26th November 2022, 2 min read

Science and Technology links (November 26 2022)

1. In Molière’s famous play, Tartuffe, the main characters is outwardly pious but fundamentally deceitful. Are people who insist on broadcasting their high virtue better people, or are they more like Tartuffe? Dong et al. (2022) conclude that people who say that they have good values are not necessarily better people in practice, but they are more likely to be hypocrites. That is, Tartuffe is a realistic character. It is worth pointing out that Molière’s play was censored by the king.
2. The thymus is a small organ which plays a critical role in your immune system by producing T cells. As you get older, your thymus nearly disappears. The net result is that by the time you are 60 years old, you have few available T cells left and your immune system cannot adapt to new diseases as well. Calum Chace reports on a small clinical trial that showed that we can rejuvenate the thymus inexpensively. Unfortunately, though the clinical trial has been completed years ago, nobody seems to care about what is possibly a medical breakthrough in the fight against aging.
3. When doing exercises to get stronger, it is the extension of the muscles that matters, not the contraction.
4. Climate change might results in us having more rainbows.
5. Social scientists are no better at predicting societal change than the rest of us.
6. In female rats, scientists find that a gene therapy may protect against reproductive aging.
7. High-speed wireless internet significantly increased teen girls’ severe mental health diagnoses – by 90%.
8. We can reset the age of a single cell.
9. Content warnings reduce aesthetic appreciation of visual art.
10. Highly intelligent people are not more likely to have mental illness.
11. Psychopaths only do better if others cannot retaliate. They also tend to cooperate less.
12. Hundreds of thousands of bats are killed per year in countries with many wind turbines.