Psychologists have long thought that bringing women into traditionally male realms would create kinder, gentler institutions. However, female torture of male prisoners at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison seems to prove the opposite. Of the seven U.S. soldiers charged in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, three are women.
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Why have we been fascinated for so many years by Mona Lisa’s enigmatic smile? It may be due to random noise in our brain.
Philip Cohen reports in New Scientist that Christopher Tyler and Leonid Kontsevich manipulated a computer image of the painting by adding random visual “noise” (like the “snow” seen on a badly tuned TV). They then asked 12 people if they thought this Mona Lisa was sad or happy.
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Children, especially girls, are reaching puberty at alarmingly younger ages every year. This is a major problem, since with longer lives and more education, most women want to put off having children to a later age than ever before. The sexualizing of children has been blamed on too much sex on TV?but now researchers have found that even watching wholesome family fare can bring on early puberty.
Gaia Vince writes in New Scientist that this is because children who watch a lot of TV produce less melatonin, the sleep hormone that has been linked to the onset of puberty.Scientists at the University of Florence found that when kids were kept away from TV, computers and video games, their melatonin production increased by about 30%.
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A second cow has tested positive for Mad Cow Disease in the U.S.?and only a fraction of cattle are tested, so who knows how many infected cows there really are? However, the USDA says it’s “very likely” that with further testing, the cow will turn out not to have Mad Cow Disease, even though the test they used is wrong only about once in a thousand cases.
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