Music is omnipresent and plays an enormous role in our everyday lives. It transports us, soothes us, energizes us, evokes memories instantaneously like few things in this world have the power to do (smell being an exception).

Music can bind us together and create shared experiences, or it can divide us (metalheads versus country fans). But why? Mark Changizi wrote an excellent article on the origins of music and four hurdles for a scientific theory of music, touching on these questions: why do we have a brain for music; why is music emotionally evocative; why do we dance; and why is music structurally organized as it is?

Dr. Raymond Mar, of On Fiction: An Online Magazine on the Psychology of Fiction, published a research bulletin the other day summarizing a psychological study whose results apparently suggest that, in the words of the blog headline, “words reveal the personality of the writers.”  After presenting the background, experimental procedure, and findings, Dr. Mar concludes that “From these findings, it appears that creative writing can indeed reveal aspects of the author’s personality to readers. An encouraging result for those of us who feel we’ve come to know an author by reading his or her books.”

Arctic Ice May 2010 - Update


In a recent article - Arctic Ice May 2010 - I predicted that Arctic sea ice would be lower by the end of the month than at the same time in 2007.  The extent as shown by the NSIDC is now touching the 2007 extent line on the graph.


image source NSIDC 20 May 2010.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

Arctic sea ice is on track to recede to a record low this year, suggesting that northern waters free of summer ice are coming faster than anyone thought.

There's a tremendous amount of research literature that does not make it into public consumption. Coupling this lack of trickle down with a voracious need to feel certainty where none may exist, many parents faced with an autism diagnosis will gravitate towards those individuals who offer the certainty they are seeking. They find this certainty, these assurances, not with mainstream medicine or psychology, but with alternative medicine and snake oil salesman who offer guarantees that cannot be delivered on.

Henry Ford Hospital researchers say it is time for a nationwide public smoking ban. Such a measure would reduce public health care costs by $90 million and significantly reduce hospitalization due to heart attack each year.

Their study was presented today at the American Heart Association's annual Quality of Care and Outcomes Research conference in Washington.

After analyzing data from the 13 states that don't have a law banning smoking in public places, researchers concluded that more than 18,596 fewer hospitalizations for heart attack could be realized from a smoking ban in all 50 states after the first year of implementation, resulting in more than $92 million in savings in hospitals costs for caring for those patients.

Parents who have books in the home increase the level of education their children will attain, according to a 20-year study conducted by sociologists from the University of Nevada, Reno and UCLA.

For years, educators have thought the strongest predictor of attaining high levels of education was having parents who were highly educated. But, strikingly, this massive study showed that the difference between being raised in a bookless home compared to being raised in a home with a 500-book library has as great an effect on the level of education a child will attain as having parents who are barely literate (3 years of education) compared to having parents who have a university education (15 or 16 years of education).

Researchers from the University of Barcelona and the University of California, San Francisco have captured the first high resolution images of DNA unfolding.

The team studied a small DNA fragment consisting of 12 base pairs (the human genomes has about 3,000 million base pairs) and obtained 10 million structural snapshots of how DNA unfolds. In this process they revealed the two main ways by which the natural folded structure move to an unfolded state.  The results of the research were published in Angewandte Chemie.

Listening to music based on the genre it belongs to may lead you away from songs or albums you would actually enjoy, say the authors of a study in the New Journal of Physics.

The research shows that searching for the temporal aspects of songs – their rhythm – might be a better way to find music you like than using current automatic genre classifications.

By studying similar and different characteristics of specific rhythmic durations and the occurrence of rhythmic sequences, the group of Brazilian researchers found that it is possible to correctly identify the musical genres of specific musical pieces.

An innovative paint system may make it possible to lower the fuel consumption of airplanes and ships, reducing costs and carbon dioxide emissions, according to researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Applied Materials Research. When applied to every airplane every year throughout the world, the paint could save a volume of 4.48 million tons of fuel.

The inspiration for the paint's structure comes from the scales of fast-swimming sharks that have evolved in a manner that significantly diminishes drag. The challenge was to apply this knowledge to a paint that could withstand the extreme demands of aviation. Temperature fluctuations of -55 to +70 degrees Celsius; intensive UV radiation and high speeds.