I'm just trying to remember why I want to punch you. The right and left halves of the brain are somewhat specialized. Perceptions and actions on the right side of the body are handled on the left, and various other functions are often handled by one side or the other. That's fairly common knowledge, but most people probably don't realize how tightly entwined these things are. Taking simple actions with the right side of the body—say, clenching your fist—can increase the activity across wide areas of the brain on the left. Doing so will increase the experience of things handled on the left side, which happens to include intense emotions like happiness and anger. So, clenching the left fist increases the experience of anxiety and sadness.
That's old news, but the findings prompted recent work that involves the specialization of the right and left sides of the brain for memory. The left side is more strongly involved in encoding memories, while the right does more work during retrieval. And, sure enough, clenching the left fist helped people with recall tasks, while clenching the right during memorization also helped boost performance. So, next time you're struggling with a test, remember to clench your left fist.
The healthy aroma of subway bacteria. Anybody who's stepped onto a subway platform during the heat of the summer would be forgiven for thinking that the air had festered deep in the system for years and probably represents a threat to human life. Fortunately, that just isn't so. A team from the University of Colorado decided to sample the microbes in the subway, and found that it's actually a relatively simple environment. It doesn't even change much with the seasons.
The bacterial ecology most closely represented the ambient air above ground, with an added dose from human-dwelling species, along with a smattering of species found in the water of the system. Non-bacterial species were largely fungi involved in wood rot. And none of the species were known to pose a threat to human health.
Maybe teens just like conflict. Conflict is an inevitable part of relationships. So, the couples that tend to do best aren't necessarily the ones that try to avoid them in the first place. Instead, the ability to resolve a conflict and move on seems to be one of the keys to the long-term survival of most relationships. Unless you're a teenager, apparently. Some researchers enrolled 80 teen couples and tracked their relationship over several years, observing how they resolved conflicts and tracking couples' staying power. And, unlike in adults, conflict resolution skills made no difference to how long a relationship lasted. The authors suggest it's time to go back to the drawing board and come up with a new hypothesis.
When thieves manage to build trust relationships. This study looks at a miniature economy that has boomed regardless of the health of the global one: the exchange of stolen credit cards. Successful thieves can steal more than they need, and willing buyers don't necessarily have the skills to obtain their own card information. So, a division of labor has been established and exchanges have arisen, with managerial oversight and coordinated exchanges. Long-time buyers and thieves have developed trust relationships, but there are formalized procedures for others to start engaging in transactions through an intermediary—a bit like eBay.
The roadkill field guide for northwestern Spain. Wild boar may be considered a delicacy in the US, but it's apparently a major driving hazard in northwest Spain. There, they account for almost two-thirds of the ungulate accidents. That's according to "Temporal pattern of wild ungulate-related traffic accidents in northwest Spain," a new paper that tells you exactly when to go for a drive if you want to run over the feral brethren of the pig. The answer? Hit the road any Sunday night during hunting season. If venison is more your thing, we can heartily recommend taking a drive at dusk during mating season. At least the deer would die happy.
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