#scientists are investigating how and why the chimney

[kittinoir]

Phantoms Ch. 6

“Ladybug said I was awesome.” Not entirely true, but Queen Bee never could stand silence. “She said that I’d made huge improvements.”

Koira didn’t even glance her way. “And?”

“And?” Queen Bee repeated as they arced around the Eiffel Tower. “And a compliment to me is a compliment to you. I thought you’d like to know.”

“Compliments from Ladybug are meaningless” Koira said as they began the second half of their patrol. 

Outrage boiled up in Queen Bee, for once on behalf of someone else. “Are you seriously saying you think you’re better than her?”

“I’m saying she thinks too much,” Koira said, coming to an abrupt stop on a slanted roof. “I’m saying this whole mess could have been avoided if she’d just asked for help. I’m saying Ladybug doesn’t like me, I don’t like her, and it’s fine. And I’m saying if you worried less about what Ladybug thought of you and more about what you wanted, you’d be even better.”

There was so much to unpack there, Queen Bee didn’t even know where to start. “What mess are you talking about?” Her heart beat painfully in her chest. There could only be one mess he could mean. She’d stupidly thought he of all people would never hold it against her. She’d thought they were the same.

But Koira just laughed, a bitter sound without any real humour. “There’d be no point in telling you.”

Queen Bee stomped her foot in frustration. “Why? You think I’m so enamoured with Ladybug I’ll just take her side? Or am I too stupid to understand?”

Finally, finally, Koira met her eyes. The usual disdain had vanished. In its place was…pity?

“You won’t be able to hold onto it,” he finally said as he began running again. “It’s a waste of time.”

Unease swirled through Queen Bee as she followed, but it was overwhelmed by hurt. He really did think she was stupid. He really did. 

“Why do you even bother with me, then,” she choked out. Damnit, she was not going to cry. Especially because Felix had hurt her feelings. As if she cared about what Adrien’s cranky cousin thought of her anyway. As if she cared what any of them thought! She was Chloe Bourgeois! She had beauty, style, grace! She was the real deal; Felix was just too blind to see it. And that was hardly her fault.

“Ugh,” Koira groaned, glancing back at her over his shoulder. “This is why I wanted to wash my hands of this whole thing. I work better alone.” But still, he stopped, dragging Queen Bee into the thing shadow of a chimney. 

“I don’t think you’re stupid,” he said, scowling. “But you won’t remember. The team is at a disadvantage because of Ladybug and Chat Noir’s choices. Everyone’s identity is one mistake away from being revealed.”

Even as he spoke, Queen Bee was having trouble remembering the words. She managed to hold onto them - barely. “Speaking from experience, your identity being known isn’t the problem. Hawk Moth had an advantage when the Miraculous were being dropped off, but now that we hold onto them full time - ”

“He can come and get them any time he wants,” Koira interrupted, starting off again. 

Queen Bee followed, at a loss. He wasn’t wrong. Hawk Moth had done that very thing to her when he’d targeted her parents. He’d known she’d do anything to save them. And it was her fault most of their team was now at the same disadvantage. But…

“What were they supposed to do?” Queen Bee said at last as she followed her partner through an alley. “What would you have done?”

She was close enough she could see him scowl. He was quiet so long she didn’t think he would answer, but then he spoke.

“It’s impossible to know.” He sped up. “I’ve never loved someone that much.”

Neither had she. She hadn’t even loved herself that much. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Queen Bee finally said. “It’s done. The only thing that matters is whether or not you trust them.”

Koira glanced back again, a half-smile on his face. “Not really,” he said, “And if you knew what I do, you wouldn’t either. But that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that we have the same goals. That’s enough for me.”

Maybe it was her recent experiences with Ladybug, or the fact that she now knew who wore the earrings, but Queen Bee found herself agreeing with Koira. She trusted Ladybug and Chat Noir to do their best, but around each other…

Love was a weapon. Her parents had taught her that. It had only ever led to pain. 

Queen Bee was so engrossed in her warring thoughts that she nearly hit a weathervane, narrowly avoiding it only by throwing herself into a graceful arc over the obstruction.

“Where are we?” she demanded as she glanced around. “This isn’t our normal route.”

“No,” Koira agreed. “I thought it was time to do more than just damage control.”

Queen Bee scowled at her partner. “Meaning?”

“Why are we always cleaning up Hawk Moth’s messes?” Koira said as he led her down another street. “Why are we always being chased instead of chasing?”

“Like, a million reasons.” Trust was one thing, but questioning how things were done… it wasn’t perfect but it worked. “One, we don’t know anything about him. Two, he, like, never shows up in public. Three, we don’t know anything about him.”

“Don’t we?” Koira said, finally coming to a stop on the roof of a random building. “After all, Chat Noir thought he didn’t know anything about Ladybug until he had to find her.”

Queen Bee opened her mouth to argue, but the words died on her tongue as her heart beat once, then twice. A tone rang briefly in her ear, distracting her, until she abruptly refocused on Koira shaking his head, the last few seconds a hazy blur.

“We just think we don’t know anything about him,” Koira continued as though nothing had happened as he pulled a loose tile out. “Truth is, LB and Chat Noir have been so busy cleaning up they haven’t had time to do anything else. But now they have us.”

“Are you going to stop being cryptic or do I have to continue to pretend to be interested in whatever you’re rambling about?” Queen Bee snapped. 

Koira scowled, but leaned back to show her the map he’d pulled out from under the tile, marked with dozens of red dots. “Do you know how criminal profiling started?”

“Like…instagram accounts for bad guys?”

“Profiling.” Koira pointed to the map. “Where detectives and scientists would put together a profile on their bad guy based on the data of their crimes to help them catch them when they didn’t even have an eye-witness to go on. It started when investigators would mark where suspects carried out their crimes. More often than not, the crimes would take place in a radius around where the suspect did the deed. They didn’t like to go too far from home, but they didn’t like to be too close, either. Too obvious. Problem is, you’re left with a nice little target on your head that anyone can find if they just notice the pattern.”

Queen Bee frowned at the map. “But that doesn’t look like anything. There’s dots all over Paris.”

“But just Paris,” Koira said, splaying his gloved hand over the map. “So we know he’s probably in the city.”

“Puh-lease! He’s after the Miraculous, right? Which is where Ladybug and Chat Noir are. So he’s creating akumas here. That’s all that proves. After all, you’re not from here.”

“He has to be close,” Koira insisted. “The Miraculous have limits. He wouldn’t be able to feel negative emotions from too far away.”

“Not necessarily,” Queen Bee said, crouching closer to the map for a better look. “The horse miraculous and rabbit miraculous have no limits on distance, temporal or physical. He akumatized a villain in the United States just a few months ago.”

Koira huffed, running a hand through his hair. “This is why I bother with you.”

Queen Bee blinked over at him. “What?”

“You’re so combative.” He traced an invisible line from dot to dot. “You just love to be right.” His hand abruptly froze on the map as he looked over at her. “I see things more clearly with you.”

Queen Bee could feel every nerve in her body tingle as those green eyes bored into hers. So similar, but so different. Amber flecks instead of blue. But looking at Adrien had never made her feel like this, like every nerve in her body was on fire.

“For what it’s worth, I think you’re right,” she whispered. “He would want to be here, to get his hands on the Miraculous as soon as possible. Maybe not when everything first started, but now…”

“He’s appeared in the city,” Koira said, but his gaze didn’t stray from her face. “He saved Mayura when she was in danger. He wouldn’t have been fast enough if he’d been elsewhere.”

“So he’s here,” Queen Bee repeated, finally breaking his gaze to scour the map again, but no pattern revealed itself.

“Somewhere. We just have to flush him out.” Koira paused, tracing more invisible lines. “It might take some…bonding time.”

Queen Bee made a face. “Bonding time? With…?”

Koira barked a laugh as he caught her meaning. “God, no. I meant you with our fearless leader and me with my dear cousin. There’s a pattern here; we just need more details. I’m betting the wonder twins have just been too enamoured with one another to see it. But you and I can probably find it, or some clues, to start to form a picture.”

“Oh. Right.” She was definitely not stung that he didn’t want to hang out with her. She was just embarrassed to have jumped to conclusions. That was it. “Well, I must warn you, the Lady’s not my biggest fan. She might be suspicious.”

Koira glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “Trust me: play your cards right and she’ll give you just about anything. I, on the other hand, have no such trump card. The cat will have his back up.”

But Queen Bee bit her lip. “Maybe it would be better to just tell them.” Striking out on her own, not trusting Ladybug had been what had caused all her problems in the first place. 

“Answer me this,” Koira said, turning to face her. “Do you honestly think they’ll let us do this if we say anything?”

No. No, they wouldn’t. They’d be afraid of the consequences. Queen Bee was afraid of the consequences. But she was beginning to be more afraid of what she already had to lose. A sense of urgency rose up in her, nudging at her in a way she couldn’t quite grasp. She breathed through the panic, letting it guide her to a conclusion.

“Once we find him,” Queen Bee said at last, “We tell them, before we do anything.” 

“Deal,” Koira said, reaching for his map. “I would have anyway. I’ve seen first-hand the consequences of taking Hawk Moth on without everyone on board. But until then, this stays between us.”

Queen Bee stood, arms crossed. “As if I’ll even remember what house this is after we leave,” she scoffed.

But she would. She’d memorized the house across the way and the name of the street. She might not get it on the first try, but if she had to, she could probably find it again. She was done, she decided. She was done letting Hawk Moth jerk her around. She was done having her life ruined over and over again because she was afraid. And she was done being on defense. 

And she wanted it, she realized. More than anything, she wanted Hawk Moth’s head on a platter. It had been months since he’d last manipulated her, but the wounds were still fresh, and stung more than she remembered. 

Queen Bee wanted her life back.

And Hawk Moth was going to damn well give it to her, even if she had to chase him through all of Paris to get it.

[naturalsciencesbelgium]

Scientists of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences have developed an ultra-robust rock scanner to analyze the chemical composition of rocks. The instrument will help the American space agency NASA to study the origins of life on Earth in deep-sea hydrothermal vents. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory will also test if similar technology could be used on space missions.

Geologists Christian Burlet and Yves Vanbrabant (RBINS), together with Pablo Sobron (SETI-Impossible Sensing LLC), created a special spectrometer for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). The “SpectroGRID” is made to analyze the chemical composition of the surface of small rock samples in the lab. Its particularity is that it contains little moving components, making it very robust and reliable. JPL's “Origins and Habitability Laboratory” will test the capabilities of the instrument to study the chemistry of rock samples from deep-sea hydrothermal vents. These are fissures in the seabed from which geothermally heated water erupts and where Earth’s earliest life forms may have emerged, fuelled by the chemicals dissolved in the vent fluids. Besides, JPL will test if similar technology could be used on space missions, for example to Mars.

The First of its Kind

The SpectroGRID is a LIBS (laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy) micro-imager. LIBS is a chemical analysis technology that uses a short (but very powerful) laser pulse to ablate a tiny fraction of the sample, which results in light production. Because every element emits light with a specific wavelength, the spectrometer inside can identify the elements of which the sample is composed. To visualize this, special software is used to produce a 'geochemical map', showing the spatial distribution of elements on the surface of the rock samples.

But the SpectoGRID is not your regular LIBS scanner! Its particularity is that it has very little moving parts, as little as currently possible. “This makes the instrument much more robust and reliable”, Yves Vanbrabant explains. “The JPL will test the SpectroGRID, to find out if similar technology could be used on space missions, for example to Mars. There, sandstorms form a major problem, because all these little grains can get stuck into the machinery. Having little moving parts is an important asset in this kind of environments.” And there’s more. “Another advantage is the fact that you can scan the rocks from a distance, which reduces the chances of contamination” adds Christian Burlet. “This is of course important if you are researching environments that are relatively isolated and untouched, like the deep-sea."

Race Against Time

The adventure began just one year ago, when the two geologists decided to join hands with ‘Impossible Sensing’, an American company specialized in technology for measuring the scattering and absorption of light. Together they designed the SpectroGRID. “In the US it is much easier to find funds for developing a new instrument. I found it very interesting to work ‘the American way’; more dynamic. They dare to choose for innovation”, comments Yves Vanbrabant. They proposed their design to JPL, and the lab decided to go for it. "That was amazing news for us. We were so excited!", Christian Burlet says.

But after the joy came the next challenge. “In less than two months, we had to transform the concept into a real, working instrument, a very short timeframe for such a delicate machine and complex software” With the help of no less than four 3D printers they managed to gather all the necessary components, just in time for taking them to the US. “The final assembly in the labs of Impossible Sensing was another race against the clock”, says Christian Burlet. “Without the help of the team over there, we wouldn't have made it!” But they did it, right on time to deliver it to the JPL. “This spectrometer is a prototype of course, and will evolve, but hey are very happy with their new toy!” Christian adds smiling. The team is now working on a first upgrade of the instrument in order to improve sensitivity and simulate different atmospheric compositions in the sample chamber.

Life at 100°C (and more)

The SpectroGRID was made specifically for the “Origins and Habitability Laboratory”, a sub-lab of JPL that studies how geological conditions impact the origin of life, life in extreme environments and how life can exist on other worlds. One of their research grounds is the deep-sea, where life thrives around hydrothermal vents with temperatures of 60°C to more than 400°C. There, not plants, but chemosynthetic bacteria form the bottom of the food chain, sustaining many larger organisms far away from sunlight.

But why does this interest NASA, aren’t they all about outer space? Well, one of the most promising hypotheses of the origins of life locates it around hydrothermal vents. The chemicals found in these vents and the energy they provide could have fueled many of the chemical reactions necessary for the emergence of life. NASA researchers think that some of the Solar System ice moons, such as Jupiter's Europa, might also have hydrothermal vents in the liquid oceans under their frozen crusts. The astrobiologists of the “Origins and Habitability Laboratory” are simulating these hydrothermal chimney systems in the lab, to study the chemistry of elements crucial for life and origin of life. There, the SpectroGRID will help them to investigate rock samples and unravel some of the many mysteries they still hold.

[solidnews]

Science Explains That Question That Confuses The Heads: Why doesn't the human penis consist of bone? Home> Iq> Technology-Added on 30 December, 17:34, updated on 31 December, 22:00SubscribeMelissaOnedio Member303ShareShare on FacebookShare on TwitterAdd to your favorites.Remove from your favorites. Unlike chimpanzees and bonobos, who are considered to be our closest relatives, we humans do not have penile bone or baculum. Today, scientists are investigating how and why the chimney, which Cem Yılmaz perceived as a loss that made men malfunction, disappeared during the evolutionary process. The baculum is a bone that is not attached to the rest of the skeleton and is found separately in the penis. The penile bone of the walrus is approximately one-sixth of the body length; on the other hand, ring-tailed lemurs have a chimney length up to one centimeter and up to one-forty-one in length. Penis bone is found in many mammal species. Although very rare in humans, penis bone is found, it is considered a congenital disorder rather than a baculum. Two scientists from University College London investigated when and how the baculum developed in mammals. as a result of their study of baculum placental organisms separated from the others, that they developed 145-95 million years ago revealed that. The study also shows that the common ancestors of primates have penile bone. This means that humans possessed the penile bone and somehow lost it in the evolutionary process. Some mammals have several theories about the development of the penile bone. In some species, for example, cats, females do not have the ability to ovulate before mating. Therefore, it is thought that the chimney stimulates the female in these species and provides ovulation. Another theory is that the baculum provides support for penetration of the penis into the vagina. But the most important is that the penile bone prolongs sexual intercourse. Because prolongation of the intercourse period reduces the possibility of females mating with other males. In addition to prolonged sexual intercourse formation of the penile bone, mammals with longer intercourse were observed to have longer legumes. In addition, there is a longer competition for females in the species where the penile bone is longer. What makes this situation different for us? If the penile bone advantage over females and prolong sexual intercourse, why is there baculus in humans? Researchers explain the reason for this because people have been monogamous two million years ago. Because men and women only have sexual intercourse with each other, the level of competition between males of the species decreases and the duration of sexual intercourse does not matter much to the human species (according to scientists!). Short sexual intercourse makes it unnecessary for men to have baculum and allows people to reproduce without penile bone. Considering that the average time from the start of sexual intercourse to ejaculation in men of our species is less than two minutes, these findings seem to offer new and scientific excuses to the "some" situations experienced by men ... The scars show that the penis is prickly in the past. just like cats. these spines deliberately irritate the vagina, making it difficult for the female to cifle with other men. Because the human tour is the transition to monogamous penis spines, all of the bone lost. life forms and strategies of living things cause serious changes in their physiology. for example, the testes of the sempazen are smaller than the human because there is no monogamy, men produce more sperm for competition, and the gorilla testicles are smaller than human because there are harem system in gorillas, the predominant male is not close to the other male sura.1 Jan 23: 01Answer ReportEngelleufukdiyokiHealth loss found in some men is not an "excuse". It is a rudely accusation.1 Jan 21: 09AnswerLike (4) ReportEngelleHakan ABaculumu not break the male kalmazdı1 Jan 16: 25AnswerLike (8) ReportEngelleMehmetkaç money ulan a 'baculum'? 1 Jan 10: People don't have a leg. Jan 03: 17ResponseLike (22) ReportEngelleDoctorWhatbecause everything related to living biology is about evolution2 Jan 01: 33ReplyLike (5) ReportRegularMailer DaemonBecause of science ask about why2 Jan 04: 39Next Show ()

Science Explains That Question That Confuses The Heads: Why doesn't the human penis consist of bone? Home> Iq> Technology-Added on 30 December, 17:34, updated on 31 December, 22:00SubscribeMelissaOnedio Member303ShareShare on FacebookShare on TwitterAdd to your favorites.Remove from your favorites. Unlike chimpanzees and bonobos, who are considered to be our closest relatives, we humans do not have penile bone or baculum. Today, scientists are investigating how and why the chimney, which Cem Yılmaz perceived as a loss that made men malfunction, disappeared during the evolutionary process. The baculum is a bone that is not attached to the rest of the skeleton and is found separately in the penis. The penile bone of the walrus is approximately one-sixth of the body length; on the other hand, ring-tailed lemurs have a chimney length up to one centimeter and up to one-forty-one in length. Penis bone is found in many mammal species. Although very rare in humans, penis bone is found, it is considered a congenital disorder rather than a baculum. Two scientists from University College London investigated when and how the baculum developed in mammals. as a result of their study of baculum placental organisms separated from the others, that they developed 145-95 million years ago revealed that. The study also shows that the common ancestors of primates have penile bone. This means that humans possessed the penile bone and somehow lost it in the evolutionary process. Some mammals have several theories about the development of the penile bone. In some species, for example, cats, females do not have the ability to ovulate before mating. Therefore, it is thought that the chimney stimulates the female in these species and provides ovulation. Another theory is that the baculum provides support for penetration of the penis into the vagina. But the most important is that the penile bone prolongs sexual intercourse. Because prolongation of the intercourse period reduces the possibility of females mating with other males. In addition to prolonged sexual intercourse formation of the penile bone, mammals with longer intercourse were observed to have longer legumes. In addition, there is a longer competition for females in the species where the penile bone is longer. What makes this situation different for us? If the penile bone advantage over females and prolong sexual intercourse, why is there baculus in humans? Researchers explain the reason for this because people have been monogamous two million years ago. Because men and women only have sexual intercourse with each other, the level of competition between males of the species decreases and the duration of sexual intercourse does not matter much to the human species (according to scientists!). Short sexual intercourse makes it unnecessary for men to have baculum and allows people to reproduce without penile bone. Considering that the average time from the start of sexual intercourse to ejaculation in men of our species is less than two minutes, these findings seem to offer new and scientific excuses to the "some" situations experienced by men … The scars show that the penis is prickly in the past. just like cats. these spines deliberately irritate the vagina, making it difficult for the female to cifle with other men. Because the human tour is the transition to monogamous penis spines, all of the bone lost. life forms and strategies of living things cause serious changes in their physiology. for example, the testes of the sempazen are smaller than the human because there is no monogamy, men produce more sperm for competition, and the gorilla testicles are smaller than human because there are harem system in gorillas, the predominant male is not close to the other male sura.1 Jan 23: 01Answer ReportEngelleufukdiyokiHealth loss found in some men is not an "excuse". It is a rudely accusation.1 Jan 21: 09AnswerLike (4) ReportEngelleHakan ABaculumu not break the male kalmazdı1 Jan 16: 25AnswerLike (8) ReportEngelleMehmetkaç money ulan a 'baculum'? 1 Jan 10: People don't have a leg. Jan 03: 17ResponseLike (22) ReportEngelleDoctorWhatbecause everything related to living biology is about evolution2 Jan 01: 33ReplyLike (5) ReportRegularMailer DaemonBecause of science ask about why2 Jan 04: 39Next Show ()

Science Explains That Question That Confuses The Heads: Why doesn't the human penis consist of bone? Home> Iq> Technology-Added on 30 December, 17:34, updated on 31 December, 22:00SubscribeMelissaOnedio Member303ShareShare on FacebookShare on TwitterAdd to your favorites.Remove from your favorites. Unlike chimpanzees and bonobos, who are considered to be our closest relatives, we humans do not…

[equinoxparanormal]

12 Scientific Explanations behind Paranormal Phenomenon

We've all felt the uneasy, spine-tingling feeling that someone or something is watching us - be it an intruder, a ghost, or something far more sinister. And the truth is, scientific explanations for ghosts really don't mean much when you're overcome with that creepy-as-heck feeling in the middle of the night. All the logic in the world couldn't disprove what you already know: your house is probably haunted and some sage or holy water isn't going to cut it.

On the other hand, most of the time there really is a normal, logical explanation behind seemingly paranormal experiences. Even an apparent demonic possession can be explained pretty soundly with science (sorry, Lucifer). There's a real science behind haunted houses, and the reason our bodies sometimes feel on edge is usually kind of anticlimactic. Listen, no one is trying to tell you to buy property on top of an Indian burial ground anytime soon, but before you pack up all your belongings and move out of your haunted mansion in the middle of the night, you should really consider a couple of facts.

These scientific explanations for haunted houses may ease your mind, but you could still burn your Ouija board just in case.

Infrasound Makes You Feel like You're Being Watched

If you suddenly feel a sense of panic for no particular reason, it could be the result of infrasound - sounds that are too deep for humans to hear, but that we can still pick up on. Think of it like a dog whistle: we can't hear it, but dogs can. Does that make the sound any less real? Humans can only hear sound waves between 20 and 20,000 Hertz, but we can still feel the vibrations of everything else. This often manifests in the pits of our stomachs as strange, indescribable feelings. Ever feel awe-struck and happy for no reason? You can blame it on infrasound. The feeling depends entirely on the circumstances. If you're in a creepy house alone at night, you may feel panic rather than excitement.

Infrasound happens for a few reasons - storms, wind, weather, and the like. Even your kitchen refrigerator can emit them. This happened to be the case for Vic Tandy, a scientist who was convinced that his laboratory was haunted after seeing what he thought was a ghost. Tandy, a scientist and fencing enthusiast, eventually noticed that his fencing sword had been vibrating on its own, and then understood what had happened: A new fan he had installed in his lab was emitting vibrations of about 19 Hz. Since eyeballs have a resonant frequency of 20 Hz, when the fan vibrated his eye, it caused him to see shadows because his brain couldn't interpret what was happening. When he turned off the fan, all the ghosts went away.

Ghostly Orbs in Pictures Are Purely Camera Problems

Many of us want so badly to believe that those floating, glowing orbs in photos are real-life proof of ghosts. The problem is that while ghosts may be haunting every inch of your house, they're probably never going to let themselves be caught on film. Even real ghost believers are skeptical about orbs because they're usually just the result of a faulty camera.

Ever notice how orbs are mostly in flash photography? That’s because when a small bug or piece of dust gets caught in the flash, it reflects the light back - and since the camera doesn't have enough time to re-focus before the shutter clicks, it comes out like a blurry circle. There's also a high possibility that whatever paranormal photographer took the picture accidentally smudged the lens with his finger. Oops.

Automatism Makes Mediums Think They've Channeled Ghosts

How sad would it be to live in a world where a medium couldn't actually contact the dead? While some mediums are able to expose details so specific that they can't possibly come from anyone but your dead relative, a whole bunch of mediums are shams. The worst part, though, is that many of them really, actually believe they have a gift.

Mediums are often misguided by their spirit-channeling talents because of automatism, an altered state of conscious where people aren't aware of what they're saying or thinking. When mediums effectively clear their minds, readying themselves to be filled with other-worldly messages, they become filled with random ideas and images instead. Mediums often attribute this to channeling a spirit, but the reality is that it's all just random. It's the same science behind why your dreams are super strange, nonsensical, and sometimes super creepy.

A Mold Infestation Can Make Your Home Feel Haunted

Mold is a pretty boring answer to a really exciting - and terrifying - problem, but it's an answer nonetheless. Rather than burning some sage, you may want to invest in some quality bleach-based cleaners.

The reason you may feel terrified for no explicable reason, or suddenly see things that aren't there, could be because of toxic mold growing in your home. Research shows that certain molds have somewhat ghostly effects, causing irrational fear and even dementia. Whatever you do, don't spray the area with holy water, as dampness just helps mold thrive.

The Ideomotor Effect Causes Unexplained Things to Happen

Every little girl who has ever been to a sleepover probably used an Ouija board at some point. Some of our parents may have banned them from our homes, but for the rest of us, we enjoyed scaring ourselves by waiting for ghosts to communicate with us through a series of letters even more inconvenient than T9 texting. While it's definitely possible that a few odd-ball spirits have attached themselves to Hasbro's bestselling occult-themed toy, most of the time those messages can be attributed to the ideomotor effect. In fact, most scary sleepover games (hello, "Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board") have no paranormal ties whatsoever.

Ideomotor action occurs when our muscles unconsciously move thanks to the power of suggestion. Basically, merely thinking about something wills it to happen. This was tested by physicist Michael Faraday who discovered that the tables used during a séance moved or appeared to levitate only because people expected them to do so. Once people expected a table to move, they unintentionally moved it. In 1853, this was tested in an experimental séance (where no ghosts were present). Half the people involved were told the table would move to the left, and half were told it would move to the right. As a result, the table didn't move at all.

Carbon Monoxide Poisoning Causes Ghostly Hallucinations

Strange voices, hearing things in your house rustle around, and even seeing ghostly shadowy figures can all be attributed to carbon monoxide poisoning - the notoriously slow, silent killer. According to a 1921 study in the American Journal of Ophthalmology, a family began experiencing strange, paranormal things when they moved into an old house. They heard strange noises and truly felt like they were being held down in bed by ghosts. The feeling of weakness was undeniable and so was their fear. The ghost turned out to be a faulty furnace that was seeping carbon monoxide throughout the entire home. As soon as the furnace was fixed, they never heard or saw anything weird again.

So, if you're feeling a ghostly presence, you may want to check your carbon monoxide detector. If that hasn't buzzed, you should probably move before you end up in The Conjuring.

Seeing Spooky Shadows? It's Probably Some Extra Electricity

It Follows was so scary mostly because we've all felt like we were being followed at some point. The shape-shifting, evil shadows that follow the main character around throughout the film didn't just haunt her house - they haunted her entire body. And once your whole body is haunted, you're kind of screwed.

In the real world, seeing shadow people has a pretty boring explanation: an excess of electricity in your brain. Swiss scientists tested this theory by electrically stimulating an epileptic patient's brain. After the quick shock, she saw a shadow person behind her copying all of her movements (just like in It Follows). She even claimed that the ghost grabbed her, but it turned out to be a miscommunication in the left temporoparietal junction of her brain - that's the part that helps you tell yourself apart from others, and in this case, it created a creepy duplicate.

Solar Winds Create Mysterious Ghosts

The earth is completely blanketed in magnetic fields. As a result, some places have stronger magnetic fields than others - and if you ask a paranormal investigator, they'll probably attribute that to ghosts. But if you ask a scientist, they'll definitely disagree.

The reason so many ghost encounters happen at night is actually because of the sun. The sun is constantly pushing solar winds towards the earth and these winds in turn push into the earth's electromagnetic field. During the night, you're faced away from the sun, so this causes the electromagnetic field to expand, which in turn, has a greater effect on our brains. We already know that an electric shock to the brain can cause hallucinations - this is a similar premise.

Drafts Close Doors, Make Things Move, and Make Us Feel Cold

Haunted houses always have a few hallmarks - doors randomly closing, things getting knocked off of shelves, and rooms suddenly getting filled with brisk, cold air. A ghost needs energy to move, so it sucks all the heat out of the room, uses it as fuel, and leaves behind cold spots, right? Sorry to break it to you, but no, it's just the weather.

Drafts entering through open windows, doors, or chimneys can cause some ghost-like things to happen. Cool air rises and hot air drops, so when outside air enters a room, it rushes around trying to equalize the temperature. This results in rooms randomly getting colder or slightly breezy. Many times drafts cause open doors to slam and lighter objects like paper and picture frames to blow off of shelves. If you feel like your body is suddenly getting colder, this could really just be from a lack of humidity - so go grab a sweater, you'll be fine.

Ions Are Actually Making Your Hair Stand on Edge, Not Ghosts

Many ghost hunters carry something called an ion counter, which literally counts the ions in the atmosphere. When that sucker goes off you know a ghost is taking a stroll nearby. However, ions are pretty natural - and they're the very reason you get an electric shock when you're wearing certain types of clothing.

Ions are caused by a ton of natural factors like weather, solar radiation, and radon gas. You can even buy ionic hair dryers that emit negative ions to help evaporate water faster. Ions have such a strong presence that they can even change our moods. Negative ions calm us, and positive ions give us headaches. If you live in a house filled with negative ions, you may feel tired and tense, but it's definitely not because of a ghost.

You Only Think a House Is Haunted Because Everyone Else Does

Have you ever noticed that you become increasingly aware of a problem once someone else points it out? The same can be said for a haunted house. Mass hysteria is a very real phenomenon, and one person's account of something can have you looking for signs that just aren't there.

This was proven in a 2014 study by Goldsmiths University of London where participants watched a video of an alleged psychic bending a key with his brain. Subjects were paired up with either a person who said they saw the key bend or a person who said they did not. Those sitting next to people who claimed to see the key bend were more likely to say they saw the key bend, too.

Quantum Mechanics Proves Ghosts Are Real

There are a ton of scientific explanations behind haunted houses that completely dispel the idea of them actually being haunted at all; however, what if science could prove ghosts actually do exist? Quantum mechanics is the study of the smallest types of matter, which some scientists believe make up the very foundation of ghosts.

Dr. Stuart Hameroff and physicist Roger Penrose believe that human consciousness comes from microtubules in our brain cells. These tubules are the very foundation of our souls. According to their theory, when people have near-death experiences those microtubules leave the brain and continue to exist (hence the idea of out-of-body experiences).

Another quantum physicist named Dr. Henry Stapp also believes this theory. He thinks a person's personality can exist as a mental entity after death (AKA as a ghost), and that if these entities can manage to pull themselves back into the physical world, things like channeling and possession can actually happen. So, maybe those mediums weren't making it up after all.

[Mariel Loveland, Ranker]

[massivechocolatealpaca-blog]

THE MEANING BEHIND: BLACK CARBON SOCIETY

During aging processing, black carbon (also called soot) particles may tend to be mixed with other aerosols, and highly influence their radiative forcing. In this study, freshly emitted soot particles were simulated as fractal aggregates composed of small spherical primary monomers. After aging in the atmosphere, soot monomers were coated by a thinly layer of sulfate as thinly coated soot particles. These soot particles were entirely embedded into large sulfate particle by further aging, and becoming heavily coated soot particles. In clear-sky conditions, black carbon radiative forcing with different aging states were investigated for the bottom and top of atmosphere (BOA and TOA). The simulations showed that black carbon radiative forcing increased at BOA and decreased at TOA after their aging processes. Thinly and heavily coated states increased up to ~12% and ~35% black carbon radiative forcing at BOA, and black carbon radiative forcing at TOA can reach to ~20% and ~100% smaller for thinly and heavily coated states than those of freshly emitted states, respectively. The effect of aging states of black carbon radiative forcing was varied with surface albedo, aerosol optical depth and solar zenith angles. These findings would be helpful for the assessments of climate change. “Black sky events” are defined as, “Catastrophic occurrences caused by man or nature that bring society to its knees.” “Cars would have no fuel. Restaurants and grocery stores would be bare. Electricity could be out for months in such an event,”

A new study indicates soot, known as black carbon, plays a far greater role in global warming than previously believed and is second only to CO2 in the amount of heat it traps in the atmosphere. Reducing some forms of soot emissions — such as from diesel fuel and coal burning — could prove effective in slowing down the planet’s warming.

It rises from the chimneys of mansions and from simple hut stoves. It rises from forest fires and the tail pipes of diesel-fueled trucks rolling down the highway, and from brick kilns and ocean liners and gas flares. Every day, from every occupied continent, a curtain of soot rises into the sky. What soot does once it reaches the atmosphere has long been a hard question to answer. It’s not that scientists don’t know anything about the physics and chemistry of atmospheric soot. Just the opposite: it does so many things that it’s hard to know what they add up to. To get a clear sense of soot — which is known to scientists as black carbon — an international team of 31 atmospheric scientists has worked for the past four years to analyze all the data they could. This week, they published a 232-page report in the Journal of Geophysical Research. “It’s an important assessment of where we stand now,” says Veerabhadran

Soot is made up of tiny dark particles. When it rises from fires, it mixes with dust, sulphates, and other material rising from the ground. As it ascends through the atmosphere, it can drift into clouds, mixing with the water droplets. Rain and snow then wash out the black carbon particles and bring them back to Earth. Along the way, black carbon exerts all sorts of influences, some of which help warm the atmosphere and some of which cool it. When sunlight strikes black carbon, its dark hue causes it to heat up, something like the way a black tar roof gets hot on a sunny day. When black carbon falls on ice and snow, it smudges their bright white reflective surfaces. As a result, less sunlight bounces back out to space, leading to more warming. In clouds, black carbon has a dazzling number of effects. “The more we study it, the more mechanisms people find,” says Doherty. If black carbon heats up the layer of the atmosphere where clouds are forming, for example, they will evaporate.

They can no longer reflect sunlight back into space, and so the soot-laced clouds end up warming the atmosphere. But black carbon that hangs above low-lying stratocumulus clouds has a different effect. It stabilizes the layer of air on top of the clouds, promoting their growth. It just so happens that thick stratocumulus clouds are like shields, blocking incoming sunlight. As a result, black carbon also ends up cooling the planet. All these effects depend, ultimately, on how much soot is in the air, which, in turn, depends on the many different kinds of sources of soot all over the world. Estimating that flux is a major challenge, and so it’s not too surprising that different teams of scientists have ended up with markedly different estimates for the net effect of soot on the climate.

If black carbon is responsible for trapping so much heat, then reducing soot may be an effective way to slow down the planet’s warming. It’s even more attractive because black carbon washes quickly out of the atmosphere, and so reducing soot emissions would lead to a fast fall in the concentration of black carbon in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide, by contrast, lingers for centuries in the atmosphere.

---

Not to be confused with

Carbon black

. For the cell phone model, see

Samsung SGH-D900

Black carbon is found worldwide, but its presence and impact are particularly strong in Asia.

Black carbon is in the air and circulates the globe.

Black carbon travels along

wind

currents from

Asian

cities and accumulates over the

Tibetan Plateau

and

Himalayan

foothills.

Chemically, black carbon (BC) is a component of fine particulate matter (PM ≤ 2.5 µm in aerodynamic diameter). Black carbon consists of pure carbon in several linked forms. It is formed through the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, biofuel, and biomass, and is emitted in both anthropogenic and naturally occurring soot.[1]

Black carbon causes human morbidity and premature mortality.[1]

In climatology, black carbon is a climate forcing agent. Black carbon warms the Earth by absorbing sunlight and heating the atmosphere and by reducing albedo when deposited on snow and ice (direct effects) and indirectly by interaction with clouds, with the total forcing of 1.1 W/m2.[2] Black carbon stays in the atmosphere for only several days to weeks, whereas carbon dioxide (CO2) has an atmospheric lifetime of more than 100 years.[3]

The term black carbon is also used in soil sciences and geology, referring either to deposited atmospheric black carbon or to directly incorporated black carbon from vegetation fires.[4][5] Especially in the tropics, black carbon in soils significantly contributes to fertility as it is able to absorb important plant nutrients.[6]

---

Black carbon radiative forcing at TOA decreased during aging.

During aging processing, black carbon (also called soot) particles may tend to be mixed with other aerosols, and highly influence their radiative forcing. In this study, freshly emitted soot particles were simulated as fractal aggregates composed of small spherical primary monomers. After aging in the atmosphere, soot monomers were coated by a thinly layer of sulfate as thinly coated soot particles. These soot particles were entirely embedded into large sulfate particle by further aging, and becoming heavily coated soot particles. In clear-sky conditions, black carbon radiative forcing with different aging states were investigated for the bottom and top of atmosphere (BOA and TOA). The simulations showed that black carbon radiative forcing increased at BOA and decreased at TOA after their aging processes. Thinly and heavily coated states increased up to ~12% and ~35% black carbon radiative forcing at BOA, and black carbon radiative forcing at TOA can reach to ~20% and ~100% smaller for thinly and heavily coated states than those of freshly emitted states, respectively. The effect of aging states of black carbon radiative forcing was varied with surface albedo, aerosol optical depth and solar zenith angles. These findings would be helpful for the assessments of climate change.

---

Nuclear winter is the severe and prolonged global climatic cooling effect hypothesized[1][2] to occur after widespread firestorms following a nuclear war.[3] The hypothesis is based on the fact that such fires can inject soot into the stratosphere, where it can block some direct sunlight from reaching the surface of the Earth. Historically, firestorms have occurred in a number of forests and cities. In developing computer models of nuclear-winter scenarios, researchers use both Hamburg and the Hiroshima firestorms as example cases where soot might have been injected into the stratosphere,[4] as well as modern observations of natural, large-area wildfires.[3][5][6]

---

Carbon Rain Rivers of oil · Bitumen raining from the sky · Why not here? · Black shales laced with carbon · Carbon from the sky · Black shales are highly radioactive · Natural nuclear reactions

---

[howtohero]

#031 Pop Culture Parodies

Superheroes are, of course, a pretty big cultural phenomenon. They’re like celebrities who are also complete blank slates. If you’re doing your job correctly the public should know next to nothing about you. At most they should know your codename, costume and maaaaaybe powers (but if you can somehow keep that a secret all the better.) So that leaves the public with a pretty unique opportunity. They essentially have this mega-famous entity that they can ascribe any personality or backstory that they like. This will, inevitably, lead to countless disparate depictions of heroes across various media. Some will be doing their best to be as factual as possible. Others will be knowing and purposeful parodies. Others still will just be completely making stuff up or giving it their best guess. Now, as a superhero, assuming your (*you’re, come on Zach could you at least try to be a little bit professional what if potential publishers are reading this?) famous enough to achieve this level of fame, how should you deal with these representations of yourselves?

While your knee-jerk reaction to seeing the sitcom produced about your life where, instead of being a valiant crime fighter who has saved the entire world at least three times, you’re depicted as a mild-mannered ice cream man who became a superhero in order to impress ladies and to get discounts at your local stores, might be to shut that whole thing down you should really do your level best to support it. Just think about it, the more information the parody gets incorrect about your actual life the better. It’s only when they accidentally (or through actual thorough investigation) get things right that you need to worry. This is why you need to make sure that never happens. Surreptitiously leak purposely falsified information to the show’s producers. Publicly praise the show for how accurate they were in depicting your day to day life as a high school swim coach. Call up the producer or pay visits to the set under the guise of trying to make things more accurate while actually making things more outlandishly false than the show’s writers would have ever thought to stray. Have them introduce an invisible pet crocodile to the show. Have an entire subplot introduced about your secret love for purple cabbage (which you of course secretly hate and would love for supervillains to do away with). Reveal to them your secret backstory where you’re an orphan who was raised on the moon by sentient moon rocks and that you therefore have no loved ones on Earth for your enemies to get a hold of. All kinds of preposterous stuff that’ll really throw your enemies off the trail.

You can even try to utilize the parody of your life to your benefit. Sell the television studio the rights to air your theme song in order to recoup some of the costs of having a full length theme songs written, recorded, mixed and performed by people using actual jetpacks, which, honestly was just money down the drain if we’re being honest. If merchandise is produced for the show, try demanding royalties or some sort of compensation. Having a parody based on you also gives you a sort of platform to reach the world. After all, the studio would have to be crazy not to take input from the actual hero whose life and name they are utilizing for their own gain. As long as you promise not to sue them or melt them with your face lasers I’m sure they’d be willing to take some of your input. Utilize the show to teach viewers valuable lessons about kindness and tolerance and also as a platform to teach viewers about the different villains who live in the neighborhood (this really only works for local broadcasting. I mean you can do it for a nationally syndicated show but then the whole country will just be very well informed about the criminal populace of the one five to ten block area...) 

Another fun thing you can do -since again, these people are stealing your life and so they owe you on some level- is to demand that they let you play a recurring character on the show. Not yourself, you don’t have the time to commit to being the star of the show about your fake life. Just some minor character, like the lawyer or the village chimney sweep. Some small role you can show up and perform every so often when you’re bored. The kicker is that since you obviously can’t just reveal your secret identity to the show’s creators you have to play your small minor lawyer role in full costume. And none of the characters on the show ever comment on it. And the producers really just have to let you just do it because they don’t want to fall victim to your ability to turn human beings into cats with your mind. The producers don’t want to be cats. They want to be producers, that’s why they went to film school in the first place.

While having a pop culture parody version of yourself running around and becoming a household name that may eventually eclipse your actual self in popularity might be embarrassing, remember it’s actually somewhat flattering. If your super-friends make fun of you because there’s a popular web series where you’re a cat who is continuously outsmarted by rodent versions of your most fiendish enemies (except for Hammy Manster aka the notorious Hamster Man, he is, for whatever reason, depicted as a fish,) just remind them that you’re more famous and popular and beloved than them. That ought to put them in their place.

If the parody version of you is like really really offensive and you can’t simply stand by and let it exist, you can always hold a public press conference and slam the parody for getting so many key and intrinsic facts wrong. And then continue to spread different, less offensive lies about yourselves. The key is really to just utilize whatever public platform you can to spread lies about yourself.

Here are some popular parody formats superheroes often find themselves the subjects of:

The Japanese anime/manga where you pilot a giant mecha (this one is pretty harmless and honestly you should hit up your scientist friends to see if you could actually get yourself a giant mecha.)

The sitcom where you’re depicted as more hapless than heroic (see above.)

The children’s show where your image is used to teach valuable lessons (for sure let this one slide, this is clearly a good thing guys.)

The webseries where you rap battle other superheroes and villains (see if you can get them to write you a free theme song.)

The cereal (honestly if you think about, superheroes would make the perfect cereal mascots. They’d fit right in. Tiger on steroids, bird struggling with addiction, klepto-rabbit, phantom detective who can’t get enough of feeding on the souls of criminals.) 

The [The following joke has been censored as this is a family blog.]

The documentary that actually put a lot of work into it and so you need to step in to prevent it from being too accurate.

The movie franchise that depicts you as a one-dimensional action hero who spouts cool one liners and causes a lot of uncontained, actually really quite dangerous, explosions.

The social media profiles which make jokes about how you spend your day to day life (a lot of them seem to think you’re rich and sleep til noon every day as if you don’t have a day job or are a productive member of society outside the costume.) 

The commercial campaign where you’re depicted as the spokesperson for a variety of products (at the very least you should make sure they pay you for these.)

[countrymadefoods]

Air pollution killing thousands of infants in Africa, study says

“Modest reductions in air pollution can prevent the deaths of tens of thousands of infants in sub-Saharan Africa each year, according to a new scientific study that investigated the link between breathable air pollutants and premature deaths in 30 countries across the continent. There is a "robust relationship" between breathable particulate matter and infant mortality in some of the world's poorest countries, according researchers from Stanford University and the University of California, San Diego.”

(via Air pollution killing thousands of infants in Africa, study says | CBS News)

The fruitless quest to save Indian women from slowly choking to death

“Studies have shown that these cookstoves have not caught on in low-income parts of the world, despite the decades of effort and hundreds of millions of dollars that the nonprofit sector has spent trying to convince people—almost always women—to use them.

The advanced cookstoves are meant to cut down on the toxic gases that come from burning biomass on traditional stoves or open fires. Globally, more than three billion people use either coal, kerosene, or biomass for cooking, and the fumes from these indoor fires constitute the second leading environmental cause of death in the world, after outdoor air pollution. Some 3.8 million people die prematurely each year from diseases related to indoor air pollution, such as pneumonia, stroke, heart and respiratory diseases, and cancer.

It has long been assumed that giving people around the world better cookstoves is an easy and effective way to save lives. So why aren’t those who really need the stoves using them?”

“In 2010, the UN Foundation and Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state at the time, launched the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves. At the heart of their plan were “clean” cookstoves that would burn biomass more efficiently and cleanly than existing stoves...But soon afterward came health studies indicating that the stoves, once in the field, didn’t actually improve the health of the women and children who were disproportionately exposed to indoor fumes.

The community of clean cookstove proponents and developers, known as “stovers,” came out of the appropriate technology movement of the 1970s, in which (mostly Western) experts argued that poorer people are stuck in poverty because of simple, inefficient technologies that could, and should, be easily improved. One of these unsatisfactory technologies is the humble cookstove, which continues to kill millions of people with fine particulate matter, carbon monoxide, and other fumes at levels well above safe limits. That level of exposure is particularly toxic to children under the age of five; almost half the global deaths from pneumonia among this age group can be traced to indoor air pollution from cookstoves.

“In the years since the clean cookstove movement began, stovers have engineered a variety of improved cookstoves, including the chimney, rocket, and charcoal stoves. The cleanest of them all are gasifier stoves, which contain a fan. A class apart are stoves that burn LPG, which is made from the propane or butane left as a byproduct of fossil fuel extraction. Finally, there are biogas, alcohol, and solar stoves—but these are rare and expensive.

In 2012, scientists from Harvard published the result of tracking a project to hand out chimney cookstoves—as in, stoves with chimneys that direct fumes out of homes—in Odisha, India, over four years. They found that, even though there was an improvement in the first year of the programme, over time women stopped using the new stoves, and most households still ended up with the same hazardous air as they’d had with the traditional chulhas. The key realisation was that people simply didn’t value the stoves enough to maintain and continue using them. It’s a pattern that has been repeated across the world.”

“[A] fan-driven gasifier stove, which is the cleanest improved biomass cookstove available on the market today. The researchers were surprised at how frequently the advanced stoves broke down, given that “these products had been specifically designed and developed for the indications, end users, and environments in which [researchers] assessed them.” They found themselves acting as a repair service, so that the families they were tracking would continue to use the new stoves. Still, by the second year, usage fell to 50%.

“Obviously, an LPG stove is very clean, but if someone cannot afford it, who cares?” he says. “We’re solving the problem for the rich, but not solving the problem for the base of the pyramid.” For those people, biomass stoves remain the solution...out of the roughly 2,000 stove companies worldwide, not a single one has succeeded in building a stove that’s simultaneously clean, accessible, and profitable to sell at scale.”

”One answer to the cookstove conundrum might be to promote and perfect a variety of stove types. Just as people in higher-income countries, like the US, use various devices to cook—gas burners, microwaves, tea kettles—most poor women, when given a choice, also like to use a variety of methods and fuels, from traditional stoves to LPG to biomass. (This is called “fuel stacking” in the world of non-governmental organisations.)

If people have money, they’ll prefer LPG for its convenience. It’s an aspirational product, just like a flat-screen TV. If they don’t have money, they’ll prefer traditional cookstoves, like the Indian chulhas, which have the bonus of making better-tasting food than the average biomass stove can. Biomass stoves tends to only be preferred in select situations, such as cooking outdoors, because they’re often portable. But studies suggest that there is virtually no advanced biomass cookstove on the market today that is as clean, in terms of air pollution, as an LPG stove is.”

(via The fruitless quest to save Indian women from slowly choking to death | Quartz India)

How cleaner cookstoves are sparking an environmental and societal revolution

“Approximately 3 billion people worldwide — nearly half the world’s population — use open fires and simple stoves to cook and heat their homes, according to the World Health Organization. The stoves, which typically burn wood or charcoal, are responsible for a slew of devastating environmental and health problems.”

”The stoves spew pollution into poorly ventilated homes, leading to millions of deaths from pneumonia, stroke, heart disease and other illnesses. The demand for fuel results in massive amounts of logging — including roughly half the deforestation in Sub-Saharan Africa. And inefficient cookstoves are one of the largest sources of “black carbon,” a sooty pollutant that ranks as the second-largest man-made contributor to climate change.

“It’s as clean as a stove in your house,” he said. However, it’s not affordable or durable enough for mass production and sales in Africa, Posner said, but by building it, “we learn all the lessons of what makes a clean-burning stove, and then you apply it to something that is more practical.”

“The Kuniokoa stoves going on the market this fall have undergone extensive testing by people living in Kenya and focus groups there have ranked it well above competitors’ products. And they’re being built in Burn Manufacturing’s factory near Nairobi. More than half of the factory’s 100 employees are women.

“We need to do field-based evaluations at a community level so we can keep improving...Half the world is cooking on open flames. Four million people are dying a year [from air pollution from the fires]...You have to fundamentally change how people are cooking.”

(via How cleaner cookstoves are sparking an environmental and societal revolution – GeekWire)

Can these 'stovers' finally crack the clean cooking problem?

“An entire sector exists to get the 3 billion people who cook over open fires or with traditional cookstoves to use cleaner methods of cooking. This includes the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, a public-private partnership hosting its annual forum in India this week as part of its work to get 100 million households to make the switch to clean cookstoves by 2020.

While LPG no doubt burns cleaner than biomass in the kitchen, it is a fossil fuel that is unaffordable for most people in developing countries. It also accelerates the climate impacts that cookstoves are meant to mitigate, and undermines self-sufficiency because it relies on imports...LPG cookstoves still have lower emissions, and therefore better health outcomes, than the current best-in-class biomass stoves...But biomass stoves are improving each year, and that gap may close more rapidly with research and development support from donors and philanthropists.”

“If the Sustainable Development Goals are truly not going to leave anyone behind, we have to address this issue of clean cooking. If we are looking to ensure a world where growth is sustainable for our planet, we have to address the issue of clean cooking. If we are to engage women inclusively and equitably in all of our societies and on productive engagement, we have to address this issue of cooking,” Radha Muthiah, CEO of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, said at the We the Future event organized by the Skoll Foundation and the United Nations Foundation in New York City.

Cookstoves need to cut down on the majority of pollutants to reduce respiratory illness, and the only ones that tend to do that are expensive forced-draft models with built-in fans, he said. They don’t tend to meet his checklist for whether things work for consumers, which requires them to be easy to use and easy to fix. In fact, the cookstove sector is now dealing with the stove stacking dynamic, where people use their new stoves along with their old methods of cooking.

[T]he main barriers to biomass gasification technology moving forward are not so much technological, but operational concerns such as delivery and service, and the ongoing challenge of adoption. That can be solved through economics, making biomass cheaper than charcoal...While donors want to see scaled-up LPG and eventually grid-based clean cooking, biomass cookstoves are a necessary part of the short-term solution.”

(via Can these 'stovers' finally crack the clean cooking problem? | Devex)

Smart stove design can drastically reduce wood smoke

“Dr. Larry Winiarski invented the Rocket stove, which can burn wood cleanly...Millions of Rocket stoves have been built and used for cooking, heating, drying and distillation. And there are newer and better ways to deal with smoke.

Electrostatic precipitation (ESP) puts a positive charge on smoke particles, which are attracted to the inside of your grounded chimney and are trapped unable to rise up into the sky. ESP is commonly used in industry here in the USA and in Swiss and German houses. Aprovecho used an affordable, low-wattage ESP in a heating stove competition recently in Washington, D.C. and smoke was reduced by 90 percent.”

(via Smart stove design can drastically reduce wood smoke | Register Guard)

1500 women to benefit from upscaling the Rocket Stove project

“One thousand five hundred women in the rural areas will soon embark on a project to alleviate poverty and prevent the loss of mangrove and forest for fuel wood.These women will be part of the Rocket Stove Project which has been funded by India, Brazil and South Africa.

United Nations Development Program Country Director Bakhodir Burkhanov says as part of the Rocket Stove Project, the women in rural areas will be trained to construct rocket stoves and generate income.

“These stoves use less fuel wood, increase efficiency through shorter cooking times or reduce or eliminate smoke from open fire cooking which reduces emissions.”

(via 1500 women to benefit from upscaling the Rocket Stove project | FBC)

[childrenofhypnos]

Chapter 14: Grimm

They sprinted for the window, praying it was a gateway.

It wasn't.

Emery knew it before they jumped through, when she got close enough to notice that the pressure of the Dream around them didn't let up, when she felt the Dream clawing at her mind for her memories again. She thought of Edgar and Grandpa Al, of sweaters and tea, of cannons and claymores. Even if it wasn't the Sandman's gateway, it was his subconscious, and she needed to be aware enough to find something helpful inside of it.

She hadn't realized how much she'd miss the poppy fields until she and Wes landed on a cobblestone road in the middle of a dense forest. Night slammed down around them. The forest was hung with fog and chirped with the sounds of hidden insects. A wooden fence lined one side of the road, the way marked by yellow lanterns hanging on spindly rods. Through the trees were the lights of a village, and past the village, the turrets of a vicious-looking stone castle perched atop a stone rise in the distance, its silhouette edged in moonlight. A thin layer of green clouds skittered across the sky, avoiding the moon.

"Wow. This is…" Emery looked behind them, where the road tapered off into a smear of nothingness, the edge of the dream they couldn't cross.

"It looks like a fairytale," Wes said.

"I'm not feeling very Disney right now."

"Less Disney, more Grimm."

"What do you think this guy dreams about?"

Wes sighed through his nose and hefted his hammer onto his shoulder, looking weary but determined. "We're going to find out."

~

It occurred to Emery during the walk to the little village through the trees that she could probably start shooting and do some serious psychological damage to the Sandman by ripping his dreams to shreds. She didn't think the appearance of his dream-window meant he was asleep, necessarily--she was pretty sure the dream-windows were there all the time, regardless of whether their dreamers were currently dreaming--but she did feel as if he was still nearby. She wouldn't have been surprised if he really had been following them the entire time they'd been in the Dream. Watching a couple of rookie dreamhunters stumble through window after window was probably hilarious for him.

Small cottages made up the village. Warm yellow light burned in every window and warmth leaked from every chimney. Muddy boots stood by solid front doors. Emery peeked inside a few as they passed and saw families bundled up by fireplaces, parents putting small children to bed. They wore simple clothing: tunics and dresses and thick socks. Emery wondered vaguely what Grandpa Al and Edgar were doing. Probably looking for her. Hopefully looking for her.

She stopped before one cottage not far from the town square and tried the door.

"What are you doing?" Wes hissed.

She rattled the door handle. The latch didn't budge, and the people sitting before the fireplace inside didn't look up. She rattled it again, then banged on the door. They didn't so much as sneeze.

"We can't interact with them," she said. "They're just here for show."

"Then let's keep moving. Something's got to happen."

The town square was hemmed in by several larger buildings, each identified by rough wooden signs in an alphabet they couldn't read, some muddled dream-language that would probably only make sense to the Sandman himself. The lanterns here hung from high poles staked in the ground around a squat stone well at the center of the square. Boards covered the top of the well. A man stood in front of it, his back to them, a hand resting on the well’s lip. In his other he held a rusted scythe, and he leaned on it like a walking stick.

“Hello?” Emery moved slowly toward him, one hand on a revolver. She’d been through enough nightmares where someone turned around and had no face, or had tentacles or crab claws protruding where their eyes should be, or mouths filled with dead rats. And after the villagers in the cottages, she didn’t expect this man to hear her.

He did. He turned, and watched them approach with a wary expression on his fully-formed face. The weight of the blade turned the scythe in his hand. They hadn’t seen any fields on the way to the village, but he must have been a farmer. His clothes were also in finer shape than the other villagers’, and his hair was a crisp, clean blond, combed in a precise swoop from a neat part on the right side of his head. A razor-thin scar cut down his face, over his right eye.

“Who are you?” he asked. Emery started. He had a distinct, contained Southern drawl. A Texan in a German fairytale. Emery had seen some strange things in the Dream, but that took the prize. “Have you come to speak to the scientist? He isn’t seeing anyone now. It’s a bad time.”

That it was the middle of the night and that they were wearing armor that didn’t fit their surroundings didn’t seem to bother the man at all. Emery began to ask who the scientist was when Wes stepped up beside her. “Why isn’t he seeing anyone?”

The man with the scythe paused, looking between them, sizing them up. Then he said, “My name is Daniel. I take travelers to the path in the woods that leads to the scientist’s lab.” He motioned toward the castle spearing over the trees. “The way has always been dangerous because of the Witch of the Wood. We thought it would be safer after the scientist captured her, but since then, none of the travelers I’ve led to the path have returned, and we haven’t heard from the scientist.”

Wes glanced at Emery. Emery stared back at him—had they really just been dropped in a fairytale?—until Wes raised his eyebrows.

She turned back to Daniel. “That’s exactly why we’re here. We were sent to investigate what became of the scientist. We’re well equipped to handle whatever might be waiting in that castle.” She tapped her Peacemakers. Wes had put his hammer away, but he looked intimidating enough without it.

Daniel looked them up and down once again. Emery couldn’t tell if he was supremely unimpressed with them, or if his face just always looked like that. “Aren’t you a little young, Ponytail?”

Emery’s eyebrows shot up into her hair. Now he was mocking them? And when he himself couldn’t have been much older than them.

She smiled to hold in her anger. “We’re quite capable, I assure you. You can lead us to the path or we can find it ourselves; either way, we’re going up to that castle.”

“Fine,” Daniel said, shrugging. “But if something gets you out there, no one will come to save you.”

Joke’s on you, cowboy, Emery wanted to say. We’ve already got no one coming to save us.

“We’ll take our chances,” she said instead.

~

The path through the forest sat behind a blacksmith’s shop. The trees opened up there similar to the Sandman’s gateway and window, two huge oaks framing darkness. Moonlight founds chinks in the armor of the thick canopy overhead and dappled the pathway. Fog crept through the underbrush.

Daniel had brought a lantern with him; it cast shadows over his tanned, angular face. He handed it to Emery.

“Let me give you some advice,” he said. “Don’t leave the path. Look for the knight when you reach the castle. She used to guard the front gate, but I don’t know if she’s still there. If she is, avoid her. She’s a real piece of work.”

“Don’t leave the path, avoid the knight. Got it.” What was the proper etiquette for leaving a helpful person in a fairytale? Emery saluted. Wes cleared his throat.

Daniel shifted his scythe into both hands and backed away. The lantern light left his face, shadowing his eyes. He became two bright curves in the moonlight: the blonde swoop of his hair and the iron edge of the scythe blade. Then he was gone, vanished into the fog rolling across the cobblestones.

Emery and Wes turned back toward the forest. The path was dark.

“Remind you of anything?” Emery asked.

Wes looked grim. “If the Wilmark Fox shows up, I’m going to bash its head in.”

They started walking. This path through the woods was worse than the trails in Wilmark Park. The fog, the density of the trees, and the pressure of the Dream crowded in on all sides, like watching eyes. Past the pressure, Emery was sure there actually was something out there in the woods watching them, the same way she was sure of anything else in another person’s nightmare: the person himself knew it. The Sandman had had this dream multiple times, perhaps not recently, but throughout his life.

She shivered. “We’re walking through his subconscious right now.”

“We’ve been through twenty others. It’s no different.”

“But this is a dreamhunter. It’s so crisp. Everything’s so defined.”

It felt like a real forest, not a dream forest. They probably couldn’t step off the path, but it felt like they could. There was no narrowing of Emery’s vision, no slowing of her legs or scattering of her thoughts.

“He won’t sleep much, since he’s a dreamhunter. This is probably one of the few nightmares he’s ever had that was powerful enough to surface.”

Emery had never had a nightmare strong enough to come into the waking world. Most dreamhunters didn’t; they certainly had the capability, often more than non-dreamhunters, but they didn’t sleep enough to allow the nightmares to become corporeal.

This could have been the waking world, it was so realistic.

Besides the Texan, of course.

The trees ended before they came upon the castle walls. A stretch of moat separated the woods from the stone wall, like a huge sword had come down and cleaved the ground in two. A long stone bridge spanned the gap to a high portcullis, open now onto an empty courtyard. Emery and Wes started across the bridge, side-by-side, Emery holding the lantern up.

The knight appeared the same way Daniel had disappeared, in a roll of fog across the ground, sliding into existence where she had not previously existed at all. Emery wouldn’t have known it was a woman inside the armor if Daniel hadn’t said so; the knight was as old school as everything else around here, greaves and helmet and pauldrons, the whole nine yards. The armor was black, and she stood with her legs braced apart and her hands balanced on the pommel of a massive battle axe. The sharp center tip was planted in the groove between two stones.

“I suppose we should have figured there was no way to avoid her, huh?” Emery said, taking out her revolvers. Wes hefted his hammer in both hands. Emery raised her voice. “We’re here to see the scientist. We heard something weird was going on.”

Emery wasn’t sure they used the word “weird” in fairytales.

The knight didn’t seem to care. She could’ve been a statue if not for a single flex of the fingers of her right hand. The armor made her taller and broader than Wes.

“I don’t know about you,” Emery said to Wes, “but I don’t have the energy to fight this lady right now.”

At least the armor would hide a neat bullet hole in the flesh. She raised her Peacemaker and fired.

The bullet ricocheted off the knight’s heavy breastplate and tore through a chunk of the stone wall.

“Um.” Emery looked at her Peacemaker. “It’s not supposed to do that.”

The knight’s shoulders shook.

“I think she’s laughing at you,” Wes said. “That’s…nice of her.”

“Nice of her?”

“You just tried to kill her. She could be trying to kill you back.”

“Are you going to let us in or not?” Emery snapped at the knight.

With a visible sigh—a slump of the shoulders, a slight lowering of the head—the knight took her battle axe in one hand and started across the bridge. Emery felt the vibration of her steps through the stone, they were so heavy and rattled so loud.

Wes stepped forward. “I can hold her off. You try to get past her.”

“How did it not penetrate?”

“The Sandman has got some strong dreams. Just go. We’ll flank her.”

The knight’s axe slid into place in her hands before she swung it, smooth and automatic, like a machine. It came in a long graceful arc from her heel up to her shoulder, lifting Wes’s hair from his forehead as he jerked backward to avoid it. When it came back down, he raised his hammer and caught her blade on the hammer shaft.

“Go!” he grunted.

Emery dropped the lantern—it tipped and shattered—leaped past the knight’s legs, rolled, and sprang to her feet. Metal squealed on metal. Emery sprinted to the portcullis and turned. Wes was swinging now, driving the knight back a step only to leave himself open long enough for her to surge forward and tackle him against the short wall along the edge of the bridge. Wes locked his hammer with her axe again, but the knight was bending him back, farther and farther, until his shoulders almost touched the top of the wall.

Emery raised a gun to shoot, but thought better of it; if it ricocheted again, Wes was too close. She holstered the gun, fuming, and resorted to the old standby: she dashed back across the bridge and jumped onto the knight’s back, wrapping her arms beneath the lip of the helmet visor and yanking backward. Her momentum pulled the knight away from Wes, giving him the chance to drive the hammer head into the knight’s breastplate. Emery felt the deep thud of the impact. The knight staggered backward, but didn’t fall.

“Stupid—sturdy—scrap—metal!” Emery dug her fingers beneath the lip of the knight’s helmet. They needed a weak point to hit, a soft spot. The knight dropped her axe to grab Emery’s ankles and pry her legs away, but Wes swung for the knight’s elbows and she let go to avoid being hit. The knight stumbled, Emery pulled, and the helmet came off.

A fall of brilliant orange hair lit up in the moonlight.

Wes tried to stop mid-swing and lost his grip. His hammer flew from his hands and crashed into the low stone wall. He gaped.

“Marcia?”

The knight grabbed Emery’s legs and dislodged her. Emery hit the ground with a huff. The knight grabbed her axe up again, then turned, and Emery looked up into the face of Marcia Montgomery.

Her riot of hair fell past her shoulders instead of stopping at her chin, and she looked younger than she should, but it was definitely her.

“Who are you?” Marcia said, glaring between the two of them. “How do you know my name?”

“You’re our—” Emery started, until Wes began furiously shaking his head behind Marcia’s back. “The villagers told us. The one with the scythe. Daniel. He said you were a real piece of work.”

It was enough to turn Marcia into a human volcano.

“Scum-sucking slick-haired coward! Of course he told you! He wants me out of the way, but he won’t even come into the woods himself, oh no. He’ll send others in for him! If he wants to fight me, he should come and do it!”

“Why does he want you out of the way?”

“To get to the castle! They all want to get to the castle!”

Marcia paused, huffing, then scooped up her helmet from the ground and shoved her way past Wes.

“You want to go in, go in. I was here to save you, not to defend him.” She motioned at the castle with her helmet. “If you’re still alive when I get back, I might pull you out. Go inside at your own risk.”

Then she shoved her helmet on and vanished between the trees, taking with her the sudden warmth of familiarity. The loss of it made Emery feel heavier, and it took an extra effort to get back to her feet.

“So, Marcia is in the Sandman’s dream,” Emery said. “She was acting weird about him before. They definitely know each other.”

“They must be close, if she’s such a prominent figure here.”

“Does that help us at all? Knowing that? Maybe we could use her as a defense if he tries to attack us. Like, you know—he’s about to dose us with sleeping sand, and we say, ‘Wait! We know Marcia!’”

Wes looked unconvinced.

“It was just an idea,” Emery said defensively. “Let’s go inside before she comes back.”

   (Next time on The Children of Hypnos --> IT'S ALIIIIIIIIIVE)

[kristablogs]

These ultramarathoners say life is easier after running 40 miles on frozen backwoods trails

‘I could do this all night,’ O’Neill thought. (Ackerman + Gruber/)

It is 10°F outside of the wood-beamed shelter at St. Croix State Park, a 34,000-acre pine-and-oak expanse in eastern Minnesota. Hell, it’s cold inside, despite two fireplaces blazing, their smoke pulled into flared metal chimneys that resemble the business ends of rockets. The 54 athletes standing around keep their hats on, for the most part. Each has spent good money to embark on exactly the kind of endeavor most people would pay to avoid: running or skiing—whichever suits their fancy—for 40 miles. At night. In Minnesota. In January. While pulling a sled packed with 30-plus pounds of supplies.

This torturefest is called the St. Croix 40 Winter Ultra, and its participants find pleasure in the hardship. At 4:30 p.m. they jiggle their legs and apply insulating tape to their cheeks and noses while the organizers give a prerace pep talk.

Of sorts.

“No one died last year,” says Jamison Swift, deadpanning. “Let’s keep it going.”

He soon passes the stage to Lisa Kapsner-Swift, his co-organizer and wife, who talks about what the racers can do if they feel like they’re coming down with the winter-ultra baddies: trench foot, frostbite, hypothermia.

The advice washes over Meredith O’Neill, who wears glasses and bright blue snow pants; two Heidi braids hang down her shoulders. She’s prepared for months, training to be alone, cold, and tired for what might feel like forever as she runs across an Upper Midwest oak savanna, passes through stands of pines, and treks across acres of trees felled by a storm. She’ll go and go and go until she returns, finally, hopefully, to this same building sometime tomorrow.

It’s fun. Not the normal, easy kind that comes with games of horseshoes or beach volleyball. Wilderness-seeking enthusiasts often call that “Type I Fun.” Instead, this is the more complicated variety, “Type II Fun,” which basically encompasses an activity—like backpacking up a steep mountain or scaling a sheer rock face—that suuuuuucks when you’re doing it but seems cool in retrospect. (Their categorization system also includes “Type III” activity, which is never actual fun and puts your life in danger.)

Type II recreation appeals to a variety of nature-loving folks, including a growing community of runners called ultramarathoners—those who think the traditional 26.2-mile course isn’t a big-enough test of physical endurance and mental fortitude. Their events mostly take place on remote trails, rather than on big-city streets with live bands and aid stations stocked like curbside Trader Joe’s. There were just over 100,000 finishes in ultraraces around the world in 2018, compared to 1.1 million for marathons. The extreme feats have to cover at least 31 miles (50 kilometers) and sometimes include extra challenges, like St. Croix’s sleds and snow. For tonight’s contest, participants must bring along, among other things, insulated water containers, gear for sleeping in the elements, a stove kit, and enough food to finish the course with 3,000 calories to spare.

The St. Croix winter ultramarathon covers 40 miles—from dusk till done—and draws athletes considering longer events. (Ackerman + Gruber/)

Sports psychologists have investigated the why of races like this one, looking closely at people who think that “more than a marathon” sounds like a terrific Saturday. What they’ve found is that ultrarunners get a kick out of tackling self-imposed challenges, forming community while also pursuing solitude, exploring the wilderness as well as their own limits, and then applying the idea that they can nudge their own boundaries to their tamer everyday lives.

If you ask athletes like O’Neill why they push themselves to and through mile 37 toward the finish line, their anecdata matches scientists’ findings pretty well. “In road marathons, there’s a lot of people, and I’m more introverted,” she says. “I wanted something a little quieter, more nature-filled.”

After her first ultra, a 31-miler outside of Minneapolis, O’Neill knew this was the sport for her. It wasn’t about fast finish times or jostling with other competitors. Participants like her go slower, mostly alone, through pretty places. She liked that. “I could do this for eight hours,” she thought. “I could do this for 12 hours; I could do this all night.”

O’Neill realized she could continue beyond where her biology told her to stop. That it was thrilling to go past her usual boundaries. “Your brain is holding you back a little bit to protect you,” she says. “But that’s sort of a wiggly, wobbly line that you can push further.”

It’s an idea exercise scientist Tim Noakes first suggested in the 1990s and dubbed the “central governor” theory: Your brain sends a signal to the rest of your body, informing the muscles that they’re too tired to possibly go on, and that if they do, they might damage themselves. But that signal comes long before it needs to, when the body still has tons of energy left.

Finding out how much literal and figurative fuel she has propels O’Neill into the now-single-digit Minnesota night—that, and seeking the kind of peace physical exertion provides. “It’s one of the few times I don’t really think about anything other than how far I’ve gone and how far I have to go and whether I feel okay,” she says. “I’m very present. I like it. I like having that calm.”

At 5:55 p.m., when it’s just below 10°F, O’Neill stands in full moonlight next to her sled, which is about the size of a Flexible Flyer a kid would ride downhill. Some entrants have wrapped their gear in fancy REI stowage; others merely tote big, blue IKEA bags with the handles knotted together. O’Neill’s kit hides in a black duffel. Her camp stove, like everyone else’s, rests atop the snow, ready to be lit in order to show that she can boil water in the cold—required before she can start moving her legs. Unlike road races and traditional ultras, this event requires all runners to demonstrate not just that they’re able to last a long time, but also that they have survival skills to fall back on. When the official says, “GO!” to signal the start, O’Neill’s cooker engulfs itself in a ball of flame, then settles down. A hundred feet away, two rows of primary-colored triangle flags wave from the start of the course.

Across the snowy ground, a participant named Bill Hansel has decked out his sled with Christmas lights, their blinks reflecting aggressively off the white flakes. Nearby, a spectator in an inflatable T. rex costume dances, a Cretaceous cheerleader. Hansel is a veteran ultrarunner who also organizes his own events, the Storm Trail Race Series, as a fundraiser for youth mental-health initiatives. Like O’Neill, Hansel loves what distance challenges do to his brain. “You’re alone with your thoughts a lot,” he says. “It’s my meditation.” But he also enjoys the community. “Trail runners are a very welcoming group. Everybody wants to help everybody,” he continues. Even if you’re mindfully alone for 25 miles, “you can pick up a random person” in the middle of nowhere and chitchat through ragged breaths.

Runner ­Meredith O’Neill likes being surrounded by nature. (Ackerman + Gruber/)

Hansel starts working to get his cold fuel to light.

Standing still like that, the elements start to intrude. At first it doesn’t feel so bad. Crisp! But then you breathe in sharply, and the insides of your nose flash-freeze together for a second. Frigid! Your lungs contract. Ouch! Then all of a sudden you realize that the iciness has slithered into your veins. It’s part of you now. And just as you can’t really remember exactly what it felt like to be a teenager, you can’t recall what it felt like to be warm. Maybe, you think, you never were. Maybe you’ll never be again. But the seemingly never-ending chill is temporary.

This, too, shall pass. Hansel talks in phrases like this sometimes—aphorisms interspersed with regular sentences, snippets of wisdom that are about running but really could be about anything: “There’s ups and downs, and it will get better if you keep going.” “Even if you run the same race, it’s not the same course.” “Don’t look at the big picture.”

That last one will buoy him throughout this challenge, as it has during every other ultra. He always, for instance, sets the timer on his watch for 10 minutes. When it’s up, he’ll take a drink of water. He’ll reset his watch. He’ll shift his attention to the next interval. “I have run 200 miles, 95 hours, 10 minutes at a time,” he says. He’s persisted so long that he’s hallucinated recreational vehicles (multiple times)—tales he swaps like drinking stories with other Type II enthusiasts.

This, though, is his first winter ultra, and he’s going into it with the same three big aims he always has: to finish, to have fun, to not die. He likes to play around with what he calls his superpower, which is the ability to go very slowly for a very long time. To take pleasure in how the moonlight hits the snow, to really notice his body at work, to hear only his footsteps and internal monologue, and to feel from afar the support of friends and family.

Soon, the water in his stove bubbles, and he begins moving toward his trifecta of goals. As the yellow moon rises over the trees, Hansel jogs between the flags, which lead down a snowmobile trail. He and O’Neill and the others will follow the path for the first 24 miles of the race, watching for yellow signs with blue reflective arrows to appear out of the darkness, showing the way to the only checkpoint.

More than one-quarter of the 54 people who set out on this evening will quit there.

O’Neill prepped for months to run the St. Croix trail ­ultra in frigid temperatures (Ackerman + Gruber/)

So, yeah, the St. Croix 40 Winter Ultra does claim some victims. But it’s actually one of the easier cold-weather endurance events out there. The Swifts founded it specifically for people who weren’t ready yet for the truly masochistic affairs: the Iditarod Trail Invitational 1,000, the Alaskan original and still the mother of all these races; the Tuscobia Winter Ultra, whose 160-mile route is a step toward qualifying for the Iditarod; and the Arrowhead 135, a challenge that begins at International Falls in northern Minnesota and that more than half of all starters don’t finish. (The numbers in the names refer, of course, to distance in miles.)

The Swifts want to give anyone interested in trying a winter ultra a safe place to practice something “short”—especially considering that even out here, in a straightforward test, it’s not very hard to die simply by standing still for too long. That’s why the runners have to show off their survival skills: so that someday, if they do have to set up a subzero camp, they’ll be ready.

Kapsner-Swift gets that. She does similar races herself. Last year she completed her first 24-hour run. “It was terrible,” she says, “and I loved it so much.” Her statement echoes the dichotomy articulated by another St. Croix participant, Adam Warden: “You want something that’s going to suck,” he says. “And be beautiful.”

For Kapsner-Swift and Warden, and for most ultrarunners, getting through the gut-wrenching parts is a game, like a tough chess match. “Not to get all existential,” Kapsner-Swift says, “but we have this incredible privilege of having, generally speaking, very comfortable lives.” That’s great—most of the time. But challenge is good for human beings. It’s how we grow. “Sometimes a little fear and self-doubt go a long way,” another participant, Kari Gibbons, explains. “I don’t feel that anywhere else in my life. That means I’m not pushing myself. I’m not taking a risk. If I do feel that, I know I’m doing something important.”

If life doesn’t give you lemons, in other words, you should probably pluck a few and bite down. Then, when you actually do get lemons, you’ll know what to do with them. That shift—from athletic challenge to regular existence—may be easy for ultrarunners, according to a 2014 dissertation from organizational psychologist Anthony Holly, now a director of strategy and analytics at PRO Unlimited, a workforce management company. He wanted to understand how these athletes’ mental toughness plays out in the workplace. By interviewing runners, he projected that the discipline, patience, and tenacity they use to complete races are skills they could transfer to job environments. It sounds a little Hallmarkian to say, “Because I could plod more miles, I knew I could handle the frustrations of office politics and rough deadlines.” But it seems to work. The St. Croix athletes have found that the extremes help them cope with personal and professional troubles.

St. Croix athletes pull sleds with emergency supplies. (Ackerman + Gruber/)

To understand why people initially decide to go to such lengths, Rhonna Krouse-Adams, an associate professor of health science at the College of Western Idaho, studied endurance athletes. After she failed to find any data on women ultrarunners, she decided to focus her research on them. She herself was one, and had become fascinated by the community and camaraderie among these women, who technically are competitors and mostly fly solo. “They’re noncompetitive people who form almost a family unit through this process,” she thought.

Surveying 344 participants, Krouse-Adams found they cared about health and used running to give themselves a sense of well-being. They focused on self-centric goals, like just finishing the race, rather than outward-facing ones, like besting a competitor. “The sense of freedom and accomplishment” topped the “why” list. “A sense of belonging was really high,” she says. It’s a whole identity—not just a hobby. According to a 2018 study, finishers are more motivated by their group affiliation and a feeling of happiness and fulfillment than those who complete shorter distances.

This is a self-selecting bunch, though, Krouse-Adams points out. “You can’t commit to something for 25 hours a week and have a lot of other commitments,” she says. “This was not a sport chosen by families. Not by moms.” Perhaps not surprisingly, other researchers have found that ultrarunners in the United States are around 85 percent male, 90 percent white, and more educated and richer than average. It’s a pursuit often taken up by those with lots of leisure time and money to spend on the $100-plus entry fees.

Life circumstances aside, not everyone is mentally suited to endurance events. Gavin Breslin, a sports and exercise psychologist at Ulster University, sees a focus on self-challenge. “The marathon is achievable,” says Breslin, who also coaches a team of Olympic hopefuls. Ultrarunners ask, “‘What can you do above that?' There’s risk-taking involved.” The uncertainty is that you might not be able to do what you set out to do. The fist-pumping triumph is when you do it anyway. As O’Neill puts it, “That was liberating, to know that when I thought things were over and done, I had a little more.”

Breslin and his associates have also looked at how distance athletes score on a personality test of five major traits, sometimes called the Big Five, which in concert can define character: extroversion, agreeableness, openness, neuroticism, and conscientiousness. Ultrarunners tend to score significantly higher than average for that last trait, thanks to some mysterious mix of genetics and upbringing. You can cultivate this quality, he says. “You can develop goal setting. Somewhere within us all, there’s a level of ultraendurance.”

At the 24-mile checkpoint, some of the St. Croix participants might be questioning Breslin’s assessment. The ones who decide to bow out join volunteers inside a billowing warming tent that looks like it was fashioned from the inflatable T. rex at the starting point. Other crew members stand slump-shouldered around a fire, waiting for each bedraggled, frigid racer to emerge from the darkness.

The first athlete arrives around 10 p.m., but the last runner doesn’t get there until around 2:30 a.m. If they plan to take on the last 16 miles, they have to again prove they have the skills to stay alive in an emergency. They must stop, set up their bivy sack (basically a body-shaped tent that envelops their sleeping bag), climb into the makeshift bed, wait around 30 seconds, then pack it all up before leaving. That sounds like a pain, sure. But no big deal compared to running 40 miles, right?

Counterclockwise from top: foam pad, sleeping bag and bivy sack, water bottle sleeves, camp pot and stove, fuel (red canister), snacks, trekking poles, microspikes. (Ackerman + Gruber/)

Wrong: When the temp nears zero, and you’re sweaty, you get cold quick—the kind of chill that seems to attach itself to your DNA. Some who feel too frosty after their survival demo, or just beaten, call it quits and either walk a mile (as the crow flies) on a road back to the finish line or catch a ride in a volunteer’s car.

Around 3 a.m., back at the starting point, the race crew begins making breakfast in the shelter for the people who’ve returned, either humbled from the checkpoint or triumphant from the trail. There are flaky eggs, bacon, Krusteaz pancakes, bags of Colby Jack cheese, and Activia probiotic yogurt. Also a big orange cooler with a piece of paper taped to its side: “TANG!” On the registration table, not-yet-cooked bacon languishes—which is fine, because it’s still too cold inside for bacteria to propagate.

Hansel comes in around 4 a.m., shaken. Shaky, actually. His lips are blue like Frost Glacier Freeze Gatorade, and his fork wobbles as he brings eggs up to them, or tries to cut into the pancakes.

“I had dark times starting after about five miles,” Hansel says. He didn’t really see anyone else—at all—till the checkpoint. “I’m used to dark times,” he continues, “but not that early.”

To keep going, he says he thought of his family and all of the people who support him. Would he do it again? No. “Was it fun?” Hansel asks aloud. “Yes,” he answers himself. Perhaps that’s Type 2.5 Fun. (Within a couple months, though, he would be training for next year’s St. Croix 40 Winter Ultra.)

When O’Neill comes in around two hours later, after more than 12 hours on the trail, she looks jubilant. She caught that heightened state of being she’s always chasing through the woods—what psychologists call “flow,” or total absorption in a task. You lose track of time, you feel totally in control, like you are in charge of yourself and the world. “I’m not thinking of anything but what I’m doing, my footsteps, what’s around me,” she says.

She removes her coat, revealing a pale blue argyle sweater, the kind you might wear to the office, and a down running skirt over her bright blue snow pants. The race appears to have barely fazed her. She says, in fact, that it was “90 percent Type I fun.” Her only trouble was that all her food froze—except for a stash of Twinkies. But no big deal: She just ate Twinkies, fully present to sense their spongy outsides, their gooey centers, their sugar flowing into her veins. Crisis averted. Achievement unlocked. Game won, and over.

This story appeared in the Summer 2020, Play issue of Popular Science.

[scootoaster]

These ultramarathoners say life is easier after running 40 miles on frozen backwoods trails

‘I could do this all night,’ O’Neill thought. (Ackerman + Gruber/)

It is 10°F outside of the wood-beamed shelter at St. Croix State Park, a 34,000-acre pine-and-oak expanse in eastern Minnesota. Hell, it’s cold inside, despite two fireplaces blazing, their smoke pulled into flared metal chimneys that resemble the business ends of rockets. The 54 athletes standing around keep their hats on, for the most part. Each has spent good money to embark on exactly the kind of endeavor most people would pay to avoid: running or skiing—whichever suits their fancy—for 40 miles. At night. In Minnesota. In January. While pulling a sled packed with 30-plus pounds of supplies.

This torturefest is called the St. Croix 40 Winter Ultra, and its participants find pleasure in the hardship. At 4:30 p.m. they jiggle their legs and apply insulating tape to their cheeks and noses while the organizers give a prerace pep talk.

Of sorts.

“No one died last year,” says Jamison Swift, deadpanning. “Let’s keep it going.”

He soon passes the stage to Lisa Kapsner-Swift, his co-organizer and wife, who talks about what the racers can do if they feel like they’re coming down with the winter-ultra baddies: trench foot, frostbite, hypothermia.

The advice washes over Meredith O’Neill, who wears glasses and bright blue snow pants; two Heidi braids hang down her shoulders. She’s prepared for months, training to be alone, cold, and tired for what might feel like forever as she runs across an Upper Midwest oak savanna, passes through stands of pines, and treks across acres of trees felled by a storm. She’ll go and go and go until she returns, finally, hopefully, to this same building sometime tomorrow.

It’s fun. Not the normal, easy kind that comes with games of horseshoes or beach volleyball. Wilderness-seeking enthusiasts often call that “Type I Fun.” Instead, this is the more complicated variety, “Type II Fun,” which basically encompasses an activity—like backpacking up a steep mountain or scaling a sheer rock face—that suuuuuucks when you’re doing it but seems cool in retrospect. (Their categorization system also includes “Type III” activity, which is never actual fun and puts your life in danger.)

Type II recreation appeals to a variety of nature-loving folks, including a growing community of runners called ultramarathoners—those who think the traditional 26.2-mile course isn’t a big-enough test of physical endurance and mental fortitude. Their events mostly take place on remote trails, rather than on big-city streets with live bands and aid stations stocked like curbside Trader Joe’s. There were just over 100,000 finishes in ultraraces around the world in 2018, compared to 1.1 million for marathons. The extreme feats have to cover at least 31 miles (50 kilometers) and sometimes include extra challenges, like St. Croix’s sleds and snow. For tonight’s contest, participants must bring along, among other things, insulated water containers, gear for sleeping in the elements, a stove kit, and enough food to finish the course with 3,000 calories to spare.

The St. Croix winter ultramarathon covers 40 miles—from dusk till done—and draws athletes considering longer events. (Ackerman + Gruber/)

Sports psychologists have investigated the why of races like this one, looking closely at people who think that “more than a marathon” sounds like a terrific Saturday. What they’ve found is that ultrarunners get a kick out of tackling self-imposed challenges, forming community while also pursuing solitude, exploring the wilderness as well as their own limits, and then applying the idea that they can nudge their own boundaries to their tamer everyday lives.

If you ask athletes like O’Neill why they push themselves to and through mile 37 toward the finish line, their anecdata matches scientists’ findings pretty well. “In road marathons, there’s a lot of people, and I’m more introverted,” she says. “I wanted something a little quieter, more nature-filled.”

After her first ultra, a 31-miler outside of Minneapolis, O’Neill knew this was the sport for her. It wasn’t about fast finish times or jostling with other competitors. Participants like her go slower, mostly alone, through pretty places. She liked that. “I could do this for eight hours,” she thought. “I could do this for 12 hours; I could do this all night.”

O’Neill realized she could continue beyond where her biology told her to stop. That it was thrilling to go past her usual boundaries. “Your brain is holding you back a little bit to protect you,” she says. “But that’s sort of a wiggly, wobbly line that you can push further.”

It’s an idea exercise scientist Tim Noakes first suggested in the 1990s and dubbed the “central governor” theory: Your brain sends a signal to the rest of your body, informing the muscles that they’re too tired to possibly go on, and that if they do, they might damage themselves. But that signal comes long before it needs to, when the body still has tons of energy left.

Finding out how much literal and figurative fuel she has propels O’Neill into the now-single-digit Minnesota night—that, and seeking the kind of peace physical exertion provides. “It’s one of the few times I don’t really think about anything other than how far I’ve gone and how far I have to go and whether I feel okay,” she says. “I’m very present. I like it. I like having that calm.”

At 5:55 p.m., when it’s just below 10°F, O’Neill stands in full moonlight next to her sled, which is about the size of a Flexible Flyer a kid would ride downhill. Some entrants have wrapped their gear in fancy REI stowage; others merely tote big, blue IKEA bags with the handles knotted together. O’Neill’s kit hides in a black duffel. Her camp stove, like everyone else’s, rests atop the snow, ready to be lit in order to show that she can boil water in the cold—required before she can start moving her legs. Unlike road races and traditional ultras, this event requires all runners to demonstrate not just that they’re able to last a long time, but also that they have survival skills to fall back on. When the official says, “GO!” to signal the start, O’Neill’s cooker engulfs itself in a ball of flame, then settles down. A hundred feet away, two rows of primary-colored triangle flags wave from the start of the course.

Across the snowy ground, a participant named Bill Hansel has decked out his sled with Christmas lights, their blinks reflecting aggressively off the white flakes. Nearby, a spectator in an inflatable T. rex costume dances, a Cretaceous cheerleader. Hansel is a veteran ultrarunner who also organizes his own events, the Storm Trail Race Series, as a fundraiser for youth mental-health initiatives. Like O’Neill, Hansel loves what distance challenges do to his brain. “You’re alone with your thoughts a lot,” he says. “It’s my meditation.” But he also enjoys the community. “Trail runners are a very welcoming group. Everybody wants to help everybody,” he continues. Even if you’re mindfully alone for 25 miles, “you can pick up a random person” in the middle of nowhere and chitchat through ragged breaths.

Runner ­Meredith O’Neill likes being surrounded by nature. (Ackerman + Gruber/)

Hansel starts working to get his cold fuel to light.

Standing still like that, the elements start to intrude. At first it doesn’t feel so bad. Crisp! But then you breathe in sharply, and the insides of your nose flash-freeze together for a second. Frigid! Your lungs contract. Ouch! Then all of a sudden you realize that the iciness has slithered into your veins. It’s part of you now. And just as you can’t really remember exactly what it felt like to be a teenager, you can’t recall what it felt like to be warm. Maybe, you think, you never were. Maybe you’ll never be again. But the seemingly never-ending chill is temporary.

This, too, shall pass. Hansel talks in phrases like this sometimes—aphorisms interspersed with regular sentences, snippets of wisdom that are about running but really could be about anything: “There’s ups and downs, and it will get better if you keep going.” “Even if you run the same race, it’s not the same course.” “Don’t look at the big picture.”

That last one will buoy him throughout this challenge, as it has during every other ultra. He always, for instance, sets the timer on his watch for 10 minutes. When it’s up, he’ll take a drink of water. He’ll reset his watch. He’ll shift his attention to the next interval. “I have run 200 miles, 95 hours, 10 minutes at a time,” he says. He’s persisted so long that he’s hallucinated recreational vehicles (multiple times)—tales he swaps like drinking stories with other Type II enthusiasts.

This, though, is his first winter ultra, and he’s going into it with the same three big aims he always has: to finish, to have fun, to not die. He likes to play around with what he calls his superpower, which is the ability to go very slowly for a very long time. To take pleasure in how the moonlight hits the snow, to really notice his body at work, to hear only his footsteps and internal monologue, and to feel from afar the support of friends and family.

Soon, the water in his stove bubbles, and he begins moving toward his trifecta of goals. As the yellow moon rises over the trees, Hansel jogs between the flags, which lead down a snowmobile trail. He and O’Neill and the others will follow the path for the first 24 miles of the race, watching for yellow signs with blue reflective arrows to appear out of the darkness, showing the way to the only checkpoint.

More than one-quarter of the 54 people who set out on this evening will quit there.

O’Neill prepped for months to run the St. Croix trail ­ultra in frigid temperatures (Ackerman + Gruber/)

So, yeah, the St. Croix 40 Winter Ultra does claim some victims. But it’s actually one of the easier cold-weather endurance events out there. The Swifts founded it specifically for people who weren’t ready yet for the truly masochistic affairs: the Iditarod Trail Invitational 1,000, the Alaskan original and still the mother of all these races; the Tuscobia Winter Ultra, whose 160-mile route is a step toward qualifying for the Iditarod; and the Arrowhead 135, a challenge that begins at International Falls in northern Minnesota and that more than half of all starters don’t finish. (The numbers in the names refer, of course, to distance in miles.)

The Swifts want to give anyone interested in trying a winter ultra a safe place to practice something “short”—especially considering that even out here, in a straightforward test, it’s not very hard to die simply by standing still for too long. That’s why the runners have to show off their survival skills: so that someday, if they do have to set up a subzero camp, they’ll be ready.

Kapsner-Swift gets that. She does similar races herself. Last year she completed her first 24-hour run. “It was terrible,” she says, “and I loved it so much.” Her statement echoes the dichotomy articulated by another St. Croix participant, Adam Warden: “You want something that’s going to suck,” he says. “And be beautiful.”

For Kapsner-Swift and Warden, and for most ultrarunners, getting through the gut-wrenching parts is a game, like a tough chess match. “Not to get all existential,” Kapsner-Swift says, “but we have this incredible privilege of having, generally speaking, very comfortable lives.” That’s great—most of the time. But challenge is good for human beings. It’s how we grow. “Sometimes a little fear and self-doubt go a long way,” another participant, Kari Gibbons, explains. “I don’t feel that anywhere else in my life. That means I’m not pushing myself. I’m not taking a risk. If I do feel that, I know I’m doing something important.”

If life doesn’t give you lemons, in other words, you should probably pluck a few and bite down. Then, when you actually do get lemons, you’ll know what to do with them. That shift—from athletic challenge to regular existence—may be easy for ultrarunners, according to a 2014 dissertation from organizational psychologist Anthony Holly, now a director of strategy and analytics at PRO Unlimited, a workforce management company. He wanted to understand how these athletes’ mental toughness plays out in the workplace. By interviewing runners, he projected that the discipline, patience, and tenacity they use to complete races are skills they could transfer to job environments. It sounds a little Hallmarkian to say, “Because I could plod more miles, I knew I could handle the frustrations of office politics and rough deadlines.” But it seems to work. The St. Croix athletes have found that the extremes help them cope with personal and professional troubles.

St. Croix athletes pull sleds with emergency supplies. (Ackerman + Gruber/)

To understand why people initially decide to go to such lengths, Rhonna Krouse-Adams, an associate professor of health science at the College of Western Idaho, studied endurance athletes. After she failed to find any data on women ultrarunners, she decided to focus her research on them. She herself was one, and had become fascinated by the community and camaraderie among these women, who technically are competitors and mostly fly solo. “They’re noncompetitive people who form almost a family unit through this process,” she thought.

Surveying 344 participants, Krouse-Adams found they cared about health and used running to give themselves a sense of well-being. They focused on self-centric goals, like just finishing the race, rather than outward-facing ones, like besting a competitor. “The sense of freedom and accomplishment” topped the “why” list. “A sense of belonging was really high,” she says. It’s a whole identity—not just a hobby. According to a 2018 study, finishers are more motivated by their group affiliation and a feeling of happiness and fulfillment than those who complete shorter distances.

This is a self-selecting bunch, though, Krouse-Adams points out. “You can’t commit to something for 25 hours a week and have a lot of other commitments,” she says. “This was not a sport chosen by families. Not by moms.” Perhaps not surprisingly, other researchers have found that ultrarunners in the United States are around 85 percent male, 90 percent white, and more educated and richer than average. It’s a pursuit often taken up by those with lots of leisure time and money to spend on the $100-plus entry fees.

Life circumstances aside, not everyone is mentally suited to endurance events. Gavin Breslin, a sports and exercise psychologist at Ulster University, sees a focus on self-challenge. “The marathon is achievable,” says Breslin, who also coaches a team of Olympic hopefuls. Ultrarunners ask, “‘What can you do above that?' There’s risk-taking involved.” The uncertainty is that you might not be able to do what you set out to do. The fist-pumping triumph is when you do it anyway. As O’Neill puts it, “That was liberating, to know that when I thought things were over and done, I had a little more.”

Breslin and his associates have also looked at how distance athletes score on a personality test of five major traits, sometimes called the Big Five, which in concert can define character: extroversion, agreeableness, openness, neuroticism, and conscientiousness. Ultrarunners tend to score significantly higher than average for that last trait, thanks to some mysterious mix of genetics and upbringing. You can cultivate this quality, he says. “You can develop goal setting. Somewhere within us all, there’s a level of ultraendurance.”

At the 24-mile checkpoint, some of the St. Croix participants might be questioning Breslin’s assessment. The ones who decide to bow out join volunteers inside a billowing warming tent that looks like it was fashioned from the inflatable T. rex at the starting point. Other crew members stand slump-shouldered around a fire, waiting for each bedraggled, frigid racer to emerge from the darkness.

The first athlete arrives around 10 p.m., but the last runner doesn���t get there until around 2:30 a.m. If they plan to take on the last 16 miles, they have to again prove they have the skills to stay alive in an emergency. They must stop, set up their bivy sack (basically a body-shaped tent that envelops their sleeping bag), climb into the makeshift bed, wait around 30 seconds, then pack it all up before leaving. That sounds like a pain, sure. But no big deal compared to running 40 miles, right?

Counterclockwise from top: foam pad, sleeping bag and bivy sack, water bottle sleeves, camp pot and stove, fuel (red canister), snacks, trekking poles, microspikes. (Ackerman + Gruber/)

Wrong: When the temp nears zero, and you’re sweaty, you get cold quick—the kind of chill that seems to attach itself to your DNA. Some who feel too frosty after their survival demo, or just beaten, call it quits and either walk a mile (as the crow flies) on a road back to the finish line or catch a ride in a volunteer’s car.

Around 3 a.m., back at the starting point, the race crew begins making breakfast in the shelter for the people who’ve returned, either humbled from the checkpoint or triumphant from the trail. There are flaky eggs, bacon, Krusteaz pancakes, bags of Colby Jack cheese, and Activia probiotic yogurt. Also a big orange cooler with a piece of paper taped to its side: “TANG!” On the registration table, not-yet-cooked bacon languishes—which is fine, because it’s still too cold inside for bacteria to propagate.

Hansel comes in around 4 a.m., shaken. Shaky, actually. His lips are blue like Frost Glacier Freeze Gatorade, and his fork wobbles as he brings eggs up to them, or tries to cut into the pancakes.

“I had dark times starting after about five miles,” Hansel says. He didn’t really see anyone else—at all—till the checkpoint. “I’m used to dark times,” he continues, “but not that early.”

To keep going, he says he thought of his family and all of the people who support him. Would he do it again? No. “Was it fun?” Hansel asks aloud. “Yes,” he answers himself. Perhaps that’s Type 2.5 Fun. (Within a couple months, though, he would be training for next year’s St. Croix 40 Winter Ultra.)

When O’Neill comes in around two hours later, after more than 12 hours on the trail, she looks jubilant. She caught that heightened state of being she’s always chasing through the woods—what psychologists call “flow,” or total absorption in a task. You lose track of time, you feel totally in control, like you are in charge of yourself and the world. “I’m not thinking of anything but what I’m doing, my footsteps, what’s around me,” she says.

She removes her coat, revealing a pale blue argyle sweater, the kind you might wear to the office, and a down running skirt over her bright blue snow pants. The race appears to have barely fazed her. She says, in fact, that it was “90 percent Type I fun.” Her only trouble was that all her food froze—except for a stash of Twinkies. But no big deal: She just ate Twinkies, fully present to sense their spongy outsides, their gooey centers, their sugar flowing into her veins. Crisis averted. Achievement unlocked. Game won, and over.

This story appeared in the Summer 2020, Play issue of Popular Science.

[solidnews]

Science Explains That Question That Confuses The Heads: Why doesn't the human penis consist of bone? Home> Iq> Technology-Added on 30 December, 17:34, updated on 31 December, 22:00SubscribeMelissaOnedio Member303ShareShare on FacebookShare on TwitterAdd to your favorites.Remove from your favorites. Unlike chimpanzees and bonobos, who are considered to be our closest relatives, we humans do not have penile bone or baculum. Today, scientists are investigating how and why the chimney, which Cem Yılmaz perceived as a loss that made men malfunction, disappeared during the evolutionary process. The baculum is a bone that is not attached to the rest of the skeleton and is found separately in the penis. The penile bone of the walrus is approximately one-sixth of the body length; on the other hand, ring-tailed lemurs have a chimney length up to one centimeter and up to one-forty-one in length. Penis bone is found in many mammal species. Although very rare in humans, penis bone is found, it is considered a congenital disorder rather than a baculum. Two scientists from University College London investigated when and how the baculum developed in mammals. as a result of their study of baculum placental organisms separated from the others, that they developed 145-95 million years ago revealed that. The study also shows that the common ancestors of primates have penile bone. This means that humans possessed the penile bone and somehow lost it in the evolutionary process. Some mammals have several theories about the development of the penile bone. In some species, for example, cats, females do not have the ability to ovulate before mating. Therefore, it is thought that the chimney stimulates the female in these species and provides ovulation. Another theory is that the baculum provides support for penetration of the penis into the vagina. But the most important is that the penile bone prolongs sexual intercourse. Because prolongation of the intercourse period reduces the possibility of females mating with other males. In addition to prolonged sexual intercourse formation of the penile bone, mammals with longer intercourse were observed to have longer legumes. In addition, there is a longer competition for females in the species where the penile bone is longer. What makes this situation different for us? If the penile bone advantage over females and prolong sexual intercourse, why is there baculus in humans? Researchers explain the reason for this because people have been monogamous two million years ago. Because men and women only have sexual intercourse with each other, the level of competition between males of the species decreases and the duration of sexual intercourse does not matter much to the human species (according to scientists!). Short sexual intercourse makes it unnecessary for men to have baculum and allows people to reproduce without penile bone. Considering that the average time from the start of sexual intercourse to ejaculation in men of our species is less than two minutes, these findings seem to offer new and scientific excuses to the "some" situations experienced by men ... The scars show that the penis is prickly in the past. just like cats. these spines deliberately irritate the vagina, making it difficult for the female to cifle with other men. Because the human tour is the transition to monogamous penis spines, all of the bone lost. life forms and strategies of living things cause serious changes in their physiology. for example, the testes of the sempazen are smaller than the human because there is no monogamy, men produce more sperm for competition, and the gorilla testicles are smaller than human because there are harem system in gorillas, the predominant male is not close to the other male sura.1 Jan 23: 01Answer ReportEngelleufukdiyokiHealth loss found in some men is not an "excuse". It is a rudely accusation.1 Jan 21: 09AnswerLike (4) ReportEngelleHakan ABaculumu not break the male kalmazdı1 Jan 16: 25AnswerLike (8) ReportEngelleMehmetkaç money ulan a 'baculum'? 1 Jan 10: People don't have a leg. Jan 03: 17ResponseLike (22) ReportEngelleDoctorWhatbecause everything related to living biology is about evolution2 Jan 01: 33ReplyLike (5) ReportRegularMailer DaemonBecause of science ask about why2 Jan 04: 39Next Show ()

Science Explains That Question That Confuses The Heads: Why doesn't the human penis consist of bone? Home> Iq> Technology-Added on 30 December, 17:34, updated on 31 December, 22:00SubscribeMelissaOnedio Member303ShareShare on FacebookShare on TwitterAdd to your favorites.Remove from your favorites. Unlike chimpanzees and bonobos, who are considered to be our closest relatives, we humans do not have penile bone or baculum. Today, scientists are investigating how and why the chimney, which Cem Yılmaz perceived as a loss that made men malfunction, disappeared during the evolutionary process. The baculum is a bone that is not attached to the rest of the skeleton and is found separately in the penis. The penile bone of the walrus is approximately one-sixth of the body length; on the other hand, ring-tailed lemurs have a chimney length up to one centimeter and up to one-forty-one in length. Penis bone is found in many mammal species. Although very rare in humans, penis bone is found, it is considered a congenital disorder rather than a baculum. Two scientists from University College London investigated when and how the baculum developed in mammals. as a result of their study of baculum placental organisms separated from the others, that they developed 145-95 million years ago revealed that. The study also shows that the common ancestors of primates have penile bone. This means that humans possessed the penile bone and somehow lost it in the evolutionary process. Some mammals have several theories about the development of the penile bone. In some species, for example, cats, females do not have the ability to ovulate before mating. Therefore, it is thought that the chimney stimulates the female in these species and provides ovulation. Another theory is that the baculum provides support for penetration of the penis into the vagina. But the most important is that the penile bone prolongs sexual intercourse. Because prolongation of the intercourse period reduces the possibility of females mating with other males. In addition to prolonged sexual intercourse formation of the penile bone, mammals with longer intercourse were observed to have longer legumes. In addition, there is a longer competition for females in the species where the penile bone is longer. What makes this situation different for us? If the penile bone advantage over females and prolong sexual intercourse, why is there baculus in humans? Researchers explain the reason for this because people have been monogamous two million years ago. Because men and women only have sexual intercourse with each other, the level of competition between males of the species decreases and the duration of sexual intercourse does not matter much to the human species (according to scientists!). Short sexual intercourse makes it unnecessary for men to have baculum and allows people to reproduce without penile bone. Considering that the average time from the start of sexual intercourse to ejaculation in men of our species is less than two minutes, these findings seem to offer new and scientific excuses to the "some" situations experienced by men … The scars show that the penis is prickly in the past. just like cats. these spines deliberately irritate the vagina, making it difficult for the female to cifle with other men. Because the human tour is the transition to monogamous penis spines, all of the bone lost. life forms and strategies of living things cause serious changes in their physiology. for example, the testes of the sempazen are smaller than the human because there is no monogamy, men produce more sperm for competition, and the gorilla testicles are smaller than human because there are harem system in gorillas, the predominant male is not close to the other male sura.1 Jan 23: 01Answer ReportEngelleufukdiyokiHealth loss found in some men is not an "excuse". It is a rudely accusation.1 Jan 21: 09AnswerLike (4) ReportEngelleHakan ABaculumu not break the male kalmazdı1 Jan 16: 25AnswerLike (8) ReportEngelleMehmetkaç money ulan a 'baculum'? 1 Jan 10: People don't have a leg. Jan 03: 17ResponseLike (22) ReportEngelleDoctorWhatbecause everything related to living biology is about evolution2 Jan 01: 33ReplyLike (5) ReportRegularMailer DaemonBecause of science ask about why2 Jan 04: 39Next Show ()

Science Explains That Question That Confuses The Heads: Why doesn't the human penis consist of bone? Home> Iq> Technology-Added on 30 December, 17:34, updated on 31 December, 22:00SubscribeMelissaOnedio Member303ShareShare on FacebookShare on TwitterAdd to your favorites.Remove from your favorites. Unlike chimpanzees and bonobos, who are considered to be our closest relatives, we humans do not…