Interesting Facts

According to a report by Ofsted, pupils in England are losing an hour a day's teaching because of bad behaviour in class. (Ofsted inspectors found that chatting, calling out, swinging on chairs, passing notes and using mobile phones are "very common" in English schools.   That's fine, it will prepare them for the English workplace.)

According to the charity OCD-UK, clinical research stats suggest about 750,000 people, approx.1.2% of the UK population suffer with OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). (However research suggests that 44% of the population think they have it. A common phrase in the UK is "I'm a bit OCD", well ladies and gentlemen, that's not OCD. Some signs of OCD are:- Compulsive hand-washing (Do you keep scrubbing your hands raw, or use sanitizer?) Overzealous cleaning (Is your house spotless?) Checking behaviour (Is the oven off?) Counting everything (How many steps in your house?) Perfect Organisation (Is your desk always tidy?) Fear of violence (Are you frightened to go outside?) Unwanted sexual thoughts (Are you disgusted at yourself?) Dwelling on relationships (Do you still obsess about your old flames?) Always seeking reassurance (Do you ask your friends the same questions over and over?) Hating your looks (Do you like what you see in the mirror?) So...

Houseflies are notoriously difficult to swat, and now scientists have discovered why: It's because they have superpowers. (According to a publication in the journal Animal Behaviour, they can actually see you coming in slow motion. They process more visual information than we can, for example, your average housefly can see a light flickering at a rate nearly seven times faster than we can.  So what we perceive as fast is in slow motion for them. One of the researchers, Dr McNally compared it to the famous bullet-time scene in the Matrix where the bullets were moving at an incredibly slow rate as far as Keanu Reeves was concerned.) Source

According to scientists at the University of Roehampton men put under pressure performed better when they were scratching, lip biting and touching their face because it seemed to relax them. (But this doesn't work for women. The author of the stu dy, Professor Changiz Mohiyeddini , said: "It seems that men have an effective behavioural strategy – fidgeting - to combat their nervousness, but for women, the same behaviour actually makes things much worse." It's been so long since I was at an interview I can't really comment on whether I fidget or not, but I have the sneaking suspicion that I go tharn.) 

According to experts from the Technical University of Munich, Germany, squeezing a soft ball or making a fist with your left hand could help combat sporting nerves. (Basically when we practice a particular movement thousands of times, it becomes automatic and requires little conscious thought, by shifting the balance of brain activity away from the left side, which governs conscious movement, and towards the right, which is key to automated behaviour, we can reduce the likelihood of choking under pressure and because each of our arms is connected to the opposite side of the brain, this can be done by clenching the left hand. Now, two thoughts come to mind.  We should test this theory the next time England needs to take a penalty, and I wonder if clenching the right hand can reduce exam nerves.)