Category: Science

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Appalling but Real Scientific Research Says You Should Make Tea in the Microwave

Sorry to all my British friends out there…

It’s time to ditch those pretty, whistling teapots (and having to wait 10 minutes for hot water) because science says the best way to brew a cuppa is in the microwave.

There is a method to measure a good cup of tea, apparently, and it is by how much of the catechins and caffeine contained in the leaves you can get into the brew (more being better). With the microwave method, you get 80% and 92%, respectively.

Catechins are a complex group of chemical compounds that are potentially good for your cardiovascular health, while caffeine’s effects – positive and negative – on the human body are well-documented.

And the microwave gives you way, way more of both than the traditional method of adding kettle-boiled water to your teabag.

So, here’s your new tea-making routine:

  1. Put hot water in the cup with your teabag.
  2. Put the whole thing in the microwave, set to 500 watts, and set the timer for 60 seconds.
  3. Wait another 60 seconds, dunk your teabag up and down 10 times, squeeze it out, and enjoy.

If you need more reason, look no further than David Tennant, whose Broadchurch character was seen microwaving his tea on the show. It caused a flutter of horror among tea enthusiasts, but according to researchers like Dr. Quan Vuong, microwaving also extracts more nutrients from green tea leaves.

I guess technology might actually be worth something after all?

If you can bring yourself to retire your grandmother’s tea pot to the china cabinet, I mean.

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15 Downsides of Smoking Marijuana That People Don’t Talk About Enough

As legalization sweeps the country, weed is becoming more acceptable. Smoking weed after work is basically the new version of having a glass of wine. But surely there are some potential downsides to weed, and one AskReddit thread had people chatting all about it. Here are 15 downsides of weed that people don’t talk about, courtesy of Redditors.

1. Lack of appetite.

“Not having an appetite if you’re not high. You have to smoke heavily though to get to that point.”

2. All thought, no action.

“Been smoking everyday for the past decade and am recently realizing that being too introspective can be a negative thing at times – I’ve been thinking too much and acting too little.”

3. Cognitive issues.

“Both my roommates are heavy smokers, and they just… think so slowly. It takes them forever to understand anything. They also forget a lot of stuff, like they’ll step away from the dishes for a moment and then never finish them without prompting.”

4. A one-track mind.

“It can become your only personality trait.”

“Some of my peers’ only goal is when they are going to get their next high and like they are so stuck in the culture that they just become sort of boring and their personality lacks dimension.”

“I lost a significant chunk of my best friends in college because by senior year all they were focused on was weed.”

5. Loss of motivation.

“It is fine in moderation, but multiple times per day seems to suck the ambition from most people I’ve seen, including myself long ago.”

“I used to smoke every day multiple times a day and I can confirm: it made me useless and killed my motivation. It also contributed to me losing my job.”

“It makes you okay with being just okay.”

6. Anxiety or panic.

“Things that aren’t currently stressing you out may start to induce anxiety in you. While this isn’t always the case, weed has the potential to worsen your mental state if you aren’t careful. This impact became more pronounced when I smoked weed solo, having other people around allowed me to be more present in the moment, whereas I was in my head when I was alone.”

7. Poor conversational skills.

“I’ve noticed after the initial uptick in chatter- people tend to get really quiet, and zoned out in their own thoughts.

When I used to smoke it, I found it had a dulling effect on my personality and conversational skills after the fact, too.”

“Yeah I’d never tell any of my sweet lovely friends this in real life in case it hurt their feelings, but a couple of them are a lot less fun after they smoke weed.”

8. No more dreams at night.

“One thing that I never see brought up is the effect of marijuana on dreaming. Marijuana use can prevent the user from dreaming during regular sleep. When the user stops using Marijuana for a while, they can experience night after night of extremely vivid dreams. I can only speak for my own experience, but I have heard this echoed by a co-worker’s dad who started smoking again because he couldn’t handle “having acid-trip dreams every night”.

I suspect that marijuana has some potent effect on REM sleep that will remain under-documented until it is de-scheduled and more thorough research can be done.”

9. Vomiting.

“Cannabinoid hyperemesis and cyclic vomiting syndrome.”

“Yeah my ex had cyclic vomiting syndrome so bad, but he smoked weed to help him fight the nausea turns out it was making him worse off. Not a lot of people know about this one, where I’m from at least.”

“I started smoking regularly at night to assuage anxiety and kick start my appetite and eventually ended up developing this super fun condition. It’s absolutely awful. I thought I was pregnant and or dying.”

10. Dependency.

“Its not that its super addicting its just nothing is as fun as being high so you want to be high all the time.”

“As a pretty consistent weed smoker, I don’t like when people say that weed isn’t addicting. They’re right in saying that it’s not addictive chemically like nicotine or something, you can still get addicted to not being sober.”

“I’ve been a daily user for the last 15 (or more) years and my mind automatically starts to feel like I’m not relaxing if I haven’t smoked.”

11. A higher tolerance.

“The one most annoying thing with being a smoker is your tolerance level goes way up so even though you are smoking you arent getting that high you used to get, just a mind numbing insomnia almost.”

12. Triggering psychosis.

“It can trigger psychosis if you’re susceptible to it already.”

“I had a friend go through a mental break after smoking a lot. Had to be admitted and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder (which ran in their family).”

“NPR did a report about a study done in the UK, saying that heavy pot smokers are 3x more likely to have a psychotic episode than people who never smoked at all.”

13. Brain development.

“There is “moderate evidence” that acute marijuana use can impair learning, memory, and attention, leading to a reasonable argument that it shouldn’t be consumed by those under about 25 since the brain is still developing during that time.”

14. Money.

“If you use it regularly it can become super expensive.”

15. Disassociation.

“Cannabis induced disassociation. Can completely ruin your life.”

“I’ve had it (I think it materialized from my generalized anxiety disorder) but it was the scariest fucking thing when it first happened. You feel like you’re in a fog, and disconnected from everything. Took about 8 months for me to shake it.”

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This Is Why Your Phone Struggles for Service on Airport Tarmacs

One thing is certain when you’re on the tarmac: your cell phone service sucks. Unfortunately for passengers sending a “taking off” or “just landed” text from the airport tarmac, the message never seems to reach its destination in a timely fashion.

From a logical perspective, perhaps being trapped inside a sealed metal plane explains why your cell phone struggles for service worse than me trying to make a decision at the buffet. It turns out you can blame the structural design of both airports and planes for the terribly slow service on the tarmac.

Christopher Schaberg, a writer for The Atlantic, spoke to three commercial pilots who fly for major airlines like Delta and British Airways in order to discover the secret behind the slow cell service on airport tarmacs. The professor at Loyola University of New Orleans discovered that cellular antennae often do not provide sufficient coverage to span the entire distance of an airport, including the tarmac.

Airports utilize distributed antenna systems that work best indoors. Unfortunately for travelers (and even pilots), those antennae really only work inside the terminal. That lack of capacity combined with the plane’s materials—which are obviously designed for structural integrity rather than connectivity—means that anyone sitting in the tarmac has a better chance of winning the lottery than refreshing their Instagram feed in a timely fashion.

And if your flight gets delayed, the connection conundrum only gets worse.

To avoid the painful boredom of sitting in the cabin with nothing to do, try downloading some content before boarding your flight. Having a few episodes of your favorite show stored in your downloads will come in handy to pass the time, especially if weather or technical issues cause a delay.

Believe me, bing-watching a few episodes of Breaking Bad is far better than thumbing through the safety evacuation manual.

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Here’s Why It’s Impossible for Someone to Open a Plane Door Mid-Flight

On rare occasions, an airplane passenger decides they want to trying to disrupt a flight…while in midair.

The bad news is the rest of the passengers can get quite a scare watching someone, who is usually drunk, have a breakdown and go for the exit door.

The good news is it’s impossible to get the door open while the plane is in flight.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia

There are a couple of reasons why no passenger, for any reason, could release a plane door during a flight.

The first reason is that plane doors are mechanically latched closed, and only the pilot has the controls to unlock them. Next time you’re in a plane making a landing, listen for the pilot’s announcement, “doors to manual.” At that point – and only at that point – the unlocking control is undone, allowing someone else to open the doors.

Pilot Patrick Smith, on his blog AskThePilot, explains that the reason why the doors can be opened once the plane is on the ground is in case of an emergency evacuation. A similar announcement, “disarm doors,” refers to the function of deploying slides, if needed. “Those slides can unfurl with enough force to kill a person, and you don’t want them billowing onto the jet bridge or into a catering truck.”

Photo Credit: Wikimedia

So, yes. If the plane is on the ground, it is possible for a passenger to get a door open.

But, in flight, it is literally impossible – and that’s because of reason #2…

Air pressure. Planes are pressurized on the inside during flights because of the lack of oxygen at typical cruising altitudes. We can’t breathe up there without pumped-in air.

Photo Credit: Flickr

The air that keeps the cabin pressurized so we can breathe also seals the doors shut. The doors actually fit the plane like plugs. To give you an idea of the amount of pressure keeping cabin doors sealed, at usual cruising altitude there will be eight pounds of pressure per square inch of the plane’s interior. This works out to 1,100 pounds pushing against every square foot of door.

Meaning no one is opening any airplane door while it’s flying. So get back to worrying about something more likely to happen: your luggage getting lost.

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A Terminally Ill Scientist Wants to Turn Himself Into a Cyborg Before He Passes Away

We sometimes joke from time to time about robot uprisings, the day when technology becomes too much for humanity to handle, or how we might be able to use it to be able to “live” forever. There have been countless television and movies that have explored those ideas (and associated fears) over the years – but now one scientist thinks he could actually live forever via tech.

Or at least become part robot.

Dr. Peter Bowman Scott-Morgan is a roboticist who has been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). It’s a degenerative condition, also known as Lou Gehrig’s. It has few treatment options and no cure, so Scott-Morgan decided to work toward becoming the “world’s first full cyborg.”

Image Credit: Twitter

After undergoing four medical procedures in an attempt to prolong and improve the quality of his life, he refers to himself as Peter 2.0.

Peter has a feeding tube that goes directly into his stomach, a catheter that goes directly into his bladder, a colostomy bag into his colon, and he also underwent a laryngectomy to remove is larynx, which connects his mouth and nose to his lungs.

He’s not able to speak with a natural voice and can breathe only with a respirator, but it also takes away the risk of  saliva accumulating into his lungs, which would basically cause him to drown.

He tweeted after coming home from the hospital the last time.

“Just home from 24 days in Intensive Care. All medical procedures now complete and a huge success. My mini-ventilator keeping me breathing is a LOT quieter than Darth Vader’s. All speech is synthetic but at last sounds like me again. Long research road ahead but in great spirits.”

Scott-Morgan writes on his website that he’s working on the “experiment of this life,” and plans to use his robotics knowledge to not only survive, but to thrive with a disease that spells the end for everyone who gets handed the diagnosis – over 220,000 people around the world.

In addition to the surgeries, he’s made big upgrades to his wheelchair that make it easier to move around his home, and will undergo laser eye surgery so that he can better read and control the computer screen using only his eyes – because in time, he won’t be able to control any of the other muscles in his body.

You can catch a documentary detailing his journey into becoming Peter 2.0 in 2020.

And for now, Peter is living happily in Devonshire with his husband, Francis.

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Wow! Playing Music Benefits Your Brain More Than Any Other Activity.

If you’re interested in strengthening your brain, playing a musical instrument is the best exercise you can do to improve brain function, make you happier and protect against dementia.

Learning to play an instrument actually changes brain structure and improves functioning better than any so-called brain games. Those who learn to play when they are young also have better long-term memory and brain development.

Photo Credit: Pexels

A study completed by researchers at the University of Montreal found musicians tend toward more mental alertness over those who don’t play.

Head researcher Simon Landry said,

The more we know about the impact of music on really basic sensory processes, the more we can apply musical training to individuals who might have slower reaction times. As people get older, for example, we know their reaction times get slower. So if we know that playing a musical instrument increases reaction times, then maybe playing an instrument will be helpful for them.

Previous to this study, Landry discovered musicians have faster auditory, tactile, and audio-tactile reaction times, and an altered statistical use of multisensory information.

Photo Credit: Pxhere

In other words, playing an instrument is a complex and emotional task requiring multiple senses, inputs and fine motor skills. This is what changes the brain and can also help musicians be successful in other fields, like business.

Scans of brains actually show physical differences between musicians and non-musicians. The huge bundle of nerves connecting the two sides of the brain, or the corpus callosum, is larger in the brains of musicians.

Learning an instrument at a young age leads to the biggest brain differences. Even if someone doesn’t dedicate the rest of their lives to an instrument, there are still drastic changes caused by even moderate or intermittent study. That’s because music instruction makes these changes in the brain more efficiently than any other activity (that we know of).

Photo Credit: Pxfuel

From strengthening speech processing to protecting against dementia, learning to play an instrument is like lifting weights for your brain. So forget the dumb brain games on your phone. Pick up guitar or find a piano teacher.

Your brain will thank you.

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For Some, Public Speaking Is Literally Scarier Than Death—Here’s Why

Many people have a fear of public speaking, but some people definitely have it worse than others. For some, public speaking is literally scarier than death.

In surveys about human fears, public speaking is commonly ranked at the top of the list. In some cases, it’s ranked above dying.

According to Psychology Today, this is because humans evolved to be social animals. Our community-oriented lifestyle helped us survive threats by cooperating with others — helping each other survive, fending off predators together, keeping each other alert, and so on.

When you depend on other humans to survive, social isolation is basically a death sentence. Avoiding isolation is baked into our instincts.

Photo Credit: iStock

“Ostracism appears to occur in all social animals that have been observed in nature,” Kip Williams, professor of psychological sciences at Purdue, told Psychology Today. “To my knowledge, in the animal kingdom, ostracism is not only a form of social death, it also results in death. The animal is unable to protect itself against predators, cannot garner enough food, etc., and usually dies within a short period of time.”

That’s why public speaking is so terrifying — it carries the risk of social rejection, and our bodies react accordingly. Your fight-or-flight response is triggered, and then come the sweaty palms, racing heartbeat, and inability to speak.

Photo Credit: iStock

Overcoming stage fright is all about teaching your body that public speaking can’t actually kill you, which can only happen through experience. The more times you get through it without disaster, the less scary it will be.

So get out there!

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Stars Are Disappearing and Scientists Aren’t Ruling out Aliens as a Cause

There have been a few stories lately when scientists and other suit-and-tie types have been unwilling to say aliens aren’t behind one thing or another – which I guess is the safest course, because no one likes to be proven wrong.

I mean, if a situation actually arose in which aliens were discovered, I doubt people would be running around pointing fingers at all of the folks who said aliens were a fantasy. But what do I know.

…But back to the story at hand, and the hundred-plus stars that have disappeared from the map.

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Yes, it turns out that the night sky, which has remained static enough to guide seamen and pirates and explorers for eons, is changing.

The Vanishing and Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations Project (VASCO) compares 70-year-old surveys with recent images of the night sky to document what has changed, and after years of painstaking work (there are a lot of stars, after all), they’ve published their results in the Astronomical Journal.

The 100-odd stars that were documented to have disappeared could represent short-lived flashes in the night, or they could be actual stars that disappeared.

The researchers hope their results, and results to come, will be relevant to astronomy and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI).

“VASCO is a project that is both a SETI project and a conventional astrophysics project,” explained Beatriz Villarroel, a researcher at the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics and one of the report’s coauthor. “Even if we do SETI and have SETI questions, we are also interested in publishing other results that we find along the way.”

The disappeared pinpricks of light are curious because when stars die, their last burst of glory is usually hard to miss – people saw and wrote about them long before there were telescopes – so if they can also just wink out without fanfare, well, we want to know why.

And to that end, some of the researchers don’t think we should rule out something like another advanced civilization blocking stars with their solar panels to gather energy.

For her part, Villarroel is on board.

“If we should look for aliens, maybe we should actually look for something that would be truly absurd to find.”

The research is being conducted by a team of 20 astronomers and astrophysicists who have compared 70 years worth of sky images taken by the US Naval Observatory and the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System.

They used software to analyze 600 million light sources that should have appeared in the earliest and most recent sets of data. At first,  the number of potential missing stars numbered around 150,000, but was winnowed down to 24,000 after some additional cross-referencing.

In the end, Villarroel is confident the 100 stars they presented are, indeed, missing.

“We have done the best work to remove anything that resembles any artifacts.”

If they are – or were – brief flashes that just happened to show up on the old US Navy surveys, they were likely red dwarf flares, variable stars that dimmed, or the afterglow of a gamma ray burst.

If they really were enduring light sources that disappeared without fanfare, Villarroel – and others – would be much more excited. SETI enthusiasts have speculated about how alien civilizations with advanced engineering power could shield a star from view.”You would have to exclude all-natural things, and then there might also be new natural phenomena that we don’t know about can be more exciting.”

If this is totally blowing your skirt up, the scientists at VASCO plan to implement a citizen science project that lets civilians help search through the rest of the 150,000 candidates.

You know you want to be the one who discovers the spot where technologically advanced aliens are hiding….

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You Can Now Buy a Stat-Tracking Smart Condom

In my mind, being intimate with a partner is something that should maintain some level of mystery.

Or at the very least, you should just be able to cuddle afterward instead of comparing stats like you’re trying to make the playoffs.

So, this might fall under the category of Nobody Asked For This, but British Condoms is giving it to you anyway: a penis ring that measures all of your stats during sex.

Meet the i.Con (seriously?), a penis ring that holds condoms in place, gathers information during the act, and then texts you or updates your app with all of the deets so you can (not) enjoy the afterglow.

It’s sort of like a Fitbit for your penis, and, honestly, it seems like a terrible idea. Frankly, one of the worst ideas I’ve heard in the last year, which is incredible because 2019 has been filled with disasters.

The i.Con’s nano-chips and sensors track your girth, velocity, calories burned, and so much more – it can even detect proteins or antigens associated with STIs (seems dubious to me…).

Everyone wants that text right after they finish enjoying themselves. Not.

If you’re some kind of masochist and dying to purchase this thing, you can preorder it for $73.58 (if you live outside the U.K. you’re going to need to ask someone to order it for you, though).

So. There you go.

Another technology win?

I guess you decide!

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In 1957 Little Richard saw a bright…

In 1957 Little Richard saw a bright red fireball flying across the sky, which he took as “sign from God” to repent from performing secular music and his wild lifestyle at the time until 1962. The fireball actually was the launching of the first artificial Earth satellite Sputnik 1.