Interesting Facts

We know walking is good for us, but it seems where you walk makes a difference. (Various studies have found that urban dwellers with little access to green spaces are at a higher risk of developing psychological problems, but a recent study carried out at Stanford university found that volunteers who walked for 90 minutes through a lush, green portion of the Stanford campus were more attentive and happier afterward than volunteers who strolled for the same amount of time near heavy traffic. The volunteers were allowed to walk at their own pace, but they were not allowed to have companions or listen to music. The results suggest that getting out into natural environments could be an easy and almost immediate way to improve your mood. So, let's build more parks.) Source

According to a study carried out by the British Heart Foundation, Brits spend about 19 minutes a day on regrets, which means we waste 2 hours a week dwelling on things we wish we had (or hadn't) done. (The average Brit seemingly has six major regrets.  The most frequent are not travelling enough and failing to keep in touch with friends.  Here are the top 20 regrets:- 1. Not travelling more and seeing more of the world 2. Not keeping in touch with more friends from the past 3. Taking too little exercise 4. Not saving enough money 5. Taking up smoking 6. Not working harder at school 7. Choice of career 8. Wasting years with the wrong partner 9. Eating unhealthily 10. Not asking grandparents more about their lives before they died 11. Not learning to speak a foreign language properly 12. Not spending enough time with family and friends 13. Not telling a relative who’s now dead that I loved them 14. Drinking too much alcohol 15. Not undertaking a once in a li...

According to evolutionary psychologist Professor Robin Dunbar, gossiping about others could help us to live longer. (He told the Cheltenham Science Festival that the most important thing that will prevent you dying is the size of your social network, adding "Language evolved to allow us to keep the oil of the social network flowing, keep us up to date, and tell stories which is really important for community cohesion." And he's not alone: Dr Matthew Feinberg, a researcher at Stanford University also said: “Groups that allow their members to gossip sustain co-operation and deter selfishness better than those that don't." Other studies have implied that gossiping about others is what sets us apart from the animals, and according to scientists at the University of Michigan it's especially good for women, a woman is happier and healthier if she enjoys a regular chat with her female friends because it boosts levels of progesterone, a hormone shown to reduc...

According to researchers from Bristol University's Tobacco and Alcohol Research Group, the shape of a glass can affect the speed at which we drink. (They found that straight glasses cause people to drink more slowly than curved ones. In a test people with straight glasses were 60% slower when consuming alcoholic beverages than those drinking from curved glasses. Markings on a glass also slowed the speed at which people drank. People with a marked glass took an average of 10.3 minutes to finish a pint, while the non-marked glass group took 9.1 minutes. Unfortunately I think this means pubs and restaurants will soon be removing all markings and serving everything in curvy glasses.)

Do you ever get a song stuck in your head? We call that kind of song an earworm (borrowed from the German word ‘ohrwurm'). Well according to research from the University of Reading chewing gum can get it out. (Their study found that people who chewed gum after hearing catchy songs thought less often about the song and it reduced the amount the song went round and round in their head. The study, "Want to block earworms from conscious awareness? B(u)y gum!" was published in Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. I wonder who financed the research?) Source

According to a new study conducted at Loughborough University, drivers who are dehydrated can be as dangerous as those who are drunk or on drugs. (The study showed that drivers who drank only 25 ml of water an hour made more than twice the number of mistakes as drivers who had drunk enough water. Professor Maughan, who published the findings, said, “We all deplore drink driving, but we don't usually think about the effects of other things that affect our driving skills, and one of those is not drinking and dehydration. There is no question that driving while incapable through drink or drugs increases the risk of accidents, but our findings highlight an unrecognised danger and suggest that drivers should be encouraged to make sure they are properly hydrated.” I can see it now:- Policeman: "Sir, you are 3 times over the legal limit." Driver: "At least I'm not dehydrated, officer.")

Young children really believe they become invisible if other people can't see their eyes. (Studies carried out by researchers at the University of Cambridge found that when children aged between 3 and 4 had their eyes covered with masks, they really believed they could not be seen by the researchers. On being asked to explain how they were made invisible by simply hiding their eyes, many knew that their bodies remained visible, suggesting a childhood distinction between their physical bodies and the 'self' they connect to their eyes. Peekaboo! The eyes really are the window to the soul.)

According to a study conducted by the University of California, in the US, people, especially young people, are so engrossed in their phones, they are unable to accurately read how people are feeling in real-life. (According to psychologists, this is the result of less face-to-face time interaction.  Children in particular are glued to electronic devices for nearly five hours each day, and this could leave them emotionally stunted in the future. I do hope you're not reading this on your phone.)

US scientists at Johns Hopkins Medical School and the University of Nebraska, might have found the answer as to what causes unspeakable stupidity - a virus.   (The algae virus, which has never been found in healthy people,was discovered to affect cognitive functions such as visual processing and spatial awareness. I wonder if there is a cure.)

Mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani is the first woman to be awarded what is considered the most prestigious prize in math , the Fields medal. (Ms Mirzakhani has been a professor at Stanford University since 2008, but she is also the first person to win this medal from the Middle East, as she was born and raised in Iran. The Fields medal is considered to be the Nobel Prize for maths, because strangely there is no Nobel for mathematics. All 52 previous winners of the award were men.)

Dogs are capable of feeling jealous. (For a long time, scientists have argued that emotions like jealousy and guilt require a sophisticated understanding of the self and of other's social goals and desires, and are therefore the province of humans only, but it now it looks as if what every dog owner has known all along, could be scientifically proven . Christine R. Harris and Caroline Prouvost of the University of California, have adapted an experiment, initially designed for babies, where dog owners were asked to interact with different object, one of them being a stuffed toy dog; the researchers found that the dogs were much more likely to show jealousy: aggression – snapping, getting between the owner and the object, and pushing the object away – for the stuffed dog. Laika would like to do the same to my computer.)   Source

A survey carried out by linguistics researchers at Manchester University found there were 7 different words for a bread roll in the UK. (In the South it was generally called a roll. In the North a bap or a bun. In the North-west a barm, or a muffin. In the Midlands a cob. In Yorkshire a tea cake! Now I'll go along with roll or a cob, but to me a bap is a softer, more floury bread roll, a muffin is an American cake, a bun is sweet and hopefully full of cream, and a tea cake is full of dried fruit and has to be toasted and served with lots of butter.)

According to research from UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles), a person who grows up in an average, reasonably positive home is told "no" over 148,000 times before they hit their 18th birthday. (On the other side, they are only told "yes" around 5,000 times. According to Dr. Alice Sterling Honig, Professor Emerita of Child Development at Syracuse University, and an expert in early language development, if you just say ‘no’ to a young child all the time, that child doesn'’t learn to use language to reason with you and others. 148,000 nos sounds like brainwashing to me. No wonder we are often negative, and more likely to think we can't do something, than taking the more positive view.)

Researchers from Cambridge University have developed a saliva test that can indicate the risk of depression in teenage boys. (Most mental health disorders start before age 24 and about one in six people will suffer from clinical depression, in the UK 10 million people will suffer at some point in their lives. The research found that teenage boys who felt down and had high levels of the "stress hormone" cortisol were 14 times more likely to go on to suffer clinical depression than boys who didn't . The test was tried on teenage boys and girls, but found to be most effective with boys.) Source

According to research from from the University of Leicester, rodents could evolve to fill niches as larger mammals go extinct. (The largest extinct rodent known to science was Josephoartegasia monesi. It lived three million years ago, was larger than a bull, and weighed over a ton. Like its modern-day relative, the sheep-sized capybara, it lived in South America. Gigantism is a well known evolutionary response that occurs when a small creature steps into an ecological niche left by a larger species. Rats the size of sheep!  If that isn't a good enough reason to protect the elephant, rhino and other species from extinction, I don't know what is.)

Research into sleeping patterns carried out at the University of Surrey, have shown that working night shifts sends the human body into chaos, and could cause lasting damage to health. (Working irregular shifts has a similar effect to severe jet lag or repeatedly missing sleep. Even more worryingly it has a damaging effect at the level of our DNA, with hundreds of genes, whose activity should rise and fall on a daily basis, losing their rhythm, and other genes developing abnormal cycles of their own. So basically not getting enough sleep is bad for you, and sleeping at the wrong time is bad for you too.  We can't win!) Source

According to a study published by the Center for Ethics, Harvard University, in the USA, we are more likely to lie and cheat in the afternoon. (The study, called The Morning Morality Effect - The Influence of Time of Day on Unethical Behavior, found that if we’re usually ethical to begin with, our ethics slip a bit in the afternoon, but people who tend to cheat regularly were just as likely to do so in the morning as in the afternoon. )

An advert filmed to promote a Welsh University was filmed in England. (The ad was supposed to show the actor Ioan Gruffudd, walking across the Brecon Beacons, but the location had to be changed to the Mendip Hills because of - rain.

According to research carried out by the Ultra Parallel Visible Light Communications project, a joint venture between the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, St Andrews and Strathclyde, and funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council wireless transmission reaching speeds of 10Gbit/s – more than 250 times faster than ‘superfast’ broadband is possible using converted LED lightbulbs. (The technology, cleverly called Li-Fi by Edinburgh University's Prof Harald Haas, would enable existing LED light bulbs to be converted to transmit Li-Fi signals with a single microchip.  The bulbs would have to be kept on to transmit data, but they could be dimmed to the point that they were not visible to humans, and would be more secure than Wi-Fi, as hackers would be unable to access unsecured internet connections from out of sight of the transmitter.) Source    

50 years ago only 5% of young people in the UK went to university. (The ONS (Office for National Statistics) found that 27.2% of the UK population aged 16 to 74 had a degree or equivalent or higher, and according to the UK government's universities minister, David Willetts, the number of places at UK universities will have to grow by at least a quarter over the next 20 years. We have a long way to go to beat Finland though: In Finland 80% of young women are now going to university. Going to university may become as natural as going to school.)