Friday Factoids: Tampons Glow in the Dark, a Full Moon Causes Stupidity, and I Need a Drink.

Factoids guaranteed to make even the strongest say, "Huh?"

How to Build a Perfect Human Pyramid, Six Tiers High
This is knowledge that could come in handy at your next family picnic.  Or office party.  Or while cheering for your favorite sports team. You never know, right?  The worst case would be trying to settle a bar bet.  Oy, the humanity. 

Credit: © Andres Rodriguez / Fotolia 

A Three-tier human pyramid.
 
University of Leicester physics students calculated how to build a perfect human pyramid -- and found that the best model is a group of men, women and children with an average weight of 83.6 kg for adult males, 70.2 kg for adult females and 32.2 kg for children.  (Okay.  Multiply kilograms (kg) by 2.2 to get these averages in pounds.  I am so tired of doing your homework for you.)

In a student paper, 'Pyramid of Geezers', presented in the Journal of Physics Special Topics, a peer-reviewed student journal run by the University of Leicester's Department of Physics and Astronomy, Hayley Allison, Jordan Penney, Roger Leyser and Giles Lipscombe investigated the science behind the human pyramid, using basic calculations to try to work out the best formula for constructing the tallest pyramid possible, in theory able to reach a height of six tiers. This says to me they didn't try their formula, intelligently waiting for some other group to do the experiment.  Which tells a lot about their faith in the calculations.
  • The world record for a human pyramid was a nine-level pyramid of 43.79 feet, about the height of a five story building, created by the Jai Jawan Govinda Mandal in August 2012.
  • A male-only pyramid would only be able to reach a height of four tiers if the men involved were of the weight of an average male, 83.6 kg.
  • Further information: https://physics.le.ac.uk/journals/index.php/pst/article/view/754/545
Tampons glow in the dark?
This falls way into the category of TMI.  And could lead to some sexist and really stupid jokes.

Tampons glow in the dark.  See, I told you: TMI.

A report from the University of Sheffield in England explains how this phenomena is a lost cost way to identify how waste water from baths, washing machines, sinks and showers show pollution in rivers and streams.

How is this?  It seems the cotton in tampons absorbs chemicals commonly used in laundry detergents and shampoos, and show up under ultra-violet (UV) light similar to the way some cotton t-shirts glow under the lighting in bars and clubs.  This simple fact makes it possible for environmental engineers to see if storm water systems may have sewage outflow by shining a UV light at drain pipes as they discharge into lakes or streams.  If the engineers see glowing tampons floating past, they know there is a misconnected sewer somewhere in the storm water system. 

Fountain of youth uncovered in mammary glands of mice
The Fountain of Youth has been discovered and it's not in Florida as Ponce de Leon claimed. Instead, it's in the mammary glands of genetically modified mice. A University of Toronto research team finds that when two factors that control tissue development are removed by genetic tampering, you can avoid the impact of aging.

In the normal course of aging, our tissue losses its ability to develop and repair as fast as it did when we were young. That's because stem cells, abundant in youth, decline with the passing of time. Researchers find that with two cell control or architect factors missing from stem cells in the mammary glands of mice, (TIMP1 and TIMP3) stem cells remained functional throughout the lifetime of these mice.

Okay, longevity freaks.  This is preliminary.  Let's not see a run on mice at pet stores.  Give it some time, here.

Nearly one in ten U.S. adults have impulsive anger issues and access to guns
According to scientists at Duke, Harvard, and Columbia universities, an estimated 9 percent of adults in the US have a history of impulsive, angry behavior and have access to guns, according to a new study. The study also found that an estimated 1.5 percent of adults report impulsive anger and carry firearms outside their homes. 

Angry people with ready access to guns are typically young or middle-aged men, who at times lose their temper, smash and break things, or get into physical fights.  Study participants who owned six or more firearms were also far more likely than people with only one or two firearms to carry guns outside the home and to have a history of impulsive, angry behavior.

The moral:  frisk anyone before making a bar bet with them, say, about their ability to construct a six-tier high human pyramid.  Or whether the Packers will beat the Bears this season (they will.)  And anything else, for that matter.

The full moon makes intelligent people stupid
According to Jean-Luc Margot, a UCLA professor of planetary astronomy, the moon does not influence the timing of human births or hospital admissions.  Nor does it influence on human affairs in the areas of automobile accidents, hospital admissions, surgery outcomes, cancer survival rates, menstruation, births, birth complications, depression, violent behavior, and even criminal activity, Margot writes in a study published online by the journal Nursing Research.

So if a full moon has no effect on any of those things, it must reasonably be concluded that a full moon makes even intelligent people stupid enough to believe that it does influence those things.  So the full moon does make intelligent people stupid. 

I rest my case.

Facebook use linked to depression
A researcher at the University of Houston admits that spending time of the social media site, Facebook, can be an effective tool for connecting with new and old friends. However, (and you knew one was coming), some users may compare what's happening in their lives to the activities and accomplishments of their friends.  And get depressed.

According to University of Houston (UH) researcher Mai-Ly Steers, this kind of social comparison paired with the amount of time spent on Facebook may be linked to depressive symptoms. Steers' research is presented in the article, "Seeing Everyone Else's Highlight Reels: How Facebook Usage is Linked to Depressive Symptoms" was just published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology.

So, let me see if I've got this straight.  When I inflate my day-to-day life on Facebook or some other social media site, I'm may be making some other schlep depressed?  How cool is this?  A whole new way to keep up with and surpass the Joneses.  (I'm number one, I'm number one, and I'm a jerk.)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An unexpected way to recover from a breakup

Image
Breaking up is truly hard to do. And recovery from a breakup can be even harder. Your friends may counsel you to put the whole thing out of your mind. But new research suggests that repeatedly reflecting on a break-up -- even through participation in a research study -- actually speeds emotional recovery. "Breakups are ubiquitous -- most adults have experienced at least one in their life -- and are typically very distressing," says Grace Larson of Northwestern University. After studying divorce and breakups for years using longitudinal, multi-method designs, Larson and her then-adviser David Sbarra of the University of Arizona wanted to study whether these research techniques on their own were affecting participants. One concern they had was that the studies could be harming participants, Larson says. "At first glance, it might seem like repeatedly reminding participants that they had just broken up -- and asking them to describe the breakup over and over --
Read more

Greek Bronze Age ended 100 years earlier than thought

Image
Source: www.shef.ac.uk The charred remains of Assiros Toumba in Greece. Writing historical fiction set in the Greek Bronze Age?  Or simply enjoy reading this genre'?  Here's a study you may find interesting. C onventional estimates for the collapse of the Aegean civilization may be incorrect by up to a century, according to new radiocarbon analyses. While historical chronologies traditionally place the end of the Greek Bronze Age at around 1025 BCE, this latest research suggests a date 70 to 100 years earlier. www.weather-forecast.com Archaeologists from the University of Birmingham selected 60 samples of animal bones, plant remains and building timbers, excavated at Assiros in northern Greece, to be radiocarbon dated and correlated with 95.4% accuracy using Bayesian statistical methodology at the University of Oxford and the Akademie der Wissenschaften Heidelberg, Germany. Researcher Dr Ken Wardle says, 'These new results tell a story that is totall
Read more

Mood Instability and Your Characters

Image
You're putting together a character who's mood simply bounces all over the place, happy one moment, in a fit of rage the next.  Researchers at King's College London note that this sort of mood instability is part of a number of mental health disorders.  So how do you structure the personality and behavior of a character like this?  Below is the King's College report, along with a brief description from mentalhealth.com, of typical behavior, sometimes in the extreme, of a person who is very emotionally unstable.  This is offered strictly as a guide for crafting character in fiction - and NOT for the amateur diagnosis of the state of someone's mental health.  That is always best left to trained professionals. Another note about emotionally unstable behavior:  as any parent will tell you, this is how adolescents and teen-agers often behave.  It's a normal part of growing up - but it is a matter of degree .  In the extreme, however, this behavior can be diag
Read more

How the lives of Georgian gaolbirds and highwaymen shaped modern Britain

Image
Writing historical fiction requires solid research of available materials and databases.  The key word here is available.   So news of a new publicly accessible database that allows an author to research a very interesting past era is priceless almost beyond words.   I expect some exciting fiction to come out of this announcement. Here's the story, with a link to the source in the attribution. *  *  *  *  * London Lives, a landmark project led by Professor Bob Shoemaker from the University of Sheffield and Professor Tim Hitchcock from the University of Sussex, has uncovered a mass of extraordinary new evidence which reveals how the lives of thousands of 18th-century poor and criminal Londoners helped shape modern Britain. Based on evidence made available in a publicly available database, the study sheds new light on the everyday lives of thieves, prostitutes, vagrants, highwaymen, con-men, paupers and jailbirds, revealing how their daily fight for survival led to t
Read more

Remember faces but not names? You got it wrong.

Image
Source:   Daily Excelsior So, you think you're good at remembering faces, but terrible with names? New research has revealed we are actually better at remembering names than faces The cringe-worthy experience of not being able to remember an acquaintance's name leads many of us to believe we are terrible with names. However, new research has revealed this intuition is misleading; we are actually better at remembering names than faces. With the Christmas party season fast approaching, there will be plenty of opportunity to re-live the familiar, and excruciatingly-awkward, social situation of not being able to remember an acquaintance's name. This cringe-worthy experience leads many of us to believe we are terrible at remembering names. However, new research has revealed this intuition is misleading; we are actually better at remembering names than faces. The authors of the study, from the University of York, suggest that when we castigate ourselves f
Read more