It’s long been known that men are more overconfident in their own abilities than women, which experts say helps to explain the gender pay gap.

But there is now evidence that even schoolboys are better at blowing their own trumpet.

In a new study, researchers from University College London showed teenagers 16 maths terms – including three that were fake. 

Boys were significantly more likely than girls to claim they had heard these nonsense terms often and understood them well.

So, can you tell which three terms are made up? 

Researchers looked at more than 40,000 teenagers across nine English-speaking countries, including England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland.

They were given a list of 16 maths terms, including real ones like cosine, quadratic function and rational number, and asked which they knew.

But the list included three fake maths terms – ‘declarative fraction’, ‘proper number’ and ‘subjunctive scaling’.

The results revealed that male participants were much more likely to claim to know the fake words.  

Unfortunately, for the less brazen girls, the study suggests male overconfidence may actually help boys in life.

That is because those who exaggerated their maths ability were also more likely to persevere in tasks, and to believe they could work difficult things out – from how to get somewhere, to the petrol consumption of a car.

That could make them more keen to dive in to difficult tasks, helping to get ahead in a later career.

Professor John Jerrim, who led the study from University College London, said: ‘An ability to big yourself up, as seen in these boys who claimed to know the made-up maths terms, may help to get a job or pay rise in later life.

‘If you believe you know lots of things, and are great, that overconfidence can be helpful, and it could help to explain the gender pay gap.’

The study found teens in the US and Canada were most likely to be over-claimers, followed by those in England, Wales, Australia and New Zealand.

It may be expected that no one likes a know-it-all, but in fact the teenagers who over-claimed their maths knowledge also reported being more popular in general.

The study divided the 15-year-olds into four groups, including the greatest and least ‘over-claimers’.

This was based on whether they said they had never heard of the three fake maths terms, had heard the terms once or twice, a few times or often, or claimed they knew the maths terms well and understood them.

Among the biggest over-claimers, 40 per cent claimed to understand proper numbers, 15 per cent claimed to understand declarative fractions and 10 per cent said the same for subjunctive scaling, with no one saying this among the lowest over-claimers.

Boys were more likely to be over-claimers even when their actual mathematical abilities were taken into account.

The study found the biggest over-claimers were more likely to believe in their own academic prowess.

They were more likely to express confidence in their ability to do eight tasks, including calculating the petrol consumption rate of a car, solving equations, using a train timetable to work out a journey time, or calculating a price after a discount.

Over-claimers, who were more likely to come from a privileged background based on information about their parents’ jobs, education and household possessions, also believed themselves better problem-solvers.

They rated their perseverance more highly, when asked to rate how much they agreed with statements about giving up easily, putting in effort, and seeing tasks through to the end.

The results come from a school questionnaire given in every country studied, and are published in the journal Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice.

• Dogs more likely to find food if they see it being hidden, than on smell alone

By Xantha Leatham Deputy Science Editor For The Daily Mail

Published: 14:00 EDT, 13 September 2023 | Updated: 14:00 EDT, 13 September 2023

• S&A Group says strawberries have risen from 13.6g in 2011 to 21.5g this year 
• Raspberries have doubled and blueberries have trebled in size in same period 
• But Peter Judge, of S&A Group, says bigger fruit don’t always deliver flavour 

By Connor Stringer

Published: 19:57 EDT, 20 August 2023 | Updated: 20:18 EDT, 20 August 2023

•  Parents said they take an average of 23 photos of their child a week

By Victoria Allen Science Editor

Published: 20:03 EDT, 18 August 2023 | Updated: 20:18 EDT, 18 August 2023

Urban foxes may be more bold than their country equivalents, but they are not necessarily any more clever.

Researchers spent just over a year studying wild foxes at 104 locations in England and Scotland, leaving the scavengers food in puzzling containers and filming whether they managed to open them.

They rated the locations on how rural or urban they were, based on features including roads, green space and the density of people living there.

The results showed foxes in urban areas were significantly braver, when it came to nudging, pulling, licking or biting containers with tasty treats like deli chicken, honey or dog biscuits inside them.

Their rural cousins were more reluctant to touch the containers.

But the urban foxes were no more likely to figure out how to get inside the containers, suggesting either their street smarts are not as highly developed as some people think – or they don’t bother to use them.

Dr Blake Morton, a psychologist and animal behaviourist who led the study from the University of Hull, said: ‘Foxes in towns and cities may not be as clever as we believe.

‘Or they may simply be lazy, as there is so much food lying around in urban areas, they have decided they don’t need to bother finding clever ways to get food which requires effort.

‘Either way, this challenges the long-standing belief that urban foxes are notorious scavengers of other human-made food containers, such as litter and the contents of outdoor bins.

‘Undeniably, litter and outdoor bins can provide at least some urban foxes the opportunity for an easy meal but, for many other foxes, our study shows that their behaviour is much more nuanced.’

Field mice have been found to behave more cleverly in urban areas than rural ones, so researchers wanted to understand if urban foxes, known to raid bird feeders and compost heaps, were also better at problem-solving.

They left out food which foxes could take freely from the ground, which the animals took in every instance.

But then they left out eight types of fox snack in containers which required actions like pulling open a lid with their mouth, pushing a stick with a paw or barging through a thin foil sheet.The study, published in Animal Behaviour, found that foxes in 96 out of 104 locations acknowledged the puzzles by turning their head towards them, but foxes from only 31 locations touched them.

Meanwhile foxes from just 12 locations gained access to the food, which was left out for around a fortnight on average

Although urban foxes were generally no more likely to problem-solve, foxes in London appeared to be the exception, although this is based on a small number of foxes so more research is needed.

Foxes in the capital may be better at problem-solving because they live in a more fast-paced environment, where they are constantly faced with new challenges.

Dr Morton said: ‘Foxes are renowned for thriving in cities, and our study suggests that bolder behaviour may help urban foxes adapt to such settings.

‘However, just because a fox lives in a city doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll engage in problem-solving.

‘This may mean they are not the wily ‘pests’ some people imagine, and won’t usually be a nuisance to us at all.’

Climate change may have propelled the evolution of humanity forward by giving humanity’s ancient ancestors bigger brains, a new study has suggested.

Researchers from Washington University in St Louis found increases in the brain sizes of ancient hominins (humanity’s ancestors) aligned with glacial phases more than 600,000 years ago.

The team developed a computer simulation to mathematically show how new mating habits and ‘parental cooperation’ needed to survive during an inhospitable Ice Age would have ‘sped up’ the evolution of the human brain.

The simulation suggested that hominins sought mates similar to themselves due to the rising importance of necessities like fire, food, and shelter to survive the deadly cold. 

The new mating habits, which the researchers call ‘positive assortative mating,’ could have also helped advance critical human abilities — like the development of language-based communication and fire.

Plus, greater ingenuity and a willingness to cooperate between parents, according to their study, would have vastly helped humanity’s ancestors prevent cold-related deaths, including hypothermia.

‘It has long been argued that climate change was an important driver of hominin evolution, with considerable attention given to glacial phases,’ according to the new study’s lead author, economist Bruce Petersen.

‘In The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, Charles Darwin placed great emphasis on sexual selection for hominin evolution,’ Petersen said. 

‘However, its role as an evolutionary force was then largely ignored for over a century.’

In other words, an Ice Age truce in the war between the sexes improved the chances for intelligent parents who got along with each other and taught their children well. 

Petersen used anthropological and climate data to develop the simulation and found that ‘periods of severe climate change’ beginning with a major glacial freeze 676,000 to 621,000 years ago would have led to a period of increased sexual pickiness.

This ‘Ice Age within an Ice Age,’ dubbed MIS 16 after the marine isotopes used to identify it, would have led to what Petersen calls ‘positive assortative mating.’

‘This means that mates are less specialized,’ Petersen said, ‘in part because complementarities arise only when mates work together.’  

‘An efficient mating system surely became ever more important with the lengthening of offspring dependency and the start of the severe glacial phases,’ he noted.

The research team’s simulation pitted three categories of early men against each other: first, a group that was the most intelligent but physically weak, a second ‘intermediate’ group and lastly, a third that was the strongest but least intelligent.

Their mathematical models found that the positive assortative mating of pairs from the first category not only produced the fittest offspring — but was often the only pairing with enough children for their genes to survive the brutal glacial freeze.

‘Many scientists have argued that the enormous advantages of both language and fire would have placed strong selective pressures on these behaviors,’ Petersen said.

Using economics models, Petersen described these as ‘home-produced family public goods’ which were ‘demanding to produce’ and included fire, language, shelter, and child training.  

The new research also suggests that survival pressures due to climate change would have spurred physical changes, reducing ‘dimorphism’ or body differences between the sexes.

‘Finally, this paper suggests that the economics of the family, particularly the focus on assortative mating, can be useful for future research on the evolution of sexual dimorphism in Homo [early hominins more broadly, not just Homo sapiens or others].’  

‘A prediction of this paper’s model,’ Petersen noted, is a ‘decline in body size dimorphism.’ 

These changes in sex-based difference — height, weight and strength — ‘may have continued well into the time period of Homo heidelbergensis: an extinct species of human known from fossils dating from 600,000 to 200,000 years ago in Africa, Europe, and possibly Asia,’ he said.

Petersen believes that extreme Ice Age hardship was a key instance in which ‘positive’ natural selection, meaning co-parenting choices, had a bigger impact on human evolution than ‘negative’ natural selection, from deaths and competition. 

‘The paper applies core economic principles, rarely used to explain human evolution prior to Homo sapiens,’ Petersen added. 

‘Sexual selection and parental cooperation, in conjunction with severe glacial phases, helped drive hominin intelligence in the Middle Pleistocene.’

The Elon Musk effect? Intelligent men become fathers later in life but have more children, study finds

• Men who score higher in intelligence tests become fathers later in life
• And they are also more likely to have more children, experts say 

By Xantha Leatham Deputy Science Editor For The Daily Mail

Updated: 19:01 EDT, 27 June 2023

A staggering new survey has found that a majority of Americans polled don’t want President Joe Biden to run for office again in 2024. 

And the poll also spelled trouble for Donald Trump, finding that a majority of voters didn’t think the former president should run for reelection too.

The poll, carried out by Yahoo! News and the market research company YouGov, found that a shocking 64 per cent of Americans answered ‘No’ to the question, ‘Should President Biden run for president again in 2024?’

A measly 21 per cent answered ‘Yes’ to the question, and 15 per cent said they were unsure about whether the 79-year-old Biden should run again in 2024.

Trump’s numbers were only slightly better with 55 per cent of voters polled saying that the 76-year-old should not run in 2024. 

Meanwhile, 31 per cent said that the former President should run, and 14 per cent said they remained unsure.

The poll found that if an election were carried out between the two presidents today, Trump would narrowly win with 42 per cent of voters over Biden’s 39 per cent.

Data from Democrat and Republican voters showed that Biden and Trump do maintain the support of their respective parties – Trump moreso than his rival.

A total of 43 per cent of Democrats said Biden should run again in 2024, with 36 per cent saying he shouldn’t, and 21 per cent unsure. 

Two fifths of those who said Biden shouldn’t run again in two years voted for him in 2020.  

Of voters who were against a 2024 Biden run, 66 per cent were white, 49 per cent were black, and 65 per cent were hispanic. 

Trump’s command over his party was considerably stronger compared to Biden’s. 

A 58 per cent majority of Republicans said that Trump should run again in 2024, while just 25 per cent were against a rerun. 17 per cent remained undecided. 

Only 21 per cent of Republicans who voted for Trump in 2020 said that he should not run again in 2024.

Voters who did not want to see a 2024 Trump ticket were 50 per cent white, 75 per cent black, and 58 per cent Hispanic. 

The poll called on 1,541 US adults between June 10 and 13 – just as inflation in the US under Biden’s administration has hit the highest levels in over 40 years, and as the US House Committee held publicly broadcast hearings investigating President Trump’s culpability in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US capital. 

Thirty six per cent of voters polled who were in favor of a 2024 Biden bid watched January 6 hearings live, and 24 per cent watched news coverage. 

Meanwhile, 73 per cent who said no to a 2024 Trump ticket watched the January 6 hearings live, and 59 per cent followed news coverage.

If Biden and Trump ran against each other in 2024, they would be the oldest lineup of candidates in US history – a record they already set in 2020. 

Biden would be 81 in November, 2024 – and just days away from 82 – and Trump would be 77. 

Judge finds AFL legend sexually abused teenage girl for five years – but she might not get the huge payout she deserves after she told court: ‘My body was the crime scene’

• AFL legend Barry Cable accused of sexual assault
• Cable, 79, denies any wrongdoing, never charged
• Judge ruled on Friday abuse had taken place
• Victim said her ‘body was the crime scene’

By Michael Ramsey For Australian Associated Press

Published: 23:45 EDT, 15 June 2023 | Updated: 03:00 EDT, 16 June 2023

A Twitch gamer who shaved his head for charity during a live stream was left in shock when he discovered an indent in his head where his headphones sit.

Streamer Curtoss was in horror after running the buzzer over his skull, revealing a headband-shaped dent caused by wearing his pair too long.

Many other gamers have since come forward to share their ‘gamer heads’ in solidarity – with one man revealing it appeared after wearing headphones for 14 hours.

However, the indentation is part of experts’ prediction of avid gamers’ appearance in 20 years, including bloodshot eyes and blistered hands.

In the clip, Curtoss said: ‘Dude, the shaver’s working like a champ.

‘I’m looking at an indent here; this is where my headphones go. I have a f**king headphone indent in my head. What the f**k.

‘I thought that was just my hair; I thought just my hair did that.’

The indentation, however, does not form an actual dent in the head – birth injuries and some types of bone tumors typically cause this. 

The gamer head resembles marks left on the face after people remove their glasses.

Dedicated players can apply pressure or massage the area when they spot a dent.

Another fix is a hot shower that should help the skin return to normal.

Curtoss’ video saw more than 42 million views on Twitter with thousands of comments, many suggesting the streaming switch to earbuds.

One user commented: ‘New fear unlocked, Brb checking my head.’

The indentation on Curtoss’ head looks eerily similar to a design of what video gamers could look like in the future.

A grotesque model named ‘Michael’ shows how hunching over consoles might affect avid gamers.

This cautionary vision was cooked up by researchers based on globally-sourced reports on the physical impacts of the gamer lifestyle.

‘Everyone meet Michael, a visual representation of the future gamer,’ said a spokesperson for OnlineCasino.ca, the Canadian site that undertook the study.

The research, they added, ‘predicted how avid gamers could look in the next twenty years if they didn’t change their lifestyle habits.’

‘From sleep deprivation and dehydration to lack of vitamin D, digital eye strain and ‘PlayStation thumb’ are just some of the physical implications of spending hours online, in a gaming chair, away from sunlight and physical activity.’

To design Michael, researchers reviewed reports by such organizations as the National Health Service, the World Health Organization, National Geographic and UK interactive entertainment on the potential effects of the gamer lifestyle.

This included the physical impacts on the human body — including muscles, skin, eyes and hair — of remaining indoors, sitting in a chair and spending excessive time staring at a computer screen.

Using this information, the team worked with animators and artists to create Michael – a visual representation of a future gamer.

A poor diet and too much time out of the sun and under artificial light have given him pale and pasty skin from insufficient Vitamin D and B-12.

His back is now permanently bent from his poor gaming posture, and he has stress-related eczema across his legs and arms.

The full findings of the study were published on the OnlineCasino.ca website.