Wednesday, January 6, 2021

Maybe rodents regulate a ratio of protein to dietary carbohydrates in order to achieve metabolic benefits (reduced insulin levels, improved blood glucose control, and, in the long term, reduced weight & fat gain)

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What does self‐selection of dietary proteins in rats tell us about protein requirements and body weight control? Patrick C. Even  Joséphine ...

Chimpanzees: Adolescent males mated with nulliparous females and reproduced primarily with these first-time mothers, who are not preferred as mating partners by older males

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The development of affiliative and coercive reproductive tactics in male chimpanzees. Rachna B. Reddy, Kevin E. Langergraber, Aaron A. Sande...

Previous research suggests that choice causes an illusion of control—that it makes people feel more likely to achieve preferable outcomes, even when they are selecting among options that are functionally identical

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Does Choice Cause an Illusion of Control? Joowon Klusowski, Deborah A. Small, Joseph P. Simmons. Psychological Science, January 5, 2021. htt...

Empathy for joy recruits a broader prefrontal network than empathy for sadness; prefrontal cortex activation during both types of empathy was positively predicted by working memory capacity

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Taiwo, Z., Bezdek, M., Mirabito, G., & Light, S. N. (2021). Empathy for joy recruits a broader prefrontal network than empathy for sadne...

Documenting individual differences in the propensity to hold attitudes with certainty

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DeMarree, K. G., Petty, R. E., Briñol, P., & Xia, J. (2020). Documenting individual differences in the propensity to hold attitudes with...

Women reported slightly more openness to uncommitted sexual relationships during the peri-ovulatory session, but significant differences were restricted only to women who exhibited the luteinizing hormone surge

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Variation in sociosexuality across natural menstrual cycles: Associations with ovarian hormones and cycle phase. Urszula M. Marcinkowska et ...
Tuesday, January 5, 2021

Baby falls while walking: We propose that a system that discounts the impact of errors in early stages of development encourages infants to practice basic skills such as walking to the point of mastery

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The impact of errors in infant development: Falling like a baby. Danyang Han  Karen E. Adolph. Developmental Science, December 5 2020. https...

Modern women show signs of the ancestral competition among women, disliking & aggressing against those who threaten their romantic prospects, targeting especially physically attractive & sexually uninhibited peers

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Our Grandmothers’ Legacy: Challenges Faced by Female Ancestors Leave Traces in Modern Women’s Same-Sex Relationships. Tania A. Reynolds. Arc...

Supposedly, having multiple non-marital sex partners reduces traditional incentives for men to get married; instead, recent sex partners reduce the odds of marriage, but the lifetime number of non-marital sex partners does not

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Wolfinger, Nicholas H., and Samuel Perry. 2021. “Does Promiscuity Affect Marriage Rates?.” SocArXiv. January 4. doi:10.31235/osf.io/n9e6p Ro...

A 44-year-old woman started to ask whether her family had attended her funeral; since she thought she had died, she told her husband to marry another woman

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Cotard syndrome in anti-NMDAR encephalitis: two patients and insights from molecular imaging. J Ramirez Bermudez et al. The Neural Basis of ...

This paper proposes that ancestral use of irrigation increases autocracy and a culture of collectivism, & reduces contemporary female labor force participation and female property rights

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Fredriksson, Per G.; Gupta, Satyendra Kumar (2020): Irrigation and Culture: Gender Roles and Women’s Rights, GLO Discussion Paper, No. 681, ...

Taste is afforded the greatest relevance to nutrition as it is posited to have improved the probability of survival, helping screen safe and potentially toxic properties of foods; this teleology is dubious

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Taste, teleology and macronutrient intake. Richard D Mattes. Current Opinion in Physiology, Volume 19, February 2021, Pages 162-167. https:/...
Monday, January 4, 2021

People vary with regard to their temperature & spiciness preferences for unknown reasons; these preferences correlate, & were not associated with age, gender & cultural background, which suggests that they may be innate

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Some like it hot: Preference for temperature and pungency consumption is associated with sensitivity to noxious heat. Ruth Defrin  Michal De...

The historian Fred Shannon said in 1945 that local soil heterogeneity limited the ability of American farmers to learn from the experience of their neighbors, & that this contributed to their "traditional individualism"

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Learning is Caring: Soil Heterogeneity, Social Learning and the Formation of Close-knit Communities. Itzchak Tzachi Raz. The Hebrew Universi...

Gendered Fitness Interests: An individual's socio-political views covary with the sex of their children or the numbers of relatives of each sex

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Gendered fitness interests: A method partitioning the effects of family composition on socio-political attitudes and behaviors. Robert C. Br...

From 2019... The 1862 Homestead Act granted 10% of the land in the United States to 1.6 million individuals; areas with greater historical exposure to homesteading are poorer and more rural today

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From 2019... There’s No Such Thing As Free Land: The Homestead Act and Economic Development. Ross Mattheis, Itzchak Tzachi Raz. Harvard Job ...