Month: September 2020

Keeping It in the Family: Why We Pick the Partners We Do

The peacock’s dazzling tail feathers do not exist for them to carry out everyday activities such as eating or sleeping, but because their colourfulness is attractive to peahens: the more brilliant the feathers, the greater the chance the peacock has of finding a sexual partner. Tail feathers, to peahens, can be powerfully attractive. Scientists have long been interested in unravelling the subconscious processes that influence partner choice, since heritable characteristics that are favoured in sexual partners will tend to increase in frequency in subsequent generations. That’s why the peacock’s tail feathers are so radiant: over many generations, more beautiful tail feathers have been selected. This means that partner preferences tell us something about the evolutionary pressures that shape a species – including us. So what do we find attractive in each other, and why?

How To Take the Perfect Breath: Why Learning To Breathe Properly Could Change Your Life

Aimee Hartley, like most people, thought she knew how to breathe – she had, after all, been doing it all her life. She had also given it plenty of thought, having trained as a yoga teacher. But then she took a lesson with a breathing coach, who told her where she was going wrong. He pointed out she wasn’t taking the air into her lower lungs but was, she says, an “upper chest breather. He then taught me this conscious breathing and I felt my lower belly open, and I felt myself breathing a lot better after just one session. So I then became fascinated by how we breathe.”

What Is Uniswap and How Does It Work?

Uniswap is a set of computer programs that run on the Ethereum blockchain and allow for decentralized token swaps. It works with the help of unicorns (as illustrated by their logo).

Traders can exchange Ethereum tokens on Uniswap without having to trust anyone with their funds. Meanwhile, anyone can lend their crypto to special reserves called liquidity pools. In exchange for providing money to these pools, they earn fees.

Bodybuilding supplement promotes healthy aging and extends life span, at least in mice

A dietary supplement bodybuilders use to bulk up may have a more sweeping health benefit: Staving off the ravages of old age. Mice given the substance—alpha-ketoglutarate(AKG)—were healthier as they aged, and females lived longer than mice not on the supplement.

CEOs now earn 320 times more than average workers

Robert Reich, the U.S. Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, tweeted Tuesday: “Capitalism is off the rails.” That was in reaction to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), which found that the average CEO compensation in 2019 at one of America’s top 350 firms was $21.3 million, up by 14% from the year prior—and up 1,167% from 1978. A typical worker at one of these top companies now earns $67,000 per year.