Gold
Scientists Witness Lead Literally Turn Into Gold in The Large Hadron Collider
Intimate relationships are frequently characterized by problems, which the current research aimed to identify. […] Greek-speaking participants […] The most common problems were a poor sex life, followed by incompatibility and neglect. Other common problems included a partner’s bad character, fear of abandonment, and lack of shared fun and recreation. Lack of loyalty and respect, disagreement over family planning, and privacy invasion were the least common problems in our sample. Both sexes reported similar problems.
How does paternal odor influence emotion perception in infancy? […] Our findings therefore provide first evidence for an influence of the father’s odor on face processing, specifically male faces, in infancy.
living near golf courses could dramatically drive up one’s risk of developing Parkinson’s disease. Common golf course pesticides, such as chlorpyrifos and maneb can contaminate air and groundwater.
Microbe that infests hospitals can digest medical-grade plastic. Until now, the only enzymes shown to break down plastics were found in environmental bacteria. “If a pathogen can degrade plastic, then it could compromise plastic-containing medical devices such as sutures, implants, stents or wound dressings, which would obviously negatively impact patient prognosis”
Killer fungi to spread as climate heats up […] The Aspergillus family could expand its reach to more northerly swaths of Europe, Asia and the Americas, underscoring the stealthy menace of moulds already estimated to be a factor in 5 per cent of all worldwide deaths. Climatic shifts are broadening the geographical reach of many potentially lethal pathogens, such as those borne by mosquitoes. Fungi are a particular peril, due to their hard-to-detect spores, a shortage of treatments for the diseases they trigger, and growing resistance to existing drugs. […] Mycology, the study of fungi, is a field of many mysteries. More than 90 per cent of fungal species “remain unknown to science” […] About 3.8mn people each year die with invasive fungal infections, with the pathogen being the main cause of death in 2.5mn of those cases […] A leading danger is aspergillosis, a lung disease caused by aspergillus spores that can spread to other organs including the brain. Many infections are spotted late or never, because of medical practitioners’ unfamiliarity or because symptoms are mistaken for those of other conditions. [Financial Times | archive.ph]
The amount of electricity consumed is strongly affected by the outside temperature
“Europe had a [blood plasma] shortage of around 38%, which it met by importing plasma from paid donors in the United States, where blood products account for 2% of all exports by value.” TWO PERCENT OF U.S. EXPORTS ARE BLOOD!? […] So 0.5298% of goods exports almost certainly use blood, and my best guess is that another 0.1569% of exports also include blood, for a total of 0.6867%.
An island 50 miles (80 kilometers) off the southern tip of the Korean Peninsula is home to a unique and celebrated community of women: the Haenyeo. These women dive year-round off Jeju Island, collecting sea urchin, abalone and other seafood from the ocean floor, descending as much as 60 feet (18 meters) beneath the surface multiple times over the course of four to five hours each day. They dive throughout pregnancy and well into old age, without the help of any breathing equipment — just a wet suit. […] the researchers wondered whether the divers have unique DNA that allows them to go without oxygen for so long or if that ability is the result of a lifetime of training — or a combination of the two. […] findings […]uncovered unique genetic differences the Haenyeo have evolved to cope with the physiological stress of free diving … a discovery that could one day lead to better treatments for blood pressure disorders
On any given day, Huh does about three hours of focused work. He might think about a math problem, or prepare to lecture a classroom of students, or schedule doctor’s appointments for his two sons. “Then I’m exhausted,” he said. “Doing something that’s valuable, meaningful, creative” — or a task that he doesn’t particularly want to do, like scheduling those appointments — “takes away a lot of your energy.” […] He finds that forcing himself to do something or defining a specific goal — even for something he enjoys — never works. It’s particularly difficult for him to move his attention from one thing to another. “I think intention and willpower … are highly overrated,” he said. “You rarely achieve anything with those things.” […] When he was younger, Huh had no desire to be a mathematician. He was indifferent to the subject, and he dropped out of high school to become a poet. It would take a chance encounter during his university years — and many moments of feeling lost — for him to find that mathematics held what he’d been looking for all along. June Huh, 39, has now [2022] been awarded the Fields Medal, the highest honor in mathematics
