Cocaine:

2007/2008: "North America accounts for more than 40% of global cocaine consumption (the total is estimated at around 470 tons); whereas the 27 EU and four EFTA countries were responsible for more than a quarter of global cocaine consumption. These two regions comprise more than 80% of the value of the global cocaine market, estimated at US$88 billion in 2008."

Source:
The Globalization of Crime - A Transnational Organized Crime Threat Assessment (p. 81-105)
UNODC (2010)

A common neurobiology for pain and pleasure

A common neurobiology for pain and pleasure
Siri Leknes and Irene Tracey (2008)


Abstract

Pain and pleasure are powerful motivators of behaviour and have historically been considered opposites. Emerging evidence from the pain and reward research fields points to extensive similarities in the anatomical substrates of painful and pleasant sensations. Recent molecular-imaging and animal studies have demonstrated the important role of the opioid and dopamine systems in modulating both pain and pleasure. Understanding the mutually inhibitory effects that pain and reward processing have on each other, and the neural mechanisms that underpin such modulation, is important for alleviating unnecessary suffering and improving well-being.

Genotypic IQ of European Populations (1455-1995)

Fig.1: Two-axis graph illustrating the relationship between change in genotypic IQ (using Meisenberg’s dysgenesis rate estimates) and innovation rate over time (r = .876, N = 56 decades, P < .01). Nyborg’s dysgenesis rate estimates (not shown) correlated at r = .866, N = 56 decades, P < .01.


Source:
Woodley, M.A., The social and scientific temporal correlates of genotypic intelligence and the Flynn effect, Intelligence (2012)

[Thanks @ Elijah.]

INEQUITY IN EQUITY: How "Equity" Can Lead to Inequity for High-Potential Students

INEQUITY IN EQUITY: How "Equity" Can Lead to Inequity for High-Potential Students
Camilla P. Benbow and Julian C Stanley (1996)


Abstract

Over the past three decades, the achievement of waves of American students with high intellectual potential has declined as a result of inequity in educational treatment. This inequity is the result of an extreme form of egalitarianism within American society and schools, which involves the pitting of equity against excellence rather than promoting both equity and excellence, anti-intellectualism, the "dumbing-down" of the curriculum, equating aptitude and achievement testing with elitism, the attraction to fads by schools, and the insistence of schools to teach all students from the same curriculum at the same level. In this article we provide recommendations for creating positive change—recommendations that emphasize excellence for all, that call for responsiveness to individual differences, and that suggest basing educational policies on well-grounded research findings in psychology and education. Educational policies that fail to take into account the vast range of individual differences among students—as do many that are currently in use—are doomed to be ineffective.

The Relation between Intelligence and Unemployment at the Individual and National Level

The Relation between Intelligence and Unemployment at the Individual and National Level
Richard Lynn and Garth Zietsman (Summer 2013)
Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies


Abstract

It has been shown that there is an association between low intelligence and unemployment among individuals within nations. We explore the question of whether this relationship is present across nations. We find that national rates of unemployment for 107 nations, averaged for the years 2001 and 2008, are correlated with national IQs at r = -0.66, and national IQ therefore explains 43.5% of the national variance in unemployment. Corrected for unreliability of both variables, the correlation between national IQ and rates of unemployment is r = -0.756 and national IQ explains 57.2% of the national differences in unemployment. Variations in economic freedom independently account for another 12.9% of national rates of unemployment.

Sex Roles and Mutual Mate Choice Matter during Mate Sampling

Sex Roles and Mutual Mate Choice Matter during Mate Sampling
L. C. Myhre, K. de Jong, E. Forsgren, and T.Amundsen (June 2012)
http://jong1234.home.xs4all.nl/files/paper%20mate%20sampling.pdf


Abstract

The roles of females and males in mating competition and mate choice have lately proven more variable, between and within species, than previously thought. In nature, mating competition occurs during mate search and is expected to be regulated by the numbers of potential mates and same-sex competitors. Here, we present the first study to test how a temporal change in sex roles affects mating competition and mate choice during mate sampling. Our model system (the marine fish Gobiusculus flavescens) is uniquely suitable because of its change in sex roles, from conventional to reversed, over the breeding season. As predicted from sex role theory, courtship was typically initiated by males and terminated by females early in the breeding season. The opposite pattern was observed late in the season, at which time several females often simultaneously courted the same male. Mate-searching females visited more males early than late in the breeding season. Our study shows that mutual mate choice and mating competition can have profound effects on female and male behavior. Future work needs to consider the dynamic nature of mating competition and mate choice if we aim to fully understand sexual selection in the wild.

(full size: click at the image)

Ethnic Conflict and Violence in Heterogeneous Societies

Ethnic Conflict and Violence in Heterogeneous Societies 
Tatu Vanhanen (Spring 2012)
Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies


Abstract

Ethnic groups have tended to conflict since the beginning of the known human history, and the intensity of violent conflicts does not seem to have decreased during the last centuries. Why are ethnic conflicts so common across all civilizational boundaries and over time? Researchers have explained particular ethnic conflicts as being due to various political, cultural, and other environmental factors, but they have not yet been able to produce any theoretical explanation that could be tested by global empirical evidence. It will be argued in this paper that the universality of ethnic conflict can be traced to our common human nature, to our evolved disposition to ethnic nepotism. This hypothesis is tested by empirical evidence on a scale of institutionalized ethnic interest conflict (IC) and on a scale of ethnic violence (EV), which are intended to measure the degree of ethnic conflict from two different perspectives, and by the degree of ethnic heterogeneity (EH), which is used to measure ethnic nepotism, in a group of 176 contemporary countries. The results show that EH explains approximately 70 percent of the global variation in IC and nearly half of the variation in EV. These results leads to the conclusion that ethnic nepotism provides the most powerful theoretical explanation for the persistance of ethnic conflicts.