Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Commentary on devolution of advanced societies towards tribalism.

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I have been wanting to point to a number of Op-Ed articles that try to make a story to explain the apparent devolution of many advanced soc...
Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Corporate social responsibility to counter the sociopathy of capitalism?

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Sorkin describes a striking letter sent out to business leaders by BlackRock, the largest investment firm in the world. The article and le...
Monday, January 29, 2018

How our bones regulate our weight.

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Jansson et al. report that bones have a gravity sensor that initiates metabolic changes that compensate for a sudden change in body weight ...
Friday, January 26, 2018

Taming modern Frankensteins

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The Jan. 12 issue of Science Magazine has an interesting section of articles on the long shadow cast by Mary Shelley’s 200 year old Frankens...
1 comment:
Thursday, January 25, 2018

Preferences for moral vs. immoral traits in others are conditional

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Wow, talk about work relevant to our current political situation...where some people (like myself) can not understand how anyone could suppo...
Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Self protection from social media feedback.

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Rodman et al. show that adults and adolescents deal with peer feedback in very different ways: Significance The growing popularity of ...
Tuesday, January 23, 2018

The ‘social genomes’ of friends are correlated.

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Here is an interesting study from Domingue et al. : Significance Our study reported significant findings of a “social genome” that can ...
Monday, January 22, 2018

How much can we change our aging?

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I'm using this post to point to the notes for a lecture on aging that I recently gave to a senior group in Austin Texas. It begins with...
Friday, January 19, 2018

Improving ourselves to death

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Alexandra Schwartz notes a number of self help books and considers how their advice reflects the beliefs and priorities of our era. Here ar...
Thursday, January 18, 2018

Explanation of fraternal birth order effect on sexual orientation.

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A number of studies have by now confirmed that the probability of a boy growing up to be gay increases for each older brother born to the sa...
Wednesday, January 17, 2018

Benefits of talking to yourself.

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Talking to ourselves either internally or out loud we can switch from 1st person voice (I can do this) to second person (you can do this) or...
Tuesday, January 16, 2018

Old brains come uncoupled in sleep.

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From Helfrich et al .: Highlights •Precise coupling of NREM (Non-rapid-eye-movement) slow waves and spindles dictates memory consolidat...
Monday, January 15, 2018

How to detect that someone is sick.

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Alexsson et al. do a study suggesting that you should look first for droopy eyelids and corners of the mouth, then also check for pale skin...
Friday, January 12, 2018

A Two-System Framework for understanding fear and anxiety.

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LeDoux and Pine note that extensive study and understanding of how mammalian brains, including our own, detect and respond to threats has n...
Thursday, January 11, 2018

Demonstrating reciprocity on a global scale.

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In this age that seems characterized by increasing domestic and international chaos, I like to pass on any work that shows potential bufferi...
Wednesday, January 10, 2018

Forget about major life extension - Aging is a fundamental feature of multicellular life

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Nelson and Masel , present a theoretical argument summarized by Wagner in his brief essay on their paper. From Wagner: Paul Nelson and Joa...
Tuesday, January 09, 2018

Exercise alters the microbiome, enhancing immune function.

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Reynolds points to interesting work by Allen et al. showing that exercise by lean, but not obese, subjects enhances microbial production o...
1 comment:
Monday, January 08, 2018

Memories are stored by the extracellular matrix surrounding brain cells.

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Fascinating work from Thompson et al. , who show that degrading the extracellular matrix structure with local injections into visual cortex ...
Friday, January 05, 2018

The narcissism epidemic is dead?

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An interesting piece from Wetzel et al. , who find no evidence for a commonly reported narcissism epidemic over the past 10-20 years, based ...
Thursday, January 04, 2018

The temporal organization of perception.

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Ronconi et al. do interesting work suggesting that whether we perceive two visual stimuli as being separate events or a single event depend...