David Dobbs's EasyBlog

Quotes:

Amazon.com: Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension (Philosophy of the Mind): Andy Clark: Books

• a growing number of social scientists are offering their expertise in behavioral decision making, risk analysis, and evolutionary influences on human behavior to explain our limited responses to global warming. Among the most significant factors they point to: The way we're psychologically wired and socially conditioned to respond to crises makes us ill-suited to react to the abstract and seemingly remote threat posed by global warming. Their insights are also leading to some intriguing recommendations about how to get people to take action-including the potentially dangerous prospect of playing on people's fears.
  • The average 20-29 year old scores a 2.5 on my Memory Test. How well can you do?
    

    • Professor Christakis' extensive review looked at 78 studies published over the last 25 years and reiterates the findings of numerous studies he has carried out with colleagues into this specialist area.

      
      

      He points out that as many as nine in ten children under the age of two watch TV regularly, despite ongoing warnings, and some spend as much as 40 per cent of their waking hours in front of a TV.

      • • 29 per cent of parents who took part in a survey of 1,000 American families published in 2007 said they let their infants watch TV because they thought it was "good for their brains". But claims made by manufacturers are not substantiated by peer-reviewed medical papers and industry studies.
        • Watching TV programmes or DVDs aimed at infants can actually delay language development, according to a number of studies. For example, a 2008 Thai study published in Acta Paediatrica found that if children under 12 months watched TV for more than two hours a day they were six times more likely to have delayed language skills. Another study found that children who watched baby DVDs between seven and 16 months knew fewer words than children who did not.

ARCHAEOLOGIST UNCOVERS EVIDENCE OF ANCIENT CHEMICAL WARFARE

Dark Skies Awareness

A New Push to Turn Off the Lights in 2009 | Wired Science from Wired.com

Daily Kos: Marine Life Series

Sleepwalker found frozen had taken Ambien

VSL?

Quotes:

CRIMINOLOGY: Study Shows How Degraded Surroundings Can Degrade Behavior -- Holden 322 (5905): 1175a -- Science

• CRIMINOLOGY:
  Study Shows How Degraded Surroundings Can Degrade Behavior

  
  Constance Holden

  
  

  Antisocial cues. People are much more likely to litter a graffiti-adorned alley than one in which the walls are clean. CREDIT: ANTHONY COOPER/ECOSCENE/CORBIS

  
  If you're walking by a wall covered with graffiti, are you also more likely to litter? The Broken Window Theory, crystallized in a 1982 article in The Atlantic by political scientist James Q. Wilson and criminologist George L. Kelling, posits that the environment has a significant effect on whether people engage in antisocial behavior. But there's been little empirical research on just how "broken windows" lead to social disorder and crime--until now.

  
  In a series of cleverly designed experiments reported in a paper published online by Science this week (www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1161405), researchers at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands found that if people see one norm or rule being violated (such as graffiti or a vehicle parked illegally), they're more likely to violate others--such as littering, or even stealing.

  • In one setup, for example, the experimenters attached useless fliers to the handles of bicycles parked in an alley that had a sign on the wall forbidding graffiti. There was no trash can in the alley. The experimenters covertly watched how many people tossed the fliers on the pavement or put them on another bike rather than pocketing them for disposal. On another day, they set up the same condition in the same place, except with graffiti on the wall.

    
    The results were striking: When there was no graffiti, a third of 77 cyclists tossed the flier away. But more than two-thirds littered after the graffiti was applied. In another experiment involving a €5 note left sticking out of a mailbox, 13% of subjects pocketed it when the mailbox was in a clean environment, compared with 23% when there was trash around.

    • The study demonstrates that disorder in the environment has a generalized effect, says social psychologist Robert Cialdini of Arizona State University, Tempe. That finding suggests government agencies can expect a big payoff from what he calls "relatively minor efforts, let's say, to keep the streets clean."
      • Cialdini says his research has found that people's pro-social behavior can be calibrated to quite a fine degree and is shaped not only by what they see but also by what they believe to be true. For example, many hotel bathrooms have signs advising visitors that reusing their towels is good for the environment. On any given day, he says, about 38% of guests will reuse their towels. But the percentage rises to one-half if guests are told that a majority of the hotel's guests reuse their towels. "And if we say, 'The majority of guests in this room' reuse towels, we get even more [participation]," says Cialdini.

Quotes:

CRIMINOLOGY: Study Shows How Degraded Surroundings Can Degrade Behavior -- Holden 322 (5905): 1175a -- Science

• CRIMINOLOGY:Study Shows How Degraded Surroundings Can Degrade Behavior
  Constance Holden
  
  
  
  Antisocial cues. People are much more likely to litter a graffiti-adorned alley than one in which the walls are clean.
  CREDIT: ANTHONY COOPER/ECOSCENE/CORBIS
  If you're walking by a wall covered with graffiti, are you also more likely to litter? The Broken Window Theory, crystallized in a 1982 article in The Atlantic by political scientist James Q. Wilson and criminologist George L. Kelling, posits that the environment has a significant effect on whether people engage in antisocial behavior. But there's been little empirical research on just how "broken windows" lead to social disorder and crime--until now.
  In a series of cleverly designed experiments reported in a paper published online by Science this week (www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1161405), researchers at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands found that if people see one norm or rule being violated (such as graffiti or a vehicle parked illegally), they're more likely to violate others--such as littering, or even stealing.
  • In one setup, for example, the experimenters attached useless fliers to the handles of bicycles parked in an alley that had a sign on the wall forbidding graffiti. There was no trash can in the alley. The experimenters covertly watched how many people tossed the fliers on the pavement or put them on another bike rather than pocketing them for disposal. On another day, they set up the same condition in the same place, except with graffiti on the wall.
    The results were striking: When there was no graffiti, a third of 77 cyclists tossed the flier away. But more than two-thirds littered after the graffiti was applied. In another experiment involving a €5 note left sticking out of a mailbox, 13% of subjects pocketed it when the mailbox was in a clean environment, compared with 23% when there was trash around.

You see this? It appears Northstar is doing some conference-presentation data presentations as well. Do you know what their target is? ("Cortical stimulation" would seem to offer a lot of possibilities...). This look similar to the other case?

Dave

Quotes:

Northstar Neuroscience Announces Presentation Of Long-Term Data Of Cortical Stimulation For Depression And Stroke Recovery