Ah, if only our vehicle fuel was as abundant as say, water. In his 2003 State of the Union address, former President George W. Bush proposed a $1.2 billion research initiative that would someday lead to a U.S. vehicle fleet weaned off petroleum and running on zero-emission hydrogen fuel cells. Six years later, this hydrogen-based economy envisioned by President Bush is still seems little more than dream. In fact, if it wasn't for Arnold Schwarzenegger's continuing push for a California Hydrogen Highway and Obama's brief mention of hydrogen on the campaign trail, you might think ... Read More
Older Drivers Involved in Fewer Crashes, Study Finds
January 27, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
There's some good news for older drivers in a fresh report from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which has found that, compared to past years, fewer older drivers died in crashes and fewer were involved in fatal collisions between 1997 and 2006. Even as the population of people 70 and older rose 10 percent, crash fatalities among drivers 70 and older fell 21 percent during the survey period, reversing a previous upward trend. The study doesn't pinpoint reasons for the fatality declines, but a separate Institute study suggests that older adults increasingly self-limit their ... Read More
Don’t Think Too Hard About That Next Big Purchase
January 27, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Quick, intuitive judgments are more likely to stand up over time, according to a new paper, “The Devil is in the Deliberation.” In it, Loran Nordgren of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis of Amsterdam’s Radboud University explain why a new car can look so appealing in the showroom, but seem so disappointing in the driveway. “Our judgmental apparatus is far from flawless,” they conclude. “And ironically, it gets worse when we deliberate.” The paper is a follow-up to a 2006 study suggesting that conscious thought ... Read More
Scientists, Public Drift Apart on Climate Change
January 23, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
A new study finds a strong scientific consensus that climate change is real and human activity is at least partly to blame, even as a survey reports the public is becoming more skeptical on both points. The two documents suggest President Obama was right to speak of the dangers of global warming in his inaugural address, but he and his administration have a serious sales job ahead of them to convince the public to take action. That effort commences on Wednesday, when former Vice President Al Gore, who has been studying and discussing climate change since the 1980s, will testify before the ... Read More
Free Will is Bunk? Then Don’t Ask Me for Help
January 21, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Free will may be an illusion, but if so, it's one we might want to hold onto. New research confirms and expands upon a study from last year that links antisocial behavior with disbelief in the notion that we make our own decisions. Neuroscientists have been suggesting for some time now that the sensation we experience of making decisions is largely, if not entirely, illusory. They tell us our actions are in fact determined by the unconscious interaction between our genes and our environment; our conscious minds are kept busy justifying the decisions that were made by internal forces beyond ... Read More
Putting a Crowd Count on History
January 21, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
A day after Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States in a historically massive (and massively historic) Washington celebration, the big debate wasn't about Rick Warren's address or the best one-liners from Obama. It was this: How many people actually went to this thing? The question is an intensely personal one for the people who attended ("I was one of 2 million" sounds better than "I was one of 700,000 or so") as well as an essential historical footnote for future accounts of the day. In many ways, though, the politics of crowd-counting are messier ... Read More
Stress Decreases Effectiveness of Flu Vaccine
January 21, 2009 • By • 1 Comment
A meta-analysis of 13 studies examining the effectiveness of influenza vaccinations finds “a significant negative association between psychological stress and antibody responses” to the vaccine. This decreased effectiveness was seen in both elderly and youthful recipients of the purportedly protective injection. Researchers led by Anette Fischer Pedersen of Denmark's University of Aarhus looked at 13 studies, which included a total of more than 1,150 participants. Five of them compared antibody levels of caregivers (whose stress levels tend to be higher) with non-caregivers; the ... Read More
The Deal on the Floss
January 21, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Tell him what he'll gain from it, and Austin Powers might just listen to you when you tell him to brush his teeth — not because his teeth are atrocious (which they are) but because he is British. A new study, "The Cultural Congruency Effect: Culture, Regulatory Focus, and the Effectiveness of Gain- vs. Loss-Framed Health Messages," soon to be published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, reveals the way we respond to health messaging is at least partly based on how well the message's framing mirrors the behavioral motivations of our own culture. Need ... Read More
Electric Cars: Great Promise, Potential Potholes
January 20, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
While the technical problems are formidable, a provocative new paper looks at the equally daunting social and cultural realities that will have to be addressed if a switchover away from gasoline engines is to occur. Writing in the journal Energy Policy, Benjamin Sovacool of the National University of Singapore and Richard F. Hirsh of Virginia Polytechnic Institute note that the vehicle-to-grid concept – in which automobiles would be continually hooked up to the larger power grid, both taking energy from it and supplying energy to it – would be a major advance on many levels. Such a ... Read More
Megaprojects Guru to Head New Oxford Center
January 15, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Bent Flyvbjerg, subject of this September 2008 Miller-McCune cover story, has just been appointed chair of a new program at the University of Oxford. The Danish professor is an expert on megaprojects — the public transit systems, opera houses, stadiums and other infrastructure undertakings that cost more than $1 billion to build and last several years. Governments and corporations are beginning to use his technique, reference-class forecasting, to help control the notorious cost overruns that plague megaprojects. On April 1, Flyvbjerg will become chair of the Centre for Major Programme ... Read More
