Science News for Writers

It's getting hard to find anything that isn't a flat-out unintended environmental disaster.  Now Easter Eggs.  Next, Santa's reindeer will be busted for a particularly disgusting aerial discharge - without the proper waste disposal permits. When will it end? Here' the story.  I'm going out to drown my sorrow in chocolate schnapps. *  *  *  *  * Is your Easter egg bad for the environment? A recent study by researchers at The University of Manchester and published in the journal Food Research International has looked at the carbon footprint of chocolate and its other environmental impacts. It has done this by assessing the impacts of ingredients, manufacturing processes, packaging and waste. The study estimates that the UK chocolate industry produces about 2.1m tonnes of greenhouse gases (GHG) a year. This is equivalent to the annual emissions of the whole population of a city as large as Belfast. It also found that it take...

2013_Freedom_House_world_map.svg The idea that English is becoming grammatically simpler as it spreads makes sense; as does English gaining in vocabulary as it borrows words and meanings from the many other languages with which it mingles. So here's the story on this research. *  *  *  *  * What happens to language as populations grow? It simplifies, say researchers Languages have an intriguing paradox. Languages with lots of speakers, such as English and Mandarin, have large vocabularies with relatively simple grammar. Yet the opposite is also true: Languages with fewer speakers have fewer words but complex grammars. Why does the size of a population of speakers have opposite effects on vocabulary and grammar? Through computer simulations, a Cornell University cognitive scientist and his colleagues have shown that ease of learning may explain the paradox. Their work suggests that language, and other aspects of culture, may become simpler as...

Credit: © fizkes / Fotolia Stellar grades in college could hurt -- rather than help -- women new to the  job market, according to a new study that suggests employers place more  value  on the perceived "likability" of female applicants than on their academic success. Given all they must fight. who'd be a woman?  According to this study, you bust your ass getting good grades, even graduating with honors. . . and academic success is held against you in the job and career market. This despite the facts.  Research clearly shows that businesses with women in leadership positions are less likely to fail or to be lead aimlessly into bankruptcy.  Businesses with women in leadership positions are more profitable with fewer problems.  That businesses with women in leadership positions live longer. Yet despite this, a woman can't win, no matter what she does. It's not just a glass ceiling, it's a glass box, trapping you on all sides. P...

Source: Chicago Music I've always liked the simple headline.  Music makes kids smarter.  So does art. Straight forward, easy to grasp. And true. A reason why there must be art and music taught in our schools. *  *  *  *  * Music lessons improve children's cognitive skills and academic performance Cognitive skills developed from music lessons appear to transfer to unrelated subjects, leading to improved academic performance The first large-scale, longitudinal study adapted into the regular school curriculum finds that structured music lessons significantly enhance children's cognitive abilities -- including language-based reasoning, short-term memory, planning and inhibition -- leading to improved academic performance. Visual arts lessons were also found to significantly improve children's visual and spatial memory . Published in Frontiers in Neuroscience, the research is the first large-scale, longitudinal study to be a...

F-bombs notwithstanding,  all languages skew toward happiness: Universal human bias for positive words " Vermont currently has the happiest signal, while Louisiana has the saddest. And the latest data puts Boulder, CO, in the number one spot for happiness, while Racine, WI, is at the bottom ." In 1969, two psychologists at the University of Illinois proposed what they called the Pollyanna Hypothesis -- the idea that there is a universal human tendency to use positive words more frequently than negative ones. "Put even more simply," they wrote, "humans tend to look on (and talk about) the bright side of life." It was a speculation that has provoked debate ever since. Now a team of scientists at the University of Vermont and The MITRE Corporation have applied a Big Data approach -- using a massive data set of many billions of words, based on actual usage, rather than "expert" opinion -- to confirm the 1960s guess. Movie ...

Source:  Positive Writer This is one of the cooler bits of research published this year, with implications for the writer. One, you can turn failure to success by writing about the experience of failure. Two, you can turn down your stress level by writing about the experience of failure. Three, having a character write about the experience of his or her failure as a device to turn it around also teaches your reader a useful technique. And how cool is this? Here's the research: *  *  *  *  * Analyzing past failures may boost future performance by reducing stress Study shows for first time that writing critically about past setbacks leads to lower stress responses, better choices and better performance on a new stressful task Insights from past failures can help boost performance on a new task -- and a new study is the first to explain why. US researchers report that writing critically about past setbacks leads to lower leve...

Credit: Elisabeth Holmqvist-Sipilä Map of neolithic pottery exchange network in the Baltic Sea region. It seems that it is mostly men who receive credit for innovation.  Scientists assume the first stone tools were made by men.  The first farmers were men.  The first fishers were men.  Women were gatherers and caretakers in the ancient hunter gatherer societies.  Were they? Seriously, were they? How does anyone know? Was testosterone found rubbed into the surface of a 500,000 year old hand ax indicating it was made by a man? It could have been a woman watching the kids take a nap in camp while the men were out scavenging dead meat who invented the first hand ax or spear point.  It could have been a woman who wove the first basket.  It could have been a woman who painted the first bison on the wall of a cave.  (You know how men are about decorating the home.  It's a struggle.) We simply don't know.  And there is no ...