Customers are curious. They like to know what’s going on behind the scenes and they don’t want to feel nosy for asking. To grow sales, beat them to the punch. Make your business as visible as possible, you might be surprised by the increase in your annual sales. Learn how this strategy worked wonders for these 3 businesses!
For years, bakeries have created space for icers to show off their frosting prowess in front of customers in hopes of selling more cakes. But you don’t have to be in the food business to amp up the interactivity with prospective buyers.
Here are three different businesses that can attest to the benefits of letting customers watch their employees work:
Car Mechanics
Auto-repair shops have traditionally been among the biggest targets for customer complaints. But one Scottsdale, Ariz.-based company believes it has solved the problem of consumer trust. Honest-1 Auto Care, a chain of 26 auto-repair and maintenance shops, lets customers watch through a lobby window as their cars are being repaired.
“Many people like the knowledge that it’s an option for them to watch their cars being worked on. Most customers will periodically stand at the window,” says Jack Keilt, president and CEO. “With our name being Honest-1 Auto Care and the normal perception-mistrust of the automotive repair business, we wanted to create a way to build trust with our customers.”
This “honest approach” results in customers referring Honest-1 to friends and family, Keilt says, as well as a lot of repeat business. Honest-1 estimates that about two-thirds of customers come back for future repairs.
Furniture Makers
RVP 1875, a furniture shop in Jefferson, Iowa, puts on quite a show for customers. Employees dress in clothing circa 1875 and build furniture using only 19th century tools and techniques. “Having people watch the process is a giant part of our draw,” says Robby Pedersen, a furniture maker and owner of RVP 1875. “We double as a working museum, and I find that a typical customer is far more likely to order a piece after I demonstrate some tools and techniques of the trade. Our customers tell their friends and family about what they’ve seen and heard at our store and an order may come from that.”
He estimates that 75 percent of buyers have watched him work before deciding to buy. In addition, RVP 1875 offers classes and apprenticeships in furniture making, as well as a general store where other artisans, such as tinsmiths, soap makers and stained-glass artists, perform their trade and sell their wares.
Artists
Many shops let customers get involved in framing a favorite photo or print. But the team at CanvasPop, a 6,000-square-foot art factory in Las Vegas, Nev., takes this concept one step further. Customers can watch their favorite photos go from printing on canvas to framing. “This is a way for us to show people our approach to handcrafting high-quality canvas prints,” says Adrian Salamunovic, co-founder. “Our employees take great pride in their work. Having customers visit our art factory allows our employees to see our customers as real people – it’s amazing for morale.” Workers sign the back of each canvas with a sticker that says, “Lovingly Framed By ________.”
“This touch really makes our products and the experience even more human,” Salamunovic says. Another plus: Inviting in customers enables CanvasPop to get feedback. “We use this time together to ask customers questions about their product preferences,” Salamunovic says. About 200 customers visit the factory each year, but the majority of orders are made online.
Winemakers
The bottling operation at Standing Sun Wines
Photo courtesy of the company
At Standing Sun Wines, a family-owned winery in Buellton, Calif., the tasting room provides a clear view of the processing equipment that de-stems, crushes, ferments and presses the grapes. So, while you sip wine, you can see how it's made, too. When people see multiple things going on, they inevitably begin to ask questions, says John Wright, owner and winemaker. "These questions lead to increased interest, and increased interest leads directly to sales."
Many people email Wright later to learn more about the wine that was being produced on the day of their visit. "I tell them which wine they saw produced that day and they buy it," Wright says. "They feel a connection to that wine. Maybe they saw it as grapes coming in on a truck or maybe they watched it being de-stemmed or crushed." Since the winery opened the tasting room in September 2011, more visitors have joined its cellar club, boosting club member sales by 50 percent.
Crafters
Glassblower Corey Duda at the Simon Pearce studio in Quechee, Vt.
Photo courtesy of the company
Some people who visit Simon Pearce's pottery and hand-blown glass facility in Queechee, Vt., say they find it "hypnotic" to watch the craftsmen at work. "Allowing guests to visit our workshops and speak with our glassblowers is the best marketing we can do," Ross Evans, director of marketing, says of the more than 300,000 people who visit the manufacturing facility every year. "It's a real competitive advantage to allow guests to look under the hood and really experience the process."
Although Evans can't quantify how much customer engagement translates into sales, he believes the more educated customers are about the process of glassblowing, the more likely they are to buy a vase they've seen being made. "The reality is, so many of the things we buy today are made overseas, we have lost that connection to the maker," Evans says. "By keeping our workshops open to the public, we allow guests to feel deeply connected to the process of making glass, and in turn, they form a stronger connection to specific products. It also means they form a stronger connection to the brand."
Lambeth Hochwald is a freelance journalist, whose stories have appeared in magazines such as Coastal Living, O The Oprah Magazine, Real Simple and Redbook. She is also an adjunct professor at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.
Fear conditioning using sound and taste aversion, as applied to mice, have revealed interesting information on the basis of memory allocation.
European 'Cellular mechanisms underlying formation of the fear memory trace in the mouse amygdala' (FEAR Memory TRACE) project is investigating memory allocation and the recruitment of certain neurons to encode a memory. By studying conditioned fear memory in response to an auditory stimulus, the researchers have delved into pathological emotional states and neural mechanisms involved in memory allocation, retrieval and extinction.
Prior research has revealed that the conditioned fear response in mice is located in a specific bundle of neurons in the amygdala. Memory allocation modulation is due to expression of the transcription factor, cyclic adenosine 3', 5'-monophosphate response element binding protein (CREB) and possibly neuronal excitability.
FEAR Memory TRACE focused on the electrophysiological properties of neurons encoding the same memory. The project also aimed to ascertain the biophysical mechanisms in the plasticity changes recorded in the specific set of neurons in the fear memory trace.
Recording information on auditory fear conditioning and conditioned taste aversion, the scientists used intra-amygdala surgery using viral vectors and electrophysiological experiments to detect neuronal excitability.
Transfected by virus, CREB tagged with green fluorescent protein together with the gene for channelrhodopsin2 were used in neural control experiments. Combined, these two elements caused neuron firing in specific nerve cells. Molecular techniques included western blot for protein detection, genotyping and viral DNA preparation.
Behavioural tests on long- and short-term memory of mice involving fear conditioning and taste aversion showed increased memory performance at the three-hour point rather than the five-hour point. The intrinsic excitability of the mice receiving both shock and the tone was increased at three hours, not five, compared to mice that only received the tone.
As the project continues to its close in two years, the aim is to identify biophysical mechanisms involved in recruiting neurons that compete with each other for a specific memory. FEAR Memory TRACE will also develop computational models to assess the role of these mechanisms in memory performance.
Information on biochemical processes in neural mechanisms has wide application in many clinical situations including patients suffering memory loss, such as stroke victims. Fear response manipulation can be applied in treatment of neuroses and phobias.
This image shows brain activity when people exert self-control. Credit: University of Iowa
New pictures from the University of Iowa show what it looks like when a person runs out of patience and loses self-control.
A study by University of Iowa neuroscientist and neuro-marketing expert William Hedgcock confirms previous studies that show self-control is a finite commodity that is depleted by use. Once the pool has dried up, we're less likely to keep our cool the next time we're faced with a situation that requires self-control.
But Hedgcock's study is the first to actually show it happening in the brain using fMRI images that scan people as they perform self-control tasks. The images show the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)—the part of the brain that recognizes a situation in which self-control is needed and says, "Heads up, there are multiple responses to this situation and some might not be good"—fires with equal intensity throughout the task.
However, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC)—the part of the brain that manages self-control and says, "I really want to do the dumb thing, but I should overcome that impulse and do the smart thing"—fires with less intensity after prior exertion of self-control.
This image shows brain activity after people have been engaged in self-control tasks long enough that self-control resources have been depleted. Credit: University of Iowa
He said that loss of activity in the DLPFC might be the person's self-control draining away. The stable activity in the ACC suggests people have no problem recognizing a temptation. Although they keep fighting, they have a harder and harder time not giving in.
Which would explain why someone who works very hard not to take seconds of lasagna at dinner winds up taking two pieces of cake at desert. The study could also modify previous thinking that considered self-control to be like a muscle. Hedgcock says his images seem to suggest that it's like a pool that can be drained by use then replenished through time in a lower conflict environment, away from temptations that require its use.
The researchers gathered their images by placing subjects in an MRI scanner and then had them perform two self-control tasks—the first involved ignoring words that flashed on a computer screen, while the second involved choosing preferred options. The study found the subjects had a harder time exerting self-control on the second task, a phenomenon called "regulatory depletion." Hedgcock says that the subjects' DLPFCs were less active during the second self-control task, suggesting it was harder for the subjects to overcome their initial response.
Hedgcock says the study is an important step in trying to determine a clearer definition of self-control and to figure out why people do things they know aren't good for them. One possible implication is crafting better programs to help people who are trying to break addictions to things like food, shopping, drugs, or alcohol. Some therapies now help people break addictions by focusing at the conflict recognition stage and encouraging the person to avoid situations where that conflict arises. For instance, an alcoholic should stay away from places where alcohol is served.
But Hedgcock says his study suggests new therapies might be designed by focusing on the implementation stage instead. For instance, he says dieters sometimes offer to pay a friend if they fail to implement control by eating too much food, or the wrong kind of food. That penalty adds a real consequence to their failure to implement control and increases their odds of choosing a healthier alternative.
The study might also help people who suffer from a loss of self-control due to birth defect or brain injury.
"If we know why people are losing self-control, it helps us design better interventions to help them maintain control," says Hedgcock, an assistant professor in the Tippie College of Business marketing department and the UI Graduate College's Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Neuroscience.
More information: Hedgcock's paper, "Reducing self-control depletion effects through enhanced sensitivity to implementation: Evidence from fMRI and behavioral studies," was co-authored by Kathleen Vohs and Akshay Rao of the University of Minnesota. It will be published in January 2013 in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.
Comment: My self control is completely depleted by the first chocolate and the whole box/bar will soon be consumed. Self control can be refreshed by flashing the list of chores before my eyes e.g. mowing lawns, washing car etc and resistance soars back to maximum, temptation to mow lawns successfully averted.
It’s scary trying to convince yourself and your team to follow you based on a “feeling.” But sometimes that’s the best thing to do.
The most frustrating advice I ever received came from a mentor who told me, “Just follow your gut.”
I had no idea what that meant nor how to do it. He made it sound as if my gut would suddenly appear in front of me and gesture for me to follow it.
Want to know why it’s so hard to follow your gut? Because it requires you to stop giving a damn about what everyone else thinks.
Entrepreneurs spend so much of their lives comparing themselves to others and measuring their progress by some impossible ideal. Covers of magazines show 20-something who became billionaires off their brilliant ideas. Your bank account, meanwhile, looks more than a little pathetic. (I know mine does.) You start to feel that, whatever success is supposed to look like, you’re not achieving it as well as the person next door.
So you worry that you’re going to make a flop out of this thing called life. And that gut you’re supposed to follow? It gets buried in the fear and envy and self-loathing. So, you pick up every self-help book you can find and seek out best practices. But you don’t get it right. You just keep stumbling. Until one day you wake up and say, “What have I got to lose?” That’s the day you dig our gut out and let it beckon us in the right direction.
But it’s a cycle. And your gut will lead you astray again. (Sometimes badly astray.)
My gut plagues me constantly. I have advisors and investors and consultants and cofounders and most of the time, not a single one of them agrees with my gut. It takes a great deal of effort to convince dozens of smart people that you should go in a direction because you “feel” you should. There’s no evidence. Just an instinct.
Continue reading this article at INC.com after the break!
Do you ever wonder who the Albert Einstein’s or Thomas Edison’s of our generation are? If so, Jeff Bezo’s definitely makes the list. Find out what new projects he has in the works, which are likely to be million to billion dollar successes!
Jeff Bezos changed the way we shop, with Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) He transformed how many of us read, with his Kindle e-reader.
He has a few other potentially life-changing ideas, too. In a patent application made public in August 2011, for example, Mr. Bezos is listed as one of two inventors of a “system and method for protecting devices from impact damage.”
The famously secretive Mr. Bezos acknowledged that his name is on the airbag-patent application but declined to elaborate on the air bag. “I can’t talk about the future road map, I’m sorry,” he said in an interview. “I don’t even want to say whether or not we’re working on it.”
Some of history’s greatest innovators have been among its most idiosyncratic, and Mr. Bezos shows signs of fitting that mold. He is the latest businessman to use his fortune to fund ambitious and what some might consider far-fetched plans.
Howard Hughes, after making his name making movies in the 1920s and 1930s, devoted himself to developing and personally testing the world’s fastest planes. Virgin Group founder Richard Branson has attempted to set speed records on sea and in air. Oracle Corp. founder Larry Ellison has competed for the America’s Cup sailing team he backs himself.
David Risher, a former Amazon executive, said his former boss “thinks in decades and centuries…Unlike most of us, Jeff is hard-wired for the very long term.”
Mr. Bezos has already gained some fame with his Blue Origin space-travel project. But the 48-year-old, whose net worth is estimated at $20 billion, is quietly putting time and money into some other less-public side projects that have little or nothing to do with online shopping.
While he declines to discuss his phone air bag, he is a bit more willing to discuss his project to build a 200-foot-tall clock designed to last millennia. He has financed a group, the Long Now Foundation, that is building what he calls “The 10,000 Year Clock” deep inside a mountain on his West Texas property, not far from his rocket-launch site.
It’s like a grandfather clock on a grander scale, Mr. Bezos said. When it’s finished, it will play an elaborate cuckoo-like sequence for the anniversary of every year, decade, century, millennium and 10 millennia.
People who visit the clock when it is finished years from now will also be treated to a daily chime sequence that has been choreographed by musician Brian Eno, who serves on the project’s board.
“The reason I’m doing it is that it is a symbol of long-term thinking, and the idea of long-term responsibility,” said Mr. Bezos, who has spent at least $42 million on the timekeeper. “We humans have become so technologically sophisticated that in certain ways we’re dangerous to ourselves. It’s going to be increasingly important over time for humanity to take a longer-term view of its future.”
Mr. Bezos’s biggest ambitions are astronomical. Last year, he hired undersea experts to scan the ocean floor to find the massive engines that propelled the Apollo 11′s space capsule from Earth to outer space. In March, he wrote on his website that the team had been successful.
The Amazon founder said on the site that he hopes to raise some of the five engines, using private money, and return them to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. “NASA is one of the few institutions I know that can inspire five-year-olds,” he wrote. “It sure inspired me and, with this endeavor, maybe we can inspire a few more youths to invent and explore.”
Seoul National University , SNU is one the top ranked university in the world. You can check its ranking in the world. It is in to 50 and 100 universities in the world.
So, must try for the admission here.
You can get admission in SNU on scholarship as SNU 's professors have many funds and can support you.
But you have to email the professors in a way which i will explain below, if you get confirmation from professor , that he may support you , then you can continue there.
Other Bottleneck: English scores such as IELTS and TOEFL. Although you can apply on the basis of English proficiency scores, but it reduces your chances of getting admissions
There is a drawback or some problem with this kind of professor scholarship : If you are successful in getting funds/scholarship from professor, then you have to work hard for publications as if you do not have publications or results, then you may have serious problems regarding funding/scholarship. So, be sure before applying it that you are ready to work hard.
There are also a few university scholarship , on which you can apply
First of all email the professors according to the tips given below . when you get confirmation of scholarship from them, then you should apply for admission. OR apply with the university scholarships
Let me explain to you the easiest way to get admission and scholarship (both fee and living expenses) is first of all, you should search relevant professors of your choice and research interest. Then you should make a tailored made CV according to the interest of those relevant professors and send him/her that CV along with a short email stating your introduction and show your interest that you want to do master/Ph.D under his/her supervision.
If a professor shows interest it means almost you have 99% chances that your admission is confirmed.
So, first of all, you should try to find "Faculty" => Professors profiles on the university website.
You can find the respective faculties in the list.
Then what you have to do is:
1. Read all your major professors profiles, research interests and projects. (You can also find the research interests of professors by finding on Google their published research papers)
2. Make your CV research oriented and also easily readable and good looking. (Also according to the professor you choose to apply. Relate your previous work plus final year project with that professor's work and show him your interest in his work)
Important Note for Electronics plus Computer majors ( In Korea, professors like if you are good in programming languages and it is good if you have distinction in programming skills and you can show them)
3. Write an email. (Please be short in writing email, as professor has not so much times to read it fully just write main but few sentences)
4. Send your email and CV to as many professors as you can (keep in mind only interested professors may reply you, so don't be disappointed)
Note: If you are interested in any specific professor and he/she does not reply you then you must contact him/her by" telephone". Please keep in mind that many professors do not reply, so in that case, you must contact him/her by telephone.
IMPORTANT:
1. Maybe if you face some trouble while opening website then please install "Korean" language tools.
2. Deadlines and time is very important.
3. Try to get any English proficiency certificate. Sometime it increases chances of scholarships.
If any updates, I will let you know.
4. Once the ball starts rolling (getting in contact with professor) Come up with a project plan or SOP (Statement of purpose, Research plan) that what you are going to research about. Indulge yourself in writing new project proposals if required.
FEW MORE THINGS
Professor scholarship
This solely depends on professor and university does not give you money in this case. These are easy to get but hard to maintain sometimes, because sometimes if professor is not happy with your performance, then he can give you financial problems. So be ready to do hard work.
University scholarships
University scholarships are few and hard to get , but good than professor scholarship as in this case you will not be depended on money by professor. But when you apply for this scholarship, if you contact the professor before in the way as mentioned above, then you have better chance to get this scholarship. Although university scholarships mostly do not require professors recommendations but if you are successful to get one before applying, then it is good chance for you to get that scholarship
That is all for the tips
Also undergraduate students can apply. they can see this link but it is difficult to get undergraduate scholarships, but they can try.
நயினை நாகபூசணி அம்மன் ஆலய மஹா கும்பாபிசேகத்தை முன்னிட்டு ஆலயத்தின் புதிதாக அமைக்கப்பாட்ட 108 அடி உயர ராஜ கோபுரத்தின் நுழை வாயில் கதவினைத் திறப்பதற்காக நயினாதீவுக்கு கொண்டு வரப்பட்ட யானை.இவ் யானை நயினாதீவு வங்களாவடி இறங்குதுறையில் இறக்கப்பட்டு நயினாதீவு செம்மனத்தம் புலம் ஸ்ரீ வீரகத்தி விநாயகர் ஆலயத்திற்கு சென்று அங்கிருந்து விகாரைக்கு சென்று அதன்பின் நாகபூசணி அம்மன் ஆலயத்திற்கு சென்றதன் காணொளி.
The throat and facial movements that twist the air pushing through your vocal cords into words could be rooted in the well-meaning expressions primates exchange with each other, according to two recent studies based at Princeton University.
The researchers found that the oral-facial component of human speech mirrors the rhythm, development and internal dynamics of lip smacking, a friendly back-and-forth gesture performed by primates such as chimpanzees, baboons and macaques. The studies also show that the mechanics of primate lip smacking are distinct from those of chewing, similar to the separate mechanics of human speech and chewing.
These parallels suggest that in primates chewing and lip smacking — as with chewing and speech-related facial movement in humans — have separate neural controls, explained Asif Ghazanfar, an associate professor of psychology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, and a lead researcher for both studies. With further study, the neural pathway in primates from the brain to facial mechanics could help illuminate the neurological basis of speech disorders in humans, he said.
Ghazanfar and his colleagues first reported in the journal Developmental Science that lip smacking undergoes the same developmental trajectory from infancy to adulthood in rhesus macaques that speech-related mouth movement does in humans. Infant macaques smacked their lips slowly and with an inconsistent rhythm, similar to the documented pace of babbling in human infants. By adulthood, however, lip smacking has a distinct rhythm and a faster pace averaging 5 hertz, or cycles per second — the same as adult humans producing speech. Ghazanfar worked with lead author Ryan Morrill, who received his undergraduate degree from Princeton in 2010; Annika Paukner, a research fellow at the National Institutes of Health; and Pier Ferrari, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Parma in Italy.
Two recent studies based at Princeton University suggest that the oral-facial component of human speech evolved from lip smacking, a friendly back-and-forth gesture performed by primates. The studies show that the mechanics of primate lip smacking are distinct from those of chewing, similar to the separate mechanics of human speech and chewing. X-ray movies of adult rhesus macaques showed that lip smacking (left) results in a fast, loosely coordinated movement of internal structures such as the lips (green dot), tongue (red dot) and hyoid (blue dot) -- just as in human speech. Also similar to humans, chewing (right) produced a slow, tightly coordinated movement of these components in macaques. These parallels suggest that in primates chewing and lip smacking -- as with chewing and speech-related facial movement in humans -- have separate neural controls. With further study, the neural pathway in primates from the brain to facial mechanics could help illuminate the neurological basis of speech disorders in humans. Video courtesy of Asif Ghazanfar
In the second paper, published in the journal Current Biology, Ghazanfar and co-author W. Tecumseh Fitch, a professor of cognitive biology at the University of Vienna in Austria, used X-ray movies to film adult rhesus macaques as they smacked their lips or as they chewed food. The researchers observed that during lip smacking, internal structures such as the tongue and hyoid, which houses the larynx, move in pace with the lips with a rhythm of 5 hertz — again, just as in human speech. Also similar to humans, chewing produced a slow, tightly coordinated movement of these components in macaques, while lip smacking resulted in faster, loosely coordinated movement. Ghazanfar, as lead author, wrote the paper with Fitch, Princeton postdoctoral fellow Daniel Takahashi and Neil Mathur, who received his undergraduate degree from Princeton in 2011.
Ghazanfar explains the findings of both papers as follows:
"This research gives us insight into methods of exploring the neural basis of not only facial expression production but also its evolution and relationship to speech. Exploring the neural side of speech production and development can give us a handle on what can go wrong neurophysiologically in human communication disorders. We have few testable ideas about the neural mechanisms that go awry because there is very little work on the production side of communicative expressions.
"In our research, we found that primate lip smacking and the facial component of human speech have the same frequency range, developmental trajectory and involve a similar interplay of the lips, tongue and hyoid. So, if the neural controls for lip smacking are the same as for human speech, then further study of lip smacking in monkeys could reveal more about the brain mechanisms behind human speech.
"Lip smacking is performed by all Old World monkeys and apes, including chimpanzees, and is used in friendly, face-to-face interactions. They often take turns exchanging lip-smacking gestures. Because primate lip smacking has no vocal component, it might seem unrelated to speech, but human speech has two components: the source and the filter. The source component is when the respiratory system pushes air through a person's vocal cords to produce a sound. That sound travels up through the nasal and oral cavities and gets filtered by those cavities. We use our mouths, tongues and lips to actually change the shape of those cavities and, thus, those sounds. That filtering is a separate component with separate neural controls. Our work focuses on this filtering component.
"The connection of speech to lip smacking in primates stems from a theory put forth by [University of Texas-Austin Professor Emeritus of Psychology] Peter MacNeilage in 1998 [in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences] that human speech originates from primate facial expressions that were eventually paired with vocal sounds to produce a primitive form of babbling. He proposed that the rhythmicity of those ancestral expressions led to the rhythmicity our faces produce when we speak.
"There are various other theories regarding the evolution of human speech. One theory focuses on the source component and holds that speech evolved from monkey vocalizations, but monkeys don't learn to produce their vocalizations. Pretty much as soon as it is born, a monkey produces the sounds it will produce for the rest of its life; there's not that rich interaction between parent and offspring inherent in human speech. Another theory is that speech evolved when the neural circuits behind the complex manual gestures apes use to communicate shifted over to vocal output.
"We think that MacNeilage offered the only sufficiently clear and testable hypothesis, and we provide the first real empirical support for his theory. Ultimately, our work suggests that the roots of human speech do not lie entirely in primate vocalizations or manual gestures, but are closely related to primate facial expressions.
"We compared lip smacking in rhesus macaques with another oral-facial rhythm, that of chewing. In studies related to speech production and development, it is common to contrast oral-facial movements related to chewing and talking because both actions use the same anatomical structures.
"For the first study, we found in human speech-development literature that when children start to babble, their mouth movements are very slow and variable in rhythmicity. Infants produce these gestures at around 2.5 hertz; in adults, it's around 5 hertz with much less variability. On the other hand, chewing moments are consistently slow and relatively constant from birth to adulthood. That indicates different developmental trajectories, as well as neural controls, for speech and chewing.
"So, if lip smacks have anything to do with the evolution of speech, primates should have a similar developmental trajectory. For our study, we videotaped rhesus macaques of various ages producing lip smacks and used a computer algorithm to measure frame-by-frame the dynamics and rhythmicity of those lip movements. We compared those measurements with chewing movements. Incredibly, the pattern of lip-smack development in the rhesus macaques was identical to the pattern of speech development documented in humans. Moreover, chewing rhythms were basically the same for adult and juvenile primates just as in humans — about 2.5 hertz and without any developmental change. So, lip smacking in Old World monkeys, or at least rhesus macaques, has a similar developmental trajectory as human speech.
"For the second study, we used cineradiography, or X-ray movies, to observe the many internal structures that coordinate with the opening and closing of the mouth to produce speech. We filmed rhesus macaques as they produced lip-smacking expressions and gave them food to elicit chewing movements. When humans chew there's a very predictable relationship between the movements of the jaw, lips, tongue and the hyoid cartilage, which contains the vocal cords. In human speech, the relationship between all these structures is not reliable because of the different sounds involved in speaking. But in chewing the relationship and the ability to predict how the structures will move in relation to one another is very high.
"We saw the same dichotomy in the monkeys: chewing produced a highly stereotyped, functional relationship between the tongue, hyoid and mouth, while during lip smacking the relationship was much looser in those structures. That's another strong piece of evidence that this lip-smack gesture could have easily been co-opted for use in speech. It also suggests that whatever neural controls are involved in chewing don't seem to be equivalently involved in lip smacking and that there's some other type of neural control for lip smacking, which also is suggested when speech and chewing dynamics in humans are compared."
More information: The paper "Monkey Lipsmacking Develops Like the Human Speech Rhythm" was published online April 18 in Developmental Science. The article "Cineradiography of Monkey Lipsmacking Reveals Putative Precursors of Speech Dynamics" was published online May 31 inCurrent Biology.
(Medical Xpress) -- Most of us have experienced it. You are introduced to someone, only to forget his or her name within seconds. You rack your brain trying to remember, but can't seem to even come up with the first letter. Then you get frustrated and think, "Why is it so hard for me to remember names?"
You may think it's just how you were born, but that's not the case, according to Kansas State University's Richard Harris, professor of psychology. He says it's not necessarily your brain's ability that determines how well you can remember names, but rather your level of interest.
"Some people, perhaps those who are more socially aware, are just more interested in people, more interested in relationships," Harris said. "They would be more motivated to remember somebody's name."
This goes for people in professions like politics or teaching where knowing names is beneficial. But just because someone can't remember names doesn't mean they have a bad memory.
"Almost everybody has a very good memory for something," Harris said.
The key to a good memory is your level of interest, he said. The more interest you show in a topic, the more likely it will imprint itself on your brain. If it is a topic you enjoy, then it will not seem like you are using your memory.
For example, Harris said a few years ago some students were playing a geography game in his office. He started to join in naming countries and their capitals. Soon, the students were amazed by his knowledge, although Harris didn't understand why. Then it dawned on him that his vast knowledge of capitals didn't come from memorizing them from a map, but rather from his love of stamps and learning their whereabouts.
"I learned a lot of geographical knowledge without really studying," he said.
Harris said this also explains why some things seem so hard to remember -- they may be hard to understand or not of interest to some people, such as remembering names.
Harris said there are strategies for training your memory, including using a mnemonic device.
"If somebody's last name is Hefty and you notice they're left-handed, you could remember lefty Hefty," he said.
Another strategy is to use the person's name while you talk to them -- although the best strategy is simply to show more interest in the people you meet, he said.
The researchers identified a recombinant antibody that could attach itself strongly to a specific part of the dengue virus and inhibit it from attacking other cells.
Image: flubydust/iStockphoto
A team of research scientists here have uncovered a human antibody that can neutralize and kill the dengue virus within two hours. A way to reproduce this antibody in large quantities has also been identified, potentially opening the door to a cure for dengue infected patients.
This discovery was made by a combined team from the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School and the Defence Medical & Environmental Research Institute at DSO National Laboratories (DMERI@DSO) with funding from the Singapore National Research Foundation under its Singapore NRF Fellowship, National Medical Research Council and DR Tech.
By studying a group of cell lines from recovered dengue-infected patients over a period of two years, the team identified a recombinant antibody that could attach itself strongly to a specific part of the dengue virus and inhibit it from attacking other cells. The antibody ventually destroys the virus and at a much faster speed compared to existing anti-dengue compounds. It has been proven to increase the survival in a mouse model infected with the dengue virus.
The World Health Organization estimates there may be 50–100 million dengue infections worldwide every year. With no approved vaccines or specific treatment available and with vector control as the only method for prevention, dengue continues to be a public health concern.
To complicate matters, there are four dengue serotypes (DENV1 to DENV4), and infection with one dengue serotype means lifelong immunity to that type but only partial and temporary protection against the other three. Developing a vaccine against dengue has thus been challenging, made more so because of a global, urgent need for new treatment to manage this disease.
This newly discovered antibody specifically treats DENV1, which accounts for up to 50% of the dengue cases in Singapore and other Association of Southeast Asian Nation countries. To ensure its effectiveness, the team tested this new antibody with DENV1 types from these countries – with equally promising results, said Associate Professor Paul Macary of the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine’s Department of Microbiology. He is the Principal Investigator who led the research team.
“We knew the antibody exists based on the fact that most patients recover naturally from dengue infection, but the chances of finding it would be like finding a needle in a haystack. We are very encouraged by this breakthrough. This represents the best candidate therapy that currently exists for dengue and thus is likely to be the first step in treating dengue infected patients who currently have no specific medicine or antibiotic to take and may take days to fully recover.”
Added Dr Brendon Hanson, Head, Bio-Defence Therapeutics Lab, DMERI@DSO, “Being a completely human antibody, it is likely to have no serious side effects and this makes not only this antibody, but the approach we took to isolate antibodies from recovered patients an attractive one.”
Said Assistant Professor Lok Shee-Mei of the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore, “The journey in finding this antibody that effectively treats dengue virus serotype 1 virus infection has been very fulfilling. Now we will be on our next quest to find other antibodies that treat Dengue serotypes 2, 3 and 4 infection. We hope to combine these antibodies into one concoction in the near future to treat each serotype and improve patient outcomes.”
Moving forward the team will be embarking on a clinical trial in the next 12 -16 months and expects a therapy to be available within the next 6 - 8 years. The team hopes to uncover antibodies for the other dengue types within the next two years.
Editor's Note: Original news release can be found here.
This image shows brain activity when people exert self-control. Credit: University of Iowa
This image shows brain activity after people have been engaged in self-control tasks long enough that self-control resources have been depleted. Credit: University of Iowa
