<![CDATA[General]]> http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/ Redorbit News http://www.redorbit.com/media/themes/redorbit/images/logo_160x80.gif http://www.redorbit.com/ 160 80 <![CDATA[Organic Food Eaters Feel Entitled To Be Mean To Others]]> http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/1112538927/organic-food-eaters-feel-entitled-to-be-mean-to-others/ 2012-05-21 09:09:20 Michael Harper for RedOrbit.com

Science has now proven what many of us have suspected all along: People who choose organic foods are meaner than everyone else.

According to a new study published this week in the journal Social Psychology and Personality Science, choosing organic food may cause some people to not only act mean, but judge others more harshly.

Surely fruits and vegetables don’t harbor a “mean gene” within them to cause us to act this way, so what is it about these products that can fill us with ill-will?

Study author Kendall Eskine, assistant professor of the department of psychological sciences at Loyola University in New Orleans, noticed a trend in the way these healthy and organic foods are branded and labeled.

“There's a line of research showing that when people can pat themselves on the back for their moral behavior, they can become self-righteous,” Eskine told Diane Mapes of MSNBC's Health Today. “I've noticed a lot of organic foods are marketed with moral terminology, like Honest Tea, and wondered if you exposed people to organic food, if it would make them pat themselves on the back for their moral and environmental choices. I wondered if they would be more altruistic or not.”

To test his theory, Eskine and team gathered together 60 participants and split them into 3 groups. One group was shown pictures of organic foods — Apples, Spinach and the like. The next group was shown less-than-healthy comfort foods, such as brownies, cookies and ice cream. Finally, the third group acted as the control and was shown pictures of foods which fell into neither category, like mustard, oatmeal and rice.

With these images fresh on their brains, the 3 groups were then asked to read a series of short stories describing issues of ethics and morals.

Speaking to Mapes, Eskine explained the stories this way:

“One vignette was about second cousins having sex.”

“Another was about a lawyer on the prowl in an ER trying to get people to sue for their injuries. Then the groups made moral judgments on a scale from one to seven.”

In a second aspect to the study, the groups were also asked to volunteer for a second, albeit fictitious study to be conducted in the future. Each person was then asked to write down how much time they’d be willing to volunteer to the work of science, from zero to 30 minutes.

When the results were tabulated, the organic group was shown in a very negative light.

“We found that the organic people judged much harder compared to the control or comfort food groups,” says Eskine. “On a scale of 1 to 7, the organic people were like 5.5 while the controls were about a 5 and the comfort food people were like a 4.89.”

The organic group didn’t care too much for volunteerism either, saying they were only willing to donate 13 minutes of their time, compared to 19 minutes by the controls and a full 24 minutes from the comfort food group.

“There’s something about being exposed to organic food that made them feel better about themselves,” says Eskine. “And that made them kind of jerks a little bit, I guess.”]]> 0 <![CDATA[Most Well-read Cities In America]]> http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112537913/most-well-read-cities-in-america/ 2012-05-18 04:41:38 Michael Harper for RedOrbit.com

Have you ever taken a look around your home town and noticed the majority of people around you have their nose in a book?

If you live in Alexandria, Virginia, such an occurrence may be so commonplace you wouldn’t even give it a second thought.

This week, the world’s top bookseller, Amazon.com, released some stats about which cities bought the most books, magazines and newspapers in the past year. Topping their list of the 20 most well-read cities in America is Alexandria, VA. Two other Virginia cities also placed in the top 20, Arlington at 7 and Richmond coming in last at 20.

As they say, Virginia is for lovers, and according to CNN, Alexandrians’ were more inclined to buy romance novels from Amazon.com than any other genre.

The second most well-read city in America is none other than Cambridge, Mass., home of Harvard and MIT. With a population of more than 100,000, Amazon says Cambridge residents were more likely to buy books from the business and investing categories.

As you might expect, other college towns and University homes also made the list: Berkeley, Boulder, Columbia and Gainesville all represented their collegiate home towns, reading as much as they could.

“It's great to see that we are truly a nation of readers, with representation on this list from every region of the country," Chris Schluep, senior editor of books for Amazon.com, said in a statement announcing the results.

This is the second annual list compiled of the 20 most read cities with populations of 100,000 or more. To determine where each city placed in the list, Amazon looked at sales data on books, ebooks, magazines and newspapers since last June.

Of course, such a list is likely to induce some slightly judgmental jesting. As such, it is important to note that many of the cities did, in fact live up to their stereotypes.

For instance, Cambridge’s aforementioned affinity with all things business and financial.

Boulder, Colorado is considered one of the  fittest cities in America. As such, Boulder residents spent most of their time in the Health, Fitness and Dieting category.

As for Berkeley, California, most of the books being sent to these residents were from the Travel category, suggesting Berkeley is a city of jet-setters.

This year’s list may also surprise some, as some of our nation’s largest cities and urban centers did not make the list. Notably absent are cities Chicago, Los Angeles and New York.

Amazon’s home town of Seattle, Washington did make the list, though they sit on the lower end at number 13, edged out by cities such as Miami, Florida, Salt Lake City, Utah, and Ann Arbor, Michigan.

As summer draws nigh and people begin their summer reading lists, Amazon hopes to encourage those cities on and off the list to either protect their place or knock another city out of the running.

"As the summer reading season gets into full swing, we're excited to reveal our second annual Most Well-Read Cities list," said Schluep.

The entire list is as follows:

1. Alexandria, Virginia

2. Cambridge, Massachusetts

3. Berkeley, California

4. Ann Arbor, Michigan

5. Boulder, Colorado

6. Miami, Florida

7. Arlington, Virginia

8. Gainesville, Florida

9. Washington, D.C.

10. Salt Lake City, Utah

11. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

12. Knoxville, Tennessee

13. Seattle, Washington

14. Orlando, Florida

15. Columbia, South Carolina

16. Bellevue, Washington

17. Cincinnati, Ohio

18. St. Louis, Missouri

19. Atlanta, Georgia

20. Richmond, Virginia]]> 0 <![CDATA[Sexy Pictures Of Women Objectified In Ads]]> http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/1112536074/sexy-pictures-of-women-objectified-in-ads/ 2012-05-16 04:40:12 Psychological Science, also found interestingly enough that men and women see men in their underwear as people.

This reaction, called sexual objectification, has been well examined, but most of the research is about looking at the effects of this objectification.

Philippe Bernard of Université libre de Bruxelles in Belgium says, "What’s unclear is, we don’t actually know whether people at a basic level recognize sexualized females or sexualized males as objects."

Psychologists have found that in order to determine whether something is seen as an object is to turn it upside down. Pictures of people present a recognition problem when they’re turned upside down, but pictures of objects don’t have that problem.

Researchers devised a test in which they showed participants pictures of underdressed men and women on a computer screen with some of the pictures right-side-up and some upside-down. After each picture, there was a second of black screen, then the participant was shown two images. They were supposed to choose the one that matched the one they had just seen.

Both men and women recognized right-side-up men better than upside-down men, suggesting that they were seeing the men as people instead of objects (and thereby having recognition trouble). But the women in underwear weren’t any harder to recognize when they were upside down—which is consistent with the idea that people see sexy women as objects.

Women’s sexualized bodies are on display everywhere; billboards, buildings, Perfume ads, even the sides of buses. This suggests that we think of these images as if they were objects, not people.

Bernard, the study's lead researcher, said that the next step is to study how seeing sexualized women in advertising influences how people treat women.]]> 0 <![CDATA[Why We Get A Kick Out Of Talking About Ourselves]]> http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/1112531884/why-we-get-a-kick-out-of-talking-about-ourselves/ 2012-05-09 11:54:21 John Neumann for RedOrbit.com

Why do we, when given the chance, tend to share the most intimate details of our day with just about anyone? From snapping pics of our lunch and tweeting it to friends, to the details of our arguments with loved ones, in general, we love to share, some would say overshare.

New research out of Harvard University shows us it is highly rewarding, reports Diane Mapes of MSNBC. Our brains responds to self-disclosure the same way they respond to pleasure triggers like food, money or sex.

Psychologists have long known that sharing aspects of oneself with other people is a crucial part of human social life, writes Carolyn Y. Johnson for Boston.com. However it’s the escalation from small talk to more personal details that often forms the foundation of friendship and romantic intimacy.

“The internet has drastically expanded the number of mediums through which we can talk about ourselves to other people,” Diana Tamir, a graduate student in the Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Lab at Harvard and lead author of a study published today in the journal PNAS, told Mapes.

“We were interested in why people engage in self-disclosure so seemingly excessively. The hypothesis we wanted to test was whether or not this behavior provided people with intrinsic or subjective value -- did it feel good to do it.”

Five studies involving nearly 300 people were conducted by Tamir and her colleagues, most of them from the Harvard and Cambridge community. In some studies, participants were asked to disclose their own opinions while being scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a technique that directly measures the blood flow in the brain, thereby providing information on brain activity.

Other studies asked participants to complete certain behavioral tasks in exchange for varying amounts of money. Study subjects, as it turns out, were willing to go without 17 to 25 percent of their potential earnings if they could reveal info about themselves to others.

“We called this the ‘penny for your thoughts study,’” says Tamir. “We wanted to know if people would pay money to engage in this behavior -- to share information about themselves with other people -- and it turns out they will.”

Dr. Hans Breiter, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study, told Johnson the research is a good first step toward answering a question of growing importance, especially as the number of tools for sharing increase via the internet online and mobile devices.

He added that the experiments would need to be refined and repeated to truly pinpoint, for example, which brain regions are playing a role in the behavior.
John Neumann for RedOrbit.com
]]> 0 <![CDATA['Losing Yourself' In a Fictional Character Can Affect Your Real Life]]> http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/1112529781/%e2%80%9closing-yourself%e2%80%9d-in-a-fictional-character-can-affect-your-real-life/ 2012-05-07 14:26:49
Researchers at Ohio State University examined what happened to people who, while reading a fictional story, found themselves feeling the emotions, thoughts, beliefs and internal responses of one of the characters as if they were their own - a phenomenon the researchers call “experience-taking.”

They found that, in the right situations, experience-taking may lead to real changes, if only temporary, in the lives of readers.

In one experiment, for example, the researchers found that people who strongly identified with a fictional character who overcame obstacles to vote were significantly more likely to vote in a real election several days later.

“Experience-taking can be a powerful way to change our behavior and thoughts in meaningful and beneficial ways,” said Lisa Libby, co-author of the study and assistant professor of psychology at Ohio State University.

There are many ways experience-taking can affect readers.

In another experiment, people who went through this experience-taking process while reading about a character who was revealed to be of a different race or sexual orientation showed more favorable attitudes toward the other group and were less likely to stereotype.

“Experience-taking changes us by allowing us to merge our own lives with those of the characters we read about, which can lead to good outcomes,” said Geoff Kaufman, who led the study as a graduate student at Ohio State. He is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Tiltfactor Laboratory at Dartmouth College.

Their findings appear online in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and will be published in a future print edition.

Experience-taking doesn’t happen all the time. It only occurs when people are able, in a sense, to forget about themselves and their own self-concept and self-identity while reading, Kaufman said. In one experiment, for example, the researchers found that most college students were unable to undergo experience-taking if they were reading in a cubicle with a mirror.

“The more you’re reminded of your own personal identity, the less likely you’ll be able to take on a character’s identity,” Kaufman said.

“You have to be able to take yourself out of the picture, and really lose yourself in the book in order to have this authentic experience of taking on a character’s identity.”

In the voting study, 82 undergraduates who were registered and eligible to vote were assigned to read one of four versions of a short story about a student enduring several obstacles on the morning of Election Day (such as car problems, rain, long lines) before ultimately entering the booth to cast a vote. This experiment took place several days before the 2008 November presidential election.

Some versions were written in first person (“I entered the voting booth) while some were written in third person (“Paul entered the voting booth”). In addition, some versions featured a student who attended the same university as the participants, while in other versions, the protagonist in the story attended a different university.

After reading the story, the participants completed a questionnaire that measured their level of experience-taking - how much they adopted the perspective of the character in the story. For example, they were asked to rate how much they agreed with statements like “I found myself feeling what the character in the story was feeling” and “I felt I could get inside the character’s head.”

The results showed that participants who read a story told in first-person, about a student at their own university, had the highest level of experience-taking. And a full 65 percent of these participants reported they voted on Election Day, when they were asked later.

In comparison, only 29 percent of the participants voted if they read the first-person story about a student from a different university.

“When you share a group membership with a character from a story told in first-person voice, you’re much more likely to feel like you’re experiencing his or her life events,” Libby said. “And when you undergo this experience-taking, it can affect your behavior for days afterwards.”

While people are more likely to lose themselves in a character who is similar to themselves, what happens if they don’t learn that a character is not similar until later in a story?

In one experiment, 70 male, heterosexual college students read a story about a day in the life of another student. There were three versions - one in which the character was revealed to be gay early in the story, one in which the student was identified as gay late in the story, and one in which the character was heterosexual.

Results showed that the students who read the story where the character was identified as gay late in the narrative reported higher levels of experience-taking than did those who read the story where the character’s homosexuality was announced early.

“If participants knew early on that the character was not like them - that he was gay - that prevented them from really experience-taking,” Libby said.

“But if they learned late about the character’s homosexuality, they were just as likely to lose themselves in the character as were the people who read about a heterosexual student.”

Even more importantly, the version of the story participants read affected how they thought about gays.

Those who read the gay-late narrative reported significantly more favorable attitudes toward homosexuals after reading the story than did readers of both the gay-early narrative and the heterosexual narrative.

Those who read the gay-late narrative also relied less on stereotypes of homosexuals - they rated the gay character as less feminine and less emotional than did the readers of the gay-early story.

“If people identified with the character before they knew he was gay, if they went through experience-taking, they had more positive views - the readers accepted that this character was like them,” Kaufman said.

Similar results were found in a story where white students read about a black student, who was identified as black early or late in the story.

Libby said experience-taking is different from perspective-taking, where people try to understand what another person is going though in a particular situation - but without losing sight of their own identity.

“Experience-taking is much more immersive - you’ve replaced yourself with the other,” she said.

The key is that experience-taking is spontaneous - you don’t have to direct people to do it, but it happens naturally under the right circumstance.

“Experience-taking can be very powerful because people don’t even realize it is happening to them. It is an unconscious process,” Libby said.

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On The Net:
]]> 0 <![CDATA[Bike Sharing? Stay Safe By Wearing A Helmet]]> http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/1112525096/bike-sharing-stay-safe-by-wearing-a-helmet/ 2012-05-01 07:22:54 Connie K. Ho for RedOrbit.com

Getting around town has never been easier. There’s public transportation, like buses and metros. There are individual modes of transportation, such as cars and bikes. In particular, bike share programs have grown in popularity in urban centers as they allow people to exercise and help the environment by emitting less pollution. For those bike enthusiasts, it’s important to remember to wear a helmet while riding. However, a new study found that only 1 in 5 bikers wear their helmets.

Researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center discovered that more than 80 percent of bike riders put themselves in life-threatening danger when they ride without a helmet.  The Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is affiliated with the Harvard Medical School, providing patient care, research, and teaching. It also currently ranks third in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding among independent hospitals in the U.S, working on projects such as the bike share study.

"Head injury accounts for about a third of all bicycle injuries and about three-quarters of bicycle related deaths, so these are some pretty shocking numbers," related lead author and emergency medicine physician, Dr. Christopher Fischer.

The findings, published in a recent issue of Annals of Emergency Medicine, were part of a study that examined bike share programs in Boston and Washington D.C.

"Helmet use is associated with decreased rates of head injury and mortality in riders of all ages, with bicycle helmets decreasing the risk of head and brain injury by 65 to 88 percent," described the authors in the report.

The interest in bike share programs was first seen seen in European cities like Barcelona and Paris.  There are currently 15 bike share programs in the U.S., and 30 more programs in development.  The Capital Bikeshare program in Washington D.C. was the first of its kind in the nation. SmartBike D.C. offered 120 bikes at stations in Downtown and the City Center, with 1,600 subscribing for the service. Since then, the organization has over 140 stations through D.C. and Arlington.

The team of researchers collected data in Boston and Washington D.C. with the help of trained observers. They had more than 43 observation periods done over 50 hours. They gathered information near bike share sites regarding helmet usage by adult cyclists, with more than 3,000 bikers observed in the study.

"We were surprised to find that of all bicyclists, more than half rode without helmets," commented Fischer in a prepared statement. "But it was even more concerning to learn that four out of five bike share riders were out there without helmets."

While helmet use is not a requirement by bike share programs, bike share programs in Boston and Washington D.C. have worked to promote the practice of wearing a helmet while riding.

"Bike sharing programs have the potential to offer a lot of benefits to cyclists and cities, but it's important to encourage safe cycling," explained Fischer in the statement. "We know that wearing a helmet reduces the risk of head injury dramatically and we believe that helmets should be more readily available at bike rental sites."]]> 0 <![CDATA[Food In The Lives Of GenXers]]> http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/1112522517/food-in-the-lives-of-genxers/ 2012-04-26 10:31:11
GenX men are surprisingly involved in shopping for food and cooking, the report shows. They go grocery shopping more than once a week, on average, and cook an average of about eight meals a week—much more often than their fathers did.

"I was surprised to see how often GenX men shop and cook," said Jon Miller, author of The Generation X Report. "Women, particularly married women, are still doing more cooking and shopping. But men are much more involved in these activities than they used to be. The stereotype that men can't do much more in the kitchen than boil water just can't hold water, as it were."

Using data from about 3,000 young adults collected as part of the ongoing Longitudinal Study of American Youth funded by the National Science Foundation, the report details where GenXers look for information about food, how often they entertain at home and how they feel about organic and genetically modified foods.

"Food does more than provide necessary sustenance," Miller said. "Meals provide an important time for families to gather together and share their lives, and also mark special occasions with family, friends and neighbors."

Food is also a source of concern, according to Miller, and the new report covers GenX attitudes about potential food-related benefits and threats. What kinds of food are healthiest to eat and serve your family? Where should you turn for the best information about potential threats from genetically modified foods?

Among the key findings:

* GenXers cooked a meal for guests about once a month, on average, and they talked to friends about food or cooking about six times a month.

* Men and women were equally likely to watch food shows on television, about four times a month.

* Married women cooked the most—preparing about 12 meals a week, on average. Single women cooked about 10 meals a week, while both married and single men prepared about eight meals a week.

* About half of GenXers said they preferred to buy organic foods at least some of the time, and one in 10 said they are committed to buying organic when it's available.

* GenXers had a low level of understanding about genetically modified foods. On a 10-point index of understanding, the mean score was 3.8.

"In the 21st century, food often involves judgments that may require some scientific understanding," Miller said. "Young adults who are scientifically literate are most able to monitor news about food safety, and most able to identify and use credible sources of information about a topic that directly affects their own health and the health of friends and family."

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On The Net:
]]> 0 <![CDATA[Red Means You're Easy, According To Men]]> http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112520035/red-means-youre-easy-according-to-men/ 2012-04-24 04:16:09 Lee Rannals for RedOrbit.com

Researchers claim they have found that the reason why men prefer women who wear red is because they think those women are easy.

Psychologists studied 120 male students between the ages of 18 to 21 and found that most believed women who wore red had "greater sexual intent" and were more likely to sleep with a man than someone who opted for more neutral colors.

The psychologists at the University of South Brittany in France split the group of men into four different groups.

Each volunteer spent 30 seconds looking at an image of the same 20-year-old woman, but with the color of her top varying for each group from red, blue, green or white.

The participants were asked to rate on a scale of one to nine how attractive they thought the woman was.  They also rated her in terms of how likely it was that she would sleep with a man on a first date.

The men found the women most attractive when she was wearing red, followed by white, blue and green.

The researchers also found that the women, according to the men, would most likely agree to have sex on a first date if she was wearing red, followed by blue, green and finally white.

The researchers reported in the Journal of Social Psychology that they concluded that men see a woman wearing red as a candidate for having sex on a first date.

The study's results reflect a similar study that found that men will ask more intimate questions of a woman and sit closer to her if she is wearing red, rather than a green blouse.

Another study found that female hitch hikers who choose a red top have a better chance of getting more lifts from male drivers, but not from female drivers.

“Studies have shown that red is connected to lust and romantic love as well as to female fertility," the French psychologists wrote in the journal. “But biological evolution could also explain the importance of redness. During their fertility phase, the perineum of female baboons, macaques and chimpanzees becomes red, probably to attract males."

The authors wrote that their experience is the first to show that clothes have the ability to lead men to perceive a woman wearing red is easy to get into bed.

Dr Pam Spurr, the author of Sex Academy, told the Huffington Post that women who wear red can increase their confidence.

“We can use color to mask our true feelings. And I often recommend that if someone is feeling down-spirited, they should shed their black wardrobe and put on colors with more impact."

Previous report about women in red.]]> 0 <![CDATA[Women Drive Romance, Cellphone Records Prove It]]> http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112519280/women-drive-romance-cellphone-records-prove-it/ 2012-04-23 08:50:41
Robin Dunbar, University of Oxford anthropologist and author of the study analyzed 1.95 billion cell phone calls and 489 text messages to conduct his research. He and his team worked with a single cellular provider in undisclosed European country and kept all location data anonymous in order to protect the identities of the cell phone users.

To limit the amount of data they used, Dunbar and team studied only the top 3 friendships of each male and female cell phone user. Dunbar’s study was published on April 19 by Nature Scientific Reports.

According to his research, romantic relationships between men and women are most important to those in their 20s and 30s. Women in particular were more likely to call their partner more frequently than men. Women call their spouses more often than any other person until their daughters are old enough to have children. Men, on the other hand, call their spouses most often during the first 7 years of marriage, then move their attention to other friendships.

Things begin to change at age 50, however. Researchers noticed women call other women a generation younger than themselves, presumably their daughters, more often then they call their husbands. Men, on the other hand, continue to seek out companionship relationships.

The researchers believe this strong preference in women towards men and then their daughters or a daughter-like figure ultimately affects men. The study shows women make romantic relationships a top priority in their early years, a move men learn to reciprocate over time. This relationship remains a priority throughout her childbearing years, then her focus moves onto the next generation of child bearers.

“Generally, we have probably underestimated how important these family support networks are,” Dunbar told Scientific American via Huffington Post.

“What seems to happen is that women push the ‘old man’ out to become their second best friend, and he gets called much less often and all her attention is focused on her daughters just at the point at which you are likely to see grandchildren arriving,” he told BBC News.

According to Dunbar, the point of this study was to discover how intimate relationships develop over a lifetime.

The data also reveals some well-known differences in the way men and women communicate with members of the same sex.

According to the phone records, women are more likely to have “intense” one-on-one relationships with other women, a relationship which is shaped through frequent communication. In fact, Dunbar even suggests the digital and modern age of communication, with its quick bursts of texts and instant messages, is tailor-made for female communication.

Men, on the other hand, are more likely to have many friendships with an equal number of men and women after the romantic years have passed.

In conclusion, Prof. Dunbar says the data suggests that, “at root the important relationships are those between women and not those between men”.

“Men’s relationships are too casual. They often function at a high level in a political sense, of course; but at the end of the day, the structure of society is driven by women, which is exactly what we see in primates,” he explained to BBC's Pallab Ghosh.]]> 0 <![CDATA[Does This Gun Make Me Look Bigger?]]> http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/1112513140/does-this-gun-make-me-look-bigger/ 2012-04-13 04:54:37 UCLA suggests holding a gun makes men look bigger, stronger and more masculine. Published in the journal PLoS ONE, the study was conducted by asking hundreds of Americans to estimate the size and muscularity of four men, each holding a different object. The men holding guns were perceived as not only larger, but also stronger than the other men.

Daniel Fessler is the lead author of the paper and an associate professor of anthropology at UCLA. According to him, assuming a gun-wielder is large is an automatic mental-leap.

“There’s nothing about the knowledge that gun powder makes lead bullets fly through the air at damage-causing speeds that should make you think that a gun-bearer is bigger or stronger, yet you do,” Fessler said in a statement.

“Danger really does loom large — in our minds.”

This automatic leap suggests there is an unconscious mental mechanism in our minds similar to those found in animals used to quickly estimate the size and strength of possible foes.

The study is part of a larger project, which is being funded by the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research. The results could be used to train and equip law enforcement and military personnel.

“We’re exploring how people think about the relative likelihood that they will win a conflict, and then how those thoughts affect their decisions about whether to enter into conflict,”

To conduct the study. Fessler and his team put calls out to online want-ad sites Craigslist and MechanicalTurk. In one round, participants were asked to look at pictures of four hands, each holding a different tool, such as caulking guns, electric drills and saws, while one of the hands pictured was holding a gun.

The decision to use tools was quite intentional.

“Tools were used as control objects to rule out the possibility that a simple link with traditionally masculine objects would explain intuitions that the weapon-holders were larger and stronger,” Fessler explained.

Based solely on the photographs of hands, the participants were asked to guess the height of each hand model. Then, the participants were shown pictures of men with progressing height and muscularity; shortest to tallest, then wimpiest to strongest.

According to their research, the participants consistently assumed the larger, stronger men matched the hand model holding the gun.

In order to stray away from any possible mistake or bias, the researchers were careful to take pictures of each hand model holding each object-some participants saw a gun held by a smaller model while others saw pictures of larger men holding the gun. The researchers also picked the models based on their similar appearance, white and free of any distinguishing marks.

On average, the participants viewed the wielding models to be 17% larger than those holding the other tools. Interestingly, the participants consistently viewed the hand holding the caulking gun to be the smallest man.

To make sure the results weren’t influences by pop culture’s depiction of large, burly men toting firearms, the researchers also showed two other groups pictures of hand models holding kitchen knives, paint brushes, and squirt guns.

Unsurprisingly, the kitchen knife was viewed as the most dangerous object of the three. However, while the images of the handguns were associated with large men, the images of the kitchen knife were associated with women.]]> 0 <![CDATA['Hangover Heaven' Curb-Side Business Started In Las Vegas]]> http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/1112511215/hangover-heaven-curb-side-business-started-in-las-vegas/ 2012-04-11 06:51:23 Las Vegas Review Journal reported on April 8 that one doctor has created a new business venture to "cure" a hangover.

The doctor's new business is mobile, giving customers curb-side service by heading to someone's room at a hotel and giving them an IV for a variety of prices.

Hangover Heaven's website states that the designated pickup areas are at the Hard Rock Hotel, Paris, Bellagio and The Cosmopolitan.  The buses are equipped with two lounge areas and six bunk beds.

"Once on the bus, our physician will take a brief medical history, and assess your hangover severity score," the website claims. "Then, numbing medicine is applied to your skin and a small IV will then be placed. Most people find it completely painless. Then you start receiving the treatment."

Dr. Jason Burke, a board-certified anesthesiologist who graduated from Duke University, started the company, which offers various packages and will "deliver" them to customers through its fleet of buses.

The company's website said Dr. Burke can have a patient feeling better in less than 45 minutes so they can "continue the party, or just get back to your normal self."

"With my treatment protocol, I can take you from a semi-conscious, porcelain-hugging, hit-by-a-truck hangover to feeling like you’re ready to take on the world  in less than 45 minutes," Burke wrote on the company's website.

“People come to Las Vegas to blow off some steam, relieve stress and have a good time. Should we lose an entire day of our vacation because the bartender over-served us the night before?” Burke said. “I say NO.”

The basic package, which has been called Redemption, starts at $130 and includes flushing the toxins from a customer's body.

The Salvation Package is priced at $200 and is the business' "most effective service."  This packages includes IV hydration, anti-nausea and anti-inflammatory medications.

Burke said Hangover Heaven will be offering In-Room treatment starting on April 16, and will be available Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

In-Room Treatments, which include two bags of IV fluids, anti-nausea medicine, anti-inflammatories and vitamins, start at $500 for the first person and $375 for each additional person.

The business is quick to point out on the website that it does not advertise in binge drinking, but instead asks people to just drink in moderation.

“Our buses can work magic, but they cannot bring you back from the dead," the website claims.]]> 0 <![CDATA[New York Replacing Phone Booths With 'Smart Screens']]> http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/1112510228/new-york-replacing-phone-booths-with-smart-screens/ 2012-04-10 04:00:28 New York Post, the Big Apple is going to be placing "smart screens" inside old phone booths over the next month.

The report said the city is planning on unveiling 32-inch "smart screens" to replace telephones throughout the five boroughs in New York.

The touch-screen display will show local neighborhood information, including lists of nearby restaurants, store sales in the area, traffic updates, landmark information and safety alerts, according to the Post.

“The goal is to pilot it and see what the response is,” Nicholas Sbordone, a spokesman for the city’s department of Information Technology & Telecommunications, told the Post.

“It will help inform the city’s ongoing reassessment, with public input, of what we want or what we think the future of public pay phones will entail.”

City24x7 will be the company that will install and maintain the smart screens throughout the city.  CEO Tom Touchet said the screens will be more sanitary than an ATM because they are built to be cleaned with a jet hose and are waterproof and dust-proof.

He told the Post that the smart screens will eventually be wired to make Skype calls, log onto email accounts, and serve as Wi-Fi hotspots.

The city will not be making any money off of the technology at first, but will eventually get a 36 percent cut of all ad revenue.

The Post reported that a city spokesman said New York City earns about $18 million annually on pay phones.

It also said the city will be rolling out 22-inch computer touch-screens underground to replace pay phones.

A city spokesman told the Post that these touch screens will be equipped with cameras for video applications, as well as electrical outlets so users can charge their phones.

The New York Times said that an earlier pilot program saw smart screens installed during the past few years in places like Citi Field and the dormitories of New York University.

“It’s giving you information that’s time-of-day sensitive, geo-specific,” Touchet told the New York Times. “It’s based on whatever community you happen to be in.”]]> 0 <![CDATA[Popularity Of 1940 Census Bogs Down Website]]> http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/1112507347/popularity-of-1940-census-bogs-down-website/ 2012-04-04 04:40:18 1940 Census records on Monday were unable to because the popularity of the information weighed down its servers too much.

The National Archives and Records Administration said that in the first three hours of launching the Census, it had 22.5 million hits on the site.

"We're a victim of our own success," National Archives and Records Administration spokeswoman Susan Cooper told the Los Angeles Times.

CBS News reported that those users who were able to get through on the website would wait 20 minutes and longer for a page to load.

When the information is not being overwhelmed by traffic, the public can search through the records of over 132 million people living in the U.S. in 1940 for free.  The data was available for 72 years because of privacy laws.

Newsday reported that the National Archives and Records Administration worked with archives.com to put 3.8 million images from the 1940 Census online.

The organization said that the official website was getting 100,000 hits every second, according to @1940sCensusNews Twitter account.

Among the release of 132 million individuals is presidents Ronald Reagan and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The website shows that actor Ronald Reagan, and his wife, actress Jane Wyman, reported incomes of over $5,000 a year and had a home worth $200,000.

President Roosevelt's occupation is listed as "President of the U.S.A." and had an address of "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."

The information collected by the census in 1940 included a person's address, age and education, the names of the adults and children under their roof, whether their home was owned or rented, and the value of their home or rent.

In 1940, there were 5.1 million farmers, while today's Census shows there are 613,000 famers in the U.S.

Twenty-three percent of the population during 1940 listed their occupation as manufacturing, while 19 percent were in agriculture.

About 132 million who took part of the 1940 Census, compared to the 309 million people who answered questions for the 2010 Census.

Also, just five percent of the population had college degrees in 1940, compared to nearly 30 percent in the 2010 Census.

The Census also reveals how the population moved from more northern states to southern states.  In the 1940 Census, the most desirable places to live was New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois.  Now, the most heavily populated states are California, Texas and New York.

Racial diversity has grown since the 1940 Census as well, with 0.4 percent of the population being listed as "other" and white and black making up the majority.  Now, the percentage of white people in America has dropped 7.4 percentage points, while black has grown nearly 3 percentage points, and the Asian population holds 4.8 percent of the American population.

The 1940 Census included 34 questions, with an extra 15 questions for the smaller subset chosen at random.  The current Census only consists of 10 questions.

Jeanne Bloom of the Chicago Genealogical Society, compared the releasing of this information to a major sporting event.

"It's kind of like the Super Bowl for genealogists," Bloom told NPR. "I locate living family members of soldiers that were missing in action during World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam [and] whose remains were never recovered, identified and returned to the family."

Robert Gellman, a privacy and information consultant, told the Associated Press that he doubted the records would be of much value to crooks.

"There's nobody out there complaining about 70-year-old records being used against them," he told The AP.

The 1940 Census is now back online, and its 3.8 million images and 4,000 rolls of "microfilm" are ready to be sifted through.]]> 0