ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 521

Satellite Images Show A Blood Red River Nile

Environment





Photo credit:

Copernicus Sentinel 3-A/ ESA

It might look like a scene from a Bible story, but this image showing Egypt's River Nile glowing a deep blood red is actually the result of imaging techniques used to monitor Earth’s environmental health.

Winning Is All In The Mind Of The Zebrafish

The Brain





Photo credit:

Typical fight behavior between male zebrafish – the winner depends as much on the brain as physical attributes. RIKEN

Every sports coach who has sought to inspire players with the message that victory is a mental state can rejoice. The claim has been vindicated with the discovery that zebrafish battles are won and lost in the brain, along with identification of the regions that determine success and failure.

Male Contraceptive Stops Rabbits Breeding Like Rabbits

Health and Medicine





Photo credit:

A reversible blockage of sperm allows bunnies that survived the operation to have consequence-free fun. Robynrg/Shutterstock

A potential new option in male contraception has proven effective, if not yet safe, in animals. Vasalgel works not through hormonal control, but by creating a reversible obstacle to sperms' path.

The complaint that women always seem to be stuck with the responsibility for contraception is longstanding. Comparing condoms and vasectomies on one side with the array of technologies on the other, many have wondered if researcher gender imbalance might be contributing.

Polish Government Approves Large Scale Logging In Europe’s Last Primeval Forest

Environment





Photo credit:

The forest is a window back to what much of Europe would have looked like 10,000 years ago. Aleksander Bolbot/Shutterstock

The Polish government has announced that it will open up large tracts of Europe’s last primeval forest for commercial logging, with both international and local conservation groups and scientists coming out in strong opposition to the plans.

One Common Factor Could Cut Your Lifespan By Three Years

Health and Medicine





Photo credit:

Gio.tto/Shutterstock

Researchers have linked a shorter lifespan with two common gene changes. One copy of either of these two changes to DNA (called variants) could shave a year off your life expectancy. People who inherit two copies – one from mom and one from dad – of both variants could expect to lose about 3.3 to 3.7 years. The findings were published in Nature Communications this week. 

We’re rarely rational when we vote because we’re rarely rational, period

Photo credit: Kaitlin McKeown/Associated Press

By Robert M. Sapolsky

Science can tell us lots about how voters will make their decisions in 2016. To appreciate those findings, first free yourself of the idea that humans are rational beings.

Rationality has taken a hit in various domains of decision-making. Economics used to be thought of as a realm of pure rationality, something disproven, for starters, by the million-plus Pet Rocks sold around Christmas in 1975. Formal behavioral economics research comes to much the same conclusion more systematically. For example, people make radically different choices about an economic scenario depending on whether it is described in terms of risk or gain (“you have a 50% chance of losing X number of dollars,” versus “you have a 50% chance of gaining X”).

Human decision-making is subject to implicit influences in other realms as well. In one study involving thousands of cases of parole-board decisions, a highly significant predictor of whether an inmate was granted parole was how long it had been since the judge had eaten. Justice may be blind, but don’t expect to get a sympathetic hearing from someone whose stomach is gurgling.

Other research shows our sensitivity to all sorts of unconscious cues. People think potato chips taste better if they hear crunching sounds in the background as they eat, rate a beverage as tasting better if it’s served in more expensive-looking surroundings. Ask people their favorite detergent; if they’ve just read a paragraph containing the word “ocean,” they’re more likely to choose Tide — and then concoct some supposedly rational reason why it’s the very best.

Which brings us to how people go about voting for a political candidate. It’s a rare voter who carefully reads a candidate’s position papers on every conceivable topic. Instead, we typically vote based on a candidate’s stance on a subset of topics, assuming there will be a certain consistency on other topics. Or we follow party lines, or choose based on endorsements — if A agrees closely with B’s politics, and B is voting for C, A is on pretty safe ground voting for C even if C is a complete unknown.

Another conscious component of political decision-making is voting for experience or competence, rather than a platform. This is so common that one study found that candidates judged to look more competent had won elections 68% of the time (perhaps we don’t so much vote for competence as for the appearance of it). Competence at least seems like a pretty rational criterion — after all, who wouldn’t want competence in our leaders? — until you wind up voting for someone who competently implements things you oppose.

Continue reading by clicking the name of the source below.

Europe’s Oldest Forest Is Threatened By A Beetle Infestation – Let Nature Take Its Course

Environment





Photo credit:

Aleksander Bolbot / shutterstock

Białowieza Forest is the kind of place you imagine from the Grimm fairy tales. Huge firs, oaks and ashes tower over you, woodpeckers and other birds call all around you and the guides who work there know the intimate history, and names, of many individual trees.

How Mind-Controlling Parasites Can Get Inside Your Head

The Brain





Photo credit:

Shutterstock

Imagine that pesky tabby cat has been pooing in your backyard again. Unbeknown to you, it has transferred some of the parasite spores it was carrying onto your herb garden. Unintentionally, while preparing a tasty salad, you forget to wash your hands and infect yourself with the Toxoplasma gondii spores. For months you display no symptoms, then after six months you are driving your car more aggressively, taking chances in road junctions and generally filled with more road rage as you angrily gesticulate with fellow drivers.

Changing The Face Of Autism: Here Come The Girls

The Brain





Photo credit:

Autism. It’s not just a boy thing. www.shutterstock.com

If you ask someone to name famous people (fictional or non-fictional) who are known for having autism or being “on the spectrum”, Rain Man is often the top favourite, possibly followed by Sherlock Holmes (especially in his recent incarnation by Benedict Cumberbatch). Sheldon in the Big Bang Theory is another. Very rarely will anyone come up with a woman’s name. So are there really very few women with autism, or is it just that we have too narrow a view of what autism looks like?

An Ancient Retrovirus Has Been Found In Human DNA – And It Might Still Be Active

Health and Medicine





Photo credit:

vitstudio/shutterstock.com

Striking evidence has emerged that an ancient virus previously known only from fossil evidence has persistently infected some humans at very low levels for hundreds of thousands or even millions of years. This ancient retrovirus is a kind of living fossil, and the discovery of an intact copy of it within the human genome poses questions as to how it has survived, and suggests others from the distant evolutionary past may lie dormant in the DNA of many species.