Category Archives: Nature

Nature Internship 5: Back to the office

Handle money often? It might help you tolerate pain, according to psychologists who found that volunteers who handled bills or even just thought about money were better at handling social rejection and physical pain than those who thought about neutral topics. I wrote a news story about the study this week. I also wrote about an astronomer who thinks he knows why hundreds of naked-eye observers have seen long-lasting flashes of light on the moon. Columbia grad student Cameron Hummels mentioned this research to me when I was profiling him for Science Careers this winter–it was fun to follow up on the tip and turn it into a story.

Not long after my Alpine ski tour (sadly not part of my work for Nature), I attended a Microsoft Research demonstration day in Cambridge where I played with futuristic gadgets and spoke with researchers working in everything from computational biology to 3-d visualization hardware. I also finally met one of the engineers behind SenseCam, who was out of town when I reported on the device for Science in March.

And back at the office, I’ve blogged about some look-alike journals produced by Elsevier on behalf of drugmaker Merck (here and here), the FDA’s accusations that Cheerios has mislabeled its cereal, and a possible nomination to fill the empty NASA administrator role.

Update: My story about money and pain appeared in the Costa Rican newspaper La Nación [html] [pdf-like format] on 1 June.

Thoughts of money soothe social rejection

Handling or even contemplating money can relieve both physical pain and the distress of social rejection, according to a study by Chinese and American psychologists. But remembering cash one has spent intensifies both types of hurt.

The findings suggest that the mere thought of having money makes people feel physically stronger and less dependent on the approval of others to satisfy their needs. “Money activates a general sense of confidence, strength, and efficacy,” the researchers propose.

Read the rest of this news story on Nature News: [html][pdf].

Also summarized by a Mexican outlet, called Reporte Indigo here: [html]

Published online 14 May 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.481 News  Thoughts of money soothe social rejection Handling cash also eases physical pain.  Lucas Laursen    A substitute for social acceptance? PunchstockHandling or even contemplating money can relieve both physical pain and the distress of social rejection, according to a study by Chinese and American psychologists1. But remembering cash one has spent intensifies both types of hurt.   The findings suggest that the mere thought of having money makes people feel physically stronger and less dependent on the approval of others to satisfy their needs. “Money activates a general sense of confidence, strength, and efficacy,” the researchers propose.

Nature Internship 4: Sybil Attack of the Stem Cell Clones

cover_nature1A real-life network of scientists, policymakers and journalists linked to stem cell research recently found itself cloned on social networking site Facebook. The originals had no control over the profiles, which used their names and photos and which hijacked their real friends in what’s called a sybil attack. Find out more in my news story, online ahead of next week’s print edition.

A former NASA collaborator has just published a new analysis of his copy of Apollo-era data–NASA lost the originals–from a lunar dust experiment. I reported in an online news story that NASA archivists are trying to recover other Apollo data, too, in advance of the next moon missions.

Earthquake scientists have created some pretty awesome -looking images of the Italian region hit by an earthquake earlier this month. Nature printed [html] one this week, based on my blog post last week. I also blogged about animal researchers who protested violence against them at UCLA and about a TV documentary on controversial human cloning attempts. And while I was covering controversy, I blogged about allegations that Jared Diamond defamed a pair of feuding New Guinean men in a New Yorker article.

Apollo scientist dusts off ‘lost’ lunar data

A new analysis based on an Apollo scientist’s copies of lost NASA data seeks to determine how sticky, abrasive moon dust will affect lengthier future lunar missions.

The author of the new study, Brian O’Brien, was the principal investigator for the dust detectors left behind in 1969 by the first two manned missions to the Moon, Apollo 11 and Apollo 12. At the time, O’Brien was a professor of space science at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Continue reading Apollo scientist dusts off ‘lost’ lunar data