Photo: AP/Jon Pall Vilhelmsson

As one of six non-Icelandic reporters capable of correctly pronouncing Eyjafjallajokull, the name of the Icelandic volcano that’s been stranding travelers all over the globe, NPR newscaster Korva Coleman has taken on the momentous responsibility of teaching others how to do it.  That’s right. It’s the NPR Eyjafjallajokull rap.

More—much more—almost too much more—help here.

(PHOTO:Magda Wieclawska)

German neurologists have just shown that reading words associated with painful experiences sets off a firestorm of activity in areas of the brain, like the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), that are responsible for processing physical pain.

Neutral, negative but not pain associated, and positive words were used as controls in the study, and the table showing both the German word list and the English translations is the real reason I’m posting this. It’s a fascinating cross-cultural study in itself. How could the word Krampfartig (English: crampy) not make your brain hurt? Peinigend (English: tantalising) makes me ponder; it’s true the word has tormenting origins, but it’s not quite right for English speakers. And on the positive side, I’m not sure what Hocherotisch (English: highly erotic) would do to my DLPFC, but I would sure like to find out.

You may peruse the table above, as well as the paper describing these findings, without fear—the team reported that no actual physical sensations of pain were associated with reading the painful words.

(PHOTO:Christine Daniloff)

Having a hard time deciding if someone’s actions are morally right or wrong? Huh. Have a group of MIT neuroscientists used transcranial magnetic stimulation to mess with the right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) of your brain lately?

In one experiment, volunteers were exposed to TMS for 25 minutes before taking a test in which they read a series of scenarios and made moral judgments of characters’ actions on a scale of one (absolutely forbidden) to seven (absolutely permissible).

In a second experiment, TMS was applied in 500-milisecond bursts at the moment when the subject was asked to make a moral judgment. For example, subjects were asked to judge how permissible it is for a man to let his girlfriend walk across a bridge he knows to be unsafe, even if she ends up making it across safely. In such cases, a judgment based solely on the outcome would hold the perpetrator morally blameless, even though it appears he intended to do harm.

In both experiments, the researchers found that when the right TPJ was disrupted, subjects were more likely to judge failed attempts to harm as morally permissible.

More detail on these startling revelations here.

(PHOTO: Richard Dawkins, as photographed by Mike Cornwell.)

According to a new study by British evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa, social, political, and religious viewpoints that are “evolutionarily novel"—meaning relatively new to human history—are more likely to be held by people of higher intelligence. Among the values Kanazawa classifies as being novel are “caring about an indefinite number of genetically unrelated strangers you never meet or interact with” (liberalism), and failing to “perceive agency and intention...at work behind otherwise natural phenomena” (atheism).

Kanazawa is set to publish his findings in an upcoming issue of Social Psychology Quarterly; at the moment only the abstract of Why Liberals and Atheists Are More Intelligent is available, but you can read a detailed press release here. 

(Whatever else you might think of his work, the guy knows how to write a title: Earlier papers of his include 2001’s Why Single Men Might Abhor Foreign Cultures, and 2004’s Why Beautiful People are More Intelligent.)

Johns Hopkins researchers confirm what we’ve all always suspected—it is your mom’s fault that you’re always getting lost!

“We found that people with a rare genetic disorder cannot use one of the very basic systems of navigation that is present in humans as early as 18 months and shared across a wide range of species,” Landau said. “To our knowledge, this is the first evidence from human studies of a link between the missing genes and the system that we use to reorient ourselves in space.”

More detail here. Thank goodness for smart phones, eh?

...or not.

(PHOTO: DeaPeaJay)

(PHOTO: Jeff the Trojan)

A Spanish experimental psychologist has just concluded that left-handed people like things on the left better than things on the right, unlike right-handed people, who like things on the right better than things on the left.

In one of his experiments, Casasanto presented participants a diagram that depicts a character who was planning a trip to the zoo, and who loves zebras and thinks they are good, but dislikes pandas and thinks they are bad. The participant had to draw a zebra in the box that best represented good things and a panda in the box that best represented bad things.

You can read the press release here. I kind of love it.

(PHOTO: Ohadweb)

The New York Time’s Economix blog, which reports (rather sassily) about what it calls the science of everyday life, recently linked to an Australian study of happiness and divorce rates in a post entitled Don’t Become Happier Than Your Wife. As someone who had a rather dispiriting 2009 and whose husband is happily ensconced in graduate school right now, doing exactly what he loves doing most, I raised an eyebrow.

Using a meta-analysis of three large sample surveys that include questions about happiness, and correlating this with divorce data, the authors found that “an increase in the happiness gap by 1% raises the probability of separation by 0.24% in Germany (GSOEP), 0.3% in Australia (HILDA) and 0.1% in the United-Kingdom (BHPS).” (This may sound small, but the average risk of breakup in the samples, they claim, is only 1.8% to begin with.)

From the paper itself:

...we find that a higher satisfaction gap, even in the first year of marriage, increases the likelihood of a future separation. We interpret this as the effect of comparisons of well-being between spouses, i.e. aversion to unequal sharing of wellbeing inside couples. Couples are more likely to break-up when the difference in life satisfaction is unfavourable to the wife. The information available in the Australian survey reveals that divorces are indeed predominantly initiated by women, and importantly, by women who are unhappier than their husband.

You can read the entire paper here. As for me, when my husband’s experiments don’t go as well as he hopes, maybe I’ll just tell him his frustration is an investment in our long-term future. 

(PHOTO: Jose Luis Rodriguez)

Look! It’s the prizewinning entry in the BBC Wildlife Magazine and London’s Natural History Museum’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. Neat, huh? It’s an awesome photo of an Iberian gray wolf leaping towards its prey! Nature! Wildness! Caught in action! The judges were thrilled!

Oh, snap. Turns out it was all a con. (Probably.)

In a shocking update released today, the photo has been officially disqualified and stripped of its award after the judging panel decided the wolf shown in it was probably a trained hired model, not a wild animal. According to the BBC, “the judging panel looked at a range of evidence and took specialist advice from panel judges who have extensive experience of photographing wildlife including wolves,” before coming to the conclusion that they’d been duped.

The shocking revelation can be found here; the original story about the win is here. The photographer (who had previously explained that the photo was the result of years of planning and even design sketches—somehow this did not catch anyone’s attention) denies any chicanery.

Not that they don’t tear apart. Just that they don’t make you cry.

Crop and Food, a research institute in New Zealand, used gene-silencing to shut off the onion’s biggest flaw. They are hoping to have a prototype onion hitting the market in a decade.

Colin Eady is the senior scientists behind the breakthrough. Here’s what he told AFP: “The technology creates a sequence that switches off the tear-inducing gene in the onion so it doesn’t produce the enzyme. So when you slice the vegetable, it doesn’t produce tears.” He anticipates that the health and the flavor of the onion will actually be enhanced this way. Me? I’m a bit skeptical. But have a decade to wait to see if its justified. 

People, there’s something you have to know. 2008 is the International year of the Potato. That’s right. A whole YEAR of potato festivities. Talk about heaven.

Now this is especially concerning because we’ve already let 17 potential days of spud love pass us by. But that leaves a whole 348 days of potato festivities ahead of us. Truth be told, I don’t know how to go about celebrating a whole year of potatoes. So I went to the UN International Year of the Potato website to find out.

There, they’ve got a handy ”potato calendar” that flags all the good stuff. This February comes the International Potato Technology Expo. Then we’ve got a bunch of do-gooders meeting in Peru this March to convene and discuss the hot topic of “potato science for the poor.” Finally far off into the future in October don’t forget ”Potato week 2008” in Spain - which makes it Semana de la Patata (which begs the question, how does a potato week distinguish itself from a potato year? Are the two not redundant?). And finally, for those that will be sad to see the year of the potato go come December 31, 2008, never fear. The I7th World Potato Congress takes place in March 2009.

I’m personally puzzled as to why Mr. Potato Head isn’t making an appearance during the year of the potato (I mean seriously, it’s a golden opportunity). Also, I think some potato lore, poetry and proverbs wouldn’t go amiss. I stumbled upon this Irish one that my unimaginative head can’t quite process. It goes like this: “"It is easy to halve the potato where there’s love.” ...? As in, people who love are generous and share? They’re good at eying the irregular shape of spuds and cutting them perfectly in half? People in love are rich in potatoes? ?  ?

Moving along. May I also recommend the UN web page that explains the origins of the potato. In fact, the entire “Potato” subsection is a revelation. Did you know there are over 200 species of wild potato that grow in the Americas and over 5,000 varieties grown in the Andes alone. Don’t you want to each every single one!! Where are the potato tours? I want to taste the whole gamut of them. Yum yum. Now that’s an idea worth exploring; a potato eating tour of the Andes. I would SO go.