This blog is my absolute lowest of low priorities. I've had stuff tabbed for months now that I wanted to put here and never seem to get to. I don't think anyone even looks at this but if someone does, it's best to follow me at You're Doing It Wrong

For several decades, however, researchers have known that placebo effects can also arise from subconscious associations as opposed to overt beliefs. Stimuli that a patient links with feeling better or with physical improvement—say, a doctor’s white lab coat, a stethoscope or the smell of an examining room—may induce physiological reactions even if a patient has no explicit faith in the treatment being given. That is, simply seeing a doctor holding a syringe can produce a placebo reaction if a patient has previously associated that scenario with feeling better. In such cases, the overall effect—improvement or even complete recovery—stems from a combination of the pharmacological action of the drug and the subconscious or conditioned response.

Via Scientific American

Finding A Face in A Crowd

I think it's funny how often I can spot my sweetheart in a crowd. I'll see someone familiar out of the corner of my eye and there he is.

As we walk along a city street, it takes no effort to recognize the face of a friend in the crowd. But the ease of the feat masks its cognitive complexity—all faces have eyes, noses and mouths in the same relative place and can bear an array of emotional expressions. For decades, scientists have debated the basis for our facility with faces: either human brains evolved specialized face-processing machinery, distinct from regions that deal with other objects, or they process all objects using an expansive, multipurpose network, merely developing an expertise for faces. Two experiments have now clarified this perennial dispute by uncovering a distinct network that is indeed dedicated to faces.

Via Scientific American

Grief Ghosts

A scientific explanation of ghosts. But what about scary ghosts like the ones in movies that rips your guts out? Are those a hallucination?

There are hints that the type of grief hallucinations might also differ across cultures. Anthropologists have told us a great deal about how the ceremonies, beliefs and the social rituals of death differ greatly across the world, but we have few clues about how these different approaches affect how people experience the dead after they have gone. Carlos Sluzki, the owner of the shadow cat and a cross-cultural researcher at George Mason University, suggests that in cultures of non-European origin the distinction between “in here” and “out there” experiences is less strictly defined, and so grief hallucinations may not be considered so personally worrying.

Via Scientific American

My Favorite Legume Destination

One of our favorite places to visit. We call it The Bean Store.

Tucked into an industrial park off Oregon 224 in Milwaukie, the Bob's Red Mill Whole Grain Store is the flagship of the 25-year-old company, which produces and markets all manner of flours and grains, legumes, nuts, dried fruit and spices. While you can buy Bob's Red Mill products in most markets around town, it's well worth a trip to the picturesque mill-themed store for the remarkable selection, specials and bulk purchases (25 pounds of beans, cornmeal or rye flakes?). I could have bought half the store, but I limited myself to a small haul of mixed cereals, beans and grains. And when you go, go hungry: Bob's has a full kitchen and prepares hearty -- and healthy -- meals for breakfast and lunch.

Via Oregonian

Turnip Love

My favorite vegetable, getting some love in the Oregonian. My favorite turnips are the tiny white ones in Spring. I use turnips in all the same places I use carrots: diced small for salad or diced big in hot dishes like soups.

Turnips may have an image problem, but it's undeserved. After all, almost anything you can do to a potato you can do to a turnip. Look for younger turnips, which have a more delicate and sweeter flavor.

The thought of turnips may not immediately get your tastebuds tingling, but it's a mistake to ignore this nutritious and versatile root.

Via Oregonian

There's No Magic: You Just Have to Do It

The characteristic most strongly linked to procrastination is conscientiousness—or lack thereof. A highly conscientious person is dutiful, organized and industrious. Therefore, someone who is not conscientious has a high probability of procrastinating. A person who is impulsive also is a procrastinator at risk. “People who are impulsive can’t shield one intention from another,” Pychyl says. So they are easily diverted by temptations—say, the offer of a beer—that crop up in the middle of a project such as writing a term paper.

Via Scientific American

I'm Just Distracted

Older brains do not think as quickly as younger brains do. But does this cognitive impairment arise because processing speeds slacken or because the ability to block out irrelevant information falters? A recent study reconciles these two leading hypotheses: older brains have a harder time ignoring distractions in the initial stages of performing a task, which slows down processing.

Via Scientific American

Patternicity

Cool. But also I realized that almost every post recently has been related to getting old and/or dying so I had to find something different.

Traditionally, scientists have treated patternicity as an error in cognition. A type I error, or a false positive, is believing something is real when it is not (finding a nonexistent pattern). A type II error, or a false negative, is not believing something is real when it is (not recognizing a real pattern—call it “apatternicity”). In [Michael Shermer's] 2000 book How We Believe (Times Books), [he] argue[s] that our brains are belief engines: evolved pattern-recognition machines that connect the dots and create meaning out of the patterns that we think we see in nature. Sometimes A really is connected to B; sometimes it is not. When it is, we have learned something valuable about the environment from which we can make predictions that aid in survival and reproduction. We are the ancestors of those most successful at finding patterns. This process is called association learning, and it is fundamental to all animal behavior, from the humble worm C. elegans to H. sapiens.

via Scientific American

Please Let This Work

By my estimate I'll be looking at Alzheimer's about 2043.

In the U.S. some five million people have Alzheimer’s disease and 10 million boomers will be at risk for memory problems over their lifetime. Worldwide, more than 100 million people may have Alzheimer’s by the year 2050. As clinicians, we have learned to recognize that jokes about “old-timer’s disease” and “Teflon brain” are often calls for help from seniors worried about their memory lapses. Living longer is obviously no fun if you cannot remember your home address or drive a car. Although we have made tremendous progress in understanding brain changes that accompany aging and dementia, no medications have proven effective for preventing Alzheimer’s to date. In recent years, however, more evidence is pointing to a non-medical way to bolster brain health as we age: exercise.

via Scientific American

Houses of Hemp

Houses made of hemp, timber or straw could help combat climate change by reducing the carbon footprint of building construction, according to researchers at the University of Bath.

via Science Daily

Why Do We Forget Things?

In the past several decades, cognitive psychologists have determined that there are two primary memory systems in the human mind: a short-term, or "working," memory that temporarily holds information about just a few things that we are currently thinking about; and a long-lasting memory that can hold massive amounts of information gained through a lifetime of thoughts and experiences.

These two memory systems are also thought to differ in the level of detail they provide: working memory provides sharp detail about the few things we are presently thinking about, whereas long-term memory provides a much fuzzier picture about lots of different things we have seen or experienced. That is, although we can hold lots of things in long-term memory, the details of the memory aren’t always crystal-clear and are often limited to just the gist of what we saw or what happened.

Via Scientific American

More Dead Stuff

I'm a little fixated on death at the moment. Wonder what that's all about. When it comes to data collection, people aren't allowed to die of old age. Nope. There has to be a reason. It's so typical of our culture that official data collection treats death as something that went wrong rather than a natural outcome of being alive.

Neither should "infirmity" or "senescence" appear as a cause of death, according to the CDC handbook on how properly to fill out a death certificate. Why? These words "have little value for public health or medical research," the agency says. Plus, "Age is recorded elsewhere on the [death] certificate."

Via NYT

And Then You Die

For a long time I was sure that there was more than this. Now I tend to think being dead is going to be exactly like before I was born. And back then I don't recall longing to be alive.

And yet people in every culture believe in an afterlife of some kind or, at the very least, are unsure about what happens to the mind at death. My psychological research has led me to believe that these irrational beliefs, rather than resulting from religion or serving to protect us from the terror of inexistence, are an inevitable by-product of self-consciousness. Because we have never experienced a lack of consciousness, we cannot imagine what it will feel like to be dead. In fact, it won’t feel like anything—and therein lies the problem.

The comments are good too:

Part of the problem is that for those who are dead, being dead represents the total antithesis for/what the term 'experience' means, the total lack of/ incapacity to experience. and therein lies the problem. How do you experience what can not be experienced? You can't.

Via Scientific American

Moving the Earth to Survive

Pardon me if I'm not optimistic.

The Sun is slowly getting warmer as it burns the hydrogen in its core. In about 5 billion years, the Sun will begin evolving into a bloated red giant. Its outer gas shell will swell up, engulfing the Earth by the time it reaches its peak size and brightness 7 billion years from now.
* * *
Elementary physics tells us that we actually can move the planets. Launching a rocket into space pushes the Earth a bit in the opposite direction, like the recoil from a gun.

Via New Scientist

Guess I'm Never Going to the Sundarban Islands

Did I ever mention my irrational fear of being eaten alive by an animal?

The number of tiger attacks on people is growing in India's Sundarban islands as habitat loss and dwindling prey caused by climate change drives them to prowl into villages for food, conservation experts say.

Wildlife experts say endangered tigers in the world's largest reserve are turning on humans because rising sea levels and coastal erosion are steadily shrinking the tigers' natural habitat.

Via New Scientist

Randomness Rules the World

I've read this article at least three times and find it fascinating. But I don't get it.

Imagine that you are a contestant on the classic television game show Let’s Make a Deal. Behind one of three doors is a brand-new automobile. Behind the other two are goats. You choose door number one. Host Monty Hall, who knows what is behind all three doors, shows you that a goat is behind number two, then inquires: Would you like to keep the door you chose or switch? Our folk numeracy—our natural tendency to think anecdotally and to focus on small-number runs—tells us that it is 50–50, so it doesn’t matter, right?

Wrong. You had a one in three chance to start, but now that Monty has shown you one of the losing doors, you have a two-thirds chance of winning by switching. Here is why. There are three possible three-doors configurations: (1) good, bad, bad; (2) bad, good, bad; (3) bad, bad, good. In (1) you lose by switching, but in (2) and (3) you can win by switching. If your folk numeracy is still overriding your rational brain, let’s say that there are 10 doors: you choose door number one, and Monty shows you door numbers two through nine, all goats. Now do you switch? Of course, because your chances of win??ning increase from one in 10 to nine in 10. This type of counterintuitive problem drives people to innumeracy, including mathematicians and statisticians, who famously upbraided Marilyn vos Savant when she first presented this puzzle in her Parade magazine column in 1990.

Via Scientific American

Exploitation of the Ignorant

How do politicians get away with [bending the truth]? Ignorance is part of the answer. Many voters will never read the newspaper article or watch the news broadcasts that reveal the true situation. But psychology is also at work. The short cuts that we use to make sense of the world shape our perception of it. When it comes to politics, this can lead voters to reach the wrong conclusions about candidates, even when they have been exposed to the truth. Could it be that politicians and their strategists are harnessing this phenomenon?

Via New Scientist

Avoiding Turbulence.

As a nervous flier, this is technology I can embrace.

IT STRIKES without warning and can jangle the nerves of even seasoned air travellers - but maybe not for much longer. Clear air turbulence just got a lot easier to predict and avoid.

Two types of turbulence affect aircraft. The first, caused by storms, high winds or the flow of air over mountains, is fairly predictable. Clear air turbulence (CAT) is a different matter: "The skies are clear and blue, everything looks fine, but there is invisible turbulence there and pilots fly through it," says Paul Williams at the University of Reading, UK. As a result, CAT causes hundreds of injuries a year to airline passengers.

via New Scientist

Indian Mascots

The mascots don't bother me as much as the double-standard. Can you imagine a sports team called the Mexicans? The Jews? If someone suggested it, heads would roll.

It's unsettling to watch someone who is not Native American present their interpretation of a culture they are not a part of for entertainment value. The majority if these mascots throw on some buckskin, beads, war paint and prance around the field and consider that authentic.

Via Baylor Lariat

Time To Open A Bar

This is an article about a mozzarella bar opening in NYC. I love fresh mozzarella and I acknowledge that I've probably never even had the real deal so I bet I'd love this. It just sounds funny to me. Like what if I started a dried fruit bar or a pinto beans bar?

Via NYT