the brains process is to get to the image we actually see. I wonder if they would be fairly similar or if the cat truly sees less in the light and that is why the image is blurry compared to the human images. I would also find it interesting to see what the dog sees compared to the human and then compare this to the cat’s view of the world.
Sarahvais · October 23, 2013 at 7:25 pm
In response to “yawning is contagious” i found it very interesting that this was in fact finally proven. I know everyone says that yawning is contagious but I had never seen a study supporting this. There is a lot of misconception behind the needs to yawn. It would be interesting to see further the reason that yawning is stimulated in the first person to yawn. There is no information that I have seen that can explain this. I have heard before that it is due to a lack of oxygen and that the body tries to compensate by taking in a large amount at once.
Will · October 23, 2013 at 9:59 pm
In response to “bats cheat.” It is ridiculous how evolution has allowed organisms to use their environment to their advantage. Using leaves as a way to amplify calls has allowed the bats to help their fellow bats evade predators. This type of social interaction gives way to studying how bats act as social animals. There has to be more organisms that do similar things out there.
Will · October 23, 2013 at 10:04 pm
In response to “yawning is contagious.” I thought this was only a common saying but there is possible science behind it. I find the idea of animals having emotion very appealing and even more appealing is the type of emotion we do not usually associate with animals; empathy. The thing that stood out to me most was the age where the chimpanzees started to yawn when the human subject yawned. This seems to run parallel with how human children start to develop empathy towards their peers. I hope there is more research that studies how yawning can be a signal for subconscious thought and emotion.
JessicaZacarias · October 26, 2013 at 1:26 pm
In response to “Three Parent Fertilization”: I have mixed feelings about all this new technology. On one side, I am really excited that we are now capable of preventing fatal birth defects but there has to be a line drawn somewhere. There are too many formalities and ethical issues that come with manipulating conception like that. I think that this technology could potentially be very helpful when it is used to prevent fatalities however, something just rubs me wrong about humans having the power to change the fate of their children before they’re even born.
JulieLane0116 · November 5, 2013 at 10:56 pm
In response to “Diagnosing Autism”: Brain scans look to be offering valuable insight into the diagnosis of Autism. This article makes me think of my best friend- she was born with autism, but claims to be healed and doesn’t seem autistic in the least. Except for when it comes to her slight difficulty in “understanding social processes,” as the article says. I would love to see what a scan of her brain says. She seems completely average at first, but she does have some traits and behaviors that correlate very highly with a high-functioning autistic. I would love to talk to her more about it, if only it were an easier subject to discuss.
lfarr · November 12, 2013 at 4:03 pm
In response to “I’m not lazy…”: I definitely agree that taking mental breaks, exercise, and meditation allows me to increase productivity, attention, and motivation later. Some people are hesitant to take a break because they believe they don’t have time. But as the article suggests, even a 10 minute nap helped improve memory and practicing 15 minutes of mindfulness increased focus and attention. Students tend to choose not to take a break, but then find themselves continually rereading a sentence over and over again.
I enjoyed the segment about American workers as well. I am interested in burnout with employees as well as motivation. I found it interesting that people who took one day off, rather than a week-long vacation felt more motivated to come back and work hard on the job. I think this has to do with targeting the daily tiredness at work for long term, rather than a short term solution with a long vacation. In other words, people will spend more time at work than in vacation; so it is important for people to make work more enjoyable and productive. Going on a long vacation, may be enjoyable and rejuvenating, but it seems to be a short-term fix (as stated with effects only lasting a couple weeks). I enjoy going backpacking in the summer and find a nice mental break (or ‘brain not-so-full’). However, realistically I can’t take a week long backpacking break during school, so I must find healthy, effective ways to take a mental break if I want to stay motivated and focused throughout the day, week, and quarter.
smarch · November 23, 2013 at 11:14 pm
In response to “This Is How Cats See the World”
I am a cat lover, so naturally, I could not pass up this article. Whenever I look at an animal, I’ve always wondered what they’re thinking, or how they view and hear the world. I appreciated this article for providing such a perspective that we wouldn’t normally have access to. In addition to the quick glimpse of the physiological variation of the cat’s eye, the comparative pictures from a human’s view and a cat’s view was really cool. It allows one to see the differences in clarity, focus, distance, and breadth of vision between the two species. In the human-perspective shot, there is much finer detail of objects’ shapes and colors at great distances while in the cat-perspective shot, there is greater focus on objects in closer proximity, with the article mentioning that quick rejuvenation of rod cells in cat eyes allows them to process fast movements. From a biologist’s view, it is easy to infer how the mechanistic features of the cat’s eye were important adaptations in their evolution; a cat would utilize those rod cells to hone in and capture prey that was of small size, quick, and agile in its movements. The pictures of night landscapes were the most interesting and reminded me of my cat. She is afraid of just about everything, especially outside the confines of my home; however, she has grown interest in prowling around in the backyard at night. After viewing the night images from the cat perspective, I can see why she may be comfortable with this—she can see just as well, if not better, at night time and has a more keen awareness of her surroundings. Still, that makes me question why she insists on sitting directly in the footpath from (where I shut off) my light switch to my bed every night!
veronicaflesch · November 26, 2013 at 10:56 am
In response to “yawning is contagious,” I’ve always been intrigued by the way I compulsively and invariably yawn when I see someone else yawn, regardless of whether I’m tired or not. Personally, I don’t even need to actually see someone yawn, but merely the thought of yawning triggers me to yawn. In fact, reading the article about yawning caused me to yawn several times and while writing this comment, I’ve yawned about 5 times. I’d be interested in doing an experiment similar to this one, but with humans, and with having someone mentioning yawning rather than actually yawning. I also think another really interesting aspect of yawning is how once you yawn one time, it seems like you’re more likely to keep yawning.
veronicaflesch · November 26, 2013 at 12:14 pm
In response to “the voice tells you whether they love them and leave them”:
This article seems to go along with many of the other studies showing how women prefer more masculine traits that result from higher testosterone (such as a square jaw) when it comes to short term relationships as opposed to long-term relationships. I’m curious if this experiment were to be repeated on two separate groups of women- 1 group close to ovulation, and the other not- if there would be a significant difference between them, since in other studies I’ve heard of, like the one with the square jaw, women who are close to ovulation are more likely to prefer the more masculine traits.
I also wonder if what women seem to assume of men with lower voices in this study is true; the article doesn’t seem to question whether or not men with lower voices actually are more likely to cheat on their partner. If testosterone is the main thing responsible for producing a lower voice, studies have been done showing that testosterone levels (in younger men) don’t really correlate with sexual frequency, so maybe this shouldn’t be assumed.
JuliaSpalding · November 29, 2013 at 7:01 pm
In response to “yawning is contagious”:
I’ve always heard and experienced yawning as being contagious, but I never thought to add in other factors such as age or familiarity with the people around you. I remember watching a Mythbusters episode a few years back where they actually busted the contagious yawn myth, but now that I think of it, they tested it on a waiting room of complete strangers! It’s compelling to think that as they grow older, these chimps learned to empathize and became more susceptible to human yawn contagion. I’m intrigued by what else this study could mean for development in chimpanzees.
bcolli05 · December 1, 2013 at 12:47 am
In response to the article about babies and morality:
It was very interesting to read about this professor’s idea about morality being inborn. I am currently in an ethics course at cal poly that talks a lot about morality, and this article contradicts what we have talked about in class. My philosophy professor believes that morality is something that is learned, something that can never be thought of as an inborn quality. However, this article greatly stresses that babies understand and are born with morality; they are able to comfort other infants when they are sad, usually by some sort of stroke/patting of the arm, leg, et c. I found this claim to be very interesting. However, i disagree with the terminology. I would say that babies are born with empathy, not morality. To me, morality is more complex, something that is not understood by children until they are at least teenagers. Empathy, however, can be seen by the pat of the arm comfort, as discuss. I think we need to better define morality before claiming that it is an inborn quality.
JSGraves · December 6, 2013 at 10:48 am
In response to: “This is how cats see the world”
I thought this article was interesting because I have always wondered about how my cats see differently. I really liked the photographs they provided of the different places, distances, and lighting to demonstrate these differences. I thought it was fascinating how they talked about how cats see different color than humans do. They states that cats are mostly red-green color blind which I thought was particularly interesting because my cat has some of the same toys in different colors and her favorite one is definitely the pink one. This makes me wonder what color it appears to her as (from the pictures what is pink to humans seems to look yellow to cats) and why she favors that one even though it doesn’t appear that different to her.