El instrumento detecta los misteriosos picos de temperatura que se producen en determinados lugares de la célula.
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Not many studies have been conducted to quantify the relationship that may exist between personality and musical preferences. In fact, un recent meta-analysis seemed to question whether the relationship was very strong.
However, through the use of more modern techniques and a broader understanding of musical taste, it is suggested in a recent study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science that musical preferences may reflect Big Five personality traits.
The Big Five
Previous studies on music and personality have limitations in not being able to fully measure listening habits, because they are based on self-reported preferences and small samples.
However, in the present study, several Spotify users were asked to participate by showing their listening habits over three months, including information about the genres and moods of the music they listened to.
To get a more complete picture, some questions were asked to build a more nuanced understanding: Do you discover new music or listen to old favorites? Are your tastes diverse? Do you have regular listening habits?
Along with these measures, study participants were asked to complete the Inventory of the Big Five, a 44-item questionnaire that measures the five personality traits:
- Openness to experience (inventive/curious vs. consistent/cautious)
- Awareness (efficient/organized vs. extravagant/careless)
- Extraversion (sociable/energetic vs. solitary/reserved)
- Kindness (friendly/compassionate vs. challenging/uncaring)
- Neuroticism (susceptible/nervous vs. resistant/confident)
To understand how these personality scores relate to music preferences, a machine learning model was trained to predict someone's personality using only their preferences and demographic information.
Those who rated themselves as more 'open to new experiences' tended to listen to more classical, Afropop or 'sentimental' music (e.g. 'Freddie Freeloader' by Miles Davis, 'April Come She Will' by Simon & Garfunkel). Listening to bluesy or 'melancholic' music (e.g. 'Take Care' by drake, 'Karma Police' by Radiohead) has an inverse relationship with self-assessment of 'emotional stability', while people who listen to Death Metal or 'aggressive' music (e.g. 'Boss' by Lil Pump, 'Last Resort' Papa Roach) tend to have fewer 'pleasant' self-evaluations, while people who listen to Jazz or Country have more.
People whose results identified them as extroverted tended to listen to others' playlists more, which could indicate greater trust in musical suggestions from their social networks. Self-rated introverts, on the other hand, tended to dig deeper into an artist's catalog, listening to more tracks from each artist they discovered.
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The news
Tell me what music you like and I'll tell you what personality you have or how you listen to music (on Spotify)
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
Officially known as Brookesia nana, either B. lullaby for short, the new species It is so small that it is believed to survive on a diet of mites and springtails, an order of hexapod arthropods close to insects.
About the size of a sunflower seed, the newly described creature from Madagascar may already be critically endangered. Finding such a small reptile also raises interesting questions about the lower limits of vertebrate body size.
Brookesia nana
Like other chameleons, This small reptile has a tongue that it can project to catch its prey.. It hunts during the day on the jungle floor and retreats to the safety of the blades of grass at night.
So far, scientists have observed only two individuals: a male and a female, each of which was captured in 2012, on an expedition to a group of mountains known as the Sorata massif.
The researchers suspect that this nanochameleon could receive the title of the smallest reptile in the world. The fact that only two individuals were found makes it difficult to generalize about the findings. Other chameleons of this species may be larger or smaller, just as humans may be of different heights.
Its closest competitor is a creature called Brookesia micron, a species of tiny chameleon that made its debut in 2012, photographed on the head of a matchstick.
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The news
This new species of chameleon could be the smallest reptile in the world
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
Most accidents are caused by human error, simply because our brain cannot process as many inputs nor maintain attention for as long. Thus, autonomous vehicles will eventually make our roads safer.
However, people trust human drivers more than autonomous vehicles, reveals a new study published in the magazine Risk Analysis. This bias is called blame attribution asymmetry.
Risk analysis
Semi-autonomous vehicles (semi-AVs), which allow humans to supervise driving and take control of the vehicle, are already on the road. However, when there is an accident, we are inclined to think that the fault the machine or the vehicle manufacturer had it before the human driver.
Researchers led by Peng Liu, associate professor at the School of Management and Economics at Tianjin University, conducted experiments to measure participants' responses to hypothetical semi-AV shocks. When a crash was caused by a vehicle's automated system, participants assigned more blame and responsibility to the automation and its manufacturer and indicated that the victim should be compensated more, compared to a crash caused by a human driver.
They also judged that the crash caused by automation was more severe and less acceptable than one caused by a human, regardless of the severity of the crash.
Liu and his colleagues call this bias against automated systems blame attribution asymmetry. It indicates the tendency of people to overreact to shocks caused by automation, possibly due to the higher negative affect, or feelings and emotions, evoked by these shocks. Negative emotions such as anger can amplify attributions of legal responsibility and blame.
To change people's negative attitudes about semi-AVs, Liu maintains that "public communication campaigns are very necessary to transparently communicate accurate information, dispel public misconceptions, and provide opportunities to experience semi-AVs." .
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The news
We are more likely to blame a vehicle's autonomous system than its human driver when there is an accident
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
Tobacco use kills more than 8 million worldwide each year and can cause cancer, heart disease, lung disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, as well as affecting fertility.
However, even though we are talking about such a serious health problem, the information, education and all the campaigns that are carried out, In 20 years, tobacco consumption among young people has barely been reduced in 40% of the countries in the world..
A health problem
Tobacco use among adolescents and children is a crucial problem, since most adult smokers begin in adolescence or childhood. Despite an overall reduction in cigarette consumption over the past 20 years, nearly 1 in 5 boys (17.9%) and more than 1 in 10 girls (11.5%) worldwide used tobacco at least once in the last month between 2010-2018, according to a new study published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health.
Smoking prevalence was highest in the Western Pacific region for children (17·6%), with Tokelau having the highest prevalence of 49.3%. The European region had the highest prevalence of smoking among girls (90%), with a prevalence of 23.7% in Bulgaria and 23.6% in Italy.
In the study, there was a variable prevalence of cigarette smoking and use of other tobacco products in different regions, which is believed to be due to differences in the way tobacco control measures are implemented and monitored. For example, Uruguay has been at the forefront of tobacco control, with a complete ban on tobacco promotion and advertising and strict pictorial health warnings. As a result, cigarette consumption decreased by 17% every 10 years (from 20.1% in 2007 to 8% in 2014).
The prevalence of use of any tobacco product was two to three times higher in 15-year-olds than in 13-year-olds in most countries. Peer pressure, the desire to experience new things, and the ability to buy cigarettes could explain this trend. As explained Bo Xi, from Shandong University, China, and lead author of the study:
Cigarette smoking may have decreased in most of the countries in the study, but there are still large numbers of young people who smoke. The fact that in many countries, the prevalence of non-cigarette tobacco product use is higher or as high as the prevalence of cigarette use shows us that there is still much work to be done. The need to strengthen tobacco control efforts, including specific policies for different tobacco products and a focus on health education for adolescents globally, is more important than ever.
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The news
In 20 years, almost half of countries have failed to reduce tobacco consumption among young people
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
El hielo se derrite, y cada vez más deprisa. Los datos de los satélites, de la década de 1990 hasta ahora, ofrecen una visión global de cómo ha ido desapareciendo.
Un supuesto «remedio natural» puede tener un efecto motivador en la terapia cognitivo-conductual para tratar la depresión.
¿Ha alcanzado la física los límites de lo que podemos descubrir, o las posibilidades no han hecho más que empezar?
En ratones, la presencia de ciertas bacterias en el intestino de las hembras resulta en el descuido de los pequeños, hecho que perjudica a su desarrollo posnatal.
Drugs like LSD still They have a lot to teach us about the way the brain works, and may shed light on the mysterious interface between consciousness and neuronal physiology, as suggested a new study.
Combining pharmacological interventions with non-invasive brain imaging techniques, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), can provide information about normal and abnormal brain function.
LSD
In the study, a group of 20 healthy volunteers underwent brain scans in two separate sessions, fifteen days apart. In one of the sessions, participants took a placebo before entering the fMRI scanner, while in the other they were administered an active dose of LSD.
By comparing the results of the two sessions, the researchers found that LSD separates functional connectivity from the limitations of structural connectivity, while also altering the way the brain manages the balancing act between integration and segregation of information. In particular, the well-known LSD-induced sensation of 'ego dissolution' correlates with the reorganization of brain networks during a state of high global integration.
The drug-altered state of consciousness could be seen as an abnormal increase in the functional complexity of the brain, and the data show times when the brain reveals predominantly segregated patterns of functional connectivity.
As explained by the first author and neuroscience researcher Andrea Luppi, from the University of Cambridge, this study is part of the clarification of the dynamic functional connectivity, the theory that brain phenomena demonstrate states of functional connectivity that change over time, in the same way that our stream of consciousness is dynamic and always flowing.
While this takes place, and the human brain processes information, it must integrate that information into an amalgamated form of understanding, but at the same time segregate information, keeping different sensory streams separate from each other, so that they can be managed by particular neural systems.
In other words, the 'ego dissolution' of a psychedelic trip could be the subjective experience of the brain increasing its segregation dynamics, decoupling the brain's structure from its functioning, that is, its ability to integrate and amalgamate separate streams of information into a unified whole.
This distinction, the dynamics of brain integration and segregation, is something that is affected by psychedelic drugs, and with the advent of brain imaging technology, we can observe what happens when our regular functional connectivity is disrupted.
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The news
Describes how LSD allows the brain to function beyond the body itself
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.