For the Geeks out there

So I’m sure you all know that last week, Jodi and Jason, two awesome geeks, got engaged. And when I heard this cute story of geeks in love, I was reminded forcefully of this:

Don’t you all wish you were geeks in love? Congrats to Jodi and Jason!
More is to come, I’ve been away from the tubes, and when Sci checked her reader, there were over 600 posts demanding her attention in their tiny, squeaky little voices. Yikes. The stuff of nightmares.

Does stress trigger your chocolate habit?

There are many behavioral tasks out there which use monkeys. But a lot of people lately are asking the question: why use monkeys when you can use humans? Of course, for some of these tasks, conditions have to exist that we would be unable to obtain in humans, but there are some simple behavioral tasks which a rat, a monkey, and a human can do equally well. And Sci must imagine that tasks like this involve some amusement factor on the part of the experimenter. After all, if something looks cute when a rat is doing it, it often makes a human look profoundly ridiculous.
And this paper is interesting for other reasons. There are a lot of questions as to how well humans REALLY operate in times of stress. Perhaps some of us may think that stress facilitates our abilities. And in some people, that might be the case. But it also appears that stress brings out other behaviors in humans that may not be as positive as you think.
Schwabe and Wolf. “Stress promts habit behavior in humans.” The Journal of Neuroscience, 2009.
Today’s study brought to you by Nestle Quik

And a lot of oranges

You’ll see why.