Science & Society

Did The Victorian Era Repress Left-Handed People Too?

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 Christ ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 17 2007 - 10:44am

Investment Banks Issue Survey Of Climate Change Strategies

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 s ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 24 2007 - 1:36am

Men With Deep Voices Have More Children, Says 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 Fe ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 24 2007 - 2:57pm

Music May Beat Phonics In Improving Verbal Skills

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 al ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 24 2007 - 11:12pm

Open Notebook Science Case Studies Session In Second Life

We had about a dozen participants at the Open Notebook Science Case Studies SciFoo Lives On session yesterday. I talked about using a free and hosted blog (Blogger), wiki (Wikispaces), referral tracker (Sitemeter), mailing list (Google Groups), molecule da ...

Article - Jean-Claude Bradley - Sep 25 2007 - 11:31am

Biogenic Amines Test Could Help Avoid Headaches From Chocolate And Wine

Researchers in California are reporting development of a fast, inexpensive test suitable for home use that could help millions of people avoid those ‘out of the blue’ headaches that may follow consumption of certain red wines, cheese, chocolate, and other ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 1 2007 - 2:29pm

Less Popular Music Impacted Most By Music Piracy, Says Study

File sharing is taking its worst toll on smaller albums, “devastating” lower ranked titles on the Billboard Top 100, according to the Management Insights feature in the current issue of Management Science. The authors completed rigorous empirical analysis, ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 1 2007 - 2:37pm

Wired Article On Dark Data

Tom Goetz wrote a thoughtful article " It's Time to Free the Dark Data of Failed Scientific Experiments " in Wired this week. So what happens to all the research that doesn't yield a dramatic outcome —or, worse, the opposite of what res ...

Article - Jean-Claude Bradley - Oct 2 2007 - 3:16am

Opinions Of Peers Count A Lot More When They're Negative

'Word of mouth' advertising is valuable because marketing groups know that opinions of friends and associates count more than the paid endorsements of strangers. But what kind of opinions matter most? It turns out the negative ones do, even if so ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 5 2007 - 12:58pm

Weight Gain Between Pregnancies May Increase Chances Of A Male Baby, Says Study

Correlation is not causation but a new study in the journal Fertility & Sterility found that mothers who experienced an increase in weight from the beginning of the first pregnancy to the beginning of the second pregnancy may be slightly more likely to ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 6 2007 - 12:54pm