Channel 42
Science is the answer to everything.

While the relationship between religion and popular support for suicide attacks is a topic of frequent conjecture, scientific study of the relationship is rare. A new study in Psychological Science has found that the relationship between religion and support suicide attacks is real but is unrelated to devotion to particular religious beliefs or religious belief in general. Instead, collective religious ritual appears to facilitate parochial altruism in general and support for suicide attacks in particular.

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The American Geological Institute Workforce Program has released the second chapter, entitled Trends in Geoscience Education at Four Year Institutions, of the Status of the Geoscience Workforce report.

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In a letter to be published in this week’s Journal of the American MedicalAssociation, Dr. S. Stanley Young, Assistant Director of Bioinformatics at the National Institute of Statistical Sciences, and Ming Yu, University of British Columbia, highlight the statistical limitations of a study claiming that bisphenol A is associated with cardiovascular diagnoses, diabetes and abnormal blood level liverenzyme levels that Lang et.al. published in an earlier study.

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Self-control is one of our most cherished values. But is it possible that willpower can sometimes be an obstacle rather than a means to happiness and harmony? A new study reveals that the volunteers lacking discipline and self-control found talking about race with a black interviewer much more enjoyable than did those with their self-control intact, presumably because they weren’t working so hard at monitoring and curbing what they said.

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A new study reveals that empathy for minority groups has a much less positive effect when it is triggered in the context of an actual intergroup interaction situation than it does when directed toward minority group members in the abstract. The researchers surmise that empathy has a negative effect during interactions with members of the minority group because the empathetic individuals become preoccupied with how they will be viewed by that minority group.

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While reading a novel, why do we imagine scenes differently — when do we view the action from an outsider’s perspective and when do we place ourselves in the main character’s shoes? The results of a new study, reported in Psychological Science, indicate that we use different perspectives, depending on which pronouns are used.

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Autism Speaks reported initial results for the first industry-sponsored Autism Clinical Trials Network study, the Study of Fluoxetine in Autism which showed that fluoxetine was not effective for reducing repetitive behaviors in children and adolescents with autistic disorder as compared to placebo. The study of 158 patients (ages 5 - 17) was carried out in 19 CTN sites in collaboration with study sponsor, Neuropharm Group Plc., a specialty pharmaceutical company focused on neurodevelopmental disorders.

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A congressionally mandated report from the National Research Council finds serious deficiencies in the nation’s forensic science system and calls for major reforms and new research.

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University of Iowa ophthalmologists and colleagues have tested and are now using a tiny surgical implant called Retisert to prevent complete vision loss and eliminate dependence on systemic, or whole-body, immunosuppression for people who have a rare, but potentially devastating, eye condition called sympathetic ophthalmia.

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A new study involving iPods and teenagers by the University of Colorado at Boulder and Children’s Hospital Boston indicates teenagers who receive pressure from their peers or others to turn down the volume of their iPods instead turn them up higher.

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