Why did Barack Obama win the US election and did the fact he is over six feet tall influence the voters? In a synthesis of research, published in Current Biology this month, the authors of the paper 'The Origins and Evolution of Leadership' argue that due to 'a hangover from our evolutionary past' factors like age, sex, height and weight play a major part in the determining our choice of leaders.
Author Professor Mark van Vugt, an Associate Member of the Institute for Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Oxford, said: 'Traits like height, age, gender, masculinity/femininity, and weight all appear to matter when we vote for our leaders. These are likely hangovers from our evolutionary past -- ancestral leadership prototypes that are context-dependent. When we face particular threats, like war, these elicit particular prototypes, such as the need for a masculine leader. Therefore, leaders who match these ancestral prototypes have a better chance of being elected.'
The article says that although human societies continue to rely heavily on political, economic, military, professional and religious leaders to function effectively, there is a consistently high rate of leadership failure. Nearly three quarters of business failures in corporate America are due to managerial incompetence, the study points out. It asks whether new approaches might be useful in understanding when and why human leadership succeeds and fails -- including Nature's own lessons on what works best in different contexts.
Science & Technology
© SOHO
Sunspot 1029
Sunspot 1029
The sunspot's magnetic polarity identifies it as a member of new Solar Cycle 24. If its growth continues apace, sunspot 1029 could soon become the biggest sunspot of 2009. Readers with solar telescopes are encouraged to monitor developments.
© Hulton Archive
Professor Paabo, who is director of genetics at the renowned Max Planck Institution for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, made the claim at a conference in the Cold Springs Laboratory in New York.
But Prof Paabo said he was unclear if the couplings had led to children, of if they were capable of producing offspring.
"What I'm really interested in is, did we have children back then and did those children contribute to our variation today?" he said in an article in The Sunday Times.
"I'm sure that they had sex, but did it give offspring that contributed to us? We will be able to answer quite vigorously with the new [Neanderthal genome] sequence."
The ring is about four times the size of a full moon
Three astronomers from the Washington region, following in the footsteps of no less illustrious a predecessor than Galileo, have discovered a new ring around the planet Saturn.
Of all the features of the solar system, few exert a greater hold on the imagination than Saturn's rings. The image of the remote planet, surrounded by rings, has often stood as a symbol of astronomy and other sciences.
The announcement of the discovery not only made known a new feature of the solar system but it also demonstrated that despite years of effort, much about the planets remains unknown.
In the announcement, published online Oct. 7 by Nature, the international weekly journal of science, Anne J. Verbiscer and Michael F. Skrutskie, both of the University of Virginia, and Douglas P. Hamilton of the University of Maryland indicated that they have apparently found the largest of the rings.
Three astronomers from the Washington region, following in the footsteps of no less illustrious a predecessor than Galileo, have discovered a new ring around the planet Saturn.
Of all the features of the solar system, few exert a greater hold on the imagination than Saturn's rings. The image of the remote planet, surrounded by rings, has often stood as a symbol of astronomy and other sciences.
The announcement of the discovery not only made known a new feature of the solar system but it also demonstrated that despite years of effort, much about the planets remains unknown.
In the announcement, published online Oct. 7 by Nature, the international weekly journal of science, Anne J. Verbiscer and Michael F. Skrutskie, both of the University of Virginia, and Douglas P. Hamilton of the University of Maryland indicated that they have apparently found the largest of the rings.
© Claire Dawlish
Tottiford
Tottiford
The 'mini-Atlantis' was unearthed after water levels were lowered at the old Tottiford Reservoir, near Moretonhampstead - and comes complete with a Stonehenge-esque ceremonial site.
Archaeologists observing the city are justifiably astonished at its existence.
Jane Marchand, of Dartmoor National Park Authority, describes the find and its Avebury-like credentials: "It's a proper ceremonial site - we've also got ten burial cairns there. It was probably a real community centre. There are a lot of earlier recordings in this area of polished stone axes and so on - and I've always wondered why they were there. This place could have been the focus for all that activity.
© iStockphoto/Warwick Lister-Kaye
Body hair difference is more pronounced between chimpanzees and humans than within our own species.
Body hair difference is more pronounced between chimpanzees and humans than within our own species.
The body hair difference is even more pronounced between the two species than within our own species.
Do the same genes cause both types of variation? Biologists have puzzled over that question for some time, not just with respect to people, chimps and body hair, but for all sorts of traits that differ within and between species. Now, a study by University of Michigan researchers shows that, at least for body color in fruit flies, the two kinds of variation have a common genetic basis. The research, led by evolutionary biologist Patricia Wittkopp, appears in the Oct. 23 issue of the journal Science.
Wittkopp's group explored the genetic underpinnings of pigmentation differences within and between a pair of closely related fruit fly species: Drosophila americana, which is dark brown, and Drosophila novamexicana, which is light yellow.
© ISAS/JAXA/Junichi Haruyama et al.
This 65-metre-wide hole in the lunar surface extends at least 80 metres down and could be an opening into a larger lunar cave
This 65-metre-wide hole in the lunar surface extends at least 80 metres down and could be an opening into a larger lunar cave
The moon seems to possess long, winding tunnels called lava tubes that are similar to structures seen on Earth. They are created when the top of a stream of molten rock solidifies and the lava inside drains away, leaving a hollow tube of rock.
Their existence on the moon is hinted at based on observations of sinuous rilles - long, winding depressions carved into the lunar surface by the flow of lava. Some sections of the rilles have collapsed, suggesting that hollow lava tubes hide beneath at least some of the rilles.
© NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Seen from our planet, the view of Saturn's rings during equinox is extremely foreshortened and limited. But in orbit around Saturn, Cassini had no such problems. From 20 degrees above the ring plane, Cassini's wide angle camera shot 75 exposures in succession for this mosaic showing Saturn, its rings and a few of its moons Aug. 12, 2009, beginning about 1.25 days after exact Saturn equinox, when the sun's disk was exactly overhead at the planet's equator.
Seen from our planet, the view of Saturn's rings during equinox is extremely foreshortened and limited. But in orbit around Saturn, Cassini had no such problems. From 20 degrees above the ring plane, Cassini's wide angle camera shot 75 exposures in succession for this mosaic showing Saturn, its rings and a few of its moons Aug. 12, 2009, beginning about 1.25 days after exact Saturn equinox, when the sun's disk was exactly overhead at the planet's equator.
This happens during Saturn's equinox, when the sun is directly over Saturn's equator. At this time, the rings, which also orbit directly over the planet's equator, appear edge-on to the sun. During equinox, light from the sun hits the ring particles at very low angles, accenting their topography and giving us a three-dimensional view of the rings.
© Unknown
According to Einstein's special theory of relativity, it would require an infinite amount of energy to propel an object at more than 186,000 miles per second.
However, Dr Gunter Nimtz and Dr Alfons Stahlhofen, of the University of Koblenz, say they may have breached a key tenet of that theory.
The pair say they have conducted an experiment in which microwave photons - energetic packets of light - travelled "instantaneously" between a pair of prisms that had been moved up to 3ft apart.
© X-ray: NASA/CXC/INAF/S.Andreon et al Optical: DSS; ESO/VLT
This is a composite image of the most distant galaxy cluster yet detected. This image contains X-rays from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, optical data from the Very Large Telescope (VLT), and optical and infrared data from the Digitized Sky Survey. This record-breaking object, known as JKCS041, is observed as it was when the Universe was just one quarter of its current age. X-rays from Chandra are displayed here as the diffuse blue region, while the individual galaxies in the cluster are seen in white in the VLT's optical data, embedded in the X-ray emission.
This is a composite image of the most distant galaxy cluster yet detected. This image contains X-rays from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, optical data from the Very Large Telescope (VLT), and optical and infrared data from the Digitized Sky Survey. This record-breaking object, known as JKCS041, is observed as it was when the Universe was just one quarter of its current age. X-rays from Chandra are displayed here as the diffuse blue region, while the individual galaxies in the cluster are seen in white in the VLT's optical data, embedded in the X-ray emission.
The galaxy cluster, known as JKCS041, beats the previous record holder by about a billion light years. Galaxy clusters are the largest gravitationally bound objects in the Universe. Finding such a large structure at this very early epoch can reveal important information about how the Universe evolved at this crucial stage.
