Hands-On: Windows 8 Brings Tablet-Style Simplicity To The Desktop

Windows 8 might be a gamechanger for tablets, but it's designed for desktops too. How does it fare with a keyboard and mouse?

By Dan Nosowitz

Windows 8 Metro Start Menu There's a mix of Metro apps (the brightly-colored ones like Photos, Store, and Weather) and regular Windows programs (like Internet Explorer) in this new Start screen. Dan Nosowitz

Since Windows 7, Microsoft's been busily honing the interface for Windows tablets, which uses a bold bunch of squares and rectangles in flat neon colors and has been christened "Metro." Windows 8--undoubtedly the biggest change to the operating system in a few generations--finally brings Metro to the desktop. So how does it work with a keyboard and mouse?

Windows 8 integrates Metro with what in reality is a barely-changed version of Windows 7, with all the programs and behavior we've gotten familiar with for the past decade or two. It sounds disjointed, but functionally, after using it for a minute, I see what Microsoft is doing here, and it makes sense. For tablet users, Metro is everything. For desktop users, it's essentially Microsoft's new Start menu.

On a tablet, Metro is highly touchable, with big buttons and swipey gestures and pretty bright colors. Apps run in full-screen, with the additional option of sticking an app in a quarter of the screen on the left or right (great for stuff like Twitter or an instant-message client). On a desktop, Metro's still useful, but it's not where you'll spend most of your time. A desktop user triggers Metro by clicking, from anywhere, on the lower left-hand corner of the screen (or by hitting the Windows button on your keyboard), and there you are: home base.

Windows 8 Desktop: Windows 8 basically looks like Windows 7, Metro notwithstanding. My desktop is essentially unchanged--except the Start button has been replaced with a thumbnail preview of Metro that appears when I hover my cursor in the bottom left corner.  Dan Nosowitz

Metro is where you see basic updates. You can go into a pretty weather app, check your email, look at photos, listen to music (no longer called Zune, which is smart; despite Zune being reliably excellent throughout its tenure as Microsoft's most-mocked property, it was also reliably unpopular), play some quick games, or do a little light messaging. It's also the spot from which you'll launch all your apps. Here's where it gets kind of tricky: there are two kinds of apps, Metro apps and regular Windows apps. You can "pin" both of these types of apps to your Metro screen, anywhere you want, but the Metro apps will launch in Metro and the Windows apps will launch in regular Windows (which, as I said before, looks pretty much exactly like Windows 7).

Metro is pretty simple to use. A right click brings up a sidebar on the bottom (bottombar?) with context-sensitive options. You scroll through your Metro thumbnails with the mouse wheel (or, once Windows 8 is optimized for laptops, with the trackpad). The hot corners, to borrow a phrase from Mac OS, work whether you're in Metro or not. Stick your cursor in the upper left corner to see a little popup of your most recently used app, which you can click on to be taken there. Or you can move the cursor down to see more of your recently used apps. At the bottom of this list is always a thumbnail of Metro--your new Start button. (I imagine many desktop users will stick to the tried-and-true Alt-Tab method of app switching--it's quite a bit faster.)

Over in the upper right-hand corner, you've got what Microsoft calls "charms." These are a couple quick, important keys: Search, Share, Devices, Settings, and another Start button. Not sure why there are two Start buttons available at all times, but there they are. The search function is Metro-fied and works well, but it's not universal--you have to tell it whether you're looking for an app, a setting, or a file. Mac OS X's universal search "Spotlight" is better, I think, but this works pretty well.

Windows 8 Search: Here's how you search. I'm searching for an app here, so it'll narrow down my list of apps as I type until it (hopefully) finds the one I want.  Dan Nosowitz

Tablet users, I imagine, will stay pretty much entirely in Metro. It's just right for touch-based interaction on a small screen. But desktop users will be just the opposite: you might look at the weather app in Metro, or use the Metro calendar, or maybe check your email (though the email app has some issues; read more below in the "apps" section), but I can't imagine a desktop user wanting to use, say, a Twitter or instant-message app in Metro. For one thing, you'd have to keep leaping between your desktop and Metro, which is kind of jarring (Alt-Tab includes both Metro and regular windows apps)--even more than heavily using widgets on Mac OS or gadgets in Windows 7, and those are nowhere near as involved as Metro apps. For another, Metro apps are designed to be super lightweight and speedy and simple. That's fine for some stuff, but the email app is basically a touchscreen email app--if I'm using a desktop computer, with a keyboard and mouse and an ugly black tower filled with space-age components, why wouldn't I just use an email app like Thunderbird, or even a web-based client like Gmail, both of which are more powerful, flexible, and better suited for keyboard-and-mouse use than Metro's email app?

Windows 8 Metro Email App: Metro's email app is simple, but given the power of a desktop computer, keyboard and mouse, do we want it to be quite this simple?  Dan Nosowitz

METRO APPS

Given that this is a preview and not a finished product, it's expected that there's a very limited number of Metro apps. There's no Twitter app, no Facebook. The only IM client is Microsoft's own, which doesn't support Google Chat or AIM, only Facebook and Windows Live Messenger (good for 14-year-olds and Europeans, respectively, but I am neither). There are a few simple games, and the Xbox app has some interesting possibilities--looks like you'll be able to send videos to your Xbox 360 in addition to the expected access to Xbox settings and friends.

The email app is super pretty, as is basically everything in Metro, but it's also super simple. When I'm on a desktop, I can't imagine using this app over a regular email program or a decent web app. There's not enough room left for the actual message, not enough controls, not enough information on the screen, compared to the alternatives.

The calendar app is excellent, much cleaner and simpler than previous Windows calendars or even Apple's iCal, with its silly digital leather stitching. The music app is far too basic for desktop use--I have a keyboard and mouse, why do I need to scroll through a billion giant thumbnails? (The Music and Video apps are tied in pretty thoroughly with the formerly-named Zune store.) On the other hand, the photos app is simple, but works nicely--I like having a simple photo app that just shows me my photos. It's not going to replace Picasa, which has much more robust uploading and editing and management tools, but to just take a look through some photos? Great.

WHAT ABOUT THE REST OF WINDOWS?

There haven't been any real major changes to the "normal" part of Windows 8. Windows Explorer is still Windows Explorer. There are some slight granular differences in the menu bars and things like that, but nothing will really be shocking to anyone who's used Windows 7. The Start icon is gone from the taskbar, but otherwise it looks exactly the same--you right-click on any app in the "all apps" section of Metro, and hit "Pin to taskbar" to stick it right there. All of those great Windows 7 previews are still here, so you can hover over the items on the taskbar for a preview and things like that.

Internet Explorer does not suck. I'm as surprised as anyone. It's pretty and fast and minimal. It doesn't have a killer feature like Firefox's scores of extensions or Chrome's search bar, but it does not deserve scorn, which is high praise for this particular dinosaur of a program.

Windows 8: Internet Explorer: Internet Explorer: Familiar, but less bad. Actually, not very bad at all! Dan Nosowitz

The Control Panel is still confusing as all hell. You can use the new "PC Settings" area in Metro for basic stuff--accounts, personalization, notifications, updates--but it's a pretty shallow set of options for a desktop, and you'll definitely have to close your eyes and plunge your arm into the toilet of Control Panel at some point. Microsoft promises that they've vastly cut down on the quantity and incomprehensibility of error messages, but as I didn't see any, I can't vouch for that.Or can I?

All of my Windows 7 programs worked. Actually everything seemed to work a little better than before--maybe it's just that Metro is so ridiculously smooth and fast, but the whole computer felt snappier than I remembered Windows 7 ever being. (For reference, I'm using a few-years-old Dell desktop with 8GB of memory and a triple-core AMD Phenom processor--faster than your average workstation, but by no means a speed beast. As a side note, I had to dig it out of my closet, where it was entirely covered with dust, and plug it into my HDTV, because I no longer have a monitor, so all things Metro seem impossibly bold and bright. I tried to install it via both Boot Camp and Parallels on a Macbook Pro, hoping to try out some multitouch, but had no luck in getting it to run in any reasonable way. This will probably change soon.)

Windows 8: Charms: Not sure about the name, guys.  Dan Nosowitz

SINCERELY, IN CONCLUSION

I like Windows 8 a lot! But it's important to remember that while Windows 8 is a huge, game-changing step for tablets, in the desktop world it'll be more like the step from Snow Leopard to Lion on Mac OS. It brings a whole bunch of tablet ideas, but it's still a desktop OS, and it's really not as different from the previous version as it sounds or looks at first. And, by the way, Windows 8 is going to freak the hell out of a lot of people--Metro is the first thing you see, and you'll keep going back to it for settings and launching apps and things like that, and it looks like Microsoft burned Windows to the ground and built a new OS out of neon construction paper and a T-square. But it's really not a huge deal--desktop users will treat Metro like the fanciest, best Start menu/app launcher there ever was. And it is, too; Metro's changes are infinitely more modern and welcome than Lion's weird, useless iPad-like app launcher and all the other mobile-inspired ideas Apple crammed into the latest version.

I have no hesitation in recommending an upgrade; I've had absolutely no hiccoughs or errors after my upgrade, everything runs perfectly smooth, and Metro is, though not a gamechanger, really, really cool. Especially if you haven't played with other Metro products like the new Xbox homescreen or Windows Phone, it'll be a shock--but after you figure out what Metro is and what it isn't, it'll be just fine. Better, even.

You can download the Windows 8 Consumer Preview from Microsoft here, for free. It'll expire in late 2013.

Bacteria Communicate by Touch, New Research Suggests

                                           Science Daily  — What if bacteria could talk to each other? What if they had a sense of touch? A new study by researchers at UC Santa Barbara suggests both, and theorizes that such cells may, in fact, need to communicate in order to perform certain functions.

The findings appeared recently in the journal Genes & Development.

Christopher Hayes, UCSB associate professor of molecular, cellular, and development biology, teamed with graduate students Elie Diner, Christina Beck, and Julia Webb to study uropathogenic E. coli (UPEC), which causes urinary tract infections in humans. They discovered a sibling-like link between cell systems that have largely been thought of as rivals.

The paper shows that bacteria expressing a contact--dependent growth inhibition system (CDI) can inhibit bacteria without such a system only if the target bacteria have CysK, a metabolic enzyme required for synthesis of the amino acid cysteine. CysK is shown to bind to the CDI toxin -- an enzyme that breaks RNA ó and activate it.

For a cell system typically thought of as existing only to kill other bacteria -- as CDIs have largely been -- the results are surprising, said Hayes, because they suggest that a CDI+ inhibitor cell has to get permission from its target in order to do the job.

"This is basically the inhibitor cell asking the target cell, 'Can I please inhibit you?'" he explained. "It makes no sense. Why add an extra layer of complexity? Why add a permissive factor? That's an unusual finding.

"We think now that the [CDI] system is not made solely because these cells want to go out and kill other cells," Hayes continued. "Our results suggest the possibility that these cells may use CDI to communicate as siblings and team up to work together; for example, in formation of a biofilm, which lends bacteria greater strength and better odds of survival."

The study points to the enzyme CysK as the potential catalyst to such bacterial communication -- like a secret handshake, or a password. In simpler terms, said Hayes, "If you have the right credentials, you're allowed into the club; otherwise you're turned away. There's a velvet rope, if you will, and if you're not one of the cool kids, you can't get in."

Although only UPEC was studied for this paper, Hayes said that the findings hold potential implications for pathogens from bacterial meningitis to the plague, as well as for plant-based bacteria that can devastate vegetation.

David Low, a UCSB professor of molecular, cellular, and developmental biology and secondary author on the paper, described the work by Hayes's laboratory as potentially groundbreaking for its insights into how bacteria communicate -- and the practical applications that could someday result.

"We are just starting to get some clues that bacteria may be talking to each other with a contact-dependent language," said Low. "They touch and respond to one another in different ways depending on the CDI systems and other genotypic factors. Our hope is that ultimately this work may aid the development of drugs that block or enhance touch-dependent communication, whether the bacteria is harmful or helpful."

The work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

How warfarin becomes a danger

MONASH UNIVERSITY

The risk of severe side effects associated with a common blood-thinning medication is related to elderly patients misunderstanding medical instructions, according to new research. A team of researchers at Monash University studied the effects of warfarin. This drug has been used clinically for over 50 years for the prevention of blood clots in the elderly, but it also puts its patients at an increased risk of bleeding. The NHMRC-funded research, led by PhD scholar Basia Diug, found that psychosocial factors such as poor health literacy, depressed mood and impaired cognition were just as likely to cause an increased risk of bleeding as other factors, such as a patient's age. "Warfarin is an effective drug for treatment and prophylaxis of thromboembolic disorders, but despite routine monitoring, patients taking warfarin are at risk of haemorrhage," Ms Diug said. "Most conditions requiring warfarin manifest in older patients, the fastest growing group in our community, and require long-term care. "Despite the known risks, warfarin usage in Australia has been steadily increasing at a rate of nine per cent annually, and it remains one of the leading causes of harmful medication errors and medication-related adverse events." The study recommended that doctors consider the social circumstances of patients when prescribing warfarin, as the presence of multiple psychosocial deficits increased the risk of bleeding. Ms Diug's research was supervised by Professor John McNeil, Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, and conducted over two stages, involving over 500 patients recruited through Melbourne Pathology. The results were published in the international journal Stroke and the Medical Journal of Australia. The project was a collaboration between the Monash Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and experts from The Alfred Hospital and Melbourne Pathology. Director of Pharmacy at Alfred Health and Professor of Clinical Pharmacy at the Monash University Centre for Medicine Use and Safety (CMUS), Professor Michael Dooley, collaborated with Ms Diug on the project. "This work demonstrates the collaboration between clinicians and researchers across faculty lines that are a key component of the strength of having conjoint positions between the acute health care sector and academia," Professor Dooley said. Editor's Note: Original news release can be found here.

Why we should break up sitting times

BAKER IDI HEART & DIABETES INSTITUTE

Overweight office workers, drivers and call centre staff who sit for long periods could improve their health by simply breaking up their sitting time with frequent activity breaks according to new research by Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute, published online today in Diabetes Care – a publication of the American Diabetes Association. Baker IDI researchers examined spikes in participants’ blood glucose levels after consuming a high-calorie meal and found that their bodies were much more effective in controlling glucose and insulin levels when they performed regular two minute bouts of either light or moderate-intensity activity. Repeated spikes in glucose, or blood sugar, are known to contribute to a number of negative health outcomes, including hardening of the arteries and cardiovascular disease. Insulin is important, because it plays a key role in controlling blood sugar levels. Lead researcher, Associate Professor David Dunstan explained; “When we eat, we get rises in blood glucose. With larger and more frequent rises in blood glucose, we gradually accumulate damage to the walls of our veins and arteries. This increases our susceptibility to heart disease. So, we want to minimise these rises in order to improve our health outcomes.” “In a controlled laboratory environment that mimicked the typical patterns of desk-bound office workers, participants who interrupted their sitting time with regular activity breaks, showed up to 30 per cent improvement in the body’s response to a meal containing glucose. The good news is that the improvements were seen even with light-intensity activity, which is the equivalent of strolling.” “Our research has already shown that sitting for long periods can be hazardous to health. Sedentary behaviour is also a risk factor for chronic diseases, including some cancers. The results of this study now provide some direction about what activity can be undertaken to break up sitting time and counteract the negative effects of sitting for long periods, including the frequency of breaks required to improve health outcomes. “Being overweight has been shown to be associated with an increased susceptibility to impaired glucose metabolism.  So the findings are likely to have important implications for people who already have difficulty processing blood sugars.” Dunstan said; “When we sit, we have muscle ‘dis-use’ – our muscles are essentially ‘sleeping’. When we’re up and moving, we’re contracting muscles and it appears that these frequent contractions throughout the day are beneficial for helping to regulate the body’s metabolic processes.” The findings may also provide added support to the current Australian OHS recommendations that desk bound employees take a break from their computer screen approximately every 30 minutes to reduce eye strain. While the majority of people in a modern office based environment are required by their jobs to sit for long periods, the researchers warned that there are other settings in which people need to be mindful of breaking up long sitting periods. These include the home environment where long periods of TV or video viewing and computer use is increasingly frequent or long car commutes that many people find difficult to avoid. “The findings are not confined to people who are overweight and suggest that even people who are not overweight could benefit from breaking up their sitting time, commented Dunstan.” Study Methodology Participants were aged 45-65 and were either overweight or obese with a body mass index of 31.2 kg/m2 (overweight or obese). Each participant was required to participate in three separate daily sitting schedules with a break of six days between each of the days. In the first trial condition, each participant sat for 5 hours with no break. In the second experiment, they walked on a treadmill at a light-intensity pace for 2 minutes every 20 minutes. And in the third trial condition, they walked on a treadmill at moderate-intensity pace for 2 minutes every 20 minutes. Key Finding Importantly, the researchers found that the benefit of walking at a light intensity pace was almost identical to walking at a moderate intensity pace , suggesting that it was not so much the amount of effort put into the break that was critical but the act of standing up and moving and thereby reducing sitting time was intrinsically beneficial.  Dunstan said; “We were encouraged to see people getting a tangible benefit from breaking up their sitting time with light-intensity activity. We appreciate that it’s not very common to find a treadmill in the workplace and how difficult it would be for people to engage in reasonably vigorous movement in the office. Just standing up regularly, walking to the printer, using the stairs instead of an elevator and standing while on the phone are all likely to deliver a benefit.” “As recently as two decades ago, people were moving more frequently throughout the day in the workplace. Prior to email, people had to collect mail from a pigeon hole, or walk over to people’s desks for a chat. I think we’ve reached a crisis point where we need to step back and acknowledge that sitting for long periods is not what our bodies were designed for.” The researchers concluded that regularly breaking up sitting time by standing up more, finding ways to move about and generally being more active instead of sitting could prove to be an important public health and clinical intervention strategy for reducing cardiovascular risk. Editor's Note: Original news release can be found here.

Melioidosis found in stormwater

JAMES COOK UNIVERSITY

The study shows that people should avoid driving or walking through floodwater to protect their health. Image: BeyondImages/iStockphoto During Northern Queensland’s wet season, many people know to avoid driving or walking through floodwater for safety reasons, but researchers have found they should also avoid it to protect their health. Research conducted by James Cook University’s Environmental and Public Microbiology Health Research group, within JCU’s School of Veterinary and Biomedical Science in Townsville have found the infectious disease melioidosis linked to run-off and stormwater. Melioidosis is an environmental-based tropical disease caused by the bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei. It is a disease that lives naturally in soil around Northern Queensland, with most cases occurring in the Torres Strait, Mornington Island and Townsville, but it has not been reported from groundwater before. Symptoms include high fevers, pneumonia and sepsis, which cannot be transmitted through human contact. According to JCU Associate Professor in microbiology, Dr Jeff Warner, the discovery has linked groundwater to transmission of disease in Townsville for the first time. “This finding may help explain the reported infection peak during the wet season and after periods of extreme weather,” he said. Associate Professor Warner said globally, the mortality rate (those that die after they contract the illness) was between 11 – 40 percent, and in Townsville it is reported to be about 20 percent, or 1 in 5. “We are fortunate we have doctors that can recognise and treat the disease here, but prevention is always better than cure.” Anthony Baker is the lead author and PhD student within the group who has published results that for the first time implicated groundwater in the potential transmission of the disease in Townsville. Mr Baker’s paper, Groundwater Seeps Facilitate Exposure to Burkholderia pseudomallei, was published in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology late last year. “We have found the organism, linked to clinical disease in ground water, not just soil. “Whether inhaling the organism through aerosols or contracting it through cuts and abrasions, water is now implicated in disease transmission in Townsville,” he said. “With collaborators at the CSIRO and Jessica Ezzahir, a JCU honours student, we are going to be looking at different aspects of the water and the environment to see what influences survival or persistence of the organism. This may help us understand the ecology of the disease a bit better,” he said. Associate Professor Warner said he believed that thanks to Anthony’s research findings, they may be able to help a public health campaign to ‘avoiding soil in the wet season is good, but avoiding runoff or storm water, perhaps even better’. Editor's Note: Original news release can be found here.

Leap years keep calendars in sync

QUEENSLAND UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

"If there were no leap years, the seasons would completely swap every 750 years - i.e. the middle of summer would become the middle of winter..." Image: BrianAJackson/iStockphoto Without leap years, Earth would experience "calendar climate change" and the seasons would completely swap every 750 years, a QUT scientist says. Astronomy expert Dr Stephen Hughes said leap years kept the calendar in sync, otherwise the middle of summer would become the middle of winter - as once happened in ancient Egypt. "The year, defined as when the sun arrives back at the same place in the sky on its apparent circuit around the Earth, is not exactly 365 days long," Dr Hughes said. "Rather, it's 365 days, 5 hours and 48 minutes. In other words, the calendar is out of sync by about one day out every four years. "So, every four years an extra day puts the Earth calendar in sync." Dr Hughes, from QUT's Science and Engineering Faculty, said the additional day in February still did not perfectly compensate for extra time. "Because the extra time required for the sun to get back to the same position is just short of one quarter of a day, three leap days are missed out every 400 years," he said. "Years divisible by 100, such as 1900 or 2100, are not leap years. Years divisible by 400, for example, 2000, are leap years. "If there were no leap years, the seasons would completely swap every 750 years - i.e. the middle of summer would become the middle of winter - calendar climate change. "This actually happened in ancient Egypt. "The Egyptian calendar year was exactly 365 days in length. In the Sinai Peninsula there is a carving by an Egyptian worker complaining that it has become summer in winter." Editor's Note: Original news release can be found here.

Bhajan by Shraddhaji

The emotional historian?

Danelle van Zyl-Hermann. Credit: Antonio Schmandke.
Danelle van Zyl-Hermann, a Gates scholar with an interest in the emotional history of South Africa, explains why the study of society's sentiments can unlock a better understanding of the past.
Reflecting back on the past month and its association with St. Valentine’s Day, it seems February often confronts us with emotion a bit more overtly – even if it is only the retail version of romantic love. It has been hard to miss the flowers, the chocolates and the cards, the pink and red and sparkly silver which seems to appear every year for the convenience and consumption of those lucky in love – only to have vanished forebodingly on the morning of the fifteenth. But when did all this happen? I don’t mean, when is the date when store managers give the okay to their assistants to switch the Christmas tinsel and reindeer for dangling cupids against a backdrop of hearts, and then to replace these a few weeks later with florid posters proclaiming the imminence of Mother’s Day. Rather, when did these symbols start representing love? Why did it become accepted or important to celebrate certain kinds of affective relationships in such a public way? While these sentiments seem so obvious to us, would their meanings have been equally intelligible to people living a century or two ago? How has the way in which romantic or familial love is represented impacted the ways in which it is experienced, expressed or understood? These are just some of the kinds of questions which come up for the historian of emotions.
The historical study of human emotions such as fear, shame, disgust, anger, love and happiness is a relatively recent development, forming part of the rise of cultural history and a scholarly interest in subjectivity. Traditionally, emotions are regarded as the domain of psychology and neuroscience. These fields tend to view feelings as physiologically governed and therefore emphasise their universalism: that emotions are the same today as they were in the past and will be in the future, irrespective of the spatial or temporal context in which they function. But social constructionists have critiqued this perspective, showing that the experience, expression and interpretation of emotions take place within a specific social context, and therefore emotions must be culturally specific and embedded in cultural meaning. It follows that the experience, expression, evaluation and interpretation of emotion is intimately bound up with its cultural context and is subject to change over time. In short, emotions have a history.
This is skilfully demonstrated in Fear: a cultural history by the British historian Joanna Bourke. In this book Bourke studies two centuries of dread and panic in the Anglo-American world. From the Victorians’ fear of being buried alive to post-9/11 trepidations over terrorist attacks, she effectively shows how an emotion changes over time within the context of broader social stresses. Interest in studying change and continuity in human emotions has accelerated so rapidly that many universities now house centres and institutes specifically dedicated to the historical study of the emotions. Cambridge was one of the first universities to offer a course on the topic as part of the Themes and Sources history undergraduate paper. The course is taught by a host of acclaimed Cambridge historians and allows students to ponder the literature and evaluate different approaches and methodologies in the historical study of emotions.
But why do feelings deserve so much attention? Proponents of the approach argue that emotions are on par with class or gender – indispensable categories of analysis which should be considered in any historical study in order to more fully comprehend the past. The study of emotions should therefore not simply form a peripheral or unique field of inquiry, but be integrated into all historical research. The American medievalist Barbara Rosenwein explains: “Thus, for example, a history of Germany between the two world wars should include a discussion of not only the economy, the relations between men and women, the ideologies of communism, fascism, and liberalism, and so on, but also the emotions that were privileged – and denigrated – during that period by various dominant and marginal groups.” To Rosenwein, this engagement with emotions in all areas of historical inquiry is “the ultimate goal” (2010).
Yet this trend towards historicising emotions has not caught on in all national historiographies. In my own main field of interest, South African history, there seems to be precious little, well, emotional awareness. Why are South African historians “less emotional”?
During the 1980s, when the cultural turn in historiography was in full swing and the history of emotions was fast developing into an independent field in Europe and the United States, South Africa was firmly caught in the escalating struggle against apartheid. In traditionally nationalist universities and research institutes, scholarship typically continued to revolve around the nationalist project, investigating issues relevant to the continuation of white supremacy and focusing on the history of South Africa since European settlement in the mid-1600s. Race was the central and unquestioned category of analysis. This was the case not simply because many academics supported the system, but also because they were dependent on state funding for their livelihoods. Critical voices sounded from more liberal institutions, where scholars were pointing to the importance of class, investigating the histories of South Africa’s non-white population and trying to lend a voice to the disadvantaged and the marginalised. An ideological war was being waged, a national state of emergency – literally – in which there seemed to be little space for sentiment.
The concerted efforts of the liberation struggle culminated in the first democratic elections of April 1994. Yet despite such obviously emotional phenomena as the euphoria of democracy, Nelson Mandela’s charismatic allure and the revelations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the years following the “miracle” did not see historians’ attention shift to the significance of emotions. Instead, the end of apartheid and the resulting opening up of the academy saw researchers move to studying previously taboo topics such as the past prior to European settlement, and the complexities of identity formation and resistance within South Africa’s multicultural setting. A reinvention of the education system demanded that history quite literally be rewritten to include previously silenced communities and explain the system of racial discrimination and structural inequality which was the country’s heritage. Much like Germany’s need as from the 1950s to master its particular history saw the development of a very specific post-war historiography in that national context, so efforts to understand the origins, rise and demise of apartheid, and to overcome its legacy, occupied South African research agendas. In many of these studies – such as those dealing with daily humiliations under the apartheid system, the intricacies of the relationships between white “masters” and their non-white “servants”, and instances of resilience under these conditions – emotions slumber beneath the surface, even if the authors failed to recognise the history of emotions as such.
Today, almost twenty years on, there has still been little conscious effort to historicise South Africa’s emotional landscape. For all the academic engagement which exists with the country’s traumatic past, it is remarkable that the emotional issues arising from this have not been widely recognised as an area worthy of historical investigation. A handful of local historians have started looking at humour, laughter and the joke to explore the experiences, identity, memory and attitudes of various communities at specific historical junctures, but these historians do not necessarily posit their work in terms of emotions history – and it is debatable to which degree humour and laughter in their usage point to specific emotions at all.
But there might be another explanation for the relative absence of emotional analysis in South African historiography. Possibly, it is not only due to the engagement of the academy (and of South African society in general) with the legacy of apartheid, but also to a pervasive social view of emotions as irrational, unpredictable and dangerous. This view sees emotionality being associated with weakness, instability or lack of control – a notion which resonates in many “western” societies and would be familiar to many readers. Emotions are seen as something which should be relegated to the private sphere – the realm, traditionally, of women – outside of which a degree of emotional constraint is expected. Within the South African context of limited resources and opportunities and the challenges of change, society does champion strength, street-wise savvy and independence above emotional awareness and sensibility. While the contention would need to be investigated systematically, it is possible that this view of feeling as something which should not play an important role in rational behaviour, keeps scholars from recognising – or admitting – the importance of emotions. As the South African academy remains male-dominated to a large degree, one might see the prevalence of historical studies insensitive to feelings as a kind of “masculine” disciplining of “feminine” emotional phenomena.
My own PhD research seeks to contribute towards an emotions history of South Africa. Responding to broader historiographical lacunae, I am investigating the experiences of working class Afrikaners with transformation and democratisation as from the 1980s. This research not only problematises notions of the blanket privileging of whites during apartheid, but enquires into this community’s emotional experiences, their emotional investment in their material circumstances and how emotions may be employed to negotiate political space. Does the interpretation of transformation-as-trauma hold true for all Afrikaners? How does one make sense of the feelings of shame and defeatism which run parallel to expressions of pride and anger in the broader community? Why does the representation of Afrikaners as victims – both discursively and visually – find so much appeal within a community which actually seems to have retained most of its wealth and structural privilege? These are just some of the contradictions which a historical attentiveness to emotions allows us to explore. As a colleague recently remarked, “It doesn’t make sense to look at Afrikaners without looking at emotions!”

Indeed, South African history is ripe for the emotional picking. The dedicated academic engagement with discourse analysis which already exists, along with an interest in past practices relating to sexuality, gender and the body increasingly opens up intellectual space for the discussion of emotions. In a country as ethnically diverse, economically divided and politically sensitive as South Africa, there are myriad opportunities for researchers to set up emotional camp and start delving into the past sensibilities of their chosen subjects.

Danelle van Zyl-Hermann is a PhD candidate in history supervised by Prof Megan Vaughan. She has previously published on emotional life at the Cape of Good Hope at the turn of the nineteenth century. Danelle is a Gates Scholar and member of St John’s College, Cambridge.
Provided by University of Cambridge

"The emotional historian?." February 29th, 2012. http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-emotional-historian.html
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Robert Karl Stonjek

Fear factor isn't enough: Ads have to gross you out to work best

(PhysOrg.com) -- We've all seen the ads meant to scare us into buying products like protective sunscreen or to avoid doing something like drugs. Well, it turns out those advertisements may only freeze us with fear and inaction. New research from the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University shows, in order to work best, these ads also have to disgust and gross us out.
“Fear creates uncertainty and insecurity over what to do, but disgust gives us a very strong impulse to avoid and distance ourselves from the item or situation as quickly as possible,” explains Andrea Morales, W. P. Carey School of Business marketing professor, lead author of the work. “When you add a disgusting message or image to an advertisement, it can significantly increase the ad’s effectiveness.”
The new research from Morales and her colleagues was just posted online by the Journal of Marketing Research. It points to successful, disgusting campaigns, such as one by the New York City Department of Health that centered on images of soda turning into gobs of fat. Department officials say sugar-rich beverage consumption in the area dropped by 12 percent after the campaign. Other popular advertisements in the disgusting category include a medication ad with a creepy yellow rat-like creature attacking a human toenail, a pain-medication ad featuring a pair of feet covered in fire ants, and an anti-smoking matchbook with graphic images of decayed, blackened teeth.
“Disgust dramatically enhances persuasion and compliance above and beyond just fear appeals,” says Morales. “You have to go beyond scare tactics to produce a strong and immediate avoidance reaction or a change in behavior. For example, disgust is especially good at motivating people toward losing weight, quitting smoking or changing another behavior to improve their health.”
In particular, the research discusses a real ad campaign in Britain that showed graphic images linking cigarettes with fat-filled arteries. The 2004 campaign by the British Heart Foundation and the local Department of Health was so successful that the United Kingdom’s government is planning to print these pictorial-warning images on all tobacco products sold in the U.K.
“We’ve also seen several recent ads for cleaning products that disgust viewers by talking about and showing the dirt, grime and germs left behind when you use other, less effective mops, cleansers, even toothpaste,” says Morales. “A new series of Febreze commercials shows people in filthy rooms, but smelling pleasant odors thanks to the spray.”
In a series of five experiments, the researchers repeatedly found the same thing. When people looked at ads with neutral messages or those simply meant to induce fear, they didn’t work as well as those using disgust.
For example, 155 undergraduate students looked at various versions of a real anti-meth ad with the same words and format, but different, altered images. The version with a teen whose face was covered in open sores was found to be much more effective than the versions with a picture of a coffin or two teens sitting side by side. The coffin, while scary, didn’t portray an immediate, imminent, disgusting threat.

Another experiment involved showing participants a sunscreen ad with identical images, but different text in each case. The most persuasive version talked about “open sores that crust and do not heal for weeks,” “scaly red patches” and “wart-like growths that ooze and bleed.” The reaction to it was far more significant than a neutral ad version and one that simply talked about “a severe sunburn” and the “possibility of heat stroke.”

Morales’ co-authors are Eugenia Wu, assistant professor at Cornell University and Gavan Fitzsimons, professor at Duke University.
More information: The full write-up called “How Disgust Enhances the Effectiveness of Fear Appeals,” is available at the Journal of Marketing Research website at http://www.journal … /jmr.07.0364 .
Provided by Arizona State University

"Fear factor isn't enough: Ads have to gross you out to work best." February 29th, 2012. http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-factor-isnt-ads-gross.html
Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

Seeing science with an artist's eye

Neuroscientist Heather Bimonte-Nelson uses paint on canvas to explain her research in a way that words can't. Credit: Pete Zrioka, OKED
For many, the words “scientific research” call to mind a collection of cartoonish clichés – white lab coats and goggles, microscopes and bubbling beakers. But research isn’t just a set of props and piles of data. It’s a story that starts with a question and journeys to an answer, an ongoing narrative that can be told in a variety of ways.
Heather Bimonte-Nelson, a neuroscientist at Arizona State University, explores the brain and its functions through science and explains her science through art. Armed with spatulas, acrylic paints, inks and a handful of appropriated household tools, she produces intensely detailed paintings that further the story of her research.
“Science is really about convincing people that your hypothesis or theory could be the truth in nature,” says Bimonte-Nelson, an associate professor of psychology. “And if you’re not a good storyteller, people will never believe it. You could have the best theory ever, but if you can’t communicate it effectively so others understand it, it doesn’t count.”
Bimonte-Nelson is the head of the Memory and Aging Laboratory, which focuses on learning, memory and brain changes that occur as we age. Recently, researchers in the lab demonstrated a link between the birth control shot and memory loss in rodents. The scientists juggle multiple projects, mostly related to hormone therapies and the impact they have on brain functions and memory. Bimonte-Nelson's paintings are reflections of her research work, depicting spidery neurons, fading memories and cell death.
While she describes herself as “always crafty,” Bimonte-Nelson only began painting about a year ago, and has since then produced an estimated 40 pieces. Some adorn her office, others she’s given to students and friends. Works in progress and finished pieces dominate her dining room, which serves as her makeshift studio.
A cut above a diagram in the average psychology textbook, the paintings explain the interworking of the mind in intricate and striking detail.
Bimonte-Nelson and her husband Matthew Nelson have two daughters, Hailey, 8, and Brooke, 6. Both girls have a history of epilepsy, and while their conditions are in remission, it’s always in the forefront of Bimonte-Nelson’s mind – and her art.
One painting, simply titled “GABA,” functions as a portrait of her daughters’ seizures, and the quest to control them. Even tones of light green and cerulean blue streak down the canvas, but are disrupted on one side in a dramatic blood-red band.
The colors represent neurotransmitters in the brain. The blues and greens are the inhibitory gamma-aminobutyric acid, or GABA, and the red is glutamate, an excitatory neurotransmitter.
“GABA is very soothing, a great inhibitor,” explains Bimonte-Nelson. “Without GABA, you’d be running around with no control. With a seizure, there’s a big imbalance between these inhibitory and excitatory systems in the brain.”
While “GABA” could be considered as more of a personal piece, Bimonte-Nelson’s inspiration to paint first came in the form of writer’s block.
“I was writing a grant and I had a vision of a painting in my head. I couldn’t really formulate the words for it, but I saw the picture,” she recalls.
After painting for a while, Bimonte-Nelson understood the connection she was looking for. She had found the right words for her grant, and was able to complete it. After she finished that first piece, “Dancing Neurons,” she says she felt a sense of accomplishment and a greater understanding of the science she was working on at the time.
A network of black neurons dominates the painting, with different color pockets evenly distributed across the canvas, representing the different neurotransmitters inside the brain.
During sleep, your brain goes through a process called consolidation, in which the neurons that have fired throughout the day in a specific pattern fire in again that pattern, said Bimonte-Nelson. Consolidation is how information goes from short- to long-term memory.
The prominent dark blue hues give “Synchrony of Memory in Replay” a calming, restful feel, while the neuron seems to crackle with the electricity of coding memories.
“Synchrony of Memory in Replay” exemplifies the most engaging attribute of Bimonte-Nelson’s paintings. As art, they’re attractive enough to find a home in an ornate frame. But it’s the inspiration, the science from which they are derived that makes them interesting, captivating pieces. Even people with little or no understanding of science can understand the processes her paintings depict.
Bimonte-Nelson’s husband of nearly 10 years, Matthew Nelson, sees that accessible quality in his wife’s work.
“People tend to reach a point when talking to scientists where they just glaze over,” says Nelson, a research operations manager at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix. “With something like Heather’s paintings you don’t get lost in the words, you just get lost in the art.”
These literal representations of cerebral processes are engaging to not only the scientifically challenged but also those intensely familiar with science.
“As a scientist, I think the mixture of art and science is absolutely beautiful,” says Jazmin Acosta, a postdoctoral fellow in Bimonte-Nelson’s lab. “Not only can we see a representation of what we’re studying, but it also gives us another perspective. It illustrates things very clearly.”
Bimonte-Nelson’s husband, who worked as a researcher for 15 years prior to moving into administration, asserts that most scientists fail to become independent researchers because they can’t sell their ideas.
In other words, they can’t tell their story.
Bimonte-Nelson doesn’t seem to have that problem. In her lectures, she’s animated and full of energy. In her lab, she sells the story of her research with words and data. In her art, she provides an unconventional and beautiful way to look at science.

“In anything you are passionate about, it is necessary to be a good communicator and storyteller – you can do that through art, through words or through presentations,” Bimonte-Nelson says. “Silence does not change the world. You have to be good at conveying information or your ideas, scientific or not, will never come across. If you can not express, in some form, what you want the world to hear or interpret, it is as if that thought never existed.”

Provided by Arizona State University

"Seeing science with an artist's eye." February 29th, 2012. http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-science-artist-eye.html
Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

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