Image of the week is this rather striking picture showing that slime moulds love to digest herbal sleeping tablets. This makes sense, because slime moulds are well known to experience severe insomnia. Because they're moulds, and moulds don't sleep.
Story of the week is that evolutionary biologist and writer Steven J. Gould relied on dodgy statistics in his classic book about race, science and intelligence, The Mismeasure of Man. That's according to a new paper, and there are excellent blog discussions here and here. Gould's to my mind the greatest science writer of all time. But you can write well without always being right.
Many neuroscience and psychology studies could be flawed because the "healthy controls" are just too healthy. This is a serious issue which doesn't get discussed enough.
Did dinosaurs sleep during the day, or the night? Until we get a working time machine, we'll never know for sure, but by examining the shapes of the eyes of different species, a new study has shed light on this question.
Studying psychology at university is not a good idea if you want to get a high salary, according to an upcoming paper.
An interesting legal case from the U.S: judge overturns federal law to impose less than the minimum sentence in a child pornography case. According to Forensic Psychologist blog, the ruling contains discussions of everything from neuroimaging to the arguments over DSM-V.
Psych Your Mind blogger posts his 'favourite' anonymous peer review judgements, along with the suggestion that psychology reviewers seem to be especially vicious compared to those in other fields.
British doctors, charities, and politicians all agreed that antipsychotic drugs are being over-used in dementia this week. Which is something, because they don't agree about anything else right now. I previously blogged about how an earthquake in Italy caused a spike in local elderly people getting these drugs.
The LA Times has an excellent piece on the attempts to build prosthetic limbs with a sense of touch. We've already got artificial retinas, but an artificial sense of touch is even harder, because it requires implanting electrodes directly into the brain.
Mind Hacks discusses a major study into Alzheimer's disease, conducted with the help of a Columbian family with a hereditary form of the disorder.
I can't read everything. So any tipoffs will be gratefully received. Either leave them in a comment or drop me an email.
No comments:
Post a Comment