UFO Hoax Leads to Arrest of New Jersey Men (Gothamist)

I know , you want to believe. But sometimes , a hoax is a hoax, and it’s noteworthy that it was perpetrated by a science teacher:

Rudy, a science teacher, and Russo, who works in sales, revealed their identities in an article for eSkeptic magazine explaining the hoax, which took place over the course of five nights in January and early February: “Like most other people, we had always heard about the uneducated farmer spotting an alien spaceship hovering over his farm, but we wondered if that amount of gullibility could be found in our upper-middle class hometown of Hanover, NJ, and the surrounding cities.” Indeed, gullibility could be found, and though local police immediately dismissed the phenomenon as road flares attached to balloons, the media ran with the story, and soon History Channel show “UFO Hunters” was on the scene.

I am all for pushing skepticism,  (again, take a look at the openness video i posted yesterday), but there are better ways to help people understand that the lack of explanation is proof of the supernatural.  Getting the History Channel’s UFO hunters to bite is coup!

Newsweek has more on the story here.

Poverty Goes Straight to the Brain (Wired)

With President Obama’s  call to reform our education system, this study marks how improving the conditions a youth lives in can be just as important as improving their school:

For decades, education researchers have documented the disproportionately low academic performance of poor children and teenagers living in poverty. Called the achievement gap, its proposed sociological explanations are many. Compared to well-off kids, poor children tend to go to ill-equipped and ill-taught schools, have fewer educational resources at home, eat low-nutrition food, and have less access to health care.

Researchers have found how biological development plays a role in this phenomenon, where stress hormones affect memory ability:

Given a sequence of items to remember‚ teenagers who grew up in poverty remembered an average of 8.5 items. Those who were well-off during childhood remembered an average of 9.44 items. So-called working memory is considered a reliable indicator of reading, language and problem-solving ability — capacities critical for adult success.

When Evans and Schamberg controlled for birth weight, maternal education, parental marital status and parenting styles, the effect remained. When they mathematically adjusted for youthful stress levels, the difference disappeared.

Their is another biological prescedent in lab rats:

In lab animals, stress hormones and high blood pressure are associated with reduced cell connectivity and smaller volumes in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. It’s in these brain regions that working memory is centered. Evans and Schamberg didn’t scan their human subjects’ brains, but the test results suggest that the same basic mechanisms operate in kids.

The brain is sensitive to stress. The flight or fight response was developed as a short term solution to an immediate danger. It makes sense that long exposure to this body chemistry could lead to deleterious effects on organs like the heart and mind. It gets worse! :

McEwen also noted that, at least in animals, the effects of stress produce changes in genes that are then passed from parent to child. Poverty’s effects could be hereditary.

The article then goes on to talk about how hours of reading to your children can help with language issues. I also see another effect from doing that level of parenting for stressful poor children; it can possibly counteract the effects of the stress. What is more relaxing than having your parents read to you?

Jonah Lehrer of science blogs, a favorite of mine, notes another important point from the research:

Gould’s work implies that the symptoms of poverty are not simply states of mind; they actually warp the mind. Because neurons are designed to reflect their circumstances, not to rise above them, the monotonous stress of living in a slum literally limits the brain.

This next story is a laffer (silent and deadly), a bacteria that can convert electricity to methane when combined with CO2.:

Bacteria Turns Excess Clean Energy Into Methane for Storage (CleanTechnica)

Any surplus power from wind, solar, or tidal sources is fed into the bacteria and combined with CO2 from the atmosphere to create methane for storage. Methane is a clean-burning gas and 80% of energy fed into the process was retained at the end.

How Humor Makes You Friendlier, Sexier (Scientific American)

DUH! Everyone knows that dudes with big hardy laughs have huge …feet.

Cheerfulness, a trait that makes people respond more readily to humor, is linked to emotional resilience—the ability to keep a level head in difficult circumstances—and to close relationships. Life satisfaction may increase with the ability to laugh.

Video: Recharging Transportation – Alternative Energy Cars (Treehugger)

America.gov is making me feel better about our chances in the auto industry with new car tech. There’s a nice video!