Progress Daily

Martin Gibala had a group of college students, who were healthy but not athletes, ride a stationary bike at a sustainable pace for between 90 and 120 minutes. Another set of students grunted through a series of short, strenuous intervals: 20 to 30 seconds of cycling at the highest intensity the riders could stand. After resting for 4 minutes, the students pedaled hard again for another 20 to 30 seconds, repeating the cycle 4-6 times (depending on how much each person could stand), for a total of 2-3 minutes of intense exercise per training session.

Each of the groups exercised 3 times a week. After 2 weeks, both groups showed almost identical increases in their endurance (as measured in a stationary bicycle time trial), even though one group had exercised for 6-9 minutes per week, and the other about 5 hours. Additionally, molecular changes that signal increased fitness (such as increased volume of muscular mitochondria) were evident equally in both groups. The short, intense workouts aided in weight loss, too; the rate of energy expenditure remained higher longer into recovery after brief, high-intensity exercise than after longer, easier workouts. (Other researchers have found that intense, brief sessions of exercise improve cardiac health, even among people with heart disease.)

“Can You Get Fit in Six Minutes a Week?,” by Gretchen Reynolds

A series of a series of experiments (”Positive Self-Statements: Power for Some, Peril for Others“) by Joanne Wood suggest that positive self-statements cause negative moods in people with low self-esteem. The researchers questioned a group of 68 men and women using long-accepted methods to measure self-esteem. The participants were then asked to write down their thoughts & feelings. In the midst of this, half were randomly assigned to say to themselves “I am a lovable person” every time they heard a bell ring.

Immediately after the exercise, they were asked questions such as “What is the probability that a 30-year-old will be involved in a happy, loving romance?” to measure individual moods using a scoring system that ranged from a low of zero to a high of 35.

Those with high self-esteem who repeated “I’m a lovable person” scored an average of 31 on their mood assessment compared with an average of 25 by those who did not repeat the phrase. Among participants with low self-esteem, those making the statement scored an average of 10 while those that did not managed an average of 17.

“Words of wisdom,” The Economist

Non-kin altruism among non-human animals is rare, & altruism fares poorly in computer simulations — when altruistic individuals emerge in a community characterized by self-interested behavior, selfishness triumphs.

Group selection could explain the prevalence of human altruism but probably only if the ancestral environment included high levels of violence and inbreeding.

Sam Bowles showed in 2006 that genetic analyses of tribes still living a Stone Age life suggests there was enough inbreeding to make group competition a driver of genetic change.

In ancient graves excavated previously, Bowles found that up to 46% of the skeletons from 15 different locations around the world showed signs of a violent death. More recently, war inflicted 30% of deaths among the Ache, 17% among the Hiwi, & just 4% among the Anbara. Combat between groups accounted for about 14% of all deaths in these hunter-gatherer societies.

After estimating the rate that altruism would reduce an individual’s chances of reproducing, Bowles plugged the numbers into a model of intergroup competition where an individual’s altruism would also improve a group’s chances of combat triumph. In the absence of war, a gene imposing a self-sacrificial cost of as little as 3% in forgone reproduction would drop from 90% to 10% of the population in 150 generations. Bowles predicts that much higher levels of self-sacrifice — up to 13% in one case — could be sustained if warfare were brought into the equation.

“Did Warfare Among Ancestral Hunter-Gatherers Affect the Evolution of Human Social Behaviors?” By Samuel Bowles

“Altruism’s Bloody Roots,” by Brandon Keim

“Ancient warfare: Fighting for the greater good,” by Ewen Callaway

“Blood and treasure,” The Economist

The percentage of foreign-born residents of the US rose from 5% in 1970 to 12% in 2006, during which time income inequality increased.

This wave of immigration exerted a mild downward pressure on the wages of native-born low-skilled workers but its primary impact on inequality was due to the increased number of less-skilled workers. According to the Robert Lerman (”US Wage-Inequality Trends and Recent Immigration“), excluding recent immigrants from the analysis would eliminate roughly 30% of the increase in adult male annual earnings inequality between 1979 and 1996. These immigrants experienced large wage gains as a result of relocating to the US, however. When Lerman included recent immigrants and their native-country wages in his calculations, he found equality had increased
rather than decreased.

In 1950, the labor force participation rate for women was 34%. By 1970 it had climbed to 43%, and by 2005 it had jumped to 59%. This exacerbated household income inequality: Now richer men are married to richer wives. Between 1979 and 1996, the proportion of working-age men with working wives rose by approximately 25% among those in the top fifth of the male earnings distribution, and their wives’ total earnings rose by over 100%. According to a 1999 estimate by Gary Burtless (”Effects of Growing Wage Disparities and Changing Family Composition on the US Income Distribution“), this phenomenon explained about 13% of the rise in income inequality since 1979.

“Nostalgianomics,” by Brink Lindsey

According to data compiled the US Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, total private-sector employment rose by nearly 20 million between 1993 and 2002. A breathtaking total of 330 million jobs were added, while 310 million jobs were lost.

Between 1983 and 2002, the number of managerial and specialized professional jobs rose from 24 million to 43 million — from 23% of total employment to 31%.

Between 1980 and 2003, American manufacturing output climbed a dizzying 93 percent. Yes, production fell during the recent recession, but it is now recovering: the industrial production index for manufacturing rose 2.2 percent in 2003.

Manufacturing’s share of gross domestic product declined from 27% in 1960 to 14% in 2002, during which time the percentage of workers employed in manufacturing fell from 28% to 12%. The primary cause of these trends is the superior productivity of American manufacturers. Output per hour in the overall nonfarm business sector rose 50% between 1980 and 2002; by contrast, manufacturing output per hour shot up 100%. In other words, goods are getting cheaper and cheaper relative to services. Since this faster productivity growth has not been matched by a corresponding increase in demand for manufactured goods, the result is that Americans are spending relatively less on manufactures.

Similarly, in 1870, 48% of total US employment was in farming. By 2002 the figure had fallen to 2%.

“10 Truths About Trade,” by Brink Lindsey

Studies by William Maddux & Adam Galinsky (”Cultural Borders and Mental Barriers: The Relationship between Living Abroad and Creativity“) have proved that there is a link between creativity and living in a foreign country.

The researchers presented 150 US business students and 55 foreign ones studying in America with a test used by psychologists as a measure of creativity. Given a candle, some matches and a box of drawing pins, the students were asked to attach the candle to a cardboard wall so that no wax would drip on the floor when the candle was lit. (The solution is to use the box as a candleholder and fix it to the wall with the pins.) They found 60% of students who were either living abroad or had spent some time doing so, solved the problem, whereas only 42% of those who had not lived abroad did so.

A follow-up study with 72 Americans and 36 foreigners explored their creative negotiating skills. Pairs of students were asked to play the role of a seller of a gas station who then needed to get a job and a buyer who would need to hire staff to run the business. The two were likely to reach an impasse because the buyer had been told he could not afford what the seller was told was his minimum price. Where both negotiators had lived abroad 70% struck a deal in which the seller was offered a management job at the petrol station in return for a lower asking price. When neither of the negotiators had lived abroad, none was able to reach a deal.

When the researchers used statistical controls to filter out personality traits (such as openness to new experiences) that are known to predict creativity, the statistical relationship between living abroad and creativity remained. According to the researchers, this suggests that living in foreign parts that helps foster creativity, rather than the correlation being due to creative people’s penchant for moving to foreign countries.

“Expats at work, The Economist