Though the Japanese navy became famous for Kamikaze (Tokubetsu Kōgekita) suicide attacks using planes, it was really only during the last year of World War II that they occurred. And Vulcan Inc.’s Research Vessell Petrel's latest discovery may have been from the Battle of Leyte Gulf, which means it may have been due to the first instance of such a suicide plane encounter. After the Allied Invasion to reclaim the Philippine Islands on October 20, 1944, the Japanese sent an armada composed of the Main Body (Northern), First Striking Force (Force "A" and Force "C"), and the Southwest Area Force, to destroy the Allied fleet.
Once 237 astronomers took it upon themselves to change the definition of a planet so that Pluto did not count - unless a handful of others did count - there is little point in reading a textbook on the matter. The number could change next year and again the year after.Because "dwarf planet" is entirely subjective and therefore meaningless. In removing one subjective definition of planet and replacing it with another one just over a decade ago the International Astronomical Union created a mess they don't know how to fix. Now they will have to "vote" on science yet again, but they can't deny this one or none of them have any meaning.
On this day in 1919, exactly 100 years ago, the Volstead Act introduced Prohibition, which was signed into law and created a ban on alcohol. A ban on alcohol was necessary, according to social authoritarian groups like the Anti-Saloon League and Woman's Christian Temperance Union, because companies had created alcohol flavors that too many people liked, it was not safe to have alcohol even at a business, families were being ruined. It was for the children.
Homeopathy was a vaguely illogical belief 200 years ago that if you mimicked the symptoms of a disease you could prevent or cure the disease. It's like sitting in a chair pushing an imaginary gas pedal and believing that will get you to Safeway yet it sells to the 'I don't trust medicine but with magic water my flu only lasted for 7.8 days instead of 8' crowd.I imagine Hahnemann would not believe in something so goofy today ("Why are you still listening to us? We wrote with feathers!") but there is a whole market of kooky customers who believe the Ways Of The Ancients must be superior - even if they make no scientific sense at all.
Dr. Jed Rose has spent his entire career trying to get people to smoke fewer cigarettes, and to do so he invented the nicotine patch. He even invented an e-cigarette in the 1980s because he understood how people became addicted to a drug that "doesn't get people visibly high", even when the cigarette smoke that came with it could kill them.But he has been around long enough to know that "anti-" forces, in business only because of money they got from the Big Tobacco Master Settlement related to cigarettes, a dwindling market, are going to look for new targets and are using a thousand illnesses related to bootleg vaping juice to suppress the legitimate smoking cessation and harm reduction fields.
When properly motivated, not only will rats drive cars, they will seem more relaxed after doing so, finds a recent psychology experiment published in Behavioural Brain Research.Rodent operated vehiclesIf we want animals to engage in more complex behavioral tasks, it is important to have enriched environments. That may include humans, if we want to improve therapies for neurodegenerative disease and psychiatric illness. In the meantime, the "rat race" just got a whole lot more interesting.Credit: Kelly Lambert/University of Richmond
We get creeped out by people who behave in bizarre and unpredictable ways. They violate subtle social conventions that enable us to understand their intentions and that can be scary. This goes for things as well; dolls that are too lifelike to clowns in places where clowns should not be. What about places?Yes, this ‘threat-ambiguity theory’ of creepiness also applies to places, according to Knox College psychology professor Francis McAndrew. Scary places lack what psychologists refer to as ‘legibility' - the ease with which a place can be recognized, organized into a pattern and recalled. A deep dark woods is going to be scarier than a meadow with a stream whose edges you can see.
When Hans Eysenck passed away in 1997, he was one of the most influential psychologists of all time, behind only Freud and Piaget. Yet few outside the field had heard of him, which is the problem with conflating citations and actual influence.His fame was built on work concerning intelligence and personality testing, called psychometrics. He maintained the hereditability of IQ and personality traits and came under fire for that, but also published work validating astrology.
In December of 1941, Japan launched an attack on America at Pearl Harbor, worried that if they didn't do something quickly to cripple the American fleet, they would be starved of oil slowly and lose if America eventually entered anyway.Oddly, Germany then declared war on America to support its Axis ally.Both countries underestimated American manufacturing capacity. In April, the Doolittle Raid bombed Tokyo, in May the world saw its first combined air-sea battle, the Battle of Coral Sea, and in June the U.S. Navy intercepted a Japanese invasion fleet heading for Midway Island.
At least some of the illnesses caused by putting tainted products into nicotine vaping devices has a source; synthetic marijuana, also called K2, Spice, and other things, sold in a product called Yolo and made by Janell Thompson, co-founder of the companies called Hookahzz and Mathco Health Corporation.
