Category: ideas

A study says that “although IM shared some of the patterns used in speech, its vocabulary and grammar tended to be relatively conservative. For example, teenagers are more likely to use the phrase “He was like, ‘What’s up?’ than ‘He said, ‘What’s up?’ when speaking – but the opposite is true when they are instant-messaging. This supports the idea that IM represents a hybrid form of communication.”

“People who are good at interpreting facial expressions have ‘mirror neuron’ systems that are more active, say researchers. The finding adds weight to the idea that these cells are crucial to helping us figure out how others are feeling.”

“Despite the huge numbers who visit galleries and museums, most people don’t go. If they do, the convention of the art gallery is that the work is entitled to be there and your right to question it is correspondingly limited. But in the street where you live, the supermarket where you shop, the square where you sit, you have a right to state an opinion.” Such is the beauty (and the complexity) of public art.

“There are two distinct types of memory: Verbatim, which allows us to recall what specifically happened at any given moment, and gist, which enables us to put the event in context and give it meaning.” A new study has surprised researchers with the finding that “verbatim and gist memory are separate, parallel systems. So separate, in fact, that ‘there is some evidence’ they occupy different sections of the brain.”

“In recent months American wine drinkers have taken their turn as pop culture’s punching bags. In press accounts of two studies on wine psychology, consumers have been portrayed as dupes and twits, subject to the manipulations of marketers, critics and charlatan producers who have cloaked wine in mystique and sham sophistication in hopes of better separating the public from its money.”

A new study reports that hierarchical awareness seems to be deeply embedded in the human brain. “If the hierarchy is stable, we seem to ignore those below us but focus on those higher up. If unstable, and we are in danger of losing status, areas of the brain linked to emotions are aroused.”

“Why are we as a species so often so desperately poor at achieving our goals? If we are, as the selfish-gene theory would have it, organisms that exist only to serve the interests of our genes, why do we waste so much of our time doing things that are not, in any obvious way, remotely in the interest of our genes?”

Scientists “are trying to figure out why animals learn and why some have evolved to be better at learning than others. One reason for the difference, their research finds, is that being smart can be bad for an animal’s health.”