Science

WTF Fun Fact 12968 – Edible Burrito Tape

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Do you love burritos but hate the mess they make when they’re not expertly rolled into a magical self-sealing pocket? Well, edible burrito tape could be the weirdest invention you never knew you needed.

What’s the deal with edible burrito tape?

Leave it to college students to solve this age-old conundrum.

It turns out that a group of Engineering majors at Johns Hopkins taking a product design course have found a way to make your burritos delicious and more convenient.

According to TODAY (cited below), “The all-female team of Tyler Guarino, Rachel Nie, Marie Eric and Erin Walsh came together and decided to solve one of life’s most frustrating problems: preventing a burrito from unraveling and making a mess. Their solution: an edible tape that keeps all the delicious ingredients inside the tortilla instead of on your plate or lap.”

The first step was to investigate what made tape, in general, work well (turns out the answer is twofold – a backbone and an adhesive compound). The next step was to make those components edible.

“Tastee” Tape

Student Tyler Guarino told TODAY: “We tried tons of different combinations, and formulations and really did a lot of trial and error until we were able to get a product that was clear in color, tasteless, didn’t have a noticeable texture, but was still strong enough to hold a big fat burrito together.”

It took the women a few months of trial and error to figure out how to make a cookable, edible burrito tape. After that, they set about making it pleasant to eat (not just edible). That meant playing around with the taste and texture.

They decided on a final product that carried little to none of it’s own taste or texture so people could just enjoy their burritos. The product is known as Tastee Tape.

“You simply just peel the piece off of the sheet,” Guarino said. “You wet it to activate it, and then you apply it to your tortilla.” 

The students aren’t keen to share their recipe, however. They’re looking to patent it. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Johns Hopkins students develop edible tape to make burritos easier to eat” — TODAY

WTF Fun Fact 12967 – Bats and Tequila

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There’s a little-known but critical relationship between bats and tequila. In fact, without bats, we may not be able to create tequila at all!

How are bats and tequila connected?

If you’re a tequila fan, you probably know the crucial ingredient in the spirit is agave. This spiky plant is native to the desert regions of North and South America (but mostly Mexico). Agave nectar is also harvested to be used as a sweetener.

One of the many interesting things about the agave plant is that it has very few natural pollinators. (And you likely know that in order for plants to produce, they need to be pollinated by things like birds, bees, etc.)

The agave plant’s primary pollinator is bats. No bats, no agave. No agave, no tequila.

Is the tequila supply in danger?

To make matters even more complicated for agave plants, only a few species of bats are pollinators. These bats are being threatened by industrial farming and other threats to their natural habitats.

But while the bats and agave plants are increasingly threatened, our thirst for tequila has only gone up. According to NPR (cited below), the tequila industry has grown by 60% over the last decade. That means we need more agave plants than ever.

You might think that industrial farming would simply increase the amount of agave being grown, but it hasn’t worked out that way.

How do you solve a problem like agave?

NPR interviewed Micaela Jemison of Bat Conservation International, who said that the problem with commercial agave production is that agave stalks are harvested before they can reproduce. “That means no tasty pollen for hungry bats. And instead of plants that reproduce through bats spreading pollen from stem to stem, major tequila companies use cloned agave.”

If you only care about tequila, you might not think this is a big deal, but there are some major unintended consequences of handing a natural process over to a business.

“Growing genetically identical plants is easy and cheap for big companies, but cloned agave is vulnerable to fungus or disease that could wipe out entire crops. Bats can solve this problem by creating genetic diversity. Instead, their ecosystem has been disrupted. Fewer agave plants are allowed to flower and growers use powerful agrochemicals that can hurt the three kind of bats that feed on agave.”

The Mexican long-nosed bat and the lesser long-nosed bat are two of the major agave pollinators listed as endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and a third, the Mexican long-tongued bat, is a species of concern.

To help spread appreciation for the relationship between bats and tequila, the Tequila Interchange Project (which is made up of bartenders, scientists, industry consultants, and plain old tequila fans) is trying to promote Bat Friendly Tequila and Mezcal™. These approved brands give some of their proceeds to agave farmers who welcome the bats and help maintain their populations.

Bat-friendly tequila

The coalition notes that “Given that Tequila is a two billion USD a year industry, and that the economy of 40,000 families is linked to blue agaves (and to bats and other pollinators), it is in the best interest of all stakeholders, from producers to the government to the individual consumer and everyone in-between, to protect the future of tequila and mezcal agaves by adopting sustainable practices and protecting pollinators and genetic resources.”

According to the website, some of the bat-friendly brands include:
– Tequila 8
– Tequila Tapatio
– Tesoro de Don Felipe
– Siembra Valles Ancestral
– 7 Leguas
– Siembra Metl Cupreata
– TOCUZ Alto
– Don Mateo de la Sierra Cupreata
– Mezcal Vago Pechuga

— WTF fun facts

Source: “Bats And Tequila: A Once Boo-tiful Relationship Cursed By Growing Demands” — NPR

WTF Fun Fact 12965 – The New Moon

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Have you ever heard that there was a new Moon only to look up at the sky and see no moon at all? Well, that’s because the Moon cycle is starting all over again.

Types of Moons

We obviously only have one Moon, but it goes through lots of phases. A “new” Moon is the opposite of a full Moon. During a full Moon, the sun is fully illuminating one side of the big ball. That’s what makes it glow so brightly in the night sky.

During the time when the Moon is “new,” we are seeing the side that is not illuminated by the sun. The Moon is still up there, but without the sun shining on it, we can’t see it in the night sky.

According to Farmer’s Almanac (cited below) “When the Moon is “new,” it’s located between the Earth and the Sun. In other words, the Moon is in line with the Sun, and the Sun and Earth are on opposite sides of the Moon. (Note that when the Moon is perfectly aligned in front of the Sun, it blocks out the Sun, giving us a solar eclipse.)”

Lunar cycles and the new Moon

The new Moon is the beginning of the lunar cycle. This lasts 29.5 days, and it’s the amount of time it takes for the moon to orbit the Earth.

The Moon cycle used to be used to measure months (each new moon signaled a new month).

Another fun fact: the new Moon always rises close to the time of sunrise.

And according to The Farmer’s Almanac:

“As the new Moon crosses the sky during the day, rising and setting around the same time as the Sun, it’s lost in the solar glare…The new Moon is also lit up from behind, showing us its dark side. It’s doubly invisible. New Moons generally can’t be seen with the naked eye.”

About a day (maybe two) after a new lunar cycle begins, you’ll be able to look up at the night sky and see a slim crescent off to the West after the sun sets. These crescent moons are often very bright. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Learn All About the New Moon” — Almanac

WTF Fun Fact 12963 – The Autumn Equinox

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Solstice, equinox – what’s the difference? We know these things meant more to people in agricultural societies, but they still dictate the way we do things today to some extent. The 2022 autumn equinox will begin on September 22 at 9:03 pm.

Why is the autumn equinox so specific?

This is a natural phenomenon that influences culture, not the other way around. So while you might start shopping for your autumn decor in August, fall doesn’t really begin until the solar system says so.

The autumnal equinox occurs when the sun is nearest to the equatorial plane (the imaginary extension of the equator), giving us a day with equal amounts of sunlight and darkness. It lasts a few days, and as soon as it’s over, the days start to get shorter.

Spring also has an equinox. When it’s over, the days start to get longer.

Winter and summer, on the other hand, have solstices.

What’s the difference between an equinox and a solstice?

The summer and winter solstices occur when the sun is farthest from the equatorial plane. They are the day when the daylight is longest (spring) or shortest (winter).

So while the solstices and equinoxes each usher in a new season, each only applies to two seasons and represents a different phenomenon. (And all of the seasons are the opposite in each hemisphere – we’re only talking about the northern hemisphere here!)

What’s so fun about the autumnal solstice?

If you like fall weather (and live in the northern hemisphere), you’re probably pretty excited about its official start.

Historically, the equinox signaled the end of the outdoor working season or harvest season. It was a time to celebrate all of the hard work nature had done for humans and that humans did to reap the benefits and survive through winter. It’s traditionally a time to give thanks and take stock of all of nature’s bounty a community had received.

In many places, it was a time of harvest festivals, feasting (at least on the things that might not be preserved over the winter), and thanking the gods of the harvest. — WTF fun facts

Source: “The Spiritual Meaning of the Autumn Equinox” — Spirituality & Health

WTF Fun Fact 12962 – The Earth’s Rotation Around The Sun

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The Earth’s rotation around the sun isn’t an opinion, it’s a fact – and one we learn in elementary school. Of course, we don’t retain all of that information throughout our lives, which is why some people answered a question about it incorrectly.

In need of a revolution

Now, this is disturbing in many ways. However, some people don’t do well when quizzed on the spot. We’d like to think that it’s more of a misunderstanding than a quarter of Americans truly believing that the Earth is the center of the solar system.

Spoiler alert: the Earth revolves around the sun.

Maybe we should all talk to elementary school students taking science classes more often.

Parsing data on the earth’s revolution

Here’s how the survey was done: People were asked a (theoretically simple) question: “Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth.”

Only 26% answered incorrectly.

According to NPR (cited below): “In the same survey, just 39 percent answered correctly (true) that ‘The universe began with a huge explosion’ and only 48 percent said ‘Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals.’ Just over half understood that antibiotics are not effective against viruses.”

It’s a bit of an embarrassing science deficit. In fact, that last misunderstanding (about antibiotics) has been downright dangerous.

However, NPR goes on…“As alarming as some of those deficits in science knowledge might appear, Americans fared better on several of the questions than similar, but older surveys of their Chinese and European counterparts. Only 66 percent of people in a 2005 European Union poll answered the basic astronomy question correctly.”

But let’s not celebrate too soon because “both China and the EU fared significantly better (66 percent and 70 percent, respectively) on the question about human evolution.” — WTF fun facts

Source: “1 In 4 Americans Thinks The Sun Goes Around The Earth, Survey Says” — NPR

WTF Fun Fact 12961 – Ride-Sharing Risks

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We would have assumed that with fewer cars on the road, ride sharing services like Uber and Lyft would have helped decrease the number of traffic deaths. But a 2018 study from University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, there are some unforeseen ride sharing risks. In fact, these services have contributed to a 2%-3% increase in traffic deaths.

Reporting on the risk of ride-sharing

In “The Cost of Convenience: Ridesharing and Traffic Fatalities,” authors John M. Barrios (University of Chicago), Yael V. Hochberg (Rice University), and Livia Hanyi Yi (Rice University), claim that since 2011, roughly 1,100 deaths could be attributed to ride sharing companies in the U.S.

The report (cite below) states: “The arrival of ridesharing is associated with an increase of 2-3% in the number of motor vehicle fatalities and fatal accidents. This increase is not only for vehicle occupants, but also for pedestrians.”

Why the increase in traffic deaths?

After looking at the data, the authors note a number of ride sharing risks that contribute to traffic accidents.

The biggest increases occurred in large cities, where ride sharing also put more cars on the road despite the presence of public transportation. An increase in new vehicles leads to more congestion on the streets, which is correlated with more accidents.

According to the Booth School of Business: “Evaluating the effect of ride sharing on driver quality is complicated, according to the researchers. An increase in high-quality ride-share drivers could offset increased VMT and potentially reduce accident rates; however, while some poor drivers may substitute ride sharing for driving, other passengers may be skilled drivers who simply enjoy the convenience. At the same time, lesser-quality drivers may be tempted to drive for ride-sharing services.”

The cost of the increase in accidents is estimated to be $5.33 billion to $13.24 billion per year.

Of course, there are benefits to ride sharing: “These include improved mobility for the disabled and for minorities, flexible job opportunities that are especially valuable to those otherwise at high risk of unemployment, and customer convenience and resulting consumer surplus.” — WTF fun facts

Source: “The Cost of Convenience” — University of Chicago

WTF Fun Fact 12958 – Odorless Sweat

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Most sweat doesn’t smell. Body odor comes from the bacteria that feed on sweat in your armpits and groin only. Other perspiration is odorless sweat.

What sweat is odorless?

When most of us sweat, we can smell it. But that’s because getting sweaty means we sweat all over our bodies. However, the sweat that comes from our head, arms, back, and legs has no odor at all.

Only the perspiration from your armpits and groin produces body odor. If you use a strong antiperspirant in those areas, you can get all sweaty and not smell it.

Why does some sweat smell bad while some have odorless sweat?

According to Harvard Health (cited below):

“Your body has two main types of sweat glands — eccrine and apocrine — that release fluid (sweat) onto your skin’s surface when you’re hot. Sweat serves an important purpose. As perspiration evaporates, it cools your body temperature. Eccrine glands are all over your body. Apocrine glands are in areas like your armpits and groin. They produce a thicker, milky fluid. Sweat itself doesn’t have a smell. The odor happens when bacteria come into contact with the perspiration your apocrine glands release.”

Food and body odor

Your diet can also change the way you smell.

According to Harvard Health: “Cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower produce gas. The breakdown of garlic and onions in your body releases sulfur-like compounds that waft out through your pores. And people with a rare condition called trimethylaminuria develop a fishy odor after eating seafood.”

Odorless sweat is still more common, however.

Can you stop sweating?

Those with a medical condition such as hyperhidrosis can address excess sweating with antiperspirants, other prescriptions, and even BOTOX. There’s even a surgery that can remove your sweat glands entirely.

However, sweat helps us cool down. So unless it’s ruining your life, it’s probably better to just sweat it out. — WTF fun facts

Source: “What’s that smell? Get rid of body odor” — Harvard Health Publishing

WTF Fun Fact 12957 – The Man Who Couldn’t Stop Rhyming

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A recent publication reports that a neuroscientist who suffered a series of strokes and seizures couldn’t stop rhyming and rapping after his recovery.

The rhyming neuroscientist

Of course, the neuroscientist’s name has been withheld to preserve his privacy, but a Feb 2022 piece in the journal Neurocase titled “The neurologist who could not stop rhyming and rapping” (cited below) says he is 55 years old.

In the abstract, author Mario Mendez states that “His strokes included right posterior cerebellar and right thalamic infarctions, and his subsequent focal-onset seizures emanated from the left frontotemporal region.

The urge to rap

The abstract goes on to describe the aftermath of his strokes:

“On recovery, he described the emergence of an irresistible urge to rhyme, even in thought and daily speech. His pronounced focus on rhyming led him to actively participate in freestyle rap and improvisation. This patient’s rhyming and rapping may have been initially facilitated by epileptiform activation of word sound associations but perpetuated as compensation for impaired cerebellar effects on timed anticipation.”

We still don’t know the underlying mechanisms that cause a person’s brain to develop linguistic dysfunctions after an injury such as a stroke. Some strokes affect the ability to speak or understand language, while others cause brain injuries with more unique symptoms. The irrepressible urge to rhyme is certainly a unique one!

Other post-stroke rappers

In 2019, The Atlantic published a piece on a 50-something man who couldn’t stop rapping after a stroke – and it’s likely the same person.

Dr. Sherman Hershfield specialized in physical medicine and rehabilitation and was in excellent health before he was plagued by blackouts and then a grand mal seizure and series of strokes. Then: “His personality also seemed to change. He suddenly became obsessed with reading and writing poetry. Soon Hershfield’s friends noticed another unusual side effect: He couldn’t stop speaking in rhyme.” — WTF fun facts

Source: “The neurologist who could not stop rhyming and rapping” — Neurocase

WTF Fun Fact 12956 – Witzelsucht, a Joke Addiction

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Have you ever met anyone who couldn’t stop telling jokes, even if no one else found them funny? Maybe they had Witzelsucht.

What’s a joke addict?

In 2016, neuroscientists Elias Granadillo and Mario Mendez published a paper titled “Pathological Joking or Witzelsucht Revisited” in The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences that described two patients with damage to their brains suffering from joke addiction.

They explained that “impaired humor integration from right lateral frontal injury and disinhibition from orbitofrontal damage results in disinhibited humor.” Two men were used as an example.

Compulsive jokesters

According to Discover Magazine:

“Patient #1 was a 69-year-old right-handed man presented for a neuropsychiatric evaluation because of a 5-year history of compulsive joking… On interview, the patient reported feeling generally joyful, but his compulsive need to make jokes and create humor had become an issue of contention with his wife. He would  wake her up in the middle of the night bursting out in laughter, just to tell her about the jokes he had come up with. At the request of his wife, he started writing down these jokes as a way to avoid waking her. As a result, he brought to our office approximately 50 pages filled with his jokes.“

“Patient #2 was a 57-year old man, who had become “a jokester”, a transformation that had occurred gradually, over a three period. At the same time, the man became excessively forward and disinhibited, making inappropriate actions and remarks. He eventually lost his job after asking “Who the hell chose this God-awful place?” The patient constantly told jokes and couldn’t stop laughing at them. However, he did not seem to find other people’s jokes funny at all.”

Diagnosis: Witzelsucht

Apparently, both men displayed signs of something called Witzelsucht, “a German term literally meaning ‘joke addiction.'”

“Several cases have been reported in the neurological literature, often associated with damage to the right hemisphere of the brain. Witzelsucht should be distinguished from ‘pathological laughter‘, in which patients start laughing ‘out of the blue’ and the laughter is incongruent with their “mood and emotional experience.” In Witzelsucht, the laughter is genuine: patients really do find their own jokes funny, although they often fail to appreciate those of others.” — WTF fun facts

Source: “‘Joke Addiction’ As A Neurological Symptom” — Discover Magazine

WTF Fun Fact 12954 – Is the Soul Weighing 21 Grams a Lie?

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There’s no reliable way to weigh the human “soul,” though one person has tried. Still, the myth that the soul weighs 21 grams and that scientists have confirmed it still persists. And that’s because of a movie.

The weight of the soul

“21 Grams” is a 2003 film starring Sean Penn in which he plays a mathematician who experiments to find the weight of the human soul. It’s based on a story about a scientist, to some small extent, but the movie is pure fiction.

The man who attempted to weigh the human soul was a physician named Duncan MacDougall from Dorchester, MA. He assumed that if humans had souls in their bodies, those souls must weigh something. Therefore, upon death, the soul leaves the body and a person’s corpse should therefore be lighter.

In 1907, he wrote about his effort: “Since … the substance considered in our hypothesis is linked organically with the body until death takes place, it appears to me more reasonable to think that it must be some form of gravitative matter, and therefore capable of being detected at death by weighing a human being in the act of death.”

A flawed experiment

According to LiveScience, “MacDougall teamed up with Dorchester’s Consumptives’ Home, a charitable hospital for late-stage tuberculosis, which at that time was incurable. MacDougall built a large scale, capable of holding a cot and a dying tuberculosis patient. Tuberculosis was a convenient disease for this experiment, MacDougall explained in his paper, because patients died in ‘great exhaustion’ and without any movement that would jiggle his scale.”

We’re already on shaky ground here, but it gets worse.

“MacDougall’s first patient, a man, died on April 10, 1901, with a sudden drop in the scale of 0.75 ounce (21.2 grams). And in that moment, the legend was born. It didn’t matter much that MacDougall’s next patient lost 0.5 ounce (14 grams) 15 minutes after he stopped breathing, or that his third case showed an inexplicable two-step loss of 0.5 ounce and then 1 ounce (28.3 g) a minute later. MacDougall threw out Case 4, a woman dying of diabetes, because the scale wasn’t well calibrated, in part due to a ‘good deal of interference by people opposed to our work,’ which raises a few questions that MacDougall did not seem eager to answer in his write-up. Case 5 lost 0.375 ounce (10.6 grams), but the scale malfunctioned afterward, raising questions about those numbers, too. Case 6 got thrown out because the patient died while MacDougall was still adjusting his scale. MacDougall then repeated the experiments on 15 dogs and found no loss of weight — indicating, to his mind, that all dogs definitely do not go to heaven.”

Despite being a poor experiment with few samples in which his own first result was undermined by everything that came after it, he sent in his write-up to the journals American Medicine and the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, and his results were also reported in the New York Times.

No one except a sheep rancher in Oregon has ever tried to replicate the experiment, for ethical reasons.

So science has neither determined the existence of a soul nor its weight. —WTF fun facts

Source: “How much does the soul weigh?” — LiveScience

WTF Fun Fact 12947 – Only Humans Have Chins

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We found this hard to believe at first, but it’s the little details that matter when it comes to anatomy. As an anatomical feature, only humans have chins.

That seems surprising if you’ve ever rubbed your pet under their little “chin.”

What’s a chin?

While we basically all call the bottom of the face a “chin,” a chin is technically a bone formed at the apex of the lower jaw. And a chin is a bony protrusion that juts out in a way that is only seen in human skulls.

According to Smithsonian Magazine (cited below): “Even chimpanzees and gorillas, our closest genetic cousins, lack chins. Instead of poking forward, their lower jaws slope down and back from their front teeth. Even other ancient hominids, like the Neanderthals, didn’t have chins…”

Ok, so maybe anatomical technicalities aren’t really that amazing, but what is interesting is that the chin protrusion doesn’t really serve a purpose. No one knows why humans even have chins.

Why do chins exist in humans?

Of course, once anthropologists and evolutionary biologists realized this bit of human uniqueness, they set about trying to explain why we evolved chins. Maybe it’s to help us chew food? Maybe it helps us speak?

Nope. Those ideas have all been largely debunked. The chin is in the wrong place to help reinforce the jaw for chewing. Our tongues don’t seem to generate enough force to require a chin to help us speak. If the chin developed to help us find mates, then it would only appear in one gender.

The list of reasons the chin doesn’t need to exist goes on and on.

According to Duke University’s James Pampush, the chin may not actually serve a purpose at all. This would make it a “spandrel” – “an evolutionary byproduct left from another feature changing.”

“In the chin’s case, it could be the result of the human face shrinking over time as our posture changed and our faces shortened, or a remnant from a period of longer jaws.”

Of course, there’s really no way to prove the chin serves no function since you’d have to reject every possible hypothesis first.

It looks like we may just have to live with the mystery. — WTF fun facts

Source: “A Chin-Stroking Mystery: Why Are Humans the Only Animals With Chins?” — Smithsonian Magazine

WTF Fun Fact 12939 – Moonquakes

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We’ve all heard of earthquakes, but it hadn’t really occurred to us that seismic activity would occur on other celestial bodies. Now that we think about it, it makes sense. And, of course, they wouldn’t necessarily be called “earth”quakes. On the moon, they’ve named them “moonquakes.”

Data on moonquakes?

In 2006, NASA (which is cited below) reported that a Notre Dame professor named Clive R. Neal (who was an associate professor of civil engineering and geological sciences – the department has since changed its name a bit) came to a surprising conclusion.

Neal and a team of 15 other researchers looked at data from the Apollo mission, and told scientists that the data pointed to something interesting. At NASA’s Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG) meeting in League City, Texas in October 2005, he announced that “The moon is seismically active.”

That might not seem important because: 1) the team was never on the moon themselves to feel a moonquake, and 2) it’s not like buildings are going to come crashing down if there’s a huge moonquake. However, people like Elon Musk are talking more and more about building structures on the moon and increasing human activity there. If that happens, structures will have the be built to stand up to moonquakes (which we don’t know all that much about).

Types of seismic activity on the moon

According to the research team, there are at least 4 different types of moonquakes (revealed by the data they assessed):

(1) deep moonquakes about 700 km below the surface, probably caused by tides
(2) vibrations from the impact of meteorites
(3) thermal quakes caused by the expansion of the frigid crust when first illuminated by the morning sun after two weeks of deep-freeze lunar night
(4) shallow moonquakes only 20 or 30 kilometers below the surface.

The team said: “The first three were generally mild and harmless. Shallow moonquakes on the other hand were doozies. Between 1972 and 1977, the Apollo seismic network saw twenty-eight of them; a few ‘registered up to 5.5 on the Richter scale,’ says Neal. A magnitude 5 quake on Earth is energetic enough to move heavy furniture and crack plaster.”

The last thing we want to hear if we decide to visit the moon is that any event out of our control could be a “doozy.” And these shallow moonquakes sound potentially deadly:

“Furthermore, shallow moonquakes lasted a remarkably long time. Once they got going, all continued more than 10 minutes. ‘The moon was ringing like a bell,'” Neal said.

Imagine the insurance premium on that moon house!

What else is interesting about moonquakes?

While we have plenty of aftershocks on Earth, earthquake vibrations from individual events usually last around 30 seconds – or 2 minutes, tops. That’s because of something called chemical weathering (as Neal says) – energy moves across minerals in the earth, and those deaden the vibrations relatively quickly. Not so much on the moon:

“The moon, however, is dry, cool, and mostly rigid, like a chunk of stone or iron. So moonquakes set it vibrating like a tuning fork. Even if a moonquake isn’t intense, ‘it just keeps going and going,’…And for a lunar habitat, that persistence could be more significant than a moonquake’s magnitude.”

Moon structures will have to be built of flexible materials so that they can move with the vibrations (that way they don’t crack). But first we need to know a lot more about engineering details like the maximum fatigue threshold needed so we can build those materials. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Moonquakes” — NASA

WTF Fun Fact 12934 – Axolotl Brain Regeneration

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In an amazing evolutionary feat that we wish were available to many of the humans we know, it turns out the salamanders known as axolotls can grow back parts of their brains. Axolotl brain regeneration is just another one of this creature’s amazing regenerative abilities.

Axolotl body regeneration

According to IFL Science (cited below), the initial discovery is an old one:

“The axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum) is an aquatic salamander renowned for its ability to regenerate its spinal cord, heart and limbs. These amphibians also readily make new neurons throughout their lives. In 1964, researchers observed that adult axolotls could regenerate parts of their brains, even if a large section was completely removed. But one study found that axolotl brain regeneration has a limited ability to rebuild original tissue structure.”

Regenerating the brain

At the Treutlein Lab at ETH Zurich and the Tanaka Lab at the Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna, researchers are trying to figure out just how complete axolotl brain regeneration is. For example, one question is what types of brain cells are they able to replace?

One of the authors of a recent study noted in IFL Science that looking at brain cells was the key to understanding the regenerative process:

“In our recently published study, we created an atlas of the cells that make up a part of the axolotl brain, shedding light on both the way it regenerates and brain evolution across species. Why look at cells? Different cell types have different functions. They are able to specialize in certain roles because they each express different genes. Understanding what types of cells are in the brain and what they do helps clarify the overall picture of how the brain works. It also allows researchers to make comparisons across evolution and try to find biological trends across species.”

Axolotl brain mapping

The research team uses a specific type of RNA sequencing to get snapshots of brain samples. More specifically, they focus on the telencephalon (the region that contains the brain’s neocortex – the seat of behavior and cognition). The cells in this area are highly diversified.

By identifying the genes that are active when cells such as neurons replicate or turn into other cell types, the researchers can get a sense of how more mature cells form in the axolotl’s brain form over time.

The real test comes when the researchers inflict an injury on part of the brain, damaging some cells, then checking in later to see if they’ve regenerated.

And they found that in about 12 weeks, most of the axolotl’s brain cells have been replaced by new ones. The cells even reformed neuronal connections.

Can axolotl brain regeneration research help humans?

Even if you don’t care about axolotls, the research is important for the future of human brain research. There are many diseases that affect cognitive capacity (not to mention the role of aging on the brain). Understanding the process by which the axolotl’s brain regenerates could someday help up apply this knowledge to humans. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Axolotls Can Regenerate Their Brains – These Adorable Salamanders Are Helping Unlock The Mysteries Of Brain Evolution And Regeneration” — IFL Science

WTF Fun Fact 12924 – The NASA Artemis I Mission

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The NASA Artemis 1 mission is scheduled for September 3, 2022. But even if it’s scrubbed due to weather or technical issues, whenever it does launch it will be history-making.

What’s significant about NASA’s Artemis I mission?

For starters, Artemis I is the most powerful rocket ever built. NASA’s new Space Launch System (SLS), as well as the Orion spacecraft (which is also being tested), are integral parts of NASA’s plan to send people back to the Moon and further into space than ever before. If the technology is successful, it will show that we can build a sophisticated spacecraft capable of carrying humans back to the Moon.

And if Artemis I goes out without a hitch, it will carry the first woman and the first person of color to ever set foot on the moon in a few years.

This mission was supposed to happen a few years ago, but politics and the pandemic got in the way.

the NASA Artemis 1 mission is set to last 6 weeks. After reaching orbit, it will perform a trans-lunar injection and deploy 10 satellites plus the Orion spacecraft, which will enter retrograde orbit for 6 days. The hope is that the Orion will return to Earth after its mission and splash down in the Pacific Ocean without burning up on re-entry.

NASA tried to launch the mission on August 17, 2022, but had to scrap it after a series of delays during pre-flight testing. On August 29, the second try was capped after an issue with the core stage. Hopefully, the third time is the charm.

How can you watch the NASA Artemis I launch?

If you’re reading this before Saturday, September 3, 2022, at 2:17 EST, you can watch the launch for free online. NASA’s live streams (and pre-launch briefings are linked here).

According to IFL Science (cited below): “The rocket will launch from the historic Launch Pad 39B (Apollo and Skylab both launched from here) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida on Saturday, September 3. The launch window opens at 2:17 pm EDT (7:17 pm UTC) and will stay open for two hours, though it’s likely the launch will take place as soon as the window opens.”

If all goes well on the NASA Artemis 1 mission,Artemis 2is set to carry a crew for a lunar flyby in the future, and Artemis 3 will carry astronauts back to the moon five decades after the last Apollo mission. —WTF fun facts

Source: “NASA’s Artemis I Will Make History This Weekend – Here’s How To Watch Live” — IFL Science

WTF Fun Fact 12894 – Firefighters Use Wetter Water

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It’s supposed to be one of those “duh” facts that water is wet. But did you know if can technically be “wetter”? Firefighters use “wetter” water to put out fires. This involves using synthetic chemicals to improve water’s ability to put out fires.

Why do firefighters need water wetter?

Some types of fires are so hot that water simply evaporated the moment it hits the flames. Wetting chemicals help increase water’s spreading and penetrating properties.

We’ve long known that fires involving oil and gasoline can’t be put out with a splash of water. Decades ago, fire departments started using chemical and mechanical foam and carbon dioxide to help extinguish those fires.

But even a fire that starts with a match may be hard to extinguish with plain old H2O. The material that’s burning may be too thick and dense for water to penetrate it and extinguish all of the flames, for example.

As a result, fire departments use water-wetting chemicals. These give water properties that allows it to maintain contact with a solid surface or spread out more effectively to address a wider area.

How can you make water wetter?

In firefighting, the purpose of water is to make other things wet. But when water bonds are cohesive, water can bead up and not penetrate the surface of an object. But adding detergents, water becomes wetter, the cohesive forces weaken, and it’s able to make other things wet – which in turn extinguishes a fire.

Wetting agents also reduce the surface tension of water by penetrating the water molecules and making them less adhesive. They can also help increase the evaporation temperature of water. For firefighters, this allows them to get things wetter faster and with less water.

The most common chemicals in wet water are surfactants such as ethylene or propylene glycol. They make water easier to distribute over a surface and better able to flow into things that are on fire. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Fighting Fires with “Wet” Water” — Fire Engineering

WTF Fun Fact 12828 – Walking Sharks

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You have to be of a certain age to remember Steve Martin’s LAND SHARK! But when we think of walking sharks, this is where our mind goes. Anything else is simply too terrifying.

Of course, you don’t have to worry about a shark walking down the street. They walk underwater. For now…

Are there really walking sharks?

So, yes, there is a shark that can “walk.” But it’s rare, it’s small, and it’s not out to get you. Sorry to ruin the surprise so early in the explanation.

You may have seen the shark on social media since some guy saw one on a trip somewhere in Indonesia, hadn’t watched enough Shark Week, and then posted a video insisting he discovered a new type of shark. Of course, once marine biologists saw the footage they all said “Yeah, duh, that’s so 2006.” They’ve known about these sharks for a while, discovering them in 2006 in the Bird’s Head Seascape of West Papua, Indonesia.

Conservation International’s Mark Erdmann and his team currently study the walking sharks and their evolutionary origin. (Remember, if humans originated in the wet slime and eventually learned to walk on land, seeing a shark evolve to do the same is extra interesting!). And it turns out there are about 9 species of little sharks that can use their fins to both walk and swim.

So, what’s the real deal with these walking sharks?

According to Conservation News (cited below), these bottom-dwelling sharks “walk” using pectoral and pelvic fins. This allows them to traipse around coral reefs and stick their heads under rocks to look for more food.

Another cool fact about the sharks is that shark geneticists (which is definitely not a job we ever heard about during Career Day) have used genetic samples from shark fins to look at the genomes of these sharks, comparing them to older species to see when each branched off into a new species. In case you didn’t know, sharks are actually older than dinosaurs by about 200 million years. But according to these genetic analyses, walking sharks are only about 9 million years old.

If you’re still more freaked out than fascinated, just not that all 9 species “are found exclusively in a ring around Northern Australia, New Guinea and the satellite islands of Raja Ampat, Aru, and Halmahera in Indonesia.”

If you want to see the walking shark in all its glory, check out the video below:

–WTF fun facts

Source: “Discovery afoot: New study cracks mystery of how ‘walking’ sharks split” — Conservation.org

WTF Fun Fact 12826 – The Problem With Preferring Trees Over Grasslands

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Apparently, we’re tree snobs. Unfortunately, preferring trees over grasslands actually ends up hurting the environment because grasslands are complex and much-needed ecosystems.

Still, we have to admit we love trees.

Why do we love forests?

In a recent article for The Atlantic, writer Julia Rosen pointed out a painful truth:

“Grasslands rank among the most imperiled and least protected biomes on Earth. They are disappearing even faster than forests, and much of what remains has suffered varying degrees of damage. Their decline threatens a huge chunk of the planet’s biodiversity, the livelihoods of roughly 1 billion people, and countless ecological services such as carbon and water storage. Yet these losses don’t register with the same force as deforestation. Perhaps because we do not notice, or perhaps because we do not care.”

We had no idea. Still, we find ourselves thinking that trees are just more helpful – but apparently, that’s wrong (or at least misguided).

Preferring trees over grasslands is “arboreal chauvinism”

Ok, we’re not fond of the term, but it does some interesting linguistic work when you think about it. A lot of us really do think of grasslands as flat and boring and…beige.

Of course, no one who is advocating for grasslands, such as prairies, is against trees. They’re just trying to raise our awareness and change our perspective so we can appreciate the need to value and conserve them.

In other words, it’s time to stop looking at prairie land as “deforested” area or proto-forests that simply aren’t fertile enough to grow trees – in fact, grasslands are their own special thing.

What’s the big deal with grasslands?

Well, for starters, the problem with disregarding grasslands in favor of trees and forests keeps prairie, savannah, and other grassland plants and animals off of conservation lists and open to extinction.

Check out this not-so-fun fact from The Atlantic: “Just 1 percent of Texas’s prairies remain intact. (Nationally, about half of native grasslands have already been converted to cropland or consumed by development, and millions more acres are lost each year.)”

To appreciate just some of what grasslands have to offer, consider this:

“Despite their apparent simplicity, grasslands are bastions of biodiversity. They support everything from large, charismatic megafauna (think lions and elephants) to humble pollinators and rare wildflowers. The Cerrado, for instance, is home to more than 12,000 plant species, a third of which occur nowhere else on Earth. And a mountain grassland in Argentina holds the world record for the most plant species found within a square meter of land: 89.”

That’s a lot of biodiversity to give up if we don’t remember that forests aren’t the only type of ecosystems we need to preserve.

–WTF fun facts

Source: “Trees Are Overrated” — The Atlantic

WTF Fun Fact 12823 – Rats are Ticklish

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We never really thought about tickling a rat, but apparently, it makes them pretty happy. And other than primates, they’re the only other creatures that seem to be able to be tickled.

Rat tickling

Some people hate to be tickled but rats seem to enjoy it to some extent.

According to Smithsonian Magazine (cited below), the little creatures “…break down in supersonic ‘giggles’ and ‘joy jumps’ when you gently ruffle their fur—but only if they’re in the mood.”

Now, you probably want to know how we know this. Here’s how:

“For a new study published today in the journal Science, a group of German scientists had the pleasure of tickling some rats to find out that—like humans—these rodents’ responses to tickles are mood-dependent. Stressful situations stifled the rats’ otherwise impulsive laughter, while a more relaxed atmosphere made for uninhibited giggles. The new research, led by animal physiologist Shimpei Ishiyama at Humboldt University in Berlin, offers a new insight into where exactly in the brain this ticklish laughter appears to come from.”

If rats are ticklish, why don’t we hear them laugh?

It turns out that few of us will ever get the pleasure of hearing a rat laugh.

Smithsonian notes that “Tickled rats emit high-pitched chirping and squeaking sounds, which are only audible through a special microphone. Researchers were able to observe this laughter by using the microphones, as well as by measuring behavior and neuron activity of rats that they tickled and gently touched in various regions of the body, including the back and belly.”

It sounds like you’re going to need some specialized equipment.

And if you’re wondering where to tickle a rat in order to make it happy – the answer is the belly. – WTF fun facts

Source: “What Tickling Giggly Rats Can Tell Us About the Brain” — Smithsonian Magazine