Fact O' The Day

[Krandall]

"Most of your traits are evident from your shoes."


A study at the University of Kansas asked 208 volunteers to fill out questionnaires on their lifestyle and behavior, then gathered pictures of the volunteers' most frequently worn shoes. Student participants were then given these pictures and asked to guess the characteristics of the people wearing the shoes (gender, age and personality traits). The students accurately guessed the volunteers' traits in almost all categories, including, for example, flashy shoes belonging to extroverts, uncomfortable-looking shoes belonging to calm people and functional, practical shoes belonging to agreeable people.

[Krandall]

"Being unreachable by work makes you happier at work in the long term."


A study conducted by a professor at Harvard Business School surveyed 1,600 managers and other workers and found that only 2% of those surveyed ever turned off their smartphones, even when on vacation. A follow-up study therefore sought to gauge the effects of being intentionally unreachable on a regular basis. Participants were asked to take a night off once a week, starting at around 6 p.m., during which time their workplaces would be unable to contact them (other team members were designated to cover for them if any issues arose, and exceptions were made in legitimate emergencies). Participants were very reluctant at first, but the study found that taking this day off worked even better than expected. The participants became more proactive about future time management, felt happier about their work-life balance and felt increased work satisfaction overall.

[Krandall]

"Men fantasize slightly more, but women have conventional fantasies more often."


Researchers at the University of Granada in Spain interviewed 2,250 participants, all of them in long-term (over six months) heterosexual relationships, about their tendencies toward sexual fantasy. Men, they found, are more likely to fantasize about exploratory situations (e.g. group sex with other couples), but women are more likely to have "pleasant" sexual fantasies, while both men and women often fantasized about their significant others.

[Krandall]

"We're conditioned to crave fats, but tasting fats actually makes us perceive flavors less."

We have a biological drive to consume fats and have a genetic variance in how we respond to eating it (we can't technically taste fat, but people with a specific variant of the CD36 gene are able to detect it, and as a result tend to crave less of it). A three-year study at the University of Nottingham has concluded that tasting fat actually inhibits the brain's perception of flavor. Participants were monitored with MRI scanners as they tasted four different fruit emulsions, one of which had flavoring but no fat, while the other three had fat and various flavoring properties. The non-fatty sample provoked a bigger response in the brain regions associated with taste than any of the fatty samples, even though the flavor perception was the same.

[Peelz]

"We're conditioned to crave fats, but tasting fats actually makes us perceive flavors less."

We have a biological drive to consume fats and have a genetic variance in how we respond to eating it (we can't technically taste fat, but people with a specific variant of the CD36 gene are able to detect it, and as a result tend to crave less of it). A three-year study at the University of Nottingham has concluded that tasting fat actually inhibits the brain's perception of flavor. Participants were monitored with MRI scanners as they tasted four different fruit emulsions, one of which had flavoring but no fat, while the other three had fat and various flavoring properties. The non-fatty sample provoked a bigger response in the brain regions associated with taste than any of the fatty samples, even though the flavor perception was the same.

not sure I agree....  unless I am one of these with said "cd36" gene. Because enjoy some fatty steak....and pork chops...Oh man 

[Krandall]

not a fan of fatty steak.

I like some marbling, but fattyy.. nastyyyy

[Hefe]

pork fat rules

[Peelz]

yah pork chop fat.... probably the reason my arteries are nearly closed.

I sorta agree Krandall... too much on a steak is icky. Leaner cuts of meat with a little marble- om nom nom

[Colorado700R]

In the PBS science program Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, Episode 9: "The Lives of the Stars", astronomer and television personality Carl Sagan estimated that writing a googolplex in standard form (i.e., "10,000,000,000...") would be physically impossible, since doing so would require more space than the known universe provides.

An average book of 60 cubic inches can be printed

with 5 ×10 5 zeroes (5 characters per word, 10 words per line, 25 lines per page, 400 pages), or

8.3 ×10 3 zeros per cubic inch. The observable (i.e.

past light cone) universe contains 6 ×10 83 cubic

inches ( 4 /3 × π × (14 ×10 9 light years in inches) 3 ). This math implies that if the universe is stuffed with paper printed with 0s, it could contain only

5.3 ×10 87 zeros—far short of a googol of zeros. In

fact there are only about 2.5 ×10 89 elementary particles in the observable universe, so even if one were to use an elementary particle to represent each digit, one would run out of particles well before reaching a googol of digits.

Consider printing the digits of a googolplex in unreadable, one-point font (0.353 mm per digit). It

would take about 3.5 ×10 96 metres to write a googolplex in one-point font. The observable

universe is estimated to be 8.80 ×10 26 meters,or

93 billion light-years, in diameter, [2] so the distance required to write the necessary zeroes is

4.0 ×10 69 times as long as the estimated universe.

[dragonz]

this chick is hot...........












Fact!

[als660r]

this chick is hot...........












Fact!

[Krandall]

"Coastal populations are healthier (at least in the UK)."


A study at the European Centre for Environment and Human Health used UK census responses from 2001 to analyze health data for some 48 million people. After accounting for factors like socioeconomic status and age, they compared people's responses for overall health with their location in the country. People living by the coast reported higher rates of good health than people living inland. The potential reasons for this are numerous, but researchers suggest that living by the coast enables increased physical activity, more opportunities for stress reduction and an increased sense of relaxation.

[Krandall]

"Feeling awe seems to make time pass slowly."

Psychologists at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and the University of Minnesota - Carlson School of Management set up a series of experiments to study the effects of awe (a rarely researched emotion, according to study authors). Participants engaged in a mundane word-scramble task designed to provoke the sensation of being pressed for time, then watched a video evocative of either happiness or awe. People who watched the awe video were more likely to feel that time was plentiful.

[Krandall]

"Hair color may influence long-term health."


Researchers from the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid studied the effects on hair color in boar populations, and found that boars with red fur generally had higher levels of cell damage related to stress over time. The study links the prevalence of the animals' red fur to lower levels of the cellular antioxidant glutathione, which inhibits cellular damage. Conversely, boars with gray hair had the lowest levels of oxidative damage. It's possible, according to the study's authors, that the pigment responsible for red or chestnut colorations could "use up" available glutathione, leaving it less available to fight oxidative stress elsewhere (previous research indicates that gray hair is actually a sign of oxidative stress in humans, but researchers pointed out that all higher vertebrates share the same melanins, and that the topic warrants further study).

[Krandall]

"Cheese eaters are less likely to have diabetes."


A study in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition indicates that people who eat cheese have a 12% lower risk of type 2 (adult-onset) diabetes than non-cheese eaters. The study relied on data from nearly 350,000 people across eight European countries, and the research indicated a difference in the benefits of cheese consumption based on nationality (cheese eaters in the UK actually had higher rates of diabetes than their counterparts in other countries). Dairy consumption overall was not linked to any change in diabetes risk.