The science of love
“Losing and ending a romantic relationship is one of the most painful losses experienced by adults,” begins a BAS (abundantly abbreviated study) by researchers in Germany and Iran, published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research.
This is science at its most romantic: electromagnetically stimulating the brains of volunteers who are suddenly in love. This is also science in its shortest acronym: tDCS (transcranial direct current stimulation), DLPFC (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex), VLPFC (ventrolateral prefrontal cortex), and LTS (love trauma syndrome).
For those in the throes of lost love, one passage begs to be uttered like a rooftop soliloquy at midnight: “36 participants with love trauma syndrome were randomized to three tDCS conditions (left DLPFC, right VLPFC, sham stimulation) . LTS symptoms, treatment-related outcome variables (depressive state, anxiety, emotion regulation, positive and negative affect), and cognitive functions were assessed before, immediately after, and one month after the intervention.
This evaluation, the researchers say, showed that brain decompression “improves symptoms of LTS.” But, they warn for all the science, “there is a huge research gap about ‘Love Trauma Syndrome,’ what exactly are its symptoms and what diagnostic criteria are important.”
Smoking outside smells
Kevin Lee uncovers a possible cause and effect in the actions of London’s (and the world’s) first celebrity pathologist.
He writes: “I’m a retired coroner and as you can easily imagine, I’ve been asked endlessly how I get on with the wind. Apart from the old trick of the innocent smile and the question: ‘Smell, what smell?’ The very simple fact is that I still have an acute sense of smell and am quite capable of distinguishing the various odors of decomposition even when they are quite faint. I’ve managed to train myself to take a fairly neutral approach to these pongs so that, although I’m fully aware of them, after a good sniff they no longer present themselves as a problem.
“The last article [Feedback, 15 June] regarding Sir Bernard Spilsbury, the very famous forensic pathologist of the early 20th century, described it as having an extremely impaired sense of smell. If he did in fact have such a defect, I would believe that it was most likely due to the fact that he was a heavy smoker, taking about 50 cigarettes a day. He might as well have used the same technique I’ve used since then.”
Religions of life
Body parts, living (elbow), dead (hair), nominal (leg) and severed, are featured in this note from UK reader Gerald Legg: “Your latest piece ‘Parting Hairs’ (July 20 ) reminded me of my time at Manchester University. . My PhD research involved a lot of microtome work using the old but still functional Cambridge oscillating microtome. [a specialist cutting device].
“I was taught how to sharpen blades using a sheet of plate glass and cerium dioxide. Before use, a blade would be ground, checked under x40 to make sure there were no nicks on it, and then tested. The test: splitting a hair. A sharp blade should be able to cut through a strand of hair three times, lifting small bits of curl still attached to the body of the hair, before cutting the hair right off.
“The lab had a sharp knife—a fact I discovered when I put my elbow on it and heard a heavy thud as it cut through to the bone, but felt nothing.
“A quick trip to Manchester Hospital, down the road, followed by some stitches fixed it quickly and I was able to return to the lab and continue my serial sectioning with the same blade.”
It remains nameless
When their students make tangible contributions to science, some teachers find a way to publicly acknowledge the who, what, and where—especially if those students made unusual sacrifices.
Such may be the case with a preprint study called “Investigating the Bactericidal Effect of Earwax in Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus isolated from skin and stool samples of graduate students, Federal University of Agriculture, Makurdi, Benue State, Nigeria”.
Credit, in academia, has its limits. Individual students are not identified by name.
Simple pleasures
“Simplify, simplify, simplify” is an old rule, especially among scientists. To honor the adage, Feedback is compiling a collection of documents called “Simplify, Simplify, Simplify.”
The first item of the assembly is a report entitled “Unique Simple Personalities of Politicians”. Published in the February 6, 1997 issue of Naturethis study says that politicians’ personalities can be reduced to a set of just two or three numbers – a stark contrast to the extraordinary five numbers that psychologists claim are needed to judge normal people.
The authors of that work were awarded the 2003 Ig Nobel Prize in psychology.
If you have the simple pleasure of finding another good example, please send it (along with citation details) to: Simple pleasures, care Feedback.
Marc Abrahams created the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony and co-founded the journal Annals of Improbable Research. Previously, he worked on unusual ways to use computers. His website is impossible.com.
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