Biologists have described the evolution of the size of a female trait which males prefer when choosing a partner. The study in Evolutionary Biology shows that male cichlid fish prefer females with a larger pelvic fin and that this drives females to grow fins out of proportion with their body size.
Sebastian Baldauf from the University of Bonn, Germany, worked with a team of researchers to study the effects of female ornamentation in the African cichlid fish Pelvicachromis taeniatus. He said, “In contrast to the well-known phenomenon of sexual selection influencing male traits, the expression of female ornaments in relation to body size is almost completely unexplored.”
The discovery of Gliese 581g was cause for rampant hype almost everywhere but here, along with some rather ridiculous claims that there was a 100% chance of life there.
The actual paper authors were more reserved, though astronomy is far bolder than biology in terms of its participants hyping findings and generally physics is pretty reserved (exception: LHC claims when it was being funded and built - now that the marketing is over, the call for perspective has set in) outside dark matter and dark energy, where anything goes.
A new study says supplemental brief dynamic therapy in the treatment of patients with obsessive compulsive-disorder with concurrent major depressive disorder who are receiving effective medication has no significant clinical effect on obsessive and depressive symptoms.
When obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), a recurring topic is whether psychoanalysis or related brief psychotherapies help and answering that was the goal a study performed by researchers of the University of Torino in the current issue of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics.
Last Tuesday I presented new precise Tevatron results on top quark physics at the "LHC Days" conference in Split. The top-quark measurements that CDF and DZERO have produced with their multi-inverse-femtobarn datasets of proton-antiproton collisions are very precise, and they surpass pre-Run-II expectations: suffices to say that the top-quark mass is now estimated with a 0.61% uncertainty, over twice smaller than promised. So it was nice to display these results to an audience mainly composed of LHC colleagues. I received several questions and the interest in my talk was clear.
What is on the mind of all the physicists all over the world right now? Quantum Gravity? Global warming? No. It is the same that is on the mind of all the other scientists in academia, too. Impact factor (IF)! How can I get my name on a paper into a high IF journal – that is the question. Publish Or Perish – POP science, popular science.
A new study published says that people who think about time become more social and at least plan to spend more time with the people in their lives, while people who think about money fill their schedules with work.
Cassie Mogilner of the University of Pennsylvania designed an online experiment where adults from all over the United Statesbconcentrated on money or time. The volunteers were asked to unscramble a series of sentences; some participants were presented with sentences containing words related to time (e.g., "clock" and "day"), whereas others' sentences contained words related to money (e.g., "wealth" and "dollar"). Next all participants were asked how they planned to spend their next 24 hours.
A systematic review of research into the use of nutritional supplements for the treatment of anxiety disorders says it has found strong evidence for the use of extracts of passionflower or kava and combinations of L-lysine and L-arginine. They pooled the results of 24 studies involving a total of more than 2000 participants, showing that some nutritional and herbal supplements can be effective, without the risk of serious side effects.
Gamblers behave differently during game time and lulls in action such as half-time. A computer-modeled comparison of their actions says there are corollaries between the actions of gamblers at half-time and people in the stock market.
But how do behaviors change when no action is happening? Unlike the stock market, football gamblers are, more often than not, free of news about the game during half-time. Gamblers are simply left to their own devices which, the researchers suggest, is akin to identifying the complex interactions of stock market traders.
If you want something done right, do it yourself. Or, if you're tired of waiting for someone else to do it, give it the ol' college try yourself. So saith two local governments, anyway.
Two unrelated stories caught my eye, and I thought them interesting enough to share. I'm willing to bet you have examples of such local action in your region. The first deals with my hometown (and current place of residence), the charming Hennepin County in Minnesota. The second comes from that bastion of fun and civilization among Iowa's corn- and soybean fields, Iowa City (where I lived for a lovely summer while on a biochemistry fellowship).
Imagine no teen pregnancy, I wonder if you can...1
Science comedian Brian Malow ties much of science to growing up in a happily dysfunctional family. He asks:
What if the driving force behind the evolutionary patterns of homo erectus was moms telling their kids to “Stand Up Straight?”
Once when I was 10, he tells us, I asked my dad why the sky was blue. He said go ask your mom. She said, “Because I said so.” I never asked her a science question again.
