My Science School

Alexithymia is the inability to identify and describe one’s own emotions. Alexithymia was first mentioned as a psychological construct in 1976 and was viewed as a deficit in emotional awareness. Research suggests that approximately 8% of males and 2% of females experience Alexithymia, and that it can come in mild, moderate and severe intensities. Studies also show that Alexithymia has two dimensions – a cognitive dimension, where a child or adult struggles to identify, interpret and verbalize feelings (the “thinking” part of our emotional experience). And an affective dimension, where difficulties arise in reacting, expressing, feeling and imagining (the “experiencing” part of our emotional experience). Alexithymia has long been associated to a range of psychological disorders, from autism, depression, schizophrenia, and somatoform disorders, just to name a few. It’s very challenging for those who struggle with Alexithymia to cope with co-existing psychological disorders because their innate vulnerability to understanding themselves and others complicates recovery.

 

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New York Times crossword puzzle editor, Will Shortz, is the only person in the world known to have a degree in enigmatology, the study of puzzles.

Will sold his first puzzle professionally when he was just 14 years old to Venture, a denominational youth magazine. At age 16, he became a regular contributor to Dell puzzle publications. To date Will is the author or editor of more than 500 puzzle books!

Having received a law degree from the University of Virginia in 1977, Will originally entered law school with the intention of practicing law for ten years. By then he estimated he would make enough money to retire and do what he really wanted—create puzzles. However ten years proved to be a daunting length of time for a young Will Shortz, and following graduation he skipped the bar exam to begin his career in puzzles immediately.

 

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78 years ago, Walt Disney unleashed a phenomenon when Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first full-length animated film, debuted in theater all over the U.S. But though Snow White was Disney’s first full-length movie princess, she was not the first Disney princess. That honour goes to Persephone, the main character in a 1937 short film that served as a sort of test run for Snow White. The film, The Goddess of Spring, features a realistic maiden flitting through an idyllic spring world, accompanied by dancing, dwarf-like figures, birds and fairies.

Things take a scary turn when a singing Pluto (no, not that Pluto), the god of the underworld, snatches Persephone and drags her to a jazzy, fiery hell. Spoiler alert: The spring maiden works things out with Hades and agrees to spend half the year with him.

Alyssa Carnahan, open studio coordinator at the Walt Disney Family Museum, writes that the project was a chance for Disney’s animators to work on bringing a human character to life. The studio had focused primarily on wacky animals, though early silent shorts featured a real-life girl with long curls named Alice. As they worked on Persephone’s princess-like look and action, animators also developed standards like the model sheet, which allows cel animators to keep character attributes consistent throughout the film.

A look at Persephone shows plenty of similarities to Snow White, from her habit of holding her skirt and twirling, to her proclivity for adorable animals and diminutive people. Persephone might be a goddess, but she’s also the daughter of Zeus and thus a princess, as well—one who exhibits the same characteristics of curiosity, peril and redemption that her later sisters will mirror.

 

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A standard 2x2 LEGO brick can take 432 kgs of pressure before it cracks. The grand total of bricks a single Lego brick can support? 375,000. Multiply that by the height of the brick (9.6 mm) and it turns out that, theoretically, a tower of Lego 3.5 kms high could be built before the one at the bottom shows any problems. That’s taller than Mount Olympus in Greece!

A 2x4 brick would fail sooner, Ian Johnston reckons, while a 1x2 brick would likely be able to withstand more.

But could a 3.5km Lego tower really be built?

"There isn't a chance you could do it in reality," Johnston says. "Long before the brick fails, the tower would fail as a structure itself, by buckling. The other thing you have to remember is that we were very careful to load this equally down the middle, so that all four walls were loaded."

A 3.5km tower would have to be built so straight that it was no more than 2mm off centre at the midway point, he says.

"And I'd be delighted to meet a Lego builder who could make a 3.5km tower so accurately."

Cue Duncan Titmarsh, the UK's only certified Lego builder - and one of only 13 worldwide - and Ed Diment, his partner at company Bright Bricks.

They built the 12.2m (40ft) Lego Christmas tree that stood in London's St Pancras station last Christmas, and the 5m x 3m advent calendar standing in Covent Garden.

 

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U.S. astronauts Scott Kelly and Mark Kelly are the first and only identical twins to have travelled into outer space. Scott spent a year on the International Space Station (ISS), the longest mission in outer space by any NASA astronaut. Mark, who retired from NASA in 2011, stayed on Earth. Because the Kellys have virtually the same genetic material, NASA can study how long-duration space flight affects the body and the mind, using Mark as the control. One of the results? Scott is now two inches taller than Mark! On earth, the discs in the spinal column are slightly compressed due to gravity. In space, that compression is no longer present causing the discs to expand. The result: the spine lengthens, and the astronaut is taller.

Human bodies did not evolve to float in microgravity or to thrive under the radiation levels in space. When NASA astronaut Scott Kelly spent nearly a year on the International Space Station, in a mission launching in 2015, his body was put under incredible stress: Fluids swelled his upper body and head, his genes activated in different ways, and his immune system jumped into overdrive compared to that of his identical twin, Mark Kelly. Mark has also flown in space, but he remained on the ground during that long-duration mission. Over time, Scott experienced decreased body mass, instability in his genome, swelling in major blood vessels, changes in eye shape, metabolism shifts, inflammation and alterations in his micro biome — as well as a strange lengthening of his telomeres, the protective structures at the ends of chromosomes. (They shortened again after he landed.)

 

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Nature’s newest super material comes from a mollusk found on the rocky shores of western Europe. The teeth of the limpets are even stronger than spider silk, the previous record holder.

Limpet teeth grow from a radula, a ribbonlike structure used to scrape and cut food, such as algae, offrocky surfaces. The teeth are built of protein frames reinforced by closely packed nanofibres of a mineral called goethite. The material displayed a very high tensile strength of up to 6.5 gigapascals (GPa); in comparison, spider silk has a tensile strength of up to 4.5 Gpa, and Kevlar boasts only about 3.0-3.5 Gpa. What’s interesting is that limpet teeth retain their strength regardless of size.

Scientists believe the structure could be reproduced in high-performance engineering applications such as Formula 1 racing cars, boat hulls and aircraft.

Examining effective designs in nature and then making structures based on these designs is known as ‘bio-inspiration’.

Tears caused by sadness, happiness, and  chopping onions look different under the microscope, photographer Rose-Lynn Fisher found as part of her project The Topography of Tears.

Tears contain oils, antibodies and enzymes suspended in salt and fall into three categories: basal (released continuously to keep the eyes lubricated), reflex (in response to irrtants such as when chopping onions or when getting poked in the eye), and psychic (triggered by emotions).

Since the structures seen under the microscope are largely crystallized salt, the circumstances under which the tear dries can lead to radically dissimilar shapes and formations, so two psychic tears with the exact same chemical make-up can look very different.

 

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Meet Sesame, the smartphone designed specifically for the mobility impaired. Developed by Oded Ben Dov and Giora Livne of Israel-based startup Sesame Enable, the phone allows disabled users to control it with their voice or with just head movements.

The Sesame Phone is a Google Nexus 5 phone customized to include facial recognition capabilities and a cursor that floats over the home screen, allowing people to click on apps without using their hands. Users open the Sesame Enable app by saying, “Open Sesame,” which opens a window that capture’s key points on the user’s face, a cursor appears. Turn your head slightly to the right and the cursor moves right. Stop, and a navigation icon appears, allowing you to click, drag, swipe, or exit.

Giora Livne, who himself is disabled, says, “My life quality jumped from the Stone Age to the smartphone age.”

 

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Josephoartigasia monesi, a rodent closely related to guinea pigs, lived in South America around 3 million years ago. With an estimated body mass of 1000 kg it was similar in size to a buffalo! An almost complete skull (the largest fossil rodent ever found), unearthed from San Jose Formation in Uruguay, is preserved in the National History and Anthropology Museum of Uruguay. The animal lived during the Pliocene period, an era marked by an abundance of large animals including the first mammoths.

Scientists found that although the rodent’s bite forces were very large – around 1400 Newtons, similar to that of a tiger, its incisors would have been able to withstand almost three times that force. They concluded that it must have used its incisors for other activities too, such as digging in the ground for food or defensing itself from predators, similar to how a modern-day elephant uses its tusks.

 

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The world’s oldest existing lighthouse is the Tower of Hercules in Spain, erected in the first century and still operational. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, it now marks the entrance of Spain’s La Coruna Harbour. This ancient Roman lighthouse is 180 feet tall and overlooks the North Atlantic coast of Spain. At its base is preserved the cornerstone with an inscription crediting it to the architect Gaius Sevius Lupus from Aeminium (present-day Coimbra, Portugal).

The architectural integrity of the property, in the sense of a structurally complete building, and its functional integrity are satisfactory. While the authenticity of the central Roman core is certain, the authenticity of the building only makes sense when judged from the point of view of a technological property that has required numerous renovations and functional adaptations.

The conservation of the property is monitored to a good scientific level. In the final analysis, all the measures and projects presented form an acceptable management plan. The role of the Tower Management Plan Monitoring Committee needs to be upgraded by virtue of its being the coordinating authority for the management of the property.

 

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The island nation of Kiribati is the only country that falls in all four hemispheres. It consists of 33 atolls and one raised coral island (Banaba), extending into the eastern, western, northern and southern hemispheres.

It's the country that's furthest from the Greenwich meantime at GMT +14, making it the first country that welcomes the New Year. This was purposely done to keep the working week same for the whole country rather than have it split over the International Date Line.

Other interesting facts about the country include that it's made of 33 atolls and reef islands, out of which only 21 happen to be inhabited. It is the 197th most populous country in the world and while the country's just 811 square km, its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) is of 3,441,810 square km, making its EEZ slightly larger than all of India. 

Two of its uninhabited islets disappeared below the sea in 1999. In fact, in an attempt to counter the very real risk of the whole country drowning, Kiribati is in talks to buy 5000 acres of land from Fiji, where it can relocate its people.

 

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Ayam Cemani is a breed of chicken that is entirely black. Even the internal organs are black! ‘Ayam’ means ‘chicken’ in Indonesian and ‘Cemani’ translates to ‘completely black’ in Javanese. Ayam Cemani gets its black colouring from a generic trait known as ‘fibromelanosis’, that promotes the proliferation of black pigment cells. The breed that originated from Java in Indonesia is so exotic that it is referred to as the “Lamborghini of poultry”. They are one of the most expensive chickens in the world with a single bird costing up to $2,500. The hens lay cream-coloured eggs – the only part of the chicken that is not black.

In Asia, Ayam Cemani are renowned as much for the mystical powers of their black meat as they are for their extraordinary ink-black feathers that shimmer with a metallic sheen of beetle green and purple. Greenfire Farms was able to locate and legally import into the United States the first pure specimens of this breed despite the current USDA export ban on importing live chickens from Indonesia. We have unrelated bloodlines of Ayam cemani that should produce healthy and beautiful chicks for many generations. Ayam Cemani are friendly birds, and the hens lay about 60 to 100 cream-colored eggs their first year. A typical laying cycle lasts for about 20 to 30 eggs, and then the hen will stop laying for three to six months. The eggs are unusually large in proportion to the size of the hen’s body. The birds pictured here are our breeding stock, and they were selected from many birds for their exceptionally black features. However, we cannot guarantee the distribution of black pigment in their offspring.

 

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The ampersand was once the 27th letter after ‘Z’ in the Latin alphabet. The shape of the character (&) predates the word ‘ampersand’ by more than 1,500 years. In the first century, Roman scribes wrote in cursive, so when they wrote the Latin word et which means ‘and’ they linked the e and t. In the early 1800s, school children reciting their ABCs concluded the alphabet with the ‘&’. It was recited as “and per se and”, meaning ‘and by itself and’. Over time ‘and per se and’ morphed together into the word ‘ampersand’.

There are blogs that focus on ampersands, there are t-shirts, there are colouring books about ampersands, ampersand-a-day Tumblr blogs, apparently a surprising number of people out there have ampersand tattoos, sculptural decorations for the home, framed prints and a multitude of Pinterest pages besotted by it. Perhaps the most dedicated undertaking in praise of the humble letter form was the contribution by 400 different designers to create an entire font made up of nothing but ampersands. All of this activity and commerce, for one humble character, that sits discretely above the number 7 on your keyboard.

 

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The Rose of Hildersheim, known as the Thousand-Year Rose, is said to be the oldest living rose on earth. Growing up the side of a columnar portion of Germany’s Hildesheim Cathedral, the Rosa Canina (dog rose) bush in thought to have been planted in the early 800s when the church itself was founded. The plant, reaching to a height of 33 feet, still produces pale pink flowers once a year (in May). It was nearly completely razed during the World War II when Allied bombs annihilated the cathedral. Every bit of the plant above ground was destroyed, but from the rubble, new branches grew from the root that survived.

Today the the base of the Thousand-Year Rose is protected by a squat iron fence and each of the central roots is named and catalogued to protect one of the oldest pieces of natural beauty one is lucky to find. 

 

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Hangry is the state of being so hungry that the lack of food causes you to become angry. Hangry didn’t come into greater use until the Internet gave it new life. It showed up first on Usenet, then other Internet forums, and eventually joined the pantheon of The Giffed, cementing its place in our online lexicon.

It’s moved offline as well—and with good reason. Hangry is a concise way to describe a common feeling, so it’s no surprise that it’s shown up in sources like The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, SELF Magazine, Ebony, and Bon Appetit, as well as in broadcasts on CNN and NBC. Scientists have weighed in on hanger and whether it’s real or imagined, and the adjective has even been applied to bears.

The rise in use of hangry makes it a good candidate for future entry—provided people stay hangry.

 

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It’s not just men who flex their biceps, male kangaroos do it, too! Research shows that male kangaroos deliberately strike poses that show off their arms in order to attract a male.

People who are familiar with kangaroos might not be that surprised, as the animal has been a symbol of strength for a while. The Royal Australian Air Force used a boxing kangaroo starting in 1891. For a while, kangaroos would fight men in boxing rings. And, in fact, a male kangaroo biceps are a lot more impressive than you might think.

 

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