Psychology undergraduate Martinique Jones has conducted research in Houston schools.

Check out their stories on the Know Web site.

Martinique Jones
Major: Psychology
Research Topic: The African American Dream: A Progressive Discussion of Academic Achievement in African American Students

Margaret Sanders
Major: Plan II and Psychology
Research Topic: The Effect of Categorization on Judgments of Paintings

Zachary Garber
Major: Government
Research Topic: William Lauder’s Impact on the History of Barbados

Jose Ybarra
Major: Human Biology
Research Topic: Nerve Regeneration and Cellular Migration

And, Sarah Miracle, an architecture undergraduate student, who does hands-on materials research with Materials Lab Curator Zaneta Hong.

Steven Weinberg at Google

Steven Weinberg, the physicist, spoke at Google headquarters in California recently. His talk about his book, “Lake Views: The World and the Universe,” is posted on authors@google on YouTube.

David Buss, an evolutionary psychologist, spoke at the American Natural History Museum. His topic, Why Humans Have Sex. The talk is posted as a podcast by the New York Academy of Science. Buss draws on the book he and colleague, Cindy Meston, another University of Texas at Austin psychology faculty member, wrote, “Why Women Have Sex.”

These are among the questions that University of Texas at Austin researchers answered in the fall 2009 semester.

Here’s a look back at what they found.

Women and sex: Let me count the whys
Challenging the idea that women’s sexual motivations are tied exclusively to romantic emotions or reproduction, a new study by Cindy Meston and David Buss, psychologists at The University of Texas at Austin found women’s sexual decisions are motivated by a shocking array of reasons that range from the mundane (”I was bored”) to a sense of adventure (”I wanted to know what it was like before getting married”), and from the altruistic (”I felt sorry for him”) to the borderline evil (”I wanted to give him a sexually transmitted disease”).

Video: Meston and Buss lecture to the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing

No sex, please. We’re Mycocepurus smithii

The asexual ant, Mycocepurus-smithii

Who knew? Bats are balladeers
Video: Sid the Bat sings a love songIt might not sound like crooners singing about love on the radio, but bats sing love songs to each other too, say researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University who are believed to be the first to decode the mysterious sounds made by the winged creatures.

Fossils shake dinosaur family tree

Tawa hellae

It had to be you … on Facebook

Sam Gosling

Toddlers talking have their own grammar rules

Colin Bannard

Find more on Texas research at http://www.utexas.edu/research/

Kim Fromme, psychology professor

Blacked-out drinkers might not remember whom they were with, what they said or what they did, leading to embarrassing, if not dangerous, situations.

Psychology Professor Kim Fromme’s lab is one of the few in the country to research blackouts. She studies drinking among college students.

I interviewed Fromme for an article about alcoholism and addiction research at the university. That article focused on another part of her research. Here’s some of what her lab has learned about blackouts.

Fifty percent of people who drink enough alcohol to reach a blood alcohol content (BAC) of 0.06 percent or greater have blackouts, but most blackouts occur when BAC reaches 0.20 percent or greater. The legal limit is 0.08 percent.

For the studies, she recruits people who have had blackouts in the past and people who have not. Some of the research includes alcohol administration (drinking) in Fromme’s Bar Lab, but not to the point of blacking out.

The blackout studies show some people are more vulnerable to experiencing blackouts than others when they drink too much.

“We’ve found that people who do and do not experience blackouts don’t differ on memory processes when sober,” she said. “It’s only when alcohol is introduced that they differ, which is pretty interesting.”

One of Fromme’s doctoral students, Reagan Wetherill, has run alcohol administration studies to examine the memory processes of those who experience blackouts.

In one study, Wetherill used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) brain scans. The participants, people had experienced blackouts and those who hadn’t, were tested twice, once sober and once intoxicated to a target BAC of 0.08 percent.

Wetherill’s findings helped identify the neural structures in the brain that are different between people who do and do not have alcohol-induced blackouts.

Fromme said that future blackout research in her lab probably will address the question of whether alcohol is unique in its capacity to affect memory in people who have experienced blackouts.

“The key question about blackouts, for me,” she said, “is whether alcohol intoxication uniquely causes the memory deficits we see when those who have previously experienced blackouts are intoxicated – or whether they would show the same memory impairments if you decreased their cognitive processes in another way, say with a divided attention task.

“Given the resources, I would like to attempt to replicate our findings about memory deficits (in those who previously experienced blackouts) using a different cognitive load, and compare those findings to those for alcohol intoxication.”

Prof. Kim Fromme in the Bar Lab.

The Bar Lab is exactly that: A bar laboratory. It’s where Kim Fromme, a professor in the Department of Psychology, and her students conduct research on college students and drinking.

It looks like a small neighborhood bar might look if it was staffed with a cleaning crew and smoking had never been allowed.

There are tables, bar stools, neon beer signs and a television on the wall. The lighting can go down low and the music can be pumped up.

The mirror at the back of the bar is one-way so the researchers can observe the participants, who are recorded and videotaped.

Fromme’s lab is one of eight in the country. Her graduate school mentor, Dr. G. Alan Marlatt, set up the first bar lab at the University of Washington.

In a bar lab, research participants react more realistically to experimental scenarios, Fromme said.

“Cues are important,” she said. “Particularly if you want to see how somebody drinks naturally, you’re better off putting them in a bar as a drinking situation than you would, say, a classroom.”

To get to the Bar Lab, participants walk through part of the Seay Building, which houses the Psychology Department. They sign informed-consent releases. They know they are in an experiment.

Still, Fromme said, it’s remarkable how quickly people forget they’re not in a real bar.

“Everybody comes in and says, ‘Yeah, I know you’re watching me. Where’s the camera?’ ” she said. “But within five minutes it’s, “Give me another drink.’ ”

Then there’s that favorite cocktail of the psychology set, the placebo.

”To this day the power of it never ceases to amaze me,” Fromme said.

It must be said, however, that the placebo the Bar Lab bartenders serve is more than a Shirley Temple garnished with a maraschino cherry.

“When you’re doing a placebo study, it’s got to feel, smell, act real,” Fromme said.

The researchers infuse the area with alcohol smells, rim the glasses with a small amount of alcohol and set the lights and music to appropriate levels.

“You’ve got all of these cues, your eyes and your nose and your taste is saying booze and that helps fool the brain,” she said.

She recalled an evening when she checked in on a project run by a graduate student. The scene was a bit boisterous.

“I pulled the student out and said, ‘Oh, alcohol night?’ and he said, ‘placebo,’ ” she recounted. “I mean I was fooled walking in and seeing the people laughing and talking and I smelled the alcohol.”

After one experiment, a participant took exception when she told him he had been drinking a placebo.

“He said, ‘No you didn’t. I’m drunk,’” Fromme said. “’I’m unsteady. I was flirting with the bartender.’ ”

They stepped over to the Breathalyzer, which showed his blood alcohol content was not even on the charts—at 0.00 percent.

At the end of an experimental session, the participants are required to stay in the lab until their blood alcohol content is below 0.02 percent. Even then they can’t drive themselves home. They are either provided with a taxi ride or make arrangements for someone to pick them up and take them home.

Here’s a roundup of some of the more interesting discoveries in exercise, psychology, business and statistics.

Add crunch to your post workout recovery

In a study of well-trained cyclists, exercise physiologist Lynne Kammer found that a bowl of whole grain cereal is as good as a sports drink for recovery after exercise. The research was supported by the General Mills Bell Institute of Health and Nutrition.

At the tone, say goodbye to that bad memory (someday)

Marie Monfils

Is that market index half full or half empty?

Nicholas Seybert

Stocks or Scratch-off game? Same thing for some investors

Alok Kumar

Coffee’s not the only thing mountain grown; Amazon’s frogs are, too

Colorful poison frogs in the Amazon owe their great diversity to ancestors that leapt into the region from the Andes Mountains several times during the last 10 million years, a new study from graduate student Juan Santos suggests.

Been screened at the airport too often? Statistics to the rescue!

William Press