In partnership with 10 local video rental stores, Domino’s printed special labels with flavored varnish on movie discs including Argo, James Bond, and The Dark Knight. As the discs heat up, the label’s movie title is gradually replaced with an image of a pizza. And, once the movie is over and the disc is removed from the player, the user is also treated to the smell of fresh pizza along with the message: “Did you enjoy the movie? The next one will be even better with a hot and delicious Domino’s Pizza.”
This isn’t a really a food signal, as much as it’s a multisensory marketing signal. It’s pretty interesting though, as a first foray into this space.
The US adolescents who signed up for the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY) in the 1970s were the smartest of the smart, with mathematical and verbal-reasoning skills within the top 1% of the population. Now, researchers at BGI (formerly the Beijing Genomics Institute) in Shenzhen, China, the largest gene-sequencing facility in the world, are searching for the quirks of DNA that may contribute to such gifts. Plunging into an area that is littered with failures and riven with controversy, the researchers are scouring the genomes of 1,600 of these high-fliers in an ambitious project to find the first common genetic variants associated with human intelligence. The project, which was launched in August 2012 and is slated to begin data analysis in the next few months, has spawned wild accusations of eugenics plots, as well as more measured objections by social scientists who view such research as a distraction from pressing societal issues. Some geneticists, however, take issue with the study for a different reason. They say that it is highly unlikely to find anything of interest — because the sample size is too small and intelligence is too complex.
Ellie (right) is a computer simulation designed to engage real people, like the woman on the left, in meaningful conversation and take their measure. The computer system looks for subtle patterns in body language and vocal inflections that might be clues to underlying depression or other emotional distress.
Does the explicit attempt to be happier facilitate or obstruct the actual experience of happiness? Two experiments investigated this question using listening to positive music as a happiness-inducing activity. Study 1 showed that participants assigned to try to boost their mood while listening to 12 min of music reported higher positive mood compared to participants who simply listened to music without attempting to alter mood. However, this effect was qualified by the predicted interaction: the music had to be positively valenced (i.e. Copland, not Stravinsky). In Study 2, participants who were instructed to intentionally try to become happier (vs. not trying) reported higher increases in subjective happiness after listening to positively valenced music during five separate lab visits over a two-week period. These studies demonstrate that listening to positive music may be an effective way to improve happiness, particularly when it is combined with an intention to become happier.
“Doctors hate pain. Let me count the ways. We hate it because we are (mostly) kindhearted and hate to see people suffer. We hate it because it is invisible, cannot be measured or monitored, and varies wildly and unpredictably from person to person. We hate it because it can drag us closer to the perilous zones of illegal practice than any other complaint.
And we hate it most of all because unless we specifically seek out training in how to manage pain, we get virtually none at all, and wind up flying over all kinds of scary territory absolutely solo, without a map or a net.
The events of the last few decades haven’t helped much. First came a consumer-driven “pain power” movement — justified, for the most part — pointing out that pain was wildly undertreated by most doctors. And then, more recently, came the new statistics on the widespread abuse of prescription narcotics, which now saturate street corner markets everywhere and cause more overdose fatalities than heroin and cocaine combined.
In other words, we are now cautioned in the strongest possible terms against giving too little medication and too much, being too free and too parsimonious, underprescribing to the right people and overprescribing to the wrong. Most official guidelines and policy statements, even fuller than usual of vacuous general principles, aren’t of much help in figuring how to do any of this.”
a class of patients called “exceptional responders” — aka, the people who got a benefit (sometimes a big one) from a medication or treatment that otherwise failed the clinical trial process. When we do clinical trials, we’re looking at group averages. We want to know whether a drug performed better than placebo when administered to lots of people. Sometimes, though, drugs that can’t do that do seem to have a positive effect for a few lucky individuals. Now, scientists are trying to figure out why that is. What makes those people special? And how should this change the way we do research?
BioCurious (synthetic biology)
“In Stranger Visions artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg creates portrait sculptures from analyses of genetic material collected in public places. Working with the traces strangers unwittingly leave behind, Dewey-Hagborg calls attention to the impulse toward genetic determinism and the potential for a culture of genetic surveillance.”
(via Colossal | A blog about art and visual ingenuity.)
The Mailman School of Public Health is joining a growing movement among universities and research institutions to make scholarly research available free to the public online. The Mailman School is the first school at the university and one of the first of U.S. schools of public health to adopt an open access resolution, which calls for faculty and other researchers at the school to post their papers in openly available online repositories such as Columbia’s Academic Commons. The resolution passed unanimously by a vote of the standing Faculty Steering Committee and goes into effect on May 1, 2013.
“Are doctors nicer to patients who aren’t fat?
A provocative new study suggests that they are — that thin patients are treated with more warmth and empathy than those who are overweight or obese.
And statements like these are no small thing. Studies show that patients are far more likely to follow a doctor’s advice and to have a better health outcome when they believe their doctor empathizes with their plight.
“When there is increased empathy by the doctor, patients are more likely to report they are satisfied with their care, and they are more likely to adhere to recommendations of physicians,” Dr. Gudzune said. “There is evidence to show that after visits with more empathy, patients have improved clinical outcomes, so patients with diabetes have better blood sugar control or cholesterol is better controlled.”“ (via Overweight Patients Face Bias - NYTimes.com)
