History stuff from the weeks 30/7 - 26/8/12

First up, a story that will fascinate some, and send the rest to sleep:

Historians have discovered long-lost accounting records dating back to the 15th century, regarding activities in London.

The ledger records are not enough to infer the company's financial position, but they do give us a sample of the goods that were traded -- raw wool, woollen cloth, tin, (exports) and spices, dyes, other luxuries (imports).

For some unknown reason, they were not returned to Italy for use, but remained in London, and, 55 years later, were used as scrap, to draw coats of arms on!

Raw wool, woollen cloth and tin were popular exports, while we imported spices, dyes and other luxury goods.”

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-07-qm-historians-medieval-banking-hidden.html#jCp

Raw wool, woollen cloth and tin were popular exports, while we imported spices, dyes and other luxury goods.”

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-07-qm-historians-medieval-banking-hidden.html#jCp

Raw wool, woollen cloth and tin were popular exports, while we imported spices, dyes and other luxury goods.”

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-07-qm-historians-medieval-banking-hidden.html#jCp

Raw wool, woollen cloth and tin were popular exports, while we imported spices, dyes and other luxury goods.”

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-07-qm-historians-medieval-banking-hidden.html#jCp

Raw wool, woollen cloth and tin were popular exports, while we imported spices, dyes and other luxury goods.”

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-07-qm-historians-medieval-banking-hidden.html#jCp

Raw wool, woollen cloth and tin were popular exports, while we imported spices, dyes and other luxury goods.”

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-07-qm-historians-medieval-banking-hidden.html#jCp

Raw wool, woollen cloth and tin were popular exports, while we imported spices, dyes and other luxury goods.”

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-07-qm-historians-medieval-banking-hidden.html#jCp

http://phys.org/news/2012-07-qm-historians-medieval-banking-hidden.html

Gosh, what a terrible, punning title!

 

'Science puts snakes on a plain'

The article is about Coniophis precedens - a proto-snake with a mid-way form between that of modern snakes - no legs, lots of vertebrae, wide bite - and its reptilian ancestors.

Coniophis precedens had the legless body, but did not have the wide bite of modern snakes, limiting it to smaller prey.

"All known Coniophis fossils come from floodplains in eastern Wyoming and Montana — from the same soil deposits as mammals and terrestrial lizards, including the dinosaurs T. rex and Triceratops — indicating that snakes evolved as terrestrial rather than as marine animals."

And that is where the tenuous link to plains comes in!

The researchers say that Coniophis was something of a living fossil, while alive, much like coelocanth is today, because it lived with snakes much more similar to the modern varieties.

All known Coniophis fossils come from floodplains in eastern Wyoming and Montana — from the same soil deposits as mammals and terrestrial lizards, including the dinosaurs T. rex and Triceratops — indicating that snakes evolved as terrestrial rather than as marine animals

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-07-science-snakes-plain.html#jCp

http://phys.org/news/2012-07-science-snakes-plain.html

A curious Aztec burial has been found in Mexico City's Templo Mayor.

The site contains a tree (believed to be held as 'sacred' by the Aztecs, and the body of a woman, surrounded by a pile of 1789 other human bones.

"The institute said some of the bones showed what may be cut marks to the sternum or vertebrae, places where a ritual heart extraction might leave a mark, but added that it didn't seem likely the dead were sacrificed on the spot to accompany the burial because their bones were found separated."

"The researchers discovered the skulls of seven adults and three children in one pile, long bones like femurs in another grouping, and ribs in another."

"Physical anthropologist Perla Ruiz, who was in charge of the dig, said that might suggest the bones were disinterred from previous burials and reburied with the woman. While some pre-Hispanic cultures disinterred bones as part of ancestor worship, it isn't clear the Aztecs did."

"The burial dates to about 1481 to 1486, based on the "stage" of temple buildings at which they were found. The Templo Mayor, like many sites, was rebuilt by successive generations, one stage atop another."

http://phys.org/news/2012-08-mexico-hundreds-bones-aztec-burial.html

The institute said some of the bones showed what may be cut marks to the sternum or vertebrae, places where a ritual heart extraction might leave a mark, but added that it didn't seem likely the dead were sacrificed on the spot to accompany the burial because their bones were found separated. The researchers discovered the skulls of seven adults and three children in one pile, long bones like femurs in another grouping, and ribs in another. Physical anthropologist Perla Ruiz, who was in charge of the dig, said that might suggest the bones were disinterred from previous burials and reburied with the woman. While some pre-Hispanic cultures disinterred bones as part of ancestor worship, it isn't clear the Aztecs did. The burial dates to about 1481 to 1486, based on the "stage" of temple buildings at which they were found. The Templo Mayor, like many sites, was rebuilt by successive generations, one stage atop another.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-08-mexico-hundreds-bones-aztec-burial.html#jCp

What killed off the Mayans, who lived in what is now Guatemala?

It looks like climatic changes, exacerbated by their razing of surrounding forests, caused terrible drought conditions, making their way of life unsustainable.

http://phys.org/news/2012-08-multiple-factors-climate-collapse-depopulation.html

http://phys.org/news/2012-08-forest-razing-ancient-maya-worsened.html

Let's stay in the Americas for a while longer.

For the first time, proteomics  - the study of proteins, their structure, and their functions - has been used to identify that a frozen, 500-year-old, Incan girl was killed by a bacterial lung infection.

Swabs showed immune response to, as well as the presence of, a bacterial infection, which supported the observation of lung infection scars in X-ray scans.

http://phys.org/news/2012-07-ancient-mummy-lung-infection-proteomics.html

And over to Egyptian mummies to finish:

What's this bloke doing in a lady's coffin?

"2005 research (based on CT scans and other data) revealed mummy NM R27.3 was actually a man inside the coffin of a woman."

The trouble with this find is that traders, exploiting enthusiasts' desire for all things ancient Egypt, would put coffins and mummies together, just because they could get a better price that way.

To infer that the individual, when alive, was a cross-dresser, or transsexual, would be to miss the very real possibility that they jumped coffins at some point, post-death.

2005 research (based on CT scans and other data) revealed mummy NM R27.3 was actually a man inside the coffin of a woman.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-08-mummy-mysteries-unraveled-high-tech.html#jCp

http://phys.org/news/2012-08-mummy-mysteries-unraveled-high-tech.html

Sociology and Psychology stuff from the week 13-19/8/12

Factionalism exacerbates social prejudice.
'Giving to charity: Why do we donate more money to individuals when they are members of a group?'
In general, people give less to charities when motivated by thoughts of groups than thoughts of individuals (because they fail to cognise the reality of many people - but are capable of cognising just one).
{Oh, the number of times i've seen/heard someone say - "but they're not just statistics - you're reducing them to statistics", and "what's the human story behind this?" Er.. durr... the humanity is compound -- but most people aren't rational enough to realise that. A stat of a million dead people is a million times as bad as a stat of one dead person.}
But when giving to groups, opinions about those groups influences the amount given - favourable bias leads to bigger donations, disfavourable bias leads to smaller donations.
http://phys.org/news/2012-08-charity-donate-money-individuals-members.html

Game Theory - on factionalism:
'Study shows increased aggression between evenly matched teams'
If you're obviously going to lose, then you won't put much effort in, and so neither will the side that eventually wins.
If your factions are evenly matched, then they will fight exuberantly, believing themselves to have a 'decent chance'.
I'm thinking of all the wars that have raged ebulliently, with both sides confidently claiming the same god(s). You can't get more evenly matched than that!
http://phys.org/news/2012-08-aggression-evenly-teams.html

Game Theory - on self-confidence:
"falsely believing one is better than others has profound social benefits for the individual."
In a culture of 'everybody fighting to get to the top', individuals who have higher opinions of themselves than are actually warranted, are given an advantage.
Oh - the number of people i've seen get positions in which they are completely feckless, and everyone stands around wondering how, and/or self-deceiving with "well, i suppose anyone else would have been worse"
"these findings suggest one reason why in organizational settings, incompetent people are so often promoted over their more competent peers. "In organizations, people are very easily swayed by others' confidence even when that confidence is unjustified," says Anderson. "Displays of confidence are given an inordinate amount of weight."
And here's where the culture plays an important part:
"It is important to note that group members did not think of their high status peers as overconfident, but simply that they were terrific. "This overconfidence did not come across as narcissistic," explains Anderson. "The most overconfident people were considered the most beloved"."
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-08-people-overconfident.html

'College students lose respect for peers who hook up too much'
Students who are, or at least appear to be, highly promiscuous, are subject to greater negative opinion as a result of doing so.
Also, the metaphorical playing field seems to be evening out, between males and females.
"gender equality and sexual liberation are not synonymous. While we've come a long way in terms of gender equality, it seems that a large portion of both college men and women lose respect for individuals who they believe participate in too frequent casual sexual activity."
But we must remember that the survey asked "too much" - so we don't know what numbers would be classified by them as excessive. If "too much" means 1 person per month for a woman, and 7 for a man, then that's hardly equality!
http://phys.org/news/2012-08-college-students-respect-peers.html

The "human cost" of emotionalism -- fear of nuclear radiation, rather than the actual effect:
Despite exposure of less than 1 milli-Sievert in all but one resident (hundreds of mSv-s are necessary to notice negative effects), the social exclusion experienced by workers at the Daiichi and Daini nuclear power plants *is* having negative health consequences - for the workers.
They have showed higher incidence of stress events, and higher psychological stress overall.
1495 of the 1760 workers at both plants reported back to the researchers, with accounts of prejudice and relational aggression, manifesting in noticeable PTSD symptoms.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528783.400-workers-at-fukushima-feel-the-pressure-of-blame.html
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-08-health-consequences-meltdown-fukushima-nuclear.html

Sociology and Psychology stuff from the fortnight 30/7 - 12/8/12

'Weather matters when buying a home or car'
Research that used data from more than 40 million new and used vehicle transactions, and more than 4 million single-family residential properties that sold in the United States between 1998 and 2008, has found a real correlation between weather conditions, and sale frequency.
Hotter weather caused higher sales of convertible cars; snow caused higher sales of 4x4s; sunniness determines sales of black cars; summer increases the value of houses, when they have a swimming pool.
"the results of the paper suggest that consumers would benefit from laws designed to help them better evaluate their decisions. For example, laws that allow consumers a “cooling-off period” for durable goods or goods for which consumers sign extended contracts may provide significant benefits."
http://phys.org/news/2012-08-weather-home-car.html 

A woman who was born with two missing fingers on her right hand, and later had to have the hand amputated, after a car accident, has developed phantom pain in the two fingers that she never had. Weird!
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528774.400-womans-missing-digits-grow-back-in-phantom-form.html

When women break through into positions in the business hierarchy that others are not familiar with women having, they are treated with disdain, and seemingly not just from men:
"58 percent of female supervisors in predominantly male work environments are likely to experience harassment, while 42 percent might expect harassment in female dominated workplaces."
http://phys.org/news/2012-08-link-women-power-sexual.html

"Don't be fooled by popular stereotypes... Men are not from Mars and women are not from Venus. We are all on planet Earth."
"Men and women are actually more similar in the ways they express love than they are different," said study author Elizabeth Schoenfeld, a researcher at the University of Texas in Austin. "But we also learned that, even in the wake of feminism, wives express love by being less assertive and more accommodating, while husbands show love by initiating sex or sharing activities together."
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-gender-difference.html

And sometimes they express love, even when they weren't expecting to...
'New study finds clients want real love from sex workers'
"In recent years, we have come to see a gradual normalization of independent escort prostitution, where sexual encounters have come to resemble quasi-dating relationships," stated study author Christine Milrod. "Our study shows that regular clients of a particular sex provider often come to experience feelings of deep affection, which can progress into an authentic love story."
Read the "saying" in the comment, LOL
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-08-clients-real-sex-workers.html

Forget polygyny - men having multiple wives - Katherine Starkweather's research says polyandry - a woman having multiple husbands - is a recipe for stability, as demonstrated by some cultures.
"Extra husbands ensure that women's children are cared for even if their fathers die or disappear."
"In approximately half of the cultures studied, the other husbands were closely related to the first husband, a practice with economic repercussions. In previously studied polyandrous cultures, especially those of Nepal, Tibet and India, inheritance traditions called for land to be divided evenly among male offspring after a parent's passing. That practice would have resulted in land being sub-divided into useless parcels too small to provide enough crops to feed a family. However, if several brothers married the same wife, the family farm would stay intact. In the small egalitarian cultures Starkweather studied land and property ownership was unusual. In these societies, younger brothers in the marriage often protected and provided food for the family in the absence of the older brother, who was often the primary husband."
I'm not sure that i'd favour either over communalism/socialism - where you just look after each other, whoever they are - but polyandry seems favourable to polygyny.
http://phys.org/news/2012-08-multiple-husbands-child-life-cultures.html

Having used the buses before, these tactics come as no surprise to me -- even though i do live in a completely different country. So similar are we.
'Strangers on a bus: Study reveals lengths commuters go to avoid each other'
http://phys.org/news/2012-08-strangers-bus-reveals-lengths-commuters.html

Culture -- what you dish out, you're more likely to get back -- that's the 'rule of thumb'.
If you treat people with disdain and suspicion, then they'll take up the precedent, and treat you with matching disdain and suspicion.
'Being paranoid about office politics can make you a target'
http://phys.org/news/2012-07-paranoid-office-politics.html

The perils of self-reporting: 'Americans gaining more weight than they say'
Subjective analyses are usually completely useless, because they bear no relation to the actual situation.
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-08-americans-gaining-weight.html

'Stress makes men appreciate heavier women'
The proposed mechanism is that stress is usually associated with environmental paucity of calories, therefore better-built women will be better options for reproducing with.
Also observed, was that men broadened their interests in women, which also suggests a response to environmental difficulty.
http://phys.org/news/2012-08-stress-men-heavier-women.html
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0042593

Psychology and Sociology stuff from the week 23-29/7/12

Children easily pick up cultural rules, without ever having to have them stated explicitly.
"children don’t need explicit teaching from adults to see an action as following a social norm; they only need to see that adults expect things to work a certain way."
This is how we teach our children to behave like everyone else -- not just in the good ways, but also in the bad ways - by enforcing sexism (clothes, interests, etc) and instilling prejudices and factionalistic affiliations.
"In another study, Schmidt, Rakoczy, and Tomasello found that children only enforce game norms on members of their own cultural in-group – for example, people who speak the same language. These results suggest that children understand that ‘our group’ falls within the scope of the norm and can be expected to respect it."
Too many people fail to understand that simply refraining from telling their children to do particular things, or instructing them to do others, is not enough to generate an effect, when those messages are contradicted by their behaviour.
Children are highly discerning, and will work out whether you do, and ergo they should, approve of Gays/Mexicans/chips/frocks/iPods... anything that culture covers.
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-toddlers-people.html

People view women as a collection of body parts, rather than as a whole -- but it's not just men - women view each other that way too.
This process seems to be cultural - people can be trained out of thinking this way (reductionist - "objectivist" is fallacious terminology)
"the researchers found a clear difference between the way people of both genders view women. They found that the volunteers were better at recognizing body parts of women versus men when viewing both whole images, and images of just those body parts. When viewing pictures of men, they found things were reversed, most of the volunteers were much better at recognizing men if they saw the whole person.
Next, the researchers tried something else. They showed volunteers pictures of letters that were made up of other different tiny letters before showing them the pictures in the first experiments. Some were asked to identify the tiny letters inside the letters, others were asked to identify which letter the little ones formed as a whole. One forced local brain processing the other global. They found that those that were forced to think globally before viewing the photographs were much less likely to objectify the women in the pictures."
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-people-view-women-body.html

A survey study has found that parents of babies with trisomy 13 or 18 consider their baby to have a higher standard of life, than do the actual medical professionals, who have a wealth of experience by which to calibrate their appraisal.
This is an astounding peek into the practice of self-deception -- although not unprecedented - others have found that parents who incur more expense, as expected by the culture in which they live, are more effusive in reporting that children are a 'joy' to endure.
The study found that "over 97% of the parents interviewed considered that their child was happy and its presence enriched the life of their family and their life as a couple regardless of longevity".
In fact "their families rated their quality of life as being higher than caregivers did"
Babies born with trisomy 13 or 18 have very short life expectancies, and foetuses frequently miscarry, before reaching term.
"according to the parents interviewed, belonging to a support group helped them view their experience positively."
The power of self-deception is staggering, isn't it!
I bet this kind of survey will be claimed, gleefully, by the Right To Life brigade, who think that everything must live, regardless of whether they *actually* enjoy it or not!
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-children-trisomy-families-happy.html

How do people con themselves and each other into thinking that superstitions are efficacious? They do them over and over and over again.
This study has found that people have much more confidence that their rituals actually do something, the more they've done them in the past.
Religious rituals are classic for repetition - the weekly or even daily rituals that key people into the cult's activities, and convince them that what they're doing is worth the effort.
Of course, if you never stop doing them, you can't notice the difference. And the ritual inculcates a kind of OCD - a kind of 'out damn spot' to cure a problem that didn't exist, and conceals the fact that it is actually the real problem!
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-repetitious-time-intensive-magical-rituals-effective.html

'Think you're a comic genius? Maybe you're just overconfident'
"because society trains us not to hurt others' feelings, we rarely hear the truth about ourselves — even when it's well deserved. And that can be a problem for overly self-confident people who carry around inaccurate, overly positive perceptions of how others view them."
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-youre-comic-genius-overconfident.html

Chimps are more likely to 'catch' yawns from males than they are from females.
The researchers infer that yawn-catching implies compliance to a social code, because makles tend to be 'higher ranked'.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528755.700-chimps-catch-yawns-from-dominant-males.html

[video] Bosses who experience anxiety, due to lack of self-esteem, and lower intelligence, attempt to compensate through arrogance.
They attempt to build themselves up, by putting everyone else down, which has a destructive effect on the morale of their colleagues.
“Does your boss demonstrate different behaviors with subordinates and supervisors?” Silverman asks. He says a “yes” answer could mean trouble.
Silverman warns that “yes” replies to these other questions raise red flags and signal arrogance.
• Does your boss put his/her personal agenda ahead of the organization’s agenda?
• Does the boss discredit others’ ideas during meetings and often make them look bad?
• Does your boss reject constructive feedback?
• Does the boss exaggerate his/her superiority and make others feel inferior?
http://phys.org/news/2012-07-arrogant-boss.html

In the last 30 years, the proportion of 17-19 year olds in the US with driving licences has fallen from 8 in 10 to 6 in 10.
In 1983, 87% of 19-year-olds had a driving licence; in 2010, only 70% did.
"While their findings show that the reduction in the percentage of teen drivers with a license continued in 2010, they also reveal a decline in the number of driver's licenses for people of most age groups—except for slight increases for those 25-29 and those over 70."
It's thought that this has occurred simply because fossil-fuelled personal transport is simply too expensive, and so people are looking for alternative arrangements.
http://phys.org/news/2012-07-percentage-teen-drivers.html

[video]
77% of UK smokers started when they were teenagers, some as young as 13, and 85% of smokers admit they'd rather have never started smoking in the first place.
68% of British people support the current campaign to blank out the glamorous packaging of cigarette packets -- the deal-maker that caused smokers to buy their first packets.
“We have a unique opportunity to protect children from the marketing of this deadly product. This is about us as a society saying that it is wrong for tobacco – a product that kills half of all its long term users – to be marketed to children as though it were a bag of sweets. We know that standardised packs with large health warnings make cigarettes less attractive to young people and the dangers of smoking clearer. We urge the Government to introduce plain packaging as soon as possible.”
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-most-regret-ever-starting-smoking.html

Children who grew up during the most recent bout of 'troubles', in Northern Ireland, are the most likely to commit suicide, due to the stress placed upon them by their experiences.
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-children-prone-suicide.html

Homophobia is costly for Straight men as well. Due to the association between HIV and homosexual men, Straight men are falling through the gaps of health practices in Canada, which do not cater for them.
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-gaps-heterosexual-men-hiv.html

Sociology and Psychology stuff from the week 16-22/7/12

Peer pressure really counts -- even to charitable donations
'Researchers reveal 'peer effect' really counts when it comes to charitable giving'
"The University of Bristol study found that donors were strongly influenced by how much other people had given. One donation of £100 typically shifts average donations from £20 to £30. The effects also appear to be fairly persisent, lasting at least up to 20 donations after. Similarly, a single small donation to a website lowers the amounts that are subsequently given by around £5."
http://phys.org/news/2012-07-reveal-peer-effect-charitable.html

Companies with Republican-supporting CEOs pay more tax than companies with Democrat-supporting CEOs, despite Republicans being more anti-tax.
The reason for this is that Republicans are more conservative - they are less tolerant of ambiguity, and more risk-averse - which means they accept less risk with tax avoidance schemes, meaning they end up paying more tax.
The researchers found that this is the case, and not simply the higher-tax-payers resenting doing so, by noticing that changes in CEO were succeeded by changes in the companies tax avoidance riskiness.
http://phys.org/news/2012-07-uga-firms-tax-tied-ceos.html

An insight into cultural variations around the world:
US women with east asian ancestry, who had suffered domestic violence "used mental health services only 5.3 percent of the time, while Latino victims used them 14.6 percent of the time"
A study using several national surveys found that "asian victims of domestic violence were at least four times less likely to use mental health services than whites, blacks or Latinos"
"In many Asian cultures, seeking help can be seen as shameful to the victim and the victim's family."
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-asians-reluctant-domestic-violence.html

'Anxiety disorders in poor moms likely to result from poverty, not mental illness'
Anxiety: internally or externally caused? In many, it's caused by physiological deficit, but the trials of living in poverty seem to cause anxiety in mothers, independently of any anxiety disorder.
"the poorest mothers had greater odds of being classified as having [Generalised anxiety disorder] but that the path from anxiety to parenting stress was not supported..."
"Our findings suggest that anxiety in poor mothers is usually not a psychiatric problem but a reaction to severe environmental deficits"
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-anxiety-disorders-poor-moms-result.html


Want to get more money for your items on ebay? Put them on a red background.
The red background motivationally arouses bidders, causing them to bid more aggressively, and end up paying more for the item.
But in negotiations, this effect causes them to submit lower bids, resulting in a lower payment. Here, blue maximises amount paid.
"Buyers think they are competing against other bidders in auctions. Therefore, a red background is advantageous to sellers as aggressive bidders will try to win by outbidding other potential buyers and therefore offer higher bids. In negotiations, however, buyers are competing against the seller and will try to get the best deal. In this case, sellers will benefit from a blue background."
Whether this colour-perception is immutable or cultural, is, i think, still being debated.
http://phys.org/news/2012-07-ebay-higher-red-background.html

Consumers have a tendency to select options from the centre of their field of view, and are unaware that they're even doing this.
"Using eye-tracking devices, the authors investigated how location influences choices for products as varied as vitamins, meal replacement bars, and energy drinks. Consumers had a tendency to increase their visual focus on the central option in the final five seconds prior to a decision and this determined which option they would choose."
The researchers say this phenomenon comes in to play when the consumers are choosing between unfamiliarised varieties of products, that they frequently purchase.
http://phys.org/news/2012-07-consumers-aware-drawn-center-products.html

Oh -- the perils of self-assessment. I hated these, at school!
"Consumers often fear the worst when it comes to their own health while maintaining a calm objectivity with regard to others. For example, when someone else suffers from indigestion, we tend to accurately perceive it as indigestion, but experiencing the same symptom might lead us to panic and worry that we're having a heart attack."
This is how people do on-line diagnoses, and conclude that they have tropical frostbite, as well as being in a coma: the process of self-assessment allows emotionalism to creep into judgement, meaning a compromised appreciation of the facts. Symptoms are matched up to conditions, rather than conditions matched up to symptoms.
"One of the easiest ways to get rid of this bias is to see a real doctor instead of Dr. Google. A real doctor possesses much more knowledge and will take the prevalence of a disease into consideration because she is viewing the patient from a distance. This will prevent symptoms from exerting a disproportionate influence on the diagnosis"
http://phys.org/news/2012-07-online-self-diagnosis-heart-hiccups.html

Magnitudinous thinking, yet again: blurring the variables of spatial distance and temporal distance:
'Why does the week before your vacation seem longer when you're going far away?'
"The authors asked consumers to imagine visiting a post office today and a bookstore in three months. Some were told that the distance between the post office and the bookstore was long, while others were told it was short. When the distance was long, consumers perceived the same three month period to be longer. Similarly, consumers who imagined moving far away when they retire felt their retirement was farther away in time than those who imagined moving near their current location."
http://phys.org/news/2012-07-week-vacation-longer-youre.html

Sociology and Psychology stuff from the week 9-15/7/12

Richard Wiseman strikes again! Lies are not in the eyes
He and Caroline Watt have debunked the idea that looking to the right indicates falsehood, and looking to the left indicates truth-telling.
http://doubtfulnews.com/2012/07/the-truth-that-lies-behind-the-eyes/

The influence of weather conditions on mood could cause the London Olympics' coverage to be unduly negative - picking out the cons more than the pros.
Well -- they'll certainly be given plenty of real problems to whine about! Would we actually notice the effect of the weather?
http://phys.org/news/2012-07-weather-impact-tone-olympics-coverage.html

Many people with declining memory function manage to convince themselves that their memory has not got worse. Not being able to remember what you've failed to remember is presumably inhibitory to self assessment.
"most survey participants believed their memory had remained stable over the 11-year assessment, despite tests showing a decline in memory performance."
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-perceptions-memory.html

Think your partner having a meal with their ex might make you jealous? Well - that's a no-brainer!
But what these researchers have found is that meal-related jealousy is greater than that incurred by texts, phone conversations, or a quick coffee. Eating seems to be the key.
"It's key to remember, from your spouse's perspective, it's not 'just lunch,'"
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-lunch.html

'Stray-bullet shootings often harm women, kids'
"The right to bear arms - only minorly more moronic than a right to arm bears"
"You know a gun never killed nobody; You can ask anyone; People get shot by people; People with guns" - Brian May (Put Out The Fire)
Most people killed or wounded in stray-bullet shootings are unaware of the context of the shootings, and the majority are women and children.
"When we think about gun violence, we think about high-profile and tragic events like Virginia Tech or the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. But stray-bullet shootings affect entire communities every day, and there has been almost no research exploring them."
"Victims of stray bullets are essentially 'collateral damage' and are usually disconnected from the events that lead to their injury or death," Wintemute said. "They are innocent bystanders who typically have no opportunity to flee or take any other preventive measures."
People die to gunshots because of incompetence - people simply can't be trusted to wield weapons - but remember that these people are highly likely to have had *any* training in weapon use.
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-stray-bullet-women-kids.html

'Netherlands euthanasia and assisted suicide rates in 2010 comparable to rates before legalization'
One of the superstitionists' so-called 'arguments' is that "if they make euthanasia legal, then people will be popped off all over the place, willy nilly!!!"
This has already been shown to be completely false -- as expected!
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-netherlands-euthanasia-suicide-legalization.html

Women spend more money on clothes during the most fertile period of their menstrual cycle (days 15-28), and spend more time attending to their appearance, according to a study that involved 59 women recording their activities in a diary, for 35 days.
I'm slightly worried that it only covers one cycle of menstruation; and is 59 people enough?
http://phys.org/news/2012-07-menstrual-affects-consumer-behavior.html
There's certainly evidence that sexual behaviour changes according to the menstrual cycle, but that can't automatically be extrapolated to shopping behaviours.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v220/n5167/abs/220593a0.html
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v399/n6738/abs/399741a0.html
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022399987901048
'Women dance most attractively when fertile' http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528734.900-women-dance-most-attractively-when-fertile.html

'New evidence for link between obesity and circle of friends'
Peer pressure and peer affirmation -- intrinsically different? Seemingly not.
"Researchers found that part of the reason why obesity clusters in social networks was due to the way students selected friends [(homophily)]. But even after controlling for this friend-selecting process, there still was a significant link between obesity and a student's circle of friends. [(social influence)]"
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-evidence-link-obesity-circle-friends.html

Similarly, peer affirmation exacerbates violence in people who form gangs that share violent thoughts.
'Psychologists discover links between angry thoughts and displaced aggression in male gang affiliates'
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-psychologists-links-angry-thoughts-displaced.html

'Teens' lifestyle choices affect their blood pressure'
Female contraceptive use and male alcohol consumption correlate with high blood pressure, as well as high salt intake, and high bodyweight.
The researchers found that it is the lifestyle of the adolescents that determined the high blood pressure, and the consumption of the articles.
"Adolescents need to be aware that a lifestyle which predisposes to fatness, high salt intake and alcohol consumption may lead to adverse health consequences in adult life. The effects are additive and already associated with hypertension. Moreover, teenage girls taking oral contraceptives should be advised about regular blood pressure monitoring,"
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-teens-lifestyle-choices-affect-blood.html

Despite having a much smaller impact per person, Indians voice far more guilt about their environmental impact than do Americans and Europeans.
My hypothesis is that all the efforts of businesses to greenwash their products has had an effect - instilling a belief that our behaviour is already sustainable, and quelling the guilt that we should feel about it.
Either that, or Indian culture is one in which they are far more willing to express guilt. Of this characteristic actually existing, however, i am not aware.
http://phys.org/news/2012-07-india-eco-impact-guilty.html

Who'da thought it? To get kids into Science, all you have to do is send their parents a series of glossy brochures!
http://phys.org/news/2012-07-teens-math-science-parents.html

The psychological impact of failed fertility treatments is such that the women involved suffer mental illnesses as a consequence. There is so much cultural weight applied to reproduction, that they take it really badly if they don't fulfill their and others' expectations.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528734.800-infertility-may-increase-risk-of-mental-disorders.html

Psychology stuff from the week 2-8/7/12

'The advantages of being first'
I think there have been other studies, on this topic, that have found that people prefer the first option, then the last options, and least prefer the others, in the middle.
In this study, however, they were only selecting between two options, so that was not possible!
"The study found that especially in circumstances under which decisions must be made quickly or without much deliberation, preferences are unconsciously and immediately guided to those options presented first."
http://phys.org/news/2012-07-advantages.html

Mothers with 'intensive parenting beliefs', defined as: mothers are more important than fathers; parental happiness is derived from the happiness of the children; parents should always provide stimulating activity; parenting is more difficult than working; a parent should always sacrifice for the child; suffer worse mental health than mothers with wiser beliefs.
Mothers who believed they should be the primary source of support were less satisfied with their lives, when accepting support from their family. Those who believed parenting should be challenging, were more stressed and depressed.
"If intensive mothering is related to so many negative mental health outcomes, why do women do it? They may think that it makes them better mothers, so they are willing to sacrifice their own mental health to enhance their children's cognitive, social and emotional outcomes. In reality, intensive parenting may have the opposite effect on children from what parents intend."
IMO, this whole problem boils down to poorly-constructed expectations, determined by culture. Women who think that parenting means wearing themselves down to the bone, excluding men from any caregiving role, and rejecting peer assistance, will get more stressed, and develop more mental health problems. It would be interesting to see if prior disposition to mental illness associates with these self-condemning beliefs.
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-parenthood-paradox-parenting-beliefs-detrimental.html

Chimps cognise the premise behind the expression "better the devil you know".
When offered a trade for a tool that they already know to work, they are much less likely to go for it, despite having preferred the option, previously.
http://phys.org/news/2012-07-endowment-effect-chimpanzees.html

Good article. Multiple annoying flaws, though.
1 - the title - what's it mean??
2 - clearly written with their 'Law' hat on - it's really difficult to understand!
3 - at the end, fails to recognise the distinction between efficiency and effectiveness, and so substitutes the latter for "stability"
What this sociology study found is that people prefer to have institutionalised justice-enacters (law courts, police) when the people responsible for making the laws are punishable, themselves.
Because legal systems are expensive, they disfavour the establishments when unemployed; but favour them if assured the establishments will be employed.
First-order free-riders, as referred to in this study, are people like tax evaders (presumably where the title came from), that take from society, and do not give back.
{This is, of course, the very notion of profit, enshrined in capitalism}
Second-order free-riders are the people who could punish the first-order free-riders but don't. (The bought officials [cough: Dave Hartnett] who overlook soaring tax bills [cough: Vodafone, Goldman Sachs, etc])
Lastly, they mention that "institutionalised punishment reduces the number of crimes so greatly that the cost-benefit ratio shifts to their detriment: high police taxes to punish a small number of criminals"
This, of course, invokes the last flaw -- criminals -- there is no such classification as 'a criminal' who's going to do crimes whatever happens. All you have to do is catch them and incarcerate them or kill them.
No! This is wrong. All kinds of people commit all kinds of immoral deeds; and many of them count as crimes.
A system of institutionalised punshment that, as they say, reduces the number of crimes committed, does so by preventing future crimes from happening.
More expense means fewer crimes. This should not be classed as a bad thing, which is done by invoking 'efficiency'.
Effectiveness is what matters -- and this is what causes "stability"
http://phys.org/news/2012-07-tax-evaders.html

Why do women watch the Olympics, but not other sports programmes?
Women prefer watching the Olympics because it is in a condensed format; it doesn't run on for months; there's plenty of talking about what's going on; and it exhibits pursuits that conform to feminine sex roles, in contrast to most broadcast sports.
So, basically -- women watch the Olympics because it's more familiar to them, and is therefore culturally conducive to being watched. It has little to do with actually being interested in sport!
http://phys.org/news/2012-07-women-olympics.html

Sociology stuff from the week 2-8/7/12

'Women less likely to endorse independence in gender-unequal societies'
In cultures of high sexual inequality, women are more likely to have authoritarian beliefs.
This, i believe to be the consequence of self-deception - if you can't do anything about it, then pretend it's the way it ought to be.
The study also found that men tend to be relatively more authoritarian in cultures of lower inequality, presumably because they're trying to self-deceive themselves into thinking they should retain their positions at the top of the hierarchy.
Also, they found that women are no more likely to be authoritarian in collectivist societies, where people culturally group together, for their common good, and therefore have no room for sexist authoritarianism.
http://phys.org/news/2012-07-women-endorse-independence-gender-unequal-societies.html

''Ambient' bullying gives employees urge to quit'
A study has found that businesses exhibiting high staff turnover rates (high numbers of people leaving) are equally caused by people observing others being bullied as people being bullied themselves.
The researchers have hypothesised that this is due to a feeling of moral indignation, and their resignation is therefore motivated by a willingness to declare discontent with the culture, or just to escape it.
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-ambient-bullying-employees-urge.html

'Bride's new toilet points to social revolution in India'
A woman has won the installation of a proper toilet, after campaigning for one since she moved in with her husband, and discovered, like many millions of indians, that she would have to urinate and defecate in the fields around her home.
This is a more major problem for women, because they are expected to not be seen during daylight hours, and therefore have to hold it in from dawn to dusk!
"Defecating in the open is a major social issue in India, touching on topics including women's rights, health and hygiene, and the clash between traditional and modern lifestyles."
"We gave awards to Priyanka and two other brides who refused to live with their new families due to lack of toilets... We want them to be torchbearers whose example encourages better sanitation."
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-bride-toilet-social-revolution-india.html

'Women more likely to defer health care for financial reasons'
Because of financial constraints, women are more likely to forgo medical care, even though they have more chronic conditions, and are more likely to be responsible for others' care.
Private healthcare fails again! If they don't have to pay the excess, then they won't let their and others' health down.
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-women-defer-health-financial.html

Psychology stuff from the week 25/6 - 1/7/12

'The lemon you reach for is not the lemon you taste'
When primed with colour distinctions, people judge lemons and canaries to be more similar.
This is one of a long line of studies expounding on the cognition functions behind synaesthesia - something i call 'magnitudinous thinking'.
Bascially, all variables are equated to a 'more or less' scale, and in synaesthesia, two or more of these scales overlap, causing a confusion between the two.
In this case, the perception of the lemon's colour blurs into the perception of its flavour, and its structural identity as a lemon.
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-lemon.html
It's a known trick, in food photography, to replace some foodstuffs with substitutes, and to spray others with WD40, to recreate their oily content.
This is because photographs of food have to evoke the experience of food, while limited to just the visual stimulus.
In order to convey the oily/stickiness of our favourite foods, they have to spray them with something, so that they don't literally look like the food we eat, but they do match up with the ideas of the food we eat, in our minds, that consist of multiple variables.
http://giveawaytuesdays.wonderhowto.com/inspiration/20-nitty-gritty-secret-ingredients-for-mastering-food-photography-0130063/

Profound lack of ANS (Approximate Number Sense) is called dyscalculia. All mathematical thought involves scalar/vectoral cognition - spatial thinking.
Me, with my Physics background, am used to understanding concepts with a spatial/graphical mental representation of the phenomena involved.
But there's good news for people who struggle to think like this - as the LGBTQI people say - "it gets better".
Experience crunching numbers in our heads provides us with the practice necessary to grow our brains to be better at it.
In the older members of the population, ability increased in variance, suggesting that while some retain their abilities, others 'go slack' and lose them, or maybe just lose it with dementia.
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-ability-quantity-years-life.html

'Thinking about choice diminishes concern for wealth inequality'
When primed with ideas of choices, people are far more likely to fall for the notion that people's choices can determine their wealth.
"After controlling for certain characteristics like political orientation, socioeconomic status, and gender, Savani and Rattan found that participants in the choice condition were less disturbed about wealth inequalities in the U.S. than participants in the control condition."
This is a common error made by advocates of capitalism - that rich people are rich, and poor people are poor, because they choose to be and/or deserve to be - ergo the wealth disparity is perfectly fine.
http://phys.org/news/2012-06-choice-diminishes-wealth-inequality.html

When promised greater federal spending (in the US), voters praise the President in preference to their regional senators and members of congress.
This is probably due to greater publicity - people are more likely to associate federal action with the President, who's face is on everything, than with their regional representative.
The same is true in the UK. Voters ignore their local representatives, and concentrate on the politics/personality of the PM or Party heads. Doing this is made even easier when all the politics programs are national, and therefore ignore all the regional representatives.
http://phys.org/news/2012-06-voters-bypass-reward-federal.html

'What was he thinking? Study turns to ape intellect'
What's the difference between humans and other species? It's not intellect - many species exhibit similar reasoning abilities, but the one thing that separates us is our ability for complex language.
Because we can encode ideas into strings of phonemes, we have a mechanism by which to build ideas, layering premises, and discovering ideas that are out of reach to all the other species.
We are not an 'intelligent' species - we are a talkative species.
We should remember this. Intelligent species do not do theism, quackery, war, etc, and then employ self-deception to 'rationalise' them away.
These are markers of a distinct lack of intelligence; we do them not despite greater reasoning skills, but because we never had them - only a tiny minority benefit from a truly scientific worldview, because we are only weakly predisposed to be like this.
The majority of homo sapiens profess Religious affiliations, 'support' sports teams, and 'know' their starsign. Why do we bother with this, if we're so intelligent? We're not.
We're good at communicating ideas to each other, but are no better than other species at telling good ideas from bad.
This is why we so desperately need the epistemic framework of the scientific method, to genuinely get anywhere, in our efforts to work for the social good.
http://phys.org/news/2012-06-line-blurs-animal-monkeys-math.html

'Panic was not the cause of the Love Parade disaster in Germany'
Mass panic is exceptionally rare, another study has found. When people are compressed into a tight space, the density of their bodies causes them, as a group, to behave like a dense fluid.
Pressure waves can ripple through this people-fluid, forming nodes around environmental structures, such as fences, where people are crushed.
When designed, this process is called 'kettling' - a technique that is often utilised by police forces, to push blame from themselves to the crowd.
It is purely because of the high people density that these events happen - this knowledge empowers us to prevent disasters like this from happening, and to condemn police forces for manufacturing their occurrence.
http://phys.org/news/2012-06-panic-parade-disaster-germany.html
'Why cops should trust the wisdom of the crowds' (from 2009)
"Research into how people behave at demonstrations, sports events, music festivals and other mass gatherings shows not only that crowds nearly always act in a highly rational way, but also that when facing an emergency, people in a crowd are more likely to cooperate than panic.
Paradoxically, it is often actions such as kettling that lead to violence breaking out. Often, the best thing authorities can do is leave a crowd to its own devices."
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327171.400-why-cops-should-trust-the-wisdom-of-the-crowds.html