Month: October 2019

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When the Pollen Count Goes Up, Violent Crime Goes Down

Much in the same way you feel like crap when allergies attack, it turns out criminals are less likely to go about their regular day when they’re not feeling up to snuff.

Image Credit: Pixabay

We know this because of a study recently published in the Journal of Health Economics, which found that when large cities experience a drop in violent crime, it typically happens while the pollen count is unusually high.

“Leveraging daily variation in local pollen counts in 16 US cities, we present novel evidence that violent crime declines by approximately 4% on days in which the local pollen count is unusually high. …While this might sound like a small behavioral response, it is on par with the change in crime that would be expected to accrue from a 10% increase in the size of a city’s police force.”

The researchers looked at crime levels in Chicago, Georgia, and New York, and while the results matched up when it came to violent crime – even domestic violence – property crimes did not seem to be affected.

Image Credit: Pixabay

It seems that if a plan to rob a house or a bank is already in progress, no one is going to cancel because they’re under the weather. Gotta pay the bills and all that.

“Given that the effects we observe are driven by a decline in a residential, mostly family violence, despite the fact that, if anything, there is more residential interaction on high pollen days, this is not merely a story about a change in opportunity or routine activities.”

It’s pretty remarkable when you think about it – even though people are more likely to be at home, where domestic violence typically occurs – these violent crimes are still less frequent.

“Violence responds to other situational factors which shift the costs and benefits of offending and precaution: malaise driven by pollen allergies.”

Image Credit: Pixabay

Basically, people may be too drowsy or unwell to commit crimes of passion.

The authors of the study believe that their findings show not just how crime is sensitive to allergens, but how it can be affected by changes to public health altogether.

“Our results do not show evidence of temporal displacement or state dependence, and hence the data are most consistent with the proportion that high pollen days prevent crime rather than delay it.”

So, people don’t “make up” for their drowsy, crime-free days by doing more crime afterward – the high allergy days actually seem to prevent crime.

I’m not sure how local law enforcement could take all of this into consideration, but I feel like they should be able to, don’t you?

Let’s figure it out together in the comments…

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Google Maps Is Adding Alerts for Speed Traps and Other Road Incidents

Are you one of the drivers out there who sticks to Waze for navigation purposes because it lets you know other useful info, such as where police cars are hiding in wait to give you a speeding ticket? Well, you can soon switch to Google Maps and enjoy the same perks.

Google Maps is finally adding this feature to its own navigation system. Users will be able to report speed traps, crashes, road closures, construction, slowdowns, disabled vehicles and objects on the road. Some of those updates are already available on Android devices, but they’re now being rolled out globally to Apple users as well.

Photo Credit: iStock

“This feature has been one of our most popular on Android, and we’re excited to expand it to iOS,” Google Product Manager Sandra Tseng wrote in a recent blog post.

“Google Maps has always helped people get from point A to B in the easiest way possible. Today, we’re adding more tools that reflect real-time contributions from the community so you can stay even more informed when you’re behind the wheel.”

Photo Credit: Google

Submitting a report through Google Maps is simple and streamlined. You simply tap on the + sign and then click “Add a report.”

Unlike on Waze, there’s no option to add comments or photos to your report, so there’s less detail available — but also less clutter.

This is exactly the sort of thing I like in an update. It’s easy, it’s useful, and it makes me actually want to bother to go through with downloading new software.

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Take a Look at This Bizarre Crayfish Species of All Females Who Clone Themselves by the Hundreds

Whoa…

The marbled crayfish looks like a regular crayfish. They live in fresh waterways, rivers and streams like regular crayfish. But they are so much more creepy.

The Procambarus virginalis is a crayfish with an ominous ability. First, they are all female.

Also, they clone themselves.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia

German biologist Frank Lyco was the first to notice something amiss about the extra large crayfish. An aquarium enthusiast told him he picked up the creature he called a Texas crayfish (aka a marmokreb) at a pet shop in 1995.

The man told Lyco the crayfish just kept laying eggs. He had so many live crayfish, he started giving them away to friends. It wasn’t too long before they could be found in aquarium and pet stores across Europe.

But the strangest part was that all the crayfish were female. They laid hundreds and hundreds of eggs with no males for fertilization, but the eggs still hatched hundreds and hundreds of crayfish—all females and all exact clones of the mother.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia

The females, once matured, would in turn lay her hundreds of eggs…

Yikes (that’s a scientific term).

Aquarium owners reported having hundreds of offspring from one crayfish. In 2003, biologists sequenced the crayfish DNA and confirmed the animals were exact clones.

Twenty-five years ago, these crayfish didn’t exist. Now, they number in the millions, thriving in the wild, throughout Europe, Japan and Madagascar.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

As aquarium hobbyists are finding out, even the largest tanks will fill with marbled crayfish fast. Extra animals often get dumped into rivers, but the dump-ees are hardy and can walk for hundreds of yards to fresh water… where they clone themselves to the contentment of their hearts.

So, where did the first weirdo come from?

Lyco and his team sequenced the marbled crayfish genome and discovered this new crustacean was a result of a major mutation in the form of a copied chromosome in a slough crayfish from the Saltilla River in Florida and Georgia. This mutation meant that there were two of each chromosome in its sex cells instead of the usual one. About 30 years ago, the mutated slough crayfish mated. The offspring was super hardy and had three copies of chromosomes in their sex cells.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia

And they could reproduce themselves.

Now what?

Well, Lyco told The New York Times the crayfish could thrive for a hundred thousand years, which is not all that long evolution-wise. Or, because there’s no genetic variation in the clones, one pathogen could bring the whole species down.

So there’s that.

But for the blip in time in which we now live, we’re sharing our space with mutant, self-cloning crayfish.

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Good News! You Can Build a ‘Gingerbread’ House out of Oreo Cookies!

It’s a time-honored winter tradition to make holiday-themed houses out of cookies and frosting. Now there’s a brand new type of cookie house that is, frankly, making gingerbread houses look very boring in comparison. The Oreo Holiday Chocolate Cookie House is here, folks, and it comes in a ready-to-use kit.

The Oreo Holiday Chocolate Cookie House kit comes with pre-baked chocolate cookie pieces, pre-made icing, and of course, plenty of miniature Oreo cookies. There are also some fruity gummies and candy jewels to decorate your house to true Christmas-y perfection (I know, it’s October, but the thing was released, and it’s AWESOME, so get over it).

Photo Credit: Nabisco

The kit is available for $10 at Big Lots, or you can buy a mini version for $6.

“Get the family together this winter for some afternoon fun!” the item’s description reads. “This kit includes everything you need to build and decorate your very own OREO holiday chocolate cookie house. Just open the box and start building!”

Gingerbread houses are great and all, but man, doesn’t an Oreo house sound amazing? It’s basically a giant house-shaped Oreo. What’s not to love?

Shoppers have also spotted the kits at select CVS stores. Christmas is still many weeks away, so hopefully as the holiday gets sooner, these kits will start popping up at more locations.

Traditional gingerbread houses aren’t always the tastiest, especially once they’ve been sitting out for days. But an Oreo house? Probably won’t remain uneaten for long.

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Thousands of Tarantulas Are Roaming the San Francisco Area Searching for Mates

Attention: people of San Francisco, don’t freak out—but there are thousands of tarantulas casually roaming your city right now.

The tarantulas are out and about throughout the entire San Francisco Bay Area. They’re making a show not for Halloween, but because the weather has been drier and warmer than usual, causing male Bay Area blond tarantulas, the only tarantulas that are native to the region, to come out and look for a mate.

Residents have been spotting the creatures on trails, roads, and parks.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

After the males successfully mate, they die. “They’re not returning home,” Cameron Morrison, supervising state park peace officer for Mount Diablo State Park, explained to ABC News. “That’s their final voyage, basically.”

The male tarantulas are up to 4 inches in length, while females are the size of a nickel. But experts say not to fear them—they are “gentle giants,” Cameron says. “They’re very reluctant to bite you. I’ve never had someone say that they were bitten by a tarantula.” Also, if one did bite you for some reason, it would be less severe than a bee sting (even though their fangs are quite large). Their hairs can cause skin irritation, though, so it’s not a good idea to handle them.

Photo Credit: iStock

Usually, by this time of year, the male tarantulas have already done their mating and died. But thanks to seasonal weather changes, they’re still on the prowl. Lucky California!

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A Man’s Strange Reaction to Antibiotics Has His Guts Brewing Alcohol

Well, this is odd.

A week into his course of cephalexin, a common antibiotic prescribed to ward off infection in an injured thumb, a man checked into the emergency room with some strange symptoms.

They included memory loss, brain fog, and episodes of depression, along with personality changes and uncharacteristic aggression.

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Among my sleep studies research there are numerous notes about how alcohol disrupts sleep. Because it causes the brain to be simultaneously in alpha and delta activity patterns (one’s for being wide awake, the other for being in deep sleep), and blocks REM sleep, and messes with adenosine production interrupting your circadian rhythm, and aggravating breathing problems such as snoring and sleep apnea. . This has me thinking about a recently-discovered, seemingly-rare condition known as auto brewery/gut fermentation syndrome. It’s a condition in which the naturally-occurring yeast in your gut causes the sugars you consume to ferment into alcohol. Known cases lead to folks becoming drunk as a result of drinking fruit juice (for example), but — as with any condition — there should be cases that run the gambit between in-your-face (drunkenness) and subtle-enough-to-be-misdiagnosed-as-a-dozen-other-things-if-at-all. . With this in mind: What if an individual’s daily sugar intake, daily energy use, and overall gut yeast levels are balanced in such a way that their gut doesn’t automatically create alcohol during the day, but then at night (with some sugars still in the system and physical activity coming to a halt) the gut then creates alcohol? That person would have no trouble falling asleep, but would regularly have trouble staying asleep. . It’s just a theory. But it’s a theory that can be checked (at least on the individual level) via stool test and or glucose challenge test. And for those struggling to get a proper diagnosis for sleep issues, those are tests worth taking. . If it turns out a person has secondary insomnia resulting from auto brewery syndrome, that means there’s only a handful of underlying conditions that could be causing the whole kit-n-kaboodle. Because no one’s born with auto brewery syndrome, it arises as a result of some other condition creating too much yeast in your gut. And that really helps to narrow down the possibilities. . And as someone whose OCD was misdiagnosed and punished in equal measure for about 25 years before we finally knew what was what, if even one random-ass theory can help someone get to the right diagnosis a little fast

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Doctors were unable to get to the root of the cause, and he suffered those same symptoms for some time. Three years later, a psychiatrist treated him with antidepressants, but his issues persisted.

Things came to a head when he was pulled over on suspicion of drink driving, and was found to have a blood-alcohol level of 200mg/dL (about the equivalent of 7-10 drinks, depending on your weight). He was nauseous, vomiting, impaired, had no memory of the event, and passed out in the hospital.

The patient, however, insisted he had not had one single drink.

It was his aunt who brought him a breathalyzer, and as he tracked his measurements over time, he received similar readings.

A doctor in Ohio administered a carbohydrate test, where the patient consumes carbohydrates and then has their blood-alcohol levels monitored over the course of several hours, and found elevated alcohol levels in his blood. They also found brewer’s yeast in his stool, and eventually diagnosed him with auto-brewery syndrome (ABS).

The syndrome, also known as gut fermentation syndrome, is extremely rare. It causes the digestive system to produce ethanol that makes you intoxicated. Several cases have been reported over the years, usually discovered under similar circumstances (people arrested for drunk driving without having a drink).

This man, however, is the first documented case of ABS stemming from a course of antibiotics.

“We postulate that the antibiotic altered his gut microbiome, allowing fungal growth. This diagnosis should be considered in any patient with positive manifestations of alcohol toxicity who denies alcohol ingestion.”

He was given antifungal medications and, despite a relapse after a night of pizza and soda, is doing well.

I’m not saying this will work if you ever find yourself on the wrong end of a traffic stop, but I mean. It could be your guts making beer, and you just don’t know it.

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People Share What They Have Absolutely Zero Sympathy for

Do you have things that make your blood boil and you have ZERO SYMPATHY for the people who commit them? Maybe it’s littering, bad drivers, etc.?

Whatever they are, share yours in the comments so we can see what gets everybody out there extremely PO’d.

AskReddit users did not hold back in their responses.

1. No litterbugs allowed.

“People who litter. One that really boils my piss is whenever it’s a nice sunny day, we don’t go to our local beaches. Hell none of the locals do in the holidays, because they’re packed with literal bus loads of tourists coming in from the cities, bringing their entire extended families to cause chaos and havoc everywhere. And the litter they leave is insane. It’s worse than some of the festivals I’ve been to.”

2. Don’t listen to other people.

“People who make fun of other people starting new things. Makes people leave hobbies that could’ve been their favourite thing to in their spare time. Made me lose interest in speed-cubing, because that community can be pretty toxic to new people.”

3. Can you help me out?

“People that go to foreign countries with strict and unreasonable consequences for minor infractions that expect their home country to bail them out when they they try to steal something/commit a crime (in the eyes of the country they are in). I feel bad for their families for having a such a stupid relative.”

4. On to the impound lot.

“People who get towed when they leave their car running in the fire lane in front of supermarkets.”

5. Always the victim.

“People who act like the victim with everything, after dating one for a while it finally hits you how cancerous it is, it weighed on my mental health and I almost went to a psyche ward, her ghosting me was the best thing to ever happen to me last year.”

6. Maybe you should stop having kids?

“People who won’t stop having kids even though all you hear from them is griping about how they have no money or a life of their own or they’re tired all the time or they say stuff like “but this is so haaaaard”. Don’t act surprised that that kind of shit happens once you start having kids; it’s some of the most common frigging knowledge in the world. And don’t start palming off your younger kids on your older ones all the time, either; you wanted a baseball team, you gotta coach ’em all.

(This is not about parents whose older children want to help or have some responsibilities like helping their siblings with tying shoes and whatall. This is about parents whose older kids don’t get to be kids because they are too busy raising their siblings.)”

7. These people are the worst.

“People who take their anger out on people who can’t defend themselves. doesn’t matter if it’s customer service people, their spouse, their kids, some homeless person, an animal… just get your shit together and deal with your own problems instead of becoming someone else’s.”

8. Just be nice to everyone.

“People who treat everybody like garbage then complain about being lonely. Like, I’m not getting paid to be here. If you act like a dick I’m leaving.”

9. I’ll be with you…later.

“Guests who sit down and aren’t served within 30 seconds even though I acknowledged them while helping another guest: “HELLO? CAN I GET SOME SERVICE HERE??” “

10. This drives me INSANE.

“Needing to listen to music badly enough that you play your phone speaker on public transportation.”

11. It’s okay to say no.

“I have zero sympathy for a parent that never says no to their child.”

12. Not going to associate with you.

“Manipulators. As soon as I see you trying to bend someone’s actions/emotions towards your gain, we don’t need to associate anymore.”

13. Don’t sweat the little stuff.

“People who lose their shit over things that don’t matter for example when McDonalds runs out of sauce.”

14. I’m with this.

“I entirely lack sympathy for people that abuse animals and kids or the elderly. In fact, those people actually inspire homicidal tendencies whenever I hear about their bullshit.”

15. Too lazy to move your hand?

“People who do not use their blinker while driving. Why? You’re too lazy to move your hand for a second? You expect everyone else on the road to read your mind?”

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A Beekeeper Turned Thieving Bears into (Unpaid) Honey-Tasters

If you’re a person of a certain age, then there’s a good chance the characters from Winnie the Pooh are near and dear to your heart.

Which also means that you’ve been aware for basically your whole life that bears really, really love honey.

Like Pooh, giant bears will go to great lengths to get to honey they’ve sniffed out – and even though the ensuing videos may be adorable to the masses, for to bee farmers…not so much.

The bears can cause damage to hives that can cost thousands of dollars to repair, so most keepers work hard to keep them away. But when Ibrahim Sedef’s ideas of putting up metal cages and leaving out different bear-fare like bread and fruit didn’t work, he had a rather adorable lightbulb moment.

Maybe the bears could be brought on as quality control.

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Beekeeper turns honey-stealing bears into taste testers #FACTS AUG. 29, 2019 – These #bears just wanted a little smackerel from the honey pot. And #beekeeper Ibrahim Sedef is using their honey-loving palates to his advantage Sedef, an agricultural engineer in #Turkey, is constantly trying to protect his hives from the many sweet-toothed bears in his neighborhood, on the country’s #BlackSea coast. His efforts got downright scientific when he began experimenting with various tactics to divert their paws away from his liquid gold Ever the scientist, Sedef eventually decided that if he couldn’t beat them, he could at least learn from them — particularly their expert taste for #honey So he set up a night-vision camera on his bee farm, and laid out a table with five varieties of honey for the bears to taste test Sedef told Turkish outlet DHA that the bears, in fact, had a very refined sense of smell that led them first to the rare Anzer honey from the Ballıköy plateau region, which they slurped up the most. According to Ahval News, the Turkish honey goes “1,000 liras ($171) per kilo,” and is considered “among the most expensive honeys on the market.” #Anzerhoney is the most famous of all Turkish honeys, said to be, of course, the best honey in the world Of course, New Zealanders say manuka honey is the best, Australians say it’s berringa honey, Indians say it’s Maharishi honey, Russians say it’s Bashkir honey, Arabs say it’s sidr honey, Malaysians say it’s gelam honey or tualang honey and the list can continue. Basically each country can pretend it produces the best honey in the world #FOODNINFO #FOODNETWORK #FOODANDWINE #TASTY #TOPCHEF #LEFOODING #huffpostgram #HUFFPOSTTASTE #EATER #LAEATS #EATERDENVER #NETFLIXFOOD #CHEFSROLL #chefsofinstagram #SAFOODIE #EATERLA #DISCOVERY #NATURE #ANIMALPLANET

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He installed photo trap cameras that could track the bears roaming his farm, mostly at night, and then set up a table topped with labeled bowls of different kinds of honey.

It worked.

The bears didn’t disturb the hives, since the honey was ready and waiting, and now Sedef – and the rest of us – know which honey a true connoisseur would prefer.

It turns out bears have expensive taste, because they devoured the Anzer honey first – it goes for around $150 a pound in Turkey – while leaving the cherry blossom honey untouched.

Now you know that the “good” honey really does taste much better – even the bears agree that you get what you pay for (even if they’re not technically paying).

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This Is Kind of Scary. Antibiotic Resistance in Germs Has Doubled in the past 20 Years.

There are a lot of things to worry about these days, but if you’re a germophobe (like my husband) or someone obsessed with the idea that we’re all going to die in a pandemic (like me), then you’ve probably spent at least some time wondering what’s going to happen when antibiotics stop being widely effective.

I mean…the world before antibiotics was a pretty harrowing place.

And now, research is finding that the number of cases in which people experience infections that are resistant to antibiotics is sharply on the rise.

Preliminary findings, which were presented at United European Gastroenterology Week Barcelona 2019, focused on conditions related to the Helicobacter pylori bacteria – gastric ulcer, lymphoma, and gastric cancer – and found that resistance to the typical antibiotic treatment has risen to nearly 21.6% (from 9.9% in 1998).

 

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Similar rises have been seen with other common antibiotic treatments.

Antibiotic resistance happens when bacteria evolve a tolerance to the drugs we use to eliminate them from our bodies body. Recently, the issue has gotten attention from the WHO, as well as national and regional health organizations in the U.S. and the EU.

 

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Right now, around 56,000 people die worldwide every year when antibiotics fail to treat their infections. Of course, according to this research, we can expect that number to rise, says lead author Francis Megraud.

“With resistance rates to commonly used antibiotics such as clarithromycin increasing at an alarming rate of nearly 1% per year, treatment options for H. pylori will become progressively limited and ineffective if novel treatment strategies remain undeveloped. The reduced efficacy of current therapies could maintain the high incidence rates of gastric cancer and other conditions such as peptic ulcer disease if drug resistance continues to increase at this pace.”

 

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Not being able to counter the effects of H. pylori is especially telling – and bad, as children are often the ones infected.

“The findings of this study are certainly concerning, as H. pylori is the main cause of peptic disease and gastric cancer. The increasing risk of H. pylori to a number of commonly-used antibiotics may jeopardize prevention strategies.”

If you’re worried about yourself or your family, the best thing you can do is not take antibiotics for infections that are likely viral, not all that bothersome, or will run their course on their own without excessive discomfort.

Easier said than done, I know, but you’ll be toughing out a lot worse if these bacteria evolve faster than we do.

Real talk.

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Here’s a Weird Beauty Trend: Makeup on Babies

Can anybody help me out with why this is a thing?

I’m not sure if some or all of these pics are Photoshopped (I think so?), but it’s still just…weird.

Take a look at the evidence.

1. Get a load of that…

2. OMG, what is happening?

3. Wise beyond her years. I think.

4. He’s not feeling it.

5. Wide-eyed with trepidation.

6. A wee bit too much eye shadow.

7. A total nightmare, in my humble opinion.

8. Looks like a doll.

9. Spruce up those baby blues.

10. Okay, I think we’ve all had enough.

Do you find this strange like I do?

Sound off in the comments!

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