Stripping Down Science (3 page)

FACT BOX

Cats have their owners under their paws

Those who prefer to keep a cat rather than man's more traditional best friend, beware. Your moggy may well be resorting to mewing-related manipulation to tap into your sensitive side.

According to Sussex University scientist (and cat-owner) Karen McComb,
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there are two ‘flavours' of purring: one when a cat is contented and a second ‘solicitation' sound produced with ‘purr-pose' such as when the animal is after something. ‘In my cat's case, it's usually at 5 am when it wakes me up wanting to go out,' says McComb.

To find out whether humans fall for this feline trick, she recorded the purrs of 10 cats and played them to a group of 50 volunteers, which included both cat-owners and non-cat-owners. Participants from both groups pricked up their ears at the solicitation purrs
and judged them to be more urgent-sounding, distracting and unpleasant.

To find out why, McComb acoustically analysed the two purr types and found a significant difference. A contented cat produces a steady purr that rumbles along at about 27 Hz, just above the threshold of human low-frequency hearing. But a cat craving attention or food adds an extra sound – effectively a ‘mini-meow' nestled inside the ongoing purr. Intriguingly, this 380 Hz additional sound is within the same frequency range as a human baby's cry, which we all know from bitter experience is very distracting. The effect also appears to be more manifest amongst cats that have a close one-to-one relationship with their owners.

This suggests that, once they get to know you, cats craftily tap into a sonic sensitivity linked to your child-nurturing instincts, meaning you're more likely to feed them than throw them out …

Recession, depression, repossession, febrile economy, credit crunch, quantitative easing …
Few have escaped the headlines, or the impact, of the financial crisis that's gripped the world in the latter part of the ‘noughties'. Given the grim state of the world economy, you'd be forgiven for thinking that just about the only people who might profit from a recession are bailiffs, bankruptcy lawyers and newspaper publishers with a penchant for monetary puns and wordplays. But there is a silver lining to the present gloomy outlook: your health is likely to be a beneficiary too!

This sounds counterintuitive, because we're always being told that prosperity makes people live longer. But it turns out this is a myth of almost similar proportions to Barack Obama's US rescue package. Instead, it's official: new work has shown that, alongside share prices, death rates drop during a recession.

This relationship was revealed when Jose Tapia Granados and Ana Diez Roux, both based at the
University of Michigan,
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compared mortality rates with the state of the US economy over the period straddling the 1930s Great Depression, with striking results. In the years 1923, 1926, 1929 and 1936–37, they report, there were economic booms. But in each of these years, the population mortality rates also peaked. However, in 1921, 1930–33 and 1938, which were all recessions or depressions, the death rates among children and adults fell to their lowest levels. Initially this seems surprising because one would assume that, during recessions, people would be financially stretched, have little money for healthcare and healthy living and would be generally more stressed, all of which would add up to a higher risk of dying. It seems the reverse is true.

Some have suggested that this charted relationship reflects nothing more than a ‘lag' effect, whereby people become ill during a recession but by the time they die, the economy is booming again. The researchers discount this theory on the grounds that the timing just doesn't work, because the periods between boom and bust are not constant each time yet the mortality
rates change directly in step with the state of the economy.

They point out that, although a fast-growing economy might be good for your bank balance, it's potentially very bad for the health of the person in the street because people tend to work longer hours during a boom and have more disposable income to spend on a deleterious lifestyle, including alcohol and cigarettes, the consumption of which is known to increase at times of prosperity. There is also more traffic, more pollution, and industrial accidents are more common. People also migrate during booms in pursuit of lucrative high-paid work, which can lead to social isolation, itself a risk factor for poor health.

Together, these factors add up to more ill-health during the so-called good times. So rather than rue the recession, welcome it with open arms … and see how long your bank manager will swallow the story that your empty account and maxed-out credit card are all part of a healthier lifestyle!

FACT BOX

Pointing the finger at the top market mover to get the best from boom and bust

Love it or hate it, boom and bust is part of a capitalist economy. But to whom should you entrust your money to ensure the best return? The answer would appear to be, when assessing your brokers' credentials, take a tape measure, because scientists have revealed that the relative lengths of a person's fingers can predict money-making ability in some financial markets.

Cambridge University Judge Business School researcher John Coates, who also made headlines by showing that testosterone levels amongst city traders were linked to their daily profits, took photocopies of the palm-prints of 44 financiers.
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He measured the lengths of the index and ring fingers to find a strong association between finger length and profit
or loss. Traders with an index finger shorter than the ring finger were more successful, on average, and the larger the ring finger relative to the index finger – known as the 2D:4D ratio – the more money they made.

‘This is an index of testosterone exposure during development,' points out Coates. ‘Some of the same genes that control limb and hand development in the embryo are also involved in the development of the urogenital system, so finger length is an index of pre-natal testosterone levels. Testosterone therefore seems to pattern the body and behaviour later in life. We see the same relationship amongst sportsmen playing testosterone-charged sports.'

In the present study, the researchers looked at a specific group of traders who aim to profit by gambling on second-by-second and minute-by-minute fluctuations in the values of certain assets. ‘These high-frequency trades require the same testosterone-fuelled rapid reactions that benefit an athlete on the sports field,' says Coates, ‘although not all financial roles benefit
from high testosterone: some money-making schemes require traders to take a much longer-term view, and high testosterone is unlikely to be of benefit under those circumstances.'

The bottom line is, when making short-term bets on stocks and shares, measure your brokers' fingers … ideally before you threaten to break them!

A common belief is that if you're trying to lose weight or give up smoking, then buying in bulk is a bad idea. Psychologists say that big bags of food encourage you to eat more, so smaller portions should be the order of the day. However, recent research carried out on snacking Dutch students suggests that the reverse might be true.

Working on the premise that consumers might be lulled into a false sense of dietary security by small portion sizes, University of Tilberg scientist Rik Pieters and his colleagues
¹¹
set out to discover how a diet-conscious mindset and a big bag of crisps can influence a person's eating habits. The team recruited 140 male and female students who were told they were taking part in an advertising study, which involved watching some television commercials. The participants were given either two large bags or nine small bags of chips to
munch during the viewing. Before the screenings started, half the students were also made ‘diet aware' by weighing them in front of a mirror.

The team then totalled up how many bags of chips the students opened and what weight of food they ultimately ate. The results were quite literally gob-smacking. Amongst the non-diet-conscious volunteers, 50% opened the big bags whilst 75% opened the small bags. Weighing the food eaten, however, showed that both groups had nonetheless consumed about the same amounts.

But amongst the participants who were weighed first, the story took an interesting twist. In this case only 25% of the students given big bags of crisps actually opened them. But when they did, they ate
half
as much as the 59% of students who opened their small bags. This shows that, far from helping people to exercise dietary restraint, under certain circumstances restricted-size packages can actually trigger
increased
eating. The team think that the effect occurs because small portions effectively fly beneath the nutritional radar and fail to trigger our normal self-restraining behaviour.

‘The tendency of consumers to believe that smaller quantities of tempting products are
“acceptable” and to consider single-serving packages even as helpful self-regulatory tools can contribute to increased consumption compared to when products are offered in quantities considered to be “unacceptable”, which could instigate consumption restraint,' say the researchers. So big bags in the hands of diet-conscious individuals made them think twice about opening them in the first place, and then made them regret every morsel. The smaller bags, however, didn't trigger the same calorie-sensitive alarm bells and so the students ate more.

According to Rik Pieters, the apparent willingness of food manufacturers to provide ‘healthier' and ‘smaller' portions may be because they already know this happens, and that by marketing their products in this way they can effectively kill two birds with one stone. On the one hand they can expand their markets by selling more food and on the other they can promote themselves in a healthy light. Consumers, meanwhile, merely expand their waistlines …

Researchers have found that, contrary to expectations, thinking about food can help to reduce how much you eat. We usually associate food fantasies with hunger pangs and a subsequent binge, but a recent study by Birmingham University researcher Suzanne Higgs
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suggests that this is a nutritional myth. She and her colleagues invited a group of 47 healthy (non-obese) female students to take part in a ‘snack-attack' test advertised on the university campus as an investigation into the relationship between food and mood. In reality, it was the culinary equivalent of an episode of candid camera, during which the researchers scrutinised the eating habits of the participants to see whether thinking about food actually made them hungrier.