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Art and Design - 27.03.2017

Birmingham hosts major research conference to help shape better world
A re-examination of the iconic John Constable work, Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows , has found that the original 1831 exhibited version of the painting did not have a rainbow - and that it was added later to correspond with the time of his best friend's death over a year later. The new research explains how a reassessment of the solar geometry of the painting, and the painter's considerable understanding of contemporary rainbow theory, suggest that that the rainbow was added in at a later date as an homage to John Fisher, who died on the afternoon of 25 August 1832.

Art and Design - Physics - 15.03.2017

Quantum physics offers insight into music expressivity
Scientists at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) are bringing us closer to understanding the musical experience through a novel approach to analysing a common musical effect known as vibrato. Vibrato is the up-down oscillation in pitch introduced during instrumental or vocal performance, intended to add expressivity and to facilitate sound projection, and commonly used in opera.

Art and Design - 23.02.2017

New £100 million Rosalind Franklin research institute to improve health through physical science innovation
Listening to five minutes of West African or Indian pop music can give the listener more positive attitudes towards those cultures, research from the Universities of Oxford and Exeter has found. Research had previously shown that making music can foster affiliation and cooperation among participants, but this study shows that even listening to music can improve someone's unconscious attitudes towards other cultural groups.

Art and Design - 14.02.2017

Listening to music can improve unconscious attitudes towards other cultures
Listening to five minutes of West African or Indian pop music can give the listener more positive attitudes towards those cultures, research from the Universities of Oxford and Exeter has found. Research had previously shown that making music can foster affiliation and cooperation among participants, but this study shows that even listening to music can improve someone's unconscious attitudes towards other cultural groups.

Life Sciences - Art and Design - 08.02.2017

Sex, drugs, and rock & roll chemistry in the brain
The same brain-chemical system that mediates feelings of pleasure from sex, recreational drugs, and food is also critical to experiencing musical pleasure, according to a study by McGill University researchers published today in the Nature journal Scientific Reports . The same brain-chemical system that mediates feelings of pleasure from sex, recreational drugs, and food is also critical to experiencing musical pleasure, according to a study by McGill University researchers published today in the Nature journal Scientific Reports .

Art and Design - Life Sciences - 04.01.2017

Lack of joy from music linked to brain disconnection
Using fMRI data, researchers found that while listening to music, specific musical anhedonics presented a reduction in the activity of the Nucleus Accumbens Have you ever met someone who just wasn't into music' They may have a condition called specific musical anhedonia, which affects three-to-five per cent of the population.

Art and Design - 21.12.2016

Kids think stereotypes reflect how world should be
ANN ARBOR'Once children believe that a group is characterized by a certain trait, they think individual people within that group should also be judged by that trait, according to a University of Michigan study. U-M researchers introduced participants to unfamiliar groups?"Hibbles" and "Glerks"?who differed from each other in harmless behaviors, such as the kind of food they eat, language they speak, music they listen to and games they play.

Art and Design - Health - 12.12.2016

Men should avoid rock music when playing board games, say scientists
Mozart may enhance a man's performance in board games - while AC/DC may hinder their chances, according to new research. The scientists behind the study, from Imperial College London and the Royal College of Music , say classical music may be the best option for men when concentrating on a task. Music was found to have no effect on women's performance, though they generally performed better than men at the game involved in the study.

Art and Design - Social Sciences - 30.11.2016

We like what experts like - and what is expensive
Whether Peter Paul Rubens or Damien Hirst - the personal taste of art can be argued. Scientists from the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Vienna have now shown that the individual taste of art is also dependent on social factors. The personal valuation of art was influenced by who else liked the work - or not.

Art and Design - 08.11.2016

Australian Pied Butcherbirds Improvise Like Jazz Musicians
Scientists at Freie Universität Berlin, City College of New York, and Macquarie Universität in Sydney Present New Findings ' 386/2016 from Nov 08, 2016 A new study indicates that the songs of some birds follow the same rules as human music. The study was done by scientists from Freie Universität Berlin, the City College of New York, and Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.

Art and Design - 27.09.2016

Art and Design - Economics / Business - 06.09.2016

Alcohol content in YouTube music videos breaks industry codes of practice, new study finds
"F**k it! Let's get to drinking - poison our livers!" — some of the lyrics in YouTube music videos which researchers at the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies say may harmfully influence adolescents in Britain. The new research is an extension of previous work which found that UK teenagers were heavily exposed to images of alcohol and tobacco in YouTube music, effectively glamourising the habits and promoting underage drinking and smoking.

Media - Art and Design - 21.07.2016

Media fuels anti-Muslim attitudes and policies
ANN ARBOR'When Americans rely primarily on television shows, movies and the news media for information about Muslims, their attitude toward Muslims may be negatively influenced, a new University of Michigan study finds. But relying on direct with Muslims for information produces the opposite effect. "These findings reflect the importance of media and direct in influencing attitudes towards marginalized groups," said Muniba Saleem, U-M assistant professor of communication studies and the study's lead author.

Art and Design - Life Sciences - 13.07.2016

Why we like the music we do
In Western styles of music, from classical to pop, some combinations of notes are generally considered more pleasant than others. To most of our ears, a chord of C and G, for example, sounds much more agreeable than the grating combination of C and F# (which has historically been known as the 'devil in music?).

Art and Design - Health - 10.05.2016

Scientists create a new way to categorize music
A team of scientists from McGill University, the University of Cambridge, and Stanford Graduate School of Business developed a new method of coding and categorizing music. They found that people's preference for these musical categories is driven by personality. The researchers say the findings have important implications for industry and health professionals.

Art and Design - Life Sciences - 25.04.2016

Music improves baby brain responses to music and speech
Rock your baby in sync with music and you may wonder how the experience affects her and her developing brain. A new study by scientists at the University of Washington's Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS) shows that a series of play sessions with music improved 9-month-old babies' brain processing of both music and new speech sounds.

Linguistics / Literature - Art and Design - 22.03.2016

Researchers to investigate the connection between languages and creativity
A new Oxford-led research programme will explore the crucial role of creativity in the use of languages and investigate more creative forms of language learning, providing a forum for universities, schools and other partners to forge a new and more cohesive identity  for modern foreign languages (MFL).

Life Sciences - Art and Design - 16.12.2015

Music in the brain
Scientists have long wondered if the human brain contains neural mechanisms specific to music perception. Now, for the first time, MIT neuroscientists have identified a neural population in the human auditory cortex that responds selectively to sounds that people typically categorize as music, but not to speech or other environmental sounds.

Art and Design - Psychology - 30.11.2015

Opinion: What your musical taste says about your personality
David Greenberg (Department of Psychology) discusses how musical preferences are linked to thinking styles. We're exposed to music for nearly 20% of our waking lives. But much of our musical experience seems to be a mystery.

Art and Design - Social Sciences - 19.11.2015

Seven minutes of meditation can reduce racial prejudice, study finds
Seven minutes of meditation can reduce racial prejudice, study finds A popular meditation technique that's intended to create feelings of kindness can also reduce prejudice, according to new University of Sussex research. The study , published online in the journal Motivation and Emotion , found that just seven minutes of Loving-kindness meditation (LKM), a Buddhist practise that promotes unconditional kindness towards oneself and others, is effective at reducing racial bias.