In a report this week in Cell, researchers have identified a biological basis for why events that happen during heightened states of emotion such as fear, anger and joy are more memorable than less dramatic occurrences: a hormone released during emotional arousal “primes” nerve cells to remember events by increasing their chemical sensitivity at sites where nerves rewire to form new memory circuits.

'Word of mouth' advertising is valuable because marketing groups know that opinions of friends and associates count more than the paid endorsements of strangers. But what kind of opinions matter most? It turns out the negative ones do, even if someone had privately had a positive impression prior to the negative input.

“Consumer attitudes toward products and services are frequently influenced by others around them. Social networks, such as those found on Myspace and Facebook suggest that these influences will continue to be significant drivers of individual consumer attitudes as society becomes more inter-connected,” explain Adam Duhachek, Shuoyang Zhang, and Shanker Krishnan of Indiana University in a Journal of Consumer Research report.

I have mixed feelings about the proliferation of the term "Open Notebook Science". I started using the term a year ago to describe our UsefulChem project because it had no hits on Google and so it offered an opportunity to start with a fresh definition. There are currently over 43 000 hits for that term and it is nice to see that the first hit is still the post with the original definition. The first part of the term, "Open Notebook", is meant to be taken literally. It refers to the ultimate information source used by a researcher to record their work.

Moving away from home and adapting to a new social environment are just two of the many challenges that new students face as they enter university. An innovative new study conducted at the University of Alberta has found that these challenges can actually have a negative effect on a student's health.

The researchers found that female students who lived away from home were three times more likely to report symptoms of binge eating compared to those students living with parents during their first year of university studies.

Also, students who felt dissatisfied with their bodies were three times as likely to report symptoms of binge eating when entering their first year of studies.

The theory of loss aversion is used in many contexts to explain why potential loss has a greater mitigating influence on behavior than potential gain.

In trading situations, consumers will most likely opt to keep what they have, tending to place a larger value on the items already in their possession (also known as the “endowment effect”). However, these theories generally assume that consumers like what they have enough to want to keep it. What happens when we’re in possession of something we hate?

A new study appearing in the Journal of Consumer Research uses experimental results to show a situation in which the endowment effect is reversed. The authors differentiate between two types of loss aversion:

A tiny galaxy,SDSSJ0737+3216 (lens redshift 0.3223, source redshift 0.5812), nearly halfway across the universe and the smallest in size and mass known to exist at that distance, has been identified by an international team of scientists.

The scientists used data collected by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii.

 

It was 50 years ago this week that the Russians launched Sputnik, the first man made satellite to orbit the earth. It changed the world.  In fact, there are few, if any events of the last 50 years that had such a global impact on just about every aspect of humanity. 

Consumers are told that leaving electrical devices in standby mode wastes large amounts of energy and makes a significant contribution to carbon dioxide emissions. Should 'standby mode' be regulated by governments?

Not according to results of a study published in the International Journal of Environment and Sustainable Development.

Sound counter-intuitive? Their reasoning is that as electrical devices get more efficient, the amount of energy saved through stricter regulation becomes ever smaller and effort should instead be spent improving the overall efficiency of devices in operation.

People understand the irony of sentences like "I am from the federal government and I am here to help you" yet are comfortable with local initiatives to reduce global warming, even if it means more money.

According to a survey conducted by GfK Public Affairs and the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, 74 percent of Americans would support local regulations requiring all newly constructed homes to be more energy efficient, even if it would increase the initial cost of a new home by roughly $7,500.

A plant-like micro-organism mostly found in oceans could make the manufacture of products, from iridescent cosmetics, paints and fabrics to credit card holograms, cheaper and ‘greener’.

The tiny single-celled ‘diatom’, which first evolved hundreds of millions of years ago, has a hard silica shell which is iridescent – in other words, the shell displays vivid colours that change depending on the angle at which it is observed. This effect is caused by a complex network of tiny holes in the shell which interfere with light waves.

Diatoms are classified as eukaryotic algae and represent one of the commonest types of phytoplankton. Each diatom is encased in a silica frustule, or cell wall. Although usually microscopic, some species of diatom may grow to as much as 2mm long.