prefrontal liars

The Royal College of Psychiatrists:

To our knowledge, this study is the first to show a brain abnormality in people who lie, cheat and manipulate others.

Liars had increased prefrontal white matter volumes and reduced grey/white ratios compared with normal controls.

The effect size was substantial, with group membership explaining 28.2% of the variance in prefrontal volume.

These findings provide the first evidence of a structural brain deficit in liars, they implicate the prefrontal cortex as an important (but not sole) component in the neural circuitry underlying lying and provide an initial neurobiological correlate of a deceitful personality.

plug-in snooping

What will the Tea Party do when they discover the firms they defend are the Big Brother they fear?

Ann Cavoukian, Ontario’s privacy commissioner, has co-authored a new report that highlights the potential privacy breaches that could result as we move toward a smart grid infrastructure…

the bully boss

Roughly 54 million people have been bullied at work, primarily having been sabotaged, yelled at, or belittled by their bosses.

When and why do power holders seek to harm other people?

The present research examined the idea that aggression among the powerful is often the result of a threatened ego.

Four studies demonstrated that individuals with power become aggressive when they feel incompetent…

Aggressiveness was eliminated among participants whose sense of self-worth was boosted.

new energy policies

Fact sheet on U.S-China clean energy announcements.

Meeting in Beijing, the two presidents agreed to a seven-point plan designed to speed the development of renewable energy and improve energy efficiency.

  1. Establish a U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center;
  2. U.S.-China Electric Vehicles Initiative – a joint program to develop electric vehicles that will include pilot projects in more than a dozen cities;
  3. U.S.-China Energy Efficiency Action Plan – to collaborate on improving the energy efficiency of buildings, factories, and consumer appliances;
  4. U.S.-China Renewable Energy Partnership – establish a renewable energy partnership to promote alternative energy technologies, including ‘advanced grid’ and programs to promote cooperation between states and regions in the two countries;
  5. 21st Century Coal – joint research into developing methods of capturing CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants as well as storing carbon dioxide underground;
  6. Shale Gas Initiative – share U.S. expertise in extracting natural gas from underground shale deposits.
  7. U.S.-China Energy Cooperation Program – a private sector project initiative to include collaborative projects on renewable energy, smart grid, clean transportation, green building, clean coal, combined heat and power, and energy efficiency.

potential nanoscale risks

Scientific American:

Smaller than a virus and used in more than 200 consumer products, silver nanoparticles can kill and mutate fish embryos, new research shows.

Tiny particles of silver – potent anti-microbial agents that can kill bacteria on contact – are becoming increasingly popular in consumer goods, including washing machines, refrigerators, clothing and toys.

“I think we jumped the gun” by creating such large volumes of nanoparticles, said University of Utah researcher Darin Furgeson. “We should take more time and really look at these new nano-systems before we start to throw them into personal products and shoot them into these ecosystems.”

Wenjuan Yang is studying nanosilver risks:

Food storage material silver nanoparticles interfere with DNA replication fidelity and bind with DNA

build and contribute

Chris Corrigan:

Improv of course is all about living the life of invitation in every second. It is about making offers and accepting offers. It is about building on the best of others and contributing something to help them look good. It is a world that works when generosity and attention are activated.

testosterone mismatch

One: Men and women with more testosterone like to be in charge. Indeed, they can find it stressful and uncomfortable when denied the status that they crave.

Two: Similarly, people low in testosterone find it uncomfortable to be placed in positions of authority.

Three: Teams made up of out-of-sync testosterone tend to be less effective.

lists obscure limits

Why do we waste so much time trying to complete things that can’t be realistically completed?

“We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. That’s why we like all the things that we assume have no limits and, therefore, no end. It’s a way of escaping thoughts about death. We like lists because we don’t want to die.”

what is nature worth?

Money invested in protecting nature can bring huge financial returns – a hundredfold return on capital.

Pavan Sukhdev, Deutsche Bank economist:

“We have now evaluated 1,100 studies ranging across different countries and different ecosystem services.

“And we find that with protected areas, for example, no matter how you slice the figures up you come up with a ratio of benefits to costs that’s between 25-to-one and 100-to-one.

“Now we can say quite confidently that there is a solid benefit from investing in protected areas.”

The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity study is the first attempt to evaluate the economic value of ‘ecosystem services’ – things that parts of the natural world do for free, such as purifying drinking water.

Some governments are on board already: Germany – which initiated the project in 2007 – Norway, and the UK. [BBC]

blabberhockey

The AP is tracking Sarah Palin errors. Wonkette is citing various poor writing and silly quotations.

“A month of diapers cost as much as a truck payment, and it was always a gut wrenching decision: ‘keep the big new truck or let Trig stay in a wet diaper for an extra few days’”

addiction the body produces

Withdrawal from intense exercise can produce effects that parallel, chemically, heroin withdrawal. The opiates the body produces naturally during exercise can have similar effects to externally administered opiates such as heroin; it also implies that endurance activities such as ultrarunning might be of use in helping drug addicts replace a “negative” addiction with a “positive” one.

wildly atypical

Many, many psychological and sociological studies rely on college students, but:

“The findings suggest that members of WEIRD [Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic] societies, including young children, are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans”.

Mind Hacks

a wide range of ways

Obama is pacific:

“I know there are many who question how the United States perceives China’s emergence. But, as I have said, in an interconnected world, power does not need to be a zero-sum game, and nations need not fear the success of another. Cultivating spheres of cooperation — not competing spheres of influence — will lead to progress in the Asia Pacific.

“So . . . I want everyone in America to know that we have a stake in the future of this region, because what happens here has a direct effect on our lives at home. This is where we engage in much of our commerce and buy many of our goods. And this is where we can export more of our own products and create jobs back home in the process.”

Full speech here.

a major advance for humanity

Craig Newmark — Wikipedia: the first draft of history

“It’s an exemplar and test platform for large-scale, global collaboration. By that I mean large numbers of people working together for common goals. Wikipedia, in that sense, is a major advance for all humanity.

“It’s also dramatic proof of the supreme effectiveness of collaboration: people work together on Wikipedia to build articles, often in collaboration across the world, and often over long periods of time.

“The style of collaboration is novel in that it balances expert work with that of talented citizens. That’s the same balance we see emerging all over the Net. It’s also the same balance between representative democracy and grassroots democracy. In that sense, Wikipedia is a democratic system, reflecting the best of what we see in all human endeavors.”

other becoming wealthy

Mahindra:

Lack of vision and resource constraint is the main reason for problems that we are facing today.

We can understand the resource constraint the country faced earlier. But not having right visionary leaders at the right place at the right time is going to cost us more in coming days.

Leaders who are running this India, these Indian states, these Indian cities… absolutely do not have a proper plan to serve 1.2+ Billion people.

other wealthy

Farmer:

The 18-year-long day is no less epic than a 700-page day spent with Joyce’s Ulysses and a whole lot more accessible and pleasurable.

mattering expert

Climate Change Costs $500 Billion Per Year:

Faith Birol, our pet IEA Chief Economist says “…the world must speed up the reduction in fossil energy use and make a transition faster to clean renewable energy, not only because because of climate change but because of growing problems within our energy system and possible implications for the global economy… .