This week, scientists reported on drinking beer, Saturnian expulsions, an ancient North American dog breed, and cats playing dogs’ favorite game, fetch.
Researchers at the University of Portsmouth recruited volunteers at a Portsmouth-area pub who judged 18 images for attractiveness and symmetry. Each type of rating was made twice, once with unaltered images and again with images of faces with enhanced asymmetry. In the second stage of the experiment, volunteers judged which of the two faces was more attractive or more symmetrical, one normal face and the other perfectly symmetrical.
They found that heavily intoxicated volunteers had a reduced ability to distinguish natural from perfectly symmetrized faces; however, they did not rate the faces as being more attractive. The researchers conclude that attractiveness is likely multifactorial, encompassing traits that are not present in photos alone, and that further research is required to resolve the question of why beer makes other people hot.
NASA researchers analyzing Cassini data on plumes spewing from Saturn’s moon Enceladus have found strong evidence for hydrogen cyanide, a key ingredient for life, among the organic compounds previously identified.
Hydrogen cyanide is one of the most important precursors of amino acids. Enceladus is the sixth-largest of Saturn’s moons, hiding a liquid ocean below its icy crust. Cassini discovered that cryovolcanoes near its south pole shoot jets of water vapor and molecular hydrogen into space, some of which snows back down to the surface and much of which comprises one of Saturn’s rings.
2023-12-16 13:00:04
Original from phys.org rnrn