Links for 2022-01-10
A publication by University of Oxford researchers describes a new minimally invasive and inexpensive blood test that can identify cancer in patients with non-specific symptoms. https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2022-01-05-new-test-can-identify-if-patient-has-cancer-and-if-it-has-spread
The neuroprotective benefits of exercise can be transferred from running mice to sedentary mice via blood plasma. Exercise plasma boosts memory and dampens brain inflammation via clusterin. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04183-x
Elon Musk: Self-driving is way harder than I thought https://youtu.be/MyLUiE-XfQI
Shipping Container Sized Commercial Nuclear Fusion is Fully Funded and May Arrive 2027 https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2022/01/174306.html
Calibration training—based on principles of “superforecasting”—improves the accuracy of real-world probability judgments by about 10%.
Female candidates are now twice as likely to be chosen as equally qualified men. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/14/study-finds-surprisingly-that-women-are-favored-for-jobs-in-stem/
"Human right-handedness represents an unparalleled extreme" compared to related species. The rareness of human left-handers is an evolutionary mystery https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.30.474462v1
Human Handedness: A Meta-Analysis: Around 10.6% of people are left-handed; Left-handedness is more common in men; The same evolutionary mechanisms maintain the 1:10 ratio worldwide; Mixed-handedness is about as common as left-handedness (~9.33%). https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fbul0000229
Active math and grammar learning engages overlapping brain networks https://www.pnas.org/content/118/46/e2106520118
Extinction of big prey through hunting led mean hunted animal mass 10,500 years ago to be only 1.7% of what it was 1.5 million years ago. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277379121005230
"Ever wonder how wokeness managed to so rapidly dominate Western cultural institutions? Well, the CIA may have had something to do with that. Before you ridicule, read this THREAD" https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1477693156036653056.html
Some information related to dating and sexuality:
1. Women are attracted to men at about their own age Men are attracted to young women, no matter the man's age: https://nytimes.com/2017/09/29/opinion/sunday/dating-age-gap.html?_r=0
But note that men are very likely even more attracted to even younger women. The sharp cut-off is likely an artifact of the study design or due to age restrictions on dating platforms on which these studies rely.
2. Sex offenders almost always attack the young. The percentage of female victims who are over 50 is close to zero. In male prisons...heterosexual men target the youngest inmates. https://quillette.com/2016/01/02/to-rape-is-to-want-sex-not-power/
3. Women have much stricter standards for the “average” member of the opposite sex and dating apps allow them to choose only the very best men whereas before they had to choose from a local pool: https://web.archive.org/web/20120723173702/http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dating/
4. A Tinder study showed that "male subjects liked 61.9% of female profiles, female subjects liked only 4.5% of male...findings in line with evolutionary psychology and parental investment theory (Trivers, 1972)" +women like more if he has masters in business/engineering https://sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272775719301104
5. The great majority of women are only willing to communicate romantically with a small minority of men while most men are willing to communicate romantically with most women. https://quillette.com/2019/03/12/attraction-inequality-and-the-dating-economy/
6. A man who is 5 feet 6 inches tall needs to earn an additional $175,000 per year to be as desirable as a man who is about 6 feet tall. A 6'2" man can earn $30,000 less than a 6' man and will be viewed as equally desirable. http://home.uchicago.edu/~hortacsu/onlinedating.pdf
7. Race and Attraction: All women preferred men of their own race. https://web.archive.org/web/20190212060118if_/https://theblog.okcupid.com/race-and-attraction-2009-2014-107dcbb4f060?gi=eeb259cf010
8. Men and women prefer attractive over unattractive profiles, regardless of their own attractiveness. High-educated men prefer low-educated over high-educated profiles as much as high-educated women prefer high-educated over low-educated profiles. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047272721000086
9. How Couples Meet: In 1940, ~80% of couples met through family, friends, or elementary/high school. Today, ~67% meet online or at bars. Internet dating has displaced friends and family from their former roles as key intermediaries in the formation of new unions. https://web.stanford.edu/~mrosenfe/Rosenfeld_et_al_Disintermediating_Friends.pdf
10. Online dating sites give us an intriguing look at how we meet people now: men tend to initiate contact; people tend to contact potential mates who are nearby; most interactions are between people in the same age groups and ethnic groups; men tend to contact women who are younger than they are and reciprocated messages tend to be between people of the same ethnicity; The youngest submarkets in Chicago and Seattle, for example, have almost two men for every woman. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613286/the-anatomy-of-online-dating-has-been-revealed-in-unprecedented-detail/
11. Half of All Singles Don’t Want a Relationship or a Date https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/living-single/202008/half-all-singles-don-t-want-relationship-or-date