To Pre-Rinse Or Not To Pre-Rinse? The Age-Old Dishwasher Argument Has Finally Been Settled

Posted on 06/11/2023 by Boris Clair

I don’t know about your household, but mine faces the same debate on repeat: should you rinse your dishes before putting them in the dishwasher, or not?

I’d always thought both sides made a valid point ― until I heard from Ian Palmer-Smith, appliance expert at Domestic & General, about the topic.

“One of the biggest dishwasher myths is that you need to rinse items before loading them,” he shared via email.

Here’s his reasons against pre-rinsing, as well as some other dishwasher tips from the pros.

Why shouldn’t you rinse your dishes before placing them in the dishwasher?

Palmer-Smith says that, in short, the practice is just a bit useless: “Pre-rinsing plates is a bit like hand washing your car before taking it to the car wash.”

Then, there’s the added boiler costs of using extra hot water (which, though likely not a huge percentage of your bill, are best avoided if not needed).

“In reality, [rinsing before dishwasher use] uses extra unnecessary hot water and typically won’t improve the results. Modern dishwashers use high temperatures designed to break down stubborn stains with little trouble,” he says.

Of course, that’s not to say you should just lob a loaded plate into your appliance, he adds. Scraping is the way forward, Palmer-Smith says, as too much gunk can clog your machine.

He concedes, however: “If you have a pan with some burnt-on food residue it can be a good idea to give it a soak beforehand.”

Still, it’s bad news for the rinsing regiment.

Dishwashers are more energy-efficient than you might think

In case you think I’m escaping the Dish Debate scot-free, you’re wrong; I’m usually a proponent of hand washing, because I always thought dishwashers used way too much energy.

But according to Palmer-Smith, I’m in the wrong.

“Even without pre-rinsing, dishwashers generally use less hot water than hand washing,” he says (that is, of course, if you have a dishwasher already).

“On average, a dishwasher uses water four times more efficiently than washing by hand so if you are running a load when the appliance is full, this can actually ease your energy bills more than most think,” the appliance pro adds ― and it turns out that science agrees.

Well, that’s a load of stress (literally) off my hands…

So THIS Is What Video Calls Are Doing To Our Brains

Posted on 30/10/2023 by Boris Clair

If you’ve ever been on a work video call (and after COVID, it’s safe to say lots of us have), then you’ll probably know the particular stressors the medium can bring.

There’s the person who’s accidentally muted themselves. There are the patchy internet connections. There’s the awkward, crossed-mic silences when the person leading the call asks a group questions (martyrs, IMO).

And now, a paper published in Imaging Neuroscience has found that video calling people affects more than just social cues; it suggests that the contact method can have a pretty noticeable effect on how our brains process the interaction.

“Separable Processes for Live ‘In-Person’ and Live ‘Zoom-like” Faces’,” a study led by Yale professor Joy Hirsch, found that “the social systems of the human brain are more active during real live in-person encounters than on Zoom.“

People who we see on video calls “do not have the same ‘privileged access’ to social neural circuitry in the brain that is typical of the real thing,” Hirsch said.

The researchers used brain imaging tools to look at the neural activity of pairs speaking via video call and those speaking in person.

The scientists observed high levels of neural activity during face-to-face interactions, along with long gaze times, increased pupil diameters, and what appeared to be enhanced face-processing abilities.

Those who were looking at an image on a screen had a “suppressed” social response compared to those who were talking face-to-face, the paper revealed.

“Overall, the dynamic and natural social interactions that occur spontaneously during in-person interactions appear to be less apparent or absent during Zoom encounters,” said Professor Hirsch. “This is a really robust effect.”

The Yale study highlighted the unique impact face-to-face interactions can have on our brains.

“Online representations of, faces, at least with current technology, do not have the same ‘privileged access’ to social neural circuitry in the brain that is typical of the real thing,” said Professor Hirsch.

So, if you’ve ever felt like a video meeting was genuinely mind-numbing, you might be onto something…

Turn Out Most Animals Are Pretty Frickin’ Gay, Research Finds

Posted on 09/10/2023 by Boris Clair

We’ve recently written about how many members of Gen Z are LGBT+ (spoiler alert; it’s a lot). And a recent study recently showed that same-sex attraction is far from limited to humans; lots (like, up to 80% in some cases) of animals are sexually fluid, too.

The project examined all the existing research on same-sex activity among animals. It was led by scientists at Estación Experimental de Zonas Áridas in Spain ― they created a database of all the studies’ conclusions.

So, what did they find?

They discovered that same-sex sexual activity has been recorded in 1,500 animal species, from birds to bees (literally).

Mammals were much more likely to be recorded as engaging with gay sex than other species (about 4%), with non-human primates particularly likely to display homosexual behaviour ― “it has been observed in at least 51 species from lemurs to apes,” they say.

That’s likely an underrepresentation of actual homosexual activities, the researchers add.

“This figure is probably underestimating the actual prevalence of same-sex sexual behaviour in mammals, since this behaviour has attracted the attention of behavioural ecologists and evolutionary biologists only recently,” they say ― and there’s already a research bias towards mammals over other animals, which could explain some of the discrepancies.

In fact, longer-term studies find that homosexual activity occurred in 80% of the mammal population ― the more you observe the animals, it seems, the more sexually fluid they prove themselves to be.

Those who performed same-gender sex acts commonly displayed activities like courtship, mounting, genital contact, copulation and pair bonding ― mounting and genital contact were the most common acts (87% of the same-sex sexual acts in their dataset).

OK, but ― why?

Because it doesn’t help to further the population, same-sex activity among animals is considered an “evolutionary conundrum” and a “Darwinian paradox,” the researchers say.

Of course, lots of the animals who engaged with same-sex sexual activity also had sex with a different gender. And our conception of “homosexual” and heterosexual” is just that ― our human conception.

“Same-sex sexual behaviour as it is used here does not denote sexual orientation (ie an overall pattern of sexual attraction/arousal over time), sexual orientation identity (the sexual orientation that individuals perceive themselves to have), categories of sexual beings (homosexuals, heterosexuals, etc), nor sexual preference,” the researchers say.

They warned that their findings shouldn’t be used to analyse homosexuality in humans ― they’re different.

With that said, a lot of the studies that the researchers looked at suggested homosexual activity in animals could have an adaptive role “in maintaining social relationships and mitigating conflict.”

Part of the reason they think this is because homosexual behaviour has evolved in so many species in similar environments, suggesting it has benefits for those in their circumstances.

They also found that “The prevalence of same-sex sexual behaviour was also associated with adulticide [grown adults of a species killing other adults of the same species], but only for males.”

But the researchers don’t think this disproves the theory that same-sex activity is used to calm conflict ― in fact, they think it confirms it.

That’s because if animals usually engage in homosexual activity during times of violence, it’s more likely that violent results will be associated with the act.

“Because the association was more intense in males than in females, we presume that adulticide was a stronger force triggering the evolution of same-sex sexual behaviour in males. If this hypothesis is confirmed, it seems that same-sex sexual behaviour mitigates rather than negates adulticide, as there are still many species that commit this type of aggressive behaviour,” they say.

The authors of the study added that the field is under-researched, and more study is needed. In the meantime, though ― that’s pretty interesting, right?

Yes Really – We All See Very Different Colours

Posted on 04/06/2023 by Boris Clair

What is your favourite colour? Mine is lilac. Most people’s favourite colour is some variation of blue and we care so much about colour that there’s been a recent trend of influencers getting “colour analysis” consultations to learn whether the colours they tend to wear actually suit their complexions and hair shades.

The wild thing is, though, that while we have what we think are very concrete ideas of our favourite colours and which ones we gravitate towards when clothes shopping, we actually experience colours differently from one another meaning that the colour you’re describing (like your favourite blue shirt) is not quite the same colour that the person you’re talking to is seeing.

Or, another example is, have you ever found yourself arguing with the opposite sex over a colour? Maybe you saw something that looked more red than orange and they argued that, no, it’s definitely orange? This is because as well as individuals perceiving colours differently, perception of colours greatly differs between the sexes, too.

Why Do We Experience Colours Differently?

The back of your eyes are lined with retinas and this is where photoreceptors are located. So, as biologists CJ Kazilek & Kim Cooper of Arizona State University say, “If you think of the eye as a camera, the retina would be the film. The retina also contains the nerves that tell the brain what the photoreceptors are “seeing.”

There are two types of photoreceptors involved in sight: rods and cones. Rodd work at low levels of light and they’re used for night vision as only a few bits of light can activate a rod. They don’t help with colour vision which is the reason everything is in a greyscale at night. Cones, however, require light and are used to see colour. We have blue, green, and red cones.

However, much like lots of elements of human beings: the number of cones in the human retina isn’t constant. Some people have a lot more than others and in fact, there is research that suggests women could potentially see a lot more colours than men.

According to researchers, we could actually be seeing dramatically different colours. Vision scientist Joseph Carroll of the Medical College of Wisconsin said, “one person’s red might be another person’s blue and vice versa. You might really see blood as the colour someone else calls blue, and the sky as somebody else’s red but our individual perceptions don’t affect the way the colour of blood, or that of the sky, makes us feel.”

Another consideration is that colour can differ between languages and lexicons. Grue languages don’t discriminate blue from green but only have one colour term that covers all blue/green shades in the colour spectrum. These include Vietnamese, Kuku-Yalanji, Tswana, and Zulu.

Blue Strawberries?

This week, news emerged of a man in his 40s that had a very rare condition called colour agnosia. It was reported that, “He could put very similar hues in the right order. But he could not sort tokens into distinct colours such as red, green, blue, yellow, and orange. He could not identify the colours of the tokens. He could not imagine the colour of his car. He could not even understand, when presented with a drawing of garishly blue strawberries, that the picture was odd at all.”

This isn’t colour blindness. It’s something entirely different. Researchers say: “In pure colour agnosia, patients have difficulty naming or pointing to named colours, despite relatively preserved colour perception (i.e., retaining the ability to match colours or to identify the numbers on the Ishihara plates). They also have difficulty matching colours, either verbally or visually, to familiar coloured objects (e.g., identifying the colour normally associated with cherries, lettuce, or bananas).”

I don’t know about you but I’m not going to stop thinking about this for a while.

Elon Musk Unveils Spacecraft He Claims Can Make A Return Trip To Mars

Posted on 29/09/2019 by Boris Clair

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Florida Scientists Induce Spawning Of Atlantic Coral In Lab For First Time

Posted on 23/08/2019 by Boris Clair