behavior
grrlscientist | December 29, 2006
.
This study, carried out by Cancer Research UK, showed that women who did 16-17 hours of housework per week cut their risk of breast cancer by 20% for postmenopausal women and 30% for premenopausal women. Further, it was housework specifically that has this beneficial effect, not other forms of physical activity;
Women who exercise by doing the housework can reduce their risk of breast cancer, a study suggests.
The research on more than 200,000 women from nine European countries found doing household chores was far more cancer protective than playing sport.
[ .. ]
Out of all of the…
scientificactivist | November 16, 2006Living successfully with other people demands sacrifice. From going out of your way to pick your little brother up from school to paying taxes toward government health care programs, there is an expectation in any society that its members will sacrifice some personal gain for the greater good. This cooperation, in turn, contributes to a stronger and more successful society, the benefits of which should be felt by all of its members. This is true not just for humans, but for some other animals and, most notably, colony-forming insects. Even there, though, the picture isn't so simple, and a…
scientificactivist | September 7, 2006Robert Trivers was the first to describe the theory of reciprocal altruism and Noam Chomsky is... well... Noam Chomsky is the man (not to be confused with The Man). What happens when you bring together in one room the evolutionary theorist who changed the way we think about cooperation and social interactions with the intellectual who has probably done more to challenge entrenched power structures in our society than anyone else? A hell of an interesting conversation, that's what. From Seed magazine:
The full text of the discussion can be found here.
Chomsky and Trivers discuss the role…