Mosaic Science

other interesting articles:

Changing Mindsets to Enhance Treatment Effectiveness

JAMA. 2017 May 23;317(20):2063-2064. doi: 10.1001/jama.2017.4545.

https://mbl.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/crum_zuckerman_jama_2017.pdf

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You can train your body into thinking it’s had medicine ( 09 February 2016 )

Jo Marchant asks if we can harness the mind to reduce side-effects and slash drug costs.

https://mosaicscience.com/story/medicine-without-the-medicine-how-to-train-your-immune-system-placebo

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The Vodka-Red-Bull Placebo Effect

People take more risks when downing caffeine-and-alcohol cocktails—but only if they know what they’re drinking.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/06/caffeine-and-alcohol-placebo/529641/?single_page=true

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Howe, L. Goyer, P., & Crum, A. (2017). Harnessing the Placebo Effect: Exploring the Influence of Physician Characteristics on Placebo Response. Health Psychology.

https://mbl.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/howegoyercrum_harnessingtheplaceboeffect.pdf

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Crum, A., Phillips, D., Higgins, T. (2016). Transforming Water: Social Influence Moderates Psychological, Physiological, and Functional Response to a Placebo Product. PLOS One, 11(11).

https://mbl.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/crumetal_transformingwater.pdf

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Crum, A. & Phillips, D. (2015). Self-Fulfilling Prophesies, Placebo Effects, and the Social-Psychological Creation of Reality. In R. Scott and S. Kosslyn (Eds.), Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral…

> In a study at the University of Michigan in 2012, visual information expert Sookyung Cho asked subjects “to design a cute rectangle by adjusting the size, proportion, roundness, rotation, and color of the figure”. What she found supported the idea that “smallness, roundness, tiltedness, and lightness of color can serve as determinants of perceived cuteness in artifact design”. It mattered, she found, whether the person designing the rectangle was in the USA or South Korea. Cuteness is nothing if not culturally specific, and that itself has become a rich focus of inquiry.

> [...]

> Teddy bears exist because the night is dark and long and at some point your parents have to go to bed and leave you. There is real comfort in cuteness.

> “Filling in an emotional need is exactly where kawaii plays a significant role,” writes Christine R Yano, a professor of anthropology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and the author of Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty’s trek across the Pacific. “Even in America, journalist Nicholas Kristof has written of an ‘empathy gap’ in today’s society,” states Yano. “He points to the place of objects that may be considered promoters of ‘happiness’, ‘solace’, ‘comfort’. When a society needs to heal, it seeks comfort in the familiar. And often the familiar may reside in ‘cute’. Witness the use of teddy bears as sources of comfort for firefighters in the wake of NYC’s 9-11. So I see kawaii things as holding the potential as empathy generators.”

I wonder…

So Ars reprinted that from the original at mosaicscience.com and I guess that's from a Gastropod episode or at least that's a podcast companion to the story. It's on soundcloud.com iTunes

Really interesting read on why it's so damn hard to figure out how to lose weight, or why it's so hard to control our eating sometimes. Is it genetics, gut microbes, insulin, existing fat cells? All of the above? More and more the science seems to agree stop eating sugar/carbs/whatever and that seems to help most people. BUT not everyone responds to sugar/carbs/whatever the same way if you measure blood sugar after you eat. AND it's hard to actually measure calories. Sure was much easier when all we had to do was "avoid fats", but apparently that was just wrong.

http://mosaicscience.com/story/why-calorie-broken

https://soundcloud.com/gastropodcast/the-end-of-the-calorie

https://geo.itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-end-of-the-calorie/id918896288?i=361353657&mt=2

Oh hey, is this Nautilus the publication that doesn’t pay their authors until they sue?

They used to have some excellent work before all the authors wised up...

If you’re interested in this type of material, may I suggest mosaic (https://mosaicscience.com) and Quanta (https://www.quantamagazine.org)?

Both are excellent and sustainable (they pay their authors).

> also, an article with that many statistical claims should have footnotes IMO

If you click on 'References' at the bottom of the article you get a short drop down list.

But there is also a companion article [1] that gives more references and links.

[1] https://mosaicscience.com/story/briefing-reading-violence-crime-knife-gang-epidemic-gun-health-prevention/