In Discover Magazine: 20 Things You Didn't Know about Allergies

Curing them by giving yourself hookworms, preventing them by putting RFID tags in your food, and avoiding them in Knoxville, the Allergy Capital of the country.

1. Our immune system may be like those small bands of Japanese “holdout” soldiers after World War II. Not knowing that the war was over, they hid for years, launching guerrilla attacks on peaceful villages.
   
2. With our living environment well scrubbed of germs, our body’s immune “soldiers” mistakenly fire on innocent peanuts and cat dander.

Read more (items 3-20).

This Week in Psychology Today: The Show Must Go On

And the Experiment Must Continue 

In the early 1960s, after the trial began in Jerusalem of Nazi Adolf Eichmann, Yale social scientist Stanley Milgram conducted an experiment in pathological obedience. The setting was a fake (but convincing) language learning lab. On the basis of his scientific authority, the experimenter convinced test subjects to administer what they thought were brutal, even life-threatening corrective shocks to "learners" trying to memorize word pairs. Eighty percent of the test subjects obeyed, and they did so despite having voiced strong moral qualms about what was being asked of them.

Milgram wanted to learn whether it was possible that the millions of guards, police, and informers complicit in the Holocaust had merely been following orders, as many had claimed. He concluded from the ease with which he convinced people to be ruthless that it was, indeed, possible. "Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process." 

Fast forward about 50 years. A team from both Aix-Marseille University and Paris West University (Nanterre) recreated Milgram's famous experiment—only this time the experimenter had no scientific authority. The experiment's setting was a reality TV show shot before a live studio audience, and the experimenter was a fashionably attired game show host. Did the unwitting "contestants" follow orders? Was the host's authority significant enough to turn contestants into monsters? And what might the new experiment's results mean for reality TV, with the shows continually besting each other to be the most barbarous?

Find out at Psychology Today.

This Week at Psychology Today: One Country's Porn is Another's Pablum

Think of it as "Debbie Does Dallas" meets "I'm OK, You're OK." Ok, if that doesn't work for you, answer this question: Of Norway, the United States, and Japan, which country do you think shows more girls who wanna have fun (and get to)? The answer is in my "The Bejeezus Out of Me" column at Psychology Today.

This Week at Psychology Today: Sh*t My Chimp Throws

And the Origins of Humans' Ability to Say Anything

What's in those disgusting balls of waste that chimps hoard and throw. Maybe—just maybe—the roots of human language. It's in my new "The Beejezus out of Me: Startling Behavioral Science" blog at Psychology Today.

This Week at Psychology Today: Social Media, WAY Past, and Present.

Q: What do ancient sacred sites in New Mexico and Facebook have in common?

A: Walls, the universe, and everything

See "Social Media, WAY Past and Present" in my new The Bejeezus out of Me: Startling Behavioral Science column at Psychology Today.

In Discover Magazine This Month: 20 Things You Didn't Know about Clouds

1 When moist, warm air rises to a cooler elevation, water condenses onto microscopic “seeds” like dust, ash, or bacteria. Water + seeds + updraft = clouds.

2 If there’s more water vapor than places for it to condense, already-formed ice crystals can also serve as seeds. As the crystals take on moisture, they may become too heavy for updrafts to support. Time for the umbrella.

3 It makes sense, then, that adding seeds to thin clouds should make them rain out. Believing the theory, 37,000 Chinese peasants shot rockets filled with silver iodide (a widely used seeding agent) into clouds.

More

When Bad Odors Happen to Clean People

Some people stink no matter how often they bathe. In August 2011 the American Journal of Medicine published a study of 353 people who had "malodor production" that couldn't be explained by poor hygiene, flatulence, or dental problems. They found that about one third of them tested positive for trimethylaminuria (TMAU), a genetically-transmitted disease that thwarts the body's ability to metabolize trimethylamine (TMA), a chemical compound common in eggs, some legumes, wheat germ, saltwater fish, and organ meats. When TMA is inadequately metabolized, it accumulates in urine, sweat, and saliva. The result is a gently radiating, fishy stench that is far from popular on the play-yard or at the water cooler.

TMAU was first identified as a disease in 1970, and the chemical test used to identify it is common. What is special about this study is that its researchers hail from the Monell Chemical Senses Center, a flavor lab in Philadelphia. Monell's team paid its usual heightened attention to aromatic nuance. What they found was a rich and varied TMAU bouquet. Because the disease is classified as rare (fewer than 200,000 affected individuals in the United States), typically doctors sniff for the characteristic fishiness before authorizing the chemical test. The researchers in this study suggest that, by doing so, they may be missing positive cases. Which is unfortunate because, once TMAU is identified, the odor problem can be solved. A diet hygienically "clean" of the foods carrying high TMA concentrations clears the air.