Smell a friend: Evidence shows human beings ‘click’ instantly with people with similar body smell
People with similar body odours are more likely to ‘click’ and become instant friends, according to several experiments. When people meet others for the first time, they sometimes experience an “immediate strong click that makes us feel as if we have already been good friends for years,” says Inbal Ravreby...
How shades of inequality in research deepen discrimination by gender, age, education, incomes or race
Vida Maralani began her career studying whether education is, in fact, the ticket to socio-economic advancement and reducing inequalities, as she’d been taught. “I’ve evaluated some of the most expensive social policies our government has ever funded to prevent school dropouts,” says Maralani, interim director of the Centre for the...
Why eating bananas and other foods is key to eliminating risks of breathing blockage and breathing difficulties
Bananas may be beneficial for people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). They are potassium-rich and contain antioxidants and fibre. Other sources of these nutrients are berries and whole grains. COPD is a group of diseases, including emphysema and chronic bronchitis. These conditions cause a blockage to the airflow and...
Wine may no longer get sweeter with age as climate change takes its toll on fruit chemistry and taste
Warming, wildfires and unpredictable weather threaten to disrupt the delicate processes that underlie treasured wines. Researchers and producers are innovating to keep ahead. Soon after the devastating Glass Fire sparked in California’s Napa Valley in September 2020, wine chemist Anita Oberholster’s inbox was brimming with hundreds of emails from panicked...
Tigray insurgency: Ethiopian prime minister owns up on crimes against humanity, but where is the law?
In June 2018, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali told Parliament that the post-1991 government used torture and killing to terrorise its people. Perpetrated in police detention centres, dungeons and prisons across the country, the state-sanctioned violence recounted by the prime minister amounts to crimes against humanity in international criminal...
Without intervention, a large outbreak of monkeypox with over 10,000 cases among MSM is highly likely
Sexual networks among men who have sex with men (MSM) are not different in nature from those of other groups, Lilith Whittles, an infectious disease modeller at Imperial College London, stresses, but a core group of people are much more densely connected than people outside the MSM community. They change...
New study links rapid spread of monkeypox to highly interconnected sexual networks in gay community
Ever since monkeypox started to sicken thousands of people worldwide this spring, two big questions have loomed: Why is a virus that has never managed to spread beyond a few cases outside Africa suddenly causing such a big, global outbreak? And why are the overwhelming majority of those affected men...
How aging and changes in sexual organs affect intimacy and available medical support – report
Research conducted by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) says the normal aging process brings about changes that may affect sex. It says the sexual organs change with age. In females, the vagina may become narrower, with less lubrication. Menopause may also affect sexual desire. In males, erectile problems may...
During a tour of Russia, American musicians were tailed by Soviet agents and repeatedly questioned
While someone could technically have played the code as music, it would have sounded less like a tune and more like a cat walking across piano keys, says American saxophonist Merry Goldberg, who duped Russian spies with musical codes. “I picked a note to start, and then I created the...
Espionage: How an American saxophonist hoodwinked Russian spies by encrypting secrets in music
In 1985, saxophonist Merryl Goldberg found herself on a plane to Moscow with three fellow musicians from the Boston Klezmer Conservatory Band. She had carefully packed sheet music, reeds and other woodwind supplies, along with a soprano saxophone, to bring into the USSR. But one of her spiral-bound notebooks, lined...
