Feed aggregator

Ιf you asked a multilingual friend which language they find more emotional, the answer would usually be their mother tongue – the one they used while growing up and probably still use at home. This does not mean they are incapable of expressing emotion in another language, but there is a clear link between first languages and stronger emotional expression.

This has a lot to do with where and how we learn a language. Our first language, which linguists call L1, is usually acquired in the emotionally charged settings of childhood and family. Second languages, known as L2, are often learned in more neutral contexts, such as schools and institutions, making them less emotionally intense.

read more

In 2003, the Human Genome Project was completed and both Tesla and LinkedIn were founded. Those were all interesting but not revolutionary; cars and job sites already existed, and we knew a lot about DNA, we just didn't have a complete "map" of a genome.

The biggest shift in culture was the introduction of the Pumpkin Spice Latte by Starbucks. In a few short years, it ended the dominance of apple cider to such an extent that unprompted people don't associate autumn with apple cider at all. Despite thousands of years of dominance as the Flavor of Fall.

read more

Three years into war with Russia and martial law, public services continue to operate and citizens continue to have confidence in them. A new analysis of survey results in Government information Quarterly says trust in public figures and a sense of cooperation are key factors.

read more

A preamble

Subnuclear physics obeys the laws of quantum mechanics, which are quite a far cry from those of classical mechanics we are accustomed to. For that reason, one might be inclined to believe that analogies based on everyday life cannot come close to explaining the behavior of elementary particles. But that is not true – in fact, many properties of elementary particles are understandable in analogy with the behavior of classical systems, without the need to delve into the intricacies of the quantum world. And if you have been reading this blog for a while, you know what I think – the analogy is a powerful didactical instrument, and it is indeed at the very core of our learning processes.

read more

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is a former Natural Resources Defense Council lawyer and once such a pillar of the Democratic party that President Obama floated his name to run the Environmental Protection Agency.

Now he controls the agency that controls EPA. That is a big win for anti-science progressives. And because they are playing chess, not checkers, anti-science Republicans think it's their idea.

read more

New survey results find that sociocultural factors may be involved in how likely someone is to report moderate to severe depression symptoms and get a prenatal depression diagnosis.

read more

FDA-approved flu treatments target viral enzymes of influenza but the virus mutates, which is why there is a new vaccine each year.

Recent work showed that a cocktail of antibodies offered protection mice from nearly every strain of influenza. Even avian and swine flu. Their cocktail did not allow viral escape, even after a month of repeated exposure.

read more

People in the northeast of the United States think they have greater "wellness" than everywhere else except California. People in the southern United States think they have more wellness than everywhere else.

Which is right? They both are. Wellness may be in social media ad campaigns and have diets and apps and fads under the umbrella, but it's entirely subjective. The northeast believe they have greater wealth and social standing, which they consider traditional wellness. The south sense of purpose and community identity, which is existential wellness.

read more

Death rates from non-communicable  diseases like cancer, diabetes, and heart disease continue to decline but you wouldn't know that by corporate media which prints every claim that some useful product is "linked" to shorter lifespans.

Weedkillers, processed food, artificial sugar, you name it and some activist group has weaponized the public against it - and only you sending their lawyers money to sue will prevent it. The drums of the anti-science movement have only gotten louder since one of the pillars of the progressive fringe got a job in, of all places, a Republican administration.(1)

read more

Rather than encourage smoking cessation and harm reduction, the US Centers for Disease Control have spent over a decade undermining products that were not Big Pharma. That has been and remains a mistake. Smoking kills, and anything that helps reduce or eliminate it, from patches to gums to vaping to hypnosis, should be available.

read more

If you have spent any time on social media, you have a different kind of bystander effect in action. Psychologists say if many people are around, the bystander effect is why everyone is less likely to help. They believe someone else will be more competent or know something you don't. If you walk by a person laying unconscious in New York City, based on experience they did not have a heart attack and are in peril. They are on drugs or alcohol.

read more

Colors trigger unique brain responses, the subjective nature of our brains and eyes, not to mention different media, is why a famous blue dress experiment took countries by storm.

To try and help determine how different people have the same brain responses to colors, researchers measured color-induced brain responses from one set of participants. Next, they predicted what colors other participants were observing by comparing each individual’s visual cortex brain activity to color-induced responses of the first set of observers. 

read more

A new study describes a new liquid phase in thin films of a glass-forming molecules. These results demonstrate how these glasses and other similar materials can be fabricated to be denser and more stable, providing a framework for developing new applications and devices through better design.

New research has identified potential treatment that could improve the human immune system's ability to search out and destroy cancer cells within the body. Scientists have identified a way to restrict the activity of a group of cells which regulate the immune system, which in turn can unleash other immune cells to attack tumours in cancer patients.

University of Washington scientists have developed a statistical framework that incorporates key COVID-19 data -- such as case counts and deaths due to COVID-19 -- to model the true prevalence of this disease in the United States and individual states. Their approach projects that in the U.S. as many as 60% of COVID-19 cases went undetected as of March 7, 2021, the last date for which the dataset they employed is available.

Mice exposed to the opioid oxycodone before birth experience permanent changes in behavior and gene expression. The new research published in eNeuro highlights a need to develop safer types of painkillers for pregnant women.

Researchers have identified a rare class of genetic differences transmitted from parents without autism to their affected children with autism and determined that they are most prominent in "multiplex" families with more than one family member on the spectrum. These findings are reported in Recent ultra-rare inherited variants implicate new autism candidate risk genes, a new study published in Nature Genetics.

An international team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research and the University of Åarhus in Denmark have discovered that bacteria from the plant microbiota are adapted to their host species. In a newly published study, they show how root-associated bacteria have a competitive advantage when colonizing their native host, which allows them to invade an already established microbiota.

A new study reports that among individuals who had an allergic reaction to their first mRNA COVID-19 vaccine dose, all who went on to receive a second dose tolerated it. Even some who experienced anaphylaxis following the first dose tolerated the second dose.

Researchers from the Institute of Process Engineering (IPE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing Chaoyang Hospital and the University of Queensland have developed a new formulation based on regulatory T-cell exosomes (rEXS) to deliver vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) antibodies for choroidal neovascularization therapy.