BrainStuff - HowStuffWorksThe short answer is “no.” Tune in to learn how long it really takes, plus how nuclear weapons led scientists to the solution.
Today’s question: Does your body really replace itself every 7 years?
The short answer is “no,” but don’t worry: This isn’t a case of chicanerous researchers pulling the wool of shoddy science over your eyes.
Your body mostly replaces itself every 7 to 15 years. Some bits are never replaced. Others, like the lining of your stomach and intestines, are renewed much faster. Due to constant wear and tear from the process of digestion, these cells have an average lifespan of just 5 days!
Yes, the organs that work the hardest have the fastest changeover. You get a whole new skin every 2 to 4 weeks. Your red blood cells last less than half a year – not bad, considering that their route through your circulatory system is about a thousand miles. And your liver renews itself at least once every couple of years. As the human body’s detoxifier, it goes through a lot.
Other tissues take longer to completely replenish themselves. Like your bones. Skeletal cells die and new ones grow constantly, but the complete process takes about 10 years. (And the process slows down as we get older, which is why our bones tend to get weaker as we age.)
And, like I said, some parts of your body stay with you for life. The cells on the inner lens of your eye formed when you were just an embryo. Your tooth enamel wears down with use, never to return.
And evidence indicates that you can’t regrow the neurons of your cerebral cortex. Its loss can lead to diseases like dementia. Luckily, other parts of your brain do regenerate. Like the hippocampus, which helps us create memories, and the olfactory bulb, which helps us smell.
So how do we know all this? Turns out, it’s thanks to our old pal nuclear weapons testing. Yeah! High-fives for radioactive stuff being released into the atmosphere!
No, really: Aboveground nuclear detonations during World War II and the Cold War spiked Earth’s air supply with extra carbon-14. It’s been declining back toward the norm at a predictable rate since the 1960s. Which means that you can use the amount of it present in any given tissue sample to determine when those cells were born. More carbon-14 means older cells.
Does The Human Body Really Replace Itself Every 7 Years?BrainStuff - HowStuffWorks2015-02-17 | The short answer is “no.” Tune in to learn how long it really takes, plus how nuclear weapons led scientists to the solution.
Today’s question: Does your body really replace itself every 7 years?
The short answer is “no,” but don’t worry: This isn’t a case of chicanerous researchers pulling the wool of shoddy science over your eyes.
Your body mostly replaces itself every 7 to 15 years. Some bits are never replaced. Others, like the lining of your stomach and intestines, are renewed much faster. Due to constant wear and tear from the process of digestion, these cells have an average lifespan of just 5 days!
Yes, the organs that work the hardest have the fastest changeover. You get a whole new skin every 2 to 4 weeks. Your red blood cells last less than half a year – not bad, considering that their route through your circulatory system is about a thousand miles. And your liver renews itself at least once every couple of years. As the human body’s detoxifier, it goes through a lot.
Other tissues take longer to completely replenish themselves. Like your bones. Skeletal cells die and new ones grow constantly, but the complete process takes about 10 years. (And the process slows down as we get older, which is why our bones tend to get weaker as we age.)
And, like I said, some parts of your body stay with you for life. The cells on the inner lens of your eye formed when you were just an embryo. Your tooth enamel wears down with use, never to return.
And evidence indicates that you can’t regrow the neurons of your cerebral cortex. Its loss can lead to diseases like dementia. Luckily, other parts of your brain do regenerate. Like the hippocampus, which helps us create memories, and the olfactory bulb, which helps us smell.
So how do we know all this? Turns out, it’s thanks to our old pal nuclear weapons testing. Yeah! High-fives for radioactive stuff being released into the atmosphere!
No, really: Aboveground nuclear detonations during World War II and the Cold War spiked Earth’s air supply with extra carbon-14. It’s been declining back toward the norm at a predictable rate since the 1960s. Which means that you can use the amount of it present in any given tissue sample to determine when those cells were born. More carbon-14 means older cells.
Episode description: Honeybees can heat and cool their hives to keep the temperature comfortable. Learn about one method -- bearding -- in this episode of BrainStuff.How Can a Sea Slug Use Solar Power? - BrainStuff 12/4/2019BrainStuff - HowStuffWorks2020-01-02 | Listen to the beginning of this episode of "How Can a Sea Slug Use Solar Power?" - BrainStuff
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Episode description: Americans eat a LOT of turkey around the winter holidays, but why? Learn about turkey's festive history and when we eat the most of it in this episode of BrainStuff.Do Dogs Have Belly Buttons? - BrainStuff 11/26/2019BrainStuff - HowStuffWorks2019-12-25 | Listen to the beginning of this episode of "Do Dogs Have Belly Buttons?" - BrainStuff
Episode description: Spoiler alert: Yep, all placental mammals have belly buttons, but dogs' and cats' look a little different than ours. Learn how belly buttons work in this episode of BrainStuff.How Did Turducken Become a Thing? - BrainStuff 11/25/2019BrainStuff - HowStuffWorks2019-12-24 | Listen to the beginning of this episode of "How Did Turducken Become a Thing?" - BrainStuff
Episode description: A chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a turkey. Yep. Learn the history of the turducken and what it takes to prepare one in this episode of BrainStuff.Can Your Brain Get Tired Like Your Muscles Do? - BrainStuff 11/22/2019BrainStuff - HowStuffWorks2019-12-23 | Listen to the beginning of this episode of "Can Your Brain Get Tired Like Your Muscles Do?" - BrainStuff
Episode description: We've all felt it: the dreaded brain drain after a long or taxing day. Learn why this occurs -- and what you can do to help prevent burnout -- in this episode of BrainStuff.How Did the Ancient Land Blob Called Gondwana Become Todays Southern Continents? - 11/21/2019BrainStuff - HowStuffWorks2019-12-20 | Listen to the beginning of this episode of "How Did the Ancient Land Blob Called Gondwana Become Today's Southern Continents?" - BrainStuff
Episode description: Just looking at a world map makes it clear that today's continents were once a single mass, but scientists are still researching how they came together and apart. Learn about the history of the Southern Hemisphere's continents in this episode of BrainStuff.Why Dont Evergreen Trees Lose Their Needles? - BrainStuff 11/20/2019BrainStuff - HowStuffWorks2019-12-19 | Listen to the beginning of this episode of "Why Don't Evergreen Trees Lose Their Needles?" - BrainStuff
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Episode description: You may have heard that people share about 50 percent of their DNA with bananas, and while there's a seed of truth to that, it's not quite right. Learn about our genetic similarity to fruit and other life forms in this episode of BrainStuff.How Do You Deep Fry a Turkey? - BrainStuff 11/18/2019BrainStuff - HowStuffWorks2019-12-17 | Listen to the beginning of this episode of "Could We Recycle Excess Subway Heat?" - BrainStuff
Episode description: Deep frying anything is a science -- but perhaps especially a whole turkey. Learn how to do it (and why it works) in this episode of BrainStuff.Can Hypoallergenic Dogs Still Trigger Allergies? - BrainStuff 11/15/2019BrainStuff - HowStuffWorks2019-12-16 | Listen to the beginning of this episode of "Can 'Hypoallergenic' Dogs Still Trigger Allergies?" - BrainStuff
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Episode description: Heating homes and other human hangouts requires a huge carbon footprint -- but meanwhile, we're wasting heat every day (and sweating) in systems like subways. Learn how one project hopes to use that excess heat for the greater good in this episode of BrainStuff.Can We Win the War on Cockroaches? - BrainStuff 11/13/2019BrainStuff - HowStuffWorks2019-12-12 | Listen to the beginning of this episode of "Can We Win the War on Cockroaches?" - BrainStuff
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Episode description: Wolverines may not have adamantium-reinforced skeletons, but this species of weasel boasts a few superpowers of its own. Learn more about wolverines in this episode of BrainStuff.How Do GPS Coordinates Work?BrainStuff - HowStuffWorks2017-01-19 | So you’ve seen those location-tagging numbers on maps and GPS devices before, but do you actually know what they mean? Brainstuff is here to fill you in.
fcc.gov/media/radio/dms-decimalHow Does Anxiety Work?BrainStuff - HowStuffWorks2017-01-12 | Anxiety is a normal, healthy response for the human body. But when it interferes with daily life it can become a disorder. We investigate anxiety's symptoms and biochemistry to learn how it can become irrational... and how you treat it.
Holland, J. S. (2013). the bite that heals. National Geographic, 223(2), 64-83.
SHAFFER, L. (2016). THIS WON'T HURT. Discover, 37(3), 32-37.]
ROSEN, M. (2013). Body & brain: Scorpion venom kills pain in mice: Toxin works with nerve proteins to block distress signals' journey to brain. Science News, 184(11), 10. doi:10.1002/scin.5591841108
Kluger, J. (2016). The Perfectly Sane Case for Life In Space. Time, 187(6/7), 104The Way We Think About Sugar Is Going To ChangeBrainStuff - HowStuffWorks2016-11-22 | The FDA recently changed their Nutrition Facts label to include added sugars. But why?
Fainting at the sight of blood, which is a condition called either neurocardiovascular syncope or vasovagal syncope, is actually related in some cases to what's classified as a blood injury phobia. Something like 3-4% of people have a blood injury phobia. But what's really interesting is that 15% of people faint at the sight of blood. Which means there's a lot of people out there who really have no issue with cutting themselves, but still faint dead away anyway when they see themselves bleeding. That's kind of weird.
When you faint from anxiety, which is what researchers think is going on when you faint from the sight of your own blood, your blood pressure suddenly spikes. But then, just as quickly, it decreases. And that decrease in blood pressure drains blood away from your brain, causing you to lose consciousness.
When you're anxious or when you feel like you're in danger, it's normal for your blood pressure to rise. It's part of the sympathetic nervous system's "fight or flight" response. What's unusual in this case, is the sudden decrease in blood pressure that causes you to lose consciousness.
At the center of all this oddness is the vagus nerve. It's a major nerve that connects your brain to various regions of your body that are involved in involuntary movement. Like your heart beating, your throat swallowing, that kind of stuff.
And at the other end, your vagus nerve is connected to a region of your brain called the nucleus of the solitary tract, or the NST. The NST is kind of like a toggle switch that goes back and forth between the sympathetic response (your fight or flight response) or the parasympathetic response, which is what calms you down after danger has passed.
What researchers think is going on is that the NST gets some sort of confused signal from the vagus nerve that causes it to decrease blood pressure as part of the parasympathetic response, without deactivating the increase in your heart rate. Which causes a lot of blood to suddenly be pumped away from your brain, hence making you pass out.
Another explanation is that your NST simply toggles too quickly between the sympathetic and parasympathetic responses. Like it's working its joystick, like, "What's going on?" And then you're out on the floor.
Then there's another parallel hypothesis, that because your NST is also in charge of mediating your disgust response, that there's some sort of mixture of fright and disgust that causes you to faint, because, again, the NST is confused.
However you slice it, it seems that you can lay the fainting at the sight of blood thing at the feet of the NST.
Evolutionarily speaking, passing out at the sight of your own blood doesn't make much sense. And researchers have bent over backwards to try to explain it. What they've come up with is that, possibly, when you faint at the sight of your own blood, say, after being mauled by a bear, the bear will take you as being dead and will lose interest. Pretty lame.
Another more reasonable (in my humble opinion) explanation is that this sudden decrease in blood pressure prevents us from bleeding out of some sort of wound, and that the fainting is just an unfortunate byproduct of the whole thing.
Either way, at any rate, whatever the case, once you're on the floor, which is usually what happens when you faint, the blood flow to your brain can be restored fairly quickly, because it's a lot easier for your heart to pump blood horizontally than upwards against gravity.
First, let’s look at what a memory is, and how these things form. At the most basic level, memories form when proteins cause our brain cells to form new synaptic connections between neurons. The emphasis here is on connections, rather than a single spot. So a recollection isn’t stored in one specific cell of your brain. Instead, it’s tangled up in these various connections between these neurons.
And, despite how static they may feel, memories are not stable. Sure, you can revisit your first day at a job, or school, or the time you the love of your life. But every time you do, that memory becomes malleable again, resetting more vividly than before.
Each time you remember something, your brain has to “resave” some version of that memory. It’s like you’re taking a piece of hard chocolate out of a refrigerator and holding it in a warm room, or with your warm hands. When you put it back in the fridge, it’s changed, even if just a bit, from exposure.
This is known as ‘reconsolidation.’ And the more often you revisit a memory, the more it changes. Your brain reassesses its connections, literally rewiring itself.
So, let’s say, for example, that you have an unpleasant memory. Maybe you were bit by a spider during your childhood. And every time you remembered this spider bite, you also remembered the pain and fear of the experience, strengthening that connection in your mind. Eventually, just thinking of spiders in general could leave you terrified and quaking in fear.
But don’t feel doomed just yet. It’s possible to tilt the scales during every single act of recollection. Numerous studies indicate that using a drug called propranolol to block your body’s norepinephrine can ‘dampen’ traumatic memories, leaving the details while removing the overwhelming emotional associations.
One particularly fascinating study found that injecting mice with this substance could break their fearful associations between musical tones and subsequent shocks.
Norepinephrine, by the way is a chemical involved in the “flight or fight” response that people get.
This line of research isn’t quite capable of creating the sci-fi amnesia we see in films like “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” but it could be an invaluable treatment for trauma survivors. This leads us to several wide-reaching implications – some of which are disturbing.
First, scientists do believe it’s possible, with the right combination of drugs and treatment, to target and erase specific memories. The primary obstacle, so far, seems to be ethical rather than procedural. Second, healthy people may try to take these treatments simply because they want to erase something.
And one last thing: there’s a reason our memories exists. As painful as some recollections may be, they can also function as tools of survival. To paraphrase the old saying: what’s the point of forgetting the past if it means you’re doomed to repeat it?
Thanks for watching! And hey, here's a question: if you could erase a memory with an injection, would you do it? How do you think this technology will be used in the future? Let me know in the comments and remember: stay tuned for more BrainStuff.
SOURCES:Heres Why Helicopter Blades Can Look Strange On VideoBrainStuff - HowStuffWorks2016-09-08 | Helicopter blades and other fast spinning objects often produce strange effects on camera. Lauren explains why.
Hey and welcome to BrainStuff. I'm Josh Clark and you're you, and this is the BrainStuff where I explain to you... Satanism!
Sure, if you like heavy metal and you have a comb sticking out of your back pocket, you're probably cool with somebody calling you a Satanist. But more often than not, if you're called a Satanist, it's because someone is shouting after that, "Burn him!" It's not a good thing. And traditionally it's been used to discredit people.
Probably the most famous early use of accusations of Satanism was leveled against the Knights Templar, the very wealthy, religious army that invaded the Middle East during the Crusades around the turn of the last millennium. The Templars were accused of worshipping Baphomet, a form of Satan that turned into this guy by the 19th Century. The thing is, modern historians believe it's possible that Baphomet is a mangled translation of Muhammad, and that the Knights Templar were actually secretly Muslim, and had converted during the Crusades.
Even more famously were the witch hunts in Europe and the Americas that were carried out from the 14th Century onward. All of those people who were accused of witchcraft were also accused of worshipping the Devil and being in league with him.
And even more recently than that, in the 1980s and 90s in the United States and Britain, there was something called a Satanic Panic. Which was a moral panic that saw everybody from burnouts to daycare workers accused of worshipping Satan, and murdering people, and molesting children. All in the name of the dark lord.
The thing is, this was a super nutso time, and people actually went to prison for decades for crimes that they (and actually no one) ever committed. The whole thing was totally fictitious.
Despite the moral panics and instances where people have murdered in the name of Satan, there's no evidence that there actually ever has been a widespread and organized worship of Satan. Despite the fear by some that it actually exists.
Instead, Satanism is a wholly made up philosophy that focuses on the sanctity and the freedom of the individual. To Satanists, Satan is a symbol of mankind's freewill. They don't really believe in the Christian version of Satan. And they certainly don't believe in the red devil running around with the pointy tail and the horns. Although they did appropriate the beard.
The actual Church of Satan was founded in 1966. It's pretty recent. And it was founded by a guy named Anton LaVey. LaVey believed that Christian churches were quite hypocritical. So he packaged his brand of individualism which a dramatic mockery of Christian rites. It attracted likeminded people, and actually, 50 years on, the church is still around.
It spawned some offshoots, like the Temple of Set in 1975. And more recently, the Satanic Temple in 2013. The Satanic Temple's activities mostly include shining a spotlight on the lack of separation between church and state in the United States. So, for example, they paid for a 9 foot bronze statue of Baphomet surrounded by adoring children, that they planned to install at the Oklahoma state capitol building, after the Ten Commandments went up there. They also distributed a kids coloring book at a school where Christians were handing out pamphlets.
They're also known as being the trolls who trolled uber-trolls Westboro Baptist Church, by holding a gay Satanic wedding on the grave of Fred Phelps' mother. Fred Phelps is the founder of Westboro Baptist Church. That's some trolling.
SOURCES:
Anderson, D. (2016). Satanism. Salem Press Encyclopedia,
The Invention of Satanism By Asbjorn Dyrendal, James R. Lewis, Jesper Aa. PetersenHow Much Does It Cost To Run For President?BrainStuff - HowStuffWorks2016-07-19 | There’s a big difference between running for President and actually winning the election. So how much money will you need to have a decent shot at being Commander-in-Chief?
Registering as a Presidential candidate isn’t actually that expensive. First, you need to fill out – surprise – a government form. It’s called the Statement of Candidacy, or FEC Form 2, and you’re required to submit this within 15 days of becoming a candidate.
So when does an average Jane or Joe become a candidate? According to the Feds, you’re automatically a candidate once your team has either received 5,000 dollars in contributions, or racked up 5,000 in campaign expenses.
But remember, there’s a big difference between running for President and actually winning. To campaign successfully you’ll need much more than 5,000 bucks.
Your next step will be getting on state ballots. Each state may have different rules outlining how you can do this. Unless you’re already established in the public eye, you’ll need petitions.
For example, in 2012, Democratic candidates needed either 1% or 500 signatures from Democrats in each of California’s districts. There were over 50 districts! This means you’ll need a volunteer campaign, along with advertising and, probably, a paid staff. While it’s possible to be a write-in candidate, it’s not probable that you’d be able to garner any significant numbers that way.
Caucus states like Iowa just require enough people to show up and cast a ballot for you. But there are hundreds of caucuses in Iowa alone. You’ll need a strategy to reach these voters, which, again, means you’ll need a staff. You’ll also need money for advertising, travel, and more. The cost of pizza for volunteers alone could run into the tens of thousands of dollars over time.
By this point, the campaign has already become massively expensive. Luckily, you’ve got contributors. Virtually no viable candidate is going to be self-funded. Instead, the average would-be President receives contributions from individuals, parties, corporations, political action committees and so on. Uncle Sam has different limits on how much money these entities can contribute during the primary and general elections.
While every campaign is different, there are some definite trends. For instance, each recent campaign seems to be more expensive than the last. According to the FEC, President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign raised 683.5 million dollars. Contributions from the Democratic party and other outside groups raised the total to around 1.1 billion dollars. When we combine all of the parties, the 2012 election was estimated to cost 2.6 billion dollars.
Pundits, fundraisers and other policy wonks are predicting the 2016 campaign may top these numbers, with the Clinton campaign alone rumored to possibly reach 1.5 to 2 billion dollars. These numbers have led speculators like the Economist to predict that the 2016 election may eventually ring in at an unprecedented 5 billion dollars.
Does this mean you have to be a multi-millionaire to become Commander-in-Chief? No. But it does mean you’ll need millions of someone’s dollars to ensure your voice is heard amid the din of all the other candidates vying for the public’s attention.
In 2004 George W. Bush spent 367 million for reelection, while the John Kerry campaign spent 328.
In 2008 election, the first Obama campaign spent 730 million, with the McCain side spending 333.
As we saw earlier, the 2012 Obama reelection pushed costs to 683 million, compared to Mitt Romney's campaign’s 433 million.
Notice a pattern? In recent elections it seems the folks who spent the most ended up in the White House. If this trend continues, and you want to be president in 2016 or later, well… either start saving or start writing to your supporters. You’ll need all the help you can get.
Pushing buttons is satisfying as all heck. A button represents a modicum of control in a chaotic world. In the moment of pushing, you are the brief master of your own fate. All the forces humankind has harnessed have come to bow under your finger.
Plus, buttons are shiny.
But does pressing them always have the promised effect? Do ‘close door’ buttons in elevators and ‘push to cross’ buttons at crosswalks actually do anything? Physically speaking, the answer is ‘not always.’ Psychologically, the jury is out.
Let’s tackle the physical section first. As of 2004, a representative from the Department of Transportation in New York City said that more than 75% of their crosswalk buttons had no effect on their traffic signals.
And as of 2013 in the UK, transportation officials reported that an unknown number of crosswalk signals function automatically, regardless of whether anyone presses the button. The estimates that they could give regarding nonfunctional buttons ranged from about 18 percent to 40 percent.
But why? Many crosswalk buttons are relics of a time before signal patterns were controlled by computer systems to help streamline traffic. Removing the buttons, especially in large cities like New York, would cost millions. So the folks in charge have generally chosen to leave them standing.
In newer traffic control systems – for example, SCOOT (the Split Cycle Offset Optimisation Technique) - municipalities can program buttons to turn on only some of the time.
Think of an intersection with lots of motor traffic 24-hours a day, but pedestrian traffic mostly during business hours. During the day, when walk signals will likely be useful during every signal cycle, the buttons don’t work: The walk signal comes on automatically. At night, when fewer people are on foot, you have to press the button to stop traffic and cross the street.
Meanwhile, reports on the functionality of elevator ‘close door’ buttons vary by the source. The urban myth that they’re usually fake, or that they’re only operable with use of a key by emergency or repair personnel, seems to stem from the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990.
Its current Accessibility Guidelines specify that elevator doors must remain open for at least three seconds. In practice, this law may well render ‘close door’ buttons useless to the particularly impatient. But there’s no reason to think that they’re all – or even mostly - placebo buttons.
Yes, placebo buttons: This is the psychology term for buttons that are designed to not do anything. They’re named after the placebo effect, which my nemesis Josh Clark did a whole episode about once. In brief, the placebo effect is a confirmed phenomenon in which people experience measurable, clinical results with fake treatments due to the apparent power of their belief in the treatment.
In the world of buttons, placebos have been installed on purpose in some workplaces in the form of fake thermostats. According to an informal survey conducted by the online publication “Air Conditioning, Heating & Refrigeration News”, a majority of HVAC professionals have installed placebo thermostats during their careers. Or 51 out of 70 respondents, at any rate.
It seems that managers sometimes hope that employees who would otherwise waste time complaining about the temperature will be placated by pressing a button, even if it doesn’t change anything. After all, even the illusion of control can make us happier.
How, of all the snacks on earth, did popcorn become the mainstay of movie theaters?
It starts with a bit of history. See, popcorn has been around for ages, and it was a popular snack at 19th century fairs and carnivals, especially after the invention of the first steam-powered popcorn-popper back in 1885. People loved the crunchy, salty, inexpensive snack.
And movie theaters hated it. During the era of silent film, these companies followed many of the same rules as traditional theatres – and they didn’t want to be associated with a loud food that could distract from the show.
Additionally, there was a little bit of a class consideration here. Since audiences had to read the dialogue on screen, they had to be literate. AKA a “better” sort of people, with superior education. Allowing popcorn inside was, in the opinion of these theater owners, kind of like throwing sawdust on the floor and saying “Yeah, sure, spit wherever.”
Talkies, or films with spoken dialogue, emerged in 1927, and this brought movie theaters to the common folk. Suddenly anyone could cough up some change, grab a seat and understand what was going on. This was also the time of the Great Depression, when Americans from coast to coast pined for cheap, escapist entertainment.
So the average Americans finally found the cinema, and they brought their snack culture along. And the Depression affected theaters, as well – theaters with the best chances of surviving were the ones that gave customers what they wanted.
At first, independent vendors sold popcorn outside the theater, profiting from the casual passersby as well as from future movie patrons. Since corn kernels were dirt cheap, popcorn became even more - wait for it - popular.
Anyway. Things, as the internet likes to say, escalated quickly.
Movie theaters allowed vendors to sell their wares in the lobby for a small fee. Eventually, they cut out the vendors entirely, acquiring their own poppers. During World War II, popcorn sales saw another bump. Sugar was rationed, which made many conventional sweet snacks and drinks, like soda, more expensive. (At least, that is, when they were available at all.) Popcorn, on the other hand, only required salt and popcorn kernels, neither of which were hard to come by.
By then the association between movies and popcorn was firmly established in the mind of the American public. This association continues today, but there’s another wrinkle to the story. “Ben,” you might be saying, “sure, popcorn was cheap in the Depression or whatever, but what happened? When did it become so expensive?”
That’s a great question. The price hike really kicked in, not just on popcorn, but on all concessions, back in the 1970s. Contrary to popular belief, your local movie theater doesn’t actually make much bank off the films it screens. Instead, theaters use concessions to stay in business.
According to the Stanford Business School, concessions comprise only about 20% of a theatre’s gross revenue, but 40% of its profits. This makes sense when we consider how theaters have to split ticket revenue with movie distributors, but can pocket 100% of whatever they manage to sell at the snack counter. The bulk cost of the ingredients is laughably small, and the profit margin is huge. And let's not forget that this stuff is addictively delicious.
Thanks for watching. What’s a snack you think more movie theaters should sell? Is there anything that could replace popcorn? Everyone who said whiskey, let’s hang out later. In the meantime, stay tuned for more BrainStuff.
Hi there, internet. I’m here today to tell you that your brain lies to you. Not maliciously. It thinks it’s helping. Which brings us to our question: “Why do you stop noticing smells after a while?” They’re still there. Why does your brain tell you that they’re not?
The “why” is actually simple. Experts in biology and psychology and volatile aroma compound physics (aka the science of smells) all pretty much agree that you stop noticing a smell after a short while because your brain wants to concentrate on scanning for new (and potentially hazardous) smells.
Sharp, “gross” scents may indicate that a dangerous predator is in the area, or that there’s a disease at work, or that the thing you’re about to eat should under no circumstances be eaten.
If you stick around a particular scent, your brain figures it’s already done warned you about that one and thus frees up its processing power for logging new scents and changes in scent intensity. This is called olfactory adaptation.
How your brain accomplishes this type of sensory adaptation is more complicated. When you notice a smell, a molecule of a volatile aroma compound (that is, a gaseous, smelly thing) has entered your nose. Our nasal passages are lined with somewhere around 10 million neurons. You can think of each of those neurons as a tiny tree designed to pick up on a single type of scent.
They have branches called dendrites, each covered in smaller structures (like leaves, going with the tree concept) that are called cilia. The cilia are studded with odor receptors. A molecule -- of whatever kind of scent that neuron specializes in sensing -- can bind to each receptor.
When that binding happens, it sets off an electrochemical chain reaction. In the end, the neuron sends an electrical impulse through its axon (metaphorically, its root), up into your olfactory bulb. That’s the part of your brain that processes scent stimuli and sends the information on to other parts of the brain.
Very basically, the more molecules that bind to a given type of scent receptor throughout your nasal passages, the stronger the signal to your brain will be, and the stronger you will perceive the scent to be.
But we can adapt to a scent’s presence within a few breaths. Researchers think that there are a couple things going on here. First, in those tree-like neurons in your nose, at least one chemical plays double-duty in both helping send electrical impulses to the brain and in stopping those electrical impulses. The culprit here seems to primarily be calcium ions, if you were curious.
The second thing going on here is that there’s some kind of feedback loop among your nasal neurons and your olfactory bulb. Researchers aren’t precisely sure what's going on here, but we do know it happens because they’ve conducted experiments where they’ve only exposed only one nostril to a scent. Neurons in the other nostril start adapting to it.
But there are more questions here. How do different scents and different lengths of exposure lead to different adaptations? Why can you never smell your own home the way other people experience it?
“Shenanigans” is the answer science has to give us right now. Because the perception of scent isn’t just physical; it’s psychological. What the other parts of your brain do with the scent information that the olfactory bulb sends them absolutely factor in, in ways that researchers are still trying to suss out.
Ever since there's been more than one civilization, there's probably been some form of diplomatic immunity. As far back as 2000 BCE, the very famous Babylonian ruler (and eye-for-an-eye type lawgiver) King Hammurabi was criticized - I guess on a tablet or something - for not providing safe transport for a couple of emissaries through his kingdom when they left, after they delivered some bad news to him.
Not very cool, Hammurabi. That means that as far back as 4000 years ago, the idea behind diplomatic immunity was already a custom.
So, what King Hammurabi failed to observe was a tenet of diplomatic immunity called personal inviolability. And it basically says: don't kill the messenger. No diplomat or anybody on a diplomatic mission should be injured, killed, harmed, detained, or kept from their business in any way, shape, or form.
In fact, it's so ingrained in international relations - and has been for so long - that even when some parties have failed to observe it, other parties have decided not to retaliate. Very famously, Darius I, King of Persia, did not kill a couple of Spartan emissaries that he had hanging out at his court when the Spartans kicked his emissaries into a bottomless pit. Yes, that movie was actually fairly accurate.
In addition to personal inviolability, there's another column - another pillar - of diplomatic immunity. And this one's a little more recent. It's dated from about the Renaissance. And it's a little bit of legal fiction called extraterritoriality. It's a mouthful. Believe me, I just said it. Extraterritoriality basically says that the sovereign soil of a nation extends into a host nation as far as the embassy goes. So that means that the embassy itself, the diplomatic vehicles, the houses of the diplomats, their offices... all of these are considered to be on the sovereign soil of the nation they belong to even though they're in another country.
That means that the law enforcement, or the cops, or whoever, of the host country has no more jurisdiction over these houses or cars or offices than they would, than if those places were actually in the other country themselves.
Now, it's not all fun and games. Under the United Nations' 1961 convention on diplomatic immunity, someone with diplomatic immunity can be arrested in the host country, but they can't actually be charged with a crime. Theoretically, though. they're still operating under their own country's laws. So, if they broke the law, they should be extradited back to their country to stand trial for the crime they committed in the other country. This doesn't always happen. It does sometimes, if the crime is heinous enough. But, for the most part, everybody just looks the other way.
Diplomats do still have to watch their step, though. Because their home country can waive diplomatic immunity on them, and the host country can go ahead and prosecute. Plus, if things are bad enough, the host country can declare the diplomat "persona non grata," which means that person is no longer welcome in the country and they've got a very limited amount of time to skedaddle back home.
For the most part, though, people with diplomatic immunity exist in a weird kind of lawlessness. As a result, we've seen recent allegations of things like human trafficking, where a diplomat brings somebody from their home country to work in the host country in their home (again remember: sovereign soil), and they basically keep them there under slave labor conditions.
But hey, diplomatic immunity!
We also saw it in 2010 in Haiti, when the United Nations cited diplomatic immunity to protect some of its peacekeepers who were alleged to have started a cholera outbreak that killed as many as 8000 people.
And closer to home, in New York City, the unpaid parking tickets in 2011 alone of people with diplomatic immunity totaled 16.7 million dollars.
So, because of the rather attractive protections that diplomatic immunity affords one, there's been a run on diplomatic immunity since World War II. Everybody from your little brother to the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission has diplomatic immunity these days.
This has led to calls on tightening up who exactly gets diplomatic immunity, and just how far it extends. A lot of people suggest that we use something called functional immunity, which is kind of like diplomatic immunity-lite. The idea behind functional immunity is, yes, as a diplomat you need to be protected from legal harassment during the course of your work, but you should still pay your parking ticket, y'know?
SOURCES:How Will You Most Likely Die?BrainStuff - HowStuffWorks2016-06-16 | Death is the most mysterious and inevitable part of the human experience. But how will we go? Join Ben as he takes a closer look at the most common causes of death across the globe.
Benjamin Franklin famously said nothing’s certain but death and taxes, and so far he’s been half-right. Barring some astonishing medical breakthrough, we’re all gonna croak. You, me, even Nicolas Cage and our producer, Paul. Hey Paul.
But how? How will we die?
There are a few ways to approach this question. First, should we look at deaths in a specific country, like the US or China? While we can pull some interesting statistics from a more narrowly defined study, doing so means we’re essentially ignoring the rest of the world. So let’s take a shot at the Big Kahuna of Mortality Studies: the global statistics on death.
In 2012, the most recent database available, just five conditions were responsible for 40% of annual deaths. Can you guess which one led the pack? If you thought “something about heart disease,” then congratulations. You are correct. You’re still going to die, but always remember: you died a winner.
Cardiovascular diseases wiped out an estimated 17.5 million people in 2012, accounting for 31% of all deaths. Of these fatalities, 7.4 million were due to coronary heart disease and 6.7 million were due to stroke.
The most common cause of ischaemic heart disease is atherosclerosis – that’s where this gross plaque made of fat, cholesterol, calcium and other substances builds up within your arteries. Eventually this gunk hardens, reducing the amount of blood that can run through your system – and this means less delicious, necessary oxygen reaches your organs.
While some causes of death, such as AIDs, have declined over time, heart disease is on the rise. Why? According to the World Health Organization, behavioral factors play a huge role in this affliction. All the fun stuff: smoking, drinking too much booze, obesity and physical activity (or specifically lack thereof) can all contribute to the most unpleasant (and perhaps final) surprise of your life.
Fortunately, experts around the globe are tackling this problem together. As we record this episode, the Member States of WHO are working to achieve the goals created in the oh-so-suavely named “Global action plan for the prevention and control of Noncommunicable Diseases 2013-2020.”
While the title doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, the concept itself is worthwhile. In the US alone 1 out every 4 deaths are caused by heart disease, and many people don’t recognize the symptoms. Sure, one day we may be able to replace our bodies or upload our minds to the internet, but for now the one body you have - the one you're watching this video in - and it's the only one you’ll get – so take care of it!
Let’s go back, shall we? We'll go way back. Into the Cold War. Where the United States and the Soviet Union had the whole world effectively polarized. Everybody was on one side or the other, except for those countries that weren't. Those were the Third World countries, because they didn't subscribe to one world or the other. That's actually where the term comes from.
One thing that the Soviet Union and the United States loved to do to one another was escalate. If one side created a stockpile of nuclear weapons, the other side would create twice as many. Move some missiles to Europe? We'll move ours to Cuba. And so on and so forth until we reach the 1980s, when superpower leader Ronald Reagan had a really great idea.
He said, "Why don't I do something that scares the beejeezus out of the USSR and also spends them right out of the Cold War?" And this great idea that superpower leader Reagan hit upon was called the Strategic Defense Initiative (or SDI), or, more popularly, Star Wars. It was called Star Wars because the whole idea was a missile defense shield in space.
So the SDI had its intended effect. The Soviets were very much scared. They realized that if the United States had a missile defense shield in space, that the United States' nuclear arsenal could survive a first strike from the USSR with enough weaponry left to launch a counterstrike that could still wipe Russia off the face of the map.
So Russia (again, quite scared of this idea) did what any superpower would do: they created a doomsday device.
They called it "Mertvaya Ruka," or the "Dead Hand." The details on this thing are kind of sketchy because the Russians have never officially acknowledged it existed. But based on interviews, some investigation by westerners, and a little anecdotal evidence, it appears that the Dead Hand was kind of a primitive computer network that came online around 1985.
It was designed to rain nuclear hell down upon the Americans if they launched a first strike against the Soviets, even if the Soviet Union had already been incinerated.
Formally they called the thing the Perimeter. But they also could've called it "We Got You Back!" Or "My poluchili vas obratno!"
So the Perimeter (or We Got You Back or the Dead Hand) worked something like this: Most of the time this computer network lay dormant. But it could be activated by the Soviet military in case of an emergency. And once it was activated, when left alone, it would stay that way for about 15 minutes, and then it would go back to being dormant again. But while it was online for that 15 minute period, it was constantly communicating with Soviet central command. And it was taking in input (data) from sensors all around the country that were looking out for air pressure, seismic activity, and most importantly, radioactivity. Things that would indicate there was some sort of attack that the Americans had carried out.
If the Perimeter sensed that there was some sort of nuclear attack, and it could no longer communicate with Soviet central command, it basically let it all hang out. And anyone who was in the room that made up its nerve center at the time, could trigger it.
When triggered, 4 command missiles are launched. They fly around the USSR and say, "Wake up! Wake up all thermonuclear warheads! Go get the US!" And remotely activate a counterstrike on the United States of America even if the USSR doesn't exist any longer. That's why they called it the Dead Hand.
Even more horrific than the idea that the Perimeter was a real thing is the idea that it still might be a real thing. The Russian government isn't talking. But at least one retired high-ranking Soviet official says, Yeah, that thing is still real.
Hey BrainStuff, Jonathan here. Lots of situations can leave you stranded in the wild without supplies: Camping miscommunications, unexpected side quests, alien abductions with imprecise return drops, and so on.
Whatever the reason you find yourself out there, you’ll need to find water. A minimum of two quarts per day to maintain good health – that is, to keep your blood circulating. Which you want to do.
And that brings us to today’s question: How do you find water in the wild? But first, I should mention that this information is for your education only. Legally speaking, I can’t recommend that you do anything I say.
Let’s assume that you can’t find any large sources of fresh water: There’s not a raincloud in the sky, and no streams, rivers, or lakes nearby.
You can dig a well. Look for mud, or damp soil in a dry riverbed -- there may be groundwater near the surface. Dig a hole about a foot wide and a foot deep. If there’s water, your well will start filling up. Even in the desert, you can try digging at the low point between dunes, near vegetation. Put rocks in the bottom of your well to keep sediment from stirring up into the water, and line the sides with wood to prevent the walls from caving in.
Well water needs to be purified before you drink it. Give it a boil for 10 minutes. Even water that looks clean can harbor nasty microbes that will make you sicker than I get after I have shrimp.
But if your wells turn up dry, you can create structures to collect water from thin air. Like a solar still. You’ll need some plastic sheeting, a container to collect the water, and a rock. Having a length of tubing or some definitely-non-poisonous vegetation would be a bonus.
Choose a damp bit of ground that gets sunlight for most of the day. Dig a bowl-shaped hole about 3 feet across and 2 feet deep. In the bottom, dig out enough space to place your container. If you have a tube, place one end at the bottom of the container and secure the other end on the surface outside the hole. If you have some leaves or other greenery that you know for sure are not toxic, tear them up and add them to the walls of the bowl.
Place the plastic loosely over the hole and hold down the edges with rocks. But, not the one you've put aside. That one, you want to put in the center of the sheet so that it sags in a little more than a foot, directly over the container. Add more rocks and soil to the edges of the sheet for stability.
The heat of the sun will evaporate moisture in the ground, producing condensation on the plastic. It’ll drip and collect in your container, and you can either sip it directly through your tube or retrieve the container at sunset.
If your energy is low, you'll want to avoid all that digging. The transpiration technique yields less water, but all it requires is tying a knot in a plastic bag. Find a definitely-non-poisonous leafy tree or shrub that will be in the sun for most of the day. Tie the bag around a branch.
Over the course of the day, the plant will ‘exhale’ (or transpire) water vapor that’ll collect at the bottom of the bag. Untie it or poke a hole in it to collect the water, then tie it off again and reuse the bag. Plants transpire a lot – about 10 percent of the moisture in our air comes from transpiration.
Water you get from a solar still or transpiration should be safe to drink, but it never hurts to give it a boil.
Hey there. I'm Josh Clark, and this is BrainStuff. And this is the BrainStuff where I talk to you about itching.
Just fair warning here: you are going to itch. Because I am a puppet master and you are my puppet. Just FYI.
So let's talk about skin. It's your birthday suit! And skin allows us to experience that ever so important sensation touch. Touch, in and of itself, is a very complex thing. It's multifaceted. And one of those facets - one of the chief facets among all touch - is the itch.
For a while, people thought that an itch was just a low level type of pain. And it makes a lot of sense. Because itches and pain (and actually the sensation of heat) all follow the same neural pathways from the skin to the brain. But a recent closer examination of your skin has found that your itch triggers a specific kind of receptor, called pruriceptors. Which is tough to say, but actually, it's a pretty legitimate term because another word for itch (the clinical term) is "pruritus."
Which is why everybody just calls it itch.
So these special receptors (pruriceptors) are attuned to just the most minute sense of touch. They're triggered by something like the ever-so-gentle pressure of a fly's legs. And, even closer examination of itching has found that these pruriceptors use a specialized neurotransmitter called MPPB to send the itch signal from the skin to the brain.
So, it turns out that itching is not pain. It's its own thing. A good analogy is that itches and pain might follow the same highway from the skin to the brain, but they start from slightly different points of origin, and an itch uses a different kind of car.
So science has a better handle on itches than it did before, but they're still a big mystery. Why should scratching an itch bring any sort of relief?
Well, itching appears to be a built-in warning system for us to say that there's something small but potentially dangerous that's just alighted on our skin. Right?
When we scratch whatever's causing that itch, the prevailing theory, is that we activate more skin cells than just the pruriceptors. Which means that the pruriceptors' itch signal is either drowned out by these other signals or potentially turned off somehow.
And that makes a lot of sense, because when you scratch an itch, your fingernail is exerting enough pressure, and is big enough, that it can destroy or get rid of whatever was causing the itch in the first place.
You’ve had the flu before, right? Well, now imagine feeling worse than that all the time. I’m talking about “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome,” hereafter referred to as CFS for the sake of my brain not exploding all over the camera lens.
Maybe you’ve heard of this disease and thought, “Huh, I’ve been a little tired lately. Maybe I’ve got it?” Well hold on there boss, because to be properly diagnosed with CFS you have to be sick for at least 6 months straight. CFS is so debilitating that bed rest doesn’t even make it better.
It's not even worth the Netflix binging, people.
And here’s the kicker: we barely know anything about how to diagnose it, what causes it or how to treat it. Some people don’t even think it’s a real biological disorder. Skeptics called it the “yuppie flu” or “shirker syndrome” for awhile. And for years doctors thought it was psychosomatic.
Less than half of today’s medical textbooks have any information about CFS as well. And only one-third of medical schools even teach it in their curriculum.
One thing we sort of know about CFS are its symptoms. Obviously, because of the name, “fatigue” is a big one. But that word barely does it justice, because patients are so weak it interferes with their daily activities, as well as their concentration and stamina, causing at least 50% incapacitation.
In addition you’ve got to have 4 or more of the following major symptoms over here. I’m not going to say them all out loud, or else we’d be here for a week, so just hit pause and check them out.
Now these are all the possible minor symptoms that could coincide with what we’ve already covered. As you can see, they’re both physical and psychological.
So you get an idea of how difficult it is to diagnose this thing. It gets even more complicated because CFS affects its victims in cycles. They’ll have periods of illness, followed by feeling okay, with sometimes even a total remission of their symptoms.
“Jeez Cristen, that sounds terrible,” you’re probably saying to yourself, “What causes this awful disease?” Well... I don't know. Scientists haven’t identified what causes CFS. And they’ve studied all sorts of things as triggers: viral infections like Mono, immune system disorders, allergic sensitivity, stress and even nutrition.
One thing we do know is there’s no evidence that CFS is contagious. But it affects way more women than it does men. Current estimates by the Institute of Medicine say that somewhere between 836,000 and 2.5 million people in America have it. But less than 20% of them are diagnosed, because this thing is so hard to pin down.
So ok, how do you cure a disease that comes and goes, has a myriad of complex symptoms and can barely be diagnosed because it resembles many other illnesses?
You don’t.
At this time, all we can do is treat the symptoms of CFS as they vary over time. And if you think you have it, get ready to take a battery of tests.
The 2013 Magill’s Medical Guide actually has this quote about CFS in it: “Medical treatment and diagnostic testing can be costly as well as useless.”
Usually treating the disease is a combination of the following: antidepressants, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, psychological counseling, physical therapy and a mix of homeopathic remedies.
So that’s all the stuff we don’t know about CFS. Oh, and we can’t agree what to call it either. The CDC only uses “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome” because exhaustion is the primary symptom. But some patients find that misleading and prefer “myalgic encephalomyelitis.”
Yeah, trying saying that three times fast. Or just one time slow.
SOURCES:
Chronic fatigue syndrome. By: DeLuca, Patrick J., Ph.D., Alder, Richard, Ph.D., Magill’s Medical Guide (Online Edition), January, 2013
http://now.howstuffworks.com/2016/02/04/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-teens-new-studyCan Computers Read Your Mind?BrainStuff - HowStuffWorks2016-05-12 | Nowadays it’s not unusual for a search engine to autofill search terms, for streaming music services to suggest new music based on your past preferences, and for advertisers to automatically target you for specific products. But how far can this practice go? Is it possible that one day a computer could read your mind?
Hey everybody, welcome to BrainStuff. I’m Ben. And let’s start with a related question: How did you find this video? If you are on YouTube, then odds are it may have popped up as a suggested video based on something you watched earlier. We’re used to that nowadays. We’re used to computers using our past input as a predictor of future action. But today’s question is, what if computers could read your mind?
This is the strange part, right? Because the answer is they already can, sort of. It just depends on what we mean when we say ‘read one’s mind.’ We’re roughly talking about two different categories of things. One is the idea of predictive behavior. This could be something as simple as autofill when you’re typing in text or you’re searching on a computer. Because what it’s doing is it’s remembering the last time you typed that series of inputs, and it’s using that as a basis to predict your intentions this time.
But let’s talk about the second thing. The idea that an algorithm – a machine of some sort – could know what you want before you want it, or know instantaneously what’s going on in your head.
How close are we? Depending on how you feel about the future, we’re either amazingly close, or terrifyingly close – on a precipice.
In 2007, a study at the Max Planck Institute in Germany demonstrated this concept. They took a number of patients, and they attached electrodes to them, and they gave them fMRI to see what’s happening where in their brain, and see if they could correlate it to a cognitive action. Specifically, they went to the patients and they said, ‘We’re going to give you two sets of numbers. And before we give you these two sets of numbers, what we would like you to do is spend a few seconds thinking about whether you want to add them together or subtract them.’ And after this pause, they would show them the numbers.
It was clever of the scientists to do this because they were able to isolate and differentiate between two separate cognitive processes. First, the process of an intention to perform a future action. And then, the process of that action itself – in this case, basic arithmetic.
And what they found was that, as they were feeding this information about brain activity and about the mathematical performance into the software and algorithms, they were able to predict the intention of the patient with 70% accuracy. And granted, 70% accuracy is barely a passing grade if you’re in high school. But in the bleeding edge of science, it’s quite impressive.
And research continues today. A 2015 study in Albany by a fellow named Peter Brunner took us to a new horizon with this concept. They were able to create the first brain-to-text interface between a computer and a human mind.
They cut these people’s skulls open, and they attached electrodes directly to their brains. And then, they had these patients read stuff aloud. So, they would read things like The Gettysburg Address, a children’s story, maybe a JFK address. After the baseline had been established – after these patients had read this stuff aloud – they read silently. Based on this earlier input, the algorithm (the software) was able to translate the brain’s activity directly into text.
There are a couple of drawbacks with this, of course. Number one being that you have to have your head split open. Which I still think is pretty gross. And number two, of course, which is also important, being that the software’s lexicon (its vocabulary) leaves a lot to be desired. It doesn’t know every word, so there are some things it just can’t translate.
It is enormously difficult to explore all the possible implications of a direct link between a computer and a human mind. Let’s consider the massive benefits this could have for people with certain neurological problems, or with physical impairments. Let’s also consider the possibility for predictive behavior of crime. Is it possible, for instance, that you and I could end up living in a Minority Report style future, wherein our actions – good and bad – can be predicted with such a degree of fidelity that we can be arrested before those actions take place? Or indeed, before we are consciously aware that we would perform those actions?
While this sort of future is not inevitable yet, it is increasingly plausible with each coming year.
SOURCES:How Do We Grow Hard Bones From Soft Tissue?BrainStuff - HowStuffWorks2016-05-10 | The foods we eat and the cells that produce our bones are squishy, but our bones are hard. How does that work?
Hi. I’m Jonathan Strickland. This is BrainStuff. Today’s question: How do duels work?
The English word “duel” seems to come from cramming together the Latin words “duo-“, meaning “two”, and “bellum”, meaning war. “Duellum,” or eventually, just “duel.”
So a duel is combat between two people.
The duel of honor was a specific cultural practice taking place mostly in Europe and the Americas, starting around the Renaissance and fizzling out in the early 20th century.
There’s no one list of universal rules, but there were some especially popular guides -- for example, the Irish Code Duello of 1777. Let’s see how a duel according to the Code Duello might go down.
First off – who would duel? There were some notable exceptions, but most duels of honor took place between men of the aristocracy.
And what could cause a duel? Any insult to someone’s honor. Honor is a difficult concept to define succinctly, but it meant something like “a man’s reputation for respectability and aristocratic virtues.”
But whether someone had an affair with your wife or simply made harsh jest of your new powdered wig, honor was on the line. And according to the 1824 “British Code of Duel,” honorable men were not only expected to accept duels when challenged; they were expected to demand them when offended.
So: The offended party issues a formal challenge. Depending on the offense, the duel might be averted by an apology. If so, the two parties have to apologize for their offenses in the order they were committed.
But according to the Code Duello, some offenses to honor couldn’t be fixed by apology alone. So a personal insult, maybe. But a punch to the nose was a point of no return: You pretty much had to duel to repair your honor.
Duels could involve any number of weapons, usually chosen by the person being challenged. In France in 1843 two men reportedly dueled to the death with billiard balls – and yes, one of them was killed by a billiard ball straight to the face. But the two most common dueling weapons were, first, swords, and later, pistols.
The two dueling parties usually appointed “seconds.” These were like lieutenants. The seconds had the job of trying to resolve the conflict before it came to violence, and they were also responsible for preparing the duelists’ weapons.
You’d think from this arrangement that the seconds would tend to keep cool heads, but according to Rule 25 of the Code Duello, “Where seconds disagree, and resolve to exchange shots themselves, it must be at the same time and at right angles with their principals.”
"Principals" meaning duelists - not their own personal philosophies. And honestly, it ends up with a whole lot of people shooting at each other.
Many duels didn’t end in death. In fact, in England, between 1760 and 1820, there were 172 known duels (though probably plenty more that were off the books), but only 69 known fatalities from duels.
Often, duels using swords could be called off once at least one swordsman had been bloodied. And those who used pistols often intentionally fired wide of the target – though the Code Duello strictly prohibits “dumb shooting or firing in the air,” referring to such practices as “children’s play.” But despite this command, many duelists simply didn’t aim to kill.
Crazy duel fact from the 21st century: In 2002, an Iraqi official suggested that Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush could avoid an all-out war if they settled their differences through a one-on-one duel on neutral territory. The White House declined the challenge.
Have you ever been standing in a crowd before? Say you were waiting for Weird Al to come out from backstage after a show. And then suddenly he does, and all of a sudden it seems like all the people around you multiply exponentially. And as far as you can see, you're surrounded by people. And all of them start to press forward. And you, against your own will, are propelled forward. And you're pushed into the person in front of you, and you propel them forward. And you stop and think, "Uh oh!"
Well if you thought that, you were thinking very clearly. Because you were in a very dangerous situation: something called a high density crowd. A high density crowd is one where there's 6 or more people per square meter. It can get a lot more packed than that, but that's the lowest level threshold. The reason that's the threshold is because, when you have 6 people per square meter, individuals in the crowd start to lose their ability to move on their own accord. Things get more and more packed, and the crowd tends to behave a lot like a fluid.
So there's a couple of ways that you can actually die in a high density crowd. The first one is called a crowd crush. When you first start to get to about 6 people per square meter, the individuals lose their ability to move around. The next step is that you lose your ability to move your arms from your sides. And as people pack in further and further, the pressure from all sides keeps your lungs from inflating and deflating, which means you lose your ability to breathe.
What's amazing (and horrific) is that people suffocate in crowds because they're squeezed so tightly by the people pressing against them. That's a crowd crush.
Another way you can die in a crowd is what's called progressive crowd collapse. So, say you have a bunch of people crowded together in a high density crowd. And one of them falls down. That creates a hole in this crowd, and the people who were formerly leaning against this person who just fell down start to fall down. And so on and so forth. A domino effect is created. People start to pile up and the ones on the bottom are literally pressed to death by the humans who have piled up on top them.
So why don't people just get up and go, get out of the crowd? Well, the short answer is, they can't.
One mark for humanity is that crowd researchers have shown that when individuals are given information - say, something like, "Oh, someone ahead is being crushed to death" - they respond positively by, say, backing up and alleviating the pressure on the crowd in front.
The problem is humans aren't ants. We don't transmit information through crowds like ants do. And so people end up dying in crowd crushes and progressive crowd collapses because the people in the back are pushing forward.
Another common misconception are mass panics and stampedes. There's this idea that people stampede over one another and that's how deaths occur in crowd crushes. This is really off point. In fact, if you have enough room to rush out over your fellow humans to get from Point A to Point B, there's probably enough room for those fellow humans to get out of the way. So, stampedes really don't cost any lives whatsoever. That's not the problem with crowd crushes.
And the same with mass panics. Very rarely do entire crowds panic and move in a panicked way. In fact, you can suffocate in a crowd crush in a very calm crowd that's just entered a bottleneck in a narrow corridor, and trying to get out of an exit. People just quietly die pinned up against their fellow human beings who are leaving the place.
What do you do if you find yourself in a crowd? Well, get out. That's the best thing you can do. But, as you're entering a crowd, crowd researchers suggest that you pay attention, stop talking, and listen ahead for people calling for help, or saying "Move back!" or any other indication that there's a crowd crush going on. In that case, get back as far as you can.
If you find yourself in a crowd, and it starts to surge forward, follow the crowd movement, but move to the side as much as possible. Just stay out of crowds. How about that?
Aron, J. (2011). Mass sway reveals risk of a crushing crowd. New Scientist, 211(2824), 23.
Harding, P., Gwynne, S., & Amos, M. (2011). Mutual Information for the Detection of Crush. Plos ONE, 6(12), 1. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0028747Can You Die Of Fright?BrainStuff - HowStuffWorks2016-04-26 | It’s a common story in everything from studies of curses to stories by Arthur Conan Doyle – but what’s the truth? Can a person really be scared to death?
First, let’s look at what happens when something scares you. Let’s say you’re sneaking through an abandoned amusement park late at night, like you do. Suddenly, a stained, white-gloved hand clamps down on your shoulder.
In a split-second, you freak out!
More specifically, your body activates what’s known as the "fight-or-flight" response. It all starts with your thalamus, a structure of two walnut-sized bulbs that relay sensations to your cerebral cortex. At this point, your thalamus doesn't know if the sensory info it’s just received – the gloved hand -- is a real sign of danger. But since it might be, your hypothalamus steps in and activates two systems: the sympathetic nervous system and the adrenal-cortical system. The first uses nerve pathways to initiate reactions, and the second uses the bloodstream.
Then it hits you: Your pupils dilate. You feel a surge of strength and your heartrate skyrockets.
But let’s say this story has a happy ending. Let’s say one of your friends just snuck up on you (and happens to have what looks like a dead hand), because they have a terrible sense of humor. You realize you are not, in fact, a clown’s next victim, so you calm down. You’ve learned a valuable lesson about trespassing (and friendship).
However, these bursts of fright can occasionally be more damaging than the perceived threat itself. Some doctors believe that if the fear is great enough, the jolt of chemicals rushing to your heart can cause immediate death, especially if your ticker wasn’t top-notch to begin with.
In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s "The Hound of the Baskervilles,” Sherlock Holmes investigates the case of a man who had a heart attack, seemingly caused by the fear of a ghostly dog. The man, Charles Baskerville, was susceptible to this stress because of a heart condition. Over the years scientists have studied this so-called “Baskerville effect.” They’ve found that cultural fears can increase this likelihood of sudden death.
Another related concept comes from Harvard psychologist Walter Cannon, who published a 1942 paper attributing sudden death – which he called “voodoo death” - to an overactive nervous system.
He believed this nervous condition was more common in cultures where forms of harmful magic were practiced. Otherwise healthy people, convinced they were cursed, experienced a fight or flight response that never ended.
Instead, the prolonged influx of adrenaline acted on the heart almost like a large amount of cocaine -- it shut the organ down.
Then researchers at Johns Hopkins added another twist to the plot when they argued that experiencing stressful emotions could cause something that looks like a heart attack or heart failure even when there were no clogged arteries or blood clots present.
This work has a disturbing implication: death could happen in the wake of any shocking emotion, from intense joy to deep anger. Hypothetically, that means we're all at risk of “death-by-fright.”
But hey, our species actively pursues thrills and chills on a daily basis, from scary movies to rush hour traffic, and few of us die from these. At this point, research indicates that our chances of being scared to death are pretty low.
Bestic, L. (2015). The nose knows. New Scientist, 227(3028), 34-37.Why Do So Many Price Tags End In .99?BrainStuff - HowStuffWorks2016-04-19 | It’s very common to see the number 9 at the right end of a price tag. Why is this? Lauren explains the psychology of prices and nines in this episode of BrainStuff.
Hi there! I’m Lauren, and this is BrainStuff. The other day I was shopping at Bavmorda’s Trebuchet and Millinery Emporium and I started wondering -- why do so many prices end in the number 9?
You might have wondered the same thing too, and if you have, it’s not just your imagination. Studies have shown that many retailers disproportionately use prices within 5 cents of the nearest dollar, 1 cent of the nearest 10 cents, $5 of the nearest $100 or $1000, and within $1 of the nearest 10-dollar amount.
Prices like this are often known as “charm” prices, “odd” prices, “magic” prices, or “psychological pricing.” Pricetags ending in the number 9 are especially common. But why?
These days, two main psychological theories of charm pricing have emerged. And yes, this is a field of study. For the purpose of this video, we’ll call them the “rounding off” theory and the “bargain signaling” theory.
The rounding off theory argues that shoppers tend to pay a lot more attention to the first digits in a listed price. So, when you see a product labels $29.99, even though it's only 1 penny off from being 30 bucks, the theory goes that you mentally round down to think of it as a $20 price point based on that first digit.
For example, a 2005 study found that prices ending in 99 cents caused shoppers to make math errors that even-dollar prices did not. It worked like this: Test shoppers were given an allowance of exactly 73 bucks, and they were then asked to estimate how many products they could buy with this allowance. It turned out that when 99-cent endings were in the picture, shoppers overestimated their spending power.
In other words, they thought they could buy significantly more products at prices like $2.99 and $5.99 than they could at $3 and $6. This seems to suggest that we do tend to “round down” and ignore the final digits in prices, even though it makes no economic sense to do so.
The bargain signaling theory suggests that odd prices work the same way “Sale” signs do, meaning they imply to shoppers that the price listed is especially good. Maybe the weird specificity of something priced $5.98 or $2.39 makes us think that the store is selling that bag of Gummy Bears at the lowest price point they can possibly afford. Or maybe we’ve all been conditioned by marketing to associate odd prices, especially the ones ending in 9, with sales and discounts.
In 2003, researchers showed that in some cases, you could actually increase demand for an item by raising the price so that it ended in a ‘9,’ which would seem to contradict rational economics.
One example they studied: A $34 dress in a clothing catalog. By raising the price from 34 bucks to 39 bucks, demand for the dress actually went up. When they raised the price to $44, however, the trend didn’t hold -- so it wasn’t just that buyers liked paying more for their clothes.
Since 34 and 39 both start with the same digit, this would seem to favor the bargain signaling theory rather than the rounding off theory. Something about the 9 just seemed to make people think they were getting a good deal.
So it looks like our penchant for buying at the 9s might be explained by a mixture of our tendency to round down to the leftmost digit AND our beliefs that 9s inherently indicate bargains.
First of all, a word of warning for our viewers. If you're squeamish, you might want to watch a less-gross episode of BrainStuff. Like "Why is bird poop white? Or "How do bed bugs work?"
Okay. Ready?
Let’s clarify that an autopsy is a medical examination of a dead body to determine the cause of death. There’s two types: forensic and clinical.
Clinical ones are performed for research, medical training, or at the request of the deceased’s family. And forensic autopsies are the ones you’re used to seeing on TV, like when Agent Scully carves into a corpse because the truth is in there. This is often for legal reasons, potentially as evidence in criminal or civil court cases.
While the general procedure is similar, for our purposes, let’s stick to forensic autopsies. Why? 'Cause I ain’t going out like a punk!
All legally investigated deaths fall into 5 categories: natural, accident, homicide, suicide and undetermined. Yeah, that last one may seem a little wishy-washy, but sometimes the answers aren’t that clear for the attending medical examiner or coroner.
And this is an important distinction. Forensic pathologists are physicians, trained to perform autopsies.
In some counties they use “coroners” instead. And a coroner doesn’t necessarily have medical training. Instead, they’re elected to their position. They can be anyone: farmers, snake handlers, even YouTube hosts… But if a non-medical coroner ever needs assistance, the state usually provides them with a medical examiner.
When that examiner finally gets ahold of your cold body, here’s what they’ll do to it. First they gather information on you, your death and your medical records. Then they record an external exam of your appearance.
They start by photographing you inside a body bag, noting your clothing and its position before stripping you naked. They try to establish your identity, noting ethnicity, gender, age, and hair and eye color. Then they collect samples of hair, fingernails and any foreign objects found on your surface.
Once the external exam is done, they clean your body, weigh it and measure it. On the table they place a rubber body block under your back to make your chest protrude forward so the arms and neck fall back. This makes it easier... for the cutting!
For a complete internal exam they start with the chest, making a Y-shaped incision. Following this, they peel back your skin, muscle and soft tissue with a scalpel, pull the chest flap over your face and expose your ribcage and neck muscles.
Your ribcage is then removed, followed by your larynx, esophagus, arteries and ligaments. By severing a few attachments to your spinal cord, bladder, and rectum, the examiner can remove the rest of your organs as an entire set.
Your organs are each examined and weighed, with sample slices taken of their tissue. If necessary, these organs are stored in formalin.
Depending on how you died, they probably won’t cut open your arms, hands, legs or face.
But don’t think your head is off the hook just yet. If they need a peek inside your noggin, the examiner will move the rubber block under your neck like a pillow. Then they make a cut from behind one ear, across your forehead, over to the other ear and around the back.
Then out comes the electric saw to pop the top of your skull off like a cap and expose your brain. This is severed from your spinal cord and then lifted out, Frankenstein style. Just like your other organs, it’s weighed and examined.
What happens to all of those organs, sitting outside of your body anyway? Well, depending on the style of funeral, they’re either put back in or incinerated. Either way, the butterflied chest flaps are closed, the skull cap is placed back on your head and everything is sewn up nice and tidy with a baseball stitch.
Though even after your body goes off to the funeral home, a pathologist’s work is never done. It takes days to get tissue and blood samples tested and at least two weeks for brain samples. Then it takes hours more to write up a detailed report for the official record.
Keep in mind that this is a brief overview of the autopsy process. We didn’t even get into examining wounds, determining the time of death, or what tools of the trade are used to crack you open.
SOURCES:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/auto...
http://www.livescience.com/32789-fore...
Sedaris, D. (1998). Working stiffs. Esquire, 129(4), 114.
Odyssey. Sep2008, Vol. 17 Issue 7, p18-21. 4p. 3 Color Photographs, 1 Graph. What does the autopsy show? Kowalski, Kathiann M.Should Animals Have Human Rights?BrainStuff - HowStuffWorks2016-04-05 | In theory, all human beings have a certain set of inalienable rights simply by virtue of being self-aware, of having the ability to consider abstract concepts. Nowadays an increasing number of scientists, legislators and global institutions are asking whether higher-order animals qualify for the same legal protections.
Learn more at HowStuffWorks.com: http://now.howstuffworks.com/2016/01/...
http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/eur...What Are Eye Boogers?BrainStuff - HowStuffWorks2016-03-31 | The gunk builds up at the inner corners of our eyes is residue of the stuff the coats and protects our eyeballs all the time. Learn what it’s made of and why it turns to sand overnight.
Hi BrainStuff, Cristen here. Today’s question is “What are eye boogers?” If you’ve ever had to wipe gunk out of the corners of your eyes, it’s not because you were visited by the Sandman or a magical mucus fairy. Nope! We live in a cruelly mundane universe. I’m sorry if I’m the first to break it to you.
Eye boogers are a buildup of the “precorneal” or “basal” tear film that coats and protects your eyes -- plus any foreign particles it catches.
This tear film is just 3 micrometers thick, which is less than half the diameter of a red blood cell, but it’s made up of 3 components: the mucin, the aqueous, and the lipid.
The aqueous component is the operative one: It nourishes, lubricates, and flushes your eyes’ cells. It also smoothes over the microscopic lumps and bumps on the surface of your eyes, creating a smooth lens that optimizes light transfer into your retina.
The other two components are a support system for the aqueous one: The mucin component underneath allows it to temporarily stick to your eyes. Mucins are the proteins that make mucus slimy.
And the lipid component outside holds it in place, so that you’re not just crying constantly like you’ve got Moulin Rouge playing on loop. Without the lipid layer, our tear film would drip right off of our eyeballs.
But how do these components become eye boogers, and why do they accumulate in the inner corners of your eyes? I’ll tell ya.
When you blink, your entire eyelid doesn’t close simultaneously. It shuts like a meaty clapperboard, from the outer corners of your eyes inward toward your nose. Your tear film gets pushed along by the motion.
Upon reaching the inner corner of your eye, most of the film drains out through the tear ducts, which empty into your nasal cavity. But some of the film – the mucins, oils, and debris – can clump together and get stuck.
When enough of that builds up, it forms the goop known as eye boogers. And when it accumulates and dries overnight because you’re not blinking it away, it forms the crusty gunk known as sleep or sand.