darthsunshine pointed me toward a piece on the ABC News website regarding a study that demonstrated positive placebo effect even when the patients knew it was a placebo. This absolutely fascinates me, because this is a research direction that could lead to figuring out how to trigger the body's capacity to heal without need for medication or surgery. ( Read more... )

A scientist at my alma mater has written a "math-free" guide to quantum mechanics. I don't know how much sense his explanation of a laser makes to me, but I do appreciate his comments on "quantum woo": "It kind of seems to me to be at the same level as using mathematical knot theory or topology to justify crossing your fingers when you're making a ( Read more... )

Just droppin' some science for y'all.

At least one universal constant might not be so constant, though the data is still rather preliminary. However, this was the source of one of the most awesome science quotes I've seen in a really long time: "The fundamental constants being constant is an assumption. We're here to test physics, not to assume ( Read more... )

Some stuff from the most recent Science in the News Weekly...

A lot of "common sense" wisdom about studying is actually bullshit, and there is science to prove it. Amongst the most interesting debunked idea I found here was that the whole notion of "learning styles" and "teaching styles" is apparently pretty much a crock. And they give you tips ( Read more... )

In a bit of a hurry, but here's a few good ones from Science in the News last week ( Read more... )

And for once, it's not all just from Science in the News!

The New York Times has an article abstracted from an upcoming book on the role that language plays in how we interpret our world. I guess this maybe seems sort of obvious, but the author discusses some pretty interesting linguistic examples that may really broaden how you think about the ( Read more... )

Holy wow: frickin' cyberarms! http://epicwinftw.com/2010/08/02/awesome-videos-we-can-rebuild-him-we-have-the-technology/

IBM built a pretty freakin' impressive semantic computer named Watson and it plays Jeopardy. Wait, what? No, really - and that's a pretty impressive thing in terms of language processing.

A researcher has been scanning the brains of prison inmates and figured out that the limbic systems of psychopaths aren't as active. And I'm a little creeped ( Read more... )

Remarkably enough, US undergrads aren't psychologically representative of our species-at-large. I know that's shocking, so take a second to chill out.

It's only taken, what, fifty or sixty years of research before someone thought of looking into this objectively? What's wrong with that picture?

http://tallguywrites.livejournal.com/150111.html#cutid1

Nice piece on homeopathy. AND it's a comic!