From negotiating property prices to blind-guessing the result of a long multiplication, the previous exposure to certain data can greatly influence our choices and decisions. This phenomenon, first theorized by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, is called anchoring: a cognitive bias where a particular reference point or 'anchor' influences an individual's decisions. This exposure to a value and its influence in decision making plays a big role in both the scientific community where anchoring could introduce a human bias into research, as well as in day-to-day life where the existence of anchors could be a powerful tool in marketing, economic decisions, or negotiations.
Press Release: The Body's Built-in Cancer-Fighting System
The battle with finding a cure for cancer has been long and arduous, given that it is a unique disease arising from a random change in genetic material. However, in recent years we have come to realize that our body has all the machinery needed to fight cancer on its own, but a few key players, monocytes and macrocytes, prevent our body from eradicating cancer cells. The review paper published in the October issue of the Journal of Young Investigators analyzes how the immune cells monocytes and macrophages affect tumor cell growth as well as how we are combating this issue.