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Call for posts for the June Scientiae: Moving Forward

Alice and I are teaming up to host the June edition of Scientiae, the carnival by, for, and about women in science, engineering, technology, and math. As is the norm for the monthly Scientiae carnival, I get to choose a theme to help inspire and unite you all to write posts, though submissions on any topic related to women in STEM are always welcome. At this time of year, some of us are just emerging from the end of the semester, while others still have another month to slog through before getting a reprieve. Some people are within spitting distance of finishing their research project or…

Call for participation in US-Europe workshop for research on gender and diversity

This announcement just in: the organization of a US-Europe workshop on research on gender in engineering education. More information below the fold; applications are due April 13, in just over 2 weeks! US-Europe Workshop for Research on Gender and Diversity in Engineering Education Announcement and Call for Applicants Applications are due April 13, 2009! US Participants are sought for a 1-2 day workshop on gender research in engineering education to be held this summer in Delft, The Netherlands. Tentative dates are June 29, 30, or July 4. Participants will actively engage in developing an…

Locopops solves DSHEA dietary supplement labeling issue

In the United States, herbal and non-herbal dietary supplements can be sold without any assurance of safety or efficacy as a result of a hastily-passed, late-night, final-session piece of legislation put forth by Sen Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). (Aside: Utah has several large dietary supplement manufacturers.) This piece of legislation is named the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, or DSHEA. A FAQ for consumers is provided by the US Food and Drug Administration here. An unusual aspect of the law is that supplement manufacturers can make a variety of wellness or structure-function…

How to save a life: physician humanity

Bear with me this morning because I am growing very weary of my physician colleagues enduring all sorts of haranguing for being hateful, pharma shills who only want to cut, burn, and poison. I was extremely fortunate, personally and professionally, to train in two clinical units with strong basic science programs. As such, I worked at the bench with MD fellows and we schooled each other on our respective strengths. I loved when when my colleagues would come back from clinic and tell me of experiences that put our bench work in real world perspective. Yes, not all bench work is immediately…

I get email

I don't know what it is, but the kooks who write to me either don't know what paragraphs are, so that I get a dense knot of disconnected sentences, or they use a peculiar pattern of quirky line breaks that makes sense to them, I suppose, but not to anyone else. Arvin is one of the latter. He likes his white space. Hello Dr. PZ Myers my name is Arvin Sookiassian I had two questions for you Dr. PZ Myers. 1. How do you justify objective morals without a moral source (GOD)? 2. Why are short human beings deserving of life? • Taller human beings are smarter then shorter human beings…

How much should you know outside of your field?

I'm a bit under the weather today but I wanted to at least share with you an interesting career development consideration pointed out by the always-excellent medicinal chemist blogger, Derek Lowe at In the Pipeline. In his post, What Should Non-Chemists Know About Medicinal Chemistry, Anyway?, Derek posits: Here's a topic that I was discussing with some colleagues not too long ago: how much do we need to know about each other's specialties, anyway? I'm assuming that the answer is "more than nothing", although if someone wants to make the zilch case, I'd be interested in hearing it done. A…

Unclear on the concept of climate change? Maybe a graph would help

What does a climatologist have to do to attract some attention? Sure, there are plenty of good journalists and a handful of thoughtful editors and news directors out there, but sometimes it seems that even sensational climate stories get buried. For example, this past week we learn that global greenhouse gas emissions are growing faster than the worst-case scenarios used by the IPCC. Then we're treated to a study comparing changes in national emission levels. Both stories make for gripping copy, the kind of stuff that should set the blogosphere alight. And yet, here I am, desperately trying…

Plant a tree, make things worse

Jeremy Bruno, one our newest ScienceBloggers, hit the nail on the head with a post about the folly of assuming that we can do about something climate change by planting more trees, at least in the non-tropical regions. This is not a new idea, and studies pointing out that lowering the albedo of snow-prone northern latitudes by increasing forest coverage more than offsets any increased carbon uptake by those very same trees have been coming out every few months for at least six years now. What I like about Jeremy's take is his observation that tree-planting advocates are symptomatic of the…

Light from a Hairbrush

Question from a reader: Pick up a comb, rub it with your hair and you have got some electric charge. Now shake it and you are generating an electromagnetic wave. Am I right? Yes indeed. So why don't we see light emitted when we brush our hair? Let's run some numbers. If you wiggle around an electric point charge, electromagnetic radiation is emitted. The power carried by this radiation is given by the Larmor formula: $latex \displaystyle P = \frac{e^2 a^2}{6 \pi \epsilon_0 c^3}&s=1$ Well, a comb isn't a point charge. But if we're just interested in an order-of-magnitude estimate, we can…

Gauss' Law PROVED WRONG!

Just though I'd try writing a post title in the style of a crank. Kinda fun! Gauss' law, of course, is not wrong. But I got a question from a reader that deceptively simple and an interesting example of a theorem not quite working the way you'd expect. I've gone over Gauss' law before, so as a quick refresher I'll just say that it relates the electric charge at a location to the way the electric field lines diverge at that location. Symbolically (and in, appropriately, Gaussian units): E is the electric field, ρ is the charge density. Draw a closed surface around the charge in question and…

What's a wave?

So, what's a wave? In his deservedly ubiquitous undergrad electrodynamics textbook, David Griffiths emphasizes the fact that the whole idea is pretty nebulous. Any rigid definition is likely to exclude things that are usually thought of as waves or to include things that aren't. He suggests that one possible vague definition is "a disturbance of a continuous medium that propagates with a fixed shape at a constant velocity". He goes on: Immediate I must add qualifiers: In the presence of absorption, the wave will diminish in size as it moves; if the medium is dispersive different frequencies…

Monkeys fall into the uncanny valley

In the movie industry, special effects and computer-generated imagery are becoming better and more realistic. As they'd improve, you'd expect moviegoers to more readily accept virtual worlds and characters, but that's not always the case. It turns out that people are incredibly put off by images or animations of humans that strive for realism, but aren't quite there yet. A character like Wall-E is lovable because he's clearly not human but has many human-like qualities and expressions. In contrast, the more realistic CG-characters of Beowulf or The Polar Express are far closer to reality but…

Enough

Can the principle of sufficiency, of seeking enough, face the dominance of the efficiency model that currently underpins our economic structure and works to undermine ecological sensibility? I've been reading Thomas Princen's (2005) The Logic of Sufficiency (MIT Press) with great interest. Princen is a professor at the University of Michigan. He works in the School of Natural Resource and Environmental Policy, specifically working on Natural Resource and Environmental Policy. He's also the co-editor of another fine book (with Michael Maniates and Ken Conca), Confronting Consumption (2002…

Things that I don't understand: 90's television shows and hairstyle edition

Specifically: why in heaven's name did Felicity choose Ben over Noel? I mean seriously folks: Noel was obviously the better choice. And I say this because he was of the geeky, computer literate set, and (I think, I think) was essentially representing all that is good and deserving of those who are single, smart, sensible and nice in the scienc-y community. And yet, and yet, Felicty chooses Ben! And fer chrissakes, this is even with the added variable that had Felicity chosen Noel, she would have also scored a free trip to Europe. So people, what is up with that? But wait, wait... Maybe…

Climate Science Theater (Art! Science! Carbon Emissions!)

The Silencer (being performed in Blacksburg, VA, on November 1, 2, and 3, ahead of its London opening in 2007) is a play about Global Warming and Climate Science. How about that, a play about global warming and climate science. Not your everyday occurrence. I can't say if it's Michael Frayn-level theater, but I can say that it's not the usual approach to confronting climate science issues. Here's a summary of the play: Dr. Brian Heath must decide whether to protect his family or publicize his alarming findings about the impending threat of climate change. His predicament stands for our…

Sole Survivor

CNN has a headline up: Fate or Fluke: Air crash sole survivors. ON the homepage itself the banner reads "Fate or Physics?" (CNN) -- Some will see it as divine intervention, others a simple quirk of fate, fortune or physics, but one boy's cheating of death in an air crash in Libya this week adds another name to a small roll call of aviation disaster sole survivors. The boy, identified as Ruben van Assouw, suffered multiple fractures in his lower limbs when the Afriqiyah Airways Airbus A330-200 crashed Tuesday at Tripoli International Airport killing 92 passengers and a crew of 11. ...…

The Moon!

Forty years ago two human beings traveled a quarter million miles in a tiny metal capsule and stepped out onto the surface of the Moon. It was the most dramatic footfall in the history of our species, I am in absolute awe of all the Apollo program accomplished. Though it's a long shot, I'm hopeful that space tourism will become practical and inexpensive enough that someday I can be maybe the millionth or so person to stand on our sister world and look back at home. Until then, I can just admire the pictures just taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter of some of the old Apollo sites…

Pi day!

Whew! Busy week for me, hence the missing post or two. Traditionally Saturdays on this blog tend to be non-physics fare - either links, commentary on something nonscientific, or whatever. Today I think it will be the celebration of Pi Day! Pi Day: As you know from the SB main page, today is pi day. 3/14, representing the famous number 3.14159265359... You first meet is as the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. As you go on in math, you meet it pretty much everywhere else too. Seriously everywhere. There's also a Pi Approximation Day, on 7/22. Which of course only…

Earthquake!

Every section of Physics 218 I've taught this semester has asked me about this question. Really it's less of a physics question than it is a math question, but either way it gives people fits. It's not all that surprising. While it seems like it should be simple, to most beginning students it's not at all intuitive how all the given information gits together. Without further ado, the problem: Earthquakes produce several types of shock waves. The most well-known are the P-waves and the S-waves. In the earth's crust, the P-waves travel around 8.9 km/s while the S-waves move at about 2.7 km/…

What it will take to cut global warming in half

A new paper to be published next week in Geophysical Research Letters (which really needs a better name) lays out what kind of effort would be required to reduce the impacts of climate change by half. Actually, what it does is conclude that if we reign in our fossil-fuel emissions by 70%, temperature rise and a few other consequences will be roughly half of what they'd be in the absence of any mitigating effort. But since both targets are arbitrary, it doesn't really matter which way you approach the subject. Either way, the news ain't good. In "How much climate change can be avoided by…

Battlestar's divine ending

So Battlestar Galactica is over. Again. It is unlikely that many a fan of science fiction, or intelligent story-telling of any genre, over the age of 11 mourned the end of the original series. But the resurrected version that drew its final breath a week ago was transcendent television, by any measure. Those unfamiliar with the program should read no further. Bookmark this post, rent the DVDs and return when you're done. After four years of ambiguous exploration of the battle between science and faith, the writers chose to end on a decidedly spiritual note. Starbuck is an angel. Boomer and…

Darwin was wrong, but he's not the only one

New Scientist's recent cover that heralded the stunning news (not) that "Darwin was wrong" has generated an enormous amount of antipathy in these parts. Bora's keeping notes, and the feature article's author, Graham Lawton, surely doesn't deserve the vitriol. (Although with the umbrage he takes in return via blog comments, he is hardly doing himself any favors). I understand the reaction among those who live, eat and and breathe evolutionary biology ;;;; perhaps Lawton's interpretation of a few issues is questionable ;;;; but stand back and take a deep one, folks. This is journalism we're…

Quantum Booz (Allen Hamilton) Jobs

Charles passes along that Booz Allen Hamilton is looking for a few good quantum people: JOB POSITION IN QUANTUM PHYSICS IN ARLINGTON, VA - BOOZ ALLEN HAMILTON, INC. As you may already know from interacting with us at review meetings and conferences, our team at Booz Allen Hamilton provides scientific and technical expertise to a variety of government agencies. As consultants, we work with our clients to develop new research programs, monitor ongoing research, and to help transition technologies to other government agencies and industry. Currently, we are looking to expand our physics team…

Quantum Open Notebook

Sir Tobias Osborne of the Quantum Boolean Functions has made the plunge and is trying out open notebook science: Tobias J. Osborne's Research Notes. Which reminded me of some dream software I've been thinking of writing (oh Time you Devil---why could you not expand to fit in all I want to create and do in this life!) The basic idea is as follows. Blogs are great for a few reasons. One is they provide a journal system and date stamping system. Second they allow for commenting and this commenting can be done after some basic user authentication. But they are, it seems to me, not ideal…

Will the Real Reason For Quantum Theory Please Stand Up?

Michael Nielsen has a nice essay up explaining Why the world needs quantum mechanics: Conventional wisdom holds that quantum mechanics is hard to learn. This is more or less correct, although often overstated. However, the necessity of abandoning conventional ways of thinking about the world, and finding a radically new way - quantum mechanics - can be understood by any intelligent person willing to spend some time concentrating hard. Conveying that understanding is the purpose of this essay. For a good explanation of Bell inequalities, jump to Michael's essay. At the end of the article,…

Pseudo Open Notebook Science?

A topic of much discussion I see in the Science 2.0 world (it's like the Renaissance, but with more Javascript!) is the idea of Open Notebook Science. In one version of Open Notebook Science, one simply opens up ones research notebook (or other equivalent) to outside access. For an example see Garrett Lisi's research wiki. This is, of course, the grand ideal of science at its best: the question for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me Darwin. But of course, this idea has it's problems. Most notably, of course, there is the political aspect: what is keep…

Happenings in the Quantum World: Nov 21, 2007

Postdocs, APS GQI quantum newsletter, Quantum computing in Waikiki, quantum chicanery, quantum foods. Postdocs at NIST: National Research Council Postdoctoral Research Associateships at Mathematical and Computational Sciences Division of the NIST Information Technology Laboratory The fall newsletter for the APS Topical Group of Quantum Information, Concepts and Computation is available. Included is a report on a recent quantum computing conference in Iran, as well as statements from the people crazy enough to run the topical group officer positions. Wait, I'm one of those crazies? Doh.…

Telephone Psychotherapy Effective

The title of this article is a little bit misleading, although not deliberately so.  The study examined the question of whether telephonic CBT - added to pharmacotherapy - was beneficial, in a primary care population.  Note that the primary care population is NOT the population that psychiatrists typically see.  Consequently, it is not possible to extrapolate these results to most typical psychiatrist's practices.  It also is not applicable to the population of persons seen in many outpatient offices of other mental health specialists. Telephone Psychotherapy Effective, Efficient in…

Peak Oil: Imminent Public Health Issue

A post at Energy Bulletin recaps a recent presentation at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, in conjunction with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  href="http://www.energybulletin.net/node/48895">The post is U.S. public health community begins discussing peak oil. The presentation was: href="http://www.jhsph.edu/preparedness/events/eventscalendar.html">Peak Oil: Implications for Disaster Preparedness & Response (the link goes to the event calendar, so it probably won't be valid after a while.  The archives are href="http://www.jhsph.edu…

Tech Tip #7 - reporting malicious websites

If you encounter a web site that contains malware (virus, trojan, etc.), how do you report it?  I had a devil of a time finding out.  A friend had forwarded a suspicious email to me.  The email contained a link.  The link indicated that it would take you to a text file that explained a finding about a chance of an asteroid hitting the Earth next year.  the file ended with .txt.exe, obviously a bad thing.  So I downloaded it, using Linux, of course (the .exe would not be able to do anything without me affirming that the file was to be opened with WINE, which I did not plan on doing).  I…

WSJ: Fact-check Fail

An opinion article ( href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123689292159011723.html">There's No Pill for This Kind of Depression) in the Wall Street Journal contained the following unsupported claim: The sale of antidepressants and antianxiety drugs is widespread. In New York their use became common after 9/11. It continued through and, I hypothesize, may have contributed to, the high-flying, wildly imprudent Wall Street of the '00s. We look for reasons for the crash and there are many, but I wonder if Xanax, Zoloft and Klonopin, when taken by investment bankers, lessened what might have…

Disciplines Exchange Ideas on Art, Controversy, & Science

Sculptor Marilene Oliver uses MRI, PET, and CT scanning to create her works. Last week I traveled to the Canadian Rockies to participate in a unique workshop organized by the University at Alberta that focused on the shared perspectives and collaborations among artists, scientists, ethicists, and social scientists. The workshop was the second in a series organized by brothers Sean Caulfield and Timothy Caulfield, professors of Art and Law respectively at the University of Alberta. In 2009, the first workshop resulted in the "Imagining Science" exhibit at the Art Gallery of Alberta and a…

"ClimateGate": A Catchphrase That Instantly Flips the Frame On Climate Scientists

ClimateGate: A now ubiquitous tagline that conveys a preferred storyline. In a paper published earlier this year at the journal Environment, I explained how claims and arguments relative to the climate change debate can be classified and tracked using a typology of frames that are common to science-related issues. With the recent controversy over the East Anglia stolen emails, one of these common frames has come to dominate discussion leading up to Copenhagen. What's different this time around is that climate skeptics and conservatives are applying the frame, rather than liberals and…

Changes, one way or another

I have news. Scienceblogs is going to be folded into a new organization sometime soon — basically, we've been bought. I can't discuss all of the details just yet, but let's just say it is a prestigious national magazine with a healthy bottom line that will do us a lot of good. There are certainly some advantages: like I said, prestigious, and there's also a commitment to up-to-date technology and migrating to better blogging software. There's also an agreement that the range of topics I discuss here, including the strong dissent from religion and the atheism and the anti-creationism stuff,…

At the NYTimes, A Frame Shift for Nanotech?

An artist's take on the "scary wonder" of nanotechnology. The asbestos of tomorrow? As we wrote in our article last year at The Scientist, that's not the type of frame device that augurs well for public perceptions of nanotechnology. But it's exactly the perceptual lens by which the New York Times covers a new study appearing this week at Nature Nanotechnology. As Kenneth Chang opens the article, setting the train of thought for readers: Nanotubes, one of the wonder materials of the new age of nanotechnology, may carry a health risk similar to that of asbestos, a wonder material of an…

Why the PZ Myers Affair is Really, Really Bad for Science

If you haven't seen this clip yet, above is a preview of the central message on how "Big Science" views religion in the documentary Expelled. There's little work needed on the part of the producers, since the message is spelled out via the interviews provided by PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins. Notice the very clear translation for audiences as to what supposedly establishment science believes: A) Learning about science makes you an atheist, it "kills off" religious faith. B) If we boost science literacy in society, it will lead to erosion of religion, as religion fades away, we will get more…

Preparing for the Environmental Fight Over Nukes and Coal

In a time of increasing concern for water quality and availability, nuclear power facilities require enormous quantities of water and put back effluent into those nearby water sources. At a time of carbon counting, they also generate considerable carbon emissions through the process of construction and with the life-cycle chain of fuel (uranium) mining, milling, transporting, and disposing. As Americans relearn the breadth of what an environmental issue is, nuclear plants all the while create new social and cultural problems for community stability and autonomy. Coal-fired plants quite…

Sen. Arlen Specter on NIH funding

Last night, I saw Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) speak. (I joined this speakers club called the Oxonian Society -- which despite its name is not restricted to Oxford alumni. Why? What can I say. I was bored, and it is cheaper than internet dating. Hopefully, the people I meet will be more reliably intelligent and less reliably absurd.) Anyway, Sen. Specter has been touring around touting his new book, Never Give In: Battling Cancer in the Senate which discusses his battle with Hodgkin's lymphoma while dealing with a variety of controversial political issues such as judicial confirmations and…

A Vocal Mouse?

University of Washington researchers have developed a vocal mouse that moves the cursor around the screen with clicks and phonemes: The Internet offers wide appeal to people with disabilities. But many of those same people find it frustrating or impossible to use a handheld mouse. Software developed at the University of Washington provides an alternative using the oldest and most versatile mode of communication: the human voice. "There are many people who have perfect use of their voice who don't have use of their hands and arms," said Jeffrey Bilmes, a UW associate professor of electrical…

Darwin and Marx

Razib notes "I’m sure you know that Marx was a keen follower of Darwin’s theory." Eh, no. Not so much. While Marx in 1860 described Origin as containing "the natural-historical basis of our outlook," by 1861 he was noting that "[i]t is remarkable how Darwin recognises among beasts and plants his English society with its labour, competition, opening up of new markets, 'inventions’, and the Malthusian 'struggle for existence’". Indeed he would view Darwinism as a bourgeois ideology which mirrored the bourgeois competitive struggle in capitalist society. Marx’s use of Darwin is underwhelming…

Oh, no! Another outbreak of Mooneyitis!

I'll be brief. I'm sure you all find these things as tiresome as I do. Once again, we've got a couple of indignant wanna-be bureaucrats of atheism complaining about those cranky, rough-hewn gnu atheists. Chris Stedman and Karla McLaren are shocked that people don't realize their hectoring is good for the movement. So they whine about how everyone is mean to them. In this past year, a sociologically fascinating "many approaches" meme has permeated the atheist and skeptical movements. Increasingly, anyone who questions the fiercely uncivil and polemical discourse style will be upbraided with…

Kentucky pays off Ken Ham

Today was the day: Kentucky officially approved giving Ken Ham $43 million in tax breaks plus $11 million in road improvements. That's a nice number; it's about twice what Answers in Genesis sunk into their Creation "Museum" in total. Now they get double that back from the state, and they can use it to build their grandiose Ark Park. There was only one surprise. Answers in Genesis brought up an alternative scenario, where they would build a slightly less flamingly insane version of the park. It doesn't seem to have mattered, because the state seems to have stumbled all over themselves rushing…

One year on and nothing has improved

I first posted this picture on September 8th 2005 in the wake of the ineptitude shown by the administration with their handling of Hurricane Katrina. As we approach the anniversary of the hurricane's second landfall on August 29th 2005 at Louisiana, we've little to convince us that the boy king hasn't been "one of the worst disasters to hit the U.S." If anything, Bush's resume is looking worse and worse. As Maureen Dowd wrote last year: "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees," [Bush] told Diane Sawyer. ... Why does this self-styled "can do" president always lapse into…

Silver nanorod microscopy

Japanese researchers have developed a design concept for a light microscope which could in principle be used for imaging of nanoscale objects. The device would rely on a novel subwavelength imaging technique which allows for the visualization of objects that are smaller than the wavelength of the photons used in the device. Once thought to be impossible, subwavelength imaging can now be performed because of the development of nanostructured metamaterials with a negative refractive index, which can act as a lens by focusing incident light. Until now though, such materials only worked at one…

In Canada, The Liberal's Big Kyoto Problem

The Golden Rule in politics is never promise something you can't deliver. In 1997 Canada signed the Kyoto Protocol and committed to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions to 6 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12, yet emissions today are now more than 30% above the target. Last week, it was claimed by Eddie Goldenberg, a former party policy advisor, that at the time, Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretian committed the country to Kyoto fully expecting to fall short of the targets. Here's how the Globe and Mail reported the comments: "I am not sure that Canadian public opinion -- which was…

Why Al Gore's 'Inconvenient Truth' Is Not Appropriate for Science Class

In case you missed it, ScienceBlogs lit up last week with news that Federal Way school district in Seattle has banned Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth, in part because the presentation conflicts with creationist views and does not depict a fiery End Times for the earth. (Go here, here, here, and here, to name just a few posts.) The deeply distressing news from Federal Way is yet another sign that at the local level, elements of the conservative movement are broadening their attacks on the cultural authority of science by challenging not only the consensus on evolutionary science, but also in…

Sacred Waste: a Polymeric Ritual at the New Orleans Fringe Festival

I have a small part in a show called SACRED WASTE which was created by LSU Ph.D. student Bonny McDonald – which is playing in the upcoming New Orleans Fringe Fest.  The show involves dance, poetry, ritual, elaborate costumes (made of 100% recycled plastic), and explores many aspects of the relationship between humans and plastic – including the manufacture of it here in Louisiana, and some introductory polymer chemistry!  SACRED WASTE was one of 30 shows jury selected to play in the New Orleans Fringe Festival (out of > 200 entries). This performance art show is a unique blend of art and…

More on mathematicians

I seem to have annoyed someone by the moniker of 'dlamming', apparently a graduate student who is interested in yeast. While searching through my junk trackbacks, I discovered his response to my post on the mathematician William Hart (see here), whom he feels is more than adequately qualified to talk about evolution. 'dlamming' makes a number of claims. The first is simply that math is important to many aspects of biology. This is not terribly interesting or, for that matter, controversial and no one - certainly not me - has been claiming that math and mathematicians are not part of…

My Daughter Is Now Officially Data

Back in 2005 my daughter Charlotte, then a four-year-old, took part in a study to see how kids stack up mentally against chimpanzees. I wrote about the ambivalent experience of watching her as both a father and a curious science writer in the New York Times. The emerging lesson of the study, led by Yale grad student Derek Lyons, was that children overimitate even though they should know better. Lyons showed the children how to get a toy out of a container, adding in lots of unnecessary tapping of walls and sliding of rods and such. Other scientists had tested chimpanzees on similar…

Palm Reading and Sexual Advertising: Bodily Symmetry and Intelligence

Your body's bilateral symmetry statistically predicts your health, probability of schizotypy and depression, number of sexual partners, and resting metabolic rate (particularly if you are male). Bodily symmetry may reflect "developmental stability" - i.e., influences like disease, mutation and stress may cause a developmental divergence from DNA's symmetric blueprint. Not only do individuals differ in their environmental exposure to these things, but also in their sensitivity to them: a recent Intelligence article claims that "some individuals grow adaptive phenotypes under almost any…