• At PopPsych, Jesse Marczyk uses recent research to demonstrate the challenges in applying adaptive models across the board. What does that mean? Essentially, dealing in absolutes when it comes to human behavior is likely to lead to false conclusions. There is no one-size fits all explanation than can be attached to behavior.

• At the Research Digest, Christian Jarrett explores cultural representations of the individual via the lens of Facebook. It seems the nature of your profile picture can be suggestive of larger social structures.

• Some people view their cars as a private, personal space. But what about parking spaces? An interesting post at Science Storiented investigates some older research on territoriality - as it relates to drivers and their parking spaces.

Until next time, folks. I’ll be back next week with more from anthropology, philosophy, and research.

• Can grave goods tell us about the political economy of a group? At Bones Don’t Lie, Katy Meyers reports on recent research that examines what burial practices can reveal about the extent of social networks.

• At bigthink, David Berreby discusses a neat study on the ways colors can influence our perception – and how sports teams may integrate this information when planning team uniforms (and how it might work against them). It’s a fun read that takes research out of the lab and away from the WEIRD crowd.

Until next time, folks. I’ll be back next week with more from anthropology, philosophy, and research.

Can courtesy and mobile technologies get along? | Photo by Joe Pemberton. | Click on image for license and information.

Tweeting, texting, Facebooking, checking email, sending photos, and even, yes, old-fashioned telephone calls—we’re doing it all, and we’re doing it wherever and whenever we please. Mobile technology has increased our ability to connect to each other, but we’re still working out the social codes that go along with this medium.

As we weave our digital relationships with our offline ones, the practice of digital etiquette is increasingly a concern. At all levels, our relationships are governed by codes of behavior which serve to regulate our interactions and help maintain the integrity of our networks. While the digital space is far from the Wild West, this present time finds us wrestling to reconcile the differences between what is acceptable in digital spaces versus offline spaces. And really, as etiquette guide Anna Post notes, it’s not so much that digital spaces require new behaviors—because common sense rules about relationships and social interactions still apply—but that the shift in the space in which we interact forces a heightened awareness of how we are perceived, and this awareness results in some uneasiness.

For the most part, we play our roles within our groups without thinking about it. You don’t get home and switch into “family mode” or “dinner with friends mode” or get to work and pull on your professional mask—at least not consciously. The digital space requires a more conscious effort because the social cues that allow us to exercise our roles are largely lacking. For example, body language provides a wealth of information that we use to modify our responses and guide our interactions. There is far more opportunity for deceit online—or put another way: to intentionally manipulate perceptions.

Nineteen percent of survey respondents (pdf) admitted to sharing false information online, which Post believes is the negative aspect of controlling our images online. She notes that we all engage in some degree of identity curation: for example, job hunters routinely take down online pages or go through their profiles with a fine toothed comb. Of course, the wrinkle in this kind of identity management is that we can’t control what others may say about or post about us—the seat of our anxiety may be the challenge presented by the immediacy of mobile technology.

“We all seeing each other online, and we’re seeing people who do it right and people who do it wrong,” said Post. And it seems that the cases of “wrong” are instances where immediacy gets the better of us, as Intel’s list of top digital pet peeves suggests:

• People who constantly complain (59 percent)

• People who post inappropriate/explicit photos (55 percent)

• People who share information that they would consider to be private (53 percent)

These irritations may be our preliminary guide to establishing digital etiquette. If these behaviors are the ones that bother us the most, use them as a digital mirror and try to avoid making the same mistakes. “A pause doesn’t hurt,” says Post. “Take the time to process the information yourself before making it public.”

As social as mobile technology allows us to be, it also imparts a sense of independence which decreases our sense of connectivity even as we work to be more connected—it’s a strange phenomenon no doubt. However we have to accept that our online spaces are shares spaces, and we invite others into those spaces when we participate in mobile social behaviors. The golden rule of digital etiquette may be simple: Don’t make people uncomfortable. “Do you have to be the first person to post a photo of a bride in her dress? Or share how excited you are your friend is pregnant?” asked Post. Her message is a direct one: Allow others to control their information just as you would like to control yours.

While we navigate these waters of change, Post offered the following guidelines for digital behaviors:

1. Keep it positive. No one wants to hear how awful your life is. All. The. Time. And Framingham showed that happiness can be contagious.
2. Don’t scoop other people’s news. Have a “me-first” policy so that you’re taking charge of your information, and not always sharing information that belongs to others.
3. Take a breath. You don’t always have to be first to post. Take some time and process the information.
4. Be authentic. Your online and offline selves should be congruent. Don’t lie—the information will ultimately circle back to someone who can out you.

What other rules would you suggest or like to see implemented as we establish digital social codes?

• Contextual clues are important in archaeology. And at Bones Don’t Lie, Katy Meyers highlights how a geoarchaeology approach can reveal how a tomb was treated—whether it was reopened and how many times. With time, this information may be linked to other tomb elements that can possibly shed more light on funerary practices.

• At EvoAnth, Adam Benton delves into attraction, asking what appeals to us and why. He does a fine job of rounding out the discussion by explaining this study against the backdrop of both evolutionary psychology and human behavioral ecology.

More next week!

How do you prepare to say goodbye to your social group? | iStock photo.

It took a few days of moping around the house before I finally acknowledged what the problem is: my heart hurts.

It’s an expression I use with those closest to me. It means I’m sad, and to some degree I feel helpless. It means my heart is breaking just a little. And it’s also an unusual feeling to have right now because I’m filled with anticipation and I’m more than a little excited: After almost six years I’m changing jobs—and it’s a great opportunity to work more closely with the subject that continues to hold my attention: the spread of technology. I am excited. But the fact remains I have to say goodbye to some people who have come to mean a great deal to me. And I’m not sure how. What I do know is that my heart hurts.

Even the most stable social networks are not immune to change. People move and life events place them in different roles, and as they do, their responsibilities within their various social groups also change. In this way a person can be many things to many people even as she is many things to the same person—the roles of writer, colleague, wife, sister, friend, bibliophile, cook, caretaker, etc., all have different meanings in different social contexts, and different responsibilities. What does it mean if this role is suddenly removed from its social niche? What does it mean to the group and to the individual herself if she is to leave the network? The role may ultimately be replaced, but before it can be, the change has to be acknowledged. So we say goodbye.

Goodbyes have a particular role to play in mediating the balance of the network, and they often reflect the degree of change the group will experience. For example, if you’re headed out the door to pick up a pizza for dinner, you might say “Be right back,” or if you leaving a friend at the end of a night out, “See you later” could suffice. Both of these types of goodbyes indicate that the shift in the network is small and temporary. It’s acknowledged that the person may be departing, but that they’re expected back—and will soon occupy their place in the social group again.

But for long-term departures, more formal ceremony is needed. If the actual word “goodbye” has a sense of finality to it, it’s not by accident. It’s a contraction of “God be with ye,” which conveys a blessing or prayer or hope that the person upon whom it’s bestowed will travel safely. It’s almost a plea. Today’s assorted methods of electronic communication mean that separations are only as permanent as they are allowed to be, but there was a time when departure from loved ones forced you to consider the very real possibility that the parting could be permanent, or very, very, very, very extended. The gravity of this occasion was marked by a ritualized send-off in the form of a party or feast or an observance of some sort. From wakes to wedding receptions to going-away parties, the network must gather to reconcile the interruption to the existing connections. People meet and engage in exercises of remembrance which reinforces the sense that change is impending.

In the case of long-term goodbyes, rituals also serve to confirm the connection of the individual to the group, which is particularly important because in leaving an established network, she’ll enter a transitory stage. Oh sure—she’ll have a new role assigned to her and new responsibilities but there will be a period of adjustment before she truly belongs to the new network. Even if she’s leaving to take on the same role elsewhere (e.g., cook), she’ll still have to learn the nuances of that social order. But once you know someone, it’s hard to unknow them—you might grow apart, your relationship might change, but if you know someone, have chosen to know someone and recognized her role within your network, you will always know that person. Rituals associated with long-term partings confirm deep rooted connections with the group.

Goodbyes can consequently become an exercise in expressing intimacy. Goodbyes between close parties are scripted. Does the following sound familiar? “It’s getting late. I need to go.” “Oh no. Stay for just a little while longer.” Indeed, stay a little while longer while the other finishes his drink or because dessert hasn’t been served or because another guest hasn’t arrived—stay because your company is valued. While this example may relate more closely to a temporary parting, the idea that the leaving should be protested in some way to confirm the individual’s meaning to the group is a routine part of goodbyes between close company.

At a formal gathering, not all members may cluster around the departee to offer objections—this responsibility falls to those closest to the individual—but those that do express dismay at the change may do so in the form of guilt or anger or sorrow. These emotions, similar to the plea to stay just a little longer, function to remind the individual has contributed to the network and will be missed. A lot can be conveyed by a failure or an unwillingness to protest in some form—and really, if a meaningful connection doesn’t exist between separating parties, goodbyes can be short and completed quickly. The parting process is delayed between members for whom the separation will create the greatest interruption.

At the end of the day, it’s not an easy experience for anyone. Goodbyes, especially among an affectionate cohort, can weigh heavily on the group dynamic, which is why it bears repeating that they are only as final as you allow them to be—after all, there’s always Facebook.

Could your social network influence your behavior? | IStock photo.

By now you’ve undoubtedly heard that Facebook allows people to share their organ donor status. A friend of mine adjusted her information on the day of the announcement to reflect her donor status and someone quipped, “What did you donate?” Snark potential aside, it’s a wonderful way to bring the donor community together and to raise awareness about organ donation overall. With over 100,000 people waiting for an organ donation and only 14,144 organ transplants in 2011, the prospects look grim for many—which has unfortunately driven a robust black market trade in body parts.

There is much to consider here regarding ownership and ethics. But there is also something to be said about social pressure, too. A 2010 survey (1) conducted by Donate Life America revealed the following reasons why people might not consider becoming an organ donor:

• 52% of respondents were open to the idea that doctors may not try as hard to save their lives if their wish to be organ donors is known

• 61% are open to the idea that it is possible for a brain dead person to recover from his or her injuries

• 8% believe that organ or tissue donation is against their religion

These beliefs are unfounded:

• If you are sick or injured and admitted to the hospital, the number one priority is to save your life. Organ, eye, and tissue donation can only be considered after you are deceased.

• While you can recover from comas, brain death is permanent and irreparable.

• All major religions in the United States support organ, eye, and tissue donation.

Still, these ideas persist. The percentage of people who report believing that emergency personnel may not work as hard to save their lives or that they can recover from brain death remains high (pdf). What Facebook has done is launch a massive campaign to shift perception—after all, if you’re friends are doing it, friends whom you’ve vetted (hopefully—we’ll overlook that girl you met at the bar who swore she knew you in elementary school and then looked you up on Facebook a few days later) and opted to follow and share personal information with, then how bad could it be?

There’s science behind the mechanisms of social pressure. If you think of behaviors as viruses, you can see that they’re more powerful—or contagious—when passed between people who have contact with each other—and we’re more likely to have contact with each other if we’re friends. However, some network structures are better suited to this than others. Networks characterized by “long-ties”—where members have fewer overlapping connections and links appear to be more randomized—were believed to have a farther reach because they could transfer information to more unique members. But research has found that networks where members have a great deal of overlap between connections and interests—clustered networks—there are higher rates of behavior adoption because members can receive multiple signals that reinforce certain patterns (pdf).

In randomized networks, behavior is treated like a simple contagion where single contact is enough to pass the behavior on. But if you think about it, the challenge there is fairly illustrated by the Telephone Game: the message might be clear initially, but it gets diluted as it travels down the line. The same is true of behavior: the farther away you get from the original actor and the relationship you share, which provides a strong reason for why you might adopt the behavior, the less compelling it becomes to emulate and adopt her actions.

Behavior change is far from simple; it requires repetition. Within the clustered network frame, social behavior is regarded as a complex contagion, requiring multiple points of contact before “infection” can occur. In 2003, researchers Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler gave us a good example of the power of clustered networks by tracing obesity, smoking cessation, and happiness through the Framingham network—a fortuitous byproduct of a medical study that collected information on personal contacts, which allowed the participants’ social networks to be mapped years later, and for researchers to trace the spread of certain behaviors. Christakis and Fowler found that:

• If a person became obese, the likelihood his friend would also become obese was 171%.

• When smokers quit, their friends are 36% more likely to also quit. (Although this effect diminishes as the separation between contacts grow, and loses its efficacy at four degrees of separation.)

• Happy friends increased the likelihood of an individual being happy by 8%.

Framingham demonstrated that your contacts matter and that what they do is of great importance. Our networks help us establish a sense of what’s acceptable—right down to expanding waistlines. The more social reinforcement we receive that certain actions are appropriate, the more likely we are to adopt those actions ourselves.

Facebook is clearly a clustered network. Part of the work done by Christakis and Fowler was to reproduce the measure of happiness in the Framingham network with a Facebook sample, and the results were strikingly similar. So if people start sharing their status as organ donors, it helps normalize the behavior, and minimizes the damaging effect of the misconceptions that hinder sign-ups. Peer pressure, in this form, can be powerful. It can convince you to do things you might not otherwise consider because you’re afraid or it goes against what you think believe. Peer pressure can shift the social mindset.

But it’s still peer pressure. And haven’t we been taught that this is a negative thing?

There’s already been an article asking why Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t indicated that he’s an organ donor. Should he have to? Or will he have to in order to be accepted? Silly question? Replace Zuckerberg with Joe Smith or Jane Doe and ask it again. How will we view people who fail to publicly comply with a greater social norm of the network? Do we freeze them out?

This is different from sharing a political or religious affiliation or music group or favorite because it’s a status that’s meant to cross boundaries. While very few people will argue that becoming an organ donor is a bad thing, it still remains a choice, and now it’s become a choice that we can be judged on. For example, in the Framingham study smokers mingled freely with nonsmokers in 1971 and they were distributed evenly throughout the network. However, by 2001 as groups of smokers quit, those who persisted were socially isolated. What if we required people to list their status as smokers or non-smokers—how would our networks shift as a result of this information?

If organ donor status becomes a part of the basic set of information a person can share on Facebook—it’s not, but let’s consider the possibility—how would this missing piece of information color your interaction? Does it frustrate you to not know this bit about your connection? Will you think twice about connecting with them? And if it’s not the organ donor status that does it, then what will? Knowing whether the person was bullied or was a bully as a child? Whether he as high blood pressure?

At the very least, this allows a community of donors who might not have otherwise known each other to find and connect with others who have made this very important commitment. This is a concerted effort to harness the potential power of a clustered network. Still, it’s not a network that exists in isolation. There’s no telling what will happen as a result of making this information public and no telling how far it will actually reach, but the impact of external factors, such as media attention, on network behaviors can’t be discounted. We’ll just have to watch and see. In the meantime, do you plan to share your status as an organ donor?

—

Notes:
1. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the original survey that I had linked when I previously discussed these data, but you can view the original press release with the stats above here (pdf).

References:
Centola, D. (2010). The Spread of Behavior in an Online Social Network Experiment Science, 329 (5996), 1194-1197 DOI: 10.1126/science.1185231

Christakis, N., & Fowler, J. (2007). The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years New England Journal of Medicine, 357 (4), 370-379 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMsa066082

Christakis, N., & Fowler, J. (2008). The Collective Dynamics of Smoking in a Large Social Network New England Journal of Medicine, 358 (21), 2249-2258 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMsa0706154

Rosenquist, J., Fowler, J., & Christakis, N. (2010). Social network determinants of depression Molecular Psychiatry, 16 (3), 273-281 DOI: 10.1038/mp.2010.13

• We might not give much thought to eyeliner today, dismissing it as a beauty product that highlights and enhances the eye, but the ancient Egyptians had a different purpose for lining their eyes: preventing eye infections. At Body Horrors, Rebecca Kreston has the scoop on the antibacterial properties of kohl.

• Rituals permeate our daily lives. Why do certain rituals persist over others? Eric Horow reports on a recent study at Peer Reviewed by My Neurons investigating how we evaluate the effectiveness of rituals.

• Researchers are tracing ancestral links between the Philippines and the Marianas through pottery. A study discussed at Imprints of Philippine Science traces the connections revealed by pottery shards.

• Want to eat like a Roman? At Powered by Osteons, Kristina Killgrove prepares a meal based on skeletal isotope information highlighting the wealth of data that can be drawn from different sources.

Until next time, folks. I’ll be back next week with more from anthropology, philosophy, and research.

While age, education, and household income are the strongest negative predictors for Internet use, access has become less of a limiting factor for non-Internet users. In the last decade, only 6% of this group have cited a lack of access as the main reason they don’t go online. (Instead, a primary reason cited by non-users for why they don’t log on is a belief the Internet isn’t relevant to their information or communication needs.) Access is now almost ubiquitous since almost every electronic gadget that goes to market needs to be able to connect to the Internet to some degree. From cell phones to MP3 players to game consoles to e-Readers and tablets, access to online content has moved beyond the bulky, stationary confines of a desktop computer.

Of the 88% of American adults who own a cell phone, 46% own a smart phone (Android, BlackBerry, iPhone). Smart phone adoption is high among the financially-well off, the well-educated, and adults under the age of 50, which are groups that are typically early tech-adopters. Race appears to remain an insignificant factor: Overall access and adoption rates have been consistently comparable for African-American and Latinos to the national average for all Americans. What is significant is that for a growing number of of people, cell phones and other gadgets represent their primary source of Internet access. For one-third of adults who primarily use their smart phone to go online, their device is their sole access to online resources—they do not have a high speed broadband connection.

So what are smartphone users doing with their phones?

You’ll note that making an actual old fashioned phone call doesn’t seem to have made the list. Instead, activities tend to lean toward the more “social” sphere. Mobile users are going online, but they’re also creating new content and sharing that content from the palm of their hands.

The digital divide may be diminishing but what the Pew Internet & American Life Project has termed “mobile differences” seems an extension of a second tier of the digital divide—an issue that extends beyond access, and relates more to digital literacy. If we’re being programmed to use the Internet in pre-programmed “buckets” that take the shape of the apps we download to our smartphones, what do we lose in terms of critical thinking and understanding about the potential of the ‘net?

I admit it: I have a bit of Mrs. Lovejoy in me. This has long been a topic of interest, and you can find extensive thoughts on the subject at www.anthropologyinpractice.com. Enter “digital divide” in the search box—I can’t embed a link with the results here unfortunately.

Would you believe there was once an illegal trade in twine? | Photo by Rosa Money, CC. Click on image for license and information.

I learned something recently: Twine was once a contraband item.

Picture this: It’s almost harvest time, and it promises to be a good one—in fact, you’ve taken out a bank loan to cover your harvest costs. You’ll cut the grain and you’ll bind it and you’ll sell it. And with your new binding machine, the job will be done in no time—the grain will be bound as soon as you cut it, reducing your harvest costs. You know the drill; it’ll be routine. And then you learn the price of twine has skyrocketed due to a shortage. What do you do? How do you protect your bottom line?

If you were a Canadian farmer in the late 19th-century, you might seriously start thinking about buying twine from across the border. It would likely be cheaper, though if it were prison-made the quality might be questionable. And there’s one other thing: It’ll also be highly illegal.

Yes, you read that right.

Twine played an important role in the mechanization of agriculture. Grain farmers used to cut and bind their harvest by hand using everything from bark to twine to wire. The introduction of the mechanical reaper in the early 19th-century helped speed this process, but it was the knotting device that would truly reduce the resources needed to bring the harvest in. The knotting device mechanically bound grain stalks as they were cut and deposited them in neat bundles that could easily be rounded up for sale.

The binder twine industry grew in response to the widespread adoption of the mechanical binder, linking international entities to the U.S. and Canadian harvests. Manila fiber from the Philippines, and Sisal and henequen from the Yucatan yielded twine that tied the tightest and were naturally insect repellent. Managing these materials and tools became an exercise in political identity: U.S. manufacturers produced a bevy of binder machines, but the Canadians levied heavy taxes on the imports to protect Canada’ agricultural implement industry. Additionally, because the U.S. harvest occurred occurred earlier than the Canadian harvest, manufacturers sold surplus twine to Canadians but lawmakers, fearing that this arrangement placed Canada at the mercy of U.S. market, worked hard to suppress this trade with tariffs, which were meant to support Canadian production efforts instead.

Canadian farmers weren’t all pleased. Some insisted that U.S. twine was superior: stronger, and more consistent in lengths. They resented the tariffs and were willing to purchase U.S. twine under the table—and at a discount to boot. It created a black market for U.S. twine.

Canadian officials responded with stricter regulations for labelling, and they turned to prison labor to produce an inexpensive binder twine. This, however, created competition for Canadian cordage companies, who further faced difficulty exporting their products by the same tariffs that limited the flow of U.S. twine into Canada. Discrepancies and disappointments would ultimately lead to firm legislation on labelling, length, and tensile strength but until that time the landscape of binder twine was one back door deals and haggling and uncertainty.

The trade of contraband is more than just work. It’s a commitment to a lifestyle of creative strategizing, thinking on your feet, and a certain resignation (or acceptance) of your fate if caught. The stories that capture our attention—from the sordid tales of human trade to the Robin Hood-style legends of prohibition—exoticize illegal trade, making it at once vile while promising just a hint of glory. It’s a narrative that lends itself well to pop culture. Boardwalk Empire, for example, explore the conflicted morals of Prohibition-era mobsters. As to a certain degree does Locked Up Abroad, which tells the true stories of regular, every day people who are caught with contraband. It broadens the definition of Criminal to include people from all walks of life: the Bored, the Desperate, the Curious, the Trusting, the Careless, the Entrepreneur—and well, anyone, really.

And just as anyone can become caught up with illegal trade, anything can become contraband. It is more than the movement of alcohol or drugs or immigrants or prostitutes—it’s a process. And through the lens of this process we can view how social rules are created and flouted. Contraband is born out of the definition of boundaries marking access to rights, authority, and personhood. Smugglers, Brothels, and Twine invites readers to consider these negotiations with a collection of examples that delve beyond popular stories. In this context, twine as contraband explains political boundaries and national identities. These are themes that play out again and again. For example, when the Cree were dispossessed in the 1880s in an effort to control and restrict their movement and access to natural resources, their illegal status meant that everything down to their behavior was contraband. And in the 1950s, pleasure became contraband when Windsor, Ontario sought to curb the influx of sex tourists from Detroit —”transient Americans,” perpetrators of vice and sin. Underneath the sensational headline of prostitution, the process of “Othering” becomes clear, revealing the interesting effect borders can have on how neighbors view each other.

What is and isn’t contraband reflects the needs of the larger social order. And sometimes, the less sensational stories are the more interesting ones.

Smugglers, Brothels, and Twine: Historical Perspectives on Contraband and Vice in North America’s Borderlands | Elaine Carey and Andrae Marak eds. | University of Arizona Press | 264 pages | $55.00 (Hardcover)

This book was provided by the publisher free of charge. Bloggers sometimes receive and request review books with the understanding that a review of the material is not guaranteed.

• At EvoAnth, Adam Benton wonders whether human ancestors may have mastered tool use earlier than we think. He shares research (containing admittedly scant evidence) that includes a nice discussion of the challenges of this data.
• Sarah Jane Alger of The Scorpion and the Frog delivers a hair raising tale about obligate brood parasites— insidious offspring that are actually transplants who usurp resources to boost their survival. She asks why these invaders are sometimes murderous and sometimes not, and investigates whether their survival strategy is actually adaptive.
• The Neuroskeptic maintains that there is a degree of universality to some facial expressions despite the assertions otherwise of a recent paper. The skeptic dissects the study’s results to demonstrate that recognition of “basic” emotions (e.g., happy, sad) is relatively consistent.
• How much has your hometown changed since you first moved there? At Per Square Mile, Tim DeChant discusses the “last settler syndrome,” explaining how this might color the way we see and remember the spaces around us.
• Have you been subject to gaslighting? Juliana Breines explains this subtle method of manipulation at Psych Your Mind which may leave you wondering why you believe the things you do.

Until next time, folks. I’ll be back next week with more from anthropology, philosophy, and research.

How do you spend your food budget? | Photo by Maureen Reilly, CC. Click on image for license and information.

S has taken the lead in preparing our weeknight meals. It helps us get dinner on the table earlier but he’s also interested in helping us eat more healthfully. He’s invested a great deal of time into learning about healthy food options and healthy substitutes for the richer foods he enjoys. Our daily menu has shifted to include brown rice regularly, lots of salads and vegetables, and lean white meat. Oh, and oatmeal. Lots and lots of oatmeal. The reduced-fat milk is the hardest for me. Although he’s made it clear that I can eat what I want, but since he’s ramped up his efforts to eat well and get in better shape, it seems the right time to make this change together. It means that the days of savory lasagnes and chicken marsala and pesto have been limited to Sunday dinners, which is fine, but I really, really miss whole milk.

The change has made us more aware of what we’re buying, and what it costs to create a healthy meal. It’s hard—and that’s more than just typical whining about having to give up culinary treats. It requires a social and behavioral shift, but is also requires a serious reconsideration of our food budget and means questioning the effectiveness our personal food environment—where you get your foods is as important as what your foods are.

In addition to watching our fat and sodium intake, there’s something else to consider: The distance people are willing to travel for foods appears to be related to their weight and wellness. A recently published study in PLoS One found that among the French, those who shop at the same local supermarkets tend to have a similar body mass index and waist circumference. And while Basile Chaix and colleagues admit there are some challenges with this study, there are some general ideas that can be applied to our overall relationship to food and food procurement.

The study found that the greater the distance a person has to travel to his primary supermarket, the greater the person’s BMI and waist circumference. One possible reason for this may be that because supermarket visits are few and infrequent, the person is relying on canned and less-fresh products and not obtaining the maximum nutritional value from the foods available. Other factors that appear to be associated with a greater BMI and waist circumference include, a lower SES customer base, purchasing specific supermarket brands, and shopping at discount supermarkets.

New York City recognized the challenges residents of lower SES neighborhoods face in obtaining fresh produce and other healthy food options. For example, in both Bedford-Stuyvesant and Central Harlem, bodegas are more common than supermarkets. While they often function as food centers, they are severely limited in their offering:

• While offering convenient locations and hours, bodegas carry a narrower range
  of products at higher prices than supermarkets and other stores.

• Bodegas are less likely than supermarkets to carry reduced-fat milk, apples, oranges, bananas, and green vegetables.

• Bodegas are also more likely to have ads for sugary juices, energy drinks, and tobacco.

Fast food is a prevalent option in lower income neighborhoods, as well. Taken together, the available food environment in these neighborhoods offers few options. To combat these limitations, the City launched the Green Cart initiative in 2008, a program that uses food carts as mobile produce stations throughout the five boroughs.

However, the green carts have not been without their own challenges. They must deal with low foot traffic, competition between vendors, finding and purchasing affordable produce, storing their carts, the weather, and fines for breaking the City’s strict rules (like vending too close to an intersection). And green grocers, supermarkets, and even bodegas view these mobile produce stands as competitors, whether they’re down the block or three blocks away, and are less than welcoming. So what’s the bottom line with these carts? Have they been successful in increasing fresh produce intake in lower SES neighborhoods? Results are mixed:

From 2008 to 2010, the percentage of residents in Green Cart communities who reported consuming no fruits or vegetables the previous day increased from 17.1 percent to 18.1 percent, while in non-Green Cart neighborhoods, the same number decreased from 10.7 percent to 9.5 percent. During that same period, the number of residents in Green Cart areas who reported consuming between 1-4 servings decreased by 2 percent. However, residents with Green Carts in their neighborhoods reported consuming five or more servings a day increased 1 percent.

It’s true that change takes time, but Chaix and colleagues offer an observation that may help us understand the slow adoption of the Green Carts: Access alone is not enough to change behavior. If shoppers in Supermarket A were suddenly placed in Supermarket B, their shopping behavior would reflect tendencies rooted in shopping at Supermarket A.

It’s not entirely about access—although that’s definitely part of the issue. The quality of the goods available is questionable, according to Chaix and colleagues:

Another French study published in 2009 reported no systematic difference between low priced and branded products in terms of nutrient content, raw materials, microbiological analysis, or taste. However, in the aforementioned French study, a weak relationship suggested that the overall quality of ingredients increased with the price of foods (within a given food category). Moreover, basic nutritional information and dietary recommendations were less often provided on low priced foods than on branded products. Overall, the published information is scarce and provides only mixed evidence in support of the idea that hard discount supermarkets are obesogenic nutritional environments.

If shoppers will retain their tendencies even if given the option to shop elsewhere, then they are will likely continue to by the non-perishable staples that are familiar to them—especially in the face of sticker shock.

Habits are notoriously difficult to break. For many residents in lower SES neighborhoods, relying on non-perishable goods that can be obtained at little to no cost from food banks and churches and other social centers continues to represent a viable option for feeding their families. Or purchasing goods from bodegas and discount stores that accept food stamps is a more realistic option—though some carts have adopted an electronic machine that would allow them to do this as well.

The amount of money in your pocket really does influence where and what you can eat. And that in turn influences the quality and variety of foods you have access to. Fresh fruits and vegetables start to look like a serious luxury when you realize that you can triple your purchase of canned goods for what you would spend on perishables, which will spoil within the week if not used. Or that a lunchtime salad—in New York City, at least—will cost you almost three times what a slice of pizza and a fountain soda will cost. There is a premium on healthy foods, which of course is not such a new thing: kings and lords have always tended to eat better than commoners. But if we want to break unhealthy food habits at an early age, are we putting those healthy options within reach of children, whose spending money may not match the premiums?

S and I were considering the changes in our personal food environments over the years, reflecting on the degree that our finances determined what we could eat and where we could shop—so that even when we had the means of traveling beyond our local food neighborhoods to green grocers and other specialty stores, we often didn’t (and the truth it, we still don’t). This discussion was spurred by wondering where we could shop to increase our healthy food options and realizing that at an early point in our lives together, our primary supermarket was a discount supermarket with canned goods that were dented and deformed. We shopped there when we needed pantry staples, got our deli meats from a bodega, and were surrounded by fast food options—there were three Chinese take-out places within a 2 block radius of our first apartment. And it’s not that we didn’t have a model of shopping in place: My parents did travel to increase their food options as did S’s parents, but they didn’t do so because they were health conscious, they shopped at different stores to help save. And they did buy fresh produce because it figured heavily in their diets in the first place.

The costs of healthy eating are negotiated by a number of factors: financial means, yes, but also by dietary preference, transportation, availability, and quality. What lengths do you go to to get variety in your diet?

Reference:
Chaix B, Bean K, Daniel M, Zenk SN, Kestens Y, Charreire H, Leal C, Thomas F, Karusisi N, Weber C, Oppert JM, Simon C, Merlo J, & Pannier B (2012). Associations of Supermarket Characteristics with Weight Status and Body Fat: A Multilevel Analysis of Individuals within Supermarkets (RECORD Study). PloS one, 7 (4) PMID: 22496738

• At Geneaology of Religion, Cris Campbell has a nice summary of dissociative speech patterns—in layman’s terms, that’s to say he breaks down different ways of “speaking in tongues.”
• The Neuroskeptic discusses a small, self-selected study on “bi-gendered” individuals which highlights the ways social pressures can color our identities.
• At NeuroDojo, Zen Faulkes presents another examination of the prisoner’s dilemma, which is the basis for a UK game show, considering whether there are cues that could tip off the potential course of action by the participants.

I’ll be back next week with more from anthropology, philosophy, and research.

• Could there be evidence of a second type of bipedalism in the hominid family tree? Possibly—though the evidence is scant. At Lawn Chair Anthropology, Zachary Cofran discusses the potential a 3.4 million year old foot may bring to discussions about evolution.

• How does your liver feel? The Neuroskeptic discusses a paper on emotional terminology among the Hmong, who use the term “broken liver” over “broken heart.”

• At Bodyhorrors Rebecca Kreston encourages us to take note of mass deaths in the natural world because they can signal trouble for us as well. She discusses professions that can help signal the onset of an epidemic—do you belong to any of those groups?

• Sarah Jane Alder talks about gift giving in spiders at The Scorpion and the Frog. This behavior increases the likelihood of an amorous encounter, regardless of what the gift actually is.

I’ll be back next week with more from anthropology, philosophy, and research.

Photographer Tsuneaki Hiramatsu combined slow–shutter speed photos to produce stunning images of firefly signals. This image was photographed in Okayama prefecture, Japan. | © Tsuneaki Hiramatsu, digitalphoto.cocolog-nifty.com

In the 17th-century, although the English had the opportunity, they chose not to make land on Cuba. They bypassed the island because they saw flickering lights that they believed were the campfires of the Spanish. Those lights were actually fireflies. The humble, yet brilliant firefly probably changed the course of history, which isn’t surprising since it has long captured our imagination:

• In the Philippines, one story tells that they are the remnants of a star on the forehead of the Princess Alitaptap, who was sent from the heavens. The star was shattered when she was killed. The pieces rose as fireflies following her death.

• Another Filipino story proposes that fireflies are the descendants of a vain young man who offended a fairy. She turned him into a bug and told him that he would remain that way until he could find another more beautiful than her. So he searches each night, carrying a torch to illuminate his way.

• Still another Filipino legend tells that fireflies got their lights at the suggestion of the sampaguita bush: They took refuge from the dark in the leaves of the bush, and told it they were hiding from the fruit bat, who would only cease its pursuit when the moon was full. The sampaguita bush advised them to carry torches and travel in groups to emulate the moon and blind the fruit bat.

• In Japan, fireflies are the tears shed by a beautiful moon princess who had to return to the sky on her twentieth birthday and leave behind those she loved.

• And among the Cherokee, there a legend about the stars descending from the heavens to help find a lost child. They took the form of fireflies to guide searchers to her location.

Bioluminescence, the ability of some organisms to produce their own light by chemical reaction, has fascinated humans for centuries. So called “living light,” has been recognized in folklore, superstition, and the arts. For example, sailors once thought the bioluminescent wake from the bows of their ships were evidence of Poseidon’s hand, glowing fungi have been thought to be lost spirits or fairies, and Tennyson has likened the Pleiades to a swarm of fireflies. In fact, bioluminescence is one of the oldest fields of study. Aristotle was the first to record in detail the light he observed in sea creatures, noting that the light was cold as compared to the light cast by a fire or a candle.

A model of Phausis reticulata, shown 65 times actual size. | ©AMNHD. Finnin

Creatures of Light: Nature’s Bioluminescence is an exhibit opening this Saturday—March 31st—at the American Museum of Natural History that looks to continue Aristotle’s initial forays. Fireflies are not the only organisms to glow. They’re just the ones that we’ve most likely come in contact with. And it’s a starting point for Creatures of Light that draws visitors in with something familiar, reminding them of childhood summer pursuits and explaining some of the mystery of the phenomenon. After passing under a giant glowing mushroom—and feeling a bit like you’ve fallen down the rabbit hole—visitors get to know nature’s own flashlight.

Bloody Bay Wall, a species-rich coral wall that is home to many bioluminescent and biofluorescent animals. The biofluorescent animals respond to certain wavelengths of light. Here's the wall glows red. | © Jim Hellemn, portraitofacoralreef.com

From there, the exhibit takes visitors across the tree of life through different environments—from dinoflagellates in Mosquito Bay to glowworms in the Waitomo cave system to corals in the Bloody Bay Wall in the Cayman Islands—to explore the evolution of bioluminescence in a variety of species. Each environment becomes its own world. For example, you can stick your head into a cavern and look up at the glowworms dangling from the ceiling. Or scatter the dinoflagellates as you “wade” in Mosquito Bay—where the light emitted by these protists was once so bright that tourists could read in the evening by the water. (When the canal was widened for development prospects, the light disappeared.) You’ll also travel to the depth of the ocean to visit briefly with anglerfish, ponyfish, jellyfish, and flashlight fish. The exhibit is also careful to note the difference between bioluminescence, which is an internal chemical reaction, and fluorescence, which is triggered by an external factor, such as a particular wavelength of light. For example, the corals in the Bloody Bay can appear as red, green, and orange depending on the wavelength of light they’re exposed to, which greatly changes the appearance of the coral, fishes, and anemone that call this environment their home.

All of that aside, the exhibit is also a chance to confront legends:

Bitter oyster mushroom (Panellus stipticus) | © AMNH\J. Sparks

Panellus stipticus, the bitter oyster mushroom, grows in the forests of the eastern United States. The light it generates was believed by North American settlers to be supernatural—fairy lights that would lead you to your doom if you followed them. The sense of doom associated with the fungus is likely rooted in the fact its often found on decaying wood, hardly making it a welcoming context. The light is likely an evolutionary defense system that warns potential predators that there’s no meal to be had with these mushrooms.

See live dinoflagellates at Creatures of Light. | ©AMNH\D. Finnin

Dinoflagellates are single-celled marine plankton that are found throughout the world. They give water its sparkle under the moonlight. And they’re the basis for reports of “burning” seas by sailors who caught sight of their mysterious light in the water. They’re triggered by movement, and the light is actually part of their defense system: it will startle predators or attract larger predators that will find a meal in their would-be attacker. (It’s the circle of life, folks.) These tiny creatures were likely also the basis for the Poseidon’s Wheel legend: the luminescent wake from the bows of ships resemble the spokes of a wheel. It was apparently a short leap for sailors to associate those spoke with Poseidon’s chariot.

And to meet the strange citizens of the deep:

Anglerfish (Linophryne algibarbata) | ©AMNH\D. Finnin

The anglerfish is equipped with her own luminescent lure. The depths of the ocean hides her true nature, and inquisitive fish soon find themselves wishing they’d stayed away from the light.

Vampire squid (Vampyroteuthis infernalis) | ©AMNH\D. Finnin

The vampire squid is so named for its cape-like arms. Because this squid lives in the depths of the ocean, it doesn’t have the camouflage as a defense technique. Instead, it uses bioluminescence to frighten predators away.

All organisms respond similarly to illumination: even as we’re drawn to light, it can also be a warning. In most cases, scientists believe bioluminescence has a communicative function—which is also what we’re doing as we illuminate our world. Light, for many, means power in more than one sense of the word, especially when you consider that it’s only recently that light has come to most of the world. Prior to the mid-1800s, people in small towns and villages were used to darkness following sunset that was broken only by the odd candle or lantern. But a relationship to light is clearly not unique to our species. Bioluminescence has evolved numerous times as the chemistry to produce this light varies between organisms—and we’ve only just scratched the surface in understanding its purpose and potential applications. Let there be light, indeed.

Creatures of Light opens on March 31st, 2012 at the American Museum of Natural History.

The Death of Caesar by Vincenzo Camuccini. | CC. Click on image for license and information.

Is there a more suspicious day than the Ides of March? The day on which Julius Caesar was assassinated? It’s a day associated with betrayal—a day to worry about the loyalties of those closest to you because everyone has a price. The Ides of March occur in the middle of the month (from the Latin iduare, meaning “to divide”) and is marked on March 15th. The Ides are a regular occurrence then since all months have a middle. However, March 15th took on special meaning when the term became overwhelmingly tied to Caesar. I’m sure your Facebook feed or Twitter stream were filled with warnings that you should beware because the Ides had come.

But what if I told you that it was all for naught? That you were warned and suspicious of friends named Brutus for no reason? Why? Because the Ides had not come. The Ides would not arrive for roughly another two weeks—in fact, the Ides, according to the Julian calendar, is today.

People have marked time differently throughout the ages, struggling to reconcile solar and lunar cycles with the changes that occurred around them. The Roman calendar started the year in March and was 10 months long—six months had 30 days and four months had 31. It was 304 days long, with some 61 odd days left over that accounted for winter which were not assigned to any month in particular. It’s likely it was a lunar calendar as the Romans divided the month into three segments:

• The Kalends signified the start of the new moon cycle and was the first day of the month.

• The Nones were related to the half moon, and were typically observed eight days before the Ides.

• The Ides were believed to be the day of the full moon. It occurred on the 15th day in March, May, July, and October, and the 13th day in the other months.

Days were counted by their relationship to these markers. So, March 11th would have been “Five Ides” to the Romans because it is four days before the Ides.

The year began on the vernal equinox (so in addition to a Happy Spring, I should wish you a Happy New Year!) The Romans fiddled with the calendar—Numa Pompilius added January and February, and shifted days around to lengthen the calendar to 354 days. And then they added a leap month to try and keep the calendar aligned to a tropical year (equinox to equinox). Leap years were 377 days long!

Time is not a concrete thing, and it can be made to serve to various purposes. Roman politicians understood this quite well. Because their terms were defined by the calendar, they could extend or shorten the year to serve their political needs as they saw fit. The Roman calendar, therefore, lacked consistency.

Julius Caesar changed that.

He realigned the calendar year to the tropical calendar by making 46 BC 445 days long and starting the year on January 1. This accounted for leap years that had been missed during some turbulent years. In 45 BC, he further restructured the Roman calendar by doing away with the leap month and introducing a leap day every four years. His calendar combined the old Roman months, the Egyptian calendar, and Greek astronomy. However, the leap day appears to have been incorrectly applied initially by Roman leaders who marked it every third year. After 36 years, things were out of sync again and Caesar stepped in. It took 12 years, during which he skipped three leap days, but he realigned the calendar.

Still, his calendar doesn’t quite match the solar year—it’s just a bit longer. So, this generated an error of one day every 128 years, shifting the tropical year backwards, and moving the Easter observance around. That did not sit well with the Roman Catholic Church, so in the 16th-century Pope Gregory XIII made a few changes. However, you shouldn’t overlook that the Julian calendar was used well after the Roman Empire had fallen (and in some cases, it’s still used today!).

Gregory’s calendar combined the Julian calendar with the lunar calendar of the church. He reduced the number of leap years, and changed their structure: Leap years would occur every four years, except for years that are divisible by 100—though centurial years divisible by 400 would still be still leap years, which is the pattern we follow today. He also reduced the year by roughly 10 minutes to realign time to the vernal equinox. His calendar actually began on March 21st—skipping ahead from March 11th to reestablish the date of the equinox—and Easter.

The Gregorian calendar wasn’t immediately adopted by all. The Protestents—their Reformation well underway—thought the calendar was an insidious plot and resisted. And other countries adopted the calendar at different times. And even today, Jewish and Islamic calendars mark time differently, as does the Chinese calendar. Time is what we make of it.

All of this to show that what we think of as a concrete, definite thing is actually a flexible creation. With all of these calendar changes, dates were in a state of flux. Birthdays changed! (Though Caesar kept his.) So beware the Ides of March. And you might want to pass on that lunch with Brutus today.

H/T to Prof. Kevin Birth for pointing out the correct day of caution on (the Gregorian) March 15th.

Dressings for your dish. | Photo by Michael Rosenstein, CC. Click on image for license and information.

Do me a favor: Go open your refrigerator and look at the labels on your condiments. Alternatively, if you’re at work, open your drawer and flip through your stash of condiment packets. (Don’t look at me like that. I know you have a stash. Or you know where to find one. It’s practically Office Survival 101.) Go on. I’ll wait.

So tell me, what brands are hanging out in your fridge? (Or drawer?) Hellmann’s? French’s? Heinz? Even if you aren’t a slave to brand names and you typically buy whatever is on sale or the local supermarket brand, if you’ve ever eaten out or purchased a meal to-go that required condiments, you’ve likely been exposed to one of these brands for mayonnaise, mustard, or ketchup. And given the broad reach of Heinz, I’d be surprised if the company didn’t get a mention. So what are the origins of Heinz—the man and the brand? Why do we adorn our hamburgers and hotdogs with his products over others? It boils down to trust—carefully crafted trust, which obscures the image of Heinz as a food corporation and highlights a sense of quality, home-made goods.

Henry Heinz | Historical image provided by Heinz. Click on image for license and information.

Henry Heinz was born in 1844 to German immigrant parents near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His father John owned a brickyard in Sharpsburg, and his mother Anna was a homemaker with a talent for gardening. Henry assisted both of them—in the brickyard before and after school, and in the garden when time permitted. He also sold surplus produce to local grocers. Henry proved to have quite a green thumb himself and at the age of twelve, he had his own plot, a horse, a cart, and a list of customers.

Henry’s gardening proficiency was in keeping with the times—most households were growing or otherwise making their own foods at home in the early nineteenth century, space permitting. The market for processed food was hampered by distrust in the quality offered:

Food quality and safety were growing concerns in the mid nineteenth-century cities. These issues were not new. Various local laws had mandated inspection of meat and flour exports since the colonial period. Other ordinances had regulated bread prices and ingredients, banning adulterants, such as chalk and ground beans. But as urban areas and the sources of food supplying these areas expanded, older controls weakened. Public anxiety about contaminated food, including milk, meat, eggs, and butter mounted. So, too, did worries about adulterated chocolate, sugar, vinegar, molasses, and other foods (356).

Contaminants included lead (in peppers and mustard) and ground stone (in flour and sugar). So it’s not surprising that people were hesitant about purchasing pre-packaged products. However, American society was on the brink of a social change that would make people more receptive to processed foods: industrialization was accelerating. As a result, an increase in urbanization reduced the amount of space available for gardens and livestock, incomes rose so that more people could afford prepared foods, and women’s roles shifted to allow for wage labor. In fact, between 1859 and 1899, the output of the food processing industry expanded 1500%, and by 1900, manufactured food comprised about a third of commodities produced in the US (350).

So what led the way for this adoption of packaged foods? Believe it or not, horseradish.

Horseradish was particularly popular among English and German immigrant communities. It was used to flavor potatoes, cabbage, bread, meats, and fish—and some people even attributed medicinal properties to the condiment. It was also extremely time consuming to make: the root had to be grated, packed in vinegar and spices, and sealed in jars or pots. The potential market for prepared horseradish existed, but customers were suspicious of the contents of the green and brown glass bottles that served as packaging. Turnip and wood-fibers were popular fillers, and the opaque coloring of the bottles made it hard to judge the caliber of the contents.

Heinz's Horseradish. | Historical photo provided by Heinz. Click on image for license and information.

Heinz understood this—and saw the potential for selling consumers, especially women—something that they desperately wanted: time. In his teens, he began to bottle horseradish using his mother’s recipe—without fillers—in clear glass, and sold his products to local grocers and hotel owners. He emphasized the purity of his product and noted he had nothing to hide because he used clear glass so you could view the contents of his product. His strategy worked: By 1861, he was growing three and a half acres of horseradish to meet demand, and had made $2400.00 by year’s end (roughly $93,000.00 in 2012) (356).

He made enough money to eventually buy his father’s brickyard. But in 1869, Heinz opted to shift his energies entirely to food production. The discovery of oil in the Allegheny Valley had propelled the region into an industrial hub, and Heinz’s produce sales grew with the increased demands created by the influx of workers and businesses that opened to cater to their needs. So Heinz took a partner, L. Clarence Noble, a member of a wealthy Sharpsburg family, and the two opened a factory in the basement of a former home of some Heinz family members. They hired two women and a boy to make and pack the product, which was still just bottled horseradish. They decided on an anchor for their logo—it being a solid and reliable example that their customers could depend on.

The other members of the Heinz product family—celery sauce, mustard, and sweet and sour pickles—were integrated backwards as Heinz and Noble worked to minimize waste and expenditure. Because vinegar played such a large role in the production process, the company moved to manufacture its own vinegar—also under the banner of high quality that could be trusted to be unadulterated. And Heinz experimented constantly to add products that would utilize the existing capabilities of the company:

In the first five years of business, horseradish root, vinegar, cucumbers, onions, cabbages, and a few spices were the firm’s core ingredients. Its early product line, which soon broadened to include sauerkraut and pickled cauliflower, developed directly from inventive reliance on these makings. New products such a gherkins and mustard were combined to create still other goods. Chow chow, a chutney-like spread, was made from gherkins, onions, cauliflower, and mustard” (361).

The success of Heinz and Noble was intimately tied to their guarantee of an unadulterated product. And their reputation was such that customers came to expect high quality products from the Anchor-marked brand.

Business would continue to grow until 1875 when Heinz and Noble would fall under the effects of the Panic of 1873. The economy was depressed, credit was tight, and Heinz was short $3,000.00 to pay creditors and employees. On top of that, the growing season had been a good one, and there was no shortage of production goods—just hands to make them with. In November 1875, Heinz bounced a check, and it was a short step to December from there, when he and his partner filed for bankruptcy.

The story doesn’t end there, however, because we haven’t talked about ketchup. Heinz would struggle for a few years—he didn’t even have money for groceries in 1876—but ketchup would save the day. He went to his brother John and cousin Frederick for a loan, and launched another food-processing company. So it was that F&J Heinz was born. This time his family was heavily involved and they focused on the same products that had made Heinz and Noble a success. But sales lagged.

Heinz saw a market in ketchup just as he had done for horseradish. Ketchup was an immensely popular addition to fish, meat, vegetables and gravies since the 18th-century. It was a British staple that had been imported to the United States, and was well established by the 19th-century as a kitchen necessity. However, it lacked consistency and quality assurance. In addition, “overcooking, spoilage, and large quantities of camouflaging spices often destroyed taste and appearance” (373). Heinz utilized his reputation for delivering an unadulterated product of high and consistent standards—in a clear bottle, of course—to seize the market.

What Heinz seemed to understand was that people needed to feel that there was no trade-off with packaged foods. Women in particular, who would be the primary purchasers of these items, needed a product they could trust in a trade for the time they might spend in meal preparation for their families. A clear bottle suggested to consumers that Heinz had nothing to hide, unlike competitors who relied on opaque bottles to mask the caliber of their goods.

All of that from a clear bottle.

Cited:
Koehn, N. (2011). Henry Heinz and Brand Creation in the Late Nineteenth Century: Making Markets for Processed Food Business History Review, 73 (03), 349-393 DOI: 10.2307/3116181

It dawned on me—having professed to being a reluctant e-Reader adopter—that easily four times as many of these (apologies in advance for the blurry pictures):

would fit ever so easily into this:

The moment was fleeting, but it did give me pause. I haven’t yet finished the reorganization—I’ll need to get two more shelves in this coming weekend to wrap it up, but I can’t imagine not having a space where words surround me. I might actually hold off on buying anything new for a bit though.

• At Powered by Osteons, Kristina Killgrove has a fantastic seasonal post up on the symbolism of eggs and their role in burials.

• At Gambler’s House, teofilo clears up usage of the word “flimsy” in the context of Mississippian houses by highlighting an interesting bias that the word contributes.

• According to Dr. Stu, the onset of warmer weather might loosen your purse strings. Research that explores the intersection of sunshine, mood and our wallets suggest that people will spend more on warmer days.

• At Neurodojo, Zen Faulkes reports that fingerprints confound even the experts. He discusses the incidence of errors among experts—who were not permitted to report anything but certainty on their identifications.

Tune in next Thursday for more picks in anthropology, philosophy, research, and the social sciences.

Join the gang on March 29th, at the Peculier Pub in NYC for an informal evening of science and networking..

Updated details can always be found on the Facebook page. And as per the norm, for more information you can always:

• Read “What Is: #NYCSciTweetUp”
• Follow the #NYCSciTweetUp hashtag on Twitter
• Join the Facebook group
• Add yourself to the #NYCSciTweetUp Facebook invite

A smelly meeting. | Photo by Tom Freidel. CC. Click on image for license and information.

No, really. What would you do? What scents would you miss the most? Freshly laundered sheets? A certain perfume or cologne worn by someone you care about? Mom/dad/Aunt Jane’s meatloaf? The roses in your garden? While I might miss my favorite perfume, I’ll tell you what I wouldn’t miss: subway body odors. But what about if you never had a sense of smell—how would you even know what to miss? And how would your life be different?

The latter questions were the subject of a paper published in the open access journal PLoS One. The ability to smell can undoubtedly be useful. It can warn you of a gas leak or that the milk or meat you’re about to consume is bad. It could tell you that the iron is on or that you’ve stepped in something unpleasant. It entices us to eat—can you resist the savory smells of your favorite meal? Data from the NIH reports that 1%-2% of people in North America have a smell disorder that may range from the reduced ability to detect odors (hyposmia), which can be a temporary result of having a cold, to the inability to detect odors completely (anosmia). (That percentage rises to 15%-20% when global populations are counted.) Isolated congenital anosmia (ICA) occurs when otherwise healthy people are born without a sense of smell. And it’s rare: researchers estimate that 1 in 5,000-10,000 are afflicted (globally). But for those few individuals, how are their lives changed? This was the question that Ilona Croy and colleagues set out to answer:

If the sense of smell is important for ingestive behaviour, environmental hazards and social communication, like described above, how are these domains affected in patients with ICA? Do ICA patients have trouble maintaining their weight or do they obtain no joy in eating, for example? Do they accidentally eat spoiled food? Do they also worry about their body odor? And do they feel different in social situations? Or are people without a sense of smell not affected at all by this deficit and is olfaction just overestimated?

It turns out that these individuals don’t experience significant differences in quality of life. In fact, they often don’t realize that they’re missing anything—and that makes sense: how can you know something is missing if you’ve never had the item to begin with? Often, anosmia is diagnosed when someone close to the person notices a discrepancy in responses to offensive odors, which researchers believe may indicate that smell may not be as crucial to the ways we experience the world.

A survey of individuals with ICA also reveals that there may be other sensitivities to consider (1). For example, individuals with ICA reported a higher incidence of household accidents and a greater degree of social insecurity. The former relates to things like leaving the iron on or drinking spoiled milk. In this case, individuals reported developing coping strategies—”Hey, does this smell okay to you?”—to reduce difficulties. The latter reflects concerns about social relationships. The researchers propose that olfactory cues can provide important—subtle—information about other people that could help guide appropriate social interactions. In the absence of these cues, having ICA may result in hesitation in social settings. However, the authors are careful to note that additional research is needed to confirm both points.

It makes sense to a certain degree: Anything that might impact your ability to function within a social setting might heighten social insecurity, but it might have less to do with olfactory cues from others, and more to do with concerns about self—along the lines of “Does my breath smell?” or “Is my deodorant still working?”. Can you actually smell anxiety? I’m not sure, though you might be able to sense it and read it from body language and in other cues. And if you were in a situation where you could smell the fear on someone else, well, my guess is that you’d already know he was frightened. While pheromones may play a role in mate selection and in influencing behavior, their function in human relations remains somewhat mysterious.

One of the findings from the study is that individuals with ICA report being breast fed as often as controls. The reseachers note that this is somewhat surprising given the importance of smell for infants in locating the nipple. I think perhaps this is less surprising than one might suppose: human mothers can presumably guide their infants to the nipple if needed. Croy and colleagues also note that there does not seem to be noticeable effects on eating behaviors, which they find odd given the link between smell and taste. And while a decrease in appetite is often reported in individuals with hyposmia, the lack of a noticeable effect in eating behaviors in individuals with ICA may be the result of being socialized without a sense of smell. If the individuals and those closest to them are unaware of being different initially, then they’re likely not being treated differently at meal times—and we can’t forget that we just don’t know what the relationship between ICA and taste is.

Ultimately, smell may be less important to daily life activities for humans than for other members of the animal kingdom for whom a sense of smell is tied to daily survival—in part because we belong to social systems that can provide support and help us cope in the face of what might otherwise present a challenge. But this doesn’t mean smell is a dispensable sense.

Notes:
(1). The sample for the survey was small (n=32), but given the rarity of anosmia, this may be suitable for preliminary suggestions.

Reference:
Croy I, Negoias S, Novakova L, Landis BN, & Hummel T (2012). Learning about the Functions of the Olfactory System from People without a Sense of Smell PLoS ONE, 7 (3)

Design by Jason Heuer (click to see larger)

Botticelli's Primavera. | Public domain. Click on image for license and information.

On March 20th, 2012 at 1:14 AM EST the vernal equinox occurred. It actually may have occurred on March 19th depending on where you are, but still, allow me to wish you a very Happy Spring in the Northern Hemisphere! (And an equally Happy Fall in the Southern Hemisphere.) The March equinox marks the moment when the sun is positioned directly over the equator so that the Earth is neither tilted toward or away from the sun. As a result, day and night are believed to be approximately the same length (1). The observance of seasonal shifts by people all around the globe, capture moments of transition that reflect the rhythms of their lives.

Hades abducting Persephone, wall painting in the small royal tomb at Verghina (Vergina), Macedonia. | Public domain. Click on image for license and link.

In Greek and Roman mythology, Spring is tied to Persephone’s story. The legend goes following the fall of the Titans, fearsome giants rose to battle the gods. The defeat of these foes shook the Earth to its core, forcing Hades to the surface to check that his realm was secure. Aphrodite and Eros spied Hades, and the goddess encouraged her son to pierce the heart of the dark god—there is a bit of malice in her words as she encourages Eros to exert his influence and prove that none can escape love, whether it’s the God of the Underworld or the daughter of a certain Earth goddess who has taken to following the strong, independent examples of Athena and Artemis (2). Hades, so afflicted, chances upon Persephone, daughter of Demeter, a harvest and fertility goddess, and Zeus. Persephone was apparently the picture of innocence as she gathered flowers with her playmates. He captured her (we won’t delve too deeply into what that means exactly) and forcibly removed her to the Underworld to be his queen.

Leighton's "The Return of Persephone." | Public domain. Click on image for license and information.

Once Demeter learned she was missing, she searched high and low to try and uncover Persephone’s fate. Finally finding evidence suggesting Persephone has been swallowed by the Earth, Demeter’s grief was so great that she cursed the land so that nothing would grow. The Earth—and its inhabitants—suffered until a nymph, Arethusa, intervened and informed the grieving mother that she had seen Persephone in the Underworld. Demeter turned to Zeus and begged him to return her daughter. For the sake of the barren Earth, he agreed—providing Persephone had not eaten anything while with Hades. But she had: Hades had offered her a pomegranate, and she had sucked the pulp from six of the seeds. For six months, she would have to live with Hades and for the other six months she could return to her mother. Thus, the Greeks and Romans explained seasonal shifts: vegetation dies and the Earth goes into mourning as Demeter does when Persephone returns to Hades—the darkest, coldest months of Winter are those when Demeter’s grief is greatest—and the Earth blooms again when she returns, giving us Spring.

The key elements of seasonal death and rebirth in Persephone’s story are old themes that human populations around the globe have observed. In Babylonian mythology, for example, Tammuz (a god of harvests and food) is likewise mourned. The passing of the summer solstice, when the heat of the summer defeats agrarian efforts, marks his death. His lover Ishtar, a goddess of fertility, journeys to the underworld to bring him back and during this period the Earth effectively dies. Social anthropologist James Frazer writes of Tammuz and Ishtar in The Golden Bough[pdf]:

During her absence the passion of love ceased to operate: men and beasts alike forgot to reproduce their kinds: all life was threatened with extinction. So intimately bound up with the goddess were the sexual functions of the whole animal kingdom that without her presence they could not be discharged. A messenger of the great god Ea was accordingly despatched [sic] to rescue the goddess on whom so much depended. The stern queen of the infernal regions, Allatu or Eresh-Kigal by name, reluctantly allowed Ishtar to be sprinkled with the Water of Life and to depart, in company with her lover Tammuz, that the two might return together to the upper world, and that with their return all nature might revive.

Osiris, the Egyptian god of death and afterlife, has a complicated story of rebirth tied to his mythology. In short, the keeper and judge of the dead is also the keeper of life as he manages the flooding of the Nile and consequently the growth of crops. And Quetzalcoatl, a Mesoamerican deity often depicted as a feathered serpent, may have been tied to the regrowth of vegetation.

The list can go on. While there are parallels within mythologies—particularly those of the Ancient World—these stories ultimately suggest a way to reconcile changes that touch everyone. And while we may not necessarily rend our clothes and beat our breasts to remember Osiris’ dismemberment, we recognize these changes in our own way. Spring cleaning, for example, clears the old to make way for the new and can arguably instigate a psychological rebirth. How do you mark these periods of transition?

Notes:
(1). This is false. An equinox is not the same as an equilux. The former, meaning “equal night” in Latin, is a actually a moment when the sun is positioned directly over the equator—for many reasons, day is actually longer than night on these occasions. In the latter case, there are two specific occurrences when sunrise and sunset are approximately 12 hours apart. Thus, all is not quite equal on the equinox.

(2). Said daughter, the lost Persephone, repays the favor to Aphrodite by refusing to relinquish Adonis, a beautiful child who is found and sheltered by Aphrodite, after she asks Persephone to keep him safe for a time. Ultimately, he comes to share a similar fate: six months with Persephone and six months with Aphrodite and becomes tied to rebirth in his own right.

• At Bones Don’t Lie, Katy Meyers discusses what we can learn from grave goods.

• Kristina Killgrove examines biological and cultural processes of childbirth via the lens of mother-fetus burials at Powered By Osteons.

• Can the ways we eat influence our ability to taste? Possibly. At Inkfish, Elizabeth Preston discusses the independent evolution of taste (or lack thereof) in animals.

• At Originus, Cris Campbell urges caution when declaring artifacts as ornaments.

• Can you trust what you think see? Always? At Genealogy of Religion, Cris Campbell discusses perceptual bias and hallucinations.

• And finally, at Tropaion Nikolaos Markoulakis discusses the significance of fig cakes in a festival honoring Athena.

I’ll be back next week with more from anthropology, philosophy, and research.

Ducks awaiting the dinner table. | Photo by KDCosta, Feb 2012.

The smell greets you well before you step in the door to the tiny storefront selling chickens, turkeys, ducks, and supposedly, rabbits. It’s bearable, you might tell yourself, as you peer a bit anxiously into the dark, feather-strewn interior from which a cacophony of squawks occasionally erupts. Trying not to breathe too deeply, you step inside and join the queue, which moves with the briskness of a well-tuned assembly line. You’re going to purchase live poultry—well, it might not be live when you leave with it, but it won’t be the frozen variety from your supermarket.

New York City is home to about 80 live poultry markets, which cater to the robust immigrant community for whom live poultry is a tradition rooted in a necessity: in places where people raise their own livestock, refrigerated goods can be difficult to obtain and a needless expense. Live poultry markets have been criticized for the treatment of the animals, however, which are often packed into crates and cages for extended periods and are allegedly left without food or water or clean accommodations. And in China, at least, they have been identified as a possible source of H5N1 infections. Despite these concerns, business appeared to be fairly steady at the small shop on Rockaway Boulevard in Queens, NY, as a stream of customers filtered in and out—some albeit more squeamishly than others.

Once inside, I huddled a little anxiously next to S, trying not to think about what might be in the trickle of greenish-brown liquid flowing into the drain in the center of the floor, and trying not to get too close to the racks of cages serving as temporary housing for medium-sized white ducks, large gray speckled ducks, turkeys, roosters, white hens, and brown hens. The live poultry market we visited was small by comparison to some of the other larger establishments in the neighborhood, where you can get goats and sometimes cows and pigs and other animals. We took note of the ordering process, while we inched to the front where a man stood in a very dirty apron, heavy black boots, and gloves. “What ya havin’?” he would ask, his Trinidadian accent running the words together. And then, “What size?” (Large, medium, or small.) He would stride over to the appropriate holding cage, reach in fearlessly, and grab a protesting bird, string it up by its feet to a scale in the center of the room and note its weight, ask a few more questions, and then toss the bird down a chute leading to a back room where it would be slaughtered, plucked, roasted, cut, and bagged while the customer waited.

Getting weighed in. | Photo by KDCosta, Feb 2012.

When I was growing up, my Trinidadian parents regularly obtained their poultry from markets like this one, but they had never taken me along. They swore that the chicken was fresher, tasted better, and that you got more for your money when compared with the supermarket variety. They also were more confident that they knew what they were getting—after all, they picked out the bird. S and I were there to pick up a chicken in honor of a long overdue visit from my mother. Standing in line, however, I wasn’t so sure about the purchase. My senses were assaulted with smells and sounds that were new and shocking to me. Like many Americans, I might have subconsciously known them to be a part of livestock slaughtering process, but wouldn’t otherwise have had to face them. I inched closer to S, increasingly glad I had left my coat in the car and worn my beat-up fishing sneakers as the line drew us closer to that greenish-brown fluid on the floor.

The door to the processing area swung open, and the frame of another man filled the doorway. He lumbered over to the cages and peered in. “Stand aside, Miss,” he said to me, as he pulled a tray out from under the cage filled with feces and feathers. The confines of the small shop quickly filled with swirling feathers and I had just enough time to desperately wish I had thought to tie my hair up in addition to wearing those old sneakers. When he pulled a second tray out, the dust and feathers proved to be too much. I squeezed S’s arm and backed up hastily to the exit. An older West Indian woman glanced at me curiously, and then watched with some amusement as I took a deep breath of air and shook myself sending a flurry of dust particles into the bright sunlight. I turned just in time to see S talking to the man in charge of weighing the birds. In a matter of seconds, a white hen was weighed and disappeared down the chute-of-no-return.

S joined me outside. “I got us a medium-sized bird,” he said showing me his ticket and shrugging. This was new to him too. “Is that okay?” “I think so,” I said as he picked a few feathers out of my hair. “You are covered in stuff,” he said wrinkling his nose. “Come on, let’s go grab the rest of the ingredients we need. And you need to shake yourself off before you get in the car later.” We crossed the street to a supermarket where we soon found ourselves in the freezer section facing somewhat sparse shelves of pre-packaged drumsticks, thighs, and wings. The packages looked old and the meat they contained was oddly discolored in some places. I suppose in a neighborhood where so much poultry is sold from a live market, the frozen options aren’t necessarily going to fly off of the shelves.

S and I crossed the street back to the market where we joined the small queue waiting at the door to the slaughter room. The cages looked substantially emptier and the market had a sense of a lull about it. The weighing man was gone from his post. In fact, the only person around was the cashier. Though the floor had been washed and the brownish-green liquid was gone, a bird had relieved itself in transit to the weighing post leaving splotches of feces in its wake. No one had gotten around to cleaning that up yet and customers stepped around it without looking down. The room was humid and small feathers stuck to the cages. S paid for our medium-sized bird and joined the few people waiting near the door to the back room, which would occasionally open and a worker would appear with a small plastic bag and call out a number. “What number?” he asked S on his third pass. S showed him the ticket and he disappeared to return with our bag. Still warm, we put it in the car and headed home. And I made a childhood dish, just as my mom had made it for me, for her.

The chute-of-no-return. | Photo by KDCosta, Feb 2012.

Critics of these small markets are loud and focused, calling for customers to adopt a plant-based diet and decrying the treatment of the animals. Primary concerns of activist groups, such as United Poultry Concerns, are that the birds are kept in cramped dirty transport cages without access to fresh food and clean water, are handled roughly by workers, that the slaughter process is unnecessarily cruel and painful, and that live birds are sometimes sold to individuals who are beyond regulations. The latter issue may actually be exempt [pdf] from federal review, but at the live market level, federal and state jurisdiction seems a bit murky. Though a 2005 notice from the Food and Safety Inspection Service in the Federal Register [pdf] reminded poultry slaughterhouses that they are required to treat the birds as humanely as possible:

The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is reminding all poultry slaughter establishments that, under the Poultry Products Inspection Act (PPIA) and Agency regulations, live poultry must be handled in a manner that is consistent with good commercial practices, which means they should be treated humanely. Although there is no specific federal humane handling and slaughter statute for poultry, under the PPIA, poultry products are more likely to be adulterated if, among other circumstances, they are produced from birds that have not been treated humanely, because such birds are more likely to be bruised or to die other than by slaughter.

It appears, however, that steps have been taken to ensure consistent slaughter practices, and from what I witnessed, some of the suggestions [pdf] proposed by activists have been adopted. For example, birds removed from cages were held by their feet, which was a request meant to minimize the damage to the bird.

These markets tend to thrive in urban areas with large immigrant populations, who bring this familiarity with livestock with them as they reconstruct essences of home. (For more on this, you might enjoy these two posts on the neighborhood of Jackson Heights.) They often face NIMBY arguments from local residents who aren’t at all thrilled about having these small-scale slaughterhouses down the street. And there’s no arguing that the smell can be difficult to escape. However, perhaps as local food movements gain more support, these establishments will gain a firmer foothold in the food supply landscape—birds sold in New York City, for example, come from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New England as opposed to Maryland (Perdue), Arkansas (Tyson), or Colorado (Pilgrim’s Pride).

Live markets can reintroduce customers to the process of procuring meat, which—surprisingly—does not magically appear on grocery shelves. Meat sold in supermarkets is anonymous and impersonal. At a live market, even if you aren’t specifically choosing which animal you’re taking home—and you certainly can do just that: we watched one woman specifically instruct the weighing man which bird she wanted (“No, not that one. The one over there, to the side. Ayup. That’s the thing, right there.”)—you’re making a conscious decision about what you’re purchasing and you’re intimately involved in the animal’s demise. You, after all, have selected it for dinner. And it will feed your family, perhaps over several meals. None of that is supposed to dissuade you from consuming meat, but perhaps it makes you more aware of the foods you are choosing.

Can you measure someone's nature by the temperature of their hands? | Photo from iStock.

It’s a curious saying: “Cold hands, warm heart.” It proposes that people whose hands are usually cold actually have kind and loving personalities. There is no counterpart as far as I can tell. That is, people with warm hands aren’t reputed to have cold hearts. They’re just regular folk whose body temperatures hover at the norm of 98.6 degrees F.

In 2008 researchers Lawrence Williams and John Bargh garnered some press for disbunking this saying. The study found that experiences of physical warmth activated concepts of interpersonal warmth. What is interpersonal warmth? It refers to a series of traits that we perceive in others as being favorable to us—for example, we might talk about how friendly, or helpful, or trustworthy someone might be, which helps us assess whether he is friend-material or someone who should be avoided. Exposure to physical warmth seemed to trigger behaviors to encourage these perceptions about us. So, for example, we might be more likely to share or think ahead about and plan for reciprocal behaviors. Exposure to cold seemed to help us focus our attentions more selfishly.

The warm-cold divide may be rooted in our physical experiences with these sensations. Experiences of warmth may trigger other associations we have with this sensation, which links it to psychological warmth. As an example, Williams and Bargh cited Harry Harlow’s classic study with macaques where infants demonstrated a preference for a cloth surrogate mother over a wire mother who provided food. If you don’t know this study, it’s actually an interesting read, and you can learn more here. If you’re interested, there’s also a video, but be warned, it might tug at your heart a bit—Harlow’s experiments have been criticized as being cruel and unethical, however, the video does not contain any explicit physical violence against the macaques. The issues are more psychological. (I also summarized the study following the video, so feel free to skip ahead.)

[Disclaimer: This video shows infant macaques being held in cages, and may be difficult for some people to watch. However, there is no sign of physical violence. And it is highly illustrative of Harlow's research.]

The short of it is that researchers presented two surrogate “mothers” to infant macaques. One was made of cloth and heated with a light bulb and the other was constructed from wire but provided food. The monkeys chose the cloth mothers for comfort and only turned to the wire mothers when driven to do so by hunger. Harlow used these findings to establish the importance of comfort from contact, particularly in the early years of life. The absence of this sort of comfort has been tied to severe developmental issues later in life. Harlow’s work has been instrumental in the ways child care agencies approach and design care policies for children.

So we have these associations of comfort and safety and trust tied to warmth because our early caregivers provide these components of psychological warmth in addition to actual physical warmth (606). In the Williams and Bargh study, research participants who briefly held a hot cup of coffee, were more likely to perceive others as having warmer personality traits than participants who briefly held an iced coffee. And participants who held a hot therapeutic pad were more likely later to choose a reward that they could share with a friend than those who held a cold therapeutic pad (607).

The study pinpoints of the influence of external factors in our relationships with others. If you’re exposed to cold, for example, which can be an uncomfortable state, you may be more inclined to think of yourself. It’s actually pretty understandable that you want to make yourself comfortable. If you’re warm, which means you are presumably comfortable (not hot and sweaty, which can be uncomfortable), you may be more receptive to thinking about others because your needs are already accounted for. So cold hands do not equate with a “warm heart,” but suggests a state of discomfort that should be addressed.

But the saying maintains that people whose hands are usually cold, have warm hearts regardless. So while a temporary environmental change may impact how we perceive others and behave towards them, is the same true of someone whose experience of hot and cold remains more or less constant? That person who is cold in the heat of the summer months—you know the one I mean—is she less psychologically warm than others? Or perhaps this saying evolved to help normalize an unusual experience?

If our aversion is cold is such that it generates negative connections, it makes sense that we would want to remove people we’re fond of from those associations. So “cold hands, warm heart” becomes a means of dismissing an anomaly and asserting sameness. The hot-cold assessment may be a “first-pass” judgment regarding the suitability of an individual to belong to our social networks. Williams and Bargh suggest that it may also be “an automatic and obligatory evaluation that does not require the perceiver’s intent to make it” (606). Does “cold hands, warm heart” then function as a way to by-pass this initial assessment? My sense is that the phrase is used more affectionately than this context would permit—but it does perhaps serve as a way to assuage concerns about self and the psychological implications/associations with coldness.

Cited:
Williams LE, & Bargh JA (2008). Experiencing physical warmth promotes interpersonal warmth. Science (New York, N.Y.), 322 (5901), 606-7 PMID: 18948544