Sweden has more blond beauties per capita, Italy and France have far better cuisine, and most of the free world can boast of better weather. But over the past 30 years, the citizens of Denmark have scored higher than any other Western country on measures of life satisfaction, and scientists think they know why. In a paper appearing in the Dec. 23 issue of the medical journal BMJ, researchers review six likely and unlikely explanations, and conclude that the country’s secret is a culture of low expectations. ‘It’s a David and Goliath thing,’ said the lead author, Kaare Christensen, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense. ‘If you’re a big guy, you expect to be on the top all the time and you’re disappointed when things don’t go well. But when you’re down at the bottom like us, you hang on, you don’t expect much, and once in a while you win, and it’s that much better.’ The researchers arrived at their findings by a process of elimination and humor. Blonds may have more fun, they argue, but Sweden has a higher prevalence of them. As for climate, Danes ‘bask in a somewhat […]
The UK’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has decided to open the question of whether to allow animal-human hybrid embryos to be developed for research purposes to public debate. The HFEA licenses and monitors IVF and donor insemination clinics, and research centres that use embryos. They also regulate the storage of embryos, eggs and sperm. The HFEA has received two requests from scientists who want to use human cells and animal eggs to produce stem cells for research. Members of the authority met yesterday to decide whether it was in their remit to grant such a request, and if so, then how best to go about it. Chief Executive of the HFEA, Angela McNab, said earlier today that ‘the issues around hybrid and chimera research are unique and different from mainstream human embryo research.’ She adds that the law is not clear and that such research would lead to ‘a significant step change in UK science.’ The HFEA decided two things. First, that it is in their remit to regulate human-animal hybrid and chimera research, and secondly, that the public should be consulted to establish in principle, whether such research should be allowed in the […]
PARIS — Patrick Lozès has a dream: One day France’s black citizens will enjoy the equality granted them under law. ‘To be black and proud – that’s not being anti-French,’ says Mr. Lozès, whose vision challenges France’s colorblind model of assimilation. ‘It’s simply theliberation of a people who don’t see themselves reflected in their country’s public life – in its theater, television, medicine, and universities – except in negative images.’ It is not an accident that Mr. Lozès’s words often contain echoes of Martin Luther King Jr. and other luminaries of the American civil rights movement. The African- American struggle for racial equality has been his prototype for France’s first national black lobbying organization. His group, called the Representative Council of Black Organizations (Le Conseil Représentative des Associations Noires, or CRAN), was founded in late 2005, just after widespread rioting in the suburban ghettos populated largely by the families of African and Arab immigrants. The riots were not the motivation for creating CRAN, according to Mr. Lozès. But they gave the group immediacy, momentum, and a high public profile. Its leaders have spent the past months holding conferences, setting up committees, and building a grass-roots […]
A group of high school and college teachers and students has transmitted sound pulses faster than light travels-at least according to one understanding of the speed of light. The results conform to Einstein’s theory of relativity, so don’t expect this research to lead to sound-propelled spaceships that fly faster than light. Still, the work could help spur research that boosts the speed of electrical and other signals higher than before. The standard metric for the speed of light is that of light traveling in vacuum. This constant, known as c, is roughly 186,000 miles per second, or roughly one million times the speed of sound in air. According to Einstein’s work, matter and signals cannot travel faster than c. PVC science However, physicist William Robertson at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, along with a high school teacher, two college students and two high school students, managed to, depending on how you look at it, transmit sound pulses faster than c using little more than a plastic plumbing pipe and a computer’s sound card. ‘This experiment is truly basement science,’ Robertson told LiveScience. The key to understanding their results, reported online Jan. 2 in […]
This week in Federal Way schools, it got a lot more inconvenient to show one of the top-grossing documentaries in U.S. history, the global-warming alert ‘An Inconvenient Truth.’ After a parent who supports the teaching of creationism and opposes sex education complained about the film, the Federal Way School Board on Tuesday placed what it labeled a moratorium on showing the film. The movie consists largely of a computer presentation by former Vice President Al Gore recounting scientists’ findings. ‘Condoms don’t belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He’s not a schoolteacher,’ said Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven who also said that he believes the Earth is 14,000 years old. ‘The information that’s being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is. … The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn’t in the DVD.’ Hardison’s e-mail to the School Board prompted board member David Larson to propose the moratorium Tuesday night. ‘Somebody could say you’re killing free speech, and my retort to them would be we’re encouraging free speech,’ said Larson, a lawyer. ‘The beauty of our society is we allow debate.’ […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
