ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 575
January 28, 2016
Woman’s Tummy Pains Due To 26-Centimeter Cyst With 6 Liters Of Fluid
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Her distended stomach was a cyst, not her obesity. © 2016 by the BMJ Publishing Group Ltd
Some people blame cupcakes for the extra pounds, others marriage and children. But in this case, the cause was something totally bizarre: a ginormous abdominal cyst.
Ancient Babylonians Used Geometry To Track Jupiter Thousands Of Years Ago
Photo credit:
NASA
An outstanding discovery could change how we view the history of science. New research has suggested that ancient Babylonian astronomers used geometry to track the position of Jupiter in the sky, one and a half millennia before European thinkers developed the same approach.
The Moon’s Formation Was Even More Dramatic Than Thought
Photo credit:
NASA
The Moon likely formed when the primordial Earth slammed into a Mars-sized object, throwing a sizable chunk of material into orbit, which eventually became our satellite. While this has been known for a few decades, the details are still a mystery. Now, a crucial piece of evidence could help clarify exactly how it happened.
Something Very Strange Happens To The Herpes Virus In Space
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NASA
NASA is currently funding a study on the effects of herpes in space. At first glance, that may seem rather strange, but there is a good reason for the study.
New Wearable Sweat Sensor Can Tell You When You’re Dehydrated Or Fatigued
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The sensor could provide a real-time analysis of the chemicals in your sweat. Der-Hsien Lien and Hiroki Ota/UC Berkeley
When it comes to physical activity, there are a whole range of gadgets and bands out there that measure everything from your heart rate to the calories burned. But a new sensor takes things a step further. By measuring the individual components of your sweat, the new wearable tech could tell you when you’re dehydrated or close to fatigue in real time, by sending the information directly to your smartphone.
Good Health And High Intelligence Shown To Be Linked To Same Genes
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Good news for smart couch potatoes, then. Tatiana Shepeleva/Shutterstock
Previous research has indicated that there appears to be a link between poor health and both low socioeconomic status and low educational attainment. However, the link between intelligence and health is arguably more questionable.
Mercury Levels In Rainwater Are Rising In Parts Of North America
Photo credit:
-Carly-/Flickr. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Mercury levels in parts of the western and central United States' rainwater have been increasing over the past 20 years. However, the East Coast’s rain has seen a decline in these levels. This is despite nationwide cuts in coal emissions and moving away from coal-fired power plants. So what's causing this disparity between the eastern and western states?
Suicide Differences By Region Related To Gun Availability
“One of the things we know for sure in the United States is that a gun in the home increases the likelihood that someone in the home will die a violent death—from gun accidents, from a woman being murdered by a man in an intimate partner violence situation and particularly by suicide.”
David Hemenway. He’s the director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. He’s also a professor of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The gun violence discussion often seems to give short shrift to suicide, even though more than 60 percent of the approximately 32,000 annual U.S. firearms deaths are suicides. Hemenway spoke January 26th at a Harvard School of Public Health forum on gun violence as a public health issue.
“The evidence is overwhelming, from case control studies and ecological studies. For example, why do we have very different suicide rates across cities, across states, across regions in the United States. To explain the differences in suicide rates across states, turns out it’s not well explained at all by differences in mental health, it’s not well explained at all by differences in the number of psychiatrists, it’s not even explained by differences in suicide ideation among the population or even suicide attempts. What really explains the difference in the United States across the populations is the number of guns. Because it’s gun suicide which is so different.”
And someone who commits suicide with a gun very likely would not have either attempted or succeeded if the gun were not available. For example, a 2013 Swiss study tracked men after the size of the army was cut in half, effectively removing guns from half that group. The overall suicide rate went down, and the researchers estimated that only 22 percent of all the men who would have killed themselves with a gun if it had been available wound up committing the act by other means. The presence of the gun just makes it significantly easier to take your own life impulsively.
The entire hour-long forum featuring Hemenway and other researchers discussing gun violence as a public health issue is archived on line. Just google “Harvard public health forum”.
—Steve Mirsky
(The above text is a transcript of this podcast)
Touching A Great White Is A Really, Really Stupid Thing To Do
Photo credit:
Stefan Pircher/Shutterstock
An image of a diver reaching out of a dive cage and touching the nose of a shark off the coast of Guadalupe Island, Mexico, has been circulating online and in the media. While the photograph is undoubtedly eye-catching, experts have warned that this is a really, really dumb idea.
Sugar Cravings Come From Two Different Parts Of The Brain
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Sugar: the bane of many attempted diets. qoppi/Shutterstock
A new study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience reveals that sugar stimulates two different parts of one brain region in order to encourage you to eat more.
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