▎ WuXi AppTec content team editor
2021 is coming to an end, and this year I have watched a lot of cutting-edge research with readers and friends! A lot of research is moving because of the tall technology, or the prospect of curing terminal illnesses. However, there are also some studies that may be impressive because they seem "nonsensical". Maybe some people will have a question mark: This can still publish papers?
Wearing a mask really protects against viruses
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic two years ago, there has been frequent debate about whether wearing masks can reduce the spread of covid-19.
In order to test the seemingly "common sense" approach, scientists have not only conducted a number of studies, but also concluded that "wearing a mask works" has been featured in top academic journals more than once in 2021.
Image credit: 123RF
A study published today in Science in June quantitatively analyzed the effectiveness of masks against virus particles by modeling the spread of the virus. The researchers analyzed the concentration range of the new crown virus in different environments, the situation of different groups of people wearing masks, and different types of masks, and finally concluded that the level of the new crown virus in the environment where ordinary people live is actually not high, and wearing a mask at this time can further reduce the risk of infection, and to achieve the best protection effect, both the new crown infection and healthy people need to wear masks.
Another paper was also published in the journal Science
Through large randomized controlled trials, the scientists tested the effectiveness of masks in the field. The researchers devised a series of measures to encourage nearly 350,000 residents in more than 600 villages in Bangladesh to wear masks extensively. Tracking data shows that as the proportion of masks wearing masks rises by nearly 30%, the seroprevalence rate of COVID-19 has dropped by about 9%, which suggests that surgical masks can indeed serve as a large-scale protective measure to reduce symptomatic COVID-19 infections.
Wearing a mask affects the recognition of people's faces
When people universally wear masks to reduce the spread of the virus, a new social challenge emerges: how to recognize faces. Cognitive psychologists at the University of Huddersfield in the United Kingdom designed three sets of experiments to confirm how much wearing a mask affects the face, and also compared it with the effect of wearing sunglasses.
Their results showed that wearing a mask increased the difficulty of identifying a familiar face (such as a well-known celebrity) or a completely unfamiliar face, and participants were less accurate at judging whether two photos of a masked or not wearing a mask were the same person. But the researchers also found that the effects of masks are the same as sunglasses.
▲ Experiments have shown that masks and sunglasses both affect the recognition of facial emotions (Image source: References[3])
Not surprisingly, experiments have also shown that emotions are less easily revealed under the cover of masks: masked faces make it difficult to identify happiness, disgust, or surprise; masks and sunglasses can also help hide emotions of anger and fear.
After reading this conclusion, the social fear of wearing a mask is more at ease when going out...
Cats are masters of playing "peek-a-boo"
Some scientists have used experiments in the past two years to prove that cats can understand human names and can distinguish between the voices of shovelers and strangers. The scientists then recorded the sounds of different people calling cats and conducted another experiment: playing "peek-a-boo" with cats.
The researchers played the recordings behind a door close to the cat and outside a window farther away from the cat. This allowed them to discover that cats would act surprised when they heard sounds "running" from one place to another. Especially after hearing an invisible movement of a familiar owner's voice, they would stare behind the door and ponder, turn their ears to look around, or get up to look for it.
The researchers analyzed that this phenomenon confirmed a cognitive ability that was previously unknown in felines: cats were able to psychologically map the position of others in space based on sound cues. This suggests that cats have an important spatial cognitive ability that is a feature of complex thinking. It is generally believed that human babies usually begin to understand "object persistence" around 8 months, that is, the belief that something, although invisible, still exists. And these scientists who are keen to pet cats show that cats also have the intelligence to understand the persistence of objects.
The richer you are, the happier you are
In your opinion, how much money can you earn to get a happy and happy life?
The relationship between money and happiness has always attracted a lot of scientists to study. A highly influential 2010 study showed that the more money you make, the happier people are, and when the annual household income reaches $75,000, happiness tends to stabilize, and no amount of money will make you have additional happiness.
However, a new study published this year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that the "income ceiling" for happiness may not exist.
Together, the studies collected more than 1.7 million data from 33,000 participants. Dr. Matthew Killingsworth of Wharton College in Pennsylvania set up a small mobile app that asks participants to report their immediate sense of well-being (i.e., experiential happiness) at randomly selected points in time multiple times—such as eating, watching TV, and chatting—while assessing their overall satisfaction with life (i.e., evaluative well-being).
The survey results show that both experiential and evaluative well-being continue to increase as income increases. With a doubling of annual income, happiness has also doubled.
Dr Killingsworth analyzes that high-income earners are happier, in part because of their increased sense of control over their lives. "When you have more money, you have more choices about how to live." But he added, "While money may be good for happiness, I've found that people who equate money with success are not as happy as those who don't equate the two." I also found that people who make more money also work longer hours and are more pressed for time. ”
Some of the conclusions of the study seem to be nonsense at first glance, and scientists did not expect to do experiments. But if you look closely, you may realize that some of the thoughts or actions we take on a daily basis are not so "natural." It is precisely because of the scientists' truth-seeking efforts that we are constantly adjusting our pace in order to live a happier life.