J
Aug 4, 2008
Jul 22, 2008
Plant migrations
You’ve heard of bird migrations, here’s something different: plant migration. It seems that plants are beginning to migrate in search of cooler climes.
“The researchers found that grasses, herbs and other short-lived species that had been through many generations shifted the most in search of perfect temperatures, whereas long-lived trees stayed largely in place. According to the authors, this is changing the composition of the forest—mixing formerly low-altitude grasses with high-altitude trees—which could potentially affect the entire ecosystem, particularly the animals that rely on specific plants to survive.”
Courtesy: SciAm
No cheating in front of the mirror
Research shows that people are less likely to cheat or demonstrate other undesirable behavior when working in front of a mirror. Perhaps we should mandate that all interior walls in our politicians’ offices are covered with mirrors. I’m sure they will become immune to it after they get used to it in a couple of weeks, but for a few weeks at least, we’ll have a cleaner government.
“Other researchers have determined that mirrors can subtly affect human behavior, often in surprisingly positive ways. Subjects tested in a room with a mirror have been found to work harder, to be more helpful and to be less inclined to cheat, compared with control groups performing the same exercises in nonmirrored settings. Reporting in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, C. Neil Macrae, Galen V. Bodenhausen and Alan B. Milne found that people in a room with a mirror were comparatively less likely to judge others based on social stereotypes about, for example, sex, race or religion.”
Jul 14, 2008
To stop eating chips, change your couch
"Dr. Wood studied exercise habits among students who transferred from one college to another. When locations remained stable - the new school had an outdoor track just like the old school, for example - students continued running regularly. But if the tracks were too different, the exercise tapered off, on average. In another experiment, conducted by researchers studying smokers, those wanting to quit were more than twice as successful if they started kicking the habit while on vacation, when surrounded by unfamiliar people and places.
""Habits are formed when the memory associates specific actions with specific places or moods," said Dr. Wood, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke. "If you regularly eat chips while sitting on the couch, after a while, seeing the couch will automatically prompt you to reach for the Doritos. These associations are sometimes so strong that you have to replace the couch with a wooden chair for a diet to succeed."
"The researchers at P.& G. realized that these types of findings had enormous implications for selling Febreze. Because bad smells occurred too infrequently for a Febreze habit to form, marketers started looking for more regular cues on which they could capitalize."
Jul 10, 2008
Octopus "handedness"
It seems that some researchers are trying to figure out if octopuses (octopi?) are left handed or right handed, or rather, more accurately, if they prefer some of their appendages over others for various tasks.
As much as I love science and enjoy learning about esoteric research, I have ask: Is this really the best use of science resources (scientists, their free-labor students, and money)?
The article claims that the results will help make octopuses life in captivity a bit easier, that is, instead of feeding them food from left side, we can now feed them from the right side.
Ummm, maybe it’s just me, but if I’m stuck in a cage for life, I’m not sure how much I would care about the food being served from the window to my left or the one on my right…
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