Softpedia News - Behavior/Humans

How Language Changes

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 19:01:01 GMT

Language is one of the things that constantly change, and not over the years, but several times in the course of an average life span. The engines behind these changes are the people, a researcher proposes, saying that the process through which language changes to reflect daily routines and actions is very similar to the evolution of animal and plant species trying to adapt to their environment. Dutch scientist Frank Landsbergen, who is based at the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (now), believes that this angle on language may help explain some of its mysteries, over which researchers have been scratching their heads for a long time.

The expert believes that even a single individual can spark a change in the language, even if it's as small as putting a new word in the dictionary. If the rest of society accepts the new word, and adopts it as its own, then, for all intents and purposes, it belongs to everyone. That should of course be reflected by the official collection of a language's words, which is the dictionary. This approach to investigating linguistics may provide scientists with a number of advantages and clarifications, ScienceDaily reports.

Changes in language include a multitude of factors, such as pronunciation, choice of words, alloted meaning, and variations in all of the above. Through use by th... (read more)

Skin Can Apparently Influence Hearing

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 20:01:01 GMT

Scientists know that the human brain is far from being decoded, and as such remains one of the most mysterious constructs in nature today. But they had no idea that it also processed impulses from the skin, when transforming electrical signals from the ears into the auditory sensation. Though that might seem improbable at first, this was the conclusion that a new scientific study came to, after analyzing the behavior of several test subjects inside the isolated settings of a lab, LiveScience reports.

These amazing conclusions are based on results obtained from volunteers that were asked to listen to a row of syllables, while at the same time experiencing air being puffed onto their skins. The researchers concluded that the brain must be processing information from all our senses, when it constructed an image of our surroundings, even if it was just an auditory one. The new investigation adds even more proof to a growing body of pieces of evidence, which challenges established knowledge of how the human cortex processes stimuli, and projects the surrounding world to our consciousness.

The new conclusions are “very different from the more traditional ideas, based on the fact that we have eyes so we think of ourselves as seeing visible information, and we have ears so we think of ourselves as hearing audito... (read more)

Robotic Arms Improve Life for Wheelchair Users

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:01:02 GMT

Experts in the field of robotics have had a hard time making their own inventions open doors, on account of the difficult tasks that are involved in the process, but now a team has managed to crack the problem for a real-life application. While it may seem simple for us, a great degree of coordination and intelligence is needed to open a door. Former University of Massachusetts in Lowell (UML) student Erin Rapacki has managed to come up with a low-cost solution that allows for the mounting of a specialized gripper on wheelchairs, which makes it possible for users to navigate through doors without having to reach them themselves.

When opening a door, our brains take into account a number of complex factors, and put them in relation, in order for us to be able to open the “obstacle” in the first attempt. We need to know our exact position as opposed to the door, and also the extent of our own hand. We then must calculate “how much force is needed to open the door, the twisting angles to unlatch the door, and how much force is needed to unlatch it,” Rapacki says. This holds true for robots as well, only, in their case, humans need to devise the algorithms that allow them to perform such intricate calculations fast enough to make them of use.

Another important function that robotic... (read more)

How to Overcome Fear of Steeps

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:01:02 GMT

A new scientific study has revealed that people who are simply too scared of steep slopes should move in closer to the edge in order to make their anxiety go away. The conclusion comes from an investigation that showed slopes appeared increasingly mild as you got closer to them. Standing at their very edge makes them look a lot more tame than they did when you first looked at them, and less so than they actually are, ScienceNow reports. A paper detailing the findings appears in last month's issue of the Journal of Vision.

The research was conducted by scientists at the Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, led by psychologist Frank Durgin and his colleague Zhi Li. “There's a creek that has very high banks that go down very steeply on both sides. So we went out to one of these paths along the top of one of these banks and just tried to see what happens [as we moved away],” Durgin, who is also actively involved in studying human perception of visual information in natural environments, explains.

Some experts argue that these processing abilities that we have may be a reminiscence of our earliest days, when our ancestors really used them. No point in remaining paralyzed at the edge of a slope with a hungry predator behind you. The finding is also remarkable for an additional reason – it contradicts the &... (read more)

Crisis Makes More Youngsters Move Back Home

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 06:33:00 GMT

In a recently released report, the Pew Research Center shows that, in order to mitigate the effects that the poor state of the economy is having on their budgets, more and more young adults choose to return home, and live with their parents. While this may not necessarily be their primary choice, it is also the only one that makes sense from an economic perspective, especially if the younger member of the family gets along well with all the others. In the new investigation, it was revealed that more than 13 percent of parents have had one of their children move back in within the last year.

LiveScience reports that the adults sons or daughters gave a variety of reasons for their decision to move back in at home, and that high on the list was precisely the recession. The age group most likely to move in is that of young people between the ages of 18 and 24, and for good reason. The economic downturn arguably affected those in the early stages of their careers hardest. This is further evidenced by employment records, which show that only 46 percent of young adults (aged 16 to 24) have a job in these tough times. Under this circumstances, keeping their own place is simply too much of a cost.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) says that these are the highest unemployment numbers for young people that hav... (read more)

Skin Color Is a Matter of Perception

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:01:01 GMT

In a new scientific study conducted on people's perceptions on politicians, it was revealed that people tended to alter the image they had of their candidate (or their opponent) in their mind, depending on preferences. The feelings that the politician incites in a person are a factor that directly influences the visual perception that person has on the official. In the new experiments, a number of people were shown photos of Barack Obama, and were asked to select which one they thought was most representative of the President. The results are puzzling, ScienceNow reports.

In the investigation, three photos of the Commander-in-Chief were shown to Democrats and Republicans. All the images showed Obama in various settings, but the hue of his skin had been digitally altered in some, and left as it was in others. When presented with the photographs, the Democrats proved to be more likely to select a picture of Obama with a lighter skin hue as the President's most representative one. On the other hand, Republicans proved more likely to be conservative, and selected the images in which the chief of state had the darkest skin color.

Details of the new research were published in the latest issue of the respected journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). According to University of Chicago social psy... (read more)

Children Are Not Deceived by Optical Illusions

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:35:00 GMT

A new scientific study seems to suggest that children are far better at detecting the tricks behind optical illusions than the elderly. This ability may be partially owed to the different way in which the two age groups size up the target objects, and relate their sizes to everything around them. This may also mean, scientists say, that the brain's ability to make out the context of visual scenes develops over time. As soon as it is set-up, the cortex becomes unable to focus on parts of scenes, and thus looses its ability to make out the deceiving parts of optical illusions, Wired reports.

The new study was conducted by a team of scientists at the University of Stirling, in Scotland, which was led by expert psychologist Martin Doherty. Details of the new work appear online, in the November 12 issue of the respected scientific journal Developmental Science. In the research, the group concludes that even 10-year-olds do not have adults' ability to attune their brains to the visual context. This means, the study leader adds, that this context can be easily manipulated if it's targeted at adults, eliciting whatever reaction the manipulator wants.

When subjected to a task more commonly known as the Ebbinghaus illusion, the brains of 7-year-olds showed no signs of altered size perception, the experts add. &ldqu... (read more)

New Model to Explain How We Produce Sounds

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:54:00 GMT

Scientists have known for a long time what the basic process involved in vocalization is. Regardless if we speak, sing or shout, the sounds are produced in the same way. Airflow pushed out of the lungs passes between the vocal chords, which are nothing more than muscular filaments. When this happens, the structures vibrate within the airflow and produce sounds, which can then be modeled in various way. Each individual has their own voice, but medical conditions may affect the vocalization ability. A new computer model is currently being devised to understand this process. And to usher in a new set of treatments against these conditions,e! Science News reports.

“Voice disorders affect 30 percent of the general population and up to 60 percent of educators. The objective of our work is to develop a detailed understanding of the phonation process, which will enable the development of computational models,” explains Michael Plesniak, who is a professor at the famous George Washington University. The expert conducts his work alongside his doctoral student Byron Erath, also at the university. The two have been working on these issues for several years and have already teamed up with speech pathologists, so as to get the most detailed answers possible. At the time, Plesniak was still working at the Purdue University.... (read more)

Kids Always Ask 'Why' for a Reason

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:55:00 GMT

A new scientific study has recently revealed that the real reason children ask 'why' all the time is because they want to get to the truth, and not to step on their parents' nerves. The research has also demonstrated that the small ones appear to react better to some answers than to others, which is really puzzling. This basically means that the children in the investigation, aged two to five, were a lot more active in their knowledge-gathering processes than experts had previously anticipated, LiveScience reports.

“Even from really early on when they start asking these how and why questions, they are asking them in order to get explanations. Kids are playing more of an active role in learning about the world around them than we may have expected,” University of Michigan expert Brandy Frazier, who has also been the lead researcher of the study, explains. As soon as the kids in the study started being given answers, they continued to probe further and further into different subjects, demonstrating that they were in fact interested in the truth about the matters, and would stop at nothing to get it.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why some parents get mad, or lose their patience when their young one starts asking them questions. They feel the answers could be inappropriate for the child's age, so they ... (read more)

Kids Watch Twice as Much TV as First Thought

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:02:00 GMT

Studying precisely how much time children spend in front of the TV set is very difficult, especially in societies where parents don't get to spend as much time with their juniors as both of the parties would want to. This type of settings offers the perfect conditions for excesses to occur, and watching TV is one of them. This was proven recently, when the first survey on how much TV children had watched in daycare settings in the past 20 years was conducted. The researchers found that the little ones in fact watched much more shows and cartoons than any existing statistics had predicted.

“It's alarming to find that so many children in the United States are watching essentially twice as much television as we previously thought. Research continues to link excessive preschool screen time with language delay, obesity, attentional problems and even aggression depending upon content. At the same time, studies show that high quality preschool can be beneficial to children's development,” the lead researcher of the new study, Dimitri A. Christakis, MD, MPH, explains, quoted by PhysOrg.

“Unfortunately, for many children, the potential benefits of preschool may be displaced by passive TV viewing. I suspect many parents are unaware of the frequency and extent of TV viewing in day care settings. H... (read more)

Children Should Be Allowed to Get Dirty, Study Finds

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 11:31:00 GMT

According to a new scientific study, it may be that parents should allow for their children to play in the sand, and get dirty. Apparently, this is of tremendous use to the skin's development, as the organ basically learns to take care of itself, something that will come in handy later on in life. While some may have a difficult time accepting that, evolutionarily speaking, this makes a lot of sense. In most species, the way children act while still young dictates their abilities and behaviors when they grow up.

Experts add that exposure to germs early on in a child's years prevents allergies from developing later on. Numerous bacteria live at the surface of the skin, and they all help damp down the response our immune systems give off when we cut ourselves, or nick our skins. In ideal conditions, the immune system would make every single minor cut or bruise swell up and hurt for many days. But the skin, with its abilities fully formed, can easily take care of the damage on its own. The bacteria on its surface basically prevent the immune system from overreacting.

The new study was conducted by scientists at the University of California in San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine. Their complete findings appear in the latest online issue of the respected scientific journal Nature Medicine. The research... (read more)

Males May Have More Pronounced Personalities than Females

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 02:21:02 GMT

Scientists at the University of Exeter have recently completed their latest scientific study, which hints at the fact that males may have more pronounced personality traits across a wide range of species, from humans to house sparrows. Traits such as aggression and daring, which are sought-for in a male, and preferred by females, were also found to persist in high amounts. Across all the studied species, issues related to parental care, aggression and risk-taking were found to be more consistent, predictable and dependable in males than in females, the science group reveals, quoted by e! Science News.

“Our study is the first to bring together research about the impact of [mate] selection on personality in humans and other animals. Our study suggests that, while males tend to exhibit more pronounced personalities, including more predictable behavior, in a range of different contexts, females are more receptive to these traits in males. We found a surprising level of similarity across a range of species,” University of Exeter Professor Dr. Wiebke Schuett, the lead author of the new investigation, explains.

A host of past studies, some going as far back as 1972, were used as a basis for the current research, Details of the findings appear in the November 18 issue of the respected s... (read more)

Carpets Have a Huge Say in Your Purchases

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:56:00 GMT

According to a new scientific study, it would appear that people shopping in stores that have the floors covered with comfortable carpets feel better during their shopping experience, but also tend to view the products they are checking out as being “less comforting.” Test respondents did not arrive at the same conclusion when they walked on hard tile-covered floors, such as the ones present in most supermarkets and stores. Details of the study appear in the latest issue of the scientific Journal of Consumer Research.

“We first conducted a study to show that carpeting flooring indeed evokes a greater sense of physical comfort than tiled flooring. Based on this finding, we addressed a more practical and intriguing question: would these bodily sensations elicited by the flooring transfer to people's assessments of products that they observe while shopping?” the authors write in the journal entry. The science group behind the investigation includes University of Minnesota scientist Joan Meyers Levy, and University of British Columbia researchers Rui Zhu and Lan Jiang, e! Science News reports.

In their investigation, the scientists made people either stand on hard tiles, such as the ones present in most stores, or on comfortable carpet coverings. The participants were then made to watch a... (read more)

Genes May Determine Our Ability to Empathize

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:21:01 GMT

We've all been in situations in which the person we were talking to seemed oblivious to the fact that we looked sick and not in the mood, and just kept on ranting for hours on end. The ability to empathize – that is, to figure out what other people are feeling without them saying it, and to relate to their state – is clearly something that only a part of the population has. A new study now adds weight to something that researchers hypothesized a long time ago, namely the fact that the root of empathy is genetic, and therefore inherited.

One of the substances that experts thought to be responsible for this trait was oxytocin. In previous experiments, participants playing a game under the influence of increased doses of the substance showed a lot more trust in each other. A variant (polymorphism) of the gene that triggers the production of oxytocin receptors was recently proven to play an important part in the development of autism, a disease that is known to make its sufferers unable to handle social interactions normally. The polymorphism, called rs53576, may be what causes empathy differences in the general population.

The new idea belongs to Oregon State University (OSU) neuropsychologist Sarina Rodrigues. She and her team used a tool known as the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test, to asse... (read more)

Colors Play a Huge Role in Human Attraction

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:41:01 GMT

A group of researchers has determined that, among Caucasians, the color of a person's face is a major factor in determining their attractiveness level for individuals of the opposite gender. A yellowish, light complexion has been determined to be the healthiest, and therefore the most appealing, by a set of experiments. The researchers in charge of the investigation believe that this may be owed to the fact that a lighter skin hue indicates a healthy diet, rich in fruits and vegetables, LiveScience reports.

“Effectively health and attractiveness are pretty much the same thing,” study researcher Ian Stephen says. The expert is based at the University of Bristol in England. He adds that a number of previous studies seem to point to this conclusion as well, alongside a host of upcoming researches, yet to be published. The UB team predicts that their finds will hold true for other ethnic groups as well, though they admit that the hypothesis will have to be rigorously checked before any conclusions are drawn. Details of the new study appear in the December issue of the International Journal of Primatology.

Other cues of attractiveness that have been identified on people's faces are symmetry and shape, but the latter may be considered a subjective matter. “Most previous work on faces has focus... (read more)

The Future Path of Human Evolution

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:00:00 GMT

Over the past two million years or so, we have evolved to the point where we've reached about the maximum possible size of our brains. As anthropologists may argue, our brain capacities may actually be getting smaller, and all for a simple reason – the anatomical difficulties that birthing a large-headed child poses. For a while in human history, childbirth was the leading cause of death for women, so evolution will not opt to work on the size of our skulls in the future, for obvious reasons. Now, the question is, where does that leave us?

It has become apparent that, for the last 5,000 years or so, our brains have been constantly getting smaller. Other human species that lived before us had larger brains, but evolution weeded those out, for the very same reason we mentioned earlier. With more and more fossils being constantly discovered, our history becomes clearer, allowing scientists to piece together our evolutionary past. There are numerous theories about what we will come to be over the millennia. Some of the ideas are inspired from science-fiction novels, while others are proposed by respected academicians. But some of them are simply unfeasible, and without any merit.

For instance, there is a belief that humans will grow to sport an impressive brain, similar to the ones currently depicted in the repre... (read more)

How Thoughtful Words Save Marriages

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 09:35:00 GMT

Arguably the biggest challenge in the life of a couple is fight. As spirits heat, one or the other may drop some words that he or she does not necessarily mean, but that are uttered precisely because the other will undoubtedly be hurt. Many otherwise happy couples split and marriages ended following such arguments, even if this was not necessarily the wish of either one of the people in the relationship. Studies have already demonstrated that a stressful couple life can have adverse effects on the immune system. A new research also shows that people can easily avoid that and still remain together.

Scientists at the Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) say that, during arguments, large amounts of various stress proteins are released when harmful words start flying. These proteins are the main agents that affect the immune system, and they can weaken it just enough so as to allow the onset and development of a number of serious medical conditions. “Previous research has shown that couples who are hostile to each other show health impairments and are at greater risk of disease,” Penn State Assistant Professor of Biobehavioral Health Jennifer Graham explains, quoted by PhysOrg.

“We wanted to know if couples who use thoughtfulness and reasoning in the midst of a fight incur potential health bene... (read more)

How Shape Perception Develops in the Human Brain

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 08:49:00 GMT

Our ability to recognize shapes and patterns is something that scientists believe was an acquired trait, spawned from the environment in which a new individual was born. But a new scientific study, published this week in the online issue of the journal Psychological Science, seems to show that people have a sense of geometry, and of shape perception, regardless of the influences that they receive early in life. This basically means that the brain is able to develop shape perception all by itself.

“In terms of perceiving the world (…) either genetics or the natural world will give you the right type of experiences,” Irving Biederman, the lead author of the new journal entry, explains. The expert in perception is also the Chair of neuroscience at the University of Southern California (USC) College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. The recent investigation was led on a group of westerners, which was compared with a group of African nomads. Members of the latter group were selected so that they were as little exposed to the geometrical figures the Western world was accustomed to as little as possible.

Shape-sorters, the “educational” instruments that are supposedly a principal tool in teaching children how to recognize shapes, are thus rendered obsolet... (read more)

Brain Scans Reveal Consciousness 'Signature'

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:31:02 GMT

For the first time ever, experts believe that they may have identified a sign that could lead to deciphering the mystery behind the conscious and unconscious activity inside the human brain. This has been a goal in neurology and other fields of research related to the cortex since their inception, but finding the key to these two processes has thus far remained elusive. The new brain scans bring further hope that a solution to this mystery will be found soon, NewScientist reports.

“It's very exciting work. The use of a reproducibility measure to disentangle conscious and non-conscious processes is genuinely new,” explains Raphael Gaillard. The expert, a neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge, was not a part of the new study. The investigators that did manage to find the hints in the brain scans are based at the Princeton University in New Jersey, and are led by expert Aaron Schurger. He and his team broke free of the standard approach to identifying consciousness, which revolved around analyzing how long brain activity lasts, what intensity it has, or how different areas of the brain relate to each other during the former two processes.

“We were looking for something other than the intensity and duration of the neural activity that characterizes conscious neural processing,” Sch... (read more)

Another of Brain's Mysteries Resolved

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 20:31:02 GMT

Many of us have, at least at one point in our lives, come to a situation when we had to tell the person we were talking to something along the lines “I don't remember if I've told you this, but ...” Apparently, this type of behavior is not something that is entirely owed to the fact that people forget stuff, but it may be something that is inscribed in our brains since birth. In other words, we may be hardwired not to remember who we've shared information with. The amazing conclusion belongs to a new study, which will be published in an upcoming issue of the respected scientific journal Psychological Science.

Researcher Nigel Gopie, from the Toronto, Canada-based Rotman Research Institute, and University of Waterloo scientist Colin MacLeod were the authors of the new paper. They have demonstrated in experiments that it is a lot simpler for the human brain to remember the pieces of information it received, than what it itself has shared with others. This is one of the first investigations ever to look at the way incoming and outgoing information is stored and organized in the memory. Thus far, scientists have only tried to determine how many types of memory there are (short-term, long-term, etc.), and how they function, LiveScience reports.

The scientists have classified this trait of the brain destinati... (read more)

Cognitive Development in Children Affected by Modernization

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:37:00 GMT

For centuries, children have been educated in the spirit of their families, without too much outside influence, and less influenced by their peers than today. It's arguable whether those children turned out to be individuals or not, but the main point is that they were not subjected to the many perks that children today take for granted, such as electricity, television, the Internet, mobile phones, computers, and so on. Researchers realized some time ago that there were no long-term studies on the consequences of modernization on children's cognitive development, so they proceeded towards fixing this problem.

Their conclusions have been published in the November/December 2009 issue of the respected scientific journal Child Development, e! Science News reports. The cross-cultural investigation was aimed at discovering the widespread implications that the accelerated modernization had on the children's ability to develop strong cognitive skills on their own. The work was conducted by scientists at the University of California in Riverside (UCR), and at the Pitzer College. The team relied on data collected in the early 1970s for the foundation of their inquiry.

“Childhood is changing rapidly around the world. Increased urbanization; massive shifts in economic, political, and social cond... (read more)

'Love Hormone' Also Boosts Negative Behavior

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 02:11:01 GMT

Scientists at the University of Haifa, in Israel, have recently determined that the hormone that has been primarily been associated with love – oxytocin – also plays an important part in bolstering negative states of mind. In other words, the chemical is able to make people feel empathy, trust, and generosity, but can also trigger adverse feelings such as jealousy and gloating. The person's state of mind at the time seems to be the only thing that determines whether oxytocin will act positively or negatively.

“Subsequent to these findings, we assume that the hormone is an overall trigger for social sentiments: when the person's association is positive, oxytocin bolsters pro-social behaviors; when the association is negative, the hormone increases negative sentiments,” UH expert Simone Shamay-Tsoory, who was the leader of the new research. Details of the recent scientific investigation were published in the latest issue of the respected scientific journal Biological Psychiatry, AlphaGalileo reports.

The investigation comes on the heels of different studies, which have shown the positive effects that the hormone has on positive states of mind and behaviors. In natural instances, the chemical is released in larger quantities when women go through childbirth, or during intercourse.... (read more)

Maximum Six Years Retention Time for Innocent 'DNA'

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 03:31:01 GMT

Authorities in the United Kingdom will only be allowed to hold the DNA evidence related to persons found to be innocent of the crimes they were charged with, for a maximum period of six years, after which time they will have to destroy the material. The decision applies in England and Wales, the UK Home Office has announced. However, though this is not yet entirely sure, it may be that police departments will be able to retain the DNA evidence of all those suspected for terrorism indefinitely, even if the people in question have not been charged, or have been found innocent.

The country would have gladly retained all DNA samples until the end of time, if it weren't for a decision of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which decided that the UK National DNA Database was an illegal endeavor, and that people's genetic material are not to be kept by their governments. Ministers in the UK say that the law in its new form is the optimum balance between respecting people's privacy, but also allowing police enforcement to effectively fight crime.

The same ECHR ruling was not the same for all of the UK. In the case of Scotland, for example, the Court did not find any reasons to declare the DNA database illegal, as law enforcement agencies in this country deleted the genetic material they possessed on peo... (read more)

Avatars Can Affect Users of Video Games

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 02:01:02 GMT

According to a communication professor at the University of Texas in Austin (UTA), people's representations in online worlds and computer games – known as their avatars – can exert a strong, negative influence on their owner's behavior, even if they are just virtual characters. In digital technologies, avatars are oftentimes considered to inconsequential, and not much thought has been given to this idea. This is among the first studies to look at the effects of these representations on an actual person, ScienceDaily reports.

"When you step into a virtual environment, you can potentially become 'Mario' or whatever other character you are portraying. Oftentimes, the connotations of our own virtual character will subtly remind us of common stereotypes, such as 'bad guys wear black or dress up in hooded robes.' This association may surreptitiously steer users to think and behave more antisocially, but also inhibit more pro-social thoughts and responses in a virtual environment,” says Jorge Pena.

He is an UTA assistant professor in the College of Communication, and also a student of the thoughts, behaviors, and feelings that people can develop while online. Graduate student Nicholas A. Merola, also from UTA and Cornell University professor Jeffrey T. Hancock were also coauthors of a new paper detaili... (read more)

Why Smells Transport You Back to Childhood

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:31:02 GMT

We've all experienced this at least once – smell something and get instantly transported back into our childhood. Strong memories are associated with various smells and situations, a fact which has been known for quite some time. But a new set of studies seems to show that the smells we experience for the first time are given “privileged” status in the brain. This means that we remember them always over other, more recent memories. A region of the brain, known as the hippocampus, is believed to be involved in this process, Israeli researchers have recently established.

In a new set of experiments, scientists from the Weizmann Institute of Science, in Rehovot, Israel, asked volunteers to look at a chair or a pencil – objects that the test subjects were very unlikely to have already associated with other smells – while being exposed to an odor or a sound at the same time. Some 90 minutes later, the same participants were exposed to the same object, but different smells and sounds. They then went home for a week, and returned afterwards for follow-up studies.

The scientists presented all of the participants with the chair or pencil again, and then asked them about the sound or smell that was also present in the room at the time of the first test. In addition , the team looked at the... (read more)

How You Are Affected by Others' Bad Decisions

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:58:00 GMT

The fact that happiness and sadness spread through social circles like ripples in a pond was proven some time ago. It may take more than a year for a positive or negative feeling to make its way through related groups of friends, until the emotion finally has no more “stamina” left to move forward. Experts are fascinated with this mechanism, and a new field of science has emerged to study these interactions in particular. But a series of recent studies suggests something that previous researches never even hinted at, namely the fact that people can also catch another person's irrational processes and bad decisions. The find is of tremendous importance, ScienceNow reports.

One good example is a classic economic fallacy known as “sunk costs.” You buy a house by paying too much for it, a lot more than its actual worth. Then, rather than accepting that you have made a mistake, you keep pouring more and more money into the property, though deep inside you know that it's never going to sell for more than you paid for it. This doesn't stop you from trying to justify the original, bad investment with new ones. The new studies essentially show that this type of behavior can be contagious, which has considerable implications for the field of analyzing social interactions.

In a series of ex... (read more)

Textbooks Have Political Messages

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 08:20:00 GMT

English scientists from the University of Manchester, led by Dr. Matthias vom Hau, have recently announced that the conclusion of their latest study is ominous – nearly all textbooks the team analyzed over the course of the investigation had political messages, most of them nationalistic. Hundreds of textbooks from countries in Latin America, the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany were reviewed, and the team says that the main theme is always the same – turn the children into model citizens that abide by the country's laws, PhysOrg reports.

Books dealing with national history, citizenship, and English literature were the main targets of the new investigation. The team reveals that the same nationalistic messages were discovered in all of the books, albeit in different contexts. Furthermore, the messages had changed over the past 150 years, a time frame for which the investigators were able to find printed materials. Vom Hau reveals that, in Latin American countries, the experts allowing textbooks to be published judge the information presented within based on political criteria, and not on the quality of the data.

“Schools of course educate us and make us literate. But what you learn about national identity and history is highly regulated by Government and expert panels and thus they a... (read more)

How Long-Term Memories Form

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:31:01 GMT

In a new study conducted on unsuspecting mice, Swedish researchers at the medical university Karolinska Institutet managed to accomplish a major breakthrough in the field of neuroscience, when they identified a mechanism related to the formation of long-term memories. Their find essentially controls the brain's ability to store information for longer than a few seconds; and the new-found knowledge is bound to have considerable implications for the field of medicine today. Details of the discovery appear in the latest issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“We are constantly being swamped with sensory impression. After a while, the brain must decide what's to be stored long term. It's this mechanism for how the connections between nerve fibers are altered so as to store selected memories that we've been able to describe,” explains the leader of the new study, professor Lars Olson. In the experiments, the Swedish team was able to control mice's ability to form long-lasting memories by simply adding or subtracting a substance from the water.

Converting sensory impression into memory is the very essence of our ability to learn. Data about past experiences is maintained in the brain in such a way that it allows for its most important part to be accessed at all times. Until now, the only... (read more)

Same Brain Regions Process Words and Gestures

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:31:02 GMT

Words and gesture may seem to be two distinct sets of communication tools, and someone would expect that they are processed in different parts of the brain. However, this does not seem to be the case, as indicated by a new scientific study funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), a division of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). Details of the investigation are published in the early online issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), PhysOrg reports.

Scientists have known for quite some time that spoken and written words are deciphered and processed in the same brain areas, but they had no idea that wordless gestures were integrated by the same areas. The new find is highly important, because it seems to indicate the fact that these specific portions of the cortex are the areas from which language originated. If this turns out to be true, then a number of new therapies for conditions related to misunderstanding, or incorrect processing, of words, gestures and other non-verbal clues may be developed.

“In babies, the ability to communicate through gestures precedes spoken language, and you can predict a child's language skills based on the repertoire of his or her gestures during those early months. These fi... (read more)

Why We Are Suspicious of Distorted Faces

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Mon, 9 Nov 2009 12:03:00 GMT

In a new set of studies, researchers have demonstrated that the suspicions we show towards distorted faces and unconventional looks may actually be something that is rooted in our DNA. Additionally, the same investigations have also discovered that the trait might have evolved further back in the past than first predicted, creating a new perspective on what could be an evolutionary adaptation. The phenomenon is called “uncanny valley,” and can be easily noticed in people looking at a robot that mimics human expressions, but not in a natural way, the BBC News reports.

While observing this behavior in humans is somewhat to be expected, scientists were completely surprised when they recorded it in macaque monkeys as well. When presented with computer-generated replicas of actual macaques, the primates behaved normally, showing their interest in the “newcomers.” However, when renditions that did not quite match the original were shown, the monkeys were able to recognize the difference, and stared at the models. The differences did not have to be very great in order for this effect to be produced, the researchers say.

“We were not terribly surprised that they show an uncanny valley effect. What I am surprised by is that we can evoke it using such a rudimentary procedure – measu... (read more)