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On August 13 (Tuesday), well-known foreignscienceThe main contents of the website are as follows:

Science Times website (www.sciencetimes.com)

Ugly people have shorter lifespans

Unattractive people may die younger than their attractive counterparts, a startling new study suggests. The findings, published in the journal Social Science and Medicine, show that unattractive men may die almost a year less on average, while women may die two years less.

The study was conducted by scholars from Arizona State University and the University of Texas at Austin. They analyzed data from a survey of more than 8,300 high school seniors in Wisconsin, most of whom were born in 1957 and entered old age or died in 2022.

The researchers used photos of these people in high school. The results showed that people who ranked at the bottom of the attractiveness ranking had a 16.8% higher mortality rate than those with average attractiveness. However, there was no significant difference in the life expectancy of people with high appearance compared with ordinary people.

The researchers noted that while appearance does not directly affect life expectancy, it may reflect underlying health problems. They believe that factors such as genes and social standards can make some people look more attractive than others.

The researchers also pointed out that social prejudice may be an important factor in the difference in life expectancy. Better medical treatment, higher income and fairer social treatment may be the reasons for the lower mortality rate of people with better looks.

Science Daily website (www.sciencedaily.com)

1. The most advanced brain scanner reveals how neurons resonate

Scientists have long studied how the brain processes information in layers, with different brain regions responsible for different functions. But how these regions communicate and integrate information to form a unified cognitive whole has always been a mystery. Now, researchers from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have provided us with new clues to solve this mystery by studying how neurons in the human brain synchronize their activity when reading. The research results have been published in the journal Nature Human Behavior.

This synchronization between brain regions, called co-rippling, is a key process in combining disparate pieces of information into a coherent whole.animalIn humans, previous studies have also found that co-ripples can occur throughout the cerebral cortex.

Due to the limitations of non-invasive brain scanning, common ripples in the human cerebral cortex are difficult to observe. To this end, the researchers used intracranial electroencephalography (EEG) scanning technology to measure the brain's electrical activity from inside the skull. They studied 13 patients with intractable epilepsy who underwent EEG monitoring, which provided a rare opportunity to deeply study brain activity.

In the experiment, the researchers asked participants to look at a series of animal names that were either covered with random consonant strings or displayed in meaningless fonts, and asked them to press a button to identify the animal name they saw. The researchers found three cognitive stages: the initial stage, in which participants saw the words in the visual area of ​​the cortex but had not yet processed them consciously; the second stage, in which the information spread to other cortical areas associated with complex cognitive functions through "co-ripples"; and the final stage, in which the information in the cerebral cortex was integrated into conscious knowledge and action through "co-ripples" - the participants pressed a button.

The researchers found that throughout the test, "co-ripples" occurred between different parts of the brain involved in these cognitive stages, but the ripples were stronger when the participants were identifying real words.

The study's findings could have long-term implications for the treatment of neurological and psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, which are characterized by disruptions in the information integration process.

More broadly, the study's findings have important implications for our understanding of the connection between brain function and human experience.

"This goes to a fundamental question of human existence, getting to the heart of the relationship between the mind and the brain," the researchers said. "By revealing how neurons in the brain work together, we gain a deeper understanding of the nature of consciousness itself."

2. As temperatures break records, more and more people believe that heat waves are affecting daily activities

According to NASA, July 22, 2024 was the hottest day on record, and there are growing signs that this July could be the hottest July in history. A survey conducted by the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) at the University of Pennsylvania in mid-July showed that most people can identify the three main symptoms of heat-related illnesses. At the same time, more and more people believe that heat waves are becoming more frequent and intense, and affecting their daily activities.

More people now believe climate change is increasing the risk of heat-related illness, respiratory illness and vector-borne diseases than when the APPC conducted its survey in November 2023. 67% of respondents hold this view, compared to 58% in November 2023.

Over the past year, the number of people who believe that extreme heat often or frequently affects their daily activities has increased significantly. 43% of respondents said that extreme outdoor heat often (22%) or frequently (21%) affects their daily activities, an increase of 8 percentage points from November 2023.

Notably, most people also know the three main symptoms of heat-related illness: dizziness (89%, compared to 86% in August 2022), nausea (83%, compared to 79% in August 2022), and skin that is hot, red, dry, or clammy (72%, the same as in August 2022) or skin that is cool, pale, and clammy (42%, the same as in August 2022).

However, only 30% of respondents understood that pregnant women exposed to extreme heat are more likely to give birth prematurely than those not exposed to such conditions.

There is widespread awareness that heat-related deaths are most common among older adults, with 67% of respondents knowing that people aged 65 or older are at high risk for heat-related deaths, an increase from 62% in August 2022.

Almost everyone (92%) agreed that drinking water is more effective than sugary drinks for preventing heat-related illness.

Scitech Daily website (https://scitechdaily.com)

1. "Listening" to temperature - scientists have discovered a new level of human perception

Research has shown that humans can sense water temperature through sound. This ability is likely developed through experience, suggesting that humans may have the potential to develop new brain sensory maps and advanced perceptual skills.

Researchers from the Ivchel Brain, Cognition and Technology Institute (BCT Institute) at Reichman University in Israel have discovered this largely overlooked perceptual ability. By using machine learning techniques, they revealed cross-modal perception - the interaction between different senses. In a recent study, the research team explored whether humans can perceive the thermal properties of water, such as water temperature, through sound and studied whether this perception is conscious.

The team also used the principle of multisensory integration - the mechanism by which the brain integrates information from different sensory modalities to form a unified perception of the environment - to explore the possibility of multisensory thermal perception. In addition, they used pre-trained deep neural networks (DNNs) and classification algorithms (such as support vector machines) to test whether machine learning can consistently classify the sounds of water pouring at different temperatures and create a map of the physical encoding of these thermal properties in the sound.

The results of the study show that humans are able to learn complex sensory mappings from everyday experience, and that machine learning can help reveal subtle perceptual phenomena. Subsequent research will explore whether people form new sensory mappings in their brains for this experience, similar to what they do for vision, touch, and hearing. In theory, if this approach is combined with brain stimulation technology, it may realize Elon Musk's recent vision of creating superhuman abilities through neural connections.

2. Seeds of civilization: Scientists discover 7,000-year-old agricultural secrets in Western Europe

A team of researchers led by the University of Barcelona in Spain has provided new insights into the emergence and development of agriculture in early Neolithic Western Europe. They found that the first farmers in the western Mediterranean, around 7,000 years ago, adopted advanced agricultural techniques similar to those used today, selecting the most fertile land for cultivation, growing cereal varieties very similar to modern ones, and using livestock manure sparingly.

The study, recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), mainly refers to agricultural data from La Draga, one of the most important and complex Neolithic sites on the Iberian Peninsula, as well as 16 other sites in the region, to reconstruct the environmental conditions, crop management practices and plant characteristics at the time of the rise of agriculture in Western Europe.

The study found that the earliest farmers on the Iberian Peninsula displayed a stable cereal-growing technique, suggesting that the technology and genetic material they carried with them evolved as they migrated from the Fertile Crescent, the birthplace of Neolithic agriculture in the Middle East, to the rest of Europe.

Since its emergence in the Fertile Crescent about 12,000 years ago, agriculture has dramatically altered humans’ relationships with the natural environment and their socio-economic structures. Now, the team has used paleoenvironmental reconstruction and archaeobotany techniques to pinpoint the conditions under which agriculture arose in La Draga.

La Draga, located on the eastern shore of Lake Banyoles in Spain, is one of the earliest agricultural and pastoral communities in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula (5200-4800 BC), witnessing the first agricultural and pastoral society on the Iberian Peninsula. To add a regional perspective to this study, the researchers also referred to cereal data from other Neolithic sites in the Iberian Peninsula and southern France. (Liu Chun)