1. Pigs could grow human organs in stem cell breakthrough. Scientists have been able to use stem cells created from adult rats and then make mouse embryos grow organs that would be compatible with that adult rat. It is hoped that this accomplishment is the first step to being able to grow new human organs in pigs, so that there would never be organ shortages again. 2. The heritability of feminism. New research indicates that political beliefs are heritable —…
1. Q&A: Who is H. sapiens really, and how do we know?. Interesting FAQ explaining the latest state of scientific knowledge about human origins and our ancestors’ admixture with archaic human species such as Neanderthals and Denisovans. 2. Historic Pairing: Shuttle Docked to the ISS. Amazing pictures of the shuttle docked to the International Space Station (here is a picture of the shuttle docked to the Mir Space Station to give some perspective on the stations’ relative sizes). 3. Evolutionary…
1. Ancient Female Ancestors Roamed Far and Wide for Mates. Analysis of the 2 million year old bones of human ancestors indicates that males stayed close to their birth place for their entire lives, whereas females who reached maturity would leave their birth area and join a new group to find a mate. 2. Nerds and the supernatural. Radio preacher Harold Camping recently incorrectly predicted that the rapture and the end of the world would happen on May 21, 2011….
1. Getting Smart on Aid. Exciting developments in empirical research about how to improve the lives of the poor in developing countries: Now we reach a central question for our age: How can we most effectively break cycles of poverty? For decades, we had answers that were mostly anecdotal or hot air. But, increasingly, we are now seeing economists provide answers that are rigorously field-tested, akin to the way drugs are tested in randomized controlled trials, yielding results that are…
1. Serenity Parenting. Going along with my previous post, “Sensible Parenting”, about Brian Caplan’s book “Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids”, this is a good quote from his book: Once I became a dad, I noticed that parents around me had a different take on the power of nurture. I saw them turning parenthood into a chore—shuttling their kids to activities even the kids didn’t enjoy, forbidding television, desperately trying to make their babies eat another spoonful of vegetables. Parents’…
1. Photos of skyscrapers in different cities in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. Wealthy and middle class Brazilians often live in highrise apartments in their city’s downtown area. The effect of this is that even smaller Brazilian cities often have skylines of highrise buildings. The posts on this forum thread have a lot of cool pictures of modern Brazilian cities in São Paulo, Brazil (Brazil’s richest state). 2. We’ve Become a Nation of Takers, Not Makers. “More Americans work…
We’ve all heard that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. But a recent psychology study indicates that we may be able to make accurate judgments about certain aspects of people’s character “after minimal exposure to [their] physical appearance.” The study is titled “The Accuracy of Inferences About Criminality Based on Facial Appearance”1 and was performed by Jeffrey M. Valla, Stephen J. Ceci, and Wendy M. Williams of Cornell University and published in the Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and…
1. Mapping the 2010 U.S. Census. This has been out for a few weeks, but it is still worth looking at if you haven’t heard about it yet. The New York Times has created a neat tool which visualizes the results of the U.S. census. You can zoom in at different levels (states, counties, census tracts) to see all sorts of demographic information about any place in the United States. 2. Earth Is Not Random. A summary of a scientific…
1. Justice is served, but more so after lunch: how food-breaks sway the decisions of judges. A study of Israeli judges holding parole hearings found that “the odds that prisoners will be successfully paroled start off fairly high at around 65% and quickly plummet to nothing over a few hours. . . . After the judges have returned from their [food] breaks, the odds abruptly climb back up to 65%, before resuming their downward slide. A prisoner’s fate could hinge…
Do we have a right to receive an education in the same way that we have a right to free speech? Do we have a right to healthcare in the same way that we have a right to own property? We often use the word “right” without thinking much about what the word actually means and without considering what the government is obligated to do about our rights. There are actually two very different conceptions of rights, and these two…