A great deal of medicine and thoughts that astronauts take to space addresses the unusual and confined environment of microgravity in which they have to work. When you are at home, sitting on a divan or standing near a window, blood and other fluids pool toward your lower extremities but redistribute headward. This doesn’t happen in microgravity. The one-way movement of fluid toward your head could cause brain volume changes and pituitary gland deformation. Less critical but still serious are sleep problems and skin rashes. A recent report has it that the use of sleep aids and incidence of skin rashes were higher than expected among medications for astronauts. Getting a good night’s sleep out there is a little trickier than we might think. Apart from the overflowing discomfort of microgravity, you also wake up to the fact that ‘day’ and ‘night’ are best experienced on a planet. “As far as skin rashes are concerned,” said Gerald Weissmann, M.D (Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal), “that should be no surprise either. Those are close quarters and things get itchy.”
SNEAK PEEK
1. Ramadan this year
COVID-19 makes Ramdam harsher this year, but epidemics and wars have troubled Islamic practices throughout history — from the Qurmatian attack on Mecca in 930 and the 19th century cholera outbreaks (both resulted in the cancellation of Hajj). Who recalled the history?
1. Al Jazeera correspondent Usaid M. Siddiqui
2. Don’t sit down!
Going out to exercise means different things to different people. Joggers are out to jog, but think of people who have suddenly taken it up and are panting on a pavement near you. Well, who suggested that the expert advice should have been put simply as “Don’t sit down”?
2. Suzanne Moore, a columnist at ‘The Guardian’
3. The UV solution
The notion that you can disinfect your skin or clothing or other objects with UV is an extremely popular health advice right now. There is only one type of UV that can reliably inactivate Covid-19 — and it’s extremely dangerous. “You would literally be frying people.” Who said it?
3. Dan Arnold (UV Light Technology, UK)
4. Keeping a distance
Disease avoidance should be — and is — part of our survival instinct. Our sense of vision and smell alone are enough to detect bodies with a disease and urge us to avoid infection. But it doesn’t apply if you have a close relationship with the ill person. Who made the discovery?
4. Mats J. Olsson (Karolinska Institute, Sweden)
5. Like bones, reefs
Our bones and coral reefs adjust mineral deposits in relation to changing environments. Imagine a bone implant or a bridge that can self-reinforce where a high force is applied. Who created a self-adapting material that can change its stiffness in response to applied force?
5. Sung Hoon Kang (Johns Hopkins University)
6. Kem Kem Group
Fossils from the rock formations in south-eastern Morocco show the presence of extremely ferocious predators. It was 100 million years ago, in the most dangerous place in the history of Earth, “where a human time-traveller would not last very long”. Who reported this?
6. National Geographic explorer Dr Nizar Ibrahim
7. Sugar is wanting.
“Sweet is liking, sugar is wanting.” Signals of the arrival of sugar in the intestines travel to the brain, where they ignite a huge craving for more. This gut-to-brain pathway responds only to sugar molecules. Who spoke of the need to separate the concepts of sweet and sugar?
7. Chilean molecular geneticist Charles Zuker
8. Making a choice
There is this tension between doing what you should do (at least from a statistical perspective) and what you feel like doing. Facing two options, we may know which choice gives us the best chance of success, but still, take the other option. Who demonstrated this in a study?
8. Psychologist Ian Krajbich (Ohio State University)
9. Goosebumps
Picking cues of threat in the environment is critical to any animal. Our brains are continuously anticipating and preparing us for action in response to threat, and horror movies exploit the state expertly. Who identified it after studying the top 100 horror movies of the past century?
9. Matthew Hudson (University of Turku, Finland)
[ANSWERS]
1. Al Jazeera correspondent Usaid M. Siddiqui
2. Suzanne Moore, a columnist at ‘The Guardian’
3. Dan Arnold (UV Light Technology, UK)
4. Mats J. Olsson (Karolinska Institute, Sweden)
5. Sung Hoon Kang (Johns Hopkins University)
6. National Geographic explorer Dr Nizar Ibrahim
7. Chilean molecular geneticist Charles Zuker
8. Psychologist Ian Krajbich (Ohio State University)
9. Matthew Hudson (University of Turku, Finland)
QUIZ No. 952
1. Who proposed that reducing physical effort is a part of sign language use as well?
– Christopher Beckwith
– N. Sanders, D.J. Napoli
– Stephen P. Corder
1. N. Sanders, D.J. Napoli
2. Dogs and horses show similar patterns in their play behaviours. Who studied this?
– Elisabetta Palagi
– Rosalie Alberta Rayner
– Max Friedrich Meyer
2. Elisabetta Palagi
3. Who noted that people perceive direct gaze towards the whole face as eye contact?
– Dr Shane Rogers
– Solomon Halbert Snyder
– Richard J. Davidson
3. Dr Shane Rogers
4. He said “black holes have no hair” and the no-hair theorem got a name. Name him.
– Ezra T. Newman
– John Archibald Wheeler
– Robert Henry Dicke
4. John Archibald Wheeler
5. We have a lot of bombs… “What more do you want, mermaids?” Who said it once?
– Isidor Isaac Rabi
– Norris Edwin Bradbury
– William L. Laurence
5. Isidor Isaac Rabi