Multibillionaires are not as smart characters as you might think

For a long time there was a belief that there is a close connection between a person’s intelligence and his ability to accumulate significant wealth. As it turned out, those who are able to collect colossal sums, on the order of billions of dollars, must be much smarter than the average person.

All this is just a myth, according to some sociologists from Linköping University, Sweden, in a recent study published in the European Sociological Review. Perhaps wondering why they didn’t have such dilemmas over cocktails by the pool on some private island and in the faculty dining room, the authors set to work and analyzed approximately 60,000 subjects to find out what relationship exists between the level of intelligence and the ability to earn very large sums of money.

The result was amazing. Namely, that between these two, intelligence and financial success, there is only a connection up to the amount of 64,000 dollars per year (we are obviously talking about Sweden). In particular, don’t take education out of the equation in hopes of hitting the stock market! The idea is that people who earn much more than the specified annual amount have an intelligence level at most equal to those who earn middle or even low incomes. In fact, it turns out that people in the top 1% are even slightly dumber than those at the bottom of the list.

The study doesn’t explain more, it’s more of a statistical observation. But another, slightly older study claims that the main (not the only) factor in achieving mega-financial success is… luck. In short, be healthy, because all fools are lucky!

​h2: The Keanu Reeves molecule and its beneficial effects on humans and plants

As for scientific names, you get the impression that scientists get a little more inspired, so they give some Latin names that you can’t even pronounce. Not so here, where some German microbiologists named an antimicrobial molecule after the famous Hollywood actor Keanu Reeves on the grounds that the molecule defeats opponents (in this case fungi) similar to the John Wick character. Your mind hurts!

It is a molecule produced by a bacterium of the genus Pseudomonas that has been shown to be extremely effective, even deadly, in fighting fungal infections of plants and even humans.

The discovery, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, shows us that a new natural product called keanomycin can not only fight fungi, but is also environmentally friendly, especially because it is biodegradable and leaves no traces or harmful substances. effects.

Therefore, keanomycin can be used as an alternative to the much more harmful pesticides that we throw on the fields today to protect grain and legume crops. Moreover, it can be used to treat, as I said, fungal infections in humans. So only good news from this sector. The only question that remains is, in fact, the most painful of all, and it has to do with the title. Why Keanu Reeves and not Van Damme, for example?

Is it not more eloquent from a scientific point of view to picture a molecule dragging its feet in the mouth of mushrooms, doing splits from a jump? It’s just a thought that probably deserves serious analysis in a study in Nature.

​h2: African countries fight back and stop exporting donkeys to China

The donkey problem is more serious than you imagine. why Because in China, medicine is made based on collagen obtained from donkey skin, and the demand for it is so high that the Chinese risk leaving us all without these cute animals next to the human house.

The medicine is called Ejiao, and as I mentioned, it is made from donkey skin collagen, herbs, and other ingredients. Not only does it thin the blood, promoting erections that you don’t even see in the movies, but it also helps stop bleeding and improves sleep. And the demand on the Chinese market is so high that even the price of 783 US dollars per kilogram could not appease them.

In fact, demand has actually increased, and the specialty market is worth more than $7.8 billion annually. The problem is that the number of donkeys in China has declined significantly, and companies that produce Eijao have had to turn to other sources of raw materials.

This is how they got to African countries, which own two-thirds of the world’s 53 million donkeys. And the effects were seen quickly, in less than two decades, as the number of donkeys in Africa almost halved during that period. All as a result of the export of donkey skins, because even these animals do not reproduce like mosquitoes.

In response, Kenya, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Tanzania have already officially blocked all exports of donkey skins to China. South Africa has reduced the quota and is trying to keep the situation under control. This, of course, has led to the development of a highly profitable black market, while the authorities of the mentioned countries believe that it will take them about 15 years to restore the population of donkeys.

Currently there are only hypothetical solutions to this whole ass. But the authorities of China and African countries hope to reach a consensus so that the illegal trade is eradicated.

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