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Why Cavemen Needed No Braces - Stanford University Press Blog
https://stanfordpress.typepad.com/blog/2018/05/why-cavemen-needed-no-braces.html, posted 2 Mar by peter in food health science
At its root, the problem we face is that we have entered a space age world with Stone Age genes – genes that evolved to produce jaws adapted to a hunter-gatherer diet. Today's jaws epidemic is concealed behind the commonplace. Its most obvious symptoms are oral and facial: crooked teeth (and the accompanying very common use of braces), receding jaws, a smile that shows lots of gums, mouth breathing, and interrupted breathing during sleep. A bother, but hardly an 'epidemic' – at least until one recognizes the relationship between malocclusion and a veritable host of downstream health consequences.
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Snake Oil Supplements — Information is Beautiful
https://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/snake-oil-scientific-evidence-for-nutritional-supplements-vizsweet/, posted 17 Feb by peter in health reference science statistics visualization
Which are the best supplements to take to enhance your health and wellbeing? We visualised all evidence for all health supplements in one chart. Now regularly updated with revitalising boosts of fresh data.
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Doing something is better than doing nothing for most people, study shows | EurekAlert! Science News
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-07/uov-dsi063014.php, posted 21 Dec by peter in cognition science
"What is striking," the investigators write, "is that simply being alone with their own thoughts for 15 minutes was apparently so aversive that it drove many participants to self-administer an electric shock that they had earlier said they would pay to avoid."
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Nuclear salt-water rocket - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_salt-water_rocket, posted 26 Oct by peter in energy science scifi space
A nuclear salt-water rocket (NSWR) is a theoretical type of nuclear thermal rocket which was designed by Robert Zubrin. In place of traditional chemical propellant, such as that in a chemical rocket, the rocket would be fueled by salts of plutonium or 20 percent enriched uranium. The solution would be contained in a bundle of pipes coated in boron carbide (for its properties of neutron absorption). Through a combination of the coating and space between the pipes, the contents would not reach critical mass until the solution is pumped into a reaction chamber, thus reaching a critical mass, and being expelled through a nozzle to generate thrust.
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「湿度が低いほうがウイルスがうつりやすい」富岳で計算
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/k10012661241000/k10012661241000.html, posted 14 Oct by peter in health injapanese science
グループで食事をするときの唾の広がり方も調べました。前に座った人より隣に座った人に唾が5倍多くかかりました。チームの人は、隣に座ると、ウイルスがうつる危険が高くなると言っています。
(A group of researchers found the risk of coronavirus spreading among people sitting together eating was five times higher when they were seated next to each other, compared to when they were sitting opposite.)
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Bli stark för livet | Forskning & Framsteg
https://fof.se/tidning/2020/8/artikel/bli-stark-for-livet, posted Aug '20 by peter in health inswedish science
Styrketräning kan förlänga livet och minska risken för hjärt- och kärlsjukdomar, diabetes och cancer. Även minnet förbättras. Ändå har styrketräning hamnat i bakvattnet av konditionsträning. Är det dags för en förändring?
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That "Five Monkeys Experiment" Never Happened
www.throwcase.com/2014/12/21/that-five-monkeys-and-a-banana-story-is-rubbish/, posted Aug '20 by peter in culture science
This story has been doing the rounds since 1996, and it has never been verified. It seems to have first appeared in a book called Competing For The Future by Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad, and by “appeared” I mean it was just made up. The authors never provided a source. None of the authors who have referred to the experiment in the past eighteen years have provided a source either. None of the appealing memes or infographics that describe the story now provide a source. Suffice to say, there is no source, because the experiment never happened.
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Mercury Colonization
einstein-schrodinger.com/mercury_colony.html, posted Jun '20 by peter in opinion science space
There is a good reason for colonizing another planet, which is to avoid extinction if the Earth is hit by a 10km or larger asteroid, as has happened many times in the Earth's history. Colonization of Mercury appears to be a very real and practical possibility, whereas colonization of Mars or the other planets, moons or asteroids is really more in the realm of fantasy.
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Wild hummingbirds can see colors that humans can't — study
https://www.inverse.com/science/wild-hummingbirds-can-see-colors-that-humans-cant-study, posted Jun '20 by peter in bird color science
Humans can't see UV light, but birds can. By combining spectral light with UV, researchers proved that birds can differentiate between those colors. This means that when the birds look at objects we can see as spectral light, they are likely seeing many more colors because that fourth cone gives the ability to see more color combinations.
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Future of the human climate niche | PNAS
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/04/28/1910114117, posted May '20 by peter in environment science
We show that for thousands of years, humans have concentrated in a surprisingly narrow subset of Earth’s available climates, characterized by mean annual temperatures around ∼13 °C. This distribution likely reflects a human temperature niche related to fundamental constraints. We demonstrate that depending on scenarios of population growth and warming, over the coming 50 y, 1 to 3 billion people are projected to be left outside the climate conditions that have served humanity well over the past 6,000 y. Absent climate mitigation or migration, a substantial part of humanity will be exposed to mean annual temperatures warmer than nearly anywhere today.