You wouldn't think that tanking an economy would make anyone happy but it puts a spring in the steps of a small group; economics professors.
If the lousy economy is cause for a party, the election of Barack Obama and more government meandering is apparently icing on the cake. Witness Professor Panicos Demetriades of the Economic and Social Research Council's World Economy and Finance Programme, who is today speaking at the 'Politics of Macro-Adjustment and Poverty Reduction' Conference.
A new study challenges the prevailing assumption that you must pay attention to something in order to learn it. Research in the journal Neuron says that stimulus-reward pairing can elicit visual learning in adults ... even without awareness of the stimulus presentation or reward contingencies.
The story’s Superman figure doubts if humanity is worth saving. Its Batman is impotent. Its Wonder Woman has mommy issues. And its closest thing to a protagonist also is a murderous sociopath.
Welcome to the world of Watchmen, considered by many to be the greatest comic book ever written. Dalhousie University english professor Anthony Enns, who teaches the course “Cartoons and Comics,” appreciates why people feel that way. He remembers Alan Moore’s comic being a sensation from the moment it first hit shelves over 20 years ago.
“If you were into comics then, everyone was taking about it, all the time,” he says. “People would gather and have these endless debates about what would happen next issue.”
Like adults, kids who are more spiritual or religious tend to be healthier.
That’s the conclusion of Dr. Barry Nierenberg, Ph.D., ABPP, associate professor of psychology at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, who has been studying the relationship between faith and health. He presented on the topic at the American Psychological Association’s Division of Rehabilitation Psychology national conference on February 27, in Jackson, Fla.
Want to be fearless? Create an army of super soldiers? A limited test case may be on to something.
A team of Dutch researchers led by Vici-winner Merel Kindt at Universiteit van Amsterdam has successfully reduced the 'fear response' - they weakened fear memories in human volunteers by administering the beta-blocker propranolol. Most interestingly, the fear response does not return.
Can fear be deleted?
For millions of years, green plants have employed photosynthesis to capture energy from sunlight and convert it into electrochemical energy. A goal of scientists has been to develop an artificial version of photosynthesis that can be used to produce liquid fuels from carbon dioxide and water. Researchers with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratoryhave now taken a critical step towards this goal with the discovery that nano-sized crystals of cobalt oxide can effectively carry out the critical photosynthetic reaction of splitting water molecules.
Human problems rarely occur in a vacuum, but persist as part of ongoing social interaction in which causes and effects are interwoven. One person's behavior can set the stage for what another does. A new study in the journal Family Process reveals that smoking can promote emotional connection for couples when both partners smoke.
Health-compromising behaviors, such as smoking or weight gain, may sometimes persist because they preserve stability in a vital close relationship.
Humor is a powerful communications tool with potential political implications at various levels of society, as the recent Danish political cartoon representations of Islamic prophet Mohammad and the political repercussions and resulting economic boycotts demonstrated. A new paper by Darren Purcell, Melissa Scott Brown and Mahmut Gokmen looks at humor as an important form of popular culture in the creation of geopolitical worldviews.
A new map combining nearly three months of data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is giving astronomers an unprecedented look at the high-energy cosmos. To Fermi's "eyes", the universe is ablaze with gamma rays from sources within the solar system to galaxies billions of light-years away.
A paper describing the 205 brightest sources the LAT sees has been submitted to The Astrophysical Journal Supplement. "This is the mission's first major science product, and it's a big step toward producing our first source catalog later this year," said David Thompson, a Fermi deputy project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
While science is of tremendous societal importance, it is difficult to probe the often hidden world of scientific creativity. Most studies of scientific activity rely on citation data, which takes a while to become available because both the cited publication and the publication of a particular citation can take years to appear. In other words, citation data observes science as it existed years in the past, not the present.
What we need is a Map Of Science.
Enter a group of Los Alamos researchers who created a high-resolution graphic depiction of the virtual trails scientists leave behind when they retrieve information from online services.
