Month: March 2017

United Parcel Service (UPS) celebrates its 110^th anniversary this year, but it’s not likely any of their drivers are going to stop for cake. With 4.9 billion packages routed via UPS trucks every year, their priority is getting your goods to your front door while maximizing productivity.

In their pursuit of expediency, in the 1970s UPS began mandating that its fleet of brown-clothed drivers avoid turning left whenever possible. While that might seem like a curious policy, it turns out that it’s the most economical way to distribute packages.

When motor vehicles turn left, they’re operating against the flow of traffic. In addition to creating safety issues with collisions, it also means a truck—say, one full of Amazon packages—is going to sit idling waiting for cross-traffic to abate before it can successfully navigate away from it, wasting both time and fuel.

To combat this, UPS uses an onboard navigational system they’ve dubbed ORION (On-Road Integrated Optimization and Navigation) to tell drivers the best route to take that’s made up primarily of right turns. By looping right during delivery runs, the company estimates it saves up to 10 million gallons of fuel every year and shortens paths by an average of six to eight miles.

Not all left turns are avoidable—UPS figures drivers go left about 10 percent of the time, or more if they’re in more rural areas. But the general rule of thumb is to keep right to keep on schedule.

Would that strategy work for all drivers? Not necessarily. According to traffic analysts, commuters and other non-commercial drivers are typically using the same route, minimizing the necessity to cut corners.

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If you feel inspired by Henry David Thoreau’s Walden but not inspired enough to isolate yourself in the woods for two years, you can now relive his experience by playing a video game. As The Verge reports, Walden: a game presents the theme and setting of the classic book in a modern package.

We first reported the video game last year, and it launched through the indie game marketplace itch.io in late February. A team of developers led by Tracy Fullerton, a University of Southern California professor and the director of USC Games, went to great lengths to ensure their creation channeled the source material. Players can find inspiration at Walden Pond, build a cabin, forage for food, and visit Ralph Waldo Emerson at the neighboring town.

If they so please, players can also make choices that contradict Thoreau’s original mission. Instead of living in seclusion, they can take the path of the successful writer and purchase fine suits from the local shop and ask their editor about public speaking opportunities. Thoreau’s words are hidden in descriptions of items and actions, hinting at the choices he himself would make.

Whether or not the same writer who championed surrendering everyday luxuries would approve of video games is up for debate. Video game players looking for a transcendental experience, or those who just want to relax with some virtual fishing, can purchase the game for $18.45.

[h/t The Verge]

Experts say a common, needle-free treatment for adults with migraines may be a good option for kids, too. They presented their findings on March 5 at the annual meeting of the Society of Interventional Radiology in Washington, D.C.

Your sphenopalatine ganglion (SPG) is a cluster of nerves pressed against the back wall of your nasal cavity. These nerves help inform the brain of all kinds of sensations, including pain, and have been a target for migraine treatments since the early 1900s. Today, adults with migraines and other head pain may be given an SPG block, in which a small catheter of local anesthetic is pushed into their nostril to numb the cluster of nerves. Doing so can bring fast relief and disrupt the debilitating migraine cycle.

The SPG block has been proven to be safe and effective—at least in adults. To find out if it could help kids, too, researchers at Phoenix Children’s Hospital recruited 85 migraine patients between the ages of 7 and 18. Each kid was asked to rate their pain on a scale of one to 10 before the treatment and again 10 minutes afterward.

Like their grownup counterparts, juvenile patients saw fast, significant pain relief with the SPG block. Post-treatment pain levels went down an average of more than two points on the 10-point scale. A two-point decrease may not sound like much, but it could help a kid with a migraine avoid missing school or—in the most severe cases—hospitalization.

Paper co-author Robin Kaye is section chief of interventional radiology at the hospital. She says the block has a lot of advantages, including eliminating the need for additional treatments. “By reducing the need for medications that come with serious side effects or intravenous therapies that may require hospital stays, children don’t have to miss as much school and can get back to being a kid sooner,” she said in a statement.

The treatment is currently only available at Phoenix Children’s, but Kaye says that will likely change soon, as she’s received a lot of interest from other pediatric radiologists.

She told mental_floss: “Until then, parents should either talk to their child’s pediatrician about the best plan of action to treat their child’s migraines, or seek out a pediatric neurologist that specializes in headaches and ask him/her about the possibility of their child receiving this treatment.”

Editor’s note: This post has been slightly updated for clarity.