The Saturday briefing
IS THERE anything you are desperately yearning to know? Are there any pressing factual disputes you would like us to help resolve? This is the page where we shall do our best to answer any questions you throw at us, whatever the subject.
WHEN we see on TV a person, for example a Cabinet minister, walking up to 10 Downing Street, the door opens with perfect timing and the person enters. How does Number 10 know precisely who is approaching and how does the door open at the exact moment the person reaches the threshold?
Robert Banks, Wolverhampton, West Midlands THE door of Number 10 can be opened only from the inside and doesn’t even have a keyhole on the outside.
As a result, someone is stationed for that purpose 24 hours a day.
Given the level of security, communications and closedcircuit television these days, it is hardly surprising that only authorised and expected visitors get as far as the front door and that Number 10 knows who is coming and when they have arrived.
There is, incidentally, also a back entrance for staff which does have a key and can be opened from the outside.
IS there any record of who the first footballer was to celebrate scoring a goal with a knee-slide?
Peter Todd, Workington, Cumbria I’M not sure if he was the first but the man who made the knee-slide famous was Yugoslav footballer Dragan Mance who died in a road accident in 1985 at the tragically early age of 22.
A pop song was composed in his honour with words that translate as: “On his knees, he slides through the grass, he raises his hands, and celebrates goals.”
JENNIFER Selway wrote about plutocrats in last Saturday’s Daily Express. Just how did the Roman god of the dead Pluto get to have the rich and powerful named after him?
James Thompson, Sunderland PLOUTOS was Greek for “wealth” and Plouton, or Pluto, was the Greek god of the underworld, so named because all Earth’s mineral wealth was supposedly stored in the underworld. Hence plutocracy, rule by the wealthy.
I HAVE often wondered where birds go to die. Considering the amount of them in this world today you very rarely see them dead.
R J Bailey, by email TWO facts contribute to this. The first is that when sick or injured, a bird is liable to go somewhere secluded, such as a hole in a tree trunk, to recover or die. The second is that birds have many predators, from insects to larger mammals.
Because of its light body mass a bird’s body, if not eaten by a scavenger, will decompose surprisingly quickly.
I READ recently that a hug needs to last at least six seconds for it to be properly effective. What is the scientific basis for this?
Chris Schuman, Reading, Berkshire I AM tempted to say there is no scientific basis whatsoever but that’s not quite the case, though the six seconds figure is difficult to justify.
In 2011 a study was published of the length of congratulatory hugs between Olympic athletes. It found that the average length of a hug was three seconds.
I think the first to suggest a six-second hug was US motivational author Gretchen Rubin in her book The Happiness Project. The idea is that the longer one hugs, the greater the amount of the mood-boosting hormone oxytocin the brain releases, lowering anxiety and blood pressure.
However some say a hug should last 20 seconds to get the optimum result. WE are constantly reading about increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere but my question concerns oxygen levels. Are these also declining because of the increasing rates of burning fossil fuels and deforestation?
PJ Botting, Altrincham, Cheshire ACCORDING to a recent study, levels of oxygen in the atmosphere have dropped by only 0.7 per cent over the past 800,000 years and we really don’t know the cause.
It is true that the creation of carbon dioxide by fuel-burning takes oxygen from the atmosphere and deforestation leads to less oxygen being by produced by plants but those seem to have had a minor effect over the long term.
One possible explanation is that a general cooling over that period has left the oceans colder, which makes them able to hold more dissolved oxygen, thus leaving less in the atmosphere.
Another possibility is that the large scale erosion of mountains that has occurred over the same period has led to more oxidation (similar to iron rusting) which has also consumed oxygen. ON a recent episode of Call The Midwife a sister opened the front door to find that the milk was frozen. The milk had risen frozen from the bottle by about two inches with the tops still on. My question is that I understand that you can freeze milk, presumably in plastic bottles. How does this work?
Nigel Syrett, by email YOU can freeze milk but as it expands on freezing it’s a good idea to pour it into something else that leaves room for expansion. Also, as the fats in milk freeze at a much lower temperature than water, you should not really try to freeze anything fattier than semi-skimmed. You should also leave time for proper defrosting or you’ll get an off-putting mixture of ice and unfrozen creaminess. Frozen milk can last about a month, though the colour change and texture can be a little off-putting.