Science

Human eyelashes are good for more than just catching dust and looking pretty: As researchers report in Science Advances, they also actively fling water droplets away from the #eyes, helping to keep vision clear when we swim, sweat, and cry (or shower)

Summary: a snake collector immunized himself on a rotating basis to lots of lethal snakes. I will not certify him as sane, since at some point he allowed snakes to directly bite himself and ended up in coma for several days (it was by accident). As a result of prolonged work with increasing doses and cyclically repeating venoms, he seems to have done human kind a considerable favour: it was possible to isolate venom antibodies from his blood which have broad and powerful effect and don't cause as much allergy as animal antibodies.

Study of the calls that bonobos use to communicate indicates that their vocal system shows both trivial and non-trivial compositionality, the latter previously thought to occur only in human languages.

(Note: since The Guardian messed up their link to the research paper, I'm providing it here: Extensive compositionality in the vocal system of bonobos.)

Science ‘storytelling’ urgently needed amid climate and biodiversity crisis.

By the 17th century, it wasn’t just God who could create a vacuum. Physicists Evangelista Torricelli and Blaise Pascal had also managed it using a mercury barometer. But had they really created nothing?

Archived link of the article

Summary: back in 2008, researchers found a big difference between the incidence and mortality of prostate cancer in Asian and "western" countries (even if situated in Asia). Incidence of the disease in "western" countries was several times higher. Additional data was pulled in to determine if the cause was genetic. People of Asian descent born in "western" countries had a comparably high risk, but people who had immigrated to "western" countries retained a lower risk. Thus, evidence pointed at society. The obvious candidate explanation was eating food that contains phytoestrogens from soy beans.

Two scientists and an editor spent six months investigating so-called paper mills, which churn out bogus scientific papers that impede actual research on lifesaving breakthroughs.

A new study published in Biological Reviews critically examines the parallels and key differences between human migration and biological invasions. Bringing together experts from both the natural and social sciences, the study explains why drawing such parallels is misleading and potentially harmful, particularly in today's politically charged climate.

Your privacy is important. Protect yourself from Google with the FreeTube app.

With the rapid shifting of ecosystems, the concept of native and invasive is being rethought. On the one end are folks who desire to maintain ecological communities as static as possible, and on the other are those who want to end any sort of invasive species control completely.

This paper introduces a new framework that I quite like. "Here, I discuss the moral relevance and waning utility of the geographically-based and dichotomous understanding of “native” (or “in situ”) which is an important component of conservation ethics and practice. I then propose a new understanding of nativeness in which a species is native—not to a geographic location—but to a quantifiable set of biotic, climatic, geologic, and topographic conditions (i.e. its niche) that can then map to geographic space."

A short summary: contrary to widespread opinion, the brain of a typical person is not sterile, but inhabited with microbes that have health effects.