Players’ rankings at normal chess are accurate predictors of blitz chess performance

Chess is typically envisioned as a game of concentration and deliberation, a game not to be taken lightly and a game definitely not to be rushed. But some recent research suggests that it’s actually a player’s split-second intuitions that make the master.
Bruce D. Burns of Michigan State University, in an article to be published in the July issue of Psychological Science, a journal

For years, the advice of psychologists and mothers alike has been to express your emotions in order to achieve a balanced mental state. This might bring up some problems when your anxiety is going to make that presentation look shoddy, but hey, it’s better to show emotions than be like Spock, right?

Not quite. A new hypothesis on the issue of emotional expression is that we’re actually better off being flexible about how much we show our feelings – neither letting it all out nor ke

Two dozen volunteers bravely exposed their arms to jellyfish tentacles as part of a new Stanford University School of Medicine study to test a topical, over-the-counter cream designed to protect against stinging nettles. Fortunately for the volunteers, the cream appeared to be relatively effective.

“It didn’t completely inhibit the stings, but it came pretty darn close,” reported Alexa Kimball, MD, MPH, an assistant professor of dermatology who directed the study. The study appears in

UCSF scientists are publishing sweet results of a study examining chocolate’s effects on blood vessel function in healthy people. The team reports that small daily doses of flavonoid-rich dark chocolate consumed over a two-week period improved blood vessels’ ability to dilate, or expand. They also report that a particular flavonoid thought to be beneficial for blood vessel function, epicatechin, was absorbed at high levels in the blood.

“This is the longest clinical trial to date to show i

Evidence based practice is currently in vogue, and basing medical practice on published evidence is clearly a good idea, but what if the published findings are inaccurate? An article published this week in BMC Medical Research Methodology shows that a large proportion of articles in top science and medical journals contain statistical errors, 4% of which may have caused non-significant findings to be misrepresented as being significant. Thirty-eight percent of the Nature papers and a quarter

A tiny speck of an island in the broad expanse of the Mediterranean is drowning with tourists. And for that reason, the exquisite Greek island of Santorini awaits an interdisciplinary team of University of Cincinnati students and faculty this summer. That team – having proven itself in other locales in Greece – will serve as an academic version of “Extreme (Tourism) Make-Over” from June 10-August 14.

On the tiny Greek island of Santorini, a vividly painted village perches precariously

Smells trigger memories but can memories trigger smell, and what does this imply for the way memories are stored? A UCL study of the smell gateway in the brain has found that the memory of an event is scattered across sensory parts of the brain, suggesting that advertising aimed at triggering memories of golden beaches and soft sand could well enhance your desire to book a seaside holiday.

By reversing the premise used in Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, UCL researchers establish

People are not drawn to religion just because of a fear of death or any other single reason, according to a new comprehensive, psychological theory of religion.

There are actually 16 basic human psychological needs that motivate people to seek meaning through religion, said Steven Reiss, author of the new theory and professor of psychology and psychiatry at Ohio State University.

These basic human needs – which include honor, idealism, curiosity and acceptance – can explain why cert

OHSU study finds tiny crystals also help brain lesion tissue to be viewed under microscope

A research team from Oregon Health & Science University and the Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center is demonstrating some of the world’s first clinical applications for nanometer-size particles in the brain.

The OHSU scientists have shown that an iron oxide nanoparticle as small as a virus can outline not only brain tumors under magnetic resonance imaging, but also other lesi

Specialist individual music lessons could hugely benefit children with autism, according to researchers Dr Pamela Heaton and Dr Francesca Happe at the University of London. The study, which was funded by ESRC, suggests that many children with this disorder have outstanding abilities in tone recognition. “A lot of work has been done on musical savants with exceptional musical memory and rarely found absolute pitch ability” says Dr Pamela Heaton who led the research. “But our research shows that even c

How the news is presented, not the news itself, is putting young adult audiences off, say Central Michigan University media researchers David Weinstock and Timothy Boudreau. Their survey of 244 college students, ages 18 to 25, examines the students’ wartime media uses, preferences and attitudes about news media. The students were surveyed April 21-24, 2003, as U.S. forces were struggling to restore order in Baghdad. The researchers offer the following observations:

Youth interest in the wa

Werewolves notwithstanding, the full moon does not influence the frequency of epileptic seizures, reports a University of South Florida study.

“Contrary to the myth, epileptic seizures are not more common during a full moon,” said Selim Benbadis, MD, associate professor of neurology and neurosurgery at the USF College of Medicine. “In fact, we found the number of epileptic seizures was lowest during the full moon and highest in the moon’s last quarter.”

The study, to be publi

In the years at the dangerous border between adolescence and adulthood, about three men die for every woman, according to a new University of Michigan study of the ratio of male to female mortality rates in 20 nations, including the United States.

The study, selected as a “hot topic talk” to be presented May 28 at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Society, also appears in the current issue of the journal Evolutionary Psychology.

“Being male is now the single largest

In laboratory experiments, women — but not men — who had been exposed to frustrating noise stress ate more cheese, chocolate, potato chips and popcorn after the stressful session was over.

Dr. Laura C. Klein, assistant professor of biobehavioral health who led the study, says, “Although other researchers have shown that both men and women eat more during stressful periods, this is the first study to show that eating is affected in some individuals after a stress is stopped.

“In

Moderate exercise in conjunction with common dietary supplements significantly reduce the risk of atherosclerosis because, combined, they boost the body’s production of nitric oxide, which protects against a variety of cardio-vascular disorders, a new UCLA study led by 1998 Nobel Laureate in medicine Louis J. Ignarro shows.

The study, “Long Term Beneficial Effects of Physical Training and Metabolic Treatment on Atherosclerosis in Hypercholesterolemic Mice,” will be published the week o

Using the zebrafish, a model organism widely used in genetic studies, researchers have found that when it comes to social interactions with other fish, individual zebrafish learn to prefer one fish color pattern over another according to their early experience with these patterns. The work extends the utility of zebrafish to studies of behavior and evolution and is reported by University of Texas researchers Raymond E. Engeszer, Dr. David M. Parichy, and Dr. Michael J. Ryan.

Social behavior