Science & Society

Music training, with its pervasive effects on the nervous system’s ability to process sight and sound, may be more important for enhancing verbal communication skills than learning phonics, according to a new Northwestern University study. Musicians use all of their senses to practice and perform a musical piece. They watch other musicians, read lips, and feel, hear and perform music, thus, engaging multi-sensory skills. As it turns out, the brain’s alteration from the multi-sensory process of music training enhances the same communication skills needed for speaking and reading, the study…

Men who have lower-pitched voices have more children than do men with high-pitched voices, researchers have found. And their study suggests that for reproductive-minded women, mate selection favors men with low-pitched voices. In previous studies, David Feinberg, assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour at McMaster University, and his colleagues have shown that women find deeper male voices to be more attractive, judging them to be more dominant, older, healthier and more masculine sounding. Men, on the other hand, find higher-pitch voices in women more…

The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) is a collaboration of over 315 institutional investors with assets under management of more than $41 trillion. They have released their 5th annual global report, providing the largest and most comprehensive database of strategies from the world's largest corporations regarding the impact of climate change on shareholder value. On behalf of the collaboration of 315 investors, including Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, CalPERS and AIG, CDP has sent a questionnaire to the world's largest publicly-owned companies each year since 2002. This elicits detailed…

The "Victorian Era", named for the period when Queen Victoria was Queen of England and the British Empire was at its apex, is now regarded as one of either impeccable manners and dress or one of sexual repression and quiet frustration. Ian Christopher McManus of the University College London says that Victorian society also seems to have repressed left-handedness. 11 percent of people today are left-handed yet according to his research only 3 percent of people born in 1900 were. They say that threefold difference merits explanation and they looked to old films for answers. "Left-…

Breasts move far more than ordinary bras are designed to cope with and they also bounce more during exercise – up to 21 cm rather than the maximum 16 cm bounce measured in past studies, according to new research. Ordinary bras can stop the bouncing but the new study by University of Portsmouth scientist Dr Joanna Scurr shows that breasts also move side-to-side and in and out and estimates are that more than 50 percent of women experience breast pain when exercising, regardless of cup size. Dr Scurr’s study also found that breasts move as much during slow jogging as they do at maximum sprint…

With prices of gourmet coffee approaching sticker-shock levels, scientists in Illinois are reporting development of a method to "fingerprint" coffee to detect when corn has been mixed in to short-change customers. Gulab Jham and colleagues point out that such adulteration of Brazilian coffee is among the most serious problems affecting coffee quality -- with cereal grains, coffee twigs, and brown sugar sometimes mixed into the genuine article. Their research focuses on detecting corn, probably the most widely used adulterant. The study describes development and use on six popular coffee…

A nationwide survey of the religious beliefs and practices of American physicians has found that the least religious of all medical specialties is psychiatry. Among psychiatrists who have a religion, more than twice as many are Jewish and far fewer are Protestant or Catholic, the two most common religions among physicians overall. The study, published in the September 2007 issue of Psychiatric Services, also found that religious physicians, especially Protestants, are less likely to refer patients to psychiatrists, and more likely to send them to members of the clergy or to a religious…

If you wander around the SciFoo Lives On area, you will notice that some of the poster booths have bells. If the text above them is green, it indicates that the presenter is somewhere in Second Life. The visitor can then just click on the bell to summon the presenter with a quick message. If the text is red, the presenter is not in world. However, a message can still be sent and it will show up the next time they log in. Now this can be problematic for users who created a Second Life account exclusively for the purpose of presenting or attending a SciFoo Lives On session since they are…

A new study authored by Tore Nielsen, PhD, of the Sleep Research Centre at the Hôpital du Sacré-Cœur de Montréal in Montréal, Québec, Canada, found that expectant mothers had their dream content impact impacted and it wasn't always good. Maternal responsibility and concern led to anxiety in the mother that often spilled over into wakefulness. These kinds of dreams were also accompanied by complex behaviors in new moms such as motor activity, speaking and expressing emotion. The following summarizes the results: The percentage of women in all groups who recalled dreams ranged from 88-91…

Previous studies have shown that there is a very weak correlation between experts’ judgments of cultural entertainment, such as movies, and popular judgment. These findings have been taken to mean that ordinary people don’t have “good taste.” However, a new study by researchers at Columbia University and Boccini University, Italy, argues that when controlling for marketing campaigns, regular consumers show more “good taste” than previously thought. The most common working definition of “good taste” utilizes the judgment of experts, who have honed their understanding of a particular cultural…