We have many phobias, and the words to describe our fears

Q. 2020 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale, founder of the nursing profession and undoubtedly the most famous nurse in history. A fierce reformer and bold iconoclast, did you know she was a pioneering statistician as well?

A. Born into a wealthy British family and schooled in mathematics, Nightingale trained in a well-respected German nursing school and served as superintendent of a London hospital for governesses, says Joshua Hammer in “Smithsonian” magazine. With the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1858, she was dispatched to an area outside Constantinople where thousands of wounded and sick British soldiers were quartered, many of them wracked by frostbite, gangrene and typhoid fever. She did what she could to minister to them, despite bureaucratic impediments.

When Nightingale returned to England after the war, she and a government statistician gathered data from military hospitals in Constantinople that confirmed what she had long suspected: “Nearly seven times as many British soldiers had died of disease in the Crimean War than in combat, and the deaths dropped dramatically once hospitals at the front were cleaned up.” With the findings published in graphic illustrations, the military improved hospitals throughout Great Britain, and Parliament voted to finance the first comprehensive sewage system for London.

Though often bedridden with a war-contracted malady, Nightingale continued to gather data on every aspect of medical care, believing that “using statistics to understand how the world worked was to understand the mind of God.” Says Hammer, “In 1858, she became the first woman to be made a fellow of the Royal Statistical Society.”

Q. Based on millions of measurements from 25,000 patients, German physician Carl Reinhold August Wunderlich concluded in 1851 that normal human body temperature is 37.0C (98.6F). However, modern studies consistently find a value around 36.6C (97.9F). Why the difference?

A. The change is typically written off as measurement bias due to poorly calibrated 19th-century thermometers. But after analyzing 677,423 body temperature readings from three different cohort populations spanning 157 years of measurement, Stanford researcher Myroslava Protsiv and her colleagues (published in eLife) found that “men born in the early 19th century had temperatures 0.59C higher than men today.” The decrease was continuous — about -0.03C per decade — over the entire timespan, so the authors conclude that the change is unlikely to be due to measurement bias. And a similar trend holds for women, based on data since 1971.

Why the decline? The authors speculate that it may be due to reduced prevalence of various infections. But whatever the reason, “humans in high-income countries have changed physiologically over the last 200 birth years with a mean body temperature 1.6%

ACROSS

1. Software program, briefly

4. For winding rope on a sailboat

11. Amorphous creature

16. Bird ___

17. Moveable bridge

18. Small motercycle

19. Make into something else

21. Snooped

22. Bozos

23. Cheat, slangily

24. Book keeper

25. 45 - 50% cocoa

31. Flax

34. Blackguard

35. 1773 jetsam

36. "___ to Joy"

37. "___ we having fun yet?"

38. Cute tree climber

41. There are 7 of them

44. You can spend it in Romania

45. Catch a glimpse of

46. Start of a refrain

48. "Lulu" composer

52. Connections

55. Academic enclave

58. Photograph

62. 1973 Supreme lower than in the pre-industrial era.”

Q. Phobias come in many forms: cynophobia (fear of dogs), coultophobia (fear of clowns) and arachnaphobia (fear of spiders). The suffix “phobia” can also mean “a strong dislike,” as in “trypophobia,” not officially recognized in the medical community and without any obvious threat to the afflicted person. Do you know its meaning?

A. It’s fear of holes, or perhaps not holes per se. “It might not even be a phobia, because research suggests it is triggered by disgust,” says David Adam in “New Scientist” magazine. As urban environments become more dominated by patterns from tiles, bricks and other materials, certain of these patterns can be bad for the brain, and more people may develop trypophobia.

Court decision name

63. Pilot's announcement, briefly

64. "___ Ng" (They Might Be Giants song)

65. Fabrication

66. Folded page corners

68. Tattletale

72. "___ well"

73. Same old, same old

74. "___ on Down the Road"

78. Flash of light

79. 3 words for an inappropriate person

83. Wait on

84. Chisholm Trail town

85. "Aladdin" prince

86. Failed attempt

87. Sprinkle with liquid

88. "If only ___ listened ..."

DOWN

1. ___-American

2. "Guilty," e.g.

3. ____ of smoke

4. "60 Minutes" network

5. "I see!"

6. Telekinesis, e.g.

“Triggering images had high levels of contrast repeated at regular, but not frequent, intervals”: holes, bumps, Swiss cheese, empty honeycombs. “Holes have shadows even under diffuse illumination, enhancing their contrast.”

Scientists are still puzzling its underlying reason: Is the visual signature contrast similar to patterns on some of the world’s most venomous animals? Or is it the circular shapes on the skin or irregular clusters of pustules produced by diseases like smallpox or typhus?

There seems to be no easy fix for those affected by trypophobia. For now, architects and designers can try to account for this overactive disgust response to certain patterns in their products and buildings.

7. Boos

8. Loose shirt

9. Beth's preceder

10. "20,000 Leagues" harpooner ___ Land

11. Greek or Roman jar

12. Edible fungas

13. Pulling hair from the root

14. Unusual tea for when sick

15. Annex

20. Dangerous biters

24. Pair of small oars

26. Loyal and honest

27. Ethereal

28. Clarification lead-in

29. Mozart's "L'___ del Cairo"

30. Ring bearer, maybe

31. Bank deposit

32. Bad day for Caesar

33. Certain tide

38. Jack

39. Christiania, now

40. Enlarged lymph node

42. A naturally occurring ridge

43. Western blue flag, e.g.

47. Cupid's projectile

49. Decorative pitcher

50. Network of blood vessels

51. Alum

53. Sickly coordinated

54. Manicurist's concern

56. Cartoon bear

57. New driver, typically

58. Spotted, to Tweety

59. Asthmatic's device

60. ____ List

61. ___ Dee River

66. Tabacco left in pipe

67. Ancient

69. Drudge

70. Monetary persuasion

71. Sensational

75. Asian nurse

76. After-Christmas event

77. "Idylls of the King" character

78. Fed. property manager

79. Apply gently

80. Churchyard tree in "Romeo and Juliet"

81. "___ moment"

82. ___ Zeppelin