daily scientific news: January 2015

Thursday, 29 January 2015

Frequent Binge-Watching Could Be a Warning Sign of Depression

Netflix is a wasted day waiting to happen. The running joke is that the service gives you 10 seconds in between TV episodes to decide if you're going to do anything productive with your day. Ah yes, binge-watching and the allure of “just one more episode” is something most of us can relate to. But researchers Yoon Hi Sung, Eun Yeon Kang and Wei-Na Lee from the University of Texas at Austin think that this persistent behavior could be a warning sign of depression.

The researchers conducted a survey on 316 participants, ages 18 to 29 years, asking about their TV-watching habits and how often they felt lonely or depressed. Their results revealed that participants who confessed to binge-watching often were more likely to feel lonely and depressed. The researchers suggest that among these people there might be a deficiency in their ability to self-regulate, opting for clicking that “Next” button that will take them away from negative feelings.

With the rise of seemingly unlimited movies and TV shows at our finger-tips, binge-watching is a relatively new pastime. One that people joke is a harmless addiction. However, the researcher Sung cautions against this thought, saying in a press release:

"When binge-watching becomes rampant, viewers may start to neglect their work and their relationships with others. Even though people know they should not, they have difficulty resisting the desire to watch episodes continuously. Our research is a step toward exploring binge-watching as an important media and social phenomenon."

This study doesn't necessarily mean you should forgo plans to binge-watch the latest season of House of Cards, just make sure these plans aren't happening on a regular basis.

Wednesday, 28 January 2015

Sugary Drinks May Trigger Early Pubberty in Girls

by Natalie Shoemaker

Scientists have found girls who consume more than one sugary drink a day start their periods at an earlier age than those who consume fewer.

Linda Geddes from New Scientist sat down with researchers who published their results in the journal of Human Reproduction . The study followed 5,583 girls (ages 9 to 14 years old) between 1996 and 2001, and they hadn't had their periods when the study began. The girls were asked to fill out an annual questionnaire, inquiring about their health, diet, and exercise, and whether or not they'd begun menstruating.

Girls who drank more than 1.5 servings of sweetened beverages a day tended to get their period 2.7 months earlier (around 12.8 years of age) than girls who consumed two or fewer sugar drinks a week (around 13 years of age). The researchers controlled for the girls' BMIs, food consumption, and exercise, and found these results were independent of these factors.

There are, of course, risks for girls that get their period early, including depression in adolescence and breast cancer later on in life. However, for the girls in this survey the researchers say that a 2-month margin isn't significant. Previous studies linking early menstruation to breast cancer have said that girls who get their period a year have a 5 percent increased risk. However, they note that their sample group that consumed more than 1.5 sugar-sweetened beverages a day is likely low compared to some other populations.

The researchers, however, state that this study doesn't prove there's a direct link to sugar drinks and early menstruation, just that there's a correlation between the two. They report that the high-glycemic levels cause an increase in insulin as a result, which could cause higher concentrations of sex hormones that have been linked to earlier periods.

The American Beverage Association sounded off about the study in a statement:

"Neither this study nor the body of science shows that sugar-sweetened beverage consumption causes early onset of menarche [first period]. What the body of science supports is that adolescent girls are reaching puberty earlier than prior generations; however, there is no scientific consensus concerning the cause of this trend.”

Still, sugar drinks have no nutritional value and have been linked with obesity, which in an of itself can cause numerous health issues. The best course of action might be to try and hold off on the soft drinks as much as possible.

Coffee, Early Working Hours Helped Bring Breakfast into the Mainstream

by Natalie Shoemaker

Health promoters want you to start off your day right with breakfast. Some have even gone so far as to say it's the most important meal of the day. Food manufacturers have even said that a healthy breakfast can help you lose weight. A lot of people want you to eat breakfast, but Marissa Fessenden from the Smithsonian says that the morning meal is a relatively new concept.

The Romans apparently thought the idea of more than one meal a day was gluttonous, according to Caroline Yeldham, a food historian. Indeed, like the physicians in the Middle Ages, they were concerned about digestion and eating before a prior meal had been evacuated from the body. Even Monarchs didn't take on a first meal. Rather they would have a meal around 10:30 or 11 in the morning and then another meal that followed five hours later.

The only recordings of morning meals were seen when referring to those who were old or ill before the 1550s. These people would be prescribed a breakfast of a particular item in order to help them through the day. In some cases, young, healthy monks were also permitted to indulge in a light breakfast as a way to deter them from gorging themselves later on in the day and falling asleep. So, when did Westerners start eating breakfast and why?

Fessenden explains that regular working hours and coffee were major contributors to the rise of breakfast. It started with men who helped bring in the harvest for a manor. It was expected, since the rose so early and worked so late, that they were to be served a morning meal. A statue of regular hours from 5am to 7pm in 1515 then allowed breakfast to start being considered a mainstream mealtime. But even then some physicians still warned that it was unhealthy to eat before the previous meal had digested. By the middle of the 1500s, sources were switching their tune claiming that breakfast was now an essential meal to start the day. The introduction of coffee helped gain its approval among physicians as it helped in the “evacuation of superfluities.”

Tuesday, 27 January 2015

Stress During Pregnancy Affects Fetal Development

by Natalie Shoemaker

Stress during pregnancy is understandable. There are preparations to make before the baby arrives and the everyday worry of carrying around another person in your womb. But there's a difference between the everyday strain of pregnancy and chronic, unyielding stress. For pregnant women, continuous anxiety and mental strain could cause developmental risks to the fetus.

In a press release, lead author of the study, Owen Vaughan, talked about the study, which was published in The Journal of Physiology. Vaughan and his team of researchers used pregnant mice in order to conduct their research, injecting them with a natural glucocorticoid corticosterone to cause stress at different times of fetal development. Researchers injected 20 females from day 11 to 16 and 31 females from day 14 to19, and used 74 females as a control group (they received no injections).

The mice who received injections tended to eat more, however, the researchers noted that the glucocorticoid stress hormones caused a decrease in transition of nutrients through the placenta. Particularly, in the transportation of glucose to the fetus. This resulted in the fetuses weight less than the control-group of mice.

Vaughan explained the long-term effects these stress hormones could have on human offspring:

"Glucocorticoid levels in pregnant women may determine the specific combination of nutrients received by the foetus and influence the long-term metabolic health of their children as a result. This could have implications for women stressed during pregnancy or treated clinically with glucocorticoids, if the mechanisms are similar in humans.”

To the Brain, Reading Aloud is the Same as Reading to Yourself

by Natalie Shoemaker

What happens when we make the switch from reading aloud to internalizing our voices? Carl Engelking from Discover Magazine summarized a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that sought to answer just this question. The results of the group's research found that the brain lights up the same way when we read to ourselves as it would when we read aloud, showing what an important role sound plays to developing our internal monologue.

The researchers recruited 12 men and four women for this study, all of whom were having surgery to remove malignant tumors. The surgery was used to also attach electrodes to the participants' Broca area of the brain, which is responsible for functions related to speech production. Participants remained conscious in order to conduct the test, using local anesthesia to dull the pain.

After the electrodes were attached the first part of the test could begin. Researchers asked the participants to read aloud some phrases and words while they measured sound waves and electrical signals produced by the brain. In the second part of the test researched asked participants to silently read the same words and phrases from the previous part.

The results produced an interesting find: the participants' brains mimicked the sound frequencies as if the words were being read aloud.

The researchers write:

“This suggests that in hearing people, sound representation deeply informs generation of linguistic expressions at a much higher level than previously thought. This may help in designing new strategies to help people with language disorders such as aphasia.”

Monday, 26 January 2015

A Clean Desk May Help You Work Though Frustrating Tasks

by Natalie Shoemaker

Messy workspaces have their benefits, some research suggests that the clutter makes people more creative. But there's another aspect to the clutter, according to Boyoun (Grace) Chae and Rui (Juliet) Zhu, which may be undermining your ability to persevere through a difficult task.

The two published their study in the Journal of Consumer Research , which sought to find if a messy or clean environment dictated an individual's self-regulation control. The researchers collected 103 student participants and directed them to sit in a room that featured a clean workspace or in a cluttered room with papers and items strewn about. In a separate room, researchers then asked participants to solve (an unsolvable) geometry puzzle. The researchers timed how long each person spent trying to solve the puzzle as a test to gauge persistence in the face of a frustrating task.

Participants who were placed in the neat environment spent an average of 1,117 seconds on the task, while those who sat in the cluttered space spent an average of 669 seconds on the task. The results show that those working in a clean space may feel unburdened by clutter and more mentally capable to take on a difficult problem. The saying, “A cluttered house is a cluttered head,” comes to mind. Chae and Zhu suggest that the mess “threatened participants’ sense of personal control. Coping with that threat from the physical environment caused a depletion of their mental resources, which in turn led to self-regulatory failure.”

“... although we don’t have data to back this up, we conjecture that a mess of your own creation may affect you even more strongly than a mess that’s been imposed by someone else. A self-created mess can become overwhelming because it serves as evidence that you’re unable to control your environment.”

Their assumptions are based off of some interesting connections in weight loss community that states if people unclutter their physical environment, they're able to regain control over that space and focus on their weight goals. What do you think about their findings? Do these observations mirror your own life?

Study Links Social Isolation to Heart Risks

by Natalie Shoemaker

Loneliness is known to cause depression in people, however, social isolation can also have physiological effects, namely, cardiovascular disease. Julie Beck from The Atlantic reports on a new study, published in Annals of Behavioral Medicine , that offers further proof to how heavily isolation can weigh on the heart.

Researchers led by Jean-Philippe Gouin, a Psychology Professor at Concordia, recruited 60 students that had just moved to Montreal, Canada to attend school. They made sure the students had no connections prior to the study—no family, friends, or relationships. The participants had their heart-rates measured during their first visit, and again at two and five months after. Researchers also inquired about their social habits: how many people they spoke to during the week and how lonely they felt.

Over time researchers noted that the participants' heart-rate variability (the time between heart-beats) decreased. This piece of information is of particular interest to researchers, because it could be the connection between poor heart health and social isolation. Gouin explained in a press release:

"Other research has shown that individuals with a lower heart rate variability are at increased risk for the development of poor health, including greater risk for cardiac diseases. Therefore, decreases in heart rate variability are bad for you."

Indeed, the researchers found that those students who were able to form social connections found their heart-rate variability increase. Whereas those who remained in social isolation had a lower heart-rate variability. However, being that these students moved there's the possibility that a contributing factor of this experiment is stress, which has also been linked to heart disease. But social interaction would have certainly helped to mitigate that stress.

"The message is clear: Reach out to other people. The more quickly you manage to integrate socially in your new home, the healthier you'll be. It's easier said than done, but it's worth it."

How Man Ray Made Art of Math and Shakespeare

by Bob Duggan

While advanced math and Shakespeare combine to make a nightmare curriculum for some students, for artist Man Ray, one of the most intriguing minds of 20^th century art, they were “such stuff as dreams are made on,” or at least art could be made from. A new exhibition at The Phillips Collection reunites the objects and photographs with the suite of paintings they inspired Man Ray to create and title Shakespearean Equations. Man Ray—Human Equations: A Journey from Mathematics to Shakespeare traces the artist’s travels between disciplines, between war-torn continents, and between media that became not only a journey from arithmetic to the Bard, but also a journey of artistic self-discovery.

Man Ray’s long, strange trip begins in Paris in 1934. Art historian Christian Zervos commissions him to photograph a collection of three-dimensional mathematical models at the Institut Henri Poincaré. Originally made to serve as algebraic and geometric teaching tools, the models immediately strike the Surrealist photographer with greater artistic potential. Zevros publishes the photographs in 1936 in an issue of Cahiers d’Art centered on the “Crisis of the Object.” That same year, Man Ray’s original photographs appear in several Surrealist exhibitions.

Yet, in 1937, just one year later, Man Ray renounces photography as his main medium in the manifesto titled La Photographie n’est pas l’Art, L’Art n’est pas de la Photographie , literally announcing that photography is not art, and vice versa. After philosophically leaving photography behind him, Man Ray physically left his photographs and other artworks behind as he fled France at the start of World War II for America. By late 1940, Man Ray settled in the then (and now) Surrealist place on earth—Hollywood. “There was more Surrealism rampant in Hollywood,” Man Ray joked later, “than all the Surrealists could invent in a lifetime.” As Andrew Strauss writes in the catalog to the exhibition, Man Ray “reinvented” himself in Hollywood, not only marrying a young dancer but also wedding himself to the idea of working in different media in new and exciting combination.

In 1947, Man Ray returned to France to retrieve his pre-war oeuvre, including his mathematical photographs. Back in America, Man Ray reevaluated the potential of those decade-old pictures. Fellow Surrealist André Breton suggested titles such as “Pursued by her Hoop,” “The Rose Penitents,” and “The Abandoned Novel” back when the mathematical photographs were first taken, but Man Ray went in a different direction when titling the paintings inspired by those photos. “While such poetic titles echoed the playful Surrealist spirit of the mid-thirties,” Strauss writes, “Man Ray felt that refreshing new titles in English could add to their potential popularity and commercial appeal in his new environment.” Man Ray then hit on the idea of using the titles of Shakespeare’s plays for the paintings. “The mathematical models would then become specific personalities featured in Shakespeare plays that would be familiar to his audience and invite curiosity,” Strauss continues.

The Shakespearean guessing game quickly aroused the inner critic of viewers. “We would play games, trying to get people to guess what play belonged to which picture,” Man Ray admitted later. “Sometimes they got it right; sometimes of course, they didn’t, and it was just as well!” Man Ray—Human Equations invites the same guessing with the same ambiguous, same fittingly Surrealist results. By bringing together more than 125 works, the exhibition allows you to take in for the first time ever the original models from the Institut Henri Poincaré Man Ray photographed, the photographs, and the paintings they inspired.

Despite having all the facts before you, however, things never truly add up in a convincing way, just as Man Ray intended, thus calling into question the long-perceived, unjustified differences between “solid” math and the “squishy” liberal arts of literature and painting. For example, on the blackboard shown in Shakespearean Equation, Julius Caesar , writes the illogical equation “2 + 2 = 22” beside rational formulae “a : A = b : B” and “a : b = A : B,” thus introducing us to a whole new world of math merged with art. As exhibition curator Wendy A. Grossman writes in her catalog essay, “Squaring the Circle : The Math of Art,” “Devices such as inversion, negation, doubling, disjunction, and symbolic form common to mathematicians are techniques equally employed by Surrealists in order to achieve the movement’s professed goal of going beyond the real.” If the Surrealists used modern math in pursuit of unreality, Grossman argues, “Is this confluence merely coincidental, or do Surrealism and modern mathematics share something of the same spirit? Or is there something Surreal about mathematics that drew these artists to this realm?”

Just as the idea of modern math and modern art intersecting challenges common assumptions, stirring Shakespeare into the equation adds another intriguing dimension. There’s a long tradition of paintings of Shakespeare’s plays. Shakespeare scholar Stuart Sillars cites in the catalog epilogue William Blake and Henry Fuseli as notable examples, and powerful contrasts to Man Ray’s approach. “Trying to place Man Ray’s Shakespearean Equations series within the tradition of paintings that illustrate or are inspired by Shakespeare’s plays is at once pointless and essential,” Sillars writes, “pointless because the originality and zest of the images, like all his work, argues against such placement, and essential because by comparison the sheer originality of his work becomes clearer.” Despite titling and suggesting Shakespearean qualities, Man Ray’s paintings tell but don’t tell us anything about the plays in a direct or obvious way—a paradox as mathematically modern and as conceptually complex as Shakespeare’s works themselves. The Bard himself would be proud.

One example of Man Ray’s paradoxical, quintessentially Shakespearean method in action is Shakespearean Equation, King Lear (shown above). Strauss sees King Lear’s famous “tears speech” depicted “by means of a diluted pigment dripping down the canvas” and even suspects that this “presumably fortuitous effect provided inspiration for the choice of title.” Grossman sees Man Ray’s affixing of the canvas to a large wooden hoop—“a geometric figure known to mathematicians as a Kummer surface”—as the artist’s attempt to “turn[] the work into a three-dimensional object that, like so much of his work, defies easy categorization and belies a common perception that his canvases from this series were simply cerebral and literal transfers of his photographs involving little artistic mediating vision.” In essence, Man Ray’s King Lear shows off his mathematical knowledge in the name of artistic independence, all, of course, while depending on a Shakespearean allusion—a paradox neatly holding together right before your eyes. Or, as Sillars neatly puts it, “[H]ere, the Shakespearean equation is the image, not a pedestrian decryption.” As much as you try to solve the puzzle, the puzzle remains bigger and more powerful than any single answer, making this exhibition both frustrating and irresistible.

To accompany these paintings’ first exhibition, Man Ray designed a fittingly different album. On the front cover appeared a yellow, triangular flap with the words “TO BE,” the first half of Hamlet’s famous quote and the most immediately recognized line in all of Shakespeare. Man Ray deflated all expectations, however, when readers lifted the flap to find the words “Continued Unnoticed,” a confession of the artist’s disappointment over the failure of the paintings to reach a wider audience. By bringing these works and Man Ray’s methods to public notice, Man Ray—Human Equations: A Journey from Mathematics to Shakespeare introduces the artist to the public he’s been waiting for—a 21^st century audience more comfortable with the surrealism of post-modern life and accepting of the intersection of math and art in the magical electronic devices it wields. The world of easy answers is gone, even when we have the whole world just a few clicks away. Man Ray—Human Equations: A Journey from Mathematics to Shakespeare demonstrates that embracing the paradox can be challenging, fun, and undeniably human.

[Image: Man Ray, Shakespearean Equation, King Lear , 1948. Oil on canvas, 18 1/8 x 24 1/8 in. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1972. © Man Ray Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris 2015. Photography by Cathy Carver.]

[Many thanks to The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, for providing me with the image above from, other press materials related to, and a review copy of the catalog for Man Ray—Human Equations: A Journey from Mathematics to Shakespeare , which runs from February 7 through May 10, 2015.]

[Please follow me on Twitter (@BobDPictureThis) and Facebook (Art Blog By Bob) for more art news and views.]

How Do Men and Women Respond to Parenthood?

by Natalie Shoemaker

Men and women respond differently to the prospects of parenthood. But Nathan Collins from Pacific Standard reports on a recent study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, delves into the details of these dynamics and how they can affect the future of a relationship.

Researchers had 192 couples (all first-time parents) participate in the study and followed them over the course of two years from the start of their parenthood. The team collected data at five points over the course of the research, asking about the couple's satisfaction with their relationship, contributions made to child rearing, and personal history of attachment avoidance.

Researchers found that women tended to feel worse if they made little contributions to childcare, whereas men felt better. Parents who claimed to do the bulk of child rearing reported their sense of efficacy remained the same over the course of the study. But, on average, women felt better over time about their abilities if they took on the bulk of the work. If a partner was more prone to avoiding attachments, men showed sharper drop in relationship satisfaction than women. However, men who contributed more to child rearing and weren't prone to attachment avoidance, tended to feel a rise in relationship satisfaction. Whereas women in the same boat felt the complete opposite.The researcher wrote:

“The results revealed that certain individual differences-especially gender and attachment avoidance-shape individual reactions to childcare, above and beyond the proportion of childcare tasks that partners report completing. Women and less avoidantly attached new parents handle the introduction of childcare tasks better than most men, especially those who are more avoidantly attached.”

In their study the team suggest there's a “need for more research on men's adjustment during this particularly stressful transition.” Research to help improve the transition for men will only help to strengthen relationships with a baby on the way.

Friday, 23 January 2015

Frida Kahlo and Solidarity of the Strange

by DSN Editors

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) was a Mexican painter best known for her self-portraits and her distinctive surrealist style. Kahlo had a rocky marriage with the artist Diego Rivera, who shared her communist politics. She is said to have had an affair with Leon Trotsky during his time in Mexico. Kahlo's legacy is one that flourished in the decades following her death; her paintings are a staple of the Mexican artistic canon.

The following quote comes from Kahlo's diary. The victim of a debilitating bus accident during her youth, Kahlo's lifelong poor health often plunged her into isolation. She felt a kindred solidarity with the "strange" of the world:

"I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it's true I'm here, and I'm just as strange as you." [Wikiquote]

Doomsday Clock Ticks Forward to 3 Minutes to Midnight

by Natalie Shoemaker

The hands of the iconic “Doomsday Clock” have been moved forward to read 3 minutes from midnight. The last time the world was 3 minutes to midnight was during the Cold War in 1984.

The metaphorical clock is managed by the Science and Security Board of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and signals the grim outlook the group has on the world's future if attentions aren't paid to growing climate change and nuclear arsenals. Megan Gannon from Live Science reported that the board decided to move the time from 5 minutes to midnight where its hands have rested for the past three years--since 2012.

Granted, the board is by no means predicting the world's demise, rather the clock is used as a tool to warn the public about how close we are to a global catastrophe. It has been maintained as a symbol to the world since 1947 as a warning that humanity is deadly-close to a global disaster. After the Atomic Bombs were dropped in Japan, the clock has warned of nuclear disaster, but since 2007 the board has also considered the irreversible damages of climate change, adding the threat to their doomsday predictions. The furthest the clock has ever been from midnight was when it was moved to 11:43, when the Soviet Union and the United States signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in 1991.

Since then the clock has been inching ever-forward. The lack of global action toward resolving the climate change crisis, which scientists predict the Earth will be 5 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit warmer by the end of century; there's also the he halted efforts of nations to scale back their nuclear arms; and rising global tensions have only convinced the board that the world needs to act in order to step back from this metaphorical ledge.

Kennette Benedict, Executive Director of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists spoke to reporters in Washington D.C. about the board's decision:

"We are not saying it is too late to take action but the window for action is closing rapidly. We move the clock hand today to inspire action."

Thursday, 22 January 2015

E-Cigarettes Dispense Large Doses of Formaldehyde at Higher Settings

by Natalie Shoemaker

There have been increasing concerns and controversy surrounding the health and safety of e-cigarettes. Some researchers claim the devices are a helpful aid for smokers to quit, others say they're a safer alternative to conventional cigarettes. However, in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine , researchers claim they've found evidence of large doses of formaldehyde when the e-cigarettes are turned up to their highest settings.

For those who aren't familiar with e-cigarettes, they work by heating up a liquid that contains a solution of propylene glycol, glycerol, or both, with the option of nicotine and various flavorings. The liquid is then turned into a vapor that the user inhales.

Rob Stein from NPR has written on the concerns brought forward by researchers relating to high doses of formaldehyde they found. He sat down to interview one of them--David Peyton, a Professor at Portland State University.

In their research, the team simulated vaping by drawing the aerosol into a syringe in order to examine the chemicals being emitted by e-cigarettes. What they found was large doses of formaldehyde—higher than what's usually seen in conventional smoking cigarettes. However, Gregory Conley of the American Vaping Association has another take on the researchers' findings:

"They clearly did not talk to [people who use e-cigarettes] to understand this. They think, 'Oh well. If we hit the button for so many seconds and that produces formaldehyde, then we have a new public health crisis to report.' "

He claims in order to yield these results, an e-cigarette user would have to turn the device's settings to its highest voltage and keep it on for 100 seconds. Conley told NPR:

"… no human vaper would ever vape at that condition, because within one second their lungs would be incredibly uncomfortable."

Peyton and his fellow researchers did dial the e-cigs up to their highest voltage levels, telling NPR that no formaldehyde was detected at the e-cigarette's lower settings. However, he believes that Conley's assessment isn't true:

"As I walk around town and look at people using these electronic cigarette devices it's not difficult to tell what sort of setting they're using. You can see how much of the aerosol they're blowing out. It's not small amounts."

Not being an e-cigarette user, it would seem further research into how vapers use the devices demands some study. The findings here are a good jumping off point, but looking into the practices of e-cigarette users should be the next step. Still, if large doses of formaldehyde do exist at higher settings, perhaps there should be regulations on that as well.

Wednesday, 21 January 2015

Some Women Experience More Pain When a Partner is Present for Procedures

by Natalie Shoemaker

Painful medical procedures can be frightening. Oftentimes, doctors will suggest or invite a person's significant other to be there with them as a means of comfort and support. But the BBC points to recent research that suggests, for some women, having their other half present may cause more pain than comfort.

The study, which was published in the journal of Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience , found that women who avoid closeness in their relationships and don't trust their partners more than themselves tend to feel more pain during uncomfortable medical procedures.

Researcher took 39 heterosexual couples and asked them questions about how often they sought or avoided emotional intimacy and closeness with their significant other. The females were then hooked up to an EEG to read rain activity and subjected to a series of painful laser pulses with their partner in the room and with their partner out of the room.

The researchers found that the women who tended to avoid closeness in their relationships felt more pain when their partners were present, and the EEGs mirrored their sentiments, showing spikes in activity where the brain experiences pain and anxiety. Meanwhile the women who sought intimacy in their relationships didn't suffer more or less when their other half was in or out of the room.

This finding indicates that the usual doctoral advice of inviting a partner to be present to help a patient get through a procedure may not be the best course of action every time (particularly in the case of child-birth).

Katerina Fotopoulou, one of the authors of the study and Director of the London Neuropsychoanalysis Center at UCL, offered a suggestion to doctors:

“We recommend that health professionals ask their patients rather than assume the kind of social support they want. People know what they prefer.”

Run Faster By Focusing on an Object in the Distance

by Natalie Shoemaker

Those of us who've made fitness part of our New Year's resolution may find their focus waining. The winter ritual of hopping on a treadmill and just running is boring, even having a go around the block can be a daunting exercise regardless of the cold. But Olga Khazan of The Atlantic writes that researchers have found a way to make the task seem less long and tiresome, claiming people who narrow their attention and focus on a specific object in the distance—keeping your eye on the prize as the old adage goes—can motivate themselves to push on.

One of the study's co-authors, Emily Balcetis an Assistant Professor of Psychology at New York University, explained in a press release:

“People are less interested in exercise if physical activity seems daunting, which can happen when distances to be walked appear quite long. These findings indicate that narrowly focusing visual attention on a specific target, like a building a few blocks ahead, rather than looking around your surroundings, makes that distance appear shorter, helps you walk faster, and also makes exercising seem easier.”

The findings, published in the journal Motivation and Emotion, were based on two studies. The first involved 66 adult participants that were taken to a New York City park in the summer and asked to walk. From the starting line, an open cooler with cold beverages stood just 12 feet away. The participants were split into two groups. One was asked to focus on the cooler as they walked, while the other was told to walk naturally.

Researchers then asked participants to estimate the distance between the cooler and the starting line. Those who were asked to focus on the cooler perceived the distance as shorter than the other group.

In the second experiment, researchers took 73 participants to a gymnasium and timed them as they walked 20 feet while wearing ankle bracelets, adding 15 percent to their body weight. Similar to the first experiment one group was told to focus on a point in the distance (a cone), while the other group was told to look around and look at the cone.

Participants in the focused group perceived the cone to be 28 percent closer and walked 23 percent faster than the other group. What's more, the focused group found the exercise less physically exhausting than the other group.

The researchers weren't sure what caused the focused participants skewed perception and faster speeds. However, they offered a suggestion:

"When people see goals as within reach, it may mobilize action, producing bursts of energy that result in quicker walking times and an experience of ease."

Teens Who Feel Fat Run the Risk of Becoming Overweight Adults

by Natalie Shoemaker

How we perceive ourselves is important. It dictates how we behave and interact with others, but also how we treat ourselves. For teenagers perceptions about weight can often be skewed, which could lead to unhealthy dieting that could result in real weight issue later on in life.

Melissa Dahl from NYMag got an advanced copy of a recent study set to be published in the journal Psychological Science. Researchers, led by Angelina R. Sutin from the Florida State University College of Medicine, found data that indicates teens who perceived themselves to be overweight have a 40 percent greater chance of becoming obese before they turned 30.

The study took data from a survey that was collected from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health that interviewed teens at age 16 and again when they were 28. The survey consisted of a total of 6,523 people. The researchers asked the teens how they felt about their weight and themselves. They also took measurements of their height and weight to determine their BMIs as teens and again as adults.

Sutin's team zeroed-in on particular cases where teens felt they were overweight or obese, but their BMIs' indicated the opposite. Her team then compared these teens with the ones who perceived their weight accurately. The results were as stated above: teens who perceived themselves as obese (and were not) had a 40 percent greater risk of becoming overweight than those with an accurate perception of their weight.

Sutin suggests that these at-risk teens may engage in unhealthy dieting strategies that may cause them to gain more weight.

Use a Treadmill Desk to Boost Memory, Attention

by Natalie Shoemaker

Office work isn't good for our health, sitting for long stretches of time is killing us all. Treadmill desks offer a unique solution to those of us who are desk-bound for the better part of the work week. But can we continue to work productively while we walk? Tom Jacobs from Pacific Standard writes on a research team, led by Elise Labonte-LeMoyne of HEC Montreal, that have found that we can. The study was published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior . The lead author writes:

“While the health benefits of this new practice are indisputable, it will only be adopted if users feel they can accomplish their work as well or better than with the use of a traditional desk.”

“Our results suggest that workers not only perform better on a recall task, but they also perceive themselves to be more attentive to the task at hand.”

The small-scale study included 18 students split into two, equal groups. One was set with the task of reading a document for 40 minutes while seated, while the other group was asked to do the same exercise on a treadmill desk on a 2.5 kilometers per hour (that's 1.55 miles) setting.

The participants had to retain as much of the information as possible within the 40 minutes while also responding to emails. Researchers were attempting to mimic the daily routine of workers. Also some of the emails contained pertinent information to the text they were reading.

After a 10 minute break, researchers then gave the students a true/false quiz, testing them to see how much information they had retained. The participants were also hooked up to an EEG machine to measure brain activity for increases in activity that's involved in memory.

The researchers found that the walking group was 34.9 percent more likely to answer a question correctly compared to the sitting group. As for their brain activity, the researchers noted:

“Previous studies have shown that good memory performance is correlated with a decrease in theta power and an increase in alpha power. We observed significantly more theta activity in the seated group, and more alpha activity in the walking group.”

Perhaps it's worth while for desk-bound workers to start walking around the office. We already know how horrible sitting is for us. Recent studies even show that exercise can't make up for sitting at a desk all day. So, if you can't afford to mod your workspace with a treadmill desk, maybe consider taking your Blackberry out on a on a stroll—answer some emails while recovering from your stretch of sitting every 30 minutes.

Tuesday, 20 January 2015

Fatty, Sugar-Heavy Diets Causes Damage to Memory

by Natalie Shoemaker

People whose diets are made up of saturated fats and sugars may have more than a growing waistline to worry about. Terry Davidson and Camille Sample from The Conversation have conducted their own studies, and found indications that a “Western diet” could cause considerable brain damage.

They cite past research that has found middle-age and older people who are overweight or obese are at greater risk for developing Alzheimer's disease. Other studies show overweight children are threatened as well with impairments to memory. This led them to take on their own research to see the effects these foods have on the brain.

In their own study, publish in the journal Neuroscience , the two researchers along with their team gave a group of rats a diet rich in saturated fats and sugar, which resulted in a weakening of the blood-brain barrier—a wall of cells and membranes that help stop any harmful chemicals or agents from entering into the brain. The barrier begins to weaken, allowing harmful agents to get into the brain causing damage.

They injected the rats with a blue dye to find out which areas were being most influenced by the weakening membrane, and the blue dye tended to settle in the hippocampus—a part of the brain responsible for learning by converting short-term memory into long-term memory. With the hippocampus compromised, Davidson and Sample suggest in their article that the damage would only continue, affecting our ability to stop eating. They write:

“One type of information that is processed by the hippocampus takes the form of internal physiological signals about one’s need for food. Rats and people who have sustained damage to their hippocampus appear to have difficulty using those internal signals to tell whether or not they’ve had enough to eat or drink.”

Thus begins a vicious cycle of continuous eating and drinking of the very food that's posing these issues, causing people to overeat. They suggest further research may be required in order to find a way to help strengthen the blood-brain barrier. But until then, understanding the risks these food pose to our health and practicing good eating will have to suffice.

Monday, 19 January 2015

Twin Births Increase as Women Wait to Have Children Later in Life

by Natalie Shoemaker

Twins births have hit a record high in America--for every 1,000 births, 33.7 of them result in twins. David Beasley from Reuters reports that these births have increased 76 percent from 1980 to 2009—a trend that officials believe has something to do with the increasing number of fertility treatments, as women are choosing to have children later in life.

As the birth rates among women in their 20s declines, rates among women in their 30s and 40s have hit record highs. However, rates of triplets have dropped—a once expected result of fertility treatments. However, Joyce Martin, an Epidemiologist for the CDC, contributes this decline in the advancements made in the field. Fewer embryos are needed in order to help the treatment succeed.

Teen pregnancies have also hit a low with the abundance of educational programs teaching kids about safe sex, as well as a wealth of methods for birth control from IUDs to condoms. Though, why pregnancies in women in their 20s have declined need only look at the female workforce and tuition fees to find a potential answer. More women are graduating college and going into business, perhaps more women are career-driven--wanting to focus on their jobs before they settle down. There's also the rising college debt to consider, and more women are enrolled in college than men. This issue could mean more women are waiting to become more financially stable before they begin having a family.

There are a number of factors to consider when looking at these later-in-life-births, according to CDC statistician, Brady Hamilton.

"For women in their 20s, it's not so much an issue of foregoing a birth as it is postponing a birth. For older women, that's not a viable option. Also women in their 40s tend to be more stable in their jobs, their incomes."

Facing African-American History Through African-American Art

by Bob Duggan

When the Philadelphia Museum of Art purchased Henry Ossawa Tanner’s painting The Annunciation in 1899, they became the first American museum to acquire a work by an African-American artist. That purchase announced a new era of recognition of African-American art and artists just as much as the painting itself announced a new style of art moving away from stereotypical “black” scenes towards a freedom of aesthetic choice. Persons of color could express themselves in any way, even abstraction, but faced the new problem of remaining true to themselves at the same time. The new exhibition Represent: 200 Years of African American Art and accompanying catalogue show how these artists faced the challenges posed to them by art and society and provide all of us with a fascinating guide to facing African-American history—tragic, tenacious, transcendent—through its art.

The PMA’s unique among American art museums in its long-standing relationship to African-American creators reaching literally down to its very foundations. African-American architect Julian Abele contributed to the initial design of the museum. (Abele’s masterful drawings of the museum to be greet you in the hallway outside the exhibition space.) But even before Abele’s drawings and Tanner’s Annunciation, PMA curator Edwin AtLee Barber studied and collected the distinctive and enigmatic “face jugs” created by South Carolinian craftsmen who were slaves or former slaves. Barber’s “face jugs” entered the museum’s collection after his death in 1917 and still puzzle experts who see them as water coolers, grave markers, or echoes of African art traditions.

Few African-American works entered the collection until 1941, when art by Philadelphia area artists Horace Pippin, Dox Thrash, and Raymond Steth ignited greater interest in African-American art, thus reflecting the changing times and changing demographics of the Northeastern United States after the “Great Migration” of African Americans from the South. In 1970, after the social turmoil of the 1960s, the PMA purchased native son Barkley Hendricks’ Miss T , a pensive portrait of his then girlfriend Robin Tyler in black dashiki with a full, Angela Davis-esque Afro—a realistic portrait, yes, but also a visual political statement whose controversial nature the museum embraced. Five years later, Seahorses by Sam Gilliam became the first solo show of an African-American artist in the museum’s history.

Today, thanks to the PMA’s African American Collections Committee (founded in 2001) and the museum’s commitment to serving the needs of the region, the museum owns more than 750 works of art representing over 200 African-American artists. To document this collection and to serve as an introduction to African-American art itself, the museum decided to create a special catalogue, the publication of which is celebrated by the exhibition, which presents a tantalizing selection of just one tenth of the overall African-American collection culled from a select 50 artists ranging from 19^th century artists Moses Williams and David Drake (aka, “Dave the Potter” or “Dave the Slave”) to still-living, still-working artists such as Kara Walker, Glenn Ligon, and Moe Brooker.

Dr. Richard J. Powell introduces the catalogue with the metaphor of African-American artists “walking on water” in achieving a miraculous balance between individual self-expression and the collective African-American experience. Rather than accept the “facile retreat into epidermalization and the sociological realities of blackness,” Powell’s ideal African-American artists “take up instead the more difficult processes of introspection and dream-work around race, culture, and identity.” True African-American art is, quite literally, more than skin deep, challengingly digging down to the roots of race as a social construction based on power and control, not on melanin and biology.

Consulting Curator of the exhibition and the catalogue’s main author Dr. Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw follows Powell’s thematic lead with a whirlwind, intertwined tour of African-American social and art history that not only introduces the PMA’s collection specifically and the African-American experience generally, but also provides a perfect primer on a post-modern approach to history for the non-academic uninitiated. If you’ve ever been confused by the concept of a “post-racial America,” this catalogue will clear it up. Represent is not about an America that no longer sees race, but instead about an America that sees race for what it truly is—a lie told and retold to divide rather than unite.

Combined, the catalogue and exhibition are eye openers. They bridge the distance between the Gee’s Bend quilters and modern fashion designers such as Patrick Kelly and Stephen Burrows to show a continuum of expression stretching across the loom of time. They re-label the labels of “outsider artist” or “folk artist” as art history ghettoization from mainstream fine arts. Self-taught artists denied training because of race and/or economics such as Bill Traylor, Minnie Evans, Joseph Yoakum, and others finally leap from the “blackstream” to the mainstream. Standing before Bill Thompson’s 1961 painting Deposition , which combines Renaissance religious content with modern style, you can’t help but notice on the wall text his death at 29 years of age and wonder how much more he could have done. Then you wonder how much more so many other African-American artists could have done over the centuries had they been given the chance.

The one work from Represent that represents the goal of the catalogue and exhibition best for me is John Woodrow Wilson’s Martin Luther King, Jr. (shown above), a charcoal drawing for a commission for a MLK memorial in Buffalo, New York. Wilson transforms the literal, physical being of MLK into a symbolic, spiritual work of art—a massive head for a massive intellect that hoped to change minds then and inspires others with that same hope today. “What is required for a work of art to enter the cerebral or soulful realms of the black subject is the act of embodiment,” Powell asserts, “with the artist functioning as a barometer of the shifting cultural indices of gender, class, race, and other social constructs and, only then, responding in kind.” Just as Wilson embodies in Powell’s sense King’s essence, Represent: 200 Years of African American Art embodies what African-American art should be—a mirror reflecting the past, illuminating the present, and forcing us to face the future together.

[Image: Martin Luther King, Jr. , 1981, by John Woodrow Wilson (Philadelphia Museum of Art: 125^th Anniversary Acquisition. Purchased with funds contributed by the Young Friends of the Philadelphia Museum of Art in honor of the 125^th Anniversary of the Museum and in celebration of African American art, 2000-34-1) © John Wilson/Licensed by VAGA, New York.]

[Many thanks to the Philadelphia Museum of Art for providing me with the image above and other press materials for, for a review copy of the catalogue to, and for inviting me to the press preview for the exhibition Represent: 200 Years of African American Art , which runs through April 5, 2015.]

Sunday, 18 January 2015

2014 Hottest on Record, Except Where it May Matter Most

by Orion Jones

Last year was the hottest on record for every place in the world, except two: a small part of Antarctica and the Northeast United States. NASA says the cool spots were simple temperature anomalies and that the warming trend remains indisputable.

Knowing that we need every grain of evidence to marshal the slow forces of government against climate change, the anomaly seems unfortunate, even wicked.

As the New Yorker's Amy Davidson writes, "The East Coast is where Congress and the main financial markets are, and so anything that contributes to climate-change denial has a systemic toxicity."

The recent fall in oil prices also provides America with a moment of temporary bliss while the climate changes all around us. Cheaper fuel already has Americans buying heavier vehicles with poorer efficiency, and when the price of renewable technologies rise relative to gasoline, businesses have a financial disincentive to invest in clean energy.

Many have called for a new gas tax so that the price of carbon-based fuel doesn't remain artificially low. In a recent DSN interview, acclaimed economist Larry Summers talks oil prices, energy independence, and America's unavoidable market vulnerability:

Poor Sleep in Teens May be an Early Predictor for Alcohol Abuse

by Natalie Shoemaker

Lack of sleep has been linked to a myriad of mental and emotional issues—people have been known to experience disorientation and hallucinations when going days without sleep. But Smitha Mundasad from the BBC reported on a recent study that has found sleep can be a predictor of future behavior in teens. Those that have a particularly troublesome time dozing off are more likely to develop alcohol and drug problems.

The study was published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. Researchers took data from 6,500 adolescences from the United States that was attained from a survey conducted three times between 1994 and 2002. The survey tracked sleep patterns, and drug and alcohol consumption.

The data points revealed that teens who said they slept poorly at least once a week at the start of the survey were more likely to develop a drinking habit and engage in drug use. Researchers found the worse the sleep, the more teens' odds rose. For those that had difficulty falling asleep every night, their odds of developing an alcohol addiction rose to 33 percent.

Professor Maria Wong from Idaho State University led the project, and told the BBC:

"Most of the time we don't think sleep is important. But our results show sleep is a good marker of some serious later problems."

"A lot of parents don't monitor their adolescents' sleep schedules and let them make their own decisions about when to go to bed.”

This study makes a strong case for getting tablets and other electronic devices out of teens' bedrooms, as they have been known to cause disruptions in sleep patterns. The CDC recommends teens get between 9 to 10 hours of sleep each day.

Friday, 16 January 2015

Stress Dictates How Much We Empathize with Strangers

by Natalie Shoemaker

When someone else is in pain mice and humans share the ability to empathize with what their fellows are feeling. However, when under stress that feeling of empathy could become lost, according to a new study.

The BBC reported on the study, where researchers used human participants and mice to back their findings, which were publish in Current Biology .

The mice were given a stress-blocking drug, after which researchers watched how they responded to other, unfamiliar mice in pain. The mice, reacted to the stanger-mice in pain as they would to a mouse that was familiar to them. However, when put under stress the mice held less empathy toward a mouse that wasn't familiar to them.

The study showed the exact same reaction in humans who took the stress-reducing drug. In this case, student participants were asked watch an actor plunging his hand into ice-cold water for 30 seconds. Researchers monitored their reactions, noting they touched their corresponding hand, and if another recent study is any indication that hand might have even dropped in temperature. Researchers noted that those who didn't take the drug had a less dramatic reaction towards the actor plunging his hand in the icy water.

The stress center of the brain has the power to override our empathic abilities, according to Dr. Jeffrey Mogil, the study's author and Neuroscientist from McGill University in Canada. He says that whenever humans are in a room with someone they don't know, there's a stress response. But he says this stress can quickly dissipate with an ice-breaking game. The researchers used one on their participants called Rock Band.

Thursday, 15 January 2015

How Our Minds Work = Hard To See

How our own minds work is hard to see. Here are some once-tempting views about why we do what we know we will rue:

1. Mythmakers like Homer imagined us at the mercy of gods and fate. What isn’t achievable by will and effort is a gift of the gods (even sleep ). And the strong emotions of our inner lives seemed like external spirits possessing us.

2. Reason-loving Socrates reportedly believed that we never knowingly do wrong . Ignorance causes vice. Knowing what’s right = doing it. That’s untrue, but still influential (~more information = healthier eating).

3. Plato compared the mind to a two-horse chariot: Reason (the charioteer) steers the horses (emotions), one good (naturally virtue-seeking), one bad (appetitive, unruly). All three must cooperate to reach rational goals.

4. Aristotle blamed “weakness of will ” which enabled emotions to master reason. Well-being required the opposite… reason must master (well trained) emotions.

5. Saint Paul confessed, “I do not understand my own actions… For... I do the very thing I hate .” He blamed “the sin that dwells within me .” Augustine went further, projecting his own psychodrama onto everybody by inventing universal “original sin .” Avoiding sin was hard, so “lead us not into temptation” became desirable.

6. The Enlightenment enabled new metaphors, like Hume’s “The mind is a kind of theater .” And thinkers recast minds as moved by impersonal science-like forces. Locke (called the “Newton of the mind”) imagined we are gravitationally attracted to pleasure, which we weighed against pain. Behaviours seemed driven by utility maximizing calculations (see “Bentham’s bucket error ”).

7. Economics remains possessed by Socratic and Enlightenment spirits (better information begets better calculated behavior). And practices “flaw enforcement”... markets systemically encourage (rather than resist) temptation, envy, and greed.

8. Meanwhile Freud’s subconscious wrestlers (id, ego, superego) remain influential beyond reason. Like Augustine, Freud over-projected his own demons. Adding an unample sample of case studies, his unfalsifiable unscientific stories of repressed hydraulic drives and dark irrational impulses, keep mythic spirits alive within our skulls (even using Greek mythic names eg Oedipus).

9. Nowadays scientific psychologists are (re)discovering and empirically measuring our everywhere evident (throughout experience, history and the arts) un-rational-ness: Emotions are fast thinking . Minds have kludgey “cognitive biases.”

What to make of, or add to, the above?

a) Many evidently aren’t prudent , so is avoiding or promoting temptation wiser?

b) Unconscious influences aren’t all Freud’s demons or psychophysics . The logic coupling basic drives to behavior is script-like and culturally configured .

c) Self-command remains rationally adaptive, Plato’s reins must bridle unruly vices (or we reason no better than id-centric children, see Plato’s pastry and Freud’s Reality Principle).

d) We evolved to habitually act without consciously thinking. Aristotle was correct, we must train our emotions (fast thinking) and habits (automatically unthinkingly triggered behaviors ).

Wednesday, 14 January 2015

Study: Feeling Cold is Contagious

by Natalie Shoemaker

There's a saying: Put a sweater on if your mother feels cold. It may seem silly, but a recent study shows that feeling cold can be contagious.

Melissa Dahl from NYMag writes on the research, published online on PLOS ONE , led by Neil Harrison, a Neuropsychiatrist from the Brighton and Sussex Medical School.

Harrison conducted a study where 36 students were shown a three-minute video containing one of four scenes: an actor adding hot water to a clear container and putting a hand in the water; an actor dumping a bag full of ice into a transparent container and placing his right or left hand in the water; or one of two scenes showing an actor placing a hand in water. Only the hand was shown, so the actor didn't reveal any facial cues as to the temperature of the water.

Researchers measured the temperature of the participants' hands before and after viewing one of the videos. They found that the participants that watched the actors submerge their hands into the ice water experienced a significant drop in their own corresponding hand. However, no significant change was measured with participants that watch the hot or neutral videos.

In his paper, Harrison puzzles over why the hot water video had no effect. He explains it could be how the video was set up. Participants could see the ice cubes floating in the cold water throughout the three-minute scene, but the steam rising from the hot water was only visible in the beginning of the video. Other than that there were no visible cues that screamed “hot water” in the participants minds. Then again, Harrison offers another possibility in press release:

"There is some evidence to suggest that people may be more sensitive to others appearing cold than hot."

Why this “temperature contagion” exists could have roots in our ability to empathize with others.

"Humans are profoundly social creatures and much of humans' success results from our ability to work together in complex communities--this would be hard to do if we were not able to rapidly empathize with each other and predict one another's thoughts, feelings and motivations."

Washington DC's Public Library Will Teach People How to Use Tor

by Natalie Shoemaker

Privacy concerns seem to be the elephant in the room nowadays. Some people are taking action to make sure they secure their systems from prying eyes, while others hide away under the logical fallacy “I've got nothing to hide.” But Jason Koebler from Motherboard writes on a promising new program out of Washington DC's Public Library that wants to give people the tools to understand these issues, which also means giving them the tools to protect themselves from prying eyes.

As part of a 10 day series called “Orwellian America,” the library will attempt to give a balanced view on the issues that have made Americans ponder: how much of our personal freedoms are we willing to sacrifice in the name of freedom?

It will kick off with a screening of The Internet's Own Boy, a documentary about Aaron Swartz. Then move into a reading on George Orwell's 1984. The library also intends on moving beyond mere discussion and show its participants how to secure themselves online through the use of anonymous Tor software as well as enabling two-step authentication. The class will even show learners how to access public government files and track campaign finances, so you know where a party's message is really coming from.

The barrier to entry to learn all the security hacks on your own can often seem daunting--most people don't have the luxury of time to read through every forum or blog if they aren't tech savvy. Perhaps, open classes, like this one, will help people make good choices about the future of their information and their right to protect it.

A Study of Comments Reveal How the Internet Reacts to Gender Bias

by Natalie Shoemaker

The comments section is always a dicey area on the internet, it's a place most journalists are told to avoid (if they can help it). The articles involving studies or discussions on gender are usually the worst--abandon all hope of finding a rational discussion following the conclusion.

Olga Khazan from The Atlantic writes on a recent study that examined 1,135 comments from New York Times, Discover magazine, and IFL Science that all wrote about a study that found science professors favor their male students. The study, which was published in Psychology of Women Quarterly , wanted to examine how people reacted to evidence of gender bias in STEM fields.

The internet provided a means for researcher to asses people's uninhibited, inner thoughts and feelings that they may not otherwise express if they weren't anonymous. Indeed, the comments yielded a wealth of positive and negative comments. The researchers were able to determine gender based on photos and names, though, they didn't include gender-neutral or ambiguous names in their results. From this sorting, they were able to determine the gender or 51 percent of commenters, and 57 percent were female.

The researchers then sorted the comments into categories based on whether they agreed with the study, made a sexist remark, or did not believe the study's findings. About 7 percent of the comment were sexist in nature--5 percent of the comments were misogynistic, and most of those comments were left by men. Around 78 percent of the comments agreed or supported the study's findings of gender bias, and were mainly left by women. While 24 percent of commenters refused to accept that the bias existed.

“This finding is consistent with other work suggesting that women are more likely than men to perceive sexism, in part because they are more likely to experience it. Similarly, men may be unlikely to acknowledge gender bias in order to maintain their own privileged position in the social hierarchy.”

It's hard to sift through what could be considered internet trolling and what people actually think. But as Khazan says, “... if there is truth in wine, perhaps there’s some in Internet comments, too.”

Long Hours at the Office Make People More Likely to Become Heavy Drinkers

by Natalie Shoemaker

There's a saying: Work hard, play hard. But this kind of lifestyle may have adverse effects on people's health. After a long day or week at the office it may feel appropriate to kick back with a beer or two. But a recent study has found workers who clock-in more and 48 hours in a week run the risk of developing a habit for unhealthy alcohol consumption.

Penny Sarchet from New Scientist writes that the research spanned 14 countries from an analysis of 61 studies, taking data from a total of 330,000 people across the globe. The data collected has led researchers to conclude that longer hours boosts your likelihood of becoming a heavy drinker by 11 percent compared to those that work a normal 40 hour work week.

Marianna Virtanen at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health along with her colleagues found in their own separate research that people who worked 49 to 54 hours a week were 13 percent more likely to overindulge in their alcohol consumption. They defined over-consumption as 14 drinks for women and 21 for men.

"There was some evidence from previous studies that working long hours may be associated with unhealthy lifestyle, such as low physical activity and high alcohol use.”

Indeed, and now that this data has been gathered across multiple countries, regardless of socio-economic status and culture, we can see that longer working hours may have harmful side-effects. Workers may use alcohol as a way to get through to the next week, drinking away their worries as it were.

"We think that some people may cope with excess working hours with habits that are unhealthy, such as using alcohol. The symptoms they try to alleviate with alcohol may include stress, depression and sleep disturbances."

The authors of the study conclude that the workplace may be an important place to begin talking about alcohol misuse. But it's also important for workers to understand the risks their taking on their health by working such long hours. The researchers concluded their study, writing:

“Further research is needed to assess whether preventive interventions against risky alcohol use could benefit from information on working hours.”

Tuesday, 13 January 2015

Better Sleep May Yield Better Grades in Math, Language

by Natalie Shoemaker

Sleep plays a major role in our health. Adults who miss sleep tend to drag through the day, but for kids it plays a major role in their development. Melissa Locker from Time writes on a recent study, led by Reut Gruber, researched how sleep affected children's performance in math and language. They looked at not just time spent in bed, but the time spent sleeping, Gruber said:

“Sleep efficiency is the proportion of the amount of time you slept to the amount of time you were in bed.”

She also explained the reason for choosing math and language rather than lumping in academics as a whole:

“For math and languages, we need to use the skills that are called ‘executive functions’—things like working memory, planning, not being distracted. The hardware that supports those skills is in the pre-frontal cortex of the brain, which is very sensitive to the effects of poor sleep or insufficient sleep.”

Her team had 75 child participants between the ages of 7 and 11. The children were given a wristwatch-like device called an actigraphy that tracked their sleep by measuring movement. Researcher averaged the data over the course of five nights to get a sense of the children's sleep patterns and compared it with the kids' report card grades.

The researchers found that greater sleep efficiency yielded better scores in math and languages. However, grades in science and art weren't affected significantly.

The findings of this study underscore the importance of paying attention to any irregularities in a child's performance. The simple answer may be that the kid isn't getting enough sleep.

“I think many kids might have some sleep issues that nobody is aware of. And if the pediatrician doesn’t ask about it, we don’t know that it’s there. Regular screening for possible sleep issues is particularly important for students who exhibit difficulties in math, languages, or reading.”

For parents who want to start imposing a stricter sleep schedule: The National Sleep Foundation recommends kids ages five to 12 get 10 to 11 hours of sleep each night, whereas teens need about nine hours.

Advertising Contributed to Women's Decline in Computer Science

by Natalie Shoemaker

The field of computer science used to be heavily dominated by women. Lisa Wade of The Society Pages writes “As late as the second half of the 1960s, women were seen as naturals for working with computers,” referencing Grace Hopper's 1967 article praising women as “naturals” in the art of computer programming.

By 1984, the amount of women entering the field flattens and plunges dramatically. In 1984, 37 percent of Computer Science degrees were awarded to women, and the percentage continues to drop with 29 percent in 1989 to 1990. We see a trend of women beginning falling behind their male counterparts in classes that claimed to be introductory courses. Teacher berating female students for not being on the same level. But why?

One of the reasons NPR reported on was men had a distinct advantage: they were getting hands-on time with computers in their own homes when their female counterparts were getting none. There's an advertising trend that engaged more men to get involved in the industry. Parents were getting personal computers for their sons because advertisers were targeting them for those products, excluding the demographic who had helped build the industry.

Boys were prominently featured in ads for the Commodore 64 and Apple's personal computers. Movies of the time also confirmed that men and computers were a natural thing—no girls allowed—and all the while the history of women in this industry faded away. These images from the media have created a “geek factor” that some researchers believe discourages women from entering the field, more so than men. This begs the question if TV shows, like Bing Bang Theory, are perpetuating that stereotype, deterring young women to pursue a career in computing. Jan Cuny, a Computer Scientist at the University of Oregon who also directs a National Science Foundation program, spoke to the NYTimes, confirmed this sentiment:

“They think of it as programming. They don’t think of it as revolutionizing the way we are going to do medicine or create synthetic molecules or study our impact on the climate of the earth.”