SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Bears stop breathing during hibernation for as much as 25-30 seconds at a time. However, unlike ‘deep hibernators’ they remain conscious and their body temperature does not drop significantly.
An “ant mill” or “ant death spiral” is when an army ant trail accidentally forms a circle and a colony walks itself to death from exhaustion.
The number of monarch butterflies in California has declined 97% since the 1980s. Many insect populations around the world have declined by over 75%. Bird and fish species all over the world are dying off due to thiamine deficiency.
HEALTH
“While Dougherty is served by a well-regarded hospital, nine Georgia counties, most of them also in the southern part of the state, not only lack hospitals but have no practicing physicians at all, according to Monty Veazey, the president of the Georgia Alliance of Community Hospitals. Eighteen have no family-practice doctors. Thirty-two have no internal-medicine doctors. Seventy-six counties have no ob-gyn.”
There were around 72,000 alcohol-related deaths among people over the age of 16 in 2017—more than double the number of similar alcohol-related deaths recorded two decades earlier.
The spread of synthetic opioids is driven by supplier decisions, not user demand. Synthetic opioids are a strategic device for dealers seeking to lower costs or skirt drug laws, not a newly popular drug among users.
Santa Clara County, home to Silicon Valley, has 23 active superfund sites, more than any other county in the county.
The “Nordic paradox” is the high prevalence of intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW) in countries with high levels of gender equality such as Sweden, versus lower levels of gender of equality such as Spain.
Meth is a popular Lunar New Year’s gift in North Korea: “The gifting and use of methamphetamine…is said to be a well-established custom in North Korea. Users are said to inject or snort the drug as casually as they might smoke a cigarette, with little awareness of its addictive qualities or destructive effects.”
Physiologist considers performance differentials between male and female athletes, and the implications for male-to-female transgender athletes. “If the performance of a biological male falls by less than 10% after lowering testosterone, they have a conceptually ‘unfair’ advantage. At 10% impaired, only truly elite men could win medals in women’s sport. With a 7% loss of performance a sub-elite male could be a medal winner. With a 4%-or-less loss of performance, a sub-elite man could dominate a woman’s sport”
“The share of U.S. adults reporting no sex in the past year reached an all-time high in 2018, underscoring a three-decade trend line marked by an aging population and higher numbers of unattached people.” 18-30 year olds are nearly twice as likely to report past-year celibacy as 50-somethings.
“Experimental work has challenged the idea that bystanders are passive in dangerous situations, in which it is clear that the victim does require help. This work suggests that when it really matters, bystanders actually do intervene…” CCTV shows that “at least one bystander (but typically three or four) carried out helping interventions in nine-out-of-ten of the events.”
A study of randomized class schedules shows that students perform better in the afternoon than in the early morning, cognitive fatigue set in when scheduling multiple courses in a row, instruction improves with repetition.
US
19.5% (28.2M) of the United States workforce are employed in occupations where working from home would be difficult, due to minimal use of computer at work, and a high level of interaction with the public. About 25% (35.6M) of the United States are employed in occupations where working from home could 31 likely be more easily accommodated.
Increases in minimum wage appear to lead to increases in property crime. “Our estimates suggest that a $15 Federal minimum wage could generate criminal externality costs of nearly $2.4 billion.”
“Across multiple studies, we find that access to Spanish‐language television is associated with decreases in turnout, ethnic civic participation, and political knowledge.”
The combination of state, local, and federal school funding makes it so that the districts attended by poor students are funded 2.5% more than non-poor students.
BUSINESS
10% of Nepal’s GDP comes from Everest expeditions.
The utility of CEO as scapegoat.
Ikea says it uses 1% of the planet’s lumber each year — 530 million cubic feet of wood.
OTHER
An anchorite or anchoress permanently confines themselves to a cell, usually attached to a church, to live a life of prayer, contemplation, and aesthetic mortification. There were a few hundred anchorites across Europe, mainly women, in the Middle Ages.
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