Se cree que unos electrones correlacionados cuánticamente en moléculas de los ojos de las aves les sirven a estas para percibir campos magnéticos débiles. Ahora se ha observado por primera vez un efecto relacionado con este sensor en cultivos de célula…
"Experts in this complementary therapy (Reiki) recognized by the WHO argue that it can help minimize the effects of the disease," shamelessly publish the newspaper The vanguard.
And also that it can help combat COVID-19.
"Reiki is a complementary therapy recognized by the World Health Organization, which helps alleviate stress, anguish, anxiety and physical pain," it is stated from a mass media outlet that, presumably, is intended to inform its readers.
"Reiki increases our immune system and that is why it helps a lot to minimize the effects caused by Covid-19." Neither.
All this is false. Neither Reiki is recognized by the WHO (It only states that there are people who use it, but does not say anything about its effectiveness or usefulness, and even includes it in the set of faith-based treatments), nor has it been shown to have any effect on health.
For a national newspaper to make such statements is comparable to stating that extraterrestrials exist and visit us often, or that the Earth is flat.
It is grotesque that at this point there are still media outlets that publish this content and do not immediately become part of a kind of blacklist of unreliable media. Because it is not the first time that this newspaper, La Vanguardia, splash up to the knee in the quagmire of pseudosciences, as Pere Estupinyà already denounced.
Reiki, feng shui, ayurveda or traditional Chinese medicine are, as a whole, a scam. Even a simple nine year old girl He demonstrated it with a simple experiment. But the media we should trust publishes such lies for the simple fact that they sell, or to respect each other's beliefs.
As a politician who once proposed to build a landing strip for ufos simply because many people said they were seeing them, as I explain below:
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The news
No, Reiki cannot help you in any way against COVID-19 because it is a scam.
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
We all know that, psychologically, time shortens like a blink or stretches like a piece of gum depending on whether we are having a good time or a bad time, respectively.
But there is another way to officially violate the natural passage of time: it is what he did On February 14, 2019, a certain Julian O'Shea, which took advantage of the time zones that cluster along the international date line.
The international date line It is an imaginary terrestrial surface line drawn over the Pacific Ocean and close to the 180° meridian. For the convenience of some countries whose territory it crosses, the legal or local time and date in them may be that corresponding to the other hemisphere. Moving from one side of the line to the other involves changing the date, exactly one day.
International date line (in black).
Therefore, Julian lived only one calendar day of 49 hours long thanks to time changes.
To achieve this, he began his journey in Apia, Samoa, and from there he traveled to Auckland (New Zealand), Sydney (Australia) and Honolulu (Hawaii), ending in Pago Pago (American Samoa).
Thanks to this, Julian equaled the record of Mariusz Majewski, from Poland, who on March 13, 2017 also completed a 24-hour day in 49 hours.
When crossing the international date line from east to west (from America to Asia across the Pacific Ocean) the date must be advanced one day on all clocks, that is, one day is lost. On the other hand, if a traveler crosses said line from west to east, the date must be moved back one day (gaining one day). It was based on this idea Julio Verne to write his famous novel Around the world in eighty days.
Due to the number of territories it governs beyond Europe, by the way, France is the country with the most time zones: 12 (13 during one time of year).
Of course, all this is nothing more than a convention. However, it is still very different from the conventions and models on which science in general depends: the world is so complex that we need to simplify it in order to manage some of its areas. Models allow us to orient ourselves, make predictions, and know how something works at a certain level, as you can see in the following video:
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The news
The longest day of a person was 49 hours long and took place entirely on Earth
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
Probability theorists have identified a logical fallacy in the argument commonly used to solve the problem of fine-tuning based on the existence of many universes.
La administración de la molécula de diseño promueve la regeneración de los axones neuronales tras la disección completa de la médula espinal.
As explained Daniel E. Lieberman, paleoanthropologist at Harvard University, in his book The history of the human bodyIn the United States, medical care for a cardiovascular patient costs an additional $18,000 per year.
Therefore, if just 25 % more of the population were convinced to get fit, it would save $58 billion a year on cardiovascular disease care alone. Roughly double the annual research budget of the National Institutes of Health (NIH): that is, It's better to prevent.
Prevention, then, seems to be a much more intelligent aspiration, for which we must all fight with greater effort, at least more than simply putting all our eggs in the basket. the care or resolution of medical problems.
Prevention is not becoming obsessed with exercise or diets. Much less entrust yourself to the paleo diet, which is in any way a pseudoscientific construct: there is no ideal and exemplary way of life for hunter-gatherers. There is not even the idea of a paleo diet, because this should be a set of diets very different from each other, as Lieberman points out:
By way of analogy, trying to understand what the human body is adapted to by looking only at hunter-gatherers would be like trying to understand the result of a football game by looking only at a fragment of the second half.
The most effective prevention would simply happen, according to This studio of The Lancet, by eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, not smoking, exercising moderately and not drinking alcohol excessively. Doing this is enough to reduce cardiovascular disease rates by 50 %.
For this reason, precisely, develop non-fattening food It would not solve one problem but it would amplify others, and it is smarter to be safe than sorry, as I explain in the following video:
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The news
If 25% more of the US population got in shape, they would save $58 billion in medical expenses
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
According to A study, lWomen are less likely to say yes to an image of a man holding a cat. That's the conclusion of a completely counterintuitive study (don't women like cats?) from Colorado State University. The study surveyed a total of 708 women between the ages of 18 and 24 in an online experiment.
The thing is, according to the authors, that men who held cats were seen as less masculine, more neurotic, pleasant and open, and less friendly. That is, it is likely that the findings are the result of deep-rooted cultural stereotypes about dog and cat owners.
In the study, when a group of women were shown the cat-free image of one of the subjects, the women's 38% said they were likely or very likely to date him occasionally, while the women's 37% said they would consider a relationship. would be with him.
But an image of the same man holding a cat got the respondents thinking, and those numbers were reduced to 33% for each category. Meanwhile, the proportion of women who said they would never consider getting involved with him increased from 9% to 14%.
In comparison, positive ratings for the second subject did not decrease significantly when he was photographed with a cat, but women were more likely to rule him out as a potential partner.
When photographed alone, 40% respondents said it would be unlikely or certain that they would not go out with him occasionally. But it increased to the 45% when a cat joined it. Similarly, 41% said he would be unlikely to be considered for a relationship, but 45% said the same thing when they saw him with the mascot.
Everything seems like stereotypes, according to the authors, just as happens with that of a woman with cats, which is culturally associated with a woman with mental problems (the crazy cat lady):
Cat owners did not differ from others in their symptoms of depression, anxiety, or their experiences in close relationships. Our findings, therefore, do not fit the notion that cat owners are more depressed, anxious or lonely.
Mutatis mutandis, the photographs of thin women They also tend to be more successful among the male market because that image carries cultural stereotypes, in addition to pressing the button on the handicap principle (sexual selection traits act as signals of ostentation, showing the ability to afford to waste a resource simply for the sake of waste), whether suggesting that being thin is something exclusive as it is, for men, drive a car-dick:
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The news
To attract women you should keep your cat away from your profile photo
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
Manipular el movimiento de gotas a una escala micrométrica es muy difícil. Un equipo de físicos, que se ha inspirado en el famoso juego de vídeo Pac-Man, ha logrado desplazar de forma controlada una gota sobre una superficie horizontal. Podría tener nu…
Los datos de casi 100.000 personas no indican un límite superior en los beneficios que supone para el corazón una mayor actividad física.
The frequency of emotional contact is associated with physical and psychological well-being, and those who are deprived of it suffer from depression, anxiety and a host of other illnesses.
However, There are people who resist physical contact with other people, even with the close ones. These people also report more psychological problems than the general population.
Perhaps this is because, without knowing it, those who have little physical ability deprive themselves of precisely the benefits of that contact. But it could also be that physical contact has the opposite effect on them, increasing psychological discomfort instead of alleviating it, and that is why they try to avoid it as much as they can without ever succeeding.
This is the topic that the psychologist from the University of Lausanne (Switzerland) Anik Debrot and his colleagues explored in a study they recently published.
To explore these questions, the researchers conducted three separate studies. The first was a survey of more than 1,600 people who were in an intimate relationship. Questions about attachment style, well-being, and touch behaviors, including types (petting, hugging, kissing, etc.) and frequency (ranging from never to four or more times a day).
The results showed, as expected, that people who touched their partners more frequently They also reported higher levels of well-being. Furthermore, as expected, those with a contact-avoidant attachment style generally reported less frequent physical contact with their partner and They also exhibited lower levels of well-being.
However, some people with avoidant attachment reported touching their partner frequently, and these people enjoyed similar levels of well-being as others who reported frequent physical contact.
This latter finding suggests that people with an avoidant attachment style may benefit from intimate contact just as others do, and in any case it certainly does not harm them. However, we should always be careful when interpreting self-report data like these.
To further explore the connection between avoidant attachment and the benefits of touch, Debrot and her colleagues invited 66 couples to visit their lab. Couples individually responded to surveys about attachment style, well-being, and touch similar to those in the first study. They were then asked to participate in a series of conversations with each other about times when they had made a sacrifice for their partner or felt great love for their partner. These conversations were recorded and subsequently observers counted the number of times they touched each other. Participants also indicated their level of positive feeling before and after each conversation.
The results of this second study were similar to those of the first. But a new finding was that a high frequency of physical touch during a difficult conversation didn't necessarily increase positive feelings right away. Rather, researchers speculate that it is the general pattern of touching in the relationship. leading to higher levels of overall well-being.
The third investigation was a 28-day diary study consisting of 98 couples who reported attachment style on the first day and then noted positive mood and contact behaviors daily thereafter. The results confirmed the findings of the two previous studies, but also provided new information about the impact of attachment style on the couple. That is, not only did those individuals with an avoidant attachment style report lower levels of positive mood, so did their partners.
However, people with avoidant attachment who were receptive to their partner's touch advances generally reported higher levels of positive mood. This clearly indicates that physical contact is beneficial even for those who tend to recoil when their loved ones try to touch them. Therefore, Debrot and her colleagues suggest that therapists develop techniques to help those with an avoidant attachment style. to overcome your aversion to non-sexual physical contact.
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The news
People who avoid contact are unhappier, but because they need more contact or the contact itself bothers them?
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
