The cost of an acquisition falls by 15.4 percent for each female director on a company’s board, materialistic Israelis experience higher levels of post-traumatic stress following public violence, and extroverted children are more strongly influenced by plate-size bias. Orphans are likelier to be indiscriminately friendly, and their amygdalas likelier to produce equivalent reactions toward both adoptive mothers and strangers. Neurologists who stimulated the anterior midcingulate cortices of epileptics aroused their patients’ will to persevere. Psychologists announced that some people settle for bad relationships because they fear being single. Women are inclined to regret the sex they had, and men the sex they didn’t. Women find sex in advertising less objectionable if the product advertised is sufficiently expensive. Moral outrage is strongly predicted by anger but requires anger to interact with disgust. Americans are less likely to respond to an online classified for an iPod, and then will offer less money, if the ad contains a photo of a black person’s hand or a white person’s with a tattoo. Criminality is higher among college students in Belgium, Canada, Greece, Hong Kong, Israel, Italy, Norway, Poland, Russia, Scotland, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, and the United States who were spanked as children. Study participants are likelier to choose the same snack they offered an unknown woman — even if it is not the snack they themselves want — when that woman is wearing a fat suit.
It emerged that, in trying to count her rings, marine geologists had accidentally killed a 507-year-old clam named Ming. Electroantennograms revealed that domesticated silk moths have evolved an indifference to environmental odors. Crowded, restrained locusts toward whom vanilla or lemon scents are gently blown during spoon-feeding can be trained to prefer lemon. Mice trained to fear the smell of artificial cherry blossom pass on the aversion to their grandchildren. The equal burning of sucrose and glucose was discovered by a biologist who collected the exhalations of hummingbirds. A two-decade study found that female Bahamian lemon sharks return to Bimini Lagoon to give birth, and a two-year study found that Bahamian rock iguanas fed by tourists have atypical loose feces. Ocean acidification impairs digestion in green sea urchins and makes rockfish anxious. The head of the seahorse produces no wake before it. Sharks know you can see them. Cuttlefish remember when.
While on Ritalin, a nervous, fidgety, impulsive monkey can delay gratification, but not as well as an unmedicated, innately calm monkey. The sound of mice being clicked may induce seizures in house cats. Swiss barn owlets can identify the calls of their individual nestmates, and a human’s height can be accurately inferred from a voice recording, possibly because of variations in subglottal resonance. The convened Acoustical Society of America heard that more young Californian men were ending their sentences with rising pitch. Nasal sexual dimorphism begins around age eleven. Alabaman doctors blamed female tween delinquency on early puberty. People with photographic autobiographical memories remain prone to false memories. Nostalgists tend to be optimists. Autistics are likelier to be synaesthetes. Gymnasts ingest more flame retardants. Face transplants, because they look unlike either the donor or the recipient, are becoming ethically accepted. Health insurance does not encourage unhealthy behavior. Peak happiness was observed at a per capita GDP of $36,000.
Tea and Canvas, erased book pages by Jonathan Callan. Courtesy the artist and Martin Kudlek Galerie, Cologne, Germany.
