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.