The Daily Sabbatical

Women In Bikinis Make Men Spend Stupidly – On Everything

Submitted by News Account on 30 May 2008 – 12:21pm. Science & Society

It’s no surprise that a woman in a bikini can increase a man’s sexual appetite but research in the Journal of Consumer Research says that men who watched sexy videos or even handled lingerie had more appetite for everything – and it impacted their decisions about soda, candy and even money.

Authors Bram Van den Bergh, Siegfried DeWitte, and Luk Warlop (KULeuven, Belgium) found that the desire for immediate rewards increased in men who touched bras, looked at pictures of beautiful women, or watched video clips of young women in bikinis running through a park.

The authors believe the stimuli bring men’s minds to the present as opposed to the future. “The study demonstrates that bikinis cause a shift in time preference: Men live in the here and now when they glance at pictures featuring women in lingerie. That is, men will choose the immediately available rewards and seek immediate gratification after sex cue exposure.”

Do all straight men respond the same? Actually, no. Some men are highly responsive to rewards while others are not so sensitive, and the more reward-sensitive men are the impatient ones.

“It seems that sexual appetite causes a greater urgency to consume anything rewarding,” the authors suggest. Thus, the activation of sexual desire appears to spill over into other brain systems involved in reward-seeking behaviors, even the cognitive desire for money.

In fact, doing a task designed to inspire financial satisfaction reduced the bikini-inspired impatience, just as feeling full reduces food cravings. Men may want to be aware of bikinis’ effects on their bank accounts and waistlines.

“After they touched a bra, men are more likely to be content with a smaller immediate monetary reward,” writes Bram Van den Bergh, one of the study’s authors. “Prior exposure to sexy stimuli may influence the choice between chocolate cake or fruit for dessert.”

Article: Bram Van den Bergh, Siegfried DeWitte, and Luk Warlop. “Bikinis Instigate Generalized Impatience in Intertemporal Choice” Journal of Consumer Research: June 2008.

Can you imagine the confusion and fear? I mean, it’s interesting from our perspective that these dudes are out there, but occupy their perspective for a moment! Link to Guardian article here.

Isolated tribe spotted in Brazil

One of South America’s few remaining uncontacted indigenous tribes has been spotted and photographed on the border between Brazil and Peru.

The Brazilian government says it took the images to prove the tribe exists and help protect its land.

The pictures, taken from an aeroplane, show red-painted tribe members brandishing bows and arrows.

More than half the world’s 100 uncontacted tribes live in Brazil or Peru, Survival International says.

Stephen Corry, the director of the group – which supports tribal people around the world – said such tribes would “soon be made extinct” if their land was not protected.

‘Monumental crime’

Survival International says that although this particular group is increasing in number, others in the area are at risk from illegal logging.

Uncontacted tribe near Brazil-Peru border

What do the pictures tell us?
In pictures: Brazil tribe

The photos were taken during several flights over one of the most remote parts of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil’s Acre region.

They show tribe members outside thatched huts, surrounded by the dense jungle, pointing bows and arrows up at the camera.

“We did the overflight to show their houses, to show they are there, to show they exist,” the group quoted Jose Carlos dos Reis Meirelles Junior, an official in the Brazilian government’s Indian affairs department, as saying.

“This is very important because there are some who doubt their existence.”

He described the threats to such tribes and their land as “a monumental crime against the natural world” and “further testimony to the complete irrationality with which we, the ‘civilised’ ones, treat the world”.

Disease is also a risk, as members of tribal groups that have been contacted in the past have died of illnesses that they have no defence against, ranging from chicken pox to the common cold.

That’s all I said, and lo! I get complaints about it in my student evaluations! Who could be offended at that? Apparently many students at Southern Methodist University.
Seriously, though, there was an argument, modeled after the article by David Lewis and Philip Kitcher (see selection from Harper’s here.) I think the offhand version of the argument I rather flippantly posed in class was “At least the Nazi’s only thought the Jews should burn for a few minutes. Christians think they should burn for eternity.” Ok, neither subtle nor particularly smooth. But I’ve always believed that those who believe in damnation (which, of course, is not all Christians by a long shot) should belly up to the bar and face the troubling consequences of the following syllogism: 1. If you believe an all good being does something, you believe that thing should be done. 2. Brimstone christians believe God, an all good being, sends non-believers (such as yours truly) to hell for eternal hotness. Therefore… you get the idea…

After agreeing to play Dracula for the sixth birthday of Doug Ehring’s daughter Sophia, I thought I’d go back and read the original. I’m pretty sure I read some abridged version or other when I was a lad, but I’d never slain the whole monster. I’m now most of the way through doing so, however, so I can offer the following report: Bram Stoker is a truly terrible writer.
I’m willing to ignore the overwrought and repetitive descriptions (furious beasts of awe-inspiring terror and whatnot), and I think I might even forgive the fact that the various epistolary voices all sound the same. (Except, it must be said, for Seward–the asylum doctor–who occasionally throws in some vaguely medical terminology to authenticate himself.) I cannot forgive, however, the narrative inconsistencies and logical gaps that the most childlike of editors should have caught. Lacking an omniscient narrator, Stoker needs to have people around to witness the unwitnessed, so crowds are posted on cliffs in the midst of storms, even though paragraphs later they are all said to be shuttered in their homes. Speaking through the mouths of characters who know less than he does, Stoker cannot contain himself, as when Mina, who admits to knowing nothing about the sea, talks of ships “bending to their scuppers.” She knows what scuppers are? In a singe journal entry a character talks of Van Helsing as if he has never met him (saying “if it turns out the man is of the quality Mina describes” or something of the sort) and then a couple of sentences later he proceeds to describe his own long encounter with the man which clearly made quite an impression on him. Within the period of a few short hours, Van Helsing and Mina have an Exeter to London epistolary exchange, which it seems would be quite impossible unless email made an appearance earlier than anyone has imagined. Finally there is the fact that the few utterances Van Helsing makes in his native tongue appear to be in German. (Deutsch, Dutch, what’s the difference?)
Apparently Stoker wrote many books, most of which have been lost in obscurity. That this one survived is, I suppose, a testament to the fact that in Count Dracula Stoker found a completely captivating character and that vampire myths are just incredibly cool. It certainly isn’t because Stoker is a writer worth remembering.

Monkey uses brainwaves to control prosthetic arm

* James Randerson, science correspondent
* guardian.co.uk,
* Wednesday May 28 2008
Scientists have trained monkeys to control a robotic arm using the power of their thoughts. The research, which involved wiring electrodes into the animals’ brains, is aimed at producing controllable prosthetic limbs for patients with stroke, spinal cord injuries or neurodegenerative conditions.

The monkeys learned to feed themselves using the robotic arm and performed subtle movements such as approaching the food with the arm so as not to knock it over. The researchers believe the animals began to regard the arm as part of their own body.

Scientists have previously taught monkeys and human subjects to control a cursor on a screen or a simple grasping hand via their brain activity, but this is the first time experimenters have demonstrated that it is possible to perform complex behavioural tasks this way.

“In our research, we’ve demonstrated a higher level of precision, skill and learning,” said Prof Andrew Schwartz at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. “The monkey learns by first observing the movement, which activates his brain cells as if he were doing it … like sports training, where trainers have athletes first imagine that they are performing the movements they desire.”

The team, who report their research in Thursday’s issue of Nature, first trained the macaque monkeys to retrieve marshmallows — a favourite treat — by using a joystick to control the prosthetic arm. Once they had mastered this, the team inserted electrodes into the animals’ motor cortex and used brain signals there to control the arm’s movement.
Gripping hand

During the trials, the animals’ limbs were restrained in plastic tubes so that they could not reach for the food themselves. After some errors, the animals learned to perform subtle movements using the robotic arm, which has a jointed shoulder, elbow and wrist, as well as a gripping hand.

The research is a progression from a study reported in 2006 which involved the patient Matthew Nagle, a 25-year-old Massachusetts man who has been paralysed from the neck down since 2001. An implant in his brain allowed him to control a cursor on a screen and to open and close the hand on a prosthetic limb by thinking of the relevant actions.

Prof John Kalaska, an expert on the primate motor cortex at the University of Montreal in Quebec, said the latest research represented the “state of the art” in the field. “[It] could one day, in principle, help patients perform many everyday tasks such as eating, drinking from a glass or using a tool,” he wrote in a commentary on the work in Nature.

He warned that there were practical problems to overcome before controllable prosthetic limbs could be used in patients. Currently, animals do not receive any touch feedback from the object they are picking up. This will be important if patients are to use a strong enough grip to handle an object without holding it so tightly that they crush it. The durability of the implanted electrodes must also be improved, because at present they deteriorate within weeks or months.

I’m pretty excited about this just from the trailer. I think I read the short story a long time ago, but this thing looks beautiful. I’m a believer, once again, in Brad Pitt after seeing The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, so I think he can pull this off. Plus, Cate Blanchett and Tilda Swinton.

Every reviewer that talks about this Seattle band begins by admitting that they first listened because they were intrigued by the band’s name. Add me to that list. Every reviewer then says they were drawn in, however, because the band (surprisingly) doesn’t suck and is in fact fun as hell. Add me to that list too.
NPSH’s new album “Glistening Pleasure” (which I gotta think amounts to an admission that they are themselves a guilty listening pleasure) won’t make many year end lists, admittedly, but it’s better than a lot of similar albums out there that have gotten much more press. (I’m looking at you, CSS.) It’s electro-something-or-other, and reminds one of The Faint, a bit, minus the self-seriousness and even at moments Franz Ferdinand, without the sophistication. It falls in the category of mix tape source material, in my opinion: I probably won’t sit down and listen to the whole thing much, but I’ll pepper some mixes with “Iceage Babeland” or “Me + Yr Daughter.”
Leave it to me to find something serious in something like this, but I do wonder at what point it becomes ok to appropriate someone’s name or features in a product or band name and at what point it goes too far. Can I finally start my band “Saul Kripke and the Rigid Designators?” Must I worry about that hot young act, “Robert Howell’s Left Nipple?” I don’t know how Miss Portman feels, but the whole thing makes me nervous. Better listen to some electro-irony.
Iceage Babeland.mp3
Mouth Full of Bones.mp3

The jumpers were leaping over five or six infants at a time

Grown men have been leaping over rows of babies in the north Spanish village of Castrillo de Murcia in an annual rite meant to ward off the Devil.

Jumpers dressed as the Colacho, a character representing the Devil, bounded over clusters of bemused infants laid out on mattresses.

Nobody appeared to get hurt in this year’s festive event.

Castrillo, near Burgos, has been holding the event since 1620 to mark the Catholic feast of Corpus Christi.

The feast is widely celebrated in Spain, often with processions and mystery plays.

Pageants can feature dancers depicting demons and angels or other characters.

Cracked magazine has a funny little segment called 12 comic book ads that made us cynical. There you will find a list of nifty products, several of which i purchased when flipping through my Richie Rich comic books. (Yes, I know those are the dorkiest comic books, and perhaps even morally corrupting, but I was a young republican at age 5. My brother wasn’t. I recall him at four years old crying when Jimmy Carter lost to Reagan. I’m pretty sure he thought Carter had been killed, but I don’t know for sure. Turns out, in any case, he had more foresight than I did.) I won’t say which products I bought, but let’s just say I find it remarkable that I wanted to see through blouses at that tender age.

Artistic rendition of Gerobatrachus hottoni lunging at the mayfly Protoreisma between stands of Calamites and under a fallen Walchia conifer. Credit: Michael Skrepnick

Gerobatrachus Hottoni – The Missing Link Between Salamander And Frog
Submitted by News Account on 21 May 2008 – 9:45am. Evolution

The description of an ancient amphibian that millions of years ago swam in quiet pools and caught mayflies on the surrounding land in Texas has set to rest one of the greatest current controversies in vertebrate evolution. The discovery was made by a research team led by scientists at the University of Calgary.

The examination and detailed description of the fossil, Gerobatrachus hottoni (meaning Hotton’s elder frog), proves the previously disputed fact that some modern amphibians, frogs and salamanders evolved from one ancient amphibian group called temnospondyls.

“The dispute arose because of a lack of transitional forms. This fossil seals the gap,” says Jason Anderson, assistant professor, University of Calgary Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and lead scientist in the study.

The Gerobatrachus fossil provides a much fuller understanding of the origin and evolution of modern amphibians. The skull, backbone and teeth of Gerobatrachus have a mixture of frog and salamander features—the fossil has two fused bones in the ankle, which is normally only seen in salamanders, and a very large tympanic ear (ear drum). It also has a lightly built and wide skull similar to that of a frog. Its backbone is exactly intermediate in number between the modern frogs and salamanders and more primitive amphibians.

The new fossil also addresses a controversy over molecular clock estimates, or the general time salamanders and frogs evolved into two distinct groups.

“With this new data our best estimate indicates that frogs and salamanders separated from each other sometime between 240 and 275 million years ago, much more recently than previous molecular data had suggested,” says Robert Reisz, professor, University of Toronto Mississauga and second author on the paper.

Gerobatrachus was originally discovered in Texas in 1995 by a field party from the Smithsonian Institution that included the late Nicholas Hotton, for whom the fossil is named. It remained unstudied until it was “rediscovered” by Anderson’s team. It took countless hours of work on the small, extremely delicate fossil to remove the overlying layers of rock and uncover the bones to reveal the anatomy of the spectacular looking skeleton.

“It is bittersweet to learn about frog origins in this Year of the Frog, dedicated to informing the public about the current global amphibian decline,” continues Anderson. “Hopefully we won’t ever learn about their extinction.”

Article: Jason S. Anderson, Robert R. Reisz, Diane Scott, Nadia B. Fröbisch & Stuart S. Sumida, ‘A stem batrachian from the Early Permian of Texas and the origin of frogs and salamanders’,Nature 453, 515-518 (22 May 2008) doi:10.1038/nature06865