-
Obama to Unveil Initiative to Map the Human Brain
The New York Times: President Obama on Tuesday will announce a broad new research initiative, starting with $100 million in 2014, to invent and refine new technologies to understand the human brain, senior administration officials said Monday. ... “The underlying assumptions about ‘mapping the entire brain’ are very controversial,” said Donald Stein, a neuroscientist at Emory University in Atlanta. He said changes in brain chemistry were “not likely to be able to be imaged by the current technologies that these people are proposing.” Emphasizing the development of technologies first, he said, is not a good approach.
-
Verschwörungstheorien: Was Faktenleugner bewegt (Conspiracy: Fact Deniers)
Der Spiegel: Die überwältigende Mehrheit der Klimaforscher ist sich einig, dass sich das Klima verändert und dass vom Menschen verursachte Kohlendioxidemissionen diesen Prozess beeinflussen. Trotzdem wird in der Öffentlichkeit heftig darüber gestritten - und so mancher lehnt diese These komplett ab. Psychologen haben Motivation und Einstellungen von Klimawandelleugnern mittels eines Online-Fragebogens untersucht. Wie sie im Fachmagazin "Psychological Science" berichten, baten sie eine Reihe von Klima-Bloggern, auf ihren Fragebogen zu verlinken. Er erschien auf acht englischsprachigen Blogs, die der Wissenschaft positiv gegenüberstehen.
-
Mindfulness Training Boosts Test Scores
Pacific Standard: Studies reporting the benefits of mindfulness training keep rolling in—not quite with the regularity of those distracting thoughts that keep popping up in your head, but at a good clip nonetheless. The latest, from a team at the University of California, Santa Barbara, reports even a short, two-week course in focusing the mind can lead to immediate, tangible results: higher scores on tests measuring reasoning and comprehension.
-
Sleeping Like a Baby, Learning at Warp Speed
The Wall Street Journal: Babies and children sleep a lot—12 hours a day or so to our eight. But why would children spend half their lives in a state of blind, deaf paralysis punctuated by insane hallucinations? Why, in fact, do all higher animals surrender their hard-won survival abilities for part of each day? Children themselves can be baffled and indignant about the way that sleep robs them of consciousness. We weary grown-ups may welcome a little oblivion, but at nap time, toddlers will rage and rage against the dying of the light. Read the whole story: The Wall Street Journal
-
How Cultural Stereotypes Lure Women Away From Careers in Science
TIME: Women may be underrepresented in science and technology not because they are less skilled in those areas or because they face specific gender barriers to entering these fields, but because they may find better opportunities elsewhere. That’s the conclusion from a new study by Ming-Te Wang and colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh. According to the researchers, women have broader intellectual talents, which provide them with more occupational options. Read the whole story: TIME
-
Can Meditation Make You a More Compassionate Person?
Scientists have mostly focused on the benefits of meditation for the brain and the body, but research suggests that meditation may also have impacts on interpersonal harmony and compassion.
