Tody I Learned:
1) An interesting rough method of detecting bias in selection processes (like hiring for jobs or applying to college) under certain conditions -- in particular, when you can measure the performance subsequent performance of a random sample of selectees and when applicant ability is equally high among different groups. If there is bias in the selection process against some group, then only the very best applicants from that group will be accepted, so a group overperforming dramatically is potentially a sign of bias against that group in a selection process.
A few more words about this here: http://ift.tt/1PclVhl
2) There's not all that much in an ant's thorax. Based on a couple of anatomical drawings of ants (from a book, so I can't link them), there's not much in an ant's thorax aside form its esophagus (important but kind of boring), nervous system (ok, that's pretty important), and some specialized endocrine glands. Speaking of which, ants have a lot of endocrine glands! And lots of pheromone-depositing glands! Different species have different glands, and there are dozens of them known in total, located all over the ant body plan.
3) Tidal locking* is much more common among bodies orbiting close to their parent. The reason is that tidal locking usually happens because tidal forces slow down or speed up a close-orbiting body until its rotation matches its parent, and tidal forces are much stronger for close-orbiting bodies. I had kind of inferred this trend from reading planetary descriptions in Mass Effect, but it's nice to have a mechanism to explain why it is so.
*when a planet/moon rotates and revolves in such a way that one side always faces its parent star/planet, as with Mercury or our moon.
No comments:
Post a Comment