http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/apps/cvp/3.0/swf/cnn_416x234_embed.swf?context=embed&videoId=us/2011/01/03/dnt.ar.bird.fish.deaths.katv thedailywhat: Another Unfortunate Incident of the Day: Some 100,000 lifeless drum fish were spotted floating in the Arkansas River near Ozark, Arkansas, some 125 miles west of Beebe, where over 5,000 blackbirds suddenly dropped dead on New Year’s Eve. Keith Stephens of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission says disease is the likely culprit, […]
Read moreTHE JUNGLE INSIDE A CAVE: A roof collapse ages ago in Hang Son Doong let in the light; plants thickly followed. Here, “Sweeny” Sewell climbs to the surface as hikers struggle through the wryly named Garden of Edam. Photo by Carsten Peter.
Read morePolitical Ideology Linked to Brain Anatomy
Political Ideology Linked to Brain Anatomy
In particular, scientists in the UK observed that conservatives tended to have a larger amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for emotion and anxiety, and a smaller anterior cingulate, which supplies bravery and optimism. From the Telegraph:
Prof Geraint Rees, who led the research, said: “We were very surprised to find that there was an area of the brain that we could predict political attitude.
"It is very surprising because it does suggest there is something about political attitude that is encoded in our brain structure through our experience or that there is something in our brain structure that determines or results in political attitude.”
Prof Rees and his team, who carried out the research for the Today programme on BBC Radio 4, looked at the brain make up of the Labour MP Stephen Pound and Alan Duncan, the Conservative Minister of State for International Development using a scanner.
They also questioned a further 90 students, who had already been scanned for other studies, about their political views.
The results, which will be published next year, back up a study that showed that some people were born with a “Liberal Gene” that makes people more likely to seek out less conventional political views.
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The crazy life and crazier death of Tycho Brahe, history’s strangest astronomer
Read more’Periodic Table of Rejected Elements’ by Michael Gerber and Jonathan Schwarz, The Atlantic, August 1999. [via]
Read moreTired of Repetitive Arguing About Climate Change, Scientist Makes a Bot to Argue For Him: Poos, you should take this bot on and drop some of your mad science.
Read moreWith Botox, a person can respond otherwise normally to an emotional event, [such as] a sad movie scene, but will have less movement in the facial muscles that have been injected, and therefore less feedback to the brain about such facial expressivity. It thus allows for a test of whether facial expressions and the sensory feedback from them to the brain can influence our emotions.
Joshua Davis, Psychologist at Barnard College in New York. ’Botox paralyzes your emotions, too, study shows’ [MSNBC]
Science behind the parting of the Red Sea
Science behind the parting of the Red Sea
A ‘Science of the Bible’ book would make a fascinating read.
A close-up of Sauron’s eye a sunspot, taken with the New Solar Telescope, located in Big Bear Lake, California on July 2, 2010. (Credit: BBSO / Sky and Space Photos)[via]
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