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Superhard, Super Slippery Diamonds
2008-07-16 09:41:00
They call diamonds ?ice,? and not just because they sparkle. Engineers and physicists have long studied diamond because even though the material is as hard as an ice ball to the head, diamond slips and slides with remarkably low friction, making it an ideal material or coating for seals, high performance tools and high-tech moving parts.Robert Carpick, associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics at the University of Pennsylvania, and his group led a collaboration with researchers from Argonne National Laboratories, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Florida to determine what makes diamond films such slippery customers, settling a debate on the scientific origin of its properties and providing new knowledge that will help create the next generation of super low friction materials.The Penn experiments, the first study of diamond friction convincingly supported by spectroscopy, looked at two of the main hypotheses posited...
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Neuroscientists spot nature/nurture gene link
2008-07-16 09:37:00
Neuroscientists at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory found that a previously unsuspected set of genes links nature and nurture during a crucial period of brain developmentNature --in the form of genes--and nurture--in the form of environmental influences--are fundamentally intertwined during this period. "Our work points to how a disorder can be genetic and yet be dependent on the environment," said co-author Mriganka Sur, Sherman Fairchild Professor of Neuroscience at the Picower Institute and chair of MIT's brain and cognitive sciences department. "Many genes require activity to be expressed and make their assigned proteins. They alter their expression when activity is altered. Thus, we reveal an important mechanism of brain development that should open up a window into the mechanisms and treatment of brain disorders such as autism."In the brain, some genes are only expressed, or turned on, in response to stimulus from the outside world. Like a panel of switches tha...
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New method devised for protecting private data
2008-04-20 12:35:00
Companies and organizations that keep sensitive personal information on millions of Americans have become attractive targets for hackers in recent years, resulting in billions of dollars in losses for U.S. businesses and misery for countless consumers. But now Amit Sahai, an associate professor of computer science at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, and his colleagues have devised a new data-protection method they hope will put Internet criminals out of business. "We want to change the rules of the game on hackers and even out the playing field," Sahai said. Along with co-authors Brent Waters, a UCLA computer science alumnus, and Jonathan Katz of the University of Maryland, Sahai has come up with a mathematical system -- known as functional encryption -- that will not only help to simplify the encryption of data in servers but will also allow access to the data in an intuitive way, making it much harder for hackers to gain access to sensitive i...
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Gene variant increases risk of asthma
2008-04-20 12:33:00
A tiny variation in a gene known as CHI3L1 increases susceptibility to asthma, bronchial hyperresponsiveness and decline in lung function, researchers report early online in the New England Journal of Medicine. (The printed version will appear in the April 17 issue). The gene variant causes increased blood levels of YKL-40, a biomarker for asthma. A slightly different version of the genetic variation lowers YKL-40 levels and protects against asthma. Although the original discovery came from a study of a genetically isolated population, the Hutterites of South Dakota, the researchers were able to confirm the same connections between the CHI3L1 variations, YKL-40 levels and asthma susceptibility in three genetically diverse Caucasian populations from Chicago; Madison, Wisconsin; and Freiberg, Germany. This gene, "may have important implications in the early identification of, susceptibility to, and prevention and treatment of asthma,? said Elizabeth G. Nabel, M.D., director, the Nat...
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Scientists show first 3-D image of antibody gene
2008-04-20 12:31:00
Using a multidisciplinary mix of geometry, biological research and techniques developed to solve problems on supercomputers, scientists at the University of California, San Diego have shown for the first time how a genome is organized in three-dimensional space. The 3-D structure of the immunoglobulin locus in B cells is shown, with the relative positions of the different portions of the immunoglobulin genes. Grey objects indicate constant regions. Blue objects indicate proximal variable regions. Green objects indicate distal variable regions. Red line indicates the linker connecting the proximal variable and joining regions. Researchers led by Cornelis Murre, a professor of biology at UC San Diego, and Steve Cutchin, senior scientist for visualization services at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), used the gene encoding the immunoglobulin heavy chain locus ? responsible for generating diverse kinds of antibodies ? to demonstrate ...
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Release of Darwin?s papers includes first draft of Theory of Evolution
2008-04-20 12:30:00
The first draft of Charles Darwin ?s Theory of Evolution is among thousands of his private papers made accessible online for the very first time. For decades these were only available to scholars at Cambridge University Library. But they can now be seen free of charge by anyone around the globe at Darwin Online (http://darwin-online.org.uk/). The publication of Darwin?s private papers is the largest in history, totalling about 20,000 items in nearly 90,000 images. As well as the first draft of his theory of evolution, the vast collection of Darwin-related items includes thousands of notes and drafts of his scientific writings, notes from the voyage of the Beagle - with his musings on Galapagos birds - and his first recorded doubts about the permanence of species. It also contains photographs of Darwin and his family, newspaper clippings, reviews of his books and much more. On a less scientific note, there is material r...
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Genome analysis reveals new protein associated with breast cancer progressi
2008-04-20 12:24:00
A novel systems-based approach that combines comprehensive gene expression profiling with genome-wide transcription factor analysis and protein-protein interaction has led researchers to an important genetic marker that can help physicians know which breast cancer patients are at highest risk and will require more aggressive treatment, a research team based at the University of Chicago Medical Center reports in the April 15, 2008, issue of the journal Molecular Systems Biology. The researchers found that high expression of a protein known as H2A.Z, which is associated with the expression of genes within the nucleus, can help physicians predict which patients are most at risk for disease spread and death. It could also serve as a new target for therapy. ?Elevated H2A.Z expression is significantly associated with metastasis and shorter survival, and it could quickly help doctors make better predictions and treatment choices for their patients,? said study director Kevin White, PhD, ...
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Less sleep, more TV leads to fat toddlers
2008-04-13 11:10:00
Infants and toddlers who sleep less than 12 hours a day are twice as likely to become overweight by age 3 than children who sleep longer. In addition, high levels of television viewing combined with less sleep elevate the risk, so that children who sleep less than 12 hours and who view two or more hours of television per day have a 16 percent chance of becoming overweight by age 3. “Mounting research suggests that decreased sleep time may be more hazardous to our health than we imagined,” says Elsie Taveras, assistant professor in Harvard Medical School’s Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention and lead author on the study. “We are now learning that those hazardous effects are true even for young infants.” Results are published in the April 2008 issue of Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine. The study team identified 915 mother-infant pairs from Project Viva, a long-term study of the effects of diet and other lifestyle factors on maternal and child h...
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Engineering Prof Builds Brains for Robotic Cars
2008-04-13 11:06:00
Jonathan Sprinkle wants to build robotic vehicles that pass the Turing Test. The test, proposed by Alan Turing in a 1950 paper, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” requires a robot’s behavior to be so lifelike that an observer can't tell if he’s dealing with a robot or a person. Sprinkle, an assistant professor at The University of Arizona, and professor J. Mikael Eklund, of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, have already passed the Turing Test with a control system they designed for a T-33 jet trainer. A veteran F-15 pilot who flew against the T-33 in a test at Edwards Air Force Base said it looked like a recent flight school graduate was at the controls. Following his success with flight-based systems, Sprinkle has placed his robotic control expertise firmly on the ground, where he’s applying it to smart cars that drive themselves. This research effort began with a DARPA Urban Challenge project Sprinkle worked on at the University of California, Berk...
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Cambridge academics shed new light on the Sun
2008-04-13 11:04:00
New insights into solar activity have been revealed thanks to research from a group of Cambridge academics. The work comes from the Atomic Astrophysics Group (AAG) at the University’s Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, who have been collaborating on an international solar mission, the Hinode project, with a number of space agencies. Their research involves detailed analyses of regions of intense activity in the Sun’s atmosphere, the corona. Through examination of the ultraviolet radiation given off by these areas, known as active regions, they have found a variety of dynamic activities, including jets and flows of gas with speeds of up to 150 kilometres per second. Temperatures within the corona are extremely high (in excess of one million degrees), whereas the solar surface is much cooler at about 6000 degrees. AAG has been seeking to understand why the corona is so hot a...
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Arizona Cancer Center Studying Benefits of Green Tea Extract
2008-04-10 22:04:00
The Arizona Cancer Center at The University of Arizona is studying the effects of Polyphenon E, a green tea extract, on prostate cancer prevention. This study will determine whether Polyphenon E affects cancer-related biomarkers in blood and/or prostate tissue in men with prostate cancer. Tea is one of the world?s most consumed beverages. Polyphenon E is a chemically defined, decaffeinated, catechin-enriched green tea extract. Catechins are plant chemicals that are considered powerful antioxidants and have multiple beneficial biological effects that could lead to cancer prevention. Prostate cancer is the most common type of cancer found in American men, other than skin cancer. The American Cancer Society estimates that there will be about 186,320 new cases of prostate cancer in the United States in 2008. Past and ongoing research in numerous experimental studies and in one clinical trial provide evidence that green tea or green tea extracts such as Polyphenon E may have the potent...
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Heart Dieases predetermined by oxygen levels in the Womb
2008-04-10 21:39:00
The amount of oxygen available to a baby in the womb can affect their susceptibility to developing cardiovascular disease later in life. Research from scientists at the University of Cambridge indicates that your risk of developing cardiovascular disease can be predetermined before birth, not only by your genes, but also by their interaction with the quality of the environment you experience in the womb. Their research was presented this week at the annual Society for Endocrinology, British Endocrine Society meeting. The Cambridge researchers, led by Dr Dino Giussani, examined the role that oxygen availability in the womb plays in programming your susceptibility to different diseases. His group found that babies that don?t receive enough oxygen in the womb, e.g. due to pre-eclampsia (high-blood pressure during pregnancy) or placental insufficiency, are more likely to suffer from cardiovascular disease when they are adu...
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A Giant of Astronomy and a Quantum of Solace
2008-04-08 20:28:00
--> Cerro Paranal, the 2600m high mountain in the Chilean Atacama Desert that hosts ESO's Very Large Telescope, will be the stage for scenes in the next James Bond movie, "Quantum of Solace ".Looking akin to Mars, with its red sand and lack of vegetation, the Atacama Desert is thought to be the driest place on Earth. Cerro Paranal is home to ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT), which, with its array of four giant 8.2-m individual telescopes, is the world's most advanced optical observatory. The high-altitude site and extreme dryness make excellent conditions for astronomical observations. "We needed a unique site for a unique set of telescopes, and we found it at Paranal," said Andreas Kaufer, ESO's Paranal Director. "We are very excited that the Bond production team have also chosen this location." The excellent astronomical conditions at Paranal come at a price, however. In this forbidding desert environment, virtually nothing can grow outside. The humidity drops below 10...
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Phytoplankton species deviates from norm: No CO2 absorbed in photosynthesis
2008-04-06 21:35:00
A widespread species of ocean-dwelling microorganisms has been found to employ a never-before-seen alternative method of photosynthesis. The discovery has implications not only for scientists' basic understanding of photosynthesis—arguably the most important biological process on Earth—but also for the amount of carbon dioxide that phytoplankton pull from the atmosphere. Until now, it was thought that all the photosynthetic algae and bacteria living in the ocean drew carbon dioxide out of the air and used it to build sugars and other carbon-rich molecules to use as fuel. But two new studies by researchers at Stanford and the Carnegie Institution show that Synechococcus, a type of cyanobacteria (formerly called blue-green algae) that dominates much of the world's oceans, has evolved a mechanism that short-circuits photosynthetic carbon-dioxide fixation while still producing energy. The alternate approach is found in regions of the ocean where some of the ingredients necessary...

Eating meat led to smaller stomachs, bigger brains
2008-04-06 21:34:00
Behind glass cases, Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology displays ancient tools, weapons, clothing, and art — enough to jar you back into the past. But the venerable museum offered a jarring moment of another sort in its Geological Lecture Hall last month (March 20). Paleoanthropologist Leslie Aiello delivered a late-afternoon talk on diet, energy, and evolution. It was jolting to see her, slight and matronly, stand before a story-high screen filled with images of rugged early hominids on a savannah, gathered around fallen game. Then again, Aiello — as one of her admirers put it — is the “alpha female” among anthropologists who make a study of human origins. She co-wrote the widely used text “An Introduction to Human Evolutionary Anatomy” (Academic Press, 1990), based on the idea that the fossil record offers clues to how early hominids looked, moved, and even ate. Aiello — a professor for three decades at University College, London, and now president of t...
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Study shows that stimuli unrelated to decision can still influence men’s
2008-04-06 21:30:00
Attractive women plus cool cars equal brisk sales for auto dealers as men snap up those cars, prompted—or so advertising theory goes—by the association. But is the human male really so easily swayed? Can the irrelevant image of an alluring female posing by the merchandise actually encourage a heterosexual man to purchase it? Possibly, according to a new study by Stanford researchers. The study showed that when heterosexual men are exposed to positive emotional stimuli—in this case, erotic photos of a man and woman—an area of the brain associated with anticipation of reward is stimulated. In the immediate aftermath of that stimulation, men are consistently more likely to take bigger financial risks than they otherwise would, said Brian Knutson, assistant professor of psychology. "This is the first study to demonstrate that emotional stimuli can influence financial risk-taking," said Knutson, lead author of a paper describing the research in the current issue of NeuroReport...
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Discovery of the First Sex Chromosome Gene Tied to Male Infertility
2008-04-06 21:29:00
A team of scientists led by University of Pennsylvania veterinary researchers have identified a gene, TEX11, located on the X chromosome, which when disrupted in mice renders the males sterile and reduces female fecundity. This is the first study of the genetic causes of infertility that links a particular sex chromosome meiosis-specific gene to sterility.As with mice, the TEX11 gene is also located on the human X chromosome. Given that disruption of TEX11 causes azoospermia, or non-measurable sperm levels in mice, mutations in the human TEX11 gene may be a genetic cause of infertility in men. Because men have only one X chromosome that they inherit from their mother and thus only one copy of the TEX11 gene, any mutation could theoretically lead to sterility. Like other X-linked disorders such as color blindness and muscular dystrophy, genetic mutation causing a son’s infertility could be passed from his mother.Researchers hypothesize that a screening of the TEX11 gene may provide...
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Common aquatic animals show resistance to radiation
2008-04-06 21:26:00
Scientists at Harvard University have found that a common class of freshwater invertebrate animals called bdelloid rotifers are extraordinarily resistant to ionizing radiation, surviving and continuing to reproduce after doses of gamma radiation much greater than that tolerated by any other animal species studied to date. Because free radicals such as those generated by radiation have been implicated in inflammation, cancer, and aging in higher organisms, the findings — published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Harvard’s Matthew Meselson and graduate student Eugene Gladyshev — could stimulate new lines of research into these medically important problems. “Bdelloid rotifers are far more resistant to ionizing radiation than any of the hundreds of other animal species for which radiation resistance has been examined,” says Meselson, Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. “The...
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Promising New Nanotechnology for Spinal Cord Injury
2008-04-02 22:13:00
A spinal cord injury often leads to permanent paralysis and loss of sensation below the site of the injury because the damaged nerve fibers can't regenerate. The nerve fibers or axons have the capacity to grow again, but don?t because they're blocked by scar tissue that develops around the injury. Northwestern University researchers have shown that a nano-engineered gel inhibits the formation of scar tissue at the injury site and enables the severed spinal cord fibers to regenerate and grow. The gel is injected as a liquid into the spinal cord and self -assembles into a scaffold that supports the new nerve fibers as they grow up and down the spinal cord, penetrating the site of the injury.When the gel was injected into mice with a spinal cord injury, after six weeks the animals had a greatly enhanced ability to use their hind legs and walk.The research is published today in the April 2 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience."We are very excited about this," said lead author John Kes...
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Can Robots Cure Cancer
2008-04-02 22:11:00
New research released at the Society of Interventional Radiology's (SIR) Annual Scientific Meeting in Washington, D.C. holds promise of a new interventional imaging capability using advanced robotics provided by Siemens Healthcare, to improve the value of chemoembolization in treating cancer.The research, presented by Dr. John Angle, Associate Professor of Radiology, Chief, Division of Angiography, University of Virginia Health System in Charlottesville, at the "Advanced Imaging Symposium," reveals clinical results from his case study using the Siemens Artis zeego, a multi-axis C-arm that employs robotic technology to enable large-volume syngo DynaCT acquisition for liver chemoembolization.The Artis zeego is part of the new Artis zee family of interventional imaging systems introduced by Siemens. According to Angle, the combination of the Artis zeego and large-volume syngo(R) DynaCT enables the physician to see the whole abdomen or the entire liver for chemoembolization and biopsie...
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Gene's 'selective signature' helps scientists identify instances of natural
2008-04-02 22:06:00
Microbes, the oldest and most numerous creatures on Earth, have a rich genomic history that offers clues to changes in the environment that have occurred over hundreds of millions of years.While scientists are becoming increasingly aware of the many important environmental roles played by microbes living today--they process the food in our intestines, they keep carbon moving through the ocean food web, they can be harnessed to process sewage and build specific proteins--they still know little about these tiny critters, particularly marine microbes, which generally are classified into species based on their ecological niche. For instance, two species of marine microbe might look very similar physically, but one may have adapted to life in a particularly dark part of the ocean, while its sister species may have adapted to feeding off a nutrient that is rare in most parts of the ocean, but exists in abundance in one small area.Scientists at MIT who are trying to understand existing mic...
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New research provides insight into menopause
2008-04-01 10:32:00
nsight into why females of some species undergo menopause while others do not has proven elusive despite an understanding of the biological mechanisms behind the change. However, new research by scientists at the Universities of Cambridge and Exeter suggests that menopause is an adaptation to minimize reproductive competition between generations of females in the same family unit. Even in 'natural fertility' human societies (i.e., those without access to modern medicine or technology) women typically survive for many years after they have ceased to reproduce. Menopause represents an evolutionary puzzle because theory suggests that there should be no selection for genes which promote survival past the end of reproduction. The current explanation was proposed 50 years ago and is known as the 'grandmother hypothesis': Natural selection can favour post-reproductive survival if older non-breeding women ca...
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Researchers make a point of explaining 'the wallpaper problem
2008-03-31 21:32:00
Frustrated by tape that won't peel off the roll in a straight line? Angry at wallpaper that refuses to tear neatly off the wall?A new study reveals why these efforts can be so aggravating. Wallpaper is not out to foil you--it's just obeying the laws of physics, according to a team of researchers from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris, the Universidad de Santiago, Chile, and MIT.The report, published in the March 30 online issue of Nature Materials, sheds light on a phenomenon many people have experienced, which the researchers dubbed "the wallpaper problem.""You want to redecorate your bedroom, so you yank down the wallpaper. You wish that the flap would tear all the way down to the floor, but it comes together in a triangle and you have to start all over again," said Pedro Reis, one of the authors of the paper and an applied mathematics instructor at MIT.This pattern, where two cracks propagate toward each other and meet at a point, is extremely rob...
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Growth hormone also guides brain wiring
2008-03-30 11:21:00
A human hormone known to stimulate the growth of cells throughout the body has a new role - helping to set up the proper nerve connections in the odor center of the brain, according to University of California, Berkeley, scientists. Airborne scent chemicals (inset) stimulate odor receptors in the nasal cavity, which send signals to the brain's olfactory bulb (yellow) located in the frontal lobe of the brain just above the nasal bone. These connections are set up during early development when sensory nerves in the nose send axons into the brain (blue and gold) that target specific neurons in the bulb to create a map of sensory information that displays a mirror symmetry across the bulb’s midline (dashed line). When IGF signaling is disrupted (right), the blue axons collapse toward the bulb’s midline, resulting in a distortion of this sensory map, demonstrating the critical role played by IGF in wiring the brain. (John Ngai/UC Berkeley; ...
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Low oxygen, molybdenum delayed evolution
2008-03-27 10:33:00
A deficiency of oxygen and the heavy metal molybdenum in the ancient deep ocean may have delayed the evolution of animal life on Earth by nearly two billion years, a study led by UC Riverside biogeochemists has found.The researchers arrived at their result by tracking molybdenum in black shales, which are a kind of sedimentary rock rich in organic matter and usually found in the deep ocean. Molybdenum is a key micronutrient for life and serves as a proxy for oceanic and atmospheric oxygen amounts.Study results appear in the March 27 issue of Nature.Following the initial rise of oxygen in the Earth?s atmosphere 2.4 billion years ago, oxygen was transferred to the surface ocean to support oxygen-demanding microorganims. Yet the diversity of these single-celled life forms remained low, and their multicellular ancestors, the animals, did not appear until about 600 million years ago, explained Timothy Lyons, a professor of biogeochemistry in the Department of Earth Sciences and one of th...
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Black carbon pollution growing
2008-03-25 17:32:00
Black carbon, a form of particulate air pollution most often produced from biomass burning, cooking with solid fuels and diesel exhaust, has a warming effect in the atmosphere three to four times greater than prevailing estimates, according to scientists in an upcoming review article in the journal Nature Geoscience.Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego atmospheric scientist V. Ramanathan and University of Iowa chemical engineer Greg Carmichael, said that soot and other forms of black carbon could have as much as 60 percent of the current global warming effect of carbon dioxide, more than that of any greenhouse gas besides CO2. The researchers also noted, however, that mitigation would have immediate societal benefits in addition to the long term effect of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.The article, ?Global and regional climate changes due to black carbon,? will be posted in the online version of Nature Geoscience on March 23.?Observationally based studies such as o...
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The ?Bambi Factor?
2008-03-25 17:30:00
Loveable family entertainment they may be, but when it comes to environmental awareness, Disney films have rarely been seen as contributing much more than a clutch of cuddly talking animals to the cause. Now a new book by a Cambridge University researcher is suggesting that, far from just cute, Disney icons like Bambi, Nemo and Baloo are the all-singing, unsung heroes of the green lobby. According to academic David Whitley, Disney?s screen fables have been helping successive generations of children to develop ?a critical awareness of contested environmental issues? ever since Snow White in 1937. Far from offering us sheer escapism, he says, they carry important messages about our relationship with the natural world. Conservation is so central to Bambi, for example, that the film is credited with having inspired many 1960s environmental activists at an early age. It also sparked protests from pro-hunting groups fearful of...
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Study shows indicator for cardiovascular events
2008-03-24 22:39:00
Gene panels may someday identify patients needing more intense monitoring, treatment A study appearing in this week?s (March 19) New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) confirms that a combination of gene variants previously associated with cholesterol levels does reflect patients? cholesterol levels and can signify increased risk of heart attack, stroke, or sudden cardiac death. Led by researchers from the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) cardiology division, the study?s findings are a first step toward the ability to identify individuals who might benefit from earlier use of cholesterol-lowering medications and other measures to combat elevated risk. ?The prospect of personalized medicine has received much hype, but until recently, there has been little hard evidence to support the promise,? says Sekar Kathiresan, MGH director of preventive cardiology, the paper?s lead author. ?We feel that our data provides two insights. First, we provide a foundation for the possibility t...
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A Gecko's Tail
2008-03-24 22:36:00
UC Berkeley biologists report that geckos rely on their tails to keep from falling off vertical surfaces and, if they do fall, to right themselves in midair and maneuver like a skydiver gliding to a safe landing. The discovery is already helping engineers design better climbing robots and may aid in the design of unmanned gliding vehicles or spacecraft. Perhaps, the researchers say, an "active" tail could help astronauts maneuver in space. According to senior author Robert J. Full, professor of integrative biology at UC Berkeley, previous experiments on geckos have focused on their unique toes as the key to running up a wall and hanging onto ceilings. Full discovered six years ago that, while claws help geckos climb rough surfaces, millions of microscopic toe hairs make it possible for them to climb smooth ones. Only when engineers began building gecko-like robots, such as Boston Dynamics Inc.'s RiSE (Robot in Scansorial Environment), the University of Pennsylvania's DynaClim...
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Know thyself and you?ll know others better
2008-03-24 22:28:00
Using functional MRI (fMRI) scanning, researchers have found that the region of the brain associated with introspective thought ?lights up? when people infer the thoughts of others like themselves. However, this is not the case when we?re considering people we think of as different politically, socially, or religiously. Published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study was led by Adrianna Jenkins, a graduate student in the Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, with Jason Mitchell, assistant professor of psychology at Harvard. Jenkins and Mitchell?s co-author was C. Neil Mcrae of the University of Aberdeen. ?Our research helps to explain how and when people draw on their own inner experiences to make inferences about the experiences of others,? says Jenkins. ?The findings suggest that the part of the brain that is responsible for introspection also helps us to understand what other peopl...
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