Culture

University of Missouri researchers have studied the residues from gourds and squash artifacts that date back to 2200 B.C. and recovered starch grains from manioc, potato, chili pepper, arrowroot and algarrobo. The starches provide clues about the foods consumed at feasts and document the earliest evidence of the consumption of algarrobo and arrowroot in Peru.

New York, NY, July 21, 2009—The individual health insurance market is not a viable option for the majority of uninsured adults, a new report from The Commonwealth Fund finds. Seventy-three percent of people who tried to buy insurance on their own in the last three years did not purchase a policy, primarily because premiums were too high.

Corporations like Kraft Foods, PepsiCo, and McDonald's each spent more than $1 billion in advertising in 2007. And a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research suggests those advertisers are missing out if their ads only mention taste and ignore our other senses.

Naturally, most food ads mention the taste of the food being marketed. But authors Ryan S. Elder and Aradhna Krishna (both University of Michigan) demonstrate that tapping into our other senses can actually increase consumers' taste perceptions.

Authors Michelle P. Lee (Singapore Management University) and Kwanho Suk (Korea University) set out to examine a paradox of consumer behavior: Sometimes consumers are swayed by the surrounding context in which a product appears (an "assimilation effect"). In other situations, a product that appears among cheaper items seems to be more expensive ("contrast effect").

Like most families, certain objects become a part of daily routines and histories. A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research helps explain why some possessions wind up in permanent storage or get tossed away, while others are kept for generations.

Most female surgeons would choose their career again, although many would favor more options for part-time or other alternative work schedules, according to a report in the July issue of Archives of Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

If a salesperson shares a birthday or a birthplace with you, you're more likely to make a purchase and feel good about it, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.

"This research examines how the fundamental human need to connect with others plays a role in sales encounters," write authors Lan Jiang, JoAndrea Hoegg, Darren W. Dahl (all University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC), and Amitava Chattopadhyay (INSEAD, Singapore).

Western consumers are more receptive to unexpected promotional gifts than their East Asian counterparts, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.

People from diverse cultures react differently to the element of surprise, according to authors Ana Valenzuela (Baruch College), Barbara Mellers (University of California, Berkeley), and Judi Strebel (San Francisco State University). The research team explored different cultural responses to promotional gifts, such as gift cards, mugs, snacks, t-shirts, etc.

The wound that ultimately killed a Neanderthal man between 50,000 and 75,000 years was most likely caused by a thrown spear, the kind used by modern humans, not Neanderthals, finds Duke University researchers.

"What we've got is a rib injury, with any number of scenarios that could explain it," said Steven Churchill, an associate professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke. "We're not suggesting there was a blitzkrieg, with modern humans marching across the land and executing the Neanderthals. I want to say that loud and clear."

A new study published this week takes scientists a step further in their quest to understand how Antarctica's vast glaciers will contribute to future sea-level rise. Reporting in the journal Nature Geoscience, scientists from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and University of Durham describe how a new 3-d map created from radar measurements reveals features in the landscape beneath a vast river of ice, ten times wider than the Rhine*, in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

PHILADELPHIA – (July 20, 2009) – A team of researchers from The Wistar Institute and the University of Pennsylvania reports new evidence refuting a popular hypothesis about the highly publicized failure in 2007 of the Merck STEP HIV vaccine study that cast doubt on the feasibility of HIV-1 vaccines. The findings were published on-line July 20 in Nature Medicine.

BEER-SHEVA, ISRAEL -- July 20, 2009 – Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) have conducted a "before and after" study of depression and terrorist attacks in adolescents, demonstrating that strong social support from friends is a buffer from depression in terrorism-related stress.

The study, believed to be the first of its type, was published in the July issue of Pediatrics, the journal of The American Academy of Pediatrics.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Researchers are proposing in a new report that a major experiment be conducted to reintroduce wolves to a test site in the Scottish Highlands, to help control the populations and behavior of red deer that in the past 250 years have changed the whole nature of large ecosystems.

PITTSBURGH, July 20 – Cancer treatment has come a long way, leading to a multitude of therapy options and improved survival rates. These successes, however, have created a challenge for young cancer patients since chemotherapy and radiation treatments that often save lives threaten fertility. Techniques available to safeguard fertility, such as freezing eggs for later embryo development, have poor odds of success, leaving patients with very limited options for the future.

Washington, DC—The thousands of professional lobbyists working in Washington, DC on issues tend to be professional partisans who mobilize resources for one preferred political party exclusively. So finds a new study which counters the common expectation that lobbyists play both sides of the political field regardless of which party is in the ascendancy.