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ByMichael Balter "Language leaves no traces in the archaeological record, and many researchers have been doubtful about how much animal communication could reveal about the unique features of human communication. That began to change in the 1990s, when linguists, evolutionary biologists, psychologists...
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By Dan Jones "Suppose you're a psychologist at a research university, trying to figure out what drives human behavior. You have devised simple, clever experiments in which people play economic games or perceive visual illusions, and you would like large sample sizes. How will you find subjects...
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By Michael Shermer "Michael Shermer says the human tendency to believe strange things -- from alien abductions to dowsing rods -- boils down to two of the brain's most basic, hard-wired survival skills. He explains what they are, and how they get us into trouble." Watch the video . Image...
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By John Casti from NewScientist "Put simply, the mood of a group - an institution, state, continent or even the world - is how that group, as a group, feels about the future. Is the group optimistic or pessimistic? Clearly, this question must be addressed on the timescale appropriate for the type...
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by David Munger from Seed Magazine "Medical writer Tom Rees devotes his blog Epiphenom to the scientific study of religion. Last week he examined a study on the relationship between intelligence and religious belief. Published in Social Psychology Quarterly , this study by Satoshi Kanazawa replicated...
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by Adam Hadhazy from Scientific American "As Olympians go for the gold in Vancouver, even the steeliest are likely to experience that familiar feeling of "butterflies" in the stomach. Underlying this sensation is an often-overlooked network of neurons lining our guts that is so extensive...
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by Melinda Wenner from Scientific American " Fantasizing about sex gets more than just your juices flowing—it also boosts your analytical thinking skills. Daydreaming about love, on the other hand, makes you more creative, according to a study published in the November 2009 Personality and Social...
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"Barabási mathematically describes networks in the World Wide Web, the internet, the human body, and society at large. Fowler seeks to identify the social and biological links that define us as humans. In this video Salon, Barabási and Fowler discuss contagion and the Obama campaign, debate the...
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by Philip Ball from Nature News "Medieval monarchies might not have had many things to recommend them compared with liberal democracies, but here's one: our rulers have no Fools. How often now will a national leader employ someone to laugh at their folly and remind them of bitter truths? More...
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By Richard E. Cytowic in Seed Magazine "From my perspective as a neurologist who studies minds and as a creative writer who imagines characters’ inner lives, Virginia Woolf’s mind is a marvel to behold. No two books are alike. “Not this, not that,” she seems to be saying as she rejects convention...
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By Daniel K. Campbell-Meiklejohn, Dominik R. Bach, Andreas Roepstorff, Raymond J. Dolan1 and Chris D. Frith "The opinions of others can easily affect how much we value things. We investigated what happens in our brain when we agree with others about the value of an object and whether or not there...
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By Emily B. Falk, Elliot T. Berkman, Traci Mann, Brittany Harrison, and Matthew D. Lieberman "Although persuasive messages often alter people's self-reported attitudes and intentions to perform behaviors, these self-reports do not necessarily predict behavior change. We demonstrate that neural...
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By Joshua M. Ackerman, Christopher C. Nocera, John A. Bargh "Touch is both the first sense to develop and a critical means of information acquisition and environmental manipulation. Physical touch experiences may create an ontological scaffold for the development of intrapersonal and interpersonal...
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We all know the story in which science supposedly demonstrates a Bumblebee only flies because it doesn’t know it can’t. I know the real story but like that one better because the bumblebee still goes about its daily tasks, unencumbered by knowing about all the impossible parameters which are being erroneously...
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Claudia Preuschhof, Torsten Schubert, Arno Villringer, and Hauke R. Heekeren Neurophysiological data suggest that the integration of prior information and incoming sensory evidence represents the neural basis of the decision-making process. Here, we aimed to identify the brain structures involved in...
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By Eerik Lagerspetz There is a permanent tension between the requirements of substantive goodness or wisdom and those of formal legitimacy in public decision-making. This article charts the various attempts to reconcile the two requirements within decision rules. First, the history of decision rules...
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by N Robson and D Rew AIM: To describe systems for capturing and optimising collective knowledge and insight in areas of complexity and uncertainty in surgical oncology, with particular reference to the Delphi process and related systems. METHODS: Internet search engines (Google, Google Scholar) and...
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by Tim Rakow and Ben R. Newell A striking finding has emerged recently in the literature: When decision makers are faced with essentially the same choice, their preferences differ as a function of whether options are described or are “experienced” via observation and feedback. For example, when presented...
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Daniel M. Hausman and Brynn Welch One of the hottest ideas in current policy debates is “libertarian paternalism,” the design of policies that push individuals toward better choices without limiting their liberty. In their recent book, Nudge, Richard Thaler and then Obama advisor (now head of the White...
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Stephen S. Hall "A compelling investigation into one of our most coveted and cherished ideals, and the efforts of modern science to penetrate the mysterious nature of this timeless virtue. We all recognize wisdom, but defining it is more elusive. In this fascinating journey from philosophy to science...