(left to right): HERO IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES; V. ALTOUNIAN/SCIENCE; SARAH BICKEL
By Alex Fox
Men need not apply: university set to open jobs just to women
A Dutch engineering university is taking radical action to increase its share of female academics by opening job vacancies to women only. Starting on 1 July, Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands will not allow men to apply for permanent academic jobs for the first 6 months of the recruitment process under a new fellowship program.
A growing sensory smog threatens the ability of fish to communicate, navigate, and survive
When many people think of threats to the world’s fish, overfishing or vanishing reefs might leap to mind. Increasingly, however, scientists also worry about a subtler danger: how human activities might interfere with the senses fish use to perceive the world. Noise from ships and construction, murkier waters caused by pollution, and rising ocean acidification from the buildup of atmospheric carbon dioxide are all possible culprits. In laboratories and in the wild, scientists study exactly how those factors might affect a fish’s ability to communicate, navigate, and survive.
We may have helped give our canine pals ‘puppy dog eyes’
Dog owners know the look: Your pooch stares up at you, eyes wide, and you can’t resist giving them a hug or favorite treat. A new study of dog facial anatomy suggests we may have helped create this expression by favoring canines with “puppy dog eyes” over the course of thousands of years of dog evolution.
This rock-eating ‘worm’ could change the course of rivers
Shipworms have long been a menace to humankind, sinking ships, undermining piers, and even eating their way through Dutch dikes in the mid-1700s. Now, researchers have found the first shipworm that eschews wood for a very different diet: rock. The new shipworm—a thick, white, wormlike creature that can grow to be more than a meter long—lives in freshwater.
These are the countries that trust scientists the most—and the least
Nearly three-quarters of people worldwide solidly trust scientists: That’s one of the main findings of the Wellcome Global Monitor, a new survey that asked 140,000-plus people in more than 140 countries how they think and feel about health and science. Other polls have asked similar questions, but this one claims to be the first to study on a global scale how attitudes vary by nationality, gender, income, and education.
Source: Science Mag