A team of researchers, including faculty at Binghamton University, have developed machine learning algorithms which can successfully identify bullies and aggressors on Twitter with 90 percent accuracy. Effective tools for detecting harmful actions on social media are scarce, as this type of behavior is often ambiguous in nature and/or exhibited…
Action-oriented goals produce higher probability of purchases under tight deadlines
If you want something done, ask a busy person — or so the saying goes. According to a new paper co-written by a University of Illinois scholar who studies attitudes and persuasion psychology, if you want to sell something quickly, it helps to try a busy consumer. People on a…
What’s more powerful, word-of-mouth or following someone else’s lead?
Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh, UCLA and the University of Texas published new research in the INFORMS journal Marketing Science (Editor’s note: The source of this research is INFORMS), that reveals the power of word-of-mouth in social learning, even when compared to the power of following the example of…
New tech for multiple sclerosis diagnosis and treatment: Patent-pending tool creates 3D images of brain lesions
Researchers at the Center for BrainHealth®, part of The University of Texas at Dallas, in collaboration with a team from UT Southwestern, have developed technology for a novel diagnostic method for multiple sclerosis (MS). The new approach has the potential to determine which damaged regions in an MS patient’s brain…
Gender binary in elite sports should be abandoned, researchers urge
Existing gender categories in sport should perhaps be abandoned in favour of a more “nuanced” approach in the new transgender era, University of Otago researchers say. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) guidelines that allow male-to-female transgender athletes to compete in the women’s category at the elite level has raised significant…
Area of brain linked to spatial awareness and planning also plays role in decision making
New research by neuroscientists at the University of Chicago shows that the posterior parietal cortex (PPC), an area of the brain often associated with planning movements and spatial awareness, also plays a crucial role in making decisions about images in the field of view. “Traditionally this part of the brain…
How the brain remembers where you’re heading to: Researchers have made new discoveries about how certain brainwaves aid navigation
The brain appears to implement a GPS system for spatial navigation; however, it is not yet fully understood how it works. In the journal Science Advances, researchers from Freiburg, Bochum and Beijing now suggest that rhythmic fluctuations in brain activity, so-called theta oscillations, may play a role in this process….
Deciphering how the brain encodes color and shape: Study reveals how the brain processes the external world using overlapping visual circuits
There are hundreds of thousands of distinct colors and shapes that a person can distinguish visually, but how does the brain process all of this information? Scientists previously believed that the visual system initially encodes shape and color with different sets of neurons and then combines them much later. But…
Screams contain a ‘calling card’ for the vocalizer’s identity: Finding may help explain evolutionary origins of screams
Human screams convey a level of individual identity that may help explain their evolutionary origins, finds a study by scientists at Emory University. PeerJ published the research, showing that listeners can correctly identify whether pairs of screams were produced by the same person or two different people — a critical…
Moral concerns override desire to profit from finding a lost wallet
The setup of a research study was a bit like the popular ABC television program “What Would You Do?” — minus the television cameras and big reveal in the end. An international team of behavioral scientists turned 17,303 “lost” wallets containing varying amounts of money into public and private institutions…
Six against loneliness
The UK has since Wednesday, a Minister, to deal with the issue of loneliness. Politicians of the CDU and the SPD are calling for, to create in the German Ministry of health, a position, which takes on the theme. In fact, loneliness can be to a large psychological stress and…