Should You Let Your Kid Date in Middle/High School? Science Gives a Surprising Answer

Posted on March 26, 2013 by Ryo

Young love can show you things about yourself you’ve never known. It can bring you to happiness and leave you in despair. It can take away the trust you thought you had with others, and make you want to give up on the world. It can teach you what it means to be human, and make you feel more real than ever before. Young love can be all of these things and more, but we never see it coming. The only thing we can really expect is that it will probably change us, for better or worse. Luckily, new research has just looked into some of the effects of dating on academic performance, drug usage, and school drop-out rates, so we know now more than ever before. The results of the research are stunning.

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Posted in Culture, Psychology, Science, Sex and Sexuality, Social Psych | Tagged dating, drugs, education, happiness, love, teenagers | Leave a comment

In Japan, Strangers are More Likely than Family to Give CPR for Cardiac Arrest

Posted on March 24, 2013 by Ryo

When it comes to Japanese people giving CPR to someone suffering a cardiac arrest, it appears as though water is actually thicker than blood. A recent review of 547,218 cases of cardiac arrests in Japan between 2005 and 2009 was presented at the American Heart Association. The results were surprising, to say the least. But why would this possibly be the case? How could a family member be so less helpful in this time of emergency?

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Posted in Culture, Japan, Medicine & Health, Science | Tagged heart disease | Leave a comment

Power and Rape – Part 2: How to Create a Breeding Ground for Sex Offenders

Posted on March 20, 2013 by Ryo

As I mentioned in Part 1, rape is tolerated in the military because the acknowledgment of rape in a unit will make that unit look bad, not to mention the military as a whole. Therefore, officials try to sweep such information under the rug. In fact, reporting rape is seen as far worse than actually committing it. Now, let’s focus more on the military culture. Not only is it a culture of rape, but also one of partying – a drinking culture. In fact, no matter where the U.S. servicemen go in the world, it seems like they bring their trouble along with them.

This is a preview of Power and Rape – Part 2: How to Create a Breeding Ground for Sex Offenders. Read the full post (1382 words, 1 image, estimated 5:32 mins reading time)

Posted in Japan, Legal Issues, Psychology, Science, Sex and Sexuality | Tagged America, Canada, crime, discrimination, military, rape, sex, sexual harassment | Leave a comment

Power and Rape – Part 1: Rape in the Military is a Career Killer… for the Victim

Posted on March 16, 2013 by Ryo

If you ever wanted to know just how bad “blaming the victim” can get, look no further than the U.S. military. It’s clear that blaming and shaming has gone far beyond just making someone have to live with a stigma that they completely don’t deserve – which is bad enough. Rather, the problem is a systematic denial of justice, a protection of the perpetrator, and an outright pursuit of punishing the victim. If this type of discrimination happened in the public sphere, people would be completely outraged; but what is it about this military culture that allows such behavior to go unpunished?

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Posted in Culture, Legal Issues, Medicine & Health, Psychology, Science, Sex and Sexuality | Tagged America, crime, discrimination, homosexuality, military, rape, sex, sexual harassment, stigma | 1 Comment

Does Chewing Gum Help You Concentrate?

Posted on March 10, 2013 by Ryo

If you want to be a rocket scientist, you might want to start chewing that stick of gum. At least, that’s the hypothesis of a growing body of research that suggests chewing bubble gum is correlated to the ability to concentrate on various mental tasks. And as every student knows (or at least should know) it’s not the amount of time you spend studying that matters – it’s the the amount of time you are actually learning. In short, the more you concentrate, the more you learn, the more you know. But what does the actual science say about this.

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Posted in Neuroscience, Psychology, Science | Tagged brain, food | Leave a comment

Possessed by Demons, Animals, and Nonsense

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Ryo

“Japan doesn’t have that stuff. That’s more of a Western thing.” Just like I constantly have to remind Westerners how they’re horribly wrong about the bizarre and ridiculous stereotypes of Japan, I had to show my Japanese friend that she was totally wrong in her idea about “us” and “them.” The notion that only Westerners believe in exorcisms and demonic possessions is simply wrong. In addition to the many stories I mentioned in an earlier post about exorcisms in Japan, yet another case occurred recently in Japan where the belief in possessions reared its ugly head.

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Posted in Abnormal & Clinical Psych, Culture, Japan, Psychology, Science, Skepticism | Tagged America, animals, brain, brainscan, China, crime, exorcisms, spirit possession | Leave a comment

SATIRAN – Part 3: “Judicial Theatre,” or Judgment for the 2010 Israeli Flotilla Raid

Posted on March 3, 2013 by Ryo

In May 2010, the “Gaza Freedom Flotilla” was sent to give humanitarian aid and construction materials to Gaza, but they were unable to. Their Zionist oppressors (Israel) has policed the Gaza borders since Hamas has been in command in 2007. In a valiant act of defiance, the activist ships went full speed ahead, resulting in Israeli intervention that ended in the death of nine activists. ”What happened there was inhumane and intolerable,” said Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “Nowhere on earth do humanitarian activists come under military attack.” He argued back in 2010 that the soldiers who took part in that operation should stand trial for their actions, and luckily, that trial is now underway.

This is a preview of SATIRAN – Part 3: “Judicial Theatre,” or Judgment for the 2010 Israeli Flotilla Raid. Read the full post (908 words, 2 images, estimated 3:38 mins reading time)

Posted in Culture, Legal Issues | Tagged court of law, crime, Gaza, Iran, Israel, law, politics, Turkey | Leave a comment

Study: Close Relationships Aren’t Necessarily Better

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Ryo

It makes sense, doesn’t it? The closer you are to someone, the better your relationship is. Intuitively, this makes perfect sense. But new research out of Columbia University suggests that this is not necessarily the case.

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Posted in Psychology, Science, Social Psych | Tagged America, Canada, dating, love, marriage | Leave a comment

Are Religious People More Charitable, Generous, and Altruistic than Atheists?

Posted on February 16, 2013 by Ryo

According to a Canadian study from 2008, religious people are “more helpful, honest and generous;” an American study from last year found that “religious states give more to charity than non-religious states.” As I explained in a previous article, the stereotype that religious people are more likely to be Good Samaritans than nonreligious people is highly suspect. In fact, a new study has thrown the idea of religious people being more charitable into question too. This might just be the nail in the coffin for stereotypes about religiosity and altruism.

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Posted in Culture, Psychology, Science, Social Psych | Tagged altruism, America, Canada, money, religion | 8 Comments

Gender, Age, Socioeconomic, and Cultural Differences in Social Networking Site Usage

Posted on February 13, 2013 by Ryo

Online social networks has become an interesting platform for research, and hundreds if not thousands of studies around the world are investigating how we interact with others online. This article looks into recent studies that analyzed data regarding differences in age, culture, gender, and socioeconomic status.

Gender Differences

Researchers from the Santa Fe Institute used a multiplayer game “Pardus” to analyze social networks. Online video games have become increasingly seen as a gold mine of data on social interactions in recent years, and, as it turns out, many of the same gender differences seen in the real world were observed in the social networks in Pardus.

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