ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 431

For Monkeys, Lower Status Affects Immune System

By Erica Goode

Researchers have long known that social class is one of the most powerful predictors of health, more powerful than genes, smoking, alcohol intake, or other health risks.

The lower a person is on the social ladder — as measured by income, education and other markers of relative status — the higher the risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, cancer, psychiatric disorders and a host of other illnesses. One recent study based on income data from 1.4 billion tax records found that people in the top 1 percent income bracket had life expectancies that were as much as 10 to 15 years longer than those in the bottom 1 percent.

But investigators do not know for sure whether lower social status, which often comes with less access to health care, a lack of control over one’s life circumstances and a variety of other stresses, causes people to end up sicker, or whether being less healthy leads to lower social status. And although researchers have speculated how social class might influence health, they still have little evidence for what those mechanisms might be.

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Your Dog Remembers More Than You Think

By James Gorman

Once again, science has confirmed the suspicions of dog-owners that their beloved pets know more than they are letting on. In this case, it has to do with memory, a favorite subject of researchers who study the mental abilities of other animals.

No one doubts that dogs can be trained to remember commands and names of objects. They also remember people and places. But Claudia Fugazza and her colleagues at the Family Dog Project at Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest set out to see whether dogs share a more complex kind of memory.

In people it is called episodic memory, and it involves a sense of self. In animals, it’s called episodic-like memory, because it’s difficult to try to plumb something as elusive as self without the aid of language.

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Oh Good, a “Professor Watch List”

By Rebecca Schuman

This past Saturday, 200 white nationalists gathered two blocks away from President-elect Donald Trump’s future home, exulting in a victory that has catapulted them out of the shadows. This Monday, an organization called Turning Point USA launched a website called the Professor Watchlist, which provides the full names, locations, offenses—and sometimes photographs—of liberal academics it has singled out for ignominy. In any other year in recent memory on this continent, these would be two unrelated events. But in the United States in late 2016, as the president-elect’s surrogates cite Japanese internment as a “precedent” for what may come, any “watch list” of any sort is worrying. One that targets outspoken intellectuals with views that oppose a mercurial future president who spent the weekend tweeting petulantly at the cast of a Broadway play? Abjectly terrifying.

The mission of the watch list, according to its website, is to “expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students, promote anti-American values, and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.” The site invites users to nominate candidates, asking that they “submit a tip” about the nefarious pinkos who teach them (that’s S-C-H-U-M-A-N with one n, by the way). Some of the professors on the list have responded thoughtfully to their inclusion; others on social media have trolled the list with complaints about Indiana Jones and Jesus. Like any soulless golem, I love a good Jesus joke, but today even I can’t muster up the laughter.

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What Does Trump Think About Climate Change? He Doesn’t Know Either

By Robinson Meyer

What does the president-elect think about climate change?

Who even knows anymore?

Speaking at the offices of The New York Times on Tuesday, Donald J. Trump appeared to vacillate on, and sometimes even disagree with, previous statements about climate change made by Donald J. Trump. He even seemed ready to grant that climate change exists.

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Why Are Gorillas Committing Mob Violence?

By Ed Yong

It started with a scream.

It either came from a fleeing gorilla named Inshuti, or from the three males who were chasing him. Whatever the case, seconds later, Inshuti was on the ground, surrounded by a mob of 25 other gorillas. They pinned him down by his arms and legs. They screamed and grunted as they bit, kicked, and hit him. They pulled out chunks of his hair. The biggest of the attacking silverbacks repeatedly sank his teeth into Inshuti’s body and shook his head, like a dog with a bone.

Four minutes later, the mob dispersed silently and Inshuti slunk away. His injuries were severe, but he survived.

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5 Things to Know About Betsy DeVos, Trump’s Pick for Education Secretary

By Emily Deruy

President-Elect Donald Trump on Wednesday said he will nominate the Michigan philanthropist and prominent Republican donor Betsy DeVos to be U.S. Education Secretary. The announcement signals that big changes could be on the way for schools and students around the country. Here are five things to know:

1. DeVos will push for school choice.

DeVos has been a vocal supporter of school choice, which is something Trump backed on the campaign trail. DeVos, who heads up the pro-charter and pro-school-voucher nonprofit American Federation for Children, has said parents should have the ability to choose the best schools for their children, whether they are traditional public schools, charters, or private schools. Trump has proposed creating a $20 billion federal voucher program for families to use to send their kids to the school of their choice. But, as Education Week noted recently, making that program a reality could be difficult. It’s unclear exactly where the funding would come from, and even if Congress did manage to pass such a proposal, some states currently prohibit funds from going to schools with religious affiliations, which could complicate how those funds are used.

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Scientists to ‘reset’ blood proteins in attempt to slow ageing process

By Ian Sample

In what could be a fresh chapter in the never-ending story of the search for eternal youth, scientists are to tinker with people’s blood in the hope of slowing down the ageing process and preventing age-related diseases.

Researchers in California plan to launch a clinical trial of the radical – and highly experimental – approach in the next six months, after a small study in mice found the treatment had promise.

People who take part in the trial will have their blood passed through a machine that resets abnormal levels of proteins seen in older blood. The scientists believe these high levels of certain proteins can hamper the growth and maintenance of healthy body tissues, and so contribute to their deterioration in old age.

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We really need to figure out how to stop a killer asteroid, scientists say

By Sarah Kaplan

Imagine if scientists found out that a massive asteroid was on a collision course with Earth and would strike somewhere near Los Angeles by September 2020. What could humanity do?

Not much. At least, that was the result of a day-long tabletop exercise coordinated by NASA and FEMA late last month. In their hypothetical scenario, the space agency concluded that the 330-foot space rock was approaching too quickly to mount a deflection mission. The team from FEMA was left to figure out how to evacuate millions of people from Southern California.

This was a purely fictional exercise. NASA has discovered some 17,000 potentially hazardous near-Earth objects, but none of them is projected to come close to Earth in the next hundred years. No human that we know of has been killed by a meteorite or the effects of an impact, and the likelihood that this could happen to any of us is very, very slim. The chance of an impact big enough to destroy our planet is even smaller. Remember that Earth has suffered only one mass extinction-inducing impact that we know of in its 4.6 billion-year history, and even that asteroid didn’t end life entirely. Our planet is pretty resilient.

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Microsoft Spends Big to Build a Computer Out of Science Fiction

By John Markoff

SAN FRANCISCO — Microsoft is putting its considerable financial and engineering muscle into the experimental field of quantum computing as it works to build a machine that could tackle problems beyond the reach of today’s digital computers.

There is a growing optimism in the tech world that quantum computers, superpowerful devices that were once the stuff of science fiction, are possible — and may even be practical. If these machines work, they will have an impact on work in areas such as drug design and artificial intelligence, as well as offer a better understanding of the foundations of modern physics.

Microsoft’s decision to move from pure research to an expensive effort to build a working prototype underscores a global competition among technology companies, including Google and IBM, which are also making significant investments in search of breakthroughs.

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Trump to scrap Nasa climate research in crackdown on ‘politicized science’

By Oliver Milman

Donald Trump is poised to eliminate all climate change research conducted by Nasa as part of a crackdown on “politicized science”, his senior adviser on issues relating to the space agency has said.

Nasa’s Earth science division is set to be stripped of funding in favor of exploration of deep space, with the president-elect having set a goal during the campaign to explore the entire solar system by the end of the century.

This would mean the elimination of Nasa’s world-renowned research into temperature, ice, clouds and other climate phenomena. Nasa’s network of satellites provide a wealth of information on climate change, with the Earth science division’s budget set to grow to $2bn next year. By comparison, space exploration has been scaled back somewhat, with a proposed budget of $2.8bn in 2017.

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