Science

WTF Fun Fact 12740 – The Master Switch of Life

The Master Switch of Life is a phrase coined by Swedish researcher Per Scholander in the 1960s.

His research took place in the U.S. the United States where he studied just how being underwater would affect humans. He had already studied Weddell seals and found that the creatures seemed to gain more oxygen the longer they were underwater.

The water tank trials

To see if the effect might be the same in humans, he put volunteers in a water tank and monitored their heart rates as they dove to the bottom of the tank. Immediately, the volunteers’ heart rates decreased.

Then he asked them to do some exercise at the bottom of the tank to try and raise their heart rates but to no avail. Being underwater continued to lower everyone’s heart rate, meaning they also needed less oxygen (the opposite of what happens on land when we exercise). In addition, when the volunteers were underwater, their blood began flowing away from limbs and towards vital organs (which also happens in seals).

When blood flows to the heart and brain, they stay oxygenated longer, meaning we need less overall oxygen for our bodies to continue to function.

The mystery of water

That’s when he wondered why water has such an unexpected effect on us.

It turns out that the more we dive, the more blood can penetrate the cell walls of our organs to counteract external pressure.

And here’s the really cool part, according to TED:

“Scholander found that a person need submerge only his face in water to activate these life-lengthening (and lifesaving) reflexes. Other researchers tried sticking a hand or a leg in the water in an attempt to trigger the reflex, but to no avail. One researcher even put volunteers into a compression chamber to see if pressure alone would trigger a similar diving reflex. No dice. Only water could trigger these reflexes, and the water had to be cooler than the surrounding air.”

A splash of cold water

All we need to do is splash some cold water on our faces to flip what he called this “Master Switch of Life.” Cool water basically makes us more amphibious and produces a physical change in our heart rates. That certainly explains why cold water feels so refreshing!

– WTF fun facts

Source: “Your body’s amazing reaction to water” — TED Ideas

WTF Fun Fact 12739 – The Dreams of Men

Multiple studies have shown tend to have more male characters in their dreams.

We have very little control over what we dream about, even though many of us try to direct our dreams. (I know I do – if I could spend all night dreaming about being a wealthy villa owner on an abandoned tropical coast instead of reliving a made-up scenario about missing a vital exam and never graduating high school, I would!)

Studying dreams

Anyway, there are hundreds of studies on dreams. Most of them involve having people use dream journals where they write down the contents of their dreams any time they awaken. The journals are then processed by a researchers who looks for certain characteristics without knowing anything about the person the journals belong to (that’s why they’re called a “blind judge” in many research papers).

Researchers usually start with common themes and types of characters and count mentions of them. And a lot of the research has backed up the data we’ve collected over time. (However, there are some differences between cultures as to what we dream about.)

Demhoff’s dream research

For example, G. William Domhoff wrote one of the most widely-cited papers on the genders we dream about (nearly two decades ago, before talking about more than two genders was a cultural priority). It’s called “The Dreams of Men and Women: Patterns of Gender Similarity and Difference,” and it was published in 2005.

In the paper, Domhoff is very clear that “The study of gender similarities and differences in dream content has proven to be a dangerous mine field for dream researchers.” That’s because this kind of information has the “potential to stir up all the tensions that inevitably accompany any discussion of gender in a world where gender discrimination–and conflicts between men and women on many personal issues–are pervasive.”

Limited interpretations

In other words, it’s likely that a large number of people will dislike this “fun fact” because they somehow feel judged by it or don’t like whatever they think it implies (which is largely nothing).

Demhoff was also careful to not that variations across cultures and across genders make generalizations difficult. He’s just reporting on one characteristic that he found to be statistically significant – the gender of the characters in people’s dreams.

Demhoff concentrated on American subjects since he was most familiar with the cultural characteristics of Americans. But other researchers have studied other cultures and found some key differences.

To make sure everyone is categorizing things in a roughly similar way, Demhoff used a coding system developed in 1966 called the Hall/Van de Castle system, where most things fall into pretty simple categories like: men/women; indoor setting/outdoor setting, etc. But that system was created based on the dream journals of white, middle-class college students at Case Western in the 1950s and 60s. In general, other studies have found these categories useful too.

So, on to the results (because results don’t mean much without some context first!).

What men dream of

Demhoff asked what percentage of dreams had a negative element “such as aggressions, misfortunes, failures, and negative emotions (anger, apprehension, confusion, and sadness)…” And the results were that “men and women are similar in that 80% of men’s dreams and 77% of women’s have at least one of these negative elements.”

When it comes to positive aspects, “such as friendly interactions, good fortune, success, and happiness, 53% of dreams for both men and women have at least one of those elements. Men and women also have an equal number of dreams in which food or eating is mentioned–about 17%.”

In addition, “Both men and women are more often victims than aggressors in the aggressive interactions in their dreams, and they face the same attackers, namely, men who are not known to them (“male strangers”) and animals. On a more positive note, both men and women are equally likely to befriend another character in their dreams.”

But we started with the most reported-on finding, which is that “men dream twice as often about other men as they do about women (67% vs. 33%), and women dream equally about both sexes (48% men, 52% women).”

What’s implied by the dreams of men? Not much

And here’s where people get offended. No one is implying that men fantasize about other men. They can be someone you fight on the street, your 5th grade math teacher, your dad…whatever.

Women may also have more of a character gender balance because their dreams tend to have more characters overall. This may be a result of women’s dreams being longer overall than men’s.

But Demhoff points out that this in not universal. Even among Black Americans, men and women tended to have an equal gender breakdown in dreams. Studies of Mexican and Peruvian teens as well as German college students also showed more of a gender balance. However, in each case there were slightly more men than women in everyone’s dreams.

– WTF fun facts

Source: “The Dreams of Men and Women: Patterns of Gender Similarity and Difference” — G. William Domhoff

WTF Fun Fact 12731 – Cute Aggression

Have you ever seen a chubby baby face or a fluffy bunny and thought about snuggling it to pieces? It’s called “cute aggression,” and it isn’t typically as violent as it sounds.

According to Forbes, “cute aggression” was first described by Yale researchers in 2015. It’s “actually pretty common and can encompass behaviors such as wanting to bite, nibble, squeeze, or smoosh the face of something extremely adorable.” In addition, “studies have long shown that people who view photos of tiny, adorable things often react with extremely aggressive language.”

Don’t worry – no one gets hurt

The good news is that no matter how many times we say “I just want to smush her cheeks” or “I want to cuddle that kitten SO HARD,” those words don’t actually translate into action. For the most part, we lay off the smushing and potentially painful cuddles. (Of course, toddlers and cats may not agree – they always act like a snuggle is about to kill them.)

Research into “cute aggression” was done by Katherine Stavropoulos, an assistant professor at the University of California, Riverside. She’s also a licensed clinical psychologist and neuroscientist. Stavropoulos looked at the brain’s electrical activity as subjects viewed images of really cute creatures. She published the findings in an article titled “‘It’s so Cute I Could Crush It!’: Understanding Neural Mechanisms of Cute Aggression,” in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience.

Forbes states that “the new study backs up the hypothesis that these feelings may serve as a mechanism to prevent people from being overwhelmed (and thus incapacitated) by cute things. It’s basically what happens to your brain when you just can’t even.”

“Cute aggression” is all in your head

In other words, the electrical activity in our brains showed that we have a physiological reaction to cuteness. And it can be A LOT. In order to make sure we don’t actually smother baby animals (which were deemed to be the cutest things overall, producing the biggest neurological response), we use “violent” language to talk about snuggling things really hard.

That’s just how our brains respond to a cuteness overload.

Forbes also revealed that “Journalists have noted that this phenomenon is universal and that most languages have a word for this type of feeling – the Filipino language Tagalog, for example, has a word Gigil, which means gritting your teeth and trembling in an overwhelming situation.” In addition “Other studies have shown that cuteness aggression is felt far more acutely when people can’t physically touch the cute thing they’re seeing.”

That would help explain all the squealing when we see cute animal videos online. – WTF fun facts

Source: “The Science Behind Why You Want To Destroy Something Beautiful” — Forbes

WTF Fun Fact 12729 – Astronaut Life Insurance

We never really thought about astronaut life insurance, but we had hoped that heroic explorers wouldn’t have to worry about their families being taken care of in the event of their untimely demise.

Alas, that was not necessarily the case for Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin. They didn’t have life insurance that covered an accident involving a moon landing (or anything related to it).

“It was driven by the fact that, given the nature of the astronauts’ livelihood, they were not able to secure much life insurance,” said Apollo program author Howard C. Weinberger. According to Brandi Dean, spokesperson for NASA’s Johnson Space Center, NASA DID have an insurance program, but it “originally did not cover astronauts when flying—it was considered high risk and experimental.”

There may not have been an eBay marketplace back in 1969, but Neil Armstrong understood the power of celebrity and the value of an autograph. That’s why he suggested they all leave autographed materials behind for their families to sell in case they didn’t return.

Particularly valuable were items called covers, which are envelopes signed and postmarked on important dates.

According to NPR:

“About a month before Apollo 11 was set to launch, the three astronauts entered quarantine. And, during free moments in the following weeks, each of the astronauts signed hundreds of covers.

They gave them to a friend. And on important days — the day of the launch, the day the astronauts landed on the moon — their friend got them to the post office and got them postmarked, and then distributed them to the astronauts’ families.”

While the trio didn’t need to worry about a grim fate after all, the items did start showing up at auctions in the 1990s. An Apollo 11 “insurance autograph” was worth up to $30,000 at the time.  – WTF fun facts

Source: “What The Apollo Astronauts Did For Life Insurance” — NPR

WTF Fun Fact 12728 – Frederic Tudor’s International Ice Shipment

Have you heard of Frederic “The Ice King” Tudor? He may sound like European royalty, but he was actually the American founder of international ice shipment (long before people could make their own).

Tudor figured out how to carve ice chunks out of bodies of water – particularly Wenham Lake in Massachusetts – and send it as far away as India and New Zealand by ship!

And did we mention that this was in the 1800s, before refrigeration?

Tudor was initially mocked for his attempts to ship it. Of course, his first attempts were the utter failures one might expect from someone trying to send ice cubes to the Caribbean. (He also spent time in debtor’s prison after being scammed by a business partner.)

Tudor was born in 1783, and by 1820, he had indeed figured out a way to put ice on a boat and send it pretty much anywhere in the world. Perhaps more impressive was his ability to send it to people who had never even seen or heard of ice before. He just convinced them they needed it! (In fact, he played a major role in New Zealand’s booming ice cream industry as a result.)

When the Harvard grad first began his business, he need to purchase his own ship since no ship owners would allow him to rent space on their vessels for a product guaranteed to melt all over the place. Luckily, buying his own ship meant he could control the conditions much more closely.

So, how did Tudor’s international ice shipment production get ice all the way to India and places in between? He insulated giant cubes by packing them in sawdust. Of course, this wasn’t always successful, and there was a tremendous among of ice lost in the process, but there was usually enough to sell by the time it reached its destination. (Even Queen Victoria got her ice from Massachusetts.)

By 1847, he was shipping over 22 tons of ice to foreign ports, three of which were in India. To give you an idea of the accomplishment, that’s a 14,000-mile journey that requires crossing the equator twice.

Of course, Tudor didn’t invent the idea of enjoying ice – the ancient Greeks, Romans, Persians, and Chinese all found ways to store ice during the winter to use during the warmer months. They just didn’t ship it as far as Tudor did.

Source: “Frederic Tudor | New England’s Ice King” — ThoughtCo

WTF Fun Facts 12719 – When Weather Kills

Heat waves (typically regarded as 3 or more days in a row with a temperature above 90 degrees) are a time to take special care and to check in on the elderly and those with young children who may need help. While the heat makes many of us miserable, it’s also a killer. And because it gets misdiagnosed and is considered a fact of life in the summer by many, we easily forget what a calamity it can be for some (even for those with A/C who experience increasingly frequent power outages!).

Technically, all heat-related deaths are preventable. That’s why it’s so sad that around 658 Americans are killed by extreme heat each year. And the numbers are likely much higher since heat-related deaths aren’t mandatory to report to public health agencies.

Heat deaths as well as deaths in which heat was a contributing factor are easy to misdiagnose or mislabel. Looking back at deadly heat waves in Chicago and Paris, for example, show that far more deaths were related to heat than were recorded at the time.

Here are some sobering facts from the Environmental Protection Agency:

  • Between 1979 and 2018, the death rate as a direct result of exposure to heat (the underlying cause of death) generally hovered between 0.5 and 2 deaths per million people…
  • A total of more than 11,000 Americans have died from heat-related causes since 1979, according to death certificates.
  • In some years, recording has included heat as a contributing factor, and in other years it has not – but in the years where only direct heat deaths “counted,” the estimates may be twice as high as the records show.
  • There was a peak in heat-related deaths in 2006, one of the hottest years on record in the contiguous 48 states.

And while many kids do get special attention during traumatic weather events, it’s the elderly who are often forgotten. However:

  • Since 1999, people aged 65+ have been several times more likely to die from heat-related cardiovascular disease than the general population, while non-Hispanic Blacks generally have had higher-than-average rates.
  • The interaction of heat and cardiovascular disease caused about one-fourth of the heat-related deaths recorded since 1999.

According to the CDC, those most likely to suffer from heat-related illness and death include:

  • infants and children up to 4 years old
  • People 65 years of age and older
  • People who are overweight
  • People who have existing medical conditions, such as diabetes or heart disease
  • People who are socially isolated
  • Those who take medications that impair the body’s ability to regulate its temperature or that inhibit perspiration
  • People who are poor

Behaviors that put people are at risk for serious illness or death during heat waves include:

  • Those who engage in strenuous exercise during high heat
  • People who drink alcoholic beverages during high heat

Heat is also worse in urban areas where buildings, parking lots, sidewalks, and roads absorb heat and create even hotter “heat islands” that aren’t recorded in the local weather estimates.

From 1999 to 2010, 8,081 heat-related deaths were reported in the United States. In 72% of these cases, excessive heat was actually the underlying cause of death (often in those who already had a cardiovascular condition). Only in 28% of cases was it a contributing factor.

So, what can you do to make sure everyone handles the heat?

  • Check on people at risk, such as the elderly, disabled, or homebound.
  • Never leave any living creature locked in a car. (Sometimes we don’t even know how bad the heat is getting to us until it’s too late.)
  • Limit sun exposure during midday hours, even at places like beaches.
  • Avoid sunburn and treat it right away if it happens by applying aloe vera and hot compresses – never pop blisters.
  • Drink plenty of nonalcoholic fluids (and avoid caffeine).
  • Replace the body’s salts and minerals by eating fruits and vegetables (NOT salty snacks – because while your body needs salt, they have too much for your kidneys to handle).
  • Dress in cool, loose clothing (this also helps avoid heat rash).
  • Shade your (and especially children’s) heads and faces from the sun – use an umbrella if that’s all you have.
  • Provide plenty of fresh water for pets and put it in the shade.
  • Create circulation with fans if you don’t have a/c – and make there’s a fan pointing outward to push hot air out of the room.
  • Put a bowl of cold water (with ice, if possible) in front of a fan for an extra cooling effect.
  • Try closing all doors, windows, and curtains right before the sun comes up to keep cooler evening air inside longer.
  • Cover your feet and shoulders with wet towels and washcloths.
  • Create a space in the basement, if you have one, since it’s often cooler down there.
  • Turn off electronics that give off heat when plugged in (such as computers and lamps with incandescent light bulbs).
  • Try not to use the stove or oven.
  • If there’s no relief in your home, visit public buildings (such as shopping malls or libraries) with air conditioning.
  • Avoid large, protein-rich meals to keep the body from creating its own metabolic heat.
  • Lay down in a shaded area and sip water if you get clammy, pale, lightheaded, nauseous, or develop a headache – this can turn into an emergency quickly, so don’t hide away in a hot room.
  • Keep some Gatorade or Pedialyte (or any oral hydration with essential minerals and potassium) to stave off dehydration.
  • Call 911 if you experience: cramps, swelling, fainting, a temperature over 100 degrees and rising, confusion, a rapid pulse, severe nausea, a severe headache, and skin that’s warm and dry – it could be heat stroke, which can lead to coma and death.

— WTF fun facts

Sources: “Heat-Related Illness” — CDC
“Climate Change indicators” — EPA
“11 Facts About Heat Waves” — DoSomething.org

WTF Fun Fact 12718 – Crickets Can Tell You The Temperature

Let’s get one thing out of the way up front. While we call the method of measuring temperature using cricket chirps “Dolbear’s law,” the idea was first laid out in 1881 by Margarette W. Brooks. Her report “Influence of temperature on the chirp of the cricket” was published in Popular Science Monthly, it just wasn’t noticed until after Amos Dolbear published an 1897 article called “The Cricket as a Thermometer” 16 years later.

Regardless, it’s known as Dolber’s law, and it states that there is a connection between the air temperature and the rate at which crickets chirp. And it’s accurate for the field cricket within about 1 degree Fahrenheit.

It’s kind of like counting the seconds between lightning strikes and thunder, except way more inconvenient.

However, it is true that crickets chirp more speedily as the weather warms up. Dolbear realized this because crickets chirp consistently – that makes it possible to use the numbers in an equation.

In the original paper, Dolbear said you can get the approximate temperature in degrees Fahrenheit based on the times a cricket chirps in 1 minute – but you have to do some more math.

T_{F}=50+\left({\frac {N_{{60}}-40}{4}}\right).
In other words, T = 50+[(N-40)/4]
T = temperature
N = number of chirps per minute

If you want a shortcut for Celcius, you can use the number of chirps in 8 seconds and add 5.

Of course, there are many types of crickets, and Dolbear realized they each had a different rate of chirping. So he created new equations for other species. The problem for us is that we have to know which type of cricket we’re dealing with.

In fact, the common field cricket really isn’t the best cricket to use since its age, and whether it’s mating season can also affect the speed at which they chirp (so they’re not entirely consistent). But they’re probably good enough for a quick experiment. –WTF fun facts

Source: “How to Use Crickets to Calculate Temperature” — Thought Co.

WTF Fun Fact 12717 – Humanity In A Meatball

Turns out we’re not much to look at if you were to put all of humanity in a blender and use the solid parts to create a giant meatball.

On a Reddit forum called r/theydidthemath, user kiwi2703 made some gruesome calculations and found that the nearly 8 billion humans on Earth could be blended into a goo sphere that’s actually pretty small, all considering.

We’re not sure what motivated them to come up with this little math trick, but it did make us say “WTF?!” – and that’s why we’re all here, right?

Behold:

[Self] If you blended all 7.88 billion people on Earth into a fine goo (density of a human = 985 kg/m3, average human body mass = 62 kg), you would end up with a sphere of human goo just under 1 km wide. I made a visualization of how that would look like in the middle of Central Park in NYC. from theydidthemath

— WTF fun facts

Source: “Blended Up, Every Living Human In The World Would Make A Meatball Just Three Eiffel Towers Wide” — IFL Science

WTF Fun Fact 12713 – da Vinci’s “Helicopter”

It’s hard to put into words the genius of Leonardo da Vinci. You have to look beyond his paintings and into his notebooks to see just how masterfully his brain worked. It’s like he understood the secrets of nature in a way no one else could (either then or now).

For example, in the 1480s, he was already imagining ways to create flying machines. And some might call his “aerial screw” the forerunner of the helicopter. That’s an innovation that it took us 400 more years to actually create!

(It’s only fair to mention that de Vinci’s drawing is not the first-ever of a helicopter-type vehicle. In 400 BCE, Chinese Taoist scholar Ge Hong described a “vertical flying machine” made of bamboo in the Baopuzi, though he was referring to a spinning toy. And since Chinese manuscripts made their way to Europe during the Renaissance, da Vinci was possibly influenced by this. It certainly influenced future helicopter inventors.)

Today, we even call the Renaissance artist’s invention “da Vinci’s helicopter” these days, and he wrote an entire treatise on flight. Just look at a page to see what he was capable of:

From: https://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/codex/codex.cfm#page-20-21

In the modern world, companies still bicker over who invented the first real helicopter, so it’s just more fun to give credit to da Vinci.

Of course, the aerial screw isn’t the same helicopter we have today. It’s not like he built a gas engine or anything, but he did conceive of a blade that would lift a vehicle vertically off the ground. His blades were not flat but shaped like a screw or helix.

As physicist Tom Hartsfield described in Big Think:

“What da Vinci lacked was the modern materials necessary to construct a lightweight and durable blade. He described the helical screw as being made of linen, with the pores stopped up by starch.

He also lacked the continuous motive power for such a machine. Men turning cranks could never dream of flying: they are far too heavy and too weak to produce enough power to lift themselves…Cognizant of this limitation, da Vinci envisioned a spring, wound by the crank turners, building up and storing energy. That built-up energy could be released in a quick unwinding burst, spinning the screw rotor. But as far as we know, such a device was never built.”  — WTF fun facts

Source: “15th-century futurism: Leonardo da Vinci’s famous helicopter design finally takes flight” — Big Think