Since being named deputy editor of Elements Jack Serle has impressed the editorial team with his adequate standards of personal hygiene. His areas of interest include policy, development and infectious diseases. Jack has said he believes Elements will further understanding and appreciation of science for everyone. He looks forward to tearing his hair out and losing plenty of sleep over the site in the coming months.
The man who saw the world, weighed down by his accolades.
12 April is a day locked in history as the moment humans took a leap into the great unknown. On this day in 1961 Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet Union cosmonaut, launched humanity into a new epoch of exploration and discovery in his Vostok 1 rocket.
Gagarin, who left Earth’s atmosphere a Lieutenant in the Russian air force and re-entered a Major, completed a single orbit in just 108 minutes. At an altitude of 188 miles (302km), roughly equal to the lower limit of that of the International Space Station, Gagarin was the first person to look down on Earth. “I saw how beautiful our planet is,” he is quoted as saying. “People, let us preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it.”
The TUC protests of 26 March brought the public sector unions to the support of the NHS
The Conservative Secretary of State for Health Andrew Lansley announced his plans to reform the NHS in June last year with the publication of the white paperEquality and Excellence: Liberating the NHS.
The changes came as a shock to many having not been set out in the Conservative Party election manifesto or the Coalition Agreement. Some have called foul, claiming the programme for reform tabled in the Health and Social Care Bill has no mandate.
In his 2006 Conservative Party conference speech, David Cameron claimed he could spell out his priority “in three letters: NHS”. Journalist and political commentator Joy Johnson believes this is a brutal attack on social welfare. Writing in the magazine Tribune she said the reforms would mean healthcare provision “calculated, not on quality, but on cost”.
Walk past the shop fronts of Britain and you will take in advertisements and displays filled with images of idealised and perhaps unrealistic beauty. Geared around the basic premise that attraction is based on looks alone, these adverts tap into our more basic urges.
New research may contradict this preconception. Richard Masters went out and about in central London to investigate:
Transcript:
Montage of shop fronts displaying mannequins and photographs of young women, Oxford Street, London
Richard Masters: These days, to step on to the high street is to be assailed by images of a somewhat uniform idea of female beauty, informed by the notion that attractiveness is best understood at the level of physical traits.
Nothing seems more evident: your attractiveness is based on how you look.
Were that not the case our supermarkets would not be so loaded with slimming and beauty products.
For beauty, they say, is only skin deep.
View of the University of Westminster on Regent Street, London
But Dr Viren Swami, based just off London’s main thoroughfare, published a study in the Journal of Social Psychology that might turn those assumptions on their head.
Reconstruction showing man sitting down and consulting photos of women, consulting printed information and writing responses in a questionnaire
In the research heterosexual male volunteers were asked to rate photographs of women with different sized and shaped bodies on their physical attractiveness. One group was given positive personality information about each of the women in the pictures; a second group, negative personality details; and a third group no information at all.
Dr Viren Swami, interviewed in his office by Richard Masters
Viren Swami: We found that across all the different groups men had a certain ideal body size that they preferred in a woman. So, across the groups, regardless of the personality information, they all selected a relatively underweight figure as being attractive.
On the other hand, personality information did have an impact in that positive personality information widened the range of figures that men thought were attractive, whereas negative personality information made that range much smaller.
RM: So what do you think the implications for this work are?
VS: Well, I think the point of the research is that, actually, physical attractiveness is not just dependent on physical looks and that non-physical traits can impact on what people think about you physically.
More broadly, I suppose, the obsession with physical looks only really matters – or matters more – in what we call zero equations context, when you don’t have any personality information about a person.
RM: How do you think your findings can be applied to a society where beauty is sold to us?
VS: In general I think yes, on the one hand we are bombarded with the idea that people have to be attractive and if you’re attractive you’re successful, you’re happy and so on. On the other hand actually in real life social interactions it probably matters very little.
View of Oxford Street
RM: In fact, this is a view which even those who work in shops dedicated to selling products and services aimed at enhancing our appearance would agree with.
Sumin, a beautician, stands outside her place of work
RM: What would you say, in your opinion, is what makes someone beautiful?
Sumin: Umm…cliché, but obviously your personality and kindness.
Jenny, a skincare shop assistant, also standing outside her shop
Jenny: They’ll sell their lash-lengthening mascaras, they’ll sell their blemish-perfecting foundations and people will starve themselves to get into clothes which are a size 8, which obviously I’m quite clearly not…but that doesn’t necessarily make someone beautiful.
Montage of men standing in front of the camera, just off Regent Street, waiting to be interviewed in the vox pop sequence
RM: But let’s not forget, the subjects in Dr. Swami’s study were heterosexual men. Are they really as influenced by personality as the research suggests?
RM: What do you find attractive in woman?
Man 1: Err…personality, mainly: spirit, a bit of spunk.
Man 2: Personality, background.
Man 3: Obviously, beauty being the first issue but intelligence as well.
Man 4: Body shape, that type of thing but once you get over that then I think obviously personality does come into it. Someone may have all the looks but if you’ve got no personality that won’t get you very far.
View of a shop displaying a large poster of a young woman, pan across to Richard Masters, standing nearby and delivering a piece to camera
RM: Despite being surrounded by commercial images emphasising the importance of how we look people do tend to agree with Dr Swami’s view; non-physical cues – our personalities – are important components of physical attractiveness. Beauty, it seems, is a far more complex affair than looks alone. Or is it?
Man 5: What I think’s attractive is the legs and the butt.
Swami, V., Furnham, A., Chamorro-Premuzic, T., Akbar, K., Gordon, N., Harris, T., Finch, J., & Tovee, M. (2010). More Than Just Skin Deep? Personality Information Influences Men’s Ratings of the Attractiveness of Women’s Body Sizes The Journal of Social Psychology, 150 (6), 628-647 DOI: 10.1080/00224540903365497
Discovery has touched down for the final time. With two more shuttle missions left these iconic machines will soon be confined to museums
The space shuttle Discovery has completed its final flight, successfully docking with the International Space Station (ISS) for the last time.
Discovery, on its 39th mission, delivered a new module and components to the ISS including Robonaut 2, the first humanoid robot in space.
The crew went on two space walks to fit the new module, Leonardo, and perform maintenance on the ISS.
The space shuttle, Space Transportation System (STS) to give it is proper name, arrived on 26 February and departed on 6 March. This was Discovery’s 13th rendezvous with the space station.
Discovery has had a considerable career. The fourth shuttle to be built, it has travelled further, completed more orbits, and flown more flights than any of its sister craft.
Microbe Hunter Pierre Paul Émile Roux, who helped develop a treatment for diptheria.
The Wellcome Collection this spring will be hosting an exhibition of the history of dirt. From 24 March the Wellcome Trust will present art, artefacts, films and photographs exploring the realm of dirt and its relationship with us.
The filthy and insanitary have long been companions of disease. With this in mind I have dusted off a history of microbiology that summarises this fascinating science.
In Paul de Kruif’s Microbe Hunters he recounts the lives of the pioneering scientists who fussed with glassware, boiled up nutrient broths and peered down microscopes into the bizarre world of microorganisms.
Published in 1926, de Kruif’s history is still an illuminating and enjoyable read today. Spanning three centuries; the discoveries of his microbe hunters have fundamentally changed our view of the world around us.
This is a world which is more than comfortable with microbes. The idea of microscopic beasties like bacteria no longer boggles the mind.
We have anthropomorphised them in adverts: we battle them with bleach in our homes and form yoghurt-mediated alliances with them in our guts.
Although feared in our kitchens, we no longer fear for our lives. For us in the West the thought of a dirty work-surface is more terrifying than the thought of cholera.
De Kruif takes the reader through the heroes of microbiology, from the forgotten to the famous. He begins with a very much unappreciated draper from 17th century Delft, Antony Leeuwenhoek.
Leeuwenhoek; the first man to espy microorganisms. The man who wowed learned men of London’s Royal Society like Sir Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle with his descriptions of a hitherto inconceivable realm.
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