Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2661 )

• Art in a Whiskey Glass, the Physics Explained.

  

  Here's a random bit that provides a tonic for the day. Ernie Button, a photographer in Phoenix, started taking pictures of the interesting patterns he noticed... Read more

  Posted on 24 November 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Wealth is Especially Bad for the Wealthy.

  Michael Lewis reviews Darrell West's new book "Billionaires: Reflections on the Upper Crust" in The New Republic. The review starts with a marvellous story abou... Read more

  Posted on 24 November 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Genes That Turned Wildcats into Kitty Cats.

  

  Reaction of my Abyssinian cat, Melvin, to finding that his genome had been sequenced. David Grimm summarizes work by Montague et al. Read more

  Posted on 21 November 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Cooperating with the Future - How to Sustain Resources.

  From Hauser et al., an experiment showing that if resource extraction decision are made by vote rather than individually, the resource can be sustained. Voting... Read more

  Posted on 20 November 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Humor and Health

  I want to point to this item by Jennifer Gibson that reminds me how useful it might be for me to "lighten up" just a little bit, try to get a daily laugh. Read more

  Posted on 19 November 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Chemicals That Delay Or Reverse Effects of Aging.

  I scan for articles on aging in my wanderings through journals and pass on the following two, on chemical compounds that delay or reverse the effects of aging:... Read more

  Posted on 18 November 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Big Data in Neuroscience

  

  I want to pass on an interesting graphic from a piece by Sejnowski, Churchland, and Movshon that introduces a "Focus on big data" series of articles in the... Read more

  Posted on 17 November 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• MDMA (ecstasy) Enhances Emotional Empathy and Prosocial Behavior

  Maybe a hit of NDMA, the party drug ecstasy (not to be confused with the methamphetamine of crystal meth, which is another derivative of the core amphetamine... Read more

  Posted on 15 November 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Trajectories of Aging.

  

  This post points to another of the articles in the Science special issue on aging. Lindenberger summarizes key features of human cognitive aging from the... Read more

  Posted on 14 November 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Are We Really Conscious?

  I've done a post on Graziano's 'attention schema' theory of conscious, and thought I would pass on some clips from his recent exposition of the model in a... Read more

  Posted on 13 November 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Antidepressant and Nerve Growth Stimulating Effects of Exercise - a Mechanism.

  Yau et al. find that a hormone secreted by fat cells during exercise alleviates depression-like behaviors in mice and boosts new nerve cell synthesis in the... Read more

  Posted on 12 November 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Aging: Sit Less and Shape up Your Attitude

  I'm continuing to clean out my queue of aging articles that have been languishing as potential posts... Reynolds points to two studies. Read more

  Posted on 11 November 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Mind Wandering That Makes Effort More Efficient.

  MindBlog has done numerous posts on our brains' default mode and executive control networks, with the idea usually being that activating the default network or... Read more

  Posted on 10 November 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• What is Literature Good For?

  I pass on this fetching clutch of points on the usefulness of reading literature (rather than brief tweets, and blog posts like this) from Alain de Botton's... Read more

  Posted on 09 November 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Why Do We Like Sad Music?

  I have earlier noted work on how, in both Eastern and Western music and vocalization, major modes are associated with positive emotions, and minor modes with... Read more

  Posted on 08 November 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Positive Thinking Can Sabotage Desired Outcomes.

  The point is a simple one - imagining success in attaining a goal can make one strive less diligently towards it. Gabriele Oettingen has summarized her... Read more

  Posted on 07 November 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• A Mechanism Underlying Intractable Political Conflicts.

  Waytz et al. do an interesting piece of work directly relevant to the polarized mid-term election that just occurred, finding a cognitive bias that drives... Read more

  Posted on 06 November 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Aging - Predictors of Cognitive Abilities.

  The Oct. 31 issue of Science Magazine has a special section of articles on the aging brain. I point in particular to Underwood's article, "Starting young", whic... Read more

  Posted on 05 November 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Liberals and Conservatives Have Different Smell Preferences.

  A post faintly appropriate to this election day that is deciding the outcomes of very polarized contests of liberals and conservatives...Arthur Brooks points... Read more

  Posted on 04 November 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Memory Reactivation During Rest Supports Upcoming Learning of Related Content.

  I have found that a brief period of rest, around 20 minutes or so, after I have worked on learning the notes and fingering of a new piano piece, has a huge... Read more

  Posted on 03 November 2014 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE