The Rat-Planned City.
Tel Aviv researchers are revolutionizing urban design, PhysOrg.com reports, by designing cities for rats. Normally thought of as vermin, the critters can navigate the street […]
psychology
Be Boring.
No! Say it ain’t so! The Overcoming Bias blog has this study from the Journal of Experimental Psychology that shows that interesting details interfere with […]
Nature Deficit Disorder?
Seed contributor Jonah Lehrer posts to Scienceblogs about the brain-boosting effects of a stroll in the woods: Because you can’t help but stop and notice […]
No, Really.
Scientific American reports on the psychology of sarcasm and on new studies that suggest irony is hardwired into our brains: In one experiment, [Penny M. […]
Baby, It’s Cold Outside.
The LA Times reports on a new psychological study in Science that proves something we all probably take for granted – that warmth is more […]
Terror warnings undermine conservative candidates.
PhysOrg enters the presidential fray with a new UC Berkeley study that finds playing the terror card can backfire on political conservatives: …[A] new national […]
Giving the cold shoulder? Just wash your hands of it.
SciAm warms my heart with a great interview about metaphor. Cognitive psychiatrist Chen-Bo Zhong of the University of Toronto is an expert in why certain […]
You can have any music you like, as long as it’s one of these six forms.
Because, New Scientist tells us, there are only six forms of music to have: In his new book, The World in Six Songs, cognitive psychologist […]
Drive my car.
So. Wired tells us it’s true – the roar of the sportscar kinda turns us on: To test the theory that high-performance cars get people […]
Baby Talk 101.
Keep it simple, short and repetitive! That’s what an international team of neurological researchers covered in PhysOrg.com found when they scanned infants’ brains while saying, […]
It’s all magic to me.
While peeking at a Special Secret Magical Message Board, I came across this “Perspective” piece from Nature Reviews Neuroscience on magic. Specifically, it’s an overview […]
Lights out.
So, LabSpaces.net confirms what we’ve all been feeling after those long, late nights. Sleeplessness causes power failures in your brain: The research team, led by […]
A Cowardly and Superstitious Lot.
I can’t say anything more about SciAm’s interview on the science of Batman. The article speaks for itself: What’s a realistic training regimen? I didn’t […]
Mushrooms and meaning.
Johns Hopkins researchers are getting profoundly trippy, PhysOrg reports, in a research project that found psychedelic mushrooms can have long-lasting spiritual effects: “Most of the […]