Human Factors
Researchers who followed nearly 7,000 Dutch adults for nine years found that both…
There is a popular rule of thumb about social media: scrolling in silence is bad for you, but posting and chatting is good.
Human Factors
Vitamin B12 is synthesised only by bacteria and archaea
Vitamin B12 is built only by bacteria and archaea — no plant, animal, or fungus can make it. The human liver hoards enough to last roughly three years, which is why deficiency hides for so long before it shows.
Human Factors
The human body synthesises roughly 1 gram of creatine a day in the liver and kidneys
The liver, kidneys and pancreas together produce roughly one gram of creatine every day, and about 95% of the body's total creatine sits inside skeletal muscle — a closed loop that explains why the same 5-gram scoop of white powder produces wildly different results in different people.
Human Factors
Astronauts returning from long missions can initially struggle to stand, walk, and…
An astronaut does not return to Earth as someone who has forgotten gravity. The problem is quieter than that.
Human Factors
Spaceflight pushes fluid toward the head, flattening the back of the eye and…
For a long time, the most visible changes to astronauts in orbit were the obvious ones.
Science & Engineering
A 2012 University of Westminster study measured horror-film viewers burning about…
Every year around late October, a number surfaces again: 113 calories, apparently the amount you burn sitting through a horror film, roughly what a short walk would cost you.
Human Behaviour
Nearly every atom in your body is swapped out over the years, so in a real sense…
The body feels like a fixed object because consciousness rides inside it without interruption.
Human Behaviour
In 2012, researchers mapping census data across England found that communities…
The claim is easy to over-romanticise. The English coast has its postcard version: cliffs, beaches, wind, water, a horizon wide enough to make ordinary worries feel smaller.
Human Behaviour
Japan created a national ministerial post for loneliness in 2021, becoming only the…
In February 2021, Japan appointed Tetsushi Sakamoto as the world's second cabinet minister for loneliness, three years after Britain created the role. The move came after a pandemic-era surge in suicides, particularly among women, forced Tokyo to treat social isolation as a matter of state.
Human Behaviour
An ant carrying a crumb across your kitchen floor can lift and haul around 50 times…
Leafcutter ants routinely haul loads 50 times their body weight — a scaling trick rooted in Galileo's square-cube law and a neck joint that can bear 5,000 times an ant's weight before failing.
Psychology
America’s loneliness problem may not be a failure of social skills, but of design
Most explanations of American loneliness are explanations of character. People have forgotten how to talk to strangers.
Science & Engineering
South Korea’s postwar miracle was built by chaebols like Samsung, Hyundai, SK, and…
A typical morning in Seoul is routed through a handful of family conglomerates before the commute is over.
Human Behaviour
The word hikikomori was coined by Japanese psychiatrist Tamaki Saito in the late…
In 1998, Japanese psychiatrist Tamaki Saito coined the term hikikomori for young people who withdraw completely from society, estimating over a million cases in Japan — a number later government surveys would confirm.
Science & Engineering
For nearly five decades, psychologist Francine Patterson taught a western lowland…
For most of her life, a western lowland gorilla named Koko was among the best-known non-human animals on the planet.
Human Factors
The Golden Triangle — the remote borderland where Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand meet…
In May 1967 a single-file column of roughly 500 men and 300 mules stretched for more than a mile along a ridge in Shan State, hauling sixteen tons of raw opium toward a lumber town across the Mekong in Laos.
Science & Engineering
Brain scans found that mothers looking at their own dogs activated some of the same…
Show a mother a photograph of her own dog, then a photograph of her own child, slide her into an MRI scanner, and a good deal of what lights up looks the same.