1. Influence of Long-Lasting Static Stretching on Maximal Strength, Muscle Thickness and Flexibility by Warneke et al. (2022). A recent study found evidence that static stretching with sufficient intensity and volume can cause hypertrophy in humans (n= 52). This is counter to the common assertion that stretching “doesn’t really do much” — especially when it comes to muscle gains.
  2. Simplicity is An Advantage but Sadly Complexity Sells Better by Eugene Yan. Asked explicitly, most would agree that a simple solution is the best way to solve a problem, and yet in everyday life the fancy complex solution is favoured again and again. Quoting the computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra at the beginning of the article: “Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. And to make matters worse: complexity sells better.”
  3. Evolution Only Thinks About One Thing, and It’s Crabs by Jason P. Dinh at Discover Magazine. The perfect summer body? Carcinized. Crustaceans evolved at least five times independently, which highlights just how successful a life form they are.
  4. Ethereum Is Merging by Matt Levine for Bloomberg. Levine’s take on “The Merge”, Ethereum’s long-awaited switch to a more sustainable verification system. The new proof-of-stake model differs from the classic Bitcoin proof-of-work model and is rather similar to the concept of interest: “In one sense, crypto is in the business of constantly reinventing or rediscovering the basic ideas of financial history, and it is funny for crypto to reinvent interest. In another sense this is cool: Crypto has rediscovered interest from entirely different principles.” (You can find a good explanation of PoW vs PoS in another Bloomberg article)
  5. Flo Period Tracker Launches ‘Anonymous Mode’ to Fight Abortion Privacy Concerns by Nicole Wetsman and Corin Faife at The Verge. Given user concerns over legal changes such as the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Flo has implemented a new data privacy measure which disconnects usage data from the user’s name, email address, or IP address.
  6. The Serotonin Theory of Depression: A Systematic Umbrella Review of the Evidence by Moncrieff et al. (2022). In the most shared paper of August, the authors put an end to the theory that depression is caused by low serotonin levels: “The main areas of serotonin research provide no consistent evidence of there being an association between serotonin and depression, and no support for the hypothesis that depression is caused by lowered serotonin activity or concentrations.”
  7. The Big Idea: Why Relationships are the Key to Existence by Carlo Rovelli for The Guardian. Rovelli proposes that a lesson of quantum theory is that we should think about reality in terms of relations instead of objects, entities or substances — also called the Relational Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.
  8. Frugal is the New Cool for Young Chinese as Economy Falters by Albee Zhang and Tony Munroe at Reuters. Unemployment among people aged 16 to 24 lies at almost 19%, while others have been forced to take a paycut. Almost 60% of people are now inclined to save more, rather than consume or invest more. Chinese households overall added 10.8 trillion yuan ($1.54 trillion) in new bank savings in the first eight months of the year, up from 6.4 trillion yuan in the same period last year.
  9. Cooperation Among Strangers Has Increased for the Past 60 Years by the American Psychological Association at SciTech Daily, based on a meta-analysis of 511 studies by Yuan et al. (2022). Despite popular belief, the level of cooperation in the US has increased over the past 60 years. This finding is based on a 20% cooperation rate increase in certain social dilemmas between 1957 and 2017.