Monday, December 31, 2007

The Model of a Psychopharmacologist

Worker Substance Use

SAMSHA report

Full report

Why Aren’t All People Beautiful?

Maybe the genes that make hot males make distinctly un-hot females.

What Should Be Done About Standardized Tests?

A Freakonomics Quorum

Against All Odds

In “Against All Odds”, students follow a young person’s flight from oppression in his or her home country to exile in an asylum country. The game is intended to increase students’ awareness and knowledge about refugees – where they come from, what situations they have faced and how they adapt to their new lives.
Educators across the United States can help students learn about the plight of refugees and understand the importance of treating refugees with tolerance and respect. UNHCR offers free educational materials for teachers of grades 4-12, including lesson plans, magazines, videos, posters and games.

The secret to winning at rock, paper, scissors

start with scissors

Babies can tell helpful, hurtful playmates

Story Highlights

Whoopie!


Lap-Dance Science

Miller, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of New Mexico, and Jordan, his recent undergraduate research assistant, did conduct a study examining the impact ovulation has on lap dancers’ tip earnings. But they gathered data via a Web site, where strippers logged in anonymously to provide information about their earnings, productivity and menstrual cycles during 296 work shifts (about 5,300 lap dances). The results: While ovulating — and therefore the most fertile — strippers made an average of $30 per hour more than menstruating women and $15 per hour more than women elsewhere in their cycles. Women on the pill — who typically don’t ovulate — made significantly less than naturally cycling women overall and had no “estrus earning peak.”

The New New Philosophy

Or is it social psychology?

Philosophers are increasingly eager to go out into the world and conduct experiments. But will their results settle any arguments?

Careers in Human Factors/Ergonomics

Information from the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.

Career articles.

exactitudes

Rotterdam-based photographer Ari Versluis and stylist Ellie Uyttenbroek have worked together since October 1994. Inspired by a shared interest in the striking dress codes of various social groups, they have systematically documented numerous identities over the last 13 years. Rotterdam's heterogeneous, multicultural street scene remains a major source of inspiration for Ari Versluis and Ellie Uyttenbroek, although since 1998 they have also worked in cities abroad.
They call their series Exactitudes: a contraction of exact and attitude. By registering their subjects in an identical framework, with similar poses and a strictly observed dress code, Versluis and Uyttenbroek provide an almost scientific, anthropological record of people's attempts to distinguish themselves from others by assuming a group identity. The apparent contradiction between individuality and uniformity is, however, taken to such extremes in their arresting objective-looking photographic viewpoint and stylistic analysis that the artistic aspect clearly dominates the purely documentary element.

Debunking The Commercial Press and Why Scientists Hate to Talk to the Media

The popular press ran a story over the weekend about the eventual split into two species of the human race. The sources cited were the preeminent London School of Economics and the work of Professor Oliver Curry. The story published as scientific fact is rebuked by Dr. Curry and this article explains how it all happened.

Debates Persist Over Subsidies for Immigrant College Students

Children brought to the U.S. illegally by their parents find, years later, that they must forgo higher education because they are ineligible for federal or state aid.

Deaf demand right to designer deaf children

DEAF parents should be allowed to screen their embryos so they can pick a deaf child over one that has all its senses intact, according to the chief executive of the Royal National Institute for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People (RNID).

Japanese Scientists Create Mice With No Fear Of Cats

Video games are big business and soon they could be big in business too.


Sexy walks 'keep men off scent'

The women who were most fertile at the time of the experiment walked with fewer hip movements and with their knees closer together.

Campaign on Childhood Mental Illness Succeeds at Being Provocative

A provocative public service campaign on children’s psychiatric disorders has raised hackles as much as awareness.

Black people in advertising

Consumed Edward F. Boyd b. 1914
Sales Leader
By ROB WALKER
Published: December 30, 2007
He knew that advertising was all about fantasy, but it was a fantasy that black consumers might want a part of.