For a healthy relationship, men should be ugly and rich, women pretty and mixed-race

Have you ever seen a happy couple walking down the street, holding hands, laughing and being generally smoochy, and thought to yourself, "How did that guy get her?"

I’m that guy.

As a fully paid-up member of the "batting out of my league club," it comes as no surprise to me that the happiest hetero relationships are those in which the female is objectively more attractive than the male.

McNulty, Neff and Karney in their report Beyond initial attraction: Physical attractiveness in newlywed marriage, published in the Journal of Family Psychology, found that the relative difference between partners’ levels of attractiveness is one of the most important factors when predicting marital behaviour. In relationships in which the wives were more attractive than their husbands, both the husband and wife were happier than in situations where the husband was more attractive than the wife. Indeed, a strong conclusion of this study was that relatively more attractive husbands were less satisfied. As opposed to new relationships, where being similarly attractive helps form a strong bond, similarity in attractiveness was unrelated to a married couple’s satisfaction and behaviour.

This got me thinking, what does it mean to be attractive? How can you measure this?

Michael B Lewis from the School of Psychology, Cardiff University has an interesting take on this. He recently published Why are mixed-race people perceived as more attractive? on perceptionweb, and also presented Who has the ‘X Factor’? at the 2010 British Psychological Society’s Annual Conference.

To test his theory that people from a mixed-race background appear proportionally over-represented in TV talent competitions such The X Factor, 1205 images from Facebook were shown to 20 white psychology students (is this a large and diverse enough group?), who rated each face on its attractiveness on a 9-point scale (5 being average). The racial background of those in the photos was inferred from the Facebook group from which the photos were taken. The result was that there was a small but highly significant difference in the attractiveness of mixed-race faces compared to white and black faces.

This is an interesting result and could point towards a perceptual demonstration of heterosis in humans. Heterosis is the idea that breeding with people genetically different to you leads to offspring genetically fitter than you. The theory is that the child would possess the genetic strengths of each parent and less of their weaknesses. Two genetically similar parents (that is, both black or both white) may have similar strengths and weaknesses, so the weaknesses may not be bred out.

But does facial attractiveness really correlate to genetic fitness?

There have been numerous studies on this topic, and the answer would seem to be yes. In terms of evolution, it makes sense that those you are attracted to are also those with whom you would have genetically strong children.

Or in the paraphrased words of Thornhill and Gangestad, “Humans discriminate between potential mates on the basis of attractiveness and it is reasonable to hypothesise that the psychological mechanisms underlying attractiveness judgments are adaptations that have evolved in the service of choosing a mate so as to increase gene propagation throughout evolutionary history.”

For a summary of how facial attractiveness can represent the health of a subject and their overall genetic well-being, see Thornhill and Gangestad’s Facial attractiveness in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, from where the above quote comes. There is also a nice discussion of how preferences change during menstrual cycles.

My conclusion therefore is that if you’re a hetero guy, you should find a girl better looking than you are, and to widen the attractiveness gap even further, it would help if she was mixed-race. Don't push it too far though, as there is bound to be some limit on how much more attractive a girl can be. Remember, similar looks at the start can help get the relationship going, it is after this point when an attractiveness gap can help.

This seems quite easy for men so far, as all the criteria have been placed upon the women. Not so.

In the seminal report Partner wealth predicts self-reported orgasm frequency in a sample of Chinese women, published in Evolution and Human Behaviour, Thomas V. Pollet and Daniel Nettle investigated the relationship between women’s self-reported orgasm frequency and the characteristics of their partners. They found that women report more frequent orgasms the higher their partner’s income. They controlled for age, health, happiness, educational attainment, relationship duration, wealth difference between the partners, difference between the partners in educational attainment, and regional location. They consider that wealth is seen as desirable in potential partners by women all over the world and studies in diverse populations have found that increasing wealth increases male marriage success. Thus, all other things being equal, richer men are preferred to poorer ones as mates.

The purpose of this study was to understand the evolution of the female orgasm – what is its adaptive significance? They come to a number of conclusions:

• The results could be an artefact of reporting bias. Reporting bias can act in two ways, either by women with frequent orgasms overestimating their partner’s income or by women with high-quality mates over reporting their orgasm frequency.
• There may be assortative mating of desirable men with women susceptible to being highly orgasmic. There is a heritable component to female orgasmic function (go on, ask your Mum…), but it is not known whether these particular genetic features are also involved in attraction and mate choice.
• More desirable mates may cause women to experience more orgasms. This is the interpretation most consistent with the functional view of the female orgasm – that is, as the orgasm feels good and comes about more often with desirable males, then this helps females find good men.

I love the fact they cite Alcock (1987) and Thornhill, Gangestad & Comer (1995)...

In conclusion therefore, men should be rich and ugly, women should be attractive and mixed race. QED.

Two asides:

• This conclusion is exceptionally shallow (I don't believe it myself). There are layers and layers of human psychology and culture that go on top of this. Plus the Lewis study used 20 white psychology students - surely we need a bigger base than this. Feel free to pick this apart, I was just having fun with it.
• I suspect that humans are evolutionarily wired to find women better looking than men. It was seen in the Lewis study that the female photos had a higher average score than the male photos for each race studied. Could this make sense with regards to sexual selection? I’m sure there are studies out there looking into this idea. I’d like to hear you thoughts on this, and the above topics.

Ep 127: Conditioning quolls against cane toads

The cane toad in Australia is a text book example of a feral species. As an introduced species, it has no natural predators and out-competes native animals for food and habitat. Things are made worse by the fact that cane toads are highly poisonous - so poisonous that they can kill animals as large as crocodiles.

One species imperilled by the cane toad is the Northern Quoll. The northern quoll has been almost driven to extinction in many parts of northern Australia because they attack the toad and are subsequently poisoned. The poison kills the quolls too quickly for them to learn not to do it again.

In a recent study Conditioned taste aversion enhances the survival of an endangered predator imperilled by a toxic invader in the Journal of Applied Ecology, Stephanie O'Donnell, Jonathan Webb and Richard Shine from the University of Sydney tested whether quolls could be taught to avoid eating cane toads through "conditioned taste aversion" (CTA).

I spoke to Dr Webb about their study and how quolls can possibly be saved from extinction by CTA. To listen to this show, tune in here (or press play below):



Working with the Territory Wildlife Park, the researchers took a group of quolls and taught half (the "toad-smart" group) to associate eating a cane toad with feeling sick by feeding them a small dead cane toad laced with thiabendazole. The cane toad was too small to kill the quolls with its poison, however the tiabendazole made them feel sick. The second half of the quoll group ("toad-naive") were not fed the cane toad.

The next part of the experiment was to feed the quolls a small, live cane toad in plastic container to see whether or not they attacked it. It was found that the toad-smart group was less likely to attack the toad in the plastic container. See the video below to catch this behaviour in action. It was also found that the toad-smart group survived up to five times longer in the wild than "toad-naive" quolls. The researchers also found that male quolls were far more likely than female quolls to attack cane toads. Dr Webb thinks that aerially deployed 'toad baits' ahead of the cane toad invasion front could educate quolls to avoid attacking cane toads before the toads invade.

Cane toads were introduced to Australia from Hawaii in June 1935 to control the native Cane Beetle. They bred immediately in captivity, and by August 1935 more than 102 young toads were released in northern Queensland. Toads now number over 200 million and have steadily expanded through Queensland, reaching the border with New South Wales in 1978 and the Northern Territory in 1984. It is estimated that cane toads migrate at an average of 40 kilometres per year.

More on science daily. To listen to this show, tune in here (or press play below):



The video below (from YouTube) shows the toad-smart quoll leaving the cane toad alone - then knocking over the camera.

Robyn Williams in conversation with Richard Dawkins, or is that Emma Watson?

Richard Dawkins, apart from being the popular face of atheism, is a highly regarded scientist. Recently Dawkins spoke to Robyn Williams about the ideas underpinning his new book, The Greatest Show on Earth, in particular the intricacies, patterns and anomalies produced by the process of evolution. Dawkins then takes further questions from the audience about the theory of evolution, genetic determinism, the climate change denial movement and the place of religion in the world of science.

This video below comes courtesy of SlowTV, a free internet TV channel delivering interviews, debates, conversations and public lectures about Australia's key political, social and cultural issues. It is produced by The Monthly and there is an impressive amount of science content. You can subscribe via podcast. Before taking in the video however, have you ever seen Emma Watson and Richard Dawkins in the same place?

Image courtesy funz.ro.



The rest of the series can be seen at SlowTV. I reviewed Dawkins's book The God Delusion a few years back - I think my thoughts on the topic have probably evolved since then.

Life and the cosmos with Astronomer Royal, Lord Martin Rees (via SlowTV)

Lord Martin Rees is UK Astronomer Royal and President of the Royal Society. He was also appointed to the House of Lords in 2005, is Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and is the author of about 500 research papers and several books. I recently came across these videos of Lord Rees on SlowTV, a free internet TV channel delivering interviews, debates, conversations and public lectures about Australia's key political, social and cultural issues. It is produced by The Monthly and there is an impressive amount of science content. You can subscribe via podcast.

In the inaugural Derek Denton lecture in Science and the Arts at University of Melbourne, Lord Rees discussed current ideas on cosmology and how the universe evolved from a simple Big Bang to its present complexity. He also talked about the possibility of life elsewhere in the cosmos. I had quite an enjoyable afternoon listening to this talk in the background. It is clear why he is regarded as one of the world's foremost science communicators.

Part 1:



Part 2:



If you can't see the embedded videos, check out the talk at SlowTV. For more on the topics addressed in this talk, check out our Astronomy and Space and Science Communication tags, and particularly:

• Astrobiology and the search for extraterrestrial life;
Astrobiology is a fascinating and complex field of science. It is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe, and is a relatively new field of science incorporating astronomy, biology, geology, palaeontology, physics, mathematics and other disciplines. I spoke to Dr Carol Oliver, a science communication researcher working for the Australian Centre for Astrobioligy, whose key goals include contributing to the understanding of the orgin of life on Earth and to set an Australian life-seeking instrument on the surface of Mars. 

• Jon Lomberg, the Voyager Gold Record, and the movie Contact;
I spoke to Jon Lomberg, one of the world's most distinguished space-artists. Lomberg was Carl Sagan's principal artistic collaborator for more than twenty years and in 1998, the International Astronomical Union officially named Asteroid Lomberg in his honour. In 1972, Sagan asked Lomberg to illustrate The Cosmic Connection, after which they worked on NASA's interstellar Voyager Golden Record, a record included in the two 1977 Voyager spacecraft.

• Alien Vox Pop and (re)introducing The Beer Drinking Scientists; 
In this episode you can hear the vox pop from a Beer Drinking Scientists episode including from one person who swears she has seen not only one UFO, but a UFO release a baby-craft, and another who thinks that Jesus might be an alien...

• The Unknown Solar System
I spoke to Bianca Nogrady from New Scientist about the NS article The biggest mysteries of our solar system.

Ep 126: Science of Superheroes - Doc Ock

Continuing with our recurring segment The Science of Superheroes, this week we're tackling the mechanically-blessed supervillain Doc Ock, from Marvel Comics. And joining me once again for a journey through superhero scholarship is Dr Boob. To listen to this show, tune in here (or press play below):

Dr. Otto Gunther Octavius is a scientist who designed a set of advanced mechanical arms to assist him with his nuclear physics research. He controlled the arms via a brain-computer interface. In the movie Spiderman 2, Octavius created the mechanical arms to help him conduct nuclear fusion experiments. The arms had their own artificial intelligence, with an inhibitor chip used such that Octavius could maintain control over them.

The arms attached to a harness that was strapped around his body. In great comic book tradition, a freak experimental accident caused the limbs to fuse to his body, and the inhibitor chip was destroyed. The arms themselves took control as Octavius could no longer control them, and mad-scientist Octavius became evil Doc Ock. Interestingly, the limbs were able to defend themselves whilst Doc Ock was unconscious, implying not only self-awareness, but a capability to sense their surroundings.

In this episode, we come closer than we have come before in our series to figuring out a way to recreate a superhero (or supervillain in this case) in the laboratory. The topics discussed in this podcast include:

• Robotics,
• The history of artificial limbs,
• The history of aritifical intelligence, and how to design limbs that could possibly have self-awareness and a desire (and capability) to defend themselves,
• What is nuclear fusion? Is it possible to develop a controlled energy source using nuclear fusion, and if so, could this be the way forward for powering enormous artificial limbs?
• What would the limbs be made from? Is it time to turn once again to Adamantium? See our show on Wolverine for more information.
• Assuming the AI is difficult to accomplish, how could the limbs be controlled? Two methods include:

1. Myoelectric prostheses - a myoelectric prosthesis uses EMG signals from muscles on the surface of the skin to control the movements of an attached prosthesis. These prostheses have been used where arms and legs have been amputated, with the prosthesis attaching to the residual limb. The concept of neuroplasticity is also very important here. Neuro- (or brain-) plasticity is the ability of the brain to change throughout life, to reorganise itself and form new connections between neurons. Artificial limbs have recently been controlled by chest muscles - this is an example of the brain learning how to control muscles in a completely new way.
2. Remote control - recent work has shown that objects can be remotely controlled by brain waves (EEG). Naturally, this does not mean one can levitate a chair on the opposite side of the room - the brain needs to be hooked up to a computer which reads the brain signals, interprets them and then controls the connected object in an appropriate way. We discussed this a few years ago in our article Space Invaders Mind Control, Small Testes and Facial Expressions. 

To listen to this show, tune in here (or press play below):



And on the topic of superheroes, you may enjoy this poster from Russell Walks Illustration. It is a Periodic Table of 122 fictitious elements from sci-fi movies, comics, TV series etc. Adamantium is in there, as naturally is the most famous of them all, Kryptonite. Click on the image below for a closer look and to buy the image as a poster.



Thanks to @markfromhouston for the tip on the Periodic Table poster.

Ep 125: The Sailors' (syphilis detecting) Handshake

It may be an apocryphal tale, but here's an interesting story about how sailors of yore determined if a potential suitor had syphilis.

As demonstrated by Victoria Bond and myself in the image on the right, Victoria is feeling my right elbow whilst shaking my hand. The epitrochlear lymph nodes in the elbow get swollen with syphilis.

The story goes that when sailors arrived in a new port, they would greet the girls in this manner to determine if they had syphilis. Another story goes that they did this whilst dancing. Whatever the case, it is true that the nodes swell when suffering from syphilis, although it's not fail safe as there are a number of things that could cause the swelling, including infection.

We made the following short video demonstration of the handshake when recording Diffusion Science Radio. The movie was produced by Ian Woolf. You can download the video as an mp4 here and find all my videos on youtube here.



While we're on the topic of syphilis, reports out of the UK this week are laying the blame for a rise in syphilis cases at the feet of social networking site Facebook. This story is the up there with the dangerous cookie story as one of the more stupid 'science' stories I have read. The Telegraph reported Facebook 'linked to rise in syphilis', however The Sun takes the cake with Sex diseases soaring due to Facebook romps.

The articles are based on an NHS news release titled Warning as syphilis cases increase. The news release does not mention Facebook, but does mention "social networking sites":

Professor Peter Kelly, Executive Director of Public Health for NHS Tees said syphilis has risen sharply in the last year.

"There has been a four fold increase in the number of syphilis cases detected with more young women being affected," he said. "Syphilis is a devastating disease which can lead to serious health problems to the infected individual, their sexual contacts and an unborn child (in pregnant women). It is easily preventable and treatment is simple and effective. Unprotected sex, especially with casual partners, is the biggest risk for syphilis. Social networking sites are making it easier for people to meet up for casual sex. It is important that people avoid high risk sexual behaviours and practise safe sex to protect themselves from sexually transmitted infections."

Syphilis cases have increased fourfold in Sunderland, Durham and Teesside. The UK newspapers, independent of the NHS press release, found that Facebook is very popular in Sunderland. The problem here of course is our old friend "correlation vs. causation" - it is in no way clear that Facebook (or more broadly online social networking) is connected to the rise in syphilis. Syphilis cases have been on the rise for some time now. And even if Facebook is increasing casual sex in these regions, should we really blame it for someone's sexual habits? Other problems include the fact that the sample size is tiny (30 people), there is no mention of other sexually transmitted diseases, and no actual evidence to connect social networking to syphilis is presented - it is a merely a comment. There is a good discussion of this at Bad Science.

Ep 124: Liberals, atheists, intelligence, cocaine deaths and temperature

Liberals, atheists, intelligence, cocaine deaths and the temperature? What do these things have in common?

Courtesy Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

The answer? Correlation of the Week of course.

This podcast concerns our two most recent Correlations of the Week:

1. Liberals and Atheists Are More Intelligent;
2. Cocaine overdoses and the Weather.

To listen to this show, tune in here (or press play below):



For a very interesting comment on the Kanazawa theory, see rifters.com

This should get the kids back into mathematics

Seen over at imgur and also at fridley.

Fibonacci numbers are the numbers in the following order:

After the 0 and 1, each number is the sum of the previous two. A Fibonacci spiral can be created by drawing arcs connecting the opposite corners of squares in a Fibonacci tiling. In the picture above, the "squares" have side-lengths 1, 1, 2, 3, and 5.

Edit: Just in case it wasn't obvious, this post is more humour than maths. The curve would actually be a parabola (I think). If you look hard enough in nature, you can find all sorts of curves - see Fibonacci Flim-Flam for an overview of this idea.

Correlation of the Week: Liberals and Atheists Are More Intelligent

Some people have thought this for a while.

A recent study, Why Liberals and Atheists Are More Intelligent, published in Social Psychology Quarterly has shown that more intelligent people are statistically significantly more likely to exhibit behaviours that have not been shaped by our evolutionary history.

Image by clintjcl. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Specifically, Satoshi Kanazawa from the London School of Economics and Political Science, postulates that liberalism (not to be confused with the Australian Liberal Party – a socially conservative political party) and atheism correlate with higher intelligence. Sexual exclusivity for men, but not women, is also a sign of higher intelligence.

According to Kanazawa’s theory, more intelligent people are more likely to adopt evolutionarily novel behaviours than less intelligent people. Evolutionarily novel values are those that humans are not biologically designed to have.

The theory is known as the Savannah-IQ Interaction Hypothesis. The Savannah Principle is the notion that the human brain was moulded through natural selection in an environment that is drastically different to the world we currently live in. This means it has difficulty comprehending and dealing with situations that did not exist in the ancestral environment – that is, on the savannah. An example of this is that our ancestors, in a time of scarce resources, craved sugary and fatty foods – those who ate more of these foods lived longer and were healthier than those who didn't. In today’s environment, where such foods are plentiful, this craving brings on health problems. The Savannah-IQ Interaction Hypothesis postulates that intelligence evolved to deal with novel problems – problems whose solutions evolution had not “hard-wired” into us. More intelligent individuals can better deal with new situations than less intelligent individuals, however both can deal equally well with evolutionarily familiar situations.

"General intelligence, the ability to think and reason, endowed our ancestors with advantages in solving evolutionarily novel problems for which they did not have innate solutions. As a result, more intelligent people are more likely to recognise and understand such novel entities and situations than less intelligent people, and some of these entities and situations are preferences, values, and lifestyles," Kanazawa said.

Kanazawa argues that humans are evolutionarily designed to be conservative and to care mostly about their family – those who have similar genes. Caring for unrelated strangers - that is, being liberal - is evolutionarily novel. This theory is backed up by the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which found that young adults who identify themselves as "very liberal" have an average IQ of 106 while those who identify themselves as "very conservative" have an average IQ of 95.

Kanazawa also argues that religion arose because of our desire to look for the cause of events and to ascribe meaning and intention to natural phenomena. Humans are innately paranoid and extremely vigilant when it comes to self-protection. This was an evolutionary benefit for human preservation on the dangerous savannah. The survey showed that young adults who identify themselves as "not at all religious" have an average IQ of 103, while those who identify themselves as "very religious" have an average IQ of 97.

"Humans are evolutionarily designed to be paranoid, and they believe in God because they are paranoid. So, more intelligent children are more likely to grow up to go against their natural evolutionary tendency to believe in God, and they become atheists," said Kanazawa.

Sex, sex, sex...

Throughout evolutionary history, it is theorised that men have been mildly polygamous in order to increase their chance of producing off-spring, whilst women have generally been monogamous, possibly due to the fact that a nine-month pregnancy period means that having multiple partners does not increase the chance of producing off-spring. Being sexually exclusive is evolutionarily novel for men but not for women. Kanazawa’s theory therefore predicts that more intelligent men are more likely to remain sexual exclusive – that is, monogamous – than less intelligent men. However, this does not hold for women. Again, the survey data supported this theory.

But he also found that intelligence does not correlate with the very oldest of evolutionary values. One finding was that more intelligent people are no more or less likely to value such evolutionarily familiar ideas as marriage, family, children, and friends.

The Postmodernisation of Rugby Union in Australia... wait, what?

Sometimes when are you are not looking, you stumble across gold. I was browsing through Google Scholar looking for an entirely work-related article today when I came across The Postmodernisation of Rugby Union in Australia published in the august journal Football Studies.

(As a side note, you can do an Honours Degree in Football Studies at Southampton Solent University. And Sydney University used to offer Cricket and the Law which was unfortunately cut before I could do it. I digress...)

Throughout my time as a rugby fan, I have given the game a great deal of thought - how the rules could be changed, whether the domestic game should expand into new states and countries, will the Waratahs ever win - but I must admit to having never thought of the effect of postmodern philosophy on rugby. I should have. This paper is a surprisingly interesting take on the evolution of the game.

Postmodernism is defined, in the paper, thus:

Postmodernism represents a realisation that there is no single truth but multiple realities, all are legitimate and all equally valid; that individuals, societies and economies are not governed solely by instrumental reason but are subject to historical and cultural processes that cannot be explained by reason alone; that the human being is not necessarily the centre of the universe; that modernism is itself and egregious male oriented conceptualisation of the world and has consistently retarded female participation in human affairs (hence the emergence postmodern feminism); that capitalism is not the only desirable form of economic order; that progress does not mean marching linearly toward a predetermined goal; that the quality of life need not be measured in economic and material terms only; and that in human affairs aesthetic judgement is just as important as economic judgement.

Eh? Essentially this comes down to the idea that there is no one preferred way of doing things or making sense of the world. What does this mean for sport? During the preindustrial era, sport was unorganised and local. Violence was tolerated and sport was closely connected to the customs of the community. There were no governing bodies and the local town or village was the focal point of a tribal passion.

However, with capitalism came a transformation of sport, with violent and disorganised sports giving way to carefully regulated sports that were adapted to the constraints of time and space of the industrial city. By the end of the 1970s, sponsorship and media rights rivalled gate receipts, and television had created an audience that was a hundred times larger than ground attendance. Spectators and viewers were attracted as much to spectacular, time compressed contests, as they were to the traditional tribal performances of the past. This is highlighted by cricket's postmodernisation with World Series Cricket. Sport became entangled in a complex web of commercial arrangements, legal constraints and marketing deals.

Rugby was slow to come to the postmodern party due to its ties to its old-school traditions (remember, Rugby is named as such because it was first invented at the exclusive 'Rugby School' in the town of Rugby - many other British public schools had their own games played by no one else.) Finally by the 1990s, rugby decided its amateur traditions were no longer appropriate or relevant to its players or its fans.

The authors conclude that postmodernism has removed the traditional metaphysical, mythical and social barriers that were thought to have divided business from sport (come on, you were just thinking that...) Rugby during the 1990s shows how traditional sporting values and practices were undermined by the postmodern forces of global consumer capitalism. Rugby's foundation of amateur values could not be sustained under the weight of global commercial forces. The rules and playing schedules had to change to meet the needs of customers and TV viewers. Simply put, the game had to managed not only as a sport, but also as a business.

Have a read the original article - it's a good read! The evolution of rugby is an interesting read for rugby fans and culture buffs alike. Sometimes it's nice to indulge some philosophy when you have your head in numbers all day!

Geek Pop 2010

This year’s Geek Pop festival launches on 12 March. Previously an online-only event, the festival is in its third year and is now adding live music to the programme, with gigs in Bristol and London.

Geek Pop is a celebration of science-inspired music and geek culture, featuring artists from around the globe. More than 30 artists are signed up to perform across its virtual and physical stages in 2010, with music from every set available to download for free.

Sponsored by Computer Geeks and the British Science Association, the Bristol live gig at Cube Microplex will kick off proceedings on 11 March, just ahead of the virtual launch. Geek Pop crew member Jim Bell is organising the Bristol event. “It’s been a huge undertaking this year,” he says. “But we’ve got some great geeky acts booked and there’s no doubt that adding live gigs to the programme has really helped get the word around.”

Many artists involved this year have been writing and recording new material specifically for the festival. Canadian hip-hop artist Baba Brinkman, known for his unique fusion of rap and evolution (or all things...), will be unveiling his rationalist anthem “Off That” at Geek Pop. And returning for the second year in a row, UK-based Spirit of Play will be performing brand new and specially tailored science songs at both the online event and London gig at The Miller on 18 March.

According to Festival Organiser, Hayley Birch, the festival has evolved rapidly since 2008. “In the first year, we only had about ten artists and none of the music was specifically written for us,” she says. “It’s great to see we’re establishing ourselves as an annual event and especially that we’re giving creative inspiration to musicians to make music about science.”

Previous years saw musicians perform online across the Tetrahedron and Reproductive stages, and Tesla Tent. This year, organisers commissioned Bristol-based illustrator Sam Church to re-design the site and have added another stage, The Comical Flask, where acts will be entertaining audiences with nerdy, science-based comedy.

From 12 March, festival-goers can experience the virtual festival from the comfort of their own homes by typing visiting the geekpop homepage. Further details of the Bristol and London live gigs, including how to buy tickets, are available. Given March 14th is pi day, I think the festival's timing is apt!

I spoke to Hayley Birch in 2008 about their inaugural festival - check out that interview in Ep 94: The Geek Pop Virtual Music Festival.

Correlation of the Week: Cocaine overdoses and the weather

Next time you head out for a big, expensive, lairy night out, check the temperature.

Amy Bohnert, Marta Prescott, David Vlahov, Kenneth Tardiff and Sandro Galea, in their paper Ambient temperature and risk of death from accidental drug overdose in New York City, 1990-2006, published in the journal Addiction, have found that there is a significant correlation between deaths due to accidental cocaine overdose and the temperature.

Using New York City mortality data from 1990 to 2006, and temperature data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, the researchers found that accidental overdose deaths due to cocaine in NYC rose significantly when the average weekly temperature passed 24 degrees Celsius.

The study showed no difference in the number of drug overdoses when the average weekly temperature was between -10 and 24 degrees Celsius. However, above 24 degrees Celsius, there were 0.25 more drug overdoses per 1,000,000 residents per week for every two degrees increase.  For New York City, this means that at least two more people per week will die of a drug overdose for each two degree rise in temperature above 24 degrees Celsius. There were approximately 7 weeks a year between 1990 and 2006 that had an average weekly temperature of 24 or above in New York City.

Cocaine-related overdose deaths increase as the ambient temperature rises because cocaine increases the core body temperature, impairs the cardiovascular system’s ability to cool the body, and decreases the sense of heat-related discomfort that ordinarily motivates people to avoid becoming overheated. Cocaine users who become overheated (hyperthermic) can overdose on lower amounts of cocaine because their bodies are under more stress.

Ep 123: Remote Medicine

Wadeye is a remote town in Australia's Northern Territory. It has a population of roughly 2500 people, 2200 of whom are Indigenous Australians, and as such is one of Australia's largest indigenous communities. The town is over 200 km southwest of Darwin, and during the wet season the only way in and out of the town is by air, as the roads are completely cut off.

Uploaded onto flickr by sarah_brooke00

The town has a number of social issues, with gang violence making international headlines in 2006. On average there are 16 people per house and the median age at death is an astoundingly low 46 years. This compares to the medium age at death of a non-indigenous person in the Northern Territory of over 70 years, and over 80 in other states (data here).

Wadeye's remoteness, social issues and cultural differences present a considerable challenge to the provision of quality health care. There is only one general practitioner in town with serious cases referred to Darwin. Victoria Bond (who you may have heard as a regular contributor to the Diffusion Science Radio Show) has taken a posting in Wadeye as part of her medical degree. I chatted to Victoria about the unique medical issues that have arisen in Wadeye, and what it's like as an American student in such a remote place.

To listen to this show, tune in here (or press play below):

The Open Laboratory 2009 - The best science blog posts of the past year

The Open Laboratory 2009, the best writing on science blogs throughout the past year, has now been published. You can buy the book online in PDF or soft-cover format.

I was pretty chuffed to have one of my articles, A sorry saga - the crumbling cookie, make the final list. This was an article that looked into the misreporting (actually, simply horrible reporting) of science in the UK media, and the notion that apparently biscuit-eating is an extreme sport in the UK. It examined what was a very good example of how not to report science in the newspaper.

The 2009 anthology was edited by SciCurious and you can browse the full list of articles that made the final cut, or if you are up for some heavy reading, have a look at the long list of nominated articles.

This is the second year I've been in Open Labs - in The Open Laboratory 2008, my post for Plus Magazine called United Kingdom - Nil Points about the maths of the Eurovision Song Contest made the cut. Eurovision is such a wonderful mix of maths, pop culture, politics and bad 80s music. I love it!

You can buy previous versions from lulu - 2006, 2007 and 2008.

Why I didn't become an actor

This video from 1995 aptly portrays why I followed science and I never went into acting. Not the most sciencey post I've put up recently, but a bit of fun. We made this video about the crime fighters Brad and VD when in Year 11. Those involved have ended up being quite creative - director Nick as a digital producer, and actor Scott as a designer. A good look back on the days of analogue tape. We were clearly influenced by Get Smart.



Thanks to Jason for digitising the video - or should I say, digitally remastering it. Would love to see any embarrassing high school videos you might have.

Ep 122: Science of Superheroes - Wolverine (Part 2)

This is the second part of our series on the science of Wolverine - specifically, how can we create Wolverine in the lab? Join Dr Boob and myself as we journey through Wolverine's characteristics and how they may be recreated in a human. Read more on Wolverine in part 1 of this series. To listen to this show, tune in here (or press play below):



Specifically in this episode, we tackle the topics of:

1. What would happen to your bones if you completely covered them with metal? Bones are living parts of your body and make red blood cells, platelets and bone marrow - among other things - that are vital for life.
2. Would a lack of platelets reduce Wolverine's ability to heal?
3. Wolverine is likely to be on a cocktail of drugs, including anabolic steroids to beef him up, immunosuppressants so his body doesn't reject the metal coating on his bones, and various drugs to supply red blood cells, bone marrow and platelets.
4. Could we really harness the healing powers of the sea cucumber for Wolverine, and would they work quickly enough?
5. Are carrots enough to improve his sight?
6. What metal could we use to coat his bones? It needs to be able to be injected as a liquid and then harden at body temperature. Most steels have melting points over 1000 degrees Celcius, and this would cause terrible trauma to his body. Dr Boob's suggestion was CerroLOW117, which is 44.7% Bismuth, 22.6% Lead, 8.3% Tin, 5.3% Cadmium and 19.1% Indium. CerroLOW117 has a melting point of 47 degrees Celcius, however lead and cadmium both accumulate in the body and have adverse health effects. It is highly likely CerroLOW117 would not be strong enough to help Wolverine anyway.
7. And what is a phlebotomist?

For more on superheroes, check out our recurring science of superheroes series. And for more from Dr Boob, check out Chris's other contributions.

Tracking Mouse Clicks

Here is another funky app to add some interest to your work day. Anatoliy Zenkov has developed a tool (Mac and PC) to track your mouse pointer during the day. Simply open it up and let it run in the background for as long as you like. 8 hours of mouse tracks from my day today look like this:



The big dots are times when the mouse did not move - for example, the bottom right dot is my lunch break. I've added some extra notes to the image on flickr to explain these dots. My movements around the taskbar are clear, as are mouse movements to the top left - I was using Excel for most of the day, and many of the functions I used were located there, as were the open / close file options. I found this tool on FlowingData. I'd be interested to see your tracks.

Ep 121: Science of Superheroes - Wolverine (Part 1)

Wolverine is probably the best known of the X-Men. Commonly known as Logan, Wolverine is a mutant who has animal-keen senses, super bodily strength, retracting claws, and the ability to almost instantly heal himself from injury. And thanks to some evil scientists, he has the near indestructible (and fictional) metal alloy adamantium fused to his bones, meaning that his claws and skeleton are almost unbreakable.

In the second episode of our regular series on the science of superheroes, biochemist Dr Chris Pettigrew (aka Dr Boob) and I discuss where in nature Wolverine's powers can be found, and how we might scientifically create Wolverine in the lab. This is the first of a 2-part show on Wolverine - see below for a brief description of some of the science discussed. Our first superheroes episode was on the science of Wolverine's fellow X-man, and sometime love interest, Mystique.

To listen to this show, tune in here (or press play below):



The name Wolverine comes from the Wolverine animal, which lives in isolated northern areas such as the arctic and alpine regions of Alaska. It is a stocky and strong animal that is very strong for its size and has been known to kill prey as large as moose. The wolverine is not actually a bear or a dog, but rather a mustelid, or in common parlance, a weasel.

While many of Wolverine's powers (such as strength and hearing) could come from its namesake mustelid, if we were to attempt to create Wolverine in the lab, we must first turn to the ocean:

Healing ability:

Sea Cucumbers are the champions of organ regrowth. All animals possess some kind of tissue repair mechanism, however the sea cucumber belongs to a group of animals that can regrow lost limbs - salamandas and some starfish also have this ability. The repair process involves cells called morula cells, which move to the point of injury. Although all animals have wound repair processes, not all can regenerate lost body parts. With the sea cucumber, the same processes that repair its injuries also repair limbs and internal organs, and this opens up the possibility that we could one day discover how to repair our own wounds and perhaps how to regenerate body parts. But as Dr Boob says, we are quite some way off from instant healing ability: "The odd bullet to the head won't be able to be dealt with."

Retractable Claws:

There is a remarkable analogue found in nature for Wolverine's retractable claws. University of Harvard biologists have determined that some African frogs have the ability to puncture their own skin with sharp bones in their toes. These bones then act as claws to attack predators. The defence mechanism was discovered by David C. Blackburn, James Hanken, and Farish A. Jenkins, Jr. Blackburn said, "It's surprising enough to find a frog with claws. The fact that those claws work by cutting through the skin of the frogs' feet is even more astonishing. These are the only vertebrate claws known to pierce their way to functionality."

Blackburn discovered the frog and its defences when he was conducting fieldwork in Cameroon and one frog he was studying scratched him. He found 11 frog species in the genera Astylosternus, Trichobatracus and Scotobleps who had this peculiar ability. Read more at Project Frog.

Smell, sight, hearing

Whilst there are obvious candidates in nature that have heightened sight, smell and hearing abilities, recent studies suggest that human and dog olfactory receptor genes evolved from a common mammalian ancestor, and as such Dr Boob thinks that mimicking the smelling ability of dogs could be quite "easy." Dogs have an olfactory sense approximately a hundred thousand to a million times more acute than a human's. Scenthounds can smell one- to ten-million times more acutely than a human, and Bloodhounds, ten- to one-hundred-million times more.

To hear more on the science of Wolverine, tune in here (or press play below):



Part 2 of this series on the science of Wolverine will be aired over the next few weeks. The song A Russian Peter was used in the background of this podcast, with permission from Ioda Promonet. Buy the full London Philharmonic Orchestra Peter and the Wolf CD, or download individual songs as mp3s, from Amazon here.

Keyboard cat tops the charts

Internet memes are fascinating. The term meme refers to ideas and cultural phenomena that spread through society through imitation. The term was first used by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene to discuss how evolution could work with cultural phenomena such as beliefs, fashion and music. He argues that memes are cultural analogues to genes, in that they self-replicate, mutate, can be inherited and respond to selective pressure.

The concept of Internet memes relates to this original definition of meme, and refers to the spread of ideas across the internet. Colloquially, internet memes are essentially in-jokes. And like any good in-joke, the meme will often start out as not particularly funny, but after you have seen it 1000 times, it takes on a life of its own, often evolving to something completely unpredictable. Lolcats is an example of a meme that I don't think is all that funny - however, I am quite partial to Rick Rolling, and I Like Turtles is awesome!

I was recently putting together my annual list of most played songs on my ipod for the last year when I realised that I am clearly susceptible to internet memes. Not only was the list Rick Rolled (with no less than three Rick Astley songs) but the top song was one I learnt of through my favourite internet meme, Keyboard Cat. Keyboard Cat consists of 1984 footage of "Fatso" the cat playing the keyboard, and was uploaded to youtube as charlie schmidt's "cool cat". The gag is to append footage of the cat to video of people doing stupid things (falling over, getting hit in the head etc.) - the cat is essentially playing the person off stage, much like getting the hook in the days of vaudeville.

One of the best Keyboard Cat videos - and probably my favourite video ever on youtube - has Keyboard Cat with Hall and Oates playing their song You Make My Dreams. The video starts with a segment of Desperate Lives, a 1982 movie starring Helen Hunt showing the effects of drug use - Keyboard Cat plays off the overdosing Hunt as a cautionary tale against drug use. Then the music video starts, and this is when I discovered the song - check it out!



2009 saw a minor comeback for the song, and even though I have no evidence to back this up, I am going to put it out there that Keyboard Cat is the reason for its renewed success. Here's You Make My Dreams from the movie (500) Days of Summer - video here.



And for a complete understanding of Keyboard Cat, check out the excellent Know your Meme series of videos.

Ep 120: Correlation of the Week: Housework and Sex

There's nothing quite like pulling on the rubber gloves, splashing each other with dirty dish-water and then reaching for the vacuum cleaner with the adjustable nozzle to get you in mood for love.

The first Correlation of the Week for 2010 is awarded to Constance Gager, from Montclair State University, and Scott Yabiku, from Arizona State University, who discovered that wives and husbands who spend more hours in housework and paid work report more frequent sex. They theorise that women and men who "work hard" also "play hard."

To listen to this show, tune in here (or press play below):



The report, Who Has the Time? The Relationship Between Household Labor Time and Sexual Frequency, published in the Journal of Family Issues, documented a survey of 6,877 married couples which showed that couples who devote lots of time to work and chores still make time for sex. The results contradict the idea that time spent on household chores reduces the opportunity for sex - worth remembering next time this particular excuse is used...

The authors controlled the results for "gender ideology" - that is, they controlled for the various viewpoints people have on their relationships. For example, a wife with a 1950s mentality might regard doing lots of housework and having frequent sex as part of her marital responsibilities. The housework-sex link was found to exist no matter what views each member held.

Housework was defined as:

• cleaning, 
• preparing meals, 
• washing dishes, 
• washing and ironing clothes, 
• driving family members around, 
• shopping, 
• yard work, 
• maintaining cars,
• paying bills. 

Husbands spent on average 23.4 hours per week performing these household tasks, whilst wives spent 41.8 hours a week. Husbands spent an average 33.8 hours a week working, compared with 19.7 hours for wives. This means that the wives in the study spent a total of 61.5 hours a week either working at their job or at home, compared to 57.2 for their husbands. And just so you know how you stack up, the couples in the study reported having sex 82.7 times a year (1.6 times per week). Sexual frequency went down with age and the length of the relationship. Protestants had more sex than the Catholics - presumably the Catholics had more unprotected sex.... Having small children reduced frequency but once the kids were older, the frequency went back up.

Couples who spent more time in paid work also reported more sex. This led the authors to conclude that "individuals may be achievers across multiple spheres." They theorise that as life gets busier and time gets tighter, some couples can successfully balance their time commitments to make time for sex.

So there you have it, couples who make time to do their household chores also make time for loving. More at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Wall Street Journal. And for more weird and wonderful correlations, see our Correlation of the Week tag.