Loneliness is not a gnawing, chronic disease without redeeming features, social isolation is just a different scale of organization that can't be grasped outside evolutionary time and evolutionary forces. Well, maybe.

If you are alone this Valentine's Day, you are not...alone, you are part of a giant biological imperative, according to the psychologists behind an evolutionary theory of loneliness, who write in Cogntion  &  Emotion about its potential adaptive value on an evolutionary timescale.

Everyone feels neuroscience studies are biased, no matter how representative they try to be. But Roel Willems and colleagues from the  Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour at Radboud University Nijmegen,  and Max Planck Institute in Nijmegen say studies are flawed if they don't include enough left-handed people.

Because left-handed people have different brains.

Do television shows and magazines make you feel guilty for not wearing sexy lingerie, ladies? You may just need some marketing empowerment from academics in the humanities.

Luckily, at Valentine's Day, the Internet will be filled with insipid advice based on weak observational studies and surveys. So here it is: sexy lingerie may not help, but it sure won't hurt. 

Can data be a tactile experience?

The CEEDs project thinks it can be, and they want to use integrated technologies to support human experience when trying to make sense of very large datasets.

Jonathan Freeman Professor of Psychology at Goldsmith University of London, did an interview with youris.com to outline  how they believe this project can help present data better, depending on the feedback participants provide to data from their environment via monitoring of explicit responses such as eye movement, and their inner reactions, like rate. 

What inspired you to get involved in data representation?

Looking for a good book? Then stay away from the award-winning section of the bookstore, because high standards means a greater chance for a letdown, according to Amanda Sharkey of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, who finds that a book read after winning a prestigious award will likely be judged more negatively than if it's read prior to recognition.

Sharkey and colleague Balázs Kovács of the University of Lugano analyze thousands of reader reviews of 32 pairs of books. One book in each pair had won an award – like the Booker Prize, National Book Award or PEN/Faulkner Award – while the other book had been nominated but hadn't won.

Asian longhorned beetles are an invasive pest that affects about 25 tree species in the United States. 

Female Asian longhorned beetles lure males to their locations by laying down sex-specific pheromone trails on tree surfaces, according to an international team of researchers.  

The researchers isolated and identified four chemicals from the trails of virgin and mated female Asian longhorned beetles -- Anoplophora glabripennis -- that were not found in the trails of males. They found that the pheromone trails contained two major components -- 2-methyldocosane and (Z)-9-tricosene -- and two minor components -- (Z)-9-pentacosene and (Z)-7-pentacosene.

Health education videos tell us what really matters to people.

Two videos both began by offering information about UV light and sun-protective behaviors but then one describes the increased skin cancer risk of UV exposure and the other
describes effects on appearance including wrinkles and premature aging.

Cancer is too remote, but wrinkles are real, for teenagers. 

A
University of Colorado Cancer Center study shows that while teens who watched both videos
learned and retained the same amount of knowledge about UV light and sun-protective behaviors,
only the teens who watched the appearance-based video (and not the health-based video) actually
changed these behaviors.

Osteoarthritis is a leading cause of disability, characterized by the destruction of cartilage tissue in joints, but there is a lack of effective therapies because the underlying molecular causes have been unclear. A study published by Cell Press February 13th in the journal Cell reveals that osteoarthritis-related tissue damage is caused by a molecular pathway that is involved in regulating and responding to zinc levels inside of cartilage cells. A protein called ZIP8 transports zinc inside these cells, setting off a cascade of molecular events that result in the destruction of cartilage tissue in mice. The findings could lead to a new generation of therapies for osteoarthritis.

Cells communicate through proteins embedded in their cell membranes. These proteins have diverse functions and can be compared with antennas, switches and gates. For the well-being of the cell, it has to adjust the composition of its membrane proteins and lipids constantly. New proteins are incorporated, while old proteins get recycled or eliminated. The process by which membrane material gets internalized is called endocytosis. A research team headed by Daniël van Damme and Geert De Jaeger from VIB and Ghent University (Belgium), and Staffan Persson from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology in Golm near Potsdam (Germany) has now identified a new protein complex which is crucial for endocytosis in plants.

Many psychiatric disorders are accompanied by memory deficits. Basel scientists have now identified a network of genes that controls fundamental properties of neurons and is important for human brain activity, memory and the development of schizophrenia. Their results have been published in the online edition of the US journal Neuron.