Ooh! That is  surprise. We make spontaneous sounds to express everything from elation (Woohoo!) to embarrassment (Oops!). A statistical analysis of responses to more than 2,000 “vocal bursts” (nonverbal exclamations) conveys at least 24 kinds of emotion.

An audio map devised by Alan Cowen at UC Berkeley reveals how one can slide one’s cursor across the emotional topography and hover over fear (scream), then surprise (gasp), then awe (woah), realization (ohhh), interest (ah?) and finally confusion (huh?). It is of crucial significance in clinical situations. You might want to sample the sounds to see if a patient is recognising nuanced differences between “Ooh” and “Oops”.

The bottomline is that voice is a much more powerful tool for expressing emotions than previously thought. For millions of years, humans have used wordless vocalisations to communicate feelings that can be readily decoded in a matter of seconds. Cowen said, “emotional expressions colour our social interactions with spirited declarations of our inner feelings that are difficult to fake, and that our friends, co-workers, and loved ones rely on to decipher our true commitments.”

SNEAK PEEK

1. Mere objects: One

Materialistic people perceive and treat their Facebook (FB) friends as “digital objects”, and they have significantly more friends than people who are less interested in possessions. Who came up with evidence that materialists have a greater need to compare themselves with others on FB.

1. Phillip Ozimek (Ruhr-University Bochum)

2. Mere objects: Two

While it is widely believed that the media objectifies women, new research says that women diminish themselves by comparing their bodies to others’. Who established that spending more time on Facebook, for instance, is associated with greater self-objectification among young women?

2. Jasmine Fardouly et al (Psychology of Women Quarterly, April 2015)

3. Eating under stress

Watch what you eat when under stress in particular. Combined with stress, a high-calorie diet results in more weight gain than the same diet caused in a stress-free environment. Who detected an insulin-controlled molecular pathway in the brain, which drives the additional weight gain?

3.Herbert Herzog (Garvan Institute of Medical Research)

4. A clue to the future

Some people think they will change over time and others expect they might remain the same. Expecting ourselves to remain mostly the same over the next ten years is strongly related to being happier later in life. Who contended this based on an analysis of a ten-year longitudinal dataset?

4. Joseph Reiff (UCLA)

5. Travelling farther

A line can be drawn between spatial ability, navigation, range size and reproductive success. A study of the Twe and Tjimba tribes (Namibia) shows that men who did better on a spatial task not only travelled farther than other men but also had children with more women. Who led the study?

5. University of Utah anthropologist Layne Vashro

6. Capture the flake!

This photographer perfected a method of catching snowflakes on black velvet to capture their images before they turn to water or vapour. “He did it so well that hardly anybody bothered to photograph snowflakes for almost 100 years,” said physicist Kenneth Libbrecht. Who was the person?

6. Wilson Alwyn “Snowflake” Bentley (1865-1931)

7. Saving which half?

The ‘Half Earth’ approach provides an inspiring vision to protect the world’s species, but which half? Protecting even as much as half of the world’s large wilderness areas will not protect many more species than at present. “It’s quality, not quantity that matters.” Who summarised it this way?

7. Stuart L. Pimm (Duke University)

8. Impacting markets

Women in Iran are subject to strict state/religious control in the fashion clothing market. The hijab is compulsory. But they have shown that subtle, hidden and everyday acts of resistance by people with limited resources can impact even all-powerful markets. Who researched the outcome?

8. Dr Mahsa Ghaffari (University of Portsmouth)

9. Sculptor’s studio

Sculptor is a faint constellation. An astronomer sighted it during his mapping of the southern skies (1751–52). He named it “the sculptor’s studio” and depicted it as a carved head on a tripod table with an artist’s mallet and two chisels on a block of marble next to it. Name the astronomer.

9. Nicolas Louis de Lacaille

QUIZ No. 901

1. Who recognised exceptional genetic diversity in the DNA of nine 13th century Crusaders?

– Chris Tyler-Smith
– Charles Harrison McNutt
– Camilla Wedgwood

1. Chris Tyler-Smith

2. Faking positive emotions at work may cause heavier drinking after work. Who noticed it?

– Alicia Grandey
– Walter Frederick Buckley
– Thomas Bottomore

2. Alicia Grandey

3. Who proved that shoes simulating the texture of a golf ball brings in better aerodynamics?

– Per-Olof Åstrand
– Schack Steenberg Krogh
– Robert Ashford

3. Robert Ashford

4. Dreams rarely relate to what’s of “significance in one’s waking experience”. Who said so?

– Mieko Kamiya
– Marie-Louise von Franz
– Mary Whiton Calkins

4. Mary Whiton Calkins

5. They say the first impression is the best impression but not at least as the title of a novel for…

– Jane Austen
– Robert Louis Stevenson
– Vita Sackville-West

5. Jane Austen