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KerenLimor

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So far Keren has created 26 blog entries.

Commuting and health outcomes

Relationship between commuting and health outcomes in a cross-sectional population survey in southern Sweden – E. Hansson, K. Mattisson, J. Björk, P. Östergren and K. Jakobsson, BMC Public Health 2011, 11:834

The need for a mobile workforce inevitably means that the length of the total work day (working and traveling time) will increase, but the health effects of commuting have been surprisingly little studied apart from perceived stress and the benefits of physically active commuting. The results of this study are concordant with the few earlier studies in the field, in that associations were found between commutation and negative health outcomes. This further demonstrates the need to consider the negative side-effects of commuting when discussing policies aimed at increasing the mobility of the workforce. Studies identifying population groups with increased susceptibility are warranted.

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undergroundImage credit: κύριαsity, flickr

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Jealousy in Dogs

dogs

Image credit: lizzie1326, flickr

Jealousy in Dogs – CR. Harris, C. Prouvost, PLoS ONE 9(7): e94597

It is commonly assumed that jealousy is unique to humans, partially because of the complex cognitions often involved in this emotion. However, from a functional perspective, one might expect that an emotion that evolved to protect social bonds from interlopers might exist in other social species, particularly one as cognitively sophisticated as the dog. The reported experiment adapted a paradigm from human infant studies to examine jealousy in domestic dogs. The authors found that dogs exhibited significantly more jealous behaviors (e.g., snapping, getting between the owner and object, pushing/touching the object/owner) when their owners displayed affectionate behaviors towards what appeared to be another dog as compared to nonsocial objects. These results lend support to the hypothesis that jealousy has some “primordial” form that exists in human infants and in at least one other social species besides humans.

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Ants have toilets too

Nest Etiquette—Where Ants Go When Nature Calls – TJ. Czaczkes, J. Heinze, J. Ruther, PLoS ONE 10(2): e0118376.

Sanitary behaviour is an important, but seldom studied, aspect of social living. Social insects have developed several strategies for dealing with waste and faecal matter, including dumping waste outside the nest and forming specialised waste-storage chambers. In some cases waste material and faeces are put to use, either as a construction material or as a long-lasting signal, suggesting that faeces and waste may not always be dangerous. Here the authors examine a previously undescribed behaviour in ants – the formation of well-defined faecal patches. These patches never contained other waste material such as uneaten food items, or nestmate corpses. Such waste was collected in waste piles outside the nest. The coloured patches were thus distinct from previously described ‘kitchen middens’ in ants, and are best described as ‘toilets’. Why faeces is not removed with other waste materials is unclear. The presence of the toilets inside the nest suggests that they may not be an important source of pathogens, and may have a beneficial role.

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Similarities between Musical Performance and Everyday Motor Activity

dancingPeopleBig

Image Credit: Nicola (flickr)

The Production and Perception of Emotionally Expressive Walking Sounds: Similarities between Musical Performance and Everyday Motor Activity – BL. Giordano, H. Egermann, R. Bresin, PLoS ONE 9(12): e115587

Several studies have investigated the encoding and perception of emotional expressivity in music performance. A relevant question concerns how the ability to communicate emotions in music performance is acquired. In accordance with recent theories on the embodiment of emotion, the authors suggest that both the expression and recognition of emotion in music might at least in part rely on knowledge about the sounds of expressive body movements. The authors test this hypothesis by drawing parallels between musical expression of emotions and expression of emotions in sounds associated with a non-musical motor activity: walking. Taken together, the results lend support the motor origin hypothesis for the musical expression of emotions.

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The Impact of iPhone Separation on Cognition, Emotion, and Physiology

The Extended iSelf: The Impact of iPhone Separation on Cognition, Emotion, and Physiology – RB. Clayton, G. Leshner and, A. Almond, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. doi: 10.1111/jcc4.12109

This study uniquely examined the effects on self, cognition, anxiety, and physiology when iPhone users are unable to answer their iPhone while performing cognitive tasks. Participants (N = 40 iPhone users) completed 2 word search puzzles. Among the key findings from this study were that when iPhone users were unable to answer their ringing iPhone during a word search puzzle, heart rate and blood pressure increased, self-reported feelings of anxiety and unpleasantness increased, and self-reported extended self and cognition decreased. These findings suggest that negative psychological and physiological outcomes are associated with iPhone separation and the inability to answer one’s ringing iPhone during cognitive tasks. Implications of these findings are discussed.

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Can a Moth Remember What It Learned As a Caterpillar?

Retention of Memory through Metamorphosis: Can a Moth Remember What It Learned As a Caterpillar? DJ. Blackiston, E. Silva Casey, MR. Weiss, PLoS ONE 3(3): e1736

Insects that undergo complete metamorphosis experience enormous changes in both morphology and lifestyle. The current study examines whether larval experience can persist through pupation into adulthood in Lepidoptera, and assesses two possible mechanisms that could underlie such behavior: exposure of emerging adults to chemicals from the larval environment, or associative learning transferred to adulthood via maintenance of intact synaptic connections. The present study, the first to demonstrate conclusively that associative memory survives metamorphosis in Lepidoptera, provokes intriguing new questions about the organization and persistence of the central nervous system during metamorphosis. The results have both ecological and evolutionary implications, as retention of memory through metamorphosis could influence host choice by polyphagous insects, shape habitat selection, and lead to eventual sympatric speciation.

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Manduca sexta

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Careful! Contagious emotions over here!

Emotions as infectious diseases in a large social network: the SISa model – AL. Hill , DG. Rand , MA. Nowak , NA. Christakis, The royal society proceeding v282 issue 1802

Human populations are arranged in social networks that determine interactions and influence the spread of diseases, behaviours and ideas. In this article the authors evaluate the spread of long-term emotional states across a social network.  They provide formal evidence that positive and negative emotional states behave like infectious diseases spreading across social networks over long periods of time. Their results give insight into the transmissive nature of positive and negative emotional states. Determining to what extent particular emotions or behaviours are infectious is a promising direction for further research with important implications for social science, epidemiology and health policy. Their model provides a theoretical framework for studying the interpersonal spread of any state that may also arise spontaneously, such as emotions, behaviours, health states, ideas or diseases with reservoirs.

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Shh… Let me sleep…I’m consolidating my memory

Generalization of word meanings during infant sleep – M. Friedrich, I. Wilhelm, J. Born, and AD. Friederici, Nature Communications 6,Article number:6004

Sleep consolidates memory and promotes generalization in adults, but it is still unknown to what extent the rapidly growing infant memory benefits from sleep. In this article the authors show that during sleep the infant brain reorganizes recent memories and creates semantic knowledge from individual episodic experiences. Initially, infants acquire only the specific but not the general word meanings. About 1.5 h later, infants who napped during the retention period, but not infants who stayed awake, remember the specific word meanings and successfully generalize words to novel category exemplars. Independently of age, the semantic generalization effect is correlated with sleep spindle activity during the nap, suggesting that sleep spindles are involved in infant sleep-dependent brain plasticity.

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Three-parent babies

Three-parent in vitro fertilization: gene replacement for the prevention of inherited mitochondrial diseases – P. Amato, M. Tachibana, M. Sparman, S. Mitalipov

In the following article the authors discuss the issue of inherited mitochondrial diseases, the reproductive options for preventing transmission of mitochondrial diseases, the ensuing ethical issues as well as future research in the field.

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baby

The ethics of creating children with three genetic parents – F. Baylis

This article on mitochondrial replacement technology briefly explains and defends the legitimacy of such terms as ‘three-parent embryos’, ‘three-parent babies’ and ‘three-person IVF’. It then reviews select ethical objections to mitochondrial replacement technology.

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Read about the topic in media releases:

BBC: MPs say yes to three-person babies

WIRED: Is It Ethical to Create Babies From Three DNA Sources? Absolutely

Telegraph: Three parent babies: unethical, scary and wrong

Nature: A slippery slope to human germline modification

Nuffield Bioethics: Council gives evidence on future regulation of mitochondrial donation 

Graphene

Can graphene keep its promise? – P. Ball, Natl Sci Rev (2014)

In this article the author interviews scientists working on Graphene—sheets of carbon atoms joined into a one-atom-thick mesh of hexagonal rings. Over the past decade, graphene has been hailed as a ‘wonder material’, which might revolutionize everything from microelectronic circuitry to ultra-strong composite engineering. Graphene displays several striking properties: it conducts electricity, it is transparent, and exceedingly strong and lightweight. It is not surprising that many groups and companies are racing to find the first major industrial application of graphene but will it live up to its promise?

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