We Are More Likely to Lie in the Afternoon

If you want to catch someone in a lie, you’ll raise your odds in the afternoon because most people are more likely to cheat or lie then, as opposed to in the morning

The researchers also found that people who tend to cheat regularly were just as likely to do so in the morning as in the afternoon. It was the more ethical folks who suffered lapses as the day wore on

via We Are More Likely to Lie in the Afternoon: Scientific American Podcast.

Shifting employee bonuses from self to others increases satisfaction and productivity at work

Providing employees with a bonus to spend on charities or co-workers may increase job satisfaction and team sales, according to results published September 18 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Lalin Anik from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and colleagues from other institutions.Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-09-shifting-employee-bonuses-satisfaction-productivity.html#jCp

http://phys.org/news/2013-09-shifting-employee-bonuses-satisfaction-productivity.html

The effect of subliminal priming on sleep duration

Two experiments primed college students with either sleep-related or neutral words and then assessed sleep during a 25 minute nap period. Both experiments showed that participants primed with sleep-related words reported having slept longer than did those primed with neutral words. Furthermore, both experiments showed that sleep-primed participants exhibited lower heart rate. Experiment 2 also revealed that the effect of the priming manipulation was especially strong among participants who had trouble sleeping. This suggests that priming might be a cost-effective treatment for inducing sleep among people with sleep problems.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jasp.12123/abstract

You do the priming by writing words like relax, comfy, warm, etc where you can read them from bed

Google Ngram Viewer

This tool allows you to view how often case-sensitive comma-separated phrases appear in Google Books (until 2008 as far as I can see) from various languages. Interesting to see

Love

scores a lot lower than

Sex

and “yes we can” was popular in 1930 – 1935 as well as 1944 – 1950 and started on a growth well before Obama came along in 1990.

Oddly enough, “I have a dream” has also been making a comeback since the 1980s

Corked Wine Plugs Up Your Nose

Ever send a bottle of wine back at a restaurant? If you weren’t just being a pretentious snob, then it was probably because the wine seemed “corked”—had a musty odor and didn’t taste quite right. Most likely, the wine was contaminated with a molecule called 2,4,6-trichloroanisole (TCA), the main cause of cork taint. But a new study by Japanese researchers concludes that you do not smell TCA directly; rather, TCA blocks up your sense of smell and distorts your ability to detect odors. The findings could help the food and beverage industry improve its products and lead to less embarrassment for both you and your waiter.

http://news.sciencemag.org/chemistry/2013/09/corked-wine-plugs-your-nose

Scientific evidence of what works in education often ignored

According to Gina Kolata in the New York Times, The Institute of Education Sciences in the Department of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, has supported 175 randomized controlled studies, like the studies used in medicine, to find out what works and doesn’t work, which are reported in the What Works Clearinghouse. Surprisingly, the choice of instructional materials — textbooks, curriculum guides, homework, quizzes — can affect achievement as much as teachers; poor materials have as much effect as a bad teacher, and good materials can offset a bad teacher’s deficiencies. One popular math textbook was superior to 3 competitors. A popular computer-assisted math program had no benefit. Most educators, including principals and superintendents, don’t know the data exists. 42% of school districts had never heard of the clearinghouse. Up to 90% of programs that seemed promising in small studies had no effect or made achievement scores worse. For example a program to increase 7th-grade math teachers’ understanding of math increased their understanding but had no effect on student achievement. Upward Bound had no effect.

http://m.slashdot.org/story/191103

Pollution makes Europeans unhappy

Researchers in Canada have found a correlation between air pollution and people’s happiness. Their deep analysis, reported in the latest issue of the International Journal of Green Economics, suggests that air pollution may lead to unhappiness while the converse is also true, the unhappier the citizens of a country the more air pollution.

via Pollution makes Europeans unhappy.

Using EEG for incredibly rapid human image processing

This is an incredible story of a commercial neuroscience application being used to analyse images at the rate of 20 per second in order to pre screen them by sorting the chaff from the wheat. The brain can regonise and analyse images at that rate and spikes in electrical activity 300 milliseconds after seeing the images (the P300 response) indicate whether the images contain what you’re looking for.

From Bench to Bunker – The Chronicle Review – The Chronicle of Higher Education.