If you're unhappily married, you might as well be single: At least if your goal in life is to have it all end via a fatal stroke. It's just a meeting abstract with an accompanying press release, but the results seem pretty clear cut. Single men have an elevated risk of dying from stroke compared to married men. But, if you separate out the men who report their marriage as "not so successful," then they have the same risk elevation as their single counterparts. Looking on the bright side, only 3.6 percent of the men viewed their marriage as that much of a downer.Mouse species views the Y chromosome as irrelevant: Those of us who survived high school biology know that mammals use an X/Y sex determination system. But that's apparently one of those "lies for children"—sex determination systems evolve extremely rapidly, so there's plenty of potential for an exception to this rule. And, in fact, these exceptions exist: "A limited number of mammal species have, however, evolved to escape convention and present aberrant sex chromosome complements," as the authors of a recent paper put it. Behold the African pygmy mouse, Mus minutoidesz, which apparently has a perfectly normal Y chromosome, but has an unusual looking X that can override it, creating XY females.
Scientists measure the speed of racing turtles: If you heard the phrase "like swimming through sand," you'd probably expect it to refer to an arduous, inefficient process. For newly hatched sea turtles, however, the same flippers that help them scoot through the ocean can apparently compact a sandy surface, at which point they can push off it as if it were a solid. Young loggerhead turtles can turn in equivalent performance when scampering across sand as they do when making their way across sandpaper. Videos of scientists sending turtles off to the races are available.
Karma makes life less disappointing: There's a well described phenomenon called disconfirmation sensitivity, that describes how a mismatch between expectations and reality can lead to disappointment. But what happens if you believe that the Universe is structured in a way that compensates for your disappointments? Researchers performed a study of disconfirmation sensitivity in India, and found that the strength of one's belief in karma correlated with a decrease in subjects' tendency to experience the disappointment.
If you're not in it for the money, you must be incompetent: It's a two-fer of weirdness from the Journal of Consumer Research. US society as a whole is based on the assumption that the profit motive drives all sorts of creativity and competence. Apparently, we've internalized that message so well that we assume nonprofits are incompetent. Consumers feel warmly towards nonprofits, but aren't especially interested in buying anything from them. Sending subtle signals that suggest the nonprofit is good at what it does can overcome this effect, at which point the warm feelings make consumers even more likely to buy.
Robo-foot gains efficiency through fake ankle: As someone who has badly sprained both of his ankles at various points in the past, I've always viewed them as one of evolution's low points. But, as it turns out, they're a good thing: when functioning properly, they take some of the energy that would otherwise be dissipated by the foot and recycle it into the next stride. Researchers have now created a microprocessor-controlled robo-equivalent. Shut off the controller, and the ankle exacts a 23 percent energy cost; switch it on, and that cost drops to 14 percent. The researchers hope to put it into prosthetics some day.
Source: Arstechnica.com
