Way back in 2005 researchers at Texas A&M determined that humor – an appreciation of the absurd hilarity of life – can significantly increase Hope, and that hopefulness helps people cope with stresses in daily life and during illnesses as well.

In January of this year a communications professor at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, demonstrated that in a medical setting, laughter is the best medicine. Humor helps both the doctors and the patients cope. The finding was extended to the workplace and to educational situations as well, eventually reaching the conclusion that regardless of the content, humor seems to be beneficial and productive. It helps to get the point across in almost any situation.

Then on June 12, 2008 Alastaire Clarke published his Pattern Recognition Theory of Humor, which purportedly explains the reason that humor is common to all human societies. In Humor Shown to be Fundamental to Our Success as a Species, Clarke claims that humor is fundamantal to the evolution of human beings, and continues to be important in the cognitive development of infants and children.

Alas, Clarke’s Pattern Recognition Theory can’t tell us what’s funny or why, so it probably won’t be used by comedy writers or clowns to formulate their skits any time soon. And while humor can progress from basic slapstick to childish jokes to ridicule to satire, he does not attempt to explain why slapstick still makes us laugh even if we’ve progressed all the way to dry British satire. A clown would have a handy explanation for that, but I don’t think Clarke asked one. Oh, well.

The articles do make a strong case for the survival value of humor to human beings, and that may be all we really need to know about it.

Links:

Humor Can Increase Hope, Research Shows
Laughter is the Best Medicine

A research scientist at UMich School of Public Health has established through interviews with 475 undergraduates that humans exchange resources (or merely clout) for sex, just like penguins, hummingbirds and other species of beings on this planet. His paper, “Young Adults Attempt Exchanges in Reproductively Relevant Currencies,” is published in this month’s Journal of Evolutionary Psychology.

Not that the idea of trading sex for resources is something unheard of in human society. Or even that in cultures where marriages are arranged among parents and grandparents before the young are old enough to walk, the arrangements are all about relative wealth and social standing – things considered valuable in the societies.

It is interesting that biologists (yes, the evo-psych folks too) have just recently figured out that their traditional reliance on exclusivity in sexual selection as a primary mechanism of directional evolution is not nearly as cut and dried as they long assumed it was. Given that cheating on spouses and general promiscuity have turned out to be fairly rampant in birds and beasts – the beauty of that peacock’s tail or the size of that ape’s manly parts doesn’t prevent lesser males from getting their genes into the pool after all…

There’s a reason we call it “The Oldest Profession.” Turns out, it’s even older than humans!

The science blogosphere erupted this week after biology professor Paul Myers [a.k.a. PZ Myers] was summarily expelled from a pre-release screening of the Ben Stein movie Expelled, even while his wife, daughter and guest Richard Dawkins were allowed in to see the film.

Myers blogged about the incident in several posts to his #1 rated science blog for Seed Media Group, Pharyngula. Other science bloggers for the same outlet also blogged about it – Greg Laden bestowed sainthood on PZ and compiles the buzz from Dawkins, other bloggers, national and international media… it’s an exhaustive (but dated) list.

And the whole affair is really quite humorous, in my humble opinion. I am still holding out the suspicion that Myers – who appears in the film for about five minutes, according to reports – is getting a cut of the net for all his promotional efforts. This suspicion is further enhanced by Myers’ crashing an ‘invitation only’ media conference call on Friday. He has an explanation for how he managed that on his blog, but I’m taking the whole thing with a large grain of salt.

The buzz and massive publicity being stirred by irate science bloggers is guaranteeing the film’s commercial success, even if it’s as bad as Myers claims. That seems highly suspicious to me, given the sheer antiquity of the Creationism versus Evolution debates, the generations of religious believers and biologists who have come and gone without changing a thing, and the actual legal situation in the U.S., where it is unconstitutional to teach Creationism or Intelligent Design in public school classrooms.

If PZ is not getting paid to promote this film, he’s a bigger idiot than the IDiots he rails against so frequently on a science blog that is mostly NOT about science. Amazing.

Sam Shuster, Described as a “Professor” (but with no indication of what he’s a ‘professor’ of) got a paper published in the British Medical Journal this week claiming that he’s figured out that the human capacity for humor develops from aggression caused by male hormones.

Professor Shuster figured this out by riding a unicycle around the streets of Newcastle upon Tyne and noticing the reactions he got from people of various ages. Those responses were predictable droll jokes, which indicated to Shuster that such jokes must have a biological cause. And because the most aggressive reactions came from young men, he’s convinced it has something to do with androgens in teenage boys. Most adult women responded with praise or encouragement instead of jokes, so apparently women – at least in one town in England – don’t have a sense of humor.

Now, this doesn’t appear to explain much about how my mother managed to keep her sharp wit and wicked sense of humor even as she was dying of COPD, or how my grandmother is still fondly recalled by everyone lucky enough to have known her as the funniest human being ever. Shuster did admit that he went for the “simplest explanation” for why teenage boys were so aggressive about his mode of transportation, and for the oh, so predictable jokes. Had to be the testosterone, but not the spectacle of some guy peddling down the street on a unicycle. Which I’m here to tell you is not the most efficient or graceful mode of transportation ever invented. There’s a reason you don’t see unicyclists in the Tour de France.

Perhaps if the professor were to wear a nice bowler and take up juggling the reactions might be less aggressive and probably a lot more lucrative. People are quite used to tossing money into the hat of buskers, after all. Or he could stay home and catch up on all the old episodes of I Love Lucy, see if he can explain how she got to be so funny without chest hair and six-pack abs.

Still, I’m sure that getting his research published in the British Medical Journal is a feather in Shuster’s cap, no matter what kind of cap he wears, or what it is he’s a professor of. This doesn’t appear to be research that was funded by tax money, so it’s all good.

Lots of interesting science reports lately about all things neurological, in brains and in our remote sensor neurons. First up is a surprising (or maybe not so surprising) finding by a researcher at the University of Hertfordshire – the harder we try to mentally suppress our thoughts and desires, the more we will indulge in the activity we’re trying to suppress.

Resistance to Thoughts of Chocolate is Futile

This research project dealt with something quite simple, chocolate. Which some say is addictive, but that’s a whole different area of research. Dr. Erskine of Hertfordshire divided 134 young (avg. age 22) people into two groups to investigate how our thinking affects our behaviors.

The participants were asked to try two brands of chocolate and answer questions about which they preferred and why. Then they were given two periods of thought verbalization where they were to talk about their thoughts while alone. On top of this they were told they must think about – or not think about – certain things. Including chocolate.

Among those told not to think about the chocolate which was still present and available to them, consumption of chocolate was significantly higher than in those who could think about chocolate all they liked. Among those who were told to go ahead and focus on thinking about chocolate, the males ate significantly more chocolate than the females.

It’s always nice to get scientific confirmation of things we already know. Meanwhile, psychologists at the University of Pittsburgh tell us that Human Decision-making Takes Multiple Brain Regions Performing Individual Functions, something most people who think about such things also already knew.

It’s not new news that there is a hierarchy of brain regions that separately receive inputs from our remote sensors and process the information before we become aware of what we are perceiving. What psychology professor Mark Wheeler tells us IS new is how these regions work together for decision-making – knowledge integration and action planning based on the perceptual information.

Decision making forwards the processed information to the object processing, reasoning and memory circuits for evaluation and classification in line with previous experience and memory.

A particularly interesting finding from studies at Drexel and Northwestern Universities tells us that Brain Activity Differs for Creative and Noncreative Thinkers. They found that creative thinkers made use of more right-hemisphere involvement in their thinking, which indicates that creative thinkers process more loosely connected or “remote” associations between elements of a problem than noncreative thinkers do.

From that report, “…creative and methodical solvers exhibited different activity in areas of the brain that process visual information. The pattern of “alpha” and “beta” brainwaves in creative solvers was consistent with diffuse rather than focused visual attention. This may allow creative individuals to broadly sample the environment for experiences that can trigger remote associations to produce an Aha! Moment.” Cool.

Finally, in the weird world of serious sensations that aren’t what they appear to be, researchers at the Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University report that they’ve (once again) discovered the World’s Hottest Chili Pepper.

We fans of hot chili peppers already know that the alkaloid chemical capsaicin in pepper ribs and seeds is what stimulates our heat and pain sensing nerves to think we’re being badly burned, when no actual burn tissue damage is taking place. It apparently evolved as a way for the plant to get its seeds distributed by only certain animals (birds) and not by others (mammals).

To get a feel for the ‘heat’ this Indian “Ghost Chile” [Bhut Jolokia] is capable of producing, consider the lowly jalapeno, which has a Scoville heat unit [SHU] index of about 2,500. Those firey habaneros rate from 300,000 to 500,000 SHU, making them among the hottest known until now. The previous record holder was the Red Savina, which measured at a solid 577,000 SHU.

The Bhut Jolokia ghost chile weighed in at a cool million SHU. Not very likely to find its way into that pickled pepper jar on the bar at the local pub, as the reaction just might really hurt somebody. The researcher do think it may have an impact in the processed food industry, since it would take much less of the pepper to impart some serious heat to chiles, salsas, sauces and stews.

Links:

Resistance to Thoughts of Chocolate is Futile

Human Decision-making Takes Multiple Brain Regions Performing Individual Functions

Brain Activity Differs for Creative and Noncreative Thinkers

What Makes Peppers Hot May Also Be Cool For What Ails You

World’s Hottest Chile Pepper Discovered

A pre-Halloween poll conducted by the Associated Press and Ipsos informs us that a whopping 33% of Americans believe in ghosts. Nearly one in four people say they’ve actually seen or felt a ghost!

About 1 in 5 people believes in the efficacy of magic spells, and half of America believes in ESP. Interestingly, more than half of college graduates [51%] think ESP is real, while only 37% of those with high school or less education think there’s anything to it. A Newsweek poll in 1996 reported 66% believing in ESP, so looks like the numbers are going down.

Check out the linked poll, it’s full of interesting information. Superstitions, ghost stories and even Closet Monsters just in time for Halloween!

The science news this week had some really odd articles that looked a lot like heavy-handed preferential placements by some junior government official trying to scare home-grown dissidents and tech-savvy terrorists writing bomb-making instructions for the internet from a cave in Afghanistan (or maybe Pakistan). My guess is that we’ll have this from time to time in the modern world, as our reliance on science and technology increases and can be used by anyone to promote whatever someone deems it pertinent to promote.

The trick is to figure out what’s real science news, what’s purposely planted disinformation, and what the ‘trial balloons’ being floated are. Then we could try to figure out what in the world the desired effect of such things might be. From the looks of our first story, the wisdom of having hundreds of millions of people “on-call” 24-7 via cell phones isn’t looking quite so desirable all of a sudden…

Yes, it’s official: there is a new psychiatric disorder and it’s caused by your cell phone. It’s called “ringxiety”. A survey presented at the American Psychological Association’s annual convention in San Francisco reported that two-thirds of adults in the US hear their cell phone ring or feel it vibrate when it’s not actually ringing or vibrating.

As reported in Many hear ‘phantom ringing’ from cellphone, the more a person uses their phone, the more often they hear phantom ringing. And you thought it was just a modern comedy that so many people are now walking the streets of our towns and cities talking incessantly to themselves, the only indicator that they’re not all inpatients out on day passes being the little gadgets hooked to their ears.

Between this alarming suggestion of incipient mental illness and the notable problem that Drivers using cell phones are twice as likely to cause rear-end collisions, one might begin to wonder if being 100% ‘wired’ is particularly good for humans. Hmmm…

Of course, just because you’re imagining that your phone is talking to you when it’s not doesn’t mean nobody’s listening in on your communications. The frontier for that kind of surveillance seems to be the internet, and it’s all about the War on Terror. Scientists Use ‘Dark Web’ to Snag Extremists and Terrorists Online describes a project by computational scientists at the Artificial Intelligence Lab at UA designed to systematically collect and analyze all terrorist-generated content on the web.

Now, you might wonder – quite legitimately – how this ‘Dark Web’ knows what emails and which of the traffic at web sites and forums is “terrorist-generated,” as well as how it can claim to be intercepting “all” of it. Further, one might be reasonably concerned about how much of regular citizens’ communications are being monitored by such a project, and whether Holly Housewife and Joe Blow and Daphne Darling the teenager are getting labeled “Terrorist” by a machine that claims to be artificially intelligent. Don’t we have laws against this sort of thing?

Something to consider in light of the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution, since project director Chen has already planned expansions into other data-mining purposes:

Dark Web’s capabilities are also being used to study the online presence of extremist groups and other social movement organizations. Chen sees applications for this Web mining approach for other academic fields.

“What we are doing is using this to study societal change,” Chen says. “Evidence of this change is appearing online, and computational science can help other disciplines better understand this change.”

Maybe those little old Quaker ladies shouldn’t relax their legal challenges to unwarranted surveillance yet. Looks to me like the gub’ment still thinks recipes for chocolate chip cookies is reason to send in the Marines.

Meanwhile, across the pond, scientists at five British universities have joined with police and security services to develop a hoped-to-be-foolproof lie detector. Research to Assist in Investigation of Criminal and Terrorist Activity reports that by combining technologies for location based games with intensive communications monitoring researchers hope to determine whether deception can be identified reliably from suspects’ movements, communications and behaviors. An interesting tidbit of news:

The interactions will be studied by psychologists and analysed by data-mining specialists to determine where the team participants are applying deception or where the account of their activities is true. The researchers will also conduct interviews to assess public awareness of, and response to, monitoring and surveillance in counter-terrorism.

Perhaps if just owning and using a cell phone causes two-thirds of people to suffer schizophrenic-like symptoms of “ringxiety,” knowledge that all their online activity, television watching habits, physical movements, literary preferences and purchases are being constantly monitored and analyzed should make them feel much better. I wonder how much the government’s willing to pay someone to do nothing but monitor all my activities all the time, and if they could be persuaded to just pay me directly. I’ll promise to write it up once a week for them, and they should soon be able to get the Brits to verify whether or not I’m telling the truth…