Five Interesting Things: Today’s Scan Hits
Here are five indicators, observations or articles that caught the eye of FA futurists today.
- In a new paper in Science, researchers report that they have succeeded in creating a persistent bacterial infection in a strain of mosquitoes that transmit malaria. Scientists have long hoped that by infecting mosquitoes with certain bacteria they could stop them from spreading diseases like malaria and dengue fever; establishing a stable infection in a mosquito population is one important, difficult step in this strategy.
- Several European academic psychologists use reaction-time studies to argue that the average IQ in World 1 countries has dropped 14 points since the Victorian era. According to their analysis, average IQ in World 1 is dropping by 1.3 IQ points per decade. The movie Idiocracy already explored the long-term consequences of this trend in amusing detail.
- A new study published in the journal Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology found that the use of copper fixtures, surfaces and tools in ICUs reduced the rate of hospital acquired infections by 50%. Researchers were surprised at the dramatic number, anticipating a result more in the range of 10%. Copper has been found to have persistent anti-microbial qualities.
- The rate of college enrollment for American Hispanics has passed the rate for whites for the first time.
- American governments have created substantial incentives to boost home ownership, citing broad economic benefits. A new study finds that when home ownership rises in a US state, a sharp rise in unemployment follows, albeit after a long lag period. These findings “are relevant to, and may be worrying for, a range of policymakers and researchers.”