Researchers have found that flossing your teeth can help your memory. Flossing prevents gum disease, which prevents stiff blood vessels, which cause memory issues.
100 Mind-Blowing Researchers Facts
In 2014, Princeton researchers determined that Facebook would lose 80% of its users by 2017.
The loudness of a monkey is relative to the size of its testicles. Researchers found that the smaller the testicles, the louder the monkey.
Deaf people are known to use sign language in their sleep. A case study of a 71-year-old man with rapid eye movement disorder and a severe hearing impairment showed him using fluent sign language in his sleep, with researchers able to get an idea of what he was dreaming about thanks to those signs.
Giraffes hum to communicate with each other. It’s thought that the low-frequency humming could be a form of ‘contact call’ between individuals who have been separated from their herd, helping them to find each other in the dark. Some researchers think they sleep talk too.
Laughing came before language. How do we know? Some researchers tickled baby apes, which, beyond being adorable, showed that they share the same structure as ours and likely arose in our common ancestors millions of years ago. Language came about much later.
Dead skin cells are a main ingredient in household dust. Here’s an interesting science fact for you: According to researchers at Imperial College London, humans shed around 200 million skin cells each hour—and they have to go somewhere when we’re indoors. If the idea of skin dust isn’t sitting well with you, you should know that a report from the American Chemical Society found that a skin oil called squalene naturally helps reduce indoor ozone levels by up to 15 per cent.
Your brain synapses shrink while you sleep. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Centre for Sleep and Consciousness studied mice to observe what happens to their brains while they sleep. Dr Chiara Cirelli and Dr Giulio Tononi found an 18 per cent decrease in the size of synapses after a few hours of sleep. Don’t worry, though—this nighttime brain shrinkage helps your cognitive abilities.
South American river turtles talk in their eggs. Turtles don’t have vocal cords, and their ears are internal, so scientists believed that turtles were deaf and didn’t communicate through sounds. However, research has found that turtles communicate at an extremely low frequency that sounds like “clicks, clucks, and hoots” that can only be heard through a hydrophone (a microphone used underwater). These sounds even come from the egg before the turtle hatches. Researchers hypothesize that this helps all the turtle siblings hatch at once.
Researchers once turned a live cat into a telephone. Princeton researchers Ernest Wever and Charles Bray took out a cat’s skull and most of its brain to connect the animal to electricity. When they spoke into the cat’s ear, the sound could be heard through a phone receiver in another room. The twisted experiment paved the way for cochlear implant developments.
Space travel makes mice run in circles. NASA once sent 20 rodents to the International Space Station to see how the effects of space affected mice. Not long after they got there, the mice all started running in loops inside their cages. No one is exactly sure why this occurred, but researchers stated that the critters might’ve just been enjoying their time in space.
Bumblebees can fly at great heights. Bumblebees can fly beyond the height of Mt. Everest. Researchers were shocked to discover that two bees that they were tracking were able to fly up to 30,000 feet high.
Earthquakes can permanently shorten the length of the Earth’s day. If a strong enough Earthquake occurs, it can move the spin of the Earth’s axis. The 2011 Earthquake in Japan knocked 1.8 microseconds off our days according to researchers.
Humans share about 50% of our DNA with bananas. By sequencing the entire genome of various organisms, researchers have discovered similarities in their base material. Human beings have been found to share many of the housekeeping genes that are necessary for cellular function with bananas.
An actor’s brain activity is different when in character. Some actors are so good, you forget that they’re acting. However, the actors themselves seem to forget that too. During a study, researchers scanned performers’ brains while the actors answered questions either as themselves or in character. According to the results, the brain activity of participants differed between answering as themselves or as a character – almost as if the character is possessing the actor.
The first webcam was invented to monitor a coffee pot. In 1993, researchers at Cambridge’s computer science department got tired of walking up to an empty coffee machine. So, they wired up a system that would stream images to the Trojan Room that housed the coffee pot.
Canadian researchers have found that Einstein’s brain was 15% wider than normal.
Researchers have found that laughter comes before language.
Horses use facial expressions to communicate with each other. Researchers have identified 17 discrete facial movements in horses.
Researchers from India recently discovered a new species of green pit vipers. They named the snake after Salazar Slytherin, one of the founders of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the Harry Potter universe.
Madame Curie’s notebooks are still radioactive. Researchers wishing to study them must sign a waiver to do so.
Recessions may not be good for our finances, but it turns out that they’re good for our health. Researchers in the US initially studied data from previous economic crises expecting to find a correlation between mortalities and economic crises. What they found was surprising, as harder times seemed actually to reduce mortality rates instead of increasing them. This is because during a recession, there is less traffic, and cleaner air, and people have less money to spend on unhealthy things like drinking alcohol or smoking.
Roosters have built-in earplugs, so they don’t deafen themselves when they crow. Anyone who’s ever spent a night outside the city knows one thing, and that’s the fact that roosters are loud! Researchers measured how loud roosters do crow and found them to be as loud as 140 decibels – well over the amount needed to cause permanent ear damage and even deafness. When they studied what happens when roosters crow, they discovered that in opening their jaw to crow, their outer ear canals close up, essentially giving them natural earplugs.
It turns out that you don’t need to drink six to eight cups of water per day. Water is without a doubt one of the most important things on our planet, and since around the 1940s, it’s been popularly believed that you should drink about 84 ounces (2.5 litres) of the stuff every day to stay healthy. Researchers have since delved deeper into the issue and concluded that you don’t need to drink anywhere near that much, as you get a lot of water from the food you eat. Instead, you’re merely advised to drink when you’re thirsty and drink extra on particularly hot days.
A town in Antarctica forces would-be residents to have their appendices removed. Villas Las Estrellas lies on King George Island, one of Antarctica’s South Shetland Islands. The island itself has a rotating population of around 100 or so people, primarily made up of researchers and various military personnel. Because the island is so remote and the medical facilities there so small, anyone who wishes to live there must get their appendix taken out to ensure it doesn’t become a problem down the line.
The coldest temperature ever recorded occurred in Antarctica, -144 Fahrenheit, as reported by researchers in a scientific journal in 2018.
Which is the older email or www? Most people don’t realize email came long before the World Wide Web. Before the web came along, email worked much differently than today. Users needed to dial a rotary phone to connect to Micronet and access the email webpage. Academic researchers and government entities used email at the time. Consumer usage simply didn’t exist until the Internet came to fruition. Considering what email is today, its original form is archaic and almost confusing to see in action. For that reason, not a single person wants to return to the email systems of the past.
How Many Computer Viruses Are Found Each Day? AV-TEST Institute identifies more than 350,000 new viruses and malicious programs each day. This includes malware, viruses, and unwanted applications. Millions of existing viruses continue to be identified every single day as well. In 2021, AV-TEST estimates a total number of 1191+ million total malware out there. Security researchers and antivirus software providers cannot keep up with the onslaught of new viruses. Creating and releasing a new virus requires little capital and little effort. It can take antivirus software months to catch up with current viruses. Nonetheless, the importance of a capable antivirus program cannot be overstated. Consumers need to protect themselves from viruses whenever possible.
Study Reveals Surgeons Need To Play More Video Games, But Why? Beth Israel Medical Centre in New York recently carried out a study with 33 of its surgeons. The surgeons took a surgical skills test in Laparoscopy that lasted almost two days. In the study, researchers tracked performance in the skills test on an individual level. They then recorded each surgeon’s habits about playing video games. Nine of 33 surgeons played an average of three hours of games per week. They outscored surgeons that never played video games in various categories. For instance, they committed 37 per cent fewer errors and completed the test 27 per cent faster. The study concluded a strong correlation exists between surgical skill and Laparoscopy performance.
There is a machine that can predict heart attacks. Researchers “trained” a machine-learning algorithm that was able to predict heart attacks. It can predict heart attacks up to four hours before they happen – with 80% accuracy.
Researchers found fossils of a “Mega Penguin” that stood over 6 feet tall and weighed in at over 250 pounds.
Daylight saving time does more than make people lose an hour of sleep. It can have some pretty concerning health effects. Studies have linked daylight saving time with an uptick in heart attacks, car crashes, and mining injuries. The extra hour of daylight is good for koalas, though: Researchers found that koala-car collisions went down by up to 11 per cent during daylight saving time.
In the first half of 2022, researchers flagged almost 79 million domains as malicious, based on a newly observed domain dataset. (Akamai)
Cybersecurity Collaboration Centre: The NSA partners with industry, researchers, and allies to strengthen cybersecurity through the Cybersecurity Collaboration Centre. This collaboration helps address emerging threats.
Banknotes are a breeding ground for infections. According to scientists, 94% of the world’s money is infected with bacteria. Researchers at the University of Oxford tested several currency samples for germs and found that the 100 yuan was the dirtiest note, with more than 180,000 bacteria found on it. A relatively “clean” banknote can be considered a euro – 11,000 bacteria.
Researchers at the University of Stanford created a machine learning algorithm that is capable of predicting death with a shocking 90 per cent accuracy.
To better address various AI problems – including fairness – researchers are suggesting a probabilistic programming language system.
AI is also the future of dating apps. Researchers believe that it’ll help people find more compatible partners from the convenience of their smartphones.