What's more universal in culture than a "thumbs up"?

To our brains, whether we seem to have a cultural familiarity or not, it isn't familiar at all, says new research in Human Brain Mapping.

People seem to react quickly and intuitively to body language, tone of voice and gaze but gestures are different, at least when the gesturer offers no other cues.    Less surprisingly, the new study also found that same-race interaction leads to greater activity in the mirror neuron system, a region of the brain linked to subconscious imitation.

No, the following does not belong into the humor section, because I know of people who made a career with the method described below. This is serious! This is another article in my series on the usual cheating in science.

POP-science culture (POP = publish or perish = popular) ensures that only publications count in academia. Successful grant applications also count, but the grant you get only if you have many publications. And “friends” count, which you get with coauthoring and publications. And all that impacts science – no conspiracy theory necessary here. This is science today:

It's election season and the biggest schism in American culture come November voting won't be abortion or global warming, it will be the size and role of the U.S. government in the last two years.

But increased government involvement is not new in American cultural debates - nor is it even new in science.   

Scientists have altered cardiac muscle cells to make them controllable with light and showed an ability to cause conditions such as arrhythmia in genetically modified mice, which opens up new possibilities for researching the development and therefore treatment of arrhythmias. 

Tobias Brügmann and his colleagues from the University of Bonn’s Institute of Physiology I used a “channelrhodopsin” for their experiments - a type of light sensor. At the same time, it can act as an ion channel in the cell membrane because when stimulated with blue light, this channel opens, and positive ions flow into the cell. This causes a change in the cell membrane’s pressure, which stimulates cardiac muscle cells to contract.

Over at Cosmic Variance Sean Carroll is fighting an interesting battle. In a series of recent blogs that started under the title "The Laws Underlying The Physics of Everyday Life Are Completely Understood" he is making the claim that physicists have fully figured out whatever we may encounter in our day-to-day lives. Everything. No exception. Sean wonders why this several decades old achievement never got the attention it deserves.

Like many of history's greatest minds, narcissists spend a great deal of time deep in thought - but for narcissists it is thought about themselves.

Neuroscientists recently found a correlation between high scores on the Machiavellian Egocentricity subscale - a measure of narcissism - and activity during rest in the posteromedial cortex, a brain region that previous studies have associated with thoughts about the self.  The study also found a correlation between poor decision-making and brain activity during rest in the medial prefrontal cortex. Impulsive action without regard for consequences is another aspect of psychopathic behavior.

When you drink a soda, you may not think it has much in common with horseradish or peppers, but your body does. 

New research from USC says the carbon dioxide in fizzy drinks triggers the same pain sensors in the nasal cavity as mustard or other spicy foods, though at a lower intensity.  That burning sensation people feel in different degrees comes from a system of nerves that respond to sensations of pain, skin pressure and temperature in the nose and mouth.

Despite vast great differences between the atmospheres of Venus and Earth, it turns out very similar mechanisms produce lightning on the two planets. The rates of discharge, the intensity and the spatial distribution of lightning are comparable - which may help us understand the evolution of the atmospheres of the two planets. 

In the next three days, I'll out the work mostly of Elizabeth Loftus, who describes how and when our memories misfire—in cool and interesting ways—ways, you can use to create the realities you want in unsuspecting friends and family.

Part I:
When we store events in our memories, we tag them with keywords. Was the rollercoaster ride exciting, or scary? Was the dip in the pool cold, or invigorating? Then when we encounter a similar situation, we run a quick keyword search of our memory to help us interpret the new event. Whether you go on the rollercoaster or jump in the pool depends on how you tagged these experiences last time.

The dissertation is complete, the post-dissertation vacation is finished, and Squid-A-Day is back, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed! And oh boy, have I got news for you.

It's no accident that Squid-A-Day is emerging from its PhD chrysalis (note to self: nice analogy. come back to it later) just as we enter the month of October. As the 10th month of the year, it is a friend to the squid, with their ten appendages. But as its Latinate name contains the number 8, it goes the extra step to acknowledge that the squid's appendages are composed of only eight arms, and two specialized tentacles. Thus, October + Squid = Celebration!