Environmentalists in peril

“Around the world, sticking up for the environment can be deadly, and it appears to be getting deadlier,” reports Associated Press. “People who track killings of environmental activists say the numbers have risen dramatically in the last three years. Improved reporting may be one reason, they caution, but they also believe the rising death toll is a consequence of intensifying battles over dwindling supplies of natural resources, particularly in Latin America and Asia. Killings have occurred in at least 34 countries, from Brazil to Egypt … A report released Tuesday by the London-based Global Witness said more than 700 people – more than one a week – died in the decade ending 2011 … They were killed, the [group] says, during protests or investigations into mining, logging, intensive agriculture, hydropower dams, urban development and wildlife paoching.”

Heaven, Hell and crime

“Religions are thought to serve as bulwarks against unethical behaviours,” The Huffington Post says. “However, when it comes to predicting criminal behavior, the specific religious beliefs one holds is the determining factor, says a University of Oregon psychologist. The study, appearing in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE, found that criminal behavior is lower in societies where people’s religious beliefs contain a strong punitive component than in places where religious beliefs are more benevolent. … The finding surfaced from a comprehensive analysis of 26 years of data involving 143,197 people in 67 countries. ‘The key finding is that … a nation’s rate of belief in hell predicts lower crime rates, but the nation’s rate of belief in heaven predicts hgher crime rates, and these are strong effects,’ said Azim F. Shariff, professor of psychology and director of the Culture and Morality Lab at the [university].”

It takes time to relax

“People who go on holiday for one week only get three days’ rest because it takes four days to switch off from the pressures of work, a study suggests,” says The Daily Telegraph. “Researchers found that halfway through the fourth day of a holiday is when workers feel everyday stress. And with most holidays being just over a week, that only leaves a few days of real relaxation.”

Customized fright

“Imagine if [your sweat] could make the film you are watching more scary – or even change what happens next,” says the New Scientist. That’s the idea behind an app developed by Sensum . “The sensor measures how much you sweat while watching a video and sends the data to your smartphone, which then uploads it to the Sensum website.” When paired with specially designed films, it can change what you are watching in real time, making the music more intense or even giving you a different ending.

A museum to failure

“In an unremarkable business park outside the city of Ann Arbor in Michigan,” reports The Guardian, “stands a poignant memorial to humanity’s shattered dreams … the storehouse – operated by a company called GfK Custom Research North America – has acquired a nickname: the Museum of Failed Products. This is consumer capitalism’s graveyard … it’s almost certainly the only place on the planet where you’ll find Clairol’s A Touch of Yogurt shampoo alongside Gillette’s equally unpopular For Oily Hair Only, a few feet from a now-empty bottle of Pepsi AM Breakfast Cola (born 1989; died 1990). The museum is home to discontinued brands of caffeinated beer; to TV dinners branded with the logo of the toothpaste manufacturer Colgate; to self-heating soup cans that had a regrettable tendency to explode in customers’ faces; and to packets of breath mints that had to be withdrawn from sale because they looked like the tiny packages of crack cocaine dispensed by America’s street drug dealers. It is where microwaveable scrambled eggs – pre-scrambled and sold in a cardboard tube with a pop-up mechanism for easier consumption in the car – go to die.”

Fossilized during sex

“Fossilized turtles have been caught having sex, the first known case of animals with backbones found copulating in the fossil record, researchers say,” writes Charles Choi for LiveScience. “The mating turtles my have been caught in a death trap as they sank to deeper layers of the lake, where they were having sex nearly 50 million years ago, the researchers speculate. The lake’s deep layers may have held deadly volcanic gases or other toxins. Scientists made their discovery at the Messel Pit in Germany, which once was a deep volcanic crater lake in a wet, tropical environment.”