Glider

So, you're rescuers would just be looking for a tiny hole in a snow field? That'll help them

Psychology is a very large discipline. It involves areas from the entire 'hardness continuum'. At one end you have the hard stuff; direct nerve conduction studies, PET, SPET, computer controlled preattentive presentation, direct GSR, EEG, fMRI, output measure stuff, drug studies, in vitro NT action studies and so-on (e.g. psychoneuroimmunology, psychophysiology, neuropsychology etc.), and at the other end you have the "...and how do you feel about that" pink and fluffy stuff. To ask whether Psychology is a science or art, you need to understand its full scope, and then specify which particular area you're talking about.

The saltwater rinse after having a tooth out is to prevent/reduce post-op infection. It doesn't have any direct analgesic properties. I don't know how sensodyne works (or even that it does, but I'm prepared to take people's word for it), but I can't see how KCl could de-sensitize nerves.

If you have 3 samples of data, you can't use a t-test. A t-test is a test of difference between two samples of data. As ed84c said, you need to provide more information.

True. These expectations can also lead to self-fulfilling prophesy, which further confirm our beliefs.

They pay attention, a trick humans have lost. Bears always know which way is north? So do I (it's how I used to navigate when I was a despatch rider), it's really not that hard. It's down to paying attention. Animals don't really have any weird or supernatural abilities, they just use the senses they have and notice the things that warn them of danger. Because humans have enveloped themselves in technology and a false sense of security, we have lost the knack; the ability to recognise the signs that indicate danger. When a tsunami is approaching, one of the things that happen is that the sea withdraws as the wave approaches. Huge numbers of people were lost in the tsunami because they trotted down the beach to see where it had gone. There was no sense of "that can't be good. I'm out of here".

This argument is based on the gambler's fallacy. This is the one that states "If, when tossing a coin, I throw a tail, the probability of my throwing a head in the next throw increases" which leads to "The more tails I throw on the trot, the higher my chances of throwing a head". This is not true. Each throw is an independent trial and each trial hold a 50% chance of throwing a head. It doesn't matter how many times you have previously thrown a tail.

Probably the best way would just be to ask them. Well, cortisol is the stress hormone, so low levels of that would be associated with low stress. The nucleus accumbens and ventral tegmental area are associated with reward, as is the transmitter substance dopamine. Higher activity in those areas and higher levels of dopamine are associated with euphoria and reward. Nope, not really. All these things, cortisol levels, dopamine levels and activity in the brain reward system are only correlates of the experience. For example, high levels of cortisol are associated with stress, but low levels (and the absence of the post waking spike) can also be associated with depression. Dopamine is the principal substance in the reward system. Higher levels there are associated with euphoria and happiness, but high levels of dopamine are also associated with schitzophrenia. You could try galvanic skin response (GSR) measurements whilst people were watching the films/reading the books etc., but even these are just corrolates of stress responses. You couldn't translate the recordings into experience in any meaningful way. How would you tell the difference between e.g. excitement and anger (very similar GSR), or 'calmness' and 'about to go to sleep through boredom' (again, very similar GSR). As I said, probably the best way of measuring a person's level of satisfaction would be just to ask them, and I believe that media executives spend a lot of time and money doing that already.

You are right. Reactive depression can become clinical, and often clinical depression begins as reactive depression; a perfectly normal response to an event/situation, which then gets out of hand and becomes 'habit' so to speak. What I should have said, to be precise, is that clinical depression doesn't need a triggering event, or at least not one that is obvious and immediate (e.g. the death of a loved one, getting the sack, divorce etc.). Reverse is right, there are people who have depressive tendencies to begin with. It's a part of their psychological/neurological (depending on your bias) makeup. Even then, in many cases, it could be argued that these tendencies were gained through prior experience. These people tend to remember more negative events in their lives (even though the numbers of negative and positive events are probably the same, as with most people). They tend to catastrophise (i.e. small negative events tend to be seen as major, insurmountable problems), and they tend to have more negative predictions, e.g. good events won't necessarily lead to good outcomes, but bad events will definitely lead to bad outcomes. In a way, it's a bit like wearing cognitive sunglasses. Normal everyday life that everybody is exposed to gets filtered through these chronically accessible cognitive structures and are interpreted as being that much darker. However, this in itself isn't depression. People with depressive tendencies just have a lower threshold for depression i.e. are more likely to become depressed, and are more likely to become depressed when subejected to events that wouldn't lead to depression in other people. So another interpretation of 'no triggering event' is 'a comparitively innocuous event that would not normally lead to depression in the majority of people'. As for time, "How far away in time must an event be in order to not figure as a trigger?", well, time is not really a factor. Resolution is the issue. If an event remains unresolved, then it tends to remain a potential trigger for depression, regardless of the amount of time that passes. 'Time heals' it is said, but specifically this means time provides the opportunity to gain perspective and to come to see the problem in relation to the bigger picture of their overall lives. But if a person avoids thinking about the event at all and just suppresses it, then it will tend to remain as a future risk.

Precisely. And more than that, resucitation is a brutal exercise in many cases. Seriously, it's not something you'd want to undergo unless you were fairly sure of coming out of it pretty much intact & functional.

Depression is the normal reaction to really depressing events. This is acute, adaptive and is known as reactive depression. Clinical depression, on the other hand, occurs without any obvious triggering events, and is chronic. Whether the depression is reactive or clinical, it is always an emotional state. It's the underlying cause that differs.

It depends. Strictly speaking, a PhD is a research degree. The requirement is that you produce a piece of research that is novel, original and adds something to the established body of knowledge, and that you do this independently, although under supervision (not least for the sake of ethical clearance & insurance). The length requirement differs from place to place. The maximum used to be 100,000 words but many institutions have reduced this to around 80,000. However, in some disciplines, and in some countries, PhDs are becoming taught (modular) courses, which kind of negates the Ph bit, if you think about it. PhDs can take as little as 2 years if you are organised, well supervised and start with a masters degree. If you do a PhD by transfer it takes longer. A PhD by transfer means that you start with a BSc, do a year or two, then submit a detailed report which should show that what you have done is worthy of a masters, and that what you have still to do stands some chance of fulfilling the requirements of a PhD. If you get through that, your transfer is accepted and you are then officially on a PhD, and you spend the next couple of years on that. The time taken can very significantly with the toipic you have chosen and the complexity of your methods. I knew a guy who did his part-time, and took 14 years to complete. I did mine (PhD by transfer) part-time. I won a scholarship, but that only paid my fees. I had to work to pay the rent and it was a nightmare. There simply aren't enough hours to work enough to pay the rent, live and do a PhD. It took me from Feb. 96 to Oct. 03. Happily, I sailed the viva. I couldn't have taken having to do a significant re-write. I think PhDs are supposed to be a bit soul destroying. In many ways they are a test of endurance rather than a test of ability. I certainly wouldn't recommend that anyone does theirs part-time. Just maintaining focus and drive over that length of time is a problem. Having said that, they are supposed to demonstrate your abilities as an independent researcher; to be able to identify a research question, to formulate sensible hypotheses, to design and construct valid methods for testing those hypotheses, to implement those methods, generate meaningful data, perform appropriate analyses and form sensible and meaningful conclusions from the results and ultimately to generate something that adds something tangiable to the existing body of knowledge in the area. They aren't really supposed to be a breeze. I think one of the most important factors is that you have a genuine interest in the topic you are researching though. If you don't have that, you just won't be able to run with it over any length of time, you'll just forget why you started. I was amazed when I found out the proportion of PhD candidates who drop out in the first year or two.

There are several mechanisms of action for drugs. They act usually at synapses. They can act as an agonist (act on receptor molecules in the same way as a substance) for an endogenous substance, e.g. opiates (opium, morphine, diamorphine etc.) are agonists for enkephalins and endorphins. Or they can act as antagonists (block the action of a substance) e.g. naloxone, (the antagonist for opioids and endorphins). Alternatively, they can alter the concentrations of endogenous transmitters e.g. specific serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), or monoamineoxidase inhibitors (MAOIs). Each of these increase the concentrations of serotonin; SSRIs by inhibiting its reuptake by the presynaptic buton, and MAOIs by inhibiting the enzyme that breaks down serotonin. Some drugs used locally work on the axon itself and simply block transmission (e.g. cocaine and its derivitives: Lidocaine, xylocaine, lignocaine etc.). However, the same drug in the central nervous system has the overall effect of increasing dopamine levels (a/w reward). Drugs of abuse all have different effects in many different areas of the brain, but their underlying effect; the reason people take them and get addicted to them is that they share a final common effect, in that they increase activity in dopaminergic systems in the ventral tegmental area, the medial forebrain bundle, the nucleus accumbens and the mesolimbic pathway (essentially, this constitutes the brain reward system). Some do this directly, by stimulating dopamine release and others do it indirectly e.g. barbiturates, benzodiazepines opiates and alcohol. These interact with Gamma Aminobutyric Acid (GABA) receptors, inhibiting the release of GABA onto dopaminergic neurons. GABA is an inhibitory transmitter, and its usual function is to inhibit dopamine release. By inhibiting the inhibitor, you are in effect 'removing the brakes' in the system. The brain can't do anything immediately to prevent drugs from working. It can compensate for their action over time though, often by altering the concentration of receptor molecules in postsynaptic membranes and sometimes by reducing the amount of endogenous transmitter substance it produces.

I think the driving emotion there would be anger. And here' date=' fear is removed through removal of the perceived threat. And this is stupidity (failure to see the threat in the first place). I think courage is not the absence of fear in a threat situation (that's stupidity). It the ability to control fear and not let it become the driving emotion. So courage in itself is not an emotion, it is more the ability to control one.

Very good point. And at least five of the six basic emotions can be seen clearly in babies: Happiness, Sadness (distress), Disgust, Surprise (startle) and fear. Anger can also be seen, but it looks like distress in babies and is more related to frustration. Yes, we can have mixed emotions. When presented with two opposing stimuli, we will respond to both, but the combination is dissonance and often leads to inaction (with respect to the stimuli) and displacement behaviours. This can be seen in both animals and humans.

That sounds reasonable to me. The six I presented are the visually recognisable displays of emotion. These are adaptive and necessary in a social group. However, emotion is a response to certain stimuli (real or perceived), and it makes sense to assume that one could only evoke a pure emotion through exposure to a 'pure' stimulus, specific to a particular emotion. But every individual is different and highly complex in their own emotional stuctures, and in real life, there is no such thing as a 'pure' emotional stimulus, they are all going to be mixed. So, it makes sense to assume that emotional responses to them will also be mixed. Your example, jealousy (of the romantic attachment kind, rather than the acquisitive kind) will very likely include fear (of loss), anger (at the perceived encroachment on one's 'own territory/property') and sadness (at the loss of feelings of security and/or the decrease in one's sense of self worth).

That's a very long list. There are six universally recognised emotions, i.e. facial expressions of emotion that are recognised throughout the species: Happines, Sadness, Fear, Surprise, Anger and Disgust.

One can feel hunger. Hunger is a negative state resulting in a psychological drive to seek food. It is accompanied by an emotional (affective-motivational) state which is subject to negative reinforcement. Because of this negative reinforcement, it can be an overwhelming state and can quite easily exclude less salient states (depending on the degree of hunger). So, perhaps one suggestion might be that no real, deep, important emotion is being hidden, and "it's simply that the most important drive at this time is hunger and after a sandwich, I might be more ready to discuss what it is you really want to know?"

Damn! Where do you work? That sounds like an awful situation! Our place is intolerant of plagiarists. If we found something we suspected was plagiarized, it was up to us to find the evidence, but if we did, the student automatically got zero for that work on their first offence. Subsequent offences incur greater penalties, up to being kicked out of University. Last year they introduced a new system (JISC) whereby all students submitting course work have to submit hard copy (for us) and they have to upload a soft copy into the JISC system on the students webpage. The JISC system searches the text of their work and tries to match it with anything on the internet and also with anything on any other submitted work. The penalties remain; zero for the offending work on the first offence, greater penalties for subsequent offences, up to and including expulsion.

In fact we know there is an hereditory component in alcoholism. There are neurological differences in the brains of alcoholics, localised to the left hemisphere (I can't remember the precise location). This difference has been observed in the sons of alcoholics. It is passed down the male line. You are right about the environment. This hereditory component provides a propensity for alcoholism, but it does not guarantee the individual will become an alcoholic. In effect, it just increases the probability (risk) significantly above those without this difference. The same has been observed in primates. There are those with a propensity for uncontrolled drinking, and those who find the effects of alcohol aversive. This, within the same species. This occurs at a resort at which these animals regularly come down to scavange food and drink left by tourists. In this case, the environment plays a significant role, because it is that which determines access to alcohol. Nonetheless, within that environment, there are still those who will go to extreme lengths to scavange alcoholic drinks, and those who avoid it and scavange only soft drinks. A good example of a nature/nurture interaction, I thought. The nature/nurture debate is old. It has been many years since anyone argued for the sole influence of one or the other. Most people now acknowledge that both play a significant role and these days look at the relative impacts of each.

If you have 9 balls in a barrel, and all 9 are red, then the proportion of balls in that sample that are red is 100%. Therefore, if you reach in to the barrel and pull one out at random, the probability it will be red is also 100%. The same applies for flying hippos. A nine out of nine chance means that there are nine flying hippos (so the proportion of flying hippos in that sample of nine is 100%), and if each one is going to hit you then the chances of being hit by a flying hippo is also 100%.

As a general rule, if you want to know what will happen to your hair, you look at your maternal grandfather. It's one of those things that are passed down the maternal line (x chromosome).

You can buy heated handlebar grips for motorcycles. You might like to look at how they are constructed. They run off the bike's battery (12v).

I spent some time working at as an undertaker some years ago, I have seen many crematoria, in and around London. I have never seen an oven capable of holding more than one individual. I have seen crematoria with banks of ovens, but each could hold only one coffin.

Now you're just depressing me.