Curiosity December 2023

E50

Monthly roundup of the latest science stories.

December < Decem L < Dasha Sn. 10th month when the year was of 10 months in Roman calendar system, BC times

Month of Winter Solstice in NH while Summer Solstice in SH.

Narcissus Florigraphy: Language of flowers

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Last month’s science news

1. Journal of Improbable Research announces IgNobel Prizes 2023 | Chemistry for explaining why many scientists like to lick rocks. | Literature for studying the sensations people feel when they repeat a single word many, many, many, many, many times. | Mechanical engineering for necrobotics: re-animating dead spiders to use as mechanical gripping tools. | Medicine for using cadavers to explore whether there is an equal number of hairs in each of a person’s two nostrils.| Physics for measuring the extent to which ocean-water mixing is affected by the sexual activity of anchovies. | Education for methodically studying the boredom of teachers and students | Nutrition for experiments to determine how electrified chopsticks and drinking straws can change the taste of food. | Psychology for experiments on a city street to see how many passersby stop to look upward when they see strangers looking upward
2. Suicide Rate 2.6 Times Higher Among Indian Men Compared To Women: Study in Lancet. For married men rates are even higher, more than 3 times.
3. Nanoplastics found to cause Parkinson’s Disease
4. The supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, Sgr A*, is found to be spinning near its maximum rate, dragging space-time along with it.
5. Crisis in the skies: Pilots aren’t getting mental health treatment because they fear they’ll lose their wings
6. COP28 begins in Dubai, but Greta says it is just blah blah blah
7. Nature retracts room temperature superconductivity paper by Prof. Ranga P Dias, U Rochester
8. ISRO Set to launch X ray polarimeter satellite XPoSat. Aiming to investigate the polarisation of intense X-Ray sources. | An Indian astronaut is set to be travelling to ISS in 2025 along with NASA team. | First time since Rakesh Sharma’s maiden space voyage in 1984 aboard Russia’s Soyuz T11
9. Antarctica’s ozone hole expands mid-spring since 2001
10. COVID-19 vaccine not contributing to sudden deaths, says ICMR study
11. Red aurora spotted at Hanle and Merak observatories, Ladakh, due to geomagnetic storm caused by solar flares | Stable Auroral Red (SAR) arc

A23a is the largest iceberg recorded till date, size larger than city of Dubai where COP 28 is now being held

This month’s Discoveries

1. Attractiveness has a bigger impact on men’s socioeconomic success than women’s, study suggests| Attractive people get invited to parties of a higher social class.
2. Study has revealed that 20 minutes of morning moderate intensity exercise can improve cognitive function in people who are sleep deprived and have low levels of oxygen
3. Growing numbers of people in England and Wales are being found so long after they have died that their body has decomposed, in a shocking trend linked to austerity and social isolation
4. Measles deaths are surging worldwide, prompted by a wave of infections among unvaccinated children. Deaths from measles increased by 43% globally in 2022 compared to the year before, resulting from an 18% increase in measles cases
5. The UK ‘sugar tax’ introduced in 2018 may have have reduced the number of under-18s having a tooth removed due to tooth decay by 12% , and saved more than 5,500 hospital admissions for tooth extractions
6. Eye-to-eye contact during conversations is rare and happen only 3.5% of the time but shapes our social behavior and “this time, even it lasts for a few seconds, appears to be an important predictive factor for subsequent social behavior”
7. Babies’ Brains Are Primed for Their Native Language Before Birth. Results provide the most compelling evidence to date that language experience already shapes the functional organization of the infant brain, even before birth
8. People with permanent tattoos are more likely to be arrested, convicted, and incarcerated, study finds
9. Study on 20 adults found that sensors in smartphones and smart speakers, with an algorithm developed by researchers, could determinate a person’s level of alcohol intoxication based on the changes in their voice with an accuracy of 98%
10. Scientists made the discovery that light alone can evaporate water, and is even more efficient at it than heat | The finding could improve our understanding of natural phenomena or boost desalination systems.
11. Ultra-white ceramic cools buildings with record-high 99.6% reflectivity
12. Low cognition predicts unrealistic optimism. High cognition predicts realism and pessimism
13. When being asked a trick math question the majority of people will answer intuitively with the wrong answer. Hints will then get more people to answer correctively. However, even when directly told the correct answer a significant amount of people will still keep the intuitive but incorrect answer.
14. Collective intelligence can help reduce medical misdiagnoses: An estimated 250,000 people die from preventable medical errors in the U.S. each year. Single diagnosticians achieved 46% accuracy, whereas pooling the decisions of 10 diagnosticians increased accuracy to 76%.

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Observances

• 1 AIDS day
• 2 National Pollution Prevention Day, Pheonicid MS
• 3 Persons with Disabilities
• 4 Mercury
• 5 Soil Day
• 6 Cassiopid MS
• 7 Civil Aviation Day, Puppid-Velid MS
• 9 Moon-Mars Conjunction, Monocerotid MS
• 10 Human Rights Day
• 11 Mountain Day
• 12 Hybrid MS
• 14 Geminid MS
• 15 Orion Nebula, Earthshine on moon
• 16 Comae-Berenicid MS
• 18 Migrants Day, Moon-Saturn Conjunction
• 20 Leonis-Minorid MS
• 22 December Solstice, Moon-Jupiter Conj
• 23 Urcid MS
• 27 Epidemic Preparedness, The Cold Moon

Opportunities

• SERB Overseas Doctoral Fellowship, 2nd Jan
• IIT Gandhinagar Early Career Fellowship, 15 Dec
• Saroj Chandrasekhar Memorial Award, 10 Dec
• The Branco Weiss Fellowship — Society in Science, 15th Jan 24
• Several JRF/Project position calls shared in Facebook group
• Call for case studies on Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage and Climate Actions from Asia-Pacific Region by the Integrated Research on Disaster Risks (IRDR) under the auspices of UNESCO (deadline: 30 January)
• Call for applicants for IUPAC-SOLVAY International Award for Young Chemists for most outstanding Ph.D. theses in chemical sciences (deadline: 15 February)
• Digital communications officer (remote work) at Earth4All. Deadline: 3 December. Learn more
• 2024 IUPAC-Richter Prize in Medicinal Chemistry. Deadline: 15 December.
• Call for applications for the IIASA Young Scientists Summer Program. Deadline: 12 January 2024

Book I am reading in this month: Vagabonding: An uncommon guide to the art of long-term world travel. Rolf Potts, Tim Ferris

My latest book “Biostatistics and Mathematical Biology” just got published by Pearson. Available in bookstores/Amazon. “Life Skills” is now on sale, Rs. 435 only. Order here. YAI Fb page lists more exciting curiosity-driven research news every day, do subscribe.

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