Quirky Science

The anger face is a constellation of features, each of which makes a person appear physically stronger.

Anger makes people want things more

Anger is an interesting emotion for psychologists. On the one hand, it's negative, but then it also has some of the features of positive emotions. For a new study published in Psychological Science, researchers find that associating an object with anger actually makes people want the object—a kind of motivation that's normally associated with positive emotions.
For example, it activates an area on the left side of the brain that is associated with many positive emotions. And, like positive emotions, it can motivate people to go after something. "People are motivated to do something or obtain a certain object in the world because it's rewarding for them. Usually this means that the object is positive and makes you happy," writes Henk Aarts of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, first author of the new study.

Photo Courtesy: Northwestern University

Electric current to brain boosts memory

Stimulating a particular region in the brain via non-invasive delivery of electrical current using magnetic pulses, called Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, improves memory, according to a new Northwestern Medicine study.
The discovery opens a new field of possibilities for treating memory impairments caused by conditions such as stroke, early-stage Alzheimer's disease, traumatic brain injury, cardiac arrest and the memory problems that occur in healthy aging.
“We show for the first time that you can specifically change memory functions of the brain in adults without surgery or drugs, which have not proven effective," writes senior author Joel Voss, assistant professor of medical social sciences at Northwestern University. "This noninvasive stimulation improves the ability to learn new things. It has tremendous potential for treating memory disorders."
The study was published August 29 in Science.

Photo Courtesy: MIT

How does a football swerve?

It happens every four years: The World Cup begins and some of the world's most skilled players carefully line up free kicks, take aim – and shoot way over the goal.
When such shots go awry in the World Cup, a blame game usually sets in. Players, fans, and pundits all suggest that the new official tournament ball, introduced every four years, is the cause.
It is harder to control a smoother ball, such as the much-discussed "Jabulani" used at the 2010 World Cup. The one used at this year's tournament in Brazil, the "Brazuca," had seams that were over 50 percent longer, one factor that makes the ball less smooth and apparently more predictable in flight.
“The details of the flow of air around the ball are complicated, and in particular they depend on how rough the ball is," writes John Bush, a professor of applied mathematics at MIT. "If the ball is perfectly smooth, it bends the wrong way."

Less domestic violence among married couples who smoke pot

New research findings from a study of 634 couples found that the more often they smoked marijuana, the less likely they were to engage in domestic violence.
The study was conducted by researchers in the University at Buffalo School of Public Health and Health Professions and Research Institute on Addictions (RIA). Looking at couples over the first nine years of marriage, the study found:
 More frequent marijuana use by husbands and wives (two-to-three times per month or more often) predicted less frequent intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetration by husbands.
 Husbands' marijuana use also predicted less frequent IPV perpetration by wives.
 Couples in which both spouses used marijuana frequently reported the least frequent IPV perpetration.
 The relationship between marijuana use and reduced partner violence was most evident among women who did not have histories of prior antisocial behavior.
The study appeared in Psychology of Addictive Behaviors.