Money, it’s a hit: want it or have it
Wednesday, June 11th, 2008
When you have money, life is good. When you want money, life could be better. Here’s the abstract from Vohs et al (HT Neuroscientifically Challenged who has a great analysis of the whole paper):
ABSTRACT—Money plays a significant role in people’s lives, and yet little experimental attention has been given to the psychological underpinnings of [...]
Looking for a wife who is nice, safe, and goes to sleep early? Answer, plus a joke.
Tuesday, June 10th, 2008Marry a nice Finnish girl born prematurely. In Finland, very low birth weight girls grow up to be more conscientious, more agreeable, less open to new things, have lower hostility and aggressiveness, and go to sleep earlier than controls.
This reminds me of a joke: The mother sends the daughter off into the world to go [...]
Psychopaths, platypus, mammalian infants - REM sleep but no dreams may indicate white matter disconnect.
Wednesday, June 4th, 2008Last January I wondered if psychopaths dream — and noted that the only mammal (or maybe one of the few mammals) that doesn’t dream is a platypus. This post follows up, with a discussion of the “Platypus Defense” as part of the murder trial of Hans Reiser. Plus platypus genome and microRNA and transposable elements [...]
Obesity research: Tesofensine and NS2359 drug family for weight loss - Better to block three receptors than only 5HT2c? Nah.
Friday, May 30th, 2008So far, lorcaserin is the only weight loss drug in the near future that makes commercial sense to me, not to say it is the most wonderful drug in the world and the science is, imo, sort of a yawner.
I keep an eye out for better weight loss drugs on the horizon — so here’s [...]
DNA Research Roundup: Fragile X Premutation, Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder and Major Psychosis all related to DNA misprocessing
Thursday, May 29th, 2008Albert Bierstadt, Lake Tahoe, Spearfishing by Torchlight (1867)
I’ve wondered why the meanest relatives live the longest , and pointed to some DNA trinuclotide repeat disorders that have psychiatric aspects — like machiavellianism or just meanness . So here’s more on that: Fragile X premutation, schizophrenia, biopolar and major psychosis are all related to [...]
The Post-Smoking Society: Smokers - quick - band together and sell your genomes.
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008The anti-smoking drug Chantix is in the news for having significant side-effects — which brings up a conundrum: which is worse, the drug or the addiction?
New research shows the nature and the environment: (a) some people are clearly genetically loaded to smoke; and (b) when people quit, they quit in groups of three.
Which brings up [...]
Narcissism Research Round-Up
Tuesday, May 20th, 2008
What’s the latest research on narcissism? Three studies discussed:
1. Narcissists are motivated to achieve a desired outcome (probably further personal glory) but not that motivated to avoid a negative outcome.
2. Depressive symptoms induce paranoid symptoms in narcissistic personalities (but not narcissistic symptoms in paranoid personalities).
3. On-line gamers are reported to be high on the [...]
Where do you put your insulin when you don’t have a refrigerator? Or electricity?
Monday, May 19th, 2008Ok, this is strictly a pharma-geek post, but this is why there is science: combining chemistry, protein structure, medicine, computer science, and third world social sciences, scientists from Cleveland and Chicago made a mini-revolution: uber-insulin that doesn’t need refrigeration. How great is that?
Maybe a little back story: One of my side projects is working with [...]
Your family is more likely to pull the plug if they’re happy with the ICU
Friday, March 7th, 2008Say you’re on life support, and, you are just racking up the ICU bills. Will your family be a little too enthusiastic in pulling the plug?
The hospital admin knows these bills won’t get paid, since the debt dies with the debtor, in most cases. So what do they do? The butter up your [...]
A Few of My Favorite Things - Select Posts from Research Blogging Members
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008
Raindrops on Roses by leobaby 727 on Flickr
Some selected posts from others in Research Blogging that I found of particular interest (thank you fellow bloggers):
Sphere: Related Content
Open Up Peer Review Because We Are Global
Saturday, February 23rd, 2008“The Unknown Reviewer” by Swivelchair (work modified from Brymo ’s “Day 57 Brown Baggin It“via Flickr (under attribution license))
Kennedy, D. (2008). Confidential Review–or Not?. Science, 319(5866), 1009-1009. DOI: 10.1126/science.1156250
What are “peer-reviewers” afraid of?
“Peer-review” is the process by which scientific research is legitimized — the work is vetted by others in the industry [...]
On the internet nobody knows you’re a dog. . .
Friday, February 22nd, 2008In the Western world, we love to anthropomorphize our dogs. There was a New Yorker cartoon, at the dawn of the internet age, where a dog was clicking away at a keyboard, remarking to another little dog, “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” As they say in Washington, if you want a friend, [...]
If men did equal housework employers wouldn’t have this problem.
Tuesday, February 19th, 2008
Professor Henry Higgins:
Noted Wonderer of “Why Can’t A Woman Be More Like A Man?”Whereas the More Economically Efficient Question Would Be “Why Can’t A Man Be More Like A Woman?”
Selmi, M.L. (2008). The Work-Family Conflict: An Essay on Employers, Men and Responsibility. University of St. Thomas Law Journal, 1(1), 1-24.
SSRN suggested citation: Selmi, [...]
How powerful people avoid criminal labels: steroids, backdating and stolen museum artifacts
Monday, February 18th, 2008Jose Canseco, the noted baseball player and author of “Juiced“, was busy as a bee pollinating major league baseball with knowledge and practices for steroid and growth hormone use. (Here’s the link on Docuticker). This strikes me as similar to the stock option backdating scenario — interlocking boards of directors and using the [...]
Brain mitochondria: serotonin transports ‘em, and dopamine messes with ‘em.
Sunday, February 17th, 2008 Wired ran a news report about a Science paper showing how mitochondria are culprits in making heart cells dysfunction. I wondered about brain cells. After all, brain cells need energy too. What about brain cell mitochondria?
Now, the Wired report caught my eye because it was about heart cells, and I generally follow cardiac [...]