Which human body part increases to 10 times its size when stimulated?

The 6th grade science teacher, Mrs. Parks, asked her class, "Which human body part increases to 10 times its size when stimulated?"

No one answered until little Mary stood up, angry, and said, "You should not be asking 6th graders a question like that! I'm going to tell my parents, and they will go and tell the principal, who will then fire you!" With a sneer on her face, she then sat back down.

Mrs. Parks ignored her and asked the question again, "Which body part increases to 10 times its size when stimulated?" Little Mary's mouth fell open; then she said to those around her, "Boy, is she gonna get in big trouble!"

The teacher continued to ignore her and said to the class, "Anybody?" Finally, Billy stood up, looked around nervously, and said, "The body part that increases 10 times its size when stimulated is the pupil of the eye."

Mrs. Parks said, "Very good, Billy," then turned to Mary and continued, "As for you, young lady, I have three things to say:

One, you have a dirty mind, two, you didn't read your homework assignment, and three, one day you are going to be very, very disappointed."

Happiness makes it easier to get pregnant

Do you know why nine months after the World Cup, Germany is experiencing a baby boom? ...You got it right... according to a report, "last summer's mix of sun, beer and excitement during the football World Cup appears to have produced a massive hormone rush in German bedrooms, gardens and back alleys". Happiness tends to release hormones and makes it easier to get pregnant. The current birth rate is 10-15% higher than average, which is good news because Germany's birth rate is among the lowest in the world.

A rise in infomania

In a recent survey in UK, researchers found 62% of people checked working related email or IM at home or on holiday. More than 50% of the 1,100 respondents said they always responded to an email as soon as possible, with 21% admitting they would interrupt a meeting to do so. However, the important finding is this: those distracted by incoming email and phone calls saw a 10-point fall in their IQ - 200% more than the impact of smoking marijuana.

Why human get ulcers, but zebras don’t

I finished reading book Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, Third Edition last week, a quite interesting read. Author Robert Sapolsky, a Stanford University neuroscientist, did an excellent job shedding light on human stress.

Being highly intelligent and social, humans suffer from more stress-related diseases than any other animal, worrying about family, health, jobs and even the future. These are all diseases that are either caused by or being worsened by stress. The average beast, on the other hand, does not spend much time worrying about these things, that is in essence, why human get ulcers, but zebras don’t.

Humans can anticipate that something unfavorable is about to happen to them and can have a stress response prior to the event, which could help them cope. On the other hand, if human believes they are about to be loosing control over, but they are really not and this belief continues, then they are dealing with chronic stress.

The author's own words sum up this situation very well - “ for 99% of the beasts on this planet, stress is about 3 minutes of screaming in terror after which it’s either over with or you’re over with, and we turn it on for 30 year mortgages”.

Where to find love?

Numbers on Y-axis are assumed popular place (in terms of %) to meet potential mate, numbers on X-axis are actual data. Please click the graph to see it on a larger scale.

Positive sides of relationship break-ups

We all know a relationship break-up can have huge impact on a person's life. A new research showing that impact could be very positive, especially if the relationship is of low quality.

Researchers surveyed 155 people (aged 18 to 32) who had experienced a relationship break-up in the last 11 weeks; for 1/4 of them, it was their partner who had chosen to initiate the break up. 58% of the sample reported high levels of positive emotions following the relationship break-up, such as feeling energised and hopeful, while 71% reported high levels of growth, agreeing with statements like "I have learned a lot about myself" (importantly, growth was not related to who had initiated the break-up). By contrast, just 31% reported high levels of negative emotions like feeling traumatised.

"The present results indicate that growth and positive emotions may be a larger part of the relationship dissolution experience than previously thought", the researchers said.

Immigrants: more likely to be self-employed

USnews.com (Feb 26, 2007) ran a short article about immigrants' high propensity to be self-employed. Often as the only way to crack the US economy system, immigrants start business at a higher rate than native-born Americans. Even highly educated immigrants, due to lack of language and cultural skills to break into corporate America, or driven purely by personality, they often prefer to be their own boss. About 25% of the engineering and technology companies started in US from 1995-2005 had at least one immigrant founder, Jerry Young (co-founder of Yahoo), Steve Chan (co-founder of YouTube) are two of the best known.