Parents who strongly disagree may not be very motivated to find a solution when they hear that they must spend two full hours with a mediator. Photo: Morguefile.

Four out of ten child custody cases which are heading to court end in agreement following mediation. Mediation produced agreements in 39 per cent of cases which were destined for legal proceedings.

“This is a surprisingly high proportion, considering that the parents initially disagreed so strongly that one or both wanted a court to make a decision,” says Marian Ådnanes, a senior research scientist at SINTEF.

The figures are from a recent study which SINTEF and NTNU Samfunnsforskning, the social science department at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, has carried out on behalf of the Norwegian Ministry of Children, Equality and Social Inclusion. [continue reading…]

Glutamatergic neuron of the hippocampus. © MPI of Psychiatry

Emotional balance is regulated by molecular factors behind stress response. When healthy people are faced with threatening situations, they react with a suitable behavioural response and do not descend into a state of either panic or indifference, as is the case, for example, with patients who suffer from anxiety.

With the help of genetic studies on mice, scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry have discovered two opposing neuronal regulatory circuits for the generation and elimination of fear. Both are controlled by the stress-inducing messenger substance corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) and its type 1 receptor (CRHR1). The availability of these factors in neurons that release glutamate in brain areas of the limbic system activates a neuronal network which causes anxiety behaviour. Conversely, in dopamine-releasing neurons in the mid-brain, these factors give rise to behaviour that reduces fear. Because disorders of the stress factors may be observed in many patients with affective illnesses, the scientists suspect that the pathological alteration of the CRHR1-dependent regulatory circuits may be at the root of such emotional maladies. [continue reading…]

Static visualization of the social network of some of the persons speaking by phone (300,000 customers). Each circle is a customer and each line is a call between two customers. The network is very dense, a reflection of the small world of the social networks.

This study, which has analyzed around 9,000 million calls throughout almost a year period, is the first to identify these features of the communication process and to quantify their impact in the diffusion of information. “This is something very important in the processes such as the diffusion of commercial information, viral marketing and the market trends of products, but also in situations such as the spreading of rumours, opinions, policies, etc.”, explained one of the authors of this research, Esteban Moro,.

The study’s main conclusion, published in the scientific Journal, Physical Review E, is the finding that people communicate in bursts. In this way, our behaviour (in communication as well as in other activities) does not happen in a homogenous way over time, but rather there is universal behaviour in which there is no communication, followed by short intervals called bursts. “This aspect of human activity which has also been observed in other activities such as e-mail, web page visits and stock market operations governs communication between people,” , the researchers concluded. The effect of the bursts is that it slows down the information diffusion since the large periods of inactivity in the communication between two persons make it less likely that information is passed from one to the other. The study also highlights another important aspect of human communications: in group conversations, that is, although it is produced in bursts, these bursts happen at the same time among the members of the social group, which then accelerates information diffusion within these groups.

When, how much, and how do I communicate

The main objective of the research is to try to understand the temporal pattern of communication among persons in a social network. “As opposed to the static vision of a social network (who I interact with), our study seeks to understand when and how these social relations are produced,” Professor Esteban Moro elaborated. And with two purposes, the first being, to see if relations in a social network can be quantified better, that is, determine if the communication rhythm between two persons allows us to know something about the “strength” or characteristics of the relation (family member, acquaintance, friend, colleague, etc..); and the second, to investigate the impact of these rhythms on the propagation of information in social networks, in processes such as viral marketing, product recommendations, etc.

Source: Universidad Carlos III de Madrid – Oficina de Información Científica