Tips from the Brooklyn Better Science Club: On altruism
Whenever they say “it’s not about the money,” it’s about the money. (thanks Bill Graham)
(From MTV)
"But (Jimmy) Page suggested in an recent Guitar World magazine article that playing just one show would be foolish. "It's a bit silly not to because there is such massive demand," Page told the magazine. "It's a bit selfish to do just one show. If that's it, we probably shouldn't have taken the genie out of the bottle." "
"Cause it's all about the chillin',"
Okay, what else do you have against Europeans?
Subliminal Smells Bias Perception About A Person's Likeability
ScienceDaily (Dec. 8, 2007) — Anyone who has bonded with a puppy madly sniffing with affection gets an idea of how scents, most not apparent to humans, are critical to a dog's appreciation of her two-legged friends. Now new research from Northwestern University suggests that humans also pick up infinitesimal scents that affect whether or not we like somebody.
"We evaluate people every day and make judgments about who we like or don't like," said Wen Li, a post-doctoral fellow in the Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease Center at Northwestern's Feinberg School of Medicine and lead author of the study. "We may think our judgments are based only on various conscious bits of information, but our senses also may provide subliminal perceptual information that affects our behavior."
Minute amounts of odors elicited salient psychological and physiological changes that suggest that humans get much more information from barely perceptible scents than previously realized.
"To test whether subliminal odors alter social preferences, participants were asked to sniff bottles with three different scents: lemon (good), sweat (bad) and ethereal (neutral)."
Ethereal? We get it, "You smell great, so nonmaterial."
Big animal reconstructed from a bone the size of a can opener
Ancient polar bear jawbone found
By Jonathan Amos
Science reporter, BBC News, San Francisco
What may be the oldest known remains of a polar bear have been uncovered on the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic. The jawbone was pulled from sediments that suggest the specimen is perhaps 110,000 or 130,000 years old.
Professor Olafur Ingolfsson from the University of Iceland says tests show it was an adult, possibly a female. The find is a surprise because polar bears are a relatively new species, with one study claiming they evolved less than 100,000 years ago.
If the Svalbard jawbone's status is confirmed, and further discoveries can show the iconic Arctic beasts have a deeper evolutionary heritage, then the outlook for the animals may be more positive than some believe.
The jawbone's discovery is being presented here in San Francisco at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting.
The specimen was found at Poolepynten on Prins Karls Forland, a narrow strip of land on the far west of the archipelago.
Researchers have studied the DNA of modern polar bears to try to gauge when the Arctic animals separated from brown bears, their nearest evolutionary cousins.
Different models have variously put the radiation as near as 70,000 years ago and as distant as 1-1.5 million years ago. One of the problems has been in finding the ancient specimens to put alongside, and constrain, these genetic estimates.
Until recently, one of the oldest polar bear specimens was thought to be British - a 70,000-year-old animal found at Kew Bridge in London. Building up a more detailed picture of the ancient history of polar bears will be challenging, though. The animals spend much of their lives out on the ice, and when they die their remains are likely to be scavenged by other creatures or fall to the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. Finds will continue to be extremely rare.
"The polar bear is basically a brown bear that decided some time ago that it would be easier to feed on seals on the ice. So long as there are seals, there are going to be polar bears. I think the threat to the polar bears is much more to do with pollution, the build up of heavy metals in the Arctic."
Quote of the day
"This is just how I interpret it. But this is science - when you have little data, you have lots of freedom."
Professor Olafur Ingolfsson from the University of Iceland
Right you are sir, a little data, like a jawbone the size of a can opener.
Headline of the day
Grandmother arrested for carrying a gun and knife at Disney now out of jail (OrlandoSentinal.com) courtesy of The Obscure Store
Note: It was a silver Beretta .32-caliber semiautomatic
She probably heard about the size of the mouse that lives there.
It’s Hugo time
Venezuelans Reset Clocks With Chavez's New Time Zone (Update1)
By Matthew Walter
More Photos/Details
Dec. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Venezuelans began their work week at a new hour after President Hugo Chavez ordered clocks set back, creating a time zone unique to the South American country.
Chavez says setting clocks back half an hour will allow school children to wake up with the sun and ease poor Venezuelans' pre-dawn commute. Since the decree's publication on Nov. 27, businesses have struggled to update time-sensitive computer systems.
Chavez, who says time zones were created by ``imperialists,'' has also changed the country's name to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and redesigned its coat of arms and national flag in his bid to create a ``21st century socialist'' society. Some Venezuelans say the time change is part of Chavez's drive to put his mark on every aspect of the country's national identity.
``It's a political whim,'' said Yanitza Lopez, 27, an accountant for a cosmetics company in Caracas. ``It's not going to make any difference for any kids.''
Airlines and travel agencies were still calling and e- mailed passengers last week to notify them about flight changes, and the Caracas stock exchange had to update its software to ensure trades ran smoothly today.
``The time change is going to affect many flights, and lots of airlines still haven't changed their timetables,'' said Roberto Pulido, country manager for Copa Airlines and president of Venezuela's airline association. ``This is an additional cost, because we've had to update all of our reservation systems.''
Venezuela joins a handful of countries, including India, Iran, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka that don't set their time in increments of one hour from Greenwich Mean Time.
``This affects even the biological functioning of the body,'' the president said yesterday, according to the state news wire. ``It's scientifically proven.
Local media spent the past week focusing on the aftermath of a Dec. 2 national referendum, in which voters rejected the president's plan to overhaul the constitution to allow him to run for re-election indefinitely, contributing to confusion about yesterday's change.
Chavez has changed the start date for the new time zone at least once, and in a national address he mistakenly said the plan was to turn clocks forward by half an hour.
``I don't really understand the point, but nothing with this president surprises me,'' said Rafael Sucre, 39, a doctor, as he exited a subway station last week in the Chacao commercial district of the nation's capital, Caracas.
We suppose that getting the earth to start revolving the other way is going to take a little more time.
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