Weird Science
Phone distraction
In a study of 143 married women more than three-quarters said mobile phones frequently interfered with their relationships.
In a new paper, US researchers go beyond the idea that technology is simply attention-grabbing and suggest there may be an evolutionary mismatch between smartphones and the social behaviours that help form and maintain close social relationships.
Humans are hardwired to connect with others, and over the course of evolutionary history, we have relied on close relationships with small networks of family and friends for survival as individuals and as a species.
These relationships were based on trust and co-operation, and this was built when people disclosed personal information about themselves and were responsive to others.
“Smartphones . . . create new contexts for disclosing information about who we are and for being responsive to others, and these virtual connections may have downstream unwanted effects on our current relationships,” University of Arizona psychology professor David Sbarra said.
“When you are distracted into or by the device, then your attention is divided, and being responsive to our partners — an essential ingredient for building intimacy — requires attention in the here and now.”
Hangover myth busted
“Beer before wine and you’ll feel fine; wine before beer and you’ll feel queer” goes the age-old aphorism.
But scientists have now shown that it doesn’t matter how you order your drinks — if you drink too much, you’re still likely to be ill.
Hangover symptoms occur when higher-than-normal blood alcohol concentrations drop back to zero and, surprisingly, the phenomenon is not particularly understood.
It is thought, however, that the underlying causes include dehydration, our immune response, and disturbances of our metabolism and hormones.
Hangovers are also likely to be influenced by ingredients other than the pure alcohol content: colourings and flavourings have been suggested as making hangovers worse.
On the flipside, old folk remedies like the “hair of the dog”, and sayings like “grape or grain, but never the twain” persist, with little evidence to support or refute them.
German and UK researchers set out to test them by recruiting 90 volunteers and splitting them into three groups.
The first group consumed about a litre of beer followed by four large glasses of wine, the second drank the same amounts of alcohol, but in reverse order, while the third drank either beer or wine.
The researchers found that none of the groups had a significantly different hangover score with different orders of alcoholic drinks. Women tended to have slightly worse hangovers than men.
While neither blood and urine tests, nor factors such as age, sex, body weight, drinking habits and hangover frequency, helped to predict hangover intensity, vomiting and perceived drunkenness were associated with heavier hangover.
“Using white wine and lager beer, we didn’t find any truth in the idea that
drinking beer before wine gives you a milder hangover than the other way around,” said study co-author Joran Kochling, of Witten/Herdecke University.
“The truth is that drinking too much of any alcoholic drink is likely to result in a hangover.
“The only reliable way of predicting how miserable you’ll feel the next day is by how drunk you feel and whether you are sick. We should all pay attention to these red flags when drinking.”
Why has the zebra got stripes?
Zebras’ stripes may be a defence against predators, but not the huge lions and leopards you might expect.
International research has revealed that the stripes may help to stop horse flies from landing on and biting zebras.
The flies were observed flying faster and failing to slow down when approaching zebras, tending to bounce off instead of land. Because they landed less often on zebras’ stripes than horses with a single colour, horse coats in zebra patterns could make effective deterrents for biting flies in domesticated horses.