Research
dmunger | July 15, 2008Imagine yourself in a room surrounded by eleven objects arranged in a circle. You memorize the position of the objects, then you close your eyes, and rotate a third of the way around (120°). Keeping your eyes closed, can you point to the object that was behind you before? Most people can do this without much difficulty, and only take an instant longer than if they'd stayed in the same position.
Now imagine the objects are rotating on a turntable as you yourself rotate, so that the same object is still in front of you -- in many respects, it's as if you've never turned and the objects never…
dmunger | July 9, 2008In 2005, E. Ashby Plant and B. Michelle Peruche tested 48 Florida police officers and found that they were initially more likely to shoot unarmed Black "suspects" in a crime-fighting simulation than White people holding similar objects. Interestingly, however, as the test went on, the officers improved, and by the end of the session, any bias had been removed.
But in the real world, officers don't get a second chance, and accidental shootings do occur. In many communities, racial tensions are already running high, and an interracial shooting by a police officer can bring those tensions to the…
dmunger | July 7, 2008Last year we discussed a great deal of research about the gender disparity in math and science. Even while women are more successful overall in school than men, in certain fields there is a very large deficit in the number of women participating. We mentioned one explanation in particular:
The male math advantage in a number of different studies appears to be directly related to visuospatial skills, the most important being mental rotation. In tests on calculation or other mathematical problems that don't require visuospatial skills, females perform just as well as -- or better than -- males…
dmunger | July 3, 2008Have you ever seen Singin' in the Rain? One of the movie's most hilarious moments is when the beautiful silent movie star Lina Lamont is asked to start making "talking pictures." As soon as this gorgeous screen siren opens her mouth, the illusion of her beauty is shattered: her squeaky voice instantly transforms her from a glamorous leading lady into a cartoonish boor. Threatened with losing their box-office cash-cow, the studio chiefs frantically enroll her in voice and etiquette lessons, but nothing helps, and eventually they're forced to substitute the voice of the attractive and lovely-…
sciencetolife | July 2, 2008
I am happy to report that my research paper on a protein implicated in breast and lung cancer, called BAP1 (BRCA1-associated protein-1), was recently accepted for publication in the journal 'Cancer Research'.
As you know, my research studies are in the field of cancer biochemistry and for the past few years I have been working on the BAP1 protein-a deubiquitinating enzyme.
The paper is entitled "BAP1 is a tumor suppressor that requires deubiquitinating activity and nuclear localization". This paper is particularly special to me because it is my first peer-reviewed scientific publication (…
dmunger | June 30, 2008In our discussions of violence associated with video game play, we've frequently noted that there appear to be different effects depending on the type of video game. Some games are more violent than others, and some games reward violence while others discourage it. All this has an impact in terms of real-world behavior and attitudes. Some games have positive effects.
One type of game -- one of the most popular types, in fact -- hasn't been studied nearly as much as the traditional arcade-style game: massively multiplayer online role-playing games, or MMORPGs. One of the studies of this type…
dmunger | June 26, 2008My high school experience, like that of nearly everyone who attended my school, was a perplexing one. It seemed there were only a few "popular" people -- those that everyone knew and liked -- and wanted to be like. Everyone else was much like me: they struggled to become more popular, with little success. Everyone had a few friends, but somehow these friends were never as good as the popular people would be, or so it seemed.
One of the things that I believed was preventing me from becoming popular was my reputation. Those who knew me saw me in a certain way -- a non-popular way. Maybe if I…
grrlscientist | June 23, 2008tags: researchblogging.org, scientific ethics, Hippocratic oath, life scientists, corporate culture
I promise never to allow financial gain, competitiveness or ambition cloud my judgment in the conduct of ethical research and scholarship. I will pursue knowledge and create knowledge for the greater good, but never to the detriment of colleagues, supervisors, research subjects or the international community of scholars of which I am now a member.
Scientific misconduct is very expensive, leading to years of wasted research dollars and effort in pursuit of a scientific mirage, and it damages…
dmunger | June 23, 2008Do you multitask? I'm not talking about literally doing two things at once, like emailing while talking on the phone, or playing the trombone while washing the dishes. I'm talking about the more common phenomenon of starting one project before you're finished with another. For example, after I read the journal article I'll be discussing in this post, I caught up on some email correspondence, ordered a new phone for my office, and ate lunch. Now I'm finally getting around to actually writing the post itself. Why didn't I just read the article and then write my post while it was fresh in my…
dmunger | June 19, 2008One of the first steps to learning a language is figuring out where one word ends and the next one begins. Since fluent speakers don't generally pause between words, it can be a daunting task. We've discussed one of the ways people do it in this post -- they focus in on consonant sounds. Other researchers have found that we also focus on the statistical properties of language.
Certain syllables are likely to follow each other within individual words, but unlikely to follow each other between words. Take the phrase "between words." In English, within a single word we're much more likely to…
jane | June 17, 2008I have a few undergraduate students working in my lab for part of the summer. They started this week. Working with undergrads is something I do every summer---well, except for last summer, when I was on maternity leave. So you'd think I'd remember, at this point, how the drill goes: how to get them up and running, how much time and attention they need, etc.
Apparently I forgot a lot in a year.
I've forgotten how little undergrads know when they start out---even the best and brightest of them. I've forgotten that they don't know "the rules of the lab", or how to "do" research, or what I…
dmunger | June 17, 2008What makes something look glossy? At first, it doesn't seem like a difficult question -- it's something smooth and reflective. But if you were to attempt to draw something that looked glossy, how would you to it? Now, the problem suddenly gets a lot more difficult. Taking a look at a photo of a glossy object might give you some clues. Here's an example:
I took this picture of my watch using the webcam on my computer. Notice that you can see the reflection of the computer screen in the bottom half of my watch face. You can't see it on my face though -- my face isn't glossy. So one component…
dmunger | June 16, 2008Listen to this short audio clip:
The clip plays two notes that are two full octaves apart. That's a greater range than many people can produce vocally. It should be easy for anyone to tell the difference between these two notes, even when heard in isolation, right?
Not necessarily.
A team led by Ulrich Weger has found a scenario where people make systematic errors judging these two very different notes. While most people get the notes right most of the time, by introducing a wrinkle into the testing, Weger's team could reliably induce errors and slower response times.
They asked 20…
dmunger | June 12, 2008Boundary extension -- misremembering the boundaries of a scene as wider than they really are -- has been observed in adults as old as 84 and children as young as 6. But for kids much younger than 6, the phenomenon becomes quite difficult to study. How do you ask a 6-month-old whether the picture they're looking at has the same borders as one they saw a few minutes ago? You can't ask them to draw the picture for you -- they can barely sit up, let alone hold a pencil.
Yet the development of boundary extension is an important aspect of the study of vision. Do babies experience the phenomenon…
dmunger | June 11, 2008Take a look at these three pictures. Can you tell which is a human, which is a cat, and which is a pigeon?
How about these three pictures? A little easier?
It would be even easier, of course, if the pictures were in motion, like in this movie (QuickTime required). (Update: Nikolaus Troje has provided a link to a full set of demos here -- check them out, they're awesome!) The difference between the first three pictures and the second three is that the points that make up each animal's body parts have been scrambled in the first set of pictures. Why? Because the researchers Dorita Chang…
dmunger | June 10, 2008A reader recently emailed to ask us if there's been any research about whether poor working conditions such as a noisy or overheated office affect motivation and efficiency. Wouldn't it be great if you could document to your employer that the guy in the next cubicle's constant gabbing on the phone is negatively affecting the company's bottom line?
Greta did a search of the literature (and made some queries to colleagues who specialize in industrial / organizational psychology) and confirmed my suspicion that there has been a great deal of research into how working conditions affect…
terrasig | June 6, 2008This one's for the molecular and cell biology and pharmaceutical chemistry crowd: what's on your current wishlist?
If you had a US$250,000 equipment budget, what would you buy to outfit the lab?
Assume that your department has all the big ticket items like real-time PCR, confocal microscopy, flow cytometer, histology gadgetry, >500MHz NMR, MALDI-TOF, LCs, etc.
And, no, not for scientist salaries - instrumentation/capital equipment only.
I just want to know if there are any newfangled whizbang thingamabobs out there that I haven't seen in the last year or two, perhaps along the lines of the…
dmunger | June 5, 2008This article was originally posted on March 27, 2007
When we see a familiar face, or even a photo of a favorite car or pet, we're often flooded with memories from our past. Sometimes just seeing a person or object that's similar to the ones in our memory will trigger recollections we never knew we had. Maybe you've had a memory triggered by a scent or the texture of an object. Sometimes emotions such as happiness or anger will spur vivid memories, too.
A new study adds an unexpected method to the list of ways to spur memories about our past: body position. That's right: just holding your body…
dmunger | June 4, 2008Not long ago we discussed work led by Deena Skolnick Weisberg showing that most people are more impressed by neuroscience explanations of psychological phenomena than plain-old psychology explanations. Talking about brains, it seems, is more convincing than simply talking about behavior, even when the neuroscience explanation doesn't actually add any substantive details.
Now David McCabe and Alan Castel have taken this work on the acceptance of neuroscience to a new level: now they've got pictures! They asked 156 students at Colorado State University to read three different newspaper articles…
dmunger | June 3, 2008Take a look at the short movie I've linked below (Click on the picture to play. QuickTime required). The movie shows a virtual gripping device (two red balls) lifting rectangular objects and placing them on a conveyor belt. Do you notice anything unusual happening as the objects are being moved?
This is a recording of the image seen by a volunteer using a virtual-reality headset and two force-feedback devices to simulate moving objects by picking them up with a thumb and index finger. The force-feedback devices offer resistance so that the volunteer feels as if he is lifting real objects…