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A cat sitting in a regular square (l) and the Kanizsa square illusion (r). (Smith et al., Applied Animal Behaviour Science 2021) Our feline friends certainly wow us with their cleverness - they can fetch things, open doors, navigate seemingly impossible obstacles, and even understand basic instructions (when they feel like it, anyway). At other times, they can be hilariously silly. Any cat lover is familiar with their quirks, such as seemingly endless joy at knocking things off tables, and an innate fondness for sitting in enclosed spaces. The latter can apply even if that space is just a two-dimensional...

Misinformation and fake news continue to be a major problem across social media platforms. Now, a new study reports people with high emotional intelligence are much less likely to fall for deceptive and untrue news items. Conducted at the University of Strathclyde, the study asked a group of volunteers to take a look at various social media news stories, some true and some false. The group then tried to determine which were real and which were fictitious. Each participant also gave a short explanation as to their fact-checking thought process and filled out a test to gauge their emotional intelligence....

Researchers have mapped an underlying “psychological signature” for people who are predisposed to holding extreme social, political and religious attitudes and supporting violence in the name of ideology. A new study suggests that a particular mix of personality traits and types of unconscious cognition – the ways our brain takes in basic information – is a strong predictor for extremist views across a range of beliefs, including nationalism and religious fervour. These mental characteristics include poorer working memory and slower “perceptual strategies” – the unconscious processing of changing stimuli, such as shape and colour – as well as tendencies towards...

Internet platforms like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are not systematically biased against conservatives or right-wing viewpoints in their content moderation practices, according to an analysis from NYU researchers. According to the report released Monday, “False Accusation: The Unfounded Claim that Social Media Companies Censor Conservatives,” the allegation that social media companies engage in anti-conservative bias “is itself a form of disinformation: a falsehood with no reliable evidence to support it.” “No trustworthy large-scale studies have determined that conservative content is being removed for ideological reasons,” the NYU report says. “Even anecdotal evidence of supposed bias tends to crumble under close...

In a year when numerous faculty members who aren’t “woke” have been pilloried, and many universities are revamping themselves in accordance with the agenda of Black Lives Matter and Antifa, I was amazed to read an article by Harvard history professor Naomi Oreskes and her student, Charlie Tyson, who claim that research findings that university professors overwhelmingly lean to the left are wrong. Oreskes and Tyson published “Is Academe Awash in Liberal Bias?” in the Chronicle of Higher Education on September 14. Their piece violates common sense and misconstrues basic statistical reasoning.

In Hebrews 11:1 in the Bible, faith is described as the “substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Now, according to a new study by Georgetown University neuroscientists, the strength of one's faith in God is likely linked to the brain.In their study, Implicit pattern learning predicts individual differences in belief in God in the United States and Afghanistan, published this month in the journal Nature Communications, the neuroscientists found that an individual’s ability to unconsciously predict complex patterns, through an ability known as implicit pattern learning, had a strong correlation with the strength of their...

It's not advisable, and it's not always safe, but passing out drunk happens sometimes when people over-indulge – having so many drinks their bodies just can't handle it, leading them to sink into bleary unconsciousness. The hangover could be far worse than a sore head the next morning, scientists now report in a new study. A massive review of previous research examining the drinking history of over 130,000 people suggests that getting blind drunk stands to double people's risk of developing dementia later in life. While the associations between excessive alcohol consumption and dementia are well documented, there nonetheless remains...

Researchers looked at pairs of identical twins where one of each set was straight The homosexual twin tended to have a more 'male' hand with differing fingers Essex University scientists said the differences may be determined in the womb _____________________________________________________________________ The length of a person's fingers could provide a clue to their sexuality, with women whose ring fingers are longer than their index digits more likely to be lesbian, a study has suggested. Researchers at Essex University looked at sets of identical twins where one of the siblings was heterosexual. They found that the homosexual twin tended to have a...

Sociology professor Alicia Walker is asking male participants to voluntarily send photos of their anatomy along with measurements – in an aroused and non-aroused state – as part of a research project approved by the Missouri State University Institutional Review Board, The College Fix reported. “The study is examining the importance of men's self-esteem and feelings about their bodies and their experiences in a society that worships size and tells men that they're less than if they don't measure up,” Walker told Fox News. “For the men I've spoken to thus far, that impact has been grave.” Walker clarified that men are not emailing...

The Atlantic claims online pornography is killing the environment at a greater pace than physical pornography ever did, in an article this week. “So many people watch porn online that the industry’s carbon footprint might be worse now that it was in the days of DVDs and magazines,” declared Atlantic writer Matt Kessler. […] … “Using a formula that Netflix published on its blog in 2015, Nathan Ensmenger, a professor at Indiana University who is writing a book about the environmental history of the computer, calculates that if Pornhub streams video as efficiently as Netflix (0.0013 kWh per streaming hour),...

Are kids from more religious families more or less altruistic than their peers from less-religious families? That's what a high-profile new study from University of Chicago neuroscientist Jean Decety and a global crew of collaborators sought to determine... (snip) In their study, Decety and his colleagues gave the sticker test to 1,170 kids at schools in six cities--Amman, Cape Town, Chicago, Guangzhou, Istanbul, and Toronto...The researchers also gave the kids another test, in which they watched videos of people hurting other people, and then judged (a) how mean the bullies were, and (b) how much punishment the bullies deserved. (snip)...

Marijuana is much safer than alcohol or tobacco, according to a new study Marijuana is roughly 114 times less deadly than alcohol, according to recent findings published in the journal Scientific Reports. Of the seven drugs included in the study, alcohol was the deadliest at an individual level, followed by heroin, cocaine, tobacco, ecstasy, methamphetamines, and marijuana. Previous studies consistently ranked marijuana as the safest recreational drug, but it was not known that the discrepancy was this large. The researchers determined the mortality risk by comparing a lethal dose of each substance with the amount typically used. Not only was...

Zaneta Rago, the Director of Rutgers’ Social Justice Center, said that she was surprised there were not more millennials who believed that gender exists on a spectrum. “It's wonderful that approximately half of the respondents understood gender as a spectrum, but that means we're only half way there," she said. Daniella Anconetami, a School of Arts and Sciences first-year student, said that she believes in the gender spectrum. She said that she discovered that gender “wasn’t black and white” in high school, and said that her opinions about gender identity changed after meeting someone who was transgender in high school....

The study, from the nonpartisan wealth research firm New World Wealth, found that of the 13.1 million millionaires in the world, 7.4 million, or 56.2 percent, identify themselves as Christian when asked about their religion. Fully 6.5 percent of millionaires identified themselves as Muslim, 3.9 percent identified themselves as Hindu and 1.7 percent identified themselves as Jewish. Fully 31.7 percent of millionaires identified themselves as "other," which includes other religions and "no religion."

Given all the attention paid to sexual assault on college campuses in recent months, you'd think a Justice Department report showing that the campus rape and assault rate had dropped 52% since 1997 would attract a lot of attention.

It's enough to start a new battle of the sexes, but when it comes to needless and untimely deaths, men win hands down. A 20 year study of the Darwin Awards, an annual review of the most foolish way people have died, found almost 90 per cent were 'won' by males. ... Of 332 independently verified nominations 14 were ruled out of the analysis because they were shared by male and females - usually overly adventurous couples in compromising positions.

Where do you fit in this society? Take this test. I'm almost a 'centralist', close to the center axis in the blue sector. 1.62 and 1.59. Does that make me a 'RINO'?

The Benefits of Being Politically Correct By Anna North November 10, 2014 1:20 pm 30 Comments When people bring up political correctness, they’re often talking about how much they hate it. Unlike, say, “diversity” or “inclusion,” the term is perhaps most frequently used by those who object to what it stands for, who feel that calls to change the way they speak harm them or society in some way. These objections inspired Jack Goncalo, a professor of organizational behavior at Cornell, and his team to study the actual effects of political correctness. They’d heard “this idea that the effort to...

A new study from the American Journal of Political Science indicates that different political affiliations may actually correspond with different body odors. The researchers, led by Brown University political scientist Rose McDermott, found that conservatives and liberals smell dissimilar. While the difference is small, it is apparently significant enough that we subconsciously prefer the scent of those who vote like we do. "It appears nature stacks the deck to make politically similar partners more attractive to each other in unconscious ways," the researchers wrote.Previous research has found a number of other political view correlations with unknown degrees of biological and...

A federal study to determine why 75 percent of lesbian women are obese and gay men are not has totaled nearly $3 million. snip They have determined that gay and bisexual males had a “greater desire for toned muscles” than straight men, lesbians have lower “athletic self-esteem” that may lead to higher rates of obesity, and that lesbians are more likely to see themselves at a healthy weight even though they are not, the Free Beacon reported. Their research also found that LGBT individuals exercise less than heterosexuals, and that sexual minorities are 46 to 76 percent less likely to...