Science News for Writers

Source:   Daily Excelsior So, you think you're good at remembering faces, but terrible with names? New research has revealed we are actually better at remembering names than faces The cringe-worthy experience of not being able to remember an acquaintance's name leads many of us to believe we are terrible with names. However, new research has revealed this intuition is misleading; we are actually better at remembering names than faces. With the Christmas party season fast approaching, there will be plenty of opportunity to re-live the familiar, and excruciatingly-awkward, social situation of not being able to remember an acquaintance's name. This cringe-worthy experience leads many of us to believe we are terrible at remembering names. However, new research has revealed this intuition is misleading; we are actually better at remembering names than faces. The authors of the study, from the University of York, suggest that when we castigate ourselves f...

Why we shouldn't like coffee, but we do Weirdly, people with a higher sensitivity to bitter caffeine taste drink more coffee The more sensitive people are to the bitter taste of caffeine, the more coffee they drink, reports a new study. The sensitivity is based on genetics. Bitterness is natural warning system to protect us from harmful substances, so we really shouldn't like coffee. Scientists say people with heightened ability to detect coffee's bitterness learn to associate good things with it. Why do we like the bitter taste of coffee? Bitterness evolved as a natural warning system to protect the body from harmful substances. By evolutionary logic, we should want to spit it out. But, it turns out, the more sensitive people are to the bitter taste of caffeine, the more coffee they drink, reports a new study from Northwestern Medicine and QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Australia. The sensitivity is caused by a genetic variant. "You'd...

Source:    Discover Magazine Two things in this story attracted my attention. Mammals, especially us, have the ability to selectively forget things.  Since I tend to forget things I'd rather remember, the first isn't really news.  Well, it is.  It's good news that we can selectively forget things.  Now if I could just selectively remember things. And we're related to rats.  Slimey, stinky, vermin-infested, icky, blaaah rats. Upon further consideration, this is not even a slight surprise. *  *  *  *  *  * Selective amnesia: How rats and humans are able to forget distracting memories Our ability to selectively forget distracting memories is shared with other mammals, suggests new research from the University of Cambridge. The discovery that rats and humans share a common active forgetting ability -- and in similar brain regions -- suggests that the capacity to forget plays a vital role in adapting mammal...

I don't want to say that screenwriters are to blame for this, but we are certainly complicit.  In the quest to create the next blockbuster (while creating a upward career path), resorting to violence to resolve situations is an easy out.  While we could point the finger of blame at producers, studio heads and the money people behind them also want product that makes money, and violence often attracts larger audiences.  This is also true of theater owners and even merchandising company executives. There is plenty of blame to go around. *  *  *  *  * 'Good guys' in superhero films more violent than villains New research found that protagonists in superhero films engage in more violent acts than the villains. In a film genre more popular than ever, courageous superheroes wield special powers to protect the public from villains. But despite positive themes these films may offer, new research suggests superhero characters often i...

Source:  cbc.ca/ Wealth is just one factor in how long people live. There's also happiness.  And so on. Here's the report: *  *  *  *  * Rich people don't live that much longer than the poor Economists take income mobility into account when calculating life expectancy Differences in how many extra years rich people live compared to poor people  is only about half of what we thought, according to new research. New research results, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), challenge previous findings of huge differences in life expectancy between the rich and those at the bottom of the income scale. In real life people don´t necessarily stay poor or stay rich, as assumed in previous research, and three economists from the University of Copenhagen have now found a way to take this mobility between income-classes into account providing a more realistic way to calculate life expectancy for people...