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MacArthur fellow will focus on suicide prevention
Los Angeles Times: Suicide has emerged as a prominent public health issue in recent years because of the stubbornly high rate of such deaths in the United States. But the announcement Tuesday of the MacArthur Fellowships will provide a boost in research aimed at preventing people from taking their own lives. MacArthur fellow Matthew Nock, 38, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, said the award will also help advance research that is beginning to dispel some myths about suicide. Suicide is the 10th-leading cause of death in the United States, accounting for about 100 deaths per day.
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Editor’s Selections: Video Games and Arrogant Humans
Scientific American: Here are my Research Blogging Editor’s Selections for this week. A post by Bradley Voytek on Oscillatory Thoughts about an article by Mo Costandi in Nature about a paper by Dan Simons and colleagues, about research methodology and video game studies. Voytek writes, “It amazes me how many meta peer-review papers are written that simply reiterate basic research and/or statistical methodologies.” “Humans are consistently and bafflingly overconfident. We consider ourselves more skilled, more in control, and less vulnerable to danger than we really are.
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In a Married World, Singles Struggle for Attention
The New York Times: Here’s a September celebration you probably didn’t know about: It’s National Single and Unmarried Americans Week. But maybe celebration isn’t the right word. Social scientists and researchers say the plight of the American single person is cause for growing concern. About 100 million Americans, nearly half of all adults, are unmarried, according to the Census Bureau — yet they tend to be overlooked by policies that favor married couples, from family-leave laws to lower insurance rates. That national bias is one reason gay people fight for the right to marry, but now some researchers are concerned that the marriage equality movement is leaving single people behind.
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Crime witness ID method can affect error rate: study
CNBC: Showing photographs of suspected criminals to witnesses in sequence, rather than all at once, can produce fewer mistakes in identifications, according to new research. Gary Wells, a psychology professor at Iowa State University, said presenting photos one at a time produced a lower error rate than when witnesses were shown a simultaneous array of photos. "We believe these results go a long way toward instilling greater confidence in the sequential procedure as something that improves the reliability of eyewitness identification evidence," Wells, the lead researcher, said in a conference call with journalists. Read the whole story: CNBC
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A Few Strokes of the Past in an Artist Who Lost Her Memory
The New York Times: “Can I draw something for you — what should I draw?” Lonni Sue Johnson asked, but she didn’t wait for an answer. She drew a squiggly line that became a curly halo of hair around the cheerful face of a seated man stretching one leg upward, balancing a large bird on his foot. Within minutes, she had added a cat wearing a necklace, stars and a tiny, grinning airplane. “I like this part, because you want people to be happy,” she said, beaming. “Every sheet of paper is a treat.” Ms.
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Parentology: Will the Vinci computer help babies?
Los Angeles Times: A computer for babies may sound like the stuff of science fiction, but a Canadian company has just made it reality. Last month Rullingnet Corp. launched Vinci, a 7-inch touch-screen tablet that sells for $389 to $479 and is marketed exclusively for children 4 and younger. To some parents, Vinci is an exciting, if pricey, step in the future of early childhood education. For others, the idea of buying a tablet for a baby is excessive, if not downright creepy. As Rullingnet points out, this is a serious computer.
