Berzerker
Deity
Johnny 'I Can See Clearly Now' Nash died too at the age of 80
lets see you hold a note that long
lets see you hold a note that long
Today I Learned #2: Gone for a Wiki Walk
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Josu
Emperor
TIL this story about Van Halen and brown M&Ms
shadowplay
your ad here
Read the story about him getting his **** back from fred durst. It's truly hilarious.
aimeeandbeatles
watermelon
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Today I learned that over a quarter of the electricity generated in Iceland is from geothermal plants.
Berzerker
Deity
I didn't know this but Indonesians are big fans of Van Halen, the brothers are actually Dutch and Indonesian and came here back in the early 60s having faced racial discrimination in both the Netherlands and SoCal
Zkribbler
Deity
I thought it was 100%.
TIL:
Shedding Light On Lefties And Righties
Shedding Light On Lefties And Righties
Anew study has handed important information to scientists mystified by lefties and righties. Why do people favor one hand over the other? The trait has baffled scientists across a half-century of scattershot research. While environmental factors appear to play a crucial role, many scientists have long espoused a theory that a single dominant gene may be the reason so many people are right-handed. But in new studies encompassing millions of people, scientists now are discovering that the answer may lie in dozens of genetic variations shaping our preference in small, unexpected ways.
The question goes beyond which hand we favor when throwing a ball or picking up a pen. Broadly speaking, it touches on how language, face recognition and some sensory perceptions can vary in location and intensity across the brain’s two hemispheres. Brain imaging studies suggest these neural signals are processed by one side of the brain or another in ways that seem to track with handedness, scientists say. Hand preference shapes our behavior from how we hug and kiss or kick a soccer goal, to the side we favor when we pose for selfies on Instagram. Indeed, ideas of right and left are so ingrained that they shape the way we talk about morality, creativity and politics.
”This is very much at the core of how our brains and nervous systems are organized—and how it relates to behavior,” says psychologist Sebastian Ocklenburg at Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, who studies hand preference among humans and animals. “You think you have free will in all these things, but there is this ancient brain principle shaping all sorts of little everyday tidbits of what we do.”
Many species, from dogs and cats to Japanese crabs, are evenhanded, favoring one paw or claw over the other in almost equal numbers, studies show. Humans, however, are about 90% right-handed. No one knows exactly why, nor why a significant minority is persistently left-handed and has been so for tens of thousands of years, based on the evidence of prehistoric cave art and handprints.
Even if the genetic aspects of left-handedness become much clearer, science may conclude that heredity plays a surprisingly small role. Hand preference is “very environmental,” says geneticist David Evans at the University of Queensland in Australia, who was also a senior author on the new study suggesting multiple genetic influences.
The year someone is born, how much they weighed at birth, or whether they were in a set of twins or triplets may influence handedness, according to data collected by the health research resource UK Biobank. Other researchers found the proportion of births of left-handers is higher in the spring and early summer months in the Northern Hemisphere, while births of left-handers in the Southern Hemisphere appear to be highest from September to January. Sex differences could
play a role as well. Slightly more men than women are left-handers, studies show.
Geography and culture also are likely factors. People born in the U.K. had a 10.1% chance of being born left-handed, while for U.K. residents born elsewhere, the chances fell to 6.8%, according to research published last year. While ethnic differences may play a part here, a study showed that 3.5% of schoolchildren in China but only 0.7% in Taiwan were left-handed. More broadly, the prevalence of left-handedness is lower in Asia than in North America or Europe.
Greek scientist Marietta Papadatou- Pastou at the National & Kapodistrian University of Athens and colleagues have pulled together data encompassing more than 2.3 million people worldwide, collected in 200 published studies. In findings published online in April in Psychological Bulletin, Dr. Papadatou-Pastou and her team estimated that 10.6% of people world-wide are left-handed— about 827 million people in all.
The new study on multiple genetic variations, published in the journal Nature Human Behavior, involved 1.7 million people and is the largest genetic study of hand preference ever conducted. An international consortium of 118 scientists led by Sarah Medland, head of the psychiatric genetics group at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Brisbane, Australia, discovered 41 genetic variations active only among people who are left-handed. They also detected another seven genetic variants associated only with people who are ambidextrous—able to use either hand with equal facility.
The scientists based their conclusions on anonymized genetic data collected by UK Biobank, the biotech company 23andMe and 32 research groups participating in the International Handedness Consortium. The researchers looked for telltale patterns among 1.5 million right-handed, 194,198 left-handed and 37,637 ambidextrous individuals.
The researchers are not sure yet what any of these genetic changes do, but based on their discoveries so far, they suspect that hundreds, if not thousands, of such variations may be associated with hand preferences. Several appear to be related to brain development.
Previous studies had simply been too small to detect significant genetic influences, the scientists said. They took 10 years to assemble sufficient data. “At first we didn’t have significant findings because the sample size was too small,” says Dr. Evans. “It is only the advent of extremely large cohort studies that allows us to do this.”
The focus on left-handers was rare among such studies, several scientists said, reflecting what might be a longtime bias against studies of lefthandness. In fact, until recently, neuroscientists routinely excluded left-handers from brain-imaging studies designed to explore brain functions. Most focused solely on right-handed men in order to simplify results, several neuroscientists and psychologists said. undreds of studies have tried and failed to sort out such complications. “Why are we not all right-handed or left-handed? Even in isolated societies, we see this same 10% or so of left-handers,” Dr. Papadatou-Pastou says. “We really don’t know why.”
GETTY IMAGES (6)
TAKING SIDES, FROM LEFT TO RIGHT
| THE HUMAN TENDENCY TO FAVOR ONE SIDE OVER THE OTHER TAKES MANY FORMS
Best Foot Forward: Many people prefer their right foot to kick a ball or crush something underfoot. A study of 12,000 people found 61.6% right-footers, 8.2% left-footers and 30.2 % mixed-footers.
Taking Selfies: People usually pose showing their left side, says a study of online photos posted with the hashtag #selfie on Instagram.
Kissing: Most people tilt their heads to the right when they kiss. Studies show that about 64.5% of couples turned their heads to the right during kissing and 35.5% of couples turned to the left.
Cradling a baby: Most people use their left arm to cradle an infant, several studies show, regardless of whether they are right- or left-handed.
Hugging: People hugging in public tend to favor the right side, several studies show. A 2018 study of 2,500 people found that 83.04% engaged in right-side embraces.
SCIENCE JOURNAL
ROBERT LEE HOTZ
aimeeandbeatles
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Is it bad that due to today's political climate my first thing I thought of that headline was was "but both U.S. parties are actually kinda right-wing..."
Phrossack
Armored Fish and Armored Men
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China is undergoing a growing project to eliminate more and more minorities it deems troublesome, and is extremely sensitive and insecure about any depictions of Chinese history anywhere. At least the museum curator refused.TIL that the words Genghis Khan, Empire and Mongol should not be used in an museum exposition in Nantes, France about the history and life of Genghis Khan
Well... China does not want that.
yes, good that curator stood his ground
With the incident with the Leipziger Messe I mentioned in another thread IIRC the management did give in to China.
China is a big "country" and as far as I understand Chinese history only loosely held together the past thousands of years based on simple obedience without much of a cultural integration.
If that is correct (IDK for certain) China has a big challenge.
When I was there in 2018 the many different ethnic groups of SW China were celebrated within provinces and promoted to Chinese and foreign tourists. Of course those folks are not Muslims and IIRC don't have a history of causing trouble. Genghis Khan may be a problem because he conquered China and incorporated it into his Empire before it became just another dynasty.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
We should also be wary of assuming that China has any consistent policy in this regard. Despite being a one-party state, it's still riven with competing factions and cliques, all competing for prestige and resources, and each with their own notion of how things should be done. It may simply be that whatever clique controls the tourist administration has a different attitude towards this stuff than whatever clique controls the museums.
I think this is sometimes masked because the cliques all understand the importance of presenting a united front to the outside world, so will allow edicts they disagree with to be presented as emanating from "the Chinese government" even when it really originates in a given department, simply because the negative impact of the edict is less than the perceived negative impact of squabbling in front of foreigners.
Ajidica
High Quality Person
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In some ways it reminds me of the Soviet Union. They were perfectly happy showing off the ethnic diversity of the Soviet Union, so long as said ethnic diversity was expressed in a Soviet-approved way.
For example, the Soviet Union was simultaneously repressing Lithuanian ethnic identity through Russification, but at the same time engaged in a massive reconstruction of Trakai Castle, a symbol of Lithuanian culture and heritage.
And in some way that reminded me of all the post stamps showing diversity of regions. I very much loved the Spanish ones on traditional costumes. I made a screenshot shown below full of them incl some from mainly Romania.
I also love very much the Balkan costumes. My ex-wife made one for herself as wedding dress. Lots to embroider was that.
As long as it is at a harmless level ethnic identity is fine and centralist countries have no issues.
It's a bit imo like the current strong lifestyle identity culture, it keeps people happy busy.
TIL that during the 1918-9 pandemic they thought it was caused by a bacteria:
The State of Science, Microbiology, and Vaccines Circa 1918
Richard Pfeiffer announced in 1892 and 1893 that he had discovered influenza's cause. Pfeiffer's bacillus (Bacillus influenzae) was a major focus of attention and some controversy between 1892 and 1920. The role this organism or these organisms played in influenza dominated medical discussion during the great pandemic.
The State of Science, Microbiology, and Vaccines Circa 1918
It's even still named like it today, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haemophilus_influenzae .
aimeeandbeatles
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Today I learned that Nunavut has a license plate shaped like a polar bear.
Also that although there's a few roads in Nunavut, there's none connecting to other provinces or territories.
Also that although there's a few roads in Nunavut, there's none connecting to other provinces or territories.
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