Tattoos made with the cremated remains of loved ones are growing in popularity. WKYC-TV's Monica Robins reports.
Some bereaved people are choosing an unexpected final resting place for their dearly departed: under their own skin. Tattoos called made with microscopic ashes mixed into ink are gaining in popularity, some tattoo shops report.
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Courtesy of Kristin Kalning
The writer's hand, with her "wedding ring rash."
You’ve heard of the 7-year itch, but what about the eight-year rash?
I’ve worn my wedding band since I said, “I do” nearly eight years ago, and my engagement ring for a year longer than that. But this winter, quite abruptly, I developed a red, scaly rash on my finger, beneath both rings. Had I suddenly developed an allergy to my rings? (Or worse, to marriage?)
“It’s not the ring, it’s the stuff that gets stuck under the ring,” said Dr. Carolyn Jacobs, a Chicago-based dermatologist. If you don’t take your rings off when you wash your hands, soap particles get trapped underneath them. Eventually, the soap starts to irritate the outer layers of the skin, and presto, “wedding ring rash.” (I’ve also seen the condition referred to as “ring-eating finger.” Ewww.)
This type of eczema, or contact dermatitis, is pretty common, said Jacobs, who sees a lot of it among moms doing frequent diaper changes and, by extension, frequent hand-washing. Add in dry, winter weather and you’ve got a perfect storm of circumstances for a rash.
Some people can develop an allergy to their rings, though. “Gold has other metal alloys mixed in with it to make it hard enough to wear, “ Jacobs said. “If you have a 14-karat gold or white gold ring, there could be nickel in there, and nickel is close to the top of the list of allergens your skin can be allergic to.”
Jacobs had a good fix, though, if such an allergy plagues you: Take clear nail polish and coat the inside of your ring. “This prevents nickel from leaching onto the skin,” she explained.
My rings are made of platinum, though, and it’s not possible to be allergic to that metal. So Jacobs suggested picking up an over-the-counter, topical cortisone ointment -- which is more powerful than cream -- and applying it twice a day to the affected area. After a week, my ring rash should be gone.
Since I’m not keen on taking off my rings every time I wash my hands, Jacobs advised that I rinse well, and be generous with the moisturizer. She recommends CeraVe cleanser and lotion, which both contain ceramides. Ceramides are fats that help maintain the protective barrier of the skin. The more you wash, the more those ceramides get stripped out, and these products, said Jacobs, help replace them.
Public-bathroom soaps are notoriously harsh, so Jacobs also suggested that I tote around little bottles of the CeraVe stuff to avoid getting my wedding ring rash in the future.
Two more tubes in my loaded-down handbag? It’s a small price to pay to get rid of my eight-year rash.
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Think pink! People are more forgiving if you blush after making a social blunder.
Brides and bashful types aren't the only ones who blush. Most of us have felt our cheeks burn up at least occasionally.
But next time a rush of blood and heat give your face and neck a crimson glow, don't feel embarrassed. A new study suggests some unexpected benefits of blushing: It found that people who turn red after making a mistake or social blunder were considered more trustworthy and judged more positively than those who did not.
In the research, published in the April issue of the journal Emotion, 196 college students (ages 17 to 44) played a prisoner's dilemma game online. During the game's first round, a virtual opponent cooperated with the participant's playing strategy and each shared the winnings. But after the second round, the opponent defected and earned a bigger payout than the participant.
After both rounds, participants were shown photographs of their virtual female opponent bearing one of four expressions: neutral, neutral with a blush, embarrassment, and embarrassment plus blush. When students were asked to do a "trust task" at the end of the game, they judged the defector less harshly when she blushed and thought she was less likely to defect again. Participants even gave a blushing, neutral faced opponent more prize money during the trust task and rated her more honest than someone without rosy cheeks.
"After you do something wrong, people like you more when you blush," says Corine Dijk, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and the study's lead author.
Charles Darwin once described a blush as "the most peculiar and most human of all expressions," and it's a reaction we have no control over.
Color that may begin at your neck, spread to your checks and forehead, and extend to your ears, tends to appear following a mistake, when a secret is exposed, or after a compliment. "The common thing in all these situations is that you are extremely self-conscious," suggests Dijk.
Blushing is an important way that humans display their emotions and it has an appeasing effect on people after a social gaffe. It "signals that you care about others opinions," says Dijk, and that's generally a good thing.
Dijk describes more intriguing facts about blushing:
Is there a blush-inducing moment that sticks out in your mind? Do tell.
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Tom Brakefield / Getty Images file
The prehistoric-looking nine-banded armadillo is dangerous -- and tasty?
Government scientists have been trying to pin down the cause of a spate of mysterious cases of leprosy in the south. See, leprosy is kind of hard to catch these days because we don't still live in biblical times.
But genetic testing revealed the ancient disease can still be caused by "frequent handling" of armadillos -- or eating these bizarre-looking creatures, known in some parts as "hillbilly speedbumps." Apparently, some folks have a taste for their roadkill.
Read the full story on msnbc.com
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Wolfgang Kumm / AFP - Getty Images
Bearded dragon lizards are praised as great pets, but health officials warn that they, like other reptiles and amphibians, can spread salmonella infections.
It might be the weirdest way yet to contract food poisoning: Take two bearded dragon lizards, combine with a big batch of turkey gravy and serve to unwitting patrons of a community potluck Thanksgiving dinner.
That’s what happened in Minnesota in 2009, when an outbreak of Salmonella infections typically associated with reptiles sickened at least 19 holiday diners and led health officials on a winding trek that led to a pair of living room lizards.
In the end, the problem was traced back to the private home of a cook who also happened to keep two of the scaly critters in a glass cage, according to a new case report detailed in the journal Zoonoses and Public Health. Three days before the potluck, the cook had made turkey, potatoes, gravy and two salads.
Within hours of the meal, three potluck patrons reported illness and experts were called in to investigate. Trouble was, none of the sick people reported contact with reptiles.
After much sleuthing, however, investigators detected the types of salmonella that made people sick, including an unusual strain of Samonella Labadi, in several places in the gravy-maker’s house, including the kitchen. Health officials said that the infections likely came from the bearded dragons, perhaps when a teenager in the home changed the critters’ food and water dishes using the kitchen sink.
Researchers say it’s just another reminder that reptiles -- including lizards, turtles and snakes -- may be great pets, but they’re also a common source of infections that can be dangerous, even deadly, to very young children and others with vulnerable immune systems. Amphibians, too, can pose problems, such as the recent outbreak of salmonella in more than 200 people caused by pet African dwarf frogs.
The risk of salmonella poisoning in homes that keep reptiles is well documented, the researchers say. But it’s another thing entirely for lax food handlers to sicken large groups of people, all for the sake of a couple scaly pets. They call for better education about food safety -- and more vigilance to keep reptile bacteria away from the gravy.
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By Bill Briggs:
As the radio announcer screamed that my favorite team, the Colorado Rockies, had just tied the game with a clutch ninth-inning knock, blue police lights abruptly gleamed behind my car. I slowed, steered to the shoulder and smiled.
Watching the ticket-toting cop stroll closer in my side mirror, I heard two things: the Rockies finishing their furious comeback by pushing home the winning run, and my then-5-year-old daughter howling in horror: “Daddy, please don’t go to jail!”
“Sir, do you know why I stopped you?” the officer asked. “You were going 85 in a 55.”
“Yeah. My bad. The Rockies just rallied with three in the ninth. They just won!” I said. “I guess I got a little caught up in the action.”
“You serious?” the officer responded. “They actually pulled that out? Nice!”
So, I did not get a ticket. I did not go to jail. My daughter’s tears dried. And the Rockies finished the season in third place.
But true to my speedy tale, grave roadway dangers indeed lurk for drivers whose beloved teams just gnawed out nail-biting wins, according to a new study by researchers at North Carolina State University and the University of South Carolina.
They found that traffic fatalities increase in or near the hometowns of winning teams on game days.
“While some sports junkies will be quick to tell you they live and die by whether their favorite sports team wins, there may be more truth in their statements than they know,” the authors wrote. Their study was published in the Journal of Consumer Research.
The researchers dissected 271 pro and college sporting events played over an eight-year span -- all “highly anticipated football and basketball games, like playoffs and rivalry games,” they wrote. Because close scores often don’t reflect exciting finishes, the authors asked fans to rate the intensity of the outcomes: “1” for a “blowout” and “5” for “extremely close.”
Then they crosschecked the national Highway Safety Administration’s traffic facility database against the game dates and saw a link between the thrill of victory and the agony of a crash. The closer the games, the higher the rate of deadly accidents.
“For every one-point increase on that scale, we observed an approximate 21 percent increase in observed fatalities at the game location and a 29 percent increase at the winner’s home town,” said Stacy Wood, professor of marketing at N.C. State’s Poole College of Management.
“There was no increase in the loser’s hometown,” Wood added.
The researchers floated two theories. First, that many of the crashes involved in-game alcohol consumption -- although, they acknowledged, not all traffic records indicated whether the drivers had been drunk or sober. Second, high levels of testosterone churned up by vicariously soaking up a big win seemed to influence how those delirious fans later drove -- too recklessly or too quickly.
Artificially snuffing the fans’ joy is not the answer. The researchers suggest, however, that team and stadium officials use certain means -- like singing school songs or listening to players’ speeches -- to keep fans in their seats after the games, adding a “cooling off period.” That often happens naturally following college games.
“If fans are aware of this effect, if they feel like they’re walking on air, that’s the time to have that small voice in your head say, ‘OK, take a deep breath and be calm before you turn the key in the ignition.’ Just have that that little voice of caution,” Wood said.
Or you can learn from famously frenzied fans of Duke University’s basketball team. Dubbed the “Cameron Crazies,” Duke fans have a special clapping chant they shout for the losing squads and their backers: “Drive home safely!”
Bill Briggs is a frequent contributor to msnbc.com and author of the new nonfiction book, “The Third Miracle.”
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This post originally appeared on the blog Persephone Magazine.
By Teri Floyd
I tilt my head back gracefully, swan-like, and lift my arms high in the air. I bring one hand down and gently graze my arm with my fingers, then repeat the same movement with the other hand; over and over, in a languid, ballet-like dance.
Then my husband elbows me in the ribs. “You’re doing it AGAIN," he hisses groggily. “Roll over and go to sleep.”
It turns out that I’m not performing "Swan Lake" for the masses; I’m performing these odd dance moves for a party of one -- my irritated husband who is lying in the bed beside me.
It’s true. I dance in my sleep.
Every night, ever since I was a small child, I’ve done it. I sometimes wake myself up with my arms high in the air, bringing one hand down to graze my inner arm; then, I repeat the same movement with the other side. Apparently, it is quite irritating to wake up night after night to your spouse performing a ballet dance from her pillow. I wouldn’t know. I rarely remember these episodes.
I’ve often wondered what exactly is going on in my brain to make me bust out with the dance moves in my bed at night. After all, I’m not exactly a big dancer during the light of day. Let’s just say that I could have a dance off with Carlton and Elaine and I’d still lose. And yet I’m jigging it up in my sleep.
In my attempts to figure out this night-time recital, I’ve come across two front runners I suspect may be the culprit.
Sleep related rhythmic movement disorder is a disorder typically seen in infants and small children, and it involves repeated body movements such as body rolling, banging of the legs, and even humming. This is what you’re witnessing if you’ve ever seen a toddler repeatedly bang his/her head on the wall or headboard as they drift off to sleep. Generally speaking, most children who have RMD outgrow it by the time they are in adolescence.
Periodic limb movement disorder is a sleep disorder in which a person’s limbs are randomly moving during sleep with no apparent cause. Typically it involves the arms or legs. It only occurs in 4 percent of people, the majority of them women. It is linked to restless leg syndrome and occurs often in people with anemia or an iron deficiency (I have both due to a blood disorder I had in teenage years.) There are also a host of other factors that can cause it, including stress, exercise, diet, and more. I suspect that this is what I have, but it's never bothered me enough to necessitate a visit to a specialist or consultant to confirm it. So for now, at least, my husband will have to put up with my sleepy dance moves.
Do you dance in your sleep? Punch or elbow your partner? Talk? Giggle? Drool? Tell us about your sleepy-time mischief.
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In 1988, a Chinese man thought he'd been hit in the back of the head with a slingshot. More than two decades later, he found out that he'd actually suffered a gunshot wound that day, leaving a rusty bullet lodged in his brain for more than two decades.
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No, you really can't focus on the road while you're yakking away on your cell phone -- and a new study explains why.
This new research builds on the well-known "Gorillas in Our Midst" experiment, a staple of Psych 101 courses. Researchers say they can now explain why many people fail to see a "gorilla" who unexpectedly appears in a video when their attention is focused on another task -- it's because they have lower "working memory capacity," a measure of the ability to keep your brain tuned into many things at once.
In the study, 197 psychology students (ages 18 to 35) watched a 24-second video of six people playing basketball. They were asked to count the number of bounce passes and aerial passes made by the black-shirted team. Twelve seconds into the video, an actor dressed in a gorilla suit walks into the hoops game, pounds his chest, then leaves. The "gorilla" appears on screen for eight seconds.
After viewing the segment, researchers asked participants for the two different pass counts and whether they noticed anything unusual in the clip. Slightly more than half the participants, or 58 percent, noticed the ape but 42 percent did not.
Why the gorilla is 'invisible'
Scientists have wondered why roughly half the people who watch this video see the hairy beast while others completely miss it. Psychologists call this effect "inattentional blindness." It's an inability to see something, typically an unexpected object, when your attention is wrapped up in something else.
"Tasks that require a lot of attention, concentration or mental effort could be more likely to raise the risk of inattentional blindness," says Janelle Seegmiller, a doctoral student in psychology at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and the study's lead author. (This research will appear in the May issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition.)
The gorilla study "demonstrates that people are more likely to miss unexpected events that are in their visual field when they are cognitively stressed as well showing that people with lower working memory capacity may also be more susceptible to missing them," she points out.
While completing difficult tasks, people with higher working memory capacity can keep more information in their minds. And these folks are more likely to see the gorilla. That's because they "have more attentional resources allowing them to use any 'leftover' resources to monitor the environment and notice the gorilla," explains Seegmiller.
In fact, researchers found that among participants who were most accurate in counting basketball passes in the video -- the original task at hand -- 67 percent of those with "high working memory capacity" observed the gorilla but only 36 percent with "low working memory capacity" did.
Although psychologists currently believe that your working memory capacity is not something that can be trained or dramatically changed, you're not doomed to miss things right before your eyes if yours is low. The trick is to have "leftover" attention so you notice the unexpected.
Not glimpsing a gorilla in a lab video is one thing, but imagine what you could be missing out on in real life. "We could find similar results with driving and unexpected events (like a car in front of you quickly breaking)," says Seegmiller. Or people having cell phone conversations while behind the wheel -- then sailing through a stop sign. Or looking but not seeing another vehicle and causing a fender-bender.
Missing the gorilla is a problem of processing information and focusing a hard-working brain. It's helpful to filter out information that's irrelevant to a task, which helps you pay attention to what's important. But this can also be harmful when something unanticipated isn't noticed and should have been.
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daily-consumertips.com
Don't fall for it!
Do you know the "real dangers" of having a toxic colon?
Neither did "Natalie Winston," a "reporter" at Daily Consumer Tips, until she "recently put the Acai Berry Diet to the test."
Surely you heard about it on "ABC, Fox News Channel, CBS, CNN, USAToday and Consumer Reports."
After four weeks on the Acai Berry Select supplement and Acai Advanced Colon Cleanse, Winston not only lost an "astonishing amount of weight," the supplements also bosted her energy level!
But wait! There's more!
In fact, the claims about acai berries made in advertisements that appear in pop-ups, Google search results, on real news sites (including msnbc.com) and even on WebMd.com, are not based in real research done by actual reporters. Today, the Federal Trade Commission is doing something about it.
In a press conference held Tuesday, the FTC announced a crackdown on fake news websites advertising acai berry weight-loss pills. The FTC announcement reads, in part:
Millions of consumers are being lured to websites that imitate those of reputable news organizations. The "reporters" on these sites supposedly have done independent evaluations of acai berry supplements, and claim that the products cause major weight loss in a short period of time with no diet or exercise. In reality the websites are deceptive advertisements placed by third-party or "affiliate"marketers. The websites are aimed at enticing consumers to buy the featured acai berry weight-loss products.
The FTC filed charges against companies and individuals blurring the lines between advertisements and journalism promoting false information about acai and colon cleansing. In some cases, companies and individuals were hit with temporary restraining orders preventing assets from being moved or records from being destroyed. The offending websites must prominently display a statement that they are being sued by the FTC, or be removed from the Web.
As for the "as seen on ABC, Fox News Channel, CBS, CNN, USAToday and Consumer Reports" — yeah, that never happened either. At least in the way the acai scammers would want you to believe. Way back in 2009, Consumer Reports issued a warning about websites and pop-up ads promoting acai products infiltrating the Internet, and mentioned how the scammers came across those acai-endorsing logos:
On May 24 [2009] "60 Minutes" re-aired its January report on the possible life-extending properties of resveratrol—a substance mostly found in grapes, red wine, and purple grape juice. Last year, Oprah Winfrey’s medical expert, Mehmet Oz, M.D., mentioned resveratrol and acai berries on his anti-aging checklist.
One site that’s pushing a resveratrol product actually has video from the "60 Minutes" report and a photo of Dr. Oz. Some sites even use the doctor’s name in their Web address. But the Oprah Web site has issued a notice that neither Oprah nor Dr. Oz has endorsed any product containing resveratrol or acai berry.
In January 2009, Consumer Reports reported that "evidence on the health benefits of acai berries is scant." The bottom line:
CU’s medical consultants advise consumers to be wary of formulations of resveratrol or acai berries being marketed on the Web and in health food stores. While the encouraging test tube and experimental animal research, with purified resveratrol, has yielded some beneficial results, any extrapolation to humans leaves much to be desired – not the least of which are quantitative and safety aspects of its use.
If you want to know the real dangers of having a toxic colon, you should probably ask your doctor.
More on the annoying way we live now:
Helen A.S. Popkin goes blah blah blah about the Internet. Tell her to get a real job on Twitter and/or Facebook.
Cameron Whitman / Getty Images/Vetta
No pain, no gain, right? Actually, your favorite swear word really can help you fight through painful stuff, a new study shows.
Next time you stub your toe, go ahead and let those four-letter words fly. Cursing actually does help dull our perception of pain, research suggests.
In the study, researchers from the UK's Keele University asked participants for five words they'd likely use after hitting their thumb with a hammer; the first word listed would be their go-to profanity during the experiment. (They were also asked to list five boring words -- ones they'd use to describe a table.)
Participants were then instructed to submerge their unclenched hand in a container of 41-degree water, and keep it there -- while repeatedly cursing -- for as long as they could. Before and after plunging their hands into the chilly water, their heart rate was recorded. And after they could no longer stand the cold temperature, they were asked to rate the amount of pain they were in, too.
What's surprising is that the researchers had thought that swearing would make the cold water feel much colder, lowering the participants' tolerance for pain and heightening their perception of it. "In fact, the opposite occurred -- people withstood a moderately to strongly painful stimulus for significantly longer if they repeated a swear word rather than a nonswear word," write the team, led by Keele University psychologist Richard Stephens, in the journal Neuroreport.
From the way participants' heart rates accelerated post-swearing, the psychologists believed their fight-or-flight response had been activated -- that may be because cursing can amp up feelings of aggression. (Think of a bunch of rowdy NFL players psyching each other up before a big game.)
Interestingly, women reported feeling less pain after swearing a blue streak. (Hilariously, the researchers report that cussing "did not increase pain tolerance in males with a tendency to catastrophise." That's the polite British way of saying some of the boys were total drama queens.)
Has your own research already proven that a few well-timed swear words can soothe a stubbed toe? Do tell.
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Earlier today, Geoffrey Mutai ran the fastest marathon ever recorded -- the Kenyan man finished the race in an incredible 2 hours, 3 minutes and 2 seconds. (Update: Mutai's record-breaker won't be recognized, because today's racers were helped by an unusually strong tailwind.) Including Mutai, about 27,000 runners took over the streets of Boston today, racing in the 115th edition of the oldest annual marathon on the planet -- and after months of hard training, many have surely sustained a running-related injury.
STR / Reuters
Elite men runners start the 115th running of the Boston Marathon in Hopkinton, Mass., today.
In fact, injuries occur in 40 to 50 percent of runners every year, shows a 2010 study published in the journal Current Sports Medicine Reports. You've heard of shin splints, stress fractures and runners' knee -- but the weirdest injury we've heard of has to be "dead butt syndrome."
The silly "dead butt" nickname was made popular this winter when a New York Times blogger dramatically declared, "My butt is dead." Not nearly as hilarious as it sounds, the medical term for "dead butt syndrome" is gluteus medius tendinosis -- basically, one of the muscles that make up your behind becomes inflamed, causing searing hip pain.
The gluteus medius is located on the outer surface of the pelvis, and it powers the thighs forward. Without proper strength training, this muscle is unable to withstand the repetitive stress caused by the long runs that training for a half marathon or anything longer requires.
To beginner marathon runners, all the miles you're expected to log is daunting enough -- and the pros want you to add another exercise on top of that? But it's important to strengthen the lower abdominal muscles and the gluteus muscles -- otherwise, smaller muscles like the gluteus medius muscle end up too weak to bear the brunt of the increasingly ridiculous distances you're running. It's a reminder to runners that when training for a half marathon or longer, just running won't cut it; some kind of cross-training -- whether it's strength-training, swimming, biking, rowing or something else -- is necessary. Keep that butt alive!
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Everett Kennedy Brown / EPA
A photograph made available on April 18 shows plumes of pollen from cedar trees being carried by a gust of wind in Hanamaki city, Iwate prefecture, Japan on April 12. The pollen from cedar trees is the major cause of hay fever in Japan, a malady that affects 29.8 per cent of the Japanese population each spring.
See our slideshow of Micropollen: The beauty behind your allergy misery and follow our coverage of allergies and asthma.
NBC Universal
Looks like a fun "Office" party.
There's a reason certain episodes of "The Office" or "Curb Your Enthusiasm" -- or those painful audition episodes of "American Idol" -- make you so uncomfortable. A team of European scientists has uncovered a neural explanation for vicarious embarrassment, that cringe-inducing phenomenon of feeling embarrassed for someone.
Whether Michael Scott, the boss of the fictional paper company in "The Office" (or -- even worse -- his British counterpart David Brent), realizes he's humiliating himself or not, observing his awkward moments activates the region of our brains that processes empathy. That's what's making us squirm, according to the study, published this week in the journal PLoS ONE.
In one experiment, the researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine the brain's "pain matrix" -- the anterior cingulate cortex and the anterior insula -- while the 619 participants read a series of vignettes describing embarrassing moments. (Yes, that "pain matrix" is the area that processes actual, physical pain, but previous research has shown that this is where social pain, including empathy, is felt, too.) Protagonists in the vignettes slipped in mud, walked around with their fly open, burped loudly in a fancy restaurant and wore T-shirts bragging about their sexual prowess. In other words, some realized they were being ridiculous, while others did not.
"Vicarious embarrassment was experienced regardless of whether the observed protagonist acted accidentally or intentionally and was aware or unaware that he/she was in an embarrassing situation," write the study authors, led by Sören Krach and Frieder M. Paulus from Philipps-University Marburg, Germany.
Video: Will Ferrell ready for work at "The Office"
The participants were also asked to rate how embarrassed they would feel if they were in the person's position -- and also whether they were feeling chagrined for that person -- and then took another survey intended to rate the participants' empathy. Not surprisingly, empathetic folks were more likely to experience secondhand embarrassment, proving what we already suspected: If you can't stand to watch deluded reality show contestants humiliate themselves on national TV, it's because you are just such an incredibly nice person.
By the way: We are delighted to report that there is a German word for this very specific feeling: "Fremdscham." It's the emotional mirror of the more-familiar German word: "Schadenfreude," the pleasure we sometimes feel from the misfortune of others.
Can you hardly sit through an episode of the British or American versions of "The Office"? Did you have to leave the room all those years ago when William Hung made his "American Idol" debut? Tell us your favorite example of experiencing secondhand embarrassment. (Or should we say,"fremdscham.")
You can find The Body Odd on Facebook, and follow Melissa Dahl @melissadahl.
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A group of scientists at North Carolina State University is taking navel-gazing to another level.
Jiri Hulcr and his colleagues at the Raleigh, N.C., school recently launched the Belly Button Biodiversity project as a fun way to interest people in microbiology and teach them about the bacteria that's found on skin.
Although the belly button is an unusual place to conduct research, in many ways it's ideal digs for germs.
"The belly button is protected, making it a safe haven for normal skin microbes," says Hulcr, a postdoctoral research associate who leads the project.
Another plus is that few people wash this area with soap. "That's great for bacteria," explains Hulcr, because you get more interesting things growing there. (So far, they've found lots of Staphylococcus epidermidis, which is the most common bacteria found on skin -- but also bright yellow colonies of Micrococcus luteus, and gooey globs of Pseudomonas.)
A third advantage is that the "belly button doesn't produce any special secretions or oils, such as other protected body parts, such as the nose or armpit," Hulcr says. "So the microflora inside the belly button is fairly representative of the rest of the body."
And it's easily accessible: To get a sample, researchers hand each subject a sterile long cotton swab. You're asked to turn it around in your navel three times and place the swab in a vial. Scientists grow the bacteria in a culture and once they become "big and chunky enough" they're photographed. Participants are given a sample number to view their bacteria online.
Volunteers also submit information about how often they wash their belly buttons, whether they have an "innie" or an "outie," as well as their age, sex, ethnicity, and where they grew up.
"People are always surprised at how much stuff grows from even this superficial sample," Hulcr says, adding that a moderately disgusting discovery their project has made was that "very few people wash their belly button with soap."
In the nearly 500 samples collected since the project began in February, Hulcr says they've found the diversity of microbes you would expect to see on skin -- "almost universally bacteria, some molds and fungi, but not as many yeast as anticipated." (Finding yeast on skin is quite common.)
"We're probably the only ones studying human belly buttons on such a large scale," admits Hulcr. He hopes to collect thousands of swabs and eventually sequence a sampling of the bacterial DNA to identify each type -- and determine if there are noticeable differences between men and women, for example, or based on how often you clean your navel.
We conclude with a roundup of some random belly button trivia:
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When the first 3-D movies started hitting the theaters, I was excited to take my kids to see them. I realized early on, though, that I was not enjoying 3-D — I just got headaches.
So I spoke to Dr. Dominick Maino, professor of pediatrics and binocular vision at the Illinois College of Optometry/Illinois Eye Institute, about my issue. It turns out I had one of the symptoms of a binocular vision problem that interfere with 3D viewing, which also include nausea, dizziness and lack of depth perception. This issue affects approximately 16 percent of people, yet few realize they have a 3-D vision problem.
Dr. Maino points out, binocular vision isn’t just about enjoying movies. Binocular vision problems can affect your ability to focus on a page when reading or a ball while playing sports, drive a car or ride a bike.
Your insurance company may cover the comprehensive eye exam, but the follow-up sensorimotor test that would be required to nail a diagnosis may not be covered. So I was intrigued to learn about a simple, inexpensive test, called a Brock String test, you can do at home to see how well your eyes work together.
To perform the test, all you need is one piece of string that measures about the length of your arm. Tie a knot in the middle, and then a knot two to four inches from each end. Hold the string up to your nose with the closest knot about two inches away from your nose. Make sure your finger isn’t obscuring your line of sight. Now you’re ready to go.
First, check to see how many knots you see as you look at the knot in the center. You should see only one. If you see two, you may have double vision, or diplopia, and should consult your optometrist.
Next, check to see how many strings you see as you focus on the center knot. You should see two, crossing at the knot in the middle. If you don’t see two strings, you don’t see 3-D. I found that the strings kept popping in and out, so I definitely have issues with 3-D perception.
If you see two strings, the next step is to determine where the strings cross. If they cross at the center knot, your eyes probably work well together and you can see 3-D. If they cross in front of the center knot, your eyes are pointing in too much and you have "convergence excess." And if the strings cross in back of the center knot, your eyes aren’t pointing in enough and you have "convergence insufficiency."
(Confused? Here's a straightforward, though somewhat boring, video demonstration of the Brock test.)
Fortunately, these issues can often be corrected with glasses or optometric vision therapy. So take the Brock String test to see how good your two-eyed vision is. And if you end up being in the 16 percent of people affected by a binocular vision problem, make the time to see your optometrist.
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A new study shows that judges are a lot like toddlers: They get crabby when they're hungry.
Researchers in the U.S. and Israel decided to test the adage that justice comes down to "what the judge ate for breakfast." They studied more than 1,000 rulings by Israeli judges who were deciding whether to grant parole to prisoners.
It turns out the judges were most lenient first thing in the morning and right after lunch, the Associated Press reports. At the start of a morning court session, 65 percent of prisoners received a favorable ruling, but the prisoners' luck faded to zero by lunchtime. Then, after a mid-day meal break, favorable rulings jumped back up to 65 percent.
The bottom line: Just like preschoolers, judges need snack breaks.
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Scientists have discovered why it becomes harder and harder to multitask as we age. Just as our bodies become stiffer, our brains become less maneuverable as we get older, a new study shows.
Older brains, researchers found, have trouble refocusing after they’re interrupted or distracted.
While nobody’s particularly good at multitasking, we do get worse as we age, says Dr. Adam Gazzaley, study co-author, associate professor of neurology, physiology and psychiatry and director of the neuroscience imaging center at the University of California, San Francisco.
Gazzaley looked at the impact of interruptions and distractions on “working” memory. This type of memory is like the screen on a computer. Just as we can edit and manipulate words on the screen before we save them to the hard drive, with working memory we can take in information and mull it over in our brains without committing it to permanent memory. That's why we can do simple calculations and compose short works in our heads.
Gazzaley and his team suspected that interruptions and distractions might interfere more with the working memories of older people and explain the occurrence of “senior moments,” like forgetting what you wanted from the fridge after you’re interrupted by a phone call.
To test this, the researchers ran a simple experiment with the help of 22 young people (average age 25) and 20 seniors (average age 69). While in a functional MRI machine, each study volunteer was shown a nature scene and asked to remember it for about 15 seconds. While they were thinking about the scene, the volunteers were briefly shown a picture of a face and then asked to determine its age and gender.
When the 15 seconds were up, they were shown another nature scene and asked whether it was the scene they’d been asked to remember or a new one.
As the researchers expected, the older people had more trouble than their younger counterparts remembering whether the second picture was the same as the original one. When the researchers looked at the fMRI scans, they could see what was happening during the experiment as some parts of the brain lit up while others dimmed.
When people were interrupted from thinking about the scene, the part of the brain responsible for memory maintenance went offline, while the parts of the brain needed to make a decision about age and gender fired up. After the decision was made, the memory maintenance network came back online, while the decision-making regions turned off.
The switching process went smoothly for the younger people. But the brains of the older people had trouble turning off the decision-making regions and firing the memory maintenance network back up.
What this means, Gazzaley says, is that the older you get, the more trouble you’ll have switching back and forth between tasks. So, if you have an important deadline to meet, you might want to silence your cell phone ringer and mute your computer so you don’t know when new emails come shooting through.
What are some tricks you've developed to keep yourself focused?
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We know that sitting in traffic on the freeway every morning and night increases anxiety and fatigue -- plus, it's making us fat. Now, a study in mice suggests your hellish commute might also be making you dumber.
Breathing in "freeway particulate matter" -- fossile fuels, weathering car parts and pavement -- may damage neurons involved in learning and memory, according to new research from the University of Southern California. The researchers found that mice with still-developing brains were particularly vulnerable to foul freeway air.
Dr. Todd Morgan, a USC researcher, points out that we don't yet know if these findings apply to people, "but there is suggestive evidence that similar effects may be happening in humans."
How long is your commute? Let's find the reader with the longest trek to and from work -- is it you?
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What’s the secret to a blissful family life? Apparently it's a game of X's. (Well, four X chromosomes, to be exact.)
Having two daughters leads to the most harmonious family life, according to a study by the popular U.K. parenting website Bounty.com. The survey of more than 2,000 families with different combinations of siblings found two girls are most likely to be: well-behaved, play nicely together, easy to reason with, and rarely try to push each other's buttons.
But don't think that more girls means more giggles. Au contraire. The study included an awesome list, ranking the "Best to Worst Combinations of Kids." Second was one girl and one boy. (See below for the full list.) At the bottom: four daughters, the recipe for the least amount of familial peace.
Why? Because all those hormones result in negatives such as fighting and arguing, making a lot of noise, chaotic bedtime routines and general dislike for one another.
If you've ever been in a house full of kids, regardless of the mix of genders, you know that chaos and happiness aren't mutually exclusive. (Remember the Brady Bunch -- three girls, three boys; and what about the Kardashians -- six girls, four boys? Plenty of turmoil and tranquility in both cases.)
However, the Bounty study found that there was something about just four girls that made moms and dads surveyed the least happy with family life overall.
One in three parents of four girls "found it hard to cope on a daily basis," reported the study. "Parents of four girls also admitted to having to cope with an average of four fights or arguments a day."
Liz Davis of Jupiter, Fla., says the study "is a riot." She and husband Joe have four daughters – ages 24, 22, 18 and 16. And while she admits that life with four girls has had its "loud, crazy and chaotic" moments, for the most part, it has been nothing but pleasure.
Responding to the list of four-girl negatives, Davis agrees with a few. The family did have to buy a bigger house – one of the negatives on the Bounty list – and also had some tough family crises, including moving to a new city and a family illness, that made for difficult times for some of her daughters.
But getting ready for school was not the nightmare that it can be for some, because Davis would lay the girls' clothes out the night before. (She does admit to being late to the school bus on more than one occasion.)
While Davis' experience doesn't reflect the study findings, she theorizes that the age range of her girls made a difference. She had the oldest two, and then waited four years to have the younger two.
"I essentially had two and two," says Davis.
Two sets of two daughters. Maybe that's the ultimate formula for family happiness.
Here's the full list -- how does your family rank? What combination of siblings do you think creates the most familial bliss?
Best to worst combinations of siblings, according to British web site Bounty.com:
1. Two girls
2. One boy and one girl
3. Two boys
4. Three girls
5. Three boys
6. Four boys
7. Two girls and one boy
8. Two boys and one girl
9. Three boys and one girl
10. Three girls and one boy
11. Two boys and two girls
12. Four girls
TODAY's Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb discuss the best and worst sibling combinations.
Daniel Boczarski / Getty Images
We get it, Kanye West. You think you're the bee's knees. (In the photo, West is performing in Austin, Texas, during VEVO Presents: G.O.O.D. Music.)
On iPods everywhere, Rihanna is demanding, "Want you to make me feel like I'm the only girl in the world!" Taylor Swift is whining, "Why can't you see? You belong with me!" And Kanye West is bragging, "Excuse me? Was you saying something? Uh uh. You can't tell me nothing."
It would seem that the popular music we listen to today has become more "me"-centric, less "we"-centric, when compared to hits from decades past -- at least, that's what a team of finger-wagging psychologists are saying in a new study analyzing the lyrics pop hits from 1980 to 2007. What's more, they argue that the increase in "me me me" lyrics reflect a nationwide increase in that 21st century affliction: narcissism.
"Music and culture share a powerful relationship with each other that ... has been left unexplored," write the researchers, led by C. Nathan DeWall of the University of Kentucky. (The study was published in the March issue of the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts.) The researchers add that "music serves as a cultural product that documents change in U.S. culture across time."
Researchers used a text analysis program to examine song lyrics for the 10 most popular songs (according to the Billboard Hot 100 year-end chart) for every year from 1980 to 2007. They found that the decades-old songs were more likely to use more first-person plural pronouns (we, our, us), while the newer lyrics contained more first-person singular pronouns (me, my, mine).
But modern songs aren't just more "me"-focused -- they're also meaner, the study shows. Researchers saw an increase in angry, antisocial words in pop songs as the years went on -- words like kill, hate, annoyed, damn, and f---. (Incidentally, two hit songs in recent months drop the f-bomb in their titles: Pink's "F---in' Perfect" and Cee-Lo's "F--- You.")
Of course, it's not entirely fair to say that pop songs reflect nationwide narcissism -- after all, what about the kids who only listen to indie or punk bands, or grown-ups who stick to oldies? Another shortcoming: The report acknowledges that the program used to analyze the lyrics isn't able to detect sarcasm or hidden meaning. Still, the researchers point out a past study that showed self-reported feelings of loneliness jumped 250 percent from 1985 and 2004 -- plus, more of us than ever are living alone, according to U.S. Census data. But it's an interesting examination of how pop culture is intertwined with our emotional lives.
Bottom line: We're not sure how, but we're pretty sure this is the fault of Facebook and Twitter.
What are some recent pop songs that are very "me me me"? And can you think of any lyrics from songs in the past few decades that defy this finding?
You can find The Body Odd on Facebook, and follow Melissa Dahl @melissadahl.
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By Stacy Lipson
Think Popeye the Sailor Man, and you likely think of spinach binges and bulging biceps. But researchers at James Cook University Hospital in England thought of something else entirely when they saw a weird injury they're calling "popeye gluteus."
According to the case study, published in the May issue of the journal Injury Extra, a 42-year-old man was riding a bicycle, when he was smashed from the rear by a bus. Amazingly, he was OK -- save for a giant butt bruise, covering his right gluteal and lower lumbar regions.
And what a bruise it was."His gluteus maximus muscle was bunched up and had an abnormal contour when he clenched his buttock," said Dr. Thomas Wood, the case study's lead author.
It reminded Wood and colleagues of "popeye bicep" -- when the bicep looks like it's perpetually flexed due to a tendon that has separated from the bone. The unlucky British fellow was suffering from the only recorded case of “popeye butt.”
It was very painful for the patient, particularly when he was seated for long periods. But Wood and a team of doctors were able to attach the muscle back to the bone using sutures and suture-anchors. Surprisingly, the study reported the patient was pain-free at seven weeks. Wood said the patient was pleased after the operation, and he was able to return to work full-time.
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Warning: While reading this post, you will desperately want to yawn. But you'll be too scared to do so.
A boring lecture in a college class prompted a big yawn out of one of the students -- a yawn that ended up unhinging the girl's jaw, locking her mouth in permanent slack-jaw position.
She ended up in a nearby hospital's emergency department, where the BBC show "Bizarre ER" was there to film her bizarre treatment: A doctor stacked 26 tongue depressors in her gaping mouth, which caused the poor girl's jaw muscles to tire, allowing the doc to set her jaw back into place.
We guess that's one way to get out of a dull class.
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Ever wonder why the bad times seem so much easier to remember than the good ones? Scientists may have found the explanation: A new study shows that your memory doesn’t work as well when you’re in a good mood.
“Other studies have found that you have more creativity when you’re in a good mood,” says the study’s lead author, Elizabeth A. Martin, a doctoral candidate at the University of Missouri. “We may have found something that a good mood is bad for.”
At the beginning of the study, Martin and her co-author assessed the moods of 180 college students. Then half the study volunteers were shown a video designed to make them feel good -- 15 minutes from Jerry Seinfeld’s stand up comedy video, “I’m Telling You for the Last Time.” The other half were shown a home improvement video called “How Do I: Flooring,” which explained how to install different types of floor coverings.
After the videos, the volunteers’ moods were assessed once again -- sure enough, the Seinfeld viewers were happier, while the moods of the other volunteers were unchanged.
Next Martin sat her volunteers down and gave them a memory test. They were told they would hear a list of single digit numbers and would then be asked to recall the last six without being told in advance how many numbers would be in the list. Then Martin listed 12 to 20 numbers for the volunteers, with just four seconds between each item.
Martin repeated the test 18 times with each person. And as it turns out, there was a clear difference in the volunteers’ ability to parrot back the numbers: Those who saw the Seinfeld video had a harder time remembering all six.
What is it about a good mood that makes memory bad? Martin isn’t sure, but she’s willing to guess.
The same thing that makes us more creative at these times -- our tendency to focus on many things rather than just one -- may be what makes it hard to remember, she says. Put simply, we’re just a bit more scattered when we’re in a good mood.
The solution is simple. If you know that your memory isn’t going to be as reliable when you’re in a good mood, you can take steps to counter that effect, like writing down people’s phone numbers or consciously associating something important with a new acquaintance’s name.
Do you think you get a little spacier when you're happy?
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News flash: Attractive people are happier.
And it all boils down to simple economics, say researchers who get paid to study such things.
If you've been blessed with good looks, you're more likely to be blessed with a bigger bank account, according to new research by economists at The University of Texas at Austin, who've made a career out of examining the interplay of looks, success and money.
"Personal beauty raises happiness," said Daniel Hamermesh, a Texas professor who co-authored the study (.pdf file) with Jason Abrevaya. "The majority of beauty's effect on happiness works through its impact on economic outcomes."
In previous research, Hamermesh has established that beautiful people earn more money and marry better-looking and higher-earning spouses than their plain-Jane counterparts.
The study suggests these indirect economic benefits account for nearly half of the additional happiness that good-looking folks report. Women are more likely than men to report that their happiness is more directly affected by beauty than men.
"For men, almost all the effect is indirect — through beauty raising their earnings, the kind of spouse they can get, their ease of getting loans, etc." Hamermesh said. "For women, however, those indirect effects account for only half the impact of beauty on happiness. The other half is direct. ... Better-looking women just feel happier."
To reach their conclusions, the economists reviewed five large international studies involving nearly 25,000 participants. To quantify beauty, interviewers rated the participants' attractiveness using set guidelines or evaluated their beauty from pictures.
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