TOP 100 CAMPING SITES
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| A chimpanzee apocalypse in Tanzania? Tanzania's chimpanzee population has plummeted by more than 90 percent, from 10,000 a few years ago to just 700 today, according to a report from the Tanzania National Parks Authority. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Ecotravel: Cycling the World A band of spring showers is chasing me along a stretch of beachside road near Los Angeles. I’m pedaling hard to stay ahead of it, but the prospects are diminishing. The narrow tires of my road bike hiss on the dampening asphalt. Although I’m enjoying my little race with nature, I keep glancing back over my shoulder at this fast-moving mantle of weather like it’s a posse in hot pursuit.I’ve traveled this same highway before, but always sealed inside an automobile, insulated from the exhilarating sensation I’m having right now: the feeling of skimming between sea foam to one side of me and striated cliff faces to the other. Suffusing the entire moment is the faintly electrical smell of approaching rain. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Are Our Big Brains the Reason Newborns Can't Walk? Compared with other animals, human babies take much longer to learn to walk. Does this have something to do with our big brains? --Mahmoud Dhaouadi, via e-mail [More] rss.sciam.com |
50 Years Ago: The Nutcracker Man NOVEMBER 1959 NERVE GROWTH -- “No longer do physicians encourage the patient with a regenerated facial nerve to try to regain control of facial expression by training; their advice today is to inhibit all expression, to practice a ‘poker face’ in order to make the two sides of the face match in appearance. The outlook is equally dim for restoration of coordination in cases of severe nerve injury in other parts of the body. This changed viewpoint reflects a revision in the picture of the entire nervous system. According to the new picture, the connections necessary for normal coordination arise in embryonic development. --R. W. Sperry” [More] rss.sciam.com |
How a Lack of Control Leads to Superstition Imagine a time in your life when you felt out of control--anything from getting lost to losing a job. Now look at the top illustration on this page. What do you see? Such a scenario was presented to subjects in a 2008 experiment by Jennifer Whitson of the University of Texas at Austin and her colleague Adam Galinsky of Northwestern University. Their study, entitled “Lacking Control Increases Illusory Pattern Perception,” was published in Science .Defining “illusory pattern perception” (what I call “patternicity”) as “the identification of a coherent and meaningful interrelationship among a set of random or unrelated stimuli ... (such as the tendency to perceive false correlations, see imaginary figures, form superstitious rituals, and embrace conspiracy beliefs, among others),” the researchers’ thesis was that “when individuals are unable to gain a sense of control objectively, they will try to gain it perceptually.” As Whitson explained the psychology to me, “Feelings of control are essential for our well-being--we think clearer and make better decisions when we feel we are in control. Lacking control is highly aversive, so we instinctive­ly seek out patterns to regain control--even if those patterns are illusory.” [More] rss.sciam.com |