Month: November 2022

what people get wrong about pop psychology’s latest trend for explaining relationships

Published by skeptic

Attachment theory is almost everywhere. In magazines and books, in the news, on social media and in our conversations with each other. Originally rooted in developmental psychology, the theory explains how we form and maintain close relationships in order to survive and thrive in the environment we are born into. It was quickly picked up not only by pop culture but also social psychology, psychotherapy, psychiatry as well as child welfare practice. But some of the most important features of attachment theory are getting lost in translation. Misunderstandings are leading people to believe they have a “bad” attachment type that is wreaking havoc on their relationships. Attachment theory is not a gauge of whether someone has the “wrong” or “right” attachment type. Its purpose is to help people understand what coping strategies they use when the people they are closest to are, or are perceived to be, unavailable or inconsistently responsive. When psychologist John Bowlby developed attachment theory about 70 years ago, he had two goals in mind. He wanted to create language that can …

what the world might be like if our species survives for a million years

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Most species are transitory. They go extinct, branch into new species or change over time due to random mutations and environmental shifts. A typical mammalian species can be expected to exist for a million years. Modern humans, Homo sapiens, have been around for roughly 300,000 years. So what will happen if we make it to a million years? Science fiction author H.G. Wells was the first to realise that humans could evolve into something very alien. In his 1883 essay, Man in the year million, he envisioned what’s now become a cliche: big-brained, tiny-bodied creatures. Later, he speculated that humans could also split into two or more new species. While Wells’s evolutionary models have not stood the test of time, the three basic options he considered still hold true. We could go extinct, turn into several species or change. An added ingredient is that we have biotechnology that could greatly increase the probability of each of them. Foreseeable future technologies such as human enhancement (making ourselves smarter, stronger or in other ways better using drugs, …

how to support your child if they have mathematical learning difficulties

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A good grasp of maths has been linked to greater success in employment and better health. But a large proportion of us – up to 22% – have mathematical learning difficulties. What’s more, around 6% of children in primary schools may have dyscalculia, a mathematical learning disability. Developmental dyscalculia is a persistent difficulty in understanding numbers which can affect anyone, regardless of age or ability. If 6% of children have dyscalculia, that would mean one or two children in each primary school class of 30 – about as many children as have been estimated to have dyslexia. But dyscalculia is less well known, by both the general public and teachers. It is also less well researched in comparison to other learning difficulties. Children with dyscalculia may struggle to learn foundational mathematical skills and concepts, such as simple counting, adding, subtracting and simple multiplication as well as times tables. Later, they may have difficulty with more advanced mathematical facts and procedures, such as borrowing and carrying over but also understanding fractions and ratios, for instance. Dyscalculia …

Universal free school meals would make a huge difference to the cost-of-living crisis – here’s how

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The UK government’s recent autumn statement set out several measures to help people with rapidly rising prices. These including increased benefit payments and an extension to the energy price cap, although at a less generous rate than currently guaranteed. Campaigners will have been disappointed, though, at the lack of any announcement on another measure that could help many people with the cost of living crisis: an extension of entitlement to free school meals in England. All children in reception, year one and year two in state schools in England are currently entitled to a free school meal at lunchtime on weekdays in term time. For children in year three and above in England, only those whose parents receive benefit payments are eligible. For those on universal credit, household earnings must be less than £7,400 per year. In the academic year 2021-22, 23% of schoolchildren at state schools were eligible for free school meals. Extending free school meals to all primary and secondary school children with parents on universal credit would cost around £477 million a …

​England’s early years educators are underpaid and undervalued – only government investment can improve this

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Early education and care for children aged from birth to five in England is at a critical point. On one hand, the cost of care and education to parents at a time of high price rises is a key issue. In 2022, the average annual cost of a part-time nursery place for a child under two in Great Britain is £7,210. At the same time, the government has been accused of “knowingly underfunding” early years settings, many of which are struggling to stay afloat. The sector is also experiencing challenges in recruiting and retaining staff. Early years educators may well be leaving for better paid retail work. The government’s most recent early years workforce strategy for England was published in 2017. It claimed it represented “the government’s commitment to supporting the early years sector to thrive”, but the early years workforce has not seen sustained investment. There was a notable lack of reference to any funding for early years care and education in the recent autumn statement. All children in their early years should be …

James Webb space telescope uncovers chemical secrets of distant world – paving the way for studying Earth-like planets

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Since the first planet orbiting a star other than the Sun was discovered in 1995, we have realised that planets and planetary systems are more diverse than we ever imagined. Such distant worlds – exoplanets – give us the opportunity to study how planets behave in different situations. And learning about their atmospheres is a crucial piece of the puzzle. Nasa’s James Webb space telescope (JWST) is the largest telescope in space. Launched on Christmas Day 2021, it is the perfect tool for investigating these worlds. Now my colleagues and I have used the telescope for the first time to unveil the chemical make-up of an exoplanet. And the data, released in preprint form (meaning it has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal), suggests some surprising results. Many exoplanets are too close to their parent stars for even this powerful telescope to distinguish them. But we can use the trick of watching as the planet passes in front of (transits) its star. During transit, the planet blocks a small fraction of the starlight, …

What if the dinosaurs hadn’t gone extinct? Why our world might look very different

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Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid hit the Earth with the force of 10 billion atomic bombs and changed the course of evolution. The skies darkened and plants stopped photosynthesising. The plants died, then the animals that fed on them. The food chain collapsed. Over 90% of all species vanished. When the dust settled, all dinosaurs except a handful of birds had gone extinct. But this catastrophic event made human evolution possible. The surviving mammals flourished, including little proto-primates that would evolve into us. After the asteroid. Joschua Knuppe Imagine the asteroid had missed, and dinosaurs survived. Picture highly evolved raptors planting their flag on the moon. Dinosaur scientists, discovering relativity, or discussing a hypothetical world in which, incredibly, mammals took over the Earth. This might sound like bad science fiction, but it gets at some deep, philosophical questions about evolution. Is humanity just here by chance, or is the evolution of intelligent tool-users inevitable? Brains, tools, language and big social groups make us the planet’s dominant species. There are 8 billion Homo sapiens on …

why it may be the last mission for Nasa astronauts

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Neil Armstrong took his historic “one small step” on the Moon in 1969. And just three years later, the last Apollo astronauts left our celestial neighbour. Since then, hundreds of astronauts have been launched into space but mainly to the Earth-orbiting International Space Station. None has, in fact, ventured more than a few hundred kilometres from Earth. The US-led Artemis programme, however, aims to return humans to the Moon this decade – with Artemis 1 on its way back to Earth as part of its first test flight, going around the Moon. The most relevant differences between the Apollo era and the mid-2020s are an amazing improvement in computer power and robotics. Moreover, superpower rivalry can no longer justify massive expenditure, as in the Cold War competition with the Soviet Union. In our recent book “The End of Astronauts”, Donald Goldsmith and I argue that these changes weaken the case for the project. The Artemis mission is using Nasa’s brand new Space Launch System, which is the most powerful rocket ever – similar in design …

What the autumn statement means for financially struggling schools

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The cost-of-living crisis and new staffing costs have been pushing schools in England into financial trouble. So school leaders were relieved to hear of an increase to their budget in the government’s autumn statement, delivered on November 17. However, now that teachers and school leaders have had a chance to examine the details of this apparent handout, they may be left wondering how much they have actually gained. In what he described as a “thank you” to school staff for their brilliant work, the chancellor Jeremy Hunt promised £2.3 billion extra for schools in each of the next two years. Not quite all of this is new money, as the government’s own blog makes clear. It is, though, a further addition to £4 billion already promised, and brings the total spending on schools to £58.8 billion in the year 2024-25. This is an increase of 15% over two years. This is undoubtedly significant, but we should be wary of simply celebrating “more money in schools than ever before”. There are currently over 9 million children …

new archaeological evidence changes what we thought about how ancient humans prepared food

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We humans can’t stop playing with our food. Just think of all the different ways of serving potatoes – entire books have been written about potato recipes alone. The restaurant industry was born from our love of flavouring food in new and interesting ways. My team’s analysis of the oldest charred food remains ever found show that jazzing up your dinner is a human habit dating back at least 70,000 years. Imagine ancient people sharing a meal. You would be forgiven for picturing people tearing into raw ingredients or maybe roasting meat over a fire as that is the stereotype. But our new study showed both Neanderthals and Homo sapiens had complex diets involving several steps of preparation, and took effort with seasoning and using plants with bitter and sharp flavours. This degree of culinary complexity has never been documented before for Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers. Before our study, the earliest known plant food remains in south-west Asia were from a hunter-gatherer site in Jordan roughly dating to 14,400 years ago, reported in 2018. Scanning Electron Microscope …