Science News for Writers

health.ninemsn.com.au/ C haracters in fiction with a gambling addiction offer the writer the opportunity to explore the many foibles and flaws of the human animal ~ provided the author or screenwriter does their homework to develop their character in a believable way. Suggested reading A gambling addiction, like many issues, is complex, with the addict prone to so many underlying issues and personality disorders.  A writer just can't say, this is a gambling addict.  This is a sex addict.  This is a video game addict.  This is a cell phone addict. In every case, the addiction is the character's problem everyone sees.  Like an iceberg, the addiction is what shows above the surface.  What isn't so obvious are the underlying personality problems.  Yet these problems drive the addictive behavior, drive your character and drive your story.  Beyond gambling, how does the character behave?  What is their self image?  How do they t...

theguardian.com   " Almost all of the participants stated that they liked reading a printed  book  best. . .  but it does not match the data obtained from the study ," T he debate between authors and publishers continues.  Do their readers prefer and have a better reading experience from a book or a screen, and which of these offers more reading comfort? Many authors express concern that while younger readers have grown up reading from screens, by publishing an E-book, they may be missing a major section of their market - older readers who prefer and process information from the print page. According to research conducted at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU, and published in 2011, there are no disadvantages to reading from electronic reading devices such as an E-book compared with reading printed texts.  This result holds true for both younger and older readers. Whether printed or digital, reading itself remains the important cultu...

Credit: © Giuseppe Porzani / Fotolia Artist's abstraction (stock illustration). According to Poirier's theory, quantum  reality is not wave-like at all, but is composed of multiple, classical-like worlds.  In each of these worlds, every object has  very definite physical attributes, such  as position and momentum. Within a given world, objects interact with each other  classically. All quantum effects, on the other hand, manifest as interactions between "nearby" parallel worlds. Sorry, authors and screenwriters, researchers are taking interacting parallel worlds and universes out of the realm of science fiction and into that of hard science.   Very hard science. Griffith University academics, Professor Howard Wiseman and Dr Michael Hall from Griffith's Centre for Quantum Dynamics, and Dr Dirk-Andre Deckert from the University of California, are challenging the foundations of quantum science with a radical new theory based on...

www.cinemaparadiso.co.uk   Edward Fox as the Jackal in the 1973 action-suspense film, The Day of the Jackal, an action adventure film that made you think. Action  adventure films sell more tickets, but are less likely to earn  critical acclaim. Movies that are more emotional and contain darker  portrayals earn praise from critics and favorable ratings from viewers. This, in a nutshell is the challenge of making serious movies in the U.S.  According to recently published research, action and adventure movies sell more tickets and make more money in release. But after release, does anyone remember them even a week later? Let's face it, action movies drive box office revenues. But dramas and deeper, more serious movies earn audience acclaim and appreciation, according to a team of researchers. If you're trying to sell a script to a producer or studio, are your odds better with an action adventure movie, or with a serious examinatio...

Source: sb.cc.stonybrook.edu/news/ F ifteen to 20 percent of us will suffer a Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) in our lifetime.  And some of us suffer some degree of depression throughout our lives.  Researcher Turhan Canli, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychology and Radiology at Stony Brook University (left), proposes that we build a new concept of depression: that depression may result from an infection by a parasite, bacteria or virus. According to Dr. Canli, and as anyone who has suffered depression knows, recurrence is common, and pharmacological treatments have not changed. He feels this is because the our understanding of what causes depression is not clearly defined. Is depression caused by loss?  Poor diet? Genetic make-up? Prolonged stress?  All have been identified as a factor in causing depression, but have researchers have delved as deeply as is needed to identify depressions' true causes? Dr. Canli argues not. And if we don't understand what ca...

Adrian as played by Talia Shire in the Rocky movies.  When she first meets Rocky, Adrian is painfully shy and withdrawn.  If any character in fiction has a social anxiety disorder, Adrian does. It's common in fiction for an author or screenwriter to develop a character that finds making friends difficult, whether it’s a protagonist or part of a supporting cast. Developing a character suffering social anxiety, the most common type of anxiety, is your opportunity to create a story that most readers and audiences connect to readily: showing someone growing and changing through the events and interactions in your story.  At the same time, you're creating a character any skilled actor would love to play. Case in point: Adrian as played by Talia Shire in the Rocky movies.  When she first meets Rocky, Adrian is painfully shy and withdrawn.  If any character in fiction has a social anxiety disorder, Adrian does.  Her cha...

www.bbc.co.uk Stephen Hawking communicates using a clever computer program especially designed for his needs.  Note the small sensor on Professor Hawking's right cheek.   T oday, physicist Stephen Hawking communicates using those few muscles his brain still controls, with winks and twitches that are interpreted by a computer and the guesswork of those around him. His mind is trapped. If there were a way to directly capture the electrical signals in his brain to say or write what he is thinking as he thinks it, it would free him from the perpetual guessing game that he and his assistants now endure.  Hawking is not alone in this inability to communicate. There may be not a cure for Hawking's paralysis, but one day soon there may be a method for him to communicate directly with the world around him based on the discoveries neuroscientist Irina Simanova made ...

Credit: Peter the Great Museum A ground-breaking study on DNA recovered from the Kostenki skull a man who lived 3 6,000 years ago in Kostenki, western Russia shows that the earliest European humans' genetic ancestry survived the Last Glacial Maximum: the peak point of the last ice age.   R ecently, researchers from Cambridge University announced the recovery of ancient DNA from a 36,000 year old skeleton, the second oldest from which genetic material has been successfully extracted.  This DNA shows three things: Our earliest European genomes or DNA profiles, weathered the Ice Age.  The date when our ancestors interbred with Neandertals. That a mystery population that disappeared for around 30,000 years are the people who gave us agriculture about 8,000 years ago. Homo Sapiens, us, originated several hundred thousand years ago deep in Africa, perhaps as far south as a river delta in South Africa, before e...

Source:  The Leicester Mercury I remember the process of negotiating with my wife over the naming of my sons.  What this led to wasn't quite an argument, but was certainly more than a disagreement.  Every married man knows the look, and I got the look when I insisted naming our oldest after my father, with a middle name, Lincoln, from a friend. When the second was born, I stayed mostly quiet and let his mother name him.  Tyler Wallace.  A popular first name of the time combined with the name of his maternal grandfather. Neither son has forgiven me. Now comes your opportunity to get the look from most of the women on our good planet.  Or if you're a woman, you can enjoy the male half standing quietly aside as if to avoid a bloody battle they have slim odds of winning. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) are asking our help in naming the 20 to 30 exoplanet...