thinker_jeff

I tell you the truth - Your attitude causes me unhappy, even though I am a guy with happiness and joy in daily life. Every one should respect others in this forum, despite of the disagreements about religions and other thoughts.

Respectful. Do you mean that you believe in the God who is not the ONE in Bible?

Well, I feel something strange. It seems that all of the replies are on the same side. In reality there are a lots of people, including some scientists, believing in God; however, there is no such kind of replies in this topic. Why?

By the nature of science, it is never trying to prove if God exists or doesn't. I have no feeling about God at all. If God appeared on front of me, I would ask why he did not make the earthquake on the warfield. If he did so, the current earthquake could replace the atomic bombs in 1945 so that the today's Japenese were able to live peacefully.

This general perception may not be true. Some research indicates that Australians are getting shorter. Link: http://www.earthtime...rcher-says.html

Delete this, too.

Please delete this post.

Let's define "systematic" first. I use this word as "presented or formulated as a coherent body of ideas or principles" (See http://www.merriam-w...nary/systematic ). For example, if a person thinks that the reason we do what we do is just executing the instruction from God, he should believe that God runs the world all the time. Otherwise, his philosophy is not systematic. When you charge on a scientific research, you should have a lot of things to consider, a lot of issues to resolve, and a lot of challenge to face. If you are qualified to be such person, you should know how to formulate your scientific ideas as a coherent body, which means you should have the systematic philosophy already. By the way, I believe that all of the religions are systematic philosophies, too.

The first, every adult has some philosophy evidently because there are always some general questions about the world and people you have to explain for yourself. For examples: Does God exist or doesn't? If God exist, how does God run the world? If God doesn't exist, where does the world and people come from? Why do we do what we do? The second, when you are qualified to have a career in science, you must have a systematic philosophy of science already. The third, some systematic philosophies have many theories contradicted to science. Therefore, you don't need systematic philosophy before learning science; and in fact, that is good condition for your study in science.

PhDwannabe, You have many good points about neuroimaging. For example: It seems that you extend your opinion to conclude neuroimaging useless other than just "cool things". I agree with you that a lot of researches have not used such technologies wisely nor interpreted such data rigorously; however, neuroimaging does provide us more empirical data than before. For instance, how can we study "imagery" by behavioral data without help by neuroimaging? Of course, the data extracted from neuroimaging is still coarse and inconsistent. But at least it is some fact to help us to understand the brain better than before. Psychology needs neuroimaging and the improvement of such technologies. The terminology of "hard-wired" is misleading in popular science media. It seems that should be replaced by "plastic-wired".

Left-lateralized early neurophysiological response for Chinese characters in young primary school children Abstract Adult readers consistently show an enhanced early event-related potential (ERP) response, N170, for visual words compared with other stimuli at left posterior electrodes. Developmental studies with words in alphabetic languages showed that this neurophysiological specialization for print develops rapidly from 6 to 10-years of age and becomes established around 10–11 years of age. Here we report for the first time the development of the word-related N170 in Chinese children learning to read Chinese, a logographic writing system radically different from alphabetic scripts in visual and linguistic features. We recorded ERP responses elicited by Chinese characters and line drawings of common objects in three groups of primary school children at 7, 9, and 11 years of age as well as college students. Results showed that the amplitude of N170 evoked by Chinese characters in the 7-year-old group was significantly larger than that in the 11-year-old group and the adult readers. Remarkably, all four age groups – even the youngest group – showed an increased and left-lateralized N170 response for Chinese characters, as compared with line drawings, suggesting that a relatively specialized mechanism for processing Chinese characters is already emergent by as early as 7 years of age. Our results, combined with studies of non-Chinese child readers suggest that the developmental pattern of word-related N170 is highly similar across different scripts, possibly reflecting increased visual processing expertise that children acquire through everyday reading. Link: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T0G-524FSJ5-2&_user=10&_coverDate=02%2F08%2F2011&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=gateway&_origin=gateway&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=e4973e2be385080a6295d8b7b6ef96ee&searchtype=a

I have a little problem with this article (not the paper, because I haven't seen it.). To receive $16 tomorrow is not immediate reward, so that there is no time pressure on the subject.

What should you do when you really, REALLY have to “go”? Make important life decisions, maybe. Controlling your bladder makes you better at controlling yourself when making decisions about your future, too, according to a study to be published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Sexual excitement, hunger, thirst-psychological scientists have found that activation of just one of these bodily desires can actually make people want other, seemingly unrelated, rewards more. Take, for example, a man who finds himself searching for a bag of potato chips after looking at sexy photos of women. If this man were able to suppress his sexual desire in this situation, would his hunger also subside? This is the sort of question Mirjam Tuk, of the University of Twente in the Netherlands, sought to answer in the laboratory. Tuk came up with the idea for the study while attending a long lecture. In an effort to stay alert, she drank several cups of coffee. By the end of the talk, she says, "All the coffee had reached my bladder. And that raised the question: What happens when people experience higher levels of bladder control?" With her colleagues, Debra Trampe of the University of Groningen and Luk Warlop of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Tuk designed experiments to test whether self-control over one bodily desire can generalize to other domains as well. In one experiment, participants either drank five cups of water (about 750 milliliters), or took small sips of water from five separate cups. Then, after about 40 minutes-the amount of time it takes for water to reach the bladder-the researchers assessed participants' self-control. Participants were asked to make eight choices; each was between receiving a small, but immediate, reward and a larger, but delayed, reward. For example, they could choose to receive either $16 tomorrow or $30 in 35 days. The researchers found that the people with full bladders were better at holding out for the larger reward later. Other experiments reinforced this link; for example, in one, just thinking about words related to urination triggered the same effect. "You seem to make better decisions when you have a full bladder," Tuk says. So maybe you should drink a bottle of water before making a decision about your stock portfolio, for example. Or perhaps stores that count on impulse buys should keep a bathroom available to customers, since they might be more willing to go for the television with a bigger screen when they have an empty bladder. The results were a little surprising from a theoretical point of view; a lot of research in psychology has supported the concept of "ego depletion"-that having to restrain yourself wears out your brain and makes it harder to exert self-control over something else. But Tuk says this seems to work in a different way, maybe because bladder control is largely an automatic, unconscious process. © Association for Psychological Science Link: http://www.utwente.nl/news/full-bladder,-better-decisions

I think - this is commercial for toys instead of scientific discussion.

I guess that you have to pay to read the article, that why the line of copyright follows. I have a question - Is consciousness really an established concept in scientific paradigms?

Abstract Scientific paradigms have a tendency to rise fast and decline slowly. This asymmetry reflects the difficulty in developing a truly original idea, compared to the ease at which a concept can be eroded by numerous modifications. Here we formulate a model for the emergence and spread of ideas which deals with this asymmetry by constraining the ability of agents to return to already abandoned concepts. The model exhibits a fairly regular pattern of global paradigm shifts, where older paradigms are eroded and subsequently replaced by new ones. The model sets the theme for a new class of pattern formation models, where local dynamics breaks the detailed balance in a way that prevents old states from defending themselves against new nucleating or invading states. The model allows for frozen events in terms of the coexistence of multiple metastable states. © 2011 American Physical Society Link: http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v106/i5/e058701

Did my question cause offense to you? If so, I am very sorry. Be honest, I am a new member and still learning the culture in this forum. Personally I like to think based on the facts, especially on the facts supported by research. Of course, I want to hear the novel opinions as far as I can catch the points.

I feel a little lost. Could you summarize your points in a few sentences?

Impressive theory. I am interested on how many theories in political science backed by researches in psychology. Based on my personal experience, generally people in U.S. have less knowledge about other countries than the foreign people's knowledge about U.S. I guess that is the reason of the low efficiency of U.S. diplomatic resources.

I always think that many troubles between countries are caused by cultural difference. The people in one country interpret the motivations of the people in another country in the way different from each other, especially when they are in different languages and cultures. This research supports my thought, that why I post it here.

Abstract The way we talk about complex and abstract ideas is suffused with metaphor. In five experiments, we explore how these metaphors influence the way that we reason about complex issues and forage for further information about them. We find that even the subtlest instantiation of a metaphor (via a single word) can have a powerful influence over how people attempt to solve social problems like crime and how they gather information to make “well-informed” decisions. Interestingly, we find that the influence of the metaphorical framing effect is covert: people do not recognize metaphors as influential in their decisions; instead they point to more “substantive” (often numerical) information as the motivation for their problem-solving decision. Metaphors in language appear to instantiate frame-consistent knowledge structures and invite structurally consistent inferences. Far from being mere rhetorical flourishes, metaphors have profound influences on how we conceptualize and act with respect to important societal issues. We find that exposure to even a single metaphor can induce substantial differences in opinion about how to solve social problems: differences that are larger, for example, than pre-existing differences in opinion between Democrats and Republicans. Link: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0016782

Is Hati a modern country? Is Mexico a modern country? No, they are not! If you question why different people is asking you a similar question again and again, the answer should be obvious that they do not understand your point.

LINK: http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/3/70/70ra14.abstract Abstract Evidence from behavioral and self-reported data suggests that the patients’ beliefs and expectations can shape both therapeutic and adverse effects of any given drug. We investigated how divergent expectancies alter the analgesic efficacy of a potent opioid in healthy volunteers by using brain imaging. The effect of a fixed concentration of the μ-opioid agonist remifentanil on constant heat pain was assessed under three experimental conditions using a within-subject design: with no expectation of analgesia, with expectancy of a positive analgesic effect, and with negative expectancy of analgesia (that is, expectation of hyperalgesia or exacerbation of pain). We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to record brain activity to corroborate the effects of expectations on the analgesic efficacy of the opioid and to elucidate the underlying neural mechanisms. Positive treatment expectancy substantially enhanced (doubled) the analgesic benefit of remifentanil. In contrast, negative treatment expectancy abolished remifentanil analgesia. These subjective effects were substantiated by significant changes in the neural activity in brain regions involved with the coding of pain intensity. The positive expectancy effects were associated with activity in the endogenous pain modulatory system, and the negative expectancy effects with activity in the hippocampus. On the basis of subjective and objective evidence, we contend that an individual’s expectation of a drug’s effect critically influences its therapeutic efficacy and that regulatory brain mechanisms differ as a function of expectancy. We propose that it may be necessary to integrate patients’ beliefs and expectations into drug treatment regimes alongside traditional considerations in order to optimize treatment outcomes.

I agree with SMF that you are trolling. Please explain why in modern society the Natural Selection still continues in human beings if they are lived in the way to prevent deaths.

This is another example to see how the process of Natural Seletion has been stopped by public heath care in modern society.