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Prince Myshkin

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Americans die younger and experience more injury and illness in comparison to people from other rich nations. This is despite spending almost twice as much on healthcare.

 

Premature births in America is higher than the rest of its peers and more closely resembles sub-Saharan Africa.

 

Alongside this, many people lack health insurance at all or face financial barriers to care and a lack of primary care providers. People in the US also consume more calories, are more sedentary, abuse more drugs and shoot one another more often. The US also lags behind on many measures of education, has higher child poverty and income equality, and lower social mobility than most other advanced democracies.

 

 

This is comparing America with: Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands and the UK.

 

(Source: New Scientist, Issue No 2925, Page 28)

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A 1995 study that compared the pitch of women in Japan and the Netherlands found that Japanese women had consistently higher voices. This reflected cultural values, the researchers concluded, noting that traditional gender roles - with an emphasis on the man as the breadwinner and protector - were very highly valued in Japanese culture at the time, but less so in Dutch culture.

 

Studies in Sweden, the US, Australia and Canada have shown that women's voices have grown deeper since the 1950's (by more than 20 hertz, roughly the equivalent of moving between "middle C" and B on a piano.

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In the 1760's an Italian priest called Lazzaro Spallanzani discovered the purpose of sex by dressing up frogs in taffeta pants. When the frogs were clothed, eggs laid by females didn't grow. Only if the pants were unlaced, releasing the slimy seamen inside, did the eggs develop into tadpoles.

 

Given that many people still believed in spontaneous generation of loving creatures from inanimate matter, his experiments were a breakthrough for science: his dressed up frogs guided developments in everything from barrier contraception to in vitro fertilisation.

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taking a big stride and sticking your foot in a lift door doesn't always make it open and in such instances you look like an idiot whilst trying to reach a button when you have fucking tiny t.rex arms.

basically kids don't stick your feet in a lift door.

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don't ever think that you're not clever! Inspiration comes in bursts, and we all have down days to contend with.

I am pleased to announce that scientists are working on short-crop cacao, which makes perfect sense - nobody's growing cacao trees for lumber, so short trees means more cacao plants and pods per acre, which might just take some pressure off the land use issues surrounding cacao tree plantations. Chocolate lovers have reason to celebrate!!! :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Fewer boys than girls were born in the months after the huge earthquake struck Japan in March 2011.

 

Ralph Catalano of the University of California in Berkeley and colleagues examined hospital records of births in Japan between 2006 and the end of 2011. After the quake, births in areas closest to the epicentre were more likely to be girls, but provinces farther out showed no gender bias. About 2.2 per cent fewer boys were born in the most damaged areas than expected (American Journal of Human Biology, doi.org/nbj).

 

It is not the first time such a skew has been noted: fewer boys were born after the US stock market crash of 2008, for instance. The reason may be evolutionary, says Catalano. Boys are more likely to be premature and suffer problems associated with low birth weight than girls. In times of stress, it may therefore be beneficial for the mother to give birth to a girl.

 

However, it is unclear whether stress causes mothers to miscarry more males or whether fewer males are conceived. Earthquakes provide a natural test for this, Catalano says. If births immediately after show a gender skew, it would suggest that stress is triggering miscarriages. A bias nine months later indicates fewer male conceptions.

 

The team found evidence for both. Several mechanisms may be at work, says Catalano. Fetuses produce a hormone called human chorionic gonadotropin, which camouflages them from the mother's immune system. Weak male fetuses make less of this hormone, meaning they may be at greater risk of attack.

 

William James of University College London believes the father's testosterone level plays a role. During periods of high stress, he says, men produce less testosterone, which can reduce the number and quality of the "male" sperm, which carry a Y sex chromosome.

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