Radio stations disrupt magnetic navigation in birds

Pigeons and migratory birds are known to use the earth's magnetic field for navigation. But experiments in this area of study are found to be difficult to replicate. There are times when researchers fail to see any evidence of magnetic navigation in birds. A recent paper in Nature 509, 353–356 (2014) gives us a clue why: radio waves!

Radio waves in the range of 50 kHz to 5 MHz seem to suppress the ability of the birds to use the magnetic field. Our radio stations seem to disrupt a sensibility that has evolved over millions of years. 

Strange, though it may seem, it becomes quite understandable when we consider that there are radio waves that are not produced by radio stations. Changes in solar activity induces changes in the ionosphere of the earth and cause the whistlers - strange sounds that you hear when you try and tune amplitude modulated (AM) radio. This is the time when there are also magnetic storms and using magnetic navigation would cause the birds to go astray anyway. So shutting down the sense of magnetic navigation momentarily is, in a way, useful. 

But consider that the radio stations are mostly 24/7 - unlike whistlers. :(

Does an injection from a female doctor hurt more?

Probably. If we extrapolate from a recent paper in Nature Methods (doi:10.1038/nmeth.2935).

• Jeffrey S Mogil's pain research lab was initially flummoxed by the results of their experiments: they could not get consistent results when testing pain behaviour in rodents. First they thought that it was because of the experimenters' presence that changed the behaviour of the rodents. Even human cutouts produced a change in the exhibition of pain. But that did not explain the results. When the male experimenter injected pain producing chemicals into the foot pads of the rodents they demonstrated less pain. Is it some smell that they were responding to? Scientists tested again in the presence of T-shirts worn by male and female researchers. And reconfirmed the results using smells of male and female rodents. The male smell did reduce the pain behaviour! 
• • Don't be too hasty to take the sweat shirts of male athletes to surgical aftercare yet. It is only the behaviour that the scientists could observe. Not the pain that is felt. 
  • • • Perhaps the rodents are showing less pain in the presence of male because display of pain would be construed as a weakness. Perhaps there could be evolutionary pressures to display less pain in the presence of males, though the pain actually felt is the same.