Triple-Decker Weekly, 95

art by Lee Price

In two studies, we examine the effect of manipulating the position of different foods on a restaurant menu. Items placed at the beginning or the end of the list of their category options were up to twice as popular as when they were placed in the center of the list. Given this effect, placing healthier menu items at the top or bottom of item lists and less healthy ones in their center (e.g., sugared drinks vs. calorie-free drinks) should result in some increase in favor of healthier food choices. [Judgment and Decision Making]

Fake Pub Studies Drinking Habits

This work explored the potential negative consequences of unexpected help. A behavioral observation and a survey study found that men are unlikely to have the door held open for them in a chivalrous manner, whereby they walk through the door before the person helping them does. In an experimental field study, passersby were randomly assigned to experience this type of door-holding help or not. Males who had the door held for them in this manner by a male confederate reported lower self-esteem and self-efficacy than males who did not have the door held for them. Females were unaffected by door-holding condition. These results demonstrate negative consequences of seemingly innocuous but unexpected helping behavior that violates gender norms. [Social Influence | via Improbable ]

People who appear popular may actually be withdrawn and sad, new study claims.

Analyzing selfies worldwide (gender proportions, average head tilt angles…)

British internet users share more than 3.8 million cat photos and videos every day, compared to 1.4 million selfies.

Snake-Handling Pastor Dies From Snake Bite

To answer the seemingly simple question "Have I been here before?" we must use our memories of previous experiences to determine if our current location is familiar or novel. In a new study published in the Journal of Neuroscience researchers have identified a region of the hippocampus, called CA2, which is sensitive to even small changes in a familiar context. The results provide the first clue to the contributions of CA2 to memory and may help shed light on why this area is often found to be abnormal in the schizophrenic brain. [Function Space]

“At Starbucks I order under the name Godot. Then leave.”

Almost half of all disturbing dreams contain primary emotions other than fear, study finds […] The research also found that men and women tend to have different dreams. Men were "significantly" more likely to report themes involving disaster or calamity as well as insects while women's dreams were more likely to feature interpersonal conflicts. [Telegraph]

By mapping the links between themes that appear in dreams, network scientists reveal the connections between dreams in different cultures for the first time

[W]e should not be surprised by coincidences. In fact, we should expect coincidences to happen. One of the key strands of the principle is the law of truly large numbers. This law says that given enough opportunities, we should expect a specified event to happen, no matter how unlikely it may be at each opportunity. Sometimes, though, when there are really many opportunities, it can look as if there are only relatively few. This misperception leads us to grossly underestimate the probability of an event: we think something is incredibly unlikely, when it's actually very likely, perhaps almost certain. [Scientific American]

In this study, we tested the hypothesis that a nonhuman sexual stimulus would elicit a genital response in women but not in men. Eighteen heterosexual women and 18 heterosexual men viewed seven sexual film stimuli, six human films and one nonhuman primate film, while measurements of genital and subjective sexual arousal were recorded. Women showed small increases in genital arousal to the nonhuman stimulus and large increases in genital arousal to both human male and female stimuli. Men did not show any genital arousal to the nonhuman stimulus and demonstrated a category-specific pattern of arousal to the human stimuli that corresponded to their stated sexual orientation. [Biological Psychology]

The mathematical theory introduced in this paper unveils an underlying mechanism that may explain the deterioration and disruption occurring massively in sentimental relationships that were initially planned to last forever. Two forces work together to ease the appearance of the deterioration process. First, it happens that since an extra effort must always be put in to sustain a relationship on the successful path, partners may relax and lower the effort level if the gap is uncomfortable. Then instability enters the scene, driving the feeling-effort state out of the lasting successful dynamics. [...] Lasting relationships are possible only if the effort gap is tolerable and the optimal effort making is continuously watched over to stay on the target dynamics. [PLoS]

[a]mong the married couples, a higher discrepancy between men's and women's number of previous intercourse partners was related to lower levels of love, satisfaction, and commitment in the relationship. [The Journal of Sex Research]

"Penis captivus" or can couples really get stuck together during sex?

Several results support our two predictions that 1) early stage, intense romantic love is associated with subcortical reward regions that are also dopamine-rich (e.g., Fisher 1998) and 2) romantic love engages a motivation system involving neural systems associated with motivation to acquire a reward rather than romantic love being a particular emotion in its own right (Aron and Aron 1991). [Journal of Neurophysiology]

Homophobia Takes Years Off of Your Life, Study

Today, credit cards are on supersale. Pageler says that means a big breach just happened. Strangely, platinum credit cards on the site are selling for less money than gold cards. [...] The bots send out emails, and between 5 percent and 10 percent of recipients open the attachment, which lets the crooks in. [NPR]

Bitcoin itself may not flourish as a currency, but the underlying technology is beginning to suggest valuable new applications. […] For example, Namecoin is a system used to create and exchange domain names: the coins contain information about the domain names themselves. Recall that the domain name market has about $3 billion in revenue per year: it’s a good example of a weird, scarce digital resource. And Bitmessage is a Bitcoin-inspired messaging platform that allows for anonymous (or at least pseudonymous) communication. What Namecoin and Bitmessage share is that they allow data to be added to the transaction, making the exchange one not just of perceived value but also of information. Or take digital art. Larry Smith, a partner at the business architecture consultancy The matix and an analyst with long experience in digital advertising and digital finance, asks us to “imagine digital items that can’t be reproduced.” If we attached a coin identifier to a digital image, Smith says, “we could now call that a unique, one-of-a-kind digital entity.” Media on the Internet—where unlimited copying and sharing has become a scourge to rights holders—would suddenly be provably unique, permanently identified, and attached to an unambiguous monetary value. [Technology Review]

Author profiling is a problem of growing importance in applications in forensics, security, and marketing. E.g., from a forensic linguistics perspective one would like being able to know the linguistic profile of the author of a harassing text message (language used by a certain type of people) and identify certain characteristics. Similarly, from a marketing viewpoint, companies may be interested in knowing, on the basis of the analysis of blogs and online product reviews, the demographics of people that like or dislike their products. The focus is on author profiling in social media since we are mainly interested in everyday language and how it reflects basic social and personality processes. [PAN]

German Hackers Are Building a DIY Space Program to Put Their Own Uncensored Internet into Space

“At a distance of 20 feet, they were clearly seeing what someone with normal vision could see at no farther than 7.5 feet away.” App Trains You to See Farther

A New Tool That Seals Bullet Wounds in Seconds With High-Tech Sponges

China accounts for 27% of global cancer deaths

Home made cigarettes are more addictive than the factory-rolled ones, study.

The husband and wife team behind the handmade cosmetics company Lush – which this week won a high court battle against Amazon over its use of the word "lush" to sell rival cosmetics – has trademarked the name "Christopher North" as a brand name for a new range of toiletries, which could eventually extend to deodorants and hair removing cream. North is the managing director of Amazon.co.uk. [Guardian]

Skadden is the second largest law firm in the world in revenue. Forbes magazine called it "Wall Street's most powerful law firm," and it has been named as America's best Corporate Law firm every year since 2001.

What I Saw When I Crashed a Wall Street Secret Society And: The full Kappa Beta Phi member list

Challenging the conventional wisdom, the most expensive fares typically appear when purchased far in advance of a flight.

Toyota to debut wireless charging for 2016 model

If electric cars become popular quickly, the demand for charging them is likely to exceed supply

Does snow make a city cleaner?

4 Russian Travel Tips for Visiting America

Edgar Allan Poe, Interior Design Critic

Proust’s and Deleuze’s takes on enigmatic messages.

Instances of fuck before the fifteenth century are rare. On the origin of Fuck

New breakthrough over the Voynich Manuscript: Professor says he has deciphered 10 words, which could lead to more discoveries.

Conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation [PDF]

Economists finally test prisoner's dilemma on prisoners