Browsing the news
Perhaps you’ve asked yourself (maybe while looking in a mirror), why do I have eyebrows? Some people are born without them, usually involving an inherited condition, and many celebrities lack them. They seem to do fine, though the fashion magazine Elle once declared “Eyebrows Are Your Most Important Facial Feature, Says Science.”
That’s because those little (or large) strips (or strip, as the case may be) of hair serve a few critical functions. First, they protect the eyes by channeling sweat, rain and moisture away from the eyeballs. They also catch dust and work as a shield from glare.
But perhaps more important, they are essential to nonverbal communication. Scientists says they are important to expressing happiness, surprise and anger, and have been used thusly for millenniums, even when our ancestors had plenty of other bodily hair.
Finally, eyebrows are a long-distance calling card. They don’t change much, unless you’re a supermodel. They stand out against a bald forehead, and can be seen from afar, helping you identify someone as they approach.
Winter of our discontent
And while we’re asking the big questions: Why do more people get sick in the winter?
Part of the answer is obvious: We’re indoors more, in confined spaces where it’s easier for viruses to spread among us. But there are other factors too. Colder weather benefits many viruses, such as influenza, whose viral particles are coated by a lipid (fat) that tends to turn into liquid at higher temperatures, becoming less stable and less transmissible.
Winter also means less humidity in the air. Less moisture allows viruses to travel farther and remain in the air longer without binding to water molecules. Less indoor ventilation may help them linger too.
Finally, cold weather may affect our immune systems. There is some evidence that our noses grow less effective at filtering out pathogens when temperatures drop, though the evidence remains scant.
Body of knowledge
Human hair contains traces of many elements, mostly carbon (50 percent), oxygen (21 percent), nitrogen (17 percent), hydrogen (6 percent) and sulfur (5 percent), but also gold. Infants under 3 months of age have more gold in their hair than older children and adults due to a transference from their mother’s breast milk.
Counts
Doc talk
Mania of the week
Best medicine
Just say no to drugs. Of course, if you’re talking to drugs, you’ve probably already said yes.
Observation
“If you take the ‘I’ out of illness and add ‘we,’ you end up with wellness.”
Medical history
This week in 1953, the journal Nature published a single-page study by James Watson and Francis Crick that began: “We wish to suggest a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid (DNA). This structure has novel features which are of considerable biological interest.” Life has never been the same.
Ig Nobel apprised
The Ig Nobel Prizes celebrate achievements that make people laugh, then think. A look at real science that’s hard to take seriously, and even harder to ignore.
In 1997, the Ig Nobel Prize in medicine went to a pair of researchers at Wilkes University and James F. Harrison of Muzak Ltd. for their discovery that listening to Muzak stimulates the immune system response and may help prevent the common cold (at the possible expense of any further appreciation of real music).
Sum body
There is nowhere on Earth free of pollution, from the highest mountains of Antarctica to the deepest Pacific Ocean abyss. But there are places more polluted than others. Here, according to data from the Environmental Protection Agency, are the 10 most polluted U.S. states, as measured by levels of industrial toxins and pollution-related health risks.
1. Louisiana
2. Nevada
3. Indiana
4. Delaware
5. Utah
6. Ohio
7. Oregon
8. Tennessee
9. Illinois
10. Alabama
Fit to be tried
There are thousands of exercises and you’ve only got one body, but that doesn’t mean you can’t try them all: The Superman Punch won’t get you flying, but it will get your back, shoulders and posterior in super shape.
Lie on your stomach with your arms extended overhead by your ears.
Lift your chest, arms and legs off the ground and squeeze your butt.
Keeping your arms and legs off the ground, pull your elbows in toward your sides, then punch overhead. Repeat this punching motion, hovering your arms and legs above the ground and engaging your glutes the entire time.
Start with 10 seconds, and repeat for three to five sets. As you get better, increase the number of seconds.
Curtain calls
In March 1975, a 50-year-old bricklayer named Alex Mitchell settled into his chair in his Norfolk, England, home to watch a British TV comedy called “The Goodies.” It was one of his favorite shows and soon he was laughing loudly. And he kept laughing, going on for at least 25 minutes, according to his wife, until he bellowed a climactic guffaw, slumped in his chair and died of heart failure.
LaFee is a health science writer at UC San Diego.
